Nothing lay nearer to his heart than the protection of the Eastern Christians.His sense of personal duty to them was partly due to the feeling that the Crimean War had prolonged the rule of the Turk, and had thus imposed a special responsibility on Britain, and on the statesmen who formed the cabinet which undertook that war.Twenty years after the agitation of 1876, and when he had finally retired from Parliament and political life, the massacres perpetrated by the Sultan on his Armenian subjects brought him once more into the field, and his last speech in public (delivered at Liverpool in the autumn of 1896) was a powerful argument in favor of British intervention to rescue the Eastern Christians.In the following spring he followed this up by a spirited pamphlet on behalf of the freedom of Crete.In neither of these two cases did success crown his efforts, for the government, commanding a large majority in Parliament, pursued the course it had already entered on.Many poignant regrets were expressed in England that Mr.Gladstone was no longer able to take practical action in the cause of humanity; yet it was a consolation to have the assurance that his sympathies with that cause had been nowise dulled by age and physical infirmity.
That he was right in the view he took of the Turks and British policy in 1876-78 has been now virtually admitted even by his opponents.That he was also right in 1896 and 1897, when urging action to protect the Eastern Christians, will probably be admitted ten years hence, when partizan passion has cooled.In both cases it was not merely religious sympathy, but also a far-sighted view of policy that governed his judgment.The only charge that can fairly be brought against his conduct in foreign, and especially in Eastern, affairs is, that he did not keep a sufficiently watchful eye upon them at all times, but frequently allowed himself to be so engrossed by British domestic questions as to lose the opportunity which his tenure of power from time to time gave him of averting approaching dangers.Those who know how tremendous is the strain which the headship of a cabinet and the leadership of the House of Commons impose will understand, though they will not cease to regret, this omission.
Such a record is the best proof of the capacity for initiative which belonged to him and in which men of high oratorical gifts have often been wanting.In the Neapolitan case, in the Alabama case, in the Bulgarian case, no less than in the adoption of the policy of a separate legislature and executive for Ireland, he acted from his own convictions, with no suggestion of encouragement from his party;and in the last instances--those of Ireland and of Bulgaria--he took a course which seemed to the English political world so novel and even startling that no ordinary statesman would have ventured on it.
His courage was indeed one of the most striking parts of his character.It was not the rashness of an impetuous nature, for, impetuous as he was when stirred by some sudden excitement, he was wary and cautious whenever he took a deliberate survey of the conditions that surrounded him.It was the proud self-confidence of a strong character, which was willing to risk fame and fortune in pursuing a course it had once resolved upon; a character which had faith in its own conclusions, and in the success of a cause consecrated by principle; a character which obstacles did not affright or deter, but rather roused to a higher combative energy.
Few English statesmen have done anything so bold as was Mr.
Gladstone's declaration for Irish home rule in 1886.He took not only his political power but the fame and credit of his whole past life in his hand when he set out on this new journey at seventy-seven years of age; for it was quite possible that the great bulk of his party might refuse to follow him, and he be left exposed to derision as the chief of an insignificant group.It turned out that the great bulk of the party did follow him, though many of the most influential and socially important refused to do so.But neither Mr.Gladstone nor any one else could have foretold this when his intentions were first announced.
