Herbert Woodfield Paul

“ His power was over masses ; and no one quite knows what he was who has not heard him address a great public meeting. Even in the House of Commons,though he almost always delighted it, and at times roused it to such enthusiasm as no one else could elicit, he often provoked antagonism which he might have avoided. He could not, as Disraeli said that Peel could, play upon the house like an old fiddle. Having entered public life a tory, and left it a radical, Gladstone was naturally accused of being an 'opportunist,' or, in plain English, a time-server. ”

“ Gladstone thought that a great national emergency calling for prompt action had arisen, and that he at seventy-six must cope with it. He could not have expected that he would live to be eighty-eight. There was at least one sphere in which Gladstone's mind did not fluctuate. From the straight line of orthodox Christianity he never swerved by the breadth of a hair. The Christian religion guided every day and every act of his life. He was, as Lord Salisbury said after his death, 'a great Christian man.' As an orator Gladstone's only contemporary rival was John Bright. ”

“ The defect of his conversation was that he could not help being earnest on all subjects, and failed to see that his views on the making of violins were less interesting than his experience of government by cabinet. In combined breadth and subtlety of intellect no statesman of his own age surpassed him. He was equally at home in drawing up a great measure like the Irish Land Act of 1881, and in refining upon the point whether the retention of the Irish members with home rule was a principle or an 'organic detail.' Sometimes his subtlety led him to draw sophistical distinctions. ”

“ The Irish representative peers would cease to sit in the House of Lords, and the Irish members would cease to sit in the House of Commons. Ireland would tax herself in all branches of taxation except customs and excise. The balance of customs and excise duties, after the discharge of Ireland's obligations to the British government, would be paid into the Irish exchequer. Certain powers would be reserved to the imperial parliament, affecting the crown, the army, the navy, and foreign or colonial relations. The Irish legislature would be expressly prohibited from endowing any religious body. ”

“ Gladstone's budget next year (1860) was one of his greatest and most memorable achievements. It had been preceded by the commercial treaty with France, which Cobden, holding no official position, had, under Gladstone's superintendence, concluded in the autumn with the emperor of the French. By this treaty, which was to last for ten years, England agreed to abolish all duties on manufactured goods and to reduce the duties on brandy and wine. France agreed to lower her tariff on English goods and to treat England on the footing of the most favoured nation. ”

“ By arguments which to him were satisfactory, but which drew upon him the shaft of Lowell's wit ('lifelong convictions to extemporise') , he showed that his opinions forced him to become a home-ruler when five-sixths of the Irish people were so, and home rule could be given to Ireland without endangering the unity of the empire. Whether it would endanger that unity was the great question, and there can be no doubt that Gladstone sincerely held it would not. The charge of precipitation is, from his point of view, not a charge at all. ”

“ Every penny given by a man to charitable objects in his lifetime, though it might involve not only generosity but privation, was taxed to the uttermost. He asked whether it was right and just that parliament should specially favour wills which might endow a charitable institution and leave the testator's family destitute; he asserted that an exemption from a tax was a grant of public money, and he denied the moral right of parliament to grant money without retaining control of it. ”

“ In the second part of his pamphlet, called 'Lessons of the Elections,' Gladstone analysed the position of the majority. He pointed out that, while the proportion of liberal unionists to liberals was among the peers five-sixths, it was among the working classes no more than one-twentieth. He showed that Ireland, Scotland, and Wales were all in favour of home rule, England alone being against it. Exaggerated apprehensions of the consequences to which the land purchase bill would lead were, he believed, the real cause of his defeat, and that bill was altogether dead. ”

“ Lord Salisbury said that the country had lost the most brilliant intellect ever devoted to the service of the state since parliamentary government began. Though Gladstone remained a member of parliament till the dissolution of 1895, he issued on 21 March 1894 his farewell address to the electors of Midlothian. In this he made a dignified appeal to the masses of the people, in whose hands, he said, political power now rested. And he warned them that they must be on their guard against the temptation to pursue their own selfish interests, which sometimes beset every portion of the community. ”

“ On 5 May Forster explained the grounds of his resignation. He had been unable, he said, to concur in the opinion that the release of the suspected persons was justified, either by any satisfactory assurances from them or by the condition of Ireland. Gladstone, in reply, intimated that, in the opinion of the government, the peace of Ireland would be greatly furthered by an arrears bill, in which they might hope for the support of the Irish homerulers. If that reconciliation could be effected, it would be unreasonable to detain in prison men who might help in carrying it out. ”

“ The Duke of Westminster, an old political follower, who had been estranged from his chief by home rule, but who, like the Duke of Argyll, had been brought back to friendly alliance with him by this recent phase of the eastern question, was in the chair. Gladstone maintained that England had a right of interference under the treaty of Paris, and that by the Anglo-Turkish convention of 1878 England was not merely authorised, but bound, to protect the Asiatic subjects of the Porte. But moral considerations, he said, had no weight at Constantinople. ”

“ Lord Hartington did not at once refuse to form a government, but, after an interview with Gladstone on the 22nd, when he returned from Windsor, he decided not to attempt it. On the 23rd he and Lord Granville saw the queen together, with the result that her majesty sent for Gladstone the same afternoon. He at once formed, without difficulty, a strong administration, becoming himself, as he had been in 1873, prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer. Lord Granville and Lord Hartington both took office under him, the former as foreign secretary, and the latter as secretary for India. ”

“ On the same evening Sir Stafford Northcote rose to move a vote of censure on the Egyptian policy of the government. Gladstone's position was a difficult one. He defended himself on the double ground that the great source of evil in Egypt was the dual control which he had inherited from his predecessors, and that since the British occupation began valuable reforms had been carried out. There was to be no reconqest of the Soudan, but the garrison of Tokar was to be relieved from Suakim. ”

“ In one respect Gladstone and his cleverest contemporaries at Eton were premature men. They were ardent politicians, studying parliamentary debates, writing about them to each other in the holidays, and even keeping such division lists as they could get hold of. ”

“ Gladstone used to say that there was no man he more regretted not to have known than Lord Melbourne.
Peel succeeded Melbourne as prime minister on 31 Aug. 1841, and Gladstone became vice-president of the board of trade and master of the mint. He was sworn of the privy council, but not admitted to the cabinet. He was disappointed with his office, for he had no practical knowledge of commerce, and he had hoped to be chief secretary for Ireland. But it was the making of his career. Peel at once set himself to reform the tariff, and Gladstone was his chief assistant in the task. ”

“ The debate on the second reading of the home rule bill began on 10 May, and was prolonged with intervals till 7 June. Gladstone, in moving that the bill be read a second time, intimated that he was not unwilling to reconsider the question of retaining the Irish members at Westminster, though he gave no hint of the manner in which this could bedone. In a spirited peroration he declared that the path of boldness was the path of safety, and he called upon his opponents to say what they considered was the alternative to home rule. ”

“ Even in Scotland he disappointed many of his most ardent supporters by intimating that the time was not ripe for the disestablishment of the Scottish church. As for Ireland, he held that she was entitled to the utmost measure of local self-government consistent with the integrity of the United Kingdom. Parnell declared that this was the most important deliverance on Irish affairs which had hitherto come from any British statesman, and called upon Gladstone to say particularly what his plan of Irish self-government was. ”

“ After George Canning's death in August 1827, Gladstone wrote a fervent eulogy of him there, the first of his many tributes to that statesman. Gladstone, as he told the House of Commons in 1866, 'was brought up under the shadow of the great name of Mr. Canning.' His father had induced Canning to stand for Liverpool in 1812, and the crowd at that election was the first thing Gladstone could remember. When he went from Eton to Oxford he was a Canningite in politics, and a Canningite in foreign politics he always remained. ”

“ On 30 July the treaty of Berlin was brought before the house by Lord Hartington, who moved a resolution sarcastically described by Beaconsfield as 'a series of congratulatory regrets.' Lord Hartington asked the house to condemn the failure of the congress to satisfy the just claims of Greece, and to censure the government for having incurred a liability to defend the Asiatic dominions of the sultan. To this debate Gladstone contributed an elaborate and argumentative speech, unusually devoid of rhetoric, and devoted to an exhaustive analysis of what the treaty did and failed to do. ”

“ Disraeli, who, though he was three times chancellor of the exchequer, never became an expert financier, could make no head against them, albeit his parliamentary genius was never more fully displayed than as leader of the opposition in the parliament of 1859. But before the budget of 1861 Gladstone introduced a social and economic reform which has proved immensely advantageous to the lower and middle classes of society. This was the post office savings bank bill, which he brought in on 8 Feb., and which became law without serious difficulty. ”

“ His favourite pastime of cutting down trees was begun in the woods of Clumber, which he inspected as the Duke of Newcastle's trustee. Till after seventy he was a great walker, and no stretch, however long, seemed to tire him. Wordsworth's plain living and high thinking was Gladstone's standard. His father left him a sufficient fortune, which exempted him from the necessity of adopting any other profession than politics. Hawarden Castle, his Welsh home, belonged to his wife's brother, Sir Stephen Richard Glynne, and, after Sir Stephen died unmarried in 1874, to Mrs. Gladstone for her life. ”

“ This year Gladstone succeeded in passing the university test bill, which had long been before parliament, and which opened the prizes of the universities to men of all creeds. Speaking on the women's suffrage bill of Jacob Bright, Gladstone made the admission that he would not object to women voting if the ballot were introduced, but to this isolated expression of opinion he gave no practical effect. On the other hand, he made an uncompromising speech against Miall's motion for the disestablishment of the church of England. ”

“ Never was a government formed under greater difficulties than was Gladstone's third and last administration. The prime minister was eighty-two, and, though his strength was unabated, the infirmities of age were creeping upon him. His power of hearing was greatly diminished. The majority was entirely dependent upon the Irish vote, and the Irish party itself had not been reunited by the death of Mr. Parnell in October 1891. Some of the liberal leaders, including Lord Rosebery, returned to office with great reluctance. ”

“ On 10 June Gladstone, as chancellor of the exchequer, introduced a supplementary budget, Sir Stafford Northcote's budget having provided only for the early part of the year. It was the first time he had made the financial statement of the government for fourteen years. The principal feature of it was the unexpected repeal of the malt tax, for which conservative representatives of the farming interests had clamoured for many years, but which no conservative government had found itself able to touch. ”

“ Having resigned, however, he felt himself at liberty to support Peel's proposal, arguing that, as grants were made by parliament for other religious purposes not connected with the church of England, it was unjust to exclude the church of the majority in Ireland. The grant to Maynooth was part of Peel's general scheme for improving university education in Ireland. He also proposed the foundation of unsectarian institutions, which Sir Robert Inglis called the 'godless colleges.' These also Gladstone defended, on the grounds of justice to Ireland and the interests of higher education. ”

“ On the other hand, and as a set-off, the debt incurred by Ireland at the time of the great famine, six years before, was wiped out. But Ireland was a loser by the transaction; for while the interest on the debt was 245,000l., the Irish income tax brought in about twice as much. Gladstone's triumph was so complete that no effective resistance could be offered to his main proposals in the House of Commons. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton (afterwards Lord Lytton) divided the committee against the continuance of the income tax, but he was beaten by a majority of seventy-one. ”

“ On 15 April 1861 Gladstone introduced his budget for the year in a speech which was pronounced by some impartial critics to be the finest he had yet delivered. He took off the penny which he had put on the income tax the year before. He again proposed the repeal of the paper duty. As for the income tax, he declared that it depended entirely upon the national expenditure. If the country would be content to be governed at the cost of 60,000,000l., they might get rid of the tax. ”

“ The royal Irish constabulary, so long as it existed, would remain under imperial control, and one third of its cost would be supplied from the imperial exchequer. To the general expenditure of the United Kingdom Ireland would contribute a proportion of one in twenty-six. At the conclusion of his speech Gladstone referred to the complete success of home rule in the British colonies, and drew from that fact the inference that it would be equally successful in Ireland. ”