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GLADSTONE, ENGLAND'S GREATEST LEADER

[Speech of Whitelaw Reid at a dinner given by the Irish-Americans
to Justin McCarthy, New York City, October 2, 1886. Judge Edward
Browne presided. Mr. Reid was called upon to speak to the toast,
"Gladstone, England's Greatest Leader."]

GENTLEMEN:--I am pleased to see that since this toast was sent
me by your committee, it has been proof-read. As it came to me, it
describes Mr. Gladstone as England's greatest Liberal leader. I thought
you might well say that and more. It delights me to find that you have
said more--that you have justly described him as England's greatest
leader. ["Hear! Hear!"] I do not forget that other, always remembered
when Gladstone is mentioned, who educated his party till it captured
its opponents' place by first disguising and then adopting their
measures. That was in its way as brilliant party leadership as the
century has seen, and it placed an alien adventurer in the British
peerage and enshrined his name in the grateful memory of a great party
that vainly looks for Disraeli's successor. [Applause.] I do not forget
a younger statesman, never to be forgotten henceforth by Irishmen, who
revived an impoverished and exhausted people, stilled their dissensions,
harmonized their conflicting plans, consolidated their chaotic forces,
conducted a peaceful Parliamentary struggle in their behalf with
incomparable pertinacity, coolness, and resources; and through storms
and rough weather has held steadily on till even his enemies see now, in
the very flush of their own temporary success, that in the end the
victory of Parnell is sure. [Loud applause.] Great leaders both; great
historic figures whom our grandchildren will study and analyze and
admire.

But this man whom your toast honors, after a career that might have
filled any man's ambition, became the head of the Empire whose mourning
drum-beat heralds the rising sun on its journey round the world. That
place he risked and lost, and risked again to give to an ill-treated
powerless section of the Empire, not even friendly to his sway, Church
Reform, Educational Reform, Land Reform, Liberty! [Cheers.] It was no
sudden impulse and it is no short or recent record. It is more than
seventeen years since Mr. Gladstone secured for Ireland the boon of
disestablishment. It is nearly as long since he carried the first bill
recognizing and seriously endeavoring to rem