ller evil than their persistence in a course which they know to be
wrong. It is not always to be blamed. But it is always to be watched
with vigilance; always to be challenged and put upon its trial.'[133] To
this challenge in his own case--and no man of his day was half so often
put upon his trial for inconsistency--he was always most easily provoked
to make a vehement reply. In that process Mr. Gladstone's natural habit
of resort to qualifying words, and his skill in showing that a new
attitude could be reconciled by strict reasoning with the logical
contents of old dicta, gave him wonderful advantage. His adversary, as
he strode confidently along the smooth grass, suddenly found himself
treading on a serpent; he had overlooked a condition, a proviso, a word
of hypothesis or contingency, that sprang from its ambush and brought
his triumph to naught on the spot. If Mr. Gladstone had only taken as
much trouble that his hearers should understand exactly what it was that
he meant, as he took trouble afterwards to show that his meaning had
been grossly misunderstood, all might have been well. As it was, he
seemed to be completely satisfied if he could only show that two
propositions, thought by plain men to be directly contradictory, were
all the time capable on close construction of being presented in perfect
harmony. As if I had a right to look only to what my words literally
mean or may in good logic be made to mean, and had no concern at all
with what the people meant who used the same words, or with what I
might have known that my hearers were all the time supposing me to mean.
Hope-Scott once wrote to him (November 24, 1841): 'We live in a time in
which accurate distinctions, especially in theology, are absolutely
unconsidered. The "common sense" or general tenor of questions is what
alone the majority of men are guided by. And I verily believe that
semi-arian confessions or any others turning upon nicety of thought and
expression, would be for the most part considered as fitter subjects for
scholastic dreamers than for earnest Christians.' In politics at any
rate, Bishop Butler was wiser.

The explanation of what was assailed as inconsistency is perhaps a
double one. In the first place he started on his journey with an
intellectual chart of ideas and principles not adequate or well fitted
for the voyage traced for him by the spirit of his age. If he held to
the inadequate ideas with which Oxford and Canning and his f