And the fact which has created (I am sorry to say) a general impression that [they...] are a pack of shuffling humbugs, is exactly the fact that they do [...] give way to merely instinctive tastes and passions at the expense of the first principle which they are supposed to hold [...] They will upset their whole philosophy to upset one person whom they dislike [...] And they think that they can give to reform all its original energy merely because when they see something that they very much want to do, they do it with a great deal of gusto. But the old acts of justice were not most powerful when they were performed with gusto. Rather they were more powerful when they were performed with reluctance. Men thought more of the strength of the creed when they saw the creed compelling the man [...] Political consistency of this kind people felt had something of the naked dignity of the great dogmatic religions which it seemed to ignore. A political faith ought to have, like a religious faith, a slight element of mortification: it ought either to mortify the flesh or, what is (in the case of prigs) much more important and valuable, to mortify the spirit.

-October 12, 1907, Illustrated London News