The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume II Part 47

Then come others, recalling ill.u.s.trious names and famous events in English history. There are a dozen letters of business (1837-1846) from the Duke of Wellington. The reader may be curious to see the earliest communication between two such men-

_London, Nov. 27, 1837._-I have by accident mislaid the pet.i.tion from the Cape of Good Hope, if it was ever sent me. But I shall be happy to see you and converse with you upon the subject; and consider whether it is desirable or possible that I can bring the subject before the consideration of the House of Lords at the same time that you will in the H. of C. I would propose to you to come here, or that I should go to you to-morrow, Tuesday, at any hour you will name.-I have the honour to be, dear sir, your most faithful, humble servant,

WELLINGTON.(335)

Once he uses his well-known laconic style-

_Strathfieldsaye, January 3, 1842._-F. M. the Duke of Wellington presents his compliments to Mr. Gladstone. He has received Mr.

Gladstone's letter of the 1st inst. He begs leave to decline to interfere in any manner in the matter to which Mr. Gladstone's letter refers.

What the matter was we cannot tell; but we may guess that it was perhaps less tersely propounded. The rest touch military affairs in the colonies, and are now of no concern.

Here we have a last vision of one of the forlorn shadows of ruined power:-

_Chislehurst, le 5 Juillet, 1871._-Monsieur le Ministre, j'ai recu la copie du nouveau Ballot bill que votre excellence a bien voulu m'envoyer et je profite de cette occasion pour vous dire combien je suis touche des marques d'attention que je recois en Angleterre. Je vous prie de recevoir l'a.s.surance de mes sentimens de haute estime.

NAPOLeON.

Notes from and to his ill.u.s.trious adversary in the stirring arena of public life are not without a delicate accent of pathos and sincerity. The first was on some occasion of Mrs. Disraeli's illness,(336) the second on her death:-

_Nov. 20, 1867._-I was incapable yesterday of expressing to you how much I appreciate your considerate sympathy. My wife had always a strong personal regard for you, and being of a vivid and original character, she could comprehend and value your great gifts and qualities. There is a ray of hope under this roof since the last four and twenty hours: round your hearth, I trust, health and happiness will be ever present.-Yours sincerely, B. DISRAELI.

Six years later when Lady Beaconsfield died, Mr. Gladstone wrote (Jan. 19, 1873):-

DEAR MR. DISRAELI,-My reluctance to intrude on the sacredness and freshness of your sorrow may now, I think, properly give way to a yet stronger reluctance to forego adding our small but very sincere tribute of sympathy to those abundant manifestations of it which have been yielded in so many forms. You and I were, as I believe, married in the same year. It has been permitted to both of us to enjoy a priceless boon through a third of a century.

Spared myself the blow which has fallen on you, I can form some conception of what it must have been and must be. I do not presume to offer you the consolation which you will seek from another and higher quarter. I offer only the a.s.surance which all who know you, and all who knew Lady Beaconsfield, and especially those among them who like myself enjoyed for a length of time her marked, though unmerited regard, may perhaps tender without impropriety, the a.s.surance that in this trying hour they feel deeply for you and with you.-Believe me, sincerely yours,

W. E. GLADSTONE.

_Hughenden Manor, Jan. 24, 1873._-DEAR MR. GLADSTONE,-I am much touched by your kind words in my great sorrow. I trust, I earnestly trust, that you may be spared a similar affliction.

Marriage is the greatest earthly happiness, when founded on complete sympathy. That hallowed lot was mine, and for a moiety of my existence; and I know it is yours.-With sincere regard, D.

A last note, with the quavering pen-strokes of old age (Nov. 6, 1888), comes from the hand, soon to grow cold, of one who had led so strange a revolution, and had stood for so much in the movement of things that to Mr. Gladstone were supreme:-

It is a great kindness and compliment your wis.h.i.+ng to see me. I have known and admired you so long. But I cannot write nor talk nor walk, and hope you will take my blessing, which I give from my heart.-Yours most truly, JOHN H. CARD. NEWMAN.

So the perpetual whirl of life revolves, "by nature an unmanageable sight," but-

Not wholly so to him who looks In steadiness; who hath among least things An under-sense of greatest; sees the parts As parts, but with a feeling of the whole.(337)

Such steadiness, such under-sense and feeling of the whole, was Mr.

Gladstone's gift and inspiration, never expending itself in pensive musings upon the vain ambitions, illusions, cheats, regrets of human life-such moods of half-morbid moralising were not in his temperament-but ever stirring him to duty and manful hope, to intrepid self-denial and iron effort.

Chapter IV. Eastern Question Once More. (1876-1877)

The dead have been awakened-shall I sleep?

The world's at war with tyrants-shall I crouch?

The harvest's ripe-and shall I pause to reap?

I slumber not-the thorn is in my couch: Each day a trumpet soundeth in mine ear, Its echo in my heart.

-BRYON.

I

Preserved in the Octagon is a large packet of notes on "Future Retribution," and on them is the docket, "_From this I was called away to write on Bulgaria._" In the spring of 1876 the Turkish volcano had burst into flame. Of the Crimean war the reader has already seen enough and too much.(338) Its successes, in Mr. Gladstone's words, by a vast expenditure of French and English life and treasure, gave to Turkey, for the first time perhaps in her bloodstained history, twenty years of a repose not disturbed either by herself or by any foreign power. As Cobden and Bright had foreseen, as even many European statesmen who approved the war on grounds of their own had foreseen, Turkish engagements were broken, for this solid reason if for no other that Turkey had not in the resources of her barbaric polity the means to keep them.

Fierce revolt against intolerable misrule slowly blazed up in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a rising in Bulgaria, not dangerous in itself, was put down by Turkish troops despatched for the purpose from Constantinople, with deeds described by the British agent who investigated them on the spot, as the most heinous crimes that had stained the history of the century. The consuls of France and Germany at Salonica were murdered by the Turkish mob. Servia and Montenegro were in arms. Moved by these symptoms of a vast conflagration, the three imperial courts of Russia, Austria, and Germany agreed upon an instrument imposing on the Turk certain reforms, to be carried out under European supervision. To this instrument, known as the Berlin memorandum, England, along with France and Italy, was invited to adhere (May 13). The two other Powers a.s.sented, but Mr. Disraeli and his cabinet refused,-a proceeding that, along with more positive acts, was taken by the Turk and other people to a.s.sure the moral support of Great Britain to the Ottoman, and probably to threaten military support against the Russian.

(M176) This rejection of the Berlin memorandum in May marked the first decisive moment in British policy. The withdrawal of England from the concert of Europe, the lurid glare of the atrocities in Bulgaria, and his abiding sense of the responsibility imposed upon us by the Crimean war and all its attendant obligations, were the three main elements in the mighty storm that now agitated Mr. Gladstone's breast. Perhaps his sympathies with the Eastern church had their share. In a fragment of reminiscence twenty years after, he says:-

When, in 1876, the eastern question was forced forward by the disturbances in the Turkish empire, and especially by the cruel outrages in Bulgaria, I shrank naturally but perhaps unduly from recognising the claim they made upon me individually. I hoped that the ministers would recognise the moral obligations to the subject races of the east, which we had in honour contracted as parties to the Crimean war and to the peace of Paris in 1856. I was slow to observe the real leanings of the prime minister, his strong sympathy with the Turk, and his mastery in his own cabinet. I suffered others, Forster in particular, to go far ahead of me. At the close of the session [1876] a debate was raised upon the subject, and I had at length been compelled to perceive that the old idol was still to be wors.h.i.+pped at Constantinople, and that, as the only person surviving in the House of Commons who had been responsible for the Crimean war and the breaking of the bulwark raised by the treaty of Kainardji on behalf of the eastern Christians, I could no longer remain indifferent. Consequently in that debate Mr. Disraeli had to describe my speech as the only one that had exhibited a real hostility to the policy of the government. It was, however, at that time an opposition without hope. I went into the country, and had mentally postponed all further action to the opening of the next session, when I learned from the announcement of a popular meeting to be held in Hyde Park that the question was alive.(339) So I at once wrote and published on the Bulgarian case. From that time forward, till the final consummation in 1879-80, I made the eastern question the main business of my life. I acted under a strong sense of individual duty without a thought of leaders.h.i.+p; nevertheless it made me again leader whether I would or no. The nation n.o.bly responded to the call of justice, and recognised the brotherhood of man. But it was the nation, not the cla.s.ses. When, at the close of the session of 1876, there was the usual dispersion in pursuit of recreation, I thought the occasion was bad. It was good, for the nation did not disperse and the human heart was beating. When the clubs refilled in October, the Turkish cause began again to make head.

Then came a chequered period, and I do not recollect to have received much a.s.sistance from the "front bench." Even Granville had been a little startled at my proceedings, and wished me to leave out the "bag and baggage" from my pamphlet.

Before the end of the session of 1876 Mr. Disraeli quitted the House of Commons and became the Earl of Beaconsfield. Lord Granville informed Mr.

Gladstone, on the authority of a high personage, that Disraeli had said to the Queen he must resign; "that the peerage was then suggested; that at first he said, 'Yes, but accompanied with resignation,' but was told that in the present state of Europe that was impossible." In reporting to Sir Arthur Gordon, then abroad, what was not merely a piece of news but an event, Mr. Gladstone says (Aug. 16):-

Disraeli a.s.sumes his earldom amidst loud acclaims. I had better be mute about him and his influence generally, except as to a full acknowledgment of his genius and his good points of character. His government is supposed now to stand mainly upon its recent foreign policy: the most selfish and least worthy I have ever known.

Whatever was open to any degree of exception in Palmerston, has this year received a tenfold development in Disraeli. Derby's influence, I think, has been for good; but too little of it.

To the Duke of Argyll a couple of days before, he had written:-