But our colonists, no doubt, saw in such utterances only a pharisaism which overlooks the fact that this is pre-eminently a sort of charity which should begin at home. Mr. Gladstone, as appears from his despatches, was profoundly dissatisfied with the way in which Sir Eardley Wilmot—who was an old man, with probably an old-fashioned aversion to new ideas—performed, or, rather, did not perform, his duties, and finally dismissed him. Unfortunately, at the same time he addressed him in a private or ‘secret’ letter, in which he referred to certain rumours that had reached him of irregularities in Sir Eardley’s private life, which, as they were subsequently disproved, and Sir Eardley died during the controversy, awakened much sympathy. Mr. Hogan gives great prominence to this old scandal, and there can be no doubt that Sir Eardley was unjustly treated; but it is manifest that it was not the malicious rumours, but the neglect of duty, that was the ground of his dismissal. Mr. Gladstone’s complaint is:
‘You have under your charge and responsibility many thousand convicts formed into probation parties, or living together at Government depots. It is only with extreme rarity that you advert in your despatches to the moral condition of these men. You have discussed the economical questions connected with their maintenance or their coercion, and you have even entered into argument, though in a manner too little penetrating, upon their offences against the laws. But into the inner world of their mental, moral and spiritual state, either you have not made it a part of your duty to examine, or else—which for the present issue is, I apprehend, conclusive—you have not placed Her Majesty’s Government in possession of the results.’
It is curious to note Mr. Gladstone’s unpopularity in the Colonies. When Sir Henry Parkes, the New South Wales Premier, visited England, he writes: ‘I had a long conversation with Mr. Gladstone, in the course of which I told him that he had been often charged in Australia, both in the newspapers and in speeches, with being indifferent, if not inimical, to the preservation of the connection between the colonies and England. He was visibly surprised at what I told him, and said I was authorized to say that he had never at any time favoured such view, and that I might challenge any person making the charge to produce proof in support of it.’ On another occasion Sir Henry Parkes writes: ‘We talked for two hours chiefly on Australian topics, and I recollect very vividly his animated inquiry as to whether many of the young men of the country entered the Church.’
The Budget of 1860 was distinguished mainly for two things—the Commercial Treaty with France, initiated by Mr. Cobden, and the Taxes on Knowledge.
In the debate on this subject in 1852, Mr. Gladstone, then in opposition, intimated that, though he should like to see the paper duty repealed when the proper time had come, if books and newspapers were dearer than they ought to be, the blame was not so much with fiscal requirements as with the trades unionism, which wickedly raised the wages of compositors and others to a level far above their deserts. If the working-classes wanted cheap literature, he thought that they had a sufficient remedy in their own hands, as they themselves could cheapen the labour by which the literature was produced (quoted from Fox Bourne’s ‘History of the Newspaper Press’).
In the following year Mr. Gladstone, after the Government had been beaten, as a compromise, proposed to reduce the advertisement duty from one shilling and sixpence to sixpence. But he was again defeated, and the tax, in spite of him, was abolished altogether. The final stage was reached in 1861, when the paper duty was abolished, Mr. Gladstone being Chancellor of the Exchequer, after the Bill had been defeated in the House of Lords. ‘It entailed,’ wrote Mr. Gladstone in the Nineteenth Century, ‘the severest Parliamentary struggle in which I have ever been engaged.’ The repeal of the paper duty was the arrival of a new era in literature—of the penny newspaper, of the popular magazine, of cheap reprints of all our great standard authors.
On February 15 Mr. Greville writes: ‘When I left London a fortnight ago the world was anxiously expecting Gladstone’s speech, in which he was to put the Commercial Treaty and the Budget before the world. His own confidence, and that of most of his colleagues, in his success was unbounded, but many inveighed bitterly against the treaty. Clarendon shook his head, Overstone pronounced against the treaty, the Times thundered against it, and there is little doubt that it was unpopular, and becoming more so every day. Then came Gladstone’s unlucky illness, which compelled him to put off his expose, and made it doubtful whether he would not be physically disabled from doing justice to the subject. His doctor says he ought to have taken two months’ rest instead of two days. However, at the end of his two days’ delay he came forth and, consensus omnium, achieved one of the greatest triumphs that the House of Commons ever witnessed. Everybody, I have heard from home, admits that it was a magnificent display, not to be surpassed in ability of execution, and that he carried the House of Commons with him. I can well believe it, for when I read the report of it next day it carried me along with it likewise.’ The only parties not gratified were the Temperance Reformers, who did not like the cheap Gladstone claret which was immediately introduced at the dinner-tables, nor that clause of the new Bill which was to give grocers licenses to sell the cheap wines of France, and which was to make the fortune of the great house of Gilbey.
Lord Russell became a peer, and left Mr. Gladstone to fight the good fight in the House of Commons, about this time. Gladstone and Disraeli were fully recognised as the leaders of their respective parties. In the life of Mr. Richard Redgrave, under the date of 1860, Mr. Redgrave gives a description of Mr. Gladstone’s reply to Mr. Disraeli’s attack on the French Treaty. A friend who was present told him: ‘Mr. Gladstone was in such a state of excitement that everyone dreaded an attack from him; that his punishment of Mr. Disraeli was most ferocious. He was like a Cherokee Indian fighting; he first knocked down his adversary, then he stamped upon him, then he got excited and danced on him; he scalped him, and then took him between his finger and thumb like a miserable insect, and looked at him, and held him up to contempt.’
Mr. Macarthy’s judicious criticism may be quoted here.
‘It is idle to contend that between Gladstone and Disraeli any love was lost, and that many people thought it was unhandsome on the part of Mr. Gladstone not to attend his great rival’s obsequies, and to bury his animosities in the grave. In 1862 Disraeli complained to the Bishop of Oxford that he and others kept the Church as Mr. Gladstone’s nest-egg when he became a Whig till it was almost addled. At this time Disraeli wrote: “I wish you could have induced Gladstone to have joined Lord Derby’s Government when Lord Ellenborough resigned in 1858. It was not my fault that he did not; I almost went on my knees to him. Had he done so, the Church and everything else would have been in a very different position.” In 1867 the Bishop of Oxford writes: “The most wonderful thing is the rise of Disraeli. It is not the mere assertion of talent, as you hear so many say; it seems to me quite beside that. He has been able to teach the House of Commons almost to ignore Gladstone, and at present lords it over him, and, I am told, says that he will hold him down for twenty years.” Disraeli, however, did himself no good when, in 1878, he described Mr. Gladstone as a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that at all times can command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign his opponents and to glorify himself.’