He never shrank from putting his faith to the test; and on the whole,
who can deny that for his country and for himself he has reason to
rejoice in the verification of his working hypothesis?
'We walk by faith and not by sight,' he said once; 'and by no one so
much as by those who are in politics is this necessary.' It is the
evidence of things not seen, the eternal principles, the great invisible
moral sanctions that men are wont to call the laws of God, which alone
supply a safe guide through this mortal wilderness.
'Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here!
See one straightforward conscience put in pawn
To win a world; see the obedient sphere
By bravery's simple gravitation drawn!
Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old,
And by the Present's lips repeated still?
In our own single manhood to be bold,
Fortressed in conscience and impregnable.'
"Mr. Gladstone has never hesitated to counter at sharp right angles the
passion and the fury of the day. Those who represent him as ever strong
upon the strong side, wilfully shut their eyes to half his history. He
challenged Lord Palmerston over the Don Pacifico question, and was
believed to have wrecked himself almost as completely as when in 1876 he
countered even more resolutely the fantastic Jingoism of Lord
Beaconsfield.
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