The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-05-19
WILLIAM e. GLADSTONE.

Mr.. Gladstone is dead. One of the most
conspicuous figures of the nineteenth CEN
fury has passed away, a man who belonged
not to the English people only, but to all
the world Though the world is immeas-
urably richer for his life, it is none the
poorer for his DEATH His lifework is i'm
mortal. and, though his wonderful vitality
was preserved to the last, so completely
rounded out was his career that his life
work has already passed into history His
great suffrage and church reforms, his i'm
portant inventions in methods of taxation,
his work for human freedom. not only in
England and Ireland, but in Greece and
Italy as well, will live forever. Yet there
are those in England, and plenty of Them
who Will say that Mr.. Gladstone accom-
plished none of these things; that he simply
appreciated the fact that these reforms
were coming and was shrewd enough to
take the winning side, and they support
their assertion with the very true statement
that Mr.. Gladstone usually started out upon
the wrong side of great public questions,
but invariably veered around to the right
In time to do magnificent service in it's be-
half and reap the lions share of the honors
of success.
Thus it is impossible to give a reasonable
estimate of Mr.. Gladstone's greatness. 1t
is yet too early by a century for anything
of that nature. We cannot deal with men
or events of our own time from the view
point of the historian. We cannot get
them in the proper perspective The hin
in our immediate vision eclipses from our
view the distant mountain peak When we
are near 1t in the valley the tangled under
brush hides from our eyes the broad and
shining river. But as we get away the I'M
derbrush and the hill mingle with the mo-
notony of the plain. The mountain and the
river remain the features of the landscape
Thus we know not how the statesman of
the present compares with the monarch or
monarch-maker of the past-and all great
ness is purely a matter of comparison. We
do not even know the men of the present
as we know those of the past. Our vision
is obscured by the confused mass of gossip,
of defamation and of extravagant praise
Time must separate the true from the false,
the good from the valueless. In history, if
in nothing else, the fittest must and will
survive.
1t was Moncure D. Conway who wrote of
Mr.. Gladstone as an evolution" and evolu-
ton is peculiarly fit word to apply to his
life and work. 1t is the only word that ex-
presses the consistency of his inconsistency.
In 1888 the author of powerful defense
of the Established Church of England and
its support by the state, in 1868 he intro
duced a measure dsestablishing that
church in Ireland and with it overthrow
Disrael's Ministry; entering Parliament
the uncompromisng champion of orthodoxy
of the Oxford quality, he later advocated
the admission of Jews, and still later of
atheists to the British legislature; in 1889
fighting shoulder to shoulder with Peel for
protection, in 1890 he published a free-trade
polemic in which he went further than even
Bright or Golden had ever gone making
his first speech in Parliament in defense of
slavery in the West Indies, he stood at the
close of his career one of the worlds
great champions of human liberty and
equality; starting out in the belief that pop
ular government was but another name
barrier until Great Britain enjoys practi-
cally universal manhood suffrage; in 1881
the author of a stringent Irish coercion bill,
he was in 1891 the rock to which chung the
hope of home rule for Ireland. In a word
he began his career as a High Church
Tory; he ended it the leader of the radical
wing of the Liberal party, an element so
advanced in it's ideas of reform that the old
line Wings parted company with it.
He was an exponent of the Anglo-Saxon
civilization of the age. His absolutely spot
less character and conscientious, undeviat-
ing regard for truth and purity reflect in
an intensified degree the high moral stand
ards of his people and his time. He was
man of boundless energy in half a dozen
fields of action; his age has been one of
ceaseless activity, commercial, political,
reformer of everything; his age has been
one of continual change, of amending efforts
for betterment. He was intensely unirn-
aginative; his work was for the lettering
of men in their everyday political, CONNER
cial, industrial and social affairs; his age
has been an intensely practical one. He was
a negative force in foreign affairs, but
very positive one in domestic legislation;
statesman conspicuously weak in time of
war, but even more conspicuously strong in
time of peace.
If Mr.. Gladstone was inconsistent, the
history of his time is inconsistent He
changed, he developed, and the Anglo
Saxon race has changed and developed with
him.
The success with which the Spanish fleet
has avoided the American souadrons so far