We may now, before passing away from the public side of Mr. Gladstone's career, return for a moment to the opposite views of his character which were indicated some pages back. He was accused of sophistry, of unwisdom, of want of patriotism, of lust for power. Though it is difficult to sift these charges without discussing the conduct which gave rise to them, a task impossible here, each of them must be briefly examined. The first charge is the most plausible. His ingenuity in discovering arguments and stating fine verbal distinctions, his subtlety in discriminating between views or courses apparently similar, were excessive, and invited misconstruction. He had a tendency to persuade himself, quite unconsciously, that the course he desired to take was a course which the public interest required. His acuteness soon found reasons for that course; the warmth of his emotions enforced the reasons. It was a dangerous tendency, but it does not impeach his honesty of purpose, for the influence which his predilections unconsciously exerted upon his judgment appeared also in his theological and literary inquiries. I can recall no instance in which he wilfully misstated a fact, or simulated a feeling, or used an argument which he knew to be unsound. He did not, as does the sophist, attempt "to make the worse appear the better reason." His wisdom will be differently judged by those who condemn or approve the chief acts of his policy. But it deserves to be noted that all the legislation he passed, even the measures which, like the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill, exposed him to angry attacks at the time, have now been approved by the all but unanimous judgment of Englishmen.[69] The same may be said of two acts which brought much invective upon him--his settlement of the _Alabama_ claims, one of the wisest strokes of foreign policy ever accomplished by a British minister, and his protest against a support of the Turks in and after 1876. I pass by Irish Home Rule, because the wisdom of the course he took must be tested by results that are yet unborn, as I pass by his Egyptian policy in 1882-85, because it cannot be fairly judged till the facts have been fully made public. He may be open to blame for his participation in the Crimean War, for his mistaken view of the American Civil War, for his neglect of the Transvaal question when he took office in 1880, and for his omission during his earlier career to recognise the gravity of Irish disaffection and to study its causes. I have heard him lament that he had not twenty years earlier given the same attention to that abiding source of the difficulties of England which he gave from 1866 onwards. If in these instances he erred, it must be remembered that he erred in company with nine-tenths of British statesmen in both political parties.