remarkable ingenuity and resourcefulness. Fertile in expedients, he
was still more fertile in reasonings by which to recommend the
expedients. The gift had its dangers, for he was apt to be carried
away by the dexterity of his own dialectic, and to think that a
scheme must be sound in whose support he could muster a formidable
array of arguments. He never seemed at a loss, in public or in
private, for a criticism, or for an answer to the criticisms of
others. If his power of adapting his own mind to the minds of those
whom he had to convince had been equal to the skill and swiftness with
which he accumulated a mass of matter persuasive to those who looked
at things in his own way, no one would have exercised so complete a
control over the political opinion of his time. But his intellect
lacked this power of adaptation. It moved on lines of its own, which
were often misconceived, even by those who sought to follow him
loyally. Thus, as already observed, he was blamed for two opposite
faults. Some, pointing to the fact that he had frequently altered his
views, denounced him as a demagogue profuse of promises, ready to
propose whatever he thought likely to catch the people's ear. Others
complained that there was no knowing where to have him; that he had an
erratic mind, whose currents ran underground and came to the surface
in unexpected places; that he did not consult his party, but followed
his own impulses; that his guidance was unsafe because his decisions
were unpredictable. Much of the suspicion with which he was regarded,
especially after 1885, arose from this view of his character.
It was an unfair view, yet nearer to the truth than that which charged
him with seeking to flatter and follow the people. No great popular
leader had in him less of the demagogue. He saw, of course, that a
statesman cannot oppose the general will beyond a certain point, and
may have to humour it in small things that he may direct it in great
ones. He was obliged, as others have been, to take up and settle
questions he deemed unimportant because they were troubling the body
politic. Now and then, in his later days, he so far yielded to his
party advisers as to express his approval of proposals in which his
own interest was slight. But he was ever a leader, not a follower, and
erred rather in not keeping his finger closely and constantly upon the
pulse of public opinion. In this point, at least, one may discover in
him a likeness to Disraeli. Slow as he was in maturing his opinions,
Mr. Gladstone was liable to forget that the minds of his followers
might not be moving along with his own, and hence his decisions
sometimes took his party as well as the nation by surprise. But he was
too self-absorbed, too eagerly interested in the ideas that suited his
own cast of thought, to be able to watch and gauge the tendencies of
the multitude. The three most remarkable instances in which his new
departures startled the world were his declarations against the Irish
Church establishment in 1867, against the Turks and the traditional
English policy of supporting them in 1876, and in favour of Irish Home
Rule in 1886, and in none of these did any popular demand suggest his
pronouncement. It was the masses who took their view from him, not he
who took a mandate from the masses. In each of these cases he may,
perhaps, be blamed for not having sooner perceived, or at any rate for
not having sooner announced, the need for a change of policy. But it
was very characteristic of him not to give the full strength of his
mind to a question till he felt that it pressed for a solution. Those
who listened to his private talk were scarcely more struck by the
range of his vision than by his unwillingness to commit himself on
matters whose decision he could postpone. Reticence and caution were
sometimes carried too far, not merely because they exposed him to
misconstruction, but because they withheld from his party the guidance
it needed. This was true in the three instances just mentioned; and in
the last of them it is possible that earlier and fuller communications
might have averted the separation of some of his former colleagues.
Nor did he always rightly divine the popular mind. His proposal (in
1874) to extinguish the income-tax fell completely flat, because the
nation was becoming indifferent to that economy in public expenditure
which both parties had in the days of Peel and Lord John Russell vied
in demanding. Cherishing his old financial ideals, Mr. Gladstone had
not marked the change. So he failed to perceive how much the credit of
his party was suffering (after 1871) from the belief of large sections
of the people, that he was indifferent to the interests of England
outside England. Perhaps, knowing the charge of indifference to be
groundless, he underrated the effect which the iteration of it
produced: perhaps his pride would not let him stoop to dissipate it.
Though the power of reading the signs of the times and swaying the
mind of the nation may be now more essential to an English statesman
than the skill which manages a legislature or holds together a
cabinet, that skill counts for much, and must continue to do so while
the House of Commons remains the governing authority of the country. A
man can hardly reach high place, and certainly cannot retain high
place, without possessing this kind of art. Mr. Gladstone was at one
time thought to want it. In 1864, when Lord Palmerston's end was
approaching, and Mr. Gladstone had shown himself the strongest man
among the Liberal ministers in the House of Commons, people speculated
about the succession to the headship of the party; and the wiseacres
of the day were never tired of repeating that Mr. Gladstone could not
possibly lead the House of Commons. He wanted tact, they said, he was
too excitable, too impulsive, too much absorbed in his own ideas, too
unversed in the arts by which individuals are conciliated. But when,
after twenty-five years of his unquestioned reign, the time for his
own departure drew nigh, men asked how the Liberal party in the House
of Commons would ever hold together after it had lost a leader of such
consummate capacity. The Whig critics of 1864 had grown so accustomed
to Palmerston's way of handling the House as to forget that a man
might succeed by quite different methods, and that defects, serious in
themselves, may be outweighed by transcendent merits.
Mr. Gladstone had the defects ascribed to him. His impulsiveness
sometimes betrayed him into declarations which a cooler reflection
would have dissuaded. The second reading of the Irish Home Rule Bill
of 1886 might possibly have been carried had he not been goaded by his
opponents into words which were construed as recalling or modifying
the concessions he had announced at a meeting of the Liberal party
held just before. More than once precious time was wasted because
antagonists, knowing his excitable temper, brought on discussions with
the sole object of annoying him and drawing from him some hasty
deliverance. Nor was he an adept, like Disraeli and Disraeli's famous
Canadian imitator, Sir John A. Macdonald, in the management of
individuals. His aversion for the meaner side of human nature made him
refuse to play upon it. Many of the pursuits, and most of the
pleasures, which attract ordinary men had no interest for him, so that
much of the common ground on which men meet was closed to him. He was,
moreover, too constantly engrossed by the subjects he loved, and by
enterprises which specially appealed to him, to have leisure for the
lighter but often vitally important devices of political strategy. I
remember hearing, soon after 1870, how Mr. Delane, then editor of the
_Times_, had been invited to meet the Prime Minister at a moment when
the support of that newspaper would have been specially valuable to
the Liberal Government. Instead of using the opportunity in the way
that had been intended, Mr. Gladstone dilated during the whole time of
dinner upon the approaching exhaustion of the English coal-beds, to
the surprise of the company and the unconcealed annoyance of the
powerful guest. It was the subject then uppermost in his mind, and he
either forgot, or disdained, to conciliate Mr. Delane. Good nature as
well as good sense made him avoid giving offence by personal
reflections in debate, and he usually suffered fools if not, like St.
Paul's converts, gladly, yet patiently.[64] In the House of Commons he
was entirely free from airs, and, indeed, from any assumption of
superiority. The youngest member might accost him in the lobby and be
listened to with perfect courtesy. But he had a bad memory for faces,
seldom addressed any one outside the circle of his personal friends,
and more than once made enemies by omitting to notice and show
attention to recruits who, having been eminent in their own towns,
expected to be made much of when they entered Parliament. Having
himself plenty of pride and comparatively little vanity, he never
realised the extent to which, and the cheapness with which, men can be
captured and used through their vanity. Adherents were sometimes
turned into dangerous foes because his preoccupation with graver
matters dimmed his sense of what may be done to win support by the
minor arts, such as an invitation to dinner or even a seasonable
compliment. And his mind, flexible as it was in seizing new points of
view and devising expedients to meet new circumstances, did not easily
enter into the characters of other men. Ideas and causes interested
him more than did personal traits; his sympathy was keener and
stronger for the sufferings of nations or masses of men than with the
fortunes of an individual man. With all his accessibility and
kindliness, he was at bottom chary of real friendship, while the
circle of his intimates became constantly smaller with advancing
years. So it befell that though his popularity among the general body
of his adherents went on increasing, and the admiration of his
parliamentary followers remained undiminished, he had in the House of
Commons few personal friends who linked him to the party at large, and
rendered to him those confidential services which count for much in
keeping all sections in hearty accord and enabling the commander to
gauge the sentiment of his troops.
Of parliamentary strategy in that larger sense, which covers
familiarity with parliamentary forms and usages, care and judgment in
arranging the business of the House, the power of seizing a
parliamentary situation and knowing how to deal with it, the art of
guiding a debate and choosing the right moment for reserve and for
openness, for a dignified retreat, for a watchful defence, for a
sudden rattling charge upon the enemy--of all this no one had a fuller
mastery. His recollection of precedents was unrivalled, for it began
in 1833 with the first reformed Parliament, and it seemed as fresh for
those remote days as for last month. He enjoyed combat for its own
sake, not so much from inborn pugnacity, for he was not disputatious
in ordinary conversation, as because it called out his fighting force
and stimulated his whole nature. "I am never nervous in reply," he
once said, "though I am sometimes nervous in opening a debate." No one
could be more tactful or adroit when a crisis arrived whose gravity he
had foreseen. In the summer of 1881 the House of Lords made some
amendments to the Irish Land Bill which were deemed ruinous to the
working of the measure, and therewith to the prospects of the
pacification of Ireland. A conflict was expected which might have
strained the fabric of the constitution. The excitement which quickly
arose in Parliament spread to the nation. Mr. Gladstone alone remained
calm and confident. He devised a series of compromises, which he
advocated in conciliatory speeches. He so played his game that by a
few minor concessions he secured nearly all the points he cared for,
and, while sparing the dignity of the Lords, steered his bill
triumphantly out of the breakers which had threatened to engulf it.
Very different was his ordinary demeanour in debate when he was off
his guard. His face and gestures while he sat in the House of Commons
listening to an opponent would express all the emotions that crossed
his mind. He would follow every sentence as a hawk follows the
movements of a small bird, would sometimes contradict half aloud,
sometimes turn to his next neighbour to vent his displeasure at the
groundless allegations or fallacious arguments he was listening to,
till at last, like a hunting leopard loosed from the leash, he would
spring to his feet and deliver a passionate reply. His warmth would
often be in excess of what the occasion required, and quite
disproportioned to the importance of his antagonist. It was in fact
the unimportance of the occasion that made him thus yield to his
feeling. As soon as he saw that bad weather was coming, and careful
seamanship wanted, his coolness returned, his language became
measured, while passion, though it might increase the force of his
oratory, never made him deviate a hand's breadth from the course he
had chosen. The Celtic heat subsided, and the shrewd self-control of
the Lowland Scot regained command.
It was by oratory that Mr. Gladstone rose to fame and power, as,
indeed, by it most English statesmen have risen, save those to whom
wealth and rank and family connections used to give a sort of
presumptive claim to high office, like the Cavendishes and the
Russells, the Bentincks and the Cecils. And for many years, during
which Mr. Gladstone was suspected as a statesman because, while he had
ceased to be a Tory, he had not fully become a Liberal, his eloquence
was the main, one might almost say the sole, source of his influence.
Oratory was a power in English politics even a century and a half ago,
as the career of the elder Pitt shows. During the last seventy years,
years which have seen the power of rank and family connections
decline, it has, although less cultivated as a fine art, continued to
be almost essential to the highest success, and it still brings a man
quickly to the front, though it will not keep him there should he
prove to want the other branches of statesmanlike capacity.
The permanent reputation of an orator depends upon two things, the
witness of contemporaries to the impression produced upon them, and
the written or printed record of his speeches. Few are the famous
speakers who would be famous if they were tried by this latter test
alone, and Mr. Gladstone was not one of them. It is only by a rare
combination of gifts that one who speaks with so much force and
brilliance as to charm his listeners is also able to deliver thoughts
so valuable in words so choice that posterity will read them as
literature. Some of the ancient orators did this; but we seldom know
how far those of their speeches which have been preserved are the
speeches which they actually delivered. Among moderns, a few French
preachers, Edmund Burke, Macaulay, and Daniel Webster are perhaps the
only speakers whose discourses have passed into classics and find new
generations of readers.[65] Twenty years hence Mr. Gladstone's will
not be read, except, of course, by historians. Indeed, they ceased to
be read even in his lifetime. They are too long, too diffuse, too
minute in their handling of details, too elaborately qualified in
their enunciation of general principles. They contain few epigrams and
few of those weighty thoughts put into telling phrases which the
Greeks called +gnomai+. The style, in short, is not sufficiently rich
or polished to give an enduring interest to matter whose practical
importance has vanished. The same oblivion has overtaken all but a few
of the best speeches (or parts of speeches) of Grattan, Sheridan,
Pitt, Fox, Erskine, Canning, Plunket, Brougham, Peel, Bright. It may,
indeed, be said--and the examples of Burke and Macaulay show that this
is no paradox--that the speakers whom posterity most enjoys are rarely
those who most affected the audiences that listened to them.[66]
If, on the other hand, Mr. Gladstone be judged by the impression he
made on his own time, his place will be high in the front rank. His
speeches were neither so concisely telling as Mr. Bright's nor so
finished in diction; but no other man among his contemporaries--neither
Lord Derby nor Mr. Lowe, nor Lord Beaconsfield nor Lord Cairns, nor
Bishop Wilberforce nor Bishop Magee--taken all round, could be ranked
beside him. And he rose superior to Mr. Bright himself in readiness,
in variety of knowledge, in persuasive ingenuity. Mr. Bright spoke
seldom and required time for preparation. Admirable in the breadth and
force with which he set forth his own position, or denounced that of
his adversaries, he was not equally qualified for instructing nor
equally apt at persuading. Mr. Gladstone could both instruct and
persuade, could stimulate his friends and demolish his opponents, and
could do all these things at an hour's notice, so vast and well
ordered was the arsenal of his mind. Pitt was superb in an expository
or argumentative speech, but his stately periods lacked variety. Fox,
incomparable in reply, was hesitating and confused when he had to state
his case in cold blood. Mr. Gladstone showed as much fire in winding
up a debate as skill in opening it.
His oratory had, indeed, two faults. It wanted concentration, and it
wanted definition. There were too many words, and the conclusion was
sometimes left vague because the arguments had been too nicely
balanced. I once heard Mr. Cobden say: "I always listen to Mr.
Gladstone with pleasure and admiration, but I sometimes have to ask
myself, when he has sat down, 'What after all was it that he meant,
and what practical course does he recommend?'" These faults were
balanced by conspicuous merits. There was a lively imagination, which
enabled him to relieve even dull matter by pleasing figures, together
with a large command of quotations and illustrations. There were
powers of sarcasm, powers, however, which he rarely used, preferring
the summer lightning of banter to the thunderbolts of invective. There
was admirable lucidity and accuracy in exposition. There was art in
the disposition and marshalling of his arguments, and finally--a gift
now almost lost in England--there was a delightful variety and grace
of appropriate gesture. But above and beyond everything else which
enthralled the listener, there stood out four qualities. Two of them
were merits of substance--inventiveness and elevation; two were merits
of delivery--force in the manner, expressive modulation in the voice.
No one showed such swift resourcefulness in debate. His readiness, not
only at catching a point, but at making the most of it on a moment's
notice, was amazing. Some one would lean over the back of the bench he
sat on and show a paper or whisper a sentence to him. Apprehending the
bearings at a glance, he would take the bare fact and so shape and
develop it, like a potter moulding a bowl on the wheel out of a lump
of clay, that it grew into a cogent argument or a happy illustration
under the eye of the audience, and seemed all the more telling because
it had not been originally a part of his case. Even in the last three
years of his parliamentary life, when his sight had so failed that he
read nothing, printed or written, except what it was absolutely
necessary to read, and when his deafness had so increased that he did
not hear half of what was said in debate, it was sufficient for a
colleague to say into the better ear a few words explaining how the
matter at issue stood, and he would rise to his feet and extemporise a
long and ingenious argument, or retreat with dexterous grace from a
position which the course of the discussion or the private warning of
the Whips had shown to be untenable. Never was he seen at a loss
either to meet a new point raised by an adversary or to make the best
of an unexpected incident. Sometimes he would amuse himself by drawing
a cheer or a contradiction from his opponents, and would then suddenly
turn round and use this hasty expression of their opinion as the basis
for a fresh argument of his own. Loving conflict, he loved debate,
and, so far from being confused or worried by the strain conflict put
upon him, his physical health was strengthened and his faculties were
roused to higher efficiency by having to prepare and deliver a great
speech. He had the rare faculty of thinking ahead while he was
speaking, and could, while pouring forth a stream of glittering
sentences, be at the same time (as one saw by watching his eye)
composing an argument to be delivered five or ten minutes later. Once,
at a very critical moment, when he was defending a great measure
against the amendment--moved by a nominal supporter of his own--which
proved fatal to it, a friend suddenly reminded him of an incident in
the career of the mover which might be effectively used against him.
When Mr. Gladstone sat down after delivering an impassioned speech, in
the course of which he had several times approached and then sheered
off from the incident, he turned round to the friend and said, "I was
thinking all the time I was speaking whether I could properly use
against ---- what you told me, but concluded, on the whole, that it
would be too hard on him."
The weakness of his eloquence sprang from its supersubtlety and
superabundance. He was prone to fine distinctions. He multiplied
arguments when it would have been better to rely upon two or three of
the strongest. And he was sometimes so intent on refuting the
particular adversaries opposed to him, and persuading the particular
audience before him, that he forgot to address his reasonings to the
public beyond the House, and make them equally applicable and equally
convincing to the readers of next morning.
As dignity is one of the rarest qualities in literature, so elevation
is one of the rarest in oratory. It is a quality easier to feel than
to analyse. One may call it a power of ennobling ordinary things by
showing their relation to great things, by pouring high emotions round
them, by bringing the worthier motives of human conduct to bear upon
them, by touching them with the light of poetry. Ambitious writers and
speakers strain after effects of this kind; but they are effects which
study and straining cannot ensure. Vainly do most men flap their wings
in the effort to soar; if they succeed in rising from the ground it is
because some unusually strong burst of feeling makes them for the
moment better than themselves. In Mr. Gladstone the capacity for
feeling was at all times so strong, and the susceptibility of the
imagination so keen, that he soared without effort. His vision seemed
to take in the whole landscape. The points actually in question might
be small, but the principles involved were to him far-reaching. The
contests of to-day were ennobled by the effect they might have in a
still distant future. There are rhetoricians skilful in playing by
words and manner on every chord of human nature, rhetoricians who move
you, and may even carry you away for the moment, but whose sincerity
is doubted, because the sense of spontaneity is lacking. Mr. Gladstone
was not of these. He never seemed to be forcing an effect or assuming
a sentiment. To listen to him was to feel convinced of his own
conviction and to be warmed by the warmth with which he expressed it.
Nor was this due to the perfection of his rhetorical art. He really
did feel what he expressed. Sometimes, of course, like all statesmen,
he had to maintain a cause whose weakness he perceived, as, for
instance, when it became necessary to defend the blunder of a
colleague, or a decision reached by some Cabinet compromise which his
own judgment disapproved. But even in such cases he did not simulate
feeling, but reserved his earnestness for those parts of the case on
which it could be honestly expended. As this was generally true of the
imaginative and emotional side of his eloquence, so was it especially
true of his unequalled power of lifting a subject from the level on
which other speakers had treated it into the purer air of permanent
principle, perhaps even of moral sublimity.