Ireland was prostrate, Old Chartists were lecturing on Christian evidences, or, more ...

Ireland was prostrate, Old Chartists were lecturing on Christian evidences, or, more usefully, working quietly in the new trade unions; old republicans were shouting for war; old pacifists declaiming to empty halls. Nothing is so bloody-minded as a Radical turned patriot.

Roebuck was all for bombarding Naples. Bentham's former secretary, Bowring, crowned his astonishingly various career by actually bombarding Canton.

Only those whose memories went back fifteen years could understand the change of sentiment which made the arming of the volunteers in '59 possible, or how completely the confidence which inspired that gesture was vindicated by the patience of Lancashire in the cotton famine.

Adventurous and secure, the ruling class in the years of Palmerston was excellently qualified to found a commonwealth or reconquer an empire abroad, and, within the range of its ideas, to legislate wisely at home. Ireland, unhappily, lay outside that range.