MR W. F. GLADSTONE AS A POLITICIAN.

Waikato Times, Volume XL, Issue 3207, 14 January 1893, Page 2 (Supplement)

MR W. F. GLADSTONE AS A POLITICIAN.

Thf/ following article appears hi the San Francisco' Nou'3 Letter, ami it affords a very 'good idea of the estimate in which Mr Gladstone'is now held by foremost writers and thinkers in America :-W. K Gladstone, the .statesman,,has .in his old age become Gladstone the politician. This deplorable change of character in one of England's most notable men dates from fclio* timo when Mr Gladstone made the futile attempt to increase the number of his supporters, in the House of Commons by entering into an alliance with the same men .'whom a fejr. months, previously he : had : denounced as" inarching through rapine and murder to the dismemberment .of .the Empire," Since turning, this .astonishing political mmmersault, he has endeavoured to maintain bis own position by means absolutely unworthy of his high' intellect and his former great achievements Hundreds of proofs could be given for this statement, but it will suffice to merely refer to his article in this month's North American Review, supposed to be a reply to. the Duke of Argylo's essay in the August number of the same magazine. A reply it certainly is not, for it contains no arguments, and its assertions were all answered at the time of the Home Rule debate; but what is interesting in the article is the method used by the English Premier in answering a political, opponent, and considered suitable by him to gain favour with the American readers. Mr Gladstone must have a very poor opinion of us if he thinks he can blind us. to the truth by flattery, misrepresentation of facts, and vituperatiou of his opponent, aud rhetorical tricks of the simplest kind. The Duke of Argyle compared the' maintenance of our union during the war, with England's desire to prevent Ireland's separation from the United Kingdom. Mr Gladstone considers it a jeu (Vcsprit to represent the Duke as stating that the ; abolition of slavery in tlio South resembled the maintenance of tyranny in Ireland. In order to flatter the Americans Mr Gladstone expresses his delight over the fact (?) that, as a distinguished Republican has told him, twelve and a-half million votes out of the thirteen million cast in the United. States next month would be favourable to Irish Home Rule. The bulk of the article contains, instead of arguments, slurs cast upon the character and intelligence of the Duke of Argyle. The Duke towards the end of his essay, in order to excuse what he termed its imperfections, had used the polite phrase that he had written cumnte cakmo-le,, hastily. Of this conventional phrase Mr Gladstone makes the most. "What!" ho exclaims.' " How can the Duke dare to insult the great American nation, which has always been so splendidly Hibernian in sentiment, and its wonderful press by offering to them a hastilywritten article, and how can he ask them to read it I" This, at least, is'the sense, if not the text of a great part of his article. What an undignified trick 1 What nauseating flattery I every impartial reader will exclaim, And how petty are the attacks, of which the article is full, upon the ; Duke, who is one of the most learned and distinguished statesmen and authors of England, and whom Mr Gladstone accuses of ignorance, of having read nothing, and'of beiug unable to discuss the question of Home Rule intelligently, though all the world knows that the Duke of Argyle has more than once, in the House of Lords, shown the weakness of Mr .Gladstone's modern policy in a manner in which the 'latter' can hardly have forgotten, The Duke of Argyle in his essay repeated what he had often demonstrated before—namely, that Mr Gladstone's statements on Irish history are untrustworthy. Mr Gladstone indignantly exclaims in his article: " This is a quiet, way of disposing of a series of utterances which fill n moderate volume," Of course, the Duke cannot be expected to answer a "volume" in the limited space of a magazine article, and nobody but Mr, Gladstone, would expect him to do so, nor can we nnulizo within less ihan a column uf the Nbws Lkttkr Mr. Gladstone's long inagaziuo article; all that we could do above was to point out its general method, and if our readers will refer to the article itself they will be wwanleJ by the surprise of finding that one of England's most prominent public men has actually nothing better to offer to an intelligent American public on the question of Irish home-rule than a petty politician's pka,.which, to use ono of Mr. Gbidatone's own. digninVi phrases is. as full of tricks as "a plum pudding is full of plums."