GROWTH

Once more, his whole temper and spirit turned to practice. His thrift of
time, his just and regulated thrift in money, his hatred of waste, were
only matched by his eager and minute attention in affairs of public
business. He knew how to be content with small savings of hours and of
material resources. He was not downcast if progress were slow. In
watching public opinion, in feeling the pulse of a cabinet, in softening
the heart of a colleague, even when skies were gloomiest, he was almost
provokingly anxious to detect signs of encouragement that to others were
imperceptible. He was of the mind of the Roman emperor, 'Hope not for
the republic of Plato; but be content with ever so small an advance, and
look on even that as a gain worth having.'[127] A commonplace, but not
one of the commonplaces that are always laid to heart.

If faith was one clue, then next to faith was growth. The fundamentals
of Christian dogma, so far as I know and am entitled to speak, are the
only region in which Mr. Gladstone's opinions have no history.
Everywhere else we look upon incessant movement; in views about church
and state, tests, national schools; in questions of economic and fiscal
policy; in relations with party; in the questions of popular
government--in every one of these wide spheres of public interest he
passes from crisis to crisis. The dealings of church and state made the
first of these marked stages in the history of his opinions and his
life, but it was only the beginning.

I was born with smaller natural endowments than you, he wrote to
his old friend Sir Francis Doyle (1880), and I had also a narrower
early training. But my life has certainly been remarkable for the
mass of continuous and searching experience it has brought me ever
since I began to pass out of boyhood. I have been feeling my way;
owing little to living teachers, but enormously to four dead
ones[128] (over and above the four gospels). It has been experience
which has altered my politics. My toryism was accepted by me on
authority and in good faith; I did my best to fight for it. But if
you choose to examine my parliamentary life you will find that on
every subject as I came to deal with it practically, I had to deal
with it as a liberal elected in '32. I began with slavery in 1833,
and was commended by the liberal minister, Mr. Stanley. I took to
colonial subjects principally,