The Real Gladstone: An Anecdotal Biography
‘I remain, with great respect, my dear Lord Bishop,
‘Yours most faithfully,‘W. E. Gladstone.‘The Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of St. Asaph.’
During the subsequent proceedings the letter was frequently referred to as a magnificent letter, and as one worthy of the Premier’s transcendent abilities.
Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord E. Fitzmaurice, complimenting him upon a speech which he delivered at Old Cumnock, in Ayrshire. ‘It was pre-eminently,’ said the ex-Premier, ‘the speech that was wanted, made by one who was “in all respects peculiarly the man to make it.” In my view,’ proceeded Mr. Gladstone, ‘Ireland is the heading of a bright chapter in the history, not only of the Liberals, but especially of the Whigs. It was a noble thing on the part of Burke and Fitzwilliam and the other seceders from Fox that not all their horror of France could make them untrue to Ireland. The Whig party after the schism remained for Irish purposes unbroken, and were right in each one of the various stages through which the question had to pass – right in the endeavour, frustrated by Pitt and the ascendency men, to work the Grattan Parliament; right in the opposition to the Union when it was shamelessly forced on Ireland; right in saying, by the mouth of Fox, that so huge a measure must have an unprejudiced and a full trial when it had once been effected, and when no man could undertake to say positively that Ireland might not come, as Scotland had come, to make it her own by adoption; right, probably, when Grattan gave his provisional sanction to coercion as the necessary sequel to the Union; right certainly when Lord Grey and Lord Althorp proposed further coercion in 1834, when they had done, and were doing, for Ireland in so many ways all which at the time they could, and when no Minister was in a condition to say constitutionally that the sense of the Irish people demanded self-government; and, finally, right was a cruelly crippled remnant of their leading class, enthusiastically supported from first to last by a large portion of the nation, in listening to the constitutional demand of Ireland by their representatives in 1885, and in recognising after three generations had passed away that union with coercion – in other words, government by force – had been tried all but too fully, and had entirely failed. We want,’ continued Mr. Gladstone, ‘a little Whig treatment of Ireland.’ Dealing with another aspect of the argument, which he characterized as ‘not less unacceptable and important,’ he expressed the fear that the action of the chief part of the Whig peers and aristocracy in severing themselves from the bulk of the Liberal party might be to narrow the Liberal party, which had hitherto been so broad. This he attributed ‘entirely to the so-called Liberal Unionists.’ ‘Liberal Unionism has,’ he said, ‘tended to break up the old and invaluable habit of Liberal England, which looked to a Liberal aristocracy and a Liberal leisured class as the natural, and therefore the best, leaders of the Liberal movement. Thus it was that classes and masses were united.’ This controversy, and the recollection, will do away with the certain triumph of Home Rule. But will the ranks which have been divided easily close up? ‘I, for one,’ repeated Mr. Gladstone, ‘think that the narrowing of the party by the severance or reduction of one wing is also the crippling of the party.’
Mr. Gladstone had, as he himself put it, ‘felt it his duty to put Liberal candidates in possession of some means of meeting statements’ as to his past connection with the Tory party. The particular remark which elicited this letter was made by Mr. Chatterton, the Tory candidate for the Crewe division. It was that ‘in his fiftieth year Mr. Gladstone was in full sympathy with the Tory party.’ Mr. Gladstone, in his letter, put forward ten propositions: ‘It is true that down to the year 1839, when I was twenty-nine years old, I might fairly be called a Tory of the Tories in questions relating to the Church. (2) It is untrue that even at that time I could justly be so described in other questions. (3) I am not aware that after 1839, or, at all events, after 1841, I could justly be described, even in Church questions, as a Tory of the Tories, or perhaps as a Tory at all. (4) In 1843 I was denounced in the House of Lords as being disloyal to the principles of Protection. (5) In 1849–50 I assisted to the best of my power the Government of Naples. (6) In 1851, in company with the Peelites, the Irish Roman Catholics, and the group led by Mr. Cobden, I actively resisted both Whigs and Tories, but the last especially, in defence of religious liberty, on the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. (7) Unquestionably I differed strongly from the first Government of Lord Palmerston in 1855–8, on the question of peace, of foreign policy, of finance, and of divorce. The last was not a party question. On the other three I believe that my opinions were, as they are now, practically the opinions of the Liberal party. (8) Lord Derby sent me to the Ionian Islands in 1858, in precisely the same sense as that in which the Government of 1868–74 sent Lord Iddesleigh to America. (9) In company with Lord Russell and Mr. Milner Gibson, I gave the vote in 1858 on the Conspiracy Bill which brought in the Tories. Like Lord Russell, after doing this, I knew it to be my duty to give the Tories fair-play and such support as was equitable until positive cause of difference should arise. (10) Before their Italian policy was made public, I declined to join in the vote of want of confidence which removed them from office. But a few weeks later, when the volume containing it was published, I intimated in Parliament that had I known that policy at the time I should have pursued a different course.’ ‘So much,’ adds Mr. Gladstone, ‘for my Toryism down to 1859.’
In 1876 Mr. Gladstone wrote to Hayward: ‘The Times appears to be thoroughly emasculated. It does not pay to read a paper which next week is sure to refute what it has demonstrated this week. It ought to be prohibited to change sides more than a certain number of times in a year. As to the upper ten thousand, it has not been by a majority of that body that any of the great and good measures of our century have been carried, though a minority have done good service; and so I fear it will continue.’ Mr. Gladstone seems in 1878 to have had a poor opinion of the Daily News. ‘I think,’ he wrote to Blachford, ‘they have often made improper admissions, and do not drive the nail home as it really ought to be done by a strong Opposition paper, such as the Morning Chronicle of Derry.’
In his address to the electors of Midlothian in 1886, Mr. Gladstone said: ‘Lord Hartington has lately and justly stated in general terms that he is not disposed to deny our having fallen into errors of judgment. I will go one step further, and admit that we committed such errors, and serious errors, too, with cost of treasure and of precious lives, in the Soudan. For none of these errors were we rebuked by the voice of the Opposition; we were only rebuked, and that incessantly, because we did not commit them with precipitation, and because we did not commit other errors greater still. Our mistakes in the Soudan I cannot now state in detail; the task belongs to history. Our responsibility for them cannot be questioned; yet its character ought not to be misapprehended. In such a task miscarriages were inevitable. They are the proper and certain consequence of undertakings that war against nature, and that lie beyond the scope of human means, and of rational and prudent human action; and the first authors of these undertakings are the real makers of the mischief.’
In connection with this subject, let us add the following from Gordon’s Diary at Khartoum: ‘Poor Gladstone’s Government! how they must love me! I will accept nothing whatever from Gladstone’s hands. I will not let them even pay my expenses; I will get the King to pay them. I will never set foot in England again.’
Perhaps one of the most remarkable letters a great statesman ever wrote was that to an American in 1862, in which Mr. Gladstone thus shows how impossible it was for the North to put down the South. He writes: ‘You know, in the opinion of Europe, that impossibility has been proved. Depend upon it, to place the matter on a simple issue, you cannot conquer and keep down a country where the women behave like the women of New Orleans, and when a writer says they would be ready to form regiments, were such regiments required. And how idle it is to talk as some of your people do, and some of ours, of the slackness with which the war has been carried on, and of its accounting for the want of success. You have no cause to be ashamed of your military character and efforts… I am, in short, a follower of General Scott; with him I say, Wayward sisters, go in peace. Immortal fame be to him for his wise and courageous advice, amounting to a prophecy. Finally, you have done what man could do; you have failed because you have resolved to do what man could not do. Laws stronger than human will are on the side of earnest self-defence; and to aim at the impossible, which in other things may be folly only when the path of search is dark with misery and red with blood, is not folly only, but guilt to boot.’
In 1880 some correspondence was published between Captain Boycott and Mr. Gladstone. The former wrote to the Prime Minister, giving a narrative of the events which obliged him to leave Ireland, and asked for compensation from the Government. ‘I have been prevented from pursuing my business peaceably; where my property has not been stolen, it has been maliciously wasted, and my life has been in hourly peril for many months. I have been driven from my home, and, having done no evil, find myself a ruined man, because the law as administered has not protected me.’ In reply, Mr. Gladstone’s secretary wrote: ‘Mr. Gladstone has received your letter of the 8th inst., and, in reply, desires me to say that he is not sure in what way he is to understand your request for assistance from her Majesty’s Government. It has been very largely afforded you in the use of the public force; beyond this it is the duty of the Government to use its best exertions in the enforcement of the existing law, which they are endeavouring to effect through the courts, and by asking when necessary the assistance of the Legislature to amend or enlarge the law – a matter of much importance, on which you can, of course, only receive information together with the public generally.’ A little later we were informed Mr. Gladstone declined to accede to Captain Boycott’s claim for pecuniary compensation on account of having to leave his farm, holding that the large display of public force required for Captain Boycott’s protection having been furnished, the State could not be expected to entertain any further claims.
Mr. Gladstone addressed the following letter to the editor of the Baptist:
‘Dear Sir,
‘I have given full consideration, which is well deserved, to your letter and article. I complain of nothing in the article, and am not surprised at the desires which it expresses. I acknowledge the just and generous treatment which I have had from Nonconformists both in and out of Wales; but the same hill or valley presents itself in different forms and tints, according to the point from which it is viewed.
‘My point of view is that determined for me by my political career. I cannot safely or wisely deal in the affirmation of abstract resolutions, though I by no means undertake to lay down the same rather rigid rule for others. In 1868 I moved resolutions on the Irish Church, but they were immediately followed by a Bill.
‘Your article asserts that there is now a great opportunity for disestablishing the Welsh Church, which ought not to be let slip.
‘I will not enter into the arguments pro or con., but will simply refer to the declarations I have made in the case of Scotland, and then assume, for argument’s sake, that the Welsh Church ought to be disestablished.
‘From my point of view there is now no such opportunity at all. I have been telling the country on every occasion I could find that no great political matter, of whatever kind (of course I mean a contested matter), could be practically dealt with until the Irish question, which blocks the way, is settled, and so put out of the way. I may, of course, be wrong, but this is my firm opinion; therefore he who wishes to have a great Welsh question discussed in a practical manner should, as I think, see that his first business, with a view to his own aim, is to clear the road.
‘But you may say Ireland ought not to occupy the attention of Parliament to the exclusion of great British questions. My answer is, that I have not stated whether it ought, but have simply said that it will.
‘Then, you may ask, why not defer the Irish question until these urgent British matters are settled? I reply that I have no more power thus to defer the Irish question than I had to defer the earthquake which happened thirty-six hours ago in France and Italy. Any attempt by me to force a postponement of the Irish question would only add to the confusion and the pressure. I am not creating a difficulty, but only pointing it out. The finger-post does not make the road.
‘I will, however, point out a main reason why this Irish question is so troublesome, obtrusive, and provoking. It is because it involves social order, and it is in the nature of questions involving social order to push their claims to precedence over other questions.
‘In conclusion, I may also observe that your letter and article take no notice of the fact that I am in my fifty-fifth year of public service, and appear to assume that it is my duty to continue in such service until I drop. To this proposition I must, on what appear to me solid and even high grounds, respectfully demur.
‘I have no desire that you should consider this letter as a secret one.
‘Your most faithful and obedient,‘W. E. Gladstone.’‘21, Carlton House Terrace,
‘February 25.’
Mr. Gladstone’s secretary, writing to a correspondent in the Daily News in 1885, who had asked what the clergy were drawing from national funds, replied: ‘Sir, – Mr. Gladstone, in reply to your letter, desires me to inform you that the clergy are not State paid.’
Again, to a correspondent Mr. Gladstone wrote: ‘You are mistaken in supposing that the outrages in Manchester and Clerkenwell determined or affected my action with regard to Ireland. They drew the attention of the public, on which there are so many demands, to Irish questions, and thereby enabled me in point of time to act in a manner for which I had previously declared my desire. You state that the Irish voters are preparing themselves to punish the Liberal party. In that respect I do not see that those of whom you speak can improve upon what they have already done; for in and since 1874, just after that party had dealt with the questions of Church and Land, they inflicted upon it the heaviest Parliamentary blow it has received in my time. I hope, however, from every present indication, that, notwithstanding the mischief done to it and to the wider interests of humanity by the Irish secession, it will, when an opportunity is allowed, prove to have strength sufficient for the exigencies of the time.’
CHAPTER XVI
MR. GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
In 1853 Lord Blachford wrote, just after Mr. Gladstone had unfolded his famous Budget which took off newspapers the additional stamp required for supplements, and imposed a single stamp of a penny for every newspaper of whatever sort: ‘If Gladstone has anything Conservative in him, he will find it difficult to remain in a Ministry which must eventually be thrown upon Radical support. But he is really so powerful a man that, whatever shakes and delays and loss of time there may be, he must come up near the surface. I expect he will show the best —i. e., most politically powerful – side of himself as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Pursuing details is so much his power if he is only not run away with by it. I think, if it is not a paradox, he has not poetry enough for the formation of a first-rate judgment. He has an immense mass of knowledge most methodically arranged, but the separate items must be looked for in their respective boxes, and do not combine. The consequence is not merely want of play, but that crotchety, one-sided, narrowish mode of viewing a matter uncorrected by the necessary comparisons and considerations which people call ingenious and subtle and Gladstonian. He looks at the details, not at the aspects of a subject, and masters it, I should imagine, by pursuing it hither and thither from one starting-point, and not by walking round it; and financial subjects will, I suppose, bear this mode of treatment better than any other.’
In a valuable work by a distinguished German, Dr. Geiffeken, of which an English translation appeared in 1889, the author thus described Mr. Gladstone: ‘His eloquence shows as its prominent quality the acuteness of intelligent methodical thought, and a readiness which, united with the most complete mastery of the matter, seems to require no preparation. He is beyond all cavil the first speaker of his time on subjects connected with public business, and is unsurpassed in power of luminous presentation of complicated economic questions. Relying on a memory that never fails, he knows how to impart life to the dryest array of figures, to group them in attractive forms, and to expound them so that his hearers may have them completely within their grasp. Nor is he less able in mastering the most involved question of law. His imagination is short-winded, dry, and apt to lose itself in speculation. His pathos is without warmth, his diction lacks charm, in spite of his copious command of language, his clear periods, and the inexhaustible staying power of his voice. The most unfavourable side of him as a speaker is seen when he begins to argue. Mr. Escobar never understood so well as he how to use language against the use of language, to involve his thoughts in clouds, to explain away inconvenient facts, to leave himself a back-door open to escape, and to father upon his opponents assertions which they would in nowise acknowledge. He involves the truth so hopelessly that it is impossible to disentangle it.’
Sir Rowland Hill, in his ‘Autobiography,’ writes: ‘There are few public men with whom I have not come on such excellent terms, and from whom I have received so much kindness, as from Mr. Gladstone.’
Archbishop Trench, writing to Bishop Wilberforce in 1864, says: ‘I deeply regret Mr. Gladstone’s Reform speech, which certainly may alter his future – may alter the whole future of England. No man but one endowed with his genius and virtues could effectually do mischief to the institutions of England, but he may do it.’ Again he wrote: ‘Nothing can hinder Mr. Gladstone from being the most remarkable man in England.’
In the autumn of 1859 Sir Archibald Alison, the historian, met Mr. Gladstone at the hospitable mansion of Mr. Stirling, of Keir, near Stirling. ‘I had been acquainted with him,’ he writes, ‘when he was a young man, and he had dined once or twice at our house in St. Colome Street, but I had not seen him for above twenty years, and in the interval he had become a leading Parliamentary orator and a great man. I was particularly observant, therefore, of his manner and conversation, and I was by no means disappointed in either. In manner he had the unaffected simplicity of earlier days, without either the assumption of superiority which might have been natural from his Parliamentary eminence, or the official pedantry so common in persons who have held high office in the State. In conversation he was rapid, easy and fluent, and possessed in a high degree that great quality so characteristic of a powerful mind, so inestimable in discoursing, of quickly apprehending what was said on the other side, and in reply setting himself at once to meet it fairly and openly. He was at once energetic and discursive, enthusiastic, but at times visionary. It was impossible to listen to him without pleasure, but equally so to reflect on what he said without grave hesitation. He left on my mind the impression of his being the best discourser on imaginative topics, and the most dangerous person to be entrusted with practical ones, I had ever met with. He gave me more the impression of great scholastic acumen than of weighty, statesman-like wisdom. Eminent in the University, and transferred without any practical training in the school of life at once from its shades to the House of Commons, he was like the ecclesiastics who in Catholic countries were often transferred direct from the cloister to the Cabinet, and began to operate on mankind as they would do on a dead body to elucidate certain points of physics, and who have so often proved at once the ablest and most dangerous of governors.’
An able writer, Mr. Bagehot, contends Mr. Gladstone is spoilt by applause, as follows: ‘But because his achievements have fallen so much below the standard of his expectations, because destiny has fought against him and proved too much for him, is Mr. Gladstone on that account dejected? On the contrary, although he may experience some passing emotions of chagrin and a pious resentment against circumstances, he cherishes the comfortable conviction that both what he has done and what he has abstained from doing are right. Facts may be against him, but, then, so much the worse for the facts. His view of foreign politics is that every male child born into the world, whether Indian or African, Mussulman, Egyptian fellah or Zulu Kaffir, Aztec or Esquimaux, is capable of being educated into a free and independent elector for an English borough. Parliamentary institutions and representative Government are to him, not only the supreme end at which to aim, but the régime to which all nationalities are instinctively capable of adapting themselves. He makes no allowance for difference of race or climate, historical antecedents, national peculiarities. Herein he displays a lack of imagination, which is more strange, seeing that he possesses a large allowance of the imaginative faculty in other respects, and that he is really poet first and statistician afterwards.
‘Particular causes have combined to confirm this defect. Mr. Gladstone has spent his life in the House of Commons, and cannot imagine a political system or a scheme of popular rule without as accurate a copy as conditions permit of the English representative Chamber. Again, he understands the English people so well, he has so completely identified himself with the ideas and aspirations of the upper class of bourgeoisie, that he considers it scarcely worth while to attempt to understand any other race. If he attempts such an intellectual process he can only measure the unfamiliar by reference to the familiar object.
‘Mr. Gladstone has drunk too deeply of the atmosphere of idolatry and incense by which he has been surrounded. His immense experience of public life, his great capacities as a financier, his moral earnestness, his religious fervour, his scholarship, culture, and conversational powers, have procured for him enthusiastic worshippers in every section of the community – among the lower classes; among the men of commerce and business; among the Whig aristocracy, with whom he has been educated, and who have long since seen in him the bulwark against revolution; among the clergy of the Anglican Church and the Nonconformist ministers; finally, among certain small and exclusive divisions of London society itself. No man can receive the homage that has fallen to the lot of Mr. Gladstone during so many years without experiencing a kind of moral intoxication and forming an excessive idea of his own infallibility. Nor is it good for him that domestic interposition should ward off the hostile expressions of opinions in the newspapers not attached to his cause, but which may, nevertheless, represent the views of a certain section of the English people.’
Mr. G. W. E. Russell, in his charming little book on Gladstone, refers to Mr. Gladstone’s speech on the Don Pacifico debate, as illustrating his tendency ‘to belittle England, to extol and magnify the virtues and graces of other nations, and to ignore the homely prejudice of patriotism. He has frankly told us that he does not know the meaning of prestige, and an English Minister who makes that confession has yet to learn one of the governing sentiments of
‘“An old and haughty nation proud in arms.”
