Mr. Turnbull had certainly made himself great, and could
hardly have done so without force of intellect. He was one of the
most popular, if not the most popular politician in the country. Poor
men believed in him, thinking that he was their most honest public
friend; and men who were not poor believed in his power, thinking
that his counsels must surely prevail. He had obtained the ear of the
House and the favour of the reporters, and opened his voice at no
public dinner, on no public platform, without a conviction that the
words spoken by him would be read by thousands. The first necessity
for good speaking is a large audience; and of this advantage Mr.
Turnbull had made himself sure. And yet it could hardly be said that
he was a great orator. He was gifted with a powerful voice, with
strong, and I may, perhaps, call them broad convictions, with perfect
self-reliance, with almost unlimited powers of endurance, with hot
ambition, with no keen scruples, and with a moral skin of great
thickness. Nothing said against him pained him, no attacks wounded
him, no raillery touched him in the least. There was not a sore spot
about him, and probably his first thoughts on waking every morning
told him that he, at least, was totus teres atque rotundus.
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