These qualities and habits of the minister profoundly affected his disciple. They became part of the texture of Mr. Gladstone"s political character, and in his case, as in that of Peel, they sometimes brought censure upon him, as having locked up too long within his breast views or purposes which he thought it unwise to disclose till effect could be forthwith given to them. Such reserve, such a guarded att.i.tude and tenderness for existing inst.i.tutions, may have been not altogether natural to Mr. Gladstone"s mind, but due partly to the influence of Peel, partly to the tendency to hold by tradition and the established order which reverence for Christian antiquity and faith in the dogmatic teachings of the Church had planted deep in his soul. The contrast between Mr.
Gladstone"s caution and respect for facts on the one hand, and his reforming fervour on the other, like the contrast which ultimately appeared between his sacerdotal tendencies and his political liberalism, contributed to make his character perplexing and to expose his conduct to the charge of inconsistency. Inconsistent, in the proper sense of the word, he was not, much less changeable.
He was really, in his fundamental convictions and the main habits of his mind, one of the most tenacious and persistent of men. But there were always at work in him two tendencies. One was the speculative desire to probe everything to the bottom, to try it by the light of general principles and logic, and when it failed to stand this test, to reject it. The other was the sense of the complexity of existing social and political arrangements, and of the risk of disturbing any one part of them until the time had arrived for resettling other parts also. Every statesman feels both these sides to every concrete question of reform. No one has set them forth more cogently, and in particular no one has more earnestly dwelt on the necessity for the latter side, than the most profound thinker among British statesmen, Edmund Burke. When Mr. Gladstone stated either side with his incomparable force, people forgot that there was another side which would be no less vividly present to him at some other moment. He was not only, like all successful parliamentarians, necessarily something of an opportunist, though perhaps less so than his master, but was moved by emotion more than most statesmen, and certainly more than Peel. The relative strength with which the need for drastic reform or the need for watchful conservatism, as the case might be, presented itself to his mind depended largely upon the weight which his emotions cast into one or other scale, and this emotional element made it difficult to forecast his course. Thus his action in public life was the result of influences differing widely in their origin, influences, moreover, which could be duly appreciated only by those who knew him intimately.
Whoever has followed his political career has been struck by the sharp divergence of the views entertained by his fellow-countrymen about one who had been for so long a period under their observation. That he was possessed of boundless energy and brilliant eloquence all agreed. But agreement went no further. One section of the nation accused him of sophistry, of unwisdom, of a want of patriotism, of a l.u.s.t for power.
The other section not only repelled these charges, but admired in him a conscientiousness and a moral enthusiasm such as no political leader had shown for centuries. When the qualities of his mind and the apt.i.tudes for politics which he showed have been briefly examined, it will be fitting to return to these divergent views of his character, and endeavour to discover which of them contains the larger measure of truth. Meantime let it suffice to say that among the reasons that led men to misjudge him, this union in one person of opposite qualities was the chief. He was rather two men than one. Pa.s.sionate and impulsive on the emotional side of his nature, he was cautious and conservative on the intellectual. Few understood the conjunction; still fewer saw how much of what was perplexing in his conduct it explained.
Mr. Gladstone sat for sixty-three years (1833-1895) in Parliament, was for twenty-eight years (1866-1894) the leader of his party, and was four times Prime Minister. He began as a high Tory, remained about fifteen years in that camp, was then led by the split between Peel and the Protectionists to take up an intermediate position, and finally was forced to cast in his lot with the Liberals, for in England, as in America, third parties seldom endure. No parliamentary career in English annals is comparable to his for its length and variety; and of those who saw its close in the House of Commons, there was only one man, Mr. Villiers (who died in January 1898), who could remember its beginning. Mr. Gladstone had been opposed in 1833 to men who might have been his grandfathers; he was opposed in 1894 to men who might have been his grandchildren. It is no part of my design to describe or comment on the events of such a life. All that can be done here is to indicate the more salient characteristics which a study of his career as a statesman and a parliamentarian sets before us.
The most remarkable of these characteristics was the openness, freshness, and eagerness of mind which he preserved down to the end of his life. Most men form few new opinions after thirty-five, just as they form few new intimacies. Intellectual curiosity may remain even after fifty, but its range narrows as a man abandons the hope of attaining any thorough knowledge of subjects other than those which make the main business of his life. It is impossible to follow the progress of all the new ideas that are set afloat in the world, impossible to be always examining the foundations of one"s political or religious beliefs. Repeated disappointments and disillusionments make a man expect less from changes the older he grows; while indolence deters him from entering upon new enterprises. None of these causes seemed to affect Mr. Gladstone. He was as much excited over a new book (such as Cardinal Manning"s Life) at eighty-four as when at fourteen he insisted on compelling little Arthur Stanley (afterwards Dean of Westminster, and then aged nine) forthwith to procure and study Gray"s poems, which he had just perused himself. His reading covered almost the whole field of literature, except physical and mathematical science. While frequently declaring that he must confine his political thinking and leadership to a few subjects, he was so observant of current events that the course of talk brought up scarcely any topic in which he did not seem to know what was the latest thing that had been said or done. Neither the la.s.situde nor the prejudices that usually accompany old age prevented him from giving a fair consideration to any new doctrines. But though his intellect was restlessly at work, and though his curiosity disposed him to relish novelties, except in theology, that bottom rock in his mind of caution and reserve, which has already been referred to, made him refuse to part with old views even when he was beginning to accept new ones. He allowed both to "lie on the table" together, and while declaring himself open to conviction, felt it safer to speak and act on the old lines till the process of conviction had been completed. It took fourteen years, from 1846 to 1860, to carry him from the Conservative into the Liberal camp. It took five stormy years to bring him round to Irish Home Rule, though his mind was constantly occupied with the subject from 1880 to 1885, and those who watched him closely saw that the process had advanced a long way even in 1882. And as regards ecclesiastical establishments, having written a book in 1838 as a warm advocate of State churches, it was not till 1867 that he adopted the policy of disestablishment for Ireland, not till 1890 that he declared himself ready to apply that policy in Wales and Scotland also.
Both these qualities--his disposition to revise his opinions in the light of new arguments and changing conditions, and the silence he maintained till the process of revision had been completed--exposed him to misconstruction. Commonplace men, unwont to give serious scrutiny to their opinions, ascribed his changes to self-interest, or at best regarded them as the index of an unstable purpose. Dull men could not understand why he should have forborne to set forth all that was pa.s.sing in his mind, and saw little difference between reticence and dishonesty. In so far as they shook public confidence, these characteristics injured him in his statesman"s work. Yet the loss was outweighed by the gain. In a country where opinion is active and changeful, where the economic conditions that legislation has to deal with are in a state of perpetual flux, where the balance of power between the upper, the middle, and the poorer cla.s.ses has been swiftly altering during the last seventy years, no statesman can continue to serve the public if he adheres obstinately to the doctrines with which he started in life. He must--unless, of course, he stands aloof in permanent isolation--either subordinate his own views to the general sentiment of his party, and be driven to advocate courses he secretly mislikes, or else, holding himself ready to quit his party, if need be, must be willing to learn from events, and to reconsider his opinions in the light of emergent tendencies and insistent facts. Mr.
Gladstone"s pride as well as his conscience forbade the former alternative; it was fortunate that the tireless activity of his intellect made the latter natural to him. He was accustomed to say that the capital fault of his earlier days had been his failure adequately to recognise the worth and power of liberty, and the tendency which things have to work out for good when left to themselves. The application of this principle gave room for many developments, and many developments there were. He may have shown less than was needed of that prescience which is, after integrity and courage, the highest gift of a statesman, but which can seldom be expected from an English minister, too engrossed to find time for the patient reflection from which alone sound forecasts can issue. But he had the next best quality, that of remaining accessible to new ideas and learning from the events which pa.s.sed under his eyes.
With this openness and flexibility of mind there went a not less remarkable ingenuity and resourcefulness. Fertile in expedients, he was still more fertile in reasonings by which to recommend the expedients. The gift had its dangers, for he was apt to be carried away by the dexterity of his own dialectic, and to think that a scheme must be sound in whose support he could muster a formidable array of arguments. He never seemed at a loss, in public or in private, for a criticism, or for an answer to the criticisms of others. If his power of adapting his own mind to the minds of those whom he had to convince had been equal to the skill and swiftness with which he acc.u.mulated a ma.s.s of matter persuasive to those who looked at things in his own way, no one would have exercised so complete a control over the political opinion of his time. But his intellect lacked this power of adaptation. It moved on lines of its own, which were often misconceived, even by those who sought to follow him loyally. Thus, as already observed, he was blamed for two opposite faults. Some, pointing to the fact that he had frequently altered his views, denounced him as a demagogue profuse of promises, ready to propose whatever he thought likely to catch the people"s ear. Others complained that there was no knowing where to have him; that he had an erratic mind, whose currents ran underground and came to the surface in unexpected places; that he did not consult his party, but followed his own impulses; that his guidance was unsafe because his decisions were unpredictable. Much of the suspicion with which he was regarded, especially after 1885, arose from this view of his character.
It was an unfair view, yet nearer to the truth than that which charged him with seeking to flatter and follow the people. No great popular leader had in him less of the demagogue. He saw, of course, that a statesman cannot oppose the general will beyond a certain point, and may have to humour it in small things that he may direct it in great ones. He was obliged, as others have been, to take up and settle questions he deemed unimportant because they were troubling the body politic. Now and then, in his later days, he so far yielded to his party advisers as to express his approval of proposals in which his own interest was slight. But he was ever a leader, not a follower, and erred rather in not keeping his finger closely and constantly upon the pulse of public opinion. In this point, at least, one may discover in him a likeness to Disraeli. Slow as he was in maturing his opinions, Mr. Gladstone was liable to forget that the minds of his followers might not be moving along with his own, and hence his decisions sometimes took his party as well as the nation by surprise. But he was too self-absorbed, too eagerly interested in the ideas that suited his own cast of thought, to be able to watch and gauge the tendencies of the mult.i.tude. The three most remarkable instances in which his new departures startled the world were his declarations against the Irish Church establishment in 1867, against the Turks and the traditional English policy of supporting them in 1876, and in favour of Irish Home Rule in 1886, and in none of these did any popular demand suggest his p.r.o.nouncement. It was the ma.s.ses who took their view from him, not he who took a mandate from the ma.s.ses. In each of these cases he may, perhaps, be blamed for not having sooner perceived, or at any rate for not having sooner announced, the need for a change of policy. But it was very characteristic of him not to give the full strength of his mind to a question till he felt that it pressed for a solution. Those who listened to his private talk were scarcely more struck by the range of his vision than by his unwillingness to commit himself on matters whose decision he could postpone. Reticence and caution were sometimes carried too far, not merely because they exposed him to misconstruction, but because they withheld from his party the guidance it needed. This was true in the three instances just mentioned; and in the last of them it is possible that earlier and fuller communications might have averted the separation of some of his former colleagues.
Nor did he always rightly divine the popular mind. His proposal (in 1874) to extinguish the income-tax fell completely flat, because the nation was becoming indifferent to that economy in public expenditure which both parties had in the days of Peel and Lord John Russell vied in demanding. Cherishing his old financial ideals, Mr. Gladstone had not marked the change. So he failed to perceive how much the credit of his party was suffering (after 1871) from the belief of large sections of the people, that he was indifferent to the interests of England outside England. Perhaps, knowing the charge of indifference to be groundless, he underrated the effect which the iteration of it produced: perhaps his pride would not let him stoop to dissipate it.
Though the power of reading the signs of the times and swaying the mind of the nation may be now more essential to an English statesman than the skill which manages a legislature or holds together a cabinet, that skill counts for much, and must continue to do so while the House of Commons remains the governing authority of the country. A man can hardly reach high place, and certainly cannot retain high place, without possessing this kind of art. Mr. Gladstone was at one time thought to want it. In 1864, when Lord Palmerston"s end was approaching, and Mr. Gladstone had shown himself the strongest man among the Liberal ministers in the House of Commons, people speculated about the succession to the headship of the party; and the wiseacres of the day were never tired of repeating that Mr. Gladstone could not possibly lead the House of Commons. He wanted tact, they said, he was too excitable, too impulsive, too much absorbed in his own ideas, too unversed in the arts by which individuals are conciliated. But when, after twenty-five years of his unquestioned reign, the time for his own departure drew nigh, men asked how the Liberal party in the House of Commons would ever hold together after it had lost a leader of such consummate capacity. The Whig critics of 1864 had grown so accustomed to Palmerston"s way of handling the House as to forget that a man might succeed by quite different methods, and that defects, serious in themselves, may be outweighed by transcendent merits.
Mr. Gladstone had the defects ascribed to him. His impulsiveness sometimes betrayed him into declarations which a cooler reflection would have dissuaded. The second reading of the Irish Home Rule Bill of 1886 might possibly have been carried had he not been goaded by his opponents into words which were construed as recalling or modifying the concessions he had announced at a meeting of the Liberal party held just before. More than once precious time was wasted because antagonists, knowing his excitable temper, brought on discussions with the sole object of annoying him and drawing from him some hasty deliverance. Nor was he an adept, like Disraeli and Disraeli"s famous Canadian imitator, Sir John A. Macdonald, in the management of individuals. His aversion for the meaner side of human nature made him refuse to play upon it. Many of the pursuits, and most of the pleasures, which attract ordinary men had no interest for him, so that much of the common ground on which men meet was closed to him. He was, moreover, too constantly engrossed by the subjects he loved, and by enterprises which specially appealed to him, to have leisure for the lighter but often vitally important devices of political strategy. I remember hearing, soon after 1870, how Mr. Delane, then editor of the _Times_, had been invited to meet the Prime Minister at a moment when the support of that newspaper would have been specially valuable to the Liberal Government. Instead of using the opportunity in the way that had been intended, Mr. Gladstone dilated during the whole time of dinner upon the approaching exhaustion of the English coal-beds, to the surprise of the company and the unconcealed annoyance of the powerful guest. It was the subject then uppermost in his mind, and he either forgot, or disdained, to conciliate Mr. Delane. Good nature as well as good sense made him avoid giving offence by personal reflections in debate, and he usually suffered fools if not, like St.
Paul"s converts, gladly, yet patiently.[64] In the House of Commons he was entirely free from airs, and, indeed, from any a.s.sumption of superiority. The youngest member might accost him in the lobby and be listened to with perfect courtesy. But he had a bad memory for faces, seldom addressed any one outside the circle of his personal friends, and more than once made enemies by omitting to notice and show attention to recruits who, having been eminent in their own towns, expected to be made much of when they entered Parliament. Having himself plenty of pride and comparatively little vanity, he never realised the extent to which, and the cheapness with which, men can be captured and used through their vanity. Adherents were sometimes turned into dangerous foes because his preoccupation with graver matters dimmed his sense of what may be done to win support by the minor arts, such as an invitation to dinner or even a seasonable compliment. And his mind, flexible as it was in seizing new points of view and devising expedients to meet new circ.u.mstances, did not easily enter into the characters of other men. Ideas and causes interested him more than did personal traits; his sympathy was keener and stronger for the sufferings of nations or ma.s.ses of men than with the fortunes of an individual man. With all his accessibility and kindliness, he was at bottom chary of real friendship, while the circle of his intimates became constantly smaller with advancing years. So it befell that though his popularity among the general body of his adherents went on increasing, and the admiration of his parliamentary followers remained undiminished, he had in the House of Commons few personal friends who linked him to the party at large, and rendered to him those confidential services which count for much in keeping all sections in hearty accord and enabling the commander to gauge the sentiment of his troops.
Of parliamentary strategy in that larger sense, which covers familiarity with parliamentary forms and usages, care and judgment in arranging the business of the House, the power of seizing a parliamentary situation and knowing how to deal with it, the art of guiding a debate and choosing the right moment for reserve and for openness, for a dignified retreat, for a watchful defence, for a sudden rattling charge upon the enemy--of all this no one had a fuller mastery. His recollection of precedents was unrivalled, for it began in 1833 with the first reformed Parliament, and it seemed as fresh for those remote days as for last month. He enjoyed combat for its own sake, not so much from inborn pugnacity, for he was not disputatious in ordinary conversation, as because it called out his fighting force and stimulated his whole nature. "I am never nervous in reply," he once said, "though I am sometimes nervous in opening a debate." No one could be more tactful or adroit when a crisis arrived whose gravity he had foreseen. In the summer of 1881 the House of Lords made some amendments to the Irish Land Bill which were deemed ruinous to the working of the measure, and therewith to the prospects of the pacification of Ireland. A conflict was expected which might have strained the fabric of the const.i.tution. The excitement which quickly arose in Parliament spread to the nation. Mr. Gladstone alone remained calm and confident. He devised a series of compromises, which he advocated in conciliatory speeches. He so played his game that by a few minor concessions he secured nearly all the points he cared for, and, while sparing the dignity of the Lords, steered his bill triumphantly out of the breakers which had threatened to engulf it.
Very different was his ordinary demeanour in debate when he was off his guard. His face and gestures while he sat in the House of Commons listening to an opponent would express all the emotions that crossed his mind. He would follow every sentence as a hawk follows the movements of a small bird, would sometimes contradict half aloud, sometimes turn to his next neighbour to vent his displeasure at the groundless allegations or fallacious arguments he was listening to, till at last, like a hunting leopard loosed from the leash, he would spring to his feet and deliver a pa.s.sionate reply. His warmth would often be in excess of what the occasion required, and quite disproportioned to the importance of his antagonist. It was in fact the unimportance of the occasion that made him thus yield to his feeling. As soon as he saw that bad weather was coming, and careful seamanship wanted, his coolness returned, his language became measured, while pa.s.sion, though it might increase the force of his oratory, never made him deviate a hand"s breadth from the course he had chosen. The Celtic heat subsided, and the shrewd self-control of the Lowland Scot regained command.
It was by oratory that Mr. Gladstone rose to fame and power, as, indeed, by it most English statesmen have risen, save those to whom wealth and rank and family connections used to give a sort of presumptive claim to high office, like the Cavendishes and the Russells, the Bentincks and the Cecils. And for many years, during which Mr. Gladstone was suspected as a statesman because, while he had ceased to be a Tory, he had not fully become a Liberal, his eloquence was the main, one might almost say the sole, source of his influence.
Oratory was a power in English politics even a century and a half ago, as the career of the elder Pitt shows. During the last seventy years, years which have seen the power of rank and family connections decline, it has, although less cultivated as a fine art, continued to be almost essential to the highest success, and it still brings a man quickly to the front, though it will not keep him there should he prove to want the other branches of statesmanlike capacity.
The permanent reputation of an orator depends upon two things, the witness of contemporaries to the impression produced upon them, and the written or printed record of his speeches. Few are the famous speakers who would be famous if they were tried by this latter test alone, and Mr. Gladstone was not one of them. It is only by a rare combination of gifts that one who speaks with so much force and brilliance as to charm his listeners is also able to deliver thoughts so valuable in words so choice that posterity will read them as literature. Some of the ancient orators did this; but we seldom know how far those of their speeches which have been preserved are the speeches which they actually delivered. Among moderns, a few French preachers, Edmund Burke, Macaulay, and Daniel Webster are perhaps the only speakers whose discourses have pa.s.sed into cla.s.sics and find new generations of readers.[65] Twenty years hence Mr. Gladstone"s will not be read, except, of course, by historians. Indeed, they ceased to be read even in his lifetime. They are too long, too diffuse, too minute in their handling of details, too elaborately qualified in their enunciation of general principles. They contain few epigrams and few of those weighty thoughts put into telling phrases which the Greeks called +gnomai+. The style, in short, is not sufficiently rich or polished to give an enduring interest to matter whose practical importance has vanished. The same oblivion has overtaken all but a few of the best speeches (or parts of speeches) of Grattan, Sheridan, Pitt, Fox, Erskine, Canning, Plunket, Brougham, Peel, Bright. It may, indeed, be said--and the examples of Burke and Macaulay show that this is no paradox--that the speakers whom posterity most enjoys are rarely those who most affected the audiences that listened to them.[66]
If, on the other hand, Mr. Gladstone be judged by the impression he made on his own time, his place will be high in the front rank. His speeches were neither so concisely telling as Mr. Bright"s nor so finished in diction; but no other man among his contemporaries--neither Lord Derby nor Mr. Lowe, nor Lord Beaconsfield nor Lord Cairns, nor Bishop Wilberforce nor Bishop Magee--taken all round, could be ranked beside him. And he rose superior to Mr. Bright himself in readiness, in variety of knowledge, in persuasive ingenuity. Mr. Bright spoke seldom and required time for preparation. Admirable in the breadth and force with which he set forth his own position, or denounced that of his adversaries, he was not equally qualified for instructing nor equally apt at persuading. Mr. Gladstone could both instruct and persuade, could stimulate his friends and demolish his opponents, and could do all these things at an hour"s notice, so vast and well ordered was the a.r.s.enal of his mind. Pitt was superb in an expository or argumentative speech, but his stately periods lacked variety. Fox, incomparable in reply, was hesitating and confused when he had to state his case in cold blood. Mr. Gladstone showed as much fire in winding up a debate as skill in opening it.
His oratory had, indeed, two faults. It wanted concentration, and it wanted definition. There were too many words, and the conclusion was sometimes left vague because the arguments had been too nicely balanced. I once heard Mr. Cobden say: "I always listen to Mr.
Gladstone with pleasure and admiration, but I sometimes have to ask myself, when he has sat down, "What after all was it that he meant, and what practical course does he recommend?"" These faults were balanced by conspicuous merits. There was a lively imagination, which enabled him to relieve even dull matter by pleasing figures, together with a large command of quotations and ill.u.s.trations. There were powers of sarcasm, powers, however, which he rarely used, preferring the summer lightning of banter to the thunderbolts of invective. There was admirable lucidity and accuracy in exposition. There was art in the disposition and marshalling of his arguments, and finally--a gift now almost lost in England--there was a delightful variety and grace of appropriate gesture. But above and beyond everything else which enthralled the listener, there stood out four qualities. Two of them were merits of substance--inventiveness and elevation; two were merits of delivery--force in the manner, expressive modulation in the voice.
No one showed such swift resourcefulness in debate. His readiness, not only at catching a point, but at making the most of it on a moment"s notice, was amazing. Some one would lean over the back of the bench he sat on and show a paper or whisper a sentence to him. Apprehending the bearings at a glance, he would take the bare fact and so shape and develop it, like a potter moulding a bowl on the wheel out of a lump of clay, that it grew into a cogent argument or a happy ill.u.s.tration under the eye of the audience, and seemed all the more telling because it had not been originally a part of his case. Even in the last three years of his parliamentary life, when his sight had so failed that he read nothing, printed or written, except what it was absolutely necessary to read, and when his deafness had so increased that he did not hear half of what was said in debate, it was sufficient for a colleague to say into the better ear a few words explaining how the matter at issue stood, and he would rise to his feet and extemporise a long and ingenious argument, or retreat with dexterous grace from a position which the course of the discussion or the private warning of the Whips had shown to be untenable. Never was he seen at a loss either to meet a new point raised by an adversary or to make the best of an unexpected incident. Sometimes he would amuse himself by drawing a cheer or a contradiction from his opponents, and would then suddenly turn round and use this hasty expression of their opinion as the basis for a fresh argument of his own. Loving conflict, he loved debate, and, so far from being confused or worried by the strain conflict put upon him, his physical health was strengthened and his faculties were roused to higher efficiency by having to prepare and deliver a great speech. He had the rare faculty of thinking ahead while he was speaking, and could, while pouring forth a stream of glittering sentences, be at the same time (as one saw by watching his eye) composing an argument to be delivered five or ten minutes later. Once, at a very critical moment, when he was defending a great measure against the amendment--moved by a nominal supporter of his own--which proved fatal to it, a friend suddenly reminded him of an incident in the career of the mover which might be effectively used against him.
When Mr. Gladstone sat down after delivering an impa.s.sioned speech, in the course of which he had several times approached and then sheered off from the incident, he turned round to the friend and said, "I was thinking all the time I was speaking whether I could properly use against ---- what you told me, but concluded, on the whole, that it would be too hard on him."
The weakness of his eloquence sprang from its supersubtlety and superabundance. He was p.r.o.ne to fine distinctions. He multiplied arguments when it would have been better to rely upon two or three of the strongest. And he was sometimes so intent on refuting the particular adversaries opposed to him, and persuading the particular audience before him, that he forgot to address his reasonings to the public beyond the House, and make them equally applicable and equally convincing to the readers of next morning.
As dignity is one of the rarest qualities in literature, so elevation is one of the rarest in oratory. It is a quality easier to feel than to a.n.a.lyse. One may call it a power of enn.o.bling ordinary things by showing their relation to great things, by pouring high emotions round them, by bringing the worthier motives of human conduct to bear upon them, by touching them with the light of poetry. Ambitious writers and speakers strain after effects of this kind; but they are effects which study and straining cannot ensure. Vainly do most men flap their wings in the effort to soar; if they succeed in rising from the ground it is because some unusually strong burst of feeling makes them for the moment better than themselves. In Mr. Gladstone the capacity for feeling was at all times so strong, and the susceptibility of the imagination so keen, that he soared without effort. His vision seemed to take in the whole landscape. The points actually in question might be small, but the principles involved were to him far-reaching. The contests of to-day were enn.o.bled by the effect they might have in a still distant future. There are rhetoricians skilful in playing by words and manner on every chord of human nature, rhetoricians who move you, and may even carry you away for the moment, but whose sincerity is doubted, because the sense of spontaneity is lacking. Mr. Gladstone was not of these. He never seemed to be forcing an effect or a.s.suming a sentiment. To listen to him was to feel convinced of his own conviction and to be warmed by the warmth with which he expressed it.
Nor was this due to the perfection of his rhetorical art. He really did feel what he expressed. Sometimes, of course, like all statesmen, he had to maintain a cause whose weakness he perceived, as, for instance, when it became necessary to defend the blunder of a colleague, or a decision reached by some Cabinet compromise which his own judgment disapproved. But even in such cases he did not simulate feeling, but reserved his earnestness for those parts of the case on which it could be honestly expended. As this was generally true of the imaginative and emotional side of his eloquence, so was it especially true of his unequalled power of lifting a subject from the level on which other speakers had treated it into the purer air of permanent principle, perhaps even of moral sublimity.
The dignity and spontaneity which marked the substance of his speeches was no less conspicuous in their delivery. Nothing could be more easy and graceful than his manner on ordinary occasions, nothing more grave and stately than it became when he was making a ceremonial reference to some public event or bestowing a meed of praise on the departed.
His expository discourses, such as those with which he introduced a complicated bill or unfolded a financial statement, were models of their kind, not only for lucidity, but for the pleasant smoothness, never lapsing into monotony, with which the stream of speech flowed from his lips. The task was performed so well that people thought it an easy task till they saw how inferior were the performances of two subsequent chancellors of the exchequer so able in their respective ways as Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Lowe. But when an occasion arrived which quickened men"s pulses in the House of Commons, a place where feeling rises as suddenly as do the waves of a Highland loch when a squall comes rushing down the glen, the vehemence of his feeling found expression in the fire of his eye and the resistless strength of his words. His utterance did not grow swifter, nor did the key of his voice rise, as pa.s.sion raises and sharpens the voice in most men. But the measured force with which every sentence was launched, like a sh.e.l.l hurtling through the air, the concentrated intensity of his look, as he defied antagonists in front and swept his glance over the ranks of his supporters around and behind him, had a startling and thrilling power which no other Englishman could exert, and which no Englishman had exerted since the days of Pitt and Fox.
The whole proud, bold, ardent nature of the man seemed to flash out, and one almost forgot what the lips said in admiration of the towering personality.
People who read next day the report in the newspapers of a speech delivered on such an occasion could not comprehend the impression it had made on the listeners. "What was there in it so to stir you?"
they asked. They had not seen the glance and the gestures; they had not heard the vibrating voice rise to an organ peal of triumph or sink to a whisper of entreaty. Mr. Gladstone"s voice was naturally rich and resonant. It was a fine singing voice, and a pleasant voice to listen to in conversation, not the less pleasant for having a slight trace of Liverpool accent clinging to it. But what struck one in listening to his speeches was not so much the quality of the vocal chords as the skill with which they were managed. He had a gift of sympathetic expression, of throwing his feeling into his voice, and using its modulations to accompany and convey every shade of meaning, like that which a great composer exerts when he puts music to a poem, or a great executant when he renders at once the composer"s and the poet"s thought. And just as accomplished singers or violinists enjoy the practice of their art, so he rejoiced, perhaps unconsciously, yet intensely, in putting forth this faculty of expression; as appeared, indeed, from the fact that whenever his voice failed him (which sometimes befell in later years) his words came less easily, and even the chariot of his argument seemed to drive heavily. That the voice should so seldom have failed was wonderful. When he had pa.s.sed his seventy-fifth year, it became sensibly inferior in volume and depth of tone. But its variety and delicacy remained. In April 1886, he being then seventy-seven, it held out during a speech of nearly four hours in length. In February 1890 it enabled him to deliver with extraordinary effect an eminently solemn and pathetic appeal. In March 1894 those who listened to it the last time it was heard in Parliament--they were comparatively few, for the secret of his impending resignation had been well kept--recognised in it all the old charm. The most striking instance I recall of the power it could exert is to be found in a speech made in 1883, during one of the tiresome debates occasioned by the refusal of the Opposition and of some timorous Liberals to allow Mr. Bradlaugh to be sworn as a member of the House of Commons. This speech produced on those who heard it an impression which its perusal to-day fails to explain. That impression was chiefly due to the grave and reverent tone in which he delivered some sentences stating the view that it is not our belief in the bare existence of a Deity, but the realising of him as being a Providence ruling the world, that has moral value and significance for us. And it was due in particular to the solemn dignity with which he declaimed six lines of Lucretius, setting forth the Epicurean view that the G.o.ds do not concern themselves with human affairs. There were perhaps not twenty men in the House of Commons who could follow the sense of the lines so as to appreciate their bearing on his argument. But these sonorous hexameters--hexameters that seemed to have lived on through nineteen centuries to find their application from the lips of an orator to-day--the sense of remoteness in the strange language and the far-off heathen origin, the deep and moving note in the speaker"s voice, thrilled the imagination of the audience and held it spellbound, lifting for a moment the whole subject of debate into a region far above party conflicts. Spoken by any one else, the pa.s.sage culminating in these Lucretian lines might have produced little effect. It was the voice and manner, above all the voice, with its marvellous modulations, that made the speech majestic.
Yet one must not forget to add that with him, as with some other famous statesmen, the impression made by a speech was in a measure due to the admiring curiosity and wonder which his personality inspired.
He was so much the most interesting human being in the House of Commons that, when he withdrew, many members said that the place had lost half its attraction for them, and that the chamber looked empty because he was not in it. Plenty of able men remained. But even the ablest seemed ordinary when compared with the figure that had vanished, a figure in whom were combined, as in no other man of his time, an unrivalled experience, an extraordinary activity and versatility of intellect, a fervid imagination, and an indomitable will.
Though Mr. Gladstone"s oratory was a main source of his power, both in Parliament and over the people, the effort of detractors to represent him as a mere rhetorician will seem absurd to the historian who reviews his whole career. The rhetorician adorns and popularises 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. Mr. Gladstone was himself a source of new ideas and new policies; he evoked new sentiments or turned old sentiments into new channels. Neither was he, as some alleged, primarily a destroyer. His conservative instincts were strong; he cherished ancient custom. When it became necessary to clear away an inst.i.tution he sought to put something else in its place. He was a constructive statesman not less conspicuously than were Pitt, Canning, and Peel. Whether he was a philosophic statesman, basing his action on large views obtained by thought and study, philosophic in the sense in which we apply the epithet to Pericles, Machiavelli, Turgot, Burke, Jefferson, Hamilton, Stein--if one cla.s.s can be made to include persons otherwise so dissimilar--may perhaps be doubted. There are few instances in history of men who have been great thinkers and also great legislators or administrators, because the two kinds of capacity almost exclude one another. As experts declare that a man who should try to operate on the Stock Exchange in reliance upon a profound knowledge of the inner springs of European politics and the financial resources of the great States, would ruin himself before his perfectly correct calculations had time to come true, so a practical statesman, though he cannot know too much, or look too far ahead, must beware of trusting his own forecasts, must remember that he has to deal with the next few months or years, and to persuade persons who cannot be expected to share or even to understand his views of the future. The habit of meditating on underlying truths, the tendency to play the long game, are almost certain to spoil a man for dealing effectively with the present. He will not be a sufficiently vigilant observer; he will be out of sympathy with the notions of the average man; his arguments will go over the head of his audience. No English prime minister has looked at politics with the eye of a philosopher. But Mr.
Gladstone, if hardly to be called a thinker, showed higher constructive power than any one else has done since Peel. Were the memory of his oratorical triumphs to pa.s.s 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 const.i.tution of his country and in her European policy.
Three groups of measures stand out as monuments of his skill and energy. The first of these three 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 he continued the work begun by Peel by reducing and simplifying the customs duties. Deficiencies in revenue were 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 pa.s.sing 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:
+Kartisten de ten ge machen phato dymenai andron.+[67]
The budget of 1860, among other changes, abolished the paper duty, a boon to the press which was resisted by 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 surpa.s.s, those of Peel, and are not tarnished, as in the case of Pitt, by the recollection of a burden of debts incurred. To no minister can be ascribed so large a share in promoting the commercial and industrial prosperity of modern England, and in the reduction of her national debt to the figure at which it stood when it began to rise again in 1900.
The second group includes the 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 pa.s.sing next year, by Mr. Disraeli, of a more sweeping measure. Taken together, these statutes 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. In preparing a bill no man could be more painstaking. He settled and laid down the principles himself; and when he came to work them out with the draughtsman and the officials who had special knowledge of the subject, he insisted on knowing what their effect would be in every particular. Indeed, he loved work for its own sake, in this respect unlike Mr. Bright, who once said to me with a smile, when asked as to his methods of working, that he had never done any work all his life. The value of this mastery of details was seen when a bill came to be debated in Committee. It was impossible to catch Mr.
Gladstone tripping on a point of fact, or unprepared with a reply to the arguments of an opponent. He seemed to revel in the toil of mastering a tangle of technical details.
It is long since England, in this respect not favoured by her parliamentary system, has produced a great foreign minister, nor has that t.i.tle been claimed for Mr. Gladstone. But he showed on several occasions both his independence of tradition and his faith in broad principles as fit to be applied in international relations; and his action in that field, though felt only at intervals, has left abiding results in European history. In 1851, he being then still a Tory, his pamphlet denouncing the cruelties of 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 ministry in arranging a treaty for the neutrality of Belgium on the outbreak of the war between France and Germany, averted the risk that Belgium might be drawn into the strife. In 1871, by concluding the treaty of Washington, which provided for the settlement by arbitration of the _Alabama_ claims, he not only set a precedent full of promise for the future, 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, his onslaught upon the Turks, after the Bulgarian ma.s.sacres, roused an intense feeling in England, turning the current of opinion so decisively that Disraeli"s ministry were forced to leave the Sultan to his fate, and thus became a cause of the ultimate deliverance of Bulgaria, Eastern Rumelia, Bosnia, and Thessaly from Mussulman tyranny. Few English statesmen have equally earned the grat.i.tude of the oppressed.
Nothing lay nearer to his heart than the protection of the Christians of the East. 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 members of Lord Aberdeen"s cabinet which drifted into that war. Twenty years after the agitation of 1876, and when he had finally retired from Parliament and political life, the ma.s.sacres 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 favour of British intervention to rescue the Eastern Christians. In the following spring he followed this up by a 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 upon which it had already entered. Poignant regrets were expressed that Mr.
Gladstone was no longer able to take effective action in the cause of humanity; yet it was a consolation to be a.s.sured that age and infirmity had not dulled his sympathies with that cause.
That he was right in 1876-78 in the view he took of the line of conduct England should adopt towards the Turks has been now virtually admitted even by his opponents. That he was also right in 1896, when urging action to protect the Eastern Christians, will probably be admitted ten years hence, when the facts of the case and the nature of the opportunity that existed for taking prompt action without the risk of a European war have become better known. In both cases it was not merely religious sympathy, but also a far-sighted view of policy that governed his judgment. He held that the faults of Turkish rule are incurable, and that the Powers of Western and Central Europe ought to aim at protecting the subject nationalities and by degrees extending self-government to them, so that they may grow into states, and in time be able to restore prosperity to regions ruined by long misgovernment, while const.i.tuting an effective barrier to the advance of Russia. The jealousies of the Powers throw obstacles in the way of this policy, but it is a safe policy for England, and offers the best hope for the peoples of the East.
The facts just noted prove that he possessed and exerted a capacity for initiative in foreign as well as in domestic affairs. In the Neapolitan case, in the _Alabama_ case, in the Bulgarian case, he acted from his own convictions, with no previous suggestion of encouragement from his party; and in the last-mentioned instance he took a course which did not at the moment promise any political gain, and 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 the man.[68]
It was not the rashness of an impetuous nature, for, impetuous as he was when stirred by some sudden excitement, he showed an Ulyssean caution 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, 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. As it happened, the bulk of the party did follow him, though many of the most influential refused to do so. But neither he nor any one else could have foretold this when his intentions were first announced.
We may now, before pa.s.sing away from the public side of Mr.
Gladstone"s career, return for a moment to the opposite views of his character which were indicated some pages back. He was accused of sophistry, of unwisdom, of want of patriotism, of l.u.s.t for power.
Though it is difficult to sift these charges without discussing the conduct which gave rise to them, a task impossible here, each of them must be briefly examined.
The first charge is the most plausible. His ingenuity in discovering arguments and stating fine verbal distinctions, his subtlety in discriminating between views or courses apparently similar, were excessive, and invited misconstruction. He had a tendency to persuade himself, quite unconsciously, that the course he desired to take was a course which the public interest required. His acuteness soon found reasons for that course; the warmth of his emotions enforced the reasons. It was a dangerous tendency, but it does not impeach his honesty of purpose, for the influence which his predilections unconsciously exerted upon his judgment appeared also in his theological and literary inquiries. I can recall no instance in which he wilfully misstated a fact, or simulated a feeling, or used an argument which he knew to be unsound. He did not, as does the sophist, attempt "to make the worse appear the better reason."
His wisdom will be differently judged by those who condemn or approve the chief acts of his policy. But it deserves to be noted that all the legislation he pa.s.sed, even the measures which, like the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill, exposed him to angry attacks at the time, have now been approved by the all but unanimous judgment of Englishmen.[69]
The same may be said of two acts which brought much invective upon him--his settlement of the _Alabama_ claims, one of the wisest strokes of foreign policy ever accomplished by a British minister, and his protest against a support of the Turks in and after 1876. I pa.s.s by Irish Home Rule, because the wisdom of the course he took must be tested by results that are yet unborn, as I pa.s.s by his Egyptian policy in 1882-85, because it cannot be fairly judged till the facts have been fully made public. He may be open to blame for his partic.i.p.ation in the Crimean War, for his mistaken view of the American Civil War, for his neglect of the Transvaal question when he took office in 1880, and for his omission during his earlier career to recognise the gravity of Irish disaffection and to study its causes. I have heard him lament that he had not twenty years earlier given the same attention to that abiding source of the difficulties of England which he gave from 1866 onwards. If in these instances he erred, it must be remembered that he erred in company with nine-tenths of British statesmen in both political parties.
Their admiration did not prevent his friends from noting tendencies which sometimes led him to miscalculate the forces he had to deal with. Being, like the younger Pitt, extremely sanguine, he was p.r.o.ne to underrate difficulties. Hopefulness is a splendid quality. It is both the child and the parent of faith. Without it neither Mr. Pitt nor Mr. Gladstone could have done what they did. But it disposes its possessor not sufficiently to allow for the dulness or the prejudice of others. So too the intensity of Mr. Gladstone"s own feeling made him fail to realise how many of his fellow-countrymen did not know of, or were not shocked by, acts of cruelty and injustice which had roused his indignation. If his hatred of ostentation suffered him to perceive that a nation, however well a.s.sured of the reality of its power and influence in the world, may also desire that this power and influence should be a.s.serted and proclaimed to other nations, he refused to humour that desire. He had a contempt for what is called "playing to the gallery," with a deep sense of the danger of stimulating the pa.s.sions which lead to aggression and war. To national honour, as he conceived it, national righteousness was vital. His spirit was that of Lowell"s lines--
I love my country so as only they Who love a mother fit to die for may.
I love her old renown, her ancient fame: What better proof than that I loathe her shame?
It was this att.i.tude that brought on him the charge of wanting patriotism, a charge first, I think, insinuated at the time of the _Alabama_ arbitration, renewed when in 1876 he was accused of befriending Russia and neglecting "British interests," and sedulously repeated thereafter, although in those two instances the result had proved him right. There was this much to give a kind of colour to the charge, that he had scrupulously, perhaps too scrupulously, refrained from extolling the material power of England, preferring to insist upon her responsibilities; that he was known to regret the constant increase of naval and military expenditure, and that he had several times taken a course which honour and prudence seemed to him to recommend, but which had offended the patriots of the music-halls. But it was an unjust charge, for no man had a warmer pride in England, a higher sense of her greatness and her mission.
Was he too fond of power? Like other strong men, he enjoyed it.[70]