, never associate with them the hated
name of force and coercion exercised by us, at a distance, over
their rising fortunes. Govern them upon a principle of freedom.
Defend them against aggression from without. Regulate their foreign
relations. These things belong to the colonial connection. But of
the duration of that connection let them be the judges, and I
predict that if you leave them the freedom of judgment it is hard
to say when the day will come when they will wish to separate from
the great name of England. Depend upon it, they covet a share in
that great name. You will find in that feeling of theirs the
greatest security for the connection. Make the name of England yet
more and more an object of desire to the colonies. Their natural
disposition is to love and revere the name of England, and this
reverence is by far the best security you can have for their
continuing, not only to be subjects of the crown, not only to
render it allegiance, but to render it that allegiance which is the
most precious of all--the allegiance which proceeds from the depths
of the heart of man. You have seen various colonies, some of them
lying at the antipodes, offering to you their contributions to
assist in supporting the wives and families of your soldiers, the
heroes that have fallen in the war. This, I venture to say, may be
said, without exaggeration, to be among the first fruits of that
system upon which, within the last twelve or fifteen years, you
have founded a rational mode of administering the affairs of your
colonies without gratuitous interference.

As I turn over these old minutes, memoranda, despatches, speeches, one
feels a curious irony in the charge engendered by party heat or malice,
studiously and scandalously careless of facts, that Mr. Gladstone's
policy aimed at getting rid of the colonies. As if any other policy than
that which he so ardently enforced could possibly have saved them.

III

A PAINFUL INCIDENT

In 1849 Mr. Gladstone was concerned in a painful incident that befel one
of his nearest friends. Nobody of humane feeling would now willingly
choose either to speak or hear of it, but it finds a place in books even
to this day; it has been often misrepresented; and it is so
characteristic of Mr. Gladstone, and so entirel