Excerpt from The Edinburgh Review, Vol. 204: Or Critical Journal; For July, 1906;;; October, 1906 It is, perhaps, only in these great stirrings of the national mind, ' says Mr. Churchill, that a man may discover to which of the main groupings of political opinions he naturally belongs. In all this conflict Lord Randolph took no public. Part. An occasional sarcasm used at some small function, an unadvertised abstention from some important division, might have-revealed his personal inclinations. But he did nothing to attract public notice, and it is only from his private letters that we may learn how decided were his sympathies, and by what circumstances he was prevented from action which might easily have altered his whole career.' It was not fated that Lord Randolph Should join the Liberal party; and when in 1880, after Mr. Gladstone's great triumph at the polls, Lord Randolph, once more elected for Wood stock, began his active parliamentary career, no one suspected him of leanings towards Liberalism. In the course of that Parliament he was sometimes taunted on his own side of the House with in fact playing the game of his opponents. But the charge was not true. He was playing after his own vigorous and often reckless fashion the game of the Tories, ' as he always called his political friends. That they should defeat and trample upon their Liberal Opponents was the end at which he was constantly aiming. Whether, in order to do this, he was not quite ready himself to accept what had hitherto been regarded as Liberal principles, may be a question. The path of a vehement Tory Democrat is a difficult and narrow one to tread. In many respects Lord Randolph's sympathies or instincts seem, as his son points out, to have fitted him, had his circumstances been other than they were, to have taken a leading part on the Liberal side.
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