n them. He is not afraid of the
suffrage, as he indicated in his celebrated speech; he is not
alarmed at risking the treasury as his reductions have proved;
does not hesitate to apply the full power of the state to
ameliorate social anomalies, as he showed by creating state banks,
state insurance offices, and state annuity funds for the very
poor. He of all men alive could most easily reduce our anarchical
ecclesiastical system into something like order; he, perhaps,
alone among statesmen would have the art and the energy to try as
a deliberate plan to effect the final conciliation of
Ireland....(127)

(M51) A letter from Francis Newman to Mr. Gladstone is a good illustration
of the almost passionate going out of men's hearts to him in those days:--

Until a practical reason for addressing you arose out of ... I did
not dare to intrude on you sentiments which are happily shared by
so many thousands of warm and simple hearts; sentiments of warm
admiration, deep sympathy, fervent hope, longing expectation of
lasting national blessing from your certain elevation to high
responsibility. The rude, monstrous, shameful and shameless
attacks which you have endured, do but endear you to the nation.
In the moral power which you wield, go on to elevate and purify
public life, and we shall all bless you, dear sir, as a
regenerator of England. Keep the hearts of the people. _They_ will
never envy you and never forsake you.

Church, afterwards the dean of St. Paul's, a man who united in so
wonderful a degree the best gifts that come of culture, sound and just
sense, and unstained purity of spirit, said of Mr. Gladstone at the moment
of accession to power, "There never was a man so genuinely admired for the
qualities which deserve admiration--his earnestness, his deep popular
sympathies, his unflinching courage; and there never was a man more deeply
hated both for his good points and for undeniable defects and failings.
But they love him much less in the House than they do out of doors. A
strong vein of sentiment is the spring of what is noblest about his
impulses; but it is a perilous quality too."(128) An accomplished woman
with many public interests met Mr. Bright in Scotland sometime after this.
"He would not hear a word said against Mr. Gladstone. He said it was just
because people were not good enough themselves to understand him that he