The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume I Part 54

For some time I doubted whether to state reasons at all: fearing that it might appear presumptuous; but I resolved to do it as choosing rather to incur that risk, than the hazarding an appearance of reserve and desire to conceal my real sentiments from one who has a right to see into the bottom of my heart.

Yet one trespa.s.s more I must make on your patience. It may perhaps seem that the inducements I have stated are of an unusual character, unsubstantial, romantic, theoretical, and not practical. Unusual, indeed, they are: because (though it is not without diffidence that I bring this sweeping charge--indeed, I should not dare to bring it were it not brought elsewhere) it is a rare thing in this world even where right actions are performed to ground them upon right motives. At least, I am convinced that there are fundamental errors on this subject very prevalent--that they are in general fixed far too low, and that the height of our standard of practice must ever be adapted more or less to that of principle. G.o.d only knows whether this be right. But hence it has been that I have endeavoured, I trust not improperly, to put these motives forward in the simplicity of that form wherein they seem to me to come down from the throne of G.o.d to the hearts of men; and to consider my prospects and obligations, not under all the limitations which a highly artificial state of society might seem to impose upon them, but direct and undiluted; not, in short, as one who has certain pursuits to follow, certain objects of his own to gain, and relations to fulfil, and arrangements to execute--but as a being destined shortly to stand before the judgment seat of G.o.d, and there give the decisive account of his actions at the tribunal whose awards admit of no evasion and of no appeal.

That I _have_ viewed them in this light I dare not a.s.sert; but I have wished and striven to view them so, and to weigh them, and to answer these questions in the same manner as I must answer them on that day when the trumpet of the archangel shall arouse the living and the dead, and when it will be demanded of me in common with all others, how I have kept and how employed that which was committed to my charge. I dare not pretend that I could act even up to the standard here fixed, but I can eye it though distant, with longing hope, and look upwards for the power which I know is all-sufficient, and therefore sufficient to enable even such an one as myself to reach it.

Viewing, then, these considerations in such a light as this, I can come to no other conclusion, at least unaided, than that the work of spreading religion has a claim infinitely transcending all others in dignity, in solemnity, and in usefulness: destined to continue in force until the happy moment come when every human being has been made fully and effectually acquainted with his condition and its remedies--when too, as it seems to me, it will be soon enough--of course, I lay down this rule for myself, provided as I am to the extent of my wants and very far beyond them--to devise other occupations: _now_ it behoves me to discharge the overwhelming obligation which summons me to this.

I have scarcely mentioned my beloved mother in the whole of this letter; for though little has ever pa.s.sed between us on this subject through the medium of language, and nothing whatever, I believe, since I last spoke with you upon it, yet I have long been well aware of the tendency of her desires, long indeed before my own in any degree coincided with them.

I await with deference and interest the communication of your desires upon this subject: earnestly desiring that if I have said anything through pride or self-love, it may be forgiven me at your hands, and by G.o.d through his Son; and that if my statements be false, or exaggerated, or romantic, or impracticable, I may, by His mercy and through your instrumentality or that of others, be brought back to my right mind, and taught to hold the truth of G.o.d in all its sobriety as well as in all its force.--And believe me ever, my beloved and honoured father, your affectionate and dutiful son,

WM. E. GLADSTONE.

_John Gladstone to his Son_

_Leamington, 10 Aug. 1830_.

MY BELOVED WILLIAM,--I have read and given my best consideration to your letter, dated the 4th, which I only received yesterday. I did hope that you would have delayed making up your mind on a subject so important as your future pursuits in life must be to yourself and to us all, until you had completed those studies connected with the attainment of the honours or distinctions of which you were so justly ambitious, and on which your mind seemed so bent when we last communicated respecting them. You know my opinion to be, that the field for actual usefulness to our fellow-creatures, where a disposition to exercise it actively exists, is more circ.u.mscribed and limited in the occupations and duties of a clergyman, whose sphere of action, unless pluralities are admitted (as I am sure they would not be advocated by you) is necessarily in a great degree confined to his parish, than in those professions or pursuits which lead to a more general knowledge, as well as a more general intercourse with mankind, such as the law, taking it as a basis, and introduction to public life, to which I had looked forward for you, considering you, as I do, peculiarly well qualified to be made thus eminently useful to others, with credit and satisfaction to yourself.

There is no doubt but as a clergyman, faithfully and conscientiously discharging the duties of that office to those whose spiritual interests are entrusted to your care, should you eventually be placed in that situation, that you may have both comfort and satisfaction, with few worldly responsibilities, but you will allow me to doubt whether the picture your perhaps too sanguine mind has drawn in your letter before me, would ever be practically realised. Be this as it may, whenever your mind shall be finally made up on this most important subject, I shall trust to its being eventually for your good, whatever that determination may be. In the meantime I am certainly desirous that those studies with which you have been occupied in reading for your degree may be followed up, whether the shorter or longer period may be necessary to prepare you for the results. You are young and have ample time before you. Let nothing be done rashly; be consistent with yourself, and avail yourself of all the advantages placed within your reach. If, when that ordeal is pa.s.sed, you should continue to think as you now do, I shall not oppose your _then_ preparing yourself for the church, but I do hope that your final determination will not until then be taken, and that whatever events may occur in the interval, you will give them such weight and consideration as they may appear to merit.... Your mother is much as usual.--With our united and affectionate love, I ever am your affectionate father,

JOHN GLADSTONE.

CANADA, 1838

_Page 144_

_Jan. 20/38._--To-day there was a meeting on Canada at Sir R. Peel's.

There were present Duke of Wellington, Lords Aberdeen, Ripon, Ellenborough, Stanley, Hardinge, and others.... Peel said he did not object to throwing out the government provided it were done by us on our own principles; but that to throw them out on radical principles would be most unwise. He agreed that less might have been done, but was not willing to take the responsibility of refusing what the government asked. He thought that this rebellion had given a most convenient opportunity for settling the question of the Canadian const.i.tution, which had long been a th.o.r.n.y one and inaccessible; that if we postponed the settlement by giving the a.s.sembly another trial, the revolt would be forgotten, and in colder blood the necessary powers might be refused. He thought that when once you went into a measure of a despotic character, it was well to err, if at all, on the side of sufficiency; Lord Ripon strongly concurred. The duke sat with his hand to his ear, turning from one towards another round the circle as they took up the conversation in succession, and said nothing till directly and pressingly called upon by Peel, a simple but striking example of the self-forgetfulness of a great man.

_Jan. 26/38._--I was myself present at about eight hours [_i.e._ on three occasions] of discussion in Peel's house upon the Canadian question and bill, and there was one meeting held to which I was not summoned. The conservative amendments were all adopted in the thoroughly straightforward view of looking simply at the bill and not at the government and the position of parties. Peel used these emphatic words: 'Depend upon it, our course is the direct one; don't do anything that is wrong for the sake of putting them out; don't avoid anything that is right for the sake of keeping them in.' Every one of these points has now been carried without limitation or exception. For the opposition party this is, in familiar language, a feather in its cap. The whole has been carefully, thoroughly, and effectually done. Nothing since I have been in parliament--not even the defeat of the Church Rate measure last year--has been of a kind to tell so strikingly as regards appearances upon the comparative credit of the two parties.

SIR ROBERT PEEL'S GOVERNMENT

_Page 247_

_In the great mountain of Mr. Gladstone's papers I have come across an unfinished and undated draft of a letter written by him for the Queen in 1880 on Sir Robert Peel's government_:--

Mr. Gladstone with his humble duty reverts to the letter which your Majesty addressed to him a few days back, and in which your Majesty condescended to recollect and to remind him of the day now nearly forty years ago, a day he fears not altogether one of pleasure to your Majesty, when together with others he had the honour to be sworn of your Majesty's privy council. Your Majesty is pleased to p.r.o.nounce upon the government then installed into office a high eulogy: a eulogy which Mr. Gladstone would presume, as far as he may, to echo. He values it, and values the recollection of the men who princ.i.p.ally composed it, because it was, in the first place, a most honourable and high-minded government; because its legislative acts tended greatly, and almost uniformly, to increase the wellbeing of the country, and to strengthen the attachment of the people to the throne and the laws; while it studied in all things to maintain the reverse of an ambitious or disturbing policy.

It was Mr. Gladstone's good fortune to live on terms of intimacy, and even affection, with the greater portion of its princ.i.p.al and more active members until the close of their valued lives; and although he is far from thinking that they, and he himself with them, committed no serious errors, yet it is his conviction that in many of the most important rules of public policy that government surpa.s.sed generally the governments which have succeeded it, whether liberal or conservative. Among them he would mention purity in patronage, financial strictness, loyal adherence to the principle of public economy, jealous regard to the rights of parliament, a single eye to the public interest, strong aversion to extension of territorial responsibilities, and a frank admission of the rights of foreign countries as equal to those of their own.

With these recollections of the political character of Sir R. Peel and his government Mr. Gladstone has in no way altered his feelings of regard and respect for them. In all the points he has mentioned he would desire to tread in their steps, and in many of them, or at least in some, he has no hope of soon seeing them equalled. The observance of such principles is in his conviction the best means of disarming radicalism of whatever is dangerous in its composition, and he would feel more completely at ease as to the future prospects of this country could he feel more sure of their being faithfully observed.

Mr. Gladstone is, and has been, but a learner through his life, and he can claim no special gift of insight into the future: the history of his life may not be flattering to his self-love, but he has great consolation in believing that the great legislative acts of the last half-century, in most of which he has had some share ...

_And here the fragment closes_.

CRISIS ON THE SUGAR DUTIES, 1844

_Page 267_

In 1841 the whig government raised the question of the sugar duties, and proposed to subst.i.tute a protective duty of 12/ per cwt. for the actual or virtual prohibition of foreign sugars which had up to that time subsisted. They were strongly opposed, and decisively beaten. The argument used against them was, I think, twofold. There was the protection plea on behalf of the West Indians whose estates were now worked only by free labour--and there was the great and popular contention that the measure not only admitted sugar the product of slave labour, which we would not allow our own colonies to employ, but that our new supplies would be derived from Brazil, and above all from Cuba and Puerto Rico, where the slave trade was rampant, and was prosecuted on an enormous scale. The government of Sir R. Peel largely modified our system. Its general professions were the abolition of prohibition, and the reduction of protective duties to a moderate rate. In 1844 it was determined to deal with the sugar duties, and to admit sugar at, I think, a rate of 10/ per cwt. beyond the rate for British-grown. But we had to bear in mind the arguments of 1841, and it was determined that the sugars so to be admitted were to be the product of free labour only.

There was some uncertainty from whence they were to come. Java produced sugar largely, under a system involving certain restraints, but as we contended essentially free. The whole argument, however, was difficult and perplexed, and a parliamentary combination was formed against the government. The opposition, with perfect consistency, mustered in full force. The West Indian interest, which, though much reduced in wealth, still subsisted as a parliamentary ent.i.ty, was keenly arrayed on the same side. There were some votes attracted by dislike, perhaps, to the argument on our side, which appeared to be complex and over-refined. A meeting of the party was held in order to confront the crisis. Sir Robert Peel stated his case in a speech which was thought to be haughty and unconciliatory. I do not recollect whether there was hostile discussion, or whether silence and the sulks prevailed. But I remember that when the meeting of the party broke up, Sir Robert Peel said on quitting the room that it was the worst meeting he had ever attended. It left disagreeable antic.i.p.ations as to the division which was in immediate prospect.... The opposition in general had done what they could to strengthen their momentary a.s.sociation with the West Indian conservatives. Their hopes of a majority depended entirely upon conservative votes. Of course, therefore, it was vital to confine the attack to the merits of the question immediately before the House, as an attack upon the policy of the government generally could only strengthen it by awakening the susceptibilities of party and so reclaiming the stray voters to the administration. Lord Howick, entering into the debate as the hours of enhanced interest began, made a speech which attacked the conservative policy at large, and gave the opening for an effective reply. Lord Stanley perceived his opportunity and turned it to account with great force and adroitness. In a strictly retaliatory speech, he wound up conservative sentiment on behalf of ministers, and restored the tone of the House. The clouds of the earlier evening hours dispersed, and the government was victorious. Two speeches, one negatively and the other positively, reversed the prevailing current, and saved the administration. I have never known a parallel case. The whole honour of the fray, in the ministerial sense, redounded to Lord Stanley. I doubt whether in the twenty-six years of his after life he ever struck such a stroke as this.

COLONIAL POLICY

_Page 362_

You have reversed, within the last seventy years, every one of these salutary principles. Your policy has been this; you have retained at home the management of and property in colonial lands. You have magnificent sums figuring in your estimates for the ordinary expenses of their governments, instead of allowing them to bear their own expenses.

Instead of suffering them to judge what are the measures best adapted to secure their peaceful relations with the aboriginal tribes, and endeavouring to secure their good conduct--instead of telling them that they must not look for help from you unless they maintain the principles of justice, you tell them, 'You must not meddle with the relations between yourselves and the natives; that is a matter for parliament'; a minister sitting in Downing Street must determine how the local relations between the inhabitants of the colony and the aboriginal tribes are to be settled, in every point down to the minutest detail.

Nay, even their strictly internal police your soldiery is often called upon to maintain. Then, again, the idea of their electing their own officers is, of course, revolutionary in the extreme--if not invading the royal supremacy, it is something almost as bad, dismembering the empire; and as to making their own laws upon their local affairs without interference or control from us, that is really an innovation so opposed to all ideas of imperial policy, that I think my honourable friend the member for Southwark (Sir William Molesworth) has been the first man in the House bold enough to propose it. Thus, in fact, the principles on which our colonial administration was once conducted have been precisely reversed. Our colonies have come to be looked upon as being, not munic.i.p.alities endowed with internal freedom, but petty states. If you had only kept to the fundamental idea of your forefathers, that these were munic.i.p.al bodies founded within the shadow and cincture of your imperial powers--that it was your business to impose on them such positive restraints as you thought necessary, and having done so, to leave them free in everything else--all those principles, instead of being reversed, would have survived in full vigour--you would have saved millions, I was going to say countless millions, to your exchequer; but you would have done something far more important by planting societies more worthy by far of the source from which they spring; for no man can read the history of the great American Revolution without seeing that a hundred years ago your colonies, such as they then were, with the inst.i.tutions they then possessed, and the political relations in which they then stood to the mother-country, bred and reared men of mental stature and power such as far surpa.s.sed anything that colonial life is now commonly considered to be capable of producing.--_Speech on second reading of the New Zealand Const.i.tution bill, May_ 21, 1852.

FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS OF 1853 AS AFFECTING IRELAND

_Page 465_

_When the report of the Irish Financial Relations Commission of 1894 was named to him, Mr. Gladstone made the following observations:--_

The changes adopted in that year were explained in my budget speech, and will be found in my volume of _Financial Statements_, pp. 53, 60, and 69. They affected the Spirit Duties and the Income-Tax.

1. _The Spirit Duties._--We laid 8d. per gallon upon Irish spirits, imposed at the same time 1s. per gallon in Scotland, and laid it down that the equalisation of the duty in the three countries would require a reduction of the duty of 8s. chargeable in England. Sir Robert Peel had imposed 1s. per gallon on Irish spirits in 1842, but was defeated by the smuggler, and repealed the duty in consequence of the failure. In 1842 the duty was levied by a separate revenue police. I abolished this separate police, and handed the duty to the constabulary force, which raised it, and without difficulty.

2. _The Income-Tax_ was also in that year extended to Ireland. I pointed out that Sir Robert Peel, in imposing the burden on Great Britain, proposed to give a compensation for it by progressive reductions of duty on consumable commodities, and that Ireland had for twelve years enjoyed her full share of the compensation without undergoing any part of the burden; but I also laid it down as a fundamental principle that the peace income-tax was to be temporary, and I computed that it might cease in 1860. This computation was defeated, first by the Crimean war, second by a change of ideas as to expenditure and establishments which I did everything in my power to check, but which began to creep in with, and after, that war. We were enabled to hold it in check during the government of 1859-66. It has since that time, and especially in these last years, broken all bounds. But although the computation of 1853 was defeated, the principle that the income-tax should be temporary was never forgotten, at least by me, and in the year 1874 I redeemed my pledge by proposing, as mentioned, to repeal it--a course which would have saved the country a sum which it is difficult to reckon, but very large. This fact which was in the public mind in 1853 when the income-tax was temporary, is the key to the whole position. From this point of view we must combine it with the remission of the consolidated annuities. I have not now the means of making the calculation exactly, but it will be found that a descending income-tax on Ireland for seven years at 7d., then 6d., then 5d., is largely, though not completely, balanced by that remission. It will thus be seen that the finance of 1853 is not responsible either for a permanent peace income-tax upon Ireland, or for the present equalisation of the spirit duties. At the same time, I do not mean to condemn those measures. I condemn utterly the extravagance of the civil expenditure in Ireland, which, if Ireland has been unjustly taxed, cannot for a moment be pleaded as a compensation. I reserve my judgment whether political equality can be made compatible with privilege in point of taxation. I admit, for my own part, that in 1853 I never went back to the union whence the difficulty springs, but only to the union of the exchequers in or about 1817. It is impossible to resist the authority which has now affirmed that we owe a pecuniary, as well as a political debt to Ireland.

FINANCIAL PROPOSAL OF 1853

_Page 473_

_Mr. Gladstone to Sir Stafford Northcote_

_Aug._ 6, 1862.--I have three main observations to make upon the conversion scheme, two of which are confessions, and one a maxim for an opposition to remember.

1. In the then doubtful state of foreign politics, had I been capable of fully appreciating it at the time, I ought not to have made the proposal.

2. Such a proposal when made by a government ought either to be resisted outright, or allowed to pa.s.s, I do not say without protest, but without delay. For _that_ can do nothing but mischief to a proposal depending on public impression. The same course should be taken as is taken in the case of loans.

3. I am sorry to say I made a more serious error, as regards the South Sea Stocks, than the original proposal. In the summer, I think, of 1853, and a good while before harvest the company proposed to me to take Mr.

Goulburn's 3 per cents. to an equal amount in lieu of their own. They were at the time more valuable and I refused; but it would have been wise to accept, not because the event proved it so, but because the state of things at the time was so far doubtful as to have made this kind of insurance prudent.

_For the benefit of the expert, I give Mr. Gladstone's further observations on this highly technical matter:--_

I have other remarks to offer. I write, however, from memory. Three millions of the 8,000,000 were paid in exchequer bills. The difference between 100 and the price of consols at the time may, in argument at least, fairly be considered as public loss. You say it was 90 or 91. We could not, however, if the operation had not taken place, have applied our surplus revenue with advantage to the reduction of debt. The balances would have been richer by 5,000,000, but we had to raise seven millions for the services of the year 1854-5. Now, as I am making myself liable for the loss of half a million of money in repaying the South Sea Company, and thereby starving the balances, I am ent.i.tled to say on the other hand that the real loss is to be measured by the amount of necessity created for replenis.h.i.+ng them, and the charge entailed in effecting it. This I think was done by the exchequer bonds: and beyond all doubt a large saving was effected to the public by raising money upon those bonds, instead of borrowing in consols at 84 or thereabouts, which I think would have been the price for which we should in that year have borrowed--say, at 84. The redemption price, _i.e._ the price at which on the average consols have been in recent times redeemed, can hardly I think be less than 95, and may be higher. There was in 1854 a strong combination in the City to compel a 'loan' by bearing the funds; and when it was defeated by the vote of the House of Commons, a rapid reaction took place, several millions, as I understand, were lost by the 'bear,' and the attempt was not renewed in 1855, when the loan was, I believe, made on fair terms, relatively to the state of the market.