The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume III Part 47

When May opened, it was evident that the end was drawing near. On the 13th he was allowed to receive visits of farewell from Lord Rosebery and from myself, the last persons beyond his household to see him. He was hardly conscious. On the early morning of the 19th, his family all kneeling around the bed on which he lay in the stupor of coming death, without a struggle he ceased to breathe. Nature outside-wood and wide lawn and cloudless far-off sky-shone at her fairest.

III

On the day after his death, in each of the two Houses the leader made the motion, identical in language in both cases save the few final words about financial provision in the resolution of the Commons:-

That an humble Address be presented to her Majesty praying that her Majesty will be graciously pleased to give directions that the remains of the Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone be interred at the public charge, and that a monument be erected in the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, Westminster, with an inscription expressive of the public admiration and attachment and of the high sense entertained of his rare and splendid gifts, and of his devoted labours to parliament and in great offices of state, and to a.s.sure her Majesty that this House will make good the expenses attending the same.

The language of the movers was worthy of the British parliament at its best, worthy of the station of those who (M188) used it, and worthy of the figure commemorated. Lord Salisbury was thought by most to go nearest to the core of the solemnity:-

What is the cause of this unanimous feeling? Of course, he had qualities that distinguished him from all other men; and you may say that it was his transcendent intellect, his astonis.h.i.+ng power of attaching men to him, and the great influence he was able to exert upon the thought and convictions of his contemporaries. But these things, which explain the attachment, the adoration of those whose ideas he represented, would not explain why it is that sentiments almost as fervent are felt and expressed by those whose ideas were not carried out by his policy. My Lords, I do not think the reason is to be found in anything so far removed from the common feelings of mankind as the abstruse and controversial questions of the policy of the day. They had nothing to do with it. Whether he was right, or whether he was wrong, in all the measures, or in most of the measures which he proposed-those are matters of which the discussion has pa.s.sed by, and would certainly be singularly inappropriate here; they are really remitted to the judgment of future generations, who will securely judge from experience what we can only decide by forecast. It was on account of considerations more common to the ma.s.ses of human beings, to the general working of the human mind, than any controversial questions of policy that men recognised in him a man guided-whether under mistaken impressions or not, it matters not-but guided in all the steps he took, in all the efforts that he made, by a high moral ideal. What he sought were the attainments of great ideals, and, whether they were based on sound convictions or not, they could have issued from nothing but the greatest and the purest moral aspirations; and he is honoured by his countrymen, because through so many years, across so many vicissitudes and conflicts, they had recognised this one characteristic of his action, which has never ceased to be felt.

He will leave behind him, especially to those who have followed with deep interest the history of the later years-I might almost say the later months of his life-he will leave behind him the memory of a great Christian statesman. Set up necessarily on high-the sight of his character, his motives, and his intentions would strike all the world. They will have left a deep and most salutary influence on the political thought and the social thought of the generation in which he lived, and he will be long remembered not so much for the causes in which he was engaged or the political projects which he favoured, but as a great example, to which history hardly furnishes a parallel, of a great Christian man.

Mr. Balfour, the leader in the Commons, specially spoke of him as "the greatest member of the greatest deliberative a.s.sembly that the world has seen," and most aptly pointed to Mr. Gladstone's special service in respect of that a.s.sembly.

One service he did, in my opinion incalculable, which is altogether apart from the judgment that we may be disposed to pa.s.s upon particular opinions, or particular lines of policy which Mr.

Gladstone may from time to time have advocated. Sir, he added a dignity, as he added a weight, to the deliberations of this House by his genius, which I think it is impossible adequately to replace. It is not enough for us to keep up simply a level, though it be a high level, of probity and of patriotism. The mere average of civic virtue is not sufficient to preserve this a.s.sembly from the fate that has overcome so many other a.s.semblies, products of democratic forces. More than this is required; more than this was given to us by Mr. Gladstone. He brought to our debates a genius which compelled attention, he raised in the public estimation the whole level of our proceedings, and they will be most ready to admit the infinite value of his service who realise how much of public prosperity is involved in the maintenance of the worth of public life, and how perilously difficult most democracies apparently feel it to be to avoid the opposite dangers into which so many of them have fallen.

Sir William Harcourt spoke of him as friend and official colleague:-

I have heard men who knew him not at all, who have a.s.serted that the supremacy of his genius and the weight of his authority oppressed and overbore those who lived with him and those who worked under him. Nothing could be more untrue. Of all chiefs he was the least exacting. He was the most kind, the most tolerant, he was the most placable. How seldom in this House was the voice of personal anger heard from his lips. These are the true marks of greatness.

Lord Rosebery described his gifts and powers, his concentration, the multiplicity of his interests, his labour of every day, and almost of every hour of every day, in fas.h.i.+oning an intellect that was mighty by nature. And besides this panegyric on the departed warrior, he touched with felicity and sincerity a note of true feeling in recalling to his hearers

the solitary and pathetic figure, who for sixty years, shared all the sorrows and all the joys of Mr. Gladstone's life, who received his confidence and every aspiration, who shared his triumphs with him and cheered him under his defeats; who by her tender vigilance, I firmly believe, sustained and prolonged his years.

When the memorial speeches were over the House of Commons adjourned. The Queen, when the day of the funeral came, telegraphed to Mrs. Gladstone from Balmoral:-

My thoughts are much with you to-day, when your dear husband is laid to rest. To-day's ceremony will be most trying and painful for you, but it will be at the same time gratifying to you to see the respect and regret evinced by the nation for the memory of one whose character and intellectual abilities marked him as one of the most distinguished statesmen of my reign. I shall ever gratefully remember his devotion and zeal in all that concerned my personal welfare and that of my family.

IV

It was not at Westminster only that his praise went forth. Famous men, in the immortal words of Pericles to his Athenians, have the whole world for their tomb; they are commemorated not only by columns and inscriptions in their own land; in foreign lands too a memorial of them is graven in the hearts of men. So it was here. No other statesman on our famous roll has touched the imagination of so wide a world.

The colonies through their officers or more directly, sent to Mrs.

Gladstone their expression of trust that the worldwide admiration and esteem of her honoured and ill.u.s.trious husband would help her to sustain her burden of sorrow. The amba.s.sador of the United States reverently congratulated her and the English race everywhere, upon the glorious completion of a life filled with splendid achievements and consecrated to the n.o.blest purposes. The President followed in the same vein, and in Congress words were found to celebrate a splendid life and character. The President of the French republic wished to be among the first to a.s.sociate himself with Mrs. Gladstone's grief: "By the high liberality of his character," he said, "and by the n.o.bility of his political ideal, Mr.

Gladstone had worthily served his country and humanity." The entire French government requested the British amba.s.sador in Paris to convey the expression of their sympathy and a.s.surance of their appreciation, admiration, and respect for the character of the ill.u.s.trious departed. The Czar of Russia telegraphed to Mrs. Gladstone: "I have just received the painful news of Mr. Gladstone's decease, and consider it my duty to express to you my feelings of sincere sympathy on the occasion of the cruel and irreparable bereavement which has befallen you, as well as the deep regret which this sad event has given me. The whole of the civilised world will beweep the loss of a great statesman, whose political views were so widely humane and peaceable."

In Italy the sensation was said to be as great as when Victor Emmanuel or Garibaldi died. The Italian parliament and the prime minister telegraphed to the effect that "the cruel loss which had just struck England, was a grief sincerely shared by all who are devoted to liberty. Italy has not forgotten, and will never forget, the interest and sympathy of Mr.

Gladstone in events that led to its independence." In the same key, Greece: the King, the first minister, the university, the chamber, declared that he was ent.i.tled to the grat.i.tude of the Greek people, and his name would be by them for ever venerated. From Roumania, Macedonia, Norway, Denmark, tributes came "to the great memory of Gladstone, one of the glories of mankind." Never has so wide and honourable a pomp all over the globe followed an English statesman to the grave.

IV

On May 25, the remains were brought from Hawarden, and in the middle of the night the sealed coffin was placed in Westminster Hall, watched until the funeral by the piety of relays of friends. For long hours each day great mult.i.tudes filed past the bier. It was a striking demonstration of national feeling, for the procession contained every rank, and contingents came from every part of the kingdom. On Sat.u.r.day, May 28, the body was committed to the grave in Westminster Abbey. No sign of high honour was absent. The heir to the throne and his son were among those who bore the pall. So were the prime minister and the two leaders of the parties in both Houses. The other pall-bearers were Lord Rosebery who had succeeded him as prime minister, the Duke of Rutland who had half a century before been Mr. Gladstone's colleague at Newark, and Mr. Armitstead and Lord Rendel, who were his private friends. Foreign sovereigns sent their representatives, the Speaker of the House of Commons was there in state, and those were there who had done stout battle against him for long years; those also who had sat with him in council and stood by his side in frowning hours. At the head of the grave was "the solitary and pathetic figure" of his wife. Even men most averse to all pomps and shows on the occasions and scenes that declare so audibly their nothingness, here were only conscious of a deep and moving simplicity, befitting a great citizen now laid among the kings and heroes. Two years later, the tomb was opened to receive the faithful and devoted companion of his life.

Chapter X. Final.

Anybody can see the host of general and speculative questions raised by a career so extraordinary. How would his fame have stood if his political life had ended in 1854, or 1874, or 1881, or 1885? What light does it shed upon the working of the parliamentary system; on the weakness and strength of popular government; on the good and bad of political party; on the superiority of rule by cabinet or by an elected president; on the relations of opinion to law? Here is material for a volume of disquisition, and n.o.body can ever discuss such speculations without reference to power as it was exercised by Mr. Gladstone. Those thronged halls, those vast progresses, those strenuous orations-what did they amount to? Did they mean a real moulding of opinion, an actual impression, whether by argument or temper or personality or all three, on the minds of hearers? Or was it no more than the same kind of interest that takes men to stage-plays with a favourite performer? This could hardly be, for his hearers gave him long spells of power and a practical authority that was unique and supreme. What thoughts does his career suggest on the relations of Christianity to patriotism, or to empire, or to what has been called neo-paganism? How many points arise as to the dependence of ethics on dogma? These are deep and living and perhaps burning issues, not to be discussed at the end of what the reader may well have found a long journey. They offer themselves for his independent consideration.

I

Mr. Gladstone's own summary of the period in which he (M189) had been so conspicuous a figure was this, when for him the drama was at an end:-

Of his own career, he says, it is a career certainly chargeable with many errors of judgment, but I hope on the whole, governed at least by uprightness of intention and by a desire to learn. The personal aspect may now readily be dismissed as it concerns the past. But the public aspect of the period which closes for me with the fourteen years (so I love to reckon them) of my formal connection with Midlothian is too important to pa.s.s without a word. I consider it as beginning with the Reform Act of Lord Grey's government. That great Act was for England improvement and extension, for Scotland it was political birth, the beginning of a duty and a power, neither of which had attached to the Scottish nation in the preceding period. I rejoice to think how the solemnity of that duty has been recognised, and how that power has been used. The three-score years offer us the pictures of what the historian will recognise as a great legislative and administrative period-perhaps, on the whole, the greatest in our annals. It has been predominantly a history of emanc.i.p.ation-that is of enabling man to do his work of emanc.i.p.ation, political, economical, social, moral, intellectual. Not numerous merely, but almost numberless, have been the causes brought to issue, and in every one of them I rejoice to think that, so far as my knowledge goes, Scotland has done battle for the right.

Another period has opened and is opening still-a period possibly of yet greater moral dangers, certainly a great ordeal for those cla.s.ses which are now becoming largely conscious of power, and never heretofore subject to its deteriorating influences. These have been confined in their actions to the cla.s.ses above them, because they were its sole possessors. Now is the time for the true friend of his country to remind the ma.s.ses that their present political elevation is owing to no principles less broad and n.o.ble than these-the love of liberty, of liberty for all without distinction of cla.s.s, creed or country, and the resolute preference of the interests of the whole to any interest, be it what it may, of a narrower scope.(315)

A year later, in bidding farewell to his const.i.tuents "with sentiments of grat.i.tude and attachment that can never be effaced," he proceeds:-

Though in regard to public affairs many things are disputable, there are some which belong to history and which have pa.s.sed out of the region of contention. It is, for example as I conceive, beyond question that the century now expiring has exhibited since the close of its first quarter a period of unexampled activity both in legislative and administrative changes; that these changes, taken in the ma.s.s, have been in the direction of true and most beneficial progress; that both the conditions and the franchises of the people have made in relation to the former state of things, an extraordinary advance; that of these reforms an overwhelming proportion have been effected by direct action of the liberal party, or of statesmen such as Peel and Canning, ready to meet odium or to forfeit power for the public good; and that in every one of the fifteen parliaments the people of Scotland have decisively expressed their convictions in favour of this wise, temperate, and in every way remarkable policy.(316)

To charge him with habitually rousing popular forces into dangerous excitement, is to ignore or misread his action in some of the most critical of his movements. "Here is a man," said Huxley, "with the greatest intellect in Europe, and yet he debases it by simply following majorities and the crowd." He was called a mere mirror of the pa.s.sing humours and intellectual confusions of the popular mind. He had nothing, said his detractors, but a sort of clever pilot's eye for winds and currents, and the rising of the tide to the exact height that would float him and his cargo over the bar. All this is the exact opposite of the truth. What he thought was that the statesman's gift consisted in insight into the facts of a particular era, disclosing the existence of material for forming public opinion and directing public opinion to a given purpose. In every one of his achievements of high mark-even in his last marked failure of achievement-he expressly formed, or endeavoured to form and create, the public opinion upon which he knew that in the last resort he must depend.

(M190) We have seen the triumph of 1853.(317) Did he, in renewing the most hated of taxes, run about anxiously feeling the pulse of public opinion?

On the contrary, he grappled with the facts with infinite labour-and half his genius was labour-he built up a great plan; he carried it to the cabinet; they warned him that the House of Commons would be against him; the officials of the treasury told him the Bank would be against him; that a strong press of commercial interests would be against him. Like the bold and sinewy athlete that he always was, he stood to his plan; he carried the cabinet; he persuaded the House of Commons; he vanquished the Bank and the hostile interests; and in the words of Sir Stafford Northcote, he changed and turned for many years to come, a current of public opinion that seemed far too powerful for any minister to resist. In the tempestuous discussions during the seventies on the policy of this country in respect of the Christian races of the Balkan Peninsula, he with his own voice created, moulded, inspired, and kindled with resistless flame the whole of the public opinion that eventually guided the policy of the nation with such admirable effect both for its own fame, and for the good of the world. Take again the Land Act of 1881, in some ways the most deep-reaching of all his legislative achievements. Here he had no flowing tide, every current was against him. He carried his scheme against the ignorance of the country, against the prejudice of the country, and against the standing prejudices of both branches of the legislature, who were steeped from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot in the strictest doctrines of contract.

Then his pa.s.sion for economy, his ceaseless war against public profusion, his insistence upon rigorous keeping of the national accounts-in this great department of affairs he led and did not follow. In no sphere of his activities was he more strenuous, and in no sphere, as he must well have known, was he less likely to win popularity. For democracy is spendthrift; if, to be sure, we may not say that most forms of government are apt to be the same.