Continuing his career as a reformer, we find Mr. Gladstone repealing the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and abolishing religious tests in the Universities; and as the Lords threw out his Bill for the Abolition of Purchase in the Army, he abolished it by Royal Warrant. Many old Whigs questioned the wisdom of the procedure, as they did also his conduct in the Alabama Claims, which he referred to arbitration, when, as is always the case, the arbitrators decided against us and in favour of America. Earl Russell, who has a claim to be heard on the question, writes that he declined to submit the claims to arbitration by a foreign Power because ‘it appeared to me that we could not consistently with our position as an independent State allow a foreign Power to decide either that Great Britain had been wanting in good faith or that our law officers did not understand so well as a foreign Power or State the meaning of a British statute.’
His lordship severely criticised the way in which Mr. Gladstone formed his Ministry, as done with little tact or discrimination. ‘I cannot think,’ he continues, ‘that I was mistaken in giving way to Mr. Gladstone as head of the Whig-Radical party of England. During Lord Palmerston’s Ministry I had every reason to admire the boldness and the judgment with which he had directed our finances. I had no reason to suppose that he was less attached than I was to our national honour; that he was less proud than I was of our national achievements by land or sea; that he disliked the extension of our colonies; or that his measures would tend to reduce the great and glorious empire of which he was put in charge to a manufactory of cheap cloth and a market for cheap goods, with an army and navy reduced by paltry savings to a standard of weakness and inefficiency.’
In March, 1874, Mr. Gladstone addressed a letter to Lord Granville, in which he said: ‘At my age I must reserve my entire freedom to divest myself of all the responsibilities of leadership at no distant date. . . . I should be desirous shortly before the season of 1874 to consider whether there would not be an advantage in my placing my services for a time at the disposal of the Liberal party, or whether I should claim exemption from the duties I have hitherto discharged.’ Mr. Gladstone at that time was sixty-four—certainly no great age for himself or any other statesman of his time; and when Mr. Russell Gurney proposed to legislate on Ritualism, Mr. Gladstone was back in the field. After his unsuccessful intervention, Mr. Gladstone again retired from active participation in affairs; but he returned to the subject in the autumn by contributing an article to the Contemporary Review, in which he passionately protested against the attempt to impose uniformity of practice on the clergy of the Church of England by legislation. In the following passage he did much to offend the Roman Catholics: ‘As to the question whether a handful of clergy are or are not engaged in an utterly hopeless and visionary attempt to Romanize the Church and the people of England, at no time since the bloody reign of Queen Mary has such a scheme been possible. But if it had been possible in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, it would still have become impossible in the nineteenth, when Rome has substituted for the proud boast of semper eadem a policy of violence and change in faith; when she has refurbished every rusty weapon she was fondly thought to have disused; when no one can become her convert without renouncing his mental and moral freedom, and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another; and when she has equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history.’ This article was followed up by his celebrated pamphlet, ‘The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance.’
Ministers had an easy time of it till they got to the purchase of the shares in the Suez Canal, which Mr. Gladstone vehemently opposed, though it seems to have turned out well. When Mr. Gladstone declared that it was an unprecedented thing to spend the money of the nation in that way, Sir Stafford Northcote replied: ‘So is the canal.’ Mr. Gladstone was soon to prove how far from real was his intention of retiring into private life. We began to hear of Bulgarian atrocities and of the Turkish horrors. It was a cause into which Mr. Gladstone threw himself heart and soul. He published an article in the Contemporary Review, advocating the expulsion of ‘the unspeakable Turk,’ bag and baggage, from the country. His pamphlets were in every hand. In the meanwhile we had another crisis in the East. We were on the verge of war with Russia, and the Jingoes, as the war party came to be denominated, went about the streets singing:
‘We don’t want to fight; but, by Jingo! if we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too!’
Mr. Disraeli had sought refuge in the House of Lords as Earl Beaconsfield. All this time Mr. Gladstone kept rather quiet in Parliament, but from time to time he addressed meetings in the country, denouncing the Jingoes. We find him, however, supporting a vote of censure on the Government, moved by Lord Hartington, he himself having already moved one. It was a false move in tactics, as the Government obtained a crushing majority. But the Ministry were doomed, nevertheless. At the General Election in 1880 they had a decisive defeat, mainly due to Mr. Gladstone, who had gone to Scotland to win Midlothian, hitherto the stronghold of the Duke of Buccleugh, and who had carried the fiery cross in triumph from London to the North. Never had he exerted himself more, and never with such splendid results. As Mr. Disraeli had said when referring to Mr. Gladstone’s temporary retirement from political life, ‘There will be a return from Elba;’ nor was that return long delayed. Once more he was Premier.
But there was a difficulty. At the time of the victory Lord Hartington, not Mr. Gladstone, was the leader of the Liberal party. When Lord Beaconsfield resigned, which he had the grace to do without meeting Parliament, the Queen, according to precedent, sent for Lord Hartington. He could do nothing, and then the Queen summoned Lord Granville, the Liberal leader in the Lords. The two statesmen went together to the Queen, and assured her that the victory was Mr. Gladstone’s, and that he was the only possible Premier. They returned to London in the afternoon, and called upon Mr. Gladstone in Harley Street. He was expecting the message which they brought, and he went down to Windsor without a moment’s delay. This was on April 23. That evening he kissed hands and returned to London, a second time Premier. The prospect was not cheering. On a vote on the Bradlaugh affair the Government majority was seventy-five. There were difficulties about Sir Bartle Frere at the Cape, about Cyprus, about the Employers’ Liability Bill, and a hot debate on opium. ‘Gladstone,’ writes Sir Stafford Northcote, ‘had been dining out to meet the authoress of “Sister Dora” (Miss Lonsdale), who was very much alarmed by the rapidity and variety of his questions, and only came back in time to express his opinion that the House was too much influenced by sentiment and too little by judgment. It must be as good as a play to hear such sentiments from such a quarter.’ In the course of one of the debates on the Bradlaugh affair, Sir Stafford Northcote writes: ‘Gladstone spoke early, and evidently under great anxiety. His speech, especially in the earlier part, was a very fine one, and produced a considerable impression. Towards the end, however, he refined too much, and seemed a little to lose his hold of his audience. Gibson followed him with a very able and telling speech, but, unfortunately, the House had greatly emptied for dinner when Mr. Gladstone sat down. It is a favourite habit of his to speak into the dinner-hour, so that his opponent must speak either to empty benches or forego the advantage of replying on the instant.’ The Opposition when the division was taken had a majority of forty-four, ‘a result,’ adds Sir Stafford Northcote, ‘wholly unexpected on our side, the more sanguine having only hoped for a close run, and being prepared to renew the fight by moving the previous question, and adjourning the debate on it. The excitement when the numbers were given was greater than I ever remember. There was shouting, cheering, clapping of hands, and other demonstrations, both louder and longer than any I ever heard in my Parliamentary life.’
It may be stated that ultimately the question of Bradlaugh was settled by Mr. Gladstone’s moving a resolution to admit all persons who may claim their right to do so, without question and subject to their liability to penalties by the State.
When the new Parliament assembled the Liberals were in a majority of more than a hundred, if the Irish Home Rulers were counted as neutral. If they were added to the Liberal ranks, their majority became 170. No one then thought of adding them to the Conservatives, though half of them—the Parnellites—subsequently voted with the Conservatives in a vast number of divisions, and finally contributed to Mr. Gladstone’s downfall.