As the conference met, so it ran a usual course, and then vanished. The

Powers were in complete accord as to the demands that were to be made upon

Turkey for the protection of the unfortunate Christian rayahs. The Turk in

just confidence that he should find a friend, rejected them, and the

envoys departed to their homes. Mr. Gladstone, however, found comfort in

the thought that by the agitation two points had been gained: the

re-establishment of the European concert, and extrication from a

disgraceful position of virtual complicity with Turkey.

In the spring of 1877 he wrote a second pamphlet,(342) because a speech in

the House could not contain detail enough, and because parliamentary

tradition almost compelled a suspension of discussion while ministers were

supposed to be engaged in concert with other Powers in devising a

practical answer to Russian inquiry. He found that it “produced no great

impression,” the sale not going beyond six or seven thousand copies.

Still, the gala remained from the proceeding in the autumn, that the

government dared not say they had nothing to do with the condition of the

Christian rayahs of Turkey, and any idea of going to war for Turkey was

out of the question.

Public feeling had waxed very hot, yet without any clear precision of

opinion or purpose on the side opposed to Mr. Gladstone’s policy of

emancipation. Dean Church (Dec. 1876) describes how “everybody was very

savage with everybody about Turks and Russians: I think I never remember

such an awkward time for meeting people (until you know you are on the

same side) except at the height of the Tractarian row.”(343)

(M181) A little later we have one of the best pictures of him that I know,

from the warm and vivid hand of J. R. Green, the historian:—

_Feb. 21, 1877._—Last night I met Gladstone—it will always be a

memorable night to me; Stubbs was there, and Goldwin Smith, and

Humphry Sandwith, and Mackenzie Wallace, whose great book on

Russia is making such a stir, besides a few other nice people; but

one forgets everything in Gladstone himself, in his perfect

naturalness and grace of manner, his charming abandon of

conversation, his unaffected modesty, his warm ardour for all that

is noble and good. I felt so proud of my leader—the chief I have

always clung to through good report and ill report—because, wise

or unwise as he might seem in this or that, he was always noble of

soul. He was very pleasant to me, and talked of the new historic

school he hoped we were building up as enlisting his warmest

sympathy. I wish you could have seen with what a glow he spoke of

the Montenegrins and their struggle for freedom; how he called on

us who wrote history to write what we could of that long fight for

liberty! And all through the evening not a word to recall his

greatness amongst us, simple, natural, an equal among his equals,

listening to every one, drawing out every one, with a force and a

modesty that touched us more than all his power.

In another letter, says the same ardent man, “I begin to see that there

may be a truer wisdom in the ‘humanitarianism’ of Gladstone than in the

purely political views of Disraeli. The sympathies of peoples with

peoples, the sense of a common humanity between nations, the aspirations

of nationalities after freedom and independence, _are_ real political

forces; and it is just because Gladstone owns them as forces, and Disraeli

disowns them, that the one has been on the right side, and the other on

the wrong in parallel questions such as the upbuilding of Germany or

Italy. I think it will be so in this upbuilding of the Sclave.”(344)

It was my own good fortune to pass two days with him at this moment at

High Elms. Huxley and Playfair were of the party. Mr. Gladstone had with

him the printer’s proofs of his second pamphlet, and was in full glow

against Turkish terrorism and its abettors. This strong obsession could

not be concealed, nor was there any reason why it should be; it made no

difference in his ready courtesy and kindness of demeanour, his

willingness to enter into other people’s topics, his pliant force and

alacrity of mind. On the Sunday afternoon Sir John Lubbock, our host, took

us all up to the hilltop whence in his quiet Kentish village Darwin was

shaking the world. The illustrious pair, born in the same year, had never

met before. Mr. Gladstone as soon as seated took Darwin’s interest in

lessons of massacre for granted, and launched forth his thunderbolts with

unexhausted zest. His great, wise, simple, and truth-loving listener,

then, I think, busy on digestive powers of the drosera in his green-house,

was intensely delighted. When we broke up, watching Mr. Gladstone’s erect

alert figure as he walked away, Darwin, shading his eyes with his hand

against the evening rays, said to me in unaffected satisfaction, “What an

honour that such a great man should come to visit me!” Too absorbed in his

own overwhelming conflict with the powers of evil, Mr. Gladstone makes no

mention of his afternoon call, and only says of the two days that “he

found a notable party, and made interesting conversation,” and that he

“could not help liking” one of the company, then a stranger to him. In his

absence at church, we were talking of the qualities that send men forward

and keep them back. “I should like to know,” cried Huxley, “what would

keep such a man as that back,” pointing to where Mr. Gladstone had been

sitting; “why, put him in the middle of a moor, with nothing in the world

but his shirt, and you could not prevent him from being anything he

liked.” And Huxley was as far as possible from being a Gladstonian.

IV

(M182) Events meanwhile had moved. The failure of the conference in

December, and the futility of an instrument known as the London protocol

devised in March, led up to a declaration of war by Russia against Turkey

in April. We now come to an episode in this controversy, that excited

lively passions at the moment, and subjected Mr. Gladstone’s relation to

his party to a strain that would have been profoundly painful, if his

heroic intensity had not for the time taken him beyond the region of pain

and pleasure.

_To Lord Granville. 73 Harley Street, April 23, 1877._—The

protocol, the refusal of Turkey, the insistence of Russia, have

been followed to-night by the announcement that the Russian Chargé

has suspended relations with Turkey. Is not the moment now come

for raising the rather stiff question whether a policy, or a

substantive motion, is to be submitted to parliament? I hold back

from a conclusion as long as I can, that I may benefit by the

views of others. But it is perfectly plain that Salisbury is at a

discount, and that the government grow more Turkish every day;

reasonably plain that some grave arguments against moving have now

lost their force. My own inclination is towards a series of

resolutions with such points as are rudely indicated on the

enclosed scrap. Please to let me have it again at some time; I

have no copy.

_To the Duke of Argyll. April 26, 1877._—I have drawn some

resolutions of which I intend to give notice to-day unless the

leaders will move. If they will move, though they may say much

less, I can support them and express my fuller ideas in a speech.

I cannot leave my bed, but notice will be given in my name.

_From the Diary. April 27, 1877._—Ill in the night; kept my bed.

Saw Dr. Clark twice. Saw Mr. Goschen, Lord Wolverton, Mr. Bright,

Lord Frederick Cavendish. This day I took my decision, a severe

one, in face of my not having a single approver in the _upper_

official circle. But had I in the first days of September asked

the same body whether I ought to write my pamphlet, I believe the

unanimous answer would have been No. Arranged for the first

(general) notice to be given, in my absence.

The resolutions were five in number, and the pith of them was, first, an

expression of complaint against the Porte; second, a declaration that, in

the absence of guarantees on behalf of the subject populations, the Porte

had lost all claim to support, moral or material; third, a desire that

British influence should be employed on behalf of local liberty and

self-government in the disturbed provinces; fourth, this influence to be

addressed to promoting the concert of the Powers in exacting from the

Porte such changes as they might deem to be necessary for humanity and

justice; fifth, an address to the crown accordingly. On the expediency of

these resolutions, at a moment when a war with many complexities had just

broken out, opinion in the party was divided. The official liberals and

their special adherents doubted. The radicals below the gangway, headed by

Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, supported the resolutions with

enthusiasm. Adverse notices of the previous question were put upon the

paper. Lord Granville wrote to Mr. Gladstone (May 2) that his colleagues

on the front opposition bench had met, and were still of opinion, “that it

was not opportune at this moment to move resolutions, and thought that the

least antagonistic course as regarded you would be to vote for one of the

motions announced for the previous question.” To the Duke of Argyll Mr.

Gladstone wrote on the 4th:—

Our friends of the late cabinet have fallen into a sad series of

errors, some of which I fear will be greatly resented in the

country. To meet on Wednesday; to use the private pressure which

is being used, as I am told, against the resolutions; and above

all to have announced the result of the meeting in the papers of

yesterday; these form a combination, in my opinion, deplorable and

almost incredible. I shall do all in my power to avert

consequences, but my difficulties are greatly increased.

It looked as if a mortal split within the party were inevitable.

_From the Diary. May 5._—The post brought me near 140 letters

to-day which took some hours to examine, but they are most

remarkable. Saw Lord Granville with Lord Wolverton. They opened

the means of bridging over the chasm inadvertently made; and I

readily went into the scheme. It was carried through by Granville

at a meeting of his friends after the Academy dinner, and he came

to me at Wolverton’s with Hartington to make known the result and

consider some details of execution. What they ask of me is really,

from my point of view, little more than nominal. They have in

truth been awakened as from a slumber by the extraordinary

demonstrations in the country. 3—4-½ attended the Academy

exhibition. 6-½-10-1/4 at the dinner; spoke for literature! My

reception surprised me, it was so good.

(M183) What was asked was that he should consent to an amended form of his

second resolution, declaring more simply and categorically that the Turk,

by his misgovernment, had lost his claims. As to the other resolutions,

according to a common usage, it was at his choice to accept a division on

the first or first two, and not divide upon the rest. His speech, of

course, would cover the ground of all the resolutions. This reduction was,

as he truly said, “little more than nominal.” A friendly question was to

be put when the time came, and in reply he would state how things stood.

The critical day arrived, and not often has parliamentary excitement been

so high. It was a battle of high national and even European policy, for

England was now at the front; it was a battle between two sections of a

party; it was the ordeal of a man admitted to be the greatest in the

House, and perhaps some of the onlookers felt much like the curious

Florentines, as they wondered what would happen to Savonarola and the

monks in the great Trial by Fire.

_From the Diary. May 7._—This day came in about 100 meetings and

say 200 letters or 250. Worked hard upon the blue book, and

references and notes for speech. House at 4-1/4. For over two

hours I was assaulted from every quarter, except the opposition

bench, which was virtually silent. Such a sense of solitary

struggle I never remember. At last I rose on the main question

nearly in despair as to the result; but resolved at least not to

fail through want of effort. I spoke 2-½ hours, voice lasting

well. House gradually came round and at the last was more than

good. It was over at 9.30. Never did I feel weaker and more

wormlike. Dinner at Sir W. James’s and H. of C. again

10-3/4-12-3/4. 8.—I am the spoiled child of sleep. This night was

an exception.

The scene began with the question as preconcerted, put by Mr. Trevelyan.

Such moves never fail to provoke some measure of mockery, and this time

both regular opponents and opponents in more or less disguise thought that

they had got the monarch of the forest down. The situation was one that

opened the way for Mr. Gladstone’s love of over-precision, and his various

explanations prolonged the wrangle. It lasted until the dinner-hour.

“While many members,” says one observer, “were streaming out to dine and

those who remained looked dejectedly at their watches, Mr. Gladstone, who

is sixty-eight years of age, sprang again to his feet, and without any

sign of diminished spirit delivered a noble speech lasting two hours and a

half. It was perhaps the greatest triumph of irrepressible moral and

physical vitality over depressing conditions that was ever won in the

House of Commons.”(345)

The record of a distinguished eyewitness, himself one day to be prime

minister, ought not to be omitted:—

There was one of those preliminary parliamentary debates—or series

of debates—which preceded the main business of the evening. In

this Mr. Gladstone had to speak not once or twice, but several

times, and it was not until hour after hour had passed in this

preliminary skirmish in a House hostile, impatient, and utterly

wearied, that he got up to present his case with that conviction

that he was right, which was his great strength as a speaker in

and out of the House. I never shall forget the impression that

speech left on my mind. As a mere feat of physical endurance it

was almost unsurpassed; as a feat of parliamentary courage,

parliamentary skill, parliamentary endurance, and parliamentary

eloquence, I believe it will always be unequalled.(346)

As he drew to his close, he looked according to Mr. Forster, “_like an

inspired man_,” and I have heard many hearers of cool temperament declare

the passage about the Montenegrins and onwards, to have been the most

thrilling deliverance that could ever be conceived. Here is this noble

peroration:—

Sir, there were other days when England was the hope of freedom.

Wherever in the world a high aspiration was entertained, or a

noble blow was struck, it was to England that the eyes of the

oppressed were always turned—to this favourite, this darling home

of so much privilege and so much happiness, where the people that

had built up a noble edifice for themselves would, it was well

known, be ready to do what in them lay to secure the benefit of

the same inestimable boon for others. You talk to me of the

established tradition and policy in regard to Turkey. I appeal to

an established tradition older, wider, nobler far—a tradition not

which disregards British interests, but which teaches you to seek

the promotion of these interests in obeying the dictates of honour

and justice. And, sir, what is to be the end of this? Are we to

dress up the fantastic ideas some people entertain about this

policy and that policy in the garb of British interests, and then,

with a new and base idolatry, fall down and worship them? Or are

we to look, not at the sentiment, but at the hard facts of the

case, which Lord Derby told us fifteen years ago—viz., that it is

the populations of those countries that will ultimately possess

them—that will ultimately determine their abiding condition? It is

to this fact, this law, that we should look. There is now before

the world a glorious prize. A portion of those unhappy people are

still as yet making an effort to retrieve what they have lost so

long, but have not ceased to love and to desire. I speak of those

in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Another portion—a band of heroes such

as the world has rarely seen—stand on the rocks of Montenegro, and

are ready now, as they have ever been during the 400 years of

their exile from their fertile plains, to sweep down from their

fastnesses and meet the Turks at any odds for the re-establishment

of justice and of peace in those countries. Another portion still,

the 5,000,000 of Bulgarians, cowed and beaten down to the ground,

hardly venturing to look upwards, even to their Father in heaven,

have extended their hands to you; they have sent you their

petition, they have prayed for your help and protection. They have

told you that they do not seek alliance with Russia, or with any

foreign power, but that they seek to be delivered from an

intolerable burden of woe and shame. That burden of woe and

shame—the greatest that exists on God’s earth—is one that we

thought united Europe was about to remove; but to removing which,

for the present, you seem to have no efficacious means of offering

even the smallest practical contribution. But, sir, the removal of

that load of woe and shame is a great and noble prize. It is a

prize well worth competing for. It is not yet too late to try to

win it. I believe there are men in the cabinet who would try to

win it, if they were free to act on their own beliefs and

aspirations. It is not yet too late, I say, to become competitors

for that prize; but be assured that whether you mean to claim for

yourselves even a single leaf in that immortal chaplet of renown,

which will be the reward of true labour in that cause, or whether

you turn your backs upon that cause and upon your own duty, I

believe, for one, that the knell of Turkish tyranny in these

provinces has sounded. So far as human eye can judge, it is about

to be destroyed. The destruction may not come in the way or by the

means that we should choose; but come this boon from what hands it

may, it will be a noble boon, and as a noble boon will gladly be

accepted by Christendom and the world.

V

The division, after a debate that lasted five days, resulted in 354 for

ministers, against 223 for Mr. Gladstone.

Of course if you had gone on alone, Lord Granville told him, you

would only have had either more or less than half the liberal

party. If Hartington had moved the first two resolutions, the

government would certainly have had some 160 or 170 majority. All

the malcontents behind the opposition front benches were obliged

to vote on Monday, in consequence of having so vigorously preached

allegiance during the previous ten days. As it is, the party voted

pretty well.

(M184) “The assumed laughter of the conservatives,” he adds, “showed their

vexation, and _some_ of the radicals showed their cards—that it is not the

eastern question, but the hopes of breaking up the party that really

excites them.” The radicals on their part were extremely sore at the

withdrawal of the resolutions. “Your goodness,” wrote their leading man to

Mr. Gladstone the following day, “has been abused in the interests of a

section of the party who deserve least at your hands. The current report

in the lobbies last night, spread by these gentlemen, and easily believed

by their friends, was that you had ‘caved in.’ ” Could he not take some

further opportunity of showing that he had not abandoned the policy of

joint intervention, and that the liberal party in the country had no

reason to regret that they rose almost as one man to his call?

At first it was thought that the discussion had done good by impressing

the government with the desire of the country, if not for coercion at

least for real neutrality, and that Lord Beaconsfield had submitted to the

better influences in the cabinet. It soon appeared that this had not

happened. “The fidelity of the party,” said Lord Granville, “and the large

majority have given Beaconsfield the lead, of which he has not been slow

to avail himself. It is very serious.” The war in the Balkans went on; the

Turks fought with valour and constancy: sufferings on both sides were

frightful. In England the sympathy with the miserable victims of Turkish

misrule became modified by the re-awakened jealousy of Russian power. Mr.

Gladstone held his ground with invincible tenacity against all comers. He

took his share in such parliamentary operations as were possible, but

these operations were necessarily fruitless, and the platform now for the

first time became the effective field for moving national opinion.

Great parties of tourists from the northern and midland towns began to

make it a fashion to go on high pilgrimage to Hawarden, where besides a

fine park they saw the most interesting man in the country, and had a good

chance of hearing an eloquent speech, or watching a tree fall under the

stroke of his vigorous arm. If they brought him the tribute of a casket or

an axe or some cunning walking-stick, he was obliged to thank them, and if

he opened his lips to thank them, the all-engrossing theme was sure to

well up. Some of these earnest utterances jarred even on his admirers in

the press and out of it. Just so would critics in colleges and cathedral

closes have found Wesley and Whitefield in their evangelising mission

north, south, east, and west, excessive, exaggerated, indiscreet, and

deficient in good taste. They could not understand how one supposed to be

so knowing in all the manœuvres of parliament and party, was at the same

time so naïf. This curious simplicity in fact marked him in all the

movements into which he put his heart. Like every other grand

missionary—the abolitionist, the gospel missionary, the free trader, the

peace man, the temperance man—he could not believe that the truths,

arguments, and appeals, of which he was the bearer, could fail to strike

in all who heard them the same fire that blazed in bosoms fervid as his

own.

He went to Birmingham and was received with tumultuous acclamations by

many tens of thousands:—

_May 31._—[Hawarden.] Off before 11. Reached Birmingham at 3-1/4.

A triumphal reception. Dinner at Mr. Chamberlain’s. Meeting 7 to

9-½, half occupied by my speech. A most intelligent and duly

appreciative audience—but they were 25,000 and the building I

think of no acoustic merits, so that the strain was excessive. A

supper followed. _June 1._—Breakfast party 9.30. Much conversation

on the Birmingham school board system. Off at 10.45 to Enfield

factory, which consumed the forenoon in a most interesting survey

with Colonel Dickson and his assistants. Then to the fine (qy.

overfine?) board school, where addresses were presented and I

spoke over half an hour on politics. After luncheon to the town

hall; address from the corporation, made a municipal speech of say

20 minutes. A good deal of movement in the streets with us even

to-day. Thence to the Oratory and sat with Dr. Newman.(347) Saw

Mr. Chamberlain’s very pleasing children. Then to the dinner,

spoke again. To Hagley at 11.5.

Well was, it said of this visit by Dale, that strenuous whole-hearted man,

“Forsaken or but feebly supported by many of those with whom he had shared

many glorious conflicts, and who owed to him their place and fame, his

courage remained undaunted, and his enthusiasm for righteousness and

freedom unquenched.”

Mr. Gladstone described, the general situation in a letter to a

correspondent out of England:—

I cannot say much for the conduct of the Powers. That of the pope

and his court has been vile; Manning and most part of Ireland have

followed suit; France and Germany are thinking of themselves and

one another; and Italy, for fear of the pope, is obliged to look

very much to Germany. Austria is to some extent in a false

position. For us there is no excuse: there was no difficulty

whatever in our doing our duty. I have said in parliament, and I

deeply feel, it is the most deplorable chapter of our foreign

policy since the peace of 1815. The good cause has been further

weakened by the bad conduct, in varying degrees, of many races,

Magyars and Jews above all. You see I cannot help filling up my

paper with this subject.

In July he made a pleasure trip in one of Sir Donald Currie’s steamers,

from London to Dartmouth. “We set out at 10.20,” he says, “for the docks.

Started in the _Dublin Castle_ at noon. We spent the night at the Nore,

good weather, kind reception, splendid fare. The Cape deputies came with

us as far as Gravesend.” Among these deputies was Mr. Kruger.

In October he paid his first and only visit to Ireland. It lasted little

more than three weeks, and did not extend beyond a very decidedly English

Pale. He stayed in great houses, was feasted by the provost of Trinity, in

spite of disestablishment, and he had a friendly conversation with

Cardinal Cullen, in spite of Vaticanism. “You know, Mr. Gladstone,” said

the Cardinal, “we could have given you a warmer reception if it had not

been for certain pamphlets which we in Ireland did not like very well.” He

received the freedom of the city of Dublin, broke bread with the Duke of

Marlborough at the vice-regal lodge, admired the picturesque site of the

castle at Kilkenny, enjoyed sympathetic talks with host and hostess at

Abbeyleix, and delighted in the curious antiquities and exquisite natural

beauties of the county of Wicklow. Of the multitudes of strange things

distinctively Irish, he had little chance of seeing much.

Chapter V. A Tumultuous Year. (1878)

On these great questions, which cut so deep into heart and mind,

the importance of taking what they think the best course for the

question will often seem, even to those who have the most just

sense of party obligation, a higher duty than that of party

allegiance.—GLADSTONE (_to Granville_, 1878).

I

Of 1878 Mr. Gladstone spoke as “a tumultuous year.” In January, after a

fierce struggle of five months in the Balkan passes, the Russian forces

overcame the Turkish defence, and by the end of January had entered

Adrianople and reached the Sea of Marmora. Here at San Stefano a treaty of

peace was made at the beginning of March. The last word of the eastern

question, as Lord Derby said in those days, is this: Who is to have

Constantinople? No great Power would be willing to see it in the hands of

any other great Power, no small Power could hold it at all, and as for

joint occupation, all such expedients were both dangerous and

doubtful.(348) This last word now seemed to be writing itself in capital

letters. Russia sent the treaty to the Powers, with the admission that

portions of it affecting the general interests of Europe could not be

regarded as definitive without general concurrence. A treaty between

Russian and Turk within the zone of Constantinople and almost in sight of

St. Sophia, opened a new and startling vista to English politicians.

Powerful journalists, supposed to be much in the confidence of ministers,

declared that if peace were ultimately concluded on anything like the

terms proposed, then beyond all doubt the outworks of our empire were

gone, and speedy ruin must begin. About such a situation there had been

but one opinion among our statesmen for many generations. Until Mr.

Gladstone, “all men held that such a state of things [as the Russians at

Constantinople] would bring the British empire face to face with

ruin.”(349)

(M185) Before the treaty of San Stefano, an angry panic broke out in parts

of England. None of the stated terms of British neutrality were violated

either by the treaty or its preliminaries, but even when no Russian force

was within forty miles of Constantinople, the cabinet asked for a vote of

six millions (January), and a few days later the British fleet passed the

Dardanelles. Two years earlier, Mr. Gladstone had wished that the fleet

should go to Constantinople as a coercive demonstration against the Porte;

now, in 1878, the despatch of the fleet was a demonstration against

Russia, who had done alone the work of emancipation that in Mr.

Gladstone’s view should have been done, and might have been done without

war by that concert of the Powers from which England had drawn back. The

concert of the Powers that our withdrawal had paralysed would have revived

quickly enough, if either Austria or Germany had believed that the Czar

really meant to seize Constantinople. “I have done my best,” wrote Mr.

Gladstone to a friend, “against the vote of six millions; a foolish and

mischievous proposition. The liberal leaders have, mistakenly as I think,

shrunk at the last moment from voting. But my opinion is that the liberal

party in general are firmly opposed to the vote as a silly, misleading,

and mischievous measure.” He both spoke and voted. The opinion of his

adherents was that his words, notwithstanding his vote, were calculated to

do more to throw oil on the troubled waters, than either the words or the

abstention of the official leader.

The appearance of the British fleet with the nominal object of protecting

life and property at Constantinople, was immediately followed by the

advance of Russian troops thirty miles nearer to Constantinople with the

same laudable object. The London cabinet only grew the wilder in its

Projects, among them being a secret expedition of Indian troops to seize

Cyprus and Alexandretta, with the idea that it would be fairer to the Turk

not to ask his leave. Two ministers resigned in succession, rather than

follow Lord Beaconsfield further in designs of this species.(350)

“It is a bitter disappointment,” Mr. Gladstone wrote to Madame Novikoff,

“to find the conclusion of one war, for which there was a weighty cause,

followed by the threat of another, for which there is no adequate cause at

all, and which will be an act of utter wickedness—if it comes to pass,

which God forbid—on one side or on both. That unhappy subject of the bit

of Bessarabia,(351) on which I have given you my mind with great freedom

(for otherwise what is the use of my writing at all?) threatens to be in

part the pretext and in part the cause of enormous mischief, and in my

opinion to mar and taint at a particular point the immense glory which

Russia had acquired, already complete in a military sense, and waiting to

be consummated in a moral sense too.”

Public men do not withstand war fevers without discomfort, as Bright had

found in the streets of Manchester when he condemned the Crimean war. One

or two odious and unusual incidents now happened to Mr. Gladstone:—

_Feb. 24._—Between four and six, three parties of the populace

arrived here, the first with cheers, the two others hostile.

Windows were broken and much hooting. The last detachment was only

kept away by mounted police in line across the street both ways.

This is not very sabbatical. There is strange work behind the

curtain, if one could only get at it. The instigators are those

really guilty; no one can wonder at the tools.

One Sunday afternoon a little later (March 4):—

Another gathering of people was held off by the police. I walked

down with C., and as a large crowd gathered, though in the main

friendly, we went into Dr. Clark’s, and then in a hansom off the

ground.

Stories were put about that Lord Beaconsfield reported the names of

dissentient colleagues to the Queen. Dining with Sir Robert Phillimore

(Jan. 17), Mr. Gladstone—

was emphatic and decided in his opinion that if the premier

mentioned to the Queen any of his colleagues who had opposed him

in the cabinet, he was guilty of great baseness and perfidy.

Gladstone said he had copies of 250 letters written by him to the

Queen, in none of which could a reference be found to the opinion

of his colleagues expressed in cabinet.

On the same occasion, by the way, Sir Robert notes: “Gladstone was careful

to restrain the expression of his private feelings about Lord

Beaconsfield, as he generally is.”

II

(M186) In the summer the famous congress assembled at Berlin (June 13 to

July 13), with Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury as the representatives

of Great Britain, to sanction, reject, or modify the treaty of San

Stefano. Before the congress met, the country received a shock that made

men stagger. While in London it was impossible to attempt to hold a

meeting in favour of peace, and even in the northern towns such meetings

were almost at the mercy of anybody who might choose to start a jingo

chorus; while the war party exulted in the thought that military

preparations were going on apace, and that the bear would soon be rent by

the lion; a document was one afternoon betrayed to the public, from which

the astounding fact appeared that England and Russia had already entered

into a secret agreement, by which the treaty of San Stefano was in

substance to be ratified, with the single essential exception that the

southern portion of Bulgaria was to be severed from the northern. The

treaty of Berlin became in fact an extensive partition of the Turkish

empire, and the virtual ratification of the policy of bag and baggage. The

Schouvaloff memorandum was not the only surprise. Besides the secret

agreement with Russia, the British government had made a secret convention

with Turkey. By this convention England undertook to defend Turkey against

Russian aggression in Asia, though concessions were made to Russia that

rendered Asiatic Turkey indefensible; and Turkey was to carry out reforms

which all sensible men knew to be wholly beyond her power. In payment for

this bargain, the Sultan allowed England to occupy and administer Cyprus.

At the end of the session Mr. Gladstone wound up his labours in parliament

with an extraordinarily powerful survey of all these great transactions.

Its range, compass, and grasp are only matched by the simplicity and

lucidity of his penetrating examination. It was on July 30:—

Finished the protocols and worked up the whole subject. It loomed

very large and disturbed my sleep unusually. H. of C. Spoke 2-½

hours. I was in body much below par, but put on the steam

perforce. It ought to have been far better. The speech exhausted

me a good deal, as I was and am below par.

He sketched, in terse outline, the results of the treaty—the independence

of Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro; the virtual independence of northern

Bulgaria; the creation in southern Bulgaria (under the name of Eastern

Roumelia) of local autonomy, which must soon grow into something more.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, though Mr. Gladstone would have hoped for their

freedom from external control, had been handed over to Austria, but they

were at any rate free from the Ottoman. The cardinal fact was that eleven

millions of people formerly under Turkish rule, absolute or modified, were

entirely exempted from the yoke. “Taking the whole of the provisions of

the treaty of Berlin together, I most thankfully and joyfully acknowledge

that great results have been achieved in the diminution of human misery

and towards the establishment of human happiness and prosperity in the

East.” A great work of emancipation had been achieved for the Slavs of the

Turkish empire. He deplored that equal regard had not been paid to the

case of the Hellenes in Thessaly and Epirus, though even in 1862,

Palmerston and Russell were in favour of procuring the cession of Thessaly

and Epirus to Greece. As for the baffling of Russian intrigue, it was true

that the Bulgaria of Berlin was reduced from the Bulgaria of San Stefano,

but this only furnished new incentives and new occasions for

intrigue.(352) Macedonia and Armenia were left over.

(M187) On the conduct of the two British plenipotentiaries at Berlin he

spoke without undue heat, but with a weight that impressed even adverse

hearers:—

I say, sir, that in this congress of the great Powers, the voice

of England has not been heard in unison with the institutions, the

history, and the character of England. On every question that

arose, and that became a subject of serious contest in the

congress, or that could lead to any important practical result, a

voice has been heard from Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury

which sounded in the tones of Metternich, and not in the tones of

Mr. Canning, or of Lord Palmerston, or of Lord Russell. I do not

mean that the British government ought to have gone to the

congress determined to insist upon the unqualified prevalence of

what I may call British ideas. They were bound to act in

consonance with the general views of Europe. But within the limits

of fair differences of opinion, which will always be found to

arise on such occasions, I do affirm that it was their part to

take the side of liberty; and I do also affirm that as a matter of

fact they took the side of servitude.

The agreement with Russia had in truth constantly tied their hands. For

instance, Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury might make to Russia as

many eloquent speeches as they liked against the restoration of

Bessarabia, but everybody in the room knew that the British government had

taken the lead in virtually assuring Russia that she had only to hold to

her point and Bessarabia should again be hers. Most effective of all was

his exposure of the convention with Turkey, a proceeding by which we had

undertaken, behind the back of Europe and against the treaty of Paris, to

establish a sole protectorate in Asiatic Turkey.(353) We had made a

contract of such impossible scope as to bind us to manage the reform of

the judicature, the police, the finances, the civil service of Turkey, and

the stoppage of the sources of corruption at Constantinople. The load, if

we took it seriously, was tremendous; if we did not take it seriously,

then what was the whole story of the reform of Asiatic Turkey, but a blind

to excuse the acquisition of Cyprus? This great presentation of a broad

and reasoned case contained a passage near its close, that had in it the

kernel of Mr. Gladstone’s policy in the whole controversy that was now

drawing to an end:—

I think we have lost greatly by the conclusion of this convention;

I think we have lost very greatly indeed the sympathy and respect

of the nations of Europe. I do not expect or believe that we shall

fall into that sort of contempt which follows upon weakness. I

think it to be one of the most threadbare of all the weapons of

party warfare when we hear, as we sometimes hear, on the accession

of a new government, that before its accession the government of

England had been despised all over the world, and that now on the

contrary she has risen in the general estimation, and holds her

proper place in the councils of nations. This England of ours is

not so poor and so weak a thing as to depend upon the reputation

of this or that administration; and the world knows pretty well of

what stuff she is made.... Now, I am desirous that the standard of

our material strength shall be highly and justly estimated by the

other nations of Christendom; but I believe it to be of still more

vital consequence that we should stand high in their estimation as

the lovers of truth, of honour, and of openness in all our

proceedings, as those who know how to cast aside the motives of a

narrow selfishness, and give scope to considerations of broad and

lofty principle. I value our insular position, but I dread the day

when we shall be reduced to a moral insularity.... The proceedings

have all along been associated with a profession as to certain

British interests, which although I believe them to be perfectly

fictitious and imaginary, have yet been pursued with as much zeal

and eagerness as if they had been the most vital realities in the

world. This setting up of our own interests, out of place, in an

exaggerated form, beyond their proper sphere, and not merely the

setting up of such interests, but the mode in which they have been

pursued, has greatly diminished, not, as I have said, the regard

for our material strength, but the estimation of our moral

standard of action, and consequently our moral position in the

world.

(M188) Lord Beaconsfield lost some of his composure when Mr. Gladstone

called the agreement between England and Turkey an insane convention. “I

would put this issue,” he said, “to an intelligent English jury: Which do

you believe most likely to enter into an insane convention? A body of

English gentlemen, honoured by the favour of their sovereign and the

confidence of their fellow-subjects, managing your affairs for five

years—I hope with prudence, and not altogether without success—or a

sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own

verbosity,”(354)—and so forth, in a strain of unusual commonness, little

befitting either Disraeli’s genius or his dignity. Mr. Gladstone’s speech

three days later was as free from all the excesses so violently described,

as any speech that was ever made at Westminster.

No speech, however, at this moment was able to reduce the general

popularity of ministers, and it was the common talk at the moment that if

Lord Beaconsfield had only chosen to dissolve, his majority would have

been safe. Writing an article on “England’s Mission” as soon as the House

was up, Mr. Gladstone grappled energetically with some of the impressions

on which this popularity was founded. The _Pall Mall Gazette_ had set out

these impressions with its usual vigour. As Mr. Gladstone’s reply

traverses much of the ground on which we have been treading, I may as well

transcribe it:—

The liberals, according to that ably written newspaper, have now

imbibed as a permanent sentiment a “distaste for national

greatness.” This distaste is now grown into matter of principle.

“The disgust at these principles of action ever grew in depth and

extent,” so that in the Danish, the American, and the

Franco-German wars, there was “an increasing portion of the nation

ready to engage in the struggle on almost any side,” as a protest

against the position that it was bound not to engage in it at all!

The climax of the whole matter was reached when the result of the

Alabama treaty displayed to the world an England overreached,

overruled, and apologetic. It certainly requires the astounding

suppositions, and the gross ignorance of facts, which the

journalist with much truth recites, to explain the manner in which

for some time past pure rhodomontade has not only done the work of

reasoning, but has been accepted as a cover for constant

miscarriage and defeat; and doctrines of national self-interest

and self-assertion as supreme laws have been set up, which, if

unhappily they harden into “permanent sentiment” and “matter of

principle,” will destroy all the rising hopes of a true public law

for Christendom, and will substitute for it what is no better than

the Communism of Paris enlarged and exalted into a guide of

international relations. It is perhaps unreasonable to expect that

minds in the condition of the “increasing portion” should on any

terms accept an appeal to history. But, for the sake of others,

not yet so completely emancipated from the yoke of facts, I simply

ask at what date it was that the liberal administrations of this

country adopted the “permanent sentiment” and the “matter of

principle” which have been their ruin? Not in 1859-60, when they

energetically supported the redemption and union of Italy. Not in

1861, when, on the occurrence of the Trent affair, they at a few

days’ notice despatched ten thousand men to Halifax. Not when, in

concert with Europe, they compelled the sultan to cut off the head

of his tyrannical pasha, and to establish a government in the

Lebanon not dependent for its vital breath on Constantinople. Not

when in 1863 they invited France to join in an _ultimatum_ to the

German Powers, and to defend Denmark with us against the intrigues

which Germany was carrying on under the plea of the Duke of

Augustenburg’s title to the Duchies; and when they were told by

Louis Napoleon in reply that that might be a great British

interest, but that it had no significance for France. Not when in

1870 they formed in a few days their double treaty for the defence

of Belgium. Does, then, the whole indictment rest on this—that, in

conformity with the solemn declaration of the European Powers at

Paris in 1856, they cured a deep-seated quarrel with America by

submitting to the risk of a very unjust award at Geneva; and

reconciled a sister nation, and effected a real forward step in

the march, of civilisation at about half the cost which the

present administration has recently incurred (but without paying

it) in agitating and disturbing Europe? Or is it that during all

those years, and many more years before them, while liberty and

public law were supported, and British honour vindicated,

territorial cupidity was not inflamed by the deeds or words of

statesmen, British interests were not set up as “the first and

great commandment,” and it was thought better to consolidate a

still undeveloped empire, which might well satisfy every ambition,

as it assuredly taxes to the utmost every faculty.

III

(M189) Though this was a “tumultuous year,” he noted with some complacency

that the work of his pen produced a thousand pounds. He laboured hard at

his Homeric primer, “just contriving to squeeze the completion of it into

the Easter recess”; wrote articles on the “Peace to Come,” on the “Paths

of Honour and of Shame,” on the Abbé Martin, on “England’s Mission,” on

“Electoral Statistics,” the “Friends and Foes of Russia,” and other

matters. He finished a paper on Iris, “a charming little subject, and for

once I am a little pleased with my work.” He toiled diligently at a

collection of old articles, which he christened _Gleanings_:—

_November 14._—Worked on articles for reprint. Reperusal of

Patteson moves me unto tears.(355) What a height he reached! What

he did for God and the church. Praise to the Highest in the

height! 21.—This morning the rain on the trees was wonderful and

lovely. When it fell under the trees in the afternoon it was like

snow or small icicles an inch deep. 25.—Read _Maud_ once more,

and, aided by Doyle’s criticism, wrote my note of apology and

partial retractation.(356) The fact is I am wanting in that higher

poetical sense, which distinguishes the true artist.

Again and again he gives himself the delightful refreshment of arranging

his books. He finds that he has 700 volumes of English poetry. “After 30

hours my library is now in a passable state, and I enjoy, in Ruskin’s

words, ‘the complacency of possession and the pleasantness of order.’ ” He

sat to Millais in the summer for what was to be the most popular of his

portraits. “_July 5._—Went with C. to examine the Millais portrait, surely

a very fine work. 6—Sat once more to Millais, whose ardour and energy

about his picture inspire a strong sympathy.” On Good Friday he hears

Bach’s passion music, “most beautiful, yet not what I like for to-day.” In

the afternoon: “We drove down to Pembroke Lodge. For a few minutes saw

Lord Russell at his desire—a noble wreck. He recognised us and overflowed

with feeling.”

In December the Argylls and Mr. Ruskin came to Hawarden:—

_Dec. 12._—Mr. Ruskin’s health better, and no diminution of charm.

14.—Mr. Ruskin at dinner developed his political opinions. They

aim at the restoration of the Judaic system, and exhibit a mixture

of virtuous absolutism and Christian socialism. All in his

charming and modest manner.

From a pleasing account of Ruskin at Hawarden privately printed, we may

take one passage:—

Something like a little amicable duel took place at one time

between Ruskin and Mr. G., when Ruskin directly attacked his host

as a “leveller.” “You see _you_ think one man is as good as

another and all men equally competent to judge aright on political

questions; whereas I am a believer in an aristocracy.” And

straight came the answer from Mr. Gladstone, “Oh dear, no! I am

nothing of the sort. I am a firm believer in the aristocratic

principle—the rule of the best. I am an out-and-out

_inequalitarian_,” a confession which Ruskin treated with intense

delight, clapping his hands triumphantly.

The true question against Ruskin’s and Carlyle’s school was how you are to

get the rule of the best. Mr. Gladstone thought that freedom was the

answer; what path the others would have us tread, neither Ruskin nor his

stormy teacher ever intelligibly told us.

IV

Writing on November 1 to Madame Novikoff, Mr. Gladstone said:—

_Nov. 1, ’78._—My opinion is that this government is moving to its

doom, and I hope the day of Lord Granville’s succession to it may

be within a twelvemonth. It is not to be desired that this should

take place at once. The people want a little more experience of

Beaconsfield toryism.

Unfortunately this experience, whatever be the precise name for it, now

came with disastrous promptitude, and the nation having narrowly escaped

one war, found itself involved in two. The peril of a conflict in Europe

had hardly passed, before the country found itself committed to an attack

for which the government themselves censured their high-handed agent, upon

the fiercest of the savage tribes of South Africa. A more formidable

surprise was the announcement that, by a headlong reversal of accepted

Indian policy, war had been declared against the Ameer of Afghanistan.

Chapter VI. Midlothian. (1879)

μηδὲ μαλθακὸς γένῃ.

τί δρᾴς? ἀνίστω, μή σε νικάτω κόπος.

ÆSCH. _Eum._, 74-128.

Turn not faint of heart. What doest thou? Let not weariness

overcome thee.

I

(M190) After the general election of 1874, Mr. Gladstone resolved not

again to offer himself as candidate for Greenwich, and in 1878 he formally

declined an invitation from the liberals in that constituency. At the end

of the year it was intimated to him that he might have a safe seat in the

city of Edinburgh without a contest. In January 1879, more ambitious

counsels prevailed, and it was resolved by the liberal committee of

Midlothian, with Lord Rosebery in the front, and amid infinite resolution,

enthusiasm, and solid sense of responsibility, that Mr. Gladstone should

be invited to contest the metropolitan county of Scotland. Mr. Adam, the

Scotch whip, entered into the design, Lord Wolverton approved, and Lord

Granville sent Adam a letter assenting. The sitting member was Lord

Dalkeith, eldest son of that Duke of Buccleuch who had been Mr.

Gladstone’s colleague in Peel’s cabinet nearly forty years before, and who

had left it in the memorable December of 1845. Parties had always been

closely balanced, although the tories had held their own pretty firmly,

and only two contests had been fought for forty years. The Midlothian tory

was described to Mr. Gladstone as of the hardest and narrowest type, and

the battle was therefore sure to be fierce. Some of the voters, however,

told the canvassers that they would no longer support ministers. “If the

government continues much longer,” they said, “the whole nation will be in

the poorhouse.” The delight of the constituency was intense at the

prospect of having for their champion one whom they described as the

greatest living Scotchman, and Adam (January 10, 1879) predicted a

majority of two hundred. Mr. Gladstone rapidly, but not without

deliberation, entered into the project. “I am now only anxious,” he wrote

to Mr. Adam (January 11), “under your advice and Wolverton’s, about making

the ground sure before the plunge is taken; after it is taken, you may

depend on me.” On the same day he wrote to Lord Granville:—

I believe you have been cognizant of the proceedings about the

county of Midlothian, which are now beginning to bear a practical

aspect. Generally, when one knows the tree is a large tree, yet on

coming close up to the trunk it looks twice as large as it did

before. So it is with this election. If it goes on, it will gather

into itself a great deal of force and heat, and will be very

prominent. Thus far I am not sure whether I have put the matter

pointedly before you, or have been content to assume your approval

of what I found Adam pressing strongly upon me. It will be a tooth

and nail affair.

Lord Granville replied, that he was doing a “very plucky and

public-spirited thing.” “Your friends,” he said, “must begin working the

coach at once, but I should think you had better not appear too early in

the field. Act Louis XIV.” “Having received your approval,” Mr. Gladstone

told Lord Granville, “I wrote on the same day to Adam accordingly.” He

then went into details with his usual care and circumspection. When the

public were made aware of what was on foot, the general interest became

hardly less lively all over the island than it was in the constituency

itself. It was observed at the time how impossible many people seemed to

find it to treat anything done by Mr. Gladstone as natural and reasonable.

Nothing would appear to be a more simple and unobjectionable act than his

compliance with the request of the electors of Midlothian, yet “he was

attacked as if he were guilty of some monstrous piece of vanity and

eccentricity.”(357) Relentless opponents amused themselves by saying that

“Mr. Gladstone lives personally in Wales and intends to live politically

in Scotland; and his most fervently held opinions, like the Celtic

population of the island, have very much followed the same line of

withdrawal.”

Mr. Gladstone described the general outlook in a letter to his son Henry

in India (May 16):—

The government declines, but no one can say at what rate.

Elections are tolerably satisfactory to us—not, I think, more. A

sure though evil instinct has guided them in choosing rather to

demoralise our finance, than to pay their way by imposing taxes,

but I do not see how they are long to escape this difficulty....

Our people look forward comfortably to the election. The

government people say they will not have it this year. But if we

come to the conclusion that we ought to have it, I am by no means

sure but that though a minority, we can force it by putting our

men into the field, and making it too uncomfortable for them to

continue twelve or fifteen months in hot water. I am safe in

Midlothian, unless they contrive a further and larger number of

faggot votes.

Adam looked forward with alarm to the mischief that might be done if the

general election were to be protracted beyond the autumn of 1880. “In

order to neutralise the present majority,” he told Mr. Gladstone, “they

will have to create faggots to a _disgraceful_ extent, but they are not

troubled by scruples of conscience.” The charity that thinketh no evil is

perhaps less liberally given to party whips than even to other

politicians.

Apart from Midlothian Mr. Adam, in January 1879, said to Mr. Gladstone

that the liberals were helpless even in the best agricultural counties of

England; that he saw no hope of improvement; they had neither candidates

nor organisation in most of them, and there was no means that he knew of

(and he had done all that he could) to wake them up. By November 1879, he

reported that he had been carefully over the list, taking a very moderate

calculation of the chances at the coming election; and he believed they

ought to have a majority of 20 to 30, independent of home rulers. Mr.

Gladstone wrote to Lord Granville:—

_Aug. 6, ’79._—Salisbury’s speech indicates, and for several

reasons I should believe, that they intend sailing on the quiet

tack. Having proved their spirit, they will now show their

moderation. In other words they want all the past proceedings to

be in the main “stale fish” at the elections. Except financial

shuffling they will very likely commit no new enormity before the

election. In my view that means they will not supply any new

matter of such severe condemnation as what they have already

furnished. Therefore, my idea is, we should keep the old alive and

warm. This is the meaning of my suggestion as to autumn work,

rather than that I expect a dissolution. It seems to me good

policy to join on the proceedings of 1876-9 by a continuous

process to the dissolution. Should this happen, which I think

likely enough about March, there will have been no opportunity

immediately before it of stirring the country. I will not say our

defeat in 1874 was owing to the want of such an opportunity, but

it was certainly, I think, much aggravated by that want.

II

(M191) It was on November 24 that Mr. Gladstone soon after eight in the

morning quitted Liverpool for Edinburgh, accompanied by his wife and Miss

Gladstone. “The journey from Liverpool,” he enters, “was really more like

a triumphal procession.” Nothing like it had ever been seen before in

England. Statesmen had enjoyed great popular receptions before, and there

had been plenty of cheering and bell-ringing and torchlight in individual

places before. On this journey of a bleak winter day, it seemed as if the

whole countryside were up. The stations where the train stopped were

crowded, thousands flocked from neighbouring towns and villages to main

centres on the line of route, and even at wayside spots hundreds

assembled, merely to catch a glimpse of the express as it dashed through.

At Carlisle they presented addresses, and the traveller made his first

speech, declaring that never before in the eleven elections in which he

had taken part, were the interests of the country so deeply at stake. He

spoke again with the same moral at Hawick. At Galashiels he found a great

multitude, with an address and a gift of the cloth they manufactured. With

bare head in the raw air, he listened to their address, and made his

speech; he told them that he had come down expressly to raise effectually

before the people of the country the question in what manner they wished

to be governed; it was not this measure or that, it was a system of

government to be upheld or overthrown. When he reached Edinburgh after

nine hours of it, the night had fallen upon the most picturesque street in

all our island, but its whole length was crowded as it has never been

crowded before or since by a dense multitude, transported with delight

that their hero was at last among them. Lord Rosebery, who was to be his

host, quickly drove with him amidst tumults of enthusiasm all along the

road to the hospitable shades of Dalmeny. “I have never,” Mr. Gladstone

says in his diary, “gone through a more extraordinary day.”

All that followed in a week of meetings and speeches was to match. People

came from the Hebrides to hear Mr. Gladstone speak. Where there were six

thousand seats, the applications were forty or fifty thousand. The weather

was bitter and the hills were covered with snow, but this made no

difference in cavalcades, processions, and the rest of the outdoor

demonstrations. Over what a space had democracy travelled, and what a

transition for its champion of the hour, since the days half a century

back when the Christ Church undergraduate, the disciple of Burke and

Canning, had ridden in anti-reform processions, been hustled by reform

mobs, and had prayed for the blessing of heaven on the House of Lords for

their honourable and manly decision in throwing out the bill. Yet the

warmest opponent of popular government, even the Duke of Buccleuch

himself, might have found some balm for this extraordinary display of

popular feeling, in the thought that it was a tribute to the most splendid

political career of that generation; splendid in gifts and splendid in

service, and that it was repaid, moreover, with none of the flattery

associated with the name of demagogue. Mr. Gladstone’s counsels may have

been wise or unwise, but the only flattery in the Midlothian speeches was

the manly flattery contained in the fact that he took care to address all

these multitudes of weavers, farmers, villagers, artisans, just as he

would have addressed the House of Commons,—with the same breadth and

accuracy of knowledge, the same sincerity of interest, the same scruple in

right reasoning, and the same appeal to the gravity and responsibility of

public life. An aristocratic minister, speaking at Edinburgh soon after,

estimated the number of words in Mr. Gladstone’s Midlothian speeches in

1879 at 85,840, and declared that his verbosity had become “a positive

danger to the commonwealth.” Tory critics solemnly declared that such

performances were an innovation on the constitution, and aggravated the

evil tendencies of democracy.(358) Talk of this kind did not really impose

for an instant on any man or woman of common sense.

(M192) Oratory ever since the days of Socrates, and perhaps long before,

has been suspected as one of the black arts; and both at the time and

afterwards Mr. Gladstone’s speeches in his first Midlothian campaign were

disparaged, as I have just said, as sentiment rather than politics, as

sophistry not sound reason, as illusory enchantment not solid and

subsisting truth. We are challenged to show passages destined to

immortality. With all admiration for the effulgent catalogue of British

orators, and not forgetting Pitt on the slave trade, or Fox on the

Westminster scrutiny, or Sheridan on the begums of Oude, or Plunket on the

catholic question, or Grattan, or Canning, or Brougham, we may perhaps ask

whether all the passages that have arrived at this degree of fame and

grandeur, with the exception of Burke, may not be comprised in an

extremely slender volume. The statesman who makes or dominates a crisis,

who has to rouse and mould the mind of senate or nation, has something

else to think about than the production of literary masterpieces. The

great political speech, which for that matter is a sort of drama, is not

made by passages for elegant extract or anthologies, but by personality,

movement, climax, spectacle, and the action of the time. All these

elements Midlothian witnessed to perfection.

It was my fortune to be present at one whole day of these performances.

“An overpowering day,” Mr. Gladstone calls it in his diary (December 5,

1879). “After a breakfast-party,” he says, “I put my notes in order for

the afternoon. At twelve delivered the inaugural address as lord rector of

the university” [Glasgow]. This discourse lasted an hour and a half, and

themes, familiar but never outworn nor extinct, were handled with vigour,

energy, and onward flow that made them sound as good as novel, and even

where they did not instruct or did not edify, the noble music pleased. The

great salient feature of the age was described as on its material side the

constant discovery of the secrets of nature, and the progressive

subjugation of her forces to the purposes and will of man. On the moral

side, if these conquests had done much for industry, they had done more

for capital; if much for labour, more for luxury; they had variously and

vastly multiplied the stimulants to gain, the avenues of excitement, the

solicitations to pleasure. The universities were in some sort to check all

this; the habits of mind formed by universities are founded in sobriety

and tranquillity; they help to settle the spirit of a man firmly upon the

centre of gravity; they tend to self-command, self-government, and that

genuine self-respect which has in it nothing of mere self-worship, for it

is the reverence which each man ought to feel for the nature that God has

given him, and for the laws of that nature. Then came an appeal, into

which the speaker’s whole heart was thrown, for the intellectual dignity

of the Christian ministry. If argument failed to the great Christian

tradition, he would set small value on the multitude of uninstructed

numerical adhesions, or upon the integrity of institutions and the

unbroken continuity of rite. “Thought,” he exclaimed,—“_thought is the

citadel_.” There is a steeplechase philosophy in vogue—sometimes

specialism making short cuts to the honours of universal knowledge;

sometimes by the strangest of solecisms, the knowledge of external nature

being thought to convey a supreme capacity for judging within the sphere

of moral action and of moral needs. The thing to do is to put scepticism

on its trial, and rigorously to cross-examine it: allow none of its

assumptions; compel it to expound its formulæ; do not let it move a step

except with proof in its hand; bring it front to front with history; even

demand that it shall show the positive elements with which it proposes to

replace the mainstays it seems bent on withdrawing from the fabric of

modern society. The present assault, far from being destined to final

triumph, is a sign of a mental movement, unsteady, though of extreme

rapidity, but destined, perhaps, to elevate and strengthen the religion

that it sought to overthrow. “_In the meantime_,” he said, in closing this

branch of his address, “_I would recommend to you as guides in this

controversy, truth, charity, diligence, and reverence, which indeed may be

called the four cardinal virtues of all controversies, be they what they

may_.” This was followed by an ever-salutary reminder that man is the

crown of the visible creation, and that studies upon man—studies in the

largest sense of humanity, studies conversant with his nature, his works,

his duties and his destinies—these are the highest of all studies. As the

human form is the groundwork of the highest training in art, so those

mental pursuits are the highest which have man, considered at large, for

their object. Some excellent admonitions upon history and a simple, moving

benediction, brought the oration to an end.

Blue caps as well as red cheered fervently at the close, and some even of

those who had no direct interest in the main topics, and were not much or

not at all refreshed by his treatment of them, yet confessed themselves

sorry when the stream of fascinating melody ceased to flow. Then followed

luncheon in the university hall, where the principal, in proposing the

lord rector’s health, expressed the hope that he had not grudged the time

given to the serene, if dull, seclusion of academic things. “I only

quarrel with your word dull,” said Mr. Gladstone in reply. “Let me assure

you, gentlemen, nothing is so dull as political agitation.” By this time

it was four o’clock. Before six he was at St. Andrew’s Hall, confronting

an audience of some six thousand persons, as eager to hear as he was eager

to speak; and not many minutes had elapsed before they were as much aflame

as he, with the enormities of the Anglo-Turkish convention, the spurious

harbour in Cyprus, the wrongful laws about the press in India, the heavy

and unjust charges thrown upon the peoples of India, the baseless quarrel

picked with Shere Ali in Afghanistan, the record of ten thousand Zulus

slain for no other offence than their attempt to defend against our

artillery with their naked bodies their hearths and homes.

Once mentioning a well-known member of parliament who always showed fine

mettle on the platform, Mr. Gladstone said of him in a homely image, that

he never saw a man who could so quickly make the kettle boil. This was

certainly his own art here. For an hour and a half thus he held them, with

the irresistible spell of what is in truth the groundwork of every

political orator’s strongest appeal—from Athenians down to Girondins, from

Pericles to Webster, from Cicero to Gambetta—appeal to public law and

civil right and the conscience of a free and high-minded people. This

high-wrought achievement over, he was carried off to dine, and that same

night he wound up what a man of seventy hard-spent years might well call

“an overpowering day,” by one more address to an immense audience

assembled by the Glasgow corporation in the city hall, to whom he

expressed his satisfaction at the proof given by his reception in Glasgow

that day, that her citizens had seen no reason to repent the kindness

which had conferred the freedom of their city upon him fourteen years

before.

(M193) The audience in St. Andrew’s Hall at Glasgow was, we may presume,

like his audiences elsewhere, and the sources of his overwhelming power

were not hard to analyse, if one were in analytic humour. For one thing,

the speeches were rallying battle-cries, not sermons, and everybody knew

the great invisible antagonist with whom the orator before them was with

all his might contending. It was a gleaming array of the political facts

of a political indictment, not an aerial fabric of moral abstractions.

Nor, again, had the fashion in which Mr. Gladstone seized opinion and

feeling and personal allegiance in Scotland, anything in common with the

violent if splendid improvisations that made O’Connell the idol and the

master of passionate Ireland. One of the most telling speeches of them all

was the exposure of the government finance in the Edinburgh corn-exchange,

where for an hour and a half or more, he held to his figures of surplus

and deficit, of the yield of bushels to the acre in good seasons and bad,

of the burden of the income-tax, of the comparative burden per head of new

financial systems and old, with all the rigour of an expert accountant. He

enveloped the whole with a playful irony, such as a good-humoured master

uses to the work of clumsy apprentices, but of the paraphernalia of

rhetoric there is not a period nor a sentence nor a phrase. Fire is

suppressed. So far from being saturated with colour, the hue is almost

drab. Yet his audience were interested and delighted, and not for a moment

did he lose hold,—not even, as one observer puts it, “in the midst of his

most formidable statistics, nor at any point in the labyrinthine evolution

of his longest sentences.”

Let the conclusion be good or let it be bad, all was in groundwork and in

essence strictly on the plane and in the tongue of statesmanship, and

conformable to Don Pedro’s rule, “What need the bridge much broader than

the flood?”(359) It was Demosthenes, not Isocrates. It was the orator of

concrete detail, of inductive instances, of energetic and immediate

object; the orator confidently and by sure touch startling into

watchfulness the whole spirit of civil duty in a man; elastic and supple,

pressing fact and figure with a fervid insistence that was known from his

career and character to be neither forced nor feigned, but to be himself.

In a word, it was a man—a man impressing himself upon the kindled throngs

by the breadth of his survey of great affairs of life and nations, by the

depth of his vision, by the power of his stroke. Physical resources had

much to do with the effect; his overflowing vivacity, the fine voice and

flashing eye and a whole frame in free, ceaseless, natural and spontaneous

motion. So he bore his hearers through long chains of strenuous periods,

calling up by the marvellous transformations of his mien a strange

succession of images—as as if he were now a keen hunter, now some eager

bird of prey, now a charioteer of fiery steeds kept well in hand, and now

and again we seemed to hear the pity or dark wrath of a prophet, with the

mighty rushing wind and the fire running along the ground.

All this was Mr. Gladstone in Midlothian. To think of the campaign without

the scene, is as who should read a play by candle-light among the ghosts

of an empty theatre. When the climax came, it was found that Mr.

Gladstone’s tremendous projectiles had pounded the ministerial citadel to

the ground, and that he had a nation at his back. What had been vague

misgiving about Lord Beaconsfield grew into sharp certainty; shadows of

doubt upon policy at Constantinople or Cabul or the Cape, became

substantive condemnation; uneasiness as to the national finances turned to

active resentment; and above all, the people of this realm, who are a

people with rather more than their share of conscience at bottom, were led

to consider whether when all is said, there is not still a difference

between right and wrong even in the relations of states and the problems

of empire. It was this last trait that made the atmosphere in which both

speaker and his hearers drew their inspiration. It may be true, if we

will, that, as a great critic sardonically hints, “eloquence, without

being precisely a defect, is one of the worst dangers that can beset a

man.”(360) Yet after all, to disparage eloquence is to depreciate mankind;

and when men say that Mr. Gladstone and Midlothian were no better than a

resplendent mistake, they forget how many objects of our reverence stand

condemned by implication in their verdict; they have not thought out how

many of the faiths and principles that have been the brightest lamps in

the track of human advance they are extinguishing by the same unkind and

freezing breath. One should take care lest in quenching the spirit of

Midlothian, we leave sovereign mastery of the world to Machiavelli.

I need not here go through the long list of topics. As an attack upon

ministers Mr. Gladstone made out the upshot to be finance in confusion,

legislation in arrear, honour compromised by breach of public law, Russia

aggrandized and yet estranged, Turkey befriended, as they say, but sinking

every year, Europe restless and disturbed; in Africa the memory of

enormous bloodshed in Zululand, and the invasion of a free people in the

Transvaal; Afghanistan broken; India thrown back. He disclaimed all

fellowship with those who believe that the present state of society

permits us to make any vow of universal peace, and of renouncing in all

cases the policy of war. He enumerated the six principles that he thought

to be the right principles for us: to foster the strength of the empire by

just laws and by economy; to seek to preserve the world’s peace; to strive

to the uttermost to cultivate and maintain the principle of concert in

Europe; to avoid needless and entangling engagements; to see that our

foreign policy shall be inspired by such love of freedom as had marked

Canning, Palmerston, Russell; to acknowledge the equal right of all

nations. He denounced “the policy of denying to others the rights that we

claim ourselves” as untrue, arrogant, and dangerous. The revival of the

analogy of imperial Rome for the guidance of British policy he held up as

fundamentally unsound and practically ruinous. For have not modern times

established a sisterhood of nations, equal, independent, each of them

built up under the legitimate defence which public law affords to every

nation living within its own borders, and seeking to perform its own

affairs? He insisted that we should ever “remember the rights of the

savage, as we call him.” “Remember,” he exclaimed, “that the sanctity of

life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as

inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own. Remember that He

who has united you as human beings in the same flesh and blood, has bound

you by the law of mutual love; that that mutual love is not limited by the

shores of this island, is not limited by the boundaries of Christian

civilisation; that it passes over the whole surface of the earth, and

embraces the meanest along with the greatest in its unmeasured scope.”

It was this free movement and pure air that gave to the campaign its

marking character. The campaign had a soul in it. Men were recalled to

moral forces that they had forgotten. In his last speech at Edinburgh, Mr.

Gladstone’s closing words were these:—

I am sustained and encouraged, and I may almost say driven on in

public life, by the sentiment believed and entertained by me most

sincerely, whether erroneously or not, that the principles at

issue are much broader than those of ordinary contention.... I

humbly ask for confidence when I state my own belief that the

objects we have in view at the present time are objects connected

with the welfare of mankind upon the widest scale.... Whatever we

may say amidst the clash of arms and amidst the din of preparation

for warfare in time of peace—amidst all this yet there is going on

a profound mysterious movement, that, whether we will or not, is

bringing the nations of the civilised world, as well as the

uncivilised, morally as well as physically nearer to one another,

and making them more and more responsible before God for one

another’s welfare.... I do most heartily thank you for having

given me the credit of being actuated by the desire to consider in

public transactions the wider interests of mankind, and I venture

to assure you that so far as my objects and intentions are

concerned, objects of that nature, and nothing meaner or narrower,

will ever be taken as the pole-star of my life.

III

(M194) Two days after a departure from Glasgow which he calls royal, the

unwearied warrior made his way through scenes of endless stir all along

the journey, back to his temple of peace at Hawarden (December 8). There

he at once resumed his habits of daily industry, revising proofs of

speeches “reaching 255 pages!” placing books and reading them—Catullus,

Hodgson’s _Turgot_, somebody on Colour Sense, somebody else on Indian

finance, Jenkins on Atheism, Bunbury’s Geography—and so forth. Also,

“wrote on mythology and on economics; together rather too much. I am not

very fit for composition after 5 P.M.” Meanwhile Christmas arrived, and

then the eve of his birthday, with its reflections—reflections of one—

“Who though thus endued as with a sense

And faculty for storm and turbulence

Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans ...

Where what he most doth value must be won.”

_December 28._ ... And now I am writing in the last minutes of the

seventh decade of my life. This closing is a great event. The days

of our life are three score years and ten. It is hardly possible

that I should complete another decade. How much or how little of

this will God give me for the purposes dear to my heart? Ah! what

need have I of what I may term spiritual leisure, to be out of the

dust and heat and blast and strain, before I pass into the unseen

world. But perhaps this is a form of self-love. For the last three

and a half years I have been passing through a political

experience which is, I believe, without example in our

parliamentary history. I profess to believe it has been an

occasion when the battle to be fought was a battle of justice,

humanity, freedom, law, all in their first elements from the very

root, and all on a gigantic scale. The word spoken was a word for

millions, and for millions who for themselves cannot speak. If I

really believe this, then I should regard my having been morally

forced into this work as a great and high election of God. And

certainly I cannot but believe that He has given me special gifts

of strength on the late occasion, especially in Scotland.... Three

things I would ask of God over and above all the bounty which

surrounds me. This first, that I may escape into retirement. This

second, that I may speedily be enabled to divest myself of

everything resembling wealth. And the third—if I may—that when God

calls me He may call me speedily. To die in church appears to be a

great euthanasia, but not at a time to disturb worshippers. Such

are some of an old man’s thoughts, in whom there is still

something that consents not to be old.

Among the other books that he had been reading was the biography of one of

the closest of his friends, and in the last hours of this _annus

mirabilis_ he writes:—

Read the _Life of Bishop Wilberforce_. It is indeed an edifying

book. I knew him, admired him, loved him living. But the laying

out of his full character from early days onwards tells me much I

did not know, and lifts upwards my conception of him both in

greatness and in goodness.

Chapter VII. The Eve Of The Battle. (1879)

Perhaps no man has ever had a mighty influence over his fellows

without having the innate need to dominate, and this need usually

becomes the more imperious in proportion as the complications of

life make Self inseparable from a purpose which is not

selfish.—GEORGE ELIOT.

I

It is interesting to get what light we may on Mr. Gladstone’s frame of

mind between his first astounding triumph in Midlothian and the crowning

mercy of the general election. In October he had written to his son Henry

in India as to the probable date of the dissolution, that the government

had in his opinion “to choose between a minor or a less smashing defeat

now, or probably a more smashing one after the disclosure and real

presentation of their most discreditable finance, which can hardly be

delayed beyond the spring.” They had a chance of better trade, but the

likelihood also of worse revenue. The great reason against dissolution was

that they were in possession, and every day’s delay was another day’s

exercise of power. He then proceeds to mention his personal position:—

They are beginning to ask _who_ is to succeed if Beaconsfield is

displaced. Voices are coming up here and there, some of them very

confident, that the people will call for me. Nothing, however, but

a very general, a nearly unanimous, call from the liberals, with

the appearance of a sort of national will, could bring this demand

to a form in which it could or ought to be obeyed. The reasons

against my coming forward are of immense force; those against my

indicating any shadow of desire or willingness to come forward are

conclusive. Nor do I at present see any indication of a state of

things which would bring it about.

(M195) Before leaving Dalmeny at the end of his campaign, Mr. Gladstone

wrote a letter to Mr. Bright, a copy of which, along with the reply, and

two letters from Lord Wolverton, he left tied up in a separate packet.

_To Mr. Bright._

_Nov. 28, 1879._—You will probably recollect that during your last

visit to Hawarden you suggested to me in a walk the expectation or

the possibility that when the return of liberals to power seemed

probable, there might be a popular call for my resuming the

leadership of the party, and that I stated to you what I believed,

and you I think admitted, to be the reasons against it. These, if

I remember right, were four, and I attached to them differing

degrees of weight.

The first was that my health and strength would be unequal to the

strain at my time of life.

The second, that the work to be done was so formidable that hardly

any amount of courage availed to look it in the face.

The third, weightier than these, was that a liberal government

under me would be the object from the first of an amount and kind

of hostility, such as materially to prejudice its acts and weaken

or, in given circumstances, neutralise its power for good.

The fourth, that I was absolutely precluded under present

circumstances, being bound by the clearest considerations of

honour and duty to render a loyal allegiance to Granville as

leader of the party, and to Hartington as leader in the Commons,

and was entirely disabled from so much as entertaining any

proposition that could directly or indirectly tend to their

displacement.

There is a fifth consideration that now presses me, of which the

grounds had hardly emerged in regard to myself personally at the

time when we conversed together. Nothing could be so painful, I

may almost say so odious to me, as to force myself, or to be

forced, upon the Queen, under circumstances where the choice of

another from the ranks of the same party would save her from being

placed in a difficulty of that peculiar kind. This, it may be

said, belongs to the same category as my first and second

objections; but there it is.

The enthusiasm of Scotland is something wonderful. As to the

county of Midlothian, I doubt whether the well-informed tories

themselves in the least expect to win. We go to Taymouth on

Monday. I hope you are well and hearty and see cause to be

contented with the progress of opinion. The more I think about the

matter, the more strange and mysterious does it seem to me that

any party in this free nation should be found to sanction and

uphold policy and proceedings like those of the last two years in

particular. I have written this because I am desirous you should

have clearly before you the matter of my conversation with you,

and the means of verifying it.

_Mr. Bright to Mr. Gladstone._

_Rochdale, Dec. 12, 1879._—Perhaps I ought to have written to you

sooner to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 28th ult.,

but I preferred to let you get home before I wrote, and I was in

truth rather puzzled as to what I ought to say.

You, with sufficient accuracy, describe the purport of your

remarks during our conversation when I was with you a year ago. I

saw the difficulty, then in the future, now perhaps near upon us.

But it is one in which nothing can be done, and “a masterly

inactivity” seems the only wise course. If a break-up of the

present concern comes, the Queen will be advised to send, for

Granville or Hartington. The one sent for will accept and attempt

to form a government, or he may have grave doubts, and say that

you are the only man, etc.; he will consult the other, and will

consult you. Meantime there may be a “pronouncement” on the part

of the people, through the press and public meetings, which will

have a sudden effect on negotiations and on the views of the

Queen, and may decide the question. If such a time should come,

then you will have to say what is possible, and I hope you will be

able to decide rightly, and with reference solely to the interests

of the country and the service you owe to the crown as

representing the nation. You will act with a most strict honour to

Granville and Hartington, as I believe they will act to you. If,

as I hope for and believe, no selfish ambition will come in to

make mischief, the question will be determined in such a manner as

to content all honest men, and what is best for all will be done.

I am often asked as to the future. I reply only so as to say

nothing to add to the evident difficulty of the situation.

Your Scotch expedition has been one of discovery and of conquest.

The tory press and partizans are evidently astonished at it. The

government speakers have no new defence, and they want the past to

be forgotten. Mr. Smith, first lord, I see, entirely rejoices in

what has been done in South Africa, though “a few lives” have been

lost by it. This official life seems sorely to demoralise some

homely and decent people. I am fairly well so far during the

winter, but I seem feeble when I compare myself with your activity

and power.... We are to have meetings in Birmingham during

January. I should prefer the quiet of obscurity to these meetings.

I hope Mrs. Gladstone and your daughter have enjoyed their Scotch

trip and are well after it.

Five days later came Lord Wolverton’s report of the state of feeling on

these delicate topics in high places in London. He had seen Lord Granville

on the evening of the 16th:—

To most affectionate inquiries as to your health and powers, I

gave a most satisfactory account, and the conversation then went

to the question as to the effect which your recent triumphant

progress in Midlothian and the North had produced upon your mind.

I frankly said that you had in my opinion not anticipated such a

marked expression of public feeling, and that it had doubtless

tended to lead your mind to the consideration of the position of

the party, and to the fact that public opinion might call upon you

to an extent which no one could have looked for. I then (with

anxiety to convey what I know to be your desire) most earnestly

impressed upon Lord Granville that you had upon every occasion

when the subject was alluded to, prefaced all you had to say with

the strongest expressions of loyalty to Hartington and himself.

That I felt convinced that nothing would induce you to encourage,

or to even listen to, any attempt which others might make to

disturb the existing state of things as to the leadership, unless

the wish was very clearly expressed to you by Hartington and

himself, and you would demand full proof that their interests and

that of the party strongly pointed to the reconsideration of your

own position. I need hardly say that, though I felt it my duty to

take care that I did not understate your feelings, it was not

necessary to reassure Granville upon that point.

The conversation then went to the state of the party and its

present position. I learnt that a private meeting had been held at

Devonshire House in the morning. I believe Hartington, Granville,

Cardwell, Adam, and Harcourt were present. My _impression_ is that

the advice Adam gave as to the elections, was that “union in the

party at this moment would not be promoted by a change of front.”

I do not mean to say that the question of leadership was _actually

discussed_, but I _suspect_ the conversation turned somewhat upon

the point which you place “_third_” in your letter to Bright. To

sum it all up, I do not think you will at present be troubled by

any application to you from Granville and Hartington.(361)

The third point in the letter to Mr. Bright was the question whether a

liberal government under Mr. Gladstone would not be exposed to a special

degree of hostility, due to the peculiar antagonism that his personality

excited. In a later letter (December 20), Wolverton tells Mr. Gladstone

that in the conversation of the 16th, “Lord Granville raised the point you

made your third in your note to Bright, and that he did converse upon at

_some length_, evidently having real fears that many of our weak-kneed

ones would feel some alarm if Hartington went from the front _now_, and

that the tories would intensify this to the uttermost. I think this was

all.” Another sentence indicates Lord Wolverton’s own view:—

Lord Granville is not sanguine as to the future. As you know, he

is always inclined to “temporise”; this is his line now, and he is

perhaps right. You know my fear was that without your name in

front, the battle at the election would be fought at a great

disadvantage. But I see the immense difficulty of a change of

front _now_, even if they desired it and you consented to it. This

you also feel, I know.

To all this Mr. Gladstone replied to Wolverton as follows:—

_Hawarden, December 18, 1879._—I thank you much for your letter.

What you report yourself to have said is quite satisfactory to me.

If Granville said more than you had mentioned, anything that fell

from him would be acceptable to me. When I saw your envelope, I

felt a dread lest the contents should be more substantive; a

relief came on reading them. But these communications are useful,

as they give distinctness to ideas, and through ideas to

intentions. I may state mine as follows: 1. My ears are shut

against all the world, except it were Granville and Hartington. 2.

And even to them unless they spoke together, and in clear and

decisive language. 3. They are the judges whether to speak, as

well as when to speak. But as an individual, I am of opinion that

there is not a case for their speaking _now_. 4. Were they to

speak now, and as I have defined above, I should then say let us

have nothing more than a formula, and let the substance of it be

that by the nature of things no man in my position could make

beforehand an absolute renunciation, and that the leadership in

the next parliament must, like everything else, be considered in

connection with what may appear at the dissolution to be the sense

of the country, but that my action individually has been and will

continue to be that of a follower of Lord Granville and Lord

Hartington. One thing I would ask of you as a fast friend. If you

think that in anything I fall short by omission or commission of

perfect loyalty as a member of the party, I beg you to tell me.

II

As usual with him, these grave political preoccupations were not

engrossing, but only a part of the day’s task. He carried on a pretty

profuse correspondence, he worked hard on his favourite diversion of

arranging books and papers, he gave much thought and time to estate

matters with his eldest son, with him too he felled now a chestnut, now a

sycamore; he corrected the proofs of his speeches and wrote an article for

Mr. Knowles; he read books and articles about Eleusis, and the Hebrew

migration from Egypt, and the Olympian system, and Newman on the

Eirenicon, and Westcott on St. John, and somebody else upon St. Thomas

Aquinas. For two or three days he was partially disabled by “a low

face-ache: the reaction after heavy pressure, under which I received from

the mercy of God such remarkable support.” In the middle of January

alarming accounts came from his sister Helen, who lay dying at Cologne.

Thither he sped with his eldest brother and his sister-in-law. They found

life fast ebbing, and four days after their arrival the end came, in the

midst of pious exercises and affectionate care. They were satisfied that

she had been “freely restored to the unity of spirit and the bond of

peace,” and had died not in the actual Roman communion. A few days after

his return home he records: “Wrote a long memorandum of the evidence in

regard to dear Helen’s religious profession.” The remains they bore to

Fasque, and by the end of the month he was again at Hawarden, once more at

work with his eldest son upon the “accumulated disorder,” and the rest of

the round of his familiar employments. Among other things he read Cowper’s

_Task_—“the fifth book very noble in its moral strain”; and another entry

will interest many,—“_Feb. 15._—Read the biography of noble Dora Pattison.

How by reflex action it stings.... Yet even to her (like Bishop Butler),

death was terrible.” “He was haunted,” he writes, “with recollections of

Sister Dora.” Then after a Sunday passed in church exercises, and

“skimming many theological books,” on February 23 he “left Hawarden with a

heavy heart.”

He quickly found himself in the London whirlpool, attending conclaves of

his political friends, dining out, seeing Irving in the _Merchant of

Venice_ (“his best, I think”), speaking once or twice in the House, and

twice at London meetings in St. Pancras and Marylebone, where the popular

enthusiasm made even his most hardened critics begin to suspect that the

tide had really turned since the days when the Londoners mobbed him in the

street and broke his windows.

Chapter VIII. The Fall Of Lord Beaconsfield. (1880)

In causa facili cuivis licet esse disertum,

Et minimae vires frangere quassa valent;

Subruere est arces et stantia moenia virtus.

—Ov. _Trist._, iii. XI. 21.

In an easy case any man can plead, and against shattered walls the

puniest strength prevails; ’tis the overthrow of standing towers

and frowning ramparts that tests manhood.

I

At last one day (March 8) when Mr. Gladstone was “writing a little on

Homer,” he heard the fated news that the dissolution was announced. Lord

Beaconsfield published the famous letter to the lord lieutenant of

Ireland, and in deep accents and sonorous sentences endeavoured to make

home rule the issue of the election. Shrewd politicians, with time to

reflect, found it not easy to divine why the government had chosen the

particular moment. It might be, as some supposed, that they thought the

opposition had lately got into bad odour with the country by coquetting

with home rulers, as shown by the elections at Liverpool and Southwark.

But, in fact, little importance was to be attached to these two defeats of

the opposition, for Liverpool had always been conservative, and Southwark

was thoroughly disorganised by liberal divisions. “The general opinion

seems to be,” says Speaker Brand (Mar. 15), “that the opposition may gain

slightly at the general election, but not to an extent to break down

altogether the conservative majority.”

In what was in effect his election address, Lord Beaconsfield warned the

country that a danger, in its ultimate results scarcely less disastrous

than pestilence and famine, distracted Ireland. A portion of its

population was endeavouring to sever the constitutional tie that united it

to Great Britain in that bond which was favourable to the power and

prosperity of both. “It is to be hoped,” he went on, “that all men of

light and leading will resist this destructive doctrine. The strength of

this action depends on the unity of feeling which should pervade the

United Kingdom and its widespread dependencies. The first duty of an

English minister should be to consolidate that co-operation which renders

irresistible the community educated, as our own, in an equal love of

liberty and law. And yet there are some who challenge the expediency of

the imperial character of this realm. Having attempted and failed to

enfeeble our colonies by their policy of decomposition, they may perhaps

now recognise in the disintegration of the United Kingdom, a mode which

will not only accomplish, but precipitate their purpose.... Rarely in this

century has there been an occasion more critical. The power of England and

the peace of Europe will largely depend upon the verdict of the

country.... Peace rests on the presence, not to say the ascendency of

England in the councils of Europe. Even at this moment the doubt supposed

to be inseparable from popular elections, if it does not diminish,

certainly arrests her influence, and is a main reason for not delaying an

appeal to the national voice.”

To this manifesto Mr. Gladstone, with his usual long pains in the drafting

of such pieces, prepared his counterblast. He went with direct force to

what Lord Beaconsfield had striven to make the centre of his appeal:—

In the electioneering address which the prime minister has issued,

an attempt is made to work upon your fears by dark allusions to

the repeal of the union and the abandonment of the colonies.

Gentlemen, those who endangered the union with Ireland were the

party that maintained there an alien church, an unjust land law,

and franchises inferior to our own; and the true supporters of the

union are those who firmly uphold the supreme authority of

parliament, but exercise that authority to bind the three nations

by the indissoluble tie of liberal and equal laws. As to the

colonies, liberal administrations set free their trade with all

the world, gave them popular and responsible government, undertook

to defend Canada with the whole strength of the empire, and

organised the great scheme for uniting the several settlements of

British North America into one dominion, to which, when we quitted

office in 1866, it only remained for our successors to ask the

ready assent of parliament. It is by these measures that the

colonies have been bound in affection to the empire, and the

authors of them can afford to smile at baseless insinuations.

Gentlemen, the true purpose of these terrifying insinuations is to

hide from view the acts of the ministry, and their effect upon the

character and condition, of the country.

To those ministerial misdeeds he proceeded to draw the attention of the

electors, though he declared with threescore years and ten upon his head,

how irksome he felt the task. “At home,” he said, “the ministers have

neglected legislation, aggravated the public distress by continual shocks

to confidence which is the life of enterprise, augmented the public

expenditure and taxation for purposes not merely unnecessary but

mischievous, and plunged the finances, which were handed over to them in a

state of singular prosperity, into a series of deficits unexampled in

modern times.” After shooting this heavy bolt he looked abroad. “Abroad

they have strained, if they have not endangered, the prerogative by gross

misuse, and have weakened the empire by needless wars, unprofitable

extensions, and unwise engagements, and have dishonoured it in the eyes of

Europe by filching the island of Cyprus from the Porte under a treaty

clause distinctly concluded in violation of the treaty of Paris, which

formed part of the international law of Christendom.” As to the domestic

legislation of the future, it was in the election address of the prime

minister a perfect blank. It was true that in default of reform in this

kingdom, the nation was promised the advantages of “presence, not to say

ascendency,” in the councils of Europe.

There is indeed, he said, an ascendency in European councils to

which Great Britain might reasonably aspire, by steadily

sustaining the character of a Power no less just than strong;

attached to liberty and law, jealous of peace, and therefore

opposed to intrigue and aggrandizement, from whatever quarter they

may come; jealous of honour, and therefore averse to the

clandestine engagements which have marked our two latest years. To

attain a moral and envied ascendency such as this, is indeed a

noble object for any minister or any empire.

II

Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Acton on March 14:—

On Tuesday I am to set out for Midlothian and my _last_ general

election. My general elections have been 1832, 1835, 1837, 1841,

1847, 1852, 1857, 1859, 1865, 1874, and now 1880—what a list! I

believe that among the official men of this century I am now

beaten only by Lord Palmerston in the length of my career in the

House of Commons. A clear answer from the nation, a clear answer

in the right sense, and a decisive accession of the liberal party

to power without me, this is what I hope and pray. I think that

the experts and the party generally are pretty sanguine. None

doubt that the government are to lose; a few doubt whether they

will be weaker than liberals and home rulers; very many whether

weaker than liberals alone. All agree that Scotland will do its

duty.

On the morning of the 16th, Mr. Gladstone started. Hundreds of people grew

to thousands long before his train left King’s Cross, and all the way to

Edinburgh he found the same vivid interest and acclamation on the east

coast that had greeted him in November on the west. At Grantham the mayor

and a crowd estimated by nimble statisticians at two thousand, awaited him

at the station; at York the lord mayor and six thousand; at

Newcastle-on-Tyne too many thousands to count. The little addresses made

at these stopping-places were described as a sort of table of contents of

the more elaborate speeches to be delivered in Midlothian itself. As he

crossed the Tweed the fervour did not cool, and when at last he reached

Edinburgh, he encountered a scene almost as wonderful as that which had

met him four months before.

Again he was the guest at Dalmeny, and again he renewed his prodigious

exertions amid a vehemence of admiration and delight that became more

intense as the days passed. Here is an entry or two from the diary:—

Travelled forty miles and delivered three speeches of forty-five

or fifty minutes each, at Juniper Green, Colinton, and Mid Calder.

Enthusiasm unabated.... Corrected and despatched proofs of

_Religion, Achaian and Semitic_. _Mar. 21, Palm Sunday._—Drove to

Edinburgh cathedral; service 11-1-½. Free St. George’s in the

afternoon. Walked out seven miles with Lord Rosebery. 22.—To

Edinburgh (after working as usual on my papers) at 1.15. Short

complimentary address at liberal club. Then to George Street and

on to the city election committee; short speech. Then by train to

Gilmerton; spoke forty-five or fifty minutes; next after tea to

Loanhead, and after more tea, spoke again for some time on Russian

aggrandizement. Everywhere the greatest enthusiasm. Mr. C[owan]

gave me interesting details about Magyar and Bohemian students.

Back to Dalmeny at 7.20.

And so day after day did panting time toil after him in vain. Many of us

have known long spells of hard electioneering—but not in one’s

seventy-first year, with every single word as it fell into print on the

morrow watched with the lynx eyes of party scrutiny, and all loaded with

the heaviest personal responsibility.

(M196) On March 24 the parliament was dissolved. On March 30 the first

elections took place, and the first pollings on the day following. From

the early returns it was pretty evident that the liberals would have a

majority. On the first day they made a net gain of fifteen seats in

sixty-nine constituencies. By the end of the fourth day a total net gain

of fifty seats was recorded. The ministerial majority was already gone.

The county elections brought new surprises, and by the end of the second

week the liberal gains were reckoned at ninety-nine.

Mr. Gladstone’s fortnight of discourse ended on the 2nd of April. “So,” he

records, “ends the second series of the speeches in which I have hammered

with all my poor might at the fabric of the present tory power. _April

3._—Cut down a Spanish chestnut in Dalmeny Park by order. The day was

quiet, but my papers and letters and the incoming news made it busy. It

seemed as if the arm of the Lord had bared itself for work that He has

made His own. 4.—A lull in election news, but the reflections on what has

passed are overpowering.” Here are his closing words, and they are not

without historic import:—

The great trial, gentlemen, proceeds. You have great forces

arrayed against you. I say “You”; if you will permit me to

identify myself with you, I will say, We have great forces arrayed

against us, and apparently we cannot make our appeal to the

aristocracy, excepting that which must never be forgotten, the

distinguished and enlightened minority of that body of able,

energetic, patriotic, liberal-minded men, whose feelings are with

those of the people, and who decorate and dignify their rank by

their strong sympathy with the entire community. With that

exception, in all the classes of which I speak, I am sorry to say

we cannot reckon upon what is called the landed interest, we

cannot reckon upon the clergy of the established church either in

England or in Scotland, subject again and always in each case to

the most noble exceptions—exceptions, I trust, likely to enlarge

and multiply from day to day. On none of these can we place our

trust. We cannot reckon on the wealth of the country, nor upon the

rank of the country, nor upon the influence which rank and wealth

usually bring. In the main these powers are against us, for

wherever there is a close corporation, wherever there is a spirit

of organised monopoly, wherever there is a narrow and sectional

interest apart from that of the country, and desiring to be set up

above the interest of the public, there, gentlemen, we, the

liberal party, have no friendship and no tolerance to expect.

Above all these, and behind all these, there is something greater

than these—there is the nation itself. This great trial is now

proceeding before the nation. The nation is a power hard to rouse,

but when roused, harder still and more hopeless to resist.... I

figure to myself those who have constituted the majority of the

late House of Commons as the persons arraigned, and the

constituencies of the country as those who are called together in

the solemn order of the constitution to hear the evidence, and to

pronounce the verdict. That evidence has been pretty largely

given. That verdict we await. We have none of the forms of a

judicial trial. There are no peers in Westminster Hall, there are

no judges on the woolsack; but if we concentrate our minds upon

the truth of the case as apart from its mere exterior, it is a

grander and a more august spectacle than was ever exhibited either

in Westminster Hall or in the House of Lords. For a nation, called

to undertake a great and responsible duty,—a duty which is to

tell, as we are informed from high authority, on the peace of

Europe and on the destinies of England,—has found its interests

mismanaged, its honour tarnished, and its strength burdened and

weakened by needless, mischievous, unauthorised, and unprofitable

engagements, and it has resolved that this state of things shall

cease, and that right and justice shall be done.(362)

(M197) Mr. Gladstone was already member for Leeds. So far back as the

March of 1878 Sir James Kitson had written to ask him to become a

candidate for the great city of the West Siding, but Mr. Gladstone

declined the proposal. Then a deputation came to him in Harley Street, and

he made them a speech on the Eastern question, but avoided any reference

to the subject which they had come to handle. The stout Yorkshiremen were

not to be baffled, and Mr. Gladstone, nominated without action of his own,

was now returned by the unprecedented vote of 24,622.(363) He was right in

calling the Leeds election “one of the most conspicuous and imposing

victories ever won for the liberal cause.”(364) Still public interest was

concentrated upon Midlothian, and the might with which he prevailed over

men’s minds there, was admitted by his foes to be the most impressive

tribute ever paid to political man and his vast powers as orator and

popular leader. In Midlothian the crusade had been opened, and in

Midlothian its triumph was sealed.

The poll was declared in Edinburgh soon after seven on the evening of

April 5, and a few minutes later the result, amid every demonstration of

extravagant delight from the triumphant multitude as they rushed away from

the courthouse, was made known to Mr. Gladstone at a house in George

Street taken by Lord Rosebery for the occasion. A couple of candles were

brought from the dining-table and held on each side of him, so that his

face might be seen, as from the balcony he spoke a few words of

thanks.(365) “Drove into Edinburgh about four,” Mr. Gladstone records. “At

7.20 Mr. Reid brought the figures of the poll—Gladstone, 1579; Dalkeith,

1368; quite satisfactory. Soon after, 15,000 people being gathered in

George Street, I spoke very shortly from the windows, and Rosebery

followed, excellently well. Home about 10. Wonderful and nothing less has

been the disposing guiding hand of God in all this matter.” The majority

was not of great dimensions, but it was adequate and sufficient, and the

victory was celebrated half through the night with bonfires,

illuminations, fireworks, and all the other fashions of signifying public

joy, throughout Scotland and the north of England. The astrologers,

meteorologists, and prognosticators of Pall Mall and Fleet Street felt

that this time at least they had not rightly plumbed the depths of the

democratic seas.

Lord Beaconsfield was staying alone at that time in the historic halls of

Hatfield, their master being then abroad. There, hour by hour and day

after day, news of the long train of disasters reached him. From one in

confidential relations with him, and who saw much of him at this moment, I

have heard that the fallen minister, who had counted on a very different

result, now faced the ruin of his government, the end of his career, and

the overwhelming triumph of his antagonist, with an unclouded serenity and

a greatness of mind, worthy of a man who had known high fortunes and

filled to the full the measure of his gifts and his ambitions.

III

(M198) Some writers complained that the language of Midlothian was as

solemn as if the verdict of the country were about to settle the issues of

the battle of Armageddon. It was not exactly the battle of Armageddon, but

the election of 1880 was, at any rate, one of the most remarkable in party

history. For one thing, activity was unprecedented, and Mr. Gladstone’s

fiery spirit seemed to have spread over the country. A list prepared by

the liberal whips, and preserved by Mr. Gladstone, describes the new

parliament as composed of 347 liberals, 240 conservatives, and 65

nationalists. Looking at the divisions of the three kingdoms, we find

England and Wales contributing 282 liberals against 207 tories; Scotland

52 liberals against 8 tories; and Ireland, 13 liberals against 25 tories.

The Irish nationalists were of two shades: 35 followers of Mr. Parnell, 26

moderate home rulers who followed Mr. Shaw, and 4 dubious. In England and

Wales therefore the liberal majority was 75, and in Scotland it was 44.

Turning to electoral aspects with special social significance, we note

that of the county constituencies 63 sent liberal members as against 124

tories. In the metropolis, as a whole, the government gained one seat and

lost four, with the result that London was represented in the new

parliament by 8 tories and 14 liberals. One victory of real importance was

won by the government, for they beat the liberal by two to one in the City

of London, the heart and centre of many of those powerful influences that

Mr. Gladstone had described in his last speech in the Midlothian election

as determined foes from whom the liberal party had no tolerance to expect.

“The tory party,” Mr. Gladstone noted, “has never had a majority on any

one of its own four dissolutions—1852, 1859, 1868, 1880.”

_Mr. Gladstone to Lord Rosebery._

_Hawarden, April 10, 1880._—... I should like to write about these

marvellous events, but how can I? The romance of politics which

befel my old age in Scotland, has spread over the whole land. You

remember perhaps my series of fractions, comparing daily the net

gains with the gross returns. The first day began with 1/13 or

thereabouts. It had got to 1/10 or 1/9 when we left you. It is now

1/6. How idle to talk about the caprice of household suffrage; the

counties have given quite as remarkable results as the boroughs. I

was stunned at the end of the first night; and I am still out of

breath from the endeavour to keep up with the rapidity of events.

I suppose the conservative Scotch will fill the first class

compartment, or nearly so, but no more. Wales, I beg you to

observe, has not (as I think) been behind Scotland in her

achievements. Most of the wretched percentage of compensation on

“tory gains” on the general list is wretched in quality as well as

quantity, and consists of the _district_ places. To scarcely one

of these gains can they point with any keen satisfaction. As to

Midlothian the moral effect, before and after, has I think

surpassed all our hopes. The feeling until it was over (since

which there has justly been a centring of thought on E.

Lancashire) was so fastened on it, that it was almost like one of

the occasions of old when the issue of battle was referred to

single combat. The great merit of it I apprehend lay in the

original conception, which I take to have been yours, and to

overshadow even your operations towards the direct production of

the result. But one thing it cannot overshadow in my mind: the

sense of the inexpressible aid and comfort derived day by day from

your considerate ever-watchful care and tact. [_Latin not to be

identified._] Let me apply these same words (calling on you for a

translation if needful) to Lady Rosebery. I should feel profoundly

ashamed of the burdens we brought you, had I not seen how truly

they were borne in the spirit, which alone makes all burdens

light. It is a very pleasant subject of reflection to me that the

riveting effect of companionship in a struggle like this, does not

pass away with the struggle itself but abides.

Our stratagem for a quiet exit was on the whole successful. At

Carlisle there was perfect quiet. At most of the few places where

the train stopped there were a score or two of people and no more.

At Hawarden, arriving between 9 and 10 A.M., we cheated the

triumphal preparations; but made amends by carrying them over to

Herbert the following day. We now become eager for the East

Worcestershire election and are sanguine about my son’s return. At

Warrington we got over the three hours wonderfully, and succeeded

in sleeping, though not exactly μαλθακῶς κατακείμενος through a

succession of the most violent and unearthly noises, banging,

crashing, roaring, squealing, that a railway station traversed by

innumerable goods’ trains can supply..... I will not trouble you

with, more words of thanks, I feel them so poor and idle.

Two days later Mr. Gladstone wrote to the Duke of Argyll:—

_April 12, 1880._—All our heads are still in a whirl from the

great events of the last fortnight, which have given joy, I am

convinced, to the large majority of the civilised world. The

downfall of Beaconsfieldism is like the vanishing of some vast

magnificent castle in an Italian romance. It is too big, however,

to be all taken in at once. Meantime, while I inwardly rejoice, I

am against all outward signs, beyond such as are purely local, of

exultation, for they are not chivalrous, and they would tend to

barbarise political warfare. We may be well content to thank God

in silence. But the outlook is tremendous! The gradual unravelling

of the tangled knots of the foreign and Indian policy will indeed

be a task for skilled and strong hands, if they can be found; and

these can hardly be found such as the case requires.

Chapter IX. The Second Ministry. (1880)

There is indeed one great and critical act, the responsibility for

which falls momentarily or provisionally on the Sovereign: it is

the dismissal of an existing Ministry, and the appointment of a

new one. This act is usually performed with the aid drawn from

authentic manifestations of public opinion, mostly such as are

obtained through the votes or conduct of the House of

Commons.—GLADSTONE.

The day after the declaration of the poll in Midlothian, Mr. Gladstone and

his wife and daughter quitted Dalmeny, and made their way homewards, as we

have just seen.

_April 6._—A heavy day with post, incessant telegrams, and

preparations for departure. We drove, however, to Linlithgow, saw

the beautiful church and fine old castle, and I made a short

non-polemical speech to the people.... Careful concealment of the

plans of departure until well on in the evening. Left this most

hospitable of all houses at 8.30, and got into the 9.25, escaping

by secrecy all demonstration except from some 200 who seemed to

gather on the instant. Travelled all night, and had time to

ruminate on the great hand of God, so evidently displayed.

_April 7, Wed._—After three hours of successful sleep amid

frightful unearthly noises at Warrington, we went off to Chester

and Hawarden, saluted enthusiastically, but escaping all

crowds.... Set to work at once on a mass of letters and papers....

The day occupied with papers, letters, and telegrams, and reading

my Vatican tracts.... The triumph grows and grows; to God be the

praise.

_April 9._—Letters passed 100. _April 10, Sat._—Church, 8-½ A.M.

Wrote to ... Postal arrivals, 140; terrible! Wolverton arrived to

dinner, and I spent the evening in full conversation with him. He

threatens a request from Granville and Hartington. Again, I am

stunned, but God will provide.

_April 11, Sun._—Church, 8-½ A.M., Holy Communion; 11 A.M. Wrote

etc. Read _Gospel for the 19th Century_. Examined liturgical

books. Further conversation with Wolverton on the London

reception, on Leeds, and on the great matter of all. _April

12._—Wolverton went off in the morning, and is to see Granville

and Hartington to-day. Read Brugsch’s _Hist. Egypt_. _Guy

Mannering._ Wrote some memoranda of names applicable to this

occasion. Hard day. But all are pretty hard in this my

“retirement.” _April 13._—Began tentatively an anonymous letter on

the Conservative Collapse,(366) really drawn forth by the letter

of Lord Bath.... Read _Guy Mannering_ and that most heavenly man

George Herbert.... _April 16._—Mr. Bright came over from

Llandudno, and we spent nearly all the time in conversing on the

situation. He is most kind and satisfactory. _April 17._—Finished

my letter and revision of it. Cut down a sycamore with W. H. G.

_April 18, Sun._—Holy Communion 8 A.M.; morning service and

evening. Wrote to [17 letters]. _Read Divine Veracity or Divine

Justice_, Caird on the _Philosophy of Religion_. _April 19._—A

reluctant goodbye before 1. London at 6.30. A secret journey, but

people gathered at Chester station and Euston. I vaguely feel that

this journey is a plunge out of an atmosphere of peace into an

element of disturbance. May He who has of late so wonderfully

guided, guide me still in the critical days about to come. _April

20._—This blank day is, I think, probably due to the Queen’s

hesitation or reluctance, which the ministers have to find means

of [covering].

One joyous element in these days at Hawarden was the arrival first of the

youngest son of the house, then of the eldest, the latter of them having

won a seat in Worcestershire, and the former having failed in Middlesex,

after a display of qualities that delighted his family and friends much

more than mere victory could have done. “About one,” Mr. Gladstone marks

on the 8th, “Herbert entered in triumph. We were there, and could not but

be much moved.” And on the 14th, “Willy made his triumphal entry at four,

and delivered a very good speech. Neville Lyttelton, too, spoke well from

the carriage.” As Lord Acton wrote to Miss Gladstone about Middlesex, “The

picture of the young, untried son bursting into sudden popularity, and

turning men’s thoughts from the absorbing exploits of his father, adds an

affecting domestic feature to that great biography. That meeting at

Hawarden, after such a revolution and such a growth, is a thing I cannot

think of without emotion.” A little later, when Mr. Gladstone’s option of

Midlothian left the Leeds seat vacant, his son was elected without

opposition to fill it. Mr. Gladstone’s letters on this operation, which

had its delicacies, are an excellent example of his habits of careful and

attentive judgment in handling even secondary affairs.

II

(M199) From the moment when it became clear that Lord Beaconsfield would

be swept out of office, it was just as clear to sensible men that only one

successor was possible. It was Mr. Gladstone, as everybody knew and said,

who had led and inspired the assault. A cabinet without him would hold its

councils without the most important of the influences on which it

depended. If the majorities that carried the election could have been

consulted on the choice of a minister, nobody doubted upon whom with

unanimity their choice would fall. Even those who most detested the

result, even those who held that a load of anxiety would be lifted from

the bosoms of many liberals of official rank if they were to hear of Mr.

Gladstone’s definite retirement from public life, still pronounced that it

was Mr. Gladstone’s majority, and that was what the contributors to that

majority intended to vote for was, above all else, his return to office

and his supremacy in national affairs. If he would not lay down his power,

such persons said, it was best for everybody that he should exercise it

openly, regularly, and responsibly as head of the government.(367) The

very fact that he had ceased to be the leader of the opposition five years

before, was turned into an argument for his responsibility now; for it was

his individual freedom that had enabled him to put forth all his strength,

without any of that management and reserve that would have been needed in

one who was titular leader of a party, as well as real leader of the

nation. The victory would have been shorn of half its glory if any other

chief had been given to the party. In short, no minister, not Pitt in

1784, nor Grey in 1831, nor Peel ten years later, nor Palmerston in 1855,

was ever summoned by more direct and personal acclaim. Whatever liberty of

choice the theory of our constitution assigned to the Queen, in practice

this choice did not now exist. It was true that in the first of his

Midlothian speeches Mr. Gladstone had used these words, “I hope the

verdict of the country will give to Lord Granville and Lord Hartington the

responsible charge of its affairs.”(368) But events had wrought a

surprise, and transformed the situation.

Some, indeed, there were whom a vision of another kind possessed; a vision

of the moral grandeur that would attend his retirement after putting

Apollyon and his legions to flight, and planting his own hosts in triumph

in the full measure of their predominance. Some who loved him, might still

regretfully cherish for him this heroic dream. Retirement might indeed

have silenced evil tongues; it would have spared him the toils of many

turbid and tempestuous years. But public life is no idyll. Mr. Gladstone

had put himself, by exertions designed for public objects, into a position

from which retreat to private ease would have been neither unselfish nor

honourable. Is it not an obvious test of true greatness in a statesman,

that he shall hold popularity, credit, ascendency and power such as Mr.

Gladstone now commanded, as a treasure to be employed with regal profusion

for the common good, not guarded in a miser’s strong-box? For this outlay

of popularity the coming years were to provide Mr. Gladstone with

occasions only too ample.

If retreat was impossible, then all the rest was inevitable. And it is

easy to guess the course of his ruminations between his return from

Midlothian and his arrival in Harley Street. Mr. Gladstone himself,

looking back seventeen years after, upon his refusal in 1880 to serve in a

place below the first, wrote: “I conceive that I was plainly right in

declining it, for had I acted otherwise, I should have placed the facts of

the case in conflict with its rights, and with the just expectations of

the country. Besides, as the head of a five years’ ministry, and as still

in full activity, I should have been strangely placed as the subordinate

of one twenty years my junior, and comparatively little tested in public

life.”

As the diary records, on Monday, April 12, Lord Wolverton left Hawarden,

and was to see the two liberal leaders the same day. He did so, and

reported briefly to his chief at night:—

I hope the Plimsoll matter(369) is at an end. The clubs to-night

think that Lord Beaconsfield will meet parliament, and that when

the time comes, if asked, he will advise that Hartington should be

sent for. I do not believe either. I have seen Lord Granville and

Hartington; both came here upon my arrival, and Adam with them.

Lord Granville hopes you may be in London on Friday. I told him I

thought you would be. He has gone to Walmer, and will come up on

Friday. He has a good deal to think of in the meantime as to “the

position of the party.” I need not say more than this, as it

embraces the whole question, which he _now quite appreciates_....

Nothing could be more cordial and kind than Granville and

Hartington, but I hardly think till to-day they _quite_ realised

the _position_, which I confess seems to me as clear as the sun at

noon. They will neither of them speak to any one till Friday, when

Lord Granville hopes to see you. Adam is much pleased with your

kind note to him. He has gone home till Friday. It is well to be

away just now, for the gossip and questioning is unbearable.

Acknowledging this on the following day (April 13), Mr. Gladstone says to

Lord Wolverton:—