620 LIFE OF OOBDEN. [oma?

1854 unfortunate asa general who has lost sight of his army. The)
41.5". had habitually appealed against aristocratic caste, agains!
monopolist selfishness, against journalistic levity, agains!
parliamentary insincerity, to the sovereign tribunal of Public
Opinion. They had lived and worked on opinion, they hed
placed their whole heart in it, they had won their great victory
by it. This divinity now proved as false an idol as the rest
Public opinion was bitterly and impatiently hostile and
intractable. Mr. Bright was burnt in effigy. Cobden, at?
meeting in his own constituency, after an energetic vindics”
bion of his opinions, saw resolutions carried against him
Every morning they were reviled in half the newspaper®
in the country as enemies of the commonwealth. They were
openly told that they were traitors, and that it was a pity
that they could not be punished as traitors.
A more mortifying position can hardly be imagined:
Mortifying as it was, it never shook their steadfastness for #
moment. War could never be for them a mere commonplace
 incident of policy. If the necessity for it was anything
short of being irresistible, war was a crime and the parent of
crimes. They now asked where was the necessity, and what
was the justification. The danger of the Russian power
they said, was a phantom. The expediency of permanently
upholding the Ottoman rule in Europe was an absurdity:
The drawbacks of non-intervention were remote and vagus
and could neither be weighed nor described in accurate
terms. This is their own langnage. With such a view, it
was impossible that they could do otherwise than hold
sternly aloof. “ You must excuse me,” said Mr. Bright, in
reply to the Mayor of Manchester, who had invited him t0
attend a meeting for the Patriotic Fund, “if I cannot go
with you; I will have no part in this terrible crime. My
hands shall be unstained with the blood that is being shed.
The necessity of maintaining themselves in office may in-