Every kind of effort is being made by the Tory
party to con- vince ignorant electors that Mr. Gladstone is a secret Romanist. Now a paper asserts that he and all his family have been Catholics for years ; then a schoolmaster affirms that he threatened to resign if Dr. Wynter were promoted, Dr. Wynter being an " anti-Romanizer." Most of these libels scarcely deserve the con- temptuous denial with which Mr. Gladstone smashes them ; but one was of more importance. It was actually announced in a despatch from Florence that the Pope had directed Archbishop Manning to thank Mr. Gladstone for his Irish policy. This was just possible, and the Archbishop therefore writes to the Man- chester Examiner and Times to declare that " the statement is as false as it is mischievous." It " has not a particle of truth, not a shadow of foundation." Inventions of this sort are common in ecclesiastical warfare, and always indicate that the party which uses them has lost hope both in its arguments and its numbers.
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