danger of talking at random." In politics, as in all else that he
touched, he was critical rather than constructive; and in politics,
"immersed," as Bacon said, "in matter," a man must be constructive, if
his influence is to be felt and to endure. "Politicians," he said in
1880, "we all of us here in England are and must be, and I too cannot
help being a politician; but a politician of that commonwealth of which
the pattern, as the philosopher says, exists perhaps somewhere in
Heaven, but certainly is at present found nowhere on earth." In 1887,
describing himself as "an aged outsider," he thus stated his own
attitude towards political problems--

"The professional politicians are always apt to be impatient of the
intervention in politics of a candid outsider, and he must expect to
provoke contempt and resentment in a good many of them. Still the action
of the regular politicians continues to be, for the most part, so very
far from successful, that the outsider is perpetually tempted to brave
their anger and to offer his observations, with the hope of possibly
doing some little good by saying what many quiet people are thinking and
wishing outside of the strife, phrases, and routine of professional
politics."

From first to last, he professed himself, and no doubt believed himself,
to be on the Liberal side. At the General Election of 1868 he urbanely
informed a Tory Committee, which asked for the advantage of his name,
that he was "an old Whig," nurtured in the traditions of Lansdowne
House. "Although," he said in 1869, "I am a Liberal, yet I am a Liberal
tempered by experience, reflection, and renouncement." In 1878 he
described himself as a "sincere but ineffectual Liberal": in 1880, as "a
Liberal of the future rather than a Liberal of the present." A year
later, he spoke smilingly of "all good Liberals, of whom I wish to be