Part 1 (1/2)

The Grand Old Man.

by Richard B. Cook.

PREFACE

William E. Gladstone was cosmopolitan. The Premier of the British Empire is ever a prominent personage, but he has stood above them all. For more than half a century he has been the active advocate of liberty, morality and religion, and of movements that had for their object the prosperity, advancement and happiness of men. In all this he has been upright, disinterested and conscientious in word and deed. He has proved himself to be the world's champion of human rights. For these reasons he has endeared himself to all men wherever civilization has advanced to enlighten and to elevate in this wide world.

With the closing of the 19th century the world is approaching a crisis in which every nation is involved. For a time the map of the world might as well be rolled up. Great questions that have agitated one or more nations have convulsed the whole earth because steam and electricity have annihilated time and s.p.a.ce. Questions that have sprung up between England and Africa, France and Prussia, China and j.a.pan, Russia and China, Turkey and Armenia, Greece and Turkey, Spain and America have proved international and have moved all nations. The daily proceedings of Congress at Was.h.i.+ngton are discussed in j.a.pan.

In these times of turning and overturning, of discontent and unrest, of greed and war, when the needs of the nations most demand men of world-wide renown, of great experience in government and diplomacy, and of firm hold upon the confidence of the people; such men as, for example, Gladstone, Salisbury, Bismark, Crispi and Li Hung Chang, who have led the mighty advance of civilization, are pa.s.sing away. Upon younger men falls the heavy burden of the world, and the solution of the mighty problems of this climax of the most momentous of all centuries.

However, the Record of these ill.u.s.trious lives remains to us for guidance and inspiration. History is the biography of great men. The lamp of history is the beacon light of many lives. The biography of William E. Gladstone is the history, not only of the English Parliament, but of the progress of civilization in the earth for the whole period of his public life. With the life of Mr. Gladstone in his hand, the student of history or the young statesman has a light to guide him and to help him solve those intricate problems now perplexing the nations, and upon the right solution of which depends Christian civilization--the liberties, progress, prosperity and happiness of the human race.

Hence, the life and public services of the Grand Old Man cannot fail to be of intense interest to all, particularly to the English, because he has repeatedly occupied the highest position under the sovereign of England, to the Irish whether Protestant or Catholic, north or south, because of his advocacy of (Reforms) for Ireland; to the Scotch because of his Scottish descent; to the German because he reminds them of their own great chancellor, the Unifier of Germany, Prince Bismarck; and to the American because he was ever the champion of freedom; and as there has been erected in Westminster Abbey a tablet to the memory of Lord Howe, so will the American people enshrine in their hearts, among the greatest of the great, the memory of William Ewart Gladstone.

”In youth a student and in eld a sage; Lover of freedom; of mankind the friend; n.o.ble in aim from childhood to the end; Great is thy mark upon historic page.”

INTRODUCTORY.

There are few, even among those who differed from him, who would deny to Mr. Gladstone the t.i.tle of a great statesman: and in order to appreciate his wonderful career, it is necessary to realize the condition of the world of thought, manners and works at the time when he entered public life.

In medicine there was no chloroform; in art the sun had not been enlisted in portraiture; railways were just struggling into existence; the electric telegraph was unknown; gas was an unfas.h.i.+onable light; postage was dear, and newspapers were taxed.

In literature, Scott had just died; Carlyle was awaiting the publication of his first characteristic book; Tennyson was regarded as worthy of hope because of his juvenile poems; Macaulay was simply a brilliant young man who had written some stirring verse and splendid prose; the Brontes were schoolgirls; Thackeray was dreaming of becoming an artist; d.i.c.kens had not written a line of fiction; Browning and George Eliot were yet to come.

In theology, Newman was just emerging from evangelicalism; Pusey was an Oxford tutor; Samuel Wilberforce a village curate; Henry Manning a young graduate; and Darwin was commencing that series of investigations which revolutionized the popular conception of created things.

Princess, afterwards Queen Victoria, was a girl of thirteen; Cobden a young calico printer; Bright a younger cotton spinner; Palmerston was regarded as a man-about-town, and Disraeli as a brilliant and eccentric novelist with parliamentary ambition. The future Marquis of Salisbury and Prime Minister of Great Britain was an infant scarcely out of arms; Lord Rosebery, (Mr. Gladstone's successor in the Liberal Premiers.h.i.+p), Lord Spencer, Lord Hersch.e.l.l, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Brice, Mr. Acland and Mr. Arnold Morley, or more than half the members of his latest cabinet remained to be born; as did also the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re, Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain, among those who were his keenest opponents toward the end of his public career.

At last the end of Mr. Gladstone's public life arrived, but it had been extended to an age greater than that at which any English statesman had ever conducted the government of his country.

Of the significance of the life of this great man, it would be superfluous to speak. The story will signally fail of its purpose if it does not carry its own moral with it. We can best conclude these introductory remarks by applying to the subject of the following pages, some words which he applied a generation ago to others:

In the sphere of common experience we see some human beings live and die, and furnish by their life no special lessons visible to man, but only that general teaching in elementary and simple forms which is derivable from every particle of human histories. Others there have been, who, from the times when their young lives first, as it were, peeped over the horizon, seemed at once to--

”'Flame in the forehead of the evening sky,'”

--Whose lengthening years have been but one growing splendor, and who at last-- ”------Leave a lofty name, A light, a landmark on the cliffs of fame.”

CHAPTER I

ANCESTRY AND BIRTH

All history, says Emerson, ”resolves itself into the biographies of a few stout and earnest persons.” These remarks find exemplification in the life of William Ewart Gladstone, of whom they are pre-eminently true. His recorded life, from the early period of his graduation to his fourth premiers.h.i.+p, would embrace in every important respect not only the history of the British Empire, but very largely the international events of every nation of the world for more than half a century.

William Ewart Gladstone, M.P., D.C.L., statesman, orator and scholar, was born December 27, 1809, in Liverpool, England. The house in which he was born, number 62 Rodney Street, a commodious and imposing ”double-fronted” dwelling of red brick, is still standing. In the neighborhood of the Rodney Street house, and a few years before or after the birth of William E. Gladstone, a number of distinguished persons were born, among them William Roscoe, the writer and philanthropist, John Gibson, the sculptor, Doctor Bickersteth, the late Bishop of Ripon, Mrs. Hemans, the poetess, and Doctor James Martineau, Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy in Manchester New College, and the brother of Harriet Martineau, the auth.o.r.ess.

The Gladstone family, or Gledstanes, which was the original family name, was of Scottish origin. The derivation of the name is obvious enough to any one familiar with the ancestral home. A _gled_ is a hawk, and that fierce and beautiful bird would have found its natural refuge among the _stanes_, or rocks, of the craggy moorlands which surround the ”fortalice of gledstanes.” As far back as 1296 Herbert de Gledstane figures in the Ragman Roll as one of the lairds who swore fealty to Edward I. His descendants for generations held knightly rank, and bore their part in the adventurous life of the Border. The chief stock was settled at Liberton, in the upper part of Clydesdale. It was a family of Scottish lairds, holding large estates in the sixteenth century. The estate dwindled, and in the beginning of the seventeenth century pa.s.sed out of their hands, except the adjacent property of Authurs.h.i.+el, which remained in their possession for a hundred years longer. A younger branch of the family--the son of the last of the Gledstanes of Arthurs.h.i.+el--after many generations, came to dwell at Biggar, in Lanarks.h.i.+re, where he conducted the business of a ”maltster,” or grain merchant.