force of character, with resolute and effective power of work, a fervid
love of country, and a warm and true humanity. No orator, he was yet an
excellent speaker of a sound order, for his speaking, though plain and
even rough in style, abounded in substance; he always went as near to the
root of the matter as his vision allowed, and always with marked effect
for his own purposes. A quaker origin is not incompatible with a militant
spirit, and Forster was sturdy in combat. He had rather a full share of
self-esteem, and he sometimes exhibited a want a tact that unluckily
irritated or estranged many whom more suavity might have retained. Then,
without meaning it, he blundered into that most injurious of all positions
for the parliamentary leader, of appearing to care more for his enemies
than for his friends. As Mr. Gladstone said of him, "destiny threw him on
the main occasions of his parliamentary career into open or qualified
conflict with friends as well as foes, perhaps rather more with friends
than foes." A more serious defect of mind was that he was apt to approach
great questions--Education, Ireland, Turkey--without truly realising how
great they were, and this is the worst of all the shortcomings of
statesmanship. There was one case of notable exception. In all the stages
and aspects of the American civil war, Forster played an admirable part.

The problem of education might have seemed the very simplest. After the
extension of the franchise to the workmen, everybody felt, in a happy
phrase of that time, that "we must educate our masters." Outside events
were supposed to hold a lesson. The triumphant North in America was the
land of the common school. The victory of Prussians over Austrians at
Sadowa in 1866 was called the victory of the elementary school teacher.
Even the nonconformists had come round. Up to the middle of the sixties
opinion among them was hostile to the intervention of the state in
education. They had resisted Graham's proposals in 1843, and Lord John
Russell's in 1847; but a younger generation, eager for progress, saw the
new necessity that change of social and political circumstance imposed.
The business in 1870 was to provide schools, and to get the children into
them.(191)

It is surprising how little serious attention had been paid even by
speculative writers in this country to the vast problem of the relative
duties of the State and the Family in respect of education. Mill devoted a
few