PROGRESS IN PUBLIC LIFE
(_1835-1838_)
Les hommes en tout ne s'éclairent que par le tâtonnement de
l'expérience. Les plus grands génies sont eux-mêmes entraînés par
leur siècle.--TURGOT.
Men are only enlightened by feeling their way through experience.
The greatest geniuses are themselves drawn along by their age.
In September (1835), after long suffering, his mother died amid tender
care and mournful regrets. Her youngest son was a devoted nurse; her
loss struck him keenly, but with a sense full of the consolations of his
faith. To Gaskell he writes: 'How deeply and thoroughly her character
was imbued with love; with what strong and searching processes of bodily
affliction she was assimilated in mind and heart to her Redeemer; how
above all other things she sighed for the advancement of His kingdom on
earth; how few mortals suffered more pain, or more faithfully recognised
it as one of the instruments by which God is pleased to forward that
restoring process for which we are placed on earth.'
Then the world resumed its course for him, and things fell into their
wonted ways of indefatigable study. His scheme for week-days included
Blackstone, Mackintosh, Aristotle's _Politics_--'a book of immense value
for all governors and public men'--Dante's _Purgatorio_, Spanish
grammar, Tocqueville, Fox's _James II._, by which he was disappointed,
not seeing such an acuteness in extracting and exhibiting the principles
that govern from beneath the actions of men and parties, nor such a
grasp of generalisation, nor such a faculty of separating minute from
material particulars, nor such an abstraction from a debater's modes of
thought and forms of expression, as he should have hoped. To these he
added as he went along the _Génie du Christianisme_, Bolingbroke,
Bacon's _Essays_, _Don Quixote_, the _Annals_ of Tacitus, Le Bas' _Life
of Laud_ ('somewhat too Laudish, though right _au fond_'; unlike
Lawson's _Laud_, 'a most intemperate book, the foam swallows up all the
facts'), _Childe Harold_, _Jerusalem Delivered_ ('beautiful in its kind,
but how can its author be placed in the same category of genius as
Dante?'), Pollok's _Course of Time_ ('much talent, little culture,
insufficient power to digest and construct his subject or his
versification; his politics radical, his religious sentiments generally
sound, though perhaps hard').
In the evenings he read aloud to his father the _Faery Queen_ and
Shakespeare. On Sundays he read Chillingworth and Jewel, and, above all,
he dug and delved in St. Augustine. He drew a sketch of a project
touching Peculiarities in Religion. For several days he was writing
something on politics. Then an outline or an essay on our colonial
system. For he was no reader of the lounging, sauntering, passively
receptive species; he went forward in a sedulous process of import and
export, a mind actively at work on all the topics that passed before it.
At the beginning of the year 1836 he was invited to pay a visit to
Drayton, where he found only Lord Harrowby--a link with the great men of
an earlier generation, for he had acted as Pitt's second in the duel
with Tierney, and had been foreign secretary in Pitt's administration of
1804; might have been prime minister in 1827 if he had liked; and he
headed the Waverers who secured the passing of the Reform bill by the
Lords. Other guests followed, the host rather contracting in freedom of
conversation as the party expanded.[71]
VISIT TO DRAYTON
I cannot record anything continuous, Mr. Gladstone writes in his
memorandum of the visit, but commit to paper several opinions and
expressions of Sir R. Peel, which bore upon interesting and
practical questions. That Fox was not a man of settled, reasoned,
political principle. Lord Harrowby added that he was thrown into
opposition and whiggism by the insult of Lord North. That his own
doctrines, both as originally declared, and as resumed when finally
in office, were of a highly toned spirit of government. That
Brougham was the most _powerful_ man he had ever known in the H. of
C.; that no one had ever fallen so fast and so far. That the
political difficulties of England might be susceptible of cure, and
were not appalling; but that the state of Ireland was to all
appearance hopeless. That there the great difficulty lay in
procuring the ordinary administration of justice; that the very
institution of juries supposed a common interest of the juror and
the state, a condition not fulfilled in the present instance; that
it was quite unfit for the present state of society in Ireland.
Lord Harrowby thought that a strong conservative government might
still quell agitation. And Sir B. Peel said Stanley had told him
that the whig government were on the point of succeeding in putting
a stop to the resistance to payment of tithe, when Lord Althorp,
alarmed at the expense already incurred, wrote to stop its
collection by the military. We should probably live to see the
independence of Poland established.
The Duke of Wellington and others arrived later in the day. It was
pleasing to see the deference with which he was received as he
entered the library; at the sound of his name everybody rose; he is
addressed by all with a respectful manner. He met Peel most
cordially, and seized both Lady Peel's hands. I now recollect that
it was with _glee_ Sir R. Peel said to me on Monday, 'I am glad to
say you will meet the duke here,' which had reference, I doubt not,
partly to the anticipated pleasure of seeing him, partly to the
dissipation of unworthy suspicions. He reported that government are
still labouring at a church measure without appropriation. _Jan.
20._--The Duke of Wellington appears to speak little; and never for
speaking's sake, but only to convey an idea, commonly worth
conveying. He receives remarks made to him very frequently with no
more than 'Ha,' a convenient, suspensive expression, which
acknowledges the arrival of the observation and no more. Of the two
days which he spent here he hunted on Thursday, shot on Friday, and
to-day travelled to Strathfieldsay, more, I believe, than 100
miles, to entertain a party of friends to dinner. With this bodily
exertion he mixes at 66 or 67 a constant attention to business. Sir
R. Peel mentioned to me to-night a very remarkable example of his
[the duke's] perhaps excessive precision. Whenever he signs a draft
on Coutts's, he addresses to them at the same time a note apprising
them that he has done so. This perfect facility of transition from
one class of occupation to their opposites, and their habitual
intermixture without any apparent encroachments on either side, is,
I think, a very remarkable evidence of self-command, and a mental
power of singular utility. Sir Robert is also, I conceive, a
thrifty dealer with his time, but in a man of his age [Peel now 48]
this is less beyond expectation.
He said good-bye on the last night with regret. In the midst of the
great company he found time to read Bossuet on Variations, remarking
rather oddly, 'some of Bossuet's theology seems to me very good.'
MIXED AVOCATIONS
On Jan. 30th is the entry of his journey from Liverpool, '1 to 4 to
Hawarden Castle.' [I suppose his first visit to his future home.]
Got to Chester (Feb. 1) five minutes after the mail had started.
Got on by Albion. Outside all night; frost; rain; arrived at Albany
11¾. _Feb. 4th._--Session opens. Voted in 243-284. A good
opportunity for speaking, but in my weakness did not use it. _Feb.
8th._--Stanley made a noble speech. Voted in 243 to 307 for
abolition of Irish corporations. Pendulums and Nothingarians all
against us. _Sunday._--Wrote on Hypocrisy. On Worship. Attempted to
explain this to the servants at night. Newman's Sermons and J.
Taylor. Trench's Poems. _March 2nd._--Read to my deep sorrow of
Anstice's death on Monday. His friends, his young widow, the world
can spare him ill; so says at least the flesh. Stapleton.
_Paradiso_, VII. VIII. Calls. Rode. Wrote. Dined at Lord
Ashbuxton's. House. Statistical Society's _Proceedings._ Verses on
Anstice's death. _March 22nd._--House 5¼-9¾. Spoke 50 minutes [on
negro apprenticeship; see p. 145]; kindly heard, and I should thank
God for being made able to speak even thus indifferently.[72]
_March 23rd_.... Late, having been awake last night till between 4
and 5, as usual after speaking. How useful to make us feel the
habitual unremembered blessing of sound sleep.... _April
7th._--_Gerus. Lib._ c. xi.... Dr. Pusey here from 12 to 3 about
church building. Rode. At night 11 to 2 perusing Henry Taylor's
proofs of _The Statesman_, and writing notes on it, presumptuous
enough.... _Gerus._ xii. Re-perused Taylor's sheets. A batch of
calls. Wrote letters. Bossuet. Dined at Henry Taylor's, a keen
intellectual exercise, and thus a place of danger, especially as it
is exercise seen.... _9th._--Spedding at breakfast. _Gerus._ xiii.
Finished Locke on Understanding. It appears to me on the whole a
much overrated, though, in some respects, a very useful book....
_May 16th._--Mr. Wordsworth, H. Taylor, and Doyle to breakfast. Sat
till 12¾. Conversation on Shelley, Trench, Tennyson; travelling,
copyright, etc. _30th._--Milnes, Blakesley, Taylor, Cole, to
breakfast. Church meeting at Archbishop of Armagh's. Ancient music
rehearsal. House 6-8¼ and 9¼-12. _June 1st._--Read Wordsworth....
House 5-12. Spoke about 45 minutes [on Tithes and Church (Ireland)
bill]. I had this pleasure in my speech, that I never rose more
intent upon telling what I believe to be royal truth; though I did
it very ill, and further than ever below the idea which I would
nevertheless hold before my mind. _3rd._--West Indies Committee
1-4. Finished writing out my speech and sent it. Read
Wordsworth.... Saw Sir R. Peel. Dined at Sergeant Talfourd's to
meet Wordsworth.... _5th._--St. James's, Communion. Dined at
Lincoln's Inn. St. Sepulchre's. Wrote. Jer. Taylor, Newman. Began
Nicole's _Préjugés_. Arnold aloud. _8th._--Wordsworth, since he has
been in town, has breakfasted twice and dined once with me.
Intercourse with him is, upon the whole, extremely pleasing. I was
sorry to hear Sydney Smith say that he did not see very much in
him, nor greatly admire his poems. He even adverted to the London
Sonnet as ridiculous. Sheil thought this of the line:
'Dear God! the very houses seem asleep.'
I ventured to call his attention to that which followed as carrying
out the idea:
'And all that mighty heart is lying still.'
Of which I may say _omne tulit punctum_.
Wordsworth came in to breakfast the other day before his time. I
asked him to excuse me while I had my servant to prayers; but he
expressed a _hearty_ wish to be present, which was delightful. He
has laboured long; if for himself, yet more for men, and over all I
trust for God. Will he ever be the bearer of evil thoughts to any
mind? Glory is gathering round his later years on earth, and his
later works especially indicate the spiritual ripening of his noble
soul. I heard but few of his opinions; but these are some He was
charmed with Trench's poems; liked Alford; thought Shelley had the
greatest native powers in poetry of all the men of this age. In
reading _Die Braut von Korinth_ translated, was more horrified than
enchained, or rather altogether the first. Wondered how any one
could translate it or the Faust, but spoke as knowing the original.
Thought little of Murillo as to the mind of painting; said he could
not have painted Paul Veronese's 'Marriage of Cana.' Considered
that old age in great measure disqualified him by its rigid fixity
of habits from judging of the works of young poets--I must say that
he was here even over liberal in self-depreciation. He defended the
make of the steamboat as more poetical than otherwise to the eye
(see Sonnets).[73] Thought Coleridge admired Ossian only in youth,
and himself admired the spirit which Macpherson _professes_ to
embody.
Sergeant Talfourd dined here to meet Wordsworth yesterday.
Wordsworth is vehement against Byron. Saw in Shelley the lowest
form of irreligion, but a later progress towards better things.
Named the discrepancy between his creed and his imagination as the
marring idea of his works, in which description I could not concur.
Spoke of the _entire_ revolution in his own poetical taste. We were
agreed that a man's personal character ought to be the basis of his
politics. He quoted his sonnet on the contested election [what
sonnet is this?], from which I ventured to differ as regards its
assuming nutriment for the heart to be inherent in politics. He
described to me his views; that the Reform Act had, as it were,
brought out too prominently a particular muscle of the national
frame: the strength of the towns; that the cure was to be found in
a large further enfranchisement, I fancy, of the country chiefly;
that you would thus extend the base of your pyramid and so give it
strength. He wished the old institutions of the country preserved,
and thought this the way to preserve them. He thought the political
franchise upon the whole a good to the mass--regard being had to
the state of human nature; against me. _11th._--Read Browning's
_Paracelsus_. Went to Richmond to dine with the Gaskells. A two
hours' walk home at night. _16th._--Wrote two sonnets. Finished and
wrote out _Brant von Korinth_. Shall I ever dare to make out a
counterpart? _21st._--Breakfast at Mr. Hallam's to meet Mr.
Wordsworth and Mr. Rogers. Wordsworth spoke much and justly about
copyright. Conversation with Talfourd in the evening, partly about
that subject. Began something on egotism. _24th._--Breakfast with
Mr. Rogers, Mr. Wordsworth only there. Very agreeable. Rogers
produced an American poem, the death of Bozzaris, which Wordsworth
proposed that I should read to them: of course I declined, so even
did Rogers. But Wordsworth read it through in good taste, and doing
it justice.
_Fasque_ in time for Aug. 12; out on the hill, but unlucky with a
sprained ankle, and obliged to give up early. _Aug. 15th._--Wrote
(long) to Dr. Chalmers. Orator. _Sept. 20th._--Milner, finished
Vol. ii. Cic. _Acad._ Wraxall. Began Goethe's _Iphigenie_. Wrote.
_Oct. 7th._--Milner. Wraxall. A dinner-party. Wrote out a sketch
for an essay on Justification. Singing, whist, shooting. Copied a
paper for my father. _12th._--A day on the hill for roe. 14 guns.
[To Liverpool for public dinner at the Amphitheatre.] _18th._--Most
kindly heard. Canning's début everything that could be desired. I
thought I spoke 35 minutes, but afterwards found it was 55. Read
_Marco Visconti_. _21st._--Operative dinner at Amphitheatre. Spoke
perhaps 16 or 18 minutes. _28th._--_Haddo_ [Lord Aberdeen's].
Finished _Marco Visconti_, a long bout, but I could not let it go.
Buckland's opening chapters. _On the whole_ satisfactory.
_30th._--Lord Aberdeen read prayers in the evening with simple and
earnest pathos. _Nov. 10th._--_Wilhehm Meister_, Book i., and there
I mean to leave it, unless I hear a better report of the succeeding
one than I could make of the first. Next day, recommenced with
great anticipations of delight the _Divina Commedia_.
_13th._--Finished Nicole _De l'Unité_. August. _De Civ._ [Every day
at this time.] _19th._--Began Cicero's _Tusculan Questions_....
_25th._--Aug. _Civ. Dei._ I am now in Book xiv. Cic. _Tusc._
finished. Book ii. _Purgatorio_, iii.-v. A dose of whist. Still
snow and rain. _26th._--Aug. Cicero. Billiards. _Purgatorio_,
vi.-viii. Began Dryden's _Fables._ My eyes are not in their best
plight, and I am obliged to consider type a little. _Jan. 3rd_,
1837.--Breakfasted with Dr. Chalmers. How kind my father is in
small matters as well as great--thoughtfully sending carriage.
_13th, Glasgow._--The pavilion astonishing, and the whole effect
very grand. Near 3500. Sir E. Peel spoke 1 h. 55 m. Explicit and
bold; it was a very great effort. I kept within 15 min.--quite long
enough. _14th._--7½-5½ mail to Carlisle. On all night, _15th._
Wetherby at 7½. Leeds 10½. Church there. Walked over to Wakefield.
Church there. Evening at Thornes. [Milnes Gaskell's.] _17th._--To
Newark. Very good meeting. Spoke ¾ hour.
In this speech, after the regulation denunciation of the reckless
wickedness of O'Connell, he set about demonstrating the change that had
taken place in the character of public feeling during the last few
years. He pointed out that at the dissolution of 1831 the conservative
members of the House of Commons amounted perhaps to 50. In 1835 they saw
this small dispirited band grow into a resolute and formidable phalanx
of 300. The cry was: 'Resolute attachment to the institutions of the
country.' One passage in the speech is of interest in the history of his
attitude on toleration. Sir William Moles worth had been invited to come
forward as candidate for the representation of Leeds. A report spread
that Sir William was not a believer in the Christian articles of faith.
Somebody wrote to Molesworth, to know if this was true. He answered,
that the question whether he was a believer in the Christian religion
was one that no man of liberal principles ought to propose to another,
or could propose without being guilty of a dereliction of duty. On this
incident, Mr. Gladstone said that he would ask, 'Is it not a time for
serious reflection among moderate and candid men of all parties, when
such a question was actually thought impertinent interference? Surely
they would say with him, that men who have no belief in the divine
revelation are not the men to govern this nation, be they whigs or
radicals.' Long, extraordinary, and not inglorious, was the ascent from
such a position as this, to the principles so nobly vindicated in the
speech on the Affirmation bill in 1883.
PARTY COUNCILS
At the end of January he is back in London, arranging books and papers
and making a little daylight in his chaos. 'What useful advice might a
man who has been _buon pezzo_ in parliament give to one going into it,
on this mechanical portion of his business.' The entries for 1837 are
none of them especially interesting. Every day in the midst of full
parliamentary work, social engagements, and public duties outside of the
House of Commons, he was elaborating the treatise on the relations of
church and state, of which we shall see more in our following chapter.
At the beginning of the session he went to a dinner at Peel's, at which
Lord Stanley and some of his friends were present--a circumstance noted
as a sign of the impending fusion between the whig seceders of 1834 and
the conservative party. Sir Robert seems to have gone on extending his
confidence in him.
I visited Sir Robert Peel (March 4th) about the Canada question,
and again by appointment on the 6th, with Lord Aberdeen. On the
former day he said, 'Is there anyone else to invite?' I suggested
Lord Stanley. He said, perhaps he might be inclined to take a
separate view. But in the interval he had apparently thought
otherwise. For on Monday he read to Lord Aberdeen and myself a
letter from Stanley written with the utmost frankness and in a tone
of political intimacy, saying that an engagement as chairman of a
committee at the House would prevent his meeting us. The business
of the day was discussed in conversation, and it was agreed to be
quite impossible to support the resolution on the legislative
council in its existing terms, without at least a protest. Peel
made the following remark: 'You have got another Ireland growing up
in every colony you possess.'
A week later he was shocked by the death of Lady Canning. 'Breakfast
with Gaskell' (March 23rd), 'and thence to Lady Canning's funeral in
Westminster Abbey. We were but eleven in attendance. Her coffin was
laid on that of her illustrious husband. Canning showed a deep but manly
sorrow. May we live as by the side of a grave and looking in.'
In the same month he spoke on Canada (March 8th) 'with insufficient
possession of the subject,' and a week later on church rates, for an
hour or more, 'with more success than the matter or manner deserved.' He
finished his translation of the _Bride of Corinth_, and the episode of
Ugolino from Dante, and read Eckermann's _Conversations with Goethe_, to
which he gives the too commonplace praise of being very interesting. He
learned Manzoni's noble ode on the death of Napoleon, of which he
by-and-by made a noble translation; this by way of sparing his eyes, and
Italian poetry not taking him nearly half the time of any other to
commit to memory. He found a 'beautiful and powerful production' in
Channing's letter to Clay, and he made the acquaintance of Southey, 'in
appearance benignant, melancholy, and intellectual.'
II
THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1837
In June King William IV. died, 'leaving a perilous legacy to his
successor.' A month later (July 14) Mr. Gladstone went up with the
Oxford address, and this was, I suppose, the first occasion on which he
was called to present himself before the Queen, with whose long reign
his own future career and fame were destined to be so closely and so
conspicuously associated. According to the old law prescribing a
dissolution of parliament within six months of the demise of the crown,
Mr. Gladstone was soon in the thick of a general election. By July 17th
he was at Newark, canvassing, speaking, hand-shaking, and in lucid
intervals reading Filicaja. He found a very strong, angry, and general
sentiment, not against the principle of the poor law as regards the
able-bodied, but against the regulations for separating man and wife,
and sending the old compulsorily to the workhouse, with others of a like
nature. With the disapprobation on these heads he in great part
concurred. There was to be no contest, but arrangements of this kind
still leave room for some anxiety, and in Mr. Gladstone's case a
singular thing happened. Two days after his arrival at Newark he was
followed by a body of gentlemen from Manchester, with an earnest
invitation that he would be a candidate for that great town. He declined
the invitation, absolutely as he supposed, but the Manchester tories
nominated him notwithstanding. They assured the electors that he was the
most promising young statesman of the day. The whigs on the other hand
vowed that he was an insulter of dissent, a bigot of such dark hue as to
wish to subject even the poor negroes of his father's estates to the
slavery of a dominant church, a man who owed whatever wealth and
consequence his family possessed to the crime of holding his
fellow-creatures in bondage, a man who, though honest and consistent,
was a member of that small ultra-tory minority which followed the Duke
of Cumberland. When the votes were counted, Mr. Gladstone was at the
bottom of the poll, with a majority of many hundreds against him.[74]
Meantime he was already member for Newark. His own election was no
sooner over than he caught the last vacant place on the mail to
Carlisle, whence he hastened to the aid of his father's patriotic
labours as candidate for Dundee. Here he worked hard at canvassing and
meetings, often pelted with mud and stones, but encouraged by friends
more buoyant than the event justified.
_Aug. 1st._--My father beaten after all, our promised votes in many
cases going back or going against us.... Two hundred promises
broken. Poll closed at Parnell, 666; Gladstone, 381. It is not in
human approbation that the reward of right action is to be sought.
Left at 4½ amid the hisses of the crowd. Perth at 7¼. Left at one
in the morning for Glasgow. _2nd._--Glasgow 8½. Steamer at 11.
Breeze; miserably sick; deck all night. _3rd._--Arrived at 11½;
(Liverpool), very sore. _4th._--Out at 8½ to vote for S.
Lancashire. Acted as representative in the booth half the day.
Results of election excellent. _5th._--Again at the booths. A great
victory here. _6th._--Wrote to Manning on the death of his wife.
_9th._--_Manchester._ Public dinner at 6; lasted till near 12.
Music excellent. Spoke 1½ hours, I am told, _proh pudor!_[75]
Back at Fasque, only a day too late for the Twelfth, he found the sport
bad and he shot badly, but he enjoyed the healthful walks on the hill.
His employments were curiously mixed. '_Sept. 8th._--In the bog for
snipe with Sir J. Mackenzie. Read _Timæus_. Began Byron's Life. My eyes
refused progress. Verses. _15th._--Snipe-shooting with F. in the bog.
Began _Critias_. _22nd._--_Haddo._ Otter-hunting, _senz esito_. Finished
Plato's _Laws_. Hunting too in the library.' The mental dispersion of
country-house visiting never affects either multifarious reading or
multifarious writing. Spanish grammar, _Don Quixote_ in the original,
Crabbe, _Don Juan_, alternate with Augustine _de peccatorum remissione_
or _de utilitate Credendi_ ('beautiful and useful'). He works at an
essay of his own upon Justification, at adversaria on Aristotle's
_Ethics_, at another essay upon Rationalism, and to save his eyes,
spins verse enough to fill a decent volume of a hundred and fifty pages.
He makes a circuit of calls upon the tenants, taking a farming lecture
from one, praying by the sick-bed of another.
BUSINESS WITH WELLINGTON
In November he was again in London to be sworn of the new parliament,
and at the end of the month he had for the first time an interview on
business with the Duke of Wellington--of interest as the collocation of
two famous names. 'The immediate subject was the Cape of Good Hope. His
reception of me was plain but kind. He came to the door of his room.
"Will you come in? How do you do? I am glad to see you." We spoke a
little of the Cape. He said with regard to the war--and with sufficient
modesty--that he was pretty well aware of the operations that had taken
place in it, having been at the Cape, and being in some degree able to
judge of those matters. He said, "I suppose it is there as everywhere
else, as we had it last night about Ireland and the House of Lords. They
won't use the law, as it is in Canada, as it is in the West Indies. They
excite insurrection everywhere (I, however, put in an apology for them
in the West Indies), they _want to play the part of opposition_; they
are not a government, for they don't maintain the law." He appointed me
to return to him to-morrow.'
The result of the general election was a slight improvement in the
position of the conservatives, but they still mustered no more than 315
against 342 supporters of the ministry, including the radical and Irish
groups. If Melbourne and Russell found their team delicate to drive,
Peel's difficulties were hardly less. Few people, he wrote at this
moment, can judge of the difficulty there has frequently been in
maintaining harmony between the various branches of the conservative
party. The great majority in the Lords and the minority in the Commons
consisted of very different elements; they included men like Stanley and
Graham, who had been authors and advocates of parliamentary reform, and
men who had denounced reform as treason to the constitution and ruin to
the country. Even the animosities of 1829 and catholic emancipation were
only half quenched within the tory ranks.[76] It was at a meeting held
at Peel's on December 6, 1837, that Lord Stanley for the first time
appeared among the conservative members.
The distractions produced in Canada by mismanagement and misapprehension
in Downing Street had already given trouble during the very short time
when Mr. Gladstone was under-secretary at the colonial office; but they
now broke into the flame of open revolt. The perversity of a foolish
king and weakness and disunion among his whig ministers had brought
about a catastrophe. At the beginning of the session (1838) the
government introduced a bill suspending the constitution and conferring
various absolute powers on Lord Durham as governor general and high
commissioner. It was in connection with this proposal that Mr. Gladstone
seems to have been first taken into the confidential consultations of
the leaders of his party.
CANADIAN SPEECH
The sage marshalling and manoeuvring of the parliamentary squads was
embarrassed by a move from Sir William Molesworth, of whom we have just
been hearing, the editor of Hobbes, and one of the group nicknamed
philosophic radicals with whom Mr. Gladstone at this stage seldom or
never agreed. 'The new school of morals,' he called them, 'which taught
that success was the only criterion of merit,'--a delineation for which
he would have been severely handled by Bentham or James Mill. Molesworth
gave notice of a vote of censure on Lord Glenelg, the colonial minister;
that is, he selected a single member of the cabinet for condemnation, on
the ground of acts for which all the other ministers were collectively
just as responsible. For this discrimination the only precedent seems to
be Fox's motion against Lord Sandwich in 1779. Mr. Gladstone's
memorandum[77] completes or modifies the account of the dilemma of the
conservative leader, already known from Sir Robert Peel's papers,[78]
and the reader will find it elsewhere. It was the right of a
conservative opposition to challenge a whig ministry; yet to fight under
radical colours was odious and intolerable. On the other hand he could
not vote for Molesworth, because he thought him unjust; but he could not
vote against him, because that would imply confidence in the Canadian
policy of ministers. A certain conservative contingent would not
acquiesce in support of ministers against Molesworth, or in tame resort
to the previous question. Again, Peel felt or feigned an apprehension
that if by aggressive action they beat the government, a conservative
ministry must come in, and he did not think that such a ministry could
last. Even at this risk, it became clear that the only way of avoiding
the difficulty was an amendment to Molesworth's motion from the official
opposition. Mr. Gladstone spoke (Mar. 7), and was described as making
his points with admirable precision and force, though 'with something of
a provincial manner, like the rust to a piece of powerful steel
machinery that has not worked into polish.' The debate, on which such
mighty issues were thought to hang, lasted a couple of nights with not
more than moderate spirit. At the close the amendment was thrown out by
a majority of twenty-nine for ministers. The general result was to
moderate the impatience of the Carlton Club men, who wished to see their
party in, on the one hand; and of the radical men, who did not object to
having the whigs out, on the other. It showed that neither
administration nor opposition was in a station of supreme command.
III
At the end of March Mr. Gladstone produced the strongest impression that
he had yet made in parliament, and he now definitely took his place in
the front rank. It was on the old embarrassment of slavery. Reports from
the colonies showed that in some at least, and more particularly in
Jamaica, the apprenticeship system had led to harsher treatment of the
negroes than under slavery. As it has been well put, the bad planters
regarded their slave-apprentices as a bad farmer regards a farm near the
end of an expiring term. In 1836 Buxton moved for a select committee to
inquire into the working of the system. Mr. Gladstone defended it, and
he warned parliament against 'incautious and precipitate anticipations
of entire success' (March 22). Six days later he was appointed a member
of the apprenticeship committee which at once began to investigate the
complaints from Jamaica. Mr. Gladstone acted as the representative of
the planters on the committee, and he paid very close attention to the
proceedings during two sessions. In the spring of 1838 a motion was made
to accelerate by two years the end of the apprenticeship system on the
slave plantations of the West Indies. Brougham had been raising a
tempest of humane sentiment by more than one of his most magnificent
speeches. The leading men on both sides in parliament were openly and
strongly against a disturbance of the settlement, but the feeling in the
constituencies was hot, and in liberal and tory camp alike members in
fear and trembling tried to make up their minds. Sir George Grey made an
effective case for the law as it stood, and Peel spoke on the same side;
but it was agreed that Mr. Gladstone, by his union of fervour,
elevation, and a complete mastery of the facts of the case, went deeper
than either. Even unwilling witnesses 'felt bound to admit the great
ability he displayed.' His address was completely that of an advocate,
and he did not even affect to look on both sides of the question,
expressing his joy that the day had at length arrived when he could meet
the charges against the planters and enter upon their defence.
_March 30th._--Spoke from 11 to 1. Received with the greatest and
most affecting kindness from, all parties, both during and after.
Through the debate I felt the most painful depression. Except Mr.
Plumptre and Lord John Russell, all who spoke damaged the question
to the utmost possible degree. Prayer earnest for the moment was
wrung from me in my necessity; I hope it was not a blasphemous
prayer, for support in pleading the cause of justice.... I am half
insensible even in the moment of delight to such pleasures as this
kind of occasion affords. But this is a dangerous state;
indifference to the world is not love of God....
SPEECH ON SLAVERY
In writing to him upon this speech, Mr. Stephen, his former ally at the
colonial office, addressed an admonition, which is worth, recalling both
for its own sake and because it hits by anticipation what was to be one
of the most admirable traits in the mighty parliamentarian to whom it
was written. 'It seems to me,' says Stephen, 'that this part of your
speech establishes nothing more than the fact that your opponents are
capricious in the distribution of their sympathy, which is, after all, a
reproach and nothing more. Now, reproach is not only not your strength,
but it is the very thing in the disuse of which your strength consists;
and indulging as I do the hope that you will one day occupy one of the
foremost stations in the House of Commons, if not the first of all, I
cannot help wishing that you may also be the founder of a more
magnanimous system of parliamentary tactics than has ever yet been
established, in which recrimination will be condemned as unbefitting
wise men and good Christians.' In an assembly for candid deliberation
modified by party spirit, this is, I fear, almost as much a counsel of
perfection as it would have been in a school of Roman gladiators, but at
any rate it points the better way. The speech itself has a close,
direct, sinewy quality, a complete freedom from anything vague or
involved; and shows for the first time a perfect mastery of the art of
handling detail upon detail without an instant of tediousness, and
holding the attention of listeners sustained and unbroken. It was a
remonstrance against false allegations of the misbehaviour of the
planters since the emancipating act, but there is not a trace of
backsliding upon the great issue. 'We joined in passing the measure; we
declared a belief that slavery was an evil and demoralising state, and
_a desire to be relieved from it_; we accepted a price in composition
for the loss which was expected to accrue.'
Neither now or at any time did Mr. Gladstone set too low a value on that
great dead-lift effort, not too familiar in history, to heave off a
burden from the conscience of the nation, and set back the bounds of
cruel wrong upon the earth. On the day after this performance, the entry
in his diary is--'In the morning my father was greatly overcome, and I
could hardly speak to him. Now is the time to turn this attack into
measures of benefit for the negroes.' More than once in the course of
the spring he showed how much in earnest he was about the negroes, by
strenuously pressing his father to allow him to go to the West Indies
and view the state of things there for himself. Perhaps by prudent
instinct his father disapproved, and at last spoke decidedly against any
project of the kind.
The question of the education of the people was rising into political
prominence, and its close relations with the claims of the church
sufficed to engage the active interest of so zealous a son of the church
as Mr. Gladstone. From a very early stage we find him moving for
returns, serving on education committees in parliament, corresponding
energetically with Manning, Acland, and others of like mind in and out
of parliament. Primary education is one of the few subjects on which the
fossils of extinct opinion neither interest nor instruct. It is enough
to mark that Mr. Gladstone's position in the forties was that of the
ultra-churchman of the time, and such as no church-ultra now dreams of
fighting for. We find him 'objecting to any infringement whatever of the
principle on which the established church was founded--that of confining
the pecuniary support of the state to one particular religious
denomination.'[79]
To Dr. Hook (March 12, 1838), he speaks of 'a safe and precious
interval, perhaps the last to those who are desirous of placing the
education of the people under the efficient control of the clergy.' The
aims of himself and his allies were to plant training schools in every
diocese; to connect these with the cathedrals through the chapters; to
license the teachers by the bishops after examination.
Writing to Manning (Feb. 22, 1839), he compares control by government to
the 'little lion cub in the _Agamemnon_,' which after being in its
primeval season the delight of the young and amusement of the old,
gradually revealed its parent stock, and grew to be a creature of huge
mischief in the household.[80] He describes a divergence of view among
them on the question whether the clergyman should have his choice as to
'admitting the children of dissenters without at once teaching them the
catechism.' How Mr. Gladstone went he does not say, nor does it matter.
He was not yet thirty. He accepted his political toryism on authority
and in good faith, and the same was true of his views on church policy.
He could not foresee that it was to be in his own day of power that the
cub should come out full-grown lion.
IN SOCIETY
His work did not prevent him from mixing pretty freely with men in
society, though he seems to have thought that little of what passed was
worth transcribing, nor in truth had Mr. Gladstone ever much or any of
the rare talent of the born diarist. Here are one or two miscellanea
which must be made to serve:--
_April 25/38._--A long sitting and conversation with Mr. Rogers
after the Milnes' marriage breakfast. He spoke unfavourably of
Bulwer; well of Milnes' verses; said his father wished them not to
be published, because such authorship and its repute would clash
with the parliamentary career of his son. Mr. Rogers thought a
great author would undoubtedly stand better in parliament from
being such; but that otherwise the additament of authorship, unless
on germane subjects, would be a hindrance. He quoted Swift on
women.... He has a good and tender opinion of them; but went nearly
the length of Maurice (when mentioned to him) that they had not
that specific faculty of understanding which lies beneath the
reason. Peel was odd, in the contrast of a familiar first address,
with slackness of manner afterwards. The Duke of Wellington took
the greatest interest in the poor around him at Strathfieldsay, had
all of eloquence except the words. Mr. Rogers quoted a saying about
Brougham that he was not so much a master of the language as
mastered by it. I doubt very much the truth of this. Brougham's
management of his sentences, as I remember the late Lady Canning
observing to me, is surely most wonderful. He never loses the
thread, and yet he habitually twists it into a thousand varieties
of intricate form. He said, when Stanley came out in public life,
and at the age of thirty, he was by far the cleverest young man of
the day; and at sixty he would be the same, still by far the
cleverest young man of the day.
PROGRESS IN PUBLIC LIFE
_June 13th._--Sir R. Peel dined at Mr. Dugdale's. After dinner he
spoke of Wilberforce; believed him to be an excellent man
independently of the book, or would not have been favourably
impressed by the records of his being in society, and then going
home and describing as lost in sin those with whom he had been
enjoying himself. Upon the other hand, however, he would have
exposed himself to the opposite reproach had he been more secluded,
morosely withdrawing himself from the range of human sympathies. He
remembered him as an admirable speaker; agreed that the results of
his life were very great (and the man must be in part measured by
them). He disapproved of taking people to task by articles in the
papers, for votes against their party.
_July 18th._--I complimented the Speaker yesterday on the time he
had saved by putting an end to discussions upon the presentation of
petitions. He replied that there was a more important advantage;
that those discussions very greatly increased the influence of
popular feeling on the deliberations of the House; and that by
stopping them he thought a wall was erected against such
influence--not as strong as might be wished. Probably some day it
might be broken down, but he had done his best to raise it. His
maxim was to shut out as far as might be all extrinsic pressure,
and then to do freely what was right within doors.
This high and sound way of regarding parliament underwent formidable
changes before the close of Mr. Gladstone's career, and perhaps his
career had indirectly something to do with them. But not, I think, with
intention. In 1838 he cited with approval an exclamation of Roebuck's in
the House of Commons, 'We, sir, are or ought to be the _élite_ of the
people of England for mind: we are at the head of the mind of the people
of England.'
EXPECTATIONS OF FRIENDS
Mr. Gladstone's position in parliament and the public judgment, as the
session went on, is sufficiently manifest from a letter addressed to him
at this time by Samuel Wilberforce, four years his junior, henceforth
one of his nearest friends, and always an acute observer of social and
political forces. 'It would be an affectation in you, which you are
above,' writes the future bishop (April 20, 1838), 'not to know that few
young men have the weight you have in the H. of C. and are gaining
rapidly throughout the country.... I want to urge you to look calmly
before you, ... and act now with a view to _then_. There is no height to
which you may not fairly rise in this country. If it pleases God to
spare us violent convulsions and the loss of our liberties, you may at a
future day wield the whole government of this land; and if this should
be so, of what extreme moment will your _past steps_ then be to the real
usefulness of your high station.'
FOOTNOTES:
[71] Parker's _Peel_, ii. p. 321.
[72] The _Standard_ marks it 'as a brilliant and triumphant
argument--one of the few gems that have illuminated the reformed House
of Commons.'
[73] 'Motions and Means on Land and Sea at War,' v. 248. Steamboats,
Viaducts, and Railways.
[74] Thomson, 4127; Philips, 3759; Gladstone, 2324.
[75] In this speech he dealt with an attack made upon him by his
opponent, Poulett Thomson, afterwards Lord Sydenham, on the question of
negro slavery:--
'I have had some obloquy cast upon me by Mr. Thomson, in reference to
the part which I took in the question of negro slavery. Now, if there
was ever a question upon which I would desire to submit all that I have
ever said to a candid inquirer, it is that of negro slavery. He should
try me in opposition to Lord Stanley, and did Lord Stanley complain? It
is well known that he stated that the only two speeches which were
decidedly hostile to that measure were delivered by two gentlemen who
hold office under her majesty's present government, whilst, on the
contrary, his lordship was pleased to express candidly his high
approbation of my sentiments, and my individual exertions for the
settlement of that matter. Does Mr. Thomson mean to say that the great
conservative body in parliament has offered opposition to that measure?
Who, I would ask, conducted the correspondence of the government office
with reference to that important question? Will any man who knows the
character of Lord Bathurst--will any man who knows the character of Mr.
Stephen, the under-secretary for the colonies--the chosen assistant of
the noble lord in that ministry of which he was no unimportant
member--will any man say that Mr. Stephen, who was all along the
advocate of the slaves, with his liberal and enlightened views,
exercised an influence less than under Lord Stanley? Does Mr. Thomson
presume to state that Lord Aberdeen was guilty of neglect to the slaves?
When I add that the question underwent a considerable discussion last
year, in the House of Commons, when all parties and all interests were
fairly represented, and the best disposition was evinced to assist the
proper working of the measure, and to alter some parts that were
considered injurious to the slaves, and which had come under the
immediate cognisance of the conservative party, is it fair, is it just,
that a minister of the crown should take advantage, for electioneering
purposes, of the fact that my connections have an interest in the West
Indies, to throw discredit upon me and the cause which I advocate?'
[76] Parker's _Peel_, ii. pp. 336-8.
[77] See Appendix.
[78] Parker, ii. pp. 352-367.
[79] _Hansard_, June 20, 1839.
[80] _Agam._ 696-716.
Even so belike might one
A lion suckling nurse,
Like a foster-son,
To his home a future curse.
In life's beginnings mild
Dear to sire and kind to child....
But in time he showed
The habit of his blood....
--Gladstone in _Translations_, p. 83.