We have had a great deal of sham glory, and sham courage, and sham strength.  I say, let us get rid of all these shams, and fall back upon realities, the character of which is to be guided by unostentatiousness, to pretend nothing, not to thrust claims and unconstitutional claims for ascendancy and otherwise in the teeth of your neighbour, but to maintain your right and to respect the rights of others as much as your own.  So much, then, for the great issue that is still before us, though I rejoice to think how many of our fellow subjects in England have acquitted themselves well and honourably of their part in the fray; and I rejoice—­I will not say much more because here my expectations were so high—­but I rejoice not less when I think how extraordinary has been the manifestation thus far of Scottish feeling in the only three contests that have taken place—­in the city of Perth, in the city of Aberdeen, and in the city of Edinburgh, where we certainly owe some gratitude to the opponent for consenting to place himself in a position so ludicrous as that which he has occupied.  But at the same time we are compelled to say, on general grounds of prudence and of justice, that it is a monstrous thing that communities should be disturbed with contests so absurd as these, which deserve to be censured in the old Parliamentary language as frivolous and vexatious.

One word upon your past.  I have no doubt the great bulk of you are Liberals, but yet I shall be very glad if some of you are Conservatives.  Are Conservatives seriously considering with the gravity which becomes the people of this country—­the responsible people of this country—­what course they shall take upon the coming occasion?  Great things have been done in the last three days, and these things are not done in a corner.  The intelligence, limited, but, I think, intelligible, has been flashed over sea and land, and has reached, long before I address you, the remotest corners of the earth.  I can well conceive that it has been received in different countries with different feelings.  I can believe that there are one or two Ministers of State in the world, and possibly even here and there a sovereign, who would have eaten this morning a heartier breakfast if the tidings conveyed by the telegraph had been reversed, and if the issue of the elections had been as triumphant for the existing Administration as it has been menacing, if not fatal, to their prospects.  But this I know, among other places to which it has gone, it has passed to India—­it has before this time reached the mind and the heart of many millions of your Indian fellow subjects—­and I will venture to say that it has gladdened every heart among them.  They have known this Government principally in connexion with the aggravation of their burdens and the limitation of their privileges.  And, gentlemen, I will tell you more, that if there be in Europe any State or country which is crouching in fear at the feet of powerful neighbours with gigantic armaments,