Mr. Gladstone's Expostulation Unravelled.
Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet, The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance, is in everybody's hands, and for long to come Catholics will be asked, 'What have you got to say to Mr. Gladstone?' Many replies have been written; more than the intrinsic value of the production deserved. The character of the book is peculiar in its style, a style so different from the man when he writes with clear and certain knowledge of his subject. Place it by the side of his Homeric books or his Financial Statements, and it will be at once understood what I mean. To read it is like looking into a landscape where shifting clouds and fogs leave us scarcely a definite object in sight by which to tell us where in the world we are. Broad assertions are made, then contracted in their compass, then expanded anew into yet broader and stronger affirmations; and when we come to the end of them, we are irresistibly driven to ask, What does Mr. Gladstone precisely mean, and where are his proofs? Hence the conclusion is forced upon us, that this cannot be Mr. Gladstone after all; he must be swayed by prompters on more than one side of him, who throw his mind into confusion. Before, then, we come to the singular style of his Expostulation, let us consider:5
