It now began to be apparent that the policy of the prime minister was reform wherever reform was needed. There was no telling what he would do next. Had he been the prime minister of an absolute monarch he would have been unfettered, and could have carried out any reform which his royal master approved. But the English are conservative and slow to change, no matter what party they belong to. It seemed to many that the premier was iconoclastic, and was bent on demolishing anything and everything which he disliked. Consequently a reaction set in, and Mr. Gladstone's popularity, by which he had ruled almost as dictator, began to wane.
The settlement of the Alabama Claims did not add to his popularity. Everybody knows what these were, and I shall merely allude to them. During our Civil War, injuries had been inflicted on the commerce of the United States by cruisers built, armed, and manned in Great Britain, not only destroying seventy of our vessels, but by reason of the fear of shippers, resulting in a transfer of trade from American to British ships. It having been admitted by commissioners sent by Mr. Gladstone to Washington, that Great Britain was to blame for these and other injuries of like character, the amount of damages for which she was justly liable was submitted to arbitration; and the International Court at Geneva decided that England was bound to pay to the United States more than fifteen million dollars in gold. The English government promptly paid the money, although regarding the award as excessive; but while the judicious rejoiced to see an arbitrament of reason instead of a resort to war, the pugnacious British populace was discontented, and again Gladstone lost popularity.
And here it may be said that the foreign policy of Mr. Gladstone was pacific from first to last. He opposed the Crimean war; he kept clear of entangling alliances; he maintained a strict neutrality in Eastern complications, and in the Franco-German embroilment; he never stimulated the passion of military glory; he ever maintained that--
"There is a higher than the warrior's excellence."
He was devoted to the development of national resources and the removal of evils which militated against justice as well as domestic prosperity. His administration, fortunately, was marked by no foreign war. Under his guidance the nation had steadily advanced in wealth, and was not oppressed by taxation; he had promoted education as wall as material thrift; he had attempted to heal disorders in Ireland by benefiting the tenant class. But he at last proposed a comprehensive scheme for enlarging higher education in Ireland, which ended his administration.
The Irish University Bill, which as an attempted compromise between Catholic and Protestant demands satisfied neither party, met with such unexpected opposition that a majority of three was obtained against the government. Mr. Gladstone was, in accordance with custom, compelled to resign or summon a new Parliament. He accepted the latter alternative; but he did not seem aware of the great change in public sentiment which had taken place in regard to his reforms. Not one of them had touched the heart of the great mass, or was of such transcendent importance to the English people as the repeal of the corn laws had been. They were measures of great utility,--indeed, based on justice,--but were of a kind to alienate powerful classes without affecting universal interests. They were patriotic rather than politic. Moreover, he was not supported by lieutenants of first-class ability or reputation. His immediate coadjutors were most respectable men, great scholars, and men of more experience than genius or eloquence. Of his cabinet, eight of them it is said were "double-firsts" at Oxford. There was not one of them sufficiently trained or eminent to take his place. They were his subordinates rather than his colleagues; and some of them became impatient under his dictation, and witnessed his decline in popularity with secret satisfaction. No government was ever started on an ambitious course with louder pretensions or brighter promises than Mr. Gladstone's cabinet in 1868. In less than three years their glory was gone. It was claimed that the bubble of oratory had burst when in contact with fact, and the poor English people had awoke to the dreary conviction that it was but vapor after all; that Mr. Disraeli had pricked that bubble when he said, "Under his influence [Gladstone's] we have legalized confiscation, we have consecrated sacrilege, we have condoned treason, we have destroyed churches, we have shaken property to its foundation, and we have emptied jails."
Everything went against the government. Russia had torn up the Black Sea treaty, the fruit of the Crimean war; the settlement of the "Alabama" claims was humiliating; "the generous policy which was to have won the Irish heart had exasperated one party without satisfying another. He had irritated powerful interests on all sides, from the army to the licensed victuallers."
On the appeal to the nation, contrary to Mr. Gladstone's calculations, there was a great majority against him. He had lost friends and made enemies. The people seemingly forgot his services,--his efforts to give dignity to honest labor, to stimulate self-denial, to reduce unwise expenditures, to remove crying evils. They forgot that he had reduced taxation to the extent of twelve millions sterling annually; and all the while the nation had been growing richer, so that the burdens which had once been oppressive were now easy to bear. It would almost appear that even Gladstone's transcendent eloquence had lost in a measure its charm when Disraeli, in one of his popular addresses, was applauded for saying that he was "a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign his opponents and to glorify himself,"--one of the most exaggerated and ridiculous charges that was ever made against a public man of eminence, yet witty and plausible.
On the retirement of the great statesman from office in 1875, in sadness and chagrin, he declined to continue to be the leader of his party in opposition. His disappointment and disgust must have been immense to prompt a course which seemed to be anything but magnanimous, since he well knew that there was no one capable of taking his place; but he probably had his reasons. For some time he rarely went to the House of Commons. He left the leaders of his party to combat an opponent whom he himself had been unable to disarm. Fortunately no questions came up of sufficient importance to arouse a nation or divert it from its gains or its pleasures. It was thinking of other things than budgets and the small extension of the suffrage, or even of the Eastern question. It was thinking more of steamships and stock speculations and great financial operations, of theatres, of operas, of new novels, even of ritualistic observances in the churches, than of the details of government in peaceful times, or the fireworks of the great magician who had by arts and management dethroned a greater and wiser man than himself.
Although Mr. Gladstone was only occasionally seen, after his retirement, in the House of Commons, it must not be supposed that his political influence was dead. When anything of special interest was to be discussed, he was ready as before with his voice and vote. Such a measure as the bill to regulate public worship--aimed at suppressing ritualism--aroused his ecclesiastical interest, and he was voluminous upon it, both in and out of Parliament. Even when he was absent from his seat, his influence remained, and in all probability the new leader of the Liberals, Lord Hartington, took counsel from him. He was simply taking a rest before he should gird on anew his armor, and resume the government of the country.