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

It was in this article, by Lord Macaulay, that the mow famous words occurred which former Conservative friends of Mr. Gladstone delight to recall in view of his change of political opinions: "The writer of this volume is a young man of unblemished character and of distinguished parliamentary talents; the rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories who follow, reluctantly and cautiously, a leader whose experience and eloquence are indispensable to them, but whose cautious temper and moderate opinions they abhor. It would not be strange if Mr. Gladstone were one of the most unpopular men in England."

Higginson writes: "The hope of the stern and unbending Tories has for years been the unquestioned leader of English Liberals, and though he may have been at times as unpopular as Macaulay could have predicted, the hostility has come mainly from the ranks of those who were thus early named as his friends. But whatever may have been Mr. Gladstone's opinions or affiliations, whoever may have been his friends or foes, the credit of surpassing ability has always been his."

It was remarked by Lord Macaulay that the entire theory of Mr. Gladstone's book rested upon one great fundamental proposition, namely, that the propagation of religious truth is one of the chief ends of government as government; and he proceeded to combat this doctrine. He granted that government was designed to protect our persons and our property, but declined to receive the doctrine of paternal government, until a government be shown that loved its subjects, as a father loves his child, and was as superior in intelligence to its subjects as a father was to his children. Lord Macaulay then demonstrated, by appropriate illustrations, the fallacy of the theory that every society of individuals with any power whatever, is under obligation as such society to profess a religion; and that there could be unity of action in large bodies without unity of religious views. Persecutions would naturally follow, or be justifiable in an association where Mr. Gladstone's views were paramount. It would be impossible to conceive of the circumstances in which it would be right to establish by law, as the one exclusive religion of the State, the religion of the minority. The religious teaching which the sovereign ought officially to countenance and maintain is that from which he, in his conscience, believes that the people will receive the most benefit with the smallest mixture of evil. It is not necessarily his own religious belief that he will select. He may prefer the doctrines of the Church of England to those of the Church of Scotland, but he would not force the former upon the inhabitants of Scotland. The critic raised no objections, though he goes on to state the conditions under which an established Church might be retained with advantage. There are many institutions which, being set up, ought not to be rudely pulled down. On the 14th of June, 1839, the question of National Education was introduced in the House of Commons by the Ministry of the day. Lord Stanley opposed the proposal of the government in a powerful speech, and offered an amendment to this effect: "That an address be presented to her Majesty to rescind the order in council for constituting the proposed Board of Privy Council." The position of the government was defended by Lord Morpeth, who, while he held his own views respecting the doctrines of the Roman Catholics and also respecting Unitarian tenets, he maintained that as long as the State thought it proper to employ Roman Catholic sinews, and to finger Unitarian gold, it could not refuse to extend to those by whom it so profited the blessings of education. Speeches were also made by Lord Ashley, Mr. Buller, Mr. O'Connell and others, and in the course of debate reference was freely made to Mr. Gladstone's book on Church and State. Finally Mr. Gladstone rose and remarked, that he would not flinch from a word he had uttered or written upon religious subjects, and claimed the right to contrast his principles, and to try results, in comparison with those professed by Lord John Russell, and to ascertain the effects of both upon the institutions of the country, so far as they operated upon the Established Church in England, in Scotland and in Ireland. It was at this time that a very remarkable scene was witnessed in the House. Turning upon Mr. O'Connell, who had expressed his great fondness for statistics, Mr. Gladstone said the use he had made of them reminded him of an observation of Mr. Canning's, "He had a great aversion to hear of a fact in debate, but what he most distrusted was a figure." He then proceeded to show the inadequacy of the figures presented by Mr. O'Connell. In reply to Lord Morpeth's declaration concerning the duty of the State to provide education for Dissenters so long as it fingered their gold, Mr. Gladstone said that if the State was to be regarded as having no other functions than that of representing the mere will of the people as to religious tenets, he admitted the truth of his principle, but not that the State could have a conscience. It was not his habit to revile religion in any form, but he asked what ground there was for restricting his lordship's reasoning to Christianity. He referred to the position held by the Jews upon this educational question, and read to the House an extract from a recent petition as follows: "Your petitioners feel the deepest gratitude for the expression of her Majesty's most gracious wish that the youth of the country should be religiously brought up, and the rights of conscience respected, while they earnestly hope that the education of the people, Jewish and Christian, will be sedulously connected with a due regard to the Holy Scriptures."

Mr. Gladstone very pertinently asked how the education of the Jewish people, who considered the New Testament an imposture, was "to be sedulously connected with a due regard to the Holy Scriptures," which consisted of the Old and New Testaments? To oblige the Jewish children to read the latter would be directly contrary to the views of the gentlemen on the other side of the House. He would have no child forced to do so, but he protested against paying money from the treasury of the State to men whose business it was to inculcate erroneous doctrines. The debate was concluded, and the government carried its motion by a very small majority. Two years later, when the Jews' Civil Disabilities Bill was before Parliament, Mr. Gladstone again took the unpopular side in the debate and opposed the Bill, which was carried in the House of Commons but defeated in the House of Lords.

Mr. Gladstone published, in 1840, another work, entitled "Church Principles Considered in their Results." It was supplementary to his former book in defense of Church and State, and was written "beneath the shades of Hagley," the house of Lord and Lady Lyttelton, and dedicated "in token of sincere affection" to the author's life-long friend and relative, Lord Lyttelton. He dwelt upon the leading moral characteristics of the English Episcopal Church, their intrinsic value and their adaptation to the circumstances of the times, and defined these characteristics to be the doctrine of the visibility of the Church, the apostolic succession in the ministry, the authority of the Church in matters of faith and the truths symbolized in the sacraments.

In one chapter he strongly attacks Rationalism as a reference of the gospel to the depraved standard of the actual human natures and by no means to its understanding properly so called, as its measure and criterion. He says: "That therefore to rely upon the understanding, misinformed as it is by depraved affections, as our adequate instructor in matters of religion, is most highly irrational." Nevertheless, "the understanding has a great function in religion and is a medium to the affections, and may even correct their particular impulses."

In reference to the question of the reconversion of England to Catholicism, earnestly desired by some, Mr. Gladstone forcibly remarked: "England, which with ill grace and ceaseless efforts at remonstrance, endured the yoke when Rome was in her zenith, and when her powers were but here and there evoked; will the same England, afraid of the truth which she has vindicated, or even with the license which has mingled like a weed with its growth, recur to that system in its decrepitude which she repudiated in its vigor?" If the Church of England ever lost her power, it would never be by submission to Rome, "but by that principle of religions insubordination and self-dependence which, if it refuse her tempered rule and succeed in its overthrow, will much more surely refuse and much more easily succeed in resisting the unequivocally arbitrary impositions of the Roman scheme." Here is the key-note of many of Mr. Gladstone's utterances in after years against the pretentious and aspirations of Rome. The defense of the English Church and its principles and opposition to the Church of Rome have been unchanging features in Mr. Gladstone's religious course. But, in the light of these early utterances, some have criticised severely that legislative act, carried through by him in later years, by which the Disestablishment of the Irish Church was effected. How could the author of "The State in its Relations with the Church" become the destroyer of the fabric of the Irish Church?

To meet these charges of inconsistency Mr. Gladstone issued, in 1868, "A Chapter of Autobiography." The author's motives in putting forth this chapter of autobiography were two—first, there was "the great and glaring change" in his course of action with respect to the Established Church of Ireland, which was not due to the eccentricity or perversion of an individual mind, but to the silent changes going on at the very basis of modern society. Secondly, there was danger that a great cause then in progress might suffer in point of credit, if not of energy and rapidity, from the real or supposed delinquencies of the author.

He stated that "The author had upheld the doctrine that the Church was to be maintained for its truth, and that if the principle was good for England it was good for Ireland too. But he denied that he had ever propounded the maxim simpliciter that we were to maintain the establishment. He admitted that his opinion of the Church of Ireland was the exact opposite of what it had been; but if the propositions of his work were in conflict with an assault upon the existence of the Irish Establishment, they were even more hostile to the grounds upon which it was now sought to maintain it. He did not wish to maintain the Church upon the basis usually advanced, but for the benefit of the whole people of Ireland, and if it could not be maintained as the truth it could not be maintained at all."

Mr. Gladstone contended that the Irish Episcopal Church had fallen out of harmony with the spirit and use of the time, and must be judged by a practical rather than a theoretic test. In concluding the author puts antithetically the case for and against the maintenance of the Church of Ireland: "An establishment that does its work in much and has the hope and likelihood of doing it in more; that has a broad and living way open to it into the hearts of the people; that can command the services of the present by the recollections and traditions of the past; able to appeal to the active zeal of the greater portion of the people, and to the respect or scruples of living work and service, and whose adversaries, if she has them, are in the main content to believe that there will be a future for them and their opinions; such an establishment should surely be maintained.