The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-05-22
BRITAIN'S DEAD STATESMAN
This Writer Thinks He Was in Some
Respects OverTated.

To the Editor of the Indianapolis Journal
1t has for years seemed to me that Glad
stone was a greatly overrated man. That
he had prodigious learning and grand in
tellect no one will wish to deny. That he
was a very great orator when on his legs
is the universal verdict. BY force of his
grand presence, his unsurpassed voice and
personality he always carried his audience.
whether in the House of Commons or at
the hustings. But once in print he ceases
to charm, and his speeches cannot be read
with pleasure like those of John Bright,
Burke or Daniel Webster. In this respect
he greatly resembles our own silver
tongued Henry Clay. Who now reads Clays
speeches that once were the delight of the
United States Senate and of American audi
ences?
If to change opinions and for the last for
ty years of ones life to violently attack the
ideas and principles of the first forty be the
mark of a statesman, Gladstone was the
greatest of the great. No one ever pre-
scented to the world so inconsistent record.
While fear of inconsistency is always the
| mark of small mind, while every man has
a right to change an opinion when con-
| WINGED of error still, Gladstone's record in
| this respect easily leads the world. To
| illustrate: from 1888 to 1912 or '43 he was a
protectionist; in 1874 he became a free
trader. In 1S33-40 he was persistent adj
vocate of taxing Catholic Ireland-only one
| eighth of its people were then Protestants-
to support the Episcopal Church. He after
wards disestablshed the same Irish Episco-
| pal Church. And so on to the end of the
chapter Everybody recalls Disraelis
| graphic words about his great rivals
''h&rassing every industry" etc.
| AS party leader Gladstone was lament
| able failure. Ten years ago he was at the
head of the Liberal party, with an enormous
majority in the House of Commons. In
| three years he had split his party in twain
| alternating from it such great men as Mr..
| Chamberlain and Lord Harrington and such
a sagacious woman as Queen Victoria, who
| profoundly diStrusted him. His Irish poll
| ces were a dismal failure and when Glad
| stone finished all he had to say or DO irish
| home rule was deader than Banquos ghost
| and Irish emancipation had lost all it had
| gained for fifty previous years
| he does not write italian poetry, cannot
| read Greek and knows nothing of the
| Fathers) than Gladstone. Bismarck took
score Of discordant German states, the
| jealousy between whom was worse than
| that of Irish and English, and made
unified Germany. Bismarck was as great
war as peace statesman. We all know how
| he crowned his Emperor in the French pail
ace of Versailles Gladstone was failure
| as a war minister. SdcrlnClnS OHlIeSG OOI-
don through delay in reinforcing him
in the Soudan. have. In my IL
brary eight volumes by Gladstone
more dreary reading cannot be imagined.
The Indianapolis Journal of yesterday con-
tanned the comments of English scholars
upon his Homeric labors; they are anything
but complimentary The last year of his
life was given up to theology. and ortho-
aeon controversy sy with Colonel Ingersoli in the
North American Review. While Gladstone
was as much in the right as lngersoli was
in the wrong, everybody who read the three
or four articles contributed regret the great
Englishman's indiscretion in waking up the
great American nighthawk.
As an illustration of Gladstone'S unrelia-
bility, take his record in our war OF 1872
| He wanted the South to succeed He was
as much our enemy as John Bright was our
friend. He declared, in substance, that the
genius of jeff Davis had created nation in
a day." True, he afterwards ate humble
pie by declaring that he was misunder-
stood But what right had a great states
man to make that kind of mistakes? Evil
IDENTIFY the wish was father to the utter
ance.
To worship Gladstone has been fashion
able fad with a very large class of people,
but by no means without foundation. Glad
stone from start to finish was an honest
| man. 1t is to his everlasting credit that.
although as premier three, times he CON
ferred innumerable titles, he remained to
the end plain William Ewart Gladstone. AL
though an aristocrat of the aristocrats, his
| life was spent in building up the great mid
| die classes of England at the expense of
the aristocracy. Had he been ten years
younger he would have brought in a bill to
abolish the House of Lords. The working
| men of England owe to him their practical
y universal suffrage. The laboring classes
had no more persistent or powerful advo-
cate. No stain ever attached to Glad
stones morals. While not SO great man
as Pitt or the Earl of Chatham, or perhaps
George Canning, still he easily outranks all
his contemporaries in England for the last
fifty years even including the brilliant Dis
raeli-one of the most consummate party
leaders the world witnessed. Human
ity is vastly better for Gladstone's life.
Upon the whole the English are the best
governed nation in the whole world, and no
one man has contributed more to this grand
result than Gladstone. 1t is glory and
praise enough to say. and say with perfect
truth that the history of Europe for the
last fifty years cannot be truthfuly written
and Gladstones name be omitted.
d. p. BALDWIN.
Logansport, Ind, May 20.