5 MAY 1888, Page 6

MR. GLADSTONE'S POLITICAL HISTORY.

TR. GLADSTONE has written a letter,—in which, —IL by-the-way, there is one bad misprint, the state- ment that in 1849-50 he assisted, to the best of his power, the Government of Naples, instead of resisted that Govern- ment,—to prove that since 1839, or at all events since 1841, he has never been what is properly termed a Tory. We would go much further, and say that Mr. Gladstone, even in the commencement of his career, though he -voted steadily with the Tories, and thought himself a thorough- going Tory on the Irish Church Question, was never in essence a Tory at all. Any man who is essentially a Tory must have either some principle of rank, or some principle of intellectual caste, or some principle of fastidious taste, or in some shape or other a principle that militates against popular sympathies, very deeply ingrained in him, and nothing seems to us more certain than that Mr. Gladstone never had such a principle ; that he never understood the feeling of caste, whether of rank, or of intellect, or of taste ; and that such Toryism as there was in him was founded either on religious conviction, or else on that dislike for administrative bungling so well marked amongst all the Peelites, which induced a certain contempt for the attempts of the Whig Government between 1832 and 1841, to blend bad finance with an ostentation of popular policy. As a statesman, we should say that Mr. Gladstone was originally a genuine Peelite,—that is, a Conservative wherever he did not see his way clearly to reform, simply because it is more workman- like not to tinker at what you do not feel sure that you can really improve,—not so much Conservative because he loved the old system as it was, as because he did not see a distinct promise of anything better. Whenever either Sir Robert Peel or Mr. Gladstone felt convinced that they could improve on what existed, they were always willing and even eager to do so ; in other words, they were Con- servative Opportunists, no unworthy type of statesmen, a type always unwilling to meddle rashly with great issues, always eager to mend specific defects by specific remedies. This tendency it was that made Mr. Gladstone so un- willing to support Lord Palmerston's rather bumptious and rash foreign policy, and that rendered him so averse to the cheap religious Chauvinism of the silly Ecclesiastical Titles Act. But when Mr. Gladstone intimates, as we understand him to do, that because on issues affecting peace, foreign policy, and finance, he was between 1839 and 1859 very much what Liberals are now, he was in no sense what would be popularly called a Tory in these years, he forgets, we think, the general drift of his writings and speeches in reference to the question of Parliamentary reform, which were undoubtedly as different in tendency from the writings and speeches of the last quarter of a century on the same subject, as it is possible to conceive. In the period between 1850 and 1860, Mr. Gladstone's general tone on Parliamentary reform was the tone of a statesman who regarded it as the true test of a good Parliament that it should be able to check the errors and improve the working of our administrative Services ; while his general tone since he succeeded to the lead of the House of Commons, has been that of a statesman who regards it as the true test of a good Parliament that it should express adequately the aspirations and cravings of the people, even where those aspirations and cravings are apt to result in ambitious legislative attempts of the most risky character. We ourselves think that a good Parlia- ment is one that embodies both these tempers, that is very loth to embark in large legislative ventures except under the most urgent necessity, but, nevertheless, is fully representative of the ideas circulating amongst the people at large, and very anxious to feel its way carefully towards a prudent enlargement of the sphere of legislation. We are far from saying that Mr. Gladstone has not greatly enlarged the grasp of his statesmanship since he began to lead the Liberals ; but we do say that he has greatly altered it ; that he has allowed the new popular sympathy to encroach enormously on the old administrative prudence ; that his career between 1868 and 1888 is as different from his career between 1848 and 1868 as if it had been the career of two different men ; and that, in the latter part at least of his later career, he has sunk the prudence of his former Opportunism far more completely than in his earlier life he sunk the heartiness of his popular sympathies. The truth we take to be that, till Mr. Gladstone led the Liberal Party in the House of Commons, he never knew the extent of his own power as a popular leader, or appreciated the fascination of wielding that magic wand ; and that this experience changed the whole tenor of his statesmanship, making it as much the aspiration of his later days to express the mind of the people as it had been the aspiration of his earlier days to express the mind of a highly polished administrative class deeply versed in the art of adapting political means to political ends, and caring even more for workmanlike efficiency than for popular effects. We hold that up to 1860, Mr. Gladstone, though far from a good Tory, was in spirit a true Conservative, with something very near to a dislike for the intrusion of popular cries into matters so essentially requiring a cool, impartial judgment as the policy of this country in regard to war, peace, finance, or administrative machinery. Since 1866, he has been essentially a popular statesman, with far more wish to see the masses win whenever they are pitted against the classes, than anxiety as to the successful working of the schemes which the masses may happen to favour. Indeed, during the latter part of his career, this anxiety has almost disappeared. He has seemed to forget that the masses can make even bigger mistakes than the classes themselves, bigger because less revocable as well as more audacious. Though Mr. Gladstone was never a Tory, undoubtedly in his later days he has been a democrat, and a democrat not even inclined to take security for the rectification of local prejudices and prepossessions by insisting on a sufficient area for the range of a demo- cracy. In his plunge into the doctrine of separate nation- alities for Ireland, Scotland, and even " gallant little Wales," he has done what would certainly have made the hair of all that band of Peelites to which he originally belonged stand on end with horror. The truth is, that the edge of his administrative genius has been a good deal blunted of late, while the eagerness of his popular sympa- thies has been incessantly stimulated. The Peelite in him has dwindled rapidly as the democrat has grown. It is not a matter for reproach that so great a popular leader should have felt the elation of his marvellous position so profoundly as to have lost to some extent the fastidiousness of his great administrative genius. But it is surely true that up to his fiftieth year he showed no sort of indication of the part he was about to play,—a part which was at first far greater than any he had conceived in the first half-century- of his life, but which during the last five years has, in our belief, shown a dwindling sense of self-control, of caution, of wisdom, and even of the sense of justice.