Ireland from the incumbrance of a State Church not in harmony with the religion of the people; he had even intended well in his Irish University scheme, except that he was unable to realise the depth and tenacity with which Catholics hold to their principles, or to understand what experience of the evil of mixed universities we had already before us on the Continent. How sad it is that, by an outrage as unprovoked as it was unexpected, Mr. Gladstone should put our gratitude to a strain so intense!
The prejudice inflicted on Mr. Gladstone's mind during the Council had seemed to sleep, till his vindication of Ritualism woke it up again. His fierce attack upon the Catholics, and especially upon the converts, in the Contemporary Review, led to private expostulations from convert friends. Was it possible for Catholics to be silent under his imputations? This seems to have surprised him, and to have stung his sensitive mind. He resolved to expostulate in his turn, and to hit a fierce blow at men who dared to think he could be wrong. The newspapers told us of his visit to Dr. Döllinger before his Expostulation appeared, and of his visit to Dr. Döllinger's principal English pupil immediately after it came out. The points raised in that production are the points raised by the Döllingerites before the Council commenced and during its sitting, when yet these men hung loosely on the Church, and they have been forced forward with still greater vehemence by them since they became an excommunicated sect.
We have next to examine Mr. Gladstone's own statement of his motives.
