t home; but as a whole I cannot
regret it so far as England is concerned. I think the proposals
give here almost for the first time a perfectly honourable and
tenable position in the face of the islands. The first set of
manoeuvres was directed to preventing them from being made; and that
made me really uneasy. The only point of real importance was to get
them out.... Do not hamper yourself in this affair with me. Let me
sink or swim. I have been labouring for truth and justice, and am
sufficiently happy in the consciousness of it, to be little
distressed either with the prospect of blame, or with the more
serious question whether I acted rightly or wrongly in putting
myself in the place of L.H.C. to propose these reforms,--a step
which has of course been much damaged by the early nomination of
Sir H. Storks, done out of mere consideration for me in another
point of view. Lytton's conduct throughout has been such that I
could have expected no more from the oldest and most confiding
friend.

To Lytton himself he writes (Feb. 7, 1859):--

I sincerely wish that I could have repaid your generous confidence
and admirable support with recommendations suited to the immediate
convenience of your government. But in sending me, you grappled
with a difficulty which you might have postponed, and I could not
but do the same. Whether it was right that I should come, I do not
feel very certain. Yet (stolen despatch and all) I do not regret
it. For my feelings are those you have so admirably described; and
I really do not know for what it is that political life is worth
the living, if it be not for an opportunity of endeavouring to
redeem in the face of the world the character of our country
wherever, it matters not on how small a scale, that character has
been compromised.

Language like this, as sincere as it was lofty, supplies the true test
by which to judge Mr. Gladstone's conduct both in the Ionian transaction
and many another. From the point of personal and selfish interest any
simpleton might see that he made a mistake, but measured by his own
standard of public virtue, how is he to be blamed, how is he not to be
applauded, for undertaking a mission that, but for an unforeseen
accident, might have redounded to the honour and the credit of the
British power?