4.  ARBITRATION AND THE “ALABAMA.”

Gladstone’s hatred of war, and his resolve to avoid it at all hazards unless national duty required it, determined his much criticized action in regard to the Alabama.  That famous and ill-omened vessel was a privateer, built in an English dockyard and manned by an English crew, which during the American Civil War got out to sea, captured seventy Northern vessels, and did a vast deal of damage to the Navy and commerce of the Union.  The Government of the United States had a just quarrel with England in this matter, and the controversy—­not very skilfully handled on either side—­dragged on till the two nations seemed to be on the edge of war.  Then Gladstone agreed to submit the case to arbitration, and the arbitration resulted in a judgment hostile to England.  From that time—­1872—­Gladstone’s popularity rapidly declined, till it revived, after an interval of Lord Beaconsfield’s rule, at the General Election of 1880.  In the first Session of that Parliament, he vindicated the pacific policy which had been so severely criticized in the following words: 

“The dispositions which led us to become parties to the arbitration of the Alabama case are still with us the same as ever; we are not discouraged, we are not damped in the exercise of these feelings by the fact that we were amerced, and severely amerced, by the sentence of the international tribunal; and, although we may think the sentence was harsh in its extent and unjust in its basis, we regard the fine imposed on this country as dust in the balance compared with the moral value of the example set when these two great nations of England and America, who are among the most fiery and the most jealous in the world with regard to anything that touches national honour, went in peace and concord before a judicial tribunal to dispose of these painful differences, rather than resort to the arbitrament of the sword.”

5.  NATIONALITY—­THE BALKANS AND IRELAND.

Gladstone was an intense believer in the principle of nationality, and he had a special sympathy with the struggles of small and materially feeble States.  “Let us recognize,” he said, “and recognize with frankness, the equality of the weak with the strong, the principles of brotherhood among nations, and of their sacred independence.  When we are asking for the maintenance of the rights which belong to our fellow-subjects, resident abroad, let us do as we would be done by, and let us pay that respect to a feeble State, and to the infancy of free institutions, which we would desire and should exact from others, towards their maturity and their strength.”

He was passionately Phil-Hellene.  Greece, he said in 1897, is not a State “equipped with powerful fleets, large armies, and boundless treasure supplied by uncounted millions.  It is a petty Power, hardly counting in the list of European States.  But it is a Power representing the race that fought the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis, and hurled back the hordes of Asia from European shores.”