ncipally concerned, and the
distracting atmosphere of party perturbation and disquiet that daily and
hourly harassed the work, the despatch of such a task within such limits
of time was at least not discreditable to the industry and concentration
of those who achieved it. I leave it still open to the hostile critic to
say, as Moliere's Alceste says of the sonnet composed in a quarter of an
hour, that time has nothing to do with the business.

All through March Mr. Gladstone laboured in what he called "stiff
conclaves" about finance and land, attended drawing rooms, and "observed
the variations of H.M.'s _accueils_"; had an audience of the Queen, "very
gracious, but avoided serious subjects"; was laid up with cold, and the
weather made Sir Andrew Clark strict; then rose up to fresh grapples with
finance and land and untoward colleagues, and all the "inexorable demands
of my political vocation." His patience and self-control were as
marvellous as his tireless industry. Sorely tried by something or another
at a cabinet, he enters,--"Angry with myself for not bearing it better. I
ought to have been thankful for it all the time." On a similar occasion, a
junior colleague showed himself less thankful than he should have been for
purposeless antagonism. "Think of it as discipline," said Mr. (M108)
Gladstone. "But why," said the unregenerate junior, "should we grudge the
blessings of discipline to some other people?"

Mr. Gladstone was often blamed even by Laodiceans among his supporters,
not wise but foolish after the event, because he did not proceed by way of
resolution, instead of by bill. Resolutions, it was argued, would have
smoothed the way. General propositions would have found readier access to
men's minds. Having accepted the general proposition, people would have
found it harder to resist the particular application. Devices that
startled in the precision of a clause, would in the vagueness of a broad
and abstract principle have soothed and persuaded. Mr. Gladstone was
perfectly alive to all this, but his answer to it was plain. Those who
eventually threw out the bill would insist on unmasking the resolution.
They would have exhausted all the stereotyped vituperation of abstract
motions. They would have ridiculed any general proposition as mere
platitude, and pertinaciously clamoured for working details. What would
the resolution have affirmed? The expediency of setting up a legislative
authority in Ireland to deal w