John Morley: “The ideal is as impracticable as it is puerile and retrograde.”

Gladstone protested against the bill as “inequitable, unusual, and unwise,” and it was largely modified in committee.

For this line of contention he was called an “unpatriotic trumpet of disaster,” and other names commonly bestowed on all men in all countries who venture to say that what chances for the hour to be a popular war is a blunder.

A rendering less apt for this occasion finds favour with some scholars, that true virtue can never be restored to those who have once fallen away from it.

True merit once resigned, No trick nor feint will serve as well.