by Cardinal Wiseman at Oscott on 14 Sept. 1845. In the following year he took up his quarters in a small house built for him by Pugin near St. Edmund's College, Ware. He found at first no work in the college; but he turned his leisure to good account in theological study and religious exercise; nor did he lose touch of wider interests. Two articles by him in the ‘Tablet’ (24 June and 15 July 1845) on the ‘Political Economy’ of John Stuart Mill led to an introduction to Mill, who had highly appreciated Ward's earlier review of his ‘Logic’ in the ‘British Critic’ (October 1843), and had read the ‘Ideal’ with interest. The two men had little in common except the qualities of intellectual thoroughness and perfect candour; for though in economics (the population question excepted) Ward was content to sit at Mill's feet, his docility was largely due to ignorance; and in logic and metaphysics, though his views were as yet crude, they tended in a direction as far as possible removed from empiricism. Their personal intercourse was inconsiderable; but an irregular correspondence was maintained until shortly before Mill's death.
In October 1851 Ward was appointed lecturer in moral philosophy, and in the following year professor—though his modesty declined any higher title than that of assistant-lecturer in dogmatic theology—in St. Edmund's College. This anomalous position he owed to Cardinal Wiseman, by whom he was sustained in it, against a strong opposition both within and without the college.
At Rome, where Ward had a staunch and influential friend in Monsignor Talbot, the appointment was approved, and in 1854 Ward received from the pope the diploma of Ph.D. His lectures were carefully studied with a view not only to the needs of his pupils, but to the construction of a systematic treatise ‘On Nature and Grace.’ Only the philosophical introduction to the projected work saw the light (London, 1860, 8vo); but the vigour of its polemic against agnosticism and of its defence of independent morality, established Ward's reputation as a thinker (cf. Mill, Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, 6th ser. p. 209 n.). Ward resigned his lectureship at St. Edmund's College in 1858, and for three years resided at Northwood Park, to which, with another estate in the Isle of Wight, he had succeeded on the death of his uncle in 1849. From the irksome business of managing his property he found relief in occasional visits to London, where he became intimate with Frederick William Faber [q. v.] Meanwhile he closely observed the signs of the times, and prepared himself for the polemics in which the rest of his life was to be passed. His aversion from liberalism, even in the mild form represented within the church by Döllinger, Montalembert, and the ‘Rambler Review,’ edited (from 1859) by Sir John (now Lord) Acton, became intense; and in 1861 he returned to his former quarters, near St. Edmund's College, with a mind made up to wage war to the knife against it. His crusade was carried on chiefly in the ‘Dublin Review,’ which he raised from decadence and edited with conspicuous success from 1863 to 1878. In its pages he defended the encyclical ‘Quanta Cura’ and ‘Syllabus Errorum’ of 1864, and led the extreme wing of the ultramontane party in the controversy on papal infallibility. He speculated freely on the extent of infallibility, and reduced the interpretative functions of the ‘schola theologorum’ to a minimum. His startling conclusions he enunciated with the serenity of a philosopher and defended with the vehemence of a fanatic. The mortification caused him by the triumph of the moderate party at the Vatican council was salved by a brief conveying the papal commendation and benediction (4 July 1870). The heat evolved in this controversy, and also the part he took in frustrating the scheme for a catholic hall at Oxford, strained his relations with Newman, for whom he nevertheless retained in secret his old veneration. His horror of liberalism carried him to the verge of obscurantism. He gravely proposed to dethrone the classics from their place of honour in the higher culture, and suggested that the progress of science would probably be accelerated by the submission of hypotheses to papal censorship. On Wiseman's death all the influence which Ward possessed at Rome was exerted to secure the appointment of Manning to the see of Westminster. Both men were at one in their detestation of the modern spirit and their unswerving loyalty to the holy see, though Manning was far too cautious a controversialist to imitate Ward's intemperate tone or explicitly identify himself with Ward's extreme positions.
As a philosopher Ward throughout life exhibited a largeness of mind, a temperateness of tone, and a generosity of temper in striking contrast to his theological narrowness and intolerance. In the Metaphysical Society, of which he was a founder (March 1869), president (1870), and while health permitted a mainstay, he showed himself a disputant as fair, genial, and generous as he was keen, dexterous, and unsparing; and the same characteristics are apparent not only in the fragment ‘On Nature and Grace,’
