ition And Otherwise. (1864)

The best form of government is that which doth actuate and dispose
every part and member of a state to the common good. If, instead
of concord and interchange of support, one part seeks to uphold an
old form of government, and the other part introduce a new, they
will miserably consume one and other. Histories are full of the
calamities of entire states and nations in such cases. It is,
nevertheless, equally true that time must needs bring about some
alterations.... Therefore have those commonwealths been ever the
most durable and perpetual which have often formed and recomposed
themselves according to their first institution and
ordinance.--PYM.

I

A rapid and extraordinary change began to take place in Mr. Gladstone's
position after the year 1863. With this was associated an internal
development of his political ideas and an expansion of social feeling,
still more remarkable and interesting. As we have seen, he reckoned that a
little earlier than this he had reached his lowest point in public
estimation. He had now been more than thirty years in parliament. He had
sat in three cabinets, each of a different colour and different
connections from the other two. It was not until he had seen half a
century of life on our planet, and more than quarter of a century of life
in the House of Commons, that it was at all certain whether he would be
conservative or liberal, to what species of either genus he would attach
himself, or whether there might not from his progressive transmutations be
evolved some variety wholly new.

I have already given his picture of the Palmerston cabinet as a
kaleidoscope, and the same simile would be no bad account of his own
relation to the political groups and parties around him. The Manchester
men and the young radicals from the West Riding of Yorkshire were his
ardent adherents when he preached economy and peace, but they were chilled
to the core by his neutrality or worse upon the life and death struggle
across the Atlantic. His bold and confident finance was doubted by the
whigs, and disliked by the tories. But then the tories, apart from their
wiser leader, were delighted by his friendly words about the Confederates,
and the whigs were delighted with his unflagging zeal for the deliverance
of Italy. Only, zeal for the deliverance of Italy lost him the friendship
of those children of the Holy Father who came