Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet on the Vatican Decrees, of which we
explained something of the tenour last week, appeared on the day of our last issue, and has, of course, given great offence to Roman Catholics, and apparently not very great satisfaction to any but the German antagonists of Catholicism. The most anti- Catholic organs of the English Press have grumbled as if they thought Mr. Gladstone were poaching on their preserves, or, at all events, as if he were indulging in that taste for the Unexpected, which is an admitted privilege of Destiny, but not of Mr. Gladstone's. In point of fact, however, Mr. Gladstone's line on the O'Keeffe ewe had given warning to all politicians, long before the defeat on the Irish University Bill, of his feeling towards " Vaticanism," and whatever the short- comings of his pamphlet, on which, as well as on its strong points, we have said our mind elsewhere, it is absurd to attribute it, as his detractors do, to private pique. The Times of Monday treated it as a symptom that Mr. Gladstone was likely to join the Old Catholics, a wild conjecture, which might with even more plausibility be launched against the Bishop of Winchester, or Canon Liddon, or Dean Howson. It is curious that of all our public men, Mr. Gladstone is least often given credit for meaning precisely what he says, and no more ; and yet of all our public men, he is probably the most artless, though also, perhaps, the most complex.
