THE GLADSTONE MEMORIAL W E agree with the Duke of Devonshire
that the public memory of Mr. Gladstone, of his character We were unable to follow Yr. Gladstone in the later years of his life, for we thought, and still think, that his first Home-rule Bill would have disintegrated the kingdom without securing a prosperous future to Ireland, while the second was opposed to all justice and to the first principles of modern statesmanship ; but we have never questioned that he was one of the greatest men whom this island has ever produced, not only, as Lord Peel put it, first among her many "masters of speech," but, as Mr. Morley put it, " of a character greater even than his achievements.' It is mere folly to denounce him as a rhetorician. As Mr. Morley said in his fine speech while unveiling last Saturday Mr. Hamo Thornycroft's splendid statue, in which the subject's whole character seems embodied as well as his figure, he was " the most extraordinary case in our annals of the combination of a man who had the magic and the glory of the orator combined with the passion and the power of the man of action." It was after he had framed some great scheme. and assured himself down to the minutest detail • and his great feats of statesmanship, has even in the few years which have elapsed since his death suffered a certain degree of obscuration • but we cannot agree with him as to the explanation. He thinks the rather discreditable fact probably due to the immense multiplicity and variety of the causes with which Mr. Gladstone was associated ; but surely that should have helped to keep his memory green. One class should venerate him for abolishing the Establishment in Ireland, and another for his reforms in the taxation of the people. We fear that the true explana- tion is at once a broader and a more unsatisfactory one. Perhaps the strangest and the worst peculiarity of the English intellect—English, we say, not British, for it is not shared by Scotsmen—is their readiness to forget the statesmen, sometimes even the heroes, who in their long history have served them well. Nelson and Wellington are not forgotten ; but just ask the next man you meet to say offhand who commanded the fleet which defeated the Armada, or to recite the names of the men who staked life and fortune and great position in order to save their forefathers from Rome and absolutism by summoning the Dutch Stuart to restore their country's freedom. Our people remember Elizabeth vaguely ; but they have forgotten what the Tudor dynasty did for us—it settled the ques- tion of the unemployed for one thing, and the settlement lasted three hundred years—they have nearly forgotten William III. • to them the first Pitt is scarcely a name ; they sea Sir III. Peel through a thick film; and while honouring or abusing " Cobdenism," they cannot tell pre- cisely why Cobden should be abused or honoured. They cannot recall without effort who gave them Education— free, universal, and compulsory—and, as the Duke says, they are allowing the memory of Gladstone gradually to become vague and dim within their minds. It is this evil mental habit—which cannot be cured, for it arises from a deficiency of historic imagination inherent in the race— that is the true reason for setting up statues or other visible mementoes of our great men, even when, as has happened in Mr. Gladstone's case, they have found the vales sacer, and adequate biographers have put up to them monuments more durable, and visible over a wider area. that it was workable, that he poured out his 'rhetoric," that marvellous power of persuasion which left friends enthusi- astic and enemies bewildered and afraid, and "created, shaped, moulded, and inspired that public opinion upon which success depended." As Lord Salisbury, his great opponent in the struggle over Ireland, said in the splendid eulogium in which he summed up his life and its influence, " ' what Mr. Gladstone sought was the achievement of great ideals, and whether they were based upon sound convictions or not, they could have issued from nothing but the highest and purest moral convictions.' Set up necessarily on high, the sight of him, his character, his motives, and his intentions, would strike all the world. ' It will have left a deep and most salutary influence on the political thought and the social thought of the gene- ration in which he lived, and he will long be remembered, not so much for the causes on which he was engaged, or the political projects which he favoured, but as a great example for which history hardly furnishes a parallel, of a great Christian man." The Duke of Devonshire was compelled to quit him on the Home-rule question ; yet he stood by the side of Mr. Morley as the statue was unveiled, and he uttered a eulogium which was almost warmer than that of the Radical orator who had preceded him. After bearing high testimony to his subject's character, and his capacity as a man of business, and regretting the absence of every member of the present Government, the Duke concluded thus :- " But I am fully convinced that, as time goes on and as our history unrolls itself, we shall become not less but more conscious of the great influence which he has exerted, not only upon the events of his time, but upon the character of this people, and the influence which he exerted in forming and in training the character and the highest instinct of the people among whom he lived." The character of a man of whom such things can be said, and said with truth, after his death and by opponents, is a grand asset for his countrymen if only they will remember it ; and even a statue, imperfect memorial as it must be to a man whose greatness was intellectual, will assist, in some cases even revive, the needful memory. That will especially be the result when, as in this instance, the statue recalls a. certain grandeur inherent in the man, a grandeur which suggested to a few hauteur, to many intellectual power, and to, all the perfect courage which, of all his many great qualities, did most to turn his grand powers of thought and his acute sympathies into a force always ready for beneficent action. There were few subjects which Mr. Gladstone could not master ; there was nothing that, once convinced that his action would be beneficent, he dare not do.
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