'Harcourt then went on to defend that to which I was strongly opposed --namely, Bible reading--on the ground that "we should give our republic not the best possible laws, but the best which they will bear. This is the essence of politics. All the rest is speculation.... We must make up our minds before the meeting on Monday, for in the multitude of counsellors there is folly."' A definite principle was at stake. Under this proposal the teaching, though called undenominational, would not in fact be so. Bible reading, subject, no doubt, to a conscience clause, would be enforced on Roman Catholics, Jews, and secularists, and Bible reading, though undenominational as regarded the different divisions of Protestant Christianity, would still be denominational as regards these three: 'I myself took the extreme and logical line of not only opposing Bible reading, but of opposing Mr. Jacob Bright's and Mr. Cowper Temple's amendments for excluding creeds, and for setting up a general undenominational Protestantism of the majority.' He was in agreement with John Stuart Mill in resisting a proposal which in his opinion did injustice to large classes of the community for the sake of introducing what (in his own words) "could be only religion of the driest and baldest kind, and such as would be hardly worthy of the name." At the beginning of 1870 Sir Charles was not openly in revolt, though after working for Odger against the Government candidate, he had gone on to condemn in a speech the Whig influences and fear of the House of Lords, which in his opinion were destroying Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Bill. Mr. Gladstone showed a desire to conciliate this overactive critic by inviting him to second the Address to the Crown. Accordingly at the opening of Parliament on February 8th, 1870, Sir Charles had his part to play in the modest ceremonial which still survives, rather shamefacedly, in the House of Commons, when a couple of commoners, uniformed or in Court dress, are put forward as the spokesmen of that sombre assembly. His speech, advocating the European concert, dwelt on the cloudless calm which lay--in February, 1870--over the civilized world, and for another six months wrapped it in delusive peace.