The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume II Part 32

Chapter VIII. Autumn Of 1871. Decline Of Popularity. (1871-1872)

For the present at least the reformation will operate against the reformers. Nothing is more common than for men to wish, and call loudly too, for a reformation, who when it arrives do by no means like the severity of its aspect. Reformation is one of those pieces which must be put at some distance in order to please. Its greatest favourers love it better in the abstract than in the substance.

-BURKE.

I

In July, 1871, Mr. Gladstone paid a Sunday visit to Tennyson among the Surrey hills. They had two interesting days, "with talk ranging everywhere." The poet read the _Holy Grail_, which Mr. Gladstone admired.

They discussed the Goschen parish council plan, and other social reforms; Lacordaire and liberal collectivism; politics and the stormy times ahead.

Mr. Gladstone a.s.sured them that he was a conservative, and feared extreme measures from the opposition. "A very n.o.ble fellow," Tennyson called him, "and perfectly unaffected."(249) Mr. Gladstone, for his part, records in his diary that he found "a characteristic and delightful abode. In Tennyson are singularly united true greatness, genuine simplicity, and some eccentricity. But the latter is from habit and circ.u.mstance, the former is his nature. His wife is excellent, and in her adaptation to him wonderful. His son Hallam is most attractive."

After a laborious and irksome session, "in which, we have sat, I believe, 150 hours after midnight," the House rose (Aug. 21). Mr. Gladstone spent some time at Whitby with his family, and made a speech to his eldest son's const.i.tuents (Sept. 2) on the ballot, and protesting against the spirit of "alarmism." Towards the end of the month he went on to Balmoral. On September 26 he was presented with the freedom of Aberdeen, and made a speech on Irish home rule, of which, as we shall see, he heard a great deal fifteen years later:-

_To Mrs. Gladstone._

_Balmoral, Sept. 28._-The time is rolling on easily at this _quiet_ place.... We breakfast six or eight. The Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse dine most days. To-day I walked with her and her party. She is quick, kind, and well informed. I got her to-day on the subject of the religious movement in the Roman catholic church in Germany. She is imbued with her father's ideas, and, I think, goes beyond them. She quoted Strauss to me, as giving his opinion that the movement would come to nothing. She said the infallibility was the legitimate development of the Roman system. I replied that the Roman system had grown up by a mult.i.tude of scarcely perceptible degrees out of the earliest form of Christianity, and if we adopted this notion of legitimate development, we ran a risk of making Saint Paul responsible for the Vatican council. She talked much about the hospitals, in which she worked so hard while nursing her baby, a very fine one, whom she introduced to me, with two flouris.h.i.+ng elder children. She hates war; and is not easy as to the future.

_Sept. 29._-I have had a twelve-mile stretch to-day, almost all on wild ground, and so solitary! not a living creature except three brace of grouse all the way. I am glad to report that I came in very fresh. ... What a mess the Bishop of Winchester has made of this Glengarry kirk business.

_Sept. 30._-Last night we dined ten at Abergeldie. The Prince of Wales had his usual pleasant manners. He is far lighter in hand than the Duke of Edinburgh. After dinner he invited me to play whist. I said, "For love, sir?" He said, "Well, s.h.i.+llings and half-a-crown on the rubber," to which I submitted. Ponsonby and I against the Prince and Bra.s.seur, a charming old Frenchman, his tutor in the language. The Prince has apparently an _immense_ whist memory, and plays well accordingly. To-day the Queen was to have seen me at six, but sent to postpone it till to-morrow on account of expecting the Princess of Wales, who was to come over and pay her a visit from Abergeldie. I think she is nervous, and shrinks from talk; but I do not mean to say a word that would give her trouble, as there would be no good in it at this moment.

_Oct. 3._-I have seen the Queen again this morning. She conversed longer, near an hour, and was visibly better and stronger, and in good spirits. She told me much about her illness. ... She wished me a pleasant journey.

_Ballater, Oct. 4._-Here am I ensconced in the station-master's box at Ballater, after a 15 or 16 mile walk round through the hills, the regular train being postponed for an hour or more to let the couple from Mar Lodge go off special. They had two carriages laden with luggage, besides their own carriage! I hope to be at Colwyn soon after six. These solitary walks among the hills, I think, refresh and invigorate me more than anything else.

To-day the early part of the day was glorious, and the wind most bracing as it came over the ma.s.s of mountains. I bade farewell reluctantly to Balmoral, for it is as homelike as any place away from home can be, and wonderfully safe from invasions. I had all the grand mountains in view at once, with their snow caps; the lowest, about the same as Snowdon. I came by the falls of the Muich, which, after the rain, were very fine. I had an interesting conversation with Princess Louise about the Queen this morning.

_Oct. 4._-Nothing sets me up in mind and body like a mountain solitude, not even, perhaps, the sea. Walked from Balmoral to Ballater, 15 miles, in 4 hrs. 5 m. 6.-Walked 20 miles in 5 hrs.

and 45 minutes. 7.-Walked 15 miles.-(_Diary._)

_To Mrs. Gladstone._

_Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, Oct. 8, 1871._-I got here last night before seven, and had the most affectionate welcome from the dean that you can conceive; a dinner-party followed, and now I have for the _first time_ since the government was formed had a holiday of two whole days. Last night the lord advocate tried to talk to me about the Scotch endowed schools and I refused to have anything to say to him. I have no time to write about my walk, beyond this, that it was quite successful. The dean [Ramsay] preached at St.

John's this morning about Ruth. The sermon was beautiful, and the voice and manner with his venerable age made it very striking. He put an astonis.h.i.+ng energy into it, and his clear melodious tones rang through and through as they did when I first heard him 43 years ago. It was altogether most touching, and he told me afterwards that he had wished to preach to me once more before he died. But I rejoice to say his life seems a very good one. I would not have missed the occasion for much.

_London, Oct. 27._-Went to Sir R. Murchison's funeral, the last of those who had known me or of me from infancy. And so a step towards the end is made visible. It was a great funeral. 28.-My expedition to Greenwich, or rather, Blackheath. I spoke 1 h. 50 m.; too long, yet really not long enough for a full development of my points. Physically rather an excess of effort. All went well, thank G.o.d!-(_Diary._)

(M124) This speech at Blackheath was a fine ill.u.s.tration both of Mr.

Gladstone's extraordinary power, and of the sure respect of a British audience for manful handling and firm dealing in a minister, if only the appeal be high enough. It was one of the marked scenes of his life. In the cold mist of the October afternoon he stood bareheaded, pale, resolute, before a surging audience of many thousands, few of them enthusiastically his friends, a considerable ma.s.s of them dockyard workmen, furious at discharge or neglect by an economising government. He was received with loud and angry murmurs ominous of storm, but curiosity, interest, and a sense that even a prime minister should have fair play prevailed. His rich tones and clear articulation-and Mr. Gladstone had studied all the arts for husbanding vocal resources-carried his words beyond the five or six thousand persons that are commonly understood to be the limit of possible hearers in the open air. After half an hour of struggle he conquered a hold upon them that became more intense as he went on-touching topic after topic, defending all that had been done for the reform and efficiency of the army, denouncing extreme opinions on the Education Act, vindicating the ballot bill, laughing at various prescriptions of social quackery-until at the close of a speech nearly two hours long, he retired amid sustained hurricanes of earnest applause. Well might he speak of rather an excess of physical effort, to say nothing of effort of mind.

On his return to Hawarden he had a visit from Mr. Bright, whom he earnestly hoped to bring back into the cabinet.(250)

_Nov. 13._-Hawarden. Two long conversations with Mr. Bright, who arrived at one. 14.-Some five hours in conversation with Mr.

Bright; also I opened my proposal to him, which he took kindly though cautiously. My conversation with him yesterday evening kept me awake till four. A most rare event; but my brain a.s.sumes in the evening a feminine susceptibility, and resents any unusual strain, though, strange to say, it will stand a debate in the H. of C.

15.-Forenoon with Bright, who departed, having charmed everybody by his gentleness. Began the cutting of a large beech. #/

_To Lord Granville._

_Nov. 15, 1871._-Bright has been here for forty-eight hours, of which we pa.s.sed I think more than a fourth in conversation on public affairs. Everything in and everything out of the cabinet I told him as far as my memory would serve, and I think we pretty well boxed the political compa.s.s. On the whole I remained convinced of two things: first, that his heart is still altogether with us; secondly, that his health, though requiring great care, is really equal to the moderate demands we should make upon him.

The truth is I was quite as much knocked up with our conversation as he was, but then I had the more active share. In the whole range of subjects that we travelled over, we came to no point of sharp difference, and I feel confident that he could work with the cabinet as harmoniously and effectually as before. In saying this I should add that I told him, with respect to economy, that I thought we should now set our faces in that direction. I told him that we should not expect of him ordinary night attendance in the House of Commons, and that his attendance in the cabinet was the main object of our desire. He was pleased and touched with our desire, and he has not rejected the proposal. He has intimated doubts and apprehensions, but he reserves it for consideration, and seemed decidedly pleased to learn that the question _might_ be held open until the meeting of parliament in case of need.... I did not think it fair to put to him the request by which I endeavoured to hold him in December 1868, viz.: that he would not determine in the matter without seeing me again; but I begged and pressed that he should in no case refuse without taking the opinion of a first-rate London physician, as these are the people whose wide experience best enables them to judge in such cases.

Altogether my experience of him was extremely pleasant, and he was popular beyond measure in the house, where the guests were one or two ladies and four gentlemen, Sir G. Prevost, a high church (but most excellent) archdeacon, John Murray, the tory publisher, and Hayward-whom to describe it needs not. One and all were charmed with Bright. In his character the mellowing process has continued to advance, and whatever he may have been thirty years ago, he is now a gentle and tender being. Yesterday he had five hours of conversation with me and much with others, also an hour and a half walk in the rain, which seemed to do him no harm whatever. I will add but one word. He was deeply impressed with the royalty question.... Details I will report to the cabinet.

Mr. Bright did not yet feel able to return, and an important year, the third of the administration, drew to its close.

II

Two stubborn and noisy scuffles arose in the autumn of 1871, in consequence of a couple of appointments to which Mr. Gladstone as prime minister was a party. One was judicial, the other was ecclesiastical.

(M125) Parliament, authorising the appointment of four paid members of the judicial committee of the privy council, had restricted the post to persons who held at the date of their appointment, or had previously held, judicial office in this country or in India.(251) Difficulty arose in finding a fourth member of the new court from the English bench. The appointment being a new one, fell to the prime minister, but he was naturally guided by the chancellor. The office was first offered by Mr.

Gladstone to Lord Penzance, who declined to move. Application was then made to Willes and to Bramwell. They also declined, on the ground that no provision was made for their clerks. Willes could not abandon one who had been "his officer, he might say friend, for thirty years." Bramwell spoke of the pecuniary sacrifice that the post would involve, "for I cannot let my clerks, who between them have been with me near half a century, suffer by the change." The chancellor mentioned to Mr. Gladstone a rumour that there was 'an actual strike among the judges' in the matter. n.o.body who knew Bramwell would impute unreasonable or low-minded motives to him, and from their own point of view the judges had a sort of case. It was ascertained by the chancellor that Blackburn and Martin had said expressly that they should decline. Mr. Gladstone felt, as he told Lord Hatherley, that "it was not right to hawk the appointment about," and he offered it to Sir Robert Collier, then attorney-general. Collier's claim to the bench, and even to the heads.h.i.+p of a court, was undisputed; his judicial capacity was never at any time impugned; he acquired no additional emolument. In accepting Mr. Gladstone's offer (Oct. 1871) he reminded him: "You are aware that in order to qualify me it will be necessary first to make me a common law judge." Three days later, the chancellor told Mr.

Gladstone, "It would hardly do to place the attorney-general on the common law bench and then promote him." Still under the circ.u.mstances he thought it would be best to follow the offer up, and Collier was accordingly made a judge in the common pleas, sat for a few days, and then went on to the judicial committee. The proceeding was not taken without cabinet authority, for Lord Granville writes to Mr. Gladstone: "Nov. 12, '71: The cabinet completely a.s.sented to the arrangement. Sufficient attention was perhaps not given to the technical point. For technical it only is.... I think you said at the cabinet that Collier wished to have three months'

tenure of the judges.h.i.+p, and that we agreed with you that this would have been only a sham."

c.o.c.kburn, the chief justice of the Queen's bench, opened fire on Mr.

Gladstone (Nov. 10) in a long letter of rather over-heroic eloquence, protesting that a colourable appointment to a judges.h.i.+p for the purpose of getting round the law seriously compromised the dignity of the judicial office, and denouncing the grievous impropriety of the proceeding as a mere subterfuge and evasion of the statute. Mr. Gladstone could be extremely summary when he chose, and he replied in three or four lines, informing the chief justice that as the transaction was a joint one, and as "the completed part of it to which you have taken objection, was the official act of the lord chancellor," he had transmitted the letter for his consideration. That was all he said. The chancellor for his part contented himself with half a dozen sentences, that his appointment of Collier to the puisne judges.h.i.+p had been made with a full knowledge of Mr.

Gladstone's intention to recommend him for the judicial committee; that he thus "acted advisedly and with the conviction that the arrangement was justified as regards both its fitness and its legality"; and that he took upon himself the responsibility of thus concurring with Mr. Gladstone, and was prepared to vindicate the course pursued. This curt treatment of his Junius-like composition mortified c.o.c.kburn's literary vanity, and no vanity is so easily stung as that of the amateur.

(M126) Collier, when the storm was brewing, at once wrote to Mr. Gladstone (Nov. 13) proposing to retain his judges.h.i.+p to the end of the term, then to resign it, and act gratuitously in the privy council. He begged that it might not be supposed he offered to do this merely as matter of form.

"Though I consider the objection to my appointment wholly baseless, still it is not pleasant to me to hold a salaried office, my right to which is questioned." "I have received your letter," Mr. Gladstone replied (Nov..

14), "which contains the offer that would only be made by a high-spirited man, impatient of suspicion or reproval, and determined to place himself beyond it.... I have not a grain of inclination to recede from the course marked out, and if you had proposed to abandon the appointment, I should have remonstrated."

What Mr. Gladstone called "a parliamentary peppering" followed in due course. It was contended that the statute in spirit as in letter exacted judicial experience, and that formal pa.s.sing through a court was a breach of faith with parliament. As usual, lawyers of equal eminence were found to contend with equal confidence that a fraud had been put upon the law, and that no fraud had been put upon it; that the law required judicial status not experience, and on the other hand that what it required was experience not status. Lord Hatherley and Roundell Palmer were all the virtues, whether public or private, personified; they were at the top of the legal ladder; and they agreed in Palmer's deliberate judgment that-after other judges with special fitness had declined the terms offered by parliament-in nominating the best man at the bar who was willing to take a vacant puisne judges.h.i.+p upon the understanding that he should be at once transferred to the judicial committee, the government were innocent of any offence against either the spirit or substance of the law.(252)

Yet the escape was narrow. The government only missed censure in the Lords by a majority of one. In the Commons the evening was anxious. "You will see," says Mr. Bruce (Feb. 20, 1872), "that we got but a small majority last night. The fact is that our victory in the Lords made men slack about coming to town, and Glyn got very nervous in the course of the evening.

However, Palmer's and Gladstone's speeches, both of which were excellent, improved the feeling, and many who had announced their intention to go away without voting, remained to support us." At one moment it even looked as if the Speaker might have to give a casting vote, and he had framed it on these lines: "I have concluded that the House while it looks upon the course taken by government as impolitic and injudicious, is not prepared at the present juncture to visit their conduct with direct parliamentary censure."(253) In the end, ministers had a majority of twenty-seven, and reached their homes at three in the morning with reasonably light hearts.

III

(M127) The ecclesiastical case of complaint against Mr. Gladstone was of a similar sort. By an act of parliament pa.s.sed in 1871 the Queen was ent.i.tled to present to the rectory of Ewelme, but only a person who was a member of convocation of the university of Oxford. This limitation was inserted by way of compensation to the university for the severance of the advowson of the rectory from a certain chair of divinity. The living fell vacant, and the prime minister offered it (June 15) to Jelf of Christ Church, a tory and an evangelical. By Jelf it was declined. Among other names on the list for preferment was that of Mr. Harvey, a learned man who had published an edition of Irenaeus, a work on the history and theology of the three creeds, articles on judaism, jansenism, and jesuitism, and other productions of merit. As might perhaps have been surmised from the nature of his favourite pursuits, he was not a liberal in politics, and he had what was for the purposes of this preferment the further misfortune of being a Cambridge man. To him Mr. Gladstone now offered Ewelme, having been advised that by the process of formal incorporation in the Oxford convocation the requirement of the statute would be satisfied. Mr. Harvey accepted. He was told that it was necessary that he should become a member of convocation before he could be appointed. A little later (Aug. 1) he confessed to the prime minister his misgivings lest he should be considered as an "interloper in succeeding to the piece of preferment that parliament had appropriated to bona-fide members of the university of Oxford." These scruples were set aside, he was incorporated as a member of Oriel in due form, and after forty-two days of residence was admitted to members.h.i.+p of convocation, but whether to such plenary members.h.i.+p as the Ewelme statute was taken to require, became matter of dispute. All went forward, and the excellent man was presented and inst.i.tuted to his rectory in regular course. There was no secret about operations at Oxford; the Oriel men were aware of his motive in seeking incorporation, and the vice-chancellor and everybody else concerned knew all about it. Mr.

Gladstone, when squalls began to blow, wrote to Mr. Harvey (Feb. 26, '72) that he was advised that the presentation was perfectly valid.

The attack in parliament was, as such attacks almost always are, much overdone. Mr. Gladstone, it appeared, was far worse than Oliver Cromwell and the parliament of the great rebellion; for though those bad men forced three professors upon Oxford between 1648 and 1660, still they took care that the intruders should all be men trained at Oxford and graduates of Oxford. Who could be sure that the prime minister would not next appoint an ultramontane divine from Bologna, or a Greek from Corfu? Such extravagances did as little harm as the false stories about Mr. Harvey being jobbed into the living because he had been at Eton with Mr.

Gladstone and was his political supporter. As it happened he was a conservative, and Mr. Gladstone knew nothing of him except that a number of most competent persons had praised his learning. In spite of all this, however, and of the technical validity of the appointment, we may wish that the rector's doubts had not been overruled. A worthy member regaled the House by a story of a gentleman staying in the mansion of a friend; one morning he heard great noise and confusion in the yard; looking out he saw a kitchen-maid being put on a horse, and so carried round and round the yard. When he went downstairs he asked what was the matter, and the groom said, "Oh, sir, 'tis only that we're going to take the animal to the fair to sell, and we want to say he has carried a lady." The apologue was not delicate, but it conveyed a common impression. "Gladstone spoke," says Mr. Bruce (March 9, 1872), "with great vigour and eloquence on the Ewelme case; but I think that, with the best possible intentions, he had placed himself in a wrong position."