John Morrison Davidson

“ Maxse's education had been purely naval. It ought, I think, to have been literary or philosophic. Ideas take possession of him with overpowering force. He is their servant rather than their master. He has read extensively and closely, but with passion,—I do not say prejudice. The consequence is, that he is at times apt to see objects in considerable disproportion,—a defect which a more systematic scholastic training in youth would have done much to cure. ”

“ The disillusioning process is always a painful one for a lofty, ardent nature like Maxse's; but it is salutary all the same. It does not alter, by a hair's breadth, one's sense of duty, while it teaches invaluable lessons of method and adaptation in relation to the social environment. Progress, though inevitable, is seldom to be obtained by a coup. ”

“ Thirty thousand electors, he shows, in small constituencies, elect forty-four members of Parliament, while five hundred and forty-six thousand in large boroughs return only thirty-five. Thirty thousand electors thus outvote five hundred and forty-six thousand. At the last general election eighteen thousand electors of Manchester, who recorded their votes in favor of a candidate, failed to return him; while eighteen thousand electors, living in petty boroughs or rural constituencies, seated no fewer than thirty honorable members! ”

“ I have read with some curiosity the admiral's "Woman Suffrage, the Counterfeit and the True: Reasons for opposing Both." and can only feel astonishment that he should have been at so much pains to argue so stoutly either on the one side or the other. Female suffrage would have done very well if only the admiral had had the good sense to let it alone. It is a topic which females and feminine men should be permitted wholly to monopolize. It will please them, and do no one much injury.
As a member of the executive council of the Land-Tenure Reform Association, Maxse did yeoman's service. ”

“ Accordingly, the admiral, acting on his well-worn maxim, "People who do not care for politics do not care for their fellow-creatures," has twice, as has been said, sought the suffrages of popular constituencies. ”

“ What made me an active politician was, when I came to live on shore, observing the condition of the English agricultural laborers, I found that a large number of Britons were slaves,—slaves to artificial oppressive circumstances, for the maintenance of which the governing classes stood, in my eyes, responsible ”

“ It made shipwreck, however, unfortunately, over the question of woman suffrage, against which Admiral Maxse set his face with, I think, most injudicious vigor. It is a problem which may be safely left for such goody-goody sentimental people to solve, in their own fashion, as we see voting for incompetent women in preference to competent men in school-board elections. ”

“ Speculative, perhaps somewhat chimerical, in religion and politics, he is yet obviously a man of action, a born commander of men. His father, James Maxse, was a Tory squire of the old school, who had inherited immense wealth, honorably acquired by the Maxse family as merchants in Bristol. ”

“ His interest in French politics is at least as keen as in those of his own country. He is on terms of intimacy with nearly all the great men of the Third Republic, with whom he has so much more in common than with the ruck of English Liberals. ”

“ He is a fluent, forcible speaker, too earnest to be amusing, but always attractive because instructive. You feel that his mind is made up, and that what he says he will infallibly perform. But he does not see the by-play of electioneering ”