The Real Gladstone: An Anecdotal Biography

by J. Ewing Ritchie

‘Bold to survey with eye serene,
The void that had her palace been;
She lodged the vipers in her skin
Where best to drink the poison in.’

When ‘Ecce Homo’ appeared—a book which dear Lord Shaftesbury, Exeter Hall applauding, described as the worst book ever vomited out of the jaws of hell—Mr. Gladstone, in an article in Good Words, gave in his adherence to the book. He described the author as at once passing into the presence of Jesus of Nazareth, and then, without any foregone conclusion, either of submission or dissent, giving that heed to the acts and words of the unfriended teacher which the truest Jews did when those words were spoken and those acts done.

Mr. Gladstone found time, amid his preoccupations, to write a long article for the English Historical Review on the last portion of the ‘Greville Memoirs,’ chiefly justifying the action of the parties with which he was associated at the time of the ‘death and obsequies of Protection,’ in 1852, and during the Crimean War. Mr. Gladstone traverses Mr. Greville’s statement that in 1852 the Peelites were indisposed to join the Whigs, under the delusive belief that they could form a Government of their own. He can say positively that, with the single exception of the Duke of Newcastle, none of the party entertained this belief. ‘They knew that dichotomy, and not trichotomy, was for our times the law of the nation’s life.’ Their sympathies in regard to economy and peace lay rather with one of the Liberal wings than with the main body. In some cases they were divided between their Liberal opinions and their Conservative traditions and associations. For many a man to leave the party in which he was brought up is like the stroke of a sword dividing bone and marrow. But the intermediate position is essentially a false position, and nothing can long disguise its falseness. The right hon. gentleman confesses that he himself frankly stated to Lord Derby that the Peelites were a public nuisance, for while rapid migrations from camp to camp may be less creditable, slow ones not only are more painful, but are attended with protracted public inconvenience. The lessons of this political drama, he says—and the statement is significant at the present time—are of the present and the future. It entails a heavy responsibility to embark political parties in controversies certain to end in defeat where there is a silent sense of what is coming—a latent intention to accept defeat—and where the postponement of the final issue means only the enhancement of the price to be paid at the close. Mr. Gladstone deprecates the tone generally assumed in speaking of the Crimean War. He denies the assumptions that we drifted into that war; that the Cabinet of the day was in continual conflict with itself at the various stages of the negotiations; and that if it had adopted a bolder course at an earlier stage the Emperor Nicholas would have succumbed. The first of these assertions he characterizes as untrue, the second as ridiculous, and the third as speculative and highly improbable. Lord Clarendon did say that we drifted into war; but his meaning was simply that the time of war had not come, but the time of measures for averting it had expired; and Lord Clarendon, not less expressively than truly, said that, while the intermediate days were gliding by, we were drifting into war. ‘But the fable is brazen-fronted, and, like Pope Joan, still holds her place.’ As regards the Cabinet, Mr. Gladstone has witnessed much more sharp or warm argument in almost every other of the seven Cabinets to which he has had the honour to belong. In regard to the assumption that the war was not justifiable, he makes the ‘inconvenient admission’ that those who approved of the war at the time approved of it on very different grounds. Some favoured it as an Arthurian enterprise, the general defence of the weak against the strong; some because they had faith in the restorative energies of Turkey, if time were obtained by warding off the foe; some thought the power of Russia was exorbitant, and dangerous to Europe and to England. This last was the sentiment which most captivated the popular imagination. ‘It was feeling, and not argument, that raised the Crimean War into popularity.’ It is feeling, Mr. Gladstone thinks, which has plunged it into the abyss of odium. The war proceeded, as he conceives, upon a more just and noble idea expressed by Lord Russell when, on the outbreak of hostilities, he denounced the Emperor Nicholas as ‘the wanton disturber of the peace of Europe.’ The policy which led to the war was a European protest against the wrongdoing of a single State. His belief is that, compared with most wars, the war of 1854–56 will hold in history no dishonourable place. For its policy must be regarded à parte ante. He confesses, however, that the result of the war was exceedingly unsatisfactory.

The May number of the Nineteenth Century, 1887, contained an article by Mr. Gladstone reviewing the fifth and sixth volumes of Mr. Lecky’s ‘History of England in the Eighteenth Century.’ Towards the conclusion of the article Mr. Gladstone quotes the following sentence:

‘Mr. Lecky writes as follows: “We have seen a Minister going to the country on the promise that if he was returned to office he would abolish the principal direct tax paid by the class which was then predominant in the constituencies.”’

This sentence refers, of course, to Mr. Gladstone’s promise in his election address in 1874 to repeal the income tax. Mr. Gladstone replies that Mr. Lecky seems to be unaware that it is the practice of candidates for a seat in Parliament to announce to those whose votes they desire their views on political questions, either pending, proximate, or sometimes remote. He proceeds:

‘The accusing sentence is inaccurately written. In January, 1874, the date to which it refers, there was no question of returning to office. I addressed a constituency as Minister, and in a double capacity as Chancellor of the Exchequer and as head of the Administration, proposed to repeal the income tax. But it is also untruly written. It is untrue that the payers of income tax were then the predominant class in the constituencies. In Ireland, the payers of income tax had ceased, since the ballot was introduced, to rule elections. In England and Scotland, a very large majority of members were returned by the towns. In the towns, then as now, household suffrage was in full force, and the voters were as a body more independent of the wealthy than are the rural population. The repeal of the income tax, whether proper or improper in itself, was not then a thing improper in respect of the persons to whom it was announced.

‘It has been held by some that there should never be an appeal to the people by a Ministry on the subject of taxation. But why not? The rights of the people in respect to taxation are older, higher, clearer, than in respect to any other subject of government. Now, appeals on many such subjects have been properly made—on Reform in 1831; on the China War in 1857; on the Irish Church in 1868; on Home Rule in 1886; lastly, in 1852, by the Tories, whose creed Mr. Lecky appears in other matters to have adopted, on the finance proper to be proposed by Mr. Disraeli after, and in connection with, the repeal of the Corn Law.

‘Undoubtedly, although right in principle, such appeals and promises are eminently liable to abuse. But there is one touchstone by which the peccant element in them may be at once detected. If the promise launches into the far future, it may straightway be condemned. If, on the other hand, it is one certain to be tested within a few weeks, the case is different. A Minister casually pitchforked, so to speak, into office, and living from hand to mouth, might be tempted to a desperate venture. But can Mr. Lecky suppose that the Ministry of 1868–74, which had outlived the ordinary term, and (may it be said?) had made its mark in history, would thus have gambled with false coin, and have sought to add so ignobly, and with such compromise of character, a respite almost infinitesimal to its duration?

‘Was the engagement to the repeal of the income tax one either obligatory or proper in itself? Was the time well chosen? Was the proposer morally bound to the proposal? I will answer “Yes” to all these questions, and I will prove my affirmative, though my short recital will lead Mr. Lecky, if he reads it, into a field of contemporary history which it is quite plain that he has never traversed.’