TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. GLADSTONE AS A PARTY LEADER.
SINCE the untimely death of Sir G. C. Lewis Mr. Gladstone is recognized by common consent as the heir apparent to the leadership of the Liberal party ; and those, therefore, who, like ourselves, are not quite so ductile to the rash timidity and dangerous caution of the times as to look with equanimity on the prospect of a long series of years in which the Govern- ment of this country should cover with its tegis every rotten abuse, and wave aside every noble cause till it has ceased to need our aid, must henceforth watch the Chancellor of the Exchequer's career with mingled anxiety and pride. He alone can pretend to lead the Liberals ; but it is useless to ignore the fact that he will be a leader whom all the Conser- vatives will delight to assault, and not quite all the Liberals will delight to defend. Nay, we must say more,—though he will be a leader to be followed with enthusiasm,—with far greater loyalty of sentiment than one can readily feel for Lord Palmerston's pleasant and politic expediency,—we must often, too, follow him with anxiety and trembling, as a leader whose thoughts and ways are not very easy to anticipate,—one of the greatest defects in the leader of a popular party,—and whose mind is too inventive for any large measure of that political sagacity which, finds the true track rather by scent than intellectual effort. In one respect, and only in one re- spect, the Conservative party when headed by Mr. Disraeli, and the Liberal when headed by Mr. Gladstone, will suffer from exactly similar misfortunes. They will be liable to very sudden shocks and surprises from the intellectual manceuvres of their chiefs. Great parties like to have leaders whose thoughts and measures they seem to know beforehand. Lord John Russell (when in office at least,—we would not say the same of him as leader of opposition) had this advantage, that his views were a sort of familiar liturgy to his party. They were accustomed to his constitutional forms of praise and prayer, and came prepared to chime in at the right moment. But the Conservatives, who, being even fonder of set forms as well as rather duller and more stupii, naturally appreciate this sort of satisfaction even more than the Liberals, have always been cheated of this innocent enjoyment by Mr. Disraeli, whose extempore flights of devotion con- stantly leave them, like the incalculable eloquence of dissent- ing supplications, far behind, if not entirely out of temper with him. Mr. Gladstone's leadership will be liable to the same defect. He is at once too original, and too discursive in the plan of his originality, for a model leader. A Parlia- mentary party is, in this, like a Volunteer army; it wants leading, but it wants to be led only where it is well prepared to go. Few men can persuade or convince like Mr. Glad- stone ; but after all, a convinced regiment, especially if con- vinced against its will and therefore of the same opinion still, is not a very manageable regiment, and the convincing art should be reserved for great occasions and great issues, not lavished on small expedients. But if Mr. Gladstone somewhat resembles Mr. Disraeli in the frequent intellectual surprises to which he subjects his people, he is, at least, far his superior in the definitive direc- tion of his moral sympathies, which are to Mr. Disraeli of the nature of imaginative fictions, whose existence it is poli- tically wise, but exceedingly difficult for him to remember and realize. Mr. Gladstone's moral sympathies are one of the secrets of his great oratorical influence in the House of Com- mons. Pacific, and yet eminently generous in his tone, full of that temper of what we may call Christian expediency, which gives so amiable a sobriety to his political hopes and wishes, Mr. G:adstone is the natural link between the commercial spirit of his country and the higher culture of the age. On every subject on which his tendencies are generally known to .differ from Lord Palmerston's, they differ doubly,—by approxi- mating closer to the enlightened self-interest of the country as Lancashire understands it, and to the Christian feeling of the country, as one or two of the more cultivated Bishops understand it. Take, for example, the Turkish question, the conflict between the Porte and its Christian subjects, Mr. Gladstone differs from our elder statesmen both in that he approaches the views of Mr. Cobden, and in that he approaches the views of the Greek Church. He leans to Greece because the Greeks are an enterprising commercial people, full of life and speculative activity ; and because the Greeks adhere to a faith which has in it elements of authority, thought, and sentiment which command Mr. Gladstone's reverence. Like all the followers of Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Gladstone never thinks without an eye to utilitarian results,—but he has mixed with that attitude of mind a certain refinement and subtlety of religiousness which redeems it from the coldness, if it sometimes overshadows the clearness, of mere statesman.. like prudence.
And it is a part of this same Lancashire temperament that Mr. Gladstone has a certain imaginative tenderness for balance-sheets,—a fond way of dwelling on the national ways and means which proves them to be as familiar to his quiet reveries as they are to his hours of business,—in short, an e'panchement de mar towards budgets, which makes his speeches on these matters models of solicitous art and avenues to the respect of the House of Commons. This requires not only a certain susceptibility of nature towards these subjects, but the boundless fertility of illustration and invention for which Mr. Gladstone is so remarkable. Under no other man's hand could figures sprout and give forth such abundant leaves and blossoms, and not only golden, but rich mellow fruit, as under Mr. Gladstone's. Even Mr. Disraeli, who is both an artist and an inventive artist, never produced such interesting budgets. He had not that soft place in his nature for Accounts which in Mr. Gladstone's finance covers a multitude of sins. His heart was comparatively hardened against the figures.
But though Mr. Gladstone's weakness, so to say, thus catches the weak place in the practical imagination of English.. men, his sympathy with noble culture is as fine as it might be in the most poetical contemner of mere money matters. And here, again, he has a great advantage over his Tory antagonist, who cares for culture as a means, but by no means as an end.
Nothincs° can be more characteristic of their difference in this respect than their opposite tendencies on the Italian question. With Mr. Disraeli, Italy is even as China ; and much less interesting because a less enigmatic and novel field of speculation than America. With Mr. Gladstone, the clas- sical associations of Italian politics, and the nobly patriotic bearing of the Italian nobility, inspire an enthusiasm half literary and half political, but entirely human and reverential. This is the sort of sentiment which links Mr. Gladstone close with the literary scholarship of the age, and helps hira to interpret between it and the strong material yearnings of the commercial spirit. The clear and ever clearer growing definition of his sympathies mike him a far fitter leader of a party than Mr. Disraeli ; for, after all, though the herd of a political flock like to have some acquaintance with their leader's plans and purposes, they care yet more about his tastes and hopes; and while they share the latter strongly, though they may quarrel with his sudden manceuvres, they will but rarely desert him. Perhaps the only deficiency in Mr. Gladstone's sympathies is a certain want of any aggressively national tone,—it may be an inclina- tion to be rather more catholic and cosmopolitan in feeling than any but the commercial party likes, and this much less from undue anxiety for commerce than from a certain breadth and humanity of feeling and aversion to what he thinks the bar- barous expedient of physical force. One of Mr. Gladstone's most eminent characteristics as a Parliamentary leader, which is closely allied both with his great qualifications and some disqualifications for the supreme post, is his wonderful power as a debater—which is, indeed, in some respects, too great. His mind may be said to swarm arguments, all of them, at least, telling, and for the time con- verging on his point; but still of that independent and tena- cious vitality that they do not perish with the occasion, but are apt to return upon their progenitor at inconvenient seasons, when they are not likely to strengthen his position. There is none of that parsimony of logic about Mr. Gladstone—that disposition to use up the same considerations again and again till they are a little threadbare—which, in the hands of a dexterous chief like the late Sir Robert Peel, is one of the most useful of a leader's tendencies. Mr. Glad- stone pays for almost unrivalled momentary Parliamen- tary influence by giving constant and very effective handles to his opponents. But when we have admitted that even as a debater his wonderful fertility is as much a risk as a power, we must add that a greater debater probably never addressed the House of Commons. Just take, for instance, his extraordinary Italian speech of yesterday week, in answer to Mr. C. Bentinck, Lord Henry Lennox, and Mr. Disraeli, of which not a line could have been prepared beforehand, and the greater part must have risen to his lips as he stood reviewing the speech of his immediate predecessor, Mr. Disraeli. Yet it would be impossible to conceive a more skilful and artistic reply,—great not merely in retort, in subtle observation, in using his opponent's concessions for purposes exactly -subversive of his opponent's aims, in playful irony, in that graphic and humorous criticism on the temper of the House, which the House invariably enjoys as the highest tribute to its own importance, and as attaching a certain dramatic worth to the part of the applauding, but otherwise, silent hosts,—great not only in all these acces- sories of the debater's art, but great also in the genuine eloquence of deep principle, sedate conviction, and the impassioned earnestness of the true Liberal faith. Mr. Gladstone's eloquence never rises to the passionate height of Mr. Bright's, but it is far better adapted to the House of Commons. Keen and flexible, without any want of mus- cular vigour, adapting itself to every bend and turn of his adversary's movement with a dexterity that yet shows full proof of robustness, Mr. Gladstone exceeded himself in his answer to Mr. Disraeli. The criticism began with a gentle but powerful shake, that reminded us of the preliminary action taken by a big dog to a weaker assailant, which at length he is induced by continued assaults to notice ;—then, as the leader of opposition seemed to be quivering in his grasp, the Chancellor of the Exchequer turned aside to lecture with graceful irony on Mr. Disraeli's wavering Italian policy : —" I think I so understand him, but I speak with the greatest diffidence, and with many scruples even, as if I were endeavouring to decipher some obscure telegram, or to read some ancient manuscript with characters much defaced." And the repeated alternation of a half satirical patronage with occasionally rough, but strictly Parliamentary, thrusts, which, continued through so great a part of the speech, brought out the noble and manly eloquence of the concluding sentences in that full relief which the highest dialectic ease and self-possession always give to any flash of ardent convic- tion. The speech was one which showed all Mr. Gladstone's highest qualities as a debater, without any of his too prolific ingenuities ; for it was on a subject which did not admit of logical inventiveness, but only of happy political illustration. In some ways even more wonderful than his masterly and statesmanlike speech of Monday week on the Charities, it was an achievement which will fill all true Liberals with pride and hope for the future career,—hitherto deemed so precarious —of their high-minded and versatile leader.
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