The Real Gladstone: An Anecdotal Biography

On April 8, 1886, Mr. Gladstone moved his great and long-expected measure. The desire to hear the statement of the Premier was intense, Nationalist members sitting up all night to secure their places. Never was there such a struggle on the part of members to obtain seats. Chairs were set on the floor of the House, by which means seventy or eighty additional seats were provided. The galleries, the nooks – in short, every foot of standing ground was crowded with chairs. Language fails to do justice to the intense excitement of the hour, or to note the competition for every seat in the Strangers’ Gallery; the scramble of the Lords, too, for room in places assigned to them, the ovation rapturously afforded by his followers to the hero of the hour, the physical and mental efforts of the orator for more than two hours, the rapt attention, diversified by bursts of cheers from one side and ironical exclamations from the other, and the vociferous applause at the close, are things never to be forgotten in the history of our Parliamentary annals. The speech with which he wound up the debate on the first reading in April was wonderfully fine. ‘He raised,’ writes Sir R. Temple, ‘the drooping spirits of his followers; he held his head aloft; and in his wrath against the dissentient Liberals he seemed to stand higher by inches than his ordinary stature.’ His next effort, in unfolding his scheme for buying out the Irish landlords, was not so successful. After Mr. Chamberlain’s attack on it, he is described as having left the House apparently in high dudgeon. The second reading of the Home Rule Bill was moved by Mr. Gladstone amidst cheers from the Nationalist members alone. The debate was animated and prolonged. On the closing night Mr. Gladstone rose at midnight to deliver his fourth speech on the Bill. ‘For the last twenty minutes or so,’ writes Sir R. Temple, ‘I have never heard such oratory anywhere from any man; indeed, he poured his very soul into it.’ But all in vain. The Ayes were 311, the Noes 341. Parliament was dissolved, and in the General Election Home Rule was smitten, as far as England was concerned, hip and thigh. Lord Salisbury was Premier, Mr. Goschen joined the Unionist party; and Mr. Chamberlain suggested the Round Table Conference to fill up the Liberal ranks, to which Mr. Gladstone heartily consented, but which came to nothing after all.

The chief event of this short session was a Tenant Relief Bill, introduced by Mr. Parnell, providing for the suspension of the ejectment of any defaulting tenant who should pay half his rent and half his arrears. Let us add, this session was memorable as the most trying one that had ever taken place, from the acrimony of its debates and the late hours of its sittings. However, Mr. Gladstone had got back Sir George Trevelyan and three or four small men besides. Meanwhile, the Government had to wince under the loss of several seats at by-elections. At Southampton, the Unionist majority of 342 had been turned into a Gladstonian one of 885; and the Ayr Burghs followed suit, by replacing a Unionist, whose majority had been at the General Election 1,175, by a Gladstonian whom they preferred to the extent of 53 votes to the Hon. Evelyn Ashley. It was not till Christmas Eve that Parliament adjourned. Government met Parliament the next year under great discouragement. Before the debate on the Queen’s Speech was begun, Sir William Harcourt raised the question of privilege, of which he maintained a breach had been committed against the House by Tories in the matter of the charges against the Irish members; and the diminished majority by which his motion was rejected – 58 – testified to the loss of prestige by the Government, as a consequence of their supposed connection with a case bolstered up by the forgeries of the Irish informer Pigott. On the second reading of the Local Taxation Bill, Mr. Caine moved an amendment refusing assent to any proposal to extinguish licenses by means of public money. Mr. Gladstone, in supporting it, defended himself from the charge of having violated pledges given to his Midlothian electors, declared that since those pledges had been given ‘the law had been cleared and settled in a manner not only unfavourable to the doctrine of vested interests, but likewise to the doctrine of permanent interest, on the part of a publican in an annual license.’ However, Mr. Gladstone spoke in vain.

Mr. Justin McCarthy, in his ‘Life of Mr. Gladstone,’ seems to show the gradual development of Mr. Gladstone’s conversion to Home Rule. This was not at all the sudden change that shallow satirists imagined. His conviction was gradually borne in upon him by the close study of Ireland imposed upon him as a preparation for his Church and Land legislation. He hesitated long, because Ireland had never sent a majority of Nationalists to Parliament. On this subject Mr. McCarthy’s recollection of a conversation with the great chief in the division lobby is very interesting: ‘He said to me in a somewhat emphatic tone that he could not understand why a mere handful of Irish members, such as my immediate colleagues were, should call themselves par excellence the Irish Nationalist Party, while a much larger number of Irish representatives, elected just as we were, kept always assuring him that the Irish people had no manner of sympathy with us or with our Home Rule scheme. “How am I to know?” he asked me. “These men far outnumber you and your friends, and they are as fairly elected as you are.” I said to him: “Mr. Gladstone, give us a popular franchise in Ireland, and we will soon let you know whether we represent the Irish people or whether we do not.” At the election of 1885 they did let him know, by returning 85 Nationalists out of 103 members for Ireland. This settled the question in Mr. Gladstone’s mind.

When a serious calamity occurred to the Irish party by reason of the action brought against Mr. Parnell by Captain O’Shea for adultery with his wife, Mr. Gladstone was compelled to take notice of the matter. The English Nonconformists and Scotch Presbyterians made known to him their determination not to work for Home Rule so long as Mr. Parnell remained at the head of the Irish party. Accordingly, Mr. Gladstone wrote to Mr. John Morley: ‘I thought it necessary, reviewing arrangements for the commencement of the present session, to acquaint Mr. McCarthy with the conclusion at which I have arrived, after using all the means of reflection and observation in my power. It was this, that, notwithstanding the splendid services rendered by Mr. Parnell to his country, his continuance at the present moment in the leadership would be productive of consequences disastrous in the highest degree to the cause of Ireland.’

This led to serious charges of bad faith made against Mr. Gladstone by Mr. Parnell. ‘No single suggestion was offered by me,’ wrote Mr. Gladstone in reply, ‘as formal, or as unanimous, or final. It was a statement, perfectly free and without prejudice, of points in which either I myself or such of my colleagues as I had been able to consult inclined generally to believe that the plan for Home Rule in Ireland might be improved, and as to which I was desirous to learn whether they raised any serious objection in the mind of Mr. Parnell.’

In February, 1891, Mr. Gladstone moved the second reading of a Bill which he had introduced to remove the disabilities which prevented Roman Catholics from holding the appointment of Lord Chancellor and Viceroy of Ireland. The Bill was rejected by a majority of forty-seven. After this he almost entirely disappears from the Parliament he had done so much to illustrate and adorn. Never before has any statesman filled so large a space in public life, or secured so enormous a popularity. At times, even after 1892, there was talk of his returning to Parliament as leader, to head his followers, who were as sheep having no shepherd. But failing strength and advancing years led him to retire from Parliament altogether, and fainter grew his voice, and less frequent his utterances. Amongst the latest was his message to his party in 1898, to stick to Lord Rosebery and to attack the House of Lords. To the last the Nonconformists of England and Scotland, in spite of his High Church views, stuck to Mr. Gladstone. Largely had he been deserted by his old followers all over the country, who had cheered Mr. Gladstone when he indignantly told the leaders of the Irish party that their steps were dogged with crime; who had done their best to give him a majority that would render him, as he intimated, independent of the Irish vote, but who failed to understand how, after such declarations, Mr. Gladstone could spring on them a Home Rule Bill, which they were not prepared to support. But none of these things affected the Nonconformist Conscience. In May, 1888, Mr. Gladstone received an address at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street, in favour of his Irish policy, signed by 3,370 Nonconformist ministers. To the address, which was read by the Rev. J. Guinness Rogers, Mr. Gladstone replied: ‘I accept with gratitude, as well as pleasure, the address which has been presented to me, and I rejoice again to meet you within walls which, although no great number of years have passed away since their erection, have already become historic, and which are associated in my mind, and in the minds of many, with honourable struggles, sometimes under circumstances of depression, sometimes under circumstances of promise, but always leading us forward, whatever have been the phenomena of the moment, along the path of truth and justice. I am very thankful to those who have signed the address for the courageous manner in which they have not scrupled to associate their political action and intention with the principles and motives of their holy religion.’

Not long after came the end of Mr. Gladstone’s marvellous Parliamentary career. The originative power, masterful vigour, and fiery energy which still characterized Mr. Gladstone after passing his eightieth year were so extraordinary that his followers almost regarded him as immortal. At any rate, men of forty and fifty hardly expected to have to look for another leader in their lifetime. But, nevertheless, the time came for his retirement – came suddenly, and without apparent cause. There were rumours, but there was nothing certain, and his last Parliamentary words, in grave condemnation of the changes made by the Lords in the Local Government Bill, were spoken in March, 1894. The description of the scene is one of the most effective passages in Mr. McCarthy’s book:

‘Some of us, of course, were in the secret, or at least were vaguely forewarned of what we had to expect. Shortly after Mr. Gladstone sat down I met Mr. John Morley in one of the lobbies. “Is that, then,” I asked, “the very last speech?” “The very last,” was his reply. “I don’t believe one quarter of the men in the House understand it so,” I said. “No,” he replied, “but it is so, all the same.” Mr. McCarthy continues: “No other man, not Mr. Gladstone, would probably on such an occasion have made it plain that he was giving his final farewell to the assembly which he had charmed and over which he had dominated by his eloquence for so many years. Lord Chatham certainly would not have allowed himself to pass out of public life without conveying to all men the idea that he spoke in Parliament for the last time. But Mr. Gladstone, with all his magnificent rhetorical gift, and with all his artistic instinct, had no thought of getting up a scene… In the theatric sense I should describe his last speech as a dramatic failure. Numbers of men lounged out of the House when the speech was over, not having the least idea that they were never again to hear his voice in Parliamentary debate. Yet I for one do not regret that Mr. Gladstone thus took his leave of political life. I am not sorry that there were no fireworks; that there was no tableau; that there was no such dramatic fall of the curtain. The orator during his closing speech was inspired by one subject, and was not thinking of himself. A single sentence interjected in the course of the speech would have told every one of his hearers what was coming, and would have led to a demonstration such as was probably never before known in the House of Commons. It did not suit Mr. Gladstone’s tastes or inclinations to lead up to any such demonstration, and therefore, while he warned the House of Commons as to its duties and its responsibilities, he said not a word about himself and about his action in the future. Parliamentary history lost something, no doubt, by the manner of his exhortation, but I think the character of the man will be regarded as all the greater because at so supreme a moment he forgot that the greatest Parliamentary career of the Victorian era had come at last to its close.’

About this time Mr. W. H. Smith, the ‘Old Mortality’ of Punch, writes: ‘Gladstone is more kindly in his personal relations than I have ever known him, but he is physically much weaker, and the least exertion knocks him up.’ Yet Mr. Gladstone long outlived his amiable critic. When in March Mr. W. H. Smith moved the adoption of the report of the Parnell Commission, Mr. Gladstone moved an amendment, and for two hours poured forth a stream of eloquence, writes Sir R. Temple, like molten and liquid gold from the furnace, with intonation and gesticulation quite marvellous for a man of his advanced age; but his amendment was rejected. In the debate on the Welsh Church he spoke for Disestablishment, contending that when he argued for the Establishment the political forces were for it, but now they were against it. In the next year Mr. Gladstone made a speech in favour of peasant proprietorship, and on the advantages of small tenures of land, as on the Continent. He also opposed a grant for a railway near Zanzibar. In a broad-minded and judicious manner he supported the Government Bill for developing legislative measures in India, and for giving the natives increased electoral rights. He also supported the Clergy Discipline (Immorality) Bill in terms, says Sir R. Temple, of noble generosity towards the organization of the Church, yet in language of courteous respect towards Nonconformists.

In the Parliament ruled over by Mr. Smith, Mr. Gladstone – ‘now seventy-six years,’ writes Mr. Russell – entered on an extraordinary course of physical and intellectual efforts with voice and pen, ‘in Parliament and on the platform,’ on behalf of his favourite scheme of Irish Home Rule. In 1888 Mr. Neill O’Daunt writes: ‘Mr. Gladstone has been justly and ably denouncing the Union in the Westminster Review and other periodicals. He has given many unanswerable arguments against it. He might add, however, that if you want to appreciate the evils of the Union, look at me, W. E. G. When Ireland lay crushed and prostrate beneath the miseries of a seven years’ famine, when multitudes had perished by starvation, and when all who could obtain the passage-money fled to America, I, W. E. G., secured that propitious moment to give a spur to the exodus by adding 52 per cent. to the taxation of Ireland, and pleaded the terms of the Union as my justification for inflicting this scourge on the suffering people.’

It is characteristic of Mr. Gladstone’s loyalty that when engaged in celebrating his golden wedding, he found time to attend the House of Commons and deliver a speech in support of the Royal Grants.

Mr. Gladstone had left Parliament, had passed away from public life. Fight was in him, nevertheless, to the last. When in the winter of 1898 he started for the South of France, according to newspaper reports, he advised his followers to continue the attack on the House of Lords; and when the Irish celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in March in London, he wrote to them, advising union if they would gain the day. I prefer, however, and I think many will agree with me, to think of the aged and illustrious man as he was leaving Bournemouth for Hawarden in March of the same year, putting his head out of the window, and saying to the crowd who had come to see him off: ‘God bless you all, and the land you love!’