wrong, the state has nothing to do with restraints of morals, the
ruler is emancipated. Speculations in physical science were distorted for
alien purposes, and survival of the fittest was taken to give brutality a
more decent name. Even new conceptions and systems of history may be
twisted into release of statesmen from the conscience of Bishop Butler's
plain man. This gospel it was Mr. Gladstone's felicity to hold at bay.
Without bringing back the cosmopolitanism of the eighteenth century,
without sharing all the idealisms of the middle of the nineteenth, he
resisted with his whole might the odious contention that moral progress in
the relations of nations and states to one another is an illusion and a
dream.

This vein perhaps brings us too near to the regions of dissertation. Let
us rather leave off with thoughts and memories of one who was a vivid
example of public duty and of private faithfulness; of a long career that
with every circumstance of splendour, amid all the mire and all the
poisons of the world, lighted up in practice even for those who have none
of his genius and none of his power his own precept, "Be inspired with the
belief that life is a great and noble calling; not a mean and grovelling
thing, that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated and lofty
destiny."

APPENDIX

Irish Local Government, 1883. (Page 103)

_Mr. Gladstone to Lord Granville_

_Cannes, Jan. 22, 1883._--Today I have been a good deal distressed
by a passage as reported in Hartington's very strong and able
speech, for which I am at a loss to account, so far does it travel
out into the open, and so awkward are the intimations it seems to
convey. I felt that I could not do otherwise than telegraph to you
in cipher on the subject. But I used words intended to show that,
while I thought an immediate notification needful, I was far from
wishing to hasten the reply, and desired to leave altogether in
your hands the mode of touching a delicate matter. Pray use the
widest discretion.

I console myself with thinking it is hardly possible that
Hartington can have meant to say what nevertheless both _Times_
and _Daily News_ make him seem to say, namely, that we recede
from, or throw into abeyance, the declarations we have constantly
made about our desire to extend local government, properly so
called, to Ireland on the first opportunity which