diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 01:31:50 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 01:31:50 -0700 |
| commit | cf92172ca0827bfebe788be937b30f2f9f40deea (patch) | |
| tree | 9283a49e98eff74d6d47c2e05099155032413962 /21091-h | |
Diffstat (limited to '21091-h')
| -rw-r--r-- | 21091-h/21091-h.htm | 27269 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 21091-h/images/illus-000.jpg | bin | 0 -> 24196 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 21091-h/images/illus-096.jpg | bin | 0 -> 22352 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 21091-h/images/illus-231.jpg | bin | 0 -> 21946 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 21091-h/images/illus-345.jpg | bin | 0 -> 58437 bytes |
5 files changed, 27269 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/21091-h/21091-h.htm b/21091-h/21091-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f85b904 --- /dev/null +++ b/21091-h/21091-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,27269 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, by John Morley. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 65%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + color: silver; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + + div.centered {text-align: center;} /* work around for IE centering with CSS problem part 1 */ + div.centered table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;} /* work around for IE centering with CSS problem part 2 */ + + div.trans-note {border-style: solid; border-width: 1px; + margin: 3em 15%; padding: 1em; text-align: center;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + .right {text-align: right;} + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i1 {display: block; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i11 {display: block; margin-left: 11em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i12 {display: block; margin-left: 12em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i17 {display: block; margin-left: 17em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i21 {display: block; margin-left: 21em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i24 {display: block; margin-left: 24em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i37 {display: block; margin-left: 37em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i40 {display: block; margin-left: 40em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i6 {display: block; margin-left: 6em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i7 {display: block; margin-left: 7em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 +(of 3), by John Morley + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) + 1809-1859 + +Author: John Morley + +Release Date: April 15, 2007 [EBook #21091] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE *** + + + + +Produced by Paul Murray, Thomas Strong and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center"><a name="image-1" id="image-1"><!-- Image 1 --></a> +<img src="images/illus-000.jpg" height="480" width="335" alt="Sir John Gladstone" /></p> +<p class="center"><a href="#ILLUSTRATIONS">Click for list of Illustrations</a></p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<h2>THE LIFE OF</h2> + +<h1>WILLIAM EWART</h1> + +<h1>GLADSTONE</h1> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h3>JOHN MORLEY</h3> +<br /> +<br /> +<p class="center"><i>IN THREE VOLUMES—VOL. I</i></p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1809-1859</i>)</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<p class="center">TORONTO</p> +<p class="center">GEORGE N. MORANG & COMPANY, LIMITED</p> +<p class="center">1903<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1903,</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.</p> + +<p class="center">Set up, electrotyped, and published October, 1903. Reprinted</p> +<p class="center">October, November, 1903.</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<p class="center">Norwood Press</p> +<p class="center">J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.</p> +<p class="center">Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p> +<hr /> +<br /> +<p class="center">TO THE</p> + +<p class="center">ELECTORS OF THE MONTROSE BURGHS</p> + +<p class="center">I BEG LEAVE TO</p> + +<p class="center">INSCRIBE THIS BOOK</p> + +<p class="center">IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION</p> + +<p class="center">OF</p> + +<p class="center">THE CONFIDENCE AND FRIENDSHIP</p> + +<p class="center">WITH WHICH</p> + +<p class="center">THEY HAVE HONOURED ME</p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> +<br /> +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p> +<p class="center">NOTE</p> + +<p>The material on which this biography is founded consists mainly, of +course, of the papers collected at Hawarden. Besides that vast +accumulation, I have been favoured with several thousands of other +pieces from the legion of Mr. Gladstone's correspondents. Between two +and three hundred thousand written papers of one sort or another must +have passed under my view. To some important journals and papers from +other sources I have enjoyed free access, and my warm thanks are due to +those who have generously lent me this valuable aid. I am especially +indebted to the King for the liberality with which his Majesty has been +graciously pleased to sanction the use of certain documents, in cases +where the permission of the Sovereign was required.</p> + +<p>When I submitted an application for the same purpose to Queen Victoria, +in readily promising her favourable consideration, the Queen added a +message strongly impressing on me that the work I was about to undertake +should not be handled in the narrow way of party. This injunction +repre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>sents my own clear view of the spirit in which the history of a +career so memorable as Mr. Gladstone's should be composed. That, to be +sure, is not at all inconsistent with our regarding party feeling in its +honourable sense, as entirely the reverse of an infirmity.</p> + +<p>The diaries from which I have often quoted consist of forty little books +in double columns, intended to do little more than record persons seen, +or books read, or letters written as the days passed by. From these +diaries come several of the mottoes prefixed to our chapters; such +mottoes are marked by an asterisk.</p> + +<p>The trustees and other members of Mr. Gladstone's family have extended +to me a uniform kindness and consideration and an absolutely unstinted +confidence, for which I can never cease to owe them my heartiest +acknowledgment. They left with the writer an unqualified and undivided +responsibility for these pages, and for the use of the material that +they entrusted to him. Whatever may prove to be amiss, whether in +leaving out or putting in or putting wrong, the blame is wholly mine.</p> + +<p style="margin-left: 35em;">J. M.</p> + +<p style="margin-left: 1em;">1903.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p> + +<h3><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</a></h3> + +<h4><i><a href="#Book_I">BOOK I</a></i></h4> + +<p class="center"><i>(1809-1831</i>)</p> + +<div class="centered"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 10%;"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td> +<td align='right' style="width: 70%;"> </td> +<td align='right' style="width: 20%;"><span class="smcap">Page</span></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'> </td> +<td align='left'><a href="#INTRODUCTORY">INTRODUCTORY</a></td> +<td align='right'>1</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>I.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHILDHOOD</a></td> +<td align='right'>7</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>II.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">ETON</a></td> +<td align='right'>26</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>III.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">OXFORD</a></td> +<td align='right'>48</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<h4><i><a href="#Book_II">BOOK II</a></i></h4> + +<p class="center">(<i>1832-1846</i>)</p> + +<div class="centered"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='right' style="width: 10%;">I.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 70%;"><a href="#BkIICh_I">ENTERS PARLIAMENT</a></td> +<td align='right' style="width: 20%;">86</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>II.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIICh_II">THE NEW CONSERVATISM AND OFFICE</a></td> +<td align='right'>116</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>III.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIICh_III">PROGRESS IN PUBLIC LIFE</a></td> +<td align='right'>131</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>IV.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIICh_IV">THE CHURCH</a></td> +<td align='right'>152</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>V.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIICh_V">HIS FIRST BOOK</a></td> +<td align='right'>169</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>VI.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIICh_VI">CHARACTERISTICS</a></td> +<td align='right'>184</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>VII.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIICh_VII">CLOSE OF APPRENTICESHIP</a></td> +<td align='right'>219</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>VIII.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIICh_VIII">PEEL'S GOVERNMENT</a></td> +<td align='right'>247</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>IX.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIICh_IX">MAYNOOTH</a></td> +<td align='right'>270</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>X.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIICh_X">TRIUMPH OF POLICY AND FALL OF THE MINISTER</a></td> +<td align='right'>282</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>XI.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIICh_XI">THE TRACTARIAN CATASTROPHE</a></td> +<td align='right'>303</td> +</tr> +</table></div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span></p> + +<h4><i><a href="#Book_III">BOOK III</a></i></h4> + +<p class="center">(<i>1847-1852</i>)</p> + +<div class="centered"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='right' style="width: 10%;">I.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 70%;"><a href="#BkIIICh_I">MEMBER FOR OXFORD</a></td> +<td align='right' style="width: 20%;">327</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>II.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIIICh_II">THE HAWARDEN ESTATE</a></td> +<td align='right'>337</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>III.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIIICh_III">PARTY EVOLUTION—NEW COLONIAL POLICY</a></td> +<td align='right'>350</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>IV.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIIICh_IV">DEATH OF SIR ROBERT PEEL</a></td> +<td align='right'>366</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>V.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIIICh_V">GORHAM CASE—SECESSION OF FRIENDS</a></td> +<td align='right'>375</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>VI.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIIICh_VI">NAPLES</a></td> +<td align='right'>389</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>VII.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIIICh_VII">RELIGIOUS TORNADO—PEELITE DIFFICULTIES</a></td> +<td align='right'>405</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>VIII.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIIICh_VIII">END OF PROTECTION</a></td> +<td align='right'>425</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<h4><i><a href="#Book_IV">BOOK IV</a></i></h4> + +<p class="center"><i>(1853-1859)</i></p> + +<div class="centered"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='right' style="width: 10%;">I.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 70%;"><a href="#BkIVCh_I">THE COALITION</a></td> +<td align='right' style="width: 20%;">443</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>II.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIVCh_II">THE TRIUMPH OF 1853</a></td> +<td align='right'>457</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>III.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIVCh_III">THE CRIMEAN WAR</a></td> +<td align='right'>476</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>IV.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIVCh_IV">OXFORD REFORM—OPEN CIVIL SERVICE</a></td> +<td align='right'>496</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>V.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIVCh_V">WAR FINANCE—TAX OR LOAN</a></td> +<td align='right'>513</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>VI.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIVCh_VI">CRISIS OF 1855 AND BREAK-UP OF THE PEELITES</a></td> +<td align='right'>521</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>VII.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIVCh_VII">POLITICAL ISOLATION</a></td> +<td align='right'>544</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>VIII.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIVCh_VIII">GENERAL ELECTION—NEW MARRIAGE LAW</a></td> +<td align='right'>558</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>IX.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIVCh_IX">THE SECOND DERBY GOVERNMENT</a></td> +<td align='right'>574</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>X.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIVCh_X">THE IONIAN ISLANDS</a></td> +<td align='right'>594</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'>XI.</td> +<td align='left'><a href="#BkIVCh_XI">JUNCTION WITH THE LIBERALS</a></td> +<td align='right'>621</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'> </td> +<td align='left'><a href="#APPENDIX">APPENDIX</a></td> +<td align='right'>635</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='right'> </td> +<td align='left'><a href="#CHRONOLOGY">CHRONOLOGY</a></td> +<td align='right'>654</td> +</tr> +</table></div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p> +<br /> +<br /> +<h3><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS">ILLUSTRATIONS</a></h3> + +<div class='centered'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="List of Illustrations" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 75%;"><span class="smcap">Sir John Gladstone</span></td> +<td align='right' style="width: 25%;"><a href="#image-1"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'> <i>From a painting by William Bradley</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">William Ewart Gladstone</span></td> +<td align='right'><i>to face page</i> <a href="#image-2">86</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="padding-bottom: .75em;"> <i>From a painting by William Bradley</i></td> +<td style="padding-bottom: .75em;"> </td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Catherine Gladstone</span></td> +<td align='right'><i>to face page</i> <a href="#image-3">223</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="padding-bottom: .75em;"> <i>From a painting</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'><span class="smcap">Hawarden Castle</span></td> +<td align='right'><i>to face page</i> <a href="#image-4">337</a></td> +</tr> +</table></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<hr /> + +<h4><a name="Book_I" id="Book_I">Book I</a></h4> + +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> + +<p class="center"><i>1809-1831</i></p> + +<p class="center"><a name="INTRODUCTORY" id="INTRODUCTORY">INTRODUCTORY</a></p> + +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> + +<p>I am well aware that to try to write Mr. Gladstone's life at all—the +life of a man who held an imposing place in many high national +transactions, whose character and career may be regarded in such various +lights, whose interests were so manifold, and whose years bridged so +long a span of time—is a stroke of temerity. To try to write his life +to-day, is to push temerity still further. The ashes of controversy, in +which he was much concerned, are still hot; perspective, scale, +relation, must all while we stand so near be difficult to adjust. Not +all particulars, more especially of the latest marches in his wide +campaign, can be disclosed without risk of unjust pain to persons now +alive. Yet to defer the task for thirty or forty years has plain +drawbacks too. Interest grows less vivid; truth becomes harder to find +out; memories pale and colour fades. And if in one sense a statesman's +contemporaries, even after death has abated the storm and temper of +faction, can scarcely judge him, yet in another sense they who breathe +the same air as he breathed, who know at close quarters the problems +that faced him, the materials with which he had to work, the limitations +of his time—such must be the best, if not the only true memorialists +and recorders.</p> + +<p>Every reader will perceive that perhaps the sharpest of all the many +difficulties of my task has been to draw the line between history and +biography—between the fortunes of the community and the exploits, +thoughts, and purposes of the individual who had so marked a share in +them. In the case of men of letters, in whose lives our literature is +admirably rich, this difficulty happily for their authors and for our +delight does not arise. But where the subject is a man who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> was four +times at the head of the government—no phantom, but dictator—and who +held this office of first minister for a longer time than any other +statesman in the reign of the Queen, how can we tell the story of his +works and days without reference, and ample reference, to the course of +events over whose unrolling he presided, and out of which he made +history? It is true that what interests the world in Mr. Gladstone is +even more what he was, than what he did; his brilliancy, charm, and +power; the endless surprises; his dualism or more than dualism; his +vicissitudes of opinion; his subtleties of mental progress; his strange +union of qualities never elsewhere found together; his striking +unlikeness to other men in whom great and free nations have for long +periods placed their trust. I am not sure that the incessant search for +clues through this labyrinth would not end in analysis and disquisition, +that might be no great improvement even upon political history. Mr. +Gladstone said of reconstruction of the income-tax that he only did not +call the task herculean, because Hercules could not have done it. +Assuredly, I am not presumptuous enough to suppose that this difficulty +of fixing the precise scale between history and biography has been +successfully overcome by me. It may be that Hercules himself would have +succeeded little better.</p> + +<p>Some may think in this connection that I have made the preponderance of +politics excessive in the story of a genius of signal versatility, to +whom politics were only one interest among many. No doubt speeches, +debates, bills, divisions, motions, and manœuvres of party, like the +manna that fed the children of Israel in the wilderness, lose their +savour and power of nutriment on the second day. Yet after all it was to +his thoughts, his purposes, his ideals, his performances as statesman, +in all the widest significance of that lofty and honourable designation, +that Mr. Gladstone owes the lasting substance of his fame. His life was +ever '<i>greatly absorbed</i>,' he said, '<i>in working the institutions of his +country</i>.' Here we mark a signal trait. Not for two centuries, since the +historic strife of anglican and puritan, had our island produced a ruler +in whom the religious motive was paramount in the like degree. He was +not only a political force but a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> moral force. He strove to use all the +powers of his own genius and the powers of the state for moral purposes +and religious. Nevertheless his mission in all its forms was action. He +had none of that detachment, often found among superior minds, which we +honour for its disinterestedness, even while we lament its impotence in +result. The track in which he moved, the instruments that he employed, +were the track and the instruments, the sword and the trowel, of +political action; and what is called the Gladstonian era was +distinctively a political era.</p> + +<p>On this I will permit myself a few words more. The detailed history of +Mr. Gladstone as theologian and churchman will not be found in these +pages, and nobody is more sensible than their writer of the gap. Mr. +Gladstone cared as much for the church as he cared for the state; he +thought of the church as the soul of the state; he believed the +attainment by the magistrate of the ends of government to depend upon +religion; and he was sure that the strength of a state corresponds to +the religious strength and soundness of the community of which the state +is the civil organ. I should have been wholly wanting in biographical +fidelity, not to make this clear and superabundantly clear. Still a +writer inside Mr. Gladstone's church and in full and active sympathy +with him on this side of mundane and supramundane things, would +undoubtedly have treated the subject differently from any writer +outside. No amount of candour or good faith—and in these essentials I +believe that I have not fallen short—can be a substitute for the +confidence and ardour of an adherent, in the heart of those to whom the +church stands first. Here is one of the difficulties of this complex +case. Yet here, too, there may be some trace of compensation. If the +reader has been drawn into the whirlpools of the political Charybdis, he +might not even in far worthier hands than mine have escaped the rocky +headlands of the ecclesiastic Scylla. For churches also have their +parties.</p> + +<p>Lord Salisbury, the distinguished man who followed Mr. Gladstone in a +longer tenure of power than his, called him 'a great Christian'; and +nothing could be more true or better worth saying. He not only accepted +the doctrines of that faith as he believed them to be held by his own +communion;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> he sedulously strove to apply the noblest moralities of it +to the affairs both of his own nation and of the commonwealth of +nations. It was a supreme experiment. People will perhaps some day +wonder that many of those who derided the experiment and reproached its +author, failed to see that they were making manifest in this a wholesale +scepticism as to truths that they professed to prize, far deeper and +more destructive than the doubts and disbeliefs of the gentiles in the +outer courts.</p> + +<p>The epoch, as the reader knows, was what Mr. Gladstone called 'an +agitated and expectant age.' Some stages of his career mark stages of +the first importance in the history of English party, on which so much +in the working of our constitution hangs. His name is associated with a +record of arduous and fruitful legislative work and administrative +improvement, equalled by none of the great men who have grasped the helm +of the British state. The intensity of his mind, and the length of years +through which he held presiding office, enabled him to impress for good +in all the departments of government his own severe standard of public +duty and personal exactitude. He was the chief force, propelling, +restraining, guiding his country at many decisive moments. Then how many +surprises and what seeming paradox. Devotedly attached to the church, he +was the agent in the overthrow of establishment in one of the three +kingdoms, and in an attempt to overthrow it in the Principality. +Entering public life with vehement aversion to the recent dislodgment of +the landed aristocracy as the mainspring of parliamentary power, he lent +himself to two further enormously extensive changes in the +constitutional centre of gravity. With a lifelong belief in +parliamentary deliberation as the grand security for judicious laws and +national control over executive act, he yet at a certain stage betook +himself with magical result to direct and individual appeal to the great +masses of his countrymen, and the world beheld the astonishing spectacle +of a politician with the microscopic subtlety of a thirteenth century +schoolman wielding at will the new democracy in what has been called +'the country of plain men.' A firm and trained economist, and no friend +to socialism, yet by his legislation upon land in 1870 and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> 1881 he +wrote the opening chapter in a volume on which many an unexpected page +in the history of Property is destined to be inscribed. Statesmen do far +less than they suppose, far less than is implied in their resounding +fame, to augment the material prosperity of nations, but in this +province Mr. Gladstone's name stands at the topmost height. Yet no ruler +that ever lived felt more deeply the truth—for which I know no better +words than Channing's—that to improve man's outward condition is not to +improve man himself; this must come from each man's endeavour within his +own breast; without that there can be little ground for social hope. +Well was it said to him, 'You have so lived and wrought that you have +kept the soul alive in England.' Not in England only was this felt. He +was sometimes charged with lowering the sentiment, the lofty and +fortifying sentiment, of national pride. At least it is a ground for +national pride that he, the son of English training, practised through +long years in the habit and tradition of English public life, standing +for long years foremost in accepted authority and renown before the eye +of England, so conquered imagination and attachment in other lands, that +when the end came it was thought no extravagance for one not an +Englishman to say, 'On the day that Mr. Gladstone died, the world has +lost its greatest citizen.' The reader who revolves all this will know +why I began by speaking of temerity.</p> + +<p>That my book should be a biography without trace of bias, no reader will +expect. There is at least no bias against the truth; but indifferent +neutrality in a work produced, as this is, in the spirit of loyal and +affectionate remembrance, would be distasteful, discordant, and +impossible. I should be heartily sorry if there were no signs of +partiality and no evidence of prepossession. On the other hand there is, +I trust, no importunate advocacy or tedious assentation. He was great +man enough to stand in need of neither. Still less has it been needed, +in order to exalt him, to disparage others with whom he came into strong +collision. His own funeral orations from time to time on some who were +in one degree or another his antagonists, prove that this petty and +ungenerous method would have been to him of all men most repugnant. Then +to pretend that for sixty years, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> all 'the varying weather of the +mind,' he traversed in every zone the restless ocean of a great nation's +shifting and complex politics, without many a faulty tack and many a +wrong reckoning, would indeed be idle. No such claim is set up by +rational men for Pym, Cromwell, Walpole, Washington, or either Pitt. It +is not set up for any of the three contemporaries of Mr. Gladstone whose +names live with the three most momentous transactions of his +age—Cavour, Lincoln, Bismarck. To suppose, again, that in every one of +the many subjects touched by him, besides exhibiting the range of his +powers and the diversity of his interests, he made abiding contributions +to thought and knowledge, is to ignore the jealous conditions under +which such contributions come. To say so much as this is to make but a +small deduction from the total of a grand account.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p><p>I have not reproduced the full text of Letters in the proportion +customary in English biography. The existing mass of his letters is +enormous. But then an enormous proportion of them touch on affairs of +public business, on which they shed little new light. Even when he +writes in his kindest and most cordial vein to friends to whom he is +most warmly attached, it is usually a letter of business. He deals +freely and genially with the points in hand, and then without play of +gossip, salutation, or compliment, he passes on his way. He has in his +letters little of that spirit in which his talk often abounded, of +disengagement, pleasant colloquy, happy raillery, and all the other +undefined things that make the correspondence of so many men whose +business was literature, such delightful reading for the idler hour of +an industrious day. It is perhaps worth adding that the asterisks +denoting an omitted passage hide no piquant hit, no personality, no +indiscretion; the omission is in every case due to consideration of +space. Without these asterisks and, other omissions, nothing would have +been easier than to expand these three volumes into a hundred. I think +nothing relevant is lost. Nobody ever had fewer secrets, nobody ever +lived and wrought in fuller sunlight.</p> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">CHILDHOOD</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1809-1821</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I know not why commerce in England should not have its old +families, rejoicing to be connected with commerce from generation +to generation. It has been so in other countries; I trust it will +be so in this country.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span>.</p></div><br /> + +<p>The dawn of the life of the great and famous man who is our subject in +these memoirs has been depicted with homely simplicity by his own hand. +With this fragment of a record it is perhaps best for me to begin our +journey. 'I was born,' he says, 'on December 29, 1809,' at 62 Rodney +Street, Liverpool. 'I was baptized, I believe, in the parish church of +St. Peter. My godmother was my elder sister Anne, then just seven years +old, who died a perfect saint in the beginning of the year 1829. In her +later years she lived in close relations with me, and I must have been +much worse but for her. Of my godfathers, one was a Scotch episcopalian, +Mr. Fraser of ——, whom I hardly ever saw or heard of; the other a +presbyterian, Mr. G. Grant, a junior partner of my father's.' The child +was named William Ewart, after his father's friend, an immigrant Scot +and a merchant like himself, and father of a younger William Ewart, who +became member for Liverpool, and did good public service in parliament.</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p> +<div class="blockquot"><p>Before proceeding to the period of my childhood, properly +so-called, I will here insert a few words about my family. My +maternal grandfather was known as Provost Robertson of Dingwall, a +man held, I believe, in the highest respect. His wife was a +Mackenzie of [Coul]. His circumstances must have been good.</p> + +<p>Of his three sons, one went into the army, and I recollect him as +Captain Robertson (I have a seal which he gave me, a three-sided +cairngorm. Cost him 7½ guineas). The other two took mercantile +positions. When my parents made a Scotch tour in 1820-21 with, I +think, their four sons, the freedom of Dingwall was presented to us +all,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> with my father; and there was large visiting at the houses +of the Ross-shire gentry. I think the line of my grandmother was +stoutly episcopalian and Jacobite; but, coming outside the western +highlands, the first at least was soon rubbed down. The provost, I +think, came from a younger branch of the Robertsons of Struan.</p> + +<p>On my father's side the matter is more complex. The history of the +family has been traced at the desire of my eldest brother and my +own, by Sir William Fraser, the highest living authority.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> He has +carried us up to a rather remote period, I think before Elizabeth, +but has not yet been able to connect us with the earliest known +holders of the name, which with the aid of charter-chests he hopes +to do. Some things are plain and not without interest. They were a +race of borderers. There is still an old Gledstanes or Gladstone +castle. They formed a family in Sweden in the seventeenth century. +The explanation of this may have been that, when the union of the +crowns led to the extinction of border fighting they took service +like Sir Dugald Dalgetty under Gustavus Adolphus, and in this case +passed from service to settlement. I have never heard of them in +Scotland until after the Restoration, otherwise than as persons of +family. At that period there are traces of their having been fined +by public authority, but not for any ordinary criminal offence. +From this time forward I find no trace of their gentility. During +the eighteenth century they are, I think, principally traced by a +line of maltsters (no doubt a small business then) in Lanarkshire. +Their names are recorded on tombstones in the churchyard of Biggar. +I remember going as a child or boy to see the representative of +that branch, either in 1820 or some years earlier, who was a small +watchmaker in that town. He was of the same generation as my +father, but came, I understood, from a senior brother of the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>family. I do not know whether his line is extinct. There also seem +to be some stray Gladstones who are found at Yarmouth and in +Yorkshire.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p></div> + +<p class="center">ANCESTRY</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>My father's father seems from his letters to have been an excellent +man and a wise parent: his wife a woman of energy. There are +pictures of them at Fasque, by Raeburn. He was a merchant, in +Scotch phrase; that is to say, a shopkeeper dealing in corn and +stores, and my father as a lad served in his shop. But he also sent +a ship or ships to the Baltic; and I believe that my father, whose +energy soon began to outtop that of all the very large family, went +in one of these ships at a very early age as a supercargo, an +appointment then, I think, common. But he soon quitted a nest too +small to hold him. He was born in December 1764: and I have (at +Hawarden) a reprint of the <i>Liverpool Directory</i> for 178-, in which +his name appears as a partner in the firm of Messrs. Corrie, corn +merchants.</p> + +<p>Here his force soon began to be felt as a prominent and then a +foremost member of the community. A liberal in the early period of +the century, he drew to Mr. Canning, and brought that statesman as +candidate to Liverpool in 1812, by personally offering to guarantee +his expenses at a time when, though prosperous, he could hardly +have been a rich man. His services to the town were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> testified by +gifts of plate, now in the possession of the elder lines of his +descendants, and by a remarkable subscription of six thousand +pounds raised to enable him to contest the borough of Lancaster, +for which he sat in the parliament of 1818.</p> + +<p>At his demise, in December 1851, the value of his estate was, I +think, near £600,000. My father was a successful merchant, but +considering his long life and means of accumulation, the result +represents a success secondary in comparison with that of others +whom in native talent and energy he much surpassed. It was a large +and strong nature, simple though hasty, profoundly affectionate and +capable of the highest devotion in the lines of duty and of love. I +think that his intellect was a little intemperate, though not his +character. In his old age, spent mainly in retirement, he was our +constant [centre of] social and domestic life. My mother, a +beautiful and admirable woman, failed in health and left him a +widower in 1835, when she was 62.</p></div> + +<p>He then turns to the records of his own childhood, a period that he +regarded as closing in September 1821, when he was sent to Eton. He +begins with one or two juvenile performances, in no way differing from +those of any other infant,—<i>navita projectus humi</i>, the mariner flung +by force of the waves naked and helpless ashore. He believes that he was +strong and healthy, and came well through his childish ailments.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>My next recollection belongs to the period of Mr. Canning's first +election for Liverpool, in the month of October of the year 1812. +Much entertaining went on in my father's house, where Mr. Canning +himself was a guest; and on a day of a great dinner I was taken +down to the dining room. I was set upon one of the chairs, +standing, and directed to say to the company 'Ladies and +gentlemen.'</p> + +<p>I have, thirdly, a group of recollections which refer to Scotland. +Thither my father and mother took me on a journey which they made, +I think, in a post-chaise to Edinburgh and Glasgow as its principal +points. At Edinburgh our sojourn was in the Royal Hotel, Princes +Street. I well remember the rattling of the windows when the castle +guns were fired on some great occasion, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>probably the abdication of +Napoleon, for the date of the journey was, I think, the spring of +1814.</p></div> + +<p class="center">EARLY RECOLLECTIONS</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>In this journey the situation of Sanquhar, in a close Dumfriesshire +valley, impressed itself on my recollection. I never saw Sanquhar +again until in the autumn of 1863 (as I believe). As I was whirled +along the Glasgow and South-Western railway I witnessed just +beneath me lines of building in just such a valley, and said that +must be Sanquhar, which it was. My local memory has always been +good and very impressible by scenery. I seem to myself never to +have forgotten a scene.</p> + +<p>I have one other early recollection to record. It must, I think, +have been in the year 1815 that my father and mother took me with +them on either one or two more journeys. The objective points were +Cambridge and London respectively. My father had built, under the +very niggard and discouraging laws which repressed rather than +encouraged the erection of new churches at that period, the church +of St. Thomas at Seaforth, and he wanted a clergyman for it.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> +Guided in these matters very much by the deeply religious temper of +my mother, he went with her to Cambridge to obtain a recommendation +of a suitable person from Mr. Simeon, whom I saw at the time.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> I +remember his appearance distinctly. He was a venerable man, and +although only a fellow of a college, was more ecclesiastically got +up than many a dean, or even here and there, perhaps, a bishop of +the present less costumed if more ritualistic period. Mr. Simeon, I +believe, recommended Mr. Jones, an excellent specimen of the +excellent evangelical school of those days. We went to Leicester to +hear him preach in a large church, and his text was '<i>Grow in +grace</i>.' He became eventually archdeacon of Liverpool, and died in +great honour a few years ago at much past 90. On the strength of +this visit to Cambridge I lately boasted there, even during the +lifetime of the aged Provost Okes, that I had been in the +university before any one of them.</p> + +<p>I think it was at this time that in London we were domiciled in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> +Russell Square, in the house of a brother of my mother, Mr. Colin +Robertson; and I was vexed and put about by being forbidden to run +freely at my own will into and about the streets, as I had done in +Liverpool. But the main event was this: we went to a great service +of public thanksgiving at Saint Paul's, and sat in a small gallery +annexed to the choir, just over the place where was the Regent, and +looking down upon him from behind. I recollect nothing more of the +service, nor was I ever present at any public thanksgiving after +this in Saint Paul's, until the service held in that cathedral, +under my advice as the prime minister, after the highly dangerous +illness of the Prince of Wales.</p> + +<p>Before quitting the subject of early recollections I must name one +which involves another person of some note. My mother took me in +181—to Barley Wood Cottage, near Bristol. Here lived Miss Hannah +More, with some of her coeval sisters. I am sure they loved my +mother, who was love-worthy indeed. And I cannot help here +deviating for a moment into the later portion of the story to +record that in 1833 I had the honour of breakfasting with Mr. +Wilberforce a few days before his death,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> and when I entered the +house, immediately after the salutation, he said to me in his +silvery tones, 'How is your sweet mother?' He had been a guest in +my father's house some twelve years before. During the afternoon +visit at Barley Wood, Miss Hannah More took me aside and presented +to me a little book. It was a copy of her <i>Sacred Dramas</i>, and it +now remains in my possession, with my name written in it by her. +She very graciously accompanied it with a little speech, of which I +cannot recollect the conclusion (or apodosis), but it began, 'As +you have just come into the world, and I am just going out of it, I +therefore,' etc.</p></div> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I wish that in reviewing my childhood I could regard it as +presenting those features of innocence and beauty which I have often +seen elsewhere, and indeed, thanks be to God, within the limits of +my own home. The best I can say for it is that I do not think it was +a vicious childhood. I do not think, trying to look at the past +impartially, that I had a strong natural propensity then developed +to what are termed the mortal sins. But truth obliges <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>me to record +this against myself. I have no recollection of being a loving or a +winning child; or an earnest or diligent or knowledge-loving child. +God forgive me. And what pains and shames me most of all is to +remember that at most and at best I was, like the sailor in Juvenal,</p></div> + +<span style="margin-left: 16em;">digitis a morte remotus,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Quatuor aut septem;</span><a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>the plank between me and all the sins was so very thin. I do not +indeed intend in these notes to give a history of the inner life, +which I think has been with me extraordinarily dubious, vacillating, +and above all complex. I reserve them, perhaps, for a more private +and personal document; and I may in this way relieve myself from +some at least of the risks of falling into an odious Pharisaism. I +cannot in truth have been an interesting child, and the only +presumption the other way which I can gather from my review is that +there was probably something in me worth the seeing, or my father +and mother would not so much have singled me out to be taken with +them on their journeys.</p> + +<p>I was not a devotional child. I have no recollection of early love +for the House of God and for divine service: though after my father +built the church at Seaforth in 1815, I remember cherishing a hope +that he would bequeath it to me, and that I might live in it. I have +a very early recollection of hearing preaching in St. George's, +Liverpool, but it is this: that I turned quickly to my mother and +said, 'When will he have done?' The <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> undoubtedly +took a great and fascinating hold upon me, so that anything which I +wrote was insensibly moulded in its style; but it was by the force +of the allegory addressing itself to the fancy, and was very like a +strong impression received from the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, and from +another work called <i>Tales of the Genii</i>. I think it was about the +same time that Miss Porter's <i>Scottish Chiefs</i>, and especially the +life and death of Wallace, used to make me weep profusely. This +would be when I was about ten years old. At a much earlier period, +say six or seven, I remember praying earnestly, but it was for no +higher object than to be spared from the loss of a tooth. Here, +however, it may be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> mentioned in mitigation that the local dentist +of those days, in our case a certain Dr. P. of —— Street, +Liverpool, was a kind of savage at his work (possibly a very +good-natured man too), with no ideas except to smash and crash. My +religious recollections, then, are a sad blank. Neither was I a +popular boy, though not egregiously otherwise. If I was not a bad +boy, I think that I was a boy with a great absence of goodness. I +was a child of slow, in some points I think of singularly slow, +development. There was more in me perhaps than in the average boy, +but it required greatly more time to set itself in order: and just +so in adult, and in middle and later life, I acquired very tardily +any knowledge of the world, and that simultaneous conspectus of the +relations of persons and things which is necessary for the proper +performance of duties in the world.</p> + +<p>I may mention another matter in extenuation. I received, unless my +memory deceives me, very little benefit from teaching. My father was +too much occupied, my mother's health was broken. We, the four +brothers, had no quarrelling among ourselves: but neither can I +recollect any influence flowing down at this time upon me, the +junior. One odd incident seems to show that I was meek, which I +should not have supposed, not less than thrifty and penurious, a +leaning which lay deep, I think, in my nature, and which has +required effort and battle to control it. It was this. By some +process not easy to explain I had, when I was <i>probably</i> seven or +eight, and my elder brothers from ten or eleven to fourteen or +thereabouts, accumulated no less than twenty shillings in silver. My +brothers judged it right to appropriate this fund, and I do not +recollect either annoyance or resistance or complaint. But I +recollect that they employed the principal part of it in the +purchase of four knives, and that they broke the points from the +tops of the blades of my knife, lest I should cut my fingers.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p><p>Where was the official or appointed teacher all this time? He was +the Rev. Mr. Rawson of Cambridge, who had, I suppose, been passed by +Mr. Simeon and become private tutor in my father's house. But as he +was to be incumbent of the church, the bishop required a parsonage +and that he should live in it. Out of this grew a very small school +of about twelve boys, to which I went, with some senior brother or +brothers remaining for a while.</p></div> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Mr. Rawson was a good man, of high no-popery opinions. His school +afterwards rose into considerable repute, and it had Dean Stanley +and the sons of one or more other Cheshire families for pupils. But +I think this was not so much due to its intellectual stamina as to +the extreme salubrity of the situation on the pure dry sands of the +Mersey's mouth, with all the advantages of the strong tidal action +and the fresh and frequent north-west winds. At five miles from +Liverpool Exchange, the sands, delicious for riding, were one +absolute solitude, and only one house looked down on them between +us and the town. To return to Mr. Rawson. Everything was +unobjectionable. I suppose I learnt something there. But I have no +recollection of being under any moral or personal influence +whatever, and I doubt whether the preaching had any adaptation +whatever to children. As to intellectual training, I believe that, +like the other boys, I shirked my work as much as I could. I went +to Eton in 1821 after a pretty long spell, in a very middling state +of preparation, and wholly without any knowledge or other +enthusiasm, unless it were a priggish love of argument which I had +begun to develop. I had lived upon a rabbit warren: and what a +rabbit warren of a life it is that I have been surveying.</p> + +<p>My brother John, three years older than myself, and of a moral +character more manly and on a higher level, had chosen the navy, +and went off to the preparatory college at Portsmouth. But he +evidently underwent persecution for righteousness' sake at the +college, which was then (say about 1820) in a bad condition. Of +this, though he was never querulous, his letters bore the traces, +and I cannot but think they must have exercised upon me some kind +of influence for good. As to miscellaneous notices, I had a great +affinity with the trades of joiners and of bricklayers. Physically +I must have been rather tough, for my brother John took me down at +about ten years old to wrestle in the stables with an older lad of +that region, whom I threw. Among our greatest enjoyments were +undoubtedly the annual Guy Fawkes bonfires, for which we had always +liberal allowances of wreck timber and a tar-barrel. I remember +seeing, when about eight or nine, my first case of a dead body. It +was the child of the head gardener Derbyshire, and was laid in the +cottage bed by tender<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> hands, with nice and clean accompaniments. +It seemed to me pleasing, and in no way repelled me; but it made no +deep impression. And now I remember that I used to teach pretty +regularly on Sundays in the Sunday-school built by my father near +the Primrose bridge. It was, I think, a duty done not under +constraint, but I can recollect nothing which associates it with a +seriously religious life in myself.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p></div> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">GENEALOGY</p> + +<p>To these fragments no long supplement is needed. Little of interest can +be certainly established about his far-off ancestral origins, and the +ordinary twilight of genealogy overhangs the case of the Glaidstanes, +Gledstanes, Gladstanes, Gladstones, whose name is to be found on +tombstones and parish rolls, in charter-chests and royal certificates, +on the southern border of Scotland. The explorations of the genealogist +tell of recognitions of their nobility by Scottish kings in dim ages, +but the links are sometimes broken, title-deeds are lost, the same name +is attached to estates in different counties, Roxburgh, Peebles, Lanark, +and in short until the close of the seventeenth century we linger, in +the old poet's phrase, among dreams of shadows. As we have just been +told, during the eighteenth century no traces of their gentility +survives, and apparently they glided down from moderate lairds to small +maltsters. Thomas Gladstones, grandfather of him with whom we are +concerned, made his way from Biggar to Leith, and there set up in a +modest way as corndealer, wholesale and retail. His wife was a Neilson +of Springfield. To them sixteen children were born, and John Gladstones +(b. Dec. 11, 1764) was their eldest son. Having established himself in +Liverpool, he married in 1792 Jane Hall, a lady of that city, who died +without children six years later. In 1800 he took for his second wife +Anne Robertson of Dingwall. Her father was of the clan Donnachaidh, and +her mother was of kin with Mackenzies, Munros, and other highland +stocks.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> Their son, therefore,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> was of unmixed Scottish origins, half +highland, half lowland borderer.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> With the possible exception of Lord +Mansfield—the rival of Chatham in parliament, one of the loftiest names +among great judges, and chief builder of the commercial law of the +English world, a man who might have been prime minister if he had +chosen.—Mr. Gladstone stands out as far the most conspicuous and +powerful of all the public leaders in our history, who have sprung from +the northern half of our island. When he had grown to be the most famous +man in the realm of the Queen, he said, 'I am not slow to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> claim the +name of Scotsman, and even if I were, there is the fact staring me in +the face that not a drop of blood runs in my veins except what is +derived from a Scottish ancestry.'<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> An illustrious opponent once +described him, by way of hitting his singular duality of disposition, as +an ardent Italian in the custody of a Scotsman. It is easy to make too +much of race, but when we are puzzled by Mr. Gladstone's seeming +contrarieties of temperament, his union of impulse with caution, of +passion with circumspection, of pride and fire with self-control, of +Ossianic flight with a steady foothold on the solid earth, we may +perhaps find a sort of explanation in thinking of him as a highlander in +the custody of a lowlander.</p> + +<p>Of John Gladstone something more remains to be said. About 1783 he was +made a partner by his father in the business at Leith, and here he saved +five hundred pounds. Four years later, probably after a short period of +service, he was admitted to a partnership with two corn-merchants at +Liverpool, his contribution to the total capital of four thousand pounds +being fifteen hundred, of which his father lent him five hundred, and a +friend another five at five per cent. In 1787 he thought the plural +ending of his name sounded awkwardly in the style of the firm, Corrie, +Gladstones, and Bradshaw, so he dropped the <i>s</i>.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> He visited London +to enlarge his knowledge of the corn trade in Mark Lane, and here became +acquainted with Sir Claude Scott, the banker (not yet, however, a +baronet). Scott was so impressed by his extraordinary vigour and +shrewdness as to talk of a partnership, but Gladstone's existing +arrangement in Liverpool was settled for fourteen years. Sometime in the +nineties he was sent to America to purchase corn, with unlimited +confidence from Sir Claude Scott. On his arrival, he found a severe +scarcity and enormous prices. A large number of vessels had been +chartered for the enterprise, and were on their way to him for cargoes. +To send them back in ballast would be a disaster. Thrown entirely on his +own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> resources, he travelled south from New York, making the best +purchases of all sorts that he could; then loaded his ships with timber +and other commodities, one only of them with flour; and the loss on the +venture, which might have meant ruin, did not exceed a few hundred +pounds. Energy and resource of this kind made fortune secure, and when +the fourteen years of partnership expired, Gladstone continued business +on his own account, with a prosperity that was never broken. He brought +his brothers to Liverpool, but it was to provide for them, not to assist +himself, says Mr. Gladstone; 'and he provided for many young men in the +same way. I never knew him reject any kind of work in aid of others that +offered itself to him.'</p> + +<p class="center">JOHN GLADSTONE</p> + +<p>It was John Gladstone's habit, we are told, to discuss all sorts of +questions with his children, and nothing was ever taken for granted +between him and his sons. 'He could not understand,' says the +illustrious one among them, 'nor tolerate those who, perceiving an +object to be good, did not at once and actively pursue it; and with all +this energy he joined a corresponding warmth and, so to speak, eagerness +of affection, a keen appreciation of humour, in which he found a rest, +and an indescribable frankness and simplicity of character, which, +crowning his other qualities, made him, I think (and I strive to think +impartially), the most interesting old man I have ever known.'<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p> + +<p>To his father's person and memory, Mr. Gladstone's fervid and +affectionate devotion remained unbroken. 'One morning,' writes a female +relative of his, 'when I was breakfasting alone with Mr. Gladstone at +Carlton House Terrace something led to his speaking of his father. I +seem to see him now, rising from his chair, standing in front of the +chimneypiece, and in strains of fervid eloquence dwelling on the +grandeur, the breadth and depth of his character, his generosity, his +nobleness, last and greatest of all—his loving nature. His eyes filled +with tears as he exclaimed: "None but his children can know what +torrents of tenderness flowed from his heart."'</p> + +<p>The successful merchant was also the active-minded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> citizen. 'His +force,' says his son, 'soon began to be felt as a prominent and then a +foremost member of the community.' He had something of his descendant's +inextinguishable passion for pamphleteering, and the copious effusion of +public letters and articles. As was inevitable in a Scotsman of his +social position at that day, when tory rule of a more tyrannic stamp +than was ever known in England since the Revolution of 1688, had reduced +constitutional liberty in Scotland to a shadow, John Gladstone came to +Liverpool a whig, and a whig he remained until Canning raised the flag +of a new party inside the entrenchments of Eldonian toryism.</p> + +<p>In 1812 Canning, who had just refused Lord Liverpool's proffer of the +foreign office because he would not serve under Castlereagh as leader in +the House of Commons, was invited by John Gladstone to stand for +Liverpool. He was elected in triumph over Brougham, and held the seat +through four elections, down to 1822, when he was succeeded by +Huskisson, whom he described to the constituency as the best man of +business in England, and one of the ablest practical statesmen that +could engage in the concerns of a commercial country. The speeches made +to his constituents during the ten years for which he served them are +excellent specimens of Canning's rich, gay, aspiring eloquence. In +substance they abound in much pure toryism, and his speech after the +Peterloo massacre, and upon the topics relating to public meetings, +sedition, and parliamentary reform, though by sonorous splendour and a +superb plausibility fascinating to the political neophyte, is by no +means free from froth, without much relation either to social facts or +to popular principles. On catholic emancipation he followed Pitt, as he +did in an enlarged view of commercial policy. At Liverpool he made his +famous declaration that his political allegiance was buried in Pitt's +grave. At one at least of these performances the youthful William +Gladstone was present, but it was at home that he learned Canningite +doctrine. At Seaforth House Canning spent the days between the death of +Castlereagh and his own recall to power, while he was waiting for the +date fixed for his voyage to take up the viceroyalty of India.</p> + +<p class="center">CANNING</p> + +<p>As from whig John Gladstone turned Canningite, so from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> presbyterian +also he turned churchman. He paid the penalty of men who change their +party, and was watched with a critical eye by old friends; but he was a +liberal giver for beneficent public purposes, and in 1811 he was +honoured by the freedom of Liverpool. His ambition naturally pointed to +parliament, and he was elected first for Lancaster in 1818, and next for +Woodstock in 1820, two boroughs of extremely easy political virtue. +Lancaster cost him twelve thousand pounds, towards which his friends in +Liverpool contributed one-half. In 1826 he was chosen at Berwick, but +was unseated the year after. His few performances in the House were not +remarkable. He voted with ministers, and on the open question of +catholic emancipation he went with Canning and Plunket. He was one of +the majority who by six carried Plunket's catholic motion in 1821, and +the matter figures in the earliest of the hundreds of surviving letters +from his youngest son, then over eleven, and on the eve of his departure +for Eton:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 21em;"><i>Seaforth, Mar. 10, 1821</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I address these few lines to you to know how my dear mother is, to +thank you for your kind letter, and to know whether Edward may get +two padlocks for the wicket and large shore gate. They are now +open, and the people make a thoroughfare of the green walk and the +carriage road. I read Mr. Plunket's speech, and I admire it +exceedingly. I enclose a letter from Mr. Rawson to you. He told me +to-day that Mrs. R. was a great deal better. Write to me again as +soon as you can.—Ever your most affectionate and dutiful son, <span class="smcap">W.</span> +<span class="smcap">E. Gladstone</span>.</p></div> + +<p>In after years he was fond of recalling how the Liverpool with which he +had been most familiar (1810-20), though the second commercial town in +the kingdom, did not exceed 100,000 of population, and how the silver +cloud of smoke that floated above her resembled that which might now +appear over any secondary borough or village of the country. 'I have +seen wild roses growing upon the very ground that is now the centre of +the borough of Bootle. All that land is now partly covered with +residences and partly with places of business and industry; but in my +time but one single house<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> stood upon the space between Primrose brook +and the town of Liverpool.' Among his early recollections was 'the +extraordinarily beautiful spectacle of a dock delivery on the Mersey +after a long prevalence of westerly winds followed by a change. +Liverpool cannot imitate that now [1892], at least not for the eye.'</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">JOHN GLADSTONE AS SLAVEHOLDER</p> + +<p>The Gladstone firm was mainly an East India house, but in the last ten +years of his mercantile course John Gladstone became the owner of +extensive plantations of sugar and coffee in the West Indies, some in +Jamaica, others in British Guiana or Demerara. The infamy of the +slave-trade had been abolished in 1807, but slave labour remained, and +the Liverpool merchant, like a host of other men of equal respectability +and higher dignity, including many peers and even some bishops, was a +slaveholder. Everybody who has ever read one of the most honourable and +glorious chapters in our English history knows the case of the +missionary John Smith.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> In 1823 an outbreak of the slaves occurred in +Demerara, and one of John Gladstone's plantations happened to be its +centre. The rising was stamped out with great cruelty in three days. +Martial law, the savage instrument of race passion, was kept in force +for over five months. Fifty negroes were hanged, many were shot down in +the thickets, others were torn in pieces by the lash of the cart-whip. +Smith was arrested, although he had in fact done his best to stop the +rising. Tried before a court in which every rule of evidence was +tyrannically set aside, he was convicted on hearsay and condemned to +death. Before the atrocious sentence could be commuted by the home +authorities, the fiery heat and noisome vapours of his prison killed +him. The death of the Demerara missionary, it has been truly said, was +an event as fatal to slavery in the West Indies, as the execution of +John Brown was its deathblow in the United States.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> Brougham in 1824 +brought the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> case before the House of Commons, and in the various +discussions upon it the Gladstone estates made rather a prominent +figure. John Gladstone became involved in a heated and prolonged +controversy as to the management of his plantations; as we shall see, it +did not finally die down till 1841. He was an indomitable man. In a +newspaper discussion through a long series of letters, he did not defend +slavery in the abstract, but protested against the abuse levelled at the +planters by all 'the intemperate, credulous, designing, or interested +individuals who followed the lead of that well-meaning but mistaken man, +Mr. Wilberforce.' He denounced the missionaries as hired emissaries, +whose object seemed to be rather to revolutionise the colonies than to +diffuse religion among the people.</p> + +<p>In 1830 he published a pamphlet, in the form of a letter to Sir Robert +Peel,<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> to explain that negroes were happier when forced to work; +that, as their labour was essential to the welfare of the colonies, he +considered the difficulties in the way of emancipation insurmountable; +that it was not for him to seek to destroy a system that an over-ruling +Providence had seen fit to permit in certain climates since the very +formation of society; and finally with a Parthian bolt, he hinted that +the public would do better to look to the condition of the lower classes +at home than to the negroes in the colonies. The pamphlet made its mark, +and was admitted by the abolitionists to be an attempt of unusual +ingenuity to varnish the most heinous of national crimes. Three years +later, when emancipation came, and the twenty million pounds of +compensation were distributed, John Gladstone appears to have received, +individually and apart from his partnerships, a little over seventy-five +thousand pounds for 1609 slaves.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p> + +<p>It is as well, though in anticipation of the order of time, to complete +our sketch. In view of the approach of full<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> abolition, John Gladstone +induced Lord Glenelg, the whig secretary of state, to issue an order in +council (1837) permitting the West Indian planters to ship coolies from +India on terms drawn up by the planters themselves. Objections were made +with no effect by the governor at Demerara, a humane and vigorous man, +who had done much work as military engineer under Wellington, and who, +after abolishing the flogging of female slaves in the Bahamas, now set +such an iron yoke upon the planters and their agents in Demerara, that +he said 'he could sleep satisfied that no person in the colony could be +punished without his knowledge and sanction.'<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> The importation of +coolies raised old questions in new forms. The voyage from India was +declared to reproduce the horrors of the middle passage of the vanished +Guinea slavers; the condition of the coolie on the sugar plantations was +drawn in a light only less lurid than the case of the African negro; and +John Gladstone was again in hot water. Thomas Gladstone, his eldest son, +defended him in parliament (Aug. 3, 1839), and commissioners sent to +inquire into the condition of the various Gladstone plantations reported +that the coolies on Vreedestein appeared contented and happy on the +whole; no one had ever maltreated or beaten them except in one case; and +those on Vreedenhoop appeared perfectly contented. The interpreter, who +had abused them, had been fined, punished, and dismissed. Upon the +motion of W. E. Gladstone, these reports were laid upon the table of the +House in 1840.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p> + +<p>We shall have not unimportant glimpses, as our story unfolds itself, of +all these transactions. Meanwhile, it is interesting to note that the +statesman whose great ensign was to be human freedom, was thus born in a +family where the palliation of slavery must have made a daily topic. The +union, moreover, of fervid evangelical religion with antagonism to +abolition must in those days have been rare, and in spite of his devoted +faith in his father the youthful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> Gladstone may well have had uneasy +moments. If so, he perhaps consoled himself with the authority of +Canning. Canning, in 1823, had formally laid down the neutral principles +common to the statesmen of the day: that amelioration of the lot of the +negro slave was the utmost limit of action, and that his freedom as a +result of amelioration was the object of a pious hope, and no more. +Canning described the negro as a being with the form of a man and the +intellect of a child. 'To turn him loose in the manhood of his physical +strength, in the maturity of his physical passions, but in the infancy +of his uninstructed reason, would be to raise up a creature resembling +the splendid fiction of a recent romance,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> the hero of which +constructs a human form with all the corporal capabilities of a man, but +being unable to impart to the work of his hands a perception of right +and wrong, he finds too late that he has only created a more than mortal +power of doing mischief.' 'I was bred,' said Mr. Gladstone when risen to +meridian splendour, 'under the shadow of the great name of Canning; +every influence connected with that name governed the politics of my +childhood and of my youth; with Canning, I rejoiced in the removal of +religious disabilities, and in the character which he gave to our policy +abroad; with Canning, I rejoiced in the opening he made towards the +establishment of free commercial interchanges between nations; with +Canning, and under the shadow of the yet more venerable name of Burke, +my youthful mind and imagination were impressed.'<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> On slavery and +even the slave trade, Burke too had argued against total abolition. 'I +confess,' he said, 'I trust infinitely more (according to the sound +principles of those who ever have at any time meliorated the state of +mankind) to the effect and influence of religion than to all the rest of +the regulations put together.'<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The freedom was formally bestowed on him in 1863.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Sir William Fraser died in 1898.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Researches into the ancestry of the Gladstone family have been made +by Sir William Fraser, Professor John Veitch, and Mrs. Oliver of +Thornwood. Besides his special investigation of the genealogy of the +family, Sir W. Fraser devoted some pages in the <i>Douglas Book</i> to the +Gledstanes of Gledstanes. The surname of Gledstanes occurs at a very +early period in the records of Scotland. Families of that name acquired +considerable landed estates in the counties of Lanark, Peebles, +Roxburgh, and Dumfries. The old castle of Gledstanes, now in ruins, was +the principal mansion of the family. The first of the name who has been +found on record is Herbert de Gledstanes, who swore fealty to Edward I. +in 1296 for lands in the county of Lanark. The Gledstanes long held the +office of bailie under the Earls of Douglas, and the connection between +the two families seems to have lasted until the fall of the Douglas +family. The Gledstanes still continued to figure for many generations on +the border. About the middle of the eighteenth century two branches of +the family—the Gledstanes of Cocklaw and of Craigs—failed in the +direct male line. Mr. Gladstone was descended from a third branch, the +Gledstanes of Arthurshiel in Lanarkshire. The first of this line who has +been traced is William Gledstanes, who in the year 1551 was laird of +Arthurshiel. His lineal descendants continued as owners of that property +till William Gledstanes disposed of it and went to live in the town of +Biggar about the year 1679. This William Gledstanes was Mr. Gladstone's +great-great-grandfather. The connection between these three branches and +Herbert de Gledstanes of 1296 has not been ascertained, but he was +probably the common ancestor of them all.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> John Gladstone built St. Thomas's Church, Seaforth, 1814-15; St. +Andrew's, Liverpool, about 1816; the church at Leith; the Episcopal +chapel at Fasque built and endowed about 1847.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Charles Simeon (1759-1836), who played as conspicuous a part in low +church thought as Newman afterwards in high.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a><a href="#Page_106">See below, pp. 106-7.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <span class="smcap">XII</span> 58—'Removed from death by four or maybe seven fingers' +breadth.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> The fragment is undated.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> One or two further genealogical <i>nugæ</i> are among the papers. A +correspondent wrote to Mr. Gladstone in 1887: Among the donors to the +Craftsman's Hospital, Aberdeen, established in 1833, occurs the name of +'Georg Gladstaines, pewterer, 300 merks' (£16, 13s. 4d. sterling), 1698. +George joined the Hammerman Craft in 1656, when he would have been about +25 years of age. His signature is still in existence appended to the +burgess oath. Very few craftsmen could sign their names at that +period—not one in twenty—so that George must have been fairly well +educated. Mr. Gladstone replied that it was the first time that he had +heard of the name so far north, and that the pewterer was probably one +planted out. At Dundee (1890) he mentioned that others of his name and +blood appeared on the burgess-roll as early as the fifteenth century. As +for his maternal grandfather, the <i>Inverness Courier</i> (March 2, year not +given) has the following:—'Provost Robertson of Dingwall was a +descendant of the ancient family of the Robertsons of Inshes, of whose +early settlement in the north the following particulars are known: The +first was a member of the family of Struan, Perthshire, and was a +merchant in Inverness in 1420. In the battle of <i>Blair-na-leine</i>, fought +at the west end of Loch-Lochy in 1544, John Robertson, a descendant of +the above, acted as standard-bearer to Lord Lovat. This battle was +fought between the Frasers and Macdonalds of Clanranald, and derived its +appellation from the circumstance of the combatants fighting only in +their shirts. The contest was carried on with such bloody determination, +foot to foot and claymore to claymore, that only <i>four</i> of the Frasers +and <i>ten</i> of the Macdonalds returned to tell the tale. The former family +was well nigh extirpated; tradition, however, states that sixteen widows +of the Frasers who had been slain, shortly afterwards, as a providential +succour, gave birth to sixteen sons! From the bloody onslaught at +Loch-Lochy young Robertson returned home scaithless, and his brave and +gallant conduct was the theme of praise with all. Some time thereafter +he married the second daughter of Paterson of Wester and Easter Inshes, +the eldest being married to Cuthbert of Macbeth's Castlehill, now known +as the Crown lands, possessed by Mr. Fraser of Abertarff. On the death +of Paterson, his father-in-law, Wester Inshes became the property of +young Robertson, and Easter Inshes that of the Cuthberts, who, for the +sake of distinction, changed the name to Castlehill. The Robertsons, in +regular succession until the present time, possess the fine estate of +Inshes; while that of Castlehill, which belonged to the powerful +Cuthberts for so many generations, knows them no more. The family of +Inshes, in all ages, stood high in respect throughout the highlands, and +many of them had signalised themselves in upholding the rights of their +country; and the worthy Provost Robertson of Dingwall had no less +distinguished himself, who, with other important reforms, had cleared +away the last burdensome relic of feudal times in that ancient burgh.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> The other sons and daughters of this marriage were Thomas, <i>d.</i> +1889; Robertson, <i>d.</i> 1875; John Neilson, <i>d.</i> 1863; Anne, <i>d.</i> 1829; +Helen Jane, <i>d.</i> 1880.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> At Dundee, Oct. 29, 1890.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> In 1835 formal difficulties arose in connection with the purchase +of a government annuity, and then he seems to have taken out letters +patent authorising the change in the name.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Memoirs of J. R. Hope-Scott</i>, ii. p. 290.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> The story of John Smith is excellently told in Walpole (iii. p. +178), and in Miss Martineau's <i>Hist. of the Peace</i> (bk. II. ch. iv.). +But Mr. Robbins has worked it out with diligence and precision in +special reference to John Gladstone: <i>Early Life</i>, pp. 36-47.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Trevelyan's <i>Macaulay</i>, i. p. 111, where the reader will also find +a fine passage from Macaulay's speech before the Anti-Slavery Society +upon the matter—the first speech he ever made.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> 'A statement of facts connected with the present state of slavery +in the British sugar and coffee colonies, and in the United States of +America, together with a view of the present situation of the lower +classes in the United Kingdom.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> In Demerara the average price of slaves from 1822 to 1830 had been +£114, 11s. 5¼d. The rate of compensation per slave averaged £51, 17s. +½d., but it is of interest to note that the slaves on the Vreedenhoop +estate were valued at £53, 15s. 6d.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> <i>Dict. Nat. Biog.</i>, Sir James Carmichael Smyth.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> He took Follett's opinion (Aug. 5, 1841) on the question of +applying for a criminal information against the publisher of an article +stating how many slaves had been worked to death on his father's +plantations. The great advocate wisely recommended him to leave it +alone.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <i>Frankenstein</i> was published in 1818.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> House of Commons, April 27, 1866.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> <i>Letter to Dundas, with a sketch of a Negro Code</i>, 1792. But see +<i>Life of W. Wilberforce</i>, v. p. 157.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">ETON</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1821-1827</i>)</p><br /> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It is in her public schools and universities that the youth of +England are, by a discipline which shallow judgments have sometimes +attempted to undervalue, prepared for the duties of public life. +There are rare and splendid exceptions, to be sure, but in my +conscience I believe, that England would not be what she is without +her system of public education, and that no other country can +become what England is, without the advantages of such a +system.—<span class="smcap">Canning</span>.</p><br /> + +<p>It is difficult to discern the true dimensions of objects in that +mirage which covers the studies of one's youth.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span>.</p></div> + +<p>In September 1821, the young Gladstone was sent to Eton. Life at Eton +lasted over six years, until the Christmas of 1827. It impressed images +that never faded, and left traces in heart and mind that the waves of +time never effaced,—so profound is the early writing on our opening +page. Canning's words at the head of our present chapter set forth a +superstition that had a powerful hold on the English governing class of +that day, and the new Etonian never shook it off. His attachment to Eton +grew with the lapse of years; to him it was ever 'the queen of all +schools.'</p> + +<p>'I went,' he says, 'under the wing of my eldest brother, then in the +upper division, and this helped my start and much mitigated the sense of +isolation that attends the first launch at a public school.' The door of +his dame's house looked down the Long Walk, while the windows looked +into the very crowded churchyard: from this he never received the +smallest inconvenience, though it was his custom (when master of the +room) to sleep with his window open both summer and winter. The school, +said the new scholar, has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> only about four hundred and ninety fellows in +it, which was considered uncommonly small. He likes his tutor so much +that he would not exchange him for any ten. He has various rows with +Mrs. Shurey, his dame, and it is really a great shame the way they are +fed. He and his brother have far the best room in the dame's house. His +captain is very good-natured. Fighting is a favourite diversion, hardly +a day passing without one, two, three, or even four more or less mortal +combats.</p> + +<p class="center">MANNERS AT ETON</p> + +<p>You will be glad to hear, he writes to his Highland aunt Johanna +(November 13, 1821), of an instance of the highest and most honourable +spirit in a highlander labouring under great disadvantages. His name is +Macdonald (he once had a brother here remarkably clever, and a capital +fighter). He is tough as iron, and about the strongest fellow in the +school of his size. Being pushed out of his seat in school by a fellow +of the name of Arthur, he airily asked him to give it him again, which +being refused, with the additional insult that he might try what he +could do to take it from him, Macdonald very properly took him at his +word, and began to push him out of his seat. Arthur struck at him with +all his might, and gave him so violent a blow that Macdonald was almost +knocked backwards, but disdaining to take a blow from even a fellow much +bigger than himself, he returned Arthur's blow with interest; they began +to fight; after Macdonald had made him bleed at both his nose and his +mouth, he finished the affair very triumphantly by knocking the arrogant +Arthur backwards over the form without receiving a single blow of any +consequence. He also labours under the additional disadvantage of being +a new fellow, and of not knowing any one here. Arthur in a former battle +put his finger out of joint, and as soon as it is recovered they are to +have a regular battle in the playing fields.</p> + +<p>Other encounters are described with equal zest, especially one where +'the honour of Liverpool was bravely sustained,' superior weight and +size having such an advantage over toughness and strength, that the foe +of Liverpool was too badly bruised and knocked about to appear in +school. On another occasion, 'to the great joy' of the narrator, an +oppidan vanquished a colleger, though the colleger fought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> so furiously +that he put his fingers out of joint, and went back to the classic +studies that soften manners, with a face broken and quite black. The +Windsor and Slough coaches used to stop under the wall of the playing +fields to watch these desperate affrays, and once at least in these +times a boy was killed. With plenty of fighting went on plenty of +flogging; for the headmaster was the redoubtable Dr. Keate, with whom +the appointed instrument of moral regeneration in the childish soul was +the birch rod; who on heroic occasions was known to have flogged over +eighty boys on a single summer day; and whose one mellow regret in the +evening of his life was that he had not flogged far more. Religious +instruction, as we may suppose, was under these circumstances reduced to +zero; there was no trace of the influence of the evangelical party, at +that moment the most active of all the religious sections; and the +ancient and pious munificence of Henry VI. now inspired a scene that was +essentially little better than pagan, modified by an official church of +England varnish. At Eton, Mr. Gladstone wrote of this period forty years +after, 'the actual teaching of Christianity was all but dead, though +happily none of its forms had been surrendered.'<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p> + +<p>Science even in its rudiments fared as ill as its eternal rival, +theology. There was a mathematical master, but nobody learned anything +from him, or took any notice of him. In his anxiety for position the +unfortunate man asked Keate if he might wear a cap and gown. 'That's as +you please,' said Keate. 'Must the boys touch their hats to me?' 'That's +as they please,' replied the genial doctor.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> Gladstone first picked +up a little mathematics, not at Eton, but during the holidays, going to +Liverpool for the purpose, first in 1824 and more seriously in 1827. He +seems to have paid much attention to French, and even then to have +attained considerable proficiency. 'When I was at Eton,' Mr. Gladstone +said, 'we knew very little indeed, but we knew it accurately.' 'There +were many shades of distinction,' he observed, 'among the fellows who +received what was supposed to be, and was in many respects, their +education. Some of those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> shades of distinction were extremely +questionable, and the comparative measures of honour allotted to talent, +industry, and idleness were undoubtedly such as philosophy would not +justify. But no boy was ever estimated either more or less because he +had much money to spend. It added nothing to him if he had much, it took +nothing from him if he had little.' A sharp fellow who worked, and a +stupid fellow who was idle, were both of them in good odour enough, but +a stupid boy who presumed to work was held to be an insufferable +solecism.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p> + +<p class="center">KNOWLEDGE AT ETON</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>My tutor was the Rev. H. H. Knapp (practically all tutors were +clergymen in those days). He was a reputed whig, an easy and +kind-tempered man with a sense of scholarship, but no power of +discipline, and no energy of desire to impress himself upon his +pupils. I recollect but one piece of advice received later from +him. It was that I should form my poetical taste upon Darwin, whose +poems (the 'Botanic Garden' and 'Loves of the Plants') I obediently +read through in consequence. I was placed in the middle remove +fourth form, a place slightly better than the common run, but +inferior to what a boy of good preparation or real excellence would +have taken. My nearest friend of the first period was W. W. Parr, a +boy of intelligence, something over my age, next above me in the +school.</p> + +<p>At this time there was not in me any desire to know or to excel. My +first pursuits were football and then cricket; the first I did not +long pursue, and in the second I never managed to rise above +mediocrity and what was termed 'the twenty-two.' There was a +barrister named Henry Hall Joy, a connection of my father through +his first wife, and a man who had taken a first-class at Oxford. He +was very kind to me, and had made some efforts to inspire me with a +love of books, if not of knowledge. Indeed I had read Froissart, +and Hume with Smollett, but only for the battles, and always +skipping when I came to the sections headed 'A Parliament.' Joy had +a taste for classics, and made visions for me of honours at Oxford. +But the subject only danced before my eyes as a will-of-the-wisp, +and without attracting me. I remained stagnant without heart or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> +hope. A change however arrived about Easter 1822. My 'remove' was +then under Hawtrey (afterwards head-master and provost), who was +always on the lookout for any bud which he could warm with a little +sunshine.</p></div> + +<p>He always described Hawtrey as the life of the school, the man to whom +Eton owed more than to any of her sons during the century. Though not +his pupil, it was from him that Gladstone, when in the fourth form, +received for the first time incentives to exertion. 'It was entirely due +to Hawtrey,' he records in a fragment, 'that I first owed the reception +of a spark, the <i>divinae particulam aurae</i>, and conceived a dim idea, +that in some time, manner, and degree, I might come to know. Even then, +as I had really no instructor, my efforts at Eton, down to 1827, were +perhaps of the purest plodding ever known.'</p> + +<p>Evidently he was not a boy of special mark during the first three years +at Eaton. In the evening he played chess and cards, and usually lost. He +claimed in after life that he had once taken a drive in a hired tandem, +but Etonians who knew him as a schoolboy decided that an aspiring memory +here made him boast of crimes that were not his. He was assiduous in the +Eton practice of working a small boat, whether skiff, funny, or wherry, +single-handed. In the masquerade of Montem he figured complacently in +all the glories of the costume of a Greek patriot, for he was a faithful +Canningite; the heroic struggle against the Turk was at its fiercest, +and it was the year when Byron died at Missolonghi. Of Montem as an +institution he thought extremely ill, 'the whole thing a wretched waste +of time and money, a most ingenious contrivance to exhibit us as +baboons, a bore in the full sense of the word.' He did not stand aside +from the harmless gaieties of boyish life, but he rigidly refused any +part in boyish indecorums. He was, in short, just the diligent, +cheerful, healthy-minded schoolboy that any good father would have his +son to be. He enjoys himself with his brother at the Christopher, and is +glad to record that 'Keate did not make any jaw about being so late.' +Half a dozen of them met every whole holiday or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> half, and went up Salt +Hill to bully the fat waiter, eat toasted cheese, and drink egg-wine.</p> + +<p class="center">SCHOOL DAYS</p> + +<p>He started, as we have already seen, in middle fourth form. In the +spring of 1822 Hawtrey said to him: 'Continue to do as well as this, and +I will send you up for good again before the fourth of June.' Before the +end of June, he tells his sailor brother of his success: 'It far exceeds +the most sanguine expectations I ever entertained. I have got into the +remove between the fourth and fifth forms. I have been sent up for good +a second time, and have taken seven places.' In the summer of 1823 he +announces that he has got into the fifth form after taking sixteen +places, and here instead of fagging he acquires the blessed power +himself to fag. In passing he launches, for the first recorded time, +against the master of the remove from which he has just been promoted, +an invective that in volume and intensity anticipates the wrath of later +attacks on Neapolitan kings and Turkish sultans.</p> + +<p>His letters written from Eton breathe in every line the warm breath of +family affection, and of all those natural pieties that had so firm a +root in him from the beginning to the end. Of the later store of genius +and force that the touch of time was so soon to kindle into full glow, +they gave but little indication. We smile at the precocious <i>copia +fandi</i> that at thirteen describes the language of an admonishing +acquaintance as 'so friendly, manly, sound, and disinterested that +notwithstanding his faults I must always think well of him.' He sends +contributions to his brother's scrap-book, and one of the first of them, +oddly enough, in view of one of the great preoccupations of his later +life, is a copy of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's stanzas on the night of his +arrest:—</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'O Ireland, my country, the hour<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of thy pride and thy splendour has passed.<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 2.25em;">And the chain which was spurned in thy moment of power,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Hangs heavy around thee at last.'<br /></span> + +<p>The temper and dialect of evangelical religion are always there. A +friend of the family dies, and the boy pours out his regret, but after +all what is the merely natural death of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> Dr. N. compared with the awful +state of a certain clergyman, also an intimate friend, who has not only +been guilty of attending a fancy ball, but has followed that vicious +prelude by even worse enormities, unnamed, that surely cannot escape the +vigilance and the reproof of his bishop?</p> + +<p>His father is the steady centre of his life. 'My father,' he writes to +his brother, 'is as active in mind and projects as ever; he has two +principal plans now in embryo. One of these is a railroad between +Liverpool and Manchester for the conveyance of goods by +locomotive-steam-engine. The other is for building a bridge over the +Mersey at Runcorn.' In May 1827, the Gloucester and Berkeley canal is +opened: 'a great and enterprising undertaking, but still there is no +fear of it beating Liverpool.' Meanwhile, 'what prodigiously quick +travelling to leave Eton at twelve on Monday, and reach home at eight on +Tuesday!' 'I have,' he says in 1826, 'lately been writing several +letters in the <i>Liverpool Courier</i>.' His father had been attacked in the +local prints for sundry economic inconsistencies, and the controversial +pen that was to know no rest for more than seventy years to come, was +now first employed, like the pious Æneas bearing off Anchises, in the +filial duty of repelling his sire's assailants. Ignorant of his nameless +champion, John Gladstone was much amused and interested by the anonymous +'Friend to Fair Dealing,' while the son was equally diverted by the +criticisms and conjectures of the parent.</p> + +<p class="center">YOUTHFUL READING</p> + +<p>With the formidable Keate the boy seems to have fared remarkably well, +and there are stories that he was even one of the tyrant's +favourites.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> His school work was diligently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> supplemented. His daily +reading in 1826 covers a good deal of miscellaneous ground, including +Molière and Racine, Blair's <i>Sermons</i> ('not very substantial'), <i>Tom +Jones</i>, Tomline's <i>Life of Pitt</i>, Waterland's <i>Commentaries</i>, Leslie <i>on +Deism</i>, Locke's <i>Defence of The Reasonableness of Christianity</i>, which +he finds excellent; <i>Paradise Lost</i>, Milton's <i>Latin Poems</i> and +<i>Epitaphium Damonis</i> ('exquisite'), Massinger's <i>Fatal Dowry</i> ('most +excellent'), Ben Jonson's <i>Alchemist</i>; Scott, including the <i>Bride of +Lammermoor</i> ('a beautiful tale, indeed,' and in after life his favourite +of them all), Burke, Clarendon, and others of the shining host whose +very names are music to a scholar's ear. In the same year he reads 'a +most violent article on Milton by Macaulay, fair and unfair, clever and +silly, allegorical and bombastic, republican and anti-episcopal—a +strange composition, indeed.' In 1827 he went steadily through the +second half of Gibbon, whom he pronounces, 'elegant and acute as he is, +not so clear, so able, so attractive as Hume; does not impress my mind +so much.' In the same year he reads Coxe's <i>Walpole</i>, <i>Don Quixote</i>, +Hallam's <i>Constitutional History</i>, <i>Measure for Measure</i> and <i>Much Ado</i>, +Massinger's <i>Grand Duke of Florence</i>, Ford's <i>Love's Melancholy</i> ('much +of it good, the end remarkably beautiful') and <i>Broken Heart</i> (which he +liked better than either the other or <i>'Tis Pity</i>), Locke <i>on +Toleration</i> ('much repetition').</p> + +<p>There is, of course, a steady refrain of Greek iambics, Greek anapæsts, +'an easy and nice metre,' 'a hodge-podge lot of hendecasyllables,' and +thirty alcaic stanzas for a holiday task. Mention is made of many +sermons on 'Redeeming the time,' 'Weighed in the balance and found +wanting,' 'Cease to do evil, learn to do well,' and the other ever +unexhausted texts. One constant entry, we may be sure, is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> 'Read Bible,' +with Mant's notes. In a mood of deep piety he is prepared for +confirmation. His appearance at this time was recalled by one who had +been his fag, 'as a good-looking, rather delicate youth, with a pale +face and brown curling hair, always tidy and well dressed.'<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p> + +<p>He became captain of the fifth at the end of October 1826, and on +February 20, 1827, Keate put him into the sixth. 'Was very civil, +indeed; told me to take pains, etc.: to be careful in using my +authority, etc.' He finds the sixth very preferable to all other parts +of the school, both as regards pleasure and opportunity for improvement. +They are more directly under the eye of Keate; he treats them with more +civility and speaks to them differently. So the days follow one another +very much alike—studious, cheerful, sociable, sedulous. The debates in +parliament take up a good deal of his time, and he is overwhelmed by the +horrible news of the defeat of the catholics in the House of Commons +(March 8, 1827). On a summer's day in 1826, 'Mr. Canning here; inquired +after me and missed me.' He was not at Eton but at home when he heard of +Mr. Canning's death. 'Personally I must remember his kindness and +condescension, especially when he spoke to me of some verses which H. +Joy had injudiciously mentioned to him.'</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">DEBATING SOCIETY</p> + +<p>Youthful intellect is imitative, and in a great school so impregnated as +Eton with the spirit of public life and political association, the few +boys with active minds mimicked the strife of parliament in their +debating society, and copied the arts of journalism in the <i>Eton +Miscellany</i>. In both fields the young Gladstone took a leading part. The +debating society was afflicted with 'the premonitory lethargy of death,' +but the assiduous energy of Gaskell, seconded by the gifts of Gladstone, +Hallam, and Doyle, soon sent a new pulse beating through it. The +politics of the hour, that is to say everything not fifty years off, +were forbidden ground; but the execution of Strafford or of his royal +master, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> deposition of Richard II., the last four years of the reign +of Queen Anne, the Peerage bill of 1719, the characters of Harley and +Bolingbroke, were themes that could be made by ingenious youth to admit +a hundred cunning sidelights upon the catholic question, the struggle of +the Greeks for independence, the hard case of Queen Caroline, and the +unlawfulness of swamping the tories in the House of Lords. On duller +afternoons they argued on the relative claims of mathematics and +metaphysics to be the better discipline of the human mind; whether +duelling is or is not inconsistent with the character that we ought to +seek; or whether the education of the poor is on the whole beneficial. +It was on this last question (October 29, 1825) that the orator who made +his last speech seventy years later, now made his first. 'Made my first +or maiden speech at the society,' he enters in his diary, 'on education +of the poor; funked less than I thought I should, by much.' It is a +curious but a characteristic circumstance not that so many of his Eton +speeches were written out, but that the manuscript should have been +thriftily preserved by him all through the long space of intervening +years. 'Mr. President,' it begins, 'in this land of liberty, in this age +of increased and gradually increasing civilization, we shall hope to +find few, if indeed any, among the higher classes who are eager or +willing to obstruct the moral instruction and mental improvement of +their fellow creatures in the humbler walks of life. If such there are, +let them at length remember that the poor are endowed with the same +reason, though not blessed with the same temporal advantages. Let them +but admit, what I think no one can deny, that they are placed in an +elevated situation principally for the purpose of doing good to their +fellow creatures. Then by what argument can they repel, by what pretence +can they evade the duty?' And so forth and so forth. Already we seem to +hear the born speaker in the amplitude of rhetorical form in which, +juvenile though it may be, a commonplace is cast. 'Is human grandeur so +stable that they may deny to others that which they would in an humble +situation desire themselves? Or has human pride<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> reached such a pitch of +arrogance that they have learned to defy both right and reason, to +reject the laws of natural kindness that ought to reign in the breast of +all, and to look on their fellow countrymen as the refuse of mankind?... +Is it morally just or politically expedient to keep down the industry +and genius of the artisan, to blast his rising hopes, to quell his +spirit? A thirst for knowledge has arisen in the minds of the poor; let +them satisfy it with wholesome nutriment and beware lest driven to +despair,' et cetera. Crude enough, if we please; but the year was 1826, +and we may feel that the boyish speaker is already on the generous side +and has the gift of fruitful sympathies.</p> + +<p>In the spacious tournaments of old history, we may smile to hear +debating forms and ceremony applied to everlasting controversies. 'Sir,' +he opens on one occasion, 'I declare that as far as regards myself, I +shall have very little difficulty in stating my grounds on which I give +my vote for James Graham [the Marquis of Montrose]. It is because I look +upon him as a hero, not merely endowed with that animal ferocity which +has often been the sole qualification which has obtained men that +appellation from the multitude—I should be sorry indeed if he had no +testimonials of his merits, save such as arise from the mad and +thoughtless exclamations of popular applause.' In the same gallant style +(Jan. 26, 1826) he votes for Marcus Aurelius, in answer to the question +whether Trajan has any equal among the Roman emperors from Augustus +onwards. Another time the question was between John Hampden and +Clarendon. 'Sir, I look back with pleasure to the time when we +unanimously declared our disapprobation of the impeachment of the Earl +of Strafford. I wish I could hope for the same unanimity now, but I will +endeavour to regulate myself by the same principles as directed me +then.... Now, sir, with regard to the impeachment of the five members, +it is really a little extraordinary to hear the honourable opener +talking of the violence offered by the king, and the terror of the +parliament. Sir, do we not all know that the king at that time had +neither friends nor wealth?... Did the return of these members with a +triumphant mob<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> accompanying them indicate terror? Did the demands of +the parliament or the insolence of their language show it?' So he +proceeds through all the well-worn arguments; and 'therefore it is,' he +concludes, 'that I give my vote to the Earl of Clarendon, because he +gave his support to the falling cause of monarchy; because he stood by +his church and his king; because he adopted the part which loyalty, +reason, and moderation combined to dictate.... Poverty, banishment, and +disgrace he endured without a murmur; he still adhered to the cause of +justice, he still denounced the advocates of rebellion, and if he failed +in his reward in life, oh, sir, let us not deny it to him after death. +In him, sir, I admire the sound philosopher, the rigid moralist, the +upright statesman, the candid historian.... In Hampden I see the +splendour of patriotic bravery obscured by the darkness of rebellion, +and the faculties by which he might have been a real hero and real +martyr, prostituted in the cause,' and so on, with all the promise of +the <i>os magna soniturum</i>, of which time was to prove the resources so +inexhaustible. On one great man he passed a final judgment that years +did not change:—'Debate on Sir R. Walpole: Hallam, Gaskell, Pickering, +and Doyle spoke. Voted for him. Last time, when I was almost entirely +ignorant of the subject, against him. There were sundry considerable +blots, but nothing to overbalance or to spoil the great merit of being +the bulwark of the protestant succession, his commercial measures, and +in general his pacific policy.'<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p> + +<p class="center">ETON MISCELLANY</p> + +<p>As for the <i>Eton Miscellany</i>, which was meant to follow earlier attempts +in the same line, the best-natured critic cannot honestly count it +dazzling. Such things rarely are; for youth, though the most adorable of +our human stages, cannot yet have knowledge or practice enough, whether +in life or books, to make either good prose or stirring verse, unless by +a miracle of genius, and even that inspiration is but occasional. The +<i>Microcosm</i> (1786-87) and the <i>Etonian</i> (1818), with such hands as +Canning and Frere, Moultrie and Praed, were well enough. The newcomer +was a long way behind these in the freshness, brilliance, daring,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> by +which only such juvenile performances can either please or interest. +George Selwyn and Gladstone were joint editors, and each provided pretty +copious effusions. 'I cannot keep my temper,' he wrote afterwards in his +diary in 1835, on turning over the <i>Miscellany</i>, 'in perusing my own +(with few exceptions) execrable productions.' Certainly his +contributions have no particular promise or savour, no hint of the +strong pinions into which the half-fledged wings were in time to expand. +Their motion, such as it is, must be pronounced mechanical; their phrase +and cadence conventional. Even when sincere feelings were deeply +stirred, the flight cannot be called high. The most moving public event +in his schooldays was undoubtedly the death of Canning, and to Gladstone +the stroke was almost personal. In September 1827 he tells his mother +that he has for the first time visited Westminster Abbey,—his object, +an eager pilgrimage to the newly tenanted grave of his hero, and in the +<i>Miscellany</i> he pays a double tribute. In the prose we hear sonorous +things about meridian splendour, premature extinction, and inscrutable +wisdom; about falling, like his great master Pitt, a victim to his proud +and exalted station; about being firm in principle and conciliatory in +action, the friend of improvement and the enemy of innovation. Nor are +the versified reflections in Westminster Abbey much more striking:—</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Oft in the sculptured aisle and swelling dome,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The yawning grave hath given the proud a home;<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Yet never welcomed from his bright career<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A mightier victim than it welcomed here:<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Again the tomb may yawn—again may death<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Claim the last forfeit of departing breath;<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Yet ne'er enshrine in slumber dark and deep<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A nobler, loftier prey than where thine ashes sleep.<br /></span> + +<p>Excellent in feeling, to be sure; but as a trial of poetic delicacy or +power, wanting the true note, and only worth recalling for an instant as +we go.</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">FRIENDS</p> + +<p>As nearly always happens, it was less by school work or spoken addresses +in juvenile debate, or early attempts in the great and difficult art of +written composition, than by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> blithe and congenial comradeship that the +mind of the young Gladstone was stimulated, opened, strengthened. In +after days he commemorated among his friends George Selwyn, afterwards +bishop of New Zealand and of Lichfield, 'a man whose character is summed +up, from alpha to omega, in the single word, noble, and whose high +office, in a large measure, it was to reintroduce among the anglican +clergy the pure heroic type.' Another was Francis Doyle, 'whose genial +character supplied a most pleasant introduction for his unquestionable +poetic genius.' A third was James Milnes Gaskell, a youth endowed with +precocious ripeness of political faculty, an enthusiast, and with a +vivacious humour that enthusiasts often miss. Doyle said of him that his +nurse must have lulled him to sleep by parliamentary reports, and his +first cries on awaking in his cradle must have been 'hear, hear'! +Proximity of rooms 'gave occasion or aid to the formation of another +very valuable friendship, that with Gerald Wellesley, afterwards dean of +Windsor, which lasted, to my great profit, for some sixty years, until +that light was put out.' In Gaskell's room four or five of them would +meet, and discuss without restraint the questions of politics that were +too modern to be tolerated in public debate. Most of them were friendly +to catholic emancipation, and to the steps by which Huskisson, supported +by Canning, was cautiously treading in the path towards free trade. The +brightest star in this cheerful constellation was the rare youth who, +though his shining course was run in two-and-twenty years, yet in that +scanty span was able to impress with his vigorous understanding and +graceful imagination more than one of the loftiest minds of his +time.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> Arthur Hallam was a couple of years younger than Gladstone, no +narrow gulf at that age; but such was the sympathy of genius, such the +affinities of intellectual interest and aspiration spoken and unspoken, +such the charm and the power of the younger with the elder, that rapid +instinct made them close comrades. They clubbed together their rolls and +butter, and breakfasted in one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> another's rooms. Hallam was not strong +enough for boating, so the more sinewy Gladstone used to scull him up to +the Shallows, and he regarded this toilsome carrying of an idle +passenger up stream as proof positive of no common value set upon his +passenger's company. They took walks together, often to the monument of +Gray, close by the churchyard of the elegy; arguing about the articles +and the creeds; about Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley; about free will, for +Hallam was precociously full of Jonathan Edwards; about politics, old +and new, living and dead; about Pitt and Fox, and Canning and Peel, for +Gladstone was a tory and Hallam pure whig. Hallam was described by Mr. +Gladstone in his old age as one who 'enjoyed work, enjoyed society; and +games which he did not enjoy he left contentedly aside. His temper was +as sweet as his manners were winning. His conduct was without a spot or +even a speck. He was that rare and blessed creature, <i>anima naturaliter +Christiana</i>. He read largely, and though not superficial, yet with an +extraordinary speed. He had no high or exclusive ways.' Thus, as so many +have known in that happy dawn of life, before any of the imps of +disorder and confusion have found their way into the garden, it was the +most careless hours,—careless of all save truth and beauty,—that were +the hours best filled.</p> + +<p class="center">ARTHUR HALLAM</p> + +<p>Youth will commonly do anything rather than write letters, but the +friendship of this pair stood even that test. The pages are redolent of +a living taste for good books and serious thoughts, and amply redeemed +from strain or affectation by touches of gay irony and the collegian's +banter. Hallam applies to Gladstone Diomede's lines about Odysseus, of +eager heart and spirit so manful in all manner of toils, as the only +comrade whom a man would choose.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> But the Greek hero was no doubt a +complex character, and the parallel is taken by Gladstone as an +equivocal compliment. So Hallam begs him at any rate to accept the other +description, how when he uttered his mighty voice from his chest, and +words fell like flakes of snow in winter, then could no mortal man +contend with Odysseus.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> As happy a forecast for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> great orator of +their generation, as when in 1829 he told Gladstone that Tennyson +promised fair to be its greatest poet. Hallam's share in the +correspondence reminds us of the friendship of two other Etonians ninety +years before, of the letters and verses that Gray wrote to Richard West; +there is the same literary sensibility, the same kindness, but there is +what Gray and West felt not, the breath of a busy and changing age. Each +of these two had the advantage of coming from a home where politics were +not mere gossip about persons and paragraphs, but were matters of +trained and continued interest. The son of one of the most eminent of +the brilliant band of the whig writers of that day, Hallam passes +glowing eulogies on the patriotism and wisdom of the whigs in coalescing +with Canning against the bigotry of the king and the blunders of +Wellington and Peel; he contrasts this famous crisis with a similar +crisis in the early part of the reign of George III.; and observes how +much higher all parties stood in the balance of disinterestedness and +public virtue. He goes to the opera and finds Zucchelli admirable, +Coradori divine. He wonders (1826) about Sir Walter's forthcoming life +of Napoleon, how with his ultra principles Scott will manage to make a +hero of the Corsican. He asks if Gladstone has read 'the new <i>Vivian +Grey</i>' (1827)—the second part of that amazing fiction into which an +author, not much older than themselves and destined to strange historic +relations with one of them, had the year before burst upon the world. +Hallam is not without the graceful melancholy of youth, so different +from that other melancholy of ripe years and the deepening twilight. +Under all is the recurrent note of a grave refrain that fatal issues +made pathetic.</p> + +<p>'Never since the time when I first knew you,' Hallam wrote to Gladstone +(June 23, 1830), 'have I ceased to love and respect your character ... +It will be my proudest thought that I may henceforth act worthily of +their affection who, like yourself, have influenced my mind for good in +the earliest season of its development. Circumstance, my dear Gladstone, +has indeed separated our paths, but it can never do away with what has +been. The stamp of each of our minds is on the other. Many a habit of +thought in each is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> modified, many a feeling is associated, which never +would have existed in that combination, had it not been for the old +familiar days when we lived together.'</p> + +<p>In the summer of 1827 Hallam quitted Eton for the journey to Italy that +set so important a mark on his literary growth, and he bade his friend +farewell in words of characteristic affection. 'Perhaps you will pardon +my doing by writing what I hardly dare trust myself to do by words. I +received your superb Burke yesterday; and hope to find it a memorial of +past and a pledge for future friendship through both our lives. It is +perhaps rather bold in me to ask a favour immediately on acknowledging +so great a one; but you would please me, and oblige me greatly, if you +will accept this copy of my father's book. It may serve when I am +separated from you, to remind you of one, whose warmest pleasure it will +always be to subscribe himself, Your most faithful friend, A. H. H.'</p> + +<p>A few entries from the schoolboy's diary may serve to bring the daily +scene before us, and show what his life was like:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>October 3, 1826</i>.—Holiday. Walk with Hallam. Wrote over theme. +Read Clarendon. Wrote speech for Saturday week. Poor enough. Did +punishment set by Keate to all the fifth form for being late in +church.</p> + +<p><i>October 6.</i>—Fin. second Olympiad of Pindar.... Clarendon. Did an +abstract of about 100 pages. Wrote speech for to-morrow in favour +of Cæsar.</p> + +<p><i>November 13</i>.—Play. Breakfast with Hallam. Read a little +Clarendon. Read over tenth Satire of Juvenal and read the fifth, +making quotations to it and some other places. Did a few verses.</p> + +<p><i>November 14</i>.—Holiday. Wrote over theme. Did verses. Walked with +Hallam and Doyle. Read papers and debates.... Read 200 lines of +<i>Trachiniae</i>. A little <i>Gil Blas</i> in French, and a little +Clarendon.</p> + +<p><i>November 18</i>.—Play. Read papers, etc. Finished Blair's +<i>Dissertation on Ossian</i>. Finished <i>Trachiniae</i>. Did 3 props. of +Euclid. Question: Was deposition of Richard II. justifiable? <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>Voted +no. Good debate. Finished the delightful oration <i>Pro Milone</i>.</p> + +<p><i>November 21</i>.—Holiday.... Part of article in <i>Edinburgh Review</i> +on <i>Icon Basilike</i>. Read Herodotus, Clarendon. Did 3 props. +Scrambling and leaping expedition with Hallam, Doyle, and Gaskell.</p> + +<p><i>November 30</i>.—Holiday. Read Herodotus. Breakfasted with Gaskell. +He and Hallam drank wine with me after 4. Walked with Hallam. Did +verses. Finished first book of Euclid. Read a little <i>Charles XII</i>.</p> + +<p><i>February 27, 1827</i>.—Holiday. Dressed (knee-breeches, etc.) and +went into school with Selwyn. Found myself not at all in a funk, +and went through my performance with tolerable comfort. Durnford +followed me, then Selwyn, who spoke well. Horrors of speaking +chiefly in the name.</p> + +<p><i>March 20</i>.—My father has lost his seat, and Berwick a +representative ten times too good for it. Wrote to my father, no +longer M.P.; when we have forgotten the manner, the matter is not +so bad.</p> + +<p><i>March 24</i>.—Half-holiday. Play and learning it. Walked with +Hallam, read papers. Hallam drank wine with me after dinner. +Finished 8th vol. of Gibbon; read account of Palmyra in second +volume; did more verses on it. Much jaw about nothing at Society, +and absurd violence.</p> + +<p><i>May 31</i>.—Finished iambics. Wrote over for tutor. Played cricket +in the Upper Club, and had tea in poet's walk [an entry repeated +this summer].</p> + +<p><i>June 26</i>.—Wrote over theme. Read <i>Iphigenie</i>. Called up in Homer. +Sculled Hallam to Surly after 6. Went to see a cricket match after +4.</p></div> + +<p class="center">FAREWELL TO ETON</p> + +<p>Gladstone's farewell to Eton came with Christmas (1827). He writes to +his sister his last Etonian letter (December 2) before departure, and +'melancholy that departure is.' On the day before, he had made his +valedictory speech to the Society, and the empty shelves and dismantled +walls, the table strewn with papers, the books packed away in their +boxes, have the effect of 'mingling in one lengthened mass all the +boyish hopes and solicitudes and pleasures' of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> Eton life. 'I have +long ago made up my mind that I have of late been enjoying what will in +all probability be, as far as my own individual case is concerned, the +happiest years of my life. And they have fled! From these few facts do +we not draw a train of reflections awfully important in their nature and +extremely powerful in their impression on the mind?'</p> + +<p class="center">DR. KEATE</p> + +<p>Two reminiscences of Eton always gave him, and those who listened to +him, much diversion whenever chance brought them to his mind, and he has +set them down in an autobiographic fragment, for which this is the +place:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>To Dr. Keate nature had accorded a stature of only about five feet, +or say five feet one; but by costume, voice, manner (including a +little swagger), and character he made himself in every way the +capital figure on the Eton stage, and his departure marked, I +imagine, the departure of the old race of English public school +masters, as the name of Dr. Busby seems to mark its introduction. +In connection with his name I shall give two anecdotes separated by +a considerable interval of years. About the year 1820, the +eloquence of Dr. Edward Irving drew crowds to his church in London, +which was presbyterian. It required careful previous arrangements +to secure comfortable accommodation. The preacher was solemn, +majestic (notwithstanding the squint), and impressive; carrying all +the appearance of devoted earnestness. My father had on a certain +occasion, when I was still a small Eton boy, taken time by the +forelock, and secured the use of a convenient pew in the first rank +of the gallery. From this elevated situation we surveyed at ease +and leisure the struggling crowds below. The crush was everywhere +great, but greatest of all in the centre aisle. Here the mass of +human beings, mercilessly compressed, swayed continually backwards +and forwards. There was I, looking down with infinite complacency +and satisfaction from this honourable vantage ground upon the floor +of the church, filled and packed as one of our public meetings is, +with people standing and pushing. What was my emotion, my joy, my +exultation, when I espied among this humiliated mass, struggling +and buffeted—whom but Keate! Keate the master of our existence, +the tyrant of our days! Pure, unalloyed, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>unadulterated rapture! +Such a περιπέτεια, such a reversal of human conditions of being, as +that now exhibited between the Eton lower boy uplifted to the +luxurious gallery pew, and the head-master of Eton, whom I was +accustomed to see in the roomy deck of the upper school with vacant +space and terror all around him, it must be hard for any one to +conceive, except the two who were the subjects of it. Never, never, +have I forgotten that moment.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p> + +<p>I will now, after the manner of novelists, ask my reader to effect +along with me, a transition of some eighteen years, and to witness +another, and if not a more complete yet a worthier, turning of the +tables. In the year 1841 there was a very special Eton dinner held +in Willis's Rooms to commemorate the fourth centenary of the +ancient school. Lord Morpeth, afterwards Lord Carlisle, was in the +chair. On his right, not far off him, was Dr. Keate, to whom I +chanced to have a seat almost immediately opposite. In those days, +at public dinners, cheering was marked by gradations. As the Queen +was suspected of sympathy with the liberal government of Lord +Melbourne which advised her, the toast of the sovereign was +naturally received with a moderate amount of acclamation, decently +and thriftily doled out. On the other hand the Queen Dowager either +was, or was believed to be, conservative; and her health +consequently figured as the toast of the evening, and drew forth, +as a matter of course, by far its loudest acclamation. So much was +routine; and we went through it as usual. But the real toast of the +evening was yet to come. I suppose it to be beyond doubt that of +the assembled company the vastly preponderating majority had been +under his sway at Eton; and if, when in that condition, any one of +them had been asked how he liked Dr. Keate, he would beyond +question have answered, 'Keate? Oh, I hate him.' It is equally +beyond doubt that to the persons of the whole of them, with the +rarest exceptions, it had been the ease of Dr. Keate to administer +the salutary correction of the birch. But upon this occasion, when +his name had been announced the scene was indescribable. Queen and +Queen Dowager alike vanished into insignificance. The roar of +cheering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> had a beginning, but never knew satiety or end. Like the +huge waves at Biarritz, the floods of cheering continually +recommenced; the whole process was such that we seemed all to have +lost our self-possession and to be hardly able to keep our seats. +When at length it became possible Keate rose: that is to say, his +head was projected slightly over the heads of his two neighbours. +He struggled to speak; I will not say I heard every syllable, for +there were no syllables; speak he could not. He tried in vain to +mumble a word or two, but wholly failed, recommenced the vain +struggle and sat down. It was certainly one of the most moving +spectacles that in my whole life I have witnessed.</p></div> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p class="center">AT WILMSLOW</p> + +<p>Some months passed between leaving Eton and going to Oxford. In January +1828, Gladstone went to reside with Dr. Turner at Wilmslow in Cheshire, +and remained there until Turner was made Bishop of Calcutta. The +bishop's pupil afterwards testified to his amiability, refinement, and +devoutness; but the days of his energy were past, and 'the religious +condition of the parish was depressing.' Among the neighbouring +families, with whom he made acquaintance while at Wilmslow, were the +Gregs of Quarry Bank, a refined and philanthropic household, including +among the sons William R. Greg (born in the same year as Mr. Gladstone), +that ingenious, urbane, interesting, and independent mind, whose +speculations, dissolvent and other, were afterwards to take an effective +place in the writings of the time. 'I fear he is a unitarian,' the young +churchman mentions to his father, and gives sundry reasons for that +sombre apprehension; it was, indeed, only too well founded.</p> + +<p>While at Wilmslow (Feb. 5, 1828) Gladstone was taken to dine with the +rector of Alderley—'an extremely gentlemanly and said to be a very +clever man,'—afterwards to be known as the liberal and enlightened +Edward Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, and father of Arthur Stanley, the +famous dean. Him, on this occasion, the young Gladstone seems to have +seen for the first time. Arthur Stanley was six years his junior, and +there was then some idea of sending him to Eton. As it happened, he too +was a pupil at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> Rawson's at Seaforth, and in the summer after the +meeting at Alderley the two lads met again. The younger of them has +described how he was invited to breakfast with William Gladstone at +Seaforth House; in what grand style they breakfasted, how he devoured +strawberries, swam the Newfoundland dog in the pond, looked at books and +pictures, and talked to W. Gladstone 'almost all the time about all +sorts of things. He is so very good-natured, and I like him very much. +He talked a great deal about Eton, and said that it was a very good +place for those who liked boating and Latin verses. He was very +good-natured to us all the time, and lent me books to read when we went +away.'<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> A few months later, as all the world knows, Stanley, happily +for himself and for all of us, went not to Eton but to Rugby, where +Arnold had just entered on his bold and noble task of changing the face +of education in England.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>Gleanings</i>, vii. p. 138.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> A story sometimes told of Provost Goodall.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> At Marlborough, Feb. 3, 1877; at Mill Hill School, June 11, 1879.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Doyle tells a story of the boy being flogged for bringing wine into +his study. When questioned on this, Mr. Gladstone said, 'I <i>was</i> +flogged, but not for anything connected in any way with wine, of which, +by the by, my father supplied me with a small amount, and insisted upon +my drinking it, or some of it, all the time that I was at Eton. The +reason why I was flogged was this. I was præpostor of the remove on a +certain day, and from kindness or good nature was induced to omit from +the list of boys against whom H. [the master] had complained, and who +ought to have been flogged next day, the names of three offenders. The +three boys in question got round me with a story that their friends were +coming down from London to see them, and that if they were put down on +the flogging list they could not meet their friends. Next day when I +went into school H. roared out in a voice of thunder, "Gladstone, put +down your own name on the list of boys to be flogged."' Mr. Gladstone on +this occasion told another tale of this worthy's 'humour.' 'One day H. +called out to the præpostor, “Write down Hamilton's name to be flogged +for breaking my window.” “I never broke your window, sir,” exclaimed +Hamilton. “Præpostor,” retorted H., “write down Hamilton's name for +breaking my window and lying.” “Upon my soul, sir, I did not do it,” +ejaculated the boy, with increased emphasis. “Præpostor, write down +Hamilton's name for breaking my window, lying, and swearing.” Against +this final sentence there was no appeal, and, accordingly, Hamilton was +flogged (I believe unjustly) next day.'—F. Lawley in <i>Daily Telegraph</i>, +May 20, 1898.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <i>Temple Bar</i>, Feb. 1883.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Feb. 10, 1827.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Mr. Gladstone fixed on two of the elegies of <i>In Memoriam</i> as most +directly conveying the image of Arthur Hallam, cviii. and cxxviii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> <i>Iliad</i>, iii. 221.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 242.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> I have heard him tell this story, and Garrick himself could not +have reproduced a schoolboy's glee with more admirable accent and +gesture.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Prothero's <i>Life of Dean Stanley</i>, 1. p. 22.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">OXFORD</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>October 1828-December 1831</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to the +moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of +the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, +keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the +ideal, to perfection—to beauty, in a word, which is only truth +seen from another side?—<span class="smcap">M. Arnold</span>.</p></div><br /> + +<p>Glorious to most are the days of life in a great school, but it is at +college that aspiring talent first enters on its inheritance. Oxford was +slowly awakening from a long age of lethargy. Toryism of a stolid +clownish type still held the thrones of collegiate power. Yet the eye of +an imaginative scholar as he gazed upon the grey walls, reared by piety, +munificence, and love of learning in a far-off time, might well discern +behind an unattractive screen of academic sloth, the venerable past, not +dim and cold, but in its traditions rich, nourishing, and alive. Such an +one could see before him present days of honourable emulation and +stirring acquisition—fit prelude of a man's part to play in a strenuous +future. It is from Gladstone's introduction into this enchanted and +inspiring world, that we recognise the beginning of the wonderful course +that was to show how great a thing the life of a man may be made.</p> + +<p class="center">CHRIST CHURCH</p> + +<p>The Eton boy became the Christ Church man, and there began residence, +October 10, 1828. Mr. Gladstone's rooms, during most of his +undergraduate life, were on the right hand, and on the first floor of +the staircase on the right, as one enters by the Canterbury gate. He +tells his mother that they are in a very fashionable part of the +college, and mentions as a delightful fact, that Gaskell and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> Seymer +have rooms on the same floor. Samuel Smith was head until 1831, when he +was succeeded by the more celebrated Dr. Gaisford, always described by +Mr. Gladstone as a splendid scholar, but a bad dean. Gaisford's +excellent services to the Greek learning of his day are unquestioned, +and he had the signal merit of speech, Spartan brevity. For a short time +in 1806 he had been tutor to Peel. When Lord Liverpool offered him the +Greek professorship, with profuse compliments on his erudition, the +learned man replied, 'My Lord, I have received your letter, and accede +to the contents.—Yours, T. G.' And to the complaining parent of an +undergraduate he wrote, 'Dear Sir,—Such letters as yours are a great +annoyance to your obedient servant T. Gaisford.'<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> This laconic gift +the dean evidently had not time to transmit to all of his flock.</p> + +<p>Christ Church in those days was infested with some rowdyism, and in one +bear-fight an undergraduate was actually killed. In the chapel the new +undergraduate found little satisfaction, for the service was scarcely +performed with common decency. There seems, however, to have been no +irreconcilable prejudice against reading, and in the schools the college +was at the top of its academic fame. The influence of Cyril Jackson, the +dean in Peel's time, whose advice to Peel and, other pupils to work like +a tiger, and not to be afraid of killing one's self by work, was still +operative.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> At the summer examination of 1830, Christ Church won five +first classes out of ten. Most commoners, according to a letter of +Gaskell's, had from three hundred and fifty to five hundred pounds a +year; but gentlemen commoners like Acland and Gaskell had from five to +six hundred. At the end of 1829, Mr. Gladstone received a studentship +<i>honoris causa</i>, by nomination of the dean—a system that would not be +approved in our epoch of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> competitive examination, but still an advance +upon the time-honoured practice of deans and canons disposing of +studentships on grounds of private partiality without reference to +desert. We may assume that the dean was not indifferent to academic +promise when he told Gladstone, very good-naturedly and civilly, that he +had determined to offer him his nomination. The student designate wrote +a theme, read it out before the chapter, passed a nominal, or even +farcical, examination in Homer and Virgil, was elected as matter of +course by the chapter, and after chapel on the morning of Christmas eve, +having taken several oaths, was formally admitted in the name of the +Holy Trinity.</p> + +<p>Mr. Biscoe, his classical tutor, was a successful lecturer on Aristotle, +especially on the Rhetoric. With Charles Wordsworth, son of the master +of Trinity at Cambridge, and afterwards Bishop of Saint Andrews, he read +for scholarship, apparently not wholly to his own satisfaction. While +still an undergraduate, he writes to his father (Nov. 2, 1830), 'I am +wretchedly deficient in the knowledge of modern languages, literature, +and history; and the classical knowledge acquired here, though sound, +accurate, and useful, yet is not such as to <i>complete</i> an education.' It +looked, in truth, as if the caustic saying of a brilliant colleague of +his in later years were not at the time unjust, as now it would happily +be, that it was a battle between Eton and education, and Eton had won.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone never to the end of his days ceased to be grateful that +Oxford was chosen for his university. At Cambridge, as he said in +discussing Hallam's choice, the pure refinements of scholarship were +more in fashion than the study of the great masterpieces of antiquity in +their substance and spirit. The classical examination at Oxford, on the +other hand, was divided into the three elastic departments of +scholarship and poetry, history, and philosophy. In this list, history +somewhat outweighed the scholarship, and philosophy was somewhat more +regarded than history. In each case the examination turned more on +contents than on form, and the influence of Butler was at its climax.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">CHARACTER OF OXFORD TEACHING</p> + +<p>If Mr. Gladstone had gone to Oxford ten years earlier, he would have +found the Ethics and the Rhetoric treated, only much less effectively, +in the Cambridge method, like dramatists and orators, as pieces of +literature. As it was, Whately's common sense had set a new fashion, and +Aristotle was studied as the master of those who know how to teach us +the right way about the real world.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> Aristotle, Butler, and logic +were the new acquisitions, but in none of the three as yet did the +teaching go deep compared with modern standards. Oxford scholars of our +own day question whether there was even one single tutor in 1830, with +the possible exception of Hampden, who could expound Aristotle as a +whole—so utterly had the Oxford tradition perished.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p> + +<p>The time was in truth the eve of an epoch of illumination, and in these +epochs it is not old academic systems that the new light is wont to +strike with its first rays. The summer of 1831 is the date of Sir +William Hamilton's memorable exposure,<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> in his most trenchant and +terrifying style and with a learning all his own, of the corruption and +'vampire oppression of Oxford'; its sacrifice of the public interests to +private advantage; its unhallowed disregard of every moral and religious +bond; the systematic perjury so naturalised in a great seminary of +religious education; the apathy with which the injustice was tolerated +by the state and the impiety tolerated by the church. Copleston made a +wretched reply, but more than twenty years passed before the spirit of +reform overthrew the entrenchments of academic abuse. In that overthrow, +when the time came, Mr. Gladstone was called to play a part, though +hardly at first a very zealous one. This was not for a quarter of a +century; for, as we shall soon see, both the revival of learning and the +reform of institutions at Oxford were sharply turned aside from their +expected course by the startling theological movement that now proceeded +from her venerable walls.</p> + +<p>What interests us here is not the system but the man; and never was +vital temperament more admirably fitted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> by its vigour, sincerity, +conscience, compass, for whatever good seed from the hand of any sower +might be cast upon it. In an entry in his diary in the usual strain of +evangelical devotion (April 25, 1830) is a sentence that reveals what +was in Mr. Gladstone the nourishing principle of growth: 'In practice +the great end is that the love of God may become the <i>habit</i> of my soul, +and particularly these things are to be sought;—1. The spirit of love. +2. Of self-sacrifice. 3. Of purity. 4. Of energy.' Just as truly as if +we were recalling some hero of the seventeenth or any earlier century, +is this the biographic clue.</p> + +<p>Gladstone constantly reproaches himself for natural indolence, and for a +year and a half he took his college course pretty easily. Then he +changed. 'The time for half-measures and trifling and pottering, in +which I have so long indulged myself, is now gone by, and I must do or +die.' His really hard work did not begin until the summer of 1830, when +he returned to Cuddesdon to read mathematics with Saunders, a man who +had the reputation of being singularly able and stimulating to his +pupils, and with whom he had done some rudiments before going into +residence at Christ Church. In his description of this gentleman to his +father, we may hear for the first time the redundant roll that was for +many long years to be so familiar and so famous. Saunders' disposition, +it appears, 'is one certainly of extreme benevolence, and of a +benevolence which is by no means less strong and full when purely +gratuitous and spontaneous, than when he seems to be under the tie of +some definite and positive obligation.' Dr. Gaisford would perhaps have +put it that the tutor was no kinder where his kindness was paid for, +than where it was not.</p> + +<p class="center">CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION</p> + +<p>The catholic question, that was helping many another and older thing to +divide England from Ireland, after having for a whole generation played +havoc with the fortunes of party and the careers of statesmen, was now +drawing swiftly to its close. The Christ Church student had a glimpse of +one of the opening scenes of the last act. He writes to his brother +(Feb. 6th, 1829):<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I saw yesterday a most interesting scene in the Convocation house. +The occasion was the debate on the anti-catholic petition, which it +has long been the practice of the university to send up year by +year. This time it was worded in the most gentle and moderate terms +possible. All the ordinary business there, is transacted in Latin; +I mean such things as putting the question, speaking, etc., and +this rule, I assure you, stops many a mouth, and I dare say saves +the Roman catholics many a hard word. There were rather above two +hundred doctors and masters of arts present. Three speeches were +made, two against and one in favour of sending up the petition. +Instead of aye and no they had <i>placet</i> and <i>non-placet</i>, and in +place of a member dividing the House, the question was, “<i>Petitne +aliquis scrutinium?</i>” which was answered by “<i>Peto!</i>” “<i>Peto!</i>” +from many quarters. However, when the scrutiny took place, it was +found that the petition was carried by 156 to 48.... After the +division, however, came the most interesting part of the whole. A +letter from Peel, resigning the seat for the university, was read +before the assembly. It was addressed to the vice-chancellor and +had arrived just before, it was understood; and I suppose brought +hither the first positive and indubitable announcement of the +government's intention to emancipate the catholics.</p></div> + +<p>A few days later, Peel accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, and after some +deliberation allowed himself to be again brought forward for +re-election. He was beaten by 755 votes to 609. The relics of the +contest, the figures and the inscriptions on the walls, soon +disappeared, but panic did not abate. On Gladstone's way to Oxford +(April 30, 1829), a farmer's wife got into the coach, and in +communicative vein informed him how frightened they had all been about +catholic emancipation, but she did not see that so much had come of it +as yet. The college scout declared himself much troubled for the king's +conscience, observing that if we make an oath at baptism, we ought to +hold by it. 'The bed-makers,' Gladstone writes home, 'seem to continue +in a great fright, and mine was asking me this morning whether it would +not be a very good thing if we were to give them [the Irish] a king and +a parliament of their own, and so to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> no more to do with them. The +old egg-woman is no whit easier, and wonders how Mr. Peel, who was +always such a well-behaved man here, can be so foolish as to think of +letting in the Roman catholics.' The unthinking and the ignorant of all +classes were much alike. Arthur Hallam went to see <i>King John</i> in 1827, +and he tells his friend how the lines about the Italian priest (Act III. +Sc. 1) provoked rounds of clapping, while a gentleman in the next box +cried out at the top of his voice, 'Bravo! Bravo! No Pope!' The same +correspondent told Gladstone of the father of a common Eton friend, who +had challenged him with the overwhelming question, 'Could I say that any +papist had ever at any time done any good to the world?' A still +stormier conflict than even the emancipation of the catholics was now to +shake Oxford and the country to the depths, before Mr. Gladstone took +his degree.</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">OXFORD FRIENDSHIPS</p> + +<p>His friendships at Oxford Mr. Gladstone did not consider to have been as +a rule very intimate. Principal among them were Frederick Rogers, long +afterwards Lord Blachford; Doyle; Gaskell; Bruce, afterwards Lord Elgin; +Charles Canning, afterwards Lord Canning; the two Denisons; Lord +Lincoln. These had all been his friends at Eton. Among new acquisitions +to the circle of his intimates at one time or another of his Oxford +life, were the two Aclands, Thomas and Arthur; Hamilton, afterwards +Bishop of Salisbury; Phillimore, destined to close and life-long +friendship; F.D. Maurice, then of Exeter College, a name destined to +stir so many minds in the coming generation. Of Maurice, Arthur Hallam +had written to Gladstone (June 1830) exhorting him to cultivate his +acquaintance. 'I know many,' says Hallam, 'whom Maurice has moulded like +a second nature, and these too, men eminent for intellectual power, to +whom the presence of a commanding spirit would in all other cases be a +signal rather for rivalry than reverential acknowledgment.' 'I knew +Maurice well,' says Mr. Gladstone in one of his notes of reminiscence, +'had heard superlative accounts of him from Cambridge, and really strove +hard to make them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> all realities to myself. One Sunday morning we walked +to Marsh Baldon to hear Mr. Porter, the incumbent, a calvinist +independent of the <i>clique</i>, and a man of remarkable power as we both +thought. I think he and other friends did me good, but I got little +solid meat from him, as I found him difficult to catch and still more +difficult to hold.'</p> + +<p>Sidney Herbert, afterwards so dear to him, now at Oriel, here first +became an acquaintance. Manning, though they both read with the same +tutor, and one succeeded the other as president of the Union, he did not +at this time know well. The lists of his guests at wines and breakfasts +do not even contain the name of James Hope; indeed, Mr. Gladstone tells +us that he certainly was not more than an acquaintance. In the account +of intimates is the unexpected name of Tupper, who, in days to come, +acquired for a time a grander reputation than he deserved by his +<i>Proverbial Philosophy</i>, and on whom the public by and by avenged its +ownfoolishness by severer doses of mockery than he had earned.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> The +friend who seems most to have affected him in the deepest things was +Anstice, whom he describes to his father (June 4, 1830) as 'a very +clever man, and more than a clever man, a man of excellent principle and +of perfect self-command, and of great industry. If any circumstances +could confer upon me the inestimable blessing of fixed habits and +unremitting industry, these [the example of such a man] will be they.' +The diary tells how, in August (1830), Mr. Gladstone conversed with +Anstice in a walk from Oxford to Cuddesdon on subjects of the highest +importance. 'Thoughts then first sprang up in my soul (obvious as they +may appear to many) which may powerfully influence my destiny. O for a +light from on high! I have no power, none, to discern the right path for +myself.' They afterwards had long talks together, 'about that awful +subject which has lately almost engrossed my mind.' Another +day—'Conversation of an hour and a half with Anstice on practical +religion, particularly as regards our own situation. I bless and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> praise +God for his presence here.' 'Long talk with Anstice; would I were more +worthy to be his companion.' 'Conversation with Anstice; he talked much +with Saunders on the motive of actions, contending for the love of God, +<i>not</i> selfishness even in its most refined form.'<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p> + +<p class="center">EVANGELICAL IN RELIGION</p> + +<p>In the matter of his own school of religion, Mr. Gladstone was always +certain that Oxford in his undergraduate days had no part in turning him +from an evangelical into a high churchman. The tone and dialect of his +diary and letters at the time show how just this impression was. We find +him in 1830 expressing his satisfaction that a number of Hannah More's +tracts have been put on the list of the Christian Knowledge Society. In +1831 he bitterly deplores such ecclesiastical appointments as those of +Sydney Smith and Dr. Maltby, 'both of them, I believe, regular +latitudinarians.' He remembered his shock at Butler's laudation of +Nature. He was scandalised by a sermon in which Calvin was placed upon +the same level among heresiarchs as Socinus and other like aliens from +gospel truth. He was delighted (March 1830) with a university sermon +against Milman's <i>History of the Jews</i>, and hopes it may be useful as an +antidote, 'for Milman, though I do think without intentions directly +evil, does go far enough to be justly called a bane. For instance, he +says that had Moses never existed, the Hebrew nation would have remained +a degraded pariah tribe or been lost in the mass of the Egyptian +population—and this notwithstanding the promise.' In all his letters in +the period from Eton to the end of Oxford and later, a language noble +and exalted even in these youthful days is not seldom copiously streaked +with a vein that, to eyes not trained to evangelical light and to minds +not tolerant of the expansion that comes to religious natures in the +days of adolescence, may seem unpleasantly strained and excessive. The +fashion of such words undergoes transfiguration as the epochs pass. Yet +in all their fashions, even the crudest, they deserve much tenderness. +He consults a clergyman (1829) on the practice of prayer meetings in +his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> rooms. His correspondent answers, that as the wicked have their +orgies and meet to gamble and to drink, so they that fear the Lord +should speak often to one another concerning Him; that prayer meetings +are not for the cultivation or exhibition of gifts, nor to enable noisy +and forward young men to pose as leaders of a school of prophets; but if +a few young men of like tastes feel the withering influence of mere +scholastic learning, and the necessity of mutual stimulation and +refreshment, then such prayer meetings would be a safe and natural +remedy. The student's attention to all religious observances was close +and unbroken, the most living part of his existence.</p> + +<p>The movement that was to convulse the church had not yet begun. 'You may +smile,' Mr. Gladstone said long after, 'when told that when I was at +Oxford, Dr. Hampden was regarded as a model of orthodoxy; that Dr. +Newman was eyed with suspicion as a low churchman, and Dr. Pusey as +leaning to rationalism.' What Mr. Gladstone afterwards described as a +steady, clear, but dry anglican orthodoxy bore sway, 'and frowned this +way or that, on the first indication of any tendency to diverge from the +beaten path.'<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> He hears Whately preach a controversial sermon (1831) +just after he had been made Archbishop of Dublin. 'Doubtless he is a man +of much power and many excellences, but his anti-sabbatical doctrine is, +I fear, as mischievous as it is unsound.' A sermon of Keble's at St. +Mary's prompts the uneasy question, 'Are all Mr. Keble's opinions those +of scripture and the church? Of his life and heart and practice, none +could doubt, all would admire.' A good sermon is mentioned from Blanco +White, that strange and forlorn figure of whom in later life Mr. +Gladstone wrote an interesting account, not conclusive in argument, but +assuredly not wanting in either delicacy or generosity.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> 'Dr. Pusey +was very kind to me when I was an undergraduate at Oxford,' he says, but +what their relations were I know not. 'I knew and respected both Bishop +Lloyd and Dr. Pusey,' he says, 'but neither of them attempted to +exercise the smallest influence over my religious opinions.' With Newman +he seems to have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> brought into contact hardly at all.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> Newman +and one of the Wilberforces came to dine at Cuddesdon one day, and, on a +later occasion, he and another fellow of Oriel were at a dinner with Mr. +Gladstone at the table of his friend Philip Pusey. Two or three of his +sermons are mentioned. One of them (March 7, 1831) contained 'much +singular, not to say objectionable matter, if one may so speak of so +good a man.' Of another,—'heard Newman preach a good sermon on those +who made excuse' (Sept. 25, 1831). Of the generality of university +sermons, he accepted the observation of his friend Anstice,—'Depend +upon it, such sermons as those can never convert a single person.' On +some Sundays he hears two of these discourses in the morning and +afternoon, and a third sermon in the evening, for though he became the +most copious of all speakers, Mr. Gladstone was ever the most generous +of listeners. It was at St. Ebb's that he found really congenial +ministrations—an ecclesiastical centre described by him fifty years +later—under Mr. Bulteel, a man of some note in his day; here the flame +was at white heat, and a score or two of young men felt its +attractions.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> He always remembered among the wonderful sights of his +life, St. Mary's 'crammed in all parts by all orders, when Mr. Bulteel, +an outlying calvinist, preached his accusatory sermon (some of it too +true) against the university.' In the summer of 1830, Mr. Gladstone +notes, 'Poor Bulteel has lost his church for preaching in the open air. +Pity that he should have acted so, and pity that it should be found +necessary to make such an example of a man of God.' The preacher was +impenitent, for from a window Mr. Gladstone again heard him conduct a +service for a large congregation who listened attentively to a sermon +that was interesting, but evinced some soreness of spirit. A 'most +painful' discourse from a Mr. Crowther so moves Mr. Gladstone that he +sits down to write to the preacher, 'earnestly expostulating with him on +the character and the doctrines of the sermon,' and after re-writing his +letter, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> delivers it with his own hand at the door of the displeasing +divine. The effect was not other than salutary, for a little later he +was 'happy to hear two sermons of good principles from Mr. Crowther.' To +his father, October 27, 1830:—'Dr. Chalmers has been passing through +Oxford, and I went to hear him preach on Sunday evening, though it was +at the baptist chapel.... I need hardly say that his sermon was +admirable, and quite as remarkable for the judicious and sober manner in +which he enforced his views, as for their lofty principles and piety. He +preached, I think, for an hour and forty minutes.' The admiration thus +first aroused only grew with fuller knowledge in the coming years.</p> + +<p class="center">ESSAY CLUB</p> + +<p>An Essay Club, called from its founder's initials the WEG, was formed at +a meeting in Gaskell's rooms in October, 1829. Only two members out of +the first twelve did not belong to Christ Church, Rogers of Oriel and +Moncreiff of New.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> The Essay Club's transactions, though not very +serious, deserve a glance. Mr. Gladstone reads an essay (Feb. 20, 1830) +on the comparative rank of poetry and philosophy, concluding with a +motion that the rank of philosophy is higher than that of poetry: it was +beaten by seven to five. Without a division, they determined that +English poetry is of a higher order than Greek. The truth of the +principles of phrenology was affirmed with the tremendous emphasis of +eleven to one. Though trifling in degree, the influence of the modern +drama was pronounced in quality pernicious. Gladstone gave his casting +vote against the capacious proposition, of which philosophers had made +so much in France, Switzerland, and other places on the eve of the +French revolution, that education and other outward circumstances have +more than nature to do with man's disposition. By four to three, Mr. +Tennyson's poems were affirmed to show considerable genius, Gladstone +happily in the too slender majority. The motion that 'political<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> liberty +is not to be considered as the end of government' was a great affair. +Maurice, who had been admitted to the club on coming to Oxford from +Cambridge, moved an amendment 'that every man has a right to perform +certain personal duties with which no system of government has a right +to interfere.' Gladstone 'objected to an observation that had fallen +from the mover, “A man finds himself in the world,” as if he did not +come into the world under a debt to his parents, under obligations to +society.' The tame motion of Lord Abercorn, that Elizabeth's conduct to +Mary Queen of Scots was unjustifiable and impolitic, was stiffened into +'not only unjustifiable and impolitic, but a base and treacherous +murder,' and in that severe form was carried without a division.</p> + +<p>Plenty of nonsense was talked we may be sure, and so there was, no +doubt, in the Olive Grove of Academe or amid those surnamed Peripatetics +and the Sect Epicurean. Yet nonsense notwithstanding, the Essay Club had +members who proved in time to have superior minds if ever men had, and +their disputations in one another's rooms helped to sharpen their mental +apparatus, to start trains of ideas however immature, and to shake the +cherished dogmatisms brought from beloved homes, even if dogmatism as +stringent took their place. This is how the world moves, and Oxford was +just beginning to rub its eyes, awaking to the speculations of a new +time.</p> + +<p>When he looked back in after times, Mr. Gladstone traced one great +defect in the education of Oxford. 'Perhaps it was my own fault, but I +must admit that I did not learn when I was at Oxford that which I have +learned since—namely, to set a due value on the imperishable and +inestimable principle of British liberty. The temper which too much +prevailed in academical circles was that liberty was regarded with +jealousy and fear, something which could not wholly be dispensed with, +but which was to be continually watched for fear of excesses.'<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">TRIES FOR THE IRELAND SCHOLARSHIP</p> + +<p>In March 1830 Gladstone made the first of two attempts to win the +scholarship newly founded by Dean Ireland, and from the beginning one of +the most coveted of university prizes. In 1830 (March 16) he +wrote:—'There is it appears smaller chance than ever of its falling out +of the hands of the Shrewsbury people. There is a very formidable one +indeed, by name Scott, come up from Christ Church. If it is to go among +them I hope he may get it.' This was Robert Scott, afterwards master of +Balliol, and then dean of Rochester, and the coadjutor with Dean Liddell +in the famous Greek Lexicon brought out in 1843. A year later he tried +again, but little better success came either to himself or to Scott. He +tells his father the story (March 16th, 1831) and collegians who have +fought such battles may care to hear it:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I must first tell you that I am <i>not</i> the successful candidate, and +after this I shall have nothing to communicate but what will, I +think, give you pleasure. The scholarship has been won by (I +believe) a native of Liverpool.<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> His name is Brancker, and he is +now actually at Shrewsbury, but had matriculated here though he had +not come up to reside. This result has excited immense surprise. +For my own part, I went into the examination <i>solely</i> depending for +any hope of pre-eminence above the Shrewsbury men on three points, +Greek history, one particular kind of Greek verses, and Greek +philosophy.... It so fell out, however, that not one of these three +points was brought to bear on the examination, though, indeed, it +is but a lame one without them. Accordingly from the turn it seemed +to take as it proceeded, my own expectations regularly declined, +and I thought I might consider myself very well off if I came in +pretty high. As it is, I am even with the great competitor, Scott, +whom everybody almost thought the favourite candidate, and above +the others. Allies, an Eton man, Scott and I are placed together; +and Short, one of the examiners, told us this morning that it was +an extremely near thing, and he had great difficulty in making up +his mind, which he never had felt in any former examination in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> +which he had been engaged; and indeed he laid the preference given +to Brancker chiefly on his having written short and concise +answers, while ours were longwinded. And in consideration of its +having been so closely contested, the vice-chancellor is to present +each of us with a set of books.... Something however may fairly +enough be attributed to the fact that at Eton we were not educated +for such objects as these.... The result will affect the +scholarship itself more than any individual character; for previous +events have created, and this has contributed amazingly to +strengthen, a prevalent impression that the Shrewsbury system is +radically a false one, and that its object is not to educate the +mind but merely to cram and stuff it for these purposes. However, +we who are beaten are not fair judges.... I only trust that you +will not be more annoyed than I am by this event.</p></div> + +<p>Brancker was said to have won because he answered all the questions not +only shortly, but most of them right, and Mr. Gladstone's essay was +marked 'desultory beyond belief.' Below Allies came Sidney Herbert, then +at Oriel, and Grove, afterwards a judge and an important name in the +history of scientific speculation.</p> + +<p>He was equally unsuccessful in another field of competition. He sent in +a poem on Richard Cœur de Lion for the Newdigate prize in 1829. In 1893 +somebody asked his leave to reprint it, and at Mr. Gladstone's request +sent him a copy:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>On perusing it I was very much struck by the contrast it exhibited +between the faculty of versification which (I thought) was good, +and the faculty of poetry, which was very defective. This faculty +of verse had been trained I suppose by verse-making at Eton, and +was based upon the possession of a good or tolerable ear with which +nature had endowed me. I think that a poetical faculty did develop +itself in me a little later, that is to say between twenty and +thirty, due perhaps to having read Dante with a real devotion and +absorption. It was, however, in my view, true but weak, and has +never got beyond that stage. It was evidently absent from the +verses, I will not say the poem, on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>Cœur de Lion; and without +hesitation I declined to allow any reprint.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p></div> + +<p class="center">DEBATES AT THE UNION</p> + +<p>He was active in the debates at the Union, where he made his first start +in the speaking line (Feb. 1830) in a strong oration much admired by his +friends, in favour,—of all the questionable things in the world,—of +the Treason and Sedition Acts of 1795. He writes home that he did not +find the ordeal so formidable as it used to be before the smaller +audiences at Eton, for at Oxford they sometimes mustered as many as a +hundred or a hundred and fifty. He spoke for a strongly-worded motion on +a happier theme, in favour of the policy and memory of Canning. In the +summer of 1831, he mentions a debate in which a motion was proposed in +favour of speedy emancipation of the West Indian slaves. 'I moved an +amendment that education of a religious kind was the fit object of +legislation, which was carried by thirt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>y-three to twelve.' Of the most +notable of all his successes at the Union we shall soon hear.</p> + +<p class="center">DAILY LIFE</p> + +<p>His little diary, written for no eye but his own, and in the use of +which I must beware of the sin of violating the sanctuary, contains in +the most concise of daily records all his various activities, and, at +least after the summer at Cuddesdon, it presents an attractive picture +of duty, industry, and attention, 'constant as the motion of the day.' +The entries are much alike, and a few of them will suffice to bring his +life and him before us. The days for 1830 may almost be taken at random.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>May 10, 1830</i>.—Prospectively, I have the following work to do in +the course of this term. (I mention it now, that this may at least +make me blush if I fail.) Butler's <i>Analogy</i>, analysis and +synopsis. Herodotus, questions. St. Matthew and St. John. +Mathematical lecture. <i>Aeneid.</i> Juvenal and Persius. <i>Ethics</i>, five +books. Prideaux (a part of, for Herodotus). Themistocles Greciae +valedicturus [I suppose a verse composition]. Something in +divinity. Mathematical lecture. Breakfast with Gaskell, who had the +Merton men. Papers. <i>Edinburgh Review</i> on Southey's <i>Colloquies</i> +[Macaulay's]. <i>Ethics.</i> A wretched day. God forgive idleness. Note +to Bible.</p> + +<p><i>May 13</i>.—Wrote to my mother. At debate (Union). Elected +secretary. Papers. <i>British Critic</i> on <i>History of the Jews</i> [by +Newman on Milman]. Herodotus, <i>Ethics</i>. Butler and analysis. +Papers, Virgil, Herodotus. Juvenal. Mathematics and lecture. Walk +with Anstice. Ethics, finished book 4.</p> + +<p><i>May 25</i>.—Finished Porteus's <i>Evidences</i>. Got up a few hard +passages. Analysis of Porteus. Sundry matters in divinity. +Themistocles. Sat with Biscoe talking. Walk with Canning and +Gaskell. Wine and tea. Wrote to Mr. G. [his father]. Papers.</p> + +<p><i>June 13</i>. <i>Sunday</i>.—Chapel morning and evening. Thomas à Kempis. +Erskine's <i>Evidence</i>. Tea with Mayow and Cole. Walked with Maurice +to hear Mr. Porter, a wild but splendid preacher.</p> + +<p><i>June 14</i>.—Gave a large wine party. Divinity lecture. Mathematics. +Wrote three long letters. Herodotus, began book 4. Prideaux. +Newspapers, etc. Thomas à Kempis.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p> + +<p><i>June 15</i>.—Another wine party. <i>Ethics</i>, Herodotus. A little +Juvenal. Papers. Hallam's poetry. Lecture on Herodotus. Phillimore +got the verse prize.</p> + +<p><i>June 16</i>.—Divinity lecture. Herodotus. Papers. Out at wine. A +little Plato.</p> + +<p><i>June 17</i>.—<i>Ethics</i> and lecture. Herodotus. T. à Kempis. Wine with +Gaskell.</p> + +<p><i>June 18</i>.—Breakfast with Gaskell. T. à Kempis. Divinity lecture. +Herodotus. Wrote on Philosophy <i>versus</i> Poetry. A little Persius. +Wine with Buller and Tupper.</p> + +<p><i>June 25</i>.—<i>Ethics</i>. Collections 9-3. Among other things wrote a +long paper on religions of Egypt, Persia, Babylon; and on the +Satirists. Finished packing books and clothes. Left Oxford between +5-6, and walked fifteen miles towards Leamington. Then obliged to +put in, being caught by a thunderstorm. Comfortably off in a +country inn at Steeple Aston. Read and spouted some <i>Prometheus +Vinctus</i> there.</p> + +<p><i>June 26</i>.—Started before 7. Walked eight miles to Banbury. +Breakfast there, and walked on twenty-two to Leamington. Arrived at +three and changed. Gaskell came in the evening. <i>Life of +Massinger</i>.</p> + +<p><i>July 6</i>. <i>Cuddesdon</i>.—Up soon after 6. Began my Harmony of Greek +Testament. Differential calculus, etc. Mathematics good while, but +in a rambling way. Began <i>Odyssey</i>. Papers. Walk with Anstice and +Hamilton. Turned a little bit of Livy into Greek. Conversation on +ethics and metaphysics at night.</p> + +<p><i>July 8</i>.—Greek Testament. Bible with Anstice. Mathematics, long +but did little. Translated some <i>Phædo</i>. Butler. Construed some +Thucydides at night. Making hay, etc., with S., H., and A. Great +fun. Shelley.</p> + +<p><i>July 10</i>.—Greek Testament. Lightfoot. Butler, and writing a +marginal analysis. Old Testament with Anstice and a discussion on +early history. Mathematics. Cricket with H. and A. A conversation +of two hours at night with A. on religion till past 12. Thucydides, +etc. I cannot get anything done, though I seem to be employed a +good while. Short's sermon.</p> + +<p><i>July 11</i>.—Church and Sunday-school teaching, morning and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> +evening. The children miserably deluded. Barrow. Short. Walked with +S.</p> + +<p><i>September 4</i>.—Same as yesterday. <i>Paradise Lost.</i> Dined with the +bishop. Cards at night. I like them not, for they excite and keep +me awake. Construing Sophocles.</p> + +<p><i>September 18</i>.—Went down early to Wheatley for letters. It is +indeed true [the death of Huskisson], and he, poor man, was in his +last agonies when I was playing cards on Wednesday night. When +shall we learn wisdom? Not that I see folly in the fact of playing +cards, but it is too often accompanied by a dissipated spirit.</p></div> + +<p>He did not escape the usual sensations of the desultory when fate forces +them to wear the collar. 'In fact, at times I find it very irksome, and +my having the inclination to view it in that light is to me the surest +demonstration that my mind was in great want of some discipline, and +some regular exertion, for hitherto I have read by fits and starts and +just as it pleased me. I hope that this vacation [summer of 1830] will +confer on me one benefit more important than any having reference merely +to my class—I mean the habit of steady application and strict economy +of time.'</p> + +<p class="center">CORRESPONDENCE WITH HALLAM</p> + +<p>Among the recorded fragmentary items of 1830, by the way, he read Mill's +celebrated essay on Coleridge, which, when it was republished a +generation later along with the companion essay on Bentham, made so +strong an impression on the Oxford of my day. He kept up a +correspondence with Hallam, now at Cambridge, and an extract from one of +Hallam's letters may show something of the writer, as of the friend for +whose sympathising mind it was intended:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Academical honours would be less than nothing to me were it not for +my father's wishes, and even these are moderate on the subject. If +it please God that I make the name I bear honoured in a second +generation, it will be by inward power which is its own reward; if +it please Him not, I hope to go down to the grave unrepining, for I +have lived and loved and been loved; and what will be the momentary +pangs of an atomic existence when the scheme of that providential +love which pervades, sustains, quickens this boundless universe +shall at the last day be unfolded <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>and adored? The great truth +which, when we are rightly impressed with it, will liberate mankind +is that no man has a right to isolate himself, because every man is +a particle of a marvellous whole; that when he suffers, since it is +for the good of that whole, he, the particle, has no right to +complain; and in the long run, that which is the good of all will +abundantly manifest itself to be the good of each. Other belief +consists not with theism. This is its centre. Let me quote to their +purpose the words of my favourite poet; it will do us good to hear +his voice, though but for a moment:—</p></div> + +<span style="margin-left: 15em;">'One adequate support<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">For the calamities of mortal life<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Exists—one only: an assured belief<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">That the procession of our fate, howe'er<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Of infinite benevolence and power,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Whose everlasting purposes embrace<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">All accidents, converting them to good.'<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a><br /></span> + +<p>Hallam's father, in that memoir so just and tender which, he prefixes to +his son's literary remains, remarks that all his son's talk about this +old desperate riddle of the origin and significance of evil, like the +talk of Leibnitz about it, resolved itself into an unproved assumption +of the necessity of evil. In truth there is little sign that either +Arthur Hallam or Gladstone had in him the making of the patient and +methodical thinker in the high abstract sphere. They were both of them +cast in another mould. But the efficacy of human relationships springs +from a thousand subtler and more mysterious sources than either patience +or method in our thinking. Such marked efficacy was there in the +friendship of these two, both of them living under pure skies, but one +of the pair endowed besides with 'the thews that throw the world.'</p> + +<p>Whether in Gladstone's diary or in his letters, in the midst of +Herodotus and Butler and Aristotle and the rest of the time-worn sages, +we are curiously conscious of the presence of a spirit of action, +affairs, excitement. It is not the born scholar eager in search of +knowledge for its own sake; there is little of Milton's 'quiet air of +delightful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> studies;' and none of Pascal's 'labouring for truth with +many a heavy sigh.' The end of it all is, as Aristotle said it should +be, not knowing but doing:—honourable desire of success, satisfaction +of the hopes of friends, a general literary appetite, conscious +preparation for private and public duty in the world, a steady +progression out of the shallows into the depths, a gaze beyond garden +and cloister, <i>in agmen, in pulverem, in clamorem</i>, to the dust and +burning sun and shouting of the days of conflict.</p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>In September 1829, as we have seen, Huskisson had disappeared. Thomas +Gladstone was in the train drawn by the <i>Dart</i> that ran over the +statesman and killed him.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Poor Huskisson, he writes to William Gladstone, the great promoter +of the railroad, has fallen a victim to its opening!... As soon as +I heard that Huskisson had been run over, I ran and found him on +the ground close to the duke's [Wellington] car, his legs +apparently both broken (though only one was), the ground covered +with blood, his eyes open, but death written in his face. When they +raised him a little he said, 'Leave me, let me die.' 'God forgive +me, I am a dead man.' 'I can never stand this.'... On Tuesday he +made a speech in the Exchange reading room, when he said he hoped +long to represent them. He said, too, that day, that we were sure +of a fine day, for the duke would have his old luck. Talked +jokingly, too, of insuring his life for the ride.</p></div> + +<p>And he notes, as others did, the extraordinary circumstance that of half +a million of people on the line of road the victim should be the duke's +great opponent, thus carried off suddenly before his eyes.</p> + +<p>There was some question of Mr. John Gladstone taking Huskisson's place +as one of the members for Liverpool, but he did not covet it. He foresaw +too many local jealousies, his deafness would be sadly against him, he +was nearly sixty-five, and he felt himself too old to face the turmoil. +He looked upon the Wellington government as the only government +possible, though as a friend of Canning he freely recognised its +defects, the self-will of the duke, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> the parcel of mediocrities and +drones with whom, excepting Peel, he had filled his cabinet. His view of +the state of parties in the autumn of 1830 is clear and succinct enough +to deserve reproduction. 'Huskisson's death,' he writes to his son at +Christ Church (October 29, 1830), 'was a great gain to the duke, for he +was the most formidable thorn to prick him in the parliament. Of those +who acted with Huskisson, none have knowledge or experience sufficient +to enable them to do so. As for the whigs, they can all talk and make +speeches, but they are not men of business. The ultra-tories are too +contemptible and wanting in talent to be thought of. The radicals cannot +be trusted, for they would soon pull down the venerable fabric of our +constitution. The liberals or independents must at least generally side +with the duke; they are likely to meet each other half way.'</p> + +<p class="center">THE REFORM BILL</p> + +<p>In less than a week after this acute survey the duke made his stalwart +declaration in the House of Lords against all parliamentary reform. 'I +have not said too much, have I?' he asked of Lord Aberdeen on sitting +down. 'You'll hear of it,' was Aberdeen's reply. 'You've announced the +fall of your government, that's all,' said another. In a fortnight +(November 18) the duke was out, Lord Grey was in, and the country was +gradually plunged into a determined struggle for the amendment of its +constitution.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone, as a resolute Canningite, was as fiercely hostile to the +second and mightier innovation as he had been eager for the relief of +the catholics, and it was in connection with the Reform bill that he +first made a public mark. The reader will recall the stages of that +event; how the bill was read a second time in the Commons by a majority +of one on March 22nd, 1831; how, after a defeat by a majority of eight +on a motion of going into committee, Lord Grey dissolved; how the +country, shaken to its depths, gave the reformers such undreamed of +strength, that on July 8th the second reading of the bill was carried by +a hundred and thirty-six; how on October 8th the Lords rejected it by +forty-one, and what violent commotions that deed provoked; how a third +bill was brought in (December<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> 12th, 1831) and passed through the +Commons (March 23rd, 1832); how the Lords were still refractory; what a +lacerating ministerial crisis ensued; and how at last, in June, the +bill, which was to work the miracle of a millennium, actually became the +law of the land. Not even the pressure of preparation for the coming +ordeal of the examination schools could restrain the activity and zeal +of our Oxonian. Canning had denounced parliamentary reform at Liverpool +in 1820; and afterwards had declared in the House of Commons that if +anybody asked him what he meant to do on the subject, he would oppose +reform to the end of his life, under whatever shape it might appear. +Canning's disciple at Christ Church was as vehement as the master.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> +To a friend he wrote in 1865:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I think that Oxford teaching had in our day an anti-popular +tendency. I must add that it was not owing to the books, but rather +to the way in which they were handled: and further, that it tended +still more strongly in my opinion to make the love of truth +paramount over all other motives in the mind, and thus that it +supplied an antidote for whatever it had of bane. The Reform bill +frightened me in 1831, and drove me off my natural and previous +bias. Burke and Canning misled many on that subject, and they +misled me.</p></div> + +<p>While staying at Leamington, whither his family constantly went in order +to be under the medical care of the famous Jephson, Mr. Gladstone went +to a reform meeting at Warwick, of which he wrote a contemptuous account +in a letter to the <i>Standard</i> (April 7). The gentry present were few, +the nobility none, the clergy one only, while 'the mob beneath the grand +stand was Athenian in its levity, in its recklessness, in its gaping +expectancy, in its self-love and self-conceit—in everything but its +acuteness.' 'If, sir, the nobility, the gentry, the clergy are to be +alarmed, overawed, or smothered by the expression of popular opinion +such as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> this, and if no great statesman be raised up in our hour of +need to undeceive this unhappy multitude, now eagerly rushing or +heedlessly sauntering along the pathway of revolution, as an ox goeth to +the slaughter or a fool to the correction of the stocks, what is it but +a symptom as infallible as it is appalling, that the day of our +greatness and stability is no more, and that the chill and damp of death +are already creeping over England's glory.' These dolorous spectres +haunted him incessantly, as they haunted so many who had not the +sovereign excuse of youth, and his rhetoric was perfectly sincere. He +felt bound to say that, as far as he could form an opinion, the ministry +most richly deserved impeachment. Its great innovations and its small +alike moved his indignation. When Brougham committed the enormity of +hearing causes on Good Friday, Gladstone repeats with deep complacency a +saying of Wetherell, that Brougham was the first judge who had done such +a thing since Pontius Pilate.</p> + +<p class="center">OXFORD ELECTIONEERING</p> + +<p>The undergraduates took their part in the humours of the great election, +and Oxford turned out her chivalry gallantly to bring in the anti-reform +candidate for the county to the nomination. 'I mounted the mare to join +the anti-reform procession,' writes the impassioned student to his +father, 'and we looked as well as we could do, considering that we were +all covered with mud from head to foot. There was mob enough on both +sides, but I must do them justice to say they were for the most part +exceedingly good-humoured, and after we had dismounted, we went among +them and elbowed one another and bawled and bellowed with the most +perfect good temper. At the nomination in the town hall there was so +much row raised that not one of the candidates could be heard.' The +effect of these exercitations was a hoarseness and cold, which did not, +however, prevent the sufferer from taking his part in a mighty bonfire +in Peckwater. On another day:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I went with Denison and another man named Jeffreys between eleven +and twelve. We began to talk to some men among Weyland's friends; +they crowded round, and began to holloa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> at us, and were making a +sort of ring round us preparatory to a desperate hustle, when lo! +up rushed a body of Norreys' men from St. Thomas's, broke their +ranks, raised a shout, and rescued us in great style. I shall ever +be grateful to the men of St. Thomas's. When we were talking, +Jeffreys said something which made one man holloa, 'Oh, his +father's a parson.' This happened to be true, and flabbergasted me, +but he happily turned it by reminding them, that they were going to +vote for Mr. Harcourt, son of the greatest parson in England but +one (Archbishop of York). Afterwards they left me, and I pursued my +work alone, conversed with a great number, shook hands with a fair +proportion, made some laugh, and once very nearly got hustled when +alone, but happily escaped. You would be beyond measure astonished +how unanimous and how <i>strong</i> is the feeling among the freeholders +(who may be taken as a fair specimen of the generality of all +counties) <i>against</i> the catholic question. Reformers and +anti-reformers were alike sensitive on that point and perfectly +agreed. One man said to me, 'What, vote for Lord Norreys? Why, he +voted against the country <i>both</i> times, <i>for</i> the Catholic bill and +then against the Reform.' What would this atrocious ministry have +said had the appeal to the voice of the people, which they now +quote as their authority, been made in 1829? I held forth to a +working man, possibly a forty-shilling freeholder, [he adds in a +fragment of later years,] on the established text, reform was +revolution. To corroborate my doctrine I said, 'Why, look at the +revolutions in foreign countries,' meaning of course France and +Belgium. The man looked hard at me and said these very words, 'Damn +all foreign countries, what has old England to do with foreign +countries?' This is not the only time that I have received an +important lesson from a humble source.</p></div> + +<p class="center">SPEECH AT THE UNION</p> + +<p>A more important scene which his own future eminence made in a sense +historic, was a debate at the Union upon Reform in the same month, where +his contribution (May 17th) struck all his hearers with amazement, so +brilliant, so powerful, so incomparably splendid did it seem to their +young eyes. His description of it to his brother (May 20th, 1831) is +modest enough:—</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>I should really have been glad if your health had been such as to +have permitted your visiting Oxford last week, so that you might +have heard our debate, for certainly there had never been anything +like it known here before and will scarcely be again. The +discussion on the question that the ministers were incompetent to +carry on the government of the country was of a miscellaneous +character, and I moved what they called a 'rider' to the effect +that the Reform bill threatened to change the form of the British +government, and ultimately to break up the whole frame of society. +The debate altogether lasted three nights, and it closed then, +partly because the <i>votes</i> had got tired of dancing attendance, +partly because the speakers of the revolutionary side were +exhausted. There were eight or nine more on ours ready, and indeed +anxious. As it was, there were I think fifteen speeches on our side +and thirteen on theirs, or something of that kind. Every man spoke +above his average, and many very far beyond it. They were generally +short enough. Moncreiff, a long-winded Scotsman, spouted nearly an +hour, and I was guilty of three-quarters. I remember at Eton (where +we used, when I first went into the society, to speak from three to +ten minutes) I thought it must be one of the finest things in the +world to speak for three-quarters of an hour, and there was a +legend circulated about an old member of the society's having done +so, which used to make us all gape and stare. However, I fear it +does not necessarily imply much more than length. Doyle spoke +remarkably well, and made a violent attack on Mr. Canning's +friends, which Gaskell did his best to answer, but very +ineffectually from the nature of the case. We got a conversion +speech from a Christ Church gentleman-commoner, named Alston, which +produced an excellent effect, and the division was favourable +beyond anything we had hoped—ninety-four to thirty-eight. We +should have had larger numbers still had we divided on the first +night. Great diligence was used by both parties in bringing men +down, but the tactics on the whole were better on our side, and we +had fewer truants in proportion to our numbers. England expects +every man to do his duty; and ours, humble as it is, has been done +in reference to this question. On Friday I wrote a letter to the +<i>Standard</i> giving an account of the division, which you will see in +Saturday's paper, if you think it worth while to refer to it. The +way in which the present<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> generation of undergraduates is divided +on the question is quite remarkable.</p></div> + +<p>The occasion was to prove a memorable one in his career, and a few more +lines about it from his diary will not be considered superfluous:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>May 16th</i>.—Sleepy. Mathematics, few and shuffling, and lecture. +Read Canning's reform speeches at Liverpool and made extracts. Rode +out. Debate, which was adjourned. I am to try my hand to-morrow. My +thoughts were but ill-arranged, but I fear they will be no better +then. Wine with Anstice. Singing. Tea with Lincoln.</p> + +<p><i>May 17th</i>.—Ethics. Little mathematics. A good deal exhausted in +forenoon from heat last night. Dined with White and had wine with +him, also with young Acland. Cogitations on reform, etc. Difficult +to <i>select</i> matter for a speech, not to gather it. <i>Spoke at the +adjourned debate for three-quarters of an hour</i>; immediately after +Gaskell, who was preceded by Lincoln. Row afterwards and +adjournment. Tea with Wordsworth.</p></div> + +<p>When Gladstone sat down, one of his contemporaries has written, 'we all +of us felt that an epoch in our lives had occurred. His father was so +well pleased with the glories of the speech and with its effect, that he +wished to have it published. Besides his speech, besides the composition +of sturdy placards against the monstrous bill, and besides the +preparation of an elaborate petition<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> and the gathering of 770 +signatures to it, the ardent anti-reformer, though the distance from the +days of doom in the examination schools was rapidly shrinking, actually +sat down to write a long pamphlet (July 1831) and sent it to Hatchard, +the publisher. Hatchard doubted the success of an anonymous pamphlet, +and replied in the too familiar formula that has frozen so many thousand +glowing hearts, that he would publish it if the author would take the +money risk. The most interesting thing about it is the criticism of the +writer's shrewd and wise father upon his son's performance (too long for +reproduction here). He went with his son in the main, he says,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> 'but I +cannot go all your lengths,' and the language of his judgment sheds a +curious light upon the vehement temperament of Mr. Gladstone at this +time as it struck an affectionate yet firm and sober monitor.</p> + +<p class="center">HEARS HIS FIRST DEBATE</p> + +<p>In the autumn of 1831 Mr. Gladstone took some trouble to be present on +one of the cardinal occasions in this fluctuating history:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>October 3rd to 8th</i>.—Journey to London. From Henley in +Blackstone's chaise. Present at five nights' debate of infinite +interest in the House of Lords. The first, I went forwards and +underwent a somewhat high pressure. At the four others sat on a +round transverse rail, very fortunate in being so well placed. Had +a full view of the peeresses. There nine or ten hours every +evening. Read Peel's speech and sundry papers relating to King's +College, which I went to see; also London Bridge. Read introduction +to Butler. Wrote to Saunders. Much occupied in order-hunting during +the morning. Lord Brougham's as a speech most wonderful, delivered +with a power and effect which cannot be appreciated by any hearsay +mode of information, and with fertile exuberance in sarcasm. In +point of argument it had, I think, little that was new. Lord Grey's +most beautiful, Lord Goderich's and Lord Lansdowne's extremely +good, and in these was comprehended nearly all the oratorical merit +of the debate. The reasoning or the attempt to reason, +independently of the success in such attempt, certainly seemed to +me to be with the opposition. Their best speeches, I thought, were +those of Lords Harrowby, Carnarvon, Mansfield, Wynford; next Lords +Lyndhurst, Wharncliffe, and the Duke of Wellington. Lord Grey's +reply I did not hear, having been compelled by exhaustion to leave +the House. Remained with Ryder and Pickering in the coffee-room or +walking about until the division, and joined Wellesley and +[illegible] as we walked home. Went to bed for an hour, +breakfasted, and came off by the Alert. Arrived safely, thank God, +in Oxford. Wrote to my brother and to Gaskell. Tea with Phillimore +and spent the remainder of the evening with Canning. The +consequences of the vote may be awful. God avert this. But it was +an honourable and manly decision, and so may God avert them. +This was the memorable occasion when the Lords threw out the Reform bill +by 199 to 158, the division not taking place until six o'clock in the +morning. The consequences, as the country instantly made manifest, were +'awful' enough to secure the reversal of the decision. It seems, so far +as I can make out, to have been the first debate that one of the most +consummate debaters that ever lived had the fortune of listening to.</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p class="center">READING FOR THE SCHOOLS</p> + +<p>Meanwhile intense interest in parliament and the newspapers had not +impaired his studies. Disgusted as he was at the political outlook, in +the beginning of July he had fallen fairly to work more or less close +for ten or twelve hours a day. It 'proved as of old a cure for +ill-humour, though in itself not of the most delectable kind. It is odd +enough, though true, that reading hard close-grained stuff produces a +much more decided and better effect in this way, than books written +professedly for the purpose of entertainment.' Then his eyes became +painful, affected the head, and in August almost brought him to a full +stop. After absolute remission of work for a few days, he slowly spread +full sail again, and took good care no more to stint either exercise or +sleep, thinking himself, strange as it now sounds, rather below than +above par for such exertions. He declared that the bodily fatigue, the +mental fatigue, and the anxiety as to the result, made reading for a +class a thing not to be undergone more than once in a lifetime. Time had +mightier fatigues in store for him than even this. The heavy work among +the ideas of men of bygone days did not deaden intellectual projects of +his own. A few days before he went to see the Lords throw out the Reform +bill, he made a curious entry:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>October 3rd, 1831</i>.—Yesterday an idea, a chimera, entered my +head, of gathering during the progress of my life, notes and +materials for a work embracing three divisions, Morals, Politics, +Education, and I commit this notice to paper now, that many years +hence, if it please God, I may find it either a pleasant or at +least<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> an instructive reminiscence, a pleasant and instructing one, +I trust, if I may ever be permitted to execute this design; +instructive if it shall point while in embryo, and serve to teach +me the folly of presumptuous schemes conceived during the buoyancy +of youth, and only relinquished on a discovery of incompetency in +later years. Meanwhile I am only contemplating the gradual +accumulation of materials.</p></div> + +<p>The reading went on at a steady pace, not without social +intermissions:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Oct. 11th and 12th</i>.—Rode. Papers. Virgil. Thucydides, both +days. Also some optics. Wrote a long letter home. Read a chapter of +Butler each day. Hume. Breakfasted also with Canning to meet Lady +C[anning]. She received us, I thought, with great kindness, and +spoke a great deal about Lord Grey's conduct with reference to her +husband's memory, with great animation and excitement; her hand in +a strong tremor. It was impossible not to enter into her feelings.</p></div> + +<p>Then comes the struggle for the palm:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Monday, November 7th to Saturday 12th</i>.—In the schools or +preparing. Read most of Niebuhr. Finished going over the +<i>Agamemnon</i>. Got up Aristophanic and other hard words. Went over my +books of extracts, etc. Read some of Whately's rhetoric. Got up a +little Polybius, and the history out of Livy, decade one. In the +schools Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; each day about six and a +half hours at work or under. First Stratford's speech into Latin +with logical and rhetorical questions—the latter somewhat +abstract. Dined at Gaskell's and met Pearson, a clever and +agreeable man. On Thursday a piece of Johnson's preface in morning, +in evening critical questions which I did very badly, but I +afterwards heard, better than <i>the rest</i>, which I could not and +cannot understand. On Friday we had in the morning historical +questions. Wrote a vast quantity of matter, ill enough digested. In +the evening, Greek to translate and illustrate. Heard cheering +accounts indirectly of myself, for which I ought to be very +thankful.... Dined with Pearson at the Mitre. Very kind in him to +ask me. Made Saturday in great measure an idle day. Had a good ride +with Gaskell. Spent part of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> evening with him. Read about six +hours. <i>Sunday, November 13th</i>.—Chapel thrice. Breakfast and +much conversation with Cameron. Read Bible. Some divinity of a +character approaching to cram. Looked over my shorter abstract of +Butler. Tea with Harrison. Walk with Gaskell. Wine with Hamilton, +more of a party than I quite liked or expected. Altogether my mind +was in an unsatisfactory state, though I heard a most admirable +sermon from Tyler on Bethesda, which could not have been more +opportune if written on purpose for those who are going into the +schools. But I am cold, timid, and worldly, and not in a healthy +state of mind for the great trial of to-morrow, to which I know I +am utterly and miserably unequal, but which I also know will be +sealed for good....</p></div> + +<p>Here is his picture of his <i>viva voce</i> examination:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>November 14th</i>.—Spent the morning chiefly in looking over my +Polybius; short abstract of ethics, and definitions. Also some hard +words. Went into the schools at ten, and from this time was little +troubled with fear. Examined by Stocker in divinity. I did not +answer as I could have wished. Hampden [the famous heresiarch] in +science, a beautiful examination, and with every circumstance in my +favour. He said to me, 'Thank you, you have construed extremely +well, and appear to be thoroughly acquainted with your books,' or +something to that effect. Then followed a very clever examination +in history from Garbett, and an agreeable and short one in my poets +from Cremer, who spoke very kindly to me at the close. I was only +put on in eight books besides the Testament, namely Rhetoric, +Ethics, <i>Phædo</i>, Herodotus, Thucydides, <i>Odyssey</i>, Aristophanes +(<i>Vespae</i>), and Persius. Everything was in my favour; the examiners +kind beyond everything; a good many persons there, and all +friendly. At the end of the science, of course, my spirits were +much raised, and I could not help at that moment [giving thanks] to +Him without whom not even such moderate performances would have +been in my power. Afterwards rode to Cuddesdon with the Denisons, +and wrote home with exquisite pleasure.</p></div> + +<p class="center">HIS DOUBLE FIRST CLASS</p> + +<p>I have read a story by some contemporary how all attempts to puzzle him +by questions on the minutest details<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> of Herodotus only brought out his +knowledge more fully; how the excitement reached its climax when the +examiner, after testing his mastery of some point of theology, said: 'We +will now leave that part of the subject,' and the candidate, carried +away by his interest in the subject, answered: 'No, sir; if you please, +we will not leave it yet,' and began to pour forth a fresh stream. Ten +days later, after a morning much disturbed and excited he rode in the +afternoon, and by half-past four the list was out, with Gladstone and +Denison both of them in the first class; Phillimore and Maurice in the +second; Herbert in the fourth.</p> + +<p>Then mathematics were to come. The interval between the two schools he +passed at Cuddesdon, working some ten hours a day at his hardest, riding +every day with Denison, and all of them in high spirits. But optics, +algebra, geometry, calculus, trigonometry, and the rest, filled him with +misgivings for the future. 'Every day I read, I am more and more +thoroughly convinced of my incapacity for the subject.' 'My work +continued and my reluctance to exertion increased with it.' For the +Sunday before the examination, this is the entry, and a characteristic +and remarkable one it is:—'Teaching in the school morning and evening. +Saunders preached well on “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.” Read Bible +and four of Horsley's sermons. Paid visits to old people.'</p> + +<p>On December 10th the mathematical ordeal began, and lasted four days. +The doctor gave him draughts to quiet his excitement. Better than +draughts, he read Wordsworth every day. On Sunday (December 11th) he +went, as usual, twice to chapel, and heard Newman preach 'a most able +discourse of a very philosophical character, more apt for reading than +for hearing—at least I, in the jaded state of my mind, was unable to do +it any justice.' On December 14th, the list was out, and his name was +again in the first class, again along with Denison. As everybody knows, +Peel had won a double-first twenty-three years before, and in +mathematics Peel had the first class to himself. Mr. Gladstone in each +of the two schools was one of five. Anstice, whose counsels and example +he counted for so much at one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> epoch in his collegiate life, in 1830 +carried off the same double crown, and was, like Peel, alone in the +mathematical first class.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It was an hour of thrilling happiness, between the past and the +future, for the future was, I hope, not excluded; and feeling was +well kept in check by the bustle of preparation for speedy +departure. Saw the Dean, Biscoe, Saunders (whom I thanked for his +extreme kindness), and such of my friends as were in Oxford; all +most warm. The mutual hand-shaking between Denison, Jeffreys, and +myself, was very hearty. Wine with Bruce.... Packed up my +things.... Wrote at more or less length to Mrs. G. [his mother], +Gaskell, Phillimore, Mr. Denison, my old tutor Knapp.... Left +Oxford on the Champion.</p> + +<p><i>December 15th</i>.—After finding the first practicable coach to +Cambridge was just able to manage breakfast in Bedford Square. Left +Holborn at ten, in Cambridge before five.</p></div> + +<p>Here he was received by Wordsworth, the master of Trinity, and father of +his Oxford tutor. He had a visit full of the peculiar excitement and +felicity that those who are capable of it know nowhere else than at +Oxford and Cambridge. He heard Hallam recite his declamation; was +introduced to the mighty Whewell, to Spedding, the great Baconian, to +Smyth, the professor of history, to Blakesley; renewed his acquaintance +with the elder Hallam; listened to glorious anthems at Trinity and +King's; tried to hear a sermon from Simeon, the head of the English +evangelicals; met Stanhope, an old Eton man, and the two sons of Lord +Grey; and 'copied a letter of Mr. Pitt's.' From Cambridge he made his +way home, having thus triumphantly achieved the first stage of his long +life journey. Amid the manifold mutations of his career, to Oxford his +affection was passionate as it was constant. 'There is not a man that +has passed through that great and famous university that can say with +more truth than I can say, I love her from the bottom of my heart.'<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">VI</p> + +<p class="center">THOUGHTS ON FUTURE PROFESSION</p> + +<p>Another episode must have a place before I close this chapter. At the +end of 1828, the youthful Gladstone had composed a long letter, of which +the manuscript survives, to a Liverpool newspaper, earnestly contesting +its appalling proposition that 'man has no more control over his belief, +than he has over his stature or his colour,' and beseeching the editor +to try Leslie's <i>Short Method with the Deists</i>, if he be unfortunate +enough to doubt the authority of the Bible. At Oxford his fervour +carried him beyond the fluent tract to a personal decision. On August +4th, 1830, the entry is this:—'Began Thucydides. Also working up +Herodotus. ἐξηρτυμένος. Construing Thucydides at night. Uncomfortable +again and much distracted with doubts as to my future line of conduct. +God direct me. I am utterly blind. Wrote a very long letter to my dear +father on the subject of my future profession, wishing if possible to +bring the question to an immediate and final settlement.' The letter is +exorbitant in length, it is vague, it is obscure; but the appeal +contained in it is as earnest as any appeal from son to parent on such a +subject ever was, and it is of special interest as the first definite +indication alike of the extraordinary intensity of his religious +disposition, and of that double-mindedness, that division of sensibility +between the demands of spiritual and of secular life, which remained +throughout one of the marking traits of his career. He declares his +conviction that his duty, alike to man as a social being, and as a +rational and reasonable being to God, summons him with a voice too +imperative to be resisted, to forsake the ordinary callings of the world +and to take upon himself the clerical office. The special need of +devotion to that office, he argues, must be plain to any one who 'casts +his eye over the moral wilderness of the world, who contemplates the +pursuits, desires, designs, and principles of the beings that move so +busily in it to and fro, without an object beyond the finding food for +it, mental or bodily, for the present moment.' This letter the reader +will find in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> full elsewhere.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> The missionary impulse, the yearning +for some apostolic destination, the glow of self-devotion to a supreme +external will, is a well-known element in the youth of ardent natures of +either sex. In a thousand forms, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil, +such a mood has played its part in history. In this case, as in many +another, the impulse in its first shape did not endure, but in essence +it never faded.</p> + +<p>His father replied as a wise man was sure to do, almost with sympathy, +with entire patience, and with thorough common sense. The son dutifully +accepts the admonition that it is too early to decide so grave an issue, +and that the immediate matter is the approaching performance in the +examination schools. 'I highly approve,' his father had written (Nov. +8th, 1830), 'your proposal to leave undetermined the profession you are +to follow, until you return from the continent and complete your +education in all respects. You will then have seen more of the world and +have greater confidence in the choice you may make; for it will then +rest wholly with yourself, having our advice whenever you may wish for +it.' The critical issue was now finally settled. At almost equal length, +and in parts of this second letter no less vague and obscure than the +first, but with more concentrated power, Mr. Gladstone tells his father +(Jan. 17th, 1832) how the excitement has subsided, but still he sees at +hand a great crisis in the history of mankind. New principles, he says, +prevail in morals, politics, education. Enlightened self-interest is +made the substitute for the old bonds of unreasoned attachment, and +under the plausible maxim that knowledge is power, one kind of ignorance +is made to take the place of another kind. Christianity teaches that the +head is to be exalted through the heart, but Benthamism maintains that +the heart is to be amended through the head. The conflict proceeding in +parliament foreshadows a contest for the existence of the church +establishment, to be assailed through its property. The whole foundation +of society may go. Under circumstances so formidable, he dares not look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> +for the comparative calm and ease of a professional life. He must hold +himself free of attachment to any single post and function of a +technical nature. And so—to make the long story short—'My own desires +for future life are exactly coincident with yours, in so far as I am +acquainted with them; believing them to be a <i>profession</i> of the law, +with a view substantially to studying the constitutional branch of it, +and a subsequent experiment, as time and circumstances might offer, on +what is termed public life.' 'It tortures me,' he had written to his +brother John (August 29th, 1830), 'to think of an inclination opposed to +that of my beloved father,' and this was evidently one of the +preponderant motives in his final decision.</p> + +<p>In the same letter, while the fire of apostolic devotion was still +fervid within him, he had penned a couple of sentences that contain +words of deeper meaning than he could surely know:—'I am willing to +persuade myself that in spite of other longings which I often feel, my +heart is prepared to yield other hopes and other desires for this—of +being permitted to be the humblest of those who may be commissioned to +set before the eyes of man, still great even, in his ruins, the +magnificence and the glory of Christian truth. Especially as I feel that +my temperament is so excitable, that I should fear giving up my mind to +other subjects which have ever proved sufficiently alluring to me, and +which I fear would make my life a fever of unsatisfied longings and +expectations.' So men unconsciously often hint an oracle of their lives. +Perhaps these forebodings of a high-wrought hour may in other hues have +at many moments come back to Mr. Gladstone's mind, even in the full +sunshine of a triumphant career of duty, virtue, power, and renown.</p> + +<p class="center">MEDITATIONS</p> + +<p>The entry in his diary, suggested by the return of his birthday (Dec. +29, 1831), closes with the words, 'This has been my debating society +year, now, I fancy, done with. Politics are fascinating to me; perhaps +too fascinating.' Higher thoughts than this press in upon him:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Industry of a kind and for a time there has been, but the industry +of necessity, not of principle. I would fain believe that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> my +sentiments in religion have been somewhat enlarged and +untrammelled, but if this be true, my responsibility is indeed +augmented, but wherein have my deeds of duty been proportionally +modified?... One conclusion theoretically has been much on my +mind—it is the increased importance and necessity and benefit of +prayer—of the life of obedience and self-sacrifice. May God use me +as a vessel for his own purposes, of whatever character and results +in relation to myself.... May the God who loves us all, still +vouchsafe me a testimony of His abiding presence in the protracted, +though well nigh dormant life of a desire which at times has risen +high in my soul, a fervent and a buoyant hope that I might work an +energetic work in this world, and by that work (whereof the worker +is only God) I might grow into the image of the Redeemer.... It +matters not whether the sphere of duty be large or small, but may +it be duly filled. May those faint and languishing embers be +kindled by the truth of the everlasting spirit into a living and a +life-giving flame.</p></div> + +<p>Every reader will remember how, just two hundred years before, the +sublimest of English poets had on his twenty-third birthday closed the +same self-reproach for sluggishness of inward life, with the same +aspiration:—</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">It shall be still in strictest measure even<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">To that same lot however mean or high,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Towards which time leads me and the will of heaven.<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">All is, if I have grace to use it so,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">As ever in my great taskmaster's eye.<br /></span> + +<p>Two generations after he had quitted the university, Mr. Gladstone +summed up her influence upon him:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Oxford had rather tended to hide from me the great fact that +liberty is a great and precious gift of God, and that human +excellence cannot grow up in a nation without it. And yet I do not +hesitate to say that Oxford had even at this time laid the +foundations of my liberalism. School pursuits had revealed little; +but in the region of philosophy she had initiated if not inured me +to the pursuit of truth as an end of study. The splendid integrity +of Aristotle, and still more of Butler, conferred upon me an +inestimable service. Elsewhere I have not scrupled to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>speak with +severity of myself, but I declare that while in the arms of Oxford, +I was possessed through and through with a single-minded and +passionate love of truth, with a virgin love of truth, so that, +although I might be swathed in clouds of prejudice there was +something of an eye within, that might gradually pierce them.</p></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Charles Wordsworth's <i>Annals</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> After Peel had begun his career, Jackson gave him a piece of advice +that would have pleased Mr. Gladstone:—'Let no day pass without your +having Homer in your hand. Elevate your own mind by continual meditation +on the vastness of his comprehension and the unerring accuracy of all +his conceptions. If you will but read him four or five times over every +year, in a half a dozen years you will know him by heart, and he well +deserves it.'—Parker's <i>Life of Sir R. Peel</i>, i. p.28.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> On the four periods of Aristotelian study at Oxford in the first +half of the century see Pattison's Essays, i. P. 463.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Ibid</i>., i. p. 465.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Reprinted from the <i>Edingburgh Review</i> in <i>Discussions on +Philosophy and Literature</i>, pp. 401-559. (1852.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Tupper (<i>My Life</i>, etc., p. 53, 1886) mentions that he beat Mr. +Gladstone for the Burton theological essay, 'The Reconciliation of +Matthew and John'; but Gladstone was so good a second that Dr. Burton +begged that one-fifth of the prize money, might be given to him as +solatium.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Anstice was afterwards professor of Classics at King's College, and +was cut off prematurely at the age of thirty.<a href="#Page_134">See below, p. 134.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>Gleanings</i>, vii. p. 141.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii, p. 1.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> Purcell (<i>Manning</i>, i. p. 46) makes Mr. Gladstone say, 'I was +intimate with Newman, but then we had many friends in common.' This must +be erroneously reported.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <i>Gleanings</i>, vii. p. 211.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Sir Thomas Acland gives the names of the first twelve members as +follows: Gladstone, Gaskell, Doyle, Moncreiff, Seymer, Rogers, two +Aclands, Leader, Anstice, Harrison, Cole. Mr. Gladstone in a letter to +Acland (1889) mentions these twelve names, and adds 'from the old book +of record,' Bruce, J., Bruce, F., Egerton, Liddell, Lincoln, Lushington, +Maurice, Oxenham, Vaughan, Thornton, C. Marriott.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> At Palmerston Club, Oxford, Jan. 30, 1878.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> His father was a Liverpool merchant, and had been mayor.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> By the kindness of the present dean of Christ Church I am able to +give the reader a couple of specimens of Mr. Gladstone's Latin verse. +The two pieces were written for 'Lent verses':— +</p> + +(1829) Gladstone.<span style="margin-left: 11em;"><i>An aliquid sit immutabile?</i><br /></span> +<span style="margin: 25em;"><i>Affirmatur</i>.<br /></span> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Vivimus incertum? Fortunæ lusus habemur?<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Singula præteriens det rapiatve dies?<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">En nemus exaninum, qua se modo germina, verno<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Tempore, purpureis explicuere comis.<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Respice pacatum Neptuni numine pontum:<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Territa mox tumido verberat astra salo.<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Sed brevior brevibus, quas unda supervenit, undis<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Sed gelidâ, quam mox dissipat aura, nive:<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Sed foliis sylvarum, et amici veris odore,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Quisquis honos placeat, quisquis alatur amor.<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Jamne joci lususque sonant? viget alma Juventus?<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Funereæ forsan eras cecinere tubæ.<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Nec pietas, nec casta Fides, nec libera Virtus,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Nigrantes vetuit mortis inire domos.<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Certa tamen lex ipsa manet, labentibus annis,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Quæ jubet assiduas quæque subire vices.<br /></span> +<br /> +(1830) Gladstone.<span style="margin-left: 8em;"><i>An malum a seipso possit sanari?</i><br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 25em;"><i>Affirmatur</i>.<br /></span> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Cernis ut argutas effuderit Anna querelas?<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Lumen ut insolitâ triste tumescat aquâ?<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Quicquid in ardenti flammarum corde rotatur,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Et fronte et rubris pingitur omne genis.<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Dum ruit hùc illùc, speculum simulacra ruentis,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Ora Mimalloneo plena furore, refert.<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Pectora vesano cùm turgida conspicit æstu,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Quæ fuit (haud qualis debeat esse) videt.<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Ac veluti ventis intra sua claustra coactis,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Quum piget Æolium fræna dedisse ducem;<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Concita non aliter subsidit pectoris unda,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Et propriâ rursum sede potitur Amor,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Jurâsses torvam perculso astare Medusam<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Jurares Paphiæ lumen adesse deæ.<br /></span></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>Excursion</i>, Book iv. p. 1.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> It is curious, we may note in passing, that Thomas Gladstone, his +eldest brother, was then member for Queenborough, and he, after voting +in the majority of one, a few weeks later changed his mind and supported +the amendment that destroyed the first bill. At the election he lost his +seat.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> It is given in Robbins, <i>Early Life</i>, pp. 104-5.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Oxford, Feb. 5, 1890.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a><a href="#APPENDIX">See Appendix.</a></p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center"><a name="image-2" id="image-2"><!-- Image 2 --></a> +<img src="images/illus-096.jpg" height="480" width="311" alt="William Ewart Gladstone" /></p> +<p class="center"><a href="#ILLUSTRATIONS">Click to return to List of Illustrations</a></p> +<h4><a name="Book_II" id="Book_II"></a>Book II</h4> + +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> + +<p class="center"><i>1882-1846</i></p> + +<h2><a name="BkIICh_I" id="BkIICh_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> + +<p class="center">ENTERS PARLIAMENT</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1832-1834</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I may speak of the House of Commons as a school of discipline for +those who enter it. In my opinion it is a school of extraordinary +power and efficacy. It is a great and noble school for the creation +of all the qualities of force, suppleness, and versatility of +intellect. And it is also a great moral school. It is a school of +temper. It is also a school of patience. It is a school of honour, +and it is a school of justice.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span> (1878).</p></div><br /> + +<p class="center">FOREIGN TRAVEL</p> + +<p>Leaving home in the latter part of January (1832), with a Wordsworth for +a pocket companion, Mr. Gladstone made his way to Oxford, where he +laboured through his packing, settled accounts, 'heard a very able +sermon indeed from Newman at St. Mary's,' took his bachelor's degree +(Jan. 26), and after a day or two with relatives and friends in London, +left England along with his brother John at the beginning of February. +He did not return until the end of July. He visited Brussels, Paris, +Florence, Naples, Rome, Venice, and Milan. Of this long journey he kept +a full record, and it contains one entry of no small moment in his +mental history. A conception now began to possess him, that according to +one religious school kindled a saving illumination, and according to +another threw something of a shade upon his future path. In either view +it marked a change of spiritual course, a transformation not of religion +as the centre of his being, for that it always was, but of the frame and +mould within which religion was to expand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p> + +<p>In entering St. Peter's at Rome (March 31, 1832) he experienced his +'first conception of unity in the Church,' and first longed for its +visible attainment. Here he felt 'the pain and shame of the schism which +separates us from Rome—whose guilt surely rests not upon the venerable +fathers of the English Reformed Church but upon Rome itself, yet whose +melancholy effects the mind is doomed to feel when you enter this +magnificent temple and behold in its walls the images of Christian +saints and the words of everlasting truth; yet such is the mass of +intervening encumbrances that you scarcely own, and can yet more +scantily realise, any bond of sympathy or union.' This was no fleeting +impression of a traveller. It had been preceded by a disenchantment, for +he had made his way from Turin to Pinerol, and seen one of the Vaudois +valleys. He had framed a lofty conception of the people as ideal +Christians, and he underwent a chill of disappointment on finding them +apparently much like other men. Even the pastor, though a quiet, +inoffensive man, gave no sign of energy or of what would have been +called in England vital religion. With this chill at his heart he came +upon the atmosphere of gorgeous Rome. It was, however, in the words of +Clough's fine line from <i>Easter Day</i>, 'through the great sinful streets +of Naples as he passed,' that a great mutation overtook him.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>One Sunday (May 13) something, I know not what, set me on examining +the occasional offices of the church in the prayer book. They made +a strong impression upon me on that very day, and the impression +has never been effaced. I had previously taken a great deal of +teaching direct from the Bible, as best I could, but now the figure +of the Church arose before me as a teacher too, and I gradually +found in how incomplete and fragmentary a manner I had drawn divine +truth from the sacred volume, as indeed I had also missed in the +thirty-nine articles some things which ought to have taught me +better. Such, for I believe that I have given the fact as it +occurred, in its silence and its solitude, was my first +introduction to the august conception of the Church of Christ. It +presented to me Christianity under an aspect in which I had not yet +known it: its ministry of symbols, its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> channels of grace, its +unending line of teachers joining from the Head: a sublime +construction, based throughout upon historic fact, uplifting the +idea of the community in which we live, and of the access which it +enjoys through the new and living way to the presence of the Most +High. From this time I began to feel my way by decrees into or +towards a true notion of the Church. It became a definite and +organised idea when, at the suggestion of James Hope, I read the +just published and remarkable work of Palmer. But the charm of +freshness lay upon that first disclosure of 1832.</p></div> + +<p>This mighty question:—what is the nature of a church and what the +duties, titles, and symbols of faithful membership, which in divers +forms had shaken the world for so many ages and now first dawned upon +his ardent mind, was the germ of a deep and lasting pre-occupation of +which we shall speedily and without cessation find abundant traces.</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">OFFER OF A SEAT</p> + +<p>A few weeks later, the great rival interest in Mr. Gladstone's life, if +rival we may call it, was forced into startling prominence before him. +At Milan he received a letter from Lord Lincoln, saying that he was +commissioned by his father, the Duke of Newcastle, to inform him that +his influence in the borough of Newark was at Mr. Gladstone's disposal +if he should be ready to enter parliamentary life. This was the fruit of +his famous anti-reform speech at the Oxford Union. No wonder that such +an offer made him giddy. 'This stunning and overpowering proposal,' he +says to his father (July 8), 'naturally left me the whole of the evening +on which I received it, in a flutter of confusion. Since that evening +there has been time to reflect, and to see that it is not of so +intoxicating a character as it seemed at first. First, because the Duke +of Newcastle's offer must have been made at the instance of a single +person (Lincoln), that person young and sanguine, and I may say in such +a matter partial.... This much at least became clear to me by the time I +had recovered my breath: that decidedly more than mere permission from +my dear father would be necessary to authorise my entering on the +consideration of particulars<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> at all.' And then he falls into a vein of +devout reflection, almost as if this sudden destination of his life were +some irrevocable priesthood or vow of monastic profession, and not the +mere stringent secularity of labour in a parliament. It would be thin +and narrow to count all this an overstrain. To a nature like his, of +such eager strength of equipment; conscious of life as a battle and not +a parade; apt for all external action yet with a burning glow of light +and fire in the internal spirit; resolute from the first in small things +and in great against aimless drift and eddy,—to such an one the moment +of fixing alike the goal and the track may well have been grave.</p> + +<p>Then points of doubt arose. 'It is, I daresay, in your +recollection,'—this to his father,—'that at the time when Mr. Canning +came to power, the Duke of Newcastle, in the House of Lords, declared +him the most profligate minister the country had ever had. Now it struck +me to inquire of myself, does the duke know the feelings I happen to +entertain towards Mr. Canning? Does he know, or can he have had in his +mind, my father's connection with Mr. Canning?' The duke had in fact +been one of the busiest and bitterest of Canning's enemies, and had +afterwards in the same spirit striven with might and main to keep +Huskisson out of the Wellington cabinet. Another awkwardness appeared. +The duke had offered a handsome contribution towards expenses. Would not +this tend to abridge the member's independence? What was the footing on +which patron and member were to stand? Mr. Gladstone was informed by his +brother that the duke had neither heretofore asked for pledges, nor now +demanded them.</p> + +<p>After a very brief correspondence with his shrewd and generous father, +the plunge was taken, and on his return to England, after a fortnight +spent 'in an amphibious state between that of a candidate and ἰδιώτης or +private person,' he issued his address to the electors of Newark (August +4, 1832). He did not go actually on to the ground until the end of +September. The intervening weeks he spent with his family at Torquay, +where he varied electioneering correspondence and yachting with plenty +of sufficiently serious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> reading from Blackstone and Plato and the +<i>Excursion</i> down to <i>Corinne</i>. One Sunday morning (September 23), his +father burst into his bedroom, with the news that his presence was +urgently needed at Newark. 'I rose, dressed, and breakfasted speedily, +with infinite disgust. I left Torquay at 8¾ and devoted my Sunday to the +journey. Was I right?... My father drove me to Newton; chaise to Exeter. +There near an hour; went to the cathedral and heard a part of the +prayers. Mail to London. Conversation with a tory countryman who got in +for a few miles, on Sunday travelling, which we agreed in disapproving. +Gave him some tracts. Excellent mail. Dined at Yeovil; read a little of +the <i>Christian Year</i> [published 1827]. At 6½ <span class="smcap">A.M.</span> arrived at Piccadilly, +18½ hours from Exeter. Went to Fetter Lane, washed and breakfasted, and +came off at 8 o'clock by a High Flyer for Newark. The sun hovered red +and cold through the heavy fog of London sky, but in the country the day +was fine. Tea at Stamford; arrived at Newark at midnight.' Such in forty +hours was the first of Mr. Gladstone's countless political pilgrimages.</p> + +<p>His two election addresses are a curious starting-point for so memorable +a journey. Thrown into the form of a modern programme, the points are +these:—union of church and state, the defence in particular of our +Irish establishments; correction of the poor laws; allotment of cottage +grounds; adequate remuneration of labour; a system of Christian +instruction for the West Indian slaves, but no emancipation until that +instruction had fitted them for it; a dignified and impartial foreign +policy. The duke was much startled by the passage about labour receiving +adequate remuneration, 'which unhappily among several classes of our +fellow countrymen is not now the case.' He did not, however, interfere. +The whig newspaper said roundly of the first of Mr. Gladstone's two +addresses, that a more jumbled collection of words had seldom been sent +from the press. The tory paper, on the contrary, congratulated the +constituency on a candidate of considerable commercial experience and +talent. The anti-slavery men fought him stoutly. They put his name into +their black schedule with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> nine-and-twenty other candidates, they +harried him with posers from a pamphlet of his father's, and they met +his doctrine that if slavery were sinful the Bible would not have +commended the regulation of it, by bluntly asking him on the hustings +whether he knew a text in Exodus declaring that 'he that stealeth a man +and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put +to death.' His father's pamphlets undoubtedly exposed a good deal of +surface. We cannot be surprised that any adherent of these standard +sophistries should be placed on the black list of the zealous soldiers +of humanity. The candidate held to the ground he had taken at Oxford and +in his election address, and apparently made converts. He had an +interview with forty voters of abolitionist complexion at his hotel, and +according to the friendly narrative of his brother, who was present, 'he +shone not only in his powers of conversation, but by the tact, +quickness, and talent with which he made his replies, to the thorough +and complete satisfaction of baptists, wesleyan methodists, and I may +say even, of almost every religious sect! Not one refused their vote: +they came forward, and enrolled their names, though before, I believe, +they never supported any one on the duke's interest!'</p> + +<p class="center">ISSUES ADDRESS AT NEWARK</p> + +<p>The humours of an election of the ancient sort are a very old story, and +Newark had its full share of them. The register contained rather under +sixteen hundred voters on a scot and lot qualification, to elect a +couple of members. The principal influence over about one quarter of +them was exercised by the Duke of Newcastle, who three years before had +punished the whigs of the borough for the outrage of voting against his +nominee, by serving, in concert with another proprietor, forty of them +with notice to quit. Then the trodden worm turned. The notices were +framed, affixed to poles, and carried with bands of music through the +streets. Even the audacity of a petition to parliament was projected. +The duke, whose chief fault was not to know that time had brought him +into a novel age, defended himself with the haughty truism, then just +ceasing to be true, that he had a right to do as he liked with his own. +This clear-cut enun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>ciation of a vanishing principle became a sort of +landmark, and gave to his name an unpleasing immortality in our +political history. In the high tide of agitation for reform the whigs +gave the duke a beating, and brought their man to the top of the poll, a +tory being his colleague. Handley, the tory, on our present occasion +seemed safe, and the fight lay between Mr. Gladstone and Sergeant Wilde, +the sitting whig, a lawyer of merit and eminence, who eighteen years +later went to the woolsack as Lord Truro. Reform at Newark was already +on the ebb. Mr. Gladstone, though mocked as a mere schoolboy, and +fiercely assailed as a slavery man, exhibited from the first hour of the +fight tremendous gifts of speech and skill of fence. His Red club worked +valiantly; the sergeant did not play his cards skilfully; and pretty +early in the long struggle it was felt that the duke would this time +come into his own again. The young student soon showed that his double +first class, his love of books, his religious preoccupations, had not +unfitted him by a single jot for one of the most arduous of all forms of +the battle of life. He proved a diligent and prepossessing canvasser, an +untiring combatant, and of course the readiest and most fluent of +speakers. Wilde after hearing him said sententiously to one of his own +supporters, 'There is a great future before this young man.' The rather +rotten borough became suffused with the radiant atmosphere of Olympus. +The ladies presented their hero with a banner of red silk, and an +address expressive of their conviction that the good old Red cause was +the salvation of their ancient borough. The young candidate in reply +speedily put it in far more glowing colours. It was no trivial banner of +a party club, it was the red flag of England that he saw before him, the +symbol of national moderation and national power, under which, when +every throne on the continent had crumbled into dust beneath the +tyrannous strength of France, mankind had found sure refuge and +triumphant hope, and the blast that tore every other ensign to tatters +served only to unfold their own and display its beauty and its glory. +Amid these oratorical splendours the old hands of the club silently +supplemented eloquence and argument by darker agencies, of which +happily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> the candidate knew little until after. There was a red band and +each musician received fifteen shillings a day, there happening +accidentally to be among them no fewer than ten patriotic red plumpers. +Large tea-parties attracted red ladies. The inns great and small were +thrown joyously open on one side or other, and when the time came, our +national heroes from Robin Hood to Lord Nelson and the Duke of +Wellington, as well as half the animal kingdom, the swan and salmon, +horses, bulls, boars, lions, and eagles, of all the colours of the +rainbow and in every kind of strange partnership, sent in bills for meat +and liquor supplied to free and independent electors to the tune of a +couple of thousand pounds. Apart from these black arts, and apart from +the duke's interest, there was a good force of the staunch and honest +type, the life-blood of electioneering and the salvation of party +government, who cried stoutly, 'I was born Red, I live Red, and I will +die Red.' 'We started on the canvass,' says one who was with Mr. +Gladstone, 'at eight in the morning and worked at it for about nine +hours, with a great crowd, band and flags, and innumerable glasses of +beer and wine all jumbled together; then a dinner of 30 or 40, with +speeches and songs until say ten o'clock; then he always played a rubber +of whist, and about twelve or one I got to bed and not to sleep.'</p> + +<p class="center">HUMOURS OF AN OLD ELECTION</p> + +<p>At length the end came. At the nomination the show of hands was against +the reds, but when the poll was taken and closed on the second day, +Gladstone appeared at the head of it with 887 votes, against 798 for his +colleague Handley, and 726 for the fallen Wilde. 'Yesterday' (Dec. 13, +1832), he tells his father, 'we went to the town hall at 9 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span>, when +the mayor cast up the numbers and declared the poll. While he was doing +this the popular wrath vented itself for the most part upon Handley.... +The sergeant obtained me a hearing, and I spoke for perhaps an hour or +more, but it was flat work, as they were no more than patient, and +agreed with but little that I said. The sergeant then spoke for an hour +and a half.... He went into matters connected with his own adieu to +Newark, besought the people most energetically to bear with their +disappointment like men,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> and expressed his farewell with great depth of +feeling. Affected to tears himself, he affected others also. In the +evening near fifty dined here [Clinton Arms] and the utmost enthusiasm +was manifested.' The new member began his first speech as a member of +parliament as follows:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Gentlemen: In looking forward to the field which is now opened +before me, I cannot but conceive that I shall often be reproached +with being not your representative but the representative of the +Duke of Newcastle. Now I should rather incline to exaggerate than +to extenuate such connection as does exist between me and that +nobleman: and for my part should have no reluctance to see every +sentiment which ever passed between us, whether by letter or by +word of mouth, exposed to the view of the world. I met the Duke of +Newcastle upon the broad ground of public principle, and upon that +ground alone. I own no other bond of union with him than this, that +he in his exalted sphere, and I in my humble one, entertained the +same persuasion, that the institutions of this country are to be +defended against those who threaten their destruction, at all +hazards, and to all extremities. Why do you return me to +parliament? Not because I am the Duke of Newcastle's man, simply: +but because, coinciding with the duke in political sentiment, you +likewise admit that one possessing so large a property here, and +faithfully discharging the duties which the possession of that +property entails, ought in the natural course of things to exercise +a certain influence. You return me to parliament, not merely +because I am the Duke of Newcastle's man: but because both the man +whom the duke has sent, and the duke himself, are <i>your men</i>.</p></div> + +<p class="center">RETURNED FOR NEWARK</p> + +<p>The election was of course pointed to by rejoicing conservatives as a +proof the more of that reaction which the ministerial and radical press +was audacious enough to laugh at. This borough, says the local +journalist, was led away by the bubble reform, to support those who by +specious and showy qualification had dazzled their eyes; delusion had +vanished, shadows satisfied no longer, Newark was restored to its high +place in the esteem of the friends of order and good government. Of +course the intimates of the days of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> his youth were delighted. We want +such a man as Gladstone, wrote Hallam to Gaskell (October 1, 1832); 'in +some things he is likely to be obstinate and prejudiced; but he has a +fine fund of high chivalrous tory sentiment, and a tongue, moreover, to +let it loose with. I think he may do a great deal.'</p> + +<p>In the course of his three months of sojourn at Newark Mr. Gladstone +paid his first visit to the great man at Clumber.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The duke received me, he tells his father, with the greatest +kindness, and conversed with such ease and familiarity of manner as +speedily to dispel a certain degree of awe which I had previously +entertained, and to throw me perhaps more off my guard than I ought +to have been in company with a man of his age and rank.... The +utmost regularity and subordination appears to prevail in the +family, and no doubt it is in many respects a good specimen of the +old English style. He is apparently a most affectionate father, but +still the sons and daughters are under a certain degree of +restraint in his presence.... A man, be his station of life what it +may, more entirely divested of personal pride and arrogance, more +single-minded and disinterested in his views, or more courageous +and resolute in determination to adhere to them as the dictates of +his own conscience, I cannot conceive.</p></div> + +<p>From this frigid interior Mr. Gladstone made his way to the genial +company of Milnes Gaskell at Thornes and had a delightful week. Thence +he proceeded to spend some days with his sick mother at Leamington. 'We +have been singularly dealt with as a family,' he observes, 'once +snatched from a position where we were what is called entering society, +and sent to comparative seclusion as regards family establishment—and +now again prevented from assuming the situation that seems the natural +termination of a career like my father's. Here is a noble trial—for me +personally to exercise a kindly and unselfish feeling, if amid the +excitements and allurements now near me, I am enabled duly to realise +the bond of consanguinity and suffer with those whom Providence has +ordained to suffer.' And this assuredly was no mere entry in a journal. +In betrothals, marriages, deaths, on all the great occasions of life in +his circle, his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> letters under old-fashioned formalities of phrase yet +beat with a marked and living pulse of genuine interest, solicitude, +sympathy, unselfishness, and union.</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>As always, he sought refreshment from turmoil that was only moderately +congenial to him, in reading and writing. Among much else he learns +Shelley by heart, but his devotion to Wordsworth is unshaken. 'One +remarkable similarity prevails between Wordsworth and Shelley; the +quality of combining and connecting everywhere external nature with +internal and unseen mind. But how different are they in applications. It +frets and irritates the one, it is the key to the peacefulness of the +other.' Two books of <i>Paradise Regained</i>, he finds 'very objectionable +on religious grounds,'—the books presumably where Milton has been +convicted of Arian heresy. He still has energy enough left for more +mundane things, to write a succession of articles for the <i>Liverpool +Standard</i>, and he finds time to record his joy (December 7) 'over five +Eton first classes' at Oxford. Then, by and by, the election accounts +come in. The arrangement had been made that the expenses were not to +exceed a thousand pounds, of which the duke was to contribute one half, +and John Gladstone the other half. It now appeared that twice as much +would not suffice. The new member flung himself with all his soul into a +struggle with his committee against the practice of opening public +houses and the exorbitant demands that came of it. Open houses, he +protested, meant profligate expenditure and organised drunkenness; they +were not a pecuniary question, but a question of right and wrong. In the +afternoon of the second day of polling, his agent had said to him, +speaking about special constables, that he scarcely knew how they could +be got if wanted, for he thought nearly every man in the town was drunk. +It was in vain that the committee assured him of the discouraging truth +that a certain proportion of the voters could not be got to the poll +without a breakfast; and an observer from another planet might perhaps +have asked himself whether all this was so remarkable an improvement on +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> duke doing what he liked with his own. Mr. Gladstone still stood to +it that a system of entertainment that ended in producing a state of +general intoxication, was the most demoralising and vicious of all forms +of outlay, and the Newark worthies were bewildered and confounded by the +gigantic dialectical and rhetorical resources of their incensed +representative. The fierce battle lasted, with moments of mitigation, +over many of the thirteen years of the connection. Of all the measures +that Mr. Gladstone was destined in days to come to place upon the +statute book, none was more salutary than the law that purified corrupt +practices at elections.<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p> + +<p class="center">HIS BIRTHDAY</p> + +<p>On his birthday at the close of this eventful year, here is his entry in +his diary:—'On this day I have completed my twenty-third year.... The +exertions of the year have been smaller than those of the last, but in +some respects the diminution has been unavoidable. In future I hope +circumstances will bind me down to work with a rigour which my natural +sluggishness will find it impossible to elude. I wish that I could hope +my frame of mind had been in any degree removed from earth and brought +nearer to heaven, that the habit of my mind had been imbued with +something of that spirit which is not of this world. I have now +familiarised myself with maxims sanctioning and encouraging a degree of +intercourse with society, perhaps attended with much risk.... Nor do I +now think myself warranted in withdrawing from the practices of my +fellow men except when they really <i>involve</i> an encouragement of sin, in +which case I do certainly rank races and theatres....' 'Periods like +these,' he writes to his friend Gaskell (January 3, 1833), 'grievous +generally in many of their results, are by no means unfavourable to the +due growth and progress of individual character. I remember a very wise +saying of Archidamus in Thucydides, that the being educated ἐν τοῖς +ἀναγκαιοτάτοις brings strength and efficacy to the character.'<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p> + +<p>In one of his letters to his father at this exciting epoch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> Mr. +Gladstone says, that before the sudden opening now made for him, what he +had marked out for himself was 'a good many years of silent reading and +inquiry.' That blessed dream was over; his own temperament and outer +circumstances, both of them made its realisation impossible; but in a +sense he clung to it all his days. He entered at Lincoln's Inn (January +25), and he dined pretty frequently in hall down to 1839, meeting many +old Eton and Oxford acquaintances, more genuine law students than +himself. He kept thirteen terms but was never called to the bar. If he +had intended to undergo a legal training, the design was ended by +Newark. After residing for a short time in lodgings in Jermyn Street, he +took quarters at the Albany (March 1833), which remained his London home +for six years. 'I am getting on rapidly with my furnishing,' he tells +his father, 'and I shall be able, I feel confident, to do it all, +including plate, within the liberal limits which you allow. I cannot +warmly enough thank you for the terms and footing on which you propose +to place me in the chambers, but I really fear that after this year my +allowance in all will be greater not only than I have any title to, but +than I ought to accept without blushing.' He became a member of the +Oxford and Cambridge Club the previous month,<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> and now was 'elected +<i>without</i> my will (but not more than without it) a member of the Carlton +Club.' He would not go to dinner parties on Sundays, not even with Sir +Robert Peel. He was closely attentive to the minor duties of social +life, if duties they be; he was a strict observer of the etiquette of +calls, and on some afternoons he notes that he made a dozen or fourteen +of them. He frequented musical parties, where his fine voice, now +reasonably well trained, made him a welcome guest, and he goes to public +concerts where he finds Pasta and Schröder splendid. His irrepressible +desire to expand himself in writing or in speech found a vent in +constant articles in the <i>Liverpool Standard</i>, neither better nor worse +than the ordinary juvenilia of a keen young college<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> politician. He was +confident that, whether estimated by their numbers, their wealth, or +their respectability, the conservatives indubitably held in their hands +the means and elements of permanent power. He discharges a fusillade +from Roman history against the bare idea of vote by ballot, quotes +Cicero as its determined enemy, and ascribes to secret suffrage the fall +of the republic. He quotes with much zest a sentence from an +ultra-radical journal that the life of the West Indian negro is +happiness itself compared with that of the poor inmate of our +spinning-mills. He scores a good point for the patron of Newark, by an +eloquent article on the one man who had laboured to retrieve the +miserable condition of the factory children, and ends with a taunting +reminder to the reformers that this one man, Sadler,<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> was the nominee +of a borough-monger, and that borough-monger the Duke of Newcastle.</p> + +<p class="center">LONDON LIFE</p> + +<p>It need not be said that his church-going never flagged. In 1840 his +friend, the elder Acland, interested himself in forming a small +brotherhood, with rules for systematic exercises of devotion and works +of mercy. Mr. Gladstone was one of the number. The names were not +published, nor did any one but the treasurer know the amounts given. The +pledge to personal and active benevolence seems not to have been +strongly operative, for at the end of 1845 (Dec. 7) Mr. Gladstone writes +to Hope in reference to Acland's scheme:—'The desire we then both felt +passed off, as far as I am concerned, into a plan of asking only a +donation and subscription. Now it is very difficult to satisfy the +demands of duty to the poor by money alone. On the other hand, it is +extremely hard for me—and I suppose possibly for you—to give them much +in the shape of time and thought, for both with me are already tasked up +to and beyond their powers.... I much wish we could execute some plan +which without demanding much time would entail the discharge of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> some +humble and humbling office.... If you thought with me—and I do not see +why you should not, except to assume the reverse is paying myself a +compliment—let us go to work, as in the young days of the college plan +but with a more direct and less ambitious purpose.' Of this we may see +something later. At a great service at St. Paul's, he notes the glory +alike of sight and sound as 'possessing that remarkable criterion of the +sublime, a grand result from a combination of simple elements.' Edward +Irving did not attract; 'a scene pregnant with melancholy instruction.' +He was immensely struck by Melvill, whom some of us have heard +pronounced by the generation before us to be the most puissant of all +the men in his calling. 'His sentiments,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'are manly +in tone; he deals powerfully with all his subjects; his language is +flowing and unbounded; his imagery varied and intensely strong. Vigorous +and lofty as are his conceptions, he is not, I think, less remarkable +for soundness and healthiness of mind.' Such a passage shows among other +things how the diarist was already teaching himself to analyse the art +of oratory. I may note one rather curious habit, no doubt practised with +a view to training in the art of speech. Besides listening to as many +sermons as possible, he was also for a long time fond of reading them +aloud, especially Dr. Arnold's, in rather a peculiar way. 'My plan is,' +he says, 'to strengthen or qualify or omit expressions as I go along.'</p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p class="center">HOUSE OF COMMONS</p> + +<p>In an autobiographical note, written in the late days of his life, when +he had become the only commoner left who had sat in the old burned House +of Commons, he says:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I took my seat at the opening of 1833, provided unquestionably +with, a large stock of schoolboy bashfulness. The first time that +business required me to go to the arm of the chair to say something +to the Speaker, Manners Sutton—the first of seven whose subject I +have been—who was something of a Keate, I remember the revival in +me bodily of the frame of mind in which a schoolboy stands before +his master. But apart from an incidental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> recollection of this +kind, I found it most difficult to believe with, any reality of +belief, that such a poor and insignificant creature as I, could +really belong to, really form a <i>part</i> of, an assembly which, +notwithstanding the prosaic character of its entire visible +equipment, I felt to be so august. What I may term its corporeal +conveniences were, I may observe in passing, marvellously small. I +do not think that in any part of the building it afforded the means +of so much as washing the hands. The residences of members were at +that time less distant: but they were principally reached on foot. +When a large House broke up after a considerable division, a +copious dark stream found its way up Parliament Street, Whitehall, +and Charing Cross.</p> + +<p>I remember that there occurred some case in which a constituent +(probably a maltster) at Newark sent me a communication which made +oral communication with the treasury, or with the chancellor of the +exchequer (then Lord Althorp), convenient. As to the means of +bringing this about, I was puzzled and abashed. Some experienced +friend on the opposition bench, probably Mr. Goulburn, said to me, +There is Lord Althorp sitting alone on the treasury bench, go to +him and tell him your business. With such encouragement I did it. +Lord Althorp received me in the kindest manner possible, alike to +my pleasure and my surprise.</p></div> + +<p>The exact composition of the first reformed House of Commons was usually +analysed as tories 144; reformers 395; English and Scotch radicals 76; +Irish repealers 43. Mr. Gladstone was for counting the decided +conservatives as 160 and reckoning as a separate group a small party who +had once been tories and now ranked between conservative opposition and +whig ministers. The Irish representatives he divided between 28 tories, +and a body of 50 who were made up of ministerialists, conditional +repealers, and tithe extinguishers. He heard Joseph Hume, the most +effective of the leading radicals, get the first word in the reformed +parliament, speaking for an hour and perhaps justifying O'Connell's +witty saying that Hume would have been an excellent speaker, if only he +would finish a sentence before beginning the next but one after it.</p> + +<p>No more diligent member of parliament than Mr. Glad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>stone ever sat upon +the green benches. He read his blue-books, did his duty by election +committees, and on the first occasion when, in consequence of staying a +little too long at a dinner at the Duke of Hamilton's, he missed a +division, his self-reproach was almost as sharp as if he had fallen into +mortal sin. This is often enough the way with virtuous young members, +but Mr. Gladstone's zealous ideal of parliamentary duty lasted, and both +at first and always he was a singular union of deep meditative +seriousness with untiring animation, assiduity, and practical energy and +force working over a wide field definitely mapped.</p> + +<p class="center">MAIDEN SPEECH</p> + +<p>In the assembly where he was one day to rank among the most powerful +orators ever inscribed upon its golden roll, he first opened his lips in +a few words on a Newark petition (April 30) and shortly after (May 21) +he spoke two or three minutes on an Edinburgh petition. A little later +the question of slavery, where he knew every inch of the ground, brought +him to a serious ordeal. In May, Stanley as colonial secretary +introduced the proposals of the government for the gradual abolition of +colonial slavery. Abolition was to be preceded by an intermediate stage, +designated as apprenticeship, to last for twelve years; and the planters +were to be helped through the difficulties of the transition by a loan +of fifteen millions. In the course of the proceedings, the intermediate +period was shortened from twelve years to seven, and the loan of fifteen +millions was transformed into a free gift of twenty. To this scheme John +Gladstone, whose indomitable energy made him the leading spirit of the +West Indian interest, was consistently opposed, and he naturally became +the mark of abolitionist attack. The occasion of Mr. Gladstone's first +speech was an attack by Lord Howick on the manager of John Gladstone's +Demerara estates, whom he denounced as 'the murderer of slaves,'—an +attack made without notice to the two sons of the incriminated +proprietor sitting in front of him. He declared that the slaves on the +Vreedenhoop sugar plantations were systematically worked to death in +order to increase the crop. Mr. Gladstone tried in vain to catch the eye +of the Chairman on May 30, and the next day he wished to speak<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> but saw +no good opportunity. 'The emotions through which one passes, at least +through which I pass, in anticipating such an effort as this, are +painful and humiliating. The utter prostration and depression of spirit; +the deep sincerity, the burdensome and overpowering reality of the +feeling of mere feebleness and incapacity, felt in the inmost heart, yet +not to find relief by expression, because the expression of such things +goes for affectation,—these things I am unequal to describe, yet I have +experienced them now.' On June 3, the chance came. Here is his story of +the day: 'Began <i>le miei Prigioni</i>. West India meeting of members at one +at Lord Sandon's. Resolutions discussed and agreed upon; ... dined +early. Re-arranged my notes for the debate. Rode. House 5 to 1. Spoke my +first time, for 50 minutes. My leading desire was to benefit the cause +of those who are now so sorely beset. The House heard me very kindly, +and my friends were satisfied. Tea afterwards at the Carlton.' The +speech was an uncommon success. Stanley, the minister mainly concerned, +congratulated him with more than those conventional compliments which +the good nature of the House of Commons expects to be paid to any decent +beginner. 'I never listened to any speech with greater pleasure,' said +Stanley, himself the prince of debaters and then in the most brilliant +part of his career; 'the member for Newark argued his case with a +temper, an ability, and a fairness which may well be cited as a good +model to many older members of this House.' His own leader, though he +spoke later, said nothing in his speech about the new recruit, but two +days after Mr. Gladstone mentioned that Sir R. Peel came up to him and +praised Monday night's affair. King William wrote to Althorp: 'he +rejoices that a young member has come forward in so promising a manner, +as Viscount Althorp states Mr. W. E. Gladstone to have done.'<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p> + +<p>Apart from its special vindication in close detail of the state of +things at Vreedenhoop as being no worse than others, the points of the +speech on this great issue of the time were familiar ones. He confessed +with shame and pain that cases of cruelty had existed, and would always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> +exist, under the system of slavery, and that this was 'a substantial +reason why the British legislature and public should set themselves in +good earnest to provide for its extinction.' He admitted, too, that we +had not fulfilled our Christian obligations by communicating the +inestimable benefits of our religion to the slaves in our colonies, and +that the belief among the early English planters, that if you made a man +a Christian you could not keep him a slave, had led them to the +monstrous conclusion that they ought not to impart Christianity to their +slaves. Its extinction was a consummation devoutly to be desired, and in +good earnest to be forwarded, but immediate and unconditioned +emancipation, without a previous advance in character, must place the +negro in a state where he would be his own worst enemy, and so must +crown all the wrongs already done to him by cutting off the last hope of +rising to a higher level in social existence. At some later period of +his life Mr. Gladstone read a corrected report of his first speech, and +found its tone much less than satisfactory. 'But of course,' he adds, +'allowance must be made for the enormous and most blessed change of +opinion since that day on the subject of negro slavery. I must say, +however, that even before this time I had come to entertain little or no +confidence in the proceedings of the resident agents in the West +Indies.' 'I can now see plainly enough,' he said sixty years later, 'the +sad defects, the real illiberalism of my opinions on that subject. Yet +they were not illiberal as compared with the ideas of the times, and as +declared in parliament in 1833 they obtained the commendation of the +liberal leaders.'</p> + +<p class="center">COMMON OPINIONS ON SLAVERY</p> + +<p>It is fair to remember that Pitt, Fox, Grenville, and Grey, while eager +to bring the slave trade to an instant end, habitually disclaimed as a +calumny any intention of emancipating the blacks on the sugar islands. +In 1807, when the foul blot of the trade was abolished, even Wilberforce +himself discouraged attempts to abolish slavery, though the noble +philanthropist soon advanced to the full length of his own principles. +Peel in 1833 would have nothing to do with either immediate emancipation +or gradual. Disraeli has put his view on deliberate record that 'the +movement of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> middle class for the abolition of slavery was virtuous, +but it was not wise. It was an ignorant movement. The history of the +abolition of slavery by the English, and its consequences, would be a +narrative of ignorance, injustice, blundering, waste, and havoc, not +easily paralleled in the history of mankind.'<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p> + +<p>A week later Lord Howick proposed to move for papers relating to +Vreedenhoop. Lord Althorp did not refuse to grant them, but recommended +him to drop his motion, as Mr. Gladstone insisted on the equal necessity +of a similar return for all neighbouring plantations. Howick withdrew +his motion, though he afterwards asserted that ministers had declined +the return, which was not true. When Buxton moved to reduce the term of +apprenticeship, Mr. Gladstone voted against him. On the following day +Stanley, without previous intimation, announced the change from twelve +years to seven. 'I spoke a few sentences,' Mr. Gladstone enters in his +diary, 'in much confusion: for I could not easily recover from the +sensation caused by the sudden overthrow of an entire and undoubting +alliance.'</p> + +<p>The question of electoral scandals at Liverpool, which naturally excited +lively interest in a family with local ties so strong, came up in +various forms during the session, and on one of these occasions (July 4) +Mr. Gladstone spoke upon it, 'for twenty minutes or more, anything but +satisfactorily to myself.' Nor can the speech now be called satisfactory +by any one else, except for the enunciation of the sound maxim that the +giver of a bribe deserves punishment quite as richly as the receiver. +Four days later he spoke for something less than half an hour on the +third reading of the Irish Church Reform bill. 'I was heard,' he tells +his father, 'with kindness and indulgence, but it is, after all, uphill +work to address an assembly so much estranged in feeling from one's +self.' Peel's speech was described as temporising, and the deliverance +of his young lieutenant was temporising too, though firm on the +necessary principle, as he called it, of which the world was before long +to hear so much from him, that the nation should be taxed for the +support of a national church.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p> + +<p>Besides his speeches he gave a full number of party votes, some of them +interesting enough in view of the vast career before him. I think the +first of them all was in the majority of 428 against 40 upon O'Connell's +amendment for repeal,—an occasion that came vividly to his memory on +the eve of his momentous change of policy in 1886. He voted for the +worst clauses of the Irish Coercion bill, including the court-martial +clause. He fought steadily against the admission of Jews to parliament. +He fought against the admission of dissenters without a test to the +universities, which he described as seminaries for the established +church. He supported the existing corn law. He said 'No' to the property +tax and 'Aye' for retaining the house and window taxes. He resisted a +motion of Hume's for the abolition of military and naval sinecures +(February 14), and another motion of the same excellent man's for the +abolition of all flogging in the army save for mutiny and drunkenness. +He voted against the publication of the division lists. He voted with +ministers both against shorter parliaments and (April 25) against the +ballot, a cardinal reform carried by his own government forty years +later. On the other hand he voted (July 5) with Lord Ashley against +postponing his beneficent policy of factory legislation; but he did not +vote either way a fortnight later when Althorp sensibly reduced the +limit of ten hours' work in factories from the impracticable age of +eighteen proposed by Ashley, to the age of thirteen. He supported a bill +against work on Sundays.</p> + +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p class="center">PURCHASE OF FASQUE</p> + +<p>A page or two from his diary will carry us succinctly enough over the +rest of the first and second years of his parliamentary life.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>July 21, 1833, Sunday</i>.— ... Wrote some lines and prose also. +Finished Strype. Read Abbott and Sumner aloud. Thought for some +hours on my own future destiny, and took a solitary walk to and +about Kensington Gardens. <i>July 23</i>.—Read <i>L'Allemagne</i>, <i>Rape of +the Lock</i>, and finished factory report. <i>July 25</i>.—Went to +breakfast with old Mr. Wilberforce, introduced by his son. He is +cheerful and serene, a beautiful picture of old age in sight of +im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>mortality. Heard him pray with his family. Blessing and honour +are upon his head. <i>July 30</i>.—<i>L'Allemagne</i>. Bulwer's England. +Parnell. Looked at my Plato. Rode. House. <i>July 31</i>.—Hallam +breakfasted with me.... Committee on West India bill finished.... +German lesson. <i>August 2</i>.—Worked German several hours. Head half +of the <i>Bride of Lammermoor</i>. <i>L'Allemagne</i>. Rode. House. <i>August +3</i>.—German lesson and worked alone.... Attended Mr. Wilberforce's +funeral; it brought solemn thoughts, particularly about the slaves. +This a burdensome question. [German kept up steadily for many +days.] <i>August 9</i>.—House ... voted in 48 to 87 against legal +tender clause.... Read Tasso. <i>August 11</i>.—St. James's morning and +afternoon. Read Bible. Abbott (finished) and a sermon of +Blomfield's aloud. Wrote a paraphrase of part of chapter 8 of +Romans. <i>August 15</i>.—Committee 1-3¼. Rode. Plato. Finished Tasso, +canto 1. Anti-slavery observations on bill. German vocabulary and +exercise. <i>August 16</i>.—2¾-3½ Committee finished. German lesson. +Finished Plato, <i>Republic</i>, bk. v. Preparing to pack. <i>August +17</i>.—Started for Aberdeen on board <i>Queen of Scotland</i> at 12. +<i>August 18th</i>.—Rose to breakfast, but uneasily. Attempted +reading, and read most of Baxter's narrative. Not too unwell to +reflect. <i>August 19th</i>.—Remained in bed. Read Goethe and +translated a few lines. Also <i>Beauties of Shakespeare</i>. In the +evening it blew: very ill though in bed. Could not help admiring +the crests of the waves even as I stood at cabin window. <i>August +20</i>.—Arrived 8½ <span class="smcap">A.M.</span>—56½ hours.</p></div> + +<p>His father met him, and in the evening he and his brother found +themselves at the new paternal seat. In 1829 John Gladstone, after much +negotiation, had bought the estate of Fasque in Kincardineshire +for, £80,000, to which and to other Scotch affairs he devoted his special +and personal attention pretty exclusively. The home at Seaforth was +broken up, though relatives remained there or in the neighbourhood. For +some time he had a house in Edinburgh for private residence—the centre +house in Atholl Crescent. They used for three or four years to come in +from Kincardineshire, and spend the winter months in Edinburgh. Fasque +was his home for the rest of his days. This was W. E. Gladstone's first +visit, followed by at least<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> one long annual spell for the remaining +eighteen years of his father's life.</p> + +<p>On the morning of his arrival, he notes, 'I rode to the mill of Kincairn +to see Mackay who was shot last night. He was suffering much and seemed +near death. Read the Holy Scriptures to him (Psalms 51, 69, 71, Isaiah +55, Joh. 14, Col. 3). Left my prayer book.' The visit was repeated daily +until the poor man's death a week later. Apart from such calls of duty, +books are his main interest. He is greatly delighted with Hamilton's +<i>Men and Manners in America</i>. Alfieri's <i>Antigone</i> he dislikes as having +the faults of both ancient and modern drama. He grinds away through +Gifford's <i>Pitt</i>, and reads Hallam's <i>Middle Ages</i>. 'My method has +usually been, 1, to read over regularly; 2, to glance again over all I +have read, and analyse.' He was just as little of the lounger in his +lighter reading. Schiller's plays he went through with attention, +finding it 'a good plan to read along with history, historical plays of +the same events for material illustration, as well as aid to the +memory.' He read Scott's chapters on Mary Stuart in his history of +Scotland, 'to enable me better to appreciate the admirable judgment of +Schiller (in <i>Maria Stuart</i>) both where he has adhered to history and +where he has gone beyond it.' He finds fault with the <i>Temistocle</i> of +Metastasio, as 'too humane.' 'History should not be violated without a +reason. It may be set aside to fill up poetical verisimilitude. If +history assigns a cause inadequate to its effect, or an effect +inadequate to its cause, poetry may supply the deficiency for the sake +of an impressive whole. But it is too much to overset a narrative and +call it a historical play.' Then came a tragic stroke in real life.</p> + +<p class="center">DAYS IN SCOTLAND</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>October 6, 1833</i>.—Post hour to-day brought me a melancholy +announcement—the death of Arthur Hallam. This intelligence was +deeply oppressive even to my selfish disposition. I mourn in him, +for myself, my earliest near friend; for my fellow creatures, one +who would have adorned his age and country, a mind full of beauty +and of power, attaining almost to that ideal standard of which it +is presumption to expect an example. When shall I see his like? Yet +this dispensation is not all pain, for there is a hope <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>and not (in +my mind) a bare or rash hope that his soul rests with God in Jesus +Christ.... I walked upon the hills to muse upon this very mournful +event, which cuts me to the heart. Alas for his family and his +intended bride. <i>October 7th.</i>—My usual occupations, but not +without many thoughts upon my departed friend. Bible. Alfieri, +<i>Wallenstein</i>, Plato, Gifford's <i>Pitt</i>, <i>Biographia Literaria</i>. +Rode with my father and Helen. All objects lay deep in the softness +and solemnity of autumnal decay. Alas, my poor friend was cut off +in the spring of his bright existence.</p> + +<p><i>December 13, Edinburgh.</i>—Breakfast with Dr. Chalmers. His +modesty is so extreme that it is oppressive to those who are in his +company, especially his juniors, since it is impossible for them to +keep their behaviour in due proportion to his. He was on his own +subject, the Poor Laws, very eloquent, earnest, and impressive. +Perhaps he may have been hasty in applying maxims drawn from +Scotland to a more advanced stage of society in England. <i>December +17</i>.—Robertson's <i>Charles V.</i>, Plato, began book 10. Chalmers. +Singing-lesson and practice. Whist. Walked on the Glasgow road, +first milestone to fourth and back in 70 minutes—the returning +three miles in about 33¾. Ground in some places rather muddy and +slippery. <i>December 26</i>.—A feeble day. Three successive callers +and conversation with my father occupied the morning. Read a good +allowance of Robertson, an historian <i>who leads his reader on</i>, I +think, more pleasantly than any I know. The style most attractive, +but the mind of the writer does not set forth the loftiest +principles. <i>December 29th, Sunday</i>.—Twenty-four years have I +lived.... Where is the <i>continuous</i> work which ought to fill up the +life of a Christian without intermission?... I have been growing, +that is certain; in good or evil? Much fluctuation; often a +supposed progress, terminating in finding myself at, or short of, +the point which I deemed I had left behind me. Business and +political excitement a tremendous trial, not so much alleviating as +forcibly dragging down the soul from that temper which is fit to +inhale the air of heaven. <i>Jan. 8, 1834, Edinburgh</i>.—Breakfast +with Dr. Chalmers. Attended his lecture 2-3.... More than ever +struck with the superabundance of Dr. C.'s gorgeous language, which +leads him into repetitions, until the stores of our tongue be +exhausted on each particular point. Yet the variety and +magnifi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>cence of his expositions must fix them very strongly in the +minds of his hearers. In ordinary works great attention would be +excited by the very infrequent occurrence of the very brilliant +expressions and illustrations with which he cloys the palate. His +gems lie like paving stones. He does indeed seem to be an +<i>admirable</i> man.</p></div> + +<p>Of Edinburgh his knowledge soon became intimate. His father and mother +took him to that city, as we have seen, in 1814. He spent a spring there +in 1828 just before going to Oxford, and he recollected to the end of +his life a sermon of Dr. Andrew Thomson's on the Repentance of Judas, 'a +great and striking subject.' Some circumstance or another brought him +into relations with Chalmers, that ripened into friendship. 'We used to +have walks together,' Mr. Gladstone remembered, 'chiefly out of the town +by the Dean Bridge and along the Queensferry road. On one of our walks +together, Chalmers took me down to see one of his districts by the water +of Leith, and I remember we went into one or more of the cottages. He +went in with smiling countenance, greeting and being greeted by the +people, and sat down. But he had nothing to say. He was exactly like the +Duke of Wellington, who said of himself that he had no small talk. His +whole mind was always full of some great subject and he could not +deviate from it. He sat smiling among the people, but he had no small +talk for them and they had no large talk. So after some time we came +away, he pleased to have been with the people, and they proud to have +had the Doctor with them.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> For Chalmers he never lost a warm +appreciation, often expressed in admirable words—'one of nature's +nobles; his warrior grandeur, his rich and glowing eloquence, his +absorbed and absorbing earnestness, above all his singular simplicity +and detachment from the world.' Among other memories, 'There was a +quaint old shop at the Bowhead which used to interest me very much. It +was kept by a bookseller, Mr. Thomas Nelson. I remember being amused by +a reply he made to me one day when I went in and asked for Booth's +<i>Reign of Grace</i>. He half turned his head towards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> me, and remarked with +a peculiar twinkle in his eye, "Ay, man, but ye're a young chiel to be +askin' after a book like that."'</p> + +<p class="center">RELATIONS WITH CHALMERS</p> + +<p>On his way south in January 1834, Mr. Gladstone stays with relatives at +Seaforth, 'where even the wind howling upon the window at night was dear +and familiar;' and a few days later finds himself once more within the +ever congenial walls of Oxford.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>January 19, Sunday.</i>—Read the first lesson in morning chapel. A +most masterly sermon of Pusey's preached by Clarke. Lancaster in +the afternoon on the Sacrament. Good walk. Wrote [family letters]. +Read Whyte. Three of Girdlestone's Sermons. Pickering on adult +baptism (some clever and singularly insufficient reasoning). +Episcopal pastoral letter for 1832. Doane's Ordination sermon, +1833, admirable,—Wrote some thoughts. <i>Jan. 20</i>.—Sismondi's +<i>Italian Republics</i>. Dined at Merton, and spent all the evening +there in interesting conversation. I was Hamilton's guest +[afterwards Bishop of Salisbury]. It was delightful, it wrings joy +even from the most unfeeling heart, to see religion on the increase +as it is here. <i>Jan. 23rd</i>.—Much of to-day, it fell out, spent +in conversation of an interesting kind, with Brandreth and Pearson +on eternal punishment; with Williams on baptism; with Churton on +faith and religion in the university; with Harrison on prophecy and +the papacy.... <i>Jan. 24</i>.—Began <i>Essay on Saving Faith</i>, and wrote +thereon. <i>Jan. 29th</i>.—Dined at Oriel. Conversation with Newman +chiefly on church matters.... I excuse some idleness to myself by +the fear of doing some real injury to my eyes. [After a flight of +three or four days to London, he again returns for a Sunday in +Oxford.] <i>Feb. 9</i>.—Two university sermons and St. Peter's. Round +the meadows with Williams. Dined with him, common room. Tea and a +pleasant conversation with Harrison. Began <i>Chrysostom de +Sacerdotio</i>, and Cecil's <i>Friendly Visit</i>. [Then he goes back to +town for the rest of the session.] <i>Feb. 12, London.</i>—Finished +<i>Friendly Visit</i>, beautiful little book. Finished Tennyson's poems. +Wrote a paper on ἠθικὴ πίστις in poetry. Recollections of Robert +Hall. <i>13th.</i>—With Doyle, long and solemn conversation on the +doctrine of the Trinity.... Began Wardlaw's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> <i>Christian Ethics.</i> +<i>26th, London</i>.—A busy day, yet of little palpable profit.... Read +two important Demerara papers.... Rode. At the levee. House 5½-11. +Wished to speak, but deterred by the extremely ill disposition to +hear. Much sickened by their unfairness in the judicial character, +more still at my own wretched feebleness and fears. <i>April +1</i>.—Dined at Sir R. Peel's. Herries, Sir G. Murray, Chantrey, etc. +Sir R. Peel very kind in his manner to us. <i>May 29</i>.—Mignet's +<i>Introduction</i> [to 'the History of the Spanish succession,' one of +the masterpieces of historical literature]. <i>June 4</i>.—Bruce to +breakfast. Paper. Mignet and analysis. Burke. Harvey committee.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> +Ancient music concert. Dined at Lincoln's Inn. House 11¼-12¾. Rode. +<i>June 6</i>.—<i>Paradise Lost</i>. Began Leibnitz's <i>Tentamina Theodiceæ</i>. +<i>June 11</i>.—Read Pitt's speeches on the Union in January, 1799, and +Grattan on Catholic petition in 1805. <i>15th</i>.—Read some passages +in the latter part of <i>Corinne</i>, which always work strongly on me. +<i>18th</i>.—Coming home to dine, found <i>Remains of A. H. H.</i> Yesterday +a bridal at a friend's, to-day a sad memorial of death. 'Tis a sad +subject, a very sad one to me. I have not seen his like. The memory +of him reposes gently in my inmost heart, a fountain of tears which +soften and fertilise it in the midst of pursuits whose tendency is +to dry up the sources of emotion by the fever of excitement. I read +his memoir. His father had done me much and undeserved kindness +there. <i>20th</i>.—Most of my time went in thinking confusedly over +the university question. Very anxious to speak, tortured with +nervous anticipations; could not get an opportunity. Certainly my +inward experience on these occasions ought to make me humble. +Herbert's maiden speech very successful. I ought to be thankful for +my <i>miss</i>; perhaps also because my mind was so much oppressed that +I could not, I fear, have unfolded my inward convictions. What a +world it is, and how does it require the Divine power and aid to +clothe in words the profound and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>mysterious thoughts on those +subjects most connected with the human soul—thoughts which the +mind does not command as a mistress, but entertains reverentially +as honoured guests ... content with only a partial comprehension, +hoping to render it a progressive one, but how difficult to define +in words a conception, many of whose parts are still in a nascent +state with no fixed outline or palpable substance. <i>July 2</i>.— ... +Guizot. Cousin. Bossuet (<i>Hist. Univ.</i>). Rode. Committee and House. +Curious detail from O'Connell of his interview with Littleton. +<i>10th.</i>—7¼ <span class="smcap">-A.M.</span>-7½ in an open chaise to Coggeshall and back with +O'Connell and Sir G. Sinclair, to examine Skingley [a proceeding +arising from the Harvey committee], which was done with little +success.</p></div> + +<p class="center">THE UNIVERSITY QUESTION</p> + +<p>The conversation of the great Liberator was never wholly forgotten, and +it was probably his earliest chance of a glimpse of the Irish point of +view at first hand.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>July 11</i>.—No news till the afternoon and then heard on very good +authority that the Grey government is definitely broken up, and +that attempts at reconstruction have failed. Cousin, Sismondi, +Education evidence. Letters. House. <i>21st</i>.—To-day not for the +first time felt a great want of courage to express feelings +strongly awakened on hearing a speech of O'Connell. To have so +strong an impulse and not obey it seems unnatural; it seems like an +inflicted dumbness. <i>28th</i>.—Spoke 30 to 35 minutes on University +bill, with more ease than I had hoped, having been more mindful or +less unmindful of Divine aid. Divided in 75 v. 164. [To his father +next day.] You will see by your <i>Post</i> that I held forth last night +on the Universities bill. The House I am glad to say heard me with +the utmost kindness, for they had been listening previously to an +Indian discussion in which very few people took any interest, +though indeed it was both curious and interesting. But the change +of subject was no doubt felt as a relief, and their disposition to +listen set me infinitely more at my ease than I should otherwise +have been. <i>29th</i>.—Pleasant house dinner at Carlton. Lincoln got +up the party. Sir R. Peel was in good spirits and very agreeable.</p></div> + +<p>It was on this occasion that he wrote to his mother,—'Sir<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> Robert Peel +caused me much gratification by the way in which he spoke to me of my +speech, and particularly the great warmth of his manner. He told me he +cheered me loudly, and I said in return that I had heard his voice under +me while speaking, and was much encouraged thereby.' He ends the note +already cited (Sept. 6, 1897) on the old House of Commons, which was +burned down this year, with what he calls a curious incident concerning +Sir Robert Peel, and with a sentence or two upon the government of Lord +Grey:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Cobbett made a motion alike wordy and absurd, praying the king to +remove him [Peel] from the privy council as the author of the act +for the re-establishment of the gold standard in 1819. The entire +House was against him, except his colleague Fielden of Oldham, who +made a second teller.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> After the division I think Lord Althorp +at once rose and moved the expunction of the proceedings from the +votes or journals; a severe rebuke to the mover. Sir Robert in his +speech said, 'I am at a loss, sir, to conceive what can be the +cause of the strong hostility to me which the honourable gentleman +exhibits. <i>I</i> never conferred on him an obligation.' This stroke +was not original. But what struck me at the time as singular was +this, that notwithstanding the state of feeling which I have +described, Sir R. Peel was greatly excited in dealing with one who +at the time was little more than a contemptible antagonist. At that +period shirt collars were made with 'gills' which came up upon the +cheek; and Peel's gills were so soaked with perspiration that they +actually lay down upon his neck-cloth.</p> + +<p>In one of these years, I think 1833, a motion was made by some +political economist for the abolition of the corn laws. I (an +absolute and literal ignoramus) was much struck and staggered with +it. But Sir James Graham—who knew more of economic and trade +matters, I think, than the rest of the cabinet of 1841 all put +together—made a reply in the sense of protection, whether high or +low I cannot now say. But I remember perfectly well that this +speech of his built me up again for the moment and enabled me (I +believe) to vote with the government.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p></div> + +<p class="center">A YEAR OF SPLENDID LEGISLATION</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The year 1833 was, as measured by quantity and in part by quality, +a splendid year of legislation. In 1834 the Government and Lord +Althorp far beyond all others did themselves high honour by the new +Poor Law Act, which rescued the English peasantry from the total +loss of their independence. Of the 658 members of Parliament about +480 must have been their general supporters. Much gratitude ought +to have been felt for this great administration. But from a variety +of causes, at the close of the session 1834 the House of Commons +had fallen into a state of cold indifference about it.</p></div> + +<p>He was himself destined one day to feel how soon parliamentary reaction +may follow a sweeping popular triumph.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Henry James's Act (1883).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Thuc. i. 84, § 7.—'We should remember that man differs little from +man, except that he turns out best who is trained in the sharpest +school.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> Proposed by Sir R. Inglis and seconded by George Denison, +afterwards the militant Archdeacon of Taunton. He was on the committee +from 1834 to 1838, and he withdrew from the Club at the end of 1842.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> Sadler is now not much more than a name, except to students of the +history of social reform in England, known to some by a couple of +articles of Macaulay's, written in that great man's least worthy and +least agreeable style, and by the fact that Macaulay beat him at Leeds +in 1832. But he deserves our honourable recollection on the ground +mentioned by Mr. Gladstone, as a man of indefatigable and effective zeal +in one of the best of causes.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> <i>Memoir of Althorp</i>, p. 471.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> <i>Lord George Bentinck</i>, chapter xviii. p. 324.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> Report of an interview with Mr. Gladstone in 1890, in <i>Scottish +Liberal</i>, May 2, 9, etc., 1890.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> Daniel Whittle Harvey was an eloquent member of parliament whom the +benchers of his inn refused to call to the bar, on the ground of certain +charges against his probity. The House appointed a committee of which +Mr. Gladstone was a member to inquire into these charges. O'Connell was +chairman, and they acquitted Harvey, without however affecting the +decision of the benchers. Mr. Gladstone was the only member of the +committee who did not concur in its final judgment. See his article on +Daniel O'Connell in the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, Jan. 1889.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> See Cobbett's <i>Life</i> by Edward Smith, ii. p. 287. Attwood of +Birmingham seems to have voted for the motion.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIICh_II" id="BkIICh_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> + +<p class="center">THE NEW CONSERVATISM AND OFFICE</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1834-1845</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I consider the Reform bill a final and irrevocable settlement of a +great constitutional question.... If by adopting the spirit of the +Reform bill it be meant that we are to live in a perpetual vortex +of agitation; that public men can only support themselves in public +estimation by adopting every popular impression of the day, by +promising the instant redress of anything that anybody may call an +abuse ... I will not undertake to adopt it. But if the spirit of +the Reform bill implies merely a careful review of institutions +civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper, the +correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances, +then, etc. etc.—<span class="smcap">Peel</span> (<i>Tamworth Address</i>).</p></div> + +<p class="center">MISCELLANEOUS READING</p> + +<p>The autumn of 1834 was spent at Fasque. An observant eye followed +political affairs, but hardly a word is said about them in the diary. A +stiff battle was kept up against electioneering iniquities at Newark. +Riding, boating, shooting were Mr. Gladstone's pastimes in the day; +billiards, singing, backgammon, and a rubber in the evening. Sport was +not without compunction which might well, in an age that counts itself +humane, be expected to come oftener. 'Had to kill a wounded partridge,' +he records, 'and felt after it as if I had shot the albatross. It might +be said: This should be more or less.' And that was true. He was always +a great walker. He walked from Montrose, some thirteen or fourteen miles +off, in two hours and three quarters, and another time he does six miles +in seventy minutes. Nor does he ever walk with an unobserving mind. At +Lochnagar: 'Saw Highland women from Strathspey coming down for harvest +with heavy loads, some with babies, over these wild rough paths through +wind and storm. Ah, with what labour does a large portion of mankind +subsist, while we fare<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> sumptuously every day!' This was the ready +susceptibility to humane impression in the common circumstance of life, +the eye stirring the emotions of the feeling heart, that nourished in +him the soul of true oratory, to say nothing of feeding the roots of +statesmanship. His bookmindedness is unabated. He began with a +resolution to work at least two hours every morning before breakfast, +and the resolution seems to have been manfully kept, without prejudice +to systematic reading for a good many hours of the day besides. For the +first time, rather strange to say, he read St. Augustine's +<i>Confessions</i>, and with the delight that might have been expected. He +finds in that famous composition 'a good deal of prolix and fanciful, +though acute speculation, but the practical parts of the book have a +wonderful force, and inimitable sweetness and simplicity.' In other +departments of religion, he read Archbishop Leighton's life and Hannah +More's, Arnold's Sermons and Milner's <i>Church History</i> and Whewells +<i>Bridgewater Treatise</i>. Once more he analyses the <i>Novum Organum</i> and +the <i>Advancement of Learning</i>, and he reads or re-reads Locke's <i>Essay</i>. +He studies political science in the two great manuals of the old world +and the new, in the <i>Politics</i> of Aristotle and the <i>Prince</i> of +Machiavelli. He goes through three or four plays of Schiller; also +Manzoni, and Petrarch, and Dante at the patient rate of a couple of +cantos a day; then Boccaccio, from whom, after a half-dozen of the days, +he willingly parts company, only interested in him as showing a strange +state of manners and how religion can be dissociated from conduct. In +modern politics he reads the memoirs of Chatham, and Brougham on +Colonial Policy, of which he says that 'eccentricity, paradox, fast and +loose reasoning and (much more) sentiment, appear to have entered most +deeply into the essence of this remarkable man when he wrote his +Colonial Policy, as now; with the rarest power of <i>expressing</i> his +thoughts, has he any fixed law to guide them?' On Roscoe's <i>Leo X.</i> he +remarks how interesting and highly agreeable it is in style, and while +disclaiming any right to judge its fidelity and research, makes the odd +observation that it has in some degree subdued the leaven of its +author's unitarianism. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> writes occasional verses, including the +completion of 'some stanzas of December 1832 on “The Human Heart,” but I +am not impudent enough to call them by that name.'</p> + +<p>In the midst of days well filled by warm home feeling, reasonable +pleasure, and vigorous animation of intellect came the summons to +action. On November 18, a guest arrived with the astonishing news that +ministers were out. The king had dismissed the Melbourne government, +partly because he did not believe that Lord John Russell could take the +place of Althorp as leader of the Commons, partly because like many +cleverer judges he was sick of them, and partly because, as is perhaps +the case with more cabinets than the world supposes, the ministers were +sick of one another, and King William knew it. Mr. Gladstone in 1875<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> +described the dismissal of the whigs in 1834 as the indiscreet +proceeding of an honest and well-meaning man, which gave the +conservatives a momentary tenure of office without power, but provoked a +strong reaction in favour of the liberals, and greatly prolonged the +predominance which they were on the point of losing through the play of +natural causes.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> Sir Robert Peel was summoned in hot haste from Rome, +and after a journey of twelve days over alpine snows, eight nights out +of the twelve in a carriage, on December 9 he reached London, saw the +king and kissed hands as first lord of the treasury. Less than two years +before, he had said, 'I feel that between me and office there is a wider +gulf than there is perhaps between it and any other man in the House.'</p> + +<p class="center">PROPOSAL OF OFFICE</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone meanwhile at Fasque worked off some of his natural +excitement which he notes as invading even Sundays, by the composition +of a political tract. The tract has disappeared down the gulf of time. +December 11 was his father's seventieth birthday, 'his strength and +energy wonderful and giving promise of many more.' Within the week the +fated message from the new prime<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> minister arrived; the case is apt to +quicken the pulse of even the most serene of politicians, and we may be +sure that Mr. Gladstone with the keen vigour of five-and-twenty tingling +in his veins was something more or less than serene.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Dec. 17</i>.—Locke, and Russell's <i>Modern Europe</i> in the morning. +Went to meet the post, found a letter from Peel desiring to see me, +dated 13th. All haste; ready by 4—no place! Reluctantly deferred +till the morning. Wrote to Lincoln, Sir R. Peel, etc.... A game of +whist. This is a serious call. I got my father's advice to take +anything with work and responsibility. <i>18th</i>.—Off at 7.40 by +mail. I find it a privation to be unable to read in a coach. The +mind is distracted through the senses, and rambles. Nowhere is it +to me so incapable of continuous thought.... Newcastle at 9¼ <span class="smcap">P.M.</span> +<i>19th</i>.—Same again. At York at 6¼ <span class="smcap">A.M.</span> to 7. Ran to peep at the +minster and bore away a faint twilight image of its grandeur. +<i>20th</i>.—Arrived safe, thank God, and well at the Bull and Mouth 5¾ +<span class="smcap">A.M.</span> Albany soon. To bed for 2¼ hours. Went to Peel about eleven.</p></div> + +<p>He writes to his father the same day—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>My interview with him was not more than six or eight minutes, but +he was <i>extremely</i> kind. He told me his letter to me was among his +first; that he was prompted only by his own feelings towards me and +some more of that kind; that I might have a seat either at the +admiralty or treasury boards, but the latter was that which he +intended for me; that I should then be in immediate and +confidential communication with himself; and should thereby have +more insight into the general concerns of government; that there +was a person very anxious for the seat at the treasury, who would +go to the admiralty if I did not; but that he meant to go upon the +principle of putting every one to the post for which he thought +them most fit, so far as he could, and therefore preferred the +arrangement he had named. As he distinctly preferred the treasury +for me, and assigned such reasons for the preference, it appeared +to me that the question was quite settled, and I immediately closed +with his offer. I expressed my gratitude for the opinions of me +which he had expressed; and said I thought it my duty to mention +that the question of my re-election at Newark upon a single<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> +vacancy had never been put to my friends, and I asked whether I +should consider any part of what he had said as contingent upon the +answer I might receive from them. He said no, that he would +willingly take that risk. At first, he thought I had suspicions +about the Duke of Newcastle, and assured me that he would be much +pleased, of which I said I felt quite persuaded. This inquiry, +however, served the double purpose of discharging my own duty, and +drawing out something about the dissolution. He said to me, 'You +will address your constituents upon vacating your seat, and +acquaint them of your intention to solicit a renewal of their +confidence whenever they are called upon to exercise their +franchise, <i>which I tell you confidentially</i>,' he added, 'will be +very soon.' I would have given a hundred pounds to be then and +there in a position to express my hopes and fears! But it is, then, +you see <i>certain</i> that we are to have it, and that they will not +meet the present parliament. Most bitterly do I lament it.</p></div> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone at a later date (July 25, 1835) recorded that he had +reason to believe from a conversation with a tory friend who was in many +party secrets, that the Duke of Wellington set their candidates in +motion all over the country before Sir Robert's return. Active measures, +and of course expense, had so generally begun, so much impatience for +the dissolution had been excited, and the anticipations had been +permitted for so long a time to continue and to spread, as to preclude +the possibility of delay.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p> + +<p class="center">SECOND ELECTION AT NEWARK</p> + +<p>The appointment of the young member for Newark was noted at the time as +an innovation upon a semi-sacred social usage. Sir Robert Inglis said to +him, 'You are about the youngest lord who was ever placed at the +treasury on his own account, and not because he was his father's son.' +The prime minister, no doubt, rejoiced in finding for the public service +a young man of this high promise, sprung out of the same class, and bred +in the same academic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> traditions as his own.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> The youthful minister's +path was happily smoothed at Newark. This time blues and reds called a +grand truce, divided the honours, and returned Mr. Gladstone and +Sergeant Wilde without a contest. The question that excited most +interest in the canvass was the new poor law. Mr. Gladstone gave the +fallen ministers full credit for their measure. Most of their bills, he +said, were projected from a mere craving for popularity, but in the case +of the poor law they acted in defiance of the public press and many of +their own friends. On the other hand, he defended the new government as +the government of a truly reforming party, pointing to the commercial +changes made by Lord Liverpool's administration, to the corporation and +test Acts, and to catholic emancipation. Who could deny that these were +changes of magnitude settled in peaceful times by a parliament +unreformed? Who could deny that Sir Robert Peel had long been a +practical reformer of the law, and that the Duke of Wellington had +carried out great retrenchments? Let them then rally round throne and +altar, and resist the wild measures of the destructives. The red hero +was drawn through the town by six greys, with postilions in silk +jackets, amid the music of bands, the clash of bells, and the cheers of +the crowd. When the red procession met the blue, mutual congratulations +took the place of the old insult and defiance, and at five o'clock each +party sat down to its own feast. The reds drank toasts of a spirited, +loyal, and constitutional character, many admirable speeches were made +which the chronicler regrets that his limits will not allow him to +report,—regrets unshared by us,—and soon after eleven Mr. Gladstone +escaped. After a day at Clumber, he was speedily on his way to London. +'Off at 10½ <span class="smcap">P.M.</span> Missed the High Flyer at Tuxford, broke down in my +chaise on the way to Newark; no injury, thanks to God. Remained 2½ hours +alone; overtaken by the Wellington at 3½ <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span><span class="smcap">A.M.</span> Arrived in London (Jan. +8) before 8 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span> Good travelling.' On reckoning up his movements he +finds that, though not at all fond of travelling for the sake of going +from place to place, he has had in 1834 quite 2400 miles of it.</p> + +<p>Before the dissolution, Sir H. Hardinge had told him that the +conservatives would not be over 340 nor under 300, but by the middle of +the month things looked less prosperous. The reaction against the whigs +had not yet reached full flood, the royal dismissal of the +administration was unpopular, moderate people more especially in +Scotland could not stand a government where the Duke of Wellington, the +symbol of a benighted and stubborn toryism, was seen over Peel's +shoulder. 'At present,' Mr. Gladstone writes, 'the case is, even in my +view, hopeful; in that of most here it is more. And certainly, to have +this very privilege of entertaining a deliberate and reasonable hope, to +think that notwithstanding the ten pound clause, a moderate parliament +may be returned; in fine, to believe that we have now <i>some</i> prospect of +surviving the Reform bill without a bloody revolution, is to me as +surprising as delightful; it seems to me the greatest and most +providential mercy with which a nation was ever visited.... To-day I am +going to dine with the lord chancellor [Lyndhurst], having received a +card to that effect last night.'</p> + +<p>It was at this dinner that Mr. Gladstone had his first opportunity of +making a remarkable acquaintance. In his diary he mentions as present +three of the judges, the flower of the bench, as he supposes, but he +says not a word of the man of the strangest destiny there, the author of +<i>Vivian Grey</i>. Disraeli himself, in a letter to his sister, names 'young +Gladstone,' and others, but condemns the feast as rather dull, and +declares that a swan very white and tender, and stuffed with truffles, +was the best company at the table. What Mr. Gladstone carried away in +his memory was a sage lesson of Lyndhurst's, by which the two men of +genius at his table were in time to show themselves extremely competent +to profit,—'Never defend yourself before a popular assemblage, except +with and by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> retorting the attack; the hearers, in the pleasure which +the assault gives them, will forget the previous charge.' As Disraeli +himself put it afterwards, <i>Never complain and never explain.</i></p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">CHANGE OF OFFICE</p> + +<p>One afternoon, a few days later, while he was grappling at the treasury +with a file of papers on the mysteries of superannuation, Mr. Gladstone +was again summoned by the prime minister, and again (Jan. 26) he writes +to his father:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I have had an important interview with Sir R. Peel, the result of +which is that I am to be under-secretary for the colonies. I will +give you a hurried and imperfect sketch of the conversation. He +began by saying he was about to make a great sacrifice both of his +own feelings and convenience, but that what he had to say he hoped +would be gratifying to me, as a mark of his confidence and regard. +'I am going to propose to you, Gladstone, that you should be, for +you know Wortley has lost his election, under-secretary of state +for the colonies, and I give you my word that I do not know six +offices which are at this moment of greater importance than that to +which is attached the representation of the colonial department in +the House of Commons, at a period when so many questions of +importance are in agitation.' I expressed as well as I could, and +indeed it was but ill, my unfeigned and deep sense of his kindness, +my hesitation to form any opinion of my own competency for the +office, and at the same time my general desire not to shrink from +any responsibility which he might think proper to lay upon me. He +said that was the right and manly view to take.... He adverted to +my connection with the West Indies as likely to give satisfaction +to persons dependent on those colonies, and thought that others +would not be displeased. In short, I cannot go through it all, but +I can only say that if I had always heard of him that he was the +warmest and freest person of all living in the expression of his +feelings, such description would have been fully borne out by his +demeanour to me. When I came away he took my hand and said, '<i>Well, +God bless you, wherever you are.</i>'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p></div> + +<p>From Sir Robert the new under-secretary made his way, in fear and +trembling, to his new chief, Lord Aberdeen.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Distinction of itself naturally and properly rather alarms the +young. I had heard of his high character; but I had also heard of +him as a man of cold manners, and close and even haughty reserve. +It was dark when I entered his room, so that I saw his figure +rather than his countenance. I do not recollect the matter of the +conversation, but I well remember that, before I had been three +minutes with him, all my apprehensions had melted away like snow in +the sun. I came away from that interview conscious indeed of his +dignity, but of a dignity so tempered by a peculiar purity and +gentleness, and so associated with impressions of his kindness and +even friendship, that I believe I thought more about the wonder of +his being at that time so misunderstood by the outer world, than +about the new duties and responsibilities of my office.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p></div> + +<p>Time only deepened these impressions. It is not hard for a great party +chief to win the affection and regard of his junior colleague, and where +good fortune has brought together a congenial pair, no friendship +outside the home can be more valuable, more delightful, alike to veteran +and to tiro. Of all the host of famous or considerable men with whom he +was to come into official and other relations, none ever, as we shall +see, held the peculiar place in Mr. Gladstone's esteem and reverence of +the two statesmen under whose auspices he now first entered the +enchanted circle of public office. The promotion was a remarkable +stride. He was only five-and-twenty, his parliamentary existence had +barely covered two years, and he was wholly without powerful family +connection. 'You are aware,' Peel wrote to John Gladstone, 'of the +sacrifice I have made of personal feeling to public duty, in placing +your son in one of the most important offices—that of representative of +the colonial department in the House of Commons, and thus relinquishing +his valuable aid in my own immediate department. Wherever he may be +placed, he is sure to distinguish himself.'<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">POSITION OF GOVERNMENT</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone's first spell of office was little more than momentary. +The liberal majority, as has so often happened, was composite, but Peel +can hardly have supposed that the sections of which it was made up would +fail to coalesce, and coalesce pretty soon, for the irresistible object +of ejecting ministers who were liked by none of them, and through whose +repulse they could strike an avenging blow against the king. Ardent +subalterns like Mr. Gladstone took more vehement views. The majority at +once beat the government (supported by the group of Stanleyites, +fifty-three strong) in the contest for the Speaker's chair. Other +repulses followed. 'The division,' writes Mr. Gladstone to his father, +with the honourable warmth of the young party man, 'I need not say was a +disappointment to me; but it must have been much more so to those who +have ever thought well of the parliament. Our party mustered splendidly. +Some few, but very, very few, of the others appear to have kept away +through a sense of decency; they had not virtue enough to vote for the +man whom they knew to be incomparably the best, and against whom they +had no charge to bring. No more shameful act I think has been done by a +British House of Commons.'</p> + +<p>Not many days after fervently deprecating a general resignation, an +ill-omened purpose of this very course actually flitted across the mind +of the young under-secretary himself. A scheme was on the anvil for the +education of the blacks in the West Indies, and a sudden apprehension +startled Mr. Gladstone, that his chief might devote public funds to all +varieties of denominational religious teaching. Any plan of that kind +would be utterly opposed to what with him, as we shall soon discover, +was then a fundamental principle of national polity. Happily the fatal +leap was not needed, but if either small men like the government whips, +or great men like Peel and Aberdeen, could have known what was passing, +they would have shaken grave heads over this spirit of unseasonable +scruple at the very start of the race in a brilliant man with all his +life before him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Feb. 4 or 5</i>.—Charles Canning told me Peel had offered him the +vacant lordship of the treasury, through his mother. They were, he +said, very much gratified with the manner in which it had been +done, though the offer was declined, upon the ground stated in the +reply, that though he did not anticipate any discrepancy in +political sentiments to separate him from the present government, +yet he should prefer in some sense deserving an official station by +parliamentary conduct.... Peel's letter was written at some length, +very friendly, without any statesmanlike reserve or sensitive +attention to nicety of style. In the last paragraph it spoke with +amiable embarrassment of Mr. Canning; stating that his 'respect, +regard, and admiration' (I think even), apparently interrupted by +circumstances, continued fresh and vivid, and that those very +circumstances made him more desirous of thus publicly testifying +his real sentiments.</p> + +<p><i>March 30</i>.—Wished to speak on Irish church. No opportunity. Wrote +on it. A noble-minded speech from Sir J. Graham. <i>March 31</i>.—Spoke +on the Irish church—under forty minutes. I cannot help here +recording that this matter of speaking is really my strongest +religious exercise. On all occasions, and to-day especially, was +forced upon me the humiliating sense of my inability to exercise my +reason in the face of the H. of C., and of the necessity of my +utterly failing, unless God gave me the strength and language. It +was after all a poor performance, but would have been poorer had He +never been in my thoughts as a present and powerful aid. But this +is what I am as yet totally incompetent to effect—to realise, in +speaking, anything, however small, which at all satisfies my mind. +Debating seems to me less difficult, though unattained. But to hold +in serene contemplative action the mental faculties in the turbid +excitement of debate, so as to see truth clearly and set it forth +such as it is, this I cannot attain to.</p> + +<p>As regards my speech in the Irish church debate, he tells his +father (April 2), it was received by the House, and has been +estimated, in a manner extremely gratifying to me. As regards +satisfaction to myself in the manner of its execution, I cannot say +so much. Backed by a numerous and warm-hearted party, and strong in +the consciousness of a good cause, I did not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>find it difficult to +grapple with the more popular parts of the question; but I fell +miserably short of my desires in touching upon the principles which +the discussion involved, and I am sure that it must be long before +I am enabled in any reasonable sense to be a speaker according even +to the conception which I have formed in my own mind.</p></div> + +<p>A few days later, he received the congratulations of a royal +personage:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>In the evening, dining at Lord Salisbury's, I was introduced to the +Duke of Cumberland, who was pleased to express himself favourably +of my speech. He is fond of conversation, and the common reputation +which he bears of including in his conversation many oaths, appears +to be but too true. Yet he said he had made a point of sending his +son to George the Fourth's funeral, thinking it an excellent +advantage for a boy to receive the impression which such a scene +was calculated to convey. The duke made many acute remarks, and +was, I should say, most remarkably unaffected and kind. These are +fine social qualities for a prince, though, of course, not the most +important—'My dear Sir,' and thumps on the shoulder after a ten +minutes' acquaintance. He spoke broadly and freely—much on the +disappearance of the bishops' wigs, which he said had done more +harm to the church than anything else!</p></div> + +<p class="center">MINISTERS DEFEATED</p> + +<p>On the same night the catastrophe happened. After a protracted and +complex struggle Lord John Russell's proposal for the appropriation of +the surplus revenues of the Irish church was carried against ministers. +The following day Peel announced his resignation.</p> + +<p>Though his official work had been unimportant, Mr. Gladstone had left an +excellent impression behind him among the permanent men. When he first +appeared in the office, Henry Taylor said, 'I rather like Gladstone, but +he is said to have more of the devil in him than appears.' A few weeks +were enough to show him that 'Gladstone was far the most considerable of +the rising generation, having besides his abilities an excellent +disposition and great strength of character.' James Stephen thought well +of him, but doubted if he had pugnacity enough for public life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p> + +<p>A few days later Mr. Gladstone dined with an official party at the +fallen minister's:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Sir R. Peel made a very nice speech on Lincoln's proposing and our +drinking his health. The following is a slight and bad sketch:—'I +really can hardly call you gentlemen alone. I would rather address +you as my warm and attached friends in whom I have the fullest +confidence, and with whom it has afforded me the greatest +satisfaction to be associated during the struggle which has just +been brought to a close. In undertaking the government, from the +first I have never expected to succeed; still it was my conviction +that good might be done, and I trust that good has been effected. I +believe we have shown that even if a conservative government be not +strong enough to carry on the public affairs of this country, at +least we are so strong that we ought to be able to prevent any +other government from doing any serious mischief to its +institutions. We meet now as we met at the beginning of the +session, then perhaps in somewhat finer dresses, but not, I am +sure, with kindlier feelings towards each other.'</p></div> + +<p>The rest of the session Mr. Gladstone passed in his usual pursuits, +reading all sorts of books, from the correspondence of Leibnitz with +Bossuet, and Alexander Knox's <i>Remains</i>, down to Rousseau's +<i>Confessions</i>. As to the last of these he scarcely knew whether to read +on or to throw it aside, and, in fact, he seems only to have persevered +with that strange romance of a wandering soul for a day or two. Besides +promiscuous reading, he performed some scribbling, including a sonnet, +recorded in his diary with notes of wondering exclamation. His family +were in London for most of May, his mother in bad health; no other +engagement ever interrupted his sedulous attendance on her every day, +reading the Bible to her, and telling the news about levees and +drawing-rooms, a great dinner at Sir Robert Peel's, and all the rest of +his business and recreations. In the House he did little between the +fall of the ministry and the close of the session. He once wished to +speak, but was shut out by the length of other speeches. 'So,' he +moralises, 'I had two useful lessons instead of one. For the sense of +helplessness which always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> possesses me in prospect of a speech is one +very useful lesson; and being disappointed after having attained some +due state of excitement and anticipation is another.'</p> + +<p class="center">SPEECH AT NEWARK</p> + +<p>In June at a feast at Newark, which, terrible to relate, lasted from +four o'clock to eleven, Mr. Gladstone gave them nearly an hour, not to +mention divers minor speeches. His father 'expressed himself with +beautiful and affectionate truth of feeling, and the party sympathised.' +His own speech deserves to be noted as indicating the political +geography for three or four years to come. The standing dish of the tory +opposition of the period was highly-spiced reproach of the ministers for +living on the support of O'Connell, and Newark was regaled with an ample +meal. Mr. Gladstone would not enter into a detail of the exploits, +character, political opinions of that Irish gentleman; he would rather +say what he thought of him in his presence than in his absence, because +he could unfortunately say nothing of him but what was bad. 'This is not +the first period in English history,' Mr. Gladstone noted down at that +time, 'in which a government has leaned on the Roman catholic interest +in Ireland for support. Under the administration of Strafford and at the +time of the Scotch revolt, Charles I. was enthusiastically supported by +the recusants of the sister isle, and what was the effect? The religious +sympathies of the people were touched then and they were so now with the +same consequence, in the gradual decline of the party to whom the +suspicion attaches in popular fervour and estimation.' Half a century +later he may have recalled this early fruit of historic observation. +Meanwhile, in his Newark speech, he denounced the government for seeking +to undo the mischief of the Irish alliance by systematic agitation. But +it was upon the church question, far deeper and more vital than +municipal corporations, that the fate of the government should be +decided. Then followed a vindication of the church in Ireland. 'The +protestant faith is held good for us, and <i>what is good for us is also +good for the population of Ireland</i>.' That most disastrous of all our +false commonplaces was received at Newark, as it has been received so +many hundreds of times ever since all over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> England, with loud and +long-continued cheering, to be invariably followed in after act and +event with loud and long-continued groaning.<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> Four years later Mr. +Gladstone heard words from Lord John Russell on this point, that began +to change his mind. 'Often do I think,' he wrote to Lord Russell in +1870, 'of a saying of yours more than thirty years back which struck me +ineffaceably at the time. You said: "The true key to our Irish debates +was this: that it was not properly borne in mind that as England is +inhabited by Englishmen, and Scotland by Scotchmen, so Ireland is +inhabited by Irishmen."'<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> <i>Gleanings</i>, i. p. 38.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> In another place he describes it as an action done 'with no sort of +reason' (<i>Ib.</i> p. 78). But the Melbourne papers, published in 1890, pp. +219-221 and 225, indicate that Melbourne had spontaneously given the +king good reasons for cashiering him and his colleagues.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> Lord Palmerston doubted (Nov. 25, 1834) whether Peel would +dissolve. 'I think his own bias will rather be to abide by the decision +of this House of Commons, and try to propitiate it by great professions +of reform. The effect of a dissolution must be injurious to the +principles that he professes.... But he may be overborne by the violent +people of his own party whom he will not be able to control.' Ashley's +<i>Life of Palmerston</i> (1879), i. p. 313.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> Greville, on the other hand, grumbled at Peel, for taking high +birth and connections as substitutes for other qualities, because he +made Sidney Herbert secretary at the board of control, instead of making +him a lord of the treasury, and sending 'Gladstone, who is a very clever +man,' to the other and more responsible post.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> Lord Stanmore's <i>Earl of Aberdeen</i> (1893), p. iii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> Parker's <i>Peel</i>, ii. p. 267.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> O'Connell paid Newark a short visit in 1836—spoke against Mr. +Gladstone for an hour in the open air, and then left the town, both he +and it much as they had been before his arrival.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> Walpole, <i>Life of Lord John Russell</i>, ii. p. 455.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIICh_III" id="BkIICh_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">PROGRESS IN PUBLIC LIFE</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1835-1838</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Les hommes en tout ne s'éclairent que par le tâtonnement de +l'expérience. Les plus grands génies sont eux-mêmes entraînés par +leur siècle.—<span class="smcap">Turgot</span>.</p> + +<p>Men are only enlightened by feeling their way through experience. +The greatest geniuses are themselves drawn along by their age.</p></div><br /> + +<p>In September (1835), after long suffering, his mother died amid tender +care and mournful regrets. Her youngest son was a devoted nurse; her +loss struck him keenly, but with a sense full of the consolations of his +faith. To Gaskell he writes: 'How deeply and thoroughly her character +was imbued with love; with what strong and searching processes of bodily +affliction she was assimilated in mind and heart to her Redeemer; how +above all other things she sighed for the advancement of His kingdom on +earth; how few mortals suffered more pain, or more faithfully recognised +it as one of the instruments by which God is pleased to forward that +restoring process for which we are placed on earth.'</p> + +<p>Then the world resumed its course for him, and things fell into their +wonted ways of indefatigable study. His scheme for week-days included +Blackstone, Mackintosh, Aristotle's <i>Politics</i>—'a book of immense value +for all governors and public men'—Dante's <i>Purgatorio</i>, Spanish +grammar, Tocqueville, Fox's <i>James II.</i>, by which he was disappointed, +not seeing such an acuteness in extracting and exhibiting the principles +that govern from beneath the actions of men and parties, nor such a +grasp of generalisation, nor such a faculty of separating minute from +material particulars, nor such an abstraction from a debater's modes of +thought and forms of expression, as he should have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> hoped. To these he +added as he went along the <i>Génie du Christianisme</i>, Bolingbroke, +Bacon's <i>Essays</i>, <i>Don Quixote</i>, the <i>Annals</i> of Tacitus, Le Bas' <i>Life +of Laud</i> ('somewhat too Laudish, though right <i>au fond</i>'; unlike +Lawson's <i>Laud</i>, 'a most intemperate book, the foam swallows up all the +facts'), <i>Childe Harold</i>, <i>Jerusalem Delivered</i> ('beautiful in its kind, +but how can its author be placed in the same category of genius as +Dante?'), Pollok's <i>Course of Time</i> ('much talent, little culture, +insufficient power to digest and construct his subject or his +versification; his politics radical, his religious sentiments generally +sound, though perhaps hard').</p> + +<p>In the evenings he read aloud to his father the <i>Faery Queen</i> and +Shakespeare. On Sundays he read Chillingworth and Jewel, and, above all, +he dug and delved in St. Augustine. He drew a sketch of a project +touching Peculiarities in Religion. For several days he was writing +something on politics. Then an outline or an essay on our colonial +system. For he was no reader of the lounging, sauntering, passively +receptive species; he went forward in a sedulous process of import and +export, a mind actively at work on all the topics that passed before it.</p> + +<p>At the beginning of the year 1836 he was invited to pay a visit to +Drayton, where he found only Lord Harrowby—a link with the great men of +an earlier generation, for he had acted as Pitt's second in the duel +with Tierney, and had been foreign secretary in Pitt's administration of +1804; might have been prime minister in 1827 if he had liked; and he +headed the Waverers who secured the passing of the Reform bill by the +Lords. Other guests followed, the host rather contracting in freedom of +conversation as the party expanded.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p> + +<p class="center">VISIT TO DRAYTON</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I cannot record anything continuous, Mr. Gladstone writes in his +memorandum of the visit, but commit to paper several opinions and +expressions of Sir R. Peel, which bore upon interesting and +practical questions. That Fox was not a man of settled, reasoned, +political principle. Lord Harrowby added that he was thrown <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>into +opposition and whiggism by the insult of Lord North. That his own +doctrines, both as originally declared, and as resumed when finally +in office, were of a highly toned spirit of government. That +Brougham was the most <i>powerful</i> man he had ever known in the H. of +C.; that no one had ever fallen so fast and so far. That the +political difficulties of England might be susceptible of cure, and +were not appalling; but that the state of Ireland was to all +appearance hopeless. That there the great difficulty lay in +procuring the ordinary administration of justice; that the very +institution of juries supposed a common interest of the juror and +the state, a condition not fulfilled in the present instance; that +it was quite unfit for the present state of society in Ireland. +Lord Harrowby thought that a strong conservative government might +still quell agitation. And Sir B. Peel said Stanley had told him +that the whig government were on the point of succeeding in putting +a stop to the resistance to payment of tithe, when Lord Althorp, +alarmed at the expense already incurred, wrote to stop its +collection by the military. We should probably live to see the +independence of Poland established.</p> + +<p>The Duke of Wellington and others arrived later in the day. It was +pleasing to see the deference with which he was received as he +entered the library; at the sound of his name everybody rose; he is +addressed by all with a respectful manner. He met Peel most +cordially, and seized both Lady Peel's hands. I now recollect that +it was with <i>glee</i> Sir R. Peel said to me on Monday, 'I am glad to +say you will meet the duke here,' which had reference, I doubt not, +partly to the anticipated pleasure of seeing him, partly to the +dissipation of unworthy suspicions. He reported that government are +still labouring at a church measure without appropriation. <i>Jan. +20</i>.—The Duke of Wellington appears to speak little; and never for +speaking's sake, but only to convey an idea, commonly worth +conveying. He receives remarks made to him very frequently with no +more than 'Ha,' a convenient, suspensive expression, which +acknowledges the arrival of the observation and no more. Of the two +days which he spent here he hunted on Thursday, shot on Friday, and +to-day travelled to Strathfieldsay, more, I believe, than 100 +miles, to entertain a party of friends to dinner. With this bodily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> +exertion he mixes at 66 or 67 a constant attention to business. Sir +R. Peel mentioned to me to-night a very remarkable example of his +[the duke's] perhaps excessive precision. Whenever he signs a draft +on Coutts's, he addresses to them at the same time a note apprising +them that he has done so. This perfect facility of transition from +one class of occupation to their opposites, and their habitual +intermixture without any apparent encroachments on either side, is, +I think, a very remarkable evidence of self-command, and a mental +power of singular utility. Sir Robert is also, I conceive, a +thrifty dealer with his time, but in a man of his age [Peel now 48] +this is less beyond expectation.</p></div> + +<p>He said good-bye on the last night with regret. In the midst of the +great company he found time to read Bossuet on Variations, remarking +rather oddly, 'some of Bossuet's theology seems to me very good.'</p> + +<p class="center">MIXED AVOCATIONS</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>On Jan. 30th is the entry of his journey from Liverpool, '1 to 4 to +Hawarden Castle.' [I suppose his first visit to his future home.] +Got to Chester (Feb. 1) five minutes after the mail had started. +Got on by Albion. Outside all night; frost; rain; arrived at Albany +11¾. <i>Feb. 4th.</i>—Session opens. Voted in 243-284. A good +opportunity for speaking, but in my weakness did not use it. <i>Feb. +8th</i>.—Stanley made a noble speech. Voted in 243 to 307 for +abolition of Irish corporations. Pendulums and Nothingarians all +against us. <i>Sunday</i>.—Wrote on Hypocrisy. On Worship. Attempted to +explain this to the servants at night. Newman's Sermons and J. +Taylor. Trench's Poems. <i>March 2nd</i>.—Read to my deep sorrow of +Anstice's death on Monday. His friends, his young widow, the world +can spare him ill; so says at least the flesh. Stapleton. +<i>Paradiso</i>, <span class="smcap">VII</span>. <span class="smcap">VIII</span>. Calls. Rode. Wrote. Dined at Lord +Ashbuxton's. House. Statistical Society's <i>Proceedings</i>. Verses on +Anstice's death. <i>March 22nd</i>.—House 5¼-9¾. Spoke 50 minutes [on +negro apprenticeship; see p. 145]; kindly heard, and I should thank +God for being made able to speak even thus indifferently.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> +<i>March 23rd</i>.... Late, having been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>awake last night till between +4 and 5, as usual after speaking. How useful to make us feel the +habitual unremembered blessing of sound sleep.... <i>April +7th</i>.—<i>Gerus. Lib</i>. c. xi.... Dr. Pusey here from 12 to 3 about +church building. Rode. At night 11 to 2 perusing Henry Taylor's +proofs of <i>The Statesman</i>, and writing notes on it, presumptuous +enough.... <i>Gerus</i>. xii. Re-perused Taylor's sheets. A batch of +calls. Wrote letters. Bossuet. Dined at Henry Taylor's, a keen +intellectual exercise, and thus a place of danger, especially as it +is exercise seen.... <i>9th</i>.—Spedding at breakfast. <i>Gerus</i>. xiii. +Finished Locke on Understanding. It appears to me on the whole a +much overrated, though, in some respects, a very useful book.... +<i>May 16th</i>.—Mr. Wordsworth, H. Taylor, and Doyle to breakfast. +Sat till 12¾. Conversation on Shelley, Trench, Tennyson; +travelling, copyright, etc. <i>30th</i>.—Milnes, Blakesley, Taylor, +Cole, to breakfast. Church meeting at Archbishop of Armagh's. +Ancient music rehearsal. House 6-8¼ and 9¼-12. <i>June 1st</i>.—Read +Wordsworth.... House 5-12. Spoke about 45 minutes [on Tithes and +Church (Ireland) bill]. I had this pleasure in my speech, that I +never rose more intent upon telling what I believe to be royal +truth; though I did it very ill, and further than ever below the +idea which I would nevertheless hold before my mind. <i>3rd</i>.—West +Indies Committee 1-4. Finished writing out my speech and sent it. +Read Wordsworth.... Saw Sir R. Peel. Dined at Sergeant Talfourd's +to meet Wordsworth.... <i>5th</i>.—St. James's, Communion. Dined at +Lincoln's Inn. St. Sepulchre's. Wrote. Jer. Taylor, Newman. Began +Nicole's <i>Préjugés</i>. Arnold aloud. <i>8th</i>.—Wordsworth, since he has +been in town, has breakfasted twice and dined once with me. +Intercourse with him is, upon the whole, extremely pleasing. I was +sorry to hear Sydney Smith say that he did not see very much in +him, nor greatly admire his poems. He even adverted to the London +Sonnet as ridiculous. Sheil thought this of the line:</p> + +<p class="center">'Dear God! the very houses seem asleep.'</p> + +<p>I ventured to call his attention to that which followed as carrying +out the idea:</p> + +<p class="center">'And all that mighty heart is lying still.'</p> + +<p>Of which I may say <i>omne tulit punctum</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p> + +<p>Wordsworth came in to breakfast the other day before his time. I +asked him to excuse me while I had my servant to prayers; but he +expressed a <i>hearty</i> wish to be present, which was delightful. He +has laboured long; if for himself, yet more for men, and over all I +trust for God. Will he ever be the bearer of evil thoughts to any +mind? Glory is gathering round his later years on earth, and his +later works especially indicate the spiritual ripening of his noble +soul. I heard but few of his opinions; but these are some He was +charmed with Trench's poems; liked Alford; thought Shelley had the +greatest native powers in poetry of all the men of this age. In +reading <i>Die Braut von Korinth</i> translated, was more horrified than +enchained, or rather altogether the first. Wondered how any one +could translate it or the Faust, but spoke as knowing the original. +Thought little of Murillo as to the mind of painting; said he could +not have painted Paul Veronese's 'Marriage of Cana.' Considered +that old age in great measure disqualified him by its rigid fixity +of habits from judging of the works of young poets—I must say that +he was here even over liberal in self-depreciation. He defended the +make of the steamboat as more poetical than otherwise to the eye +(see Sonnets).<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> Thought Coleridge admired Ossian only in youth, +and himself admired the spirit which Macpherson <i>professes</i> to +embody.</p> + +<p>Sergeant Talfourd dined here to meet Wordsworth yesterday. +Wordsworth is vehement against Byron. Saw in Shelley the lowest +form of irreligion, but a later progress towards better things. +Named the discrepancy between his creed and his imagination as the +marring idea of his works, in which description I could not concur. +Spoke of the <i>entire</i> revolution in his own poetical taste. We were +agreed that a man's personal character ought to be the basis of his +politics. He quoted his sonnet on the contested election [what +sonnet is this?], from which I ventured to differ as regards its +assuming nutriment for the heart to be inherent in politics. He +described to me his views; that the Reform Act had, as it were, +brought out too prominently a particular muscle of the national +frame: the strength of the towns; that the cure was to be found in +a large further enfran<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>chisement, I fancy, of the country chiefly; +that you would thus extend the base of your pyramid and so give it +strength. He wished the old institutions of the country preserved, +and thought this the way to preserve them. He thought the political +franchise upon the whole a good to the mass—regard being had to +the state of human nature; against me. <i>11th</i>.—Read Browning's +<i>Paracelsus</i>. Went to Richmond to dine with the Gaskells. A two +hours' walk home at night. <i>16th</i>.—Wrote two sonnets. Finished and +wrote out <i>Brant von Korinth</i>. Shall I ever dare to make out a +counterpart? <i>21st</i>.—Breakfast at Mr. Hallam's to meet Mr. +Wordsworth and Mr. Rogers. Wordsworth spoke much and justly about +copyright. Conversation with Talfourd in the evening, partly about +that subject. Began something on egotism. <i>24th</i>.—Breakfast with +Mr. Rogers, Mr. Wordsworth only there. Very agreeable. Rogers +produced an American poem, the death of Bozzaris, which Wordsworth +proposed that I should read to them: of course I declined, so even +did Rogers. But Wordsworth read it through in good taste, and doing +it justice.</p></div> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Fasque</i> in time for Aug. 12; out on the hill, but unlucky with a +sprained ankle, and obliged to give up early. <i>Aug. 15th</i>.—Wrote +(long) to Dr. Chalmers. Orator. <i>Sept. 20th</i>.—Milner, finished +Vol. ii. Cic. <i>Acad.</i> Wraxall. Began Goethe's <i>Iphigenie</i>. Wrote. +<i>Oct. 7th</i>.—Milner. Wraxall. A dinner-party. Wrote out a sketch +for an essay on Justification. Singing, whist, shooting. Copied a +paper for my father. <i>12th</i>.—A day on the hill for roe. 14 guns. +[To Liverpool for public dinner at the Amphitheatre.] <i>18th</i>.—Most +kindly heard. Canning's début everything that could be desired. I +thought I spoke 35 minutes, but afterwards found it was 55. Read +<i>Marco Visconti</i>. <i>21st</i>.—Operative dinner at Amphitheatre. Spoke +perhaps 16 or 18 minutes. <i>28th</i>.—<i>Haddo</i> [Lord Aberdeen's]. +Finished <i>Marco Visconti</i>, a long bout, but I could not let it go. +Buckland's opening chapters. <i>On the whole</i> satisfactory. +<i>30th</i>.—Lord Aberdeen read prayers in the evening with simple and +earnest pathos. <i>Nov. 10th</i>.—<i>Wilhehm Meister</i>, Book i., and +there I mean to leave it, unless I hear a better report of the +succeeding one than I could make of the first. Next day, +recommenced with great anticipations of delight the <i>Divina +Commedia</i>. <i>13th</i>.—Finished Nicole <i>De l'Unité</i>. August. <i>De Civ</i>. +[Every day at this time.]<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> <i>19th</i>.—Began Cicero's <i>Tusculan +Questions</i>.... <i>25th</i>.—Aug. <i>Civ. Dei.</i> I am now in Book xiv. Cic. +<i>Tusc</i>. finished. Book ii. <i>Purgatorio</i>, iii.-v. A dose of whist. +Still snow and rain. <i>26th.</i>—Aug. Cicero. Billiards. <i>Purgatorio</i>, +vi.-viii. Began Dryden's <i>Fables</i>. My eyes are not in their best +plight, and I am obliged to consider type a little. <i>Jan. 3rd</i>, +1837.—Breakfasted with Dr. Chalmers. How kind my father is in +small matters as well as great—thoughtfully sending carriage. +<i>13th, Glasgow</i>.—The pavilion astonishing, and the whole effect +very grand. Near 3500. Sir E. Peel spoke 1 h. 55 m. Explicit and +bold; it was a very great effort. I kept within 15 min.—quite long +enough. <i>14th</i>.—7½-5½ mail to Carlisle. On all night, <i>15th</i>. +Wetherby at 7½. Leeds 10½. Church there. Walked over to Wakefield. +Church there. Evening at Thornes. [Milnes Gaskell's.] <i>17th</i>.—To +Newark. Very good meeting. Spoke ¾ hour.</p></div> + +<p>In this speech, after the regulation denunciation of the reckless +wickedness of O'Connell, he set about demonstrating the change that had +taken place in the character of public feeling during the last few +years. He pointed out that at the dissolution of 1831 the conservative +members of the House of Commons amounted perhaps to 50. In 1835 they saw +this small dispirited band grow into a resolute and formidable phalanx +of 300. The cry was: 'Resolute attachment to the institutions of the +country.' One passage in the speech is of interest in the history of his +attitude on toleration. Sir William Moles worth had been invited to come +forward as candidate for the representation of Leeds. A report spread +that Sir William was not a believer in the Christian articles of faith. +Somebody wrote to Molesworth, to know if this was true. He answered, +that the question whether he was a believer in the Christian religion +was one that no man of liberal principles ought to propose to another, +or could propose without being guilty of a dereliction of duty. On this +incident, Mr. Gladstone said that he would ask, 'Is it not a time for +serious reflection among moderate and candid men of all parties, when +such a question was actually thought impertinent interference? Surely +they would say with him, that men who have no belief in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> divine +revelation are not the men to govern this nation, be they whigs or +radicals.' Long, extraordinary, and not inglorious, was the ascent from +such a position as this, to the principles so nobly vindicated in the +speech on the Affirmation bill in 1883.</p> + +<p class="center">PARTY COUNCILS</p> + +<p>At the end of January he is back in London, arranging books and papers +and making a little daylight in his chaos. 'What useful advice might a +man who has been <i>buon pezzo</i> in parliament give to one going into it, +on this mechanical portion of his business.' The entries for 1837 are +none of them especially interesting. Every day in the midst of full +parliamentary work, social engagements, and public duties outside of the +House of Commons, he was elaborating the treatise on the relations of +church and state, of which we shall see more in our following chapter. +At the beginning of the session he went to a dinner at Peel's, at which +Lord Stanley and some of his friends were present—a circumstance noted +as a sign of the impending fusion between the whig seceders of 1834 and +the conservative party. Sir Robert seems to have gone on extending his +confidence in him.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I visited Sir Robert Peel (March 4th) about the Canada question, +and again by appointment on the 6th, with Lord Aberdeen. On the +former day he said, 'Is there anyone else to invite?' I suggested +Lord Stanley. He said, perhaps he might be inclined to take a +separate view. But in the interval he had apparently thought +otherwise. For on Monday he read to Lord Aberdeen and myself a +letter from Stanley written with the utmost frankness and in a tone +of political intimacy, saying that an engagement as chairman of a +committee at the House would prevent his meeting us. The business +of the day was discussed in conversation, and it was agreed to be +quite impossible to support the resolution on the legislative +council in its existing terms, without at least a protest. Peel +made the following remark: 'You have got another Ireland growing up +in every colony you possess.'</p></div> + +<p>A week later he was shocked by the death of Lady Canning. 'Breakfast +with Gaskell' (March 23rd), 'and thence to Lady Canning's funeral in +Westminster Abbey. We were but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> eleven in attendance. Her coffin was +laid on that of her illustrious husband. Canning showed a deep but manly +sorrow. May we live as by the side of a grave and looking in.'</p> + +<p>In the same month he spoke on Canada (March 8th) 'with insufficient +possession of the subject,' and a week later on church rates, for an +hour or more, 'with more success than the matter or manner deserved.' He +finished his translation of the <i>Bride of Corinth</i>, and the episode of +Ugolino from Dante, and read Eckermann's <i>Conversations with Goethe</i>, to +which he gives the too commonplace praise of being very interesting. He +learned Manzoni's noble ode on the death of Napoleon, of which he +by-and-by made a noble translation; this by way of sparing his eyes, and +Italian poetry not taking him nearly half the time of any other to +commit to memory. He found a 'beautiful and powerful production' in +Channing's letter to Clay, and he made the acquaintance of Southey, 'in +appearance benignant, melancholy, and intellectual.'</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1837</p> + +<p>In June King William IV. died, 'leaving a perilous legacy to his +successor.' A month later (July 14) Mr. Gladstone went up with the +Oxford address, and this was, I suppose, the first occasion on which he +was called to present himself before the Queen, with whose long reign +his own future career and fame were destined to be so closely and so +conspicuously associated. According to the old law prescribing a +dissolution of parliament within six months of the demise of the crown, +Mr. Gladstone was soon in the thick of a general election. By July 17th +he was at Newark, canvassing, speaking, hand-shaking, and in lucid +intervals reading Filicaja. He found a very strong, angry, and general +sentiment, not against the principle of the poor law as regards the +able-bodied, but against the regulations for separating man and wife, +and sending the old compulsorily to the workhouse, with others of a like +nature. With the disapprobation on these heads he in great part +concurred. There was to be no contest, but arrangements of this kind +still leave room for some anxiety, and in Mr. Gladstone's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> case a +singular thing happened. Two days after his arrival at Newark he was +followed by a body of gentlemen from Manchester, with an earnest +invitation that he would be a candidate for that great town. He declined +the invitation, absolutely as he supposed, but the Manchester tories +nominated him notwithstanding. They assured the electors that he was the +most promising young statesman of the day. The whigs on the other hand +vowed that he was an insulter of dissent, a bigot of such dark hue as to +wish to subject even the poor negroes of his father's estates to the +slavery of a dominant church, a man who owed whatever wealth and +consequence his family possessed to the crime of holding his +fellow-creatures in bondage, a man who, though honest and consistent, +was a member of that small ultra-tory minority which followed the Duke +of Cumberland. When the votes were counted, Mr. Gladstone was at the +bottom of the poll, with a majority of many hundreds against him.<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a></p> + +<p>Meantime he was already member for Newark. His own election was no +sooner over than he caught the last vacant place on the mail to +Carlisle, whence he hastened to the aid of his father's patriotic +labours as candidate for Dundee. Here he worked hard at canvassing and +meetings, often pelted with mud and stones, but encouraged by friends +more buoyant than the event justified.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Aug. 1st</i>.—My father beaten after all, our promised votes in +many cases going back or going against us.... Two hundred promises +broken. Poll closed at Parnell, 666; Gladstone, 381. It is not in +human approbation that the reward of right action is to be sought. +Left at 4½ amid the hisses of the crowd. Perth at 7¼. Left at one +in the morning for Glasgow. <i>2nd</i>.—Glasgow 8½. Steamer at 11. +Breeze; miserably sick; deck all night. <i>3rd</i>.—Arrived at 11½; +(Liverpool), very sore. <i>4th</i>.—Out at 8½ to vote for S. +Lancashire. Acted as representative in the booth half the day. +Results of election excellent. <i>5th</i>.—Again at the booths. A great +victory here. <i>6th</i>.—Wrote to Manning on the death of his wife. +<i>9th</i>.—<i>Manchester</i>. Public dinner at 6;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> lasted till near 12. +Music excellent. Spoke 1½ hours, I am told, <i>proh pudor!</i><a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a></p></div> + +<p>Back at Fasque, only a day too late for the Twelfth, he found the sport +bad and he shot badly, but he enjoyed the healthful walks on the hill. +His employments were curiously mixed. '<i>Sept. 8th</i>.—In the bog for +snipe with Sir J. Mackenzie. Read <i>Timæus</i>. Began Byron's Life. My eyes +refused progress. Verses. <i>15th</i>.—Snipe-shooting with F. in the bog. +Began <i>Critias</i>. <i>22nd</i>.—<i>Haddo</i>. Otter-hunting, <i>senz esito</i>. Finished +Plato's <i>Laws</i>. Hunting too in the library.' The mental dispersion of +country-house visiting never affects either multifarious reading or +multifarious writing. Spanish grammar, <i>Don Quixote</i> in the original, +Crabbe, <i>Don Juan</i>, alternate with Augustine <i>de peccatorum remissione</i> +or <i>de utilitate Credendi</i> ('beautiful and useful'). He works at an +essay of his own upon Justification, at adversaria on Aristotle's +<i>Ethics</i>, at another essay upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> Rationalism, and to save his eyes, +spins verse enough to fill a decent volume of a hundred and fifty pages. +He makes a circuit of calls upon the tenants, taking a farming lecture +from one, praying by the sick-bed of another.</p> + +<p class="center">BUSINESS WITH WELLINGTON</p> + +<p>In November he was again in London to be sworn of the new parliament, +and at the end of the month he had for the first time an interview on +business with the Duke of Wellington—of interest as the collocation of +two famous names. 'The immediate subject was the Cape of Good Hope. His +reception of me was plain but kind. He came to the door of his room. +“Will you come in? How do you do? I am glad to see you.” We spoke a +little of the Cape. He said with regard to the war—and with sufficient +modesty—that he was pretty well aware of the operations that had taken +place in it, having been at the Cape, and being in some degree able to +judge of those matters. He said, “I suppose it is there as everywhere +else, as we had it last night about Ireland and the House of Lords. They +won't use the law, as it is in Canada, as it is in the West Indies. They +excite insurrection everywhere (I, however, put in an apology for them +in the West Indies), they <i>want to play the part of opposition</i>; they +are not a government, for they don't maintain the law.” He appointed me +to return to him to-morrow.'</p> + +<p>The result of the general election was a slight improvement in the +position of the conservatives, but they still mustered no more than 315 +against 342 supporters of the ministry, including the radical and Irish +groups. If Melbourne and Russell found their team delicate to drive, +Peel's difficulties were hardly less. Few people, he wrote at this +moment, can judge of the difficulty there has frequently been in +maintaining harmony between the various branches of the conservative +party. The great majority in the Lords and the minority in the Commons +consisted of very different elements; they included men like Stanley and +Graham, who had been authors and advocates of parliamentary reform, and +men who had denounced reform as treason to the constitution and ruin to +the country. Even the animosities of 1829 and catholic emancipation were +only half quenched<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> within the tory ranks.<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> It was at a meeting held +at Peel's on December 6, 1837, that Lord Stanley for the first time +appeared among the conservative members.</p> + +<p>The distractions produced in Canada by mismanagement and misapprehension +in Downing Street had already given trouble during the very short time +when Mr. Gladstone was under-secretary at the colonial office; but they +now broke into the flame of open revolt. The perversity of a foolish +king and weakness and disunion among his whig ministers had brought +about a catastrophe. At the beginning of the session (1838) the +government introduced a bill suspending the constitution and conferring +various absolute powers on Lord Durham as governor general and high +commissioner. It was in connection with this proposal that Mr. Gladstone +seems to have been first taken into the confidential consultations of +the leaders of his party.</p> + +<p class="center">CANADIAN SPEECH</p> + +<p>The sage marshalling and manœuvring of the parliamentary squads was +embarrassed by a move from Sir William Molesworth, of whom we have just +been hearing, the editor of Hobbes, and one of the group nicknamed +philosophic radicals with whom Mr. Gladstone at this stage seldom or +never agreed. 'The new school of morals,' he called them, 'which taught +that success was the only criterion of merit,'—a delineation for which +he would have been severely handled by Bentham or James Mill. Molesworth +gave notice of a vote of censure on Lord Glenelg, the colonial minister; +that is, he selected a single member of the cabinet for condemnation, on +the ground of acts for which all the other ministers were collectively +just as responsible. For this discrimination the only precedent seems to +be Fox's motion against Lord Sandwich in 1779. Mr. Gladstone's +memorandum<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> completes or modifies the account of the dilemma of the +conservative leader, already known from Sir Robert Peel's papers,<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> +and the reader will find it elsewhere. It was the right of a +conservative opposition to challenge a whig ministry; yet to fight under +radical colours was odious and intolerable. On the other hand he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> could +not vote for Molesworth, because he thought him unjust; but he could not +vote against him, because that would imply confidence in the Canadian +policy of ministers. A certain conservative contingent would not +acquiesce in support of ministers against Molesworth, or in tame resort +to the previous question. Again, Peel felt or feigned an apprehension +that if by aggressive action they beat the government, a conservative +ministry must come in, and he did not think that such a ministry could +last. Even at this risk, it became clear that the only way of avoiding +the difficulty was an amendment to Molesworth's motion from the official +opposition. Mr. Gladstone spoke (Mar. 7), and was described as making +his points with admirable precision and force, though 'with something of +a provincial manner, like the rust to a piece of powerful steel +machinery that has not worked into polish.' The debate, on which such +mighty issues were thought to hang, lasted a couple of nights with not +more than moderate spirit. At the close the amendment was thrown out by +a majority of twenty-nine for ministers. The general result was to +moderate the impatience of the Carlton Club men, who wished to see their +party in, on the one hand; and of the radical men, who did not object to +having the whigs out, on the other. It showed that neither +administration nor opposition was in a station of supreme command.</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>At the end of March Mr. Gladstone produced the strongest impression that +he had yet made in parliament, and he now definitely took his place in +the front rank. It was on the old embarrassment of slavery. Reports from +the colonies showed that in some at least, and more particularly in +Jamaica, the apprenticeship system had led to harsher treatment of the +negroes than under slavery. As it has been well put, the bad planters +regarded their slave-apprentices as a bad farmer regards a farm near the +end of an expiring term. In 1836 Buxton moved for a select committee to +inquire into the working of the system. Mr. Gladstone defended it, and +he warned parliament against 'incautious and precipitate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> anticipations +of entire success' (March 22). Six days later he was appointed a member +of the apprenticeship committee which at once began to investigate the +complaints from Jamaica. Mr. Gladstone acted as the representative of +the planters on the committee, and he paid very close attention to the +proceedings during two sessions. In the spring of 1838 a motion was made +to accelerate by two years the end of the apprenticeship system on the +slave plantations of the West Indies. Brougham had been raising a +tempest of humane sentiment by more than one of his most magnificent +speeches. The leading men on both sides in parliament were openly and +strongly against a disturbance of the settlement, but the feeling in the +constituencies was hot, and in liberal and tory camp alike members in +fear and trembling tried to make up their minds. Sir George Grey made an +effective case for the law as it stood, and Peel spoke on the same side; +but it was agreed that Mr. Gladstone, by his union of fervour, +elevation, and a complete mastery of the facts of the case, went deeper +than either. Even unwilling witnesses 'felt bound to admit the great +ability he displayed.' His address was completely that of an advocate, +and he did not even affect to look on both sides of the question, +expressing his joy that the day had at length arrived when he could meet +the charges against the planters and enter upon their defence.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>March 30th</i>.—Spoke from 11 to 1. Received with the greatest and +most affecting kindness from, all parties, both during and after. +Through the debate I felt the most painful depression. Except Mr. +Plumptre and Lord John Russell, all who spoke damaged the question +to the utmost possible degree. Prayer earnest for the moment was +wrung from me in my necessity; I hope it was not a blasphemous +prayer, for support in pleading the cause of justice.... I am half +insensible even in the moment of delight to such pleasures as this +kind of occasion affords. But this is a dangerous state; +indifference to the world is not love of God....</p></div> + +<p class="center">SPEECH ON SLAVERY</p> + +<p>In writing to him upon this speech, Mr. Stephen, his former ally at the +colonial office, addressed an admonition, which is worth, recalling both +for its own sake and because it hits by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> anticipation what was to be one +of the most admirable traits in the mighty parliamentarian to whom it +was written. 'It seems to me,' says Stephen, 'that this part of your +speech establishes nothing more than the fact that your opponents are +capricious in the distribution of their sympathy, which is, after all, a +reproach and nothing more. Now, reproach is not only not your strength, +but it is the very thing in the disuse of which your strength consists; +and indulging as I do the hope that you will one day occupy one of the +foremost stations in the House of Commons, if not the first of all, I +cannot help wishing that you may also be the founder of a more +magnanimous system of parliamentary tactics than has ever yet been +established, in which recrimination will be condemned as unbefitting +wise men and good Christians.' In an assembly for candid deliberation +modified by party spirit, this is, I fear, almost as much a counsel of +perfection as it would have been in a school of Roman gladiators, but at +any rate it points the better way. The speech itself has a close, +direct, sinewy quality, a complete freedom from anything vague or +involved; and shows for the first time a perfect mastery of the art of +handling detail upon detail without an instant of tediousness, and +holding the attention of listeners sustained and unbroken. It was a +remonstrance against false allegations of the misbehaviour of the +planters since the emancipating act, but there is not a trace of +backsliding upon the great issue. 'We joined in passing the measure; we +declared a belief that slavery was an evil and demoralising state, and +<i>a desire to be relieved from it</i>; we accepted a price in composition +for the loss which was expected to accrue.'</p> + +<p>Neither now or at any time did Mr. Gladstone set too low a value on that +great dead-lift effort, not too familiar in history, to heave off a +burden from the conscience of the nation, and set back the bounds of +cruel wrong upon the earth. On the day after this performance, the entry +in his diary is—'In the morning my father was greatly overcome, and I +could hardly speak to him. Now is the time to turn this attack into +measures of benefit for the negroes.' More than once in the course of +the spring he showed how much in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> earnest he was about the negroes, by +strenuously pressing his father to allow him to go to the West Indies +and view the state of things there for himself. Perhaps by prudent +instinct his father disapproved, and at last spoke decidedly against any +project of the kind.</p> + +<p>The question of the education of the people was rising into political +prominence, and its close relations with the claims of the church +sufficed to engage the active interest of so zealous a son of the church +as Mr. Gladstone. From a very early stage we find him moving for +returns, serving on education committees in parliament, corresponding +energetically with Manning, Acland, and others of like mind in and out +of parliament. Primary education is one of the few subjects on which the +fossils of extinct opinion neither interest nor instruct. It is enough +to mark that Mr. Gladstone's position in the forties was that of the +ultra-churchman of the time, and such as no church-ultra now dreams of +fighting for. We find him 'objecting to any infringement whatever of the +principle on which the established church was founded—that of confining +the pecuniary support of the state to one particular religious +denomination.'<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a></p> + +<p>To Dr. Hook (March 12, 1838), he speaks of 'a safe and precious +interval, perhaps the last to those who are desirous of placing the +education of the people under the efficient control of the clergy.' The +aims of himself and his allies were to plant training schools in every +diocese; to connect these with the cathedrals through the chapters; to +license the teachers by the bishops after examination.</p> + +<p>Writing to Manning (Feb. 22, 1839), he compares control by government to +the 'little lion cub in the <i>Agamemnon</i>,' which after being in its +primeval season the delight of the young and amusement of the old, +gradually revealed its parent stock, and grew to be a creature of huge +mischief in the household.<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> He describes a divergence of view among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> +them on the question whether the clergyman should have his choice as to +'admitting the children of dissenters without at once teaching them the +catechism.' How Mr. Gladstone went he does not say, nor does it matter. +He was not yet thirty. He accepted his political toryism on authority +and in good faith, and the same was true of his views on church policy. +He could not foresee that it was to be in his own day of power that the +cub should come out full-grown lion.</p> + +<p class="center">IN SOCIETY</p> + +<p>His work did not prevent him from mixing pretty freely with men in +society, though he seems to have thought that little of what passed was +worth transcribing, nor in truth had Mr. Gladstone ever much or any of +the rare talent of the born diarist. Here are one or two miscellanea +which must be made to serve:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>April 25/38</i>.—A long sitting and conversation with Mr. Rogers +after the Milnes' marriage breakfast. He spoke unfavourably of +Bulwer; well of Milnes' verses; said his father wished them not to +be published, because such authorship and its repute would clash +with the parliamentary career of his son. Mr. Rogers thought a +great author would undoubtedly stand better in parliament from +being such; but that otherwise the additament of authorship, unless +on germane subjects, would be a hindrance. He quoted Swift on +women.... He has a good and tender opinion of them; but went nearly +the length of Maurice (when mentioned to him) that they had not +that specific faculty of understanding which lies beneath the +reason. Peel was odd, in the contrast of a familiar first address, +with slackness of manner afterwards. The Duke of Wellington took +the greatest interest in the poor around him at Strathfieldsay, had +all of eloquence except the words. Mr. Rogers quoted a saying about +Brougham that he was not so much a master of the language as +mastered by it. I doubt very much the truth of this. Brougham's +management of his sentences, as I remember the late Lady Canning +observing to me, is surely most wonderful. He never loses the +thread, and yet he habitually twists it into a thousand varieties +of intricate form. He said, when Stanley came out in public life, +and at the age of thirty, he was by far the cleverest young man of +the day; and at sixty he would be the same, still by far the +cleverest young man of the day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p></div> + +<p class="center">PROGRESS IN PUBLIC LIFE</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>June 13th</i>.—Sir R. Peel dined at Mr. Dugdale's. After dinner he +spoke of Wilberforce; believed him to be an excellent man +independently of the book, or would not have been favourably +impressed by the records of his being in society, and then going +home and describing as lost in sin those with whom he had been +enjoying himself. Upon the other hand, however, he would have +exposed himself to the opposite reproach had he been more secluded, +morosely withdrawing himself from the range of human sympathies. He +remembered him as an admirable speaker; agreed that the results of +his life were very great (and the man must be in part measured by +them). He disapproved of taking people to task by articles in the +papers, for votes against their party.</p> + +<p><i>July 18th</i>.—I complimented the Speaker yesterday on the time he +had saved by putting an end to discussions upon the presentation of +petitions. He replied that there was a more important advantage; +that those discussions very greatly increased the influence of +popular feeling on the deliberations of the House; and that by +stopping them he thought a wall was erected against such +influence—not as strong as might be wished. Probably some day it +might be broken down, but he had done his best to raise it. His +maxim was to shut out as far as might be all extrinsic pressure, +and then to do freely what was right within doors.</p></div> + +<p>This high and sound way of regarding parliament underwent formidable +changes before the close of Mr. Gladstone's career, and perhaps his +career had indirectly something to do with them. But not, I think, with +intention. In 1838 he cited with approval an exclamation of Roebuck's in +the House of Commons, 'We, sir, are or ought to be the <i>élite</i> of the +people of England for mind: we are at the head of the mind of the people +of England.'</p> + +<p class="center">EXPECTATIONS OF FRIENDS</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone's position in parliament and the public judgment, as the +session went on, is sufficiently manifest from a letter addressed to him +at this time by Samuel Wilberforce, four years his junior, henceforth +one of his nearest friends, and always an acute observer of social and +political forces. 'It would be an affectation in you, which you are +above,' writes the future bishop (April 20, 1838), 'not to know that few +young men have the weight you have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> in the H. of C. and are gaining +rapidly throughout the country.... I want to urge you to look calmly +before you, ... and act now with a view to <i>then</i>. There is no height to +which you may not fairly rise in this country. If it pleases God to +spare us violent convulsions and the loss of our liberties, you may at a +future day wield the whole government of this land; and if this should +be so, of what extreme moment will your <i>past steps</i> then be to the real +usefulness of your high station.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> Parker's <i>Peel</i>, ii. p. 321.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> The <i>Standard</i> marks it 'as a brilliant and triumphant +argument—one of the few gems that have illuminated the reformed House +of Commons.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> 'Motions and Means on Land and Sea at War,' v. 248. Steamboats, +Viaducts, and Railways.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Thomson, 4127; Philips, 3759; Gladstone, 2324.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> In this speech he dealt with an attack made upon him by his +opponent, Poulett Thomson, afterwards Lord Sydenham, on the question of +negro slavery:— +</p><p> +'I have had some obloquy cast upon me by Mr. Thomson, in reference to +the part which I took in the question of negro slavery. Now, if there +was ever a question upon which I would desire to submit all that I have +ever said to a candid inquirer, it is that of negro slavery. He should +try me in opposition to Lord Stanley, and did Lord Stanley complain? It +is well known that he stated that the only two speeches which were +decidedly hostile to that measure were delivered by two gentlemen who +hold office under her majesty's present government, whilst, on the +contrary, his lordship was pleased to express candidly his high +approbation of my sentiments, and my individual exertions for the +settlement of that matter. Does Mr. Thomson mean to say that the great +conservative body in parliament has offered opposition to that measure? +Who, I would ask, conducted the correspondence of the government office +with reference to that important question? Will any man who knows the +character of Lord Bathurst—will any man who knows the character of Mr. +Stephen, the under-secretary for the colonies—the chosen assistant of +the noble lord in that ministry of which he was no unimportant +member—will any man say that Mr. Stephen, who was all along the +advocate of the slaves, with his liberal and enlightened views, +exercised an influence less than under Lord Stanley? Does Mr. Thomson +presume to state that Lord Aberdeen was guilty of neglect to the slaves? +When I add that the question underwent a considerable discussion last +year, in the House of Commons, when all parties and all interests were +fairly represented, and the best disposition was evinced to assist the +proper working of the measure, and to alter some parts that were +considered injurious to the slaves, and which had come under the +immediate cognisance of the conservative party, is it fair, is it just, +that a minister of the crown should take advantage, for electioneering +purposes, of the fact that my connections have an interest in the West +Indies, to throw discredit upon me and the cause which I advocate?'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> Parker's <i>Peel</i>, ii. pp. 336-8.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a><a href="#CANADA">See Appendix.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Parker, ii. pp. 352-367.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> <i>Hansard</i>, June 20, 1839.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> <i>Agam.</i> 696-716. +</p><p> +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Even so belike might one<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">A lion suckling nurse,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Like a foster-son,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">To his home a future curse.<br /></span> +</p><p> +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">In life's beginnings mild<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Dear to sire and kind to child....<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">But in time he showed<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The habit of his blood....<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">—Gladstone in <i>Translations</i>, p. 83.</span></p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIICh_IV" id="BkIICh_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">THE CHURCH</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1838</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>A period and a movement certainly among the most remarkable in the +Christendom of the last three and a half centuries; probably more +remarkable than the movement associated with the name of Port +Royal, for that has passed away and left hardly a trace behind; but +this has left ineffaceable marks upon the English church and +nation.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span> (1891).</p></div><br /> + +<p>It was the affinity of great natures for great issues that made Mr. +Gladstone from his earliest manhood onwards take and hold fast the +affairs of the churches for the objects of his most absorbing interest. +He was one and the same man, his genius was one. His persistent +incursions all through his long life into the multifarious doings, not +only of his own anglican communion, but of the Latin church of the west, +as well as of the motley Christendom of the east, puzzled and vexed +political whippers-in, wire-pullers, newspaper editors, leaders, +colleagues; they were the despair of party caucuses; and they made the +neutral man of the world smile, as eccentricities of genius and rather +singularly chosen recreations. All this was, in truth, of the very +essence of his character, the manifestation of its profound unity.</p> + +<p>The quarrel upon church comprehension that had perplexed Elizabeth and +Burleigh, had distracted the councils of Charles I. and of Cromwell, had +bewildered William of Orange and Tillotson and Burnet, was once more +aglow with its old heat. The still mightier dispute, how wide or how +narrow is the common ground between the church of England and the church +of Rome, broke into fierce flame.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION</p> + +<p>Then by and by these familiar contests of ancient tradition, thus +quickened in the eternal ebb and flow of human things into fresh +vitality, were followed by a revival, with new artillery and larger +strategy, of a standing war that is roughly described as the conflict +between reason and faith, between science and revelation. The +controversy of Laudian divines with puritans, of Hoadly with non-jurors, +of Hanoverian divines with deists and free-thinkers, all may seem now to +us narrow and dry when compared with such a drama, of so many +interesting characters, strange evolutions, and multiple and startling +climax, as gradually unfolded itself to Mr. Gladstone's ardent and +impassioned gaze.</p> + +<p>His is not one of the cases, like Pascal, or Baxter, or Rutherford, or a +hundred others, where a man's theological history is to the world, +however it may seem to himself, the most important aspect of his career +or character. This is not the place for an exploration of Mr. +Gladstone's strictly theological history, nor is mine the hand by which +such exploration could be attempted. In the sphere of dogmatic faith, +apart from ecclesiastical politics and all the war of principles +connected with such politics, Mr. Gladstone, by the time when he was +thirty, had become a man of settled questions. Nor was he for his own +part, with a remarkable exception in respect of one particular doctrine +towards the end of his life, ever ready to re-open them. What is +extraordinary in the career of this far-shining and dominant character +of his age, is not a development of specific opinions on dogma, or +discipline, or ordinance, on article or sacrament, but the fact that +with a steadfast tread he marched along the high anglican road to the +summits of that liberalism which it was the original object of the new +anglicans to resist and overthrow.</p> + +<p>The years from 1831 to 1840 Mr. Gladstone marked as an era of a +marvellous uprising of religious energy throughout the land; it saved +the church, he says. Not only in Oxford but in England he declares that +party spirit within the church had fallen to a low ebb. Coming +hurricanes were not foreseen. In Lord Liverpool's government patronage +was considered to have been respectably dispensed, and church<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> reform +was never heard of.<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> This dreamless composure was rudely broken. The +repeal of the test and corporation Acts in 1828 first roused the church; +and her sons rubbed their eyes when they beheld parliament bringing +frankly to an end the odious monopoly of office under the crown, all +corporate office, all magistracy, in men willing to take the communion +at the altar of the privileged establishment. The next year a deadlier +blow fell after a more embittered fight—the admission of Roman +catholics to parliament and place. The Reform bill of 1832 followed. +Even when half spent, the forces that had been gathering for many years +in the direction of parliamentary reform, and had at last achieved more +than one immense result, rolled heavily forward against the church. The +opening of parliament and of close corporations was taken to involve an +opening to correspond in the grandest and closest of all corporations. +The resounding victory of the constitutional bill of 1832 was followed +by a drastic handling of the church in Ireland, and by a proposal to +divert a surplus of its property to purposes not ecclesiastical. A long +and peculiarly unedifying crisis ensued. Stanley and Graham, two of the +most eminent members of the reforming whig cabinet, on this proposal at +once resigned. The Grey ministry was thus split in 1834, and the Peel +ministry ejected in 1835, on the ground of the absolute inviolability of +the property of the Irish church. The tide of reaction set slowly in. +The shock in political party was in no long time followed by shock after +shock in the church. As has happened on more than one occasion in our +history, alarm for the church kindled the conservative temper in the +nation. Or to put it in another way, that spontaneous attachment to the +old order of things, with all its symbols, institutes, and deep +associations, which the radical reformers had both affronted and +ignored, made the church its rallying-point. The three years of tortuous +proceedings on the famous Appropriation clause—proceedings that +political philosophers declared to have disgraced this country in the +face of Europe, and that were certainly an ignominy and a scandal in a +party called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> reforming—were among the things that helped most to +prepare the way for the fall of the whigs and the conservative triumph +of 1841. Within ten years from the death of Canning the church +transfixed the attention of the politician. The Duke of Wellington was +hardly a wizard in political foresight, but he had often a good +soldier's eye for things that stood straight up in front of him. 'The +real question,' said the duke in 1838, 'that now divides the country and +which truly divides the House of Commons, is church or no church. People +talk of the war in Spain, and the Canada question. But all that is of +little moment. The real question is church or no church.'</p> + +<p class="center">CHANGED POSITION OF THE CHURCH</p> + +<p>The position of the tory party as seen by its powerful recruit was, when +he entered public life, a state of hopeless defeat and discomfiture. +'But in my imagination,' wrote Mr. Gladstone, 'I cast over that party a +prophetic mantle and assigned to it a mission distinctly religious as +the champion in the state field of that divine truth which it was the +office of the Christian ministry to uphold in the church. Neither then +did I, nor now can I, see on what ground this inviolability could for a +moment be maintained, except the belief that the state had such a +mission.' He soon discovered how hard it is to adjust to the many angles +of an English political party the seamless mantle of ecclesiastical +predominance.</p> + +<p>The changes in the political constitution in 1828, in 1829, and in 1832, +carried with them a deliberate recognition that the church was not the +nation; that it was not identical with the parliament who spoke for the +nation; that it had no longer a title to compose the governing order; +and—a more startling disclosure still to the minds of churchmen—that +laws affecting the church would henceforth be made by men of all +churches and creeds, or even men of none. This hateful circumstance it +was that inevitably began in multitudes of devout and earnest minds to +produce a revolution in their conception of a church, and a resurrection +in curiously altered forms of that old ideal of Milton's austere and +lofty school—the ideal of a purely spiritual association that should +leave each man's soul<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> and conscience free from 'secular chains' and +'hireling wolves.'</p> + +<p class="center">CHANGED SOCIAL CONDITIONS</p> + +<p>Strange social conditions were emerging on every side. The factory +system established itself on a startling scale. Huge aggregates of +population collected with little regard to antique divisions of diocese +and parish. Colonies over the sea extended in boundaries and numbers, +and churchmen were zealous that these infant societies should be blessed +by the same services, rites, ecclesiastical ordering and exhortation, as +were believed to elevate and sanctify the parent community at home. The +education of the people grew to be a formidable problem, the field of +angry battles and campaigns that never end. Trade, markets, wages, +hours, and all the gaunt and haggard economics of the labour question, +added to the statesman's load. Pauperism was appalling. In a word, the +need for social regeneration both material and moral was in the spirit +of the time. Here were the hopes, vague, blind, unmeasured, formless, +that had inspired the wild clamour for the bill, the whole bill, and +nothing but the bill. The whig patricians carried away the prizes of +great office, though the work had been done by men of a very different +stamp. It was the utilitarian radicals who laid the foundations of +social improvement in a reasoned creed. With admirable ability, +perseverance, unselfishness, and public spirit, Bentham and his +disciples had regenerated political opinion, and fought the battle +against debt, pauperism, class-privilege, class-monopoly, abusive +patronage, a monstrous criminal law, and all the host of sinister +interests.<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> As in every reforming age, men approached the work from +two sides. Evangelical religion divides with rationalism the glory of +more than one humanitarian struggle. Brougham, a more potent force than +we now realise, plunged with the energy of a Titan into a thousand +projects, all taking for granted that ignorance is the disease and +useful knowledge the universal healer, all of them secular, all dealing +with man from the outside, none touching imagination or the heart. +March-of-mind became to many almost as wearisome a cry as +wisdom-of-our-ancestors had been. According<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> to some eager innovators, +dogma and ceremony were to go, the fabrics to be turned into mechanics' +institutes, the clergy to lecture on botany and statistics. The reaction +against this dusty dominion of secularity kindled new life in rival +schools. They insisted that if society is to be improved and +civilisation saved, it can only be through improvement in the character +of man, and character is moulded and inspired by more things than are +dreamed of by societies for useful knowledge. The building up of the +inward man in all his parts, faculties, and aspirations, was seen to be, +what in every age it is, the problem of problems. This thought turned +the eyes of many—of Mr. Gladstone first among them—to the church, and +stirred an endeavour to make out of the church what Coleridge describes +as the sustaining, correcting, befriending opposite of the world, the +compensating counterforce to the inherent and inevitable defects of the +state as a state. Such was the new movement of the time between 1835 and +1845.</p> + +<p>'It is surprising,' said Proudhon, the trenchant genius of French +socialism in 1840 and onwards, 'how at the bottom of our politics we +always found theology.' It is true at any rate that the association of +political and social change with theological revolution was the most +remarkable of all the influences in the first twenty years of Mr. +Gladstone's public life. Then rose once more into active prominence the +supreme debate, often cutting deep into the labours of the modern +statesman, always near to the heart of the speculations of the +theologian, in many fields urgent in its interest alike to ecclesiastic, +historian, and philosopher, the inquiry: what is a church? This opened +the sluices and let out the floods. What is the church of England? To +ask that question was to ask a hundred others. Creeds, dogmas, +ordinances, hierarchy, parliamentary institution, judicial tribunals, +historical tradition, the prayer-book, the Bible—all these enormous +topics sacred and profane, with all their countless ramifications, were +rapidly swept into a tornado of such controversy as had not been seen in +England since the Revolution. Was the church a purely human creation, +changing with time and circumstance, like all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> other creations of +the heart and brain and will of man? Were its bishops mere officers, +like high ministers of mundane state, or were they, in actual historic +truth as in supposed theological necessity, the direct lineal successors +of the first apostles, endowed from the beginning with the mystical +prerogatives on which the efficacy of all sacramental rites depended? +What were its relations to the councils of the first four centuries, +what to the councils of the fifteenth century and the sixteenth, what to +the Fathers? The Scottish presbyterians held the conception of a church +as strongly as anybody;<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> but England, broadly speaking, had never +been persuaded that there could be a church without bishops.</p> + +<p>In the answers to this group of hard questions, terrible divisions that +had been long muffled and huddled away burst into view. The stupendous +quarrel of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries again broke out. To +the erastian lawyer the church was an institution erected on principles +of political expediency by act of parliament. To the school of Whately +and Arnold it was a corporation of divine origin, devised to strengthen +men in their struggle for goodness and holiness by the association and +mutual help of fellow-believers. To the evangelical it was hardly more +than a collection of congregations commended in the Bible for the +diffusion of the knowledge and right interpretation of the Scriptures, +the commemoration of gospel events, and the linking of gospel truths to +a well-ordered life. To the high anglican as to the Roman catholic, the +church was something very different from this; not a fabric reared by +man, nor in truth any mechanical fabric at all, but a mystically +appointed channel of salvation, an indispensable element in the relation +between the soul of man and its creator. To be a member of it was not to +join an external association, but to become an inward partaker in +ineffable and mysterious graces to which no other access lay open. Such +was the Church Catholic and Apostolic as set up from the beginning,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> and +of this immense mystery, of this saving agency, of this incommensurable +spiritual force, the established church of England was the local +presence and the organ.</p> + +<p class="center">HARD QUESTIONS REVIVED</p> + +<p>The noble restlessness of the profounder and more penetrating minds was +not satisfied, any more than Bossuet had been, to think of the church as +only an element in a scheme of individual salvation. They sought in it +the comprehensive solution of all the riddles of life and time. Newman +drew in powerful outline the sublime and sombre anarchy of human +history.</p> + +<p>This is the enigma, this the solution in faith and spirit, in which Mr. +Gladstone lived and moved. In him it gave to the energies of life their +meaning, and to duty its foundation. While poetic voices and the oracles +of sages—Goethe, Scott, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge—were +drawing men one way or another, or else were leaving the void turbid and +formless, he, in the midst of doubts, distractions, and fears, saw a +steadfast light where the Oxford men saw it; in that concrete +representation of the unseen Power that, as he believed, had made and +guides and rules the world, in that Church Catholic and Apostolic which +alone would have the force and the stoutness necessary to serve for a +breakwater against the deluge. Yet to understand Mr. Gladstone's case, +we have ever to remember that what is called the catholic revival was +not in England that which the catholic counter-revolution had been on +the continent of Europe, primarily a political movement. Its workings +were inward, in the sphere of the mind, in thought and faith, in +idealised associations of historic grandeur.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a></p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">HIS RELIGIOUS GROWTH</p> + +<p>The reader has already been told how at Rome and in Naples in 1832, Mr. +Gladstone was suddenly arrested by the new idea of a church, +interweaving with the whole of human life a pervading and equalised +spirit of religion. Long years after, in an unfinished fragment, he +began to trace the golden thread of his religious growth:—</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>My environment in my childhood was strictly evangelical. My dear +and noble mother was a woman of warm piety but broken health, and I +was not directly instructed by her. But I was brought up to believe +that Doyly and Mant's Bible (then a standard book of the colour +ruling in the church) was heretical, and that every unitarian (I +suppose also every heathen) must, as matter of course, be lost +forever. This deplorable servitude of mind oppressed me in a +greater or less degree for a number of years. As late as in the +year (I think) 1836, one of my brothers married a beautiful and in +every way charming person, who had been brought up in a family of +the unitarian profession, yet under a mother very sincerely +religious. I went through much mental difficulty and distress at +the time, as there had been no express renunciation [by her] of the +ancestral creed, and I absurdly busied myself with devising this or +that religious test as what if accepted might suffice.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a></p> + +<p>So, as will be seen, the first access of churchlike ideas to my +mind by no means sufficed to expel my inherited and bigoted +misconception, though in the event they did it as I hope +effectively. But I long retained in my recollection an observation +made to me in (I think) the year 1829, by Mrs. Benjamin Gaskell of +Thornes, near Wakefield, a seed which was destined long to remain +in my mind without germinating. I fell into religious conversation +with this excellent woman, the mother of my Eton friend Milnes +Gaskell, himself the husband of an unitarian. She said to me, +Surely we cannot entertain a doubt as to the future condition of +any person truly united to Christ by faith and love, whatever may +be the faults of his opinions. Here she supplied me with the key to +the whole question. At this hour I feel grateful to her +accordingly, for the scope of her remark is very wide; and it is +now my rule to remember her in prayer before the altar.</p> + +<p>There was nothing at Eton to subvert this frame of mind; for +nothing was taught us either for it or against it. But in the +spring and summer of 1828, I set to work on Hooker's +<i>Ecclesiastical Polity</i>, and read it straight through. Intercourse +with my elder sister Anne had increased my mental interest in +religion, and she, though generally of evangelical sentiments, had +an opinion that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>the standard divines of the English church were of +great value. Hooker's exposition of the case of the church of +England came to me as a mere abstraction; but I think that I found +the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, theretofore abhorred, +impossible to reject, and the way was thus opened for further +changes.</p> + +<p>In like manner at Oxford, I do not doubt that in 1830 and 1831 the +study of Bishop Butler laid the ground for new modes of thought in +religion, but his teaching in the sermons on our moral nature was +not integrated, so to speak, until several years later by larger +perusal of the works of Saint Augustine. I may, however, say that I +was not of a mind ill disposed to submit to authority.</p> + +<p>The Oxford Movement, properly so called, began in the year 1833, +but it had no direct effect upon me. I did not see the Tracts, and +to this hour I have read but few of them. Indeed, my first +impressions and emotions in connection with it were those of +indignation at what I thought the rash intemperate censures +pronounced by Mr. Hurrell Froude upon the reformers. My chief tie +with Oxford was the close friendship I had formed in 1830 with +Walter Hamilton.<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> His character, always loving and loved, had, +not very greatly later, become deeply devout. But I do not think he +at this time sympathised with Newman and his friends; and he had +the good sense, in conjunction with Mr. Denison, afterwards bishop, +to oppose the censure upon Dr. Hampden, to which I foolishly and +ignorantly gave in, without, however, being an active or important +participator.</p> + +<p>But the blow struck by the prayer-book in 1832 set my mind in +motion, and that motion was never arrested. I found food for the +new ideas and tendencies in various quarters, not least in the +religious writings of Alexander Knox, all of which I perused. +Moreover, I had an inclination to ecclesiastical conformity, and +obedience as such, which led me to concur with some zeal in the +plans of Bishop Blomfield. In the course of two or three years, +Manning turned from a strongly evangelical attitude to one as +strongly anglican, and about the same time converted his +acquaintance with me into a close friendship. In the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> manner +James Hope, whom I had known but slightly at Eton or Oxford, made a +carefully considered change of the same kind; which also became the +occasion of a fast friendship. Both these intimacies led me +forward; Hope especially had influence over me, more than I think +any other person at any period of my life.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a></p> + +<p>When I was preparing in 1837-8 <i>The State in its Relations with the +Church</i>, he took a warm interest in the work, which, during my +absence on the continent, he corrected for the press. His attitude +towards the work, however, included a desire that its propositions +should be carried further. The temper of the times among young +educated men was working in the same direction. I had no low +churchmen among my near friends, except Walter Farquhar. Anstice, a +great loss, died very early in his beautiful married life. While I +was busy about my book, Hope made known to me Palmer's work on the +Church, which had just appeared. I read it with care and great +interest. It took hold upon me; and gave me at once the clear, +definite, and strong conception of the church which, through all +the storm and strain of a most critical period, has proved for me +entirely adequate to every emergency, and saved me from all +vacillation. I did not, however, love the extreme rigour of the +book in its treatment of non-episcopal communions. It was not very +long after this, I think in 1842, that I reduced into form my +convictions of the large and important range of subjects which +recent controversy had brought into prominence. I conceive that in +the main Palmer completed for me the work which inspection of the +prayer-book had begun.</p> + +<p>Before referring further to my 'redaction' of opinions, I desire to +say that at this moment I am as closely an adherent to the +doctrines of grace generally, and to the general sense of Saint +Augustine, as at the date from which this narrative set out. I hope +that my mind has dropped nothing affirmative. But I hope also that +there has been dropped from it all the damnatory part of the +opinions taught by the evangelical school; not only as regards the +Roman catholic religion, but also as to heretics and heathens; +nonconformists and presbyterians I think that I always let off +pretty easily....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p></div> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">INFLUENCE OF FRIENDS AND BOOKS</p> + +<p>The Tractarian movement is by this time one of the most familiar +chapters in our history, and it has had singular good fortune in being +told by three masters of the most winning, graphic, and melodious +English prose of the century to which the tale belongs.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> Whether we +call it by the ill name of Oxford counter-reformation or the friendlier +name of catholic revival, it remains a striking landmark in the varied +motions of English religious thought and feeling for the three-quarters +of a century since the still unfinished journey first began. In its +early stages, the movement was exclusively theological. Philanthropic +reform still remained with the evangelical school that so powerfully +helped to sweep away the slave trade, cleansed the prisons, and aided in +humanising the criminal law. It was they who 'helped to form a +conscience, if not a heart, in the callous bosom of English politics,' +while the very foremost of the Oxford divines was scouting the fine talk +about black men, because they 'concentrated in themselves all the +whiggery, dissent, cant, and abomination that had been ranged on their +side.'<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> Nor can we forget that Shaftesbury, the leader in that +beneficent crusade of human mercy and national wisdom which ended in the +deliverance of women and children in mines and factories, was also a +leader of the evangelical party.</p> + +<p>The Tractarian movement, as all know, opened, among other sources, in +antagonism to utilitarian liberalism. Yet J. S. Mill, the oracle of +rationalistic liberalism in Oxford and other places in the following +generation, had always much to say for the Tractarians. He used to tell +us that the Oxford theologians had done for England something like what +Guizot, Villemain, Michelet, Cousin had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> done a little earlier for +France; they had opened, broadened, deepened the issues and meanings of +European history; they had reminded us that history is European; that it +is quite unintelligible if treated as merely local. He would say, +moreover, that thought should recognise thought and mind always welcome +mind; and the Oxford men had at least brought argument, learning, and +even philosophy of a sort, to break up the narrow and frigid conventions +of reigning system in church and college, in pulpits and professorial +chairs. They had made the church ashamed of the evil of her ways, they +had determined that spirit of improvement from within 'which, if this +sect-ridden country is ever really to be taught, must proceed <i>pari +passu</i> with assault from without.'<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a></p> + +<p>One of the ablest of the Oxford writers talking of the non-jurors, +remarks how very few of the movements that are attended with a certain +romance, and thus bias us for a time in their favour, will stand full +examination; they so often reveal some gross offence against common +sense.<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> Want of common sense is not the particular impression left by +the Tractarians, after we have put aside the plausible dialectic and +winning periods of the leader, and proceed to look at the effect, not on +their general honesty but on their intellectual integrity, of their most +peculiar situation and the methods which they believed that situation to +impose. Nobody will be so presumptuous or uncharitable as to deny that +among the divines of the Oxford movement were men as pure in soul, as +fervid lovers of truth, as this world ever possessed. On the other hand +it would be nothing short of a miracle in human nature, if all that +dreadful tangle of economies and reserves, so largely practised and for +a long time so insidiously defended, did not familiarise a vein of +subtlety, a tendency to play fast and loose with words, a perilous +disposition to regard the non-natural sense of language as if it were +just as good as the natural, a willingness to be satisfied with a bare +and rigid logical consistency of expression, without respect to the +interpretation that was sure to be put upon that expression by the +hearer and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> reader. The strain of their position in all these +respects made Newman and his allies no exemplary school. Their example +has been, perhaps rightly, held to account for something that was often +under the evil name of sophistry suspected and disliked in Mr. Gladstone +himself, in his speeches, his writings, and even in his public acts.</p> + +<p class="center">MISCHIEVOUS EFFECTS OF OXFORD ENTANGLEMENTS</p> + +<p>It is true that to the impartial eye Newman is no worse than teachers in +antagonistic sects; he is, for instance, no subtler than Maurice. The +theologian who strove so hard in the name of anglican unity to develop +all the catholic elements and hide out of sight all the calvinistic, was +not driven to any hardier exploits of verbal legerdemain, than the +theologian who strove against all reason and clear thinking to devise +common formulæ that should embrace both catholic and calvinistic +explanations together, or indeed anything else that anybody might choose +to bring to the transfusing alchemy of his rather smoky crucible. Nor +was the third, and at that moment the strongest, of the church parties +at Oxford and in the country, well able to fling stones at the other +two. What better right, it was asked, had low churchmen to shut their +eyes to the language of rubrics, creeds, and offices, than the high +churchmen had to twist the language of the articles?</p> + +<p>The confusion was grave and it was unfathomable. Newman fought a skilful +and persistent fight against liberalism, as being nothing else than the +egregious doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, and that +one creed is as good as another. Dr. Arnold, on the other hand, +denounced Newmanism as idolatry; declared that if you let in the little +finger of tradition, you would soon have in the whole monster, horns and +tail and all; and even complained of the English divines in general, +with the noble exceptions of Butler and Hooker, that he found in them a +want of believing or disbelieving anything because it was true or false, +as if that were a question that never occurred to them.<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> The plain +man, who was but a poor master either of theology or of the history of +the church of England, but who loved the prayer-book and hated +confession, convents,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> priest-craft, and mariolatry, was wrought to +madness by a clergyman who should describe himself, as did R. H. Froude, +as a catholic without the popery, and a church of England man without +the protestantism. The plain man knew that he was not himself clever +enough to form any distinct idea of what such talk meant. But then his +helplessness only deepened his conviction that the more distinct his +idea might become, the more intense would his aversion be, both to the +thing meant and to the surpliced conjurer who, as he bitterly supposed, +was by sophistic tricks trying hard to take him in.</p> + +<p>Other portents were at the same time beginning to disturb the world. The +finds and the theories of geologists made men uncomfortable, and brought +down sharp anathemas. Wider speculations on cosmic and creative law came +soon after, and found their way into popular reading.<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> In prose +literature, in subtler forms than the verse of Shelley, new dissolving +elements appeared that were destined to go far. Schleiermacher, between +1820 and 1830, opened the sluices of the theological deep, whether to +deluge or to irrigate. In 1830 an alarming note was sounded in the +publication by a learned clergyman of a history of the Jews. We have +seen (p. 56) how Mr. Gladstone was horrified by it. Milman's book was +the beginning of a new rationalism within the fold. A line of thought +was opened that seemed to make the history of religious ideas more +interesting than their truth. The special claims of an accepted creed +were shaken by disclosing an unmistakeable family likeness to creeds +abhorred. A belief was deemed to be accounted for and its sanctity +dissolved, by referring it historically to human origins, and showing it +to be only one branch of a genealogical trunk. Historic explanation +became a graver peril than direct attack.</p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p class="center">NEW IDEAS AND TENDENCIES</p> + +<p>The first skirmish in a dire conflict that is not even now over or near +its end happened in 1836. Lord Melbourne recommended for the chair of +divinity at Oxford Dr. Hampden,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> a divine whose clumsy handling of nice +themes had brought him, much against his intention, under suspicion of +unsound doctrine, and who was destined eleven years later to find +himself the centre of a still louder uproar. Evangelicals and +Tractarians flew to arms, and the two hosts who were soon to draw their +swords upon one another, now for the first time, if not the last, +swarmed forth together side by side against the heretic. What was rather +an affront than a penalty was inflicted upon Hampden by a majority of +some five to one of the masters of arts of the university, and in accord +with that majority, as he has just told us, though he did not actually +vote, was Mr. Gladstone. Twenty years after, when he had risen to be a +shining light in the world's firmament, he wrote to Hampden to express +regret for the injustice of which in this instance 'the forward +precipitancy of youth' had made him guilty.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> The case of Hampden gave +a sharp actuality to the question of the relations of church and crown. +The particular quarrel was of secondary importance, but it brought home +to the high churchmen what might be expected in weightier matters than +the affair of Dr. Hampden from whig ministers, and confirmed the +horrible apprehension that whig ministers might possibly have to fill +all the regius chairs and all the sees for a whole generation to come.</p> + +<p>Not less important than the theology of the Oxford divines in its +influence on Mr. Gladstone's line of thought upon things ecclesiastical +was the speculation of Coleridge on the teaching and polity of a +national church. His fertile book on <i>Church and State</i> was given to the +world in 1830, four years before his death, and this and the ideas +proceeding from it were the mainspring, if not of the theology of the +movement, at least of Mr. Gladstone's first marked contribution to the +stirring controversies of the time. He has described the profound effect +upon his mind of another book, the <i>Treatise on the Church of Christ</i>, +by William Palmer of Worcester College (1838), and to the end of his +life it held its place in his mind among the most masterly performances +of the day in the twin hemispheres of theology and church<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> polity.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> +Newman applauded the book for its magnificence of design, and +undoubtedly it covers much ground, including a stiff rejection of +Locke's theory of toleration, and the assertion of the strong doctrine +that the Christian prince has a right by temporal penalties to protect +the church from the gathering together of the froward and the +insurrection of wicked doers. It has at least the merit, so far from +universal in the polemics of that day, of clear language, definite +propositions, and formal arguments capable of being met by a downright +yes or no.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> The question, however, that has often slumbered yet never +dies, of the right relations between the Christian prince or state and +the Christian church, was rapidly passing away from logicians of the +cloister.</p> + +<p class="center">Note to <a href="#Page_167">page 167.</a></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'<i>Hawarden, Chester, November 9, 1856</i>.—<span class="smcap">My Lord Bishop</span>,—Your +lordship will probably be surprised at receiving a letter from me, +as a stranger. The simple purpose of it is to discharge a debt of +the smallest possible importance to you, yet due I think from me, +by expressing the regret with which I now look back on my +concurrence in a vote of the University of Oxford in the year 1836, +condemnatory of some of your lordship's publications. I did not +take actual part in the vote; but upon reference to a journal kept +at the time, I find that my absence was owing to an accident.</p> + +<p>'For a good many years past I have found myself ill able to master +books of an abstract character, and I am far from pretending to be +competent at this time to form a judgment on the merits of any +propositions then at issue. I have learned, indeed, that many +things which, in the forward precipitancy of my youth, I should +have condemned, are either in reality sound, or lie within the just +limits of such discussion as especially befits an University. But +that which (after a delay, due, I think, to the cares and pressing +occupations of political life) brought back to my mind the +injustice of which I had unconsciously been guilty in 1836, was my +being called upon, as a member of the Council of King's College in +London, to concur in a measure similar in principle with respect to +Mr. Maurice; that is to say, in a condemnation couched in general +terms which did not really declare the point of imputed guilt, and +against which perfect innocence could have no defence. I resisted +to the best of my power, though ineffectually, the grievous wrong +done to Mr. Maurice, and urged that the charges should be made +distinct, that all the best means of investigation should be +brought to bear on them, ample opportunity given for defence, and a +reference then made, if needful, to the Bishop in his proper +capacity. But the majority of laymen in the Council were +inexorable. It was only, as I have said, after mature reflection +that I came to perceive the bearing of the case on that of 1836, +and to find that by my resistance I had condemned myself. I then +lamented very sincerely that I had not on that occasion, now so +remote, felt and acted in a different manner.</p> + +<p>'I beg your lordship to accept this expression of my cordial +regret, and to allow me to subscribe myself, very respectfully, +your obedient and humble servant, <span class="smcap">W. E. Gladstone</span>.'<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Newman, <i>Essays</i>. ii. p. 428.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> See Sir Leslie Stephen's <i>English Utilitarians</i>, ii. p. 42.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> 'Nowhere that I know of,' the Duke of Argyll once wrote in friendly +remonstrance with Mr. Gladstone, 'is the doctrine of a separate society +being of divine foundation, so dogmatically expressed as in the Scotch +Confession; the 39 articles are less definite on the subject.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> On this, see Fairbairn's <i>Catholicism, Roman and Anglican</i>, pp. +114-5.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> A little sheaf of curious letters on this family episode survives.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> Afterwards Bishop of Salisbury.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> Marrying Walter Scott's granddaughter (1847) he was named +Hope-Scott after 1853.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> The <i>Apologia</i> of its leader; Froude, <i>Short Studies</i>, vol. iv.; +and Dean Church's <i>Oxford Movement</i>, 1833-45, a truly fascinating +book—called by Mr. Gladstone a great and noble book. 'It has all the +delicacy,' he says, 'the insight into the human mind, heart, and +character, which were Newman's great endowment; but there is a pervading +sense of soundness about it which Newman, great as he was, never +inspired.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> See Dr. Fairbairn's <i>Catholicism, Roman and Anglican</i>, p. 292. +Pusey speaks of our 'paying twenty millions for a theory about slavery' +(Liddon, <i>Life of Pusey</i>, iii. p. 172).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> <i>Dissertations</i>, i. p. 444.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> J. B. Mozley's <i>Letters</i>, p. 234.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> Stanley's <i>Life of Arnold</i>, ii. p. 56 <i>n</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> The <i>Vestiges of Creation</i> appeared in 1844.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> The letter will be found at the end of the chapter.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> See his article in the <i>Nineteenth Century</i> for August, 1894, where +he calls Palmer's book the most powerful and least assailable defence of +the position of the anglican church from the sixteenth century +downwards.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> See Church, <i>Oxford Movement</i>, pp. 214-6.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> This letter is printed in the <i>Life of Hampden</i> (1876), p. 199.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIICh_V" id="BkIICh_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">HIS FIRST BOOK</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1838-1839</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The union [with the State] is to the Church of secondary though +great importance. <i>Her</i> foundations are on the holy hills. Her +charter is legibly divine. She, if she should be excluded from the +precinct of government, may still fulfil all her functions, and +carry them out to perfection. Her condition would be anything +rather than pitiable, should she once more occupy the position +which she held before the reign of Constantine. But the State, in +rejecting her, would actively violate its most solemn duty, and +would, if the theory of the connection be sound, entail upon itself +a curse.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span> (1838).</p></div><br /> + +<p>According to Mr. Gladstone, a furore for church establishment came down +upon the conservative squadrons between 1835 and 1838. He describes it +as due especially to the activity of the presbyterian established church +of Scotland before the disruption, and especially to the 'zealous and +truly noble propagandism of Dr. Chalmers, a man with the energy of a +giant and the simplicity of a child.' In 1837, Mr. Gladstone says in one +of the many fragments written when in his later years he mused over the +past, 'we had a movement for fresh parliamentary grants to build +churches in Scotland. The leaders did not seem much to like it, but had +to follow. I remember dining at Sir R. Peel's with the Scotch +deputation. It included Collins, a church bookseller of note, who told +me that no sermon ought ever to fall short of an hour, for in less time +than that it was not possible to explain any text of the Holy +Scripture.'</p> + +<p>In the spring of 1838, the mighty Chalmers was persuaded to cross the +border and deliver in London half a dozen discourses to vindicate the +cause of ecclesiastical establish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>ments. The rooms in Hanover Square +were crowded to suffocation by intense audiences mainly composed of the +governing class. Princes of the blood were there, high prelates of the +church, great nobles, leading statesmen, and a throng of members of the +House of Commons, from both sides of it. The orator was seated, but now +and again in the kindling excitement of his thought, he rose +unconsciously to his feet, and by ringing phrase or ardent gesture +roused a whirlwind of enthusiasm such that vehement bystanders assure us +it could not be exceeded in the history of human eloquence.<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> In +Chalmers' fulminating energy, the mechanical polemics of an +appropriation clause in a parliamentary bill assume a passionate and +living air. He had warned his northern flock, 'should the disaster ever +befall us, of vulgar and upstart politicians becoming lords of the +ascendant, and an infidel or demi-infidel government wielding the +destinies of this mighty empire, and should they be willing at the +shrines of their own wretched partizanship to make sacrifice of those +great and hallowed institutions which were consecrated by our ancestors +to the maintenance of religious truth and religious liberty,—should in +particular the monstrous proposition ever be entertained to abridge the +legal funds for the support of protestantism,—let us hope that there is +still enough, not of fiery zeal, but of calm, resolute, enlightened +principle in the land to resent the outrage—enough of energy and +reaction in the revolted sense of this great country to meet and +overbear it.'</p> + +<p class="center">CHALMERS IN LONDON</p> + +<p>The impression made by all this on Mr. Gladstone he has himself +described in an autobiographic note of 1897:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The primary idea of my early politics was the church. With this was +connected the idea of the establishment, as being everything except +essential. When therefore Dr. Chalmers came to London to lecture on +the principle of church establishments, I attended as a loyal +hearer. I had a profound respect for the lecturer, with whom I had +had the honour of a good deal of acquaintance during winter +residences in Edinburgh, and some correspondence by letter. I was +in my earlier twenties, and he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>near his sixties [he was 58], with +a high and merited fame for eloquence and character. He subscribed +his letters to me 'respectfully' (or 'most respectfully') yours, +and puzzled me extremely in the effort to find out what suitable +mode of subscription to use in return. Unfortunately the basis of +his lectures was totally unsound. Parliament as being Christian was +bound to know and establish the truth. But not being made of +theologians, it could not follow the truth into its minuter +shadings, and must proceed upon broad lines. Fortunately these +lines were ready to hand. There was a religious system which, taken +in the rough, was truth. This was known as protestantism: and to +its varieties it was not the business of the legislature to have +regard. On the other side lay a system which, taken again in the +rough, was not truth but error. This system was known as popery. +Parliament therefore was bound to establish and endow some kind of +protestantism, and not to establish or endow popery.</p></div> + +<p>In a letter to Manning (May 14, 1838) he puts the case more bluntly:—</p> +<div class="blockquot"><p>Such a jumble of church, un-church, and anti-church principles as +that excellent and eloquent man Dr. Chalmers has given us in his +recent lectures, no human being ever heard, and it can only be +compared to the state of things—</p> + +<p class="center">Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia cœlum.<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a></p> + +<p>He thinks that the State has not cognisance of spirituals, except +upon a broad simple principle like that which separates popery from +protestantism, namely that protestantism receives the word of God +only, popery the word of God and the word of man alike—it is easy, +he says, such being the alternatives, to judge which is preferable. +He flogged the apostolic succession grievously, seven bishops +sitting below him: London, Winchester, Chester, Oxford, Llandaff, +Gloucester, Exeter, and the Duke of Cambridge incessantly bobbing +assent; but for fear we should be annoyed he then turned round on +the cathedrals plan and flogged it with at least equal vigour. He +has a mind keenly susceptible of what is beautiful, great, and +good; tenacious of an idea when once grasped, and with a singular +power of concentrating the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> whole man upon it. But unfortunately I +do not believe he has ever looked in the face the real doctrine of +the visible church and the apostolic succession, or has any idea +what is the matter at issue.</p></div> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone says he could not stand the undisputed currency in +conservative circles of a theory like this, and felt that the occasion +ought to be seized for further entrenching the existing institution, +strong as it seemed in fact, by more systematic defences in principle +and theory. He sat down to the literary task with uncommon vigour and +persistency. His object was not merely to show that the state has a +conscience, for not even the newest of new Machiavellians denies that a +state is bound by some moral obligations, though in history and fact it +is true that</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 16em;">Earth is sick,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">And Heaven is weary, of the hollow words<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Which States and Kingdoms utter when they talk<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Of truth and justice.<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a><br /></span> + +<p>But the obligation of conscience upon a state was not Mr. Gladstone's +only point. His propositions were, that the state is cognisant of the +difference between religious truth and religious error: that the +propagation of this truth and the discouragement of this error are among +the ends for which government exists; that the English state did +recognise as a fundamental duty to give an active and exclusive support +to a certain religion; and finally that the condition of things +resulting from the discharge of this duty was well worth preserving +against encroachment, from whatever quarter encroachment might threaten.</p> + +<p class="center">COMPOSITION OF HIS WORK</p> + +<p>On July 23rd, the draft of his book was at last finished, and he +dispatched it to James Hope for free criticism, suggestions, and +revision. The 'physical state of the <span class="smcap">MS</span>.,' as Mr. Gladstone calls it, +seems to have been rather indefensible, and his excuse for writing +'irregularly and confusedly, considering the pressure of other +engagements'—an excuse somewhat too common with him—was not quite so +valid as he seems to have thought it. 'The defects,' writes Hope, 'are +such as must almost necessarily occur when a great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> subject is handled +piecemeal and at intervals; and I should recommend, with a view to +remedying them, that you procure the whole to be copied out in a good +legible hand with blank pages, and that you read it through in this +shape once connectedly, with a view to the whole argument, and again +with a view to examining the structure of each part.'<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> Hope took as +much trouble with the argument and structure of the book as if he were +himself its author. For many weeks the fervid toil went on.</p> + +<p>The strain on his eyesight that had embarrassed Mr. Gladstone for +several months now made abstinence from incessant reading and writing +necessary, and he was ordered to travel. He first settled with his +sister at Ems (August 15th), whither the proofs of his book with Hope's +annotations followed, nor did he finally get rid of the burden until the +middle of September. The tedium of life in hotels was almost worse than +the tedium of revising proofs, and at Milan and Florence he was strongly +tempted to return home, as the benefit was problematical; it was even +doubtful whether pictures were any less trying to his eyes than books. +He made the acquaintance of one celebrated writer of the time. 'I went +to see Manzoni,' he says, 'in his house some six or eight miles from +Milan in 1838. He was a most interesting man, but was regarded, as I +found, among the more fashionable priests in Milan as a <i>bacchettone</i> +[hypocrite]. In his own way he was, I think, a liberal and a +nationalist, nor was the alliance of such politics with strong religious +convictions uncommon among the more eminent Italians of those days.'</p> + +<p>October found him in Sicily,<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> where he travelled with Sir Stephen +Glynne and his two sisters, and here we shall soon see that with one of +these sisters a momentous thing came to pass. It was at Catania that he +first heard of the publication of his book. A month or more was passed +in Rome in company with Manning, and together they visited Wiseman, +Manning's conversion still thirteen years off. Macaulay too, now +eight-and-thirty, was at Rome that winter. 'On<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> Christmas Eve,' he says, +'I found Gladstone in the throng, and I accosted him, as we had met, +though we had never been introduced to each other. We talked and walked +together in St. Peter's during the best part of an afternoon. He is both +a clever and an amiable man....' At Rome, as the state of his eyesight +forbade too close resort to picture galleries and museums, he listened +to countless sermons, all carefully recorded in his diary. Dr. Wiseman +gave him a lesson in the missal. On his birthday he went with Manning to +hear mass with the pope's choir, and they were placed on the bench +behind the cardinals. At St. Peter's he recalled that there his first +conception of the unity of the church had come into his mind, and the +desire for its attainment—'an object in every human sense hopeless, but +not therefore the less to be desired, for the horizon of human hope is +not that of divine power and wisdom. That idea has been upon the whole, +I believe, the ruling one of my life during the period that has since +elapsed.' On January 19, he bade 'a reluctant adieu to the mysterious +city, whither he should repair who wishes to renew for a time the dream +of life.'</p> + +<p>A few years later Mr. Gladstone noted some differences between English +and Italian preaching that are of interest:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The fundamental distinction between English and Italian preaching +is, I think, this: the mind of the English preacher, or reader of +sermons, however impressive, is fixed mainly upon his composition, +that of the Italian on his hearers. The Italian is a man applying +himself by his rational and persuasive organs to men, in order to +move them; the former is a man applying himself, with his best +ability in many cases, to a fixed form of matter, in order to <i>make +it</i> move those whom he addresses. The action in the one case is +warm, living, direct, immediate, from heart to heart; in the other +it is transfused through a medium comparatively torpid. The first +is surely far superior to the second in truth and reality. The +preacher bears an awful message. Such messengers, if sent with +authority, are too much identified with, and possessed by, that +which they carry, to view it objectively during its delivery, it +absorbs their very being and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>all its energies, they <i>are</i> their +message, and they see nothing extrinsic to themselves except those +to whose hearts they desire to bring it. In truth, what we want is +the following of nature, and her genial development. (March 20, +Palm Sunday, '42.)</p></div> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">GOES ABROAD. BOOK PUBLISHED</p> + +<p>It was the end of January (1839) before Mr. Gladstone arrived in London, +and by that time his work had been out for six or seven weeks.<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> On +his return we may be sure that his book and its fortunes were the young +author's most lively interest. Church authorities and the clergy +generally, so far as he could learn, approved, many of them very warmly. +The Bishop of London wrote this, and the Archbishop of Canterbury said +it. It is easy to understand with what interest and delight the average +churchman would welcome so serious a contribution to the good cause, so +bold an effort by so skilled a hand, by lessons from history, by general +principles of national probity and a national religion, and by +well-digested materials gathered, as Hooker gathered his, 'from the +characteristic circumstances of the time,' to support the case for +ecclesiastical privilege. Anglicans of the better sort had their +intellectual self-respect restored in Mr. Gladstone's book, by finding +that they need no longer subsist on the dregs of Eldonian prejudice, but +could sustain themselves in intellectual dignity and affluence by large +thoughts and sonorous phrases upon the nature of human society as a +grand whole.<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a> Even unconvinced whigs who quarrelled with the +arguments, admitted that the tories had found in the young member for +Newark a well-read scholar, with extraordinary amplitude of mind, a man +who knew what reasoning meant, and a man who knew how to write.</p> + +<p>The first chapter dealing with establishment drew forth premature praise +from many who condemned the succeeding chapters setting out high notions +as to the church. From both universities he had favourable accounts. +'From Scotland they are mixed; those which are most definite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> tend to +show there is considerable soreness, at which, God knows, I am not +surprised; but I have not sought nor desired it.' The Germans on the +whole approved. Bunsen was exuberant; there was nobody, he said, with +whom he so loved συμφιλοσοφεῖν καὶ συμφιλολογεῖν; people have too much +to do about themselves to have time to seek truth on its own account; +the greater, therefore, the merit of the writer who forces his age to +decide, whether they will serve God or Baal. Gladstone is the first man +in England as to intellectual power, he cried, and he has heard higher +tones than any one else in this land. The Crown Prince of Prussia sent +him civil messages, and meant to have the book translated. Rogers, the +poet, wrote that his mother was descended from stout nonconformists, +that his father was perverted to his mother's heresies, and that +therefore he himself could not be zealous in the cause; but, however +that might be, of this Mr. Gladstone might be very sure, that he would +love and admire the author of the book as much as ever. The Duke of +Newcastle expected much satisfaction; meanwhile declared it to be a +national duty to provide churches and pastors; parliament should vote +even millions and millions; then dissent would uncommonly soon +disappear, and a blessing would fall upon the land. Dr. Arnold told his +friends how much he admired the spirit of the book throughout, how he +liked the substance of half of it, how erroneous he thought the other +half. Wordsworth pronounced it worthy of all attention, doubted whether +the author had not gone too far about apostolical descent; but then, +like the sage that he was, the poet admitted that he must know a great +deal more ecclesiastical history, be better read in the Fathers, and +read the book itself over again, before he could feel any right to +criticise.<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">ITS RECEPTION</p> + +<p>His political leaders had as yet not spoken a word. On February 9th, Mr. +Gladstone dined at Sir Robert Peel's. 'Not a word from him, Stanley, or +Graham yet, even to acknowledge my poor book; but no change in manner, +certainly none in Peel or Graham.' Monckton Milnes had been to Drayton, +and told how the great man there had asked impatiently why anybody with +so fine a career before him should go out of his way to write books. +'Sir Robert Peel,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'who was a religious man, was +wholly anti-church and unclerical, and largely undogmatic. I feel that +Sir R. Peel must have been quite perplexed in his treatment of me after +the publication of the book, partly through his own fault, for by habit +and education he was quite incapable of comprehending the movement in +the church, the strength it would reach, and the exigencies it would +entail. Lord Derby, I think, early began to escape from the erastian +yoke which weighed upon Peel. Lord Aberdeen was, I should say, +altogether enlightened in regard to it and had cast it off: so that he +obtained from some the sobriquet (during his ministry) of "the +presbyterian Puseyite."' Even Mr. Gladstone's best friends trembled for +the effect of his ecclesiastical zeal upon his powers of political +usefulness, and to the same effect was the general talk of the town. The +common suspicion that the writer was doing the work of the hated +Puseyites grew darker and spread further. Then in April came Macaulay's +article in the <i>Edinburgh</i>, setting out with his own incomparable +directness, pungency, and effect, all the arguments on the side of that +popular antagonism which was rooted far less in specific reasoning than +in a general anti-sacerdotal instinct that lies deep in the hearts of +Englishmen. John Sterling called the famous article the assault of an +equipped and practised sophist against a crude young platonist, who +happens by accident to have been taught the hard and broken dialect of +Aristotle rather than the deep, continuous, and musical flow of his true +and ultimate master.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> Author and critic exchanged magnanimous letters +worthy of two great and honourable men.<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a> Not the least wonderful +thing about Macaulay's review is that he should not have seen how many +of his own most trenchant considerations told no more strongly against +Mr. Gladstone's theory, than they told against that whig theory of +establishment which at the end of his article he himself tried to set up +in its place.</p> + +<p>Praise indeed came, and praise that no good man could have treated with +indifference, from men like Keble, and it came from other quarters +whence it was perhaps not quite so welcome, and not much more dangerous. +He heard (March 19) that the Duke of Sussex, at Lord Durham's, had been +strongly condemning the book; and by an odd contrast just after, as he +was standing in conversation with George Sinclair, O'Connell with +evident purpose came up and began to thank him for a most valuable work; +for the doctrine of the authority of the church and infallibility in +essentials—a great approximation to the church of Rome—an excellent +sign in one who if he lived, etc. etc. It did not go far enough for the +Roman catholic Archbishop of Tuan; but Dr. Murray, the Archbishop of +Dublin, was delighted with it; he termed it an honest book, while as to +the charges against romanism Mr. Gladstone was misinformed. 'I merely +said I was very glad to approximate to any one on the ground of <i>truth</i>; +<i>i.e.</i> rejoiced when truth immediately wrought out, in whatever degree, +its own legitimate result of unity. O'Connell said he claimed half of +me.... Count Montalembert came to me to-day (March 23rd), and sat long, +for the purpose of ingenuously and kindly impugning certain statements +in my book, viz. (1) That the peculiar tendency of the policy of +romanism before the reformation went to limit in the mass of men +intellectual exercise upon religion. (2) That the doctrine of purgatory +adjourned until after death, more or less, the idea and practice of the +practical work of religion. (3) That the Roman catholic church restricts +the reading of the scriptures by the Christian people. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> spoke of the +evils; I contended we had a balance of good, and that the idea of duty +in individuals was more developed here than in pure Roman catholic +countries.'</p> + +<p class="center">THE BOOK TOO LATE</p> + +<p>All was of no avail. 'Scarcely had my work issued from the press,' wrote +Mr. Gladstone thirty years later, 'when I became aware that there was no +party, no section of a party, no individual person probably, in the +House of Commons, who was prepared to act upon it. I found myself the +last man on a sinking ship.' Exclusive support to the established +religion of the country had been the rule; 'but when I bade it live, it +was just about to die. It was really a quickened, not a deadened +conscience, in the country, that insisted on enlarging the circle of +state support.'<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> The result was not wholly unexpected, for in the +summer of 1838 while actually writing the book, he records that he 'told +Pusey for himself alone, I thought my own church and state principles +within one stage of being hopeless as regards success in this +generation.'</p> + +<p>Another set of fragmentary notes, composed in 1894, and headed 'Some of +my Errors,' contains a further passage that points in a significant +direction:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Oxford had not taught me, nor had any other place or person, the +value of liberty as an essential condition of excellence in human +things. True, Oxford had supplied me with the means of applying a +remedy to this mischief, for she had undoubtedly infused into my +mind the love of truth as a dominant and supreme motive of conduct. +But this it took long to develop into its proper place and +function. It may, perhaps, be thought that among these errors I +ought to record the publication in 1838 of my first work, <i>The +State in its Relation with the Church</i>. Undoubtedly that work was +written in total disregard or rather ignorance of the conditions +under which alone political action was possible in matters of +religion. It involved me personally in a good deal of +embarrassment.... In the sanguine fervour of youth, having now +learned something about the nature of the church and its office, +and noting the many symptoms of revival and reform within her +borders, I dreamed that she was capable of recovering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> lost ground, +and of bringing back the nation to unity in her communion. A +notable projection from the ivory gate,</p> + +<p class="center">'Sed falsa ad cœlum mittunt insomnia manes.'<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a></p> + +<p>From these points of view the effort seems contemptible. But I +think that there is more to be said. The land was overspread with a +thick curtain of prejudice. The foundations of the historic church +of England, except in the minds of a few divines, were obscured. +The evangelical movement, with all its virtues and merits, had the +vice of individualising religion in degree perhaps unexampled, and +of rendering the language of holy scripture about Mount Sion and +the kingdom of heaven little better than a jargon.... To meet the +demands of the coming time, it was a matter of vital necessity to +cut a way through all this darkness to a clearer and more solid +position. Immense progress has been made in that direction during +my lifetime, and I am inclined to hope that my book imparted a +certain amount of stimulus to the public mind, and made some small +contribution to the needful process in its earliest stage.</p></div> + +<p>In the early pages of this very book, Mr. Gladstone says, that the union +of church and state is to the church of secondary though great +importance; <i>her</i> foundations are on the holy hills and her condition +would be no pitiable one, should she once more occupy the position that +she held before the reign of Constantine.<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> Faint echo of the +unforgotten lines in which Dante cries out to Constantine what woes his +fatal dower to the papacy had brought down on religion and mankind.<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> +In these sentences lay a germ that events were speedily to draw towards +maturity, a foreshadowing of the supreme principle that neither Oxford +nor any other place had yet taught him, 'the value of liberty as an +essential condition of excellence in human things.'</p> + +<p class="center">WRITES <i>CHURCH PRINCIPLES</i></p> + +<p>This revelation only turned his zeal for religion as the paramount issue +of the time and of all times into another channel. Feeling the +overwhelming strength of the tide that was running against his view of +what he counted vital aspects of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> church as a national institution, +he next flew to the new task of working out the doctrinal mysteries that +this institution embodied, and with Mr. Gladstone to work out a thing in +his own mind always meant to expound and to enforce for the minds of +others. His pen was to him at once as sword and as buckler; and while +the book on <i>Church and State</i>, though exciting lively interest, was +evidently destined to make no converts in theory and to be pretty +promptly cast aside in practice, he soon set about a second work on +<i>Church Principles</i>. It is true that with the tenacious instinct of a +born controversialist, he still gave a good deal of time to constructing +buttresses for the weaker places that had been discovered by enemies or +by himself in the earlier edifice, and in 1841 he published a revised +version of <i>Church and State</i>.<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> But ecclesiastical discussion was by +then taking a new shape, and the fourth edition fell flat. Of <i>Church +Principles</i>, we may say that it was stillborn. Lockhart said of it, that +though a hazy writer, Gladstone showed himself a considerable divine, +and it was a pity that he had entered parliament instead of taking +orders. The divinity, however, did not attract. The public are never +very willing to listen to a political layman discussing the arcana of +theology, and least of all were they inclined to listen to him about the +new-found arcana of anglo-catholic theology. As Macaulay said, this time +it was a theological treatise, not an essay upon important questions of +government; and the intrepid reviewer rightly sought a more fitting +subject for his magician's gifts in the dramatists of the Restoration. +Newman said of it, 'Gladstone's book is not open to the objections I +feared; it is doctrinaire, and (I think) somewhat self-confident; but it +will do good.'</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>A few sentences more will set before us the earliest of his transitions, +and its gradual dates. He is writing about the first election at +Newark:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It was a curious piece of experience to a youth in his twenty-third +year, young of his age, who had seen little or nothing of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> +world, who resigned himself to politics, but whose desire had been +for the ministry of God. The remains of this desire operated +unfortunately. They made me tend to glorify in an extravagant +manner and degree not only the religious character of the state, +which in reality stood low, but also the religious mission of the +conservative party. There was in my eyes a certain element of +Antichrist in the Reform Act, and that act was cordially hated, +though the leaders soon perceived that there would be no step +backward. It was only under the second government of Sir Robert +Peel that I learned how impotent and barren was the conservative +office for the church, though that government was formed of men +able, upright, and extremely well-disposed. It was well for me that +the unfolding destiny carried me off in a considerable degree from +political ecclesiasticism of which I should at that time have made +a sad mess. Providence directed that my mind should find its food +in other pastures than those in which my youthfulness would have +loved to seek it. I went beyond the general views of the tory party +in state churchism, ... it was my opinion that as to religions +other than those of the state, the state should tolerate only and +not pay. So I was against salaries for prison chaplains not of the +church, and I applied a logic plaster to all difficulties.... So +that Macaulay ... was justified in treating me as belonging to the +ultra section of the tories, had he limited himself to +ecclesiastical questions.</p></div> + +<p>In 1840, when he received Manning's imprimatur for <i>Church Principles</i>, +he notes how hard the time and circumstances were in which he had to +steer his little bark. 'But the polestar is clear. Reflection shows me +that a political position is mainly valuable as instrumental for the +good of the church, and under this rule every question becomes one of +detail only.' By 1842 reflection had taken him a step further:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I now approach the <i>mezzo del cammin</i>; my years glide away. It is +time to look forward to the close, and I do look forward. My life +... has two prospective objects, for which I hope the performance +of my present public duties may, if not qualify, yet extrinsically +enable me. One, the adjustment of certain relations <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>of the church +to the state. Not that I think the action of the latter can be +harmonised to the laws of the former. We have passed the point at +which that was possible.... But it would be much if the state would +honestly aim at enabling the church to develop her own intrinsic +means. To this I look. The second is, unfolding the catholic system +within her in some establishment or machinery looking both towards +the higher life, and towards the external warfare against ignorance +and depravity.</p></div> + +<p class="center">INTERNAL CONFLICT</p> + +<p>In the autumn of 1843, Mr. Gladstone explains to his father the relative +positions of secular and church affairs in his mind, and this is only a +few months after what to most men is the absorbing moment of accession +to cabinet and its responsibilities. 'I contemplate secular affairs,' he +says, 'chiefly as a means of being useful in church affairs, though I +likewise think it right and prudent not to meddle in church matters for +any small reason. I am not making known anything new to you.... These +were the sentiments with which I entered public life, and although I do +not at all repent of [having entered it, and] am not disappointed in the +character of the employments it affords, certainly the experience of +them in no way and at no time has weakened my original impressions.' At +the end of 1843 he reached what looked like a final stage:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Of public life, I certainly must say, every year shows me more and +more that the idea of Christian politics cannot be realised in the +state according to its present conditions of existence. For +purposes sufficient, I believe, but partial and finite, I am more +than content to be where I am. But the perfect freedom of the new +covenant can only, it seems to me, be breathed in other air; and +the day may come when God may grant to me the application of this +conviction to myself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> Hanna's <i>Life of Chalmers</i>, iv. pp. 37-46.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> Ovid, <i>Met.</i> i. 5.—Chaos, before sea and land and all-covering +skies.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> <i>Excursion</i>, v.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> <i>Memoirs of J. R. Hope-Scott</i>, i. p. 150, where an adequate +portion of the correspondence is to be found.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> He wrote an extremely graphic account of their ascent of Mount +Etna, which has since found a place in Murray's handbook for Sicily.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> Of the first edition some 1500 or 1750 copies were sold.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> <i>Memoirs of J. R. Hope-Scott</i>, i. p. 172.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> Carlyle wrote to Emerson (Feb. 8, 1839): One of the strangest +things about these New England Orations (Emerson's) is a fact I have +heard, but not yet seen, that a certain W. Gladstone, an Oxford crack +scholar, tory M.P., and devout churchman of great talent and hope, has +contrived to insert a piece of you (<i>first</i> Oration it must be) in a +work of his own on <i>Church and State</i>, which, makes some figure at +present! I know him for a solid, serious, silent-minded man; but how +with his Coleridge shovel-hattism he has contrived to relate himself to +<i>you</i>, there is the mystery. True men of all creeds, it <i>would</i> seem, +are brothers.—<i>Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson</i>, i. p. 217. +</p><p> +There is more than one reference to Emerson in Mr. Gladstone's book, +<i>e.g.</i> i. pp. 25, 130.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> The letters are given in full in <i>Gleanings</i>, vii. p. 106. See +also Trevelyan's <i>Macaulay</i>, chap. viii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> Chapter of Autobiography, 1868.—<i>Gleanings</i>, vii. p. 115.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> <i>Aeneid</i>, vi. 896. But through the ivory gate the shades send to +the upper air apparitions that do but cheat us.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> Chapter i. p. 5.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> <i>Inferno</i>, xix. 115-7.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> It was translated into German and published, with a preface by +Tholuck, in 1843.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIICh_VI" id="BkIICh_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">CHARACTERISTICS</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1840</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Be inspired with the belief that life is a great and noble calling; +not a mean and grovelling thing that we are to shuffle through as +we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span>.<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a></p></div> +<br /> +<p>It is the business of biography to depict a physiognomy and not to +analyse a type. In our case there is all the more reason to think of +this, because type hardly applies to a figure like Gladstone's, without +any near or distant parallel, and composed of so many curious dualisms +and unforeseen affinities. Truly was it said of Fénelon, that half of +him would be a great man, and would stand out more clearly as a great +man than does the whole, because it would be simpler. So of Mr. +Gladstone. We are dazzled by the endless versatility of his mind and +interests as man of action, scholar, and controversial athlete; as +legislator, administrator, leader of the people; as the strongest of his +time in the main branches of executive force, strongest in persuasive +force; supreme in the exacting details of national finance; master of +the parliamentary arts; yet always living in the noble visions of the +moral and spiritual idealist. This opulence, vivacity, profusion, and +the promise of it all in these days of early prime, made an awakening +impression even on his foremost contemporaries. The impression might +have been easier to reproduce, if he had been less infinitely mobile. 'I +cannot explain my own foundation,' Fénelon said; 'it escapes me; it +seems to change every hour.' How are we to seek an answer to the same +question in the history of Mr. Gladstone?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">INTERNAL CONFLICT</p> + +<p>His physical vitality—his faculties of free energy, endurance, +elasticity—was a superb endowment to begin with. We may often ask for +ourselves and others: How many of a man's days does he really live? +However men may judge the fruit it bore, Mr. Gladstone lived in vigorous +activity every day through all his years. Time showed that he was born +with a frame of steel. Though, unlike some men of heroic +strength—Napoleon for example—he often knew fatigue and weariness, yet +his organs never failed to answer the call of an intense and persistent +Will. As we have already seen, in early manhood his eyes gave him much +trouble, and he both learned by heart and composed a good deal of verse +by way of sparing them. He was a great walker, and at this time he was a +sportsman, as his diary has shown. 'My object in shooting, ill as I do +it, is the invigorating and cheering exercise, which does so much for +health (1842).' One day this year (Sept. 13, '42) while out shooting, +the second barrel of a gun went off while he was reloading, shattering +the forefinger of his left hand. The remains of the finger the surgeons +removed. 'I have hardly ever in my life,' he says, 'had to endure +serious bodily pain, and this was short.' In 1845, he notes, 'a hard +day. What a mercy that my strength, in appearance not remarkable, so +little fails me.' In the autumn of 1853 he was able to record, 'Eight or +nine days of bed illness, the longest since I had the scarlet fever at +nine or ten years old.' It was the same all through. His bodily strength +was in fact to prove extraordinary, and was no secondary element in the +long and strenuous course now opening before him.</p> + +<p>Not second to vigour of physical organisation—perhaps, if we only knew +all the secrets of mind and matter, even connected with this vigour—was +strength and steadfastness of Will. Character, as has been often +repeated, is completely fashioned will, and this superlative +requirement, so indispensable for every man of action in whatever walk +and on whatever scale, was eminently Mr. Gladstone's. From force of +will, with all its roots in habit, example, conviction,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> purpose, sprang +his leading and most effective qualities. He was never very ready to +talk about himself, but when asked what he regarded as his master +secret, he always said, '<i>Concentration</i>.' Slackness of mind, vacuity of +mind, the wheels of the mind revolving without biting the rails of the +subject, were insupportable. Such habits were of the family of +faintheartedness, which he abhorred. Steady practice of instant, fixed, +effectual attention, was the key alike to his rapidity of apprehension +and to his powerful memory. In the orator's temperament exertion is +often followed by a reaction that looks like indolence. This was never +so with him. By instinct, by nature, by constitution, he was a man of +action in all the highest senses of a phrase too narrowly applied and +too narrowly construed. The currents of daimonic energy seemed never to +stop, the vivid susceptibility to impressions never to grow dull. He was +an idealist, yet always applying ideals to their purposes in act. Toil +was his native element; and though he found himself possessed of many +inborn gifts, he was never visited by the dream so fatal to many a +well-laden argosy, that genius alone does all. There was nobody like him +when it came to difficult business, for bending his whole strength to +it, like a mighty archer stringing a stiff bow.</p> + +<p class="center">FORCE OF WILL AND POWER OR TOIL</p> + +<p>Sir James Graham said of him in these years that Gladstone could do in +four hours what it took any other man sixteen to do, and he worked +sixteen hours a day. When I came to know him long years after, he told +me that he thought when in office in the times that our story is now +approaching, fourteen hours were a common tale. Nor was it mere mechanic +industry; it was hard labour, exact, strenuous, engrossing rigorous. No +Hohenzollern soldier held with sterner regularity to the duties of his +post. Needless to add that he had a fierce regard for the sanctity of +time, although in the calling of the politician it is harder than in any +other to be quite sure when time is well spent, and when wasted. His +supreme economy here, like many other virtues, carried its own defect, +and coupled with his constitutional eagerness and his quick +susceptibility, it led at all periods of his life to some hurry. The +tumult of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> business, he says one year in his diary, 'follows and whirls +me day and night.' He speaks once in 1844 of 'a day restless as the +sea.' There were many such. That does not mean, and has nothing to do +with, 'proud precipitance of soul,' nor haste in forming pregnant +resolves. Here he was deliberate enough, and in the ordinary conduct of +life even minor things were objects of scrutiny and calculation, far +beyond the habit of most men. For he was lowlander as well as +highlander. But a vast percentage of his letters from boyhood onwards +contain apologies for haste. More than once when his course was nearly +run, he spoke of his life having been passed in 'unintermittent hurry,' +just as Mill said, he had never been in a hurry in his life until he +entered parliament, and then he had never been out of a hurry.</p> + +<p>It was no contradiction that deep and constant in him, along with this +vehement turn for action, was a craving for tranquil collection of +himself that seemed almost monastic. To Mrs. Gladstone he wrote a couple +of years after their marriage (Dec. 13, 1841):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>You interpret so indulgently what I mean about the necessity of +quiescence at home during the parliamentary session, that I need +not say much; and yet I think my doctrine must <i>seem</i> so strange +that I wish again and again to state how entirely it is different +from anything like disparagement, of George for example. It is +always relief and always delight to see and to be with you; and you +would, I am sure, be glad to know, how near Mary [Lady Lyttelton] +comes as compared with others to you, as respects what I can hardly +describe in few words, my mental rest, when she is present. But +there is no <i>man</i> however near to me, with whom I am fit to be +habitually, when hard worked. I have told you how reluctant I have +always found myself to detail to my father on coming home, when I +lived with him, what had been going on in the House of Commons. +Setting a tired mind to work is like making a man run up and down +stairs when his limbs are weary.</p></div> + +<p>If he sometimes recalls a fiery hero of the <i>Iliad</i>, at other times he +is the grave and studious benedictine, but whether<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> in quietude or +movement, always a man with a purpose and never the loiterer or lounger, +never apathetic, never a sufferer from that worst malady of the human +soul—from cheerlessness and cold.</p> + +<p>We need not take him through a phrenological table of elements, powers, +faculties, leanings, and propensities. Very early, as we shall soon see, +Mr. Gladstone gave marked evidence of that sovereign quality of Courage +which became one of the most signal of all his traits. He used to say +that he had known three men in his time possessing in a supreme degree +the virtue of parliamentary courage—Peel, Lord John Russell, and +Disraeli. To some other contemporaries for whom courage might be +claimed, he stoutly denied it. Nobody ever dreamed of denying it to him, +whether parliamentary courage or any other, in either its active or its +passive shape, either in daring or in fortitude. He had even the courage +to be prudent, just as he knew when it was prudent to be bold. He +applied in public things the Spenserian line, '<i>Be bold, be bold, and +everywhere be bold</i>,' but neither did he forget the iron door with its +admonition, '<i>Be not too bold</i>.' The great Condé, when complimented on +his courage, always said that he took good care never to call upon it +unless the occasion were absolutely necessary. No more did Mr. Gladstone +go out of his way to summon courage for its own sake, but only when +spurred by duty; then he knew no faltering. Capable of much +circumspection, yet soon he became known for a man of lion heart.</p> + +<p class="center">MEASURE OF HIS GIFTS</p> + +<p>Nature had bestowed on him many towering gifts. Whether Humour was among +them, his friends were wont to dispute. That he had a gaiety and +sympathetic alacrity of mind that was near of kin to humour, nobody who +knew him would deny. Of playfulness his speeches give a thousand proofs; +of drollery and fun he had a ready sense, though it was not always easy +to be quite sure beforehand what sort of jest would hit or miss. For +irony, save in its lighter forms as weapon in debate, he had no marked +taste or turn. But he delighted in good comedy, and he reproached me +severely for caring less than one ought to do for the <i>Merry Wives of +Windsor</i>. Had he Imagination? In its high<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> literary and poetic form he +rose to few conspicuous flights—such, for example, as Burke's descent +of Hyder Ali upon the Carnatic—in vast and fantastic conceptions such +as arose from time to time in the brain of Napoleon, he had no part or +lot. But in force of moral and political imagination, in bold, excursive +range, in the faculty of illuminating practical and objective +calculations with lofty ideals of the strength of states, the happiness +of peoples, the whole structure of good government, he has had no +superior among the rulers of England. His very ardour of temperament +gave him imagination; he felt as if everybody who listened to him in a +great audience was equally fired with his own energy of sympathy, +indignation, conviction, and was transported by the same emotion that +thrilled through himself. All this, however, did not fully manifest +itself at this time, nor for some years to come.</p> + +<p>Strength of will found scope for exercise where some would not discover +the need for it. In native capacity for righteous Anger he abounded. The +flame soon kindled, and it was no fire of straw; but it did not master +him. Mrs. Gladstone once said to me (1891), that whoever writes his life +must remember that he had two sides—one impetuous, impatient, +irrestrainable, the other all self-control, able to dismiss all but the +great central aim, able to put aside what is weakening or disturbing; +that he achieved this self-mastery, and had succeeded in the struggle +ever since he was three or four and twenty, first by the natural power +of his character, and second by incessant wrestling in prayer—prayer +that had been abundantly answered.</p> + +<p>Problems of compromise are of the essence of the parliamentary and +cabinet system, and for some years at any rate he was more than a little +restive when they confronted him. Though in the time to come he had +abundant difference with colleagues, he had all the virtues needed for +political co-operation, as Cobden, Bright, and Mill had them, nor did he +ever mistake for courage or independence the unhappy preference for +having a party or an opinion exclusively to one's self. 'What is wanted +above all things,' he said, 'in the business of joint counsel, is the +faculty of making many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> one, of throwing the mind into the common +stock.'<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> This was a favourite phrase with him for that power of +working with other people, without which a man would do well to stand +aside from public affairs. He used to say that of all the men he had +ever known, Sir George Grey had most of this capacity for throwing his +mind into joint stock. The demands of joint stock he never took to mean +the quenching of the duty in a man to have a mind of his own. He was +always amused by the recollection of somebody at Oxford—'a regius +professor of divinity, I am sorry to say'—who was accustomed to define +taste as 'a faculty of coinciding with the opinion of the majority.'</p> + +<p>Hard as he strove for a broad basis in general theory and high abstract +principle, yet always aiming at practical ends he kept in sight the +opportune. Nobody knew better the truth, so disastrously neglected by +politicians who otherwise would be the very salt of the earth, that not +all questions are for all times. 'For my part,' Mr. Gladstone said, 'I +have not been so happy, at any time of my life, as to be able +sufficiently to adjust the proper conditions of handling any difficult +question, until the question itself was at the door.'<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> He could not +readily apply himself to topics outside of those with which he chanced +at the moment to be engrossed:—'Can you not wait? Is it necessary to +consider now?' That was part of his concentration. Nor did he fly at a +piece of business, deal with it, then let it fall from his grasp. It +became part of him. If circumstances brought it again into his vicinity, +they found him instantly ready, with a prompt continuity that is no +small element of power in public business.</p> + +<p>How little elastic and self-confident at heart he was in some of his +moods in early manhood, we discern in the curious language of a letter +to his brother-in-law Lyttelton in 1840:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It is my nature to lean not so much on the applause as upon the +assent of others to a degree which perhaps I do not show, from that +sense of weakness and utter inadequacy to my work which never +ceases to attend me while I am engaged upon these subjects.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>... I +wish you knew the state of total impotence to which I should be +reduced if there were no echo to the accents of my own voice. I go +through my labour, such as it is, not by a genuine elasticity of +spirit, but by a plodding movement only just able to contend with +inert force, and in the midst of a life which indeed has little +claim to be called active, yet is broken this way and that into a +thousand small details, certainly unfavourable to calm and +continuity of thought.</p></div> + +<p>Here we have a glimpse of a singular vein peculiarly rare in ardent +genius at thirty, but disclosing its traces in Mr. Gladstone even in his +ripest years.</p> + +<p class="center">AS ORATOR</p> + +<p>Was this the instinct of the orator? For it was in the noble arts of +oratory that nature had been most lavish, and in them he rose to be +consummate. The sympathy and assent of which he speaks are a part of +oratorical inspiration, and even if such sympathy be but superficial, +the highest efforts of oratorical genius take it for granted. 'The work +of the orator,' he once wrote, 'from its very inception is inextricably +mixed up with practice. It is cast in the mould offered to him by the +mind of his hearers. It is an influence principally received from his +audience (so to speak) in vapour, which he pours back upon them in a +flood. The sympathy and concurrence of his time, is, with his own mind, +joint parent of the work. He cannot follow nor frame ideals: his choice +is, to be what his age will have him, what it requires in order to be +moved by him; or else not to be at all.'<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a></p> + +<p>Among Mr. Gladstone's physical advantages for bearing the orator's +sceptre were a voice of singular fulness, depth, and variety of tone; a +falcon's eye with strange imperious flash; features mobile, expressive, +and with lively play; a great actor's command of gesture, bold, +sweeping, natural, unforced, without exaggeration or a trace of +melodrama. His pose was easy, alert, erect. To these endowments of +external mien was joined the gift and the glory of words. They were not +sought, they came. Whether the task were reasoning or exposition or +expostulation, the copious springs never failed. Nature had thus done +much for him, but he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> superadded ungrudging labour. Later in life he +proffered to a correspondent a set of suggestions on the art of +speaking:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>1. Study plainness of language, always preferring the simpler word. +2. Shortness of sentences. 3. Distinctness of articulation. 4. Test +and question your own arguments beforehand, not waiting for critic +or opponent. 5. Seek a thorough digestion of, and familiarity with, +your subject, and rely mainly on these to prompt the proper words. +6. Remember that if you are to sway an audience you must besides +thinking out your matter, watch them all along.—(March 20, 1875.)</p></div> + +<p>The first and second of these rules hardly fit his own style. Yet he had +seriously studied from early days the devices of a speaker's training. I +find copied into a little note-book many of the precepts and maxims of +Quintilian on the making of an orator. So too from Cicero's <i>De +Oratore</i>, including the words put into the mouth of Catulus, that nobody +can attain the glory of eloquence without the height of zeal and toil +and knowledge.<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> Zeal and toil and knowledge, working with an inborn +faculty of powerful expression—here was the double clue. He never +forgot the Ciceronian truth that the orator is not made by the tongue +alone, as if it were a sword sharpened on a whetstone or hammered on an +anvil; but by having a mind well filled with a free supply of high and +various matter.<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> His eloquence was 'inextricably mixed up with +practice.' An old whig listening to one of his budget speeches, said +with a touch of bitterness, 'Ah, Oxford on the surface, but Liverpool +below.' No bad combination. He once had a lesson from Sir Robert Peel. +Mr. Gladstone, being about to reply in debate, turned to his chief and +said: 'Shall I be short and concise?' 'No,' was the answer, 'be long and +diffuse. It is all important in the House of Commons to state your case +in many different ways, so as to produce an effect on men of many ways +of thinking.'</p> + +<p>In discussing Macaulay, Sir Francis Baring, an able and unbiassed judge, +advised a junior (1860) about patterns for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> the parliamentary +aspirant:—'Gladstone is to my mind a much better model for speaking; I +mean he is happier in joining great eloquence and selection of words and +rhetoric, if you will, with a style not a bit above debate. It does not +smell of the oil. Of course there has been plenty of labour, and that +not of to-day but during a whole life.' Nothing could be truer. +Certainly for more than the first forty years of his parliamentary +existence, he cultivated a style not above debate, though it was debate +of incomparable force and brilliance. When simpletons say, as if this +were to dispose of every higher claim for him, that he worked all his +wonders by his gifts as orator, do they ever think what power over such +an assembly as the House of Commons signifies? Here—and it was not +until he had been for thirty years and more in parliament that he betook +himself largely to the efforts of the platform—here he was addressing +men of the world, some of them the flower of English education and +intellectual accomplishment; experts in all the high practical lines of +life, bankers, merchants, lawyers, captains of industry in every walk; +men trained in the wide experience and high responsibilities of public +office; lynx-eyed rivals and opponents. Is this the scene, or were these +the men, for the triumphs of the barren rhetorician and the sophist, +whose words have no true relation to the facts? Where could general +mental strength be better tested? As a matter of history most of those +who have held the place of leading minister in the House of Commons have +hardly been orators at all, any more than Washington and Jefferson were +orators. Mr. Gladstone conquered the house, because he was saturated +with a subject and its arguments; because he could state and enforce his +case; because he plainly believed every word he said, and earnestly +wished to press the same belief into the minds of his hearers; finally +because he was from the first an eager and a powerful athlete. The man +who listening to his adversary asks of his contention, 'Is this true?' +is a lost debater; just as a soldier would be lost who on the day of +battle should bethink him that the enemy's cause might after all perhaps +be just. The debater does not ask, 'Is this true?' He asks, 'What is the +answer to this? How can I most surely floor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> him?' Lord Coleridge +inquired of Mr. Gladstone whether he ever felt nervous in public +speaking: 'In opening a subject often,' Mr. Gladstone answered, 'in +reply never.' Yet with this inborn readiness for combat, nobody was less +addicted to aggression or provocation. It was with him a salutary maxim +that, if you have unpalatable opinions to declare, you should not make +them more unpalatable by the way of expressing them. In his earlier +years he did not often speak with passion. 'This morning,' a famous +divine once said, 'I preached a sermon all flames.' Mr. Gladstone +sometimes made speeches of that cast, but not frequently, I think, until +the seventies. Meanwhile he impressed the House by his nobility, his +sincerity, his simplicity; for there is plenty of evidence besides Mr. +Gladstone's case, that simplicity of character is no hindrance to +subtlety of intellect.</p> + +<p>Contemporaries in these opening years describe his parliamentary manners +as much in his favour. His countenance, they say, is mild and pleasant, +and has a high intellectual expression. His eyes are clear and quick. +His eyebrows are dark and rather prominent. There is not a dandy in the +House but envies his fine head of jet-black hair. Mr. Gladstone's +gesture is varied, but not violent. When he rises, he generally puts +both his hands behind his back, and having there suffered them to +embrace each other for a short time, he unclasps them, and allows them +to drop on either side. They are not permitted to remain long in that +locality before you see them again closed together, and hanging down +before him.<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> Other critics say that his air and voice are too +abstract, and 'you catch the sound as though he were communing with +himself. It is as though you saw a bright picture through a filmy veil. +His countenance, without being strictly handsome, is highly +intellectual. His pale complexion, slightly tinged with olive, and dark +hair, cut rather close to his head, with an eye of remarkable depth, +still more impress you with the abstracted character of his disposition. +The expression of his face would be sombre were it not for the striking +eye, which has a remarkable fascination. His triumphs as a debater are +achieved not by the aid of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> passions, as with Sir James Graham, or +with Mr. Sheil; not of prejudice and fallacy, as with Robert Peel; not +with imagination and high seductive colouring, as with Mr. Macaulay: +but—of pure reason. He prevails by that subdued earnestness which +results from deep religious feelings, and is not fitted for the more +usual and more stormy functions of a public speaker.'<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a></p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">ACTION HIS FIELD</p> + +<p>We are not to think of him as prophet, seer, poet, founder of a system, +or great born man of letters like Gibbon, Macaulay, Carlyle. Of these +characters he was none, though he had warmth and height of genius to +comprehend the value of them all, and—what was more curious—his +oratory and his acts touched them and their work in such a way that men +were always tempted to apply to him standards that belonged to them. His +calling was a different one, and he was wont to appraise it lower. His +field lay 'in working the institutions of his country.' Whether he would +have played a part as splendid in the position of a high ruling +ecclesiastic, if the times had allowed such a personage, we cannot tell; +perhaps he had not 'imperious immobility' enough. Nor whether he would +have made a judge of the loftier order; perhaps his mind was too +addicted to subtle distinctions, and not likely to give a solid +adherence to broad principles of law. A superb advocate? An evangelist, +as irresistible as Wesley or as Whitefield? What matters it? All agree +that more magnificent power of mind was never placed at the service of +the British Senate.</p> + +<p>His letters to his father from 1832 onwards show all the interest of a +keen young member in his calling, though they contain few anecdotes, or +tales, or vivid social traits. 'Of political gossip,' he admits to his +father (1843), 'you always find me barren enough.' What comes out in all +his letters to his kinsfolk is his unbounded willingness to take trouble +in order to spare others. Even in prolonged and intricate money +transactions, of which we shall see something later<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>transactions of all +others the most apt to produce irritation—not an accent of impatience +or dispute escapes him, though the guarded firmness of his language +marks the steadfast self-control. We may say of Mr. Gladstone that +nobody ever had less to repent of from that worst waste in human life +that comes of unkindness. Kingsley noticed, with some wonder, how he +never allowed the magnitude and multiplicity of his labours to excuse +him from any of the minor charities and courtesies of life.</p> + +<p>Active hatred of cruelty, injustice, and oppression is perhaps the main +difference between a good man and a bad one; and here Mr. Gladstone was +sublime. Yet though anger burned fiercely in him over wrong, nobody was +more chary of passing moral censures. What he said of himself in 1842, +when he was three and thirty, held good to the end:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Nothing grows upon me so much with lengthening life as the sense of +the difficulties, or rather the impossibilities, with which we are +beset whenever we attempt to take to ourselves the functions of the +Eternal Judge (except in reference to ourselves where judgment is +committed to us), and to form any accurate idea of relative merit +and demerit, good and evil, in actions. The shades of the rainbow +are not so nice, and the sands of the sea-shore are not such a +multitude, as are all the subtle, shifting, blending forms of +thought and of circumstances that go to determine the character of +us and of our acts. But there is One that seeth plainly and judgeth +righteously.</p></div> + +<p class="center">HIS SILENCES</p> + +<p>This was only one side of Mr. Gladstone's many silences. To talk of the +silences of the most copious and incessant speaker and writer of his +time may seem a paradox. Yet in this fluent orator, this untiring +penman, this eager and most sociable talker at the dinner-table or on +friendly walks, was a singular faculty of self-containment and reserve. +Quick to notice, as he was, and acutely observant of much that might +have been expected to escape him, he still kept as much locked up within +as he so liberally gave out. Bulwer Lytton was at one time, as is well +known, addicted to the study of mediæval magic, occult power, and the +conjunctions of the heavenly bodies; and among other figures he one day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> +amused himself by casting the horoscope of Mr. Gladstone (1860). To him +the astrologer's son sent it. Like most of such things, the horoscope +has one or two ingenious hits and a dozen nonsensical misses. But one +curious sentence declares Mr. Gladstone to be '<i>at heart a solitary +man</i>.' Here I have often thought that the stars knew what they were +about.</p> + +<p>Whether Mr. Gladstone ever became what is called a good judge of men it +would be hard to say. Such characters are not common even among +parliamentary leaders. They do not always care to take the trouble. The +name is too commonly reserved for those who think dubiously or downright +ill of their fellow-creatures. Those who are accustomed to make most of +knowing men, do their best to convince us that men are hardly worth +knowing. This was not Mr. Gladstone's way. Like Lord Aberdeen, he had a +marked habit of believing people; it was part of his simplicity. His +life was a curious union of ceaseless contention and inviolable +charity—a true charity, having nothing in common with a lazy spirit of +unconcern. He knew men well enough, at least, to have found out that +none gains such ascendency over them as he who appeals to what is the +nobler part in human nature. Nestors of the whigs used to wonder how so +much imagination, invention, courage, knowledge, diligence—all the +qualities that seem to make an orator and a statesman—could be +neutralised by the want of a sound overruling judgment. They said that +Gladstone's faculties were like an army without a general, or a jury +without guidance from the bench.<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> Yet when the time came, this army +without a general won the crowning victories of the epoch, and for +twenty years the chief findings of this jury without a judge proved to +be the verdicts of the nation.</p> + +<p>It is not easy for those less extraordinarily constituted, to realise +the vigour of soul that maintained an inner life in all its absorbing +exaltation day after day, year after year, decade after decade, amid the +ever-swelling rush of urgent secular affairs. Immersed in active +responsibility for momentous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> secular things, he never lost the breath +of what was to him a diviner aether. Habitually he strove for the lofty +uplands where political and moral ideas meet. Even in those days he +struck all who came into contact with him by a goodness and elevation +that matched the activity and power of his mind. His political career +might seem doubtful, but there was no doubt about the man. One of the +most interesting of his notes about his own growth is this:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>There was a singular slowness in the development of my mind, so far +as regarded its opening into the ordinary aptitudes of the man of +the world. For years and years well into advanced middle life, I +seem to have considered actions simply as they were in themselves, +and did not take into account the way in which they would be taken +and understood by others. I did not perceive that their natural or +probable effect upon minds other than my own formed part of the +considerations determining the propriety of each act in itself, and +not unfrequently, at any rate in public life, supplied the decisive +criterion to determine what ought and what ought not to be done. In +truth the dominant tendencies of my mind were those of a recluse, +and I might, in most respects with ease, have accommodated myself +to the education of the cloister. All the mental apparatus +requisite to constitute the 'public man' had to be purchased by a +slow experience and inserted piecemeal into the composition of my +character.</p></div> + +<p>Lord Malmesbury describes himself in 1844 as curious to see Mr. +Gladstone, 'for he is a man much spoken of as one who will come to the +front.' He was greatly disappointed at his personal appearance, 'which +is that of a Roman catholic ecclesiastic, but he is very +agreeable.'<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a> Few men can have been more perplexed, and few perhaps +more perplexing, as the social drama of the capital was in time unfolded +to his gaze. There he beheld the glitter of rank and station, and +palaces, and men and women bearing famous names; worlds within worlds, +high diplomatic figures, the partisan leaders, the constant stream of +agitated rumours about weighty affairs in England and Europe; the keen +play of ambition, passions, interests, under easy manners and fugitive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> +pleasantry; gross and sordid aims, as King Hudson was soon to find out, +masked by exterior refinement; so much kindness with a free spice of +criticism and touches of ill-nature; so much of the governing force of +England still gathered into a few great houses, exclusive and full of +pride, and yet, after the astounding discovery that in spite of the +deluge of the Reform bill they were still alive as the directing class, +always so open to political genius if likely to climb, and help them to +climb, into political power. These were the last high days of the +undisputed sway of territorial aristocracy in England. The artificial +scene was gay and captivating; but much in it was well fitted to make +serious people wonder. Queen Victoria was assuredly not of the harsh +fibre of the misanthropist in Molière's fine comedy; yet she once said a +strange and deep thing to an archbishop. 'As I get older,' she said, 'I +cannot understand the world. I cannot comprehend its littlenesses. When +I look at the frivolities and littlenesses, <i>it seems to me as if they +were all a little mad</i>.'<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a></p> + +<p class="center">THE SOCIAL DRAMA</p> + +<p>This was the stage on which Mr. Gladstone, with 'the dominant tendencies +of a recluse' and a mind that might easily have been 'accommodated to +the cloister,' came to play his part,—in which he was 'by a slow +experience' to insert piecemeal the mental apparatus proper to the +character of the public man. Yet it was not among the booths and +merchandise and hubbub of Vanity Fair, it was among strata in the +community but little recognised as yet, that he was to find the field +and the sources of his highest power. His view of the secular world was +never fastidious or unmanly. Looking back upon his long experience of it +he wrote (1894):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>That political life considered as a profession has great dangers +for the inner and true life of the human being, is too obvious. It +has, however, some redeeming qualities. In the first place, I have +never known, and can hardly conceive, a finer school of temper than +the House of Commons. A lapse in this respect is on the instant an +offence, a jar, a wound, to every member of the assembly; and it +brings its own punishment on the instant, like the sins of the Jews +under the old dispensation. Again, I think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> the imperious nature of +the subjects, their weight and force, demanding the entire strength +of a man and all his faculties, leave him no residue, at least for +the time, to apply to self-regard; no more than there is for a +swimmer swimming for his life. He must, too, in retrospect feel +himself to be so very small in comparison with the themes and the +interests of which he has to treat. It is a further advantage if +his occupation be not mere debate, but debate ending in work. For +in this way, whether the work be legislative or administrative, it +is continually tested by results, and he is enabled to strip away +his extravagant anticipations, his fallacious conceptions, to +perceive his mistakes, and to reduce his estimates to the reality. +No politician has any excuse for being vain.</p></div> + +<p>Like the stoic emperor, Mr. Gladstone had in his heart the feeling that +the man is a runaway who deserts the exercise of civil reason.</p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p class="center">RELIGION THE MAINSPRING</p> + +<p>All his activities were in his own mind one. This, we can hardly repeat +too often, is the fundamental fact of Mr. Gladstone's history. Political +life was only part of his religious life. It was religion that prompted +his literary life. It was religious motive that, through a thousand +avenues and channels stirred him and guided him in his whole conception +of active social duty, including one pitiful field of which I may say +something later. The liberalism of the continent at this epoch was in +its essence either hostile to Christianity or else it was indifferent; +and when men like Lamennais tried to play at the same time the double +part of tribune of the people and catholic theocrat, they failed. The +old world of pope and priest and socialist and red cap of liberty fought +on as before. In England, too, the most that can be said of the leading +breed of the political reformers of that half century, with one or two +most notable exceptions, is that they were theists, and not all of them +were even so much as theists.<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> If liberalism had continued to run in +the grooves cut by Bentham, James Mill, Grote, and the rest, Mr. +Glad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>stone would never have grown to be a liberal. He was not only a +fervid practising Christian; he was a Christian steeped in the fourth +century, steeped in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Every man +of us has all the centuries in him, though their operations be latent, +dim, and very various; in his case the roots were as unmistakeable as +the leafage, the blossom, and the fruits. A little later than the date +with which we are now dealing (May 9, 1854)—and here the date matters +little, for the case was always the same—he noted what in hours of +strain and crisis the Bible was to him:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>On most occasions of very sharp pressure or trial, some word of +scripture has come home to me as if borne on angels' wings. Many +could I recollect. The Psalms are the great storehouse. Perhaps I +should put some down now, for the continuance of memory is not to +be trusted. 1. In the winter of 1837, Psalm 128. This came in a +most singular manner, but it would be a long story to tell. 2. In +the Oxford contest of 1847 (which was very harrowing) the verse—'O +Lord God, Thou strength of my health, Thou hast covered my head in +the day of battle.' 3. In the Gorham contest, after the judgment: +'And though all this be come upon us, yet do we not forget Thee; +nor behave ourselves frowardly in Thy covenant. Our heart is not +turned back; neither our steps gone out of Thy way. No not when +Thou hast smitten us into the place of dragons: and covered us with +the shadow of death.' 4. On Monday, April 17, 1853 [his first +budget speech], it was: 'O turn Thee then unto me, and have mercy +upon me: give Thy strength unto Thy servant, and help the son of +Thine handmaid.' Last Sunday [Crimean war budget] it was not from +the Psalms for the day: 'Thou shalt prepare a table before me +against them that trouble me; Thou hast anointed my head with oil +and my cup shall be full.'</p></div> + +<p>In that stage at least he had shaken off none of the grip of tradition, +in which his book and college training had placed him. His mind still +had greater faith in things because Aristotle or Augustine said them, +than because they are true.<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a> If the end of education be to teach +independence of mind, the Socratic temper, the love of pushing into +unex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>plored areas—intellectual curiosity in a word—Oxford had done +none of all this for him. In every field of thought and life he started +from the principle of authority; it fitted in with his reverential +instincts, his temperament, above all, his education.</p> + +<p class="center">PLACE OF DANTE IN HIS MIND</p> + +<p>The lifelong enthusiasm for Dante should on no account in this place be +left out. In Mr. Gladstone it was something very different from casual +dilettantism or the accident of a scholar's taste. He was always alive +to the grandeur of Goethe's words, <i>Im Ganzen, Guten, Wahren, resolut zu +leben</i>, 'In wholeness, goodness, truth, strenuously to live.' But it was +in Dante—active politician and thinker as well as poet—that he found +this unity of thought and coherence of life, not only illuminated by a +sublime imagination, but directly associated with theology, philosophy, +politics, history, sentiment, duty. Here are all the elements and +interests that lie about the roots of the life of a man, and of the +general civilisation of the world. This ever memorable picture of the +mind and heart of Europe in the great centuries of the catholic +age,—making heaven the home of the human soul, presenting the natural +purposes of mankind in their universality of good and evil, exalted and +mean, piteous and hateful, tragedy and farce, all commingled as a living +whole,—was exactly fitted to the quality of a genius so rich and +powerful as Mr. Gladstone's in the range of its spiritual intuitions and +in its masculine grasp of all the complex truths of mortal nature. So +true and real a book is it, he once said,—such a record of practical +humanity and of the discipline of the soul amidst its wonderful poetical +intensity and imaginative power. In him this meant no spurious +revivalism, no flimsy and fantastic affectation. It was the real and +energetic discovery in the vivid conception and commanding structure of +Dante, of a light, a refuge, and an inspiration in the labours of the +actual world. 'You have been good enough,' he once wrote to an Italian +correspondent (1883), 'to call that supreme poet “a solemn master” for +me. These are not empty words. The reading of Dante is not merely a +pleasure, a <i>tour de force</i>, or a lesson; it is a vigorous discipline +for the heart, the intellect, the whole man. In the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> school of Dante I +have learned a great part of that mental provision (however +insignificant it may be) which has served me to make the journey of +human life up to the term of nearly seventy-three years.' He once asked +of an accomplished woman possessing a scholar's breadth of reading, what +poetry she most lived with. She named Dante for one. 'But what of +Dante?' 'The Paradiso,' she replied. 'Ah, that is right,' he exclaimed, +'that's my test.' In the Paradiso it was, that he saw in beams of +crystal radiance the ideal of the unity of the religious mind, the love +and admiration for the high unseen things of which the Christian church +was to him the sovereign embodiment. The mediæval spirit, it is true, +wears something of a ghostly air in the light of our new day. This +attempt, which has been made many a time before, 'to unify two ages,' +did not carry men far in the second half of the nineteenth century. +Nevertheless it were an idle dream to think that the dead hand of +Dante's century, and all that it represented, is no longer to be taken +into account by those who would be governors of men. Meanwhile, let us +observe once more that the statesman who had drunk most deeply from the +mediæval fountains was yet one of the supreme leaders of his own +generation in a notable stage of the long transition from mediæval to +modern.</p> + +<p>'At Oxford,' he records, 'I read Rousseau's <i>Social Contract</i> which had +no influence upon me, and the writings of Burke which had a great deal.' +Yet the day came when he too was drawn by the movement of things into +the flaming circle of thought, feeling, phrase, that in romance and +politics and all the ways of life Europe for a century associated with +the name of Rousseau. There was what men call Rousseau in a statesman +who could talk of men's common 'flesh and blood' in connection with a +franchise bill. Indeed one of the strangest things in Mr. Gladstone's +growth and career is this unconscious raising of a partially Rousseauite +structure on the foundations laid by Burke, to whom Rousseau was of all +writers on the nature of man and the ordering of states the most odious +and contemptible. We call it strange, though such amalgams of contrary +ways of thinking and feeling are more common than careless observers may +suppose. Mr. Gladstone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> was never an 'equalitarian,' but the passion for +simplicity he had—simplicity in life, manners, feeling, conduct, the +relations of men to men; dislike of luxury and profusion and all the +fabric of artificial and factitious needs. It may well be that he went +no further for all this than the Sermon on the Mount, where so many +secret elements of social volcano slumber. However we may choose to +trace the sources and relations of Mr. Gladstone's general ideas upon +the political problems of his time, what he said of himself in the +evening of his day was at least true of its dawn and noon. 'I am for old +customs and traditions,' he wrote, 'against needless change. I am for +the individual as against the state. I am for the family and the stable +family as against the state.' He must have been in eager sympathy with +Wordsworth's line taken from old Spenser in these very days, 'Perilous +is sweeping change, all chance unsound.'<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> Finally and above all, he +stood firm in 'the old Christian faith.' Life was to him in all its +aspects an application of Christian teaching and example. If we like to +put it so, he was steadfast for making politics more human, and no +branch of civilised life needs humanising more.</p> + +<p>Here we touch the question of questions. At nearly every page of Mr. +Gladstone's active career the vital problem stares us in the face, of +the correspondence between the rule of private morals and of public. Is +the rule one and the same for individual and for state? From these early +years onwards, Mr. Gladstone's whole language and the moods that it +reproduces,—his vivid denunciations, his sanguine expectations, his +rolling epithets, his aspects and appeals and points of view,—all take +for granted that right and wrong depend on the same set of maxims in +public life and private. The puzzle will often greet us, and here it is +enough to glance at it. In every statesman's case it arises; in Mr. +Gladstone's it is cardinal and fundamental.</p> + +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p class="center">MAXIMS OF ORDERED LIFE</p> + +<p>To say that he had drawn prizes in what is called the lottery of life +would not be untrue; but just as true is it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> that one of those very +prizes was the determined conviction that life is no lottery at all, but +a serious business worth taking infinite pains upon. To one of his sons +at Oxford he wrote a little paper of suggestions that are the actual +description of his own lifelong habit and unbroken practice.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Strathconan, Oct. 7, 1872</i>.—1. To keep a short journal of +principal employments in each day: most valuable as an account-book +of the all-precious gift of Time.</p> + +<p>2. To keep also an account-book of receipt and expenditure; and the +least troublesome way of keeping it is to keep it with care. This +done in early life, and carefully done, creates the habit of +performing the great duty of keeping our expenditure (and therefore +our desires) within our means.</p> + +<p>3. Read attentively (and it is pleasant reading) Taylor's essay on +Money,<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a> which if I have not done it already, I will give you. +It is most healthy and most useful reading.</p> + +<p>4. Establish a minimum number of hours in the day for study, say +seven at present, and do not without reasonable cause let it be +less; noting down against yourself the days of exception. There +should also be a minimum number for the vacations, which at Oxford +are extremely long.</p> + +<p>5. There arises an important question about Sundays. Though we +should to the best of our power avoid secular work on Sundays, it +does not follow that the mind should remain idle. There is an +immense field of knowledge connected with religion, and much of it +is of a kind that will be of use in the schools and in relation to +your general studies. In these days of shallow scepticism, so +widely spread, it is more than ever to be desired that we should be +able to give a reason for the hope that is in us.</p> + +<p>6. As to duties directly religious, such as daily prayer in the +morning and evening, and daily reading of some portion of the Holy +Scripture, or as to the holy ordinances of the gospel, there is +little need, I am confident, to advise you; one thing, however, I +would say, that it is not difficult, and it is most beneficial, to +cultivate the habit of inwardly turning the thoughts to God, though +but for a moment in the course or during the intervals of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> our +business; which continually presents occasions requiring His aid +and guidance.</p> + +<p>7. Turning again to ordinary duty, I know no precept more wide or +more valuable than this: cultivate self-help; do not seek nor like +to be dependent upon others for what you can yourself supply; and +keep down as much as you can the standard of your wants, for in +this lies a great secret of manliness, <i>true</i> wealth, and +happiness; as, on the other hand, the multiplication of our wants +makes us effeminate and slavish, as well as selfish.</p> + +<p>8. In regard to money as well as to time, there is a great +advantage in its methodical use. Especially is it wise to dedicate +a certain portion of our means to purposes of charity and religion, +and this is more easily begun in youth than in after life. The +greatest advantage of making a little fund of this kind is that +when we are asked to give, the competition is not between <i>self</i> on +the one hand and charity on the other, but between the different +purposes of religion and charity with one another, among which we +ought to make the most careful choice. It is desirable that the +fund thus devoted should not be less than one-tenth of our means; +and it tends to bring a blessing on the rest.</p> + +<p>9. Besides giving this, we should save something, so as to be +before the world, <i>i.e.</i> to have some preparation to meet the +accidents and unforeseen calls of life as well as its general +future.</p></div> + +<p>Fathers are generally wont to put their better mind into counsels to +their sons. In this instance the counsellor was the living pattern of +his own maxims. His account-books show in full detail that he never at +any time in his life devoted less than a tenth of his annual incomings +to charitable and religious objects. The peculiarity of all this +half-mechanic ordering of a wise and virtuous individual life, was that +it went with a genius and power that 'moulded a mighty State's decrees,' +and sought the widest 'process of the suns.'</p> + +<p class="center">VI</p> + +<p class="center">MENTAL GROWTH</p> + +<p>Once more, his whole temper and spirit turned to practice. His thrift of +time, his just and regulated thrift in money, his hatred of waste, were +only matched by his eager and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> minute attention in affairs of public +business. He knew how to be content with small savings of hours and of +material resources. He was not downcast if progress were slow. In +watching public opinion, in feeling the pulse of a cabinet, in softening +the heart of a colleague, even when skies were gloomiest, he was almost +provokingly anxious to detect signs of encouragement that to others were +imperceptible. He was of the mind of the Roman emperor, 'Hope not for +the republic of Plato; but be content with ever so small an advance, and +look on even that as a gain worth having.'<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a> A commonplace, but not +one of the commonplaces that are always laid to heart.</p> + +<p>If faith was one clue, then next to faith was growth. The fundamentals +of Christian dogma, so far as I know and am entitled to speak, are the +only region in which Mr. Gladstone's opinions have no history. +Everywhere else we look upon incessant movement; in views about church +and state, tests, national schools; in questions of economic and fiscal +policy; in relations with party; in the questions of popular +government—in every one of these wide spheres of public interest he +passes from crisis to crisis. The dealings of church and state made the +first of these marked stages in the history of his opinions and his +life, but it was only the beginning.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I was born with smaller natural endowments than you, he wrote to +his old friend Sir Francis Doyle (1880), and I had also a narrower +early training. But my life has certainly been remarkable for the +mass of continuous and searching experience it has brought me ever +since I began to pass out of boyhood. I have been feeling my way; +owing little to living teachers, but enormously to four dead +ones<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a> (over and above the four gospels). It has been experience +which has altered my politics. My toryism was accepted by me on +authority and in good faith; I did my best to fight for it. But if +you choose to examine my parliamentary life you will find that on +every subject as I came to deal with it practically, I had to deal +with it as a liberal elected in '32. I began with slavery in 1833, +and was commended by the liberal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> minister, Mr. Stanley. I took to +colonial subjects principally, and in 1837 was commended for +treating them liberally by Lord Russell. Then Sir R. Peel carried +me into trade, and before I had been six months in office, I wanted +to resign because I thought his corn law reform insufficient. In +ecclesiastical policy I had been a speculator; but if you choose to +refer to a speech of Sheil's in 1844 on the Dissenters' Chapels +bill,<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> you will find him describing me as predestined to be a +champion of religious equality. All this seems to show that I have +changed under the teaching of experience.</p></div> + +<p>And much later he wrote of himself:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The stock in trade of ideas with which I set out on the career of +parliamentary life was a small one. I do not think the general +tendencies of my mind were even in the time of my youth illiberal. +It was a great accident that threw me into the anti-liberal +attitude, but having taken it up I held to it with energy. It was +the accident of the Reform bill of 1831. For teachers or idols or +both in politics I had had Mr. Burke and Mr. Canning. I followed +them in their dread of reform, and probably caricatured them as a +raw and unskilled student caricatures his master. This one idea on +which they were anti-liberal became the master-key of the +situation, and absorbed into itself for the time the whole of +politics. This, however, was not my only disadvantage. I had been +educated in an extremely narrow churchmanship, that of the +evangelical party. This narrow churchmanship too readily embraced +the idea that the extension of representative principles, which was +then the essential work of liberalism, was associated with +irreligion; an idea quite foreign to my older sentiment on behalf +of Roman catholic emancipation. (<i>Autobiographic note</i>, <i>July 22, +1894</i>.)</p></div> + +<p class="center">VII</p> + +<p class="center">LIMITATIONS OF INTEREST</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding his humility, his willingness within a certain range to +learn, his profound reverence for what he took for truth, he was no more +ready than many far inferior men to discern a certain important rule of +intellectual life that was expressed in a quaint figure by one of our +old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> English sages. 'He is a wonderful man,' said the sage, 'that can +thread a needle when he is at cudgels in a crowd; and yet this is as +easy as to find Truth in the hurry of disputation.'<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a> The strenuous +member of parliament, the fervid minister fighting the clauses of his +bill, the disputant in cabinet, when he passed from man of action to the +topics of balanced thought, nice scrutiny, long meditation, did not +always succeed in getting his thread into the needle's eye.</p> + +<p>As to the problems of the metaphysician, Mr. Gladstone showed little +curiosity. Nor for abstract discussion in its highest shape—for +investigation of ultimate propositions—had he any of that power of +subtle and ingenious reasoning which was often so extraordinary when he +came to deal with the concrete, the historic, and the demonstrable. A +still more singular limitation on the extent of his intellectual +curiosity was hardly noticed at this early epoch. The scientific +movement, which along with the growth of democracy and the growth of +industrialism formed the three propelling forces of a new age,—was not +yet developed in all its range. The astonishing discoveries in the realm +of natural science, and the philosophic speculations that were built +upon them, though quite close at hand, were still to come. Darwin's +<i>Origin of Species</i>, for example, was not given to the world until 1859. +Mr. Gladstone watched these things vaguely and with misgiving; instinct +must have told him that the advance of natural explanation, whether +legitimately or not, would be in some degree at the expense of the +supernatural. But from any full or serious examination of the details of +the scientific movement he stood aside, safe and steadfast within the +citadel of Tradition.</p> + +<p>He was once asked to subscribe to a memorial of Tyndale, the translator +of the Bible,<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a> and he put his refusal upon grounds that show one +source at least of his scruple about words. He replies that he has been +driven to a determination to renounce all subscriptions for the +commemoration of ancient worthies, as he finds that he cannot signify +gratitude<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> for services rendered, without being understood to sanction +all that they have said or done, and thus becoming involved in +controversy or imputation about them. 'I am often amazed,' he goes on, +'at the construction put upon my acts and words; but experience has +shown me that they are commonly put under the microscope, and then found +to contain all manner of horrors, like the animalcules in Thames water.' +This microscope was far too valuable an instrument in the contentions of +party, ever to be put aside; and the animalcules, duly magnified to the +frightful size required, were turned into first-rate electioneering +agents. Even without party microscopes, those who feel most warmly for +Mr. Gladstone's manifold services to his country, may often wish that he +had inscribed in letters of gold over the door of the Temple of Peace, a +certain sentence from the wise oracles of his favourite Butler. 'For the +conclusion of this,' said the bishop, 'let me just take notice of the +danger of over-great refinements; of going beside or beyond the plain, +obvious first appearances of things, upon the subject of morals and +religion.'<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> Nor would he have said less of politics. It is idle to +ignore in Mr. Gladstone's style an over-refining in words, an excess of +qualifying propositions, a disproportionate impressiveness in verbal +shadings without real difference. Nothing irritated opponents more. They +insisted on taking literary sin for moral obliquity, and because men +could not understand, they assumed that he wished to mislead. Yet if we +remember how carelessness in words, how the slovenly combination under +the same name of things entirely different, how the taking for granted +as matter of positive proof what is at the most only possible or barely +probable—when we think of all the mischief and folly that has been +wrought in the world by loose habits of mind that are almost as much the +master vice of the head as selfishness is the master vice of the heart, +men may forgive Mr. Gladstone for what passed as sophistry and subtlety, +but was in truth scruple of conscience in that region where lack of +scruple half spoils the world.</p> + +<p class="center">VERBAL REFINING</p> + +<p>This peculiar trait was connected with another that sometimes amused +friends, but always exasperated foes. Among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> the papers is a letter from +an illustrious man to Mr. Gladstone—wickedly no better dated by the +writer than 'Saturday,' and no better docketed by the receiver than 'T. +B. Macaulay, March 1,'—showing that Mr. Gladstone was just as +energetic, say in some year between 1835 and 1850, in defending the +entire consistency between a certain speech of the dubious date and a +speech in 1833, as he ever afterwards showed himself in the same too +familiar process. In later times he described himself as a sort of +purist in what touches the consistency of statesmen. 'Change of +opinion,' he said, 'in those to whose judgment the public looks more or +less to assist its own, is an evil to the country, although a much +smaller evil than their persistence in a course which they know to be +wrong. It is not always to be blamed. But it is always to be watched +with vigilance; always to be challenged and put upon its trial.'<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> To +this challenge in his own case—and no man of his day was half so often +put upon his trial for inconsistency—he was always most easily provoked +to make a vehement reply. In that process Mr. Gladstone's natural habit +of resort to qualifying words, and his skill in showing that a new +attitude could be reconciled by strict reasoning with the logical +contents of old dicta, gave him wonderful advantage. His adversary, as +he strode confidently along the smooth grass, suddenly found himself +treading on a serpent; he had overlooked a condition, a proviso, a word +of hypothesis or contingency, that sprang from its ambush and brought +his triumph to naught on the spot. If Mr. Gladstone had only taken as +much trouble that his hearers should understand exactly what it was that +he meant, as he took trouble afterwards to show that his meaning had +been grossly misunderstood, all might have been well. As it was, he +seemed to be completely satisfied if he could only show that two +propositions, thought by plain men to be directly contradictory, were +all the time capable on close construction of being presented in perfect +harmony. As if I had a right to look only to what my words literally +mean or may in good logic be made to mean, and had no concern at all +with what the people meant who used the same words,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> or with what I +might have known that my hearers were all the time supposing me to mean. +Hope-Scott once wrote to him (November 24, 1841): 'We live in a time in +which accurate distinctions, especially in theology, are absolutely +unconsidered. The “common sense” or general tenor of questions is what +alone the majority of men are guided by. And I verily believe that +semi-arian confessions or any others turning upon nicety of thought and +expression, would be for the most part considered as fitter subjects for +scholastic dreamers than for earnest Christians.' In politics at any +rate, Bishop Butler was wiser.</p> + +<p>The explanation of what was assailed as inconsistency is perhaps a +double one. In the first place he started on his journey with an +intellectual chart of ideas and principles not adequate or well fitted +for the voyage traced for him by the spirit of his age. If he held to +the inadequate ideas with which Oxford and Canning and his father and +even Peel had furnished him, he would have been left helpless and +useless in the days stretching before him. The second point is that the +orator of Mr. Gladstone's commanding school exists by virtue of large +and intense expression; then if circumstances make him as vehement for +one opinion to-day as he was vehement for what the world regards as a +conflicting opinion yesterday, his intellectual self-respect naturally +prompts him to insist that the opinions do not really clash, but are in +fact identical. You may call this a weakness if you choose, and it +certainly involved Mr. Gladstone in much unfruitful and not very +edifying exertion; but it is at any rate better than the front of brass +that takes any change of opinion for matter-of-course expedient, as to +which the least said will be soonest mended. And it is better still than +the disastrous self-consciousness that makes a man persist in a foolish +thing to-day, because he chanced to say or do a foolish thing yesterday.</p> + +<p class="center">VIII</p> + +<p class="center">MINOR MORALS</p> + +<p>In this period of his life, with the battle of the world still to come, +Mr. Gladstone to whose grave temperament everything, little or great, +was matter of deliberate reflection, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> duty and scruple, took early +note of minor morals as well as major. Characteristically he found some +fault with a sermon of Dr. Wordsworth's upon Saint Barnabas, for</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>hardly pushing the argument for the connection of good manners with +Christianity to the full extent of which it is fairly capable. The +whole system of legitimate courtesy, politeness, and refinement is +surely nothing less than one of the genuine though minor and often +unacknowledged results of the gospel scheme. All the great moral +qualities or graces, which in their large sphere determine the +formation and habits of the Christian soul as before God, do also +on a smaller scale apply to the very same principles in the common +intercourse of life, and pervade its innumerable and separately +inappreciable particulars; and the result of this application is +that good breeding which distinguishes Christian civilisation. +(March 31, 1844.)</p></div> + +<p>It is not for us to discuss whether the breeding of Plato or Cicero or +the Arabs of Cordova was better or worse than the breeding of the +eastern bishops at Nicæa or Ephesus. Good manners, we may be sure, +hardly have a single master-key, unless it be simplicity, or freedom +from the curse of affectation. What is certain is that nobody of his +time was a finer example of high good manners and genuine courtesy than +Mr. Gladstone himself. He has left a little sheaf of random jottings +which, without being subtle or recondite, show how he looked on this +side of human things. Here is an example or two:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>There are a class of passages in Mr. Wilberforce's <i>Journals</i>, +<i>e.g.</i>, some of those recording his successful speeches, which +might in many men be set down to vanity, but in him are more fairly +I should think ascribable to a singlemindedness which did not +inflate. Surely with <i>most</i> men it is the safest rule, to make +scanty records of success achieved, and yet more rarely to notice +praise, which should pass us like the breeze, enjoyed but not +arrested. There must indeed be some sign, a stone as it were set +up, to remind us that such and such were occasions for +thankfulness; but should not the memorials be restricted wholly and +expressly for this purpose? For the fumes of praise are rapidly and +fear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>fully intoxicating; it comes like a spark to the tow if once +we give it, as it were, admission within us. (1838.)</p> + +<p>There are those to whom vanity brings more of pain than of +pleasure; there are also those whom it oftener keeps in the +background, than thrusts forward. The same man who to-day +volunteers for that which he is not called upon to do, may +to-morrow flinch from his obvious duty from one and the same +cause,—vanity, or regard to the appearance he is to make, for its +own sake, and perhaps that vanity which shrinks is a more subtle +and far-sighted, a more ethereal, a more profound vanity than that +which presumes. (1842.)</p> + +<p>A question of immense importance meets us in ethical inquiries, as +follows: is there a sense in which it is needful, right, and +praiseworthy, that man should be much habituated to look back upon +himself and keep his eye upon himself; a self-regard, and even a +self-respect, which are compatible with the self-renunciation and +self-distrust which belong to Christianity? In the observance of a +single distinction we shall find, perhaps, a secure and sufficient +answer. We are to respect our responsibilities, not ourselves. We +are to respect the duties of which we are capable, but not our +capabilities simply considered. There is to be no complacent +self-contemplation, beruminating upon self. When self is viewed, it +must always be in the most intimate connection with its purposes. +How well were it if persons would be more careful, or rather, more +conscientious, in paying compliments. How often do we delude +another, in subject matter small or great, into the belief that he +has done well what we know he has done ill, either by silence, or +by so giving him praise on a particular point as to <i>imply</i> +approbation of the whole. Now it is undoubtedly difficult to +observe politeness in all cases compatibly with truth; and +politeness though a minor duty is a duty still. (1838.)</p> + +<p>If truth permits you to praise, but binds you to praise with a +qualification, observe how much more acceptably you will speak, if +you put the qualification first, than if you postpone it. For +example: 'this is a good likeness; but it is a hard painting,' is +surely much less pleasing, than 'this is a hard painting; but it is +a good likeness.' The qualification is generally taken to be more +genuinely the sentiment of the speaker's mind, than the main +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>proposition; and it carries ostensible honesty and manliness to +propose first what is the less acceptable. (1835-6.)</p></div> + +<p class="center">IX</p> + +<p class="center">SPIRIT OF SUBMISSION</p> + +<p>To go back to Fénelon's question about his own foundation. 'The great +work of religion,' as Mr. Gladstone conceived it, was set out in some +sentences of a letter written by him to Mrs. Gladstone in 1844, five +years after they were married. In these sentences we see that under all +the agitated surface of a life of turmoil and contention, there flowed a +deep composing stream of faith, obedience, and resignation, that gave +him, in face of a thousand buffets, the free mastery of all his +resources of heart and brain:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 15.5em;"><i>To Mrs. Gladstone</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>13 <i>C.H. Terrace, Sunday evening, Jan. 21, 1844</i>.—Although I have +carelessly left at the board of trade with your other letters that +on which I wished to have said something, yet I am going to end +this day of peace by a few words to show that what you said did not +lightly pass away from my mind. There is a beautiful little +sentence in the works of Charles Lamb concerning one who had been +afflicted: 'he gave his heart to the Purifier, and his will to the +Sovereign Will of the Universe.'<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> But there is a speech in the +third canto of the <i>Paradiso</i> of Dante, spoken by a certain +Piccarda, which is a rare gem. I will only quote this one line:</p> + +<p class="center"><i>In la sua volontade è nostra pace</i>.<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a></p> + +<p>The words are few and simple, and yet they appear to me to have an +inexpressible majesty of truth about them, to be almost as if they +were spoken from the very mouth of God. It so happened that (unless +my memory much deceives me) I first read that speech on a morning +early in the year 1836, which was one of trial. I was profoundly +impressed and powerfully sustained, almost absorbed, by these +words. They cannot be too deeply graven upon the heart. In short, +what we all want is that they should not come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> to us as an +admonition from without, but as an instinct from within. They +should not be adopted by effort or upon a process of proof, but +they should be simply the translation into speech of the habitual +tone to which all tempers, affections, emotions, are set. In the +Christian mood, which ought never to be intermitted, the sense of +this conviction should recur spontaneously; it should be the +foundation of all mental thoughts and acts, and the measure to +which the whole experience of life, inward and outward, is +referred. The final state which we are to contemplate with hope, +and to seek by discipline, is that in which our will shall be <i>one</i> +with the will of God; not merely shall submit to it, not merely +shall follow after it, but shall live and move with it, even as the +pulse of the blood in the extremities acts with the central +movement of the heart. And this is to be obtained through a double +process; the first, that of checking, repressing, quelling the +inclination of the will to act with reference to self as a centre; +this is to mortify it. The second, to cherish, exercise, and expand +its new and heavenly power of acting according to the will of God, +first, perhaps, by painful effort in great feebleness and with many +inconsistencies, but with continually augmenting regularity and +force, until obedience become a necessity of second nature....</p> + +<p>Resignation is too often conceived to be merely a submission not +unattended with complaint to what we have no power to avoid. But it +is less than the whole of a work of a Christian. Your full triumph +as far as that particular occasion of duty is concerned will be to +find that you not merely repress inward tendencies to murmur—but +that you would not if you could alter what in any matter God has +plainly willed.... Here is the great work of religion; here is the +path through which sanctity is attained, the highest sanctity; and +yet it is a path evidently to be traced in the course of our daily +duties....</p> + +<p>When we are thwarted in the exercise of some innocent, laudable, +and almost sacred affection, as in the case, though its scale be +small, out of which all of this has grown, Satan has us at an +advantage, because when the obstacle occurs, we have a sentiment +that the feeling baffled is a right one, and in indulging a +rebellious temper we flatter ourselves that we are merely as it +were indulgent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>on behalf, not of ourselves, but of a duty which we +have been interrupted in performing. But our duties can take care +of themselves when God calls us away from any of them.... To be +able to relinquish a duty upon command shows a higher grace than to +be able to give up a mere pleasure for a duty....</p></div> + +<p class="center">RESPONSIBILITY FOR GIFTS</p> + +<p>The resignation thus described with all this power and deep feeling is, +of course, in one form of thoughts and words, of symbol and synthesis, +or another, the foundation of all the great systems of life. A summary +of Mr. Gladstone's interpretation of it is perhaps found in a few words +used by him of Blanco White, a heterodox writer whose strange spiritual +fortunes painfully interested and perplexed him. 'He cherished,' says +Mr. Gladstone, 'with whatever associations, the love of God, and +maintained resignation to His will, even when it appears almost +impossible to see how he could have had a dogmatic belief in the +existence of a divine will at all. There was, in short [in Blanco +White], a disposition <i>to resist the tyranny of self; to recognise the +rule of duty; to maintain the supremacy of the higher over the lower +parts of our nature</i>.'<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a> This very disposition might with truth no +less assured have been assigned to the writer himself. These three +bright crystal laws of life were to him like pointer stars guiding a +traveller's eye to the celestial pole by which he steers.</p> + +<p>When all has been said of a man's gifts, the critical question still +stands over, how he regards his responsibility for using them. Once in a +conversation with Mr. Gladstone, some fifty years from the epoch of this +present chapter, we fell upon the topic of ambition. 'Well,' he said, 'I +do not think that I can tax myself in my own life with ever having been +much moved by ambition.' The remark so astonished me that, as he +afterwards playfully reported to a friend, I almost jumped up from my +chair. We soon shall reach a stage in his career when both remark and +surprise may explain themselves. We shall see that if ambition means +love of power or fame for the sake of glitter, decoration, external +renown, or even dominion and authority on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> their own account—and all +these are common passions enough in strong natures as well as weak—then +his view of himself was just. I think he had none of it. Ambition in a +better sense, the motion of a resolute and potent genius to use strength +for the purposes of strength, to clear the path, dash obstacles aside, +force good causes forward—such a quality as that is the very law of the +being of a personality so vigorous, intrepid, confident, and capable as +his.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> Hawarden Grammar School, Sept. 19, 1877.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> Mr. Gladstone on Lord Houghton's <i>Life</i>; <i>Speaker</i>, Nov. 29, 1890.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> <i>Gleanings</i>, vii. p. 133.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> <i>Homeric Studies</i>, vol. iii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> Book ii. § 89, 363.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> Non enim solum acuenda nobis neque procudenda lingua est, sed +onerandum complendumque pectus maximarum rerum et plurimarum suavitate, +copia, varietate. Cicero, <i>De Orat.</i>, iii. § 30.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> <i>The British Senate</i>, by James Grant, vol. ii. pp. 88-92.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> <i>Anatomy of Parliament</i>, November 1840. 'Contemporary Orators,' in +<i>Fraser's Magazine</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> Lord Lansdowne to Senior (1855), in Mrs. Simpson's <i>Many +Memories</i>, p. 226.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> Malmesbury, <i>Memoirs of an Ex-Minister</i>, i. p. 155.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> <i>Life of Archbishop Benson</i>, ii. p. 11.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> The noble anti-slavery movement must be excepted, for it was very +directly connected with evangelicalism.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> Paruta, i. p. 64.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> 'Blest statesman he, whose mind's unselfish will' +(1838).—Knight's <i>Wordsworth</i>, viii. p. 101.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> The first chapter in Sir Henry Taylor's <i>Notes from Life</i> (1847).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a> Marcus Aurelius, ix. p. 29.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> Aristotle, Augustine, Dante, Butler. 'My four "doctors,"' he tells +Manning, 'are doctors to the speculative man; would they were such to +the practical too!'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a><a href="#Page_323">See below, p. 323.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> Glanville's <i>Vanity of Dogmatising</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> See Shaftesbury's <i>Life</i>, iii. p. 495. He refused to be on a +committee for a memorial to Thirlwall. (1875.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> First Sermon, <i>Upon Compassion</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> <i>Gleanings</i>, vii. p. 100, 1868.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> <i>Rosamund Gray</i>, chap. xi.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> Mr. Gladstone's rendering of the speech of Piccarda (<i>Paradiso</i>, +iii. 70) is in the volume of collected translations (p. 165), under the +date of 1835: + +</p><p><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6.5em;">'In His Will is our peace. To this all things</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">By Him created, or by Nature made,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">As to a central Sea, self-motion brings.'</span><br /> +</p> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a> <i>Gleanings</i>, ii. p. 20, 1845.</p></div> + +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIICh_VII" id="BkIICh_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">CLOSE OF APPRENTICESHIP</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1839-1841</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>What are great gifts but the correlative of great work? We are not +born for ourselves, but for our kind, for our neighbours, for our +country: it is but selfishness, indolence, a perverse +fastidiousness, an unmanliness, and no virtue or praise, to bury +our talent in a napkin.—<span class="smcap">Cardinal Newman</span>.</p></div><br /> + +<p>Along with his domestic and parliamentary concerns, we are to recognise +the ferment that was proceeding in Mr. Gladstone's mind upon new veins +of theology; but it was an interior working of feeling and reflection, +and went forward without much visible relation to the outer acts and +facts of his life during this period. As to those, one entry in the +diary (Feb. 1st, 1839) tells a sufficient tale for the next two years. +'I find I have, besides family and parliamentary concerns and those of +study, <i>ten</i> committees on hand: Milbank, Society for Propagation of the +Gospel, Church Building Metropolis, Church Commercial School, National +Schools inquiry and correspondence, Upper Canada, Clergy, Additional +Curates' Fund, Carlton Library, Oxford and Cambridge Club. These things +distract and dissipate my mind.' Well they might; for in any man with +less than Mr. Gladstone's amazing faculty of rapid and powerful +concentration, such dispersion must have been disastrous both to +effectiveness and to mental progress. As it is, I find little in the way +of central facts to remark in either mental history or public action. He +strayed away occasionally from the Fathers and their pastures and dipped +into the new literature of the hour, associated with names of dawning +popularity. Carlyle he found hard to lay down. Some of Emerson, too, he +became<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> acquainted with, as we have already seen; but his mind was far +too closely filled with transcendentalisms of his own to offer much +hospitality to the serene and beautiful transcendentalism of Emerson. He +read <i>Oliver Twist</i> and <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>, and on the latter he makes +a characteristic comment—'the tone is very human; it is most happy in +touches of natural pathos. No church in the book, and the motives are +not those of religion.' So with Hallam's <i>History of Literature</i>, +'Finished (Oct. 10, 1839) his theological chapter, in which I am sorry +to find amidst such merits, what is even far more grievous than his +anti-church sarcasms, such notions on original sin as in iv. p. 161.' He +found Chillingworth's <i>Religion of Protestants</i> 'a work of the most +mixed merits,' an ambiguous phrase which I take to mean not that its +merits were various, but that they were much mixed with those demerits +for which the puritan Cheynell baited the unlucky latitudinarian to +death. About this time also he first began Father Paul's famous history +of the Council of Trent, a work that always stood as high in his esteem +as in Macaulay's, who liked Sarpi the best of all modern historians.</p> + +<p>To the great veteran poet of the time Mr. Gladstone's fidelity was +unchanging, even down to compositions that the ordinary Wordsworthian +gives up:—</p> +<div class="blockquot"><p>Read aloud Wordsworth's <i>Cumberland Beggar</i> and <i>Peter Bell</i>. The +former is generally acknowledged to be a noble poem. The same +justice is not done to the latter; I was more than ever struck with +the vivid power of the descriptions, the strong touches of feeling, +the skill and order with which the plot upon Peter's conscience is +arranged, and the depth of interest which is made to attach to the +humblest of quadrupeds. It must have cost great labour, and is an +extraordinary poem, both as a whole and in detail.</p></div> + +<p>Let not the scorner forget that Matthew Arnold, that admirable critic +and fine poet, confesses to reading <i>Peter Bell</i> with pleasure and +edification.</p> + +<p>In the political field he moved steadily on. Sir R. Peel spoke to him +(April 19, 1839) in the House about the debate and wished him to speak +after Sheil, if Graham, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> was to speak about 8 or 9, could bring him +up. Peel showed him several points with regard to the committee which he +thought might be urged. 'This is very kind in him as a mark of +confidence; and assures me that if, as I suspect, he considers my book +as likely to bring me into some embarrassment individually, yet he is +willing to let me still act under him, and fight my own battles in that +matter as best with God's help I may, which is thoroughly fair. It +imposes, however, a great responsibility. I was not presumptuous enough +to dream of following Sheil; not that his speech is formidable, but the +impression it leaves on the House is. I meant to provoke him. A mean man +may fire at a tiger, but it requires a strong and bold one to stand his +charge; and the longer I live, the more I feel my own (intrinsically) +utter <i>powerlessness</i> in the House of Commons. But my principle is +this—not to shrink from any such responsibility when laid upon me by a +competent person. Sheil, however, did not speak, so I am reserved and +may fulfil my own idea, please God, to-night.'</p> + +<p class="center">THE JAMAICA CASE</p> + +<p>We come now to one of the memorable episodes in this vexed decade of our +political history. The sullen demon of slavery died hard. The negro +still wore about his neck galling links of the broken chain. The +transitory stage of apprenticeship was in some respects even harsher +than the bondage from which it was to bring deliverance, and the old +iniquity only worked in new ways. The pity and energy of the humane at +home drove a perplexed and sluggish government to pass an act for +dealing with the abominations of the prisons to which the unhappy blacks +were committed in Jamaica. The assembly of that island, a planter +oligarchy, resented the new law from the mother country as an invasion +of their constitutional rights, and stubbornly refused in their +exasperation, even after a local dissolution, to perform duties that +were indispensable for working the machinery of administration. The +cabinet in consequence asked parliament (April 9th) to suspend the +constitution of Jamaica for a term of five years. The tory opposition, +led by Peel with all his force, aided by the aversion of a section of +the liberals to a measure in which they detected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> a flavour of +dictatorship, ran the ministers (May 6th) within five votes of defeat on +a cardinal stage.</p> + +<p>'I was amused,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'with observing yesterday the +differences of countenance and manner in the ministers whom I met on my +ride. Ellice (their friend) would not look at me at all. Charles Wood +looked but askance and with the hat over the brow. Grey shouted, “Wish +you joy!” Lord Howick gave a remarkably civil and smiling nod; and +Morpeth a hand salute with all his might, as we crossed in riding. On +Monday night after the division, Peel said just as it was known and +about to be announced, "Jamaica was a good horse to start."' Of his own +share in the performance, Mr. Gladstone only says that he spoke a dry +speech to a somewhat reluctant House. 'I cannot work up my matter at all +in such a plight. However, considering what it was, they behaved very +well. A loud cheer on the announcement of the numbers from our people, +in which I did not join.'</p> + +<p>To have won the race by so narrow a majority as five seemed to the +whigs, wearied of their own impotence and just discredit, a good plea +for getting out of office. Peel proceeded to begin the formation of a +government, but the operation broke down upon an affair of the +bedchamber. He supposed the Queen to object to the removal of any of the +ladies of her household, and the Queen supposed him to insist on the +removal of them all. The situation was unedifying and nonsensical, but +the Queen was not yet twenty, and Lord Melbourne had for once failed to +teach a prudent lesson. A few days saw Melbourne back in office, and in +office he remained for two years longer.<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a></p> + +<p class="center"><a name="image-3" id="image-3"><!-- Image 3 --></a> +<img src="images/illus-231.jpg" height="480" width="392" alt="Catherine Gladstone" /></p> +<p class="center"><a href="#ILLUSTRATIONS">Click to return to List of Illustrations</a></p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">MARRIAGE</p> + +<p>In June 1839 the understanding arrived at with Miss Catherine Glynne +during the previous winter in Sicily, ripened into a definite +engagement, and on the 25th of the following July their marriage took +place amid much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> rejoicing and festivity at Hawarden. At the same time +and place, Mary Glynne, the younger sister, was married to Lord +Lyttelton. Sir Stephen Glynne, their brother, was the ninth, and as was +to happen, the last baronet. Their mother, born Mary Neville, was the +daughter of the second Lord Braybrooke and Mary Grenville his wife, +sister of the first Marquis of Buckingham. Hence Lady Glynne was one of +a historic clan, granddaughter of George Grenville, the minister of +American taxation, and niece of William, Lord Grenville, head of the +cabinet of All the Talents in 1806. She was first cousin therefore of +the younger Pitt, and the Glynnes could boast of a family connection +with three prime ministers, or if we choose to add Lord Chatham who +married Hester Grenville, with four.<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> 'I told her,' Mr. Gladstone +recorded on this occasion of their engagement (June 8th), 'what was my +original destination and desire in life; in what sense and manner I +remained in connection with politics.... I have given her (led by her +questions) these passages for canons of our living:—</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">'Le fronde, onde s'infronda tutto l'orto<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 10.25em;">Dell' Ortolano eterno, am' io cotanto,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 10.25em;">Quanto da lui a lor di bene è porto.'<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a><br /></span> + +<p>And Dante again—</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">'In la sua volontade è nostra pace:<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 10.25em;">Ella è quel mare, al qual tutto si muove.'<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a><br /></span> + +<p>In few human unions have the good hopes and fond wishes of a bridal day +been better fulfilled or brought deeper and more lasting content. Sixty +long years after, Mr. Gladstone said, 'It would not be possible to +unfold in words the value of the gifts which the bounty of Providence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> +has conferred upon me through her.' And the blessing remained radiant +and unclouded to the distant end.</p> + +<p>At the close of August, after posting across Scotland from Greenock by a +route better known now than then to every tourist, the young couple made +their way to Fasque, where the new bride found an auspicious approach +and the kindest of welcomes. Her 'entrance into her adoptive family was +much more formidable than it would be to those who had been less loved, +or less influential, or less needed and leant upon, in the home where +she was so long a queen.' At Fasque all went as usual. Soon after his +arrival, his father communicated that he meant actually to transfer to +his sons his Demerara properties—Robertson to have the management. +'This increased wealth, so much beyond my needs, with its attendant +responsibility is very burdensome, however on his part the act be +beautiful.'</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>The parliamentary session of 1840 was unimportant and dreary. The +government was tottering, the conservative leaders were in no hurry to +pluck the pear before it was ripe, and the only men with any animating +principle of active public policy in them were Cobden and the League +against the Corn Law. The attention of the House of Commons was mainly +centred in the case of Stockdale and the publication of debates. But Mr. +Gladstone's most earnest thoughts were still far away from what he found +to be the dry sawdust of the daily politics, as the following lines may +show:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>March 16th, 1849</i>.—Manning dined with us. He kindly undertook +to revise my manuscript on 'Church Principles.'</p> + +<p><i>March 18th</i>.—Yesterday I had a long conversation with James +Hope. He came to tell me, with great generosity, that he would +always respond to any call, according to the best of his power, +which I might make on him for the behalf of the common cause—he +had given up all views of advancement in his profession—he had +about £400 a year, and this, which includes his fellowship, was +quite sufficient for his wants; his time would be devoted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>to +church objects; in the intermediate region he considered himself as +having the first tonsure.</p> + +<p>Hope urged strongly the principle, 'Let every man abide in the +calling ——' I thought even over strongly. My belief is that he +foregoes the ministry from deeming himself unworthy.... The object +of my letter to Hope was in part to record on paper my abhorrence +of party in the church, whether Oxford party or any other.</p> + +<p><i>March 18th</i>.—To-day a meeting at Peel's on the China question; +considered in the view of censure upon the conduct of the +administration, and a motion will accordingly be made objecting to +the attempts to force the Chinese to modify their old relations +with us, and to the leaving the superintendent without military +force. It was decided not to move simultaneously in the +Lords—particularly because the radicals would, if there were a +double motion, act not on the merits but for the ministry. +Otherwise, it seemed to be thought we should carry a motion. The +Duke of Wellington said, 'God! if it is carried, they will go,' +that they were as near as possible to resignation on the last +defeat, and would not stand it again. Peel said, he understood four +ministers were then strongly for resigning. The duke also said, our +footing in China could not be re-established, unless under some +considerable naval and military demonstration, now that matters had +gone so far. He appeared pale and shaken, but spoke loud and a good +deal, much to the point and with considerable gesticulation. The +mind's life I never saw more vigorous.</p></div> + +<p class="center">THE CHINA QUESTION</p> + +<p>The Chinese question was of the simplest. British subjects insisted on +smuggling opium into China in the teeth of Chinese law. The British +agent on the spot began war against China for protecting herself against +these malpractices. There was no pretence that China was in the wrong, +for in fact the British government had sent out orders that the +opium-smugglers should not be shielded; but the orders arrived too late, +and war having begun, Great Britain felt bound to see it through, with +the result that China was compelled to open four ports, to cede Hong +Kong, and to pay an indemnity of six hundred thousand pounds. So true is +it that statesmen have no concern with pater nosters, the Sermon on the +Mount, or the <i>vade mecum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></i> of the moralist. We shall soon see that this +transaction began to make Mr. Gladstone uneasy, as was indeed to be +expected in anybody who held that a state should have a conscience.<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a> +On April 8, 1840, his journal says: 'Read on China. House.... Spoke +heavily; strongly against the trade and the war, having previously asked +whether my speaking out on them would do harm, and having been +authorised.' An unguarded expression brought him into a debating scrape, +but his speech abounded in the pure milk of what was to be the +Gladstonian word:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I do not know how it can be urged as a crime against the Chinese +that they refused provisions to those who refused obedience to +their laws whilst residing within their territory. I am not +competent to judge how long this war may last, nor how protracted +may be its operations, but this I can say, that a war more unjust +in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this +country with disgrace, I do not know and I have not read of. Mr. +Macaulay spoke last night in eloquent terms of the British flag +waving in glory at Canton, and of the animating effect produced +upon the minds of our sailors by the knowledge that in no country +under heaven was it permitted to be insulted. But how comes it to +pass that the sight of that flag always raises the spirits of +Englishmen? It is because it has always been associated with the +cause of justice, with opposition to oppression, with respect for +national rights, with honourable commercial enterprise, but now +under the auspices of the noble lord [Palmerston] that flag is +hoisted to protect an infamous contraband traffic, and if it were +never to be hoisted except as it is now hoisted on the coast of +China, we should recoil from its sight with horror, and should +never again feel our hearts thrill, as they now thrill, with +emotion when it floats magnificently and in pride upon the +breeze.... Although the Chinese were undoubtedly guilty of much +absurd phraseology, of no little ostentatious pride, and of some +excess, justice in my opinion is with them, and whilst they the +pagans and semi-civilised barbarians have it, we the enlightened +and civilised Christians are pursuing objects at variance both with +justice and with religion.<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p> + +<p><i>May 14th</i>.—Consulted [various persons] on opium. All but Sir R. +Inglis were on grounds of prudence against its [a motion against +the compensation demanded from China] being brought forward. To +this majority of friendly and competent persons I have given way, I +hope not wrongfully; but I am in dread of the judgment of God upon +England for our national iniquity towards China. It has been to me +matter of most painful and anxious consideration. I yielded +specifically to this; the majority of the persons most trustworthy +feel that to make the motion would, our leaders being in such a +position and disposition with respect to it, injure the cause. +<i>June 1st</i>.—Meeting of the Society for Suppression of the Slave +Trade. [This was the occasion of a speech from Prince Albert, who +presided.] Exeter Hall crammed is really a grand spectacle. Samuel +Wilberforce a beautiful speaker; in some points resembles Macaulay. +Peel excellent. <i>June 12th</i>.—This evening I voted for the Irish +education grant; on the ground that in its principle, according to +Lord Stanley's letter, it is identical practically with the English +grant of '33-8, and I might have added with the Kildare Place +grant. To exclude doctrine from exposition is in my judgment as +truly a mutilation of scripture, as to omit bodily portions of the +sacred volume.</p></div> + +<p class="center">SOCIAL DIVERSION</p> + +<p>His first child and eldest son was born (June 3), and Manning and Hope +became his godfathers; these two were Mr. Gladstone's most intimate +friends at this period. Social diversions were never wanting. One June +afternoon he went down to Greenwich, 'Grillion's fish dinner to the +Speaker. Great merriment; and an excellent speech from Stanley, “good +sense and good nonsense.” A modest one from Morpeth. But though we dined +at six, these expeditions do not suit me. I am ashamed of paying £2, +10s. for a dinner. But on this occasion the object was to do honour to a +dignified and impartial Speaker.' He had been not at all grateful, by +the way, for the high honour of admission to Grillion's dining club this +year,—'a thing quite alien to my temperament, which requires more +soothing and domestic appliances after the feverish and consuming +excitements of party life; but the rules of society oblige me to +submit.' As it happened, so narrow is man's foreknow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>ledge, Grillion's +down to the very end of his life, nearly sixty years ahead, had no more +faithful or congenial member.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>July 1st</i>.—Last evening at Lambeth Palace I had a good deal of +conversation with Colonel Gurwood about the Duke of Wellington and +about Canada. He told me an anecdote of Lord Seaton which throws +light upon his peculiar reserve, and shows it to be a modesty of +character, combined no doubt with military habits and notions. When +Captain Colborne, and senior officer of his rank in the 21st foot, +he [Lord Seaton] was military secretary to General Fox during the +war. A majority in his regiment fell vacant, Gen. Fox desired him +to ascertain who was the senior captain on the <i>command</i>. 'Captain +So-and-so of the 80th [I think].' 'Write to Colonel Gordon and +recommend him to his royal highness for the vacant majority.' He +did it. The answer came to this effect: 'The recommendation will +not be refused, but we are surprised to see that it comes in the +handwriting of Captain Colborne, the very man who, according to the +rules of the service, ought to have this majority.' General Fox had +forgotten it, and Captain Colborne had not reminded him! The error +was corrected. He (Gurwood) said he had never known the Duke of +Wellington speak on the subject of religion but once, when he +quoted the story of Oliver Cromwell on his death-bed, and said: +'That state of grace, in my opinion, is a state or habit of doing +right, of persevering in duty, and to fall from it is to cease from +acting right.' He always attends the service at 8 a.m. in the +Chapel Royal, and says it is a duty which ought to be done, and the +earlier in the day it is discharged the better. <i>July 24th</i>. +Heard [James] Hope in the House of Lords against the Chapters bill; +and he spoke with such eloquence, learning, lofty sentiment, clear +and piercing diction, continuity of argument, just order, sagacious +tact, and comprehensive method, as one would say would have +required the longest experience as well as the greatest natural +gifts. Yet he never acted before, save as counsel for the Edinburgh +and Glasgow railway. If hearts are to be moved, it must be by this +speech.<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> <i>July 27th</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>—Again went over and got up the +subject of opium compensation as it respects the Chinese. I spoke +thereon 1½ hours for the liberation of my conscience, and to afford +the friends of peace opposite an opportunity, of which they would +not avail themselves.</p></div> + +<p>In August he tells Mrs. Gladstone how he has been to dine with 'such an +odd party at the Guizots'; Austin, radical lawyer; John Mill, radical +reviewer; M. Gaskell, Monckton Milnes, Thirlwall, new Bishop of St. +David's, George Lewis, poor law commissioner. Not very ill mixed, +however. The host is extremely nice.' An odd party indeed; it comprised +four at least of the strongest heads in England, and two of the most +illustrious names of all the century in Europe.</p> + +<p class="center">EXAMINER AT ETON</p> + +<p>In March (1840) Mr. Gladstone and Lord Lyttelton went to Eton together +to fulfil the ambitious functions of examiner for the Newcastle +scholarship. In thanking Mr. Gladstone for his services, Hawtrey speaks +of the advantage of public men of his stamp undertaking such duties in +the good cause of the established system of education, 'as against the +nonsense of utilitarians and radicals.' The questions ran in the +familiar mould in divinity, niceties of ancient grammar, obscurities of +classical construction, caprices of vocabulary, and all the other points +of the old learning. The general merit Mr. Gladstone found 'beyond +anything possible or conceivable' when he was a boy at Eton a dozen +years before:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>We sit with the boys (39 in number) and make about ten hours a day +in looking over papers with great minuteness.... Although it is in +quantity hard work, it is lightened by a warm interest, and the +refreshment of early love upon a return to this sweet place. It is +work apart from human passion, and is felt as a moral relaxation, +though it is not one in any other sense.... This is a curious +experience to me, of jaded body and mind refreshed. I propose for +Latin theme a little sentence of Burke's which runs to this effect, +'Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation +is not of more service to the people than to kings.' <i>April +2nd</i>.—The statistics become excessively interesting. Henry Hallam +gained, and now stands second [the brother of his dead friend]. +<i>April 3rd</i>.—In, 6 hours; out, from 4 to 5 hours more upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> +papers. Vinegar, thank God, carries my eyes through so much <span class="smcap">MS</span>., +and the occupation is deeply interesting, especially on Hallam's +account. Our labours were at one time anxious and critical, the two +leaders being 1388 and 1390 respectively. At night, however, all +was decided. <i>April 4th</i>. 12.2.—<i>Viva voce</i> for fourteen select. +At 2½ Seymour was announced scholar to the boys, and chaired +forthwith. Hallam, medallist. It was quite overpowering.</p></div> + +<p>Henry Hallam was the second son of the historian, the junior of Arthur +by some fourteen or fifteen years. Mr. Gladstone more than a generation +later described a touching supplement to his Eton story. 'In 1850 Henry +Hallam had attained an age exceeding only by some four years the limit +of his brother's life. During that autumn I was travelling post between +Turin and Genoa, upon my road to Naples. A family coach met us on the +road, and the glance of a moment at the inside showed me the familiar +face of Mr. Hallam. I immediately stopped my carriage, descended, and +ran after his. On overtaking it, I found the dark clouds accumulated on +his brow, and learned with indescribable pain that he was on his way +home from Florence, where he had just lost his second and only remaining +son, from an attack corresponding in its suddenness and its devastating +rapidity with that which had struck down his eldest born son seventeen +years before.'</p> + +<p>At Fasque, where his autumn sojourn began in September, he threw himself +with special ardour into his design for a college for Scotch +episcopalians, especially for the training of clergy. He wrote to +Manning (Aug. 31, 1840):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Hope and I have been talking and writing upon a scheme for raising +money to found in Scotland a college akin in structure to the +Romish seminaries in England; that is to say, partly for training +the clergy, partly for affording an education to the children of +the gentry and others who now go chiefly to presbyterian schools or +are tended at home by presbyterian tutors. I think £25,000 would do +it, and that it might be got. I must have my father's sanction +before committing myself to it. Hope's intended <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>absence for the +winter is a great blow. Were he to be at home I do not doubt that +great progress might be made. In the kirk toil and trouble, double, +double, the fires burn and cauldrons bubble: and though I am not +sanguine as to very speedy or extensive resumption by the church of +her spiritual rights, she may have a great part to play. At present +she is very weakly manned, and this is the way I think to +strengthen the crew.</p></div> + +<p class="center">GLENALMOND</p> + +<p>The scheme expanded as time went on. His father threw himself into it +with characteristic energy and generosity, contributing many thousand +pounds, for the sum required greatly exceeded the modest figure above +mentioned. Mr. Gladstone conducted a laborious and sometimes vexatious +correspondence in the midst of more important public cares. Plans were +mature, and adequate funds were forthcoming, and in the autumn of 1842 +Hope and the two Gladstones made what they found an agreeable tour, +examining the various localities for a site, and finally deciding on a +spot 'on a mountain-stream, ten miles from Perth, at the very gate of +the highlands.' It was 1846 before the college at Glenalmond was opened +for its destined purposes.<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a> We all know examples of men holding +opinions with trenchancy, decision, and even a kind of fervour, and yet +with no strong desire to spread them. Mr. Gladstone was at all times of +very different temper; consumed with missionary energy and the fire of +ardent propagandism.</p> + +<p class="center">LETTER FROM COBDEN</p> + +<p>He laboured hard at the fourth edition of his book, sometimes getting +eleven hours of work, 'a good day as times go,'—Montesquieu, Burke, +Bacon, Clarendon, and others of the masters of civil and historic wisdom +being laid under ample contribution. By Christmas he was at Hawarden. In +January he made a speech at a meeting held in Liverpool for the +foundation of a church union, and a few days later he hurried off to +Walsall to help his brother John, then the tory candidate, and a curious +incident happened:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I either provided myself, or I was furnished from headquarters, +with a packet of pamphlets in favour of the corn laws. These I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> +read, and I extracted from them the chief material of my speeches. +I dare say it was sad stuff, furbished up at a moment's notice. We +carried the election. Cobden sent me a challenge to attend a public +discussion of the subject. Whether this was quite fair, I am not +certain, for I was young, made no pretension to be an expert, and +had never opened my lips in parliament on the subject. But it +afforded me an excellent opportunity to decline with modesty and +with courtesy as well as reason. I am sorry to say that, to the +best of my recollection, I did far otherwise, and the pith of my +answer was made to be that I regarded the Anti-Corn Law League as +no better than a big borough-mongering association. Such was my +first capital offence in the matter of protection; redeemed from +public condemnation only by obscurity.</p></div> + +<p>The letters are preserved, but a sentence or two from Mr. Gladstone's to +Cobden are enough. 'The phrases which you quote from a report in the +<i>Times</i> have reference, not to the corn law, but to the Anti-Corn Law +League and its operations in Walsall. Complaining apparently of these, +you desire me to meet you in discussion, not upon the League but upon +the corn law. I cannot conceive two subjects more distinct. I admit the +question of the repeal of the corn laws to be a subject fairly open to +discussion, although I have a strong opinion against it. But as to the +Anti-Corn Law League, I do not admit that any equitable doubt can be +entertained as to the character of its present proceedings; and, +excepting a casual familiarity of phrase, I adhere rigidly to the +substance of the sentiments which I have expressed. I know not who may +be answerable for these measures, nor was your name known to me, or in +my recollection at the time when I spoke.' Time soon changed all this, +and showed who was teacher and who the learner.</p> + +<p>By and by the session of 1841 opened, the whigs moving steadily towards +their fall, and Mr. Gladstone almost overwhelmed with floods of domestic +business. He settled in the pleasant region which is to the metropolis +what Delphi was to the habitable earth, and where, if we include in it +Downing Street, he passed all the most important years of his life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> in +London.<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a> Though he speaks of being overwhelmed by domestic business, +and he was undoubtedly hard beset by all the demands of early +housekeeping, yet he very speedily recovered his balance. He resisted +now and always as jealously as he could those promiscuous claims on time +and attention by which men of less strenuous purpose suffer the +effectiveness of their lives to be mutilated. 'I well know,' he writes +to his young wife who was expecting him to join her at Hagley, 'you +would not have me come on any conditions with which one's sense of duty +could not be quieted, and would (I hope) send me back by the next train. +These delays are to you a practical exemplification of the difficulty of +reconciling domestic and political engagements. The case is one that +scarcely admits of compromise; the least that is required in order to +the fulfilment of one's duty is constant bodily presence in London until +the fag-end of the session is fairly reached.'</p> + +<p>Here are a few examples of the passing days:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>March 12th</i>, 1841.—<i>Tracts for the Times</i>, No. 90; ominous. +<i>March 13th</i>.—Went to see Reform Club. Sat to Bradley 2½-4. +London Library committee. Carlton Library committee. Corrected two +proof-sheets. Conversed an hour and a half with Mr. Richmond, who +came to tea, chiefly on my plan for a picture-life of Christ. Chess +with C. [his wife]. <i>March 14th</i> (<i>Sunday</i>).—Communion (St. +James's), St. Margaret's afternoon. Wrote on Ephes. v. 1, and read +it aloud to servants. <i>March 20th</i>.—City to see Freshfield. +Afternoon service in Saint Paul's. What an image, what a crowd of +images! Amidst the unceasing din, and the tumult of men hurrying +this way and that for gold, or pleasure, or some self-desire, the +vast fabric thrusts itself up to heaven and firmly plants itself on +soil begrudged to an occupant that yields no lucre. But the city +cannot thrust forth its cathedral; and from thence arises the +harmonious measured voice of intercession from day to day. The +church praying and deprecating continually for the living mass that +are dead while they live, from out of the very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> centre of that +mass; silent and lonesome is her shrine, amidst the noise, the +thunder of multitudes. Silent, lonesome, motionless, yet full of +life; for were we not more dead than the stones, which built into +that sublime structure witness continually to what is great and +everlasting,—did priest or chorister, or the casual worshipper but +apprehend the grandeur of his function in that spot,—the very +heart must burst with the tide of emotions gathering within it. Oh +for speed, speed to the wings of that day when this glorious +unfulfilled outline of a church shall be charged as a hive with the +operations of the Spirit of God and of His war against the world; +when the intervals of space and time within its walls, now +untenanted by any functions of that holy work, shall be thickly +occupied; and when the glorious sights and sounds which shall +arrest the passenger in his haste that he may sanctify his purposes +by worship, shall be symbols still failing to express the fulness +of the power of God developed among His people.</p> + +<p><i>March 21</i>.—Wrote on 1 Thess. v. 17, and read it to servants. Read +<i>The Young Communicants</i>; Bishop Hall's <i>Life</i>. It seems as if at +this time the number and close succession of occupations without +any great present reward of love or joy, and chiefly belonging to +an earthly and narrow range, were my special trial and discipline. +Other I seem hardly to have any of daily pressure. Health in myself +and those nearest me; (comparative) wealth and success; no strokes +from God; no opportunity of pardoning others, for none offend me.</p> + +<p><i>April 3</i>.—Two or three nights ago Mrs. Wilbraham told Catherine +that Stanley was extremely surprised to find, after his speech on +the Tarmworth and Rugby railway bill, that Peel had been very much +annoyed with the expression he had used: 'that his right hon. +friend had in pleading for the bill made use of all that art and +ingenuity with which he so well knew how to dress up a statement +for that House,' and that he showed his annoyance very much by his +manner to him, S., afterwards. He, upon reflecting that this was +the probable cause, wrote a note to Peel to set matters to rights, +in which he succeeded; but he thought Peel very thin-skinned. Wm. +Cowper told me the other day at Milnes's that Lord John Russell is +remarkable among his colleagues for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>his anxiety during the recess +for the renewal of the session of parliament; that he always argues +for fixing an early day of meeting, and finds pleas for it, and +finds the time long until it recommences.</p></div> + +<p>A visit to Nuneham (April 12) and thence to Oxford brought him into the +centre of the tractarians. He saw much of Hamilton, went to afternoon +service at Littlemore, breakfasted in company with Newman at Merton, had +a long conversation with Pusey on Tract 90, and gathered that Newman +thought differently of the Council of Trent from what he had thought a +year or two back, and that he differed from Pusey in thinking the +English reformation uncatholic. Mr. Gladstone replied that No. 90 had +the appearance to his mind of being written by a man, if in, not of, the +church of England; and would be interpreted as exhibiting the Tridentine +system for the ideal, the anglican for a mutilated and <i>just</i> tolerable +actual. Then in the same month he 'finished Palmer on the Articles, +deep, earnest, and generally trustworthy. Worked upon a notion of +private eucharistical devotions, to be chiefly compiled; and attended a +meeting about colonial bishoprics,' where he spoke but indifferently.</p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p class="center">NEW FISCAL POLICY</p> + +<p>In 1841 the whigs in the expiring hours of their reign launched +parliament and parties upon what was to be the grand marking controversy +of the era. To remedy the disorder into which expenditure, mainly due to +highhanded foreign policy, had brought the national finance, they +proposed to reconstruct the fiscal system by reducing the duties on +foreign sugar and timber, and substituting for Wellington's corn law a +fixed eight shilling duty on imported wheat. The wiser heads, like Lord +Spencer, were aware that as an electioneering expedient the new policy +would bring them little luck, but their position in any case was +desperate. The handling of their proposals was curiously maladroit; and +even if it had been otherwise, ministerial repute alike for com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>petency +and for sincerity was so damaged both, in the House of Commons and the +country, that their doom was certain. The reduction of the duty on +slave-grown sugar from foreign countries was as obnoxious to the +abolitionist as it was disadvantageous to the West Indian proprietors, +and both of these powerful sections were joined by the corn-grower, well +aware that his turn would come next. Many meetings took place at Sir +Robert Peel's upon the sugar resolutions, and Mr. Gladstone worked up +the papers and figures so as to be ready to speak if necessary. At one +of these meetings, by the way, he thought it worth while to write down +that Peel had the tradesmen's household books upon his desk—a +circumstance that he mentioned also to the present writer, when by +chance we found ourselves together in the same room fifty years later.</p> + +<p>On May 10th, his speech on the sugar duties came off in due course. In +this speech he took the sound point that the new arrangement must act as +an encouragement to the slave trade, 'that monster which, while war, +pestilence, and famine were slaying their thousands, slew from year to +year with unceasing operation its tens of thousands.' As he went on, he +fell upon Macaulay for being member of a cabinet that was thus deserting +a cause in which Macaulay's father had been the unseen ally of +Wilberforce, and the pillar of his strength,—'a man of profound +benevolence, of acute understanding, of indefatigable industry, and of +that self-denying temper which is content to work in secret, and to seek +for its reward beyond the grave.' Macaulay was the last man to suffer +rebuke in silence, and he made a sharp reply on the following day, +followed by a magnanimous peace-making behind the Speaker's chair.</p> + +<p class="center">DEFEAT OF WHIG MINISTRY</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the air was thick and loud with rumours. Lord Eliot told Mr. +Gladstone in the middle of the debate that there had been a stormy +cabinet that morning, and that ministers had at last made up their minds +to follow Lord Spencer's advice, to resign and not to dissolve. When the +division on the sugar duties was taken, ministers were beaten (May 19) +by a majority of 36, after fine performances from Sir Robert, and a good +one from Palmerston on the other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> side. The cabinet, with, a tenacity +incredible in our own day, were still for holding on until their whole +scheme, with the popular element of cheap bread in it, was fully before +the country. Peel immediately countered them by a vote of want of +confidence, and this was carried (June 4) by a majority of one:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>On Saturday morning the division in the House of Commons presented +a scene of the most extraordinary excitement. While we were in our +lobby we were told that we were 312 and the government either 311 +or 312. It was also known that they had brought down Lord —— who +was reported to be in a state of total idiocy. After returning to +the House I went to sit near the bar, where the other party were +coming in. We had all been counted, 312, and the tellers at the +government end had counted to 308; there remained behind this +unfortunate man, reclining in a chair, evidently in total +unconsciousness of what was proceeding. Loud cries had been raised +from our own side, when it was seen that he was being brought up, +to clear the bar that the whole House might witness the scene, and +every one stood up in intense curiosity. There were now only this +figure, less human even than an automaton, and two persons, R. +Stuart and E. Ellice, pushing the chair in which he lay. A loud cry +of 'Shame, Shame,' burst from our side; those opposite were silent. +Those three were counted without passing the tellers, and the +moment after we saw that our tellers were on the right in walking +to the table, indicating that we had won. Fremantle gave out the +numbers, and then the intense excitement raised by the sight we had +witnessed found vent in our enthusiastic (quite irregular) hurrah +with great waving of hats. Upon looking back I am sorry to think +how much I partook in the excitement that prevailed; but how could +it be otherwise in so extraordinary a case? I thought Lord John's a +great speech—it was delivered too under the pressure of great +indisposition. He has risen with adversity. He seemed rather below +par as a leader in 1835 when he had a clear majority, and the ball +nearly at his foot; in each successive year the strength of his +government has sunk and his own has risen.</p></div> + +<p>Then came the dissolution, and an election memorable in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> the history of +party. Thinking quite as much of the Scotch college, the colonial +bishoprics, and Tract Ninety, as of sugar duties or the corn law, Mr. +Gladstone hastened to Newark. He was delighted with the new colleague +who had been provided for him. 'As a candidate,' he writes to his wife, +'Lord John Manners is excellent; his speaking is popular and effective, +and he is a good canvasser, by virtue not I think of effort, but of a +general kindliness and warmth of disposition which naturally shows +itself to every one. Nothing can be more satisfactory than to have such +a partner.' In his address Mr. Gladstone only touched on the poor law +and the corn law. On the first he would desire liberal treatment for +aged, sick, and widowed poor, and reasonable discretion to the local +administrators of the law. As to the second, the protection of native +agriculture is an object of the first economical and national +importance, and should be secured by a graduated scale of duties on +foreign grain. 'Manners and I,' he says, 'were returned as +protectionists. My speeches were of absolute dulness, but I have no +doubt they were sound in the sense of my leaders Peel and Graham and +others of the party.' The election offered no new incidents. One old +lady reproached him for not being content with keeping bread and sugar +from the people, but likewise by a new faith, the mysterious monster of +Puseyism, stealing away from them the bread of life. He found the +wesleyans shaky, partly because they disliked his book and were afraid +of the Oxford Tracts, and partly from his refusal to subscribe to their +school. Otherwise, flags, bands, suppers, processions, all went on in +high ceremonial order as before. Day after day passed with nothing worse +than the threat of a blue candidate, but one Sunday morning (June 26) as +people came out of church, they found an address on the walls and a dark +rumour got afloat that the new man had brought heavy bags of money. For +this rumour there was no foundation, but it inspired annoying fears in +the good and cheerful hopes in the bad. The time was in any case too +short, and at four o'clock on June 29 the poll was found to be, +Gladstone 633, Manners 630, Hobhouse 391. His own election safely over, +Mr. Gladstone turned to take part in a fierce<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> contest in which Sir +Stephen Glynne was candidate for the representation of Flintshire, but +'bribery, faggotry, abduction, personation, riot, factious delays, +landlord's intimidations, partiality of authorities,' carried the day, +and to the bitter dismay of Hawarden, Sir Stephen was narrowly beaten. +One ancient dame, overwhelmed by the defeat of the family that for +eighty years she had idolised, cried aloud to Mrs. Gladstone, 'I am a +great woman for thinking of the Lord, but O, my dear lady, this has put +it all out of my head.' The election involved him in what would now be +thought a whimsical correspondence with one of the Grosvenor family, who +complained of Mr. Gladstone for violating the sacred canons of +electioneering etiquette by canvassing Lord Westminster's tenants. 'I +did think,' says the wounded patrician, 'that interference between a +landlord with whose opinions you were acquainted and his tenants was not +justifiable according to those laws of delicacy and propriety which I +considered binding in such cases.'</p> + +<p class="center">ELECTION OF 1841</p> + +<p>At last he was able to snatch a holiday with his wife and child by the +seaside at Hoylake, which rather oddly struck him as being like Pæstum +without the temples. He read away at Gibbon and Dante until he went to +Hawarden, partly to consider the state of its financial affairs; as to +these something is to be said later. 'Walked alone in the Hawarden +grounds,' he says one day during his stay; 'ruminated on the last-named +subject [accounts], also on anticipated changes [in government]. I can +digest the crippled religious action of the state; but I cannot be a +party to exacting by blood opium compensation from the Chinese.' Then to +London (Aug. 18). He attended the select party meetings at Sir Robert +Peel's and Lord Aberdeen's. Dining at Grillion's he heard Stanley, +speaking of the new parliament, express a high opinion of Roebuck as an +able man and clear speaker, likely to make a figure; and also of Cobden +as a resolute perspicacious man, familiar with all the turns of his +subject; and when the new House assembled, he had made up his mind for +himself that '<i>Cobden will be a worrying man on corn</i>.' This was +Cobden's first entry into the House. At last the whigs were put out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> of +office by a majority of 91, and Peel undertook to form a government.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Aug. 31/41</i>.—In consequence of a note received this morning from +Sir Robert Peel I went to him at half-past eleven. The following is +the substance of a quarter of an hour's conversation. He said: 'In +this great struggle, in which we have been and are to be engaged, +the chief importance will attach to questions of finance. It would +not be in my power to undertake the business of chancellor of the +exchequer in detail; I therefore have asked Goulburn to fill that +office, and I shall be simply first lord. I think we shall be very +strong in the House of Commons if as a part of this arrangement you +will accept the post of vice-president of the board of trade, and +conduct the business of that department in the House of Commons, +with Lord Ripon as president. I consider it an office of the +highest importance, and you will have my unbounded confidence in +it.'<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a></p> + +<p>I said, 'of the importance and responsibility of that office at the +present time I am well aware; but it is right that I should say as +strongly as I can, that I really am not fit for it. I have no +general knowledge of trade whatever; with a few questions I am +acquainted, but they are such as have come across me incidentally.' +He said, 'The satisfactory conduct of an office of that kind must +after all depend more upon the intrinsic qualities of the man, than +upon the precise amount of his previous knowledge. I also think you +will find Lord Ripon a perfect master of these subjects, and depend +upon it with these appointments at the board of trade we shall +carry the whole commercial interests of the country with us.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p></div> + +<p class="center">VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>He resumed, 'If there be any other arrangement that you would +prefer, my value and “affectionate regard” for you would make me +most desirous to effect it so far as the claims of others would +permit. To be perfectly frank and unreserved, I should tell you, +that there are many reasons which would have made me wish to send +you to Ireland; but upon the whole I think that had better not be +done. Some considerations connected with the presbyterians of +Ireland make me prefer on the whole that we should adopt a +different plan.<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> Then, if I had had the exchequer, I should +have asked you to be financial secretary to the treasury; but under +the circumstances I have mentioned, that would be an office of +secondary importance and I am sure you will not estimate that I now +propose to you by the mere name which it bears.' He also made an +allusion to the admiralty of which I do not retain the exact form. +But I rather interposed and said, 'My objection on the score of +fitness would certainly apply with even increased force to anything +connected with the military and naval services of the country, for +of them I know nothing. Nor have I any other object in view; there +is no office to which I could designate myself. I think it my duty +to act upon your judgment as to my qualifications. If it be your +deliberate wish to make me vice-president of the board of trade, I +will not decline it; I will endeavour to put myself into harness, +and to prepare myself for the place in the best manner I can; but +it really is an apprenticeship.' He said, 'I hope you will be +content to act upon the sense which others entertain of your +suitableness for this office in particular, and I think it will be +a good arrangement both with a view to the present conduct of +business and to the brilliant destinies which I trust are in store +for you.' I answered, that I was deeply grateful for his many acts +of confidence and kindness; and that I would at once assent to the +plan he had proposed, only begging him to observe that I had +mentioned my unfitness under a very strong sense of duty and of the +facts, and not by any means as a mere matter of ceremony. I then +added that I thought I should but ill respond to his confidence if +I did not mention to him a subject connected with his policy which +might raise a difficulty in my mind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> 'I cannot,' I said, +'reconcile it to my sense of right to exact from China, as a term +of peace, compensation for the opium surrendered to her.'... He +agreed that it was best to mention it; observed that in consequence +of the shape in which the Chinese affair came into the hands of the +new government, they would not be wholly unfettered; seemed to hint +that under any other circumstances the vice-president of board of +trade need not so much mind what was done in the other departments, +but remarked that at present every question of foreign relations +and many more would be very apt to mix themselves with the +department of trade. He thought I had better leave the question +suspended.</p> + +<p>I hesitated a moment before coming away and said it was only from +my anxiety to review what I had said, and to be sure that I had +made a clean breast on the subject of my unfitness for the +department of trade. Nothing could be more friendly and warm than +his whole language and demeanour. It has always been my hope, that +I might be able to avoid this class of public employment. On this +account I have not endeavoured to train myself for them. The place +is very distasteful to me, and what is of more importance, I fear I +may hereafter demonstrate the unfitness I have to-day only stated. +However, it comes to me, I think, as a matter of plain duty; it may +be all the better for not being according to my own bent and +leaning; I must forthwith go to work, as a reluctant schoolboy +meaning well.</p> + +<p><i>Sept. 3</i>.—This day I went to Claremont to be sworn in. When the +council was constructed, the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Liverpool +were first called in to take their oaths and seats; then the +remaining four followed, Lincoln, Eliot, Ernest Bruce, and I. The +Queen sat at the head of the table, composed but dejected—one +could not but feel for her, all through the ceremonial. We knelt +down to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy and stood up to +take (I think) the councillor's oath, then kissed the Queen's hand, +then went round the table shaking hands with each member, beginning +from Prince Albert who sat on the Queen's right, and ending with +Lord Wharncliffe on her left. We then sat at the lower end of the +table, excepting Lord E. Bruce, who went to his place behind the +Queen as vice-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>chamberlain. Then the chancellor first and next the +Duke of Buckingham were sworn to their respective offices. C. +Greville forgot the duke's privy seal and sent him off without it; +the Queen corrected him and gave it.... Then were read and approved +several orders in council; among which was one assigning a district +to a church and another appointing Lord Ripon and me to act in +matters of trade. These were read aloud by the Queen in a very +clear though subdued voice; and she repeated 'Approved' after each. +Upon that relating to Lord R. and myself we were called up and +kissed hands again. Then the Queen rose, as did all the members of +the council, and retired bowing. We had luncheon in the same room +half an hour later and went off. The Duke of Wellington went in an +open carriage with a pair; all our other grand people with four. +Peel looked shy all through. I visited Claremont once before, 27 +years ago I think, as a child, to see the place, soon after the +Princess Charlotte's death. It corresponded pretty much with my +impressions.</p></div> + +<p class="center">SWORN OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL</p> + +<p>He secured his re-election at Newark on September 14 without opposition, +and without trouble, beyond the pressure of a notion rooted in the +genial mind of his constituency that as master of the mint he would have +an unlimited command of public coin for all purposes whether general or +particular. His reflections upon his ministerial position are of much +biographic interest. He had evidently expected inclusion in the +cabinet:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Sept. 16</i>.—Upon quietly reviewing past times, and the degree of +confidence which Sir Robert Peel had for years, habitually I may +say, reposed in me, and especially considering its climax, in my +being summoned to the meetings immediately preceding the debate on +the address in August, I am inclined to think, after allowing for +the delusions of self love, that there is not a perfect +correspondence between the tenor of the past on the one hand, and +my present appointment and the relations in which it places me to +the administration on the other. He may have made up his mind at +those meetings that I was not qualified for the consultations of a +government, nor would there be anything strange in this, except the +supposition that he had not seen it before. Having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> however taken +the alarm (so to speak) upon the invitation at that time, and been +impressed with the idea that it savoured of cabinet office, I +considered and consulted on the Chinese question, which I regarded +as a serious impediment to office of that description, and I had +provisionally contemplated saying to Peel in case he should offer +me Ireland with the cabinet, to reply that I would gladly serve his +government in the secretaryship, but that I feared his Chinese +measures would hardly admit of my acting in the cabinet. I am very +sorry now to think that I may have been guilty of an altogether +absurd presumption, in dreaming of the cabinet. But it was wholly +suggested by that invitation. And I still think that there must +have been some consultation and decision relating to me in the +interval between the meetings and the formation of the new +ministry, which produced some alteration.... In confirmation of the +notion I have recorded above, I am distinct in the recollection +that there was a shyness in Peel's manner and a downward eye, when +he opened the conversation and made the offer, not usual with him +in speaking to me.</p></div> + +<p>In after years, he thus described his position when he went to the board +of trade:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I was totally ignorant both of political economy and of the +commerce of the country. I might have said, as I believe was said +by a former holder of the vice-presidency, that my mind was in +regard to all those matters a 'sheet of white paper,' except that +it was doubtless coloured by a traditional prejudice of protection, +which had then quite recently become a distinctive mark of +conservatism. In a spirit of ignorant mortification I said to +myself at the moment: the science of politics deals with the +government of men, but I am set to govern packages. In my journal +for Aug. 2 I find this recorded: 'Since the address meetings' +(which were quasi-cabinets) 'the idea of the Irish secretaryship +had nestled imperceptibly in my mind.'<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a></p></div> + +<p>The vice-presidency was the post, by the way, impudently proposed four +years later by the whigs to Gobden, after he had taught both whigs and +tories their business. Mr. Gladstone,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> at least, was quick to learn the +share of 'packages' in the government of men.</p> + +<p class="center">REFLECTIONS ON HIS OFFICE</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Sept. 30</i>.—Closing the month, and a period of two years +comprehended within this book, I add a few words. My position is +changed by office. In opposition I was frequently called, or +sometimes at least, to the confidential councils of the party on a +variety of subjects. In office, I shall of course have to do with +the department of trade and with little or nothing beyond. There is +some point in the query of the <i>Westminster Review: Whether my +appointments are a covet satire?</i> But they bring great advantages; +much less responsibility, much less anxiety. I could not have made +myself answerable for what I expect the cabinet will do in China. +It must be admitted that it presents an odd appearance, when a +person whose mind and efforts have chiefly ranged within the circle +of subjects connected with the church, is put into office of the +most different description. It looks as if the first object were to +neutralise his mischievous tendencies. But I am in doubt whether to +entertain this supposition would be really a compliment to the +discernment of my superiors, or a breach of charity; therefore it +is best not entertained.</p></div> + +<p>Paragraphs appeared in newspapers imputing to Mr. Gladstone a strong +reprobation of the prime minister's opinions upon church affairs, and he +thought it worth while to write to Sir Robert a strong (and most +excessively lengthy) disclaimer of being, among other things, an object +of hope to unbending tories as against their moderate and cautious +leader.<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a> 'Should party spirit,' he went on, 'run very high against +your commercial measures, I have no doubt that the venom of my religious +opinions will be plentifully alleged to have infused itself into your +policy even in that direction, ... and more than ever will be heard of +your culpability in taking into office a person of my bigoted and +extreme sentiments.' Peel replied (October 19, 1841) with kindness and +good sense. He had not taken the trouble to read the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> paragraph; he had +read the works from which a mischievous industry had tried to collect +means of defaming their author; he found nothing in them in the most +distant manner to affect political co-operation; and he signed his name +to the letter, 'with an esteem and regard, which are proof against +evil-minded attempts to sow jealousy and discord.'<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> For Mr. Gladstone's later view of this transaction, see +<i>Gleanings</i>, i. p. 39. He composed a letter on the subject, which, he +says, 'will probably never see the light.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> Mr. Gladstone compiled this list of the statesmen in the maternal +ancestry of his children:—<br /> + +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Right Hon. George Grenville,</span><span style="margin-left: 9.17em;"> Great, great grandfather</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sir W. Wyndham,</span><span style="margin-left: 13.74em;">Great, great grandfather</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lord Chatham,</span><span style="margin-left: 15em;">Great, Great granduncle-in-law</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mr. Pitt,</span><span style="margin-left: 17.70em;">First cousin thrice removed</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lord Grenville,</span><span style="margin-left: 15em;">Great granduncle</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mr. Grenville,</span><span style="margin-left: 15.5em;">Great granduncle</span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> <i>Paradiso</i>, xxvi. 64-6— +</p> +<p><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">'Love for each plant that in the garden grows,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">Of the Eternal Gardener, I prove,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6.5em;">Proportioned to the goodness he bestows.'—</span><span class="smcap">Wright</span>.<br /> +</p> +</div> +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> iii. 85. <a href="#Page_215">See above, p. 215.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> See Lord Palmerston's speech, Aug. 10, 1842.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> <i>Hansard</i>, 3 S. vol. 53, p. 819.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> 'It was the common talk of Oxford how the most distinguished +lawyer of the day, a literary man and a critic, on hearing the speech in +question, pronounced his prompt verdict on him in the words, "That young +man's fortune is made."'—Newman's Funeral Sermon on J. R. Hope-Scott in +<i>Sermons preached on Various Occasions</i>, p. 269.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> The reader who cares for further particulars may consult the +<i>Memoirs of J. R. Hope-Scott</i>, i. pp. 248, 281-8; and ii. p. 291.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> His first house was 13 Carlton House Terrace, then his father gave +him 6 Carlton Gardens. In 1856 he purchased 11 Carlton House Terrace, +which was his London home until 1875. From 1876 to 1880 he occupied 73 +Harley Street.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> 'At that period the board of trade was the department which +administered to a great extent the functions that have since passed +principally into the hands of the treasury, connected with the fiscal +laws of the country.'—<i>Mr. Gladstone at Leeds</i>, Oct. 8, 1881. In 1880, +writing to Mr. Chamberlain, then president, he says: 'If you were to +look back to the records of your department thirty-five and forty years +ago, you would find how much of the public trade business was transacted +in it. Revenue was then largely involved: and hence, I imagine, it came +about that this business was taken over in a great degree by the +treasury. I myself have drawn up new tariffs in both, at the B. of T. in +1842 and 1844-5, and at the treasury in 1853 and 1860. Why and how the +old B. of T. functions also passed in part to the F.O. I do not so well +know.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> I suppose this points to incompatibility in the fevers of the hour +between protestant Ulster and a Puseyite chief secretary.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a> Autobiographic note.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a> It would appear from the manuscript at the British Museum, that +Macaulay's sentence about Mr. Gladstone as the rising hope of the stern +and unbending tories, which later events made long so famous and so +tiresome, was a happy afterthought, written in along the margin.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> Parker's <i>Peel</i>, ii. pp. 514-17.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> +<h2><a name="BkIICh_VIII" id="BkIICh_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">PEEL'S GOVERNMENT</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1842-1844</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>In many of the most important rules of public policy Sir R. Peel's +government surpassed generally the governments which have succeeded +it, whether liberal or conservative. Among them I would mention +purity in patronage, financial strictness, loyal adherence to the +principle of public economy, jealous regard to the rights of +parliament, a single eye to the public interest, strong aversion to +extension of territorial responsibilities and a frank admission of +the rights of foreign countries as equal to those of their +own.—<span class="smcap">Mr. Gladstone</span> (1880).<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id="FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a></p></div> +<br /> +<p>Of the four or five most memorable administrations of the century, the +great conservative government of Sir Robert Peel was undoubtedly one. It +laid the groundwork of our solid commercial policy, it established our +railway system, it settled the currency, and, by no means least, it gave +us a good national character in Europe as lovers of moderation, equity, +and peace. Little as most members of the new cabinet saw it, their +advent definitely marked the rising dawn of an economic era. If you had +to constitute new societies, Peel said to Croker, then you might on +moral and social grounds prefer cornfields to cotton factories, and you +might like an agricultural population better than a manufacturing; as it +was, the national lot was cast, and statesmen were powerless to turn +back the tide. The food of the people, their clothing, the raw material +for their industry, their education, the conditions under which women +and children were suffered to toil, markets for the products of loom and +forge and furnace and mechanic's shop,—these were slowly making their +way into the central field of political vision, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> taking the place of +fantastic follies about foreign dynasties and the balance of power as +the true business of the British statesman. On the eve of entering +parliament (September 17, 1832), Mr. Gladstone recounts some articles of +his creed at the time to his friend Gaskell, and to modern eyes a +curious list it is. The first place is given to his views on the +relative merits of Pedro, Miguel, Donna Maria, in respect of the throne +of Portugal. The second goes to Poland. The third to the affairs of +Lombardy. Free trade comes last. This was still the lingering fashion of +the moment, and it died hard.</p> + +<p>The new ministry contained an unusual number of men of mark and +capacity, and they were destined to form a striking group. At their head +was a statesman whose fame grows more impressive with time, not the +author or inspirer of large creative ideas, but with what is at any rate +next best—a mind open and accessible to those ideas, and endowed with +such gifts of skill, vigilance, caution, and courage as were needed for +the government of a community rapidly passing into a new stage of its +social growth. One day in February 1842, he sent for Mr. Gladstone on +some occasion of business. Peel happened not to be well, and in the +course of the conversation his doctor called. Sir James Graham who had +come in, said to his junior in Peel's absence with the physician, 'The +pressure upon him is immense. We never had a minister who was so truly a +first minister as he is. He makes himself felt in every department, and +is really cognisant of the affairs of each. Lord Grey could not master +such an amount of business. Canning could not do it. Now he is an actual +minister, and is indeed <i>capax imperii</i>.' Next to Peel as parliamentary +leaders stood Graham himself and Stanley. They had both of them sat in +the cabinet of Lord Grey, and now found themselves the colleagues of the +bitterest foes of Grey's administration. As we have seen, Mr. Gladstone +pronounces Graham to have known more about economic subjects than all +the rest of the government put together. Such things had hitherto been +left to men below the first rank in the hierarchy of public office, like +Huskisson. Pedro and Miguel held the field.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">END OF HIS PROTECTIONIST STAGE</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone's own position is described in an autobiographic fragment +of his last years:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>When I entered parliament in 1832, the great controversy between +protection or artificial restraint and free trade, of which Cobden +was the leading figure, did not enter into the popular +controversies of the day, and was still in the hands of the +philosophers. My father was an active and effective local +politician, and the protectionism which I inherited from him and +from all my youthful associations was qualified by a thorough +acceptance of the important preliminary measures of Mr. Huskisson, +of whom he was the first among the local supporters. Moreover, for +the first six years or so of my parliamentary life free trade was +in no way a party question, and it only became strictly such in +1841 at, and somewhat before, the general election, when the whig +government, <i>in extremis</i>, proposed a fixed duty upon corn. My mind +was in regard to it a sheet of white paper, but I accepted the +established conditions in <i>the lump</i>, and could hardly do +otherwise. In 1833 only, the question was debated in the House of +Commons, and the speech of the mover against the corn laws made me +uncomfortable. But the reply of Sir James Graham restored my peace +of mind. I followed the others with a languid interest. Yet I +remember being struck with the essential unsoundness of the +argument of Mr. Villiers. It was this. Under the present corn law +our trade, on which we depend, is doomed, for our manufacturers +cannot possibly contend with the manufacturers of the continent if +they have to pay wages regulated by the protection price of food, +while their rivals pay according to the natural or free trade +price. The answer was obvious. 'Thank you. We quite understand you. +Your object is to get down the wages of your workpeople.' It was +Cobden who really set the argument on its legs; and it is futile to +compare any other man with him as the father of our system of free +trade.</p> + +<p>I had in 1840 to dabble in this question, and on the wrong side of +it<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a>.... The matter passed from my mind, full of churches and +church matters, in which I was now gradually acquiring knowledge. +In 1841 the necessities of the whig government led to a further +development of the great controversy; but I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> interfered only in the +colonial part of it in connection with the colonies and the slave +trade to Porto Rico and Brazil. We West Indians were now great +philanthropists! When Sir Robert Peel assumed the government he had +become deeply committed to protection, which in the last two or +three years had become the subject of a commanding controversy. I +suppose that at Newark I followed suit, but I have no records. On +the change of government Peel, with much judgment, offered me the +vice-presidentship of the board of trade. On sound principles of +party discipline, I took the office at once; and having taken it I +set to work with all my might as a worker. In a very short time I +came to form a low estimate of the knowledge and information of +Lord Ripon; and of the cabinet Sir James Graham, I think, knew +most. And now the stones of which my protectionism was built up +began to get uncomfortably loose. When we came to the question of +the tariff, we were all nearly on a par in ignorance, and we had a +very bad adviser in Macgregor, secretary to the board of trade. But +I had the advantage of being able to apply myself with an undivided +attention. My assumption of office at the board of trade was +followed by hard, steady, and honest work; and every day so spent +beat like a battering ram on the unsure fabric of my official +protectionism. By the end of the year I was far gone in the +opposite sense. I had to speak much on these questions in the +session of 1842, but it was always done with great moderation.</p></div> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">PEEL'S SLOW CONVERSION</p> + +<p>The case on the accession of the new ministers was difficult. Peel +himself has drawn the picture. By incompetent finance, by reckless +colonial expenditure, by solving political difficulties through gifts or +promises of cash from the British treasury, by war and foreign relations +hovering on the verge of war and necessitating extended preparations, +the whigs had brought the national resources into an embarrassment that +was extreme. The accumulated deficits of five years had become a heavy +incubus, and the deficit of 1842-3 was likely to be not less than two +and a half millions more. Commerce and manufactures were languishing. +Distress<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> was terrible. Poor-rates were mounting, and grants-in-aid +would extend impoverishment from the factory districts to the rural. +'Judge then,' said Peel, 'whether we can with safety retrograde in +manufactures.'<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a></p> + +<p>So grave a crisis could only be met by daring remedies. With the highest +courage, moral courage no less than political, Peel resolved to ask +parliament to let him raise four or five millions a year by income-tax, +in order to lower the duties on the great articles of consumption, and +by reforming the tariff both to relieve trade, and to stimulate and +replenish the reciprocal flow of export and import. That he at this +time, or perhaps in truth at any time, had acquired complete mastery of +those deeper principles and wider aspects of free trade of which Adam +Smith had been the great exponent—principles afterwards enforced by the +genius of Cobden with such admirable still, persistency, and patriotic +spirit—there was nothing to show. Such a scheme had no originality in +it. Huskisson, and men of less conspicuous name, had ten years earlier +urged the necessity of a new general system of taxation, based upon +remission of duty on raw materials and on articles of consumption, and +upon the imposition of an income-tax. The famous report of the committee +on import duties of 1840, often rightly called the charter of free +trade, and of which Peel, not much to his credit, had at this moment not +read a word,<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id="FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a> laid the foundations of the great policy of tariff +reform with which the names of Peel and Gladstone are associated in +history. The policy advocated in 1830 in the admirable treatise of Sir +Henry Parnell is exactly the policy of Peel in 1842, as he acknowledged. +After all it is an idle quarrel between the closet strategist and the +victorious commander; between the man who first discerns some great +truth of government, and the man who gets the thing, or even a part of +the thing, actually done.</p> + +<p class="center">PEEL'S GOVERNMENT</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone has left on record some particulars of his own share as +subordinate minister not in the cabinet, in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> first invasion upon +the old tory corn law of 1827. Peel from the beginning appreciated the +powers of his keen and zealous lieutenant, and even in the autumn of +1841 he had taken him into confidential counsel.<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> Besides a letter +of observations on the general scheme of commercial freedom, Mr. +Gladstone prepared for the prime minister a special paper on the corn +laws.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The ordinary business of the department soon fell into my hands to +transact with the secretaries, one of them Macgregor, a +loose-minded free trader, and the other Lefevre, a clear and +scientific one. In that autumn I became possessed with the desire +to relax the corn law, which formed, I believe, the chief subject +of my meditations. Hence followed an important consequence. Very +slow in acquiring relative and secondary knowledge and honestly +absorbed in my work, I simply thought on and on as to what was +right and fair under the circumstances.</p></div> + +<p>In January 1842, as the session approached, they came to close quarters. +The details of all the mysteries of protectionist iniquity we may well +spare ourselves. Peel, feeling the pulse of his agricultural folk, +thought it would never do to give them less than a ten-shilling duty, +when the price of wheat was at sixty-two shillings the quarter; while +Mr. Gladstone thought a twelve-shilling duty at a price of sixty far too +low a relief to the consumer. His eyes were beginning to be opened.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Feb. 2</i>.—I placed in Sir R. Peel's hands a long paper on the corn +law in the month of November, which, on wishing to refer to it, he +could not find; and he requested me to write out afresh my argument +upon the value of a rest or dead level, and the part of the scale +of price at which it should arrive; this I did.</p> + +<p>On Monday I wrote another paper arguing for a rest between 60/ and +70/ or thereabouts; and yesterday a third intended to show that the +present law has been in practice <i>fully</i> equivalent to a +prohibition up to 70/. Lord Ripon then told me the cabinet had +adopted Peel's scale as it originally stood—and seemed to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>doubt +whether <i>any</i> alteration could be made. On his announcing the +adoption, I said in a marked manner, '<i>I am very sorry for +it</i>'—believing that it would be virtual prohibition up to 65/ or +66/ and often beyond, to the minimum; and not being able, in spite +of all the good which the government is about to do with respect to +commerce, to make up my mind to support such a protection. I see, +from conversations with them to-day, that Lord Ripon, Peel, and +Graham, are all aware the protection is greater than is necessary.</p></div> + +<p class="center">MR. GLADSTONE'S RAPID ADVANCE</p> + +<p>This mood soon carried the vice-president terribly far. On Feb. 5 he met +most of the members of the cabinet at Peel's house. He argued his point +that the scale would operate as virtual protection up to seventy +shillings, and in a private interview with Peel afterwards hinted at +retirement. Peel declared himself so taken by surprise that he hardly +knew what to say; 'he was thunderstruck;' and he told his young +colleague that 'the retirement of a person holding his office, on this +question, immediately before his introducing it, would endanger the +existence of the administration, and that he much doubted whether in +such a case he could bring it on.'</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I fear Peel was much annoyed and displeased, for he would not give +me a word of help or of favourable supposition as to my own motives +and belief. He used nothing like an angry or unkind word, but the +negative character of the conversation had a chilling effect on my +mind. I came home sick at heart in the evening and told all to +Catherine, my lips being to every one else, as I said to Sir R. +Peel, absolutely sealed.</p> + +<p>'He might have gained me more easily, I think,' Mr. Gladstone wrote +years afterwards, 'by a more open and supple method of +expostulation. But he was not skilful, I think, in the management +of personal or sectional dilemmas, as he showed later on with +respect to two important questions, the Factory acts and the crisis +on the sugar duties in 1844.' This sharp and unnecessary corner +safely turned, Mr. Gladstone learned the lesson how to admire a +great master overcoming a legislator's difficulties.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p> + +<p>I have been much struck (he wrote, Feb. 26) throughout the private +discussions connected with, the new project of a corn law, by the +tenacity with which Sir Robert Peel, firstly by adhering in every +point to the old arrangements where it seemed at all possible, and +since the announcement of the plan to parliament, by steadily +resisting changes in any part of the resolutions, has narrowed the +ground and reduced in number the points of attack, and thus made +his measure practicable in the face of popular excitement and a +strong opposition. Until we were actually in the midst of the +struggle, I did not appreciate the extraordinary sagacity of his +parliamentary instinct in this particular. He said yesterday to +Lord Ripon and to me, 'Among ourselves, in this room, I have no +hesitation in saying, that if I had not had to look to other than +abstract considerations, I would have proposed a lower protection. +But it would have done no good to push the matter so far as to +drive Knatchbull out of the cabinet after the Duke of Buckingham, +nor could I hope to pass a measure with greater reductions through +the House of Lords.'</p></div> + +<p>When Lord John Russell proposed an amendment substituting an +eight-shilling duty for a sliding scale, Peel asked Mr. Gladstone to +reply to him. 'This I did (Feb. 14, 1842),' he says, 'and with my whole +heart, for I did not yet fully understand the vicious operation of the +sliding scale on the corn trade, and it is hard to see how an +eight-shilling duty could even then have been maintained.'</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">THE NEW POLICY</p> + +<p>The three centres of operations were the corn bill, then the bill +imposing the income-tax, and finally the reform of the duties upon seven +hundred and fifty out of the twelve hundred articles that swelled the +tariff. The corn bill was the most delicate, the tariff the most +laborious, the income-tax the boldest, the most fraught alike with peril +for the hour and with consequences of pith and moment for the future. It +is hardly possible for us to realise the general horror in which this +hated impost was then enveloped. The fact of Brougham procuring the +destruction of all the public books and papers in which its odious +accounts were recorded,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> only illustrates the intensity of the common +sentiment against the dire hydra evoked by Mr. Pitt for the destruction +of the regicide power of France, and sent back again to its gruesome +limbo after the ruin of Napoleon. From 1842 until 1874 the question of +the income-tax was the vexing enigma of public finance.</p> + +<p>It was upon Mr. Gladstone that the burden of the immense achievement of +the new tariff fell, and the toil was huge. He used afterwards to say +that he had been concerned in four revisions of the tariff, in 1842, +1845, 1853, and 1860, and that the first of them cost six times as much +trouble as the other three put together. He spoke one hundred and +twenty-nine times during the session. He had only once sat on a +committee of trade, and had only once spoken on a purely trade question +during the nine years of his parliamentary life. All his habits of +thought and action had been cast in a different mould. It is ordinarily +assumed that he was a born financier, endowed besides with a gift of +idealism and the fine training of a scholar. As matter of fact, it was +the other way; he was a man of high practical and moral imagination, +with an understanding made accurate by strength of grasp and +incomparable power of rapid and concentrated apprehension, yoked to +finance only by force of circumstance—a man who would have made a +shining and effective figure in whatever path of great public affairs, +whether ecclesiastical or secular, duty might have called for his +exertions.</p> + +<p>It is curious that the first measure of commercial policy in this +session should have been a measure of protection in the shape of a bill +introduced by the board of trade, imposing a duty on corn, wheat, and +flour brought from the United States into Canada.<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a> But this was only +a detail, though a singular one, in a policy that was in fact a +continuance of the relaxation of the commercial system of the colonies +which had been begun in 1822 and 1825 by Robinson and Huskisson. In his +present employment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> Mr. Gladstone was called upon to handle a mass of +questions that were both of extreme complexity in themselves, and also +involved collision with trade interests always easily alarmed, +irritated, and even exasperated. With merchants and manufacturers, +importers and exporters, brokers and bankers, with all the serried hosts +of British trade, with the laws and circumstances of international +commerce, he was every day brought into close, detailed, and responsible +contact:—Whether the duty on straw bonnets should go by weight or by +number; what was the difference between boot-fronts at six shillings per +dozen pairs and a 15 per cent. duty <i>ad valorem</i>; how to distinguish the +regulus of tin from mere ore, and how to fix the duty on copper ore so +as not to injure the smelter; how to find an adjustment between the +liquorice manufacturers of London and the liquorice growers of +Pontefract; what was the special case for muscatels as distinct from +other raisins; whether 110 pounds of ship biscuits would be a fair +deposit for taking out of bond 100 pounds of wheat if not kiln-dried, or +96 pounds if kiln-dried; whether there ought to be uniformity between +hides and skins. He applies to Cornewall Lewis, then a poor-law +commissioner, not on the astronomy of the ancients or the truth of early +Roman history, but to find out for a certain series of years past the +contract price of meat in workhouses. He listens to the grievances of +the lath-renders; of the coopers who complain that casks will come in +too cheap; of the coal-whippers, and the frame-work knitters; and he +examines the hard predicament of the sawyers, who hold government +answerable both for the fatal competition of machinery and the +displacement of wood by iron. 'These deputations,' he says, 'were +invaluable to me, for by constant close questioning I learned the nature +of their trades, and armed with this admission to their interior, made +careful notes and became able to defend in debate the propositions of +the tariff and to show that the respective businesses would be carried +on and not ruined as they said. I have ever since said that deputations +are most admirable aids for the transaction of public business, provided +the receiver of them is allowed to fix the occasion and the stage at +which they appear.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">PEEL TO JOHN GLADSTONE</p> + +<p>Among the deputations of this period Mr. Gladstone always recalled one +from Lancashire, as the occasion on which he first saw Mr. Bright:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The deputation was received not by me but by Lord Ripon, in the +large room at the board of trade, I being present. A long line of +fifteen or twenty gentlemen occupied benches running down and at +the end of the room, and presented a formidable appearance. All +that I remember, however, is the figure of a person in black or +dark Quaker costume, seemingly the youngest of the band. Eagerly he +sat a little forward on the bench and intervened in the discussion. +I was greatly struck with him. He seemed to me rather fierce, but +very strong and very earnest. I need hardly say this was John +Bright. A year or two after he made his appearance in +parliament.<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id="FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a></p></div> + +<p>The best testimony to Mr. Gladstone's share in this arduous task is +supplied in a letter written by the prime minister himself to John +Gladstone, and that he should have taken the trouble to write it shows, +moreover, that though Peel may have been a 'bad horse to go up to in the +stable,' his reserve easily melted away in recognition of difficult duty +well done:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;"><i>Sir Robert Peel to John Gladstone.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Whitehall, June 16, 1842</i>.—You probably have heard that we have +concluded the discussions (the preliminary discussions at least) on +the subject of the tariff. I cannot resist the temptation, if it be +only for the satisfaction of my own feelings, of congratulating you +most warmly and sincerely, on the distinction which your son has +acquired, by the manner in which he has conducted himself +throughout those discussions and all others since his appointment +to office. At no time in the annals of parliament has there been +exhibited a more admirable combination of ability, extensive +knowledge, temper, and discretion. Your paternal feelings must be +gratified in the highest degree by the success which has naturally +and justly followed the intellectual exertions of your son, and you +must be supremely happy as a father in the reflection<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> that the +capacity to make such exertions is combined in his case with such +purity of heart and integrity of conduct.</p></div> + +<p>More than fifty years later in offering to a severe opponent magnanimous +congratulations in debate on his son's successful maiden speech, Mr. +Gladstone said he knew how refreshing to a father's heart such good +promise must ever be. And in his own instance Peel's generous and +considerate letter naturally drew from John Gladstone a worthy and +feeling response:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;"><i>John Gladstone to Sir R. Peel.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>June 17</i>.—The receipt last evening of your kind letter of +yesterday filled my eyes with tears of gratitude to Almighty God, +for having given me a son whose conduct in the discharge of his +public duties has received the full approbation of one, who of all +men, is so well qualified to form a correct judgment of his merits. +Permit me to offer you my most sincere thanks for this truly +acceptable testimonial, which I shall carefully preserve. William +is the youngest of my four sons; in the conduct of all of them, I +have the greatest cause for thankfulness, for neither have ever +caused me a pang. He excels his brothers in talent, but not so in +soundness of principles, habits of usefulness, or integrity of +purpose. My eldest, as you are aware, has again, and in a most +satisfactory manner, got into parliament. To have the third also +again there, whilst the services of naval men, circumstanced as he +is, who seek unsuccessfully for employment, are not required, we +are desirous to effect, and wait for a favourable opportunity to +accomplish. Whenever we may succeed, I shall consider my cup to be +filled, for the second is honourably and usefully engaged as a +merchant in Liverpool, occupying the situation I held there for so +many years.</p></div> + +<p>It was while they were in office that Peel wrote from Windsor to beg Mr. +Gladstone to sit for his portrait to Lucas, the same artist who had +already painted Graham for him. 'I shall be very glad of this addition +to the gallery of the eminent men of my own time.'</p> + +<p class="center">ENTRY INTO THE CABINET</p> + +<p>It was evident that Mr. Gladstone's admission to the cabinet could not +be long deferred, and in the spring of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> following year, the head of +the government made him the coveted communication:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 21.5em;"><i>Whitehall, May 13, 1843</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">My Dear Gladstone</span>,—I have proposed to the Queen that Lord Ripon +should succeed my lamented friend and colleague, Lord Fitzgerald, +as president of the board of control. I, at the same time, +requested her Majesty's permission (and it was most readily +conceded) to propose to you the office of president of the board of +trade, with a seat in the cabinet. If it were not for the occasion +of the vacancy I should have had unmixed satisfaction in thus +availing myself of the earliest opportunity that has occurred since +the formation of the government, of giving a wider scope to your +ability to render public service, and of strengthening that +government by inviting your aid as a minister of the crown. For +myself personally, and I can answer also for every other member of +the government, the prospect of your accession to the cabinet is +very gratifying to our feelings.—Believe me, my dear Gladstone, +with sincere esteem and regard, most truly yours,</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 25em;"><span class="smcap">Robert Peel.</span></span></div><br /> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>At two to-day (May 13), Mr. Gladstone records, I went to Sir R. +Peel's on the subject of his letter. I began by thanking him for +the indulgent manner in which he had excused my errors, and more +than appreciated any services I might have rendered, and for the +offer he had made and the manner of it. I said that I went to the +board of trade without knowledge or relish, but had been very happy +there; found quite enough to occupy my mind, enough responsibility +for my own strength, and had no desire to move onwards, but should +be perfectly satisfied with any arrangement which he might make as +to Lord Ripon's successor. He spoke most warmly of service +received, said he could not be governed by any personal +considerations, and this which he proposed was obviously the right +arrangement. I then stated the substance of what I had put in my +memorandum, first on the opium question, to which his answer was, +that the immediate power and responsibility lay with the East India +Company; he did not express agreement with my view of the +cultivation of the drug, but said it was a minor subject as +compared with other imperial interests constantly brought under +discussion;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> intimated that the Duke of Wellington had surrendered +his opinion (I think) upon the boundary question; and he referred +to the change in his own views, and said that in future he +questioned whether he could undertake the defence of the corn laws +on principle. His words were addressed to a sympathising hearer. My +speeches in the House had already excited dissatisfaction if not +dismay.</p></div> + +<p>Then came something about the preservation of the two bishoprics in +North Wales.<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a> To Mr. Gladstone's surprise, Peel reckoned this a more +serious matter, as it involved a practical course. After much had been +said on the topic, Mr. Gladstone asked for a day or two to consider the +question. 'I have to consider with God's help by Monday whether to enter +the cabinet or to retire altogether: at least such is probably the +second alternative.' He wished to consult Hope and Manning, and they, +upon discussion, urged that the point was too narrow on which to join +issue with the government. This brought him round. 'I well remember,' he +says of this early case of compromise, 'that I pleaded against them that +I should be viewed as a traitor, and they observed to me in reply that I +must be prepared for that if necessary, that (and indeed I now feel) in +these times the very wisest and most effective servants of any cause +must necessarily fall so far short of the popular sentiment of its +friends, as to be liable constantly to incur mistrust and even abuse. +But patience and the power of character overcome all these difficulties. +I am certain that Hope and Manning in 1843 were not my tempters but +rather my good angels.'<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a></p> + +<p>Peel had been in parliament as long, and almost as long in office, as +Mr. Gladstone had lived, but experience of public life enlarges the man +of high mind, and Peel, while perhaps he wondered at his junior's bad +sense of proportion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> was the last man to laugh at force of sincerity +and conscience. Men of the other sort, as he knew, were always to be had +for the asking. 'He spoke again of the satisfaction of his colleagues, +and even said he did not recollect former instances of a single vacancy +in a cabinet, on which there was an entire concurrence. I repeated what +I had said of his and their most indulgent judgment and took occasion +distinctly to apologise for my blunder, and the consequent embarrassment +which I caused to him in Feb. 1842, on the corn scale.'<a name="FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a></p> + +<p class="center">PARLIAMENTARY SUCCESS</p> + +<p>His parliamentary success had been extraordinary. From the first his +gifts of reasoning and eloquence had pleased the House; his union of +sincerity and force had attracted it as sincerity and force never fail +to do; and his industry and acuteness, his steady growth in political +stature, substance, and acquisition, had gained for him the confidence +of the austerest of leaders. He had reached a seat in the cabinet before +he was thirty-four, and after little more than ten years of +parliamentary life. Canning was thirty-seven before he won the same +eminence, and he had been thirteen years in the House; while Peel had +the cabinet within reach when he was four-and-thirty, and had been in +the House almost thirteen years, of which six had been passed in the +arduous post of Irish secretary. Mr. Gladstone had shown that he had in +him the qualities that make a minister and a speaker of the first class, +though he had shown also the perilous quality of a spirit of minute +scruple. He had not yet displayed those formidable powers of contention +and attack, that were before long to resemble some tremendous +projectile, describing a path the law of whose curves and deviations, as +they watched its journey through the air in wonder and anxiety for the +shattering impact, men found it impossible to calculate.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone's brief notes of his first and second cabinets are worth +transcribing: the judicious reader will have little difficulty in +guessing the topic for deliberation; it figured in the latest of his +cabinets as in the earliest, as well as in most of those that +intervened. '<i>May 15</i>.—My first cabinet. On Irish repeal meetings. No +fear of breach of the peace,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> grounded on reasons. Therefore no case for +interference. (The duke, however, was for issuing a proclamation.) <i>May +20</i>.—Second [cabinet] Repeal. Constabulary tainted.' It would be safe to +say of any half dozen consecutive meetings of the Queen's servants, +taken at random during the reign, that Ireland would be certain to crop +up. Still, protection was the burning question. From one cause or +another, said Mr. Gladstone looking back to these times, 'my reputation +among the conservatives on the question of protection oozed away with +rapidity. It died with the year 1842, and early in 1843 a duke, I think +the Duke of Richmond, speaking in the House of Lords, described some +renegade proceeding as a proceeding conducted under the banner of the +vice-president of the board of trade.' He was not always as careful as +Peel, and sometimes came near to a scrape.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>In my speech, on Lord Howick's motion (Mar. 10, 1843) I was +supposed to play with the question, and prepare the way for a +departure from the corn law of last year, and I am sensible that I +so far lost my head, as not to put well together the various, and, +if taken separately, conflicting considerations which affect the +question.... It so happens that I spoke under the influence of a +new and most sincere conviction, having reference to the recent +circumstances of commercial legislation abroad, to the effect that +it would not be wise to displace British labour for the sake of +cheap corn, without the counteracting and sustaining provisions +which exchange, not distorted by tariffs all but prohibitory, would +supply.... This, it is clear, is a slippery position for a man who +does not think firmly in the midst of ambiguous and adverse +cheering, and I did my work most imperfectly, but I do think +honestly. Sir R. Peel's manner, by negative signs, showed that he +thought either my ground insecure or my expressions dangerous.</p></div> + +<p class="center">AN ARTIFICIAL SITUATION</p> + +<p>The situation was essentially artificial. There was little secret of the +surrender of protection as a principle. In introducing the proposals for +the reform of the customs tariff, Peel made the gentlemen around him +shiver by openly declaring that on the general principle of free trade +there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> was no difference of opinion; that all agreed in the rule that we +should buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest; that even if +the foreigner were foolish enough not to follow suit, it was still for +the interest of this country to buy as cheap as we could, whether other +countries will buy from us or no.<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a> Even important cabinet colleagues +found this too strong doctrine for them.</p> + +<p>'On Tuesday night,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'Peel opened the tariff anew, +and laid down, in a manner which drew great cheering from the +opposition, the doctrine of purchasing in the cheapest market. Stanley +said to me afterwards, “Peel laid that down a great deal too broadly.” +Last night he (Lord S.) sat down angry with himself, and turned to me +and said, “It does not signify, I <i>cannot</i> speak on these subjects; I +quite lost my head.” I merely answered that no one but himself would +have discovered it.' Yet it was able men, apt to lose their heads in +economics, whom Peel had to carry along with him. 'On another night,' +says Mr. Gladstone, 'I thought Sir R. Peel appeared in an attitude of +conspicuous intellectual greatness, and on comparing notes next day with +Sir J. Graham at the palace, I found he was similarly impressed. Sheil +delivered a very effective rhetorical speech. Lord Stanley had taken a +few notes and was to follow him. Sheil was winding up just as the clock +touched twelve. Lord Stanley said to Peel, “It is twelve, shall I follow +him? I think not.” Peel said, “I do not think it will do to let this go +unanswered.” He had been quite without the idea of speaking that night. +Sheil sat down, and peals of cheering followed. Stanley seemed to +hesitate a good deal, and at last said, as it were to himself, “No, I +won't, it's too late.” In the meantime the adjournment had been moved; +but when Peel saw there was no one in the breach, he rose. The cheers +were still, a little spitefully, prolonged from the other side. He had +an immense subject, a disturbed House, a successful speech, an entire +absence of notice to contend against; but he began with power, gathered +power as he went on, handled every point in his usual mode of balanced +thought and language,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> and was evidently conscious at the close, of what +no one could deny, that he had made a deep impression on the House.'</p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone kept pretty closely in step with his leader. From Sir +Robert he slowly learned lessons of circumspection that may not seem +congenial to his temperament, though for that matter we should remember +all through that his temperament was double. He was of opinion, as he +told the House of Commons, that a sliding-scale, a fixed duty, and free +trade were all three open to serious objection. He regarded the defects +of the existing law as greatly exaggerated, and he refused to admit that +the defects of the law, whatever they might be, were fatal to every law +with a sliding-scale. He wished to relieve the consumer, to steady the +trade, to augment foreign commerce, and the demand for labour connected +with commerce. On the other hand he desired to keep clear of the +countervailing evils of disturbing either vast capitals invested in +land, or the immense masses of labour employed in agriculture.<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a> He +noted with some complacency, that during the great controversy of 1846 +and following years, he never saw any parliamentary speech of his own +quoted in proof of the inconsistency of the Peelites. Here are a couple +of entries from Lord Broughton's diary for 1844:—'<i>June 17</i>. Brougham +said “Gladstone was a d——d fellow, a prig, and did much mischief to +the government,” alluding to his speech about keeping sugar duties. +<i>June 27</i>. Gladstone made a decided agricultural protection speech, and +was lauded therefor by Miles—so the rebels were returning to their +allegiance.' Gladstone's arguments, somebody said, were in favour of +free trade, and his parentheses were in favour of protection.</p> + +<p>Well might the whole position be called as slippery a one as ever +occurred in British politics. It was by the principles of free trade +that Peel and his lieutenant justified tariff-reform; and they +indirectly sapped protection in general by dwelling on the mischiefs of +minor forms of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> protection in particular. They assured the country +gentlemen that the sacred principle of a scale was as tenderly cherished +in the new plan as in the old; on the other hand they could assure the +leaguers and the doubters that the structure of the two scales was +widely different. We cannot wonder that honest tories who stuck to the +old doctrine, not always rejected even by Huskisson, that a country +ought not to be dependent on foreign supply, were mystified and amazed +as they listened to the two rival parties disputing to which of them +belonged the credit of originating a policy that each of them had so +short a time before so scornfully denounced. The only difference was the +difference between yesterday and the day before yesterday. The whigs, +with their fixed duty, were just as open as the conservatives with their +sliding-scale to the taunts of the Manchester school, when they +decorated economics by high <i>a priori</i> declaration that the free +importation of corn was not a subject for the deliberations of the +senate, but a natural and inalienable law of the Creator. Rapid was the +conversion. Even Lord Palmerston, of all people in the world, denounced +the arrogance and presumptuous folly of dealers in restrictive duties +'setting up their miserable legislation instead of the great standing +laws of nature.' Mr. Disraeli, still warmly on the side of the minister, +flashed upon his uneasy friends around him a reminder of the true +pedigree of the dogmas of free trade. Was it not Mr. Pitt who first +promulgated them in 1787, who saw that the loss of the market of the +American colonies made it necessary by lowering duties to look round for +new markets on the continent of Europe? And was it not Fox, Burke, +Sheridan, and the minor whig luminaries, who opposed him, while not a +single member of his own government in the House of Lords was willing or +able to defend him? But even reminiscences of Mr. Pitt, and oracular +descriptions of Lord Shelburne as the most remarkable man of his age, +brought little comfort to men sincerely convinced with fear and +trembling that free corn would destroy rent, close their mansions and +their parks, break up their lives, and beggar the country. They +remembered also one or two chapters of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> history nearer to their own +time. They knew that Lord John had a right to revive the unforgotten +contrast between Peel's rejection of so-called protestant securities in +1817 and 1825, and the total surrender of emancipation in 1829. Natural +forebodings darkened their souls that protectionism would soon share the +fate of protestantism, and that capitulation to Cobden was doomed to +follow the old scandal of capitulation to O'Connell. They felt that +there was something much more dreadful than the mere sting of a +parliamentary recrimination, in the contrast between the corn bill of +1842 and Peel's panegyrics in '39, '40, and '41 on the very system which +that bill now shattered. On the other side some could not forget that in +1840 the whig prime minister, the head of a party still even at the +eleventh hour unregenerated by Manchester, predicted a violent struggle +as the result of the Manchester policy, stirring society to its +foundations, kindling bitter animosities not easy to quench, and +creating convulsions as fierce as those of the Reform bill.</p> + +<p>A situation so precarious and so unedifying was sure to lead to strange +results in the relations of parties and leaders. In July 1843 the +Speaker told Hobhouse that Peel had lost all following and authority; +all but votes. Hobhouse meeting a tory friend told him that Sir Robert +had got nothing but his majority. 'He won't have that long,' the tory +replied. 'Who will make sacrifices for such a fellow? They call me a +<i>frondeur</i>, but there are many such. Peel thinks he can govern by +Fremantle and a little clique, but it will not do. The first election +that comes, out he must go.' Melbourne, only half in jest, was reported +to talk of begging Peel to give him timely notice, lest the Queen might +take him by surprise. On one occasion Hobhouse wished a secondary +minister to tell Sir Robert how much he admired a certain speech. 'I!' +exclaimed the minister; 'he would kick me away if I dared to speak to +him.' 'A man,' Hobhouse observes, 'who will not take a civil truth from +a subaltern is but a sulky fellow after all; there is no true dignity or +pride in such reserve.' Oddly enough, Lord John was complaining just as +loudly about the same time of his own want of hold upon his party.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p> + +<p>The tariff operations of 1842 worked no swift social miracle. General +stagnation still prevailed. Capital was a drug in the market, but food +was comparatively cheap.<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a> Stocks were light, and there was very +little false credit. In spite of all these favouring conditions, Mr. +Gladstone (March 20, 1843) had to report to his chief that 'the deadness +of foreign demand keeps our commerce in a state of prolonged paralysis.' +Cobden had not even yet convinced them that the true way to quicken +foreign demand was to open the ports to that foreign supply, with which +they paid us for what they bought from us. Mr. Gladstone saw no further +than the desire of making specific arrangement with other countries for +reciprocal reductions of import duties.</p> + +<p>In one of his autobiographic notes (1897) Mr. Gladstone describes the +short and sharp parliamentary crisis in 1844 brought about by the +question of the sugar duties, but this may perhaps be relegated to an +appendix.<a name="FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a></p> + +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p>From 1841 to 1844 Mr. Gladstone's department was engaged in other +matters lying beyond the main stream of effort. 'We were anxiously and +eagerly endeavouring to make tariff treaties with many foreign +countries. Austria, I think, may have been included, but I recollect +especially France, Prussia, Portugal, and I believe Spain. And the state +of our tariff, even after the law of 1842, was then such as to supply us +with plenty of material for liberal offers. Notwithstanding this, we +failed in every case. I doubt whether we advanced the cause of free +trade by a single inch.'</p> + +<p>The question of the prohibition against the export of machinery came +before him. The custom-house authorities pronounced it ineffective, and +recommended its removal. A parliamentary committee in 1841 had reported +in favour of entire freedom. The machine makers, of course, were active, +and the general manufacturers of the country, except<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>ing the Nottingham +lace makers and the flax-spinners of the north of Ireland, had become +neutral. Only a very limited portion of the trade was any longer subject +to restriction, and Mr. Gladstone, after due consultation with superior +ministers, proposed a bill for removing the prohibition altogether.<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a> +He also brought in a bill (April 1844) for the regulation of companies. +It was when he was president of the board of trade that the first +Telegraph Act was passed. 'I was well aware,' he wrote, 'of the +advantage of taking them into the hands of the government, but I was +engaged in a plan which contemplated the ultimate acquisition of the +railways by the public, and which was much opposed by the railway +companies, so that to have attempted taking the telegraphs would have +been hopeless. The bill was passed, but the executive machinery two +years afterwards broke down.'</p> + +<p class="center">RAILWAYS</p> + +<p>Questions that do not fall within the contentions of party usually cut a +meagre figure on the page of the historian, and the railway policy of +this decade is one of those questions. It was settled without much +careful deliberation or foresight, and may be said in the main to have +shaped itself. At the time when Mr. Gladstone presided over the +department of trade, an immense extension of the railway system was seen +to be certain, and we may now smile at what then seemed the striking +novelty of such a prospect. Mr. Gladstone proposed a select committee on +the subject, guided its deliberations, drew its reports, and framed the +bill that was founded upon them. He dwelt upon the favour now beginning +to be shown to the new roads by the owners of land through which they +were to pass, so different from the stubborn resistance that had for +long been offered; upon the cheapened cost of construction; upon the +growing disposition to employ redundant capital in making railways, +instead of running the risks that had made foreign investment so +disastrous. It was not long, indeed, before this very disposition led to +a mania that was even more widely disastrous than any foreign investment +had been since the days of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> South Sea bubble. Meanwhile, Mr. +Gladstone's Railway Act of 1844, besides a number of working regulations +for the day, laid down two principles of the widest range: reserving to +the state the full right of intervention in the concerns of the railway +companies, and giving to the state the option to purchase a line at the +end of a certain term at twenty-five years' purchase of the divisible +profits.<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a></p> + +<p>It was during these years of labour under Peel that he first acquired +principles of administrative and parliamentary practice that afterwards +stood him in good stead: on no account to try to deal with a question +before it is ripe; never to go the length of submitting a difference +between two departments to the prime minister before the case is +exhausted and complete; never to press a proposal forward beyond the +particular stage at which it has arrived. Pure commonplaces if we will, +but they are not all of them easy to learn. We cannot forget that Peel +and Mr. Gladstone were in the strict line of political succession. They +were alike in social origin and academic antecedents. They started from +the same point of view as to the great organs of national life, the +monarchy, the territorial peerage and the commons, the church, the +universities. They showed the same clear knowledge that it was not by +its decorative parts, or what Burke styled 'solemn plausibilities,' that +the community derived its strength; but that it rested for its real +foundations on its manufactures, its commerce, and its credit. Even in +the lesser things, in reading Sir Robert Peel's letters, those who in +later years served under Mr. Gladstone can recognise the school to which +he went for the methods, the habits of mind, the practices of business, +and even the phrases which he employed when his own time came to assume +the direction of public affairs, the surmounting of administrative +difficulties, the piloting of complex measures, and the handling of +troublesome persons.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a> Undated fragment of letter to the Queen.<a href="#GOVERNMENT">See Appendix.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a><a href="#Page_232">See above, p. 232.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a> Parker, ii. pp. 499, 529, 533.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 509. Before the end of the session (Aug. 10, 1842) he +had learned enough to do more justice to Hume and the committee.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a> The editor of Sir Robert Peel's papers was allowed to print three +or four of Mr. Gladstone's letters to his chief at this interesting +date. The reader will find the correspondence in Parker, ii. pp. +497-517, 519, 520.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a> In 1843 a bill was passed lowering the duty on Canadian corn +imported into England, and Mr. Gladstone says in a memo, of 1851: 'In +1843 I pleaded strongly for the admission of all the colonies to the +privilege then granted to Canada.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a> Bright was elected for Durham in July 1843.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a> The question of the Welsh bishoprics was one of a certain +magnitude in its day. The union of Bangor and St. Asaph had been +provided for by parliament in 1836, with a view to form a new see at +Manchester. The measure was passed with the general assent of the +episcopal bench and the church at large. But sentiment soon changed, and +a hostile cry was raised before the death of the Bishop of St. Asaph, +when its provisions would come into force. On his death in 1846 the whig +ministry gave way and the sees remained separate.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a> Mr. Gladstone to Lord Lyttelton, Dec. 30, 1845.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a><a href="#Page_253">See above, p. 253.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a> <i>Hansard</i>, May 10, 1842.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a> <i>Hansard</i>, February 14, 1842.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a> The average price of wheat per quarter in 1841 was 64 shillings, +in 1842, 57 shillings, and in 1843, 50 shillings, a lower average than +for any year until 1849.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a><a href="#Sugar">See Appendix.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a> See Speech, Aug. 10, 1843.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a> Wordsworth wrote (Oct. 15, 1844) to implore him to direct special +attention to the desecrating project of a railway from Kendal to the +head of Windermere, and enclosed a sonnet. The sixth line, by the way, +is a variant from the version in the books: 'And must he too his old +delights disown.'—Knight's <i>Wordsworth</i> (1896 edition), viii. 166.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIICh_IX" id="BkIICh_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">MAYNOOTH</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1844-1845</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>When I consider how munificently the colleges of Cambridge and +Oxford are endowed, and with what pomp religion and learning are +there surrounded; ... when I remember what was the faith of Edward +<span class="smcap">III.</span> and of Henry <span class="smcap">VI.</span>, of Margaret of Anjou and Margaret of +Richmond, of William of Wykeham and William of Waynefleet, of +Archbishop Chichele and Cardinal Wolsey; when I remember what we +have taken from the Roman catholics, King's College, New College, +Christ Church, my own Trinity; and when I look at the miserable +Dotheboys' Hall which we have given them in exchange, I feel, I +must own, less proud than I could wish of being a protestant and a +Cambridge man.—<span class="smcap">Macaulay</span>.</p></div><br /> + +<p class="center">IRISH POLICY OF CONCILIATION</p> + +<p>In pursuit of the policy of conciliation with which he was now +endeavouring to counter O'Connell, Peel opened to his colleagues in 1844 +a plan for dealing with the sum annually voted by parliament to the +seminary for the training of catholic clergy at Maynooth. The original +grant was made by the Irish parliament, protestant as it was; and was +accepted even by anti-catholic leaders after 1800 as virtually a portion +of the legislative union with Ireland. Peel's proposal, by making an +annual grant permanent, by tripling the amount, by incorporating the +trustees, established a new and closer connection between the state and +the college. It was one of the boldest things he ever did. What Lord +Aberdeen wrote to Madame de Lieven in 1852 was hardly a whit less true +in 1845: 'There is more intense bigotry in England at this moment than +in any other country in Europe.' Peel said to Mr. Gladstone at the +beginning of 1845—'I wish to speak without any reserve, and I ought to +tell you, I think it will very probably be fatal to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> government.' +'He explained that he did not know whether the feeling among Goulburn's +constituents [the university of Cambridge] might not be too strong for +him; that in Scotland, as he expected, there would be a great +opposition; and he seemed to think that from the church also there might +be great resistance, and he said the proceedings in the diocese of +Exeter showed a very sensitive state of the public mind.' During the +whole of 1844 the project simmered. At a very early moment Mr. Gladstone +grew uneasy. He did not condemn the policy in itself, but whatever else +might be said, it was in direct antagonism to the principle elaborately +expounded by him only six years before, as the sacred rule and +obligation between a Christian state and Christian churches. He had +marked any departure from that rule as a sign of social declension, as a +descent from a higher state of society to a lower, as a note in the ebb +and flow of national life. Was it not inevitable, then, that his +official participation in the extension of the public endowment of +Maynooth would henceforth give to every one the right to say of him, +'That man cannot be trusted'? He was not indeed committed, by anything +that he had written, to the extravagant position that the peace of +society should be hazarded because it could no longer restore its +ancient theories of religion; but was he not right in holding it +indispensable that any vote or further declaration from him on these +matters should be given under circumstances free from all just +suspicions of his disinterestedness and honesty?<a name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a></p> + +<p>In view of these approaching difficulties upon Maynooth, on July 12 he +made a truly singular tender to the head of the government. He knew Peel +to be disposed to entertain the question of a renewal of the public +relations with the papal court at Rome, first to be opened by indirect +communications through the British envoy at Florence or Naples. 'What I +have to say,' Mr. Gladstone now wrote to the prime minister, 'is that if +you and Lord Aberdeen should think fit to appoint me to Florence or +Naples, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> to employ me in any such communications as those to which I +have referred, I am at your disposal.' Of this startling offer to +transform himself from president of the board of trade into Vatican +envoy, Mr. Gladstone left his own later judgment upon record; here it +is, and no more needs to be said upon it:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>About the time of my resignation on account of the contemplated +increase of the grant to the College of Maynooth, I became +possessed with the idea that there was about to be a renewal in +some shape of our diplomatic [relations] with the see of Rome, and +I believe that I committed the gross error of tendering myself to +Sir Robert Peel to fill the post of envoy. I have difficulty at +this date (1894) in conceiving by what obliquity of view I could +have come to imagine that this was a rational or in any way +excusable proposal: and this, although I vaguely think my friend +James Hope had some hand in it, seems to show me now that there +existed in my mind a strong element of fanaticism. I believe that I +left it to Sir R. Peel to make me any answer or none as he might +think fit; and he with great propriety chose the latter +alternative.</p></div> + +<p class="center">INTENTION TO RESIGN</p> + +<p>In the autumn of 1844, the prime minister understood that if he +proceeded with the Maynooth increase, he would lose Mr. Gladstone. The +loss, Peel said to Graham, was serious, and on every account to be +regretted, but no hope of averting it would justify the abandonment of a +most important part of their Irish policy. Meanwhile, in the midst of +heavy labours on the tariff in preparation for the budget of 1845, Mr. +Gladstone was sharply perturbed, as some of his letters to Mrs. +Gladstone show:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Whitehall, Nov. 22, '44</i>.—It is much beyond my expectation that +Newman should have taken my letter so kindly; it seemed to me so +like the operation of a clumsy, bungling surgeon upon a sensitive +part. I cannot well comment upon his meaning, for as you may easily +judge, what with cabinet, board, and Oak Farm, I have enough in my +head to-day—and the subject is a fine and subtle one. But I may +perhaps be able to think upon it to-night, in the meantime I think +yours is a very just conjectural sketch. We have not got in cabinet +to-day to the really pinching part of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>the discussion, the Roman +catholic religious education. That comes on Monday. My mind does +not waver; pray for me, that I may do right. I have an appointment +with Peel to-morrow, and I rather think he means to say something +to me on the question.</p> + +<p><i>Nov. 23</i>.—You will see that whatever turns up, I am sure to be in +the wrong. An invitation to Windsor for us came this morning, and I +am <i>sorry to say</i> one including Sunday—Nov. 30 to Dec. 2. I have +had a long battle with Peel on the matters of my office; not +another syllable. So far as it goes this tends to make me think he +does not calculate on any change in me; yet on the whole I lean the +other way. Manning comes up on Monday.</p> + +<p><i>Nov. 25</i>.—Events travel fast and not slow. My opinion is that I +shall be out on Friday evening. We have discussed Maynooth to-day. +An intermediate letter which Sir James Graham has to write to +Ireland for information causes thus much of delay. I have told them +that if I go, I shall go on the ground of what is required by my +personal character, and not because my mind is <i>made up</i> that the +course which they propose can be avoided, far less because I +consider myself bound to resist it. I had the process of this +declaration to repeat. I think they were prepared for it, but they +would not assume that it was to be, and rather proceeded as if I +had never said a word before upon the subject. It was painful, but +not so painful as the last time, and by an effort I had altogether +prevented my mind from brooding upon it beforehand. At this moment +(6¼) I am sure they are talking about it over the way. I am going +to dine with Sir R. Peel. Under these circumstances the Windsor +visit will be strange enough! In the meantime my father writes to +me most urgently, desiring me to come to Liverpool. I <i>hope</i> for +some further light from him on Wednesday morning....</p> + +<p><i>Nov. 26</i>.—I have no more light to throw upon the matters which I +mentioned yesterday. The dinner at Peel's went off as well as could +be expected; I did not sit near him. Lord Aberdeen was with me +to-day, and said very kindly it <i>must</i> be prevented. But I think it +cannot, and friendly efforts to prolong the day only aggravate the +pain. Manning was with me all this morning; he is well, and is to +come back to-morrow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p> + +<p><i>Jan. 9, '45</i>.—Another postponement; but our explanations were as +satisfactory as could possibly be made under such circumstances. +The tone and manner as kind as at any time—nothing like murmur. At +the same time Peel said he thought it right to intimate a belief +that the government might very probably be shipwrecked upon the +Maynooth question, partly in connection with my retirement, but +also as he intimated from the uncertainty whether there might not +be a very strong popular feeling against it. <i>He</i> takes upon +himself all responsibility for any inconvenience to which the +government may possibly be put from the delay and a consequent +abrupt retirement, and says I have given him the fullest and +fairest notice.... I saw Manning for two hours this morning, and +let the cat out of the bag to him in part. Have a note from +Lockhart saying the Bishop of London had sent his chaplain to +Murray to express high approval of the article on Ward—and +enclosing the vulgar addition of £63.</p></div> + +<p class="center">AT WINDSOR CASTLE</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Windsor Castle, Jan. 10</i>.—First, owing to the Spanish +ambassador's not appearing, Lady Lyttelton was suddenly invited, +and fell to my lot to hand in and sit by, which was very pleasant. +I am, as you know, a shockingly bad witness to looks, but she +appeared to me, I confess, a little worn and aged. She ought to +have at least two months' holiday every year. After dinner the +Queen inquired as usual about you, and rather particularly with +much interest about Lady Glynne. I told her plainly all I could. +This rather helped the Queen through the conversation, as it kept +me talking, and she was evidently hard pressed at the gaps. Then we +went to cards, and played commerce; fortunately I was never the +worst hand, and so was not called upon to pay, for I had locked up +my purse before going to dinner; but I found I had won 2s. 2d. at +the end, 8d. of which was paid me by the Prince. I mean to keep the +2d. piece (the 6d. I cannot identify) accordingly, unless I lose it +again to-night. I had rather a nice conversation with him about the +international copyright convention with Prussia....</p> + +<p><i>Whitehall, Jan. 11</i>.—I came back from Windsor this morning, very +kindly used. The Queen mentioned particularly that you were not +asked on account of presumed inconvenience, and sent me a private +print of the Prince of Wales, and on my thanking for it through +Lady Lyttelton, another of the Princess. Also she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span># brought the +little people through the corridor yesterday after luncheon, where +they behaved very well, and she made them come and shake hands with +me. The Prince of Wales has a very good countenance; the baby I +should call a very fine child indeed. The Queen said, After your +own you must think them dwarfs; but I answered that I did not think +the Princess Royal short as compared with Willy. We had more cards +last evening; Lady —— made more blunders and was laughed at as +usual....</p> + +<p><i>Jan. 13</i>.—I think there will certainly be at least one cabinet +more in the end of the week. My position is what would commonly be +called uncomfortable. I do not know how long the Maynooth matter +may be held over. I may remain a couple of months, or only a +week—may go at any time at twenty-four hours' notice. I think on +the whole it is an even chance whether I go before or after the +meeting of parliament, so that I am unfeignedly put to obey the +precept of our Lord, 'Take no thought for the morrow; the morrow +will take thought for the things of itself.' I am sorry that a part +of the inconvenience falls on your innocent head. I need not tell +you the irksomeness of business is much increased, and one's +purposes unmanned by this indefiniteness. Still, having very +important matters in preparation, I must not give any signs of +inattention or indifference.</p> + +<p><i>Cabinet Room, Jan. 14</i>.—I have no news to give you about myself, +but continue to be quite in the dark. There is a certain Maynooth +bill in preparation, and when that appears for decision my time +will probably have come, but I am quite ignorant when it will be +forthcoming. I am to be with Peel to-morrow morning, but I think on +board of trade business only. Graham has just told us that the +draft of the Maynooth bill will be ready on Saturday; but it +cannot, I think, be <i>considered</i> before the middle of next week at +the earliest.</p> + +<p><i>Jan. 15</i>.—The nerves are a little unruly on a day like this +between (official) life and death; so much of feeling mixes with +the more abstract question, which would be easily disposed of if it +stood alone. (<i>Diary.</i>)</p></div> + +<p>It was February 3 before Mr. Gladstone wrote his last note from his desk +at the board of trade, thanking the prime minister for a thousand acts +of kindness which he trusted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> himself not readily to forget. The feeling +of the occasion he described to Manning:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Do you know that daily intercourse and co-operation with men upon +matters of great anxiety and moment interweaves much of one's being +with theirs, and parting with them, leaving them under the pressure +of their work and setting myself free, feels, I think, much like +dying: more like it than if I were turning my back altogether upon +public life. I have received great kindness, and so far as personal +sentiments are concerned, I believe they are as well among us as +they can be.</p></div> + +<p>One other incident he describes to his wife:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Peel thought I should ask an audience of the Queen on my +retirement, and accordingly at the palace to-day (Feb. 3) he +intimated, and then the lord-in-waiting, as is the usage, formally +requested it. I saw the Queen in her private sitting-room. As she +did not commence speaking immediately after the first bow, I +thought it my part to do so; and I said, 'I have had the boldness +to request an audience, madam, that I might say with how much pain +it is that I find myself separated from your Majesty's service, and +how gratefully I feel your Majesty's many acts of kindness.' She +replied that she regretted it very much, and that it was a great +loss. I resumed that I had the greatest comfort I could enjoy under +the circumstances in the knowledge that my feelings towards her +Majesty's person and service, and also towards Sir R. Peel and my +late colleagues, were altogether unchanged by my retirement. After +a few words more she spoke of the state of the country and the +reduced condition of Chartism, of which I said I believed the main +feeder was want of employment. At the pauses I watched her eye for +the first sign to retire. But she asked me about you before we +concluded. Then one bow at the spot and another at the door, which +was very near, and so it was all over.</p> + +<p><i>Feb. 4</i>.—Ruminated on the dangers of my explanation right and +left, and it made me unusually nervous. H. of C. 4½-9. I was kindly +spoken of and heard, and I hope attained practically purposes I had +in view, but I think the House felt that the last part by taking +away the sting reduced the matter to flatness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p></div> + +<p class="center">RESIGNATION OF OFFICE</p> + +<p>According to what is perhaps a questionable usage, Lord John Russell +invited the retiring minister to explain his secession from office to +the House. In the suspicion, distraction, tension that marked that +ominous hour in the history of English party, people insisted that the +resignation of the head of the department of trade must be due to +divergence of judgment upon protection. The prime minister, while +expressing in terms of real feeling his admiration for Mr. Gladstone's +character and ability, and his high regard for his colleague's private +qualities, thought well to restate that the resignation came from no +question of commercial policy. 'For three years,' he went on, 'I have +been closely connected with Mr. Gladstone in the introduction of +measures relating to the financial policy of the country, and I feel it +my duty openly to avow that it seems almost impossible that two public +men, acting together so long, should have had so little divergence in +their opinions upon such questions.' If anybody found fault with Mr. +Gladstone for not resigning earlier, the prime minister was himself +responsible: 'I was unwilling to lose until the latest moment the +advantages I derived from one whom I consider capable of the highest and +most eminent services.'<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id="FNanchor_168_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p> + +<p>The point of Mr. Gladstone's reply was in fact an extremely simple and a +highly honourable one. While carefully abstaining from laying down any +theory of political affairs as under all circumstances inflexible and +immutable, yet he thought that one who had borne such solemn testimony +as he had borne in his book, to a particular view of a great question, +ought not to make himself responsible for a material departure from it, +without at least placing himself openly in a position to form a judgment +that should be beyond all mistake at once independent and unsuspected. +That position in respect of the Maynooth policy he could not hold, so +long as he was a member of the cabinet proposing it, and therefore he +had resigned, though it was understood that he would not resist the +Maynooth increase itself. All this, I fancy, might easily have been made +plain even to those who thought his action a display of overstrained +moral delicacy. As it was, his anxiety to explore every nook and cranny +of his case, and to defend or discover in it every point that human +ingenuity could devise for attack, led him to speak for more than an +hour; at the end of which even friendly and sympathetic listeners were +left wholly at a loss for a clue to the labyrinth. 'What a marvellous +talent is this,' Cobden exclaimed to a friend sitting near him; 'here +have I been sitting listening with pleasure for an hour to his +explanation, and yet I know no more why he left the government than +before he began.' 'I could not but know,' Mr. Gladstone wrote on this +incident long years after, 'that I should inevitably be regarded as +fastidious and fanciful, fitter for a dreamer or possibly a schoolman, +than for the active purposes of public life in a busy and moving +age.'<a name="FNanchor_169_169" id="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a></p> + +<p class="center">VIEWS OF HIS RESIGNATION</p> + +<p>Sir Robert Inglis begged him to lead the opposition to the bill. In the +course of the conversation Inglis went back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> to the fatal character and +consequences of the Act of 1829; and wished that his advice had then +been taken, which was that the Duke of Cumberland should be sent as lord +lieutenant to Ireland with thirty thousand men. 'As that good and very +kind man spoke the words,' Mr. Gladstone says, 'my blood ran cold, and +he too had helped me onwards in the path before me.' William Palmer +wrote that the grant to Maynooth was the sin of 1829 over again, and +would bring with it the same destruction of the conservative party. Lord +Winchilsea, one of his patrons at Newark, protested against anything +that savoured of the national endowment of Romanism. Mr. Disraeli was +reported as saying that with his resignation on Maynooth Mr. Gladstone's +career was over.</p> + +<p>The rough verdict pronounced his act a piece of political prudery. One +journalistic wag observed, 'A lady's footman jumped off the Great +Western train, going forty miles an hour, merely to pick up his hat. +Pretty much like this act, so disproportional to the occasion, is Mr. +Gladstone's leap out of the ministry to follow his book.' When the time +came he voted for the second reading of the Maynooth bill (April 11) +with remarkable emphasis. 'I am prepared, in opposition to what I +believe to be the prevailing opinion of the people of England and of +Scotland, in opposition to the judgment of my own constituents, from +whom I greatly regret to differ, and in opposition to my own deeply +cherished predilections, to give a deliberate and even anxious support +to the measure.'</p> + +<p>The 'dreamer and the schoolman' meanwhile had left behind him a towering +monument of hard and strenuous labour in the shape of that second and +greater reform of the tariff, in which, besides the removal of the +export duty on coal and less serious commodities, no fewer than four +hundred and thirty articles were swept altogether away from the list of +the customs officer. Glass was freed from an excise amounting to twice +or thrice the value of the article, and the whole figure of remission +was nearly three times as large as the corresponding figure in the bold +operations of 1842. Whether the budget of 1842 or that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> of 1845 marked +the more extensive advance, we need not discuss; it is enough that Mr. +Gladstone himself set down the construction of these two tariffs among +the principal achievements in the history of his legislative works. His +unofficial relations with the colleagues whom he had left were perfectly +unchanged. 'You will be glad to know,' he writes to his father, 'that +the best feeling, as I believe, subsists between us. Although our powers +of entertaining guests are not of the first order, yet with a view +partly to these occurrences we asked Sir R. and Lady Peel to dinner +to-day, and also Lord and Lady Stanley and Lord Aberdeen. All accepted, +but unfortunately an invitation to Windsor has carried off Sir R. and +Lady Peel. A small matter, but I mention it as a symbol of what is +material.'</p> + +<p>Before many days were over, he was working day and night on a projected +statement, involving much sifting and preparation, upon the recent +commercial legislation. Lord John Russell had expressed a desire for a +competent commentary on the results of the fiscal changes of 1842, and +the pamphlet in which Mr. Gladstone showed what those results had been +was the reply. Three editions of it were published within the year.<a name="FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a></p> + +<p>This was not the only service that Mr. Gladstone had an opportunity of +rendering in the course of the session to the government that he had +quitted. 'Peel,' he says, 'had a plan for the admission of free labour +sugar on terms of favour. Lord Palmerston made a motion to show that +this involved a breach of our old treaties with Spain. I examined the +case laboriously, and, though I think his facts could not be denied, I +undertook (myself out of office) to answer him on behalf of the +government. This I did, and Peel, who was the most conscientious man I +ever knew in spareness of eulogium, said to me when I sat down, "That +was a wonderful speech, Gladstone."' The speech took four hours, and +was, I think, the last that he made in parliament<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> for two years and a +half, for reasons that we shall presently discover.</p> + +<p class="center">THOUGHTS OF VISITING IRELAND</p> + +<p>In the autumn of 1845, Mr. Gladstone made a proposal to Hope-Scott. 'As +Ireland,' he said, 'is likely to find this country and parliament so +much employment for years to come, I feel rather oppressively an +obligation to try and see it with my own eyes instead of using those of +other people, according to the limited measure of my means.' He +suggested that they should devote some time 'to a working tour in +Ireland, eschewing all grandeur and taking little account of scenery, +compared with the purpose of looking at close quarters at the +institutions for religion and education of the country and at the +character of the people.' Philip Pusey was inclined to join them. 'It +will not alarm you,' says Pusey, 'if I state my belief that in these +agrarian outrages the Irish peasants have been engaged in a justifiable +civil war, because the peasant ejected from his land could no longer by +any efforts of his own preserve his family from the risk of starvation. +This view is that of a very calm utilitarian, George Lewis.'<a name="FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a> They +were to start from Cork and the south and work their way round by the +west, carrying with them Lewis's book, blue books, and a volume or two +of Plato, Æschylus, and the rest. The expedition was put off by Pusey's +discovery that the <i>Times</i> was despatching a correspondent to carry on +agrarian investigations. Mr. Gladstone urged that the Irish land +question was large enough for two, and so indeed it swiftly proved, for +Ireland was now on the edge of the black abysses of the famine.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a> The letters from Mr. Gladstone to Peel on this topic are given by +Mr. Parker, <i>Peel</i>, iii. pp. 160, 163, 166.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a> In the course of May, 1845, Peel made some remarks on +resignations, of which Mr. Gladstone thought the report worth +preserving:—'I admit that there may be many occasions when it would be +the duty of a public man to retire from office, rather than propose +measures which are contrary to the principles he has heretofore +supported. I think that the propriety of his taking that course will +mainly depend upon the effect which his retirement will have upon the +success of that public measure, which he believes to be necessary for +the good of his country. I think it was perfectly honourable, perfectly +just, in my right honourable friend the late president of the board of +trade to relinquish office. The hon. gentleman thinks I ought to have +pursued the same course in 1829. That was precisely the course I wished +to pursue—it was precisely the course which I intended to pursue. Until +within a month of the period when I consented to bring forward the +measure for the relief of the Roman catholics, I did contemplate +retiring from office—not because I shrank from the responsibility of +proposing that measure—not from the fear of being charged with +inconsistency—not because I was not prepared to make the painful +sacrifice of private friendships and political connections, but because +I believed that my retirement from office would promote the success of +the measure. I thought that I should more efficiently assist my noble +friend in carrying that measure if I retired from office, and gave the +measure my cordial support in a private capacity. I changed my opinion +when it was demonstrated to me that there was a necessity for +sacrificing my own feelings by retaining office—when it was shown to me +that, however humble my abilities, yet, considering the station which I +occupied, my retiring from office would render the carrying of that +measure totally impossible—when it was proved to me that there were +objections in the highest quarters which would not be overcome unless I +was prepared to sacrifice much that was dear to me—when it was +intimated to my noble friend that there was an intention on the part of +the highest authorities in the church of England to offer a decided +opposition to the measure, and when my noble friend intimated to me that +he thought, if I persevered in my intention to retire, success was out +of the question. It was then I did not hesitate to say that I would not +expose others to obloquy or suspicions from which I myself shrunk.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a> <i>Gleanings</i>, vii. p. 118.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a> 'Remarks upon recent Commercial Legislation suggested by the +expository statement of the Revenue from Customs, and other Papers +lately submitted to Parliament, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. +for Newark.' London, Murray, 1845. Mr. Gladstone had written on the same +subject in the <i>Foreign and Colonial Quarterly Review</i>, January 1843.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a> See his memorable work on Irish Disturbances, published in 1836.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIICh_X" id="BkIICh_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">TRIUMPH OF POLICY AND FALL OF THE MINISTER</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1846</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Change of opinion, in those to whose judgment the public looks more +or less to assist its own, is an evil to the country, although a +much smaller evil than their persistence in a course which they +know to be wrong. It is not always to be blamed. But it is always +to be watched with vigilance; always to be challenged and put upon +its trial.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span>.</p></div><br /> + +<p>Not lingering for the moment on Mr. Gladstone's varied pre-occupations +during 1845, and not telling over again the well-known story of the +circumstances that led to the repeal of the corn law, I pass rapidly to +Mr. Gladstone's part—it was a secondary part—in the closing act of the +exciting political drama on which the curtain had risen in 1841. The end +of the session of 1845 had left the government in appearance even +stronger than it was in the beginning of 1842. Two of the most sagacious +actors knew better what this was worth. Disraeli was aware how the ties +had been loosened between the minister and his supporters, and Cobden +was aware that, in words used at the time, 'three weeks of rain when the +wheat was ripening would rain away the corn law.'<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a></p> + +<p class="center">AN EXCITING DECEMBER</p> + +<p>Everybody knows how the rain came, and alarming signs of a dreadful +famine in Ireland came; how Peel advised his cabinet to open the ports +for a limited period, but without promising them that if the corn duties +were ever taken off, they could ever be put on again; how Lord John +seized the moment, wrote an Edinburgh letter, and declared for total and +immediate repeal; how the minister once<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> more called his cabinet +together, invited them to support him in settling the question, and as +they would not all assent, resigned; how Lord John tried to form a +government and failed; and how Sir Robert again became first minister of +the crown, but not bringing all his colleagues back with him. 'I think,' +said Mr. Gladstone in later days, 'he expected to carry the repeal of +the corn law without breaking up his party, but meant at all hazard to +carry it.'</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Peel's conduct in 1846, Lord Aberdeen said to a friend ten years +later, was very noble. With the exception of Graham and myself, his +whole cabinet was against him. Lyndhurst, Goulburn, and Stanley +were almost violent in their resistance. Still more opposed to him, +if it were possible, was the Duke of Wellington. To break up the +cabinet was an act of great courage. To resume office when Lord +John had failed in constructing one, was still more courageous. He +said to the Queen: 'I am ready to kiss hands as your minister +to-night. I believe I can collect a ministry which will last long +enough to carry free trade, and I am ready to make the attempt.' +When he said this there were only two men on whom he could rely. +One of the first to join him was Wellington. 'The Queen's +government,' he said, 'must be carried on. We have done all that we +could for the landed interest. Now we must do all that we can for +the Queen.'<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id="FNanchor_173_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a></p></div> + +<p>On one of the days of this startling December, Mr. Gladstone writes to +his father: 'If Peel determines to form a government, and if he sends +for me (a compound uncertainty), I cannot judge what to do until I know +much more than at present of the Irish case. It is there if anywhere +that he must find his justification; there if anywhere that one returned +to parliament as I am, can honestly find reason for departing at this +time from the present corn law.' Two other letters of Mr. Gladstone's +show us more fully why he followed Peel instead of joining the +dissentients, of whom the most important was Lord Stanley. The first of +these was written to his father four and a half years later:—</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>6 <i>Carlton Gardens, June 30, 1849</i>.—As respects my 'having made +Peel a free trader,' I have never seen that idea expressed +anywhere, and I think it is one that does great injustice to the +character and power of his mind. In every case, however, the head +of a government may be influenced more or less in the affairs of +each department of state by the person in charge of that +department. If, then, there was any influence at all upon Peel's +mind proceeding from me between 1841 and 1845, I have no doubt it +may have tended on the whole towards free trade.... But all this +ceased with the measures of 1845, when I left office. It was during +the alarm of a potato famine in the autumn of that year that the +movement in the government about the corn laws began. I was then on +the continent, looking after Helen [his sister], and not dreaming +of office or public affairs.... I myself had invariably, during +Peel's government, spoken of protection not as a thing good in +principle, but to be dealt with as tenderly and cautiously as might +be according to circumstances, always moving in the direction of +free trade. It <i>then</i> appeared to me that the case was materially +altered by events; it was no longer open to me to pursue that +cautious course. A great struggle was imminent, in which it was +plain that two parties only could really find place, on the one +side for repeal, on the other side for <i>permanent</i> maintenance of a +corn law and a protective system generally and on principle. It +would have been more inconsistent in me, even if consistency had +been the rule, to join the latter party than the former. But +independently of that, I thought, and still think, that the +circumstances of the case justified and required the change. So far +as relates to the final change in the corn law, you will see that +no influence proceeded from me, but rather that events over which I +had no control, and steps taken by Sir R. Peel while I was out of +the government, had an influence upon me in inducing me to take +office. I noticed some days ago that you had made an observation on +this subject, but I did not recollect that it was a question. Had I +adverted to this I should have answered it at once. If I had any +motive for avoiding the subject, it was, I think, this—that it is +not easy to discuss such a question as that of an influence of mine +over a mind so immeasurably superior, without something of egotism +and vanity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p></div> + +<p class="center">SECRETARY OF STATE</p> + +<p>So much for the general situation. The second letter is to Mrs. +Gladstone, and contributes some personal details:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>13 <i>Carlton House Terrace, Dec. 22, 6</i> <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>, <i>1845</i>.—It is offensive +to begin about myself, but I must. Within the last two hours I have +accepted the office of secretary for the colonies, succeeding Lord +Stanley, who resigns. The last twenty-four have been very anxious +hours. Yesterday afternoon (two hours after Holy Communion) Lincoln +came to make an appointment on Peel's part. I went to meet him in +Lincoln's house at five o'clock. He detailed to me the +circumstances connected with the late political changes, asked me +for no reply, and gave me quantities of papers to read, including +letters of his own, the Queen's, and Lord J. Russell's, during the +crisis. This morning I had a conversation with Bonham [the party +whipper-in] upon the general merits, but without telling him +precisely what the proposal made to me was. Upon the whole my mind, +though I felt the weight of the question, was clear. I had to +decide what was best to be done <i>now</i>. I arrived speedily at the +conviction that <i>now</i>, at any rate, it is best that the question +should be finally settled; that Peel ought and is bound now to try +it; that I ought to support it in parliament; that if, in deciding +the mode, he endeavours to include the most favourable terms for +the agricultural body that it is in his power to obtain, I ought +not only to support it, by which I mean vote for it in parliament, +but likewise not to refuse to be a party to the proposal. I found +from him that he entirely recognised this view, and did feel +himself bound to make the best terms that he believed attainable, +while, on the other hand, I am convinced that we are now in a +position that requires provision to be made for the final abolition +of the corn law. Such being the state of matters, with a clear +conscience, but with a heavy heart, I accepted office. He was +exceedingly warm and kind. But it <i>was</i> with a heavy heart.... I +have seen Lord Stanley. 'I am extremely glad to hear you have taken +office,' said he. We go to Windsor to-morrow to a council—he to +resign the seals, and I to receive them.</p></div> + +<p>In the diary he enters:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Saw Sir R. Peel at 3, and accepted office—in opposition, as I have +the consolation of feeling, to my leanings and desires, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> with +the most precarious prospects. Peel was most kind, nay fatherly. We +<i>held</i> hands instinctively, and I could not but reciprocate with +emphasis his 'God bless you.'</p> + +<p>I well remember, Mr. Gladstone wrote in a memorandum of Oct. 4, +1851, Peel's using language to me in the Duke of Newcastle's house +on Sunday, Dec. 21, 1845, which, as I conceive, distinctly +intimated his belief that he would be able to carry his measure, +and at the same time hold his party together. He spoke with a kind +of glee and complacency in his tone when he said, making up his +meaning by signs, 'I have not lived near forty years in public life +to find myself wholly without the power of foreseeing the course of +events in the House of Commons'—in reference to the very point of +the success of his government.</p></div> + +<p>One thing is worth noting as we pass. The exact proceedings of the +memorable cabinets of November and the opening days of December are +still obscure. It has generally been held that Disraeli planted a rather +awkward stroke when he taunted Peel with his inconsistency in declaring +that he was not the proper minister to propose repeal, and yet in trying +to persuade his colleagues to make the attempt before giving the whigs a +chance. The following note of Mr. Gladstone's (written in 1851 after +reading Sir R. Peel's original memoir on the Corn Act of 1846) throws +some light on the question:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>When Sir R. Peel invited me to take office in December 1845 he did +not make me aware of the offer he had made to the cabinet in his +memorandum, I think of Dec. 2, to propose a new corn law with a +lowered sliding duty, which should diminish annually by a shilling +until in some eight or ten years the trade would be free. No doubt +he felt that after Lord John Russell had made his attempt to form a +government, and after, by Lord Stanley's resignation, he had lost +the advantages of unanimity, he could not be justified in a +proposal involving so considerable an element of protection. It has +become matter of history. But as matter of history it is important +to show how honestly and perseveringly he strove to hold the +balance fairly between contending claims, and how far he was from +being the mere puppet of abstract theories.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p></div> + +<p>That is to say, what he proposed to his cabinet early in December was +not the total and immediate repeal to which he was led by events before +the end of the month.</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">OUT OF PARLIAMENT</p> + +<p>The acceptance of office vacated the seat at Newark, and Mr. Gladstone +declined to offer himself again as a candidate. He had been member for +Newark for thirteen years, and had been five times elected. So ended his +connection with the first of the five constituencies that in his course +he represented. 'I part from my constituents,' he tells his father, +'with deep regret. Though I took office under circumstances which might +reasonably arouse the jealousy of my friends, an agricultural +constituency, the <i>great</i> majority of my committee were prepared to +support me, and took action and strong measures in my favour.' 'My deep +obligation,' he says, 'to the Duke of Newcastle for the great benefit he +conferred upon me, not only by his unbroken support, but, far above all, +by his original introduction of me to the constituency, made it my duty +at once to decline some overtures made to me for the support of my +re-election, so it only remained to seek a seat elsewhere.' Some faint +hopes were entertained by Mr. Gladstone's friends that the duke might +allow him to sit for the rest of the parliament, but the duke was not +the man to make concessions to a betrayer of the territorial interest. +Mr. Gladstone, too, we must not forget, was still and for many years to +come, a tory. When it was suggested that he might stand for North Notts, +he wrote to Lord Lincoln:—'It is not for one of my political opinions +without an extreme necessity to stand upon the basis of democratic or +popular feeling against the local proprietary: for you who are placed in +the soil the case is very different.'</p> + +<p>Soon after the session of 1846 began, it became known that the +protectionist petition against the Peelite or liberal sitting member for +Wigan was likely to succeed in unseating him. 'Proposals were made to me +to succeed him, which were held to be eligible. I even wrote my address; +on a certain day, I was going down by the mail train. But it was an +object for our opponents to keep a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> secretary of state out of parliament +during the corn law crisis, and their petition was suddenly withdrawn. +The consequence was that I remained until the resignation of the +government in July a minister of the crown without a seat in parliament. +This was a state of things not agreeable to the spirit of parliamentary +government; and some objection was taken, but rather slightly, in the +House of Commons. Sir R. Peel stood fire.' There can be little doubt +that in our own day a cabinet minister without a seat in either House of +parliament would be regarded, in Mr. Gladstone's words, as a public +inconvenience and a political anomaly, too <i>dark</i> to be tolerated; and +he naturally felt it his absolute duty to peep in at every chink and +cranny where a seat in parliament could be had. A Peelite, however, had +not a good chance at a by-election, and Mr. Gladstone remained out of +the House until the general election in the year following.<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a> Lord +Lincoln, also a member of the cabinet, vacated his seat, but, unlike his +friend, found a seat in the course of the session.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone's brother-in-law, Lyttelton, was invited to represent the +colonial office in the Lords, but had qualms of conscience about the +eternal question of the two Welsh bishoprics. 'How could the government +of this wonderful empire,' Peel wrote to Mr. Gladstone, 'be ever +constructed, if a difference on such a point were to be an obstruction +to union? Might not any one now say with perfect honour and, what is of +more importance (if they are not identical), perfect satisfaction to his +own conscience, “I will not so far set up my own judgment on one +isolated measure against that of a whole administration, to such an +extent as to preclude me from co-operation with them at a critical +period.” This, of course, assumes general accordance of sentiment on the +great outlines of public policy.' Wise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> words and sound, that might +prevent some of the worst mistakes of some of the best men.</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">THE SESSION OF 1846</p> + +<p>This memorable session of 1846 was not a session of argument, but of +lobby computations. The case had been argued to the dregs, the +conclusion was fixed, and all interest was centred in the play of +forces, the working of high motives and low, the balance of parties, the +secret ambitions and antagonism of persons. Mr. Gladstone therefore was +not in the shaping of the parliamentary result seriously missed, as he +had been missed in 1845. 'It soon became evident,' says a leading whig +in his journal of the time, 'that Peel had very much over-rated his +strength. Even the expectation of December that he could have carried +with him enough of his own followers to enable Lord John, if that +statesman had contrived to form a government, to pass the repeal of the +corn law, was perceived to have been groundless, when the formidable +number of the protectionist dissentients appeared. So many even of those +who remained with Peel avowed that they disapproved of the measure, and +only voted in its favour for the purpose of supporting Peel's +government.'<a name="FNanchor_175_175" id="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a> The tyranny of the accomplished fact obscures one's +sense of the danger that Peel's high courage averted. It is not certain +that Lord John as head of a government could have carried the whole body +of whigs for total and immediate repeal, Lord Lansdowne and Palmerston +openly stating their preference for a fixed duty, and not a few of the +smaller men cursing the precipitancy of the Edinburgh letter. It is +certain, as is intimated above, that Peel could not have carried over to +him the whole of the 112 men who voted for repeal solely because it was +his measure. In the course of this session Sir John Hobhouse met Mr. +Disraeli at an evening party, and expressed a fear lest Peel having +broken up one party would also be the means of breaking up the other. +'That, you may depend upon it, he will,' replied Disraeli, 'or any other +party that he has anything to do with.' It was not long after this, when +all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> was over, that the Duke of Wellington told Lord John that he +thought Peel was tired of party and was determined to destroy it. After +the repeal of the corn law was safe, the minister was beaten on the +Irish coercion bill by what Wellington called a 'blackguard combination' +between the whigs and the protectionists. He resigned, and Lord John +Russell at the head of the whigs came in.</p> + +<p>'Until three or four days before the division on the coercion bill,' Mr. +Gladstone says in a memorandum written at the time, 'I had not the +smallest idea, beyond mere conjecture, of the views and intentions of +Sir R. Peel with respect to himself or to his government. Only we had +been governed in all questions, so far as I knew, by the determination +to carry the corn bill and to let no collateral circumstance interfere +with that main purpose.... He sent round a memorandum some days before +the division arguing for resignation against dissolution. There was also +a correspondence between the Duke of Wellington and him. The duke argued +for holding our ground and dissolving. But when we met in cabinet on +Friday the 26th of June, not an opposing voice was raised. It was the +shortest cabinet I ever knew. Peel himself uttered two or three +introductory sentences. He then said that he was convinced that the +formation of a conservative party was impossible while he continued in +office. That he had made up his mind to resign. That he strongly advised +the resignation of the entire government. Some declared their assent. +None objected; and when he asked whether it was unanimous, there was no +voice in the negative.' 'This was simply,' as Mr. Gladstone added in +later notes, 'because he had very distinctly and positively stated his +own resolution to resign. It amounted therefore to this,—no one +proposed to go on without him.' One other note of Mr. Gladstone's on +this grave decision is worth quoting:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I must put into words the opinion which I silently formed in my +room at the colonial office in June 1846, when I got the +circulation box with Peel's own memorandum not only arguing in +favour of resignation but intimating his own intention to resign, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>and with the Duke of Wellington's in the opposite sense. The duke, +in my opinion, was right and Peel wrong, but he had borne the brunt +of battle already beyond the measure of human strength, and who can +wonder that his heart and soul as well as his physical organisation +needed rest?<a name="FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a></p></div> + +<p class="center">DEFEAT OF THE GOVERNMENT</p> + +<p>In announcing his retirement to the House (June 29), Peel passed a +magnanimous and magnificent eulogium on Cobden.<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id="FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a> Strange to say, the +panegyric gave much offence, and among others to Mr. Gladstone. The next +day he entered in his diary:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Much comment is made upon Peel's declaration about Cobden last +night. My objection to it is that it did not do full justice. For +if his power of discussion has been great and his end good, his +tone has been most harsh and his imputation of bad and vile motives +to honourable men incessant. I do not think the thing was done in a +manner altogether worthy of Peel's mind. But he, like some smaller +men, is, I think, very sensible of the sweetness of the cheers of +opponents.</p></div> + +<p>He describes himself at the time as 'grieved and hurt' at these closing +sentences; and even a year later, in answer to some inquiry from his +father, who still remained protectionist, he wrote: 'July 1, '47.—I do +not know anything about Peel's having repented of his speech about +Cobden; but I hope that he has seen the great objection to which it is, +as I think, fairly open.' Some of his own men who voted for Peel +declared that after this speech they bitterly repented.</p> + +<p class="center">PEEL'S TRIBUTE TO COBDEN</p> + +<p>The suspected personal significance of the Cobden panegyric is described +in a memorandum written by Mr. Gladstone a few days later (July 12):—</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>A day or two afterwards I met Lord Stanley crossing the park, and +we had some conversation, first on colonial matters. Then he said, +'Well, I think our friend Peel went rather far last night about +Cobden, did he not?' I stated to him my very deep regret on reading +that passage (as well as what followed about the monopolists), and +that, not for its impolicy but for its injustice. All that he said +was true, but he did not say the whole truth; and the effect of the +whole, as a whole, was therefore untrue. Mr. Cobden has throughout +argued the corn question on the principle of holding up the +landlords of England to the people, as plunderers and as knaves for +maintaining the corn law to save their rents, and as fools because +it was not necessary for that purpose. This was passed by, while he +was praised for sincerity, eloquence, indefatigable zeal.</p> + +<p>On Thursday the 2nd I saw Lord Aberdeen. He agreed in the general +regret at the tone of that part of the speech. He said he feared it +was designed with a view to its effects, for the purpose of making +it impossible that Peel should ever again be placed in connection +with the conservative party as a party. He said that Peel had +absolutely made up his mind never again to lead it, never again to +enter office; that he had indeed made up his mind, at one time, to +quit parliament, but that probably on the Queen's account, and in +deference to her wishes, he had abandoned this part of his +intentions. But that he was fixed in the idea to maintain his +independent and separate position, taking part in public questions +as his views of public interests might from time to time seem to +require. I represented that this for <i>him</i>, and in the House of +Commons, was an intention absolutely impossible to fulfil; that +with his greatness he could not remain there overshadowing and +eclipsing all governments, and yet have to do with no governments; +that acts cannot for such a man be isolated, they must be in +series, and his view of public affairs must coincide with one body +of men rather than another, and that the attraction must place him +in relations with them. Lord Aberdeen said that Earl Spencer in his +later days was Sir R. Peel's ideal,—rare appearances for serious +purposes, and without compromise generally to the independence of +his personal habits. I put it that this was possible in the House +of Lords, but only there.... On Saturday I saw him again as he came +from the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>palace. He represented that the Queen was sorely grieved +at this change; which indeed I had already heard from Catherine +through Lady Lyttelton, but this showed that it continued. And +again on Monday we heard through Lady Lyttelton that the Queen said +it was a comfort to think that the work of that day would soon be +over. It appears too that she spoke of the kindness she had +received from her late ministers; and that the Prince's sentiments +are quite as decided.</p> + +<p>On Monday we delivered up the seals at our several audiences. Her +Majesty said simply but very kindly to me, 'I am very sorry to +receive them from you.' I thanked her for my father's baronetcy, +and apologised for his not coming to court. She had her glove half +off, which made me think I was to kiss hands; but she simply bowed +and retired. Her eyes told tales, but she smiled and put on a +cheerful countenance. It was in fact the 1st of September 1841 over +again as to feelings; but this time with more mature judgment and +longer experience. Lord Aberdeen and Sir J. Graham kissed hands, +but this was by favour.</p> + +<p>The same night I saw Sidney Herbert at Lady Pembroke's. He gave me +in great part the same view of Sir R. Peel's speech, himself +holding the same opinion with Lord Aberdeen. But he thought that +Peel's natural temper, which he said is very violent though usually +under thorough discipline, broke out and coloured that part of the +speech, but that the end in view was to cut off all possibility of +reunion. He referred to a late conversation with Peel, in which +Peel had intimated his intention of remaining in parliament and +acting for himself without party, to which Herbert replied that he +knew of no minister who had done so except lord Bute, a bad +precedent. Peel rejoined 'Lord Grenville,' showing that his mind +had been at work upon the subject. He had heard him not long ago +discussing his position with Lord Aberdeen and Sir James Graham, +when he said, putting his hand up to the side of his head, 'Ah! you +do not know what I suffer here.'</p> + +<p>Yesterday Lord Lyndhurst called on me.... He proceeded to ask me +what I thought with respect to our political course. He said he +conceived that the quarrel was a bygone quarrel, that the +animosities attending it ought now to be forgotten, and the old +relations of amity and confidence among the members<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> of the +conservative body resumed. I told him, in the first place, that I +felt some difficulty in answering him in my state of total +ignorance, so far as direct communication is concerned, of Sir R. +Peel's knowledge and intentions; that on Tuesday I had seen him on +colonial matters, and had talked on the probable intentions of the +new government as to the sugar duties, but that I did not like to +ask what he did not seem to wish to tell, and that I did not obtain +the smallest inkling of light as to his intentions in respect to +that very matter now immediately pending. He observed it was a pity +Sir R. Peel was so uncommunicative; but that after having been so +long connected with him, he would certainly be very unwilling to do +anything disagreeable to him; still, if I and others thought fit, +he was ready to do what he could towards putting the party together +again. I then replied that I thought, so far as extinguishing the +animosities which had been raised in connection with the corn law +was concerned, I could not doubt its propriety, that I thought we +were bound to give a fair trial to the government, and not to +assume beforehand an air of opposition, and that if so much of +confidence is due to them, much more is it due towards friends from +whom we have differed on the single question of free trade, that +our confidence should be reposed in them. That I thought, however, +that in any case, before acting together as a party, we ought to +consider well the outline of our further course, particularly with +reference to Irish questions and the church there, as I was of +opinion that it was very doubtful whether we had now a +justification for opposing any change with respect to it, meaning +as to the property. He said with his accustomed facility, 'Ah yes, +it will require to be considered what course we shall take.'<a name="FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a></p></div> + +<p class="center">CONVERSATIONS WITH COLLEAGUES</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I met Lord Aberdeen the same afternoon in Bond Street, and told him +the substance of this conversation. He said, 'It is stated that +Lord G. Bentinck is to resign, and that they are to have you.' +That, I replied, was quite new to me. The (late) chancellor had +simply said, when I pointed out that the difficulties lay in the +House of Commons, that it was true, and that my being there would +make the way more open. I confess I am very doubtful of that, and +much disposed to believe that I am regretted, as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>things and +persons <i>absent</i> often are, in comparison with the present. At +dinner I sat between Graham and Jocelyn. The latter observed +particularly on the absence from Sir R. Peel's speech of any +acknowledgment towards his supporters and his colleagues. These +last, however, are named. Jocelyn said the new government were much +divided.... Jocelyn believes that Lord Palmerston will not be very +long in union with this cabinet.</p> + +<p>With Sir J. Graham I had much interesting conversation. I told him, +I thought it but fair to mention to him the regret and blame which +I found to have been elicited from all persons whom I saw and +conversed with, by the passage relating to Cobden. He said he +believed it was the same on all hands; and that the new government +in particular were most indignant at it. He feared that it was +deliberately preconceived and for the purpose; and went on to +repeat what Lord Aberdeen had told me, that Sir R. Peel had been +within an ace of quitting parliament, and was determined to abjure +party and stand aloof for ever, and never resume office. I replied +as before, that in the House of Commons it was impossible. He went +on to sketch the same kind of future for himself. He was weary of +labour at thirteen or fourteen hours a day, and of the intolerable +abuse to which he was obliged to submit; but his habits were formed +in the House of Commons and for it, and he was desirous to continue +there as an independent gentleman, taking part from time to time in +public business as he might find occasion, and giving his leisure +to his family and to books. I said, 'Are you not building houses of +cards? Do you conceive that men who have played a great part, who +have swayed the great moving forces of the state, who have led the +House of Commons and given the tone to public policy, can at their +will remain there, but renounce the consequences of their +remaining, and refuse to fulfil what must fall to them in some +contingency of public affairs? The country will demand that they +who are the ablest shall not stand by inactive.' He said Sir Robert +Peel had all but given up his seat. I answered that would at any +rate have made his resolution a practicable one.</p> + +<p>He said, 'You can have no conception of what the virulence is +against Peel and me.' I said, No; that from having been out of +parliament during these debates my sense of these things was less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> +lively and my position in some respects different. He replied, +'Your position is quite different. You are free to take any course +you please with perfect honour.' I told him of Lord Lyndhurst's +visit and the purport of his conversation, of the meaning of the +junction on the opposition bench in the Lords, and of what we had +said of the difficulties in the Commons. He said, 'My resentment is +not against the new government, but against the seventy-three +conservative members of parliament who displaced the late +government by a factious vote; nearly all of them believed the bill +to be necessary for Ireland; and they knew that our removal was not +desired by the crown, not desired by the country. I find no fault +with the new ministers, they are fairly in possession of power—but +with those gentlemen I can never unite.' Later, however, in the +evening he relented somewhat, and said he must admit that what they +did was done under great provocation; that it was no wonder they +regarded themselves as betrayed; and that unfortunately it had been +the fate of Sir R. Peel to perform a similar operation twice....</p> + +<p>Graham dwelt with fondness and with pain on Lord Stanley; said he +had very great qualities—that his speech on the corn law, +consisting as it did simply of old fallacies though in new dress, +was a magnificent speech, one of his greatest and happiest +efforts—that all his conduct in the public eye had been perfectly +free from exception; that he feared, however, he had been much in +Lord Geo. Bentinck's counsels, and had concurred in much more than +he had himself done, and had aided in marking out the course taken +in the House of Commons. He had called on Lord Stanley several +times but had never been able to see him, he trusted through +accident, but seemed to doubt.</p> + +<p>On the Cobden eulogy, though he did not defend it outright by any +means, he said, 'Do you think if Cobden had not existed the repeal +of the corn law would have been carried at this moment?' I said +very probably not, that he had added greatly to the force of the +movement and accelerated its issue, that I admitted the truth of +every word that Peel had uttered, but complained of its omissions, +of its spirit towards his own friends, of its false moral effect, +as well as and much more than of its mere impolicy.<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p></div> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p class="center">FAREWELL INTERVIEW WITH PEEL</p> + +<p>Still more interesting is an interview with the fallen minister himself, +written ten days after it took place:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>July 24</i>.—On Monday the 13th I visited Sir R. Peel, and found him +in his dressing-room laid up with a cut in one of his feet. My +immediate purpose was to let him know the accounts from New Zealand +which Lord Grey had communicated to me.... However <i>I</i> led on from +subject to subject, for I thought it my duty not to quit town, at +the end possibly of my political connection with Sir R. Peel, that +is if he determined to individualise himself, without giving the +opportunity at least for free communication. Though he opened +nothing, yet he followed unreluctantly. I said the government +appeared to show signs of internal discord or weakness. He said, +Yes; related that Lord John did not mean to include Lord Grey, that +he sent Sir G. Grey and C. Wood to propitiate him, that Lord Grey +was not only not hostile but volunteered his services. At last I +broke the ice and said, 'You have seen Lord Lyndhurst.' He said, +'Yes.' I mentioned the substance of my interview with Lord +Lyndhurst, and also what I had heard from Goulburn of his. He said, +'I am <i>hors de combat</i>.' I said to him, 'Is that possible? Whatever +your present intentions may be, can it be done?' He said he had +been twice prime minister, and nothing should induce him again to +take part in the formation of a government; the labour and anxiety +were too great and he repeated more than once emphatically with +regard to the work of his post, 'No one in the least degree knows +what it is. I have told the Queen that I part from her with the +deepest sentiments of gratitude and attachment; but that there is +one thing she must not ask of me, and that is to place myself again +in the same position.' Then he spoke of the immense accumulation. +'There is the whole correspondence with the Queen, several times a +day, and all requiring to be in my own hand, and to be carefully +done; the whole correspondence with peers and members<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> of +parliament, in my own hand, as well as other persons of +consequence; the sitting seven or eight hours a day to listen in +the House of Commons. Then I must, of course, have my mind in the +principal subjects connected with the various departments, such as +the Oregon question for example, and all the reading connected with +them. I can hardly tell you, for instance, what trouble the New +Zealand question gave me. Then there is the difficulty that you +have in conducting such questions on account of your colleague whom +they concern.'</p> + +<p>It was evident from this, as it had been from other signs, that he +did not think Stanley had been happy in his management of the New +Zealand question. I said, however, 'I can quite assent to the +proposition that no one understands the labour of your post; that, +I think, is all I ever felt I could know about it, that there is +nothing else like it. But then you have been prime minister in a +sense in which no other man has been it since Mr. Pitt's time.' He +said, 'But Mr. Pitt got up every day at eleven o'clock, and drank +two bottles of port wine every night.' 'And died of old age at +forty-six,' I replied. 'This all strengthens the case. I grant your +full and perfect claim to retirement in point of justice and +reason; if such a claim can be made good by amount of service, I do +not see how yours could be improved. You have had extraordinary +physical strength to sustain you; and you have performed an +extraordinary task. Your government has not been carried on by a +cabinet, but by the heads of departments each in communication with +you.' He assented, and added it had been what every government +ought to be, a government of confidence in one another. 'I have +felt the utmost confidence as to matters of which I had no +knowledge, and so have the rest. Lord Aberdeen in particular said +that nothing would induce him to hold office on any other +principle, or to be otherwise than perfectly free as to previous +consultations.' And he spoke of the defects of the Melbourne +government as a mere government of departments without a centre of +unity, and of the possibility that the new ministers might +experience difficulty in the same respect. I then went on to say, +'Mr. Perceval, Lord Liverpool, Lord Melbourne were not prime +ministers in this sense; what Mr. Canning might have been, the time +was too short to show. I fully grant that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>your labours have been +incredible, but, allow me to say, that is not the question. The +question is not whether you are entitled to retire, but whether +after all you have done, and in the position you occupy before the +country, you can remain in the House of Commons as an isolated +person, and hold yourself aloof from the great movements of +political forces which sway to and fro there?' He said, 'I think +events will answer that question better than any reasoning +beforehand.' I replied, 'That is just what I should rely upon, and +should therefore urge how impossible it is for you to lay down with +certainty a foregone conclusion such as that which you have +announced to-day, and which events are not to influence, merely +that you will remain in parliament and yet separate yourself from +the parliamentary system by which our government is carried on.' +Then he said, (If it is necessary I will) 'go out of +parliament'—the first part of the sentence was indistinctly +muttered, but the purport such as I have described. To which I +merely replied that I hoped not, and that the country would have +something to say upon that too....</p></div> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>No man can doubt that he is the strong man of this parliament—of +this political generation. Then it is asked, Is he honest? But this +is a question which I think cannot justly be raised nor treated as +admissible in the smallest degree by those who have known and +worked with him.... He spoke of the immense multiplication of +details in public business and the enormous task imposed upon +available time and strength by the work of attendance in the House +of Commons. He agreed that it was extremely adverse to the growth +of greatness among our public men; and he said the mass of public +business increased so fast that he could not tell what it was to +end in, and did not venture to speculate even for a few years upon +the mode of administering public affairs. He thought the +consequence was already manifest in its being not well done.</p> + +<p>It sometimes occurred to him whether it would after all be a good +arrangement to have the prime minister in the House of Lords, which +would get rid of the very encroaching duty of attendance on and +correspondence with the Queen. I asked if in that case it would not +be quite necessary that the leader in the Commons should frequently +take upon himself to make decisions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> which ought properly to be +made by the head of the government? He said, Certainly, and that +that would constitute a great difficulty. That although Lord +Melbourne might be very well adapted to take his part in such a +plan, there were, he believed, difficulties in it under him when +Lord J. Russell led the House of Commons. That when he led the +House in 1828 under the Duke of Wellington as premier, he had a +very great advantage in the disposition of the duke to follow the +judgments of others in whom he had confidence with respect to all +civil matters. He said it was impossible during the session even to +work the public business through the medium of the cabinet, such is +the pressure upon time.... He told me he had suffered dreadfully in +his head on the left side—that twenty-two or twenty-three years +ago he injured the ear by the use of a detonating tube in shooting. +Since then he had always had a noise on that side, and when he had +the work of office upon him, this and the pain became scarcely +bearable at times, as I understood him. Brodie told him that 'as +some overwork one part and some another, he had overworked his +brain,' but he said that with this exception his health was good. +It was pleasant to me to find and feel by actual contact as it were +(though I had no suspicion of the contrary) his manner as friendly +and as much unhurt as at any former period.</p></div> + +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p>Before leaving office Peel wrote to Mr. Gladstone (June 20) requesting +him to ask his father whether it would be acceptable to him to be +proposed to the Queen for a baronetcy. 'I should name him to the Queen,' +he said, 'as the honoured representative of a great class of the +community which has raised itself by its integrity and industry to high +social eminence. I should gratify also my own feeling by a mark of +personal respect for a name truly worthy of such illustration as +hereditary honour can confer.' John Gladstone replied in becoming words, +but honestly mentioned that he had published his strong opinion of the +injurious consequences that he dreaded from 'the stupendous experiment +about to be made' in commercial policy. Peel told him that this made no +difference.<a name="FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">LORD GEORGE BENTINCK</p> + +<p>At the close of the session a trivial incident occurred that caused Mr. +Gladstone a disproportionate amount of vexation for several months. Hume +stated in the House that the colonial secretary had countersigned what +was a lie, in a royal patent appointing a certain Indian judge. The +'lie' consisted in reciting that a judge then holding the post had +resigned, whereas he had not resigned, and the correct phrase was that +the Queen had permitted him to retire. Lord George Bentinck, whose rage +was then at its fiercest, pricked up his ears, and a day or two later +declared that Mr. Secretary Gladstone had 'deliberately affirmed, not +through any oversight or inadvertence or thoughtlessness, but designedly +and of his own malice prepense, that which in his heart he knew not to +be true.' Things of this sort may either be passed over in disdain, or +taken with logician's severity. Mr. Gladstone might well have contented +himself with the defence that his signature had been purely formal, and +that every secretary of state is called upon to put his name to recitals +of minute technical fact which he must take on trust from his officials. +As it was, he chose to take Bentinck's reckless aspersion at its +highest, and the combat lasted for weeks and months. Bentinck got up the +case with his usual industrious tenacity; he insisted that the Queen's +name stood at that moment in the degrading position of being prefixed to +a proclamation that all her subjects knew to recite and to be founded +upon falsehood; he declared that the whole business was a job +perpetrated by the outgoing ministers, to fill up a post that was not +vacant; he imputed no corrupt motive to Mr. Gladstone; he admitted that +Mr. Gladstone was free from the betrayal and treachery practised by his +political friends; but he could not acquit him of having been in this +particular affair the tool and the catspaw of two old foxes greedier and +craftier than himself. To all this unmannerly stuff the recipient of it +only replied by holding its author the more tight to the point of the +original offence; the blood of his highland ancestors was up, and the +poet's contest between eagle and serpent was not more dire. The affair +was submitted to Lord Stanley. He reluctantly consented (Oct. 29) to +decide<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> the single question whether Bentinck was justified 'on the +information before him in using the language quoted.' There was a +dispute what information Bentinck had before him, and upon this point, +where Bentinck's course might in his own polite vocabulary be marked as +pure shuffling, Lord Stanley returned the papers (Feb. 8, 1847) and +expressed his deep regret that he could bring about no more satisfactory +result. Even so late as the spring of 1847 Mr. Gladstone was only +dissuaded by the urgent advice of Lord Lincoln and others from pursuing +the fray. It was, so far as I know, the only personal quarrel into which +he ever allowed himself to be drawn.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a>Perhaps I may refer to my <i>Life of Cobden</i>, which had the great +advantage of being read before publication by Mr. Bright. Chapters xiv. +and xv.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a>Lord Aberdeen to Senior, Sept. 1856. Mrs. Simpson's <i>Many +Memories</i>, p. 233.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a>Sibthorp asked Peel in the H. of C. when Gladstone and Lincoln +would appear. Peel replied that if S. would take the Chiltern Hundreds, +G. should stand against him. S. retorted that the Chiltern Hundreds is a +place under government, and he would never take place from Peel; but if +P. would dissolve he would welcome Gladstone to Lincoln—or P. himself; +and added privately that he would give P. or G. best bottle of wine in +his cellar if he would come to Lincoln and fight him fairly.—<i>Lord +Broughton's Diaries</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a><i>Halifax Papers.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a>Cobden also wrote to Peel strongly urging him to hold on, and Peel +replied with an effective defence of his own view. <i>Life of Cobden</i>, i. +chap. 18.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a>'There is a name that ought to be associated with the success of +these measures; it is not the name of Lord John Russell, neither is it +my name. Sir, the name which ought to be, and will be, associated with +these measures is the name of a man who, acting from pure and +disinterested motives, has advocated their cause with untiring energy, +and by appeals to reason expressed by an eloquence the more to be +admired because it was unaffected and unadorned—the name which ought to +be associated with the success of these measures is the name of Richard +Cobden. Without scruple, Sir, I attribute the success of these measures +to him.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a>See <i>Life of Lord Lyndhurst</i>, by Lord Campbell, p. 163.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a>Six years later (Nov. 26, 1852), Mr. Gladstone in the House of +Commons said of Cobden, with words of characteristic +qualification:—'Agree you may in his general politics, or you may not; +complain you may, if you think you have cause, of the mode and force +with which in the freedom of debate he commonly states his opinions in +this House. But it is impossible for us to deny that those benefits of +which we are now acknowledging the existence are, in no small part at +any rate, due to the labours in which he has borne so prominent a +share.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a> Parker, iii. pp. 434-5.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIICh_XI" id="BkIICh_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">THE TRACTARIAN CATASTROPHE</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1841-1846</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The movement of 1833 started out o£ the anti-Roman feelings of the +Emancipation time. It was anti-Roman as much as it was +anti-sectarian and anti-erastian. It was to avert the danger of +people becoming Romanists from ignorance of church principles. This +was all changed in one important section of the party. The +fundamental conceptions were reversed. It was not the Roman church +but the English church that was put on its trial.... From this +point of view the object of the movement was no longer to elevate +and improve an independent English church, but to approximate it as +far as possible to what was assumed to be undeniable—the perfect +catholicity of Rome.—<span class="smcap">Dean Church</span>.</p></div><br /> + +<p>The fall of Peel and the break-up of his party in the state coincided +pretty nearly with a hardly less memorable rupture in that rising party +in the church, with which Mr. Gladstone had more or less associated +himself almost from its beginning. Two main centres of authority and +leading in the land were thus at the same moment dislodged and +dispersed. A long struggle in secular concerns had come to a decisive +issue; and the longer struggle in religious concerns had reached a +critical and menacing stage. The reader will not wonder that two events +so far-reaching as the secession of Newman and the fall of Sir Robert, +coupled as these public events were with certain importunities of +domestic circumstance of which I shall have more to say by and by, +brought Mr. Gladstone to an epoch in his life of extreme perturbation. +Roughly it may be said to extend from 1845 to 1852.</p> + +<p>At the time of his resignation in the beginning of 1845, he wrote to +Lord John Manners, then his colleague at Newark, a curious account of +his views on party life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> Lord John was then acting with the Young +England group inspired by Disraeli, who has left a picture of them in +<i>Sybil</i>, the most far-seeing of all his novels.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 12.5em;"><i>To Lord John Manners</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Jan. 30, 1845</i>.—You, I have no doubt, are disappointed as to the +working of a conservative government. And so should I be if I were +to estimate its results by a comparison with the anticipations +which, from a distance and in the abstract, I had once entertained +of political life. But now my expectations not only from this but +from any government are very small. If they do a little good, if +they prevent others from doing a good deal of evil, if they +maintain an unblemished character, it is my fixed conviction that +under the circumstances of the times I can as an independent member +of parliament, for I am now virtually such, ask no more. And I do +entertain the strongest impression that if, with your honourable +and upright mind, you had been called upon for years to consult as +one responsible for the movements of great parliamentary bodies, if +you thus had been accustomed to look into public questions at close +quarters, your expectations from an administration, and your +dispositions towards it, would be materially changed....</p> + +<p>The principles and moral powers of government as such are sinking +day by day, and it is not by laws and parliaments that they can be +renovated.... I must venture even one step further, and say that +such schemes of regeneration as those which were propounded (not, I +am bound to add, by you) at Manchester,<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id="FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a> appear to me to be +most mournful delusions; and their re-issue, for their real +parentage is elsewhere, from the bosom of the party to which we +belong, an omen of the worst kind if they were likely to obtain +currency under the new sanction they have received. It is most easy +to complain as you do of <i>laissez-faire</i> and <i>laissez-aller</i>; nor +do I in word or in heart presume to blame you; but I should sorely +blame myself if with my experience and convictions of <i>the growing +impotence of government for its highest functions</i>, I were either +to recommend attempts beyond its powers, which would react +unfavourably upon its remaining capabilities, or to be a party to +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>proposed substitutes for its true moral and paternal work which +appear to me mere counterfeits.</p></div> + +<p class="center">RELIGION AT OXFORD</p> + +<p>On this letter we may note in passing, first, that the tariff +legislation did in the foundations what the Young England party wished +to do in a superficial and flimsy fashion; and second, it was the tariff +legislation that drove back a rising tide of socialism, both directly by +vastly improving the condition of labour, and indirectly by force of the +doctrine of free exchange which was thus corroborated by circumstances. +Of this we shall see more by and by.</p> + +<p>Throughout the years of Sir Robert Peel's government, Mr. Gladstone had +been keenly intent upon the progress of religious affairs at Oxford. +'From 1841 till the beginning of 1845,' he says in a fragmentary note, +'I continued a hardworking official man, but with a decided predominance +of religious over secular interests. Although I had little of direct +connection with Oxford and its teachers, I was regarded in common fame +as tarred with their brush; and I was not so blind as to be unaware that +for the clergy this meant not yet indeed prosecution, but proscription +and exclusion from advancement by either party in the state, and for +laymen a vague and indeterminate prejudice with serious doubts how far +persons infected in this particular manner could have any real capacity +for affairs. Sir Robert Peel must, I think, have exercised much +self-denial when he put me in his cabinet in 1843.' The movement that +began in 1833 had by the opening of the next decade revealed startling +tendencies, and its first stage was now slowly but unmistakeably passing +into the second. Mr. Gladstone has told us<a name="FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a> how he stood at this +hour of crisis; how strongly he believed that the church of England +would hold her ground, and even revive the allegiance not only of the +masses, but of those large and powerful nonconforming bodies who were +supposed to exist only as a consequence of the neglect of its duties by +the national church. He has told us also how little he foresaw the +second phase of the Oxford movement—the break-up of a distinguished and +imposing generation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> clergy; 'the spectacle of some of the most +gifted sons reared by Oxford for the service of the church of England, +hurling at her head the hottest bolts of the Vatican; and along with +this strange deflexion on one side, a not less convulsive rationalist +movement on the other,—all ending in contention and estrangement, and +in suspicions worse than either, because less accessible and more +intractable.'</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>The landmarks of the Tractarian story are familiar, and I do not ask the +reader in any detail to retrace them. The publication of Froude's +<i>Remains</i> was the first flagrant beacon lighting the path of divergence +from the lines of historical high churchmen in an essentially +anti-protestant direction. Mr. Gladstone read the first instalment of +this book (1838) 'with repeated regrets.' Then came the blaze kindled by +Tract Ninety (1841). This, in the language of its author and his +friends, was the famous attempt to clear the Articles from the glosses +encrusting them like barnacles, and to bring out the old catholic truth +that man had done his worst to disfigure and to mutilate, and yet in +spite of all man's endeavour it was in the Articles still. Mr. +Gladstone, as we have seen, regarded Tract Ninety with uneasy doubts as +to its drift, its intentions, the way in which the church and the world +would take it. 'This No. Ninety of <i>Tracts for the Times</i> which I read +by desire of Sir R. Inglis,' he writes to Lord Lyttelton, 'is like a +repetition of the publication of Froude's <i>Remains</i>, and Newman has +again burned his fingers. The most serious feature in the tract to my +mind is that, doubtless with very honest intentions and with his mind +turned for the moment so entirely towards those inclined to defection, +and therefore occupying <i>their</i> point of view exclusively, he has in +writing it placed himself quite outside the church of England in point +of spirit and sympathy. As far as regards the proposition for which he +intended mainly to argue, I believe not only that he is right, but that +it is an a b c truth, almost a truism of the reign of Elizabeth, namely +that the authoritative documents of the church of England were not meant +to bind <i>all</i> men to every opinion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> of their authors, and particularly +that they intended to deal as gently with prepossessions thought to look +towards Rome, as the necessity of securing a certain amount of +reformation would allow. Certainly also the terms in which Newman +characterises the present state of the church of England in his +introduction are calculated to give both pain and alarm; and the whole +aspect of the tract is like the assumption of a new position.'</p> + +<p class="center">TRACTARIAN LANDMARKS</p> + +<p>Next followed the truly singular struggle for the university chair of +poetry at the end of the same year, between a no-popery candidate and a +Puseyite. Seldom surely has the service of the muses been pressed into +so alien a debate. Mr. Gladstone was cut to the heart at the prospect of +a sentence in the shape of a vote for this professorship, passed by the +university of Oxford 'upon all that congeries of opinions which the rude +popular notion associates with the <i>Tracts for the Times</i>.' Such a +sentence would be a disavowal by the university of catholic principles +in the gross; the association between catholic principles and the church +of England would be miserably weakened; and those who at all sympathised +with the Tracts would be placed in the position of aliens, corporally +within the pale, but in spirit estranged or outcast. If the church +should be thus broken up, there would be no space for catholicity +between the rival pretensions of an ultra-protestantised or +decatholicised English church, and the communion of Rome. 'Miserable +choice!' These and other arguments are strongly pressed (December 3, +1841) in favour of an amicable compromise, in a letter addressed to his +close friend Frederic Rogers. In the same letter Mr. Gladstone says that +he cannot profess to understand or to have studied the Tracts on +Reserve.<a name="FNanchor_183_183" id="FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a> He 'partakes perhaps in the popular prejudice against +them.' Anybody can now see in the coolness of distant time that it was +these writings on Reserve that roused not merely prejudice but fury in +the public mind—a fury that without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> either justice or logic extended +from hatred of Romanisers to members of the church of Rome itself. It +affected for the worse the feeling between England and Ireland, for in +those days to be ultra-protestant was to be anti-Irish; and it greatly +aggravated, first the storm about the Maynooth grant in 1845, and then +the far wilder storm about the papal aggression six years later.</p> + +<p class="center">THE JERUSALEM BISHOPRIC</p> + +<p>Further fuel for excitement was supplied the same year (1841) in a +fantastic project by which a bishop, appointed alternately by Great +Britain and Prussia and with his headquarters at Jerusalem, was to take +charge through a somewhat miscellaneous region, of any German +protestants or members of the church of England or anybody else who +might be disposed to accept his authority. The scheme stirred much +enthusiasm in the religious world, but it deepened alarm among the more +logical of the high churchmen. Ashley and the evangelicals were keen for +it as the blessed beginning of a restoration of Israel, and the king of +Prussia hoped to gain over the Lutherans and others of his subjects by +this side-door into true episcopacy. Politics were not absent, and some +hoped that England might find in the new protestant church such an +instrument in those uncomfortable regions, as Russia possessed in the +Greek church and France in the Latin. Dr. Arnold was delighted at the +thought that the new church at Jerusalem would comprehend persons using +different liturgies and subscribing different articles,—his favourite +pattern for the church of England. Pusey at first rather liked the idea +of a bishop to represent the ancient British church in the city of the +Holy Sepulchre; but Newman and Hope, with a keener instinct for their +position, distrusted the whole design in root and branch as a betrayal +of the church, and Pusey soon came to their mind. With caustic scorn +Newman asked how the anglican church, without ceasing to be a church, +could become an associate and protector of nestorians, jacobites, +monophysites, and all the heretics one could hear of, and even form a +sort of league with the mussulman against the Greek orthodox and the +Latin catholics. Mr. Gladstone could not be drawn to go these lengths. +Nobody could be more of a logician than Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> Gladstone when he liked, no +logician could wield a more trenchant blade; but nobody ever knew better +in complex circumstance the perils of the logical short cut. Hence, +according to his general manner in all dubious cases, he moved slowly, +and laboured to remove practical grounds for objection. Ashley describes +him (October 16) at a dinner at Bunsen's rejoicing in the bishopric, and +proposing the health of the new prelate, and this gave Ashley pleasure, +for 'Gladstone is a good man and a clever man and an industrious +man.'<a name="FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> While resolute against any plan for what Hope called +gathering up the scraps of Christendom and making a new church out of +them, and resolute against what he himself called the inauguration of an +experimental or fancy church, Mr. Gladstone declared himself ready 'to +brave misconstruction for the sake of union with any Christian men, +provided the terms of union were not contrary to sound principles.' With +a strenuous patience that was thoroughly characteristic, he set to work +to bring the details of the scheme into an order conformable to his own +views, and he even became a trustee of the endowment fund. Two bishops +in succession filled the see, but in the fulness of time most men agreed +with Newman, who 'never heard of any either good or harm that bishopric +had ever done,' except what it had done for him. To him it gave a final +shake, and brought him on to the beginning of the end.<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id="FNanchor_185_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a></p> + +<p>In the summer of 1842 Mr. Gladstone received confidences that amazed +him. Here is a passage from his diary:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>July 31, 1842</i>.—Walk with R. Williams to converse on the subject +of our recent letters. I made it my object to learn from him the +general view of the ulterior section of the Oxford writers and +their friends. It is startling. They look not merely to the renewal +and development of the catholic idea within the pale of the church +of England, but seem to consider the main condition of that +development and of all health (some tending even to say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> of all +life) to be reunion with the church, of Rome as the see of Peter. +They recognise, however, authority in the church of England, and +abide in her without love specifically fixed upon her, to seek the +fulfilment of this work of reunion. It is, for example, he said, +the sole object of Oakeley's life. They do not look to any defined +order of proceedings in the way of means. They consider that the +end is to be reached through catholicising the mind of the members +of the church of England, but do not seem to feel that this can be +done to any great degree in working out and giving free scope to +her own rubrical system. They have no strong feeling of revulsion +from actual evils in the church of Rome, first, because they do not +wish to judge; secondly, especially not to judge the saints; +thirdly, they consider that infallibility is somewhere and nowhere +but there. They could not remain in the church of England if they +thought that she dogmatically condemned anything that the church of +Rome has defined <i>de fide</i>, but they do and will remain on the +basis of the argument of Tract 90; upon which, after mental +conflict, they have settled steadily down. They regret what Newman +has said strongly against the actual system of the church of Rome, +and they could not have affirmed, though neither do they positively +deny it. Wherever Roman doctrine <i>de fide</i> is oppugned they must +protest; but short of this they render absolute obedience to their +ecclesiastical superiors in the church of England. They expect to +work on in practical harmony with those who look mainly to the +restoration of catholic ideas on the foundation laid by the church +of England as reformed, and who take a different view as to reunion +with Rome in particular, though of course desiring the reunion of +the whole body of Christ. All this is matter for very serious +consideration. In the meantime I was anxious to put it down while +fresh.</p></div> + +<p class="center">POSITION OF NEWMAN</p> + +<p>Now was the time at which Mr. Gladstone's relations with Manning and +Hope began to approach their closest. Newman, the great enchanter, in +obedience to his bishop had dropped the issue of the Tracts; had +withdrawn from all public discussion of ecclesiastical politics; had +given up his work in Oxford; and had retired with a neophyte or two to +Littlemore, a hamlet on the outskirts of the ever venerable city, there +to pursue his theological studies, to prepare translations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> of +Athanasius, to attend to his little parish, and generally to go about +his own business so far as he might be permitted by the restlessness +alike of unprovoked opponents and unsought disciples. This was the +autumn of 1843. In October Manning sent to Mr. Gladstone two letters +that he had received from Newman, indicating only too plainly, as they +were both convinced, that the foundations of their leader's anglicanism +had been totally undermined by the sweeping repudiation alike by +episcopal and university authority of the doctrines of Tract Ninety. Dr. +Pusey, on the other hand, admitted that the expressions in Newman's +letter were portentous, but did not believe that they necessarily meant +secession. In a man of the world this would not have been regarded as +candid. For Newman says, 'I formally told Pusey that I expected to leave +the church of England in the autumn of 1843, and begged him to tell +others, that no one might be taken by surprise or might trust me in the +interval.'<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id="FNanchor_186_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a> But Newman has told us that he had from the first great +difficulty in making Dr. Pusey understand the differences between them. +The letters stand in the <i>Apologia</i> (chapter iv. § 2) to tell their own +tale. To Mr. Gladstone their shock was extreme, not only by reason of +the catastrophe to which they pointed, but from the ill-omened shadow +that they threw upon the writer's probity of mind if not of heart. 'I +stagger to and fro like a drunken man,' he wrote to Manning, 'I am at my +wit's end.' He found some of Newman's language, 'forgive me if I say it, +more like the expressions of some Faust gambling for his soul, than the +records of the inner life of a great Christian teacher.' In his diary, +he puts it thus:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Oct. 28, 1843</i>.—S. Simon and S. Jude. St. James's 11 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span> with a +heavy heart. Another letter had come from Manning, enclosing a +second from Newman, which announced that since the summer of 1839 +he had had the conviction that the church of Rome is the catholic +church, and ours not a branch of the catholic church because not in +communion with Rome; that he had resigned St. Mary's because he +felt he could not with a safe conscience longer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> teach in her; that +by the article in the <i>British Critic</i> on the catholicity of the +English church he had quieted his mind for two years; that in his +letter to the Bishop of Oxford, written most reluctantly, he, as +the best course under the circumstances, committed himself again; +that his alarms revived with that wretched affair of the Jerusalem +bishopric, and had increased ever since; that Manning's +interference had only made him the more realise his views; that +Manning might make what use he pleased of his letters; he was +relieved of a heavy heart; yet he trusted that God would beep him +from hasty steps and resolves with a doubting conscience! How are +the mighty fallen and the weapons of war perished!</p></div> + +<p>With the characteristic spirit with which, in politics and in every +other field, he always insisted on espying patches of blue sky where +others saw unbroken cloud, he was amazed that Newman did not, in spite +of all the pranks of the Oxford heads, perceive the English church to be +growing in her members more catholic from year to year, and how much +more plain and undeniable was the sway of catholic principles within its +bounds, since the time when he entertained no shadow of doubt about it. +But while repeating his opinion that in many of the Tracts the language +about the Roman church had often been far too censorious, Mr. Gladstone +does not, nor did he ever, shrink from designating conversion to that +church by the unflinching names of lapse and fall.<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id="FNanchor_187_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a> As he was soon +to put it, 'The temptation towards the church of Rome of which some are +conscious, has never been before my mind in any other sense than as +other plain and flagrant sins have been before it.'<a name="FNanchor_188_188" id="FNanchor_188_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a></p> + +<p>Two days later he wrote to Manning again:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Oct. 30, 1843</i>.— ... I have still to say that my impressions, +though without more opportunity of testing them I cannot regard +them as final, are still and strongly to the effect that upon the +promulgation of those two letters to the world. Newman stands in +the general view a <i>disgraced man</i>—and all men, all principles, +with which he has had to do, disgraced in proportion to the +proximity <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>of their connection. And further I am persuaded that +were he not spellbound and entranced, he could not fail to see the +gross moral incoherence of the parts of his two statements; and +that were I upon the terms which would warrant it, I should feel it +my duty, at a time when as now, <i>summa res agitur</i>, to tell him so, +after having, however, tried my own views by reference to some +other mind, for instance to your own. But surely it will be said +that his 'committing himself again' was simply a deliberate +protestation of what he knew to be untrue. I have no doubt of his +having proceeded honestly; no doubt that he can show it; but I say +that those two letters are quite enough to condemn a man in whom +one has no πίστις ἐθική: much more then one whom a great majority +of the community regard with prejudice and deep suspicion.... With +regard to your own feelings believe me that I enter into them; and +indeed our communications have now for many years been too warm, +free, and confiding to make it necessary for me, as I trust, to say +what a resource and privilege it is to me to take counsel with you +upon those absorbing subjects and upon the fortunes of the church; +to which I desire to feel with you that life, strength, and all +means and faculties, ought freely to be devoted, and indeed from +such devotion alone can they derive anything of true value.<a name="FNanchor_189_189" id="FNanchor_189_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a></p></div> + +<p class="center">WARD'S <i>IDEAL</i></p> + +<p>The next blow was struck in the summer of 1844 by Ward's <i>Ideal of a +Christian Church</i>, which had the remarkable effect of harassing and +afflicting all the three high camps—the historical anglicans, the +Puseyites and moderate tractarians, and finally the Newmanites and +moderate Romanisers.<a name="FNanchor_190_190" id="FNanchor_190_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_190_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a> The writer was one of the most powerful +dialecticians of the day, defiant, aggressive, implacable in his logic, +unflinching in any stand that he chose to take; the +master-representative of tactics and a temper like those to which Laud +and Strafford gave the pungent name of Thorough. It was not its +theology, still less its history,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> that made his book the signal for the +explosion; it was his audacious proclamation that the whole cycle of +Roman doctrine was gradually possessing numbers of English churchmen, +and that he himself, a clergyman in orders and holding his fellowship on +the tenure of church subscription, had in so subscribing to the Articles +renounced no single Roman doctrine. This, and not the six hundred pages +of argumentation, was the ringing challenge that provoked a plain issue, +precipitated a decisive struggle, and brought the first stage of +tractarianism to a close.</p> + +<p class="center">ARTICLE ON WARD</p> + +<p>It was impossible that Mr. Gladstone even in the thick of his tariffs, +his committees and deputations, his cabinet duties, and all the other +absorbing occupations of an important minister in strong harness, should +let a publication, in his view so injurious, pass in silence.<a name="FNanchor_191_191" id="FNanchor_191_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_191_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a> With +indignation he flew to his intrepid pen, and dealt as trenchantly with +Ward as Ward himself had dealt trenchantly with the reformers and all +others whom he found planted in his dialectic way. Mr. Gladstone held +the book up to stringent reproof for its capricious injustice; for the +triviality of its investigations of fact; for the savageness of its +censures; for the wild and wanton opinions broached in its pages; for +the infatuation of mind manifested in some of its arguments; and for the +lamentable circumstance that it exhibited a far greater debt in mental +culture to Mr. John Stuart Mill than to the whole range of Christian +divines. In a sentence, Ward 'had launched on the great deep of human +controversy as frail a bark as ever carried sail,' and his reviewer +undoubtedly let loose upon it as shrewd a blast as ever blew from the +Æolian wallet. The article was meant for the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, and it +is easy to imagine the dire perplexities of Lockhart's editorial mind in +times so fervid and so distracted. The practical issue after all was not +the merits or the demerits of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, nor the real +meaning of Hooker, Jewel, Bull, but simply what was to be done to Ward. +Lockhart wrote to Murray<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> that he had very seriously studied the article +and studied Ward's book, and not only these, but also the Articles and +the canons of the church, and he could not approve of the <i>Review</i> +committing itself to a judgment on the line proper to be taken by the +authorities of church and university, and the expression of such a +judgment he suspected to be Mr. Gladstone's main object in writing. Mr. +Gladstone, describing himself most truly as 'one of those soldiers who +do not know when they are beat,' saw his editor; declared that what he +sought was three things, first, that the process of mobbing out by +invective and private interpretations is bad and should be stopped; +second, that the church of England does not make assent to the +proceedings of the Reformation a term of communion; and third, that +before even judicial proceedings in one direction, due consideration +should be had of what judicial proceedings in another direction +consistency might entail, if that game were once begun. As Ward himself +had virtually put it, 'Show me how any of the recognised parties in the +church can subscribe in a natural sense, before you condemn me for +subscribing in a non-natural.'<a name="FNanchor_192_192" id="FNanchor_192_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a> The end was a concordat between +editor and contributor, followed by an immense amount of irksome +revision, mutilation, and re-revision, reducing the argument in some +places 'almost to tatters'; but the writer was in the long run satisfied +that things were left standing in it which it was well to plant in a +periodical like the <i>Quarterly Review</i>.</p> + +<p>We have a glimpse of the passionate agitation into which this great +controversy, partly theologic, partly moral, threw Mr. Gladstone:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Feb. 6</i>.—Breakfast at Mr. Macaulay's. Conversation chiefly on +Aristotle's politics and on the Oxford proceedings. I grew hot, for +which <i>ignoscat Deus</i>. <i>Feb. 13</i>.—Oxford 1-5. We were in the +theatre. Ward was like himself, honest to a fault, as little like +an advocate in his line of argument as well could he, and strained +his theology even a point further than before. The forms are +venerable, the sight imposing; the act is fearful [the degradation +of Ward], if it did not leave strong hope of its revisal by law.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p></div> + +<p>To Dr. Pusey he writes (Feb. 7):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Indignation at this proposal to treat Mr. Newman worse than a dog +really makes me mistrust my judgment, as I suppose one should +always do when any proposal seeming to present an aspect of +incredible wickedness is advanced. <i>Feb. 17</i>.—I concur with my +whole heart and soul in the desire for repose; and I fully believe +that the gift of an interval of reflection is that which would be +of all gifts the most precious to us all, which would restore the +faculty of deliberation now almost lost in storms, and would afford +the best hope both of the development of the soundest elements that +are in motion amongst us, and of the mitigation or absorption of +those which are more dangerous.</p></div> + +<p>In the proceedings at Oxford against Ward (February 13, 1845), Mr. +Gladstone voted in the minority both against the condemnation of the +book, and against the proposal to strip its writer of his university +degree. He held that the censure combined condemnation of opinions with +a declaration of personal dishonesty, and the latter question he held to +be one 'not fit for the adjudication of a human tribunal.'</p> + +<p>All this has a marked place in Mr. Gladstone's mental progress. Though +primarily and ostensibly the concern of the established church, yet the +series of proceedings that had begun with the attack on Hampden in 1836, +and then were followed down to our own day by academical, ecclesiastical +and legal censures and penalties, or attempts at censure and penalty, on +Newman, Pusey, Maurice, Gorham, <i>Essays and Reviews</i>, Colenso, and +ended, if they have yet ended, in a host of judgments affecting minor +personages almost as good as nameless—all constitute a chapter of +extraordinary importance in the general history of English toleration, +extending in its consequences far beyond the pale of the communion +immediately concerned. It was a long and painful journey, often +unedifying, not seldom squalid, with crooked turns not a few, and before +it was over, casting men into strange companionship upon bleak and +hazardous shores. Mr. Gladstone, though he probably was not one of those +who are as if born by nature tolerant, was soon drawn by circumstance to +look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> with favour upon that particular sort of toleration which arose +out of the need for comprehension. When the six doctors condemned Pusey +(June 1843) for preaching heresy and punished him by suspension, Mr. +Gladstone was one of those who signed a vigorous protest against a +verdict and a sentence passed upon an offender without hearing him and +without stating reasons. This was at least the good beginning of an +education in liberal rudiments.</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">NEWMAN'S SECESSION</p> + +<p>In October 1845 the earthquake came. Newman was received into the Roman +communion. Of this step Mr. Gladstone said that it has never yet been +estimated at anything like the full amount of its calamitous importance. +The leader who had wielded a magician's power in Oxford was followed by +a host of other converts. More than once I have heard Mr. Gladstone tell +the story how about this time he sought from Manning an answer to the +question that sorely perplexed him: what was the common bond of union +that led men of intellect so different, of character so opposite, of +such various circumstance, to come to the same conclusion. Manning's +answer was slow and deliberate: '<i>Their common bond is their want of +truth.</i>' 'I was surprised beyond measure,' Mr. Gladstone would proceed, +'and startled at his judgment.'<a name="FNanchor_193_193" id="FNanchor_193_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a></p> + +<p>Most ordinary churchmen remained where they were. An erastian statesman +of our own time, when alarmists ran to him with the news that a couple +of noblemen and their wives had just gone over to Rome, replied with +calm, 'Show me a couple of grocers and their wives who have gone over, +then you will frighten me.' The great body of church people stood firm, +and so did Pusey, Keble, Gladstone, and so too, for half a dozen years +to come, did his two closest friends, Manning and Hope. The dominant +note in Mr. Gladstone's mind was clear and it was constant. As he put it +to Manning (August 1, 1845),—'That one should entertain love for the +church of Rome in respect of her virtues and her glories, is of course +right and obligatory; but one is equally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> bound under the circumstances +of the English church in direct antagonism with Rome to keep clearly in +view their very fearful opposites.'</p> + +<p>Tidings of the great secession happened to find Mr. Gladstone in a +rather singular atmosphere. In the course of 1842, to the keen distress +of her relatives, his sister had joined the Roman church, and her +somewhat peculiar nature led to difficulties that taxed patience and +resource to the uttermost. She had feelings of warm attachment to her +brother, and spoke strongly in that sense to Dr. Wiseman; and it was for +the purpose of carrying out some plans of his father's for her +advantage, that in the autumn of 1845 (September 24-November 18), Mr. +Gladstone passed nearly a couple of months in Germany. The duty was +heavy and dismal, but the journey brought him into a society that could +not be without effect upon his impressionable mind. At Munich he laid +the foundation of one of the most interesting and cherished friendships +of his life. Hope-Scott had already made the acquaintance of Dr. +Döllinger, and he now begged Mr. Gladstone on no account to fail to +present himself to him, as well as to other learned and political men, +'good catholics and good men with no ordinary talent and information.' +'Nothing,' Mr. Gladstone once wrote in after years, 'ever so much made +me anglican <i>versus</i> Roman as reading in Döllinger over forty years ago +the history of the fourth century and Athanasius <i>contra mundum</i>.' Here +is his story to his wife:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Munich, Sept. 30, 1845</i>.—Yesterday evening after dinner with two +travelling companions, an Italian <i>negoziante</i> and a German, I must +needs go and have a shilling's worth of the Augsburg Opera, where +we heard Mozart (<i>Don Juan</i>) <i>well</i> played and very respectably +sung. To-day I have spent my evening differently, in tea and +infinite conversation with Dr. Döllinger, who is one of the first +among the Roman catholic theologians of Germany, a remarkable and a +very pleasing man. His manners have great simplicity and I am +astonished at the way in which a busy student such as he is can +receive an intruder. His appearance is, singular to say, just +compounded of those of two men who are among the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>most striking in +appearance of our clergy, Newman and Dr. Mill. He surprises me by +the extent of his information and the way in which he knows the +details of what takes place in England. Most of our conversation +related to it. He seemed to me one of the most liberal and catholic +in mind of all the persons of his communion whom I have known. +To-morrow I am to have tea with him again, and there is to be a +third, Dr. Görres, who is a man of eminence among them. Do not +think he has designs upon me. Indeed he disarms my suspicions in +that respect by what appears to me a great sincerity....</p></div> + +<p class="center">DR. DÖLLINGER</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Oct. 2</i>.—On Tuesday after post I began to look about me; and +though I have not seen all the sights of Munich I have certainly +seen a great deal that is interesting in the way of art, and having +spent a good deal of time in Dr. Döllinger's company, last night +till one o'clock, I have lost my heart to him. What I like perhaps +most, or what crowns other causes of liking towards him, is that +he, like Rio, seems to take hearty interest in the progress of +religion in the church of England, apart from the (so to speak) +party question between us, and to have a mind to appreciate good +wherever he can find it. For instance, when in speaking of Wesley I +said that his own views and intuitions were not heretical, and that +if the ruling power in our church had had energy and a right mind +to turn him to account, or if he had been in the church of Rome I +was about to add, he would then have been a great saint, or +something to that effect. But I hesitated, thinking it perhaps too +strong, and even presumptuous, but he took me up and used the very +words, declaring that to be his opinion. Again, speaking of +Archbishop Leighton he expressed great admiration of his piety, and +said it was so striking that he could not have been a real +Calvinist. He is a great admirer of England and English character, +and he does not at all <i>slur</i> over the mischief with which religion +has to contend in Germany. Lastly, I may be wrong, but I am +persuaded he in his mind abhors a great deal that is too frequently +taught in the church of Rome. Last night he spoke with such a +sentiment of the doctrine that was taught on the subject of +indulgences which moved Luther to resist them; and he said he +believed it was true that the preachers represented to the people +that by money payments they could procure the release<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> souls from +purgatory. I told him that was exactly the doctrine I had heard +preached in Messina, and he said a priest preaching so in Germany +would be suspended by his bishop.</p> + +<p>Last night he invited several of his friends whom I wanted to meet, +to an entertainment which consisted first of weak tea, immediately +followed by meat supper with beer and wine and sweets. For two +hours was I there in the midst of five German professors, or four, +and the editor of a paper, who held very interesting discussions; I +could only follow them in part, and enter into them still less, as +none of them (except Dr. D.) seemed to speak any tongue but their +own with any freedom, but you would have been amused to see and +hear them, and me in the midst. I never saw men who spoke together +in a way to make one another inaudible as they did, always +excepting Dr. Döllinger, who sat like Rogers, being as he is a much +more refined man than the rest. But of the others I assure you +always two, sometimes three, and once all four, were speaking at +once, very loud, each not trying to force the attention of the +others, but to be following the current of his own thoughts. One of +them was Dr. Görres,<a name="FNanchor_194_194" id="FNanchor_194_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a> who in the time of Napoleon edited a +journal that had a great effect in rousing Germany to arms. +Unfortunately he spoke more <i>thickly</i> than any of them.<a name="FNanchor_195_195" id="FNanchor_195_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_195_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a></p> + +<p>At Baden-Baden (October 16) he made the acquaintance of Mrs. +Craven, the wife of the secretary of the Stuttgart mission, and +authoress of the <i>Récit d'une Sœur</i>. Some of the personages of that +alluring book were of the company. 'I have drunk tea several times +at her house, and have had two or three long conversations with +them on matters of religion. They are excessively acute and also +full of Christian sentiment. But they are much more difficult to +make real way with than a professor of theology, because they are +determined (what is vulgarly called) to go the whole hog, just as +in England usually when you find a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> woman anti-popish in spirit, +she will push the argument against them to all extremes.'</p></div> + +<p class="center">FURTHER ADVANCE</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It was at the same time that he read Bunsen's book on the church. +'It is dismal,' he wrote home to Mrs. Gladstone, 'and I must write +to him to say so as kindly as I can.' Bunsen would seem all the +more dismal from the contrast with the spiritual graces of these +catholic ladies, and the ripe thinking and massive learning of one +who was still the great catholic doctor. At no time in Mr. +Gladstone's letters to Manning or to Hope is there a single +faltering accent in respect of Rome. The question is not for an +instant, or in any of his moods, open. He never doubts nor wavers. +None the less, these impressions of his German journey would rather +confirm than weaken his theological faith within the boundaries of +anglican form and institution. 'With my whole soul I am convinced,' +he says to Manning (June 23, 1850), 'that if the Roman system is +incapable of being powerfully modified in spirit, it never can be +the instrument of the work of God among us; the faults and the +virtues of England are alike against it.'</p></div> + +<p class="center">THE LADY HEWLEY CASE</p> + +<p>I need spend no time in pointing out how inevitably these new currents +drew Mr. Gladstone away from the old moorings of his first book. Even in +1844 he had parted company with the high ecclesiastical principles of +good tories like Sir Robert Inglis. Peel, to his great honour, in that +year brought in what Macaulay truly called 'an honest, an excellent +bill, introduced from none but the best and purest motives.' It arose +from a judicial decision in what was known as the Lady Hewley case, and +its object was nothing more revolutionary or latitudinarian than to +apply to Unitarian chapels the same principle of prescription that +protected gentlemen in the peaceful enjoyment of their estates and their +manor-houses. The equity of the thing was obvious. In 1779 parliament +had relieved protestant dissenting ministers from the necessity of +declaring their belief in certain church articles, including especially +those affecting the doctrine of the Trinity. In 1813 parliament had +repealed the act of William III. that made it blasphemy to deny that +doctrine. This legislation, rendered Unitarian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> foundations legal, and +the bill extended to unitarian congregations the same prescriptions as +covered the titles of other voluntary bodies to their places of worship, +their school-houses, and their burial-grounds. But what was thus a +question of property was treated as if it were a question of divinity; +'bigotry sought aid from chicane,' and a tremendous clamour was raised +by anglicans, wesleyans, presbyterians, not because they had an inch of +<i>locus standi</i> in the business, but because unitarianism was scandalous +heresy and sin. Follett made a masterly lawyer's speech, Sheil the +speech of a glittering orator, guarding unitarians by the arguments that +had (or perhaps I should say had not) guarded Irish catholics, Peel and +Gladstone made political speeches lofty and sound, and Macaulay the +speech of an eloquent scholar and a reasoner, manfully enforcing +principles both of law and justice with a luxuriance of illustration all +his own, from jurists of imperial Rome, sages of old Greece, Hindoos, +Peruvians, Mexicans, and tribunals beyond the Mississippi.<a name="FNanchor_196_196" id="FNanchor_196_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a> We do +not often enjoy such parliamentary nights in our time.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone supported the proposal on the broadest grounds of +unrestricted private judgment:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I went into the subject laboriously, he says, and satisfied myself +that this was not to be viewed as a mere quieting of titles based +on lapse of time, but that the unitarians were the true lawful +holders, because though they did not agree with the puritan +opinions they adhered firmly to the puritan principle, which was +that scripture was the rule without any binding interpretation, and +that each man, or body, or generation must interpret for himself. +This measure in some ways heightened my churchmanship, but +depressed my church-and-statesmanship.</p></div> + +<p>Far from feeling that there was any contrariety between his principles +of religious belief and those on which legislation in their case ought +to proceed, he said that the only use he could make of these principles +was to apply them to the decisive performance of a great and important +act, founded on the everlasting principles of truth and justice. Sheil,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> +who followed Mr. Gladstone, made a decidedly striking observation. He +declared how delighted he was to hear from such high authority that the +bill was perfectly reconcilable with the strictest and the sternest +principles of state conscience. 'I cannot doubt,' he continued, 'that +the right hon. gentleman, the champion of free trade, will ere long +become the advocate of the most unrestricted liberty of thought.' Time +was to justify Sheil's acute prediction. Unquestionably the line of +argument that suggested it was a great advance from the arguments of +1838, of which Macaulay had said that they would warrant the roasting of +dissenters at slow fires.</p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>In this vast field of human interest what engaged and inflamed him was +not in the main place that solicitude for personal salvation and +sanctification, which under sharp stress of argument, of pious +sensibility, of spiritual panic, now sent so many flocking into the +Roman fold. It was at bottom more like the passion of the great popes +and ecclesiastical master-builders, for strengthening and extending the +institutions by which faith is spread, its lamps trimmed afresh, its +purity secured. What wrung him with affliction was the laying waste of +the heritage of the Lord. 'The promise,' he cried, 'indeed stands sure +to the church and the elect. In the farthest distance there is peace, +truth, glory; but what a leap to it, over what a gulf.' For himself, the +old dilemma of his early years still tormented him. 'I wish,' he writes +to Manning (March 8, 1846) good humouredly, 'I could get a synodical +decision in favour of my retirement from public life. For, I profess to +remain there (to myself) for the service of the church, and my views of +the mode of serving her are getting so fearfully wide of those generally +current, that even if they be sound, they may become wholly +unavailable.' The question whether the service of the church can be most +effectually performed in parliament was incessantly present to his mind. +Manning pressed him in one direction, the inward voice drew him in the +other. 'I could write down in a few lines,' he says to Manning, 'the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> +measures, after the adoption of which I should be prepared to say to a +young man entering life, If you wish to serve the church do it in the +sanctuary, and not in parliament (unless he were otherwise determined by +his station, and not always then; it must depend upon his inward +vocation), and should not think it at all absurd to say the same thing +to some who have already placed themselves in this latter sphere. For +when the end is attained of letting “the church help herself,” and when +it is recognised that active help can no longer be given, the function +of serving the church in the state, such as it was according to the old +idea, dies of itself, and what remains of duty is of a character +essentially different.' Then a pregnant passage:—'It is the essential +change now in progress from the catholic to the infidel idea of the +state which is the determining element in my estimate of this matter, +and which has, I think, no place in yours. For I hold and believe that +when that transition has once been effected, the state never can come +back to the catholic idea by means of any agency from within itself: +that, if at all, it must be by a sort of re-conversion from without. I +am not of those (excellent as I think them) who say, Remain and bear +witness for the truth. There is a place where witness is ever to be +borne for truth, that is to say for full and absolute truth, but it is +not there.'<a name="FNanchor_197_197" id="FNanchor_197_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a></p> + +<p>He reproaches himself with being 'actively engaged in carrying on a +process of, lowering the religious tone of the state, letting it down, +demoralising it, and assisting in its transition into one which is +mechanical.' The objects that warrant public life in one in whose case +executive government must be an element, must be very special. True that +in all probability the church will hold her nationality in substance +beyond our day. 'I think she will hold it as long as the monarchy +subsists.' So long the church will need parliamentary defence, but in +what form? The dissenters had no members for universities, and yet their +real representation was far better organised in proportion to its weight +than the church, though formally not organised at all. 'Strength with +the people will for our day at least be the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> only effectual defence of +the church in the House of Commons, as the want of it is now our +weakness there. It is not everything that calls itself a defence that is +really such.'<a name="FNanchor_198_198" id="FNanchor_198_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_198_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a></p> + +<p class="center">HOPES FOR THE CHURCH</p> + +<p>Manning expressed a strong fear, amounting almost to a belief, that the +church of England must split asunder. 'Nothing can be firmer in my +mind,' Mr. Gladstone replied (Aug. 31, 1846), 'than the opposite idea. +She will live through her struggles, she has a great providential +destiny before her. Recollect that for a century and a half, a much +longer period than any for which puritan and catholic principles have +been in conflict within the church of England, Jansenist and +anti-Jansenist dwelt within the church of Rome with the unity of wolf +and lamb. Their differences were not absorbed by the force of the +church; they were in full vigour when the Revolution burst upon both. +Then the breach between nation and church became so wide as to make the +rivalries of the two church sections insignificant, and so to cause +their fusion.' Later, he thinks that he finds a truer analogy between +'the superstition and idolatry that gnaws and corrodes' the life of the +Roman church, and the puritanism that with at least as much countenance +from authority abides in the English church. There are two systems, he +says, in the English church vitally opposed to one another, and if they +were equally developed they could not subsist together in the same +sphere. If puritanical doctrines were the base of episcopal and +collegiate teaching, then the church must either split or become +heretical. As it is, the basis is on the whole anti-puritanic, and what +we should call catholic. The conflict may go on as now, and with a +progressive advance of the good principle against the bad one. 'That has +been on the whole the course of things during our lifetime, and to judge +from present signs it is the will of God that it should so continue.' +(Dec. 7, 1846.)</p> + +<p>The following to Mr. Phillimore sums up the case as he then believed it +to stand (June 24, 1847):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>... The church is now in a condition in which her children may and +must desire that she should keep her national position<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> and her +civil and proprietary rights, and that she should by degrees obtain +the means of extending and of strengthening herself, not only by +covering a greater space, but by a more vigorous organisation. Her +attaining to this state of higher health depends in no small degree +upon progressive adaptations of her state and her laws to her ever +enlarging exigencies; these depend upon the humour of the state, +and the state cannot and will not be in good humour with her, if +she insists upon its being in bad humour with all other communions.</p> + +<p>It seems to me, therefore, that while in substance we should all +strive to sustain her in her national position, we shall do well on +her behalf to follow these rules: to part earlier, and more freely +and cordially, than heretofore with such of her privileges, here +and there, as may be more obnoxious than really valuable, and some +such she has; and further, not to presume too much to give +directions to the state as to its policy with respect to other +religious bodies.... This is not political expediency as opposed to +religious principle. Nothing did so much damage to religion as the +obstinate adherence to a negative, repressive, and coercive course. +For a century and more from the Revolution it brought us nothing +but outwardly animosities and inwardly lethargy. The revival of a +livelier sense of duty and of God is now beginning to tell in the +altered policy of the church.... As her sense of her spiritual work +rises, she is becoming less eager to assert her exclusive claim, +leaving that to the state as a matter for itself to decide; and she +also begins to forego more readily, but cautiously, her external +prerogatives.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a> Some proceedings, I think, of Mr. Disraeli and his Young England +friends.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a> Chapter of Autobiography: <i>Gleanings</i>, vii. pp. 142-3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a> On Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge—Tracts 80 and 87. +(1837-40). With the ominous and in every sense un-English +superscription, <i>Ad Clerum</i>. Isaac Williams was the author.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_184_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a> <i>Life of Shaftesbury</i>, i. p. 377. There is a letter from Bunsen +(p. 373), in which he exclaims how wonderful it is 'that the +great-grandson of Anthony Earl of Shaftesbury, the friend of Voltaire, +should write thus to the great-grandson of Frederick the Great, the +admirer of both.' But not more wonderful than Bunsen forgetting that +Frederick had no children.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_185_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a> See <i>Memoirs of J. R. Hope-Scott</i>, i. chapters 15-17. <i>Apologia</i>, +chapter 3, <i>ad fin</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_186_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a><i>Story of Dr. Pusey's Life</i>, p. 227.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_187_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a> This letter of October 28 is in Purcell, <i>Manning</i>, i. p. 242.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_188_188" id="Footnote_188_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188_188"><span class="label">[188]</span></a> Mr. Gladstone to Dr. Hook, Jan. 30. '47.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_189_189" id="Footnote_189_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_189_189"><span class="label">[189]</span></a> It was on the fifth of November, a week after this correspondence, +that Manning preached the Guy Fawkes sermon which caused Newman to send +J. A. Froude to the door to tell Manning that he was 'not at +home.'—Purcell, i. pp. 245-9.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_190_190" id="Footnote_190_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_190_190"><span class="label">[190]</span></a> For a full account of this book and its consequences the reader +will always consult chapters xi., xii., and xiii., of Mr. Wilfrid Ward's +admirably written work, <i>William George Ward and the Oxford Movement</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_191_191" id="Footnote_191_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_191_191"><span class="label">[191]</span></a> It was in the midst of these laborious employments that Mr. +Gladstone published a prayer-book, compiled for family use, from the +anglican liturgy. An edition of two thousand copies went off at once, +and was followed by many editions more.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_192_192" id="Footnote_192_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_192_192"><span class="label">[192]</span></a> <i>William George Ward</i>, p. 332.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_193_193" id="Footnote_193_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_193_193"><span class="label">[193]</span></a> The story is told in Purcell, <i>Manning</i>, i. p. 318.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_194_194" id="Footnote_194_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_194_194"><span class="label">[194]</span></a> Joseph Görres, one of the most famous of European publicists and +gazetteers between the two revolutionary epochs of 1789 and 1848. His +journal was the <i>Rhine Mercury</i>, where the doctrine of a free and united +Germany was preached (1814-16) with a force that made Napoleon call the +newspaper a fifth great power. In times Görres became a vehement +ultramontane.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_195_195" id="Footnote_195_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_195_195"><span class="label">[195]</span></a> See Friedrich's <i>Life of Döllinger</i>, ii. pp. 222-226, for a letter +from Döllinger to Mr. Gladstone after his visit, dated Nov. 15, 1845.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_196_196" id="Footnote_196_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_196_196"><span class="label">[196]</span></a> <i>Hansard</i>, June 6, 1844.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_197_197" id="Footnote_197_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_197_197"><span class="label">[197]</span></a> To Manning, April 5, 1846.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_198_198" id="Footnote_198_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_198_198"><span class="label">[198]</span></a> To Manning, April 19, 1846.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h4><a name="Book_III" id="Book_III"></a>Book III</h4> + +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> + +<p class="center"><i>1847-1852</i></p> + +<h2><a name="BkIIICh_I" id="BkIIICh_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> + +<p class="center">MEMBER FOR OXFORD</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1847</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>There is not a feature or a point in the national character which +has made England great among the nations of the world, that is not +strongly developed and plainly traceable in our universities. For +eight hundred or a thousand years they have been intimately +associated with everything that has concerned the highest interests +of the country.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span>.</p></div><br /> + +<p>In 1847 the fortunes of a general election brought Mr. Gladstone into +relations that for many years to come deeply affected his political +course. As a planet's orbit has puzzled astronomers until they discover +the secret of its irregularities in the attraction of an unseen and +unsuspected neighbour in the firmament, so some devious motions of this +great luminary of ours were perturbations due in fact to the influence +of his new constituency. As we have seen, Mr. Gladstone quitted Newark +when he entered the cabinet to repeal the corn law. At the end of 1846, +writing to Lord Lyttelton from Fasque, he tells him: 'I wish to be in +parliament but coldly; feeling at the same time that I ought to wish it +warmly on many grounds. But my father is so very keen in his protective +opinions, and I am so very decidedly of the other way of thinking, that +I look forward with some reluctance and regret to what must, when it +happens, place me in marked and public contrast with him.' The thing +soon happened.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I remained, he says, without a seat until the dissolution in June +1847. But several months before this occurred it had become known +that Mr. Estcourt would vacate his seat for Oxford, and I became a +candidate. It was a serious campaign. The constituency, much to its +honour, did not stoop to fight the battle on the ground of +protection. But it was fought, and that fiercely, on religious +grounds. There was an incessant discussion, and I may say +dissection, of my character and position in reference to the Oxford +movement. This cut very deep, for it was a discussion which each +member of the constituency was entitled to carry on for himself. +The upshot was favourable. The liberals supported me gallantly, so +did many zealous churchmen, apart from politics, and a good number +of moderate men, so that I was returned by a fair majority. I held +the seat for eighteen years, but with five contests and a final +defeat.</p></div> + +<p>The other sitting member after the retirement of Mr. Estcourt was Sir +Robert Harry Inglis, who had beaten Peel by a very narrow majority in +the memorable contest for the university seat on the final crisis of the +catholic question in 1829. He was blessed with a genial character and an +open and happy demeanour; and the fact that he was equipped with a full +store of sincere and inexorable prejudices made it easy for him to be +the most upright, honourable, kindly, and consistent of political men. +Repeal of the Test acts, relief of the catholics, the Reform bill, +relief of the Jews, reform of the Irish church, the grant to Maynooth, +the repeal of the corn laws—one after another he had stoutly resisted +the whole catalogue of revolutionising change. So manful a record made +his seat safe. In the struggle for the second seat, Mr. Gladstone's +friends encountered first Mr. Cardwell, a colleague of his as secretary +of the treasury in the late government. Cardwell was deep in the +confidence and regard of Sir Robert Peel, and he earned in after years +the reputation of an honest and most capable administrator; but in these +earlier days the ill-natured called him Peel-and-water, others labelled +him latitudinarian and indifferent, and though he had the support of +Peel, promised before Mr. Gladstone's name as candidate was announced, +he thought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> it wise at a pretty early hour to withdraw from a triangular +fight. The old high-and-dry party and the evangelical party combined to +bring out Mr. Round. If he had achieved no sort of distinction, Mr. +Round had at least given no offence: above all, he had kept clear of all +those tractarian innovations which had been finally stamped with the +censure of the university two years before.</p> + +<p class="center">OXFORD SUPPORTERS</p> + +<p>Charles Wordsworth, his old tutor and now warden of Glenalmond, found it +hard to give Mr. Gladstone his support, because he himself held to the +high principle of state conscience, while the candidate seemed more than +ever bent on the rival doctrine of social justice. Mr. Hallam joined his +committee, and what that learned veteran's adhesion was in influence +among older men, that of Arthur Clough was among the younger. Northcote +described Clough to Mr. Gladstone as a very favourable specimen of a +class, growing in numbers and importance among the younger Oxford men, a +friend of Carlyle's, Frank Newman's, and others of that stamp; well read +in German literature and an admirer of German intellect, but also a +still deeper admirer of Dante; just now busily taking all his opinions +to pieces and not beginning to put them together again; but so earnest +and good that he might be trusted to work them into something better +than his friends inclined to fear. Ruskin, again, who had the year +before published the memorable second volume of his <i>Modern Painters</i> +(he was still well under thirty), was on the right side, and the Oxford +chairman is sure that Mr. Gladstone will appreciate at its full value +the support of such high personal merit and extraordinary natural +genius. Scott, the learned Grecian who had been beaten along with Mr. +Gladstone in the contest for the Ireland scholarship seventeen years +before, wrote to him:—'Ever since the time when you and I received +Strypes at the hand of the vice-chancellor, and so you became my</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 20em;">'ὁμομαστιγίας</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">λαβὼν ἀγῶνος τὰς ἴσας πληγὰς ἐμοὶ,'<a name="FNanchor_199_199" id="FNanchor_199_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_199_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>I have looked forward to your being the representative of the +university.' Richard Greswell of Worcester was the faithful chairman of +his Oxford committee now and to the end, eighteen years off. He had +reached the dignity of a bachelor of divinity, but nearly all the rest +were no more than junior masters.</p> + +<p>Routh, the old president of Magdalen, declined to vote for him on the +well-established ground that Christ Church had no business to hold both +seats. Mr. Gladstone at once met this by the dexterous proposition that +though Christ Church was not entitled to elect him against the wish of +the other colleges, yet the other colleges were entitled to elect him if +they liked, by giving him a majority not made up of Christ Church votes. +His eldest brother had written to tell him in terms of affectionate +regret, that he could take no part in the election; mere political +differences would be secondary, but in the case of a university, +religion came first, and there it was impossible to separate a candidate +from his religious opinions. When the time came, however, partly under +strong pressure from Sir John, Thomas Gladstone took a more lenient view +and gave his brother a vote.</p> + +<p>The Round men pointed triumphantly to their hero's votes on Maynooth and +on the Dissenters' Chapels bill, and insisted on the urgency of +upholding the principles of the united church of England and Ireland in +their full integrity. The backers of Mr. Gladstone retorted by recalling +their champion's career; how in 1834 he first made himself known by his +resistance to the admission of dissenters to the universities; how in +1841 he threw himself into the first general move for the increase of +the colonial episcopate, which had resulted in the erection of eleven +new sees in six years; how zealously with energy and money he had +laboured for a college training for the episcopalian clergy in Scotland; +how instrumental he was in 1846, during the few months for which he held +the seals of secretary of state, in erecting four colonial bishoprics; +how the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, through the mouth of +the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, had thanked him for his services; +how long he had been an active supporter of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> great societies for the +spread of church principles, the propagation of church doctrines, and +the erection of church fabrics. As for the Dissenters' Chapels bill, it +was an act of simple justice and involved no principles at issue between +the church and dissent, and Mr. Gladstone's masterly exposition of the +tendency of dissent to drop one by one all the vital truths of +Christianity was proclaimed to be a real service to the church. The +reader will thus see the lie of the land, what it meant to be member for +a university, and why Mr. Gladstone thought the seat the highest of +electoral prizes.</p> + +<p class="center">THE CONTEST</p> + +<p>A circular was issued impugning his position on protestant grounds. 'I +humbly trust,' wrote Mr. Gladstone in reply (July 26), 'that its writers +are not justified in exhibiting me to the world as a person otherwise +than heartily devoted to the doctrine and constitution of our reformed +church. But I will never consent to adopt as the test of such doctrine, +a disposition to identify the great and noble cause of the church of +England with the restraint of the civil rights of those who differ from +her.' Much was made of Mr. Gladstone's refusal to vote for the +degradation of Ward. People wrote to the newspapers that it was an +admitted and notorious fact that a sister of Mr. Gladstone's under his +own influence had gone over to the church of Rome.<a name="FNanchor_200_200" id="FNanchor_200_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_200_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a> The fable was +retracted, but at once revived in the still grosser untruth, that he +habitually employed 'a Jesuitical system of argument' to show that +nobody need leave the church of England, 'because all might be had there +that was to be enjoyed in the church of Rome.' Maurice published a +letter to a London clergyman vigorously remonstrating against the +bigoted spirit that this election was warming into life, and fervently +protesting against making a belief in the Nicene creed into the same +thing as an opinion about a certain way of treating the property of +unitarians. 'One artifice of this kind,' said Maurice, 'has been +practised in this election which it makes me blush to speak of. Mr. Ward +called the reformation a vile and accursed thing; Mr. Gladstone voted +against a certain measure for the condemnation of Mr. Ward; therefore he +spoke of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> reformation as a vile and accursed thing. I should not +have believed it possible that such a conclusion had been drawn from +such premisses even by our religious press.'</p> + +<p>The worthy Mr. Round, on the other hand, was almost impregnable. A +diligent scrutiny at last dragged the dark fact to the light of day, +that he had actually sat on Peel's election committee at the time of +catholic emancipation in 1829, and had voted for him against Inglis. So +it appears, said the mocking Gladstonians, that the protestant Mr. Round +'was willing to lend a helping hand to the first of a series of measures +which are considered by his supporters as fraught with danger to the +country's very best interests.' A still more sinister rumour was next +bruited abroad: that Mr. Round attended a dissenting place of worship, +and he was constrained to admit that, once in 1845 and thrice in 1846, +he had been guilty of this blacksliding. The lost ground, however, was +handsomely recovered by a public declaration that the very rare +occasions on which he had been present at other modes of Christian +worship had only confirmed his affection and reverential attachment to +the services and formularies of his own church.</p> + +<p class="center">VICTORY AT THE POLL</p> + +<p>The nomination was duly made in the Sheldonian theatre (July 29), the +scene of so many agitations in these fiery days. Inglis was proposed by +a canon of Christ Church, Round by the master of Balliol, and Gladstone +by Dr. Richards, the rector of Exeter. The prime claim advanced for him +by his proposer, was his zeal for the English church in word and deed, +above all his energy in securing that wherever the English church went, +thither bishoprics should go too. Besides all this, his master work, he +had found time to spare not only for public business of the +commonwealth, but for the study of theology, philosophy, and the +arts.<a name="FNanchor_201_201" id="FNanchor_201_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> Then the voting began. The Gladstonians went into the battle +with 1100 promises. Northcote,<a name="FNanchor_202_202" id="FNanchor_202_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a> passing vigilant days in the +convocation house, sent daily reports to Mr. Gladstone at Fasque. Peel +went up to vote for him (splitting for Inglis); Ashley went up to vote +against him. At the close of the second day things looked well, but +there was no ground for over-confidence. Inglis was six hundred ahead of +Gladstone, and Gladstone only a hundred and twenty ahead of Round. The +next day Round fell a little more behind, and when the end came (August +3) the figures stood:—Inglis 1700, Gladstone 997, Round 824, giving +Gladstone a majority of 173 over his competitor.</p> + +<p>Numbers were not the only important point. When the poll came to be +analysed by eager statisticians, the decision of the electors was found +to have a weight not measured by an extra hundred and seventy votes. For +example, Mr. Gladstone had among his supporters twenty-five +double-firsts against seven for Round, and of single first-classes he +had one hundred and fifty-seven against Round's sixty-six. Of Ireland +and Hertford scholars Mr. Gladstone had nine to two and three to one +respectively; and of chancellor's prizemen who voted he had forty-five +against twelve. Of fellows of colleges he had two hundred and eighteen +against one hundred and twenty-eight, and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> majority in this class +was highest where the elections to fellowships were open. The heads of +the colleges told a different tale. Of these, sixteen voted for Round +and only four for Gladstone. This discrepancy it was that gave its +significance to the victory. Sitting in the convocation house watching +the last casual voters drop in at the rate of two or three an hour +through the summer afternoon, the ever faithful Northcote wrote to Mr. +Gladstone at Fasque:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Since I have been here, the contest has seemed even more +interesting than it did in London. The effect of the contest itself +has apparently been good. It has brought together the younger men +without distinction of party, and has supplied the elements of a +very noble party which will now look to you as a leader. I think +men of all kinds are prepared to trust you, and though each feels +that you will probably differ from his set in some particulars, +each seems disposed to waive objections for the sake of the general +good he expects....</p> + +<p>The victory is not looked upon as 'Puseyite'; it is a victory of +the masters over the Hebdomadal board, and as such a very important +one. The Heads felt it their last chance, and are said to have +expressed themselves accordingly. The provost of Queen's, who is +among the dissatisfied supporters of Round, said the other day, 'He +would rather be represented by an old woman than by a young man.' +It is not as a Maynoothian that you are dreaded here, though they +use the cry against you and though that is the country feeling, but +as a possible reformer and a man who thinks. On the other hand, the +young men exult, partly in the hope that you will do something for +the university yourself, partly in the consciousness that they have +shown the strength of the magisterial party by carrying you against +the opposition of the Heads, and have proved their title to be +considered an important element of the university. They do not seem +yet to be sufficiently united to effect great things, but there is +a large amount of ability and earnestness which only wants +direction, and this contest has tended to unite them. 'Puseyism' +seems rather to be a name of the past, though there are still +Puseyites of importance. Marriott, Mozley, and Church appear to be +regarded as leaders; but Church who is now abroad, is looked upon +as something more, and I am <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>told may be considered on the whole +the fairest exponent of the feelings of the place. Stanley, Jowett, +Temple, and others are great names in what is nicknamed the +Germanising party. Lake, and perhaps I should say Temple, hold an +intermediate position between the two parties.... Whatever may have +been the evils attendant on the Puseyite movement, and I believe +they were neither few nor small, it has been productive of great +results; and it is not a little satisfactory to see how its +distinctive features are dying away and the spirit surviving, +instead of the spirit departing and leaving a great sham behind it.</p></div> + +<p class="center">PECULIARITY OF ELECTION</p> + +<p>Of the many strange positions to which in his long and ardent life Mr. +Gladstone was brought, none is more startling than to find him, as in +this curious moment at Oxford, the common rallying-point of two +violently antagonistic sections of opinion. Dr. Pusey supported him; +Stanley and Jowett supported him. The old school who looked on Oxford as +the ancient and peculiar inheritance of the church were zealous for him; +the new school who deemed the university an organ not of the church but +of the nation, eagerly took him for their champion. A great +ecclesiastical movement, reviving authority and tradition, had ended in +complete academic repulse in 1845. It was now to be followed by an +anti-ecclesiastical movement, critical, sceptical, liberal, scornful of +authority, doubtful of tradition. Yet both the receding force and the +rising force united to swell the stream that bore Mr. Gladstone to +triumph at the poll. The fusion did not last. The two bands speedily +drew off into their rival camps, to arm themselves in the new conflict +for mastery between obscurantism and illumination. The victor was left +with his laurels in what too soon proved to be, after all, a vexed and +precarious situation, that he could neither hold with freedom nor quit +with honour.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile he thoroughly enjoyed his much coveted distinction:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;"><i>To Mrs. Gladstone</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Exeter Coll., Nov. 2, 1847</i>.—This morning in company with Sir R. +Inglis, and under the protection or chaperonage of the dean, I have +made the formal circuit of visits to all the heads of houses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> and +all the common-rooms. It has gone off very well. There was but one +reception by a head (Corpus) that was not decidedly <i>kind</i>, and +that was only a little cold. Marsham (Merton), who is a frank, warm +man, keenly opposed, said very fairly, to Inglis, 'I congratulate +you warmly'; and then to me, 'And I would be very glad to do the +same to you, Mr. Gladstone, if I could think you would do the same +as Sir R. Inglis.' I like a man for this. They say the dean should +have asked me to dine to-day, but I think he may be, and perhaps +wisely, afraid of recognising me in any very marked way, for fear +of endangering the old Christ Church right to one seat which it is +his peculiar duty to guard.</p> + +<p>We dined yesterday in the hall at Christ Church, it being a grand +day there. Rather unfortunately the undergraduates chose to make a +row in honour of me during dinner, which the two censors had to run +all down the hall to stop. This had better not be talked about. +Thursday the warden of All Souls' has asked me and I <i>think</i> I must +accept; had it not been a head (and it is one of the little party +of four who voted for me) I should not have doubted, but at once +have declined.</p></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_199_199" id="Footnote_199_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_199_199"><span class="label">[199]</span></a> <i>Frogs</i>, 756; the second line is Scott's own. An Aristophanic +friend translates:— +</p> +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">'Good brother-rogue, we've shared the selfsame beating:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">At least, we carried off one Strype apiece.'</span><br /> +</p> +<p> +Strype was the book given to Scott and Gladstone as being good seconds +to the winner of the Ireland.<a href="#Page_61">See above p. 61.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_200_200" id="Footnote_200_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_200_200"><span class="label">[200]</span></a> <i>Standard</i>, May 29, 1847.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_201_201" id="Footnote_201_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_201_201"><span class="label">[201]</span></a> The proposer's Latin is succinct, and may be worth giving for its +academic flavour:—'Jam inde a pueritia literarum studio imbutus, et in +celeberrimo Etonensi gymnasio informatus, ad nostram accessit academiam, +ubi morum honestate, pietate, et pudore nemini æqualium secundus, indole +et ingenio facile omnibus antecellebat. Summis deinde nostræ academiæ +honoribus cumulatus ad res civiles cum magnâ omnium expectatione se +contulit; expectatione tamen major omni evasit. In senatûs enim domum +inferiorem cooptatus, eam ad negotia tractanda habilitatem, et ingenii +perspicacitatem exhibebat, ut reipublicæ administrationis particeps et +adjutor adhuc adolescens fieret. Quantum erga ecclesiam Anglicanam ejus +studium non verba, sed facta, testentur. Is enim erat qui inter primos +et perpaucos summo labore et eloquentiâ contendebat, ut ubicunque orbis +terrarum ecclesia Anglicana pervenisset, episcopatus quoque eveheretur. +Et quamdiu e secretis Reginæ fuit, ecclesia Anglicana apud colonos +nostros plurimis locis labefactam suâ ope stabilivit, et patrocinium +ejus suscepit. Neque vero publicis negotiis adeo se dedit quin +theologiæ, philosophiæ, artium studio vacaret. Quæ cum ita sint, si +delegatum, Academici, cooptare velimus, qui cum omni laude idem nostris +rebus decus et tutamen sit, et qui summa eloquentiæ et argumenti vi, +jura et libertates nostras tueri queat, hunc hodie suffragiis nostris +comprobemus.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_202_202" id="Footnote_202_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_202_202"><span class="label">[202]</span></a> Stafford Northcote had been private secretary to Mr. Gladstone at +the board of trade. On the appointment of his first private secretary, +Mr. Rawson, to a post in Canada in 1842, Mr. Gladstone applied to +Coleridge of Eton to recommend a successor. He suggested three names, +Farrer, afterwards Lord Farrer, Northcote, and Pocock. Northcote, who +looked to a political career, was chosen. 'Mr. Gladstone,' he wrote to a +friend, June 30, 1842, 'is the man of all others among the statesmen of +the present day to whom I should desire to attach myself.... He is one +whom I respect beyond measure; he stands almost alone as representative +of principles with which I cordially agree; and as a man of business, +and one who humanly speaking is sure to rise, he is preeminent.'—Lang's +<i>Life of Lord Iddesleigh</i>, i. pp. 63-67.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> + +<p class="center"><a name="image-4" id="image-4"><!-- Image 4 --></a> +<img src="images/illus-345.jpg" height="435" width="640" alt="HAWARDEN CASTLE" /></p> +<p class="center"><a href="#ILLUSTRATIONS">Click to return to List of Illustrations</a></p> + +<h2><a name="BkIIICh_II" id="BkIIICh_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">THE HAWARDEN ESTATE</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1847</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It is no Baseness for the Greatest to descend and looke into their +owne Estate. Some forbeare it, not upon Negligence alone, But +doubting to bring themselves into Melancholy in respect they shall +finde it Broken. But wounds cannot be cured without Searching. Hee +that cleareth by Degrees induceth a habit of Frugalitie, and +gaineth as well upon his Minde, as upon his Estate.—<span class="smcap">Bacon</span>.</p></div> +<br /> +<p>I must here pause for material affairs of money and business, with +which, as a rule, in the case of its heroes the public is considered to +have little concern. They can no more be altogether omitted here than +the bills, acceptances, renewals, notes of hand, and all the other +financial apparatus of his printers and publishers can be left out of +the story of Sir Walter Scott. Not many pages will be needed, though +this brevity will give the reader little idea of the pre-occupations +with which they beset a not inconsiderable proportion of Mr. Gladstone's +days. A few sentences in a biography many a time mean long chapters in a +life, and what looked like an incident turns out to be an epoch.</p> + +<p>Sir Stephen Glynne possessed a small property in Staffordshire of +something less than a hundred acres of land, named the Oak Farm, near +Stourbridge, and under these acres were valuable seams of coal and +ironstone. For this he refused an offer of five-and-thirty thousand +pounds in 1835, and under the advice of an energetic and sanguine agent +proceeded to its rapid development. On the double marriage in 1839, Sir +Stephen associated his two brothers-in-law with himself to the modest +extent of one-tenth share each in an enterprise that seemed of high +prospective value. Their interests were acquired through their wives, +and it is to be presumed that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> they had no opportunity of making a +personal examination of the concern. The adventurous agent, now +manager-in-chief of the business, rapidly extended operations, setting +up furnaces, forges, rolling-mills, and all the machinery for producing +tools and hardware for which he foresaw a roaring foreign market. The +agent's confidence and enthusiasm mastered his principal, and large +capital was raised solely on the security of the Hawarden fortune and +credit. Whether Oak Farm was irrationally inflated or not, we cannot +say, though the impression is that it had the material of a sound +property if carefully worked; but it was evidently pushed in excess of +its realisable capital. The whole basis of its credit was the Hawarden +estate, and a forced stoppage of Oak Farm would be the death-blow to +Hawarden. As early as 1844 clouds rose on the horizon. The position of +Sir Stephen Glynne had become seriously compromised, while under the +system of unlimited partnership the liability of his two brothers-in-law +extended in proportion. In 1845 the three brothers-in-law by agreement +retired, each retaining an equitable mortgage on the concern. Two years +later, one of our historic panics shook the money-market, and in its +course brought down Oak Farm.<a name="FNanchor_203_203" id="FNanchor_203_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_203_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a> A great accountant reported, a +meeting was held at Freshfield's, the company was found hopelessly +insolvent, and it was determined to wind up. The court directed a sale. +In April 1849, at Birmingham, Mr. Gladstone purchased the concern on +behalf of himself and his two brothers-in-law, subject to certain +existing interests; and in May Sir Stephen Glynne resumed legal +possession of the wreck of Oak Farm. The burden on Hawarden was over +£250,000, leaving its owner with no margin to live upon.</p> + +<p>Into this far-spreading entanglement Mr. Gladstone for several years +threw himself with the whole weight of his untiring tenacity and force. +He plunged into masses of accounts, mastered the coil of interests and +parties, studied legal intricacies, did daily battle with human +unreason, and year after year carried on a voluminous correspondence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">OAK FARM</p> + +<p>There are a hundred and forty of his letters to Mr. Freshfield on Oak +Farm alone. Let us note in passing what is, I think, a not unimportant +biographic fact. These circumstances brought him into close and +responsible contact with a side of the material interests of the country +that was new to him. At home he had been bred in the atmosphere of +commerce. At the board of trade, in the reform of the tariff, in +connection with the Bank act and in the growth of the railway system, he +had been well trained in high economics. Now he came to serve an arduous +apprenticeship in the motions and machinery of industrial life. The +labour was immense, prolonged, uncongenial; but it completed his +knowledge of the customs, rules, maxims, and currents of trade and it +bore good fruit in future days at the exchequer. He manfully and +deliberately took up the burden as if the errors had been his own, and +as if the financial sacrifice that he was called to make both now and +later were matter of direct and inexorable obligation. These, indeed, +are the things in life that test whether a man be made of gold or clay. +'The weight,' he writes to his father (June 16, 1849), 'of the private +demands upon my mind has been such, since the Oak Farm broke down, as +frequently to disqualify me for my duties in the House of Commons.' The +load even tempted him, along with the working of other considerations, +to think of total withdrawal from parliament and public life. Yet +without a trace of the frozen stoicism or cynical apathy that sometimes +passes muster for true resignation, he kept himself nobly free from +vexation, murmur, repining, and complaint. Here is a moving passage from +a letter of the time to Mrs. Gladstone:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Fasque, Jan. 20, 1849</i>.—Do not suppose for a moment that if I +could by waving my hand strike out for ever from my cares and +occupations those which relate to the Oak Farm and Stephen's +affairs, I would do so; I have never felt that, have never asked +it; and if my language seems to look that way, it is the mere +impatience of weakness comforting itself by finding a vent. It has +evidently come to me by the ordinance of God; and I am rather +frightened to think how light my lot would be, were it removed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> so +light that something else would surely come in its place. I do not +confound it with visitations and afflictions; it is merely a drain +on strength and a peculiar one, because it asks for a kind of +strength and skill and habits which I have not, but it falls +altogether short of the category of high trials. Least of all +suppose that the subject can ever associate itself painfully with +the idea of you. No persons who have been in contact with it can be +so absolutely blameless as you and Mary, nor can <i>our</i> relation +together be rendered in the very smallest degree less or more a +blessing by the addition or the subtraction of worldly wealth. I +have abundant comfort <i>now</i> in the thought that at any rate I am +the means of keeping a load off the minds of others; and I shall +have much more hereafter when Stephen is brought through, and once +more firmly planted in the place of his fathers, provided I can +conscientiously feel that the restoration of his affairs has at any +rate not been impeded by indolence, obstinacy, or blunders on my +part. Nor can anything be more generous than the confidence placed +in me by all concerned. Indeed, I can only regret that it is too +free and absolute.</p></div> + +<p class="center">LETTER TO HIS SON</p> + +<p>I may as well now tell the story to the end, though in anticipation of +remote dates, for in truth it held a marked place in Mr. Gladstone's +whole life, and made a standing background amid the vast throng of +varying interests and transient commotions of his great career. Here is +his own narrative as told in a letter written to his eldest son for a +definite purpose in 1885:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><i>To W. H. Gladstone</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Hawarden, Oct. 3, 1885</i>.—Down to the latter part of that year +(1847), your uncle Stephen was regarded by all as a wealthy country +gentleman with say £10,000 a year or more (subject, however, to his +mother's jointure) to spend, and great prospects from iron in a +Midland estate. In the bank crisis of that year the whole truth was +revealed; and it came out that his agent at the Oak Farm (and +formerly also at Hawarden) had involved him to the extent of +£250,000; to say nothing of minor blows to your uncle Lyttelton and +myself.</p> + +<p>At a conversation in the library of 13 Carlton House Terrace, it +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>was considered whether Hawarden should be sold. Every obvious +argument was in favour of it, for example the comparison between +the income and the liabilities I have named. How was Lady Glynne's +jointure (£2500) to be paid? How was Sir Stephen to be supported? +There was <i>no</i> income, even less than none. Oak Farm, the iron +property, was under lease to an insolvent company, and could not be +relied on. Your grandfather, who had in some degree surveyed the +state of affairs, thought the case was hopeless. But the family +were unanimously set upon making any and every effort and sacrifice +to avoid the necessity of sale. Mr. Barker, their lawyer, and Mr. +Burnett, the land agent, entirely sympathised; and it was resolved +to persevere. But the first effect was that Sir Stephen had to +close the house (which it was hoped, but hoped in vain, to let); to +give up carriages, horses, and I think for several years his +personal servant; and to take an allowance of £700 a year out of +which, I believe, he continued to pay the heavy subvention of the +family to the schools of the parish, which was certainly counted by +hundreds. Had the estate been sold, it was estimated that he would +have come out a wealthy bachelor, possessed of from a hundred to a +hundred and twenty thousands pounds free from all encumbrance but +the jointure.</p> + +<p>In order to give effect to the nearly hopeless resolution thus +taken at the meeting in London, it was determined to clip the +estate by selling £200,000 worth of land. Of this, nearly one-half +was to be taken by your uncle Lyttelton and myself, in the +proportion of about two parts for me and one for him. Neither of us +had the power to buy this, but my father enabled me, and Lord +Spencer took over his portion. The rest of the sales were effected, +a number of fortunate secondary incidents occurred, and the great +business of recovering and realising from the Oak Farm was +laboriously set about.</p> + +<p>Considerable relief was obtained by these and other measures. By +1852, there was a partial but perceptible improvement in the +position. The house was reopened in a very quiet way by +arrangement, and the allowance for Sir Stephen's expenditure was +rather more than doubled. But there was nothing like ease for him +until the purchase of the reversion was effected by me in 1865. I +paid £57,000 for the bulk of the property, subject to debts not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> +exceeding £150,000, and after the lives of the two brothers, the +table value of which was, I think, twenty-two and a-half years. +From this time your uncle had an income to spend of, I think, +£2200, or not more than half what he probably would have had since +1847 had the estate been sold, which it would only have been +through the grievous fault of others.</p> + +<p>The full process of recovery was still incomplete, but the means of +carrying it forward were now comparatively simple. Since the +reversion came in, I have, as you know, forwarded that process; but +it has been retarded by agricultural depression and by the +disastrous condition through so many years of coal-mining; so that +there still remains a considerable work to be done before the end +can be attained, which I hope will never be lost sight of, namely, +that of extinguishing the debt upon the property, though for family +purposes the estate may still remain subject to charges in the way +of annuity.</p> + +<p>The full history of the Hawarden estate from 1847 would run to a +volume. For some years after 1847, it and the Oak Farm supplied my +principal employment<a name="FNanchor_204_204" id="FNanchor_204_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a>; but I was amply repaid by the value of +it a little later on as a home, and by the unbroken domestic +happiness there enjoyed. What I think you will see, as clearly +resulting from this narrative, is the high obligation not only to +keep the estate in the family, and as I trust in its natural course +of descent, but to raise it to the best condition by thrift and +care, and to promote by all reasonable means the aim of diminishing +and finally extinguishing its debt.</p> + +<p>This I found partly on a high estimate of the general duty to +promote the permanence of families having estates in land, but very +specially on the sacrifices made, through his remaining +twenty-seven years of life, by your uncle Stephen, without a +murmur, and with the concurrence of us all....</p> + +<p>Before closing I will repair one omission. When I concurred in the +decision to struggle for the retention of Hawarden, I had not the +least idea that my children would have an interest in the +succession. In 1847 your uncle Stephen was only forty; your uncle +Henry, at thirty-seven, was married, and had a child almost <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>every +year. It was not until 1865 that I had any title to look forward to +your becoming at a future time the proprietor.—Ever your +affectionate father.</p></div> + +<p class="center">FINAL SETTLEMENT</p> + +<p>The upshot is this, that Mr. Gladstone, with his father's consent and +support, threw the bulk of his own fortune into the assets of Hawarden. +By this, and the wise realisation of everything convertible to +advantage, including, in 1865, the reversion after the lives of Sir +Stephen Glynne and his brother, he succeeded in making what was left of +Hawarden solvent. His own expenditure from first to last upon the +Hawarden estate as now existing, he noted at £267,000. 'It has been for +thirty-five years,' he wrote to W. H. Gladstone in 1882, '<i>i.e.</i>, since +the breakdown in 1847, a great object of my life, in conjunction with +your mother and your uncle Stephen, to keep the Hawarden estate together +(or replace what was alienated), to keep it in the family, and to +relieve it from debt with which it was ruinously loaded.'</p> + +<p>In 1867 a settlement was made, to which Sir Stephen Glynne and his +brother, and Mr. Gladstone and his wife, were the parties, by which the +estate was conveyed in trust for one or more of the Gladstone children +as Mr. Gladstone might appoint.<a name="FNanchor_205_205" id="FNanchor_205_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a> This was subject to a power of +determining the settlement by either of the Glynne brothers, on repaying +with interest the sum paid for the reversion. As the transaction touched +matters in which he might be supposed liable to bias, Mr. Gladstone +required that its terms should be referred to two men of perfect +competence and probity—Lord Devon and Sir Robert Phillimore—for their +judgment and approval. Phillimore visited Hawarden (August 19-26, 1865) +to meet Lord Devon, and to confer with him upon Sir Stephen Glynne's +affairs. Here are a couple of entries from his diary:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Aug. 26</i>.—The whole morning was occupied with the investigation +of S. G.'s affairs by Lord Devon and myself. We examined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> at some +length the solicitor and the agent. Lord D. and I perfectly agreed +in the opinion expressed in a memorandum signed by us both. +Gladstone, as might have been expected, has behaved very well. +<i>Sept. 19</i> [<i>London</i>].—Correspondence between Lyttelton and +Gladstone, contained in Lord Devon's letter. Same subject as that +which Lord D. and I came to consult upon at Hawarden. <i>Sept. +24</i>.—I wrote to Stephen Glynne to the effect that Henry entirely +approved of the scheme agreed upon by Lord D. and myself, after a +new consideration of all the circumstances, and after reading the +Lyttelton-Gladstone correspondence. I showed Henry Glynne the +letter, of which he entirely approved.</p></div> + +<p>In 1874 the death of Sir Stephen Glynne, following that of his brother +two years before, made Mr. Gladstone owner in possession of the Hawarden +estate, under the transaction of 1865. With as little delay as possible +(April 1875) he took the necessary steps to make his eldest son the +owner in fee, and seven years after that (October 1882) he further +transferred to the same son his own lands in the county, acquired by +purchase, as we have seen, after the crash in 1847. By agreement, the +possession and control of the castle and its contents remained with Mrs. +Gladstone for life, as if she were taking a life-interest in it under +settlement or will.</p> + +<p class="center">FURTHER LETTERS TO HIS SON</p> + +<p>Although, therefore, for a few months the legal owner of the whole +Hawarden estate, Mr. Gladstone divested himself of that quality as soon +as he could, and at no time did he assume to be its master. The letters +written by him on these matters to his son are both too interesting as +the expression of his views on high articles of social policy, and too +characteristic of his ideas of personal duty, for me to omit them here, +though much out of their strict chronological place. The first is +written after the death of Sir Stephen, and the falling in of the +reversion:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11.5em;"><i>To W. H. Gladstone</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>11 <i>Carlton House Terrace, April 5, 1875</i>.—There are several +matters which I have to mention to you, and for which the present +moment is suitable; while they embrace the future in several of its +aspects.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p> + +<p>1. I have given instructions to Messrs. Barker and Hignett to +convert your life interest under the Hawarden settlement into a fee +simple. Reflection and experience have brought me to favour this +latter method of holding landed property as on the whole the best, +though the arguments may not be all on one side. In the present +case, they are to my mind entirely conclusive. First, because I am +able thoroughly to repose in you an entire confidence as to your +use of the estate during your lifetime, and your capacity to +provide wisely for its future destination. Secondly, because you +have, delivered over to you with the estate, the duty and office of +progressively emancipating it from the once ruinous debt; and it is +almost necessary towards the satisfactory prosecution of this +purpose, which it may still take very many years to complete, that +you should be entire master of the property, and should feel the +full benefit of the steady care and attention which it ought to +receive from you.</p> + +<p>2. I hope that with it you will inherit the several conterminous +properties belonging to me, and that you will receive these in such +a condition as to enjoy a large proportion of the income they +yield. Taking the two estates together, they form the most +considerable estate in the county, and give what may be termed the +first social position there. The importance of this position is +enhanced by the large population which inhabits them. You will, I +hope, familiarise your mind with this truth, that you can no more +become the proprietor of such a body of property, or of the portion +of it now accruing, than your brother Stephen could become rector +of the parish, without recognising the serious moral and social +responsibilities which belong to it. They are full of interest and +rich in pleasure, but they demand (in the absence of special cause) +residence on the spot, and a good share of time, and especially a +free and ungrudging discharge of them. Nowhere in the world is the +position of the landed proprietor so high as in this country, and +this in great part for the reason that nowhere else is the +possession of landed property so closely associated with definite +duty.</p> + +<p>3. In truth, with this and your seat in parliament, which I hope +(whether Whitby supply it, or whether you migrate) will continue, +you will, I trust, have a well-charged, though not an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> +over-charged, life, and will, like professional and other +thoroughly employed men, have to regard the bulk of your time as +forestalled on behalf of duty, while a liberal residue may be +available for your special pursuits and tastes, and for +recreations. This is really the sound basis of life, which never +can be honourable or satisfactory without adequate guarantees +against frittering away, even in part, the precious gift of time.</p> + +<p>While touching on the subject I would remind you of an old +recommendation of mine, that you should choose some parliamentary +branch or subject, to which to give special attention. The House of +Commons has always heard your voice with pleasure, and ought not to +be allowed to forget it. I say this the more freely, because I +think it is, in your case, the virtue of a real modesty, which +rather too much indisposes you to put yourself forward.</p> + +<p>Yet another word. As years gather upon me, I naturally look forward +to what is to be after I am gone; and although I should indeed be +sorry to do or say anything having a tendency to force the action +of your mind beyond its natural course, it will indeed be a great +pleasure to me to see you well settled in life by marriage. Well +settled, I feel confident, you will be, if settled at all. In your +position at Hawarden, there would then be at once increased ease +and increased attraction in the performance of your duties; nor can +I overlook the fact that the life of the unmarried man, in this age +particularly, is under peculiar and insidious temptations to +selfishness, unless his celibacy arise from a very strong and +definite course of self-devotion to the service of God and his +fellow creatures.</p> + +<p>The great and sad change of Hawarden [by the death of Sir Stephen] +which has forced upon us the consideration of so many subjects, +gave at the same time an opening for others, and it seemed to me to +be best to put together the few remarks I had to make. I hope the +announcement with which I began will show that I write in the +spirit of confidence as well as of affection. It is on this footing +that we have ever stood, and I trust ever shall stand. You have +acted towards me at all times up to the standard of all I could +desire. May you have the help of the Almighty to embrace as justly, +and fulfil as cheerfully, the whole conception <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>of your duties in +the position to which it has pleased Him to call you, and which +perhaps has come upon you with somewhat the effect of a surprise; +that may, however, have the healthy influence of a stimulus to +action, and a help towards excellence. Believe me ever, my dear +son, your affectionate father.</p></div> + +<p class="center">DUTIES OF A LANDOWNER</p> + +<p>In the second letter Mr. Gladstone informed W. H. Gladstone that he had +at Chester that morning (Oct. 23, 1882), along with Mrs. Gladstone, +executed the deeds that made his son the proprietor of Mr. Gladstone's +lands in Flintshire, subject to the payment of annuities specified in +the instrument of transfer; and he proceeds:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I earnestly entreat that you will never, under any circumstances, +mortgage any of your land. I consider that our law has offered to +proprietors of land, under a narrow and mistaken notion of +promoting their interests, dangerous facilities and inducements to +this practice; and that its mischievous consequences have been so +terribly felt (the word is strong, but hardly too strong) in the +case of Hawarden, that they ought to operate powerfully as a +warning for the future.</p> + +<p>You are not the son of very wealthy parents; but the income of the +estates (the Hawarden estates and mine jointly), with your prudence +and diligence, will enable you to go steadily forward in the work I +have had in hand, and after a time will in the course of nature +give considerable means for the purpose.</p> + +<p>I have much confidence in your prudence and intelligence; I have +not the smallest fear that the rather unusual step I have taken +will in any way weaken the happy union and harmony of our family; +and I am sure you will always bear in mind the duties which attach +to you as the head of those among whom you receive a preference, +and as the landlord of a numerous tenantry, prepared to give you +their confidence and affection.</p></div> + +<p>A third letter on the same topics followed three years after, and +contains a narrative of the Hawarden transactions already given in an +earlier page of this chapter.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><i>To W. H. Gladstone</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Oct. 3, 1885</i>.—When you first made known to me that you thought +of retiring from the general election of this year, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> received the +intimation with mixed feelings. The question of money no doubt +deserves, under existing circumstances, to be kept in view; still I +must think twice before regarding this as the conclusive question. +I conceive the balance has to be struck mainly between these two +things; on the one hand, the duty of persons connected with the +proprietorship of considerable estates in land, to assume freely +the burden and responsibility of serving in parliament. On the +other hand, the peculiar position of this combined estate, which in +the first place is of a nature to demand from the proprietor an +unusual degree of care and supervision, and which in the second +place has been hit severely by recent depressions in corn and coal, +which may be termed its two pillars.</p> + +<p>On the first point it may fairly be taken into view that in serving +for twenty years you have stood four contested elections, a number +I think decidedly beyond the average.... I will assume, for the +present, that the election has passed without bringing you back to +parliament. I should then consider that you had thus relieved +yourself, at any rate for a period, from a serious call upon your +time and mind, mainly with a view to the estate; and on this +account, and because I have constituted you its legal master, I +write this letter in order to place clearly before you some of the +circumstances which invest your relation to it with a rather +peculiar character.</p> + +<p>I premise a few words of a general nature. An enemy to entails, +principally though not exclusively on social and domestic grounds, +I nevertheless regard it as a very high duty to labour for the +conservation of estates, and the permanence of the families in +possession of them, as a principal source of our social strength, +and as a large part of true conservatism, from the time when +Aeschylus wrote</p> + +<p class='center'>ἀρχαιοπλούτων δεσποτῶν πολλὴ χάρις.<a name="FNanchor_206_206" id="FNanchor_206_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a></p> + +<p>But if their possession is to be prolonged by conduct, not by +factitious arrangements, we must recognise this consequence, that +conduct becomes subject to fresh demands and liabilities.</p> + +<p>In condemning laws which tie up the <i>corpus</i>, I say nothing +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>against powers of charge, either by marriage settlement or +otherwise, for wife and children, although questions of degree and +circumstance may always have to be considered. But to mortgages I +am greatly opposed. Whether they ought or ought not to be +restrained by law, I do not now inquire. But I am confident that +few and rare causes only will warrant them, and that as a general +rule they are mischievous, and in many cases, as to their +consequences, anti-social and immoral. Wherever they exist they +ought to be looked upon as evils, which are to be warred upon and +got rid of. One of our financial follies has been to give them +encouragement by an excessively low tax; and one of the better +effects of the income-tax is that it is a fine upon mortgaging.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_203_203" id="Footnote_203_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_203_203"><span class="label">[203]</span></a> For an account of the creditors' meeting held at Birmingham on +Dec. 2, 1847, see the <i>Times</i> of Dec. 3, 1847.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204_204" id="Footnote_204_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204_204"><span class="label">[204]</span></a> To Lord Lyttelton, July 29, 1874: 'I could not devote my entire +life to it; and after 1852 my attention was only occasional.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_205_205" id="Footnote_205_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_205_205"><span class="label">[205]</span></a> This settlement followed the lines of a will made by Sir Stephen +in 1855, devising the estate to his brother for life, with the remainder +to his brother's sons in tail male; and next to W. H. Gladstone and his +sons in tail male, and then to W. E. Gladstone's other sons; and in +default of male issue of W. E. Gladstone, then to the eldest and other +sons of Lord Lyttelton, and so forth in the ordinary form of an entailed +estate.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_206_206" id="Footnote_206_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206_206"><span class="label">[206]</span></a> <i>Agam</i>. 1043, 'A great blessing are masters with, ancient riches.'</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIIICh_III" id="BkIIICh_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">PARTY EVOLUTION—NEW COLONIAL POLICY</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1846-1850</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I shall ever thankfully rejoice to have lived in a period when so +blessed a change in our colonial policy was brought about; a change +which is full of promise and profit to a country having such claims +on mankind as England, but also a change of system, in which we +have done no more than make a transition from misfortune and from +evil, back to the rules of justice, of reason, of nature, and of +common sense.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span> (1856).</p></div><br /> + +<p>The fall of Peel and the break up of the conservative party in 1846 led +to a long train of public inconveniences. When Lord John Russell was +forming his government, he saw Peel, and proposed to include any of his +party. Peel thought such a junction under existing circumstances +unadvisable, but said he should have no ground of complaint if Lord John +made offers to any of his friends; and he should not attempt to +influence them either way.<a name="FNanchor_207_207" id="FNanchor_207_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a> The action ended in a proposal of office +to Dalhousie, Lincoln, and Sidney Herbert. Nothing came of it, and the +whigs were left to go on as they best could upon the narrow base of +their own party. The protectionists gave them to understand that before +Bentinck and his friends made up their minds to turn Peel out, they had +decided that it would not be fair to put the whigs in merely to punish +the betrayer, and then to turn round upon them. On the contrary, fair +and candid support was what they intended. The conservative government +had carried liberal measures; the liberal government subsisted on +conservative declarations. Such was this singular situation.</p> + +<p class="center">PEELITES AND PROTECTIONISTS</p> + +<p>The Peelites, according to a memorandum of Mr. Glad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>stone's, from a +number approaching 120 in the corn law crisis of 1846, were reduced at +once by the election of 1847 to less than half. This number, added to +the liberal force, gave free trade a very large majority: added to the +protectionists it just turned the balance in their favour. So long as +Sir Robert Peel lived (down to June 1850) the entire body never voted +with the protectionists. From the first a distinction arose among Peel's +adherents that widened, as time went on, and led to a long series of +doubts, perturbations, manœuvres. These perplexities lasted down to +1859, and they constitute a vital chapter in Mr. Gladstone's political +story. The distinction was in the nature of political things. Many of +those who had stood by Peel's side in the day of battle, and who still +stood by him in the curious morrow that combined victorious policy with +personal defeat, were in more or less latent sympathy with the severed +protectionists in everything except protection.<a name="FNanchor_208_208" id="FNanchor_208_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_208_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a> Differing from +these, says Mr. Gladstone, others of the Peelites 'whose opinions were +more akin to those of the liberals, cherished, nevertheless, personal +sympathies and lingering wishes which made them tardy, perhaps unduly +tardy, in drawing towards that party. I think that this description +applied in some degree to Mr. Sidney Herbert, and in the same or a +greater degree to myself.'<a name="FNanchor_209_209" id="FNanchor_209_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_209_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a></p> + +<p>Shortly described, the Peelites were all free trade conservatives, drawn +by under-currents, according to temperament, circumstances, and all the +other things that turn the balance of men's opinions, to antipodean +poles of the political compass. 'We have no party,' Mr. Gladstone tells +his father in June 1849, 'no organisation, no whipper-in; and under +these circumstances we cannot exercise any considerable degree of +permanent influence as a body.' The leading sentiment that guided the +proceedings of the whole body of Peelites alike was a desire to give to +protection its final quietus. While the younger members of the Peel +cabinet held that this could only be done in one way, namely, by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> +forcing the protectionists into office where they must put their +professions to the proof, Peel himself, and Graham with him, took a +directly opposite view, and adopted as the leading principle of their +action the vital necessity of keeping the protectionists out. This broad +difference led to no diminution of personal intercourse or political +attachment.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Certainly this was not due, says Mr. Gladstone, to any desire (at +least in Sir R. Peel's mind) for, or contemplation of, coalition +with the liberal party. It sprang entirely from a belief on his +part that the chiefs of the protectionists would on their accession +to power endeavour to establish a policy in accordance with the +designation of their party, and would in so doing probably convulse +the country. As long as Lord George Bentinck lived, with his iron +will and strong convictions, this was a contingency that could not +be overlooked. But he died in 1848, and with his death it became a +visionary dream. Yet I remember well Sir Robert Peel saying to me, +when I was endeavouring to stir him up on some great fault (as I +thought it), in the colonial policy of the ministers, 'I foresee a +tremendous struggle in this country for the restoration of +protection.' He would sometimes even threaten us with the +possibility of being 'sent for' if a crisis should occur, which was +a thing far enough from our limited conceptions. We were flatly at +issue with him on this opinion. We even considered that as long as +the protectionists had no responsibilities but those of opposition, +and as there were two hundred and fifty seats in parliament to be +won by chanting the woes of the land and promising redress, there +would be protectionists in plenty to fill the left hand benches on +those terms.</p></div> + +<p class="center">RELATIONS WITH PEEL</p> + +<p>The question what it was that finally converted the country to free +trade is not easy to answer. Not the arguments of Cobden, for in the +summer of 1845 even his buoyant spirit perceived that some precipitating +event, and not reasoning, would decide. His appeals had become, as +Disraeli wrote, both to nation and parliament a wearisome iteration, and +he knew it. Those arguments, it is true, had laid the foundations of the +case in all their solidity and breadth. But until the emergency in +Ireland presented<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> itself, and until prosperity had justified the +experiment, Peel was hardly wrong in reckoning on the possibility of a +protectionist reaction. Even the new prosperity and contentment of the +country were capable of being explained by the extraordinary employment +found in the creation of railways. As Mr. Gladstone said to a +correspondent in the autumn of 1846, 'The liberal proceedings of +conservative governments, and the conservative proceedings of the new +liberal administration, unite in pointing to the propriety of an +abstinence from high-pitched opinions.' This was a euphemism. What it +really meant was that outside of protection no high-pitched opinions on +any other subject were available. The tenets of party throughout this +embarrassed period from 1846 to 1852 were shifting, equivocal, and +fluid. Nor even in the period that followed did they very rapidly +consolidate.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone writes to his father (June 30, 1849):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I will only add a few words about your desire that I should +withdraw my confidence from Peel. My feelings of admiration, +attachment, and gratitude to him I do not expect to lose; and I +agree with Graham that he has done more and <i>suffered</i> more than +any other living statesman for the good of the people. But still I +must confess with sorrow that the present course of events tends to +separate and disorganise the small troop of the late government and +their adherents. On the West Indian question last year I, with +others, spoke and voted against Peel. On the Navigation law this +year I was saved from it only by the shipowners and their friends, +who would not adopt a plan upon the basis I proposed. Upon +Canada—a vital question—I again spoke and voted against him.<a name="FNanchor_210_210" id="FNanchor_210_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_210_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a> +And upon other colonial questions, yet most important to the +government, I fear even this year the same thing may happen again. +However painful, then, it may be to me to differ from him, it is +plain that my conduct is not placed in his hands to govern.</p></div> + +<p>We find an illustration of the distractions of this long day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> of party +metamorphosis, as well as an example of what was regarded as Mr. +Gladstone's over-ingenuity, in one among other passing divergences +between him and his chief. Mr. Disraeli brought forward a motion (Feb. +19, 1850) of a very familiar kind, on the distress of the agricultural +classes and the insecurity of relief of rural burdens. Bright bluntly +denied that there was a case in which the fee of land had been +depreciated or rent been permanently lowered. Graham said the mover's +policy was simply a transfer of the entire poor rate to the consolidated +fund, violating the principles of local control and inviting prodigal +expenditure. Fortune then, in Mr. Disraeli's own language, sent him an +unexpected champion, by whom, according to him, Graham was fairly +unhorsed. The reader will hardly think so, for though the unexpected +champion was Mr. Gladstone, he found no better reason for supporting the +motion, than that its adoption would weaken the case for restoring +protection. As if the landlords and farmers were likely to be satisfied +with a small admission of a great claim, while all the rest of their +claim was to be as bitterly contested as ever; with the transfer of a +shabby couple of millions from their own shoulders to the consolidated +fund, when they were clamouring that fourteen millions would hardly be +enough. Peel rose later, promptly took this plain point against his +ingenious lieutenant, and then proceeded to one more of his elaborate +defences, both of free trade and of his own motives and character. For +the last time, as it was to happen, Peel declared that for Mr. Gladstone +he had 'the greatest respect and admiration.' 'I was associated with him +in the preparation and conduct of those measures, to the desire of +maintaining which he partly attributes the conclusion at which he has +arrived. I derived from him the most zealous, the most effective +assistance, and it is no small consolation to me to hear from him, +although in this particular motion we arrive at different conclusions, +that his confidence in the justice of those principles for which we in +common contended remains entirely unshaken.'<a name="FNanchor_211_211" id="FNanchor_211_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_211_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a></p> + +<p class="center">ON HIS POSITION</p> + +<p>On this particular battle, as well as on more general matter,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> a letter +from Mr. Gladstone to his wife (Feb. 22, 1850) sheds some light:—:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 12.5em;"><i>To Mrs. Gladstone</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Indeed you do rise to very daring flights to-day, and suggest many +things that flow from your own deep affection which, perhaps, +disguises from you some things that are nevertheless real. I cannot +form to myself any other conception of my duty in parliament except +the simple one of acting independently, without faction, and +without subserviency, on all questions as they arise. To the +formation of a party, or even of the nucleus of a party, there are +in my circumstances many obstacles. I have been talking over these +matters with Manning this morning, and I found him to be of the +opinion which is deliberately mine, namely, that it is better that +I should not be the head or leader even of my own contemporaries; +that there are others of them whose position is less embarrassed, +and more favourable and powerful, particularly from birth or wealth +or both. Three or four years ago, before I had much considered the +matter, and while we still felt as if Peel were our actual chief in +politics, I did not think so, but perhaps thought or assumed that +as, up to the then present time, I had discharged some prominent +duties in office and in parliament, the first place might naturally +fall to me when the other men were no longer in the van. But since +we have become more disorganised, and I have had little sense of +union except with the men of my own standing, and I have <i>felt</i> +more of the actual state of things, and how this or that would work +in the House of Commons, I have come to be satisfied in my own mind +that, if there were a question whether there should be a leader and +who it should be, it would be much better that either Lincoln or +Herbert should assume that post, whatever share of the mere work +might fall on me. I have viewed the matter very drily, and so +perhaps you will think I have written on it.</p> + +<p>To turn then to what is more amusing, the battle of last night. +After much consideration and conference with Herbert (who has had +an attack of bilious fever and could not come down, though much +better, and soon, I hope, to be out again, but who agreed with me), +I determined that I ought to vote last night with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> Disraeli; and +made up my mind accordingly, which involved saying why, at some +period of the night. I was anxious to do it early, as I knew Graham +would speak on the other side, and did not wish any conflict even +of reasoning with him. But he found I was going to speak, and I +suppose may have had some similar wish. At any rate, he had the +opportunity of following Stafford who began the debate, as he was +to take the other side. Then there was an amusing scene between him +and Peel. Both rose and stood in competition for the Speaker's eye. +The Speaker had seen Graham first, and he got it. But when he was +speaking I felt I had no choice but to follow him. He made so very +able a speech that this was no pleasant prospect; but I acquired +the courage that proceeds from fear, according to a line from +Ariosto: <i>Chi per virtù, chi per paura vale</i> [one from valour, +another from fear, is strong], and made my plunge when he sat down. +But the Speaker was not dreaming of me, and called a certain Mr. +Scott who had risen at the same time. Upon this I sat down again, +and there was a great uproar because the House always anticipating +more or less interest when men speak on opposite sides and in +succession, who are usually together, called for me. So I was up +again, and the Speaker deserted Scott and called me, and I had to +make the best I could after Graham. That is the end of the story, +for there is nothing else worth saying. It was at the dinner hour +from 7 to 7¾, and then I went home for a little quiet. Peel again +replied upon me, but I did not hear that part of him; and Disraeli +showed the marvellous talent that he has, for summing up with +brilliancy, buoyancy, and comprehensiveness at the close of a +debate. You have heard me speak of that talent before when I have +been wholly against him; but never, last night or at any other +time, would I go to him for conviction, but for the delight of the +ear and the fancy. What a long story!</p></div> + +<p class="center">PARTIAL WITHDRAWAL</p> + +<p>During the parliament that sat from 1847 to 1852, Mr. Gladstone's +political life was in partial abeyance. The whole burden of conducting +the affairs of the Hawarden estate fell upon him. For five years, he +said, 'it constituted my daily and continuing care, while parliamentary +action was only occasional. It supplied in fact my education for the +office of finance minister.' The demands of church matters were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> anxious +and at times absorbing. He warmly favoured and spoke copiously for the +repeal of the navigation laws. He desired, however, to accept a recent +overture from America which offered everything, even their vast coasting +trade, upon a footing of absolute reciprocity. 'I gave notice,' he says, +'of a motion to that effect. But the government declined to accept it. I +accordingly withdrew it. At this the tories were much put about. I, who +had thought of things only and not taken persons into view, was +surprised at their surprise. It did not occur to me that by my public +notification I had given to the opposition generally something <i>like</i> a +vested interest in my proposal. I certainly should have done better +never to have given my notice. This is one of the cases illustrating the +extreme slowness of my political education.' The sentence about thinking +of things only and leaving persons out, indicates a turn of mind that +partly for great good, partly for some evil, never wholly disappeared.</p> + +<p>Yet partially withdrawn as he was from active life in the House of +Commons, Mr. Gladstone was far too acute an observer to have any +leanings to the delusive self-indulgence of temporary retirements. To +his intimate friend, Sir Walter James, who seems to have nursed some +such intention, he wrote at this very time (Feb. 13, 1847):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The way to make parliament profitable is to deal with it as a +calling, and if it be a calling it can rarely be advantageous to +suspend the pursuit of it for years together with an uncertainty, +too, as to its resumption. You have not settled in the country, nor +got your other vocation open and your line clear before you. The +purchase of an estate is a very serious matter, which you may not +be able to accomplish to your satisfaction except after the lapse +of years. It would be more satisfactory to drop parliament with +another path open to you already, than in order to seek about for +one.... I think with you that the change in the position of the +conservative party makes public life still more painful where it +was painful before, and less enjoyable, where it was enjoyable; but +I do not think it remains less a duty to work through the tornado +and to influence for good according to our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> means the new forms +into which, political combination may be cast.</p></div> + +<p>In 1848 Northcote speaks of Mr. Gladstone as the 'patron saint' of the +coal-whippers, who, as a manifestation of their gratitude for the Act +which he had induced parliament to pass for them, offered their services +to put down the chartist mob. Both Mr. Gladstone and his brother John +served as special constables during the troubled days of April. In his +diary he records on April 10, 'On duty from 2 to 3¾ <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>'</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">VIEWS OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENT</p> + +<p>When Mr. Gladstone became colonial secretary at the end of 1845, he was +described as a strong accession to the progressive or theorising section +of the cabinet—the men, that is to say, who applied to the routine of +government, as they found it, critical principles and improved ideals. +If the church had been the first of Mr. Gladstone's commanding interests +and free trade the second, the turn of the colonies came next. He had +not held the seals of the colonial department for more than a few +months, but to any business, whatever it might be, that happened to +kindle his imagination or work on his reflection, he never failed to +bend his whole strength. He had sat upon a committee in 1835-6 on native +affairs at the Cape, and there he had come into full view of the costly +and sanguinary nature of that important side of the colonial question. +Molesworth mentions the 'prominent and valuable' part taken by him in +the committee on Waste Lands (1836). He served on committees upon +military expenditure in the colonies, and upon colonial accounts. He was +a member of the important committee of 1840 on the colonisation of New +Zealand, and voted in the minority for the draft report of the chairman, +containing among other things the principle of the reservation of all +unoccupied lands to the crown.<a name="FNanchor_212_212" id="FNanchor_212_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_212_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a> Between 1837 and 1841 he spoke +frequently on colonial affairs. When he was secretary of state in 1846, +questions arose upon the legal status of colonial clergy, full of knotty +points as to which he wrote<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> minutes; questions upon education in penal +settlements, and so forth, in which he interested himself, not seldom +differing from Stephen, the chief of the staff in the office. He +composed an argumentative despatch on the commercial relations between +Canada and the mother country, endeavouring to wean the Canadian +assembly from its economic delusions. It was in effect little better +than if written in water. He made the mistake of sending out despatches +in favour of resuming on a limited scale the transportation of convicts +to Australia, a practice effectually condemned by the terrible committee +eight years before. Opinion in Australia was divided, Robert Lowe +leading the opposition,<a name="FNanchor_213_213" id="FNanchor_213_213"></a><a href="#Footnote_213_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a> and the experiment was vetoed by Mr. +Gladstone's successor at the colonial office. He exposed himself to +criticism and abuse by recalling a colonial governor for inefficiency in +his post; imprudently in the simplicity of his heart he added to the +recall a private letter stating rumours against the governor's personal +character. These he had taken on trust from the bishop of the diocese +and others. The bishop left him in the lurch; the recall was one affair, +the personal rumours were another; nimble partizanship confused the two, +to the disadvantage of the secretary of state; the usual clatter that +attends any important personage in a trivial scrape ensued; Mr. +Gladstone's explanations, simple and veracious as the sunlight in their +substance, were over-skilful in form, and half a dozen blunt, sound +sentences would have stood him in far better stead. 'There was on my +part in this matter,' he says in a fugitive scrap upon it, 'a singular +absence of worldly wisdom.'<a name="FNanchor_214_214" id="FNanchor_214_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a> To colonial policy at this stage I +discern no particular contribution, and the matters that I have named +are now well covered with the moss of kindly time.</p> + +<p>Almost from the first he was convinced that some leading maxims of +Downing Street were erroneous. He had, from his earliest parliamentary +days, regarded our colonial connection as one of duty rather than as one +of advantage. When he had only been four years in the House he took a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> +firm stand against pretensions in Canada to set their assembly on an +equal footing with the imperial parliament at home.<a name="FNanchor_215_215" id="FNanchor_215_215"></a><a href="#Footnote_215_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a> On the other +hand, while he should always be glad to see parliament inclined to make +large sacrifices for the purpose of maintaining the colonies, he +conceived that nothing could be more ridiculous, or more mistaken, than +to suppose that Great Britain had anything to gain by maintaining that +union in opposition to the deliberate and permanent conviction of the +people of the colonies themselves.<a name="FNanchor_216_216" id="FNanchor_216_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_216_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a></p> + +<p>He did not at all undervalue what he called the mere political +connection, but he urged that the root of such a connection lay in the +natural affection of the colonies for the land from which they sprang, +and their spontaneous desire to reproduce its laws and the spirit of its +institutions. From first to last he always declared the really valuable +tie with a colony to be the moral and the social tie.<a name="FNanchor_217_217" id="FNanchor_217_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_217_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a> The master +key with him was local freedom, and he was never weary of protest +against the fallacy of what was called 'preparing' these new communities +for freedom: teaching a colony, like an infant, by slow degrees to walk, +first putting it into long clothes, then into short clothes. A governing +class was reared up for the purposes which the colony ought to fulfil +itself; and, as the climax of the evil, a great military expenditure was +maintained, which became a premium on war. Our modern colonists, he +said, after quitting the mother country, instead of keeping their +hereditary liberties, go out to Australia or New Zealand to be deprived +of these liberties, and then perhaps, after fifteen or twenty or thirty +years' waiting, have a portion given back to them, with magnificent +language about the liberality of parliament in conceding free +institutions. During the whole of that interval they are condemned to +hear all the miserable jargon about fitting them for the privileges thus +conferred; while, in point of fact, every year and every month during +which they are retained under the administration of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> despotic +government, renders them less fit for free institutions. 'No +consideration of money ought to induce parliament to sever the +connection between any one of the colonies and the mother country,' +though it was certain that the cost of the existing system was both +large and unnecessary. But the real mischief was not here, he said. Our +error lay in the attempt to hold the colonies by the mere exercise of +power.<a name="FNanchor_218_218" id="FNanchor_218_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_218_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a> Even for the church in the colonies he rejected the boon of +civil preference as being undoubtedly a fatal gift,—'nothing but a +source of weakness to the church herself and of discord and difficulty +to the colonial communities, in the soil of which I am anxious to see +the church of England take a strong and healthy root.'<a name="FNanchor_219_219" id="FNanchor_219_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_219_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a> He +acknowledged how much he had learned from Molesworth's speeches,<a name="FNanchor_220_220" id="FNanchor_220_220"></a><a href="#Footnote_220_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a> +and neither of them sympathised with the opinion expressed by Mr. +Disraeli in those days, 'These wretched colonies will all be independent +too in a few years, and are a millstone round our necks.'<a name="FNanchor_221_221" id="FNanchor_221_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a> Nor did +Mr. Gladstone share any such sentiments as those of Molesworth who, in +the Canadian revolt of the winter of 1837, actually invoked disaster +upon the British arms.<a name="FNanchor_222_222" id="FNanchor_222_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a></p> + +<p class="center">THE TWO SCHOOLS</p> + +<p>In their views of colonial policy Mr. Gladstone was in sub<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>stantial +accord with radicals of the school of Cobden, Hume, and Molesworth. He +does not seem to have joined a reforming association founded by these +eminent men among others in 1850, but its principles coincided with his +own:—local independence, an end of rule from Downing Street, the relief +of the mother country from the whole expense of the local government of +the colonies, save for defence from aggression by a foreign power. +Parliament was, as a rule, so little moved by colonial concerns that, +according to Mr. Gladstone, in nine cases out of ten it was impossible +for the minister to secure parliamentary attention, and in the tenth +case it was only obtained by the casual operations of party spirit. Lord +Glenelg's case showed that colonial secretaries were punished when they +got into bad messes, and his passion for messes was punished, in the +language of the journals of the day, by the life of a toad under a +harrow until he was worried out of office. There was, however, no force +in public opinion to prevent the minister from going wrong if he liked; +still less to prevent him from going right if he liked. Popular feeling +was coloured by no wish to give up the colonies, but people doubted +whether the sum of three millions sterling a year for colonial defence +and half a million more for civil charges, was not excessive, and they +thought the return by no means commensurate with the outlay.<a name="FNanchor_223_223" id="FNanchor_223_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_223_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a> In +discussions on bills effecting the enlargement of Australian +constitutions, Mr. Gladstone's views came out in clear contrast with the +old school. 'Spoke 1½ hours on the Australian Colonies bill,' he records +(May 13, 1850), 'to an indifferent, inattentive House. But it is +necessary to speak these truths of colonial policy even to unwilling +ears.' In the proceedings on the constitution for New Zealand, he +delivered a speech justly described as a pattern of close argument and +classic oratory.<a name="FNanchor_224_224" id="FNanchor_224_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_224_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a> Lord<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> John Russell, adverting to the concession of +an elective chamber and responsible government, said that one by one in +this manner, all the shields of our authority were thrown away, and the +monarchy was left exposed in the colonies to the assaults of democracy. +'Now I confess,' said Mr. Gladstone, in a counter minute, 'that the +nominated council and the independent executive were, not shields of +authority, but sources of weakness, disorder, disunion, and +disloyalty.'<a name="FNanchor_225_225" id="FNanchor_225_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_225_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a></p> + +<p class="center">HIS WHOLE VIEW</p> + +<p>His whole view he set out at Chester<a name="FNanchor_226_226" id="FNanchor_226_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_226_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a> a little later than the time +at which we now stand:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>... Experience has proved that if you want to strengthen the +connection between the colonies and this country—if you want to +see British law held in respect and British institutions adopted +and beloved in the colonies, never associate with them the hated +name of force and coercion exercised by us, at a distance, over +their rising fortunes. Govern them upon a principle of freedom. +Defend them against aggression from without. Regulate their foreign +relations. These things belong to the colonial connection. But of +the duration of that connection let them be the judges, and I +predict that if you leave them the freedom of judgment it is hard +to say when the day will come when they will wish to separate from +the great name of England. Depend upon it, they covet a share in +that great name. You will find in that feeling of theirs the +greatest security for the connection. Make the name of England yet +more and more an object of desire to the colonies. Their natural +disposition is to love and revere the name of England, and this +reverence is by far the best security you can have for their +continuing, not only to be subjects of the crown, not only to +render it allegiance, but to render it that allegiance which is the +most precious of all—the allegiance which proceeds from the depths +of the heart of man. You have seen various colonies, some of them +lying at the antipodes, offering to you their contributions to +assist in supporting the wives and families of your soldiers, the +heroes that have fallen in the war. This, I venture to say, may be +said, without exaggeration, to be among the first fruits of that +system<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> upon which, within the last twelve or fifteen years, you +have founded a rational mode of administering the affairs of your +colonies without gratuitous interference.</p></div> + +<p>As I turn over these old minutes, memoranda, despatches, speeches, one +feels a curious irony in the charge engendered by party heat or malice, +studiously and scandalously careless of facts, that Mr. Gladstone's +policy aimed at getting rid of the colonies. As if any other policy than +that which he so ardently enforced could possibly have saved them.</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">A PAINFUL INCIDENT</p> + +<p>In 1849 Mr. Gladstone was concerned in a painful incident that befel one +of his nearest friends. Nobody of humane feeling would now willingly +choose either to speak or hear of it, but it finds a place in books even +to this day; it has been often misrepresented; and it is so +characteristic of Mr. Gladstone, and so entirely to his honour, that it +cannot be wholly passed over. Fortunately a few sentences will suffice. +His friend's wife had been for some time travelling abroad, and rumours +by and by reached England of movements that might be no more than +indiscreet, but might be worse. In consequence of these rumours, and +after anxious consultations between the husband and three or four +important members of his circle, it was thought best that some one +should seek access to the lady, and try to induce her to place herself +in a position of security. The further conclusion reached was that Mr. +Gladstone and Manning were the two persons best qualified by character +and friendship for this critical mission. Manning was unable to go, but +Mr. Gladstone at the earnest solicitation of his friend, and also of his +own wife who had long been much attached to the person missing, set off +alone for a purpose, as he conscientiously believed, alike friendly to +both parties and in the interests of both. I have called the proceeding +characteristic, for it was in fact exactly like him to be ready at the +call of friendship, and in the hope of preventing a terrible disaster, +cheerfully to undertake a duty detestable to anybody and especially +detestable to him; and again, it was like him to regard the affair with +an optimistic simplicity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> that made him hopeful of success, where to +ninety-nine men of a hundred the thought of success would have seemed +absurd. To no one was it a greater shock than to him when, after a +journey across half Europe, he suddenly found himself the discoverer of +what it was inevitable that he should report to his friend at home. In +the course of the subsequent proceedings on the bill for a divorce +brought into the House of Lords, he was called as a witness to show that +in this case the person claiming the bill had omitted no means that duty +or affection could suggest for averting the calamity with which his +hearth was threatened. It was quite untrue, as he had occasion to tell +the House of Commons in 1857, that he had anything whatever to do with +the collection of evidence, or that the evidence given by him was the +evidence, or any part of it, on which the divorce was founded. The only +thing to be added is the judgment of Sir Robert Peel upon a transaction, +with all the details of which he was particularly well acquainted:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 25em;"><i>Aug. 26, 1849</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">My Dear Gladstone</span>,—I am deeply concerned to hear the result of +that mission which, with unparalleled kindness and generosity, you +undertook in the hope of mitigating the affliction of a friend, and +conducing possibly to the salvation of a wife and mother. Your +errand has not been a fruitless one, for it affords the conclusive +proof that everything that the forbearance and tender consideration +of a husband and the devotion of a friend could suggest as the +means of averting the necessity for appealing to the Law for such +protection as it can afford, had been essayed and essayed with the +utmost delicacy. This proof is valuable so far as the world and the +world's opinion is concerned—much more valuable as it respects the +heart and conscience of those who have been the active agents in a +work of charity. I can offer you nothing in return for that which +you undertook with the promptitude of affectionate friendship, +under circumstances which few would not have considered a valid +excuse if not a superior obligation, but the expression of my +sincere admiration for truly virtuous and generous conduct.—Ever, +my dear Gladstone, most faithfully yours,</p> + +<p> +<span class="smcap" style="margin-left: 25em;">Robert Peel</span>.<br /> +</p> +</div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_207_207" id="Footnote_207_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_207_207"><span class="label">[207]</span></a> <i>The Halifax Papers</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_208_208" id="Footnote_208_208"></a><a href="#FNanchor_208_208"><span class="label">[208]</span></a> Among them were such men as Wilson Patten, General Peel, Mr. +Corry, Lord Stanhope, Lord Hardinge, most of whom in days to come took +their places in conservative administrations.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_209_209" id="Footnote_209_209"></a><a href="#FNanchor_209_209"><span class="label">[209]</span></a> Memo, of 1876.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_210_210" id="Footnote_210_210"></a><a href="#FNanchor_210_210"><span class="label">[210]</span></a> A bill to indemnify the inhabitants of Lower Canada, many of whom +had taken part in the rebellion of 1837-8, for the destruction and +injury of their property. Mr. Gladstone strongly opposed any +compensation being given to Canadian, rebels.—<i>Hansard</i>, June 14, 1849.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_211_211" id="Footnote_211_211"></a><a href="#FNanchor_211_211"><span class="label">[211]</span></a> <i>Hansard</i>, Feb. 21, 1850, p. 1233.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_212_212" id="Footnote_212_212"></a><a href="#FNanchor_212_212"><span class="label">[212]</span></a> Garnett's <i>Edward Gibbon Wakefield</i>, p. 248. See also p. 232.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_213_213" id="Footnote_213_213"></a><a href="#FNanchor_213_213"><span class="label">[213]</span></a> See <i>The Gladstone Colony</i> by J. F. Hogan, M.P., with prefatory +note by Mr. Gladstone, April 20, 1897, and the chapter in Lord +Sherbrooke's <i>Life</i>, 'Mr. Gladstone's Penal Colony.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_214_214" id="Footnote_214_214"></a><a href="#FNanchor_214_214"><span class="label">[214]</span></a> Stafford Northcote published an effective vindication in a 'Letter +to a Friend,' 1847.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_215_215" id="Footnote_215_215"></a><a href="#FNanchor_215_215"><span class="label">[215]</span></a> Speech on affairs of Lower Canada, Mar. 8, 1837.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_216_216" id="Footnote_216_216"></a><a href="#FNanchor_216_216"><span class="label">[216]</span></a> On Government of Canada bill, May 29, 1840.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_217_217" id="Footnote_217_217"></a><a href="#FNanchor_217_217"><span class="label">[217]</span></a> See his evidence before a Select Committee on Colonial Military +Expenditure, June 6, 1861.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_218_218" id="Footnote_218_218"></a><a href="#FNanchor_218_218"><span class="label">[218]</span></a> See speech on Australian Colonies bill, June 26, 1849, Colonial +Administration, April 16, 1849, on the Australian Colonies, Feb. 8, +1850, March 22, 1850, and May 13, 1850. On the Kaffir War, April 5, +1852. On the New Zealand Government bill, May 21, 1852. Also speech on +Scientific Colonisation before the St. Martin in the Fields Association +for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, March 27, 1849.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_219_219" id="Footnote_219_219"></a><a href="#FNanchor_219_219"><span class="label">[219]</span></a> On the Colonial Bishops bill, April 28, 1852.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_220_220" id="Footnote_220_220"></a><a href="#FNanchor_220_220"><span class="label">[220]</span></a> Wakefield was their common teacher. In a letter as secretary of +state to Sir George Grey, then governor of New Zealand (March 27), 1846, +he states how the signal ability of Wakefield and his devotion to every +subject connected with the foundation of colonies has influenced him.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_221_221" id="Footnote_221_221"></a><a href="#FNanchor_221_221"><span class="label">[221]</span></a> To Lord Malmesbury, Aug. 13, 1852. <i>Memoirs of an Ex-Minister</i>, by +the Earl of Malmesbury, i. p. 344.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_222_222" id="Footnote_222_222"></a><a href="#FNanchor_222_222"><span class="label">[222]</span></a> 'Should a war take place, I must declare that I should more +deplore success on the part of this country than defeat; and though as +an English citizen I could not but lament the disasters of my +countrymen, still it would be to me a less poignant matter of regret +than a success which would offer to the world the disastrous and +disgraceful spectacle of a free and mighty nation succeeding by force of +arms in putting down and tyrannising over a free though feebler +community struggling in defence of its just rights.... That our dominion +in America should now be brought to a conclusion, I for one most +sincerely desire, but I desire it should terminate in peace and +friendship. Great would be the advantages of an amicable separation of +the two countries, and great would be the honour this country would reap +in consenting to such a step.' Mr. Gladstone spoke the same evening in +an opposite sense.—<i>Hans</i>. 39, p. 1466, Dec. 22, 1837. Walpole, <i>Hist. +Eng.</i>, iii. p. 425.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_223_223" id="Footnote_223_223"></a><a href="#FNanchor_223_223"><span class="label">[223]</span></a> See, for instance, <i>Spectator</i>, Jan. 17, 1845; <i>Times</i>, June 8, +1849. In 1861 it was estimated that colonial military expenditure was +between three and four millions a year, about nine-tenths of which was +borne by British taxpayers, and one-tenth by colonial contribution.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_224_224" id="Footnote_224_224"></a><a href="#FNanchor_224_224"><span class="label">[224]</span></a> <i>Edward Gibbon Wakefield</i>, p. 331. The reader will find an extract +in the Appendix. 'The New Zealand Government bill of 1852, with all its +errors and complications, was a grand step in the recovery of our old +colonial policy; but perhaps its chief contribution to the +re-establishment of constitutional views was Mr. Gladstone's speech on +its second reading.'—Right Hon. C. B. Adderley, <i>Review of Earl Grey's +Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration</i>, p. 135.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_225_225" id="Footnote_225_225"></a><a href="#FNanchor_225_225"><span class="label">[225]</span></a> See Mr. Gladstone's speech on introducing the Government of +Ireland bill, April 8, 1886.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_226_226" id="Footnote_226_226"></a><a href="#FNanchor_226_226"><span class="label">[226]</span></a> Nov. 12, 1855. See also two speeches of extraordinary fervour and +exaltation, one at Mold (Sept. 29, 1856), and the other at Liverpool the +same evening, both in support of the claims of societies for foreign +missions.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIIICh_IV" id="BkIIICh_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">DEATH OF SIR ROBERT PEEL</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1850</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Famous men—whose merit it is to have joined their name to events +that were brought onwards by the course of things.—<span class="smcap">Paul-Louis +Courier</span>.</p></div><br /> + +<p class="center">LORD PALMERSTON</p> + +<p>It was now that Lord Palmerston strode to a front place—one of the two +conspicuous statesmen with whom, at successive epochs in his career, Mr. +Gladstone found himself in different degrees of energetic antagonism. +This was all the stiffer and more deeply rooted, for being in both cases +as much a moral antagonism as it was political. After a long spell of +peace, earnestness, and political economy, the nation was for a time in +a mood for change, and Palmerston convinced it that he was the man for +its mood. He had his full share of shrewd common sense, yet was capable +of infinite recklessness. He was good-tempered and a man of bluff +cheerful humour. But to lose the game was intolerable, and it was +noticed that with him the next best thing to success was quick +retaliation on a victorious adversary—a trait of which he was before +long to give the world an example that amused it. Yet he had no capacity +for deep and long resentments. Like so many of his class, he united +passion for public business to sympathy with social gaiety and pleasure. +Diplomatists found him firm, prompt, clean-cut, but apt to be narrow, +teasing, obstinate, a prisoner to his own arguments, and wanting in the +statesman's first quality of seeing the whole and not merely the half. +Metternich described him as an audacious and passionate marksman, ready +to make arrows out of any wood. He was a sanguine man who always +believed what he desired; a confident man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> who was sure that he must be +right in whatever he chose to fear. On the economic or the moral side of +national life, in the things that make a nation rich and the things that +make it scrupulous and just, he had only limited perception and moderate +faith. Where Peel was strong and penetrating, Palmerston was weak and +purblind. He regarded Bright and Cobden as displeasing mixtures of the +bagman and the preacher. In 1840 he had brought us within an ace of war +with France. Disputes about an American frontier were bringing us at the +same period within an ace of war with the United States. When Peel and +Aberdeen got this quarrel into more promising shape, Palmerston +characteristically taunted them with capitulation. Lord Grey refused +help in manufacturing a whig government in December 1845, because he was +convinced that at that moment Palmerston at the foreign office meant an +American war. When he was dismissed by Lord John Russell in 1852 a +foreign ruler on an insecure throne observed to an Englishman, 'This is +a blow to me, for so long as Lord Palmerston remained at the foreign +office, it was certain that you could not procure a single ally in +Europe.'</p> + +<p>Yet all this policy of high spirits and careless dictatorial temper had +its fine side. With none of the grandeur of the highest heroes of his +school—of Chatham, Carteret, Pitt—without a spark of their heroic fire +or their brilliant and steadfast glow, Palmerston represented, not +always in their best form, some of the most generous instincts of his +countrymen. A follower of Canning, he was the enemy of tyrants and +foreign misrule. He had a healthy hatred of the absolutism and reaction +that were supreme at Vienna in 1815; and if he meddled in many affairs +that were no affairs of ours, at least he intervened for freedom. The +action that made him hated at Vienna and Petersburg won the confidence +of his countrymen. They saw him in Belgium and Holland, Spain, Italy, +Greece, Portugal, the fearless champion of constitutions and +nationality. Of Aberdeen, who had been Peel's foreign minister, it was +said that at home he was a liberal without being an enthusiast; abroad +he was a zealot, in the sense most opposed to Palmerston. So, of +Palmerston it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> could be said that he was conservative at home and +revolutionist abroad. If such a word can ever be applied to such a +thing, his patriotism was sometimes not without a tinge of vulgarity, +but it was always genuine and sincere.</p> + +<p>This masterful and expert personage was the ruling member of the weak +whig government now in office, and he made sensible men tremble. Still, +said Graham to Peel, 'it is a choice of dangers and evils, and I am +disposed to think that Palmerston and his foreign policy are less to be +dreaded than Stanley and a new corn law.'<a name="FNanchor_227_227" id="FNanchor_227_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_227_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a> In a debate of +extraordinary force and range in the summer of 1850, the two schools of +foreign policy found themselves face to face. Palmerston defended his +various proceedings with remarkable amplitude, power, moderation, and +sincerity. He had arrayed against him, besides Mr. Gladstone, the +greatest men in the House—Peel, Disraeli, Cobden, Graham, Bright—but +in his last sentence the undaunted minister struck a note that made +triumph in the division lobbies sure. For five hours a crowded house +hung upon his lips, and he then wound up with a fearless challenge of a +verdict on the question, 'Whether, as the Roman in days of old held +himself free from indignity when he could say <i>Civis Romanus sum</i>, so +also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident +that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him +against injustice and wrong?'</p> + +<p class="center">DON PACIFICO</p> + +<p>The Roman citizen was in this instance a Mediterranean Jew who chanced +to be a British subject. His house at Athens had for some reason or +other been sacked by the mob; he presented a demand for compensation +absurdly fraudulent on the face of it. The Greek government refused to +pay. England despatched the fleet to collect this and some other petty +accounts outstanding. Russia and France proposed their good offices; the +mediation of France was accepted; then a number of Greek vessels were +peremptorily seized, and France in umbrage recalled her ambassador from +London. Well might Peel, in the last speech ever delivered by him in the +House of Commons, describe such a course of action as consistent neither +with the dignity nor the honour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> of England. The debate travelled far +beyond Don Pacifico, and it stands to this day as a grand classic +exposition in parliament of the contending views as to the temper and +the principles on which nations in our modern era should conduct their +dealings with one another.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It was in the Greek debate of 1850, which involved the censure or +acquittal of Lord Palmerston, that I first meddled in speech with +foreign affairs, to which I had heretofore paid the slightest +possible attention. Lord Palmerston's speech was a marvel for +physical strength, for memory, and for lucid and precise exposition +of his policy as a whole. A very curious incident on this occasion +evinced the extreme reluctance of Sir R. Peel to appear in any +ostensible relation with Disraeli. Voting with him was disagreeable +enough, but this with his strong aversion to the Palmerstonian +policy Peel could not avoid; besides which, it was known that Lord +Palmerston would carry the division. Disraeli, not yet fully +recognised as leader of the protectionists, was working hard for +that position, and assumed the manners of it, with Beresford, a +kind of whipper-in, for his right-hand man. After the Palmerston +speech he asked me on the next night whether I would undertake to +answer it. I said that I was incompetent to do it, from want of +knowledge and otherwise. He answered that in that case he must do +it. As the debate was not to close that evening, this left another +night free for Peel when he might speak and <i>not</i> be in Disraeli's +<i>neighbourhood</i>. I told Peel what Disraeli had arranged. He was +very well satisfied. But, shortly afterwards, I received from +Disraeli a message through Beresford, that he had changed his mind, +and would not speak until the next and closing night, when Peel +would have to speak also. I had to make known to Peel this +alteration. He received the tidings with extreme annoyance: +thinking, I suppose, that if the two spoke on the same side and in +the late hours just before the division it would convey the idea of +some concert or co-operation between them, which it was evident +that he was most anxious to avoid. But he could not help himself. +Disraeli's speech was a very poor one, almost like a 'cross,' and +Peel's was prudent but otherwise not one of his best.<a name="FNanchor_228_228" id="FNanchor_228_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_228_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span></p></div> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone had not in 1850 at all acquired such full parliamentary +ascendency as belonged to the hardy veteran confronting him; still less +had he such authority as the dethroned leader who sat by his side. Yet +the House felt that, in the image of an ancient critic, here was no +cistern of carefully collected rain-water, but the bounteous flow of a +living spring. It felt all the noble elevation of an orator who +transported them apart from the chicane of diplomatic chanceries, above +the narrow expediencies of the particular case, though of these too he +proved himself a thoroughly well-armed master, into a full view of the +state system of Europe and of the principles and relations on which the +fabric is founded. Now for the first time he made the appeal, so often +repeated by him, to the common sentiment of the civilised world, to the +general and fixed convictions of mankind, to the principles of +brotherhood among nations, to their sacred independence, to the equality +in their rights of the weak with the strong. Such was his language. +'When we are asking for the maintenance of the rights that belong to our +fellow-subjects resident in Greece,' he said, '<i>let us do as we would be +done by</i>; let us pay all respect to a feeble state and to the infancy of +free institutions, which we should desire and should exact from others +towards their authority and strength.' Mr. Gladstone had not read +history for nothing, he was not a Christian for nothing. He knew the +evils that followed in Europe the breakdown of the great spiritual +power—once, though with so many defects, a controlling force over +violence, anarchy, and brute wrong. He knew the necessity for some +substitute, even a substitute so imperfect as the law of nations. 'You +may call the rule of nations vague and untrustworthy,' he exclaimed; 'I +find in it, on the contrary, a great and noble monument of human wisdom, +founded on the combined dictates of sound experience, a precious +inheritance bequeathed to us by the generations that have gone before +us, and a firm foundation on which we must take care to build whatever +it may be our part to add to their acquisitions, if indeed we wish to +promote the peace and welfare of the world.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">EXALTS THE LAW OF NATIONS</p> + +<p>The government triumphed by a handsome majority, and Mr. Gladstone, as +was his wont, consoled himself for present disappointment by hopes for a +better future. 'The majority of the House of Commons, I am convinced,' +he wrote to Guizot, then in permanent exile from power, 'was with us in +heart and in conviction; but fear of inconveniences attending the +removal of a ministry which there is no regularly organised opposition +ready to succeed, carried the day beyond all authoritative doubt, +against the merits of the particular question. It remains to hope that +the demonstration which has been made may not be without its effect upon +the tone of Lord Palmerston's future proceedings.'</p> + +<p>The conflict thus opened between Mr. Gladstone and Lord Palmerston in +1850 went on in many changing phases, with some curious vicissitudes and +inversions. They were sometimes frank foes, occasionally partners in +opposition, and for a long while colleagues in office. Never at any time +were they in thought or feeling congenial.<a name="FNanchor_229_229" id="FNanchor_229_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a></p> + +<p>On the afternoon of the day following this debate, Peel was thrown from +his horse and received injuries from which he died three days later +(July 2), in the sixty-third year of his age, and after forty-one years +of parliamentary life. When the House met the next day, Hume, as one of +its oldest members, at once moved the adjournment, and it fell to Mr. +Gladstone to second him. He was content with a few words of sorrow and +with the quotation of Scott's moving lines to the memory of Pitt:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">'Now is the stately column broke,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">The beacon-light is quench'd in smoke,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">The trumpet's silver sound is still,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">The warder silent on the hill!'</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>These beautiful words were addressed, said Mr. Gladstone, 'to a man +great indeed, but not greater than Sir Robert Peel.'</p> + +<p>'Great as he was to the last,' wrote Mr. Gladstone in one of his notes +in 1851, 'I must consider the closing years of his life as beneath those +that had preceded them. His enormous energies were in truth so lavishly +spent upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> gigantic work of government, which he conducted after a +fashion quite different,—I mean as to the work done in the workshop of +his own brain,—from preceding and succeeding prime ministers, that +their root was enfeebled, though in its feebleness it had more strength +probably remaining than fell to the lot of any other public man.'</p> + +<p>Peel may at least divide with Walpole the laurels of our greatest peace +minister to that date—the man who presided over beneficent and +necessary changes in national polity, that in hands less strong and less +skilful might easily have opened the sluices of civil confusion. And +when we think of Walpole's closing days, and of the melancholy end of +most other ruling spirits in our political history—of the +mortifications and disappointments in which, from Chatham and Pitt down +to Canning and O'Connell, they have quitted the glorious field—Peel +must seem happy in the manner and moment of his death. Daring and +prosperous legislative exploits had marked his path. His authority in +parliament never stood higher, his honour in the country never stood so +high. His last words had been a commanding appeal for temperance in +national action and language, a solemn plea for peace as the true aim to +set before a powerful people.</p> + +<p>To his father Mr. Gladstone wrote:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>July 2, 1850</i>.—I thought Sir R. Peel looked extremely feeble +during the debate last week. I mean as compared with what he +usually is. I observed that he slept during much of Lord +Palmerston's speech, that he spoke with little physical energy, and +next day, Saturday, in the forenoon I thought he looked very ill at +a meeting which, in common with him, I had to attend. This is all +that I know and that is worth telling on a subject which is one of +deep interest to all classes, from the Queen downwards. I was at +the palace last night and she spoke to me with great earnestness +about it. As to the division I shall say little; it is an +unsatisfactory subject. The majority of the government was made up +out of our ranks, partly by people staying away and partly by some +twenty who actually voted with the government. By far the greater +portion, I am sorry to say, of both sets of persons were what are +called Peelites, and not protectionists. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>The fact is, that if all +calling themselves liberal be put on one side, and all calling +themselves conservatives on the other, the House of Commons is as +nearly as possible <i>equally</i> divided.</p></div> + +<p class="center">QUESTIONS OF LEADERSHIP</p> + +<p>I have already described how Mr. Gladstone thought it a great mistake in +Peel to resist any step that might put upon the protectionists the +responsibilities of office. In a note composed a quarter of a century +later (1876), he says: 'This I think was not only a safe experiment +(after 1848) but a vital necessity. I do not, therefore, think, and I +did not think, that the death of Sir R. Peel at the time when it +occurred was a great calamity so far as the chief question of our +internal politics was concerned. In other respects it was indeed great; +in some of them it may almost be called immeasurable. The moral +atmosphere of the House of Commons has never since his death been quite +the same, and is now widely different. He had a kind of authority there +that was possessed by no one else. Lord John might in some respects +compete with, in some even excel, him; but to him, as leader of the +liberals, the loss of such an opponent was immense. It is sad to think +what, with his high mental force and noble moral sense, he might have +done for us in after years. Even the afterthought of knowledge of such a +man and of intercourse with him, is a high privilege and a precious +possession.'</p> + +<p>An interesting word or two upon his own position at this season occur in +a letter to his father (July 9, 1850):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The letter in which you expressed a desire to be informed by me, so +far as I might be able to speak, whether there was anything in the +rumours circulated with regard to my becoming the leader in +parliament of the conservative party, did not come to my hands +until yesterday. The fact is, that there is nothing whatever in +those rumours beyond mere speculation on things supposed probable +or possible, and they must pass for what they are worth in that +character only. People feel, I suppose, that Sir Robert Peel's life +and continuance in parliament were of themselves powerful obstacles +to the general reorganisation of the conservative party, and as +there is great annoyance and dissatisfaction with the present state +of things, and a widely spread feeling that it is not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> conducive to +the public interests, there arises in men's minds an expectation +that the party will be in some manner reconstituted. I share in the +feeling that it is desirable; but I see very great difficulties in +the way, and do not at present see how they are to be effectually +overcome. The House of Commons is almost equally divided, indeed, +between those professing liberal and those professing conservative +politics; but the late division [Don Pacifico] showed how ill the +latter could hang together, even when all those who had any +prominent station among them in any sense were united....</p></div> + +<p>Cornewall Lewis wrote,'Upon Gladstone the death of Peel will have the +effect of removing a weight from a spring—he will come forward more and +take more part in discussion. The general opinion is that Gladstone will +renounce his free trade opinions, and become leader of the +protectionists. I expect neither the one event nor the other.'<a name="FNanchor_230_230" id="FNanchor_230_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_230_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a> More +interesting still is something told by the Duke of Buccleuch. 'Very +shortly,' said the duke in 1851, 'before Sir Robert Peel's death, he +expressed to me his belief that Sidney Herbert or Gladstone would one +day be premier; but Peel said with sarcasm, If the hour comes, Disraeli +must be made governor-general of India. He will be a second +Ellenborough.'<a name="FNanchor_231_231" id="FNanchor_231_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_227_227" id="Footnote_227_227"></a><a href="#FNanchor_227_227"><span class="label">[227]</span></a> Parker, iii. p. 536.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_228_228" id="Footnote_228_228"></a><a href="#FNanchor_228_228"><span class="label">[228]</span></a> Fragment of 1897.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_229_229" id="Footnote_229_229"></a><a href="#FNanchor_229_229"><span class="label">[229]</span></a> Mr. Gladstone's Don Pacifico speech is still not quite out of +date.—June 27, <i>Hansard</i>, 1850.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_230_230" id="Footnote_230_230"></a><a href="#FNanchor_230_230"><span class="label">[230]</span></a> <i>Letters</i>, p. 226.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_231_231" id="Footnote_231_231"></a><a href="#FNanchor_231_231"><span class="label">[231]</span></a> Dean Boyle's <i>Recollections</i>, p. 32.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIIICh_V" id="BkIIICh_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">GORHAM CASE—SECESSION OF FRIENDS</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1847-1851</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It is not by the State that man can be regenerated, and the +terrible woes of this darkened world effectually dealt +with.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span> (1894).</p></div><br /> + +<p>The test case of toleration at the moment of the Oxford election of 1847 +was the admission of the Jews to sit in parliament, and in the last +month of 1847 Mr. Gladstone astonished his father, as well as a great +host of his political supporters, by voting with the government in +favour of the removal of Jewish disabilities. No ordinary degree of +moral courage was needed for such a step by the member for such a +constituency. 'It is a painful decision to come to,' he writes in his +diary (Dec. 16), 'but the only substantive doubt it raises is about +remaining in parliament, and it is truly and only the church which holds +me there, though she may seem to some to draw me from it.' Pusey wrote +to him in rather violent indignation, for Mr. Gladstone was the only man +of that school who learned, or was able to learn, what the modern state +is or is going to be. This was the third phase, so Gladstone argued, of +an irresistible movement. The tory party had fought first for an +anglican parliament, second they fought for a protestant parliament, and +now they were fighting for a Christian parliament. Parliament had ceased +to be anglican and it had ceased to be protestant, and the +considerations that supported these two earlier operations thenceforth +condemned the exclusion from full civil rights of those who were not +Christians. To his father he explained (December 17, 1847): 'After much +consideration, prolonged indeed I may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> say for the last two years and a +half, I made up my mind to support Lord John Russell's bill for the +admission of the Jews. I spoke to this effect last night. It is with +reluctance that I give the vote, but I am convinced that after the civil +privileges we have given them already (including the magistracy and the +franchise), and after the admission we have already conceded to +unitarians who refuse the whole of the most vital doctrines of the +Gospel, we cannot compatibly with entire justice and fairness refuse to +admit them.'</p> + +<p>His father, who was sometimes exacting, complained of concealment. Mr. +Gladstone replied that he regarded the question as one of difficulty, +and he therefore took as much time as he possibly could for reflection +upon it, though he never intended to run it as close as it actually +came. 'I know,' he says, in a notable sentence, 'it seems strange to you +that I should find it necessary to hold my judgment in suspense on a +question which seemed to many so plain; <i>but suspense is of constant +occurrence in public life upon very many kinds of questions, and without +it errors and inconsistencies would be much more frequent than even they +are now</i>.' This did not satisfy his father. 'I shall certainly read your +speech to find some fair apology for your vote: good and satisfactory +reason I do not expect. I cannot doubt you thought you withheld your +opinions from me under the undecided state you were in, without any +intention whatever to annoy me. There is, however, a natural closeness +in your disposition, with a reserve towards those who may think they may +have some claim to your confidence, probably increased by official +habits, which it may perhaps in some cases be worth your inquiring +into.' The sentence above about suspense is a key to many +misunderstandings of Mr. Gladstone's character. His stouthearted friend +Thomas Acland had warned him, for the sake of his personal influence, to +be sure to deal with the Jew question on broad grounds, without +refining, and without dragging out some recondite view not seen by +common men, 'in short, to be <i>as little as possible like Maurice, and +more like the Duke of Wellington</i>.' 'My speech,' Mr. Gladstone answered, +'was most unsatis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span>factory in many ways, but I do not believe that it +mystified or puzzled anybody.'</p> + +<p class="center">JEWISH DISABILITIES</p> + +<p>The following year he received the honour of a D.C.L. degree at Oxford. +Mrs. Gladstone was there, he tells his father, and 'was well satisfied +with my reception, though it is not to be denied that my vote upon the +Jew bill is upon the whole unpalatable there, and they had been provoked +by a paragraph in the <i>Globe</i> newspaper stating that I was to have the +degree, and that this made it quite clear that the minority was not +unfavourable to the Jew bill.'</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>July 5</i>.—I went off after breakfast to Oxford. Joined the V.-C. +and doctors in the hall at Wadham, and went in procession to the +Divinity schools provided with a white neckcloth by Sir R. Inglis, +who seized me at the station in horror and alarm when he saw me +with a black one. In due time we were summoned to the theatre where +my degree had been granted with some <i>non placets</i> but with no +scrutiny. The scene remarkable to the eye and mind, so pictorial +and so national. There was great tumult about me, the hisses being +obstinate, and the <i>fautores</i> also very generous. 'Gladstone and +the Jew bill' came sometimes from the gallery, sometimes more +favouring sounds.</p></div> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>After the whig government was formed in 1846, Mr. Gladstone expressed +himself as having little fear that they could do much harm, 'barring +church patronage.' He was soon justified in his own eyes in this +limitation of his confidence, for the next year Dr. Hampden was made a +bishop.<a name="FNanchor_232_232" id="FNanchor_232_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a> This was a rude blow both to the university which had +eleven years before pronounced him heretical, and to the bishops who now +bitterly and fervidly remonstrated. Grave points of law were raised, but +Mr. Gladstone, though warmly reprobating the prime minister's +recommendation of a divine so sure to raise the hurricane, took no +leading part in the strife that followed. 'Never in my opinion,' he said +to his father (Feb. 2, 1848), 'was a firebrand more wantonly and +gratuitously cast.' It was an indication the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> more of a determination to +substitute a sort of general religion for the doctrines of the church. +The next really marking incident after the secession of Newman was a +decision of a court of law, known as the Gorham judgment. This and the +preferment of Hampden to his bishopric produced the second great tide of +secession. 'Were we together,' Mr. Gladstone writes to Manning at the +end of 1849 (December 30), 'I should wish to converse with you from +sunrise to sunset on the Gorham case. It is a stupendous issue. Perhaps +they will evade it. On abstract grounds this would be still more +distasteful than a decision of the state against a catholic doctrine. +But what I feel is that as a body we are not ready yet for the last +alternatives. More years must elapse from the secession of Newman and +the group of secessions which, following or preceding, belonged to it. A +more composed and settled state of the public mind in regard to our +relations with the church of Rome must supervene. There must be more +years of faithful <i>work</i> for the church to point to in argument, and to +grow into her habits. And besides all these very needful conditions of +preparation for a crisis, I want to see the question more fully +answered, What will the state of its own free and good will do, or allow +to be done, for the church while yet in alliance with it?'</p> + +<p>The Gorham case was this: a bishop refused to institute a clergyman to a +vicarage in the west of England, on the ground of unsound doctrine upon +regeneration by baptism. The clergyman sought a remedy in the +ecclesiastical court of Arches. The judge decided against him. The case +then came on appeal before the judicial committee of the privy council, +and here a majority with the two archbishops as assessors reversed the +decision of the court below. The bishop, one of the most combative of +the human race, flew to Westminster Hall, tried move upon move in +queen's bench, exchequer, common pleas; declared that his archbishop had +abused his high commission; and even actually renounced communion with +him. But the sons of Zeruiah were too hard. The religious world in both +of its two standing camps was convulsed, for if Gorham had lost the day +it would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> or might have meant the expulsion from the establishment of +calvinists and evangelicals bag and baggage. 'I am old enough,' said the +provost of Oriel, 'to remember three baptismal controversies, and this +is the first in which one party has tried to eject the other from the +church.' On the other hand the sacramental wing found it intolerable +that fundamental doctrines of the church should be settled under the +veil of royal supremacy, by a court possessed of no distinctly church +character.</p> + +<p class="center">THE JUDGMENT</p> + +<p>The judgment was declared on March 8 (1850), and Manning is made to tell +a vivid story about going to Mr. Gladstone's house, finding him ill with +influenza, sitting down by his bedside and telling him what the court +had done; whereon Mr. Gladstone started up, threw out his arms and +exclaimed that the church of England was gone unless it relieved itself +by some authoritative act. A witty judge once observed in regard to the +practice of keeping diaries, that it was wise to keep diary enough at +any rate to prove an <i>alibi</i>. According to Mr. Gladstone's diary he was +not laid up until several days later, when he did see various people, +Manning included, in his bedroom. On the black day of the judgment, +having dined at the palace the night before, and having friends to dine +with him on this night, he records a busy day, including a morning spent +after letter-writing, in discussion with Manning, Hope, and others on +the Gorham case and its probable consequences. This slip of memory in +the cardinal is trivial and not worth mentioning, but perhaps it tends +to impair another vivid scene described on the same authority; how +thirteen of them met at Mr. Gladstone's house, agreed to a declaration +against the judgment, and proceeded to sign; how Mr. Gladstone, standing +with his back to the fire, began to demur; and when pressed by Manning +to sign, asked him in a low voice whether he thought that as a privy +councillor he ought to sign such a protest; and finally how Manning, +knowing the pertinacity of his character, turned and said: We will not +press him further.<a name="FNanchor_233_233" id="FNanchor_233_233"></a><a href="#Footnote_233_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a> This graphic relation looks as if Mr. Gladstone +were leaving his friends in the lurch. None of them ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> said so, none +of them made any signs of thinking so. There is no evidence that Mr. +Gladstone ever agreed to the resolution at all, and there is even +evidence that points presumptively the other way: that he was taking a +line of his own, and arguing tenaciously against all the rest for +delay.<a name="FNanchor_234_234" id="FNanchor_234_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_234_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a> Mr. Gladstone was often enough in a hurry himself, but there +never was a man in this world more resolute against being hurried by +other people.<a name="FNanchor_235_235" id="FNanchor_235_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a></p> + +<p class="center">EXCITING EFFECT OF THE JUDGMENT</p> + +<p>We need not, however, argue probabilities. Mr. Gladstone no sooner saw +the story than he pronounced it fiction. In a letter to the writer of +the book on Cardinal Manning (Jan. 14, 1896) he says:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I read with surprise Manning's statement (made first after 35 +years) that I would not sign the declaration of 1850 because I 'was +a privy councillor.' I should not have been more surprised had he +written that I told him I could not sign because my name began with +G. I had done stronger things than that when I was not only privy +councillor but official servant of the crown, nay, I believe +cabinet minister. The declaration was liable to <i>many</i> interior +objections. Seven out of the thirteen who signed did so without (I +believe) any kind of sequel. I wish you to know that I entirely +disavow and disclaim Manning's statement as it <i>stands</i>. And here I +have to ask you to insert two lines in your second or next edition; +with the simple statement that I prepared and published with +promptitude an elaborate argument <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>to show that the judicial +committee was historically unconstitutional, as an organ for the +decision of ecclesiastical questions. This declaration was +entitled, I think, 'A Letter to the Bishop of London on the +Ecclesiastical Supremacy.' If I recollect right, while it dealt +little with theology, it was a more pregnant production than the +declaration, and it went much nearer the mark. It has been +repeatedly published, and is still on sale at Murray's. I am glad +to see that Sidney Herbert (a <i>gentleman</i> if ever there was one) +also declined to sign. It seems to me <i>now</i>, that there is +something almost ludicrous in the propounding of such a congeries +of statements by such persons as we were; not the more, but +certainly not the less, because of being privy councillors.</p> + +<p>It was a terrible time; aggravated for me by heavy cares and +responsibilities of a nature quite extraneous: and far beyond all +others by the illness and death of a much-loved child, with great +anxieties about another. My recollections of the conversations +before the declaration are little but a mass of confusion and +bewilderment. I stand only upon what I <i>did</i>. No one of us, I +think, understood the actual position, not even our lawyers, until +Baron Alderson printed an excellent statement on the points +raised.<a name="FNanchor_236_236" id="FNanchor_236_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_236_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a></p></div> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>For long the new situation filled his mind. 'The case of the church of +England at this moment,' he wrote to Lord Lyttelton, 'is a very dismal +one, and almost leaves men to choose between a broken heart and no heart +at all. But at present it is all dark or only twilight which rests upon +our future.' He busily set down thoughts upon the supremacy. He studied +Cawdry's case, and he mastered Lord Coke's view of the law. He feels +better pleased with the Reformation in regard to the supremacy; but also +much more sensible of the drifting of the church since, away from the +range of her constitutional securities; and more than ever convinced how +thoroughly false is the present position. As to himself and his own work +in life, in reply I suppose to something urged by Manning, he says +(April 29, 1850), 'I have two characters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> to fulfil—that of a lay +member of the church, and that of a member of a sort of wreck of a +political party. I must not break my understood compact with the last, +and forswear my profession, unless and until the necessity has arisen. +That necessity will plainly have arisen for me when it shall have become +evident that justice cannot, <i>i.e.</i>, will not, be done by the state to +the church.' With boundless exaltation of spirit he expatiated on the +arduous and noble task which it was now laid upon the children of the +church of England amid trouble, suspense, and it might be even agony to +perform. 'Fully believing that the death of the church of England is +among the alternative issues of the Gorham case,' he wrote to a clerical +friend (April 9), 'I yet also believe that all Christendom and all its +history have rarely afforded a nobler opportunity of doing battle for +the faith in the church than that now offered to English churchmen. That +opportunity is a prize far beyond any with which the days of her +prosperity, in any period, can have been adorned.' He does not think +(June 1, 1850), that a loftier work was ever committed to men. Such vast +interests were at stake, such unbounded prospects open before them. What +they wanted was the divine art to draw from present terrible calamities +and appalling future prospects the conquering secret to rise through the +struggle into something better than historical anglicanism, which +essentially depended on conditions that have passed away. 'In my own +case,' he says to Manning a little later, 'there is work ready to my +hand and much more than enough for its weakness, a great mercy and +comfort. But I think I know what my course would be, were there not. It +would be to set to work upon the holy task or clearing, opening, and +establishing positive truth in the church of England, which is an office +doubly blessed, inasmuch as it is both the business of truth, and the +laying of firm foundations for future union in Christendom.' If this +vision of a dream had ever come to pass, perhaps Europe might have seen +the mightiest Christian doctor since Bossuet; and just as Bossuet's +struggle was called the grandest spectacle of the seventeenth century, +so to many eyes this might have appeared the greatest of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> +nineteenth. Mr. Gladstone did not see, in truth he never saw, any more +than Bossuet saw in his age, that the Time-Spirit was shifting the +foundations of the controversy. However that may be, the interesting +thing for us in the history of his life is the characteristic blaze of +battle that this case now kindled in his breast.</p> + +<p class="center">VIEW OF THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH</p> + +<p>On the eve of his return from Germany in the autumn of 1845, one of his +letters to Mrs. Gladstone reveals the pressing intensity of his +conviction, deepened by his intercourse with the grave and pious circles +at Munich and at Stuttgart, of the supreme interest of spiritual +things:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>In my wanderings my thoughts too have had time to travel; and I +have had much conversation upon church matters first at Munich and +since coming here with Mrs. Craven and some connections of hers +staying with her, who are Roman catholics of a high school. All +that I can see and learn induces me more and more to feel what a +crisis for religion at large is this period of the world's +history—how the power of religion and its permanence are bound up +with the church—how inestimably precious would be the church's +unity, inestimably precious on the one hand, and on the other to +human eyes immeasurably remote—lastly how loud, how solemn is the +call upon all those who hear and who <i>can</i> obey it, to labour more +and more in the spirit of these principles, to give themselves, if +it may be, clearly and wholly to that work. It is dangerous to put +indefinite thoughts, instincts, longings, into language which is +necessarily determinate. I cannot trace the line of my own future +life, but I hope and pray it may not always be where it is.... +Ireland, Ireland! that cloud in the west, that coming storm, the +minister of God's retribution upon cruel and inveterate and but +half-atoned injustice! Ireland forces upon us those great social +and great religious questions—God grant that we may have courage +to look them in the face, and to work through them. Were they over, +were the path of the church clear before her, as a body able to +take her trial before God and the world upon the performance of her +work as His organ for the recovery of our country—how joyfully +would I retire from the barren, exhausting strife of merely +political contention. I do not think that you would be very +sorrowful? As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> to ambition in its ordinary sense, we are spared the +chief part of its temptations. If it has a valuable reward upon +earth over and above a good name, it is when a man is enabled to +bequeath to his children a high place in the social system of his +country. That cannot be our case. The days are gone by when such a +thing might have been possible. To leave to Willy a title with its +burdens and restraints and disqualifications, but without the +material substratum of wealth, and the duties and means of good, as +well as the general power attending it, would not I think be acting +for him in a wise and loving spirit—assuming, which may be a vain +assumption, that the alternative could ever be before us.</p></div> + +<p>The fact that in Scotland, a country in which Mr. Gladstone passed so +much time and had such lively interests, the members of his own +episcopal church were dissenters, was well fitted to hasten the progress +of his mind in the liberal direction. Certain it is that in a +strongly-written letter to a Scotch bishop at the end of 1851, Mr. +Gladstone boldly enlarged upon the doctrine of religious freedom, with a +directness that kindled both alarm and indignation among some of his +warmest friends.<a name="FNanchor_237_237" id="FNanchor_237_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_237_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a> Away, he cried, with the servile doctrine that +religion cannot live but by the aid of parliaments. When the state has +ceased to bear a definite and full religious character, it is our +interest and our duty alike to maintain a full religious freedom. It is +this plenary religious freedom that brings out in full vigour the +internal energies of each communion. Of all civil calamities the +greatest is the mutilation, under the seal of civil authority, of the +Christian religion itself. One fine passage in this letter denotes an +advance in his political temper, as remarkable as the power of the +language in which it finds expression:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It is a great and noble secret, that of constitutional freedom, +which has given to us the largest liberties, with the steadiest +throne and the most vigorous executive in Christendom. I confess to +my strong faith in the virtue of this principle. I have lived <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>now +for many years in the midst of the hottest and noisiest of its +workshops, and have seen that amidst the clatter and the din a +ceaseless labour is going on; stubborn matter is reduced to +obedience, and the brute powers of society like the fire, air, +water, and mineral of nature are, with clamour indeed but also with +might, educated and shaped into the most refined and regular forms +of usefulness for man. I am deeply convinced that among us all +systems, whether religious or political, which rest on a principle +of absolutism, must of necessity be, not indeed tyrannical, but +feeble and ineffective systems; and that methodically to enlist the +members of a community, with due regard to their several +capacities, in the performance of its public duties, is the way to +make that community powerful and healthful, to give a firm seat to +its rulers, and to engender a warm and intelligent devotion in +those beneath their sway.<a name="FNanchor_238_238" id="FNanchor_238_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_238_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a></p></div> + +<p class="center">FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERALISM</p> + +<p>These were the golden trumpet-notes of a new time. When they readied the +ears of old Dr. Routh, as he sat in wig and cassock among his books and +manuscripts at Magdalen, revolving nearly a hundred years of mortal +life, he exclaimed that he had heard enough to be quite sure that no man +holding such opinions as these could ever be a proper member for the +university of Oxford. A few months later, it was seen how the learned +man found several hundreds of unlearned to agree with him.</p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>This chapter naturally closes with what was to Mr. Gladstone one of the +dire catastrophies of his life. With growing dismay he had seen Manning +drawing steadily towards the edge of the cataract. When he took the +ominous step of quitting his charge at Lavington, Mr. Gladstone wrote to +him from Naples (January 26, 1851): 'Without description from you, I can +too well comprehend what you have suffered.... Such griefs ought to be +sacred to all men, they must be sacred to me, even did they not touch me +sharply with a reflected sorrow. You can do nothing that does not reach +me, considering how long you have been a large part both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> of my actual +life and of my hopes and reckonings. Should you do the act which I pray +God with my whole soul you may not do, it will not break, however it may +impair or strain, the bonds between us.' 'If you go over,' he says, in +another letter of the same month, 'I should earnestly pray that you +might not be as others who have gone before you, but might carry with +you a larger heart and mind, able to raise and keep you above that +slavery to a system, that exaggeration of its forms, that disposition to +rivet every shackle tighter and to stretch every breach wider, which +makes me mournfully feel that the men who have gone from the church of +England after being reared in her and by her, are far more keen, and I +must add, far more cruel adversaries to her, than were the mass of those +whom they joined.'</p> + +<p>In the case of Hope there had been for some considerable time a +lingering sense of change. 'My affection for him, during these later +years before his change, was I may almost say intense: there was hardly +anything I think which he could have asked me to do, and which I would +not have done. But as I saw more and more through the dim light what was +to happen, it became more and more like the affection felt for one +departed.' Hope, he says, was not one of those shallow souls who think +that such a relation can continue after its daily bread has been taken +away. At the end of March he enters in his diary: 'Wrote a paper on +Manning's question and gave it him. He smote me to the ground by +announcing with suppressed emotion that he is now upon the <i>brink</i>, and +Hope too. Such terrible blows not only overset and oppress but, I fear, +demoralise me.' On the same day in April 1851, Manning and Hope were +received together into the Roman church. Political separations, though +these too have their pangs, must have seemed to Mr. Gladstone trivial +indeed, after the tragic severance of such a fellowship as this had +been.</p> + +<p class="center">MANNING AND HOPE GO OVER</p> + +<p>'They were my two props,' he wrote in his diary the next day. 'Their +going may be to me a sign that my work is gone with them.... One +blessing I have: total freedom from doubts. These dismal events have +smitten, but not shaken.' The day after that, he made a codicil to his +will striking out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> Hope as executor, and substituting Northcote. +Friendship did not die, but only lived 'as it lives between those who +inhabit separate worlds.' Communication was not severed; social +intercourse was not avoided; and both on occasions in life, the passing +by of which, as Hope-Scott said, would be a loss to friendship, and on +smaller opportunities, they corresponded in terms of the old affection. +<i>Quis desiderio</i> is Mr. Gladstone's docket on one of Hope's letters, and +in another (1858) Hope communicates in words of tender feeling the loss +of his wife, and the consolatory teachings of the faith that she, like +himself, had embraced; and he recalls to Mr. Gladstone that the root of +their friendship which struck the deepest was fed by a common interest +in religion.<a name="FNanchor_239_239" id="FNanchor_239_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_239_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a></p> + +<p>In Manning's case the wound cut deeper, and for many years the +estrangement was complete.<a name="FNanchor_240_240" id="FNanchor_240_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_240_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a> To Wilberforce, the archdeacon, Mr. +Gladstone wrote (April 11, 1851):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I do indeed feel the loss of Manning, if and as far as I am capable +of feeling anything. It comes to me cumulated, and doubled, with +that of James Hope. Nothing like it can ever happen to me again. +Arrived now at middle life, I never <i>can</i> form I suppose with any +other two men the habits of communication, counsel, and dependence, +in which I have now for from fifteen to eighteen years lived with +them both.... My intellect does deliberately reject the grounds on +which Manning has proceeded. Indeed they are such as go far to +destroy my confidence, which was once and far too long at the +highest point, in the healthiness and soundness of his. To show +that at any rate this is not from the mere change he has made, I +may add, that my conversations with Hope have not left any +corresponding impression upon my mind with regard to him.</p></div> + +<p>A wider breach was this same year made in his inmost circle. In April of +the year before a little daughter, between four and five years old, had +died, and was buried at Fasque.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> The illness was long and painful, and +Mr. Gladstone bore his part in the nursing and watching. He was tenderly +fond of his little children, and the sorrow had a peculiar bitterness. +It was the first time that death entered his married home.</p> + +<p>When he returned to Fasque in the autumn he found that his father had +taken 'a decided step, nay a stride, in old age'; not having lost any of +his interest in politics, but grown quite mild. The old man was nearing +his eighty-seventh year. 'The very wreck of his powerful and simple +nature is full of grandeur.... Mischief is at work upon his brain—that +indefatigable brain which has had to stand all the wear and pressure of +his long life.' In the spring of 1851 he finds him 'very like a spent +cannon-ball, with a great and sometimes almost frightful energy +remaining in him: though weak in comparison with what he was, he hits a +very hard knock to those who come across him.' When December came, the +veteran was taken seriously ill, and the hope disappeared of seeing him +even reach his eighty-seventh birthday (Dec. 11). On the 7th he died. As +Mr. Gladstone wrote to Phillimore, 'though with little left either of +sight or hearing, and only able to walk from one room to another or to +his brougham for a short drive, though his memory was gone, his hold +upon language even for common purposes imperfect, the reasoning power +much decayed, and even his perception of personality rather indistinct, +yet so much remained about him as one of the most manful, energetic, +affectionate, and simple-hearted among human beings, that he still +filled a great space to the eye, mind, and heart, and a great space is +accordingly left void by his withdrawal.' 'The death of my father,' Mr. +Gladstone wrote to his brother John, 'is the loss of a great object of +love, and it is the shattering of a great bond of union. Among few +families of five persons will be found differences of character and +opinion to the same aggregate amount as among us. We cannot shut our +eyes to this fact; by opening them, I think we may the better strive to +prevent such differences from begetting estrangement.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_232_232" id="Footnote_232_232"></a><a href="#FNanchor_232_232"><span class="label">[232]</span></a><a href="#Page_167">See above, p. 167.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_233_233" id="Footnote_233_233"></a><a href="#FNanchor_233_233"><span class="label">[233]</span></a> Purcell, <i>Manning</i>, i. pp. 528-33.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_234_234" id="Footnote_234_234"></a><a href="#FNanchor_234_234"><span class="label">[234]</span></a> See J. B. Hope's letter (undated) in Purcell, i. p. 530.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_235_235" id="Footnote_235_235"></a><a href="#FNanchor_235_235"><span class="label">[235]</span></a> On March 13, Hope writes to Mr. Gladstone from 14 Curzon +Street:—'Keble and Pusey have been with me to-day, and the latter has +suggested some alterations in the resolutions; I have taken upon me to +propose a meeting at your house at ¼ before 10 to-morrow morning. If you +cannot <i>or do not wish</i> to be present, I do not doubt you will at any +rate allow me the use of your rooms.' The meeting seems to have taken +place, for the entry on March 14 in Mr. Gladstone's diary is +this:—'Hope, Badeley, Talbot, Cavendish, Denison, Dr. Pusey, Keble, +Bennett, here from 9¾ to 12 on the draft of the resolutions. Badeley +again in the evening. On the whole I resolved to try some immediate +effort.' This would appear to be the last meeting, and Manning is not +named as present. On the 18th:—'Drs. Mill, Pusey, etc., met here in the +evening, I was not with them.' On the same day Mr. Gladstone had written +to the Rev. W. Maskell, 'As respects myself, I do not intend to pursue +the consideration of them with those who meet to-night, first, because +the pressure of other business has become very heavy upon me, and +secondly and mainly, because I do not consider that the time for any +enunciation of a character pointing to ultimate issues will have arrived +until the Gorham judgment shall have taken effect.' No later meeting is +ever mentioned.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_236_236" id="Footnote_236_236"></a><a href="#FNanchor_236_236"><span class="label">[236]</span></a> Purcell professed to rectify the matter in the fourth edition, i. +p. 536, but the reader is nowhere told that Mr. Gladstone disavowed the +original story.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_237_237" id="Footnote_237_237"></a><a href="#FNanchor_237_237"><span class="label">[237]</span></a> <i>Letter to the Right Rev. William Skinner, Bishop of Aberdeen and +Primus, on the functions of laymen in the Church</i>, reprinted in +<i>Gleanings</i>, vi. Also <i>Letter</i> to Mr. Gladstone on this letter by +Charles Wordsworth, the Warden of Glenalmond. Oxford. J. H. Parker, +1852.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_238_238" id="Footnote_238_238"></a><a href="#FNanchor_238_238"><span class="label">[238]</span></a> <i>Gleanings</i>, vi. p. 17.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_239_239" id="Footnote_239_239"></a><a href="#FNanchor_239_239"><span class="label">[239]</span></a> In 1868 Mr. Gladstone urged him to produce an abridged version of +Lockhart's <i>Life of Scott</i>. Then Hope found that his father-in-law's own +abridgment was unknown; and (1871) asks Mr. Gladstone's leave to +dedicate a reprint of it to him as 'one among those who think that Scott +still deserves to be remembered, not as an author only, but as a noble +and vigorous man.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_240_240" id="Footnote_240_240"></a><a href="#FNanchor_240_240"><span class="label">[240]</span></a> From 1853 to 1861 they did not correspond nor did they even meet.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIIICh_VI" id="BkIIICh_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">NAPLES</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1850-1851</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It would be amusing, if the misfortunes of mankind ever could be +so, to hear the pretensions of the government here [Naples] to +mildness and clemency, because it does not put men to death, and +confines itself to leaving six or seven thousand state prisoners to +perish in dungeons. I am ready to believe that the king of Naples +is naturally mild and kindly, but he is afraid, and the worst of +all tyrannies is the tyranny of cowards.—<span class="smcap">Tocqueville</span> [1850].</p></div> +<br /> +<p>In the autumn of 1850, with the object of benefiting the eyesight of one +of their daughters, the Gladstones made a journey to southern Italy, and +an eventful journey it proved. For Italy it was, that now first drew Mr. +Gladstone by the native ardour of his humanity, unconsciously and +involuntarily, into that great European stream of liberalism which was +destined to carry him so far. Two deep principles, sentiments, +aspirations, forces, call them what we will, awoke the huge uprisings +that shook Europe in 1848—the principle of Liberty, the sentiment of +Nationality. Mr. Gladstone, slowly and almost blindly heaving off his +shoulders the weight of old conservative tradition, did not at first go +beyond liberty, with all that ordered liberty conveys. Nationality +penetrated later, and then indeed it penetrated to the heart's core. He +went to Naples with no purposes of political propagandism, and his +prepossessions were at that time pretty strongly in favour of +established governments, either at Naples or anywhere else. The case had +doubtless been opened to him by Panizzi—a man as Mr. Gladstone +described him, 'of warm, large, and free nature, an accomplished man of +letters, and a victim of political persecution, who came to this country +a nearly starving refugee.' But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span> Panizzi had certainly made no great +revolutionist of him. His opinions, as he told Lord Aberdeen, were the +involuntary and unexpected result of his sojourn.</p> + +<p>He had nothing to do with the subterranean forces at work in the kingdom +of the Two Sicilies, in the States of the Church, and in truth all over +the Peninsula. The protracted struggle that had begun after the +establishment of Austrian domination in the Peninsula in 1815, and was +at last to end in the construction of an Italian kingdom—the most +wonderful political transformation of the century—seemed after the +fatal crisis of Novara (1849) further than ever from a close. Now was +the morrow of the vast failures and disenchantments of 1848. Jesuits and +absolutists were once more masters, and reaction again alternated with +conspiracy, risings, desperate carbonari plots. Mazzini, four years +older than Mr. Gladstone, and Cavour, a year his junior, were directing +in widely different ways, the one the revolutionary movement of Young +Italy, the other the constitutional movement of the Italian +Resurrection. The scene presented brutal repression on the one hand; on +the other a chaos of republicans and monarchists, unitarians and +federalists, frenzied idealists and sedate economists, wild ultras and +men of the sober middle course. In the midst was the pope, the august +shadow, not long before the centre, now once again the foe, of his +countrymen's aspirations after freedom and a purer glimpse of the lights +of the sun. The evolution of this extraordinary historic drama, to which +passion, genius, hope, contrivance, stratagem, and force contributed +alike the highest and the lowest elements in human nature and the growth +of states, was to be one of the most sincere of Mr. Gladstone's +interests for the rest of his life.</p> + +<p class="center">SPECTACLE OF MISRULE</p> + +<p>As we shall see, he was at first and he long remained untouched by the +idea of Italian unity and Italy a nation. He met some thirty or more +Italian gentlemen in society at Naples, of whom seven or eight only were +in any sense liberals, and not one of them a republican. It was now that +he made the acquaintance of Lacaita, afterwards so valued a friend of +his, and so well known in many circles in England for his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> geniality, +cultivation, and enlightenment. He was the legal adviser to the British +embassy; he met Mr. Gladstone constantly; they talked politics and +literature day and night, 'under the acacias and palms, between the +fountains and statues of the Villa Reale, looking now to the sea, now to +the world of fashion in the Corso.' Here Lacaita first opened the +traveller's eyes to the condition of things, though he was able to say +with literal truth that not a single statement of fact was made upon +Lacaita's credit. Mr. Gladstone saw Bourbon absolutism no longer in the +decorous hues of conventional diplomacy, but as the black and execrable +thing it really was,—'the negation of God erected into a system of +government.' Sitting in court for long hours during the trial of Poerio, +he listened with as much patience as he could command to the principal +crown witness, giving such evidence that the tenth part of what he heard +should not only have ended the case, but secured condign punishment for +perjury—evidence that a prostitute court found good enough to justify +the infliction on Poerio, not long before a minister of the crown, of +the dreadful penalty of four-and-twenty years in irons. Mr. Gladstone +accurately informed himself of the condition of those who for unproved +political offences were in thousands undergoing degrading and murderous +penalties. He contrived to visit some of the Neapolitan prisons, another +name for the extreme of filth and horror; he saw political prisoners +(and political prisoners included a large percentage of the liberal +opposition) chained two and two in double irons to common felons; he +conversed with Poerio himself in the bagno of Nisida chained in this +way; he watched sick prisoners, men almost with death in their faces, +toiling upstairs to see the doctors, because the lower regions were too +foul and loathsome to allow it to be expected that professional men +would enter. Even these inhuman and revolting scenes stirred him less, +as it was right they should, than the corruptions of the tribunals, the +vindictive treatment for long periods of time of uncondemned and untried +men, and all the other proceedings of the government, 'desolating entire +classes upon which the life and growth of the nation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> depend, +undermining the foundation of all civil rule.' It was this violation of +all law, and of the constitution to which King Ferdinand had solemnly +sworn fidelity only a year or two before, that outraged him more than +even rigorous sentences and barbarous prison practice. 'Even on the +severity of these sentences,' he wrote, 'I would not endeavour to fix +attention so much as to draw it off from the great fact of illegality, +which seems to me to be the foundation of the Neapolitan system; +illegality, the fountain-head of cruelty and baseness and every other +vice; illegality which gives a bad conscience, creates fears; those +fears lead to tyranny, that tyranny begets resentment, that resentment +creates true causes of fear where they were not before; and thus fear is +quickened and enhanced, the original vice multiplies itself with fearful +speed, and the old crime engenders a necessity for new.'<a name="FNanchor_241_241" id="FNanchor_241_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a></p> + +<p>Poerio apprehended that his own case had been made worse by the +intervention of Mr. Temple, the British minister and brother of Lord +Palmerston; not in the least as blaming him or considering it officious. +He adopted the motto, 'to suffer is to do,' '<i>il patire è anche +operare</i>.' For himself he was not only willing—he rejoiced—to play the +martyr's part.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I was particularly desirous, wrote Mr. Gladstone in a private +memorandum, to have Poerio's opinion on the expediency of making +some effort in England to draw general attention to these horrors, +and dissociate the conservative party from all suppositions of +winking at them; because I had had from a sensible man one strong +opinion against such a course. I said to him that in my view only +two models could be thought of,—the first, amicable remonstrance +through the cabinets, the second public notoriety and shame. That +had Lord Aberdeen been in power the first might have been +practicable, but that with Lord Palmerston it would not, because of +his position relatively to the other cabinets (Yes, he said, Lord +Palmerston was <i>isolato</i>), not because he would be wanting in the +will. Matters standing thus, I saw no way open but that of +exposure; and might that possibly exasperate the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span>Neapolitan +government, and increase their severity? His reply was, 'As to us, +never mind; we can hardly be worse than we are. But think of our +country, for which we are most willing to be sacrificed. Exposure +will do it good. The present government of Naples rely on the +English conservative party. Consequently we were all in horror when +Lord Stanley last year carried his motion in the House of Lords. +Let there be a voice from that party showing that whatever +government be in power in England, no support will be given to such +proceedings as these. It will do much to break them down. It will +also strengthen the hands of a better and less obdurate class about +the court. Even there all are not alike. I know it from +observation. These ministers are the extremest of extremes. There +are others who would willingly see more moderate means adopted.' On +such grounds as these (I do not quote words) he strongly +recommended me to <i>act</i>.</p></div> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">RETURN TO LONDON</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone reached London on February 26. Phillimore met him at the +station with Lord Stanley's letter, of which we shall hear in the next +chapter, pressing him to enter the government. 'I was never more +struck,' says Phillimore, 'by the earnestness and simplicity of his +character. He could speak of nothing so readily as the horrors of the +Neapolitan government, of which I verily believe he thought nearly as +much as the prospect of his own accession to one of the highest offices +of state.' He probably thought not only nearly as much, but infinitely +more of those 'scenes fitter for hell than earth,' now many hundred +miles away, but still vividly burning in the haunted chambers of his +wrath and pity. After rapidly despatching the proposal to join the new +cabinet, after making the best he could of the poignant anxieties that +were stirred in him by the unmistakeable signs of the approaching +secession of Hope and Manning, he sought Lord Aberdeen (March 4), and +'found him as always, satisfactory; kind, just, moderate, humane' (to +Mrs. Gladstone, March 4). He had come to London with the intention of +obtaining, if possible, Aberdeen's intervention, in preference to any +other mode of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> proceeding,<a name="FNanchor_242_242" id="FNanchor_242_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_242_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a> and they agreed that private +representation and remonstrance should be tried in the first instance, +as less likely than public action by Mr. Gladstone in parliament, to +rouse international jealousy abroad, or to turn the odious tragedy into +the narrow channels of party at home. Mr. Gladstone, at Lord Aberdeen's +desire, was to submit a statement of the case for his consideration and +judgment.</p> + +<p class="center">POSITION OF LORD ABERDEEN</p> + +<p>This statement, the first memorable Letter to Lord Aberdeen, was ready +at the beginning of April. The old minister gave it 'mature +consideration' for the best part of a month. His antecedents made him +cautious. Mr. Gladstone, ten years later, admitted that Lord Aberdeen's +views of Italy did not harmonise with what was his general mode of +estimating human action and the world's affairs, and there was a reason +for this in his past career. In very early youth he had been called upon +to deal with the gigantic questions that laid their mighty weight upon +European statesmen at the fall of Napoleon; the natural effect of this +close contact with the vast and formidable problems of 1814-5 was to +make him regard the state-system then founded as a structure on which +only reckless or criminal unwisdom would dare to lay a finger. The +fierce storms of 1848 were not calculated to loosen this fixed idea, or +to dispose him to any new views of either the relations of Austria to +Italy, or of the uncounted mischiefs to the Peninsula of which those +relations were the nourishing and maintaining cause. In a debate in the +Lords two years before (July 20, 1849), Lord Aberdeen had sharply +criticised the British government of the day for doing the very thing +officially, which Mr. Gladstone was now bringing moral compulsion on him +to attempt unofficially. Lord Palmerston had called attention at Vienna +to the crying evils of the government of Naples, and had boldly said +that it was little wonder if men groaning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> for long years under such +grievances and seeing no hope of redress, should take up any scheme, +however wild, that held out any chance of relief. This and other +proceedings indicating unfriendliness to the King of Naples and a veiled +sympathy with rebellion shocked Aberdeen as much as Lamartine's +trenchant saying that the treaties of Vienna were effete. In attacking +Palmerston's foreign policy again in 1850, he protested that we had +deeply injured Austria and had represented her operations in Italy in a +completely false light. In his speech in the Pacifico debate, he had +referred to the Neapolitan government without approval but in guarded +phrases, and had urged as against Lord Palmerston that the less they +admired Neapolitan institutions and usages, the more careful ought they +to be not to impair the application of the sacred principles that govern +and harmonise the intercourse between states, from which you never can +depart without producing mischiefs a thousand fold greater than any +promised advantage. Aberdeen was too upright and deeply humane a man to +resist the dreadful evidence that was now forced upon him. Still that +evidence plainly shook down his own case of a few months earlier, and +this cannot have been pleasing. He felt the truth and the enormity of +the indictment laid before him; he saw the prejudice that would +inevitably be done to conservatism both at home and on the European +continent, by the publication of such an indictment from the lips of +such a pleader; and he perceived from Mr. Gladstone's demeanour that the +decorous plausibilities of diplomacy would no more hold him back from +resolute exposure, than they would put out the fires of Vesuvius or +Etna.</p> + +<p>On May 2 Lord Aberdeen wrote to Schwarzenberg at Vienna, saying that for +forty years he had been connected with the Austrian government, and +taken a warm interest in the fortunes of the empire; that Mr. Gladstone, +one of the most distinguished members of the cabinet of Peel, had been +so shocked by what he saw at Naples, that he was resolved to make some +public appeal; that to avoid the pain and scandal of a conservative +statesman taking such a course, would not his highness use his powerful +influence to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> get done at Naples all that could reasonably be desired? +The Austrian minister replied several weeks after (June 30). If he had +been invited, he said, officially to interfere he would have declined; +as it was, he would bring Mr. Gladstone's statements to the notice of +his Sicilian majesty. Meanwhile, at great length, he reminded Lord +Aberdeen that a political offender may be the worst of all offenders, +and argued that the rigour exercised by England herself in the Ionian +Islands, in Ceylon, in respect of Irishmen, and in the recent case of +Ernest Jones, showed how careful she should be in taking up abroad the +cause of bad men posing as martyrs in the holy cause of liberty.</p> + +<p>During all these weeks, while Aberdeen was maturely considering, and +while Prince Schwarzenberg was making his secretaries hunt up +recriminatory cases against England, Mr. Gladstone was growing +impatient. Lord Aberdeen begged him to give the Austrian minister a +little more time. It was nearly four months since Mr. Gladstone landed +at Dover, and every day he thought of Poerio, Settembrini, and the rest, +wearing their double chains, subsisting on their foul soup, degraded by +forced companionship with criminals, cut off from the light of heaven, +and festering in their dungeons. The facts that escaped from him in +private conversation seemed to him—so he tells Lacaita—to spread like +wildfire from man to man, exciting the liveliest interest, and extending +to the highest persons in the land. He waited a fortnight more, then at +the beginning of July he launched his thunderbolt, publishing his Letter +to Lord Aberdeen, followed by a second explanation and enlargement a +fortnight later.<a name="FNanchor_243_243" id="FNanchor_243_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_243_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a> He did not obtain formal leave from Lord Aberdeen +for the publication, but from their conversation took it for granted.</p> + +<p class="center">NEAPOLITAN LETTERS PUBLISHED</p> + +<p>The sensation was profound, and not in England only. The Letters were +translated into various tongues and had a large circulation. The Society +of the Friends of Italy in London, the disciples of Mazzini (and a +high-hearted band they were), besought him to become a member. Exiles +wrote<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> him letters of gratitude and hope, with all the moving accent of +revolutionary illusion. Italian women composed fervid odes in fire and +tears to the '<i>generoso britanno</i>,' the '<i>magnanimo cor</i>,' the +'<i>difensore d'un popolo gemente</i>.' The press in this country took the +matter up with the warmth that might have been expected. The character +and the politics of the accuser added invincible force to his +accusations, and for the first time in his life Mr. Gladstone found +himself vehemently applauded in liberal prints. Even the contemporary +excitement of English public feeling against the Roman catholic church +fed the flame. It was pointed out that the King of Naples was the bosom +friend of the pope, and that the infernal system described by Mr. +Gladstone was that which the Roman clergy regarded as normal and +complete.<a name="FNanchor_244_244" id="FNanchor_244_244"></a><a href="#Footnote_244_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a> Mr. Gladstone had denounced as one of the most detestable +books he ever read a certain catechism used in the Neapolitan schools. +Why then, cried the <i>Times</i>, does he omit all comment on the church +which is the main and direct agent in this atrocious instruction? The +clergy had either basely accepted from the government doctrines that +they were bound to abhor, or else these doctrines were their own. And so +things glided easily round to Dr. Cullen and the Irish education +question. This line was none the less natural from the fact that the +editor of the <i>Univers</i>, the chief catholic organ in France, made +himself the foremost champion of the Neapolitan policy. The Letters +delighted the Paris Reds. They regarded their own epithets as insipid by +comparison with the ferocious adjectives of the English conservative. On +the other hand, an English gentleman was blackballed at one of the +fashionable clubs in Paris for no better reason than that he bore the +name of Gladstone. For European conservatives read the letters with +disgust and apprehension. People like Madame de Lieven pronounced Mr. +Gladstone the dupe of men less honest than himself, and declared that he +had injured the good cause and discredited his own fame, besides doing +Lord Aberdeen the wrong of setting his name at the head of a detestable +libel. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span> illustrious Guizot wrote Mr. Gladstone a long letter +expressing, with much courtesy and kindness, his regret at the +publication. Nothing is left in Italy, said Guizot, between the terrors +of governments attacked in their very existence and the fury of the +beaten revolutionists with hopes more alert than ever for destruction +and chaos. The King of Naples on one side, Mazzini on the other; such, +said Guizot, is Italy. Between the King of Naples and Mazzini, he for +one did not hesitate. This was Mr. Gladstone's first contact with the +European party of order in the middle of the century. Guizot was a great +man, but '48 had perverted his generalising intellect, and everywhere +his jaundiced vision perceived in progress a struggle for life and death +with 'the revolutionary spirit, blind, chimerical, insatiate, +impracticable.' He avowed his own failure when he was at the head of the +French government, to induce the rulers of Italy to make reforms; and +now the answer of Schwarzenberg to Lord Aberdeen, as well as the +official communications from Naples, showed that like Guizot's French +policy the Austrian remedy was moonshine.</p> + +<p>Perhaps discomposed by the reproaches of reactionary friends abroad, +Lord Aberdeen thought he had some reason to complain of the publication. +It is not easy to see why. Mr. Gladstone from the first insisted that if +private remonstrance did not work 'without elusion or delay,' he would +make a public appeal. In transmitting the first letter, he described in +very specific terms his idea that a short time would suffice to show +whether the private method could be relied upon.<a name="FNanchor_245_245" id="FNanchor_245_245"></a><a href="#Footnote_245_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a> The attitude of +the minister at Vienna, of Fortunato at Naples, and of Castelcicala in +London, discovered even to Aberdeen himself how little reasonable hope +there was of anything being done; elusion and delay was all that he +could expect. He was forced to give entire credit to Mr. Gladstone's +horrible story, and was as far as possible from thinking it a detestable +libel. He never denied the foundation of the case, or the actual state +of the abominable facts. Schwarzenberg never consented to comply with +his wishes even when writing before the publi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span>cation. How then could +Aberdeen expect that Mr. Gladstone should abandon the set and avowed +purpose with which he had come flaming and resolved to England?</p> + +<p class="center">SENSATION IN EUROPE</p> + +<p>It was exactly because the party with which Mr. Gladstone was allied had +made itself the supporter of established governments throughout Europe, +that in his eyes that party became specially responsible for not passing +by in silence any course of conduct, even in a foreign country, +flagrantly at variance with right.<a name="FNanchor_246_246" id="FNanchor_246_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_246_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a> And what was there, when at last +they arrived, in Prince Schwarzenberg's idle dissertations and +recriminations, winding up with a still more idle sentence about +bringing the charges under the notice of the Neapolitan government, that +should induce Mr. Gladstone to abandon his purpose? He had something +else to think of than the scandal to the reactionaries of Europe. 'I +wish it were in your power,' he writes to Lacaita in May, 'to assure any +of those directly interested, in my name, that I am not unfaithful to +them, and will use every means in my power; feeble they are, and I +lament it; but God is strong and is just and good; and the issue is in +His hands.' That is what he was thinking of. When he talked of 'the +sacred purposes of humanity' it was not artificial claptrap in a +protocol.<a name="FNanchor_247_247" id="FNanchor_247_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_247_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a></p> + +<p>'When I consider,' Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Aberdeen, 'that Prince +Schwarzenberg really knew the state of things at Naples well enough +independently of me, and then ask myself why did he wait seven weeks +before acknowledging a letter relating to the intense sufferings of +human beings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> which were going on day by day and hour by hour, while his +people were concocting all that trash about Frost and Ernest Jones and +O'Brien, I cannot say that I think the spirit of the letter was +creditable to him, or very promising as regards these people.' The +Neapolitan government entered the field with a formal reply point by +point, and Mr. Gladstone met them with a point by point rejoinder. The +matter did not rest there. Soon after his arrival at home, he had had +some conversation with John Russell, Palmerston, and other members of +the government. They were much interested and not at all incredulous. +Lord Palmerston's brother kept him too well informed about the state of +things there for him to be sceptical. 'Gladstone and Molesworth,' wrote +Palmerston, 'say that they were wrong last year in their attacks on my +foreign policy, but they did not know the truth.'<a name="FNanchor_248_248" id="FNanchor_248_248"></a><a href="#Footnote_248_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a> Lord Palmerston +directed copies of Mr. Gladstone's Letters to be sent to the British +representatives in all the courts of Europe, with instructions to give a +copy to each government. The Neapolitan envoy in London in his turn +requested him also to send fifteen copies of the pamphlet that had been +got up on the other side. Palmerston promptly, and in his most +characteristic style, vindicated Mr. Gladstone against the charges of +overstatement and hostile intention; warned the Neapolitan government of +the violent revolution that long-continued and widespread injustice +would assuredly bring upon them; hoped that they might have set to work +to correct the manifold and grave abuses to which their attention had +been drawn; and flatly refused to have anything to do with an official +pamphlet 'consisting of a flimsy tissue of bare assertions and reckless +denials, mixed up with coarse ribaldry and commonplace abuse.' This was +the kind of thing that gave to Lord Palmerston the best of his power +over the people of England.</p> + +<p class="center">ENERGETIC SYMPATHY OF PALMERSTON</p> + +<p>In the House of Commons he spoke with no less warmth. Though he had not +felt it his duty, he said, to make representations at Naples on a matter +relating to internal affairs, he thought Mr. Gladstone had done himself +great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> honour. Instead of seeking amusements, diving into volcanoes and +exploring excavated cities, he had visited prisons, descended into +dungeons, examined cases of the victims of illegality and injustice, and +had then sought to rouse the public opinion of Europe. It was because he +concurred in this opinion that he had circulated the pamphlet, in the +hope that the European courts might use their influence.<a name="FNanchor_249_249" id="FNanchor_249_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_249_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a> As Lord +Aberdeen told Madame de Lieven, Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet by the +extraordinary sensation it had created among men of all parties had +given a great practical triumph to Palmerston and the foreign office.</p> + +<p>The immediate effect of Mr. Gladstone's appeal was an aggravation of +prison rigour. Panizzi was convinced that the king did not know of all +the iniquities exposed by Mr. Gladstone. At the close of 1851 he +obtained an interview with Ferdinand, and for twenty minutes spoke of +Poerio, Settembrini and the condition of the prisons. The king suddenly +cut short the interview, saying, <i>Addio, terribile Panizzi</i>.<a name="FNanchor_250_250" id="FNanchor_250_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_250_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a> Faint +streaks of light from the outside world pierced the gloom of the +dungeons. As time went on, a lady contrived to smuggle in a few pages of +Mr. Gladstone's first Letter; and in 1854 the martyrs heard vaguely of +the action of Cavour. But it was not until 1859 that the tyrant, fearing +the cry of horror that would go up in Europe if Poerio should die in +chains, or worse than death, should go mad, commuted prison to perpetual +exile,<a name="FNanchor_251_251" id="FNanchor_251_251"></a><a href="#Footnote_251_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a> and sixty-six of them were embarked for America. At Lisbon +they were transferred to an American ship; the captain, either +intimidated or bribed, put in at Queenstown. 'In setting foot on this +free soil,' Poerio wrote to Mr. Gladstone from the Irish haven (March +12, 1859), 'the first need of my heart was to seek news of you.' +Communications were speedily opened. The Italians made their way to +Bristol, where they were received with sympathy and applause by the +population. The deliverance of their country was close at hand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span></p> + +<p>Not now, nor for many years to come, did Mr. Gladstone grasp the idea of +Italian unity. It was impossible for him to ignore, but he did +undoubtedly set aside, the fact that every shade and section of Italian +liberalism from Farini on the right, to Mazzini on the furthest left, +insisted on treating Italy as a political integer, and placed the +independence of Italy and the expulsion of Austria from Italian soil as +the first and fundamental article in the creed of reform. Like most of +the English friends of the Italian cause at this time, except the small +but earnest group who rallied round the powerful moral genius of +Mazzini, he thought only of local freedom and local reforms. 'The purely +abstract idea of Italian nationality,' said Mr. Gladstone at this time, +'makes little impression and finds limited sympathy among ourselves.' 'I +am certain,' he wrote to Panizzi (June 21, 1851), 'that the Italian +habit of preaching unity and nationality in preference to showing +grievances produces a revulsion here; for if there are two things on +earth that John Bull hates, they are an abstract proposition and the +pope.' 'You need not be afraid, I think,' he told Lord Aberdeen +(December 1, 1851), 'of Mazzinism from me, still less of Kossuth-ism, +which means the other <i>plus</i> imposture, Lord Palmerston, and his +nationalities.' But then in 1854 Manin came to England, and failed to +persuade even Lord Palmerston that the unity of Italy was the only clue +to her freedom.<a name="FNanchor_252_252" id="FNanchor_252_252"></a><a href="#Footnote_252_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a> The Russian war made it inconvenient to quarrel +with Austria about Italy. With Mr. Gladstone he made more way. 'Seven to +breakfast to meet Manin,' says the diary; 'he too is wild.' Not too +wild, however, to work conversion on his host. 'It was my privilege,' +Mr. Gladstone afterwards wrote, 'to welcome Manin in London in 1854, +when I had long been anxious for reform in Italy, and it was from him +that, in common with some other Englishmen, I had my first lessons upon +Italian unity as the indispensable basis of all effectual reform under +the peculiar circumstances of that country.'<a name="FNanchor_253_253" id="FNanchor_253_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_253_253" class="fnanchor">[253]</a> Yet the page of Dante +holds the lesson.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">THE TEMPORAL POWER</p> + +<p>On one important element in the complex Italian case at this time, Mr. +Gladstone gained a clear view.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Some things I have learned in Italy, he wrote to Manning (<i>January +26, 1851</i>), that I did not know before, one in particular. The +temporal power of the pope, that great, wonderful, and ancient +erection, is <i>gone</i>. The problem has been worked out—the ground is +mined—the train is laid—a foreign force, in its nature +transitory, alone stays the hand of those who would complete the +process by applying the match. This seems, rather than is, a +digression. When that event comes, it will bring about a great +shifting of parts—much super-and much subter-position. God grant +it may be for good. I desire it, because I see plainly that justice +requires it. Not out of malice to the popedom; for I cannot at this +moment dare to answer with a confident affirmative, the question, a +very solemn one—Ten, twenty, fifty years hence, will there be any +other body in western Christendom witnessing for fixed dogmatic +truth? With all my heart I wish it well (though perhaps not wholly +what the consistory might think agreed with the meaning of the +term)—it would be to me a joyous day in which I should see it +really doing well.</p></div> + +<p>Various ideas of this kind set him to work on the large and curious +enterprise, long since forgotten, of translating Farini's volumes on the +Roman State from 1815 down to 1850. According to the entries in his +diary he began and finished the translation of a large portion of the +book at Naples in 1850—dictating and writing almost daily. Three of the +four volumes of this English translation were done with extraordinary +speed by Mr. Gladstone's own hand, and the fourth was done under his +direction.<a name="FNanchor_254_254" id="FNanchor_254_254"></a><a href="#Footnote_254_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a> His object was, without any reference to Italian unity, +to give an illustration of the actual working of the temporal power in +its latest history. It is easy to understand how the theme fitted in +with the widest topics of his life; the nature of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> theocratic +government; the possibility (to borrow Cavour's famous phrase) of a free +church in a free state; and above all,—as he says to Manning now, and +said to all the world twenty years later in the day of the Vatican +decrees,—the mischiefs done to the cause of what he took for saving +truth by evil-doing in the heart and centre of the most powerful of all +the churches. His translation of Farini, followed by his article on the +same subject in the <i>Edinburgh</i> in 1852, was his first blast against +'the covetous, domineering, implacable policy represented in the term +Ultramontanism; the winding up higher and higher, tighter and tighter, +of the hierarchical spirit, in total disregard of those elements by +which it ought to be checked and balanced; and an unceasing, covert, +smouldering war against human freedom, even in its most modest and +retiring forms of private life and of the individual conscience.' With +an energy not unworthy of Burke at his fiercest, he denounces the fallen +and impotent regality of the popes as temporal sovereigns. 'A monarchy +sustained by foreign armies, smitten with the curse of social +barrenness, unable to strike root downward or bear fruit upward, the +sun, the air, the rain soliciting in vain its sapless and rotten +boughs—such a monarchy, even were it not a monarchy of priests, and +tenfold more because it is one, stands out a foul blot upon the face of +creation, an offence to Christendom and to mankind.'<a name="FNanchor_255_255" id="FNanchor_255_255"></a><a href="#Footnote_255_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a> As we shall +soon see, he was just as wrathful, just as impassioned and as eloquent, +when, in a memorable case in his own country, the temporal power +bethought itself of a bill for meddling with the rights of a Roman +voluntary church.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_241_241" id="Footnote_241_241"></a><a href="#FNanchor_241_241"><span class="label">[241]</span></a> For the two <i>Letters to Lord Aberdeen</i>, see <i>Gleanings</i>, iv.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_242_242" id="Footnote_242_242"></a><a href="#FNanchor_242_242"><span class="label">[242]</span></a> There was a slight discrepancy between the two on this point, Mr. +Gladstone describing the position as above, Aberdeen believing that it +was by his persuasion that Mr. Gladstone dropped his intention of +instant publicity. Probably the latter used such urgent language about +an appeal to the public opinion of England and Europe, that Lord +Aberdeen supposed it to be an immediate and not an ulterior resort. +Aberdeen to Castelcicala, September 15, 1851, and Mr. Gladstone to +Aberdeen, October 3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_243_243" id="Footnote_243_243"></a><a href="#FNanchor_243_243"><span class="label">[243]</span></a> The mere announcement caused such a demand that a second edition +was required almost before the first was published.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_244_244" id="Footnote_244_244"></a><a href="#FNanchor_244_244"><span class="label">[244]</span></a> <i>Wesleyan Methodist Magazine</i>, October 1851. <i>Protestant +Magazine</i>, September 1851.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_245_245" id="Footnote_245_245"></a><a href="#FNanchor_245_245"><span class="label">[245]</span></a> Gladstone to Lord Aberdeen, September 16, 1851.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_246_246" id="Footnote_246_246"></a><a href="#FNanchor_246_246"><span class="label">[246]</span></a> Mr. Gladstone in an undated draft letter to Castelcicala.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_247_247" id="Footnote_247_247"></a><a href="#FNanchor_247_247"><span class="label">[247]</span></a> The one point on which Lord Aberdeen had a right to complain was +that Mr. Gladstone did not take his advice. As the point revives in Lord +Stanmore's excellent life of his father, it may be worth while to +reproduce two further passages from Mr. Gladstone's letter to Lord +Aberdeen of July 7, 1851. Before publishing the second of the two +Letters, he wrote to Lord Aberdeen: 'I ought perhaps to have asked your +formal permission for the act of publication; but <i>I thought that I +distinctly inferred it from a recent conversation with you as to the +mode of proceeding</i>'—(Mr. Gladstone to Lord Aberdeen, July 7, 1851). +Then he proceeds as to the new supplementary publication: 'If it be +disagreeable to you in any manner to be the recipient of such sad +communications, or if you think it better for any other reason, I would +put the further matter into another form.' In answer to this, Lord +Aberdeen seems not to have done any more to refuse leave to associate +his name with the second Letter, than he had done to withdraw the +assumed leave for the association of his name with the first.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_248_248" id="Footnote_248_248"></a><a href="#FNanchor_248_248"><span class="label">[248]</span></a> Ashley, <i>Palmerston</i>, ii. p. 179.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_249_249" id="Footnote_249_249"></a><a href="#FNanchor_249_249"><span class="label">[249]</span></a> August 7, 1851. <i>Hansard</i>, cxv. p. 1949.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_250_250" id="Footnote_250_250"></a><a href="#FNanchor_250_250"><span class="label">[250]</span></a> Fagan's <i>Life of Panizzi</i>, ii. pp. 102-3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_251_251" id="Footnote_251_251"></a><a href="#FNanchor_251_251"><span class="label">[251]</span></a> On the share of Mr. Gladstone's Letters in leading indirectly to +this decision, see the address of Baldacchini, <i>Della Vita e de' Tempi +di Carlo Poerio</i> (1867), p. 58.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_252_252" id="Footnote_252_252"></a><a href="#FNanchor_252_252"><span class="label">[252]</span></a> <i>Gleanings</i>, iv. pp. 188, 195. Trans. of Farini, pref. p. ix.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_253_253" id="Footnote_253_253"></a><a href="#FNanchor_253_253"><span class="label">[253]</span></a> To Dr. Errera, author of <i>A Life of Manin</i>, Sept. 28, 1872. For +Manin's account, see his <i>Life</i>, by Henri Martin, p. 377.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_254_254" id="Footnote_254_254"></a><a href="#FNanchor_254_254"><span class="label">[254]</span></a> The first two volumes were published by Mr. Murray in 1852, and +the last two in 1854. '<i>June 17, 1851</i>.—Got my first copies of Farini. +Sent No. 1 to the Prince; and wrote with sad feelings in those for Hope +and Manning.'—<i>Diary</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_255_255" id="Footnote_255_255"></a><a href="#FNanchor_255_255"><span class="label">[255]</span></a> <i>Gleanings</i>, iv. pp. 160, 176.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIIICh_VII" id="BkIIICh_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">RELIGIOUS TORNADO—PEELITE DIFFICULTIES</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1851-1852</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I am always disposed to view with regret the rupture of party +ties—my disposition is rather to maintain them. I confess I look, +if not with suspicion, at least with disapprobation on any one who +is disposed to treat party connections as matters of small +importance. My opinion is that party ties closely appertain to +those principles of confidence which we entertain for the House of +Commons.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span> (1852).</p></div><br /> + +<p>As we have seen, on the morning of his arrival from his Italian journey +(February 26, 1851) Mr. Gladstone found that he was urgently required to +meet Lord Stanley. Mortified by more than one repulse at the opening of +the session, the whigs had resigned. The Queen sent for the +protectionist leader. Stanley said that he was not then prepared to form +a government, but that if other combinations failed, he would make the +attempt. Lord John Russell was once more summoned to the palace, this +time along with Aberdeen and Graham—the first move in a critical march +towards the fated coalition between whigs and Peelites. The negotiation +broke off on the No Popery bill; Lord John was committed to it, the +other two strongly disapproved. The Queen next wished Aberdeen to +undertake the task. Apparently not without some lingering doubts, he +declined on the good ground that the House of Commons would not stand +his attitude on papal aggression.<a name="FNanchor_256_256" id="FNanchor_256_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_256_256" class="fnanchor">[256]</a> Then according to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> promise Lord +Stanley tried his hand. Proceedings were suspended for some days until +Mr. Gladstone should be on the ground. He no sooner reached Carlton +Gardens, than Lord Lincoln arrived, eager to dissuade him from accepting +office. Before the discussion had gone far, the tory whip hurried in +from Stanley, begging for an immediate visit.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I promised, says Mr. Gladstone, to go directly after seeing Lord +Aberdeen. But he came back with a fresh message to go at once, and +<i>hear</i> what Stanley had to say. I did not like to stickle, and +went. He told me his object was that I should take office with +him—<i>any</i> office, subject to the reservation that the foreign +department was offered to Canning, but if he declined it was open +to me, along with others of which he named the colonial office and +the board of trade. Nothing was said of the leadership of the House +of Commons, but his anxiety was evident to have any occupant but +one for the foreign office. I told him, I should ask no questions +and make no remark on these points, as none of them would +constitute a difficulty with me, provided no preliminary obstacle +were found to intervene. Stanley then said that he proposed to +maintain the system of free trade generally, but to put a duty of +five or six shillings on corn. I heard him pretty much in silence, +but with an intense sense of relief; feeling that if he had put +protection in abeyance, I might have had a most difficult question +to decide, whereas now I had no question at all. I thought, +however, it might be well that I should still see Lord Aberdeen +before giving him an answer; and told him I would do so. I asked +him also what was his intention with respect to papal aggression. +He said that this measure was hasty and intemperate as well as +ineffective; and that he thought something much better might result +from a comprehensive and deliberate inquiry. I told him I was +utterly against all penal legislation and against the ministerial +bill, but that I did not on principle object to inquiry; that, on +general as well as on personal grounds, I wished well to his +undertakings; and that I would see Lord Aberdeen, but that what he +had told me about corn constituted, I must not conceal from him, +'an enormous difficulty.' I used this expression for the purpose of +preparing him to receive the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span>answer it was plain I must give; he +told me his persevering would probably depend on me.</p></div> + +<p class="center">DECLINES OFFICE</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone next hastened to Lord Aberdeen, and learned what had been +going on during his absence abroad. He learned also the clear opinions +held by Aberdeen and Graham against No Popery legislation, and noticed +it as remarkable that so many minds should arrive independently at the +same conclusion on a new question, and in opposition to the overwhelming +majority. 'I then,' he continues, 'went on to the levee, saw Lord +Normanby and others, and began to bruit abroad the fame of the +Neapolitan government. Immediately after leaving the levee (where I also +saw Canning, told him what I meant to do, and gathered that he would do +the like), I changed my clothes and went to give Lord Stanley my answer, +at which he did not show the least surprise. He said he would still +persevere, though with little hope. I think I told him it seemed to me +he ought to do so. I was not five minutes with him this second +time.'<a name="FNanchor_257_257" id="FNanchor_257_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_257_257" class="fnanchor">[257]</a></p> + +<p>The protectionists having failed, and the Peelites standing aside, the +whigs came back, most of them well aware that they could not go on for +long. The events of the late crisis had given Mr. Gladstone the hope +that Graham would effectively place himself at the head of the Peelites, +and that they would now at length begin to take an independent course of +their own. 'But it soon appeared that, unconsciously I think more than +consciously, he is set upon the object of avoiding the responsibility +either of taking the government with the Peel squadron, or of letting in +Stanley and his friends.' Here was the weak point in a strong and +capable character. When Graham died ten years after this (1861), Mr. +Gladstone wrote to a friend, 'On administrative questions, for the last +twenty years and more, I had more spontaneous recourse to him for +advice, than to all other colleagues together.' In some of the +foundations of character no two men could be more unlike. One of his +closest allies talks to Graham of 'your sombre temperament.' 'My<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> +forebodings are always gloomy,' says Graham himself; 'I shudder on the +brink of the torrent.' All accounts agree that he was a good counsellor +in cabinet, a first-rate manager of business, a good if rather pompous +speaker, admirably loyal and single-minded, but half-ruined by intense +timidity. I have heard nobody use warmer language of commendation about +him than Mr. Bright. But nature had not made him for a post of chief +command.</p> + +<p>It by and by appeared that the Duke of Newcastle, known to us hitherto +as Lord Lincoln, coveted the post of leader, but Mr. Gladstone thought +that on every ground Lord Aberdeen was the person entitled to hold it. +'I made,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'my views distinctly known to the duke. He +took no offence. I do not know what communications he may have held with +others. But the upshot was that Lord Aberdeen became our leader. And +this result was obtained without any shock or conflict.'<a name="FNanchor_258_258" id="FNanchor_258_258"></a><a href="#Footnote_258_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a></p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">BILL AGAINST ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES</p> + +<p>In the autumn of 1850 the people of this country were frightened out of +their senses by a document from the Vatican, dividing England into +dioceses bearing territorial titles and appointing Cardinal Wiseman to +be Archbishop of Westminster. The uproar was tremendous. Lord John +Russell cast fuel upon the flame in a perverse letter to the Bishop of +Durham (Nov. 4, 1850). In this unhappy document he accepted the +description of the aggression of the pope upon our protestantism as +insolent and insidious, declared his indignation to be greater even than +his alarm, and even his alarm at the aggressions of a foreign sovereign +to be less than at the conduct of unworthy sons of the church of England +within her own gates. He wound up by declaring that the great mass of +the nation looked with contempt upon the mummeries of superstition. +Justified indeed was Bright's stern rebuke to a prime minister of the +Queen who thus allowed himself to offend and to indict eight millions of +his countrymen, recklessly to create fresh discords between the Irish +and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> English nations, and to perpetuate animosities that the last +five-and-twenty years had done so much to assuage. Having thus +precipitately committed himself, the minister was forced to legislate. +'I suspect,' wrote Mr. Gladstone to his great friend, Sir Walter James, +'John Russell has more rocks and breakers ahead than he reckoned upon +when he dipped his pen in gall to smite first the pope, but most those +who not being papists are such traitors and fools as really to mean +something when they say, "I believe in one Holy Catholic Church."' There +was some division of opinion in the cabinet,<a name="FNanchor_259_259" id="FNanchor_259_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_259_259" class="fnanchor">[259]</a> but a bill was +settled, and the temper of the times may be gauged by the fact that +leave to introduce it was given by the overwhelming majority of 395 +votes to 63.</p> + +<p>In his own language, Mr. Gladstone lamented and disapproved of the +pope's proceeding extremely, and had taken care to say so in parliament +two and a half years before, when 'Lord John Russell, if he had chosen, +could have stopped it; but the government and the press were alike +silent at that period.'<a name="FNanchor_260_260" id="FNanchor_260_260"></a><a href="#Footnote_260_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a> His attitude is succinctly described in a +letter to Greswell, his Oxford chairman, in 1852: 'Do not let it be +asserted without contradiction that I ever felt or counselled +indifference in regard to the division of England into Romish dioceses. +So far is this from being the truth that shortly after I was elected, +<i>when the government were encouraging the pope to proceed</i>, and when +there was yet time to stop the measure (which I deplore sincerely) by +amicable means, I took the opportunity in the House (as did Sir R. +Inglis, I <i>think</i> a little later), of trying to draw attention to it. +But it was nobody's game then, and the subject fell to the ground. +Amicable prevention I desired; spiritual and ecclesiastical resistance I +heartily approved; but while I say this, I cannot recede from one inch +of the ground I took in opposing the bill, and I would far rather quit +parliament for ever than not have voted against so pernicious a +measure.'</p> + +<p>Other matters, as we have seen, brought on a ministerial crisis, the +bill was stopped, and after the crisis was over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span> the measure came to +life again with changes making it still more futile for its ends. The +Peelites while, like Mr. Bright, 'despising and loathing' the language +of the Vatican and the Flaminian Gate, had all of them without concert +taken this outburst of prejudice and passion at its right value, and all +resolved to resist legislation. How, they asked, could you tolerate the +Roman catholic religion, if you would not tolerate its tenet of the +ecclesiastical supremacy of the pope; and what sort of toleration of +such a tenet would that be, which forbade the pope to name ecclesiastics +to exercise the spiritual authority exercised in any other voluntary +episcopal church, Scottish, colonial, or another? Why was it more of a +usurpation for the pope to make a new Archbishop of Westminster, than to +administer London by the old form of vicars apostolic? Was not the +action of the pope, after all, a secondary consideration, and the frenzy +really and in essence an explosion of popular wrath against the +Puseyites? What was to be thought of a prime minister who, at such risk +to the public peace, tried to turn the ferment to account for the sake +of strengthening his tottering government? To all this there was no +rational reply; and even the editor of a powerful newspaper that every +morning blew up the coals, admitted to Greville that 'he thought the +whole thing humbug and a pack of nonsense!'<a name="FNanchor_261_261" id="FNanchor_261_261"></a><a href="#Footnote_261_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a></p> + +<p class="center">GREAT SPEECH AGAINST THE BILL</p> + +<p>The debate on the second reading was marked by a little brutality and +much sanctimony. Mr. Gladstone (March 25, 1851) spoke to a House +practically almost solid against him. Yet his superb resources as an +orator, his transparent depth of conviction, the unmistakeable proofs +that his whole heart was in the matter, mastered his audience and made +the best of them in their hearts ashamed. He talked of Boniface <span class="smcap">VIII</span>. +and Honorius <span class="smcap">IX</span>.; he pursued a long and close historical demonstration +of the earnest desire of the lay catholics of this country for diocesan +bishops as against vicars apostolic; he moved among bulls and rescripts, +briefs and pastorals and canon law, with as much ease as if he had been +arguing about taxes and tariffs. Through it all the House watched and +listened in enchantment, as to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> a magnificent tragedian playing a noble +part in a foreign tongue. They did not apprehend every point, nor were +they converted, but they felt a man with the orator's quality of taking +fire and kindling fire at a moral idea. They felt his command of the +whole stock of fact and of principle belonging to his topics, as with +the air and the power of a heroic master he cleared the way before him +towards his purpose. Along with complete grasp of details, went grasp of +some of the most important truths in the policy of a modern state. He +clearly perceived the very relevant fact, so often overlooked by +advocates of the free church in a free state, that 'there is no +religious body in the world where religious offices do not in a certain +degree conjoin with temporal incidents.' But this did not affect the +power of his stroke, as he insisted on respect for the frontier—no +scientific frontier—between temporal and spiritual. 'You speak of the +progress of the Roman catholic religion, and you pretend to meet that +progress by a measure false in principle as it is ludicrous in extent. +You must meet the progress of that spiritual system by the progress of +another; you can never do it by penal enactments. Here, once for all, I +enter my most solemn, earnest, and deliberate protest against all +attempts to meet the spiritual dangers of our church by temporal +legislation of a penal character.' The whole speech is in all its +elements and aspects one of the great orator's three or four most +conspicuous masterpieces, and the reader would not forgive me if I +failed to transcribe its resplendent close. He went back to a passage of +Lord John Russell's on the Maynooth bill of 1845. 'I never heard,' said +Mr. Gladstone, 'a more impressive passage delivered by any statesman at +any time in this House.'</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The noble lord referred to some beautiful and touching lines of +Virgil, which the house will not regret to hear:—</p></div> + +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Scilicet et tempus veniet, cum finibus illis<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Agricola, incurvo terram molitus aratro,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Exesa inveniet scabra rubigine pila;<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Aut gravibus rastris galeas pulsabit inanes,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Grandiaque effossis mirabitur ossa sepulcris.'<a name="FNanchor_262_262" id="FNanchor_262_262"></a><a href="#Footnote_262_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a><br /></span> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>And he said, upon those scenes where battles have been fought, the +hand of nature effaces the traces of the wrath of man, and the +cultivator of the soil in following times finds the rusted arms, +and looks upon them with calm and joy, as the memorials of +forgotten strife, and as quickening his sense of the blessings of +his peaceful occupation. The noble lord went on to say, in +reference to the powerful opposition then offered to the bill for +the endowment of Maynooth, that it seems as if upon the questions +of religious freedom, our strife is never to cease, and our arms +are never to rust. Would any man, who heard the noble lord deliver +these impressive sentiments, have believed not only that the strife +with respect to religious liberty was to be revived with a greater +degree of acerbity, in the year 1851, but that the noble lord +himself was to be a main agent in its revival—that his was to be +the head that was to wear the helmet, and his the hand that was to +grasp the spear? My conviction is, that this great subject of +religious freedom is not to be dealt with, as one of the ordinary +matters in which you may, with safety or with honour, do to-day and +undo to-morrow. This great people, whom we have the honour to +represent, moves slowly in politics and legislation; but, although +it moves slowly, it moves steadily. The principle of religious +freedom, its adaptation to our modern state, and its compatibility +with ancient institutions, was a principle which you did not adopt +in haste. It was a principle well tried in struggle and conflict. +It was a principle which gained the assent of one public man after +another. It was a principle which ultimately triumphed, after you +had spent upon it half a century of agonising struggle. And now +what are you going to do? You have arrived at the division of the +century. Are you going to repeat Penelope's process, but without +the purpose of Penelope? Are you going to spend the decay and the +dusk of the nineteenth century in undoing the great work which with +so much pain and difficulty your greatest men have been achieving +during its daybreak and its youth? Surely not. Oh, recollect the +functions you have to perform in the face of the world. Recollect +that Europe and the whole of the civilised world look to England at +this moment not less, no, but even more than ever they looked to +her before, as the mistress and guide of nations, in regard to the +great work of civil legislation. And what is it they chiefly admire +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span>in England? It is not the rapidity with which you form +constitutions and broach abstract theories. On the contrary; they +know that nothing is so distasteful to you as abstract theories, +and that you are proverbial for resisting what is new until you are +well assured by gradual effort, by progressive trials, and +beneficial tendency. But they know that when you make a step +forward you keep it. They know that there is reality and honesty, +strength and substance, about your proceedings. They know that you +are not a monarchy to-day, a republic to-morrow, and a military +despotism the day after. They know that you have been happily +preserved from irrational vicissitudes that have marked the career +of the greatest and noblest among the neighbouring nations. Your +fathers and yourselves have earned this brilliant character for +England. Do not forfeit it. Do not allow it to be tarnished or +impaired. Show, I beseech you—have the courage to show the pope of +Rome, and his cardinals, and his church, that England too, as well +as Rome, has her <i>semper eadem</i>; and that when she has once adopted +some great principle of legislation, which is destined to influence +the national character, to draw the dividing lines of her policy +for ages to come, and to affect the whole nature of her influence +and her standing among the nations of the world—show that when she +has done this slowly, and done it deliberately, she has done it +once for all; and that she will then no more retrace her steps than +the river that bathes this giant city can flow back upon its +source. The character of England is in our hands. Let us feel the +responsibility that belongs to us, and let us rely on it; if to-day +we make this step backwards, it is one which hereafter we shall +have to retrace with pain. We cannot change the profound and +resistless tendencies of the age towards religious liberty. It is +our business to guide and to control their application; do this you +may, but to endeavour to turn them backwards is the sport of +children, done by the hands of men, and every effort you may make +in that direction will recoil upon you in disaster and disgrace. +The noble lord appealed to gentlemen who sit behind me, in the +names of Hampden and Pym. I have great reverence for these in one +portion at least of their political career, because they were men +energetically engaged in resisting oppression. But I would rather +have heard Hampden and Pym quoted on any other subject<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> than one +which relates to the mode of legislation or the policy to be +adopted with our Roman catholic fellow-citizens, because, if there +was one blot on their escutcheon, if there was one painful—I would +almost say odious—feature in the character of the party among whom +they were the most distinguished chiefs, it was the bitter and +ferocious intolerance which in them became the more powerful +because it was directed against the Roman catholics alone. I would +appeal in other names to gentlemen who sit on this side of the +House. If Hampden and Pym were friends of freedom, so were +Clarendon and Newcastle, so were the gentlemen who sustained the +principles of loyalty.... They were not always seeking to tighten +the chains and deepen the brand. Their disposition was to relax the +severity of the law, and attract the affections of their Roman +catholic fellow-subjects to the constitution by treating them as +brethren.... We are a minority insignificant in point of numbers. +We are more insignificant still, because we are but knots and +groups of two or three, we have no power of cohesion, no ordinary +bond of union. What is it that binds us together against you, but +the conviction that we have on our side the principle of +justice—the conviction that we shall soon have on our side the +strength of public opinion (<i>oh, oh!</i>). I am sure I have not wished +to say a syllable that would wound the feelings of any man, and if +in the warmth of argument such expressions should have escaped me, +I wish them unsaid. But above all we are sustained by the sense of +justice which we feel belongs to the cause we are defending; and we +are, I trust, well determined to follow that bright star of +justice, beaming from the heavens, whithersoever it may lead.</p></div> + +<p>All this was of no avail, just as the same arguments and temper on two +other occasions of the same eternal theme in his life,<a name="FNanchor_263_263" id="FNanchor_263_263"></a><a href="#Footnote_263_263" class="fnanchor">[263]</a> were to be +of no avail. Disraeli spoke strongly against the line taken by the +Peelites. The second reading was carried by 438 against 95, one-third +even of this minority being Irish catholics, and the rest mainly +Peelites, 'a limited but accomplished school,' as Disraeli styled them. +Hume asked Mr. Gladstone for his speech for publication to circulate +among the dissenters who, he said, know nothing about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> religious +liberty. It was something, however, to find Mr. Gladstone, the greatest +living churchman, and Bright, the greatest living nonconformist, voting +in the same lobby. The fight was stiff, and was kept up until the end of +the summer. The weapon that had been forged in this blazing furnace by +these clumsy armourers proved blunt and worthless; the law was from the +first a dead letter, and it was struck out of the statute book in 1871 +in Mr. Gladstone's own administration.<a name="FNanchor_264_264" id="FNanchor_264_264"></a><a href="#Footnote_264_264" class="fnanchor">[264]</a></p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">FALL OF THE RUSSELL GOVERNMENT</p> + +<p>In the autumn (1851) a committee of the whig cabinet, now reinforced by +the admission for the first time of Lord Granville, was named to prepare +a reform bill. Palmerston, no friend to reform, fell into restive +courses that finally upset the coach. The cabinet, early in November, +settled that he should not receive Kossuth, and he complied; but he +received a public deputation and an address complimenting him for his +exertions on Kossuth's behalf. The court at this proceeding took lively +offence, and the Queen requested the prime minister to ascertain the +opinion of the cabinet upon it. Such an appeal by the sovereign from the +minister to the cabinet was felt by them to be unconstitutional, and +though they did not conceal from Palmerston their general +dissatisfaction, they declined to adopt any resolution. Before the year +ended Palmerston persisted in taking an unauthorised line of his own +upon Napoleon's <i>coup d'état</i> (this time for once not on the side of +freedom against despotism), and Lord John closed a correspondence +between them by telling him that he could not advise the Queen to leave +the seals of the foreign department any longer in his hands. This +dismissal of Palmerston introduced a new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span> element of disruption and +confusion, for the fallen minister had plenty of friends. Lord Lansdowne +was very uneasy about reform, and talked ominously about preferring to +be a supporter rather than a member of the government; and whig +dissensions, though less acute in type, threatened a perplexity as sharp +in the way of a stable administration, as the discords among +conservatives.</p> + +<p>Lord John (Jan. 14, 1852) next asked his cabinet whether an offer should +be made to Graham. A long discussion followed; whether Graham alone +would do them any good; whether the Peelites, considering themselves as +a party, might join, but would not consent to be absorbed; whether an +offer to them was to be a persistent attempt in good faith or only a +device to mend the parliamentary case, if the offer were made and +refused. Two or three of the whig ministers, true to the church +traditions of the caste, made great difficulties about the Puseyite +notions of Newcastle and Mr. Gladstone. 'Gladstone,' writes one of them, +'is a Jesuit, and more Peelite than I believe was Peel himself.' In the +end Lord John Russell and his men met parliament without any new +support. Their tottering life was short, and it was an amendment moved +by Palmerston (Feb. 20) on a clause in a militia bill, that slit the +thread. The hostile majority was only eleven, but other perils lay +pretty thick in front. The ministers resigned, and Lord Stanley, who had +now become Earl of Derby, had no choice but to give his followers their +chance. The experiment that seemed so impossible when Bentinck first +tried it, of forming a new third party in the state, seemed up to this +point to have prospered, and the protectionists had a definite +existence. The ministers were nearly all new to public office, and +seventeen of them were for the first time sworn of the privy council in +a single day. One jest was that the cabinet consisted of three men and a +half—Derby, Disraeli, St. Leonards, and a worthy fractional personage +at the admiralty.</p> + +<p>Sending to his wife at Hawarden a provisional list (Feb. 23), Mr. +Gladstone doubts the way in which the offices were distributed:—'It is +not good, as compared I mean with what it should have been. Disraeli +could not have been worse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span> placed than at the exchequer. Henley could +not have been worse than at the board of trade. T. Baring, who would +have been their best chancellor of the exchequer, seems to have +declined. Herries would have been much better than Disraeli for that +particular place. I suppose Lord Malmesbury is temporary foreign +secretary, to hold the place for S. Canning. What does not appear on the +face of the case is, who is to lead the House of Commons, and about that +everybody seems to be in the dark....'</p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p class="center">FIRST DERBY ADMINISTRATION</p> + +<p>The first Derby administration, thus formed and covering the year 1852, +marks a highly interesting stage in Mr. Gladstone's career. 'The key to +my position,' as he afterwards said, 'was that my opinions went one way, +my lingering sympathies the other.' His opinions looked towards +liberalism, his sympathies drew him to his first party. It was the +Peelites who had now been thrown into the case of a dubious third party. +At the end of February Mr. Gladstone sought Lord Aberdeen, looking 'to +his weight, his prudence, and his kindliness of disposition as the main +anchor of their section. His tone has usually been, during the last few +years, that of anxiety to reunite the fragments and reconstruct the +conservative party, but yesterday, particularly at the commencement of +our conversation, he seemed to lean the other way; spoke kindly of Lord +Derby and wished that <i>he</i> could be extricated from the company with +which he is associated; said that though called a despot all his life, +he himself had always been, and was now, friendly to a liberal policy. +He did not, however, like the reform question in Lord John's hands; but +he considered, I thought (and if so he differed from me), that on church +questions we all might co-operate with him securely.' Mr. Gladstone, on +the contrary, insisted that their duty plainly was to hold themselves +clear and free from whig and Derbyite alike, so as to be prepared to +take whatever of three courses might, after the defeat of protectionist +proposals, seem most honourable—whether conservative reconstruction, or +liberal conjunction,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> or Peelism single-handed. The last he described as +their least natural position; for, he urged, they might be 'liberal in +the sense of Peel, working out a liberal policy through the medium of +the conservative party.' To that procrastinating view Mr. Gladstone +stood tenaciously, and his course now is one of the multitudinous +illustrations of his constant abhorrence of premature committal, and the +taking of a second step before the first.</p> + +<p>After Aberdeen he approached Graham, who proceeded to use language that +seemed to point to his virtual return to his old friends of the liberal +party, for the reader will not forget the striking circumstance that the +new head of a conservative government, and the most trusted of the +cabinet colleagues of Peel, had both of them begun official life in the +reform ministry of Lord Grey. Graham said he had a very high opinion of +Lord Derby's talents and character, and that Lord J. Russell had +committed many errors, but that looking at the two as they stood, he +thought that the opinions of Lord Derby as a whole were more dangerous +to the country than those of Lord John. Mr. Gladstone said it did not +appear to him that the question lay between these two; but Graham's +reception of this remark implied a contrary opinion.</p> + +<p>Lincoln, now Duke of Newcastle, he found obdurate in another direction, +speaking with great asperity against Lord Derby and his party; he would +make no vows as to junction, not even that he would not join Disraeli; +but he thought this government must be opposed and overthrown; then +those who led the charge against it would reap the reward; if the +Peelites did not place themselves in a prominent position, others would. +They had a further conversation. The duke told him that Beresford, the +whip, had sent out orders to tory newspapers to run them down; that the +same worthy had said 'The Peelites, let them go to hell.' Mr. Gladstone +replied that Beresford's language was not a good test of the feelings of +his party, and that his violence and that of other people was stimulated +by what they imagined or heard of the Peelites. Newcastle persisted in +his disbelief in the government. 'During this conversation, held on a +sofa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> at the Carlton, we were rather warm; and I said to him, “It +appears to me that you do not believe this party to be composed even of +men of honour or of gentlemen.”... He clung to the idea that we were +hereafter to form a party of our own, containing all the good elements +of both parties. To which I replied, the country cannot be governed by a +third or middle party unless it be for a time only, and on the whole I +thought a liberal policy would be worked out with greater security to +the country through the medium of the conservative party, and I thought +a position like Peel's on the liberal side of that party preferable, +comparing all advantages and disadvantages, to the conservative side of +the liberal party. And when he spoke of the tories as the obstructive +body I said not all of them—for instance Mr. Pitt, Mr. Canning, Mr. +Huskisson, and in some degree Lord Londonderry and Lord Liverpool.'</p> + +<p class="center">FOUR SHADES OF PEELITES</p> + +<p>The upshot of all these discussions was the discovery that there were at +least four distinct shades among the Peelites. 'Newcastle stands nearly +alone, if not quite, in the rather high-flown idea that we are to create +and lead a great, virtuous, powerful intelligent party, neither the +actual conservative nor the actual liberal party but a new one. Apart +from these witcheries, Graham was ready to take his place in the liberal +ranks; Cardwell, Fitzroy and Oswald would I think have gone with him, as +F. Peel and Sir C. Douglas went before him. But this section has been +arrested, not thoroughly amalgamated, owing to Graham. Thirdly, there +are the great bulk of the Peelites from Goulburn downwards, more or less +undisguisedly anticipating junction with Lord Derby, and avowing that +free trade is their only point of difference. Lastly myself, and I think +I am with Lord Aberdeen and S. Herbert, who have nearly the same desire, +but feel that the matter is too crude, too difficult and important for +anticipating any conclusion, and that our clear line of duty is +independence, until the question of protection shall be settled.' (March +28, 1852.)</p> + +<p>The personal composition of this section deserves a sentence. In 1835, +during Peel's short government, the whig phalanx opposed to it in the +House of Commons consisted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span> of John Russell and seven others.<a name="FNanchor_265_265" id="FNanchor_265_265"></a><a href="#Footnote_265_265" class="fnanchor">[265]</a> Of +these eight all were alive in 1851, seven of them in the then existing +cabinet; six of the eight still in the Commons. On the other hand, +Peel's cabinet began its career thus manned in the Commons—Peel, +Stanley, Graham, Hardinge, Knatchbull, Goulburn. Of these only the last +remained in his old position. Peel and Knatchbull were dead; Stanley in +the Lords and separated; Graham isolated; Hardinge in the Lords and by +way of having retired. Nor was the band very large even as recruited. Of +ex-cabinet ministers there were but three commoners; Goulburn, Herbert, +Gladstone. And of others who had held important offices there were only +available, Clerk, Cardwell, Sir J. Young, H. Corry. The Lords +contributed Aberdeen, Newcastle, Canning,<a name="FNanchor_266_266" id="FNanchor_266_266"></a><a href="#Footnote_266_266" class="fnanchor">[266]</a> St. Germains and the Duke +of Argyll. Such, as counted off by Mr. Gladstone, was the Peelite staff.</p> + +<p>Graham in April made his own position definitely liberal, or 'whig and +something more,' in so pronounced a way as to cut him off from the +Gladstonian subdivision or main body of the Peelites. Mr. Gladstone read +the speech in which this departure was taken, 'with discomfort and +surprise.' He instantly went to read to Lord Aberdeen some of the more +pungent passages; one or two consultations were held with Newcastle and +Goulburn; and all agreed that Graham's words were decisive. 'I mentioned +that some of them were coming to 5 Carlton Gardens in the course of the +afternoon (April 20); and my first wish was that now Lord Aberdeen +himself would go and tell them how we stood upon Graham's speech. To +this they were all opposed; and they seemed to feel that as we had had +no meeting yet, it would seem ungracious and unkind to an old friend to +hold one by way of ovation over his departure. It was therefore agreed +that I should acquaint Young it was their wish that he should tell any +one who might come, that we, who were there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> present, looked upon our +political connection with Graham as dissolved by the Carlisle +speech.'<a name="FNanchor_267_267" id="FNanchor_267_267"></a><a href="#Footnote_267_267" class="fnanchor">[267]</a></p> + +<p class="center">ATTITUDE OF GRAHAM</p> + +<p>The temporary parting from Graham was conducted with a degree of good +feeling that is a pattern for such occasions in politics. In writing to +Mr. Gladstone (Mar. 29, 1852), and speaking of his colleagues in Peel's +government, Graham says, 'I have always felt that my age and position +were different from theirs: that the habits and connections of my early +political life, though broken, gave to me a bias, which to them was not +congenial; and since the death of our great master and friend, I have +always feared that the time might arrive when we must separate. You +intimate the decision that party connection must no longer subsist +between us. I submit to your decision with regret; but at parting I hope +that you will retain towards me some feelings of esteem and regard, such +as I can never cease to entertain towards you; and though political +friendships are often short-lived, having known each other well, we +shall continue, I trust, to maintain kindly relations. It is a pleasure +to me to remember that we have no cause of complaint against each +other.' 'I have to thank you,' Mr. Gladstone replies, 'for the unvarying +kindness of many years, to acknowledge all the advantages I have derived +from communication with you, to accept and re-echo cordially your +expressions of good will, and to convey the fervent hope that no act or +word of mine may ever tend to impair these sentiments in my own mind or +yours.'</p> + +<p>When the others had withdrawn, Aberdeen told Mr. Gladstone that Lord +John had been to call upon him the day before for the first time, and he +believed that the visit had special reference to Mr. Gladstone himself. +'The tenor of his conversation,' Mr. Gladstone reports, 'was that my +opinions were quite as liberal as his; that in regard to the colonies I +went beyond him; that my Naples pamphlets<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span> could have been called +revolutionary if he had written them; and in regard to church matters he +saw no reason why there should not be joint action, for he was cordially +disposed to maintain the church of England, and so, he believed, was I.' +Lord John, however, we may be sure was the last man not to know how many +another element, besides agreement in opinion, decides relations of +party. Personal sympathies and antipathies, hosts of indirect affinities +having apparently little to do with the main trunk of the school or the +faction, hosts of motives only half disclosed, or not disclosed at all +even to him in whom they are at work—all these intrude in the +composition and management of parties whether religious or political.</p> + +<p>Grave discussions turned on new nicknames. The tories had greatly gained +by calling themselves conservatives after 1832. The name of whig had +some associations that were only less unpopular in the country than the +name of tory. It was pointed out that many people would on no account +join the whigs, who yet would join a government of which Russells, +Greys, Howards, Cavendishes, Villierses, were members. On the other hand +Graham declared that Paley's maxim about religion was just as true in +politics—that men often change their creed, but not so often the name +of their sect. And as to the suggestion, constantly made at all times in +our politics for the benefit of waverers, of the name of +liberal-conservative, Lord John caustically observed that whig has the +convenience of expressing in one syllable what liberal-conservative +expresses in seven, and whiggism in two syllables what conservative +progress expresses in six.</p> + +<p class="center">MR. GLADSTONE AND HIS GROUP</p> + +<p>Connected with all this arose a geographical question—in what quarter +of the House were the Peelites to sit? Hitherto the two wings of the +broken tory party, protectionist and Peelite, had sat together on the +opposition benches. The change of administration in 1852 sent the +protectionists over to the Speaker's right, and brought the whigs to the +natural place of opposition on his left. The Peelite leaders therefore +had no other choice than to take their seats below the gangway, but on +which side? Such a question is always graver than to the heedless +outsider it may seem, and the Peelite discus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span>sions upon it were both +copious and vehement.<a name="FNanchor_268_268" id="FNanchor_268_268"></a><a href="#Footnote_268_268" class="fnanchor">[268]</a> Graham at once resolved on sharing the front +opposition bench with the whigs: he repeated that his own case was +different from the others, because he had once been a whig himself. +Herbert, who acted pretty strictly with Mr. Gladstone all this year, +argued that they only held aloof from the new ministers on one question, +and therefore that they ought not to sit opposite to them as +adversaries, but should sit below the gangway on the ministerial side. +Newcastle intimated dissent from both, looking to the formation of his +virtuous and enlightened third party, but where they should sit in the +meantime he did not seem to know. Mr. Gladstone expressed from the first +a decided opinion in favour of going below the gangway on the opposition +side. What they ought to desire was the promotion of a government +conservative in its personal composition and traditions, as soon as the +crisis of protection should be over. Taking a seat, he said, is an +external sign and pledge that ought to follow upon full conviction of +the thing it was understood to betoken; and to sit on the front +opposition bench would indicate division from the conservative +government as a party, while in fact they were not divided from them as +a party, but only on a single question. In the end, Graham sat above the +opposition gangway next to Lord John Russell and Cardwell. The Peelite +body as a whole determined on giving the new government what is called a +fair trial. 'Mr. Sidney Herbert and I,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'took pains +to bring them together, in the recognised modes. They sat on the +opposition side, but below the gangway, full, or about forty strong; and +Sir James Graham, I recollect, once complimented me on the excellent +appearance they had presented to him as he passed them in walking up the +House.' Considerable uneasiness was felt among some of them at finding +themselves neighbours on the benches to Cobden and Bright and Hume and +their friends on the one hand, and 'the Irish Brass Band' on the other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span></p> + +<p>It depended entirely on the Peelites whether the new government should +be permitted to conduct the business of the session (subject to +conditions or otherwise), or whether they should be open to an instant +attack as the enemies of free trade. The effect of such attack must have +been defeat, followed by dissolution forthwith, and by the ejection of +the Derby government in June (as happened in 1859) instead of in +December. The tactics of giving the ministers a fair trial prevailed and +were faithfully adhered to, Graham and Cardwell taking their own course. +As the result of this and other conditions, for ten months ministers, +greatly outnumbered, were maintained in power by the deliberate and +united action of about forty Peelites.</p> + +<p>Lord Derby had opened his administration with a pledge, as the Peelites +understood, to confine himself during the session to business already +open and advanced, or of an urgent character. When Mr. Disraeli gave +notice of a bill to dispose of four seats which were vacant, this was +regarded by them as a manner of opening new and important issues, and +not within the definition that had been the condition of their +provisional support.<a name="FNanchor_269_269" id="FNanchor_269_269"></a><a href="#Footnote_269_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a> 'Lord John Russell came and said to me,' says +Mr. Gladstone, '“What will you do?” I admitted we were bound to act; +and, joining the liberals, we threw over the proposal by a large +majority. This was the only occasion of conflict that arose; and it was +provoked, as we thought, by the government itself.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_256_256" id="Footnote_256_256"></a><a href="#FNanchor_256_256"><span class="label">[256]</span></a> 'He had told the Queen that he thought all the offices might be +filled in a respectable manner from among the members of the Peel +administration. On a subsequent day both Herbert and Cardwell made out +from his conversation what I did not clearly catch, namely that Lord +Aberdeen himself would have acted on the Queen's wish, and that Graham +had either suggested the difficulty altogether, or at any rate got it +put forward into its position.' Gladstone Memo., April 22, 1851.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_257_257" id="Footnote_257_257"></a><a href="#FNanchor_257_257"><span class="label">[257]</span></a> Memorandum, dated Fasque, April 22, 1851.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_258_258" id="Footnote_258_258"></a><a href="#FNanchor_258_258"><span class="label">[258]</span></a> Memorandum, Sept. 9, 1897.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_259_259" id="Footnote_259_259"></a><a href="#FNanchor_259_259"><span class="label">[259]</span></a> <i>Grey Papers</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_260_260" id="Footnote_260_260"></a><a href="#FNanchor_260_260"><span class="label">[260]</span></a> To Phillimore, Nov. 26, 1850.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_261_261" id="Footnote_261_261"></a><a href="#FNanchor_261_261"><span class="label">[261]</span></a> Greville, Part II, vol. iii. p. 369.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_262_262" id="Footnote_262_262"></a><a href="#FNanchor_262_262"><span class="label">[262]</span></a> <i>Georgics</i>, i. 493-7. 'Aye, and time will come when the husbandman +with bent ploughshare upturning the clods, shall find all corroded by +rusty scurf the Roman pikeheads; shall strike with heavy rake on empty +helms, and gaze in wonder on giant bones cast from their broken graves.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_263_263" id="Footnote_263_263"></a><a href="#FNanchor_263_263"><span class="label">[263]</span></a> Affirmation bill (1883) and Religious Disabilities Removal bill +(1891).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_264_264" id="Footnote_264_264"></a><a href="#FNanchor_264_264"><span class="label">[264]</span></a> One of the most illustrious of the European liberals of the +century wrote to Senior:— +</p><p> +Ce que vous me dites que le bill contre les titres ecclésiastiques ne +mènera à rien, me paraît vraisemblable, grâce aux mœurs du pays. Mais +pourquoi faire des lois pires que les mœurs? C'est le contraire qui +devait être. Je vous avoue que j'ai été de cœur et d'esprit avec ceux +qui comme Lord Aberdeen et M. Gladstone, se sont opposés au nom de la +liberté et du principe même de la réforme, à ces atteintes à la fois +vaines et dangereuses que le bill a portées au moins en théorie à +l'indépendance de conscience. Où se réfugiera la liberté religieuse, si +on la chasse de l'Angleterre?—Tocqueville, <i>Corr</i>. iii. p. 274.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_265_265" id="Footnote_265_265"></a><a href="#FNanchor_265_265"><span class="label">[265]</span></a> Namely Palmerston, Spring-Rice, F. Baring, Charles Wood, Hobhouse, +Labouchere, Lord Howick.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_266_266" id="Footnote_266_266"></a><a href="#FNanchor_266_266"><span class="label">[266]</span></a> This, of course, was Charles John Earl Canning, third son of +Canning the prime minister, Mr. Gladstone's contemporary at Eton and +Christ Church, and known to history as governor-general of India in the +Mutiny. Stratford Canning, afterwards Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, was +cousin of George Canning.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_267_267" id="Footnote_267_267"></a><a href="#FNanchor_267_267"><span class="label">[267]</span></a> Graham spoke of himself as a tried reformer and as a member of the +liberal party, and as glad to find himself the ally of so faithful a +liberal and reformer as his fellow-candidate. He would not exactly +pledge himself to support the ballot, but he admitted it was a hard +question, and said he was not so blind that practical experience might +not convince him that he was wrong. (Mar. 26, 1852.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_268_268" id="Footnote_268_268"></a><a href="#FNanchor_268_268"><span class="label">[268]</span></a> The same question greatly exercised Mr. Gladstone's mind in 1886, +for the same reason, that he again hoped for the reunion of a divided +party.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_269_269" id="Footnote_269_269"></a><a href="#FNanchor_269_269"><span class="label">[269]</span></a> This was a bill to assign the four disfranchised seats for Sudbury +and St. Albans to the West Riding of Yorkshire and the southern division +of Lancashire. Mr. Gladstone carried the order of the day by a majority +of 86 against the government.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIIICh_VIII" id="BkIIICh_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">END OF PROTECTION</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1852</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It is not too much to ask that now at least, after so much waste of +public time, after ministries overturned and parties disorganised, +the question of free trade should be placed high and dry on the +shore whither the tide of political party strife could no longer +reach it.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span>.</p></div><br /> + +<p>The parliament was now dissolved (July 1) to decide a great question. +The repeal of the corn law, the ultimate equalisation of the sugar +duties, the repeal of the navigation laws, had been the three great free +trade measures of the last half-dozen years, and the issue before the +electors in 1852 was whether this policy was sound or unsound. Lord +Derby might have faced it boldly by announcing a moderate protection for +corn and for colonial sugar. Or he might have openly told the country +that he had changed his mind, as Peel had changed his mind about the +catholic question and about free trade, and as Mr. Disraeli was to +change his mind upon franchise in 1867, and Mr. Gladstone upon the Irish +church in 1868. Instead of this, all was equivocation. The Derbyite, as +was well said, was protectionist in a county, neutral in a small town, +free trader in a large one. He was for Maynooth in Ireland, and against +it in Scotland. Mr. Disraeli did his best to mystify the agricultural +elector by phrases about set-offs and compensations and relief of +burdens, 'seeming to loom in the future.' He rang the changes on +mysterious new principles of taxation, but what they were to be, he did +not disclose. The great change since 1846 was that the working-class had +become strenuous free traders. They had in earlier times never been +really convinced when Cobden and Bright assured them that no fall in +wages would follow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span> the promised fall in the price of food. It was the +experience of six years that convinced them. England alone had gone +unhurt and unsinged through the fiery furnace of 1848, and nobody +doubted that the stability of her institutions and the unity of her +people were due to the repeal of bad laws, believed to raise the price +of bread to the toilers in order to raise rents for territorial idlers.</p> + +<p class="center">AGAIN ELECTED FOR OXFORD</p> + +<p>Long before the dissolution, it was certain that Mr. Gladstone would +have to fight for his seat. His letter to the Scotch bishop (see above, +p. 384), his vote for the Jews, his tenacity and vehemence in resisting +the bill against the pope,—the two last exhibitions in open defiance of +solemn resolutions of the university convocation itself,—had alienated +some friends and inflamed all his enemies. Half a score of the Heads +induced Dr. Marsham, the warden of Merton, to come out. In private +qualities the warden was one of the most excellent of men, and the +accident of his opposition to Mr. Gladstone is no reason why we should +recall transient electioneering railleries against a forgotten worthy. +The political addresses of his friends depict him. They applaud his +sound and manly consistency of principle and his sober attachment to the +reformed church of England, and they dwell with zest on the goodness of +his heart. The issue, as they put it, was simple: 'At a time when the +stability of the protestant succession, the authority of a protestant +Queen, and even the Christianity of the national character, have been +rudely assailed by Rome on one side, and on the other by democratic +associations directed against the union of the Christian church with the +British constitution—at such a time, it becomes a protestant +university, from which emanates a continuous stream of instruction on +all ecclesiastical and Christian questions over the whole empire, to +manifest the importance which it attaches to protestant truth, by the +selection of a <i>Protestant Representative</i>.' The teaching residents +were, as always, decisively for Gladstone, and nearly all the fellows of +Merton voted against their own warden. In one respect this was +remarkable, for Mr. Gladstone had in 1850 (July 18) resisted the +proposal for that commission of inquiry into the universities which the +Oxford<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span> liberals had much at heart, and it would not have been +surprising if they had held aloof from a candidate who had told the +House of Commons that 'after all, science was but a small part of the +business of education,'—a proposition that in one sense may be true, +but applied to unreformed Oxford was the reverse of true. The +non-residents were diligently and rather unscrupulously worked upon, and +they made a formidable set of discordant elements. The evangelicals +disliked Mr. Gladstone. The plain high-and-dry men distrusted him as +what they called a sophist. Even some of the anglo-catholic men began to +regard as a bad friend 'to the holy apostolic church of these realms, +the author of the new theory of religious liberty' in the Scotch letter. +They reproachfully insisted that had he headed a party in the House of +Commons defending the church, not upon latitudinarian theories of +religious liberty, not upon vague hints of a disaffected movement of the +non-juring sort, still less upon romanising principles, but on the +principles of the constitution, royal supremacy included, then the +church would have escaped the worst that had befallen her since 1846. +The minister would never have dared to force Hampden into the seat of a +bishop. The privy council would never have reversed the court of arches +in the Gorham case. The claim of the clergy to meet in convocation would +never have been refused. The committee of council would have treated +education very differently.<a name="FNanchor_270_270" id="FNanchor_270_270"></a><a href="#Footnote_270_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a> All came right in the end, however, and +Mr. Gladstone was re-elected (July 14), receiving 260 votes fewer than +Sir Robert Inglis, but 350 more than the warden of Merton.<a name="FNanchor_271_271" id="FNanchor_271_271"></a><a href="#Footnote_271_271" class="fnanchor">[271]</a> We have +to remember that he was not returned as a liberal.</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>The leaders of the sections out of office, when the general election was +over, at once fetched forth line and plummet to take their soundings. +'The next few months,' Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Aberdeen (Aug. 20), +'are, I apprehend, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span> crisis of <i>our</i> fate, and will show whether we +are equal or unequal to playing out with prudence, honour, and +resolution <i>the drama or trilogy that has been on the stage since +1841</i>.' He still regarded the situation as something like a reproduction +of the position of the previous March. The precise number of the +ministerialists could not be ascertained until tested by a motion in the +House. They had gained rather more than was expected, and some put them +as high as 320, others as low as 290. What was undoubted was that Lord +Derby was left in a minority, and that the support of the Peelites might +any hour turn it into a majority. Notwithstanding a loss or two in the +recent elections, that party still numbered not far short of 40, and Mr. +Gladstone was naturally desirous of retaining it in connection with +himself. Most of the group were disposed rather to support a +conservative government than not, unless such a government were to do, +or propose, something open to strong and definite objection. At the same +time what he described as the difficulty of keeping Peelism for ever so +short a space upon its legs, was as obvious to him as to everybody else. +'It will be an impossible parliament,' Graham said to Mr. Gladstone +(July 15), 'parties will be found too nicely balanced to render a new +line of policy practicable without a fresh appeal to the electors.' +Before a fresh appeal to the electors took place, the impossible +parliament had tumbled into a great war.</p> + +<p class="center">THE NEW PARLIAMENT</p> + +<p>When the newly chosen members met in November, Mr. Disraeli told the +House of Commons that 'there was no question in the minds of ministers +with respect to the result of that election: there was no doubt that +there was not only not a preponderating majority in favour of a change +in the laws [free trade] passed in the last few years, or even of +modifying them in any degree; but that on the contrary there was a +decisive opinion on the part of the country that that settlement should +not be disturbed.' Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Aberdeen (July 30) that +he thought the government absolutely chained to Mr. Disraeli's next +budget, and 'I, for one, am not prepared to accept him as a financial +organ, or to be responsible for what he may propose in his present +capacity.' Each successive speech made by Mr. Disraeli at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span> Aylesbury he +found 'more quackish in its flavour than its predecessor.' Yet action on +his own part was unavoidably hampered by Oxford. 'Were I either of +opinion,' he told Lord Aberdeen (Aug. 5), 'that Lord John Russell ought +to succeed Lord Derby, or prepared without any further development of +the plans of the government to take my stand as one of the party opposed +to them, the first step which, as a man of honour, I ought to adopt, +should be to resign my seat.' 'I do not mean hereby,' he adds in words +that were soon to derive forcible significance from the march of events, +'that I am unconditionally committed against any alliance or fusion, but +that any such alliance or fusion, to be lawful for me, must grow out of +some failure of the government in carrying on public affairs, or a +disapproval of its measures when they shall have been proposed.' He +still, in spite of all the misdeeds of ministers during the elections, +could not think so ill of them as did Lord Aberdeen.</p> + +<p>'Protection and religious liberty,' he wrote to Lord Aberdeen (Aug. +5),'are the subjects on which my main complaints would turn; shuffling +as to the former, trading on bigotry as to the latter. The shifting and +shuffling that I complain of have been due partly to a miserably false +position and the giddy prominence of inferior men; partly to the (surely +not unexpected) unscrupulousness and second motives of Mr. Disraeli, at +once the necessity of Lord Derby and his curse. I do not mean that this +justifies what has been said and done; I only think it brings the case +within the common limits of political misconduct. As for religious +bigotry,' he continues, 'I condemn the proceedings of the present +government; yet much less strongly than the unheard-of course pursued by +Lord John Russell in 1850-1, the person to whom I am now invited to +transfer my confidence.' Even on the superficial conversion of the +Derbyites to free trade, Mr. Gladstone found a <i>tu quoque</i> against the +whigs. 'It is, when strictly judged, an act of public immorality to form +and lead an opposition on a certain plea, to succeed, and then in office +to abandon it.... But in this view, the conduct of the present +administration is the counterpart and copy of that of the whigs +themselves in 1835, who ran Sir Robert<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> Peel to ground upon the +appropriation clause, worked it just while it suited them, and then cast +it to the winds; to say nothing of their conduct on the Irish +Assassination bill of 1846.'</p> + +<p>This letter was forwarded by Aberdeen to Lord John Russell. Lord John +had the peculiar temperament that is hard to agitate, but easy to +nettle. So polemical a reading of former whig pranks nettled him +considerably. Why, he asked, should he not say just as reasonably that +Mr. Gladstone held up the whigs to odium in 1841 for stripping the +farmer of adequate protection; worked the corn law of 1842 as long as it +suited him; and then turned round and cast the corn law to the winds? If +he gave credit to Mr. Gladstone for being sincere in 1841, 1842, and +1846, why should not Mr. Gladstone give the same credit to him? As to +the principle of appropriation, he and Althorp had opposed four of their +colleagues in the Grey cabinet; how could he concede to Peel what he had +refused to them? As for the Irish bill on which he had turned Peel out, +it was one of the worst of all coercion bills; Peel with 117 followers +evidently could not carry on the government; and what sense could there +have been in voting for a bad bill, in order to retain in office an +impossible ministry? This smart apologia of Lord John's was hardly even +plausible, much less did it cover the ground. The charge against the +whigs is not that they took up appropriation, but that having taken it +up they dropped it for the sake of office. Nor was it a charge that they +resisted an Irish coercion bill, but that having supported it on the +first reading ('worst of all coercion bills' as it was, even in the eyes +of men who had passed the reckless act of 1833), they voted against it +when they found that both Bentinck and the Manchester men were going to +do the same, thus enabling them to turn Peel out.</p> + +<p class="center">CONFUSIONS OF PARTY</p> + +<p>Sharp sallies into the past, however, did not ease the present. It was +an extraordinary situation only to be described in negatives. A majority +could not be found to beat the government upon a vote of want of +confidence. Nobody knew who could take their places. Lord John Russell +as head of a government was impossible, for his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span> maladroit handling of +papal aggression had alienated the Irish; his dealings with Palmerston +had offended one powerful section of the English whigs; the Scottish +whigs hated him as too much managed by the lights of the free church; +and the radicals proscribed him as the chief of a patrician clique. Yet +though he was impossible, he sometimes used language to the effect that +for him to take any place save the first would be a personal degradation +that would lower him to the level of Sidmouth or Goderich. Lord +Palmerston represented the moderate centre of the liberal party. Even +now he enjoyed a growing personal favour out of doors, not at all +impaired by the bad terms on which he was known to be with the court, +for the court was not at that date so popular an institution as it +became by and by. Among other schemes of ingenious persons at this +confused and broken time was a combination under Palmerston or Lansdowne +of aristocratic whigs, a great contingent of Derbyites, and the +Peelites; and before the elections it was true that Lord Derby had made +overtures to these two eminent men. A Lansdowne combination lingered +long in the mind of Lord Palmerston himself, who wished for the +restoration of a whig government, but resented the idea of serving under +its late head. Some dreamed that Palmerston and Disraeli might form a +government on the basis of resistance to parliamentary reform. Strange +rumours were even afloat that Mr. Gladstone's communications with +Palmerston before he left London at the election had been intimate and +frequent. 'I cannot make Gladstone out,' said Lord Malmesbury, 'he seems +to me a dark horse.'</p> + +<p>In the closing days of the autumn (September 12) Graham interpreted some +obscure language of Mr. Gladstone's as meaning that if protection were +renounced, as it might be, if Palmerston joined Derby and the government +were reconstructed, and if Disraeli ceased to be leader, then his own +relations with the government would be changed. Gladstone was so uneasy +in his present position, so nice in the equipoise of his opinions that +he wished to be, as he said, 'on the liberal side of the conservative +party, rather than on the conservative side of the liberal party.' A +little earlier than this,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span> Lord Aberdeen and Graham agreed in thinking +(August) that 'Disraeli's leadership was the great cause of Gladstone's +reluctance to have anything to do with the government; ... that even if +this should be removed, it would not be very easy for him to enter into +partnership with them.' Mr. Gladstone himself now and always denied that +the lead in the Commons or other personal question had anything to do +with the balance of his opinions at the present and later moments. Those +who know most of public life are best aware how great is the need in the +case of public men for charitable construction of their motives and +intent. Yet it would surely have been straining charity to the point of +dishonour if, within two years of Peel's death, any of those who had +been attached to him as master and as friend, either Mr. Gladstone or +anybody else, could have looked without reprobation and aversion on the +idea of cabinet intimacy with the bitterest and least sincere of all +Peel's assailants.</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">OPENING SKIRMISHES</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone repaired to London some weeks before the new session, and +though he was not in a position to open direct relations with the +government, he expressed to Lord Hardinge, with a view to its +communication to Lord Derby, his strong opinion that the House of +Commons would, and should, require from ministers a frank and explicit +adoption of free trade through the address, and secondly, the immediate +production of their financial measures. Lord Derby told Hardinge at +Windsor that he thought that neither expectation was far wrong. When the +Peelites met at Lord Aberdeen's to discuss tactics, they were secretly +dissatisfied with the paragraphs about free trade.</p> + +<p>Mr. Disraeli had laid down at the election the sonorous maxim, that no +statesman can disregard with impunity the genius of the epoch in which +he lives. And he now after the election averred that the genius of the +age was in favour of free exchange. Still it was pleasanter to swallow +the dose with as little public observation as possible. 'What would have +been said,' cried Lord Derby in fervid remonstrance, 'if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span> shortly after +catholic emancipation and the reform bill had been admitted as +settlements, their friends had come down and insisted not only that the +Houses of parliament should consent to act on the new policy they had +adopted, but should expressly recant their opinion in favour of the +policy that had formerly prevailed? What would the friends of Sir R. +Peel have said in 1835 if, when he assumed the government and when the +new parliament assembled, he had been called upon to declare that the +reform bill was wise, just, and necessary?' The original free traders +were not disposed to connive at Derbyite operations any more than were +the whigs. Notice was at once given by Mr. Villiers of a motion +virtually assailing the ministers, by asserting the doctrine of free +trade in terms they could not adopt. 'Now,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'we came +to a case in which the liberals did that which had been done by the +government in the case of the Four Seats bill; that is to say, they +raised an issue which placed us against them. Lord Palmerston moved the +amendment which defeated the attack, but he did this at the express +request of S. Herbert and mine, and we carried the amendment to him at +his house. He did not recommend any particular plan of action, and he +willingly acquiesced in and adopted ours.' He said he would convey it to +Disraeli, 'with whom,' he said, 'I have had communications from time to +time.'</p> + +<p>In the debate (Nov. 26) upon the two rival amendments—that of Mr. +Villiers, which the ministers could not accept, and that of Palmerston, +which they could—Sidney Herbert paid off some old scores in a speech +full of fire and jubilation; Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand, was +elaborately pacific. He earnestly deprecated the language of severity +and exasperation, or anything that would tend to embitter party warfare. +His illustrious leader Peel, he said, did indeed look for his revenge; +but for what revenge did he look? Assuredly not for stinging speeches, +assuredly not for motions made in favour of his policy, if they carried +pain and degradation to the minds of honourable men. Were they not +celebrating the obsequies of an obnoxious policy? Let them cherish no +desire to trample on those who had fought manfully and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span> been defeated +fairly. Rather let them rejoice in the great public good that had been +achieved; let them take courage from the attainment of that good, for +the performance of their public duty in future. All this was inspired by +the strong hope of conservative reunion. 'Nervous excitement kept me +very wakeful after speaking,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'the first time for +many years.' (<i>Diary</i>.)</p> + +<p>Villiers's motion was rejected by 336 to 256, the Peelites and Graham +voting with ministers in the majority. The Peelite amendment in +moderated terms, for which Palmerston stood sponsor, was then carried +against the radicals by 468 to 53. For the moment the government was +saved.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>This evening, Mr. Gladstone writes on the next day, Nov. 27, I went +to Lady Derby's evening party, where Lord Derby took me a little +aside and said he must take the opportunity of thanking me for the +tone of my speech last night, which he thought tended to place the +discussion on its right footing. It was evident from his manner, +and Lady Derby's too, that they were highly pleased with the issue +of it. I simply made my acknowledgments in terms of the common +kind, upon which he went on to ask me what in my view was to happen +next? The great object, he said, was to get rid of all personal +questions, and to consider how all those men who were united in +their general views of government might combine together to carry +on with effect. For himself he felt both uncertain and indifferent; +he might be able to carry on the government or he might not; but +the question lay beyond that, by what combination or arrangement of +a satisfactory nature, in the event of his displacement, the +administration of public affairs could be conducted.</p> + +<p>To this I replied, that it seemed to me that <i>our</i> situation +(meaning that of Herbert, Goulburn, and others, with myself) in +relation to his government remained much as it was in March and +April last.... We have to expect your budget, and the production of +that is the next step. He replied that he much desired to see +whether there was a possibility of any <i>rapprochement</i>, and seemed +to glance at personal considerations as likely perhaps to stand in +the way [Disraeli, presumably]. I said in reply, that no doubt +there were many difficulties of a personal nature to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span>faced in +conceiving of any ministerial combination when we looked at the +present House of Commons: many men of power and eminence, but great +difficulties arising from various causes, present and past +relations, incompatibilities, peculiar defects of character, or +failure in bringing them into harmony. I said that, as to relations +of parties, circumstances were often stronger than the human will; +that we must wait for their guiding, and follow it.... He said, +rather decidedly, that he assented to the truth of this doctrine. +He added, 'I think Sidney said more last night than he intended, +did he not?' I answered, 'You mean as to one particular expression +or sentence?' He rejoined, 'Yes.'<a name="FNanchor_272_272" id="FNanchor_272_272"></a><a href="#Footnote_272_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a> I said, 'I have had no +conversation with him on it, but I think it very probable that he +grew warm and went beyond his intention at that point; at the same +time, I think I ought to observe to you that I am confident that +expression was occasioned by one particular preceding speech in the +debate.' He gave a significant assent, and seemed to express no +surprise.</p></div> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p class="center">MR. DISRAELI'S PROPOSALS</p> + +<p>The respite for ministers was short. The long day of shadowy promises +and delusive dreams was over; and the oracular expounder of mysteries +was at last gripped by the hard realities of the taxes. Whigs and +Peelites, men who had been at the exchequer and men who hoped to be, +were all ready at last to stalk down their crafty quarry. Without delay +Disraeli presented his budget (Dec. 3). As a private member in +opposition he had brought forward many financial proposals, but it now +turned out that none of them was fit for real use. With a serene +audacity that accounts for some of Mr. Gladstone's repulsion, he told +the House that he had greater subjects to consider 'than the triumph of +obsolete opinions.' His proposals dazzled for a day, and then were seen +to be a scheme of illusory compensations and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span> dislocated expedients. He +took off half of the malt-tax and half of the hop duty, and in stages +reduced the tea duty from two shillings and twopence to one shilling. +More important, he broke up the old frame of the income-tax by a +variation of its rates, and as for the house-tax, he doubled its rate +and extended its area. In one of his fragmentary notes, Mr. Gladstone +says:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Having run away from protection, as it was plain from the first +they would do, they had little to offer the land, but that little +their minority was ready to accept. It was a measure essentially +bad to repeal half the malt duty. But the flagrantly vicious +element in Disraeli's budget was his proposal to reduce the +income-tax on schedule D. to fivepence in the pound, leaving the +other schedules at sevenpence. This was no compensation to the +land; but, inasmuch as to exempt one is to tax another, it was a +distinct addition to the burdens borne by the holders of visible +property. It was on Disraeli's part a most daring bid for the +support of the liberal majority, for we all knew quite well that +the current opinion of the whigs and liberals was in favour of this +scheme; which, on the other hand, was disapproved by sound +financiers. The authority of Pitt and Peel, and then my own study +of the subject, made me believe that it was impracticable, and +probably meant the disruption of the tax, with confusion in +finance, as an immediate sequitur. What angered me was that +Disraeli had never examined the question. And I afterwards found +that he had not even made known his intentions to the board of +inland revenue. The gravity of the question thus raised made me +feel that the day was come to eject the government.</p></div> + +<p class="center">ATTACK ON THE BUDGET</p> + +<p>It was upon the increase of the house-tax that the great battle was +finally staked. Mr. Gladstone's letters to his wife at Hawarden bring +the rapid and excited scenes vividly before us.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>6 <i>Carlton Gardens, Dec. 3, 1852</i>.—I write from H. of C. at 4½ +just expecting the budget. All seem to look for startling and +dangerous proposals. You will read them in the papers of to-morrow, +be they what they may. If there is anything outrageous, we may +protest at once; but I do not expect any extended debate +to-night.... The rush for places in the H. of C. is immense.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span></p> + +<p><i>Monday, Dec. 6</i>.—On Saturday, in the early part of the day, I had +a return, perhaps caused by the damp relaxing weather, of the +neuralgic pain in my face, and in the afternoon a long sitting at +Lord Aberdeen's about the budget, during which strange to say my +pain disappeared, but which kept me past the ordinary post hour. +These were the causes of your having no letter. The said budget +will give rise to serious difficulties. It is plain enough that +when its author announced something looming in the distance, he did +not mean this plan but something more extensive. Even his reduced +scheme, however, includes fundamental faults of principle which it +is impossible to overlook or compound with. The first day of +serious debate on it will be Friday next, and a vote will be taken +either then or on Monday.</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 8</i>.—Be sure to read Lord Derby's speech on Monday. His +reference to the cause of his quarrel with Lord George Bentinck was +most striking, and is interpreted as a rap at Disraeli.<a name="FNanchor_273_273" id="FNanchor_273_273"></a><a href="#Footnote_273_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a> I have +had a long sit with Lord Aberdeen to-day talking over +possibilities. The government, I believe, talk confidently about +the decision on the house-tax, but I should doubt whether they are +right. Meantime I am convinced that Disraeli's is the least +conservative budget I have ever known.</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 14</i>.—I need hardly say the vision of going down to-morrow +has been dissolved. It has been arranged that I am not to speak +until the close of the debate; and it is considered almost certain +to go on till Monday. Ministers have become much less confident, +but I understand that some, I know not how many, of Lord John's men +are not to be relied on. Whether they win or not (I expect the +latter, but my opinion is <i>naught</i>) they cannot carry this +house-tax nor their budget. But the mischief of the proposals they +have launched will not die with them.</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 15</i>.—I write in great haste. Though it is Wednesday, I have +been down at the House almost all day to unravel a device of +Disraeli's about the manner in which the question is to be put, by +which he means to catch votes; and <i>I think</i> after full +consultation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span> with Mahon and Wilson Patten, that this will be +accomplished. The debate may close to-morrow night. I am sorry to +say I have a long speech fermenting in me, and I feel as a loaf +might in the oven. The government, it is thought, are likely to be +beaten.</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 16</i>.—I have been engaged in the House till close on post +time. Disraeli trying to wriggle out of the question, and get it +put upon words without meaning, to enable more to vote as they +please, <i>i.e.</i> his men or those favourably inclined to him. But he +is beaten in this point, and we have now the right question before +us. It is not now quite certain whether we shall divide to-night; I +hope we may, for it is weary work sitting with a speech fermenting +inside one.<a name="FNanchor_274_274" id="FNanchor_274_274"></a><a href="#Footnote_274_274" class="fnanchor">[274]</a></p> + +<p><i>Dec. 18</i>.—I have never gone through so exciting a passage of +parliamentary life. The intense efforts which we made to obtain, +and the government to escape, a definite issue, were like a fox +chase, and prepared us all for excitement. I came home at seven, +dined, read for a quarter of an hour, and actually contrived (only +think) to sleep in the fur cloak for another quarter of an hour; +got back to the House at nine. Disraeli rose at 10.20 [Dec. 16], +and from that moment, of course, I was on tenterhooks, except when +his superlative acting and brilliant oratory from time to time +absorbed me and made me quite <i>forget</i> that I had to follow him. He +spoke until one. His speech as a whole was grand; I think the most +powerful I ever heard from him. At the same time it was disgraced +by shameless personalities and otherwise; I had therefore to begin +by attacking him for these. There was a question whether it would +not be too late, but when I heard his personalities I felt there +was no choice but to go on. My great object was to show the +conservative party how their leader was hoodwinking and bewildering +them, and this I have the happiness of believing that in some +degree I effected; for while among some there was great heat and a +disposition to interrupt me when they could, I could <i>see</i> in the +faces and demeanour of others quite other <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span>feelings expressed. But +it was a most difficult operation, and altogether it might have +been better effected. The House has not I think been so much +excited for years. The power of his speech, and the importance of +the issue, combined with the lateness of the hour, which always +operates, were the causes. My brain was strung very high, and has +not yet quite got back to calm, but I slept well last night. On +Thursday night [<i>i.e.</i> Friday morning] after two hours of sleep, I +awoke, and remembered a gross omission I had made, which worked +upon me so that I could not rest any more. And still, of course, +the time is an anxious one, and I wake with the consciousness of +it, but I am very well and really not unquiet. When I came home +from the House, I thought it would be good for me to be mortified. +Next morning I opened the <i>Times</i>, which I thought <i>you</i> would buy, +and <i>was</i> mortified when I saw it did not contain my speech but a +mangled abbreviation. Such is human nature, at least mine. But in +the <i>Times</i> of to-day you will see a very curious article +descriptive of the last scene of the debate. It has evidently been +written by a man who must have seen what occurred, or been informed +by those who did see. He by no means says too much in praise of +Disraeli's speech. I am told he is much stung by what I said. I am +very sorry it fell to me to say it; God knows I have no wish to +give him pain; and really with my deep sense of his gifts I would +only pray they might be well used.</p></div> + +<p class="center">THE TWO ANTAGONISTS</p> + +<p>The writer in the <i>Times</i> to whom the victorious orator here refers +describes how, 'like two of Sir Walter Scott's champions, these +redoubtable antagonists gathered up all their force for the final +struggle, and encountered each other in mid-career; how, rather equal +than like, each side viewed the struggle of their chosen athletes, as if +to prognosticate from the war of words the fortunes of two parties so +nicely balanced and marshalled in apparently equal array. Mr. Disraeli's +speech,' he says, 'was in every respect worthy of his oratorical +reputation. The retorts were pointed and bitter, the hits telling, the +sarcasm keen, the argument in many places cogent, in all ingenious, and +in some convincing. The merits were counterbalanced by no less glaring +defects of tone, temper, and feeling. In some passages<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span> invective was +pushed to the limit of virulence, and in others, meant no doubt to +relieve them by contrast, the coarser stimulants to laughter were very +freely applied. Occasionally whole sentences were delivered with an +artificial voice and a tone of studied and sardonic bitterness, +peculiarly painful to the audience, and tending greatly to diminish the +effect of this great intellectual and physical effort. The speech of Mr. +Gladstone was in marked contrast. It was characterised throughout by the +most earnest sincerity. It was pitched in a high tone of moral +feeling—now rising to indignation, now sinking to remonstrance—which +was sustained throughout without flagging and without effort. The +language was less ambitious, less studied, but more natural and flowing +than that of Mr. Disraeli; and though commencing in a tone of stern +rebuke, it ended in words of almost pathetic expostulation.... That +power of persuasion which seems entirely denied to his antagonist, Mr. +Gladstone possesses to great perfection, and to judge by the +countenances of his hearers, those powers were very successfully +exerted. He had, besides, the immense advantage resulting from the tone +of moral superiority which he assumed and successfully maintained, and +which conciliated to him the goodwill of his audience in a degree never +attained by the most brilliant sallies of his adversary, and when he +concluded the House might well feel proud of him and of themselves.'</p> + +<p>A violent thunderstorm raged during the debate, but the excited senators +neither noticed the flashes of lightning nor heard a tremendous shock of +thunder. A little before four o'clock in the morning (Dec. 17), the +division was taken, and ministers were beaten by nineteen (305 to 286). +'There was an immense crowd,' says Macaulay, 'a deafening cheer when +Hayter took the right hand of the row of tellers, and a still louder +cheer when the numbers were read.'<a name="FNanchor_275_275" id="FNanchor_275_275"></a><a href="#Footnote_275_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a></p> + +<p class="center">DEFEAT OF GOVERNMENT</p> + +<p>A small incident occurred a few nights later to show that it was indeed +high time to abate the passions of these six years and more. A +politician of secondary rank had been accused of bribery at Derby, and a +band of tory friends thought the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span> moment opportune to give him a banquet +at the Carlton. Mr. Gladstone in another room was harmlessly reading the +paper. Presently in came the revellers, began to use insulting language, +and finally vowed that he ought to be pitched headlong out of the window +into the Reform. Mr. Gladstone made some courteous reply, but as the +reporter truly says, courtesy to gentry in this humour was the casting +of pearls before swine. Eventually they ordered candles in another room, +and left him to himself.<a name="FNanchor_276_276" id="FNanchor_276_276"></a><a href="#Footnote_276_276" class="fnanchor">[276]</a> 'You will perhaps,' he wrote to his wife, +'see an account of a row at the Carlton in which I have taken no harm.' +The affair indeed was trivial, but it illustrates a well-known and +striking reflection of Cornewall Lewis upon the assault perpetrated on +Sumner in the Senate at Washington by Brooks. 'That outrage,' he said, +'is no proof of brutal manners or low morality in Americans; it is the +first blow in a civil war.... If Peel had proposed a law not only +reducing rents, but annihilating them, instead of being attacked by a +man of words like Disraeli, he would have been attacked with physical +arguments by some man of blows.'<a name="FNanchor_277_277" id="FNanchor_277_277"></a><a href="#Footnote_277_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a></p> + +<p>In point of numbers the stroke given to protection was not tremendous, +but as the history of half a century has shown, it was adequate and +sufficient, and Lord Derby at once resigned. He did not take his defeat +well. 'Strange to say,' Mr. Gladstone wrote to his wife, 'Lord Derby has +been making a most petulant and intemperate speech in the House of Lords +on his resignation; such that Newcastle was obliged to rise after him +and contradict the charge of combination; while nothing could be better +in temper, feeling, and judgment than Disraeli's farewell.' Derby +angrily divided the combination that had overthrown him into, first, +various gradations of liberalism from 'high aristocratic and exclusive +whigs down to the extremest radical theorists'; second, Irish +ultramontanes; and lastly, a party of some thirty or thirty-five +gentlemen 'of great personal worth, of great eminence and +respectability, possessing considerable official experience and a large +amount of talent—who once professed, and I believe do still profess, +conservative opinions.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span></p> + +<p>Mr. Disraeli, on the contrary, with infinite polish and grace asked +pardon for the flying words of debate, and drew easy forgiveness from +the member whom a few hours before he had mocked as 'a weird sibyl'; the +other member whom he would not say he greatly respected, but whom he +greatly regarded; and the third member whom he bade learn that petulance +is not sarcasm, and insolence is not invective. Lord John Russell +congratulated him on the ability and the gallantry with which he had +conducted the struggle, and so the curtain fell. The result, as the +great newspaper put it with journalistic freedom, was 'not merely the +victory of a battle, but of a war; not a reverse, but a conquest. The +vanquished have no principles which they dare to assert, no leaders whom +they can venture to trust.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_270_270" id="Footnote_270_270"></a><a href="#FNanchor_270_270"><span class="label">[270]</span></a> Charles Wordsworth, <i>Letter to Mr. Gladstone</i>, 1852, p. 50.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_271_271" id="Footnote_271_271"></a><a href="#FNanchor_271_271"><span class="label">[271]</span></a> Inglis, 1368; Gladstone, 1108; Marsham, 758.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_272_272" id="Footnote_272_272"></a><a href="#FNanchor_272_272"><span class="label">[272]</span></a> I suppose this refers to a passage about Mr. Disraeli:—'For my +part I acquit the chancellor of the exchequer, so far as his own +convictions are concerned, of the charge of having ever been a +protectionist. I never for one moment thought he believed in the least +degree in protection. I do not accuse him of having forgotten what he +said or what he believed in those years. I only accuse him of having +forgotten now what he then wished it to appear that he believed.' The +same speech contains a whimsical reason why the Jews make no converts, +which the taste of our more democratic House would certainly not +tolerate.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_273_273" id="Footnote_273_273"></a><a href="#FNanchor_273_273"><span class="label">[273]</span></a> 'The only serious misunderstanding I ever had with my noble and +lamented friend Lord George Bentinck, which I am happy to say was +thoroughly removed before his untimely death—was upon a full and frank +expression of my opinion that nothing could be more unfitting nor more +impolitic than to load with terms of vituperation those from whom we are +compelled conscientiously to differ' (<i>Dec. 6</i>).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_274_274" id="Footnote_274_274"></a><a href="#FNanchor_274_274"><span class="label">[274]</span></a> 'We had a preliminary debate to have the whole resolution put, +instead of the preamble only, which was ultimately agreed to, and placed +the question more fairly before the public, Disraeli making the +extraordinary declaration that though the proposal was for doubling the +house-tax, nobody was bound by that vote to do so. It was an attempt at +a shuffle in order to catch votes from his own people, and to a certain +extent it succeeded.'—<i>Halifax Papers</i>, 1852.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_275_275" id="Footnote_275_275"></a><a href="#FNanchor_275_275"><span class="label">[275]</span></a> Trevelyan, ii. p. 331.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_276_276" id="Footnote_276_276"></a><a href="#FNanchor_276_276"><span class="label">[276]</span></a> <i>Times</i>, Dec. 23, 1852.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_277_277" id="Footnote_277_277"></a><a href="#FNanchor_277_277"><span class="label">[277]</span></a> <i>Letters</i>, p. 315.</p></div> + +</div> + +<hr /> +<h4><a name="Book_IV" id="Book_IV"></a>Book IV</h4> + +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> + +<p class="center"><i>1853-1859</i></p> + +<h2><a name="BkIVCh_I" id="BkIVCh_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> + +<p class="center">THE COALITION</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1853</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The materials necessary for a sound judgment of facts are not found +in the success or failure of undertakings; exact knowledge of the +situation that has provoked them forms no inconsiderable element of +history.—<span class="smcap">Metternich</span>.</p></div><br /> + +<p>England was unconsciously on the eve of a violent break in the peace +that had been her fortunate lot for nearly forty years. To the situation +that preceded this signal event, a judicious reader may well give his +attention. Some of the particulars may seem trivial. In countries +governed by party, what those out of the actualities of the fray reckon +trivial often count for much, and in the life of a man destined to be a +conspicuous party leader, to pass them by would be to leave out real +influences.</p> + +<p>The first experiment in providing the country with a tory government had +failed. That alliance between whig and Peelite which Lord John the year +before had been unable to effect, had become imperative, and at least a +second experiment was to be tried. The initial question was who should +be head of the new government. In August, Lord Aberdeen had written to +Mr. Gladstone in anticipation of the Derbyite defeat: 'If high character +and ability only were required, <i>you</i> would be the person; but I am +aware that for the present at least this would not be practicable. +Whether it would be possible for Newcastle or me to undertake the +concern is more than I can say.' Other good reasons apart,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span> it is easy +to see that Mr. Gladstone's attitude in things ecclesiastical put him +out of court, and though he had made a conspicuous mark not only, as +Lord Aberdeen said, by character and ability but by liberality of view +especially in the region of colonial reform, still he had as yet had no +good opportunity for showing an independent capacity for handling great +affairs.</p> + +<p>Not any less impossible was Lord John. Shortly before the occasion +arose, a whig intimate told him plainly that reconstruction on the basis +of his old government was out of the question. 'Lord John's answer was a +frank acceptance of that opinion; and he was understood to say that the +composition of the next government must be mainly from the ranks of the +Peelites; he evidently looked forward to being a member of it, but not +the head. When various persons were named as possible heads, Lord +Aberdeen was distinctly approved, Graham was distinctly rejected, +Newcastle was mentioned without any distinct opinion expressed. We +[Aberdeen and Gladstone] were both alike at a loss to know whether Lord +John had changed his mind, or had all along since his resignation been +acting with this view. All his proceedings certainly seem to require an +opposite construction, and to contemplate his own leadership.'<a name="FNanchor_278_278" id="FNanchor_278_278"></a><a href="#Footnote_278_278" class="fnanchor">[278]</a></p> + +<p>Lord Palmerston was determined not to serve again under a minister who +had with his own hand turned him out of office, and of whose unfitness +for the first post he was at the moment profoundly convinced. He told a +Peelite friend that Lord John's love of popularity would always lead him +into scrapes, and that his way of suddenly announcing new policies +(Durham letter and Edinburgh letter) without consulting colleagues, +could not be acquiesced in. Besides the hostility of Palmerston and his +friends, any government with the writer of the Durham letter at its head +must have the hostility of the Irishmen to encounter. The liberal +attitude of the Peelites on the still smouldering question of papal +aggression gave Aberdeen a hold on the Irish such as nobody else could +have.</p> + +<p class="center">A HARASSED WEEK</p> + +<p>Another man of great eminence in the whig party might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span> have taken the +helm, but Lord Lansdowne was seventy-two, and was supposed to have +formally retired from office for ever. The leader of the Peelites +visited the patrician whig at Lansdowne House, and each begged the other +to undertake the uncoveted post. Lord Aberdeen gave a slow assent. +Previously understanding from Lord John that he would join, Aberdeen +accepted the Queen's commission to form a government. He had a harassed +week. At first the sun shone. 'Lord John consents,' wrote Mr. Gladstone +to his wife at Hawarden, 'and has behaved very well. Palmerston refuses, +which is a serious blow. To-morrow I think we shall get to detailed +arrangements, about which I do not expect extraordinary difficulty. But +I suppose Palmerston is looking to become the leader of a Derby +opposition; and without him, or rather with him between us and the +conservatives, I cannot but say the game will be a very difficult one to +play. It is uncertain whether I shall be chancellor of the exchequer or +secretary for the colonies; one of the two I think certainly; and the +exchequer will certainly come to Graham or me.'</p> + +<p>Within a few hours angry squalls all but capsized the boat. Lord John at +first had sought consolation in an orthodox historical parallel—the +case of Mr. Fox, though at the head of the largest party, leading the +Commons under Lord Grenville as head of the government. Why should he, +then, refuse a position that Fox had accepted? But friends, often in his +case the most mischievous of advisers, reminded him what sort of place +he would hold in a cabinet in which the chief posts were filled by men +not of his own party. Lord John himself thought, from memories of Bishop +Hampden and other ecclesiastical proceedings, that Mr. Gladstone would +be his sharpest opponent. Then as the days passed, he found deposition +from first place to second more bitter than he had expected. Historic +and literary consolation can seldom be a sure sedative against the +stings of political ambition. He changed his mind every twelve hours, +and made infinite difficulties. When these were with much travail +appeased, difficulties were made on behalf of others. The sacred caste +and their adherents were up in arms, and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span> bitter cry arose that all +the good things were going to the Peelites, only the leavings to the +whigs. Lord John doubtless remembered what Fox had said when the +ministry of All the Talents was made,—'We are three in a bed.' Disraeli +now remarked sardonically, 'The cake is too small.' To realise the +scramble, the reader may think of the venerable carp that date from +Henry iv. and Sully, struggling for bread in the fish-ponds of the +palace of Fontainebleau. The whigs of this time were men of intellectual +refinement; they had a genuine regard for good government, and a decent +faith in reform; but when we chide the selfishness of machine +politicians hunting office in modern democracy, let us console ourselves +by recalling the rapacity of our oligarchies. 'It is melancholy,' muses +Sir James Graham this Christmas in his journal, 'to see how little +fitness for office is regarded on all sides, and how much the public +employments are treated as booty to be divided among successful +combatants.'</p> + +<p>From that point of view, the whig case was strong. 'Of 330 members of +the House of Commons,' wrote Lord John to Aberdeen, '270 are whig and +radical, thirty are Irish brigade, thirty are Peelites. To this party of +thirty you propose to give seven seats in cabinet, to the whigs and +radicals five, to Lord Palmerston one.' In the end there were six whigs, +as many Peelites, and one radical. The case of four important offices +out of the cabinet was just as heartrending: three were to go to the +thirty Peelites, and one to the two hundred and seventy just persons. 'I +am afraid,' cried Lord John, 'that the liberal party will never stand +this, and that the storm will overwhelm me.' Whig pride was deeply +revolted at subjection to a prime minister whom in their drawing-rooms +they mocked as an old tory. In the Aberdeen cabinet, says Mr. Gladstone, +'it may be thought that the whigs, whose party was to supply five-sixths +or seven-eighths of our supporters, had less than their due share of +power. It should, however, be borne in mind that they had at this +juncture in some degree the character of an used up, and so far a +discredited, party. Without doubt they were sufferers from their +ill-conceived and mischievous Ecclesiastical Titles Act. Whereas we, +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span> Peelites had been for six and a half years out of office, and had +upon us the gloss of freshness.'</p> + +<p class="center">CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER</p> + +<p>Lord Palmerston refused to join the coalition, on the honourable ground +that for many years he and Aberdeen had stood at the antipodes to one +another in the momentous department of foreign affairs. In fact he +looked in another direction. If the Aberdeen-Russell coalition broke +down, either before they began the journey or very soon after, Lord +Derby might come back with a reconstructed team, with Palmerston leading +in the Commons a centre party that should include the Peelites. He was +believed to have something of this kind in view when he consented to +move the amendment brought to him by Gladstone and Herbert in November, +and he was bitterly disappointed at the new alliance of that eminent +pair with Lord John. With the tories he was on excellent terms. Pall +Mall was alive with tales of the anger and disgust of the Derbyites +against Mr. Disraeli, who had caused them first to throw over their +principles and then to lose their places. The county constituencies and +many conservative boroughs were truly reported to be sick of the man who +had promised marvels as 'looming in the future,' and then like a bad +jockey had brought the horse upon its knees. Speculative minds cannot +but be tempted to muse upon the difference that the supersession by Lord +Palmerston of this extraordinary genius at that moment might have made, +both to the career of Disraeli himself, and to the nation of which he +one day became for a space the supreme ruler. Cobden and Bright let it +be understood that they were not candidates for office. 'Our day has not +come yet,' Bright said to Graham, and the representative of the radicals +in the cabinet was Sir William Molesworth. In their newspaper the +radicals wrote rather stiffly and jealously. In the end Lord Palmerston +changed his mind and joined.</p> + +<p>It was three days before the post of the exchequer was filled. Mr. +Gladstone in his daily letter to Hawarden writes: 'At headquarters I +understand they say, “Mr. G. destroyed the budget, so he ought to make a +new one.” However we are trying to press Graham into that service.' The +next day it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span> was settled. From Osborne a letter had come to Lord +Aberdeen: 'The Queen hopes it may be possible to give the chancellorship +of the exchequer to Mr. Gladstone, and to secure the continuance of Lord +St. Leonards as chancellor.'<a name="FNanchor_279_279" id="FNanchor_279_279"></a><a href="#Footnote_279_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a> Notwithstanding the royal wish, 'we +pressed it,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'on Graham, but he refused point +blank.' Graham, as we know, was the best economist in the administration +of Peel, and Mr. Gladstone's frequent references to him in later times +on points of pure finance show the value set upon his capacity in this +department. His constitutional dislike of high responsibility perhaps +intervened. Mr. Gladstone himself would cheerfully have returned to the +colonial office, but the whigs suspected the excesses of his colonial +liberalism, and felt sure that he would sow the tares of anglicanism in +these virgin fields. So before Christmas day came, Mr. Gladstone +accepted what was soon in influence the second post in the +government,<a name="FNanchor_280_280" id="FNanchor_280_280"></a><a href="#Footnote_280_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a> and became chancellor of the exchequer.</p> + +<p>Say what they would, the parliamentary majority was unstable as water. +His own analysis of the House of Commons gave 270 British liberals, not +very compact, and the radical wing of them certain to make occasions of +combination against the government, especially in finance. The only +other party avowing themselves general supporters of the government were +the forty Peelites—for at that figure he estimated them. The ministry, +therefore, were in a minority, and a portion even of that minority not +always to be depended on. The remainder of the House he divided into +forty Irish brigaders, bent on mischief; from fifty to eighty +conservatives, not likely to join in any factious vote, and not +ill-disposed to the government, but not to be counted on either for +attendance or confidence; finally, the Derby opposition, from 200 to +250, ready to follow Mr. Disraeli into any combination for turning out +the government. 'It thus appears, if we strike out the fifty +conservatives faintly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span> favourable, that we have a government with 310 +supporters, liable on occasions, which frequently arise, to heavy +deductions; with an opposition of 290 (Derbyites and brigaders), most of +them ready to go all lengths. Such a government cannot be said to +possess the confidence of the House of Commons in the full +constitutional sense.'</p> + +<p class="center">EARLY POSITION OF THE MINISTRY</p> + +<p>The general course seemed smooth. Palmerston had gone to the harmless +department of home affairs. The international airs were still. But a +cabinet finally composed of six Peelites, six whigs, and a radical, was +evidently open to countless internal hazards. 'We shall all look +strangely at each other,' one of them said, 'when we first meet in +cabinet.' Graham describes them as a powerful team that would need good +driving. 'There are some odd tempers and queer ways among them; but on +the whole they are gentlemen, and they have a perfect gentleman at their +head, who is honest and direct, and who will not brook insincerity in +others.' The head of the new government described it to a friend as 'a +great experiment, hitherto unattempted, and of which the success must be +considered doubtful, but in the meantime the public had regarded it with +singular favour.' To the King of the Belgians, Aberdeen wrote: 'England +will occupy her true position in Europe as the constant advocate of +moderation and peace'; and to Guizot, that 'the position which we +desired so see England occupy among the nations of Europe, was to act +the part of a moderator, and by reconciling differences and removing +misunderstandings to preserve harmony and peace.'</p> + +<p>I have seen no more concise analysis of the early position of the +coalition government than that by one of the ablest and most experienced +members of the whig party, not himself a candidate for office:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>'It is strong,' Sir Francis Baring wrote to his son, 'in personal +talent; none that I can remember stronger, though the head of the +government is untried. It is strong in one point of view: as to +public feeling. The country, I believe, wanted a moderate liberal +government, and a fusion of liberal conservatives and moderate +liberals. It is weak in the feelings of the component<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span> parts: +Palmerston is degraded, Gladstone will struggle for power, Lord +John cannot be comfortable. It is weak in the discordant +antecedents of the cabinet; they must all make some sacrifices and +work uncomfortably. It is weak in the support. I do not mean the +numbers, but the class of supporters. The Peelites are forty; they +will have the liberals on the one side and the conservatives on the +other. The whigs of the cabinet will be anxious to satisfy the +former; the Peelites (Gladstone especially) the other. They are +weak in their church views. The protestants look on those who voted +against the Aggression bill with distrust; the evangelicals on +Gladstone and S. Herbert with dislike. I don't pretend to be a +prophet, but it is always well to put down what you expect and to +compare these expectations with results. My conjecture is that +Gladstone will, before long, leave the government or that he will +break it up.'<a name="FNanchor_281_281" id="FNanchor_281_281"></a><a href="#Footnote_281_281" class="fnanchor">[281]</a></p></div> + +<p>Long afterwards Mr. Gladstone himself said this of the coalition:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I must say of this cabinet of Lord Aberdeen's that in its +deliberations it never exhibited the marks of its dual origin. Sir +W. Molesworth, its radical member, seemed to be practically rather +nearer in colour to the Peelites than to the whigs. There were some +few idiosyncrasies without doubt. Lord Palmerston, who was home +secretary, had in him some tendencies which might have been +troublesome, but for a long time were not so. It is, for instance, +a complete error to suppose that he asked the cabinet to treat the +occupation of the Principalities as a <i>casus belli</i>. Lord Russell +shook the position of Lord Aberdeen by action most capricious and +unhappy. But with the general course of affairs this had no +connection; and even in the complex and tortuous movements of the +Eastern negotiations, the cabinet never fell into two camps. That +question and the war were fatal to it. In itself I hardly ever saw +a cabinet with greater promise of endurance.</p></div> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">OPPOSITION AT OXFORD</p> + +<p>Acceptance of office vacated the Oxford seat, and the day after +Christmas a thunderbolt fell upon the new chancellor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span> of the exchequer +from his friend, the militant archdeacon of Taunton. 'I wish to use few +words,' Denison wrote, 'where every word I write is so bitterly +distressing to me, and must be little less so, I cannot doubt, to +yourself and to many others whom I respect and love. I have to state to +you, as one of your constituents, that from this time I can place no +confidence in you as representative of the university of Oxford, or as a +public man.' Mr. Gladstone's protestations that church patronage would +be as safe in Lord Aberdeen's hands as in Lord Derby's; that his own +past history dispensed with the necessity of producing other assurances +of his own fidelity; that his assumption of office could not shake +it—all these were vain in face of the staring and flagrant fact that he +would henceforth be the intimate and partner in council of Lord John +Russell, the latitudinarian, the erastian, the appropriationist, the +despoiler; and worse still, of Molesworth, sometimes denounced as a +Socinian, sometimes as editor of the atheist Hobbes, but in either case +no fit person to dispense the church patronage of the duchy of +Lancaster. Only a degree less shocking was the thought of the power of +filling bishoprics and deaneries by a prime minister himself a +presbyterian. No guarantee that the member for Oxford might have taken +against aggression upon the church, or for the concession of her just +claims, was worth a feather when weighed against the mere act of a +coalition so deadly as this.</p> + +<p>It was an awkward fact for Mr. Gladstone's canvassers that Lord Derby +had stated that his defeat was the result of a concert or combination +between the Peelites and other political parties. Mr. Gladstone himself +saw no reason why this should cause much soreness among his Oxford +supporters. 'No doubt,' he said, 'they will remember that I avowed +before and during the last election a wish to find the policy and +measures of the government such as would justify me in giving them my +support. That wish I sincerely entertained. But the main question was +whether the concert or combination alleged to have taken place for the +purpose of ejecting Lord Derby's government from office was fact or +fiction. I have not the slightest hesitation in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span> stating to you that it +is a fiction. Evidence for the only presumption in its favour was +this—that we voted against the budget of Mr. Disraeli in strict +conformity with every principle of finance we had professed through our +political lives and with the policy of former finance ministers from the +time of Mr. Pitt, against the “new principles” and “new policies” which +Mr. Disraeli declared at Aylesbury his intention to submit to the House +of Commons—a pledge which I admit that he completely redeemed.'<a name="FNanchor_282_282" id="FNanchor_282_282"></a><a href="#Footnote_282_282" class="fnanchor">[282]</a></p> + +<p>All this was true enough, but what people saw was that the first fruits +of the victory were a coalition with the whigs, who by voting with +Villiers had from the first shown their predetermination against +ministers. As Northcote humorously said, Mary Stuart could never get +over the presumption which her marriage with Bothwell immediately raised +as to the nature of her previous connection with him. It is hard to deny +that, as the world goes, the Oxford tories clerical and lay might think +they had a case. Lord Derby was the tory minister, and Mr. Gladstone had +been a chief instrument in turning him out. That was the one salient +fact, and the political flock is often apt to see a thing with a more +single eye than their shepherds.</p> + +<p>A candidate was found in Mr. Perceval, son of the tory prime minister +who had met a tragic death forty years before. The country clergy were +plied with instigations and solicitations, public and private. No +absurdity was too monstrous to set afloat. Mr. Gladstone had seceded to +the episcopal church of Scotland. He had long ceased to be a +communicant. He was on close and intimate terms with Cardinal Wiseman. +He had incited the pope to persecute protestants at Florence. In this +vein a flight of angry articles and circulars descended on every +parsonage where there was an Oxford master of arts with his name still +on the university books. At the beginning the enemy by a rush were in a +majority, but they were speedily beaten out of it. At the end of six +days, in spite of frenzied efforts, no more than 1330 votes out of a +constituency of 3600 had been recorded. Still the indomitable men +insisted on the legal right of keeping the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span> poll open for fifteen days, +and learned persons even gloomily hinted that the time might be extended +to forty days. In the end (Jan. 20) Mr. Gladstone had 1022 votes against +Perceval's 898, or a narrow majority of 124. The tory press justly +consoled themselves by calculating that such a majority was only six per +cent. of the votes polled, but they were very angry with the failure of +the protestant electors in doing their patriotic duty against 'the +pro-romanist candidate.' The organ of the Peelites, on the other hand, +was delighted at the first verdict thus gained from the most influential +constituency in Great Britain, in favour of the new experiment of +conservative-liberalism and wise and rational progress. Graham said, and +truly, that 'though Gladstone's defeat at that precise juncture would +have been a misfortune, yet for his own sake hereafter, emancipation +from the thraldom of that constituency would be a blessing. It is a +millstone under which even Peel would have sunk.'</p> + +<p>Was Mr. Gladstone right in his early notion of himself as a slow moving +mind? Would it be true to say that, compared with Pitt, for instance, he +ripened slowly? Or can we accurately describe him as having in any +department of life, thought, knowledge, feeling, been precocious? +Perhaps not. To speak of slowness in a man of such magical rapidity of +intellectual apprehension would be indeed a paradox, but we have seen +already how when he is walking in the middle path of his years, there is +a sense in which he was slow in character and motion. Slowness explains +some qualities in his literary and oratorical form, which was often, and +especially up to our present period, vague, ambiguous, and obscure. The +careless and the uncharitable set all down to sophistry. Better +observers perceived that his seeming mystifications were in fact the +result of a really embarrassed judgment. They pointed out that where the +way was clear, as in free trade, colonial government, dissenters' +chapels, Jewish disabilities, catholic bishoprics, nobody could run more +straight, at higher speed, or with more powerful stride. They began to +say that in spite of Russells, Palmerstons, Grahams, Mr. Gladstone, +after all, was the least unlikely of them 'to turn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span> out a thoroughgoing +man of the people.' These anticipations of democracy there is no sign +that Mr. Gladstone himself, in the smallest degree, shared. The +newspapers, meanwhile, were all but unanimous in declaring that 'if +experience, talent, industry, and virtue, are the attributes required +for the government of this empire,' then the coalition government would +be one of the best that England had ever seen.</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone's dislike and distrust of the intrusion not only of the +rude secular arm, but of anything temporal into the sphere of spiritual +things, had been marked enough in the old days of battle at Oxford +between the tractarians and the heads, though it was less manifest in +the Gorham case. In 1853 he found occasion for an honourable exhibition +of the same strong feeling. Maurice had got into trouble with the +authorities at King's College by essays in which he was taken to hold +that the eternity of the future torment of the wicked is a superstition +not warranted by the Thirty-nine Articles. A movement followed in the +council of the college to oust Maurice from his professorial chair. Mr. +Gladstone took great pains to avert the stroke, and here is the story as +he told it to his brother-in-law, Lord Lyttelton:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;"><i>To Lord Lyttelton</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Oct. 29, 1853</i>.—I remained in town last Thursday in order to +attend the council of K.C., and as far as I could, to see fair +play. I was afraid of a very precipitous proceeding, and I regret +to say my fears have been verified. The motion carried was the +Bishop of London's, but I am bound to say he was quite willing to +have waived it for another course, and the proceeding is due to a +body of laymen chiefly lords. The motion carried is to the effect +that the statements on certain points contained in Maurice's last +essay are of a dangerous character, and that his connection with +the theology of the school ought not to continue. I moved as an +amendment that the bishop be requested to appoint competent +theologians who should personally examine how far the statements +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span>of Mr. Maurice were conformable to or at variance with the three +creeds and the formularies of the church of England, and should +make a report upon them, and that the bishop should be requested to +communicate with the council. For myself I find in different parts +of what Maurice has written things that I cannot, and I am quite +certain the council had not been able to, reconcile. This +consideration alone seemed to me to show that they were not in a +condition to proceed with a definite judgment. I do not feel +sufficiently certain what his view as a whole may be, even if I +were otherwise competent to judge whether it is within or beyond +the latitude allowed by the church in this matter. And +independently of all this I thought that even decency demanded of +the council, acting perforce in a judicial capacity, that they +should let the accused person know in the most distinct terms for +<i>what</i> he was dismissed, and should show that they had dismissed +him, if at all, only after using greater pains to ascertain that +his opinions were in real contrariety to some article of the faith. +I also cherished the hope, founded on certain parts of what he has +said, that his friends might be able in the meantime to arrange +some <i>formula concordiæ</i>; which might avert the scandal and mischief +of the dismissal. Sir J. Patteson, Sir B. Brodie, and Mr. Green +supported the amendment, but the majority went the other way, and +much was I grieved at it. I am not inclined to abate the dogmatic +profession of the church—on the contrary, nothing would induce me +to surrender the smallest fraction of it; but while jealous of its +infraction in any particular, I am not less jealous of the +obtrusion of any private or local opinion into the region of dogma; +and above all I hold that there should be as much rigour in a trial +of this kind, irrespective of the high character and distinguished +powers of the person charged in this particular case, as if he were +indicted for murder.<a name="FNanchor_283_283" id="FNanchor_283_283"></a><a href="#Footnote_283_283" class="fnanchor">[283]</a></p></div> + +<p class="center">DEFENCE OF MAURICE</p> + +<p>Long afterwards, when the alleged heretic was dead, Mr. Gladstone wrote +of him to Mr. Macmillan (April 11, 1884): 'Maurice is indeed a spiritual +splendour, to borrow the phrase of Dante about St. Dominic. His +intellectual constitution had long been, and still is, to me a good +deal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span> of an enigma. When I remember what is said and thought of him, and +by whom, I feel that this must be greatly my own fault.' Some years +after the affair at King's College, Maurice was appointed to Vere +Street, and the attack upon him was renewed. Mr. Gladstone was one of +those who signed an address of recognition and congratulation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_278_278" id="Footnote_278_278"></a><a href="#FNanchor_278_278"><span class="label">[278]</span></a> Memo, by Mr. Gladstone of a conversation with Aberdeen.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_279_279" id="Footnote_279_279"></a><a href="#FNanchor_279_279"><span class="label">[279]</span></a> The practical impossibility of retaining this learned man, the +Derbyite chancellor, upon the coalition woolsack, is an illustration of +the tenacity of the modern party system.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_280_280" id="Footnote_280_280"></a><a href="#FNanchor_280_280"><span class="label">[280]</span></a> It was not until the rise of Mr. Gladstone that a chancellor of +the exchequer, not being prime minister, stood at this high level.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_281_281" id="Footnote_281_281"></a><a href="#FNanchor_281_281"><span class="label">[281]</span></a> From the Baring papers, for which I am indebted to the kindness of +Lord Northbrook.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_282_282" id="Footnote_282_282"></a><a href="#FNanchor_282_282"><span class="label">[282]</span></a> <i>Times</i>, December 23, 1852.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_283_283" id="Footnote_283_283"></a><a href="#FNanchor_283_283"><span class="label">[283]</span></a> See <i>Life of Maurice</i>, ii. p. 195; <i>Life of Wilberforce</i>, ii. pp. +208-218. <a href="#Page_168">See also Mr. Gladstone's letter to Bishop Hampden, 1856, above +p. 168.</a></p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIVCh_II" id="BkIVCh_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">THE TRIUMPH OF 1853</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1853</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>We have not sought to evade the difficulties of our position.... We +have not attempted to counteract them by narrow or flimsy +expedients.... We have proposed plans which will go some way +towards closing up many vexed financial questions.... While we have +sought to do justice to intelligence and skill as compared with +property—while we have sought to do justice to the great labouring +community by further extending their relief from indirect taxation, +we have not been guided by any desire to set one class against +another.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span> (1853).</p></div><br /> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone began this year, so important both to himself and to the +country, with what he described as a short but active and pleasant visit +to Oxford. He stayed at Christ Church with Dr. Jacobson, of whom it was +observed that he always looked as if on the point of saying something +extremely piercing and shrewd, only it never came. He paid many calls, +dined at Oriel, had a luncheon and made a speech in the hall at Balliol; +passed busy days and brisk evenings, and filled up whatever spare +moments he could find or manufacture, with treasury papers, books on +taxation, consolidated annuities, and public accounts, alternating with +dips into Lamennais—the bold and passionate French mystic, fallen angel +of his church, most moving of all the spiritual tragedies of that day of +heroic idealists.</p> + +<p>On February 3 he moved into the house of the chancellor of the exchequer +in that best known of all streets which is not a street, where he was +destined to pass some two and twenty of the forty-one years of the +public life that lay before him. He had a correspondence with Mr. +Disraeli, his predecessor, on the valuation of the furniture in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span> the +official house. There was question, also, of the robe that passes down +under some law of exchange from one chancellor to another on an +apparently unsettled footing. The tone on this high concern was not +wholly amicable. Mr. Gladstone notes especially in his diary that he +wrote a draft of one of his letters on a Sunday, as being, I suppose, +the day most favourable to self-control; while Mr. Disraeli at last +suggests that Mr. Gladstone should really consult Sir Charles Wood, 'who +is at least a man of the world.' Such are the angers of celestial minds.</p> + +<p>At an early cabinet (Feb. 5) he began the battle that lasted in various +shapes all the rest of his life. It was on a question of reducing the +force in the Pacific. 'Lord Aberdeen, Granville, Molesworth, and I were +for it. We failed.' What was the case for this particular retrenchment I +do not know, nor does it matter. Fiercer engagements, and many of them, +were to follow. Meanwhile he bent all the energies of his mind to the +other front of financial questions—to raising money rather than +expending it, and with unwearied industry applied himself to solve the +problem of redistributing the burdens and improving the machinery of +taxation.</p> + +<p>For many years circumstances had given to finance a lively and +commanding place in popular interest. The protracted discussion on the +corn law, conducted not only in senate and cabinet, but in country +market-places and thronged exchanges, in the farmer's ordinary and at +huge gatherings in all the large towns in the kingdom, had agitated +every class in the community. The battle between free trade and +protection, ending in a revolution of our commercial system, had +awakened men to the enormous truth, as to which they are always so soon +ready to relapse into slumber, that budgets are not merely affairs of +arithmetic, but in a thousand ways go to the root of the prosperity of +individuals, the relations of classes, and the strength of kingdoms. The +finance of the whigs in the years after the Reform bill had not only +bewildered parliament, but had filled merchants, bankers, shipowners, +manufacturers, shopkeepers, and the whole array of general taxpayers +with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span> perplexity and dismay. Peel recovered a financial equilibrium and +restored public confidence, but Peel was gone. The whigs who followed +him after 1846 had once more laboured under an unlucky star in this +vital sphere of national affairs. They performed the unexampled feat of +bringing forward four budgets in a single year, the first of them +introduced by Lord John Russell himself as prime minister. By 1851 +floundering had reached a climax. Finance had thus discredited one +historical party; it had broken up the other. It was finance that +overthrew weak governments and hindered the possibility of a strong one.</p> + +<p class="center">FISCAL CONFUSION</p> + +<p>Mr. Disraeli, the most unsparing of all the assailants of Peel, tried +his own hand in 1852. To have the genius and the patience of a great +partisan chief is one gift, and this he had; to grasp the complex +material interests of a vast diversified society like the United Kingdom +demands powers of a different order. The defeat of Mr. Disraeli's budget +at the end of 1852 seemed to complete the circle of fiscal confusion. +Every source of public income was the object of assault. Every indirect +tax was to be reduced or swept away, and yet no two men appeared to +agree upon the principles of the direct taxes that were to take their +place. The window duty, the paper duty, the tax on advertisements, the +malt-tax, the stamp on marine insurances, were all to vanish, but even +the most zealous reformers were powerless to fill the void. The +order-book of the House of Commons was loaded with motions about the +income-tax, and an important committee sat in 1851 to consider all the +questions connected with the possibility of its readjustment and +amendment. They could not even frame a report. The belief that it was +essentially unjust to impose the tax at one and the same rate upon +permanent and temporary incomes, prevailed in the great mass, especially +of the liberal party. Discussions arose all through this period, +descending not only to the elementary principles of taxation, but, as +Mr. Gladstone said, almost to the first principles of civilised society +itself. Party distraction, ministerial embarrassment, adjournment after +adjournment of a decision upon fundamental maxims of national +taxation—such was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span> the bewildered scene. At last a statesman appeared, +a financier almost by accident (for, as we have seen, it was by no +special choice of his own that Mr. Gladstone went to the exchequer), but +a financier endowed with a practical imagination of the highest class, +with a combination of the spirit of vigorous analysis and the spirit of +vigorous system, with the habit of unflagging toil, and above all, with +the gift of indomitable courage. If anybody suggested the reappointment +of Hume's committee, the idea was wisely dismissed. It was evidently, as +Graham said, the duty of the executive government to lead the way and to +guide public opinion in a matter of this crucial importance. It seemed +impossible and unworthy to avoid a frank declaration about the +income-tax. He was strongly of opinion (March 15) that a larger measure +would be carried with greater certainty and ease than simple renewal; +and that a combination of income-tax, gradually diminishing to a fixed +term of extinction, with reduction of the interest of debt, and a review +of the probate and legacy duties, afforded the best ground for a +financial arrangement both successful and creditable. It was strong +ideas of this kind that encouraged Mr. Gladstone to build on a broad +foundation.</p> + +<p>The nature of his proceedings he set out in one of the most interesting +of his political memoranda:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The liberals were, to all appearance, pledged to the reconstruction +of the tax by their opinions, and the tories by their party +following. The small fraction of Peelites could probably be relied +upon the other way, and some few individuals with financial +knowledge and experience. The mission of the new government was +described by Lord Aberdeen in the House of Lords as a financial +mission, and the stress of it thus lay upon a person, very +ill-prepared. My opinions were with Peel; but under such +circumstances it was my duty to make a close and searching +investigation into the whole nature of the tax, and make up my mind +whether there was any means of accepting or compounding with the +existing state of opinion. I went to work, and laboured very hard. +When I had entered gravely upon my financial studies, I one day had +occasion—I know not what—to go into the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span>city and to call upon +Mr. Samuel Gurney, to whom experience and character had given a +high position there. He asked me with interest about my +preparations for my budget; and he said, 'One thing I will venture +to urge, whatever your plan is,—let it be simple.' I was a man +much disposed to defer to authority, and I attached weight to this +advice. But as I went further and further into my subject, I became +more and more convinced that, as an honest steward, I had no option +but to propose the renewal of the tax in its uniform shape. I +constructed much elaborate argument in support of my proposition, +which I knew it would be difficult to answer. But I also knew that +no amount of unassisted argument would suffice to overcome the +obstacles in my way, and that this could only be done by large +compensations in my accompanying propositions. So I was led +legitimately on, and on, until I had framed the most complicated +scheme ever submitted to parliament.</p></div> + +<p class="center">THE FABRIC PLANNED</p> + +<p>Truly has it been said that there is something repulsive to human nature +in the simple reproduction of defunct budgets. Certainly if anything can +be more odious than a living tax, it is a dead one. It is as much as is +consonant to biography to give an outline of the plan that was gradually +wrought out in Mr. Gladstone's mind during the first three laborious +months of 1853, and to mark the extraordinarily far-reaching and +comprehensive character of the earliest of his thirteen budgets. Its +initial boldness lay in the adoption of the unusual course of estimating +the national income roughly for a long period of seven years, and +assuming that expenditure would remain tolerably steady for the whole of +that period. Just as no provident man in private life settles his +establishment on the basis of one year or two years only, so Mr. +Gladstone abandoned hand-to-mouth, and took long views. 'I ought, no +doubt,' he said afterwards, 'to have pointed out explicitly that a great +disturbance and increase of our expenditure would baffle my reckonings.' +Meanwhile, the fabric was planned on strong foundations and admirable +lines. The simplification of the tariff of duties of customs, begun by +Peel eleven years before, was carried forward almost to completion. +Nearly one hundred and forty duties<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span> were extinguished, and nearly one +hundred and fifty were lowered. The tea duty was to be reduced in stages +extending over three years from over two shillings to one shilling. In +the department of excise, the high and injurious duty on soap, which +brought into the exchequer over eleven hundred thousand pounds annually, +was swept entirely away. In the same department, by raising the duties +on spirits manufactured in Ireland nearer to the level of England and +Scotland, a step was taken towards identity of taxation in the three +kingdoms—by no means an unequivocal good. Miscellaneous provisions and +minor aspects of the scheme need not detain us; but a great reform of +rate and scale in the system of the assessed taxes, the reduction of the +duty on the beneficent practice of life insurance from half-a-crown to +sixpence on the hundred pounds, and the substitution of a uniform +receipt stamp, were no contemptible contributions to the comfort and +well-being of the community. Advertisements in newspapers became free of +duty.<a name="FNanchor_284_284" id="FNanchor_284_284"></a><a href="#Footnote_284_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a></p> + +<p class="center">KEYSTONE OF THE BUDGET</p> + +<p>The keystone of the budget in Mr. Gladstone's conception was the +position to be assigned in it to the income-tax. This he determined to +renew for a period of seven years,—for two years at sevenpence in the +pound, for two years more at sixpence, and for the last three at +fivepence. By that time he hoped that parliament would be able to +dispense with it. Meanwhile it was to be extended to Ireland, in +compensation for the remission of a debt owed by Ireland to the British +treasury of between four and five millions. It was to be extended, also, +at a reduced rate of fivepence, to incomes between a hundred and fifty +and a hundred pounds—the former having hitherto been the line of total +exemption. From the retention of the income-tax as a portion of the +permanent and ordinary finance of the country the chancellor of the +exchequer was wholly and strongly averse, and so he remained for more +than twenty years to come. In order,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span> however, to meet a common and a +just objection, that under this impost intelligence, enterprise, and +skill paid too much and property paid too little, he resolved upon a +bold step. He proposed that the legacy duty, hitherto confined to +personal property passing on death, either by will or by inheritance and +not by settlement, should henceforth be extended to real property, and +to both descriptions of property passing by settlement, whether real or +personal. In a word, the legacy duty was to extend to all successions +whatever. This was the proposal that in many senses cut deepest. It was +the first rudimentary breach in the ramparts of the territorial system, +unless, indeed, we count as first the abolition of the corn law.<a name="FNanchor_285_285" id="FNanchor_285_285"></a><a href="#Footnote_285_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a> +Mr. Gladstone eagerly disclaimed any intention of accelerating by the +pressure of fiscal enactment changes in the tenure of landed property, +and the letters which the reader has already seen (pp. 345-9) show the +high social value that he invariably set upon the maintenance of the old +landed order. The succession duty, as we shall find, for the time +disappointed his expectations, for he counted on two millions, and in +fact it yielded little more than half of one. But it secured for its +author the lasting resentment of a powerful class.</p> + +<p>Such was the scheme that Mr. Gladstone now worked out in many weeks of +toil that would have been slavish, were it not that toil is never +slavish when illuminated by a strenuous purpose. When by and by the +result had made him the hero of a glorious hour, he wrote to Lord +Aberdeen (April 19): 'I had the deepest anxiety with regard to you, as +our chief, lest by faults of my own I should aggravate the cares and +difficulties into which I had at least helped to bring you; and the +novelty of our political relations with many of our colleagues, together +with the fact that I had been myself slow, and even reluctant, to the +formation of a new connection, filled me with an almost feverish desire +to do no injustice to that connection now that it was formed; and to +redeem the pledge you generously gave on my behalf, that there would be +no want of cordiality and zeal in the discharge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span> of any duties which it +might fall to me to perform on behalf of such a government as was then +in your contemplation.'</p> + +<p>Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen hours a day he toiled at his desk. Treasury +officials and trade experts, soap deputations and post-horse +deputations, representatives of tobacco and representatives of the West +India interest, flocked to Downing Street day by day all through March. +If he went into the city to dine with the Lord Mayor, the lamentable +hole thus made in his evening was repaired by working till four in the +morning upon customs reform, Australian mints, budget plans of all +kinds. It is characteristic that even this mountain load of concentrated +and exacting labour did not prevent him from giving a Latin lesson every +day to his second boy.</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>'Some days before the day appointed for my statement,' says Mr. +Gladstone, 'I recited the leading particulars to my able and intelligent +friend Cardwell, not in the cabinet but then holding office as president +of the board of trade. He was so bewildered and astounded at the bigness +of the scheme, that I began to ask myself, Have I a right to ask my +colleagues to follow me amidst all these rocks and shoals? In +consequence I performed a drastic operation upon the plan, and next day +I carried to Lord Aberdeen a reduced and mutilated scheme which might be +deemed by some politicians to be weaker but safer. I put to Lord +Aberdeen the question I had put to myself, and stated my readiness, if +he should think it called for, to make this sacrifice to the probable +inclinations of my colleagues. But he boldly and wisely said, “I take it +upon myself to ask you to bring your original and whole plan before the +cabinet.” I thought this an ample warrant.'</p> + +<p class="center">THE BUDGET IN CABINET</p> + +<p>At last, after Mr. Gladstone had spent an hour at the palace in +explaining his scheme to the Prince Consort, the budget was opened to +the cabinet (April 9) in a speech of three hours—an achievement, I +should suppose, unparalleled in that line, for a cabinet consists of men +each with pretty absorbing pre-occupations of his own. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span> exposition +was 'as ingenious,' Lord Aberdeen told Prince Albert, 'as clear, and for +the most part as convincing, as anything I have ever heard.' +'Gladstone,' said Lord Aberdeen later (1856) 'does not weigh well +against one another different arguments, each of which has a real +foundation. But he is unrivalled in his power of proving that a specious +argument has no real foundation. On the Succession bill the whole +cabinet was against him. He delivered to us much the same speech as he +made in the House of Commons. At its close we were all convinced.'<a name="FNanchor_286_286" id="FNanchor_286_286"></a><a href="#Footnote_286_286" class="fnanchor">[286]</a></p> + +<p>Differences that might easily become serious speedily arose upon details +in the minds of two or three of them, and for some days the prime +minister regarded the undertaking as not only difficult but perilous. +Sir Charles Wood, in cabinet (April 11), strongly disapproved of the +extension of income-tax to Ireland, and to the lowering of the exemption +line. On Ireland the plan would lay more than half a million of new +taxation, whereas much of the relief, such as soap and assessed taxes, +would not touch her.<a name="FNanchor_287_287" id="FNanchor_287_287"></a><a href="#Footnote_287_287" class="fnanchor">[287]</a> Palmerston thought it a great plan, perfectly +just, and admirably put together, only it opened too many points of +attack, and it could never be carried: Disraeli was on the watch, the +Irish would join him, so would the radicals, while the succession duty, +to which Palmerston individually had great objection, would estrange +many conservatives. Lord John Russell perceived difficulties, but he did +not see an alternative. Graham then fell in, disliked the twofold +extension of the income-tax, and thought they should only take away half +the soap-tax. Lord Lansdowne (a great Irish landlord) agreed with him. +Mr. Gladstone told them that he was willing to propose whatever the +cabinet might decide on, except one thing, namely, the breaking up of +the basis of the income-tax: that he could not be a party to; he should +regard it as a high political offence. With this reservation he should +follow their judgment, but he strongly adhered to his whole plan. Lord +Aberdeen said, 'You must take care your proposals are not unpopular +ones.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span> Mr. Gladstone replied that it was after applying the test of +popularity, that he was convinced the budget would be damaged beforehand +by some of the small changes that had been suggested.</p> + +<p>At the end of a long and interesting discussion, there stood for the +whole budget Lord John, Newcastle, Clarendon, Molesworth, Gladstone, +with Argyll and Aberdeen more or less favourable; for dropping the two +extensions of income-tax and keeping half the soap duty, Lansdowne, +Graham, Wood; more or less leaning towards them, Palmerston and +Granville. They agreed to meet again the next day (April 12), when they +got into the open sea. Wood stuck to his text. Lansdowne suggested that +an increased spirit duty and an income-tax for Ireland together would be +something like a breach of faith. Palmerston thought they would be +beaten, but he would accept the budget provided they were not to be +bound to dissolve or resign upon such a point as to the two extensions +of the income-tax. Lord John said that if they were beaten on +differentiating the tax, they would have to dissolve. Palmerston +expressed his individual opinion in favour of a distinction for +precarious incomes, and would act in that sense if he were out of the +government; as it was, he assented. Argyll created a diversion by +suggesting the abandonment of the Irish spirit duty. Mr. Gladstone +admitted that he thought the spirit duty the weakest point of the plan, +though warrantable and tenable on the whole. At last, after further +patient and searching discussion, the cabinet finding that the suggested +amendments cut against one another, were for adopting the entire budget, +the dissentients being Lansdowne, Graham, Wood, and Herbert. Graham was +full of ill auguries, but said he would assent and assist. Wood looked +grave, and murmured that he must take time.</p> + +<p class="center">CABINET MISGIVINGS</p> + +<p>In the course of these preliminaries Lord John Russell had gone to +Graham, very uneasy about the income-tax. Graham, though habitually +desponding, bade him be of good cheer. Their opponents, he said, were in +numbers strong; but the budget would be excellent to dissolve upon, and +Lord John admitted that they would gain forty seats.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span></p> + +<p>They agreed, however, in Graham's language, that it would never do to +play their trump card until the state of the game actually required it. +Lord John confessed that he was no judge of figures,—somewhat of a +weakness in a critic of a budget,—and Graham comforted him by the reply +that he was at any rate the best judge living of House of Commons +tactics.</p> + +<p>The position of the government in the House of Commons was notoriously +weak. The majority that had brought them into existence was excessively +narrow. It had been well known from the first that if any of the +accidents of a session should happen to draw the tories, the Irish, and +the radicals into one lobby, ministers would find themselves in a +minority. Small defeats occurred. The budget was only four days off. Mr. +Gladstone enters in his diary: 'Spoke against Gibson; beaten by 200-169. +Our third time this week. Very stiff work this. Ellice said dissolution +would be the end of it; we agreed in the House to a cabinet to-morrow. +Herbert and Cardwell, to whom I spoke, inclined to dissolve.' Next day +(April 15), the cabinet met in a flutter, for the same tactics might +well be repeated, whenever Mr. Disraeli should think the chances good.</p> + +<p>Lord John adverted to the hostility of the radicals as exhibited in the +tone of the debate, and hinted the opinion that they must take in a reef +or two. Mr. Gladstone doubted whether the budget could live in that +House, whatever form it might assume; but even with such perils he +should look upon the whole budget as less unsafe than a partial +contraction. Graham took the same view of the disposition of parliament: +keen opposition; lukewarm support; the necessity of a greater party +sympathy and connection to enable them to surmount the difficulties of a +most unusual and hazardous operation. But he did not appear to lean to +dissolution, and the older members of the cabinet generally declared +themselves against it. 'In the end we went back to the position that we +must have a budget on Monday, but Clarendon, Herbert, and Palmerston +joined the chorus of those who said the measure was too sharp upon +Ireland. The idea was then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span> started whether we should go the length of +the entire remission of the consolidated annuities<a name="FNanchor_288_288" id="FNanchor_288_288"></a><a href="#Footnote_288_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a> and impose the +income-tax at sevenpence, with the augmented spirit duty. This view +found favour generally; and I felt that some excess in the mere +sacrifice of money was no great matter compared with the advantage of so +great an approximation to equal taxation.' Then, 'speaking with great +deference,' Gladstone repeated his belief once more that the entire +budget was safer than a contracted one, both for the House and the +country, and his conviction that if they proposed it, the name and fame +of the government at any rate would stand well. 'Wood seemed still to +hang back, but the rest of the cabinet now appeared well satisfied, and +we parted, each resolved and certainly more likely to stand or fall by +the budget as a whole than we seemed to be on Wednesday.'</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>The decisive cabinet was on Saturday, April 16. It was finally settled +that the budget should be proposed as it stood, with its essential +features unaltered. On Sunday, the chancellor of the exchequer went as +usual twice to church, and read the <i>Paradiso</i>; 'but I was obliged,' he +says, with an accent of contrition, 'to give several hours to my +figures.' Monday brought the critical moment. 'April 18. Wrote minutes. +Read Shakespeare at night. This day was devoted to working up my papers +and figures for the evening. Then drove and walked with C. [Mrs. +Gladstone]. Went at 4½ to the House. Spoke 4¾ hours in detailing the +financial measures, and my strength stood out well, thank God. Many kind +congratulations afterwards. Herberts and Wortleys came home with us and +had soup and negus.'</p> + +<p class="center">LAID BEFORE PARLIAMENT</p> + +<p>The proceeding that figures here so simply was, in fact, one of the +great parliamentary performances of the century. Lord Aberdeen wrote to +Prince Albert that 'the display of power was wonderful; it was agreed in +all quarters that there had been nothing like the speech for many years, +and that under the impression of his commanding eloquence the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span> reception +of the budget had been most favourable.' Lord John told the Queen the +speech was one of the ablest ever made in the House of Commons. 'Mr. +Pitt, in the days of his glory, might have been more imposing, but he +could not have been more persuasive.' Lord Aberdeen heard from Windsor +the next day: 'The Queen must write a line to Lord Aberdeen to say how +delighted she is at the great success of Mr. Gladstone's speech last +night.... We have every reason to be sanguine now, which is a great +relief to the Queen.' Prince Albert used the same language to Mr. +Gladstone: 'I cannot resist writing you a line in order to congratulate +you on the success of your speech of yesterday. I have just completed a +close and careful perusal of it and should certainly have cheered had I +a seat in the House. I hear from all sides that the budget has been well +received. Trusting that your Christian humility will not allow you to be +dangerously elated, I cannot help sending for your perusal the report +which Lord John Russell sent to the Queen, feeling sure that it will +give you pleasure, such approbation being the best reward a public man +can have.'</p> + +<p>On the cardinal question of the fortunes of the ministry its effect was +decisive. The prime minister wrote to Mr. Gladstone himself (April 19): +'While everybody is congratulating <i>me</i> on the wonderful impression +produced in the House of Commons last night, it seems only reasonable +that I should have a word of congratulation for <i>you</i>. You will believe +how much more sincerely I rejoice on your account than on my own, +although most assuredly, if the existence of my government shall be +prolonged, it will be your work.' To Madame de Lieven Aberdeen said that +Gladstone had given a strength and lustre to the administration which it +could not have derived from anything else. No testimony was more +agreeable to Mr. Gladstone than a letter from Lady Peel. 'I know the +recollections,' he replied, 'with which you must have written, and +therefore I will not scruple to say that as I was inspired by the +thought of treading, however unequally, in the steps of my great teacher +and master in public affairs, so it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span> one of my keenest anxieties not +to do dishonour to his memory, or injustice to the patriotic policy with +which his name is forever associated.'<a name="FNanchor_289_289" id="FNanchor_289_289"></a><a href="#Footnote_289_289" class="fnanchor">[289]</a></p> + +<p class="center">POWER OF THE PERFORMANCE</p> + +<p>Greville makes a true point when he says that the budget speech 'has +raised Gladstone to a great political elevation, and what is of far +greater consequence than the measure itself, has given the country +assurance of a <i>man</i> equal to great political necessities and fit to +lead parties and direct governments.'<a name="FNanchor_290_290" id="FNanchor_290_290"></a><a href="#Footnote_290_290" class="fnanchor">[290]</a> Mr. Gladstone had made many +speeches that were in a high degree interesting, ingenious, attractive, +forcible. He now showed that besides and apart from all this, he was the +possessor of qualities without which no amount of rhetorician's glitter +commands the House of Commons for a single hour after the fireworks have +ceased to blaze. He showed that he had precise perception, positive and +constructive purpose, and a powerful will. In 1851, he had on two +occasions exhibited the highest competency as a critic of the budget of +Sir Charles Wood. On the memorable night in the previous December, when +he had torn Mr. Disraeli's budget to pieces, he had proved how +terrifying he could be in exposure and assault. He now triumphantly met +the test that he had triumphantly applied to his predecessor, and +presented a command of even more imposing resources in the task of +responsible construction than he had displayed in irresponsible +criticism. The speech was saturated with fact; the horizons were large; +and the opening of each in the long series of topics, from Mr. Pitt and +the great war, down to the unsuspected connection between the repeal of +the soap-tax and the extinction of the slave trade in Africa, was +exalted and spacious. The arguments throughout were close, persuasive, +exhaustive; the moral appeal was in the only tone worthy of a great +minister addressing a governing assembly—a masculine invocation of +their intellectual and political courage. This is the intrepid way in +which a strong parliament and a strong nation like to see public +difficulties handled, and they now welcomed the appearance of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span> new +minister, who rejected what he called narrow and flimsy expedients, of +which so much had been seen in the last half dozen years; who was not +afraid to make a stand against heedless men with hearts apparently set +on drying up one source of revenue after another; who did not shrink +from sconcing the powerful landed phalanx like other people; and who at +the same time boldly used and manfully defended the most unpopular of +all the public imposts. In politics the spectacle of sheer courage is +often quite as good in its influence and effect as the best of logic. It +was so here. While proposing that the income-tax should come to an end +in seven years, he yet produced the most comprehensive analysis and the +boldest vindication of the structure of the tax as it stood. His manner +was plain, often almost conversational, but his elaborate examination of +the principles of an income-tax remains to this day a master example of +accurate reasoning thrown into delightful form. He admitted all the +objections to it: the inquisition that it entailed, the frauds to which +it led, the sense in the public mind of its injustice in laying the same +rate upon the holder of idle and secured public funds, upon the +industrious trader, upon the precarious earnings of the professional +man. It was these disadvantages that made him plan the extinction of the +tax at the end of a definite period, when the salutary remissions of +other burdens now proposed would have had time to bring forth their +fruits. As was said by a later chancellor of the exchequer, this speech +not only won 'universal applause from his audience at the time, but +changed the convictions of a large part of the nation, and turned, at +least for several years, a current of popular opinion which had seemed +too powerful for any minister to resist.'<a name="FNanchor_291_291" id="FNanchor_291_291"></a><a href="#Footnote_291_291" class="fnanchor">[291]</a></p> + +<p>The succession duty brought Mr. Gladstone into the first conflict of his +life with the House of Lords. That land should be made to pay like other +forms of property Was a proposition denounced as essentially +impracticable, oppressive, unjust, cowardly, and absurd. It was called +<i>ex post facto</i> legislation. It was one of the most obnoxious,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span> +detestable, and odious measures ever proposed. Its author was a vulture +soaring over society, waiting for the rich harvest that death would pour +into his treasury. Lord Derby invoked him as a phœnix chancellor, in +whom Mr. Pitt rose from his ashes with double lustre, for Mr. Gladstone +had ventured where Pitt had failed. He admitted that nothing short of +the chancellor's extraordinary skill and dexterity could have carried +proposals so evil through the House of Commons.<a name="FNanchor_292_292" id="FNanchor_292_292"></a><a href="#Footnote_292_292" class="fnanchor">[292]</a> Meanwhile the +public counted up their gains: a remission on tea, good for twenty +shillings a year in an ordinary household; a fall in the washing bill; a +boon of a couple of pounds for the man who insured his life for five +hundred; an easy saving of ten pounds a year in the assessed taxes, and +so forth,—the whole performance ending with 'a dissolving view of the +decline and fall' of the hated income-tax.</p> + +<p class="center">SUCCESSION DUTY AND REDEMPTION</p> + +<p>The financial proceedings of this year included a proposal for the +redemption of South Sea stock and an attempted operation on the national +debt, by the creation of new stocks bearing a lower rate of interest, +two options of conversion being given to the holders of old stock. The +idea of the creation of a two-and-half-per-cent. stock, said Mr. +Gladstone in later years, though in those days novel, was very +favourably received.<a name="FNanchor_293_293" id="FNanchor_293_293"></a><a href="#Footnote_293_293" class="fnanchor">[293]</a></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I produced my plan. Disraeli offered it a malignant opposition. He +made a demand for time; the one demand that ought not to have been +made. In proposals of this kind, it is allowed to be altogether +improper. In 1844 Mr. Goulburn was permitted, I think, to carry +through with great expedition his plan for a large reduction of +interest. When Mr. Goschen produced his still larger and much more +important measure, we, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span>opposition, did our best to expedite +the decision. There are no complications requiring time on such an +occasion. It is a matter of aye or no. But when time is allowed the +chapter of accidents allows an opponent to hope that a situation +known to be unusually happy will deteriorate. Of this contingency +Disraeli took his chance. Time as it happened was in his favour. It +was no question of the substance of the plan, but a moderate change +in the political barometer, which reduced to two or three millions +a subscription which at the right moment would probably have been +twenty or thirty.<a name="FNanchor_294_294" id="FNanchor_294_294"></a><a href="#Footnote_294_294" class="fnanchor">[294]</a></p></div> + +<p>In a letter to W. R. Farquhar (March 8, 1861) he makes further remarks, +which are introspective and autobiographic:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Looking back now upon those of my proceedings in 1853 which related +to interest upon exchequer bills and to the reduction of interest +on the public debt, I think that there was nothing in the proposals +themselves which might not have taken full and quick effect, if +they had been made at a time which I may best describe as the time +that precedes high-water with respect to abundance of money and +security of the market. As respects exchequer bills, I am decidedly +of opinion that the rates of premium current for some years before +'53 were wholly incompatible with a sound state of things: and the +fluctuations then were even greater than since. Still I think that +I committed an error from want of sufficient quickness in +discerning the signs of the times, for we were upon the very eve of +an altered state of things, and any alteration of a kind at all +serious was enough to make the period unfit for those grave +operations. It is far from being the first or only time when I have +had reason to lament my own deficiency in the faculty of rapid and +comprehensive observation. I failed to see that high-water was just +past; and that although the tide had not perceptibly fallen, yet it +was going to fall. The truth likewise is this (to go a step further +in my confessions) that almost all my experience in money affairs +had been of a most difficult and trying kind, under circumstances +which admitted of no choice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span> but obliged me to sail always very +near the wind, and this induced a habit of more daring navigation +than I could now altogether approve. Nor will I excuse myself by +saying that others were deceived like me, for none of them were in +a condition to have precisely my responsibility.</p></div> + +<p>Another note contributes a further point of explanation: 'I have always +imagined that this fault was due to my experience in the affairs of the +Hawarden and Oak Farm estates, where it was an incessant course of +sailing near the wind, and there was really no other hope.'</p> + +<p class="center">INCOME-TAX</p> + +<p>Seven years later Mr. Gladstone, once more chancellor of the exchequer, +again produced a budget. Semi-ironic cheers met his semi-ironic +expression of an expectation that he would be asked the question: what +had become of the calculations of 1853? The succession duty proved a +woeful disappointment, and instead of producing two million pounds, +produced only six hundred thousand. A similar but greater +disappointment, we must recollect, owing mainly to a singular +miscalculation as to the income-tax, had marked Peel's memorable budget +of 1842, which landed him in a deficiency of nearly two and a quarter +millions, instead of a surplus of half a million.<a name="FNanchor_295_295" id="FNanchor_295_295"></a><a href="#Footnote_295_295" class="fnanchor">[295]</a> Of the +disappointment in his own case, Mr. Gladstone when the time came +propounded an explanation, only moderately conclusive. I need not +discuss it, for as everybody knows, the effective reason why the +income-tax could not be removed was the heavy charge created by the +Crimean war. What is more to the point in estimating the finance of +1853, is its effect in enabling us to meet the strain of the war. It was +this finance that, continuing the work begun by Peel, made the country +in 1859 richer by more than sixteen per cent, than it had been in 1853. +It was this finance, that by clinching the open questions that enveloped +the income-tax, and setting it upon a defensible foundation while it +lasted, bore us through the struggle. Unluckily, in demonstrating the +perils of med<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span>dling with the structure of the tax, in showing its power +and simplicity, the chancellor was at the same time providing the +easiest means, if not also the most direct incentive, to that policy of +expenditure—it rose from fifty to seventy millions between 1853 and +1859—which was one of the most fatal obstacles to the foremost aims of +his political life. It was twenty years from now, as my readers will +see, before the effort, now foreshadowed, to exclude the income-tax from +the ordinary sources of national revenue, reached its dramatic close.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_284_284" id="Footnote_284_284"></a><a href="#FNanchor_284_284"><span class="label">[284]</span></a> A curious parliamentary incident occurred. The original proposal +was to reduce the duty from eighteen-pence to sixpence. A motion to +repeal it altogether was rejected by ten. Then a motion was made to +substitute zero for sixpence in the clause. The Speaker ruled that this +reversal of the previous vote was not out of order, and it was carried +by nine.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_285_285" id="Footnote_285_285"></a><a href="#FNanchor_285_285"><span class="label">[285]</span></a> Some may place first the Act of 1833 making real estate liable for +simple contract debts.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_286_286" id="Footnote_286_286"></a><a href="#FNanchor_286_286"><span class="label">[286]</span></a> Mrs. Simpson's <i>Many Memories</i>, p. 237.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_287_287" id="Footnote_287_287"></a><a href="#FNanchor_287_287"><span class="label">[287]</span></a> For paper on Irish income-tax, see Appendix.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_288_288" id="Footnote_288_288"></a><a href="#FNanchor_288_288"><span class="label">[288]</span></a> Loans made to Ireland for various purposes.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_289_289" id="Footnote_289_289"></a><a href="#FNanchor_289_289"><span class="label">[289]</span></a> Cavour, as Costi's letters show, took an eager interest in Mr. +Gladstone's budget speech.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_290_290" id="Footnote_290_290"></a><a href="#FNanchor_290_290"><span class="label">[290]</span></a> Greville, Third Series, i. p. 59.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_291_291" id="Footnote_291_291"></a><a href="#FNanchor_291_291"><span class="label">[291]</span></a> Northcote, <i>Twenty Years of Financial Policy</i>, p. 185.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_292_292" id="Footnote_292_292"></a><a href="#FNanchor_292_292"><span class="label">[292]</span></a> Mr. Gladstone received valuable aid from Bethell, the +solicitor-general. On leaving, office in 1855 he wrote to Bethell: +'After having had to try your patience more than once in circumstances +of real difficulty, I have found your kindness inexhaustible, and your +aid invaluable, so that I really can ill tell on which of the two I look +back with the greater pleasure. The memory of the Succession Duty bill +is to me something like what Inkermann may be to a private of the +Guards: you were the sergeant from whom I got my drill and whose hand +and voice carried me through.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_293_293" id="Footnote_293_293"></a><a href="#FNanchor_293_293"><span class="label">[293]</span></a> The city articles of the time justify this statement.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_294_294" id="Footnote_294_294"></a><a href="#FNanchor_294_294"><span class="label">[294]</span></a> Gladstone Memo., 1897. See also Appendix.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_295_295" id="Footnote_295_295"></a><a href="#FNanchor_295_295"><span class="label">[295]</span></a> It may be said, however, that Peel was right about the yield of +the income-tax, and only overlooked the fact that it would not all be +collected, within the year.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIVCh_III" id="BkIVCh_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">THE CRIMEAN WAR</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1853-1854</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>He [Burke] maintained that the attempt to bring the Turkish empire +into the consideration of the balance of power in Europe was +extremely new, and contrary to all former political systems. He +pointed out in strong terms the danger and impolity of our +espousing the Ottoman cause.—<span class="smcap">Burke</span> (1791).</p></div><br /> + +<p>After the session Mr. Gladstone had gone on a visit to Dunrobin, and +there he was laid up with illness for many days. It was the end of +September before he was able to travel south. At Dingwall they presented +him (Sept. 27) with the freedom of that ancient burgh. He spoke of +himself as having completed the twenty-first year of his political life, +and as being almost the youngest of those veteran statesmen who occupied +the chief places in the counsels of the Queen. At Inverness the same +evening, he told them that in commercial legislation he had reaped where +others had sown; that he had enjoyed the privilege of taking a humble +but laborious part in realising those principles of free trade which, in +the near future, would bring, in the train of increased intercourse and +augmented wealth, that closer social and moral union of the nations of +the earth which men all so fervently desire, and which must in the +fulness of time lessen the frequency of strife and war. Yet even while +the hopeful words were falling from the speaker's lips, he might have +heard, not in far distance but close at hand, the trumpets and drums, +the heavy rumbling of the cannon, and all the clangour of a world in +arms.</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">OTTOMANS AND THE WEST</p> + +<p>One of the central and perennial interests of Mr. Gladstone's life was +that shifting, intractable, and interwoven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span> tangle of conflicting +interests, rival peoples, and antagonistic faiths, that is veiled under +the easy name of the Eastern question. The root of the Eastern question, +as everybody almost too well knows, is the presence of the Ottoman Turks +in Europe, their possession of Constantinople,—that incomparable centre +of imperial power standing in Europe but facing Asia,—and their +sovereignty as Mahometan masters over Christian races. In one of the few +picturesque passages of his eloquence Mr. Gladstone once described the +position of these races. 'They were like a shelving beach that +restrained the ocean. That beach, it is true, is beaten by the waves; it +is laid desolate; it produces nothing; it becomes perhaps nothing save a +mass of shingle, of rock, of almost useless sea-weed. But it is a fence +behind which the cultivated earth can spread, and escape the incoming +tide, and such was the resistance of Bulgarians, of Servians, and of +Greeks. It was that resistance which left Europe to claim the enjoyment +of her own religion and to develop her institutions and her laws.' This +secular strife between Ottoman and Christian gradually became a struggle +among Christian powers of northern and western Europe, to turn +tormenting questions in the east to the advantage of rival ambitions of +their own. At a certain epoch in the eighteenth century Russia first +seized her place among the Powers. By the end of the century she had +pushed her force into the west by the dismemberment of Poland; she had +made her way to the southern shores of the Black Sea; and while still +the most barbaric of all the states, she had made good a vague claim to +exercise the guardianship of civilisation on behalf of the Christian +races and the Orthodox church. This claim it was that led at varying +intervals of time, and with many diversities of place, plea, and colour, +to crisis after crisis springing up within the Turkish empire, but +henceforth all of them apt to spread with dangerous contagion to +governments beyond Ottoman limits.</p> + +<p>England, unlike France, had no systematic tradition upon this +complicated struggle. When war began between Russia and the Porte in +1771, we supported Russia and helped her to obtain an establishment in +the Black Sea. Towards the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span> end of 1782 when Catherine by a sort of +royal syllogism, as Fox called it, took the Crimea into her own hands, +the whig cabinet of the hour did not think it necessary to lend Turkey +their support, though France and Spain proposed a combination to resist. +Then came Pitt. The statesman whose qualities of greatness so profoundly +impressed his contemporaries has usually been praised as a minister +devoted to peace, and only driven by the French Revolution into the long +war. His preparations in 1791 for a war with Russia on behalf of the +Turk are a serious deduction from this estimate. Happily the alarms of +the Baltic trade, and the vigorous reasoning of Fox, produced such an +effect upon opinion, that Pitt was driven, on peril of the overthrow of +his government, to find the best expedient he could to bring the +business to an end without extremities. In 1853 the country was less +fortunate than it had been in 1791.</p> + +<p>A Russian diplomatist made a homely comparison of the Eastern question +to the gout; now its attack is in the foot, now in the hand; but all is +safe if only it does not fly to a vital part. In 1852 the Eastern +question showed signs of flying to the heart, and a catastrophe was +sure. A dispute between Greek and Latin religious as to the custody of +the holy places at Jerusalem, followed by the diplomatic rivalries of +their respective patrons, Russia and France, produced a crisis that was +at first of no extraordinary pattern. The quarrel between two packs of +monks about a key and a silver star was a trivial symbol of the vast +rivalry of centuries between powerful churches, between great states, +between heterogeneous races. The dispute about the holy places was +adjusted, but was immediately followed by a claim from the Czar for +recognition by treaty of his rights as protector of the Sultan's +Christian subjects. This claim the Sultan, with encouragement from the +British ambassador, rejected, and the Czar marched troops into the +Danubian provinces, to hold them in pledge until the required concession +should be made to his high protective claims. This issue was no good +cause for a general conflagration. Unfortunately many combustibles +happened to lie about the world at that time, and craft, +misunderstanding, dupery, auto<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span>cratic pride, democratic hurry, combined +to spread the blaze.</p> + +<p class="center">DIPLOMATIC RIVALRIES</p> + +<p>The story is still fresh. With the detailed history of the diplomacy +that preceded the outbreak of war between England, France, and Turkey on +the one part and Russia on the other, we have here happily only the +smallest concern. The large question, as it presented itself to Mr. +Gladstone's mind in later years, and as it presents itself now to the +historic student, had hardly then emerged to the view of the statesmen +of the western Powers. Would the success of Russian designs at that day +mean anything better than the transfer of the miserable Christian races +to the yoke of a new master?<a name="FNanchor_296_296" id="FNanchor_296_296"></a><a href="#Footnote_296_296" class="fnanchor">[296]</a> Or was the repulse of these designs +necessary to secure to the Christian races—who, by the by, were not +particularly good friends to one another—the power of governing +themselves without any master, either Russian or Turk? To this question, +so decisive as it is in judging the policy of the Crimean war, it is not +quite easy even now for the historian—who has many other things to +think of than has the contemporary politician—to give a confident +answer.</p> + +<p>Nicholas was not without advisers who warned him that the break-up of +Turkey by force of Russian arms might be to the deliverer a loss and not +a gain. Brunnow, then Russian ambassador at St. James's, said to his +sovereign: 'The war in its results would cause to spring out of the +ruins of Turkey all kinds of new states, as ungrateful to us as Greece +has been, as troublesome as the Danubian Principalities have been, and +an order of things where our influence will be more sharply combated, +resisted, restrained, by the rivalries of France, England, Austria, than +it has ever been under the Ottoman. War cannot turn to our direct +advantage. We shall shed our blood and spend our treasure in order that +King Otho may gain Thessaly; that the English may take more islands at +their own convenience; that the French too may get their share; and that +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span> Ottoman empire may be transformed into independent states, which +for us will only become either burdensome clients or hostile +neighbours.' If this forecast was right, then to resist Russia was at +once to prevent her from embarrassing and weakening herself, and to lock +up the Christians in their cruel prison-house for a quarter of a century +longer. If sagacious calculation in such a vein as this were the +mainspring of the world, history would be stripped of many a crimson +page. But far-sighted calculation can no longer be ascribed to the +actors in this tragedy of errors—to Nicholas or Napoleon, to Aberdeen +or Palmerston, or to any other of them excepting Cavour and the Turk.</p> + +<p>In England both people and ministers have been wont to change their +minds upon the Eastern question. In the war between Russia and Turkey in +1828, during the last stage of the struggle for Greek independence, +Russia as Greek champion against the Turk had the English populace on +her side; Palmerston was warmly with her, regarding even her advance to +Constantinople with indifference; and Aberdeen was reproached as a +Turkish sympathiser. Now we shall see the parts inverted,—England and +Palmerston ardent Turks, and Aberdeen falling into disgrace (unjustly +enough) as Russian. Before we have done with Mr. Gladstone, the popular +wheel will be found to make another and yet another revolution.</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">THE BRITISH CABINET</p> + +<p>When Kinglake's first two volumes of his history of the Crimean war +appeared (1863), Mr. Gladstone wrote to a friend (May 14): 'Kinglake is +fit to be a brilliant popular author, but quite unfit to be a historian. +His book is too bad to live, and too good to die. As to the matter most +directly within my cognisance, he is not only not too true, but so +entirely void of resemblance to the truth, that one asks what was really +the original of his picture.'<a name="FNanchor_297_297" id="FNanchor_297_297"></a><a href="#Footnote_297_297" class="fnanchor">[297]</a> A little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</a></span> earlier he had written to +Sir John Acton: 'I was not the important person in the negotiation +before the war that Mr. Kinglake seems to suppose; and with him every +supposition becomes an axiom and a dogma.' All the papers from various +sources to which I have had access show that Mr. Gladstone, as he has +just said, had no special share in the various resolutions taken in the +decisive period that ended with the abandonment of the Vienna note in +the early autumn of 1853. He has himself told us that through the whole +of this critical stage Lord Clarendon, then in charge of foreign +affairs, was the centre of a distinct set of communications, first, with +the prime minister, next, with Lord John Russell as leader in the +Commons, and third, with Lord Palmerston, whose long and active career +at the foreign office had given him special weight in that department. +The cabinet as a body was a machine incapable of being worked by +anything like daily and sometimes hourly consultations of this kind, +'the upshot of which would only become known on the more important +occasions to the ministers at large, especially to those among them +charged with the most laborious departments.'<a name="FNanchor_298_298" id="FNanchor_298_298"></a><a href="#Footnote_298_298" class="fnanchor">[298]</a> This was not at all +said by way of exculpating Mr. Gladstone from his full share of +responsibility for the war, for of that he never at any time showed the +least wish or intention to clear himself, but rather the contrary. As +matter of fact, it was the four statesmen just named who were in +effective control of proceedings until the breakdown of the Vienna note, +and the despatch of the British and French squadrons through the +Dardanelles in October, opened the second stage of the diplomatic +campaign, and led directly if not rapidly to its fatal climax.</p> + +<p>We have little more than a few glimpses of Mr. Gladstone's participation +in the counsels of the eventful months that preceded the outbreak of the +war. To Mrs. Gladstone he writes (October 4): 'I can hardly at this +moment write about anything else than the Turkish declaration of war. +This is a most serious event, and at once raises the question,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</a></span> Are we +to go into it? The cabinet meets on Friday, and you must not be +surprised at anything that may happen. The weather may be smooth; it +also may be <i>very rough</i>.' First the smooth weather came. 'October 7. We +have had our cabinet, three hours and a half; all there but Graham and +Molesworth,<a name="FNanchor_299_299" id="FNanchor_299_299"></a><a href="#Footnote_299_299" class="fnanchor">[299]</a> who would both have been strongly for peace. We shall +have another to-morrow, to look over our results in writing. Some +startling things were said and proposed, but I think that as far as +government is concerned, all will probably keep straight at this +juncture, and as to war I hope we shall not be involved in it, even if +it goes on between Russia and Turkey, which is not quite certain.' +Aberdeen himself thought the aspect of this cabinet of the 7th on the +whole very good, Gladstone arguing strongly against a proposal of +Palmerston's that England should enter into an engagement with Turkey to +furnish her with naval assistance. Most of the cabinet were for peace. +Lord John was warlike, but subdued in tone. Palmerston urged his views +'perseveringly but not disagreeably.' The final instruction was a +compromise, bringing the fleet to Constantinople, but limiting its +employment to operations of a strictly defensive character. This was one +of those peculiar compromises that in their sequel contain surrender. +The step soon showed how critical it was. Well indeed might Lord +Aberdeen tell the Queen that it would obviously every day become more +and more difficult to draw the line between defensive and offensive, +between an auxiliary and a principal. So much simpler is a distinction +in words than in things. Still, he was able to assure her that, though +grounds of difference existed, the discussions of the cabinet of the 8th +were carried on amicably and in good humour. With straightforward common +sense the Queen pressed the prime minister for his own deliberate +counsel on the spirit and ultimate tendency of the policy that he would +recommend her to approve. In fact, Lord Aberdeen had no deliberate +counsel to proffer. Speedily the weather roughened.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">SPEECH AT MANCHESTER</p> + +<p>Four days later (October 12) the minister repeated that, while elements +of wide difference existed, still the appearance of that day was more +favourable and tended to mutual agreement. At this cabinet Mr. Gladstone +was not present, having gone on an expedition to Manchester, the first +of the many triumphal visits of his life to the great industrial centres +of the nation. 'Nothing,' he wrote to Lord Aberdeen, 'could have gone +off better. Yesterday (October 11), I had to make a visit to the +Exchange, which was crammed and most cordial. This morning we had first +the “inauguration” of the Peel statue, in the presence of an enormous +audience—misnamed so, inasmuch as but a portion of them could hear; and +then a meeting in the Town Hall, where there were addresses and speeches +made, to which I had to reply. I found the feeling of the assemblage so +friendly that I said more on the war question than I had intended, but I +sincerely hope I did not transgress the limits you would think it wise +for me to observe. The existence of a peace and a war party was evident, +from alternate manifestations, but I think the former feeling was +decidedly the stronger, and at any rate I should say without the +smallest doubt that the feeling of the whole meeting as a mass was +unequivocally favourable to the course that the government have +pursued.'</p> + +<p>'Your Manchester speech,' Lord Aberdeen wrote to him in reply, 'has +produced a great and, I hope, a very beneficial effect upon the public +mind, and it has much promoted the cause of peace.' This result was +extremely doubtful. The language of the Manchester speech is cloudy, but +what it comes to is this. It recognises the duty of maintaining the +integrity and independence of the Ottoman empire. Independence, however, +in this case, says Mr. Gladstone, designates a sovereignty full of +anomaly, of misery, of difficulty, and it has been subject every few +years since we were born to European discussion and interference; we +cannot forget the political solecism of Mahometans exercising despotic +rule over twelve millions of our fellow Christians; into the questions +growing out of this political solecism we are not now entering; what we +see to-day is something different;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</a></span> it is the necessity for regulating +the distribution of power in Europe; the absorption of power by one of +the great potentates of Europe, which would follow the fall of the +Ottoman rule, would be dangerous to the peace of the world, and it is +the duty of England, at whatever cost, to set itself against such a +result.</p> + +<p>This was Mr. Gladstone's first public entry upon one of the most +passionate of all the objects of his concern for forty years to come. He +hears the desolate cry, then but faint, for the succour of the oppressed +Christians. He looks to European interference to terminate the hateful +solecism. He resists the interference single-handed of the northern +invader. It was intolerable that Russia should be allowed to work her +will upon Turkey as an outlawed state.<a name="FNanchor_300_300" id="FNanchor_300_300"></a><a href="#Footnote_300_300" class="fnanchor">[300]</a> In other words, the +partition of Turkey was not to follow the partition of Poland. What we +shortly call the Crimean war was to Mr. Gladstone the vindication of the +public law of Europe against a wanton disturber. This was a +characteristic example of his insistent search for a broad sentiment and +a comprehensive moral principle. The principle in its present +application had not really much life in it; the formula was narrow, as +other invasions of public law within the next dozen years were to show. +But the clear-cut issues of history only disclose themselves in the long +result of Time. It was the diplomatic labyrinth of the passing hour +through which the statesmen of the coalition had to thread their way. +The disastrous end was what Mr. Disraeli christened the coalition war.</p> + +<p>'The first year of the coalition government,' Lord Aberdeen wrote to Mr. +Gladstone, 'was eminently prosperous, and this was chiefly owing to your +own personal exertions, and to the boldness, ability, and success of +your financial measures. Our second year, if not specially brilliant, +might still have proved greatly advantageous to the country, had we +possessed the courage to resist popular clamour and to avoid war; but +this calamity aggravated all other causes of disunion and led to our +dissolution.'<a name="FNanchor_301_301" id="FNanchor_301_301"></a><a href="#Footnote_301_301" class="fnanchor">[301]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p class="center">ENGLAND SLOWLY DRAWN IN</p> + +<p>On November 4, Clarendon wrote to Lord Aberdeen that they were now in an +anomalous and painful position, and he had arrived at the conviction +that it might have been avoided by firm language and a more decided +course five months ago. 'Russia would then, as she is now, have been +ready to come to terms, and we should have exercised a control over the +Turks that is now not to be obtained.' Nobody, I suppose, doubts to-day +that if firmer language had been used in June to Sultan and Czar alike, +the catastrophe of war would probably have been avoided, as Lord +Clarendon here remorsefully reflects. However that may have been, this +pregnant and ominous avowal disclosed the truth that the British cabinet +were no longer their own masters; that they had in a great degree, even +at this early time, lost all that freedom of action which they +constantly proclaimed it the rule of their policy to maintain, and which +for a few months longer some of them at least strove very hard but all +in vain to recover.</p> + +<p>The Turks were driving at war whilst we were labouring for peace, and +both by diplomatic action and by sending the fleet to protect Turkish +territory against Russian attack, we had become auxiliaries and turned +the weaker of the two contending powers into the stronger. A few months +afterwards Mr. Gladstone found a classic parallel for the Turkish +alliance. 'When Aeneas escaped from the flames of Troy he had an ally. +That ally was his father Anchises, and the part which Aeneas performed +in the alliance was to carry his ally upon his back.' But the discovery +came too late, nor was the Turk the only ally. Against the remonstrances +of our ambassador the Sultan declared war upon Russia, and proceeded to +acts of war, well knowing that England and France in what they believed +to be interests of their own would see him through it. If the Sultan and +his ulemas and his pashas were one intractable factor, the French +Emperor was another. 'We have just as much to apprehend,' Graham wrote +(Oct. 27), 'from the active intervention of our ally as from the open +hostility of our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[Pg 486]</a></span> enemy.' Behind the decorous curtain of European +concert Napoleon III. was busily weaving scheme after scheme of his own +to fix his unsteady diadem upon his brow, to plant his dynasty among the +great thrones of western Europe, and to pay off some old scores of +personal indignity put upon him by the Czar.</p> + +<p>The Czar fell into all the mistakes that a man could. Emperor by divine +right, he had done his best to sting the self-esteem of the +revolutionary emperor in Paris. By his language to the British +ambassador about dividing the inheritance of the sick man, he had +quickened the suspicions of the English cabinet. It is true the sick man +will die, said Lord John Russell, but it may not be for twenty, fifty, +or a hundred years to come; when William III. and Louis XIV. signed +their treaty for the partition of the Spanish monarchy, they first made +sure that the death of the king was close at hand. Then the choice as +agent at Constantinople of the arrogant and unskilful Menschikoff proved +a dire misfortune. Finally, the Czar was fatally misled by his own +ambassador in London. Brunnow reported that all the English liberals and +economists were convinced that the notion of Turkish reform was absurd; +that Aberdeen had told him in accents of contempt and anger, 'I hate the +Turks'; and that English views generally as to Russian aggression and +Turkish interests had been sensibly modified. All this was not untrue, +but it was not true enough to bear the inference that was drawn from it +at St. Petersburg. The deception was disastrous, and Brunnow was never +forgiven for it.<a name="FNanchor_302_302" id="FNanchor_302_302"></a><a href="#Footnote_302_302" class="fnanchor">[302]</a></p> + +<p class="center">LORD STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE</p> + +<p>Another obstacle to a pacific solution, perhaps most formidable of them +all, was Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the British ambassador at +Constantinople. Animated by a vehement antipathy to Russia, possessing +almost sovereign ascendency at the Porte, believing that the Turk might +never meet a happier chance of having the battle out with his adversary +once for all, and justly confident that a policy of war would find +hearty backers in the London cabinet—in him the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">[Pg 487]</a></span> government had an +agent who while seeming to follow instructions in the narrow letter +baffled them in their spirit. In the autumn of 1853 Lord Aberdeen wrote +to Graham, 'I fear I must renounce the sanguine view I have hitherto +taken of the Eastern question; for nothing can be more alarming than the +present prospect. I thought that we should have been able to conquer +Stratford, but I begin to fear that the reverse will be the case, and +that he will succeed in defeating us. Although at our wit's end, +Clarendon and I are still labouring in the cause of peace; but really to +contend at once with the pride of the Emperor, the fanaticism of the +Turks, and the dishonesty of Stratford is almost a hopeless +attempt.'<a name="FNanchor_303_303" id="FNanchor_303_303"></a><a href="#Footnote_303_303" class="fnanchor">[303]</a> This description, when he saw it nearly forty years +later, seems to have struck Mr. Gladstone as harsh. Though he agreed +that the passage could hardly be omitted, he confessed his surprise that +Lord Aberdeen should have applied the word dishonesty to Lord Stratford. +He suggested the addition of a note that should recognise the general +character of Lord Stratford, and should point out that prejudice and +passion, by their blinding powers, often produce in the mind effects +like those proper to dishonesty.<a name="FNanchor_304_304" id="FNanchor_304_304"></a><a href="#Footnote_304_304" class="fnanchor">[304]</a> Perhaps we may find this a hard +saying. Doubtless when he comes to praise and blame, the political +historian must make due allowance for his actors; and charity is the +grandest of illuminants. Still hard truth stands first, and amiable +analysis of the psychology of a diplomatic agent who lets loose a flood +of mischief on mankind is by no means what interests us most about him. +Why not call things by their right names?<a name="FNanchor_305_305" id="FNanchor_305_305"></a><a href="#Footnote_305_305" class="fnanchor">[305]</a></p> + +<p>In his private letters (November) Stratford boldly exhibited his desire +for war, and declared that 'the war, to be successful, must be a very +comprehensive war on the part of England and France.' Well might the +Queen say to the prime minister that it had become a serious question +whether they were justified in allowing Lord Stratford any longer to +remain in a situation that enabled him to frustrate all the efforts of +his government for peace. Yet here, as many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">[Pg 488]</a></span> another time in these +devious manœuvres, that fearful dilemma interposed—inseparable in its +many forms from all collective action whether in cabinet or party; so +fit to test to the very uttermost all the moral fortitude, all the +wisdom of a minister, his sense of proportion, his strength of will, his +prudent pliancy of judgment, his power of balance, his sure perception +of the ruling fact. The dilemma here is patent. To recall Lord Stratford +would be to lose Lord Palmerston and Lord John; to lose them would be to +break up the government; to break up the government would be to sunder +the slender thread on which the chances of peace were hanging.<a name="FNanchor_306_306" id="FNanchor_306_306"></a><a href="#Footnote_306_306" class="fnanchor">[306]</a> The +thought, in short, of the high-minded Aberdeen striving against hope to +play a steadfast and pacific part in a scene so sinister, among actors +of such equivocal or crooked purpose, recalls nothing so much as the +memorable picture long ago of Maria Theresa beset and baffled by her +Kaunitzes and Thuguts, Catherines, Josephs, great Fredericks, Grand +Turks, and wringing her hands over the consummation of an iniquitous +policy to which the perversity of man and circumstance had driven her.</p> + +<p>As the proceedings in the cabinet dragged on through the winter, new +projects were mooted. The ground was shifted to what Lord Stratford had +called a comprehensive war upon Russia. Some of the cabinet began to aim +at a transformation of the policy. It was suggested that the moment +should be seized to obtain not merely the observance by Russia of her +treaty obligations to Turkey, but a revision and modification of the +treaties in Turkish interests. This is the well-known way in which, ever +since the world called civilised began, the area of conflict is widened. +If one plea is eluded or is satisfied, another is found; and so the +peacemakers are at each step checkmated by the warmakers. The Powers of +central Europe were immovable, with motives, interests, designs, each of +their own. Austria had reasons of irresistible force for keeping peace +with Russia. A single victory of Russia in Austrian Poland would enable +her to march direct upon Vienna. Austria<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[Pg 489]</a></span> had no secure alliance with +Prussia; on the contrary, her German rival opposed her on this question, +and was incessantly canvassing the smaller states against her in respect +to it. The French Emperor was said to be revolving a plan for bribing +Austria out of Northern Italy by the gift of Moldavia and Wallachia. All +was intricate and tortuous. The view in Downing Street soon expanded to +this, that it would be a shame to England and to France unless the Czar +were made not only to abandon his demands, and to evacuate the +Principalities, but also to renounce some of the stipulations in former +treaties on which his present arrogant pretensions had been formed. In +the future, the guarantees for the Christian races should be sought in a +treaty not between Sultan and Czar, but between the Sultan and the five +Powers.</p> + +<p class="center">BRITISH OPINION</p> + +<p>Men in the cabinet and men out of it, some with ardour, others with +acquiescence, approved of war for different reasons, interchangeable in +controversial value and cumulative in effect. Some believed, and more +pretended to believe, that Turkey abounded in the elements and energies +of self-reform, and insisted that she should have the chance. Others +were moved by vague general sympathy with a weak power assailed by a +strong one, and that one, moreover, the same tyrannous strength that +held an iron heel on the neck of prostrate Poland; that only a few years +before had despatched her legions to help Austria against the rising for +freedom and national right in Hungary; that urged intolerable demands +upon the Sultan for the surrender of the Hungarian refugees. Others +again counted the power of Russia already exorbitant, and saw in its +extension peril to Europe, and mischief to the interests of England. +Russia on the Danube, they said, means Russia on the Indus. Russia at +Constantinople would mean a complete revolution in the balance of power +in the Mediterranean, and to an alarmed vision, a Russia that had only +crossed the Pruth was as menacing as if her Cossacks were already +encamped in permanence upon the shores of the Bosphorus.</p> + +<p>Along with the anxieties of the Eastern question, ministers were divided +upon the subject of parliamentary reform.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[Pg 490]</a></span> Some, including the prime +minister, went with Lord John Russell in desiring to push a Reform bill. +Others, especially Palmerston, were strongly adverse. Mr. Gladstone +mainly followed the head of the government, but he was still a +conservative, and still member for a tory constituency, and he followed +his leader rather mechanically and without enthusiasm. Lord Palmerston +was suspected by some of his colleagues of raising the war-cry in hopes +of drowning the demand for reform. In the middle of December (1853) he +resigned upon reform,<a name="FNanchor_307_307" id="FNanchor_307_307"></a><a href="#Footnote_307_307" class="fnanchor">[307]</a> but nine days later he withdrew his +resignation and returned. In the interval news of the Russian attack on +the Turkish fleet at Sinope (November 30) had arrived—an attack +justified by precedent and the rule of war. But public feeling in +England had risen to fever; the French Emperor in exacting and +peremptory language had declared that if England did not take joint +action with him in the Black Sea, he would either act alone or else +bring his fleet home. The British cabinet yielded, and came to the +cardinal decision (Dec. 22) to enter the Black Sea. 'I was rather +stunned,' Gladstone wrote to Sidney Herbert next day, 'by yesterday's +cabinet. I have scarcely got my breath again. I told Lord Aberdeen that +I had had wishes that Palmerston were back again on account of the +Eastern question.'</p> + +<p>Here is a glimpse of this time:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Nov. 23, '53</i>.—Cabinet. Reform discussed largely, amicably, and +satisfactorily on the whole. <i>Dec. 16</i>.—Hawarden. Off at 9 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span> +Astounded by a note from A. Gordon. [Palmerston had resigned the +day before.] After dinner went to the admiralty, 10½-1½, where Lord +Aberdeen, Newcastle, Graham, and I went over the late events and +went over the course for to-morrow's cabinet. <i>Dec. 21</i>.—Called on +Lord Palmerston, and sat an hour. 22.—Cabinet, 2-7½, on Eastern +Question. Palmerston and reform. A day of no small matter for +reflection. <i>Jan. 4, 1854</i>.—To Windsor. I was the only guest, and +thus was promoted to sit by the Queen at dinner. She was most +gracious, and above all so thoroughly natural.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[Pg 491]</a></span></p></div> + +<p class="center">THE DECISION OF DECEMBER 22</p> + +<p>On the decision of Dec. 22, Sir Charles Wood says:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>We had then a long discussion on the question of occupying the +Black Sea, as proposed by France, and it seemed to me to be such a +tissue of confusions that I advocated the simple course of doing +so. Gladstone could not be persuaded to agree to this, in spite of +a strong argument of Newcastle's. Gladstone's objection being to +our being hampered by any engagement. His scheme was that our +occupying the Black Sea was to be made dependent, in the first +place, on the Turks having acceded to the Vienna proposals, or at +any rate to their agreeing to be bound by any basis of peace on +which the English and French governments agreed. Newcastle and I +said we thought this would bind us much more to the Turks than if +we occupied the Black Sea as part of our own measures, adopted for +our own purposes, and without any engagement to the Turks, under +which we should be if they accepted our conditions. Gladstone said +he could be no party to unconditional occupation; so it ended in +our telling France that we would occupy the Black Sea, that is, +prevent the passage of any ships or munitions of war by the +Russians, but that we trusted she would join us in enforcing the +above condition on the Turks. If they agreed, then we were to +occupy the Black Sea; if they did not, we were to reconsider the +question, and then determine what to do. Clarendon saw Walewski, +who was quite satisfied.</p></div> + +<p>By the middle of February war was certain. Mr. Gladstone wrote an +account of a conversation that he had at this time with Lord Aberdeen:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Feb. 22</i>.—Lord Aberdeen sent for me to-day and informed me that +Lord Palmerston had been with him to say that he had made up his +mind to vote for putting off (without entering into the question of +its merits) the consideration of the Reform bill for the present +year. [Conversation on Reform.]<a name="FNanchor_308_308" id="FNanchor_308_308"></a><a href="#Footnote_308_308" class="fnanchor">[308]</a></p> + +<p>He then asked me whether I did not think that he might himself +withdraw from office when we came to the declaration of war. All +along he had been acting against his feelings, but still +defensively. He did not think that he could regard the offensive in +the same light, and was disposed to retire. I said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">[Pg 492]</a></span> that a +defensive war might involve offensive operations, and that a +declaration of war placed the case on no new ground of principle. +It did not make the quarrel, but merely announced it, notifying to +the world (of itself justifiable) a certain state of facts which +would have arrived. He said all wars were called or pretended to be +defensive. I said that if the war was untruly so called, then our +position was false; but that the war did not become less defensive +from our declaring it, or from our entering upon offensive +operations. To retire therefore upon such a declaration, would be +to retire upon no ground warrantable and conceivable by reason. It +would not be standing on a principle, whereas any man would require +a distinct principle to justify him in giving up at this moment the +service of the crown. He asked: How could he bring himself to fight +for the Turks? I said we were not fighting for the Turks, but we +were warning Russia off the forbidden ground. That if, indeed, we +undertook to put down the Christians under Turkish rule by force, +then we should be fighting for the Turks; but to this I for one +could be no party. He said if I saw a way for him to get out, he +hoped I would mention it to him. I replied that my own views of war +so much agreed with his, and I felt such a horror of bloodshed, +that I had thought the matter over incessantly for myself. We +stand, I said, upon the ground that the Emperor has invaded +countries not his own, inflicted wrong on Turkey, and what I feel +much more, most cruel wrong on the wretched inhabitants of the +Principalities; that war had ensued and was raging with all its +horrors; that we had procured for the Emperor an offer of +honourable terms of peace which he had refused; that we were not +going to extend the conflagration (but I had to correct myself as +to the Baltic), but to apply more power for its extinction, and +this I hoped in conjunction with all the great Powers of Europe. +That I, for one, could not shoulder the musket against the +Christian subjects of the Sultan, and must there take my stand. +(Not even, I had already told him, if he agreed to such a course, +could I bind myself to follow him in it.) He said Granville and +Wood had spoken to him in the same sense. I added that S. Herbert +and Graham probably would adhere; perhaps Argyll and Molesworth, +and even others might be added.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">[Pg 493]</a></span></p></div> + +<p class="center">LORD ABERDEEN'S MISGIVINGS</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Ellice had been with him and told him that J. Russell and +Palmerston were preparing to contend for his place. Ellice himself, +deprecating Lord Aberdeen's retirement, anticipated that if it took +place Lord Palmerston would get the best of it, and drive Lord John +out of the field by means of his war popularity, though Lord John +had made the speech of Friday to put himself up in this point of +view with the country.</p> + +<p>In consequence of what I had said to him about Newcastle, he +[Aberdeen] had watched him, and had told the Queen to look to him +as her minister at some period or other; which, though afraid of +him (as well as of me) about Church matters, she was prepared to +do. I said I had not changed my opinion of Newcastle as he had done +of Lord John Russell, but I had been disappointed and pained at the +recent course of his opinions about the matter of the war. At my +house last Wednesday he [Newcastle] declared openly for putting +down by force the Christians of European Turkey. Yes, Lord Aberdeen +replied; but he thought him the description of man who would +discharge well the duties of that office. In this I agree.<a name="FNanchor_309_309" id="FNanchor_309_309"></a><a href="#Footnote_309_309" class="fnanchor">[309]</a></p></div> + +<p>A few days later (March 3) Lord John Russell, by way of appeasing +Aberdeen's incessant self-reproach, told him that the only course that +could have prevented war would have been to counsel the Turks to +acquiesce, and not to allow the British fleet to quit Malta. 'But that +was a course,' Lord John continued, 'to which Lansdowne, Palmerston, +Clarendon, Newcastle, and I would not have consented; so that you would +only have broken up your government if you had insisted upon it.' Then +the speaker added his belief that the Czar, even after the Turk's +acquiescence and submission, if we could have secured so much, would +have given the Sultan six months' respite, and no more. None of these +arguments ever eased the mind of Lord Aberdeen. Even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">[Pg 494]</a></span> in his last +interview with the departing ambassador of the Czar, he told him how +bitterly he regretted, first, the original despatch of the fleet from +Malta to Besika Bay (July 1853); and second that he had not sent Lord +Granville to St. Petersburg immediately on the failure of Menschikoff at +Constantinople (May 1853), in order to carry on personal negotiations +with the Emperor.<a name="FNanchor_310_310" id="FNanchor_310_310"></a><a href="#Footnote_310_310" class="fnanchor">[310]</a></p> + +<p>An ultimatum demanding the evacuation of the Principalities was +despatched to St. Petersburg by England and France, the Czar kept a +haughty silence, and at the end of March war was declared. In the event +the Principalities were evacuated a couple of months later, but the +state of war continued. On September 14, English, French, and Turkish +troops disembarked on the shores of the Crimea, and on the 20th of the +month was fought the battle of the Alma. 'I cannot help repeating to +you,' Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Palmerston (Oct. 4, 1854), 'which I +hope you will forgive, the thanks I offered at an earlier period, for +the manner in which you urged—when we were amidst many temptations to +far more embarrassing and less effective proceedings—the duty of +concentrating our strokes upon the heart and centre of the war at +Sebastopol.'<a name="FNanchor_311_311" id="FNanchor_311_311"></a><a href="#Footnote_311_311" class="fnanchor">[311]</a> In the same month Bright wrote the solid, wise, and +noble letter that brought him so much obloquy then, and stands as one of +the memorials of his fame now.<a name="FNanchor_312_312" id="FNanchor_312_312"></a><a href="#Footnote_312_312" class="fnanchor">[312]</a> Mr. Gladstone wrote to his brother +Robertson upon it:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Nov. 7, 1854</i>.—I thought Bright's letter both an able and a manly +one, and though I cannot go his lengths, I respect and sympathise +with the spirit in which it originated. I think he should draw a +distinction between petty meddlings of our own, or interferences +for selfish purposes, and an operation like this which really is in +support of the public law of Europe. I agree with him in some of +the retrospective part of his letter.</p></div> + +<p>Then came the dark days of the Crimean winter.</p> + +<p class="center">DID THE CABINET DRIFT?</p> + +<p>In his very deliberate vindication of the policy of the Crimean war +composed in 1887, Mr. Gladstone warmly denies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">[Pg 495]</a></span> either that the ship of +state drifted instead of being steered, or that the cabinet was in +continual conflict with itself at successive stages of the +negotiation.<a name="FNanchor_313_313" id="FNanchor_313_313"></a><a href="#Footnote_313_313" class="fnanchor">[313]</a> He had witnessed, he declares, much more of sharp or +warm argument in every other of the seven cabinets to which he +belonged.<a name="FNanchor_314_314" id="FNanchor_314_314"></a><a href="#Footnote_314_314" class="fnanchor">[314]</a> In 1881 he said to the present writer: 'As a member of +the Aberdeen cabinet I never can admit that divided opinions in that +cabinet led to hesitating action, or brought on the war. I do not mean +that all were always and on all points of the same mind. But I have +known much sharper divisions in a cabinet that has worked a great +question honourably and energetically, and I should confidently say, +whether the negotiations were well or ill conducted, that considering +their great difficulty they were worked with little and not much +conflict. It must be borne in mind that Lord Aberdeen subsequently +developed opinions that were widely severed from those that had guided +us, but these never appeared in the cabinet or at the time.' Still he +admits that this practical harmony could much less truly be affirmed of +the four ministers especially concerned with foreign affairs;<a name="FNanchor_315_315" id="FNanchor_315_315"></a><a href="#Footnote_315_315" class="fnanchor">[315]</a> that +is to say, of the only ministers whose discussions mattered. It is +certainly impossible to contend that Aberdeen was not in pretty +continual conflict, strong and marked though not heated, with these +three main coadjutors. Whether it be true to say that the cabinet +drifted, depends on the precise meaning of a word. It is undoubtedly +true that it steered a course bringing the ship into waters that the +captain most eagerly wished to avoid, and each tack carried it farther +away from the expected haven. Winds and waves were too many for them. We +may perhaps agree with Mr. Gladstone that as it was feeling rather than +argument that raised the Crimean war into popularity, so it is feeling +and not argument that has plunged it into the 'abyss of odium.' When we +come to a period twenty years after this war was over, we shall see that +Mr. Gladstone found out how little had time changed the public temper, +how little had events taught their lesson.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">[Pg 496]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_296_296" id="Footnote_296_296"></a><a href="#FNanchor_296_296"><span class="label">[296]</span></a> In 1772 Burke had said that he did not wish well to Turkey, for +any people but the Turks, situated as they are, would have been +cultivated in three hundred years; yet they grow more gross in the very +native soil of civility and refinement. But he did not expect to live to +see the Turkish barbarian civilised by the Russian.—<i>Corr.</i> i. p. 402.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_297_297" id="Footnote_297_297"></a><a href="#FNanchor_297_297"><span class="label">[297]</span></a> To Mrs. Gladstone, Jan. 3, 1863: 'In the evenings I have leisure. +Much of it I have been spending in reading Kinglake's book, which +touches very nearly, and not agreeably or justly, the character of Lord +Aberdeen and his government. I am afraid Newcastle blabbed on what took +place, and that his blabbing was much coloured with egotism. Clarendon, +I hear, is very angry with the book, and Lewis too, but Lewis is not a +party concerned.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_298_298" id="Footnote_298_298"></a><a href="#FNanchor_298_298"><span class="label">[298]</span></a> <i>Eng. Hist. Rev.</i> No. vi. p.289.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_299_299" id="Footnote_299_299"></a><a href="#FNanchor_299_299"><span class="label">[299]</span></a> 'Molesworth in the cabinet,' said Lord Aberdeen later, 'was a +failure. Until the war he was a mere cipher. When the war had broken out +and was popular he became outrageously warlike.'—Mrs. Simpson's <i>Many +Memories</i>, p. 264; see also Cobden's <i>Speeches</i>, ii. p. 28.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_300_300" id="Footnote_300_300"></a><a href="#FNanchor_300_300"><span class="label">[300]</span></a> <i>Eng. Hist. Rev. No.</i> vi. p. 290.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_301_301" id="Footnote_301_301"></a><a href="#FNanchor_301_301"><span class="label">[301]</span></a> 1 March 17, 1856.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_302_302" id="Footnote_302_302"></a><a href="#FNanchor_302_302"><span class="label">[302]</span></a> See Martens' <i>Recueil des Traités</i>, etc., published by the Russian +foreign office, 1898, vol. xii., containing many graphic particulars of +these events.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_303_303" id="Footnote_303_303"></a><a href="#FNanchor_303_303"><span class="label">[303]</span></a> Stanmore, <i>Earl of Aberdeen</i>, pp. 270-1.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_304_304" id="Footnote_304_304"></a><a href="#FNanchor_304_304"><span class="label">[304]</span></a> To Sir A. Gordon, Aug. 31, 1892.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_305_305" id="Footnote_305_305"></a><a href="#FNanchor_305_305"><span class="label">[305]</span></a> See Stanmore, p. 253.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_306_306" id="Footnote_306_306"></a><a href="#FNanchor_306_306"><span class="label">[306]</span></a> This is clearly worked out by Lord Stanmore, p. 254, etc.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_307_307" id="Footnote_307_307"></a><a href="#FNanchor_307_307"><span class="label">[307]</span></a> Ashley's <i>Life of Palmerston</i>, ii. p. 270.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_308_308" id="Footnote_308_308"></a><a href="#FNanchor_308_308"><span class="label">[308]</span></a><a href="#Reform">See Appendix.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_309_309" id="Footnote_309_309"></a><a href="#FNanchor_309_309"><span class="label">[309]</span></a> Lord Blachford in his <i>Letters</i> says of Newcastle (p. 225): 'An +honest and honourable man, a thorough gentleman in all his feelings and +ways, and considerate of all about him. He respected other people's +position, but was sensible of his own; and his familiarity, friendly +enough, was not such as invited response. It was said of him that he did +not remember his rank unless you forgot it. In political administration +he was painstaking, clear-headed, and just. But his abilities were +moderate, and he did not see how far they were from being sufficient for +the management of great affairs, which, however, he was always ambitious +of handling.' See also Selborne's <i>Memorials</i>, ii. pp. 257-8.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_310_310" id="Footnote_310_310"></a><a href="#FNanchor_310_310"><span class="label">[310]</span></a> Martens.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_311_311" id="Footnote_311_311"></a><a href="#FNanchor_311_311"><span class="label">[311]</span></a> The equivocal honour of originality seems to belong to the French, +but they had allowed the plan to slumber.—De La Gorce, <i>Hist. du second +Empire</i>, i. pp. 231-3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_312_312" id="Footnote_312_312"></a><a href="#FNanchor_312_312"><span class="label">[312]</span></a> It is given in <i>Speeches</i>, i. p. 529. Oct. 29, 1854.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_313_313" id="Footnote_313_313"></a><a href="#FNanchor_313_313"><span class="label">[313]</span></a> <i>Eng. Hist. Rev.</i> April 1887. This article was submitted to the +Duke of Argyll and Lord Granville for correction before publication.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_314_314" id="Footnote_314_314"></a><a href="#FNanchor_314_314"><span class="label">[314]</span></a> The cabinet of 1892 was his eighth.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_315_315" id="Footnote_315_315"></a><a href="#FNanchor_315_315"><span class="label">[315]</span></a> Aberdeen, Russell, Palmerston, Clarendon.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIVCh_IV" id="BkIVCh_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">OXFORD REFORM—OPEN CIVIL SERVICE</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1854</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>To rear up minds with aspirations and faculties above the herd, +capable of leading on their countrymen to greater achievements in +virtue, intelligence, and social well-being; to do this, and +likewise so to educate the leisured classes of the community +generally, that they may participate as far as possible in the +qualities of these superior spirits, and be prepared to appreciate +them, and follow in their steps—these are purposes requiring +institutions of education placed above dependence on the immediate +pleasure of that very multitude whom they are designed to elevate. +These are the ends for which endowed universities are desirable; +they are those which all endowed universities profess to aim at; +and great is their disgrace, if, having undertaken this task, and +claiming credit for fulfilling it, they leave it unfulfilled.—<span class="smcap">J.</span> +<span class="smcap">S. Mill</span>.</p></div><br /> + +<p>The last waves of the tide of reform that had been flowing for a score +of years, now at length reached the two ancient universities. The +Tractarian revival with all its intense pre-occupations had given the +antique Oxford a respite, but the hour struck, and the final effort of +the expiring whigs in their closing days of power was the summons to +Oxford and Cambridge to set their houses in order. Oxford had been +turned into the battle-field on which contending parties in the church +had at her expense fought for mastery. The result was curious. The +nature of the theological struggle, by quickening mind within the +university, had roused new forces; the antagonism between anglo-catholic +and puritan helped, as it had done two centuries before, to breed the +latitudinarian; a rising school in the sphere of thought and criticism +rapidly made themselves an active party in the sphere of affairs; and +Mr. Gladstone found himself forced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">[Pg 497]</a></span> to do the work of the very +liberalism which his own theological leaders and allies had first +organised themselves to beat down and extinguish.</p> + +<p class="center">FIRST OXFORD COMMISSION</p> + +<p>In 1850 Lord John Russell, worked upon by a persevering minority in +Oxford, startled the House of Commons, delighted the liberals, and +angered and dismayed the authorities of the powerful corporations thus +impugned, by the announcement of a commission under the crown to inquire +into their discipline, state, and revenues, and to report whether any +action by crown and parliament could further promote the interests of +religion and sound learning in these venerable shrines. This was the +first step in a long journey towards the nationalisation of the +universities, and the disestablishment of the church of England in what +seemed the best fortified of all her strongholds.</p> + +<p>After elaborate correspondence with both liberal and tory sections in +Oxford, Mr. Gladstone rose in his place and denounced the proposed +commission as probably against the law, and certainly odious in the eye +of the constitution. He undertook to tear in tatters the various modern +precedents advanced by the government for their purpose; scouted the +alleged visitorial power of the crown; insisted that it would blight +future munificence; argued that defective instruction with freedom and +self-government would, in the choice of evils, be better than the most +perfect mechanism secured by parliamentary interference; admitted that +what the universities had done for learning was perhaps less than it +might have been, but they had done as much as answered the circumstances +and exigencies of the country. When we looked at the lawyers, the +divines, the statesmen of England, even if some might judge them +inferior in mere scholastic and technical acquirements, why need we be +ashamed of the cradles in which they were mainly nurtured? He closed +with a triumphant and moving reference to Peel (dead a fortnight +before), the most distinguished son of Oxford in the present century, +and beyond all other men the high representative and the true type of +the genius of the British House of Commons.<a name="FNanchor_316_316" id="FNanchor_316_316"></a><a href="#Footnote_316_316" class="fnanchor">[316]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">[Pg 498]</a></span> In truth no worse case +was ever more strongly argued, and fortunately the speech is to be +recorded as the last manifesto, on a high theme and on a broad scale, of +that toryism from which this wonderful pilgrim had started on his +shining progress. It is just to add that the party in Oxford who +resisted the commission was also the party most opposed to Mr. +Gladstone, and further that the view of the crown having no right to +issue such a commission <i>in invitos</i> was shared with him by Sir Robert +Peel.<a name="FNanchor_317_317" id="FNanchor_317_317"></a><a href="#Footnote_317_317" class="fnanchor">[317]</a> Of this debate, Arthur Stanley (a strong supporter of the +measure), tells us: 'The ministerial speeches were very feeble.... +Gladstone's was very powerful; he said, in the most effective manner, +anything which could be said against the commission. His allusion to +Peel was very touching, and the House responded to it by profound and +sympathetic silence.... Heywood's closing speech was happily drowned in +the roar of “Divide,” so that nothing could be heard save the name of +“Cardinal Wolsey” thrice repeated.'<a name="FNanchor_318_318" id="FNanchor_318_318"></a><a href="#Footnote_318_318" class="fnanchor">[318]</a> The final division was taken on +the question of the adjournment, when the government had a majority of +22. (July 18, 1850.)</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">REPORT OF THE COMMISSION</p> + +<p>In Oxford the party of 'organised torpor' did not yield without a +struggle. They were clamorous on the sanctity of property; contemptuous +of the doctrine of the rights of parliament over national domains; and +protestant collegians subsisting on ancient Roman catholic endowments +edified the world on the iniquity of setting aside the pious founder. +They submitted an elaborate case to the most eminent counsel of the day, +and counsel advised that the commission was not constitutional, not +legal, and not such as the members of the university were bound to obey. +The question of duty apart from legal obligation the lawyers did not +answer, but they suggested that a petition might be addressed to the +crown, praying that the instrument might be cancelled. The petition was +duly prepared, and duly made no difference. Many of the academic +authorities were recalcitrant, but this made no difference either, nor +did the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">[Pg 499]</a></span> Bishop of Exeter's hot declaration that the proceeding had 'no +parallel since the fatal attempt of King James <span class="smcap">II</span>. to subject the +colleges to his unhallowed control.' The commissioners, of whom Tait and +Jeune seem to have been the leading spirits, with Stanley and Mr. +Goldwin Smith for secretaries, conducted their operations with tact, +good sense, and zeal. At the end of two years (April 1852) the inquiry +was completed and the report made public—one of the high landmarks in +the history of our modern English life and growth. 'When you consider,' +Stanley said to Jowett, 'the den of lions through which the raw material +had to be dragged, much will be excused. In fact the great work was to +finish it at all. There is a harsh, unfriendly tone about the whole +which ought, under better circumstances, to have been avoided, but which +may, perhaps, have the advantage of propitiating the radicals.'<a name="FNanchor_319_319" id="FNanchor_319_319"></a><a href="#Footnote_319_319" class="fnanchor">[319]</a></p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone thought it one of the ablest productions submitted in his +recollection to parliament, but the proposals of change too manifold and +complicated. The evidence he found more moderate and less sweeping in +tone than the report, but it only deepened his conviction of the +necessity of important and, above all, early changes. He did not cease +urging his friends at Oxford to make use of this golden opportunity for +reforming the university from within, and warning them that delay would +be dearly purchased.<a name="FNanchor_320_320" id="FNanchor_320_320"></a><a href="#Footnote_320_320" class="fnanchor">[320]</a> 'Gladstone's connection with Oxford,' said Sir +George Lewis, 'is now exercising a singular influence upon the politics +of the university. Most of his high church supporters stick to him, and +(insomuch as it is difficult to struggle against the current) he is +liberalising them, instead of their torifying him. He is giving them a +push forwards instead of their giving him a pull backwards.'<a name="FNanchor_321_321" id="FNanchor_321_321"></a><a href="#Footnote_321_321" class="fnanchor">[321]</a></p> + +<p>The originators of the commission were no longer in office, but things +had gone too far for their successors to burke what had been done.<a name="FNanchor_322_322" id="FNanchor_322_322"></a><a href="#Footnote_322_322" class="fnanchor">[322]</a> +The Derby government put into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">[Pg 500]</a></span> Queen's speech, in November (1852), a +paragraph informing parliament that the universities had been invited to +examine the recommendations of the report. After a year's time had been +given them to consider, it became the duty of the Aberdeen government to +frame a bill. The charge fell upon Mr. Gladstone as member for Oxford, +and in the late autumn of 1853 he set to work. In none of the +enterprises of his life was he more industrious or energetic. Before the +middle of December he forwarded to Lord John Russell what he called a +rude draft, but the rude draft contained the kernel of the plan that was +ultimately carried, with a suggestion even of the names of the +commissioners to whom operations were to be confided. 'It is marvellous +to me,' wrote Dr. Jeune to him (Dec. 21, 1853), 'how you can give +attention so minute to university affairs at such a crisis. Do great +things become to great men from the force of habit, what their ordinary +cares are to ordinary persons?' As he began, so he advanced, listening +to everybody, arguing with everybody, flexible, persistent, clear, +practical, fervid, unconquerable. 'I fear,' Lord John Russell wrote to +him (March 27), 'my mind is exclusively occupied with the war and the +Reform bill, and yours with university reform.' Perhaps, unluckily for +the country, this was true. 'My whole heart is in the Oxford bill,' Mr. +Gladstone writes (March 29); 'it is my consolation under the pain with +which I view the character my office [the exchequer] is assuming under +the circumstances of war.' 'Gladstone has been surprising everybody +here,' writes a conspicuous high churchman from Oxford, 'by the ubiquity +of his correspondence. Three-fourths of the colleges have been in +communication with him, on various parts of the bill more or less +affecting themselves. He answers everybody by return of post, fully and +at length, quite entering into their case, and showing the greatest +acquaintance with it.'<a name="FNanchor_323_323" id="FNanchor_323_323"></a><a href="#Footnote_323_323" class="fnanchor">[323]</a> 'As one of your burgesses,' he told them, 'I +stand upon the line that divides<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">[Pg 501]</a></span> Oxford from the outer world, and as a +sentinel I cry out to tell what I see from that position.' What he saw +was that if this bill were thrown out, no other half so favourable would +ever again be brought in.</p> + +<p class="center">THE BILL FRAMED</p> + +<p>The scheme accepted by the cabinet was in essentials Mr. Gladstone's +own. Jowett at the earliest stage sent him a comprehensive plan, and +soon after, saw Lord John (Jan. 6). 'I must own,' writes the latter to +Gladstone, 'I was much struck by the clearness and completeness of his +views.' The difference between Jowett's plan and Mr. Gladstone's was on +the highly important point of machinery. Jowett, who all his life had a +weakness for getting and keeping authority into his own hands, or the +hands of those whom he could influence, contended that after parliament +had settled principles, Oxford itself could be trusted to settle details +far better than a little body of great personages from outside, +unacquainted with special wants and special interests. Mr. Gladstone, on +the other hand, invented the idea of an executive commission with +statutory powers. The two plans were printed and circulated, and the +balance of opinion in the cabinet went decisively for Mr. Gladstone's +scheme. The discussion between him and Jowett, ranging over the whole +field of the bill, was maintained until its actual production, in many +interviews and much correspondence. In drawing the clauses Mr. Gladstone +received the help of Bethell, the solicitor-general, at whose suggestion +Phillimore and Thring were called in for further aid in what was +undoubtedly a task of exceptional difficulty. The process brought into +clearer light the truth discerned by Mr. Gladstone from the first, that +the enormous number of diverse institutions that had grown up in Oxford +made resort to what he called sub-legislation inevitable; that is to +say, they were too complex for parliament, and could only be dealt with +by delegation to executive act.</p> + +<p>It is untrue to say that Oxford as a place of education had no influence +on the mind of the country; it had immense influence, but that influence +was exactly what it ought not to have been. Instead of stimulating it +checked, instead of expanding it stereotyped. Even for the church<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">[Pg 502]</a></span> it +had failed to bring unity, for it was from Oxford that the opinions had +sprung that seemed to be rending the church in twain. The regeneration +introduced by this momentous measure has been overlaid by the strata of +subsequent reforms. Enough to say that the objects obtained were the +deposition of the fossils and drones, and a renovated constitution on +the representative principle for the governing body; the wakening of a +huge mass of sleeping endowments; the bestowal of college emoluments +only on excellence tested by competition, and associated with active +duties; the reorganisation or re-creation of professorial teaching; the +removal of local preferences and restrictions. Beyond these aspects of +reform, Mr. Gladstone was eager for the proposed right to establish +private halls, as a change calculated to extend the numbers and strength +of the university, and as settling the much disputed question, whether +the scale of living could not be reduced, and university education +brought within reach of classes of moderate means. These hopes proved to +be exaggerated, but they illustrate his constant and lifelong interest +in the widest possible diffusion of all good things in the world from +university training down to a Cook's tour.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone seems to have pressed his draftsmen hard, as he sometimes +did. Bethell returning to him 'the <i>disjecta membra</i> of this unfortunate +bill,' tells him that he is too deeply attached to him to care for a few +marks of impatience, and adds, 'write a few kind words to Phillimore, +for he really loves you and feels this matter deeply.' Oxford, scene of +so many agitations for a score of years past, was once more seized with +consternation, stupefaction, enthusiasm. A few private copies of the +draft were sent down from London for criticism. On the vice-chancellor +it left 'an impression of sorrow and sad anticipations'; it opened +deplorable prospects for the university, for the church, for religion, +for righteousness. The dean of Christ Church thought it not merely +inexpedient, but unjust and tyrannical. Jowett, on the other hand, was +convinced that it must satisfy all reasonable reformers, and added +emphatically in writing to Mr. Gladstone, 'It is to yourself and Lord +John that the university<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">[Pg 503]</a></span> will be indebted for the greatest boon that it +has ever received.' After the introduction of the bill by Lord John +Russell, the obscurantists made a final effort to call down one of their +old pelting hailstorms. A petition against the bill was submitted to +convocation; happily it passed by a majority of no more than two.</p> + +<p class="center">SECOND READING</p> + +<p>At length the blessed day of the second reading came. The ever zealous +Arthur Stanley was present. 'A superb speech from Gladstone,' he +records, 'in which, for the first time, all the arguments from our +report were worked up in the most effective manner. He vainly +endeavoured to reconcile his present with his former position. But, with +this exception, I listened to his speech with the greatest delight.... +To behold one's old enemies slaughtered before one's face with the most +irresistible weapons was quite intoxicating. One great charm of his +speaking is its exceeding good-humour. There is great vehemence but no +bitterness.'<a name="FNanchor_324_324" id="FNanchor_324_324"></a><a href="#Footnote_324_324" class="fnanchor">[324]</a> An excellent criticism of many, perhaps most, of his +speeches.</p> + +<p>'It must ever be borne in mind,' Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord John at the +outset, 'with respect to our old universities that history, law, and +usage with them form such a manifold, diversified, and complex mass, +that it is not one subject but a world of subjects that we have to deal +with in approaching them.' And he pointed out that if any clever lawyer +such as Butt or Cairns were employed to oppose the bill systematically, +debate would run to such lengths as to make it hopeless. This was a +point of view that Mr. Gladstone's more exacting and abstract critics +now, and many another time, forgot: they forgot that, whatever else you +may say of a bill, after all it is a thing that is to be carried through +parliament. Everybody had views of his own. A characteristic +illustration of Mr. Gladstone's temper in the arduous work of practical +legislation to which so much of the energies of his life was devoted, is +worth giving here from a letter of this date to Burgon of Oriel. Nobody +answers better to the rare combination, in Bacon's words, of a 'glorious +nature that doth put life into business, with a solid and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">[Pg 504]</a></span> sober nature +that hath as much of the ballast as of the sail':—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Sometimes it may be necessary in dealing with a very ancient +institution to make terms, as it were, between such an institution +and the actual spirit of the age. This may be in certain +circumstances a necessary, but it can never be a satisfactory, +process. It is driving a bargain, and somewhat of a wretched +bargain. But I really do not find or feel that this is the case now +before us. In that case, my view, right or wrong, is this: that +Oxford is far behind her duties or capabilities, not because her +working men work so little, but because so large a proportion of +her children do not work at all, so large a proportion of her +resources remains practically dormant, and her present constitution +is so ill-adapted to developing her real but latent powers. What I +therefore anticipate is not the weakening of her distinctive +principles, not the diminution of her labour, already great, that +she discharges for the church and for the land, but a great +expansion, a great invigoration, a great increase of her numbers, a +still greater increase of her moral force, and of her hold upon the +heart and mind of the country.</p></div> + +<p class="center">ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS</p> + +<p>Pusey seems to have talked of the university as ruined and overthrown by +a parricidal hand; Oxford would be lost to the church; she would have to +take refuge in colleges away from the university. Oxford had now +received its death-blow from Mr. Gladstone and the government to which +he belonged, and he could no longer support at election times the worker +of such evil, and must return to that inactivity in things political, +from which only love and confidence for Mr. Gladstone had roused him. +'Personally,' the good man adds, 'I must always love you.' To Pusey, and +to all who poured reproach upon him from this side, Mr. Gladstone +replied with inexhaustible patience. He never denied that parliamentary +intervention was an evil, but he submitted to it in order to avert +greater evil. 'If the church of England has not strength enough to keep +upright, this will soon appear in the troubles of emancipated Oxford: if +she has, it will come out to the joy of us all in the immensely +augmented energy and power of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">[Pg 505]</a></span> university for good. If Germanism and +Arnoldism are now to carry the day at Oxford (I mean supposing the bill +is carried into law), they will carry it fairly; let them win and wear +her (God forbid, however); but if she has a heart true to the faith her +hand will be stronger ten times over than it has been heretofore, in +doing battle.... Nor am I saddened by the pamphlet of a certain Mr. —— +which I have been reading to-day. It has more violence than venom, and +also much more violence than strength. I often feel how hard it is on +divines to be accused of treachery and baseness, because they do not, +like <i>us</i>, get it every day and so become case-hardened against it.'</p> + +<p>In parliament the craft laboured heavily in cross-seas. 'I have never +known,' says its pilot, 'a measure so foolishly discussed in committee.' +Nor was oil cast upon the waters by its friends. By the end of May Mr. +Gladstone and Lord John saw that they must take in canvas. At this point +a new storm broke. It was impossible that a measure on such a subject +could fail to awaken the ever ready quarrel between the two camps into +which the English establishment, for so many generations, has so +unhappily divided the life of the nation. From the first, the protestant +dissenters had been extremely sore at the absence from the bill of any +provision for their admission to the remodelled university. Bright, the +most illustrious of them, told the House of Commons that he did not care +whether so pusillanimous and tinkering an affair as this was passed or +not. Dissenters, he said with scorn, are expected always to manifest too +much of those inestimable qualities which are spoken of in the Epistle +to the Corinthians: 'To hope all things, to believe all things, and to +endure all things.'</p> + +<p>More discredit than he deserved fell upon Mr. Gladstone for this +obnoxious defect. In announcing the commission of inquiry four years +before, Lord John as prime minister had expressly said that the +improvement of the universities should be treated as a subject by +itself, and that the admission of dissenters ought to be reserved for +future and separate consideration. Writing to Mr. Gladstone (Jan. 1854) +he said, 'I do not want to stir the question in this bill,' but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">[Pg 506]</a></span> he +would support a proposal in a separate bill by which the halls might be +the means of admitting dissenters. Mr. Gladstone himself professed to +take no strong line either way; but in a parliamentary case of this kind +to take no line is not materially different from a line in effect +unfriendly. Arthur Stanley pressed him as hard as he could. 'Justice to +the university,' said Mr. Gladstone in reply, 'demands that it should be +allowed to consider the question for itself.... Indeed, while I believe +that the admission of dissenters without the breaking up of the +religious teaching and the government of the university would be a great +good, I am also of opinion that to give effect to that measure by +forcible intervention of parliament would be a great evil. Whether it is +an evil that must some day or other be encountered, the time has not +yet, I think, arrived for determining.' The letter concludes with a +remark of curious bearing upon the temper of that age. 'The very words,' +he says to Stanley, 'which you have let fall upon your paper—"Roman +catholics"—used in this connection, were enough to burn it through and +through, considering we have <i>a parliament which, were the measure of +1829 not law at this moment, would I think probably refuse to make it +law</i>.' There is no reason to think this an erroneous view. Perhaps it +would not be extravagant even to-day.</p> + +<p>What Mr. Gladstone called 'the evil of parliamentary interference' did +not tarry, and on the report stage of the bill, a clause removing the +theological test at matriculation was carried (June 22) against the +government by ninety-one. The size of the majority and the diversified +material of which it was composed left the government no option but to +yield. 'Parliament having now unhappily determined to legislate upon the +subject,' Mr. Gladstone writes to the provost of Oriel, 'it seems to me, +I may add it seems to my colleagues, best for the interests of the +university that we should now make some endeavour to settle the whole +question and so preclude, if we can, any pretext for renewed agitation.' +'The basis of that settlement,' he went on in a formula which he +tenaciously reiterated to all his correspondents, and which is a +landmark in the long history of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">[Pg 507]</a></span> his dealing with the question, 'should +be that the whole teaching and governing function in the university and +in the colleges, halls, and private halls, should be retained, as now, +in the church of England, but that everything outside the governing and +teaching functions, whether in the way of degrees, honours, or +emoluments, should be left open.' The new clause he described as 'one of +those incomplete arrangements that seem to suit the practical habits of +this country, and which by taking the edge off a matter of complaint, +are often found virtually to dispose of it for a length of time.' In the +end the church of England test was removed, not only on admission to the +university, but from the bachelor's degree. Tests in other forms +remained, as we shall in good time perceive. 'We have proceeded,' Mr. +Gladstone wrote, 'in the full belief that the means of applying a church +test to fellowships in colleges are clear and ample.' So they were, and +so remained, until seventeen years later in the life of an +administration of his own the obnoxious fetter was struck off.</p> + +<p class="center">MR. DISRAELI ON THE BILL</p> + +<p>The debates did not close without at least one characteristic +masterpiece from Mr. Disraeli. He had not taken a division on the second +reading, but he executed with entire gravity all the regulation +manœuvres of opposition, and his appearance on the page of Hansard +relieves a dull discussion. If government, he asked, could defer a +reform of the constitution (referring to the withdrawal of Lord John's +bill) why should they hurry to reform the universities? The talk about +the erudite professors of Germany as so superior to Oxford was nonsense. +The great men of Germany became professors only because they could not +become members of parliament. 'We, on the contrary, are a nation of +action, and you may depend upon it, that though you may give an Oxford +professor two thousand a year instead of two hundred, still ambition in +England will look to public life and to the House of Commons, and not to +professors' chairs.' The moment the revolution of 1848 gave the German +professors a chance, see how they rushed into political conventions and +grasped administrative offices. Again, the principle of the bill was the +laying of an unhallowed hand upon the ark of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">[Pg 508]</a></span> the universities, and wore +in effect the hideous aspect of the never-to-be-forgotten appropriation +clause. If he were asked whether he would rather have Oxford free with +all its imperfections, or an Oxford without imperfections but under the +control of the government, he would reply, 'Give me Oxford free and +independent, with all its anomalies and imperfections.' An excellently +worded but amusingly irrelevant passage about Voltaire and Rousseau, and +the land that was enlightened by the one and inflamed by the other, +brought the curious performance to a solemn close. High fantastic +trifling of this sort, though it may divert a later generation to whose +legislative bills it can do no harm, helps to explain the deep disfavour +with which Disraeli was regarded by his severe and strenuous opponent.</p> + +<p>'The admiration of posterity,' Dr. Jeune wrote to Mr. Gladstone, 'would +be greatly increased if men hereafter could know what wisdom, what +firmness, what temper, what labour your success has required.' More than +this, it was notorious that Mr. Gladstone was bravely risking his seat. +This side of the matter Jeune made plain to him. 'Had I foreseen in +1847,' replied Mr. Gladstone (<i>Broadstairs</i>, Aug. 26, 1854), 'that +church controversies which I then hoped were on the decline, were really +about to assume a fiercer glare and a wider range than they had done +before, I should not have been presumptuous enough to face the +contingencies of such a seat at such a time.' As things stood he was +bound to hold on. With dauntless confidence that never failed him, he +was convinced that no long time would suffice to scatter the bugbears, +and the bill would be nothing but a source of strength to any one +standing in reputed connection with it. To Dr. Jeune when the battle was +over he expresses 'his warm sense of the great encouragement and solid +advantage which at every stage he had derived from his singularly ready +and able help.' To Jowett and Goldwin Smith he acknowledged a hardly +lower degree of obligation. The last twenty years, wrote a shrewd and +expert sage in 1866, 'have seen more improvement in the temper and +teaching of Oxford than the three centuries since the Reformation. This +has undoubtedly been vastly promoted by the Reform<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">[Pg 509]</a></span> bill of 1854, or at +least by one enactment in it, the abolition of close fellowships, which +has done more for us than all the other enactments of the measure put +together.'<a name="FNanchor_325_325" id="FNanchor_325_325"></a><a href="#Footnote_325_325" class="fnanchor">[325]</a> 'The indirect effects,' says the same writer in words of +pregnant praise, 'in stimulating the spirit of improvement among us, +have been no less important than the specific reforms enacted by +it.'<a name="FNanchor_326_326" id="FNanchor_326_326"></a><a href="#Footnote_326_326" class="fnanchor">[326]</a></p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">ANOTHER FAR-REACHING CHANGE</p> + +<p>Another of the most far-reaching changes of this era of reform affected +the civil service. J. S. Mill, then himself an official at the India +House, did not hesitate 'to hail the plan of throwing open the civil +service to competition as one of the greatest improvements in public +affairs ever proposed by a government.' On the system then reigning, +civil employment under the crown was in all the offices the result of +patronage, though in some, and those not the more important of them, +nominees were partially tested by qualifying examination and periods of +probation. The eminent men who held what were called the staff +appointments in the service—the Merivales, Taylors, Farrers—were +introduced from without, with the obvious implication that either the +civil service trained up within its own ranks a poor breed, or else that +the meritorious men were discouraged and kept back by the sight of +prizes falling to outsiders. Mr. Gladstone was not slow to point out +that the existing system if it brought eminent men in, had driven men +like Manning and Spedding out. What patronage meant is forcibly +described in a private memorandum of a leading reformer, preserved by +Mr. Gladstone among his papers on this subject. 'The existing corps of +civil servants,' says the writer, 'do not like the new plan, because the +introduction of well-educated, active men, will force them to bestir +themselves, and because they cannot hope to get their own ill-educated +sons appointed under the new system.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">[Pg 510]</a></span> <i>The old established political +families habitually batten on the public patronage</i>—their sons +legitimate and illegitimate, their relatives and dependents of every +degree, are provided for by the score. Besides the adventuring +disreputable class of members of parliament, who make God knows what use +of the patronage, a large number of borough members are mainly dependent +upon it for their seats. What, for instance, are the members to do who +have been sent down by the patronage secretary to contest boroughs in +the interest of the government, and who are pledged twenty deep to their +constituents?'</p> + +<p>The foreign office had undergone, some years before, a thorough +reconstruction by Lord Palmerston, who, though very cool to +constitutional reform, was assiduous and exacting in the forms of public +business, not least so in the vital matter of a strong, plain, bold +handwriting. Revision had been attempted in various departments before +Mr. Gladstone went to the exchequer, and a spirit of improvement was in +the air. Lowe, beginning his official career as one of the secretaries +of the board of control, had procured the insertion in the India bill of +1853 of a provision throwing open the great service of India to +competition for all British-born subjects, and he was a vigorous +advocate of a general extension of the principle.<a name="FNanchor_327_327" id="FNanchor_327_327"></a><a href="#Footnote_327_327" class="fnanchor">[327]</a> It was the +conditions common to all the public establishments that called for +revision, and the foundations for reform were laid in a report by +Northcote and Sir Charles Trevelyan (November 1853), prepared for Mr. +Gladstone at his request, recommending two propositions, so familiarised +to us to-day as to seem like primordial elements of the British +constitution. One was, that access to the public service should be +through the door of a competitive examination; the other, that for +conducting these examinations a central board should be constituted. The +effect of such a change has been enormous not only on the efficiency of +the service, but on the education of the country, and by a thousand +indirect influences, raising and strengthening the social feeling for +the immortal maxim that the career should be open to the talents. The +lazy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">[Pg 511]</a></span> doctrine that men are much of a muchness gave way to a higher +respect for merit and to more effectual standards of competency.</p> + +<p class="center">OLD SYSTEM AND NEW</p> + +<p>The reform was not achieved without a battle. The whole case was argued +by Mr. Gladstone in a letter to Lord John Russell of incomparable +trenchancy and force, one of the best specimens of the writer at his +best, and only not worth reproducing here, because the case has long +been finished.<a name="FNanchor_328_328" id="FNanchor_328_328"></a><a href="#Footnote_328_328" class="fnanchor">[328]</a> Lord John (Jan. 20) wrote to him curtly in reply, 'I +hope no change will be made, and I certainly must protest against it.' +In reply to even a second assault, he remained quite unconvinced. At +present, he said, the Queen appointed the ministers, and the ministers +the subordinates; in future the board of examiners would be in the place +of the Queen. Our institutions would be as nearly republican as +possible, and the new spirit of the public offices would not be loyalty +but republicanism! As one of Lord John's kindred spirits declared, 'The +more the civil service is recruited from the lower classes, the less +will it be sought after by the higher, until at last the aristocracy +will be altogether dissociated from the permanent civil service of the +country.' How could the country go on with a democratic civil service by +the side of an aristocratic legislature?<a name="FNanchor_329_329" id="FNanchor_329_329"></a><a href="#Footnote_329_329" class="fnanchor">[329]</a> This was just the spirit +that Mr. Gladstone loathed. To Graham he wrote (Jan. 3, 1854), 'I do not +want any pledges as to details; what I seek is your countenance and +favour in an endeavour to introduce to the cabinet a proposal that we +should give our sanction to the principle that in every case where a +satisfactory test of a defined and palpable nature can be furnished, the +public service shall be laid open to personal merit.... This is <i>my</i> +contribution to parliamentary reform.' On January 26 (1854) the cabinet +was chiefly occupied by Mr. Gladstone's proposition, and after a long +discussion his plan was adopted. When reformers more ardent than +accurate insisted in later years that it was the aristocracy who kept +patronage, Mr. Gladstone reminded the House, 'No cabinet could have been +more aristocratically composed than that over which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">[Pg 512]</a></span> Lord Aberdeen +presided. I myself was the only one of fifteen noblemen and gentlemen +who composed it, who could not fairly be said to belong to that class.' +Yet it was this cabinet that conceived and matured a plan for the +surrender of all its patronage. There for the moment, in spite of all +his vigour and resolution, the reform was arrested. Time did not change +him. In November he wrote to Trevelyan: 'My own opinions are more and +more in favour of the plan of competition. I do not mean that they can +be more in its favour as a principle, than they were when I invited you +and Northcote to write the report which has lit up the flame; but more +and more do the incidental evils seem curable and the difficulties +removable.' As the Crimean war went on, the usual cry for administrative +reform was raised, and Mr. Gladstone never made a more terse, pithy, and +incontrovertible speech than his defence for an open civil service in +the summer of 1855.<a name="FNanchor_330_330" id="FNanchor_330_330"></a><a href="#Footnote_330_330" class="fnanchor">[330]</a></p> + +<p>For this branch of reform, too, the inspiration had proceeded from +Oxford. Two of the foremost champions of the change had been +Temple—afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury—and Jowett. The latter was +described by Mr. Gladstone to Graham as being 'as handy a workman as you +shall readily find,' and in the beginning of 1855 he proposed to these +two reformers that they should take the salaried office of examiners +under the civil service scheme. Much of his confident expectation of +good, he told them, was built upon their co-operation. In all his +proceedings on this subject, Mr. Gladstone showed in strong light in how +unique a degree he combined a profound democratic instinct with the +spirit of good government; the instinct of popular equality along with +the scientific spirit of the enlightened bureaucrat.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">[Pg 513]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_316_316" id="Footnote_316_316"></a><a href="#FNanchor_316_316"><span class="label">[316]</span></a> July 18, 1850.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_317_317" id="Footnote_317_317"></a><a href="#FNanchor_317_317"><span class="label">[317]</span></a> Letter to Bishop Davidson, June 11, 1891.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_318_318" id="Footnote_318_318"></a><a href="#FNanchor_318_318"><span class="label">[318]</span></a> <i>Life</i>, i. p. 420.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_319_319" id="Footnote_319_319"></a><a href="#FNanchor_319_319"><span class="label">[319]</span></a> <i>Life of Stanley</i>, i. p. 432.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_320_320" id="Footnote_320_320"></a><a href="#FNanchor_320_320"><span class="label">[320]</span></a> Letters to Graham, July 30, 1852, and Dr. Haddan, Aug. 14 and +Sept. 29, 1852.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_321_321" id="Footnote_321_321"></a><a href="#FNanchor_321_321"><span class="label">[321]</span></a> <i>Letters</i>, March 26, 1853, p. 261.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_322_322" id="Footnote_322_322"></a><a href="#FNanchor_322_322"><span class="label">[322]</span></a> Interesting particulars of this memorable commission are to be +found in the <i>Life of Archbishop Tait</i>, i. pp. 156-170.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_323_323" id="Footnote_323_323"></a><a href="#FNanchor_323_323"><span class="label">[323]</span></a> Mozley, <i>Letters</i>, p. 220. Mr. Gladstone preserved 560 letters and +documents relating to the preparation and passing of the Oxford +University bill. Among them are 350 copies of his own letters written +between Dec. 1853 and Dec. 1854, and 170 letters received by him during +the same period.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_324_324" id="Footnote_324_324"></a><a href="#FNanchor_324_324"><span class="label">[324]</span></a> <i>Life</i>, i. p. 434.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_325_325" id="Footnote_325_325"></a><a href="#FNanchor_325_325"><span class="label">[325]</span></a> <i>Academical Organisation</i>. By Mark Pattison, p. 24.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_326_326" id="Footnote_326_326"></a><a href="#FNanchor_326_326"><span class="label">[326]</span></a> The following speeches made by Mr. Gladstone on the Oxford bill +were deemed by him of sufficient importance to be included in the +projected edition of his collected speeches: On the introduction of the +bill, March 19 (1854); on the second reading, April 7; during the +committee stage, April 27, June 1, 22, 23, and July 27.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_327_327" id="Footnote_327_327"></a><a href="#FNanchor_327_327"><span class="label">[327]</span></a> <i>Life of Lord Sherbrooke</i>, pp. 421-2.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_328_328" id="Footnote_328_328"></a><a href="#FNanchor_328_328"><span class="label">[328]</span></a> For an extract see Appendix.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_329_329" id="Footnote_329_329"></a><a href="#FNanchor_329_329"><span class="label">[329]</span></a> Romilly, quoted by Layard, June 15th, 1855.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_330_330" id="Footnote_330_330"></a><a href="#FNanchor_330_330"><span class="label">[330]</span></a> He made three speeches on the subject at this period; June 15th +and July 10th, 1855, and April 24th, 1856. The first was on Layard's +motion for reform, which was rejected by 359 to 46.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIVCh_V" id="BkIVCh_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">WAR FINANCE—TAX OR LOAN</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1854</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The expenses of a war are the moral check which it has pleased the +Almighty to impose upon the ambition and lust of conquest, that are +inherent in so many nations. There is pomp and circumstance, there +is glory and excitement about war, which, notwithstanding the +miseries it entails, invests it with charms in the eyes of the +community, and tends to blind men to those evils to a fearful and +dangerous degree. The necessity of meeting from year to year the +expenditure which it entails is a salutary and wholesome check, +making them feel what they are about, and making them measure the +cost of the benefit upon which they may calculate.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span>.</p></div> +<br /> +<p>The finance of 1854 offered nothing more original or ingenious than +bluntly doubling the income tax (from seven pence to fourteen pence), +and raising the duties on spirits, sugar, and malt. The draught was +administered in two doses, first in a provisional budget for half a year +(March 6), next in a completed scheme two months later. During the +interval the chancellor of the exchequer was exposed to much criticism +alike from city experts and plain men. The plans of 1853 had, in the +main, proved a remarkable success, but they were not without weak +points. Reductions in the duties of customs, excise, and stamps had all +been followed by increase in their proceeds. But the succession duty +brought in no more than a fraction of the estimated sum—the only time, +Mr. Gladstone observes, in which he knew the excellent department +concerned to have fallen into such an error. The proposal for conversion +proved, under circumstances already described, to have no attraction for +the fundholder. The operation on the South Sea stock was worse than a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">[Pg 514]</a></span> +failure, for it made the exchequer, in order to pay off eight millions +at par, raise a larger sum at three and a half per cent., and at three +per cent. in a stock standing at 87.<a name="FNanchor_331_331" id="FNanchor_331_331"></a><a href="#Footnote_331_331" class="fnanchor">[331]</a> All this brought loudish +complaints from the money market. The men at the clubs talked of the +discredit into which Gladstone had fallen as a financier, and even +persons not unfriendly to him spoke of him as rash, obstinate, and +injudicious. He was declared to have destroyed his prestige and +overthrown his authority.<a name="FNanchor_332_332" id="FNanchor_332_332"></a><a href="#Footnote_332_332" class="fnanchor">[332]</a></p> + +<p class="center">POWERFUL SELF-DEFENCE</p> + +<p>This roused all the slumbering warrior in him, and when the time came +(May 8), in a speech three and a half hours long, he threw his +detractors into a depth of confusion that might have satisfied the +Psalmist himself. Peremptorily he brushed aside the apology of his +assailants for not challenging him by a direct vote of want of +confidence, that such a vote would be awkward in a time of war. On the +contrary, he said, a case so momentous as the case of war is the very +reason why you should show boldly whether you have confidence in our +management of your finances or not; if you disapprove, the sooner I know +it the better. Then he dashed into a close and elaborate defence in +detail, under all the heads of attack,—his manner of dealing with the +unfunded debt, his abortive scheme of conversion, his mode of charging +deficiency bills. This astonishing mass of dry and difficult matter was +impressed in full significance upon the House, not only by the orator's +own buoyant and energetic interest in the performance, but by the sense +which he awoke in his hearers, that to exercise their attention and +judgment upon the case before them was a binding debt imperatively due +to themselves and to the country, by men owning the high responsibility +of their station. This was the way in which he at all times strove to +stir the self-respect of the House of Commons. Not sparing his critics a +point or an argument, he drove his case clean home with a vigour that +made it seem as if the study of Augustine and Dante and the Fathers +were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515">[Pg 515]</a></span> after all the best training for an intimate and triumphant mastery +of the proper amount of gold to be kept at the bank, the right interest +on an exchequer bond and an exchequer bill, and all the arcana of the +public accounts.<a name="FNanchor_333_333" id="FNanchor_333_333"></a><a href="#Footnote_333_333" class="fnanchor">[333]</a> Even where their case had something in it, he +showed that they had taken the wrong points. Nor did he leave out the +spice of the sarcasm that the House loves. A peer had reproached him for +the amount of his deficiency bills. This peer had once himself for four +years been chancellor of the exchequer. 'My deficiency bills,' cried Mr. +Gladstone, 'reached three millions and a half. How much were the bills +of the chancellor whom this figure shocks? In his first year they were +four millions and a half, in the second almost the same, in the third +more than five and a quarter, in the fourth nearly five millions and a +half.' Disraeli and others pretended that they had foreseen the failure +of the conversion. Mr. Gladstone proved that, as matter of recorded +fact, they had done nothing of the sort. 'This is the way in which +mythical history arises. An event happens without attracting much +notice; subsequently it excites interest; then people look back upon the +time now passed, and see things not as they are or were, but through the +haze of distance—they see them as they wish them to have been, and what +they wish them to have been, they believe that they were.'</p> + +<p>For this budget no genius, only courage, was needed; but Mr. Gladstone +advanced in connection with it a doctrine that raised great questions, +moral, political, and economic, and again illustrated that +characteristic of his mind which always made some broad general +principle a necessity of action. All through 1854, and in a sense very +often since, parliament was agitated by Mr. Gladstone's bold proposition +that the cost of war should be met by taxation at the time, and not by +loans to be paid back by another generation. He did not advance his +abstract doctrine without qualification. This, in truth, Mr. Gladstone +hardly ever did, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">[Pg 516]</a></span> it was one of the reasons why he acquired a bad +name for sophistry and worse. Men fastened on the general principle, set +out in all its breadth and with much emphasis; they overlooked the +lurking qualification; and then were furiously provoked at having been +taken in. 'I do not know,' he wrote some years later to Northcote, +'where you find that I laid down any general maxim that all war supplies +were to be raised by taxes.... I said in my speech of May 8, revised for +Hansard, it was the duty and policy of the country to make <i>in the first +instance</i> a great effort from its own resources.' The discussions of the +time, however, seem to have turned on the unqualified construction. +While professing his veneration and respect for the memory of Pitt, he +opened in all its breadth the question raised by Pitt's policy of loan, +loan, loan. The economic answer is open to more dispute than he then +appeared to suppose, but it was the political and moral reasons for +meeting the demands of war by tax and not by loan that coloured his +economic view. The passage in which he set forth the grounds for his +opinion has become a classic place in parliamentary discussion, but it +is only too likely for a long time to come to bear reproducing, and I +have taken it as a motto for this chapter. His condemnation of loans, +absolutely if not relatively, was emphatic. 'The system of raising funds +necessary for wars by loan practises wholesale, systematic, and +continual deception upon the people. The people do not really know what +they are doing. The consequences are adjourned into a far future.' I may +as well here complete or correct this language by a further quotation +from the letter to Northcote to which I have already referred. He is +writing in 1862 on Northcote's book on <i>Twenty Years of Finance</i>. 'I +cannot refrain,' he says, 'from paying you a sincere compliment, first +on the skill with which you have composed an eminently readable work on +a dry subject; and secondly, on the tact founded in good feeling and the +love of truth with which you have handled your materials throughout.' He +then remarks on various points in the book, and among the rest on +this:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">[Pg 517]</a></span>—</p> + +<p class="center">LETTERS TO NORTHCOTE</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Allow me also to say that I think in your comparison of the effect +of taxes and loans you have looked (p. 262) too much to the effect +on labour at the moment. Capital and labour are in permanent +competition for the division of the fruits of production. When in +years of war say twenty millions annually are provided by loan say +for three, five, or ten years, then two consequences follow.</p> + +<p>1. An immense factitious stimulus is given to labour at the +time—and thus much more labour is brought into the market.</p> + +<p>2. When that stimulus is withdrawn an augmented quantity of labour +is left to compete in the market with a greatly diminished quantity +of capital.</p> + +<p>Here is the story of the <i>misery</i> of great masses of the English +people after 1815, or at the least a material part of that story.</p> + +<p>I hold by the doctrine that war loans are in many ways a great +evil: but I admit their necessity, and in fact the budget of 1855 +was handed over by me to Sir George Lewis, and underwent in his +hands little alteration unless such as, with the growing demands of +the war, I should myself have had to make in it, <i>i.e.</i> some, not +very considerable, enlargement.</p></div> + +<p>Writing a second letter to Northcote a few days later (August 11, 1862), +he goes a little deeper into the subject:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The general question of loans <i>v</i>. taxes for war purposes is one of +the utmost interest, but one that I have never seen worked out in +print. But assuming as <i>data</i> the established principles of our +financial system, and by no means denying the necessity of loans, I +have not the least doubt that it is for the interest of labour, as +opposed to capital, that as large a share as possible of war +expenditure should be defrayed from taxes. When war breaks out the +wages of labour on the whole have a tendency to rise, and the +labour of the country is well able to bear some augmentation of +taxes. The sums added to the public expenditure are likely at the +outset, and for some time, to be larger than the sums withdrawn +from commerce. When war ends, on the contrary, a great mass of +persons are dismissed from public employment, and, flooding the +labour market, reduce the rate of wages. But again, when war comes, +it is quite certain that a large share of the war taxes will be +laid upon property: and that, in war, property will bear a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">[Pg 518]</a></span> larger +share of our total taxation than in peace. From this it seems to +follow at once that, up to the point at which endurance is +practicable, payment by war-taxes rather than by taxes in peace is +for the interest of the people at large. I am not one of those who +think that our system of taxation, taken as a whole, is an +over-liberal one towards them. These observations are mere +contributions to a discussion, and by no means pretend to dispose +of the question.</p></div> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">DISPUTE WITH THE BANK</p> + +<p>In the autumn he had a sharp tussle with the Bank of England, and +displayed a toughness, stiffness, and sustained anger that greatly +astonished Threadneedle Street. In the spring he had introduced a change +in the mode of issuing deficiency bills, limiting the quarterly amount +to such a sum as would cover the maximum of dividends payable, as known +by long experience to be called for. The Bank held this to be illegal; +claimed the whole amount required, along with balances actually in hand, +to cover the entire amount payable; and asked him to take the opinion of +the law officers. The lawyers backed the chancellor of the exchequer. +Then the Bank took an opinion of their own; their counsel (Kelly and +Palmer) advised that the attorney and solicitor were wrong; and +recommended the Bank to bring their grievance before the prime minister. +Mr. Gladstone was righteously incensed at this refusal to abide by an +opinion invited by the Bank itself, and by which if it had been adverse +he would himself have been bound. 'And then,' said Bethell, urging Mr. +Gladstone to stand to his guns, 'its counsel call the Bank a trustee for +the public! Proh pudor! What stuff lawyers will talk. But 'tis their +vocation.' Mr. Gladstone's letters were often prolix, but nobody could +be more terse and direct when occasion moved him, and the proceedings of +the lawyers with their high Bank views and the equivocal faith of the +directors in bringing fresh lawyers into the case at all provoked more +than one stern and brief epistle. The governor, who was his private +friend, winced. 'I do not study diplomacy in letters of this kind,' Mr. +Gladstone replied, 'and there is no sort of doubt that I am very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519">[Pg 519]</a></span> angry +about the matter of the opinion; but affected and sarcastic politeness +is an instrument which in writing to you I should think it the worst +taste and the worst feeling to employ. I admire the old fashion +according to which in English pugilism (which, however, I do not admire) +the combatants shook hands before they fought; only I think much time +ought not to be spent upon such salutations when there is other work to +do.'</p> + +<p>In a letter to his wife seven years later, Mr. Gladstone says of this +dispute, 'Mr. Arbuthnot told me to-day an observation of Sir George +Lewis's when at the exchequer here. Speaking of my controversy with the +Bank in 1854, he said, "It is a pity Gladstone puts so much heat, so +much irritability into business. Now I am as cool as a fish."' The worst +of being as cool as a fish is that you never get great things done, you +effect no improvements, and you carry no reforms, against the lethargy +or selfishness of men and the tyranny of old custom.<a name="FNanchor_334_334" id="FNanchor_334_334"></a><a href="#Footnote_334_334" class="fnanchor">[334]</a></p> + +<p>Now also his attention was engaged by the controversies on currency that +thrive so lustily in the atmosphere of the Bank Charter Act, and, after +much discussion with authorities both in Lombard Street and at the +treasury, without committal he sketched out at least one shadow of a +project of his own. He knew, however, that any great measure must be +undertaken by a finance minister with a clear position and strong hands, +and he told Graham that even if he saw his way distinctly to a plan, he +did not feel individually strong enough for the attempt. Nor was there +time. To reconstitute the Savings Bank finance, to place the chancery +and some other accounts on a right basis, and to readjust the banking +relations properly so-called between the Bank and the state, would be +even more than a fair share of financial work for the session. Before +the year was over he passed a bill, for which he had laid before the +cabinet elaborate argumentative supports, removing a number of +objections to the then existing system of dealing with the funds drawn +from Savings Banks.<a name="FNanchor_335_335" id="FNanchor_335_335"></a><a href="#Footnote_335_335" class="fnanchor">[335]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520">[Pg 520]</a></span></p> + +<p>The year closed with an incident that created a considerable stir, and +might by misadventure have become memorable. What has been truly called +a warm and prolonged dispute<a name="FNanchor_336_336" id="FNanchor_336_336"></a><a href="#Footnote_336_336" class="fnanchor">[336]</a> arose out of Mr. Gladstone's removal +of a certain official from his post in the department of woods and +forests. As Lord Aberdeen told the Queen that he could not easily make +the case intelligible, it is not likely that I should succeed any +better, and we may as well leave the thick dust undisturbed. Enough to +say that Lord John Russell thought the dismissal harsh; that Mr. +Gladstone stood his ground against either the reversal of what he had +done, or any proceedings in parliament that might look like contrition, +but was willing to submit the points to the decision of colleagues; that +Lord John would submit no point to colleagues 'affecting his personal +honour'—to such degrees of heat can the quicksilver mount even in a +cabinet thermometer. If such quarrels of the great are painful, there is +some compensation in the firmness, patience, and benignity with which a +man like Lord Aberdeen strove to appease them. Some of his colleagues +actually thought that Lord John would make this paltry affair a plea for +resigning, while others suspected that he might find a better excuse in +the revival of convocation. As it happened, a graver occasion offered +itself.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_331_331" id="Footnote_331_331"></a><a href="#FNanchor_331_331"><span class="label">[331]</span></a> Northcote, <i>Financial Policy</i>, p. 242; Buxton, <i>Mr. Gladstone: A +Study</i>, pp. 154-5.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_332_332" id="Footnote_332_332"></a><a href="#FNanchor_332_332"><span class="label">[332]</span></a> Greville, Part III. i. pp. 150, 151, 157.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_333_333" id="Footnote_333_333"></a><a href="#FNanchor_333_333"><span class="label">[333]</span></a> Not many years before (1838), Talleyrand had surprised the French +institute by a paper in which he passed a eulogy on strong theological +studies; their influence on vigour as well as on finesse of mind; on the +skilful ecclesiastical diplomatists that those studies had formed.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_334_334" id="Footnote_334_334"></a><a href="#FNanchor_334_334"><span class="label">[334]</span></a><a href="#Bank">See Appendix.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_335_335" id="Footnote_335_335"></a><a href="#FNanchor_335_335"><span class="label">[335]</span></a> 17 and 18 Vict., c. 50.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_336_336" id="Footnote_336_336"></a><a href="#FNanchor_336_336"><span class="label">[336]</span></a> Walpole's <i>Russell</i>, ii. p. 243 <i>n</i>.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521">[Pg 521]</a></span> +<h2><a name="BkIVCh_VI" id="BkIVCh_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">CRISIS OF 1855 AND BREAK-UP OF THE PEELITES</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1855</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Party has no doubt its evils; but all the evils of party put +together would be scarcely a grain in the balance, when compared +with the dissolution of honourable friendships, the pursuit of +selfish ends, the want of concert in council, the absence of a +settled policy in foreign affairs, the corruption of certain +statesmen, the caprices of an intriguing court, which the +extinction of party connection has brought and would bring again +upon this country.—<span class="smcap">Earl Russell</span>.<a name="FNanchor_337_337" id="FNanchor_337_337"></a><a href="#Footnote_337_337" class="fnanchor">[337]</a></p></div> +<br /> +<p>The administrative miscarriages of the war in the Crimea during the +winter of 1854-5 destroyed the coalition government.<a name="FNanchor_338_338" id="FNanchor_338_338"></a><a href="#Footnote_338_338" class="fnanchor">[338]</a> When +parliament assembled on January 23, 1855, Mr. Roebuck on the first night +of the session gave notice of a motion for a committee of inquiry. Lord +John Russell attended to the formal business, and when the House was up +went home accompanied by Sir Charles Wood. Nothing of consequence passed +between the two colleagues, and no word was said to Wood in the +direction of withdrawal. The same evening as the prime minister was +sitting in his drawing-room, a red box was brought in to him by his son, +containing Lord John Russell's resignation. He was as much amazed as +Lord Newcastle, smoking his evening pipe of tobacco in his coach, was +amazed by the news that the battle of Marston Moor had begun. Nothing +has come to light since to set aside the severe judgment pronounced upon +this proceeding by the Universal opinion of contemporaries, including +Lord John's own closest political allies. That a minister should run +away from a hostile motion upon affairs for which responsi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522">[Pg 522]</a></span>bility was +collective, and this without a word of consultation with a single +colleague, is a transaction happily without a precedent in the history +of modern English cabinets.<a name="FNanchor_339_339" id="FNanchor_339_339"></a><a href="#Footnote_339_339" class="fnanchor">[339]</a> It opened an intricate and unexpected +chapter of affairs.</p> + +<p>The ministerial crisis of 1855 was unusually prolonged; it was +interesting as a drama of character and motive; it marked a decisive +stage in the evolution of party, and it was one of the turning points in +the career of the subject of this biography. Fortunately for us, Mr. +Gladstone has told in his own way the whole story of what he calls this +'sharp and difficult passage in public affairs,' and he might have added +that it was a sharp passage in his own life. His narrative, with the +omission of some details now dead and indifferent, and of a certain +number of repetitions, is the basis of this chapter.</p> + +<p class="center">I</p> + +<p class="center">LORD JOHN'S RESIGNATION</p> + +<p>On the day following Lord John's letter the cabinet met, and the prime +minister told them that at first he thought it meant the break-up of the +government, but on further consideration he thought they should hold on, +if it could be done with honour and utility. Newcastle suggested his own +resignation, and the substitution of Lord Palmerston in his place. +Palmerston agreed that the country, rightly or wrongly, wished to see +him at the war office, but he was ready to do whatever his colleagues +thought best. The whigs thought resignation necessary. Mr. Gladstone +thought otherwise, and scouted the suggestion that as Newcastle was +willing to resign, Lord John might come back. Lord John himself actually +sent a sort of message to know whether he should attend the cabinet. In +the end Lord Aberdeen carried all their resignations to the Queen. These +she declined to accept, and she 'urged with the greatest eagerness that +the decision should be reconsidered.' It is hard at this distance of +time to understand how any cabinet under national circumstances of such +gravity could have thought of the ignominy of taking to flight from a +motion of censure, whatever a single colleague like Lord John<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523">[Pg 523]</a></span> Russell +might deem honourable. On pressure from the Queen, the whigs in the +government, Lord John notwithstanding, agreed to stand fire. Mr. +Gladstone proceeds:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Lord John's explanation, which was very untrue in its general +effect, though I believe kindly conceived in feeling as well as +tempered with some grains of policy and a contemplation of another +possible premiership, carried the House with him, as Herbert +observed while he was speaking. Palmerston's reply to him was +wretched. It produced in the House (that is, in so much of the +House as would otherwise have been favourable), a flatness and +deadness of spirit towards the government which was indescribable; +and Charles Wood with a marked expression of face said while it was +going on, 'And this is to be our leader!' I was myself so painfully +full of the scene, that when Palmerston himself sat down I was on +the very point of saying to him unconsciously, 'Can anything more +be said?' But no one would rise in the adverse sense, and therefore +there was no opening for a minister. Palmerston [now become leader +in the Commons] had written to ask me to follow Lord John on +account of his being <i>a party</i>. But it was justly thought in the +cabinet that there were good reasons against my taking this part +upon me, and so the arrangement was changed.</p></div> + +<p>Roebuck brought forward his motion. Mr. Gladstone resisted it on behalf +of the government with immense argumentative force, and he put the point +against Lord John which explains the word 'untrue' in the passage just +quoted, namely, that though he desired in November the substitution of +Palmerston for Newcastle as war minister, he had given it up in +December, and yet this vital fact was omitted.<a name="FNanchor_340_340" id="FNanchor_340_340"></a><a href="#Footnote_340_340" class="fnanchor">[340]</a> It was not for the +government, he said, either to attempt to make terms with the House by +reconstruction of a cabinet, or to shrink from any judgment of the House +upon their acts. If they had so shrunk, he exclaimed, this is the sort +of epitaph that he would expect to have written over their remains: +'Here lie the dishonoured ashes of a ministry that found England in +peace and left in it war, that was content<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524">[Pg 524]</a></span> to enjoy the emoluments of +office and to wield the sceptre of power, so long as no man had the +courage to question their existence: they saw the storm gathering over +the country; they heard the agonising accounts that were almost daily +received of the sick and wounded in the East. These things did not move +them, but so soon as a member of opposition raised his hand to point the +thunderbolt, they became conscience-stricken into a sense of guilt, and +hoping to escape punishment, they ran away from duty.' Such would be +their epitaph. Of the proposed inquiry itself,—an inquiry into the +conduct of generals and troops actually in the field, and fighting by +the side of, and in concert with, foreign allies, he observed—'Your +inquiry will never take place as a real inquiry; or, if it did, it would +lead to nothing but confusion and disturbance, increased disasters, +shame at home and weakness abroad; it would convey no consolation to +those whom you seek to aid, but it would carry malignant joy to the +hearts of the enemies of England; and, for my part, I shall ever +rejoice, if this motion is carried to-night, that my own last words as a +member of the cabinet of the Earl of Aberdeen have been words of solemn +and earnest protest against a proceeding which has no foundation either +in the constitution or in the practice of preceding parliaments; which +is useless and mischievous for the purpose which it appears to +contemplate; and which, in my judgment, is full of danger to the power, +dignity, and usefulness of the Commons of England.' A journalistic +observer, while deploring the speaker's adherence to 'the dark +dogmatisms of medieval religionists,' admits that he had never heard so +fine a speech. The language, he says, was devoid of redundance. The +attitude was calm. Mr. Gladstone seemed to feel that he rested upon the +magnitude of the argument, and had no need of the assistance of bodily +vehemence of manner. His voice was clear, distinct, and flexible, +without monotony. It was minute dissection without bitterness or +ill-humoured innuendo. He sat down amid immense applause from hearers +admiring but unconvinced. Mr. Gladstone himself records of this speech: +'Hard and heavy work,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_525" id="Page_525">[Pg 525]</a></span> especially as to the cases of three persons: Lord +John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, and Lord Raglan.' Ministers were beaten +(January 29) by 325 to 148, and they resigned.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Jan. 30, 1855</i>.—Cabinet 1-2. We exchanged friendly adieus. Dined +with the Herberts. This was a day of personal light-heartedness, +but the problem for the nation is no small one.</p></div> + +<p class="center">END OF THE COALITION</p> + +<p>The Queen sent for Lord Derby, and he made an attempt to form a +government. Without aid from the conservative wing of the fallen +ministry there was no hope, and his first step (Jan. 31) was to call on +Lord Palmerston, with an earnest request for his support, and with a +hope that he would persuade Mr. Gladstone and Sidney Herbert to rejoin +their old political connection; with the intimation moreover that Mr. +Disraeli, with a self-abnegation that did him the highest credit, was +willing to waive in Lord Palmerston's favour his own claim to the +leadership of the House of Commons. Palmerston was to be president of +the council, and Ellenborough minister of war. In this conversation Lord +Palmerston made no objection on any political grounds, or on account of +any contemplated measures; he found no fault with the position intended +for himself, or for others with whom he would be associated. Lord Derby +supposed that all would depend on the concurrence of Mr. Gladstone and +Herbert. He left Cambridge House at half-past two in the afternoon, and +at half-past nine in the evening he received a note from Lord Palmerston +declining. Three hours later he heard from Mr. Gladstone, who declined +also. The proceedings of this eventful day, between two in the afternoon +and midnight, whatever may have been the play of motive and calculation +in the innermost minds of all or any of the actors, were practically to +go a long way, though by no means the whole way, as we shall see, +towards making Mr. Gladstone's severance from the conservative party +definitive.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Jan. 31</i>.—Lord Palmerston came to see me between three and four, +with a proposal from Lord Derby that he and I, with S. Herbert +should take office under him; Palmerston to be president of the +council and lead the House of Commons. Not finding me when he +called before, he had gone to S. Herbert, who seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_526" id="Page_526">[Pg 526]</a></span> to be +disinclined. I inquired (1) whether Derby mentioned Graham? (2) +Whether he had told Lord Palmerston if his persevering with the +commission he had received would depend on the answer to this +proposal. (3) How he was himself inclined. He answered the two +first questions in the negative, and said as to the third, though +not keenly, that he felt disinclined, but that if he refused it +would be attributed to his contemplating another result, which +other result he considered would be agreeable to the country. I +then argued strongly with him that though he might form a +government, and though if he formed it, he would certainly start it +amidst immense clapping of hands, yet he could not have any +reasonable prospect of stable parliamentary support; on the one +hand would stand Derby with his phalanx, on the other Lord J. +Russell, of necessity a centre and nucleus of discontent, and +between these two there would and could be no room for a +parliamentary majority such as would uphold his government. He +argued only rather faintly the other way, and seemed rather to come +to my way of thinking.</p> + +<p>I said that even if the proposition were entertained, there would +be much to consider; that I thought it clear, whatever else was +doubtful, that we could not join without him, for in his absence +the wound would not heal kindly again, that I could not act without +Lord Aberdeen's approval, nor should I willingly separate myself +from Graham; that if we joined, we must join in force. But I was +disposed to wish that if all details could be arranged, we should +join in that manner rather than that Derby should give up the +commission, though I thought the best thing of all would be Derby +forming a ministry of his own men, provided only he could get a +good or fair foreign secretary instead of Clarendon, who in any +case would be an immense loss....</p> + +<p>I went off to speak to Lord Aberdeen, and Palmerston went to speak +to Clarendon, with respect to whom he had told Derby that he could +hardly enter any government which had not Clarendon at the foreign +office. When we reassembled, I asked Lord Palmerston whether he had +made up his mind for himself independently of us, inasmuch as I +thought that if he had, that was enough to close the whole +question? He answered, Yes; that he should tell Derby he did not +think he could render him useful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527">[Pg 527]</a></span>service in his administration. He +then left. It was perhaps 6.30. Herbert and I sat down to write, +but thought it well to send off nothing till after dinner, and we +went to Grillion's where we had a small but merry party. Herbert +even beyond himself amusing. At night we went to Lord Aberdeen's +and Graham's, and so my letter came through some slight emendations +to the form in which it went.<a name="FNanchor_341_341" id="FNanchor_341_341"></a><a href="#Footnote_341_341" class="fnanchor">[341]</a> I had doubts in my mind whether +Derby had even intended to propose to Herbert and me <i>except</i> in +conjunction with Palmerston, though I had no doubt that without +Palmerston it would not do; and I framed my letter so as not to +assume that I had an independent proposal, but to make my refusal a +part of his.</p> + +<p><i>Feb. 2</i>.—I yesterday also called on Lord Palmerston and read him +my letter to Lord Derby. He said: 'Nothing can be better.'</p></div> + +<p class="center">LORD DERBY'S PROPOSALS</p> + +<p>Lord Derby knew that, though he had the country gentlemen behind him, +his own political friends, with the notable and only half-welcome +exception of Mr. Disraeli, were too far below mediocrity in either +capacity or experience to face so angry and dangerous a crisis. +Accordingly he gave up the task. Many years after, Mr. Gladstone +recorded his opinion that here Lord Derby missed his one real chance of +playing a high historic part. 'To a Derby government,' he said, 'now +that the party had been <i>drubbed</i> out of protection, I did not in +principle object; for old ties were with me more operatively strong than +new opinions, and I think that Lord Derby's error in not forming an +administration was palpable and even gross. Such, it has appeared, was +the opinion of Disraeli.<a name="FNanchor_342_342" id="FNanchor_342_342"></a><a href="#Footnote_342_342" class="fnanchor">[342]</a> Lord Derby had many fine qualities; but +strong parliamentary courage was not among them. When Lord Palmerston +(probably with a sagacious discernment of the immediate future) +declined, he made no separate offer to the Peelites. Had Lord Derby gone +on, he would have been supported by the country, then absorbed in the +consideration of the war. None of the three occa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528">[Pg 528]</a></span>sions when he took +office offered him so fine an opportunity as this; but he missed it.'</p> + +<p>On the previous day, Mr. Gladstone records: 'Saw Mr. Disraeli in the +House of Lords and put out my hand, which was very kindly accepted.' To +nobody was the hour fraught with more bitter mortification than to Mr. +Disraeli, who beheld a golden chance of bringing a consolidated party +into the possession of real power flung away.</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">ERROR OF REFUSING LORD LANSDOWNE</p> + +<p>Next, at the Queen's request, soundings in the whig and Peelite waters +were undertaken by Lord Lansdowne, and he sent for Mr. Gladstone, with a +result that to the latter was ever after matter of regret.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Feb. 2</i>.—In consequence of a communication from Lord Lansdowne, I +went to him in the forenoon and found him just returned from +Windsor. He trusted I should not mind speaking freely to him, and I +engaged to do it, only premising that in so crude and dark a state +of facts, it was impossible to go beyond first impressions. We then +conversed on various combinations, as (1) Lord J. Russell, premier, +(2) Lord Palmerston, (3) Lord Clarendon, (4) Lord Lansdowne +himself. Of the first I doubted whether, in the present state of +feeling, he could get a ministry on its legs. In answer to a +question from him, I added that I thought, viewing my relations to +Lord Aberdeen and to Newcastle, and <i>his</i> to them also, the public +feeling would be offended, and it would not be for the public +interest, if I were to form part of his government (<i>i.e.</i> +Russell's). Of the second I said that it appeared to me Lord +Palmerston could not obtain a party majority. Aloof from him would +stand on the one hand Derby and his party, on the other Lord J. +Russell, who I took it for granted would never serve under him. +Whatever the impression made by Russell's recent conduct, yet his +high personal character and station, forty years career, one-half +of it in the leadership of his party, and the close connection of +his name with all the great legislative changes of the period, must +ever render him a power in the state, and render it impossible for +a government depending on the liberal party to live independently +of him. I also hinted at injurious effects which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_529" id="Page_529">[Pg 529]</a></span>the substitution +of Palmerston for Lord Aberdeen would produce on foreign Powers at +this critical moment, but dwelt chiefly on the impossibility of his +having a majority. In this Lord Lansdowne seemed to agree.</p> + +<p>Lastly, I said that if Lord Lansdowne himself could venture to risk +his health and strength by taking the government, this would be the +best arrangement. My opinion was that at this crisis Derby, if he +could have formed an administration, would have had advantages with +regard to the absorbing questions of the war and of a peace to +follow it, such as no other combination could possess. Failing +this, I wished for a homogeneous whig government. The best form of +it would be under him. He said he might dare it provisionally, if +he could see his way to a permanent arrangement at the end of a +short term; but he could see nothing of the sort at present.</p> + +<p><i>An autobiographic note of 1897 gives a further detail of +moment</i>:—He asked whether I would continue to hold my office as +chancellor of the exchequer in the event of his persevering. He +said that if I gave an affirmative reply he would persevere with +the commission, and I think intimated that except on this condition +he would not. I said that the working of the coalition since its +formation in December 1852 had been to me entirely satisfactory, +but that I was not prepared to co-operate in its continuation under +any other head than Lord Aberdeen. I think that though perfectly +satisfied to be in a Peelite government which had whigs or radicals +in it, I was not ready to be in a whig government which had +Peelites in it. It took a long time, with my slow-moving and +tenacious character, for the Ethiopian to change his skin.</p></div> + +<p>In the paper that I have already mentioned, as recording what, when all +was near an end, he took to be some of the errors of his life, Mr. +Gladstone names as one of those errors this refusal in 1855 to join Lord +Lansdowne. 'I can hardly suppose,' he says, more than forty years after +that time, 'that the eventual failure of the Queen's overture to Lord +Lansdowne was due to my refusal; but that refusal undoubtedly +constituted one of his difficulties and helped to bring about the +result. I have always looked back upon it with pain as a serious and +even gross error of judgment. It was, I think,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_530" id="Page_530">[Pg 530]</a></span> injurious to the public, +if it contributed to the substitution as prime minister of Lord +Palmerston for Lord Lansdowne,—a personage of greater dignity, and I +think a higher level of political principle. There was no defect in Lord +Lansdowne sufficient to warrant my refusal. He would not have been a +strong or very active prime minister; but the question of the day was +the conduct of the war, and I had no right to take exception to him as a +head in connection with this subject. His attitude in domestic policy +was the same as Palmerston's, but I think he had a more unprejudiced and +liberal mind, though less of motive force in certain directions.'</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">FRUITLESS NEGOTIATIONS</p> + +<p>The next day Mr. Gladstone called on Lord Aberdeen, who for the first +time let drop a sort of opinion as to their duties in the crisis on one +point; hithertofore he had restrained himself. He said, 'Certainly the +most natural thing under the circumstances, if it could have been +brought about in a satisfactory form, would have been that you should +have joined Derby.' On returning home, Mr. Gladstone received an +important visitor and a fruitless visit.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>At half-past two to-day Lord John Russell was announced; and sat +till three—his hat shaking in his hand. A communication had +reached him late last night from the Queen, charging him with the +formation of a government, and he had thought it his duty to make +the endeavour. I repeated to him what I had urged on Lord +Lansdowne, that a coalition with advantages has also weaknesses of +its own, that the late coalition was I thought fully justified by +the circumstances under which it took place, but at this juncture +it had broken down. This being so, I thought what is called a +homogeneous government would be best for the public, and most +likely to command approval; that Derby if he could get a good +foreign minister would have had immense advantages with respect to +the great questions of war and peace. Lord John agreed as to Derby; +thought that every one must have supported him, and that he ought +to have persevered.</p> + +<p>I held to my point, adding that I did not think Lord Aberdeen and +Lord Palmerston represented opposite principles, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_531" id="Page_531">[Pg 531]</a></span>but rather +different forms of the same principles connected with different +habits and temperaments. He said that Lord Palmerston had agreed to +lead the House of Commons for him, he going as first minister to +the Lords; but he did not mention any other alteration. Upon the +whole his tone was low and doubtful. He asked whether my answer was +to be considered as given, or whether I would take time. But I said +as there was no probability that my ideas would be modified by +reflection, it would not be fair to him to ask any delay.</p></div> + +<p>With the single exception of Lord Palmerston, none of his colleagues +would have anything to do with Lord John, some even declining to go to +see him. Wood came to Mr. Gladstone, evidently in the sense of the +Palmerston premiership. He declared that Aberdeen was impossible, to +which, says Mr. Gladstone, 'I greatly demurred.'</p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>Thus the two regular party leaders had failed; Lord Aberdeen, the +coalition leader, was almost universally known to be out of the +question; the public was loudly clamouring for Lord Palmerston. A +Palmerston ministry was now seen to be inevitable. Were the Peelites, +then, having refused Lord Derby, having refused Lord John, having told +Lord Lansdowne that he had better form a system of homogeneous whigs, +now finally to refuse Lord Palmerston, on no better ground than that +they could not have Lord Aberdeen, whom nobody save themselves would +consent on any terms to have? To propound such a question was to answer +it. Lord Aberdeen himself, with admirable freedom from egotism, pressed +the point that in addition to the argument of public necessity, they +owed much to their late whig colleagues, 'who behaved so nobly and so +generously towards us after Lord John's resignation.'</p> + +<p>'I have heard club talk and society talk,' wrote an adherent to Mr. +Gladstone late one night (February 4), 'and I am sure that in the main +any government containing good names in the cabinet, provided Lord John +is not in it, will obtain general support. Lord Clarendon is +universally, or nearly so, looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_532" id="Page_532">[Pg 532]</a></span> on as essential. Next to him, I think +you are considered of vital importance in your present office. After +all, rightly or wrongly, Lord Palmerston is master of the situation in +the country; he is looked upon as the man. If the country sees you and +Sidney Herbert holding aloof from him, it will be said the Peelites are +selfish intriguers.' The same evening, another correspondent said to Mr. +Gladstone: 'Two or three people have come in since eleven o'clock with +the news of Brooks's and the Reform. Exultation prevails there, and the +certainty of Palmerston's success to-morrow. There is a sort of rumour +prevalent that Lord Palmerston may seek Lord J. Russell's aid.... This +would, of course, negative all idea of your joining in the concern. +Otherwise a refusal would be set down as sheer impracticability, or else +the selfish ambition of a clique which could not stand alone, and should +no longer attempt to do so. If the refusal to join Palmerston is to be a +going over to the other side, and a definite junction within a brief +space, that is clear and intelligible. But a refusal to join Lord +Palmerston and yet holding out to him a promise of support, is a +half-measure which no one will understand, and which, I own, I cannot +see the grounds to defend.'</p> + +<p class="center">PALMERSTON FORMS A MINISTRY</p> + +<p>We shall now find how after long and strenuous dubitation, the Peelite +leaders refused to join on the fifth of February, and then on the sixth +they joined. Unpromising from the very first cabinet, the junction was +destined to a swift and sudden end. Here is the story told by one of the +two leading actors.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Sunday, Feb. 4</i>.—Herbert came to me soon after I left him, and +told me Palmerston had at last got the commission. He considered +that this disposed of Lord Lansdowne; and seemed himself to be +disposed to join. He said <i>we</i> must take care what we were about, +and that we should be looked upon by the country as too nice if we +declined to join Palmerston; who he believed (and in this I +inclined to agree), would probably form a government. He argued +that Lord Aberdeen was out of the question; that the vote of Monday +night was against him; that the country would not stand him.</p> + +<p>No new coalition ought to be formed, I said, without a prospect <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_533" id="Page_533">[Pg 533]</a></span>of +stability; and joining Lord Palmerston's cabinet would be a new +coalition. He said he rather applied that phrase to a junction with +Derby. I quite agreed we could not join Derby except under +conditions which might not be realised; but if we <i>did</i> it, it +would be a reunion, not a coalition. In coalition the separate +existence is retained. I referred to the great instances of change +of party in our time; Palmerston himself, and Stanley with Graham. +But these took place when parties were divided by great questions +of principle; there were none such now, and no one could say that +the two sides of the House were divided by anything more than this, +that one was rather more stationary, the other more movable. He +said, 'True, the differences are on the back benches.'</p> + +<p>I said I had now for two years been holding my mind in suspense +upon the question I used to debate with Newcastle, who used to +argue that we should grow into the natural leaders of the liberal +party. I said, it is now plain this will not be; we get on very +well with the independent liberals, but the whigs stand as an +opaque body between us and them, and moreover, there they will +stand and ought to stand.</p> + +<p>Lord Palmerston came a little after two, and remained perhaps an +hour. Lord Lansdowne had promised to join him if he formed an +administration on a basis sufficiently broad. He wished me to +retain my office; and dwelt on the satisfactory nature of my +relations with the liberal party. He argued that Lord Aberdeen was +excluded by the vote on Monday night; and that there was now no +other government in view. My argument was adverse, though without +going to a positive conclusion. I referred to my conversation of +Wednesday, Jan. 31, in favour of a homogeneous government at this +juncture.</p> + +<p>At half-past eleven I went to Lord Aberdeen's and stayed about an +hour. His being in the Palmerston cabinet which had been proposed, +was, he said, out of the question; but his <i>velleities</i> seemed to +lean rather to <i>our</i> joining, which surprised me. He was afraid of +the position we should occupy in the public eye if we declined....</p> + +<p><i>Feb. 5</i>.—The most irksome and painful of the days; beginning with +many hours of anxious consultation to the best of our power, and +ending amidst a storm of disapproval almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_534" id="Page_534">[Pg 534]</a></span> unanimous, not only +from the generality, but from our own immediate political friends.</p> + +<p>At 10.30 I went to Sir James Graham, who is still in bed, and told +him the point to which by hard struggles I had come. The case with +me was briefly this. I was ready to make the sacrifice of personal +feeling; ready to see him (Lord Aberdeen) expelled from the +premiership by a censure equally applicable to myself, and yet to +remain in my office; ready to overlook not merely the inferior +fitness, but the real and manifest unfitness, of Palmerston for +that office; ready to enter upon a new venture with him, although +in my opinion without any reasonable prospect of parliamentary +support, such as is absolutely necessary for the credit and +stability of a government—upon the one sole and all-embracing +ground that the prosecution of the war with vigour, and the +prosecution of it to and for peace, was now the question of the day +to which every other must give way. But then it was absolutely +necessary that if we joined a cabinet after our overlooking all +this and more, it should be a cabinet in which confidence should be +placed with reference to war and peace. Was the Aberdeen cabinet +without Lord Aberdeen one in which I could place confidence? I +answer, No. He was vital to it; his love of peace was necessary to +its right and steady pursuit of that great end; if, then, <i>he</i> +could belong to a Palmerston cabinet, I might; but without him I +could not.</p> + +<p>In all this, Sir J. Graham concurred. Herbert came full of doubts +and fears, but on the whole adopted the same conclusion. Lord +Aberdeen sent to say he would not come, but I wrote to beg him, and +he appeared. On hearing how we stood, he said his remaining in the +cabinet was quite out of the question; and that he had told +Palmerston so yesterday when he glanced at it. But he thought we +should incur great blame if we did not; which, indeed, was plainly +beyond all dispute.</p></div> + +<p class="center">THE PEELITES JOIN</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>At length, when I had written and read aloud the rough draft of an +answer, Lord Aberdeen said he must strongly advise our joining. I +said to him, 'Lord Aberdeen, when we have joined the Palmerston +cabinet, you standing aloof from it, will you rise in your place in +the House of Lords and say that you give that cabinet your +confidence with regard to the question of war and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_535" id="Page_535">[Pg 535]</a></span>peace?' He +replied, 'I will express my hope that it will do right, but not my +confidence, which is a different thing.' 'Certainly,' I answered, +'and that which you have now said is my justification. The +unswerving honesty of your mind has saved us. Ninety-nine men out +of a hundred in your position at the moment would have said, “Oh +yes, I shall express my confidence.” But you would not deviate an +inch to the right or to the left.'</p> + +<p>Herbert and I went to my house and despatched our answers. Now +began the storm. Granville met us driving to Newcastle. Sorry +beyond expression; he almost looked displeased, which for him is +much. <i>Newcastle</i>: I incline to think you are wrong. <i>Canning</i>: My +impression is you are wrong. Various letters streaming in, all +portending condemnation and disaster. Herbert became more and more +uneasy.</p> + +<p><i>Feb. 6</i>.—The last day I hope of these tangled records; in which +we have seen, to say nothing of the lesser sacrifice, one more +noble victim struck down, and we are set to feast over the remains. +The thing is bad and the mode worse.</p> + +<p>Arthur Gordon came early in the day with a most urgent letter from +Lord Aberdeen addressed virtually to us, and urging us to join. He +had seen both Palmerston and Clarendon, and derived much +satisfaction from what they said. We met at the admiralty at +twelve, where Graham lay much knocked up with the fatigue and +anxiety of yesterday. I read to him and Lord Aberdeen Palmerston's +letter of to-day to me. Herbert came in and made arguments in his +sense. I told him I was at the point of yesterday, and was +immovable by considerations of the class he urged. <i>The only +security worth having lies in men</i>; the man is Lord Aberdeen; moral +union and association with him must continue, and must be publicly +known to continue. I therefore repeated my question to Lord +Aberdeen, whether he would in his place as a peer declare, if we +joined the cabinet, that it had his confidence with reference to +war and peace? He said, much moved, that he felt the weight of the +responsibility, but that after the explanation and assurances he +had received, he would. He was even more moved when Graham said +that though the leaning of his judgment was adverse, he would place +himself absolutely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_536" id="Page_536">[Pg 536]</a></span> in the hands of Lord Aberdeen. To Herbert, of +course, it was a simple release from a difficulty. Palmerston had +told Cardwell, 'Gladstone feels a difficulty first infused into him +by Graham; Argyll and Herbert have made up their minds to do what +Gladstone does.' Newcastle joined us, and was in Herbert's sense. I +repeated again that Lord Aberdeen's declaration of confidence +enabled me to see my way to joining....</p> + +<p>I went to Lord Aberdeen in his official room after his return from +Palmerston. It was only when I left that room to-day that I began +to realise the pang of parting. There he stood, struck down from +his eminence by a vote that did not dare to avow its own purpose, +and for his wisdom and virtue; there he stood endeavouring to cure +the ill consequences to the public of the wrong inflicted upon +himself, and as to the point immediately within reach successful in +the endeavour. I ventured, however, to tell him that I hoped our +conduct and reliance on him would tend to his eminence and honour, +and said, 'You are not to be of the cabinet, but you are to be its +tutelary deity.'</p> + +<p>I had a message from Palmerston that he would answer me, but at +night I went up to him.</p></div> + +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p class="center">THE COMMITTEE REVIVED</p> + +<p>The rush of events was now somewhat slackened. Lord John called on +Graham, and complained of the Peelites for having selfishly sought too +many offices, alluding to what Canning had done, and imputing the same +to Cardwell. He also thought they had made a great mistake in joining +Palmerston. He seemed sore about Mr. Gladstone, and told Graham that +Christopher, a stout tory, had said that if Gladstone joined Derby, a +hundred of the party would withdraw their allegiance. At the party +meeting on Feb. 21, Lord Derby was received with loud cries of 'No +Puseyites; No papists,' and was much reprehended for asking Gladstone +and Graham to join.</p> + +<p>'I ought to have mentioned before,' Mr. Gladstone writes here, 'that, +during our conferences at the admiralty, Lord Aberdeen expressed great +compunction for having allowed the country to be dragged without +adequate cause into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_537" id="Page_537">[Pg 537]</a></span> war. So long as he lived, he said with his own +depth and force, it would be a weight upon his conscience. He had held +similar language to me lately at Argyll House; but when I asked him at +what point <i>after</i> the fleet went to Besika Bay it would have been +possible to stop short, he alluded to the <i>sommation</i>, which we were +encouraged however, as he added, by Austria to send; and thought <i>this</i> +was the false step. Yet he did not seem quite firm in the opinion.'</p> + +<p>Then came the first cabinet (Feb. 10). It did not relieve the gloom of +Mr. Gladstone's impressions. He found it more 'acephalous' than ever; +'less order; less unity of purpose.' The question of the Roebuck +committee was raised, on which he said he thought the House would give +it up, if government would promise an investigation under the authority +of the crown. The fatal subject came up again three days later. +Palmerston said it was plain from the feeling in the House the night +before, that they were set upon it; if they could secure a fair +committee, he was disposed to let the inquiry go forward. On this rock +the ship struck. One minister said they could not resign in consequence +of the appointment of the committee, because it stood affirmed by a +large majority when they took office in the reconstructed cabinet. Mr. +Gladstone says he 'argued with vehemence upon the breach of duty which +it would involve on our part towards those holding responsible commands +in the Crimea, if we without ourselves condemning them were to allow +them to be brought before another tribunal like a select committee.'</p> + +<p>Dining the same evening at the palace, Mr. Gladstone had a conversation +on the subject both with the Queen and Prince Albert. 'The latter +compared this appointment of a committee to the proceedings of the +Convention of France; but still seemed to wish that the government +should submit rather than retire. The Queen spoke openly in that sense, +and trusted that she should not be given over into the hands of those +“who are the least fit to govern.” Without any positive and final +declaration, I intimated to each that I did not think I could bring my +mind to acquiesce in the prop<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_538" id="Page_538">[Pg 538]</a></span>osition for an inquiry by a select +committee into the state of the army in the Crimea.'</p> + +<p>Time did not remove difficulties. Mr. Gladstone and Graham fought with +extreme tenacity, and the first of them with an ingenuity for which the +situation gave boundless scope. To the argument that they accepted +office on reconstruction with the decision of the House for a committee +staring them in the face, he replied: 'Before we were <i>out</i>, we were +<i>in</i>. Why did we go out? Because of that very decision by the House of +Commons. Our language was: The appointment of such a committee is +incompatible with the functions of the executive, therefore it is a +censure on the executive; therefore we resign! But it is not a whit +<i>more</i> compatible with the functions of the executive now than it was +then; therefore it is not one whit less a censure; and the question +arises, (1) whether any government ought to allow its (now) principal +duty to be delegated to a committee or other body, especially to one not +under the control of the crown? (2) whether <i>that</i> government ought to +allow it, the members of which (except one) have already resigned rather +than allow it? In what way can the first resignation be justified on +grounds which do not require a second?' He dwelt mainly on these two +points—That the proposed transfer of the functions of the executive to +a select committee of the House of Commons, with respect to an army in +the face of the enemy and operating by the side of our French allies, +and the recognition of this transfer by the executive government, was an +evil greater than any that could arise from a total or partial +resignation. Second, that it was clear that they did not, as things +stood, possess the confidence of a majority of the House. 'I said that +the committee was itself a censure on the government. They had a right +to believe that parliament would not inflict this committee on a +government which had its confidence. I also,' he says, 'recited my +having ascertained from Palmerston (upon this recital we were agreed) on +the 6th, before our decision was declared, his intention to oppose the +committee....'</p> + +<p class="center">PEELITES RESIGN</p> + +<p>Graham did not feel disposed to govern without the confidence of the +House of Commons, or to be responsible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_539" id="Page_539">[Pg 539]</a></span> for the granting of a committee +which the cabinet had unanimously felt to be unprecedented, +unconstitutional, and dangerous. Lord Palmerston met all this by a +strong practical clincher. He said that the House of Commons was +becoming unruly from the doubts that had gone abroad as to the +intentions of the government with respect to the committee; that the +House was determined to have it; that if they opposed it they should be +beaten by an overwhelming majority; to dissolve upon it would be +ruinous; to resign a fortnight after taking office would make them the +laughingstock of the country.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone, Herbert, and Graham then resigned. Of the Peelite group +the Duke of Argyll and Canning remained.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Feb. 22</i>.—After considering various <i>sites</i>, we determined to ask +the Manchester school to yield us, at any rate for to-morrow, the +old place devoted to ex-ministers.<a name="FNanchor_343_343" id="FNanchor_343_343"></a><a href="#Footnote_343_343" class="fnanchor">[343]</a> Sir J. Graham expressed his +wish to begin the affair, on the proposal of the first name [of the +committee].</p> + +<p>Cardwell came at 4 to inform me that he had declined to be my +successor; and showed me his letter, which gave as his reason +disinclination to step into the cabinet over the bodies of his +friends. It seems that Palmerston and Lord Lansdowne, who assists +him, sent Canning to Lord Aberdeen to invoke his aid with Cardwell +and prevail on him to retract. But Lord Aberdeen, though he told +Canning that he disapproved (at variance here with what Graham and +I considered to be his tone on Monday, but agreeing with a note he +wrote in obscure terms the next morning), said he could not make +such a request to Cardwell, or again play the peculiar part he had +acted a fortnight ago. The cabinet on receiving Cardwell's refusal +were at a deadlock. Application was to be made, or had been made, +to Sir Francis Baring, but it seems that he is reluctant; he is, +however, the best card they have to play.</p> + +<p><i>Feb. 28</i>.—On Sunday, Sir George Lewis called on me, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_540" id="Page_540">[Pg 540]</a></span> said my +office had been offered him. This was after being refused by +Cardwell and Baring. He asked my advice as to accepting it. This I +told him I could not give. He asked if I would assist him with +information in case of his accepting. I answered that he might +command me precisely as if instead of resigning I had only removed +to another department. I then went over some of the matters needful +to be made known. On Tuesday he came again, acquainted me with his +acceptance, and told me he had been mainly influenced by my +promise.<a name="FNanchor_344_344" id="FNanchor_344_344"></a><a href="#Footnote_344_344" class="fnanchor">[344]</a></p> + +<p>This day at a quarter to three I attended at the palace to resign +the seals, and had an audience of about twenty minutes. The Queen, +in taking them over, was pleased to say that she received them with +great pain. I answered that the decision which had required me to +surrender them had been the most painful effort of my public life. +The Queen said she was afraid on Saturday night [Feb. 17, when he +had dined at the palace] from the language I then used that this +was about to happen. I answered that we had then already had a +discussion in the cabinet which pointed to this result, and that I +spoke as I did, because I thought that to have no reserve whatever +with H. M. was the first duty of all those who had the honour and +happiness of being her servants. I trusted H. M. would believe that +we had all been governed by no other desire than to do what was +best for the interests of the crown and the country. H. M. expressed +her confidence of this, and at no time throughout the conversation +did she in any manner indicate an opinion that our decision had +been wrong. She spoke of the difficulty of making arrangements for +carrying on the government in the present state of things, and I +frankly gave my opinion to H. M. that she would have little peace or +comfort in these matters, until parliament should have returned to +its old organisation in two political parties; that at present we +were in a false position, and that both sides of the House were +demoralised—the ministerial side overcharged with an excess of +official men, and the way stopped up against expectants, which led +to subdivision, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_541" id="Page_541">[Pg 541]</a></span>jealousy, and intrigue; the opposition so weak in +persons having experience of affairs as to be scarcely within the +chances of office, and consequently made reckless by acting without +keeping it in view; yet at the same time, the party continued and +must continue to exist, for it embodied one of the great +fundamental elements of English society. The experiment of +coalition had been tried with remarkable advantage under a man of +the remarkable wisdom and powers of conciliation possessed by Lord +Aberdeen, one in entire possession too of H. M.'s confidence. They +intimated that there were peculiar disadvantages, too, evidently +meaning Lord J. Russell. I named him in my answer, and said I +thought that even if he had been steady, yet the divisions of the +ministerial party would a little later have brought about our +overthrow.<a name="FNanchor_345_345" id="FNanchor_345_345"></a><a href="#Footnote_345_345" class="fnanchor">[345]</a> H. M. seeming to agree in my main position, as did +the Prince, asked me: But when will parliament return to that +state? I replied I grieved to say that I perceived neither the time +when, nor the manner how, that result is to come about; but until +it is reached, I fear that Y. M. will pass through a period of +instability and weakness as respects the executive. She observed +that the prospect is not agreeable. I said, True, madam, but it is +a great consolation that all these troubles are upon the surface, +and that the throne has for a long time been gaining and not losing +stability from year to year. I could see but one danger to the +throne, and that was from encroachments by the House of Commons. No +other body in the country was strong enough to encroach. This was +the consideration which had led my resigning colleagues with myself +to abandon office that we might make our stand against what we +thought a formidable invasion.... I thought the effect of the +resistance was traceable in the good conduct of the House of +Commons last night, when another attempt at encroachment was +proposed and firmly repelled.... I expressed my comfort at finding +that our motives were so graciously appreciated by H. M. and +withdrew.</p></div> + +<p class="center">PUBLIC OUTCRY</p> + +<p>Loud was the public outcry. All the censure that had been foretold in +case they should refuse to join, fell with double force upon them for +first joining and then seceding.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_542" id="Page_542">[Pg 542]</a></span> Lord Clarendon pronounced their +conduct to be actually worse and more unpatriotic than Lord John's. The +delight at Brooks's Club was uproarious, for to the whigs the Peelites +had always been odious, and they had been extremely sorry when +Palmerston asked them to join his government.<a name="FNanchor_346_346" id="FNanchor_346_346"></a><a href="#Footnote_346_346" class="fnanchor">[346]</a> For a time Mr. +Gladstone was only a degree less unpopular in the country than Cobden +and Bright themselves. The newspapers declared that Gladstone's epitaph +over the Aberdeen administration might be applied with peculiar force to +his own fate. The short truth seems to be that Graham, Gladstone, and +Palmerston were none of them emphatic or explicit enough beforehand on +the refusal of the committee when the government was formed, though the +intention to refuse was no doubt both stated and understood. Graham +admitted afterwards that this omission was a mistake. The world would be +astonished if it knew how often in the pressure of great affairs men's +sight proves short. After the language used by Mr. Gladstone about the +inquiry, we cannot wonder that he should have been slow to acquiesce. +The result in time entirely justified his description of the Sebastopol +committee.<a name="FNanchor_347_347" id="FNanchor_347_347"></a><a href="#Footnote_347_347" class="fnanchor">[347]</a> But right as was his judgment on the merits, yet the +case was hardly urgent enough to make withdrawal politic or wise. Idle +gossip long prevailed, that Graham could not forgive Palmerston for not +having (as he thought) helped to defend him in the matter of opening +Mazzini's letters; that from the first he was bent on overthrowing the +new minister; that he worked on Gladstone; and that the alleged reason +why they left was not the real one. All the evidence is the other way; +that Graham could not resist the obvious want of the confidence of +parliament, and that Gladstone could not bear a futile and perilous +inquiry. That they both regretted that they had yielded to +over-persuasion in joining, against their own feelings and judgment, is +certain. Graham even wrote to Mr. Gladstone in the following summer that +his assent to joining Palmerston was perhaps the greatest mistake of his +public life. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_543" id="Page_543">[Pg 543]</a></span> Mr. Gladstone's case, the transaction gave a rude and +protracted shock to his public influence.</p> + +<p class="center">LORD PALMERSTON'S REIGN</p> + +<p>Lord Palmerston meanwhile sat tight in his saddle. When the crisis first +began, Roebuck in energetic language had urged him to sweep the Peelites +from his path, and at any rate he now very steadily went on without +them. Everybody took for granted that his administration would be +temporary. Mr. Gladstone himself gave it a twelvemonth at most. As it +happened, Lord Palmerston was in fact, with one brief interruption, +installed for a decade. He was seventy-one; he had been nearly forty +years in office; he had worked at the admiralty, war department, foreign +office, home office; he had served under ten prime ministers—Portland, +Perceval, Liverpool, Canning, Goderich, Wellington, Grey, Melbourne, +Russell, Aberdeen. He was not more than loosely attached to the whigs, +and he had none of the strength of that aristocratic tradition and its +organ, the Bedford sect. The landed interest was not with him. The +Manchester men detested him. The church in all its denominations was on +terms of cool and reciprocated indifference with one who was above all +else the man of this world. The press he knew how to manage. In every +art of parliamentary sleight of hand he was an expert, and he suited the +temper of the times, while old maxims of government and policy were +tardily expiring, and the forces of a new era were in their season +gathering to a head.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_544" id="Page_544">[Pg 544]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_337_337" id="Footnote_337_337"></a><a href="#FNanchor_337_337"><span class="label">[337]</span></a> On Bute's plan of superseding party by prerogative, in the +introduction to vol. iii. of the Bedford <i>Correspondence</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_338_338" id="Footnote_338_338"></a><a href="#FNanchor_338_338"><span class="label">[338]</span></a><a href="#Duke">See Appendix.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_339_339" id="Footnote_339_339"></a><a href="#FNanchor_339_339"><span class="label">[339]</span></a> See Chap. x. of Lord Stanmore's <i>Earl of Aberdeen</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_340_340" id="Footnote_340_340"></a><a href="#FNanchor_340_340"><span class="label">[340]</span></a> 'This <i>suppressio veri</i> is shocking, and one of the very worst +things he ever did.'—<i>Greville</i>, iii. i. p. 232.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_341_341" id="Footnote_341_341"></a><a href="#FNanchor_341_341"><span class="label">[341]</span></a> At Lord Aberdeen's the question seems to have been discussed on +the assumption that the offer to Mr. Gladstone and Herbert was meant to +be independent of Palmerston's acceptance or refusal, and the impression +there was that Mr. Gladstone had been not wholly disinclined to consider +the offer.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_342_342" id="Footnote_342_342"></a><a href="#FNanchor_342_342"><span class="label">[342]</span></a> Malmesbury's <i>Memoirs of an Ex-Minister</i>, i. pp. 8, 37.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_343_343" id="Footnote_343_343"></a><a href="#FNanchor_343_343"><span class="label">[343]</span></a> On Feb. 23, he writes to Mr. Hayter, the government whip: 'We have +arranged to sit in the orthodox ex-ministers' place to-night, <i>i.e.</i> +second bench immediately below the gangway. This avoids constructions +and comparisons which we could hardly otherwise have escaped; and Bright +and his friends agreed to give it us. Might I trust to your kindness to +have some cards put in the place for us before prayers?'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_344_344" id="Footnote_344_344"></a><a href="#FNanchor_344_344"><span class="label">[344]</span></a> While Lewis went to the exchequer, Sir Charles Wood succeeded +Graham at the admiralty, Lord John, then on his way to Vienna, agreed to +come hack to the cabinet and took the colonial office, which Sir George +Grey had left for the home office, where he succeeded Palmerston.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_345_345" id="Footnote_345_345"></a><a href="#FNanchor_345_345"><span class="label">[345]</span></a> This seems to contradict the proposition in the article on +Greville in the <i>Eng. Hist. Rev</i>. of 1887.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_346_346" id="Footnote_346_346"></a><a href="#FNanchor_346_346"><span class="label">[346]</span></a> <i>Greville</i>, III. i. p. 246.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_347_347" id="Footnote_347_347"></a><a href="#FNanchor_347_347"><span class="label">[347]</span></a> Mr. Gladstone projected and partly executed some public letters on +all this, to be addressed, like the Neapolitan letters, to Lord +Aberdeen.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIVCh_VII" id="BkIVCh_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">POLITICAL ISOLATION</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1855-1856</i>)</p> + +<p class="center">ἥκιστα γὰρ πόλεμος ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς χωρεῖ—<span class="smcap">Thuc</span>. i. 122.<br /> +<br /> +War is the last thing in all the world to go according to +programme.</p><br /> + +<p>Statesmen are invincibly slow to learn the lesson put by Thucydides long +centuries ago into the mouth of the Athenian envoys at Sparta, and often +repeated in the same immortal pages, that war defies all calculations, +and if it be protracted comes to be little more than mere matter of +chance, over which the combatants have no control. A thousand times +since has history proved this to be true. Policy is mastered by events; +unforeseen sequels develop novel pretexts, or grow into startling and +hateful necessities; the minister finds that he is fastened to an +inexorable chain.</p> + +<p class="center">NEW VIEWS OF THE WAR</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone now had this fatal law of mundane things brought home to +him. As time went on, he by rapid intuition gained a truer insight into +the leading facts. He realised that Mahometan institutions in the +Ottoman empire were decrepit; that the youthful and vigorous elements in +European Turkey were crushed under antiquated and worn-out forms and +forces unfit for rule. He awoke to the disquieting reflection how the +occupation of the Principalities had been discussed, day after day and +month after month, entirely as a question of the payment of forty +thousand pounds a year to Turkey, or as a violation of her rights as +suzerain, but never in reference to the well-being, happiness, freedom, +or peace of the inhabitants. He still held that the war in its origin +was just, for it had been absolutely necessary, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_545" id="Page_545">[Pg 545]</a></span> said, to cut the +meshes of the net in which Russia had entangled Turkey. He persisted in +condemning the whole tone and policy of Russia in 1854. By the end of +1854, in Mr. Gladstone's eyes, this aggressive spirit had been +extinguished, the Czar promising an almost unreserved acceptance of the +very points that he had in the previous August angrily rejected. The +essential objects of the war were the abolition of Russian rights in the +Principalities, and the destruction of Russian claims upon Greek +Christians under Ottoman sway. These objects, Mr. Gladstone insisted, +were attained in January 1855, when Russia agreed to three out of the +Four Points—so the bases of agreement were named—and only demurred +upon the plan for carrying out a portion of the fourth. The special +object was to cancel the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea. No +fewer than seven different plans were simultaneously or in turn +propounded. They were every one of them admitted to be dubious, +inefficient, and imperfect. I will spare the reader the mysteries of +limitation, of counterpoise, of counterpoise and limitation mixed. +Russia preferred counterpoise, the allies were for limitation. Was this +preference between two degrees of the imperfect, the deficient, and the +ineffective a good ground for prolonging a war that was costing the +allies a hundred million pounds a year, and involved to all the parties +concerned the loss of a thousand lives a day? Yet, for saying No to this +question, Mr. Gladstone was called a traitor, even by men who in 1853 +had been willing to content themselves with the Vienna note, and in 1854 +had been anxious to make peace on the basis of the Four Points. In face +of pleas so wretched for a prolongation of a war to which he had +assented on other grounds, was he bound to silence? 'Would it not, on +the contrary,' he exclaimed, 'have been the most contemptible effeminacy +of character, if a man in my position, who feels that he has been +instrumental in bringing his country into this struggle, were to +hesitate a single moment when he was firmly convinced in his own mind +that the time had arrived when we might with honour escape from it?'</p> + +<p>The prospect of reducing Russia to some abstract level of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_546" id="Page_546">[Pg 546]</a></span> strength, so +as to uphold an arbitrary standard of the balance of power—this he +regarded as mischief and chimera. Rightly he dreaded the peril of +alliances shifting from day to day, like quicksands and +sea-shoals—Austria moved by a hundred strong and varying currents, +France drawing by unforeseen affinities towards Russia. Every war with +alliances, he once said, should be short, sharp, decisive.<a name="FNanchor_348_348" id="FNanchor_348_348"></a><a href="#Footnote_348_348" class="fnanchor">[348]</a></p> + +<p>As was to be expected, the colleagues from whom he had parted insisted +that every one of his arguments told just as logically against the war +in all its stages, against the first as legitimately as the last. In +fact, we can never say a plain sure aye or no to questions of peace and +war, after the sword has once left the scabbard. They are all matter of +judgment on the balance of policy between one course and another; and a +very slight thing may incline the balance either way, even though mighty +affairs should hang on the turn of the scale. Meanwhile, as the months +went on, Sebastopol still stood untaken, excitement grew, people forgot +the starting point. They ceased to argue, and sheer blatancy, at all +times a power, in war-time is supreme. Mr. Gladstone's trenchant +dialectic had no more chance than Bright's glowing appeals. Shrewd and +not unfriendly onlookers thought that Graham and Gladstone were +grievously mistaken in making common cause with the peace party, +immediately after quitting a war government, and quitting it, besides, +not on the issues of the war. Herbert was vehement in his remonstrances. +The whole advantage of co-operation with the Manchester men, he cried, +would be derived by them, and all the disrepute reaped by us. 'For the +purposes of peace, they were the very men we ought to avoid. As +advocates for ending the war, they were out of court, for they were +against beginning it.'<a name="FNanchor_349_349" id="FNanchor_349_349"></a><a href="#Footnote_349_349" class="fnanchor">[349]</a> If Gladstone and Graham had gone slower, +their friends said, they might have preached moderation to ministers and +given reasonable advice to people out of doors. As it was, they threw +the game into the hands of Lord Palmerston. They were stamped as +doctrinaires, and what was worse, doctrinaires suspected of a spice of +personal animus against old friends. Herbert insisted that the +Man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_547" id="Page_547">[Pg 547]</a></span>chester school 'forgot that the people have flesh and blood, and +propounded theories to men swayed by national feeling.' As a matter of +fact, this was wholly untrue. Cobden and Bright, as everybody nowadays +admits, had a far truer perception of the underlying realities of the +Eastern question in 1854, than either the Aberdeen or the Palmerston +cabinet, or both of them put together. What was undeniable was that the +public, with its habits of rough and ready judgment, did not understand, +and could not be expected to understand, the new union of the Peelites +with a peace party, in direct opposition to whose strongest views and +gravest warnings they had originally begun the war. 'In Gladstone,' +Cornewall Lewis said, 'people ascribe to faction, or ambition, or +vanity, conduct which I believe to be the result of a conscientious, +scrupulous, ingenuous, undecided mind, always looking on each side of a +question and magnifying the objections which belong to almost every +course of action.'<a name="FNanchor_350_350" id="FNanchor_350_350"></a><a href="#Footnote_350_350" class="fnanchor">[350]</a></p> + +<p class="center">ADVOCATES OF PEACE</p> + +<p>A foreign envoy then resident in England was struck by the general +ignorance of facts even among leading politicians. Of the friends of +peace, he says, only Lord Grey and Gladstone seemed to have mastered the +Vienna protocols: the rest were quite astonished when the extent of the +Russian concessions was pointed out to them. The envoy dined with Mr. +Gladstone at the table of the Queen, and they talked of Milner Gibson's +motion censuring ministers for losing the opportunity of the Vienna +conferences to make a sound and satisfactory peace. Mr. Gladstone said +to him that he should undertake the grave responsibility of supporting +this motion, 'because in his opinion the concessions promised by Russia +contain sufficient guarantees. Those very concessions will tear to +pieces all the ancient treaties which gave an excuse to Russia for +interfering in the internal affairs of Turkey.'<a name="FNanchor_351_351" id="FNanchor_351_351"></a><a href="#Footnote_351_351" class="fnanchor">[351]</a></p> + +<p>At all times stimulated rather than checked by a difficult situation, +Mr. Gladstone argued the case for peace to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_548" id="Page_548">[Pg 548]</a></span> House during the session +of 1855 in two speeches of extraordinary power of every kind. His +position was perfectly tenable, and he defended it with unsurpassed +force. For the hour unfortunately his influence was gone. Great +newspapers thought themselves safe in describing one of these +performances as something between the rant of the fanatic and the trick +of the stage actor; a mixture of pious grimace and vindictive howl, of +savage curses and dolorous forebodings; the most unpatriotic speech ever +heard within the walls of parliament. In sober fact, it was one of the +three or four most masterly deliverances evoked by the Crimean war. At +the very same time Lord John Russell was still sitting in the cabinet, +though he had held the opinion that at the beginning of May the Austrian +proposal ought to have ended the war and led to an honourable peace. The +scandal of a minister remaining in a government that persisted in a war +condemned by him as unnecessary was intolerable, and Lord John resigned +(July 16).</p> + +<p>The hopes of the speedy fall of Sebastopol brightened in the summer of +1855, but this brought new alarms to Lord Palmerston. 'Our danger,' he +said in remarkable words, 'will then begin—a danger of peace and not a +danger of war.' To drive the Russians out of the Crimea was to be no +more than a preliminary. England would go on by herself, if conditions +deemed by her essential were not secured. 'The British nation is +unanimous, for I cannot reckon Cobden, Bright, and Co. for +anything.'<a name="FNanchor_352_352" id="FNanchor_352_352"></a><a href="#Footnote_352_352" class="fnanchor">[352]</a> His account of the public mind was indubitably true. +Well might Aberdeen recall to his friends that, with a single exception, +every treaty concluded at the termination of our great wars had been +stigmatised as humiliating and degrading, ignominious, hollow and +unsafe. He cited the peace of Utrecht in 1713, the peace of +Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, the peace of Paris in 1763, the peace of +Versailles in 1783, and the peace of Amiens in 1801. The single +exception was the peace of Paris in 1814. It would have been difficult +in this case, he said, for patriotism or faction to discover humiliation +'in a treaty dictated at the head of a victorious army in the capital of +the enemy.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_549" id="Page_549">[Pg 549]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">AT PENMAENMAWR</p> + +<p>While the storm was raging, Mr. Gladstone made his way with his family +to Penmaenmawr, whence he writes to Lord Aberdeen (Aug. 9): 'It was a +charitable act on your part to write to me. It is hardly possible to +believe one is not the greatest scoundrel on earth, when one is assured +of it from all sides on such excellent authority.... I am busy reading +Homer about the Sebastopol of old time, and all manner of other fine +fellows.' In another letter of the same time, written to Sir Walter +James, one of the most closely attached of all his friends, he strikes a +deeper note:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Sept. 17</i>.—If I say I care little for such an attack you will +perhaps think I make little of sympathy like yours and Lord +Hardinge's, but such, I beg you and him to believe, is not the +case. Public life is full of snares and dangers, and I think it a +fearful thing for a Christian to look forward to closing his life +in the midst of its (to me at least) essentially fevered activity. +It has, however, some excellent characteristics in regard to mental +and even spiritual discipline, and among these in particular it +absolutely requires the habits of resisting temper and of +suppressing pain. I never allow myself, in regard to my public +life, to realise, <i>i.e.</i> to dwell upon, the fact that a thing is +<i>painful</i>. Indeed life has no time for such broodings: neither in +session nor recess is the year, the day, or the hour long enough +for what it brings with it. Nor was there ever a case in which it +was so little difficult to pass over and make little of a personal +matter: for if indeed it be true, as I fear it is, that we have +been committing grave errors, that those errors have cost many +thousands of lives and millions of money, and that no glare of +success can effectually hide the gloom of thickening complications, +the man who can be capable of weighing his own fate and prospects +in the midst of such contingencies has need to take a lesson from +the private soldier who gives his life to his country at a shilling +a day.</p></div> + +<p>'We are on our way back,' he writes at the end of September, 'after a +month of sea-bathing and touring among the Welsh mountains. Most of my +time is taken up with Homer and Homeric literature, in which I am +immersed with great delight up to my ears; perhaps I should say out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_550" id="Page_550">[Pg 550]</a></span> of +my depth.' Mr. Gladstone was one of the men whom the agitations of +politics can never submerge. Political interests were what they ought to +be, a very serious part of life; but they took their place with other +things, and were never suffered, as in narrower natures sometimes +happens, to blot out 'stars and orbs of sun and moon' from the spacious +firmament above us. He now found a shelter from the intensity of the +times in the systematic production of his book on Homer, a striking +piece of literature that became the most definite of his pursuits for +two years or more. His children observed that he never lounged or +strolled upon the shore, but when the morning's labour was over—and +nothing was ever allowed to break or mutilate the daily spell of serious +work—he would stride forth staff in hand, and vigorously breast the +steepest bluffs and hills that he could find. This was only emblematic +of a temperament to which the putting forth of power was both necessity +and delight. The only rest he ever knew was change of effort.</p> + +<p>While he was on the Welsh coast Sebastopol fell, after a siege of three +hundred and fifty days. Negotiations for peace were opened tolerably +soon afterwards, ending, after many checks and diplomatic difficulties, +in the Treaty of Paris (March 30, 1856), as to which I need only remind +the reader, with a view to a future incident in Mr. Gladstone's history, +that the Black Sea was neutralised, and all warships of every nation +excluded from its waters. Three hundred thousand men had perished. +Countless treasure had been flung into the abyss. The nation that had +won its last victory at Waterloo did not now enhance the glory of its +arms, nor the power of its diplomacy, nor the strength of any of its +material interests. It was our French ally who profited. The integrity +of Turkey was so ill confirmed that even at the Congress of Paris the +question of the Danubian Principalities was raised in a form that in a +couple of years reduced Turkish rule over six millions of her subjects +to the shadow of smoke. Of the confidently promised reform of Mahometan +dominion there was never a beginning nor a sign. The vindication of the +standing European order proved so ineffectual that the Crimean war was +only the sanguinary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_551" id="Page_551">[Pg 551]</a></span> prelude to a vast subversion of the whole system of +European states.</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">WORK ON HOMER</p> + +<p>Other interests now came foremost in Mr. Gladstone's mind. The old +ground so constantly travelled over since the death of Peel was for +three years to come traversed again with fatiguing iteration. In the +spring of 1856 Lord Derby repeated the overtures that he had made in +specific form in 1851 and in 1855. The government was weak, as Mr. +Gladstone had predicted that it would be. Lord Derby told Sir William +Heathcote, through whom he and Mr. Gladstone communicated, that as +almost any day it might be overturned, and he might be sent for by the +Queen, he was bound to see what strength he might rely upon, and he was +anxious to know what were Mr. Gladstone's views on the possibility of +co-operation. What was the nature of his relations with other members of +the Peel government who had also been in the cabinet of Lord Aberdeen? +Did they systematically communicate? Were they a party? Did they intend +to hold and to act together? These questions were soon answered:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>On the first point, Mr. Gladstone said, you cannot better describe +my views for present purposes than by saying that they are much +like Lord Derby's own as I understand them—there was nothing in +them to prevent a further consideration of the subject, if public +affairs should assume such a shape as to recommend it. On the +second, I said Graham, Herbert, Cardwell, and I communicated +together habitually and confidentially; that we did not seek to +act, but rather eschewed acting, as a party; that our habits of +communication were founded upon long political association, general +agreement, and personal friendship; that they were not, however, a +covenant for the future, but a natural growth and result of the +past.</p></div> + +<p>Then he proceeds to tell with a new and rather startling conclusion the +old story of the Peelite responsibility for the broken and disorganised +state of the House of Commons:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>We, the friends of Lord Aberdeen, were a main cause of disunion and +weakness in the executive government, and must be so,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_552" id="Page_552">[Pg 552]</a></span> from +whichever side the government were formed, so long as we were not +absolutely incorporated into one or the other of the two great +parties. For though we had few positively and regularly following +us, yet we had indirect relations with others on both sides of the +House, which tended to relax, and so far disable, party +connections, and our existence as a section encouraged the +formation of other sections all working with similar effects. I +carried my feeling individually so far upon the subject as even to +be ready, if I had to act alone, to surrender my seat in +parliament, rather than continue a cause of disturbance to any +government to which I might generally wish well.<a name="FNanchor_353_353" id="FNanchor_353_353"></a><a href="#Footnote_353_353" class="fnanchor">[353]</a></p></div> + +<p class="center">RELATIONS WITH LORD DERBY</p> + +<p>This exchange of views with Lord Derby he fully reported to Graham, +Herbert, and Cardwell, whom Lord Aberdeen, at his request, had summoned +for the purpose. Herbert doubted the expediency of such communications, +and Graham went straight to what was a real point. 'He observed that the +question was of the most vital consequence, Who should lead the House of +Commons? This he thought must come to me, and could not be with +Disraeli. I had said and repeated, that I thought we could not bargain +Disraeli out of the saddle; that it must rest with him (so far as we +were concerned) to hold the lead if he pleased; that besides my looking +to it with doubt and dread, I felt he had this right; and that I took it +as one of the <i>data</i> in the case before us upon which we might have to +consider the question of political junction, and which might be +seriously affected by it.' Of these approaches in the spring of 1856 +nothing came. The struggle in Mr. Gladstone's mind went on with growing +urgency. He always protested that he never at any time contemplated an +isolated return to the conservative ranks, but 'reunion of a body with a +body.'</p> + +<p>Besides his sense of the vital importance of the reconstruction of the +party system, he had two other high related aims. The commanding +position that had first been held in the objects of his activity by the +church, then, for a considerable space, by the colonies, was now filled +by finance. As he put it in a letter to his sympathetic brother +Robertson: He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_553" id="Page_553">[Pg 553]</a></span> saw two cardinal subjects for the present moment in +public affairs, a rational and pacific foreign policy, and second, the +due reduction in our establishments, economy in administration, and +finance to correspond. In 1853 he had, as he believed, given financial +pledges to the country. These pledges were by the present ministers in +danger of being forgotten. They were incompatible with Palmerston's +spirit of foreign policy. His duty, then, was to oppose that policy, and +to labour as hard as he could for the redemption of his pledges. Yet +isolated as he was, he had little power over either one of these aims or +the other. The liberal party was determined to support the reigning +foreign policy, and this made financial improvement desperate. Of Lord +Derby's friends he was not hopeful, but they were not committed to so +dangerous a leader.<a name="FNanchor_354_354" id="FNanchor_354_354"></a><a href="#Footnote_354_354" class="fnanchor">[354]</a> As he put it to Elwin, the editor of the +<i>Quarterly</i>: There is a policy going a begging; the general policy that +Sir Robert Peel in 1841 took office to support—the policy of peace +abroad, of economy, of financial equilibrium, of steady resistance to +abuses, and promotion of practical improvements at home, with a +disinclination to questions of reform, gratuitously raised.<a name="FNanchor_355_355" id="FNanchor_355_355"></a><a href="#Footnote_355_355" class="fnanchor">[355]</a></p> + +<p>His whole mind beset, possessed, and on fire with ideals of this kind, +and with sanguine visions of the road by which they might be +realised—it was not in the temperament of this born warrior to count +the lions in his path. He was only too much in the right, as his +tribulations of a later date so amply proved, in his perception that +neither Palmerston nor Palmerstonian liberals would take up the broken +clue of Peel. The importunate presence of Mr. Disraeli was not any +sharper obstacle to a definite junction with conservatives, than was the +personality of Lord Palmerston to a junction with liberals. As he had +said to Graham in November 1856, 'the pain and strain of public duty is +multiplied tenfold by the want of a clear and firm ground from which +visibly to act.' In rougher phrase, a man must have a platform and work +with a party. This indeed is for sensible men one of the rudiments of +practical politics.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_554" id="Page_554">[Pg 554]</a></span></p> + +<p>Of a certain kind of cant about public life and office Mr. Gladstone was +always accustomed to make short work. The repudiation of desire for +official power, he at this time and always roundly denounced as +'sentimental and maudlin.' One of the not too many things that he +admired in Lord Palmerston was 'the manly frankness of his habitual +declarations that office is the natural and proper sphere of a public +man's ambition, as that in which he can most freely use his powers for +the common advantage of his country.' 'The desire for office,' said Mr. +Gladstone, 'is the desire of ardent minds for a larger space and scope +within which to serve the country, and for access to the command of that +powerful machinery for information and practice, which the public +departments supply. He must be a very bad minister indeed, who does not +do ten times the good to the country that he would do when out of +office, because he has helps and opportunities which multiply twenty +fold, as by a system of wheels and pulleys, his power for doing it.' It +is true, as the smallest of men may see—and the smaller the man, the +more will he make of it—that this sterling good sense may set many a +snare for the politician; but then even the consecrated affectations of +our public life have their snares too.</p> + +<p>The world was not in the secret of the communications with Lord Derby, +but the intrinsic probabilities of a case often give to the public a +trick of divination. In the middle of December (1856) articles actually +appeared in the prints of the day announcing that Mr. Gladstone would at +the opening of the next session figure at the head of the opposition. +The tories, they said, wanted a leader, Mr. Gladstone wanted a party. +They were credulous, he was ingenious. The minority in a party must +yield to a majority, and he stood almost by himself. He would be a +returned prodigal in the conservative household, for unlike Sir James +Graham, he had never merged himself in the ordinary ruck of liberalism. +A tory peer writes to assure him that there never was such a chance for +the reunion of the party. Even the nobleman who had moved Mr. +Gladstone's expulsion from the Carlton said that he supposed reunion +must pretty soon come off. A few, per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_555" id="Page_555">[Pg 555]</a></span>haps under a score, made a great +noise, but if Lord Derby would only form a government, the noisy ones +would be as glad as the rest. True—and here the writer came nearer to +the central difficulty—'Disraeli ought <i>at first</i> to lead the Commons,' +because he had been leader before; second, he had the greater number of +followers; third, because on public grounds he must desire to see Mr. +Gladstone at the exchequer; and to transfer to him both the great +subject of finance and the great prize of leadership would be +impossible. So easy do flat impossibilities ever seem to sanguine +simpletons in Pall Mall. Another correspondent has been staying at a +grand country-house, full of tory company, and the state of parties was +much discussed—'There was one unanimous opinion,' he tells Mr. +Gladstone, 'that nothing could save the conservative party except +electing you for their leader.' The same talk was reported from the +clubs. 'The difficulty was Disraeli, not so much for any damage that his +hostility could do the party, as because Lord Derby had contracted +relations with him which it would perhaps be impossible for him to +disown.'</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the sagacious man in the tents of the tories, whose course was +so neatly chalked out for him by sulky followers not relishing his lead, +was, we may be sure, entirely wide-awake, watching currents, gales, and +puffs of wind without haste, without rest. Disraeli made a bold stroke +for party consolidation by inviting to his official dinner at the +opening of the session of 1857, General Peel, the favourite brother of +the great minister and his best accredited representative. Peel +consulted Mr. Gladstone on the reply to Disraeli's invitation, and found +him strongly adverse. The public, said Mr. Gladstone, views with much +jealousy every change of political position not founded on previous +parliamentary co-operation for some national object. Mr. Gladstone might +have put it on the narrower ground that attendance at the dinner would +be an explicit condonation of Disraeli's misdeeds ten years before, and +a direct acceptance of his leadership henceforth.</p> + +<p>Elwin believed that he had the direct sanction of Lord Derby for a +message from him to Mr. Gladstone suggesting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_556" id="Page_556">[Pg 556]</a></span> communication. After much +ruminating and consulting, Mr. Gladstone wrote (Dec. 13, 1856) in +sufficiently circuitous language to Elwin, that though he should not be +justified in communicating with Lord Derby, considered simply as a +political leader with whom he was not in relations of party, yet, he +proceeds, 'remembering that I was once his colleague, and placing entire +reliance on his honour, I am ready to speak to him in confidence and +without reserve on the subject of public affairs, should it be his +desire.' His three friends, Graham, Aberdeen, and Herbert, still viewed +the proceeding with entire disfavour, and no counsels were ever dictated +by sincerer affection and solicitude. Your financial scheme, says +Graham, is conceived in the very spirit of Peel; it would be most +conducive to national welfare; you alone and in high office can carry +it; but it must be grafted on a pacific policy and on a moderate scale +of public expenditure; it is not under Palmerston that such blessings +are to be anticipated; but then are they more probable under Derby and +Disraeli? Lord Aberdeen took another line, insisting that to make any +sort of approach to Lord Derby, after joining Palmerston only the +previous year, would be unjustifiable; the bare apprehension of a +vicious policy would be no intelligible ground for changing sides; more +tangible reasons would be needed, and they were only too likely soon to +arrive from Palmerston's foreign policy. Then a reasonable chance might +come. Herbert, in his turn, told Mr. Gladstone that though he might +infuse vigour and respectability into a party that stood much in need of +both, yet he would always be in a false position. 'Your opinions are +essentially progressive, and when the measures of any government mast be +liberal and progressive, the country will prefer the men whose +antecedents and mottoes are liberal, while the conservatives will always +prefer a leader whose prejudices are with themselves.' As Graham put it +to him: 'If you were to join the tory party to-morrow, you would have +neither their confidence nor their real good will, and they would openly +break with you in less than a year.' It all reminds one of the chorus in +Greek plays, sagely expostulating with a hero bent on some dread deed of +fate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_557" id="Page_557">[Pg 557]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">MEDITATIONS</p> + +<p>In the autumn of 1856 ecclesiastical questions held a strong place in +Mr. Gladstone's interests. The condemnation of Archdeacon Denison for +heresy roused him to lively indignation. He had long interviews with the +archdeacon, drafted answers for him, and flung his whole soul into the +case, though he was made angry by Denison's oscillations and general +tone. 'Gladstone tells me,' said Aberdeen, 'that he cannot sleep for it, +and writes to me volumes upon volumes. He thinks that Denison ought to +have been allowed to show that his doctrine, whether in accordance or +not with the articles, is in accordance with scripture. And he thinks +the decision ought to have been in his case as it was in Gorham's, that +the articles are comprehensive, that they admit Denison's view of the +Eucharist as well as that of his opponents.'<a name="FNanchor_356_356" id="FNanchor_356_356"></a><a href="#Footnote_356_356" class="fnanchor">[356]</a></p> + +<p>His closing entry for the year (1856) depicts an inner mood:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It appears to me that there are few persons who are so much as I am +enclosed in the invisible net of pendent steel. I have never known +what tedium was, have always found time full of calls and duties, +life charged with every kind of interest. But now when I look +calmly around me, I see that these interests are for ever growing +and grown too many and powerful, and that were it to please God to +call me I might answer with reluctance.... See how I stand. Into +politics I am drawn deeper every year; in the growing anxieties and +struggles of the church I have no less [interest] than I have +heretofore; literature has of late acquired a new and powerful hold +upon me; the fortunes of my wife's family, which have had, with all +their dry detail, all the most exciting and arduous interest of +romance for me now during nine years and more; seven children +growing up around us, and each day the object of deeper thoughts +and feelings, and of higher hopes to Catherine and me,—what a +network is here woven out of all that the heart and all that the +mind of man can supply....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_558" id="Page_558">[Pg 558]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_348_348" id="Footnote_348_348"></a><a href="#FNanchor_348_348"><span class="label">[348]</span></a><a href="#War">See Appendix.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_349_349" id="Footnote_349_349"></a><a href="#FNanchor_349_349"><span class="label">[349]</span></a> Herbert to Gladstone, May 27, 1855.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_350_350" id="Footnote_350_350"></a><a href="#FNanchor_350_350"><span class="label">[350]</span></a> <i>Many Memories</i>, p. 229.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_351_351" id="Footnote_351_351"></a><a href="#FNanchor_351_351"><span class="label">[351]</span></a> Vitzthum, <i>St. Petersburg and London</i>, i. p. 170. A full account +of these parliamentary events from May to July, 1855, is to be found in +Martin's <i>Prince Consort</i>, iii. pp. 281-307.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_352_352" id="Footnote_352_352"></a><a href="#FNanchor_352_352"><span class="label">[352]</span></a> Ashley, ii. pp. 320, 325.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_353_353" id="Footnote_353_353"></a><a href="#FNanchor_353_353"><span class="label">[353]</span></a> Memo. April 17, 1856.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_354_354" id="Footnote_354_354"></a><a href="#FNanchor_354_354"><span class="label">[354]</span></a> To Robertson Gladstone, Dec. 16, 1856.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_355_355" id="Footnote_355_355"></a><a href="#FNanchor_355_355"><span class="label">[355]</span></a> To Mr. Elwin, Dec. 2, 1856.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_356_356" id="Footnote_356_356"></a><a href="#FNanchor_356_356"><span class="label">[356]</span></a> Simpson's <i>Many Memories</i>, p. 238.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIVCh_VIII" id="BkIVCh_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">GENERAL ELECTION—NEW MARRIAGE LAW</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1857</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>No wave on the great ocean of Time, when once it has floated past +us, can be recalled. All we can do is to watch the new form and +motion of the next, and launch upon it to try in the manner our +best judgment may suggest our strength and skill.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span>.</p></div> +<br /> +<p>In spite of wise counsels of circumspection, Mr. Gladstone clung to the +chances that might come from personal communication between himself and +Lord Derby. Under pressure from his friends, he agreed with Lord Derby +to put off an interview until after the debate on the address. Then, +after parliament met, they took the plunge. We are now at the beginning +of February.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>This afternoon at three I called on Lord Derby and remained with +him above three hours, in prosecution of the correspondence which +had passed between us.</p> + +<p>I told him that I deliberately disapproved of the government of +Lord Palmerston, and was prepared and desirous to aid in any proper +measures which might lead to its displacement. That so strong were +my objections that I was content to act thus without inquiring who +was to follow, for I was convinced that any one who might follow +would govern with less prejudice to the public interests. That in +the existing state of public affairs I did not pretend to see far, +but thus far I saw clearly. I also told him that I felt the +isolated position in which I stood, and indeed in which we who are +called Peelites all stand, to be a great evil as tending to prolong +and aggravate that parliamentary disorganisation which so much +clogs and weakens the working of our government; and I denounced +myself as a public nuisance, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_559" id="Page_559">[Pg 559]</a></span>adding that it would be an advantage +if my doctor sent me abroad for the session.</p></div> + +<p class="center">PEELITES AND TORIES</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>He concurred in the general sentiments which I had expressed, but +said it was material for him, as he had friends with and for whom +to act, and as I had alluded to the possibility, in the event of a +change, of his being invited by the Queen to form a government, to +consider beforehand on what strength he could rely. He said he +believed his friends were stronger than any other single section, +but that they were a minority in both Houses. Weak in 1852, he was +weaker now, for it was natural that four years of exclusion from +office should thin the ranks of a party, and such had been his +case. He described the state of feeling among his friends, and +adverted to the offer he had made in 1851 and in 1855. The fact of +an overture made and not accepted had led to much bitterness or +anger towards us among a portion of his adherents. He considered +that in 1855 Lord Palmerston had behaved far from well either to +Herbert and me, or to him.<a name="FNanchor_357_357" id="FNanchor_357_357"></a><a href="#Footnote_357_357" class="fnanchor">[357]</a></p></div> + +<p>Other interviews followed; resolutions were discussed, amendments, forms +of words. They met at discreet dinners. 'Nobody,' Lord Derby tells him, +'except Disraeli knows the length to which our communications have +gone.' Nobody, that is to say, excepting also Mr. Gladstone's three +personal allies; them he kept accurately informed of all that passed at +every stage. On February 13 the government presented their budget. In +introducing his plan, Cornewall Lewis rashly quoted, and adopted as his +own, the terrible heresy of Arthur Young, that to multiply the number of +taxes is a step towards equality of burden, and that a good system of +taxation is one that bears lightly on an infinite number of points. The +reader will believe how speedily an impious opinion of this sort kindled +volcanic flame in Mr. Gladstone's breast. He thought moreover that he +espied in the ministerial plan a prospective deficiency a year ahead. To +maintain a steady surplus of income over expenditure, he reflected; to +lower indirect taxes when excessive in amount, for the relief of the +people, and bearing in mind the reproductive power inherent in such +operations; to simplify our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_560" id="Page_560">[Pg 560]</a></span> fiscal system by concentrating its pressure +on a few well chosen articles of extended consumption; and to conciliate +support to the income-tax by marking its temporary character, and by +associating it with beneficial changes in the tariff: these aims have +been for fifteen years the labour of our life. By this budget he found +them in principle utterly reversed. He told his friends that the shade +of Peel would appear to him if he did not oppose such plans with his +whole strength. When the time came (Feb. 3), 'the government was fired +into from all quarters. Disraeli in front; Gladstone on flank; John +Russell in rear. Disraeli and Gladstone rose at same time. Speaker +called the former. Both spoke very well. It was a night of triumph for +Gladstone.'<a name="FNanchor_358_358" id="FNanchor_358_358"></a><a href="#Footnote_358_358" class="fnanchor">[358]</a></p> + +<p>There is another note of the proceedings on Lewis's budget:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Saturday, Feb. 14</i>.—I was engaged to meet Graham, Herbert, and +Cardwell at Lord Aberdeen's, and I knew from Lord Derby that he was +to see his friends at noon. So I went to him on my way, first to +point out the <i>deficit</i> of between five and six millions for 1858-9 +which is created by this budget, with the augmentations of it in +subsequent years; and secondly, to say that in my opinion it was +hopeless to attack the scheme in detail, and that it must be +resisted on the ground of deficit as a whole, to give a hope of +success. I said that if among the opposition there still lingered a +desire to revive and extend indirect taxation, I must allow that +the government had bid high for support from those who entertained +it; that it was the worst proposition I had ever heard from a +minister of finance. At Lord Aberdeen's we examined the figures of +the case, and drafted two resolutions which expressed our opinions.</p> + +<p>The more serious point, however, was that they all wished me to +insist upon taking the motion into my own hands; and announcing +this to Lord J. Russell as well as to Lord Derby. As to the second +I had no difficulty, could I have acceded to the first. But I did +not doubt that Disraeli would still keep hold of so much of his +notice of Feb. 3 as had not been set aside by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_561" id="Page_561">[Pg 561]</a></span>budget. I said +that from motives which I could neither describe nor conquer I was +quite unable to undertake to enter into any squabble or competition +with him for the possession of a post of prominence. We had much +conversation on political prospects: Graham wishing to see me lead +the Commons under Lord John as prime minister in the Lords; +admitting that the same thing would do under Lord Derby, but for +Disraeli, who could not be thrown away like a sucked orange; and I +vehemently deploring our position, which I said, and they admitted, +was generally condemned by the country.</p> + +<p>I again went to Derby, as he had requested, at five; and he told me +that he had had with him Malmesbury, Hardwicke, Disraeli, +Pakington, Walpole, Lytton. They had all agreed that the best +motion would be a resolution (from Disraeli) on Monday, before the +Speaker left the chair, which would virtually rest the question on +deficit. I made two verbal suggestions on the resolution to improve +its form.</p></div> + +<p class="center">CO-OPERATION WITH MR. DISRAELI</p> + +<p>Late in the evening Lord Derby writes, enclosing a note received at +dinner from Disraeli, 'I hope I may take it for granted that there is +now a complete understanding between us as to the move on Monday night.' +'My dear lord,' runs the note, 'I like the resolution as amended. It is +improved. Yours ever, D.' When Monday came, the move was duly made, and +Gladstone and Disraeli again fought side by side as twin champions of +the cause of reduced expenditure. Time had incensed Mr. Gladstone still +further, and he conducted a terrific fusillade. He recounted how between +1842 and 1853 two and twenty millions of taxation had been taken off +without costing a farthing. 'A man may be glad and thankful to have been +an Englishman and a member of the British parliament during these years, +bearing his part in so blessed a work. But if it be a blessed work, what +are we to say of him who begins the undoing of it?' The proposal of the +government showed a gross, a glaring, an increasing deficiency, a +deficiency unparalleled in the financial history of a quarter of a +century. It was deluding the people and trifling with national +interests. It is certain that no financier before or since ever, in +Cromwellian phrase, made such a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_562" id="Page_562">[Pg 562]</a></span> conscience of the matter, or ever found +the task more thankless.<a name="FNanchor_359_359" id="FNanchor_359_359"></a><a href="#Footnote_359_359" class="fnanchor">[359]</a> Great as was the effect of the close and +searching argument that accompanied all this invective, even Mr. +Gladstone's friends thought it too impassioned and too severe upon +Lewis, in whose favour there was consequently a reaction. The cool +minister contented himself with quoting Horace's lines upon the artist +skilled in reproducing in his bronze fierce nails or flowing hair, yet +who fails because he lacks the art to seize the whole.<a name="FNanchor_360_360" id="FNanchor_360_360"></a><a href="#Footnote_360_360" class="fnanchor">[360]</a></p> + +<p>At the end of February (1857), at a party meeting of 160 members, Lord +Derby told his men that the course taken by Mr. Disraeli upon the budget +had been concerted with him and had his entire approval; spoke with +admiration of Mr. Gladstone; justified political union when produced by +men finding themselves drawn to the same lobby by identity of sentiment; +and advised them not to decline such accession of strength as would +place their party in a position to undertake the government of the +country. The newspapers cried out that the long-expected coalition had +at length really taken place. In their hearts the conservative managers +were not sure that Mr. Gladstone's adhesion would not cost them too +dearly. 'He would only benefit us by his talents' (says Lord Malmesbury) +'for we should lose many of our supporters. The Duke of Beaufort, one of +our staunchest adherents, told me at Longleat that if we coalesced with +the Peelites he would leave the party, and I remember in 1855, when Lord +Derby attempted to form a government, and offered places to Gladstone +and Herbert, that no less than eighty members of the House of Commons +threatened to leave him.'<a name="FNanchor_361_361" id="FNanchor_361_361"></a><a href="#Footnote_361_361" class="fnanchor">[361]</a> All these schemes and calculations were +destined to be rudely interrupted.</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">SPEECH ON THE CHINA WAR</p> + +<p>While he was acting with Lord Derby on the one hand, Mr. Gladstone +sought counsel from Cobden on the other, having great confidence in his +'firmness and integrity of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_563" id="Page_563">[Pg 563]</a></span> purpose,' and hoping for support from him in +face of a faint-hearted disposition to regard Lord Palmerston as a +magician against whom it was vain to struggle. Events were speedily to +show that Lord Palmerston had more magic at his disposal than his +valiant foe believed. The agent of the British government in the China +seas—himself, by the way, a philosophic radical—had forced a war upon +the Chinese. The cabinet supported him. On the motion of Cobden, the +House censured the proceeding. Mr. Gladstone, whose hatred of +high-handed iniquities in China had been stirred in early days,<a name="FNanchor_362_362" id="FNanchor_362_362"></a><a href="#Footnote_362_362" class="fnanchor">[362]</a> as +the reader may recall, made the most powerful speech in a remarkable +debate. 'Gladstone rose at half-past nine,' Phillimore says (Mar. 3), +'and delivered for nearly two hours an oration which enthralled the +House, and which for argument, dignity, eloquence, and effect is +unsurpassed by any of his former achievements. It won several votes. +Nobody denies that his speech was the finest delivered in the memory of +man in the House of Commons.' Apart from a rigorous examination of +circumstance and fact in the special case, as in the famous precedent of +Don Pacifico seven years before, he raised the dispute to higher planes +and in most striking language. He examined it both by municipal and +international law, and on 'the higher ground of natural justice'—'that +justice which binds man to man; which is older than Christianity, +because it was in the world before Christianity; which is broader than +Christianity, because it extends to the world beyond Christianity; and +which underlies Christianity, for Christianity itself appeals to it.... +War taken at the best is a frightful scourge upon the human race; but +because it is so, the wisdom of ages has surrounded it with strict laws +and usages, and has required formalities to be observed which shall act +as a curb upon the wild passions of man.... You have dispensed with all +these precautions. You have turned a consul into a diplomatist, and that +metamorphosed consul is forsooth to be at liberty to direct the whole +might of England against the lives of a defenceless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_564" id="Page_564">[Pg 564]</a></span> people.' Disraeli +in turn denounced proceedings which began in outrage and ended in ruin, +mocked at 'No reform, new taxes, Canton blazing, Persia invaded,' as the +programme of the party of progress and civilisation, and reprobated a +prime minister who had professed almost every principle, and connected +himself with almost every party. Palmerston replied by a stout piece of +close argument, spiced by taunts about coalitions, combinations, and +eloquent flourishes. But this time in parliament his slender majority +failed him.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>March 3, '57</i>.—Spoke on Cobden's resolutions, and voted in +263-247—a division doing more honour to the House of Commons than +any I ever remember. Home with C. and read Lord Ellesmere's +<i>Faust</i>, being excited, which is rare with me. (<i>Diary.</i>)</p></div> + +<p class="center">LORD PALMERSTON'S TRIUMPH</p> + +<p>The repulse was transient. The minister appealed to the constituencies, +and won a striking triumph. Nearly all the Manchester politicians, with +Bright and Cobden at their head, were ruthlessly dismissed, and the +election was a glorious ratification not only of the little war among +the Chinese junks, but of the great war against the Czar of Russia, and +of much besides. This, said Mr. Gladstone, was not an election like that +of 1784, when Pitt appealed on the question whether the crown should be +the slave of an oligarchic faction; nor like that of 1831, when Grey +sought a judgment on reform; nor like that of 1852, when the issue was +the expiring controversy of protection. The country was to decide not +upon the Canton river, but whether it would or would not have Lord +Palmerston for prime minister. 'The insolent barbarian wielding +authority at Canton who had violated the British flag' was indeed made +to play his part. But the mainspring of the electoral victory was to be +sought in the profound public weariness of the party dispersions of the +last eleven years; in the determination that the country should be +governed by men of intelligible opinions and definite views; in the +resolution that the intermediate tints should disappear; in the +conviction that Palmerston was the helmsman for the hour. The result was +justly compared to the plebiscite taken in France four or five years +earlier, whether they would have Louis Napoleon for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_565" id="Page_565">[Pg 565]</a></span> emperor or not. It +was computed that no fewer than one-sixth, or at best one-seventh, of +the most conspicuous men in the former House of Commons were thrust out. +The Derbyites were sure that the report of the coalition with the +Peelites had done them irreparable harm, though their electioneering was +independent. At Oxford Mr. Gladstone was returned without opposition. On +the other hand, his gallant attempt to save the seat of his +brother-in-law in Flintshire failed, his many speeches met much rough +interruption, and to his extreme mortification Sir Stephen Glynne was +thrown out.</p> + +<p>The moral of the general election was undoubtedly a heavy shock to Mr. +Gladstone, and he was fully conscious of the new awkwardness of his +public position. Painful change seemed imminent even in his intimate +relations with cherished friends. Sidney Herbert had written to him that +as for Gladstone, Graham, and himself, they were not only broken up as a +party, but the country intended to break them up and would resent any +attempt at resuscitation; they ought on no account to reappear as a +triumvirate on their old bench. Mr. Gladstone's reply discloses in some +of its phrases a peculiar warmth of sensibility, of which he was not +often wont to make much display:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;"><i>To Sidney Herbert</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>March 22, 1857</i>.—I did not reply to your letter when it arrived, +because it touches principally upon subjects with respect to which +I feel that my mind has been wrought into a state of sensitiveness +which is excessive and morbid. For the last eleven years, with the +exception of only two among them, the pains of political strife +have not for us found their usual and proper compensation in the +genial and extended sympathies of a great body of comrades, while +suspicion, mistrust, and criticism have flanked us on both sides +and in unusual measure. Our one comfort has been a concurrence of +opinion which has been upon the whole remarkably close, and which +has been cemented by the closer bonds of feeling and of friendship. +The loss of this one comfort I have no strength to face. Contrary +to your supposition, I have nothing with which to replace it; but +the attachments, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_566" id="Page_566">[Pg 566]</a></span> began with political infancy, and which +have lived through so many storms and so many subtler vicissitudes +will never be replaced. You will never be able to get away from me +as long as I can cling to you, and if at length, urged by your +conscience and deliberate judgment, you effect the operation, the +result will not be to throw me into the staff of Lord Derby. I +shall seek my duty, as well as consult my inclination, first, by +absconding from what may be termed general politics, and secondly, +by appearing, wherever I must appear, only in the ranks.</p> + +<p>I can neither give even the most qualified adhesion to the ministry +of Lord Palmerston, nor follow the liberal party in the abandonment +of the very principles and pledges which were original and +principal bonds of union with it. So, on the other hand, I never +have had any hope of conservative reconstruction except (and that +slender and remote) such as presupposed the co-operation—I am now +speaking for the House of Commons only—of yourself and Graham in +particular. By adopting Reform as a watchword of present political +action he has certainly inserted a certain amount of gap between +himself and me, which may come to be practically material or may +not. If you make a gap upon this opportunity, I believe it will be +a novelty in political history: it will be the first case on record +of separation between two men, all of whose views upon every public +question, political, administrative, or financial, are I believe in +as exact accordance as under the laws of the human mind is +possible....</p></div> + +<p>His leaning towards the conservative party seemed to become more decided +rather than less. Lord Aberdeen had written to him as if the +amalgamation of Peel's friends with the liberal party had practically +taken place. 'If that be true,' Mr. Gladstone replies (April 4, 1857), +'then I have been deceiving both the world and my constituents, and the +deception has reached its climax within the last fortnight, during which +I have been chosen without opposition to represent Oxford under a belief +directly contrary in the minds of the majority of my constituents.' He +saw nothing but evil in Lord Palmerston's supremacy. That was his +unending refrain. He tells one of his constituents, the state of things +'is likely to end in much political con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_567" id="Page_567">[Pg 567]</a></span>fusion if it is not stopped by +the failure of Lord Palmerston's physical force, the only way of +stopping it which I could view with regret, for I admire the pluck with +which he fights against the infirmities of age, though in political and +moral courage I have never seen a minister so deficient.' Cobden asked +him in the course of the first session of the new parliament, to take up +some position adverse to the ministers. 'I should not knowingly,' Mr. +Gladstone replies (June 16, 1857), 'allow any disgust with the state of +public affairs to restrain me from the discharge of a public duty; but I +arrived some time ago at the conclusion, which has guided my conduct +since the dissolution, that the House of Commons would sooner and more +healthily return to a sense of its own dignity and of its proper +functions, if let alone by a person who had so thoroughly worried both +it and the country as myself.'</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">DIVORCE BILL</p> + +<p>This stern resolve to hold aloof did not last. Towards the end of the +session a subject was brought before parliament that stirred him to the +very depths of heart and conscience. It marked one more stage of the +history of English laws in that immense process of the secularisation of +the state, against which, in his book of 1888, Mr. Gladstone had drawn +up, with so much weight of reading and thought, a case so wholly +unavailing. The legal doctrine of marriage had been established against +the theological doctrine by Lord Hardwicke's famous act of 1753, for +that measure made the observance of certain requirements then set up by +law essential to a good marriage. A further fundamental change had begun +with the legislation of civil marriage in 1836. The conception of +marriage underlying such a change obviously removed it from sacrament, +or anything like a sacrament, to the bleak and frigid zone of civil +contract; it was antagonistic, therefore, to the whole ecclesiastical +theory of divorce.<a name="FNanchor_363_363" id="FNanchor_363_363"></a><a href="#Footnote_363_363" class="fnanchor">[363]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_568" id="Page_568">[Pg 568]</a></span></p> + +<p>A royal commission issued a report in 1853, setting forth the case +against the existing system of dissolving marriage, and recommending +radical changes. In the following year the cabinet of which Mr. +Gladstone was a member framed and introduced a bill substantially +conforming to these recommendations. For one reason or another it did +not become law, nor did a bill of similar scope in 1856. In the interval +of leisure that followed, Mr. Gladstone was pressed, perhaps by Bishop +Wilberforce, thoroughly to consider the matter. With his prepossessions, +there could be little doubt that he would incline to that view of +marriage, and the terms and legal effects of loosening the marriage tie, +that the Council of Trent had succeeded in making the general marriage +law of catholic Europe. The subject was one peculiarly calculated to +interest and excite him. Religion and the church were involved. It +raised at our own hearths the eternal question of rendering to Cæsar +what is Cæsar's, and to the church what belongs to the church. It was +wrapped up with topics of history and of learning. It could not be +discussed without that admixture of legality and ethics which delights a +casuistic intellect. Above all, it went to the root both of that deepest +of human relations, and of that particular branch of morals, in which +Mr. Gladstone always felt the vividest concern. So, in short, being once +called upon for a practical purpose to consider divorce and the many +connected questions of re-marriage, he was inevitably roused to a +fervour on one side, not any less heated and intense than the fervour of +the mighty Milton on the other side two centuries before. He began +operations by an elaborate article in the <i>Quarterly Review</i>.<a name="FNanchor_364_364" id="FNanchor_364_364"></a><a href="#Footnote_364_364" class="fnanchor">[364]</a> Here +he flings himself upon the well-worn texts in the Bible familiar to the +readers of <i>Tetrachordon</i>,—if, indeed, <i>Tetrachordon</i> have any +readers,—with a dialectical acuteness and force that only make one +wonder the more how a mind so powerful as Mr. Gladstone's could dream +that, at that age of the world, men would suffer one of the most +far-reaching of all our social problems, whatever be the right or wrong +social solution, to be in the slightest degree affected by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_569" id="Page_569">[Pg 569]</a></span> a Greek word +or two of utterly disputable and unfixed significance.</p> + +<p class="center">INTEREST IN LAW OF DIVORCE</p> + +<p>I may note in passing that in another department of supposed Levitical +prohibition—the case of the wife's sister—he had in 1849 strongly +argued against relaxation, mainly on the ground that it would involve an +alteration of the law and doctrines of the church of England, and +therefore of the law of Christianity.<a name="FNanchor_365_365" id="FNanchor_365_365"></a><a href="#Footnote_365_365" class="fnanchor">[365]</a> Experience and time +revolutionised his point of view, and in 1869, in supporting a bill +legalising these marriages, he took the secular and utilitarian line, +and said that twelve or fourteen years earlier (about the time on which +we are now engaged) he formed the opinion that it was the mass of the +community to which we must look in dealing with such a question, and +that the fairest course would be to legalise the marriage contracts in +question, and legitimise their issue, leaving to each religious +community the question of attaching to such marriages a religious +character.<a name="FNanchor_366_366" id="FNanchor_366_366"></a><a href="#Footnote_366_366" class="fnanchor">[366]</a></p> + +<p>The Divorce bill of 1857 was introduced in the Lords, and passed by them +without effective resistance. It was supported by the Archbishop of +Canterbury and nine other prelates. Authorities no less exalted than +Bishop Wilberforce were violently hostile, even at one stage carrying +amendments (ultimately rejected), not only for prohibiting the +inter-marriage of the guilty parties, but actually imposing a fine or +imprisonment on either of them. This, I fancy, is the high-water mark of +the ecclesiastical theory in the century.<a name="FNanchor_367_367" id="FNanchor_367_367"></a><a href="#Footnote_367_367" class="fnanchor">[367]</a> Lord Mahon in a letter to +Mr. Gladstone at this date pictures Macaulay's New Zealander being taken +to the House of Lords and hearing learned lords and reverend prelates +lay down the canon that marriage is indissoluble by the law of England +and by the law of the church. But who, he might have asked, are those +two gentlemen listening so intently? Oh, these are two gentlemen whose +marriages were dissolved last year. And that other man? Oh, he was +divorced last week. And those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_570" id="Page_570">[Pg 570]</a></span> three ladies? Oh, their marriages may in +all probability be dissolved in another year or two. Still this view of +the absurdity of existing practice did not make a convert.</p> + +<p>As soon as the bill came down to the House of Commons Mr. Gladstone +hastened up to London in the dog-days. 'A companion in the railway +carriage,' he wrote to Mrs. Gladstone, 'more genial than congenial, +offered me his <i>Times</i>, and then brandy! This was followed by a proposal +to smoke, so that he had disabled me from objecting on personal +grounds.' Tobacco, brandy at odd hours, and the newspaper made a triple +abomination in a single dose, for none of the three was ever a favourite +article of his consumption. In London he found the counsels of his +friends by no means encouraging for the great fight on which he was +intent. They deprecated anything that would bring him into direct +collision with Lord Palmerston. They urged that violent opposition now +would be contrasted with his past silence, and with his own cabinet +responsibility for the very same proposal. Nothing would be intelligible +to the public, Lord Aberdeen said, beyond a 'carefully moderated +course.' But a carefully moderated course was the very last thing +possible to Mr. Gladstone when the flame was once kindled, and he fought +the bill with a holy wrath as vehement as the more worldly fury with +which Henry Fox, from very different motives, had fought the marriage +bill of 1753. The thought that stirred him was indicated in a phrase or +two to his wife at Hawarden: '<i>July 31</i>.—Parliamentary affairs are very +black; the poor church gets deeper and deeper into the mire. I am to +speak to-night; it will do no good; and the fear grows upon me from year +to year that when I finally leave parliament, I shall not leave the +great question of state and church better, but perhaps even worse, than +I found it.'</p> + +<p class="center">VEHEMENT OPPOSITION</p> + +<p>The discussion of the bill in the Commons occupied no fewer than +eighteen sittings, more than one of them, according to the standard of +those primitive times, inordinately long. In the hundred encounters +between Mr. Gladstone and Bethell, polished phrase barely hid +unchristian desire to retaliate and provoke. Bethell boldly taunted Mr. +Gladstone with insincerity. Mr. Gladstone, with a vivacity very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_571" id="Page_571">[Pg 571]</a></span> like +downright anger, reproached Bethell with being a mere hewer of wood and +drawer of water to the cabinet who forced the bill into his charge; with +being disorderly and abusing the privileges of speech by accusations of +insincerity, 'which have not only proceeded from his mouth but gleamed +from those eloquent eyes of his, which have been continuously turned on +me for the last ten minutes, instead of being addressed to the chair.' +On every division those who affirmed the principle of the bill were at +least two to one. 'All we can do,' Mr. Gladstone wrote to his wife, 'is +to put shoulder to shoulder, and this, please God, we will do. Graham is +with us, much to my delight, and much too, let me add, to my surprise. I +am as thankful to be in parliament for this (almost) as I was for the +China vote.... Yesterday ten and a-half hours, rather angry; to-day with +pacification, but still tough and prolonged.' An unfriendly but not +wholly unveracious chronicler says of this ten hours' sitting (August +14) on a single clause: 'Including questions, explanations, and +interlocutory suggestions, Mr. Gladstone made nine-and-twenty speeches, +some of them of considerable length. Sometimes he was argumentative, +frequently ingenious and critical, often personal, and not less often +indignant at the alleged personality of others.'</p> + +<p>He made no pretence of thinking the principle of divorce <i>a vinculo</i> +anything but an immense evil, but he still held himself free, if that +view were repudiated, to consider the legislative question of +dissolubility and its conditions. He resorted abundantly to what +Palmerston called 'the old standard set-up form of objecting to any +improvement, to say that it does not carry out all the improvements of +which the matter in hand is susceptible.' One of the complaints of which +he made most was the inequality in the bill between the respective +rights of husband and wife. 'It is the special and peculiar doctrines of +the Gospel,' he said, 'respecting the personal relation of every +Christian, whether man or woman, to the person of Christ, that form the +firm, the broad, the indestructible basis of the equality of the sexes +under the Christian law.' Again, 'in the vast majority of instances +where the woman falls into sin, she does so from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_572" id="Page_572">[Pg 572]</a></span> motives less impure +and ignoble than those of the man.' He attacks with just vigour the +limitation of legal cruelty in this case to the cruelty of mere force +importing danger to life, limb, or health, though he was shocked in +after years, as well he might be, at the grotesque excess to which the +doctrine of 'mental cruelty' has been carried in some States of the +American Union. In this branch of the great controversy, at any rate, he +speaks in a nobler and humaner temper than Milton, who writes with a +tyrannical Jewish belief in the inferiority of women to men, and wives +to husbands, that was in Mr. Gladstone's middle life slowly beginning to +melt away in English public opinion. His second complaint, and in his +eyes much the more urgent of the two, was the right conferred by the +government bill upon divorced persons to claim marriage by a clergyman +in a church, and still more bitterly did he resent the obligation +imposed by the bill upon clergymen to perform such marriages. Here the +fight was not wholly unsuccessful, and modifications were secured as the +fruit of his efforts, narrowing and abating, though not removing, his +grounds of objection.<a name="FNanchor_368_368" id="FNanchor_368_368"></a><a href="#Footnote_368_368" class="fnanchor">[368]</a></p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p class="center">DEATH OF LADY LYTTELTON</p> + +<p>Before the battle was over, he was torn away from the scene by a painful +bereavement. Mrs. Gladstone was at Hagley nursing her beloved sister, +Lady Lyttelton. He wrote to his wife in the fiercest hours of the fight +(11 Carlton House Terrace, Aug. 15): 'I read too plainly in your letter +of yesterday that your heart is heavy, and mine too is heavy along with +yours. I have been in many minds about my duty to-day; and I am all but +ready to break the bands even of the high obligations that have kept me +here with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_573" id="Page_573">[Pg 573]</a></span> reference to the marriage bill. You have only to speak the +word by telegraph or otherwise, showing that I can help to give any of +the support you need, and I come to you. As matters stand I am wanted in +the House to-day, and am wanted for the Divorce bill again on Monday.' +Before Monday came, Lady Lyttelton was no more. Four days after her +death, Mr. Gladstone wrote to Mr. Arthur Gordon from Hagley:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The loss suffered here is a dreadful one, but it is borne in the +way which robs death and all evil of its sting. My deceased +sister-in-law was so united with my wife; they so drew from their +very earliest years, and not less since marriage than before it, +their breath so to speak in common, that the relation I bore to her +conveys little even of what I have lost; but that again is little +compared to my wife's bereavement; and far above all to that of +Lyttelton, who now stands lonely among his twelve children. But the +retrospect from first to last is singularly bright and pure. She +seemed to be one of those rare spirits who do not need affliction +to draw them to their Lord, and from first to last there was scarce +a shade of it in her life. When she was told she was to die, her +pulse did not change; the last communion appeared wholly to sever +her from the world, but she smiled upon her husband within a minute +of the time when the spirit fled.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_574" id="Page_574">[Pg 574]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_357_357" id="Footnote_357_357"></a><a href="#FNanchor_357_357"><span class="label">[357]</span></a><a href="#Page_525">See above pp. 525-8.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_358_358" id="Footnote_358_358"></a><a href="#FNanchor_358_358"><span class="label">[358]</span></a> Phillimore's Diary.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_359_359" id="Footnote_359_359"></a><a href="#FNanchor_359_359"><span class="label">[359]</span></a> The reader will find a candid statement of the controversy in +Northcote, <i>Financial Policy</i>, pp. 306-329.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_360_360" id="Footnote_360_360"></a><a href="#FNanchor_360_360"><span class="label">[360]</span></a> <i>Ars Poetica</i>, 32-5.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_361_361" id="Footnote_361_361"></a><a href="#FNanchor_361_361"><span class="label">[361]</span></a> Malmesbury, <i>Memoirs</i>, ii. pp. 56-7. <a href="#Page_536">See above, p. 536.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_362_362" id="Footnote_362_362"></a><a href="#FNanchor_362_362"><span class="label">[362]</span></a><a href="#Page_225">See above, p. 225.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_363_363" id="Footnote_363_363"></a><a href="#FNanchor_363_363"><span class="label">[363]</span></a> It is a striking indication of the tenacity of custom against +logic that in France, though civil marriage was made not merely +permissive, as with us, but compulsory in 1792, divorce was banished +from French law from 1816 down to 1884.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_364_364" id="Footnote_364_364"></a><a href="#FNanchor_364_364"><span class="label">[364]</span></a> July 1857. Reprinted in <i>Gleanings</i>, vi. p. 47.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_365_365" id="Footnote_365_365"></a><a href="#FNanchor_365_365"><span class="label">[365]</span></a> House of Commons, June 20, 1849.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_366_366" id="Footnote_366_366"></a><a href="#FNanchor_366_366"><span class="label">[366]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, July 20, 1869. See also <i>Gleanings</i>, vi. p. 50.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_367_367" id="Footnote_367_367"></a><a href="#FNanchor_367_367"><span class="label">[367]</span></a> It may be said that the exaction of damages comes to the same +thing.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_368_368" id="Footnote_368_368"></a><a href="#FNanchor_368_368"><span class="label">[368]</span></a> In republishing in 1878 his article from the <i>Quarterly</i> +(<i>Gleanings</i>, vi. p. 106), he says his arguments have been too sadly +illustrated by the mischievous effects of the measure. The judicial +statistics, however, hardly support this view, that petitions for +divorce were constantly increasing, and at an accelerating rate of +progression. In England the proportion of divorce petitions to marriages +and the proportion of divorce decrees to population are both of them +lower than they were a few years ago. Mr. Gladstone used to desire the +prohibition of publicity in these proceedings, until he learned the +strong view of the president of the Court that the hideous glare of this +publicity acts probably as no inconsiderable deterrent.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIVCh_IX" id="BkIVCh_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">THE SECOND DERBY GOVERNMENT</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1858</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Extravagance and exaggeration of ideas are not the essential +characteristic of either political party in this country. Both of +them are composed in the main of men with English hearts and +English feelings. Each of them comprises within itself far greater +diversities of political principles and tendencies, than can be +noted as dividing the more moderate portion of the one from the +more moderate portion of the other.... But while the great English +parties differ no more in their general outlines than by a somewhat +varied distribution of the same elements in each, they are liable +to be favourably or unfavourably affected and their essential +characteristics unduly exaggerated, by circumstances of the order +that would be termed accidental.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span>.</p></div><br /> + +<p>The turn of the political wheel is constantly producing strange results, +but none has ever been more strikingly dramatic than when, on February +20, Bright and Milner Gibson, who had been ignominiously thrown out at +Manchester the year before, had the satisfaction of walking to the table +of the House of Commons as victorious tellers in the division on the +Conspiracy to Murder bill that overthrew Lord Palmerston. A plot to slay +the French Emperor had been organised by a band of Italian refugees in +London. The bombs were manufactured in England. Orsini's design +miscarried, but feeling in France was greatly excited, and the French +government formally drew attention at St. James's to the fact that +bodies of assassins abused our right of asylum. They hinted further that +the amity of the crown called for stronger law. Palmerston very sensibly +did not answer the French despatch, but introduced a bill with new +powers against conspiracy. He in an instant became the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_575" id="Page_575">[Pg 575]</a></span> most unpopular +man in the country, and the idol of the year before was now hooted in +the Park.</p> + +<p class="center">LORD PALMERSTON DEFEATED</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone was at first doubtful, but soon made up his mind. To Mrs. +Gladstone he writes (Feb. 17):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>As respects the Conspiracy bill, you may depend upon our having +plenty of fight; the result is doubtful; but if the bill gets into +the House of Lords it will pass. Lord Aberdeen is strong against +it. From him I went to-day to Lord Lyndhurst, and I found Lord +Brougham with him. A most interesting conversation followed with +these two wonderful old men at 80 and 86 (coming next birthday) +respectively, both in the fullest possession of their faculties, +Brougham vehement, impulsive, full of gesticulation, and not a +little rambling, the other calm and clear as a deep pool upon rock. +Lord Lyndhurst is decidedly against the bill, Brougham somewhat +inclines to it; being, as Lord Lyndhurst says, half a Frenchman. +[Lord Lyndhurst expounded the matter in a most luminous way from +his point of view. Brougham went into raptures and used these +words: 'I tell you what, Lyndhurst, I wish I could make an exchange +with you. I would give you some of my walking power, and you should +give me some of your brains.' I have often told the story with this +brief commentary, that the compliment was the highest I have ever +known to be paid by one human being to another.]<a name="FNanchor_369_369" id="FNanchor_369_369"></a><a href="#Footnote_369_369" class="fnanchor">[369]</a></p></div> + +<p>The debate showed a curious inversion of the parts usually played by +eminent men. Palmerston vainly explained that he was doing no more than +international comity required, and doing no worse than placing the +foreign refugee on the same footing in respect of certain offences as +the British subject. Mr. Gladstone (Feb. 19), on the other hand, 'as one +who has perhaps too often made it his business to call attention to the +failings of his countrymen,' contended that if national honour was not +henceforth to be a shadow and a name, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_576" id="Page_576">[Pg 576]</a></span> was the paramount, absolute, +and imperative duty of Her Majesty's ministers to protest against the +imputation upon us of favour for assassination, 'a plant which is +congenial neither to our soil nor to the climate in which we live.'<a name="FNanchor_370_370" id="FNanchor_370_370"></a><a href="#Footnote_370_370" class="fnanchor">[370]</a> +One of the truest things said in the debate was Disraeli's incidental +observation that 'the House should remember that in ninety-nine cases +out of a hundred, when there is a quarrel between two states, it is +generally occasioned by some blunder of a ministry.' Mr. Disraeli +perhaps consoled himself by the pithy saying of Baron Brunnow, that if +no one made any blunders, there would be no politics. The blood of the +<i>civis Romanus</i>, however, was up, and Palmerston, defeated by a majority +of nineteen, at once resigned.</p> + +<p class="center">CORRESPONDENCE WITH LORD DERBY</p> + +<p>Lord Derby, whose heart had failed him three years earlier, now formed +his second administration, and made one more attempt to bring Mr. +Gladstone over to the conservative ranks. Lord Lansdowne had told the +Queen that no other government was possible, and an hour after he had +kissed hands the new prime minister applied to Mr. Gladstone. The +decisions taken by him in answer to this and another application three +months later, mark one more of the curious turning points in his career +and in the fate of his party.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Feb. 20, 1858</i>.—Dined at Herbert's with Graham. We sat till 12½, +but did not talk quite through the crisis. Palmerston has resigned. +He is down. I must now cease to denounce him. 21.—St. James's +morning, and holy communion. Westminster Abbey in evening, when I +sat by Sir George Grey. From St. James's I went to Lord Aberdeen's. +There Derby's letter reached me. We sent for Herbert and I wrote an +answer. Graham arrived and heard it; with slight modifications it +went. The case though grave was not doubtful. Made two copies and +went <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_577" id="Page_577">[Pg 577]</a></span>off before 6 with S. Herbert. We separated for the evening +with the fervent wish that in public life we might never part.</p></div> + +<p>Two or three letters exhibit the situation:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;"><i>Lord Derby to Mr. Gladstone</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>St. James's Square, Feb. 21, 1858</i>.—In consequence of the adverse +vote of the other night, in which you took so prominent and +distinguished a part, the government, as you know, has resigned; +and I have been entrusted by the Queen with the difficult task, +which I have felt it my duty not to decline, of forming an +administration. In doing so, I am very desirous, if possible, of +obtaining the co-operation of men of eminence, who are not at this +moment fettered by other ties, and whose principles are not +incompatible with my own. Believing that you stand in this +position, it would afford me very great satisfaction if I could +obtain your valuable aid in forming my proposed cabinet; and if I +should be so fortunate as to do so, I am sure there would be on all +hands a sincere desire to consult your wishes, as far as possible, +as to the distribution of offices. I would willingly include Sidney +Herbert in this offer; but I fear he is too intimately associated +with John Russell to make it possible for him to accept.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;"><i>Mr. Gladstone to Lord Derby</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>10 <i>Great George Street, Feb. 21, 1851</i>.—I am very sensible of the +importance of the vote taken on Friday; and I should deeply lament +to see the House of Commons trampled on in consequence of that +vote. The honour of the House is materially involved in giving it +full effect. It would therefore be my first wish to aid, if +possible, in such a task; and remembering the years when we were +colleagues, I may be permitted to say that there is nothing in the +fact of your being the head of a ministry, which would avail to +deter me from forming part of it.</p> + +<p>Among the first questions I have had to put to myself, in +consequence of the offer which you have conveyed in such friendly +and flattering terms, has been the question whether it would be in +my power by accepting it, either alone or in concert with others, +to render you material service. After the long years during which +we have been separated, there would be various matters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_578" id="Page_578">[Pg 578]</a></span> of public +interest requiring to be noticed between us; but the question I +have mentioned is a needful preliminary. Upon the best +consideration which the moment allows, I think it plain that alone, +as I must be, I could not render you service worth your having. The +dissolution of last year excluded from parliament men with whom I +had sympathies; and it in some degree affected the position of +those political friends with whom I have now for many years been +united through evil and (much more rarely) through good report. +Those who lament the rupture of old traditions may well desire the +reconstitution of a party; but the reconstitution of a party can +only be effected, if at all, by the return of the old influences to +their places, and not by the junction of an isolated person. The +difficulty is even enhanced in my case by the fact that in your +party, reduced as it is at the present moment in numbers, there is +a small but active and not unimportant section who avowedly regard +me as the representative of the most dangerous ideas. I should +thus, unfortunately, be to you a source of weakness in the heart of +your own adherents, while I should bring you no party or group of +friends to make up for their defection or discontent.</p> + +<p>For the reasons which I have thus stated or glanced at, my reply to +your letter must be in the negative.</p> + +<p>I must, however, add that a government formed by you at this time +will, in my opinion, have strong claims upon me, and upon any one +situated as I am, for favourable presumptions, and in the absence +of conscientious difference on important questions, for support. I +have had an opportunity of seeing Lord Aberdeen and Sidney Herbert; +and they fully concur in the sentiments I have just expressed.</p></div> + +<p class="center">LETTER FROM MR. BRIGHT</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone had no close personal or political ties with the +Manchester men at this moment, but we may well believe that a sagacious +letter from Mr. Bright made its mark upon his meditations:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;"><i>Mr. Bright to Mr. Gladstone</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Reform Club, Feb. 21, '58</i>.—Coming down Park Lane just now, I met +a leading lawyer of Lord Derby's party, who will doubtless be in +office with him if he succeeds in forming a government. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_579" id="Page_579">[Pg 579]</a></span>He told me +that Lord Derby and his friends were expecting to be able to induce +you to join them.</p> + +<p>Will you forgive me if I write to you on this matter? I say nothing +but in the most friendly spirit, and I have some confidence that +you will not misinterpret what I am doing. Lord Derby has only +about one-third of the House of Commons with him—and it is +impossible by any management, or by any dissolution, to convert +this minority into a majority. His minority in the House is greater +and more powerful than it is in the country—and any appeal to the +country, now or hereafter, must, I think, leave him in no better +position than that in which he now finds himself. The whole liberal +party in the country dislike him, and they dislike his former +leader in the Commons; and notoriously his own party in the +country, and in the House, have not much confidence in him. There +is no party in the country to rally round him, as Peel was +supported in 1841. A Derby government can only exist upon +forbearance, and will only last till it is convenient for us and +the whigs to overthrow it. Lord Palmerston may give it his support +for a time, but he can give it little more than his own vote and +speeches, for the liberal constituencies will not forgive their +members if they support it. If you join Lord Derby, you link your +fortunes with a constant minority, and with a party in the country +which is every day lessening in numbers and in power. If you remain +on our side of the House, you are with the majority, and no +government can be formed without you. You have many friends there, +and some who would grieve much to see you leave them—and I know +nothing that can prevent your being prime minister before you +approach the age of every other member of the House who has or can +have any claim to that high office.</p> + +<p>If you agree rather with the men opposite than with those among +whom you have been sitting of late, I have nothing to say. I am +sure you will follow where 'the right' leads, if you only discover +it, and I am not hoping or wishing to keep you from the right. I +think I am not mistaken in the opinion I have formed of the +direction in which your views have for some years been tending. You +know well enough the direction in which the opinions of the country +are tending. The minority which invites you to join<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_580" id="Page_580">[Pg 580]</a></span> it, if honest, +must go or wish to go, in an opposite direction, and it cannot +therefore govern the country. Will you unite yourself with what +must be, from the beginning, an inevitable failure?</p> + +<p>Don't be offended, if, by writing this, I seem to believe you will +join Lord Derby. I don't believe it—but I can imagine your seeing +the matter from a point of view very different to mine—and I feel +a strong wish just to say to you what is passing in my mind. You +will not be the less able to decide on your proper course. If I +thought this letter would annoy you, I would not send it. I think +you will take it in the spirit in which it is written. No one knows +that I am writing it, and I write it from no idea of personal +advantage to myself, but with a view to yours, and to the interests +of the country. I may be mistaken, but think I am not. Don't think +it necessary to reply to this. I only ask you to read it, and to +forgive me the intrusion upon you—and further to believe that I am +yours, with much respect.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;"><i>Mr. Gladstone to Mr. Bright</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>10 <i>Great George Street, Feb. 22, '58</i>.—Your letter can only bear +one construction, that of an act of peculiar kindness which ought +not to be readily forgotten. For any one in whom I might be +interested I should earnestly desire, upon his entering public +life, that, if possible, he might with a good conscience end in the +party where he began, or else that he might have broad and definite +grounds for quitting it. When neither of these advantages appears +to be certainly within command, there remains a strong and +paramount consolation in seeking, as we best can, the truth and the +public interests; and I think it a marked instance of liberality, +that you should give me credit for keeping this object in my view.</p> + +<p>My seeking, however, has not on the present occasion been very +difficult. The opinions, such as they are, that I hold on many +questions of government and administration are strongly held; and +although I set a value, and a high value, upon the power which +office gives, I earnestly hope never to be tempted by its exterior +allurements, unless they are accompanied with the reasonable +prospect of giving effect to some at least of those opinions and +with some adequate opening for public good. On <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_581" id="Page_581">[Pg 581]</a></span>the present +occasion I have not seen such a prospect; and before I received +your letter yesterday afternoon I had made my choice.</p></div> + +<p>This ended the first scene of the short fifth act. The new government +was wholly conservative.</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">UNEASINESS OF FRIENDS</p> + +<p>Throughout the whole of this period, Mr. Gladstone's political friends +were uneasy about him. 'He writes and says and does too much,' Graham +had told Lord Aberdeen (Dec. 1856), and a year and a half later the same +correspondent notices a restless anxiety for a change of position, +though at Gladstone's age and with his abilities he could not wonder at +it. Mr. Gladstone was now approaching fifty; Graham was nearer seventy +than sixty; and Aberdeen drawing on to seventy-five. One of the most +eminent of his friends confessed that he was 'amazed at a man of +Gladstone's high moral sense of feeling being able to <i>bear</i> with Dizzy. +I can only account for it on the supposition, which I suppose to be the +true one, that personal dislike and distrust of Palmerston is the one +absorbing feeling with him.... I see no good ground for the violent +personal prejudice which is the sole ruling motive of Gladstone's and +Graham's course—especially when the alternative is such a man as +Dizzy.' Then comes some angry language about that enigmatic personage +which at this cooling distance of time need not here be transcribed. At +the end of 1856 Lord Aberdeen told Mr. Gladstone that his position in +the House was 'very peculiar.' 'With an admitted superiority of +character and intellectual power above any other member, I fear that you +do not really possess the sympathy of the House at large, while you have +incurred the strong dislike of a considerable portion of Lord Derby's +followers.'</p> + +<p>Things grew worse rather than better. Even friendly journalists in the +spring of 1858 wrote of him as 'the most signal example that the present +time affords of the man of speculation misplaced and lost in the +labyrinth of practical politics.' They call him the chief orator and the +weakest man in the House of Commons. He has exhibited at every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_582" id="Page_582">[Pg 582]</a></span> stage +traces of an unhappy incoherence which is making him a mere bedouin of +parliament, a noble being full of spirit and power, but not to be tamed +into the ordinary ways of civil life. His sympathies hover in hopeless +inconsistency between love for righteous national action, good +government, freedom, social and commercial reform, and a hankering after +a strong, unassailable executive in the old obstructive tory sense. He +protests against unfair dealing with the popular voice in the +Principalities on the Danube, but when the popular voice on the Thames +demands higher honours for General Havelock he resists it with the +doctrine that the executive should be wholly free to distribute honours +as it pleases. He is loudly indignant against the supersession of +parliament by diplomacy, but when a motion is made directly pointing to +the rightful influence of the House over foreign affairs, he neither +speaks nor votes. Is it not clear beyond dispute that his cannot be the +will to direct, nor the wisdom to guide the party of progress out of +which the materials for the government of this country will have to be +chosen?<a name="FNanchor_371_371" id="FNanchor_371_371"></a><a href="#Footnote_371_371" class="fnanchor">[371]</a></p> + +<p>In organs supposed to be inspired by Disraeli, Mr. Gladstone's fate is +pronounced in different terms, but with equal decision. In phrases that +must surely have fallen from the very lips of the oracle itself, the +public was told that 'cerebral natures, men of mere intellect without +moral passion, are quite unsuited for governing mankind.' The days of +the mere dialectician are over, and the rulers of Christendom are no +longer selected from the serfs of Aristotle. Without the emotions that +soar and thrill and enkindle, no man can attain 'a grand moral vision.' +When Mr. Gladstone aims at philosophy, he only reaches casuistry. He +reasons like one of the sons of Ignatius Loyola. What their Society is +to the Jesuit, his own individualism is to Mr. Gladstone. He supports +his own interests as much from intellectual zeal as from self-love. A +shrewd observer is quoted: 'looking on Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Sidney +Herbert sitting side by side, the former with his rather saturnine face +and straight black hair, and the latter eminently handsome, with his +bright, cold smile and subtlety of aspect, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_583" id="Page_583">[Pg 583]</a></span> have often thought that I +was beholding the Jesuit of the closet really devout, and the Jesuit of +the world, ambitious, artful, and always on the watch for making his +rapier thrusts.' Mr. Gladstone, in a word, is extremely eminent, but +strangely eccentric, 'a Simeon Stylites among the statesmen of his +time.'<a name="FNanchor_372_372" id="FNanchor_372_372"></a><a href="#Footnote_372_372" class="fnanchor">[372]</a></p> + +<p class="center">RENEWED PROPOSAL OF OFFICE</p> + +<p>In May an important vacancy occurred in the ministerial ranks by Lord +Ellenborough's resignation of the presidency of the board of control. +This became the occasion of a renewed proposal to Mr. Gladstone. He +tells the story in a memorandum prepared (May 22) for submission to +Aberdeen and Graham, whom Lord Derby urged him to consult.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Memorandum by Mr. Gladstone submitted to Lord Aberdeen and Sir +James Graham. May 22, '58</i>.</p> + +<p><i>Secret.</i>—Last week after Mr. Cardwell's notice but before the +debate began, Mr. Walpole, after previously sounding Sir William +Heathcote to a similar effect, called me aside in the lobby of the +House of Commons and inquired whether I could be induced to take +office. I replied that I thought that question put by him of his +own motion—as he had described it—was one that I could hardly +answer. It seemed plain, I said, that the actual situation was one +so entirely belonging to the government as it stood, that they must +plainly work through it unchanged; that the head of the government +was the only person who could make a proposal or put a question +about taking office in it; I added, however, that my general views +were the same as in February.</p> + +<p>This morning I had a note from Walpole asking for an appointment; +and he called on me at four o'clock accordingly. He stated that he +came by authority of Lord Derby to offer me the board of control +or, if I preferred it, the colonial office. That he had told Lord +Derby I should, he thought, be likely to raise difficulties on two +points: first, the separation from those who have been my friends +in public life; secondly, the leadership of the House of Commons. I +here interrupted him to say it must be in his option to speak or to +be silent on the latter of these subjects;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_584" id="Page_584">[Pg 584]</a></span> it was one which had +never been entertained or opened by me in connection with this +subject, since the former of the two points had offered an absolute +preliminary bar to the acceptance of office. He, however, explained +himself as follows, that Mr. Disraeli had stated his willingness to +surrender the leadership to Sir James Graham, if he were disposed +to join the government; but that the expressions he had used in his +speech of Thursday<a name="FNanchor_373_373" id="FNanchor_373_373"></a><a href="#Footnote_373_373" class="fnanchor">[373]</a> (apparently those with respect to parties +in the House and to office), seemed to put it beyond the right of +the government to make any proposal to him. He at the same time +spoke in the highest terms not only of the speech, but of the +position in which he thought it placed Sir James Graham; and he +left me to infer that there would have been, but for the cause +named, a desire to obtain his co-operation as leader of the House +of Commons. With respect to the proposal as one the acceptance of +which would separate me from my friends, he hoped it was not so. It +was one made to me alone, the immediate vacancy being a single one; +but the spirit in which it was made was a desire that it should be +taken to signify the wish of the government progressively to extend +its basis, as far as it could be effected compatibly with +consistency in its opinions. He added that judging from the past he +hoped he might assume that there was no active opposition to the +government on the part of my friends, naming Lord Aberdeen, Sir +James Graham, and the Duke of Newcastle.</p> + +<p>I told him with respect to the leadership that I thought it +handsome on the part of Mr. Disraeli to offer to waive it on behalf +of Sir James Graham; that it was a subject which did not enter into +my decision for the reason I had stated; and I hinted also that it +was one on which I could never negotiate or make stipulations. It +was true, I said, I had no broad differences of principle from the +party opposite; on the whole perhaps I differed more from Lord +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_585" id="Page_585">[Pg 585]</a></span>Palmerston than from almost any one, and this was more on account +of his temper and views of public conduct, than of any political +opinions. Nay more, it would be hard to show broad differences of +public principle between the government and the bench opposite.</p></div> + +<p class="center">RENEWED PROPOSAL OF OFFICE</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I said, however, that in my view the proposal which he had made to +me could not be entertained. I felt the personal misfortune and +public inconvenience of being thrown out of party connection; but a +man at the bottom of the well must not try to get out, however +disagreeable his position, until a rope or a ladder is put down to +him. In this case my clear opinion was that by joining the +government I should shock the public sentiment and should make no +essential, no important, change in their position.</p> + +<p>I expressed much regret that accidental causes had kept back from +my view at the critical moment the real extent of Lord Derby's +proposals in February; that I answered him then as an individual +with respect to myself individually.... I could not separate from +those with whom I had been acting all my life long, in concert with +whom all the habits of my mind and my views of public affairs had +been formed, to go into what might justly be called a cabinet of +strangers, since it contained no man to whom I had ever been a +colleague, with the single exception of Lord Derby, and that twelve +or fourteen years ago.</p> + +<p>While I did not conceive that public feeling would or ought to +approve this separation, on the other hand I felt that my +individual junction would and could draw no material accession of +strength to the cabinet. He made the marked admission that if my +acceptance must be without the <i>approval</i> of friends, that must +undoubtedly be an element of great weight in the case. This showed +clearly that Lord Derby was looking to me in the first place, and +then to others beyond me. He did not, however, found upon this any +request, and he took my answer as an absolute refusal. His tone +was, I need not say, very cordial; and I think I have stated all +that was material in the conversation, except that he signified +they were under the belief that Herbert entertained strong personal +feelings towards Disraeli.</p> + +<p>Returning home, however, at seven this evening I found a note<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_586" id="Page_586">[Pg 586]</a></span> from +Walpole expressing Lord Derby's wish in the following words: 'That +before you finally decide on refusing to accept the offer he has +made either of the colonies or of the India board he wishes you +would consult Sir James Graham and Lord Aberdeen.' In order to meet +this wish, I have put down the foregoing statement.</p></div> + +<p>Lord Aberdeen agreed with Mr. Gladstone that on the whole the balance +inclined to <i>no</i>.</p> + +<p>Graham, in an admirable letter, truly worthy of a wise, affectionate, +and faithful friend, said, 'My judgment is, on this occasion, balanced +like your own.' He ran through the catalogue of Mr. Gladstone's most +intimate political friends; the result was that he stood alone. Fixed +party ties and active official duties would conduce to his present +happiness and his future fame. He might form an intimate alliance with +Lord Derby with perfect honour. His natural affinities were strong, and +his 'honest liberal tendencies' would soon leaven the whole lump and +bring it into conformity with the shape and body of the times. As for +the leadership in the Commons, Graham had once thought that for +Gladstone to sit on the treasury bench with Disraeli for his leader +would be humiliation and dishonour. Later events had qualified this +opinion. Of course, the abdication of Disraeli could not be made a +condition precedent, but the concession would somehow be made, and in +the Commons pre-eminence would be Gladstone's, be the conditions what +they might. In fine, time was wearing fast away, Gladstone had reached +the utmost vigour of his powers, and present opportunities were not to +be neglected in vain expectation of better.</p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">LETTER FROM MR. DISRAELI</p> + +<p>Before this letter of Graham's arrived, an unexpected thing happened, +and Mr. Disraeli himself advanced to the front of the stage. His +communication, which opens and closes without the usual epistolary +forms, just as it is reproduced here, marks a curious episode, and sheds +a strange light on that perplexing figure:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_587" id="Page_587">[Pg 587]</a></span>—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11.5em;"><i>Mr. Disraeli to Mr. Gladstone</i>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Confidential.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I think it of such paramount importance to the public interests, +that you should assume at this time a commanding position in the +administration of affairs, that I feel it a solemn duty to lay +before you some facts, that you may not decide under a +misapprehension.</p> + +<p>Our mutual relations have formed the great difficulty in +accomplishing a result, which I have always anxiously desired.</p> + +<p>Listen, without prejudice, to this brief narrative.</p> + +<p>In 1850, when the balanced state of parties in the House of Commons +indicated the future, I endeavoured, through the medium of the late +Lord Londonderry, and for some time not without hope, to induce Sir +James Graham to accept the post of leader of the conservative +party, which I thought would remove all difficulties.</p> + +<p>When he finally declined this office, I endeavoured to throw the +game into your hands, and your conduct then, however unintentional, +assisted me in my views.</p> + +<p>The precipitate ministry of 1852 baffled all this. Could we have +postponed it another year, all might have been right.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, notwithstanding my having been forced publicly into +the chief place in the Commons, and all that occurred in +consequence, I was still constant to my purpose, and in 1855 +suggested that the leadership of the House should be offered to +Lord Palmerston, entirely with the view of consulting your feelings +and facilitating your position.</p> + +<p>Some short time back, when the power of dissolution was certain, +and the consequences of it such as, in my opinion, would be highly +favourable to the conservative party, I again confidentially sought +Sir James Graham, and implored him to avail himself of the +favourable conjuncture, accept the post of leader in the H. of C, +and allow both of us to serve under him.</p> + +<p>He was more than kind to me, and fully entered into the state of +affairs, but he told me his course was run, and that he had not +strength or spirit for such an enterprise.</p> + +<p>Thus you see, for more than eight years, instead of thrusting +myself into the foremost place, I have been, at all times, actively +prepared to make every sacrifice of self for the public good, +which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_588" id="Page_588">[Pg 588]</a></span> I have ever thought identical with your accepting office in +a conservative government.</p> + +<p>Don't you think the time has come when you might deign to be +magnanimous?</p> + +<p>Mr. Canning was superior to Lord Castlereagh in capacity, in +acquirements, in eloquence, but he joined Lord C. when Lord C. was +Lord Liverpool's lieutenant, when the state of the tory party +rendered it necessary. That was an enduring, and, on the whole, not +an unsatisfactory connection, and it certainly terminated very +gloriously for Mr. Canning.</p> + +<p>I may be removed from the scene, or I may wish to be removed from +the scene.</p> + +<p>Every man performs his office, and there is a Power, greater than +ourselves, that disposes of all this.</p> + +<p>The conjuncture is very critical, and if prudently yet boldly +managed, may rally this country. To be inactive now is, on your +part, a great responsibility. If you join Lord Derby's cabinet, you +will meet there some warm personal friends; all its members are +your admirers. You may place me in neither category, but in that, I +assure you, you have ever been sadly mistaken. The vacant post is, +at this season, the most commanding in the commonwealth; if it were +not, whatever office you filled, your shining qualities would +always render you supreme; and if party necessities retain me +formally in the chief post, the sincere and delicate respect which +I should always offer you, and the unbounded confidence, which on +my part, if you choose you could command, would prevent your +feeling my position as anything but a form.</p> + +<p>Think of all this in a kindly spirit. These are hurried lines, but +they are heartfelt. I was in the country yesterday, and must return +there to-day for a county dinner. My direction is Langley Park, +Slough. But on Wednesday evening I shall be in town.—<span class="smcap">B. Disraeli</span>. +<i>Grosvenor Gate, May 25, 1858</i>.</p></div> + +<p>None of us, I believe, were ever able to persuade Mr. Gladstone to do +justice to Disraeli's novels,—the spirit of whim in them, the ironic +solemnity, the historical paradoxes, the fantastic glitter of dubious +gems, the grace of high comedy, all in union with a social vision that +often pierced deep below the surface. In the comparative stiff<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_589" id="Page_589">[Pg 589]</a></span>ness of +Mr. Gladstone's reply on this occasion, I seem to hear the same accents +of guarded reprobation:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;"><i>Mr. Gladstone to Mr. Disraeli</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>11 <i>Carlton House Terrace, May 25, '58</i>.—<span class="smcap">My Dear Sir</span>,—The +letter you have been so kind as to address to me will enable me, I +trust, to remove from your mind some impressions with which you +will not be sorry to part.</p> + +<p>You have given me a narrative of your conduct since 1850 with +reference to your position as leader of your party. But I have +never thought your retention of that office matter of reproach to +you, and on Saturday last I acknowledged to Mr. Walpole the +handsomeness of your conduct in offering to resign it to Sir James +Graham.</p> + +<p>You consider that the relations between yourself and me have proved +the main difficulty in the way of certain political arrangements. +Will you allow me to assure you that I have never in my life taken +a decision which turned upon those relations.</p> + +<p>You assure me that I have ever been mistaken in failing to place +you among my friends or admirers. Again I pray you to let me say +that I have never known you penurious in admiration towards any one +who had the slightest claim to it, and that at no period of my +life, not even during the limited one when we were in sharp +political conflict, have I either felt any enmity towards you, or +believed that you felt any towards me.</p> + +<p>At the present moment I am awaiting counsel which at Lord Derby's +wish I have sought. But the difficulties which he wishes me to find +means of overcoming, are broader than you may have supposed. Were I +at this time to join any government I could not do it in virtue of +party connections. I must consider then what are the conditions +which make harmonious and effective co-operation in cabinet +possible—how largely old habits enter into them—what connections +can be formed with public approval—and what change would be +requisite in the constitution of the present government, in order +to make any change worth a trial.</p> + +<p>I state these points fearlessly and without reserve, for you have +yourself well reminded me that there is a Power beyond us that +disposes of what we are and do, and I find the limits of choice in +public life to be very narrow.—I remain, etc.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_590" id="Page_590">[Pg 590]</a></span></p></div> + +<p class="center">THE SECOND DERBY GOVERNMENT</p> + +<p>The next day Mr. Gladstone received Graham's letter already described. +The interpretation that he put upon it was that although Graham appeared +to lean in favour of acceptance, 'yet the counsel was indecisive.' On +ordinary construction, though the counsellor said that this was a case +in which only the man himself could decide, yet he also said that +acceptance would be for the public good. 'Your affirmative advice, had +it even been more positive, was not approval, nor was Lord Aberdeen's. +On the contrary it would have been like the orders to Balaam, that he +should go with the messengers of Balak, when notwithstanding the +command, the act was recorded against him.' We may be quite sure that +when a man draws all these distinctions, between affirmative advice, +positive advice, approval, he is going to act without any advice at all, +as Mr. Gladstone was in so grave a case bound to do. He declined to +join.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;"><i>Mr. Gladstone to Lord Derby</i>.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Private.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>11 <i>C.H. Terrace, May 26, '58</i>.—I have this morning received +Sir James Graham's reply, and I have seen Lord Aberdeen before and +since. Their counsel has been given in no narrow or unfriendly +spirit. It is, however, indecisive, and leaves upon me the +responsibility which they would have been glad if it had been in +their power to remove. I must therefore adhere to the reply which I +gave to Mr. Walpole on Saturday; for I have not seen, and I do not +see, a prospect of public advantage or of material accession to +your strength, from my entering your government single-handed.</p> + +<p>Had it been in your power to raise fully the question whether those +who were formerly your colleagues, could again be brought into +political relation with you, I should individually have thought it +to be for the public good that, under the present circumstances of +the country, such a scheme should be considered deliberately and in +a favourable spirit. But I neither know that this is in your power, +nor can I feel very sanguine hopes that the obstacles in the way of +this proposal on the part of those whom it would embrace, could be +surmounted. Lord Aberdeen is the person who could best give a +dispassionate and weighty opinion on that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_591" id="Page_591">[Pg 591]</a></span>subject. For me the +question, confined as it is to myself, is a narrow one, and I am +bound to say that I arrive without doubt at the result.</p></div> + +<p class="center">REFUSAL</p> + +<p>'I hope and trust,' said Graham, when he knew what Mr. Gladstone had +done, 'that you have decided rightly; my judgment inclined the other +way. I should be sorry if your letter to Lord Derby led him to make any +more extended proposal. It could not possibly succeed, as matters now +stand; and the abortive attempt would be injurious to him. The +reconstruction of the fossil remains of the old Peel party is a hopeless +task. No human power can now reanimate it with the breath of life; it is +decomposed into atoms and will be remembered only as a happy accident, +while it lasted.'<a name="FNanchor_374_374" id="FNanchor_374_374"></a><a href="#Footnote_374_374" class="fnanchor">[374]</a></p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p class="center">SUEZ CANAL</p> + +<p>In one remarkable debate of this summer the solitary statesman descended +from his pillar. Now was the time of the memorable scheme for the +construction of the Suez Canal, that first emanated from the French +group of Saint Simonian visionaries in the earlier half of the century. +Their dream had taken shape in the fertile and persevering genius of +Lesseps, and was at this time the battle-ground of engineers, statesmen, +and diplomatists in every country in Europe. For fifteen years the +British government had used all their influence at Constantinople to +prevent the Sultan from sanctioning the project. In June a motion of +protest was made in the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston persisted that +the scheme was the greatest bubble that ever was imposed upon the +credulity and simplicity of the people of this country; the public +meetings on its behalf were got up by a pack of foreign projectors; +traffic by the railway would always beat traffic by steamer through the +canal; it would be a step towards the dismemberment of the Turkish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_592" id="Page_592">[Pg 592]</a></span> +empire; it would tend to dismember our own empire by opening a passage +between the Mediterranean and the Indian ocean, which would be at the +command of other nations and not at ours. Away, then, with such a +sacrifice of the interest of Great Britain to philanthropic schemes and +philosophic reveries! So much for the sound practical man. Mr. Gladstone +followed. Don't let us, he said, have governments and ex-governments +coming down to instruct us here on bubble schemes. As a commercial +project, let the Suez Canal stand or fall upon commercial grounds. With +close reasoning, he argued against the proposition that the canal would +tend to sever Turkey from Egypt. As to possible danger to our own +interests, was it not a canal that would fall within the control of the +strongest maritime power in Europe? And what could that power be but +ourselves? Finally, what could be more unwise than to present ourselves +to the world as the opponents of a scheme on the face of it beneficial +to mankind, on no better ground than remote and contingent danger to +interests of our own, with the alleged interest of Turkey merely thrust +hypocritically in for the purpose of justifying a policy purely +narrow-minded and wholly selfish? The majority against the motion was +large, as it was in the case of the seven cardinals against Galileo. +Still the canal was made, with some very considerable consequences that +were not foreseen either by those who favoured it or those who mocked it +as a bubble. M. de Lesseps wrote to Mr. Gladstone from Constantinople +that the clearness of his speech had enabled him to use it with good +effect in his negotiations with the Porte. 'Your eloquent words, the +authority of your name, and the consideration that attaches to your +character, have already contributed much and will contribute more still +to hinder the darkening and complication of a question of itself +perfectly clear and simple, and to avoid the troubling of the relations +between two countries of which it is the natural mission to hold aloft +<i>together</i> the flag of modern civilisation.'</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone took an active interest in the various measures—some of +them extremely singular—proposed by Mr. Disraeli for the transfer of +the government of India from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_593" id="Page_593">[Pg 593]</a></span> the Company to the crown. Writing early in +the year to Sir James Graham he argued that their object should be +steadily and vigorously to resist all attempts at creating a monster +military and civil patronage, and to insist upon a real check on the +Indian minister. He had much conversation with Mr. Bright—not then an +intimate acquaintance—on the difficulty of the problem to govern a +people by a people. The two agreed strongly as to one prominent +possibility of mischief: they both distrusted the discretion confided to +the Indian minister in the use of the Indian army. Mr. Gladstone set a +mark upon the bill by carrying a clause to provide that the Indian army +should not be employed beyond the frontiers of India without the +permission of parliament. This clause he privately hoped would 'afford a +standing-ground from which a control might be exercised on future +Palmerstons.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_594" id="Page_594">[Pg 594]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_369_369" id="Footnote_369_369"></a><a href="#FNanchor_369_369"><span class="label">[369]</span></a> The portion within brackets is from a letter of Mr. Gladstone's to +Lady Lyndhurst, Aug. 31, 1883, and he continues: 'I have often compared +Lord Lyndhurst in my own mind with the five other lord chancellors who +since his time have been my colleagues in cabinet: much to the +disadvantage in certain respects of some of them. Once I remember in the +Peel cabinet the conversation happened to touch some man (there are +such) who was too fond of making difficulties. Peel said to your +husband, “That is not your way, Lyndhurst.” Of all the intellects I have +ever known, his, I think, worked with the least friction.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_370_370" id="Footnote_370_370"></a><a href="#FNanchor_370_370"><span class="label">[370]</span></a> 'Happily for the reputation of the House, but unhappily for the +ministry, the debate assumed once more, with Gladstone's eloquence, a +statesmanlike character. The foremost speaker of the House showed +himself worthy of his reputation ... much as there was to lament in the +too radical tone of his often finespun argumentation. His thundering +periods were received with thundering echoes of applause.'—Vitzthum, +<i>St. Petersburg and London</i>, i. p. 273.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_371_371" id="Footnote_371_371"></a><a href="#FNanchor_371_371"><span class="label">[371]</span></a> See <i>Spectator</i>, May 8, 1858.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_372_372" id="Footnote_372_372"></a><a href="#FNanchor_372_372"><span class="label">[372]</span></a> <i>Press</i>, April 7, 1858.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_373_373" id="Footnote_373_373"></a><a href="#FNanchor_373_373"><span class="label">[373]</span></a> I wish to state that it is by the courtesy of hon. gentlemen that +I occupy a seat on this (the ministerial) side of the House, although I +am no adherent of Her Majesty's government. By no engagement, express or +implied, am I their supporter. On the contrary, my sympathies and +opinions are with the liberal party sitting on the opposite side of the +House, and from recent kind communications I have resumed those habits +of friendly intercourse and confidential communication with my noble +friend (Lord John Russell) which formerly existed between us.—<i>May</i> 20, +1858.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_374_374" id="Footnote_374_374"></a><a href="#FNanchor_374_374"><span class="label">[374]</span></a> 'I wish,' said Mr. Disraeli to Bishop Wilberforce in 1862, 'you +could have induced Gladstone to join Lord Derby's government when Lord +Ellenborough resigned in 1858. It was not my fault that he did not: I +almost went on my knees to him.'—<i>Life</i>, iii. p. 70. +</p><p> +Vitzthum reports a conversation with Mr. Disraeli in January 1858, of a +different tenor: 'We are at all times ready,' he said, 'to take back +this deserter, but only if he surrenders unconditionally.'—Vitzthum, i. +p. 269.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIVCh_X" id="BkIVCh_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">THE IONIAN ISLANDS</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1858-1859</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The world is now taking an immense interest in Greek affairs, and +does not seem to know why. But there are very good reasons for it. +Greece is a centre of life, and the only possible centre for the +Archipelago, and its immediate neighbourhood. But it is vain to +think of it as a centre from which light and warmth can proceed, +until it has attained to a tolerable organisation, political and +economical. I believe in the capacity of the people to receive the +boon.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span> (1862).</p></div><br /> + +<p class="center">PROPOSAL FROM BULWER</p> + +<p>At the beginning of October, while on a visit to Lord Aberdeen at Haddo, +Mr. Gladstone was amazed by a letter from the secretary of state for the +colonies—one of the two famous writers of romance then in Lord Derby's +cabinet—which opened to him the question of undertaking a special +mission to the Ionian islands. This, said Bulwer Lytton, would be to +render to the crown a service that no other could do so well, and that +might not inharmoniously blend with his general fame as scholar and +statesman. 'To reconcile a race that speaks the Greek language to the +science of practical liberty seemed to me a task that might be a noble +episode in your career.' The origin of an invitation so singular is +explained by Phillimore:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>November 2nd, 1858</i>.—Lord Carnarvon (then under-secretary at the +colonial office) sent an earnest letter to me to come to the C.O. +and advise with Rogers and himself as to drawing the commission. I +met Bulwer Lytton there, overflowing with civility. The offer to +Gladstone had arisen as I expected from Lord C., and he had told B. +L. the conversation which he (C.) and I had together in the summer, +in which I told Lord C. that I thought Gladstone would accept a +mission extraordinary to Naples.... <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_595" id="Page_595">[Pg 595]</a></span>I risked without authority +from G. this communication. Lord C. bore it in mind, and from this +suggestion of mine sprang in fact this offer. So Lord C. said to +me.</p></div> + +<p>Lord Malmesbury very sensibly observed that to send Mr. Gladstone to +Naples was out of the question, in view of his famous letters to Lord +Aberdeen. To the new proposal Mr. Gladstone replied that his first +impulse on any call from a minister of the crown to see him on public +business, would be to place himself at the minister's disposal. The +interview did not occur for a week or two. Papers were sent from the +colonial office to Hawarden, long letters followed from the secretary of +state, and Mr. Gladstone took time to consider. The constitution of the +Ionian islands had long been working uneasily, and what the colonial +secretary invited him to undertake was an inquiry on the spot into our +relations there, and into long-standing embarrassments that seemed to be +rapidly coming to a head. Sir John Young, then lord high commissioner of +the Ionian islands, had been with him at Eton and at Oxford, besides +being a Peelite colleague in parliament, and Mr. Gladstone was not +inclined to be the instrument of indicating disparagement of his friend. +Then, moreover, he was in favour of 'a very liberal policy' in regard to +the Ionian islands, and possibly the cabinet did not agree to a very +liberal policy. As for personal interest and convenience, he was not +disposed to raise any difficulty in such a case.</p> + +<p>The Peelite colleagues whose advice he sought were all, with the single +exception of the Duke of Newcastle, more or less unconditionally +adverse. Lord Aberdeen (October 8) admitted that Mr. Gladstone's name, +acquirements, and conciliatory character might operate powerfully on the +Ionians; still many of them were false and artful, and the best of them +little better than children. 'It is clear,' he said, 'that Bulwer has +sought to allure you with vague declarations and the attractions of +Homeric propensities.... I doubt if Homer will be a <i>cheval de bataille</i> +sufficiently strong to carry you safely through the intricacies of this +enterprise.' The sagacious Graham also warned him that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_596" id="Page_596">[Pg 596]</a></span> little credit +would be gained by success, while failure would be attended by serious +inconveniences: in any case to quell 'a storm in a teapot' was no +occupation worthy of his powers and position. Sidney Herbert was strong +that governments were getting more and more into the bad habit of +delegating their own business to other people; he doubted success, and +expressed his hearty wish that we could be quit of the protectorate +altogether, and could hand the islands bodily over to Greece, to which +by blood, language, religion, and geography they belonged.</p> + +<p>I have said that these adverse views were almost unqualified, and such +qualification as existed was rather remarkable. 'The only part of the +affair I should regard with real pleasure,' wrote Lord Aberdeen, 'would +be the means it might afford you of drawing closer to the government, +and of naturally establishing yourself in a more suitable position; for +in spite of Homer and Ulysses, your Ionian work will by no means be +<i>tanti</i> in itself.' Graham took the same point: 'An approximation to the +government may be fairly sought or admitted by you. But this should take +place on higher grounds.' Thus, though he was now in fact unconsciously +on the eve of his formal entry into a liberal cabinet, expectations +still survived that he might re-join his old party.</p> + +<p>As might have been expected, the wanderings of Ulysses and the geography +of Homer prevailed in Mr. Gladstone's mind over the counsels of +parliamentary Nestors. Besides the ancient heroes, there was the +fascination of the orthodox church, so peculiar and so irresistible for +the anglican school to which Mr. Gladstone belonged. Nor must we leave +out of account the passion for public business so often allied with the +student's temperament; the desire of the politician out of work for +something definite to do; Mr. Gladstone's keen relish at all times for +any foreign travel that came in his way; finally, and perhaps strongest +of all, the fact that his wife's health had been much shaken by the +death of her sister, Lady Lyttelton, and the doctors were advising +change of scene, novel interests, and a southern climate. His decision +was very early a foregone conclusion. So his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_597" id="Page_597">[Pg 597]</a></span> doubting friends could +only wish him good fortune. Graham said, 'If your hand be destined to +lay the foundation of a Greek empire on the ruins of the Ottoman, no +hand can be more worthy, no work more glorious. <i>Recidiva manu posuissem +Pergama</i> was a noble aspiration;<a name="FNanchor_375_375" id="FNanchor_375_375"></a><a href="#Footnote_375_375" class="fnanchor">[375]</a> with you it may be realised.'</p> + +<p class="center">MISSION ACCEPTED</p> + +<p>He hastened to enlist the services as secretary to his commission of Mr. +Lacaita, whose friendship he had first made seven years before, as we +have seen, amid the sinister tribunals and squalid dungeons of Naples. +For dealings with the Greco-Italian population of the islands he seemed +the very man. 'As regards Greek,' Mr. Gladstone wrote to him, 'you are +one of the few persons to whom one gives credit for knowing everything, +and I assumed on this ground that you had a knowledge of ancient Greek, +such as would enable you easily to acquire the <i>kind</i> of acquaintance +with the modern form, such as is, I presume, desirable. That is my own +predicament; with the additional disadvantage of our barbarous English +pronunciation.' Accompanied by Mrs. Gladstone and their eldest daughter, +and with Mr. Arthur Gordon, the son of Lord Aberdeen, and now, after +long service to the state, known as Lord Stanmore, for private +secretary, Mr. Gladstone left England on November 8, 1858, and he +returned to it on the 8th of March 1859.</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p class="center">THE IONIAN CASE</p> + +<p>The Ionian case was this. By a treaty made at Paris in November 1815, +between Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, the seven +islands—scattered along the coast from Epiros to the extreme south of +the Morea—were constituted into a single free and independent state +under the name of the United States of the Ionian Islands, and this +state was placed under the immediate and exclusive protection of Great +Britain. The Powers only thought of keeping the islands out of more +dubious hands, and cared little or not at all about conferring any +advantage upon either us or the Ionians. The States were to regulate +their own internal organisation, and Great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_598" id="Page_598">[Pg 598]</a></span> Britain was 'to employ a +particular solicitude with regard to the legislation and general +administration of those states,' and was to appoint a lord high +commissioner to reside there with all necessary powers and authorities. +The Duke of Wellington foretold that it would prove 'a tough and +unprofitable job,' and so in truth it did. A constitutional charter in +1817 formed a system of government that soon became despotic enough to +satisfy Metternich himself. The scheme has been justly described as a +singularly clever piece of work, appearing to give much while in fact +giving nothing at all. It contained a decorous collection of chapters, +sections, and articles imposing enough in their outer aspect, but in +actual operation the whole of them reducible to a single clause enabling +the high commissioner to do whatever he pleased.</p> + +<p>This rough but not ill-natured despotism lasted for little more than +thirty years, and then in 1849, under the influence of the great +upheaval of 1848, it was changed into a system of more popular and +democratic build. The old Venetians, when for a couple of centuries they +were masters in this region, laid it down that the islanders must be +kept with their teeth drawn and their claws clipped. Bread and the +stick, said Father Paul, that is what they want. This view prevailed at +the colonial office, and maxims of Father Paul Sarpi's sort, +incongruously combined with a paper constitution, worked as ill as +possible. Mr. Gladstone always applied to the new system of 1849 Charles +Buller's figure, of first lighting the fire and then stopping up the +chimney. The stick may be wholesome, and local self-government may be +wholesome, but in combination or rapid alternation they are apt to work +nothing but mischief either in Ionian or any other islands. Sir Charles +Napier—the Napier of Scinde—who had been Resident in Cephalonia thirty +years before, in Byron's closing days, describes the richer classes as +lively and agreeable; the women as having both beauty and wit, but of +little education; the poor as hardy, industrious, and intelligent—all +full of pleasant humour and vivacity, with a striking resemblance, says +Napier, to his countrymen, the Irish. The upper class was mainly Italian +in origin,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_599" id="Page_599">[Pg 599]</a></span> and willingly threw all the responsibility for affairs on +the British government. The official class, more numerous in proportion +to population than in any country in Europe, scrambled for the petty +salaries of paltry posts allotted by popular election. Since 1849 they +had increased by twenty-five per cent., and were now one in a hundred of +the inhabitants. The clergy in a passive way took part with the +demagogues. Men of ability and sense were not wanting, but being +unorganised, discouraged, and saturated with distrust, they made no +effort to stem the jobbery, corruption, waste, going on around them. +Roads, piers, aqueducts, and other monuments of the British protectorate +reared before 1849, were falling to pieces. Taxes were indifferently +collected. Transgressors of local law went unpunished. In ten years the +deficit in the revenue had amounted to nearly £100,000, or two-thirds of +a year's income. The cultivators of the soil figured in official reports +as naturally well affected, and only wishing to grow their currants and +their olives in peace and quietness. But they were extremely poor, and +they were ignorant and superstitious, and being all these things it was +inevitable that they should nurse discontent with their government. +Whoever wanted their votes knew that the way to get them was to denounce +the Englishman as ἑτερόδοξος καὶ ξένος, heretic, alien, and tyrant. +There was a senate of six members, chosen by the high commissioner from +the assembly. The forty-two members of the assembly met below galleries +that held a thousand persons, and nothing made their seats and salaries +so safe as round declamations from the floor to the audience above, on +the greatness of the Hellenic race and the need for union with the Greek +kingdom. The municipal officer in charge of education used to set as a +copy for the children, a prayer that panhellenic concord might drive the +Turks out of Greece and the English out of the seven islands.</p> + +<p>Cephalonia exceeded the rest of the group both in population and in +vehemence of character, while Zante came first of all in the industry +and liveliness of its people.<a name="FNanchor_376_376" id="FNanchor_376_376"></a><a href="#Footnote_376_376" class="fnanchor">[376]</a> These<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_600" id="Page_600">[Pg 600]</a></span> two islands were the main +scene and source of difficulty. In Cephalonia nine years before the date +with which we are now dealing, an agrarian rising had occurred more like +a bad whiteboy outrage than a national rebellion, and it was suppressed +with cruel rigour by the high commissioner of the day. Twenty-two people +had been hanged, three hundred or more had been flogged, most of them +without any species of judicial investigation. The fire-raisings and +destruction of houses and vineyards were of a fierce brutality to match. +These Ionian atrocities were the proceedings with which Prince +Schwarzenberg had taunted Lord Aberdeen by way of rejoinder to Mr. +Gladstone's letters on barbarous misgovernment in Naples, and the +feelings that they had roused were still smouldering. Half a dozen +newspapers existed, all of them vehemently and irreconcilably unionist, +though all controlled by members of the legislative assembly who had +taken an oath at the beginning of each parliament to respect and +maintain the constitutional rights of the protecting sovereign. The +liberty of unlicensed printing, however, had been subject to a pretty +stringent check. By virtue of what was styled a power of high police, +the lord high commissioner was able at his own will and pleasure to tear +away from home, occupation, and livelihood anybody that he chose, and +the high police found its commonest objects in the editors of +newspapers. An obnoxious leading article was not infrequently followed +by deportation to some small and barren rock, inhabited by a handful of +fishermen. Not Cherubim and Seraphim, said Mr. Gladstone, could work +such a system. A British corporal with all the patronage in his hands, +said another observer, would get on better than the greatest and wisest +statesman since Pericles, if he had not the patronage. It was little +wonder that a distracted lord high commissioner, to adopt the similes of +the florid secretary of state, should one day send home a picture like +Salvator's Massacre of the Innocents, or Michel Angelo's Last Judgment, +and the next day recall the swains of Albano at repose in the landscapes +of Claude; should one day advise his chiefs to wash their hands of the +Ionians, and on the morrow should hint that perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_601" id="Page_601">[Pg 601]</a></span> the best thing +would be by a bold <i>coup d'état</i> to sweep away the constitution.<a name="FNanchor_377_377" id="FNanchor_377_377"></a><a href="#Footnote_377_377" class="fnanchor">[377]</a></p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">THE STOLEN DESPATCH</p> + +<p>Immediately after Mr. Gladstone had started, what the secretary of state +described as the most serious misfortune conceivable happened. A +despatch was stolen from the pigeon-holes of the colonial office, and a +morning paper printed it. It had been written home some eighteen months +before by Sir John Young, and in it he advised his government, with the +assent of the contracting powers, to hand over either the whole of the +seven islands to Greece, or else at least the five southern islands, +while transforming Corfu and its little satellite of Paxo into a British +colony. It was true that a few days later he had written a private +letter, wholly withdrawing this advice and substituting for it the exact +opposite, the suppression namely of such freedom as the islanders +possessed. This second fact the public did not know, nor would the +knowledge of it have made any difference. The published despatch stood +on record, and say what they would, the startling impression could not +be effaced. Well might Lytton call it an inconceivable misfortune. It +made Austria uneasy, it perturbed France, and it irritated Russia, all +of them seeing in Mr. Gladstone's mission a first step towards the +policy recommended in the despatch. In the breasts of the islanders it +kindled intense excitement, and diversified a chronic disorder by a +sharp access of fever. It made Young's position desperate, though he was +slow to see it, and practically it brought the business of the high +commissioner extraordinary to nought before it had even begun.</p> + +<p>He learned the disaster, for disaster it was, at Vienna, and appears to +have faced it with the same rigorous firmness and self-command that some +of us have beheld at untoward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_602" id="Page_602">[Pg 602]</a></span> moments long after. The ambassador told +him that he ought to see the Austrian minister. With Count Buol he had a +long interview accordingly, and assured him that his mission had no +concern with any question of Ionian annexation whether partial or total. +Count Buol on his part disclaimed all aggressive tendencies in respect +of Turkey, and stated emphatically that the views and conduct of Austria +in her Eastern policy were in the strictest sense conservative.</p> + +<p>Embarking at Trieste on the warship <i>Terrible</i>, Nov. 21, and after a +delightful voyage down the Adriatic, five days after leaving Vienna +(Nov. 24th) Mr. Gladstone found himself at Corfu—the famous island of +which he had read such memorable things in Thucydides and Xenophon, the +harbour where the Athenians had fitted out the expedition to Syracuse, +so disastrous to Greek democracy; where the young Octavian had rallied +his fleet before the battle of Actium, so critical for the foundation of +the empire of the Cæsars; and whence Don John had sallied forth for the +victory of Lepanto, so fatal to the conquering might of the Ottoman +Turks. It was from Corfu that the brothers Bandiera had started on their +tragic enterprise for the deliverance of Italy fourteen years before. +Mr. Gladstone landed under a salute of seventeen guns, and was received +with all ceremony and honour by the lord high commissioner and his +officers.</p> + +<p class="center">ARRIVAL AT CORFU</p> + +<p>He was not long in discovering what mischief the stolen despatch had +done, and may well have suspected from the first in his inner mind that +his efforts to undo it would bear little fruit. The morning after his +arrival the ten members for Corfu came to him in a body with a petition +to the Queen denouncing the plan of making their island a British +colony, and praying for union with Greece. The municipality followed +suit in the evening. The whole sequel was in keeping. Mr. Gladstone with +Young's approval made a speech to the senate, in which he threw over the +despatch, severed his mission wholly from any purpose or object in the +way of annexation, and dwelt much upon a circular addressed by the +foreign office in London to all its ministers abroad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_603" id="Page_603">[Pg 603]</a></span> disclaiming any +designs of that kind. He held levees, he called upon the archbishop, he +received senators and representatives, and everywhere he held the same +emphatic language. He soon saw enough to convince him of the harm done +to British credit and influence by the severities in Cephalonia; by the +small regard and frequent contempt shown by many Englishmen for the +religion of the people for whose government they were responsible; by +the diatribes in the London press against the Ionians as brigands, +pirates, and barbarians; and by the absence in high commissioners and +others 'of tact, good sense, and good feeling in the sense in which it +is least common in England, the sense namely in which it includes a +disposition to enter into and up to a certain point sympathise with, +those who differ with us in race, language, and creed.' Perhaps his +penetrating eye early discovered to him that forty years of bad rule had +so embittered feeling, that even without the stolen despatch, he had +little chance.</p> + +<p>He made a cruise round the islands. His visit shook him a good deal with +respect to two of the points—Corfu and Ithaca—on which it has been +customary to dwell as proving Homer's precise local knowledge. The rain +poured in torrents for most of the time, but it cleared up for a space +to reveal the loveliness of Ithaca. In the island of Ulysses and +Penelope he danced at a ball given in his honour. In Cephalonia he was +received by a tumultuous mob of a thousand persons, whom neither the +drenching rains nor the unexpected manner of his approach across the +hills could baffle. They greeted him with incessant cries for union with +Greece, thrust disaffected papers into his carriage, and here and there +indulged in cries of κάτω ἡ προστασία, down with the protectorate, down +with the tyranny of fifty years. This exceptional disrespect he ascribed +to what he leniently called the history of Cephalonia, meaning the +savage dose of martial law nine years before. He justly took it for a +marked symbol of the state of excitement at which under various +influences the popular mind had arrived. Age and infirmity prevented the +archbishop from coming to offer his respects, so after his levee<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_604" id="Page_604">[Pg 604]</a></span> Mr. +Gladstone with his suite repaired to the archbishop. 'We found him,' +says Mr. Gordon, 'seated on a sofa dressed in his most gorgeous robes of +gold and purple, over which flowed down a long white beard.... Behind +him stood a little court of black-robed, black-bearded, black-capped, +dark-faced priests. He is eighty-six years old, and his manners and +appearance were dignified in the extreme. Speaking slowly and distinctly +he began to tell Gladstone that the sole wish of Cephalonia was to be +united to Greece, and there was something very exciting and affecting in +the tremulous tones of the old man saying over and over again, “<i>questa +infelice isola, questa isola infelice</i>,” as the tears streamed down his +cheeks and long silvery beard. It was like a scene in a play.'</p> + +<p>At Zante (Dec. 15), the surface was smoother. A concourse of several +thousands awaited him; Greek flags were flying on all sides in the +strong morning sea-breeze; the town bands played Greek national tunes; +the bells were all ringing; the harbour was covered with boats full of +gaily dressed people; and the air resounded with loud shouts ζήτω ὁ +φιλέλλην Γλάδστων, ζήτω ἡ ἕνωσις μετὰ τῆς Ἕλλαδος, Long live Gladstone the +Philhellene, hurrah for union with Greece.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Every room and passage in the residency, Mr. Gordon writes to Lord +Aberdeen, was already thronged.... Upstairs the excitement was +great, and as soon as Gladstone had taken his place, in swept +Gerasimus the bishop (followed by scores of swarthy priests in +their picturesque black robes) and tendered to him the petition for +union. But before he could deliver it, Gladstone stopped him and +addressed to him and to the assembly a speech in excellent Italian. +Never did I hear his beautiful voice ring out more clear or more +thrillingly than when he said, '<i>Ecco l' inganno</i>.'... It was a +scene not to be forgotten. The priests, with eye and hand and +gesture, expressed in lively pantomime to each other the effect +produced by each sentence, in what we should think a most +exaggerated way, like a chorus on the stage, but the effect was +most picturesque.</p></div> + +<p class="center">VISITS ATHENS</p> + +<p>He attended a banquet one night, went to the theatre the next, where he +was greeted with lusty zetos, and at mid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_605" id="Page_605">[Pg 605]</a></span>night embarked on the +<i>Terrible</i> on his way to Athens. His stay in the immortal city only +lasted for three or four days, and I find no record of his impressions. +They were probably those of most travellers educated enough to feel the +spell of the Violet Crown. Illusions as to the eternal summer with which +poets have blessed the Isles of Greece vanished as they found deep snow +in the streets, icicles on the Acropolis, and snow-balling in the +Parthenon. He had a reception only a shade less cordial than if he were +Demosthenes come back. He dined with King Otho, and went to a <i>Te Deum</i> +in honour of the Queen's birthday. Finlay, the learned man who had more +of the true spirit of history than most historians then alive, took him +to a meeting of the legislature; he beheld some of the survivors of the +war of independence, and made friends with one valiant lover of freedom, +the veteran General Church. Though, thanks to the generosity of an +Englishman, they had a university of their own at Corfu, the Ionians +preferred to send their sons to Athens, and the Athenian students +immediately presented a memorial to Mr. Gladstone with the usual prayer +for union with the Hellenic kingdom. On the special object of his visit, +he came away from Athens with the impression that opinion in Greece was +much divided on the question of immediate union with the Ionian islands. +In truth his position had been a false one. Everybody was profoundly +deferential, but nobody was quite sure whether he had come to pave the +way for union, or to invite the Athenian government to check it, and +when Rangabé, the foreign minister, found him without credentials or +instructions, and staved off all discussion, Mr. Gladstone must have +felt that though he had seen one of the two or three most wondrous +historic sites on the globe, that was all.</p> + +<p class="center">IN ALBANIA</p> + +<p>Of a jaunt to wilder scenes a letter of Mr. Arthur Gordon's gives a +pleasant glimpse:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>You will like an account of an expedition the whole party made +yesterday to Albania to pay a visit to an old lady, a great +proprietress, who lives in a large ruinous castle at a place called +Filates. She is about the greatest personage in these regions, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_606" id="Page_606">[Pg 606]</a></span> +it was thought that the lord high commissioner should pay her a +visit if he wished to see Albania.... It was a lovely morning, and +breakfast was laid on the balcony of the private apartments looking +over the garden and commanding the loveliest of views across the +strait. Gladstone was in the highest spirits, full of talk and +<i>romping boyishly</i>. After breakfast the L.H.C.'s barge and the +cutters of the <i>Terrible</i> conveyed us on board the pretty little +gunboat.</p> + +<p>We reached Sayada in about two hours, and were received on landing +by the governor of the province, who had ridden down from Filates +to meet us. We went to the house of the English vice-consul, whilst +the long train of horses was preparing to start, but after a few +minutes' stay there Gladstone became irrepressibly restless, and +insisted on setting off to walk—I of course walked too. The old +steward also went with us, and a guard of eight white-kilted +palikari on foot. The rest of the party rode, and from a slight +hill which we soon reached, it was very pretty to look back at the +long procession starting from Sayada and proceeding along the +narrow causeway running parallel to our path, the figures +silhouetted against the sea. Filates is about 12 miles from Sayada, +perhaps more, the path is rugged and mountainous, and commands some +fine views. Our palikari guards fired off their long Afghan-looking +guns in every direction, greatly to Gladstone's annoyance, but +there was no stopping them.</p> + +<p>Scouts on the hills gave warning of our approach, and at the +entrance to Filates we were met by the whole population. First the +Valideh's retainers, then the elders, then the moolahs in their +great green turbans, the Christian community, and finally, on the +top of the hill, the Valideh's little grandson, gorgeously dressed, +and attended by his tutor and a number of black slaves. The little +boy salaamed to Gladstone with much grace and self-possession, and +then conducted us to the castle, in front of which all the +townsfolk who were not engaged in receiving us were congregated in +picturesque groups on the smooth grassy lawns and under the great +plane trees. The castle is a large ruinous enclosure of walls and +towers, with buildings of all sorts and ages within. The Valideh +herself, attired in green silk and a fur pelisse, her train held by +two negro female slaves, received us at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_607" id="Page_607">[Pg 607]</a></span>the head of the stairs and +ushered us into a large room with a divan round three sides of it. +Sweetmeats and water and pipes and coffee were brought as usual, +some of the cups and their filigree stands very handsome. We went +out to see the town, preceded by a tall black slave in a gorgeous +blue velvet jacket, with a great silver stick in his hand. Under +his guidance we visited the khans, the bazaar, and the mosque; not +only were we allowed to enter the mosque with our shoes on, but on +Gladstone expressing a wish to hear the call to prayer, the muezzin +was sent up to the top of the minaret to call the azan two hours +before the proper time. The sight of the green-turbaned imam crying +the azan for a Frank was most singular, and the endless variety of +costume displayed by the crowds who thronged the verandahs which +surround the mosque was most picturesque. The gateway of the castle +too was a picturesque scene. Retainers and guards, slaves and +soldiers, and even women, were lounging about, and a beautiful tame +little pet roedeer played with the pretty children in bright +coloured dresses, clustering under the cavernous archway.</p> + +<p>We had dinner in another large room. I counted thirty-two dishes, +or I may say courses, for each dish at a Turkish dinner is brought +in separately, and it is rude not to eat of all! The most +picturesque part of the dinner, and most unusual, was the way the +room was lighted. Eight tall, grand Albanians stood like statues +behind us, each holding a candle. It reminded me of the +torch-bearers who won the laird his bet in the <i>Legend of +Montrose</i>.</p> + +<p>After dinner there was a long and somewhat tedious interval of +smoking and story-telling in the dark, and we called upon Lacaita +to recite Italian poetry, which he did with much effect, pouring +out sonnet after sonnet of Petrarch, including that which my father +thinks the most beautiful in the Italian language, that which has +in it the 'Campeggiar del angelico riso.' This showed me how easy +it was to fall into the habits of a country. Gladstone is as +unoriental as any man well can be, yet his calling on Lacaita to +recite was really just the same thing that every Pasha does after +dinner, when he orders his tale-teller to repeat a story. The +ladies meanwhile were packed off to the harem for the night, Lady +Bowen acting as their interpreter. My L.H.C., his two +secretaries, his three aide-de-camps, Captains Blomfield and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_608" id="Page_608">[Pg 608]</a></span> +Clanricarde, and the vice-consul, all slept in the same room, and +that not a large one, and we were packed tight on the floor, under +quilts of Brusa silk and gold, tucked up round us by gorgeous +Albanians. Gladstone amused himself with speculating whether or no +we were in contravention of the provisions of Lord Shaftesbury's +lodging-house act!</p> + +<p>After a month of cloudless sunshine it took it into its head to +rain this night of all nights in the year, and rain as it only does +in these regions. Gladstone and I walked down again despite of +wind, rain, and mud, and our palikari guard—to keep up their +spirits, I suppose—chanted wild choruses all the way. We nearly +got stuck altogether in the muddy flat near Sayada, and got on +board the <i>Osprey</i> wet through, my hands so chilled I could hardly +steer the boat. Of course we had far outwalked the riding party, so +we had to wait. What a breakfast we ate! that is those of us who +could eat, for the passage was rough and Gladstone and the ladies +flat on their backs and very sorry for themselves.</p></div> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone's comment in his diary is brief: 'The whole impression is +saddening; it is all indolence, decay, stagnation; the image of God +seems as if it were nowhere. But there is much of wild and picturesque.' +The English in the island, both civil and military, adopted the tone of +unfriendly journals in London, and the garrison went so far as not even +to invite Mr. Gladstone to mess, a compliment never omitted before. The +Ionians, on the other hand, like people in most other badly governed +countries did not show in the noblest colours. There were petitions, +letters, memorials, as to which Mr. Gladstone mildly notes that he has +to 'lament a spirit of exaggeration and obvious errors of fact.' There +was a stream of demands from hosts of Spiridiones, Christodulos, +Euphrosunes, for government employ, and the memorial survives, attested +by bishop and clergy, of a man with a daughter to marry, who being too +poor to find a dowry 'had decided on reverting to your Excellency's +well-known philhellenism, and with tears in his eyes besought that your +Excellency,' et cetera.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_609" id="Page_609">[Pg 609]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">CORRESPONDENCE WITH BULWER</p> + +<p>One incident was much disliked at home, as having the fearsome flavour +of the Puseyite. It had been customary at levees for the lord high +commissioner to bow to everybody, but also to shake hands with the +bishops and sundry other high persons. Mr. Gladstone stooped and +actually kissed the bishop's hand. Sir Edward Lytton inquired if the +story were true, as a question might be asked in parliament. It is true, +said Mr. Gladstone (February 7), but 'I hope Sir E. L. will not in his +consideration for me entangle himself in such a matter, but as he knows +nothing now, will continue to know nothing, and will say that the +subject did not enter into his instructions, and that he presumes I +shall be at home in two or three more weeks to answer for all my +misdeeds.'<a name="FNanchor_378_378" id="FNanchor_378_378"></a><a href="#Footnote_378_378" class="fnanchor">[378]</a></p> + +<p>The secretary of state and his potent emissary—the radical who had +turned tory and the tory who was on the verge of formally turning +liberal—got on excellently together. Though he was not exact in +business, the minister's despatches and letters show shrewdness, good +sense, and right feeling, with a copious garnish of flummery. Demagogy, +he says to Mr. Gladstone, will continue to be a trade and the most +fascinating of all trades, because animated by personal vanity, and its +venality disguised even to the demagogue himself by the love of country, +by which it may be really accompanied. The Ionian constitution should +certainly be mended, for 'my convictions tell me that there is nothing +so impracticable as the Unreal.' He comforts his commissioner by the +reminder that a population after all has one great human heart, and a +great human heart is that which chiefly exalts the Man of Genius over +the mere Man of Talent, so that when a Man of Genius with practical +experience of the principles of sound government comes face to face with +a people whose interest it is to be governed well, the chances are that +they will understand each other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_610" id="Page_610">[Pg 610]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone applied himself with the utmost gravity to the affairs of +a pygmy state with a total population under 250,000. His imagination did +its work. While you seem, he said most truly, to be dealing only with a +few specks scarcely visible on the map of Europe, you are engaged in +solving a problem as delicate and difficult as if it arose on a far more +conspicuous stage. The people he found to be eminently gifted by nature +with that subtlety which is apt to degenerate into sophistry, and prone +to be both rather light-minded and extremely suspicious. The permanent +officials in Downing Street, with less polite analysis, had been +accustomed to regard the islanders more bluntly as a 'pack of scamps.' +This was what had done the mischief. The material condition of the +cultivators was in some respects not bad, but Mr. Gladstone laid down a +profound and solid principle when he said that 'no method of dealing +with a civilised community can be satisfactory which does not make +provision for its political action as well as its social state.'<a name="FNanchor_379_379" id="FNanchor_379_379"></a><a href="#Footnote_379_379" class="fnanchor">[379]</a> +The idea of political reform had for a time made head against the idea +of union with the Greek kingdom, but for some years past the whole +stream of popular tendency and feeling set strongly towards union, and +disdained contentment with anything else. Mankind turn naturally to the +solutions that seem the simplest. Mr. Gladstone condemned the existing +system as bad for us and bad for them. Circumstances made it impossible +for him to suggest amendment by throwing the burden bodily off our +shoulders, and at that time he undoubtedly regarded union with Greece as +in itself undesirable for the Ionians. Circumstances and his own love of +freedom made it equally impossible to recommend the violent suppression +of the constitution. The only course<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_611" id="Page_611">[Pg 611]</a></span> left open was to turn the mockery +of free government into a reality, and this operation he proposed to +carry out with a bold hand. The details of this enlargement of popular +rights and privileges, and the accompanying financial purgation, do not +now concern us. Whether the case either demanded or permitted +originality in the way of construction I need not discuss. The +manufacture of a constitution is always the easiest thing in the world. +The question is whether the people concerned will work it, and in spite +of that buoyant optimism which never in any circumstances deserted him +in respect of whatever business he might have in hand, Mr. Gladstone +must have doubted whether his islanders would ever pretend to accept +what they did not seek, as a substitute for what they did seek but were +not allowed to have. Before anybody knew the scope of his plan, the six +newspapers flew to arms with a vivacity that, whether it was Italian or +was Greek, was in either case a fatal sign of the public temper. What, +they cried, did the treaty of 1815 mean by describing the Ionian state +as free and independent? What was a protectorate, and what the rights of +the protector? Was there no difference between a protector and a +sovereign? What could be more arrogant and absurd than that the +protector, who was not sovereign, should talk about 'conceding' reforms +to a free and independent state? All these questions were in themselves +not very easy to answer, but what was a more serious obstacle than the +argumentative puzzles of partisans was a want of moral and political +courage; was the sycophancy of one class, and the greediness of +others.<a name="FNanchor_380_380" id="FNanchor_380_380"></a><a href="#Footnote_380_380" class="fnanchor">[380]</a></p> + +<p class="center">CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM</p> + +<p>Closely connected with the recommendations of constitutional reform was +the question by whom the necessary communications with the assembly were +to be conducted. Sir John Young was obviously impossible, though he was +not at once brought to face the fact. Mr. Gladstone upon this made to +the colonial secretary (December 27) an offer that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_612" id="Page_612">[Pg 612]</a></span> if he had already +determined on Young's recall, and if he thought reform would stand a +better chance if introduced by Mr. Gladstone himself, he was willing to +serve as lord high commissioner for the very limited time that might be +necessary. We may be sure that the government lost not an hour in making +up their minds on a plan that went still further both in the way of +bringing Mr. Gladstone into still closer connection with them, and +towards relieving themselves of a responsibility which they never from +the first had any business to devolve upon Mr. Gladstone or anybody +else. The answer came by telegraph (January 11), 'The Queen accepts. +Your commission is being made out.'</p> + +<p>All other embarrassments were now infinitely aggravated by the sudden +discovery from the lawyers that acceptance of the new office not only +vacated the seat in parliament, but also rendered Mr. Gladstone +incapable of election until he had ceased to hold the office. 'This, I +must confess,' he told Sir Edward, 'is a great blow. The difficulty and +the detriment are serious' (January 17). If some enemy on the meeting of +the House in February should choose to move the writ for the vacant seat +at Oxford, the election would necessarily take place at a date too early +for the completion of the business at Corfu, and Mr. Gladstone still at +work as high commissioner would still therefore be ineligible. Nobody +was ever by constitution more averse than Mr. Gladstone to turning +backward, and in this case he felt himself especially bound to go +forward not only by the logic of the Ionian situation at the moment, but +for the reason which was also characteristic of him, that the Queen in +approving his appointment (January 7) had described his conduct as both +patriotic and most opportune, and therefore he thought there would be +unspeakable shabbiness in turning round upon her by a hurried +withdrawal. The Oxford entanglement thus became almost desperate. +Resolved not to disturb the settled order of proceeding with his +assembly, Mr. Gladstone with a thoroughly characteristic union of +ingenuity and tenacity tried various ways of extrication. To complete +the mortifications of the position, the telegraph broke down.</p> + +<p class="center">QUESTION OF THE OXFORD SEAT</p> + +<p>The scrape was nearly as harassing to his friends at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_613" id="Page_613">[Pg 613]</a></span> home as to +himself. Politicians above all men can never safely count on the charity +that thinketh no evil. Lord John Russell told Lord Aberdeen that it was +clear that Gladstone was staying away to avoid a discussion on the +coming Reform bill. There was a violent attack upon him in the <i>Times</i> +(January 13) as having supplanted Young. The writers of leading articles +looked up Greek history from the days of the visit of Ulysses to +Alcinous downwards, and they mocked his respect for the countrymen of +Miltiades, and his reverence for the church of Chrysostom and +Athanasius. The satirists of the cleverest journal of the day admitted +his greatness, the brilliance and originality of his finance, the +incomparable splendour of his eloquence, and a courage equal to any +undertaking, that quailed before no opposition and suffered no abatement +in defeat, and they only marvelled the more that a statesman of the +first rank should accept at the hands of an insidious rival a fifth-rate +mission—insidious rival not named but easy to identify. The fact that +Mr. Gladstone had hired a house at Corfu was the foundation of a +transcendent story that Mr. Disraeli wished to make him the king of the +Ionian islands. 'I hardly think it needful to assure you,' Mr. Gladstone +told Lytton, 'that I have never attached the smallest weight to any of +the insinuations which it seems people have thought worth while to +launch at some member or members of your government with respect to my +mission.' Though Mr. Gladstone was never by any means unconscious of the +hum and buzz of paltriness and malice that often surrounds conspicuous +public men, nobody was ever more regally indifferent. Graham predicted +that though Gladstone would always be the first man in the House of +Commons, he would not again be what he was before the Ionian business. +They all thought that he would be attacked on his return. '<i>Ah</i>,' said +Aberdeen, '<i>but he is terrible in the rebound</i>.'</p> + +<p>After much perplexity and running to and fro in London, it was arranged +between the secretary of state and Mr. Gladstone's friends, including +Phillimore principally, and then Northcote and M. Bernard, that a course +of proceeding should be followed, which Mr. Gladstone when he knew it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_614" id="Page_614">[Pg 614]</a></span> +thought unfortunate. A new commission naming a successor was issued, and +Mr. Gladstone then became <i>ipso facto</i> liberated. Sir Henry Storks was +the officer chosen, and as soon as his commission was formally received +by him, he was to execute a warrant under which he deputed all powers to +Mr. Gladstone until his arrival. Whether Mr. Gladstone was lord high +commissioner when he came to propose his reform is a moot point. So +intricate was the puzzle that the under-secretary addressed a letter to +Mr. Gladstone by his name and not by the style of his official dignity, +because he could not be at all sure what that official dignity really +was. What is certain is that Mr. Gladstone, though it was never his way +to quarrel with other people's action taken in good faith on his behalf, +did not perceive the necessity for proceeding so rapidly to the +appointment of his successor, and thought it decidedly injurious to such +chances as his reforms might have possessed.<a name="FNanchor_381_381" id="FNanchor_381_381"></a><a href="#Footnote_381_381" class="fnanchor">[381]</a></p> + +<p>The assembly that had been convoked by Sir John Young for an +extraordinary session (January 25), at once showed that its labours +would bear no fruit. Mr. Gladstone as lord high commissioner opened the +session with a message that they had met to consider proposals for +reform which he desired to lay before them as soon as possible. The game +began with the passing of a resolution that it was the single and +unanimous <i>will</i> (θέλησις) of the Ionian people that the seven islands +should be united to Greece. Mr. Gladstone fought like a lion for +scholar's authority to treat the word as only meaning wish or +disposition, and he took for touchstone the question whether men could +speak of the θέλησις of the Almighty; the word in the Lord's Prayer was +found to be θέλημα. As Finlay truly says, it would have been much more +to the point to accept the word as it was meant by those who used it. As +to that no mistake was possible. Some say that he ought plainly to have +told them they had violated the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_615" id="Page_615">[Pg 615]</a></span> constitution, to have dissolved them, +and above all to have stopped their pay. Instead of this he informed +them that they must put their wishes into the shape of a petition to the +Queen. The idea was seized with alacrity (January 29). Oligarchs and +demagogues were equally pleased to fall in with it, the former because +they hoped it would throw their rivals into deeper discredit with their +common master, the latter because they knew it would endear them to +their constituents.</p> + +<p class="center">OPENING OF THE IONIAN SESSION</p> + +<p>The Corfiotes received the declaration of the assembly and the address +to the Queen with enthusiasm. Great crowds followed the members to their +homes with joyous acclamations, all the bells of the town were set +ringing, there was a grand illumination for two nights, and the +archbishop ordered a <i>Te Deum</i>. Neither te-deums nor prayers melted the +heart of the British cabinet, aware of the truth impressed at the time +on Mr. Gladstone by Lytton, that neither the English public nor the +English parliament likes any policy that '<i>gives anything up</i>.' The +Queen was advised to reply that she could neither consent to abandon the +obligations she had undertaken, nor could permit any application from +the islands to other Powers in furtherance of any similar design.</p> + +<p>Then at last came the grand plan for constitutional reconstruction. Mr. +Gladstone after first stating the reply of the Queen, read an eloquent +address to the assembly (February 4) in Italian, adjuring them to reject +all attempts to evade by any indirect devices the duty of pronouncing a +clear and intelligible judgment on the propositions now laid before +them. His appeal was useless, and it was received exactly as plans for +assimilating Irish administration to English used to be. The +nationalists knew that reform would be a difficulty the more in the way +of separation, the retrogrades knew it would be a spoke in the wheel of +their own jobbery. Mr. Gladstone professed extreme and truly +characteristic astonishment in respect of the address to the Queen, that +they should regard the permission to ask as identical with the promise +to grant, and the right to petition as equivalent to the right to +demand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_616" id="Page_616">[Pg 616]</a></span> If the affair had been less practically vexatious, we can +imagine the Socratic satisfaction with which Mr. Gladstone would have +revelled in pressing all these and many other distinctions on those who +boasted of being Socrates' fellow-countrymen.</p> + +<p>From day to day anxiously did Mr. Gladstone watch what he called the +dodges of the assembly. Abundant reason as there was to complain of the +conduct of the Ionians in all these proceedings, it is well to record +the existence of a number of sincere patriots and enlightened men like +the two brothers Themistocles, Napoleon Zambelli, and Sir Peter Braila, +afterwards Greek minister in London. This small band of royal adherents +gave Mr. Gladstone all the help they could in preparing his scheme of +reform, and after the scheme was launched, they strained every nerve to +induce the assembly to assent to it in spite of the pressure from the +people. Their efforts were necessarily unavailing. The great majority, +composed as usual of the friends of England who trembled for their own +jobs, joining hands with the demagogues, was hostile to the changes +proposed, and only flinched from a peremptory vote from doubt as to its +reception among the people. Promptitude and force were not to be +expected in either way from men in such a frame of mind. 'On a +preliminary debate,' Mr. Gladstone wrote mournfully to Phillimore, +'without any motion whatever, one man has spoken for nearly the whole of +two days.' Strong language about the proposals as cheating and +fraudulent was freely used, but nothing that in Mr. Gladstone's view +justified one of those high-handed prorogations after the manner of the +Stuarts, that had been the usual expedient in quarrels between the high +commissioner and a recalcitrant assembly. These doings had brought +English rule over the islands to a level in the opinion of Southern +Europe with Austrian rule at Venice and the reign of the cardinals in +the pontifical states.</p> + +<p class="center">PROCEEDINGS IN ASSEMBLY</p> + +<p>Sir Henry Storks arrived on the 16th of February, and the same day the +assembly which before had been working for delay, in a great hurry gave +a vote against the proposals, which, though in form preliminary, was in +substance decisive;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_617" id="Page_617">[Pg 617]</a></span> there were only seven dissentients. Mr. Gladstone +sums up the case in a private letter to Sidney Herbert.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Corfu, 17th Feb. 1859</i>.—This decision is not convenient for me +personally, nor for the government at home; but as a whole I cannot +regret it so far as England is concerned. I think the proposals +give here almost for the first time a perfectly honourable and +tenable position in the face of the islands. The first set of +manœuvres was directed to preventing them from being made; and that +made me really uneasy. The only point of real importance was to get +them out.... Do not hamper yourself in this affair with me. Let me +sink or swim. I have been labouring for truth and justice, and am +sufficiently happy in the consciousness of it, to be little +distressed either with the prospect of blame, or with the more +serious question whether I acted rightly or wrongly in putting +myself in the place of L.H.C. to propose these reforms,—a step +which has of course been much damaged by the early nomination of +Sir H. Storks, done out of mere consideration for me in another +point of view. Lytton's conduct throughout has been such that I +could have expected no more from the oldest and most confiding +friend.</p></div> + +<p>To Lytton himself he writes (Feb. 7, 1859):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I sincerely wish that I could have repaid your generous confidence +and admirable support with recommendations suited to the immediate +convenience of your government. But in sending me, you grappled +with a difficulty which you might have postponed, and I could not +but do the same. Whether it was right that I should come, I do not +feel very certain. Yet (stolen despatch and all) I do not regret +it. For my feelings are those you have so admirably described; and +I really do not know for what it is that political life is worth +the living, if it be not for an opportunity of endeavouring to +redeem in the face of the world the character of our country +wherever, it matters not on how small a scale, that character has +been compromised.</p></div> + +<p>Language like this, as sincere as it was lofty, supplies the true test +by which to judge Mr. Gladstone's conduct both in the Ionian transaction +and many another. From the point of personal and selfish interest any +simpleton might see that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_618" id="Page_618">[Pg 618]</a></span> he made a mistake, but measured by his own +standard of public virtue, how is he to be blamed, how is he not to be +applauded, for undertaking a mission that, but for an unforeseen +accident, might have redounded to the honour and the credit of the +British power?</p> + +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p>On February 19 he quitted the scene of so many anxieties and such +strenuous effort as we have seen. The <i>Terrible</i> fell into a strong +north-easter in the Adriatic, and took thirty-six hours to Pola. There +they sought shelter and got across with a smooth sea to Venice on the +23rd. He saw the Austrian archduke whom he found kind, intelligent, +earnest, pleasing. At Turin a few days later (March 23), he had an +interview with Cavour, for whom at that moment the crowning scenes of +his great career were just opening. 'At Vicenza,' the diary records +(Feb. 28), 'we had cavalry and artillery at the station about to march; +more cavalry on the road with a van and pickets, some with drawn swords; +at Verona regiments in review; at Milan pickets in the streets; as I +write I hear the tread of horse patrolling the streets. Dark omens!' The +war with Austria was close at hand.</p> + +<p>I may as well in a few sentences finally close the Ionian chapter, +though the consummation was not immediate. Mr. Gladstone, while he was +for the moment bitten by the notion of ceding the southern islands to +Greece, was no more touched by the nationalist aspirations of the +Ionians than he had been by nationalism and unification in Italy in +1851. Just as in Italy he clung to constitutional reforms in the +particular provinces and states as the key to regeneration, so here he +leaned upon the moderates who, while professing strong nationalist +feeling, did not believe that the time for its realisation had arrived. +A debate was raised in the House of Commons in the spring of 1861, by an +Irish member. The Irish catholics twitted Mr. Gladstone with flying the +flag of nationality in Italy, and trampling on it in the Ionian islands. +He in reply twitted them with crying up nationality for the Greeks, and +running it down when it told against the pope. In the Italian case Lord +John Russell had (1860) set<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_619" id="Page_619">[Pg 619]</a></span> up the broad doctrine that a people are the +only true judges who should be their rulers—a proposition that was at +once seized and much used by the Dandolos, Lombardos, Cavalieratos and +the rest at Corfu. Scarcely anybody pretended that England had any +separate or selfish interest of her own. 'It is in my view,' said Mr. +Gladstone, 'entirely a matter of that kind of interest only, which, is +in one sense the highest interest of all—namely the interest which is +inherent in her character and duty, and her exact and regular fulfilment +of obligations which she has contracted with Europe.'<a name="FNanchor_382_382" id="FNanchor_382_382"></a><a href="#Footnote_382_382" class="fnanchor">[382]</a></p> + +<p class="center">LATER FORTUNES OF THE ISLANDS</p> + +<p>But he held the opinion that it would be nothing less than a crime +against the safety of Europe, as connected with the state and course of +the Eastern question, if England were at this moment to surrender the +protectorate; for if you should surrender the protectorate, what were +you to say to Candia, Thessaly, Albania, and other communities of Greek +stock still under Turkish rule? Then there was a military question. +Large sums of British money had been flung away on fortifications,<a name="FNanchor_383_383" id="FNanchor_383_383"></a><a href="#Footnote_383_383" class="fnanchor">[383]</a> +and people talked of Corfu as they talked in later years about Cyprus, +as a needed supplement to the strength of Gibraltar and Malta, and +indispensable to our Mediterranean power. People listened agape to +demonstrations that the Ionian islands were midway between England and +the Persian Gulf; that they were two-thirds of the way to the Red Sea; +that they blocked up the mouth of the Adriatic; Constantinople, Smyrna, +Alexandria, Naples, formed a belt of great towns around them; they were +central to Asia, Europe, and Africa. And so forth in the alarmist's +well-worn currency.</p> + +<p>Lord Palmerston in 1850 had declared in his highest style that Corfu was +a very important position for Mediterranean interests in the event of a +war, and it would be great folly to give it up. A year later he repeated +that though he should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_620" id="Page_620">[Pg 620]</a></span> not object to the annexation of the southern +islands to Greece, Corfu was too important a military and naval post +ever to be abandoned by us.<a name="FNanchor_384_384" id="FNanchor_384_384"></a><a href="#Footnote_384_384" class="fnanchor">[384]</a> As Lord Palmerston changed, so did Mr. +Gladstone change. 'Without a good head for Greece, I should not like to +see the Ionian protectorate surrendered; with it, I should be well +pleased for one to be responsible for giving it up.' Among many other +wonderful suggestions was one that he should himself become that 'good +head.' 'The first mention,' he wrote to a correspondent in parliament +(Jan. 21, 1863), 'of my candidature in Greece some time ago made me +laugh very heartily, for though I do love the country and never laughed +at anything else in connection with it before, yet the seeing my own +name, which in my person was never meant to carry a title of any kind, +placed in juxtaposition with that particular idea, made me give way.'</p> + +<p>Meanwhile it is safe to conjecture, for the period with which in this +chapter we are immediately concerned, that in conceiving and drawing up +his Ionian scheme, close contact with liberal doctrines as to free +institutions and popular government must have quickened Mr. Gladstone's +progress in liberal doctrines in our own affairs at home. In 1863<a name="FNanchor_385_385" id="FNanchor_385_385"></a><a href="#Footnote_385_385" class="fnanchor">[385]</a> +Lord Palmerston himself, in spite of that national aversion to anything +like giving up, of which he was himself the most formidable +representative, cheerfully handed the Ionians over to their kinsfolk, if +kinsfolk they truly were, upon the mainland.<a name="FNanchor_386_386" id="FNanchor_386_386"></a><a href="#Footnote_386_386" class="fnanchor">[386]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_621" id="Page_621">[Pg 621]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_375_375" id="Footnote_375_375"></a><a href="#FNanchor_375_375"><span class="label">[375]</span></a> Virg. <i>Aen</i>. iv. 344.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_376_376" id="Footnote_376_376"></a><a href="#FNanchor_376_376"><span class="label">[376]</span></a> See Sir C. Napier's <i>The Colonies: treating of their value +generally and of the Ionian Islands in particular</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_377_377" id="Footnote_377_377"></a><a href="#FNanchor_377_377"><span class="label">[377]</span></a> <i>Parliamentary Papers, relative to the mission of the Right Hon. +W. E. Gladstone to the Ionian Islands in 1858.</i> Presented in 1861. +Finlay's <i>History of Greece</i>, vii. p. 305, etc. <i>Letters by Lord Charles +Fitzroy, etc., showing the anomalous political and financial Position of +the Ionian Islands.</i> (Ridgway, 1850.) <i>Le Gouvernement des Iles +Ioniennes.</i> Lettre à Lord John Russell, par Francois Lenormant. (Paris, +Amyot, 1861.) <i>The Ionian Islands in relation to Greece.</i> By John Dunn +Gardner, Esqr., 1859. <i>Four years in the Ionian Islands.</i> By +Whittingham. Pamphlet by S. G. Potter, D.D. See also <i>Gleanings</i>, iv. p. +287.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_378_378" id="Footnote_378_378"></a><a href="#FNanchor_378_378"><span class="label">[378]</span></a> This and his alleged attendance at mass, and compliance with +sundry other rites, were often heard of in later times, and even so late +as 1879 Mr. Gladstone was subjected to some rude baiting from doctors of +divinity and others.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_379_379" id="Footnote_379_379"></a><a href="#FNanchor_379_379"><span class="label">[379]</span></a> Finlay, <i>History of Greece</i>, vii. p. 306, blames both Bulwer and +Mr. Gladstone because they 'directed their attention to the means of +applying sound theories of government to a state of things where a +change in the social relations of the inhabitants and modifications in +the tenure and rights of property were the real evils that required +remedy, and over these the British government could exercise very little +influence if opposed by the Ionian representatives.' But is not this to +say that the real remedy was unattainable without political reform?</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_380_380" id="Footnote_380_380"></a><a href="#FNanchor_380_380"><span class="label">[380]</span></a> May 7, 1861. <i>Hans.</i> 3rd Ser. 162, p. 1687. The salaries of the +deputies struck him as especially excessive, and on the same occasion he +let fall the <i>obiter dictum</i>; 'For my part I trust that of all the +changes that may in the course of generations be made in the +constitution of this country, the very last and latest will be the +payment of members of this House.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_381_381" id="Footnote_381_381"></a><a href="#FNanchor_381_381"><span class="label">[381]</span></a> On Feb. 7, the secretary of the treasury moved the writ, and the +next day the vice-chancellor notified that there would be an election, +Mr. Gladstone having 'vacated his seat by accepting the office of lord +high commissioner of the Ionian Islands, which he no longer holds.' He +was re-elected (Feb. 12) without opposition.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_382_382" id="Footnote_382_382"></a><a href="#FNanchor_382_382"><span class="label">[382]</span></a> Mr. Gladstone, May 7, 1861.—<i>Hans</i>. Third Ser. 162. p. 1687.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_383_383" id="Footnote_383_383"></a><a href="#FNanchor_383_383"><span class="label">[383]</span></a> Napier in his <i>Memoir on the Roads of Cephalonia</i> (p. 45) tells +how Maitland had a notion of building a fort on that island, and on his +boat one day asked the commanding engineer how much it would cost. The +engineer talked about £100,000. 'Upon this Sir Thomas turned round in +the boat, with a long and loud whistle. After this whistle I thought it +best to let at least a year pass without again mentioning the subject.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_384_384" id="Footnote_384_384"></a><a href="#FNanchor_384_384"><span class="label">[384]</span></a> Ashley, ii. pp. 184, 186.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_385_385" id="Footnote_385_385"></a><a href="#FNanchor_385_385"><span class="label">[385]</span></a> <i>Dec. 8, 1862</i>.—Cabinet. Resolution to surrender the Ionian +protectorate. Only Lord W[estbury] opposing.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_386_386" id="Footnote_386_386"></a><a href="#FNanchor_386_386"><span class="label">[386]</span></a> Mr. Gladstone sent home and revised afterwards three elaborate +reports on the mischiefs of Ionian government and the constitutional +remedies proper for them. They were printed for the use of the cabinet, +though whether these fifty large pages, amounting to about a quarter of +this volume, received much attention from that body, may without +<i>scandalum magnatum</i> be doubted, nor do the reports appear to have been +laid before parliament. The Italian war was then creating an agitation +in Europe upon nationality, as to which the people of the Ionian islands +were sensitively alive, and the reports would have supplied a good deal +of fuel. There was a separate fourth report upon the suppression of +disorder in Cephalonia in 1848, which everybody afterwards agreed that +it was not expedient to publish. It still exists in the archives of the +colonial office.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="BkIVCh_XI" id="BkIVCh_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">JUNCTION WITH THE LIBERALS</p> + +<p class="center">(<i>1859</i>)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Conviction, in spite of early associations and long-cherished +preposessions—strong conviction, and an overpowering sense of the +public interests operating for many, many years before full effect +was given to it, placed me in the ranks of the liberal +party.—<span class="smcap">Gladstone</span> (Ormskirk, 1867).</p></div><br /> + +<p>When Mr. Gladstone returned to England in March 1859, he found the +conservatives with much ineffectual industry, some misplaced ingenuity, +and many misgivings and divisions, trying their hands at parliamentary +reform. Their infringement of what passed for a liberal patent was not +turning out well. Convulsions in the cabinet, murmurs in the lobbies, +resistance from the opposite benches, all showed that a ministry +existing on sufferance would not at that stage be allowed to settle the +question. In this contest Mr. Gladstone did not actively join. Speaking +from the ministerial side of the House, he made a fervid defence of +nomination boroughs as the nurseries of statesmen, but he voted with +ministers against a whig amendment. His desire, he said, was to settle +the question as soon as possible, always, however, on the foundation of +trust in the people, that 'sound and satisfactory basis on which for +several years past legislation had been proceeding.' The hostile +amendment was carried against ministers by statesmen irreconcilably at +variance with one another, alike in principle and object. The majority +of thirty-nine was very large for those days, and it was decisive. +Though the parliament was little more than a couple of years old, yet in +face of the desperate confusion among leaders, parties, and groups, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_622" id="Page_622">[Pg 622]</a></span> +upon the plea that reform had not been formally submitted as an issue to +the country, Lord Derby felt justified in dissolving. Mr. Gladstone held +the Oxford seat without opposition. The constituencies displayed an +extension of the same essentially conservative feeling that had given +Lord Palmerston the victory two years before. Once more the real +question lay not so much between measures as men; not so much between +democratic change and conservative moderation, as between Palmerston and +Russell on the one hand, and Derby and Disraeli on the other. The +government at the election improved their position by some thirty votes. +This was not enough to outnumber the phalanx of their various opponents +combined, but was it possible that the phalanx should combine? Mr. +Gladstone, who spoke of the dissolution as being a most improper as well +as a most important measure, alike in domestic and in foreign bearings, +told Acland that he would not be surprised if the government were to +attempt some reconstruction on a broad basis before the new parliament +met. This course was not adopted.</p> + +<p class="center">CRITICAL MOMENTS</p> + +<p>The chances of turning out the government were matters of infinite +computation among the leaders. The liberal whip after the election gave +his own party a majority of fifteen, but the treasury whip, on the other +hand, was equally confident of a majority of ten. Still all was +admittedly uncertain. The prime perplexity was whether if a new +administration could be formed, Lord Palmerston or Lord John should be +at its head. Everybody agreed that it would be both impossible and wrong +to depose the tories until it was certain that the liberals were united +enough to mount into their seat, and no government could last unless it +comprehended both the old prime ministers. Could not one of them carry +the prize of the premiership into the Lords, and leave to the other the +consolation stake of leadership in the Commons? Lord Palmerston, who +took the crisis with a veteran's good-humoured coolness, told his +intimates that he at any rate would not go up to the Lords, for he could +not trust John Russell in the other House. With a view, however, to +ministerial efficiency, he was anxious to keep Russell in the Commons, +as with him and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_623" id="Page_623">[Pg 623]</a></span> Gladstone they would make a strong treasury bench. But +was it certain that Gladstone would join? On this there was endless +gossip. One story ran that Mrs. Gladstone had told somebody that her +husband wished bygones to be bygones, was all for a strong government, +and was ready to join in forming one. Then the personage to whom this +was said upset the inference by declaring there was nothing in the +conversation incompatible with a Derby junction. Sir Charles Wood says +in his journal:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>May 22</i>.—Saw Mrs. Gladstone, who did not seem to contemplate a +junction with Palmerston but rather that he should join Derby. I +stated the impossibility of that, and that the strongest government +possible under present circumstances would be by such a union as +took place under Aberdeen. To effect this, all people must pull the +same and not different ways as of late years. I said that I blamed +her husband for quitting, and ever since he quitted, Palmerston's +government in 1855, as well as Lord John; that in the quarrel +between Lord John and Gladstone the former had behaved ill, and the +latter well.</p> + +<p><i>May 27</i>.—Gladstone dined here.... He would vote a condemnation of +the dissolution, and is afraid of the foreign affairs at so +critical a moment being left in the hands of Malmesbury; says that +we, the opposition, are not only justified but called upon by the +challenge in the Queen's speech on the dissolution, to test the +strength of parties; but that he is himself in a different +position, that he would vote a condemnation of the dissolution, but +hesitates as to no confidence.</p></div> + +<p>Sir Robert Phillimore<a name="FNanchor_387_387" id="FNanchor_387_387"></a><a href="#Footnote_387_387" class="fnanchor">[387]</a> gives us other glimpses during this month:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>May 18</i>.—Long interview with Gladstone. He entered most fully and +without any reserve into his views on the state of political +parties and on the duties of a statesman at this juncture. Thought +the only chance of a strong government was an engrafting of +Palmerston upon Lord Derby, dethroning Disraeli from the leadership +of the House of Commons, arranging for a moderate Reform bill, +placing the foreign office in other hands, but not in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_624" id="Page_624">[Pg 624]</a></span> Disraeli's. +He dwelt much upon this. Foreign politics seemed to have the chief +place in his mind.</p> + +<p><i>May 31</i>.—Gladstone has seen Palmerston, and said he will not vote +against Lord Derby in support of Lord John's supposed motion. The +government Gladstone thinks desirable is a fusion of Palmerston and +his followers with Lord Derby, which implies, of course, weeding +out half at least of the present cabinet. Gladstone will have to +vote with government and speak against the cabinet, and violently +he will be abused.</p> + +<p><i>June 1</i>.—Dined with Gladstone. He is much harassed and distressed +at his position relative to the government and opposition. Spoke +strongly against Lord Malmesbury. Said if the proposal is to +censure the dissolution, he must agree with it, but he will vote +against a want of confidence.</p></div> + +<p>One important personage was quite confident that Gladstone would vote +the government out. Another thought that he would be sure to join a +liberal administration. Palmerston believed this too, even though he +might not vote for a motion of want of confidence. Clarendon expected +Gladstone to join, though he would rather see him at the foreign office +than at the exchequer. At a dinner party at Lord Carlisle's where +Palmerston, Lord John, Granville, Clarendon, Lewis, Argyll, and Delane +were present, Sir Charles Wood in a conversation with Mrs. Gladstone +found her much less inclined to keep the Derby government in. In the +last week of May a party feast was planned by Lord Palmerston and the +whip, but Lord John Russell declined to join the dinner. It was decided +to call a meeting of the party. A confidential visitor was talking of it +at Cambridge House, when the brougham came to the door to take +Palmerston down to Pembroke Lodge. He was going, he said, to ask Lord +John what they should say if they were asked at the meeting whether they +had come to an agreement. The interview was not unsatisfactory. Four +days later (June 6) a well-attended meeting of the party was held at +Willis's Rooms. The two protagonists declared themselves ready to aid in +forming a government on a broad basis, and it was understood that either +would serve under the other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_625" id="Page_625">[Pg 625]</a></span> It would be for the sovereign to decide. +Mr. Bright spoke in what the whigs pronounced to be a highly reasonable +vein, and they all broke up in great spirits. The whip pored over his +lists, and made out that they could not beat the government by less than +seven. This was but a slender margin for a vote of no confidence, but it +was felt that mere numbers, though a majority might be an indispensable +incident, were in this case not the only test of the conditions required +for a solid government. Lord Hartington, the representative of the great +house of Cavendish, was put up to move a vote of no confidence.<a name="FNanchor_388_388" id="FNanchor_388_388"></a><a href="#Footnote_388_388" class="fnanchor">[388]</a></p> + +<p class="center">FALL OF THE DERBY GOVERNMENT</p> + +<p>After three days' debate, ministers were defeated (June 11) by the +narrow figure of thirteen in a House of six hundred and thirty-seven. +Mr. Gladstone did not speak, but he answered the riddle that had for +long so much harassed the wirepullers, by going into the lobby with +Disraeli and his flock. The general sense of the majority was probably +best expressed by Mr. Bright. Since the fall of the government of Sir +Robert Peel, he said, there had been no good handling of the liberal +party in the House: the cabinet had been exclusive, the policy had been +sometimes wholly wrong, and generally feeble and paltering: if in the +new government there should be found men adequately representing these +reconciled sections, acting with some measure of boldness and power, +grappling with the abuses that were admitted to exist, and relying upon +the moral sense and honest feeling of the House, and the general +sympathy of the people of England for improvement in our legislation, he +was bold to hope that the new government would have a longer tenure of +office than any government that had existed for many years past.</p> + +<p>The Queen, in the embarrassment of a choice between the two whig +veterans, induced Lord Granville, whose cabinet life as yet was only +some five years, to try to form a government.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_626" id="Page_626">[Pg 626]</a></span> This step Palmerston +explained by her German sympathies, which made her adverse alike to Lord +John and himself. Lord Granville first applied to Palmerston, who said +that the Queen ought to have sent for himself first; still he agreed to +serve. Lord John would only serve under Granville on condition of being +leader in the House of Commons; if he joined—so he argued—and if +Palmerston were leader in the Commons, this would make himself third +instead of second: on that point his answer was final. So Lord Granville +threw up a commission that never had life in it; the Queen handed the +task over to Palmerston, and in a few days the new administration was +installed. (June 17, 1859.)</p> + +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone went back to the office that he had quitted four years and +a half before, and undertook the department of finance. The appointment +did not pass without considerable remark. 'The real scandal,' he wrote +to his Oxford chairman, 'is among the extreme men on the liberal side; +they naturally say, "This man has done all he could on behalf of Lord +Derby; why is he here to keep out one of us?"' Even some among Mr. +Gladstone's private friends wondered how he could bring himself to join +a minister of whom he had for three or four years used such unsparing +language as had been common on his lips about Lord Palmerston. The plain +man was puzzled by a vote in favour of keeping a tory government in, +followed by a junction with the men who had thrown that government out. +Cobden, as we know, declined to join.<a name="FNanchor_389_389" id="FNanchor_389_389"></a><a href="#Footnote_389_389" class="fnanchor">[389]</a> 'I am exceedingly sorry,' +wrote Mr. Gladstone to his brother Robertson (July 2), 'to find that +Cobden does not take office. It was in his person that there seemed to +be the best chance of a favourable trial of the experiment of connecting +his friends with the practical administration of the government of this +country. I am very glad we have Gibson; but Cobden would, especially as +an addition to the former, have made a great difference in point of +weight.'<a name="FNanchor_390_390" id="FNanchor_390_390"></a><a href="#Footnote_390_390" class="fnanchor">[390]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_627" id="Page_627">[Pg 627]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">AGAIN AT THE EXCHEQUER</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone, with no special anxiety to defend himself, was clear +about his own course. 'Never,' he says, 'had I an easier question to +determine than when I was asked to join the government. I can hardly now +think how I could have looked any one in the face, had I refused my aid +(such as it is) at such a time and under such circumstances.' 'At a +moment,' he wrote to the warden of All Souls, 'when war is raging in +Europe, when the English government is the only instrument through which +there is any hope, humanly speaking, of any safe and early settlement, +and when all parties agree that the government of the Queen ought to be +strengthened, I have joined the only administration that could be +formed, in concert with all the friends (setting aside those whom age +excludes) with whom I joined and acted in the government of Lord +Aberdeen.'</p> + +<p>To the provost of Oriel he addressed a rather elaborate +explanation,<a name="FNanchor_391_391" id="FNanchor_391_391"></a><a href="#Footnote_391_391" class="fnanchor">[391]</a> but it only expands what he says more briefly in a +letter (June 16) to Sir William Heathcote, an excellent and honourable +man, his colleague in the representation of Oxford:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I am so little sensible of having had any very doubtful point to +consider, that I feel confident that, given the antecedents of the +problem as they clearly stood before me, you would have decided in +the way that I have done. For thirteen years, the middle space of +life, I have been cast out of party connection, severed from my old +party, and loath irrecoverably to join a new one. So long have I +adhered to the vague hope of a reconstruction, that I have been +left alone by every political friend in association with whom I had +grown up. My votes too, and such support as I could give, have +practically been given to Lord Derby's government, in such a manner +as undoubtedly to divest me of all claims whatever on the liberal +party and the incoming government. Under these circumstances I am +asked to take office. The two leading points which must determine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_628" id="Page_628">[Pg 628]</a></span> +immediate action are those of reform and foreign policy. On the +first I think that Lord Derby had by dissolution lost all chance of +settling it; and, as I desire to see it settled, it seems my duty +to assist those who perhaps may settle it. Upon the second I am in +real and close harmony of sentiment with the new premier, and the +new foreign secretary. How could I, under these circumstances, say, +I will have nothing to do with you, and be the one remaining +Ishmael in the House of Commons?</p></div> + +<p>Writing to Sir John Acton in 1864, Mr. Gladstone said:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>When I took my present office in 1859, I had several negative and +several positive reasons for accepting it. Of the first, there were +these. There had been differences and collisions, but there were no +resentments. I felt myself to be mischievous in an isolated +position, outside the regular party organisation of parliament. And +I was aware of no differences of opinion or tendency likely to +disturb the new government. Then on the positive side. I felt sure +that in finance there was still much useful work to be done. I was +desirous to co-operate in settling the question of the franchise, +and failed to anticipate the disaster that it was to undergo. My +friends were enlisted, or I knew would enlist: Sir James Graham +indeed declining office, but taking his position in the party. And +the overwhelming interest and weight of the Italian question, and +of our foreign policy in connection with it, joined to my entire +mistrust of the former government in relation to it, led me to +decide without one moment's hesitation....</p></div> + +<p class="center">CONTEST AT OXFORD</p> + +<p>On the day on which Mr. Gladstone kissed hands (June 18) disturbing news +came from Oxford. Not only was his re-election to be opposed, but the +enemy had secured the most formidable candidate that he had yet +encountered, in the person of Lord Chandos, the eldest son of the Duke +of Buckingham. His old chairman became chairman for his new antagonist, +and Stafford Northcote, who with Phillimore and Bernard had hitherto +fought every election on his behalf, now refused to serve on his +committee, while even Sir John Coleridge was alarmed at some reported +wavering on the question of a deceased wife's sister.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_629" id="Page_629">[Pg 629]</a></span> 'Gladstone, +angry, harassed, sore,' Phillimore records, 'as well he might be.' The +provost of Oriel explains to him that men asked whether his very last +vote had not been a vote of confidence in a Derby government, and of +want of confidence in a Palmerston government, yet he had joined the +government in which he declared by anticipation that he had no +confidence. After all, the root of the anger against him was simply that +the tories were out and the liberals in, with himself as their strongest +confederate. A question was raised whether he ought not to go down and +address convocation in person. The dean of Christ Church, however, +thought it very doubtful whether he would get a hearing. 'Those,' he +told Mr. Gladstone, 'who remember Sir Robert Peel's election testify +that there never was a more unreasonable and ferocious mob than +convocation was at that time. If you were heard, it is doubtful whether +you would gain any votes at that last moment, while it is believed you +would lose some. You would be questioned as to the ecclesiastical policy +of the cabinet. Either you would not be able to answer fully, or you +would answer in such terms as to alienate one or other of the two +numerous classes who will now give you many votes.'</p> + +<p>The usual waterspout began to pour. The newspapers asserted that Mr. +Gladstone meant to cut down naval estimates, and this moved the country +clergy to angry apprehension that he was for peace at any price. The +candidate was obliged to spend thankless hours on letters to reassure +them. 'The two assertions of fact respecting me are wholly unfounded. I +mean these two:—1. That as chancellor of the exchequer I “starved” the +Crimean war: that is to say limited the expenditure upon it. There is +not a shadow of truth in this statement. 2. That as soon as the war was +over I caused the government to reduce their estimates, diminish the +army, disband two fleets, and break faith with our seamen. When the war +was over, that is in the year 1856, I did not take objection at all to +the establishment or expenditure of the year. In the next year, 1857, I +considered that they ought to have been further reduced: but neither a +man nor a shilling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_630" id="Page_630">[Pg 630]</a></span> was taken from them in consequence of my +endeavours.' Other correspondents were uneasy about his soundness on +rifle corps and rifle clubs. 'How,' he replied, 'can any uncertainty +exist as to the intentions in regard to defence in a government with +Lord Palmerston at its head?' He was warned that Cobden, Bright, and +Gibson were odious in Oxford, and he was suspected of being their +accomplice. The clamour against Puseyism had died down, and the +hostility of the evangelicals was no longer keen; otherwise it was the +old story. Goldwin Smith tells him, 'Win or lose, you will have the vote +of every one of heart and brain in the university and really connected +with it. Young Oxford is all with you. Every year more men obtain the +reward of their industry through your legislation. But old Oxford takes +a long time in dying.' In the end (July 1), he won the battle by a +majority of 191—Gladstone, 1050, Chandos, 859.</p> + +<p>'My conscience is light and clear,' he wrote to Heathcote in the course +of the contest. 'The interests that have weighed with me are in some +degree peculiar, and I daresay it is a fault in me, especially as member +for Oxford, that I cannot merge the man in the representative. While +they have had much reason to complain, I have not had an over-good +bargain. In the estimate of mere pleasure and pain, the representation +of the university is not worth my having; for though the account is long +on both sides, the latter is the heavier, and sharper. In the true +estimates of good and evil, I can look back upon the last twelve years +with some satisfaction, first, because I feel that as far as I am +capable of labouring for anything, I have laboured for Oxford; and +secondly, because in this respect at least I have been happy, that the +times afforded me in various ways a field. And even as to the +contemptible summing up between suffering and enjoyment, my belief is +that the latter will endure, while the former will pass away.' The +balance struck in this last sentence is a characteristic fragment of Mr. +Gladstone's philosophy of public life. It lightened and dispelled the +inevitable hours of disappointment and chagrin that, in natures of less +lofty fortitude than his, are apt to slacken the nerve and rust the +sword.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_631" id="Page_631">[Pg 631]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p class="center">PARTY SEVERANCE, NOT CHANGED PRINCIPLES</p> + +<p>It seems a mistake to treat the acceptance of office under Lord +Palmerston as a chief landmark in Mr. Gladstone's protracted journey +from tory to liberal. The dilemma between joining Derby and joining +Palmerston was no vital choice between two political creeds. The new +prime minister and his chancellor of the exchequer had both of them +started with Canning for their common master; but there was a generation +between them, and Mr. Gladstone had travelled along a road of his own, +perhaps not even now perceiving its goal. As we have seen, he told Mr. +Walpole in May 1858 (p. 584), that there were 'no broad and palpable +differences of opinion on public questions of principle,' that separated +himself from the Derbyite tories.<a name="FNanchor_392_392" id="FNanchor_392_392"></a><a href="#Footnote_392_392" class="fnanchor">[392]</a> Palmerston on the other hand was +so much of a Derbyite tory, that his government, which Mr. Gladstone was +now entering, owed its long spell of office and power to the countenance +of Derby and his men. Mr. Bright had contemplated (p. 579) the +possibility of a reverse process—a Derbyite government favoured by +Palmerston's men. In either case, the political identity of the two +leaders was recognised. To join the new administration, then, marked a +party severance but no changed principles. I am far from denying the +enormous significance of the party wrench, but it was not a conversion. +Mr. Gladstone was at this time in his politics a liberal reformer of +Turgot's type, a born lover of good government, of just practical laws, +of wise improvement, of public business well handled, of a state that +should emancipate and serve the individual. The necessity of summoning +new driving force, and amending the machinery of the constitution, had +not yet disclosed itself to him. This was soon discovered by events. +Meanwhile he may well have thought that he saw as good a chance of great +work with Palmerston as with Disraeli; or far better, for the election +had shown<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_632" id="Page_632">[Pg 632]</a></span> that Bright was not wrong when he warned him that a Derby +government could only exist upon forbearance.</p> + +<p>Bright's own words already referred to (p. 625) sufficiently describe +Mr. Gladstone's point of view; the need for a ministry with men in it +'acting with some measure of boldness and power, grappling with abuses, +and relying upon the moral sense and honest feeling of the House, and +the general sympathy of the people of England for improvement.' With +such purposes an alliance with liberals of Lord Palmerston's temper +implied no wonderful dislodgment. The really great dislodgment in his +life had occurred long before. It was the fates that befell his book, it +was the Maynooth grant, and the Gorham case, that swept away the +foundations on which he had first built. In writing to Manning in 1845 +(April 25) after his retirement on the question of Maynooth, Mr. +Gladstone says to him, 'Newman sent me a letter giving his own +explanation of my position. It was admirably done.' Newman in his letter +told him that various persons had asked how he understood Mr. +Gladstone's present position, so he put down what he conceived it to be, +and he expresses the great interest that he feels in the tone of thought +then engaging the statesman's mind:—</p> + +<p class="center">LETTER FROM NEWMAN</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I say then [writes Newman, addressing an imaginary interlocutor]: +'Mr. Gladstone has said the state <i>ought</i> to have a conscience, but +it has not a conscience. Can <i>he</i> give it a conscience? Is he to +impose his own conscience on the state? He would be very glad to do +so, if it thereby would become the state's conscience. But that is +absurd. He must deal with facts. It has a thousand consciences, as +being in its legislative and executive capacities the aggregate of +a hundred minds; that is, it has no conscience.</p> + +<p>'You will say, “Well the obvious thing would be, if the state has +not a conscience, that he shall cease to be answerable for it.” So +he has—he has retired from the ministry. While he thought he could +believe it had a conscience—till he was forced to give up, what it +was his duty to cherish as long as ever he could, the notion that +the British empire was a subject and servant of the kingdom of +Christ—he served the state. Now that he finds this to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_633" id="Page_633">[Pg 633]</a></span>a mere +dream, much as it ought to be otherwise, and as it once was +otherwise, he has said, I cannot serve such a mistress.</p> + +<p>'But really,' I continue, 'do you in your heart mean to say that he +should absolutely and for ever give up the state and country? I +hope not. I do not think he has so committed himself. That the +conclusion he has come to is a very grave one, and not consistent +with his going on blindly in the din and hurry of business, without +having principles to guide him, I admit; and this, I conceive, is +his reason for at once retiring from the ministry, that he may +contemplate the state of things calmly and from without. But I +really cannot pronounce, nor can you, nor can he perhaps at once, +what is a Christian's duty under these new circumstances, whether +to remain in retirement from public affairs or not. Retirement, +however, could not be done by halves. If he is absolutely to give +up all management of public affairs, he must retire not only from +the ministry but from parliament.</p> + +<p>'I see another reason for his retiring from the ministry. The +public thought they had in his book a pledge that the government +would not take such a step with regard to Maynooth as is now before +the country. Had he continued in the ministry he would to a certain +extent have been misleading the country.</p> + +<p>'You say, “He made some show of seeing his way in future, for he +gave advice; he said it would be well for all parties to yield +something. To see his way and to give advice is as if he had found +some principle to go on.” I do not so understand him. I thought he +distinctly stated he had not yet found a principle. But he gave +that advice which facts, or what he called circumstances, made +necessary, and which if followed out, will, it is to be hoped, lead +to some basis of principle which we do not see at present.'</p></div> + +<p>Compared to the supreme case of conscience indicated here, and it +haunted Mr. Gladstone for nearly all his life, the perplexities of party +could be but secondary. Those perplexities were never sharper than in +the four years from 1854 to 1859; and with his living sense of +responsibility for the right use of transcendent powers of national +service, it was practically inevitable that he should at last quit the +barren position of 'the one remaining Ishmael in the House of Commons.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_634" id="Page_634">[Pg 634]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>Later in this year Mr. Gladstone was chosen to be the first lord rector +of the university of Edinburgh under powers conferred by a recent law. +His unsuccessful rival was Lord Neaves, excellent as lawyer, humorist, +and scholar. In April the following year, in the midst of the most +trying session of his life, he went down from the battle-ground at +Westminster, and delivered his rectorial address<a name="FNanchor_393_393" id="FNanchor_393_393"></a><a href="#Footnote_393_393" class="fnanchor">[393]</a>—not particularly +pregnant, original, or pithy, but marked by incomparable buoyancy; +enforcing a conception of the proper functions of a university that can +never be enforced too strongly or too often; and impressing in melodious +period and glowing image those ever needed commonplaces about thrift of +time and thirst for fame and the glory of knowledge, that kindle sacred +fire in young hearts. It was his own career, intellectual as well as +political, that gave to his discourse momentum. It was his own example +that to youthful hearers gave new depth to a trite lesson, when he +exclaimed: 'Believe me when I tell you that the thrift of time will +repay you in after life with an usury of profit beyond your most +sanguine dreams, and that the waste of it will make you dwindle, alike +in intellectual and in moral stature, beneath your darkest reckonings.' +So too, we who have it all before us know that it was a maxim of his own +inner life, when he told them: 'The thirst for an enduring fame is near +akin to the love of true excellence; but the fame of the moment is a +dangerous possession and a bastard motive; and he who does his acts in +order that the echo of them may come back as a soft music in his ears, +plays false to his noble destiny as a Christian man, places himself in +continual danger of dallying with wrong, and taints even his virtuous +actions at their source.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_635" id="Page_635">[Pg 635]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_387_387" id="Footnote_387_387"></a><a href="#FNanchor_387_387"><span class="label">[387]</span></a> Not, however, Sir Robert until 1862, when he was knighted on +becoming Queen's advocate. He was created baronet in 1881.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_388_388" id="Footnote_388_388"></a><a href="#FNanchor_388_388"><span class="label">[388]</span></a> Lord Hartington's motion was—'That it is essential for the +satisfactory result of our deliberations, and for facilitating the +discharge of your Majesty's high functions, that your Majesty's +government should possess the confidence of this House and of the +country; and we deem it our duty respectfully to submit to your Majesty +that such confidence is not reposed in the present advisers of your +Majesty.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_389_389" id="Footnote_389_389"></a><a href="#FNanchor_389_389"><span class="label">[389]</span></a> <i>Life of Cobden</i>, ii. pp. 229-233.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_390_390" id="Footnote_390_390"></a><a href="#FNanchor_390_390"><span class="label">[390]</span></a> There is a strange story in the <i>Halifax Papers</i> of Bright at this +time visiting Lord Aberdeen, and displaying much ill humour. 'He cannot +reconcile himself to not being considered capable of taking office. Lord +John broached a scheme for sending him as governor-general to Canada. I +rather doubted the expediency of this, but Mr. Gladstone seemed to think +it not a bad scheme' (June 15, 1859). Many curious things sprang up in +men's minds at that moment.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_391_391" id="Footnote_391_391"></a><a href="#FNanchor_391_391"><span class="label">[391]</span></a> Reproduced in Mr. Russell's book on Mr. Gladstone, pp. 144-5.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_392_392" id="Footnote_392_392"></a><a href="#FNanchor_392_392"><span class="label">[392]</span></a> It is worth noticing that he sat on the ministerial side of the +House without breach of continuity from 1853 to 1866. During the first +Derby government, as we have already seen (p. 423), he sat below the +gangway on the opposition side; during the Palmerston administration of +1855 he sat below the gangway on the government side; and he remained +there after the second Derby accession to office in 1858.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_393_393" id="Footnote_393_393"></a><a href="#FNanchor_393_393"><span class="label">[393]</span></a> The Address is in <i>Gleanings</i>, vii.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<h3><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX"></a>APPENDIX</h3> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p class="center">CHOICE OF PROFESSION</p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#Page_82"><i>Page 82</i></a></p> + +<p class="center"><i>Mr. Gladstone to his Father</i></p> + +<p><i>Cuddesdon, Aug. 4, 1830</i>.—<span class="smcap">My Beloved Father</span>,—I have a good while +refrained from addressing you on a subject of importance and much +affecting my own future destiny, from a supposition that your time and +thoughts have been much occupied for several months past by other +matters of great interest in succession. Now, however, believing you to +be more at leisure, I venture to bring it before you. It is, as you will +have anticipated, the decision of the profession to which I am to look +forward for life. Above eighteen months have now passed since you spoke +to me of it at Seaforth, and most kindly desired me, if unable then to +make up my mind to go into the law, to take some time to consider calmly +of the whole question.</p> + +<p>It would have been undutiful to trouble you with a recurrence of it, +until such a period had been suffered to elapse, as would suffice to +afford, by the effects it should itself produce, some fair criterion and +presumption of the inclination which my mind was likely to adopt in +reference to the <i>final</i> decision. At the same time it would also have +been undutiful, and most repugnant to my feelings, to permit the +prolongation of that intervening period to such an extent, as to give +the shadow of a reason to suppose that anything approaching to reserve +had been the cause of my silence. The present time seems to lie between +these two extremes, and therefore to render it incumbent on me to +apprise you of the state of my own views.</p> + +<p>I trust it is hardly necessary to specify my knowledge that when I speak +of 'the state of my own views' on this question, I do so not of right +but by sufferance, by invitation from you, by that more than parental +kindness and indulgence with which I have ever met at my parents' hands, +which it would be as absurd to make a matter of <i>formal</i> acknowledgment +as it would be impossible to repay, and for which I can only say, and I +say it from the bottom of my heart, may God reward them with his best +and choicest gifts, eternal, unfading in the heavens.</p> + +<p>If then I am to advert to the disposition of my own mind as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_636" id="Page_636">[Pg 636]</a></span> regards +this matter, I cannot avoid perceiving that it has inclined to the +ministerial office, for what has now become a considerable period, with +a bias at first uncertain and intermittent, but which has regularly and +rapidly increased in force and permanence. It has not been owing as far +as I can myself discern, to the operation of any external cause +whatever; nor of internal ones to any others than those which work their +effects in the most gradual and imperceptible manner. Day after day it +has grown upon and into my habit of feeling and desire. It has been +gradually strengthened by those small accessions of power, each of which +singly it would be utterly impossible to trace, but which collectively +have not only produced a desire of a certain description, but have led +me by reasonings often weighed and sifted and re-sifted to the best of +my ability, to the deliberate conclusion which I have stated above. I do +not indeed mean to say that there has been <i>no</i> time within this period +at which I have felt a longing for other pursuits; but such feelings +have been unstable and temporary; that which I now speak of is the +permanent and habitual inclination of my mind. And such too, I think, it +is likely to continue; as far at least as I can venture to think I see +anything belonging to the future, or can anticipate the continuance of +any one desire, feeling, or principle, in a mind so wayward and +uncertain as my own—so far do I believe that this sentiment will +remain.</p> + +<p>It gives me pain, great pain, to communicate anything which I have even +the remotest apprehension can give the slightest annoyance to you. I +trust this will not do so; although I fear it may. But though fearing it +may, I feel it is my duty to do it: because I have only these three +alternatives before me. First, to delay communication to some subsequent +opportunity: but as I have no fair prospect of being able <i>then</i> to +convey a different statement, this plan would be attended with no +advantage whatever, as far as I can see. Secondly, to dissemble my +feelings: an alternative on which if I said another word I should be +behaving undutifully and wickedly towards you. Thirdly, to follow the +course I have now chosen, I trust with no feelings but those of the most +profound affection, and of unfeigned grief that as far as my own view is +concerned, I am unable to make it coincide with yours. I say, <i>as far</i> +as my own view goes, because I do not now see that my own view can or +ought to stand for a moment in the way of your desires. In the hands of +my parents, therefore, I am left. But lest you should be led to suppose +that I have never reasoned with myself on this matter, but yielded to +blind impulses or transitory whims, I will state, not indeed at length, +but with as much simplicity and clearness as I am able, some of the +motives which seem to me to urge me with an irresistible accumulation of +moral force, to this conclusion, and this alone. In the first place, I +would say that my own state and character is <i>not</i> one of them; nor, I +believe, could any views of that character be compatible with their +existence and reception, but that in which it now appears to me: namely, +as one on which I can look with no degree of satisfaction whatever, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_637" id="Page_637">[Pg 637]</a></span> +for the purification of which I can only direct my eyes and offer up my +prayers to the throne of God.</p> + +<p>First, then, with reference to the <i>dignity</i> of this office, I know none +to compare with it; none which can compete with the grandeur of its end +or of its means—the end, the glory of God, and the means, the +restoration of man to that image of his Maker which is now throughout +the world so lamentably defaced. True indeed it is, that there are other +fields for the use and improvement of all which God lends to us, which +are wide, dignified, beneficial, desirable: desirable in the first and +highest degree, <i>if we had not this</i>. But as long as this field +continues, and as long as it continues unfilled, I do not see how I am +to persuade myself that any powers, be they the meanest or the greatest, +can be <i>so</i> profitably or <i>so</i> nobly employed as in the performance of +this sublime duty. And that this field is <i>not</i> yet filled, how can any +one doubt who casts his eyes abroad over the moral wilderness of this +world, who contemplates the pursuits, desires, designs, and principles +of the beings that move so busily in it to and fro, without an object +beyond the finding food, be it mental or bodily, for the <i>present</i> +moment or the <i>present</i> life—it matters little which—or beyond +ministering to the desires, under whatever modification they may appear, +of self-will and self-love? When I look to the standard of habit and +principle adopted in the world at large, and then divert my eyes for a +moment from that spectacle to the standard fixed and the picture +delineated in the book of revelation, then, my beloved father, the +conviction flashes on my soul with a moral force I cannot resist, and +would not if I could, that the vineyard still wants labourers, that 'the +kingdoms of this world are not yet become the kingdoms of our Lord and +of his Christ,' and that <i>till</i> they are become such, till the frail +race of Adam is restored to the knowledge and the likeness of his Maker, +till universally and throughout the wide world the will of God is become +our delight, and its accomplishment our first and last desire, there can +be no claim so solemn and imperative as that which even now seems to +call to us with the voice of God from heaven, and to say 'I have given +Mine own Son for this rebellious and apostate world, the sacrifice is +offered and accepted, but you, you who are basking in the sunbeams of +Christianity, you who are blessed beyond measure, and, oh, how beyond +desert in parents, in friends, in every circumstance and adjunct that +can sweeten your pilgrimage, why will you not bear to fellow-creatures +sitting in darkness and the shadow of death the tidings of this +universal and incomprehensible love?'</p> + +<p>In this, I believe, is included the main reason which influences me; a +reason as full of joy as of glory: that transcendent reason, in +comparison with which every other object seems to dwindle into utter and +absolute insignificance. But I would not conceal from you—why should +I?—that which I cannot conceal from myself: that the darker side of +this great picture sometimes meets me, and it is vain that, shuddering, +I attempt to turn away from it. My mind involuntarily reverts to the sad +and solemn conviction that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_638" id="Page_638">[Pg 638]</a></span> a fearfully great portion of the world round +me is dying in sin. This conviction is the result of that same +comparison I have mentioned before, between the principles and practices +it embraces, and those which the Almighty authoritatively enjoins: and +<i>entertaining it</i> as I do, how, my beloved parent, can I bear to think +of my own seeking to wanton in the pleasures of life (I mean even its +innocent pleasures), or to give up my heart to its business, while my +fellow-creatures, to whom I am bound by every tie of human sympathies, +of a common sinfulness and a common redemption, day after day are +sinking into death? I mean, not the death of the body, which is but a +gate either to happiness or to misery, but that of the soul, the true +and the only true death. Can I, with this persuasion engrossing me, be +justified in inactivity? or in any measure short of the most direct and +most effective means of meeting, if in <i>any degree</i> it be possible, +these horrible calamities? Nor is impotency and incompetency any +argument on the other side: if I saw a man drowning I should hold out my +hand to help him, although I were uncertain whether my strength would +prove sufficient to extricate him or not; how much more strongly, then, +is this duty incumbent when there are thousands on thousands perishing +in sin and ignorance on every side, and where the stake is not the +addition or subtraction of a few short years from a life, which can but +be a span, longer or shorter, but the doom, the irrevocable doom of +spirits made for God, and once like God, but now alienated and apostate? +And the remedy which God has provided for this portentous evil is not +like the ponderous and elaborate contrivances of men; its spear is not, +like Goliath's, the weaver's beam, but all its weapons are a few pure +and simple elements of truth, ill calculated, like the arms of David, in +the estimation of the world to attain their object, but yet capable of +being wielded by a stripling's hand, and yet more, 'mighty, through God, +to the pulling down of strongholds.'</p> + +<p>What I have said is from the bottom of my heart, and put forward without +the smallest reservation of any kind: and I have said it thus, because +in duty bound to do it; and having, too, the comfort of the fullest +persuasion that even if your judgment should disallow it, your affection +would pardon it. It is possible, indeed, that the (as it seems to me) +awful consideration which I have last put forward may have been +misstated or misapprehended. Would God it may be so! happy should I be +to find either by reason or revelation that the principles of this world +were other than I have estimated them to be, and consequently that their +fate would be other likewise. I may be under darkness and delusion, +having consulted with none in this matter; but till it is shown that I +am so, I am bound by all the most solemn ties, ties not created in this +world nor to be dissolved with it, but eternal and changeless as our +spirits and He who made them, to regulate my actions with reference to +these all-important truths—the apostasy of man on the one hand, the +love of God on the other. Of my duties <i>to men</i> as a social being, can +any be so important as to tell them of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_639" id="Page_639">[Pg 639]</a></span> danger under which I believe +them to lie, of the precipice to which I fear many are approaching, +while thousands have already fallen headlong, and others again, even +while I write, are continuing to fall in a succession of appalling +rapidity? Of my duties <i>to God</i> as a rational and responsible being, +especially as a being for whom in common with all men the precious blood +of Christ has been given, can any more imperatively and more +persuasively demand all the little I can give than this, the proclaiming +that one instance of God's unfathomable love which alone so transcends +as almost to swallow up all others? while those others thus transcended +and eclipsed are such as would be of themselves by far the highest and +holiest obligations man could know, did we not know this.</p> + +<p>Thus I have endeavoured to state these truths, if truths they are, at +least these convictions, to you, dwelling upon them at a length which +may perhaps be tedious and appear affected, simply as I trust, in order +to represent them to your mind as much to the life as possible, I mean +as nearly as possible in the light in which they have again and again +appeared, and do habitually appear, to my own, so as to give you the +best means in my power of estimating the strength or detecting the +weakness of those grounds on which the conclusions above stated rest. (I +have not mentioned the benefit I might hope myself to derive from this +course of living compared with others; and yet this consideration, +though here undoubtedly a secondary one, is, I believe, more weighty +than any of those which can be advanced in favour of an opposite +determination.)</p> + +<p>For some time I doubted whether to state reasons at all: fearing that it +might appear presumptuous; but I resolved to do it as choosing rather to +incur that risk, than the hazarding an appearance of reserve and desire +to conceal my real sentiments from one who has a right to see into the +bottom of my heart.</p> + +<p>Yet one trespass more I must make on your patience. It may perhaps seem +that the inducements I have stated are of an unusual character, +unsubstantial, romantic, theoretical, and not practical. Unusual, +indeed, they are: because (though it is not without diffidence that I +bring this sweeping charge—indeed, I should not dare to bring it were +it not brought elsewhere) it is a rare thing in this world even where +right actions are performed to ground them upon right motives. At least, +I am convinced that there are fundamental errors on this subject very +prevalent—that they are in general fixed far too low, and that the +height of our standard of practice must ever be adapted more or less to +that of principle. God only knows whether this be right. But hence it +has been that I have endeavoured, I trust not improperly, to put these +motives forward in the simplicity of that form wherein they seem to me +to come down from the throne of God to the hearts of men; and to +consider my prospects and obligations, not under all the limitations +which a highly artificial state of society might seem to impose upon +them, but direct and undiluted; not, in short, as one who has certain +pursuits to follow, certain objects of his own to gain,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_640" id="Page_640">[Pg 640]</a></span> and relations +to fulfil, and arrangements to execute—but as a being destined shortly +to stand before the judgment seat of God, and there give the decisive +account of his actions at the tribunal whose awards admit of no evasion +and of no appeal.</p> + +<p>That I <i>have</i> viewed them in this light I dare not assert; but I have +wished and striven to view them so, and to weigh them, and to answer +these questions in the same manner as I must answer them on that day +when the trumpet of the archangel shall arouse the living and the dead, +and when it will be demanded of me in common with all others, how I have +kept and how employed that which was committed to my charge. I dare not +pretend that I could act even up to the standard here fixed, but I can +eye it though distant, with longing hope, and look upwards for the power +which I know is all-sufficient, and therefore sufficient to enable even +such an one as myself to reach it.</p> + +<p>Viewing, then, these considerations in such a light as this, I can come +to no other conclusion, at least unaided, than that the work of +spreading religion has a claim infinitely transcending all others in +dignity, in solemnity, and in usefulness: destined to continue in force +until the happy moment come when every human being has been made fully +and effectually acquainted with his condition and its remedies—when +too, as it seems to me, it will be soon enough—of course, I lay down +this rule for myself, provided as I am to the extent of my wants and +very far beyond them—to devise other occupations: <i>now</i> it behoves me +to discharge the overwhelming obligation which summons me to this.</p> + +<p>I have scarcely mentioned my beloved mother in the whole of this letter; +for though little has ever passed between us on this subject through the +medium of language, and nothing whatever, I believe, since I last spoke +with you upon it, yet I have long been well aware of the tendency of her +desires, long indeed before my own in any degree coincided with them.</p> + +<p>I await with deference and interest the communication of your desires +upon this subject: earnestly desiring that if I have said anything +through pride or self-love, it may be forgiven me at your hands, and by +God through his Son; and that if my statements be false, or exaggerated, +or romantic, or impracticable, I may, by His mercy and through your +instrumentality or that of others, be brought back to my right mind, and +taught to hold the truth of God in all its sobriety as well as in all +its force.—And believe me ever, my beloved and honoured father, your +affectionate and dutiful son,</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 25em;"><span class="smcap">Wm. E. Gladstone.</span></span><br /> +<hr /> +<p class="center"><i>John Gladstone to his Son</i></p> + +<span style="margin-left: 25em;"><i>Leamington, 10 Aug. 1830</i></span>.<br /> + +<p><span class="smcap">My Beloved William</span>,—I have read and given my best consideration to your +letter, dated the 4th, which I only received yesterday. I did hope that +you would have delayed making up your mind on a subject so important as +your future pursuits in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_641" id="Page_641">[Pg 641]</a></span> life must be to yourself and to us all, until +you had completed those studies connected with the attainment of the +honours or distinctions of which you were so justly ambitious, and on +which your mind seemed so bent when we last communicated respecting +them. You know my opinion to be, that the field for actual usefulness to +our fellow-creatures, where a disposition to exercise it actively +exists, is more circumscribed and limited in the occupations and duties +of a clergyman, whose sphere of action, unless pluralities are admitted +(as I am sure they would not be advocated by you) is necessarily in a +great degree confined to his parish, than in those professions or +pursuits which lead to a more general knowledge, as well as a more +general intercourse with mankind, such as the law, taking it as a basis, +and introduction to public life, to which I had looked forward for you, +considering you, as I do, peculiarly well qualified to be made thus +eminently useful to others, with credit and satisfaction to yourself. +There is no doubt but as a clergyman, faithfully and conscientiously +discharging the duties of that office to those whose spiritual interests +are entrusted to your care, should you eventually be placed in that +situation, that you may have both comfort and satisfaction, with few +worldly responsibilities, but you will allow me to doubt whether the +picture your perhaps too sanguine mind has drawn in your letter before +me, would ever be practically realised. Be this as it may, whenever your +mind shall be finally made up on this most important subject, I shall +trust to its being eventually for your good, whatever that determination +may be. In the meantime I am certainly desirous that those studies with +which you have been occupied in reading for your degree may be followed +up, whether the shorter or longer period may be necessary to prepare you +for the results. You are young and have ample time before you. Let +nothing be done rashly; be consistent with yourself, and avail yourself +of all the advantages placed within your reach. If, when that ordeal is +passed, you should continue to think as you now do, I shall not oppose +your <i>then</i> preparing yourself for the church, but I do hope that your +final determination will not until then be taken, and that whatever +events may occur in the interval, you will give them such weight and +consideration as they may appear to merit.... Your mother is much as +usual.—With our united and affectionate love, I ever am your +affectionate father,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 26.5em;"><span class="smcap">John Gladstone</span></span>.<br /> +</p> +<hr /> + +<p class="center"><a name="CANADA" id="CANADA">CANADA, 1838</a></p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#Page_144"><i>Page 144</i></a></p> + +<p><i>Jan. 20/38</i>.—To-day there was a meeting on Canada at Sir R. Peel's. +There were present Duke of Wellington, Lords Aberdeen, Ripon, +Ellenborough, Stanley, Hardinge, and others.... Peel said he did not +object to throwing out the government provided it were done by us on our +own principles; but that to throw them out on radical principles would +be most unwise. He agreed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_642" id="Page_642">[Pg 642]</a></span> that less might have been done, but was not +willing to take the responsibility of refusing what the government +asked. He thought that this rebellion had given a most convenient +opportunity for settling the question of the Canadian constitution, +which had long been a thorny one and inaccessible; that if we postponed +the settlement by giving the assembly another trial, the revolt would be +forgotten, and in colder blood the necessary powers might be refused. He +thought that when once you went into a measure of a despotic character, +it was well to err, if at all, on the side of sufficiency; Lord Ripon +strongly concurred. The duke sat with his hand to his ear, turning from +one towards another round the circle as they took up the conversation in +succession, and said nothing till directly and pressingly called upon by +Peel, a simple but striking example of the self-forgetfulness of a great +man.</p> + +<p><i>Jan. 26/38</i>.—I was myself present at about eight hours [<i>i.e.</i> on +three occasions] of discussion in Peel's house upon the Canadian +question and bill, and there was one meeting held to which I was not +summoned. The conservative amendments were all adopted in the thoroughly +straightforward view of looking simply at the bill and not at the +government and the position of parties. Peel used these emphatic words: +'Depend upon it, our course is the direct one; don't do anything that is +wrong for the sake of putting them out; don't avoid anything that is +right for the sake of keeping them in.' Every one of these points has +now been carried without limitation or exception. For the opposition +party this is, in familiar language, a feather in its cap. The whole has +been carefully, thoroughly, and effectually done. Nothing since I have +been in parliament—not even the defeat of the Church Rate measure last +year—has been of a kind to tell so strikingly as regards appearances +upon the comparative credit of the two parties.</p> + +<hr /> +<p class="center"><a name="GOVERNMENT" id="GOVERNMENT">SIR ROBERT PEEL'S GOVERNMENT</a></p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#Page_247"><i>Page 247</i></a></p> + +<p><i>In the great mountain of Mr. Gladstone's papers I have come across an +unfinished and undated draft of a letter written by him for the Queen in +1880 on Sir Robert Peel's government</i>:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Mr. Gladstone with his humble duty reverts to the letter which your +Majesty addressed to him a few days back, and in which your Majesty +condescended to recollect and to remind him of the day now nearly +forty years ago, a day he fears not altogether one of pleasure to +your Majesty, when together with others he had the honour to be +sworn of your Majesty's privy council. Your Majesty is pleased to +pronounce upon the government then installed into office a high +eulogy: a eulogy which Mr. Gladstone would presume, as far as he +may, to echo. He values it, and values the recollection of the men +who principally composed it, because it was, in the first place, a +most honourable and high-minded government; because its legislative +acts tended greatly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_643" id="Page_643">[Pg 643]</a></span> and almost uniformly, to increase the +wellbeing of the country, and to strengthen the attachment of the +people to the throne and the laws; while it studied in all things +to maintain the reverse of an ambitious or disturbing policy.</p> + +<p>It was Mr. Gladstone's good fortune to live on terms of intimacy, +and even affection, with the greater portion of its principal and +more active members until the close of their valued lives; and +although he is far from thinking that they, and he himself with +them, committed no serious errors, yet it is his conviction that in +many of the most important rules of public policy that government +surpassed generally the governments which have succeeded it, +whether liberal or conservative. Among them he would mention purity +in patronage, financial strictness, loyal adherence to the +principle of public economy, jealous regard to the rights of +parliament, a single eye to the public interest, strong aversion to +extension of territorial responsibilities, and a frank admission of +the rights of foreign countries as equal to those of their own. +With these recollections of the political character of Sir R. Peel +and his government Mr. Gladstone has in no way altered his feelings +of regard and respect for them. In all the points he has mentioned +he would desire to tread in their steps, and in many of them, or at +least in some, he has no hope of soon seeing them equalled. The +observance of such principles is in his conviction the best means +of disarming radicalism of whatever is dangerous in its +composition, and he would feel more completely at ease as to the +future prospects of this country could he feel more sure of their +being faithfully observed.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone is, and has been, but a learner through his life, and +he can claim no special gift of insight into the future: the +history of his life may not be flattering to his self-love, but he +has great consolation in believing that the great legislative acts +of the last half-century, in most of which he has had some share +...</p></div> + +<p><i>And here the fragment closes</i>.</p> + +<hr /> +<p class="center"><a name="Sugar" id="Sugar">CRISIS ON THE SUGAR DUTIES, 1844</a></p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#Page_267"><i>Page 267</i></a></p> + +<p>In 1841 the whig government raised the question of the sugar duties, and +proposed to substitute a protective duty of 12/ per cwt. for the actual +or virtual prohibition of foreign sugars which had up to that time +subsisted. They were strongly opposed, and decisively beaten. The +argument used against them was, I think, twofold. There was the +protection plea on behalf of the West Indians whose estates were now +worked only by free labour—and there was the great and popular +contention that the measure not only admitted sugar the product of slave +labour, which we would not allow our own colonies to employ, but that +our new supplies would be derived from Brazil, and above all from Cuba +and Puerto Rico, where the slave trade was rampant, and was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_644" id="Page_644">[Pg 644]</a></span> prosecuted +on an enormous scale. The government of Sir R. Peel largely modified our +system. Its general professions were the abolition of prohibition, and +the reduction of protective duties to a moderate rate. In 1844 it was +determined to deal with the sugar duties, and to admit sugar at, I +think, a rate of 10/ per cwt. beyond the rate for British-grown. But we +had to bear in mind the arguments of 1841, and it was determined that +the sugars so to be admitted were to be the product of free labour only. +There was some uncertainty from whence they were to come. Java produced +sugar largely, under a system involving certain restraints, but as we +contended essentially free. The whole argument, however, was difficult +and perplexed, and a parliamentary combination was formed against the +government. The opposition, with perfect consistency, mustered in full +force. The West Indian interest, which, though much reduced in wealth, +still subsisted as a parliamentary entity, was keenly arrayed on the +same side. There were some votes attracted by dislike, perhaps, to the +argument on our side, which appeared to be complex and over-refined. A +meeting of the party was held in order to confront the crisis. Sir +Robert Peel stated his case in a speech which was thought to be haughty +and unconciliatory. I do not recollect whether there was hostile +discussion, or whether silence and the sulks prevailed. But I remember +that when the meeting of the party broke up, Sir Robert Peel said on +quitting the room that it was the worst meeting he had ever attended. It +left disagreeable anticipations as to the division which was in +immediate prospect.... The opposition in general had done what they +could to strengthen their momentary association with the West Indian +conservatives. Their hopes of a majority depended entirely upon +conservative votes. Of course, therefore, it was vital to confine the +attack to the merits of the question immediately before the House, as an +attack upon the policy of the government generally could only strengthen +it by awakening the susceptibilities of party and so reclaiming the +stray voters to the administration. Lord Howick, entering into the +debate as the hours of enhanced interest began, made a speech which +attacked the conservative policy at large, and gave the opening for an +effective reply. Lord Stanley perceived his opportunity and turned it to +account with great force and adroitness. In a strictly retaliatory +speech, he wound up conservative sentiment on behalf of ministers, and +restored the tone of the House. The clouds of the earlier evening hours +dispersed, and the government was victorious. Two speeches, one +negatively and the other positively, reversed the prevailing current, +and saved the administration. I have never known a parallel case. The +whole honour of the fray, in the ministerial sense, redounded to Lord +Stanley. I doubt whether in the twenty-six years of his after life he +ever struck such a stroke as this.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_645" id="Page_645">[Pg 645]</a></span></p> + +<hr /> +<p class="center">COLONIAL POLICY</p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#Page_362"><i>Page 362</i></a></p> + +<p>You have reversed, within the last seventy years, every one of these +salutary principles. Your policy has been this; you have retained at +home the management of and property in colonial lands. You have +magnificent sums figuring in your estimates for the ordinary expenses of +their governments, instead of allowing them to bear their own expenses. +Instead of suffering them to judge what are the measures best adapted to +secure their peaceful relations with the aboriginal tribes, and +endeavouring to secure their good conduct—instead of telling them that +they must not look for help from you unless they maintain the principles +of justice, you tell them, 'You must not meddle with the relations +between yourselves and the natives; that is a matter for parliament'; a +minister sitting in Downing Street must determine how the local +relations between the inhabitants of the colony and the aboriginal +tribes are to be settled, in every point down to the minutest detail. +Nay, even their strictly internal police your soldiery is often called +upon to maintain. Then, again, the idea of their electing their own +officers is, of course, revolutionary in the extreme—if not invading +the royal supremacy, it is something almost as bad, dismembering the +empire; and as to making their own laws upon their local affairs without +interference or control from us, that is really an innovation so opposed +to all ideas of imperial policy, that I think my honourable friend the +member for Southwark (Sir William Molesworth) has been the first man in +the House bold enough to propose it. Thus, in fact, the principles on +which our colonial administration was once conducted have been precisely +reversed. Our colonies have come to be looked upon as being, not +municipalities endowed with internal freedom, but petty states. If you +had only kept to the fundamental idea of your forefathers, that these +were municipal bodies founded within the shadow and cincture of your +imperial powers—that it was your business to impose on them such +positive restraints as you thought necessary, and having done so, to +leave them free in everything else—all those principles, instead of +being reversed, would have survived in full vigour—you would have saved +millions, I was going to say countless millions, to your exchequer; but +you would have done something far more important by planting societies +more worthy by far of the source from which they spring; for no man can +read the history of the great American Revolution without seeing that a +hundred years ago your colonies, such as they then were, with the +institutions they then possessed, and the political relations in which +they then stood to the mother-country, bred and reared men of mental +stature and power such as far surpassed anything that colonial life is +now commonly considered to be capable of producing.—<i>Speech on second +reading of the New Zealand Constitution bill, May 21, 1852</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_646" id="Page_646">[Pg 646]</a></span></p> + +<hr /> +<p class="center">FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS OF 1853 AS AFFECTING IRELAND</p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#Page_465"><i>Page 465</i></a></p> + +<p><i>When the report of the Irish Financial Relations Commission of 1894 was +named to him, Mr. Gladstone made the following observations:—</i></p> + +<p>The changes adopted in that year were explained in my budget speech, and +will be found in my volume of <i>Financial Statements</i>, pp. 53, 60, and +69. They affected the Spirit Duties and the Income-Tax.</p> + +<p>1. <i>The Spirit Duties.</i>—We laid 8d. per gallon upon Irish spirits, +imposed at the same time 1s. per gallon in Scotland, and laid it down +that the equalisation of the duty in the three countries would require a +reduction of the duty of 8s. chargeable in England. Sir Robert Peel had +imposed 1s. per gallon on Irish spirits in 1842, but was defeated by the +smuggler, and repealed the duty in consequence of the failure. In 1842 +the duty was levied by a separate revenue police. I abolished this +separate police, and handed the duty to the constabulary force, which +raised it, and without difficulty.</p> + +<p>2. <i>The Income-Tax</i> was also in that year extended to Ireland. I pointed +out that Sir Robert Peel, in imposing the burden on Great Britain, +proposed to give a compensation for it by progressive reductions of duty +on consumable commodities, and that Ireland had for twelve years enjoyed +her full share of the compensation without undergoing any part of the +burden; but I also laid it down as a fundamental principle that the +peace income-tax was to be temporary, and I computed that it might cease +in 1860. This computation was defeated, first by the Crimean war, second +by a change of ideas as to expenditure and establishments which I did +everything in my power to check, but which began to creep in with, and +after, that war. We were enabled to hold it in check during the +government of 1859-66. It has since that time, and especially in these +last years, broken all bounds. But although the computation of 1853 was +defeated, the principle that the income-tax should be temporary was +never forgotten, at least by me, and in the year 1874 I redeemed my +pledge by proposing, as mentioned, to repeal it—a course which would +have saved the country a sum which it is difficult to reckon, but very +large. This fact which was in the public mind in 1853 when the +income-tax was temporary, is the key to the whole position. From this +point of view we must combine it with the remission of the consolidated +annuities. I have not now the means of making the calculation exactly, +but it will be found that a descending income-tax on Ireland for seven +years at 7d., then 6d., then 5d., is largely, though not completely, +balanced by that remission. It will thus be seen that the finance of +1853 is not responsible either for a permanent peace income-tax upon +Ireland, or for the present equalisation of the spirit duties. At the +same time, I do not mean to condemn those measures. I condemn utterly +the extravagance of the civil expenditure in Ireland, which,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_647" id="Page_647">[Pg 647]</a></span> if Ireland +has been unjustly taxed, cannot for a moment be pleaded as a +compensation. I reserve my judgment whether political equality can be +made compatible with privilege in point of taxation. I admit, for my own +part, that in 1853 I never went back to the union whence the difficulty +springs, but only to the union of the exchequers in or about 1817. It is +impossible to resist the authority which has now affirmed that we owe a +pecuniary, as well as a political debt to Ireland.</p> + +<hr /> +<p class="center">FINANCIAL PROPOSAL OF 1853</p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#Page_473"><i>Page 473</i></a></p> + +<p class="center"><i>Mr. Gladstone to Sir Stafford Northcote</i></p> + +<p><i>Aug. 6, 1862</i>.—I have three main observations to make upon the +conversion scheme, two of which are confessions, and one a maxim for an +opposition to remember.</p> + +<p>1. In the then doubtful state of foreign politics, had I been capable of +fully appreciating it at the time, I ought not to have made the +proposal.</p> + +<p>2. Such a proposal when made by a government ought either to be resisted +outright, or allowed to pass, I do not say without protest, but without +delay. For <i>that</i> can do nothing but mischief to a proposal depending on +public impression. The same course should be taken as is taken in the +case of loans.</p> + +<p>3. I am sorry to say I made a more serious error, as regards the South +Sea Stocks, than the original proposal. In the summer, I think, of 1853, +and a good while before harvest the company proposed to me to take Mr. +Goulburn's 3 per cents. to an equal amount in lieu of their own. They +were at the time more valuable and I refused; but it would have been +wise to accept, not because the event proved it so, but because the +state of things at the time was so far doubtful as to have made this +kind of insurance prudent.</p> + +<p><i>For the benefit of the expert, I give Mr. Gladstone's further +observations on this highly technical matter:—</i></p> + +<p>I have other remarks to offer. I write, however, from memory. Three +millions of the £8,000,000 were paid in exchequer bills. The difference +between £100 and the price of consols at the time may, in argument at +least, fairly be considered as public loss. You say it was 90 or 91. We +could not, however, if the operation had not taken place, have applied +our surplus revenue with advantage to the reduction of debt. The +balances would have been richer by £5,000,000, but we had to raise seven +millions for the services of the year 1854-5. Now, as I am making myself +liable for the loss of half a million of money in repaying the South Sea +Company, and thereby starving the balances, I am entitled to say on the +other hand that the real loss is to be measured by the amount of +necessity created for replenishing them, and the charge entailed in +effecting it. This I think was done by the exchequer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_648" id="Page_648">[Pg 648]</a></span> bonds: and beyond +all doubt a large saving was effected to the public by raising money +upon those bonds, instead of borrowing in consols at 84 or thereabouts, +which I think would have been the price for which we should in that year +have borrowed—say, at 84. The redemption price, <i>i.e.</i> the price at +which on the average consols have been in recent times redeemed, can +hardly I think be less than 95, and may be higher. There was in 1854 a +strong combination in the City to compel a 'loan' by bearing the funds; +and when it was defeated by the vote of the House of Commons, a rapid +reaction took place, several millions, as I understand, were lost by the +'bear,' and the attempt was not renewed in 1855, when the loan was, I +believe, made on fair terms, relatively to the state of the market.</p> + +<hr /> +<p class="center"><a name="Reform" id="Reform">THE REFORM BILL OF 1854</a></p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#Page_491"><i>Page 491</i></a></p> + +<p>In cabinet on Wednesday Lord John Russell opened the question of the +Reform bill, stated the prospect of defeat on Sir E. Dering's motion, +and expressed his willingness to postpone the measure until the 27th +April. Lord Palmerston recommended postponement altogether. Lord +Aberdeen and Graham were averse to any postponement, the latter even +declaring his opinion that we ought at the time when the Queen's Speech +was framed to have assumed the present state of circumstances as +inevitable, and that, therefore, we had no apology or ground for change; +further, that we ought if necessary to dissolve upon defeat in order to +carry the measure. No one else went this length. All the three I have +named were, from their different points of view, disposed to concur in +the expedient of postponement, which none of them preferred on its +merits. Of the rest of the cabinet, Molesworth and I expressed decidedly +our preference for the more decided course of at once giving up the bill +for the year, as did the chancellor, and this for the ultimate interest +of the plan itself. Lord Lansdowne, Wood, Clarendon, Herbert were all, +with more or less decision of phrase, in the same sense. Newcastle, +Granville, and Argyll were, I believe, of the same mind. But all were +willing to accept the postponement until April 27, rather than the very +serious alternative. Molesworth and I both expressed our apprehension +that this course would in the end subject the government to far more of +censure and of suspicion than if we dealt with the difficulty at once. +Next day Lord John came to see me, and told me he had the idea that in +April it might probably be found advisable to divide the part of the +bill which enfranchises new classes from that which disfranchises places +and redistributes seats; with a view of passing the first and letting +the latter take its chance; as the popular feeling would tell for the +first while the selfish interests were provoked by the last. He thought +that withdrawal of the bill was equivalent to defeat, and that either +must lead to a summary winding up of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_649" id="Page_649">[Pg 649]</a></span> the session. I said the division +of the bill was a new idea and a new light to me; but observed that it +would by no means help Graham, who felt himself chiefly tied to the +disfranchising part; and submitted to him that his view of a withdrawal +of the bill, given such circumstances as would alone induce the cabinet +to think of it, was more unfavourable than the case warranted—<i>March +3, 1854</i>.</p> + +<hr /> +<p class="center">CIVIL SERVICE REFORM</p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#Page_511"><i>Page 511</i></a></p> + +<p class="center"><i>Extracts from a letter to Lord John Russell, Jan. 20, 1854</i></p> + +<p>... I do not hesitate to say that one of the great recommendations of +the change in my eyes would be its tendency to strengthen and multiply +the ties between the higher classes and the possession of administrative +power. As a member for Oxford, I look forward eagerly to its operation. +There, happily, we are not without some lights of experience to throw +upon this part of the subject. The objection which I always hear there +from persons who wish to retain restrictions upon elections is this: 'If +you leave them to examination, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and the other public +schools will carry <i>everything</i>.' I have a strong impression that the +aristocracy of this country are even superior in natural gifts, on the +average, to the mass: but it is plain that with their acquired +advantages, their <i>insensible education</i>, irrespective of book-learning, +they have an immense superiority. This applies in its degree to all +those who may be called gentlemen by birth and training; and it must be +remembered that an essential part of any such plan as is now under +discussion is the separation of <i>work</i>, wherever it can be made, into +mechanical and intellectual, a separation which will open to the highly +educated class a career, and give them a command over all the higher +parts of the civil service, which up to this time they have never +enjoyed....</p> + +<p>I must admit that the aggregate means now possessed by government for +carrying on business in the House of Commons are not in excess of the +real need, and will not bear serious diminution. I remember being +alarmed as a young man when Lord Althorp said, or was said to have said, +that this country could no longer be governed by patronage. But while +sitting thirteen years for a borough with a humble constituency, and +spending near ten of them in opposition, I was struck by finding that +the loss or gain of access to government patronage was not traceable in +its effect upon the local political influences. I concluded from this +that it was not the intrinsic value of patronage (which is really none, +inasmuch as it does not, or ought not, to multiply the aggregate number +of places to be given, but only acts on the mode of giving them) that +was regarded, but simply that each party liked and claimed to be upon a +footing of equality with their neighbours. Just in the same way, it was +considered neces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_650" id="Page_650">[Pg 650]</a></span>sary that bandsmen, flagmen, and the rest, should be +paid four times the value of their services, without any intention of +bribery, but because it was the custom, and was done on the other +side—in places where this was thought essential, it has now utterly +vanished away, and yet the people vote and work for their cause as +zealously as they did before. May not this after all be found to be the +case in the House of Commons as well as in many constituencies?...</p> + +<p>It might increase the uncertainties of the government in the House of +Commons on particular nights; but is not the hold even now uncertain as +compared with what it was thirty or forty years ago; and is it really +weaker for general and for good purposes, on account of that +uncertainty, than it then was? I have heard you explain with great force +to the House this change in the position of governments since the Reform +bill, as a legitimate accompaniment of changes in our political state, +by virtue of which we appeal <i>more</i> to reason, less to habit, direct +interest, or force. May not this be another legitimate and measured step +in the same direction? May we not get, I will not say more ease and +certainty for the leader of the House, but more real and more honourable +strength with the better and, in the long run, the ruling part of the +community, by a signal proof of cordial desire that the processes by +which government is carried on should not in elections only, but +elsewhere too be honourable and pure? I speak with diffidence; but +remembering that at the revolution we passed over from prerogative to +patronage, and that since the revolution we have also passed from +bribery to influence, I cannot think the process is to end here; and +after all we have seen of the good sense and good feeling of the +community, though it may be too sanguine, I cherish the hope that the +day is now near at hand, or actually come, when in pursuit not of +visionary notions, but of a great practical and economical improvement, +we may safely give yet one more new and striking sign of rational +confidence in the intelligence and character of the people.</p> + +<hr /> +<p class="center"><a name="Bank" id="Bank">GLADSTONE AND THE BANK</a></p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#Page_519"><i>Page 519</i></a></p> + +<p>From the time I took office as chancellor of the exchequer I began to +learn that the state held in the face of the Bank and the City an +essentially false position as to finance. When those relations began, +the state was justly in ill odour as a fraudulent bankrupt who was ready +on occasion to add force to fraud. After the revolution it adopted +better methods though often for unwise purposes, and in order to induce +monied men to be lenders it came forward under the countenance of the +Bank as its sponsor. Hence a position of subserviency which, as the idea +of public faith grew up and gradually attained to solidity, it became +the interest of the Bank and the City to prolong. This was done by +amicable and accommodating measures towards the government, whose +position<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_651" id="Page_651">[Pg 651]</a></span> was thus cushioned and made easy in order that it might be +willing to give it a continued acquiescence. The hinge of the whole +situation was this: the government itself was not to be a substantive +power in matters of finance, but was to leave the money power supreme +and unquestioned. In the conditions of that situation I was reluctant to +acquiesce, and I began to fight against it by financial self-assertion +from the first, though it was only by the establishment of the Post +Office Savings Banks and their great progressive development that the +finance minister has been provided with an instrument sufficiently +powerful to make him independent of the Bank and the City power when he +has occasion for sums in seven figures. I was tenaciously opposed by the +governor and deputy-governor of the Bank, who had seats in parliament, +and I had the City for an antagonist on almost every occasion.—<i>Undated +fragment</i>.</p> + +<hr /> +<p class="center"><a name="Duke" id="Duke">THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE AND SIDNEY HERBERT</a></p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#Page_521"><i>Page 521</i></a></p> + +<p>With reference to the Crimean war, I may give a curious example of the +power of self-deception in the most upright men. The offices of colonial +secretary and war minister were, in conformity with usage, united in the +hands of the Duke of Newcastle. On the outbreak of war it became +necessary to separate them. It evidently lay with the holder to choose +which he would keep. The duke elected for the war department, and +publicly declared that he did this in compliance with the unanimous +desire of his colleagues. And no one contradicted him. We could only +'grin and bear it.' I cannot pretend to know the sentiments of each and +every minister on the matter. But I myself, and every one with whom I +happened to communicate, were very strongly of an opposite opinion. The +duke was <i>well</i> qualified for the colonial seals, for he was a +statesman; <i>ill</i> for the war office, as he was no administrator. I +believe we all desired that Lord Palmerston should have been war +minister. It might have made a difference as to the tolerance of the +feeble and incapable administration of our army before Sebastopol. +Indeed, I remember hearing Lord Palmerston suggest in cabinet the recall +of Sir Richard Airy.</p> + +<p>In that crisis one man suffered most unjustly. I mean Sidney Herbert. To +some extent, perhaps, his extraordinary and most just popularity led +people to refrain from pouring on him those vials of wrath to which his +office exposed him in the eyes especially of the uninformed. The duties +of his department were really financial. I suppose it to be doubtful +whether it was not the duty of the secretary of state's department to +deal with the question of supply for the army, leaving to him only the +management of the purchasing part. But I conceive it could be subject to +no doubt at all that it was the duty of the administrative department of +the army on the spot to anticipate and make known their wants for the +coming winter. This, if my memory serves me, they wholly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_652" id="Page_652">[Pg 652]</a></span> failed to do: +and, the Duke of Newcastle's staff being in truth very little competent, +Herbert strained himself morning, noon, and night to invent wants for +the army, and according to his best judgment or conjecture to supply +them. So was laden the great steamer which went to the bottom in the +harbour of Balaclava. And so came Herbert to be abused for his good +deeds.—<i>Autobiographic Note</i>, Sept. 17, 1897.</p> + +<hr /> +<p class="center"><a name="War" id="War">THE CRIMEAN WAR</a></p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#Page_546"><i>Page 546</i></a></p> + +<p class="center"><i>Mr. Gladstone to Duke of Argyll</i></p> + +<p><i>Oct. 18, '55</i>.—You have conferred a great obligation on me by putting +me into the witness-box, and asking me why I thought last year that we +were under an obligation to Lord Palmerston for 'concentrating the +attention of the cabinet on the expedition to the Crimea.' Such was +<i>then</i> my feeling, entertained so strongly that I even wrote to him for +the purpose of giving to it the most direct expression. And such is my +feeling <i>still</i>. I think the fall of Sebastopol, viewed in itself and +apart from the mode in which it has been brought about, a great benefit +to Europe.... This benefit I should have contemplated with high and, so +to speak, unmixed satisfaction, were I well assured as to the means by +which we had achieved it. But, of course, there is a great difference +between a war which I felt, however grievous it was, yet to be just and +needful, and a war carried on without any adequate justification; so far +as I can to this hour tell, without even any well-defined practical +object.... Your letter (if I must now pass from the defensive) seems to +me to involve assumptions as to our right to rectify the distribution of +political power by bloodshed, which carry it far beyond just bounds. In +the hour of success doctrines and policy are applauded, or pass +unquestioned even under misgiving, which are very differently handled at +a period of disaster, or when a nation comes to feel the embarrassments +it has accumulated. The government are certainly giving effect to the +public opinion of the day. If that be a justification, they have it: as +all governments of England have had, in all wars, at eighteen months +from their commencement. Apart from the commanding consideration of our +duty as men and Christians, I am not less an objector to the +post-April-policy, on the ground of its certain or probable +consequences—in respect first and foremost to Turkey; in respect to the +proper place and power of France; in respect to the interest which +Europe has in keeping her (and us all) within such place and power; in +respect to the permanence of our friendly relations with her; and +lastly, in respect to the effects of continued war upon the condition of +our own people, and the stability of our institutions. But each of these +requires an octavo volume. I must add another head: I view with alarm +the future use against England of the arguments and accusations we use +against Russia.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_653" id="Page_653">[Pg 653]</a></span></p> + +<p><i>Dec. 1</i>.—What I find press hardest among the reproaches upon me is +this:—'You went to war for limited objects; why did you not take into +account the high probability that those objects would be lost sight of +in the excitement which war engenders, and that this war, if once begun, +would receive an extension far beyond your views and wishes?'</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 3</i>.—I <i>do</i> mean that the reproach I named is the one most nearly +just. What the weight due to it is, I forbear finally to judge until I +see the conclusion of this tremendous drama. But I quite see enough to +be aware that the particular hazard in question ought to have been more +sensibly and clearly before me. It <i>may</i> be good logic and good sense, I +think, to say:—'I will forego ends that are just, for fear of being +driven upon the pursuit of others that are not so.' Whether it is so in +a particular case depends very much upon the probable amount of the +driving power, and of the resisting force which may be at our command.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_654" id="Page_654">[Pg 654]</a></span></p> +<hr /> + +<div class="trans-note"> + Transcriber's Note: For orderly formatting, uniformity and ease of reading, the following +changes have been made in the Chronology: (1) Where March and April were spelled-out, they have been +abbreviated to Mar. and Apr.; and Sept. has been changed to Sep. (2) Abbreviations for the months +have been used instead of double quotes (") in all cases. (3) Where two dates were joined by 'and', 'and' has been +replaced by ','. (4) Where required for orderly formatting, the same action recorded for days in +different months has been recorded on the day and month specified.</div> + +<h3><a name="CHRONOLOGY" id="CHRONOLOGY"></a>CHRONOLOGY<a name="FNanchor_394_394" id="FNanchor_394_394"></a><a href="#Footnote_394_394" class="fnanchor">[394]</a></h3><br /> +<p class="right"><a href="#CONTENTS">ToC</a></p> +<p>1832.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Dec. 13.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Elected member for Newark,—Gladstone, 887; Handley, 798; Wilde, 726.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1833.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Jan. 25.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Admitted a law student at Lincoln's Inn.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 6.</td> +<td align='left'>Elected member of Carlton Club.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 30.</td> +<td align='left'>Speaks on a Newark petition</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 17.</td> +<td align='left'>Appointed on Colchester election committee.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 21.</td> +<td align='left'>Presents an Edinburgh petition against immediate abolition of slavery.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 3.</td> +<td align='left'>On Slavery Abolition bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 4.</td> +<td align='left'>On Liverpool election petition.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 8.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes Church Reform (Ireland) bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 25, 29.</td> +<td align='left'>On negro apprenticeship system.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 5.</td> +<td align='left'>Serves on select committee on stationary office.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 8.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves for return on Irish education.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1834.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Mar. 12, 19.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">On bill disenfranchising Liverpool freemen.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 4.</td> +<td align='left'>Serves on select committee on education in England.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 28.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes Universities Admission bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 26.</td> +<td align='left'>Junior lord of the treasury in Sir R. Peel's ministry.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1835.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Jan. 5.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Returned unopposed for Newark.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Jan. 27.</td> +<td align='left'>Under-secretary for war and the colonies.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 4.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves for, and serves on, a committee on military expenditure in the colonies.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 19.</td> +<td align='left'>Brings in Colonial Passengers' bill for improving condition of emigrants.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 31.</td> +<td align='left'>In defence of Irish church.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 11.</td> +<td align='left'>Entertained at Newark.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 22.</td> +<td align='left'>Criticises Municipal Corporation bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 20.</td> +<td align='left'>Criticises Municipal Corporation bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 21.</td> +<td align='left'>Defends House of Lords.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Sept. 23.</td> +<td align='left'>Death of his mother.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1836.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Feb. 8.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">A member of Aborigines committee.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 22.</td> +<td align='left'>On negro apprenticeship in Jamaica.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 28.</td> +<td align='left'>A member of negro apprenticeship committee.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 1.</td> +<td align='left'>On Tithes and Church (Ireland) bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 8.</td> +<td align='left'>A member of select committee on disposal of land in the colonies.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Oct. 18.</td> +<td align='left'>Speaks at dinner of Liverpool Tradesmen's Conservative Association.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Oct. 21.</td> +<td align='left'>Speaks at dinner of Liverpool Operatives' Conservative Association.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1837.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Jan. 13.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Speaks at Peel banquet at Glasgow.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Jan. 17.</td> +<td align='left'>Speaks at Newark.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 10.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves for return showing religious instruction in the colonies.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 7.</td> +<td align='left'>A member of committee on Irish education.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 8.</td> +<td align='left'>On affairs of Lower Canada.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 15.</td> +<td align='left'>In support of church rates.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_655" id="Page_655">[Pg 655]</a></span> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Apr. 28.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">A member of colonial accounts committee.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 21.</td> +<td align='left'>At Newark on Poor Law.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 24.</td> +<td align='left'>Returned unopposed for Newark.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 27.</td> +<td align='left'>Defeated for Manchester,—Thomson, 4127; Philips, 3759; Gladstone, 2324.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 9.</td> +<td align='left'>Speaks at dinner at Manchester.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 12.</td> +<td align='left'>Member of committee on education of poor children.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 22.</td> +<td align='left'>On Canadian discontent.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1838.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Jan. 23.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">On Canadian affairs.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 7.</td> +<td align='left'>Criticises action of government in Canada.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 30.</td> +<td align='left'>In defence of West Indian sugar planters.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 20.</td> +<td align='left'>On private bill to facilitate colonisation of New Zealand.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 10.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves for a commission on grievances of Cape colonists.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 11, 23.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes the appointment of dissenting chaplains in prisons.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 27.</td> +<td align='left'>A member of committee on Scotch education.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 30.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes grant to Maynooth College.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug.</td> +<td align='left'>Visits the continent. Oct. in Sicily; Dec. in Rome.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec.</td> +<td align='left'><i>The Church in its Relations with the State</i>, published.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1839.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Jan. 31.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Returns to England.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 13.</td> +<td align='left'>Withdraws from Lincoln's Inn.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 6.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes Suspension of the Jamaica constitution.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 10.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes bill for temporary government of Jamaica.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 20.</td> +<td align='left'>Criticises the proposal for a board of education.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 25.</td> +<td align='left'>Married to Miss Catherine Glynne at Hawarden.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1840.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Mar. 30 - Apr. 4.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Examiner at Eton for Newcastle scholarship.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 8.</td> +<td align='left'>Denounces traffic in opium and Chinese war.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 8.</td> +<td align='left'>A member of committee on opium question.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 29.</td> +<td align='left'>In support of Government of Canada bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 3.</td> +<td align='left'>Eldest son, William Henry, born.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 15.</td> +<td align='left'>On Canadian Clergy Reserves bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 25.</td> +<td align='left'>On sugar duties.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 29.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes Ecclesiastical Revenues bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 9.</td> +<td align='left'>A member of select committee on colonisation of New Zealand.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 20.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes Ecclesiastical Revenues bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 27.</td> +<td align='left'>Denounces traffic in opium.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Sep. 18.</td> +<td align='left'>Speaks at Liverpool on religious education.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Nov.</td> +<td align='left'><i>Church Principles considered in their Results</i>, published.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1841.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Jan. 20.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">On the corn laws at Walsall.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 31.</td> +<td align='left'>Proposes rejection of bill admitting Jews to corporate office.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr.</td> +<td align='left'>Revised edition of <i>The Church in its Relations with the State</i>, published.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 10.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes reduction of duty on foreign sugar.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 29.</td> +<td align='left'>Re-elected for Newark,—Mr. Gladstone, 633; Lord John Manners, 630; Mr. Hobhouse, 394.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Sep. 3.</td> +<td align='left'>Appointed vice-president of the board of trade.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Sep. 14.</td> +<td align='left'>Returned unopposed for Newark.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1842.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Feb. 8.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Proposes colonial trade resolutions, and brings in bill for better regulation of railways.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 14.</td> +<td align='left'>Replies to Lord J. Russell's condemnation of government's proposals for amending corn law.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 25.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes Mr. Christopher's sliding scale amendment.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 9.</td> +<td align='left'>On second reading of corn law importation bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 15.</td> +<td align='left'>On Colonial Customs Duties bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 13.</td> +<td align='left'>On preferential duties for colonial goods.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 23.</td> +<td align='left'>On importation of live cattle.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 3.</td> +<td align='left'>On sugar duties.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 14.</td> +<td align='left'>On export duty on coal.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Sep. 18.</td> +<td align='left'>Loses finger of left hand in gun accident.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_656" id="Page_656">[Pg 656]</a></span> + +<p>1843.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Jan.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Anonymous article, 'The Course of Commercial Policy at Home and Abroad,' in <i>Foreign and Colonial Quarterly Review</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Jan. 6.</td> +<td align='left'>Inaugural address at opening of Collegiate Institute, Liverpool.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 13.</td> +<td align='left'>Replies to Viscount Howick on the corn law.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 25.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes Mr. Ricardo's motion for immediate free trade.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 9.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes Mr. Villiers's motion for the immediate abolition of corn laws.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 15.</td> +<td align='left'>Attends first cabinet as president of the board of trade.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 19.</td> +<td align='left'>Supports bill reducing duty on Canadian corn.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 13.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes Lord J. Russell's motion for fixed duty on imported corn.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 10.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves second reading of bill legalising exportation of machinery.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Oct.</td> +<td align='left'>'Present Aspects of the Church' in <i>Foreign and Colonial Review</i>.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1844.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Feb. 5.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Moves for select committee on railways.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 4.</td> +<td align='left'>On recommendations of committee on railways.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 7.</td> +<td align='left'>On slave trade and commercial relations with Brazil.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 12.</td> +<td align='left'>Replies to Mr. Cobden's speech on his motion for committee on protective duties.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 19.</td> +<td align='left'>On reciprocity in commercial treaties.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 26.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes motion to extend low duty on Canadian corn to colonial wheat.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr.</td> +<td align='left'>'On Lord John Russell's Translation of the Francesca da Rimini,' in the <i>English Review</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 2.</td> +<td align='left'>Outlines provisions of Joint Stock Companies Regulation bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 4.</td> +<td align='left'>Second son, Stephen Edward, born.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 18</td> +<td align='left'>Presides at Eton anniversary dinner.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 3.</td> +<td align='left'>On sugar duties bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 6.</td> +<td align='left'>In support of Dissenters' Chapels bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 25.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes Mr. Villiers's motion for abolition of corn laws.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July</td> +<td align='left'>Review of 'Ellen Middleton,' in <i>English Review.</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 8.</td> +<td align='left'>On second reading of Railways bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 5.</td> +<td align='left'>Introduces three bills for regulating private bill procedure.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Oct.</td> +<td align='left'>'The Theses of Erastus and the Scottish Church Establishment' in the <i>New Quarterly Review</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec.</td> +<td align='left'>On Mr. Ward's 'Ideal Church,' in <i>Quarterly Review</i>.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1845.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Jan. 28.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Retires from cabinet.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 4.</td> +<td align='left'>Personal explanation.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 24.</td> +<td align='left'>In favour of discriminating duties on sugar.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 26.</td> +<td align='left'>Defends distinction between free-labour and slave-labour sugar.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar.</td> +<td align='left'><i>Remarks upon recent Commercial Legislation</i>, published.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 11.</td> +<td align='left'>On second reading of Maynooth College bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June</td> +<td align='left'>Review of 'Life of Mr. Blanco White,' in <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 2.</td> +<td align='left'>Supports Academical Institutions (Ireland) bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 15.</td> +<td align='left'>On Spanish treaties and slave-labour sugar.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Sep. 25 - Nov. 18.</td> +<td align='left'>Visits Germany.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec.</td> +<td align='left'>'Scotch Ecclesiastical Affairs,' in the <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 23.</td> +<td align='left'>Colonial secretary.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec.</td> +<td align='left'>Publishes, <i>A Manual of Prayers from the Liturgy, Arranged for Family Use</i>.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1846.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Jan. 5.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Retires from the representation of Newark.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_657" id="Page_657">[Pg 657]</a></span></p> + +<p>1847.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">June</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">'From Oxford to Rome' in the <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 7.</td> +<td align='left'>Captain Gladstone defends his brother's action in recalling Sir Eardley Wilmot.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 3.</td> +<td align='left'>Elected for Oxford University,—Sir R. Inglis, 1700; W. E. Gladstone, 997; Mr. Round, 824.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Sep.</td> +<td align='left'>On Lachmann's 'Ilias' in the <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 8.</td> +<td align='left'>Supports Roman Catholic Relief bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 13.</td> +<td align='left'>On government of New Zealand.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 16.</td> +<td align='left'>In favour of admission of Jews to parliament.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1848.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Feb. 9, 14.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">On New Zealand Government bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 16.</td> +<td align='left'>On Roman Catholic Relief bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 10.</td> +<td align='left'>On recent commercial changes.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 3.</td> +<td align='left'>On repeal of Navigation laws, criticising government's proposal.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 4.</td> +<td align='left'>On episcopal revenues.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 10.</td> +<td align='left'>Serves as special constable.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 22.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves address to the Queen at vestry of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 16.</td> +<td align='left'>In favour of increasing usefulness of cathedrals.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 23.</td> +<td align='left'>Replies to Lord G. Bentinck on free trade.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 2.</td> +<td align='left'>In favour of freedom of navigation.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 22.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes reduction of sugar duties.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 17.</td> +<td align='left'>In favour of legalising diplomatic relations with the Vatican.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 18.</td> +<td align='left'>On Vancouver's Island, and free colonisation.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec.</td> +<td align='left'>On the Duke of Argyll's <i>Presbytery Examined</i> in the <i>Quarterly</i></td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1849.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Feb. 19.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">On revision of parliamentary oaths.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 22.</td> +<td align='left'>In favour of Clergy Relief bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 8.</td> +<td align='left'>On transportation of convicts.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 12.</td> +<td align='left'>On Navigation laws.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 13.</td> +<td align='left'>On church rates.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 27.</td> +<td align='left'>In favour of scientific colonisation at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 16.</td> +<td align='left'>On colonial administration.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 2.</td> +<td align='left'>In favour of Clergy Relief bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 10.</td> +<td align='left'>Defends right of parliament to interfere in colonial affairs.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 24.</td> +<td align='left'>In favour of better government of colonies.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 4.</td> +<td align='left'>On Australian Colonies bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 14.</td> +<td align='left'>Protests against compensating Canadian rebels.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 20.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes bill legalising marriage with deceased wife's sister.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 26.</td> +<td align='left'>Explains views on colonial questions and policy.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 5.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves for inquiry into powers of Hudson Bay Company.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 13-Aug. 9</td> +<td align='left'>Visits Italy: Rome, Naples, Como.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec.</td> +<td align='left'>'The Clergy Relief Bill' in <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1850.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Feb. 8.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">In favour of double chamber constitutions for colonies.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 21.</td> +<td align='left'>On causes of agricultural distress, in support of Mr. Disraeli's motion.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar.</td> +<td align='left'>'Giacomo Leopardi' in the <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 19.</td> +<td align='left'>On suppression of slave trade.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 22.</td> +<td align='left'>On principles of colonial policy.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 9.</td> +<td align='left'>Death of his daughter, Catherine Jessy.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 6.</td> +<td align='left'>In favour of colonial self-government, and ecclesiastical constitution for church in Australia.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 13.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves that Australian Government bill be submitted to colonists.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 31.</td> +<td align='left'>In favour of differential sugar duties.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 4.</td> +<td align='left'>Letter to Bishop of London: <i>Remarks on the Royal Supremacy</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 27.</td> +<td align='left'>Attacks Lord Palmerston's foreign policy in Don Pacifico debate.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 3.</td> +<td align='left'>On death of Sir R. Peel.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 8.</td> +<td align='left'>Criticises Ecclesiastical Commission bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 15.</td> +<td align='left'>Explains plan for creation of new bishoprics.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 18.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes commission of inquiry into English and Irish universities.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 1.</td> +<td align='left'>'Last earnest protest' against Australian Colonies Government bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Oct. 26.</td> +<td align='left'>Leaves England for Naples.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_658" id="Page_658">[Pg 658]</a></span></p> + +<p>1851.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Feb. 26.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Returns to England from Naples. Declines Lord Stanley's invitation to join his government.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 25.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes Ecclesiastical Titles Assumption bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 11.</td> +<td align='left'>On financial plans to relieve agricultural distress.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 15.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes appointment of committee on relations with Kaffir tribes.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 29.</td> +<td align='left'>On grievances of inhabitants of Ceylon.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 30.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes Inhabited House Duty bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 4.</td> +<td align='left'>Protests against Ecclesiastical Titles bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 10.</td> +<td align='left'>On Rajah Brooke's methods of suppressing piracy.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 19.</td> +<td align='left'>On discipline in colonial church.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July.</td> +<td align='left'>Publishes two letters to Lord Aberdeen on Neapolitan misgovernment.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 7.</td> +<td align='left'>Death of Sir John Gladstone at Fasque.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec.</td> +<td align='left'>Letter to Dr. Skinner, Bishop of Aberdeen, <i>On the functions of laymen in the Church</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec.</td> +<td align='left'>Translation of Farini's <i>The Roman State</i>, 1815 to 1850, vols. i. and ii. published.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1852.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Jan. 29.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Publishes <i>An Examination of the Official Reply of the Neapolitan Government.</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 20.</td> +<td align='left'>Brings in Colonial Bishops bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 15.</td> +<td align='left'>On free trade.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr.</td> +<td align='left'>On Farini's 'Stato Romano,' in <i>Edinburgh Review</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 2.</td> +<td align='left'>Third son, Henry Neville, born.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 5.</td> +<td align='left'>Protests against policy of Kaffir war.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 28.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves second reading of Colonial Bishops bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 30.</td> +<td align='left'>On Mr. Disraeli's budget statement.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 10.</td> +<td align='left'>Proposes rejection of bill to assign disenfranchised seats of St. Albans and Sudbury.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 11.</td> +<td align='left'>In favour of select committee on education at Maynooth College.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 12.</td> +<td align='left'>On paper duty.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 21.</td> +<td align='left'>On New Zealand Government bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 8, 10.</td> +<td align='left'>Defends action of Bishop of Bath and Wells in the case of Frome vicarage.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 23.</td> +<td align='left'>Brings in bill to amend colonial church laws.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 14.</td> +<td align='left'>Re-elected for Oxford University,—Sir. R. Inglis, 1368; W. E. Gladstone, 1108; Dr. Marsham, 758.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Nov. 11, 25.</td> +<td align='left'>In defence of principles of free trade.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Nov. 26.</td> +<td align='left'>Defends Sir R. Peel's free trade policy.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec.</td> +<td align='left'>'Count Montalembert on Catholic Interests in the Nineteenth Century' in the <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 6.</td> +<td align='left'>Attacks government's income-tax proposals.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 16.</td> +<td align='left'>Replies to Mr. Disraeli's speech in defence of his budget proposals.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 23.</td> +<td align='left'>Appointed chancellor of the exchequer.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1853.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Jan. 20.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Re-elected for Oxford University,—W. E. Gladstone, 1022; Mr. Perceval, 898.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 3.</td> +<td align='left'>Speech on Mr. Hume's motion for repeal of all protective import duties.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 4, 18.</td> +<td align='left'>On Clergy reserves (Canada) bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 28.</td> +<td align='left'>At Mansion House banquet, on public opinion and public finance.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 4.</td> +<td align='left'>On government's proposal to improve education in England and Wales.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 8.</td> +<td align='left'>Explains nature of proposals for conversion of portion of national debt.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 8.</td> +<td align='left'>On Irish taxation.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 14.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes motion for repeal of advertisement duty, newspaper stamp tax, and paper duty on financial grounds.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 18.</td> +<td align='left'>Introduces his first budget.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 22.</td> +<td align='left'>Defends South Sea commutation bill.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_659" id="Page_659">[Pg 659]</a></span> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">May 9.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Opposes amendment, in the interest of property, to income-tax.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 12.</td> +<td align='left'>Explains changes proposed in succession duties.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 23.</td> +<td align='left'>On taxation of Ireland.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 13.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves second reading of Savings Bank bill; and July 21.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 1.</td> +<td align='left'>Proposes reduction of advertisement duty to sixpence.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 29.</td> +<td align='left'>On South Sea Annuities.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 3.</td> +<td align='left'>On Colonial Church Regulation bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Sep. 27.</td> +<td align='left'>At Dingwall and Inverness, on results of free trade and evils of war.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Oct. 12.</td> +<td align='left'>Tribute to memory of Sir R. Peel at unveiling of statue at Manchester. At town hall on Russo-Turkish question.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1854.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Jan. 7.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Fourth son, Herbert John, born.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 6.</td> +<td align='left'>Introduces budget.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 17.</td> +<td align='left'>In support of Oxford University bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 21.</td> +<td align='left'>Replies to Mr. Disraeli's attack on his financial schemes.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 25.</td> +<td align='left'>At Mansion House banquet on war and finance.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 7.</td> +<td align='left'>On second reading of Oxford University bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 11.</td> +<td align='left'>Statement on public expenditure and income.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 8.</td> +<td align='left'>Introduces war budget.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 22.</td> +<td align='left'>Defends resolution empowering government to issue two millions of exchequer bonds against criticism of Mr. Disraeli.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 25.</td> +<td align='left'>On second reading of bill for revision of parliamentary oaths.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 29.</td> +<td align='left'>On withdrawal of Bribery Prevention bills.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 2.</td> +<td align='left'>Explains provisions of Revenue and Consolidated Fund Charges.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 21.</td> +<td align='left'>On proposal to abolish church rates.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 29.</td> +<td align='left'>Brings in bill for repeal of usury laws.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 13.</td> +<td align='left'>On the Crimean war.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 2.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves resolution for regulation of interest on Savings Bank deposits.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1855.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Jan. 29.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Opposes Mr. Roebuck's motion.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 5.</td> +<td align='left'>Explains reasons for government's resignation.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 22.</td> +<td align='left'>Withdraws from cabinet.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 23.</td> +<td align='left'>Explains reasons.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 19.</td> +<td align='left'>Explains methods adopted to meet war expenditure.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 19.</td> +<td align='left'>In favour of free press.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 26.</td> +<td align='left'>Defends government of Sardinia in debate on military convention.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 20.</td> +<td align='left'>Criticises budget of Sir G. C. Lewis.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 26.</td> +<td align='left'>On principles of taxation.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 30.</td> +<td align='left'>Criticises government Loan bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 9.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes bill for amendment of marriage law.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 21.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves adjournment of debate to discuss Vienna conferences.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 24.</td> +<td align='left'>On prosecution of the war.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June</td> +<td align='left'>'Sardinia and Rome,' in <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 15.</td> +<td align='left'>On civil service reform.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 15.</td> +<td align='left'>Statement as to Aberdeen government, and terms of peace.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 10.</td> +<td align='left'>In favour of open admission to civil service.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 20, 23, 27</td> +<td align='left'>Protests against the system of subsidies, on the guarantee of Turkish loan.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 3.</td> +<td align='left'>On Vienna negotiations.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Oct. 12.</td> +<td align='left'>Lecture on Colonial Policy at Hawarden.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Nov. 12.</td> +<td align='left'>Lecture on Colonies at Chester.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_660" id="Page_660">[Pg 660]</a></span> + +<p>1856.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Feb. 29.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">On report of Crimean commissioners.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 11.</td> +<td align='left'>Condemns government proposals for national education.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 24.</td> +<td align='left'>On civil service reform.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 6.</td> +<td align='left'>On treaty of peace.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 19.</td> +<td align='left'>Criticises budget.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 1.</td> +<td align='left'>On differences with the United States government on recruiting for the British army.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 11.</td> +<td align='left'>Criticises County Courts Amendment bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 23.</td> +<td align='left'>Strongly opposes the Bishops of London and Durham Retirement bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug.</td> +<td align='left'>'The War and the Peace' in <i>Gentleman's Magazine</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Sep.</td> +<td align='left'>'The Declining Efficiency of Parliament' in the <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Sep. 29.</td> +<td align='left'>At town hall, Mold, in support of Foreign Missionary Society; in the evening at Collegiate Institution, Liverpool, for Society for Propagation of the Gospel.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1857.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Jan.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">'Homer and His Successors in Epic Poetry,' and 'Prospects Political and Financial' in <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Jan. 31.</td> +<td align='left'>At Stepney, on duty of rich to poor.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 3.</td> +<td align='left'>Criticises government's foreign policy and financial measures.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 5.</td> +<td align='left'>In support of motion to appoint committee on the Hudson Bay Company. Nominated member of the committee.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 20.</td> +<td align='left'>Condemns budget of Sir G. C. Lewis.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 3.</td> +<td align='left'>Supports Mr. Cobden's resolution on China.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 6.</td> +<td align='left'>Proposes reduction of tea duty, and condemns Sir G. C. Lewis's financial proposals.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 10.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves resolution in favour of revising and reducing expenditure.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 27.</td> +<td align='left'>Returned unopposed for Oxford University.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr.</td> +<td align='left'>'The New Parliament and its Work' in <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 2.</td> +<td align='left'>Speaks at Oxford at inauguration of Diocesan Spiritual Help Society.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July</td> +<td align='left'>'The Bill for Divorce,' and 'Homeric Characters In and Out of Homer' in <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 9.</td> +<td align='left'>At Glenalmond College on Christian and classical education.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 16.</td> +<td align='left'>On the Persian war.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 17.</td> +<td align='left'>Denounces war with China.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 21.</td> +<td align='left'>On Lord J. Russell's Oaths Validity Act Amendment bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 22.</td> +<td align='left'>Criticises and moves amendments to Burials Act Amendment bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 24.</td> +<td align='left'>Explains strong objections to Divorce and Matrimonial Causes bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 29.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes Superannuation Act Amendment bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 31.</td> +<td align='left'>Opposes second reading of the Divorce bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 4.</td> +<td align='left'>Criticises and moves amendments to Burials Act Amendment bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 7.</td> +<td align='left'>Protests against unequal treatment of men and women in Divorce bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 12.</td> +<td align='left'>Supports continuance of tea and sugar duties.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 14.</td> +<td align='left'>On Balkan Principalities.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 14.</td> +<td align='left'>Personal explanation regarding his connection with Lord Lincoln's divorce.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Oct. 12.</td> +<td align='left'>At Chester, on duty of England to India.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Oct. 22.</td> +<td align='left'>At Liverpool, urging closer connection between the great manufacturing towns and the universities.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 4, 7.</td> +<td align='left'>Criticises the Bank Issues Indemnity bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 9.</td> +<td align='left'>Protests against proposal to increase pension of Sir Henry Havelock.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 11.</td> +<td align='left'>On appointment of select committee on Bank Act.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1858.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Feb. 19.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Opposes Conspiracy to Murder bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar.</td> +<td align='left'><i>Studies in Homer and the Homeric Age</i> published.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr.</td> +<td align='left'>'The Fall of the Late Ministry' in <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 19.</td> +<td align='left'>On Mr. Disraeli's budget statement.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 21, June 8.</td> +<td align='left'>Criticises Church Rates Abolition bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 26, 30.</td> +<td align='left'>On proposals for government of India.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_661" id="Page_661">[Pg 661]</a></span> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">May 3.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">On financial condition of the country.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 3.</td> +<td align='left'>On government of India.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 4.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves address on Danubian Principalities.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>May 21.</td> +<td align='left'>Defends Lord Canning in debate on the Oude Proclamation.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 1.</td> +<td align='left'>On the Suez Canal, condemning English interference with the project.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 7, 14, 17.</td> +<td align='left'>On government of India.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 28.</td> +<td align='left'>Supports Funded Debt bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 1.</td> +<td align='left'>On government of India.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 1, 5.</td> +<td align='left'>Proposes additional clause to Universities (Scotland) bill facilitating the creation of a national university.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 6.</td> +<td align='left'>Moves that the army of India be not employed beyond the frontiers of India without permission of parliament.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 19.</td> +<td align='left'>On Government of British Columbia bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 20.</td> +<td align='left'>On Hudson Bay Company.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Oct.</td> +<td align='left'>'The Past and Present Administrations' in <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Oct. 17.</td> +<td align='left'>Address at Liverpool on university extension.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Nov. 8.</td> +<td align='left'>Leaves England for Corfu, on appointment as lord high commissioner extraordinary of the Ionian Islands.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec. 3.</td> +<td align='left'>Addresses Ionian Assembly.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<p>1859.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Chronology" style="width: 90%;"> +<tr> +<td align='left' style="width: 18%;">Feb. 5.</td> +<td align='left' style="width: 82%;">Presents new constitution to Ionian Chamber of Deputies.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Feb. 12.</td> +<td align='left'>Returned unopposed for Oxford University.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 8.</td> +<td align='left'>Returns to London.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Mar. 29.</td> +<td align='left'>On Representation of the People bill.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr.</td> +<td align='left'>'The War in Italy' in the <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 18.</td> +<td align='left'>On the state of Italy.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Apr. 29.</td> +<td align='left'>Returned unopposed for Oxford University.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 17.</td> +<td align='left'>Letter to the provost of Oriel.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 20.</td> +<td align='left'>Appointed chancellor of the exchequer.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>June 22.</td> +<td align='left'>Presides at annual dinner of Royal Literary Fund.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 1.</td> +<td align='left'>Re-elected for Oxford University,—Mr. Gladstone, 1050; Marquis of Chandos, 859.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 12.</td> +<td align='left'>Supports bill enabling Roman catholics to hold office of chancellor of Ireland.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 18.</td> +<td align='left'>Introduces budget.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>July 21.</td> +<td align='left'>Replies to Mr. Disraeli's criticisms.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Aug. 8.</td> +<td align='left'>In defence of government's Italian policy.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Oct.</td> +<td align='left'>On 'Tennyson's Poems' in <i>Quarterly</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Nov. 1.</td> +<td align='left'>At Cambridge, in support of Oxford and Cambridge mission to Central Africa.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Nov. 12.</td> +<td align='left'>Elected Lord Rector of University of Edinburgh,—Mr. Gladstone, 643; Lord Neaves, 527.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align='left'>Dec.</td> +<td align='left'>'Nelda, a Romance,' translated from Grossi, in <i>Fraser's Magazine</i>.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_394_394" id="Footnote_394_394"></a><a href="#FNanchor_394_394"><span class="label">[394]</span></a> All speeches unless otherwise stated were made in the House of +Commons.</p></div> +</div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, +Vol. 1 (of 3), by John Morley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE *** + +***** This file should be named 21091-h.htm or 21091-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/0/9/21091/ + +Produced by Paul Murray, Thomas Strong and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/21091-h/images/illus-000.jpg b/21091-h/images/illus-000.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..737db0f --- /dev/null +++ b/21091-h/images/illus-000.jpg diff --git a/21091-h/images/illus-096.jpg b/21091-h/images/illus-096.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..472737f --- /dev/null +++ b/21091-h/images/illus-096.jpg diff --git a/21091-h/images/illus-231.jpg b/21091-h/images/illus-231.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..66cf93d --- /dev/null +++ b/21091-h/images/illus-231.jpg diff --git a/21091-h/images/illus-345.jpg b/21091-h/images/illus-345.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1d382d9 --- /dev/null +++ b/21091-h/images/illus-345.jpg |
