A LETTER FROM GLADSTONE.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 95, 28 March 1885, Page 5

A LETTER FROM GLADSTONE.

London, January 17.— The letter which this- accompanies is sent for publication, I need hardly say, by Mr Gladstone's permission. A brief note on the circumstances which gave rise to it may perhaps prove interesting, and for that, too, I have his leave, as well as the consent of the friend under whose roof the incident occurred. The date was last September, the place a country house in Scotland. The reasons, or some of the reasons, why I have held back the letter till now are, I suppose, obvious enough. One may hope that by this time the effervescence of the Presidential campaign has pretty well subsided. A conversation had been started by one of the company on the subject of reverence for great men, The question was asked : "Do we in these days feel and show as much reverence for noble character as was felt and shown formerly?" Some one said,' "No, and the reason is that such characters are fewer than they used to be ; the standard is not so high ; men have as much reverence in their nature, but there is less to call it forth." Mr Gladstone dissented at once. "If," said he, "you look back over a period within the memory of the oldest of us, you will find it rich in men who deserve and who have received the deepest respect and reverence of their contemporaries. To take but one example, there is Cobden. Ido not know that there is in any period a man whose public career and life were nobler or more admirable than Cobden'a." Then, interrupting himself, and looking across the table at me, Mr Gladstone said '• • ' Of course, I except Washington. Washington to my mind is the purest figure in history." Mr Gladstone added a sentence or two which I need not repeat, as the full expression of his opinion about Washington will be found in his own letter. All those preseut excepting myself were Englishmen, and all of them, it is a pleasure to say, agreed with Mr Gladstone. The morning after this, there was a report in the papers of a meeting in favour of imperial federation, and as we walked along the gallery to the breakfast-room, Mr Gladstone asked what was thought in America on that subject. I answered as well as I could and finally said there was a matter in which we, I thought, were more directly and deeply interested, and that was the promotion of a good understanding among all English-speakingpeople the world over. "Ah, there," exclaimed Mr Gladstone. "I sm heartily with you. The future of the world belongs to us, to us avlio are of the same blood and language, if we are true to ourselves and to our opportunities, not of conquest or aggression, but commercial development and beneficent influence." For a fuller account of his opinions I refer the reader again to Mr Gladstone's letter, to which this is, perhaps, a needless preface. I have only to add that, thinking what he said on these two subjects would interest Americans profoundly, I subsequently wrote to ask if I might repeat it. "Yes," was his answer, "in such words and as publicly as you please j" and at the same time came the letter in which he restates his views on both subjects. G. W. S.

10, Downing -street, ) Whitehall, Oct. 4, 1884. j Dear Mr Smalley : I was unwilling to answer your letter nastily, and I therefore postponed writing for two or three days, but I find this does not in any way relieve me from my dilemma. The first point raised by you is, indeed, one that can be briefly disposed of. When I first read in detail the " Life of Washington " I was profoundly impressed with the moral elevation and greatness of his oharacter, and I found myself at a loss to name among the statesmen of any age or country, many, or possibly any, who could be his rival. In saying this I mean no disparagement to the class of politicians, the men of my own oraft and cloth, whom, in my own land and my own experience, I have found no less worthy than other men

of love and admiration. I could name among them those who seem to me to come near even to him. But I will shut out the last-half century from the comparison. I will then say that if, among all the pedestals supplied by history for public characters of extraordinary nobility and purity, I saw one higher than jail the reet, and if I were required at a moment's notice to name the fittest occupant for it, I think my choice, at any time during the last forty-five years, would have lighted, and it would now light, upon Washington. The other subject is one on which I hardly like to touch in a few lings, for. the prospect it opens to me is as vast as it is diversified, and it is so interesting as to be almost overwhelming. Mr Barham Zinck, no incompetent calculator, reckons that the English-speaking people of the world a hundred years hence I will probably count a thousand millions. [ Some French author, whose name I unfortunately forget, in a recent estimate, places them somewhat lower, at whatprecise figure I do not recollect, but it is like 600 or 800 millions. A century back I suppose they were not much, if at all, beyond fifteen millions ; I also suppose we may now take them at a hundred. These calculations are not so visionary as they may seem to some ; they rest upon a rather wide induction, while the best they can pretend to is rough approximation. But as I recollect, it was either Imlay or one of those with whom the name of that statistician is associated that computed, a century back, the probable population of the American Union at this date ; and placed it very noarly at the point where it now stands. What a prospect is that of very many hundreds of million of people, certainly among the most manful and energetic in the world, occupying one great continent, I may almost say two, and other islands and territories not easy to be counted, with these islands at their head, the most historic in the world ! In contact, by a vast commerce, with all mankind, and perhaps still united in kindly political associations with some more hundreds of millions fitted for no mean destiny. United almost absolutely in blood and language, and very largely in religion, laws, and institutions. If anticipations such as these are to be realised in any considerable degree, the prospect is at once majestic, inspiring and consolatory. The subjectis full of meaning, and of power ; of so much meaning that the pupil of the eye requires time to let in such a flood of light. I shall not attempt, after , thus sketching it, to expound it. It would I be as absurd as if a boxkeeper at a theatre, when letting in a party, should attempt; to expound the piece. I hope that some person more competent and less engaged than myself will give this subject the study it deserves ; taking his stand on the facts of the last centary, and the promise, valeat quantwn, of the coming one. I cannot but think as well as hope that a good understanding, in the future near and far, among English-speaking peoples, though it may not be matter of certainty, yet is beyond the necessity of going a-begging, so to speak, for recommendations from any individual, earnestly and with my whole heart as I, for one, should recommend it. Clearly if the English-speaking peoples shall then be anything like what we have now been supposing, and if there shall not be a good understanding among them, there will have been a base desertion of an early duty, a gran refiuto, such as might stir another Dante to denounce it, a renunciation of the noblest, the most beneficial, the most peaceful primacy ever presented to the heart and understanding of man. On the other hand, great as it would be, it would demand no propagandas, no superlative ingenuity or effort j it ought to be an orderly and natural growth, requiring only that you should be reasonably true and royal to your traditions, and we to ours. To gain it will need no preterhuman strength or wisdom ; to miss it will require some potentous degeneracy. Even were it a daydream, it would be an improving one, loftier and better than that which prompted the verse, super et Garamantas et Indos Proferet imperium ; jacet extra sidera tellus, Extaa anni solisque vias, Because it inpMes no strife or bloodshed, and is full only of the moral elements of strength. Believe me, dear Mr Smalley, very faithfully yours, W. E. Gladstone.