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Osbert Burdett
Published by Good Press, 2021
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A stranger to London, and inhaling with the clean lungs of a country-bred boy the perceptible breeze of Reform which gave freshness to Westminster, Gladstone found himself confronted with proposals, often admirable but not advocated upon religious grounds. Was it not extraordinary that their strongest argument should be unused? The people whom he was beginning to meet about the House and in society were a little cold, in speech that is. He missed the note of enthusiasm, yet it was far easier to suffer the scoffs of wretches, of whom there were luckily but few, stridently declaring that the naming of principles was the stock vocabulary of political rhetoric. That they spoke from tubs and at street corners proved the wisdom of our Constitution in effectively excluding them from Parliament. These ranters were the cynics after all, and cynics in Parliament would be preposterous intruders. He had better words to listen to than theirs. There was Edward Irving to hear at the new, if heretical, church in Newman Street (since he was now excommunicate by the presbytery). There were more orthodox preachers. There were Dr. Arnold's sermons to read aloud. All these men agreed on the importance of earnestness and principle. His pre-eminence in both had led to Arnold's recent promotion to Rugby School. Irving, who entered no house without giving an apostolic benediction, if misguided, was free from any charge of want of seriousness. His explicit aim had been to teach "imaginative men, and political men, and legal men, and scientific men who bear the world in hand": a comprehensive audience. This was enough. One must now study to apply one's principles; possibly, if it must come to that, with a higher seriousness because one's colleagues were men of action rather than of lofty thought. These men, too, could teach a man much. One must learn their ropes, if only in order to hitch them to the car of a prophet ascending.
Gladstone's early years in Parliament show the progress of this apprenticeship. The politician learns the mode of his calling, while the enthusiast functions usefully overhead. Once he shall have learnt how to avoid collision between this fire above and this cloud on the ground, his path will be plainer. In the course of the following sessions we shall watch how the accommodation proceeds.
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