William Ewart Gladstone | Page 5

and defining such
principles, and then to pursue a series of logical deductions from them.
They are, therefore, somewhat bolder reasoners than the English, less
content to remain in the region of concrete facts, more eager to hasten
on to the process of working out a body of speculative doctrines. The
Englishman is apt to plume himself on being right in spite of logic; the
Scotchman delights to think that it is through logic he has reached his
conclusions, and that he can by logic defend them. These are qualities
which Mr. Gladstone drew from his Scottish blood. He had a keen
enjoyment of the processes of dialectic. He loved to get hold of an
abstract principle and to derive all sorts of conclusions from it. He was
wont to begin the discussion of a question by laying down two or three
sweeping propositions covering the subject as a whole, and would then
proceed to draw from these others which he could apply to the
particular matter in hand. His well-stored memory and boundless
ingenuity made this finding of such general propositions so easy a task
that a method in itself agreeable sometimes appeared to be carried to
excess. He frequently arrived at conclusions which the judgment of the
sober auditor did not approve, because, although they seemed to have

been legitimately deduced from the general principles just enunciated,
they were somehow at variance with the plain teaching of the facts. At
such moments one felt that the man who was charming but perplexing
Englishmen by his subtlety and ingenuity was not himself an
Englishman in mental quality, but had the love for abstractions and
refinements and dialectical analysis which characterizes the Scotch
intellect. He had also a large measure of that warmth and vehemence,
called in the sixteenth century the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum,
which belong to the Scottish temperament, and particularly to the
Celtic Scot. He kindled quickly, and when kindled, he shot forth a
strong and brilliant flame. To any one with less power of self-control
such intensity of emotion as he frequently showed would have been
dangerous; nor did this excitability fail, even with him, to prompt
words and acts which a cooler judgment would have disapproved. But
it gave that spontaneity which was one of the charms of his nature; it
produced that impression of profound earnestness and of resistless
force which raised him out of the rank of ordinary statesmen. The tide
of emotion swelling fast and full seemed to turn the whole rushing
stream of intellectual effort into whatever channel lay at the moment
nearest.
With these Scottish qualities, Mr. Gladstone was brought up at school
and college among Englishmen, and received at Oxford, then lately
awakened from a long torpor, a bias and tendency which never
thereafter ceased to affect him. The so-called "Oxford Movement,"
which afterward obtained the name of Tractarianism and carried Dr.
Newman, together with other less famous leaders, on to Rome, had not
yet, in 1831, when Mr. Gladstone won his degree with double first-
class honors, taken visible shape, or become, so to speak, conscious of
its own purposes. But its doctrinal views, its peculiar vein of religious
sentiment, its respect for antiquity and tradition, its proneness to
casuistry, its taste for symbolism, were already potent influences
working on the more susceptible of the younger minds. On Mr.
Gladstone they told with full force. He became, and never ceased to be,
not merely a High-churchman, but what may be called an
Anglo-Catholic, in his theology, deferential not only to ecclesiastical
tradition, but to the living voice of the visible church, respecting the

priesthood as the recipients (if duly ordained) of a special grace and
peculiar powers, attaching great importance to the sacraments, feeling
himself nearer to the Church of Rome, despite what he deemed her
corruptions, than to any of the non-episcopal Protestant churches.
Henceforth his interests in life were as much ecclesiastical as political.
For a time he desired to be ordained a clergyman. Had this wish been
carried out, it can scarcely be doubted that he would eventually have
become the leading figure in the Church of England and have sensibly
affected her recent history. The later stages in his career drew him away
from the main current of political opinion within that church. He who
had been the strongest advocate of established churches came to be the
leading agent in the disestablishment of the Protestant Episcopal
Church in Ireland, and a supporter of the policy of disestablishment in
Scotland and in Wales. But the color which these Oxford years gave to
his mind and thoughts was never obliterated. They widened the range
of his interests and deepened his moral zeal and religious earnestness.
But at the same time they confirmed his natural bent toward over-subtle
distinctions and