12.  I thank you very cordially, both friends and opponents, if opponents you be, for the extreme kindness with which you have heard me.  I have spoken, and I must speak in very strong terms of the acts done by my opponents.  I will never say that they did it from passion; I will never say that they did it from a sordid love of office; I have no right to use such words; I have no right to entertain such sentiments; I repudiate and abjure them; I give them credit for patriotic motives—­I give them credit for those patriotic motives which are incessantly and gratuitously denied to us.  I believe we are all united in a fond attachment to the great country to which we belong; to the great empire which has committed to it a trust and function from Providence, as special and remarkable as was ever entrusted to any portion of the family of man.  When I speak of that trust and that function I feel that words fail.  I can not tell you what I think of the nobleness of the inheritance which has descended upon us, of the sacredness of the duty of maintaining it.  I will not condescend to make it a part of controversial politics.  It is a part of my being, of my flesh and blood, of my heart and soul.  For those ends I have labored through my youth and manhood, and, more than that, till my hairs are gray.  In that faith and practise I have lived, and in that faith and practise I shall die.—­Midlothian Speech: WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE.

A Study in Purity of Style

13.  Is this a reality? or is your Christianity a romance? is your profession a dream?  No, I am sure that your Christianity is not a romance, and I am equally sure that your profession is not a dream.  It is because I believe this that I appeal to you with confidence, and that I have hope and faith in the future.  I believe that we shall see, and at no very distant time, sound economic principles spreading much more widely among the people; a sense of justice growing up in a soil which hitherto has been deemed unfruitful; and, which will be better than all—­the churches of the United Kingdom—­the churches of Britain awaking, as it were, from their slumbers, and girding up their loins to more glorious work, when they shall not only accept and believe in the prophecy, but labor earnestly for its fulfilment, that there shall come a time—­a blessed time—­a time which shall last forever—­when “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”—­Peace: JOHN BRIGHT.

A Study in Common Sense and Exalted Thought

14.  My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject.  Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.  If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it.  Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and on