This affection for Mr. Gladstone was a personal matter, quite independent of politics; but in political matters also they had much in common. "You know," wrote the Cardinal to Mrs. Gladstone on her Golden Wedding, "how nearly I have agreed in William's political career, especially in his Irish policy of the last twenty years." He accepted the principle of Home Rule, though he thought badly of the Bill of 1886, and predicted its failure from the day when it was brought in. The exclusion of the Irish members was in his eyes a fatal blot, as tending rather to separation than to that Imperial federation which was his political ideal. But the Cardinal always held his politics in subordination to his religion, and at the General Election of 1885 his vigorous intervention on behalf of denominational education which he considered to be imperilled by the Radical policy, considerably embarrassed the Liberal cause in those districts of London where there is a Roman Catholic vote. It is necessary to say a word about Cardinal Manning's method of religious propagandism. He excelled in the art of driving a nail where it would go. He never worried his acquaintance with controversy, never introduced religious topics unseasonably, never cast his pearls before unappreciative animals. But when he saw a chance, an opening, a sympathetic tendency, or a weak spot, he fastened on it with unerring instinct. His line was rather admonitory than persuasive. When he thought that the person whom he was addressing had an inkling of the truth, but was held back from avowing it by cowardice or indecision, he would utter the most startling warnings about the danger of dallying with grace. "I promise you to become a Catholic when I am twenty-one," said a young lady whom he was trying to convert. "But can you promise to live so long?" was the searching rejoinder.