Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century | Page 8

be built and manned in English ports. But the actual break with Mr. Lincoln's government did not come, and the old Whig statesman lived to see the South overpowered.
Through the middle reaches of the century the political power in England remained for the most part in the hands of the Whig, latterly called Liberal, ministries. The impulse for reform-- political, economic, and social--had spent itself before 1850, and the older statesmen who guided the public policies had no sympathy with the demands for radical legislation, church disestablishment, universal suffrage, and what not, which came up from many parts of the nation. With the death of Palmerston, and the retirement of Russell, a new era was inaugurated, and new actors stepped to the front of the stage.
GLADSTONE AND DISRAELI
At the head of the Liberals was William Ewart Gladstone, who in his younger days had followed his master, Peel, out of the old Tory lines into the camp of the free traders, and had been Russell's chief lieutenant, and Palmerston's financial minister for the last half-dozen years. He was a man of splendid intellectual power, sterling morality, an adept at parliamentary management, a shrewd financier, and held a deep conviction that it was the part of statesmanship to embody in law what he conceived to be the proper demands of the nation. His opponent for a generation was Benjamin Disraeli, the young Jewish novelist, who had first won a following in the House of Commons by voicing the venom of the old-line protectionist Tories against the recreant Peel. Versatile, shifty, brilliant, this adventurous politician made himself indispensable to the Conservatives, and overcame by political moves which were little short of genius, the leadership of the opposition. Indeed, he may be said to have transformed Conservatism, giving it a new rallying cry, and inscribing great achievements upon its banner.
LIBERAL REFORMS
"Whenever that man gets my place we shall have strange doings," Palmerston had said toward the end of his life, alluding to the open-minded Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Gladstone, and had he remained on earth for another generation, he would indeed have seen much done by his erstwhile followers under Gladstone's direction which he would have accounted passing strange. Admitting the democratic principle that the state owed it to itself to provide every man's child with an education, Gladstone inaugurated (1870) a beneficent system of free public schools. An old popular grievance, the viva voce method of voting at parliamentary elections, was done away and the secret ballot substituted (1872), a change which struck a heavy blow at the prevalent bribery and intimidation. He corrected one of the worst abuses in the army by abolishing the purchase system, under which a junior officer was accustomed to buy his promotion by compensating his seniors, a practice which had closed the higher grades to men of small means. The extension of the suffrage to the agricultural laborers was finally reached by his Reform Bill of 1884, the last class being thus admitted to the body politic.
THE CAUSE OF IRELAND
But it was to the grievances of Ireland that Gladstone bent the readiest ear, and it was upon that reef that his political career made shipwreck at the last. In his first ministry he undertook and carried the disestablishment of the Irish Church, by which the Irish Catholics were relieved of an odious burden. His Irish Land Act of 1870 aimed to give the tenant-farmer certain valuable rights in the land which he rented. The result was rather to redouble the cry against "landlordism," with its corollary of agrarian crime. A second Land Act (1881) provided a land court for adjusting rents. Instead of quieting the disorders this indulgent legislation was the signal for a fresh outburst of crime. The Irish Land League was organized to secure the abolition of landlordism, and when the Irish leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, was imprisoned he exhorted the tenants to cease paying rent altogether until the government should grant all their demands. The Liberals were forced for the moment to use strong measures to restore order to Ireland, but the Home Rule party in Parliament, skillfully led by Mr. Parnell, continued to embarrass legislation and obstruct the ordinary functions of government. In April, 1886, Mr, Gladstone, having become Prime Minister for the third time, asked Parliament to grant home rule to Ireland through an Irish Parliament sitting at Dublin. Parnell and his following supported the measure, but the Liberal party was rent in twain. Lord Hartington, Joseph Chamberlain, John Bright, and others of less note, deserted their old chief. Enough of these "Liberal Unionists" seceded to defeat the bill. In August, 1892, the aged Liberal chieftain again carried the elections and took the seals of office for the fourth time. Home Rule was again the principal plank in his platform, and