less as a blessing than a scourge; even
Bossuet denounced as a heretic with dubious chances of salvation, for his
struggle on behalf of a national church against Roman centralisation; the
old Greeks held up to odium as a race of talkers, frivolous, light, and
born incorrigible dividers. In dealing with de Maistre, Mr. Gladstone
would have had a foeman worthier of his powerful steel than the authors of
the Syllabus, Schema, Postulatum, and all the rest of what he called the
Vaticanism of 1870. But here, as always, he was man of action, and wrote
for a specific though perhaps a fugitive purpose.

VI

(M166) At the end of the year the total number printed of the tract was
145,000, and of these 120,000 were in a people's edition. "My pamphlet,"
he tells Lacaita, "has brought upon me such a mass of work as I can hardly
cope with, and I am compelled to do all things as succinctly as possible,
though my work is with little intermission from morning till night. I
agree with you that the pamphlet in the main tells its own story; and I am
glad there is no need to select in a hurry some one to write on the
difference between papism and Catholicism.... There is no doubt that the
discussion opens, _i.e._ makes a breach in the walls of the papal
theology, and it ought to be turned to account. But I shall have enough to
do with all my hands, if I am to work properly through the task I have
undertaken. Not, I trust, for long, for I think another pamphlet should
suffice to end it on my side. But I am vexed that Manning (as if he had
been pulled up at Rome), after having announced his formal reply six weeks
ago, hangs fire and now talks of delaying it." The result, he assures Lord
Granville (Nov. 25), "must be injurious to the pestilent opinions that
have so grievously obtained the upper hand in that church, and to the
party which _means_ to have a war in Europe for the restoration of the
temporal power. To place impediments in their way has been my principal
purpose."

He told Acton (Dec. 18), "When you were putting in caveats and warnings,
you did not say to me, 'Now mind, this affair will absorb some, perhaps
many, months of your life.' It has been so up to the present moment, and
it evidently will be so for some time." With Acton he carried on elaborate
correspondence upon some of the questions raised by the Syllabus, notably
on the effect of the pope's disciplinary judgment on anglican marriages,
converting them into relati