1809-1898.
THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE PEOPLE.
It may seem presumptuous for me at the present time to write on Gladstone, whose public life presents so many sides, concerning which there is anything but unanimity of opinion,--a man still in full life, and likely to remain so for years to come;[4] a giant, so strong intellectually and physically as to exercise, without office, a prodigious influence in national affairs by the sole force of genius and character combined. But how can I present the statesmen of the nineteenth century without including him,--the Nestor among political personages, who for forty years has taken an important part in the government of England?
This remarkable man, like Canning, Peel, and Macaulay, was precocious in his attainments at school and college,--especially at Oxford, which has produced more than her share of the great men who have controlled thought and action in England during the period since 1820. But precocity is not always the presage of future greatness. There are more remarkable boys than remarkable men. In England, college honors may have more influence in advancing the fortunes of a young man than in this country; but I seldom have known valedictorians who have come up to popular expectations; and most of them, though always respectable, have remained in comparative obscurity.
Like the statesmen to whom I have alluded, Gladstone sprang from the middle ranks, although his father, a princely Liverpool merchant, of Scotch descent, became a baronet by force of his wealth, character, and influence. Seeing the extraordinary talents of his third son,--William Ewart,--Sir John Gladstone spared neither pains nor money on his education, sending him to Eton in 1821, at the age of twelve, where he remained till 1827, learning chiefly Latin and Greek. Here he was the companion and friend of many men who afterward became powerful forces in English life,--political, literary, and ecclesiastical. At the age of seventeen we find him writing letters to Arthur Hallam on politics and literature: and his old schoolfellows testify to his great influence among them for purity, humanity, and nobility of character, while he was noted for his aptness in letters and skill in debate. In 1827 the boy was intrusted to the care of Dr. Turner,--afterward bishop of Calcutta,--under whom he learned something besides Latin and Greek, perhaps indirectly, in the way of ethics and theology, and other things which go to the formation of character. At the age of twenty he entered Christ Church at Oxford--the most aristocratic of colleges--with more attainments than most scholars reach at thirty, and was graduated in 1831 "double-first class," distinguished not only for his scholarship but for his power of debate in the Union Society; throwing in his lot with Tories and High Churchmen, who, as he afterward confesses, "did not set a due value on the imperishable and inestimable principles of human liberty." With strong religious tendencies and convictions, he contemplated taking orders in the Church; but his father saw things differently,--and thus, with academic prejudices which most graduates have to unlearn, he went abroad in 1832 to complete the education of an English gentleman, spending most of his time in Italy and Sicily, those eternally interesting countries to the scholar and the artist, whose wonders can scarcely be exaggerated,--affording a perpetual charm and study if one can ignore popular degradation, superstition, unthrift, and indifference to material and moral progress. He who enjoys Italy must live in the past, or in the realm of art, or in the sanctuaries where priests hide themselves from the light of what is most valuable in civilization and most ennobling in human consciousness.
Mr. Gladstone returned to England in the most interesting and exciting period of her political history since the days of Cromwell,--soon after the great Reform Bill had been passed, which changed the principle of representation in Parliament, and opened the way for other necessary reforms. His personal éclat and his powerful friends gave him an almost immediate entrance into the House of Commons as member for Newark. The electors knew but little about him; they only knew that he was supported by the Duke of Newcastle and preponderating Tory interests, and were carried away by his youthful eloquence--those silvery tones which nature gave--and that strange fascination which comes from magnetic powers. The ancients said that the poet is born and the orator is made. It appears to me that a man stands but little chance of oratorical triumphs who is not gifted by nature with a musical voice and a sympathetic electrical force which no effort can acquire.
On the 29th of January, 1833, at the age of twenty-four, Gladstone entered upon his memorable parliamentary career, during the ministry of Lord Grey; and his maiden speech-- fluent, modest, and earnest--was in the course of the debate on the proposed abolition of slavery in the British colonies. It was in reply to an attack made upon the management of his father's estates in the treatment of slaves in Demerara. He deprecated cruelty and slavery alike, but maintained that emancipation should be gradual and after due preparation; and, insisting also that slaves were private property, he demanded that the interests of planters should be duly regarded if emancipation should take place. This was in accordance with justice as viewed by enlightened Englishmen generally. Negro emancipation was soon after decreed. All negroes born after August 1,1834, as well as those then six years of age were to be free; and the remainder were, after a kind of apprenticeship of six years, to be set at liberty. The sum of £20,000,000 was provided by law as a compensation to the slave-owners,--one of the noblest acts