A TORY VIEW OF MR GLADSTONE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1816, 16 April 1888, Page 3

A TORY VIEW OF MR GLADSTONE.

(By "Jehu Junior" In " Vanity Fair") (Continued from our last. ) There is indeed not a csuse ever taken up by Mr Gladstone that he has not ruined, not a principle ever advocated by him that he has not deserted, His acoes Bion to any cause lias invariably been followed by disaster and succeeded by be'rayal. The Tories whom he joined m 1832, the slaveowners whom he defended m 1833, the Irish Uhuroh which he championed m 1835, the Protectionists whom he assisted m 1840, the Union with Ireland which ho lauded m 1871, have all experienced the disasters which never fail to accompany his alliance, and from the betrayal which always ends it ; and for thoso eeek<T3 of Yankee dollars who have adopted the tra3e mark of " Home Rule " it was as fatal a day when he joined their ranks as it has ever been for all those who have experienced the misfortune of his advocacy. Nor will they fail to experience the common lot of his allies. Time and hi£ own iDconquerable defections have driven from him buch whilom fast friends as Lord Hartinglon, Mr Bright, and Mr Chamberlain ; and the day will come when Messra Parnell and Dillon will, like them, denounce the man they now regard as their leader. Mr Gladstone is indeed the most successful of political bypocrit s, for he succeeds m deceiving himself ; and the marvel of the future will be that any numbers of a plain people like the English should ever have taken serious'y the insincere sincerities, the plausible sophistries, and the canting platitudes with which he has again and again paved his way to power and salary. He is the longest-winded speaker and the greatest master of parenthesis and qualification now living ; and, m spite of the mischiefs he has wrought, it will be remembered to his credit that he bae not enriched himself by corruption, and that ho has all his lie been, and still remains, poor. Moreover, he is a man of the greatest mental and bodily vigor, of marvellous energy, acd of the largest sympathies. He studies Greek, he collects china,' ho aimires beauty, he fells trees, be reads the lessons m church on Sundays, and it is on publio record that, when Chancellor of the Exchequer m 1853, ho even found time to walk the Haymarket and Leicester equore at midnight, and to accompany an unfortunate female to her home for the sole purpose of convening and reclaiming her. Mr Gladstone haß not won flattering opinions from the great men who have best known him. Lord Rues'dll, the Liberal statesman, m his " Recollection*," declared that Mr Gladstono had "tarnished the national honor, injured the national interests, and lowered the n<tio.nal character," Mr Carlyle, the philosopher, In 1873 stigmatised him as a " poor Phantasm . . the representative of the multiludino"s cants of the age, religious, moral, political, literary ; differing ia this point from other leading men, tkat the cant seems actually true to him , . ono of those fatal figures created by England's evil genius, to work irreparable mischief." Lord Maoaulay, the Liberal historian, deckred him " to be plausible when most m error , . . whatever ho sees ib refracted and distorted by a fal^e medium of pnes ; o- s and prejudices, and the doctrines which ho puts forth op pear to us, after a full and calm consideration, to be falao, to be m the highest degree pernicious, and to bo BU?h, as, if followed out m practice to their legitimate consequences, would inevitably produce the dissolution of society." Mr Ruskin, the artist, says of him, " ; Thtra is one political opinjon Tdo entortain, a,nd that is that Mr Gladstone is an olil wjndbag.'-' Mr John Morley, M P. , tlie Home Ruler, declared that "his mind is a mint of logical counterfeits." Mr Parnel 1 , Mr T. P. O'Connor, Mr J. M'Carthy, Mr i?exton, Mr Heily, Mr Redmond, and Mr Biggar, the Home Rulers, declared him, m Novembar 1885, to be the leader of a party '' perfidious, treacherous, and incompetent." Mr John Dillon, the Home Ruler, Baid of him m October 1881, " Mr (iladstono'a reputation for honesty m politics io a falao reputation, aud Imscd upon the power of skilfully misrepresent ing facts. . . ... I have watched him moat closely, and know him to be' a dishonest politician," Fjn&Uy, Mr Parnoll denounced him m October 1881 aa " the greatest Coercioniat, the greatest and most unri.valled slanderer 6£ the Iriah nation tha,t ovor undertook t^o task." All theqe Dome Ritfere, with thia ppinion of him, have noff become lub friends and allies. Some still beliove both them and him to be honest and cane.