no means sure, upon a calm review, that Providence has
endowed me with anything that can be called a striking gift. But
if there be such a thing entrusted to me it has been shown at
certain political junctures, in what maybe termed appreciations of
the general situation and its result. To make good the idea, this
must not be considered as the simple acceptance of public opinion,
founded upon the discernment that it has risen to a certain height
needful for a given work, like a tide. It is an insight into the
facts of particular eras, and their relation one to another, which
generates in the mind a conviction that the materials exist for
forming a public opinion and for directing it to a particular end.
There are four occasions of my life with respect to which I think
these considerations may be applicable. They are these: 1. The
renewal of the Income-tax in 1853; 2. The proposal of religious
equality for Ireland, 1868....

The remaining two will appear in good time. It is easy to label this with
the ill-favoured name of opportunist. Yet if an opportunist be defined as
a statesman who declines to attempt to do a thing until he believes that
it can really be done, what is this but to call him a man of common sense?

II

(M70) In 1867 Ireland was disturbed by bold and dangerous Fenian plots and
the mischief flowed over into England. In September, at Manchester, a body
of armed men rescued two Fenian prisoners from a police van, and shot an
officer in charge, a crime for which three of them were afterwards hanged.
In December a Fenian rolled a barrel of gunpowder up to the wall of a
prison in London where a comrade was confined, and fired it. The explosion
that followed blew down part of the wall and cost several lives.

In my opinion,--Mr. Gladstone said afterwards in parliament, and
was much blamed for saying,--and in the opinion of many with whom I
communicated, the Fenian conspiracy has had an important influence
with respect to Irish policy; but it has not been an influence in
determining, or in affecting in the slightest degree, the
convictions which we have entertained with respect to the course
proper to be pursued in Ireland. The influence of Fenianism was
this--that when the habeas corpus Act was suspended, when all the
consequent proceedings occurred, when the tranquillity of the
great city of Manchester