96 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
the thing he had created; thought America had shamefully abused the privileges of blood and friendship in permitting a gigantic conspiracy to be hatched and kept alive on her free soil, to the detriment and danger of the mother country; thought Gladstone had only one desire in life, and that to be in office; regarded Hartington and Chamberlain as patriots of the noble type; looked upon the principle of hereditary legislatorship as a grand old traditional farce; would to-morrow give Ireland such a measure of local self-government, or Home Rule, or whatever it might be called, as would enable her to conduct her own internal business without reference to local committees at Westminster; was fully of opinion that the margin of personal and constitutional liberty in England was so wide and deep that any person who stepped beyond its barrier should be shot; was at heart a Republican, but above all things an Imperial Unionist, and would defend to the death the merest scrap of soil over which the flag had ever floated; in this he was a Cowenite, as he said; loyal to the Crown as long as that remained our legitimate form of government. He would go to war to-morrow for India against Russia or all the world; would fight France for Egypt rather than revive the dual control; would make every possible sacrifice for the honor, prestige, and glory of his native land; and any Government, Radical or Conservative, that would continue to give us the security of personal liberty and maintain the integrity of the Empire would have his vote and interest. It need not be pointed out to any practical politician that Dick could not be successful on these lines, anymore than Joseph Cowen, the patriotic member for Newcastle, could.
Dick was a Yorkshireman, five-and-thirty, married, and the father of a young family. He was of a medium height, broad of shoulder, strong of limb, inclined to make adipose tissue (as his doctor told him), the only antidote to
