ME. GLADSTONE AND. MR. REARDEN.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 374, 12 October 1868, Page 3

ME. GLADSTONE AND. MR. REARDEN.

(From the Saturday Review.)

Mr Gladstone has of late been prolific 'in letters. Indeed he is always prolific. If he is not talking he is writing, and vice versa. He felt, and not unnaturally, much interest in the late Worcestershire election, and accordingly wrote a letter which was said to have materially helped to decide the contest. But in this letter it seems that Mr Gladstone mentioned the famous— -famosus —Mr Rearden. Mrßeardenis apersonwhohas all of a sudden emerged into some notoriety Being a Piccadilly tradesman, it is quite possible that to be talked about may guit his purpose. Mr Eearden has his place in the great economy of things political. He unquestionably does befong to the Liberal party. Nobody would think of calling him a Tory, and he certainly has not established a specific political definition for himself. And a party, like most other animal organisations, must have a tail. A tail implies a succession of joints and articulations ; and a succession of joints involves a last joint. This hapens to be Mr Rearden. The la«t joint in a tail is apt to get most frequently into the dirt, and Mr Rearden, being the.last joint in the Liberal tail, i 3 neither the most dignified nor the cleane3t member of the organic Whig body. Recently Mr Rearden has whisked himself into a very nasty puddle indeed. He put, or rather talked about putting, a question respectfully suggesting that the Queen should abdicate. And the Speaker and the House between them managed somehow thft the question should not be put, and, to show its indignation and disgust, and altogether apropos of nothing or next to nothing, the House on a subse quent occasion got Mr Eearden to get on his legs, for the mere purpose of lettin." him know that it was not going to listen to him. That is to say, the Commons sent Mr Eearden to Coventry. The whole thing vras not very dignified, aven on the side of Parliament. Mr Rearden was and is Mr Rearden, and bis position was so unequivocally settled that it wanted no protesting or gesticulating or moralizing about. But Mr Gladstone could not see this. Mr Gladstone has that noble intelligence which, while it enables him to see further into the general problems of life, politics, or circumstances than his neighbours, frequently incapc;ciates him from seeing the plainest things in their most familiar aspect. Everything with Mr Gladstone is grandiose. He always sees everything through a haze and a sublime medium of exaggeration and importance, Mr Rearden's sheer impudence and coarse vulgarity became, in Mr Gladstone's eyes, a most solemn and momentous matter. He took the Rearden grin and foolery au grand ,<# ieux ; and writing t > Worcester about, things human and divine in general, and on the complication of the moral, social and religious Kosmos, Mr Gladstone took occasion, which there was no occasion to take, to observe that' ; Mr Rearden is no supporter of the Liberalparty." As though it were of the least importance what party Mr Rearden supported; as though Mr Eearden could support anything ; as though what Mr Rearden said or did could be of the slightest consequence to anybody, or commit anybody, even himself. This is what everybody thought of Mr Rearden except Mr Gladstone. Mr Gladstone believed, what we suppose nobody else suspected, that Mr Rearden's question about the Queen committed the Liberals, which is a notion quite as ridiculous as to suppose that Mr Whalley's gabble commits Lord Stanley or Sir William Heathcote. But Mr Gladstone, either with admirable simplicity or with that cunning which affects simplicity, disavowed Mr Rearden. It might be thought politic to disavow Mr Rearden, but it is the sort of policy which suggests to a parvenu to cut his poor relations. The poor relations will not be cut. They will thrust their reminiscences and their painful presence and their hated manners and shabby clothes and associations into the great man's presence and dignified circle. Mr Rearden is not the man to be shaken off by the great Liberal leader. It is all very well to disavow your own flesh and iblood and kith and kin, but there are always two parties to a family quarrel.

What if the poor cousin won't- be quarrelled with or cut ? This is precisely Mr Rearden's case. It is not so easy to shake off a burr, whether he be a burr domestic, social, or even political. With very great explicitness and diffuseness Mr Rearden rejoins, and protests against Mr Gladstone's repudiation of him, and points out how faithfully he ha sfollowed the Liberal camp. Indeed, he is rather, in his own estimate, an Abdiel than otherwise. Faithful to his G-ladstone when Adullamites failed, Eearden to the Rescue might always, according to Mr Eearden himself, be depended upon, Mr Gladstone cannot see this, and painfully insists that, when the Liberals were last ejected from oflice, Mr Eearden showed his devotion to his party by being absent fron the fatal division. And so Mr Gladstone and Mr Rearden go on in what the newspapers call a lengthy correspondence, and which even they found so very lengthy that they only epitomized the first part of it. The concluding letters we have in full, but, however imperfect the whole story is, we have quite enough of it, especially in Mr Eearden's last letter, to know that Mr Gladstone had better have left Mr Eearden alone.