Almighty Liberal

GLADSTONE (482 pp.)--Philip Magnus --Dutton ($6.75).

"This half-crazy and . . . ridiculous old man." "That half-mad firebrand who would soon ruin everything, and be a Dictator." Thus, on two occasions, did Queen Victoria fulminate against her pet hate, Liberal William Ewart Gladstone. In ferocious agreement with the Queen were the House of Lords, the City magnates and all good Tories--down to the anonymous songster who bellowed from the music-hall boards that Gladstone

. . . when his life ebbs out,

Will ride in a fiery chariot,

And sit in state

On a red-hot plate

Between Pilate and Judas Iscariot.

Gladstone suffered bitterly from the displeasure of a sovereign whom he served loyally as Prime Minister no fewer than four times. But he was never overwhelmed, either by the Queen or her supporters, for one simple reason: he believed with all his heart that everything he did--and much of what was done to him--was in obedience to the express commands of the Almighty. If his Liberal Party scored over Disraeli's Tories, Gladstone did not congratulate his supporters. "To God be the praise," he declared. And there was even an occasion on which God's dexterous intervention in a squabble with Turkey enabled Gladstone to leave 10 Downing Street just in time to "catch the 2:45" back to his country home and Mrs. Gladstone.

Most Hated & Adored. When Gladstone's enemies asked, as they frequently did, why God was always a Liberal, never a Tory, Gladstone patiently explained that God was choosy about whom He backed, and often refused to reveal Himself to dumb or backward persons. But perhaps God voted Liberal as often as He did because He realized that no politician, of any age, in any country, had struggled so vigorously as Gladstone to practice what He preached.

Gladstone was the son of a rich Liverpool merchant. To an erratic, explosive brain, he joined (said his doctor) a body "built in the most beautiful proportion . . . head, legs, arms and trunk, all without a flaw, like some ancient Greek statue." Gladstone's first intention was to become a parson: he never quite forgave himself for being so weak as to become a Prime Minister. Religion was not his faith; it was his spouse, and he loved it so passionately that when he felt exhausted he would say quite naturally "not that he wanted to go to bed, but that he wanted 'to go straight to church.' "

When Gladstone first took his seat in the House of Commons (1833), the Victorian era was moving in, pushing back into history the last remnants of irreverent, aristocratic Whiggery, pushing forward the businessman. In faith, in morals, in background, in purse, the young Gladstone seemed every inch a new Victorian. How, then, did he become the most hated as well as the most adored English statesman of his century?

The Selfish Rich. It happened, says Author Philip Magnus, in what is undoubtedly the best biography of Gladstone ever written, because Gladstone was the first British statesman to act upon the belief that God especially loved the common man. Gladstone felt that the rich were inclined to be "selfish," and this feeling was confirmed by various proofs:

P: Wealthy people had a habit of hanging on to their money instead of giving away a "substantial portion" of it every year (as Gladstone always did).

P: "Corrupted by the insolence of wealth and privilege," the upper classes had become incapable of sublime feelings. Not one of them, for example, shared Gladstone's ambition "to die in church. . . but not at a time to disturb worshipers."

P: The rich had no sense of mission. London was swarming with prostitutes, but few stockbrokers, let alone peers, followed Gladstone's example and spent night after night going out after streetwalkers, bringing them home, feeding them, giving them holidays at the seashore and finding jobs for them. Gladstone went on doing so all through his first three tenures of the Premiership, and was fretful when his colleagues urged him to invite influential politicians to dinner instead.

Shunned by his selfish peers, and ridiculed (at a safe distance) by his fellow intellectuals, Gladstone tried to find a stratum of society that was more susceptible to Christian doctrine. Through study of Homer, Gladstone persuaded "himself that the spirit of justice in its purest form had its habitation in the hearts and minds of the untutored masses; and he argued with simple faith that the masses were less exposed than the classes to motive's of self-interest."

No one had ever brought the British masses a more flattering message--or delivered it with such spellbinding fervor (a speech of five hours was well within his range). Gladstone's popularity with "the people" of England fell little short of idolatry: even those of his colleagues who most disliked him could not reject the leadership of a man who could cause a crowd of Londoners to tear down 1,400 yards of railings in order to come within sound of his voice.

A Matter of Stature. But the "Grand Old Man" would not have been so humanly popular had he not had his full share of inconsistencies and puzzling characteristics. He was boyish, he was tactless; he gave even his best friends the impression that he was terribly prone to self-deception, scatterbrained and undependable. Gladstone fought like a demon to give Atheist Charles Bradlaugh the seat in the House from which he was barred by the religious nature of the Oath of Allegiance (Bradlaugh finally made it at a later session).

Relentlessly sober himself, Gladstone surprised respectable Victorians by insisting that "occasional drunkenness . . . deserved to be treated with indulgence"; and if he rarely listened to smoking-room anecdotes, it was not because he disapproved of them but because any story about sex was "virtually incomprehensible" to him.

Gladstone was 80 years old when his stupendous vigor at last began to fail him. When the House of Lords threw out his Irish Home Rule Bill, he hoped to save the day by raising his old cry of "Peers v. People" and rousing the masses to defeat the Lords. But he resigned soon afterward over another issue. He died with relatively little new legislation of his making: his broadening of the electorate to include the working class was his major contribution. But he was the sort of person whose moral stature was "of vastly greater significance than what he did"--one who "by his radiant example . . . did more than any statesman since the Reformation to give effect in politics to [the Christian] ideal" and "to realize on earth the spirit of the Christian ethic."

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