J. Ewing Ritchie

“ Gladstone’s nearest neighbours and most intimate friends, said that there was no home in the United Kingdom where there was more freedom of opinion or more frankness in expressing disagreement than in the home of Mr. Gladstone.
‘His daily life at home is a model of simplicity and regularity, and the great secret of the vast amount of work he accomplishes lies in the fact that every odd five minutes is occupied. No man ever had a deeper sense of the preciousness of time and the responsibility which everyone incurs by the use or misuse he makes of it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In fact, he thinks too highly of himself and too meanly of his followers. Like Napoleon’s generals, they are to him mere mud, to be shaped and moulded according to his imperial will. The dissatisfaction arising from his conduct is not a thing of yesterday. God, as Mahomed says, has made men to be men—not foxes and wolves; and the love of truth and abhorrence of untruth inherent in the healthy British character have gradually opened the eyes of Mr. Gladstone’s most able and most independent supporters to his misdeeds. ”

“ Gladstone’s life would have been lacking to a large extent had she not felt such an overflowing sympathy for the people—for the poor and trouble-burdened, the weary and the faint-hearted. One of her friends was once lamenting to her that she could do nothing for others because she had not means. “Oh yes, you can, my dear: you can do everything; you can love them.” ”

“ Gladstone, ‘been more gratified than by the very kind note which I have just received from you. Your book itself, and everything that I have heard about you—though almost all my information came, I must say, to the honour of our troubled times, from people very strongly opposed to you in politics—led me to regard you with respect and goodwill.’ Again Macaulay wrote: ‘I have no idea that he will ever acquire the reputation of a great statesman. ”

“ Always at his side ministering to him and diverting his mind by steady cheerfulness and bright talk, she has made his life an exceptionably joyous one, and she basks in the sunshine of the happiness she has created. For many years, while her children were growing up about her and needing her watchful care, she had manifold duties, but for a long time there has been no divided responsibility, and the accustomed way for both of them has been together, and together in a union so close that it is really that exceptional thing—a soul-marriage. ”

“ Let me borrow an illustration from the world of politics. Discord is comparatively rare and slight in a political club, because a political club is an institution formed to maintain some scheme of opinion current at the time and familiarly apprehended, though its tests be but rough, by those who join it. But the Houses of Parliament, in which these rival systems have to dwell together and to work themselves out into common results, are and must be the homes of frequent and serious contention. ”

“ Gladstone, Mr. Spurgeon says:
‘We feel bound to express our great regret that the great Liberal leader should have introduced his Irish Bills. We cannot see what our Ulster brethren have done that they should be cast off. They are in great dismay at the prospect of legislative separation from England, and we do not wonder. They have been ever our loyal friends, and ought not to be sacrificed. Surely something can be done for Ireland less ruinous than that which is proposed. The method of pacification now put forward seems to us to be full of difficulties, absurdities, and unworkable proposals. ”

“ Bright? If Ireland were towed out 2,000 miles into the Atlantic your relations with Ireland would be at an end. We want to substitute for that union of force the union of hearts. We want that Ireland shall be united to England as Wales is united to England, as Scotland is united to England, not that they should be dead to their own national interests and concerns, but that they should desire to pursue them and promote them as measures of a firmly united and compacted empire. ”

“ Gladstone’s eulogy of books in opening a working men’s library in Saltney:
‘And now I commend you again to your books. Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books—and without even taking them down from their shelves—they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome. They seem to tell you that they have got something inside their covers that will be good for you, and that they are willing and desirous to impart to you. Value them much. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Knowing this, I felt bound to advise the Emperor to accede to the views of the Déak party, securing the solidarity of the empire by the guarantees afforded through the systems of delegations and joint budget. Mr. Gladstone cannot urge upon your House of Commons the same reasons for granting Home Rule to Ireland. England has not been, and I trust never will be, beaten as Austria had been beaten. No foreign foe has been dictating terms at the gates of London. ”

“ Gladstone’s physician for years, said he never had a more docile patient than Mr. Gladstone. The moment he is really laid up he goes to bed, and there remains till he recovers. He is a firm believer in the doctrine of lying in bed when you are ill. You keep yourself in an equable temperature, avoid the worries and drudgery of everyday life, and being in bed is a good pretext for avoiding the visits of the multitude of people whose room is better than their company.
Mr. Gladstone’s admirers are very angry when it is intimated that his character is not perfection. ”

“ I have chosen a young man whom I did not know, and whom I never saw, but of whose good character and abilities I have often heard. He is the young Gladstone, and I hope he will do well. He has no easy part to play in the House of Commons, but it is a fine opening for a young man of talent and ambition, and p. 37places him in the way to the highest distinction. He appears to me so amiable that I am sure, personally, I shall like him.’ It is interesting in this connection to note Mr. Gladstone’s opinion of Lord Aberdeen. ”

“ It was believed that if he were to commit even a little sin or to imagine an evil thought he would instantly arraign himself before the dread tribunal which awaited him within his own bosom, and that his intellect being subtle and microscopic, and delighting in casuistry and exaggeration, he would be likely to give his soul a very harsh trial, and treat himself as a great criminal for faults too minute to be visible to the naked eyes of laymen. ”

“ As Chancellor of the Exchequer I have not taken it. An annual Act of Indemnity passes with your consent to dispense with it, and all who choose avail themselves of the dispensation. I put it to you that this declaration ought not to be maintained upon the Statute Book. If it is right to require of certain persons that they should declare something on behalf of the Established Church, the law, and not the individual, should define who those persons should be. An established legal præmunire of self-exception is fatal to the law. ”

“ How can a man be happy who has survived all his passions and enjoyments?’ ‘Oh, my dear lord,’ was the reply of his old antagonist, ‘do not talk so; while God is pleased to enable me to read my Homer and my Bible, I cannot but be thankful and happy.’ It is easy to imagine Mr. Gladstone making a similar reply. His love of Homer is only equalled by his love of the Bible. Porson used to say of Bishop Pearson that, if he had not muddled his head with theology, he would have been a first-class critic in Greek. ”

“ Spurgeon, writing to a Cardiff Liberal who opposes Mr. Gladstone’s Irish policy, says:
‘As to Ireland, I am altogether at one with you; especially I feel the wrong proposed to be done to our Ulster brethren. What have they done to be thus cast off? The whole scheme is as full of dangers and absurdities as if it came from a madman, yet I am sure Mr. Gladstone is only doing justice, and acting for the good of all. ”

“ Ward was condemned at Oxford for his book, ‘The Ideal of a Christian Church,’ Mr. Gladstone was one of the non-placets. In a letter to his friend Bishop Wilberforce in 1844, Mr. Gladstone writes: ‘I rejoice to see that you are on the whole hopeful. For my part, I heartily go along with you. The fabric consolidates itself more and more, even while the earthquake rocks it; for, with a thousand drawbacks and deductions, love grows warmer and larger, truth firmer among us. ”

“ We have a state of things in Ireland by which, if we seize and do not lose the golden opportunity, this same union may be gained. While Ireland, in consonance with her traditions and in consequence of those physical circumstances by which she is divided from us by the Channel, desires the management of her own concerns, she is happily disposed to union with us, and to be at one with us in everything that concerns the greatness of the empire ”

“ Gladstone has spent his life in the House of Commons, and cannot imagine a political system or a scheme of popular rule without as accurate a copy as conditions permit of the English representative Chamber. Again, he understands the English people so well, he has so completely identified himself with the ideas and aspirations of the upper class of bourgeoisie, that he considers it scarcely worth while to attempt to understand any other race. If he attempts such an intellectual process he can only measure the unfamiliar by reference to the familiar object. ”

“ It was at this time that Lord Stanley conceived the notion of a new penal colony in North Australia, and it fell to his successor, Mr. Gladstone, to give it form and substance. Mr. Hogan does not spare Mr. Gladstone’s political errors; he is, on the contrary, rather given to dwelling upon them with an acerbity which is to be regretted. We all know that the venerable statesman, who has now well-nigh outlived the bitterness of party rancour, had in those days much to learn. ”

“ To him books are almost as sacred as human beings, and the increase of their numbers is perhaps as interesting a problem as the increase of population. It is real pain to him to see a book badly treated—dropped on the floor, unduly squeezed into the bookcase, dog’s-eared, or, worst crime of all, laid open upon its face. ”

“ These cheers were the genuine expression of the sentiment of the country. They, our opponents, teach you to rely on the use of this deserted and enfeebled and superannuated weapon of coercion. We teach you to rely upon Irish affection and goodwill. We teach you not to speculate on the formation of that sentiment. We show you that it is formed already; it is in full force; it is ready to burst forth from every Irish heart and through every Irish voice. ”

“ You must know that a large number of your supporters are utterly opposed to that Bill. If you tie the two Bills together, their difficulty in dealing with them will be much increased and their liberty greatly fettered. I think your friends and your opponents and the country have a right to know your intentions on so great a matter, when you are asking them to elect a Parliament in your favour. Your language seems to me rather a puzzle than an explanation, and that of your colleagues, though contradictory, is not much clearer. “I have done what I could to keep out of controversy with you.” ”

“ Gladstone: ‘The French have a derisive saying that there are no political women in England, and hence no salons in London. They have no appreciation of that class of Englishwomen, who are far more important and beneficial to society than are the corresponding class in France. But there is a social factor in English politics unattainable by any other nation, and possibly only under just such a form of Government and with such a ruler as Queen Victoria has proved herself to be. ”

“ Never before has any statesman filled so large a space in public life, or secured so enormous a popularity. At times, even after 1892, there was talk of his returning to Parliament as leader, to head his followers, who were as sheep having no shepherd. ”

“ It is the fashion to deny him a sense of humour, a judgment that could only be passed by a superficial observer. In private conversation his marvellous memory gives forth from its apparently illimitable stores an appropriate and frequently humorous idea of the current topic. ”

“ Christianity is the religion in the command of whose professors is lodged a proportion of power far exceeding its superiority of numbers, and this power is both moral and material. In the area of controversy it can be said to have hardly an antagonist. Force, secular or physical, is accumulated in the hands of Christians in a proportion almost overwhelming, and the accumulation of influence is not less remarkable than that of force. This is not surprising, for all the elements of influence have their home within the Christian precinct. ”

“ No revolution is latent, and, a point also worthy of consideration, the population of Ireland is only about five millions, including those Protestants who are against the Home Rule scheme, as compared with what I should think was the wish of the great majority of the thirty millions composing the population of Great Britain; whereas the area of Hungary is greater than that of Austria proper, and its population is nearly one-half of the total population of the empire.’
Well might Count Beust ask: ‘How can Mr. Gladstone use my dualistic system as a precedent for his scheme of Home Rule?’
p. ”

“ Pitt and Castlereagh promised at the Union that Irish taxation should not be approximated to British until an increased prosperity should enable us to bear the increased burden. The prosperity has not come, but the tax must be got. If, says Gladstone, you have not got wealth to be mulcted, your poverty will answer me quite as well. For the purchasing power of £150 is greater in a poor country than a rich one; whence he argues that, as Ireland is p. 45poor, an Irish income of £150 is a fitter subject of taxation than an income of equal amount in England. ”

“ He blamed Lord Randolph Churchill for speaking in their favour. He entirely differed from that noble lord as to the judges. He believed all judges now on the bench could be trusted perfectly. But there was one judge now upon the bench who came down from the bench to take a part in regard to the great Irish Question more violent than had been taken by any layman he could remember. If one of the gentlemen sitting below the gangway said it was excusable in him to feel some mistrust in such a case, though he (Mr. Gladstone) should not feel mistrust himself, he could understand that mistrust. ”

“ No man can receive the homage that has fallen to the lot of Mr. Gladstone during so many years without experiencing a kind of moral intoxication and forming an excessive idea of his own infallibility. ”

“ I felt myself open to the charge of being opinionated and wanting in deference to really great authorities, and I could not but see that I should be evidently regarded as fastidious and fanciful, fitter for a dreamer, or possibly a schoolman, than for the active purposes of public life in a busy and moving age.’
While at the Board of Trade Mr. Gladstone found time to devote himself as ardently as ever to ecclesiastical subjects. He was one of the party supremely interested in the establishment of an Anglican Bishop at Jerusalem. ”

“ In the anti-slavery recollections of Sir George Stephen we have a graphic account of the struggle between Gladstone, as the advocate of slavery, and Sir John Jerome, a colonial judge, who may be said to have died a martyr to his anti-slavery zeal. ‘I shall never forget,’ writes Sir George, ‘his examination before the Apprenticeship Committee. Gladstone employed all his ingenuity in vain, and no man has a greater share of logical acumen, to bewilder him. ”

“ He passionately implored his party to hold together, in order, above all things, that they should return a Liberal majority so considerable as to make it independent of the Irish party. He expressed the hope that from one end of the country to the other there would not be a single representative returned to Parliament who would listen to any proposition tending to impair the visible empire. Whatever demands might be made on the part of Ireland, if they were to be entertained they must be subject to the condition that the union of the empire should be preserved. ”

“ Lord Hatherley wrote in 1855: ‘There is but one man of genius in the House, I think—Gladstone.’
Professor Tyndall wrote in a letter to the Times: ‘Nature, which has so richly endowed him in many ways, has denied him the faculty of discerning the defeat which, even in the springtide of power and in the flush of victory, he has over and over again gratuitously wooed. ”

“ A plain straight man like Lord Hartington, or Lord John Russell, or Sir Stafford Northcote, impresses the average Englishman more favourably than a curiously acute one like the Prime Minister. The popular impression—that he is an austere purist, and would not resort to any of the tricks or wriggles that characterize ordinary party leaders—is altogether a mistake. Those who are brought in contact with the Legislature know that he can resort to any of the devices of partizanship as readily as men who are popularly accounted his inferiors. ”

“ Our responsibility for them cannot be questioned; yet its character ought not to be misapprehended. In such a task miscarriages were inevitable. They are the proper and certain consequence of undertakings that war against nature, and that lie beyond the scope of human means, and of rational and prudent human action; and the first authors of these undertakings are the real makers of the mischief.’
In connection with this subject, let us add the following from Gordon’s Diary at Khartoum: ‘Poor Gladstone’s Government! how they must love me! I will accept nothing whatever from Gladstone’s hands. ”

“ Gladstone’s Home Rule scheme, he has, to my mind, little or no excuse for introducing it, and the parallel he draws between it and the dual system I inaugurated is utterly fallacious. Agrarian agitation is the plea which he uses for giving the Irish people a separate Parliament. I believe that the agrarian system in Ireland has for centuries been a bad one, and the land legislation of 1881—whatever people may think of it from a moral point of view—will unquestionably bring about good results. ”

“ John O’Neill Daunt, who in 1882 thus closes his diary for the year: ‘The year now ending has been blackened by most abominable crimes and murders. Parnell and his followers acquired vast popularity by denouncing the evictors, the extortioners, the rack-renters; had they stopped there they would have merited praise. But in attacking all landlords—good and bad landlords—they fatally widened that severance of classes which has always been the curse of Ireland.’
Unprejudiced Englishmen—not excited by hope of triumph for a party—were naturally sceptical about Home Rule for Ireland. ”

“ The long and numerous Cabinets, which were attributed in the Times to disunion, were occupied in minute consideration of the Budget, which was there fully discussed; and Gladstone spoke in the Cabinet one day for three hours, rehearsing his speech in the House of Commons, though not quite at such length. . . . He talked of a future head, as Aberdeen is always quite ready to retire; but it is very difficult to find anyone to succeed him. I suggested Gladstone. He shook his head, and said it would not do. He spoke of the great mistakes Derby had made. ”

“ I should not be surprised if, some fine day, he took those simple Unionists at their word and made the required declaration. But could we be sure of him afterwards? For years, according to his own confession, he nourished in the dark corners of his mind this fungus of Home Rule, while to all his friends he seemed earnestly bent on extirpating it. A man of this stamp has no claim to the trust or credence of Liberal Unionists.’
Writing in 1879, Principal Tulloch says: ‘I bought the Observer on my way back, and read Gladstone’s philippic against the Government. What a man he is! ”