Copy Book Archive

An Exceptional Nation William Gladstone explains that a truly ‘exceptional nation’ respects the equality and rights of all nations.
1879
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Music: Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky

© Alex ‘Florstein’ Fedorov, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source

About this picture …

The Catherine Palace in St Petersburg, summer residence of the Tsars in the time of William Gladstone. Gladstone was inclined to side with Russia in the complex geopolitics of his day, feeling that Britain had more in common with Russia than Turkey. Nonetheless, he took the line that whatever one’s sympathies (and sympathies are both natural and proper) one should not shape foreign policy, any more than domestic policy, to benefit one’s pets or favourites.

An Exceptional Nation
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.

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.

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. (51 / 60 words)

Source

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

Suggested Music

March of the Slavs

Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Performed by the Mikhailovsky Theatre orchestra and choir, at the State Hermitage, St Petersburg.

Media not showing? Let me know!

How To Use This Passage

You can use this passage to help improve your command of English.

IRead it aloud, twice or more. IISummarise it in one sentence of up to 30 words. IIISummarise it in one paragraph of 40-80 words. IVMake notes on the passage, and reconstruct the original from them later on. VJot down any unfamiliar words, and make your own sentences with them later. VIMake a note of any words that surprise or impress you, and ask yourself what meaning they add to the words you would have expected to see. VIITurn any old-fashioned English into modern English. VIIITurn prose into verse, and verse into prose. IXAsk yourself what the author is trying to get you to feel or think. XHow would an artist or a photographer capture the scene? XIHow would a movie director shoot it, or a composer write incidental music for it?

For these and more ideas, see How to Use The Copy Book.

Related Posts

for An Exceptional Nation

Indian History

The Quiet Revolutionary

As Viceroy of India, Lord Ripon was rather more popular with the people of India than he was with some of his own civil servants.

Liberty and Prosperity

Disbanding Empire

Adam Smith could not imagine it would ever happen, but he nevertheless recommended that Britain grant independence to her colonies.

International Relations

The Spectatress

George Canning urged Britain not to bring Continental Europe’s topsy-turvy politics home by getting too closely involved.

International Relations

The Din of Diplomacy

William Gladstone warns voters not to leave foreign policy in the hands of interventionist politicians.

International Relations (41)
All Stories (1522)
Worksheets (14)
Word Games (5)