# Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892)/Chapter 49

CHAPTER VIII.
EUROPEAN TOUR.
SEPTEMBER, 1886, was quite a milestone in my experience and journey of life. I had long desired to make a brief tour through several countries in Europe and especially to revisit England, Ireland and Scotland, and to meet once more the friends I met with in those countries more than forty years before. I had twice visited England, but I had never been on the continent of Europe, and this time I was accompanied by my wife.
I shall attempt here no ample description of our travels abroad. For this more space would be required than the limits of this volume will permit. Besides, with such details the book-shelves are already crowded. To revisit places, scenes, and friends after forty years is not a very common occurrence in the lives of men; and while the desire to do so may be intense, the realization has to it a sad side as well as a cheerful one. The old people first met there have passed away, the middle-aged have grown old, and the young have only heard their fathers and mothers speak of you. The places are there, but the people are gone. I felt this when looking upon the members of the House of Commons. When I was there forty-five years before, I saw many of England's great men; men whom I had much ​desired to see and hear and was much gratified by being able to see and hear. There were Sir Robert Peel, Daniel O'Connell, Richard Cobden, John Bright, Lord John Russell, Sir James Graham, Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Morpeth, and others, but except Mr. Gladstone, not one who was there then is there now. Mr. Bright was alive, but ill health kept him out of Parliament. Five and forty years before, I saw him there, young, robust and strong; a rising British statesman representing a new element of power in his country, and battling as the co-worker of Richard Cobden, against the corn-laws which kept bread from the mouths of the hungry. His voice and eloquence were then a power in Parliament. At that time the question which most deeply interested and agitated England was the repeal of the corn-laws. Of this agitation Mr. Richard Cobden and Mr. Bright, backed by the anti-corn-law league, were the leaders. The landed aristocracy of England, represented by the Tory party, opposed the repeal with intense zeal and bitterness. But the circumstances were against that interest and against that party. The famine of 1845 was doing its ghastly work, and the people not only of Ireland, but of England and Scotland, were asking for bread, more bread, and cheaper bread; and this was a petition to which resistance was vain. The facts and figures of Cobden and the eloquence of Mr. Bright, supported by the needs of the people, bore down the powerful opposition of the aristocracy, and finally won over to repeal the great Tory leader in the person of Sir Robert Peel, one of the most graceful debaters and ablest parliamentarians that England ever had. A more fascinating man than he I never saw or heard in any legislative body. But able and skillful leader as he was, he could not carry his party with him. The landed proprietors opposed him to the last. Their cause was ​espoused by Lord George Bentinck and Mr. Benjamin Disraeli. The philippics of the latter against Sir Robert were among the most scathing and torturing of anything in their line to which I ever listened. His invectives were all the more burning and blistering because delivered with the utmost coolness and studied deliberation. But he too was gone when I looked into the House of Commons this time. The grand form and powerful presence of Daniel O'Connell was no longer there. The diminutive but dignified figure of Lord John Russell, that great Whig leader, was absent. In the House of Lords, where, five and forty years before, I saw and heard Lord Brougham, all were gone, and he with the rest. He was the most remarkable speaker I ever heard. Such a flow of language; such a wealth of knowledge; such an aptitude of repartee; such quickness in reply to difficult questions suddenly sprung upon him, I think I never saw equaled in any other speaker. In his attitudes and gestures he was in all respects original, and just the opposite of Daniel Webster. As he spoke, his tall frame reeled to and fro like a reed in a gale, and his arms were everywhere, down by his sides, extended in front and over his head; always in action and never at rest. He was discussing when I heard him the postal relations of England, and he seemed to know the postal arrangements of every civilized people in the world. He was often interrupted by "the noble Lords," but he very simply disposed of them with a word or two that made them objects of pity and sometimes of ridicule. I wondered how they dared to expose their lordly heads to the heels of such a perfect race-horse in debate as he seemed to be. He simply played with them. When they came too near he gave them a kick and scampered away over the field of his subject without looking back to see if his victims were living, wounded, or dead. But ​this marvelous man, though he lived long, was now gone, and I saw in England no man like him filling his place or likely to fill his place.
While in England during this last visit I had the good fortune to see and hear Mr. William E. Gladstone, the great Liberal leader, and, since Sir Robert Peel, the acknowledged prince of parliamentary debaters. He was said by those who had often heard him to be on this occasion in one of his happiest speaking moods, and he made one of his best speeches. I went early. The House was already crowded with members and spectators when Mr. Gladstone came in and took his seat opposite Mr. Balfour, the Tory leader. Though seventy-seven years had passed over him his step was firm and his bearing confident and vigorous. Expectation had been raised by the announcement in advance that Mr. Gladstone would that day move for the indefinite postponement of the Irish Force Bill, the measure of all others to which the Government was committed as a remedy for the ills of Ireland. As he sat in front of the Government leader, an able debater awaiting the moment to begin his speech, 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 amount 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, and I shared this feeling with the rest. A few words were said in reply by Mr. Balfour, who, though an able debater, was no match for the aged Liberal leader.
Leaving public persons, of whom many more could be mentioned, I turned to the precious friends from whom I parted at the end of my first visit to Great Britain and Ireland. In Dublin, the first city I then visited, I was kindly received by Mr. Richard Webb, Richard Allen, James Haughton, and others. They were now all gone, and except some of their children, I was among strangers. These received me in the same cordial spirit that distinguished their fathers and mothers. I did not visit dear old Cork, where in 1845 I was made welcome by the Jennings, the Warings, the Wrights, and their circle of friends, most of whom I learned had passed away. The same was true of the Neals, the Workmans, the McIntyres, and the Nelsons at Belfast. I had friends in Limerick, in Waterford, in Eniscorthy, and other towns of Ireland, but I saw none of them during this visit. What was true of the mortality of my friends in Ireland, was equally true of those in England. Few who first received me in that country are now among the living. It was, however, my good fortune to meet once more Mrs. Anna Richardson and Miss Ellen Richardson, the two members of the Society of Friends, both beyond three-score and ten, who, forty-five years before, opened a correspondence with my old master ​and raised seven hundred and fifty dollars with which to purchase my freedom. Mrs. Anna Richardson, having reached the good old age of eighty-six years, her life marvelously filled up with good works, for her hand was never idle and her heart and brain were always active in the cause of peace and benevolence, a few days before this writing passed away. Miss Ellen Richardson, now over eighty, still lives and continues to take a lively interest in the career of the man whose freedom she was instrumental in procuring. It was a great privilege once more to look into the faces and hear the voices of these noble and benevolent women. I saw in England, too, Mr. and Mrs. Russell Lant Carpenter, two friends who were helpful to me when in England, and, until within a few days, helpful to me still. During all the time that I edited and published my paper in Rochester, New York, I had the material and moral support of Rev. Russell Lant Carpenter and that of his excellent wife. But now he too has passed away, covered with honors. He was one of the purest spirits and most impartial minds I ever met. Though a man of slender frame, his life was one of earnest work, and he reached the age of seventy-five. He was the son of Rev. Lant Carpenter, who for a long time was an honored pastor in Bristol. He was also the brother of Philip and Mary Carpenter, and one of a family distinguished for every moral and intellectual excellence.