John Morley: “I can only tell you further, that if this action of ours fails, miscarries, and is wrecked, it will be a considerable…”

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.

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

Yet he had prepared this document for the very purpose of tempting France into a declaration of war.

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.