Chapter I: Retirement From Leadership. (1874-1875)

“ἐγὼ μὲν, ὧναξ, πρεσβύτερός τε ἤδη εἰμὶ καὶ βαρὺς ἀείρεσθαι; σὺ δέ
τινα τῶνδε τῶν νεωτέρων κέλευε ταῦτα ποιέειν.”—HERODOTUS iv. 150.

“I am too old, O king, and slow to stir; so bid thou one of the
younger men here do these things.”

A member of the great government of 1868, in a letter to one of his family, gave an account of the final meeting of the cabinet:—

_Feb. 17, 1874._—I doubt—he says—whether I ever passed a more
eventful evening than yesterday. The whole cabinet was assembled.
We resolved after full discussion of pros and cons, and some
slight difference of opinion, to resign at once. After which came
the startling announcement that Gladstone would no longer retain
the leadership of the liberal party, nor resume it, unless the
party had settled its differences. He will not expose himself to
the insults and outrages of 1866-8, and he has a keen sense of the
disloyalty of the party during the last three years. He will sit
as a private member and occasionally speak for himself, but he
will not attend the House regularly, nor assume any one of the
functions of leader. He does this not from anger, but because he
says that it is absolutely necessary to party action to learn that
all the duties and responsibilities do not rest on the leaders,
but that followers have their obligations too. As a consequence of
this Cardwell retires to the House of Lords. He will not take the
leadership, nor will he consent to serve under any one but
Gladstone. He is too old, he says. Lowe protests against the
anarchical experiment, and talks of Hartington as leader. As
neither Lowe, nor Bright, nor Goschen, nor Forster is in a
position to act as leader, it may come to this, so that the
liberal front benches of the two Houses will be entirely
remodelled.(309)

Here is Mr. Gladstone’s own account, written twenty-three years later, and confirmed by all other accessible papers of the moment:—

I was most anxious to make the retirement of the ministry the
occasion of my own. I had served for more than forty years. My
age—65—was greater than that of Sir Robert Peel at his retirement
in 1846, or at his death in 1850, and was much beyond that at
which most of the leading commoners of the century had terminated
their political career, together with their natural life. I felt
myself to be in some measure out of touch with some of the
tendencies of the liberal party, especially in religious matters.
Sir A. Clark, whom I consulted, would give me on medical grounds
no encouragement whatever. But I deeply desired an interval
between parliament and the grave. In spite of the solicitations of
my friends I persisted. For 1874 there was a sort of compromise
“without prejudice.” As having a title to some rest I was not a
very regular attendant, but did not formally abdicate.

(M158) He found specific reasons for withdrawal in the state of the party (Feb. 12):—

1. The absence of any great positive aim (the late plan [budget]
having failed) for which to co-operate. 2. The difficulty of
establishing united and vigorous action in the liberal party for
the purposes of economy. 3. The unlikelihood of arriving at any
present agreement respecting education.

In another fragment of the same date, he says:—

I do not forget that I am in debt to the party generally for
kindness, indulgence, and confidence, much beyond what I have
deserved. Deeming myself unable to hold it together from my
present position in a manner worthy of it, I see how unlikely it
is that I should hereafter be able to give any material aid in the
adjustment of its difficulties. Yet if such aid should at any time
be generally desired with a view to arresting some great evil or
procuring for the nation some great good, my willingness to enter
into counsel for the occasion would follow from all I have said.
But always with the understanding that as between section and
section I could not become a partisan, and that such interference
even in the case of its proving useful would entail no obligation
whatever on those accepting it, and carry with it no disturbance
of any arrangement subsisting at the time.

The situation proved, as Lowe had foreseen, an anarchic experiment. Mr. Gladstone went up to London for the session, and followed his ordinary social course:—

_March 9, 1874._—Off at 4.45 to Windsor for the fête. We dined at
St. George’s Hall. I was presented to the Duchess of C. by the
Queen, and had a few kind words from H.M. 11.—Archbishop Manning,
9-11. It is kind in him to come, but most of it is rather hollow
work, limited as we are. 16.—Dined at Marlborough House. A civil
talk with Disraeli. 20.—Finished _Vivian Grey_. The first quarter
extremely clever, the rest trash.

_May 15._—Emperor of Russia’s reception at 3.15. He thanked me for
my conduct to Russia while I was minister. I assured his Majesty I
had watched with profound interest the transactions of his reign,
and the great benefits he had conferred upon his people. He hoped
the relations of the two countries would always be good.... Dined
at Marlborough House. Stafford House ball afterwards. The emperor
complained of the burden and late hours of evening entertainments.
Princess of Wales so nice about her picture. D[israeli] complained
of my absence, said they could not get on without me. 20.—Dined at
the F.O. to meet the emperor. It was very kind of Derby. Much work
at Hawarden in arranging books and papers.

The House of Commons is hardly attractive to an irregular and perfunctory attendant; and Mr. Gladstone’s thoughts all turned to other fields. To Mrs. Gladstone he wrote early in April:—

The anti-parliamentary reaction has been stronger with me even
than I anticipated. I am as far as possible from feeling the want
of the House of Commons. I could cheerfully go there to do a work;
but I hope and pray to be as little there as possible, except for
such an aim. In London I think we were too much hustled to speak
leisurely or effectually of the future. It will open for us by
degrees. I shall be glad when the matter of money, after all a
secondary one, is disentangled, but chiefly because it seems to
put pressure upon you. I spoke to Stephen about these matters on
Saturday; he was kind, reasonable, and in all ways as satisfactory
as possible. There is one thing I should like you to understand
clearly as to my view of things, for it is an essential part of
that view. I am convinced that the welfare of mankind does not now
depend on the state or the world of politics; the real battle is
being fought in the world of thought, where a deadly attack is
made with great tenacity of purpose and over a wide field, upon
the greatest treasure of mankind, the belief in God and the gospel
of Christ.

In June Sir Stephen Glynne died,—“a dark, dark day.” “My brother-in-law,” wrote Mr. Gladstone at a later date, “was a man of singular refinement and as remarkable modesty. His culture was high and his character one of deep interest. His memory was on the whole decidedly the most remarkable known to me of the generation and country. His life, however, was retired and unobtrusive; but he sat in parliament, I think, for about fifteen years, and was lord-lieutenant of his county.”

I thank you much—Mr. Gladstone said to the Duke of Argyll—for your
kind note. Your sympathy and that of the duchess are ever ready.
But even you can hardly tell how it is on this occasion needed and
warranted. My wife has lost the last member of a family united by
bonds of the rarest tenderness, the last representative of his
line, the best of brothers, who had ever drawn closer to her as
the little rank was thinned. As for me, no one can know what our
personal relations were, without knowing the interior details of a
long family history, and efforts and struggles in common carried
on through a long series of years, which riveted into the closest
union our original affection. He was a very rare man, but we
grieve not for him; he sleeps the sleep of the just. The event is
a great one also to the outward frame of our life here.(310)

(M159) In the same letter he says it is most painful to him to be dragged into ecclesiastical turmoil, as for example by the Scotch patronage bill, which he considers precipitate, unwise, and daring, or the bill directed against the endowed schools commissioners, of whom his brother-in-law, Lord Lyttelton, was one. In the last case he acted as a leader of an organised party, but in the more important instance of a bill devised, as Mr. Disraeli said, to put down ritualism, his dissent from most of those around him fulfilled all the anticipations that had pointed to retirement. The House was heartily in favour of the bill, and what is called the country earnestly supported it, though in the cabinet itself at least four ministers were strenuously hostile. Mr. Gladstone writes to his wife a trenchant account of his vigorous dealing with a prominent colleague who had rashly ventured to mark him for assault. He sent word to the two archbishops that if they carried a certain amendment he should hold himself “altogether discharged from maintaining any longer the establishment of the church.” He wrote to Lord Harrowby when the recess came:—

I think, or rather I am convinced, that the effect _either_ of one
or two more ecclesiastical sessions of parliament such as the
last, or of any prolonged series of contentious proceedings under
the recent Act, upon subjects of widespread interest, will be to
disestablish the church. I do not feel the dread of
disestablishment which you may probably entertain: but I desire
and seek so long as standing ground remains, to avert, not to
precipitate it.

To another correspondent—

Individually I have serious doubts whether the whole of the penal
proceedings taken in this country with respect to church matters
from the day of Dr. Hampden downwards, have not done considerably
more harm than good. There is no doubt at all that all the evils,
of whatever kind, at which they were aimed, exist at this moment
among us in a far more aggravated shape than when they began....
My object and desire has ever been and still is, to keep the
church of England together, both as a church and as an
establishment. As a church, I believe she is strong enough, by
virtue of the prayer-book, to hold together under all
circumstances; but as an establishment, in my opinion, she is not
strong enough to bear either serious secession or prolonged
parliamentary agitation.

Finally, in a letter dated from Whittinghame (Nov. 17)—

There are already too many causes of demoralisation operating upon
the House of Commons. If it is also to become a debased copy of an
ecclesiastical council, all the worst men and worst qualities of
the worst men will come to the front, and the place will become
intolerable.

Even any member of parliament who shares none of Mr. Gladstone’s theology, may sympathise to the full with his deep disgust at theologic and ecclesiastical discussions as conducted in that secular air. We can easily understand how detestable he found it, and how those discussions fortified his sense of estrangement from the ruling sentiments of the parliamentary party of which he was still the titular leader.

Of course the whigs, always for keeping a parliamentary church in its proper place, disliked his line. Liberals like Thirlwall read his speeches “with great pain and suspicion,” and declared their confidence to be shaken. Hardly any section was completely satisfied. His mind in the autumn and winter of 1874 was absorbed, as we shall see within a few pages, in an assault upon the decrees of the Vatican Council of 1870. This assault, as he told Lord Granville (Dec. 7, 1874), while tending “to hearten” the party generally, was against his resumption of formal leadership, because it widened the breach with the Irishmen in the House of Commons. Apart from this there were many questions, each with a group of adherents to a special view, but incapable of being pursued by common and united action. He ran through the list in writing to Lord Granville. It has historic interest:—

1. Extension of the suffrage, with redistribution of seats abreast
or in the rear. 2. Disestablishment in Scotland, England. 3. Land
laws. 4. Retrenchment. 5. Colonial policy, territorial extension
of the empire. 6. Reform of local government taxation. 7. Secular
education. 8. Undenominational education. 9. Irish affairs. On no
one of these is there known to exist a plan desired by the entire
party, or by any clear and decisive majority of it.

On the whole, he was persuaded that neither the party generally nor the country desired another period of active reforms, even if he were fit to conduct them. Besides this he confessed his “apprehension that differences would spring up, and great shrinking from any breach with the party, and a determination, often expressed, never, if he could help it, to lead one branch of it against another.” In many forms he carried Lord Granville with him round the circle of his arguments. He once sent his points on half-a-dozen scraps of paper. Granville playfully replied, “I should like to treat them as old Lord Bessborough used to treat his playing-cards when luck was adverse—tear them up into small bits and toss them in the fire.” Nothing shook him, not even Mrs. Gladstone’s misgivings. To her he wrote from Carlton House Terrace on the eve of the session of 1875:—

Now for the grave matter about the leadership. I have had much
conversation with Granville and Cardwell, and I am going to see
Hartington, also Goschen, to-morrow. My letter is rewritten and
improved, but I am obliged to stand to my conclusion, for many
reasons. Among them the church reason is one of the most serious,
and the other the undefined and prolonged character of the service
if now undertaken. This, while arguing and deprecating, they admit
I think to a great extent. Our old colleagues are inclined to come
up on Thursday if they can, and this will be rather to hear than
to debate. Hartington will succeed. I am indeed sorry that you and
I have not been able to take the same view of this important
subject, but you know that I am acting on convictions very long
entertained, and will I am sure believe that I have probed myself
deeply, and used all the means in my power to get at a right
conclusion. Nay, I think you will be more reconciled, when I tell
you that Granville did not really see his way either to a nominal
leadership, or to making any arrangement by which I could after a
short time with some certainty have escaped. I saw Clark last
night and this morning; he gives an excellent account of me and
makes it impossible for me to plead health as my reason.

The drama went rapidly forward:—

_Jan. 12._—I find that the agreement made yesterday that I should
meet my former colleagues on Monday will require me to remain
until this day, though after a pretty busy morning the pressure is
less. I have, however, to preside in the evening at the meeting of
the Metaphysical Society, and to listen, though I hope nothing
more, to a tough discussion. Manning, I am sorry to say, will be
there. His pamphlet is at length going to press, and will extend
he says to 150 pages. Newman is not out yet.

_11 Carlton House Terrace, Jan. 14, ’75._—This great affair is
nearly arranged. My old colleagues all submit under protest; and I
shall be free. An article in the _Times_ this morning is
undisguisedly aimed at getting rid of me; but it does not express
any of their feelings. We have had a morning at Granville’s;
Halifax, Granville, Cardwell, Hartington, Aberdare, Forster,
Carlingford, Stansfeld, Selborne, Goschen, Lowe, Kimberley,—in
short all, I think, except Argyll and Bright. There was argument
and exhortation, and much kindness. My letter to Granville will be
accompanied by a short reply from him expressing difference of
opinion and regret. They are afraid of being blamed by the party
if they seem to show indifference.

The Queen thanked Mr. Gladstone for communicating to her his resolution of retiring from the more active duties of parliamentary life. She was not entirely unprepared for it after what he told her himself last year. “She knows that his zeal and untiring energy have always been exerted with the desire of advancing the welfare of the nation and maintaining the honour of the crown, and she thanks him for his loyal assurances of support on all occasions when it may become necessary.”

(M160) The Duke of Argyll wrote “sincerely to congratulate” him upon his withdrawal. Bright on the other hand (Jan. 17) said he could not applaud, yet he would not blame: Mr. Gladstone’s course seemed so unfortunate if not disastrous to the great public interests committed to him:—

For myself, says Bright, if I could have foreseen either the
result of the election of last year, or your retirement from the
conduct of the party, I should certainly have withdrawn from
parliament, where now I seem to have quite as little of duty or of
a mission as you have. The front opposition bench is full of
discord, and when you are not there full of jealousy, and I find
myself without any particular attraction to any particular part of
the House. However, I will not complain; some door of escape may
open for me, and I can become a spectator as you are proposing to
be.

I hope on some occasion I may have the chance of seeing you when
you come to town. I have had so much pleasure in your friendship,
and have gained so much from it, that I would fain hope it need
not cease now, when our association will necessarily be less
frequent than it has been of late years. Whether you come back to
the political field or turn wholly to study and to literature, I
am sure you will be usefully employed, and I hope that nothing but
blessing may rest upon all your labours.

The feeling among liberals in the country was of deep dismay. Some of the whigs doubtless found solace in the anticipation that a new middle party might be formed, with “a recovery of the old liberal position demolished for the time by John Mill, Gladstone, and Cobden.”(311) But this was limited to a narrow circle. “All sunshine is gone out of politics,” was a general phrase. The news was compared by one correspondent to Gelon’s message to the Greeks, that the spring was taken out of their year.(312)

An organ of the stiff nonconformists said,(313) “Against his government we felt that we had a great grievance; for himself, the nonconformists of this country have long cherished a loyalty more fervent, we are inclined to imagine, than that with which he has been regarded by any other section of the community. He, beyond all other modern statesmen, with perhaps here and there a doubtful exception, gave us the impression of a man who regarded politics as a part of Christian duty.” And the same writers most truly added, “We do not know what the English people have done for Mr. Gladstone that can be compared for a moment with what Mr. Gladstone has done for them. Claims on him we have none. He has far more than discharged any debt that he could have owed to the nation.” These words are a just remonstrance against the somewhat tyrannical conventions of English public life.

When the session began, he wrote to Mrs. Gladstone (Feb. 15): “I came down to the House and took my seat nearly in the same spot as last year, finding Bright my neighbour, with which I was very well pleased. Granville and Hartington both much preferred my continuing _on_ the front bench to my going elsewhere.” Lord Hartington, strongly encouraged against his own inclinations by Mr. Gladstone, accepted a thankless and unpromising post, and held it with honour and credit for five difficult years to come.