Mr. Gladstone, disclaiming the compliment paid to him by the
Provost of Aberdeen that the course of his public life had been " onward and upward," preferred to say that he desired that such it might be for the future, that his course might be resolutely onward to the accomplishment of the duties he had set himself, and " upward in an honest if feeble effort to purge himself from the intrusion of those lower motives which degrade the high voca- tion of a statesman." After this prelude he went on to compli- ment the county of Aberdeen on the great energy and self- reliance it had shown in dealing with the cattle plague, and adopting for itself measures, of which the British Government, after other unsuccessful experiments, was compelled much later to copy the plan ; and to remark that this was the kind of capacity for Home Rule which is really enviable, and upon which is built, without any desire for the separatism and weakness of what Ireland means by Home Rule, the solid " fabric of national greatness,"— whence Mr. Gladstone very easily diverged into that clear and emphatic pronouncement in relation to the new Irish programme, of which we have given an adequate account in another column.
