Excerpt from The Life of Henry Labouchere The Opinions of Englishmen are rarely disinterested, and it should never be forgotten that Henry Labouchere was, in fact, a Frenchman. French by birth, he remained, to the day of his death, French in his method of formation of opinion, in his outlook on life, in the peculiar quality of his wit. It was this that enabled, or rather obliged, him to take that curiously detached view of English ideals which was at times so dis concerting even to those who thought that they understood him. Ideals, he held, were only entitled to respect when translated into material currency. How much s. D. Does he believe in what he says he would ask concerning some fervid prophet. And if convinced that the requisite materialisation had occurred, he would accept the prophet as one more strange and amusing phenomenon in a strange and amusing universe. It would never have occurred to him that because the prophet was sincere he was right. That was a matter for reason. He once observed to me, in his whimsical way, of a colleague, that the mere denial of the existence of God did not entitle a man's Opinion to be taken without scrutiny on matters of greater importance. No mere Englishman could have said that. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.