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The Grand Old Man

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Again: "Thanks for your letter. I have been pretty hard at work, and
have done a good deal, especially on V. Something yet remains. I must
make inquiry about the law of excommunication.... I have made a very
stupid classification, and have now amended it; instead of faith,
discipline and practice, what I meant was the rule of faith, discipline,
and the bearing of particular doctrines upon practice.

"I send back also I and II that you may see what I have done."

The work was successfully issued in the autumn of 1838, and passed
rapidly through three editions. How it was received it would be
interesting to inquire. While his friends applauded, even his opponents
testified to the ability it displayed. On the authority of Lord
Houghton, it is said that Sir Robert Peel, the young author's political
leader, on receiving a copy as a gift from his follower, read it with
scornful curiosity, and, throwing it on the floor, exclaimed with truly
official horror: "With such a career before him, why should he write
books? That young man will ruin his fine political career if he persists
in writing trash like this." However, others gave the book a heartier
reception. Crabb Robinson writes in his diary: "I went to Wordsworth
this forenoon. He was ill in bed. I read Gladstone's book to him."

December 13, 1838, Baron Bunsen wrote: "Last night at eleven, when I
came from the Duke, Gladstone's book was lying on my table, having come
out at seven o'clock. It is a book of the time, a great event--the first
book since Burke that goes to the bottom of the vital question; far
above his party and his time. I sat up till after midnight, and this
morning I continued until I had read the whole. Gladstone is the first
man in England as to intellectual power, and he has heard higher tones
than any one else in the land." And again to Dr. Arnold he writes in
high praise of the book, but lamenting its author's entanglement in
Tractarian traditions, adds: "His genius will soon free itself entirely
and fly towards Heaven with its own wings."

Sir Henry Taylor wrote to the Poet Southey: "I am reading Gladstone's
book, which I shall send you if he has not.... His party begin to think
of him as the man who will one day be at their head and at the head of
the government, and certainly no man of his standing has yet appeared
who seems likely to stand in his way. Two wants, however, may lie across
his political career--want of robust health and want of flexibility."

Cardinal Newman wrote: "Gladstone's book, as you see, is making a
sensation." And again: "The _Times_ is again at poor Gladstone. Really I
feel as if I could do anything for him. I have not read his book, but
its consequences speak for it. Poor fellow! it is so noble a thing."

Lord Macaulay, in the _Edinburgh Review_, April, 1839, in his well-known
searching criticism, while paying high tribute to the author's talents
and character, said: "We believe that we do him no more than justice
when we say that his abilities and demeanor have obtained for him the
respect and good will of all parties.... That a young politician should,
in the intervals afforded by his Parliamentary avocations, have
constructed and propounded, with much study and mental toil, an original
theory, on a great problem in politics, is a circumstance which,
abstracted from all considerations of the soundness or unsoundness of
his opinions, must be considered as highly creditable to him. We
certainly cannot wish that Mr. Gladstone's doctrine may become
fashionable among public men. But we heartily wish that his laudable
desire to penetrate beneath the surface of questions, and to arrive, by
long and intent meditation, at the knowledge of great general laws, were
much more fashionable than we at all expect it to become."

It was in this article, by Lord Macaulay, that the mow famous words
occurred which former Conservative friends of Mr. Gladstone delight to
recall in view of his change of political opinions: "The writer of this
volume is a young man of unblemished character and of distinguished
parliamentary talents; the rising hope of those stern and unbending
Tories who follow, reluctantly and cautiously, a leader whose experience
and eloquence are indispensable to them, but whose cautious temper and
moderate opinions they abhor. It would not be strange if Mr. Gladstone
were one of the most unpopular men in England."

Higginson writes: "The hope of the stern and unbending Tories has for
years been the unquestioned leader of English Liberals, and though he
may have been at times as unpopular as Macaulay could have predicted,
the hostility has come mainly from the ranks of those who were thus
early named as his friends. But whatever may have been Mr. Gladstone's
opinions or affiliations, whoever may have been his friends or foes, the
credit of surpassing ability has always been his."

It was remarked by Lord Macaulay that the entire theory of Mr.
Gladstone's book rested upon one great fundamental proposition, namely,
that the propagation of religious truth is one of the chief ends of
government _as_ government; and he proceeded to combat this doctrine. He
granted that government was designed to protect our persons and our
property, but declined to receive the doctrine of paternal government,
until a government be shown that loved its subjects, as a father loves
his child, and was as superior in intelligence to its subjects as a
father was to his children. Lord Macaulay then demonstrated, by
appropriate illustrations, the fallacy of the theory that every society
of individuals with any power whatever, is under obligation as such
society to profess a religion; and that there could be unity of action
in large bodies without unity of religious views. Persecutions would
naturally follow, or be justifiable in an association where Mr.
Gladstone's views were paramount. It would be impossible to conceive of
the circumstances in which it would be right to establish by law, as the
one exclusive religion of the State, the religion of the minority. The
religious teaching which the sovereign ought officially to countenance
and maintain is that from which he, in his conscience, believes that the
people will receive the most benefit with the smallest mixture of evil.
It is not necessarily his own religious belief that he will select. He
may prefer the doctrines of the Church of England to those of the Church
of Scotland, but he would not force the former upon the inhabitants of
Scotland. The critic raised no objections, though he goes on to state
the conditions under which an established Church might be retained with
advantage. There are many institutions which, being set up, ought not
to be rudely pulled down. On the 14th of June, 1839, the question of
National Education was introduced in the House of Commons by the
Ministry of the day. Lord Stanley opposed the proposal of the government
in a powerful speech, and offered an amendment to this effect: "That an
address be presented to her Majesty to rescind the order in council for
constituting the proposed Board of Privy Council." The position of the
government was defended by Lord Morpeth, who, while he held his own
views respecting the doctrines of the Roman Catholics and also
respecting Unitarian tenets, he maintained that as long as the State
thought it proper to employ Roman Catholic sinews, and to finger
Unitarian gold, it could not refuse to extend to those by whom it so
profited the blessings of education. Speeches were also made by Lord
Ashley, Mr. Buller, Mr. O'Connell and others, and in the course of
debate reference was freely made to Mr. Gladstone's book on Church and
State. Finally Mr. Gladstone rose and remarked, that he would not flinch
from a word he had uttered or written upon religious subjects, and
claimed the right to contrast his principles, and to try results, in
comparison with those professed by Lord John Russell, and to ascertain
the effects of both upon the institutions of the country, so far as they
operated upon the Established Church in England, in Scotland and in
Ireland. It was at this time that a very remarkable scene was witnessed
in the House. Turning upon Mr. O'Connell, who had expressed his great
fondness for statistics, Mr. Gladstone said the use he had made of them
reminded him of an observation of Mr. Canning's, "He had a great
aversion to hear of a fact in debate, but what he most distrusted was a
figure." He then proceeded to show the inadequacy of the figures
presented by Mr. O'Connell. In reply to Lord Morpeth's declaration
concerning the duty of the State to provide education for Dissenters so
long as it fingered their gold, Mr. Gladstone said that if the State was
to be regarded as having no other functions than that of representing
the mere will of the people as to religious tenets, he admitted the
truth of his principle, but not that the State could have a conscience.
It was not his habit to revile religion in any form, but he asked what
ground there was for restricting his lordship's reasoning to
Christianity. He referred to the position held by the Jews upon this
educational question, and read to the House an extract from a recent
petition as follows: "Your petitioners feel the deepest gratitude for
the expression of her Majesty's most gracious wish that the youth of the
country should be religiously brought up, and the rights of conscience
respected, while they earnestly hope that the education of the people,
Jewish and Christian, will be sedulously connected with a due regard to
the Holy Scriptures."

Mr. Gladstone very pertinently asked how the education of the Jewish
people, who considered the New Testament an imposture, was "to be
sedulously connected with a due regard to the Holy Scriptures," which
consisted of the Old and New Testaments? To oblige the Jewish children
to read the latter would be directly contrary to the views of the
gentlemen on the other side of the House. He would have no child forced
to do so, but he protested against paying money from the treasury of the
State to men whose business it was to inculcate erroneous doctrines. The
debate was concluded, and the government carried its motion by a very
small majority. Two years later, when the Jews' Civil Disabilities Bill
was before Parliament, Mr. Gladstone again took the unpopular side in
the debate and opposed the Bill, which was carried in the House of
Commons but defeated in the House of Lords.

Mr. Gladstone published, in 1840, another work, entitled "Church
Principles Considered in their Results." It was supplementary to his
former book in defense of Church and State, and was written "beneath the
shades of Hagley," the house of Lord and Lady Lyttelton, and dedicated
"in token of sincere affection" to the author's life-long friend and
relative, Lord Lyttelton. He dwelt upon the leading moral
characteristics of the English Episcopal Church, their intrinsic value
and their adaptation to the circumstances of the times, and defined
these characteristics to be the doctrine of the visibility of the
Church, the apostolic succession in the ministry, the authority of the
Church in matters of faith and the truths symbolized in the sacraments.

In one chapter he strongly attacks Rationalism as a reference of the
gospel to the depraved standard of the actual human natures and by no
means to its understanding properly so called, as its measure and
criterion. He says: "That therefore to rely upon the understanding,
misinformed as it is by depraved affections, as our adequate instructor
in matters of religion, is most highly irrational." Nevertheless, "the
understanding has a great function in religion and is a medium to the
affections, and may even correct their particular impulses."

In reference to the question of the reconversion of England to
Catholicism, earnestly desired by some, Mr. Gladstone forcibly remarked:
"England, which with ill grace and ceaseless efforts at remonstrance,
endured the yoke when Rome was in her zenith, and when her powers were
but here and there evoked; will the same England, afraid of the truth
which she has vindicated, or even with the license which has mingled
like a weed with its growth, recur to that system in its decrepitude
which she repudiated in its vigor?" If the Church of England ever lost
her power, it would never be by submission to Rome, "but by that
principle of religions insubordination and self-dependence which, if it
refuse her tempered rule and succeed in its overthrow, will much more
surely refuse and much more easily succeed in resisting the
unequivocally arbitrary impositions of the Roman scheme." Here is the
key-note of many of Mr. Gladstone's utterances in after years against
the pretentious and aspirations of Rome. The defense of the English
Church and its principles and opposition to the Church of Rome have been
unchanging features in Mr. Gladstone's religious course. But, in the
light of these early utterances, some have criticised severely that
legislative act, carried through by him in later years, by which the
Disestablishment of the Irish Church was effected. How could the author
of "The State in its Relations with the Church" become the destroyer of
the fabric of the Irish Church?

To meet these charges of inconsistency Mr. Gladstone issued, in 1868, "A
Chapter of Autobiography." The author's motives in putting forth this
chapter of autobiography were two--first, there was "the great and
glaring change" in his course of action with respect to the Established
Church of Ireland, which was not due to the eccentricity or perversion
of an individual mind, but to the silent changes going on at the very
basis of modern society. Secondly, there was danger that a great cause
then in progress might suffer in point of credit, if not of energy and
rapidity, from the real or supposed delinquencies of the author.

He stated that "The author had upheld the doctrine that the Church was
to be maintained for its truth, and that if the principle was good for
England it was good for Ireland too. But he denied that he had ever
propounded the maxim _simpliciter_ that we were to maintain the
establishment. He admitted that his opinion of the Church of Ireland was
the exact opposite of what it had been; but if the propositions of his
work were in conflict with an assault upon the existence of the Irish
Establishment, they were even more hostile to the grounds upon which it
was now sought to maintain it. He did not wish to maintain the Church
upon the basis usually advanced, but for the benefit of the whole people
of Ireland, and if it could not be maintained as the truth it could not
be maintained at all."

Mr. Gladstone contended that the Irish Episcopal Church had fallen out
of harmony with the spirit and use of the time, and must be judged by a
practical rather than a theoretic test. In concluding the author puts
antithetically the case for and against the maintenance of the Church of
Ireland: "An establishment that does its work in much and has the hope
and likelihood of doing it in more; that has a broad and living way open
to it into the hearts of the people; that can command the services of
the present by the recollections and traditions of the past; able to
appeal to the active zeal of the greater portion of the people, and to
the respect or scruples of living work and service, and whose
adversaries, if she has them, are in the main content to believe that
there will be a future for them and their opinions; such an
establishment should surely be maintained.

"But an establishment that neither does nor has her hope of doing work,
except for a few, and those few the portion of the community whose
claims to public aid is the smallest of all; an establishment severed
from the mass of the people by an impassable gulf and a wall of brass;
an establishment whose good offices, could she offer them, would be
intercepted by a long, unbroken chain of painful and shameful
recollections; an establishment leaning for support upon the extraneous
aid of a State, which becomes discredited with the people by the very
act of leading it; such an establishment will do well for its own sake,
and for the sake of its creed, to divest itself, as soon as may be, of
gauds and trappings, and to commence a new career, in which renouncing
at once the credit and the discredit of the civil sanction, and shall
seek its strength from within and put a fearless trust in the message
that it bears."

Such, then, were the reasons that led the defender of the Irish Church
to become its assailant, "That a man should change his opinions is no
reproach to him; it is only inferior minds that are never open to
conviction."

Mr. Gladstone is a firm Anglican, as we have seen, but the following
extract from his address made at the Liverpool College, in December,
1872, gives a fine insight as to the breadth of his Christian
sentiments:

"Not less forcibly than justly, you hear much to the effect that the
divisions among Christians render it impossible to say what Christianity
is, and so destroy all certainty as to the true religion. But if the
divisions among Christians are remarkable, not less so is their unity in
the greatest doctrines that they hold. Well-nigh fifteen hundred years
have passed away since the great controversies concerning the Deity and
the person of the Redeemer were, after a long agony, determined. As
before that time, in a manner less defined but adequate for their day,
so, even since that time, amid all chance and change, more--aye, many
more--than ninety-nine in every hundred Christians have, with one
voice, confessed the Deity and incarnation of our Lord as the cardinal
and central truth of our religion. Surely there is some comfort here,
some sense of brotherhood; some glory due to the past, some hope for the
times that are to come."

Mr. Gladstone as Prime Minister of England, during his several
administrations, has had a large Church patronage to dispense, in other
words, has been called upon, by virtue of his office, to till many
vacancies in the Established Church, but it has been truly testified
that there has probably never been so laboriously conscientious a
distributor of ecclesiastical crown patronage as Mr. Gladstone. In his
ecclesiastical appointments he never took politics into consideration. A
conspicuous instance of this may be mentioned. When it was rumored that
he intended to recommend Dr. Benson, the present Archbishop, for the
vacant See of Canterbury, a political supporter called to remonstrate
with him. Mr. Gladstone begged to know the ground of his objection. "The
Bishop of Truro is a strong Tory," was the answer; "but that is not all.
He has joined Mr. Raikes's election committee at Cambridge; and it was
only last week that Raikes made a violent personal attack upon
yourself." "Do you know," replied Mr. Gladstone, "that you have just
supplied me with a strong argument in Dr. Benson's favor? for, if he
had been a worldly man or self-seeker he would not have done anything so
imprudent."

Mr. Gladstone sympathized more or less with the Nonconformists
struggling against the application of university tests and other
disabilities from which the Dissenters suffered, but it was not until
1876 that he really discovered the true religions work of the English
Nonconformists. The manner in which the Congregationalists, Baptists,
Quakers and others rallied to the standard raised in the cause of
Bulgarian nationality effected a great change in his attitude towards
his Dissenting fellow countrymen. He entertained many of the
representative Nonconformist ministers at breakfast, and the fidelity
and devotion of Nonconformists generally to the Bulgarian cause left on
his mind an impression which has only deepened with the lapse of time.
The extent to which this influences him may be gathered from the reply
which he made to Dr. Döllinger whilst that learned divine was discussing
with him the question of Church and State. Dr. Döllinger was expressing
his surprise that Mr. Gladstone could possibly coquette in any way with
the party that demanded the severance of Church and State in either
Wales or Scotland. It was to him quite incomprehensible that a statesman
who held so profoundly the idea of the importance of religion could make
his own a cause whose avowed object was to cut asunder the Church from
the State. Mr. Gladstone listened attentively to Dr. Döllinger's
remarks, and then, in an absent kind of way, said, "But you forget how
nobly the Nonconformists supported me at the time of the Eastern
Question." The blank look of amazement on Dr. Döllinger's face showed
the wide difference between the standpoint of the politician and the
ecclesiastic. But Mr. Gladstone knew upon whom to rely in the hour of
need, when great moral issues were at stake. The Bishops of the House of
Lords had not always done their duty. Lord Shaftesbury, himself a very
ardent Churchman, wrote, June 16, 1855, in reference to the Religious
Worship Bill: "The Bishops have exhibited great ignorance, bigotry and
opposition to evangelical life and action, and have seriously injured
their character, influence and position."

Mr. Gladstone never displayed more marked respect for the "Nonconformist
conscience" than when, in deference to their earnest appeal, he risked
the great split in the Home Rule ranks that followed his repudiation of
Mr. Parnell. Mr. Gladstone never hesitated or made the slightest
pretense about the matter. If the Nonconformists had been as indifferent
as the Churchmen, his famous letter about the Irish leadership would not
have been written. "He merely acted, as he himself stated, as the
registrar of the moral temperature which made Mr. Parnell impossible.
He knew the men who are the Ironsides of his party too well not to
understand that if he had remained silent the English Home Rulers would
have practically ceased to exist. He saw the need, rose to the occasion
and cleared the obstacle which would otherwise have been a fatal
impediment to the success of his course. Mr. Gladstone is a practical
statesman, and with some instinct divined the inevitable."

Mr. Gladstone's religious belief, as well as his opinion of the Bible
and the plan of salvation revealed in the Gospel, are manifest as
expressed in the following words from his pen:

"If asked what is the remedy for the deeper sorrows of the human
heart--what a man should chiefly look to in his progress through life as
the power that is to sustain him under trials and enable him manfully to
confront his afflictions--I must point him to something which, in a
well-known hymn is called 'the old, old story,' told of in an old, old
book, and taught with an old, old teaching, which is the greatest and
best gift ever given to mankind."

Another may read the lessons on the Lord's day in Hawarden Church and
write and speak in defense of the Established Church of England, but Mr.
Gladstone did more--he put his trust in his Lord and Saviour, and
believed in his word. Mr. Gladstone was denominationally a member of
the Episcopal Church, but religiously he held to views commonly held by
all Evangelical Christians, from which the temptations of wealth at
home, of college and of politics never turned him.

[Illustration: Kilmainham Jail, where the Irish M.P.'s were confined in
1883]




CHAPTER V


TRAVELS AND MARRIAGE

Mr. Gladstone spent the winter of 1838-9 in Rome. The physicians had
recommended travel in the south of Europe for his health and
particularly for his eyes, the sight of which had become impaired by
hard reading in the preparation of his book. He had given up lamps and
read entirely by candle-light with injurious results. He was joined at
Rome by his friend, Henry Manning, afterwards Cardinal, and in company
they visited Monsignor, afterwards Cardinal, Wiseman, at the English
College, on the feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury. They attended solemn
mass in honor of that Saint, and the places in the missal were found for
them by a young student of the college, named Grant, who afterwards
became Bishop of Southwark.

Besides visiting Italy he explored Sicily, and kept a journal of his
tour. Sicily is a beautiful and fertile island in the Mediterranean
Sea, and is the granary of Rome. His recorded observations show the
keenness of his perceptions and the intensity with which he enjoyed the
beautiful and wonderful in nature.

Mount Etna, the greatest volcano of Europe, and which rises 10,000 feet
above the sea, stirred his soul greatly, and he made an ascent of the
mountain at the beginning of the great eruption of 1838. Etna has many
points of interest for all classes of scientific men, and not least for
the student of arboriculture. It bears at the height of 4000 feet above
the level of the sea a wonderful growth--a very large tree--which is
claimed by some to be the oldest tree in the world. It is a venerable
chestnut, and known as "the father of the forest." It is certainly one
of the most remarkable as well as celebrated of trees. It consists not
of one vast trunk, but of a cluster of smaller decayed trees or portions
of trees growing in a circle, each with a hollow trunk of great
antiquity, covered with ferns or ivy, and stretching out a few gnarled
branches with scanty foliage. That it is one tree seems to be evident
from the growth of the bark only on the outside. It is said that
excavations about the roots of the tree showed these various stems to be
united at a very small depth below the surface of the ground. It still
bears rich foliage and much small fruit, though the heart of the trunk
is decayed, and a public road leads through it wide enough for two
coaches to drive abreast. Travelers have differed in their measurements
of this stupendous growth. Admiral Smyth, who takes the lowest estimate,
giving 163 feet, and Brydone giving, as the highest, 204 feet. In the
middle of the cavity a hut is built, for the accommodation of those who
collect and preserve the chestnuts. One of the Queens of Arragon is
reported to have taken shelter in this tree, with her mounted suite of
one hundred persons; but, "we may, perhaps, gather from this that
mythology is not confined to the lower latitudes."

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