MR GLADSTONE FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.

West Coast Times, Issue 351, 7 November 1866, Page 1 (Supplement)

MR GLADSTONE FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.

(from, iiatu-ers new monthly magazin'k.) All the great statesmen who have ever lived have belonged to one of two classes — the class of Representatives or that of Leaders. The Representative Man is the direct expression of his conutry at the time of his connexion with it. lie may be its practical expression — as Napoleon of France or Wellington of England ; or he may be its voice — as Burke was that of England and Webster of America. It is essential only that he keeps abreast with the people, and say or do what they wish to, but cannot s.ay or do. The Leader is not abreast with, but just ahead of hi* time and country. lie says or does not what they wish but what they want, not what they are but what they mean. He interprets them, and often he interprets them best when he is seemingly in antagonism with them. Paul, Luther, Calvin, are historic names in the latter class ; and in modern times we have them represented in Italy by Cavonr and Mazzini ; in England by Pahnerston and Gladstone. In England the death of the great Representative of the English people has made way for the accession of their great Leader, who stands in front of the Commons. But even as it is hard to classify England, it is hard to classify Gladstone. All other nations, from Japan to California, may be described as somewhere in the vast railway train of peoples ; tut England is aside, mmning on a groove of her own. Her island is the deposit of many sea currents from the soils of various^ other lands ; her Constitution is made of*,thc odds and ends of all others in Europe ; her people is mixed of all European race-* ; and her foremost orator is as complex as the physical, moral, or political elements of his country. Gladstone is a Scotchman, with a purely English training. Ho was bred a Tory, and is the leader of the Liberal party. He is a plcbian aristocrat ; a royalist who studied and learned to hate despotism in the court of Bomba; a High Churchman, who once wrote a Puseyistiebook, whom Oxford fears ; a reformer on whom the Argus of liberty finds it needful to k-iep its hundred eyes wide open. He has given each party its finest watchword, for the England he loves includes them all ; yet no party would go to him to find an advocate. Finding each party devoted much more to its own shell than to its essence, he touches them all with his wand and they unclose, revealing valuable keruals unsuspected by themselves. His theory of oratory classes him among the Leaders. The orator must, as he once said, "return to the people as flood what he has received as vapour.'' The Representative would return the vapour he had received more or less rarified. It is neyer of a- high Hind of man that one

can say, "• He is always up to the poople," or, " lie goes as fast as the people will let him." The Le.ider will fuse and remould public opinion. He will speak to marble, never doubting that it will flush with life under his words, and follow his voice as something for which it has been waiting, bound by an evil spell. But the task of the Leader licj in his presentative if not iv his representative power ; that is, he is not necessarily an originator. To the masses all not dictated bj themselves may seem innovation or originality, as they like or dislike it. The Leader, however, has leaders ; and he is oftener than otherwise^ mediator between the highest thought of his time and the people. Mr Gladstone, as we sit here, charms away the weariness oi' hours with an eloquence that, though it is figured and changed with the forms of his own mind as that light is by the stained windows, is clearly traceable to many solitary thinkers — not the least to that thin quietly-nervous representative of Westminster, who is so fascinated by the unsuspected scrolls into which he finds his own ideas may br* wov-.'n. When Mr Gladstone rises there ik a flutter of expectation and anxiety throughout the room ; what he will .say is utterly unpredictable. When John Bright, the finest orator in Europe, of the representative class, rises, his speech is so written out on his broad, handsome face, that Lavater, were he reporter for " The Times," would write it all out before he got through. But Gladstone's face is, during the first ten minutes, the sheath of the man ; and his idea only comes out gleam by gleam, until, a true Damascus blade, it flashes and darts in graceful curves — such a splendid fencer is he ! — and at length is weilded with that skill which generally wins the day. Nature has, in the clear steel-ray of his eye, the fortress-like brow that protects it, the firm nose that is its buttress above, though it becomes refined aud Greekish as it descends to the flexible lips, given him a fit casketdn, which to keep his brilliants. His gestures are more frequent thau with the earlier great speakers of Parliament, but are quite his own. He has, in particular, a way of raising his hand uj> to the side of his temples and holding it there vertically a moment before it descends to emphasise his point, which is remarkably impressive. It is, however, in the modulations of his voice?, in the tones which come each embodied in a word which expresses it as truly as pallor or blush expresses an emotion, that the great culture of Gladstone is revealed. One seems to be listening to the utterances of some invisable procession of great spirits — stretching from Homer, Demosthenes, Simonideb, to Erasmus and Bacon. As his words are, so to speak, complexionecl, so his style is physiognomical. His sentences carry in their form something beyond the mere meaning of the words. It was wonderful, indeed, to see a man of this nicety of culture floundering in the great reform Debate among the old phrases and hereditary expedients of England ; and it was a small tribute to him, that while he touched them they assumed a certain dignity. Fancy the flower of Oxonian culture talking about scot and lc.t owners and pot-walloppers ! Yet, really, when Gladstone spoke of pot-walloppers one seemed to find a new dignitary in the solitary individual — a widower, ma)'hap, or hermit, or scholar — whose boiling pot assured him an interest in his country, aud entitled him to the franchise. And so did he build statistics up into pretty architectural forms. Nevertheless, in the pauses of his speech, one could but feel a longing to hear that voice filled with the inspiration of universal questions, and not devoting itself to the tremendous issue of whether tho English votes should he a renter to the sum of seven or of ten pounds. Pounds — pounds — pounds — pounds. The words were reiterated until one would think that we had all gathered to perform a solemn rite to a great gold sovereign. I reflected on the wit of that photographer* who. having lately to make a likeness of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, set up a pound sterling in order to rivet his- eye. It is one advantage that we of America have reaped from the slavery agitation in America that our people have been educated into an interest in and knowledge of great human questions, and that our Congressmen, in however rude, unoxonian speeches, deal with such. Though the Church questions and the Irish wrongs have given of late a deeper tone to the English parliamentary debates, yet even now, in four days out of the five of its weekly sittings, one will find an immense amount of learning, vcseavcl\, and thought devoted to the Armstrong gun, to the Pigville Kail way Company, and other questions of similar grandeur. The subject of Reform was one, however, which, once unsealed, could not be kept down in the small casket of statistics. And all who listened to Gladstone when he introduced the bill knew that he must rise with the momentous importance of tlie theme. lie disappointed all who went to hear him as an orator in this ; fur his main object being to facilitate the Tories —knowing that the reformers wore sure to take whatever extension they could got — he devoted himself at the close of his statement to proving that it was a comparatively unimportant change We had a fine chance to witness the orator's dexterity in talking to one extreme what the other must not hear, and in

gilding a revolutionary pill ; but there was scarcely a touch of heioism iv the speech. The conclusion was the nearest approach to a brave treatment, and occupied five minutes of the speech, which was of two and a half hours' duration. It was an appeal to theTories, whose objection, it must be remembered, to the extension of the franchise is, that the admission of the working classes is, on account of their numbers, the virtual disfrauchisement of the higher and more educated classes. Nothing could exceed the grace and dignity with which this peroration was delivered ; and every word and thought iv it will bear a microscopic criticism. Yet it was listening to this that I felt Gladstone's limitations as an orator. There was a certain lack of moral depth in the speaker. Pe.clus est quod disertvjn faoit. Nothing can go farther than it has com 2, The plaudits which responded to these words were loud but not deep. Intellectually, Mr Gladstone is profound, though not broad ; morally he is broad, thougli not profound. I have never in this or any speech been thrilled by him, except on the intellectual side. All the parties and the people of England find a reception in his heart — for he is one of the few politicians who have hearts — but it i.s tho reception of a drawing-room ; they have no homes there. He is, therefore, a. • leader for an intermediate phase between two Englands, aud the forerunner of some man with convictions rather than opinions. If we mistake not, the working men of England can never obtain their franchises under the ministry of Gladstone. Carlyle reminds us that whoa any great change is to be wrought, God raises up men to whom that change is made to appear as '' the oue thing needful." Nobody would ever suspect Mr Gladstone of thinking the enfranchisement of the English working men the one thing needful ; there was far more of that kind of feeling about Mr Horsman when he bitterly denounced Earl Russell and his Ministeis as having at last laid the Government at the feet of John Bright. It will be impossible for the men of strong convictions on the radical side to bring in their one-thing-needful power upon a timid half-measure like that now proposed; and so it is probable that, between their indifference and the bitter hostility of the Tories and the Pahnerston mourners, the measures may fail. If it does, let it not be bupposed that English liberty has received any blow. When the diffusion of intelligence among the English lower classes shall have gone on some years yet; when fhe beer-houses are no longer tenfold more numerous than the schools ; when some of the hard and cruel religious dogmas, whose fetters on the minds and hearts of the lower orders are now hugged, shall be broken, they will be worthy of a higher privilege than to write by another's hand their ignorance upon a ballot, and east it to be another link in the chain of- all. And when that d.iy shall come, the ballot will be found to be the recognition of an elemental force moie needed by Par- v liament than Parliament by it. A SKETCH. — The Wellington correspondent of the " Otago Daily Times," writing on Oct. 8, gives the following sketch of the House on the night when Mr Jollie moved his resolution for reducing the grant to the provinces : — " On the side on which Mr Jollie is standing, I notice Mr Burns lying full length, with Ins hat over his «yo3 and nose ; Air Pott 3 trying to find a comfortable position for a nap ; Mr Macandrevr sorting his papers, but evidently listening, for he suddenly turns round anil says "quite right" to some condemnatory observation Mr Jollie has just made ; Mr Atkinson fst asleep ; Messrs Bradshaw and (Jargill trying to get there ; Mr Haughtou and Mr Wilson are studies for any artist who wanted to picture suffering patience; and Mr J. O'NeiU only half awake, in a posture, I presume, easy, but certuinly not elegant. On the opposite side I see Messrs James Williamson and LuJlain at full length, one of thvjm — no, not snoring, but breathing very hard, and v greatly disturbing the Scrgeant-at-Arms in the peru«al of some doubtlessly highly instructive volume, though it looks not unlike a novel; Mr Wells and Mr Bull evidently understand all that Mr Joliie is talking about, the latter referring to the paper indicated whenever lie says " honorable gentlemen will see, if they will be good enough to refer to," &c, &c. ; Mr WhiUiker, whose favorite " ' posture when he is bored is to curl himself up in his con wr seat, is curled up now ; Messrs Clarke and John Williamson are warming themselves, and talking over one fire ; and Messrs Taylor and G\ Graham are doing tho same over the other. The Treasury Bench is full, and all at iirat maintain the utmost dignity, pretending to listen very 'hard, but I notice that Mr Hall soon, begins to flit about rhe House, aud Major .Richardson retires to an empty bench, from winch he looks on, lying on the broad of- his back. As it is a larjje question, aud Mr Jollie is getting deep into iigures, liiembers look uneasily at the clock, some one or two come in, and some three or four go out. The opening aud shutting oi the door sounds harshly iv the perfect silence that reigns avoiuul, and Mr Jollie occasionally turns his head m that direction, ins if to say — Men may come, and men may go, But I go on for ever. However, it comes to an end at last, aud Mr Fitzherburfc gets up to ivply, and " although he didn't exactly catch the meaning of some of the hon. gentleman's remarks, he felt sure that he must have deeply studied the subject." A decidedly ridiculous failure to communicate correct intelligence that was, when the London operator undertook to tell tho Glaagowans of the grand smash-up of the big house of Peto and Belts, and astonished the Scotchmen with the announcement of the " failure of potatoes and beets — nine million pounds." — " New York World." A negro in Galveston, Texas, while smoking his pipe near an. open keg of gunpowder in a grocery store, dropped a spark amongst tho powder. The' retail was tho sudden disappearance of the negro and the store.