In 1845 the Whigs, failing to form a Cabinet, resigned, and Sir Robert Peel was again in office to carry the abolition of the Corn Laws. After resigning office, Mr. Gladstone published a pamphlet on ‘Recent Commercial Legislation,’ the tendency of which was in favour of the conclusion that all materials of industry should, as far as possible, be set free from Custom duties. When Lord Stanley refused to accompany his chief in the achievement of Free Trade in corn, Mr. Gladstone became, in his place, Secretary of State for the Colonies. But the Duke of Newcastle would not allow Mr. Gladstone his seat for Newark—he had turned his own son, Lord Lincoln, out of the representation of Nottingham for a similar reason—and Mr. Gladstone was out of Parliament when the question of Free Trade was being fought and won. Early in 1847 it was announced that there would be a vacancy in the representation of Oxford, and Mr. Gladstone was selected for the vacant seat. It was known to all that to represent Oxford University was Mr. Gladstone’s desire, as it had been that of Canning. In May, 1847, a meeting was held in Oxford in favour of Mr. Gladstone’s candidature. The canvassing wenton with more than the usual excitement in a University constituency. There was an electioneering Gladstonian rhyme worth preserving. The anti-Gladstonians had difficulty in finding a candidate.
‘A cipher’s sought,A cipher’s found;His work is nought,His name is Round.’
‘A cipher’s sought,A cipher’s found;His work is nought,His name is Round.’
The question for the electors was, as Mr. Gladstone put it, ‘Whether political Oxford shall get shifted out of her palæozoic position into one more suited to her position and work as they now stand.’ On August 2 Mr. Gladstone writes that he heard, not without excitement, the horse’s hoofs of the messenger bearing the news of the poll. He was elected by a majority of 173 over Mr. Round, the senior member, Sir Robert Inglis, being some 700 votes in advance of him. Mr. Hope Scott has left it on record that Mrs. Gladstone was a copious worker on her husband’s behalf. Sir Robert Peel went down to vote for his colleague. The venerable Dr. Routh, then nearly ninety-two years old, left his seclusion at Magdalen College to vote for him. The feeling of Mr. Gladstone’s supporters may be summed up in a letter written by Dr. Moberly, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, to a doubtful voter:
‘For my own part, I certainly disapprove of Mr. Gladstone’s vote on the godless colleges in Ireland, and I am not sure, even though I acknowledge the difficulties of the case, whether I approve of that respecting Maynooth; but I feel that I am not specially called on to reward or punish individual voters as to selectthe deepest,truest,most attached,most efficient advocate for the Church and Universitiesin coming, and very probably serious, dangers. I thinkyour correspondence with Gladstone’s committee has probably done great good. It is very useful that Gladstone should know that there are those who are not satisfied with some of his past acts; but surely you will not press this hitherto useful course to the extreme result of refraining from voting?’
Mr. Gladstone still continued in politics to uphold Conservative traditions, apart from Free Trade. He opposed marriage with a deceased wife’s sister; he deprecated the appointment of a Commission to inquire into the Universities; but he vindicated the policy of admitting Jews to Parliament, and defended the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Court of Rome. He supported the alteration of the Parliamentary oath, but was opposed to an abstract attack on Church rates. One domestic sorrow befell him about this time, the death of a little daughter, Catherine, between four and five years old. Another difficulty which gave him much trouble was on an affair which agitated all England at one time, and was known as the Gorham case. Mr. Gorham was an Evangelical clergyman, and the Bishop of Exeter refused to institute on the ground that his views on baptism were not sound; but in March, 1850, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council held that his teaching was not such as to debar him from preferment in the Church of England. In a letter addressed to the Bishop of London (Bloomfield), entitled ‘The Royal Supremacy viewed in the Light of Reason, History, and Common-sense,’ Mr. Gladstone contended that the Royal Supremacy was not inconsistent with the spiritual life and inherent jurisdiction of the Church, and that the recent establishment of the Privy Council as afinal court of appeal in religious causes was an injurious, and even dangerous, departure from the Reformation settlement. The Bishops, he held, when ‘acting jointly, publicly, solemnly, responsibly, are the best and most natural organs of the judicial office of the Church in matters of heresy, and, according to reason, history, and the Constitution in that subject-matter, the fittest and safest counsellors of the Crown.’ To that controversy it is due to a great extent that Mr. Hope Scott and Dr. Manning went over to the Church of Rome—the two men on whom in Church matters Mr. Gladstone principally relied. The blow was severe. ‘I felt,’ said Mr. Gladstone, ‘as if I had lost my two eyes.’
In this year Mr. Gladstone was very much depressed. Sir Stafford Northcote writes: ‘He (Gladstone) was out of spirits himself about public matters, and did not paint Parliamentary life in rose colour. . . . He is distressed at the position Peel has taken up, and at the want of sympathy between those who had acted for so many years cordially together, and he looks forward to serious Church troubles, which he thinks might possibly drive him out of Parliament.’ An idea which, had it been carried out, would have deprived the world of Mr. Gladstone’s greatest triumphs, political and oratorical. In that year came up the Don Pacifico affair, and Lord Palmerston’s triumph by means of theRomanus civis sumdictum, against which Mr. Gladstone thundered. It was, as Lord Palmerston admitted, a first-rate performance, appealing to the law of Nature and of God, and deprecating the vain conception that we, forsooth, have a mission to be the censors of vice and folly, of abuse and imperfection, among the other countries of the world, a doctrine which Mr. Gladstonesubsequently seemed altogether to have departed from.
On the lamented death of Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Gladstone bore eloquent testimonies to the merits of that great man.
In the following winter Mr. Gladstone was in Naples, taken there by the illness of one of his children, for whom the medical men had recommended a warmer climate, and thence he addressed to the Earl of Aberdeen those letters denouncing the atrocities of the Italian Government which for the first time made Mr. Gladstone popular with the English people.
On his return, he found the country excited to a temporary fury, because the Pope had planned Roman Bishops in English counties. To meet it, Lord John Russell carried an Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, which Mr. Gladstone powerfully attacked, and which some twenty years after he had the pleasure of quietly repealing. But the Bill proved a death-blow to Lord John Russell’s hold on office, weakened as it was by Lord Palmerston’s retirement, in consequence of his unauthorized recognition of Louis Napoleon’scoup d’état. Lord Derby came into office, and there was a General Election.
Mr. Gladstone was sent by Lord Derby as a Lord Commissioner to the Ionian Islands, to carry out needed reforms in that part of the world, Her Majesty Queen Victoria having refused her assent to the petition of the Ionian Parliament for union with Greece. But Mr. Gladstone was to reform the Ionian Parliament, so as to make it resemble as much as possible that of England. When he left, his successor, Sir H. Stocks, wrote: ‘Gladstone is regretted by many, respected by all. Nothingcould have been better than the firmness, judgment, and temper and talent he has shown. It sometimes staggers me to reflect that I have to succeed him.’
It was about this time that M. Thiers paid England a visit, having left France in consequence of thecoup d’état. A dinner was made up for him, at which were present Mr. Gladstone, Bulwer the novelist, Lord Elcho, Lord Herbert of Lea, Mr. Hayward, and others. The conversation was varied and animated. Mr. Hayward writes: ‘Thiers had the advantage of language and choice of subject, but the general opinion was that Mr. Gladstone was, if anything, the superior conversationalist of the two.’
When the election of 1852 approached, the opponents of Mr. Gladstone, thinking that his friends might have been alienated by his votes on Jewish disabilities and on the Papal Aggressions Bill, brought forward a third candidate for the University, Dr. Marsham, of Merton, in spite of a declaration signed by 1,276 members; but Mr. Gladstone managed to secure a majority of 350. In the debate in November Mr. Gladstone attacked Mr. Disraeli’s Budget, and at the election following the Tories again attacked Mr. Gladstone’s seat. The opposition was a curious affair—the result of an obscure intrigue—Lord Crompton being put forward apparently without his consent and against his wish. Then Mr. Percival was suddenly brought forward. Mr. Gladstone, however, on a small poll, had a majority of 87, and his seat was saved for the time. As a rule, a University M.P. is supposed to hold his seat for life.
By this time the Tories had become outrageous against Mr. Gladstone. After the defeat of the Derby Government,some of them gave a dinner to Major Beresford at the Carlton, who had been charged with bribery at the Derby election, and had been acquitted. ‘After dinner,’ writes Mr. Greville, ‘when they got drunk, they went upstairs, and found Mr. Gladstone alone in the drawing-room. Some of them proposed to throw him out of the window. This they did not quite dare do, but contented themselves with giving an insulting message or order to the waiter, and then went away.’ But Mr. Gladstone remained a member of the club till 1859. On the Coalition Government being formed under Lord Aberdeen, Mr. Gladstone became Chancellor of the Exchequer. His Budget speech, five hours long, held the House spell-bound. It was devoted mainly to remission of taxation. The deficiency thus created was made up by the application of the legacy duty to real property, by an increase of the duty on spirits, and by an extension of the income-tax at 5d. in the pound to all incomes between £100 and £150. The Irish were indignant at the tax being extended to Ireland. One of the few genuine Irish patriots, Mr. J. O’Neil Daunt, writes: ‘One of Mr. Gladstone’s arguments is curious from its dishonest ingenuity. He extracts from our poverty a pretext for disarming us. 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 ispoor, an Irish income of £150 is a fitter subject of taxation than an income of equal amount in England. The peculiar beauty of this argument is, that the poorer a country is, the stronger is the force of argument for taxing it.’ Evidently Mr. Gladstone’s Budget found more favour in English than in Irish eyes. The income-tax, said Mr. Gladstone, was to expire in 1860. Alas! he did not then foresee the Crimean War. On the contrary, everything seemed to betoken a happy future.
In May, 1853, Mr. Greville records an interview he had with Sir James Graham. ‘Graham seemed in excellent spirits about their political state and prospects, all owing to Gladstone and the complete success of the Budget. The long and numerous Cabinets, which were attributed in theTimesto 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. Gladstone’s object certainly was for a long time to be at the head of the Conservative party in the House of Commons, and to join with Derby, who might, in fact, have had all the Peelites, if he had chosen to ally himself with them instead of Disraeli. The latter had been the cause of the ruin of the party.’
In the same year Bishop Wilberforce wrote: ‘Lord Aberdeen is now growing to look upon Gladstone as his successor, and so told Gladstone the other day.’
A little while after we find Lord Aberdeen saying: ‘Gladstone intends to be Prime Minister. He has great qualifications, but some serious defects. The chief is that when he has convinced himself, perhaps, by abstract reasoning of some view, he thinks that everyone ought at once to see as he does, and can make no allowance for difference of opinion. Gladstone must thoroughly recover his popularity. The Queen has quite got over her feeling against him, and likes him much. . . . I have told Gladstone that when he is Prime Minister I will have a seat in his Cabinet, if he desires it, without an office.’
In April, 1856, Mr. Greville writes of a conversation he had with Graham: ‘He began talking over the state of affairs generally. He says there is not one man in the House of Commons who has ten followers—neither Gladstone, nor Disraeli, nor Palmerston . . . that Gladstone is certainly the ablest man there. His religious opinions, in which he is zealous and sincere, enter so largely into his political conduct as to form a very serious obstacle to his success, for they are abhorrent to the majority of this Protestant country, and (I was surprised to hear him say) Graham thinks approach very nearly to Rome.’
While absorbed in politics, or literature, or society, Mr. Gladstone never forgot to do his duty to the best of his ability as a loyal son of the Church of England. In 1842 there was a fight at Oxford University on the choice of a Professor of Poetry for the University. One candidate was dear to the High Church party, the other to the Low, or Evangelical, of which Lord Ashley was the head. Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Sandon, urging him to entreat Lord Ashley to avoid, for the Church’s sake, the scandal of a contest. But LordAshley was on the winning side, and his candidate was returned at the head of the poll.
In 1843, in the debates on the Dissenters’ Chapel Bill, Lord Ashley writes: ‘That inexplicable Mr. Gladstone contended that all Dissent was semi-Arian, and that a vast proportion of the founders were, in fact, Unitarians.’ When, in 1845, Mr. Ward was condemned at Oxford for his book, ‘The Ideal of a Christian Church,’ Mr. Gladstone was one of thenon-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. It makes the mind sad to speculate on the question how much better all might have been, but our mourning should be turned into joy and thankfulness while we think also how much worse it might have been. It seems to me to be written for our learning and use: “He will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when He shall hear it, He will answer thee. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it.”’
About this time Mr. Gladstone seems to have taken a leading part in the establishment of the High Church College, Glenalmond, instituted for the purpose of turning Presbyterian Scotland from the errors of its ways. At that time Mr. Gladstone was still in bondage.He argued for the maintenance of the Established Church in Ireland. Mr. Gladstone had not advanced beyond his party, and belonged to the school immortalized in ‘Tom Jones.’ ‘When I mention religion,’ says the Rev. Mr. Thwackum, ‘I mean the Christian religion, and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion, and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.’
In opening the Liverpool Collegiate Institution, he pleaded earnestly for Christian teaching. ‘If you could erect a system,’ he said, ‘which presents to man all branches of knowledge save the one that is essential, you would only be building up a tower of Babel, which, when you had completed it, would be the more signal in its fall, and which would bury those who had raised it in its ruins. We believe that if you can take a human being in his youth, and make him an accomplished man in natural philosophy, in mathematics, or in the knowledge necessary for the profession of a merchant, a lawyer, or a physician; that if in any or all of these endowments you could form his mind—yes, if you could endow him with the power and science of a Newton, and so send him forth, and if you had concealed from him—or, rather, had not given him—a knowledge and love of the Christian faith, he would go forth into the world, able, indeed, with reference to those purposes of science, successful with the accumulation of wealth for the multiplication of more, but poor and miserable and blind and naked with reference to everything that constitutes the true and sovereign purpose of our existence—nay, worse with respect to the sovereign purpose than if he had still remained in the ignorance which we all commiserate,and which it is the object of this institute to assist in removing.’
But Mr. Gladstone was moving. When Lord John Russell brought in a Bill to admit Jews to Parliament, Mr. Gladstone supported it, though at one time against it.
In 1850 Mr. Gladstone wrote a letter to Bishop Hampden, which threw a good deal of light on his mental working. He wrote: ‘Your lordship will probably be surprised at receiving a letter from me. The simple purport of it is to discharge a debt of the smallest possible importance to you, yet due, I think, from me, by expressing the regret with which I now look back on my concurrence in a vote of the University of Oxford in the year 1836, condemnatory of some of your lordship’s publications. I did not take actual part in the vote, but, upon reference to a journal kept at the time, I find that my absence was owing to an accident. For a good many years past I have found myself ill able to master books of an abstract character, and I am far from presuming at this time to form a judgment on the merits of any proposition then at issue. I have learned, indeed, that many things which in the forward precipitancy of my youth I should have condemned are either in reality sound or lie within the just bounds of such discussion as justly befits a University. But that which (after a delay due, I think, to the cares and pressing occupations of political life) brought back to my mind the injustice of which I had unconsciously been guilty in 1836 was my being called upon as a member of the Council of King’s College in London to concur in a measure similar in principle with respect to Mr. Maurice—that is to say, in a condemnationcouched in general terms, which really did not declare the point of imputed guilt, and against which perfect innocence could have no defence. I resisted to the best of my power, though ineffectually, the grievous wrong done to Mr. Maurice, and urged that the charges should be made distinct, that all the best means of investigation should be brought to bear on them, ample opportunity given for defence, and a reference then made, if needful, to the Bishop in his proper capacity of layman, as the Council were inexorable. It was only, as I have said, after mature reflection that I came to perceive the bearing of the case on that of 1836, and to find that by my resistance I had condemned myself. I then lamented that on that occasion, now so remote, I had not felt and acted in a different manner. I beg your lordship to accept this, the expression of my cordial regret.’ Dr. Hampden had published certain lectures which afterwards were strongly objected to by the Tractarian party, whose triumph led to a good deal of bitterness, hard to understand now.
Again, in March, 1865, when Mr. Dillwyn moved that ‘the present position of the Irish Church is unsatisfactory, and calls for the earliest attention of Her Majesty’s Government,’ Mr. Gladstone replied that they were not prepared to deny the abstract truth of the former part of the resolution, while they could not accept the resolution. The Irish Church as she then stood was in a false position. She ministered only to one eighth or one ninth of the community. The debate was adjourned, and not resumed during the remainder of the session; but the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer causedgreat excitement, and Mr. (afterwards Chief Justice) Whiteside promptly denounced it as fatal to the Established Church of Ireland. Sir Stafford Northcote wrote: ‘Gladstone made a terrible long stride in his downward progress last night, and denounced the Irish Church in a way that shows how by-and-by he will deal not only with it, but the Church of England, too . . . was evidently annoyed that his colleagues had decided on opposing Dillwyn’s motion. He laid down the doctrine that the tithes were national property. . . . It is plain that he must hold that the tithe of Wales, where the Dissenters are in a minority, does not properly belong to the Church; and by-and-by we shall find that he will carry the principle a great deal further. It is sad to see what he is coming to.’
Tory suspicion soon found a vent; an election was at hand, and Mr. Gladstone’s seat for Oxford University was in danger. As early as 1861 the question of his retirement had been mooted. In that year he wrote to the Rector of Exeter College: ‘I have never forgotten the ties which bind me to my kind and good-natured supporters in the University, and no prospect elsewhere could induce me to quit them, unless I could think that at a juncture like this they might, with every prospect of success, support a candidate who would fill my place to their full and general satisfaction. . . . To quit Oxford under any circumstances would be to me a most sad, even if it ever became a prudent and necessary, measure.’
As a further illustration of Mr. Gladstone’s Liberal opinions, and his unfitness for Oxford, I quote from a letter of his to Bishop Wilberforce on Mr. Hadfield’s proposal in the House of Commons to abolish thedeclaration made by Mayors that they would not use their office against the Established Church. ‘As I apprehend the matter, no one is obliged to take this declaration at all. I took it myself last year, as Elder Brother of the Trinity House, in which I have no duty whatever to discharge, except, I believe, to appoint an “almsbody” once in five or ten years. 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 legalpræmunireof self-exception is fatal to the law. If you are right in saying (which I have never heard elsewhere) that men wish to escape the declaration in order that they may carry their municipal paraphernalia in state to Dissenting chapels, it is plain that they can do it now, and therefore the declaration cannot be maintained on the ground that it prevents them, for it does not. If I am told that the mere abstract existence of such a declaration, counteracted as it is by the indemnity, deters the flesh and blood of Dissenting Mayors from such a use of theparaphernalia, such a reply appears to me fanciful. In short, if this Bill is not to be supported, it appears to me better to profess thorough-going exclusiveness at once, and to say that nothing shall be yielded except to force, for that is what the whole matter comes to. . . . It is quite obvious that if the consideration of these measuresis to be approached in such a frame of mind, we shall be doing in our day simply what Eldon and Inglis did in theirs. I must say that is not my idea of my stewardship.’
Again, he writes to the Bishop: ‘The policy of the Church as an establishment to my mind is plain. She should rest on her possessions and her powers, parting with none of them, except for equivalents in another currency, or upon full consideration ofprosandcons; but outside of these she should avoid all points of sore contact with Dissenters. Each one of them is a point at which she as a dead mass rubs upon the living flesh, and stirs the hostility of its owner. It is no less due to her own interests to share them than it is to justice as regards the Dissenter to surrender these points—if surrender that is to be called which is so unmixedly to her advantage.’
In 1865 the Oxford University election resulted in the loss by Mr. Gladstone of his seat. The opposition to him was headed by Archdeacon Denison, on account of his conduct on the Education Question. Mr. Gladstone was defeated by Mr. Hardy, but he was defeated by those members of the constituency who had the least interest in education. Nearly all the professors, tutors, and lecturers voted in the minority, but were outnumbered by the country clergy. ‘Of course,’ writes Bishop Wilberforce to Mr. Gladstone, ‘if half of these men had known what I know of your real devotion to our Church, that would have outweighed their hatred to a Government which gave Waldegrave to Carlisle, and Baring to Durham, and the youngest Bishop on the Bench to York, and supported Westbury in denying the faith of our Lord. But they could notbe made to understand the truth, and have inflicted on the University and the Church the gross indignity of rejecting the best, noblest, and truest son of each, in order to punish Shaftesbury’—supposed to be Palmerston’s Bishop-maker—‘and Westbury. You were too great for them.’
Mr. Gladstone’s reply was as follows:
‘Do not conceal from yourself that my hands are very much weakened. It is only as representing Oxford that a man whose opinions are disliked and suspected could expect or could have a title to be heard. I look upon myself now as a person wholly extraneous on one great class of questions; with respect to legislative and Cabinet measures, I am a unit. I have had too much of personal collision with Westbury to be a fair judge in his case, but in your condemnation of him as respects attacks on Christian doctrines do not forget either what coadjutors he has had or with what pitiful and lamentable indifference not only the Christian public, but so many of the clergy—so many of the warmest religionists—looked on. Do not join with others in praising me because I am not angry, only sorry, and that deeply. . . . There have been two great deaths or transmigrations of spirit in my political career—one very slow, the breaking of ties with my original party; the other very short and sharp, the breaking of my tie with Oxford. There will probably be a third, and no more.’
In a subsequent letter Mr. Gladstone states to the Bishop his fixed determination never to take any step to raise himself ‘to a higher level in official life; and this not on grounds of Christian self-denial, which would hardly apply, but on the double ground, first, of mytotal ignorance of my capacity, bodily or mental; and secondly, perhaps I might say specially, because I am certain that the fact of my taking it would seal my doom in taking it.’ The Bishop and Mr. Gladstone seem ever to have been on the most confidential terms.
In a subsequent debate on Church rates Mr. Gladstone, while opposing an abstract resolution on the subject, declared that he felt as strongly as anyone the desirability of settling the question. The evils attending the present system were certainly enormous, and it was a fact that we had deviated from the original intention of the law, which was not to oppose a mere uncompensated burden on anyone, but a burden from which everyone bearing it should receive a benefit, so that while each member of the community was bound to contribute his quota to the Church, every member of the Church was entitled to go to the churchwardens and demand a free place to worship his Maker. The case then was, especially in towns, that the centre and best parts of the church were occupied by pews exclusively for the middle classes, while the labouring classes were jealously excluded from every part of sight and hearing in the churches, and were treated in a manner which it was most painful to reflect upon.
Sir George Lewis predicted that the death of Peel would have the effect upon Gladstone of removing a weight from a spring, and the worthy Baronet judged correctly. ‘He will come forward more and more, and take more part in discussion. The general opinion is that Gladstone will give up his Free Trade and become leader of the Protectionists.’ It was not so; Mr. Gladstone had been a puzzle and wonder to his contemporaries. It puzzled the gigantic intellect of aBrougham to understand, not why Mr. Gladstone gave up office when Sir Robert Peel proposed to increase the grant to Maynooth, but Mr. Gladstone’s explanation of his conduct. Mrs. Charlotte Wynne, no superficial observer, wrote: ‘Mr. Gladstone has been given two offices to keep him quiet, by giving him too much to do to prevent his troubling his head about the Church; but,’ adds the lady, ‘I know it will be in vain, for to a speculative mind like his theology is a far more inviting and extensive field than any that is offered by the Board of Trade.’ This trait of his character especially came out when he opposed the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, hurried through Parliament in a panic because the Pope had given English titles to his Bishops in England. Mr. Gladstone ever loved to talk of theology, and in 1870 we find him in Dr. Parker’s pulpit in the City Temple describing preachers—especially Dr. Newman, who, with his deep piety and remarkable gifts of mind, he described as an object of great interest, and Dr. Chalmers. Their very idiosyncrasies, Mr. Gladstone argued, were in their favour. In 1870, when Mr. Gladstone went to Mill Hill to address the scholars at the Dissenting Grammar School there, he ended with an appeal to the lads above all things to strive after Christian growth and perfection. Early Mr. Gladstone learned to give up his prejudices against Dissenters. Often has he confessed that they are the most efficient supporters and source of strength. Miss Martineau was a Dissenter, yet he went out of his way to offer her a pension which she declined. To hear Mr. Gladstone read the lessons, all the country round flocked to Hawarden Church when the owner of the hall was at home. People laughed when Lord Beaconsfield ona memorable occasion declared that he was on the side of the angels. When Mr. Gladstone spoke on religious topics, people listened to him with respect, because they felt that in all his utterances he was sincere. Of his Christian liberality of sentiment we have a further illustration when he and his son went to hear Mr. Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher. The event is thus recorded; it took place in the beginning of the year 1882: ‘On Sunday evening last Mr. Gladstone and his eldest son were present at the service in Mr. Spurgeon’s tabernacle, and occupied Mrs. Spurgeon’s pew. Both before and after the service these distinguished gentlemen were together in the pastor’s vestry. Mr. Gladstone shook hands heartily with the elders and deacons present, and expressed himself highly delighted with the service. The visit was strictly private, and Mr. Gladstone and his son walked back to Downing Street.’ Many were the varying comments on the event. In the chief Opposition paper a writer recalled the fact that many years ago Mr. Spurgeon expressed a wish that the Church of England might grow worse in order that she soon might be got rid of. He then argued that if Mr. Gladstone’s sympathy with Mr. Spurgeon is what his presence at the Tabernacle would imply, we have a satisfactory explanation of the unsatisfactory character of Mr. Gladstone’s ecclesiastical appointments. Mr. Spurgeon is a foe to the Church; Mr. Gladstone goes to hear him, therefore he is a foe of the Church. Mr. Gladstone, being a foe of the Church, appoints as Bishops, Deans and Canons the men who will do the Church most mischief. Of course, theSaturday Reviewdid its best to make Mr. Gladstone ridiculous in connection with the affair. ‘Some jealousymay be aroused in rival Bethels by this announcement, which is, we believe, the first of its kind. But it may possibly be that Mr. Gladstone is going to take a course, and that he will distribute the steps of that course equally among the various tabernacles of his stanchest supporters. The battle of the Constitution is to be fought out in the precincts of Ebenezer, and Ebenezer must be accordingly secured. Mr. Gladstone’s plan is unquestionably a wise one.’ TheSaturday Reviewwanted to know what made Mr. Gladstone shake hands so heartily with the deacons. ‘A proceeding somewhat similar to Mr. Perkes’s plan for winning an election.’ Perhaps it is in one of Mr. Gladstone’s letters to Bishop Wilberforce that we get a clear idea of his view of the Church of England. In 1857 he wrote: ‘It is neither Disestablishment nor even loss of dogmatic truth which I look upon as the greatest danger before us, but it is the loss of those elementary principles of right and wrong on which Christianity must itself be built. The present position of the Church of England is gradually approximating to the Erastian theory that the business of the Establishment is to teach all sorts of doctrines, and to provide Christian ordinances by way of comfort for all sorts of people, to be used at their own option. It must become, if uncorrected, in lapse of time a thoroughly immoral position. Her case seems to be like that of Cranmer—to be disgraced first and then burned. Now, what I feel is that the constitution of the Church provides the means of bringing controversy to issue; not means that can be brought at all times to bear, but means that are to be effectually, though less determinately, available for preventing the general devastation of doctrine, either by a positive heresy or by thatthesis I have named above, worse than any heresy. Considering that the constitution of the Church with respect to doctrine is gradually growing into an offence to the moral sense of mankind, and that the question is, Shall we get, if we can, the means of giving expression to that mind? I confess that I cannot be repelled by fears connected with the state of the Episcopal Bench from saying Yes. Let me have it if I can, for, regarding the Church as a privileged and endowed body, no less than one with spiritual prerogatives, I feel these two things—if the mind of those who rule and of those who compose the Church is deliberately anti-Catholic, I have no right to seek a hiding place within the pale of her possessions by keeping her in a condition of voicelessness in which all are entitled to be there because none are. That is, viewing her with respect to the enjoyment of her temporal advantages, spiritually how can her life be saved by stopping her from the exercise of functions essential to her condition? It may be said she is sick; wait till she is well. My answer is, She is getting more and more sick in regard to her own function of authoritatively declaring the truth; let us see whether her being called upon so to declare it may not be the remedy, or a remedy, at least. I feel certain that the want of combined and responsible ecclesiastical action is one of the main evils, and that the regular duty of such action will tend to check the spirit of individualism and to restore that belief in a Church we have almost lost.’
Of colonial Bishops Mr. Gladstone had a high admiration. In 1876 he wrote: ‘It is indeed, I fear, true that a part—not the whole—of our colonial episcopate have sunk below the level established forit five-and-thirty years ago by the Bishops of those days. But how high a level it was! and how it lifted the entire heart of the Church of England!’
Here it is as well to give some further particulars as to Mr. Gladstone’s action with regard to Church matters. In 1836 Mr. Gladstone left the Church Pastoral Aid Society, of which he had become one of the vice-presidents, in consequence of an attempt to introduce lay agency. At all times he was ready to guard and vindicate the religious character of his alma mater. On one occasion Lord Palmerston had expressed a reasonable dislike of a system which compelled the undergraduates ‘to go from wine to prayers, and from prayers to wine.’ Mr. Gladstone, in reply, said he had a better opinion of the undergraduates who had been so lately his companions. He did not believe that even in their most convivial moments they were unfit to enter the house of prayer. Mr. Gladstone was one of a committee which met at the lodgings of Mr. (afterwards Sir Thomas) Acland in Jermyn Street, which led to the formation of Boards of Education for the different dioceses, and to the establishment of training colleges, with the double aim of securing religious education for the middle classes and the collegiate education of the schoolmasters.
Mr. Gladstone’s ecclesiastical leanings soon brought him back to Parliamentary life, in connection with Archbishop Tait’s Public Worship Regulation Bill. The grounds of his opposition he affirmed in the following resolutions:
‘1. That in proceeding to consider the grounds for the Regulation of Public Worship this House cannot do otherwise than take into view the lapse of morethan two centuries since the enactment of the present rubrics of the Common Prayer-Book of the Church of England; the multitude of particulars combined in the conduct of Divine service under their provisions; the doubt occasionally attaching to their interpretation, and the number of points they are thought to have left undecided; the diversities of local custom which under these circumstances have long prevailed; and the unreasonableness of proscribing all varieties of opinion and usage among the many thousands of congregations of the Church distributed throughout the land.
‘2. That this House is therefore reluctant to place in the hands of any single Bishop—on the motion of one or more persons, however defined—greatly increased facilities towards procuring an absolute ruling of many points hitherto left open and reasonably allowing of diversity, and thereby enforcing the establishment of an inflexible rule of uniformity throughout the land, to the prejudice in matters indifferent of the liberty now practically existing.
‘3. That the House willingly acknowledges the great and exemplary devotion of the clergy in general to their sacred calling, but is not on that account the less disposed to guard against the indiscretions or thirst for power of other individuals.
‘4. That this House is therefore willing to lend its best assistance to any measure recommended by adequate authority, with a view to provide more effectual security against any neglect of, or departure from, strict law which may give evidence of a design to alter, without the consent of the nation, the spirit or the substance of revealed religion.
‘5. That in the opinion of this House it is also to bedesired that the members of the Church having a legitimate interest in her services should receive ample protection against precipitate and arbitrary changes of established customs by the sole will of the clergyman and against the wishes locally prevalent amongst them, and that such protection does not appear to be afforded by the provisions of the Bill now before the House.
‘6. That the House attaches a high value to the concurrence of Her Majesty’s Government with the ecclesiastical authorities in the initiative of legislation affecting the Established Church.’
In moving these resolutions, Mr. Gladstone’s speech was of the highest interest and importance; ‘but never, perhaps, in his long career,’ writes the biographer of Archbishop Tait, ‘did his eloquence so completely fail to enlist the sympathy even of his own supporters, and the resolutions were withdrawn.’ The Bill, opposed by Dr. Pusey on one side and Lord Shaftesbury on the other, was carried in a modified form. Eye-witnesses have described the debate on the second reading: ‘The House, jaded with a long and anxious sitting, was eager to divide. A clear voice was heard above the clamour. It was Mr. Hussey Vivian, an old and tried friend of Mr. Gladstone. He rose to warn him not to persist in his amendments; not twenty men on his own side of the House would follow him into the Lobby. Already deft lieutenants, mournful of aspect, had brought slips of paper to their chief, fraught, it seemed, with no good tidings. When the Speaker put the question, there was no challenge for a division. Amid a roar of mixed cheers and laughter, the six resolutions melted away into darkness.’
Sir William Harcourt was one of Mr. Gladstone’s principal opponents in the course of the debate. In Committee there was rather an amusing passage of arms between Mr. Gladstone and his old Attorney-General. Sir William espoused the Bill strongly, and implored Mr. Disraeli to come to the rescue. ‘We have,’ he said, ‘a leader of the House who is proud of the House of Commons, and of whom the House of Commons is proud.’ A provision had been introduced into the Bill which would have overthrown the Bishops’ right of veto on proceedings to be instituted in the New Court. This provision Mr. Gladstone vehemently opposed, and quoted from the canonist Van Espero. Sir William ridiculed the quotations, and accused Mr. Gladstone at the eleventh hour of having come back to wreck the Bill. Two days after he again attacked Mr. Gladstone, and quoted authorities in support of his views. Mr. Gladstone’s reply was complete.
At this time Mr. Gladstone was much occupied with his favourite ecclesiastical subjects. In an article on ‘Ritual and Ritualism,’ contributed to theContemporary Review, he contended for the lawfulness and expediency of moderate ritual in the services of the Church of England. He returned to Church questions in a second article entitled ‘Is the Church of England worth Preserving?’—a question which, of course, he answered in the affirmative. In the course of his remarks he created a perfect storm of indignation on the part of the Roman Catholics. To meet this Mr. Gladstone published a pamphlet called ‘The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance.’ One hundred and twenty thousand copies of the pamphlet were sold in a few weeks,and the press was filled with replies. Mr. Gladstone returned to the charge in a pamphlet entitled ‘Vaticanism,’ in which he contended that in theory the Papal Infallibility was inconsistent with the requirements of civil allegiance. In connection with this subject, let it be briefly stated that in 1880, when Mr. Gladstone returned to power, one of the first things to be settled was the Dissenters’ Burial Bill, a subject first brought before the House of Commons by Sir Morton Peto in 1861. The Bill was finally piloted through the House of Commons by Mr. Osborne Morgan, Judge Advocate. Perhaps by this time Mr. Gladstone had become tired of ecclesiastical difficulties. In a letter to the Lord Chancellor respecting fresh legislation on the part of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Mr. Gladstone wrote: ‘The thing certainly could not be done by the authority of the Cabinet, were the Cabinet disposed to use it, of which at present I can say nothing.’
About this time a church was built at Stroud Green, near Finsbury Park, at a cost of £11,000, £8,000 of which was contributed by the parishioners and their friends. It was an Evangelical or Low church, but when, on the incumbent’s retirement, Mr. Gladstone, claiming the presentation on behalf of the Crown, thought fit to appoint as Vicar a clergyman whose antecedents proved him to be commonly known as ritualistic, the parishioners protested. Petitions against Mr. Linklater’s appointment, signed by 2,300 petitioners and members of the congregation, were presented to Mr. Gladstone. The following is a quotation from a letter written by the late Vicar: ‘There is a very widespread anxiety through the congregation that the church which their moneyhas built should not pass into the hands of one who does not hold the same Evangelical views, or favour the same simple ritual to which they have been accustomed.’ The Bishop also appealed and remonstrated; all was in vain. On August 23, 1885, Mr. Linklater was inducted to the charge of the parish. A majority of the seat-holders at once relinquished their seats; others, we are told, have since followed their example, and some who remained in hope of better things are obliged to acknowledge that their hopes are disappointed. The services most prized by the congregation have been discontinued, and other services introduced which are believed to be unscriptural, contrary to the laws ecclesiastical, and opposed to the plain directions of the Book of Common Prayer.
In 1857 there occurred a memorable passage of arms between Mr. Gladstone and Sir Richard Bethell—afterwards Lord Westbury—on the subject of divorce. More than one Commission had reported in favour of establishing a separate court, so that the dissolution of marriage might be effected by judicial separation instead of a special Act of Parliament. By this change the expense incident to the existing procedure would be materially reduced, and the remedy which lay within the reach of the wealthy would be extended to the poor. As the law stood, the privilege of obtaining a relief from the marriage tie depended on a mere property qualification. If a man had £1,000 to spend, he might rid himself of an unfaithful wife; if not, he must remain her husband.
The absurdity of the law was well put by Mr. Justice Maule. A hawker who had been convicted of bigamy urged in extenuation that his wife had been unfaithful to him and deserted him, and that was why he had to take a second wife. In passing sentence, the judge, addressing the prisoner, said: ‘I will tell you what you ought to have done under the circumstances, and if you say you did not know, I must tell you that the lawconclusively presumes you did. You should have instructed your attorney to bring an action against the seducer of your wife for damages; that would have cost you about £100. Having succeeded thus far, you should have employed a proctor, and instituted a suit in the Ecclesiastical Court for a divorcea mensâ et thoro; that would have cost you £200 or £300 more. When you had obtained a divorcea mensâ et thoro, you had only to obtain a private Act for a divorcea vinculo matrimonii. The Bill might possibly have been opposed in all its stages in both Houses of Parliament, and altogether these proceedings would have cost you £1,000. You will probably tell me that you never had a tenth of that sum, but that makes no difference. Sitting here as an English judge, it is my duty to tell you that this is not a country in which there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. You will be imprisoned for one day.’
The long-postponed Bill was introduced into the Lords, where it passed after unflagging opposition from Bishop Wilberforce. July 24 was the date fixed for its second reading in the House of Commons, but no sooner had the Attorney-General (Bethell) risen to explain the Bill than Mr. Henley interposed with a motion that it be read again in a month. He was supported in this unusual proceeding in a speech of great length and energy by Mr. Gladstone. The motion was negatived by a large majority. On July 30 the Attorney-General made his proposed statement. In the course of his speech he pointedly alluded to Mr. Gladstone as a great master of eloquence and subtle reasoning. ‘If that right hon. gentleman had lived—thank Heaven he had not—in the Middle Ages, when invention was racked tofind terms of eulogium for thesubtilissimi doctores, how great would have been his reputation!’ The case against the Bill was presented with the most telling force by Mr. Gladstone. He began by urging the strong feeling against the Bill, and the great danger of precipitancy on legislating in such a House under Government pressure. The Bill undertook to deal not only with the civil consequences and responsibilities of marriage, but also to determine religious obligations and to cancel the most solemn vows; while, though not invested with any theological authority, it set itself up as a square and measure of the consciences of men. ‘I must confess,’ continued Mr. Gladstone, ‘that there is no legend, there is no fiction, there is no speculation, however wild, that I should not deem it rational to admit into my mind rather than allow what I conceive to be one of the most degrading doctrines that can be propounded to civilized men—namely, that the Legislature has power to absolve a man from spiritual vows taken before God.’ Mr. Gladstone met the assertion that the Bill made no change in the law, but merely reduced to legislative form what had long had legislative effect, by a direct negative. The Bill carried divorce to the door of all men of all classes, and was therefore to all intents as completely novel as if it had no Parliamentary precedent. Entering upon the theological arguments under protest, as a discussion which could not properly be conducted in a popular assembly, he adduced much historical testimony, particularly that of the Primitive Christian Church, to refute the propositions of the Attorney-General as to the solubility of marriage. Coming down to the Reformation, Mr. Gladstone forcibly summarized Sir Richard Bethell’sargument, turning aside for a moment to interpolate an amusing personal reference:
‘While I am mentioning my honourable and learned friend, it would be ungrateful in me not to take notice of the undeservedly kind language in which he thanked Heaven that I had not lived and died in the Middle Ages. My hon. and learned friend complimented me on the subtlety of my understanding, and it is a compliment of which I feel the more the force since it comes from a gentleman who possesses such a plain, straightforward, John-Bull-like character of mind—rusticus abnormis sapiens crassaque Minerve. Therefore, and by the force of contrast, I feel the compliment to be ten times more valuable. But I must say, if I am guilty of that subtlety of mind of which he accuses me, I think that there is no one cause in the history of my life to which it can be so properly attributed as to my having been for two or three pleasant years the colleague and co-operator with my hon. and learned friend. And if there was a class of thosesubtilissimi doctoreswhich was open to competition, and if I were a candidate for admission and heard that my hon. and learned friend was so likewise, I assure him that I would not stand against him on any account whatever.’
Mr. Gladstone’s next sally was received with much applause. He contended that the Attorney-General had surpassed himself in liberality, for he gave a ninth beatitude: ‘Blessed is the man who trusts the received version’—a doctrine much more in keeping with the Middle Ages and thosesubtilissimi doctoresthan with the opinion of an Attorney-General of a Liberal Government in the nineteenth century; that was, Blessed is he who shuts his eyes, and does not attempt todiscover historical truth; who discards the aims of legitimate criticism; who, in order to save himself trouble and pass an important Bill without exertion, determines not to make use of the faculties that God has given him, and throws discredit upon scholarship and upon the University of which he is a conspicuous ornament, by refusing to recognise anything but the received version. Referring to the social aspect of the question, Mr. Gladstone with glowing eloquence deplored the change which the Bill would work in the marriage state, as shaking the great idea of the marriage ceremony in the minds of the people, marking the first stage on a road of which they knew nothing, except that it was different from that of their forefathers, and carried them back towards the state in which Christianity found the heathenism of man. In conclusion, he declared that he resisted the measure because it offended his own conscientious feelings; it was a retrograde step, pregnant with the most dangerous consequences to their social interests; it was not desired by the people of this country; it contained a proposal harsh and unjust towards the ministers of religion, and involved an insult to religion itself; and, lastly, because it was brought forward at a time when it was impossible to bring the mind of the country and the House to an adequate consideration of its magnitude and importance. Although he might be entirely powerless in arresting its progress, he was determined, as far as it depended upon him, that he would be responsible for no part of the consequences of a measure fraught, as he believed it to be, with danger to the highest interests of religion and the morality of the people. The speech held the House spellbound, and its conclusion was greeted by prolonged cheering. Itwas felt that all that could be said against the measure had been said. After a forcible reply from Sir Richard Bethell, in which he addressed himself exclusively to the argument of Mr. Gladstone, who had, he said, on that occasion transcended himself, and, like Aaron’s rod, swallowed up all the rest of the opponents of the Bill, the second reading was carried by a majority of 111. It was time Mr. Gladstone exerted himself; he had lost ground last session as being unpractical.
In the October of that year Bishop Wilberforce was at Hawarden, and had much talk with Gladstone. He said: ‘I greatly feel being turned out of office. I saw great things to do; I longed to do them. I am losing the best years of my life out of my natural service, yet I have never ceased to rejoice that I am not in office with Palmerston. When I have seen the tricks, the shufflings, he daily has recourse to, as to his business, I rejoice not to sit on the Treasury Bench with him.’
Of course, the Divorce Bill intensified his dislike to the Palmerston regime. Never was there a severer fight than that which took place in Committee. Clause by clause, line by line, almost word by word, the progress of the measure was challenged by an acute and determined opposition. One of the most important amendments was made by Lord John Manners, to give jurisdiction to local courts in cases of judicial separation. A still more important amendment was proposed with the object of extending to the wife the same right of divorce as was given to the husband. On this proposal Mr. Gladstone made a telling speech, founding his argument on the equality of the sexes in the highest relations of life. A further amendment in the same direction was attacked with such ardour by Mr. Gladstone,Lord John Manners, and Mr. Henly, that at length the Attorney-General claimed the right, as having official charge of the Bill, to be treated with some consideration, and then he carried the war into the enemy’s country so as to bring Mr. Gladstone again to his feet. He complained bitterly of Sir Richard Bethell’s charges of inconsistency and insincerity—‘charges which,’ he said, ‘have not only proceeded from his mouth, but gleamed from those eloquent eyes of his which have turned continuously on me for the last ten minutes.’ He commented severely on the Attorney-General’s statement of his duty with regard to the Bill. It was pushed by him through the House as a Ministerial duty; he received it from the Cabinet, for whom he considered it his duty to hew wood and draw water. In the course of the discussion of this clause, which occupied ten hours, Mr. Gladstone made upwards of twenty speeches, some of them of considerable length. He was on his legs every three minutes, in a white heat of excitement. Mr. Gladstone is stated to have told Lord Palmerston that the Bill should not be carried till the Greek Calends, and in reply to the question put to him in the lobby by Sir Richard Bethell—‘Is it to be peace or war?’—fiercely replied, ‘War, Mr. Attorney—war even to the knife.’ ‘Gladstone,’ he wrote to his wife, ‘gives a personal character to the debates.’ One of Mr. Gladstone’s amendments—to the effect that clergymen having conscientious objections to remarrying of divorced persons were to be exempt from any penalty for refusing to solemnize such marriages—which he was unable to move on account of a domestic calamity, was put forward by Sir W. Heathcote and accepted by the Government, and the long and bitter battle came to an end onAugust 31, when the third reading passed without a division.
Writing as late as 1887, Mr. Gladstone contends that the Divorce Bill was an error. ‘My objection,’ writes Mr. Gladstone, ‘to the Divorce Bill was very greatly sharpened by its introduction of the principle of inequality. But there is behind this the fact that I have no belief whatever in the operation of Parliamentary enactments upon a vow—a case which appears to me wholly different from that of the Coronation Oath. I think it would have been better to attempt civil legislation only, as in the case of the Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill. Lord Westbury and I were pitted in conflict by the Divorce Bill; but he was the representative of a prevailing public opinion, as well as of an Administration—I of an opinion which had become isolated and unpopular. I remember hearing with some consolation from Lord Wensleydale that he was against the principle of the Bill.’ It is but fair to add that, after the Act had passed, Mr. Gladstone, with the generous frankness which distinguishes all great men, wrote a letter to the Attorney-General, expressing regret for any language he had used during debates on the Bill which might have given pain. Sir Richard used to say during the course of the debates that Mr. Gladstone was the only debater in the House of Commons whose subtlety of intellect and didactic skill made it a pleasure to cross swords with him.
When Parliament met in 1859, an amendment was moved to the Address in a maiden speech from Lord Hartington, which was carried after a three nights’ debate, Mr. Gladstone voting with the Government. Lord Derby and his colleagues instantly resigned. A new Government was formed—Lord Palmerston Premier, Lord John Russell leader of the House of Commons, with Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer. A spirited opposition to Mr. Gladstone’s re-election for the University took place. Lord Chandos—afterwards the Duke of Buckingham—came forward as the Conservative candidate. In an address put forward on his behalf by Professor Mansel, it was stated: ‘By his acceptance of office Mr. Gladstone must now be considered as having given his adherence to the Liberal party as at present reconstructed, and as approving of the policy of those who overthrew Lord Derby’s Government at the late division. By his vote on that division Mr. Gladstone expressed his confidence in the Administration of Lord Derby. By accepting office he now expresses his confidence in the administration of Lord Derby’s opponent and successor.’ In aletter to Dr. Hawkins, the Provost of Oriel, Mr. Gladstone wrote: ‘Various differences of opinion, both on foreign and domestic matters, separated me during great part of the Administration of Lord Palmerston from a body of men with the majority of whom I had acted in perfect harmony under Lord Aberdeen. I promoted the vote of the House of Commons, which in February led to the downfall of that Ministry. Such having been the case, I thought it my clear duty to support, as far as I was able, the Government of Lord Derby. Accordingly, on the various occasions during the existence of the late Parliament when they were seriously threatened with danger of embarrassment, I found myself, like many other independent members, lending them such assistance as was in my power.’
The Oxford election terminated in Mr. Gladstone’s triumph over his opponent. It is curious to note how entirely Mr. Gladstone concurred with Lord John Russell. He worked hard in the Cabinet and in Parliament for his lordship’s Reform Bill, and regarded with aversion Lord Palmerston’s fortifications. In a letter to Her Majesty we read: ‘Viscount Palmerston hopes to be able to overcome his objections, but if that should prove impossible, however great the loss to the Government by the retirement of Mr. Gladstone, it would be better to lose Mr. Gladstone than to run the risk of losing Portsmouth or Plymouth.’ When his colleague’s scruples had been overcome, Lord Palmerston wrote to his Sovereign: ‘Mr. Gladstone told Lord Palmerston this evening that he wished it to be understood that, though acquiescing in the step now taken about the fortifications, he kept himself free to take such course as he might think fit upon the subject next year; to whichLord Palmerston consented. That course will probably be the same which Mr. Gladstone took last year—namely, ineffectual opposition and ultimate acquiescence.’
Mr. Gavan Duffy has given us a correct picture of Gladstone as he appeared to him about this time: ‘Mr. Gladstone was not yet the official leader of the Peelites, but he was the most noteworthy of them, and attracted close observation. He was habitually grave, it seemed to me, and spoke as if he uttered oracles; yet he left the impression that his speeches were not only improvised, but that the process of adopting a conclusion was not always complete when he rose to speak. But the vigour and grace of his rhetoric put criticism to flight. The House, which relished the persiflage of Palmerston, thought Gladstone too serious, and resented a little, I think, the subdued tone of contemptuous superiority in which he addressed the leader of the House. He was as smooth as silk, but there was manifestly a reserve of vehement and angry passion ready to break out when it was provoked.’
In a book just published by Mr. Hogan we get a glance at Mr. Gladstone as Colonial Secretary. In Queensland a town still bears his name. The town of Gladstone, which is now within the limits of North Queensland, has been somewhat overshadowed by Rockhampton, which owes its existence to the gold fever which, at the time when folk began to talk of ‘North Australia,’ nobody foresaw. The period, indeed, seems to us now curiously remote, though it is still fresh in the mind of the statesman whose name was bestowed upon the capital of the intended new colony. So much, at least, appears from the prefatory note addressed to the author:
‘Dear Mr. Hogan,‘My recollections of “Gladstone” were most copious, and are now nearly half a century old.‘The period, December, 1845, when I became Colonial Secretary, was one when the British Government had begun to feel nonplussed by the question of Transportation. Under the pressure of this difficulty, Lord Stanley, or the Colonial Office of his day, framed a plan for the establishment, as an experiment, of a pure penal colony without free settlers (at least, at the outset).‘When I came in, the plan might have been arrested in the event of disapproval; but the Government were, I think, committed, and I had only to put the last hand to the scheme.‘So it went on towards execution.‘In July, 1846, the Government was changed, and Lord Grey succeeded me. He said he would make none but necessary changes in pending measures. He, however, annihilated this scheme. For that I do not know that he is to be severely blamed. But he went on and dealt with the question in such a way as to produce a mess—I think more than one—far worse than any that he found. The result was the total and rather violent and summary extinction of the entire system.‘Here I lost sight of the fate of “Gladstone.” It has my good wishes, but I have nothing else to give.‘Yours very faithful,‘W. E. Gladstone.’
‘Dear Mr. Hogan,
‘My recollections of “Gladstone” were most copious, and are now nearly half a century old.
‘The period, December, 1845, when I became Colonial Secretary, was one when the British Government had begun to feel nonplussed by the question of Transportation. Under the pressure of this difficulty, Lord Stanley, or the Colonial Office of his day, framed a plan for the establishment, as an experiment, of a pure penal colony without free settlers (at least, at the outset).
‘When I came in, the plan might have been arrested in the event of disapproval; but the Government were, I think, committed, and I had only to put the last hand to the scheme.
‘So it went on towards execution.
‘In July, 1846, the Government was changed, and Lord Grey succeeded me. He said he would make none but necessary changes in pending measures. He, however, annihilated this scheme. For that I do not know that he is to be severely blamed. But he went on and dealt with the question in such a way as to produce a mess—I think more than one—far worse than any that he found. The result was the total and rather violent and summary extinction of the entire system.
‘Here I lost sight of the fate of “Gladstone.” It has my good wishes, but I have nothing else to give.
‘Yours very faithful,
‘W. E. Gladstone.’
Mr. Hogan deals with the decline and fall of transportation. It had ceased in New South Wales before Mr. Gladstone came into office. It had broken downalso in Norfolk Island, and the hideous practice in Van Diemen’s Land, known as ‘the probation system,’ was causing considerable excitement. 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. He was undoubtedly, at one time, of opinion that the right of the mother country to found penal settlements at the Antipodes was incontestable; but this view was then shared by most politicians outside the thoughtful circle of the Philosophical Radicals. It is clear, moreover, that Mr. Gladstone came to the subject of transportation with a sincere conviction that it was possible to convert criminals into good citizens, whose presence on the soil would be, not a curse, but an advantage. There is a remarkable State paper in the shape of a memorandum addressed to Sir Eardley Wilmot, who had been sent out specially to inaugurate the probation system. In this, after commenting with the enthusiasm natural to a young statesman on the practicability of reformation, he goes on to say: ‘Considerations yet more sacred enhance the importance of it, for it is impossible to forget in how large a proportion of cases these unhappy people have every claim on our sympathy which the force of temptation, adverse circumstances of life, ignorance and neglected education, can afford to those who have incurred the penalty of the law.’
But our colonists, no doubt, saw in such utterances only a pharisaism which overlooks the fact that this is pre-eminently a sort of charity which should begin at home. Mr. Gladstone, as appears from his despatches, was profoundly dissatisfied with the way in which Sir Eardley Wilmot—who was an old man, with probably an old-fashioned aversion to new ideas—performed, or, rather, did not perform, his duties, and finally dismissed him. Unfortunately, at the same time he addressed him in a private or ‘secret’ letter, in which he referred to certain rumours that had reached him of irregularities in Sir Eardley’s private life, which, as they were subsequently disproved, and Sir Eardley died during the controversy, awakened much sympathy. Mr. Hogan gives great prominence to this old scandal, and there can be no doubt that Sir Eardley was unjustly treated; but it is manifest that it was not the malicious rumours, but the neglect of duty, that was the ground of his dismissal. Mr. Gladstone’s complaint is:
‘You have under your charge and responsibility many thousand convicts formed into probation parties, or living together at Government depots. It is only with extreme rarity that you advert in your despatches to the moral condition of these men. You have discussed the economical questions connected with their maintenance or their coercion, and you have even entered into argument, though in a manner too little penetrating, upon their offences against the laws. But into the inner world of their mental, moral and spiritual state, either you have not made it a part of your duty to examine, or else—which for the present issue is, I apprehend, conclusive—you have not placed Her Majesty’s Government in possession of the results.’
It is curious to note Mr. Gladstone’s unpopularity in the Colonies. When Sir Henry Parkes, the New South Wales Premier, visited England, he writes: ‘I had a long conversation with Mr. Gladstone, in the course of which I told him that he had been often charged in Australia, both in the newspapers and in speeches, with being indifferent, if not inimical, to the preservation of the connection between the colonies and England. He was visibly surprised at what I told him, and said I was authorized to say that he had never at any time favoured such view, and that I might challenge any person making the charge to produce proof in support of it.’ On another occasion Sir Henry Parkes writes: ‘We talked for two hours chiefly on Australian topics, and I recollect very vividly his animated inquiry as to whether many of the young men of the country entered the Church.’
The Budget of 1860 was distinguished mainly for two things—the Commercial Treaty with France, initiated by Mr. Cobden, and the Taxes on Knowledge.
In the debate on this subject in 1852, Mr. Gladstone, then in opposition, intimated that, though he should like to see the paper duty repealed when the proper time had come, if books and newspapers were dearer than they ought to be, the blame was not so much with fiscal requirements as with the trades unionism, which wickedly raised the wages of compositors and others to a level far above their deserts. If the working-classes wanted cheap literature, he thought that they had a sufficient remedy in their own hands, as they themselves could cheapen the labour by which the literature was produced (quoted from Fox Bourne’s ‘History of the Newspaper Press’).
In the following year Mr. Gladstone, after the Government had been beaten, as a compromise, proposed to reduce the advertisement duty from one shilling and sixpence to sixpence. But he was again defeated, and the tax, in spite of him, was abolished altogether. The final stage was reached in 1861, when the paper duty was abolished, Mr. Gladstone being Chancellor of the Exchequer, after the Bill had been defeated in the House of Lords. ‘It entailed,’ wrote Mr. Gladstone in theNineteenth Century, ‘the severest Parliamentary struggle in which I have ever been engaged.’ The repeal of the paper duty was the arrival of a new era in literature—of the penny newspaper, of the popular magazine, of cheap reprints of all our great standard authors.
On February 15 Mr. Greville writes: ‘When I left London a fortnight ago the world was anxiously expecting Gladstone’s speech, in which he was to put the Commercial Treaty and the Budget before the world. His own confidence, and that of most of his colleagues, in his success was unbounded, but many inveighed bitterly against the treaty. Clarendon shook his head, Overstone pronounced against the treaty, theTimesthundered against it, and there is little doubt that it was unpopular, and becoming more so every day. Then came Gladstone’s unlucky illness, which compelled him to put off his expose, and made it doubtful whether he would not be physically disabled from doing justice to the subject. His doctor says he ought to have taken two months’ rest instead of two days. However, at the end of his two days’ delay he came forth and,consensus omnium, achieved one of the greatest triumphs that the House of Commons everwitnessed. Everybody, I have heard from home, admits that it was a magnificent display, not to be surpassed in ability of execution, and that he carried the House of Commons with him. I can well believe it, for when I read the report of it next day it carried me along with it likewise.’ The only parties not gratified were the Temperance Reformers, who did not like the cheap Gladstone claret which was immediately introduced at the dinner-tables, nor that clause of the new Bill which was to give grocers licenses to sell the cheap wines of France, and which was to make the fortune of the great house of Gilbey.