Gladstone: A Biography (46 page)

In 1863 Penmaenmawr was almost as good as in the preceding year. The Duchess did not come and there was only one bishop in the neighbourhood, but he was a major prelate. Tait, already Bishop of
London, later succeeded Longley at Canterbury. There were twenty-one sea-bathes, but some concern about ‘my stiffening limbs’. After a walk of twenty-five and three-quarter miles (very
precise) on his way across North Wales from Hawarden he feared that his days ‘of long stretches’ were over. In general, however, he seems to have been less obsessed with growing old
than had been the case at the beginning of his fifties. Of the turn of the year 1862–3, when he became fifty-three, he wrote with a satisfaction and an optimism which, while not complacent,
would have been unimaginable a dozen years before: ‘thus ending well what has been so good a year. We sat, and heard the bells chime in 1863; may its course be blessed to us
all.’
²⁰
And a year later, while there was some of the old introspective note about sin, his birthday entry was very calm compared with his
previous habit. Two days after that, at the end of that calendar year, there was more of an attempt at high-flown
prose than a repetition of the old breast-beating: ‘And
so farewell old year. May the next if given fly away with wings unsoiled.’
²¹

One almost inevitable disappointment of the period was that, as Willy Gladstone came to the end of his Oxford years, so his failure to emulate his father became manifest. He had got a first in
Honour (classical) moderations two years before. But the diary entry for 7 June 1862 read: ‘Heard in the morning of Willy’s
second
class [in Greats]. The news was chill; but it
is easy to see it may be good.’
²²
Then it was decided that Willy should go back to Oxford, and read for another honours school in Law and
History, and perhaps try for an All Souls fellowship. Six months later, however, there came the even worse result from this: ‘A letter from Willy informed us he had only a 3rd Class in the
Law and History Schools. Both his virtues & his faculties excellent: it would be very wrong to complain if his energy is not quite on the same scale.’
²³
It is with deep sympathy for Willy that one feels the struggle between Gladstone’s parental affection and his difficulty in understanding how anyone called William
Gladstone could possibly fail to have almost infinite reserves of energy. The All Souls prospect naturally evaporated and it was not clear what Willy was going to do. However, he became MP for
Chester three years later (at a cost to his father of £2000), but not to much more purpose than had been achieved by the parliamentary careers of his uncles and grandfather. And in the autumn
of 1862 Stephy followed the well-worn path from Eton to Christ Church, and Gladstone had a second horse in the Lit. Hum. stakes. Admirable and dedicated a parson though Stephen Gladstone became,
however, he did no better in this race than had his brother.

To balance these disappointments there were two reconciliations across the Anglican–Roman frontier, neither of them complete, but each marking some assuagement of old wounds. His sister
Helen had regained an even keel and after 1858 settled for several years, until she again went to live in Germany, in the appropriately named St Helen’s Priory in the Isle of Wight. There she
was surrounded by a calm if very Catholic atmosphere. She was also close to Osborne, which enabled Gladstone to combine Court visits with calls on his sister. On at least one occasion (in 1859) he
even had her over to Osborne House for luncheon with the Household (that is, not with the Queen) after a Privy Council meeting. Ironically it was General Grey, the husband of Caroline Farquhar, who
extended the invitation, and the visit, which seems to have gone smoothly, certainly indicated a vast revival in Gladstone’s trust in her. On another (1861) occasion he found her entertaining
Cardinal
Wiseman and his chaplain Dr Vaughan (later himself Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster). So far from upsetting Gladstone this was followed by his travelling back to
London with them and having ‘much conversation’ on the next day.
⁶⁰

It was for Gladstone a year of ebbing suspicion towards Roman Catholics. His theoretical tolerance might have been thought established by his brave opposition to the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill
ten years before. But tolerance in matters concerning the action of the state was different from tolerance in matters relating to family or friends. He saw himself as having a special
responsibility, in the memorable phrase he had used to (and of) Hope-Scott in 1845, ‘as one of the sentinels of the Church of England on the side looking towards the Church of Rome’.
Until the spring of 1861 he had interpreted this so rigidly that for ten years he had had no contact with Manning. Then there was a hesitant correspondence, the initiative coming from the future
Cardinal, who wanted back the early letters which he had written to Gladstone, in exchange for those which Gladstone had written to him. Then there was a meeting. Manning called on Gladstone on 20
March: ‘Saw Manning: a great event: all was smooth: but
quantum mutatus
! Under external smoothness and conscientious kindness there lay a chill indescribable. I hope I on my side did
not affect him so. He sat where Kossuth [the Hungarian nationalist leader] sat on Friday: how different!’
²⁴

It was hardly an emotional reunion but thereafter relations were normal, and in the late 1860s almost back to warmth, even though Gladstone believed (falsely) that Manning had wanted his letters
returned in order to destroy them and thus help to obliterate traces of his Anglican past. The appearance of Purcell’s reckless and often misleading biography of Manning in 1895, as we have
seen, recurdled Gladstone’s sour feelings towards Manning, but by then the latter was dead, and the attendant chaplain of Gladstone’s 1861 journey from Ryde to Waterloo was Cardinal
Archbishop.

Gladstone’s third major excursion to the wilder shores of political rashness came in May 1864, a few weeks after he had presented a well-received, relatively brief and uncontroversial
budget. Its main provisions were a further income tax reduction from sevenpence to sixpence (it was nearly back to the fivepence with which he had started in 1859, but with
a
surplus instead of a deficit and lower indirect taxes), and some remission also of the sugar and fire insurance duties. The Cabinet had accepted the budget in a single sitting of one and a quarter
hours, which was in sharp contrast with the 1860 and 1861 experiences.

On 11 May, a Wednesday and therefore in the habit of the nineteenth century a minor day for parliamentary business (the equivalent of a modern Friday, when the House both sat and adjourned
early), Gladstone was dealing for the government with a ‘gesture’ bill, moved by a Yorkshire Liberal (Baines) and designed to reduce the property qualification for the borough
franchise. The debate lasted only from noon until 2.45 p.m. and there was no question of a division.
⁶¹
Gladstone nonetheless turned it into the major
sensation of the month, if not of the session. Palmerston had written him a note that morning urging him not to commit himself and the government to any particular sum for the borough franchise.
(As this pointed to a degree of apprehension, it is difficult to understand why the Prime Minister did not solve the whole problem by getting the compliant Home Secretary, George Grey, to deal with
the matter; it was not an occasion which called for a ‘great Gun’ as Palmerston flatteringly referred to Gladstone when he wanted him to demolish Disraeli six weeks later.)

Gladstone, it could be said, obeyed the instruction to the letter. He did not concern himself with the minutiae of £6 (or £8 or £10) franchises. He simply took the whole
argument up by the roots and set it down upon a new basis. He looked back over the various attempts at franchise reform of the past fifteen years and found it a scandal that there had been no
advance from a position in which only one-tenth of those with a vote were ‘working men’, for the very good reason that only one ‘working man’ in fifty possessed a vote. His
argument was tightly sociological, which is of considerable interest when the question of his motive is looked at. It was not desirable that the upper stratum of the working class was shut out
while the lower stratum of the middle class was let in. Then came the sentence which was erected into a sensation: ‘I call upon the adversary to show cause, and I venture to say that every
man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger, is morally entitled to come within the pale of constitution.’ Then, in a very
Gladstonian way, he immediately qualified his declaration: ‘Of course, in giving utterance to
such a proposition I do not recede from the protest I have previously made
against sudden, or violent, or excessive or intoxicating change.’
²⁵

‘Some sensation’, Gladstone laconically commented, adding that it was due less to what he had said than to defensive complacency on the part of his hearers. There was a lot of
scurrying round the House. Two whips ran off to tell Phillimore of the enormity of what his chief had just said. There was a contrived scene in the chamber when it was suggested that the Prime
Minister (who had gout) should be sent for and asked if he agreed with the Chancellor. Palmerston did not agree, and on the next day he wrote the first of a nine-letter correspondence (five from
Palmerston, four from Gladstone) which extended over the next week and a half. The Prime Minister’s tone was obviously one of determined remonstrance, but it was also remarkably
good-humoured, as had been the case in previous exchanges. Gladstone in turn was unrepentant but never sullen.

Palmerston began, ‘I have read your speech, and I must frankly say with much regret [that] there is little in it that I can agree with, and much from which I differ.’ He added,
‘Your speech may win Lancashire for you, though that is doubtful, but I fear will tend to lose England for you.’ The use of ‘you’ rather than the more obvious
‘us’ as the last word may be taken as an interesting indication that, even in exasperation, Palmerston was assuming that the future lay with a Gladstone leadership.

Gladstone began his first reply: ‘It is not easy to take ill anything that proceeds from you,’ and continued with some fairly convoluted explanation of the real meaning of his words.
Palmerston then moved increasingly on to the point that Gladstone’s further and major sin was that, in receiving a delegation of working men, he had urged them to agitate for an extension of
the franchise. ‘The function of a Government is to calm rather than to excite Agitation,’ he comprehensively concluded. Gladstone then gave a superb display of both the irrepressible
and the naive sides of his character. The solution, he wrote, obviously was to publish his speech as a pamphlet. Once it was available in full the balance and sense of his words would surely set
all doubts at rest. Palmerston wanted no such thing, but he failed to budge Gladstone. ‘You are of course the best judge as to your own line,’ he concluded with more tolerance than
triumph.
²⁶

This exchange led to no quarrel between Gladstone and Palmerston, but it did lead to a new wave of argumentativeness in their relationship. Gladstone used his long days at Balmoral in October
1864 to fire off two provocative letters to Palmerston. In the first he suddenly reverted
to the question of railway nationalization – not of the operations but of the
track – an issue which had lain quiescent since his 1844 legislation as President of the Board of Trade, but which had come back into discussion as a result of uncontrolled and unco-ordinated
building, quite often undertaken merely to force a bigger adjacent company to buy up the unwanted but possibly competitive track. Palmerston reacted, as might have been expected, with some dismay.
‘It is impossible to form a Judgement of your Plan till the Details are made out, but I own it appears on the first Blush a wild and more than doubtful project.’
²⁷
He did, however, eventually concede that there should be a Royal Commission on the subject, which deliberated under the chairmanship of the seventh Duke of Devonshire,
and resulted in a negative report.

The second letter was of more serious immediate import and was, it might be thought, a most tendentious piece of aggression against an old Prime Minister, on what turned out, to no one’s
surprise, to be the threshold of the last year of his life. Gladstone produced a convoluted mixture of prose and figures, running to well over a thousand words, which complained that, over the
lifetime of the government, naval and military expenditure had only come down from £30 million to £26 million, whereas, given various special factors such as the ending of the China
War, it ought to have done so by more. It was hardly a very obvious abuse, and it got back an even longer but much more enjoyable reply from Palmerston. First he said that he had delayed replying
until Gladstone had finished his ‘severe but successful Labour in Lancashire’ (which was a euphemism for ‘another of your demagogic tours’). Then he produced his own piece
of counter-aggression: ‘I think that any Body who looks carefully at the Signs of the Times Must see that there are at present two strong Feelings in the National Mind, the one a
Disinclination to organic Changes in our representative System; the other a steady Determination that the Country shall be placed and kept in an efficient Condition of Defence.’
²⁸

So much for Gladstone’s two pet nostrums of the decade. Having nailed his colours to these hardline masts, Palmerston proceeded to adopt a more modern approach to national budgeting than
anything Gladstone was likely to encompass. It all came back to what the Prime Minister called: