In the extent of his information, the energy and versatility of his intellect, and the boldness of his methods, he had no equal among the Conservative leaders of the Victorian reign.  His audacity was well illustrated when, after the great struggle over the reform measures of 1866 which he opposed, the Conservatives succeeded to power, and he, as their representative, advanced a measure “more sweeping in its nature as a reform bill than that he had successfully opposed” when it was advocated by Gladstone.  In foreign affairs, he showed the same boldness, working to check the Liberal advance at home by directing public attention away from domestic grievances to brilliant achievements abroad.  This policy which his opponents resented the more bitterly because they saw it to be the only one by which they could be held in check, won him the title of “Jingo,” and made him the leading representative of British imperialism abroad as he was of English aristocracy at home.

THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN (From a Speech in Parliament, 1865)

There are rare instances when the sympathy of a nation approaches those tenderer feelings which are generally supposed to be peculiar to the individual and to be the happy privilege of private life; and this is one.  Under any circumstances we should have bewailed the catastrophe at Washington; under any circumstances we should have shuddered at the means by which it was accomplished.  But in the character of the victim, and even in the accessories of his last moments, there is something so homely and innocent that it takes the question, as it were, out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplomacy,—­it touches the heart of nations and appeals to the domestic sentiment of mankind.  Whatever the various and varying opinions in this house, and in the country generally, on the policy of the late President of the United States, all must agree that in one of the severest trials which ever tested the moral qualities of man he fulfilled his duty with simplicity and strength.  Nor is it possible for the people of England at such a moment to forget that he sprang from the same fatherland and spoke the same mother tongue.  When such crimes are perpetrated the public mind is apt to fall into gloom and perplexity, for it is ignorant alike of the causes and the consequences of such deeds.  But it is one of our duties to reassure them under unreasoning panic and despondency.  Assassination has never changed the history of the world.  I will not refer to the remote past, though an accident has made the most memorable instance of antiquity at this moment fresh in the minds and memory of all around me.  But even the costly sacrifice of a Caesar did not propitiate the inexorable destiny of his country.  If we look to modern times, to times at least with the feelings of which we are familiar, and the people of which were animated and influenced by the same interests as ourselves, the violent deaths