[Speech of Whitelaw Reid at a dinner given by the Irish-Americans
to Justin McCarthy, New York City, October 2, 1886. Judge Edward
Browne presided. Mr. Reid was called upon to speak to the toast,
"Gladstone, England's Greatest Leader."]
GENTLEMEN:--I am pleased to see that since this toast was sent
me by your committee, it has been proof-read. As it came to me, it
describes Mr. Gladstone as England's greatest Liberal leader. I thought
you might well say that and more. It delights me to find that you have
said more--that you have justly described him as England's greatest
leader. ["Hear! Hear!"] I do not forget that other, always remembered
when Gladstone is mentioned, who educated his party till it captured
its opponents' place by first disguising and then adopting their
measures. That was in its way as brilliant party leadership as the
century has seen, and it placed an alien adventurer in the British
peerage and enshrined his name in the grateful memory of a great party
that vainly looks for Disraeli's successor. [Applause.] I do not forget
a younger statesman, never to be forgotten henceforth by Irishmen, who
revived an impoverished and exhausted people, stilled their dissensions,
harmonized their conflicting plans, consolidated their chaotic forces,
conducted a peaceful Parliamentary struggle in their behalf with
incomparable pertinacity, coolness, and resources; and through storms
and rough weather has held steadily on till even his enemies see now, in
the very flush of their own temporary success, that in the end the
victory of Parnell is sure. [Loud applause.] Great leaders both; great
historic figures whom our grandchildren will study and analyze and
admire.
But this man whom your toast honors, after a career that might have
filled any man's ambition, became the head of the Empire whose mourning
drum-beat heralds the rising sun on its journey round the world. That
place he risked and lost, and risked again to give to an ill-treated
powerless section of the Empire, not even friendly to his sway, Church
Reform, Educational Reform, Land Reform, Liberty! [Cheers.] It was no
sudden impulse and it is no short or recent record. It is more than
seventeen years since Mr. Gladstone secured for Ireland the boon of
disestablishment. It is nearly as long since he carried the first bill
recognizing and seriously endeavoring to remedy the evils of Irish land
tenure.
He has rarely been able to advance as rapidly or as far as he wished;
and more than once he has gone by a way that few of us liked. But if he
was not always right, he has been courageous enough to set himself
right. If he made a mistake in our affairs when he said Jefferson Davis
had founded a nation, he offered reparation when he secured the Geneva
Arbitration, and loyally paid its award. If he made a mistake in Irish
affairs in early attempts at an unwise coercion he more than made amends
when he led that recent magnificent struggle in Parliament and before
the English people, which ended in a defeat, it is true, but a defeat
more brilliant than many victories and more hopeful for Ireland.
[Applause.]
And over what a length of road has he led the English people! From
rotten boroughs to household suffrage; from a government of classes to a
government more truly popular than any other in the world outside of
Switzerland and the United States. Then consider the advance on Irish
questions. From the iniquitous burden of a gigantic and extravagant
church establishment, imposed upon the people of whom seven-eighths were
of hostile faith, to disestablishment; from the principle stated by Lord
Palmerston with brutal frankness that "tenant-right is landlord's
wrong," to judicial rents and the near prospect of tenant ownership on
fair terms; from the arbitrary arrests of Irish leaders to the alliance
of the Prime Minister and ruling party with the prisoner of Kilmainham
Jail! [Loud cheers.] It has been no holiday parade, the leadership on a
march like that. Long ago Mr. Disraeli flung at him the exultant taunt
that the English people had had enough of his policy of confiscation;
and so it proved for a time, for Mr. Disraeli turned him out. But Mr.
Gladstone knew far better than his great rival did the deep and secret
springs of English action, and he never judged from the temper of the
House or a tour of the London drawing-rooms. Society, indeed, always
disapproved of him, as it did of those kindred spirits, the anti-slavery
leaders of American politics. But the frowns of Fifth Avenue and Beacon
Street have not dimmed the fame of Sumner and Chase; of Seward and
Lincoln [a voice: "And of Wendell Phillips." Cheers]; nor does Belgravia
control the future of Mr. Gladstone's career any more than it has been
able to hinder his past.
More than any other statesman of his epoch, he has combined practical
skill in the conduct of politics with a steadfast appeal to the highest
moral considerations. To a leader of that sort defeats are only
stepping-stones, and the end is not in doubt. A phrase once famous among
us has sometimes seemed to me fit for English use about Ireland. A great
man, a very great man, whose name sheds lasting honor upon our city said
in an impulsive moment--that he "never wanted to live in a country where
the one-half was pinned to the other by bayonets." If Mr. Gladstone
ever believed in thus fastening Ireland to England, he has learned a
more excellent way. Like Greeley he would no doubt at the last fight, if
need be, for the territorial integrity of his country. But he has
learned the lesson Charles James Fox taught nearly a hundred years
before: "The more Ireland is under Irish Government, the more she will
be bound to English interests." That precept he has been trying to
reduce to practice. God grant the old statesman life and light to see
the sure end of the work he has begun! [Loud applause.]
I must not sit down without a word more to express the personal
gratification I feel in seeing an old comrade here as your guest. Twelve
or fourteen years ago he did me the honor to fill for a time an
important place on the staff of my newspaper. With what skill and power
he did his work; with what readiness and ample store of information you
need not be told, for the anonymous editorial writer of those days is
now known to the English-speaking world as the brilliant historian of
"Our Own Times." Those of us who knew him then have seen his sacrifice
of private interests and personal tastes for the stormy life of an Irish
member of Parliament, and have followed with equal interest and
admiration his bold yet prudent and high-minded Parliamentary career. He
has done all that an Irishman ought for his country; he has done it with
as little sympathy or encouragement for the policy of dynamite and
assassination in England as we have had for bomb-throwing in Chicago.
[Loud and prolonged applause.]