The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume I Part 9

_December 13, Edinburgh._--Breakfast with Dr. Chalmers. His modesty is so extreme that it is oppressive to those who are in his company, especially his juniors, since it is impossible for them to keep their behaviour in due proportion to his. He was on his own subject, the Poor Laws, very eloquent, earnest, and impressive.

Perhaps he may have been hasty in applying maxims drawn from Scotland to a more advanced stage of society in England. _December 17._--Robertson's _Charles V._, Plato, began book 10. Chalmers.

Singing-lesson and practice. Whist. Walked on the Glasgow road, first milestone to fourth and back in 70 minutes--the returning three miles in about 33. Ground in some places rather muddy and slippery. _December 26._--A feeble day. Three successive callers and conversation with my father occupied the morning. Read a good allowance of Robertson, an historian _who leads his reader on_, I think, more pleasantly than any I know. The style most attractive, but the mind of the writer does not set forth the loftiest principles. _December 29th, Sunday._--Twenty-four years have I lived.... Where is the _continuous_ work which ought to fill up the life of a Christian without intermission?... I have been growing, that is certain; in good or evil? Much fluctuation; often a supposed progress, terminating in finding myself at, or short of, the point which I deemed I had left behind me. Business and political excitement a tremendous trial, not so much alleviating as forcibly dragging down the soul from that temper which is fit to inhale the air of heaven. _Jan. 8, 1834, Edinburgh._--Breakfast with Dr. Chalmers. Attended his lecture 2-3.... More than ever struck with the superabundance of Dr. C.'s gorgeous language, which leads him into repet.i.tions, until the stores of our tongue be exhausted on each particular point. Yet the variety and magnificence of his expositions must fix them very strongly in the minds of his hearers. In ordinary works great attention would be excited by the very infrequent occurrence of the very brilliant expressions and ill.u.s.trations with which he cloys the palate. His gems lie like paving stones. He does indeed seem to be an _admirable_ man.

Of Edinburgh his knowledge soon became intimate. His father and mother took him to that city, as we have seen, in 1814. He spent a spring there in 1828 just before going to Oxford, and he recollected to the end of his life a sermon of Dr. Andrew Thomson's on the Repentance of Judas, 'a great and striking subject.' Some circ.u.mstance or another brought him into relations with Chalmers, that ripened into friends.h.i.+p. 'We used to have walks together,' Mr. Gladstone remembered, 'chiefly out of the town by the Dean Bridge and along the Queensferry road. On one of our walks together, Chalmers took me down to see one of his districts by the water of Leith, and I remember we went into one or more of the cottages. He went in with smiling countenance, greeting and being greeted by the people, and sat down. But he had nothing to say. He was exactly like the Duke of Wellington, who said of himself that he had no small talk. His whole mind was always full of some great subject and he could not deviate from it. He sat smiling among the people, but he had no small talk for them and they had no large talk. So after some time we came away, he pleased to have been with the people, and they proud to have had the Doctor with them.[60] For Chalmers he never lost a warm appreciation, often expressed in admirable words--'one of nature's n.o.bles; his warrior grandeur, his rich and glowing eloquence, his absorbed and absorbing earnestness, above all his singular simplicity and detachment from the world.' Among other memories, 'There was a quaint old shop at the Bowhead which used to interest me very much. It was kept by a bookseller, Mr. Thomas Nelson. I remember being amused by a reply he made to me one day when I went in and asked for Booth's _Reign of Grace_. He half turned his head towards me, and remarked with a peculiar twinkle in his eye, "Ay, man, but ye're a young chiel to be askin' after a book like that."'

RELATIONS WITH CHALMERS

On his way south in January 1834, Mr. Gladstone stays with relatives at Seaforth, 'where even the wind howling upon the window at night was dear and familiar;' and a few days later finds himself once more within the ever congenial walls of Oxford.

_January 19, Sunday._--Read the first lesson in morning chapel. A most masterly sermon of Pusey's preached by Clarke. Lancaster in the afternoon on the Sacrament. Good walk. Wrote [family letters].

Read Whyte. Three of Girdlestone's Sermons. Pickering on adult baptism (some clever and singularly insufficient reasoning).

Episcopal pastoral letter for 1832. Doane's Ordination sermon, 1833, admirable,--Wrote some thoughts. _Jan. 20._--Sismondi's _Italian Republics_. Dined at Merton, and spent all the evening there in interesting conversation. I was Hamilton's guest [afterwards Bishop of Salisbury]. It was delightful, it wrings joy even from the most unfeeling heart, to see religion on the increase as it is here. _Jan. 23rd._--Much of to-day, it fell out, spent in conversation of an interesting kind, with Brandreth and Pearson on eternal punishment; with Williams on baptism; with Churton on faith and religion in the university; with Harrison on prophecy and the papacy.... _Jan. 24._--Began _Essay on Saving Faith_, and wrote thereon. _Jan. 29th._--Dined at Oriel. Conversation with Newman chiefly on church matters.... I excuse some idleness to myself by the fear of doing some real injury to my eyes. [After a flight of three or four days to London, he again returns for a Sunday in Oxford.] _Feb. 9._--Two university sermons and St. Peter's. Round the meadows with Williams. Dined with him, common room. Tea and a pleasant conversation with Harrison. Began _Chrysostom de Sacerdotio_, and Cecil's _Friendly Visit_. [Then he goes back to town for the rest of the session.] _Feb. 12, London._--Finished _Friendly Visit_, beautiful little book. Finished Tennyson's poems.

Wrote a paper on [Greek: ethike pistis] in poetry. Recollections of Robert Hall. _13th._--With Doyle, long and solemn conversation on the doctrine of the Trinity.... Began Wardlaw's _Christian Ethics._ _26th, London._--A busy day, yet of little palpable profit.... Read two important Demerara papers.... Rode. At the levee. House 5 - 11. Wished to speak, but deterred by the extremely ill disposition to hear. Much sickened by their unfairness in the judicial character, more still at my own wretched feebleness and fears.

_April 1._--Dined at Sir R. Peel's. Herries, Sir G. Murray, Chantrey, etc. Sir R. Peel very kind in his manner to us. _May 29._--Mignet's _Introduction_ [to 'the History of the Spanish succession,' one of the masterpieces of historical literature].

_June 4._--Bruce to breakfast. Paper. Mignet and a.n.a.lysis. Burke.

Harvey committee.[61] Ancient music concert. Dined at Lincoln's Inn. House 11-12. Rode. _June 6._--_Paradise Lost._ Began Leibnitz's _Tentamina Theodiceae_. _June 11._--Read Pitt's speeches on the Union in January, 1799, and Grattan on Catholic pet.i.tion in 1805. _15th._--Read some pa.s.sages in the latter part of _Corinne_, which always work strongly on me. _18th._--Coming home to dine, found _Remains of A. H. H._ Yesterday a bridal at a friend's, to-day a sad memorial of death. 'Tis a sad subject, a very sad one to me.

I have not seen his like. The memory of him reposes gently in my inmost heart, a fountain of tears which soften and fertilise it in the midst of pursuits whose tendency is to dry up the sources of emotion by the fever of excitement. I read his memoir. His father had done me much and undeserved kindness there. _20th._--Most of my time went in thinking confusedly over the university question. Very anxious to speak, tortured with nervous antic.i.p.ations; could not get an opportunity. Certainly my inward experience on these occasions ought to make me humble. Herbert's maiden speech very successful. I ought to be thankful for my _miss_; perhaps also because my mind was so much oppressed that I could not, I fear, have unfolded my inward convictions. What a world it is, and how does it require the Divine power and aid to clothe in words the profound and mysterious thoughts on those subjects most connected with the human soul--thoughts which the mind does not command as a mistress, but entertains reverentially as honoured guests ...

content with only a partial comprehension, hoping to render it a progressive one, but how difficult to define in words a conception, many of whose parts are still in a nascent state with no fixed outline or palpable substance. _July 2._-- ... Guizot. Cousin.

Bossuet (_Hist. Univ._). Rode. Committee and House. Curious detail from O'Connell of his interview with Littleton. _10th._--7 A.M.-7 in an open chaise to Coggeshall and back with O'Connell and Sir G.

Sinclair, to examine Skingley [a proceeding arising from the Harvey committee], which was done with little success.

THE UNIVERSITY QUESTION

The conversation of the great Liberator was never wholly forgotten, and it was probably his earliest chance of a glimpse of the Irish point of view at first hand.

_July 11._--No news till the afternoon and then heard on very good authority that the Grey government is definitely broken up, and that attempts at reconstruction have failed. Cousin, Sismondi, Education evidence. Letters. House. _21st._--To-day not for the first time felt a great want of courage to express feelings strongly awakened on hearing a speech of O'Connell. To have so strong an impulse and not obey it seems unnatural; it seems like an inflicted dumbness. _28th._--Spoke 30 to 35 minutes on University bill, with more ease than I had hoped, having been more mindful or less unmindful of Divine aid. Divided in 75 v. 164. [To his father next day.] You will see by your _Post_ that I held forth last night on the Universities bill. The House I am glad to say heard me with the utmost kindness, for they had been listening previously to an Indian discussion in which very few people took any interest, though indeed it was both curious and interesting. But the change of subject was no doubt felt as a relief, and their disposition to listen set me infinitely more at my ease than I should otherwise have been. _29th._--Pleasant house dinner at Carlton. Lincoln got up the party. Sir R. Peel was in good spirits and very agreeable.

It was on this occasion that he wrote to his mother,--'Sir Robert Peel caused me much gratification by the way in which he spoke to me of my speech, and particularly the great warmth of his manner. He told me he cheered me loudly, and I said in return that I had heard his voice under me while speaking, and was much encouraged thereby.' He ends the note already cited (Sept. 6, 1897) on the old House of Commons, which was burned down this year, with what he calls a curious incident concerning Sir Robert Peel, and with a sentence or two upon the government of Lord Grey:--

Cobbett made a motion alike wordy and absurd, praying the king to remove him [Peel] from the privy council as the author of the act for the re-establishment of the gold standard in 1819. The entire House was against him, except his colleague Fielden of Oldham, who made a second teller.[62] After the division I think Lord Althorp at once rose and moved the expunction of the proceedings from the votes or journals; a severe rebuke to the mover. Sir Robert in his speech said, 'I am at a loss, sir, to conceive what can be the cause of the strong hostility to me which the honourable gentleman exhibits. _I_ never conferred on him an obligation.' This stroke was not original. But what struck me at the time as singular was this, that notwithstanding the state of feeling which I have described, Sir R. Peel was greatly excited in dealing with one who at the time was little more than a contemptible antagonist. At that period s.h.i.+rt collars were made with 'gills' which came up upon the cheek; and Peel's gills were so soaked with perspiration that they actually lay down upon his neck-cloth.

In one of these years, I think 1833, a motion was made by some political economist for the abolition of the corn laws. I (an absolute and literal ignoramus) was much struck and staggered with it. But Sir James Graham--who knew more of economic and trade matters, I think, than the rest of the cabinet of 1841 all put together--made a reply in the sense of protection, whether high or low I cannot now say. But I remember perfectly well that this speech of his built me up again for the moment and enabled me (I believe) to vote with the government.

A YEAR OF SPLENDID LEGISLATION

The year 1833 was, as measured by quant.i.ty and in part by quality, a splendid year of legislation. In 1834 the Government and Lord Althorp far beyond all others did themselves high honour by the new Poor Law Act, which rescued the English peasantry from the total loss of their independence. Of the 658 members of Parliament about 480 must have been their general supporters. Much grat.i.tude ought to have been felt for this great administration. But from a variety of causes, at the close of the session 1834 the House of Commons had fallen into a state of cold indifference about it.

He was himself destined one day to feel how soon parliamentary reaction may follow a sweeping popular triumph.

FOOTNOTES:

[54] Sir Henry James's Act (1883).

[55] Thuc. i. 84, -- 7.--'We should remember that man differs little from man, except that he turns out best who is trained in the sharpest school.'

[56] Proposed by Sir R. Inglis and seconded by George Denison, afterwards the militant Archdeacon of Taunton. He was on the committee from 1834 to 1838, and he withdrew from the Club at the end of 1842.

[57] Sadler is now not much more than a name, except to students of the history of social reform in England, known to some by a couple of articles of Macaulay's, written in that great man's least worthy and least agreeable style, and by the fact that Macaulay beat him at Leeds in 1832. But he deserves our honourable recollection on the ground mentioned by Mr. Gladstone, as a man of indefatigable and effective zeal in one of the best of causes.

[58] _Memoir of Althorp_, p. 471.

[59] _Lord George Bentinck_, chapter xviii. p. 324.

[60] Report of an interview with Mr. Gladstone in 1890, in _Scottish Liberal_, May 2, 9, etc., 1890.

[61] Daniel Whittle Harvey was an eloquent member of parliament whom the benchers of his inn refused to call to the bar, on the ground of certain charges against his probity. The House appointed a committee of which Mr. Gladstone was a member to inquire into these charges. O'Connell was chairman, and they acquitted Harvey, without however affecting the decision of the benchers. Mr. Gladstone was the only member of the committee who did not concur in its final judgment. See his article on Daniel O'Connell in the _Nineteenth Century_, Jan. 1889.

[62] See Cobbett's _Life_ by Edward Smith, ii. p. 287. Attwood of Birmingham seems to have voted for the motion.

CHAPTER II

THE NEW CONSERVATISM AND OFFICE

(_1834-1845_)

I consider the Reform bill a final and irrevocable settlement of a great const.i.tutional question.... If by adopting the spirit of the Reform bill it be meant that we are to live in a perpetual vortex of agitation; that public men can only support themselves in public estimation by adopting every popular impression of the day, by promising the instant redress of anything that anybody may call an abuse ... I will not undertake to adopt it. But if the spirit of the Reform bill implies merely a careful review of inst.i.tutions civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper, the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances, then, etc. etc.--PEEL (_Tamworth Address_).

MISCELLANEOUS READING

The autumn of 1834 was spent at Fasque. An observant eye followed political affairs, but hardly a word is said about them in the diary. A stiff battle was kept up against electioneering iniquities at Newark.

Riding, boating, shooting were Mr. Gladstone's pastimes in the day; billiards, singing, backgammon, and a rubber in the evening. Sport was not without compunction which might well, in an age that counts itself humane, be expected to come oftener. 'Had to kill a wounded partridge,'

he records, 'and felt after it as if I had shot the albatross. It might be said: This should be more or less.' And that was true. He was always a great walker. He walked from Montrose, some thirteen or fourteen miles off, in two hours and three quarters, and another time he does six miles in seventy minutes. Nor does he ever walk with an un.o.bserving mind. At Lochnagar: 'Saw Highland women from Strathspey coming down for harvest with heavy loads, some with babies, over these wild rough paths through wind and storm. Ah, with what labour does a large portion of mankind subsist, while we fare sumptuously every day!' This was the ready susceptibility to humane impression in the common circ.u.mstance of life, the eye stirring the emotions of the feeling heart, that nourished in him the soul of true oratory, to say nothing of feeding the roots of statesmans.h.i.+p. His bookmindedness is unabated. He began with a resolution to work at least two hours every morning before breakfast, and the resolution seems to have been manfully kept, without prejudice to systematic reading for a good many hours of the day besides. For the first time, rather strange to say, he read St. Augustine's _Confessions_, and with the delight that might have been expected. He finds in that famous composition 'a good deal of prolix and fanciful, though acute speculation, but the practical parts of the book have a wonderful force, and inimitable sweetness and simplicity.' In other departments of religion, he read Archbishop Leighton's life and Hannah More's, Arnold's Sermons and Milner's _Church History_ and Whewells _Bridgewater Treatise_. Once more he a.n.a.lyses the _Novum Organum_ and the _Advancement of Learning_, and he reads or re-reads Locke's _Essay_.

He studies political science in the two great manuals of the old world and the new, in the _Politics_ of Aristotle and the _Prince_ of Machiavelli. He goes through three or four plays of Schiller; also Manzoni, and Petrarch, and Dante at the patient rate of a couple of cantos a day; then Boccaccio, from whom, after a half-dozen of the days, he willingly parts company, only interested in him as showing a strange state of manners and how religion can be dissociated from conduct. In modern politics he reads the memoirs of Chatham, and Brougham on Colonial Policy, of which he says that 'eccentricity, paradox, fast and loose reasoning and (much more) sentiment, appear to have entered most deeply into the essence of this remarkable man when he wrote his Colonial Policy, as now; with the rarest power of _expressing_ his thoughts, has he any fixed law to guide them?' On Roscoe's _Leo X._ he remarks how interesting and highly agreeable it is in style, and while disclaiming any right to judge its fidelity and research, makes the odd observation that it has in some degree subdued the leaven of its author's unitarianism. He writes occasional verses, including the completion of 'some stanzas of December 1832 on "The Human Heart," but I am not impudent enough to call them by that name.'

In the midst of days well filled by warm home feeling, reasonable pleasure, and vigorous animation of intellect came the summons to action. On November 18, a guest arrived with the astonis.h.i.+ng news that ministers were out. The king had dismissed the Melbourne government, partly because he did not believe that Lord John Russell could take the place of Althorp as leader of the Commons, partly because like many cleverer judges he was sick of them, and partly because, as is perhaps the case with more cabinets than the world supposes, the ministers were sick of one another, and King William knew it. Mr. Gladstone in 1875[63]

described the dismissal of the whigs in 1834 as the indiscreet proceeding of an honest and well-meaning man, which gave the conservatives a momentary tenure of office without power, but provoked a strong reaction in favour of the liberals, and greatly prolonged the predominance which they were on the point of losing through the play of natural causes.[64] Sir Robert Peel was summoned in hot haste from Rome, and after a journey of twelve days over alpine snows, eight nights out of the twelve in a carriage, on December 9 he reached London, saw the king and kissed hands as first lord of the treasury. Less than two years before, he had said, 'I feel that between me and office there is a wider gulf than there is perhaps between it and any other man in the House.'

PROPOSAL OF OFFICE

Mr. Gladstone meanwhile at Fasque worked off some of his natural excitement which he notes as invading even Sundays, by the composition of a political tract. The tract has disappeared down the gulf of time.

December 11 was his father's seventieth birthday, 'his strength and energy wonderful and giving promise of many more.' Within the week the fated message from the new prime minister arrived; the case is apt to quicken the pulse of even the most serene of politicians, and we may be sure that Mr. Gladstone with the keen vigour of five-and-twenty tingling in his veins was something more or less than serene.

_Dec. 17._--Locke, and Russell's _Modern Europe_ in the morning.

Went to meet the post, found a letter from Peel desiring to see me, dated 13th. All haste; ready by 4--no place! Reluctantly deferred till the morning. Wrote to Lincoln, Sir R. Peel, etc.... A game of whist. This is a serious call. I got my father's advice to take anything with work and responsibility. _18th._--Off at 7.40 by mail. I find it a privation to be unable to read in a coach. The mind is distracted through the senses, and rambles. Nowhere is it to me so incapable of continuous thought.... Newcastle at 9 P.M.

_19th._--Same again. At York at 6 A.M. to 7. Ran to peep at the minster and bore away a faint twilight image of its grandeur.

_20th._--Arrived safe, thank G.o.d, and well at the Bull and Mouth 5 A.M. Albany soon. To bed for 2 hours. Went to Peel about eleven.

He writes to his father the same day--

My interview with him was not more than six or eight minutes, but he was _extremely_ kind. He told me his letter to me was among his first; that he was prompted only by his own feelings towards me and some more of that kind; that I might have a seat either at the admiralty or treasury boards, but the latter was that which he intended for me; that I should then be in immediate and confidential communication with himself; and should thereby have more insight into the general concerns of government; that there was a person very anxious for the seat at the treasury, who would go to the admiralty if I did not; but that he meant to go upon the principle of putting every one to the post for which he thought them most fit, so far as he could, and therefore preferred the arrangement he had named. As he distinctly preferred the treasury for me, and a.s.signed such reasons for the preference, it appeared to me that the question was quite settled, and I immediately closed with his offer. I expressed my grat.i.tude for the opinions of me which he had expressed; and said I thought it my duty to mention that the question of my re-election at Newark upon a single vacancy had never been put to my friends, and I asked whether I should consider any part of what he had said as contingent upon the answer I might receive from them. He said no, that he would willingly take that risk. At first, he thought I had suspicions about the Duke of Newcastle, and a.s.sured me that he would be much pleased, of which I said I felt quite persuaded. This inquiry, however, served the double purpose of discharging my own duty, and drawing out something about the dissolution. He said to me, 'You will address your const.i.tuents upon vacating your seat, and acquaint them of your intention to solicit a renewal of their confidence whenever they are called upon to exercise their franchise, _which I tell you confidentially_,' he added, 'will be very soon.' I would have given a hundred pounds to be then and there in a position to express my hopes and fears! But it is, then, you see _certain_ that we are to have it, and that they will not meet the present parliament. Most bitterly do I lament it.

Mr. Gladstone at a later date (July 25, 1835) recorded that he had reason to believe from a conversation with a tory friend who was in many party secrets, that the Duke of Wellington set their candidates in motion all over the country before Sir Robert's return. Active measures, and of course expense, had so generally begun, so much impatience for the dissolution had been excited, and the antic.i.p.ations had been permitted for so long a time to continue and to spread, as to preclude the possibility of delay.[65]

SECOND ELECTION AT NEWARK

The appointment of the young member for Newark was noted at the time as an innovation upon a semi-sacred social usage. Sir Robert Inglis said to him, 'You are about the youngest lord who was ever placed at the treasury on his own account, and not because he was his father's son.'