Though Mr. Gladstone's oratory was a main source of
his power, both in Parliament and over the people, the effort of his enemies
to represent him as a mere rhetorician will seem absurd to the historian who
reviews his whole career. The mere rhetorician adorns and popularizes the
ideas which have originated with others, he advocates policies which others
have devised; he follows and expresses the sentiments which already prevail
in his party. He may help to destroy; he does not construct. Mr. Gladstone
was himself a source of new ideas and new policies; he evoked new sentiments
or turned sentiments into new channels. He was a constructive statesman not
less conspicuously than Pitt, Canning, and Peel. If the memory of his
oratorical triumphs were to pass completely away, he would deserve to be
remembered in respect of the mark he left upon the British statute-book and
of the changes he wrought both in the constitution of his country and in her
European policy. To describe the acts he carried would almost be to write
the history of recent British legislation; to pass a judgment upon their
merits would be foreign to the scope of this sketch: it is only to three
remarkable groups of measures that reference can here be made.
The first
of these three groups includes the financial reforms embodied in a series of
fourteen budgets between the years 1853 and 1882, the most famous of which
were the budgets of 1853 and 1860. In the former Mr. Gladstone continued the
work begun by Peel by reducing and simplifying the customs duties. The
deficiency in revenue thus caused was supplied by the enactment of less
oppressive imposts, and particularly by resettling the income tax, and by
the introduction of a succession duty on real estate. The preparation and
passing of this very technical and intricate Succession Duty Act was a most
laborious enterprise, of which Mr. Gladstone used to speak as the severest
mental strain he had ever undergone.
The budget of 1860, among other
changes, abolished the paper duty, an immense service to the press, which
excited the hostility of the House of Lords. They threw out the measure, but
in the following year Mr. Gladstone forced them to submit. His achievements
in the field of finance equal, if they do not surpass, those of Peel, and
are not tarnished, as in the case of Pitt, by the recollection of burdensome
wars. To no minister can so large a share in promoting the commercial and
industrial prosperity of modern England, and in the reduction of her
national debt, be ascribed.
The second group includes the two great
parliamentary reform bills of 1866 and 1884 and the Redistribution Bill of
1885. The first of these was defeated in the House of Commons, but it led to
the passing next year of an even more comprehensive bill--a bill which,
though passed by Mr. Disraeli, was to some extent dictated by Mr. Gladstone,
as leader of the opposition. Of these three statutes taken together, it may
be said that they have turned Britain into a democratic country, changing
the character of her government almost as profoundly as did the Reform Act
of 1832.
The third group consists of a series of Irish measures, beginning with
the Church Disestablishment Act of 1869, and including the Land Act of 1870,
the University Education Bill of 1873 (defeated in the House of Commons),
the Land Act of 1881, and the home-rule bills of 1886 and 1893. All these
were in a special manner Mr. Gladstone's handiwork, prepared as well as
brought in and advocated by him. All were highly complicated, and of
one--the Land Act of 1881, which it took three months to carry through the
House of Commons--it was said that so great was its intricacy that only
three men understood it-- Mr. Gladstone himself, his Attorney-General for
Ireland, and Mr. T. M. Healy. So far from shrinking from, he seemed to revel
in, the toil of mastering an infinitude of technical details. Yet neither
did he want boldness and largeness of conception. The Home-Rule Bill of 1886
was nothing less than a new constitution for Ireland, and in all but one of
its most essential features had been practically worked out by himself more
than four months before it was presented to Parliament.
Of the other
important measures passed while he was prime minister, two deserve special
mention, the Education Act of 1870 and the Local-Government Act of 1894.
Neither of these, however, was directly his work, though he took a leading
part in piloting the former through the House of Commons.
His action in
the field of foreign policy, though it was felt only at intervals, was on
several occasions momentous, and has left abiding results in European
history. In 1851, he being then still a Tory, his powerful pamphlet against
the Bourbon government of Naples, and the sympathy he subsequently avowed
with the national movement in Italy, gave that movement a new standing in
Europe by powerfully recommending it to English opinion. In 1870 the prompt
action of his government, in concluding a treaty for the neutrality of
Belgium on the outbreak of the war between France and Germany, saved Belgium
from being drawn into the strife. In 1871, by concluding the treaty of
Washington, which provided for the settlement of the Alabama claims, he not
only asserted a principle of the utmost value, but delivered England from
what would have been, in case of her being at war with any European power, a
danger fatal to her ocean commerce. And, in 1876, the vigorous attack he
made on the Turks after the Bulgarian massacre roused an intense feeling in
England, so turned the current of opinion that Disraeli's ministry were
forced to leave the Sultan to his fate, and thus became the cause of the
deliverance of Bulgaria, Eastern Rumelia, Bosnia, and Thessaly from
Mussulman tyranny. Few English statesmen have equally earned the gratitude
of the oppressed. Nothing lay nearer to his heart than the protection of
the Eastern Christians. His sense of personal duty to them was partly due to
the feeling that the Crimean War had prolonged the rule of the Turk, and had
thus imposed a special responsibility on Britain, and on the statesmen who
formed the cabinet which undertook that war. Twenty years after the
agitation of 1876, and when he had finally retired from Parliament and
political life, the massacres perpetrated by the Sultan on his Armenian
subjects brought him once more into the field, and his last speech in public
(delivered at Liverpool in the autumn of 1896) was a powerful argument in
favor of British intervention to rescue the Eastern Christians. In the
following spring he followed this up by a spirited pamphlet on behalf of the
freedom of Crete. In neither of these two cases did success crown his
efforts, for the government, commanding a large majority in Parliament,
pursued the course it had already entered on. Many poignant regrets were
expressed in England that Mr. Gladstone was no longer able to take practical
action in the cause of humanity; yet it was a consolation to have the
assurance that his sympathies with that cause had been nowise dulled by age
and physical infirmity.
That he was right in the view he took of the Turks
and British policy in 1876-78 has been now virtually admitted even by his
opponents. That he was also right in 1896 and 1897, when urging action to
protect the Eastern Christians, will probably be admitted ten years hence,
when partizan passion has cooled. In both cases it was not merely religious
sympathy, but also a far-sighted view of policy that governed his judgment.
The only charge that can fairly be brought against his conduct in foreign,
and especially in Eastern, affairs is, that he did not keep a sufficiently
watchful eye upon them at all times, but frequently allowed himself to be so
engrossed by British domestic questions as to lose the opportunity which his
tenure of power from time to time gave him of averting approaching dangers.
Those who know how tremendous is the strain which the headship of a cabinet
and the leadership of the House of Commons impose will understand, though
they will not cease to regret, this omission.
Such a record is the best
proof of the capacity for initiative which belonged to him and in which men
of high oratorical gifts have often been wanting. In the Neapolitan case, in
the Alabama case, in the Bulgarian case, no less than in the adoption of the
policy of a separate legislature and executive for Ireland, he acted from
his own convictions, with no suggestion of encouragement from his party; and
in the last instances--those of Ireland and of Bulgaria--he took a course
which seemed to the English political world so novel and even startling that
no ordinary statesman would have ventured on it.
His courage was indeed
one of the most striking parts of his character. It was not the rashness of
an impetuous nature, for, impetuous as he was when stirred by some sudden
excitement, he was wary and cautious whenever he took a deliberate survey of
the conditions that surrounded him. It was the proud self-confidence of a
strong character, which was willing to risk fame and fortune in pursuing a
course it had once resolved upon; a character which had faith in its own
conclusions, and in the success of a cause consecrated by principle; a
character which obstacles did not affright or deter, but rather roused to a
higher combative energy. Few English statesmen have done anything so bold as
was Mr. Gladstone's declaration for Irish home rule in 1886. He took not
only his political power but the fame and credit of his whole past life in
his hand when he set out on this new journey at seventy-seven years of age;
for it was quite possible that the great bulk of his party might refuse to
follow him, and he be left exposed to derision as the chief of an
insignificant group. It turned out that the great bulk of the party did
follow him, though many of the most influential and socially important
refused to do so. But neither Mr. Gladstone nor any one else could have
foretold this when his intentions were first announced.
Two faults natural
to a strong man and an excitable man were commonly charged on him--an
overbearing disposition and an irritable temper. Neither charge was well
founded. Masterful he certainly was, both in speech and in action. His
ardent manner, the intensity of his look, the dialectical vigor with which
he pressed an argument, were apt to awe people who knew him but slightly,
and make them abandon resistance even when they were unconvinced. A gifted
though somewhat erratic politician used to tell how he once fared when he
had risen in the House of Commons to censure some act of the ministry. "I
had not gone on three minutes when Gladstone turned round and gazed at me so
that I had to sit down in the middle of a sentence. I could not help it.
There was no standing his eye." But he neither meant nor wished to beat down
his opponents by mere authority. One of the ablest of his private
secretaries, who knew him as few people did, once observed: "When you are
arguing with Mr. Gladstone, you must never let him think he has convinced
you unless you are really convinced. Persist in repeating your view, and if
you are unable to cope with him in skill of fence, say bluntly that for all
his ingenuity and authority you think he is wrong, and you retain your own
opinion. If he respects you as a man who knows something of the subject, he
will be impressed by your opinion, and it will afterward have due weight
with him." In his own cabinet he was willing to listen patiently to
everybody's views, and, indeed, in the judgment of some of his colleagues,
was not, at least in his later years, sufficiently strenuous in asserting
and holding to his own. It is no secret that some of the most important
decisions of the ministry of 1880-85 were taken against his judgment, though
when they had been adopted he, of course, defended them in Parliament as if
they had received his individual approval. Nor, although he was extremely
resolute and tenacious, did he bear malice against those who foiled his
plans. He would exert his full force to get his own way, but if he could not
get it, he accepted the position with dignity and good temper. He was too
proud to be vindictive, too completely master of himself to be betrayed,
even when excited, into angry words. Whether he was unforgiving and
overmindful of injuries, it was less easy to determine, but those who had
watched him most closely held that mere opposition or even insult did not
leave a permanent sting, and that the only thing he could not forget or
forgive was faithlessness or disloyalty. Like his favorite poet, he put the
traditori in the lowest pit, although, like all practical statesmen, he
often found himself obliged to work with those whom he distrusted. His
attitude toward his two chief opponents well illustrates this feature of his
character. He heartily despised Disraeli, not because Disraeli had been in
the habit of attacking him, as one could easily perceive from the way he
talked of those attacks, but because he thought Disraeli habitually
untruthful, and considered him to have behaved with incomparable meanness to
Peel. Yet he never attacked Disraeli personally, as Disraeli often attacked
him. There was another of his opponents of whom he entertained an especially
bad opinion, but no one could have told from his speeches what that opinion
was. For Lord Salisbury he seemed to have no dislike at all, though Lord
Salisbury had more than once insulted him. On one occasion (in 1890) he
remarked to a colleague who had said something about the prime minister's
offensive language: "I have never felt angry at what Salisbury has said
about me. His mother was very kind to me when I was quite a young man, and I
remember Salisbury as a little fellow in a red frock rolling about on the
ottoman." His leniency toward another violent tongue which frequently
assailed him, that of Lord Randolph Churchill, was not less noteworthy.
That his temper was naturally hot, no one who looked at him could doubt. But
he had it in such tight control, and it was so free from anything acrid or
malignant, that it had become a good temper, worthy of a large and strong
nature. With whatever vehemence he might express himself, there was nothing
wounding or humiliating to others in this vehemence, the proof of which
might be found in the fact that those younger men who had to deal with him
were never afraid of a sharp answer or an impatient repulse. A distinguished
man (the late Lord Chief Justice Coleridge), some ten years his junior, used
to say that he had never feared but two persons, Mr. Gladstone and Cardinal
Newman; but it was awe of their character that inspired this fear, for no
one could cite an instance in which either of them had forgotten his dignity
or been betrayed into a discourteous word. Of Mr. Gladstone especially it
might be said that he was cast in too large a mold to have the pettiness of
ruffled vanity or to abuse his predominance by treating any one else as an
inferior. His manners were the manners of the old time, easy but stately.
Like his oratory, they were in what Matthew Arnold used to call the grand
style; and the contrast in this respect between him and most of those who
crossed swords with him in literary or theological controversy was apparent.
His intellectual generosity was a part of the same largeness of nature. He
always cordially acknowledged his indebtedness to those who helped him in
any piece of work; received their suggestions candidly, even when opposed to
his own preconceived notions; did not hesitate to own a mistake if he had
made one. Those who have abundant mental resources, and have conquered fame,
can doubtless afford to be generous. Julius Caesar was, and George
Washington, and so, in a different sphere, were Newton and Darwin. But the
instances to the contrary are so numerous that one may say of magnanimity
that it is among the rarest as well as the finest ornaments of character.
The essential dignity of his nature was never better seen than during the
last few years of his life, after he had retired (in 1894) from Parliament
and public life. He indulged in no vain regrets, nor was there any
foundation for the rumors, so often circulated, that he thought of
reentering the arena of strife. He spoke with no bitterness of those who had
opposed, and sometimes foiled, him in the past. He gave vent to no
disparaging criticisms on those who from time to time filled the place that
had been his in the government of the country or the leadership of his
party. Although his opinion on current questions was frequently solicited,
he scarcely ever allowed it to be known, and never himself addressed the
nation, except (as already mentioned) on behalf of what he deemed a sacred
cause, altogether above party--the discharge by Britain of her duty to the
victims of the Turk. As soon as an operation for cataract had enabled him to
read or write for seven hours a day, he devoted himself with his old ardor
to the preparation of an edition of Bishop Butler's works, resumed his
multifarious reading, and filled up the interstices of his working-time with
studies on Homer which he had been previously unable to complete. No trace
of the moroseness of old age appeared in his manners or his conversation,
nor did he, though profoundly grieved at some of the events which he
witnessed, and owning himself disappointed at the slow advance made by some
causes dear to him, appear less hopeful than in earlier days of the general
progress of the world, or less confident in the beneficent power of freedom
to promote the happiness of his country. The stately simplicity which had
been the note of his private life seemed more beautiful than ever in this
quiet evening of a long and sultry day. His intellectual powers were
unimpaired, his thirst for knowledge undiminished. But a placid stillness
had fallen upon him and his household; and in seeing the tide of his life
begin slowly to ebb, one thought of the lines of his illustrious
contemporary and friend:
Such a tide as moving seems
asleep, Too full for sound or foam, When that which drew from out the
boundless deep Turns again home. |