m done will not go
far. In politics I have done my work. What you and others
in the arena do will interest me more than all other
things of this world, I think and hope, to my dying day.
But I will not trouble the workers with the querulousness
of old age.

So much for myself. And now let me, as I go, say a parting
word to him with whom in politics I have been for many
years more in accord than with any other leading man. As
nothing but age or infirmity would to my own mind have
justified me in retiring, so do I think that you, who can
plead neither age nor infirmity, will find yourself at
last to want self-justification, if you permit yourself
to be driven from the task either by pride or by
indifference.

I should express my feelings better were I to say by pride
and diffidence. I look to our old friendship, to the
authority given to me by my age, and to the thorough
goodness of your heart for pardon in thus accusing you.
That little men should have ventured to ill-use you, has
hurt your pride. That these little men should have been
able to do so has created your diffidence. Put you to
a piece of work that a man may do, you have less false
pride as to the way in which you may do it than any man
I have known; and, let the way be open to you, as little
diffidence as any. But in this political mill of ours
in England, a man cannot always find the way open to do
things. It does not often happen that an English statesman
can go in and make a great score off his own bat. But not
the less is he bound to play the game and to go to the
wicket when he finds that his time has come.

There are, I think, two things for you to consider in this
matter, and two only. The first is your capacity, and the
other is your duty. A man may have found by experience
that he is unfitted for public life. You and I have known
men in regard to whom we have thoroughly wished that such
experience had been reached. But this is a matter in which
a man who doubts himself is bound to take the evidence of
those around him. The whole party is most anxious for your
co-operation. If this be so,--and I make you the assurance
from most conclusive evidence,--you are bound to accept
the common consent of your political friends on that
matter. You perhaps think that at a certain period of your
life you failed. They all agree w