aintenance of the pope and his court, followers and agents, six millions
of our fellow-subjects or thereabouts are deeply interested; and they are
making demands upon us which we are forced to decline. But I should for
one be ashamed to deny that there are the strongest equitable claims upon
the Italian government growing out of the past state of things; that in
these equitable claims the six millions I speak of have a real interest
and share; and as the matter is international, and they have no _locus
standi_ with the Italian government, it is our part so far to plead their
cause if need be."

IV

(M163) Four years elapsed before Mr. Gladstone was in a position to follow
up his strong opinions on the injury done, as he believed, to human
liberty by the Vatican decrees. But the great debate between ultramontanes
and old catholics was followed by him with an interest that never
slackened. In September 1874 he went to Munich, and we can hardly be wrong
in ascribing to that visit the famous tract which was to make so lively a
stir before the end of the year. His principal object was to communicate
with Dr. Doellinger, and this object, he tells Mrs. Gladstone, was fully
gained. "I think," he says, "I have spent two-thirds of my whole time with
Dr. Doellinger, who is indeed a most remarkable man, and it makes my blood
run cold to think of _his_ being excommunicated in his venerable but,
thank God, hale and strong old age. In conversation we have covered a wide
field. I know no one with whose mode of viewing and handling religious
matters I more cordially agree.... He is wonderful, and simple as a
child."

"I think it was in 1874," Doellinger afterwards mentioned, "that I remember
Gladstone's paying me a visit at six o'clock in the evening. We began
talking on political and theological subjects, and became, both of us, so
engrossed with the conversation, that it was two o'clock at night when I
left the room to fetch a book from my library bearing on the matter in
hand. I returned with it in a few minutes, and found him deep in a volume
he had drawn out of his pocket--true to his principle of never losing
time--during my momentary absence."(317) "In the course of a walk out of
Munich in the travelling season of 1874," Mr. Gladstone wrote sixteen
years later, "Dr. Doellinger told me that he was engaged in the work of
retrial through the whole circle of his Latin teaching and knowledge. The
results were tested in his pro