House of Commons would be against him;
the officials of the treasury told him the Bank would be against him; that
a strong press of commercial interests would be against him. Like the bold
and sinewy athlete that he always was, he stood to his plan; he carried
the cabinet; he persuaded the House of Commons; he vanquished the Bank and
the hostile interests; and in the words of Sir Stafford Northcote, he
changed and turned for many years to come, a current of public opinion
that seemed far too powerful for any minister to resist. In the
tempestuous discussions during the seventies on the policy of this country
in respect of the Christian races of the Balkan Peninsula, he with his own
voice created, moulded, inspired, and kindled with resistless flame the
whole of the public opinion that eventually guided the policy of the
nation with such admirable effect both for its own fame, and for the good
of the world. Take again the Land Act of 1881, in some ways the most
deep-reaching of all his legislative achievements. Here he had no flowing
tide, every current was against him. He carried his scheme against the
ignorance of the country, against the prejudice of the country, and
against the standing prejudices of both branches of the legislature, who
were steeped from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot in the
strictest doctrines of contract.

Then his passion for economy, his ceaseless war against public profusion,
his insistence upon rigorous keeping of the national accounts--in this
great department of affairs he led and did not follow. In no sphere of his
activities was he more strenuous, and in no sphere, as he must well have
known, was he less likely to win popularity. For democracy is spendthrift;
if, to be sure, we may not say that most forms of government are apt to be
the same.

In a survey of Mr. Gladstone's performances, some would place this of
which I have last spoken, as foremost among his services to the country.
Others would call him greatest in the associated service of a skilful
handling and adjustment of the burden of taxation; or the strengthening of
the foundations of national prosperity and well-being by his reformation
of the tariff. Yet others again choose to remember him for his share in
guiding the successive extensions of popular power, and simplifying and
purifying electoral machinery. Irishmen at least, and others so far as
they are able to comprehend the history and vile wrongs and sharp n