ym quoted on any other subject than one
which relates to the mode of legislation or the policy to be
adopted with our Roman catholic fellow-citizens, because, if there
was one blot on their escutcheon, if there was one painful--I would
almost say odious--feature in the character of the party among whom
they were the most distinguished chiefs, it was the bitter and
ferocious intolerance which in them became the more powerful
because it was directed against the Roman catholics alone. I would
appeal in other names to gentlemen who sit on this side of the
House. If Hampden and Pym were friends of freedom, so were
Clarendon and Newcastle, so were the gentlemen who sustained the
principles of loyalty.... They were not always seeking to tighten
the chains and deepen the brand. Their disposition was to relax the
severity of the law, and attract the affections of their Roman
catholic fellow-subjects to the constitution by treating them as
brethren.... We are a minority insignificant in point of numbers.
We are more insignificant still, because we are but knots and
groups of two or three, we have no power of cohesion, no ordinary
bond of union. What is it that binds us together against you, but
the conviction that we have on our side the principle of
justice--the conviction that we shall soon have on our side the
strength of public opinion (_oh, oh!_). I am sure I have not wished
to say a syllable that would wound the feelings of any man, and if
in the warmth of argument such expressions should have escaped me,
I wish them unsaid. But above all we are sustained by the sense of
justice which we feel belongs to the cause we are defending; and we
are, I trust, well determined to follow that bright star of
justice, beaming from the heavens, whithersoever it may lead.

All this was of no avail, just as the same arguments and temper on two
other occasions of the same eternal theme in his life,[263] were to be
of no avail. Disraeli spoke strongly against the line taken by the
Peelites. The second reading was carried by 438 against 95, one-third
even of this minority being Irish catholics, and the rest mainly
Peelites, 'a limited but accomplished school,' as Disraeli styled them.
Hume asked Mr. Gladstone for his speech for publication to circulate
among the dissenters who, he said, know nothing about relig