So great was the popularity of Mr. Gladstone at this time, so profound was the respect he inspired for his lofty character, his abilities, his vast and varied learning, his unimpeachable integrity and conscientious discharge of his duties, that for five years he was virtually dictator, wielding more power than any premier since Pitt, if we except Sir Robert Peel in his glory. He was not a dictator in the sense that Metternich or Bismarck was,--not a grand vizier, the vicegerent of an absolute monarch, controlling the foreign policy, the army, the police, and the national expenditures. He could not send men to prison without a trial, or interfere with the peaceful pursuits of obnoxious citizens; but he could carry out any public measure he proposed affecting the general interests, for Parliament was supreme, and his influence ruled the Parliament. He was liable to disagreeable attacks from members of the opposition, and could not silence them; he might fall before their attacks; but while he had a great majority of members to back him, ready to do his bidding, he stood on a proud pedestal and undoubtedly enjoyed the sweets of power. He would not have been human if he had not.
Yet Mr. Gladstone carried his honors with dignity and discretion. He was accessible to all who had claims upon his time; he was never rude or insolent; he was gracious and polite to delegations; he was too kind-hearted to snub anybody. No cares of office could keep him from attending public worship; no popular amusements diverted him from his duties; he was feared only as a father is feared. I can conceive that he was sometimes intolerant of human infirmities; that no one dared to obtrude familiarities or make unseemly jokes in his presence; that few felt quite at ease in his company,--oppressed by his bearing, and awed by his prodigious respectability and grave solemnity. Not that he was arrogant and haughty, like a Roman cardinal or an Oxford Don; he was simply dignified and undemonstrative, like a man absorbed with weighty responsibilities. I doubt if he could unbend at the dinner-table like Disraeli and Palmerston, or tell stories like Sydney Smith, or drink too much wine with jolly companions, or forget for a moment the proper and the conventional. I can see him sporting with children, or taking long walks, or cutting down trees for exercise, or given to deep draughts of old October when thirsty; but to see him with a long pipe, or dallying with ladies, or giving vent to unseemly expletives, or retailing scandals,--these and other disreputable follies are utterly inconceivable of Mr. Gladstone. A very serious man may be an object of veneration; but he is a constant rebuke to the weaknesses of our common humanity,--a wet blanket upon frivolous festivities.
Let us now briefly glance at the work done by Gladstone during the five years when in his first premiership he directed the public affairs of England,--impatient of opposition, and sensitive to unjust aspersions, yet too powerful to be resisted in the supreme confidence of his party.
The first thing of note he did was to complete the disestablishment of the Irish Church,--an arduous task to any one lacking Mr. Gladstone's extraordinary influence. Here he was at war with his former friends, and with a large section of the Conservative party,--especially with ecclesiastical dignitaries, who saw in this measure hostility to the Church as well as a national sin. It was a dissolution of the union between the Churches of England and Ireland; a divestment of the temporalities which the Irish clergy had enjoyed; the abolition of all ecclesiastical corporations and laws and courts in Ireland,--in short, the sweeping away of the annuities which the beneficed clergy had hitherto received out of the property of the Established Church, which annuities were of the nature of freeholds. It was not proposed to deprive the clergy of their income, so long as they discharged their clerical duties; but that the title to their tithes should be vested in commissioners, so that these church freeholds could not be bought and sold by non-residents, and churches in decadence should be taken from incumbents. The peerage rights of Irish bishops were also taken away. It was not proposed to touch private endowments; and glebe-houses which had become generally dilapidated were handed over to incumbents by their paying a fair valuation. Not only did the measure sweep away the abuses of the Establishment which had existed for centuries,--such as endowments held by those who performed no duties, which they could dispose of like other property,--but the regium donum given to Presbyterian ministers and the Maynooth Catholic College grant, which together amounted to £70,000, were also withdrawn, although compensated on the same principles as those which granted a settled stipend to the actual incumbents of the disestablished churches.
By this measure, the withdrawal of tithes and land rents and other properties amounted to sixteen millions; and after paying ministers and actual incumbents their stipends of between seven or eight millions, there would remain a surplus of seven or eight millions, with which Mr. Gladstone proposed to endow lunatic and idiot asylums, schools for the deaf, dumb, and blind, institutions for the training of nurses, for infirmaries, and hospitals for the needy people of Ireland.
There can be no rational doubt that this reform was beneficent, and it met the approval of the Liberal party, being supported with a grand eloquence by John Bright, who had under this ministry for the first time taken office,--as President of the Board of Trade; but it gave umbrage to the Irish clergy as a matter of course, to the Presbyterians of Ulster, to the Catholics as affecting Maynooth, and to the conservatives of Oxford and Cambridge on general principles. It was a reform not unlike that of Thomas Cromwell in the time of Henry VIII., when he dissolved the monasteries, though not quite so violent as the secularization of church property in France in the time of the Revolution. It was a spoliation, in one sense, as well as a needed reform,--a daring and bold measure, which such statesmen as Lords Liverpool, Aberdeen, and Palmerston would have been slow to make, and the weak points of which Disraeli was not slow to assail. To the radical Dissenters, as led by Mr. Miall, it was a grateful measure, which would open the door for future discussions on the disestablishment of the English Church itself,--a logical contingency which the premier did not seem to appreciate; for if the State had a right to take away the temporalities of the Irish Church when they were abused, the State would have an equal right to take away those of the English Church should they hereafter turn out to be unnecessary, or become a scandal in the eyes of the nation.
One would think that this disestablishment of the Irish Church would have been the last reform which a strict churchman like Gladstone would have made; certainly it was the last for a politic statesman to make, for it brought forth fruit in the next general election. It is true that the Irish Establishment had failed in every way, as Mr. Bright showed in one of his eloquent speeches, and to remove it was patriotic. If Mr. Gladstone had his eyes open, however, to its natural results as affecting his own popularity, he deserves the credit of being the most unselfish and lofty statesman that ever adorned British annals.
Having thus in 1869 removed one important grievance in the affairs of Ireland, Mr. Gladstone soon proceeded to another, and in February, 1870, brought forward, in a crowded House, his Irish Land Bill. The evil which he had in view to cure was the insecurity of tenure, which resulted in discouraging and paralyzing the industry of tenants, especially in the matter of evictions for non-payment of rent, and the raising of rents on land which had been improved by them. As they were liable at any time to be turned out of their miserable huts, the rents had only doubled in value in ninety years; whereas in England and Scotland, where there was more security of tenure, rents had quadrupled. This insecurity and uncertainty had resulted in a great increase of pauperism in Ireland, and prevented any rise in wages, although there was increased expense of living. The remedy proposed to alleviate in some respect the condition of the Irish tenants was the extension of their leases to thirty-three years, and the granting national assistance to such as desired to purchase the lands they had previously cultivated, according to a scale of prices to be determined by commissioners,--thus making improvements the property of the tenants who had made them rather than of the landlord, and encouraging the tenants by longer leases to make such improvements. Mr. Gladstone's bill also extended to twelve months the time for notices to quit, bearing a stamp duty of half-a-crown. This measure on the part of the government was certainly a relief, as far as it went, to the poor people of Ireland. It became law on August 1, 1870.
The next important measure of Mr. Gladstone was to abolish the custom of buying and selling commissions in the army, which provoked bitter opposition from the aristocracy. It was maintained by the government that the whole system of purchase was unjust, and tended to destroy the efficiency of the army by preventing the advancement of officers according to merit. In no other country was such a mistake committed. It is true that the Prussian and Austrian armies were commanded by officers from the nobility; but these officers had not the unfair privilege of jumping over one another's heads by buying promotion. The bill, though it passed the Commons, was thrown out by the Lords, who wished to keep up the aristocratic quality of army officers, among whom their younger sons were enrolled. Mr. Gladstone cut the knot by advising her Majesty to take the decisive step of cancelling the royal warrant under which--and not by law--purchase had existed. This calling on the Queen to do by virtue of her royal prerogative what could not be done by ordinary legislation, though not unconstitutional, was unusual. True, a privilege which royalty had granted, royalty could revoke; but in removing this evil Mr. Gladstone still further alienated the army and the aristocracy.
Among other measures which the premier carried for the public good, but against bitter opposition, were the secret ballot, and the removal of University Tests, by which all lay students of whatever religious creed were admitted to the universities on equal terms. The establishment of national and compulsory elementary education, although not emanating from Mr. Gladstone, was also accomplished during his government.