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Updated: May 6, 2025
The author of "George Fox digged out of his Burrowes," the sturdy controversialist who in his seventy-third year rowed himself in a boat the whole length of Narragansett bay to engage in a theological tournament against three Quaker champions, was animated by nothing less than the broadest liberalism in his bold reply to the Federal Commissioners in 1657.
When, in the sixties, Socialism, with its organisation of the working-class movement, grew up side by side with the revival of political Liberalism, then, too, by a natural law, arose the extreme form of protest against the aggregation of human society by Communism; the Anarchist doctrine naturally rose up from the complete oblivion in which it had lain for ten years.
But his speculative Liberalism had carried him so much farther than his father's had ever gone, that the recoil was correspondingly great. The steps of it are dim. He was "struck" one Sunday with the "authoritative" tone of the First Epistle of Peter. Who and what was Peter? What justified such a tone? At another time he found a Life of St.
Whatever the opinions and degree of education of a man of to-day, whatever his shade of liberalism, whatever his school of philosophy, or of science, or of economics, however ignorant or superstitious he may be, every man of the present day knows that all men have an equal right to life and the good things of life, and that one set of people are no better nor worse than another, that all are equal.
Shortly after this, the Earl of Derby retired on account of ill-health, and was succeeded by Mr. Disraeli as premier; but the current of Liberalism set in so strongly in the ensuing elections that he was forced to resign in 1868, and Mr. Gladstone now for the first time became prime minister. This was the golden period of Gladstone's public services.
The Liberalism which gives a colour to society now, is very different from that character of thought which bore the name thirty or forty years ago. It is scarcely now a party; it is the educated lay world. When I was young, I knew the word first as giving name to a periodical, set up by Lord Byron and others. Now, as then, I have no sympathy with the philosophy of Byron.
And the strange thing was that the professed, the persistent denouncer of Liberalism, was welcomed back to his rightful place among Englishmen by none more warmly than by many Liberals. Still, though his name was growing more familiar year by year, the world did not see much more of him.
It was in these circumstances that the Party surrendered "at discretion" to the expediencies of Liberalism, abjectly waiving their position as an independent entity in Parliament, with no shadow of the pride and spirit of the Parnell period left, seeming to exist for the favours and bonuses that came their way, and for the rest playing to the gallery in Ireland by telling them that Home Rule was coming "at no far distant date," and that they had only to trust to Asquith and all would be well.
My hon. friend and others who sometimes favour me with criticisms in the same sense, seem to suggest that I am a false brother, that I do not know what Liberalism is. I think I do, and I must even say that I do not think I have anything to learn of the principles or maxims or the practice of Liberal doctrines even from my hon. friend.
The encouraging fact is that not in spite of her liberalism, but because of it, she has met military Germany on her own ground and, to use a vigorous expression, gone her one better. In 1914, as armies go today, the British Army was a mere handful of men whose officers belonged to a military caste. Brave men and brave officers, indeed!
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