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

The Parliamentary session of 1881 was almost exclusively devoted to Irish affairs. Instead of the contemplated Land Act, the ministry were compelled, on account of the disturbed condition of Ireland, to bring in first a Coercion Act, although the measure was naturally distasteful to such friends of Ireland in the Cabinet as Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright. Property and life had become very insecure, and there was a startling increase of agrarian crime that such a measure was deemed necessary. But while passing the Coercion Act, Mr. Gladstone accompanied it by a great and beneficial measure—a second Irish Land Bill, which instituted a court for the purpose of dealing with the differences between landlord and tenant.

This bill—one of Mr. Gladstone's greatest measures—became a law August 23, 1881. Mr. Gladstone in his speech remarked that the complaint was made that the bill was an infringement of liberty in Ireland and was aimed at the Land League, but no person or body could be touched by the bill unless they violated the law, and then could only be arrested upon reasonable suspicion of crime committed or of inciting to crime or of interfering with law or order. There would be the fullest freedom of discussion allowed. Dealing with the Land League he said it had been attempted to compare it with the Corn Laws, but Mr. Bright had completely demolished that miserable argument. It was compared also to the trade unions, but they made an onward step in the intelligence and in the love of law and order among the working classes. They had never tainted themselves by word or deed which would bring them into suspicion in connection with the maintenance of law. The leaders of the Land League were now put forward as martyrs on the same platform as O'Connell; but on every occasion of his life-long agitation O'Connell set himself to avoid whatever might tend to a breach of law and order. Then Mr. Gladstone showed the necessity of the Coercion Act from the condition of Ireland, where during the past year there had been a great increase of crime, and the outrages were agrarian, and not connected with the distress. It was a significant fact that the agrarian outrages had risen and fallen with the meetings of the Land League. Nothing could be more idle than to confound the agrarian crime of Ireland with the ordinary crime of England, or even of Ireland. In regard to general crime, Ireland held a high and honorable place, but how different was the case with agrarian crime! He referred to the miscarriage of justice in Ireland, and said that the bill, if passed, would restore to Ireland the first conditions of Christian and civilized existence. But it "only irritated while it failed to terrify."

Mr. Gladstone's was a great speech and showed his mastery of details, and his power of expounding and illustrating broad and general principles. He began his exposition by confessing that it was the most difficult question with which he had ever been called upon to deal. He concluded with an eloquent invocation to justice.

On the 19th of April, 1881, Lord Beaconsfield died. For many years he and Mr. Gladstone had been at the head of their respective parties. "Their opposition, as one critic has well and tersely put it, like that of Pitt and Fox, was one of temperament and character as well as of genius, position and political opinions." The Premier paid an eloquent tribute to him and proposed a public funeral, which was declined. Mr. Gladstone then moved for a monument in Westminster Abbey to the memory of the deceased Earl.

In October, 1881, Mr. Gladstone made a visit to Leeds, for which borough he was returned in 1880, but for which his son Herbert sat. He delivered several important addresses on subjects which then absorbed the public attention, especially dealing with the land question local government, and Free Trade versus Fair Trade. Mr. Gladstone said:

"My boyhood was spent at the mouth of the Mersey, and in those days I used to see those beautiful American liners, the packets between New York and Liverpool, which then conducted the bulk and the pick of the trade between the two countries. The Americans were then deemed to be so entirely superior to us in shipbuilding and navigation that they had four-fifths of the whole trade between the two countries in their hands, and that four-fifths was the best of the trade. What is the case now, when free trade has operated and has applied its stimulus to the intelligence of England, and when, on the other hand, the action of the Americans has been restrained by the enactment, the enhancement and the tightening of the protective system? The scales are exactly reversed, and instead of America doing four-fifths and that the best, we do four-fifths of the business, and the Americans pick up the leavings of the British and transact the residue of the trade. Not because they are inferior to us in anything; it would be a fatal error to suppose it; not because they have less intelligence or less perseverance. They are your descendants; they are your kinsmen; and they are fully equal to you in all that goes to make human energy and power; but they are laboring under the delusion from which you yourselves have but recently escaped, and in which some misguided fellow-citizens seek again to entangle you.

"I am reminded that I was guilty on a certain occasion of stating in an article—not a political article—that, in my opinion, it was far from improbable that as the volume of the future was unrolled, America, with its vast population and its wonderful resources, and not less with that severe education which, from the high price of labor, America is receiving in the strong necessity of resorting to every description of labor-saving contrivances, and consequent development, not only on a large scale, but down to the smallest scale of mechanical genius of the country—on that account the day may come when that country may claim to possess the commercial primacy of the world, I gave sad offence to many. I at present will say this, that as long as America adheres to the protective system your commercial primacy is secure. Nothing in the world can wrest it from you while America continues to fetter her own strong hands and arms, and with these fettered arms is content to compete with you, who are free, in neutral markets. And as long as America follows the doctrine of protection, or the doctrines now known as those of 'fair trade,' you are perfectly safe, and you need not allow, any of you, even your slightest slumbers to be disturbed by the fear that America will take from you your commercial primacy."

After his return to London Mr. Gladstone received an address from the Corporation, setting forth the long services he had rendered to the country. Mr. Gladstone, in his reply, touched upon Irish obstruction, and announced, incidentally, the arrest of Mr. Parnell. Mr. Parnell, the leader of the Irish party, having openly defied the law, had been arrested and imprisoned without trial, under the Coercion Act, passed at the last session.