SPEECHES DESCRIPTIVE INDEX AND BIBLIOGRAPHY BY ARTHUR TILNEY BASSETT WITH A PREFACE BY VISCOUNT BRYCE, O.M. AND INTRODUCTIONS TO THE SELECTED SPEECHES BY METHUEN & CO., LTD. LONDON PREFACE HERE is in English history no Statesman of the first rank whose active career covers so long a period as does that of Mr. Gladstone. He entered public life at twentythree as a member of the House of Commons and at twenty-five as an official. He quitted it at eighty-five, being then, and that for the fourth time, Prime Minister. For forty-two years, from 1852 till 1894, he was one of the most prominent political figures in the country, and from 1866 onwards by far the most eminent man in his own party, even during the five years in which he had, by his own wish, ceased to be formally its leader. An impression of the wide range and endless variety of the questions with which be dealt may be gathered from the list of his speeches prefixed to this volume. They cover almost the whole field of politics. Most of them were delivered while he held high office, and all the later, those made since he entered Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet in 1843, under the responsibility which attaches to whoever has held such office and is likely to hold it again. These speeches are therefore invaluable materials for the political history of the period they cover, and will have to be constantly consulted by whoever attempts to describe that period. There are, however, some-indeed a considerable number of them which stand out from the rest in respect of the magnitude and permanent significance of the issues with which they deal; and these are naturally also among the speeches of most merit in respect of substance and diction, because the speaker put the most and the best of his thought into them and rose with the greatness of his theme. From among this considerable number of important speeches the fourteen which have been selected and placed together in this volume are all of high interest both as pieces of history and also as typical of Mr. Gladstone's oratorical manner and style. All are concerned with great affairs. All display his wonderful |