An Exceptional Nation

William Gladstone explains that a truly ‘exceptional nation’ respects the equality and rights of all nations.

1879

Queen Victoria 1837-1901

Introduction

In 1879, William Gladstone MP berated his rival Benjamin Disraeli, the Prime Minister, for turning Russia into Europe’s bogeyman. Patriotism, Gladstone said, is a healthy thing, but the true patriot is generous, and never claims for his own country rights and dignities he denies to others.

by William Ewart Gladstone 1808-1898

YOU may sympathize with one nation more than another. Nay, you must sympathize in certain circumstances with one nation more than another. You sympathize most with those nations, as a rule, with which you have the closest connection in language, in blood, and in religion, or whose circumstances at the time seem to give the strongest claim to sympathy.*

But in point of right all are equal, and you have no right to set up a system under which one of them is to be placed under moral suspicion or espionage, or to be made the constant subject of invective.* If you do that, but especially if you claim for yourself a superiority, a Pharisaical superiority over the whole of them,* then I say you may talk about your patriotism if you please,* but you are a misjudging friend of your country, and in undermining the basis of the esteem and respect of other people for your country you are in reality inflicting the severest injury upon it.

by William Ewart Gladstone 1808-1898

From ‘Political Speeches in Scotland, November and December 1879’, by William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898).

Gladstone’s sympathies were entirely with Christian Russia. In 1876, the Ottoman Turks had crushed uprisings among Christian Slavs in Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania and Montenegro, then under Ottoman control, with a series of indiscriminate massacres. Disraeli’s government, fearing that Russia’s religious and ethnic ties with the rebels might be exploited by Tsar Alexander II as an excuse to expand the Russian Empire’s territories, tried to ignore the crimes, but Gladstone spoke out, and was rewarded with a second term as Prime Minister in April 1880.

A now infamous example of the invective was a music hall chorus in support of Turkey:

We don’t want to fight but by Jingo if we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too,
We’ve fought the Bear before, and while we’re Britons true,
The Russians shall not have Constantinople.

It is from these lyrics that we derive the noun Jingoism, meaning patriotic sabre-rattling. See also Richard Price On Love of Country.

A reference to the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican in Luke 18:9-14, which Jesus told ‘unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others’. A Pharisee was a member of a strict Jewish movement committed to political and cultural separatism; a ‘publicanus’ was a Jewish tax-collector working for the Roman Empire, at that time an occupying power in Israel.

We do not invoke ‘patriotism’ today in this regard, but we do invoke humanitarianism, human rights, or national security to the same end: a world in which all countries are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Précis

William Gladstone strongly criticised those who pretended to respect other nations, but in fact gave Britain licence to behave in ways that they forbade to others. He argued that such special pleading on Britain’s behalf could not be justified as patriotic, because it lowered Britain’s standing the eyes of the world.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

Sevens

Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.

Which countries did Gladstone expect British people to feel closest to?

Suggestion

Those tied by language, religion and blood.

Jigsaws

Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.

People like some countries more than others. Gladstone did not disapprove.