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MY LIFE IN TWO HEMISPHERES
over the mistakes of an honourable man. Yet, as he had been twenty years in Parliament without getting his Bill read a second time, while the men whom he lectured carried it to a second reading in a single session, it would have been modest to recognise that they were better judges of Parliamentary policy than he was.[1]
- ↑ It cannot be doubted that in the policy of the Northerns the example of Crawford counted for much. An unjust prejudice against Lucas as a furious bigot (which he was not; he was a zealot, not a bigot) prevailed from an early period, and some of them were persuaded that it is only men in office who can carry questions successfully through the House of Commons. But Negro Slavery had been abolished by Wilberforce, Religious Equality established by O'Connell, and Free Trade by Cobden, without any of them having held office under the Crown. There were lower motives also at work. The Prime Minister was a Presbyterian, and the Duke of Argyll and two other colleagues belonged to the same Church. If there were four Catholics in the Cabinet it could not be doubted that the Catholics, who had imperilled the League on the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, would have been found hoorahing at their backs, and we were patient with this sympathy.—"League of North and South." London: Chapman and Hall.
