HC Deb 20 May 1898 vol 58 cc118-32

Considered in Committee.

[Mr. J. W. LOWTHER, Cumberland, Penrith, CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS, in the Chair.]

(In the Committee.)

* THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,) Manchester, E.

Mr. Lowther, it is now 17 years and more since a Minister rose in his place to discharge the melancholy duty which now devolves upon me. It then fell to the survivor of two great contemporaries, divided in political opinion, opposed to each other for more than a generation, separated it may be even more conclusively by differences of temperament, to propose a national memorial of the other. The task which then fell to Mr. Gladstone was one of infinite difficulty, for he had to propose an Address similar to that which you, Sir, will shortly read from the Chair, at a time when the controversies which had just been ended by death were still living in the immediate recollection of his audience, before the dust of battle had had time to sink, and when the noise of it was still in every ear. How Mr. Gladstone performed that delicate duty is in the memory of all who heard him, and I am only glad to think that, difficult as is the task which I have to perform to-day, impossible, indeed, from certain aspects, at all events the difficulties with which he had to contend do not beset my path. No persuasion need be exercised by me in inducing even the most scrupulous to join in an Address which we shall, I believe, unanimously vote this afternoon, for all feel that the great career which has just drawn to its close is a career already in large part a matter of history, and none of us will find even a momentary difficulty in forgetting any of the controversial aspects of his life, even though we ourselves may to some extent have been involved in them. I have said that Mr. Gladstone's great career is already in large part and to the vast majority of this House a matter of history; and is it not so? He was a Cabinet Minister before most of us were born; I believe there is in this House at the present time but one man who served under Mr. Gladstone in the first Cabinet over which he presided as Prime Minister; and even Members of the House not colleagues of Mr. Gladstone who were Members of the Parliament of 1868 to 1874—even those form now but a small and ever-dwindling band. This is not the place, nor this the occasion, on which to attempt any estimate of such a career; a career which began on the morrow of the first Reform Bill, which lasted for two generations, and which, so far as politics were concerned, was brought to a close a few years ago, during a fourth tenure of office as Prime Minister. But, Sir, during those two generations—during those 60 years—this country went through a series of changes, revolutionary in amount, if not by procedure, changes scientific, changes theological, changes social, changes political. In all these phases of contemporary evolution Mr. Gladstone took the liveliest interest. All of them he watched closely; in many of them he took a part—in some of them the part he took was supreme, that of a governing and guiding influence. Sir, how is it possible for us on the present occasion to form an estimate of a life so complex—a life so little to be measured by a purely political standard, a life so rich in results outside the work of this House, the work of Party politics, the work of Imperial Administration—how is it possible, I say, for any man to pretend to exhaust the many-sided aspects of such a life even on such an occasion as this? Sir, I feel myself unequal even to dealing with what is perhaps more strictly germane to this Address—I mean, Mr. Gladstone as a politician, as a Minister, as a leader of public thought, as an eminent servant of the Queen; and if I venture to say anything to the House, it is rather of Mr. Gladstone as the greatest member of the greatest deliberative assembly which, so far, the world has seen, that I would wish to speak. Sir, I think it is the language of sober and of unexaggerated truth to say that there is no gift which would enable a man to move, to influence, to adorn an assembly like this that Mr. Gladstone did not possess in a supereminent degree. Debaters as ready there may have been, orators as finished. It may have been given to others to sway as skilfully this critical assembly, or to appeal with as much directness and force to the simple instincts of the great masses of our countrymen; but, Sir, it has been given to no man to combine all those great gifts as they were combined in the person of Mr. Gladstone. From the conversational discussion appropriate to our work in Committee, to the most sustained eloquence befitting some high argument and some great historic occasion, every weapon of Parliamentary warfare was wielded by him with the sureness and the ease of perfect, absolute, and complete mastery. I would not venture myself to pronounce an opinion as to whether he was most excellent in the exposition of some complicated project of finance or legislation, or whether he shone most in the heat of extemporary debate. At least this we may say, that from the humbler ants of ridicule or invective to the subtlest dialectic, the most persuasive eloquence, the most moving appeals to everything that was highest and best in the audience he was addressing—every instrument which could find place in the armoury of a Member of this House he had at his command without premeditation, without forethought, at the moment, and in the form which was best suited to carry out his purpose. I suppose each one of us who has had the good fortune to be able to watch any part of that wonderful career must have in mind some particular example which seems to him to embody the greatest excellences of this most excellent Member of Parliament. Sir, the scene which comes back to my mind is one relating to an outworn and half-forgotten controversy now more than 20 years past, in which, as it happened, Mr. Gladstone was placed in the most difficult position which it is possible for a man to occupy—a position in which he finds himself opposed to the united and vigorous forces of his ordinary opponents, but does not happen at the moment to have behind him more than the hesitating sympathy or the veiled opposition of his friends. On this particular occasion I remember there occurred one of those preliminary debates—I ought to say series of debates—which preceded the main business of the evening. In these Mr. Gladstone had to speak, not once, nor twice only, but several times, and it was not until hour after hour had passed in this preliminary skirmishing that, to a House hostile, impatient, and utterly weary, he rose to present his case with that unhesitating conviction in the righteousness of his cause which was his great strength as a speaker in and out of this House. I never, Sir, shall forget the impression that that scene left on my mind. As a mere feat of physical endurance it was unsurpassed; as a feat of Parliamentary courage, of Parliamentary skill, of Parliamentary endurance, and Parliamentary eloquence, I believe that it was almost unique! Alas! let no man hope to be able to reconstruct from our records any living likeness of these great works of genius. The words, indeed, are there, lying side by side with the words of lesser men in an equality as if of death; but the spirit, the fire, the inspiration has gone, and he who could alone revive them, he who could alone show us what these works really were, by reproducing their like—he, alas! has now gone from us for ever. Posterity must take it on our testimony what he was to those, friends or foes, whose fortune it was to be able to hear him. We who thus heard him know that, though our days be prolonged, and though it may be our fortune to see the dawn or even the meridian of other men destined to illustrate this House and do great and glorious service to their Sovereign and their country, we shall never again in this Assembly see any man who can reproduce for us what Mr. Gladstone was—who can show to those who never heard him how much they have lost. It may, perhaps, Sir, be asked whether I have nothing to say about Mr. Gladstone's work as a statesman, about the judgment we ought to pass upon the part which he has played in the history of his country and the history of the world during the many years in which he held the foremost place in this Assembly. These questions are legitimate questions. But they are not to be discussed by me to-day. Nor, indeed, do I think that the final answer can be given to them—the final judgment pronounced—in the course of this generation. But one service he did—in my opinion incalculable—which is altogether apart from the verdicts which we may be disposed to pass upon particular opinions or particular linen of policy which Mr. Gladstone may from time to time have adopted. Sir, he added a disunity, and he added a weight, to the deliberations of this House by his genius, for which I think it is impossible to be sufficiently grateful. It is not enough for us simply to keep up a level, though it be a high level, of probity and of patriotism. The mere average of civic virtue is not sufficient to preserve this assembly from the fate which has overtaken so many other assemblies like us—the products of democratic forces. More than this is required, more than this was given to us by Mr. Gladstone. He brought to our debates a genius which raised in the general estimation the whole level of our proceedings; and they will be the most ready to admit the infinite value of this service who realise how much of public well-being is involved in maintaining the dignity and interest of public life, how perilously difficult most democracies apparently find it to avoid the opposite dangers into which so many of them have fallen. Sir, that is a consideration which, perhaps, has not occurred to persons unfamiliar with our debates, or unwatchful of the course of contemporary thought; but to me it seems that it places the services of Mr. Gladstone to this Assembly, which he loved so well, and of which he was so great an ornament, in as clear a light and on as firm a basis as it is perhaps possible to place them. In drawing the terms of the Address which will shortly be read from the Chair we have thought it our duty—and in that, at all events, we know that we are pursuing the course which Mr. Gladstone himself would most earnestly have approved—to adhere closely to former precedent. Not one phrase in this address is there which has not at least on one occasion been employed by this House when it was doing honour to some of the greatest of Mr. Gladstone's predecessors. But surely these consecrated phrases never have received a happier application than they have in the case of the great statesman whose loss we are lamenting. We talk of the "admiration" and of the "attachment" of the country. These words have, Sir, perhaps been used with some slight stretch of their meaning with regard to politicians who, falling in the very midst of party contests, can hardly be described as having commanded the universal admiration and attachment of their fellow-countrymen. But I think these words applied to Mr. Gladstone at the present; time are words wholly and absolutely appropriate, without a tingo of exaggeration. Then we go on to speak of the "high sense entertained of his rare and splendid gifts," of his "devoted labours in Parliament and in the great offices of State." We cast our eyes back over those sixty years which divided his first tenure of office from his last, and we feel that in those two generations he did indeed, if any man ever did, make full display of rare and splendid gifts, and did with ungrudging devotion give his labours to Parliament and to great offices of State. Therefore, Sir, it is with an absolute confidence that the Address is one which, not merely in its general purport, but in its particular terms, will meet with the sympathy and approval of every man in all parts of the House, whatever be Ills opinions, that I now venture to move:— That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, that Her Majesty will be graciously pleased to give directions that the remains of the Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone be interred at the public charge, and that a monu- ment be erected in the Collegiate Church of St. Peter's, Westminster, with an inscription expressive of the public admiration and attachment, and of the high sense entertained of his rare and splendid gifts, and his devoted labours in Parliament and in great offices of State, and to assure Her Majesty that this House will make good the expenses attending the same.

Motion made, and Question proposed.

* SIR W. HARCOURT (Monmouthshire, W.)

Sir, I am sure the House of Commons has heard with emotion, with admiration, and with approval the noble tribute which has been paid by the Leader of the House of Commons to the greatest of its members. I think it is a remarkable circumstance that in the opening years of the 19th century was witnessed the eclipse of the two greatest lights of the House of Commons of that day, when Pitt and Fox were interred in what may almost be called a common tomb, and that, in the very closing years of the century, the greatest figure who has adorned the annals of the House of Commons should now be laid in his grave. The House of Commons, as the nation of which it is the representative, is deeply conscious of the vast void that is left in its national life; and a striking spectacle was presented yesterday, and is offered today, when we are addressing the Queen in the name of her people to bestow upon his memory the highest honour which is reserved for her greatest sons. In his life Mr. Gladstone declined all distinctions, and it is for the nation in his death to bestow upon him the highest tribute which it has at its disposal. It is in that venerable shrine which, for 500 years, has garnered the memory of those who have built up the renown of the race to which we belong—it is in that glorious pile of accumulated fame that will be added a name, I think, as noble as any which is commemorated there. It will be the record of a great life, greatly spent in the service of a great nation. Sir, no one can forget at this moment—indeed, we are all reminded—of the celebrated saying of the great Athenian in the most celebrated of all funeral orations, "Of famous men the whole earth is the tomb." And the voice of general mourning is coining to us to-day from the remotest quarters of the civilised globe. As the right honourable Gentleman has said, and has truly said, it is hardly for us to-day—certainly for no individual amongst us—to endeavour to measure the proportions of so great a character. It is appraised by the public opinion of Great Britain to-day; it will be adjudged in history, as Bacon left his reputation In foreign nations, and future times. We have lately celebrated the sixtieth rear of the reign of the Queen—an epoch memorable for the growth of the prosperity, the happiness, and greatness of this land. But the public life of Mr. Gladstone, as the right honourable Gentleman has reminded us, was commenced before the accession of the Queen. The bright promise of his earlier years has boon fulfilled beyond the expectation even of those who knew him best and admired him most. Far beyond the age allotted to man, he has actively pursued and employed the inexhaustible resources of his genius and his experience in the service of his country. At no period probably has greater progress been made in the history of this or any country, and in that progress it may be said, I think, Para maxima fuit. It is just 30 years since I myself entered the House of Commons, at that election which placed Mr. Gladstone, at the head of affairs. During half of that period he has been First Minister four times in succession. This is not the occasion, as the right honourable Gentleman has justly said, on which we can canvass the policy or the measures for which he is responsible. I am aware that I speak in offering to-day a merited tribute to his political opponents, who are generously offering to-day a merited tribute to his memory. No word shall fall from me which shall jar upon their ears. But I hope I may be permitted for a short time to follow the example of the right honourable Gentleman, and refer to some of those qualities which have commanded the respect and admiration of us all. What inspires confidence and sympathy in the midst of conflicting opinion is the belief that a man is acting from sincere conviction, that what he is doing is that which he honestly believes to be for the advantage of his country. How many characters in history are there which we may admire, though we do not share their opinions! The sincerity of Mr. Gladstone no man ewer doubted. What he believed he intensely believed, what he wished he greatly wished, what he wrought he strenuously wrought. These are the constituents of a great character, and these are the qualities which the judgment of history will crown with deserved fame, however people may differ as to the objects to which they were devoted. Mr. Gladstone came into public life fresh from the honours of the University, which, to the last days of his existence, he dearly loved; the University in which (to borrow the fine phrase of Mr. Canning) he "slaked the first thirst of an early ambition"; he entered the House of Commons armed cap-â-pie with all the weapons fitted for the Parliamentary lists—a Parliament which had only just become truly representative of the people. He came into this famous Chamber with a mind stored with various knowledge, ancient and modern, sacred and profane, literary and political; a finished intellect inspired by a native genius. Till the last he was ever looking for fresh materials to feed his inquiring mind in every department of human thought. He had never occasion to exclaim, "I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me!" His "thoughts that breathed" were clothed at will in "words that burned," and all who witnessed the displays of those rare and splendid gifts of which the Resolution speaks will remember how he was endowed with that natural eloquence which is the most potent instrument by which in free countries the popular mind is stirred. Who that has ever listened to it can have forgotten the rich harmony of that melodious voice, which had a charm almost of physical persuasion; who will have forgotten the dignified presence, the lucid statement, the resources of reasoning, the high tone of passionate conviction, the vehement appeals to conscience and to truth? The memories to which the right honourable Gentleman has eloquently referred recall the famous extempore translation by Pitt of the passage from Tacitus on oratory, "Eloquence is a flame which requires fuel to feed it, material to excite it, and which brightens as it burns." Is that not an accurate description of the eloquence of Mr. Gladstone, which transfused into others the enthusiasm by which he was himself inspired, which delighted the cultivated by its unconscious art, and which carried away the people by the force of its stream? As the right honourable Gentleman has said, he was equally master of the lighter mood. We can recollect how on fitting occasions his humour played like the summer lightning around his theme, and how he exposed his opponents without a wound. And no man can say that these divine gifts were ever employed for mean or vulgar uses. They were exercised on high matters and for noble ends. It gave him a power over the hearts of the British people which, I believe, no other orator has ever possessed. I concur in the appropriate and eloquent words in which the right honourable Gentleman has testified to what the House of Commons owes to the life of Mr. Gladstone. To the matchless powers of his genius he added qualities of great value. He greatly reverenced the House of Commons. He desired to maintain its reputation as the great organ of the will of a free people. No one who has seen it will ever forget the stately dignity, the old world courtesy, which he ever extended to foe and to friend alike. His conduct in the House of Commons, whether in Government or in Opposition, bore all the marks of a lofty spirit. He respected others as he respected himself, and he controlled both by his magnanimity. He was strong, but he was also gentle; he was to us not only a great Statesman, but a great Gentleman. We felt, as the right honourable Gentleman has said, that he exalted the spirit of the Assembly in which he was the undisputed chief; he raised it in its own estimation, and in the estimation of the world; and we recognised that the House of Commons was greater by his presence, as it is greater by his memory. What he did for this House he did for the Nation, too. I think it is impossible to over-value the influence which the purity and the piety of his public and private life has had upon the national life of this country. It has exercised a lasting influence upon the moral sense of the people at large. They have watched him through all the trials of a long career passed under the fierce light of political controversy, and they have found in it an example which has permanently raised the standard of public life in this nation. What many have preached he practised. His life has been a lesson which is not and will not be forgotten. There is not a hamlet in this land where his virtues are not known and felt. It is known that his heart was ever with the weak, the miserable, and the poor. They remember how much of his life was spent in labours to alleviate their lot. They know that to him they were always his "flesh and blood." His sympathies were not confined to narrow bounds. The ruling passions of his heart were freedom and peace—freedom not only for his own, but for every race; peace with every people, good-will towards all men, glad tidings of great joy—the gospel of that religion to which, he was devoutly attached. His voice went forth to all who were desolate and oppressed, wherever they might dwell. What was said on the death of Grattan, of his services to the Irish nation, was true in the first degree of Mr. Gladstone—"As it had been the object of his life, so was it his dying prayer, that all classes of men might be united in amity and peace." That was the spirit of Grattan, that was the spirit of Gladstone. In conclusion, may I say a few words of what he was to those who had the privilege of his intimacy in private friendship and in the life of official colleagues. I speak with an experience, I think, longer than that of any man present, and in the recollection of the constant and gracious kindness of 45 years. I have heard men who knew him not at all, who have asserted that the supremacy of his genius and the weight of his authority oppressed and overbore those who lived and worked with him. Nothing could be more untrue. Of all chiefs he was the least exacting, the most kind, and the most tolerant. He was the most placable of men. How seldom in this House was the voice of personal anger heard from his lips! These are true marks of greatness. I read the other day a passage in the life of Pitt by a man who knew him from his youth upwards, and who was his most intimate friend through life, which I will ask leave to read, because there is not a line which is not as true of Mr. Gladstone as it was of Pitt— With the most playful vivacity he assumed no superiority in conversation, nor ever oppressed any man with the strength of his talents or the brilliancy of his wit. It was matter of surprise how so much fire could be mitigated, and yet not enfeebled, by so much gentleness, and how so much power could be so delightful. Modesty was the striking feature of his character. He was attentive to the humblest, and kindly patient to the weakest opinion. No man was more beloved by his friends, or inspired those who had the happiness to live in his society with a more sincere and affectionate attachment. Such, Mr. Lowther, was the great man, whom we shall attend to the grave amidst the mourning of a grateful people at the noble close of a long and honourable life spent in the service of his Queen and his country. He has deserved well of us and of our race, he has left us an undying memory and the precious inheritance of an enduring example.

* MR. DILLON

Sir, as an Irishman I feel that I have a special right to join in paying a tribute to the great Englishman who died yesterday, because the last and, as all men will agree, the most glorious years of his strenuous and splendid life were dominated by the love which he bore to our nation, and by the eager and even passionate desire to serve Ireland and give her liberty and peace. By virtue of the splendid quality of his nature, which seemed to give him perpetual youth, Mr. Gladstone's faith in a cause to which he had once devoted himself never wavered, nor did his enthusiasm grow cold. Difficulties and the weight of advancing years were alike ineffectual to blunt the edge of his purpose, or to daunt his splendid courage, and even when racked with pain, and when the shadow of death was darkening over him, his heart still yearned towards the people of Ireland, and his last public utterance was a message of sympathy for Ireland, and of hope for her future. His was a great and deep nature. He loved the people with a wise and persevering love. His love of the people and his abiding faith in the efficacy of liberty and of government based on the consent of the people, as an instrument of human progress, was not the outcome of youthful enthusiasm, but the deep-rooted growth of long years, and drew its vigour from an almost unparalleled experience of men and of affairs. Above all men I have ever known or read of, in his case the lapse of years seemed to have no influence to narrow his sympathies or to contract his heart. Young men felt old beside him. And to the last no generous cause, no suffering people, appealed to him in vain, and that glorious voice which had so often inspirited the friends of freedom and guided them to victory was to the last at the service of the weak and the oppressed of whatever race or nation. Mr. Gladstone was the greatest Englishman of his time. He loved his own people as much as any Englishman that ever lived. But through communion with the hearts of his own people he acquired that wider and greater gift, the power of understanding and sympathising with other peoples. He entered into their sorrows and felt for their oppressions. And with splendid courage he did not hesitate, even in the case of his much-loved England, to condemn her when he thought she was wronging others, and in so doing he fearlessly faced odium and unpopularity amongst his own people, which it must have been bitter for him to bear; and so he became something far greater than a British statesman, and took a place amidst the greatest leaders of the human race. Amidst the obstructions and the cynicism of a materialistic age he never lost his hold on the "ideal." And so it came to pass that wherever throughout the civilised world a race or nation of men were suffering from oppression, their thoughts turned towards Gladstone, and when that mighty voice was raised in their behalf, Europe and the civilised world listened, and the breathing of new hopes entered into the hearts of men made desperate by long despair. In the years that have gone by England has lost many men who served their country splendidly, and round whose graves the British people deeply mourned; but round the deathbed of Gladstone the people of this island are joined in their sorrow by many peoples, and to-day throughout the Christian world—in many lands and in many tongues—prayers will be offered to that God on whom in his last supreme hour of trial Mr. Gladstone humbly placed his firm reliance, begging that He will remember to His great servant how ardently he loved his fellow-men, without distinction of race, while he lived amongst them, and how mightily he laboured for their good.

* MR. ALFRED THOMAS (Glamorgan, E.)

On behalf of the Members representing Welsh constituencies with whom I am associated I desire to add our tribute to those so feelingly expressed by the gentlemen who have preceded me. For upwards of half a century Mr. Gladstone was connected, both by marriage and residence, with the Principality. Indeed, he spoke of Wales with pride as his adopted country, and henceforth it will be among her proudest traditions that the home of the most illustrious statesman of the century was in the Principality. He won the loyalty and confidence of the people, which remained and strengthened up to the end of his days. And, undoubtedly, he was the great factor in bringing about that marvellous change for the better in the social position of the Welsh people, and in giving the impetus to the educational movement that will soon place the Principality on an equality with the most favoured country. No other resident of that country ever wielded so powerful an influence upon its people—an influence manifested by the sacrifices they made to support him in his life's mission. But what impressed them most of all was his deep religious convictions, which called forth a universal feeling of veneration and affection for this friend of humanity and champion of oppressed peoples. We heartily concur in the Motion moved by the First Lord of the Treasury, and we trust that a Memorial will be erected worthy of the nation and of its greatest citizen.

Motion for Address put, and agreed to.

Ordered that it be reported to the House.

House resumed.

Report stage fixed for Monday next at 3.30.