Lord Beaconsfield and his party are still holding on. All the
over-praised Disraelian craft has dwindled somehow to this merely
muscular operation. An attempt is, indeed, made to disguise the attitude
by keeping strict silence, and arranging the facial expression of the
Cabinet, if not of the Party, in a way not agreeing with the strain; but
the country is fast finding out that the real posture of the
Conservatives at this moment is that of clutching at office, and nothing
more. However, no amount of not talking about the elections will put
them off finally. In his most efficient days Lord Beaconsfield was
hardly clever enough to operate upon the almanack, and a certain
terrible date is approaching upon him with increasing swiftness. It will
be rather humiliating at last for a Premier to be brought up by the day
of the month, and to be reminded by the great officials of Parliament
what year of Our Lord it is. But these latter personages are partly paid
for watching the efflux of time, and no doubt they will do their duty.
It may be unpleasant for them to have to tell Lord Beaconsfield that
dates make it impossible for him to go on any longer, but they must get
what consolation they can from the remembrance that it is the first time
they ever had to say this to a Minister. Several Parliaments in our
history have been nicknamed rather uglily, but it is likely that the
Beaconsfield House of Commons will be known under a description more
humiliating than any, because so inescapeably accurate. It will
literally be the run-to-the-last-dregs Parliament, and when, on there
not being another moment left, the dissolution has necessarily to be
ordered, the not-any-longer-to-be-put-off elections will take place.
When that unpostponeable day comes, it is very well known beforehand
whose will be the most towering figure on the hustings, whose the form
towards which all eyes must turn. It will be that of him whose name is
written at the head of this paper--Mr. Gladstone. Most Englishmen will
at first feel a crick in the neck in having to look behind them so far
north as Midlothian. But Liberals and Conservatives alike understand
that wherever Mr. Gladstone chooses to take up his position that becomes
the centre of the fight. If he stood for the Orkneys, he would still be
too near for his opponents; and, as for his friends, they remember that
with Ulysses' bow it did not greatly signify whether the hero was a few
yards further off or nearer. The bolts will reach. It is, indeed, not
unlikely that Mr. Gladstone may force on the conflict, and, after the
speech at Chester, the other side cannot say that they were left without
warning. The Conservative leaders have, in fact, a nearer date to
calculate than the final one of the Parliamentary calendar--that,
namely, of Mr. Gladstone's appearance in Midlothian. It may be supposed
that they are already anxiously counting the days of the dwindling
interval. Whenever he gives instructions for his hustings to be put up,
the Conservatives will have to send for their own carpenters, and order
planks.
The present moment, while he is temporarily absent, and just before he
again necessarily reappears in the very front of the public stage, may
not be an ill time for taking a hasty review of him and his career. It
is, in fact, a favourable chance. Mr. Gladstone, by stress of glorious
hard work and sheer public efficiency, has so unceasingly filled the
passing hour, always being fully occupied himself in dealing with a
special matter, and enforcing the attention of the nation to it, that he
has left people very little at leisure to take in a retrospect of him.
The result is, that there is great inadequacy in the public appreciation
of the dimensions of his career; it stretches back further, expands
wider, rises higher than most of us commonly keep in our minds. Lately,
it is true, Mr. Gladstone has taken great pains to remind the country of
his years; he has rather ostentatiously postured as an old man. But
without meaning to impugn his veracity, or to dispute the register, we
may say that he has scarcely got anybody to believe it. He has gone on
felling trees, writing letters and articles, and publishing volumes,
with utterances of more and better speeches between than anybody else
can make, in a way which has led not a few to congratulate themselves
that he was not any younger. In particular, his opponents, so soon as
they found out that his announcement of retirement into ease meant that
he was going to take the truest rest of all, to work a little harder in
another kind of way, positively made an outcry as if he had pledged
himself to gratify them by doing nothing. They seem rather to complain
that he has retired into greater publicity; but there is something to be
said about that matter. The implied bargain on Mr. Gladstone's side at
the time obviously was that the Conservatives were themselves not to do
anything in particular. It was to be a time of stagnation, and they have
not kept to that understanding; no sooner had he turned his back than
they began to swagger up and down the world as Imperialists. They have
risked the highest interests of the empire and have made England figure
on the wrong side, arrayed against the oppressed and blustering for war.
Mr. Gladstone could only keep quiet by foregoing all patriotism. It was
too much to ask from an old-fashioned English statesman, who had always
himself stood on the side of freedom and peace, and had grown accustomed
to seeing his country ranged there too. However, we will speak again a
little later on this point of his announced retirement.
It is nearly superfluous to remind any one that there is no statesman
now before the public with an official record which can in any way be
set beside Mr. Gladstone's even in the mere matters of length of time
and diversity of parts. There are a number of men in the House of
Commons older than Mr. Gladstone; there are some, though not many, who
have had a seat in it longer than he has; but there is no one whose
Ministerial life goes back nearly so far. He held office forty-five
years ago. Nearly a score of years had to pass after his first
appointment to a post before Mr. Disraeli joined a Ministry, and then he
stepped into the place which had been refused by Mr. Gladstone. The
latter's range of official experience excels others in breadth even more
than in length. Before he became Prime Minister he had been
Under-Secretary for the Colonies, Vice-President of the Board of Trade
and Master of the Mint, President of the Board of Trade, full Secretary
for the Colonies, and Chancellor of the Exchequer more than once. There
is no other journeyman politician with a stroke of work left in him who
has anything like this list of credentials of apprenticeship to show.
Mr. Gladstone learnt his craft under Peel, Aberdeen, Palmerston,
Russell; and then himself became the selecter and instructor of a group
of younger men for whom renewed office is only biding a not very distant
date. It is an honour alike to name the men he served under and those
whom he commanded; including in the association with him some whom he
attracted, and to whom the latter phrase might scarcely fully apply; for
Mr. Cobden worked with him without an office, and Mr. Bright in one.
These latter were achievements of personal influence which may fairly
rank a trifle higher than merely taking precedence of a Duke in a
Cabinet. If we go on to consider what has happened in his time in the
way of legislation and social reform, and his connection with it, it may
be said, speaking generally, that he has witnessed the political and
economical remoulding of this kingdom; and, taking all things together,
has helped it forward in more ways than anybody else who still survives.
If while Mr. Bright lives his name must always have the honour of first
mention when the Repeal of the Corn Laws is spoken of, it was Mr.
Gladstone who wrought out all the details of Peel's fiscal reforms. He
too it was who, much later, gave effect to Cobden's negotiation of the
French Commercial Treaty; and also, again, made the best bargain that
could be made when that first international arrangement lapsed. Every
amelioration bearing on taxation and trade in our time has been
naturally fated in some way to touch the hands of Mr. Gladstone. So,
too, it was his conversion, or rather his progress, on the question of
the Franchise--proved by his bringing in of the Russell measure--which
made the immediate granting of the vote certain, and challenged the Tory
trick of the last Reform Bill. The Ballot Act, without which the vote
was but a sinister gift, came from his Ministry. But let us turn from
England to the sister country. If Ireland is ever pacified, it will be
then seen that it was Mr. Gladstone who, by the Disestablishment of the
Irish Church and by his Land Act, laid the foundations of the peace. If
the Roman Catholics get a University now, they will only get what he
offered them years ago. The prosperity of Ireland is, indeed, sure some
day to give to Mr. Gladstone's memory a splendid revenge for the
ingratitude she showed to the man who brought legislating for Ireland
into vogue. If we shift our regard to diplomacy, the future is still
clearly with him in several of the chiefest international arrangements
this generation has witnessed. When the Berlin Treaty is cobwebbed, and
forgotten by everybody but historians and bookworms, the Treaty of
Washington will be a living, ruling precedent between the mighty
English-speaking nations on both sides of the Atlantic; and on the day
that the Turks are thrust out of Europe, and the peoples of those
regions are settling the Eastern Question finally for themselves, the
then British Government, in begging somebody to take Cyprus off our
hands, will hear a larger Greece gratefully couple Mr. Gladstone's name
with the cession of the Ionian Islands.
In every one of these matters Mr. Gladstone gets his good fortune with
posterity, as we believe, from having acted on Liberal principles. It is
the merit of those principles that, to borrow a phrase of his own, they
put Time on a man's side. He has trusted himself to the popular
impulses, which are the breezes blowing towards the future, giving
auspicious omens by the very working out of the world's events. But if,
apart from Liberalism, he would have had not much more significance for
the coming generations than Lord Beaconsfield will have when his foreign
policy has once been undone and set aside, Mr. Gladstone must not be
defrauded of a tittle of his due credit. He who has done all this was
once a Conservative, and, to make it still more wonderful, a Peelite. Of
that pale group of a Parliamentary section, which never could be a
party, he is the only one who escaped from the vain middle region of
ineffectiveness. For a man who was once a Peelite and has never ceased
to be a High Churchman to have gained supreme power in this country is a
political miracle. It was worked by sheer mental force. Mr. Gladstone's
greatest feat, making all the rest possible, was the slowly but
ever-ripeningly turning himself into a good, sound, robust Liberal; but
he not only had the wit to appreciate the inevitableness of popular
progress, he made himself a shaper and a helper of it in ways which
showed a willing adoption of its cause. For we may scrutinize his career
more closely than in the above rapid sketch, may look down lower than
these great pictorial incidents we have been recapitulating; and, if we
do so, we shall see a set of administrative reforms, less showy, but
very hard to carry, and which exhibit genuine Liberalism in the grain of
every one of them. It was under his auspices that the Civil Service was
thrown open to unlimited competition; he, in spite of the Lords, with
Earl Derby at their head, took the duty off paper, giving us cheap
newspapers; he consolidated the Law Courts, doing away a whole web of
legal artificialities; it was as his colleague that Mr. Forster gave to
the country its first national educational scheme; but for him Mr.
Cardwell would never have succeeded in altering the principle of our
military organization from long-period enlistments to the short-term
service; while Mr. Gladstone's opponents are willing to thrust upon him
the whole honour of abolishing purchase in the army, because they think
the issue of the Royal Warrant which, thanks to their resistance of the
reform, was the only means of effecting it, lends itself to a taunt. Add
to this list, the fact that although he, at first, for easily seen
reasons of mere habit of mind, going back to the earlier days when he
was Conservative, did not favour University Reform, yet he finally lent
himself fully to it, and it is not difficult to understand the
successive outcries raised against him in the higher social quarters. He
gave all the "interests" splendidly sufficient reasons for their
dislike, since wherever there was an abuse Mr. Gladstone was as certain
in the end to confront it as he is to appear, axe on his shoulder,
before any tree in Hawarden woods which has lived past its time.
But there is another way, more compendious still, of summing up his
political chronicle. His opponents at times exult over the fact of his
having often changed his constituencies. It is true, but it was always
for his growing Liberalism. Certainly, there are those who once
ensconced in a shire--say, in Buckinghamshire--remain there as long as
they need a seat. They never offend any one by progress of view. Mr.
Gladstone has not acted by that rule; he has got himself turned out of
constituency after constituency; but, we repeat, it was always for the
same reason--he became too big for them. Among his highest distinctions
are these,--he is the resigner of Newark, the rejected of Oxford, the
loser of South Lancashire. The thing has occurred too often to admit of
a casual explanation. It was not for Liberalism, as it is now
understood, that he, when still in his youth, offended the mighty Duke
of Newcastle and had to give up Newark, but it was for reasoned-out
consistency which gave hope of Liberalism. He would not stultify his
intellect by voting for Peel's proposed increase of the Maynooth Grant
in contradiction of his own book on Church and State. But all the world
knows that it was for Liberalism somewhat developed that he quitted
Oxford; and the cause of his defeat in Lancashire was that he had for
years been too busy in pushing forward reforms on all hands. It was a
noble vanquishment for him, whatever it was for his party, for
Lancashire, or for the country. Test his career how we will, the result
still comes out to his honour. He, for conscience' sake, offended the
great patron on whom his whole prospects then depended, remaining out of
Parliament for a time; later, he went over with Peel, knowing that it
meant an ineffective hanging between two parties for an indefinite time,
sharing the hopes and chances of neither; when Lord Derby came into
power, he refused office on its being offered. In a word, he has
evidenced his sincerity and proved his patriotism in every way for which
it is allowed to other men to claim honour. When a man has risked
personal prospects, refused place, held office in all its kinds, left
one lagging constituency after another behind him, and finally, by sheer
insisting on rapid progress, temporarily wearied the weak and lazy of
his countrymen throughout the whole nation, as the last general election
showed that he had, what more is there left for him to do for his
country? Only one thing remained: the sacrificing his retirement after
the formal announcement of the close of his career, and, afresh taking
up his old post in the front of the battle as if he were still young and
had place and public life to secure, striving his hardest a last time
for the sake of his principles and his party. It is this final
possibility of sacrificing ease and renewing labour which Mr. Gladstone
undertakes in the Midlothian campaign now so very soon to be opened by
him.
The above is the merest bird's-eye glance at his career, but it seemed
to us a retrospect which all Liberals should have in their minds more
completely than is common when he again draws to him the national gaze,
as he of necessity will do.
But on reading back, how inadequate does the above record seem for Mr.
Gladstone! It is simply the background of the picture; a field of
industry and achievements, on which the portraiture of the man himself
needs yet making to stand out. We have been speaking of the ex-Premier,
for instance, just as we might talk of any politician, and Mr.
Gladstone, though our chiefest politician, has throughout been so much
more than that. It is perfectly true that there is no public man among
us who has projected less of a special atmosphere of personality than he
has through which his doings are to be beheld. He has been too busy with
his work to think of any attitudinizing or trick in doing it. Mr.
Gladstone's only mannerism has been that of superior excellence of
thinking, speaking, and doing. Anybody else might have done and said
what he has uttered and effected, if only they had had the same ability
and industry. His one comprehensive distinction, summing up all the
others, lies in his having developed more of these two simple,
old-fashioned things than his best contemporaries. He has invented no
mysteries, traded in no artificialities, given us no pyrotechnics; only
a plain common air lies along his track, in which, if we perhaps except
two or three points where a little mist hangs, everything can be clearly
seen in white light, without exaggeration or distortion. His whole style
has been the old traditionary English one, accentuated only by Scotch
earnestness and seriousness of religious feeling. If Mr. Gladstone,
however, has not made any eccentric or theatrical impression on the
public mind, he has done something larger and better. He has kept all
the three kingdoms continuously aware of him as an element in our
general thinking, as well as being a power in our practical affairs. If
we put aside Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Ruskin, scarcely any one has
had so much to do with the general mental activity of the last two
generations as Mr. Gladstone. The result is what we have just pointed
out,--that if we sketch him as a statesman only, everybody sees that the
canvas is not big enough. It is a sufficiently full description of most
men who have been politicians to ascribe to them statesmanship; but in
Mr. Gladstone's case we want a yet larger phrase; his business has not
been politics merely, it has been patriotism; and he has made time,
nobody quite knows how, to do nearly as much work outside Parliament as
within it. We may cut a scholar able to adorn a university out of Mr.
Gladstone, and then carve from him a fine student and reverencer of Art;
next mark off a reviewer and general _litterateur_ whom professed
authors will respectfully make room for in their ranks; and not only is
there still left, solid and firm, the great Parliamentary Minister, but
of the scattered fragments a couple of Bishops might easily be made,
with, if nothing at all is to be wasted, several preachers for the
denominations. The latter would be derived from a morsel or two of
material which Mr. Gladstone himself is not fully aware of as being in
his composition. It is not very easy to give a complete impression
offhand of such a multiform personage as this. We must take him a little
simpler. The general effect of it all has been, as we said above, that
the mental activity of the community in all matters relating to politics
and practical affairs has had to take its rate and much of its scale
largely from him, and he has been thinking with the speed, not of the
old jog-trot political life, but with the rapidity of ethical and
religious cogitation, and has insisted on giving thought to everything.
In fact, the ultimate impression which Mr. Gladstone has made upon the
community has been that of an intellect weaponed with a perfectly fluent
tongue, and a hand holding the quickest of pens, occupying the very
highest national posts, ceaselessly going on reasoning, insisting upon
doing it, whether the reasoning might occasionally go wrong or not, just
as if thinking, speaking, and writing were man's right employment. His
chief opponents would, perhaps, hesitate in flatly saying that they were
not; but, at any rate, they have continually been wanting him to stop.
Nearly all the complaint that was ever made of Mr. Gladstone resolves
itself into a charge that he has thought and spoken and written too
much. The accusation is one which it would task a great many men to lay
themselves open to; it is never thought of in the case of the bulk of
us. Above all, he has kept on thinking; he would use his mind. Possibly
the other side might have forgiven it, if only he had not done it so
well; if only this promptest, quickest ratiocination on the part of a
practical politician in our times had not, as it progressed, brought him
ever nearer to the conclusions of Liberalism. He has, we are, however,
rather ashamed to admit, had to suffer from his own party for this
unusualness of mental activity. Our practical politics for generations
past had been carried on upon such shallow reasoning, on such a
hand-to-mouth principle of mere party expediency, that even some
Liberals were surprised when he brought a little subtlety of intellect
into public life. It was enough to make a smaller man despair of his
countrymen's sanity when he found that for years many of them could not
distinguish between an Anglican High Churchman and an admirer of Rome.
To speak plainly, there was never such a humiliating spectacle of public
stolidity as that which for so long a time was witnessed in the popular
mystification as to Mr. Gladstone's religious position. It went for
nothing that his first critical Parliamentary step was to give up his
seat rather than vote more money to Maynooth; nobody seemed to bear in
mind that as far back as 1852 he both predicted and publicly hoped for
the downfall of the temporal power of the Papacy, and that ten years
later Sir George Bowyer openly attacked him on that very point in
Parliament; it did not avail that he it was who paved the way for the
unification of Italy by dragging into the light before all Europe the
prison secrets of Neapolitan tyranny. Because he had the good sense to
oppose the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and the loyalty to remain on
terms of friendship with the companions of his youth after they became
Puseyites, and avowed that he held the same views as to Church doctrine
which some of the greatest Church of England divines taught, he was
called on to explain, every month or so, that he was not a Jesuit. Not
until he published his pamphlet on the Vatican Decrees, and by so doing
threw all the Roman Catholics in England and elsewhere into a white heat
of rage, was the silliness quite exploded. It is true that the dull
public might plead that a real profession of religiousness on the part
of a leading politician was such a novelty that it might be excused
being a little puzzled, and believing the worst in its perplexity. Worst
or best, Mr. Gladstone has gone on speaking and writing about his
religion just as if a man's ethics and faith ought to have some
connection with his politics, and, as time has passed, people appear to
think it less strange. This non-reticence on the score of religion has
made more serious the impression Mr. Gladstone has produced upon the
public mind; but in reality it is no specialty in his mode of public
thinking, but only a necessary part of it. He tracks his commonest
politics to their fundamental principles, and makes of them a system. He
has always in his reasoning to go back to history, and this has delayed
his advance in comparison with men who dispense with that; but there
never yet was a public man who explained so fully as Mr. Gladstone the
reasons of his changes. All the progress of his mind is to be traced in
speeches, articles, pamphlets, volumes. He has given too much
explanation, not too little, for his mind has an insatiability for
reasons. Most people are content when they get hold of a good one; but
he wants three or four--in fact, all that can be got by searching for;
and if it be true, as it certainly is, that he likes the last to have a
little subtlety about it, long-sustained thinking cannot take people too
deep in politics, whatever it may do now and then in religion. For
instance, on the question of Reform Mr. Gladstone has certainly
exhausted the process, having at last got at the final ideal argument.
It turns out, as he stated it to Mr. Lowe, to be this,--that, apart
from, or rather in addition to, all the hard reasons of justice and
safety that Mr. Bright can urge for extending the franchise, the vote
ought to be given because it has an educative power, and will make our
humbler fellow-countrymen better citizens. It is open to any one, who is
stupid enough, to call that argument subtle, but no one can deny that it
is truly Liberal. There is not a man among us to-day who keeps the main
Liberal issues so broad and clear as Mr. Gladstone does, and this simply
because he will get to a principle. He adds a tremendous multiplicity of
ideas in the way of side issues, but, as we above put it, they are all
reasons in addition. There is a very simple test of it,--he has never
recanted a single article of his Liberal progress, never gone back a
single step. This hardly can be said of either Mr. Lowe or a few others
who might be named. It could not even be said of so thorough a Liberal
as Earl Russell. Mr. Gladstone's alleged over-refining has ended in
placing and keeping him in the practical lead of his party, at a time of
life when many born in the faith grow faint-hearted. Even the one bit of
mysticism which his political feeling has developed--namely, the belief
that the popular judgment is truest of all in very large matters--is
only the full flowering of the popular trust which every Liberal
professes to have. The bulk of the nation will forgive him that excess
of political belief, if it be an excess, for it is the last compliment a
statesman can pay them, and they have but to merit it, and it then turns
to Mr. Gladstone's praise as well as theirs. But, at any rate, it will
not do for Liberals to set out to argue the point with Mr. Gladstone, or
they will quickly find themselves tripped up by a principle; for it is
no sentimentality in him which underlies the view, but completed logic
and wide recollection of historical instances.
Indeed, although it was necessary in trying to reproduce the general
impression Mr. Gladstone has made upon his contemporaries to speak of
this alleged over-refining, what is meant by it has been after all a
kind of superfluity of mental operation. His intricacy of thinking has
never hindered his activity; least of all living men has Mr. Gladstone
been a dreamer. He stands in history as a reviser of fiscal policies; an
introducer of new administrative modes; a widener of the boundaries of
political rights; a ceaseless overthrower of public abuses. From first
to last he has been, as the hatred of his opponents has too well
witnessed, a man of practice. You may add to this that he reasons too
minutely, if you like; but it was not by a transcendental casuistry of
politics that he wearied the country: it was by his enormous energy in
ceaselessly proposing wide sweeping measures. The casuistry was all in
addition. The over-refining of Mr. Gladstone has, in fact, been of a
wholly different kind from what is common among men; it has consisted in
finding justifications afterwards for very prompt vigorous doing.
Examine, if any one thinks it worth while at this time of day, the
Ewelme Rectory case, or the issue of the Royal Warrant on Purchase, or
the Collier appointment, and it will appear that it was for bold
decision in taking a practical step that he was arraigned as much as for
subsequently finding too many reasons for it. For ourselves, as we have
not set out to apologize for Mr. Gladstone (men of his dimensions must
be taken as they are), but simply to put down hints recalling more fully
than is usual the great features of his career, there is no need for our
not saying that we wish he had in some cases dispensed with these
arguments in excess of the conclusion. In some instances it is as wise
after all, though not so clever, to be satisfied with urging one good
reason, and not to confuse ordinary people by adding five or six more
not so good, the risk being that there will be a bad one among them. But
the fact remains that Mr. Gladstone has not busied himself in tying
mental knots for the purpose of entanglement; he has indulged in no such
waste of time. The mental puzzle has always referred to some practical
doing. Owing to this, his opponents have had to admit his mental
sincerity, while accusing him of over-subtlety. It nearly all turned, in
fact, into the psychological question of whether Mr. Gladstone's mind
had not at one part of its machinery a twist, and in the meantime while
this point was being discussed he went on carrying his measures. If
there were Liberals who did not quite follow him in his defence of the
issue of the Royal Warrant, when he drew distinctions between
prerogative and statutory power, they had not the least doubt that in
abolishing purchase he had effected a capital Liberal reform, and they
might hope that his reasoning as well as his practice was right. Is Mr.
Gladstone to be the only one to whose idiosyncrasy nothing is to be
allowed? The hullabaloo which was raised when somebody could say that he
had broken through a technicality seemed very like, after all, as though
from this one politician perfection was expected, which was not an ill
compliment at bottom; and any admirers who may admit that perfection was
not always got, do not, in granting that, depreciate him much as this
world goes, and may still think him the most upright of our public men.
His mental machinery is complicated, whilst there is no apparatus like
it for rapidity, and once set going he himself cannot always stop it;
his mind, as we have said, riots in ratiocination, and will multiply
arguments to the last shred of the material which any case in hand
affords. But, to return to the main point,--it never leaves go of the
real business. Even what has seemed to some persons his off-work, his
voluminous writing, has, with the one exception of his classical
studies, been no mere leisurely literature, but persistent advocacy of
special objects. These productions have been meant to frame public
opinion, and to give him openings for legislation, if that became
possible. He has used the press because it had become the hugest
instrument of the time he lived in; but it was not for the purpose of
multiplying books that Mr. Gladstone wrote, but with a view to
practically influencing men.
This relentless subordination of everything to practical ends--this iron
determination to keep doing, even while ready frankly to depend upon his
power of speaking and writing to produce conviction and popular
persuasion as the means for effecting his objects, gives as the final
imprint of Mr. Gladstone on one's mind that he was always meant for a
Liberal. A man of this kind might be born a Conservative; it might take
him time to break fully with old ties; but for him to stay finally in
the ranks where thought was allowed to remain muddled, where abuses were
looked on with toleration, and ease was enjoyed at the cost of others,
was an impossibility. Mr. Gladstone, if only from the fact that he was a
born financier and an inveterate thinker, and a man with a passion for
publicly talking, belonged to the Liberals from the first. His whole
life, too, has consistently lent itself to that style. If it has had in
it a touch of austerity, that excellently befitted the social condition
of the masses of our people. His gaze has been fixed too much upon them
to be attracted by the glitter of the narrow upper circle, which so
foolishly persists, amidst its gaudy splendour, in believing itself the
nation. That silliness was not for Mr. Gladstone. He has been subjected
to some tests. If his family was not highly placed, his father was a
baronet, and he himself was educated at Eton and Oxford. Nobles have
been among his friends at all periods of his life, as well as his
official subordinates more than once in it. But he has passed the whole
of his long career without a sparkle of the glitter of adventitious
display: that proudest title of all, which it is not in the power of the
Crown to bestow but only to take away--"the Great Commoner"--has
descended upon him, and is still his. Then he has fenced himself off
with no stiffness of manner; the only dignity he has assumed has been
the natural seriousness of ardent sincerity, warning off triflers only.
To everybody else he has been accessible; any person could impose on him
the trouble of a written reply. His post-cards were known to be public
property. But putting aside that joke, which is now worn bare, scarcely
has any one so fully and ungrudgingly accepted the responsibilities of
his position. He has been the public's faithful, ready servant in every
particular. Nor has it been mere complaisance, or a drudging of
mechanical industry; he has exhibited a real faculty of interesting
himself in all that anybody has been doing actively and well. To say
that he is the only statesman who, while clinging to the Church of
England, has commanded the sympathies of the Dissenters, might provoke
an enemy, embittered by the fact, to reply that he had tactical reasons
for trying to do that; but it could have been nothing else than real
width of mind and a robust versatility which enabled this High Churchman
largely to divide impartial admiration between the Evangelical party and
the Romanists, pointing out fully and exactly what is to be praised in
each. Any one who wishes it can find the estimates set out in detail in
the third and seventh volumes of "The Gleanings." This wide range of
intellectual appreciation is really as much a characteristic of Mr.
Gladstone as has been his unyielding tenacity and doctrinal hold within
the limits of his personal confession of belief. He, a firm acceptor of
the tenets of sacramental efficacy, apostolical succession, and the
authority of the Church in her own sphere, could take up the
semi-rationalistic book "Ecce Homo," and turn it round-and-round
admiringly as a most curious and valuable mental production. Nothing in
which thought was really shown has escaped his notice, or failed to
arouse his interest. He has bent his look on Secularism, as a scientific
inquirer might scrutinize a new species, and he has stooped to quote Mr.
Bradlaugh. In one place you will find him, very likely on the page after
giving a passage from Isaiah or the Psalms, citing the old poet Dunbar,
or speaking of Rowe or Swift, or alluding to Rousseau; while long before
it became a fashion he had words of sympathizing praise for Shelley,
selecting, of all other places, _The Quarterly Review_ to print them in.
But, perhaps, the clearest proof of all, alike of his power to bear
testimony in spite of personal disliking, and his standing hard and fast
upon a principle when he has reached it, is that he, whom Macaulay
nearly half a century ago described as "a young man of unblemished
character," and whom his Lordship, if he were now alive, would speak of
as "the old man with personal fame unspotted," could step aside in one
of his articles to recognize the public debt due to Jack Wilkes as a
helper forward of our freedom. Wherever a national service has been
done, Mr. Gladstone's eulogy always has been ready.
Down to this point we have not spared so much as a hint to his
magnificent oratory, his unsurpassed debating skill, his not infrequent
successes in literary style. These were not the things that anybody
needed reminding of, and that necessity was the prescribed limit of our
self-imposed task. Who has forgotten when the expounding of the Budget
was the greatest intellectual treat of the Session, when sugar and
railway duties and tea became natural themes for eloquence, and the
unfolding of the surplus was breathlessly waited for like the
_denouement_ of a novelist's plot? Those scenes are long past, it is
true, but the echoes of them can still be heard, for each year since has
brought a disappointing reminder to awaken them. But the matchless
vigour and splendour of his debating fence has never slackened, never
weakened; the only privilege of the older generation in respect of it,
is that they can boast to have witnessed more of it, not to have seen
better displays. As to his writings, there least of all is any reminder
wanted, for he presents the public with an improving specimen each
month. If any one laid themselves out to find fault with Mr. Gladstone's
literature, the very worst thing they could discover to say of it, would
be that it still was oratory, only written down.
This is the man who, after a few weeks of leisure, reappears next month
in Midlothian; first in the field, as if that appearance was his by
right of custom. How well he compares with the rest of our older party
leaders! Mr. Bright, grown a little pursy, though also stricken by
domestic misfortune, rests rather inertly on his laurels, which
certainly are plentiful enough to invite repose; Mr. Forster has never
succeeded in quite finding his way out of the clauses of his own
Education Act, where he sees himself confronted with the Church of
England at the end of so many vistas, that he is lost in admiration of
its architecture; Mr. Goschen, by some strange weakness (which, let us
hope, is only temporary) has got a scare from meeting the County
Franchise wearing Joseph Arch's coat and hat; while Mr. Lowe is riding
hobbies, bicycle-wise, in and out before the very select constituency of
the London University, with readers of _The Fortnightly Review_ for
outside spectators, just by way of showing off his little feats of
mental gymnastic. In the meanwhile, Mr. Gladstone, the veteran of them
all, is putting on his harness for a fresh contest, a riper, better
Liberal to-day than on any previous day of fight. It is for the younger
men to rally round him.
But, before taking our leave of Mr. Gladstone, we have finally to
enlarge our view of him. Early in these remarks it seemed well to give a
very hasty summary of his whole career; but there remains to be
attempted an exact sketch of his actual position in respect of opinions
and practical relations at the moment when he ceased to be Minister. Let
us, first of all, at this moment when a Brummagem Imperialism is only
yet half-faded, recall what was Mr. Gladstone's opinion of the historic
position and natural function of England among the nations; for it has
been craftily made to appear that he was willing, and indeed anxious,
for this country to efface itself. In 1870, when he was still at the
height of power, he published in _The Edinburgh Review_ his article on
"Germany, France, and England," and the following was the view he then
put forward of the international obligations and duties of his country,
in spite of the sea dividing us from other lands:--
"Yet we are not isolated.... With vast multitudes of persons in each of
the Continental countries we have constant relations, both of personal
and commercial intercourse, which grow from year to year; and as,
happily, we have no conflict of interests, real or supposed, nor scope
for evil passions afforded by our peaceful rivalry, there is nothing to
hinder the self-acting growth of concord.... So far from this implying
either a condition or a policy of isolation, it marks out England as the
appropriate object of the general confidence.... All that is wanted is
that she should discharge the functions, which are likely more and more
to accrue to her, modestly, kindly, impartially.... But in order that
she may act fully up to a part of such high distinction, the kingdom of
Queen Victoria must be in all things worthy of it. The world-wide cares
and responsibilities with which the British people have charged
themselves are really beyond the ordinary measure of human strength; and
until a recent period it seemed the opinion of our rulers that we could
not do better than extend them yet further, wherever an opening could
easily, or even decently, be found. With this avidity for material
extension was joined a preternatural and morbid sensibility. Russia at
the Amoor, America at the Fee-jee or the Sandwich Islands, France in New
Caledonia or Cochin China--all these, and the like, were held to be good
reasons for a feverish excitement lest other nations should do for
themselves but the fiftieth part of what we have done for ourselves....
The secret of strength lies in keeping some proportion between the
burden and the back."
Is it necessary to ask whether this is a policy combining dignified
patriotism and prudently-restrained common sense? Compare it for a
moment with the gewgaw skimble-skamble diplomatic sensationalism with
which we have been presented since. But let us go a little more into
detail as to Mr. Gladstone's standing with reference to international
relations. This present Government has perhaps forgotten that there is
such a nation in the world as the United States of America; but Mr.
Gladstone kept it well in mind, and we suppose every one will admit that
he, of all statesmen, stands well with that people of our own blood, who
very shortly will be the most powerful community upon the earth, and the
one with whom we shall, for all time, have most to do. However, we will
keep within the bounds of Europe. It is the fashion now to give
precedence to Germany. Well, Mr. Gladstone was among the first to
predict the success of Prussia, and she is not likely to forget who it
was who preserved neutrality at a moment most critical to her. Is it
France that he is not on good relations with? Why this Minister, who
invited her wine trade, and strove unceasingly to increase commerce to
and fro across the Channel, and who is for giving further and further
political rights to his countrymen, is the only English statesman whom
the bulk of Frenchmen can understand. To them our Tories must be as
antiquated as their own Royalists. Italy is a growing Power in the
European comity, and who is there among our statesmen who can in her
fair cities arouse half the enthusiasm he can? He is, literally, the
only English politician they familiarly know. With Austria, it is true,
he during the recent war lost patience for a moment, but her conduct
since has told that her rulers must at the time have known that he had
good reasons for it; and no one has more fully appreciated the
difficulties of Austria's position than he has done, or was more early
in giving her, years ago, the very counsel which she has since proved
was the wisest for her. There remains one other great Power to be
named--Russia; the State with whom we shall have directly of necessity
to stand face to face in the far East, and with whom terms will in the
end have somehow to be made. It is urged against Mr. Gladstone that he
has not rendered himself obnoxious enough to this remaining Power--that
is, that he did not incapacitate himself for negotiating with her, and,
having postponed defiance of her, might make some peaceful arrangement.
Can any friend of peace think this a very grievous accusation? Mr.
Gladstone has gained this position of goodwill all round at what
cost?--that of having fallen into disfavour with the Turks. That is his
one terrible disqualification for affairs; or, if you wish to be
precisely exhaustive, and at the same time to elicit the absurdity
fully, you may add to it that he has irritated the Bourbons. It is quite
true, and we, indeed, wish to put it clearly forward, that he was for
abating a little of our national swagger, and was prepared to see, and
to welcome, advancement in other nations. But every well-grounded
Liberal knows that it is only on those two conditions that England can
permanently pursue her own paths of industrial development, and the
world make progress. Mr. Gladstone's single sin in reference to our
external relations was his readiness to favour those two results.
But how does he show when a last view is taken of him from within our
politics? Here, again, first look to the circumference. In dealing with
the colonies, he was for all being put in possession of a free autonomy,
and then urging them to self-reliance--in those ways welding them into
the integrity of the empire; and as to India, he insisted that we should
strive more and more to realize what he termed the generous conception
of a moral trusteeship, to be administered for the benefit of those over
whom we rule. Here, once more, we get the true ring of a sound
Liberalism, for those are the only principles, we venture to affirm, on
which such an empire as this of ours can ever be made permanent.
Treating the colonies as babies and biting the thumb at Russia, even
from the most scientific frontier India can furnish, though you shout
"Empress" from it as loudly as you will, has nothing truly English about
it. Empire is not kept in such a mawkish, artificial manner.
But now narrow the gaze within our own home limits. The chief domestic
questions for the British public are these,--extension of the County
Franchise, the Redistribution of Seats, the Disestablishment of the
Church, and Retrenchment of Expenditure. The Land Question will yet have
to grow, and may not ripen in his time. But on three of the above
pending matters Mr. Gladstone stands at the very front. He is for making
our field cultivators citizens no less than our artizans; he is for
re-allotting members in a manner which will give us a Parliament truly
representative; and it is hardly necessary to speak of economical
benefits in connection with the Minister who used the nation to
reduction of taxation and surpluses arriving together, and whose last
promise under that head was the total abolition of the Income Tax. On
the other of these great domestic matters, that which stands third in
the above list, the Disestablishment of the Church, it has seemed to
advanced Liberals that Mr. Gladstone has lagged. But the lively fear of
his opponents on this very matter is full of hope. Since he last
dissented from Mr. Miall's motion, he has written a very significant
phrase in an article in this Review. In treating of "The Courses of
Religious Thought," when reviewing the churches of the United States and
of the British Colonies he spoke of their vigorous growth, "far from the
possibly chilling shadow of National Establishments of Religion." In
that phrase, for a man so practical as is Mr. Gladstone,
Disestablishment seems to cast its shadow before, and not a few persons
on the other side of the question shivered from the chilliness it made.
But these topics of the first class do not depend upon any one
statesman; the biggest of men have these capital problems thrust upon
them; all that you can do is to take note how a leader stands in
reference to them. And the above is Mr. Gladstone's standing. But there
was another class of legislative reforms which he was the man to have
gone in search of. In one of his most recent articles he has given us a
hint of a dream of this kind which was in his mind. He stated it
thus:--"Our currency, our local government, our liquor laws, portions
even of our taxation, remain in a state either positively disgraceful,
or at the least inviting and demanding improvement." That programme of
the further benefits which we should have owed to Mr. Gladstone was put
aside by the giddiness of twenty-five or thirty constituencies at the
last elections, but it will fittingly serve to give the finishing touch
to our presentation of him in this paper. Liberals have, in fact, to
thank him for offering more of reform and of benefit than the country
would let him give it. Splendid as his achievements have been, he really
had others in reserve.
Is it too late? is the question that naturally arises. Certainly there
is no hope of having the five years of administration by him which we
have lost since 1874. That is irretrievable; and if Mr. Gladstone felt
then his growing years, and had a wish to finish other tasks apart from
politics, he is no younger now; while the aims of his purposed leisure
must have been greatly interfered with by his partial recall to affairs
owing to the dangers to which freedom in Bulgaria and our own national
credit were exposed. It is wholly a matter for Mr. Gladstone to decide.
If the next elections go in favour of the Liberals, all the world knows
that office is there for him to take or to leave. Earl Granville, the
Duke of Argyll, Lord Hartington would, we need not say, be among the
first even to urge it as far as it was right to do so, and the whole
party would welcome him back to power with a shout of joy. Who knows?
Mr. Gladstone's patriotism is great, and our financial muddle will,
also, be very great about that time. Between the two he might be
tempted; he may yet do us the final service of putting the national
finances right again. It is, we repeat, wholly for him to say. Earlier
in this paper a further word was promised on the subject of his
retirement; but, upon second thoughts, it scarcely seems necessary. Mr.
Gladstone was too experienced in Parliamentary doings not to know that
the Conservatives would take care to keep enough of their majority until
time itself forced them back to the unwished-for hustings. He did his
party not an atom of practical injury by retiring; rather, it was a good
opportunity for giving a younger leader practice. It would be quite
idle, on the other hand, to argue with his opponents for complaining
that he did not retire enough. He has made speeches, they say; he has
written articles in every organ there is; he has even republished
previous writings. As we before said, they have themselves to blame for
it in great measure: if they wanted Mr. Gladstone to stay in retirement,
they should have carefully kept quiet. Instead of that they made a noise
before his door, disturbing him in his studies. What more natural than
that he should come out? He did so, and found that, disguised like
harlequins in the flimsy bedizenment which they call Imperialism, they
were playing high jinks with Britain's reputation and the chances of
freedom for the oppressed in the East. It was too much for him; but if
they complain of the number of the weapons he attacked them with, we
know that it would have been impossible for him to please them there.
They never have been satisfied on that score. What they really find
fault with are the blows they got.
And there are more to come. Directly we shall have them complaining that
he has chosen a constituency so far away as Scotland; the real fact
being that they wish he had gone much farther still. They never are
sincere with Mr. Gladstone; he cannot please them. We leave them
anxiously listening for his approach again unto these shores, knowing
very well that to their thinking they will hear his voice all too soon.