Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/165

 but it would appear that he has resigned himself to a general "smash up." The Parliamentary machine, he believes, will not work while Ireland clogs the wheels. Above all, the conduct of Mr. Gladstone, and of his great following in the country and in Parliament, are, to men like Mr. Froude, portents of coming evil. But I think, perhaps, that Mr. Gladstone's opponents, as well as his disciples, overrate his lasting influence, by which I mean the effect his career will produce on the coming generations. We colonists hold—and Mr. Parnell now seems to have come to the same opinion—that Mr. Gladstone has fallen into grievous ways towards the close of his remarkable career. We have recognised from the first that his great error consists in thinking that the long struggle between what he now calls "the two nations" would end if his statutory Parliament were established in Dublin. Rightly considered, it would then only begin in real earnest. Mr. Froude and his colonial disciple, Mr. Topp, seeing all this plainly enough, overrate while they attack the personality of Mr. Gladstone, and under-estimate the vigour and the vitality of the English race. They should take heart from the instinctive conduct of that other great Liberal leader, John Bright, a man