It is easy for those who come after and enter into the
spoils gained by sacrifices of which they themselves were incapable to
describe the Bulgarian agitation as an astute party move. The party did
not think so. Its leaders did not think so. Some of those who now halloo
loud enough behind Mr. Gladstone were then bitter enough in their
complaint that he had wrecked his party. One at least, who was
constrained to say the other thing in public, made up for it by bitter
and contemptuous cavilings in private. Now it is easy to see that Lord
Beaconsfield was mistaken and that Mr. Gladstone held the winning card
all along. But no one knew it at the time when the card had to be
played, certainly not Mr. Gladstone himself. He simply saw his duty a
dead sure thing, and, like Jim Bludsoe on the burning boat, 'He went for
it there and then.' It turned up trumps, but no one knew how heavy were
the odds against it save those who went through the stress and the
strain of that testing and trying time by his side."
In the summer of 1845 Mr. Gladstone proposed to his intimate friend, Mr.
J.R. Hope, that they should spend the month of September in a working
tour in Ireland, giving evidence of his characteristic desire always to
come in personal contact with any question that he had to discuss.
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