In 1876 Mr. Gladstone wrote to Hayward: ‘The Times appears to be thoroughly emasculated. It does not pay to read a paper which next week is sure to refute what it has demonstrated this week. It ought to be prohibited to change sides more than a certain number of times in a year. As to the upper ten thousand, it has not been by a majority of that body that any of the great and good measures of our century have been carried, though a minority have done good service; and so I fear it will continue.’ Mr. Gladstone seems in 1878 to have had a poor opinion of the Daily News. ‘I think,’ he wrote to Blachford, ‘they have often made improper admissions, and do not drive the nail home as it really ought to be done by a strong Opposition paper, such as the Morning Chronicle of Derry.’
In his address to the electors of Midlothian in 1886, Mr. Gladstone said: ‘Lord Hartington has lately and justly stated in general terms that he is not disposed to deny our having fallen into errors of judgment. I will go one step further, and admit that we committed such errors, and serious errors, too, with cost of treasure and of precious lives, in the Soudan. For none of these errors were we rebuked by the voice of the Opposition; we were only rebuked, and that incessantly, because we did not commit them with precipitation, and because we did not commit other errors greater still. Our mistakes in the Soudan I cannot now state in detail; the task belongs to history. Our responsibility for them cannot be questioned; yet its character ought not to be misapprehended. In such a task miscarriages were inevitable. They are the proper and certain consequence of undertakings that war against nature, and that lie beyond the scope of human means, and of rational and prudent human action; and the first authors of these undertakings are the real makers of the mischief.’
In connection with this subject, let us add the following from Gordon’s Diary at Khartoum: ‘Poor Gladstone’s Government! how they must love me! I will accept nothing whatever from Gladstone’s hands. I will not let them even pay my expenses; I will get the King to pay them. I will never set foot in England again.’
Perhaps one of the most remarkable letters a great statesman ever wrote was that to an American in 1862, in which Mr. Gladstone thus shows how impossible it was for the North to put down the South. He writes: ‘You know, in the opinion of Europe, that impossibility has been proved. Depend upon it, to place the matter on a simple issue, you cannot conquer and keep down a country where the women behave like the women of New Orleans, and when a writer says they would be ready to form regiments, were such regiments required. And how idle it is to talk as some of your people do, and some of ours, of the slackness with which the war has been carried on, and of its accounting for the want of success. You have no cause to be ashamed of your military character and efforts. . . . I am, in short, a follower of General Scott; with him I say, Wayward sisters, go in peace. Immortal fame be to him for his wise and courageous advice, amounting to a prophecy. Finally, you have done what man could do; you have failed because you have resolved to do what man could not do. Laws stronger than human will are on the side of earnest self-defence; and to aim at the impossible, which in other things may be folly only when the path of search is dark with misery and red with blood, is not folly only, but guilt to boot.’
In 1880 some correspondence was published between Captain Boycott and Mr. Gladstone. The former wrote to the Prime Minister, giving a narrative of the events which obliged him to leave Ireland, and asked for compensation from the Government. ‘I have been prevented from pursuing my business peaceably; where my property has not been stolen, it has been maliciously wasted, and my life has been in hourly peril for many months. I have been driven from my home, and, having done no evil, find myself a ruined man, because the law as administered has not protected me.’ In reply, Mr. Gladstone’s secretary wrote: ‘Mr. Gladstone has received your letter of the 8th inst., and, in reply, desires me to say that he is not sure in what way he is to understand your request for assistance from her Majesty’s Government. It has been very largely afforded you in the use of the public force; beyond this it is the duty of the Government to use its best exertions in the enforcement of the existing law, which they are endeavouring to effect through the courts, and by asking when necessary the assistance of the Legislature to amend or enlarge the law—a matter of much importance, on which you can, of course, only receive information together with the public generally.’ A little later we were informed Mr. Gladstone declined to accede to Captain Boycott’s claim for pecuniary compensation on account of having to leave his farm, holding that the large display of public force required for Captain Boycott’s protection having been furnished, the State could not be expected to entertain any further claims.
Mr. Gladstone addressed the following letter to the editor of the Baptist:
‘Dear Sir,
‘I have given full consideration, which is well deserved, to your letter and article. I complain of nothing in the article, and am not surprised at the desires which it expresses. I acknowledge the just and generous treatment which I have had from Nonconformists both in and out of Wales; but the same hill or valley presents itself in different forms and tints, according to the point from which it is viewed.
‘My point of view is that determined for me by my political career. I cannot safely or wisely deal in the affirmation of abstract resolutions, though I by no means undertake to lay down the same rather rigid rule for others. In 1868 I moved resolutions on the Irish Church, but they were immediately followed by a Bill.
‘Your article asserts that there is now a great opportunity for disestablishing the Welsh Church, which ought not to be let slip.
‘I will not enter into the arguments pro or con., but will simply refer to the declarations I have made in the case of Scotland, and then assume, for argument’s sake, that the Welsh Church ought to be disestablished.
‘From my point of view there is now no such opportunity at all. I have been telling the country on every occasion I could find that no great political matter, of whatever kind (of course I mean a contested matter), could be practically dealt with until the Irish question, which blocks the way, is settled, and so put out of the way. I may, of course, be wrong, but this is my firm opinion; therefore he who wishes to have a great Welsh question discussed in a practical manner should, as I think, see that his first business, with a view to his own aim, is to clear the road.
‘But you may say Ireland ought not to occupy the attention of Parliament to the exclusion of great British questions. My answer is, that I have not stated whether it ought, but have simply said that it will.
‘Then, you may ask, why not defer the Irish question until these urgent British matters are settled? I reply that I have no more power thus to defer the Irish question than I had to defer the earthquake which happened thirty-six hours ago in France and Italy. Any attempt by me to force a postponement of the Irish question would only add to the confusion and the pressure. I am not creating a difficulty, but only pointing it out. The finger-post does not make the road.
‘I will, however, point out a main reason why this Irish question is so troublesome, obtrusive, and provoking. It is because it involves social order, and it is in the nature of questions involving social order to push their claims to precedence over other questions.
‘In conclusion, I may also observe that your letter and article take no notice of the fact that I am in my fifty-fifth year of public service, and appear to assume that it is my duty to continue in such service until I drop. To this proposition I must, on what appear to me solid and even high grounds, respectfully demur.
‘I have no desire that you should consider this letter as a secret one.
‘Your most faithful and obedient,
‘W. E. Gladstone.’‘21, Carlton House Terrace,
‘February 25.’
Mr. Gladstone’s secretary, writing to a correspondent in the Daily News in 1885, who had asked what the clergy were drawing from national funds, replied: ‘Sir,—Mr. Gladstone, in reply to your letter, desires me to inform you that the clergy are not State paid.’
Again, to a correspondent Mr. Gladstone wrote: ‘You are mistaken in supposing that the outrages in Manchester and Clerkenwell determined or affected my action with regard to Ireland. They drew the attention of the public, on which there are so many demands, to Irish questions, and thereby enabled me in point of time to act in a manner for which I had previously declared my desire. You state that the Irish voters are preparing themselves to punish the Liberal party. In that respect I do not see that those of whom you speak can improve upon what they have already done; for in and since 1874, just after that party had dealt with the questions of Church and Land, they inflicted upon it the heaviest Parliamentary blow it has received in my time. I hope, however, from every present indication, that, notwithstanding the mischief done to it and to the wider interests of humanity by the Irish secession, it will, when an opportunity is allowed, prove to have strength sufficient for the exigencies of the time.’