ion. The enormity of war was meaningless to him. He was not a
constitutional statesman, but merely a politician who liked to arouse
emotions. Mr. Asquith, whose head is free from the wafting of
feathers, would, with strong and loyal backers, have applied his
inimitable powers of persuasion and tact in accomplishing his ends
without a rupture; and Lord Morley would as soon have thought of
dancing a hornpipe on his mother's tomb as have yielded to the clamour
for war by any number of the people or any number of his colleagues,
no matter how numerous or how powerful they might be; even though his
opinion of the French Emperor were strongly adverse, he would have
angled for peace or resigned. I would rather place the guidance of the
country through intricate courses in this man's hands than in that of
a man mentally constituted as was Pitt. The present Viscount Grey
would have taken the line his namesake took in 1815 by strongly
advocating a peaceful solution.

Take another man of our own time, the Right Hon. Arthur Balfour. He
would have parleyed and schemed until the time had passed for any
useful object to be gained by our joining in the war, always provided
that the Jingo spirit were not too irrepressible for him to overpower
and bewilder with his engaging philosophy. If George III had been
blessed with these types of statesmen to advise him instead of the
Castlereaghs, he might not have lost his reason. Napoleon would never
have gone to Egypt, and our shores would never have been threatened
with invasion. Nor would British and neutral trade have been paralysed
in such a way as to bring in its wake ruin, riots, bankruptcies, and
every form of devastation in 1811. And as a natural corollary, we were
plunged into a war with America which lasted from 1812 to 1814, and
which left, as it well might, long years of bitter and vindictive
memories in the minds of a people who were of our race and kindred.
Our people as a whole (but especially the poorer classes) were treated
in a manner akin to barbarism, while their rulers invoked them to bear
like patriots the suffering they had bestowed upon them.

But the canker had eaten so deeply into their souls that it culminated
in fierce riots breaking out in Lancashire and London which spread to
other parts and were only suppressed by measures that are familiar to
the arrogant despots who, by their clumsy acts, are the immediate
cause of revolt. Pitt and Castlereagh were the High Com