" GENERAL " GLADSTONE.
IT is very seldom that contemporaries do full justice to an achievement which happens under their own eyes. And we are in some danger, we think, of forgetting in the enormous weight of numbers by which the Irish Church Bill has been swept through the second reading and through what were once regarded as the countless dangers of the various amendments in Committee, how vast has been the foresight, how wide and comprehensive the plan, how extraordinary the knowledge, how marvellous the grasp of detail, how easy and commanding the strategy by which Mr. Gladstone has carried this most difficult of undertakings,—the disestablishment and disendownient of the Church of the minority in Ireland,—up to the point at which all the dangers of the House of Commons are practically passed, and the only risks before it are at least as much risks to the House of Lords as to the Bill itself. We have heard much of late years of the masterly inaction" of Lord Palmerston, and of the singular tactical skill and adroitness of Mr. Disraeli. Yet the skill of the former consisted in doing nothing, and winning the suffrages of his opponents by doing nothing ; and the skill of the latter consisted in playing precisely the same game from the opposite side, i.e., in doing what the Liberals wished, and winning the suffrages of the Liberals by doing what they wished. Both games were games requiring a little finesse, but not even admitting any steady and resolute plan ; for both were games that consisted in living from hand to mouth, in preparing room for concession, seeing how much to concede, and conceding it at the right moment, in giving up so-called principles with good humour, and sacrificing a policy with dignity. Both were strategies which not only did not require inflexible principle, wide knowledge, inexhaustible industry, and an imagination saturated with the detailed application of principle in a host of minute circumstances, but which consisted in doing without all these things, and in carrying off the want of them with a certain air. Lord Palmerston, in the last six years of his life, did as near to nothing in legislation as, with Mr. Gladstone for Chancellor of the Exchequer, he could manage to do. Mr. Disraeli turned out a tolerably big piece of work, but a more inartistic piece of botching and cobbling was probably never yet acknowledged as his own by any English statesman. None of the various reform schemes which he proposed was more like the result than was the stocking which had first had a new foot put to the leg, and then a new leg put to the foot, to the original stocking. The material, the knitting, the darning, the whole fabrication of the Reform measure was contributed in miscellaneous lots from all sides of the House. And when it was finished, it was not only the work of the Opposition, but it precisely fitted the purpose of those who made it, and thwarted the purpose of those who reluctantly consented to adopt it. 'Compare Mr. Gladstone's enterprise with that of either of his predecessors, and it would seem quite hopeless and gigantic in difficulty, while yet it has been accomplished with a precision, a completeness, an artistic perfection of which we have -absolutely no example in the history of recent English legislation.
It required no little nerve for the leader of the Liberal party in a House of Commons like the last,—with his own ranks in confessed disorder, with his late chief (Lord Russell) avowedly of an opposite view, with his most intimate friend Oft Roundel' Palmer) at issue with him, and himself in the most painful position in relation to the ecclesiastical question he was about to raise,—to act on the conviction which had been growing within him for years, and directly the late Government threw out tentatives towards an Irish ecclesiastical policy which could never have been adopted, and the mere attempt to adopt which would have postponed the era of Irish religious equality till the Greek Kalends, declare, not only theoretically, but practically, for a policy of disestablishment and disendowment. We said at the time, that Mr. Gladstone's speech on Lord Mayo's motion was not so much a great speech as a great action. It precipitated by one bold stroke the crystallization of an opinion which had been vaguely forming itself in the country for years, yet it required prescience and courage to hazard. Had it been a failure, it would have all but destroyed Mr. Gladstone's own political prospects for years. There was no manner of doubt that many of his own present colleagues, as well as more of his late colleagues, looked with alarm and disgust on the scheme he proposed. It subjected him to the double charge of subserviency to Rome and subserviency to Dissent. It compelled him to admit what was supposed to be a revolutionary policy for the Throne, what was known to be hateful to his old allies the Bishops, and what the House of Lords were quite certain to resist so long as they dared. More than this, it embarked him on a most difficult and intricate sea of detail, where every movement involved him in new legal and historical controversies, and every fresh question threw up formidable practical perplexities. Moreover, at once a very plausible charge was brought against him, that he was stirring in this matter prematurely and factiously in a Parliament which could confessedly take no final action, and which ought, therefore, to have been allowed to die in peace, bequeathing the question of principle to the newly enlarged constituencies.
It seems to us one of the most happy inspirations of Mr. Gladstone's generalship, that he insisted on marking his sincerity by passing the Suspensory Bill through the late House of Commons. That accomplished two things. It told the couutry he was in earnest, that this was the vital question for the constituencies, and not a mere cry. It also gave us a clear, arithmetical standard, by which to mark the progress of this proposal in popular favour between one Parliament and the next. The House of Lords will now know what is of the first moment for the House of Lords to know, not merely that there is an immense majority for this measure in the Commons, but that that majority, instead of being likely to diminish, is certain to increase on every fresh appeal to the country. It is about double this year what it was last year. And should the House of Lords be rash enough to desire, and powerful enough to obtain, another appeal to the country, it would be very likely almost double next year what it is this year. Mr. Gladstone's firmness and wisdom in pushing on the Suspensory Bill not only discounted much of the discussion of this year, not only put to the constituencies a question which they could by no means mistake, but it afforded us the most striking and complete means of comparing the wish of the unreformed constituencies on the subject with the wish of the reformed. Both were triumphantly for Mr. Gladstone ; but the reformed constituencies returned a majority for him about twice as great as the unreformed.
And if that was a great inspiration of generalship,—the incidents by which Mr. Gladstone showed his own individual earnestness, his resolution not to be spared any of the labour and heat of the day, his most fruitful though unsuccessful canvass for South-West Lancashire, his much assailed "chapter of autobiography," that indifference to the dignity of a leader so maliciously and persistently imputed to him by his opponents both in the Liberal ranks and in the Conservative, all told, we believe, and told most powerfully, on his success. Everybody saw that, dignity or no dignity, a statesman thus embarking heart and soul in the work clearly meant what he said. Every one of his followers had to emulate the leader in the explicitness of his declarations. We see the result now in the unparalleled series of divisions. No languor in the rank and file was possible where the general bad fought with so much individual ardour himself. Then Mr. Gladstone's prudence and reserve were at least as effective as his intrepidity and frankness. His steady refusal to commit himself to any scheme for the application of the surplus till he had full command of official inforznation and advice, was the highest wisdom. Had he proposed to apply it towards the most necessitous of Irish charities before the election, Sir Stafford Northcote's after-dinner charge that the gigantic scheme of robbery was eked out by a still more gigantic scheme of bribery, would have had some plausibility. The Irish constituencies, however, were interrogated only on the question of principle ; and however popular the application of the surplus which Mr. Gladstone has proposed, it was not dangled before their eyes at the elections. He reserved full power to the new Administration to apply the surplus for national purposes as they might think best, and this was a sort of dignity far better understood by the constituencies than the false dignity of pompous abstinence from work. But after all, skilful and forecasting as were all the preliminaries of this contest, the great and striking feature of the case has been the measure itself, and the perfectly wonderful mastery of detail with which Mr. Gladstone has carried it through the House of Commons, from the marvellous speech on its introduction, to the last amendment on the report. Men who had got up with elaborate care a little corner of the subject, found themselves anticipated and surpassed in all their research by Mr. Gladstone. Men who saw in this clause and that a failure of principle,— as in the proposal to compensate Maynooth and the Presbyterians out of the Church property, instead of out of the Imperial Exchequer, received a subtle and effective reply from Mr. Gladstone. Men who had dived into old Irish chronicles for evidence destructive of his general theory, found that Mr. Gladstone had not only been before them, but had been beyond them, and could cap their facts by facts still more germane to the subject. No prime minister of this country has ever added to his labour and responsibility in leading the House of Commons anything approaching to the extraordinary mastery of departmental detail which Mr. Gladstone has displayed on this Bill. Mr. Chichester Fortescue, as Irish Secretary, has assisted him, indeed, but has never been half as au fait at the intricacies of the subject as his chief. No previous English prime minister probably ever accomplished what he has accomplished in this case. And look at the result. On a matter full of intricacy, offering apparently the most excellent chances for combinations and ambuscades to the foe, he has never experienced a single check. The measure brought in within a fortnight after Parliament met, passed its second reading with an immense majority before a very early Easter, ran the gauntlet of all the amendments of the enemy with ever increasing success before Whitsuntide, and is now certain to go up to the House of Lords early in June with such enormous force at its back, as none but the most daring of peers would venture to defy. We remember no parallel to the conduct of this measure, for foresight, courage, minute knowledge, the conciliation which comes of strength, and the firmness which comes of principle, in the history of English legislation. Doubtless, there is the "brute majority." But how was the brute majority gained, and how was it sworn to fidelity,—except by the clear forecast and the devoted personal zeal of the General in command ?
We do not for a moment contend that there may not be other emergencies which, though less perplexing to most politicians, will test Mr. Gladstone's power to guide the nation more severely than any difficulty he has yet been required to meet. But we do say that in what he has already accomplished, no prime minister of this country,— not even Sir Robert Peel,—could have rivalled him for a moment. We do say that he has displayed powers which make it simply ridiculous to speak of him with that sort of depreciating and hesitating patronage so recently adopted by more than one organ even of the Liberal Press. He may, of course, yet fail on some quite unanticipated question, as Lord John Russell failed in 1852 and Lord Palmerston in 1858. But he has shown a courage as great as was ever displayed by Lord John, a sagacity and administrative skill as great as were ever displayed by Sir Robert Peel, and an earnestness and loftiness of purpose such as neither the one nor the other, and still less Lord Palmerston, ever conceived, and this without a single one of those failures of equanimity or graciousness which his bitter assailants so recklessly impute to him. Even though he should go astray once and again, like so many of his predecessors, he can hardly fail to prove one of the greatest ministers of the century. And it seems quite possible, if he only shows as much coolness and firmness in foreign policy as he shows sagacity at home, that he may leave behind him the greatest ministerial fame ever attained by an English minister since the death of Pitt.
Previous page
