even yet exhausted. He restored the European Concert, which had been shattered by the Cyprus Convention; and by its agency, in the teeth of innumerable difficulties and obstacles, without breach of the peace, and without open rupture of the Concertthough some of its performers only stayed in the orchestra on the understanding that they were not to play the tune he brought the present Sultan to his knees. He is, perhaps, the only statesman in Europe who has ever done this; and at this juncture it is worth while to remember how he did it. Again, by means of the Washington Treaty and the Geneva Arbitration, he settled the Alabama dispute, and thereby removed the most serious obstacle to a close and cordial understanding between this country and the United States. It was a great thing to do; and it was not done without loss of credit at the time. No great things ever are done in this world unless men are prepared to make some politic surrender of pride, temper, it may be of dignity, though never of honor, for the sake of doing them.

"It is," as Mr. Morley says in another connection, "one of the commonest of all secrets of cheap misjudgment in human affairs, to start by assuming that there is always some good way out of a bad case."

It must be acknowledged, on the other hand, that Mr. Gladstone made one great mistake in his treatment of American affairs-a mistake seldom censured, however, by those who were hardest on his foreign policy in general -when he declared at Newcastle in 1862 that Jefferson Davis and the other leaders of the South had "made a nation." It was a gratuitous mistake and a grievous one-gratuitous, because it was no part of his business as a subordinate minister to touch upon questions of the utmost delicacy;

and grievous, because a single word uttered at that juncture, apparently with the authority of the government, might have caused the quivering balance of public opinion in this country to incline towards an awful catastrophe. "It is, however," as Mr. Morley says and shows, "superfluous for any of us at this day to pass judgment." Mr. Gladstone has passed judgment on himself. In a fragmentary note, written so late as 1896, he frankly acknowledges his error, and atones for it by the fulness of his acknowledgment.

I have yet to record an undoubted error, the most singular and palpable, I may add the least excusable of them all, especially since it was committed so late as in the year 1862, when I had outlived half a century. . . . I declared in the heat of the American struggle that Jefferson Davis had made a nation, that is to say, that the division of the American Republic by the establishment of a Southern or secession state was an accomplished fact. Strange to say, this declaration, most unwarrantable to be made by a Minister of the Crown, with no authority other than his own, was not due to any feeling of partisanship for the South or hostility to the North. The fortunes of the South were at their zenith. Many who wished well to the Northern cause despaired of its success. The friends of the North in England were beginning to advise that it should give way, for the avoidance of further bloodshed and greater calamity. I weakly supposed that the time had come when respectful suggestions of this kind, founded on the necessity of the case, were required by a spirit of that friendship which, in so many contingencies of life, has to offer sound recommendations with a knowledge that they will not be popular. Not only was this a misjudgment of the case, but, even if it had been otherwise, I was not the person to make the declaration. I really, though most strangely, believed that it was an act of friendliness to all America to recog

nize that the struggle was virtually at an end. I was not one of those who, on the ground of British interests, desired a division of the American Union. My view was distinctly opposite. I thought that, while the Union continued, it never could exercise any dangerous pressure upon Canada to estrange it from the empire-our honor, as I thought, rather than our interest, forbidding its surrender. But were the Union split, the North, no longer checked by the jealousies of slavepower, would seek a partial compensation for its loss in annexing, or trying to annex, British North America. Lord Palmerston desired the severance as a diminution of a dangerous power, but prudently held his tongue.

That my opinion was founded on a false estimate of the facts was the very least part of my fault. I did not perceive the gross impropriety of such an utterance from a Cabinet Minister of a power allied in blood and language, and bound to loyal neutrality; the case being further exaggerated by the fact that we were already, so to speak, under indictment before the world for not (as was alleged) having strictly enforced the laws of neutrality in the matter of the cruisers. My offence was indeed only a mistake, but one of incredible grossness, and with such consequences of offence and alarm attached to it, that my failing to perceive them justly exposed me to very severe blame. It illustrates vividly that incapacity which my mind so long retained, and perhaps still exhibits, an incapacity of viewing subjects all round, in their extraneous as well as in their internal properties, and thereby of knowing when to be silent and when to speak (ii, 81-2).

The really great blots on Mr. Gladstone's foreign policy have always been held to be the muddle in Egypt and the tragedy of Khartoum. How do they appear now in the light of what Mr. Morley has to say and to tell? "Extenuating circumstances" is probably the nearest approach to a verdict of acquittal that even Mr. Morley would claim; and it is more than

doubtful whether even that plea will be accepted now by any who did not adopt it at the time. It is true, no doubt, that the Egyptian question was one of the most difficult that an English ministry has ever had to handle; that there were many divergent views in the Cabinet-we know that Bright resigned when Alexandria was bombarded and that vacillation of policy, distraction in counsel, and incoherence in action, were certain in that case to ensue. One thing is clear, however. The muddle in Egypt was assuredly no result, as was often alleged at the time, of Mr. Gladstone's imperious will, combined with what his critics held to be his native incapacity for the handling of foreign affairs. It is probable that there would have been far less muddle if Mr. Gladstone's will had been more imperious than it was.

"In common talk and in partisan speeches," says Mr. Morley, "the Prime Minister was regarded as dictatorial The and imperious. complaint of some, at least, among his colleagues in the Cabinet of 1880 was rather that Almost he was not imperious enough. from the first, he too frequently allowed himself to be overruled; often in secondary matters, it is true, but sometimes also in matters on the uncertain frontier between secondary and primary. Then he adopted a practice of taking votes and counting numbers, of which more than one old hand complained as an innovation. Lord Granville said to him in 1886, 'I think you too often counted noses in your last Cabinet'" (iii, 5).

Sir William Harcourt told the House of Commons the same thing at the time of his death:

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 with him and those who worked under him. Nothing could be more untrue. Of all chiefs he was the least exacting.

Nevertheless, a Prime Minister is, after all, a Prime Minister. If he chooses to count noses and to defer to the shifting opinions of colleagues less wise than himself, he must bear the blame of the distracted counsels that are sure to ensue.

Very much the same thing must be said of the tragedy of Khartoum. But here, by a curious irony of fate and circumstance, Mr. Gladstone was more than once disabled by indisposition at critical moments, and thereby debarred from making his will prevail, even if he had wished to do so. The expedition of Hicks Pasha should have been forbidden. This was the root of all the evil; and there is no reason to suppose that Mr. Gladstone was not a fully consenting party to this "capital miscalculation," as Mr. Morley frankly calls it.

The Cabinet ought to have seen that a door must be open or shut; and the flimsy plea that they could not shatter the Egyptian government will impose on no one now, though in Mr. Gladstone's dexterous hands it did good apologetic work at the time. The next step in the fatal business was the sending of troops to Suakin; and here Mr. Gladstone stood alone in his Cabinet in objecting to it. When this led to miscarriage and defeat, the cry arose that Gordon should be sent out. There were hesitations in many quarters, as well there might be; but the country was getting into what Mr. Morley calls "one of its high idealizing humors." Gordon was accordingly despatched in a highly dramatic, we had almost said in a melodramatic, fashion, Mr. Gladstone, who was at Hawarden, consenting, but taking no personal part in the hasty consultations which led to his mission. So it fell out that the most romantic adventure in modern English politics was directly initiated by Lord Hartington, the least romantic of modern English statesmen.

"Gordon's policies,” says Mr. Morley,

original instructions were practically drafted by himself, and he repudiated them almost before the ink was dry upon them. Of this there is no doubt whatever, though Mr. Morley's generous apology is valid.

"Viewing the frightful embarrassments that enveloped him, we cannot wonder. Still," he adds, "the same considerateness that is always so bounteously and so justly extended to the soldier in the field, is no less due in its measure to the councillor in the Cabinet. This is a bit of equity often much neglected both by contemporaries and by history" (iii, 155).

We need not enumerate all the several policies successively recommended by Gordon as alternatives to his original instructions. His recall was more than once debated by the Cabinet; and matters finally came to an issue over his proposal that Zobeir Pasha, a slavedealer and partisan leader, whose son Gordon had caused to be shot, should be appointed his successor as Governor-General of the Soudan, and entrusted with the task of withdrawing the outlying Egyptian garrisons. It was a startling proposal, though Zobeir was known to be a man of great military capacity and great personal ascendency. Mr. Gladstone was for accepting it; and so too was the Queen. But the Cabinet would have none of it, feeling convinced that the House of Commons would veto it. Mr. Gladstone was again confined to his room, though the Cabinet met in his house. "One of the ministers went to see him in his bed, and they conversed for two hours. The minister, on his return, reported, with some ironic amusement, that Mr. Gladstone considered it very likely that they could not bring Parliament to swallow Zobeir, but believed that he himself could." At one time it seemed as if Zobeir would be sent by the casting vote of the Prime Min

ister. But two of his colleagues receded from their ground, and he gave way-nothing of the imperious will here at any rate. Thenceforward the catastrophe was inevitable. It was certain that Gordon would not carry out the purposes entrusted to him by the Cabinet if he could, and could not if he would. As he could no longer be recalled, public opinion, "now in one of its high idealizing humors," would insist on his not being repudiated or abandoned. A relief expedition became necessary; and for the fatal delays which stamped "too late" on its enterprises the military authorities seem to have been not less responsible than the politicians. The tragedy was played out to its bitter end. Mr. Gladstone himself composed its sorry epilogue. In 1890 he wrote:

Jan. 10, 1890.-In the Gordon case we all, and I rather prominently, must continue to suffer in silence. Gordon was a hero, and a hero of heroes; but we ought to have known that a hero of heroes is not the proper person to give effect at a distant point, and in most difficult circumstances, to the views of It ordinary men. was unfortunate that he should claim the hero's privilege by turning upside down and inside out every idea and intention with which he had left England, and for which he had obtained our approval. Had my views about Zobeir prevailed, it would not have removed our difficulties, as Forster would certainly have moved and, with the Tories and the Irish, have carried a condemnatory address. My own opinion is that it is harder to justify our doing so much to rescue him, than our not doing more. Had the party reached Khartoum in time, he would not have come away (as I suppose), and the dilemma would have arisen in another form (iii, 168-9).

and we cannot forget that evening visit to the theatre.

Mr. Gladstone never held a post in the department of either of the services. Here, again, we may say with confidence that it would have been better for his own fame, and for the He welfare of his country, if he had. never understood the problem of defence, least of all that of naval defence; and he seemed to think it quite natural that the Admiralty should be required to cut its coat according to the cloth served out to it by the Treasury. His passion for economy he had inherited from Peel. But Peel, though a rigid economist, was much more in touch with the services, and much more keen for their efficiency than Mr. Gladstone ever was. Peel had Wellington for colleague and mentor; he was vigilant in keeping the departments up to the mark; and in writing to Wellington in 1844 he laid down the unimpeachable principle that "whatever be the state of our finances, it will be true economy' as well as true policy not to leave certain vital interests unprotected." Very different was Mr. Gladstone's method.

Economy with

him was an end in itself. To security he never seems to have given a thought. He was accidentally right in resisting Palmerston's craze for fortifications, because that was founded on a radically vicious theory of defence. But he resisted it on abstract and quite irrelevant grounds of economy, not by opposing a sound theory of defence to an unsound one; and he would have done just the same had Palmerston proposed an equivalent expenditure on mobile naval force. He sent Mr. Childers to the Admiralty with a mandate to cut down the estimates, and he armed him with an Order in Council which dislodged the sea-lords from the position they occupied under the Admiralty patent, and made the First Lord supreme This Order in Council

still survives side by side with the patent; but the incompatibility of the two instruments, the larger prescriptive authority of the older one, the spirit of Admiralty administration, the native capacity of naval officers to get the best work out of tools not of the best, and, above all, the wise policy pursued by successive First Lords, more especially by Lord Spencer, Lord Goschen, and Lord Selborne, have all combined to make it of little or no effect. It must be said too, in justice to Mr. Childers, that the reforms and reductions effected by him did not, as is clearly shown in his biography, impair the effective of the Fleet as measured by the standards of those days.

But if retrenchment could have been had in no other way, Mr. Gladstone's whole attitude towards the problem of defence must be taken as proof that he would have insisted on getting it in that way. Every one knows the story of Lord Palmerston's drawer full of Mr. Gladstone's resignations on the score of expenditure. In a letter written to his wife in 1865, he records how he has had "no effective or broad support" in the Cabinet in his opposition to the navy estimates, and how the estimates are "always settled at the dagger's point." It was a conflict over the estimates which brought about the dissolution of 1874. Again, Mr. Morley states plainly, what has long been suspected by many, that the time and occasion of his final resignation in 1894 were really determined, not by the considerations, sufficient in themselves but not imperative at the moment, which alone could be avowed at the time, but by his insuperable objection to the navy estimates proposed by Lord Spencer, and accepted by a majority of his colleagues. In this, at any rate, he was consistent-fatally consistentto the last. "What would be said," he asked, "of my active participation in a policy that will be taken as plunging

England into the whirlpool of militarism." Nothing would be said, we suppose, of his life-long pursuit of a policy which might have plunged England unprepared into a naval conflict fraught with overwhelming ruin. The state of his eyesight was alleged at the time as the main cause of his resignation. It was not the cataract in his bodily eye, however, but the still darker obsession of his mental vision, which never allowed him to see that saving without security is the worst form of national extravagance. His life-long attitude towards this subject was a negation of Adam Smith's pregnant saying, "Defence is of much more importance than opulence."

It remains to consider some of the more questionable of Mr. Gladstone's political enterprises and actions in the light that Mr. Morley has to throw upon them. It is inevitable that, in dealing with still living and disputed issues, a biographer should be more or less of an advocate. All we can expect of him, if he shares the opinions and has followed the lead of his subject, is a presentation of historical and biographical fact as impartial and dispassionate as is consistent with those feelings of sympathy and respect which he naturally entertains for his former leader.

We have no space to waste on the two "stubborn and noisy scuffles," as Mr. Morley calls them, known at the time as the Collier and Ewelme scandals, which contributed materially to Mr. Gladstone's personal disrepute and the discredit of his government in the latter days of his first administration. Beyond dispute they were, both of them, ill-advised proceedings; and a more astute man of the world than Mr. Gladstone ever was would have known that they were certain to provoke criticism altogether out of proportion to the importance of the issues involved. It is never wise to do things