James Richard Joy

“ For while we have seen, as stated by the right honorable baronet, the political earthquake rocking Europe from side to side; while we have seen thrones shaken, shattered, leveled, institutions overthrown and destroyed; while in almost every country of Europe the conflict of civil war has deluged the land with blood, from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, this country has presented a spectacle honorable to the people of England and worthy of the admiration of mankind. ”

“ Nor should his great work for Ireland obscure the grand achievements of the earlier years when he led the Liberal party through its wonderful program of reform in England; nor should any prejudice against the friend of Ireland dull our perception to the clear voice which so often pleaded the cause of ignorance and oppression at home and abroad, and touched the best that was in the conscience of his countrymen. A good, great, learned, eloquent statesman, William Ewart Gladstone towers in moral grandeur above his fellows like a mountain peak above the foothills, and the far-surrounding plain. ”

“ Our capital far exceeds that which they can command. In ingenuity, in skill, in energy, we are inferior to none. Our national character, the free institutions under which we live, the liberty of thought and action, an unshackled press, spreading the knowledge of every discovery and of every advance in science- -combine with our natural and physical advantages to place us at the head of those nations which profit by the free interchange of their products. And is this the country to shrink from competition? Is this the country to adopt a retrograde policy? ”

“ Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is marked out as the perpetual ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow. And if I might be allowed to express in one sentence the principle which I think ought to guide an English minister, I would adopt the expression of Canning, and say that with every British ministry the interests of England ought to be the shibboleth of policy. ”

“ He had met the widow of Charles Stuart, the young chevalier, in Florence; and had conversed with Napoleon in Elba. He knew Cavour and Bismarck. He was now an ally of Daniel O'Connell, and now of Cobden and Bright. He was the close friend of Thomas Moore; he knew Byron. Lord John Russell had tastes for literature, for art, for philosophy, for history, for politics, and his aestheticism had the advantage that it made him seek the society and appreciate the worth of men of genius and letters. Thus he never remained a mere politician like Pitt or Palmerston. ”

“ That, sir, is my notion of what makes a man a great statesman. I do not care whether he be a manufacturer or a manufacturer's son. That is a grand, that is indeed an heroic, position. But I care not what may be the position of a man who never originates an idea—a watcher of the atmosphere, a man who, as he says, takes his observations, and when he finds the wind in a certain quarter, trims to suit it. Such a person may be a powerful minister, but he is no more a great statesman than the man who gets up behind a carriage is a great whip. ”

“ The statesman who accomplished the disestablishment of the Irish Church, reformed the Land Laws, and devoted the closing decade of a great career to a fruitless endeavor to secure to Ireland the benefits of self- government, certainly ranks among the century's foremost Englishmen. In length of parliamentary service, in the frequency and duration of his terms as premier, in administrative ability, in moral force, and moving eloquence, it would be difficult to find in the long history of English statesmanship a name which shines with a purer ray than that of William Ewart Gladstone. ”

“ THE GOVERNMENT OF ENGLAND. [The following extract from a speech on Parliamentary Reform affords an excellent example of his style of eloquence.]
Other nations, excited by the example of the liberty which this country has long possessed, have attempted to copy our Constitution; and some of them have shot beyond it in the fierceness of their pursuit. I grudge not to other nations that share of liberty which they may acquire; in the name of God, let them enjoy it! But let us warn them that they lose not the object of their desire by the very eagerness with which they attempt to grasp it. ”

“ The problem which confronts the English at the end of the century is not whether they can hold their own against a foreign power as in the days of Waterloo, but whether all these British commonwealths can be made to work together in some sort of federal union, or whether the present ties are to dissolve or snap asunder and girdle the globe with independent states like the American republic, where each may be free to develop under its peculiar conditions the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race. ”

“ We have given Ireland a voice; we must all listen for a moment to what she says. We must all listen— both sides, both parties, I mean as they are, divided on this question—divided, I am afraid, by an almost immeasurable gap. We do not undervalue or despise the forces opposed to us. I have described them as the forces of class and its dependents; and that as a general description—as a slight and rude outline of a description—is, I believe, perfectly true. I do not deny that many are against us whom we should have expected to be for us. ”

“ Unfortunate will be the position of this country when a minister pursues a line of policy adverse to the convictions which he himself entertains. But when we come to a question of such high delicacy as the present, we may be permitted to ask ourselves what are the circumstances which require one so able, and one so eminent, to enter upon the vindication of himself, and to rise in this House, amid the cheers of his former opponents, to place himself in a position of an apologetical character to those who were once of his own party? ”

“ Our lot is happily cast in the temperate zone of freedom, the clime best suited to the development of the moral qualities of the human race, to the cultivation of their faculties, and to the security as well as the improvement of their virtues; a clime, not exempt, indeed, from variations of the elements, but variations which purify while they agitate the atmosphere that we breathe. Let us be sensible of the advantages which it is our happiness to enjoy. Let us guard with pious gratitude the flame of genuine liberty, that fire from heaven, of which our Constitution is the holy depository ”

“ As the inhabitants of those burning climates which lie beneath a tropical sun sigh for the coolness of the mountain and the grove, so (all history instructs us) do nations which have basked for a time in the torrid blaze of unmitigated liberty too often call upon the shades of despotism, even of military despotism, to cover them—a protection which blights while it shelters; which dwarfs the intellect and stunts the energies of man, but to which a wearied nation willingly resorts from intolerable heats and from perpetual danger of convulsion. ”

“ I do not complain of the conduct of those who have made these matters the means of attack upon her Majesty's ministers. The government of a great country like this is, undoubtedly, an object of fair and legitimate ambition to men of all shades of opinion. It is a noble thing to be allowed to guide the policy and to influence the destiny of such a country; and if ever it was an object of honorable ambition, more than ever must it be so at the moment at which I am speaking. ”

“ The defeat of the Tories in the first general election under the Reform Act was overwhelming. They mustered less than one-fourth of the House of Commons. It seemed to most cool political observers that the Whigs who now assumed office could not be displaced for a decade at least. The spirit of change was alive in all the nations of western Europe, and in England there seemed to be small need of a political party whose steady resistance to innovation was relieved only by the exceptions in which the party had espoused reform in extremity to save its own existence. ”

“ Such a man under any circumstances and in any sphere of life would probably have become remarkable. Ordained from his youth to be busied with the affairs of a great empire, such a man, after long years of observation, practice, and perpetual discipline, would have become what Sir Robert Peel was in the latter portion of his life—a transcendent administrator of public business and a matchless master of debate in a popular assembly. ”

“ The French Revolution had given currency to opinions which no congress of sovereigns could wholly repress, and now the policy of the "Alliance," to strangle all constitutional aspirations and rivet the chains of Bourbonism upon limbs that had once known the bliss of freedom, led to fierce intellectual revolt, and sometimes to physical violence. England had made common cause with Turk and Christian, Kaiser and King, against Napoleon, and for a time her statesmen viewed with complacency the Holy Alliance, so reassuring in its name and so pure in its professions ”

“ GLADSTONE AND DISRAELI At the head of the Liberals was William Ewart Gladstone, who in his younger days had followed his master, Peel, out of the old Tory lines into the camp of the free traders, and had been Russell's chief lieutenant, and Palmerston's financial minister for the last half-dozen years. He was a man of splendid intellectual power, sterling morality, an adept at parliamentary management, a shrewd financier, and held a deep conviction that it was the part of statesmanship to embody in law what he conceived to be the proper demands of the nation. ”

“ Sir, the right honorable gentleman has supported a different policy for a number of years. Well do we remember on this side of the House—perhaps not without a blush— well do we remember the efforts which we made to raise him to the bench on which he now sits. Who does not remember the "sacred cause of protection," the cause for which sovereigns were thwarted, Parliaments dissolved, and a nation taken in? ”

“ The necessity for a change of commercial policy grew out of the altered conditions in the nation. The agricultural England of the eighteenth century had in a generation been transformed into a hive of manufacturing industry. The rapid adoption of steam power and improved machinery in England on the one hand, and the paralysis of industry on the Continent during the Napoleonic wars, had wrought the change, while the commercial marine, guarded by her powerful navy, had brought the carrying trade of the world under her flag. ”

“ But, sir, we must ask ourselves, as members of the House of Commons, as the subjects of a popular government—we must ask ourselves, what were the means, what the machinery, by which the right honorable gentleman acquired his position, how he obtained power to turn round upon his supporters, and to treat them with contempt and disdain? ”

“ At ten minutes past eleven our light cavalry brigade advanced. The whole brigade scarcely made one effective regiment, according to the numbers of continental armies; and yet it was more than we could spare. As they rushed towards the front, the Russians opened on them from the guns in the redoubt on the right, with volleys of musketry and rifles. They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun in all the pride and splendor of war. We could scarcely believe our senses! Surely that handful of men were not going to charge an army in position? ”

“ When the Reform Bill of 1832 was passed, the Duke of Wellington bluntly declared his conviction that the result would be the speedy overthrow of the British Constitution. More sagacious observers than the great field-marshal were of the opinion that a radical change must ensue, and that the Tory party, long the prop of Church and Throne, having lost control of legislation in the House of Commons through the abolition of the close and rotten boroughs, could never regain the seat of power by electing a majority of members. ”

“ When I go down to the manufacturing districts, I know that I shall be returning to a gloomy scene. I know that starvation is stalking through the land, and that men are perishing for the want of the merest necessaries of life. When I witness this, and recollect that there is a law which especially provides for keeping our population in absolute want, I cannot help attributing murder to the legislature of this country ”

“ When not at work they were huddled in comfortless barracks little better than slave-pens. No wonder they grew up to be hopeless and brutalized, if they were so unfortunate as to survive the arduous period of their industrial bondage—for it was no less than that. Peel's act of 1802, and other remedial legislation which supplemented it, did away with the worst features of this white slavery, but the general condition of the women and children in the English factories and mines continued to be such as to move deeply the sympathies of the humane. ”

“ I am fully convinced that the country possesses at the present moment a legislature which answers all the good purpose of legislation, and this to a greater degree than any legislature ever has answered in any country whatever. I will go further, and say, that the legislature and the system of representation possess the full and entire confidence of the country—deservedly possess that confidence—and the discussions in the legislature have a very great influence over the opinions of the country. ”

“ As Canning objected to the Holy Alliance, so he would have objected to its present secular substitute, the Concert of Europe, which simply means the agreement of the great powers to inflict their will upon the small ones, not allowing them to develop according to their native forces and genius, but constraining them to such forms and confining them within such limits as suits the convenience of a despotic hexarchy of states, or of a majority of them. The country which is England at home should be England abroad, reserving all its freedom of action. ”