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

In the autumn of 1879 Mr. Gladstone, having resolved to retire from the representation of Greenwich at the next election, paid a farewell visit to his constituents. At a luncheon given by the Liberal Association he dwelt upon the necessity of a Liberal union. The Liberals had, owing to their dissensions, given twenty-six votes to their opponents in 1874, while the Government had been carried on for years by a Conservative majority of less than twenty-six, showing the importance of organization. At night Mr. Gladstone attended a great public meeting in the Plumstead Skating Rink. On his entrance the whole audience rose and cheered for several minutes. An address was presented, expressing regret at his retirement, and the pride they would ever feel at having been associated with his name and fame. Mr. Gladstone alluded to Lord Beaconsfield's phrase respecting "harassed interests," and said he knew of only one harassed interest, and that was the British nation. He protested against the words "personal government" being taken to imply that the Sovereign desired to depart from the traditions of the constitution, yet he charged the advisers of the Crown with having invidiously begun a system intended to narrow the liberties of the people of England and to reduce Parliament to the condition of the French Parliaments before the great Revolution.

Mr. Gladstone threw the whole responsibility of the Afghan war on the Ministry, and maintaining that England had departed from the customs of the forefathers, concluded as follows: "It is written in the eternal laws of the universe of God that sin shall be followed by suffering. An unjust war is a tremendous sin. The question which you have to consider is whether this war is just or unjust. So far as I am able to collect the evidence, it is unjust."

In December, 1878, the following resolution was offered in the House of Commons: "That this House disapproves the conduct of her Majesty's Government, which has resulted in the war with Afghanistan." Mr. Gladstone strongly condemned the war with Afghanistan and the irritating policy towards the Ameer, and concluded his address with the following eloquent responses to the historical and moral aspects of the Afghan difficulty: "You have made this war in concealment from Parliament, in reversal of the policy of every Indian and Home Government that has existed for the last twenty-five years, in contempt of the supplication of the Ameer and in defiance of the advice of your own agent, and all for the sake of obtaining a scientific frontier." This powerful speech greatly impressed, for the moment, both parties in the House, but the vote of censure was defeated, and the policy of the administration was endorsed. During the debate Mr. Latham made a witty comparison. He said that the Cabinet reminded him of the gentleman, who seeing his horses run away, and being assured by the coachman that they must drive into something, replied, "Then smash into something cheap!"

The Ministry presented a motion that the revenues of India should be applied for the purposes of the war. Mr. Gladstone observed that it was the people of England who had had all the glory and all the advantage which resulted from the destruction of the late administration, and the accession of the present Cabinet; and hence it was the people who must measure the pros and the cons, and who must be content, after having reaped such innumerable benefits, to encounter the disadvantage of meeting charges which undoubtedly the existing government would leave behind it as a legacy to posterity. England gained her end in the humiliation of Russia, but there were those who felt that the result of the English policy would further the advance of Russia in Europe, and that force would never make friends of the Afghans.

In the sessions of 1879 the Greek question came up in the House of Commons on a motion, "That, in the opinion of this House, tranquillity in the East demands that satisfaction be given to the just claims of Greece, and no satisfaction can be considered adequate that does not ensure execution of the recommendations embodied in Protocol 13 of the Berlin Congress." Mr. Gladstone hoped that even in the present House there would be found those who would encourage the first legitimate aspirations of the Hellenic races after freedom. The government had given pledges to advance the claims of Greece that had not been redeemed at Berlin. Not one of the European powers was now averse to the claims of the Greek kingdom, whose successful pleadings depended wholly upon England for favorable answer. But the government objected, and the motion was rejected. In July, Sir Charles Dilke called the attention of the House to the obligations of Turkey under the Treaty of Berlin, when Mr. Gladstone again earnestly enforced the claims of "Greece, weak as she may be, is yet strong in the principles in which she rests."

December 29, 1879, Mr. Gladstone attained the seventieth year of his age. His friends in Liverpool, and the Greenwich Liberal Association presented him with congratulatory addresses. The journals paid him warm tributes for his long and eminent public services. But few thought that the veteran that had so successfully gone through one electoral campaign was destined in a few months to pass through another, still more remarkable, and yet be fresh for new triumphs. In the autumn of 1879 Mr. Gladstone resolved upon a very important, and as his enemies thought, a hopeless step. He had retired from the representation of Greenwich, and he now boldly decided to contest the election for Midlothian, the county of Edinburgh. He consequently proceeded to Scotland, in November, where such an ovation was given him as has never been accorded to any man in modern times. During the period of three weeks he addressed meetings numbering seventy-five thousand people, while a quarter of a million of people, with every exhibition of good-will and admiration, took part in some way in the demonstration in his honor. In this canvass of delivering political speeches he performed an oratorical and intellectual feat unparalleled in the history of any statesman who had attained his seventieth year. Mr. Gladstone addressed large concourses of people. When he reached Edinburgh, "his progress was as the progress of a nation's guest, or a king returning to his own again."

Midlothian, the scene of Mr. Gladstone's astonishing exertions, was one of the Conservative strongholds, under the dominent influence of the Duke of Buccleuch, whose son, Lord Dalkeith, Mr. Gladstone opposed in contesting for the representation in Parliament. Mr. Gladstone said: "Being a man of Scotch blood, I am very much attached to Scotland, and like even the Scottish accent," and he afterwards said, "and Scotland showed herself equally proud of her son." He spoke at Edinburgh, November 26th, and on the following day at Dalkeith, in the very heart of the Duke of Buccleuch's own property to an audience of three thousand people, mostly agriculturists. At Edinburgh he met nearly five thousand persons at the Corn Exchange, representing more than one hundred Scottish Liberal Associations. In the Waverley Market Mr. Gladstone addressed more than twenty thousand people, one of the largest congregations ever assembled in-doors in Scotland, and met with a reception which for enthusiasm was in keeping with the vastness of the audience. December 5th, at Glasgow, he delivered his address as Lord Rector to the students of the University, and in the evening addressed an immense audience of nearly six thousand in St. Andrew's Hall. He was most enthusiastically received, and he dwelt chiefly on Cyprus, the Suez Canal, India, and Afghanistan. "We had Afghanistan ruined," he urged, "India not advanced, but thrown back in government, subjected to heavy and unjust charges, subjected to what might well be termed, in comparison with the mild government of former years, a system of oppression; and with all this we had at home the law broken and the rights of Parliament invaded."

On the 8th of March, 1880, the immediate dissolution of Parliament was announced in both Houses of Parliament, and the news created intense political excitement and activity throughout the land. In his manifesto, in the shape of a letter to the Duke of Marlborough, the Prime Minister referred to the attempt made to sever the constitutional tie between Great Britain and Ireland, and said: "It is to be hoped that all men of light and leading will resist this destructive doctrine. There are some who challenge the expediency of the Imperial character of this realm. Having attempted and failed to enfeeble our colonies by their policy of decomposition, they may now perhaps recognize in the disintegration of the United Kingdom a mode which will not only accomplish, but precipitate, that purpose. Peace rests on the presence, not to say the ascendency, of England in the councils of Europe."