March 2/81

    My dear Anna,

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        Since Mr. Gladstone cannot have changed his judgment concerning the Beaconsfield policy in Afghanistan, in India, or in South Africa, the only inference is that (from one reason or other which I may or may not know) he is not strong enough to carry out his own convictions of right. If he was not strong enough to give back the Transvaal to the Boers, though he pronounced the annexation all but insanity, when he entered office, and had a power of stipulating on what terms alone he would be Premier, much less is he strong enough now. Not Tories only, but Whigs (to judge by their past) and the whole mass of our honest fighters, and certainly the Court, will find it an unendurable humiliation to do justice by compulsion of the Boers. Their atrocious doctrine is, that before we confess that we have done them wrong, we must first murder enough of them to show that we are the stronger. It is awful to attribute sentiment so wicked to the Premier, or to John Bright and the rising Radical element of the Ministry; but the melancholy fact is that they act before the public as if this were their doctrine. . . . The Coercion Bill and its errors are past and irrecoverable. . . . How will it now aid us to hold up to the public Mr. Gladstone's irrecoverable mistakes? That is what I cannot make out. He has destroyed public confidence in all possible successors to the Premiership, if confidence could be placed in any. I know not one who could be trusted to INSIST on stopping war and wasting no more blood. Yet the longer this war lasts, the greater the danger (1) that all the Dutch in Orange State, in Natal, in Cape Colony will unite against us; (2) that an attack on us in retreat from Candahar, where Mr. Gladstone has "insanely" continued war, if moderately successful, may make even yet new "vengeance" of Afghans seem "necessary to our prestige"—such are the immoral principles dominant among Whigs as well as Tories; (3) any such embroilments may animate Ireland to insurrectionary defiance; (4) further Afghan fighting may lead to Indian revolt. . . . The nation has found that no possible Ministry will make common justice its rule. Penny newspapers make us widely different now from thirty or forty years ago. The masses abhor war, and will only sanction it when we seem forced to it in defence of public freedom. . . . The internal quiet of France has stript Republicanism of terrors to our moneyed classes. Not the thing, but the transition to it is feared: with good reason, yet perhaps not rightly in an intelligent people.

        Some sudden change of events may put off Republicanism yet for thirty years; but great disasters may precipitate it. . . . We, the people, can do nothing at present that I see except avow with Lord John Russell (1853-4), "God prosper the Right," which now means "May we be defeated whenever we are in the wrong." This is the only patriotic prayer.

F. W. N.