William Ewart Gladstone | Page 8

difference between reticence and
dishonesty. Much of the suspicion and even fear with which he was
regarded, especially after 1885, arose from the idea that it was
impossible to predict what he would do next, and how far his openness
of mind would carry him. In so far as they tended to shake public
confidence, these characteristics injured him in his statesman's work,
but the loss was far outweighed by the gain. In a country where opinion
is active and changeful, where the economic conditions that legislation
has to deal with are in a state of perpetual flux, where the balance of
power between the upper and middle and poorer classes has been
swiftly altering during the last sixty years, no statesman can continue to
serve the public if he adheres obstinately to the views with which he
started in life. He must--unless, of course, he stands aloof in permanent
opposition-- either submit to advocate measures he secretly mislikes, or
else must keep himself always ready to learn from events, and to
reconsider his opinions in the light of emergent tendencies and insistent
facts. Mr. Gladstone's pride as well as his conscience forbade the
former alternative; it was fortunate that the inexhaustible activity of his
intellect made the latter natural to him. He was accustomed to say that
the great mistake of his earlier views had been in not sufficiently
recognizing the worth and power of liberty, and the tendency which
things have to work out for good when left to themselves. The

application of this principle gave room for many developments, and
many developments there were. He may have wanted that prescience
which is, after integrity, the highest gift of a statesman, but which is
almost impossible to a man so pressed by the constant and engrossing
occupations of an English minister that he cannot find time for the
patient study and thought from which alone sound forecasts can issue.
But he had the next best quality, that of always learning from the events
which passed under his eyes.
With this singular openness and flexibility of mind, there went a not
less remarkable ingenuity and resourcefulness. His mind was fertile in
expedients, and still more fertile in reasonings by which to recommend
the expedients. This gift was often dangerous, for he was apt to be
carried away by the dexterity of his own dialectic, and to think schemes
substantially good in whose support he could muster so formidable an
array of arguments. He never seemed to be at a loss, in public or private,
for a criticism, or for an answer to the criticisms of others. If his power
of adapting his own mind to the minds of those whom he had to
convince had been equal to the skill and swiftness with which he
accumulated a mass of matter persuasive to those who looked at things
in his own way, no one would have exercised so complete a control
over the political opinion of his time. But his mind had not this power
of adaptation. It moved on its own lines--peculiar lines, which were
often misconceived, even by those who sought to follow him most
loyally. Thus it happened that he was blamed for two opposite faults.
Some, pointing to the fact that he had frequently altered his views,
denounced him as a demagogue profuse of promises, ready to propose
whatever he thought likely to catch the people's ear. Others complained
that there was no knowing where to have him; that he had an erratic
mind, whose currents ran underground and came to the surface in
unexpected places; that he did not consult his party, but followed his
own predilections; that his guidance was unsafe because his decisions
were unpredictable. Both these views were unfair, yet the latter came
nearer to the truth than the former. No great popular leader had in him
less of the true ring of the demagogue. He saw, of course, that a
statesman cannot oppose the popular will beyond a certain point, and
may have to humor it in order that he may direct it. Now and then, in

his later days, he so far yielded to his party advisers as to express his
approval of proposals for which he cared little personally. But he was
too self-absorbed, too eagerly interested in the ideas that suited his own
cast of thought, to be able to watch and gage the tendencies of the
multitude. On several occasions he announced a policy which startled
people and gave a new turn to the course of events. But in none of these
instances, and certainly not in the three most remarkable,--his
declarations against the Irish church establishment in 1868, against the
Turks and the traditional English policy of supporting them in 1876,
and in favor of Irish home rule