I cannot help regretting that the hon. and gallant Gentleman has felt it his duty to put the question. It is put under circumstances that naturally b… - William Ewart Gladstone

The county election was raging. ... I was circulating in the mob as a volunteer (like all the other undergraduates) on the side of Norreys. I held forth to a working man, possibly a forty shilling freeholder, on the established text, reform was revolution. To corroborate my doctrine I said, “Why, look at the revolutions in foreign countries”, meaning of course France and Belgium. The man looked hard at me and said these very words: “Damn all foreign countries: what has old England to do with foreign countries?” This is not the only time when I have received an important lesson from a humble source.

My fifth principle is...to acknowledge the equal rights of all nations. You may sympathize with one nation more than another. Nay, you must sympathize in certain circumstances with one nation more than another. You sympathize most with those nations, as a rule, with which you have the closest connection in language, in blood, and in religion, or whose circumstances at the time seem to give the strongest claim to sympathy. But in point of right all are equal, and you have no right to set up a system under which one of them is to be placed under moral suspicion or espionage, or to be made the constant subject of invective. If you do that, but especially if you claim for yourself a superiority, a pharisaical superiority over the whole of them, then I say you may talk about your patriotism if you please, but you are a misjudging friend of your country, and in undermining the basis of the esteem and respect of other people for your country you are in reality inflicting the severest injury upon it.

What is meant by "Boycotting?" In the first place, it is combined intimidation. In the second place, it is combined intimidation made use of for the purpose of destroying the private liberty of choice by fear of ruin and starvation.