phenomena of a century full of remark- | effect produced by his more popular
able phenomena. That two of the oratory, when he sees how the indigua-
most considerable generals of the cen- tion of his tone, the flash of his eye,
tury should have shown their great and the music of his speech produce
gifts at an age beyond the age of sev- their full effect, in spite of those little
enty - Marshal Radetzky and Marshal shades of qualification by which the
von Moltke is hardly so much out of significance of his language is limited,
the course of nature as that a great and the largeness of its promise is
Parliamentary orator should at that made less. No one can well exagger-
age have developed a perfectly new ate the delight of an orator whose pri-
phase of oratorical power, and become vate thoughts and personal convictions.
from a great debater a great master of are hampered by all sorts of obstruct-
the oratory of the platform and the ing considerations, when he finds that
open air.
For my own part, I cannot his more popular audiences catch all
doubt that this new development of the the enthusiasm of his hopes without
great orator's genius has exerted a being in the least discouraged by those
substantial influence even on his polit-subdued warnings and restricting
ical judgment and convictions, and phrases, which his candor compels him
this not the less but much the more to supply, but to which, in addressing
that the forms of his cool private them, he naturally gives none of the
thought have always been so complex, special emphasis of his eager mind.
so scholastic, so apt to be overlaid with Mr. Gladstone has himself described
hypothetical assumptions, uncertain the orator's faculty as the power of
conditions, and guarded reserves. I receiving from an audience "in vapor
cannot help thinking that it has been what "he pours back upon them in a
the highest possible enjoyment to Mr. flood." And no man has that power
Gladstone to feel the orator's impulse in richer abundance than himself. But
bursting the meshes of all these pro- then, unlike Mr. Bright and the most
visional" ifs" and "buts," and carry- representative of all popular orators,
ing him straight into the open field of Mr. Gladstone is compelled by the
those wider sympathies for which he structure of his mind to embarrass
can secure a large response from a mul- what he says and thinks with all man-
titude of voices, in spite of all those ner of conditions and qualifications
fine moral qualifications by which he which very much injure its persuasive-
verbally limits them, without really de- ness to the reader, though not to au
tracting from the popular effect of his audience who can catch his eye and
declarations. It is quite true, as Lord hear his voice, and note the singular
Rosebery has told us, that it is Mr. fulness and impressiveness of the more
Gladstone's highest art to say very emphatic words which proceed from
cautious things in a very bold man- those eloquent lips. That is, I think,
ner. For his art as an orator disguises the reason why Mr. Gladstone has
effectually his caution as a thinker; in found the inspiration which a mighty
other words, the bold fashion in which audience gives him so fascinating. It
he announces his cautious thoughts liberates him from the sense of intel-
gives them all the political and orator- lectual constraint imposed by his own
ical effect which the boldness without scholastic intellect, and gives the full
the caution would command. I cannot sense of power on which that intellect
doubt that the very consciousness of has imposed what must often have
the many provisions and limitations by
which, in his own mind, he overlays
his general affirmations, and by which
on paper, or in conversation, or even
in debate, their effect is naturally more
or less attenuated, gives a certain tone
of exultation to his enjoyment of the

seemed to him very painful sacrifices. When he first resigned office in 1845 he felt deeply the sacrifice which his scrupulous conscientiousness required of him, and in describing it in after life he said:

It is not profane if I now say, with "

great price obtained I this freedom."

The rasher policy during the last few years political association in which I stood was has been due to that higher estimate to me at that time the Alpha and Omega of vague popular sentiment, and that of public life. The government of Sir lower estimate of the judgment of Robert Peel was believed to be of immov-trained official knowledge which he has able strength. My place as president of insensibly inhaled from the popular the Board of Trade was at the very kernel audiences over which he has acquired of its most interesting operations, for it was an influence so powerful, and to him a progress from year to year, with constantly waxing courage, towards the emanso exhilarating. Latterly, Mr. Gladcipation of industry, and therein towards stone's speeches in the House of Comthe accomplishment of another great and mons have not been nearly so carefully blessed work of public justice. inlaid with the finer mosaic of the statesman's art as they used to be when Mr. Bagehot drew attention to the vast love of minutiæ and official labor which up to and, indeed, far beyond the year 1860, they abundantly displayed. Yet Mr. Gladstone avowed his belief, in one of his papers contributed to the Nineteenth Century for 1878, and since republished, that the people are of

necessity unfit for the rapid multifarious action of the administrative mind; unfurnished with the ready, elastic, and extended, if superficial knowledge which the work of government in this country, beyond all others, demands; destitute of that ac

Mr. Gladstone's scrupulousness and conscientiousness must have imposed on him a considerable number of real sacrifices, not only as a statesman, but as an orator, and I cannot but think that it has been partly the emancipation from the pangs of these oratorical sacrifices which he has found in addressing himself, as he has done during the last twenty years of his career, to larger masses of his fellow-countrymen, which has had a considerable effect in inducing him to lay much more stress on those considerations which move the masses, and much less on those which appeal to trained politi-quaintance with the world, with the minds cians, than was formerly his wont. and tempers of men, with the arts of occaThe " vapor" which he has received sion and opportunity, in fact, with the from these audiences has been more whole doctrine of circumstance, which, and more the exhilarating vapor of un- lying outside the matter of political plans discriminating popular liberalism, and and propositions, nevertheless frequently the flood which he has poured back determines, not the policy alone, but the upon them has been more and more duty of propounding them. the flood of democratic self-sufficiency. ten in legible characters and with a pen of The statesman's scruples have not, in- iron on the rock of human destiny that, deed, wholly vanished from his later within the domain of practical politics, the people must in the main be passive. speeches, but they have shrunk to those much narrower dimensions which Yet when in 1886, eight years after are less unsuitable to the ears and un- this was written, Mr. Gladstone apderstandings of eager and undiscrimi- pealed to the masses against the classes nating crowds. The more painfully to support one of the most elaborate Mr. Gladstone has felt the constraints and even technical of great Constituwhich a scholastic intellect and a labo- tional changes which had ever been rious official training imposed on a popular orator, the more he has felt the relief of adapting himself to audiences to which scholastic distinctions are so imperceptible that he cannot help passing them over rapidly and merging them in the broader effects of vague democratic optimism. I believe that a good deal of Mr. Gladstone's

It is writ

submitted to the judgment of English statesmen, he appears to me to have forgotten those weighty words of his own, and to have credited the masses directly with an adequate knowledge of the very matters in which he had declared with so much authority that the people must be passive. In fact, his high estimate of popular sentiment had

grown so rapidly during those years | still unsolved problem of the character that he was willing to submit to its of the services and disservices which arbitration precisely the kind of ques- Mr. Gladstone has rendered to his tion on which experts, and experts country. alone, are competent to form a sound judgment. Surely that change in his estimate of what popular opinion is really competent to determine, had arisen partly from his comparatively new habit of addressing large mass meetings and regarding them as the court of appeal from the narrower but more adequately trained opinion of the House of Commons ?

I believe that in the end the judgment of a sober public opinion on this great career will probably be something of this kind, that during his earlier years he rendered very conspicuous services to Sir Robert Peel's government, in which he ought never to have resigned his place, scrupulously conscientious though his resignation was; that he conceived far more truly than When Mr. Bagehot, writing early in most of his contemporaries the error 1860, declared that Mr. Gladstone was that was made by Lord Palmerston in a problem," though he had been supporting the Porte in its malevolent even then seven-and-twenty years in oppression of races whom it had neither public life, he little thought that when the will nor the power to govern justly, another seven-and-twenty years had but that the fashion in which Mr. Gladpassed, and Mr. Gladstone had been in stone criticised this policy was too fitpublic life for fifty-four years, he would ful, too eager, and too inconstant to only just be entering on that great and produce the effect which it might final reach of his laborious and arduous otherwise have produced on the opinpolitical career which would leave him ion of England; that his financial ada greater problem to posterity than ministration during the government of ever. "Who can tell," asked Mr. Lord Palmerston between 1859 and Bagehot, "whether he will be the 1865, was almost wholly beneficent and greatest orator of a great administra-sagacious; and that his own first adtion; whether he will rule the House ministration was on the whole both of Commons, whether he will be, as great and splendid, though perhaps a his gifts at first sight make him out to little too eager in its reforms for a be, our greatest statesman; or whether, country which soon exhausts its spring below the gangway, he will utter un- of reforming energy. Mr. Disraeli's intelligible discourses, will aid in de- criticism of the Treasury Bench of 1873, stroying many ministries and share in that it resembled "a range of extinct none; will pour forth during many volcanoes," represented very fairly the hopeless years a bitter, a splendid, and average opinion of the English cona vituperative eloquence ?" We now stituencies of that period, which cerknow that Mr. Gladstone has in part tainly wanted time for "rest," and fulfilled both anticipations; that he has perhaps for unthankfulness, after the been four times the greatest orator great series of Mr. Gladstone's heroic of an administration ambitious in en- efforts, before allowing him to begin terprise, and once at least great in again. With regard to his second adachievement; and yet that he has ministration the judgment will be much poured forth during his latest lustrum more hesitating. Its foreign policy in of public life a great deal too much of enlarging Greece and defending the "a bitter, a splendid, and vituperative Balkan States was sound and liberal, eloquence," vehemently vituperative but its Irish policy was a series of more at least against the policy of his former or less unsuccessful experiments aimcolleagues, though never vituperative ing at a right end, attempting to regof their characters and aims; and that ulate rents by the most inadequate now that he has laid down his great agencies, and ending in a premature office, no question will be more eagerly abandonment of all special provisions disputed in time to come than the against crime which gave the impres

sion of either a timid and despondent, | soon as he had beguiled the Irish mi-
or else a desperately divided, adminis-nority into sacrificing the protection of
tration. In Egypt, too, there was ex- a relatively narrow Irish suffrage, by
perimentation of the same unfortunate impressing on them that Great Britain
kind, while, in relation to the Trans- would always take care that they were
vaal, the policy was first resolute and justly treated. To persuade a man to
then submissive in a fashion which leave his great-coat behind him on the
gave the impression of a Cabinet not ground that he has got an umbrella
adequately controlled by any single sufficient to protect him against the
mind, but subject to spasmodic attacks rain, and then to endeavor to strike
of fever and ague. Altogether Mr. the umbrella ruthlessly out of his hand,
Gladstone's second administration was is conduct hardly consistent with prac-
not a strong one, and, when the expe-tical good faith. In the whole range of
dition for General Gordon's relief Mr. Gladstone's policy that seems to
failed, its days were numbered, and it me the one gravest moral blot.
fell almost through its own irresolu- For the rest, I have no doubt that
tion. Of Mr. Gladstone's third and among the great men of our time who
fourth administrations the estimate have been denounced in terms of the
will necessarily differ in accordance most exaggerated horror, the one who
with the view taken of Irish Home has been most coarsely and mon-
Rule, but even those who approve that strously traduced is Mr. Gladstone,
policy will not deny that it was sprung first because his complex character has
on the nation with injudicious abrupt- been so little understood, and even
ness, when Mr. Gladstone's own decla- more because his sympathies from the
rations would have justified or even very first have had no marked patriotic
required a refusal to enter on such a bias, but have not unfrequently gone
policy with the inadequate and ill-with those who were reckoned the ene-
constituted majority which he had be-mies instead of the partisans of En-
hind him. A statesman who first gland. One of his political opponents
points out the danger of relying on once described him and that before
Irish votes to carry out his new policy, he had ever been prime minister
and then twice undertakes to carry it "an object of derision and contempt to
out by the help of those votes alone, all at least who maintain that integrity
displays an indifference to the due con- of purpose and consistency ought not
ditions of a momentous Constitutional altogether to be discarded from public
enterprise which many even of those life." As for consistency, I think it
who sympathize with his policy would is a very much over-praised virtue, and
disapprove. For my own part, I hold one frequently incompatible with "in-
very strongly that when Mr. Gladstone tegrity of purpose," instead of its nat-
assimilated the Irish to the English ural complement. Mr. Gladstone, in
county franchise, giving as his reason the dignified letter to Sir John Cowan,
for so doing that the great Protestant in which he proudly admits many
majority in Great Britain would be an errors of judgment, while claiming
ample security against any surrender credit for integrity of purpose, de-
of the rights of the Protestant minority scribes "desire to learn" as one of
in Ireland, he virtually bound himself the great aims of his public life. I
not to propose Home Rule for Ireland
without substituting for the great se-
curity he was about to destroy, some
other security which the Irish Protes-
tants would regard as equally effectual.
The only political act of his life which
seems to me gravely immoral was the
course which he took in strenuously
advocating Irish Home Rule almost as

as

believe that no claim was ever more
honestly made, and that it will explain,
not only many of his inconsistencies,
but many of the violent and almost
incoherently vituperative epithets that
have been applied to him. There are
too many Englishmen to whom the
"desire to learn," and especially to
unlearn error, is almost unintelligible,

and who regard an upright mind as a licly his most lawless methods, extenusort of organ for professing one un-ating almost, if not quite, to the point changed and unchangeable conviction of exculpating, the guilt of boycotting from the earliest maturity to the edge and deliberate breach of contract. Now of the grave. Now Mr. Gladstone has all this change of conviction has been been remarkable for unlearning what startling to ordinary Englishmen, while he once took for convictions. He un- the abrupt embodiment of these learned the strong predisposition of changes of conviction which Mr. GladEnglish statesmen to think England in stone has given us in his practical the right. He unlearned the belief statesmanship, has been still more that the State is bound to propagate startling, and to narrow minds, in some religious truth simply as such. He cases, almost incredible as the result unlearned the belief that protective of a sincere determination to learn, duties on corn are securities for a pros- and to show that he has learned, the perous agriculture; he unlearned that error of his former ways. For my part distrust of the masses which was part I wholly accept his own account of the of his early creed, and exchanged it matter, and think any other account of indeed for what seems to me an ex-it, to those who know the man, absotravagant confidence not only in their lutely absurd, though he has certainly general good-will, but in their sound- not taken pains to impress upon the ness of judgment. And, above all, and world, as he ought to have impressed last of all, he unlearned one of his best upon it, that he may be falling into convictions - his confidence in enforc-quite as serious an error in some of his ing justice by external authority on a newer changes as he had fallen into reluctant people—and exchanged it before his conversion from other errofor that strange conviction which of neous convictions now abandoned; and late years he has, as I at least under- that if so, the great heat with which stand him, so often displayed, that un- he has denounced the obstinacy of less and until a people can be persuaded those who refused to follow him in his to enforce the moral law against them- latest revolution of opinion is as indeselves, it is better for them not to be fensible as would have been his own governed by a moral law at all than to perseverance in maintaining a political have it forced upon them from above. position which he no longer held. And he has not only unlearned all this, The only account which I can give to he has given great and almost heroic myself of this amazing tendency of Mr. examples of his determination to show Gladstone's to speak with passionate that he has unlearned it. He was the condemnation of political creeds and first to submit to arbitration the ques-political policies which but a few tion whether we ought not to pay dam-months or years ago were his own, is ages for letting a Confederate cruiser that with his deeply religious mind he escape from our ports, though he him- regards all his own changes of convicself had so far taken the side of the tion as Providential, and cannot help Confederates that he prematurely de-attributing to a sort of self-will the inclared his belief that Mr. Jefferson ability of other statesmen to follow him Davis had made a nation. He insisted in the facility with which he unlearns on an act of something like national old principles and acquires new ones. humiliation in the retrocession of the There is a story that one of his most Transvaal when he had convinced him- extreme followers said of him, that he self that in supposing the annexation did not at all object to Mr. Gladstone's popular among the Boers, we had been always having an ace up his sleeve, but misled. And, above all, he not only he did object to his always saying that turned round from an indignant de- Providence put it there. But in truth nouncer of Mr. Parnell into one of his that belief of his is precisely the best most earnest apologists and friends, but and truest explanation that can be he even went so far as to excuse pub-assigned of the singular confidence