Things grew worse rather than better. Even friendly journalists in the spring of 1858 wrote of him as 'the most signal example that the present time affords of the man of speculation misplaced and lost in the labyrinth of practical politics.' They call him the chief orator and the weakest man in the House of Commons. He has exhibited at every stage traces of an unhappy incoherence which is making him a mere bedouin of parliament, a noble being full of spirit and power, but not to be tamed into the ordinary ways of civil life. His sympathies hover in hopeless inconsistency between love for righteous national action, good government, freedom, social and commercial reform, and a hankering after a strong, unassailable executive in the old obstructive tory sense. He protests against unfair dealing with the popular voice in the Principalities on the Danube, but when the popular voice on the Thames demands higher honours for General Havelock he resists it with the doctrine that the executive should be wholly free to distribute honours as it pleases. He is loudly indignant against the supersession of parliament by diplomacy, but when a motion is made directly pointing to the rightful influence of the House over foreign affairs, he neither speaks nor votes. Is it not clear beyond dispute that his cannot be the will to direct, nor the wisdom to guide the party of progress out of which the materials for the government of this country will have to be chosen?[371]
In organs supposed to be inspired by Disraeli, Mr. Gladstone's fate is pronounced in different terms, but with equal decision. In phrases that must surely have fallen from the very lips of the oracle itself, the public was told that 'cerebral natures, men of mere intellect without moral passion, are quite unsuited for governing mankind.' The days of the mere dialectician are over, and the rulers of Christendom are no longer selected from the serfs of Aristotle. Without the emotions that soar and thrill and enkindle, no man can attain 'a grand moral vision.' When Mr. Gladstone aims at philosophy, he only reaches casuistry. He reasons like one of the sons of Ignatius Loyola. What their Society is to the Jesuit, his own individualism is to Mr. Gladstone. He supports his own interests as much from intellectual zeal as from self-love. A shrewd observer is quoted: 'looking on Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Sidney Herbert sitting side by side, the former with his rather saturnine face and straight black hair, and the latter eminently handsome, with his bright, cold smile and subtlety of aspect, I have often thought that I was beholding the Jesuit of the closet really devout, and the Jesuit of the world, ambitious, artful, and always on the watch for making his rapier thrusts.' Mr. Gladstone, in a word, is extremely eminent, but strangely eccentric, 'a Simeon Stylites among the statesmen of his time.'[372]
RENEWED PROPOSAL OF OFFICE
In May an important vacancy occurred in the ministerial ranks by Lord Ellenborough's resignation of the presidency of the board of control. This became the occasion of a renewed proposal to Mr. Gladstone. He tells the story in a memorandum prepared (May 22) for submission to Aberdeen and Graham, whom Lord Derby urged him to consult.
Memorandum by Mr. Gladstone submitted to Lord Aberdeen and Sir James Graham. May 22, '58.
Secret.—Last week after Mr. Cardwell's notice but before the debate began, Mr. Walpole, after previously sounding Sir William Heathcote to a similar effect, called me aside in the lobby of the House of Commons and inquired whether I could be induced to take office. I replied that I thought that question put by him of his own motion—as he had described it—was one that I could hardly answer. It seemed plain, I said, that the actual situation was one so entirely belonging to the government as it stood, that they must plainly work through it unchanged; that the head of the government was the only person who could make a proposal or put a question about taking office in it; I added, however, that my general views were the same as in February.
This morning I had a note from Walpole asking for an appointment; and he called on me at four o'clock accordingly. He stated that he came by authority of Lord Derby to offer me the board of control or, if I preferred it, the colonial office. That he had told Lord Derby I should, he thought, be likely to raise difficulties on two points: first, the separation from those who have been my friends in public life; secondly, the leadership of the House of Commons. I here interrupted him to say it must be in his option to speak or to be silent on the latter of these subjects; it was one which had never been entertained or opened by me in connection with this subject, since the former of the two points had offered an absolute preliminary bar to the acceptance of office. He, however, explained himself as follows, that Mr. Disraeli had stated his willingness to surrender the leadership to Sir James Graham, if he were disposed to join the government; but that the expressions he had used in his speech of Thursday[373] (apparently those with respect to parties in the House and to office), seemed to put it beyond the right of the government to make any proposal to him. He at the same time spoke in the highest terms not only of the speech, but of the position in which he thought it placed Sir James Graham; and he left me to infer that there would have been, but for the cause named, a desire to obtain his co-operation as leader of the House of Commons. With respect to the proposal as one the acceptance of which would separate me from my friends, he hoped it was not so. It was one made to me alone, the immediate vacancy being a single one; but the spirit in which it was made was a desire that it should be taken to signify the wish of the government progressively to extend its basis, as far as it could be effected compatibly with consistency in its opinions. He added that judging from the past he hoped he might assume that there was no active opposition to the government on the part of my friends, naming Lord Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, and the Duke of Newcastle.
I told him with respect to the leadership that I thought it handsome on the part of Mr. Disraeli to offer to waive it on behalf of Sir James Graham; that it was a subject which did not enter into my decision for the reason I had stated; and I hinted also that it was one on which I could never negotiate or make stipulations. It was true, I said, I had no broad differences of principle from the party opposite; on the whole perhaps I differed more from Lord Palmerston than from almost any one, and this was more on account of his temper and views of public conduct, than of any political opinions. Nay more, it would be hard to show broad differences of public principle between the government and the bench opposite.
RENEWED PROPOSAL OF OFFICE
I said, however, that in my view the proposal which he had made to me could not be entertained. I felt the personal misfortune and public inconvenience of being thrown out of party connection; but a man at the bottom of the well must not try to get out, however disagreeable his position, until a rope or a ladder is put down to him. In this case my clear opinion was that by joining the government I should shock the public sentiment and should make no essential, no important, change in their position.