stone's, Sir Robert Phillimore, told him (Nov. 29): "I am satisfied
that you have done wisely and justly both with reference to the immediate
and future influence of your character as a statesman. It is exactly what
a mere man of the world would not have done. His standard would have been
the ephemeral opinion of the clubs, and not the earnest opinion of the
silent but thoughtful persons to whom the moral character of their chief
is a matter of real moment and concern." Newman wrote to him from the
Oratory at Birmingham, "It is most noble, and I can congratulate you with
greater reason and more hearty satisfaction upon it, than I could upon a
score of triumphs at the hustings." The man of the world and the man at
the club did not hide their disgust, but Phillimore was right, and great
hosts of people of the other sort welcomed in this publication a sign of
sincerity and simplicity and desire to take the public into that full
confidence, which makes the ordinary politician tremble as undignified and
indecorous.

That Mr. Gladstone had rightly divined the state of public feeling about
Ireland was shown by the result. Manning put the case in apt words when he
wrote to him: "I have been much struck by the absence of all serious
opposition to your policy, and by the extensive and various support given
to it in England and Scotland. It is not so much a change in men's
thoughts, but a revelation of what they have been thinking." Heart and
soul he flung himself into the labours of his canvass. The constituency
for which he had sat in the expiring parliament was now divided, and with
Mr. H. R. Grenfell for a colleague, he contested what had become
South-West Lancashire. The breadth, the elevation, the freshness, the
power, the measure, the high self-command of these speeches were never
surpassed by any of his performances. When publicists warn us, and rightly
warn us, that rash expenditure of money extracted from the taxpayer and
the ratepayer is the besetting vice and peril of democracy, and when some
of them in the same breath denounce Mr. Gladstone as a demagogue pandering
to the multitude, they should read the speech at Leigh, in which he
assailed the system of making things pleasant all round, stimulating local
cupidity to feed upon the public purse, and scattering grants at the
solicitation of individuals and classes. No minister that ever lived
toiled more sedulously, in office and out of office, to avert this curse
of pop