UNCONQUERED.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 17, 20 August 1886, Page 9

UNCONQUERED.

( United Ireland, Jnne 19.)

[he most prominent figure in the whole world at this moment is hat old man of seventy-seven who leads in this desperate war of ostice against privilege, prejudice, and caste. He towers by the lead and shoulders over the great men of the age. He stands oat iom the ordinary rack of humanity in clear distinct relief as a man >n a ennlit hill outlined against the sky, He has no prototype in sistory or in fiction. His character and career are alike without parallel. Now that there is a brief lull in the political storm the time may not seem inopportune to glance quickly back on his life, iy torn soon again we hope to see " striding tbe blast " that must jweep his opponents into space. It is hard to realise — it is impossible to realise— that he is in the seventy-eighth year of bis age. The more we think of it the more our wonder grows. Let us take some old man of oar acquaintance, some man whose years stretch seven \rears beyond the allotted span of man's life. Let us try to fancy aim bearing the constant work, the late hours, the fierce, mental bCrain of the House of Commons in which strong yonng men age and wither before their time. Fix on some old fogey iriend, with all his half chiH-like ways and fancies and comforts, living ajwasi-mechanical lffe ; fancy him, the Prime Minister of England, swaying tbe destjniea of the Empire, boldly embarking in a colossal struggle, electrifying, enthralling the House of Commons by his eloquence, stirring men's hearts in their own despite, and winning reluctant applause even from the most malignant opponents. We cannot fancy it. The physical power of the old man is as woDderful as bis intellectual pre-eminence, and scarcely less sublime. His 6rst birthday, the 29th of December, 1809, stretches away back into the infancy of tie century that is drawing to a close. Nor was " the God- like reason " with which God endowed him permitted to " rust unused." Of that long life fifty-five years were devoted to the untiring service of his country. He was the youngest as he is the oldest member of the House of Commons, at the age of twenty-two years — before the great majority of men now living on the earth had been born—Mr. Gladstone was elected as Conservative representative of the borough of Newark. It is cnriouß to note that even theu the heart of the ardent young Tory was with tbe people. We subjoin a single paragraph from his first election address. It has that earnest eloquence which age cannot wither orcußtom stale. " Principles," ■he declared, " are now arrayed against our institutions, and not by truckling, not by temporising, not by oppression nor corruption, but t>y principles they must be met. Amongst the first results Bhou'd be a sedulous and. special attention to the interests ot the poor foamled upon tbe rule that those who are the least able to take care of themselves should be most regarded by others. Parti calarly it is a duty to endeavour by every means that labour may receive adequate iemuneration, which, unhappily, amengst- several classes of our "fellow-countrymen is not now the case. Whatever measures, therefore, whether by correction of the poor-laws, allotment of cottage grounds or olkermise, tend to support this object I deem entitled to the warmest support." Mr. Chamberlain's {original three-acres-and-a-cow policy, therefore, would seem to be but slightly developed from the policy announced some years before be was born by the leader whom he has so recently betrayed. What might not be expected from a young mm who won constituencies and formulated humane reforms while his cou temporaries were at college 1 Wbat could be expected that was not amply realised in his subsequent career ? He Bi ode on from eervice to service and from triumpn to triumph. Within the recollections of middle-aged men his history is the history of the advancing Liberal party in England. He dropped old prejudices as he proceeded. His heart and mind opened more and more as he advanced in years. And the youth who in October, 1832, won the pocket-borough, Newark, as the Tory nominee of the Duke of Newcastle, is in 1886 the leader of the British democracy which he has enfranchised. Such a development is, indeed, rare. Radicals and reformers are only too often hardened and crusted by approaching age into rigid and narrow-minded Conservatives. There was as much sober truth as sarcasm in Lord Randolph Churchill's declaration at the last election that he hesitated about opposing John Bright for Birmingham in the belief that be might possibly contest tbe seat himself on a Conservative platform. Mr. Bright might have done so without much violence to his latter-day speeches or convictions. Mr. Gladstone was of a different type. His heart and mind ripened like a winter pear under the snows of age. If Mr. Bright shrank back farther and farther into his shell as years rolled by and night approached, Mr. Gladstone is best typified in the exquisite lines in which Oliver Wendell Holmes moralises over the Chambered Nautlus: " Boild thee more stately mansions O my soul, As the swift seasons roll, Leave thy low- vaulted past, Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast Till thou at lengtn are free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea." Even in his salad Tory days, as we have seen, his hea^t wa9 with the people, but his zeal grew deeper and waxed warmer as his "i^-ius was matured by age and experience. His predominant nKiuence in England is but tbe fair price paid for the numberless and invaluable services he has rendered the Democracy — services successively denounced as confiscation, revolution, and treason to the Constitution by the party with whom the model Democrat, Mr. Chamberlain, now unites to oppose him. Mr. Gladstone's triumphs have been numerous and splendid, but he has not been without hiß defeats. The closest parallel— si licet parvos comvonere in%gnis— to the historic scene of June Bth, 18S6, is to be found in tbe exciting debate and division on the Reform Bill introduced by Mr. Gladstone after the Easter Recess in 1866. It was not a very terrifying Reform Bill as we look at such things in our days; it proposed to €nfTßnchise 400,000 voters at the outride. But it met with a terrible

opposition. Then as now the danger wms from a party of disaffected and treacherous Liberals who lent backbone to the Opposition, and who then for the first time, became krowo as the inhabitant j of the Cave of Adullam. The title, it will be remembered, was girenby Mr. John Bright, wtoo, in his old age, has been coaxed into a cave him* Belf. He was denotmclng Mr. -Horseman aad Mr. Lowe, who were the Hartington and Chamberlain of that revolt. " They had retired," be said " into what might be called their political Carve of Adullam, into which they have invited everyone who was in distress and everyone who was discontented, and made themselves captains over tbem." The speeches in the debate read like the speeches with which the country baa been recently inundated, and will be on til after the gener?) election. That tame little Bill was denounced with the same ferocious and unreasoning vehemence and virulence as the Home Bale measure. It would be the breaking up of the Empire and the; destruction of the Constitution. Take a specimen at random) f ,om the ipeech of Mr. Lowe. " Barely," he declare!, " the heroic work of so many cent Dries, the matchless acbievemeut of so many wise heads and strong hands, deseives a nobler consnmrciat'on thao to be sacrificed at the shrine of revolutionary passion or the maudlin enthusiasm of humanity." There have been many franchise extensions since tbat day. Mr. Lowe has voted fox some of them himself, and has got bis peerage as a reward, but the heroic work, the mat jbleas achievement," etc., are still in vigorous existence. It was a significant incident in that campaign that when the Liberals were driven from office a larger measure was forthwith introduced and carried by the Tories. Bat the most startling parallel of all is to be found in the peroration of the two speeches delivered by M*. Gladstone on those two memorable occasions at the close of the debates. Through both these rona the pr*s3ntment of an immediate defeat a^id the conviction of a future victory. Twenty years ago, addressing the motley opponents of reform, he declared :—: — 11 You cannot fight against the future. Time is on oni side. The great social forces which move onward in their might and majesty, and which the tumult of our debates does net for a moment impede or disturb— these great social force "J are against you. They are marshalled on our side, and the banner which we now carry in. this figbt, though perhaps at some moment it may droop over onr sinkfog heads, yet soon again will float in the eye of heaven, and will be borne by the firm hands of the united people, perhaps not to ao easy, but to "a certain and not far-distaot victory." Compare this with the etill aublimer peroration addressed the other ni^'ifc to the mix-cum gatherum majority — the rabble route of Tories and Whigs who were already exulting in their anticipated triumph :— " You have wealth, you bave rank, you have station, you have organisation, and you have power. What have -we? We think we have the people's hearts (cheers). We believe and know that we have the promise of the harvest of the future (loud cheers). Aa to tbe people's hearts, you may dispute it, and dispute it with perfect sincerity. It is a matter about which you may aak for proof. As to the harvest of the future, I doubt if you. have 60 much confidence, and I believe that there is in tbe breast of many a man who means to vote against us to-night a profound misgiving, approaching even in some places to a deep conviction (hear, hear), that the eDd will be as we foresee it, and not as you foresee it, but laat the ebbtog tide is with you and the flowing tide is with us (lond cheers)." There is aa inspiring pr jphecy in the words. We pray God the glory of the approaching triumph may be his. Defeated he has been, bat conquered never. He may justly arrogate to himself the proud humility of the greatest knight of A^tiiur'e table, who declared :— " Thrown have I been not once but many a- time, Victor from vanquished issues at the laßt, I Aad overthrowef from being overthrewn."