




                               The Life Of

                         William Ewart Gladstone

                                    By

                               John Morley

                        In Three Volumes--Vol. II.

                               (1859-1880)

                                 Toronto

                   George N. Morang & Company, Limited

                             Copyright, 1903

                         By The Macmillan Company





CONTENTS


Book V. 1859-1868
   Chapter I. The Italian Revolution. (1859-1860)
   Chapter II. The Great Budget. (1860-1861)
   Chapter III. Battle For Economy. (1860-1862)
   Chapter IV. The Spirit Of Gladstonian Finance. (1859-1866)
   Chapter V. American Civil War. (1861-1863)
   Chapter VI. Death Of Friends--Days At Balmoral. (1861-1884)
   Chapter VII. Garibaldi--Denmark. (1864)
   Chapter VIII. Advance In Public Position And Otherwise. (1864)
   Chapter IX. Defeat At Oxford--Death Of Lord Palmerston--Parliamentary
   Leadership. (1865)
   Chapter X. Matters Ecclesiastical. (1864-1868)
   Chapter XI. Popular Estimates. (1868)
   Chapter XII. Letters. (1859-1868)
   Chapter XIII. Reform. (1866)
   Chapter XIV. The Struggle For Household Suffrage. (1867)
   Chapter XV. Opening Of The Irish Campaign. (1868)
   Chapter XVI. Prime Minister. (1868)
Book VI. 1869-1874
   Chapter I. Religious Equality. (1869)
   Chapter II. First Chapter Of An Agrarian Revolution. (1870)
   Chapter III. Education--The Career And The Talents. (1870)
   Chapter IV. The Franco-German War. (1870)
   Chapter V. Neutrality And Annexation. (1870)
   Chapter VI. The Black Sea. (1870-1871)
   Chapter VII. "Day's Work Of A Giant". (1870-1872)
   Chapter VIII. Autumn Of 1871. Decline Of Popularity. (1871-1872)
   Chapter IX. Washington And Geneva. (1870-1872)
   Chapter X. As Head Of A Cabinet. (1868-1874)
   Chapter XI. Catholic Country And Protestant Parliament. (1873)
   Chapter XII. The Crisis. (1873)
   Chapter XIII. Last Days Of The Ministry. (1873)
   Chapter XIV. The Dissolution. (1874)
Book VII. 1874-1880
   Chapter I. Retirement From Leadership. (1874-1875)
   Chapter II. Vaticanism. (1874-1875)
   Chapter III. The Octagon.
   Chapter IV. Eastern Question Once More. (1876-1877)
   Chapter V. A Tumultuous Year. (1878)
   Chapter VI. Midlothian. (1879)
   Chapter VII. The Eve Of The Battle. (1879)
   Chapter VIII. The Fall Of Lord Beaconsfield. (1880)
   Chapter IX. The Second Ministry. (1880)
Appendix
Footnotes






                  [Frontispiece: Portrait of Gladstone.]

 William Ewart Gladstone; from a painting by Sir J. E. Millais, P.R.A, in
                          the National Gallery.





BOOK V. 1859-1868




Chapter I. The Italian Revolution. (1859-1860)


    Rarely, if ever, in the course of our history has there been such
    a mixture of high considerations, legislative, military,
    commercial, foreign, and constitutional, each for the most part
    traversing the rest, and all capable of exercising a vital
    influence on public policy, as in the long and complicated session
    of 1860. The commercial treaty first struck the keynote of the
    year; and the most deeply marked and peculiar feature of the year
    was the silent conflict between the motives and provisions of the
    treaty on the one hand, and the excitement and exasperation of
    military sentiment on the other.--GLADSTONE.(1)


This description extends in truth much beyond the session of a given year
to the whole existence of the new cabinet, and through a highly important
period in Mr. Gladstone's career. More than that, it directly links our
biographic story to a series of events that created kingdoms, awoke
nations, and re-made the map of Europe. The opening of this long and
complex episode was the Italian revolution. Writing to Sir John Acton in
1864 Mr. Gladstone said to him of the budget of 1860, "When viewed as a
whole, it is one of the few cases in which my fortunes as an individual
have been closely associated with matters of a public and even an historic
interest." I will venture to recall in outline to the reader's memory the
ampler background of this striking epoch in Mr. Gladstone's public life.
The old principles of the European state-system, and the old principles
that inspired the vast contentions of ages, lingered but they seemed to
have grown decrepit. Divine right of kings, providential pre-eminence of
dynasties, balance of power, sovereign independence of the papacy,--these
and the other accredited catchwords of history were giving place to the
vague, indefinable, shifting, but most potent and inspiring doctrine of
Nationality. On no statesman of this time did that fiery doctrine with all
its tributaries gain more commanding hold than on Mr. Gladstone. "Of the
various and important incidents," he writes in a memorandum, dated
Braemar, July 16, 1892, "which associated me almost unawares with foreign
affairs in Greece (1850), in the Neapolitan kingdom (1851), and in the
Balkan peninsula and the Turkish empire (1853), I will only say that they
all contributed to forward the action of those home causes more continuous
in their operation, which, without in any way effacing my old sense of
reverence for the past, determined for me my place in the present and my
direction towards the future."



I


(M1) At the opening of the seventh decade of the century--ten years of such
moment for our western world--the relations of the European states with one
another had fallen into chaos. The perilous distractions of 1859-62 were
the prelude to conflicts that after strange and mighty events at Sadowa,
Venice, Rome, Sedan, Versailles, came to their close in 1871. The first
breach in the ramparts of European order set up by the kings after
Waterloo, was the independence of Greece in 1829. Then followed the
transformation of the power of the Turk over Roumanians and Serbs from
despotism to suzerainty. In 1830 Paris overthrew monarchy by divine right;
Belgium cut herself asunder from the supremacy of the Dutch; then Italians
and Poles strove hard but in vain to shake off the yoke of Austria and of
Russia. In 1848 revolts of race against alien dominion broke out afresh in
Italy and Hungary. The rise of the French empire, bringing with it the
principle or idiosyncrasy of its new ruler, carried this movement of race
into its full ascendant. Treaties were confronted by the doctrine of
Nationality. What called itself Order quaked before something that for
lack of a better name was called the Revolution. Reason of State was
eclipsed by the Rights of Peoples. Such was the spirit of the new time.

The end of the Crimean war and the peace of Paris brought a temporary and
superficial repose. The French ruler, by strange irony at once the sabre
of Revolution and the trumpet of Order, made a beginning in urging the
constitution of a Roumanian nationality, by uniting the two Danubian
principalities in a single quasi-independent state. This was obviously a
further step towards that partition of Turkey which the Crimean war had
been waged to prevent. Austria for reasons of her own objected, and
England, still in her Turcophil humour, went with Austria against France
for keeping the two provinces, although in fiscal and military union,
politically divided. According to the fashion of that time--called a comedy
by some, a homage to the democratic evangel by others--a popular vote was
taken. Its result was ingeniously falsified by the sultan (whose ability
to speak French was one of the odd reasons why Lord Palmerston was
sanguine about Turkish civilisation); western diplomacy insisted that the
question of union should be put afresh. Mr. Gladstone, not then in office,
wrote to Lord Aberdeen (Sept. 10, 1857):--


    The course taken about the Principalities has grieved me. I do not
    mean so much this or that measure, as the principle on which it is
    to rest. I thought we made war in order to keep Russia out, and
    then suffer life, if it would, to take the place of death. But it
    now seems to be all but avowed, that the fear of danger, not to
    Europe, but to Islam,--and Islam not from Russia, but from the
    Christians of Turkey,--is to be a ground for stinting their
    liberties.


In 1858 (May 4) he urged the Derby government to support the declared wish
of the people of Wallachia and Moldavia, and to fulfil the pledges made at
Paris in 1856. "Surely the best resistance to be offered to Russia," he
said, "is by the strength and freedom of those countries that will have to
resist her. You want to place a living barrier between Russia and Turkey.
_There is no barrier like the breast of freemen._" The union of the
Principalities would raise up antagonists to the ambitions of Russia more
powerful than any that could be bought with money. The motion was
supported by Lord John Russell and Lord Robert Cecil, but Disraeli and
Palmerston joined in opposing it, and it was rejected by a large majority.
Mr. Gladstone wrote in his diary: "May 4.--H. of C.--Made my motion on the
Principalities. Lost by 292:114; and with it goes another broken promise
to a people." So soon did the illusions and deceptions of the Crimean war
creep forth.

In no long time (1858) Roumania was created into a virtually independent
state. Meanwhile, much against Napoleon's wish and policy, these
proceedings chilled the alliance between France and England. Other powers
grew more and more uneasy, turning restlessly from side to side, like sick
men on their beds. The object of Russia ever since the peace had been,
first to break down the intimacy between England and France, by flattering
the ambition and enthusiasm of the French Emperor; next to wreak her
vengeance on Austria for offences during the Crimean war, still pronounced
unpardonable. Austria, in turn, was far too slow for a moving age; she
entrenched herself behind forms with too little heed to substance; and
neighbours mistook her dulness for dishonesty. For the diplomatic air was
thick and dark with suspicion. The rivalry of France and Austria in Italy
was the oldest of European stories, and for that matter the
Lombardo-Venetian province was a possession of material value to Austria,
for while only containing one-eighth of her population, it contributed
one-fourth of her revenue.

(M2) The central figure upon the European stage throughout the time on
which we are now about to enter was the ruler of France. The Crimean war
appeared to have strengthened his dynasty at home, while faith in the
depth of his political designs and in the grandeur of his military power
had secured him predominance abroad. Europe hung upon his words; a
sentence to an ambassador at a public audience on new year's day, a
paragraph in a speech at the opening of his parliament of puppets, a
pamphlet supposed to be inspired, was enough to shake Vienna, Turin,
London, the Vatican, with emotions pitched in every key. Yet the mind of
this imposing and mysterious potentate was the shadowy home of vagrant
ideals and fugitive chimeras. It was said by one who knew him well,
_Scratch the emperor and you will find the political refugee_. You will
find, that is to say, the man of fluctuating hope without firm calculation
of fact, the man of half-shaped end with no sure eye to means. The sphinx
in our modern politics is usually something of a charlatan, and in time
the spite of fortune brought this mock Napoleon into fatal conflict with
the supple, positive, practical genius of Italy in the person of one of
the hardiest representatives of this genius that Italy ever had; just as
ten years later the same nemesis brought him into collision with the
stern, rough genius of the north in the person of Count Bismarck.
Meanwhile the sovereigns of central and northern Europe had interviews at
Stuttgart, at Teplitz, at Warsaw. It was at Warsaw that the rulers of
Austria and Prussia met the Czar at the end of 1860,--Poland quivering as
she saw the three crowned pirates choose the capital city of their victim
for a rendezvous. Russia declined to join what would have been a coalition
against France, and the pope described the conference of Warsaw as three
sovereigns assembling to hear one of them communicate to the other two the
orders of the Emperor of the French. The French empire was at its zenith.
Thiers said that the greatest compensation to a Frenchman for being
nothing in his own country, was the sight of that country filling its
right place in the world.

The reader will remember that at Turin on his way home from the Ionian
Islands in the spring of 1859, Mr. Gladstone saw the statesman who was
destined to make Italy. Sir James Hudson, our ambassador at the court of
Piedmont, had sounded Cavour as to his disposition to receive the
returning traveller. Cavour replied, "I hope you will do all you can to
bring such a proceeding about. I set the highest value on the visit of a
statesman so distinguished and such a friend of Italy as Mr. Gladstone."
In conveying this message to Mr. Gladstone (Feb. 7, 1859), Hudson adds, "I
can only say I think your counsels may be very useful to this government,
and that I look to your coming here as a means possibly of composing
differences, which may, if not handled by some such calm unprejudiced
statesman as yourself, lead to very serious disturbances in the European
body politic." Mr. Gladstone dined at Cavour's table at the foreign
office, where, among other things, he had the satisfaction of hearing his
host speak of Hudson as _quel uomo italianissimo_. Ministers, the
president of the chamber, and other distinguished persons were present,
and Cavour was well pleased to have the chance of freely opening his
position and policy to "one of the sincerest and most important friends
that Italy had."(2)

Among Cavour's difficulties at this most critical moment was the attitude
of England. The government of Lord Derby, true to the Austrian sympathies
of his party, and the German sympathies of the court, accused Italy of
endangering the peace of Europe. "No," said Cavour, "it is the statesmen,
the diplomatists, the writers of England, who are responsible for the
troubled situation of Italy; for is it not they who have worked for years
to kindle political passion in our peninsula, and is it not England that
has encouraged Sardinia to oppose the propaganda of moral influences to
the illegitimate predominance of Austria in Italy?" To Mr. Gladstone, who
had seen the Austrian forces in Venetia and in Lombardy, he said, "You
behold for yourself, that it is Austria who menaces us; here we are
tranquil; the country is calm; we will do our duty; England is wrong in
identifying peace with the continuance of Austrian domination." Two or
three days later the Piedmontese minister made one of those momentous
visits to Paris that forced a will less steadfast than his own.

The French Emperor in his dealings with Cavour had entangled himself, in
Mr. Gladstone's phrase, with "a stronger and better informed intellect
than his own." "Two men," said Guizot, "at this moment divide the
attention of Europe, the Emperor Napoleon and Count Cavour. The match has
begun. I back Count Cavour." The game was long and subtly played. It was
difficult for the ruler who had risen to power by bloodstained usurpation
and the perfidious ruin of a constitution, to keep in step with a
statesman, the inspiring purpose of whose life was the deliverance of his
country by the magic of freedom. Yet Napoleon was an organ of European
revolution in a double sense. He proclaimed the doctrine of nationality,
and paid decorous homage to the principle of appeal to the popular voice.
In time England appeared upon the scene, and by his flexible management of
the two western powers, England and France, Cavour executed the most
striking political transformation in the history of contemporary Europe.
It brought, however, as Mr. Gladstone speedily found, much trouble into
the relations of the two western powers with one another.

The overthrow of the Derby government and the accession of the whigs
exactly coincided in time with the struggle between Austria and the
Franco-Sardinian allies on the bloody fields of Magenta and Solferino. A
few days after Mr. Gladstone took office, the French and Austrian emperors
and King Victor Emmanuel signed those preliminaries of Villafranca (July
11, 1859), which summarily ended an inconclusive war by the union of
Lombardy to the Piedmontese kingdom, and the proposed erection of an
Italian federation over which it was hoped that the pope might preside,
and of which Venetia, still remaining Austrian, should be a member. The
scheme was intrinsically futile, but it served its turn. The Emperor of
the French was driven to peace by mixed motives. The carnage of Solferino
appalled or unnerved him; he had revealed to his soldiers and to France
that their ruler had none of the genius of a great commander; the clerical
party at home fiercely assailed the prolongation of a war that must put
the pope in peril; the case of Poland, the case of Hungary, might almost
any day be kindled into general conflag