The Grand Old Man / Or, the Life and Public Services of the Right Honorable William Ewart Gladstone, Four Times Prime Minister of England

William E. Gladstone was cosmopolitan. The Premier of the British Empire is ever a prominent personage, but he has stood above them all. For more than half a century he has been the active advocate of liberty, morality and religion, and of movements that had for their object the prosperity, advancement and happiness of men. In all this he has been upright, disinterested and conscientious in word and deed. He has proved himself to be the world's champion of human rights. For these reasons he has endeared himself to all men wherever civilization has advanced to enlighten and to elevate in this wide world.
With the closing of the 19th century the world is approaching a crisis in which every nation is involved. For a time the map of the world might as well be rolled up. Great questions that have agitated one or more nations have convulsed the whole earth because steam and electricity have annihilated time and space. Questions that have sprung up between England and Africa, France and Prussia, China and Japan, Russia and China, Turkey and Armenia, Greece and Turkey, Spain and America have proved international and have moved all nations. The daily proceedings of Congress at Washington are discussed in Japan.
In these times of turning and overturning, of discontent and unrest, of greed and war, when the needs of the nations most demand men of world-wide renown, of great experience in government and diplomacy, and of firm hold upon the confidence of the people; such men as, for example, Gladstone, Salisbury, Bismark, Crispi and Li Hung Chang, who have led the mighty advance of civilization, are passing away. Upon younger men falls the heavy burden of the world, and the solution of the mighty problems of this climax of the most momentous of all centuries.
However, the Record of these illustrious lives remains to us for guidance and inspiration. History is the biography of great men. The lamp of history is the beacon light of many lives. The biography of William E. Gladstone is the history, not only of the English Parliament, but of the progress of civilization in the earth for the whole period of his public life. With the life of Mr. Gladstone in his hand, the student of history or the young statesman has a light to guide him and to help him solve those intricate problems now perplexing the nations, and upon the right solution of which depends Christian civilization—the liberties, progress, prosperity and happiness of the human race.