The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume II Part 16

We went yesterday to visit the Stanleys, and saw the South Stack Lighthouse with its grand and savage rocks. They are very remarkable, one part for ma.s.ses of sheer precipices descending in columns to the sea, the other for the extraordinary contortions which the rocks have undergone from igneous action and huge compressing forces. Our weather has been and continues cold for the season, which draws onwards, however, and the gliding days recall to mind the busy outer world from which we are so well defended.

_1864_

_Jan. 4._-Often as I have been struck by the Queen's extraordinary integrity of mind-I know of no better expression-I never felt it more than on hearing and reading a letter of hers on Sat.u.r.day (at the cabinet) about the Danish question. Her determination in this case as in others, not inwardly to "sell the truth" (this is Robert Pollok) overbears all prepossessions and longings, strong as they are, on the German side, and enables her spontaneously to hold the balance, it seems to me, tolerably even.

_Jan. 14._-I am glad you were not scandalised about my laxity as to the "public house." But I expected from you this liberality. I really had no choice. How can I who drink good wine and bitter beer every day of my life, in a comfortable room and among friends, coolly stand up and advise hardworking fellow-creatures to take "the pledge"? However, I have been reading Maguire's _Life of Father Matthew_, with a most glowing admiration for the Father.

Every one knew him to be good, but I had no idea of the extent and height of his goodness, and his boundless power and thirst not for giving only but for loving.

_June 27._-Just at this time when the press and ma.s.s of ordinary business ought to be lessening, the foreign crisis you see comes upon us, and drowns us deeper than ever. I fully believe that England _will_ not go to war, and I am sure she _ought_ not. Are you not a little alarmed at Argyll on this matter? Of the fate of the government I cannot speak with much confidence or with much anxious desire; but on the whole I _rather_ think, and _rather_ hope, we shall come through.

Three marriages almost in as many weeks among your own immediate kin! I look for a dinner at Woolner's with Tennyson to-day: _a sei occhi_. Last night Manning spent three hours with me; the conversation must wait. He is sorely anti-Garibaldian. How beautiful is the ending of Newman's _Apologia_, part VII.

_Oct. 23._-Singularly happy in my old and early political friends.h.i.+ps, I am now stripped of every one of them. It has indeed been my good lot to acquire friends.h.i.+ps in later life, which I could not have hoped for; but at this moment I seem to see the spirits of the dead gathered thick around me, "all along the narrow valley," the valley of life, over and into which the sun of a better, of a yet better life, s.h.i.+nes narrowly. I do not think our political annals record such a removal of a generation of statesmen before its time as we have witnessed in the last four years. I could say a great deal about Newcastle. He was a high and strong character, very true, very n.o.ble, and, I think, intelligible, which (as you know) I think rare in politicians. My relations with him will be kept up in one sense by having to act, and I fear act much, as his executor and trustee, with De Tabley, an excellent colleague, who discharged the same duty for the Duke of Hamilton and for Canning.

_Dec. 28._-I cannot give you a full account of Lord Derby's translation [of the _Iliad_], but there is no doubt in my mind that it is a very notable production. He always had in a high degree the inborn faculty of a scholar, with this he has an enviable power of expression, and an immense command of the English tongue; add the quality of dash which appears in his version quite as much as in his speeches. Undoubtedly if he _wrought_ his execution as Tennyson does, results might have been attained beyond the actual ones; but, while I will not venture to speak of the precision of the version, various pa.s.sages in the parts I have read are of very high excellence. Try to find out what Tennyson thinks of it.

_1865_

_Aug. 8._-My reading has been little, but even without your question I was going to mention that I had caught at the name of "_L'Ami Fritz_," seeing it was by the author of the _Conscrit_, and had read it. I can recommend it too, though the subject does not at first sight look ravis.h.i.+ng: it tells how a middle-aged middle-cla.s.s German bachelor comes to marry the daughter of his own farm bailiff. Some parts are full of grace; there is a tax-gatherer's speech on the duty of paying taxes, which came home to _my_ heart. Though it a little reminds me of a sermon which I heard preached in an aisle of the Duomo of Milan to the boys of a Sunday school (said to have been founded by St. Charles Borromeo) on the absolute necessity of paying t.i.thes! The golden breadths of harvest are now a most lively joy to me. But we have had great official troubles in the death of Mr. Arbuthnot, a _pillar_ of the treasury, and a really notable man.

_Sept. 12._-I am working off my post as well as I can with the bands playing and flags fluttering outside. By and by I am going to carve rounds of beef for some part of four hundred diners. The ladies are only allowed tea. Our _weather_ anxieties are great, but all is going well. The new telegram and announcement that you will come on Friday is very welcome. Indeed, I did not say anything about the marriage, because, without knowing more, I did not know what to say, except that I most sincerely wish them all good and all happiness. The rest must keep till Friday. The characters you describe are quite, I think, on the right ground.

It was the great glory of the Greeks that they had those full and large views of man's nature, not the narrow and pinched ones which are sometimes found even among Christians. Lord Palmerston's abandoning his trip to Bristol is rather a serious affair. There is more in it, I fear, than gout.

_Oct. 24._-If you were well enough, and I had wings, there is nothing I should more covet at this moment than to appear at Inveraray and compare and correct my impressions of Lord Palmerston's character by yours. Death of itself produces a certain tendency to view more warmly what was before admired, and more slightly anything that was not. And by stirring the thought of the nation through the press it commonly throws lights upon the subject either new in themselves or new in their combination.

_Twelve_ cabinet ministers I have already reckoned in my mind, all carried off by the rude hand of death in the last five years, during which three only have been made. They are: Lord Dalhousie, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Herbert, Sir J. Graham, Lord Canning, Lord Elgin, Sir G. Lewis, Lord Campbell, Lord Macaulay, Mr. Ellice, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Palmerston. This, in the political world, and to me especially, is an extraordinary desolation.

I hope you are at least creeping on. It was so kind of you to think about my little neuralgic affairs; thank G.o.d, I have had no more.

_1866_

_Hawarden, Jan. 4._-We have been pleased with some partial accounts of improvement, and I can the better speak my wish to you for a happy new year. Next Wednesday I hope to inquire for myself.

I have been much laden and a good deal disturbed. We have the cattle plague in full force here, and it has even touched my small group of tenants. To some of them it is a question of life and death; and my brother-in-law, who is by nature one of the most munificent persons I ever knew, is sorely straitened in mind at not being able to do all he would like for his people. But do not let this sound like complaint from me. Few have such cause for ceaseless and unbounded thankfulness.

...If you come across Armstrong's poems(137) pray look at them. An Irish youth cut off at twenty-four. By the by, Wortley's children have admirable acting powers, which they showed in charades very cleverly got up by his wife as stage manager. Grosvenor seconds the speech, and F. Cavendish moves the address. We have had divers thrushes singing here, a great treat at this season. I like them better than hothouse strawberries.

_July 7._-I cannot feel unmixedly glad for yourself that you are returning to Chiswick. For us it will be a great gain.... Disraeli and I were affectionate at the Mansion House last night. Poor fellow, he has been much tried about his wife's health. The King of the Belgians pleases me, and strikes me more as to his personal qualities on each successive visit. G.o.d bless you, my dear d.u.c.h.ess and precious friend, affectionately yours.

_1867_

_Hawarden, April 29.-We both_ hope to have the pleasure of dining at Chiswick on Wednesday. We a.s.sume that the hour will be 7.30 as usual. I shall be so glad to see Argyll, and to tell him the little I can about the literary department of the _Guardian_. I write from the "Temple of Peace." It is a sore wrench to go away.

But I am thankful to have had such a quiet Easter. The false rumour about Paris has had a most beneficial effect, and has spared me a mult.i.tude of demands. The birds are delightful here.

What must they be at Cliveden.-Ever affectionately yours.

_Holker Hall, Sept. 22._-We find this place very charming. It explains at once the secret of the great affection they all have for it. It has a singular combination of advantages-sea, hill, home ground, and views, access, and the house such an excellent living house; all the parts, too, in such good keeping and proportion. We much admire your steps. The inhabitants would be quite enough to make any place pleasant. We have just been at that n.o.ble old church of Cartmel. These churches are really the best champions of the men who built them.

_Nov. 23._-I cannot let the moment pa.s.s at which I would have been enjoying a visit to you after your severe illness without one word of sympathy.... Our prospects are uncertain; but I cling to the hope of escaping to the country at the end of next week, unless the proposals of the government as to the mode of providing for the expense of this unhappy war should prove to be very exceptionable, which at present I do not expect. I saw Lord Russell last night. He seemed very well but more deaf. Lady Russell has had some partial failure of eyesight. Lord R. is determined on an educational debate, and has given notice of resolutions; all his friends, I think, are disposed to regret it.

I am told the exchequer is deplorably poor. Poor Disraeli has been sorely cut up; and it has not yet appeared that Mrs. Disraeli is out of danger, though she is better. Her age seems to be at the least seventy-six. I have been to see my china exhibited in its new home at Liverpool, where it seemed pretty comfortable.

_1868_

_31 Bloomsbury Square, Jan. 3._-I promised to write to you in case I found matters either bad or good. I lament to say they are bad.

He [Panizzi] is weaker, more feverish (pulse to-day at 122 about noon), and very restless. The best will be a severe struggle and the issue is _likely_ to be unfavourable. At the same time he is not given over. I said, I shall come to-morrow. He said, You will not find me alive. I replied that was wrong. I believe there is no danger to-morrow, but what next week may do is another matter. He is warm and affectionate as ever, and very tender. He is firm and resigned, not stoically, but with trust in G.o.d. I am very sad at the thought of losing this very true, trusty, hearty friend. I must go to-morrow, though of course I should stay if I could be of any use.(138)

This year the end came, and a few lines from his diary show the loss it was to Mr. Gladstone:-

_Oct. 28._-The post brought a black-bordered letter which announced the death of the Dowager d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland. I have lost in her from view the warmest and dearest friend, surely, that ever man had. Why this n.o.ble and tender spirit should have had such bounty for me and should have so freshened my advancing years, my absorbed and divided mind, I cannot tell. But I feel, strange as it might sound, ten years the older for her death. May the rest and light and peace of G.o.d be with her ever more until _that day_. None will fill her place for me, nor for many worthier than I.

Chapter XIII. Reform. (1866)

L'aristocratie, la democratie ne sont pas de vaines doctrines livrees a nos disputes; ce sont des puissances, qu'on n'abat point, qu'on n'eleve point par la louange ou par l'injure; avant que nous parlions d'elles, elles sont ou ne sont pas.-ROYER-COLLARD.

Aristocracy, democracy, are not vain doctrines for us to dispute about; they are powers; you neither exalt them nor depress them by praise or by blame; before we talk of them, they exist or they do not exist.

I

Mr. Denison, the Speaker, had a conversation with Mr. Gladstone almost immediately after the death of Lord Palmerston, and he reported the drift of it to Sir George Grey. The Speaker had been in Scotland, and found no strong feeling for reform or any other extensive change, while there was a general decline of interest in the ballot:-

Gladstone said, "Certainly, as far as my const.i.tuents go, there is no strong feeling for reform among them. And as to the ballot, I think it is declining in favour." He spoke of the difficulties before us, of the embarra.s.sment of the reform question. "With a majority of 80 on the liberal side, they will expect some action."

I answered, "No doubt a majority of 80, agreed on any point, would expect action. At the time of the first Reform bill, when the whole party was for the bill, the course was clear. But is the party agreed now? The point it was agreed upon was to support Lord Palmerston's government. But was that in order to pa.s.s a strong measure of reform? Suppose that the country is satisfied with the foreign policy, and the home policy, and the financial policy, and wants to maintain these and their authors, and does not want great changes of any kind?" I was, on the whole, pleased with the tone of Gladstone's conversation. It was calm, and for soothing difficulties, not for making them.... I should add that Gladstone spoke with great kindness about yourself, and about your management of the House of Commons, and said that it would be his wish that you should lead it.(139)

(M55) The antecedents of the memorable crisis of 1866-7 were curious.

Reform bills had been considered by five governments since 1849, and mentioned in six speeches from the throne. Each political party had brought a plan forward, and Lord John Russell had brought forward three.

Mr. Bright also reduced his policy to the clauses of a bill in 1858. In 1859 Lord Derby's government had introduced a measure which old whigs and new radicals, uniting their forces, had successfully resisted. This move Mr. Gladstone-who, as the reader will recollect, had on that occasion voted with the tories(140)-always took to impose a decisive obligation on all who withstood the tory attempt at a settlement, to come forward with proposals of their own. On the other hand, in the new parliament, the tory party was known to be utterly opposed to an extension of the franchise, and a considerable fringe of professing liberals also existed who were quite as hostile, though not quite as willing to avow hostility before their const.i.tuents. All the leaders were committed, and yet of their adherents the majority was dubious or adverse. The necessity of pa.s.sing a Reform bill through an anti-reform parliament thus produced a situation of unsurpa.s.sed perplexity. Some thought that formidable susceptibilities would be soothed, if the government were reconstructed and places found for new men. Others declared that the right course would be first to weld the party together by bills on which everybody was agreed; to read a good Reform bill a first time; then in the recess the country would let ministers see where they were, and the next session would find them on firm ground. But Lord Russell knew that he had little time to spare-he was now close upon seventy-four-and Mr. Gladstone was the last man to try to hold him back.

The proceedings of the new government began with a familiar demonstration of the miserable failure of English statesmen to govern Ireland, in the shape of the twentieth coercion bill, since the union. This need not detain us, nor need the budget, the eighth of the series that made this administration so memorable in the history of national finance. It was naturally quite enough for parliament that the accounts showed a surplus of 1,350,000; that the last tax on raw material vanished with the repeal of the duty on timber; that a series of commercial treaties had been successfully negotiated; and that homage should be paid to virtue by the nibbling of a mouse at the mountain of the national debt. The debt was eight hundred millions, and it was now proposed to apply half-a-million a year towards its annihilation. Reform, however, was the fighting question, and fighting questions absorb a legislature.

(M56) The chancellor of the exchequer introduced the Reform bill (March 12) in a speech that, though striking enough, was less impa.s.sioned than some of his later performances in the course of this famous contest. He did not forget that "the limbo of abortive creations was peopled with the skeletons of reform bills"; and it was his cue in a House so const.i.tuted as the one before him, to use the language and arguments of moderation and safety. Franchise was the real question at stake, and to that branch of reform the bill was limited. The other question of redistributing seats he likened to fighting in a wood, where there may be any number of partial encounters, but hardly a great and deciding issue. The only point on which there was a vital difference was the figure of the borough franchise. In 1859 Mr. Disraeli invented a quackish phrase about lateral extension and vertical extension, and offered votes to various cla.s.ses who mainly had them already, without extending downwards; but whatever else his plan might do, it opened no door for the workmen. In 1860 the Palmerston government proposed a six pound occupation franchise for boroughs, and ten pounds for counties. The proposal of 1866 was seven pounds for boroughs, and fourteen for counties. We may smile at the thought that some of the most brilliant debates ever heard in the House of Commons now turned upon the mighty puzzle whether the qualification for a borough voter should be occupancy of a ten, a seven, or a six pound house;-nay, whether the ruin or salvation of the state might not lie on the razor-edge of distinction between rating and rental. Ministers were taunted with having brought in Mr. Bright's bill. Mr. Bright replied that he could not find in it a single point that he had recommended. He was never in favour of a six pound franchise; he believed in a household franchise; but if a seven pound franchise was offered, beggars could not be choosers, and seven pounds he would take. In a fragmentary note of later years Mr. Gladstone, among other things, describes one glittering protagonist of the hour:-

Lord Russell adhered with great tenacity to his ideas, in which he was strongly supported by me as his leader in the Commons, and by Granville and others of the cabinet. Bright, the representative man of popular ideas, behaved with an admirable combination of discretion and loyalty. Lowe was an outspoken opponent, so superst.i.tiously enamoured of the ten pound franchise as to be thrown into a temper of general hostility to a government which did not recognise its finality and sanct.i.ty. He pursued our modest Reform bill of 1866 with an implacable hostility, and really supplied the whole brains of the opposition. So effective were his speeches that, during this year, and this year only, he had such a command of the House as had never in my recollection been surpa.s.sed. Nor was there any warrant for imputing to him dishonesty of purpose or _arriere-pensee_. But his position was one, for the moment, of personal supremacy, and this to such an extent that, when all had been reconciled and the time for his peerage came, I pressed his viscountcy on the sovereign as a tribute to his former elevation, which, though short-lived, was due to genuine power of mind, as it seemed to me that a man who had once soared to those heights trodden by so few, ought not to be lost in the common ruck of official barons.

The first trial of strength arose upon a device of one of the greatest of the territorial whigs, seconded by a much more eminent man in the ranks of territorial tories. Lord Grosvenor announced a motion that they would not proceed with the franchise, until they were in possession of the ministerial intentions upon seats. Lord Stanley, the son of the tory leader, seconded the motion. Any other form would have served equally well as a test of conflicting forces. The outlook was clouded. Mr. Brand, the skilful whip, informed the cabinet, that there were three cla.s.ses of disaffected liberals, who might possibly be kept in order; first, those who, although opposed to reform, were averse to a change of government; next, those who doubted whether ministers really intended to deal with the seats at all; and finally, those who felt sure that when they came to deal with seats, they would be under the baleful influence of Bright. The first of the three sections could best be kept right by means of a stiff line against Grosvenor and Stanley, and the other two sections by the simple production of the seats bill before taking the committee on franchise. The expert's counsels were followed. Mr. Gladstone told the House that Lord Grosvenor's motion would be treated as a vote of want of confidence, but that he would disclose the whole plan as soon as the franchise bill had pa.s.sed its second reading. The mutterings only grew louder. At a great meeting in Liverpool (April 6), accompanied by some of his colleagues Mr.

Gladstone roused the enthusiasm of his audience to the utmost pitch by declaring that the government would not flinch, that they had pa.s.sed the Rubicon, broken the bridges, burned their boats. Still the malcontents were not cowed.

(M57) The leader himself rose in warmth of advocacy as the struggle went on. The advocates of privilege used language about the workers, that in his generous and sympathetic mind fanned the spark into a flame. Lowe asked an unhappy question, that long stood out as a beacon mark in the controversy-whether "if you wanted venality, ignorance, drunkenness-if you wanted impulsive, unreflecting, violent people-where do you look for them?

Do you go to the top or to the bottom?" Harsh judgments like this of the conditions of life and feeling in the ma.s.s of the nation-though Lowe was personally one of the kindest of men-made Mr. Gladstone stand all the more ardently by the objects of such sweeping reproach. In a discussion upon electoral statistics, he let fall a phrase that reverberated through the discussion inside parliament and out. Some gentlemen, he said, deal with these statistics, as if they were ascertaining the numbers of an invading army. "But the persons to whom their remarks apply are our fellow-subjects, our fellow-Christians, _our own flesh and blood_, who have been lauded to the skies for their good conduct."(141) This was instantly denounced by Lord Cranborne(142) as sentimental rant, and inquiries soon followed why kins.h.i.+p in flesh and blood should be strictly limited by a seven pound rental. Speedily Mr. Gladstone pa.s.sed from steady practical argument in the ministerial key, to all the topics of popular enthusiasm and parliamentary invective. His impulsiveness, said critical observers, "betrays him at times into exaggeration or incaution; but there is a generous quality in it." Mr. Bright once talked of his own agitation for reform as no better than flogging a dead horse. The parliamentary struggle, led by Mr. Gladstone, brought the dead horse to life, stirred the combative instincts, and roused all the forces of reform. Lowe was glittering, energetic, direct, and swift. Mr. Disraeli, contented to watch his adversaries draw their swords on one another, did not put forth all his power. In a moment of unwisdom he taunted Mr. Gladstone with his stripling's speech at the Oxford Union five-and-thirty years before. As Aberdeen once said, "Gladstone is terrible on the rebound,"(143) and anybody less imperturbable than Disraeli would have found his retort terrible here. His speech on the second reading (April 27), as a whole, ranks among the greatest of his performances. "Spoke," he says, "from one to past three, following Disraeli. It was a toil much beyond my strength, but I seemed to be sustained and borne onwards I knew not how." The party danger, the political theme, the new responsibility of command, the joy of battle, all seemed to transfigure the orator before the vision of the House, as if he were the Greek hero sent forth to combat by Pallas Athene, with, flame streaming from head and shoulders, from helmet and s.h.i.+eld, like the star of summer rising effulgent from the sea. One personal pa.s.sage deserves a biographic place:-