“‘Strawberry Hill, June 24, 1866.
“‘The word Moderate, as far as my observation goes, does no great credit—according to the manner in which it is now used—either to the word Liberal or to the word Conservative. Every Liberal claims to be Conservative; every Conservative to be Liberal. I know of no solution of the question between them except the test of their works.
‘“Yours very truly,
‘“W. E. Gladstone.”’
Count Beust says: ‘When I was ambassador in London, Mr. Gladstone, who was then in office, was caricatured with his colleagues in a piece called “The Happy Land,” at the Court Theatre. This annoyed the Premier, and the piece was taken off.’
CHAPTER VIII.
POLITICS AND THE IRISH CHURCH.
In the General Election for 1865 Mr. Gladstone lost his seat for the University of Oxford. For years it was evident that his advancing views were gradually drifting him from the Oxford constituents, and when an Act was passed to enable country clergymen and non-resident M.A.’s—by means of voting papers—to swamp the real Oxford constituency, Mr. Gladstone’s seat was gone, and his opponent, Mr. Hardy, triumphed. The battle was bravely fought, and the blow was severely felt by Mr. Gladstone and his friends. In his farewell address Mr. Gladstone said: ‘After an arduous connection of seven years, now I bid you farewell. My earnest purpose to serve you—my many faults and shortcomings—the incidents of the political relationship between myself and the University established in 1847, so often questioned in vain, and now at length finally dissolved—I leave to the judgment of the future. It is an imperative duty, and one alone which induces me to trouble you with these few parting words—the duty of expressing my profound and lasting gratitude for indulgence as generous, and for support as warm and enthusiastic in itself, and as honourable from the character and distinctions of those who have given it, as has, in my belief, ever been given by any constituency to any representative.’
‘The salient figure,’ writes Sir Richard Temple, ‘was the impressive personality of Mr. Gladstone himself, who was quite the figure-head in this Parliament. Naturally he was no longer the handsome man with the beautiful voice who had been wont to charm a listening senate. But still his attitude was noble, picturesque, and when under excitement he was grandly leonine. Advanced age had left its trace on him outwardly, and had impaired his matchless powers of elocution. The once resonant voice often would become husky, and at times almost inaudible, so that his voice rose and fell with a cadence like the wind. But his persuasiveness for many minds remained in its highest degree. His impassioned gesture seemed to be quieter; it could not conceivably have been finer than it was in those days. When excited in speech, he would sweep his arm round like the play of a scimitar, and yet with a movement both graceful and appropriate. His hands, too, were most impressive, and by their motion or action helped him to enforce his arguments. Above all, there was the play of features on the careworn countenance. Evidently he was in the highest sense of the term one of Nature’s orators.’ The quality of his speeches was not quite what it had once been in all respects. The passion, the glow, the sympathy, the magnetism remained as of yore.
At the Oxford election Dr. Pusey wrote to a friend: ‘You are naturally rejoicing over the defeat of Mr. Gladstone, which I mourn. Some of those who concurred in that election or stood aloof will, I fear, mourn hereafter because they were the cause of that rejection. The grounds alleged against Mr. Gladstone bore at the utmost upon the Establishment. The Establishment might perish and the Church might come forth the purer. If the Church were corrupted the Establishment would become a curse in proportion to its influence. As that conflict will thicken, Oxford will, I think, learn to regret her rude severance from one so loyal to the Church, to the faith, and to God.’
Speaking in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester during the South Lancashire election, Mr. Gladstone said: ‘After an anxious struggle of eighteen years, during which the unbounded devotion and indulgence of my friends have maintained me in the arduous position of representative of the University of Oxford, I have been driven from that position; but do not let me come among you under false colours or with a false pretence. I have loved the University of Oxford with a deep and passionate love, and as long as I live that attachment will continue. If my affection is of the smallest advantage to that great, that noble, that ancient institution, that advantage, such as it is—and it is most insignificant—that attachment Oxford will possess as long as I breathe. But don’t mistake the issue which has been raised. The University has at length, after eighteen years of self-denial, been drawn by what I might call the overweening exercise of power into the vortex of mere party politics. Well, you will readily understand why, as long as I had a hope that the zeal and kindness of my friends might keep me in my place, it was not possible for me to abandon them. Could they have returned me by but a majority of one, painful as it is to a man at my time of life, and feeling the weight of public cares, to be incessantly struggling for his seat, nothing could have induced me to quit the University to which I had so long devoted my best care and attachment. But by no act of mine I am free to come among you. And having thus been set free, I need hardly tell you that it is with joy, with thankfulness and enthusiasm that I now, at the eleventh hour, make my appeal to the heart and mind of South Lancashire, and ask you to pronounce upon that appeal.’
Mr. Gladstone then described what had been done by himself and party, commencing with the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, dwelling on the reformation of the Poor Law, the reformation of the tariffs, the abolition of the Corn Laws, the abolition of the Navigation Laws, the conclusion of the French Treaty, the removal of laws which have relieved Dissenters from stigma and almost ignominy, adding: ‘I can truly say that there is no period of my life during which my conscience is so clear, and renders me so good an answer, as those years in which I have co-operated in the promotion of Liberal measures. Because they are Liberal they are the true measures, and indicate the true policy by which the country is made strong and its institutions preserved.’
In a speech delivered the same evening at the amphitheatre at Liverpool, Mr. Gladstone continued: ‘I am, if possible, more firmly attached to the institutions of my country than when a boy I wandered among the sand-hills of Seaforth. But experience has brought its lessons. I have learned that there is wisdom in a policy of trust, and folly in a policy of mistrust. I have observed the effect which has been produced by Liberal legislation; and if we are told that the policy of the country is in the best and broadest sense Conservative, honesty compels me to admit that that result has been brought about by Liberal legislation.’
About this time the Duke of Newcastle died, leaving Mr. Gladstone a trustee of his son’s estate. ‘In this capacity,’ writes Mr. G. W. E. Russell, ‘the Chancellor of the Exchequer applied himself with characteristic thoroughness to the duties pertaining to the management of a rural property, and acquired in the superintendence of the woodlands of Chester that practical knowledge of woodcraft which has since afforded him such constant interest and occupation.’