the dynamitards and other assassins who, in Transatlantic security, now plot and prepare demolitions for the injury of Great Britain. Why the lion got thus on the rampage, it is difficult to understand. He did not particularly admire the French Emperor, though the latter had been our ally in the Crimean war, and he was much piqued by the violent language of some French colonels who, enraged at our harbouring their political criminals, assumed a saucy and threatening attitude.
But the occasion was not one of serious danger to the nation. The Ministry, if it made a mistake in introducing the Foreign Conspiracy Bill (and it may fairly be questioned whether it did so or not), had been doing nothing else that could be complained of. It had been looking fairly well after the interests of the empire; it had not allowed us to be put to shame before our enemies; it had sacrificed none of our possessions or rights; and it had not involved us in perilous entanglements abroad. There was no accumulating record of ill-doing against it. And yet the punishment came, sharp, quick, and decisive; the Administration was snuffed out incontinently, and no chance left to them of recovering their places by submission and repentance. Comparison of this brisk dealing with the indifference which sometimes will allow the best interests of the empire to be made shipwreck of with scarcely a protest, suggests the proverb, "One man may steal a horse, while another may not look over a gate."
Another instance may be cited wherein the lion's paw came down rather with a capricious emphasis, although its stroke did not at the moment wreck a Ministry. The instance occurred in the year 1873. Mr Gladstone's Administration had devised a University Education Scheme for Ireland – not a very clever nor a very judicious one, yet a measure, as one is fain to think, which might, with a little patience, have been worked into acceptable shape. It had some visionary clauses in it, which its authors might have been forced to give up. Everybody, Ministers included, was prepared to see it transformed; but it did not strike so directly at the welfare of the Empire that it was necessary to throw it out, neck and heels, and its authors after it, which would have been the natural effect of the precipitate action taken by the House of Commons. The Bill was read a first time, and received in such a manner as to leave a reasonable expectation that it would, after some modification, become law.
A week or two intervened between its introduction and the second reading. During that time dislike to it began and increased. It was nicknamed the "Gagging Bill," because, out of tenderness for Popish susceptibilities, it prohibited the use of certain histories and theological works as class-books. The prohibition was, of course, very silly, and such as no practical statesman would have proposed; but there was ample opportunity for eliminating this from the measure, had the House been intent only upon framing an Act that would suit the temper of the time. Yet somehow the people's representatives, and, one may suppose, the people also, had waxed very arbitrary and imperative before the second reading came about. The debate had not proceeded very far before Ministers offered any terms. They would concede anything, alter anything – the House might take the Bill as a blank folio, to be
