The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume II Part 14

Chapter XI. Popular Estimates. (1868)

Die Mitlebenden werden an vorzuglichen Menschen gar leicht irre; das Besondere der Person stort sie, das laufende bewegliche Leben verruckt ihre Standpunkte und hindert das Kennen und Anerkennen eines solchen Mannes.-GOETHE.

The contemporaries of superior men easily go wrong about them.

Peculiarity discomposes them; the swift current of life disturbs their points of view, and prevents them from understanding and appreciating such men.

I

It must obviously be interesting, as we approach a signal crisis in his advance, to know the kind of impression, right or wrong, made by a great man upon those who came nearest to him. Friends like Aberdeen and Graham had many years earlier foreseen the high destinies of their colleague.

Aberdeen told Bishop Wilberforce in 1855 that Gladstone had some great qualifications but some serious defects. "The chief, that when he has convinced himself, perhaps by abstract reasoning of some view, he thinks that every one else ought at once to see it as he does, and can make no allowance for difference of opinion."(120) About the same time Graham said of him that he was "in the highest sense of the word _Liberal_; of the greatest power; very much the first man in the House of Commons; detested by the aristocracy for his succession duty, the most truly conservative measure pa.s.sed in my recollection.... He must rise to the head in such a government as ours, even in spite of all the hatred of him." Three years later Aberdeen still thought him too obstinate and, if such a thing be possible, too honest. He does not enough think of what other men think.

Does not enough look out of the window. "Whom will he lead?" asked the bishop.(121) "Oh! it is impossible to say! Time must show, and new combinations." By 1863 Cardwell confidently antic.i.p.ated that Mr. Gladstone must become prime minister, and Bishop Wilberforce finds all coming to the conclusion that he must be the next real chief.(122)

(M49) On the other side Lord Shaftesbury, to whom things ecclesiastical were as cardinal as they were to Mr. Gladstone, ruefully reflected in 1864 that people must make ready for great and irrevocable changes. Palmerston was simply the peg driven through the island of Delos: unloose the peg, and all would soon be adrift. "His successor, Gladstone, will bring with him the Manchester school for colleagues and supporters, a hot tractarian for chancellor, and the Bishop of Oxford for ecclesiastical adviser. He will succ.u.mb to every pressure, except the pressure of a const.i.tutional and conservative policy." "He is a dangerous man," was one of Lord Palmerston's latest utterances, "keep him in Oxford and he is partially muzzled; but send him elsewhere and he will run wild."(123) "The long and short of our present position is," said Shaftesbury, "that the time has arrived (_novus sclorum nascitur ordo_) for the triumph of the Manchester school, of which Gladstone is the disciple and the organ. And for the nonce they have a great advantage; for, though the majority of the country is against them, the country has no leaders in or out of parliament; whereas they are all well provided and are equally compact in purpose and action."(124) Somewhat earlier cool observers "out of hearing of the modulation of his voice or the torrent of his declamation" regarded him "in spite of his eloquence unsurpa.s.sed in our day, perhaps in our century, in spite of his abilities and experience, as one most dangerous to that side to which he belongs. Like the elephant given by some eastern prince to the man he intends to ruin, he is an inmate too costly for any party to afford to keep long."(125)

"One great weight that Gladstone has to carry in the political race,"

wrote his friend Frederick Rogers (Dec. 13, 1868), "is a _character_ for want of judgment, and every addition to that is an impediment." And indeed it is true in politics that it often takes more time to get rid of a spurious character, than to acquire the real one. According to a letter from Lord Granville to Mr. Gladstone (Feb. 11, 1867):-

Lowe described as perfectly unjust and unfounded the criticisms which had been made of your leaders.h.i.+p. You had always been courteous and conciliatory with the whole House and with individual members, including himself. He had seen Palmerston do and say more offensive things every week, than you have during the whole session.

Still people went on saying that he had yet to gain the same hold over his party in parliament that he had over the party in the nation; he had studied every branch of government except the House of Commons; he confounded the functions of leader with those of dictator; he took counsel with one or two individuals instead of conferring with the party; he proclaimed as edicts what he ought to have submitted as proposals; he lacked "the little civilities and hypocrisies" of political society. Such was the common cant of the moment. He had at least one friend who dealt faithfully with him:-

_T. D. Acland to Mr. Gladstone._

_Jan. 24, 1868._-Now I am going to take a great liberty with you.

I can hardly help myself. I have heard a lot of grumbling lately about you, and have several times asked myself whether it would be _tanti_ to tease you by repeating it. Well, what is pressed on me is, that at the present time when every one is full of anxiety as to the future, and when your warmest supporters are longing for cohesion, there is an impression that you are absorbed in questions about Homer and Greek words, about _Ecce h.o.m.o_, that you are not reading the newspapers, or feeling the pulse of followers.

One man personally complained that when you sought his opinion, you spent the whole interview in impressing your own view on him, and hardly heard anything he might have to say. It is with a painful feeling and (were it not for your generous and truly modest nature it would be) with some anxiety as to how you would take it that I consented to be the funnel of all this grumbling.

As far as I can make out, the feeling resolves itself into two main points: 1. Whatever your own tastes may be for literature, and however strengthening and refres.h.i.+ng to your own mind and heart it may be to dig into the old springs, still the people don't understand it; they consider you their own, as a husband claims a wife's devotion; and it gives a bad impression if you are supposed to be interested, except for an occasional slight recreation, about aught but the nation's welfare at this critical time, and that it riles them to see the walls placarded with your name and _Ecce h.o.m.o_.... 2. (_a_) The other point is (pray forgive me if I go too far, I am simply a funnel) a feeling that your entourage is too confined, and too much of second-rate men; that the strong men and the _rising_ men are not gathered round you and known to be so; (_b_) and besides that there is so little easy contact with the small fry, as when Palmerston sat in the tea-room, and men were gratified by getting private speech with their leader. But this is a small matter compared with (_a_).

_Mr. Gladstone to T. D. Acland._

_Hawarden, Jan. 30, '68._-Be a.s.sured I cannot feel otherwise than grateful to you for undertaking what in the main must always be a thankless office. It is new to me to have critics such as those whom you represent under the first head, and who complain that I do not attend to my business, while the complaint is ill.u.s.trated by an instance in which, professing to seek a man's opinion, I poured forth instead the matter with which I was overflowing. Nor do I well know how to deal with those who take out of my hands the direction of my own conduct on such a question as the question whether I ought to have undertaken a mission to Sheffield to meet Roebuck on his own ground. I am afraid I can offer them little satisfaction. I have been for near thirty-six years at public business, and I must myself be the judge how best to husband what little energy of brain, and time for using it, may remain to me.

If I am told I should go to Sheffield instead of writing on _Ecce h.o.m.o_, I answer that it was my Sunday's work, and change of work is the chief refreshment to my mind. It is true that literature is very attractive and indeed seductive to me, but I do not _knowingly_ allow it to cause neglect of public business.

Undoubtedly it may be said that the vacation should be given to reading up and preparing materials for the session. And of my nine last vacations _this one only_ has in part been given to any literary work, if I except the preparation of an address for Edinburgh in 1865. But I am sincerely, though it may be erroneously, impressed with the belief that the quant.i.ty of my public work cannot be increased without its quality being yet further deteriorated. Perhaps my critics have not been troubled as I have with this plague of quant.i.ty, and are not as deeply impressed as I am with the belief that grinding down the mental powers by an infinity of detail, is what now princ.i.p.ally dwarfs our public men, to the immense detriment of the country. This conviction I cannot yield; nor can I say more than that, with regard to the personal matters which you name, I will do the best I can. But what I have always supposed and understood is that my business in endeavouring to follow other and better men, is to be thoroughly open to all members of parliament who seek me, while my seeking them must of necessity be limited.... We have before us so much business that I fear a _jumble_. Reform, Education, and Ireland each in many branches will compete; any of these alone would be enough. The last is in my mind the imperious and overpowering subject.... The aspect of this letter is, I think, rather combative. It would have been much less so but that I trust entirely to your indulgence.

In a second letter, after mentioning again some of these complaints, Acland says: "On the other hand I know you are held by some of the best men (that dear, n.o.ble George Grey I am thinking of) to have the great quality of leaders.h.i.+p: such clear apprehension of the points in council, and such faithful exactness in conveying the result agreed on, truly a great power for one who has such a _copia verborum_, with its temptations." He still insists that a leader should drop into the tea-room and have afternoon chats with his adherents; and earnestly wishes him to belong to the Athenaeum club, "a great centre of intellect and criticism,"

where he would be sure to meet colleagues and the princ.i.p.al men in the public service.

(M50) All this was good advice enough, and most loyally intended. But it was work of supererogation. The House of Commons, like all a.s.semblies, is even less affected by immediate displays than by the standing impression of power. Mr. Gladstone might be playful, courteous, reserved, gracious, silent, but the House always knew that he had a sledge-hammer behind his back, ready for work on every anvil in that resounding forge. His sheer intellectual strength, his experience and power in affairs, the tremendous hold that he had now gained upon the general public out of doors, made the artful genialities of the tea-room pure superfluity. Of the secret of the rapidity with which his star was rising, and of the popular expectations thereby signified, an admirable contemporary account was traced by an excellent observer,(126) and it would be idle to transcribe the pith of it in words other than his own:-

Mr. Gladstone's policy is coming to be used as the concrete expression of a whole system of thought, to mean something for itself, and something widely different from either the policy pursued by whigs, or the policy attributed to Lord Palmerston.

This is the more remarkable because Mr. Gladstone has done less to lay down any systematised course of action than almost any man of his political standing, has a cautiousness of speech which frequently puzzles his audience even while they are cheering his oratory, and perceives alternatives with a clearness which often leaves on his own advice an impression of indecision.... Those who are applauding the chancellor of the exchequer, in season and out of season, seem, however they may put their aspirations, to expect, should he lead the House of Commons, two very important changes. They think that he will realise two longings of which they are deeply conscious, even while they express their hopelessness of speedy realisation. They believe, with certain misgivings, that he can offer them a new and more satisfactory system of foreign policy; and, with no misgivings, that he will break up the torpor which has fallen upon internal affairs. Mr.

Gladstone, say his admirers, may be too much afraid of war, too zealous for economy, too certain of the status of England as a fact altogether independent of her action. But he is sure to abandon those traditional ideas to which we have adhered so long: the notion that we are a continental people, bound to maintain the continental system, interested in petty matters of boundary, concerned to dictate to Germany whether she shall be united or not, to the Christians of Servia whether they shall rebel against the Turk or obey him, to everybody whether they shall or shall not develop themselves as they can. He is sure to initiate that temporary policy of abstention which is needed to make a breach in the great chain of English traditions, and enable the nation to act as its interests or duties or dignity may require, without reference to the mode in which it has acted heretofore. Mr.

Gladstone, for example, certainly would not support the Turk as if Turkish sway were a moral law, would not trouble himself to interfere with the project for cutting an Eider Ca.n.a.l, would not from very haughtiness of temperament protest in the face of Europe unless he intended his protests to be followed by some form of action.... That impression may be true or it may be false, but it exists; it is justified in part by Mr. Gladstone's recent speeches, and it indicates a very noteworthy change in the disposition of the public mind: a weariness of the line of action called "a spirited foreign policy." ... The expectation as to internal affairs is far more definite and more strong.... All his speeches point to the inauguration of a new activity in all internal affairs, to a steady determination to improve, if possible, both the const.i.tution and the condition of the millions who have to live under it. Most ministers have that idea in their heads, but Mr. Gladstone has more than the idea, he has plans, and the courage to propose and maintain them. He is not afraid of the suffrage, as he indicated in his celebrated speech; he is not alarmed at risking the treasury as his reductions have proved; does not hesitate to apply the full power of the state to ameliorate social anomalies, as he showed by creating state banks, state insurance offices, and state annuity funds for the very poor. He of all men alive could most easily reduce our anarchical ecclesiastical system into something like order; he, perhaps, alone among statesmen would have the art and the energy to try as a deliberate plan to effect the final conciliation of Ireland....(127)

(M51) A letter from Francis Newman to Mr. Gladstone is a good ill.u.s.tration of the almost pa.s.sionate going out of men's hearts to him in those days:-

Until a practical reason for addressing you arose out of ... I did not dare to intrude on you sentiments which are happily shared by so many thousands of warm and simple hearts; sentiments of warm admiration, deep sympathy, fervent hope, longing expectation of lasting national blessing from your certain elevation to high responsibility. The rude, monstrous, shameful and shameless attacks which you have endured, do but endear you to the nation.

In the moral power which you wield, go on to elevate and purify public life, and we shall all bless you, dear sir, as a regenerator of England. Keep the hearts of the people. _They_ will never envy you and never forsake you.

Church, afterwards the dean of St. Paul's, a man who united in so wonderful a degree the best gifts that come of culture, sound and just sense, and unstained purity of spirit, said of Mr. Gladstone at the moment of accession to power, "There never was a man so genuinely admired for the qualities which deserve admiration-his earnestness, his deep popular sympathies, his unflinching courage; and there never was a man more deeply hated both for his good points and for undeniable defects and failings.

But they love him much less in the House than they do out of doors. A strong vein of sentiment is the spring of what is n.o.blest about his impulses; but it is a perilous quality too."(128) An accomplished woman with many public interests met Mr. Bright in Scotland sometime after this.

"He would not hear a word said against Mr. Gladstone. He said it was just because people were not good enough themselves to understand him that he met such abuse, and then he quoted the stanza in the third canto of _Childe Harold_:-

"He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow; He who surpa.s.ses or subdues mankind, Must look down on the hate of those below."

I asked if he did not think sometimes his temper carried Mr. Gladstone away. He said, 'Think of the difference between a great cart horse, and the highest bred most sensitive horse you can imagine, and then, under las.h.i.+ng of a whip, think of the difference between them.' " After a stay with Mr. Gladstone in a country house, Jowett, the master of Balliol, said of him, "It is the first time that any one of such great simplicity has been in so exalted a station."(129)

In one of his Lancas.h.i.+re speeches, Mr. Gladstone described in interesting language how he stood:-

I have never swerved from what I conceive to be those truly conservative objects and desires with which I entered life. I am, if possible, more attached to the inst.i.tutions of my country than I was when, as a boy, I wandered among the sandhills of Seaforth, or frequented the streets of Liverpool. But experience has brought with it its lessons. I have learnt that there is a wisdom in a policy of trust, and folly in a policy of mistrust. I have not refused to acknowledge and accept the signs of the times. I have observed the effect that has been produced upon the country by what is generally known as liberal legislation. And if we are told, as we are now truly told, that all the feelings of the country are in the best and broadest sense conservative-that is to say, that the people value the country and the laws and inst.i.tutions of the country-honesty compels me to admit that this happy result has been brought about by liberal legislation.

Therefore, I may presume to say that since the year 1841, when Sir Robert Peel thought fit to place me in a position that brought me into direct, immediate, and responsible contact with the commercial interests of the country, from that time onward I have never swerved nor wavered, but have striven to the best of my ability to advance in the work of improving the laws, and to labour earnestly and fearlessly for the advantage of the people.(130)

(M52) Five-and-twenty years later, when his course was almost run, and the achievements of the long laborious day were over, he said:-

I have been a learner all my life, and I am a learner still; but I do wish to learn upon just principles. I have some ideas that may not be thought to furnish good materials for a liberal politician.

I do not like changes for their own sake, I only like a change when it is needful to alter something bad into something good, or something which is good into something better. I have a great reverence for antiquity. I rejoice in the great deeds of our fathers in England and in Scotland. It may be said, however, that this does not go very far towards making a man a liberal. I find, however, that the tories when it suits their purpose have much less reverence for antiquity than I have. They make changes with great rapidity, provided they are suitable to the promotion of tory interests. But the basis of my liberalism is this. It is the lesson which I have been learning ever since I was young. I am a lover of liberty; and that liberty which I value for myself, I value for every human being in proportion to his means and opportunities. That is a basis on which I find it perfectly practicable to work in conjunction with a dislike to unreasoned change and a profound reverence for everything ancient, provided that reverence is deserved. There are those who have been so happy that they have been born with a creed that they can usefully maintain to the last. For my own part, as I have been a learner all my life, a learner I must continue to be.(131)

Chapter XII. Letters. (1859-1868)

There is no saying shocks me so much as that which I hear very often; that a man does not know how to pa.s.s his time. 'Twould have been but ill spoken by Methusalem, in the nine hundred sixty-ninth year of his life; so far it is from us, who have not time enough to attain to the utmost perfection of any part of any science, to have cause to complain that we are forced to be idle for want of work.-COWLEY.

(M53) As I said in our opening pages, Mr. Gladstone's letters are mostly concerned with points of business. They were not with him a medium for conveying the slighter incidents, fugitive moods, fleeting thoughts, of life. Perhaps of these fugitive moods he may have had too few. To me, says Cra.s.sus in Cicero, the man hardly seems to be free, who does not sometimes do nothing.(132) In table-talk he could be as disengaged, as marked in ease and charm, as any one; he was as willing as any one to accept topics as they came, which is the first of all conditions for good conversation.

When alone in his temple of peace it was not his practice to take up his pen in the same sauntering and devious humour. With him the pen was no instrument of diversion. His correspondence has an object, and a letter with an object is not of a piece with the effusions of Madame de Sevigne, Cowper, Scott, FitzGerald, and other men and women whose letters of genial satire and casual play and hints of depth below the surface, people will read as long as they read anything. We have to remember a very intelligible fact mentioned by him to Lord Brougham, who had asked him to undertake some public address (April 25, 1860):-