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"He was a particularly acute thorn in the side of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and criticised the budget with unsparing vigor. 'Gladstone seems bent on leading Sir George Lewis a weary life, wrote Mr. Greville. But finance was by no means the only subject of this terrible free-lance."
He knew his words have been already quoted what Ireland's gratitude to Gladstone had been even for the unfinished effort; and now, in this crucial hour, he counted upon Ireland. From Ulster, which had its bitter resentment, assurances were needed: but if Ulster were contented to fall into line, then all was well with Ireland.
Morley were the constant friends and associates to whom Mr. Gladstone turned through all that critical time. But the great split was rushing on, and it was also in 1884 that, at Admiral Maxse's one night at dinner, I first saw Mr. Chamberlain, who was to play so great a part in the following years. It was a memorable evening to me, for the other guest in a small party was M. Clemenceau.
In the later nineteenth century the better sort of special treatment began on the whole to increase. Gladstone, an idealistic though inconsistent Liberal, rather belatedly realized that the freedom he loved in Greece and Italy had its rights nearer home, and may be said to have found a second youth in the gateway of the grave, in the eloquence and emphasis of his conversion.
Gladstone stepped briskly to the front of the platform at 12.30 p.m. bowing repeatedly in response to the applause. He looked strong and well for a man of his age and labors, and was easily heard.
He examines the chief miracles related in the Gospels, and shows with great ability and shrewd common sense that they are absurd or unworthy of the performer. He pointed out, as Huxley was to point out in a controversy with Gladstone, that the miraculous driving of devils into a herd of swine was an unwarrantable injury to somebodys property. What then would his neighbours make of him?
MacCarthy brought into more vivid contrast the personal venom the ruthless hunger for vengeance and the humiliation of his enemies which came out with almost painful vividness from the speech to which we had just ceased to listen. Mr. Gladstone, sitting opposite, attentive and watchful, was evidently much pleased at the heartiness of Mr. MacCarthy's acceptance of his great measure.
All were highly complicated, and of one the Land Act of 1881, which it took three months to carry through the House of Commons it was said that so great was its intricacy that only three men understood it Mr. Gladstone himself, his Attorney-General for Ireland, and Mr. T. M. Healy. So far from shrinking from, he seemed to revel in, the toil of mastering an infinitude of technical details.
No open hostility now, but the fires of fanaticism are only smouldering, and only a breath is needed to revive the flame. Every Protestant I saw, and all the intelligent and enlightened Catholics, concur that this is so, and that Home Rule would supply the needful impulse. These men also submit that they understand the matter better than Mr. Gladstone and his patch-work party.
He wished us defeat; but he was afraid to move without England, to whom he made a succession of indirect approaches. These nearly came to something towards the close of 1862. It was on October 7th that Gladstone spoke at Newcastle about Jefferson Davis having made a nation. Yet, after all, England didn't budge, and thus held Napoleon back.
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