A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
BY
THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
"Blame not, before thou hast examined the truth: understand first, and then rebuke."—Ecclesiasticus, ch. ii.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1868.
The right of Translation is reserved.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, DUKE STREET, STAMFORD STREET,AND CHARING CROSS.
At a time when the Established Church of Irelandis on her trial, it is not unfair that her assailantsshould be placed upon their trial too: most of all, ifthey have at one time been her sanguine defenders.
But if not the matter of the indictment againstthem, at any rate that of their defence, should bekept apart, as far as they are concerned, from thepublic controversy, that it may not darken or perplexthe greater issue.
It is in the character of the author of a bookcalled 'The State in its Relations with the Church,'that I offer these pages to those who may feel a dispositionto examine them. They were written at thedate attached to them; but their publication hasbeen delayed until after the stress of the GeneralElection.
Autobiography is commonly interesting; but therecan, I suppose, be little doubt that, as a general rule,it should be posthumous. The close of an activecareer supplies an obvious exception: for this resemblesthe gentle death which, according to ancientfable, was rather imparted than inflicted by thetender arrows of Apollo and of Artemis. I haveasked myself many times, during the present year,whether peculiar combinations of circumstance mightnot also afford a warrant at times for departure fromthe general rule, so far as some special passage oflife is concerned; and whether I was not myself nowplaced in one of those special combinations.
The motives, which incline me to answer thesequestions in the affirmative, are mainly two. First,that the great and glaring change in my course ofaction with respect to the Established Church of Irelandis not the mere eccentricity, or even perversion, ofan individual mind, but connects itself with silentchanges, which are advancing in the very bed andbasis of modern society. Secondly, that the progressof a great cause, signal as it has been and is, appearsliable nevertheless to suffer in point of credit, if notof energy and rapidity, from the real or supposed[Pg 8]delinquencies of a person, with whose name for themoment it happens to be specially associated.
One thing is clear: that if I am warranted intreating my own case as an excepted case, I ambound so to treat it. It is only with a view to thepromotion of some general interest, that the publiccan becomingly be invited to hear more, especially inpersonal history, about an individual, of whom theyalready hear too much. But if it be for the generalinterest to relieve 'an enterprise of pith andmoment' from the odiu