While superior to the prejudices of the old-fashioned wing of his party, he was too cautious and conscientious to join those who sought to lead it into demagogic courses. So far as political opinions went, he might, had fortune sent him into the world as the son of a Whig family, have made an excellent Whig, removed as far from high Toryism on the one hand as from Radicalism on the other. There was, therefore, a certain incompatibility between the man and the position. Average partisans felt that a leader so very reasonable was not in full sympathy with them. Even his invincible optimism displeased them. "Hang that fellow Northcote!" said one of them; "he's always seeing blue sky." The militant partisans, whatever their opinions, desired a pugnacious chief. That a leader should draw the enemy's fire does him good with his followers, and makes them rally to him. But the fire of his opponents was hardly ever directed against Northcote, even when controversy was hottest. Had he possessed a more imperious will, he might have overcome these difficulties, because his abilities and experience were of the highest value to his party, and his character stood so high that the mass of sensible Tories all over the country might perhaps have rallied to him, if he had appealed to them against the intrigues by which it was sought to supplant him. He did not lack courage. But he lacked what men call "backbone." For practical success, it is less fatal to fail in wisdom than to fail in resolution. He had not that unquenchable self-confidence which I have sought to describe in Disraeli, and shall have to describe in Parnell and in Gladstone. He yielded to pressure, and people came to know that he would yield to pressure. The end of it was that the weakened prestige and final fall of the Liberal Ministry were not credited to his generalship, but rather to those who had skirmished in advance of the main army. That fall was in reality due neither to him nor to them, but partly to the errors or internal divisions of the Ministry itself, partly to causes such as the condition of Ireland and the revolt of Arabi in Egypt, for which Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet was no more, perhaps less, to blame than many of its predecessors. No Ministry of recent years seemed, when it was formed, to have such a source of strength in the abilities of the men who composed it as did the Ministry of 1880. None proved so persistently unlucky.