THE GLADSTONE MYTH.
" OTHER great men, in other ages," said Lord Carlingford, in his felicitous speech at the unveiling of Mr. Bruce Joy's statue of Mr. Gladstone, "have been fabulous beings after their death ; it is Mr. Gladstone's fate to have become a fabulous person during his life." A few more might be named with whom Mr. Gladstone shares this distinction, and one name in particular will occur to the student of English politics. The writer of this article has sometimes amused himself, in com- pany where Mr. Gladstone has been violently abused, by reciting the following passage, and asking the company to supply the blank :— " It has always been with me a test of the sense and candour of any one belonging to the opposite party, whether he allowed to be a great man. Of all the persons of this description that I have ever knoWn, I never met with above one or two who would make this concession ; whether it was that party feelings ran too high to admit of any real candour, or whether it was owing to an essential vulgarity in their habits of thinking, they all seemed to be of opinion that be was a wild enthusiast, or a hollow sophist, who was to be answered by bits of facts, by smart logic, by shrewd questions, and idle songs. They looked upon him as a man of disordered intellect, because he reasoned in a style to which they had not been used, and which con- founded their dim perceptions. If you said that, though you differed with him in sentiment, yet you thought him an admirable reasoner, you were answered with a loud laugh and some hackneyed quotation. One of the common charges made against him was that of being verbose. But if he sometimes multiplies words, it is not for want of ideas, but because there are no words that fully express his ideas, and he has to do it as well as he can by different words."
Almost invariably, the answer has been that the description is intended for Mr. Gladstone. It was, in fact, written of Mr. Burke, within ten years of his death, by a distinguished writer Who mingled much in the political and literary society of that day. It seems almost incredible that party rancour should have so darkened the minds of Mr. Burke's political opponents that, with very few exceptions, they would not even admit that he was "a great man ;" but not more incredible than the view of Mr. Gladstone's character held by a large section of his contemporaries will seem to the grandchildren, whether Tory or Liberal, of this generation.
_Bow shall we account for this feeling of mingled fear, per- plexity, and hate with which men like Mr. Burke and Mr. Gladstone inspire the privileged classes, for the feeling does not exist among the masses? There are several reasons, and one of them was expounded with great frankness last Monday by an evening journal, whose personal animosity against Mr. G ladstone has developed into a ludicrous monomania. The dangerous angerous tendencies of Liberalism, we are told by this writer,
have been held in check by the fortunate accident that they were controlled by men who belonged to the aristocratic order.
"From Fox to Palmerston" the Liberal leaders have belonged to a caste "who would always stand by their Order." But "the accession of Mr. Gladstone to the leadership " opened a new era. "Wild indulgence" has been given to "the dan- gerous element in Liberalism," and the only hope of averting a catastrophe lies in getting rid of Mr. Gladstone. Here, no doubt, we have the true explanation of the larger part of that vague alarm which Mr. Gladstone's name excites in the upper ranks of society. It is not that they resent being ruled by a man not born in the purple. The English nobility are remarkably tolerant of recruits from the ranks below them,—witness the position occupied in the House of Lords by men like Lords Lyndhurst, Beaconsfield, and Gran- brook. Forty years ago Mr. Gladstone was described by Macaulay as "the rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories who follow, reluctantly and mutinously" Sir Robert Peel. And there can be no question that if Mr. Gladstone had sacrificed his convictions to his ambition he would now be the leader and the idol of the Tory party. But it is not his Liberalism which makes him so unpopular in Tory circles, but the feeling that in the collision of conflicting interests he can- not be relied on by the privileged classes. Mr. Fox and Lord Grey, Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell, might be expected, when it came to the pinch, to "stand by their Order." But Mr. Gladstone does not belong to the Sacred Order, nor did
Canning, or Peel, or Burke. And that is partly the explanation of the animosity which they all provoked, as soon as they left the beaten tracks of party politics. Lord Beaconsfield's management of Parliamentary Reform mezits the epithet of "revolutionary" better than any act in
Mr. Gladstone's political career. But escapades like this were condoned by the Tory party, because Lord Beaconsfield had never exhibited any dangerous earnestness on behalf of the
landless classes. So long as his manceuvres were aimed at "dishing "the Whigs and Radicals, his party enjoyed the sport so much that they failed to see the precipice towards which he was leading them.
Another cause of Mr. Gladstone's unpopularity among the privileged classes is the readiness which he has always shown to judge all political questions on their merits, at the risk of any amount of unpopularity, and well knowing that he was supply- ing his enemies with plausible grounds for a charge of inconsist- ency. Early in his political career, he declared in the House of Commons that he was not to be deterred from a course which he thought right by the "phantom of consistency." The truth is that there are two kinds of consistency ; one good, the other bad. Herod was consistent in the bad sense when, "for the oath's sake, and them that sat with him," he presented the daughter of Herodias with the head of John the Baptist, Mr. Gladstone was 'consistent in the true sense when, having unsuccessfully resisted the admission of Jews to Municipal offices, he afterwards advocated their admission to Parliament ; for the latter privilege followed a fortiori from the grant of the former. "In the changing state of human affairs," says Sir James Mackintosh, "the man who is constant to his opinions will be sometimes thought inconstant to his politics." Mr. Gladstone has probably changed his opinions as little as any public man of our time. In his "Chapter of Autobiography," he declares that he still believes the theory of Church and State, which he propounded in his book on that subject, to be ideally the best. But, as a practical statesman, he formally and publicly gave it up, in the year 1844. Sir Robert Peel's Grant to Maynooth was an open violation of that theory, and therefore Mr. Gladstone resigned Office, in vindication of his honour. Speaking of his theory on that
occasion, he said :—
" I still believe it to be the most salutary and the best in any con-
dition of the public sentiment that will bear its application But if the time has come when, owing to the great advance of re- ligious divisions, and likewise owing to a groat modification of political sentiments, what remains of that system must be further infringed, then I cannot undertake to draw any line of distinction unfavourable to my Roman.Catholie fellow.subjects in Ireland in particular. I therefore hold it to be my duty to apply my mind" to the considered- tion of the Irish Church, under the altered circumstances of the case], "free from every slavish regard to a mere phantom of consistency, and with the sole and single view of arriving at such a conclusion as, upon the whole, the interests of the country and the circumstances of the case may seem to demand."
When Mr. Gladstone gave this fair warning as to his future attitude on Church questions in general, and the Irish Church in particular, he was still "the rising hope" of the Tory party. He repeated the warning, in plainer language, at various inter- vals down to 1868; and it was, in fact, a speech in favour of the disestablishment of the Irish Church delivered in 1865 that
lost him that year his seat for Oxford. Yet, when he actually framed his Resoulutions against the Irish Establishment, he was accused of having taken the world by surprise, and of changing life-long opinions for the mere purpose of ousting Mr. Disraeli from office ; and his book on Church and State is still quoted against him, in spite of his formal declaration on the subject in 1844, repeated with still greater emphasis in his speech on the Jew Dill in 1847. What Mr. Gladstone, however, changed, was not his opinions, but his application of those opinions in practical politics. "Circumstances," says Burke, "which with some gentlemen pass for nothing, give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect." It is a curious fact that when Mr. Gladstone's book on Church and State was pub- lished, Baron Bunsen predicted that the author would one day become leader of the Liberal party, so numerous were the germs of Liberalism which he found scattered up and down the volume. Mr. Mozley relates, in his "Reminiscences," a still earlier indication of the Liberalism which lay at the root of Mr. Gladstone's nature. Archdeacon Denison, then a young Fellow of Oriel, "Coming into the Common Room one even- ing, said, in my hearing, 'I have just heard the best speech I ever heard in my life, by Gladstone, against the Reform Bill. But matk my words. That man will one day be a Liberal, for he argued against the Bill on Liberal grounds." This was the undergraduate speech which Mr. Disraeli quoted against Mr. Gladstone in the House of Commons, in one of the Reform debates of 1866. But persons who are too prejudiced or too impatient to read the facts of Mr. Gladstone's life for themselves only obsers e the superficial differences be- tween certain periods of his career, and they jump to the conclusion, as one of the most malevolent of them has lately expressed it, that " Mr. Gladstone has no opinions at all. What stands with him instead of opinion is a faculty of self-persuasion, unique in the history of the human mind, which enables him to adopt with the utmost enthusiasm any of the opinions about him which may be to his interest for the time being." And this is said of the man who, more than any statesman of our time, has shown a lofty indifference to office l None of our public men has so often resigned, or declined office, when he might have filled it with public approbation. And was it "to his interest for the time being" to oppose the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill against the unreasoning clamour of a nation ? or the Crimean war when it was at the height of its popularity ? or the Divorce Bill of Lord Palmerston? or the Public Worship Regulation Bill ?
The truth is, Mr. Gladstone is too close to his political opponents to enable them to observe him accurately. In con- tradistinction to the usual process, he will become less mythical as he recedes from them. And it is probable that within thirty years after his death he will be generally regarded, not only as the greatest of our statesmen hitherto, but also as, in the long run, one of the truest friends of those privileged classes who now so heartily fear and abuse him. The aim of his life has been to deal equal justice all round, and his eloquence and statesmanship have contributed more than any- thing else to the cause of order, and to the stability of our institutions.
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