The World’s Tragedy

XXVIII PREFACE. large a number of peers there are against whom I have not a shadow of evidence or even suspicion. Luckily the jud- ges are less wary. While the bishops are such easy game as to be hardly worth powder and shot. There, I’ve done it now ! Vous avez écrit contre le bon Dieu ; c’est mauvais, mais Il le vous pardonnera. Vous avez écrit contre Jésus Christ ; c’est pire encore, mais Il le vous pardonnera. Mais vous avez écrit contre Leurs Excellences, et Elles ne le vous pardonneront jamais. But this lion can bite back ! Nor after all, is fear precisely the sentiment inspired by the spectacle of a nation which has so recently placed at the head of its affairs that William Ewart Gladstone who shaped his policy by the predictions of a charlatan clair- voyant in Bond Street, while his drunken harlot performed her watery exploits on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre. The proofs, too, (in my hands) that a certain member of the present Cabinet derives much of his income from the profits of a brothel, lend a certain solidity to my position. This lion can bite back. CHRISTIANITY But why — we may indeed ask — all this heavy me- tal to bombard a brothel ? Has no good thing come out of Nazareth?