ciples of personal freedom. But the broad plain principle long established was, that when a slave does get on board an English vessel, just as when he touches British soil, he is free and is not to be restored to slavery; and that principle the Government saw themselves at last compelled to re-affirm. It was impossible for them to resist the popular demand; some of their own men in the House of Commons fell away from them and insisted that the old principle must be kept up, and that the slaveowner shall not take his slave from under the shadow of the English flag.

All this time what was Mr. Gladstone doing? He appeared to have withdrawn from the paths of Parliamentary life and almost from the political world. He was very busy indeed in another way. He had taken to polemical literature. He was writing a series of essays to prove that the doctrine of papal infallibility if strictly acknowledged by Catholics would place their allegiance to whatever Sovereign entirely at the disposal of the Pope. He was stirring up a heated controversy by endeavouring to prove that absolute obedience to the Catholic Church was henceforward inconsistent with the principles of freedom, and that the Papal doctrine was everywhere the enemy of liberty. Cardinal Manning, Dr. Newman, and other great controversialists had taken the field against Mr. Gladstone, and the argument went on for a considerable time without abatement of eagerness. Grave politicians were not a little scandalised at the position taken by a statesman who only the other

1874-5. GLADSTONE TAKES REST IN CONTROVERSY. 427

day was Prime Minister. There seemed something curiously undignified and unseemly in Mr. Gladstone's leading a theological controversy. A speaker at an Evangelical Meeting in Exeter Hall would have been quite in his place when using such arguments as those employed by Mr. Gladstone; but a sharp polemical controversy provoked by a great statesman was something new in the modern world. One conclusion was adopted everywhere. It seemed clear that Mr. Gladstone never meant to take any leading part in politics again. Surely, it was said, if he had the remotest idea of entering the political field anew, he never would have thus gratuitously assailed the religious belief of the Roman Catholic subjects of the Queen. Nor indeed did it appear as if it would be very suitable for England to have a statesman in office again who must have given offence to all the Catholic Sovereigns and Ministers of Europe. Unfriendly critics hinted that Mr. Gladstone was writing against the Pope and the Vatican in order to wreak his grudge because of the condemnation of his Irish University Bill by the heads of the Catholic Church in Ireland. It is not probable that any personal motive influenced Mr. Gladstone in a course which all his true admirers of whatever political party must have been sorry to see him follow. He had always a keen relish for theological disputation. He had in him much of the taste and the temper of the ecclesiastic. A religious controversy came to him as the most natural sort of recreation after the fatigue and disappointments of the political arena. Carteret,

driven from office, retired laughing,' says Macaulay, 'to his books and his bottle.' Fox found relief from political work in his loved Greek authors. Talleyrand played whist. Mr. Gladstone sought relaxation in religious controversy. He was as eager about it as ever he had been about a Budget or a Reform Bill. He assailed the Pope as if he were attacking Mr. Disraeli. He declared against the Vatican as if he were overwhelming the Tory Opposition with his rhetoric. There was an earnestness about him which made some men smile and others feel sad. Most of his friends shook their heads; most of his enemies were delighted. Out of this depth it seemed impossible that he could ever rise. Mr. Disraeli had once said, 'there was a Palmerston.' Did he feel tempted now to say there was a Gladstone'?

6

In the beginning of 1875, Mr. Gladstone had formally retired from the office of leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons. There was some difficulty at first about the choice of his successor. Two men stood intellectually high above all other possible competitors-Mr. Bright and Mr. Lowe. But it was well known that Mr. Bright's health would not allow him to undertake such laborious duties, and Mr. Lowe was quietly assumed to have none of the leader's qualities. Sir William Harcourt had not weight enough; neither had Mr. Goschen; the time of these two men had apparently not yet come. The real choice was between Mr. Forster and Lord Hartington. Mr. Forster, however, knew that he had estranged the Nonconformists from him by the course

1875.

THE NEW LIBERAL LEADER.

429

he had taken in his education measures, and he withdrew from what he felt to be an untenable position. Lord Hartington was therefore arrived at by a sort of process of exhaustion. It is not too much to say that had he not been the son of a great Whig duke no human being would ever have thought of him as leader of the Liberal party. But it is only right to add that he proved much better than his promise. He had a robust straightforward nature, and by constant practice he made himself an effective debater. Men liked the courage and the candid admission of his own deficiencies, with which he braced himself up to his most difficult task-to take the place of Gladstone in debate and to confront Disraeli.

CHAPTER LXIV.

THE EASTERN QUESTION AGAIN.

A CHANGE Soon came over the spirit of the Administration. It began to be seen more and more clearly that Mr. Disraeli had not come into office merely to consider the claims of agricultural tenants and to pass measures for the pulling down of what Mr. Cross, the Home Secretary, called 'rookeries' in the back slums of great cities. The Prime Minister was well known to cherish loftier ambitions. He was not supposed to have any warm personal interest in prosaic measures of domestic legislation. If a great Reform Bill were brought forward he could fight against it first, and adopt it and enlarge it afterwards. If any question of picturesque theology were under discussion he was the man to sustain religion with epigram, and array himself on the side of the angels in panoply of paradox. But his inclinations were all for the broader and more brilliant fields of foreign politics. The poetic young notary in Richter's story was found with his eyes among the stars and his soul in the blue ether. Mr. Disraeli's eyes were among the stars of imperialist ambition; his soul was in the blue ether of high policy. Since his early years he had not travelled. He had hardly ever left Eng