AN APPRECIATION OF MR. GLADSTONE
From an address in the House of Commons
BY ARTHUR J. BALFOUR
I feel myself unequal even to dealing with what is, perhaps, more strictly germane to this address—I mean, Mr. Gladstone as a politician, as a Minister, as a leader of public thought, as an eminent servant of the Queen; and if I venture to say anything, it is rather of Mr. Gladstone, the greatest member of the greatest deliberative assembly, which, so far, the world has seen.
Sir, I think it is the language of sober and unexaggerated truth to say that there is no gift which would enable a man to move, to influence, to adorn an assembly like this that Mr. Gladstone did not possess in a supereminent degree. Debaters as ready there may have been, orators as finished. It may have been given to others to sway as skillfully this assembly, or to appeal with as much directness and force to the simpler instincts of the great masses in the country; but, sir, it has been given to no man to combine all these great gifts as they were combined in the person of Mr. Gladstone. From the conversational discussion appropriate to our work in committees, to the most sustained eloquence befitting some great argument, and some great historic occasion, every weapon of Parliamentary warfare was wielded by him with the success and ease of a perfect, absolute, and complete mastery. I would not venture myself to pronounce an opinion as to whether he was most excellent in the exposition of a somewhat complicated budget of finance or legislation, or whether he showed it most in the heat of extemporary debate. At least this we may say, that from the humbler arts of ridicule or invective to the subtlest dialectic, the most persuasive eloquence, the most cogent appeals to everything that was highest and best in the audience that he was addressing, every instrument which could find place in the armory of a member of this House, he had at his command without premeditation, without forethought, at the moment and in the form which appeared best suited to carry out his purpose.
It may, perhaps, be asked whether I have nothing to say about Mr. Gladstone's place in history, about the judgment we ought to pass upon the great part which he has played in the history of his country and the history of the world during the many years in which he held a foremost place in this assembly. These questions are legitimate questions. But they are not to be discussed by me to-day. Nor, indeed, do I think that the final answer can be given to them—the final judgment pronounced—in the course of this generation. But one service he did—in my opinion incalculable—which is altogether apart from the judgment which we may be disposed to pass on the particular opinions, the particular views, or the particular lines of policy which Mr. Gladstone may from time to time have adopted. Sir, he added a dignity and he added a weight to the deliberations of this House by his genius which I think it is impossible adequately to express.
It is not enough, in my opinion, to keep up simply a level, though it be a high level, of probity and of patriotism. The mere virtue of civic honesty is not sufficient to preserve this assembly from the fate which has overcome so many other assemblies, the products of democratic forces. More than this is required, more than this was given to us by Mr. Gladstone. Those who seek to raise in the public estimation the level of our proceedings will be the most ready to admit the infinite value of those services, and realize how much the public prosperity is involved in the maintenance of the work of public life. Sir, that is a view which, it seems to me, places the services of Mr. Gladstone to this assembly, which he loved so well, and of which he was so great a member, in as clear a light and on as firm a basis as it is possible to place them.