e disertum,
Et minimae vires frangere quassa valent;
Subruere est arces et stantia moenia virtus.

--Ov. _Trist._, iii. XI. 21.

In an easy case any man can plead, and against shattered walls the
puniest strength prevails; 'tis the overthrow of standing towers
and frowning ramparts that tests manhood.

I

At last one day (March 8) when Mr. Gladstone was "writing a little on
Homer," he heard the fated news that the dissolution was announced. Lord
Beaconsfield published the famous letter to the lord lieutenant of
Ireland, and in deep accents and sonorous sentences endeavoured to make
home rule the issue of the election. Shrewd politicians, with time to
reflect, found it not easy to divine why the government had chosen the
particular moment. It might be, as some supposed, that they thought the
opposition had lately got into bad odour with the country by coquetting
with home rulers, as shown by the elections at Liverpool and Southwark.
But, in fact, little importance was to be attached to these two defeats of
the opposition, for Liverpool had always been conservative, and Southwark
was thoroughly disorganised by liberal divisions. "The general opinion
seems to be," says Speaker Brand (Mar. 15), "that the opposition may gain
slightly at the general election, but not to an extent to break down
altogether the conservative majority."

In what was in effect his election address, Lord Beaconsfield warned the
country that a danger, in its ultimate results scarcely less disastrous
than pestilence and famine, distracted Ireland. A portion of its
population was endeavouring to sever the constitutional tie that united it
to Great Britain in that bond which was favourable to the power and
prosperity of both. "It is to be hoped," he went on, "that all men of
light and leading will resist this destructive doctrine. The strength of
this action depends on the unity of feeling which should pervade the
United Kingdom and its widespread dependencies. The first duty of an
English minister should be to consolidate that co-operation which renders
irresistible the community educated, as our own, in an equal love of
liberty and law. And yet there are some who challenge the expediency of
the imperial character of this realm. Having attempted and failed to
enfeeble our colonies by their policy of decomposition, they may perhaps
now recognise in the disintegration of the United Kingdom, a mode which
will not only