(_Address of Lord Rosebery_)
I am here to-day to unveil the image of one of the great figures of our
country. It is right and fitting that it should stand here. A statue of
Mr. Gladstone is congenial in any part of Scotland. But in this Scottish
city, teeming with eager workers, endowed with a great University, a
center of industry, commerce, and thought, a statue of William Ewart
Gladstone is at home.
But you in Glasgow have more personal claims to a share in the
inheritance of Mr. Gladstone's fame. I, at any rate, can recall one
memory--the record of that marvelous day in December, 1879, nearly
twenty-three years ago, when the indomitable old man delivered his
rectorial address to the students at noon, a long political speech in
St. Andrew's Hall in the evening, and a substantial discourse on
receiving an address from the Corporation at ten o'clock at night. Some
of you may have been present at all these gatherings, some only at the
political meeting. If they were, they may remember the little incidents
of the meeting--the glasses which were hopelessly lost and then, of
course, found on the orator's person--the desperate candle brought in,
stuck in a water-bottle, to attempt sufficient light to read an extract.
And what a meeting it was--teeming, delirious, absorbed! Do you have
such meetings now? They seem to me pretty good; but the meetings of that
time stand out before all others in my mind.
This statue is erected, not out of the national subscription, but by the
contributions from men of all creeds in Glasgow and in the West. I must
then, in what I have to say, leave out altogether the political aspect
of Mr. Gladstone. In some cases such a rule would omit all that was
interesting in a man. There are characters, from which if you
subtracted politics, there would be nothing left. It was not so with
Mr. Gladstone.
To the great mass of his fellow-countrymen he was of course a statesman,
wildly worshipped by some, wildly detested by others. But, to those who
were privileged to know him, his politics seemed but the least part of
him. The predominant part, to which all else was subordinated, was his
religion; the life which seemed to attract him most was the life of the
library; the subject which engrossed him most was the subject of the
moment, whatever it might be, and that, when he was out of office, was
very rarely politics. Indeed, I sometimes doubt whether his natural bent
was toward politics at all. Had his course taken him that way, as it
very nearly did, he would have been a great churchman, greater perhaps
than any that this island has known; he would have been a great
professor, if you could have found a university big enough to hold him;
he would have been a great historian, a great bookman, he would have
grappled with whole libraries and wrestled with academies, had the fates
placed him in a cloister; indeed it is difficult to conceive the career,
except perhaps the military, in which his energy and intellect and
application would not have placed him on a summit. Politics, however,
took him and claimed his life service, but, jealous mistress as she is,
could never thoroughly absorb him.
Such powers as I have indicated seem to belong to a giant and a prodigy,
and I can understand many turning away from the contemplation of such a
character, feeling that it is too far removed from them to interest
them, and that it is too unapproachable to help them--that it is like
reading of Hercules or Hector, mythical heroes whose achievements the
actual living mortal can not hope to rival. Well, that is true enough;
we have not received intellectual faculties equal to Mr. Gladstone's,
and can not hope to vie with him in their exercise. But apart from them,
his great force was character, and amid the vast multitude that I am
addressing, there is none who may not be helped by him.
The three signal qualities which made him what he was, were courage,
industry, and faith; dauntless courage, unflagging industry, a faith
which was part of his fiber; these were the levers with which he moved
the world.
I do not speak of his religious faith, that demands a worthier speaker
and another occasion. But no one who knew Mr. Gladstone could fail to
see that it was the essence, the savor, the motive power of his life.
Strange as it may seem, I can not doubt that while this attracted many
to him, it alienated others, others not themselves irreligious, but who
suspected the sincerity of so manifest a devotion, and who, reared in
the moderate atmosphere of the time, disliked the intrusion of religious
considerations into politics. These, however, though numerous enough,
were the exceptions, and it can not, I think, be questioned that Mr.
Gladstone not merely raised the tone of public discussion, but quickened
and renewed the religious feeling of the society in which he moved.
But this is not the faith of which I am thinking to-day. What is present
to me is the faith with which he espoused and pursued great causes.
There also he had faith sufficient to move mountains, and did sometimes
move mountains. He did not lightly resolve, he came to no hasty
conclusion, but when he had convinced himself that a cause was right,
it engrossed him, it inspired him, with a certainty as deep-seated and
as imperious as ever moved mortal man. To him, then, obstacles,
objections, the counsels of doubters and critics were as nought, he
pressed on with the passion of a whirlwind, but also with the steady
persistence of some puissant machine.
He had, of course, like every statesman, often to traffic with
expediency, he had always, I suppose, to accept something less than his
ideal, but his unquenchable faith, not in himself--tho that with
experience must have waxed strong--not in himself but in his cause,
sustained him among the necessary shifts and transactions of the moment,
and kept his head high in the heavens.
Such faith, such moral conviction, is not given to all men, for the
treasures of his nature were in ingots, and not in dust. But there is,
perhaps, no man without some faith in some cause or some person; if so,
let him take heart, in however small a minority he may be, by
remembering how mighty a strength was Gladstone's power of faith.
His next great force lay in his industry. I do not know if the
aspersions of "ca' canny" be founded, but at any rate there was no "ca'
canny" about him. From his earliest school-days, if tradition be true,
to the bed of death, he gave his full time and energy to work. No doubt
his capacity for labor was unusual. He would sit up all night writing a
pamphlet, and work next day as usual. An eight-hours' day would have
been a holiday to him, for he preached and practised the gospel of work
to its fullest extent. He did not, indeed, disdain pleasure; no one
enjoyed physical exercise, or a good play, or a pleasant dinner, more
than he; he drank in deep draughts of the highest and the best that life
had to offer; but even in pastime he was never idle. He did not know
what it was to saunter, he debited himself with every minute of his
time; he combined with the highest intellectual powers the faculty of
utilizing them to the fullest extent by intense application. Moreover,
his industry was prodigious in result, for he was an extraordinarily
rapid worker. Dumont says of Mirabeau, that till he met that marvelous
man he had no idea of how much could be achieved in a day. "Had I not
lived with him," he says, "I should not know what can be accomplished in
a day, all that can be comprest into an interval of twelve hours. A day
was worth more to him than a week or a month to others." Many men can be
busy for hours with a mighty small product, but with Mr. Gladstone
every minute was fruitful. That, no doubt, was largely due to his
marvelous powers of concentration. When he was staying at Dalmeny in
1879 he kindly consented to sit for his bust. The only difficulty was
that there was no time for sittings. So the sculptor with his clay model
was placed opposite Mr. Gladstone as he worked, and they spent the
mornings together, Mr. Gladstone writing away, and the clay figure of
himself less than a yard off gradually assuming shape and form. Anything
more distracting I can not conceive, but it had no effect on the busy
patient. And now let me make a short digression. I saw recently in your
newspapers that there was some complaint of the manners of the rising
generation in Glasgow. If that be so, they are heedless of Mr.
Gladstone's example. It might be thought that so impetuous a temper as
his might be occasionally rough or abrupt. That was not so. His
exquisite urbanity was one of his most conspicuous graces. I do not now
only allude to that grave, old-world courtesy, which gave so much
distinction to his private life; for his sweetness of manner went far
beyond demeanor. His spoken words, his letters, even when one differed
from him most acutely, were all marked by this special note. He did not
like people to disagree with him, few people do; but, so far as manner
went, it was more pleasant to disagree with Mr. Gladstone than to be in
agreement with some others.
Lastly, I come to his courage--that perhaps was his greatest quality,
for when he gave his heart and reason to a cause, he never counted the
cost. Most men are physically brave, and this nation is reputed to be
especially brave, but Mr. Gladstone was brave among the brave. He had
to the end the vitality of physical courage. When well on in his ninth
decade, well on to ninety, he was knocked over by a cab, and before the
bystanders could rally to his assistance, he had pursued the cab with a
view to taking its number. He had, too, notoriously, political courage
in a not less degree than Sir Robert Walpole. We read that George II,
who was little given to enthusiasm, would often cry out, with color
flushing into his cheeks, and tears sometimes in his eyes, and with a
vehement oath:--"He (Walpole) is a brave fellow; he has more spirit than
any man I ever knew."
Mr. Gladstone did not yield to Walpole in political and parliamentary
courage--it was a quality which he closely observed in others, and on
which he was fond of descanting. But he had the rarest and choicest
courage of all--I mean moral courage. That was his supreme
characteristic, and it was with him, like others, from the first. A
contemporary of his at Eton once told me of a scene, at which my
informant was present, when some loose or indelicate toast was proposed,
and all present drank it but young Gladstone. In spite of the storm of
objurgation and ridicule that raged around him, he jammed his face, as
it were, down in his hands on the table and would not budge. Every
schoolboy knows, for we may here accurately use Macaulay's well-known
expression, every schoolboy knows the courage that this implies. And
even by the heedless generation of boyhood it was appreciated, for we
find an Etonian writing to his parents to ask that he might go to Oxford
rather than Cambridge, on the sole ground that at Oxford he would have
the priceless advantage of Gladstone's influence and example. Nor did
his courage ever flag. He might be right, or he might be wrong--that is
not the question here--but when he was convinced that he was right, not
all the combined powers of Parliament or society or the multitude could
for an instant hinder his course, whether it ended in success or in
failure. Success left him calm, he had had so much of it; nor did
failures greatly depress him. The next morning found him once more
facing the world with serene and undaunted brow. There was a man. The
nation has lost him, but preserves his character, his manhood, as a
model, on which she may form if she be fortunate, coming generations of
men. With his politics, with his theology, with his manifold graces and
gifts of intellect, we are not concerned to-day, not even with his warm
and passionate human sympathies. They are not dead with him, but let
them rest with him, for we can not in one discourse view him in all his
parts. To-day it is enough to have dealt for a moment on three of his
great moral characteristics, enough to have snatched from the fleeting
hour a few moments of communion with the mighty dead.
History has not yet allotted him his definite place, but no one would
now deny that he bequeathed a pure standard of life, a record of lofty
ambition for the public good as he understood it, a monument of
life-long labor. Such lives speak for themselves, they need no statues,
they face the future with the confidence of high purpose and endeavor.
The statues are not for them but for us, to bid us be conscious of our
trust, mindful of our duty, scornful of opposition to principle and
faith. They summon us to account for time and opportunity, they embody
an inspiring tradition, they are milestones in the life of a nation. The
effigy of Pompey was bathed in the blood of his great rival: let this
statue have the nobler destiny of constantly calling to life worthy
rivals of Gladstone's fame and character.
Unveil, then, that statue. Let it stand to Glasgow in all time coming
for faith, fortitude, courage, industry, qualities apart from intellect
or power or wealth, which may inspire all her citizens however humble,
however weak; let it remind the most unthinking passer-by of the
dauntless character which it represents, of his long life and honest
purpose; let it leaven by an immortal tradition the population which
lives and works and dies around this monument.