there were. He may have shown less
than was needed of that prescience which is, after integrity and
courage, the highest gift of a statesman, but which can seldom be
expected from an English minister, too engrossed to find time for the
patient reflection from which alone sound forecasts can issue. But he
had the next best quality, that of remaining accessible to new ideas
and learning from the events which passed under his eyes.

With this openness and flexibility of mind there went a not less
remarkable ingenuity and resourcefulness. Fertile in expedients, he
was still more fertile in reasonings by which to recommend the
expedients. The gift had its dangers, for he was apt to be carried
away by the dexterity of his own dialectic, and to think that a
scheme must be sound in whose support he could muster a formidable
array of arguments. He never seemed at a loss, in public or in
private, for a criticism, or for an answer to the criticisms of
others. If his power of adapting his own mind to the minds of those
whom he had to convince had been equal to the skill and swiftness with
which he accumulated a mass of matter persuasive to those who looked
at things in his own way, no one would have exercised so complete a
control over the political opinion of his time. But his intellect
lacked this power of adaptation. It moved on lines of its own, which
were often misconceived, even by those who sought to follow him
loyally. Thus, as already observed, he was blamed for two opposite
faults. Some, pointing to the fact that he had frequently altered his
views, denounced him as a demagogue profuse of promises, ready to
propose whatever he thought likely to catch the people's ear. Others
complained that there was no knowing where to have him; that he had an
erratic mind, whose currents ran underground and came to the surface
in unexpected places; that he did not consult his party, but followed
his own impulses; that his guidance was unsafe because his decisions
were unpredictable. Much of the suspicion with which he was regarded,
especially after 1885, arose from this view of his character.

It was an unfair view, yet nearer to the truth than that which charged
him with seeking to flatter and follow the people. No great popular
leader had in him less of the demagogue. He saw, of course, that a
statesman cannot oppose the general will beyond a certain point, and
may have to humour it in small things that he may direct it in great
one