We are nearly at the end of our confidence. It is not merely the shade of Disraeli which calls mockingly for explanations; the world that believed in Gladstone when Disraeli was playing at fantastic military statesmanship, wants to know why Christian statesmanship in Egypt has, in a short time, spilt almost as much blood as was shed by one army in that American conflict which Mr. Gladstone thought so cruel and so useless. We can not even condone Mr. Gladstone’s offense against civilization by saying that it has been a less bloody assault on humanitarian ideas and plans than Disraeli’s was; for Gladstone has butchered twenty men to Disraeli’s one. There has, in fact, been nothing so bloody in this century—I mean no such large butchery by a small army. Ten years of such statesmanship would fill the Nile valley with human bones. It is high time to call for a full explanation. What does Mr. Gladstone mean? What does he expect to accomplish? If he has intended something exalted and noble, which we should wish to believe, it is time to say so with the breadth of statement and accuracy of detail by which he obtained renown. The personal question stands at the front, because England is governed by one man. It is a happiness of Englishmen that they are able to know whom to blame when things go wrong. Mr. Gladstone is the head of a government for whose acts and failures to act he is perfectly responsible. What England does in Egypt Gladstone does. It is the one governmental luxury of the English people—they know exactly who governs them. Mr. Gladstone has not been compelled to do this or that by parties or circumstances. If he turns butcher in the Delta, on the Nile, or on the Red Sea, he alone does it, and he does it because he chooses to do it. For, at any moment, he can shift disagreeable duties to another; three lines in the form of a resignation will relieve him of the burden of responsible government. So long as he remains at the head of the English ministry he is the man who shoots down Arabs by the thousand. In this country politicians have divided, dispersed and destroyed responsibility to such an extent that the people know not whom to blame for evil events. It is a devil’s art, from whose manipulations England has by some special favor of heaven escaped. There the ghosts of murdered men and things can “shake” their “gory locks” at the Prime Minister; and he may not reply: “Thou canst not say I did it.”