Between a man's enemies and his friends
there comes out a rough painting of his character, not without a
resemblance to the final summary, albeit wanting in the justly delicate
historical touch to particular features. On the one side he is abused as
'the one-man power'; lauded on the other for his marvellous intuition
of the popular will. One can believe that he scarcely wishes to march
dictatorially, and full surely his Egyptian policy was from step to step
a misreading of the will of the English people. He went forth on this
campaign, with the finger of Egypt not ineffectively levelled against
him a second time. Nevertheless he does read his English; he has, too,
the fatal tendency to the bringing forth of Bills in the manner of
Jove big with Minerva. He perceived the necessity, and the issue of the
necessity; clearly defined what must come, and, with a higher motive
than the vanity with which his enemies charge him, though not with such
high counsel as Wisdom at his ear, fell to work on it alone, produced
the whole Bill alone, and then handed it to his Cabinet to digest, too
much in love with the thing he had laid and incubated to permit of any
serious dismemberment of its frame. Hence the disruption. He worked
for the future, produced a Bill for the future, and is wrecked in the
present. Probably he can work in no other way than from the impulse of
his enthusiasm, solitarily. It is a way of making men overweeningly in
love with their creations. The consequence is likely to be that Ireland
will get her full measure of justice to appease her cravings earlier
than she would have had as much from the United Liberal Cabinet, but at
a cost both to her and to England. Meanwhile we are to have a House of
Commons incapable of conducting public business; the tradesmen to whom
the Times addressed pathetic condolences on the loss of their season
will lose more than one; and we shall be made sensible that we have an
enemy in our midst, until a people, slow to think, have taken counsel of
their native generosity to put trust in the most generous race on earth.

CONCESSION TO THE CELT--1886

Things are quiet outside an ant-hill until the stick has been thrust
into it. Mr. Gladstone's Bill for helping to the wiser government
of Ireland has brought forth our busy citizens on the top-rubble in
traversing counterswarms, and whatever may be said against a Bill that
deals roughly with many sensitive interests, one asks whether any