He caught at the words, repeating them musingly: 

“Moral ascendancy, moral ascendancy, I like that, I like that.”

I had never before so thoroughly enjoyed a conference with a man.  I visited him again at Hawarden, but my last visit to him was at Lord Randall’s at Cannes the winter of 1897 when he was suffering keenly.  He had still the old charm and was especially attentive to my sister-in-law, Lucy, who saw him then for the first time and was deeply impressed.  As we drove off, she murmured, “A sick eagle!  A sick eagle!” Nothing could better describe this wan and worn leader of men as he appeared to me that day.  He was not only a great, but a truly good man, stirred by the purest impulses, a high, imperious soul always looking upward.  He had, indeed, earned the title:  “Foremost Citizen of the World.”

In Britain, in 1881, I had entered into business relations with Samuel Storey, M.P., a very able man, a stern radical, and a genuine republican.  We purchased several British newspapers and began a campaign of political progress upon radical lines.  Passmore Edwards and some others joined us, but the result was not encouraging.  Harmony did not prevail among my British friends and finally I decided to withdraw, which I was fortunately able to do without loss.[69]

[Footnote 69:  Mr. Carnegie acquired no less than eighteen British newspapers with the idea of promoting radical views.  The political results were disappointing, but with his genius for making money the pecuniary results were more than satisfactory.]

My third literary venture, “Triumphant Democracy,"[70] had its origin in realizing how little the best-informed foreigner, or even Briton, knew of America, and how distorted that little was.  It was prodigious what these eminent Englishmen did not then know about the Republic.  My first talk with Mr. Gladstone in 1882 can never be forgotten.  When I had occasion to say that the majority of the English-speaking race was now republican and it was a minority of monarchists who were upon the defensive, he said: 

“Why, how is that?”

“Well, Mr. Gladstone,” I said, “the Republic holds sway over a larger number of English-speaking people than the population of Great Britain and all her colonies even if the English-speaking colonies were numbered twice over.”

“Ah! how is that?  What is your population?”

“Sixty-six millions, and yours is not much more than half.”

“Ah, yes, surprising!”

[Footnote 70:  Triumphant Democracy, or Fifty Years’ March of the Republic. London, 1886; New York, 1888.]