The Pall Mall is very sore at our remark, that
it hates Mr. Gladstone, pleading that it only feels towards him well founded dislike and distrust. Now we understand by the words " dislike " and "distrust" the emotion which renders those who feel it reluctant to dwell on those who excite it, in a word, justifiably prepossessed against them, and therefore discomforted by the thought of them. We call it "hate," on the contrary, when the very strength of emotion makes it a genuine indulg- ence, a positive fascination to dwell on the bad qualities of those who excite it, to return to those bad qualities on the most trivial occasions, to turn indignantly on all who palliate them or who discern other qualities of an opposite kind, and to construct mentally the imaginary evil motives which led to the faults over which they gloat. We have often ourselves expressed distrust of Mr. Gladstone,—in the Collier case indeed a much stronger feeling. Bat political hate has no meaning, if it does not describe the state of mind which during four years of a very difficult administration has, we verily believe, prevented a Liberal journal from littering one single sentence of hearty sup- port of Mr. Gladstone,—which so exaggerated our contemporary's at first very legitimate opposition to the Geneva arbitration as to induce it, when all difficulties were removed, to go on predicting the most impossible catastrophes, till people asked each other smiling in the streets why the Pall Mall had gone a its head about the Alabama case ;—and most of all, which,gave in- sertion to a fictitious conversation between Mr. Gladstone and his Home Minister that touched the very verge of calumny, and far transgressed all the limits of fair political personality.
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