The herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1893-1900, 1894-02-04

time to the present, with brief inter
walls, he has always cut conspicuous
figure in the government OF Great
Britain. Four times he has held the
office OF prime minister; for nearly a
quarter OF a century, with some inter
walls, ne officiated as chancellor Of the
exchequer. There has not been an inn
portant MEASURE OF British legislation
in the last so years with which his name
is not connected.
Yet it will be said of him by the flu
ture historian that he was not man OF
commanding or original intellect. He
possessed common-sense, but the quail
ties to which he owed his long cereer OF
success were his honesty and his will
ingness TO change his opinions when
he found he was wrong. This last ia
one oil the rarest gifts possessed by pub
lie men. Most men form their opinions
in early or middle life, and never change
them. Their etolidity sometimes springs
from mental inertia; they do not want
to take the trouble OF changing their
mind when it ie once made up: but
more frequently the defect is due to an
incapacity to learn, proceeding from O
thickening aud induration of the mental
tissues. Many men are afraid OF being
accused OF Inconsistency, forgetting that
people who are consistent through lille
in their opinions have made no progress
since they we're young, and ignoring the
great truth that in the moral az in the
physical world the law of change 10 uni
versal.
Mr.. Gladstone has always been ready
to accept new views when he found that
they were true views. 1t may almost be
said that there is not one of his early
opinions which he entertains today, He
began life as Tory; he ends it as
Liberal. He made his debut as q de-
fender of the corn laws; he lived to
draft the tariff of 1912. In his early
speeches he opposed university reform
and defended Jewish disabilities he
reformed Oxford and sat with Jew as
his colleague for Greenwich. He WAS
once conspicuous opponent of parlia-
mentary reform, yet he introduced the
most comprehensive measure of reform
that parliament ever passed. He once
believed that jeff Davis had made a
nation: but he carried the Alabama
bill through parliament. For quarter
OF century he justified English misrule
in Ireland his last parliamentary effort
was to try to carry home rule. His mind
has never ceased to gro and widen, and
in the process it has CHANGED that he has
had to recant almost every opinion to
which he had in earlier years committed
himself. That is a record of which few
statesmen can boast. 1t is record of
constant mental improvement and de-
velopment, OF moral and intellectual
growth never retarded by obstinacy or
prejudice or conceit.
1t is doubtless, more than anything
else, the key to the hold which he has
so long held on the British heart. Peo-
pie trusted him because they saw that
he was not doctrinaire who stuck TO
this or that est of views because he had
protested them in earlier DAYS; that he
was all the time ripeninQ and pitching
his old notioDe out OF the window when
their unsoundness was demonstrated.
Such man is sure to be honest and
brave, and the possession of those quail
ties is the direct road to public conf
dence. 1t will be hard to tiud among
the able men who surround him one " no
can claim equal right TO national sup
port San Francisco Call.