Part 5

When that unpostponeable day comes, it is very well known beforehand whose will be the most towering figure on the hustings, whose the form towards which all eyes must turn. It will be that of him whose name is written at the head of this paper--Mr. Gladstone. Most Englishmen will at first feel a crick in the neck in having to look behind them so far north as Midlothian. But Liberals and Conservatives alike understand that wherever Mr. Gladstone chooses to take up his position that becomes the centre of the fight. If he stood for the Orkneys, he would still be too near for his opponents; and, as for his friends, they remember that with Ulysses' bow it did not greatly signify whether the hero was a few yards further off or nearer. The bolts will reach. It is, indeed, not unlikely that Mr. Gladstone may force on the conflict, and, after the speech at Chester, the other side cannot say that they were left without warning. The Conservative leaders have, in fact, a nearer date to calculate than the final one of the Parliamentary calendar--that, namely, of Mr. Gladstone's appearance in Midlothian. It may be supposed that they are already anxiously counting the days of the dwindling interval. Whenever he gives instructions for his hustings to be put up, the Conservatives will have to send for their own carpenters, and order planks.

The present moment, while he is temporarily absent, and just before he again necessarily reappears in the very front of the public stage, may not be an ill time for taking a hasty review of him and his career. It is, in fact, a favourable chance. Mr. Gladstone, by stress of glorious hard work and sheer public efficiency, has so unceasingly filled the passing hour, always being fully occupied himself in dealing with a special matter, and enforcing the attention of the nation to it, that he has left people very little at leisure to take in a retrospect of him. The result is, that there is great inadequacy in the public appreciation of the dimensions of his career; it stretches back further, expands wider, rises higher than most of us commonly keep in our minds. Lately, it is true, Mr. Gladstone has taken great pains to remind the country of his years; he has rather ostentatiously postured as an old man. But without meaning to impugn his veracity, or to dispute the register, we may say that he has scarcely got anybody to believe it. He has gone on felling trees, writing letters and articles, and publishing volumes, with utterances of more and better speeches between than anybody else can make, in a way which has led not a few to congratulate themselves that he was not any younger. In particular, his opponents, so soon as they found out that his announcement of retirement into ease meant that he was going to take the truest rest of all, to work a little harder in another kind of way, positively made an outcry as if he had pledged himself to gratify them by doing nothing. They seem rather to complain that he has retired into greater publicity; but there is something to be said about that matter. The implied bargain on Mr. Gladstone's side at the time obviously was that the Conservatives were themselves not to do anything in particular. It was to be a time of stagnation, and they have not kept to that understanding; no sooner had he turned his back than they began to swagger up and down the world as Imperialists. They have risked the highest interests of the empire and have made England figure on the wrong side, arrayed against the oppressed and blustering for war. Mr. Gladstone could only keep quiet by foregoing all patriotism. It was too much to ask from an old-fashioned English statesman, who had always himself stood on the side of freedom and peace, and had grown accustomed to seeing his country ranged there too. However, we will speak again a little later on this point of his announced retirement.

It is nearly superfluous to remind any one that there is no statesman now before the public with an official record which can in any way be set beside Mr. Gladstone's even in the mere matters of length of time and diversity of parts. There are a number of men in the House of Commons older than Mr. Gladstone; there are some, though not many, who have had a seat in it longer than he has; but there is no one whose Ministerial life goes back nearly so far. He held office forty-five years ago. Nearly a score of years had to pass after his first appointment to a post before Mr. Disraeli joined a Ministry, and then he stepped into the place which had been refused by Mr. Gladstone. The latter's range of official experience excels others in breadth even more than in length. Before he became Prime Minister he had been Under-Secretary for the Colonies, Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Master of the Mint, President of the Board of Trade, full Secretary for the Colonies, and Chancellor of the Exchequer more than once. There is no other journeyman politician with a stroke of work left in him who has anything like this list of credentials of apprenticeship to show. Mr. Gladstone learnt his craft under Peel, Aberdeen, Palmerston, Russell; and then himself became the selecter and instructor of a group of younger men for whom renewed office is only biding a not very distant date. It is an honour alike to name the men he served under and those whom he commanded; including in the association with him some whom he attracted, and to whom the latter phrase might scarcely fully apply; for Mr. Cobden worked with him without an office, and Mr. Bright in one. These latter were achievements of personal influence which may fairly rank a trifle higher than merely taking precedence of a Duke in a Cabinet. If we go on to consider what has happened in his time in the way of legislation and social reform, and his connection with it, it may be said, speaking generally, that he has witnessed the political and economical remoulding of this kingdom; and, taking all things together, has helped it forward in more ways than anybody else who still survives. If while Mr. Bright lives his name must always have the honour of first mention when the Repeal of the Corn Laws is spoken of, it was Mr. Gladstone who wrought out all the details of Peel's fiscal reforms. He too it was who, much later, gave effect to Cobden's negotiation of the French Commercial Treaty; and also, again, made the best bargain that could be made when that first international arrangement lapsed. Every amelioration bearing on taxation and trade in our time has been naturally fated in some way to touch the hands of Mr. Gladstone. So, too, it was his conversion, or rather his progress, on the question of the Franchise--proved by his bringing in of the Russell measure--which made the immediate granting of the vote certain, and challenged the Tory trick of the last Reform Bill. The Ballot Act, without which the vote was but a sinister gift, came from his Ministry. But let us turn from England to the sister country. If Ireland is ever pacified, it will be then seen that it was Mr. Gladstone who, by the Disestablishment of the Irish Church and by his Land Act, laid the foundations of the peace. If the Roman Catholics get a University now, they will only get what he offered them years ago. The prosperity of Ireland is, indeed, sure some day to give to Mr. Gladstone's memory a splendid revenge for the ingratitude she showed to the man who brought legislating for Ireland into vogue. If we shift our regard to diplomacy, the future is still clearly with him in several of the chiefest international arrangements this generation has witnessed. When the Berlin Treaty is cobwebbed, and forgotten by everybody but historians and bookworms, the Treaty of Washington will be a living, ruling precedent between the mighty English-speaking nations on both sides of the Atlantic; and on the day that the Turks are thrust out of Europe, and the peoples of those regions are settling the Eastern Question finally for themselves, the then British Government, in begging somebody to take Cyprus off our hands, will hear a larger Greece gratefully couple Mr. Gladstone's name with the cession of the Ionian Islands.

In every one of these matters Mr. Gladstone gets his good fortune with posterity, as we believe, from having acted on Liberal principles. It is the merit of those principles that, to borrow a phrase of his own, they put Time on a man's side. He has trusted himself to the popular impulses, which are the breezes blowing towards the future, giving auspicious omens by the very working out of the world's events. But if, apart from Liberalism, he would have had not much more significance for the coming generations than Lord Beaconsfield will have when his foreign policy has once been undone and set aside, Mr. Gladstone must not be defrauded of a tittle of his due credit. He who has done all this was once a Conservative, and, to make it still more wonderful, a Peelite. Of that pale group of a Parliamentary section, which never could be a party, he is the only one who escaped from the vain middle region of ineffectiveness. For a man who was once a Peelite and has never ceased to be a High Churchman to have gained supreme power in this country is a political miracle. It was worked by sheer mental force. Mr. Gladstone's greatest feat, making all the rest possible, was the slowly but ever-ripeningly turning himself into a good, sound, robust Liberal; but he not only had the wit to appreciate the inevitableness of popular progress, he made himself a shaper and a helper of it in ways which showed a willing adoption of its cause. For we may scrutinize his career more closely than in the above rapid sketch, may look down lower than these great pictorial incidents we have been recapitulating; and, if we do so, we shall see a set of administrative reforms, less showy, but very hard to carry, and which exhibit genuine Liberalism in the grain of every one of them. It was under his auspices that the Civil Service was thrown open to unlimited competition; he, in spite of the Lords, with Earl Derby at their head, took the duty off paper, giving us cheap newspapers; he consolidated the Law Courts, doing away a whole web of legal artificialities; it was as his colleague that Mr. Forster gave to the country its first national educational scheme; but for him Mr. Cardwell would never have succeeded in altering the principle of our military organization from long-period enlistments to the short-term service; while Mr. Gladstone's opponents are willing to thrust upon him the whole honour of abolishing purchase in the army, because they think the issue of the Royal Warrant which, thanks to their resistance of the reform, was the only means of effecting it, lends itself to a taunt. Add to this list, the fact that although he, at first, for easily seen reasons of mere habit of mind, going back to the earlier days when he was Conservative, did not favour University Reform, yet he finally lent himself fully to it, and it is not difficult to understand the successive outcries raised against him in the higher social quarters. He gave all the "interests" splendidly sufficient reasons for their dislike, since wherever there was an abuse Mr. Gladstone was as certain in the end to confront it as he is to appear, axe on his shoulder, before any tree in Hawarden woods which has lived past its time.

But there is another way, more compendious still, of summing up his political chronicle. His opponents at times exult over the fact of his having often changed his constituencies. It is true, but it was always for his growing Liberalism. Certainly, there are those who once ensconced in a shire--say, in Buckinghamshire--remain there as long as they need a seat. They never offend any one by progress of view. Mr. Gladstone has not acted by that rule; he has got himself turned out of constituency after constituency; but, we repeat, it was always for the same reason--he became too big for them. Among his highest distinctions are these,--he is the resigner of Newark, the rejected of Oxford, the loser of South Lancashire. The thing has occurred too often to admit of a casual explanation. It was not for Liberalism, as it is now understood, that he, when still in his youth, offended the mighty Duke of Newcastle and had to give up Newark, but it was for reasoned-out consistency which gave hope of Liberalism. He would not stultify his intellect by voting for Peel's proposed increase of the Maynooth Grant in contradiction of his own book on Church and State. But all the world knows that it was for Liberalism somewhat developed that he quitted Oxford; and the cause of his defeat in Lancashire was that he had for years been too busy in pushing forward reforms on all hands. It was a noble vanquishment for him, whatever it was for his party, for Lancashire, or for the country. Test his career how we will, the result still comes out to his honour. He, for conscience' sake, offended the great patron on whom his whole prospects then depended, remaining out of Parliament for a time; later, he went over with Peel, knowing that it meant an ineffective hanging between two parties for an indefinite time, sharing the hopes and chances of neither; when Lord Derby came into power, he refused office on its being offered. In a word, he has evidenced his sincerity and proved his patriotism in every way for which it is allowed to other men to claim honour. When a man has risked personal prospects, refused place, held office in all its kinds, left one lagging constituency after another behind him, and finally, by sheer insisting on rapid progress, temporarily wearied the weak and lazy of his countrymen throughout the whole nation, as the last general election showed that he had, what more is there left for him to do for his country? Only one thing remained: the sacrificing his retirement after the formal announcement of the close of his career, and, afresh taking up his old post in the front of the battle as if he were still young and had place and public life to secure, striving his hardest a last time for the sake of his principles and his party. It is this final possibility of sacrificing ease and renewing labour which Mr. Gladstone undertakes in the Midlothian campaign now so very soon to be opened by him.

The above is the merest bird's-eye glance at his career, but it seemed to us a retrospect which all Liberals should have in their minds more completely than is common when he again draws to him the national gaze, as he of necessity will do.

But on reading back, how inadequate does the above record seem for Mr. Gladstone! It is simply the background of the picture; a field of industry and achievements, on which the portraiture of the man himself needs yet making to stand out. We have been speaking of the ex-Premier, for instance, just as we might talk of any politician, and Mr. Gladstone, though our chiefest politician, has throughout been so much more than that. It is perfectly true that there is no public man among us who has projected less of a special atmosphere of personality than he has through which his doings are to be beheld. He has been too busy with his work to think of any attitudinizing or trick in doing it. Mr. Gladstone's only mannerism has been that of superior excellence of thinking, speaking, and doing. Anybody else might have done and said what he has uttered and effected, if only they had had the same ability and industry. His one comprehensive distinction, summing up all the others, lies in his having developed more of these two simple, old-fashioned things than his best contemporaries. He has invented no mysteries, traded in no artificialities, given us no pyrotechnics; only a plain common air lies along his track, in which, if we perhaps except two or three points where a little mist hangs, everything can be clearly seen in white light, without exaggeration or distortion. His whole style has been the old traditionary English one, accentuated only by Scotch earnestness and seriousness of religious feeling. If Mr. Gladstone, however, has not made any eccentric or theatrical impression on the public mind, he has done something larger and better. He has kept all the three kingdoms continuously aware of him as an element in our general thinking, as well as being a power in our practical affairs. If we put aside Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Ruskin, scarcely any one has had so much to do with the general mental activity of the last two generations as Mr. Gladstone. The result is what we have just pointed out,--that if we sketch him as a statesman only, everybody sees that the canvas is not big enough. It is a sufficiently full description of most men who have been politicians to ascribe to them statesmanship; but in Mr. Gladstone's case we want a yet larger phrase; his business has not been politics merely, it has been patriotism; and he has made time, nobody quite knows how, to do nearly as much work outside Parliament as within it. We may cut a scholar able to adorn a university out of Mr. Gladstone, and then carve from him a fine student and reverencer of Art; next mark off a reviewer and general _litterateur_ whom professed authors will respectfully make room for in their ranks; and not only is there still left, solid and firm, the great Parliamentary Minister, but of the scattered fragments a couple of Bishops might easily be made, with, if nothing at all is to be wasted, several preachers for the denominations. The latter would be derived from a morsel or two of material which Mr. Gladstone himself is not fully aware of as being in his composition. It is not very easy to give a complete impression offhand of such a multiform personage as this. We must take him a little simpler. The general effect of it all has been, as we said above, that the mental activity of the community in all matters relating to politics and practical affairs has had to take its rate and much of its scale largely from him, and he has been thinking with the speed, not of the old jog-trot political life, but with the rapidity of ethical and religious cogitation, and has insisted on giving thought to everything. In fact, the ultimate impression which Mr. Gladstone has made upon the community has been that of an intellect weaponed with a perfectly fluent tongue, and a hand holding the quickest of pens, occupying the very highest national posts, ceaselessly going on reasoning, insisting upon doing it, whether the reasoning might occasionally go wrong or not, just as if thinking, speaking, and writing were man's right employment. His chief opponents would, perhaps, hesitate in flatly saying that they were not; but, at any rate, they have continually been wanting him to stop. Nearly all the complaint that was ever made of Mr. Gladstone resolves itself into a charge that he has thought and spoken and written too much. The accusation is one which it would task a great many men to lay themselves open to; it is never thought of in the case of the bulk of us. Above all, he has kept on thinking; he would use his mind. Possibly the other side might have forgiven it, if only he had not done it so well; if only this promptest, quickest ratiocination on the part of a practical politician in our times had not, as it progressed, brought him ever nearer to the conclusions of Liberalism. He has, we are, however, rather ashamed to admit, had to suffer from his own party for this unusualness of mental activity. Our practical politics for generations past had been carried on upon such shallow reasoning, on such a hand-to-mouth principle of mere party expediency, that even some Liberals were surprised when he brought a little subtlety of intellect into public life. It was enough to make a smaller man despair of his countrymen's sanity when he found that for years many of them could not distinguish between an Anglican High Churchman and an admirer of Rome.