The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (Vol. 1-3). John Morley
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Название: The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (Vol. 1-3)

Автор: John Morley

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Документальная литература

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isbn: 4064066380526

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СКАЧАТЬ speed by Mr. Gladstone's own hand, and the fourth was done under his direction.254 His object was, without any reference to Italian unity, to give an illustration of the actual working of the temporal power in its latest history. It is easy to understand how the theme fitted in with the widest topics of his life; the nature of theocratic government; the possibility (to borrow Cavour's famous phrase) of a free church in a free state; and above all,—as he says to Manning now, and said to all the world twenty years later in the day of the Vatican decrees,—the mischiefs done to the cause of what he took for saving truth by evil-doing in the heart and centre of the most powerful of all the churches. His translation of Farini, followed by his article on the same subject in the Edinburgh in 1852, was his first blast against 'the covetous, domineering, implacable policy represented in the term Ultramontanism; the winding up higher and higher, tighter and tighter, of the hierarchical spirit, in total disregard of those elements by which it ought to be checked and balanced; and an unceasing, covert, smouldering war against human freedom, even in its most modest and retiring forms of private life and of the individual conscience.' With an energy not unworthy of Burke at his fiercest, he denounces the fallen and impotent regality of the popes as temporal sovereigns. 'A monarchy sustained by foreign armies, smitten with the curse of social barrenness, unable to strike root downward or bear fruit upward, the sun, the air, the rain soliciting in vain its sapless and rotten boughs—such a monarchy, even were it not a monarchy of priests, and tenfold more because it is one, stands out a foul blot upon the face of creation, an offence to Christendom and to mankind.'255 As we shall soon see, he was just as wrathful, just as impassioned and as eloquent, when, in a memorable case in his own country, the temporal power bethought itself of a bill for meddling with the rights of a Roman voluntary church.

      FOOTNOTES:

      241. For the two Letters to Lord Aberdeen, see Gleanings, iv.

      242. There was a slight discrepancy between the two on this point, Mr. Gladstone describing the position as above, Aberdeen believing that it was by his persuasion that Mr. Gladstone dropped his intention of instant publicity. Probably the latter used such urgent language about an appeal to the public opinion of England and Europe, that Lord Aberdeen supposed it to be an immediate and not an ulterior resort. Aberdeen to Castelcicala, September 15, 1851, and Mr. Gladstone to Aberdeen, October 3.

      CHAPTER VII

       RELIGIOUS TORNADO—PEELITE DIFFICULTIES

      (1851-1852)

      I am always disposed to view with regret the rupture of party ties—my disposition is rather to maintain them. I confess I look, if not with suspicion, at least with disapprobation on any one who is disposed to treat party connections as matters of small importance. My opinion is that party ties closely appertain to those principles of confidence which we entertain for the House of Commons.—Gladstone (1852).

      I promised, says Mr. Gladstone, to go directly after seeing СКАЧАТЬ