Welsh Journals

On a number of occasions she points out the merits of Gladstone's often criticised grasp of foreign affairs, his far-sighted doubts of the value of the Black Sea clauses in the Peace of Paris after the Crimean War, for example. He was, therefore, not unduly perturbed, she emphasises, when the Czar rejected these clauses since the Franco-Prussian War gave him the opportunity to do so. Indeed, she praises the conduct of foreign affairs during Gladstone's first ministry, being unbeguiled by those who accused his government of being too tame and insufficiently assertive of British interests. In spite of such assessments, her verdict on Gladstone is not very dissimilar to that of E. J. Feuchtwanger in his equally scholarly biography. Both see Gladstone's career as rising to a crescendo in his first ministry, followed by a less significant period of decline. To those who were brought up to reverence the 'Grand Old Man', fighting the swelling tide of reaction during his later life, this is not an entirely satisfactory verdict. It is an attempt, it may be argued, to depict a Gladstone without tears for a Thatcherite age. Having written so much and so well on the first part of his career, Agatha Ramm seems less interested, perhaps partly through lack of space, in the anti- establishmentarian phase of Gladstone's career, even getting the results of the important election of 1885 the wrong way round (p. 108). She might indeed have included Michael Barker's well-researched Gladstone and Radicalism, The reconstruction of the Liberal Party, 1885-94 (1975), in her further reading list. But she is not concerned with Gladstone's legacy to the Liberal or the rising Labour Parties. Like others she quotes Lord Salisbury, after Gladstone was safely dead, generously praising him as 'a great Christian'. But Gladstone's influence was far more marked on the parties of the left, especially when the 'Unionists' more and more adopted an aggressive imperialism and indeed, to the dismay of the Cecil family, advocated economic protection. Neither Feuchtwanger nor Agatha Ramm enables us to understand why Gladstone was and remained such a hero to so many working class men and women; why his portrait, for example, adorned so many Welsh cottages. It is true that 'blood and iron' appeared to have conquered during the first half of the twentieth century, but Gladstonian ideals have animated those who have tried to establish a durable peace. Dr. Ramm might have mentioned that the young Woodrow Wilson had a portrait of Gladstone on his desk. Nor was the 'Grand Old Man' as unsuccessful during the latter phase of his life as many modern historians have tried to indicate. Shrewd, sceptical Liberal Conservatives for the most part, they have dwelt lovingly on some of the characteristics of the young Gladstone. They have prided themselves as men of the world on their ability to indicate the inadequacies of Gladstone as a politician, but have shown less appreciation of how in his old age he won so much support in spite of so much hostile fury levelled against him. Prejudices apart, however, this is an illuminating study by one who has thought deeply on a vast range of knowledge and has come to her own conclusions in this brief Political portrait. NEVILLE MASTERMAN Swansea