THE New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) FRIDAY, MAY 20, 1898. THE DEATH OF MR GLADSTONE.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 3438, 20 May 1898, Page 2

THE New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.)

FRIDAY, MAY 20, 1898. THE DEATH OF MR GLADSTONE.

With which are incorporated the Wellington Independent, established 1845 , and the Hew Zealander,

A great light has gone out. Mr Gladstone has died in the final night of an old acre that was “as a lusty winter, frosty, hut kindly,” and the sincere sympathy ..1 the nation is centred on that house of mourning where the great statesman’s mind, triumphing in its devoutness over bodily affliction, forced the beautiful words of the Lord’s Prayer through lips almost numbed in the sleep of exhaustion that comes before death. Mr Gladstone’s formal retirement from politics in 1894 did not really involve his departure from the arena of public affairs. Since then he has held a commanding influence on British public opinion. The voice that rang out so purposefully against tyranny in Naples and brutal oppression in Bulgaria and Armenia, the voice that is now for ever still, was heard again, not as effectively, but almost as loudly, in angry protest against Turkish domination of those unfortunate lands where to be a Christian is to be a criminal. Up to the last he kept his faculties and most of his influence intact. And if his physique had been as strong as his intellect and prestige he could have held until a few weeks ago that strong hold of the Liberal leadership the relaxing of which left the party forlorn, divided and incapable. For he was in a peculiar way and under extraordinary circumstances both a captain and a type of Liberalism. A Conservative by training and early political association, he was as late as 1841 described by Macaulay in an essay on his book dealing with the question of church and State as a " young man of unblemished character and of distinguished Parliamentary talents, the rising hope of the stern, unbending Tories.” Ho loft that party very soon, and in good time towered oommandingly in the Liberal forefront. But it is still questionable whether he was not all the time Conservative in part. As one of his biographers has said, he was a “ revolutionist on a large scale." Ha destroyed an established church, added 2,000,000 of voters to the electorate, and attacked the Parliamentary union of the Kingdoms j yet admitted that all this was done in opposition to his previous ptepoasessiona On the other hand he had, even as a Conservative, persistently contended that the duties of Government were paternal, and in later times it was a favourite theory with him a theory founded on that human sympathy which is the true foundation of Liberalism—that religion is so essentially and so Vastly a public concern that every man who comes to a high position should preach it as well bs politics. All through his career (at least since he inherited command), however, his guiding rule was to do what seemed best for the nation. He regarded himself largely as a public servant, and when dennite orders wore given to him either retired] it he could not conscientiously carry them out, or obeyed them if, upon reflection, they seemed reasonable. That, we take it, is the essence of statesmanship. Reforms do not originate with politicians. They are generally initiated by people of no recognised importance, spread across the platform and the press to the constituency, and finally appear full-formed as imperative. It is the province of the statesman then, as Mr Justin McCarthy has lucidly explained, to appreciate the necessity for those reforms and put them into practical effect. That is what Mr Gladstone did. He had strong enough views of his own, especially on theological questions, as anyone who has read his at tack on Rome in 1874 knows j and to the end he remained a militant freetrader. In such respects as these he would have resolutely declined to forego convictions that were settled with him, that were part of his spiritual being. Butin things not morally eo deaf to him ho paid deference to the public will, and was amenable to conversion. That is noticeably where ha differed from his old col-

league Bright, who, haying onoe formed an opinion, stubbornly declined conversion from it. Gladstone was a practical politician who know that those who take must give, that much may be gained by occasional concessions, and that often Dost popilli vox Dei is a wise assumption. Guided by this light he still contrived to keep his dignity high, and consequently occupies in history a very different position from that of his great rival Disraeli, who was the ideal political showman, estimating all things according to their effect on him. If we said that by Mr Gladstone’s death the first of the British had been lost, we should nob exaggerate. He was, indeed, not only the first of the race in his long tiwe,|but such a man as tho best well-wisher of the nation would desire to see become its representative type in physical an well as moral respects. There was in him the tough fibrousaess that ensures strength, that enabled him to hold to his dearest beliefs, and to. sturdily stave off the end of human existence Whioh would have come much sooner to anyone who had not lived his clean life. Ha was staunch and fervent, yet amenable to reason. Hj was rugged and strong in hi* oratorical methods, and yet could be so fluently harmonious that ths most cultured moa in England eagerly listened to him. Ho was a sincere friend and a generous enemy—as was instanced When, a few years ago, he paid a splendid compliment to tho son of Mr Chamberlain, perhaps his greatest political enemy at the tim i. And his industry and attainments were almost endless. He was simultaneously the greatest statesman, tho . most brilliant finance Minister, and, according to high testimony, the bast theologian iu England ; and the classic researches he male at his leisure would bo worthy of tho busy time of many a literary specialist. Nob bee mse of his achievements so much as because of his character, however, we sat him up as a type. What Macaulay said of his unblemished character is happily applicable to all recent British Ministers. The more distinguished ’aocup.auts of that position in this'century have bean such men as Pitt, Peel, Russell, Derby, Palmerston, Disraeli, Salisbury and Gladstone, and of all these illustrious mou the last mentioned may, with special truthfulness, he said to have “ borne without abuse the grand old name of ganclera in.” E veu in his later political diys, when the Irish Home Rule proposal was made and politics took on such a tone of bitterness as had no other parallel in his time, Mr Gladstone kept free from any reproach of impropriety of a personal or political kind. Regarded merely from the politician’s point of view the Bill of 1883 was the mistake in his career. It plunged him into hostility with a larger section of Oppositionists than ha need have been opposed to, and pledged him to a permanence of that hostility. N o one knew that better than he knew it; but believing that ha was to be to this just cause what Peel had been to the repeal of the corn laws, he bravely made his proposal, and would doubtless have carried it if he had been a younger man and had had more working years ahead of him. Therefore the mistake, if it was such, stands permanently to his credit. In the national equation it was not a mistake. It brought the Some Rule question into such prominence as to make it impossible for Englishmen to forget it. Tuoy will link Home : Rule with Gladstone’s honoured name ; hereafter, and tho effect of that must be both great and good. We said that the nation’s sympathy was with the house of the dead statesman. Its feeling will be even larger than < that. Wherever English is spoken, and in (j very many other-countries, it will be recognised that when this supremely re- J ligious and notable Englishman who had fought the good fight and kept tho faith ] finished his course the whole world sus- ‘ tained a great loss. For Gladstone had j worked for the good of the world in pro- i moting peace, in striving to aid the * weak oppressed by the strong, and in j spreading both political aud theological , i enlightenment. This will be appreciated, 11 and to him may he applied with complete I , truth Danton’s mighty boast that his cams r “ would live in the pantheon of history.” j J History and remembrance are, fortunately, * not now greatly inclined to let.tho good meg p

do be interred with their bones. The faults and mistakes Gladstone had and committed are to b© accounted to bira merely as human liabilities. The honesty of his public administration, and the holy purity of his private life will be remembered. And his body will worthily be carried to its rest as that of one who acted “only in a general honest thought and common good to all," of whom it might be said even more truly than of Brutus, “ His life wag gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, * This was a ona!' °