CHAPTER XII
MR. GLADSTONE’S SPEECHES
In 1892 appeared part of what was to be a ten-volume edition of Mr. Gladstone’s speeches, edited by Mr. William Hutton, librarian, National Liberal Club, and R. J. Cowen, of the Inner Temple, barrister-at-law. The work is a labour of love on the part of the two editors, and Mr. Gladstone himself contributes a modest preface. He has seen such passages as seemed to require revision, and he testifies to their correctness. In some instances the editors have made verbal amendments where it was apparent that the text was misreported. They have also added brief notes, just sufficient to recall the circumstances under which the speeches were delivered. It is in his perorations that Mr. Gladstone rises to his loftiest rhetoric, as is seen in the one delivered in his great Birmingham speech of 1885 on Ireland’s new weapons: ‘Ah, gentlemen, may I tell you with what weapons Ireland is fighting this battle? She is not fighting it with the weapons of menace, with a threat of separation, with Fenian outbreaks, with the extension of secret societies. Happily those ideas have passed away into a distance undefined. She is fighting the contest with the weapons of confidence and affection – of confidence in the powerful party by whose irrevocable decision she is supported, and of affection towards the people of England. May I tell you one incident, that will not occupy two minutes, in proof of what I say? In the county, I think, of Limerick, not very many days ago, an Englishman was addressing a crowd of Irish Nationalists on the subject of Home Rule. His carriage or his train, whichever it was, was just going to depart. Someone cried out, “God save Ireland!” and there was a loud burst of cheering. The train started, the cheering subsided. Another voice from the crowd was raised, and shouted, “And God save England!” and there were cheers louder still, such in the language of Shakespeare that
‘“Make the welkin ring again,
And fetch still echoes from the hollow earth.”
These cheers were the genuine expression of the sentiment of the country. They, our opponents, teach you to rely on the use of this deserted and enfeebled and superannuated weapon of coercion. We teach you to rely upon Irish affection and goodwill. We teach you not to speculate on the formation of that sentiment. We show you that it is formed already; it is in full force; it is ready to burst forth from every Irish heart and through every Irish voice. We only beseech you, by resolute adherence to that policy you have adopted, to foster, to cherish, to consolidate that sentiment, and so to act that in space it shall spread from the north of Ireland to the south, and from the west of Ireland to the east; and in time it shall extend and endure from the present date until the last of the years and the last of the centuries that may still be reserved in the counsels of Providence to work out the destinies of mankind.’
Perhaps more of our readers will agree with Mr. Gladstone’s eulogy of books in opening a working men’s library in Saltney:
‘And now I commend you again to your books. Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books – and without even taking them down from their shelves – they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome. They seem to tell you that they have got something inside their covers that will be good for you, and that they are willing and desirous to impart to you. Value them much. Endeavour to turn them to good account, and pray recollect this, that the education of the mind is not merely a stowage of goods in the mind. The mind of man, some people seem to think, is a storehouse that should be filled with a quantity of useful commodities which may be taken out like packets from a shop, and delivered and distributed according to the occasions of life. I will not say that this is not true as far as it goes; but it goes a very little way, for commodities may be taken in and commodities may be given out, but the warehouse remains just the same as it was before, or probably a little worse. That ought not to be the case with a man’s mind. No doubt you are to cull knowledge that is useful for the temporal purpose of life, but never forget that the purpose for which a man lives is the improvement of the man himself, so that he may go out of this world having, in his great sphere or his small one, done some little good to his fellow-creatures, and laboured a little to diminish the sin and the sorrow that are in the world. For his own growth and development a man should seek to acquire, to his full capacity, useful knowledge, in order to deal it out again according to the supreme purposes of education. I remember just now I said that, outside of science, the chance for a labouring man to acquire knowledge was comparatively very little, unless he acquire it through observation. The poet Gray describes the condition of the rustics of the village in these words:
‘“But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of Time, did ne’er unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.”
We have witnessed an improvement upon that state of things. Knowledge has now begun to unroll her ample page, and chill Penury does not now so universally repress. Let that improvement itself be improved upon, not necessarily by grand, imposing designs, but by each of us according to his means, with the sedulous endeavour to do our duty to our neighbour and our service to our country. Let me express the fervent hope that this literary institute may thrive, and may largely and continuously contribute to the prosperity of Saltney and the happiness of its people.’
In the Dundee address on ‘Art and Industry,’ delivered on October 29, 1890, Mr. Gladstone half playfully, half seriously, denounced the vagaries of fashion:
‘Now, shall I shock you if I tell you what perhaps is partly only a personal opinion of my own? The study of beauty has several very formidable enemies. One of them, of course, is haste in production, carelessness in production. Sometimes the desire for cheapness makes people think you cannot have cheapness and beauty together. But the particular enemy which I think is one of the most formidable of all to the true comprehension and true pursuit of beauty is that thing which is known under the name of fashion. That may seem strange to the young gentlemen who want to be smart in their dress. I will not speak of young ladies. To them I have no doubt it will sound as if I was using language certainly rash, and perhaps almost profane. What is fashion? Gentlemen and ladies, if the ladies have anything to do with it – I won’t say whether it is so or not – what is fashion? Fashion of dress is perpetual change. Wherever there is perpetual change, if it is to be justifiable or if it is to be useful, there ought to be perpetual progress. But fashion is not perpetual progress; fashion is a zigzag. Fashion is a wheel which whirls round and round, and by-and-by, after a fashion has been left, after it has been discarded, if you have only a little patience to wait long enough, you will find you will go back to it. Ladies and gentlemen, you are young and I am old; I have seen this wheel of fashion going round and round, always puzzling you, like a firework wheel, but always landing in a total negation of progress, and with a strong tendency to the substitution of mere caprice and mere display for the true pursuit of beauty.’
In 1894 appeared another volume. Nominally it was the ninth volume, but the order of sequence is apparently to be from last to first. The new volume is one of the most important of the series, since it contains the great speech on introducing the first Home Rule Bill, and seventeen speeches of later date, mainly upon Home Rule. Some of these speeches present the great Parliamentary orator at his very highest – broad in sweep, dexterous in sword-play, flashing with wit, pellucid in expression, driving home his case with passionate appeal and a rush of ingenious argument. Whether we agree with him or not, it is impossible, even in cold print, not to admire the overpowering ability of the ‘old Parliamentary hand.’ Here is the peroration of the first great speech on introducing the first Home Rule Bill:
‘However this may be, we are sensible that we have taken an important decision – our choice has been made. It has not been made without thought; it has been made in the full knowledge that trial and difficulty may confront us on our path. We have no right to say that Ireland through her constitutionally-chosen representatives will accept the plan I offer. Whether it will be so I do not know – I have no title to assume it – but if Ireland does not cheerfully accept it, it is impossible for us to attempt to force upon her what is intended to be a boon; nor can we possibly press England and Scotland to accord to Ireland what she does not heartily welcome and embrace. There are difficulties, but I rely upon the patriotism and sagacity of this House; I rely on the effects of free and full discussion; and I rely more than all upon the just and generous sentiments of the two British nations. Looking forward, I ask the House to assist us in the work which we have undertaken, and to believe that no trivial motive can have driven us to it – to assist us in this work which we believe will restore Parliament to its dignity, and legislation to its free and unimpeded course. I ask you to stay that waste of public treasure which is involved in the present system of government and legislation in Ireland; and which is not a waste only, but which demoralizes while it exhausts. I ask you to show to Europe and to America that we, too, can face political problems which America twenty years ago faced, and which many countries in Europe have been called upon to face, and have not feared to deal with. I ask that in our own case we should practise with firm and fearless hand what we have so often preached – the doctrine which we have so often inculcated upon others – namely, that the concession of local self-government is not the way to sap or impair, but the way to strengthen and consolidate, unity. I ask that we should learn to rely less upon merely written stipulations, and more upon those better stipulations which are written on the heart and mind of man. I ask that we should apply to Ireland that happy experience which we have gained in England and in Scotland, where the course of generations has now taught us, not as a dream or a theory, but as practice and as life, that the best and surest foundation we can find to build upon is the foundation afforded by the affections, the convictions, and the will of the nation; and it is thus, by the decree of the Almighty, that we may be enabled to secure at once the social peace, the fame, the power, and the permanence of the empire.’
In another style, but very characteristic, I quote from the speech delivered by Mr. Gladstone at Hawarden in the Jubilee year, reviewing the reign of the Queen:
‘Now, I have said quite enough for this occasion, and I think enough to justify me in reminding you that although a jubilee may be regarded as an affair of form and ceremony, there is a great deal more than form and ceremony in this Jubilee. It invites us and compels us to cast our thoughts backward over that long series of years with which we are almost all of us familiar, and it imposes upon us the duty of deep thankfulness to the Almighty, who in these late days, when our history is so long, and when some might have thought that our nation and our constitution had grown old, has given us as a people a renovated youth; who has inspired us with renewed activity and with buoyant hope; who has conducted us thus far upon the road to improvement and advancement in the pursuit, not of false, but of true human happiness; who has made the laws of this country no longer odious, no longer suspected, but dear to the people at large, and who has thereby encouraged us – I will not say much of encouragement to men of my age, whose life is in the past more than in the future – it has encouraged all those who are grown up or coming on, who are in the first glow of youth or in the prime and vigour of manhood, to persevere and endeavour to make the coming years, if they can, not worse, but better than those which have gone by. I beseech you, if you owe the debt of gratitude to the Queen for that which I have described, for her hearty concurrence in the work of public progress and improvement, for the admirable public example which her life has uniformly set, for her thorough comprehension of the true conditions of the great covenant between the throne and the people – if you owe her a debt of gratitude for these, may I say to you: Try to acknowledge that debt by remembering her in your prayers. Depend upon it that when St. Paul enjoined that prayers should be made for all men, and gave the commanding and the leading place to prayers for kings and all in authority, St. Paul spoke the language not only of religion, but of the most profound social justice and human common-sense. Do not imagine that because in this world some live in greater splendour and greater enjoyment than others, they therefore live free of temptation, so as not to need the prayers of their fellow-Christians. Depend upon it, the higher placed one is in society, the greater are his difficulties, and the more subtle the temptations that surround his path, and that which is true as we rise from rank to rank is not least of all, but most of all, true when we come to the elevated and august position of the Sovereign, who, as a sovereign, more than any one among her subjects, needs the support which the prayers and the intercessions of her subjects offered for her to her Saviour can afford. Forgive me for entreating you not to forget that duty; not to forget that simple mode at the command of all, in which everyone who thinks the Queen has nobly done her duty to them may perform a great and beneficial duty to her and for her.’
We give one other extract from a speech at Swansea in 1887 – ‘The Union of Hearts’:
‘No difference connected with this question ought for a moment to impede our steady march upon the path on which we are entered – the path which leads us to a happy consummation of a just and politic arrangement between the two nations. I have reminded you of the objects which the arrangement contemplated – objects the dearest of which can endear them to the hearts of men, the greatness of the empire, the solidity of the empire, the true cohesion of the empire, the happiness of the people, the union of classes, the establishment of social order, the rule of law by moral as well as by physical force in one of the great divisions of the country, and finally the restoration of the honour and character of the country, so grievously compromised by this painful subject. These are the objects which make our present arduous labours worth persevering in and make us determined to pursue them. There was on one of the banners we saw to-day a phrase that I referred to in addressing our friends outside, and which made a deep impression upon me – “The union of hearts, not manacles.” What is our union with Ireland now? It is the union of manacles, and not of hearts. It is a force that attaches Ireland to us. What said Mr. Bright? If Ireland were towed out 2,000 miles into the Atlantic your relations with Ireland would be at an end. We want to substitute for that union of force the union of hearts. We want that Ireland shall be united to England as Wales is united to England, as Scotland is united to England, not that they should be dead to their own national interests and concerns, but that they should desire to pursue them and promote them as measures of a firmly united and compacted empire. We have a state of things in Ireland by which, if we seize and do not lose the golden opportunity, this same union may be gained. While Ireland, in consonance with her traditions and in consequence of those physical circumstances by which she is divided from us by the Channel, desires the management of her own concerns, she is happily disposed to union with us, and to be at one with us in everything that concerns the greatness of the empire; but if this golden opportunity be lost we know not when it will return. The rule is that lost opportunities do not return, or, if they return, they return only after long intervals and after heavy damages have been paid for the original neglect. God grant that these mischiefs may be avoided – at any rate, with regard to the subject that is now before us.’
A remarkable illustration of Mr. Gladstone’s many-sidedness is to be found in the fact that on one occasion he went to dine with the poor at St. Pancras Workhouse in 1879, with 600 of the aged inmates, at a dinner given by Mr. E. Skerries, one of the guardians. In the course of his speech Mr. Gladstone said: ‘My life presents to me a great variety of scenes and occasions; but among all these scenes and occasions I tell you, with unfeigned sincerity, I have not witnessed one for a long time that has filled me with heartier or tenderer pleasure than to be a guest at the present assembly. I likewise desired, I am well aware, in a slight manner to take an opportunity which does not often occur to me of testifying, as far as I can, my interest in your lot. In this great establishment of which you are inmates it is not possible, consistently with the interests of the community, to give many indulgences by rule and under system, which I am convinced many of those who govern you would desire to give if they felt it could be done with safety. It is not because the giving or receiving of such indulgences would be mischievous or dangerous to yourselves; it is the effect, which I am quite sure you can well appreciate, which would be produced upon the community at large, if these establishments, which are maintained out of the labour of the community and at its charge, were made establishments of luxurious living. It is necessary that the independent labourer of the country should not be solicited and tempted to forego his duty to his wife and children and the community by thinking that he could do better for himself by making himself a charge on that community. There is no more subtle poison that could be infused into the community than a system of that kind. We were in danger of it some fifty or sixty years ago, but the spirit and courage of the Parliament of 1834 and the Government of that day introduced a sounder system, and matters are here regulated with what I believe and trust is – and I believe you would be able to echo what I say – with firmness and kindness.’
When the charges against Mr. Parnell and his friends were made in the House of Commons, Mr. Gladstone was strongly against their vindication of themselves in a court of law – on the first ground, on the plea of the law’s delay, and, secondly, from the character of our judges. He blamed Lord Randolph Churchill for speaking in their favour. He entirely differed from that noble lord as to the judges. He believed all judges now on the bench could be trusted perfectly. But there was one judge now upon the bench who came down from the bench to take a part in regard to the great Irish Question more violent than had been taken by any layman he could remember. If one of the gentlemen sitting below the gangway said it was excusable in him to feel some mistrust in such a case, though he (Mr. Gladstone) should not feel mistrust himself, he could understand that mistrust. Was it so certain a verdict would be got? As to the certainty of getting verdicts against newspapers in cases where a public man attempted to restrain the liberty of newspaper comment on his own conduct, he might mention that thirty years ago he had the honour to serve Her Majesty as High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. The people of the Ionian Islands had little or nothing to complain of as to practical grievances, but they were possessed with an intense sentiment of nationality. That sentiment determined them to be content with nothing except union with their own blood and race, and that sentiment was treated by a portion of the press of this country, and especially by a portion of the Metropolitan press, with unmeasured and bitter contempt. It was said: ‘Who are these miserable Ionians that desire to join themselves to an equally miserable set of people in Greece, instead of welcoming the glory of being attached to a great empire?’ The Times said, in effect: ‘The Ionian Assembly has been committing treason, and the Queen’s Commissioner has been aiding them to commit that treason.’ He determined to prosecute the Times. He took the best advice from legal friends of weight and character, and every one of those gentlemen said: ‘Don’t dream of it. You cannot get a verdict.’ He would have gone into court without one particular prejudice against him, but in this case there was in the minds of a portion of the public a gross and cruel prejudice. His legal advisers protested so positively against any such trial that he had to acquiesce in that gross and monstrous charge. Juries had a just and proper prejudice in favour of the liberty of the press, and if he himself were a juror it would take very much indeed to make him give a verdict in restraint of the liberty of the press. He could not think they were entitled to condemn in the slightest degree the hon. member for East Mayo, if he declined to commit himself to the mercy or the chance of a court of law.
As another proof of Mr. Gladstone’s versatility, let us notice a speech delivered at the Hawarden Flower Show on fruit and vegetable culture, in which he dwelt on the importance of garden cultivation. He commenced by remarking that that was a time when leading people had to consider more seriously than they were accustomed to do in times of prosperity how they could better their position, and struggle with the vicissitudes of time and climate more effectually than on former occasions they had been able to do. ‘I believe,’ said Mr. Gladstone, ‘that one of the modes in which the cultivators of the soil in this country – I will draw no distinction at present between small and large – may improve their position is by paying a greater attention to what is called garden and spade cultivation. Perhaps it will surprise you if I tell you what is the value of the fruit and vegetables imported into this country from abroad. Now, of dried fruits there are imported into this country a value of about £2,346,000. I don’t speak so much of those, because a large proportion consists of products, such as currants, figs, and raisins, that are not adapted to the latitude of this country; but I find that a vast quantity is imported of raw fruit, such as apples, pears, stone-fruit, and the like. No less than £1,704,000 worth of raw fruit is generally imported into this country. Then, when I come to vegetables, a still larger proportion is imported. There are £414,000 worth of onions imported, but, I take it, there is no better country for the growth of onions than this country. There were, taking potatoes and other kinds of vegetables, about £5,000,000 imported. I should like to see this fruit and these vegetables grown at home.’ Mr. Gladstone then went on to show how lucrative was the growing of vegetables. ‘There was a natural taste on the part of the people to cottage garden cultivation, and a vast deal of profitable industry might be set in motion by the extension of this cottage gardening, and by the introduction of the spade cultivation where it was found suitable, even upon larger masses of land than were at the command of cottagers.’
At a breakfast in 1887, given by Dr. Parker, at which a large number of Nonconformist ministers were present, in the course of his speech Mr. Gladstone said: ‘I have no difficulty whatever in referring to the language which I myself and others have used in respect to the Irish party about six years ago, and in bringing that language into comparison with what I have said of them within the last few weeks. Six years ago it was our conviction that the leaders of the Irish party were engaged in operations which, although they might have considered them to be justified and called for by the circumstances of the country, we thought were of a blamable and dangerous, and even ruinous character. I did say at that time that the footsteps of what was called the Land League were, in my opinion, dogged with crime – that where the Land League went, crime followed it. I did say at that time, when, as we believed, there was a general movement against the payment of rates and fulfilling of contracts as a whole – I did say at that time that it was a question of proceeding through rapine to dismemberment. Those were very grave words to use. They may have been warranted, or they may have been unwarranted; they may have been exaggerated, or they may have been justified by the circumstances of the case, but I believed them, and they were spoken with sincerity. I am bound to say this, that I am not prepared to say at this moment that they were without force and truth. Grave charges were made at that time by the Nationalist party against us. Some of those charges I can now see to have been true, and I see that that is the case not for the first time. I see that some of the measures which we proposed, especially the measure for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, were unhappy and mischievous measures; but we spoke according to the circumstances that were before us. It is quite true that we were aware then, as now, that enormous allowances were to be made for men acting in Ireland under the difficulties of their position, and with the smarting and painful recollection of their past history; but we spoke the truth then, and we speak the truth now. The other day, following the steps of Lord Spencer, I stated in public that there was not, so far as I knew, and that there never had been, any reason for charging upon Mr. Parnell and the members of the Irish party complicity with crime. That is perfectly true; and it is what I would have said six years ago. I believed then that their language was dangerous, and that their plans were questionable, that they had a tendency to the production of crime; but that is a thing totally different from complicity with crime.’