GLADSTONE: GRAND OLD GAMMONBR.

NZ Truth, Issue 92, 23 March 1907, Page 8

GLADSTONE: GRAND OLD GAMMONBR.

;'' A GLORIFIED, GABBLING GASBAG."

Let the Worshippers of Gladstone

Read, Mark, Learn and Ruminate.

(By JOHN NOBTON.)

Last Sunday I listened with' pleasure to . the. preaching of. Parson Kench, m the Kongregational ; proKathedral on Saint George's Terrace, Perth. As already admitted, I msas personally pleased with the preacher, intellectually, refreshed and morally mollified by his discourse, (which dealt chiefly with the alleged .Christian virtue oif patience. Mr Kench spoke of Gladstone m terms of superlative praise, as though this old, and now happily dead and at arest t time-serving, word-spinning, hairsplitting and principle-pawning politician never coughed or sneezed, or did anything - else wanton,- wayward or windy that required the use of a snout-clout, or could have caused his contemporaries to stare, start, or sniff.. Whereas, Gladstone was the most. Vhale. l and. hearty of humans, with' Sfnpre. waywardness, wantonness, and ,/W'ihdiness m his character and comp#i|ion than any other bipedal barabctpzler of /his . species. He was :ill wards and windiness ; and ,; his jawish ejaculations, not to speak of his pectoral belching's and abdominal eructations,- marked hint as, a man of a marvellous wind-gauge, powerful physique, and limitless lucubration.

Gladstone was synonymous with Gammon, fte typified Talk, and systematized s' Sophistry. No man -has. been christened by -his countrymen with so many soubriquets, significant of contempt as Gladstone has been by Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotchmen, and Welshmen. To each of these secbions of tlie' United Kingdom he turned for favor and political support, and gained it by pandering to their racial and religious prejudices, social* and v industrial hatreds and rivalries. They smiported him because he played 'the part of political pander to popular prejudice, ever seeking to subserve his own selfish personal ends and political ambitions, by putbine: class against class, and alternately selling the Proletariat and Plutocracy, the. Aristocracy and Democracy. Gladstone was a great, genius ; he succeeded by the arts of, the charlatan and the cant of the Christian. An adept m all .the arts of 'the agitator,' -anarchist and incenr diary, he could - cog and cozen a party m Parliament, a congregation m church, or a moT) from the platform, by simply sounding forth strings of sonorous words which often meant, nothing, 'were not meant to mean anything:, nor intended to be- understood. It was this facility of- pouring forth perennial streamsof TVQrdy-. ,T?orthlessness that gained for Gladstone the ' soubriquet 'of '.: "The Glorified Gasfoag !"

* How dan- anybody speak m such disparaging terms of, the great, the good, the grand, the glorious "William Ewart Gladstone?- Simply; because Gladstone was a- grand old humbug, and a ghastly old shuffler, all his life, from start to finish. It was said of him that he would have made even a- better C-eneral of the Jesuits than Chancellor of the Exchequer : and a better Pope of Rome than Prime Minister of England. Nevertheless, Gladstone was a revolutionist, rooting up and throwing down principles and institutions, ■with-' a reckless disregard of "either" expediency or equity. He claimed to be a reformer ; but wished to reform m the same wicked old Whig way. Bri-

tain to-day is reaping, m commercial decline, industrial stagnation i sectarian strife and social anarchy, the fruits of some of Gladstone's glorified reforms. Gladstone was the greatest political pretence of the century. While pretending to serve the masses, he was betraying the classes. While pretending to increase the power of the people, he was bolstering up the political position of '•the manufacturing bourgeoise and landed aristocracy against popular rights. And while placating the masses, by pretending to fight the classes, lie was always conspiring with ' the latter to circumvent the •vyishes and will of the former. Pretending to menace and abolish the House of Lords, Gladstone, like "Wiwertor" Reid on the Reform of the Legislative Council m New South Wales, "was only gammoning. While gabbling about restraining the action (by restricting the power) of the Peers, Gladstone increased their numbers ,and strength by creating more new Peers than any other Prime Minister before or since, not excepting that port-wine swiping, spewing " sot, the ''Immortal Billy Pitt !

Gladstone began life as a plutocratic fledgling and f a political pimp of the Tories. Ke entered Parliament for the rotten borough of Newark, as the nominee of that aristocratic boroughmonser, the Earl of Carlisle. He was the son of a slave-owing sugar-planter j Who got great wealth by literally bleeding, beating, sweating, and over-working the hapless negro men, women, and child .slaves on his West Indian plantations. Gladstone and his brothers and sisters literally -fattened and battened on 'the .blood and sweat of black slaves. Gladstone— the great, the good , the frlorious .Gladstone— lived all his life, principally on the slavemade, fortune which his father had made on his West Indian plantations. The first thing that. Gladstone did when he entered Parliament, was to defend negro slavery. Lord Howick, m the House of Commons, had exposed and denounced the cruelties committed! upon the negroes on the West Indian sugar-plantations, m which he implicated Sir John Gladstone, the father of. the great and good William Ewrt Gladstone. Of course the great and good Gladstone must jump to his feet to . 'defend these West Indian atrocities m general, and his father's part > m them m particular. What a sight •'! St. Gladstone selfishly defending n^gro. slavery, and its concomitant cruelties, simply because'it was a family affair, and the fortune of. his father had, been made 'but of the ' blobd^aM rswea^f gers, and built up on their halfstarved ami brutally beaten bodies >l No wonder that, years

later, this same St. Gladstone when .'Secretary of State for the Colonies, should propose the resuscitation of Felonry m Australia, by reviving the old. Botany Bay system of transporting convicts and prostitutes to Australia, after it had once been -abolished.

Soon after he entered the House of Commons — where he was beginning to make his mark, and to be regarded ,as the rising hope of the stern, unbending legislators who were mutinously following Sir Robt. Peel, who

had betrayed them, over Protection, as Gladstone was to betray Item later on— he wrote a book m defence of a State Church, m which he advocated a State religion. Since then, without m any way altering his views upon religion he became the iconoclastic disestabiisher and disendower of National churches, and the most revolutionary reviser of religion by Act of Parliament that the world has ever seen. This rising hope of the old-time Tories soon turned out to be as truculent a turncoat m general politics as he had proved himself to be m those of religion. William Ewart Gladstone, the Champion of the Church and the State, later m life— when there was no new or safe notion wherewith to revive his waning . popularity—became the champion of Irish Home Rule. But even here, he could not go straight for long, but soon betrayed his new-found Fenian friends by pretending to be shocked at Charles Stewart Parnell's relations with Kitty O'Shea. True it is that Gladstone seemed at the time to be complying with the demand of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, formulated by the hierarchy, rather than by the parish priests, when he refused to co-operate any longer with Parnell. But this bowing to the Catholic prelacy of Ireland /was only so much false and putrid pretence.' Gladstone was the most pe'rMious of political pretenders.

Where his political plans or personal popularity seemed at stake, Gladstone seldom, if ever, , made a sacrifice for principle, honor, or conscience. It was not the Catholic priest so much as the -Protestant parson who compelled Gladstone to assassinate Parnell and basely to betray Home Rule. The basis and backbone of Gladstone's power m England, Scotland, and Wales were -Nonconformist Sects, who were glad to recognise 'm 'Gladstone their Cromwellian champion , against the Anglican State Church. But, though bitterly opposed to an endowed or subsidised State Ohuroh, they are even more bitterly opposed to the Roman Catholic Church, which they are wont to describe delicately as "The ■ Scarlet Woman" and "The Whore ' of Babylon." Irish Home Rule to these sectaries means Rome Rule, and as such they are savagely and sincerely opposed to it m every shape or form. Besides, these sweet sectaries, who glory m the Cromwellian slaughter and sack of Drogheda, or Treda, Wexford, Ross,. Buncannon, and Clonmel, have a very sensitive Conscience, v latterly known— in order to differentiate it from every other known as the conscience— as .the Nonconformist Conscience. 3 The keepers of this Nonconformist Conscience are about as scurvy, as. snide, and as snivelling a set of "snuffiebusters as ever "conjured with that illusive commodity called a conscience. So. sensitive was the collective conscience) of these rusty, fusty, musty, dusty, dirty-dickey divines, m stale singlets and stinkintr socks,, that they • pretended' to he positively shocked at Parnell's discovered' love for a lovely and lovable woman. They started out on a crusade to vindicate the Nonconformist Conscience, and to scare sanctimonious spinsters, and stir up. sectarian savages, by hoisting as the sacred standard of anti-Home Rule the petticoat of Kitty O'Shea, the loved and loving paramour of Parne-11,

Was "Gladstone stocked aii -'ParHell's prurient pranks ? Not aiT all. He had". worked -with prurient politicians of- more conspicuous and "cussed" concupiscence .than Parnell ; and, if police reports and political whispers did, not belie him, 1 • Gladstone himself was somewhat of a concupiscent caperer whenever he could cut loose from his careful and cautious wife Catherine, who knew him too well to leave Mm long at liberty from her leading and restraininp- strings. Gladstone cared no more about Parnell's pruriency than a pig does about piety. Gladstone, the Grand Old Gammoner, had. to give way to the anti-H6me Rule cry of the Nonconformist Consciences raised against Parnell m the name of private purity ; as if -private purity had anything to do with political ability and public morality ! Had he dared, the Grand Old Gabbling Gasbag would have told his Methcdy and Wcswowserleyan myrmidons to go to Hell, m recondite, round-about, rigmaroling rhc'domontade. But he dared not. There was a schism m hie? political camp, and a split among his followers over Home Rule. Chamberlain and other renegades were raging with Orangemen and Primrose Leaguers for Grand Old Gladality ! Had he dared, the Grand Old 6ammoner was not to be so easily gammoned. He saw a way of killing two birds with one stone. By giving way to the Nonconformist Con-, science clamour, he perceived that he would at one and the same time placate the English Protestant Parsons and propitiate the Irish Catholic prelates, both of whom were onually embittered against Parnell, the Protestant leader of the Irish National Movement of Home Rule.

The Protestant parsons hated Parnell beoause he,' a Protestant,, led so successfully a Catholic Irish movement which, to them, spelt Separation ami Romish Supremacy. - The Irish , Paptist prelates ..who- liatetlV Parnell because he was a Protestant, and resented his leadership of the Irish National cause for that reason, and for the other and still more cogent reason that he would not . submit the movement to Roman Catholic control. So that, m making Parnell 's pruriency a pretext for politically poigmarding him, Gladstone played the game of parson and prelate and his own at the same time —the truculent, tergiversating, old time-server that he was. The simple truth is that at the time he assisted parson and priest to assassinate Parnell, he (Gladstone) knew that he could not carry Home Rule through Parliament. He also knew that if lie failcl to perform his promises to the Irish people Parnell would put him oiit of office by coalescing with the Tories. Hence, this pusillanimous old political Pecksniff— the Grand Old Humbug of Harwarden— decided to put to death, m the most deceitful and dastardly fashion, his old political pal, Parnell, on the grounds of personal purity and private propriety. This was a pretty piece of public posing on Hie part of the one Prime Minister of England, whose pornic pranks among the park prostitutes and midnight " molls " of London had more than once got him into trouble, and made it nee-

cssary to have this political protagonist of private purity shadowed by a CriendUy policeman m plain clothes whenever lie meandered his midnight way among the molls of the Strand, Piccadilly, or Regent Street. As the " Midnight Missionary to the Molls," Gladstone was . a standing joke m the House of Commons, pretty much as the late Sir Henry Parkes was m the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, under a much more salacious and equally sonorous soubriquet.

We have already spoken of the cumulation of comtemptuous cognomens with which Gladstone's contemptible conduct caused him to be christened by his contemporaries. In addition to those already cited, he was known as the " Apostle of Peace who was always at. War." While preaching a peaceful policy to his political opponents, he went out of office ; when iri office, he was the wager of the most wanton, wasteful and wicked wars ever waged. Under Gladstone's regime, more wars of this scandalous sort (or of any other sort) were waged than at any previous period of British history. He was always waging war a,q;ainst some weak nation or race m some part of the world, . chiefly against the coloured races. He it was who, after Britain had been badly beaten by the Boers at Majuba Hill, recognised the independence, of the B per Republic, and thus left smouldering the embers of a future conflagration, which recently flared up m the late costly and disastrous Boer war. It was this same Gladstone, who was always gabbling about driving the Turks, "'bag. and baggage," out of 'Europe, but who never made a move toward that end when m power. When out of power he was for ever blaming his political opponents for doing their best by means of diplomatic ultimatums, international congresses and naval demonstrations, to restrain the Turks from the commission of further atrocities on the Christian population of the Balkan Peninsula. Asia Minor and the- Greek Archipelago.

ih-3 same gabbling, gammoning, gasbag, Gladstone, was the same fellow who supported and applauded the Soudanese when they revolted to relieve themselves of the Khedivial tyranny, declaring that " they were rightly struggling to be free." He was the same old hoary, humbug who made war upon the wretched, downtrodden, oppressed, famine-stricken Fellaheen of Egypt, when, under the leadership of their National hero, the gallant Arabi Pasha 7 they made a noble effort to throw off the Khedivial yoke. For doing what he had praised m the Soudanese, Gladstone punished the Egyptians by bombarding, huniing, and sacking Alexandria; with the whole power of the British fleet; and slaughtering, with, the whole power of the British army, scores of thousands of Fellaheen bravely fighting for' freedom on the blood-stained sands of their native land. He allowed Armenians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Cretans, and other Christian races, subject to the Sublime Porte, to be massacred with impunity ; all his blather and bunkum about expelling the Turk, " bag and baggage,." out of Europe being conveniently forgotten. This is the sort of. Grand old Shuffler that was the h£au -ideal of,, the Christian Statesmen with 'Nonconformist Corisciencars, so long as he disestablished and disendowed the Irish Church, but refrained from giving Ireland Home Rule. Surely such a statesman and such statesmanship merited all the maledictions with which Gladstone's countrymen have since seen such good reasons to condemn and curse !

When that astute Asiatic adventurer and Jew Boss of the blue-blooded aristocracy of . England, Disraeli, sneermgly declared that Gladstone was " inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity," and that all his wild, whirling words, about the Treaty of Berlin— from which " Ben Dizzy " declared that he had brought- home " Peace and Honor y '— were simply the hair-brain-ed chatter of irresponsible frivolity, the Gladstonian gobe-mouches declared that Dizzy was only a disappointed, disgrunted old Jew, seeking to vent his Semitic spleen against the great champion of Christianity. If the truth is to be told— and it can be told m a few words—. Gladstone was the -greatest Champion of Cant, and supremest specimen of Holy Humbug that the world has ever seen, or is likely to ever see again. That he was great m the sense of being highly gifted ; that he was a genius at gabbling:, and a past-master m the .political art of gammoning ; and ' that he was marvellously eloquent and wonderfully wordy, none can or will care to deny. But that he was a -great Statesman, from an Imperial point of view, or a true patriot, from a purely political standpeint, is an assumption often asserted, hut which it is seldom sought to prove, beyond the piling up of platform and pulpit platitudes, similar to those s© pratingly pronounced by Parson Kench, who. before he pretends to praise politicians, should possess himself of the main features of their personal)-, 'ties- and r the truth' about their political professions and performances.