Part 5 (1/2)
”Naturally and profoundly religious ... Mr. Gladstone conceived that those who professed the warmest regard for the Church of England and posed as her most strenuous defenders, were inclined to base their champions.h.i.+p on mistaken grounds and to direct their efforts towards even mischievous ends. To supply a more reasonable basis for action and to lead this energy into more profitable channels were the objects which he proposed to himself in his treatise of 1838. The distinctive principle of the book was that the State had a conscience. This being admitted, the issue was this: whether the State in its best condition, has such a conscience as can take cognizance of religious truth and error, and in particular whether the State of the United Kingdom at that time was, or was not, so far in that condition as to be under an obligation to give an active and an exclusive support to the established religion of the country.
”The work attempted to survey the actual state of the relations between the State and the Church; to show from history the ground which had been defined for the National Church at the Reformation; and to inquire and determine whether the existing state of things was worth preserving and defending against encroachment from whatever quarter. This question it decided emphatically in the affirmative. Faithful to logic and to its theory, the book did not shrink from applying them to the external case of the Irish Church. It did not disguise the difficulties of the case, for the author was alive to the paradox which it involved. But the one master idea of the system, that the State as it then stood was capable in this age, as it had been in ages long gone by, of a.s.suming beneficially a responsibility for the inculcation of a particular religion, carried him through all. His doctrine was that the Church, as established by law, was to be maintained for its truth; that this was the only principle in which it could be properly and permanently upheld; that this principle, if good in England, was good also for Ireland; that truth is of all possessions the most precious to the soul of man; and that to remove this priceless treasure from the view and the reach of the Irish people would be meanly to purchase their momentary favor at the expense of their permanent interests, and would be a high offense against our own sacred obligations.”
We quote also from the opening chapter of the second volume of this work, which treats of the connection subsisting between the State of the United Kingdom and the Church of England and Ireland, and shows Mr.
Gladstone's views at that period of his life upon the relations of the Church as affecting Ireland in particular. The pa.s.sage also indicates the changes that have taken place in his mind since the time when he defended these principles. It also shows the style in which this remarkable book was written and enables us to compare, not only his opinions now and then, but his style in writing then with his style now.
”The Protestant legislature of the British Empire maintains in the possession of the Church property of Ireland the ministers of a creed professed, according to the parliamentary enumeration, of 1835, by one-ninth of its population, regarded with partial favor by scarcely another ninth, and disowned by the remaining seven. And not only does this anomaly meet us full in view, but we have also to consider and digest the fact, that the maintenance of this Church for near three centuries in Ireland has been contemporaneous with a system of partial and abusive government, varying in degree of culpability, but rarely, until of later years, when we have been forced to look at the subject and to feel it, to be exempted in common fairness from the reproach of gross inattention (to say the very least) to the interests of a n.o.ble but neglected people.
”But, however formidable at first sight the admissions, which I have no desire to narrow or to qualify, may appear, they in no way shake the foregoing arguments. They do not change the nature of truth and her capability and destiny to benefit mankind. They do not relieve Government of its responsibility, if they show that that responsibility was once unfelt and unsatisfied. They place the legislature of the country in the condition, as it were, of one called to do penance for past offences; but duty remains unaltered and imperative, and abates nothing of her demand on our services. It is undoubtedly competent, in a const.i.tutional view, to the Government of this country to continue the present disposition of Church property in Ireland. It appears not too much to a.s.sume that our imperial legislature has been qualified to take, and has taken in point of fact, a sounder view of religious truth than the majority of the people of Ireland in their dest.i.tute and uninstructed state. We believe, accordingly, that that which we place before them is, whether they know it or not, calculated to be beneficial to them; and that if they know it not now, they will know it when it is presented to them fairly. Shall we, then, purchase their applause at the expense of their substantial, nay, their spiritual interests?
”It does, indeed, so happen that there are powerful motives on the other side concurring with that which has here been represented as paramount.
In the first instance we are not called upon to establish a creed, but only to maintain an existing legal settlement, when our const.i.tutional right is undoubted. In the second, political considerations tend strongly to recommend that maintenance. A common form of faith binds the Irish Protestants to ourselves, while they, upon the other hand, are fast linked to Ireland; and thus they supply the most natural bond of connection between the countries. But if England, by overthrowing their Church, should weaken their moral position, they would be no longer able, perhaps no longer willing, to counteract the desires of the majority tending, under the direction of their leaders (however, by a wise policy, revocable from that fatal course) to what is termed national independence. Pride and fear, on the one hand, are therefore bearing up against more immediate apprehension and difficulty on the other. And with some men these may be the fundamental considerations; but it may be doubted whether such men will not flinch in some stage of the contest, should its aspect at any moment become unfavorable.”
Of course the opponents of Mr. Gladstone's views, as set forth in his book, strongly combated his theories. They replied that ”the taxation of the State is equal upon all persons, and has for its object their individual, social and political welfare and safety; but that the taxation of one man for the support of his neighbor's religion does not come within the limits of such taxation, and is, in fact, unjust and inequitable.”
It was no easy task for Mr. Gladstone, with all his parliamentary duties, to aspire to authors.h.i.+p, and carry his book through the press.
In preparing for publication he pa.s.sed through all the agonies of the author, but was n.o.bly helped by his friend, James R. Hope, who afterwards became Mr. Hope-Scott, Q.C., who read and criticised his ma.n.u.script and saw the sheets through the press. Some of the letters from the young Defender of the Faith to his friend contain much that is worth preserving. We give some extracts.
He writes: ”If you let them lie just as they are, turning the leaves one by one, I think you will not find the ma.n.u.script very hard to make out, though it is strangely cut in pieces and patched.
”I hope its general tendency will meet with your approval; but a point about which I am in doubt, and to which I request your particular attention, is, whether the work or some of the chapters are not so deficient in clearness and arrangement as to require being absolutely rewritten before they can with propriety be published.... Between my eyes and my business I fear it would be hard for me to re-write, but if I could put it into the hands of any other person who could, and who would extract from my papers anything worth having, that might do.
”As regards myself, if I go on and publish, I shall be quite prepared to find some persons surprised, but this, if it should prove so, cannot be helped. I shall not knowingly exaggerate anything; and when a man expects to be washed overboard he must tie himself with a rope to the mast.
”I shall trust to your friends.h.i.+p for frankness in the discharge of your irksome task. Pray make verbal corrections without scruple where they are needed.”
Again: ”I thank you most cordially for your remarks, and I rejoice to find you act so entirely in the spirit I had antic.i.p.ated. I trust you will continue to speak with freedom, which is the best compliment as well as the best service you can render me.
”I think it very probable that you may find that V and VI require quite as rigorous treatment as II, and I am very desirous to set both my mind and eyes at liberty before I go to the Continent, which I can now hardly expect to do before the first week in September. This interval I trust would suffice unless you find that the other chapters stand in equal need.
”I entirely concur with your view regarding the necessity of care and of not grudging labor in a matter so important and so responsible as an endeavor to raise one of the most momentous controversies which has ever agitated human opinion,”
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 cla.s.sification, 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble 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 circ.u.mstance 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 surpa.s.sing ability has always been his.”
It was remarked by Lord Macaulay that the entire theory of Mr.