His death is mourned not only by England, the land of his birth, not only by Scotland, the land of his ancestors, not only by Ireland for whom he did so much, and attempted so much more; but also by the people of the two Sicilies, for whose outraged rights he once aroused the conscience of Europe, by the people of the Ionian Islands, whose independence he secured, and by the people of Bulgaria and the Danubian Provinces, in whose cause he enlisted the sympathy of his own native country. Indeed, since the days of Napoleon, no man has lived whose name has travelled so far and so wide, over the surface of the earth; no man has lived whose name alone so deeply moved the hearts of so many millions of men. Whereas Napoleon impressed his tremendous personality upon peoples far and near, by the strange fascination which the genius of war has always exercised over the imagination of men in all lands and in all ages, the name of Gladstone had come to be in the minds of all civilized nations, the living incarnation of right against might—the champion, the dauntless, tireless champion, of the oppressed against the oppressor. It is, I believe, equally true to say that he was the most marvellous mental organization which the world has seen since Napoleon—certainly the most compact, the most active and the most universal.
This last half century in which we live, has produced many able and strong men who, in different walks of life, have attracted the attention of the world at large; and of the men who have illustrated this age, it seems to me that in the eyes of posterity four will outlive and outshine all others—Cavour, Lincoln, Bismarck, and Gladstone. If we look simply at the magnitude of the results obtained, compared with the exiguity of the resources at command,—if we remember that out of the small Kingdom of Sardinia grew united Italy, we must come to the conclusion that Count Cavour was undoubtedly a statesman of marvellous skill and prescience. Abraham Lincoln, unknown to fame when he was elected to the presidency, exhibited a power for the government of men which has scarcely been surpassed in any age. He saved the American Union, he enfranchised the black race, and for the task he had to perform he was endowed in some respects almost miraculously. No man ever displayed a greater insight into the motives, the complex motives, which shape the public opinion of a free country, and he possessed almost to the degree of an instinct, the supreme quality in a statesman of taking the right decision, taking it at the right moment and expressing it in language of incomparable felicity. Prince Bismarck was the embodiment of resolute common sense, unflinching determination, relentless strength, moving onward to his end, and crushing everything in his way as unconcerned as fate itself. Mr. Gladstone undoubtedly excelled every one of these men. He had in his person a combination of varied powers of the human intellect, rarely to be found in one single individual. He had the imaginative fancy, the poetic conception of things, in which Count Cavour was deficient. He had the aptitude for business, the financial ability which Lincoln never exhibited. He had the lofty impulses, the generous inspirations which Prince Bismarck always discarded, even if he did not treat them with scorn. He was at once an orator, a statesman, a poet, and a man of business. As an orator he stands certainly in the very front rank of orators of his country or any country of his age or any age. I remember when Louis Blanc was in England, in the days of the Second Empire, he used to write to the press of Paris, and in one of his letters to "Le Temps" he stated that Mr. Gladstone would undoubtedly have been the foremost orator of England, if it were not for the existence of Mr. Bright. It may be admitted, and I think it is admitted generally, that on some occasions Mr. Bright reached heights of grandeur and pathos which even Mr. Gladstone did not attain. But Mr. Gladstone had an ability, a vigour, a fluency which no man in his age or any age ever rivalled or even approached. That is not all. To his marvellous mental powers he added no less marvellous physical gifts. He had the eye of a god, the voice of a silver bell; and the very fire of his eye, the very music of his voice swept the hearts of men even before they had been dazzled by the torrents of his eloquence.
As a statesman, it was the good fortune of Mr. Gladstone that his career was not associated with war. The reforms which he effected, the triumphs which he achieved, were not won by the supreme arbitrament of the sword. The reforms which he effected and the triumphs which he achieved were the result of his power of persuasion over his fellow-men. The reforms which he achieved in many ways amounted to a revolution. They changed, in many particulars, the face of the realm. After Sir Robert Peel had adopted the great principle which eventually carried England from protection to free trade, it was Mr. Gladstone who created the financial system which has been admitted ever since by all students of finance, as the secret of Great Britain's commercial success. He enforced the extension of the suffrage to the masses of the nation, and practically thereby made the government of monarchical England as democratic as that of any republic. He disestablished the Irish church, he introduced reform into the land tenure and brought hope into the breasts of those tillers of the soil in Ireland who had for so many generations laboured in despair. And all this he did, not by force or violence, but simply by the power of his eloquence and the strength of his personality.
Great, however, as were the acts of the man, after all he was of the human flesh, and for him, as for everybody else, there were trivial and low duties to be performed. It is no exaggeration to say that even in those low and trivial duties he was great. He ennobled the common realities of life. His was above all things a religious mind—essentially religious in the highest sense of the term. And the religious sentiment which dominated his public life and his speeches, that same sentiment, according to the testimony of those who knew him best, also permeated all his actions from the highest to the humblest. He was a man of strong and pure affections, of long and lasting friendship, and to describe the beauty of his domestic life, no words of praise can be adequate. It was simply ideally beautiful, and in the later years of his life, as touching as it was beautiful. May I be permitted, without any impropriety, to recall that it was my privilege to experience and to appreciate that courtesy, made up of dignity and grace, which was famous all the world over, but of which no one could have an appropriate opinion, unless he had been the recipient of it. In a character so complex and diversified, one may ask what was the dominant feature, what was the supreme quality, the one characteristic which marked the nature of the man. Was it his incomparable genius for finance? Was it his splendid oratorical powers? Was it his marvellous fecundity of mind? In my estimation it was not any one of these qualities. Great as they were, there was one still more marked, and if I have to give my own impression, I would say that the one trait which was dominant in his nature, which marked the man more distinctly than any other, was his intense humanity, his paramount sense of right, his abhorrence of injustice, wrong, and oppression wherever to be found or in whatever shape they might show themselves. Injustice, wrong, oppression acted upon him, as it were, mechanically, and aroused every fibre of his being, and from that moment to the repairing of the injustice, the undoing of the wrong, and the destruction of the oppression, he gave his mind, his heart, his soul, his whole life with an energy, with an intensity, with a vigour paralleled in no man unless it be the first Napoleon. There are many evidences of this in his life. When he was travelling in Southern Italy, as a tourist, for pleasure and for the benefit of the health of his family, he became aware of the abominable system which was there prevailing under the name of Constitutional Government. He left everything aside, even the object which had brought him to Italy, and applied himself to investigate and to collect evidence, and then denounced the abominable system in a trumpet blast of such power that it shook to its very foundations the throne of King Ferdinand and sent it tottering to its fall. Again, when he was sent as High Commissioner to the Ionian Islands, the injustice of keeping this Hellenic population separated from the rest of Greece, separated from the kingdom to which they were adjacent, and toward which all their aspirations were raised, struck his generous soul with such force that he became practically their advocate, and secured their independence. Again, when he had withdrawn from public life, and when, in the language of Thiers, under somewhat similar circumstances, he had returned to "ses chères études," the atrocities perpetrated by the Turks on the people of Roumania brought him back to public life with a vehemence, an impetuosity, and a torrent of fierce indignation that swept everything before it. If this be, as I think it is, the one distinctive feature of his character, it seems to explain away what are called the inconsistencies of his life. Inconsistencies there were none in his life. He had been brought up in the most unbending school of Toryism. He became the most active reformer of our times. But whilst he became the leader of the Liberal party and an active reformer, it is only due to him to say that in his complex mind there was a vast space for what is known as conservatism. His mind was not only liberal but conservative as well, and he clung to the affections of his youth until, in questions of practical moment, he found them clashing with that sense of right and abhorrence of injustice of which I have spoken. But the moment he found his conservative affections clash with what he thought right and just, he did not hesitate to abandon his former convictions and go the whole length of the reforms demanded. Thus he was always devotedly, filially, lovingly attached to the Church of England. He loved it, as he often declared. He adhered to it as an establishment in England, but the very reasons and arguments which, in his mind, justified the establishment of the Church in England, compelled him to a different course as far as that church was concerned in Ireland. In England the Church was the church of the majority, of almost the unanimity of the nation. In Ireland it was the church of the minority, and, therefore, he did not hesitate. His course was clear: he removed the one church and maintained the other. So it was with Home Rule. But coming to the subject of Home Rule, though there may be much to say, perhaps this is neither the occasion nor the place to say it. The Irish problem is dormant, not solved; but the policy proposed by Mr. Gladstone for the solution of this question has provoked too much bitterness, too deep division, even on the floor of this House, to make it advisable to say anything about it on this occasion.
I notice it, however, simply because it is the last and everlasting monument of that high sense of justice which, above all things, characterized him. When he became convinced that Home Rule was the only method whereby the long-open wound could be healed, he did not hesitate one moment, even though he were to sacrifice friends, power, popularity. And he sacrificed friends, power, popularity, in order to give that supreme measure of justice to a long-suffering people. Whatever may be the views which men entertain upon the policy of Home Rule, whether they favour that policy or whether they oppose it, whether they believe in it or whether they do not believe in it, every man, whether friend or foe of that measure, must say that it was not only a bold, but it was a noble thought, that of attempting to cure discontent in Ireland by trusting to Irish honour and Irish generosity.
Now, Sir, he is no more. England is to-day in tears, but fortunate is the nation which has produced such a man. His years are over; but his work is not closed; his work is still going on. The example which he gave to the world shall live for ever, and the seed which he has sown with such a copious hand shall still germinate and bear fruit under the full light of heaven.
—Sir Wilfrid Laurier (By permission)
In reading this speech, apply the principles of Pause, Inflection, Grouping, Emphasis, and Perspective illustrated in the preceding lessons.