Mr. Gladstone said that the proposed increase in the Maynooth endowment and the establishment of non-sectarian colleges were at variance with views he had written and uttered upon the relations of the Church and State. "I am sensible how fallible my judgment is," said Mr. Gladstone, "and how easily I might have erred; but still it has been my conviction that although I was not to fetter my judgment as a member of Parliament by a reference to abstract theories, yet, on the other hand, it was absolutely due to the public and due to myself that I should, so far as in me lay, place myself in a position to form an opinion upon a matter of so great importance, that should not only be actually free from all bias or leaning with respect to any consideration whatsoever, but an opinion that should be unsuspected. On that account I have taken a course most painful to myself in respect to personal feelings, and have separated myself from men with whom and under whom I have long acted in public life, and of whom I am bound to say, although I have now no longer the honor of serving my most gracious Sovereign, that I continue to regard them with unaltered sentiments both of public regard and private attachment."

Then again he said: "My whole purpose was to place myself in a position in which I should be free to consider any course without being liable to any just suspicion on the ground of personal interest. It is not profane if I now say, 'with a great price obtained I this freedom.' The political association in which I stood was to me at the time the alpha and omega of public life. The government of Sir Robert Peel was believed to be of immovable strength. My place, as President of the Board of Trade, was at the very kernel of its most interesting operations; for it was in progress from year to year, with continually waxing courage, towards the emancipation of industry, and therein towards the accomplishment of another great and blessed work of public justice. Giving up what I highly prized, aware that

male sarta
Gratia nequicquam coit, et rescinditur.

I felt myself open to the charge of being opinionated and wanting in deference to really great authorities, and I could not but know that I should inevitably be regarded as fastidious and fanciful, fitter for a dreamer, or possibly a schoolman, than for the active purposes of public life in a busy and moving age."

There were some of his party angry and others who thought that there was something almost Quixotic in Mr. Gladstone's honorable resignation, because so soon as he felt himself free he gave his support to the Maynooth Bill and also to the scheme for the extension of academical education in Ireland, which latter was described by Sir R. Inglis as a "gigantic scheme of godless education." In Greville's "Memoirs" we find: "Gladstone's explanation is ludicrous. Everybody said that he had only succeeded in showing that his resignation was unnecessary. He was criticised as the possessor of a kind of supernatural virtue that could scarcely be popular with the slaves of party, and he was considered whimsical, fantastic, impracticable, a man whose 'conscience was so tender that he could not go straight,' a visionary not to be relied on—in fact, a character and intellect useless to the political manager." "I am greatly alarmed at Gladstone's resignation. I fear it foretells measures opposed to the Church truth," wrote Wilberforce; and Peel told Gladstone beforehand that his reasons for his resignation would be considered insufficient. But Mr. Gladstone's resignation, when understood, elicited the liveliest expressions of regret from friend and foe, as well as the most flattering testimonies as to his ability and character. His chief, Sir Robert Peel, and Lord John Russell, the leader of the Opposition, were alike complimentary in their remarks.

Dr. Russell, the biographer of Mr. Gladstone, says: "Mr. Gladstone's retirement, by impairing his reputation for common sense, threatened serious and lasting injury to his political career, But the whirligig of time brought its revenges even more swiftly than usual. A conjunction of events arose in which he was destined to repair the mischief which the speculative side had wrought; but for the moment the speculative side was uppermost."

Mr. Gladstone was fast leaving his Toryism behind. To show how far his views had changed in the course of seven years, it may be said that in his speech on these measures he observed how that exclusive support to the Established Church was a doctrine that was being more and more abandoned. Mr. Burke considered it contrary to wise policy to give exclusive privileges to a negative creed like that of Protestantism. They could not prove their religious scruples for denying this grant to Roman Catholics, because they gave their votes of money to almost every Dissenting seat. He hoped the concession now made—which was a great and liberal gift, because unrestricted and given in a spirit of confidence—would not lead to the renewal of agitation in Ireland by Mr. O'Connell. It might be well for him to reflect that agitation was a two-edged sword. Being conformable to justice and not contrary to principle, he hoped the measure proposed would pass into a law.

W.T. Stead, in a recent article, said, in relation to Mr. Gladstone's retirement from the Cabinet, that "It is ridiculous to pretend, with Mr. Gladstone's career before us, that his course has been swayed by calculating self-interest. He has been the very madman of politics from the point of view of Mr. Worldly Wiseman. 'No man,' said he, the other day, 'has ever committed suicide so often as I,' and that witness is true. The first and perhaps the most typical of all his many suicides was his resignation of his seat in Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet, not because he disapproved of the Maynooth Grant, but because, as he had at one time written against it, he was determined that his advocacy of it should be purged of the last taint of self-interest. As Mr. George Russell rightly remarks, 'This was an act of Parliamentary Quixotism too eccentric to be intelligible. It argued a fastidious sensitiveness of conscience, and a nice sense of political propriety so opposed to the sordid selfishness and unblushing tergiversation of the ordinary place-hunter as to be almost offensive.' But as Mr. Gladstone was then, so he has been all his life—the very Quixote of conscience. Judged by every standard of human probability, he has ruined himself over and over and over again. He is always ruining himself, and always rising, like the Phoenix, in renewed youth from the ashes of his funeral pyre. As was said in homely phrase some years ago, he 'always keeps bobbing up again.' What is the secret of this wonderful capacity of revival? How is it that Mr. Gladstone seems to find even his blunders help him, and the affirmation of principles that seem to be destructive to all chance of the success of his policy absolutely helps him to its realization?"

From a merely human standpoint it is inexplicable. But

'If right or wrong in this God's world of ours
Be leagued with higher powers,'