HIS CHARACTERISTICS AS MAN AND STATEMAN BY JAMES BRYCE AUTHOR OF “THE AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH,” “TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT,” “THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,” “IMPRES- SIONS OF SOUTH AFRICA.” NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1919 Copyright, 1898, by The Evening Post Publishing Company. Copyright 1898, by The Century Co .   PAGE I. Introduction 1 II. Early Influences 5 III. Parliamentarian 18 IV. Orator 39 V. Originality and Independence 56 VI. Social Qualities 76 VII. Authorship 81 VIII. Religious Character 94...

No man has lived in our times of whom it is so hard to speak in a concise and summary fashion as Mr. Gladstone.  For forty years he was so closely associated with the public affairs of his country that the record of his parliamentary life comes near to being an outline of English politics.  His activity spread itself out over many fields.  He was the author of several learned and thoughtful books, and of a multitude of articles upon all sorts of subjects.  He showed himself as eagerly interested

The circumstances of Mr. Gladstone’s political career help to explain, or, at any rate, will furnish occasion for the attempt to explain, this complexity and variety of character.  But before we come to his manhood it is convenient to advert to three conditions whose influence on him has been profound: the first his Scottish blood, the second his Oxford education, the third his apprenticeship to public life under Sir Robert Peel. Theories of character based on race differences are dangerous, bec

Mr. Gladstone sat for sixty-three years in Parliament, and for more than twenty-six years was the leader of his party, and therefore the central figure of English politics.  As has been said, he began as a high Tory, remained about fifteen years in that camp, was then led by the split between Peel and the protectionists to take up an intermediate position, and finally was forced to cast in his lot with the Liberals, for in England, as in America, third parties seldom endure.  No parliamentary ca

Of that oratory, something must now be said.  By it he rose to fame and power, as, indeed, by it most English statesmen have risen, save those to whom wealth and rank and family connections have given a sort of presumptive claim to high office, like the Cavendishes and the Russells, the Cecils and the Bentincks.  And for many years, during which Mr. Gladstone was distrusted as a statesman because, while he had ceased to be a Tory, he had not fully become a Liberal, his eloquence was the main, on

Though Mr. Gladstone’s oratory was a main source of his power, both in Parliament and over the people, the effort of his enemies to represent him as a mere rhetorician will seem absurd to the historian who reviews his whole career.  The mere rhetorician adorns and popularizes the ideas which have originated with others, he advocates policies which others have devised; he follows and expresses the sentiments which already prevail in his party.  He may help to destroy; he does not construct.  Mr.

Adding these charms of manner to a memory of extraordinary strength and quickness and to an amazing vivacity and variety of mental force, any one can understand how fascinating Mr. Gladstone was in society.  He enjoyed it to the last, talking as earnestly and joyously at eighty-five as he had done at twenty on every topic that came up, and exerting himself with equal zest, whether his interlocutor was an arch-bishop or a young curate.  Though his party used to think that he overvalued the politi

The best proof of his swiftness, his industry, and his skill in economizing time is to be found in the quantity of his literary work, which, considering the abstruse nature of the subjects to which most of it is related, would have been creditable to the diligence of a German professor sitting alone in his study.  As to the merits of the work there has been some controversy.  Mankind are slow to credit the same person with eminence in various fields.  When they read the prose of a great poet, th

Of all the things with which men are concerned, religion was that which had the strongest hold upon his thoughts and feelings.  He had desired, when quitting the university, to become a clergyman, and it was only his father’s opposition that made him abandon the idea.  Never thereafter did he cease to take the warmest and most constant interest in all the ecclesiastical controversies that distracted the Established Church.  He was turned out of his seat for Oxford University by the country clerg