John Morley: “Gladstone said that they were without exception free traders, but not free traders without exception.”

Could ministers justify abandonment, without far stronger evidence than they then possessed that they could not govern the Transvaal peaceably?

I am trying to feel my way through the most difficult problem, the most difficult situation that a responsible Government can have to face.

What I endeavoured to show was that King George III., without changing his opinion of the justice of his war against the colonies, was obliged to give it up on account of a change of public opinion, and was not open to blame for so doing.

We ought to be able to separate in thought the question of the grounds and evidence for a given dogma being true, from the distinct and purely historic question of the social and intellectual conditions which made men accept it for true.