II
The current of domestic life at Hawarden, in the midst of all these perplexities, flowed in its usual ordered channels. The engagement of his second daughter stirred Mr. Gladstone's deepest interest. He practised occasional woodcraft with his sons, though ending his seventy-sixth year. He spends a morning in reviewing his private money affairs, the first time for three years. He never misses church. He corrects the proofs of an article on Huxley; carries on tolerably profuse correspondence, coming to very little; he works among his books, and arranges his papers; reads Beaconsfield's Home Letters, Lord Stanhope's Pitt, Macaulay's Warren Hastings, which he counts the most brilliant of all that illustrious man's performances; Maine on Popular Government; King Solomon's Mines; something of Tolstoy; Dicey's Law of the Constitution, where a chapter on semi-sovereign assemblies made a deep impression on him in regard to the business that now absorbed his mind. Above all, he nearly every day reads Burke: “December 18.—Read Burke; what a magazine of wisdom on Ireland and America. January 9.—Made many extracts from Burke—sometimes almost divine.”[174] We may easily imagine how the heat from that profound and glowing furnace still further inflamed strong purposes and exalted resolution in Mr. Gladstone. The Duke of Argyll wrote to say that he was sorry to hear of the study of Burke: “Your perfervidum ingenium Scoti does not need being touched with a live coal from that Irish altar. Of course your reference to Burke indicates a tendency to [pg 281] compare our position as regards Ireland to the position of George iii. towards the colonies. I deny that there is any parallelism or even analogy.”
End Of Seventy-Sixth Year
It was during these months that he renewed his friendly intercourse with Cardinal Manning, which had been suspended since the controversy upon the Vatican pamphlets. In November Mr. Gladstone sent Manning his article on the “Dawn of Creation.” The cardinal thanked him for the paper—“still more for your words, which revive the memories of old days. Fifty-five years are a long reach of life in which to remember each other. We have twice been parted, but as the path declines, as you say, it narrows, and I am glad that we are again nearing each other as we near our end.... If we cannot unite in the realm where ‘the morning stars sang together’ we should be indeed far off.” Much correspondence followed on the articles against Huxley. Then his birthday came:—
Postal deliveries and other arrivals were seven hundred. Immeasurable kindness almost overwhelmed us. There was also the heavy and incessant weight of the Irish question, which offers daily phases more or less new. It was a day for intense thankfulness, but, alas, not for recollection and detachment. When will that day come? Until then, why string together the commonplaces and generalities of great things, really unfelt?... I am certain there is one keen and deep desire to be extricated from the life of contention in which a chain of incidents has for the last four years detained me against all my will. Then, indeed, I should reach an eminence from which I could look before and after. But I know truly that I am not worthy of this liberty with which Christ makes free his elect. In his own good time, something, I trust, will for me too be mercifully devised.
III
At the end of this long travail, which anybody else would have found all the sorer for the isolation and quietude that it was ever Mr. Gladstone's fashion in moments of emergency to seek, he reached London on January 11th; two days later he took the oath in the new parliament, whose life was destined to be so short; and then he found himself on the [pg 282] edge of the whirlpool. Three days before formalities were over, and the House assembled for the despatch of business, he received a communication that much perturbed him, and shed an ominous light on the prospect of liberal unity. This communication he described to Lord Granville:—
21 Carlton House Terrace, Jan. 18, 1886.—Hartington writes to me a letter indicating the possibility that on Thursday, while I announce with reasons a policy of silence and reserve, he may feel it his duty to declare his determination “to maintain the legislative union,” that is to proclaim a policy (so I understand the phrase) of absolute resistance without examination to the demand made by Ireland through five-sixths of her members. This is to play the tory game with a vengeance. They are now, most rashly not to say more, working the Irish question to split the liberal party.
It seems to me that if a gratuitous declaration of this kind is made, it must produce an explosion; and that in a week's time Hartington will have to consider whether he will lead the liberal party himself, or leave it to chaos. He will make my position impossible. When, in conformity with the wishes expressed to me, I changed my plans and became a candidate at the general election, my motives were two. The first, a hope that I might be able to contribute towards some pacific settlement of the Irish question. The second, a desire to prevent the splitting of the party, of which there appeared to be an immediate danger. The second object has thus far been attained. But it may at any moment be lost, and the most disastrous mode of losing it perhaps would be that now brought into view. It would be certainly opposed to my convictions and determination, to attempt to lead anything like a home rule opposition, and to make this subject—the strife of nations—the dividing line between parties. This being so, I do not see how I could as leader survive a gratuitous declaration of opposition to me such as Hartington appears to meditate. If he still meditates it, ought not the party to be previously informed?
Pray, consider whether you can bring this subject before him, less invidiously than I. I have explained to you and I believe to him, and I believe you approve, my general idea, that we ought [pg 283] not to join issue with the government on what is called home rule (which indeed the social state of Ireland may effectually thrust aside for the time); and that still less ought we to join issue among ourselves, if we have a choice, unless and until we are called upon to consider whether or not to take the government. I for one will have nothing to do with ruining the party if I can avoid it.