that the Emperor of Russia intended last year, if the Vienna note or Prince Menchikoff’s last and most moderate proposition had been accepted, to have marched on Constantinople.  Indeed, he had pledged himself in the most distinct manner to withdraw his troops at once from the Principalities, if the Vienna note were accepted; and therefore in that case Turkey would have been delivered from the presence of the foe; peace would for a time have been secured for Europe; and the whole matter would have drifted on to its natural solution—­which is, that the Mahommedan power in Europe should eventually succumb to the growing power of the Christian population of the Turkish territories.

Now, looking back upon what has since happened, which view shows the greater wisdom and prevision?  That of the man who delivered this speech (and he was John Bright) or those against whom he spoke?  To which set of principles has time given the greater justification?

Yet upon the men who resisted what we all admit, in this case at least, to have been the false theories and who supported, what we equally admit now, to have been the right principles, we poured the same sort of ferocious contempt that we are apt now spasmodically to pour upon those who, sixty years later, would prevent our drifting in the same blind fashion into a war just as futile and bound to be infinitely more disastrous—­a war embodying the same “principles” supported by just the same theories and just the same arguments which led us into this other one.

I know full well the prejudice which the names I am about to cite is apt to cause.  We poured out upon the men who bore them a rancour, contempt and hatred which few men in English public life have had to face.  Morley, in his life of Cobden, says of these two men—­Cobden and Bright: 

They had, as Lord Palmerston said, the whole world against them.  It was not merely the august personages of the Court, nor the illustrious veterans in Government and diplomacy, nor the most experienced politicians in Parliament, nor the powerful journalists, nor the men versed in great affairs of business.  It was no light thing to confront even that solid mass of hostile judgment.  But besides all this, Cobden and Mr. Bright knew that the country at large, even their trusty middle and industrial classes, had turned their faces resolutely and angrily away from them.  Their own great instrument, the public meeting, was no longer theirs to wield.  The army of the Nonconformists, which has so seldom been found fighting on the wrong side, was seriously divided.

Public opinion was bitterly and impatiently hostile and intractable.  Mr. Bright was burnt in effigy.  Cobden, at a meeting in his own constituency, after an energetic vindication of his opinions, saw resolutions carried against him.  Every morning they were reviled in half the newspapers in the country as enemies of the commonwealth.  They were openly told that they