got's type, a born lover of good government, of just practical laws,
of wise improvement, of public business well handled, of a state that
should emancipate and serve the individual. The necessity of summoning
new driving force, and amending the machinery of the constitution, had
not yet disclosed itself to him. This was soon discovered by events.
Meanwhile he may well have thought that he saw as good a chance of great
work with Palmerston as with Disraeli; or far better, for the election
had shown that Bright was not wrong when he warned him that a Derby
government could only exist upon forbearance.

Bright's own words already referred to (p. 625) sufficiently describe
Mr. Gladstone's point of view; the need for a ministry with men in it
'acting with some measure of boldness and power, grappling with abuses,
and relying upon the moral sense and honest feeling of the House, and
the general sympathy of the people of England for improvement.' With
such purposes an alliance with liberals of Lord Palmerston's temper
implied no wonderful dislodgment. The really great dislodgment in his
life had occurred long before. It was the fates that befell his book, it
was the Maynooth grant, and the Gorham case, that swept away the
foundations on which he had first built. In writing to Manning in 1845
(April 25) after his retirement on the question of Maynooth, Mr.
Gladstone says to him, 'Newman sent me a letter giving his own
explanation of my position. It was admirably done.' Newman in his letter
told him that various persons had asked how he understood Mr.
Gladstone's present position, so he put down what he conceived it to be,
and he expresses the great interest that he feels in the tone of thought
then engaging the statesman's mind:--

LETTER FROM NEWMAN

I say then [writes Newman, addressing an imaginary interlocutor]:
'Mr. Gladstone has said the state _ought_ to have a conscience, but
it has not a conscience. Can _he_ give it a conscience? Is he to
impose his own conscience on the state? He would be very glad to do
so, if it thereby would become the state's conscience. But that is
absurd. He must deal with facts. It has a thousand consciences, as
being in its legislative and executive capacities the aggregate of
a hundred minds; that is, it has no conscience.

'You will say, "Well the obvious thing would be, if the state has
not a conscience, that h