Mr. Gladstone arrived in the House, pale and still panting from the excitement of his reception in the streets. As he sat there the entire Liberal party—with the exception of Lord Hartington, Sir Henry James, Mr. Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan—and the Nationalist members, by a spontaneous impulse, sprang to their feet and cheered him again and again. The speech which he delivered was in every way worthy of the occasion. It expounded, with marvelous lucidity and a noble eloquence, a tremendous scheme of constructive legislation—the re-establishment of a legislature in Ireland, but one subordinate to the Imperial Parliament, and hedged round with every safeguard which could protect the unity of the Empire. It took three hours in delivery, and was listened to throughout with the utmost attention on every side of the House. At its close all parties united in a tribute of admiration for the genius which had astonished them with such an exhibition of its powers.
Yet it is one thing to cheer an orator, another thing to vote for a revolution. The bill was defeated—as it was almost sure to be. Mr. Gladstone at once dissolved Parliament and appealed to the country in a new election, with the result that he was decisively defeated. His bold declaration that the contest was one between the classes and the masses turned the aristocracy against him, while he had again roused the bitter hatred of his opponents.
Gladstone, the “Grand Old Man,” a title which he had nobly won, returned to power in 1892, after a period of wholesale coercion in Ireland. He was not to remain there long. He brought in a new Home Rule Bill, supported it with much of his old vigor, and had the intense satisfaction of having it passed, with a majority of thirty-four. It was defeated in the House of Lords, and Home Rule, still remains the prominent issue in Ireland, which it has divided into two camps, Protestant Ulster being in revolt against the Catholic provinces.
With this great event the public career of the Grand Old Man came to an end. The burden had grown too heavy for his reduced strength. In March, 1894, to the consternation of his party, he announced his intention of retiring from public life. The Queen offered, as she had done once before, to raise him to the peerage as an earl, but he declined the proffer. His own plain name was a title higher than that of any earldom in the kingdom.
On May 19, 1898, William Ewart Gladstone laid down the burden of his life as he had already done that of labor. The noblest figure in legislative life of the nineteenth century had passed away from earth.
Chapter XIV.
THE FRENCH REPUBLIC
Struggles of a New Nation
The Republic Organized—The Commune of Paris—Instability of the Government—Thiers Proclaimed President—Punishment of the Unsuccessful Generals—MacMahon a Royalist President—Bazaine’s Sentence and Escape—Grevy, Gambetta and Boulanger—The Panama Canal Scandal—Despotism of the Army Leaders—The Dreyfus Case—Church and State—The Moroccan Controversy
It has been already told how the capitulation of the French army at Sedan and the captivity of Louis Napoleon were followed in Paris by the overthrow of the empire and the formation of a republic, the third in the history of French political changes. A provisional government was formed, the legislative assembly was dissolved, and all the court paraphernalia of the imperial establishment disappeared. The new government was called in Paris the “Government of Lawyers,” most of its members and officials belonging to that profession. At its head was General Trochu, in command of the army in Paris; among its chief members were Jules Favre and Gambetta. While upright in its membership and honorable in its purposes, it was an arbitrary body, formed by a coup d’état like that by which Napoleon had seized the reins of power, and not destined for a long existence.