MR. GLADSTONE'S RECENT SPEECHES.
iur R. GLADSTONE has been making a couple of speeches at
Hawarden which, we will frankly admit, he had better have left unspoken. It is the misfortune of an unapproachedi personal eminence that its possessor cannot talk trifles. Every- thing he says is at once given an importance which it does not deserve, and was never intended to bear. Thus when Mr. Gladstone is given a walking-stick by some admiring excur- sionists, he is naturally constrained to say something by way of thanks. Accordingly he praises the stick, which, after all, is only common civility ; and then, accordingto his wont, draws a little moral from it. If a politician of less mark had said that he hoped the persons whom he was addressing would be as useful in their ways as a good walking-stick is in its way, it is pro- bable that this little platitude would not have been reported ; and that if reported it would not have been made the text of a leading article. When Mr. Gladstone is the author, it is at once seized on by his opponents, and the Liberal party is solemnly invited to display profound humiliation at the. spectacle of one of its foremost men resorting to such degenerate arts. We are not in the least troubled by the reflection that Mr, Gladstone, Like his favourite poet, is some- times seen to nod. Every man must be allowed to take his rest in the way that suits him, and so long as Mr. Gladstone can speak as he does speak whenever the need presents itself, he has a good right to talk common-places when it suite him. But we confess to a wish that he would refrain
from exercising this right. His adversaries will not let his slightest utterance pass unnoticed, and his friends are obliged to follow suit. Mr. Gladstone's speeches to the two bodies of excursionists who have lately been visiting Hawarden, are very fairly adapted to the political capacities of the persons to whom they were addressed. His visitors expected him to say something to them, and they preferred that that something should be political. Accordingly, Mr. Gladstone spoke to them about politics, and as was natural under the circumstances, he said the first thing that oame into his head. To find fault with him because he touched on the county franchise without answering Mr. Gosohen, is as un- reasonable as it would be to expect a Bishop to define his position towards the Ritualists at a Sunday-school treat. There is a time and a place for everything, and an August afternoon, and the terrace at Hawarden, are not the time and place for a feat of political reasoning. We do not the least blame Mr. Gladstone for saying no more than he said ; but considering the importance which is sure to be attached to his lightest words, it would have been better if he had not touched on the question at all. If the speech which ho made at Hawarden on Monday had been made in his place in the House of Commons, it would have deserved what the Pall Mall Gazette said of it. It is the circumstances under which it was spoken that form its natural and sufficient excuse. Mr. Arnold has immortalised a certain Broad-Church clergyman who treated a joke of Lord Beaconsfield's about the tortures which certain professors would undergo if they had to listen to their own lectures in another world, as a serious contribution to the controversy about the eternity of punishment, and was proportionately shocked at its flippancy. The theory that Mr. Gladstone ought to have discussed the relation of the agricultural labourer to the Poor- law for the benefit of a Liberal Association out for a spree, strikes us as placing its author in something of the same Impenetrable category. No doubt, if we were obliged to treat Mr. Gladstone's remarks at Hawarden as embodying his notion of an adequate answer to Mr. Goschen, they would fall very far short of the occasion. Mr. Goschen made a very courageous speech and a very thorough-going speech. Mr. Gladstone made a speech which was sure to win cheers, and which only touched the fringe of the subject. He defended the extension of the county franchise, on the ground that there are a great number of unrepresented populations which are indistinguishable from the borough populations already represented. If this were all that could be said in favour of the change which Mr. Gladstone advocates, we should be in no special hurry to see it brought about. It is because the extension of the county franchise will bring into the electorate a class which is not already there, not because it will add to the number of the classes which are already there, that we are anxious to see it adopted. In other words, it is not the mere extension of the county franchise that we care for, but the enfranchisement of the agricultural labourer. But if the enfranchisement of the agricultural labourer will have as one of its incidental results the introduction into the Electorate of a large number of really urban voters, and if the fact
i that it will have this effect were likely to weigh with the persons we were addressing more than the other and greater recommendations of the measure, we should think ourselves needlessly squeamish if we refused to use this argument. There can be no question that the enfranchisement of the agricul- tural labourer will have this as one of its effects, and there can be very little question that this circumstance probably seemed to Mr. Gladstone's hearers a very strong argument in behalf of the change. We cannot see that it is forbidden to use what is really the weaker of two arguments, when those to whom it is addressed regard it as the stronger. At least, if this is forbidden, there must be a revision of the art of rhetoric, for the benefit of this new school of political purists.
There is one aspect of Mr. Gladstone's speeches at Hawarden which may serve to cheer those of his friends who are unhappy because he is not always on the level of his own highest efforts. These speeches do undoubtedly help to disguise his strength, and in so far as they do so, they help to throw his opponents off their guard. When they lament the decay of that eager, intellectual combativeness which once was part of his nature, or recall the intellectual feats of which he was once capable, but now seems capable no longer, they forget the extraordinary versatility of Mr. Gladstone's powers, and the rapidity with which ho answers to a really urgent call, Two years ago he was supposed to be nothing but a memory to his country- men, but the movement of last autumn brought him at once to the front with a passion which at once evoked a popularity, less universal indeed than it once was, but in no respect less intense. No greater oratorical feat was ever achieved than his speech on his Resolutions last Session, and yet that speech was made under circumstances which seemed to make success an impossibility even for Mr. Gladstone.Just in the same way he talks platitudes or gives homely advice at Hawarden, and his opponents begin at once to speak of him as a played-out man, and to moralise upon the smallness of the results left behind by the agitation of last, autumn. If it were any affair of ours to undeceive them, we should simply counsel them to wait till the moment for action has come, before they congratulate themselves that Mr. Gladstone is no longer of any account. Wait until there is some really significant sign that the strength of England is to be employed in support of the Turkish Government, and then measure the force of Mr. Gladstone's intellect and the extent of Mr. Gladstone's influence. This, we say, is the language we should use, if it were any business of ours to keep our opponents watchful and prepared. As it is, we rejoice to think that our warning will go for nothing, and that their overthrow, if they essay to make England an accomplice of Turkey, will be the more complete, because they have excluded from their calculations one of the most powerful "factors" with which they will have to reckon.
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