MR. GLADSTONE.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3170, 17 April 1879, Page 1

MR. GLADSTONE.

The following is from the pen of Mr Justin McCarthy, the author of a "History of'our own Times," which ba» been highly spoken of by the reviewer!:

When, shortly after the formation of the coalition Ministry, Mr Gladstone delivered his first, budget, it wai'regarded as a positive curiosity of financial exposition. It was a performance that belonged to the department of fine arts. The speech occupied several hours, and assuredly no listener wished it the shorter by a single sentence..: Pitt, we read, had the same art of making a budget speech a fascinating discourse; but in our time no Minister has had this gift except Mr Gladstone. Each time that he essayed the same task subsequently be accomplished just the same success. Mr Gladstone's first oratorial qualification was his exquisite voice. Such a voice would make commonplace seem interesting and lend something of fascination to dulness itself. It was singularly pure, clear; resonant, and sweet. The orator, never seemed to use the slightest effort or strain ' in filling any hall and reaching the ear of J the farthest among the audience. It was not a loud voice or of great volume; but strong, vibrating and silvery. The words were always aided by" energetic action and by the deep gleaming eyes of the orator. Somebody once said Gladstone was the only man in the House who could talk in italics. The saying was odd, but was nevertheless appropriate and expressive. Gladstone could? £y the slightest modulation of his voice give all the emphasis of italics, of small print, or large print, as any other e'ftecthe might desire, to his spoken words. Jt; is-not to be denied that his wonderful gift of words sometirses led him astray. It was often such a fluency as that of a torrent oa which the orator was carried away. Gladstone had to pay for his fluency by being top fluent. He could seldom resist the temptation to shower too many words on his subject and his hearers. Sometimes he involved his sentence in parenthesis within parenthesis until the ordinary listener began to think extrication an impossibility ; but the orator never failed to unravel all the entanglements and to bring the passage out to a clear and legitimate conclusion. There was never any halt or incoherency, nor did the joints of the sentence fail to fit, together in the right way. .. When, Gladstone came to be convinced that there was no such law as the Protection principle at all; that it was a mere sham; that to believe in it was to be guilty, of-an economic heresy—then it was impossible for him not to begin questioning the' genuineness of the whole system of political thought of which it formed but a part. Perhaps, too, he was impelled ■ towards Liberal principles at home by seeing what the effects of opposite doctrines had been abroad. He rendered memorableservico to the Liberal cause of EuropVby his eloquent protest against the brutal treatment of Baron Poerio and other Liberals of Naples who were imprisoned by the Neapolitan king—a protest which Garibaldi declared to have sounded!the first trumpet-call of Italian liberty. In rendering service to Liberalism and to Europe he rendered service also £o his own intelligence. He helped to set his own spirit free as well as the .Neapolitan people. We find him as his career goes on, dropping the: traditions of his youth, always rising higher in Liberalism, and not going back. One of the foremost of his compeers, and his only actual rival in popular eloquence, eulogised him as always struggling towards the light. The common taunts addressed to public men who have changed their opinions wero hardly ever applied to him. Even his enemies felt that the one idea always inspired him—a conscientious anxiety to do the right thing. None accused him.of being one of the politicals who mistake, as Victor Hugo says, a weather-cock for a flag. With many qualities which seemed hardly suited to a practical politician ; with a sensitive and eager temper, like that of Canning, and a turn of theological argument that as a rule.Englishmen do : not love in a statesman; with an impetuosity that often carried him far astray, and a deficiency of those genial social qualities that go so far to make a public success in England, Mr Gladstone maintained through the whole of his career a reputation against which there was hardly a serious cavil. The worst thing that was said of him was that he was too impulsive, and that his intelligence was too restless. He was an essayist, a critic, aHomeric scholar, a dilettante^n art, music, and old china; ke-was a, theological controversialist ; lie was a political economist, a financier,'a practical administrator, whose gift of mastering details has hardly ever been equalled; he was a statesman and an orator. No man cpuldattempt so many, things and not occasionally* make himself the subject of a""sneer. The intense gravity arid earnestness ;6f Gladstone's hiind always, -howeVeri saved him from the special penalty'df such Tersatility; no satirist described him as not one, but all mankind'si epifcoine. iilJ