The Grand Old Man / Or, the Life and Public Services of the Right Honorable William Ewart Gladstone, Four Times Prime Minister of England

by Richard B. Cook

Mr. Gladstone's retirement from public life, from the Premiership, the Cabinet, the leadership of the Liberal Party, and from Parliament did not mean his entrance upon a period of inactivity. In the shades of Hawarden and in the quiet of his study he kept up the industry that had characterized his whole life heretofore.

It had been the custom for centuries for English statesmen, upon retiring from official life, to devote themselves to the classics. Mr. Gladstone, who was pre-eminently a statesman-scholar, found it very congenial to his mind and habits to follow this old English custom. He first translated and published "The Odes of Horace." Then he took Butler's "Analogy" as a text book, and prepared and published "Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler." The discussion necessarily takes a wide range, treating, among other matters, of Butler's method, its application to the Scriptures, the future life, miracles and the mediation of Christ. Says W.T. Stead: "No one who reads the strenuous arguments with which Mr. Gladstone summarizes the reasoning of Bishop Butler on the future life is conscious of any weakening in the vigorous dialectic which was so often employed with brilliant success in the House of Commons."

One of Mr. Gladstone's latest productions was his "Personal Recollections of Arthur H. Hallam," which was written for the "Youth's Companion." It is a tribute to the memory and worth of one of his early friends at Eton.

These and other literary works occupied most of his time. But Mr. Gladstone would not content himself with quiet literary work. He had too long and too intensely been active in the world's great movements and on humanity's behalf to stand aloof. Hence it was not long before he was again in the arena, doing valiant service for the Armenian and against the Turk.

In 1892 the Sultan, in the execution of a plan devised in 1890, issued an edict against religious freedom. In 1894, he threw off the mask and began to execute his deliberate and preconcerted plan to force all Christian Armenians to become Mohammedans or to die. Robbery, outrage and murder were the means used by the hands of brutal soldiers.

In a letter to an indignation meeting held in London, December 17th, 1894, Mr. Gladstone wrote denouncing these outrages of the Turks. The reading of the letter was greeted with prolonged applause.

A deputation of Armenian gentlemen, residing in London and in Paris, took occasion on Mr. Gladstone's 85th birthday, December 29th, 1894, to present a silver chalice to Hawarden Church as "a memorial of Mr. Gladstone's sympathy with and assistance to the Armenian people." Mr. Gladstone's address to the deputation was regarded as one of the most peculiar and characteristic acts of his life. He gave himself wholly to the cause of these oppressed people, and was stirred by the outrages and murders perpetrated upon them as he was 18 years before. He said that the Turks should go out as they did go out of Bulgaria "bag and baggage," and he denounced the government of the Sultan as "a disgrace to Mahomet, the prophet whom it professed to follow, a disgrace to civilization at large, and a curse to mankind." He contended that every nation had ever the right and the authority to act "on behalf of humanity and of justice."

There were those who condemned Mr. Gladstone's speech, declaring that it might disrupt the peace of Europe, but there were many others who thought that the sooner peace secured at such a cost was disturbed the better. It was but natural for those who wrongfully claimed the sovereign right to oppress their own subjects, to denounce all interference in the affairs of the Sultan.

It was reported, March 19, 1895, that Francis Seymour Stevenson, M.P., Chairman of the Anglo-Armenian Association, on behalf of the Tiflis Armenians, would present to Mr. Gladstone, on his return to London, the ancient copy of the Armenian Gospels, inscribed upon vellum, which was to accompany the address to the ex-Premier, then being signed by the Armenians there. In a letter Mr. Gladstone had but recently declared that he had abandoned all hope that the condition of affairs in Armenia would change for the better. The Sultan, he declared, was no longer worthy of the courtesies of diplomatic usage, or of Christian tolerance. Mr. Gladstone promised that when these Gospels were formally presented to him he would deliver a "rattling" address on behalf of the Armenians. When a delegation waited on him, he said, after assuring them of his sympathy, that the danger in the Armenian situation now was that useful action might be abandoned, in view of the promises of the Turkish Government to institute reforms.