




                               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