As political education, this lesson was to be crucial; it would
decide the law of life. All these gentlemen were superlatively
honorable; if one could not believe them, Truth in politics might
be ignored as a delusion. Therefore the student felt compelled to
reach some sort of idea that should serve to bring the case
within a general law. Minister Adams felt the same compulsion. He
bluntly told Russell that while he was "willing to acquit"
Gladstone of "any deliberate intention to bring on the worst
effects," he was bound to say that Gladstone was doing it quite
as certainly as if he had one; and to this charge, which struck
more sharply at Russell's secret policy than at Gladstone's
public defence of it, Russell replied as well as he could: --
. . . His lordship intimated as guardedly as possible that Lord
Palmerston and other members of the Government regretted the
speech, and`Mr. Gladstone himself was not disinclined to
correct, as far as he could, the misinterpretation which had
been made of it. It was still their intention to adhere to the
rule of perfect neutrality in the struggle, and to let it come
to its natural end without the smallest interference, direct or
otherwise. But he could not say what circumstances might happen
from month to month in the future. I observed that the policy
he mentioned was satisfactory to us, and asked if I was to
understand him as saying that no change of it was now proposed.
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