John Morley: “It is a marked and significant act of entire separation from the whole party and will strengthen Disraeli’s hands.”

Happy the man who from out the floods has fled the storm and found the haven; happy too is he who has surmounted toil and trouble.—Bacchae, 902-5.

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.

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