Our complaint is simply this, that if such a style of opposition as he has resorted to became habitual, the government of the country would be made impossible. No means were left untried to make Russia hope, and other nations fear, that Lord Beaconsfield had not the nation at his back, and, when owing to this encouragement, Russia showed obstinacy, and it was necessary to risk something by exhibiting boldness, that very necessity was sought to be turned into a reproach. Mr. Gladstone's own tactics made it imperative that in the matter of Cyprus, and some other negotiations, secrecy should be observed, and the Government was charged with acting unconstitutionally, as if constitutional usage imposed no limits on the Opposition, or as if those limits had not been transgressed. Just so, again, in the Afghan war. If Lord Northbrook had acted with spirit years before, that war would never have been necessary; but that trifling fact Mr. Gladstone overlooked, he and the Duke of Argyll making it appear that Lord Lytton had been at great pains to get himself and his Government into a difficulty. Why Mr. Gladstone has had so little to say about the Cape war is a mystery, which may be explained some day; all that can now be said of it is that it shows a striking inconsistency. Luckily his efforts, though his industry was gigantic, have failed, and even he must be now aware that his renewal of them, though we suppose it must go on, having been arranged so long and announced so pompously, is a trifle late, with the Cape war ended, our troops in Cabul, those of Austria at Novi Bazar, and checkmated, scolding Russia gnashing her teeth at Germany. However, no doubt we shall have some very fine speeches, proving that nothing of this ought to have happened, or that it won't last long, or that the Beaconsfield Administration did not bring it about, or any thing else, just as reasonable, for fine words can be arranged in many different ways by a practised orator.
What, then, we may finally ask, was the secret of Mr. Gladstone's success so long as he was prosperous, and what was the explanation of his fall when it so suddenly arrived? The thrifty skill of calculation in estimating the growth of questions which his whole career so irresistibly points to was spoken of early in this sketch; but a man, no matter how judicious in the management of his own approaches to a party, cannot impose himself upon it. The Liberals, on the successive occasions, welcomed Mr. Gladstone, and did so gladly, never making his very late conversions a reproach. Its leaders were more vociferous in hailing him at each renewed arrival one stage farther on than were the rank and file, though some of them, as the thing was repeated, must have been struck with the unfailing punctuality of his approach. Not that we are professing to sympathize with these gentlemen. If it satisfied them that whenever they had upset a Government, be it that of Aberdeen or of Palmerston, the inevitable Mr. Gladstone always emerged out of the wreck, just a little more Liberal than the day before, ready to take the first pick of places in the new Cabinet, all well and good. But the fact was that his arrival always was a convenience, for, no matter how the sections differed among themselves, the rallying round Mr. Gladstone as a further seceder from Toryism was a proceeding in which they could all join, and it gave them, again and again, an appearance of unanimity and cohesion. This was, in fact, his great function, and in it he has been very valuable to the party. Besides, though so late and seemingly slow in politics, he had from the first been great, and at the outset even precocious, in finance; and, further, he was a wonderful orator, even quicker in debating than Mr. Bright. Such a personage, so largely prudent and so highly gifted, was sure to succeed, and to do so for a long time; but he was also certain to fail in the end, and that completely.