Gladstone’s Sixty Years of Public Life.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 7268, 22 July 1893, Page 2

Gladstone’s Sixty Years of Public Life.

(Daily Chronicle , J une 3rd ) I his day sixty years ago Mr Gladstone delivered his maiden speech in the House of Commons. It has been usual to date Mr Gladstone’s first address to the reformed Parliament some months earlier in the year, but later research has satisfactorily established the fact that the words attributed to him were spoken by bis brother. The subjectmatter of the two utterances is mainly the same. Much has been made of the fact that Mr Gladstone first spoke in the assembly which be leads in defence or in mitigation of slavery. Practically, the scope of bis remarks was narrower than this. It was a son’s defence of a father against charges associated with the management of bis slave estates, and it represented what most young men would have said under the same circumstances. The style—the method of thinking—are the really notable eatures of these early deliverances. They suggest strikingly enough the Gladstone of 1893. The young man, with the loomne mass of black hair, fine dark eyes, admirably knit figure, and the restless craving for work and a mission, has changed into the pallid veteran, whose scanty grey hairs uo longer veil the dome-like forehead, white the eyes burn with the old lustre, and the temper is set to a keener intellectual edge than ever. Sixty years ago ! Byron indeed was dead, but Tennyson was a youth , Wordsworth bad many years of life before him ; the Queen was in short frocks ; industrial England was only a-making j the age of steam had not dawned ; modern science was undreamed of. England was still a protectionist and agricultural country, governed by the aristocracy, destitute of political freedom, organised local government, of civil and religious liberty in any wide sense. All these things have been changed. Sir Robert Peel and Mr Gladstone between them revolutionieed our finance, and made the new industrial basis possible. Mr Gladstone, developing in'o a modern Opportunist Liberal, and finally crushing Palmerstonism, as the old Jingo Whiggery, under bis feet, became in time the chief political engine and (be precursor of modern democracy. Incidentally he gave England a place in Liberal Europe. The people who imagine in the fondness of their hearts that it was Palmerston who made England a Great Power in the European system had better read Matthew Arnold’s unforgettable criticism of the Palmerstonian policy in “Friendship’s Garland.’’ As a matter of fact, Palmerston, who for yea’s was Gladstone’s obstacle to the leadership of the new middle class and partially democratic Liberalism, made bis country at once detested and despised. Mr Gladstone’s foreign policy, always—save in Egypt humane and enlightened, substituted for the cheap bluster and real cowardice of Pal merston a real moral force, felt with decision in most critical periods q! international life. Ip a word, Gladstone is the true English parppfc pf piqderp humanitarianism in diplomacy, Nq other man disputes the honour with him. No one can take that great crown of glory from hie brow. Looking back through the sixty years of parliamentary life, unequalled ae a personal

achievement, we do not deny that many faults and failures distinguish them. We even confess that we have read many of Mr Gladstone’s speeches with the feeling that they lack ideas, and that their beauty of form which is undeniable—does not appeal strongly to the most critical tastes. Bat what is the test of a great man ? Surely that he is supreme in his own line. Mr Gladstone’s line has been the management of parliamentary men and institutions in the oldest and greatest of the world’s Parliaments This work he has done superbly, and through it be has become perhaps the greatest political figure that the world has ever known. And that is because of bis greater, not bis smaller, qualities. Mr Gladstone is accused of many things—of arrogance, of ambition, of lust of power. We have never discerned in him the smallest misuse of tbs great power that go with a strong will and an ardent temper. Essentially a gentle and kindly man, he has taught chivalry to his opponents, fortitude to his friends, dignity and nobleness of demeanour to the people, a regard for human rights to politicians and diplomatists. Essentially lovable and full of grace, his character is perhaps a finer legacy to his day and generation than even bis political achievements. He is in many ways the ideal of Wordsworth’s “ Happy Warrior," the man whom all mankind in arms would wish to be—a great fighter, a. generous conqueror, a beautiful soul. Are these things of small account —are are they not indeed of the highest ? We think so. Let us, therefore, cherish the thought of this great man’s splendid life, still swinging along in its eighty-f ourth year with a buoyant motion of its own. Many of Mr Gladstone’s ideas are not ours. Iu many respects he is on some points of his political creed too keenly reminiscent of the keen, pushing, individualist age in which he lived, and whose industrial fortunes he has helped largely to shape. " I am a commercial statesman " he said to a friend. He came of commerce, he glories in it, he baa not always seen its tremendons moral and social limitations. But be baa always been better than his creed, even when he was a true-blue Tory, and we fancy that when the secret records of his life and his Ministries are revealed, he will be found to have been far better than his colleagues. His career is very vulnerable to criticism such as that of the late Mr Jennings, but we are convinced that even in the view of latter day democracy he will come out well, and be justified in the main turning points of bis life, from Freetrade to Home Rule downwards. Bub the main reflection which this strange, unparalleled anniversary suggests, is of couree the prolongation practically in undiminished force of all the powers that make up this most strenuous of men. Mr Gladstone is the Goethe of the world of action. Grow old along with me, The best ia yet to be, is his message to an age that is very listless, very despairing, very blase as to its hold on human interests. There is nothing decadent about Mr Gladstone—the decadent will retort, because there is an uncritical quality in his character. That, may be; but still vigour is delightful and inspiring, and perfect vigour i of mind and body and will at eighty-four, the vigour that is unmatched in men who eit by bis side on the green benches, but any one of whom he might havedandled|in his arms when they were babies, seems to imply some deep and true form of life.