(Born 1809)
[Illustration: Axes. [TN]]
William Ewart Gladstone, statesman, orator, and author, was born in
Rodney Street, Liverpool, on December 29, 1809. He is the fourth son of
Sir John Gladstone (1764-1851), a well-known, and it might almost be
said a famous, Liverpool merchant, who sat for some years in Parliament,
and was a devoted friend and supporter of George Canning. Mr. Gladstone
is of Scotch descent, on both sides, and has declared more than once in
a public speech that the blood that runs in his veins is exclusively
Scottish. He was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford. He
became a student at Oxford in 1829, and graduated as a double
first-class, in 1831. He had distinguished himself greatly as a speaker
in the Oxford Union Debating Society, and had before that time written
much in the _Eton Miscellany_, which indeed he helped to found. He
appears to have begun his career as a strong opponent of all advanced
measures of political reform. In the Oxford Union he proposed a vote of
censure on the government of Lord Grey for introducing the great Reform
Bill which was carried in 1832, and on the Duke of Wellington, because
of his having yielded to the claims for Catholic emancipation. He also
opposed a motion in favor of immediate emancipation of the slaves in the
West Indian islands. He soon became known as a young man of promise, who
would be able to render good service to the Conservative party in the
great struggle which seemed likely to be forced upon them--a struggle,
as many thought, for their very existence. It was a time of intense
political emotion. Passion and panic alike prevailed. The first great
"leap in the dark" had been taken; the Reform Bill was carried, the
sceptre of power had passed away from the aristocracy and the privileged
ranks to the middle and lower middle classes. The Conservative party
were looking eagerly out for young men of promise to stiffen their ranks
in the new parliament, the first elected under the Reform Bill, the
first which the middle class had their due share in creating; the first
in which such cities as Manchester and Liverpool and Birmingham were
allowed to have representation.
Mr. Gladstone was invited to contest the burgh of Newark in the
Conservative interest, and he had the support of the great Newcastle
family. He stood for Newark, and he was elected. He delivered his maiden
speech on a subject connected with the great movement for the
emancipation of the West Indian slaves; but he seems to have confined
himself mainly to a defence of the manner in which his father's estates
were managed, the course of the debate having brought out some charge
against the management of the elder Gladstone's possessions in one of
the West Indian islands. The new orator appears to have made a decided
impression on the House of Commons. His manner, his voice, his diction,
his fluency were alike the subject of praise. Mr. Gladstone evidently
continued to impress the House of Commons with a sense of his great
parliamentary capacity. We get at this fact rather obliquely; for we do
not hear of his creating any great sensation in debate; and to this day
some very old members of the House insist that for a long time he was
generally regarded as merely a fluent speaker, who talked like one
reading from a book. But on the other hand, we find that he is described
by Macaulay, in 1839, as "the rising hope" of the "stern and unbending
Tories," and the whole tone of Macaulay's essay--a criticism of
Gladstone's first serious attempt at authorship, his book on the
relations between church and state--shows that the critic treats the
author as a young man of undoubted mark and position in the House of
Commons.
[Illustration: Hawarden Castle, the home of Gladstone.]
In December, 1834, Sir Robert Peel appointed Gladstone to the office of
a Junior Lord of the Treasury. In the next year Peel, who was quick to
appreciate the great abilities and the sound commercial knowledge of his
new recruit, gave to him the more important post of Under-secretary for
the Colonies. Gladstone looked up to Peel with intense admiration. There
was much to draw the two men together. Knowledge of finance, thorough
understanding and firm grasp of the principles on which a nation's
business must be conducted--perhaps, it may be added, a common origin in
the middle class--these points of resemblance might well have become
points of attraction. But there were other and still higher sympathies
to bring them close. The elder and the younger man were alike earnest,
profoundly earnest; filled with conscience in every movement of their
political and private lives; a good deal too earnest and serious,
perhaps, for most of the parliamentary colleagues by whom they were
surrounded. Mr. Gladstone always remained devoted to Peel, and knew him
perhaps more thoroughly and intimately than any other man was privileged
to do. Peel went out of office very soon after he had made Mr. Gladstone
Under-secretary for the Colonies. Lord John Russell had brought forward
a series of motions on the ominous subject of the Irish Church, and Peel
was defeated and resigned. It is almost needless to say that Gladstone
went with him. Peel came back again in office in 1841, on the fall of
the Melbourne administration, and Mr. Gladstone became Vice-president of
the Board of Trade and Master of the Mint, and was at the same time
sworn in a member of the Privy Council. In 1843 he became President of
the Board of Trade. Early in 1845 he resigned his office because he
could not approve of the policy of the government with regard to the
Maynooth grant.
The great struggle on the question of the repeal of the Corn Laws was
now coming on. It would be impossible that a man with Mr. Gladstone's
turn of mind and early training could have continued a protectionist,
when once he applied his intellect and his experience to a practical
examination of the subject. Once again he went with his leader. Peel saw
that there was nothing for it but to accept the principles of the Free
Trade party, who had been bearing the fiery cross of their peaceful and
noble agitation all through the country, and were gathering adherents
wherever they went.
It is a somewhat curious fact that Mr. Gladstone was not in the House of
Commons during the eventful session when the great battle of free trade
was fought and won. In thorough sympathy with Peel, he had joined the
government again as Colonial Secretary. Knowing that he could no longer
be in political sympathy with the Duke of Newcastle, whose influence had
obtained for him the representation of Newark, he had given up his seat,
and did not come into Parliament again until the struggle was over. At
the general elections in 1847, Mr. Gladstone, still accepted as a Tory,
was chosen one of the representatives for the University of Oxford.
Up to the time of the abolition of the Corn Laws, or at least of the
movement which led to their abolition, Mr. Gladstone had been a Tory of
a rather old-fashioned school. The corn-law agitation probably first set
him thinking over the possible defects of the social and legislative
system, and showed him the necessity for reform at least in one
direction. The interests of religion itself at one time seemed to him to
be bound up with the principles of the Tory party; and no doubt there
was a period of his career when the principle of protection would have
seemed to him as sacred as any other part of the creed. With a mind like
his, inquiry once started, must go on. There was always something
impetuous in the workings of his intellect, as well as the rush of his
sympathy. He startled Europe, and indeed the whole civilized world, by
the terrible and only too truthful description which he gave, in 1851,
of the condition of the prisons of Naples under the king who was known
by the nickname of "Bomba," and the cruelties which were inflicted on
political prisoners in particular. Again and again, in Mr. Gladstone's
public life we shall see him carried away by the same generous and
passionate emotion on behalf of the victims of despotic cruelty in any
part of the world. Burke himself could not be more sympathetic, more
earnest, or more strong.
By the death of Sir Robert Peel, in 1850, Mr. Gladstone had lost a
trusted leader, and a dear friend. But the loss of his leader had
brought Gladstone himself more directly to the front. It was not till
after Peel's death that he compelled the House of Commons and the
country to recognize in him a supreme master of parliamentary debate.
The first really great speech made by Mr. Gladstone in Parliament--the
first speech which would fairly challenge comparison with any of the
finest speeches of a past day--was made in the debate on Mr. Disraeli's
budget in the winter of 1852, the first session of the new Parliament.
Mr. Disraeli knew well that his government was doomed to fall. He knew
that it could not survive that debate. It was always one of Mr.
Disraeli's peculiarities that he could fight most brilliantly when he
knew that his cause was already lost. That which would have disheartened
and disarmed other men, seemed only to animate him with all Macbeth's
wild courage of despair. Never did his gift of satire, of invective, and
of epithet show to more splendid effect than in the speech with which he
closed his part of the debate, and mercilessly assailed his opponents.
Mr. Disraeli sat down at two o'clock in the morning, and then Mr.
Gladstone rose to reply to him. Most men in the House, even on the
opposition side, were filled with the belief that it would be impossible
to make any real impression on the House after such a speech as that of
Mr. Disraeli. Long before Mr. Gladstone had concluded, everyone admitted
that the effect of Mr. Disraeli's speech had been outdone and outshone.
From that hour Mr. Gladstone was recognized as one of the great historic
orators of the English Parliament--a man to rank with Bolingbroke and
Chatham and Pitt and Fox. With that speech began the long parliamentary
duel between these two great masters of debate, Mr. Gladstone and Mr.
Disraeli, which was carried on for four and twenty years.
On the fall of the short-lived Tory administration, Lord Aberdeen came
into office. He formed the famous Coalition Ministry. Lord Palmerston
took what most people would have thought the uncongenial office of Home
Secretary. Lord John Russell became Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Mr.
Gladstone, who with others of the "Peelites," as they were called, had
joined the new administration, was Chancellor of the Exchequer. His
speech on the introduction of his first budget was waited for with great
expectation, but it distanced all expectation. It occupied several hours
in delivery, but none of those who listened to it would have wished it
to be shortened by a sentence. It may be questioned whether even the
younger Pitt, with all his magic of voice, and style, and phrase, could
lend such charm to each successive budget as Mr. Gladstone was able to
do. A budget speech from Mr. Gladstone came to be expected with the
same kind of keen, artistic longing as waits the first performance of a
new opera by some great composer. A budget speech by Mr. Gladstone was a
triumph in the realm of the fine arts.
The Crimean War broke up the Coalition Ministry; but the year 1859 saw
Lord Palmerston back again in office, and Mr. Gladstone in his old place
as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The budget of 1860 was remarkable, as it
contained the provisions for the reduction of the wine duties and the
whole simplified system of taxation intended to apply to the commercial
treaty which Mr. Cobden had succeeded in persuading the Emperor of the
French to accept. Mr. Gladstone also introduced a provision for the
abolition of the duty on paper--a duty which was simply a tax upon
reading, a tax upon popular education. The House of Lords struck out
this clause; a somewhat impassioned popular agitation followed; and in
the next session the Lords passed the measure for the repeal of the duty
without offering any further opposition. The death of Lord Palmerston,
in 1865, called Lord Russell to the position of prime-minister, and made
Mr. Gladstone leader of the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone's mind had
long been turning in the direction of an extension, or rather expansion,
of the suffrage. It was assumed by everyone that Lord Russell and Mr.
Gladstone being now at the head of affairs, a reform bill would be sure
to come. It did come; a very moderate and cautious bill, enlarging the
area of the franchise in boroughs and counties. The Conservative party
opposed it, and were supported in their opposition by a considerable
section of the Liberals, who thought the measure was going too far on
the road to universal suffrage and the rule of the democracy. The bill
was defeated, and the Liberal statesman went out of office (1866). Mr.
Gladstone had carried his point, however, for when Mr. Disraeli came
into office he saw that a reform bill was inevitable, and he prepared
his party, or most of them, for the course which would have to be taken.
In the very next session Mr. Disraeli introduced a reform bill of his
own, which was enlarged and expanded until it became practically a
measure of household suffrage for cities and boroughs.
Somewhere about this time the attention of Mr. Gladstone began to be
attracted to the condition of Ireland. The distressed and distracted
state of Ireland, the unceasing popular agitation and discontent, the
Fenian insurrection, brought under England's very eyes by the schemes
for an attack on Chester Castle--all these evidences of malady in
Ireland's system led Mr. Gladstone to the conviction that the time had
come when statesmanship must seek through Parliament for some process of
remedy. Mr. Gladstone came after a while to the conclusion that the
Protestant State Church in Ireland must be disestablished and
disendowed, that the Irish land tenure system must be reformed, and that
better provision must be made for the higher education of the Catholics
of Ireland. He made short work with the Irish State Church. He defeated
the government on a series of resolutions foreshadowing his policy; the
government appealed to the country, the Liberals returned to power, and
Mr. Gladstone became prime minister (1868). In his first session of
government he disestablished and disendowed the State Church in Ireland.
In the next session he passed a measure which for the first time
recognized the right of the Irish tenant to the value of the
improvements he had himself made at his own cost and labor. Never
probably was there such a period of energetic reform in almost every
direction as that which set in when Mr. Gladstone became prime-minister.
For the first time in English history a system of national education was
established. The Ballot Act was passed for the protection of voters. The
system of purchase in the army was abolished by something, it must be
owned, a little in the nature of a _coup-d'etat_. Then Mr. Gladstone
introduced a measure to improve the condition of university education in
Ireland. This bill was intended almost altogether for the benefit of
Irish Catholics; but it did not go far enough to satisfy the demands of
the Catholics, and in some of its provisions was declared incompatible
with the principles of their Church. The Catholic members of the House
of Commons voted against it, and with that help the Conservatives were
able to throw out the bill (1873). Mr. Gladstone tendered his
resignation of office. But Mr. Disraeli declined just then to take any
responsibility, and Mr. Gladstone had to remain at the head of affairs.
The great wave of reforming energy had, however, subsided in the
country. The period of reaction had come. The by-elections began to tell
against the Liberals. Mr. Gladstone suddenly dissolved Parliament and
appealed to the country, and the answer to his appeal was the election
of a Conservative majority. Mr. Disraeli came back to power, and Mr.
Gladstone retired from the leadership of the House of Commons (1874).
For a while Mr. Gladstone occupied himself in literary and historical
studies, and he published essays and pamphlets. But even in his literary
career Mr. Gladstone would appear to have always kept glancing at the
House of Commons, as Charles V. in his monastery kept his eyes on the
world of politics outside. The atrocious conduct of the Turkish
officials in Bulgaria aroused his generous anger, and he flung down his
books and rushed out from his study to preach a crusade against the
Ottoman power in Europe. The waters rose and lifted him, whether he
would or no, into power. The Parliament which had gone on from the
spring of 1874 was dissolved in the spring of 1880, and the Liberals
came in with an overwhelming majority. The period of reaction had gone,
and the period of action was come again. Mr. Gladstone had to become
prime-minister once more. His name was, to adopt the phraseology of
continental politics, the only name that had come out of the voting
urns.
[Illustration: Gladstone's first home rule bill.]
It was an unpropitious hour at which to return to office. There were
troubles in Egypt; there was impending war in the Soudan and in South
Africa. There was something very like an agrarian revolution going on in
Ireland; and the Home Rule party in the House of Commons was under new,
resolute, and uncompromising leadership. Mr. Gladstone succeeded,
nevertheless, in carrying what might be called a vast scheme of
parliamentary reform, a scheme which established something very near to
universal suffrage, arranged the constituencies into proportionate
divisions, extinguished several small boroughs, leaving their electors
to vote in their county division, and in general completed the work
begun in 1832, and carried further in 1867. It is to the credit of the
Conservative party that after a while they co-operated cordially with
Mr. Gladstone in his reforming work of 1885. This was a triumph for Mr.
Gladstone of an entirely satisfactory character; but he had sore trials
to counterbalance it. He found himself drawn into a series of wars in
North and South Africa; and he, whose generous sympathy had of late been
so much given to Ireland, and who had introduced and carried another
land bill for Ireland, found that in endeavoring to pass the measures of
coercion, which the authorities in Dublin Castle deemed advisable, he
had to encounter the fiercest opposition from the Irish members of
Parliament and the vast bulk of the Irish population. That time must
have been, for a man of Mr. Gladstone's nature, a time of darkness and
of pain. Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke were assassinated in
Dublin; General Gordon perished at Khartoum. In the end the Irish
members coalesced with the Conservatives in a vote on a clause in the
budget, and Mr. Gladstone's government was defeated. Lord Salisbury came
back into office, but not just then into power. He was in a most
precarious position, depending on the course which might be taken by the
Irish members. He was out of office in a few months, and then the
general elections came on. These elections were to give the first
opportunity to the newly made voters under Mr. Gladstone's latest reform
act; and these voters sent him back into office and apparently into
power once again. The use Mr. Gladstone made of office and of power
astonished his enemies, and startled and shocked not a few of his
friends. His government had had, in the years between 1881 and 1884, to
fight a fierce battle against the policy of obstruction organized by Mr.
Parnell, the leader of the Home Rule party. The obstruction was
organized to prevent or delay the passing of coercion measures, and to
force the attention of the British public to the claims of Ireland. The
struggles that were carried on will be always memorable in the history
of Parliament. The fiercest passions were aroused on both sides, and at
one time Ireland seemed to have come to regard Mr. Gladstone as her
worst enemy. Many a statesman in his place might have allowed himself to
be governed by a feeling of disappointment and resentment. But when the
elections under the new and extended Reform Bill were held, and the
Irish Nationalist party came back 87 members out of the whole Irish
representation of 103, Mr. Gladstone made up his mind that the voice of
the Irish people was in favor of Home Rule, and he resolved to stake
power and popularity on an acceptance of their demand. In March, 1886,
he brought in a measure to give a statutory Parliament to Ireland. A
sudden and serious split took place in his party; some of his most
influential colleagues declared against him; the bill was rejected on
the second reading, and Mr. Gladstone appealed to the country, only to
be defeated at the general elections.
Opinion is still divided--may be divided forever--as to the wisdom of
his policy; but no impartial man can deny him the credit of his
sacrifice and the sincerity of his intentions. Then the Conservative
party came back into office, and with the help of Liberals who had
declined to follow Mr. Gladstone, came back with a powerful majority,
Mr. Gladstone leading the opposition. At the general election of 1892,
his party, including both sections of Irish Nationalists, secured a
majority of above forty over the combined Conservatives and Liberal
Unionists. Under his leadership a home-rule bill for Ireland was passed
by the Commons in spite of the most bitter opposition. It was rejected
almost unanimously by the House of Lords; and for a time it seemed
probable that the Liberals would attack the very existence of that body.
Perhaps this was Mr. Gladstone's intention for he introduced several
popular radical bills. But time was beginning to tell upon the Grand Old
Man; he was now eighty-four years old, and he felt himself unequal to
the gigantic struggle. He resigned his offices and retired into private
life in March, 1894.
Mr. Gladstone will find his fame as a statesman and an orator. We have
taken little account here of his contributions to literature; his
Homeric studies, his various essays in political and literary, in
ecclesiastical, and even theological, criticism. For another man these
in themselves would have made a not inconsiderable reputation; but to
the world they are interesting chiefly as illustrating a marvellous
mental activity stretching itself out in every direction; unresting in
the best sense of the word; incapable of settling down into even
momentary idleness. "Repos ailleurs" seems to have been the motto of Mr.
Gladstone's career--let rest come elsewhere--this is the world of
activity and of labor. His work as a statesman has been almost unique;
probably there is no other English minister who leaves behind him so
long and so successful a record of practical legislation; and, as we
have seen, some of the best legislation accomplished by his political
opponents was initiated by him, was his own work taken out of his hands.
As a parliamentary debater he never had a superior--it is doubtful
whether he ever had an equal--in the whole of the political history of
the British Empire. There have been, even in our time, orators who now
and then shot their arrows higher; but so ready, so skilful, and so
unerring an archer as he, taken all around, never drew bow on modern
parliamentary battle-ground. Nature had given him an exquisite voice,
sweet, powerful, easily penetrating, capable of filling without effort
any public building however large, vibrating to every emotion. The
incessant training of the House of Commons turned nature's gifts to
their fullest account. He was almost too fluent; his eloquence sometimes
carried him away on its impassioned tide; but his listeners were seldom
inclined to find fault with this magnificent exuberance. We should be
inclined to rank him as one of the greatest orators, and the very
greatest debater, of the House of Commons.