If ever the tide turns, surely the first step will be to hang the great misleaders of the people--as the pirates used to be--along the House of Commons terrace by the river as a sign to mankind, and send the rest for ever back into silence and impotence." -- * Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.
-- Whether a man be a pirate is a matter of fact.

Whether he be a misleader of the people is a matter of opinion.

"Whom shall we hang ?" would become a party question, and perhaps a general amnesty for mere debaters is the most practical solution of the problem.
Barbados, which has since suffered severely from the want of a market for its sugar, seemed to Froude's eyes to present in a sort of comic picture the summit of human felicity.

"Swarms of niggers on board--delightful fat woman in blue calico with a sailor straw hat, and a pipe in her mouth.

All of them perfectly happy, without a notion of morality--piously given too--psalm-singing, doing all they please without scruple, rarely married, for easiness of parting, looking as if they never knew a care ....