The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume II Part 36

in circles well worth considering.

IV

It was to be expected that preferments in the church should get a special share of Mr. Gladstone's laborious attention, and so they did. As member for Oxford he had been so much importuned in Lord Palmerston's time, that he wrote in a moment of unusual impatience (1863), "I think these church preferments will be the death of me." Palmerston favoured the evangelicals, and Mr. Gladstone was mortified that Church did not succeed Stanley in the chair of ecclesiastical history at Oxford, and that Wilberforce was not elevated to the throne of York in 1862.

(M142) During his first administration he recommended for no fewer than twelve bishoprics and eight deaneries. He was not unprepared to find, as he put it to Acland, that "saints, theologians, preachers, pastors, scholars, philosophers, gentlemen, men of business,-these are not to be had every day, least of all are they to be commonly found in combination.

But these are the materials which ought to be sought out, and put forward in the church of England, if she is to stand the trials, and do her work."

According to his fas.h.i.+on, he wrote down upon a fragmentary piece of paper what qualifications he ought to look for in a bishop, and this is the list:-

Piety. Learning (sacred). Eloquence. Administrative power.

Faithful allegiance to the Church and to the church of England.

Activity. Tact and courtesy in dealings with men: knowledge of the world. Accomplishments and literature. An equitable spirit.

Faculty of working with his brother bishops. Some legal habit of mind. Circ.u.mspection. Courage. Maturity of age and character.

Corporal vigour. Liberal sentiments on public affairs. A representative character with reference to shades of opinion fairly allowable in the Church.

One of his earliest preferments, that of Dr. Temple to the bishopric of Exeter, created lively excitement. He had been a contributor to _Essays and Reviews_:-

On some of the papers contained in the volume, Mr. Gladstone wrote to the Bishop of Lichfield, I look with a strong aversion. But Dr.

Temple's responsibility prior to the publication was confined to his own essay. The question whether he ought to have disclaimed or denounced any part of the volume afterwards is a difficult one, and if it was a duty, it was a duty in regard to which a generous man might well go wrong. As regards his own essay, I read it at the time of publication, and thought it of little value, but did not perceive that it was mischievous.

In speaking of him to Acland in 1865, Mr. Gladstone had let fall a truly remarkable saying, going deep down to the roots of many things:-

You need not a.s.sure me of Dr. Temple's Christian character. I have read his sermons, and if I had doubted-but I never did-they would have removed the doubt. Indeed I think it a most formidable responsibility, at the least, in these times to doubt any man's character on account of his opinions. The limit of possible variation between character and opinion, ay, between character and belief, is widening, and will widen.

How could the leading mark of progress made in Mr. Gladstone's age be more truly hit, how defined with more pith and pregnancy? How could the illumination of his own vigorous mind in forty years of life and thought be better demonstrated? It would even be no bad thing if those who are furthest removed from Mr. Gladstone's opinions either in religion or politics could lay this far-reaching dictum of his to heart. By many men in all schools his lesson is sorely needed. Shrill was the clamour. Dr.

Pusey, in Mr. Gladstone's own phrase, was "rabid." He justified his anger by reputed facts, which proved to be no facts at all, but the anger did not die with the fable. Even Phillimore was disquieted. "It has cut very deep indeed," he said. Mr. Gladstone, confident of his ground, was not dismayed. "The movement against Dr. Temple is like a peculiar cheer we sometimes hear in the House of Commons, vehement but thin."

No appointment proved so popular and successful as that of Bishop Fraser to Manchester. He was the first person named by Mr. Gladstone for the episcopate without some degree of personal knowledge. A remarkable concurrence of testimony established the great breadth of his sympathies, a trait much in his favour for the particular see of Manchester. Yet strange to say when by and by Stanley died, Mr. Gladstone was a party to trying to remove Fraser from the north to Westminster.

When in 1883 Mr. Gladstone was challenged as confining his recommendations to the high church side, he defended himself to sufficient purpose. He had a list made out of appointments to bishoprics, deaneries, and the most important parishes:-

There have been thirty important appointments. Out of them I have recommended eleven who would probably be called high churchmen (not one of them, so far as I know, unsympathetic towards other portions of the clergy) and nineteen who are not. On further examination it will appear that the high churchmen whom I take to be a decided majority of the clergy as well as a decided minority of my recommendations, have gone as a rule to the places of hard work and little pay. For example, they have got five out of ten _parochial_ recommendations; but, out of sixteen appointments to deaneries and canonries, they have received four, and those, with the exception of Mr. Furse, the worst. I could supply you with the lists in detail.

One admission I must make; the evidently broad churchmen are too large a proportion of the non-high, and the low churchmen rather too small, a disproportion which I should hope to remove, but undoubtedly the low churchman of the present day has a poorer share than half a century ago of the working energy of the church.

All these terms, High, Low, and Broad, are rather repugnant to me, but I use them as a currency of tokens with which it is difficult to dispense.

Turning from this point of view to the recognition of learning and genius, in the course of his first administration we find that he made Church dean of St. Paul's, and Scott of the Greek lexicon dean of Rochester, Liddon and Lightfoot canons of St. Paul's, Kingsley first canon of Chester, and then of Westminster, Vaughan master of the Temple.

Chapter XI. Catholic Country And Protestant Parliament. (1873)

It is all very well to establish united education, but if the persons to be educated decline to unite, your efforts will be thrown away. The question then occurs whether it is best to establish a system, rejected by those concerned, in the hope that it will gradually work its way into acceptance in spite of the intolerance of priests, or to endow the separate denominational bodies on the ground that even such education is better than none, or, finally, to do nothing. The question is one of statesmans.h.i.+p enlightened by a knowledge of facts, and of the sentiments of the population.-LESLIE STEPHEN.

I

Descending from her alien throne, the Irish church had now taken her place among the most prosperous of free communions. To Irish cultivators a definite interest of possession had been indirectly confirmed in the land to which most of its value had been given by their own toil. A third branch of the upas tree of poisonous ascendency described by Mr. Gladstone during the election of 1868, still awaited his axe. The fitness of an absentee parliament to govern Ireland was again to be tested. This time the problem was hardest of all, for it involved direct concession by nations inveterately protestant, to a catholic hierarchy having at its head an ultramontane cardinal of uncompromising opinions and inexorable will.

Everybody knew that the state of university education in Ireland stood in the front rank of unsettled questions. Ever since the establishment of three provincial colleges by Peel's government in 1845, the flame of the controversy had been alight. Even on the very night when Graham introduced the bill creating them, no less staunch a tory and protestant than Sir Robert Inglis had jumped up and denounced "a gigantic scheme of G.o.dless education." The catholics loudly echoed this protestant phrase. The three colleges were speedily condemned by the pope as fatal to faith and morals, and were formally denounced by the synod of Thurles in 1850. The fulminations of the church did not extinguish these modest centres of light and knowledge, but they cast a creeping blight upon them. In 1865 a demand was openly made in parliament for the incorporation by charter of a specifically catholic university. Mr. Gladstone, along with Sir George Grey, then admitted the reality of a grievance, namely, the absence in Ireland of inst.i.tutions of which the catholics of the country were able to avail themselves. Declining, for good reasons or bad, to use opportunities of college education by the side of protestants, and not warmed by the atmosphere and symbols of their own church and faith, catholics contended that they could not be said to enjoy equal advantages with their fellow-citizens of other creeds. They repudiated a system of education repugnant to their religious convictions, and in the persistent efforts to force 'G.o.dless education' on their country, they professed to recognise another phase of persecution for conscience' sake.

In 1866, Lord Russell's government tried its hand with a device known as the supplemental charter. It opened a way to a degree without pa.s.sing through the G.o.dless colleges. This was set aside by an injunction from the courts, and it would not have touched the real matter of complaint, even if the courts had let it stand. Next year the tories burnt their fingers, though Mr. Disraeli told parliament that he saw no scars. For a time, he believed that an honourable and satisfactory settlement was possible, and negotiations went on with the hierarchy. The prelates did not urge endowment, Mr. Disraeli afterwards said, but "they mentioned it." The country shrank back from concurrent endowment, though, as Mr. Disraeli truly said, it was the policy of Pitt, of Grey, of Russell, of Peel, and of Palmerston. Ever since 1794, catholic students had been allowed to graduate at Trinity College, and ever since the disestablishment of the Irish church in 1869, Trinity had asked parliament for power to admit catholics to her fellows.h.i.+ps and emoluments. This, however, did not go to the root, whether we regard it as sound or unsound, of the catholic grievance, which was in fact their lack of an endowed inst.i.tution as distinctively catholic in all respects as Trinity was protestant.

Such was the case with which Mr. Gladstone was called upon to grapple, and a delicate if not even a desperate case it was. The prelates knew what they wished, though they lay in shadow. What they wanted a protestant parliament, with its grip upon the purse, was determined that they should not have. The same conclusion as came to many liberals by prejudice, was reached by the academic school on principle. On principle they held denominational endowment of education to be retrograde and obscurantist.

Then there was the discouraging consideration of which Lord Halifax reminded Mr. Gladstone. "You say with truth," he observed when the situation had developed, "that the liberal party are behaving very ill, and so they are. But liberal majorities when large are apt to run riot. No men could have stronger claims on the allegiance of their party than Lord Grey and Lord Althorp after carrying the Reform bill. Nevertheless, the large majority after the election of 1832-3 was continually putting the government into difficulty." So it befell now, and now as then the difficulty was Irish.

II

(M143) Well knowing the hard work before him, Mr. Gladstone applied himself with his usual indomitable energy to the task. "We go to Oxford to-morrow," he writes to Lord Granville (Nov. 12), "to visit Edward Talbot and his wife; forward to London on Thursday, when I dine with the Templars. My idea of work is that the first solid and heavy bit should be the Irish university-some of this may require to be done in cabinet. When we have got that into shape, I should be for taking to the yet stiffer work of local taxation-most of the cabinet take a personal interest in this. I think it will require immeasurable talking over, which might be done chiefly in an open informal cabinet, before any binding resolutions are taken. But I propose to let Palmer have his say (general) about law reform on Friday." At Oxford he saw Dr. Pusey, "who behaved with all his old kindness, and seemed to have forgotten the Temple(283) business, or rather as if it had never been." On November 20, he records, "Cabinet 2-3/4-6-. Some heads of a measure on Irish university education." No communications were opened with the Irish bishops beforehand, probably from a surmise that they would be bound to ask more than they could obtain.

_Jan. 16, 1873, Hawarden._-Dr. Ingram [the distinguished fellow of Trinity College] came in afternoon, and I was able to spend several hours with him on the university question. 17.-Many hours with Dr. Ingram on the bill and scheme; in truth, almost from breakfast to dinner. Conversation with him in evening on Homer and ancient questions. Read _Old Mortality_. 20.-Drew an abstract of historical facts respecting Dublin university and college. 21.-Off at 11. At 11 C.H.T. at 6 P.M. 25.-Mr. Thring 3-5- on Irish bill.

Attended Lord Lytton's funeral in the Abbey. The church lighted in a frost-fog was sublime. 31.-Cabinet spent many hours in settling Irish university bill. _Feb._ 2.-Paid a mournful visit to the death-bedside of my old friend Milnes Gaskell.... Death has been very busy around me. 8.-Cabinet 2--6-. Pa.s.sed the Irish university bill. 13.-Worked until three upon my materials. Then drove and walked. H. of C. 4-1/4-8-. I spoke three hours in introducing the Irish university bill with much detailed explanation. (_Diary._)

Phillimore has an interesting note or two on his friend at this critical time:-

_Feb. 2._-Gladstone looking well, but much aged. Spoke of anxiety to retire when he could do so with honour, said he had _forced_ himself into the study of the whole question relating to Trinity College, Dublin, and that he was sure that his enemies did not understand the very curious facts relative to the university. It seemed as if he meant to frame the government measure on a historical and antiquarian basis. This will not satisfy the country if the practical result is to place more power in the hands of the papists. 10.-Gladstone looked very worn and anxious.

Spoke about the relief he should experience after Thursday, the weight of the matter which he had to deal with, and the general misapprehension which prevailed; thought the tide was turning in their favour. 11.-Gladstone in high spirits, confident of success on Thursday. 14.-Dined at Gladstone's. Our host in high spirits at his achievement of yesterday.

The leading provisions of the measure, though found by the able and expert draftsman unusually hard to frame, may be very shortly stated, for the question by the way is still in full blast. A new university of Dublin was to rise, a teaching as well as an examining body, governed by a council who were to appoint officers and regulate all matters and things affecting the university. The const.i.tution of this governing council was elaborately devised, and it did not make clerical predominance ultimately impossible.

The affiliation of colleges, not excluding purely denominational inst.i.tutions, was in their hands. There were to be no religious tests for either teachers or taught, and religious profession was to be no bar to honours and emoluments. Money was provided by Trinity College, the consolidated fund, and the church surplus, to the tune of 50,000 a year.

The principle was the old formula of mixed or united education, in which protestants and catholics might side by side partic.i.p.ate.

(M144) What many found intolerably obnoxious were two "gagging clauses."

By one of these a teacher or other person of authority might be suspended or deprived, who should in speaking or writing be held to have wilfully given offence to the religious convictions of any member. The second and graver of them was the prohibition of any university teacher in theology, modern history, or moral and mental philosophy. The separate affiliated colleges might make whatever arrangements they pleased for these subjects, but the new university would not teach them directly and authoritatively.

This was undoubtedly a singular limitation for a university that had sent forth Berkeley and Burke; nor was there ever a moment when in spite of the specialisation of research, the deepest questions in the domain of thought and belief more inevitably thrust themselves forward within common and indivisible precincts.