lor of the Exchequer, as
to the proper fee. Fitzjames was only anxious now to get the thing
definitively settled on any terms and put down in black and white. The
Government might go out at any moment, and without some agreement he
would be left in the lurch. It was 'excessively mortifying, ... and
showed what a ramshackle concern our whole system' was. Definite
instructions, however, to prepare the bill were soon afterwards given.
On December 20 he writes that the English Evidence Bill is getting on
famously. He hopes to have it all ready before Parliament meets, and it
may probably be read a second time, though hardly passed this year. It
was in fact finished, as one of his letters shows, by February 7, 1873.

II. 'LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY'

Meanwhile, however, he had been putting much energy into another task.
He had for some time delivered his tale of articles to the 'Pall Mall
Gazette' as of old. He was soon to become tired of anonymous journalism;
but he now produced a kind of general declaration of principles which,
though the authorship was no secret and was soon openly acknowledged,
appeared in the old form, and, as it turned out, was his last work of
importance in that department. It was in some ways the most
characteristic of all his writings. He put together and passed through
the 'Pall Mall Gazette' during the last months of 1872 and January 1873
the series of articles already begun during his voyage. They were
collected and published with his name in the following spring as
'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' I confess that I wondered a little at
the time that the editor of a newspaper should be willing to fill his
columns with so elaborate a discourse upon first principles; and I
imagine that editors of the present day would be still more determined
to think twice before they allowed such latitude even to the most
favoured contributor. I do not doubt, however, that Mr. Greenwood judged
rightly. The letters were written with as much force and spirit as
anything that Fitzjames ever produced. I cannot say how they affected
the paper, but the blows told as such things tell. They roused the anger
of some, the sympathy of others, and the admiration of all who liked to
see hard hitting on any side of a great question. The letters formed a
kind of 'Apologia' or a manifesto--the expression, as he frequently
said, of his very deepest convictions. I shall therefore dwell upon them
at some length, because he had