MR. GLADSTONE AT LIVERPOOL. T HOUGH Mr. Gladstone said nothing at
Liverpool which might not have been said by any one capable of making a speech, the newspapers were perfectly right in giving his address the importance they did give it, and in speaking of the function in St. George's Hall as "a unique event,"—that barbarous phrase which is applied to anything which it is difficult to class and describe specifically, but which it is felt is somehow or other re- markable and distinctive. In the first place, the pre- sentation of the freedom of the City of Liverpool to Mr. Gladstone was noteworthy as an outward and visible sign that there is a limit beyond which even party politics ought not to be carried, and that men of all shades of opinion regard the Prime Minister as being a great deal more than the head of a Parliamentary majority. Liver- pool is the typical Tory city. Two only of the nine Members it returns are not bitterly opposed to Mr. Glad- stone in politics ; and of these one is not a Gladstonian but a Nationalist, and sits for what is virtually a piece of Ireland that has crossed St. George's Channel. Hence, when the Liverpool Town Council unanimously conferred the citizen- ship upon Mr. Gladstone, and when the inhabitants accorded to him a popular ovation of the heartiest kind, proof was given that in England party feeling, even when at its strongest, as it undoubtedly is just now, need not, and does not, irrevocably divide the nation.
But even apart from this, the ceremony of Saturday last was interesting. In every great community there are one or two old men who remember picking roses in a hedgerow from the site of which now spring warehouse or factory walls, can recall how they fished for trout in a country brook that is now carried in a culvert under a main thoroughfare, or who will point to a terrace in a fashionable quarter as a place once much frequented by birds as shy as snipe or woodcock. Though the botanical and zoological reminiscences of such persons may sometimes pall upon the frivolous or cynical, they never fail to be the delight of the ordinary citizen, and the most commonplace old gentle- man who can recollect what this or that brick-covered dis- trict looked like seventy years ago, becomes a sort of hero. Who has ever gone to a thriving, growing city without hearing that "there are men still alive who can remember when, &c."? London is no exception. Stories of and allusions to the old gentleman (fortunately now deceased) who could remember shooting snipe in Belgrave Square, and eating blackberries in Halkin Street, West, and sloes in Cadogan Place, are perpetually going the round of the London papers. The editors know that whatever else will seem stale, flat, and unprofitable in their columns, some one is sure to be genuinely and unaffectedly delighted with the dicta of the man who remembers. The cult of the aged inhabitant belongs, indeed, to all classes and all towns. But if an interest so great is taken in a man whose only claim is his memory, what amount of public attention is likely to be awakened when the man who remembers is also Prime Minister, and the greatest orator of his age and country ? It is hardly to be wondered at that the people of Liverpool were intoxicated with delight when Mr. Gladstone was playing before them the part of aged inhabitant, and proving to them by personal testimony that the teeming and opulent city of which they are so proud was, within living memory, hardly more than a large country-town. " From my father's windows at Seaforth," said Mr. Glad- stone, " I used as a small boy to look southward along the shore to the town. I remember well that it was crowned by not so much cloud as a film of silver-grey smoke, such as you may now see surrounding the fabrics of some town of 10,000 or 20,000 people In those days, gentle- men, the space between Liverpool and Seaforth was very differently occupied from the manner in which it now is- occupied. Four miles of the most beautiful sand that I ever knew offered to the aspirations of the youthful rider the most delightful method of finding access to Liverpool, and he had this other inducement to pursue that road, that there was no other decent road into the town. I myself have seen the wild roses growing upon the very ground which is now the centre of the borough of Bootle. You know how all that land is now covered partly with resi- dences and partly with places of business and industry, but in my time one single house stood upon the space between the Rimrose brook and the town of Liverpool." Such recollections would have been welcome, and would have been listened to with interest by Liverpool, had they come from the plainest of plain men. From Mr. Glad- stone they were irresistible, and his speech was as warmly received as if it had been addressed to the most enthu- siastic political audience. One of Mr. Gladstone's greatest advantages over the ordinary aged inhabitant is to be found in the fact that he could recall not merely the physical, but also the moral, aspect of the Liverpool of seventy years ago. Mr. Gladstone's father was one of the leading merchants of the great seaport that looks out upon the Western world ; and from his recollections of his father's talk, and of events with which his father was connected, he was able to draw a very interesting picture of the moral aspect of the town in the twenties. The most salient feature is the extraordinary energy, liberality, and public spirit displayed by a body of men who, judged by our standards, were of but moderate means, and even by that of their own time, could not be regarded as specially rich men. Mr. Canning and Mr. Huskisson sat for Liverpool from 1812 down to 1830, without its costing either of them a shilling ; while "an individual for whom his friends in Liverpool—not men of great wealth, though they would not return him for the town of Liverpool, or, as it was then, the borough of Liverpool—yet subscribed £6,000 to send him to contest another borough." In the election of 1812 Mr. Gladstone's father, as treasurer of the election fund, had to appeal to the original subscribers for a second subscription, so costly and so long was the contest,— indeed, the election itself lasted twelve days or more. This appeal met, however, with so hearty a response, that in the end he was able to return 60 per cent. of the money. What- ever may be our estimate of Canning as a Foreign Minister, that Mr. Gladstone is right in attaching importance to such conduct we do not doubt. The attitude of the Liverpool merchants was infinitely better than that of the men of wealth and distinction in the great American cities of to-day. We cannot help regretting that Mr. Gladstone did not recall more of his memories of early Liver- pool politics. The political history of Liverpool during the first thirty years of the century is, as has been shown by Mr. Jephson, in his " History of the Plat- form," of peculiar interest. It was in Liverpool that the system under which Cabinet Ministers take the country into their confidence, and make speeches at meetings and banquets as important as those they make in Parliament, had its origin. Mr. Canning's Liverpool speeches were the first great political speeches ever made speakers England has ever had.
-can do most execution. But to hit this place among the of the population as it is proposed to give Bulgaria, and majority of mankind, an orator must not try to be too not a quarter as many as Bulgaria has now. The change -wise or too witty, and he must never be the least afraid proposed would, therefore, have some tendency, if it -of being commonplace, of moralising, or of stating passes the Sobranje and is accepted in the prescribed things which are supposed to be known to every school- mode for a constitutional change under the present Bul- boy. Half the things said by Mr. Gladstone last Saturday garian Constitution, to Anglicise the Bulgarian Constitu- -are things which many men would not have dared to tion, but no tendency at all to Russianise it. Moreover, it say for fear of being told they had nothing new to is obvious to all careful observers in England, that say. Mr. Gladstone has the art of being not only in- our House of Commons is excessively unwieldy for true different to such considerations, but what is more, of popular discussion ; that all debates would probably be 'being able to become genuinely enthusiastic over his twice as good, if the speakers and the candidates for review of what is commonplace and well-known. We speaking were only half as numerous. We do not at all deny venture to say that there is no public man alive but that, with a very small and infantine State, there may be Mr. Gladstone who could have spoken the following sen- a very good reason for increasing the ratio of representa- tence, yet we doubt not that it was exactly the right thing tion to population. The number of the representatives to say, and exactly the right way in which to say it :— has something to do with their courage and their power of " Mr. Cobden, who was a man of very great and real popular resistance to anything like reaction. And it may eminence, and whose fame will, in my opinion, be perma- well be that Bulgaria, though it would have, even under nent in this country (hear, hear), sometimes said striking the new proposal, between twice and three times as many things which were also true things." Another man would representatives to the same area of population as we have have shrunk from anything so universally admitted as that now, could not safely go further in the way of reduction Mr. Cobden " was a man of very great and real eminence " of the proportion than is proposed. But so far as we can —even the Fair-traders admit that—but Mr. Gladstone see, there has hitherto been no timidity at all in the knew quite well that instead of his audience being bored popular assembly of Bulgaria. A steadier popular Assembly by the remark, they would delight in it as something true in defending its own rights it would be hard to find. enough to be comforting, and not so new as to be irri- And it may well happen that the smaller number of repre- tating. Nobody could object to the remark, and most people sentatives now proposed would make a much more effective would feel satisfied at being confirmed in a previously enter- phalanx behind such a statesman as M. Stambouloff, tained belief. Even those who would have been annoyed than even the present Sobranje. At all events, the change, if it had been said half-heartedly and apologetically, were if it be carried, would be carried by the present, and not probably for the moment carried away by the air of intense by the future Sobranje ; and would, therefore, be carried enthusiasm and conviction with which it was pronounced. because the people desire it, and not merely because the Not being afraid of seeming commonplace, that is one of reigning family desire it. There could, therefore, be no ques- the secrets of Mr. Gladstone's success. Unfortunately, tion at all of its being forced on a reluctant people by an un- however, it is a secret which, even if realised and attempted constitutional surprise. Why should it be assumed that to be acted on by others, would not succeed. And for this M. Stambouloff has any unconstitutional motive in reducing reason. The absence of weakening and belittling self- the Sobranje to smaller numbers, while leaving universal criticism is very uncommon among men of genius. But suffrage just as it is ? Mr. Gladstone, when it is his cue to be commonplace, can The true test of Liberalism is surely its tendency to be commonplace and unoriginal with energy and enthu- secure the people in the right of self-government. Now siasm, and without raising the slightest condemnatory this may be secured in two ways, either by making the criticism within his own brain. popular voice more distinctly heard, or by giving it greater
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