Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878, page 139 by Various Authors
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had not already wandered so far from my theme, I should like to offer a few instances here. Very often it seemed natural to care very little whether England went to war with Russia or not: the interest lay in the moral struggle that was going on within her own limits. Awkward as this moral struggle made her appear, perilously as it seemed to have exposed her to the sarcasm of some of her neighbors--of that compact, cohesive France, for instance, which even yet cannot easily imagine a great country sacrificing the substance of "glory" to the shadow of wisdom--this was the most striking element in the drama into which, as I said just now, the situation had resolved itself. The Liberal party at the present hour is broken, disfigured, demoralized, the mere ghost of its former self. The opposition to the government has been, in many ways, factious and hypercritical: it has been opposition for opposition's sake, and it has met, in part, the fate of such immoralities. But a good part of the cause that it represented appeared at times to be the highest conscience of a civilized country. The aversion to war, the absence of defiance, the disposition to treat the emperor of Russia like a gentleman and a man of his word, the readiness to make concessions, to be conciliatory, even credulous, to try a great many expedients before resorting to the showy argument of the sword,--these various attributes of the peace party offered, of course, ample opportunity to those scoffers at home and abroad who are always prepared to cry out that England has sold herself, body and soul, to "Manchester." It was interesting to attempt to feel what there might be of justice in such cries, and at the same time feel that this looking at war in the face and pronouncing it very vile was the mark of a high civilization. It is but fair to add, though it takes some courage, that I found myself very frequently of the opinion of the last speaker. If British interests were in fact endangered by Russian aggression--though, on the whole, I did not at all b