606 LIFE OF COBDEN. omar
1859. him from an offer of a seat, and I remarked that he had very
mr. 56. carefully avoided personalities in those speeches, It is nob
personalities that are complained of ; a public man,’ said be
is right in attacking persons. But it is his attacks on class?
that have given offence to powerful bodies, who can make
their resentment felt.”
“In the course of his remarks he gave me a fall explansbion
 of his views on the present war, and expressed his
determination to preserve a strict neutrality, observing that,
as the people of England would as soon think of ¢ evacuating
these islands’ as to go to war in behalf of Austria, and 59
France did not ask ns to help her, he could not see any
possibility of our being mixed up in the fray. On thi®
point he remarked :—‘If you are afraid of our abandoning
our neutral ground, why don’t you come into the citadel of
power, where you could have a voice in preventing it 7’
“On his remarking upon the difficulty there would be iv
carrying on the Government unless all parties were united
and how impossible it was for him to do so if the nature)
representatives of the Liberals would not take office, J
replied that the very fact of his having offered me office wa8)
so far as I was concerned, his justification ; and that I
should be blamed, and not he in the matter. And I added,
‘1 shall give just the same support to your Government
whilst Mr. Gibson is in it, who represents identically my
views, as I should if I were one of your Government ; for I
should be certain to run away, if you were to do anything
very contrary to my strong convictions.’ I added that at
present there were only two subjects on which we could
have any serious difference, and that if he kept out of the
war, and gave us a fair Reform measure, I did not see any
other point on which I should be found opposing him, He
returned to the argument that my presence in the Government
 was the important step required ; and I then told him