MR. GLADSTONE'S ELASTICITY.
THE speech which Mr. Gladstone delivered to the Council of the Liberal and Radical Union yesterday week was one to excite wonder in every form. It was a marvel of force and happy adaptation to the exigencies of the moment ; it was as full of spring as if it had been delivered by a man of twenty-eight instead of by a man of seventy-eight,—indeed, no man of twenty-eight would have shown the eager and
sanguine spirit which it displayed ;—it was marked by no acrimony towards any one of his former colleagues except perhaps Mr. Chamberlain ; and in its attitude towards Lord Salisbury's Government it was penetrated with the kind of contempt and disgust which is perhaps the most effective of all oratorical moods. But all these aspects of the speech, marvellous as they are, are not, to our minds, one tenth-part as marvellous as the power which Mr. Gladstone showed of, we will not merely say ignoring the position which he himself held five years ago, but of so effectually putting on the new man,—the regenerate man, we have no doubt he thinks it,—that the Mr. Gladstone of former years had for him absolutely ceased to be ; he did not so much as once shift uneasily in his new moral position ; he was not even touched by a compunctions recollection of a different past ; he did not pay his former self the tribute of an explanation, much lees a sigh ; he simply and absolutely forgot the things that were behind with an oblivion so complete and dramatic, that we might fairly believe him to have been utterly possessed by the apostolic exhortation to stretch forward to the things which are before, in order to reach the mark of his high calling. And yet a great part of the speech was devoted to pouring forth the utmost indignation and disgust that the present Government should now dare to take its stand on ground far less exposed to the kind of comment which he lavishes upon it, than was the position which he himself held six and five years ago. Apparently be can hardly believe that any Govern- ment could be so bad as this. But if this is bad, his own was worse, we venture to say much worse, in 1881 and 1882. We do not in the least complain of this wonderful elasticity in Mr. Gladstone's nature, except so far as it certainly renders him unfair to his opponents, for it might sorely occur to him that he is bound not to express all the indignation and horror which he does express, and express very vividly, towards the opinions and actions of men who are mildly adapting to the circumstances of the present time, those views which he so powerfully represented a very few years ago. Is it really true that he feels such contempt and loathing for his own attitude of mind in a comparatively recent past? If not, is it fair to use the mighty magic of speech, as he does, with the bewilder- ing effect that both he himself and every one who listens to him become simply incapable of conceiving that but a short time ago he was deeply committed to the same views to which his opponents are committed now, so that if his old self could confront his new self, that old self would find itself shrinking under the contemptuous scorn which is now poured out so freely on Lord Salisbury and his colleagues, as if they were moral anachronisms,--salt that had lost its savour,— worthy only to be trodden under the foot of men There is something to us exceedingly astonishing, and even alarming, in this velocity of movement on the part of Mr. Gladstone. We could understand him if he said,—as he never does,—that he bewails the great mistakes of former years, that he can make the amplest allowances for men who are where he himself was so short a time ago, that far from condemning and despising them, he only wishes to help them to pass through the process by which he himself has been converted to what he believes to be a better mind. But we confess that though we give him the heartiest credit for perfect sincerity in his brand-new convic- tions, we cannot pretend to understand the amazing vivacity, the happy self-confidence, the dash and certainty of stroke, with which he attacks positions as if they were utterly and monstrously untenable which a very few years ago he was defending as if they were utterly beyond assault. Human nature being what it is, this is a wonderful power, no doubt. But we do think that Mr. Gladstone would be better under- stood, at least by statesmen, if he would condescend to reflect that even from his point of view, it cannot be so very unreasonable, either for Liberals or Conservatives,--especially for Conservatives,—to stand with some tenacity by positions which he has himself held since he completed his three score and ten years, and held with the general sympathy and approval of the Liberal as well as the Conservative Party. The velocity of modern progress has no doubt been immense. But it is a little dizzying when we find that a statesman between his seventieth and eightieth year can move so very rapidly, that he regards those who stand where he stood till long after the former age, with utter scorn and indignation for not having kept up with or outstripped the velocity of his own transit.
Take, for instance, the peroration of the Farringdon Hall speech :—" What we have to ask is, gentlemen, how long are we to be entertained with this melancholy mixture of tragedy and faros in the Government of a great Empire ; how long, while you hold the rest of your Empire by love, are you to hold Ireland at your own doors by force ; how long are you to override in the case of Ireland those principles of regard to constitutional government which you maintain for yourselves and enforce upon others as you beat may, all over the world in every other quarter ; how long are you to be content with the suspension of your own great concerns, the paralysis of your Parliament, and the stoppage of your legislation ; bow long are these things to proceed, and how long, or rather how short, will be the interval before this great people, now rapidly awakening to the consciousness of their duty and their power, shall so proceed at the elections and so proceed in the discharge of every civil duty as to show that they intend to cherish, with a devotion not less wise than fond, the maintenance of that great Empire which they have received from their forefathers, and which every one of you, gentlemen, earnestly and passionately hopes to hand down un- impaired,—aye, strengthened and consolidated,—to many a future ager Might not a moderate man very fairly reply to that impassioned appeal I= Well, I don't know, I am sure, how long it will be before you, Mr. Gladstone, will succeed in bringing the English people round to your present view ; but suppose you only give us as long as it took you to find out that your view of five years ago was a mixture of tragedy and farce,—a time, perhaps, long enough to yield a new arrangement to the rapidly changing kaleidoscope of your Irish policy,—and if you remain in the same mind still, then perhaps we may begin to see consistency enough in it to make it worth our while to take your new view seriously into account. But when we consider that five years ago you had no scruple yourself in enforcing the law in Ireland without all this parade of "love," and spent more time to less effect in attempting to grapple with obstruction than the present Government have spent this Session, it does seem to me premature to pour the utmost scorn upon them for believing that the mode you are now taking to maintain, strengthen, and consolidate this great Empire is a mode which, as you yourself recently thought, might result in decomposing and undoing it.'
Or take this denunciation of the Liberal Unionists for sup- porting the Irish Crimes Act :—" I tell you this in the plainest way. If instead of these seventy Dissentient Liberals, there had been in the House of Commons seventy more Tories, the Tory Government never would have ventured to propose and carry through the proposals that have made the history of the present Session disastrously memorable." Might not a moderate
politician, again, have replied Very likely not ; it is very difficult to fathom the weakness which is come upon the Tory Party since they found themselves dependent on a popular vote ; but it is because the Liberals value liberty so highly, and had learned under your own teaching to value liberty so highly, that even with the knowledge that you have recanted all the opinions you expressed of the wickedness of the social tyranny, established by the National League in Ireland, they have not shrank from taking steps to defend liberty, and to brave the formidable opposition which you have suddenly brought to bear against them.'
Or, again, take the passage in which Mr. Gladstone refers with the utmost delicacy and tenderness to Mr. Parnell's manifesto of 1885, in which the Nationalist leader denounced the Liberal Party as the party which was eager to hand over patriotic Irishmen to prison and to death :—" I make no com- plaint of that opposition, though I might presume to insinuate a doubt whether the great tactical faculty of the leader of that party did good service on that particular occasion." Might not a moderate critic say with great jastice 1—' No, you make no complaint of Mr. Parnell for deliberately and foully slandering you and your party in 1885, because you know well that he had then every reason to believe that you would develop your agrarian policy before you attempted this new and most difficult and dangerous attempt to unsettle a great constitutional arrangement. You had given the House of Commons to understand in the summer of 1885 that the majority in Great Britain would guarantee the just treatment of the minority in Ireland ; and Mr. Parnell, therefore, could never have suspected that you were going suddenly to offer him all he asked. But while you make no complaint of Mr. Parnell, you make great complaints of those who, believing as Mr. Parnell did, that you would pursue steadily the path you struck out in 1881, till you had reached some satis- factory conclusion, continue to cleave loyally to your former views, and especially to your former views of Mr. Parnell's malign influence. You twit hint with a tactical mistake, but you reproach them with a deplorable and almost disgraceful
moral mistake. Is it not a little difficult for ordinary politicians the velocity of whose political advance is not so marvellous as your own, to understand this fine tenderness to Mr. Parnell, these wide-embracing arms which would encircle him and all his party, including even Dr. Tanner ; and at the same time, this severity to all those who stand towards Mr. Parnell and his followers just as you stood six years ago, when you announced to an enthusiastic audience that he had been arrested in his attempt to press on through rapine to disintegration ? These things are too hard for us. The Sessions of 1881 and 1882 were infinitely more " disastrously memorable," if enforcing the law with severity in Ireland be " disastrously memorable," than the Session of 1887. But while your words are now softer than butter to the great tactician whose career you then sternly arrested, you have nothing to say of your former allies except to denounce them for "sacrificing the Session " with " die- honour " to the country, " abridging the liberties of Parlia- ment," " closing the mouths of Members," doing what 4' must make every Englishman blush or weep," imposing "causeless, wanton, mischievous, insidious coercion "on Ireland, and so on to the end of your rich store of political invective. We know that you are in earnest, in hearty earnest, but it is a sort of earnest we find it difficult to understand. If Mr. Parnell deserves such appreciative treatment now, did he not in all probability deserve it six years ago? And if so, and you could not then concede it to him, is it not passing strange that you should be so liberal now in your denunciations of men who are treading in your own footsteps, and within so very short a distance of yourself ?' As we have said dozens of times, we have no suspicion, however faint, of Mr. Gladstone's perfect and absolute sincerity and earnestness. But we do think it would repay him, so far as he can, to reconcile his present to his former self, and to show himself less perfectly self-possessed in that new and regenerate life of hie, even though, as a Home- ruler, be has cast his unregenerate life, when he was bent on enforcing law and protecting liberty, utterly behind him.
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