The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-10-31
ROSBBERY ON GLADSTONE.
THE MANY SIDEDNESS OF ENG
 LANDS GREAT PREMIER.

Ills Faith in the Causes He EEp0used-I His Wonderful Industry and His Moral Courage.
 At the recent unveiling in Glasgow of I the statue erected to the memory of Mir. Gladstone. Lord Rosebery thus summed up the virtues of the premier:
 T must, in what have to say. leave out altogether the political aspect of Mir. Gladstone. In some cases such a rule would omit all that was interest ing in a man. There are characters from which if you subtracted politics there would be nothing left. It was not so with Mir. Gladstone. To the great mass of his fellow countrymen he was, of course. a statesman. wildly worshipped by some, wildly detested by others. But to those who were privi- legged to know him, his politics seemed but the least part of him. The predom> inant part to which all else was subor- | dinated was his religion. The life | which seemed to attract him most was the life of the library; the subject | which engrossed him most was the | subject of the moment, whatever it might be, and that when he was out of l office was very rarely politics. Indeed, I sometimes doubt whether his natural bent was towards politics at all. Had his course taken him that way, as it very nearly did, he would have been a i great churchman, greater perhaps than any that this island has known. He | would have been a great professor # l you could have found a university big Cl4cugh to hold him. He would have heen a great historian. a great book man. He would have grappled with whole libraries and wrestied with academies had the fates placed him in a cloister. Indeed, it is difficult to con- ceive the career, except perhaps the r,ilitary, in which his energy and in- tellect and application would not have laced him on a summit. Politics, however, took him and claimed his life service; but, jealous mistress as sle is, could never thoroughly absorb him. Such powers as have indicated seerl tn belong to giant and a prodigy, and can understand many turning away from the contemplation of suca char acter feeling that it is too far removed from them to interest them, and 1t is too upapproachable to help them-like reading of Hercules and Hector, myth ical heroes, whose achievements the ac- tual living mortal cannot hope to rival.
 'The three signal qualities which made him what he was were courage, industry and faith-dauntless courage, unflagging industry, faith which was part of his ffbre-these were the levers with which he moved the world. I do not speak of his religious faith. That demands worthier speaker and an- other occasion, but no one who knew Mir Gladstone could fail to see that it was the essence, the savour. the motive power of his life. Strange as 1t may seem, I cannot doubt that while this attracted many to him, 1t alienated others-others, not themselves irreli- gious, but who suspected the sincerity of so manifest devotion, and who, reared in the moderate atmosphere of the time, disliked the intrusion of reli- gious considerations into rolitics. These. however, though numerous enough, were the exceptions, and 1t cannot, I think, be questioned that MT. Gladstone not merely raised the tone of public discussion, but quickened and renewed the religious feeling of the so- ciety in which he moved.
 But that is not the faith of which am thinking to-day. What is present to me is the faith with which he es- poused and pursued great causes. There, also, he had faith sufficient to move mountains. and did sometimes move mountains He did not lightly re- solve. He came to no nasty conclu- sion, but when he had convinced him self that a cause was right, it en- grossed him, it inspired him with cer- tainty as deep-seated and as imperious as ever moved mortal man. To him, then, obstacles, objections, counsels of doubters and critics were as naught. He pressed on with the passion of a whirlwind, but also with the steady persistence of some puissant machine. He had, of course. like every states man, often to traffic with expediency. He had always, I suppose, to accept something less than his ideal, but his unquenchabie faith, not in himself, though that with experience must have waxed strong-not in himself but in his cause-sustained him among the necessary shifts and transactions of the moment, and kept his head high in tine heavens. Such faith, such moral con- viction, is not given to all men, for all the treasures of his nature were in in- gots, and not in dust; but there is per- haps no man without some faith in some cause or some person. If so, let him take heart, in however small @ mi nority he may be, by remembering how mighty strength was Gledstone's power of faith.
 HIS INDUSTRY.
 His next great force lay in his in- dustry I do not know if the asper- sions of ca canny' be founded. but, at any rate, there was no ca canny' about him. From his earliest school days, if tradition be true, to the bed of death he gave his full time and energy to> work No doubt his capacity for manual labor was unusual. He would sit up all night writing pamphlet and work next day as usual. An eight