SIR W. HARCOURT ON MR GLADSRONE'S 80th ANNIVERSARY.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 457, 26 March 1890, Page 3

SIR W. HARCOURT ON MR GLADSRONE'S 80th ANNIVERSARY.

It is utterly impossible to enumerate the meetings, dinners, and banquets held in England to celebr te Mr Gladstone’s 80th birthday. Amongst the most important was that at Derby, where 700 gentlemen sat down, and at which the following able and interesting speech was delivered. We regret that we can only present it in a condensed form.

Sir W. Harcourt said that he rose to propose “ Health and prolonged life to our great leader, Mr Gladstone,” which was enthusiastically honoured, and said Ido not know if any ordinary occasion would have been sufficient in this Christmas week, and this particularly Christmas weather, to extract a singl" man from his home. But this is not an ordinary occasion. It is not a common anniversary upon which we have met together here to do honour to a famous occasion. The 30th December, 1889, which ought to have been the 29th, will be known by all who speak the English tongue as the celebration of the 80th birthday of a great Englishman ; of a man whose name and whose fame are known and will endure wherever and &3 long as the English tongue is spoken. But to us who are collected in this hall it is much more than that. Jt is an occasion of rejoicing to usthattho greatchief of our political faith, after more than half a century of public service, with his eye undimmed, his mind "unshaken, and his heart full of hope and vigour, should be ready still to lead us to the victories that have to come. (Cheers.) If you will look back upon the period of time which the life of Mr Gladstone covers, it is almost commensurate with the century which is about to close, the life beginning at the time, I think,when the reign of George 111. practically closed. My friend, the Chairman, has referred to the length of the reign of Queen Victoria. Ido not know whether you have observed that Her Majesty now, if you except the infancy of King Heiny 111., and the incapacity of George I 1., has sat upon the throne longer than any Sovereign that has ever reigned over England ; and yefc, the public life of Mv Gladstone extends beyond the reign of the Queen. Think of what England was in 1809, at the birth of Mr Gladstone. The population of England and Scotland 6inee that time has more than doubled ; and only that of Ireland, under the patronago of English rule, has dwindled since that period. The first period of the life of Mr Gladstone after the military glories of Waterloo was perhaps the most interesting period known to Englishmen—the period from 1815 to 1830. The last period of his honoured life has been in the time of perhaps the most prosperous, and with the greatest amount of wealth to the English nation which it has ever seen or known ; and of all that prosperity and wealth he has been the principal author. (Cheers.) I was reading the other day a book that has just come out, the correspondence of Lord Melbourne, a very shrewd man. He was speaking of the devotion of the people of Ireland to Mr O’Connell, and he said, speaking of that devotion, “ When the Irish people place confidence they do not withdraw it the next instant.” They do not sutler their opinions to be changed in a day by the leading article of a newspaper. When they trust a man, when they are really persuaded that he has their interest at heart, they do not throw him off because he does something which they cannot understand or explain; On the contrary, they think that he probably knows what he is about and what he does is done to serve them.” I think this is a very sensible view to take of a political leader, and the English people will do well to take such a view of their leader as the Irish did of O’Connell. That is the true secret of Mr Gladstone. They trust the man ; they are really persuaded, as Lord Melbourne said, that he has their interests at heart; and men do not throw him over, because they think he knows better what he is about, and what he recommends is in their interest, and that he desires to serve them. (Cheers.)

I know people who are of a different opinion, bub the Liberal party hold to their opinion, who are, I think, the majority of the English nation now , trust in a leader like that as an essential principle of party government, and party government is essential to Parliamentary Government ; it means keeping together in confidence under the direction of the chief you trust. If you choose to act in politics oh the view that one man’s Opinion is as good as another’s and a great deal better, you will never get on at all—you can have no effectual government at all. You will make no progress, you will only have a concourse of selfish atoms. You must make up your minds who is the man you will trust, and follow him. If you act upon any other principle than that, if your second or thiid-rate man is to think that his opinion is to prevail instead of having a great policy, which is the fruit of superior minds, you will have a third-rate policy, which is the product of inferior minds, who think they, have a right to dictate it; and that is the reason why in war as in statesmanship nothing great has ever b<-en accomplished except where great parties followed the direction of great leaders. He stated the real grounds of his removal from the Tory to the Liberal camp in a speech I well remember his making at Oxford in 1878. He said, “ I trace in the education of Oxford of my own time one great defect. Perhaps it is my own fault, but I must admit that I never learned at Oxford that which I have learned since, namely, to set a due value upen the inestimable principle of human liberty. The temper which too much prevailed in learned and academical circles was to regard with jealousy and fear the principles of liberty.” Then Mr Gladstone gave a definition of the difference between Conservative and Liberal principles. I have not his exact words, but he stated that the Tory party were actuated by fear, and that the principle of the Liberal party was a spirit of courage and confidence in the people, limited oniy by prudence. (Cheers.) That is how Mr Gladstone has told us he became a Liberal, and why he is a Liberal now, and why he is becoming more and more Liberal everyday he lives. The University of Oxford, when it dismissed him, delivered him from a policy of fear. What he says of the Universities is true. I have a great respect for men of learning, although we are somewhat overborne by men of learning. We are told that men of learning are against us ; but these men of learning have generally been against the Liberal party, and have always been in op position to the convictions of the majority of the nation and that is why no Liberal statesman has ever been able for any length of time to represent a University. Oxford got rid of Sir Robert Peel and Mr Gladstone, and Cambridge dismissed Lord Lansdowne and Lord Palmerston. Great as have been the achievements of Mj* Gladstone in past years, it was not until he left the representation of the University of Oxford that he became the acknowledged leader of the great Liberal party. In 1865 he went to the Free Trade Hall in Manchester to become a representative for South Lancashire, and the speech is one I well remember. He went down there from Oxford to Lancashire and he said, “ At last, my friends, I am come amongst you. I am going to use an expression which has become

famous and not likely to be forgotten, ‘I am come amongst you unmuzzled’” (cheers), and from that day Mr Gladstone became, and has ever since been, the leader of the Liberal part)’. The University of Oxford rejected him, and he became unmuzzled in 1865. Some twenty years later the Whigs rejected him, and he became still more unmuzzled (cheers), and I do not know we have anything to regret now. (Cheers.) I should not attempt to-night to record the great works which, as the head of the Liberal party, Mr Gladstone has accomplished. If 1 did I should keep you till tomorrow morning ; they will live in the history of the nations, they will be amongst the noblest chapters in the story of the 19th century. We know he has still one great work to accomplish. (Cheers.) That work, whether he lives to see it accomplished or not, will be the work of his heart and of his hands. (Cheers.) The nation are waiting to reca’l him to power to accomplish that work (cheers) whenever their voice can be uttered. If there are of our opponents who are prepared to deny that, let them give us the chance. (Cheers.) I need not say that as Mr Gladstonehas aroused the ardent admiration and sympathy of his friends, so he is pursued by the violent, bitter, and I will call it unjustifiable animosity and vituperation of his opponents. (Shame !) That is the fate of all great men and of all great reforms. You cannot make great reforms without threatening great interests, and the race of coppersmiths is never extinct (laughter), and they are always ready to shout “ Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” It is amusing, although it is at the same time rather shameful, to read some of the contemporary literature which has gathered round the memory of the great men of our own people. We are no better in that respect than other nations, perhaps worse. ,

I leave this vile garbage, in which the accusations' against Mr Gladstone are clothed to perish as they deserve. I mention them only to remind you of the equanimity and magnanimity with which Mr Gladstone has always encountered attacks ef this description, and scarcely ever have I seen him stirred or disturbed by the shameful insults hurled at his head. He seems to me to pass over them like a great ship making its voyage with a precious freight in a troubled sea, which dashes against it and breaks upon it, bub the vessel goes on its way, on its steady course without swerving or shrinking for a moment, until the port is gained and the freight is safely landed. (Loud cheers.) Mr Gladstone has had the unchanging support of the Literal party, and that loyalty has been rewarded richly, rewarded in the only manner which they could have desired, and that is in his advanced age he still remains the unconquered leader of the Liberal party. (Cheers.) His powers at his time of life are the marvel of our own days, and they will be the admiration of posterity. There have been men who have reached this time of life in their public functions, who have retained their mind unimpaired, and their bodily frame unbroken ; but where will you find a man, who at fourscore years has kept the spirit of youth, the confidence and the vigour and the buoyancy which belongs to youth ? Most old men lose their hopefulness of the future, their confidence in the present. They look back with a querulous discontent to the past, which they deplore. They believe in little, and they care for little ; their work is done, they have nothing to contribute to the common stock. That is not the position, that is nob the feeling of our illustrious chief. (Loud cheers.) His character has been pourbrayed in very noble lines by his co-equal, a poet who has reached the age with himself. Lord Tennyson has described the feelings of Ulysses when he returns to his home after his long and terrible wanderings after the siege of Troy. He was a man well-stricken in years, ladenwith honours, outworn with toil. Ho was entitled to rest. Rest did not belong to that spirit with which Heaven had inspired him. His indomitable will, his undying energy, drove him to more heroic deeds and to still greater labours. (Cheers.) And I think we may also bake to ourselves the exhortation which Ulysses made to his companions in arms,

I do not know whether there might have been skulkers in those days. There might have been men who said “ Have we not taken Troy ?” Have we not suffered during many years oftravel ? Youare engaging in new voyages. It is not safe ; let us rest. If there were any such in the army of Ulysses, I know there are none such in this room. Therefore we will take the invitation. “MY MARINERS.

‘Souls that have toiled and wrought and thought with me, “ That, ever with a frolic welcome took

'* The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed “ Free hearts, free foreheads. You and I are old; ‘Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all ; but something ere the end, Some work of noble note may yet be done “ Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. ‘That which we are. we are,

“ One equal temper of heroic hearts, “Made weak by time, and fate, but. strong in will •• To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

(Loud cheers.) That is the man> and that is the spirit in which we are led; that is the man, and that is the spirit in which we will follow him to the end. (Loud cheers.) While life remain? with him we will follow in his steps, and when he is no more we will endeavour to follow his example. (Loud and long-continued cheers.)