About twenty years ago Mr. Gladstone’s future career as a Minister was predicted with singular accuracy by a very acute observer of men and things, who had held almost every possible office, from that of Ministerial Whip to Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary of State. Observing from the Peers’ Gallery Mr. Gladstone’s mismanagement of public business when he led the House of Commons in Lord Russell’s short-lived second Administration, he said, in effect: ‘We are coming to new times. Mr. Gladstone cannot manage the House of Commons as other Ministers have done, in the usual way, but he can force great measures through by bringing the pressure of outside opinion to bear upon it. This,’ he added, ‘is the way in which Mr. Gladstone will maintain himself in power. We shall have one violent proposal after another, as the means by which Mr. Gladstone may gain or keep office.’ Mr. John Morley writes: ‘He sometimes shows a singular difficulty in apprehending what will be the average judgment even on ordinary proceedings. He showed this in the mistake concerning Sir Robert Collier’s hardly more than colourable qualification to be made a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. He showed it again in a blunder of much the same kind—the special pleader’s kind—in the appointment to the Ewelme Rectory of a clergyman who could only by a strained interpretation of the usual rule be regarded as eligible. He showed it more than ever in his attempt to interpret away Lord (then Mr.) Odo Russell’s meaning in the language addressed by him in 1870 to Prince Bismarck on the subject of Russia’s action concerning the Black Sea clause of the Treaty of Paris, and averring the necessity—England’s necessity—for going to war with Russia with or without allies. His hasty resignation of the leadership of the Liberal party in 1874 was a still more important illustration of his rather erratic judgment. The latest instance of it is his letter to Count Carophyl, which shows at the same time, we think, a singularly just appreciation of the diplomatic concessions he had gained, and a singularly inadequate one as to the importance of a proud and lofty tone as one who writes as a spokesman of a great people.’ Mr. Spurgeon, writing to a Cardiff Liberal who opposes Mr. Gladstone’s Irish policy, says: ‘As to Ireland, I am altogether at one with you; especially I feel the wrong proposed to be done to our Ulster brethren. What have they done to be thus cast off? The whole scheme is as full of dangers and absurdities as if it came from a madman, yet I am sure Mr. Gladstone is only doing justice, and acting for the good of all. I consider him to be making one of those mistakes which can only be made by great and well-meaning men.’ In a further deliverance on the question, ‘in answer to many friends,’ and expressing himself as sorry to say what he does, liking to agree with Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Spurgeon says: