Lord Russell became a peer, and left Mr. Gladstone to fight the good fight in the House of Commons, about this time. Gladstone and Disraeli were fully recognised as the leaders of their respective parties. In the life of Mr. Richard Redgrave, under the date of 1860, Mr. Redgrave gives a description of Mr. Gladstone’s reply to Mr. Disraeli’s attack on the French Treaty. A friend who was present told him: ‘Mr. Gladstone was in such a state of excitement that everyone dreaded an attack from him; that his punishment of Mr. Disraeli was most ferocious. He was like a Cherokee Indian fighting; he first knocked down his adversary, then he stamped upon him, then he got excited and danced on him; he scalped him, and then took him between his finger and thumb like a miserable insect, and looked at him, and held him up to contempt.’
Mr. Macarthy’s judicious criticism may be quoted here.
‘It is idle to contend that between Gladstone and Disraeli any love was lost, and that many people thought it was unhandsome on the part of Mr. Gladstone not to attend his great rival’s obsequies, and to bury his animosities in the grave. In 1862 Disraeli complained to the Bishop of Oxford that he and others kept the Church as Mr. Gladstone’s nest-egg when he became a Whig till it was almost addled. At this time Disraeli wrote: “I wish you could have induced Gladstone to have joined Lord Derby’s Government when Lord Ellenborough resigned in 1858. It was not my fault that he did not; I almost went on my knees to him. Had he done so, the Church and everything else would have been in a very different position.” In 1867 the Bishop of Oxford writes: “The most wonderful thing is the rise of Disraeli. It is not the mere assertion of talent, as you hear so many say; it seems to me quite beside that. He has been able to teach the House of Commons almost to ignore Gladstone, and at present lords it over him, and, I am told, says that he will hold him down for twenty years.” Disraeli, however, did himself no good when, in 1878, he described Mr. Gladstone as a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that at all times can command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign his opponents and to glorify himself.’
Disraeli was never happy in statement. When he had to explain a policy, financial or other, he might really be regarded as a very dull speaker. Gladstone was specially brilliant in statement. He could give to an exposition of figures the fascination of a romance or a poem. Mr. Gladstone never could, under any circumstances, be a dull speaker. He was no equal of Disraeli in the gift of sarcasm, and what Disraeli himself called ‘flouts and jeers.’ But in his reply he swept his antagonist before him with his marvellous eloquence, compounded of reason and passion.
On the breaking out of the American Civil War, Mr. Gladstone was undoubtedly on the side of the South: Jefferson Davis, he said, had made a nation of the South—a speech of which Mr. Gladstone repented a few years after. But it took a long time for the North to forgive or forget his unfortunate speech. Bishop Fraser, writing in 1865, says: ‘They have just got hold of about a dozen subscribers to the Confederate Loan, among whom is W. E. Gladstone, down, to my surprise, for £2,000. This, as you might expect, is a topic for excited editorials, and the cry is that the American Government ought to demand his dismissal from the Ministry.’
In time the Americans began to understand Mr. Gladstone better, and to appreciate him and his good feeling towards their country more. Major Pond, the well-known American, for twenty years endeavoured to get the G.O.M.—as he has long been known on both sides of the Atlantic—to cross the Atlantic on a lecturing tour. In 1880 Mr. Gladstone wrote to him: ‘I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, with all the kindness it expresses and the dazzling prospects which it offers. Unhappily, my reply lies not in vague expressions of hope, but in the burden of seventy years and of engagements and duties beyond my strength, by desertion of which, even for the time needed, I should really be disentitling myself to the goodwill of the American people, which I prize so highly.’ Notwithstanding this refusal, Major Pond returned to the attack, and offered the Grand Old Man seven thousand pounds for twenty lectures, which Mr. Gladstone declined. As a gentleman, he was bound to do so. It would have been a sorry sight to have seen the G.O.M. carted all over America as a show on a lecturing tour.
‘To Americans,’ says Table Talk, ‘the venerable ex-leader of the Liberal Party in the British Parliament is not only a great Englishman, but the greatest of all Englishmen, and his demise, which, it is to be hoped, will yet be long postponed, will be regarded as a calamity to all the English-speaking races. It has always been a matter of keen regret throughout the American continent that Mr. Gladstone has never been able to pay a visit to those whom the Grand Old Man described in his memorable article in the North American Review as “kin beyond sea.” In July, 1894, a well-organized attempt was made to induce Mr. Gladstone to cross the ocean. A letter of invitation was sent to him, signed by the then Vice-President of the United States, Mr. Adlai Stevenson, by Mr. Chauncey Depew, by Dr. Pepper, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, by seventy Senators and one hundred Congressmen, by the Governors of a large number of the States, as well as nearly all the members of Mr. Cleveland’s Cabinet and of the Supreme Bench at Washington. It was intimated to the aged statesman that the most extraordinary arrangements would be made for his comfort, including the most luxurious (of course, free) transportation for himself, Mrs. Gladstone, and such companions and attendants as he desired; a special service of private cars on all the railways, and the unlimited use of an Atlantic cable during the time of his absence from England. Mr. Gladstone was also promised immunity from “interviewers, party politicians, advertisers, and hand-shakers.” Mr. Gladstone’s reply covered three pages of large size writing-paper, and was written by himself entirely. At that time, it will be remembered, Mr. Gladstone’s eyes were giving him great trouble, and he pathetically wrote: “Undoubtedly your letter supplied the strongest motives for an attempt to brave the impossible. But I regret to say it reaches me at a time when, were I much younger, it could not be open to me to consider this question.” At the same time, while unable to accept such a flattering invitation, Mr. Gladstone, in concluding his letter, begged that the American nation would remain assured of “my unalterable interest in your country.”’
It was scarcely necessary to write that. In his celebrated article on ‘Kith and Kin’ Mr. Gladstone had shown how far our American cousins had shot ahead of the old folks at home.
In 1866 Sir Richard Temple wrote of the opening debate: ‘Next it was Mr. Gladstone’s turn to speak. I had understood privately that he was going to make some announcement that would imply the resignation of the Liberal leadership. He was known to be disappointed at his failure to obtain a majority at the General Election. . . . In fact, however, he said nothing to imply resignation, but, on the contrary, was evidently prepared to oppose the Government and challenge them to propose a measure in favour of Ireland, if they had one. It was in this speech that, alluding to his reserve on the question of Home Rule until the fit moment for action should arrive, he described himself as an old Parliamentary hand. He had long been a coiner of phrases that have become household words in Parliament, and yet this description became famous among us at once.’
Lord Houghton writes in 1866: ‘I sat by Gladstone at the Delameres’. He was very much excited, not only about politics, but cattle plague, china, and everything else. It is indeed a contrast to Palmerston’s “Ha, ha!” and laissez faire.’ Again in 1868 Lord Houghton writes: ‘Gladstone is the great triumph, but, as he owns that he has to drive a four-in-hand consisting of English Liberals, English Dissenters, Scotch Presbyterians, and Irish Catholics, he requires all his courage to look his difficulties in the face, and trust to surmount them.’
In 1849 Lord Malmesbury writes: ‘Dined with the Cannings, and met Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Phillimore. We were anxious to see the former, as he is a man much spoken of as one who will come to the front. We were disappointed at his appearance, which is that of a Roman Catholic priest; but he is very agreeable.’ On another occasion Malmesbury speaks of Gladstone as ‘a dark horse.’ In 1866 Lady Palmerston tells Lord Malmesbury that his lordship had very serious apprehensions as to Mr. Gladstone’s future career, and considered him a very dangerous and reckless politician. About the same time Lord Palmerston said to the Earl of Shaftesbury: ‘Gladstone will soon have it all his own way, and when he gets my place we shall have strange doings.’ A little later on Lord Malmesbury refers to the zest with which Mr. Gladstone had taken to singing nigger melodies.
Mr. Gladstone in 1865, questioned on the subject of the Irish Church, wrote: ‘It would be very difficult for me to subscribe to any interpretation of my speech on the Irish Church like that of your correspondent, which contains so many conditions and bases of a plan for dealing with a question apparently remote and at the same time full of difficulties on every side. My reasons are, I think, plain. First, because the question is remote, and out of all bearing on the practical politics of the day, I think it would be far worse for me than superfluous to determine upon any scheme or bases of a scheme with respect to it. Secondly, because it is difficult, even if I anticipated any likelihood of being called on to deal with it, I should think it right to take no decision beforehand as to the mode of dealing with the difficulties. But my first reason is that which chiefly sways. As far as I know, my speech signifies pretty clearly the broad distinction between the abstract and the practical views of the subject. And I think I have stated strongly my sense of the responsibility attaching to the opening of such a question except in a state of things which gives promise of satisfactorily settling it. . . . In any measure dealing with the Church of Ireland, I think (though I scarcely expect ever to be called on to share in such a measure), the Act of Union must be recognised, and must have important consequences, especially with reference to the position of the hierarchy.’
A little amusement will be created by the following:
Mr. Jerningham, author of ‘Reminiscences of an Attaché,’ met Mr. Gladstone at Strawberry Hill just after the Liberal defeat on the Reform Bill. Sitting near him at breakfast, Mr. Jerningham asked Mr. Gladstone for his autograph.
‘“Certainly,” he said; “but you must ask me a question on paper, and I will answer it.”
‘I was twenty-three years of age—very proud of being in such interesting company at such a time, and therefore most anxious to justify my presence by some clever question.
‘I wrote down quickly the following, and, rather pleased with it, gave it to Mr. Gladstone. It ran thus: “What is Mr. Gladstone’s opinion of the difference which exists in 1866 between a Liberal and a moderate Conservative?”
‘Mr. Gladstone crumpled up the paper, and, apparently much annoyed, said he did not think he could answer such a question.
‘I was so concerned by his look of vexation that I went up to one of the ladies and repeated my question to her, so as to gather from her in which way I had offended.
‘She nearly screamed—at least, so far as that person could ever utter a sound—and asked how I could ever have been so bold.
‘The truth dawned upon me. The moderate Conservatives of 1866 had dissolved a powerful Liberal Ministry, and I had inquired what he thought of them—of the very statesman who had put their moderate principles to the test.’
After this faux pas one is not surprised that Mr. Jerningham rejoiced that a dinner in town obliged him to leave his hosts on that very afternoon. But, after all, the storm soon blew over, and the incident had a pleasant ending. As Mr. Jerningham was on his way to Richmond, whom should he find upon the boat at Twickenham but Mr. Gladstone himself! So ends the tale:
‘I very modestly bade good-bye to him without any allusion to my indiscretion of the morning; but with infinite kindness and charm of manner, he said, “I have not forgotten you,” and pulled out of his pocket my original question and his characteristic answer to it:
“‘Strawberry Hill, June 24, 1866.
“‘The word Moderate, as far as my observation goes, does no great credit—according to the manner in which it is now used—either to the word Liberal or to the word Conservative. Every Liberal claims to be Conservative; every Conservative to be Liberal. I know of no solution of the question between them except the test of their works.
‘“Yours very truly,
‘“W. E. Gladstone.”’
Count Beust says: ‘When I was ambassador in London, Mr. Gladstone, who was then in office, was caricatured with his colleagues in a piece called “The Happy Land,” at the Court Theatre. This annoyed the Premier, and the piece was taken off.’
In the General Election for 1865 Mr. Gladstone lost his seat for the University of Oxford. For years it was evident that his advancing views were gradually drifting him from the Oxford constituents, and when an Act was passed to enable country clergymen and non-resident M.A.’s—by means of voting papers—to swamp the real Oxford constituency, Mr. Gladstone’s seat was gone, and his opponent, Mr. Hardy, triumphed. The battle was bravely fought, and the blow was severely felt by Mr. Gladstone and his friends. In his farewell address Mr. Gladstone said: ‘After an arduous connection of seven years, now I bid you farewell. My earnest purpose to serve you—my many faults and shortcomings—the incidents of the political relationship between myself and the University established in 1847, so often questioned in vain, and now at length finally dissolved—I leave to the judgment of the future. It is an imperative duty, and one alone which induces me to trouble you with these few parting words—the duty of expressing my profound and lasting gratitude for indulgence as generous, and for support as warm and enthusiastic in itself, and as honourable from the character and distinctions of those who have given it, as has, in my belief, ever been given by any constituency to any representative.’
‘The salient figure,’ writes Sir Richard Temple, ‘was the impressive personality of Mr. Gladstone himself, who was quite the figure-head in this Parliament. Naturally he was no longer the handsome man with the beautiful voice who had been wont to charm a listening senate. But still his attitude was noble, picturesque, and when under excitement he was grandly leonine. Advanced age had left its trace on him outwardly, and had impaired his matchless powers of elocution. The once resonant voice often would become husky, and at times almost inaudible, so that his voice rose and fell with a cadence like the wind. But his persuasiveness for many minds remained in its highest degree. His impassioned gesture seemed to be quieter; it could not conceivably have been finer than it was in those days. When excited in speech, he would sweep his arm round like the play of a scimitar, and yet with a movement both graceful and appropriate. His hands, too, were most impressive, and by their motion or action helped him to enforce his arguments. Above all, there was the play of features on the careworn countenance. Evidently he was in the highest sense of the term one of Nature’s orators.’ The quality of his speeches was not quite what it had once been in all respects. The passion, the glow, the sympathy, the magnetism remained as of yore.
At the Oxford election Dr. Pusey wrote to a friend: ‘You are naturally rejoicing over the defeat of Mr. Gladstone, which I mourn. Some of those who concurred in that election or stood aloof will, I fear, mourn hereafter because they were the cause of that rejection. The grounds alleged against Mr. Gladstone bore at the utmost upon the Establishment. The Establishment might perish and the Church might come forth the purer. If the Church were corrupted the Establishment would become a curse in proportion to its influence. As that conflict will thicken, Oxford will, I think, learn to regret her rude severance from one so loyal to the Church, to the faith, and to God.’
Speaking in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester during the South Lancashire election, Mr. Gladstone said: ‘After an anxious struggle of eighteen years, during which the unbounded devotion and indulgence of my friends have maintained me in the arduous position of representative of the University of Oxford, I have been driven from that position; but do not let me come among you under false colours or with a false pretence. I have loved the University of Oxford with a deep and passionate love, and as long as I live that attachment will continue. If my affection is of the smallest advantage to that great, that noble, that ancient institution, that advantage, such as it is—and it is most insignificant—that attachment Oxford will possess as long as I breathe. But don’t mistake the issue which has been raised. The University has at length, after eighteen years of self-denial, been drawn by what I might call the overweening exercise of power into the vortex of mere party politics. Well, you will readily understand why, as long as I had a hope that the zeal and kindness of my friends might keep me in my place, it was not possible for me to abandon them. Could they have returned me by but a majority of one, painful as it is to a man at my time of life, and feeling the weight of public cares, to be incessantly struggling for his seat, nothing could have induced me to quit the University to which I had so long devoted my best care and attachment. But by no act of mine I am free to come among you. And having thus been set free, I need hardly tell you that it is with joy, with thankfulness and enthusiasm that I now, at the eleventh hour, make my appeal to the heart and mind of South Lancashire, and ask you to pronounce upon that appeal.’
Mr. Gladstone then described what had been done by himself and party, commencing with the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, dwelling on the reformation of the Poor Law, the reformation of the tariffs, the abolition of the Corn Laws, the abolition of the Navigation Laws, the conclusion of the French Treaty, the removal of laws which have relieved Dissenters from stigma and almost ignominy, adding: ‘I can truly say that there is no period of my life during which my conscience is so clear, and renders me so good an answer, as those years in which I have co-operated in the promotion of Liberal measures. Because they are Liberal they are the true measures, and indicate the true policy by which the country is made strong and its institutions preserved.’
In a speech delivered the same evening at the amphitheatre at Liverpool, Mr. Gladstone continued: ‘I am, if possible, more firmly attached to the institutions of my country than when a boy I wandered among the sand-hills of Seaforth. But experience has brought its lessons. I have learned that there is wisdom in a policy of trust, and folly in a policy of mistrust. I have observed the effect which has been produced by Liberal legislation; and if we are told that the policy of the country is in the best and broadest sense Conservative, honesty compels me to admit that that result has been brought about by Liberal legislation.’
About this time the Duke of Newcastle died, leaving Mr. Gladstone a trustee of his son’s estate. ‘In this capacity,’ writes Mr. G. W. E. Russell, ‘the Chancellor of the Exchequer applied himself with characteristic thoroughness to the duties pertaining to the management of a rural property, and acquired in the superintendence of the woodlands of Chester that practical knowledge of woodcraft which has since afforded him such constant interest and occupation.’
The new Parliament was opened on February 6, 1866, the Queen appearing at the ceremony for the first time since her widowhood. In offering his services to Earl Russell, after the death of Palmerston, Mr. Gladstone wrote: ‘I am sore with conflicts about the public expenditure, which I feel that other men would have escaped, or conducted more gently and less fretfully. I am quite willing to retire.’
As one of the Ministers who engaged in the Crimean War, Mr. Gladstone had to leave office, Lord Derby being unable to form a Ministry, as Mr. Gladstone and the Peelites would not join him. Lord Palmerston became Premier, and Mr. Gladstone returned to office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, but resigned three weeks afterwards, on the ground that the Government assented to Mr. Roebuck’s motion for a committee to inquire into the conduct of the war. Twenty years after Mr. Gladstone contended: ‘The design of the Crimean War was in its groundwork the vindication of European law against an unprovoked aggression. It sought, therefore, to maintain intact the condition of the menaced party against the aggressor; or, in other words, to defend against Russia the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire.’ This resignation took place in February, 1855, and Mr. Gladstone’s position in consequence became very isolated. According to his subsequent statement, he was driven from office. His sympathies, he owns, were with the Conservatives, his opinions with the Liberals.
The Bishop of Oxford writes of Gladstone as in the highest sense of the term ‘Liberal’—‘detested by the aristocracy for his succession duty, the most truly Conservative measure passed in my recollection.’ Yet Mr. Gladstone was still as eager as ever in Church matters. Archdeacon Denison had been prosecuted for teaching the doctrine of the Real Presence, and was condemned by Dr. Lushington, acting as assessor to Archbishop Sumner. Gladstone wrote: ‘Whatever comes of it, two things are pretty clear: The first, that not only with the executive authorities, but in the sacred halls of justice, there are now two measures, and not one, in use—the straight one, for those supposed to err in believing too much; and the other for those who believe too little. The second is, that this is another blow to the dogmatic principle in the Established Church, the principle on which, as a Church, it rests, and on which, as an establishment, it seems less and less permitted to rest. No hasty judgment is pardonable in these matters; but for the last ten or twelve years the skies have been darkening for a storm.’ Again he writes: ‘The stewards of doctrine should, on the general ground of controversy and disturbance, deliver from their pulpits, or as they think fit, to the people the true and substantive doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. This freely done, and without any notice of the Archbishop or Dr. Lushington, I should think far better for the time than any declaration.’
Mr. Gladstone, as leader of the House, introduced a Reform Bill Lord Russell laboured at in the Cabinet, which was not very cordial in its favour, but he was supported by Mr. Gladstone, deciding to deal only with the question of the franchise, and leaving the question of redistribution to a later time. The Bill, which was introduced by Mr. Gladstone on March 12, proposed the reduction of the county franchise from £50 to £14, and of the borough franchise from £10 to £7. Some people seemed to think that Mr. Gladstone did not speak with his accustomed force; but that may be accounted for by the remembrance that he had to speak to a House not very enthusiastic in favour of Parliamentary reform. But the first reading was carried after two nights’ debate, and the second reading was fixed for April 12. It was, however, evident that, while the Conservative party were organized, the Liberals on their side were divided and indifferent. They argued with some force that the Government had brought forward only half of its scheme, and that it was impolitic and unstatesmanlike to accept one portion of the scheme without being acquainted with the whole. Lord Grosvenor, though sitting on the Liberal benches, declared that he would meet the second reading by a resolution to that effect; while Mr. Kinglake, the author of ‘Eothen,’ aiming at the same end, but anxious to secure the maintenance of the Government, announced that he should ask the House of Commons to declare that it was not expedient to go into Committee on the Bill until the House had before it the expected Bill for the redistribution of seats. The House, however, passed the second reading, but by a majority so small that the continuance of the Ministry in power was difficult. The Ministry, however, decided to persevere, and in April introduced three additional measures—a Redistribution Bill for England and Wales, and Reform Bills for Scotland and Ireland. But the condition of affairs did not improve—on the contrary, grew worse; and on June 1 Lord Dunkellin, the eldest son of Lord Clanricarde, carried a motion against the Government, substituting rating for rental as the basis of the borough franchise. The Ministry resigned, and Lord John Russell as a Parliamentary leader disappears from history.
There were people who hinted that Lord John was jealous of Mr. Gladstone’s success. Such does not seem to have been the case. In 1853 his lordship wrote to Lady John: ‘Gladstone’s speech was magnificent. It rejoices me to be a party to so large a plan, and to do with a man who seeks to benefit the country rather than to carry a majority by a concession to fear.’ Again, when the question of privilege arose on the action of the Lords with regard to the paper duty, Lord John told the Duke of Bedford that Mr. Gladstone’s speech was ‘magnificently mad.’ In 1867 Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord John: ‘My political relations with you have been late in life. I moved to you, not you to me; and ever since we have been in contact—that is to say, during the last fifteen years—my co-operation with you has been associated all along with feelings of warm attachment and regard. Every motion that moves me further from you is painful to me. . . . If you do not stand without a rival, I, for one, do not know where to look for your superior in the annals of British legislation.’ A little later on, when Mr. Gladstone brought forward the motion which sounded the knell of the Tory Government and of the Established Church in Ireland, Lord John presided at an enthusiastic meeting, held in St. James’s Hall, London, to support Mr. Gladstone’s policy; and when, in December, 1868, Mr. Gladstone formed his first Administration, one of the first persons he wrote to to join him was Lord John. Upon the refusal of the latter, on the plea of age, Mr. Gladstone wrote: ‘The snapping of ties is never pleasant, but your resolution is probably a wise one. Perhaps it is selfish of me to think of and mention them, rather than dwell upon those ties which inseparably associate your name with so many great and noble passages in the history of our country.’ And again, when Mr. Gladstone had introduced his Irish Land Act, he wrote to Lord John: ‘We have had a most anxious time with regard to the Irish Land Bill. Often do I think of a saying of yours more than thirty years back, which struck me ineffaceably at the time. You said the true key to an Irish debate was this: that it was not properly borne in mind that as England is inhabited by Englishmen, and Scotland by Scotchmen, so Ireland is inhabited by Irishmen.’
Let us return to the Reform Bill. It was evident that London was getting excited on the subject. When the Liberals resigned in June, some ten thousand people assembled in Trafalgar Square and passed strong resolutions in favour of Reform. They then marched to Carlton House, singing litanies and hymns in honour of Mr. Gladstone. As he was away, Mrs. Gladstone and her family came out on the balcony to acknowledge the popular tribute. At meetings all over England Mr. Gladstone was hailed as the hero of the people. He had become ‘the People’s William.’ On July 13 Lord Houghton wrote to a friend on the Continent: ‘The change of Ministry has passed over very quietly. It was a real collapse, and inevitable by human skill. Gladstone showed a fervour of conviction which has won him the attachment of three hundred men and the horror of the rest of the House of Commons. He will be all the better for a year or two of opposition.’ It was in the course of this debate that Mr. Gladstone, replying to Lord R. Montagu’s expression that the working classes, if armed with the franchise, would be an invading and destroying army, evoked a ringing cheer when, in a climax of enthusiasm, he asked: ‘Are they not our own flesh and blood?’
In the autumn Mr. Gladstone, with his family, spent a short while in Rome, where he had an interview with the Pope, which gave rise to rumours he had formally to deny, that during that visit he had made arrangements with the Pope to destroy the Irish Church Establishment, and that he was a Roman Catholic in heart.
In 1867 Mr. Disraeli, as leader of the House of Commons, introduced his celebrated Reform Bill, or, rather, Reform Resolutions. He proposed to reduce the occupation franchise for boroughs to a £6 rating, in counties to £20. The franchise was also to be extended to persons having £50 in the funds or £50 in a savings bank for a year. Payment of £20 of direct taxes would also be a title to the franchise, as would a University degree. Votes would further be given to clergymen, ministers of religion generally, members of the learned professions, and certificated schoolmasters. It was proposed to disfranchise Yarmouth, Lancaster, Reigate, and Totnes, and to take one member each from twenty-three boroughs with less than seven thousand inhabitants. The House would have thirty seats to dispose of, and it was proposed to allot fourteen of them to new boroughs in the Northern and Midland districts, fifteen to counties, and one to the London University; the second division of the Tower Hamlets two members, and several new county divisions would have two additional members each. The scheme would add 212,000 voters to the boroughs, and 206,500 to the counties. Mr. Gladstone pointed out the inconvenience of proceeding by resolution, and the Government undertook to introduce a Bill.
In March, 1867, the Bill was introduced, much to the dissatisfaction of Lord Cranborne, now Lord Salisbury, the Earl of Carnarvon, and General Peel, who resigned the offices they held. But the Bill was read a second time without a dissentient; the fight in the Committee was short and sharp. In May Lord Houghton writes: ‘I met Gladstone at breakfast. He seemed quite awed with the diabolical wickedness of Dizzy, who, he says, is gradually driving all ideas of political honour out of the House, and accustoming it to the most revolting cynicism.’ At this time it is understood that there was a temporary want of harmony between Mr. Gladstone and some of his supporters. When the Bill was read a third time Lord Cranborne denied emphatically that it was a Conservative triumph. The Bill, he said, had been modified at the dictation of Mr. Gladstone, who demanded, first, the lodger franchise; secondly, the abolition of the distinction between compounders and non-compounders; thirdly, a provision to prevent traffic in votes; fourthly, the omission of the taxing franchise; fifthly, the omission of the dual vote; sixthly, the enlargement of the distribution of seats; seventhly, the reduction of the county franchise, the omission of voting-papers, and the omission of the educational and savings banks franchise. ‘If,’ continued his lordship, ‘the adoption of the principles of Mr. Bright could be described as a triumph, then the Conservative party in the whole history of its previous annals had won no such signal triumph before. I desire,’ continued Lord Cranbourne, ‘to protest in the most earnest language I am capable of against the political morality on which the measures of this year have been passed. If you borrow your politics from the ethics of the political adventurer, you may depend upon it the whole of your political institutions will crumble beneath your feet.’ In the House of Lords Earl Derby unblushingly described it as a leap in the dark. Shooting Niagara it was described by Carlyle. Mr. Disraeli, however, rejoiced with exceeding joy over the event. By his own energy and faith in himself he had attained to the highest distinction—yet still many regarded him with distrust. In August Bishop Wilberforce writes: ‘No one can even guess at the political future. Whether a fresh election will strengthen the Conservatives or not seems altogether doubtful. The most wonderful thing is the rise of Disraeli.’
At this time Mr. Maurice wrote to his son: ‘I am glad you have seen Gladstone, and have been able to judge a little of what his face indicates. It is a very expressive one—hard-worked, as you say; not, perhaps, especially happy; more indicative of struggle than of victory, but not without promise of that. I admire him for his patient attention to details, and for the pains which he takes to prevent himself from being absorbed in them. He has preserved the type which I remember he bore at the University thirty-six years ago, though it has undergone curious developments.’
When in February, 1868, Parliament met, it was announced that Lord Derby, owing to failing health, had resigned—that Mr. Disraeli was to be Premier. And then came Mr. Gladstone’s turn. The Liberal party, once more united, had things all their own way. Mr. Gladstone brought in a Bill to abolish compulsory Church rates, and that was carried. He announced that he held the condition of the Irish Church to be unsatisfactory. In March he moved: ‘1. That in the opinion of this House it is necessary that the Established Church of Ireland should cease to exist as an Establishment, due regard being had for all personal interests and to all individual rights of property. 2. That, subject to the foregoing considerations, it is expedient to prevent the creation of new personal interests by the exercise of any public patronage, and to confine the operations of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to objects of immediate necessity or involving individual rights, pending the final decision of Parliament. 3. That an humble address be presented to Her Majesty, humbly to pray that, with a view to the purposes aforesaid, Her Majesty will be graciously pleased to place at the disposal of Parliament interest in the temporalities, in archbishoprics, bishoprics, and other ecclesiastical dignities and benefices in Ireland and in the custody thereof.’ ‘I am sorry,’ writes Bishop Wilberforce, ‘Mr. Gladstone has moved the attack on the Irish Church. It is altogether a bad business, and I am afraid Gladstone has been drawn into it from the unconscious influence of his restlessness at being out of office. I have no doubt that his hatred to the low tone of the Irish Church has had a great deal to do with it.’
For many years the subject had been before the public. A Royal Commission had been appointed to deal with the question, and it had given rise to more than one debate in the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone’s own adoption of the policy of Disestablishment had been made evident in a speech delivered July, 1867, although he abstained from voting. His relation to the question had, however, as he indicated, been practically declared for more than twenty years. A year later, on a motion by Mr. Maguire, ‘that this House resolves itself into a Committee with the view of taking into consideration the condition and circumstances of Ireland,’ Mr. Gladstone spoke more decidedly, declaring that, in order to the settlement of the condition of the Irish, the Church as a State Church must cease to exist, and in consequence of this declaration Mr. Maguire withdrew his motion. On the first division on Mr. Gladstone’s resolutions he obtained a majority of sixty against Government. Subsequent divisions having confirmed and increased this majority, Mr. Disraeli announced on May 4 that he had advised Her Majesty to dissolve Parliament in the coming autumn, in order that the opinion of the country might be taken on the great issue put before it. Great was the excitement everywhere, and many were the public meetings held on the subject in all parts of England. At a meeting of Church supporters held in St. James’s Hall in May, Archbishop Longley in the chair, there were twenty-five bishops on the platform, besides an array of peers and M.P.’s. Archbishop Tait, who moved the first resolution, referring to a speech of his own on the Church Rate Bill, writes to his son: ‘Gladstone fell foul of it somewhat roughly on moving his Irish Church resolutions, but last Sunday your mother and I went to the little church in Windmill Street which Mr. Kempe has built for the poor of St. James’s, and there found Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone taking refuge from the glare of London for a quiet Sunday morning; and as we all walked home together, I had some most agreeable conversation with him. I wish he was not so strangely impetuous, for he is certainly a good Christian. . . . I almost hope that something may be done to bring him to reason about reforming, not destroying, the Irish Church. This, no doubt, is what the Old Whigs really desire, if only they could get Disraeli out.’ Mr. Disraeli soon gratified—at any rate, to a certain extent—the Old Whigs. In November the constituencies replied to the appeal made to them by Mr. Disraeli by an almost unprecedented majority for his opponent. The national verdict could no longer be opposed. Mr. Disraeli himself recognised the fact by resigning office without waiting for the meeting of Parliament. When Parliament met in February, Mr. Gladstone was Premier. Defeated in Lancashire, he had been elected for Greenwich.
There were, of course, party cavillings when the member for Greenwich was gazetted in August, 1873, as Chancellor of the Exchequer without vacating his seat for the Metropolitan borough; but the polemics in the press gradually ceased upon the subject, without materially weakening his influence upon his pledged supporters, and the public at large hardly found time to listen to the controversy. Trade was good, and remunerative enterprise continued to advance by leaps and bounds—to borrow one of Mr. Gladstone’s famous phrases. On one occasion, when a Tory member argued against a certain measure that it was not the right time to introduce it, Mr. Bernal Osborne wittily exclaimed: ‘Not the right time, sir? We take our time from Greenwich.’
No sooner had Parliament met than the Queen, in order to smooth the difficulties of the question, wrote to Bishop Tait, who had then become Archbishop of Canterbury: ‘The Queen has seen Mr. Gladstone, who shows the most conciliatory disposition. He really seems to be moderate in his views, and anxious, so far as he properly and consistently can do so, to meet the wishes of those who would maintain the Irish Church. He at once assured the Queen of his readiness—and, indeed, his anxiety—to meet the Archbishop and to communicate freely with him on the subject of this most important question; and the Queen must express her hope that the Archbishop will meet him in the same spirit.’ The Government could do nothing that would tend to raise a suspicion of their sincerity in proposing to disendow the Irish Church, and to withdraw all State endowments from all religious communities in Ireland, but with these conditions accepted, all other matters connected with the question might, the Queen thought, thus become the subject of discussion and negotiation. The interview, when it took place, seems to have much relieved the Archbishop’s mind, especially as Mr. Gladstone at that date had not made public any authoritative statement of the shape which his Disestablishment policy was to assume. The Archbishop used to say in after-years that his position after the interview for about ten days was the most difficult he had ever known. In addition to the necessarily urgent correspondence of such a time, he had to grant interviews to men of every sort and condition who came to consult, inform or interrogate him upon the absorbing topic which was on every lip; and he had not merely to give attention to larger comments and conjectures, and to say something suitable in reply, but to keep entirely secret all the while the scheme which Mr. Gladstone had unfolded to him, and even the fact that such a communication had taken place.
At length came Monday, March 1, and Mr. Gladstone unfolded his scheme. For some three hours and a half Mr. Gladstone occupied the attention—the absorbed attention—of an eager House. It was one of his grandest oratorical triumphs. Complicated details, which in other hands would have been dry and lifeless, kept the listener spellbound. ‘It was strange,’ writes the Archbishop, ‘to hear Gladstone on Monday last unfold his scheme in the House of Commons, knowing beforehand what it was all to be, and having, indeed, had a rehearsal of it in my library.’
Mr. Gladstone’s Bill was in accordance with the resolutions he had moved when in opposition. The actual moment of Disestablishment he proposed to postpone until January 1, 1871; but from the passing of the Act the creation of private interests was to cease, and the property of the Church was to pass at once into the hands of Commissioners appointed for the purpose. All the ecclesiastical laws of the Disestablished Church were to exist as a binding contract to regulate the internal affairs of the Disestablished Church until such time as they should be altered by the voluntary agency of whatever new governing body would be appointed. The churches and burial-grounds were to become on application the property of the Disestablished Church, and the glebe-houses as well, on payment of the somewhat heavy existing building charges. The whole value of the Church property was estimated at sixteen millions; of this sum, £8,500,000 would be swallowed up in the necessary compensation of various kinds, and the remaining seven and a half millions would be applied to the advantage of the Irish people, but not to Church purposes. Special provision was made for incumbents and unbeneficed curates. As to the post-Reformation grants, Mr. Gladstone fixed a dividing line at the year 1680, agreeing that all grants made from private sources subsequent to that year should be handed over intact to the Disestablished Church. As to the remaining seven millions and a half, it was to be devoted to the relief ‘of unavoidable calamities and suffering not provided for by the Poor Law,’ to the support of lunatic and idiot asylums, institutions for the relief of the deaf and dumb and blind, and other kindred objects. These details, one after another, were set forth with great clearness, and the speech was closed with a magnificent peroration, which drew a warm tribute of admiration even from the bitterest opponents of the Bill.
In the House of Commons the Bill was carried triumphantly, in spite of good debating on the part of its enemies. On the second reading, the division was 368 for, 250 against. But it was in the Lords that the battle was chiefly fought, when the second reading was carried, after a debate which lasted till three in the morning, by 179 against 146. Upon a division being called, the two English Archbishops, amid a scene of intense excitement, retired to the steps of the throne, which are technically not within the House; Bishop Wilberforce and several Conservative peers withdrew. Among the Conservatives who voted with the Government were Lord Salisbury, Lord Bath, Lord Devon, Lord Carnarvon, and Lord Nelson. The only Bishop who voted with the Government was Bishop Thirlwall, of St. David’s. Thirteen English and three Irish Bishops voted on the other side. But in Committee the Lords tacked on sixty-two amendments. Punch had a clever cartoon on the occasion. The Archbishop of Canterbury was represented as a gipsy nurse giving back a changeling instead of the child that had been presented to him, saying, ‘Which we’ve took the greatest care of ’m, ma’m,’ while Mrs. the Prime Minister replies, ‘This is not my child—not in the least like it.’ The Ministerialists described the Bill to be so mutilated as to be practically useless, and the vociferous Radical cheers which greeted Mr. Gladstone as he rose on July 15 to move that the Lords’ amendments be considered were significant of the temper of the House. Nothing could be more uncompromising than his speech. He made no attempt to soften down the differences; he even accentuated their gravity, as he recounted the amendments one by one, and called upon the House to reject the preposterous proposals of men who had shown themselves to be as ignorant of the feelings of the country as if they had been ‘living in a balloon.’ He insisted on the rejection of each and every clause which involved, however indirectly, the proposal of concurrent endowment; he declined to sanction the postponement of the date of Disestablishment; and he declined to leave the disposal of the anticipated surplus to the wisdom of a future Parliament. He consented, however, to allow a reconsideration of the commutation terms, and he went further than some of his supporters in agreeing to give the lump half-million in lieu of the private endowments which had been so much discussed. His unyielding attitude made the Lords furious. When the Peers met, after a debate of quite unusual warmth, they resolved by a majority of 74 to agree to the first and most important of their amendments—the authorization of the principle of concurrent endowments. Lord Granville immediately adjourned the House to take counsel with his colleagues. It seemed as if a collision between the two Houses was inevitable. However, Mr. Gladstone and Lord Cairns met, a compromise was effected, the danger of a collision between the two Houses was avoided, and the Bill for Disestablishing and Disendowing the Irish Church—which Mr. Gladstone had enthusiastically and somewhat sanguinely believed to be a message of peace to Ireland—became law. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been one of the chief instruments in the negotiations, writes in his diary: ‘We have made the best terms we could, and, thanks to the Queen, a collision between the Houses has been averted; but a great occasion has been poorly used, and the Irish Church has been greatly injured without any benefits to the Roman Catholics.’
In Ireland the scheme was met with mingled emotions. The Church party were in despair, and their attachment to England was undoubtedly weakened. One of the ablest of Irish patriots—Mr. John O’Neill Daunt—wrote: ‘The scheme, as set forth, is to some extent undoubtedly a disendowment scheme, but objectionable in not going so far in that direction as Mr. Gladstone might have done with propriety and with full consideration for the vested interests of existing incumbents. His capitation scheme is, in fact, a plan for re-endowment, by which several millions of money, obtained by the sale of Church property, will be permanently abstracted from the Irish public and appropriated to the ecclesiastical uses of the present State Churchmen and their successors. This is anything but equality, and cannot be accepted as a final settlement by the Irish nation.’ Again he writes: ‘The Lords have passed Mr. Gladstone’s Bill, with some mutilations, to which the Commons finally assented in a conference. The Bill is a wretched abortion—in fact, it is such a sham as might have been expected from an English Parliament. It pretends to disendow the State Church, which it re-endows with about five-eighths of the Church property in a capitalized shape. . . . If Gladstone were an honest friend of Ireland, he could have averted all this danger by withholding the power to capitalize. To be sure, it is a queer disendowment that sends off the parsons with five-eighths of the money in their pockets.’ Again he writes: ‘On the whole, I dare say we have a sort of qualified triumph—nothing to boast of, considering that the result of nearly thirteen years’ agitation is a measure that enables the parsons to walk off with ten or eleven millions of our money in their pockets, that still exacts from us the rascally rent-charge, and that swindles Ireland of the amount of Irish taxes heretofore kept in the country by Maynooth and the Regium Donum.’
Nor were the English Dissenters, by whose aid Mr. Gladstone had carried the Bill, very much elated about it. Their organ, the British Quarterly Review, at some length showed how Mr. Gladstone’s pretended disendowment had given back the State Church property to the disestablished clergy in a capitalized shape. It was enough for the mob to feel that Mr. Gladstone had put an end to the Irish State Church—that upas-tree which had long blighted the country. Be that as it may, nothing was more beautiful than Mr. Gladstone’s peroration when he moved his resolutions. Said he: ‘There are many who think that to lay hands on the National Church Establishment is a profane and unhallowed act. I sympathize with it. I sympathize with it, while I think it is my duty to overcome and suppress it. There is something in the idea of a National Establishment of religion—of a solemn appropriation of a part of the commonwealth for conferring upon all who are ready to receive it what we know to be an inestimable benefit; of saving that part or portion of the inheritance from private selfishness, in order to extract from it, if we can, pure and unmixed advantages of the highest order for the population at large. There is something attractive in this—so attractive that it is an image that must always command the homage of the many. It is somewhat like the kingly ghost in “Hamlet,” of which one of the characters of Shakespeare says:
‘“We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
But it is as the air invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.”
But, sir, this is to view a religious Establishment upon one side only—upon what I may call the ethereal side; it has likewise a side of earth. And here I cannot do better than quote some lines written by the present Archbishop of Dublin at a time when his genius was devoted to the Muses. He said, speaking of mankind:
And so the Church Establishment, regarded in its theory and its aim, is beautiful and attractive. Yet what is it but an appropriation of public property—an appropriation of the fruits of labour and skill to certain purposes; and unless those purposes are fulfilled, that appropriation cannot be justified. Therefore, sir, I think we must set aside fears, which thrust themselves upon the imagination, and act upon the sober dictates of our judgment. I think it has been shown that the cause for action is strong—not for precipitate action, not for action beyond our powers, but for such action as the opportunities of the times and the condition of Parliament, if there is a ready will, will amply and easily admit of. If I am asked as to my expectations of the issue of this struggle, I begin by frankly avowing that I, for one, would not have entered into it unless I had believed that the final hour was about to sound. “Venit summa dies et ineluctabile fatum.” And I hope that the noble lord will forgive me if I say that before last Friday I thought that the thread of the remaining life of the Irish Established Church was short, but that since Friday last, when at half-past four o’clock in the afternoon the noble lord stood at that table, I have regarded it as being shorter still. The issue is not in our hands. What we had and have to do is to consider deeply and well before we take the first step in an engagement such as this, but, having entered into the controversy, there and then to acquit ourselves like men, and to use every effort to remove what still remains of the scandals and calamities in the relations that exist between England and Ireland, and to make our best efforts, at least, to fill up with the cement of human concord the noble fabric of the British Empire.’
Mr. Gladstone triumphed. Mr. Disraeli contented himself with the victory of his great rival. Mr. M‘Cullagh Torrens writes that he happened to pass near the Conservative leader in the cloisters as he muffled to resist the outer air, and could not help asking him what he thought of Gladstone’s speech in introducing the Bill. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘perfectly wonderful! Nobody but himself could have gone through such a mass of statistics, history, and computations.’ And then, after a pause: ‘And so characteristic in the finish to throw away the surplus on the other idiots.’
During the Educational debates Mr. Miall said that the Premier had ‘led one section of the Liberal party through the valley of humiliation; but once bit, twice shy, and we can’t stand this sort of thing much longer.’ Mr. Gladstone sharply replied: ‘I hope that my hon. friend will not continue his support of the Government one moment longer than he deems it consistent with his sense of duty and right. For God’s sake, sir, let him withdraw it the moment he thinks it better for the cause he has at heart that he should do so. So long as my hon. friend thinks fit to give us his support, we will co-operate with my hon. friend for any purpose we have in common, but when we think his opinions and demands exacting, when we think that he looks too much to the section of the community he adorns, and too little to the interests of the people at large, we must then recollect that we are the Government of the Queen, and that those who have assumed the high responsibility of administering the affairs of the empire must endeavour to forget the part in the whole, and must, in the great measures they introduce into the House, propose to themselves no meaner or narrower object—no other object than the welfare of the empire at large.’ Again, in opposing Mr. Miall’s motion for doing to the English Church what had been done to the Irish, he said: ‘The Church of England is not a foreign Church; it is the growth of the history and traditions of the country. It is not the number of its members or the millions of its revenue—it is the mode in which it has been from a period shortly after the Christian era, and has never for 1,300 years ceased to be, the Church of the country, having been at every period engrained into the hearts and feelings of the great mass of the people, and having entwined itself with the local habits and feelings, so that I do not believe there lives the man who could either divine the amount and character of the work my honourable friend would have to undertake were he doomed to be responsible for the execution of his own propositions, or who could in the least degree define or anticipate the consequences by which it would be attended. If Mr. Miall sought to convert the majority of the House of Commons to his views, he must begin by converting to his views the opinions of the majority of the people of England.’
The attempt to carry an Irish University Bill led Mr. Gladstone to resign. Mr. W. E. Forster writes: ‘Gladstone rose with the House dead against him, and made a wonderful speech, easy—almost playful—with passages of great power and eloquence, but with a graceful ease which enabled him to plant daggers into Horsman, Fitzmaurice and Co.’ Again he writes: ‘Gladstone determined to resign; outside opinion very strongly for resignation. Gladstone made quite a touching little speech; he began playfully. This was the last of a hundred Cabinets, and he wished to say to his colleagues with what profound gratitude—and then he broke down, and could only say that he would not enter on the details. Tears came into my eyes, and we were all very touched.’ As Mr. Disraeli was unable to form a Government, Mr. Gladstone, however, soon returned to power, he resuming his old place as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Touching the Irish University Bill, Lord Blachford writes: ‘Coleridge is sanguine about Gladstone’s Irish University Bill. He seems to have started with the Cabinet against him, and to have converted them all (their point being, I suppose, to have something that would pass), especially some whom Coleridge describes as full of admiration for the scheme. I don’t understand it, but I imagine that it gives or leaves to everybody enough to stop their mouths without infuriating their neighbours.’ As stated, Mr. Gladstone returned to office, only to leave it in the following year, when he dissolved Parliament and the Tories had a majority. Mr. Gladstone retained his seat for Greenwich, but a local Tory was at the head of the poll.
Lord Russell’s charges against Mr. Gladstone of indifference on colonial questions is somewhat borne out by his conduct with regard to the annexation of Fiji, which he opposed in 1873, but which was ultimately carried out by the Government that succeeded his in the following year. In reply to Sir W. M’Arthur’s motion in the House for the annexation of Fiji, Mr. Gladstone said: ‘Nothing was easier than to make out a plausible case of appropriation of this kind, and yet nothing would so much excite the displeasure of those who cheered his honourable friend the member for Lambeth, than when for such appropriations a similar disposition was shown by other countries. It might be the chill of old age that was coming upon him, but he confessed he did not feel that excitement for the acquisition of new territory which animated the hon. gentleman.’ As to commerce, with our inability ‘to cope with expanding opportunities, he did not feel the pressure of the argument for securing special guarantees for our trade in every part of the world.’ He was more discursive in replying to what he called, ‘in no taunting spirit, the philanthropic part of the question.’
Nothing was more unexpected, or, as it happened, nothing more disastrous, than Mr. Gladstone’s sudden dissolution of Parliament in 1874. Mr. M’Cullagh Torrens writes: ‘On January 24 I was amused at breakfast by a paragraph read by one of my family—which, in the profundity of legislative wisdom, I treated as an editorial jest—announcing an immediate dissolution. When convinced at last by reference to an address to Greenwich that the decree had really gone forth, my breath was again taken away by learning that the immediate cause was the authoritative confession that the Cabinet had lost the necessary influence in directing public opinion, and that the new departure requisite for its recovery consisted in the offer to abolish the income-tax, and the creation of a number of peasant boroughs instead of those which might be still spared as belonging to the upper classes.’ Mr. Chamberlain severely described Mr. Gladstone’s address containing these proposals as ‘the meanest public document which had ever in like circumstances proceeded from a statesman of the first rank.’ It fell flat on the public.
In 1875 Mr. Gladstone, to the surprise of his friends, announced his determination to retire from the leadership of his party, and the Marquis of Hartington was selected in his stead, and held that post until the end of the session of 1879. The situation was a little embarrassing. The difficulties he had to encounter as leader of a minority in the House of Commons were enormously increased by the fact that he had to deal, not merely with his followers, but with his brilliant predecessor, who could at any moment, by his own individual action, lead the Liberal party into any course in which he chose to direct them.
Continuing his career as a reformer, we find Mr. Gladstone repealing the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and abolishing religious tests in the Universities; and as the Lords threw out his Bill for the Abolition of Purchase in the Army, he abolished it by Royal Warrant. Many old Whigs questioned the wisdom of the procedure, as they did also his conduct in the Alabama Claims, which he referred to arbitration, when, as is always the case, the arbitrators decided against us and in favour of America. Earl Russell, who has a claim to be heard on the question, writes that he declined to submit the claims to arbitration by a foreign Power because ‘it appeared to me that we could not consistently with our position as an independent State allow a foreign Power to decide either that Great Britain had been wanting in good faith or that our law officers did not understand so well as a foreign Power or State the meaning of a British statute.’
His lordship severely criticised the way in which Mr. Gladstone formed his Ministry, as done with little tact or discrimination. ‘I cannot think,’ he continues, ‘that I was mistaken in giving way to Mr. Gladstone as head of the Whig-Radical party of England. During Lord Palmerston’s Ministry I had every reason to admire the boldness and the judgment with which he had directed our finances. I had no reason to suppose that he was less attached than I was to our national honour; that he was less proud than I was of our national achievements by land or sea; that he disliked the extension of our colonies; or that his measures would tend to reduce the great and glorious empire of which he was put in charge to a manufactory of cheap cloth and a market for cheap goods, with an army and navy reduced by paltry savings to a standard of weakness and inefficiency.’
In March, 1874, Mr. Gladstone addressed a letter to Lord Granville, in which he said: ‘At my age I must reserve my entire freedom to divest myself of all the responsibilities of leadership at no distant date. . . . I should be desirous shortly before the season of 1874 to consider whether there would not be an advantage in my placing my services for a time at the disposal of the Liberal party, or whether I should claim exemption from the duties I have hitherto discharged.’ Mr. Gladstone at that time was sixty-four—certainly no great age for himself or any other statesman of his time; and when Mr. Russell Gurney proposed to legislate on Ritualism, Mr. Gladstone was back in the field. After his unsuccessful intervention, Mr. Gladstone again retired from active participation in affairs; but he returned to the subject in the autumn by contributing an article to the Contemporary Review, in which he passionately protested against the attempt to impose uniformity of practice on the clergy of the Church of England by legislation. In the following passage he did much to offend the Roman Catholics: ‘As to the question whether a handful of clergy are or are not engaged in an utterly hopeless and visionary attempt to Romanize the Church and the people of England, at no time since the bloody reign of Queen Mary has such a scheme been possible. But if it had been possible in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, it would still have become impossible in the nineteenth, when Rome has substituted for the proud boast of semper eadem a policy of violence and change in faith; when she has refurbished every rusty weapon she was fondly thought to have disused; when no one can become her convert without renouncing his mental and moral freedom, and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another; and when she has equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history.’ This article was followed up by his celebrated pamphlet, ‘The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance.’
Ministers had an easy time of it till they got to the purchase of the shares in the Suez Canal, which Mr. Gladstone vehemently opposed, though it seems to have turned out well. When Mr. Gladstone declared that it was an unprecedented thing to spend the money of the nation in that way, Sir Stafford Northcote replied: ‘So is the canal.’ Mr. Gladstone was soon to prove how far from real was his intention of retiring into private life. We began to hear of Bulgarian atrocities and of the Turkish horrors. It was a cause into which Mr. Gladstone threw himself heart and soul. He published an article in the Contemporary Review, advocating the expulsion of ‘the unspeakable Turk,’ bag and baggage, from the country. His pamphlets were in every hand. In the meanwhile we had another crisis in the East. We were on the verge of war with Russia, and the Jingoes, as the war party came to be denominated, went about the streets singing:
‘We don’t want to fight; but, by Jingo! if we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too!’
Mr. Disraeli had sought refuge in the House of Lords as Earl Beaconsfield. All this time Mr. Gladstone kept rather quiet in Parliament, but from time to time he addressed meetings in the country, denouncing the Jingoes. We find him, however, supporting a vote of censure on the Government, moved by Lord Hartington, he himself having already moved one. It was a false move in tactics, as the Government obtained a crushing majority. But the Ministry were doomed, nevertheless. At the General Election in 1880 they had a decisive defeat, mainly due to Mr. Gladstone, who had gone to Scotland to win Midlothian, hitherto the stronghold of the Duke of Buccleugh, and who had carried the fiery cross in triumph from London to the North. Never had he exerted himself more, and never with such splendid results. As Mr. Disraeli had said when referring to Mr. Gladstone’s temporary retirement from political life, ‘There will be a return from Elba;’ nor was that return long delayed. Once more he was Premier.
But there was a difficulty. At the time of the victory Lord Hartington, not Mr. Gladstone, was the leader of the Liberal party. When Lord Beaconsfield resigned, which he had the grace to do without meeting Parliament, the Queen, according to precedent, sent for Lord Hartington. He could do nothing, and then the Queen summoned Lord Granville, the Liberal leader in the Lords. The two statesmen went together to the Queen, and assured her that the victory was Mr. Gladstone’s, and that he was the only possible Premier. They returned to London in the afternoon, and called upon Mr. Gladstone in Harley Street. He was expecting the message which they brought, and he went down to Windsor without a moment’s delay. This was on April 23. That evening he kissed hands and returned to London, a second time Premier. The prospect was not cheering. On a vote on the Bradlaugh affair the Government majority was seventy-five. There were difficulties about Sir Bartle Frere at the Cape, about Cyprus, about the Employers’ Liability Bill, and a hot debate on opium. ‘Gladstone,’ writes Sir Stafford Northcote, ‘had been dining out to meet the authoress of “Sister Dora” (Miss Lonsdale), who was very much alarmed by the rapidity and variety of his questions, and only came back in time to express his opinion that the House was too much influenced by sentiment and too little by judgment. It must be as good as a play to hear such sentiments from such a quarter.’ In the course of one of the debates on the Bradlaugh affair, Sir Stafford Northcote writes: ‘Gladstone spoke early, and evidently under great anxiety. His speech, especially in the earlier part, was a very fine one, and produced a considerable impression. Towards the end, however, he refined too much, and seemed a little to lose his hold of his audience. Gibson followed him with a very able and telling speech, but, unfortunately, the House had greatly emptied for dinner when Mr. Gladstone sat down. It is a favourite habit of his to speak into the dinner-hour, so that his opponent must speak either to empty benches or forego the advantage of replying on the instant.’ The Opposition when the division was taken had a majority of forty-four, ‘a result,’ adds Sir Stafford Northcote, ‘wholly unexpected on our side, the more sanguine having only hoped for a close run, and being prepared to renew the fight by moving the previous question, and adjourning the debate on it. The excitement when the numbers were given was greater than I ever remember. There was shouting, cheering, clapping of hands, and other demonstrations, both louder and longer than any I ever heard in my Parliamentary life.’
It may be stated that ultimately the question of Bradlaugh was settled by Mr. Gladstone’s moving a resolution to admit all persons who may claim their right to do so, without question and subject to their liability to penalties by the State.
When the new Parliament assembled the Liberals were in a majority of more than a hundred, if the Irish Home Rulers were counted as neutral. If they were added to the Liberal ranks, their majority became 170. No one then thought of adding them to the Conservatives, though half of them—the Parnellites—subsequently voted with the Conservatives in a vast number of divisions, and finally contributed to Mr. Gladstone’s downfall.