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A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.




                                   A
                       CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

                                  BY

                    THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.

      "Blame not, before thou hast examined the truth: understand
      first, and then rebuke."--ECCLESIASTICUS, ch. ii.

                                LONDON:

                    JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

                                 1868.

             _The right of Translation is reserved._

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, DUKE STREET, STAMFORD
STREET, AND CHARING CROSS.




INTRODUCTION.


At a time when the Established Church of Ireland is on her trial, it is
not unfair that her assailants should be placed upon their trial too:
most of all, if they have at one time been her sanguine defenders.

But if not the matter of the indictment against them, at any rate that
of their defence, should be kept apart, as far as they are concerned,
from the public controversy, that it may not darken or perplex the
greater issue.

It is in the character of the author of a book called 'The State in
its Relations with the Church,' that I offer these pages to those who
may feel a disposition to examine them. They were written at the date
attached to them; but their publication has been delayed until after
the stress of the General Election.




A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.


Autobiography is commonly interesting; but there can, I suppose, be
little doubt that, as a general rule, it should be posthumous. The
close of an active career supplies an obvious exception: for this
resembles the gentle death which, according to ancient fable, was
rather imparted than inflicted by the tender arrows of Apollo and of
Artemis. I have asked myself many times, during the present year,
whether peculiar combinations of circumstance might not also afford a
warrant at times for departure from the general rule, so far as some
special passage of life is concerned; and whether I was not myself now
placed in one of those special combinations.

The motives, which incline me to answer these questions in the
affirmative, are mainly two. First, that the great and glaring
change in my course of action with respect to the Established Church
of Ireland is not the mere eccentricity, or even perversion, of an
individual mind, but connects itself with silent changes, which are
advancing in the very bed and basis of modern society. Secondly, that
the progress of a great cause, signal as it has been and is, appears
liable nevertheless to suffer in point of credit, if not of energy and
rapidity, from the real or supposed delinquencies of a person, with
whose name for the moment it happens to be specially associated.

One thing is clear: that if I am warranted in treating my own case as
an excepted case, I am bound so to treat it. It is only with a view to
the promotion of some general interest, that the public can becomingly
be invited to hear more, especially in personal history, about an
individual, of whom they already hear too much. But if it be for the
general interest to relieve 'an enterprise of pith and moment' from the
odium of baseness, and from the lighter reproach of precipitancy, I
must make the attempt; though the obtrusion of the first person, and of
all that it carries in its train, must be irksome alike to the reader
and the writer.

So far, indeed, as my observation has gone, the Liberal party of this
country have stood fire unflinchingly under the heavy vollies which
have been fired into its camp with ammunition that had been drawn
from depositories full only with matter personal to myself. And, with
the confidence they entertain in the justice and wisdom of the policy
they recommend, it would have been weak and childish to act otherwise.
Still, I should be glad to give them the means of knowing that the case
may not after all be so scandalous as they are told. In the year 1827,
if I remember right, when Mr. Canning had just become Prime Minister,
an effort was made to