MR GLADSTONE AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 2376, 1 October 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

MR GLADSTONE AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

(The Monday July 11.) Tur, proceedings at Dollis-hill on Saturday, in connexion with the presentation to Mr Gladstone of the silver trophy already familiar to our readers have, we confess, caused us a moment of mild surprise. Acquainted as we are with Mr Gladstone’s colossal vanity, insatiable appetite for flattery, however coarse or however doubtful as to origin, and conspicuous lack of tho saving sense of humour, we were hardly prepared to see him make quite suoli a deplorable exhibition of himself. Tho bait dangled before him would not have been supposed to have a chance of attracting any other man occupying a prominent position, but the alacrity with which he rose to it abundantly justifies the audacity of the American anglers. In the lower commercial strata of New York tiioy have evidently taken the measure of our old Parliamentary hand with remarkable exactness. Mr Gladstone has had ample warning of tlie character of the gift offered him on Saturday, and of the men offering it. The whole thing was shown, by letters published in our columns a month ago, to be one of those delightful combinations of vulgar political intrigue with sordid commercial speculation which are so exactly to the taste of the Irish “ patriot.” These letters have never been contradicted oi even called in question, and it is perhaps worth while to recapitulate their principal points. This graven imago which Mr Gladstone accepts as a proof of the “ irrepressible interest of America in the great Irish cause ” was the happy thought of Mr Joseph Pulitzer, a Bavarian, who conducts a New York newspaper largely dependent upon Irish support. After weeks of frantic appeal; that newspaper, the “ profound and irrepressible interest ” of America had produced considerably less than one thou •sand dollars, subscribed by about sever hundred persons. Mr Pulitzer saw thal this would never do ; so he got uf a popular entertainment at whal corresponds in New York to Cremorrn or the Rosberville-gardens. It wai extensively puffed, and the people wen promised good value for their money, They went to the number of over three thousand, and the net receipts were soon eight hundred dollars. The money was added to the Gladstone fund, and the at tendance was added to the list of sub scribers. Soon afterwards another enter, tainment was given, the proceeds o which went to the fund, while the number of those who attended was added t( the subscribers’ list as before. This wai in August, and the subscription list wai kept open well into the winter, with tht result that the paltry sum of $3,382 9c was scraped together. At least half thii sum consists of the proceeds of entertain ments in which neither admiration for M Gladstone nor sympathy for Ireland cat be fairly said to have counted foi anything. The other half representi the money value of the euthusiasn of the hundred thousand Irish voter; in New York. The committee tha‘ has managed the affair is very mud what might be inferred from an affair si managed. It is composed of pushing Irish tradesmen in New York or of met like Mr Percy Belmont, who lack pro motion and are willing to flatter the Iris! mob in order to secure their most swee voices. For all these gentlemen it i very good business. They have drawn M Gladstone and they have posed as chain pions of the Irish people. Their piano on the hire system, their cheap furs, the! insurance company, and their ferry boat; will presumably gain great increase o Irish custom.

A testimonial so got up, so managed, and so presented would be regarded as an insult by any man possessed of the slightest real self-respect or worthy pride. But Mr Gladstone accepts it with effusive gratitude and repays the donors with flattery as gross and as clumsy as that which pleases his own far from fastidious palate. This vulgar mass of bullion, worth about a couple of hundred pounds as old metal, seems to Mr Gladstone a perfectly satisfactory expression of the sentiments of the American people. That one of the persons who presented it is an avowed enemy of this country, that the whole affair had its origin in an advertising speculation, that half the money was raised by giving Mr Gladstone a benefit night at New York teagardens, are circumstances which do not in the least affect the delight with which he receives the trophy. Conceive the depths to which a man must have sunk before he can contemplate such an offering as this with anything but repugnance and disgust. Conceive the insult to the American people conveyed in the assumption that when they wish to honour a man they can do nothing better than scrape together six hundred pounds by months of frantic adjuration in the New York World and by charging for admission to dancing and fireworks. Think of the good taste, the good feeling, and the dignity displayed when one who has been Prime Minister of Kugland, in the very act of receiving the tainted proceeds of an advertising speculation at the hands of his country’s enemies, taunts that country, and taunts it falsely, with receiving alms from America. The world ought to know, says this lofty-minded patriot, that wo have been for a long time the recipients of American alms. The proof of it is that Irishmen in America have sent money to their friends at home, and that some of that money may have been spent in paying rents. What statesmanlike penetration we have here, what justness of thought, what nobility and dignity of sentiment ! The case of America is peculiar, says Mr Gladstone, because from thence he has never had anything but unmixed appreciation. Thij is very fine. America is classed and her position in the world settled by her relations to Mr Gladstone. Sixty-five millions of men in one scale, with Mr Gladstone in the other, and yon get their precise value at once. The “ unmixed appreciation ” is also very fine as coming from the man who in the crisis of the Civil War hastened to declare that Jefferson Davis had created a nation. Considering that, as a correspondent points out to-day, London is swarming just now with Americans of position and standing, it is very singular that the unmixed appreciation of a continent was left to he expressed by the few and dubious representatives who escorted the graven image to Dollis-hill. Perhaps the American correspondent who, writing to ns less than a month ago, said of Mr Gladstone, “ wc have a poor opinion of Ids judgment, and no desire for his triumph,” knows a good deal more about American appreciation than can he gathered from Mr Pulitzer and his friends. That Mr Gladstone is, at any rate, far from possessing the umnixod appreciation of the Irish people is proved by the letter from Mr Mitchell Henry, in which he solemnly declares that “of all men now living Mr Gladstone has dono most to deepen Irish poverty, and has dono “ least to guard against Irish famines.” Wo leave Mr Mitchell Henry to make good his own co.se, as he does with facts and figures. But no one can have watched Mr Gladstone’s career, except from thestandpoint of a thoroughgoing partisan, without feeling that there is much truth iu Mr Mitchell Heury’s closing words:—“Mr Gladstone has a marvellous appetite for an Irish vote when it is likely to enable him to return to power; but real practical sympathy with the poverty-stricken Irish tenant I know from long and bitter experience lie lias not.” The speech of Saturday was a disgraceful performancefromboginning to end, but in nothing more disgraceful than in bis wanton onslaught upon an Irish Judge wiio lias striven to do his duty in upholding the law. In calling attention to the general condition of his district, Mr Justice O’Brien did nothing but what Judges do every where as often as they find general conditions calling for remark or remedy. Kvcn bad he overstepped bis duty, nothing more unseemly can well be

imagined than an cx-l’iimc Minister gratuitously abusing him for what would only lie excess of zeal, and that in presence of a deputation containing, there is every reason to believe, at least one sworn Fenian and member of the Clan-na-Gaol. After the exhibition of .Saturday we may expect any day to hear that tile album sent over by Ford in the charge of Michael Davitt lias been solemnly presented to Mr Gladstone and received by him with an appropriate speech.