TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. GLADSTONE AND THE AMERICANS.
AMONGST the many qualities which we really believe endear Mr. Gladstone to his countrymen, there is one which will account for a good many of his political errors,— namely, that he is certainly not a man of the world, but at heart one of the simplest of the human race. We could not help realising this afresh when we read the account of his reception at Dellis Hill of the American deputation, with the silver statuette of the female figure wearing a star-spangled robe, and holding in one hand an Irish harp, while she rests the other on the pedestal of Mr. Gladstone's bust. Mr. Tracy Tumerelli did his best to get Lord Beaconsfield into a similar scrape in 1879, by asking leave to present him with a trophy of very much the same value,—a golden wreath obtained by the collection of 52,800 pennies from the English working classes. But Lord Beaconsfield was a shrewder man of the world than any of his contemporaries. Instead of accepting the wreath, and expressing his heartfelt gratitude to Mr. Tracy Turnerelli and the English working men who had subscribed the 52,800 pennies, Lord Beaconsfield directed his private secretary to write a sharp note, severely snubbing the whole business, and leaving Mr. Tracy Turnerelli with his golden wreath in the rather awkward situation of not know- ing what to do with it. Indeed, so far as we remember, he ultimately made it the subject of a lecturing tour, in which he descanted on the amount of devil that dwelt in Lord Beaconsfield, and the great advantage to our country of having a statesman at its head to resist Russia who had so much devil in him. Certainly there was more astuteness in that plea for Lord Beaconsfield than had characterised Mr. Tracy Turnereffi's proceedings up to the time at which he urged it. Lord Beaconsfield had devil, and he never showed it with less remorse than when he directed his secretary to write that snubbing little letter to Mr. Tracy Turnerelli in which the gold wreath was curtly and con- temptuously refused. We only wish Mr. Gladstone could have taken a leaf out of Lord Beaconsfield's book last Saturday. The manager of the democratic newspaper who got up this American testimonial to Mr. Gladstone, to which, it is said, 10,689 New Yorkers had subscribed, on an average, we suppose, something between 6d. and ls. apiece, must have felt very much elated by getting so splendid an advertisement for his paper as a special reception at Dottie Hill, and a speech from Mr. Gladstone expressing that surprise and that humility which we all know to be perfectly genuine in him on such occasions, and which we all equally know to be quite misplaced. Whatever faults we may have to find with Mr. Gladstone, we should not certainly feel either surprise or gratitude on his behalf if he had received a testimonial from any country that knows him ten times as valuable, and representing a thousand times as many admirers as this hole-and-corner affair of Mr. Pulitzer's and his friends. The lady in the star-spangled banner, with the Irish harp in her hand, was not a trophy to be grateful for, and we could wish that Mr. Gladstone had found some courteous way of expressing his strong disinclination to receive it. But we cannot expect from Mr. Gladstone the somewhat cynical shrewdness of Lord Beaconsfield. He has fallen a victim to his Mr. Tracy Turnerelli, while Lord Beaconsfield made the great original look ridiculous.
The error is not a very serious one, and will probably rather enhance the esteem in which Mr. Gladstone's earnestness and simplicity are held by the mass of his countrymen ; but we do wish that, as he chose to treat Mr. Pulitzer and his companions seriously, he had taken pains to exclude pointedly from his panegyric on American givers the collectors of the large sums by which years ago the American Irish helped to defeat his own policy, and not only to defeat it, but to spread anxiety and terror among helpless multitudes who had sinned only in being citizens of this Kingdom. It was not right in Mr. Gladstone to dwell on the help received by the poor Irish from America with nothing but gratitude and satisfaction, and to ignore, as he did, that the most effective channel through which it had been collected was the same through which the funds for spreading destruction amongst us were also collected. Mr. Gladstone knows perfectly well that the Irish World has sent more money to the Land League and the National League than any other American agency, and he knows perfectly well that that paper has been a much more effective channel for diffusing bloodthirsty and treasonable counsels against this country than it has been for diffusing what Mr. Gladstone calls "alms." It is not worthy of him to speak as if "alms" of this kind were like the "alms," —if so he desires to call them,—which were sent by us to Chicago to relieve the miseries caused by the great fire, or the " alms " which were sent by us to Paris to relieve the famine after the great siege. We do not feel the least jealousy either of American advice or of American money given in good faith to• our countrymen. But we hold that Mr. Gladstone is doing him- self a great injustice when he pours forth his cordial recognition, of the help given by the United States to the Irish poor, and says. no word of the large sums devoted to the propagation of hatred amongst us, some of which have even been devoted to the advocacy of murder itself. But that is, unfortunately, too often Mr. Gladstone's way. If a party is working for the same end as he has taken up, he ignores altogether the evil it is doing. And if it is working against him, he ignores altogether the good it is doing. From this speech of his on American interference in the Irish Question, one who knew nothing else of the situation would have gathered,--first, that the American interference had all been temperate and dis- interested interference on the side of Irish Home-rule ; and next, that the measure which has just been passed by the House of Commons was the most needless and unneces- sary of insults to a country in which there is absolutely no occasion at all for special criminal legislation. When we com- pare this language with the language used by Mr. Gladstone five years ago, we are simply amazed at his power of obliterating from his memory his own former feelings. He has not now a word of reproach for those ferocious propagandists of assassina- tion whom a few years ago he denounced so justly ; and he cannot now even conceive that the Government who are doing in a much milder form just what he did in a much severer form, are worthy of the smallest consideration or respect. He insists on the misgovernment of Ireland by England for seven hundred years with a gusto which would imply that he himself is utterly free from any responsibility for that misgovernment, and he evidently does not dream that the very fault which we find with his present policy is that he would cap all that mis- government by delivering Ireland over into worse hands than any into which even her cruellest fate has yet delivered her. Then consider only the way in which he attacks Mr. Justice O'Brien for giving his view of the state of Ireland, and attacks the Government for reporting that view, though Mr. Justice O'Brien was, we believe, a non-political Judge of Lord Spencer's own making. We venture to say that if Mr. Justice O'Brien had delivered from the Bench a precisely opposite view of the case, Mr. Gladstone would have quoted it eagerly as the most convincing proof that his own course is this right one. But however near he may be to the time when he took a similar view to the one which he now impugns, he seems to feel as much astonished that any one can now be so blind and witless as to hold it, as if in his whole career he had never once entertained a spark of sympathy with men of the same way of thinking. His speech to Mr. Pulitzer and the other gentlemen from America will certainly not tend to pro- mote the judicious exchange of international counsels. Besides the great mistake of delivering any speech at all on so trivial an occasion, Mr. Gladstone made the still greater mistake that he did not even recognise the extreme difficulty which one nation has in entering successfully into the moral. perplexities of another, and even encouraged the excellent and insignificant persons who brought him the silver trophy he accepted, in the very mistaken impression that they are rather more competent to judge wisely of the political situation here than the majority of our own House of Commons. We will admit that they are quite as competent to judge of it as Mr. Gladstone was to judge that Mr. Jefferson Davis had made a nation in 1862. But then, that was just what he misjudged. Should he not have taken warning by his own error I
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