He meant, I think, that he had faith; that in a country where suspicion is the prevailing disease, he credited men with honest motives and with his own love of Ireland.
If he went wrong at any time, he went wrong by too generous a judgment of other men, too open-handed a policy.

Perhaps, too, he may have erred--it was his characteristic defect--in not pressing his policy upon others with more vehemence.

He had not the temperament which, when once possessed with an idea, rests neither night nor day in pursuit of it and spares neither others' labour nor its own to carry the conception into effect.

There was an element of inertia in his nature, and of the ordinary self-seeking motives which impel men not a trace.

Ambition he had none--none, at all events, in the last ten or fifteen years, during which I have known him.