C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
On the Death of Gladstone
By Sir Wilfrid Laurier (1841–1919)
E
This last half century in which we live has produced many able and strong men who, in different walks of life, have attracted the attention of the world at large; but of the men who have illustrated this age, it seems to me that in the eyes of posterity four will outlive and outshine all others—Cavour, Lincoln, Bismarck, and Gladstone. If we look simply at the magnitude of the results obtained, compared with the exiguity of the resources at command, if we remember that out of the small kingdom of Sardinia grew United Italy, we must come to the conclusion that Count Cavour was undoubtedly a statesman of marvelous skill and prescience. Abraham Lincoln, unknown to fame when he was elected to the Presidency, exhibited a power for the government of men which has scarcely been surpassed in any age. He saved the American Union, he enfranchised the black race, and for the task he had to perform he was endowed in some respects almost miraculously. No man ever displayed a greater insight into the motives, the complex motives, which shape the public opinion of a free country, and he possessed almost to the degree of an instinct the supreme quality in a statesman of taking the right decision, taking it at the right moment, and expressing it in language of incomparable felicity. Prince Bismarck was the embodiment of resolute common sense, unflinching determination, relentless strength, moving onward to his end, and crushing everything in his way, as unconcerned as fate itself. Mr. Gladstone undoubtedly excelled every one of these men. He had in his person a combination of varied powers of the human intellect, rarely to be found in one single individual. He had the imaginative fancy, the poetic conception of things, in which Count Cavour was deficient. He had the aptitude for business, the financial ability which Lincoln never exhibited. He had the lofty impulses, the generous inspirations which Prince Bismarck always discarded, even if he did not treat them with scorn. He was at once an orator, a statesman, a poet, and a man of business. As an orator he stands certainly in the very front rank of orators of his country or any country, of his age or any age…. To his marvelous mental powers he added no less marvelous physical gifts. He had the eye of a god, the voice of a silver bell; and the very fire of his eye, the very music of his voice swept the hearts of men even before they had been dazzled by the torrents of his eloquence.