Gladstone: A Biography (25 page)

Having got the assurance,
²⁷
and boiling with indignation against the Neapolitan government, Gladstone was anxious to be back in England and to have
the opportunity to rally the Conservative party against the iniquities. This at first was his limited objective. Palmerston, he assumed, could be got to fire off a protest at the drop of a hat, but
the Foreign Secretary had devalued such
démarches
by their too frequent use, and it was conservative opinion, both with a large and a small ‘c’, that Gladstone thought was
likely to be most effective in Naples. It was also the case that he still instinctively thought of himself as a Conservative and that what most aroused his ire against the tyranny of the Neapolitan
government was that it was specifically directed against the bourgeoisie: ‘The class persecuted as a whole is the class that lives and moves, the middle class, in its widest acceptation, but
particularly in the upper part of the middle class which [it] may be said embraces the professions, the most cultivated and progressive part of the nation.’
⁷

These considerations may have persuaded him to couch his anti-Bourbon manifesto in the form of a letter to Lord Aberdeen, who was the last previous Conservative Foreign Secretary and was looked
to as
the leader of the Peelites after the death of the former Prime Minister. Aberdeen had also long been looked upon as having a special position in Austria, which was
rightly regarded as the paramount power in Naples. Gladstone wrote the letter (more a pamphlet) in one of his ‘white-heat’ moods, and had it ready for despatch on 7 April (1851),
despite the distractions of a major, difficult and unpopular speech in the House of Commons on 25 March,
²⁸
the final arguments with Manning on the 30th
and with Hope-Scott on 3 April, and the news that they had both made the fateful break on the 6th. Gladstone pronounced himself ‘smitten’ by this last event. He was also irrepressible.
‘One blessing I have is total freedom from doubts.’ And later on that same evening of the despatch of the letter to Aberdeen he wrote: ‘Dined at the Palace: when I had most
interesting conversations especially with the Queen about Naples.’
⁸
The still young Sovereign obviously had an early experience of enjoying
Gladstone’s lecturing style.

Aberdeen liked Gladstone but he also liked a quiet life and a quiet pattern of politics in Europe. This for him meant the upholding of as much as possible of the 1815 settlement of Vienna, which
had been rudely enough shaken by the events of 1848, and he saw Gladstone’s activities as a likely source of future trouble. Nevertheless his sense of justice and humanity made him accept the
horror of the evidence put before him, and his sense of caution made him tremble at the signs of movement in the ‘tremendous projectile’ and desire to exercise some influence over its
‘curves and deviations’. Accordingly he had a friendly meeting with Gladstone on 13 April, offered one or two suggestions for small changes to the letter, and promised to make a private
approach to Prince Schwarzenberg, the Chancellor of the Austrian Empire.

He was not however in a hurry and it was nearly three weeks before he wrote a gentle letter to Schwarzenberg pointing out the disadvantages to conservative Europe of a conservative statesman of
Gladstone’s repute feeling he was forced to make public remonstrance. Aberdeen’s dilatoriness was minor compared with that of Schwarzenberg, who took another seven weeks to reply. Maybe
the Ballhausplatz officials needed these weeks to polish the insolent ripostes with which the Chancellor embellished his cold reply. The British government’s treatment of political prisoners
in Ireland, Ceylon, the Ionian Islands and even in England (the case of Ernest Jones the Chartist was specified) was recriminatingly deployed. Finally, throwing a bone to a dog, Schwarzenberg told
Aberdeen that, as it had not been formally requested (if it had he would have refused), he would pass Gladstone’s statement to His Sicilian Majesty.

The sheer efflux of time (it was four months since his return from Naples) quite apart from the dismissive nature of the reply had severely tried Gladstone’s patience by this date, and he
decided to publish and to do so under the title of
Letter to the Earl of Aberdeen
. Immediately before the event, but after he had written to his publisher, John Murray, giving instructions
to go ahead, which instructions presumably embraced the title of the pamphlet, he had at least four meetings with Aberdeen, and at his request agreed to postpone publication by a few days to 15
July. Aberdeen subsequently complained that he had never given his consent to publication. Gladstone’s response was that it had been implied in conversation, and it is difficult to believe
that this was not so in view of Gladstone’s agreement to postpone. But it may be that Aberdeen felt he was confronted with an unnegotiable position so far as a decision to publish was
concerned, with room for discussion only on the exact date.

What is certainly the case is that Gladstone inappropriately associated Aberdeen’s name with a polemical publication of vast impact. And what is probably the case is that Aberdeen only
became seriously embarrassed and somewhat (but not lastingly) resentful when he discovered how much Gladstone made his (Aberdeen’s) name resound throughout Europe and how strongly
conservative opinion across the Continent disapproved of Gladstone’s content wrapped in Aberdeen’s flag. Even the friendly and anglophile Guizot wrote a letter of courteous rebuke.
Others were less courteous. An unconnected and (so far as is known) inoffensive Gladstone was blackballed for a Paris Club on account of his name alone.

On the other hand Gladstone aroused enormous enthusiasm in liberal circles, particularly but not only in Italy. At home Palmerston expressed his support, allied to pleasure at being able to stir
a party political pot, by distributing copies of the Gladstone pamphlet to all British heads of mission in Europe with instructions that it be communicated to the governments to which they were
accredited. And when the Neapolitan minister in London countered by asking for the distribution of an exculpation which his government had produced Palmerston dismissed it as ‘a flimsy tissue
of bare assertions and reckless denials mixed up with coarse ribaldry and commonplace abuse’.
⁹

In view of the quietist approach of Aberdeen to Don Pacifico and one or two other issues this cavalier attitude was (and was intended to be) a
source of embarrassment for
him, and should perhaps have been so for Gladstone too. The latter, however, so far from showing any sign of dismay, compounded his sin by publishing a
Second Letter to the Earl of Aberdeen
,
dated the day before the publication of the first and incorporated with it in subsequent or translated editions of the pamphlet. The second letter, only half the length of the first’s 13,000
words, was a less impressive document than its predecessor. In the first Gladstone achieved a compelling tautness of style which was unusual for him, and dealt authoritatively with the travesty of
justice involved in the trial of Poerio and others, as well as with the cruel squalor in which they were held. In the second letter he reverted to his more convoluted style, got over-involved with
the articles of the Neapolitan constitution, and attempted to make far too much of a ‘Philosophical Catechism’ for use in elementary schools published in 1850, which he claimed must be
the work of the government because nothing was printed or taught in Naples without its consent. He also dealt unhappily with the Naples government’s refutation of his claim that there were
20,000 political prisoners in the Regno. The true number, they said, was 2000. Two thousand was bad enough, was in effect his reply, and over twice that number had been semi-officially suggested to
him in Naples.

The longer-term effects of the whole chapter were that it gave Gladstone great fame and much increased his standing with the liberals of Europe while sowing a new distrust of him among the
conservatives. It also slightly loosened his relations with Aberdeen and his other Peelite colleagues, who doubted his steadiness. It did not reconcile him to Palmerston, but it did incline his
mind towards Italian unity, the importance of which he had not hitherto apprehended. It made little direct difference to the conditions in the dungeons of Naples. If anything, it made conditions
even worse in the short run, but it assisted the undermining of the Bourbon regime in the Two Sicilies, and thus helped to prepare the way for Garibaldi and his patriotic invasion of 1860.

In the midst of composing the first letter to Aberdeen, on Tuesday, 25 March 1851, Gladstone delivered another of his marathon parliamentary speeches, and the one which was probably his most
distinguished to date. Morley indeed thought it ‘in all its elements and aspects one of the great orator’s three or four most conspicuous masterpieces’.
¹⁰
It was on the second reading of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and was made on the seventh night of the debate, which had begun, almost unbelievably, on the previous
Friday week and had occupied every intervening parliamentary
day except for the then short Wednesday sitting. Gladstone at the beginning of his speech admitted the truth of the
earlier statement of Russell (the Prime Minister) that the debate was already exhausted, that the best arguments for and against the bill had already been deployed. His excuse for speaking in spite
of this was that he was the only member for an English university, and thus the only representative of a large body of Anglican clergy (with whose predominant view he strongly disagreed) who had
not hitherto done so.

Having admitted Russell’s point he then proceeded to contradict it by making the best speech of the whole debate, and deploying a unique authority on the subject with more unforced ease
and equable temper than he habitually showed, despite the fact that he was addressing a largely hostile and occasionally noisy House. But he took thirty-two columns of Hansard and nearly two and a
half hours of the time of the House to do so. And although, as usual, there was no diary evidence that he had devoted time to direct preparation, the prospect of the speech seemed to agitate him
more than usual. He had tried to speak on the previous night, but had not been called, and had written: ‘H of C 7–12½:
waiting
– wh[en] so much prolonged produces
great nervousness.’ And on the night when he did speak and was in the House from ‘5–6½ and 8¼–3’, he recorded that ‘My head being hot I poured
water over it with a large sponge before dinner, and this seemed at once to clear the brain.’
¹¹

The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill has been described by Professor Owen Chadwick as ‘the most foolish act of Russell’s political career’
¹²
(which lasted sixty-five years). The bill arose out of the decision of Pope Pius IX, announced in mid-October 1850, to re-establish, for the first time since 1584, the Roman
Catholic hierarchy in England. The flamboyant, high-living and Romano-centric Dr Wiseman was to be Cardinal Archbishop of the metropolitan see of Westminster, and the rest of the country was to be
divided into twelve dioceses. His new Eminence (whom, partly as a result of his high living, his Irish servant was said to be in the habit of addressing as ‘Your Immense’) proclaimed
the new regime in a pastoral letter of more resonance than tact addressed from ‘out of the Flaminian Gate’. ‘Catholic England’, it said, ‘has been restored to its
orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament, from which its light had long vanished.’

The concession to English susceptibilities was that the new sees did not duplicate the names of Anglican dioceses. To some Protestant minds, however, this did not nearly make up for the
presumption of any
territorial titles, and in particular for the taking of a name so central to the tradition of the English state as Westminster for the archbishopric. Papal
aggression became the widely used term. However, neither the head of Bagehot’s ‘dignified’ part of the state nor the head of his ‘efficient’ part at first reacted
strongly. The Prime Minister wrote to the Queen on 25 October (from the Archbishop of York’s palace at Bishopsthorpe):

The Queen did not demur. Under the influence of the Prince Consort she liked a Protestant Church, and under the influence of her position as its Supreme Governor she liked an Erastian one. So
did Russell. His rigid Whiggery made him believe in religious liberty, but not in religious presumption. It was only when the two ran counter to each that he got into difficulties, and he did not
for the moment see the papal action as creating such a conflict.

Ironically the immediate reaction of some old English Catholics to the actions of the Pope and of Wiseman was more hostile than was that of the Queen and her Minister. The old Catholics liked a
quiet and gentlemanly religion and were already somewhat disturbed with the attention which the new elements in their Church were devoting to populist authoritarianism for Irish labourers on the
one hand and to the drama and opulence of new churches for middle-class converts on the other. The proclamation of the hierarchy acted as a catalyst which brought these discontents to the surface.
Lord Beaumont declared that English Catholics could not accept the hierarchy without violating their
duties as loyal subjects of the Queen, and the thirteenth Duke of Norfolk
took his disapproval to the extent of proclaiming himself an Anglican convert (on the issue) and receiving holy communion in the Arundel parish church. Newman, who was sympathetic to much of the
spirit of the old Catholics, even though he was a very new one himself, was also unenthusiastic. He thought seminaries and education were more important than sees. But, somewhat typically, he
allowed himself to be persuaded that it was his duty to preach a supportive sermon, and did so on 26 October in the new St Chad’s Cathedral at Birmingham. His voice was barely audible, but
his arguments only too resonant and provocative. Lord Shrewsbury, who was instinctively sympathetic to what was sometimes known as pageant Catholicism and the romanizing of the English recusant
tradition, was almost the only grand Catholic layman to be enthusiastic for the Pope.