George William Erskine Russell

The Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 4 (Classic Reprint) George William Erskine Russell

Publisher Marketing: Excerpt from The Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 4 The task of writing this Biography is one for which I should certainly not have volunteered. When Mr. Stuart Reid proposed it to me, I undertook it with reluctance. I pointed out that this was one of the cases where personal acquaintance with the subject of the book was a positive disqualification for the work. I could not consent to embellish my pages with traits and incidents which I had observed in the sacred intercourse of social life; and the official relation in which I had stood to Mr. Gladstone made it difficult for me to sit in judgment on his public acts. These objections were overruled; but it is right to state that Mr. Gladstone is in no way or degree responsible for what I have written. When, before undertaking the work, I applied to him for his sanction, he said that he would put no obstacles in the way; and there his connexion with the matter ends. This book aims at little more than a clear statement of facts chronologically arranged. The successive events of a great man's life, and his own recorded words, have been allowed to speak for themselves; and, where comment was required, it has been sought in the writings of contemporary observers. Original criticism has been used as sparingly as possible. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.