The Real Gladstone: An Anecdotal Biography
The Budget of 1860 was distinguished mainly for two things – the Commercial Treaty with France, initiated by Mr. Cobden, and the Taxes on Knowledge.
In the debate on this subject in 1852, Mr. Gladstone, then in opposition, intimated that, though he should like to see the paper duty repealed when the proper time had come, if books and newspapers were dearer than they ought to be, the blame was not so much with fiscal requirements as with the trades unionism, which wickedly raised the wages of compositors and others to a level far above their deserts. If the working-classes wanted cheap literature, he thought that they had a sufficient remedy in their own hands, as they themselves could cheapen the labour by which the literature was produced (quoted from Fox Bourne’s ‘History of the Newspaper Press’).
In the following year Mr. Gladstone, after the Government had been beaten, as a compromise, proposed to reduce the advertisement duty from one shilling and sixpence to sixpence. But he was again defeated, and the tax, in spite of him, was abolished altogether. The final stage was reached in 1861, when the paper duty was abolished, Mr. Gladstone being Chancellor of the Exchequer, after the Bill had been defeated in the House of Lords. ‘It entailed,’ wrote Mr. Gladstone in the Nineteenth Century, ‘the severest Parliamentary struggle in which I have ever been engaged.’ The repeal of the paper duty was the arrival of a new era in literature – of the penny newspaper, of the popular magazine, of cheap reprints of all our great standard authors.
On February 15 Mr. Greville writes: ‘When I left London a fortnight ago the world was anxiously expecting Gladstone’s speech, in which he was to put the Commercial Treaty and the Budget before the world. His own confidence, and that of most of his colleagues, in his success was unbounded, but many inveighed bitterly against the treaty. Clarendon shook his head, Overstone pronounced against the treaty, the Times thundered against it, and there is little doubt that it was unpopular, and becoming more so every day. Then came Gladstone’s unlucky illness, which compelled him to put off his expose, and made it doubtful whether he would not be physically disabled from doing justice to the subject. His doctor says he ought to have taken two months’ rest instead of two days. However, at the end of his two days’ delay he came forth and, consensus omnium, achieved one of the greatest triumphs that the House of Commons ever witnessed. Everybody, I have heard from home, admits that it was a magnificent display, not to be surpassed in ability of execution, and that he carried the House of Commons with him. I can well believe it, for when I read the report of it next day it carried me along with it likewise.’ The only parties not gratified were the Temperance Reformers, who did not like the cheap Gladstone claret which was immediately introduced at the dinner-tables, nor that clause of the new Bill which was to give grocers licenses to sell the cheap wines of France, and which was to make the fortune of the great house of Gilbey.
Lord Russell became a peer, and left Mr. Gladstone to fight the good fight in the House of Commons, about this time. Gladstone and Disraeli were fully recognised as the leaders of their respective parties. In the life of Mr. Richard Redgrave, under the date of 1860, Mr. Redgrave gives a description of Mr. Gladstone’s reply to Mr. Disraeli’s attack on the French Treaty. A friend who was present told him: ‘Mr. Gladstone was in such a state of excitement that everyone dreaded an attack from him; that his punishment of Mr. Disraeli was most ferocious. He was like a Cherokee Indian fighting; he first knocked down his adversary, then he stamped upon him, then he got excited and danced on him; he scalped him, and then took him between his finger and thumb like a miserable insect, and looked at him, and held him up to contempt.’
Mr. Macarthy’s judicious criticism may be quoted here.
‘It is idle to contend that between Gladstone and Disraeli any love was lost, and that many people thought it was unhandsome on the part of Mr. Gladstone not to attend his great rival’s obsequies, and to bury his animosities in the grave. In 1862 Disraeli complained to the Bishop of Oxford that he and others kept the Church as Mr. Gladstone’s nest-egg when he became a Whig till it was almost addled. At this time Disraeli wrote: “I wish you could have induced Gladstone to have joined 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. Had he done so, the Church and everything else would have been in a very different position.” In 1867 the Bishop of Oxford writes: “The most wonderful thing is the rise of Disraeli. It is not the mere assertion of talent, as you hear so many say; it seems to me quite beside that. He has been able to teach the House of Commons almost to ignore Gladstone, and at present lords it over him, and, I am told, says that he will hold him down for twenty years.” Disraeli, however, did himself no good when, in 1878, he described Mr. Gladstone as a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that at all times can command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign his opponents and to glorify himself.’
Disraeli was never happy in statement. When he had to explain a policy, financial or other, he might really be regarded as a very dull speaker. Gladstone was specially brilliant in statement. He could give to an exposition of figures the fascination of a romance or a poem. Mr. Gladstone never could, under any circumstances, be a dull speaker. He was no equal of Disraeli in the gift of sarcasm, and what Disraeli himself called ‘flouts and jeers.’ But in his reply he swept his antagonist before him with his marvellous eloquence, compounded of reason and passion.
On the breaking out of the American Civil War, Mr. Gladstone was undoubtedly on the side of the South: Jefferson Davis, he said, had made a nation of the South – a speech of which Mr. Gladstone repented a few years after. But it took a long time for the North to forgive or forget his unfortunate speech. Bishop Fraser, writing in 1865, says: ‘They have just got hold of about a dozen subscribers to the Confederate Loan, among whom is W. E. Gladstone, down, to my surprise, for £2,000. This, as you might expect, is a topic for excited editorials, and the cry is that the American Government ought to demand his dismissal from the Ministry.’
In time the Americans began to understand Mr. Gladstone better, and to appreciate him and his good feeling towards their country more. Major Pond, the well-known American, for twenty years endeavoured to get the G.O.M. – as he has long been known on both sides of the Atlantic – to cross the Atlantic on a lecturing tour. In 1880 Mr. Gladstone wrote to him: ‘I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, with all the kindness it expresses and the dazzling prospects which it offers. Unhappily, my reply lies not in vague expressions of hope, but in the burden of seventy years and of engagements and duties beyond my strength, by desertion of which, even for the time needed, I should really be disentitling myself to the goodwill of the American people, which I prize so highly.’ Notwithstanding this refusal, Major Pond returned to the attack, and offered the Grand Old Man seven thousand pounds for twenty lectures, which Mr. Gladstone declined. As a gentleman, he was bound to do so. It would have been a sorry sight to have seen the G.O.M. carted all over America as a show on a lecturing tour.
‘To Americans,’ says Table Talk, ‘the venerable ex-leader of the Liberal Party in the British Parliament is not only a great Englishman, but the greatest of all Englishmen, and his demise, which, it is to be hoped, will yet be long postponed, will be regarded as a calamity to all the English-speaking races. It has always been a matter of keen regret throughout the American continent that Mr. Gladstone has never been able to pay a visit to those whom the Grand Old Man described in his memorable article in the North American Review as “kin beyond sea.” In July, 1894, a well-organized attempt was made to induce Mr. Gladstone to cross the ocean. A letter of invitation was sent to him, signed by the then Vice-President of the United States, Mr. Adlai Stevenson, by Mr. Chauncey Depew, by Dr. Pepper, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, by seventy Senators and one hundred Congressmen, by the Governors of a large number of the States, as well as nearly all the members of Mr. Cleveland’s Cabinet and of the Supreme Bench at Washington. It was intimated to the aged statesman that the most extraordinary arrangements would be made for his comfort, including the most luxurious (of course, free) transportation for himself, Mrs. Gladstone, and such companions and attendants as he desired; a special service of private cars on all the railways, and the unlimited use of an Atlantic cable during the time of his absence from England. Mr. Gladstone was also promised immunity from “interviewers, party politicians, advertisers, and hand-shakers.” Mr. Gladstone’s reply covered three pages of large size writing-paper, and was written by himself entirely. At that time, it will be remembered, Mr. Gladstone’s eyes were giving him great trouble, and he pathetically wrote: “Undoubtedly your letter supplied the strongest motives for an attempt to brave the impossible. But I regret to say it reaches me at a time when, were I much younger, it could not be open to me to consider this question.” At the same time, while unable to accept such a flattering invitation, Mr. Gladstone, in concluding his letter, begged that the American nation would remain assured of “my unalterable interest in your country.”’
It was scarcely necessary to write that. In his celebrated article on ‘Kith and Kin’ Mr. Gladstone had shown how far our American cousins had shot ahead of the old folks at home.
In 1866 Sir Richard Temple wrote of the opening debate: ‘Next it was Mr. Gladstone’s turn to speak. I had understood privately that he was going to make some announcement that would imply the resignation of the Liberal leadership. He was known to be disappointed at his failure to obtain a majority at the General Election… In fact, however, he said nothing to imply resignation, but, on the contrary, was evidently prepared to oppose the Government and challenge them to propose a measure in favour of Ireland, if they had one. It was in this speech that, alluding to his reserve on the question of Home Rule until the fit moment for action should arrive, he described himself as an old Parliamentary hand. He had long been a coiner of phrases that have become household words in Parliament, and yet this description became famous among us at once.’
Lord Houghton writes in 1866: ‘I sat by Gladstone at the Delameres’. He was very much excited, not only about politics, but cattle plague, china, and everything else. It is indeed a contrast to Palmerston’s “Ha, ha!” and laissez faire.’ Again in 1868 Lord Houghton writes: ‘Gladstone is the great triumph, but, as he owns that he has to drive a four-in-hand consisting of English Liberals, English Dissenters, Scotch Presbyterians, and Irish Catholics, he requires all his courage to look his difficulties in the face, and trust to surmount them.’
In 1849 Lord Malmesbury writes: ‘Dined with the Cannings, and met Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Phillimore. We were anxious to see the former, as he is a man much spoken of as one who will come to the front. We were disappointed at his appearance, which is that of a Roman Catholic priest; but he is very agreeable.’ On another occasion Malmesbury speaks of Gladstone as ‘a dark horse.’ In 1866 Lady Palmerston tells Lord Malmesbury that his lordship had very serious apprehensions as to Mr. Gladstone’s future career, and considered him a very dangerous and reckless politician. About the same time Lord Palmerston said to the Earl of Shaftesbury: ‘Gladstone will soon have it all his own way, and when he gets my place we shall have strange doings.’ A little later on Lord Malmesbury refers to the zest with which Mr. Gladstone had taken to singing nigger melodies.
Mr. Gladstone in 1865, questioned on the subject of the Irish Church, wrote: ‘It would be very difficult for me to subscribe to any interpretation of my speech on the Irish Church like that of your correspondent, which contains so many conditions and bases of a plan for dealing with a question apparently remote and at the same time full of difficulties on every side. My reasons are, I think, plain. First, because the question is remote, and out of all bearing on the practical politics of the day, I think it would be far worse for me than superfluous to determine upon any scheme or bases of a scheme with respect to it. Secondly, because it is difficult, even if I anticipated any likelihood of being called on to deal with it, I should think it right to take no decision beforehand as to the mode of dealing with the difficulties. But my first reason is that which chiefly sways. As far as I know, my speech signifies pretty clearly the broad distinction between the abstract and the practical views of the subject. And I think I have stated strongly my sense of the responsibility attaching to the opening of such a question except in a state of things which gives promise of satisfactorily settling it… In any measure dealing with the Church of Ireland, I think (though I scarcely expect ever to be called on to share in such a measure), the Act of Union must be recognised, and must have important consequences, especially with reference to the position of the hierarchy.’
A little amusement will be created by the following:
Mr. Jerningham, author of ‘Reminiscences of an Attaché,’ met Mr. Gladstone at Strawberry Hill just after the Liberal defeat on the Reform Bill. Sitting near him at breakfast, Mr. Jerningham asked Mr. Gladstone for his autograph.
‘“Certainly,” he said; “but you must ask me a question on paper, and I will answer it.”
‘I was twenty-three years of age – very proud of being in such interesting company at such a time, and therefore most anxious to justify my presence by some clever question.
‘I wrote down quickly the following, and, rather pleased with it, gave it to Mr. Gladstone. It ran thus: “What is Mr. Gladstone’s opinion of the difference which exists in 1866 between a Liberal and a moderate Conservative?”
‘Mr. Gladstone crumpled up the paper, and, apparently much annoyed, said he did not think he could answer such a question.
‘I was so concerned by his look of vexation that I went up to one of the ladies and repeated my question to her, so as to gather from her in which way I had offended.
‘She nearly screamed – at least, so far as that person could ever utter a sound – and asked how I could ever have been so bold.
‘The truth dawned upon me. The moderate Conservatives of 1866 had dissolved a powerful Liberal Ministry, and I had inquired what he thought of them – of the very statesman who had put their moderate principles to the test.’
After this faux pas one is not surprised that Mr. Jerningham rejoiced that a dinner in town obliged him to leave his hosts on that very afternoon. But, after all, the storm soon blew over, and the incident had a pleasant ending. As Mr. Jerningham was on his way to Richmond, whom should he find upon the boat at Twickenham but Mr. Gladstone himself! So ends the tale:
‘I very modestly bade good-bye to him without any allusion to my indiscretion of the morning; but with infinite kindness and charm of manner, he said, “I have not forgotten you,” and pulled out of his pocket my original question and his characteristic answer to it:
“‘Strawberry Hill, June 24, 1866.“‘The word Moderate, as far as my observation goes, does no great credit – according to the manner in which it is now used – either to the word Liberal or to the word Conservative. Every Liberal claims to be Conservative; every Conservative to be Liberal. I know of no solution of the question between them except the test of their works.
‘“Yours very truly,‘“W. E. Gladstone.”’Count Beust says: ‘When I was ambassador in London, Mr. Gladstone, who was then in office, was caricatured with his colleagues in a piece called “The Happy Land,” at the Court Theatre. This annoyed the Premier, and the piece was taken off.’
CHAPTER VIII
POLITICS AND THE IRISH CHURCH
In the General Election for 1865 Mr. Gladstone lost his seat for the University of Oxford. For years it was evident that his advancing views were gradually drifting him from the Oxford constituents, and when an Act was passed to enable country clergymen and non-resident M.A.’s – by means of voting papers – to swamp the real Oxford constituency, Mr. Gladstone’s seat was gone, and his opponent, Mr. Hardy, triumphed. The battle was bravely fought, and the blow was severely felt by Mr. Gladstone and his friends. In his farewell address Mr. Gladstone said: ‘After an arduous connection of seven years, now I bid you farewell. My earnest purpose to serve you – my many faults and shortcomings – the incidents of the political relationship between myself and the University established in 1847, so often questioned in vain, and now at length finally dissolved – I leave to the judgment of the future. It is an imperative duty, and one alone which induces me to trouble you with these few parting words – the duty of expressing my profound and lasting gratitude for indulgence as generous, and for support as warm and enthusiastic in itself, and as honourable from the character and distinctions of those who have given it, as has, in my belief, ever been given by any constituency to any representative.’
‘The salient figure,’ writes Sir Richard Temple, ‘was the impressive personality of Mr. Gladstone himself, who was quite the figure-head in this Parliament. Naturally he was no longer the handsome man with the beautiful voice who had been wont to charm a listening senate. But still his attitude was noble, picturesque, and when under excitement he was grandly leonine. Advanced age had left its trace on him outwardly, and had impaired his matchless powers of elocution. The once resonant voice often would become husky, and at times almost inaudible, so that his voice rose and fell with a cadence like the wind. But his persuasiveness for many minds remained in its highest degree. His impassioned gesture seemed to be quieter; it could not conceivably have been finer than it was in those days. When excited in speech, he would sweep his arm round like the play of a scimitar, and yet with a movement both graceful and appropriate. His hands, too, were most impressive, and by their motion or action helped him to enforce his arguments. Above all, there was the play of features on the careworn countenance. Evidently he was in the highest sense of the term one of Nature’s orators.’ The quality of his speeches was not quite what it had once been in all respects. The passion, the glow, the sympathy, the magnetism remained as of yore.
At the Oxford election Dr. Pusey wrote to a friend: ‘You are naturally rejoicing over the defeat of Mr. Gladstone, which I mourn. Some of those who concurred in that election or stood aloof will, I fear, mourn hereafter because they were the cause of that rejection. The grounds alleged against Mr. Gladstone bore at the utmost upon the Establishment. The Establishment might perish and the Church might come forth the purer. If the Church were corrupted the Establishment would become a curse in proportion to its influence. As that conflict will thicken, Oxford will, I think, learn to regret her rude severance from one so loyal to the Church, to the faith, and to God.’
Speaking in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester during the South Lancashire election, Mr. Gladstone said: ‘After an anxious struggle of eighteen years, during which the unbounded devotion and indulgence of my friends have maintained me in the arduous position of representative of the University of Oxford, I have been driven from that position; but do not let me come among you under false colours or with a false pretence. I have loved the University of Oxford with a deep and passionate love, and as long as I live that attachment will continue. If my affection is of the smallest advantage to that great, that noble, that ancient institution, that advantage, such as it is – and it is most insignificant – that attachment Oxford will possess as long as I breathe. But don’t mistake the issue which has been raised. The University has at length, after eighteen years of self-denial, been drawn by what I might call the overweening exercise of power into the vortex of mere party politics. Well, you will readily understand why, as long as I had a hope that the zeal and kindness of my friends might keep me in my place, it was not possible for me to abandon them. Could they have returned me by but a majority of one, painful as it is to a man at my time of life, and feeling the weight of public cares, to be incessantly struggling for his seat, nothing could have induced me to quit the University to which I had so long devoted my best care and attachment. But by no act of mine I am free to come among you. And having thus been set free, I need hardly tell you that it is with joy, with thankfulness and enthusiasm that I now, at the eleventh hour, make my appeal to the heart and mind of South Lancashire, and ask you to pronounce upon that appeal.’
Mr. Gladstone then described what had been done by himself and party, commencing with the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, dwelling on the reformation of the Poor Law, the reformation of the tariffs, the abolition of the Corn Laws, the abolition of the Navigation Laws, the conclusion of the French Treaty, the removal of laws which have relieved Dissenters from stigma and almost ignominy, adding: ‘I can truly say that there is no period of my life during which my conscience is so clear, and renders me so good an answer, as those years in which I have co-operated in the promotion of Liberal measures. Because they are Liberal they are the true measures, and indicate the true policy by which the country is made strong and its institutions preserved.’
In a speech delivered the same evening at the amphitheatre at Liverpool, Mr. Gladstone continued: ‘I am, if possible, more firmly attached to the institutions of my country than when a boy I wandered among the sand-hills of Seaforth. But experience has brought its lessons. I have learned that there is wisdom in a policy of trust, and folly in a policy of mistrust. I have observed the effect which has been produced by Liberal legislation; and if we are told that the policy of the country is in the best and broadest sense Conservative, honesty compels me to admit that that result has been brought about by Liberal legislation.’
About this time the Duke of Newcastle died, leaving Mr. Gladstone a trustee of his son’s estate. ‘In this capacity,’ writes Mr. G. W. E. Russell, ‘the Chancellor of the Exchequer applied himself with characteristic thoroughness to the duties pertaining to the management of a rural property, and acquired in the superintendence of the woodlands of Chester that practical knowledge of woodcraft which has since afforded him such constant interest and occupation.’
The new Parliament was opened on February 6, 1866, the Queen appearing at the ceremony for the first time since her widowhood. In offering his services to Earl Russell, after the death of Palmerston, Mr. Gladstone wrote: ‘I am sore with conflicts about the public expenditure, which I feel that other men would have escaped, or conducted more gently and less fretfully. I am quite willing to retire.’
As one of the Ministers who engaged in the Crimean War, Mr. Gladstone had to leave office, Lord Derby being unable to form a Ministry, as Mr. Gladstone and the Peelites would not join him. Lord Palmerston became Premier, and Mr. Gladstone returned to office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, but resigned three weeks afterwards, on the ground that the Government assented to Mr. Roebuck’s motion for a committee to inquire into the conduct of the war. Twenty years after Mr. Gladstone contended: ‘The design of the Crimean War was in its groundwork the vindication of European law against an unprovoked aggression. It sought, therefore, to maintain intact the condition of the menaced party against the aggressor; or, in other words, to defend against Russia the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire.’ This resignation took place in February, 1855, and Mr. Gladstone’s position in consequence became very isolated. According to his subsequent statement, he was driven from office. His sympathies, he owns, were with the Conservatives, his opinions with the Liberals.
