Theologians From England

"I have told you before that Gladstone has shown much heart in this business. He has a strong aversion to the waste of money on our armaments. He has much more of our sympathies. He has more in common with you and me than any other man of his power in Britain."

"By far the greatest orator whom I personally heard in the House of Commons—indeed almost the only orator—was Mr. Gladstone... While this great and famous figure was in the House of Commons the House had eyes for no other person. His movements on the bench, restless and eager, his demeanour when on his legs, whether engaged in answering a simple question, expounding an intricate Bill, or thundering in vehement declamation, his dramatic gestures, his deep and rolling voice with its wide compass and marked northern accent, his flashing eye, his almost incredible command of ideas and words, made a combination of irresistible fascination and power. We who sat opposite him in his later years saw in him the likeness, now of an old eagle, fearless in his gaze and still exultant in his strength, now of some winged creature of prey, swooping down upon a defenceless victim, now of a tiger, suddenly aroused from his lair and stalking abroad in his anger. Mr. Gladstone seemed to me to be master of every art of eloquence and rhetoric. He could be passionate or calm, solemn or volatile, lucid or involved, grave or humorous (with a heavy sort of banter), persuasive or denunciatory, pathetic or scornful, at will. It is true that his copiousness was sometimes overpowering and his subtlety at moments almost Satanic."

"[A]s an Irishman I feel that I have a special right to join in paying a tribute to the great Englishman who died yesterday, because the last and, as all men will agree, the most glorious years of his strenuous and splendid life were dominated by the love which he bore to our nation, and by the eager and even passionate desire to serve Ireland and give her liberty and peace. By virtue of the splendid quality of his nature, which seemed to give him perpetual youth, Mr. Gladstone's faith in a cause to which he had once devoted himself never wavered, nor did his enthusiasm grow cold. Difficulties and the weight of advancing years were alike ineffectual to blunt the edge of his purpose, or to daunt his splendid courage, and even when racked with pain, and when the shadow of death was darkening over him, his heart still yearned towards the people of Ireland, and his last public utterance was a message of sympathy for Ireland, and of hope for her future. His was a great and deep nature. He loved the people with a wise and persevering love. His love of the people and his abiding faith in the efficacy of liberty and of government based on the consent of the people, as an instrument of human progress, was not the outcome of youthful enthusiasm, but the deep-rooted growth of long years, and drew its vigour from an almost unparalleled experience of men and of affairs. Above all men I have ever known or read of, in his case the lapse of years seemed to have no influence to narrow his sympathies or to contract his heart. Young men felt old beside him. And to the last no generous cause, no suffering people, appealed to him in vain, and that glorious voice which had so often inspirited the friends of freedom and guided them to victory was to the last at the service of the weak and the oppressed of whatever race or nation. Mr. Gladstone was the greatest Englishman of his time. He loved his own people as much as any Englishman that ever lived. But through communion with the hearts of his own people he acquired that wider and greater gift, the power of understanding and sympathising with other peoples. He entered into their sorrows and felt for their oppressions. And with splendid courage he did not hesitate, even in the case of his much-loved England, to condemn her when he thought she was wronging others, and in so doing he fearlessly faced odium and unpopularity amongst his own people, which it must have been bitter for him to bear; and so he became something far greater than a British statesman, and took a place amidst the greatest leaders of the human race. Amidst the obstructions and the cynicism of a materialistic age he never lost his hold on the "ideal." And so it came to pass that wherever throughout the civilised world a race or nation of men were suffering from oppression, their thoughts turned towards Gladstone, and when that mighty voice was raised in their behalf, Europe and the civilised world listened, and the breathing of new hopes entered into the hearts of men made desperate by long despair."

"Posterity will do justice to that unprincipled maniac Gladstone—extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisy, and superstition; and with one commanding characteristic—whether Prime Minister, or Leader of Opposition, whether preaching, praying, speechifying, or scribbling—never a gentleman!"

"Which do you believe most likely to enter an insane convention, a body of English gentlemen honoured by the favour of their Sovereign and the confidence of their fellow-subjects, managing your affairs for five years, I hope with prudence, and not altogether without success, or a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself?"

"Lord Palmerston's "dangerous man" has at length verified that statesman's prophecy of his ultimate insanity."

"What you say about Gladstone is most just. What restlessness! What vanity! And what unhappiness must be his! Easy to say he is mad. It looks like it. My theory about him is unchanged: A ceaseless Tartuffe from the beginning. That sort of man does not get mad at 70."

"I saw in the face of Mr. Gladstone a blending of opposite qualities. There were the peace and gentleness of the lamb, with the strength and determination of the lion. Deep earnestness was expressed in all his features. He began his speech in a tone conciliatory and persuasive. His argument against the bill was based upon statistics which he handled with marvelous facility. He showed that the number of crimes in Ireland for which the Force Bill was claimed as a remedy by the Government was not greater than the great class of crimes in England, and that therefore there was no reason for a Force Bill in one country more than in the other. After marshaling his facts and figures to this point, in a masterly and convincing manner, raising his voice and pointing his finger directly at Mr. Balfour, he exclaimed, in a tone almost menacing and tragic, "What are you fighting for?" The effect was thrilling. His peroration was a splendid appeal to English love of liberty. When he sat down the House was instantly thinned out. There seemed neither in members nor spectators any desire to hear another voice after hearing Mr. Gladstone's."

"At dinner we talked of Newman, whose Dream of Gerontius Gladstone puts very high, so high that he speaks of it in the same breath with the Divina Commedia. At length he asked, "Which of his writings will be read in a hundred years?" "Well," said Henry Smith, "certainly his hymn, 'Lead kindly Light,' and 'The Parting of Friends,' the sermon he preached before leaving Littlemore." "I go further," said Gladstone. "I think all his parochial sermons will be read.""

"W. E. Gladstone used various tactics to unify the party which he led between 1868 and 1894. He consolidated Nonconformist support, for example, by disestablishing the Irish Church and eliminating some of the remaining privileges of the Church of England. Yet free trade was his most persistent theme. He firmly linked the economic case against protectionist tariffs with the liberal ideal of a society of autonomous citizens who were equal in their possession of basic rights."

"To myself, and to many thousands, the assumption by Mr. Gladstone of the leadership of the Liberal party in the House of Commons seemed to promise the inauguration of a new era. It was known that he was as favourable to the revision and enlargement of the representation of the people in Parliament as Palmerston had been opposed to such changes, and the working classes hailed his accession to the Premiership with gladness and hope."

"What fools we were not to have accepted Gladstone's Home Rule Bill. The Empire now would not have had the Irish Free State giving us so much trouble and pulling us to pieces."

"Gladstone could do in four hours what it took any other man sixteen to do, and he worked sixteen hours a day."

"Last night I met Gladstone — it will always be a memorable night to me; Stubbs was there, and Goldwin Smith and Humphrey Sandwith and Mackenzie Wallace whose great book on Russia is making such a stir, besides a few other nice people; but one forgets everything in Gladstone himself, in his perfect naturalness and grace of manner, his charming abandon of conversation, his unaffected modesty, his warm ardour for all that is noble and good. I felt so proud of my leader — the chief I have always clung to through good report and ill report — because, wise or unwise as he might seem in this or that, he was always noble of soul. He was very pleasant to me, and talked of the new historic school he hoped we were building as enlisting his warmest sympathy. I wish you could have seen with what a glow he spoke of the Montenegrins and their struggle for freedom; how he called on us who wrote history to write what we could of that long fight for liberty! And all through the evening not a word to recall his greatness amongst us, simple, natural, an equal among his equals, listening to every one, drawing out every one, with a force and a modesty that touched us more than all his power."

"I begin to see that there may be a truer wisdom in the "humanitarianism" of Gladstone than in the purely political views of Disraeli. The sympathies of peoples with peoples, the sense of a common humanity between nations, the aspirations of nationalities after freedom and independence, are real political forces; and it is just because Gladstone owns them as forces, and Disraeli disowns them that the one has been on the right side, and the other on the wrong in parallel questions such as the upbuilding of Germany or Italy. I think it will be so in this upbuilding of the Sclave."

"The greatest statesman in whose presence I have ever been."

"The talent for which Mr. Gladstone will always be most renowned is that of the orator and debater... He spoke straight from the heart. He was sure that, if his audience knew what he knew, they would feel as he felt, and believe as he believed. Equally if not still more telling was the ardour which he threw into his subject, and the earnestness with which he pleaded his cause. The effect was to kindle extraordinary enthusiasm among those to whom he was addressing himself, to thrill them with emotion, and to hold them spellbound."

"Great though his political courage was, he possessed a courage of a still higher quality—the courage of his convictions. With him right was might. If he had once convinced himself of the rectitude and justice of a particular course, his intrepidity knew no bounds... This strength of conviction, amounting almost to a sense of infallibility, carried with it conviction in others, and constituted one of the principal reasons why he had so great a hold over his fellow-creatures."

"He deplored what he considered to be undue expenditure of public money on armaments... Analogously he had a deep-rooted aversion to annexations of territory. It was...because...he felt that there was a limit to the responsibilities which a government could prudently undertake—that there was a point at which the strength of administration would be overtaxed."

"It was religion that inspired the deepest motives which actuated his conduct. Indeed, it animated his whole life, public as well as private. It was with him a great controlling force and the leading principle of his actions... The truth of Christianity was to him the most assured reality... He had a robust belief in the life and mission of the English Church, regarding her as the most faithful representative of the Church of Christ. He was devoid of bigotry and sectarianism. Wherever the fundamental doctrines of Christianity were conscientiously held, he was ready to express his sympathy with members of all denominations... Few laymen ever studied their Bible with more assiduous and reverent care... The moral teachings of Christianity were not only professed by Mr. Gladstone, but they were practised by him. It was due to this profession, followed by practice, that he displayed such intolerance of wrong and cruelty, such sympathy with the suffering and oppressed, such love for peace and freedom."

"[H]e was unquestionably imbued with high principles; and to high principles he appealed. The furtherance of liberty, toleration, and progress, the amendment of the lot of his fellow-creatures, the relief of suffering, the wise husbanding of the nation's resources—in short, the promotion of better government—were his aims. What he desired most to find in men was character; in measures, equity."

"God bless him! May he be spared to accomplish the great work to which he has put his hand."

"Gladstone's work has made Socialism possible—nay, has been the necessary, the indispensable pioneer of the Socialist movement."

"[I]n the last twenty years England has travelled on the German path... Perhaps nothing shows this change more clearly than that, while there is no lack of sympathetic treatment of Bismarck in contemporary English literature, the name of Gladstone is rarely mentioned by the younger generation without a sneer over his Victorian morality and naive utopianism."

"It seems to me that the best name for this kind of naïve rationalism is rationalist constructivism... If it be thought that by labelling this view 'constructivism' I am once again presenting my opponents with a good word, I should plead that this term was used in precisely this sense already by one of the greatest of the nineteenth-century liberals, W. E. Gladstone. He used it as a name for the attitude for which in the past I had no better term than the 'engineering type of mind'."

"At that time there emerged also in Britain, as the leading figure of the liberal movement, W. E. Gladstone who, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and then as liberal Prime Minister, came to be widely regarded as the living embodiment of liberal principles, especially, after Palmerston's death in 1865, with regard to foreign policy, with John Bright as his chief associate. With him also the old association of British liberalism with strong moral and religious views revived."

"[Gladstone] appeared to unite in his person a timeless integrity with modern enlightenment."

"After Mr. Gladstone's death there was found in his own hand the following note: "Rules of Finance: (1) to pay your way; (2) to reduce your debt; (3) to practise economy.""

"The Gladstonian principle may be defined by antithesis to that of Machiavelli, and to that of Bismarck, and to the practice of every Foreign Office. As that practice proceeds on the principle that reasons of State justify everything, so Gladstone proceeded on the principle that reasons of State justify nothing that is not justified already by the human conscience. The statesman is for him a man charged with maintaining not only the material interests but the honour of his country. He is a citizen of the world in that he represents his nation, which is a member of the community of the world. He has to recognize rights and duties, as every representative of every other human organization has to recognize rights and duties. There is no line drawn beyond which human obligations cease. There is no gulf across which the voice of human suffering cannot be heard, beyond which massacre and torture cease to be execrable. Simply as a patriot, again, a man should recognize that a nation may become great not merely by painting the map red, or extending her commerce beyond all precedent, but also as the champion of justice, the succourer of the oppressed, the established home of freedom. From the denunciation of the Opium War, from the exposure of the Neapolitan prisons, to his last appearance on the morrow of the Constantinople massacre this was the message which Gladstone sought to convey. He was before his time. He was not always able to maintain his principle in his own Cabinet, and on his retirement the world appeared to relapse definitely into the older ways."

"When Mr Gladstone visited the North, you well remember when word passed from the newspaper to the workman that it circulated through mines and mills, factories and workshops, and they came out to greet the only British minister who ever gave the English people a right because it was just they should have it...and when he went down the Tyne, all the country heard how twenty miles of banks were lined with people who came to greet him. Men stood in the blaze of chimneys; the roofs of factories were crowded; colliers came up from the mines; women held up their children on the banks that it might be said in after life that they had seen the Chancellor of the People go by. The river was covered like the land. Every man who could ply an oar pulled up to give Mr Gladstone a cheer. When Lord Palmerston went to Bradford the streets were still, and working men imposed silence upon themselves. When Mr Gladstone appeared on the Tyne he heard cheer that no other English minister ever heard...the people were grateful to him, and rough pitmen who never approached a public man before, pressed round his carriage by thousands...and thousands of arms were stretched out at once, to shake hands with Mr Gladstone as one of themselves."

"My profound faith in our great liberal leader, Mr Gladstone, makes me feel all the more secure as to our future. He evidently regards hustings pledges as promises to be faithfully kept and redeemed."

"If you were to put that man on a moor with nothing on but his shirt, he would become whatever he pleased."

"Gladstone is very fascinating—his urbanity extreme—his eye that of a man of genius—& his apparent self-surrender to what he is talking of, without a flaw. He made a great impression on me—greater than anyone I have seen here: tho' 'tis perhaps owing to my naïveté, & unfamiliarity with statesmen."

"In such a world community, he insisted, Britons should view the actions of other nations not so much with jealousy as with understanding. The human family must be judged by the same standards applicable to one's own country... Britons should look upon war in the same way. They should care about what happens to their human brethren on the other side of the lines. They should take to their hearts the real meaning of the universality of human experience and of human dignity. Britain's burden, he said to the women gathered in Foresters' Hall in Dalkeith, was the result of having deluged many a hill and valley with blood. The Zulus were doing no more than would patriotic Britons, defending their own country. In Afghanistan, the Tories' wanton attack had spread wild destruction."

"The Christian theologian, of course, would simply say that Gladstone preached anew the old message of brotherhood, that he sought to give the British a Christian foreign policy. In any case, Gladstone was acutely perceptive of the power of group feeling, for he sought to arouse the response he desired precisely by insisting that all men belonged to the same community. He felt first of all that the group feeling of awakening nationalities must be given expression in self-government, and then that unless these group feelings were expanded to include all of mankind they would inevitably unleash jealousy, pride, envy, passion, and war—as they did... Universalism and inclusiveness was the keynote. He always explained by reference to the large picture, by including all things within an interdependent whole. For this reason, his adversary whether at home or abroad was always that class or that government which was committed to exclusiveness, which denied the unity of mankind."

"I don't object to Gladstone always having the ace of trumps up his sleeve, but merely to his belief that the Almighty put it there."

"Mr. Gladstone was entirely different from any politician I have known. He was much older in years than most of those he acted with, but was the youngest in body, soul and spirit... I can hear his voice and see him now; though nothing that I can write will convey to a reader the tremendous emotional effect of his words...that word alone [‘inspired’] gives the impression that was left on the mind of the eighteen year old boy who was listening to him."

"[F]or years I worshipped at the political shrine of Mr. Gladstone."

"The greatest Chancellor of all time."

"Gladstone had not realised the difficulties of the poor, but Disraeli had. Gladstone could not come down to the level of the common people; that had been his trouble."

"[David Lloyd George] talked of Gladstone, and how he [Lloyd George] had attacked him in his very early days in the House of Commons on the Clergy Discipline Bill... When [Lloyd George] went down to Wales afterwards, & the more proper folk reproached him for his attack on Gladstone, he said: 'I give you the same reply that Cromwell gave, "If I meet the King in battle, I will fire my pistol at him".' [Lloyd George] says that he thinks Gladstone as a Churchman had a fundamental dislike for Dissenters... 'I admire him, but I never liked him', is [Lloyd George]'s qualifying comment always."

"It is my boast that for the first four years of my membership of the House of Commons Gladstone was my leader... Gladstone was the greatest and most vital figure which ever appeared in British politics, and there will be a glorious resurrection for the memory, character, and the achievement and inspiration of that old man. We are suffering today largely from the complete neglect of the doctrines to which he devoted his life – the doctrines of peace."

"He has one gift most dangerous to a spectator, a vast command of a kind of language, grave and majestic, but of vague and uncertain import."

"The man who had led Liberalism for nearly thirty years retired from active life into the strenuous ease which is his idleness... Politics knew him no more. This loss to Liberalism it is impossible adequately to measure. Nor can we at this moment attempt any final judgment on what he has done for Liberalism. Only we can say, that of all the great statesmen of England there is not one who has accomplished as much as he in destroying unjust privileges, in establishing for the people their just rights. Can we say more? Is it possible for a ruler of men to leave behind him a nobler or greater record than this? Perhaps it is only now that the leader is gone that we can see how commanding a place he held in the life of the nation, and how great a loss the cause of progress has suffered from his retirement."

"Mr. Gladstone ... was an absolutely unique personality. His gestures, his astonishing dexterity in debate, his power of stirring the deepest emotions, the impression he conveyed of single-mindedness, of desire to do the right thing and to preserve a good conscience before God, to whose direction he essayed to submit himself, all worked together to render him a great moral and intellectual influence in the House of Commons—a fact of which every member, irrespective of creed or party, was justly proud. I was then—and I am now—no worshipper of men, but the expression “great man,” so often applied to persons of very modest rank in conduct and in abilities, is, in my judgment, pre-eminently applicable to Mr. Gladstone, whose claim to that title, while he was still with us, was acknowledged as unreservedly by his political opponents as by his supporters."

"No body of men have ever been so "un-English" as the great Englishmen, Nelson, Shelley, Gladstone: supreme in war, in literature, in practical affairs; yet with no single evidence in the characteristics of their energy that they possess any of the qualities of the English blood. But in submitting to the leadership of such perplexing variations from the common stock, the Englishman is merely exhibiting his general capacity for accepting the universe, rather than for rebelling against it."

"In March 1880 he returned for the actual election contest and in crowded halls, uncomfortable, dimly lighted, he held spell-bound the miners and workers who came to hear him with the loyalty of disciples. The image of Gladstone which was then established in the popular mind, as the old man eloquent, the righteous prophet, the friend of liberty and justice, lasted long after his death and was often more potent than the whole array of his gifted colleagues and all the party's nostrums and policies... [I]n 1955 an old lady left her house in Shetland to vote Conservative but returning to her house for her purse saw her father's photograph of Mr. Gladstone and went to the poll to vote for Mr. Grimond."

"I think I may take it for granted that Mr. Gladstone is the greatest English statesman who has appeared during the reign of Queen Victoria. This, indeed, seems to me a statement of fact and not a subject for criticism."

"Respecting Mr. Gladstone (Cheers). What was the use to speak of him on a question of sincerity? (Cheers). Every year of his official life had been marked by a succession of measures – no year being without them – some great, some small, but all aiming at the public good – to the good of the people of this country, and especially of the poorer classes. These measures were not even suggested to him: they were the offspring of his own mind, will and purpose – the free gift from him to his countrymen, unprompted, unsuggested. (Loud cheers) ... Mr. Gladstone seemed to be the first statesman who has come up to the idea of a great modern statesman: ... If we do not stand by him...we shall not easily find another to serve us in the same way. (Loud cheers)."

"Talk of the Liberal party? Why it consists of Mr. G. After him it will disappear & all will be chaos."