The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted.

Gladstone’s line reads as a compact statement of liberal optimism: despite crises, conflict, or apparent moral and political decline, the accumulated capacities of “civilization” (institutions, law, education, public conscience, and reforming energy) still have unused reserves. It implies that progress is not automatic, but that societies possess latent resources—practical and ethical—that can be mobilized to meet new problems. In Gladstone’s idiom, the phrase also carries a moral undertone: civilization is measured not only by material power but by the willingness to apply humane principles. The sentence therefore functions as a rebuttal to fatalism and a call to continued reform.