On The Place Of Italy. (Page 415)
By the provisions of nature, Italy was marked out for a conservative force in Europe. As England is cut off by the channel, so is Italy by the mountains, from the continental mass.... If England commits follies they are the follies of a strong man who can afford to waste a portion of his resources without greatly affecting the sum total.... She has a huge free margin, on which she might scrawl a long list of follies and even crimes without damaging the letterpress. But where and what is the free margin in the case of Italy, a country which has contrived in less than a quarter of a century of peace, from the date of her restored independence, to treble (or something near it) the taxation of her people, to raise the charge of her debt to a point higher than that of England, and to arrive within one or two short paces of national bankruptcy?...
Italy by nature stands in alliance neither with anarchy nor with Caesarism, but with the cause and advocates of national liberty and progress throughout Europe. Never had a nation greater advantages from soil and climate, from the talents and dispositions of the people, never was there a more smiling prospect (if we may fall back upon the graceful fiction) from the Alpine tops, even down to the Sicilian promontories, than that which for the moment has been darkly blurred. It is the heart's desire of those, who are [pg 562] not indeed her teachers, but her friends, that she may rouse herself to dispel once and for ever the evil dream of what is not so much ambition as affectation, may acknowledge the true conditions under which she lives, and it perhaps may not yet be too late for her to disappoint the malevolent hopes of the foes of freedom, and to fulfil every bright and glowing prediction which its votaries have ever uttered on her behalf.—“The Triple Alliance and Italy's Place in it” (Contemporary Review, Oct. 1889).
The Glasgow Peroration. (Page 492)
After describing the past history of Ireland as being for more than five hundred years 'one almost unbroken succession of political storm and swollen tempest, except when those tempests were for a time interrupted by a period of servitude and by the stillness of death,' Mr. Gladstone went on:—
Those storms are in strong contrast with the future, with the present. The condition of the Irish mind justifies us in anticipating. It recalls to my mind a beautiful legend of ancient paganism—for that ancient paganism, amongst many legends false and many foul, had also some that were beautiful. There were two Lacedæmonian heroes known as Castor and Pollux, honoured in their life and more honoured in their death, when a star was called after them, and upon that star the fond imagination of the people fastened lively conceptions; for they thought that when a ship at sea was caught in a storm, when dread began to possess the minds of the crew, and peril thickened round them, and even alarm was giving place to despair, that if then in the high heavens this star appeared, gradually and gently but effectually the clouds disappeared, the winds abated, the towering billows fell down to the surface of the deep, calm came where there had been uproar, safety came where there had been danger, and under the beneficent influence of this heavenly body the terrified and despairing crew came safely to port. The proposal which the liberal party of this country made in 1886, which they still cherish in their mind and heart, and which we trust and believe, they are about now to carry forward, that proposal has been to Ireland and the political relations of the two countries what the happy star was believed to be to the seamen of antiquity. It has produced already anticipations of love and good will, which are the first fruits of what is to come. It has already changed the whole tone and temper of the relations, I cannot say yet between the laws, but between the peoples and inhabitants of these two great islands. It has filled our hearts with hope and with joy, and it promises to give us in lieu of the terrible disturbances of other times, with their increasing, intolerable burdens and insoluble problems, the promise of a brotherhood exhibiting harmony and strength at home, and a [pg 563] brotherhood which before the world shall, instead of being as it hitherto has been for the most part, a scandal, be a model and an example, and shall show that we whose political wisdom is for so many purposes recognised by the nations of civilised Europe and America have at length found the means of meeting this oldest and worst of all our difficulties, and of substituting for disorder, for misery, for contention, the actual arrival and the yet riper promise of a reign of peace.—Theatre Royal, Glasgow, July 2, 1892.
The Naval Estimates Of 1894.
Naval Estimates Of 1894
The first paragraph of this memorandum will be found on p. 508:—