human
Now that the fierce struggle is over, and that I am really in full enjoyment of the right and privilege which the people of Northampton gave me on the day of the poll, I beg my friends not to mar this triumph by any undue words of exultation or ungenerous boast. If bitter bigotry and Tory malice have been active against me personally, there has been also honest, earnest piety, in despite of the foulest and most persistent misrepresentations, enlisted in the grand array on behalf of right. If some clergymen have been cruel and unjust in language and conduct, there have also been preachers who have been most generous and kindly. Do not let our Freethinking friends remember so much what we as a party have done towards the result, as what has been done for us by religious men, notwithstanding the cry of heresy. If the heart of the great Nonconformist party had not been brave and just, the fight, instead of being so far over, would yet have to be fought. The speeches of religious men like William Ewart Gladstone, John Bright, Henry Richard, and Charles Stewart Parnell--each representing a varying shade of Christian belief, and each a most earnestly religious man--must more than outweigh, and cause our friends to pass by, the rabid, raving, fanatical outpourings and deliberate misrepresentations which have disfigured the Parliamentary discussions on this subject. When the reader remembers that the very vilest mis-statements and coarsest caricatures of my language and conduct have been circulated to every member of Parliament, ... it makes worthy of the strongest praise the high-minded conduct of those Nonconformists in the House of Commons who have declared for justice despite all.