[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
. His record as prime minister during the 1880s hardly livedup to these ideals, as his armed intervention in Egypt in 1882 made patentlyclear.His American supporters were quite willing to rationalize his departuresfrom the ideal, however, and to insist that exigencies aside, he had not com-promised the soundness of his underlying beliefs.These beliefs emerged fromwhat Curtis had already termed the Liberal leader s honest dealing in subor-dinating public policy to the moral law. 22Though Gladstone was becoming an increasingly divisive figure among Brit-ish Liberals, his victory in 1880 assured the American liberal reformers thatthey remained on the right side of history and that the future belonged to aninternationalist, moral foreign policy, which they instinctively embraced.Atthe height of Disraeli s influence in 1878, Godkin had feared that such mightnot be the case.With a considerable dose of pessimism, he imagined the daywhen observers would look back and wonder why the real sources of Englishgreatness had been sacrificed in a vain attempt to realize the gaudy dreamsof a novel-writer, who had climbed into power as a rhetorician through theintellectual degeneracy of a party which had ceased to have anything behindit but wealth. Though a popular orator such as Gladstone was of course nostranger to rhetoric, liberal American observers repeatedly contrasted thedirect simplicity of Gladstone (who had preferred, refusing a peerage, to re-main Mr.Gladstone ) with the artificial spectacle of Disraeli, who had notonly become Lord Beaconsfield but had, on his own authority, bestowed thetitle empress of India on Queen Victoria.With this contrast, it was no won-der that in 1880, with the Liberal Party back in office and British integrityrestored, Curtis forecast a hopeful transatlantic future.An appeal to commonsense and moral principles had caused British voters to rise up and to show howan aversion to melodramatic men and politics had been bred in the blood ofthe English race from which we are mainly sprung. Homegrown jingoes suchas James G.Blaine should remember that Americans have been always most 232 GLOBAL POWEReffective when least sensational, Curtis wrote.But he added that the suddenand complete prostration of the Disraelian vision signaled something deeperto anyone bent on the building of empires.Not imperial expansion or mar-tial splendor but Gladstone s blending of democratic discussion with a foreignpolicy grounded in moral principles represented the very best of what Anglo-Americans had to offer.23Ireland Is England s Touchstone, as Slavery Was OursGladstone s American reputation continued to improve during his second min-istry.Most American liberals continued to believe that he was a responsiblesteward of imperial power, and even his use of force during the 1882 Egyptcrisis did not tarnish this reputation.By 1887, Godkin marveled that noliving American, has as much hold as Gladstone on the American imaginationtoday. By that time, the Grand Old Man had pushed the Liberal Party to adopthis most controversial and most ambitious measure.He was in the midst ofa fight to solve the most intractable problems of empire the persistent Irishdemands for greater political autonomy and for social, economic, and religiousjustice.24American liberal reformers interest in the problem of Ireland was to be ex-pected, though few scholars have examined their immersion in this issue.Thehistorian Robert Kelley has noted its centrality more generally, writing that asAlgeria obsessed the world in the 1950s and Vietnam in the 1960s, so Irelanddrew all eyes in the 1880s. Godkin, Curtis, Lowell, and several of their Brit-ish counterparts went beyond mere observation to become key public figuresin the most sweeping attempt yet to moderate Anglo-Irish tensions.The Glad-stonian campaign for Home Rule represented the Americans reformers mostimportant intervention in the public policies of a foreign country.In their at-tempt to shape solutions, the Liberals experienced as many losses as gains.TheIrish question fractured the British Liberal Party, resulting in its dramatic fallfrom power in 1885 and a fatal splintering into Gladstonian and Liberal Union-ist wings.Those members of the transatlantic liberal alliance most intimatelyinvolved experienced this fracturing more personally, as Ireland ruptured andrealigned relationships and pitted Goldwin Smith, Matthew Arnold, and A.V.Dicey against E.L.Godkin, John Morley, and James Bryce.While the con-troversy tested the limits of transatlantic liberal unity, it also reaffirmed andextended the lessons of the 1870s about how illiberal tendencies and corrup- GLOBAL POWER 233tions accompanied international power acquired through foreign conquest.Assuch, Americans in the 1880s came to learn that Ireland offered, as Morley hadnoted in 1860, a microcosm of the whole imperial question. 25Americans had far more intimate links to the Irish controversies than to thestruggles between Disraelian jingoism and Gladstonian moralism in the late1870s.Liberal critics had followed the epic debate over jingoism to help readersunderstand how the world s preeminent military power managed its foreignaffairs [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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. His record as prime minister during the 1880s hardly livedup to these ideals, as his armed intervention in Egypt in 1882 made patentlyclear.His American supporters were quite willing to rationalize his departuresfrom the ideal, however, and to insist that exigencies aside, he had not com-promised the soundness of his underlying beliefs.These beliefs emerged fromwhat Curtis had already termed the Liberal leader s honest dealing in subor-dinating public policy to the moral law. 22Though Gladstone was becoming an increasingly divisive figure among Brit-ish Liberals, his victory in 1880 assured the American liberal reformers thatthey remained on the right side of history and that the future belonged to aninternationalist, moral foreign policy, which they instinctively embraced.Atthe height of Disraeli s influence in 1878, Godkin had feared that such mightnot be the case.With a considerable dose of pessimism, he imagined the daywhen observers would look back and wonder why the real sources of Englishgreatness had been sacrificed in a vain attempt to realize the gaudy dreamsof a novel-writer, who had climbed into power as a rhetorician through theintellectual degeneracy of a party which had ceased to have anything behindit but wealth. Though a popular orator such as Gladstone was of course nostranger to rhetoric, liberal American observers repeatedly contrasted thedirect simplicity of Gladstone (who had preferred, refusing a peerage, to re-main Mr.Gladstone ) with the artificial spectacle of Disraeli, who had notonly become Lord Beaconsfield but had, on his own authority, bestowed thetitle empress of India on Queen Victoria.With this contrast, it was no won-der that in 1880, with the Liberal Party back in office and British integrityrestored, Curtis forecast a hopeful transatlantic future.An appeal to commonsense and moral principles had caused British voters to rise up and to show howan aversion to melodramatic men and politics had been bred in the blood ofthe English race from which we are mainly sprung. Homegrown jingoes suchas James G.Blaine should remember that Americans have been always most 232 GLOBAL POWEReffective when least sensational, Curtis wrote.But he added that the suddenand complete prostration of the Disraelian vision signaled something deeperto anyone bent on the building of empires.Not imperial expansion or mar-tial splendor but Gladstone s blending of democratic discussion with a foreignpolicy grounded in moral principles represented the very best of what Anglo-Americans had to offer.23Ireland Is England s Touchstone, as Slavery Was OursGladstone s American reputation continued to improve during his second min-istry.Most American liberals continued to believe that he was a responsiblesteward of imperial power, and even his use of force during the 1882 Egyptcrisis did not tarnish this reputation.By 1887, Godkin marveled that noliving American, has as much hold as Gladstone on the American imaginationtoday. By that time, the Grand Old Man had pushed the Liberal Party to adopthis most controversial and most ambitious measure.He was in the midst ofa fight to solve the most intractable problems of empire the persistent Irishdemands for greater political autonomy and for social, economic, and religiousjustice.24American liberal reformers interest in the problem of Ireland was to be ex-pected, though few scholars have examined their immersion in this issue.Thehistorian Robert Kelley has noted its centrality more generally, writing that asAlgeria obsessed the world in the 1950s and Vietnam in the 1960s, so Irelanddrew all eyes in the 1880s. Godkin, Curtis, Lowell, and several of their Brit-ish counterparts went beyond mere observation to become key public figuresin the most sweeping attempt yet to moderate Anglo-Irish tensions.The Glad-stonian campaign for Home Rule represented the Americans reformers mostimportant intervention in the public policies of a foreign country.In their at-tempt to shape solutions, the Liberals experienced as many losses as gains.TheIrish question fractured the British Liberal Party, resulting in its dramatic fallfrom power in 1885 and a fatal splintering into Gladstonian and Liberal Union-ist wings.Those members of the transatlantic liberal alliance most intimatelyinvolved experienced this fracturing more personally, as Ireland ruptured andrealigned relationships and pitted Goldwin Smith, Matthew Arnold, and A.V.Dicey against E.L.Godkin, John Morley, and James Bryce.While the con-troversy tested the limits of transatlantic liberal unity, it also reaffirmed andextended the lessons of the 1870s about how illiberal tendencies and corrup- GLOBAL POWER 233tions accompanied international power acquired through foreign conquest.Assuch, Americans in the 1880s came to learn that Ireland offered, as Morley hadnoted in 1860, a microcosm of the whole imperial question. 25Americans had far more intimate links to the Irish controversies than to thestruggles between Disraelian jingoism and Gladstonian moralism in the late1870s.Liberal critics had followed the epic debate over jingoism to help readersunderstand how the world s preeminent military power managed its foreignaffairs [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]