The Life Of

                         William Ewart Gladstone

                                    By

                               John Morley

                        In Three Volumes—Vol. III.

                               (1890-1898)

                                 Toronto

                   George N. Morang & Company, Limited

                             Copyright, 1903

                         By The Macmillan Company





CONTENTS


Book VIII. 1880-1885
   Chapter I. Opening Days Of The New Parliament. (1880)
   Chapter II. An Episode In Toleration. (1880-1883)
   Chapter III. Majuba. (1880-1881)
   Chapter IV. New Phases Of The Irish Revolution. (1880-1882)
   Chapter V. Egypt. (1881-1882)
   Chapter VI. Political Jubilee. (1882-1883)
   Chapter VII. Colleagues—Northern Cruise—Egypt. (1883)
   Chapter VIII. Reform. (1884)
   Chapter IX. The Soudan. (1884-1885)
   Chapter X. Interior Of The Cabinet. (1895)
   Chapter XI. Defeat Of Ministers. (May-June 1885)
   Chapter XII. Accession Of Lord Salisbury. (1885)
Book IX. 1885-1886
   Chapter I. Leadership And The General Election. (1885)
   Chapter II. The Polls In 1885. (1885)
   Chapter III. A Critical Month (December 1885)
   Chapter IV. Fall Of The First Salisbury Government. (January 1886)
   Chapter  V. The New Policy. (1886)
   Chapter VI. Introduction Of The Bill. (1886)
   Chapter VII. The Political Atmosphere. Defeat Of The Bill. (1886)
Book X. 1886-1892
   Chapter I. The Morrow Of Defeat. (1886-1887)
   Chapter II. The Alternative Policy In Act. (1886-1888)
   Chapter III. The Special Commission. (1887-1890)
   Chapter IV. An Interim. (1889-1891)
   Chapter V. Breach With Mr. Parnell. (1890-1891)
   Chapter VI. Biarritz. (1891-1892)
   Chapter VII. The Fourth Administration. (1892-1894)
   Chapter VIII. Retirement From Public Life. (1894)
   Chapter IX. The Close. (1894-1898)
   Chapter X. Final.
Appendix
   Irish Local Government, 1883. (Page 103)
   General Gordon’s Instructions. (Page 153)
   The Military Position In The Soudan, April 1885. (Page 179)
   Home Rule Bill, 1886. (Page 308)
   On The Place Of Italy. (Page 415)
   The Naval Estimates Of 1894.
   Mr. Gladstone’s Cabinet Colleagues. (Page 525)
Chronology
Footnotes






BOOK VIII. 1880-1885




Chapter I. Opening Days Of The New Parliament. (1880)


    Il y a bien du factice dans le classement politique des hommes.
                                                    —GUIZOT.

    There is plenty of what is purely artificial in the political
    classification of men.



I


On May 20, after eight-and-forty years of strenuous public life, Mr.
Gladstone met his twelfth parliament, and the second in which he had been
chief minister of the crown. “At 4.15,” he records, “I went down to the
House with Herbert. There was a great and fervent crowd in Palace Yard,
and much feeling in the House. It almost overpowered me, as I thought by
what deep and hidden agencies I have been brought back into the midst of
the vortex of political action and contention. It has not been in my power
during these last six months to have made notes, as I would have wished,
of my own thoughts and observations from time to time; of the new access
of strength which in some important respects has been administered to me
in my old age; and of the remarkable manner in which Holy Scripture has
been applied to me for admonition and for comfort. Looking calmly on this
course of experience, I do believe that the Almighty has employed me for
His purposes in a manner larger or more special than before, and has
strengthened me and led me on accordingly, though I must not forget the
admirable saying of Hooker, that even ministers of good things are like
torches, a light to others, waste and destruction to themselves.”

One who approached his task in such a spirit as this was at least
impregnable to ordinary mortifications, and it was well; for before many
days were over it became perceptible that the new parliament and the new
majority would be no docile instrument of ministerial will. An acute chill
followed the discovery that there was to be no recall of Frere or Layard.
Very early in its history Speaker Brand, surveying his flock from the
august altitude of the Chair with an acute, experienced, and friendly eye,
made up his mind that the liberal party were “not only strong, but
determined to have their own way in spite of Mr. Gladstone. He has a
difficult team to drive.” Two men of striking character on the benches
opposite quickly became formidable. Lord Randolph Churchill headed a
little group of four tories, and Mr. Parnell a resolute band of five and
thirty Irishmen, with momentous results both for ministers and for the
House of Commons.

No more capable set of ruling men were ever got together than the cabinet
of 1880; no men who better represented the leading elements in the
country, in all their variety and strength. The great possessors of land
were there, and the heirs of long governing tradition were there; the
industrious and the sedate of the middle classes found their men seated at
the council board, by the side of others whose keen-sighted ambition
sought sources of power in the ranks of manual toil; the church saw one of
the most ardent of her sons upon the woolsack, and the most illustrious of
them in the highest place of all; the people of the chapel beheld with
complacency the rising man of the future in one who publicly boasted an
unbroken line of nonconformist descent. They were all men well trained in
the habits of business, of large affairs, and in experience of English
life; they were all in spite of difference of shade genuinely liberal; and
they all professed a devoted loyalty to their chief. The incident of the
resolutions on the eastern question(1) was effaced from all (M1) memories,
and men who in those days had assured themselves that there was no return
from Elba, became faithful marshals of the conquering hero. Mediocrity in
a long-lived cabinet in the earlier part of the century was the object of
Disraeli’s keenest mockery. Still a slight ballast of mediocrity in a
government steadies the ship and makes for unity—a truth, by the way, that
Mr. Disraeli himself, in forming governments, sometimes conspicuously put
in practice.

In fact Mr. Gladstone found that the ministry of which he stood at the
head was a coalition, and what was more, a coalition of that vexatious
kind, where those who happened not to agree sometimes seemed to be almost
as well pleased with contention as with harmony. The two sections were not
always divided by differences of class or station, for some of the peers
in the cabinet often showed as bold a liberalism as any of the commoners.
This notwithstanding, it happened on more than one critical occasion, that
all the peers _plus_ Lord Hartington were on one side, and all the
commoners on the other. Lord Hartington was in many respects the lineal
successor of Palmerston in his coolness on parliamentary reform, in his
inclination to stand in the old ways, in his extreme suspicion of what
savoured of sentiment or idealism or high-flown profession. But he was a
Palmerston who respected Mr. Gladstone, and desired to work faithfully
under him, instead of being a Palmerston who always intended to keep the
upper hand of him. Confronting Lord Hartington was Mr. Chamberlain, eager,
intrepid, self-reliant, alert, daring, with notions about property,
taxation, land, schools, popular rights, that he expressed with a
plainness and pungency of speech that had never been heard from a privy
councillor and cabinet minister before, that exasperated opponents,
startled the whigs, and brought him hosts of adherents among radicals out
of doors. It was at a very early stage in the existence of the government,
that this important man said to an ally in the cabinet, “I don’t see how
we are to get on, if Mr. Gladstone goes.” And here was the key to many
leading incidents, both during the life of this administration and for the
eventful year in Mr. Gladstone’s career that followed its demise.

The Duke of Argyll, who resigned very early, wrote to Mr. Gladstone after
the government was overthrown (Dec. 18, 1885), urging him in effect to
side definitely with the whigs against the radicals:—


    From the moment our government was fairly under way, I saw and
    felt that speeches _outside_ were allowed to affect opinion, and
    politically to commit the cabinet in a direction which was not
    determined by you deliberately, or by the government as a whole,
    but by the audacity ... of our new associates. Month by month I
    became more and more uncomfortable, feeling that there was no
    paramount direction—nothing but _slip_ and _slide_, what the
    Scotch call “slithering.” The outside world, knowing your great
    gifts and powers, assume that you are dictator in your own
    cabinet. And in one sense you are so, that is to say, that when
    you choose to put your foot down, others will give way. But your
    amiability to colleagues, your even extreme gentleness towards
    them, whilst it has always endeared you to them personally, has
    enabled men playing their own game ... to take out of your hands
    the _formation_ of opinion.


On a connected aspect of the same thing, Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord
Rosebery (Sept. 16, 1880):—


    ... All this is too long to bore people with—and yet it is not so
    long, nor so interesting, as one at least of the subjects which we
    just touched in conversation at Mentmore; the future of politics,
    and the food they offer to the mind. What is outside parliament
    seems to me to be fast mounting, nay to have already mounted, to
    an importance much exceeding what is inside. Parliament deals with
    laws, and branches of the social tree, not with the root. I always
    admired Mrs. Grote’s saying that politics and theology were the
    only two really great subjects; it was wonderful considering the
    atmosphere in which she had lived. I do not doubt which of the two
    she would have put in the first place; and to theology I have no
    doubt she would have given a wide sense, as including everything
    that touches the relation between the seen and the unseen.


What is curious to note is that, though Mr. Gladstone in making his
cabinet had thrown the main weight against (M2) the radicals, yet when
they got to work, it was with them he found himself more often than not in
energetic agreement. In common talk and in partisan speeches, the prime
minister was regarded as dictatorial and imperious. The complaint of some
at least among his colleagues in the cabinet of 1880 was rather that he
was not imperious enough. Almost from the first he too frequently allowed
himself to be over-ruled; often in secondary matters, it is true, but
sometimes also in matters on the uncertain frontier between secondary and
primary. Then he adopted a practice of taking votes and counting numbers,
of which more than one old hand complained as an innovation. Lord
Granville said to him in 1886, “I think you too often counted noses in
your last cabinet.”

What Mr. Gladstone described as the severest fight that he had ever known
in any cabinet occurred in 1883, upon the removal of the Duke of
Wellington’s statue from Hyde Park Corner. A vote took place, and three
times over he took down the names. He was against removal, but was unable
to have his own way over the majority. Members of the government thought
themselves curiously free to walk out from divisions. On a Transvaal
division two members of the cabinet abstained, and so did two other
ministers out of the cabinet. In other cases, the same thing happened, not
only breaking discipline, but breeding much trouble with the Queen. Then
an unusual number of men of ability and of a degree of self-esteem not
below their ability, had been left out of the inner circle; and they and
their backers were sometimes apt to bring their pretensions rather
fretfully forward. These were the things that to Mr. Gladstone’s
temperament proved more harassing than graver concerns.



II


All through the first two months of its business, the House showed signs
of independence that almost broke the spirit of the ministerial whips. A
bill about hares and rabbits produced lively excitement, ministerialists
moved amendments upon the measure of their own leaders, and the minister
in charge boldly taxed the mutineers with insincerity. A motion for local
option was carried by 229 to 203, both Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington
in the minority. On a motion about clerical restrictions, only a strong
and conciliatory appeal from the prime minister averted defeat. A more
remarkable demonstration soon followed. The Prince Imperial, unfortunate
son of unfortunate sire, who had undergone his famous baptism of fire in
the first reverses among the Vosges in the Franco-German war of 1870, was
killed in our war in Zululand. Parliament was asked to sanction a vote of
money for a memorial of him in the Abbey. A radical member brought forward
a motion against it. Both Mr. Gladstone and Sir Stafford Northcote
resisted him, yet by a considerable majority the radical carried his
point. The feeling was so strong among the ministerialists, that
notwithstanding Mr. Gladstone’s earnest exhortation, they voted almost to
a man against him, and he only carried into the lobby ten official votes
on the treasury bench.

The great case in which the government were taken to have missed the
import of the election was the failure to recall Sir Bartle Frere from
South Africa. Of this I shall have enough to say by and by. Meanwhile it
gave an undoubted shock to the confidence of the party, and their
energetic remonstrance on this head strained Mr. Gladstone’s authority to
the uttermost. The Queen complained of the tendency of the House of
Commons to trench upon the business of the executive. Mr. Gladstone said
in reply generally, that no doubt within the half century “there had been
considerable invasion by the House of Commons of the province assigned by
the constitution to the executive,” but he perceived no increase in recent
times or in the present House. Then he proceeded (June 8, 1880):—


    ... Your Majesty may possibly have in view the pressure which has
    been exercised on the present government in the case of Sir Bartle
    Frere. But apart from the fact that this pressure represents a
    feeling which extends far beyond the walls of parliament, your
    Majesty may probably remember that, in the early part of 1835, the
    House of Commons addressed the crown against the appointment of
    Lord Londonderry to be ambassador at St. Petersburg, on (M3)
    account, if Mr. Gladstone remembers rightly, of a general
    antecedent disapproval. This was an exercise of power going far
    beyond what has happened now; nor does it seem easy in principle
    to place the conduct of Sir B. Frere beyond that general right of
    challenge and censure which is unquestionably within the function
    of parliament and especially of the House of Commons.


In the field where mastery had never failed him, Mr. Gladstone achieved an
early success, and he lost no time in justifying his assumption of the
exchequer. The budget (June 10) was marked by the boldness of former days,
and was explained and defended in one of those statements of which he
alone possessed the secret. Even unfriendly witnesses agreed that it was
many years since the House of Commons had the opportunity of enjoying so
extraordinary an intellectual treat, where “novelties assumed the air of
indisputable truths, and complicated figures were woven into the thread of
intelligible and animated narrative.” He converted the malt tax into a
beer duty, reduced the duties on light foreign wines, added a penny to the
income tax, and adjusted the licence duties for the sale of alcoholic
liquors. Everybody said that “none but a _cordon bleu_ could have made
such a sauce with so few materials.” The dish was excellently received,
and the ministerial party were in high spirits. The conservatives stood
angry and amazed that their own leaders had found no device for the repeal
of the malt duty. The farmer’s friends, they cried, had been in office for
six years and had done nothing; no sooner is Gladstone at the exchequer
than with magic wand he effects a transformation, and the long-suffering
agriculturist has justice and relief.

In the course of an effort that seemed to show full vigour of body and
mind, Mr. Gladstone incidentally mentioned that when a new member he
recollected hearing a speech upon the malt tax in the old House of Commons
in the year 1833. Yet the lapse of nearly half a century of life in that
great arena had not relaxed his stringent sense of parliamentary duty.
During most of the course of this first session, he was always early in
his place and always left late. In every discussion he came to the front,
and though an under-secretary made the official reply, it was the prime
minister who wound up. One night he made no fewer than six speeches,
touching all the questions raised in a miscellaneous night’s sitting.

In the middle of the summer Mr. Gladstone fell ill. Consternation reigned
in London. It even exceeded the dismay caused by the defeat at Maiwand. A
friend went to see him as he lay in bed. “He talked most of the time, not
on politics, but on Shakespeare’s Henry viii., and the decay of
theological study at Oxford. He never intended his reform measure to
produce this result.” After his recovery, he went for a cruise in the
_Grantully Castle_, not returning to parliament until September 4, three
days before the session ended, when he spoke with all his force on the
eastern question.



III


In the electoral campaign Mr. Gladstone had used expressions about Austria
that gave some offence at Vienna. On coming into power he volunteered an
assurance to the Austrian ambassador that he would willingly withdraw his
language if he understood that he had misapprehended the circumstances.
The ambassador said that Austria meant strictly to observe the treaty of
Berlin. Mr. Gladstone then expressed his regret for the words “of a
painful and wounding character” that had fallen from him. At the time, he
explained, he was “in a position of greater freedom and less
responsibility.”

At the close of the session of 1880, ministers went to work upon the
unfulfilled portions of the Berlin treaty relating to Greece and
Montenegro. Those stipulations were positive in the case of Montenegro; as
to Greece they were less definite, but they absolutely implied a cession
of more or less territory by Turkey. They formed the basis of Lord
Salisbury’s correspondence, but his arguments and representations were
without effect.

Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues went further. They proposed and obtained
a demonstration off the Albanian coast on behalf of Montenegro. Each great
Power sent a man-of-war, but the concert of Europe instantly became what
(M4) Mr. Gladstone called a farce, for Austria and Germany made known that
under no circumstances would they fire a shot. France rather less
prominently took the same course. This defection, which was almost
boastful on the part of Austria and Germany, convinced the British cabinet
that Turkish obduracy would only be overcome by force, and the question
was how to apply force effectually with the least risk to peace. As it
happened, the port of Smyrna received an amount of customs’ duties too
considerable for the Porte to spare it. The idea was that the united fleet
at Cattaro should straightway sail to Smyrna and lay hold upon it. The
cabinet, with experts from the two fighting departments, weighed carefully
all the military responsibilities, and considered the sequestration of the
customs’ dues at Smyrna to be practicable. Russia and Italy were friendly.
France had in a certain way assumed special cognisance of the Greek case,
but did nothing particular. From Austria and Germany nothing was to be
hoped. On October 4, the Sultan refused the joint European request for the
fulfilment of the engagements entered into at Berlin. This refusal was
despatched in ignorance of the intention to coerce. The British government
had only resolved upon coercion in concert with Europe. Full concert was
now out of the question. But on the morning of Sunday, the 10th, Mr.
Gladstone and Lord Granville learned with as much surprise as delight from
Mr. Goschen, then ambassador extraordinary at Constantinople, that the
Sultan had heard of the British proposal of force, and apparently had not
heard of the two refusals. On learning how far England had gone, he
determined to give way on both the territorial questions. As Mr. Gladstone
enters in his diary, “a faint tinge of doubt remained.” That is to say,
the Sultan might find out the rift in the concert and retract. Russia,
however, had actually agreed to force. On Tuesday, the 12th, Mr.
Gladstone, meeting Lord Granville and another colleague, was “under the
circumstances prepared to proceed _en trois_.” The other two “rather
differed.” Of course it would have been for the whole cabinet to decide.
But between eleven and twelve Lord Granville came in with the news that
the note had arrived and all was well. “The whole of this extraordinary
volte-face,” as Mr. Gladstone said with some complacency, “had been
effected within six days; and it was entirely due not to a threat of
coercion from Europe, but to the knowledge that Great Britain had asked
Europe to coerce.” Dulcigno was ceded by the Porte to Montenegro. On the
Greek side of the case, the minister for once was less ardent than for the
complete triumph of his heroic Montenegrins, but after tedious
negotiations Mr. Gladstone had the satisfaction of seeing an important
rectification of the Greek frontier, almost restoring his Homeric Greece.
The eastern question looked as if it might fall into one of its fitful
slumbers once more, but we shall soon see that this was illusory. Mr.
Goschen left Constantinople in May, and the prime minister said to him
(June 3, 1881):—


    I write principally for the purpose of offering you my hearty
    congratulations on the place you have taken in diplomacy by force
    of mind and character, and on the services which, in thus far
    serving the most honourable aims a man can have, you have rendered
    to liberty and humanity.


Only in Afghanistan was there a direct reversal of the policy of the
fallen government. The new cabinet were not long in deciding on a return
to the older policy in respect of the north-west frontier of India. All
that had happened since it had been abandoned, strengthened the case
against the new departure. The policy that had been pursued amid so many
lamentable and untoward circumstances, including the destruction of a very
gallant agent of England at Cabul, had involved the incorporation of
Candahar within the sphere of the Indian system. Mr. Gladstone and his
cabinet determined on the evacuation of Candahar. The decision was made
public in the royal speech of the following January (1881). Lord
Hartington stated the case of the government with masterly and crushing
force, in a speech,(2) which is no less than a strong text-book of the
whole argument, if any reader should now desire to comprehend it. The
evacuation was censured in the Lords by 165 against 79; in the Commons
ministers carried the day by a majority of 120.




Chapter II. An Episode In Toleration. (1880-1883)


    The state, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their
    opinions; if they be willing faithfully to serve it, that
    satisfies. ... Take heed of being sharp, or too easily sharpened
    by others, against those to whom you can object little but that
    they square not with you in every opinion concerning matters of
    religion.

    —OLIVER CROMWELL.



I


One discordant refrain rang hoarsely throughout the five years of this
administration, and its first notes were heard even before Mr. Gladstone
had taken his seat. It drew him into a controversy that was probably more
distasteful to him than any other of the myriad contentions, small and
great, with which his life was encumbered. Whether or not he threaded his
way with his usual skill through a labyrinth of parliamentary tactics
incomparably intricate, experts may dispute, but in an ordeal beyond the
region of tactics he never swerved from the path alike of liberty and
common-sense. It was a question of exacting the oath of allegiance before
a member could take his seat.

Mr. Bradlaugh, the new member for Northampton, who now forced the question
forward, as O’Connell had forced forward the civil equality of catholics,
and Rothschild and others the civil equality of Jews, was a free-thinker
of a daring and defiant type. Blank negation could go no further. He had
abundant and genuine public spirit, and a strong love of truth according
to his own lights, and he was both a brave and a disinterested man. This
hard-grit secularism of his was not the worst of his offences in the view
of the new majority and their constituents. He had published an
impeachment of the House of Brunswick, which few members of parliament had
ever heard of or looked at. But even abstract republicanism was not the
worst. What placed him at extreme disadvantage in fighting the battle in
which he was now engaged, was his republication of a pamphlet by an
American doctor on that impracticable question of population, which though
too rigorously excluded from public discussion, confessedly lies among the
roots of most other social questions. For this he had some years before
been indicted in the courts, and had only escaped conviction and
punishment by a technicality. It was Mr. Bradlaugh’s refusal to take the
oath in a court of justice that led to the law of 1869, enabling a witness
to affirm instead of swearing. He now carried the principle a step
further.

When the time came, the Speaker (April 29) received a letter from the
iconoclast, claiming to make an affirmation, instead of taking the oath of
allegiance.(3) He consulted his legal advisers, and they gave an opinion
strongly adverse to the claim. On this the Speaker wrote to Mr. Gladstone
and to Sir Stafford Northcote, stating his concurrence in the opinion of
the lawyers, and telling them that he should leave the question to the
House. His practical suggestion was that on his statement being made, a
motion should be proposed for a select committee. The committee was duly
appointed, and it reported by a majority of one, against a minority that
contained names so weighty as Sir Henry James, Herschell, Whitbread, and
Bright, that the claim to affirm was not a good claim. So opened a series
of incidents that went on as long as the parliament, clouded the radiance
of the party triumph, threw the new government at once into a minority,
dimmed the ascendency of the great minister, and what was more, showed
human nature at its worst. The incidents themselves are in detail not
worth recalling here, but they are a striking episode in the history of
toleration, as well as a landmark in Mr. Gladstone’s journey from the day
five-and-forty years before when, in (M5) reference to Molesworth as
candidate for Leeds, he had told his friends at Newark that men who had no
belief in divine revelation were not the men to govern this nation whether
they be whigs or radicals.(4)

His claim to affirm having been rejected, Bradlaugh next desired to swear.
The ministerial whip reported that the feeling against him in the House
was uncontrollable. The Speaker held a council in his library with Mr.
Gladstone, the law officers, the whip, and two or three other persons of
authority and sense. He told them that if Bradlaugh had in the first
instance come to take the oath, he should have allowed no intervention,
but that the case was altered by the claimant’s open declaration that an
oath was not binding on his conscience. A hostile motion was expected when
Bradlaugh came to the table to be sworn, and the Speaker suggested that it
should be met by the previous question, to be moved by Mr. Gladstone. Then
the whip broke in with the assurance that the usual supporters of the
government could not be relied upon. The Speaker went upstairs to dress,
and on his return found that they had agreed on moving another select
committee. He told them that he thought this a weak course, but if the
previous question would be defeated, perhaps a committee could not be
helped. Bradlaugh came to the table, and the hostile motion was made. Mr.
Gladstone proposed his committee, and carried it by a good majority
against the motion that Bradlaugh, being without religious belief, could
not take an oath. The debate was warm, and the attacks on Bradlaugh were
often gross. The Speaker honourably pointed out that such attacks on an
elected member whose absence was enforced by their own order, were unfair
and unbecoming, but the feelings of the House were too strong for him and
too strong for chivalry. The opposition turned affairs to ignoble party
account, and were not ashamed in their prints and elsewhere to level the
charge of “open patronage of unbelief and Malthusianism, Bradlaugh and
Blasphemy,” against a government that contained Gladstone, Bright, and
Selborne, three of the most conspicuously devout men to be found in all
England. One expression of faith used by a leader in the attack on
Bradlaugh lived in Mr. Gladstone’s memory to the end of his days. “You
know, Mr. Speaker,” cried the champion of orthodox creeds, “we all of us
believe in a God of some sort or another.” That a man should consent to
clothe the naked human soul in this truly singular and scanty remnant of
spiritual apparel, was held to be the unalterable condition of fitness for
a seat in parliament and the company of decent people. Well might Mr.
Gladstone point out how vast a disparagement of Christianity, and of
orthodox theism also, was here involved:—


    They say this, that you may go any length you please in the denial
    of religion, provided only you do not reject the name of the
    Deity. They tear religion into shreds, so to speak, and say that
    there is one particular shred with which nothing will ever induce
    them to part. They divide religion into the dispensable and the
    indispensable, and among that kind which can be dispensed with—I
    am not now speaking of those who declare, or are admitted, under a
    special law, I am not speaking of Jews or those who make a
    declaration, I am speaking solely of those for whom no provision
    is made except the provision of oath—they divide, I say, religion
    into what can and what cannot be dispensed with. There is
    something, however, that cannot be dispensed with. I am not
    willing, Sir, that Christianity, if the appeal is made to us as a
    Christian legislature, shall stand in any rank lower than that
    which is indispensable. I may illustrate what I mean. Suppose a
    commander has to despatch a small body of men on an expedition on
    which it is necessary for them to carry on their backs all that
    they can take with them; the men will part with everything that is
    unnecessary, and take only that which is essential. That is the
    course you ask us to take in drawing us upon theological ground;
    you require us to distinguish between superfluities and
    necessaries, and you tell us that Christianity is one of the
    superfluities, one of the excrescences, and has nothing to do with
    the vital substance, the name of the Deity, which is
    indispensable. I say that the adoption of such a proposition as
    that, which is in reality at the very root of your contention, is
    disparaging in the very highest degree to the Christian
    faith....(5)


(M6) Even viewed as a theistic test, he contended, this oath embraced no
acknowledgment of Providence, of divine government, of responsibility, or
retribution; it involved nothing but a bare and abstract admission, a form
void of all practical meaning and concern.

The House, however, speedily showed how inaccessible were most of its
members to reason and argument of this kind or any kind. On June 21, Mr.
Gladstone thus described the proceedings to the Queen. “With the renewal
of the discussion,” he wrote, “the temper of the House does not improve,
both excitement and suspicion appearing to prevail in different quarters.”
A motion made by Mr. Bradlaugh’s colleague that he should be permitted to
affirm, was met by a motion that he should not be allowed either to affirm
or to swear.


    _To the Queen._

    Many warm speeches were made by the opposition in the name of
    religion; to those Mr. Bright has warmly replied in the name of
    religious liberty. The contention on the other side really is that
    as to a certain ill-defined fragment of truth the House is still,
    under the Oaths Act, the guardian of religion. The primary
    question, whether the House has jurisdiction under the statute, is
    almost hopelessly mixed with the question whether an atheist, who
    has declared himself an atheist, ought to sit in parliament. Mr.
    Gladstone’s own view is that the House has no jurisdiction for the
    purpose of excluding any one willing to qualify when he has been
    duly elected; but he is very uncertain how the House will vote or
    what will be the end of the business, if the House undertakes the
    business of exclusion.

    _June 22._—The House of Commons has been occupied from the
    commencement of the evening until a late hour with the adjourned
    debate on the case of Mr. Bradlaugh. The divided state of opinion
    in the House made itself manifest throughout the evening. Mr.
    Newdegate made a speech which turned almost wholly upon the
    respective merits of theism and atheism. Mr. Gladstone thought it
    his duty to advise the House to beware of entangling itself in
    difficulties possibly of a serious character, by assuming a
    jurisdiction in cases of this class.

    At one o’clock in the morning, the first great division was taken,
    and the House resolved by 275 votes against 230 that Mr. Bradlaugh
    should neither affirm nor swear. The excitement at this result was
    tremendous. Some minutes elapsed before the Speaker could declare
    the numbers. “Indeed,” wrote Mr. Gladstone to the Queen, “it was
    an ecstatic transport, and exceeded anything which Mr. Gladstone
    remembers to have witnessed. He read in it only a witness to the
    dangers of the course on which the House has entered, and to its
    unfitness for the office which it has rashly chosen to assume.” He
    might also have read in it, if he had liked, the exquisite delight
    of the first stroke of revenge for Midlothian.


The next day (June 23) the matter entered on a more violent phase.


    _To the Queen._

    This day, when the Speaker took the chair at a quarter past
    twelve, Mr. Bradlaugh came to the table and claimed to take the
    oath. The Speaker read to him the resolution of the House which
    forbids it. Mr. Bradlaugh asked to be heard, and no objection was
    taken. He then addressed the House from the bar. His address was
    that of a consummate speaker. But it was an address which could
    not have any effect unless the House had undergone a complete
    revolution of mind. He challenged the legality of the act of the
    House, expressing hereby an opinion in which Mr. Gladstone
    himself, going beyond some other members of the minority, has the
    misfortune to lean towards agreeing with him.... The Speaker now
    again announced to Mr. Bradlaugh the resolution of the House. Only
    a small minority voted against enforcing it. Mr. Bradlaugh
    declining to withdraw, was removed by the serjeant-at-arms. Having
    suffered this removal, he again came beyond the bar, and entered
    into what was almost a corporal struggle with the serjeant.
    Hereupon Sir S. Northcote moved that Mr. Bradlaugh be committed
    for his offence. Mr. Gladstone said that while he thought it did
    not belong to him, under the circumstances of the case, to advise
    the House, he could take no objection to the advice thus given.


The Speaker, it may be said, thought this view of (M7) Mr. Gladstone’s a
mistake, and that when Bradlaugh refused to withdraw, the leader of the
House ought, as a matter of policy, to have been the person to move first
the order to withdraw, next the committal to the custody of the
serjeant-at-arms. “I was placed in a false position,” says the Speaker,
“and so was the House, in having to follow the lead of the leader of the
opposition, while the leader of the House and the great majority were
passive spectators.”(6) As Mr. Gladstone and other members of the
government voted for Bradlaugh’s committal, on the ground that his
resistance to the serjeant had nothing to do with the establishment of his
rights before either a court or his constituency, it would seem that the
Speaker’s complaint is not unjust. To this position, however, Mr.
Gladstone adhered, in entire conformity apparently to the wishes of the
keenest members of his cabinet and the leading men of his party.

The Speaker wrote to Sir Stafford Northcote urging on him the propriety of
allowing Bradlaugh to take the oath without question. But Northcote was
forced on against his better judgment by his more ardent supporters. It
was a strange and painful situation, and the party system assuredly did
not work at its best—one leading man forced on to mischief by the least
responsible of his sections, the other held back from providing a cure by
the narrowest of the other sections. In the April of 1881 Mr. Gladstone
gave notice of a bill providing for affirmation, but it was immediately
apparent that the opposition would make the most of every obstacle to a
settlement, and the proposal fell through. In August of this year the
Speaker notes, “The difficulties in the way of settling this question
satisfactorily are great, and in the present temper of the House almost
insuperable.”



II


It is not necessary to recount all the stages of this protracted struggle:
what devices and expedients and motions, how many odious scenes of
physical violence, how many hard-fought actions in the lawcourts, how many
conflicts between the House of Commons and the constituency, what glee and
rubbing of hands in the camp of the opposition at having thrust their
rivals deep into a quagmire so unpleasant. The scandal was intolerable,
but ministers were helpless, as a marked incident now demonstrated. It was
not until 1883 that a serious attempt was made to change the law. The
Affirmation bill of that year has a biographic place, because it marks in
a definite way how far Mr. Gladstone’s mind—perhaps not, as I have said
before, by nature or by instinct peculiarly tolerant—had travelled along
one of the grand highroads of human progress. The occasion was for many
reasons one of great anxiety. Here are one or two short entries, the
reader remembering that by this time the question was two years old:—


    _April 24, Tuesday._—On Sunday night a gap of three hours in my
    sleep was rather ominous; but it was not repeated.... Saw the
    Archbishop of Canterbury, with whom I had a very long conversation
    on the Affirmation bill and on _Church and State_. Policy
    generally as well as on special subjects.... Globe Theatre in the
    evening; excellent acting.... 25.... Worked on Oaths question....
    26.... Made a long and _begeistert_(7) speech on the Affirmation
    bill, taking the bull by the horns.


His speech upon this measure was a noble effort. It was delivered under
circumstances of unsurpassed difficulty, for there was revolt in the
party, the client was repugnant, the opinions brought into issue were to
Mr. Gladstone hateful. Yet the speech proved one of his greatest.
Imposing, lofty, persuasive, sage it would have been, from whatever lips
it might have fallen; it was signal indeed as coming from one so fervid,
so definite, so unfaltering in a faith of his own, one who had started
from the opposite pole to that great civil principle of which he now
displayed a grasp invincible. If it be true of a writer that the best
style is that which most directly flows from living qualities in the
writer’s own mind and is a pattern of their actual working, so is the same
thing to be said of oratory. These high themes of Faith, on the one hand,
and Freedom on the (M8) other, exactly fitted the range of the thoughts in
which Mr. Gladstone habitually lived. “I have no fear of Atheism in this
House,” he said; “Truth is the expression of the Divine mind, and however
little our feeble vision may be able to discern the means by which God may
provide for its preservation, we may leave the matter in His hands, and we
may be sure that a firm and courageous application of every principle of
equity and of justice is the best method we can adopt for the preservation
and influence of Truth.” This was Mr. Gladstone at his sincerest and his
highest. I wonder, too, if there has been a leader in parliament since the
seventeenth century, who could venture to address it in the strain of the
memorable passage now to be transcribed:—


    You draw your line at the point where the abstract denial of God
    is severed from the abstract admission of the Deity. My
    proposition is that the line thus drawn is worthless, and that
    much on your side of the line is as objectionable as the atheism
    on the other. If you call upon us to make distinctions, let them
    at least be rational; I do not say let them be Christian
    distinctions, but let them be rational. I can understand one
    rational distinction, that you should frame the oath in such a way
    as to recognise not only the existence of the Deity, but the
    providence of the Deity, and man’s responsibility to the Deity;
    and in such a way as to indicate the knowledge in a man’s own mind
    that he must answer to the Deity for what he does, and is able to
    do. But is that your present rule? No, Sir, you know very well
    that from ancient times there have been sects and schools that
    have admitted in the abstract as freely as Christians the
    existence of a Deity, but have held that of practical relations
    between Him and man there can be none. Many of the members of this
    House will recollect the majestic and noble lines—

    Omnis enim per se divom natura necesse est
    Immortali ævo summa cum pace fruatur,
    Semota a nostris rebus sejunctaque longe.
    Nam privata dolore omni, privata periclis,
    Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nihil indiga nostri,
    Nec bene promeritis capitur, nec tangitur ira.(8)

    “Divinity exists”—according to these, I must say, magnificent
    lines—“in remote and inaccessible recesses; but with, us it has no
    dealing, of us it has no need, with us it has no relation.” I do
    not hesitate to say that the specific evil, the specific form of
    irreligion, with which in the educated society of this country you
    have to contend, and with respect to which you ought to be on your
    guard, is not blank atheism. That is a rare opinion very seldom
    met with; but what is frequently met with is that form of opinion
    which would teach us that, whatever may be beyond the visible
    things of this world, whatever there may be beyond this short span
    of life, you know and you can know nothing of it, and that it is a
    bootless undertaking to attempt to establish relations with it.
    That is the mischief of the age, and that mischief you do not
    attempt to touch.


The House, though but few perhaps recollected their Lucretius or had ever
even read him, sat, as I well remember, with reverential stillness,
hearkening from this born master of moving cadence and high sustained
modulation to “the rise and long roll of the hexameter,”—to the plangent
lines that have come down across the night of time to us from great Rome.
But all these impressions of sublime feeling and strong reasoning were
soon effaced by honest bigotry, by narrow and selfish calculation, by flat
cowardice. The relieving bill was cast out by a majority of three. The
catholics in the main voted against it, and many nonconformists,
hereditary champions of all the rights of private judgment, either voted
against it or did not vote at all. So soon in these affairs, as the world
has long ago found out, do bodies of men forget in a day of power the
maxims that they held sacred and inviolable in days when they were weak.

The drama did not end here. In that parliament Bradlaugh was never allowed
to discharge his duty as a member, but when after the general election of
1885, being once more chosen by Northampton, he went to the table to take
the oath, as in former days Mill and others of like non-theologic
complexion had taken it, the Speaker would suffer no intervention against
him. Then in 1888, though the majority was conservative, Bradlaugh himself
secured the passing of an affirmation (M9) law. Finally, in the beginning
of 1891, upon the motion of a Scotch member, supported by Mr. Gladstone,
the House formally struck out from its records the resolution of June 22,
1881, that had been passed, as we have seen, amid “ecstatic transports.”
Bradlaugh then lay upon his deathbed, and was unconscious of what had been
done. Mr. Gladstone a few days later, in moving a bill of his own to
discard a lingering case of civil disability attached to religious
profession, made a last reference to Mr. Bradlaugh:—


    A distinguished man, he said, and admirable member of this House,
    was laid yesterday in his mother-earth. He was the subject of a
    long controversy in this House—a controversy the beginning of
    which we recollect, and the ending of which we recollect. We
    remember with what zeal it was prosecuted; we remember how
    summarily it was dropped; we remember also what reparation has
    been done within the last few days to the distinguished man who
    was the immediate object of that controversy. But does anybody who
    hears me believe that that controversy, so prosecuted and so
    abandoned, was beneficial to the Christian religion?(9)




Chapter III. Majuba. (1880-1881)


    εἰς ἀπέραντον δίκτυον  ἄτης
    ἐμπλεχθήσεσθ᾽ ὑπ᾽ ἀνοίας.

    —Æsch. _Prom._ 1078.

    In a boundless coil of mischief pure senselessness will entangle
    you.



I


It would almost need the pen of Tacitus or Dante to tell the story of
European power in South Africa. For forty years, said Mr. Gladstone in
1881, “I have always regarded the South African question as the one great
unsolved and perhaps insoluble problem of our colonial system.” Among the
other legacies of the forward policy that the constituencies had
decisively condemned in 1880, this insoluble problem rapidly became acute
and formidable.

One of the great heads of impeachment in Midlothian had been a war
undertaken in 1878-9 against a fierce tribe on the borders of the colony
of Natal. The author and instrument of the Zulu war was Sir Bartle Frere,
a man of tenacious character and grave and lofty if ill-calculated aims.
The conservative government, as I have already said,(10) without
enthusiasm assented, and at one stage they even formally censured him.
When Mr. Gladstone acceded to office, the expectation was universal that
Sir Bartle would be at once recalled. At the first meeting of the new
cabinet (May 3) it was decided to retain him. The prime minister at first
was his marked protector. The substantial reason against recall was that
his presence was needed to carry out the policy of confederation, and
towards confederation it was hoped that the Cape parliament was
immediately about to take (M10) a long preliminary step. “Confederation,”
Mr. Gladstone said, “is the pole-star of the present action of our
government.” In a few weeks, for a reason that will be mentioned in
treating the second episode of this chapter, confederation broke down. A
less substantial but still not wholly inoperative reason was the strong
feeling of the Queen for the high commissioner. The royal prepossessions
notwithstanding, and in spite of the former leanings of Mr. Gladstone, the
cabinet determined, at the end of July, that Sir Bartle should be
recalled. The whole state of the case is made sufficiently clear in the
two following communications from the prime minister to the Queen:—


    _To the Queen._

    _May 28, 1880._—Mr. Gladstone presents his humble duty, and has
    had the honour to receive your Majesty’s telegram respecting Sir
    B. Frere. Mr. Gladstone used on Saturday his best efforts to avert
    a movement for his dismissal, which it was intended by a powerful
    body of members on the liberal side to promote by a memorial to
    Mr. Gladstone, and by a motion in the House. He hopes that he has
    in some degree succeeded, and he understands that it is to be
    decided on Monday whether they will at present desist or
    persevere. Of course no sign will be given by your Majesty’s
    advisers which could tend to promote perseverance, at the same
    time Mr. Gladstone does not conceal from himself two things: the
    first, that the only chance of Sir B. Frere’s remaining seems to
    depend upon his ability to make progress in the matter of
    confederation; the second, that if the agitation respecting him in
    the House, the press, and the country should continue, confidence
    in him may be so paralysed as to render his situation intolerable
    to a high-minded man and to weaken his hands fatally for any
    purpose of good.

    _July 29, 1880._—It was not without some differences of opinion
    among themselves that, upon their accession to office, the cabinet
    arrived at the conclusion that, if there was a prospect of
    progress in the great matter of confederation, this might afford a
    ground of co-operation between them and Sir B. Frere,
    notwithstanding the strong censures which many of them in
    opposition had pronounced upon his policy. This conclusion gave
    the liveliest satisfaction to a large portion, perhaps to the
    majority, of the House of Commons; but they embraced it with the
    more satisfaction because of your Majesty’s warm regard for Sir B.
    Frere, a sentiment which some among them personally share.

    It was evident, however, and it was perhaps in the nature of the
    case, that a confidence thus restricted was far from agreeable to
    Sir B. Frere, who, in the opinion of Mr. Gladstone, has only been
    held back by a commendable self-restraint and sense of duty, from
    declaring himself aggrieved. Thus, though the cabinet have done
    the best they could, his standing ground was not firm, nor could
    they make it so. But the total failure of the effort made to
    induce the Cape parliament to move, has put confederation wholly
    out of view, for a time quite indefinite, and almost certainly
    considerable. Mr. Gladstone has therefore the painful duty of
    submitting to your Majesty, on behalf of the Cabinet, the enclosed
    copy of a ciphered telegram of recall.



II


The breaking of the military power of the Zulus was destined to prove much
less important than another proceeding closely related to it, though not
drawing the same attention at the moment. I advise the reader not to
grudge a rather strict regard to the main details of transactions that,
owing to unhappy events of later date, have to this day held a conspicuous
place in the general controversy as to the great minister’s statesmanship.

For some time past, powerful native tribes had been slowly but steadily
pushing the Boers of the Transvaal back, and the inability to resist was
now dangerously plain. In 1876 the Boers had been worsted in one of their
incessant struggles with the native races, and this time they had barely
been able to hold their own against an insignificant tribe of one of the
least warlike branches. It was thought certain by English officials on the
ground, that the example would not be lost on fiercer warriors, and that a
native conflagration might any day burst into blaze in other regions of
the immense territory. The British government despatched an agent of great
local experience; he found the Boer (M11) government, which was loosely
organised even at its best, now completely paralysed, without money,
without internal authority, without defensive power against external foes.
In alarm at the possible result of such a situation on the peace of the
European domain in South Africa, he proclaimed the sovereignty of the
Queen, and set up an administration. This he was empowered by secret
instructions to do, if he should think fit. Here was the initial error.
The secretary of state in Downing Street approved (June 21, 1877), on the
express assumption that a sufficient number of the inhabitants desired to
become the Queen’s subjects. Some have thought that if he had waited the
Boers would have sought annexation, but this seems to be highly
improbable. In the annexation proclamation promises were made to the Boers
of ’the fullest legislative privileges compatible with the circumstances
of the country and the intelligence of the people.’ An assembly was also
promised.

The soundness of the assumption was immediately disputed. The Boer
government protested against annexation. Two delegates—one of them Mr.
Kruger—repaired to England, assured Lord Carnarvon that their fellow-Boers
were vehemently opposed to annexation, and earnestly besought its
reversal. The minister insisted that he was right and they were wrong.
They went back, and in order to convince the government of the true
strength of feeling for independence, petitions were prepared seeking the
restoration of independence. The signatures were those of qualified
electors of the old republic. The government were informed by Sir Garnet
Wolseley that there were about 8000 persons of the age to be electors, of
whom rather fewer than 7000 were Boers. To the petitions were appended
almost exactly 7000 names. The colonial office recognised that the
opposition of the Boers to annexation was practically unanimous. The
comparatively insignificant addresses on the other side came from the town
and digging population, which was as strong in favour of the suppression
of the old republic, as the rural population was strong against it.

For many months the Boers persevered. They again sent Kruger and Joubert
to England; they held huge mass meetings; they poured out prayers to the
high commissioner to give back their independence; they sent memorial
after memorial to the secretary of state. In the autumn of 1879 Sir Garnet
Wolseley assumed the administration of the Transvaal, and issued a
proclamation setting forth the will and determination of the government of
the Queen that this Transvaal territory should be, and should continue to
be for ever, an integral part of her dominions in South Africa. In the
closing days of 1879 the secretary of state, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, who
had succeeded Carnarvon (Jan. 1878), received from the same eminent
soldier a comprehensive despatch, warning him that the meetings of protest
against annexation, attended by thousands of armed men in angry mood,
would be likely to end in a serious explosion. While putting all sides of
the question before his government, Sir Garnet inserted one paragraph of
momentous import. “The Transvaal,” he said, “is rich in minerals; gold has
already been found in quantities, and there can be little doubt that
larger and still more valuable goldfields will sooner or later be
discovered. Any such discovery would soon bring a large British population
here. The time must eventually arrive when the Boers will be in a small
minority, as the country is very sparsely peopled, and would it not
therefore be a very near-sighted policy to recede now from the position we
have taken up here, simply because for some years to come, the retention
of 2000 or 3000 troops may be necessary to reconsolidate our power?”(11)
This pregnant and far-sighted warning seems to have been little considered
by English statesmen of either party at this critical time or afterwards,
though it proved a vital element in any far-sighted decision.

On March 9—the day, as it happened, on which the intention to dissolve
parliament was made public—Sir Garnet telegraphed for a renewed expression
of the determination of the government to retain the country, and he
received the assurance that he sought. The Vaal river, he told the Boers,
would flow backwards through the Drakensberg sooner than the British would
be withdrawn from the Transvaal. The picturesque figure did not soften the
Boer heart. (M12) This was the final share of the conservative cabinet in
the unfortunate enterprise on which they had allowed the country to be
launched.



III


When the question of annexation had originally come before parliament, Mr.
Gladstone was silent. He was averse to it; he believed that it would
involve us in unmixed mischief; but he felt that to make this judgment
known at that period would not have had any effect towards reversing what
had been done, while it might impede the chances of a good issue, slender
as these might be.(12) In the discussion at the opening of the final
session of the old parliament, Lord Hartington as leader of the
opposition, enforcing the general doctrine that it behoved us to
concentrate our resources, and to limit instead of extending the empire,
took the Transvaal for an illustration. It was now conclusively proved, he
said, that a large majority of the Boers were bitterly against annexation.
That being so, it ought not to be considered a settled question merely
because annexation had taken place; and if we should find that the balance
of advantage was in favour of the restoration of independence, no false
sense of dignity should stand in the way. Mr. Gladstone in Midlothian had
been more reserved. In that indictment, there are only two or three
references, and those comparatively fugitive and secondary, to this
article of charge. There is a sentence in one of the Midlothian speeches
about bringing a territory inhabited by a free European Christian republic
within the limits of a monarchy, though out of 8000 persons qualified to
vote, 6500 voted against it. In another sentence he speaks of the
Transvaal as a country “where we have chosen most unwisely, I am tempted
to say insanely, to place ourselves in the strange predicament of the free
subjects of a monarchy going to coerce the free subjects of a republic,
and to compel them to accept a citizenship which they decline and refuse;
but if that is to be done, it must be done by force.”(13) A third sentence
completes the tale: “If Cyprus and the Transvaal were as valuable as they
are valueless, I would repudiate them because they are obtained by means
dishonourable to the character of the country.” These utterances of the
mighty unofficial chief and the responsible official leader of the
opposition were all. The Boer republicans thought that they were enough.

On coming into power, the Gladstone government found the official evidence
all to the effect that the political aspect of the Transvaal was decidedly
improving. The commissioners, the administrators, the agents, were
unanimous. Even those among them who insisted on the rooted dislike of the
main body of the Boers to British authority, still thought that they were
acquiescing, exactly as the Boers in the Cape Colony had acquiesced. Could
ministers justify abandonment, without far stronger evidence than they
then possessed that they could not govern the Transvaal peaceably? Among
other things, they were assured that abandonment would be fatal to the
prospects of confederation, and might besides entail a civil war. On May
7, Sir Bartle Frere pressed the new ministers for an early announcement of
their policy, in order to prevent the mischiefs of agitation. The cabinet
decided the question on May 12, and agreed upon the terms of a
telegram(14) by which Lord Kimberley was to inform Frere that the
sovereignty of the Queen over the Transvaal could not be relinquished, but
that he hoped the speedy accomplishment of confederation would enable free
institutions to be conferred with promptitude. In other words, in spite of
all that had been defiantly said by Lord Hartington, and more cautiously
implied by Mr. Gladstone, the new government at once placed themselves
exactly in the position of the old one.(15)

The case was stated in his usual nervous language by Mr. Chamberlain a few
months later.(16) “When we came into office,” (M13) he said, “we were all
agreed that the original annexation was a mistake, that it ought never to
have been made; and there arose the question could it then be undone? We
were in possession of information to the effect that the great majority of
the people of the Transvaal were reconciled to annexation; we were told
that if we reversed the decision of the late government, there would be a
great probability of civil war and anarchy; and acting upon these
representations, we decided that we could not recommend the Queen to
relinquish her sovereignty. But we assured the Boers that we would take
the earliest opportunity of granting to them the freest and most complete
local institutions compatible with the welfare of South Africa. It is easy
to be wise after the event. It is easy to see now that we were wrong in so
deciding. I frankly admit we made a mistake. Whatever the risk was, and I
believe it was a great risk, of civil war and anarchy in the Transvaal, it
was not so great a danger as that we actually incurred by maintaining the
wrong of our predecessors.” Such was the language used by Mr. Chamberlain
after special consultation with Lord Kimberley. With characteristic
tenacity and that aversion ever to yield even the smallest point, which
comes to a man saturated with the habit of a lifetime of debate, Mr.
Gladstone wrote to Mr. Chamberlain (June 8, 1881): “I have read with
pleasure what you say of the Transvaal. Yet I am not prepared, for myself,
to concede that we made a mistake in not advising a revocation of the
annexation when we came in.”

At this instant a letter reached Mr. Gladstone from Kruger and Joubert
(May 10, 1880), telling him that there was a firm belief among their
people that truth prevailed. “They were confident that one day or another,
by the mercy of the Lord, the reins of the imperial government would be
entrusted again to men who look out for the honour and glory of England,
not by acts of injustice and crushing force, but by the way of justice and
good faith. And, indeed, this belief has proven to be a good belief.” It
would have been well for the Boers and well for us, if that had indeed
been so. Unluckily the reply sent in Mr. Gladstone’s name (June 15),
informed them that obligations had now been contracted, especially towards
the natives, that could not be set aside, but that consistently with the
maintenance of the Queen’s sovereignty over the Transvaal, ministers
desired that the white inhabitants should enjoy the fullest liberty to
manage their local affairs. “We believe that this liberty may be most
easily and promptly conceded to the Transvaal, as a member of a South
African confederation.” Solemn and deliberate as this sounds, no step
whatever was effectively taken towards conferring this full liberty, or
any liberty at all.

It is worth while, on this material point, to look back. The original
proclamation had promised the people the fullest legislative privileges
compatible with the circumstances of the country and the intelligence of
the people. Then, at a later date (April 1877), Sir Bartle Frere met a
great assemblage of Boers, and told them that they should receive, as soon
as circumstances rendered it practicable, as large a measure of
self-government as was enjoyed by any colony in South Africa.(17) The
secretary of state had also spoken to the same effect. During the short
period in which Sir Bartle Frere was connected with the administration of
the Transvaal, he earnestly pressed upon the government the necessity for
redeeming the promises made at the time of annexation, “of the same
measure of perfect self-government now enjoyed by Cape Colony,” always, of
course, under the authority of the crown.(18) As the months went on, no
attempt was made to fulfil all these solemn pledges, and the Boers
naturally began to look on them as so much mockery. Their anger in turn
increased the timidity of government, and it was argued that the first use
that the Boers would make of a free constitution would be to stop the
supplies. So a thing called an Assembly was set up (November 9, 1879),
composed partly of British officers and partly of nominated members. This
was a complete falsification of a whole set of our national promises.
Still annexation might conceivably have been (M14) accepted, even the
sting might have been partially taken out of the delay of the promised
free institutions, if only the administration had been considerate,
judicious, and adapted to the ways and habits of the people. Instead of
being all these things it was stiff, headstrong, and intensely stupid.(19)

The value of the official assurances from agents on the spot that
restoration of independence would destroy the chances of confederation,
and would give fuel to the fires of agitation, was speedily tested. It was
precisely these results that flowed from the denial of independence. The
incensed Boer leaders worked so successfully on the Cape parliament
against confederation, that this favourite panacea was indefinitely hung
up. Here, again, it is puzzling to know why ministers did not retrace
their steps. Here, again, their blind guides in the Transvaal persisted
that they knew the road; persisted that with the exception of a turbulent
handful, the Boers of the Transvaal only sighed for the enjoyment of the
_pax britannica_, or, if even that should happen to be not quite true, at
any rate they were incapable of united action, were mortal cowards, and
could never make a stand in the field. While folly of this kind was
finding its way by every mail to Downing Street, violent disturbances
broke out in the collection of taxes. Still Sir Owen Lanyon—who had been
placed in control in the Transvaal in March 1879—assured Lord Kimberley
that no serious trouble would arise (November 14). At the end of the month
he still denies that there is much or any cause for anxiety. In December
several thousands of Boers assembled at Paardekraal, declared for the
restoration of their republic, and a general rising followed. Colley, who
had succeeded General Wolseley as governor of Natal and high commissioner
for south-east Africa, had been so little prepared for this, that at the
end of August he had recommended a reduction of the Transvaal
garrisons,(20) and even now he thought the case so little serious that he
contented himself (December 4) with ordering four companies to march for
the Transvaal. Then he and Lanyon began to get alarmed, and with good
reason. The whole country, except three or four beleaguered British posts,
fell into the hands of the Boers.

The pleas for failure to take measures to conciliate the Boers in the
interval between Frere’s recall and the outbreak, were that Sir Hercules
Robinson had not arrived;(21) that confederation was not yet wholly given
up; that resistance to annexation was said to be abating; that time was in
our favour; that the one thing indispensable to conciliate the Boers was a
railway to Delagoa Bay; that this needed a treaty, and we hoped soon to
get Portugal to ratify a treaty, and then we might tell the Boers that we
should soon make a survey, with a view at some early date to proceed with
the project, and thus all would in the end come right. So a fresh page was
turned in the story of loitering unwisdom.



IV


On December 6, Mr. Brand, the sagacious president of the Orange Free
State, sent a message of anxious warning to the acting governor at Cape
Town, urging that means should be devised to avert an imminent collision.
That message, which might possibly have wakened up the colonial office to
the real state of the case, did not reach London until December 30.
Excuses for this fatal delay were abundant: a wire was broken; the
governor did not think himself concerned with Transvaal affairs; he sent
the message on to the general, supposing that the general would send it on
home; and so forth. For a whole string of the very best reasons in the
world the message that (M15) might have prevented the outbreak, arrived
through the slow post at Whitehall just eleven days after the outbreak had
begun. Members of the legislature at the Cape urged the British government
to send a special commissioner to inquire and report. The policy of giving
consideration to the counsels of the Cape legislature had usually been
pursued by the wiser heads concerned in South African affairs, and when
the counsels of the chief of the Free State were urgent in the same
direction, their weight should perhaps have been decisive. Lord Kimberley,
however, did not think the moment opportune (Dec. 30).(22) Before many
weeks, as it happened, a commission was indeed sent, but unfortunately not
until after the mischief had been done. Meanwhile in the Queen’s speech a
week later an emphatic paragraph announced that the duty of vindicating
her Majesty’s authority had set aside for the time any plan for securing
to European settlers in the Transvaal full control over their own local
affairs. Seldom has the sovereign been made the mouthpiece of an utterance
more shortsighted.

Again the curtain rose upon a new and memorable act. Four days after the
Queen’s speech, President Brand a second time appeared upon the scene
(Jan. 10, 1881), with a message hoping that an effort would be made
without the least delay to prevent further bloodshed. Lord Kimberley
replied that provided the Boers would desist from their armed opposition,
the government did not despair of making a satisfactory settlement. Two
days later (Jan. 12) the president told the government that not a moment
should be lost, and some one (say Chief Justice de Villiers) should be
sent to the Transvaal burghers by the government, to stop further
collision and with a clear and definite proposal for a settlement.
“Moments,” he said, “are precious.” For twelve days these precious moments
passed. On Jan. 26 the secretary of state informed the high commissioner
at Cape Town, now Sir Hercules Robinson, that President Brand pressed for
the offer of terms and conditions to the Boers through Robinson, “provided
they cease from armed opposition, making it clear to them how this is to
be understood.” On this suggestion he instructed Robinson to inform Brand
that if armed opposition should at once cease, the government “would
thereupon endeavour to frame such a scheme as in their belief would
satisfy all friends of the Transvaal community.” Brand promptly advised
that the Boers should be told of this forthwith, before the satisfactory
arrangements proposed had been made more difficult by further collision.
This was on Jan. 29. Unhappily on the very day before, the British force
had been repulsed at Laing’s Nek. Colley, on Jan. 23, had written to
Joubert, calling on the Boer leaders to disperse, informing them that
large forces were already arriving from England and India, and assuring
them that if they would dismiss their followers, he would forward to
London any statement of their grievances. It would have been a great deal
more sensible to wait for an answer. Instead of waiting for an answer
Colley attacked (Jan. 28) and was beaten back—the whole proceeding a
rehearsal of a still more disastrous error a month later.

Brand was now more importunate than ever, earnestly urging on General
Colley that the nature of the scheme should be made known to the Boers,
and a guarantee undertaken that if they submitted they would not be
treated as rebels. “I have replied,” Colley tells Lord Kimberley, “that I
can give no such assurance, and can add nothing to your words.” In other
correspondence he uses grim language about the deserts of some of the
leaders. On this Mr. Gladstone, writing to Lord Kimberley (Feb. 5), says
truly enough, “Colley with a vengeance counts his chickens before they are
hatched, and his curious letter throws some light backward on the
proceedings in India. His line is singularly wide of ours.” The secretary
of state, finding barrack-room rigidity out of place, directs Colley (Feb.
8) to inform Brand (M16) that the government would be ready to give all
reasonable guarantees as to treatment of Boers after submission, if they
ceased from armed opposition, and a scheme would be framed for permanent
friendly settlement. As it happened, on the day on which this was
despatched from Downing Street, Colley suffered a second check at the
Ingogo River (Feb. 8). Let us note that he was always eager in his
recognition of the readiness and promptitude of the military support from
the government at home.(23)

Then an important move took place from the other quarter. The Boers made
their first overture. It came in a letter from Kruger to Colley (Feb. 12).
Its purport was fairly summarised by Colley in a telegram to the colonial
secretary, and the pith of it was that Kruger and his Boers were so
certain of the English government being on their side if the truth only
reached them, that they would not fear the result of inquiry by a royal
commission, and were ready, if troops were ordered to withdraw from the
Transvaal, to retire from their position, and give such a commission a
free passage. This telegram reached London on Feb. 13th, and on the 15th
it was brought before the cabinet.

Mr. Gladstone immediately informed the Queen (Feb. 15) that viewing the
likelihood of early and sanguinary actions, Lord Kimberley thought that
the receipt of such an overture at such a juncture, although its terms
were inadmissible, made it a duty to examine whether it afforded any hope
of settlement. The cabinet were still more strongly inclined towards
coming to terms. Any other decision would have broken up the government,
for on at least one division in the House on Transvaal affairs Mr. Bright
and Mr. Chamberlain, along with three other ministers not in the cabinet,
had abstained from voting. Colley was directed (Feb. 16) to inform the
Boers that on their desisting from armed opposition, the government would
be ready to send commissioners to develop a scheme of settlement, and that
meanwhile if this proposal were accepted, the English general was
authorised to agree to the suspension of hostilities. This was in
substance a conditional acceptance of the Boer overture.(24) On the same
day the general was told from the war office that, as respected the
interval before receiving a reply from Mr. Kruger, the government did not
bind his discretion, but “we are anxious for your making arrangements to
avoid effusion of blood.” The spirit of these instructions was clear. A
week later (Feb. 23) the general showed that he understood this, for he
wrote to Mr. Childers that “he would not without strong reason undertake
any operation likely to bring on another engagement, until Kruger’s reply
was received.”(25) If he had only stood firm to this, a tragedy would have
been averted.

On receiving the telegram of Feb. 16, Colley was puzzled to know what was
the meaning of suspending hostilities if armed opposition were abandoned
by the Boers, and he asked the plain question (Feb. 19) whether he was to
leave Laing’s Nek (which was in Natal territory) in Boer occupation, and
our garrisons isolated and short of provisions, or was he to occupy
Laing’s Nek and relieve the garrisons. Colley’s inquiries were instantly
considered by the cabinet, and the reply settled. The garrisons were to be
free to provision themselves and peaceful intercourse allowed; “but,”
Kimberley tells Colley, “we do not mean that you should march to the
relief of garrisons or occupy Laing’s Nek, if the arrangement proceeds.
_Fix reasonable time within which answer must be sent by Boers._”

On Feb. 21 Colley despatched a letter to Kruger, stating that on the Boers
ceasing from armed opposition, the Queen would appoint a commission. He
added that “upon this proposal being accepted _within forty-eight hours
from the receipt of this letter_,” he was authorised to agree to a
suspension of hostilities on the part of the British.



V


(M17) In this interval a calamity, destined to be historic, occurred,
trivial in a military sense, but formidable for many years to come in the
issues moral and political that it raised, and in the passions for which
it became a burning watchword. On the night of Feb. 26, Colley with a
force of 359 men all told, made up of three different corps, marched out
of his camp and occupied Majuba Hill. The general’s motives for this
precipitancy are obscure. The best explanation seems to be that he
observed the Boers to be pushing gradually forward on to advanced ground,
and thought it well, without waiting for Kruger’s reply, to seize a height
lying between the Nek and his own little camp, the possession of which
would make Laing’s Nek untenable. He probably did not expect that his move
would necessarily lead to fighting, and in fact when they saw the height
occupied, the Boers did at first for a little time actually begin to
retire from the Nek, though they soon changed their minds.(26) The British
operation is held by military experts to have been rash; proper steps were
not taken by the general to protect himself upon Majuba, the men were not
well handled, and the Boers showed determined intrepidity as they climbed
steadily up the hill from platform to platform, taking from seven in the
morning (Feb. 27) up to half-past eleven to advance some three thousand
yards and not losing a man, until at last they scaled the crest and poured
a deadly fire upon the small British force, driving them headlong from the
summit, seasoned soldiers though most of them were. The general who was
responsible for the disaster paid the penalty with his life. Some ninety
others fell and sixty were taken prisoners.

At home the sensation was profound. The hysterical complaints about our
men and officers, General Wood wrote to Childers, “are more like French
character than English used to be.” Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues had a
political question to consider. Colley could not be technically accused of
want of good faith in moving forward on the 26th, as the time that he had
appointed had expired. But though Majuba is just inside Natal—some four
miles over the border—his advance was, under the circumstances of the
moment, essentially an aggressive movement. Could his defeat justify us in
withdrawing our previous proposals to the Boers? Was a military
miscarriage, of no magnitude in itself, to be turned into a plea for
abandoning a policy deliberately adopted for what were thought powerful
and decisive reasons? “Suppose, for argument’s sake,” Mr. Gladstone wrote
to Lord Kimberley when the sinister news arrived (Mar. 2), “that at the
moment when Colley made the unhappy attack on Majuba Hill, there shall
turn out to have been decided on, and possibly on its way, a satisfactory
or friendly reply from the Boer government to your telegram? I fear the
chances may be against this; but if it prove to be the case, we could not
because we had failed on Sunday last, insist on shedding more blood.” As
it happened, the Boer answer was decided on before the attack at Majuba,
and was sent to Colley by Kruger at Heidelberg in ignorance of the event,
the day after the ill-fated general’s death. The members of the Transvaal
government set out their gratitude for the declaration that under certain
conditions the government of the Queen was inclined to cease hostilities;
and expressed their opinion that a meeting of representatives from both
sides would probably lead with all speed to a satisfactory result. This
reply was despatched by Kruger on the day on which Colley’s letter of the
21st came into his hands (Feb. 28), and it reached Colley’s successor on
March 7.

Sir Evelyn Wood, now after the death of Colley in chief command,
throughout recommended military action. Considering the disasters we had
sustained, he thought the happiest result would be that after a successful
battle, which he hoped to fight in about a fortnight, the Boers would
disperse without any guarantee, and many now in the field against their
will would readily settle down. He explained that by happy result, he did
not mean that a series of actions fought by any six companies could affect
our military prestige, but that a British victory would enable the Boer
(M18) leaders to quench a fire that had got beyond their control. The next
day after this recommendation to fight (March 6), he, of his own motion,
accepted a proposal telegraphed from Joubert at the instigation of the
indefatigable Brand, for a suspension of hostilities for eight days, for
the purpose of receiving Kruger’s reply. There was a military reason
behind. General Wood knew that the garrison in Potchefstrom must surrender
unless the place were revictualled, and three other beleaguered garrisons
were in almost equal danger. The government at once told him that his
armistice was approved. This armistice, though Wood’s reasons were
military rather than diplomatic, virtually put a stop to suggestions for
further fighting, for it implied, and could in truth mean nothing else,
that if Kruger’s reply were promising, the next step would not be a fight,
but the continuance of negotiation. Sir Evelyn Wood had not advised a
fight for the sake of restoring military prestige, but to make it easier
for the Boer leaders to break up bands that were getting beyond their
control. There was also present in his mind the intention, if the
government would sanction it, of driving the Boers out of Natal, as soon
as ever he had got his men up across the swollen river. So far from
sanctioning it, the government expressly forbade him to take offensive
action. On March 8, General Wood telegraphed home: “Do not imagine I wish
to fight. I know the attending misery too well. But now you have so many
troops coming, I recommend decisive though lenient action; and I can,
humanly speaking, promise victory. Sir G. Colley never engaged more than
six companies. I shall use twenty and two regiments of cavalry in
direction known to myself only, and undertake to enforce dispersion.” This
then was General Wood’s view. On the day before he sent this telegram, the
general already had received Kruger’s reply to the effect that they were
anxious to negotiate, and it would be best for commissioners from the two
sides to meet. It is important to add that the government were at the same
time receiving urgent warnings from President Brand that Dutch sympathy,
both in the Cape Colony and in the Orange Free State, with the Dutch in
the Transvaal was growing dangerous, and that the prolongation of
hostilities would end in a formidable extension of their area.(27) Even in
January Lanyon had told Colley that men from the Free State were in the
field against him. Three days before Majuba, Lord Kimberley had written to
Colley (February 24), “My great fear has been lest the Free State should
take part against us, or even some movement take place in the Cape Colony.
If our willingness to come to terms has avoided such a calamity, I shall
consider it will have been a most important point gained.”(28)

Two memoranda for the Queen show the views of the cabinet on the new
position of affairs:—


    _To the Queen._

    _March 8, 1881._—The cabinet considered with much care the terms
    of the reply to Sir Evelyn Wood’s telegram reporting (not
    textually) the answer of the Boer leaders to the proposals which
    Sir George Colley had sent to them. They felt justified in
    construing the Boer answer as leaving the way open to the
    appointment of commissioners, according to the telegram previously
    seen and approved by your Majesty. They were anxious to keep the
    question moving in this direction, and under the extreme urgency
    of the circumstances as to time, they have despatched a telegram
    to Sir Evelyn Wood accordingly. Mr. Gladstone has always urged,
    and still feels, that the proposal of the Boers for the
    appointment of commissioners was fortunate on this among other
    grounds, that it involved a recognition of your Majesty’s _de
    facto_ authority in the Transvaal.

    _March 12._—The cabinet determined, in order to obviate
    misapprehension or suspicion, to desire Sir E. Wood to inform the
    government from what quarter the suggestion of an armistice
    actually proceeded. They agreed that the proper persons to be
    appointed as commissioners were Sir H. Robinson, Sir E. Wood, and
    Mr. De Villiers, chief justice of the Cape; together with Mr.
    Brand of the Free State as _amicus curiæ_, should he be willing to
    lend his good offices in the spirit in which he has hitherto
    acted. The cabinet then considered fully the terms of the
    communication to be made to the Boers by Sir E. Wood. In this,
    which is matter of extreme urgency, they prescribe a time for the
    reply of the Boers not later than the 18th; renew the promise of
    amnesty; require the dispersion of the Boers to their own homes;
    and state the general outlines of the permanent arrangement which
    they would propose for the territory.... The cabinet believe that
    in requiring the dispersion of the Boers to their homes, they will
    have made the necessary provision for the vindication of your
    Majesty’s authority, so as to open the way for considering terms
    of pacific settlement.


On March 22, under instructions from home, the general concluded an
agreement for peace. The Boers made some preliminary requests to which the
government declined to assent. Their proposal that the commission should
be joint was rejected; its members were named exclusively by the crown.
They agreed to withdraw from the Nek and disperse to their homes; we
agreed not to occupy the Nek, and not to follow them up with troops,
though General Roberts with a large force had sailed for the Cape on March
6. Then the political negotiation went forward. Would it have been wise,
as the question was well put by the Duke of Argyll (not then a member of
the government), “to stop the negotiation for the sake of defeating a body
of farmers who had succeeded under accidental circumstances and by great
rashness on the part of our commanders, in gaining a victory over us?”
This was the true point.

The parliamentary attack was severe. The galling argument was that
government had conceded to three defeats what they had refused to ten
times as many petitions, memorials, remonstrances; and we had given to men
with arms in their hands what we refused to their peaceful prayers. A
great lawyer in the House of Lords made the speech that is expected from a
great lawyer who is also a conspicuous party leader; and ministers
undoubtedly exposed an extent of surface that was not easy to defend, not
because they had made a peace, but because they had failed to prevent the
rising. High military authorities found a curious plea for going on, in
the fact that this was our first contest with Europeans since the
breech-loader came in, and it was desirable to give our troops confidence
in the new-fashioned weapon. Reasons of a very different sort from this
were needed to overthrow the case for peace. How could the miscarriage at
Majuba, brought on by our own action, warrant us in drawing back from an
engagement already deliberately proffered? Would not such a proceeding,
asked Lord Kimberley, have been little short of an act of bad faith? Or
were we, in Mr. Gladstone’s language, to say to the Boers, “Although we
might have treated with you before these military miscarriages, we cannot
do so now, until we offer up a certain number of victims in expiation of
the blood that has been shed. Until that has been done, the very things
which we believed before to be reasonable, which we were ready to discuss
with you, we refuse to discuss now, and we must wait until Moloch has been
appeased”? We had opened a door for negotiation; were we to close it
again, because a handful of our forces had rashly seized a post they could
not hold? The action of the Boers had been defensive of the _status quo_,
for if we had established ourselves on Majuba, their camp at Laing’s Nek
would have been untenable. The minister protested in the face of the House
of Commons that “it would have been most unjust and cruel, it would have
been cowardly and mean, if on account of these defensive operations we had
refused to go forward with the negotiations which, before the first of
these miscarriages had occurred, we had already declared that we were
willing to promote and undertake.”(29)

The policy of the reversal of annexation is likely to remain a topic of
endless dispute.(30) As Sir Hercules Robinson put (M19) it in a letter to
Lord Kimberley, written a week before Majuba (Feb. 21), no possible course
was free from grave objection. If you determine, he said, to hold by the
annexation of the Transvaal, the country would have to be conquered and
held in subjection for many years by a large force. Free institutions and
self-government under British rule would be an impossibility. The only
palliative would be to dilute Dutch feeling by extensive English
immigration, like that of 1820 to the Eastern Province. But that would
take time, and need careful watching; and in the meantime the result of
holding the Transvaal as a conquered colony would undoubtedly be to excite
bitter hatred between the English and Dutch throughout the Free State and
this colony, which would be a constant source of discomfort and danger. On
the other hand, he believed that if they were, after a series of reverses
and before any success, to yield all the Boers asked for, they would be so
overbearing and quarrelsome that we should soon be at war with them again.
On the whole, Sir Hercules was disposed to think—extraordinary as such a
view must appear—that the best plan would be to re-establish the supremacy
of our arms, and then let the malcontents go. He thought no middle course
any longer practicable. Yet surely this course was open to all the
objections. To hold on to annexation at any cost was intelligible. But to
face all the cost and all the risks of a prolonged and a widely extended
conflict, with the deliberate intention of allowing the enemy to have his
own way after the conflict had been brought to an end, was not
intelligible and was not defensible.

Some have argued that we ought to have brought up an overwhelming force,
to demonstrate that we were able to beat them, before we made peace.
Unfortunately demonstrations of this species easily turn into
provocations, and talk of this kind mostly comes from those who believe,
not that peace was made in the wrong way, but that a peace giving their
country back to the Boers ought never to have been made at all, on any
terms or in any way. This was not the point from which either cabinet or
parliament started. The government had decided that annexation had been an
error. The Boers had proposed inquiry. The government assented on
condition that the Boers dispersed. Without waiting a reasonable time for
a reply, our general was worsted in a rash and trivial attack. Did this
cancel our proffered bargain? The point was simple and unmistakable,
though party heat at home, race passion in the colony, and our everlasting
human proneness to mix up different questions, and to answer one point by
arguments that belong to another, all combined to produce a confusion of
mind that a certain school of partisans have traded upon ever since.
Strange in mighty nations is moral cowardice, disguised as a Roman pride.
All the more may we admire the moral courage of the minister. For moral
courage may be needed even where aversion to bloodshed fortunately happens
to coincide with high prudence and sound policy of state.



VI


The negotiations proceeded, if negotiation be the right word. The Boers
disbanded, a powerful British force was encamped on the frontier, no Boer
representative sat on the commission, and the terms of final agreement
were in fact, as the Boers afterwards alleged, dictated and imposed. Mr.
Gladstone watched with a closeness that, considering the tremendous load
of Ireland, parliamentary procedure, and the incessant general business of
a prime minister, is amazing. When the Boers were over-pressing, he warned
them that it was only “the unshorn strength” of the administration that
enabled the English cabinet, rather to the surprise of the world, to spare
them the sufferings of a war. “We could not,” he said to Lord Kimberley,
“have carried our Transvaal policy, unless we had here a strong
government, and we spent some, if not much, of our strength in carrying
it.” A convention was concluded at Pretoria in (M20) August, recognising
the quasi-independence of the Transvaal, subject to the suzerainty of the
Queen, and with certain specified reservations. The Pretoria convention of
1881 did not work smoothly. Transvaal affairs were discussed from time to
time in the cabinet, and Mr. Chamberlain became the spokesman of the
government on a business where he was destined many years after to make so
conspicuous and irreparable a mark. The Boers again sent Kruger to London,
and he made out a good enough case in the opinion of Lord Derby, then
secretary of state, to justify a fresh arrangement. By the London
convention of 1884, the Transvaal state was restored to its old title of
the South African Republic; the assertion of suzerainty in the preamble of
the old convention did not appear in the new one;(31) and various other
modifications were introduced—the most important of them, in the light of
later events, being a provision for white men to have full liberty to
reside in any part of the republic, to trade in it, and to be liable to
the same taxes only as those exacted from citizens of the republic.

Whether we look at the Sand River Convention in 1852, which conferred
independence; or at Shepstone’s proclamation in 1877, which took
independence away; or at the convention of Pretoria in 1881, which in a
qualified shape gave it back; or at the convention of London in 1884,
which qualified the qualification over again, till independence, subject
to two or three specified conditions, was restored,—we can but recall the
caustic apologue of sage Selden in his table-talk on contracts. “Lady
Kent,” he says, “articled with Sir Edward Herbert that he should come to
her when she sent for him, and stay with her as long as she would have
him; to which he set his hand. Then he articled with her that he should go
away when he pleased, and stay away as long as he pleased; to which she
set her hand. This is the epitome of all the contracts in the world,
betwixt man and man, betwixt prince and subject.”




Chapter IV. New Phases Of The Irish Revolution. (1880-1882)


    The agitation of the Irish land league strikes at the roots of all
    contract, and therefore at the very foundations of modern society;
    but if we would effectually withstand it, we must cease to insist
    on maintaining the forms of free contract where the reality is
    impossible.—T. H. GREEN.(32)



I


On the day in 1880 when Lord Beaconsfield was finally quitting the
official house in Downing Street, one who had been the ablest and most
zealous supporter of his policy in the press, called to bid him good-bye.
The visitor talked gloomily of the national prospect; of difficulties with
Austria, with Russia, with the Turk; of the confusions to come upon Europe
from the doctrines of Midlothian. The fallen minister listened. Then
looking at his friend, he uttered in deep tones a single word.
“_Ireland!_” he said.

In a speech made in 1882 Mr. Gladstone put the case to the House of
Commons:—


    The government had to deal with a state of things in Ireland
    entirely different from any that had been known there for fifty
    years.... With a political revolution we have ample strength to
    cope. There is no reason why our cheeks should grow pale, or why
    our hearts should sink, at the idea of grappling with a political
    revolution. The strength of this country is tenfold what is
    required for such a purpose. But a social revolution is a very
    different matter.... The seat and source of the movement was not
    to be found during the time the government was in power. It is to
    be looked for in the foundation of the land league.(33)


Two years later he said at Edinburgh:—


    I frankly admit I had had much upon my hands connected with the
    doings of the Beaconsfield government in almost every quarter of
    the world, and I did not know, no one knew, the severity of the
    crisis that was already swelling upon the horizon, and that
    shortly after rushed upon us like a flood.(34)


So came upon them by degrees the predominance of Irish affairs and Irish
activity in the parliament of 1880, which had been chosen without much
reference to Ireland.



II


A social revolution with the land league for its organ in Ireland, and Mr.
Parnell and his party for its organ in parliament, now, in Mr. Gladstone’s
words, rushed upon him and his government like a flood. The mind of the
country was violently drawn from Dulcigno and Thessaly, from Batoum and
Erzeroum, from the wild squalor of Macedonia and Armenia to squalor not
less wild in Connaught and Munster, in Mayo, Galway, Sligo, Kerry.
Agrarian agitation on the one hand, parliamentary violence on the other,
were the two potent weapons by which the Irish revolutionary leader
assailed the misrule of the British garrison as the agents of the British
parliament in his country. This formidable movement slowly unmasked
itself. The Irish government, represented by Mr. Forster in the cabinet,
began by allowing the law conferring exceptional powers upon the executive
to lapse. The main reason was want of time to pass a fresh Act. In view of
the undoubted distress in some parts of Ireland, and of the harshness of
certain evictions, the government further persuaded the House of Commons
to pass a bill for compensating an evicted tenant on certain conditions,
if the landlord turned him out of his holding. The bill was no easy dose
either for the cabinet or its friends. Lord Lansdowne stirred much
commotion by retiring from the government, and landowners and capitalists
were full of consternation. At least one member of the cabinet was
profoundly uneasy. It is impossible to read the letters of the Duke of
Argyll to Mr. Gladstone on land, church establishment, the Zulu war,
without wondering on what theory a cabinet was formed that included him,
able and (M21) upright as he was, along with radicals like Mr.
Chamberlain. Before the cabinet was six months old the duke was plucking
Mr. Gladstone’s sleeve with some vivacity at the Birmingham language on
Irish land. Mr. Parnell in the committee stage abstained from supporting
the measure, sixteen liberals voted against the third reading, and the
House of Lords, in which nationalist Ireland had not a single
representative, threw out the bill by a majority of 282 against 51. It was
said that if all the opposition peers had stayed away, still ministers
would have been beaten by their own supporters.

Looking back upon these events, Mr. Gladstone set out in a memorandum of
later years, that during the session of 1880 the details of the budget
gave him a good deal to do, while the absorbing nature of foreign
questions before and after his accession to office had withdrawn his
attention from his own Land Act of 1870:(35)—


    Late in the session came the decisive and disastrous rejection by
    the House of Lords of the bill by means of which the government
    had hoped to arrest the progress of disorder, and avert the
    necessity for measures in the direction of coercion. The rapid and
    vast extension of agrarian disturbance followed, as was to be
    expected, this wild excess of landlordism, and the Irish
    government proceeded to warn the cabinet that coercive legislation
    would be necessary.

    Forster allowed himself to be persuaded by the governmental agents
    in Ireland that the root of the evil lay within small compass;
    that there were in the several parishes a certain limited number
    of unreasonable and mischievous men, that these men were known to
    the police, and that if summary powers were confided to the Irish
    government, by the exercise of which these objectionable persons
    might be removed, the evil would die out of itself. I must say I
    never fell into this extraordinary illusion of Forster’s about his
    ’village ruffian.’ But he was a very impracticable man placed in a
    position of great responsibility. He was set upon a method of
    legislation adapted to the erroneous belief that the mischief lay
    only with a very limited number of well-known individuals, that is
    to say, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act.... Two points of
    difference arose: first, as to the nature of the coercion to be
    used; secondly, as to its time. I insisted that we were bound to
    try what we could do against Parnell under the existing law,
    before asking for extraordinary powers. Both Bright and
    Chamberlain, if I remember right, did very good service in
    protesting against haste, and resisting Forster’s desire to
    anticipate the ordinary session for the purpose of obtaining
    coercive powers. When, however, the argument of time was exhausted
    by the Parnell trial(36) and otherwise, I obtained no support from
    them in regard to the kind of coercion we were to ask. I
    considered it should be done by giving stringency to the existing
    law, but not by abolishing the right to be tried before being
    imprisoned. I felt the pulse of various members of the cabinet,
    among whom I seem to recollect Kimberley and Carlingford, but I
    could obtain no sympathy, and to my dismay both Chamberlain and
    Bright arrived at the conclusion that if there was to be coercion
    at all, which they lamented, there was something simple and
    effective in the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act which made
    such a method preferable to others.(37) I finally acquiesced. It
    may be asked why? My resistance would have broken up the
    government or involved my own retirement. My reason for
    acquiescence was that I bore in mind the special commission under
    which the government had taken office. It related to the foreign
    policy of the country, the whole spirit and effect of which we
    were to reconstruct. This work had not yet been fully
    accomplished, and it seemed to me that the effective prosecution
    of it was our first and highest duty. I therefore submitted.


By the end of November Mr. Gladstone explained to the Queen that the state
of Ireland was menacing; its distinctive character was not so much that of
general insecurity of life, as that of a widespread conspiracy against
property. The worst of it was, he said, that the leaders, unlike
O’Connell, failed to denounce crime. The outbreak was not comparable to
that of 1832. In 1879 homicides were 64 against 242 for the earlier year
of disturbance. But things were bad enough. (M22) In Galway they had a
policeman for every forty-seven adult males, and a soldier for every
ninety-seven. Yet dangerous terrorism was rampant. “During more than
thirty-seven years since I first entered a cabinet,” Mr. Gladstone told
the Speaker (November 25), “I have hardly known so difficult a question of
administration, as that of the immediate duty of the government in the
present state of Ireland. The multitude of circumstances to be taken into
account must strike every observer. Among these stand the novelty of the
suspension of Habeas Corpus in a case of agrarian crime stimulated by a
public society, and the rather serious difficulty of obtaining it; but
more important than these is the grave doubt whether it would really reach
the great characteristic evil of the time, namely, the paralysis of most
important civil and proprietary rights, and whether the immediate proposal
of a remedy, probably ineffective and even in a coercive sense partial,
would not seriously damage the prospects of that arduous and comprehensive
task which without doubt we must undertake when parliament is summoned.”
In view of considerations of this kind, the awkwardness of directing an
Act of parliament virtually against leaders who were at the moment the
object of indictment in the Irish law courts; difficulties of time; doubts
as to the case being really made out; doubts as to the efficacy of the
proposed remedy, Mr. Forster did not carry the cabinet, but agreed to
continue the experiment of the ordinary law. The experiment was no
success, and coercion accompanied by land reform became the urgent policy.



III


The opening of the session of 1881 at once brought obstruction into full
view. The Irish took up their position as a party of action. They spoke
incessantly; as Mr. Gladstone put it, “sometimes rising to the level of
mediocrity, and more often grovelling amidst mere trash in unbounded
profusion.” Obstruction is obstruction all the world over. It was not
quite new at Westminster, but it was new on this scale. Closure proposals
sprang up like mushrooms. Liberal members with a historical bent ran
privately to the Speaker with ancient precedents of dictatorial powers
asserted by his official ancestors, and they exhorted him to revive them.

Mr. Forster brought in his bill. Its scope may be described in a sentence.
It practically enabled the viceroy to lock up anybody he pleased, and to
detain him as long as he pleased, while the Act remained in force.(38) The
debate for leave to introduce the bill lasted several days, without any
sign of coming to an end. Here is the Speaker’s account of his own
memorable act in forcing a close:—


    _Monday, Jan. 31._—The House was boiling over with indignation at
    the apparent triumph of obstruction, and Mr. _G_., yielding to the
    pressure of his friends, committed himself unwisely, as I thought,
    to a continuous sitting on this day in order to force the bill
    through its first stage.

    On Tuesday, after a sitting of twenty-four hours, I saw plainly
    that this attempt to carry the bill by continuous sitting would
    fail, the Parnell party being strong in numbers, discipline, and
    organisation, and with great gifts of speech. I reflected on the
    situation, and came to the conclusion that it was my duty to
    extricate the House from the difficulty by closing the debate of
    my own authority, and so asserting the undoubted will of the House
    against a rebellious minority. I sent for Mr. G. on Tuesday (Feb.
    1), about noon, and told him that I should be prepared to put the
    question in spite of obstruction on the following conditions: 1.
    That the debate should be carried on until the following morning,
    my object in this delay being to mark distinctly to the outside
    world the extreme gravity of the situation, and the necessity of
    the step which I was about to take. 2. That he should reconsider
    the regulation of business, either by giving more authority to the
    House, or by conferring authority on the Speaker.

    He agreed to these conditions, and summoned a meeting of the
    cabinet, which assembled in my library at four P.M. on Tuesday
    while the House was sitting, and I was in the chair. At that
    meeting the resolution as to business assumed the shape in which
    it finally appeared on the following Thursday, it having been
    previously considered at former meetings of the cabinet. I
    arranged with Playfair to take the chair on Tuesday night about
    midnight, engaging to resume it on Wednesday morning at nine.
    Accordingly at nine I took the chair, Biggar being in possession
    of the House. I rose, and he resumed his seat. I proceeded with my
    address as concerted with May, and when I had concluded I put the
    question. The scene was most dramatic; but all passed off without
    disturbance, the Irish party on the second division retiring under
    protest.

    I had communicated, with Mr. G.’s approval, my intention to close
    the debate to Northcote, but to no one else, except May, from whom
    I received much assistance. Northcote was startled, but expressed
    no disapproval of the course proposed.


So ended the memorable sitting of January 31. At noon, on February 2, the
House assembled in much excitement. The question was put challenging the
Speaker’s conduct. “I answered,” he says, “on the spur of the moment that
I had acted on my own responsibility, and from a sense of duty to the
House. I never heard such loud and protracted cheering, none cheering more
loudly than Gladstone.” “The Speaker’s firmness in mind,” Mr. Gladstone
reported to the Queen, “his suavity in manner, his unwearied patience, his
incomparable temper, under a thousand provocations, have rendered possible
a really important result.”



IV


After coercion came a land bill, and here Mr. Gladstone once more
displayed his unequalled mastery of legislative skill and power. He had to
explain and be ready to explain again and again, what he told Lord
Selborne was “the most difficult measure he had ever known to come under
the detailed consideration of a cabinet.” It was no affair this time of
speeches out of a railway carriage, or addressed to excited multitudes in
vast halls. That might be, if you so pleased, “the empty verbosity of
exuberant rhetoric”; but nobody could say that of the contest over the
complexities of Irish tenure, against the clever and indomitable Irish
experts who fought under the banner of Mr. Parnell. Northcote was not far
wrong when he said that though the bill was carried by two to one, there
was hardly a man in the House beyond the Irish ranks who cared a straw
about it. Another critic said that if the prime minister had asked the
House to pass the _Koran_ or the _Nautical Almanac_ as a land bill, he
would have met no difficulty.

The history of the session was described as the carriage of a single
measure by a single man. Few British members understood it, none mastered
it. The whigs were disaffected about it, the radicals doubted it, the
tories thought that property as a principle was ruined by it, the
Irishmen, when the humour seized them, bade him send the bill to line
trunks. Mr. Gladstone, as one observer truly says, “faced difficulties
such as no other bill of this country has ever encountered, difficulties
of politics and difficulties of law, difficulties of principle and
difficulties of detail, difficulties of party and difficulties of
personnel, difficulties of race and difficulties of class, and he has
never once failed, or even seemed to fail, in his clear command of the
question, in his dignity and authority of demeanour, in his impartiality
in accepting amending suggestions, in his firmness in resisting
destructive suggestions, in his clear perception of his aim, and his
strong grasp of the fitting means. And yet it is hardly possible to
appreciate adequately the embarrassments of the situation.”

Enough has already been said of the legislation of 1870, and its
establishment of the principle that Irish land is not the subject of an
undivided ownership, but a partnership.(39) The act of 1870 failed because
it had too many exceptions and limitations; because in administration the
compensation to the tenant for disturbance was inadequate; and because it
did not fix the cultivator in his holding. Things had now ripened. The
Richmond Commission shortly before had pointed to a court for fixing
rents; that is, for settling the terms of the partnership. A commission
nominated by Mr. Gladstone and presided over by Lord Bessborough had
reported early in 1881 in favour not only of fair rents to be settled by a
tribunal, but of fixity of tenure or the right of (M23) the tenant to
remain in his holding if he paid his rent, and of free sale; that is, his
right to part with his interest. These “three F’s” were the substance of
the legislation of 1881.

Rents could not be paid, and landlords either would not or could not
reduce them. In the deepest interests of social order, and in confirmation
of the tenant’s equitable and customary ownership, the only course open to
the imperial legislature was to erect machinery for fixing fair rents. The
alternative to what became matter of much objurgation as dual ownership,
was a single ownership that was only a short name for allowing the
landlord to deal as he liked with the equitable interest of the tenant.
Without the machinery set up by Mr. Gladstone, there could be no security
for the protection of the cultivator’s interest. What is more, even in
view of a wide and general extension of the policy of buying out the
landlord and turning the tenant into single owner, still a process of
valuation for purposes of fair price would have been just as
indispensable, as under the existing system was the tiresome and costly
process of valuation for purposes of fair rent. It is true that if the
policy of purchase had been adopted, this process would have been
performed once for all. But opinion was not nearly ready either in England
or Ireland for general purchase. And as Mr. Gladstone had put it to Bright
in 1870, to turn a little handful of occupiers into owners would not have
touched the fringe of the case of the bulk of the Irish cultivators, then
undergoing acute mischief and urgently crying for prompt relief. Mr.
Bright’s idea of purchase, moreover, assumed that the buyer would come
with at least a quarter of the price in his hand,—an assumption not
consistent with the practical possibilities of the case.

The legislation of 1881 no doubt encountered angry criticism from the
English conservative, and little more than frigid approval from the Irish
nationalist. It offended the fundamental principle of the landlords; its
administration and the construction of some of its leading provisions by
the courts disappointed and irritated the tenant party. Nevertheless any
attempt in later times to impair the authority of the Land Act of 1881
brought the fact instantly to light, that the tenant knew it to be the
fundamental charter of his redemption from worse than Egyptian bondage. In
measuring this great agrarian law, not only by parliamentary force and
legislative skill and power, but by the vast and abiding depth of its
social results, both direct and still more indirect, many will be disposed
to give it the highest place among Mr. Gladstone’s achievements as
lawmaker.

Fault has sometimes been found with Mr. Gladstone for not introducing his
bill in the session of 1880. If this had been done, it is argued, Ireland
would have been appeased, no coercion would have been necessary, and we
should have been spared disastrous parliamentary exasperations and all the
other mischiefs and perils of the quarrel between England and Ireland that
followed. Criticism of this kind overlooks three facts. Neither Mr.
Gladstone nor Forster nor the new House of Commons was at all ready in
1880 to accept the Three F’s. Second, the Bessborough commission had not
taken its evidence, and made its momentous report. Third, this argument
assumes motives in Mr. Parnell, that probably do not at all cover the
whole ground of his policy. As it happened, I called on Mr. Gladstone one
morning early in 1881. “You have heard,” I asked, “that the Bessborough
commission are to report for the Three F’s?” “I have not heard,” he said;
“it is incredible!” As so often comes to pass in politics, it was only a
step from the incredible to the indispensable. But in 1880 the
indispensable was also the impossible. It was the cruel winter of 1880-1
that made much difference.

In point of endurance the session was one of the most remarkable on
record. The House of Commons sat 154 days and for 1400 hours; some 240 of
these hours were after midnight. Only three times since the Reform bill
had the House sat for more days; only once, in 1847, had the total number
of hours been exceeded and that only by seven, and never before had the
House sat so many hours after midnight. On the Coercion bill the House sat
continuously once for 22 hours, and once for 41. The debates on the Land
bill took up 58 sittings, and the Coercion bill 22. No such length of
discussion, Mr. Gladstone told the Queen, (M24) was recorded on any
measure since the committee on the first Reform bill. The Reform bill of
1867 was the only measure since 1843 that took as many as 35 days of
debate. The Irish Church bill took 21 days and the Land bill of 1870 took
25. Of the 14,836 speeches delivered, 6315 were made by Irish members. The
Speaker and chairman of committees interposed on points of order nearly
2000 times during the session. Mr. Parnell, the Speaker notes, “with his
minority of 24 dominates the House. When will the House take courage and
reform its procedure?” After all, the suspension of _habeas corpus_ is a
thing that men may well think it worth while to fight about, and a
revolution in a country’s land-system might be expected to take up a good
deal of time.



V


It soon appeared that no miracle had been wrought by either Coercion Act
or Land Act. Mr. Parnell drew up test cases for submission to the new land
court. His advice to the army of tenants would depend, he said, on the
fate of these cases. In September Mr. Forster visited Hawarden, and gave a
bad account of the real meaning of Mr. Parnell’s plausible propositions
for sending test cases to the newly established land commission, as well
as of other ugly circumstances. “It is quite clear as you said,” wrote Mr.
Gladstone to Forster in Ireland, “that Parnell means to present cases
which the commission must refuse, and then to treat their refusal as
showing that they cannot be trusted, and that the bill has failed.” As he
interpreted it afterwards, there was no doubt that in one sense the Land
Act tended to accelerate a crisis in Ireland, for it brought to a head the
affairs of the party connected with the land league. It made it almost a
necessity for that party either to advance or to recede. They chose the
desperate course. At the same date, he wrote in a letter to Lord
Granville:—


    With respect to Parnellism, I should not propose to do more than a
    severe and strong denunciation of it by severing him altogether
    from the Irish people and the mass of the Irish members, and by
    saying that home rule has for one of its aims local government—an
    excellent thing to which I would affix no limits except the
    supremacy of the imperial parliament, and the rights of all parts
    of the country to claim whatever might be accorded to Ireland.
    This is only a repetition of what I have often said before, and I
    have nothing to add or enlarge. But I have the fear that when the
    occasion for action comes, which will not be in my time, many
    liberals may perhaps hang back and may cause further trouble.


In view of what was to come four years later, one of his letters to
Forster is interesting (April 12, 1882), among other reasons as
illustrating the depth to which the essence of political liberalism had
now penetrated Mr. Gladstone’s mind:—


    1. About local government for Ireland, the ideas which more and
    more establish themselves in my mind are such as these.

    (1.) Until we have seriously responsible bodies to deal with us in
    Ireland, every plan we frame comes to Irishmen, say what we may,
    as an English plan. As such it is probably condemned. At best it
    is a one-sided bargain, which binds us, not them.

    (2.) If your excellent plans for obtaining local aid towards the
    execution of the law break down, it will be on account of this
    miserable and almost total want of the sense of responsibility for
    the public good and public peace in Ireland; and this
    responsibility we cannot create except through local
    self-government.

    (3.) If we say we must postpone the question till the state of the
    country is more fit for it, I should answer that the least danger
    is in going forward at once. It is liberty alone which fits men
    for liberty. This proposition, like every other in politics, has
    its bounds; but it is far safer than the counter doctrine, wait
    till they are fit.

    (4.) In truth I should say (differing perhaps from many), that for
    the Ireland of to-day, the first question is the rectification of
    the relations between landlord and tenant, which happily is going
    on; the next is to relieve Great Britain from the enormous weight
    of the government of Ireland unaided by the people, and from the
    hopeless contradiction in which we stand while we give a
    parliamentary representation, hardly effective for anything but
    mischief without the local institutions of self-government which
    it presupposes, and on which alone it can have a sound and healthy
    basis.


We have before us in administration, he wrote to Forster in September—


    a problem not less delicate and arduous than the problem of
    legislation with which we have lately had to deal in parliament.
    Of the leaders, the officials, the skeleton of the land league I
    have no hope whatever. The better the prospects of the Land Act
    with their adherents outside the circle of wire-pullers, and with
    the Irish people, the more bitter will be their hatred, and the
    more sure they will be to go as far as fear of the people will
    allow them in keeping up the agitation, which they cannot afford
    to part with on account of their ulterior ends. All we can do is
    to turn more and more the masses of their followers, to fine them
    down by good laws and good government, and it is in this view that
    the question of judicious releases from prison, should improving
    statistics of crime encourage it, may become one of early
    importance.



VI


It was in the autumn of 1881 that Mr. Gladstone visited Leeds, in payment
of the debt of gratitude due for his triumphant return in the general
election of the year before. This progress extended over four days, and
almost surpassed in magnitude and fervour any of his experiences in other
parts of the kingdom. We have an interesting glimpse of the physical
effort of such experiences in a couple of his letters written to Mr.
Kitson, who with immense labour and spirit had organized this severe if
glorious enterprise:—


    _Hawarden Castle, Sept. 28, 1881._—I thank you for the very clear
    and careful account of the proposed proceedings at Leeds. It lacks
    as yet that _rough_ statement of numbers at each meeting, which is
    requisite to enable me to understand what I shall have to do. This
    will be fixed by the scale of the meeting. I see no difficulty but
    one—a procession through the principal thoroughfares is one of the
    most exhausting processes I know as a _preliminary_ to addressing
    a mass meeting. A mass meeting requires the physical powers to be
    in their best and freshest state, as far as anything can be fresh
    in a man near seventy-two; and I have on one or more former
    occasions felt them wofully contracted. In Midlothian I never had
    anything of the kind before a great physical effort in speaking;
    and the lapse even of a couple of years is something. It would
    certainly be most desirable to have the mass meeting first, and
    then I have not any fear at all of the procession through whatever
    thoroughfares you think fit.

    _Oct. 2, 1881._—I should be very sorry to put aside any of the
    opportunities of vision at Leeds which the public may care to use;
    but what I had hoped was that these might come _after_ any
    speeches of considerable effort and not _before_ them. To
    understand what a physical drain, and what a reaction from tension
    of the senses is caused by a “progress” before addressing a great
    audience, a person must probably have gone through it, and gone
    through it at my time of life. When I went to Midlothian, I begged
    that this might never happen; and it was avoided throughout. Since
    that time I have myself been sensible for the first time of a
    diminished power of voice in the House of Commons, and others also
    for the first time have remarked it.


Vast torchlight processions, addresses from the corporation, four score
addresses from political bodies, a giant banquet in the Cloth Hall Yard
covered in for the purpose, on one day; on another, more addresses, a
public luncheon followed by a mass meeting of over five-and-twenty
thousand persons, then a long journey through dense throngs vociferous
with an exultation that knew no limits, a large dinner party, and at the
end of all a night train. The only concessions that the veteran asked to
weakness of the flesh, were that at the banquet he should not appear until
the eating and drinking were over, and that at the mass meeting some
preliminary speakers should intervene to give him time to take breath
after his long and serious exercises of the morning. When the time came
his voice was heard like the note of a clear and deep-toned bell. So much
had vital energy, hardly less rare than his mental power, to do with the
varied exploits of this spacious career.

The topics of his Leeds speeches I need not travel over. (M25) What
attracted most attention and perhaps drew most applause was his warning to
Mr. Parnell. “He desires,” said the minister, “to arrest the operation of
the Land Act; to stand as Moses stood between the living and the dead; to
stand there not as Moses stood, to arrest, but to spread the plague.” The
menace that followed became a catchword of the day: “If it shall appear
that there is still to be fought a final conflict in Ireland between law
on the one side and sheer lawlessness upon the other, if the law purged
from defect and from any taint of injustice is still to be repelled and
refused, and the first conditions of political society to remain
unfulfilled, then I say, gentlemen, without hesitation, the resources of
civilisation against its enemies are not yet exhausted.”(40)

Nor was the pageant all excitement. The long speech, which by way of
prelusion to the great mass meeting he addressed to the chamber of
commerce, was devoted to the destruction of the economic sophisters who
tried to persuade us that “the vampire of free-trade was insidiously
sucking the life-blood of the country.” In large survey of broad social
facts, exposition of diligently assorted figures, power of scientific
analysis, sustained chain of reasoning, he was never better. The
consummate mastery of this argumentative performance did not slay a heresy
that has nine lives, but it drove the thing out of sight in Yorkshire for
some time to come.(41)



VII


On Wednesday October 12, the cabinet met, and after five hours of
deliberation decided that Mr. Parnell should be sent to prison under the
Coercion Act. The Irish leader was arrested at his hotel the next morning,
and carried off to Kilmainham, where he remained for some six months. The
same day Mr. Gladstone was presented with an address from the Common
Council of London, and in his speech at the Guildhall gave them the news:—


    Our determination has been that to the best of our power, our
    words should be carried into acts [referring to what he had said
    at Leeds], and even within these few moments I have been informed
    that towards the vindication of law and order, of the rights of
    property, of the freedom of the land, of the first elements of
    political life and civilisation, the first step has been taken in
    the arrest of the man who unhappily from motives which I do not
    challenge, which I cannot examine and with which I have nothing to
    do, has made himself beyond all others prominent in the attempt to
    destroy the authority of the law, and to substitute what would end
    in being nothing more or less than anarchical oppression exercised
    upon the people of Ireland.


The arrest of Mr. Parnell was no doubt a pretty considerable strain upon
powers conferred by parliament to put down village ruffians; but times
were revolutionary, and though the Act of parliament was not a wise one,
but altogether the reverse of wise, it was no wonder that having got the
instrument, ministers thought they might as well use it. Still executive
violence did not seem to work, and Mr. Gladstone looked in a natural
direction for help in the milder way of persuasion. He wrote (December
17th) to Cardinal Newman:—


    I will begin with defining strictly the limits of this appeal. I
    ask you to read the inclosed papers; and to consider whether you
    will write anything to Rome upon them. I do not ask you to write,
    nor to tell me whether you write, nor to make any reply to this
    letter, beyond returning the inclosures in an envelope to me in
    Downing Street. I will state briefly the grounds of my request,
    thus limited. In 1844, when I was young as a cabinet minister, and
    the government of Sir R. Peel was troubled with the O’Connell
    manifestations, they made what I think was an appeal to Pope
    Gregory XVI. for his intervention to discourage agitation in
    Ireland. I should be very loath now to tender such a request at
    Rome. But now a different case arises. Some members of the Roman
    catholic priesthood in Ireland deliver certain sermons and
    otherwise express themselves in the way which my inclosures
    exhibit. I doubt whether if they were laymen we should not have
    settled their cases by putting them into gaol. I need not describe
    the sentiments uttered. Your eminence will feel them and judge
    them as strongly as I do. But now as to the Supreme Pontiff. You
    will hardly be surprised when I say that I regard him, if apprised
    of the facts, as responsible for the conduct of these priests. For
    I know perfectly well that he has the means of silencing them; and
    that, if any one of them were in public to dispute the decrees of
    the council of 1870 as plainly as he has denounced law and order,
    he would be silenced.

    Mr. Errington, who is at Rome, will I believe have seen these
    papers, and will I hope have brought the facts as far as he is
    able to the knowledge of his holiness. But I do not know how far
    he is able; nor how he may use his discretion. He is not our
    official servant, but an independent Roman catholic gentleman and
    a volunteer.

    My wish is as regards Ireland, in this hour of her peril and her
    hope, to leave nothing undone by which to give heart and strength
    to the hope and to abate the peril. But my wish as regards the
    Pope is that he should have the means of bringing those for whom
    he is responsible to fulfil the elementary duties of citizenship.
    I say of citizenship; of Christianity, of priesthood, it is not
    for me to speak.


The cardinal replied that he would gladly find himself able to be of
service, however slight it might be, in a political crisis which must be
felt as of grave anxiety by all who understand the blessing of national
unity and peace. He thought Mr. Gladstone overrated the pope’s power in
political and social matters. Absolute in questions of theology, it was
not so in political matters. If the contest in Ireland were whether
“rebellion” or whether “robbery” was a sin, we might expect him to
anathematise its denial. But his action in concrete matters, as whether a
political party is censurable or not, was not direct, and only in the long
run effective. Local power and influence was often a match for Roman
right. The pope’s right keeps things together, it checks extravagances,
and at length prevails, but not without a fight. Its exercise is a matter
of great prudence, and depends upon times and circumstances. As for the
intemperate dangerous words of priests and curates, surely such persons
belonged to their respective bishops, and scarcely required the
introduction of the Supreme Authority.



VIII


We have now arrived at April 1882. The reports brought to the cabinet by
Mr. Forster were of the gloomiest. The Land Act had brought no
improvement. In the south-west and many of the midland counties
lawlessness and intimidation were worse than ever. Returns of agrarian
crime were presented in every shape, and comparisons framed by weeks, by
months, by quarters; do what the statisticians would, and in spite of
fluctuations, murders and other serious outrages had increased. The policy
of arbitrary arrest had completely failed, and the officials and crown
lawyers at the Castle were at their wits’ end.

While the cabinet was face to face with this ugly prospect, Mr. Gladstone
received a communication volunteered by an Irish member, as to the new
attitude of Mr. Parnell and the possibility of turning it to good account.
Mr. Gladstone sent this letter on to Forster, replying meanwhile “in the
sense of not shutting the door.” When the thing came before the cabinet,
Mr. Chamberlain—who had previously told Mr. Gladstone that he thought the
time opportune for something like a reconciliation with the Irish
party—with characteristic courage took his life in his hands, as he put
it, and set to work to ascertain through the emissary what use for the
public good could be made of Mr. Parnell’s changed frame of mind. On April
25th, the cabinet heard what Mr. Chamberlain had to tell them, and it came
to this, that Mr. Parnell was desirous to use his influence on behalf of
peace, but his influence for good depended on the settlement of the
question of arrears. Ministers decided that they could enter into no
agreement and would give no pledge. They would act on their own
responsibility in the light of the knowledge they had gained of Mr.
Parnell’s views. Mr. Gladstone was always impatient of any reference to
“reciprocal assurances” or “tacit understanding” in respect of the
dealings with the prisoner in Kilmainham. Still the nature of the
proceedings was plain enough. The object of the communications to which
the government were invited by Mr. Parnell through his emissary, was,
supposing him to be anxious to do what (M26) he could for law and order,
to find out what action on the part of the government would enable him to
adopt this line.

Events then moved rapidly. Rumours that something was going on got abroad,
and questions began to be put in parliament. A stout tory gave notice of a
motion aiming at the release of the suspects. As Mr. Gladstone informed
the Queen, there was no doubt that the general opinion of the public was
moving in a direction adverse to arbitrary imprisonment, though the
question was a nice one for consideration whether the recent surrender by
the no-rent party of its extreme and most subversive contentions, amounted
to anything like a guarantee for their future conduct in respect of peace
and order. The rising excitement was swelled by the retirement of Lord
Cowper from the viceroyalty, and the appointment as his successor of Lord
Spencer, who had filled that post in Mr. Gladstone’s first government. On
May 2nd, Mr. Gladstone read a memorandum to the cabinet to which they
agreed:—


    The cabinet are of opinion that the time has now arrived when with
    a view to the interests of law and order in Ireland, the three
    members of parliament who have been imprisoned on suspicion since
    last October, should be immediately released; and that the list of
    suspects should be examined with a view to the release of all
    persons not believed to be associated with crimes. They propose at
    once to announce to parliament their intention to propose, as soon
    as necessary business will permit, a bill to strengthen the
    ordinary law in Ireland for the security of life and property,
    while reserving their discretion with regard to the Life and
    Property Protection Act [of 1881], which however they do not at
    present think it will be possible to renew, if a favourable state
    of affairs shall prevail in Ireland.


From this proceeding Mr. Forster dissented, and he resigned his office.
His point seems to have been that no suspect should be released until the
new Coercion Act had been fashioned, whereas the rest of the cabinet held
that there was no excuse for the continued detention under arbitrary
warrant of men as to whom the ground for the “reasonable suspicion”
required by the law had now disappeared. He probably felt that the
appointment of a viceroy of cabinet rank and with successful Irish
experience was in fact his own supersession. “I have received your
letter,” Mr. Gladstone wrote to him (May 2), “with much grief, but on this
it would be selfish to expatiate. I have no choice; followed or not
followed I must go on. There are portions of the subject which touch you
personally, and which seem to me to deserve _much_ attention. But I have
such an interest in the main issue, that I could not be deemed impartial;
so I had better not enter on them. One thing, however, I wish to say. You
wish to minimise in any further statement the cause of your retreat. In my
opinion—_and I speak from experience_—viewing the nature of that course,
you will find this hardly possible. For a justification you, I fear, will
have to found upon the doctrine of ‘a new departure.’ We must protest
against it, and deny it with heart and soul.”

The way in which Mr. Gladstone chose to put things was stated in a letter
to the Queen (May 3): “In his judgment there had been two, and only two,
vital powers of commanding efficacy in Ireland, the Land Act, and the land
league; they had been locked in a combat of life and death; and the
cardinal question was which of the two would win. From the serious effort
to amend the Land Act by the Arrears bill of the nationalists,(42) from
the speeches made in support of it, and from information voluntarily
tendered to the government as to the views of the leaders of the league,
the cabinet believed that those who governed the land league were now
conscious of having been defeated by the Land Act on the main question,
that of paying rent.”

For the office of Irish secretary Mr. Gladstone selected Lord Frederick
Cavendish, who was the husband of a niece of Mrs. Gladstone’s, and one of
the most devoted of his friends and adherents. The special reason for the
choice of this capable and high-minded man, was that Lord Frederick had
framed a plan of finance at the treasury for a new scheme of land
purchase. The two freshly appointed Irish ministers at once crossed over
to a country seething in disorder. The (M27) afternoon of the fatal sixth
of May was passed by the new viceroy and Lord Frederick in that grim
apartment in Dublin Castle, where successive secretaries spend unshining
hours in saying No to impossible demands, and hunting for plausible
answers to insoluble riddles. Never did so dreadful a shadow overhang it
as on that day. The task on which the two ministers were engaged was the
consideration of the new provisions for coping with disorder, which had
been prepared in London. The under-secretary, Mr. Burke, and one of the
lawyers, were present. Lord Spencer rode out to the park about five
o’clock, and Lord Frederick followed him an hour later. He was overtaken
by the under-secretary walking homewards, and as the two strolled on
together, they were both brutally murdered in front of the vice-regal
residence. The assassins did not know who Lord Frederick was. Well has it
been said that Ireland seems the sport of a destiny that is aimless.(43)

The official world of London was on that Saturday night in the full round
of its pleasures. The Gladstones were dining at the Austrian embassy. So,
too, was Sir William Harcourt, and to him as home secretary the black
tidings were sent from Dublin late in the evening. Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone
had already left, she for a party at the admiralty, he walking home to
Downing Street. At the admiralty they told her of bad news from Ireland
and hurried her away. Mr. Gladstone arrived at home a few minutes after
her. When his secretary in the hall told him of the horrible thing that
had been done, it was as if he had been felled to the ground. Then they
hastened to bear what solace they could, to the anguish-stricken home
where solace would be so sorely needed.

The effect of this blind and hideous crime was at once to arrest the
spirit and the policy of conciliation. While the Irish leaders were locked
up, a secret murder club had taken matters in hand in their own way, and
ripened plots within a stone’s throw of the Castle. No worse blow could
have been struck at Mr. Parnell’s policy. It has been said that the
nineteenth century had seen the course of its history twenty-five times
diverted by actual or attempted crime. In that sinister list the murders
in the Phoenix Park have a tragic place.

The voice of party was for the moment hushed. Sir Stafford Northcote wrote
a letter of admirable feeling, saying that if there was any way in which
Mr. Gladstone thought they could serve the government, he would of course
let them know. The Prince of Wales wrote of his own horror and indignation
at the crime, and of his sympathy with Mr. Gladstone in the loss of one
who was not only a colleague of many merits, but a near connection and
devoted friend. With one or two scandalous exceptions, the tone of the
English press was sober, sensible, and self-possessed. “If a nation,” said
a leading journal in Paris, “should be judged by the way in which it acts
on grave occasions, the spectacle offered by England is calculated to
produce a high opinion of the political character and spirit of the
British people.” Things of the baser sort were not quite absent, but they
did not matter. An appeal confronted the electors of the North-West Riding
as they went to the poll at a bye-election a few days later, to “Vote for
——, and avenge the death of Lord Frederick Cavendish!” They responded by
placing ——’s opponent at the head of the poll by a majority of two
thousand.

The scene in the House had all the air of tragedy, and Mr. Gladstone
summoned courage enough to do his part with impressive composure. A
colleague was doing some business with him in his room before the
solemnity began. When it was over, they resumed it, Mr. Gladstone making
no word of reference to the sombre interlude, before or after. “Went
reluctantly to the House,” he says in his diary, “and by the help of God
forced out what was needful on the question of the adjournment.” His words
were not many, when after commemorating the marked qualities of Mr. Burke,
he went on in laboured tones and slow speech and hardly repressed
emotion:—


    The hand of the assassin has come nearer home; and though I feel
    it difficult to say a word, yet I must say that one of the very
    noblest hearts in England has ceased to beat, and has ceased at
    the very moment when it was just devoted to the service of
    Ireland, full of love for that country, full of hope for her
    future, full of capacity to render her service.


Writing to Lady Frederick on a later day, he mentions a public reference
to some pathetic words of hers (May 19):—


    Sexton just now returned to the subject, with much approval from
    the House. You will find it near the middle of a long speech.
    Nothing could be better either in feeling or in grace (the man is
    little short of a master), and I think it will warm your heart.
    You have made a mark deeper than any wound.


To Lord Ripon in India, he wrote (June 1):—


    The black act brought indeed a great personal grief to my wife and
    me; but we are bound to merge our own sorrow in the larger and
    deeper affliction of the widow and the father, in the sense of the
    public loss of a life so valuable to the nation, and in the
    consideration of the great and varied effects it may have on
    immediate and vital interests. Since the death of this dearly
    loved son, we have heard much good of the Duke, whom indeed we saw
    at Chatsworth after the funeral, and we have seen much of Lady
    Frederick, who has been good even beyond what we could have hoped.
    I have no doubt you have heard in India the echo of words spoken
    by Spencer from a letter of hers, in which she said she could give
    up even him if his death were to work good to his fellow-men,
    which indeed was the whole object of his life. These words have
    had a tender effect, as remarkable as the horror excited by the
    slaughter. Spencer wrote to me that a priest in Connemara read
    them from the altar; when the whole congregation spontaneously
    fell down upon their knees. In England, the national attitude has
    been admirable. The general strain of language has been, “Do not
    let this terrible and flagitious crime deter you from persevering
    with the work of justice.”


Well did Dean Church say that no Roman or Florentine lady ever uttered a
more heroic thing than was said by this English lady when on first seeing
Mr. Gladstone that terrible midnight she said, “You did right to send him
to Ireland.”(44) “The loss of F. Cavendish,” Mr. Gladstone wrote to his
eldest son, “will ever be to us all as an unhealed wound.”

On the day after the murders Mr. Gladstone received a note through the
same channel by which Mr. Chamberlain had carried on his communications:
“I am authorised by Mr. Parnell to state that if Mr. Gladstone considers
it necessary for the maintenance of his [Mr. G.’s] position and for
carrying out his views, that Mr. Parnell should resign his seat, Mr.
Parnell is prepared to do so immediately.” To this Mr. Gladstone replied
(May 7):—


    My duty does not permit me for a moment to entertain Mr. Parnell’s
    proposal, just conveyed to me by you, that he should if I think it
    needful resign his seat; but I am deeply sensible of the
    honourable motives by which it has been prompted.


“My opinion is,” said Mr. Gladstone to Lord Granville, “that if Parnell
goes, no restraining influence will remain; the scale of outrages will be
again enlarged; and no repressive bill can avail to put it down.” Those of
the cabinet who had the best chance of knowing, were convinced that Mr.
Parnell was “sincerely anxious for the pacification of Ireland.”

The reaction produced by the murders in the Park made perseverance in a
milder policy impossible in face of English opinion, and parliament
eagerly passed the Coercion Act of 1882. I once asked an Irishman of
consummate experience and equitable mind, with no leanings that I know of
to political nationalism, whether the task of any later ruler of Ireland
was comparable to Lord Spencer’s. “Assuredly not,” he replied: “in 1882
Ireland seemed to be literally a society on the eve of dissolution. The
Invincibles still roved with knives about the streets of Dublin.
Discontent had been stirred in the ranks of the Royal Irish Constabulary,
and a dangerous mutiny broke out in the metropolitan force. Over half of
the country the demoralisation of every class, the terror, the fierce
hatred, the universal distrust, had grown to an incredible pitch. The
moral cowardice of what ought to have been the governing class was
astounding. The landlords would hold meetings and agree not to go beyond a
certain abatement, and then they would go individually and privately offer
to the tenant a greater abatement. Even the agents of the law and the
courts were shaken in their duty. The power of random arrest and detention
under the Coercion Act of 1881 had not improved the _moral_ of magistrates
and police. The sheriff would let the word get out that he was coming to
make a seizure, and profess surprise that the cattle had vanished. The
whole country-side turned out in thousands in half the counties in Ireland
to attend flaming meetings, and if a man did not attend, angry neighbours
trooped up to know the reason why. The clergy hardly stirred a finger to
restrain the wildness of the storm; some did their best to raise it. All
that was what Lord Spencer had to deal with; the very foundations of the
social fabric rocking.”

The new viceroy attacked the formidable task before him with resolution,
minute assiduity, and an inexhaustible store of that steady-eyed patience
which is the sovereign requisite of any man who, whether with coercion or
without, takes in hand the government of Ireland. He was seconded with
high ability and courage by Mr. Trevelyan, the new Irish secretary, whose
fortitude was subjected to a far severer trial than has ever fallen to the
lot of any Irish secretary before or since. The coercion that Lord Spencer
had to administer was at least law. The coercion with which parliament
entrusted Mr. Forster the year before was the negation of the spirit of
law, and the substitution for it of naked and arbitrary control over the
liberty of the subject by executive power—a system as unconstitutional in
theory as it was infatuated in policy and calamitous in result. Even
before the end of the parliament, Mr. Bright frankly told the House of
Commons of this Coercion Act: “I think that the legislation of 1881 was
unfortunately a great mistake, though I was myself a member of the
government concerned in it.”




Chapter V. Egypt. (1881-1882)


    I find many very ready to say what I ought to have done when a
    battle is over; but I wish some of these persons would come and
    tell me what to do before the battle.—WELLINGTON.


In 1877 Mr. Gladstone penned words to which later events gave an only too
striking verification. “Territorial questions,” he said, “are not to be
disposed of by arbitrary limits; we cannot enjoy the luxury of taking
Egyptian soil by pinches. We may seize an Aden and a Perim, where is no
already formed community of inhabitants, and circumscribe a tract at will.
But our first site in Egypt, be it by larceny or be it by emption, will be
the almost certain egg of a North African empire, that will grow and grow
until another Victoria and another Albert, titles of the lake-sources of
the White Nile, come within our borders; and till we finally join hands
across the equator with Natal and Cape Town, to say nothing of the
Transvaal and the Orange River on the south, or of Abyssinia or Zanzibar
to be swallowed by way of viaticum on our journey.”(45) It was one of the
ironies in which every active statesman’s life abounds, that the author of
that forecast should have been fated to take his country over its first
marches towards this uncoveted destination.



I


For many months after Mr. Gladstone formed his second ministry, there was
no reason to suppose that the Egyptian branch of the eastern question,
which for ever casts its (M28) perplexing shadow over Europe, was likely
to give trouble. The new Khedive held a regularly defined position, alike
towards his titular sovereign at Constantinople, towards reforming
ministers at Cairo, towards the creditors of his state, and towards the
two strong European Powers who for different reasons had the supervision
of Egyptian affairs in charge. The oppression common to oriental
governments seemed to be yielding before western standards. The load of
interest on a profligate debt was heavy, but it was not unskilfully
adjusted. The rate of village usury was falling, and the value of land was
rising. Unluckily the Khedive and his ministers neglected the grievances
of the army, and in January 1881 its leaders broke out in revolt. The
Khedive, without an armed force on whose fidelity he could rely, gave way
to the mutineers, and a situation was created, familiar enough in all
oriental states, and not unlike that in our own country between Charles
I., or in later days the parliament, and the roundhead troopers: anger and
revenge in the breast of the affronted civil ruler, distrust and dread of
punishment in the mind of the soldiery. During the autumn (1881) the
crisis grew more alarming. The Khedive showed neither energy nor tact; he
neither calmed the terror of the mutineers nor crushed them.
Insubordination in the army began to affect the civil population, and a
national party came into open existence in the chamber of notables. The
soldiers found a head in Arabi, a native Egyptian, sprung of fellah
origin. Want either of stern resolution or of politic vision in the
Khedive and his minister had transferred the reality of power to the
insurgents. The Sultan of Turkey here saw his chance; he made a series of
diplomatic endeavours to reestablish a shattered sovereignty over his
nominal feudatory on the Nile. This pretension, and the spreading tide of
disorder, brought England and France actively upon the scene. We can see
now, what expert observers on the spot saw then, that the two Powers
mistook the nature of the Arabist movement. They perceived in it no more
than a military rising. It was in truth national as well as military; it
was anti-European, and above all, it was in its objects anti-Turk.

In 1879 the two governments had insisted on imposing over Egypt two
controllers, with limited functions but irremovable. This, as Mr.
Gladstone argued later, was to bring foreign intervention into the heart
of the country, and to establish in the strictest sense a political
control.(46) As a matter of fact, not then well known, in September 1879
Lord Salisbury had come to a definite understanding with the French
ambassador in London, that the two governments would not tolerate the
establishment in Egypt of political influence by any competing European
Power; and what was more important, that they were prepared to take action
to any extent that might be found necessary to give effect to their views
in this respect. The notable acquisition by Lord Beaconsfield of an
interest in the Suez Canal, always regarded by Mr. Gladstone as a
politically ill-advised and hazardous transaction, had tied the English
knot in Egypt still tighter.

The policy of the Gladstone cabinet was defined in general words in a
despatch from the foreign minister to the British agent at Cairo. Lord
Granville (November 1881) disclaimed any self-aggrandising designs on the
part of either England or France. He proclaimed the desire of the cabinet
to uphold in Egypt the administrative independence secured to her by the
decrees of the sovereign power on the Bosphorus. Finally he set forth that
the only circumstances likely to force the government of the Queen to
depart from this course of conduct, would be the occurrence in Egypt of a
state of anarchy.(47)

Justly averse to a joint occupation of Egypt by England and France, as the
most perilous of all possible courses, the London cabinet looked to the
Sultan as the best instrument for restoring order. Here they were
confronted by two insurmountable obstacles: first, the steadfast hostility
of France to any form of Turkish intervention, and second, that strong
current of antipathy to the Sultan which had been set flowing over British
opinion in the days of Midlothian.(48)

(M29) In December (1881) the puissant genius of Gambetta acquired
supremacy for a season, and he without delay pressed upon the British
cabinet the necessity of preparing for joint and immediate action.
Gambetta prevailed. The Turk was ruled out, and the two Powers of the west
determined on action of their own. The particular mode of common action,
however, in case action should become necessary, was left entirely open.

Meanwhile the British cabinet was induced to agree to Gambetta’s proposal
to send instructions to Cairo, assuring the Khedive that England and
France were closely associated in the resolve to guard by their united
efforts against all causes of complaint, internal or external, which might
menace the existing order of things in Egypt. This was a memorable
starting-point in what proved an amazing journey. This Joint Note (January
6, 1881) was the first link in a chain of proceedings that brought each of
the two governments who were its authors, into the very position that they
were most strenuously bent on averting; France eventually ousted herself
from Egypt, and England was eventually landed in plenary and permanent
occupation. So extraordinary a result only shows how impenetrable were the
windings of the labyrinth. The foremost statesmen of England and France
were in their conning towers, and England at any rate employed some of the
ablest of her agents. Yet each was driven out of an appointed course to an
unforeseen and an unwelcome termination. Circumstances like these might
teach moderation both to the French partisans who curse the vacillations
of M. de Freycinet, and to the English partisans who, while rejoicing in
the ultimate result, curse the vacillations of the cabinet of Mr.
Gladstone, in wisely striving to unravel a knot instead of at all risks
cutting it.



II


The present writer described the effect of the Joint Note in the following
words written at the time(49): “At Cairo the Note fell like a bombshell.
Nobody there had expected any such declaration, and nobody was aware of
any reason why it should have been launched. What was felt was that so
serious a step on such delicate ground could not have been adopted without
deliberate calculation, nor without some grave intention. The Note was,
therefore, taken to mean that the Sultan was to be thrust still further in
the background; that the Khedive was to become more plainly the puppet of
England and France; and that Egypt would sooner or later in some shape or
other be made to share the fate of Tunis. The general effect was,
therefore, mischievous in the highest degree. The Khedive was encouraged
in his opposition to the sentiments of his Chamber. The military,
national, or popular party was alarmed. The Sultan was irritated. The
other European Powers were made uneasy. Every element of disturbance was
roused into activity.”

It is true that even if no Joint Note had ever been despatched, the
prospects of order were unpromising. The most careful analysis of the
various elements of society in Egypt by those best acquainted at first
hand with all those elements, whether internal or external, whether
Egyptian or European, and with all the roots of antagonism thriving among
them, exhibited no promise of stability. If Egypt had been a simple case
of an oriental government in revolutionary commotion, the ferment might
have been left to work itself out. Unfortunately Egypt, in spite of the
maps, lies in Europe. So far from being a simple case, it was
indescribably entangled, and even the desperate questions that rise in our
minds at the mention of the Balkan peninsula, of Armenia, of
Constantinople, offer no such complex of difficulties as the Egyptian
riddle in 1881-2. The law of liquidation(50)—whatever else we may think of
it—at least made the policy of Egypt for the Egyptians unworkable. Yet the
British cabinet were not wrong in thinking that this was no reason for
sliding into the competing policy of Egypt for the English _and_ the
French, which would have been more unworkable still.

England strove manfully to hold the ground that she (M30) had taken in
November. Lord Granville told the British ambassador in Paris that his
government disliked intervention either by themselves or anybody else as
much as ever; that they looked upon the experiment of the Chamber with
favourable eyes; that they wished to keep the connection of the Porte with
Egypt so far as it was compatible with Egyptian liberties; and that the
object of the Joint Note was to strengthen the existing government of
Egypt. Gambetta, on the other hand, was convinced that all explanations of
this sort would only serve further to inflate the enemies of France and
England in the Egyptian community, and would encourage their designs upon
the law of liquidation. Lord Granville was honourably and consistently
anxious to confine himself within the letter of international right, while
Gambetta was equally anxious to intervene in Egyptian administration,
within right or without it, and to force forward that Anglo-French
occupation in which Lord Granville so justly saw nothing but danger and
mischief. Once more Lord Granville, at the end of the month which had
opened with the Joint Note, in a despatch to the ambassador at Paris
(January 30), defined the position of the British cabinet. What measures
should be taken to meet Egyptian disorders? The Queen’s government had “a
strong objection to the occupation of Egypt by themselves.” Egypt and
Turkey would oppose; it would arouse the jealousy of other Powers, who
would, as there was even already good reason to believe, make counter
demonstrations; and, finally, such an occupation would be as distasteful
to the French nation as the sole occupation of Egypt by the French would
be to ourselves. Joint occupation by England and France, in short, might
lessen some difficulties, but it would seriously aggravate others. Turkish
occupation would be a great evil, but it would not entail political
dangers as great as those attending the other two courses. As for the
French objections to the farther admission of the other European Powers to
intervene in Egyptian affairs, the cabinet agreed that England and France
had an exceptional position in Egypt, but might it not be desirable to
enter into some communication with the other Powers, as to the best way of
dealing with a state of things that appeared likely to interfere both with
the Sultan’s firmans and with Egypt’s international engagements?

At this critical moment Gambetta fell from power. The mark that he had set
upon western policy in Egypt remained. Good observers on the spot, trained
in the great school of India, thought that even if there were no more than
a chance of working with the national party, the chance was well worth
trying. As the case was put at the time, “It is impossible to conceive a
situation that more imperatively called for caution, circumspection, and
deference to the knowledge of observers on the scene, or one that was
actually handled with greater rashness and hurry. Gambetta had made up his
mind that the military movement was leading to the abyss, and that it must
be peremptorily arrested. It may be that he was right in supposing that
the army, which had first found its power in the time of Ismail, would go
from bad to worse. But everything turned upon the possibility of pulling
up the army, without arousing other elements more dangerous still. M.
Gambetta’s impatient policy was worked out in his own head without
reference to the conditions on the scene, and the result was what might
have been expected.”(51)



III


The dual control, the system of carrying on the Egyptian government under
the advice of an English and a French agent, came to an end. The rude
administration in the provinces fell to pieces. The Khedive was helplessly
involved in struggle after struggle with the military insurgents. The army
became as undisputed masters of the government, as the Cromwellian army at
some moments in our civil war. Meanwhile the British government, true to
Mr. Gladstone’s constant principle, endeavoured to turn the question from
being purely Anglo-French, into an international question. The Powers were
not unfavourable, but nothing came of it. Both from Paris and from London
somewhat bewildered suggestions proceeded by way of evading the central
enigma, whether the intervention should be Turkish (M31) or Anglo-French.
It was decided at any rate to send powerful Anglo-French fleets to
Alexandria, and Mr. Gladstone only regretted that the other Powers
(including Turkey) had not been invited to have their flags represented.
To this the French objected, with the evil result that the other Powers
were displeased, and the good effect that the appearance of the Sultan in
the field might have had upon the revolutionary parties in Egypt was lost.
On May 21, 1882, M. de Freycinet went so far as to say that, though he was
still opposed to Turkish intervention, he would not regard as intervention
a case in which Turkish forces were summoned by England and France to
operate under Anglo-French control, upon conditions specified by the two
Powers. If it became advisable to land troops, recourse should be had on
these terms to Turkish troops and them only. Lord Granville acceded. He
proposed (May 24) to address the Powers, to procure international sanction
for the possible despatch of Turkish troops to Egypt. M. Freycinet
insisted that no such step was necessary. At the same time (June 1), M. de
Freycinet told the Chamber that there were various courses to which they
might be led, but he excluded one, and this was a French military
intervention. That declaration narrowed the case to a choice between
English intervention, or Turkish, or Anglo-Turkish, all of them known to
be profoundly unpalatable to French sentiment. Such was the end of Lord
Granville’s prudent and loyal endeavour to move in step with France.

The next proposal from M. de Freycinet was a European conference, as
Prince Bismarck presumed, to cover the admissibility of Turkish
intervention. A conference was too much in accord with the ideas of the
British cabinet, not to be welcomed by them. The Turk, however, who now
might have had the game in his own hands, after a curious exhibition of
duplicity and folly, declined to join, and the conference at first met
without him (June 23). Then, pursuing tactics well known at all times at
Constantinople, the Sultan made one of his attempts to divide the Powers,
by sending a telegram to London (June 25), conferring upon England rights
of exclusive control in the administration of Egypt.

This Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville declined without even consulting the
cabinet, as too violent an infraction, I suppose, of the cardinal
principle of European concert. The Queen, anxious for an undivided English
control at any price, complained that the question was settled without
reference to the cabinet, and here the Queen was clearly not wrong, on
doctrines of cabinet authority and cabinet responsibility that were
usually held by nobody more strongly than by the prime minister himself.

Mr. Gladstone and his cabinet fought as hard as they could, and for good
reasons, against single-handed intervention by Great Britain. When they
saw that order could not be re-established without the exercise of force
from without, they insisted that this force should be applied by the
Sultan as sovereign of Egypt. They proposed this solution to the
conference, and Lord Dufferin urged it upon the Sultan. With curious
infatuation (repeated a few years later) the Sultan stood aside. When it
became necessary to make immediate provision for the safety of the Suez
Canal, England proposed to undertake this duty conjointly with France, and
solicited the co-operation of any other Power. Italy was specially invited
to join. Then when the progress of the rebellion had broken the Khedive’s
authority and brought Egypt to anarchy, England invited France and Italy
to act with her in putting the rebellion down. France and Italy declined.
England still urged the Porte to send troops, insisting only on such
conditions as were indispensable to secure united action. The Porte again
held back, and before it carried out an agreement to sign a military
convention, events had moved too fast.(52) Thus, by the Sultan’s
perversities and the fluctuations of purpose and temper in France,
single-handed intervention was inexorably forced upon the one Power that
had most consistently striven to avoid it. Bismarck, it is true, judged
that Arabi was now a power to be reckoned with; the Austrian
representatives used language of like purport; and Freycinet also inclined
to coming to terms with Arabi. The British cabinet had persuaded
themselves that the overthrow of the military (M32) party was an
indispensable precedent to any return of decently stable order.

The situation in Egypt can hardly be adequately understood without a
multiplicity of details for which this is no place, and in such cases
details are everything. Diplomacy in which the Sultan of Turkey plays a
part is always complicated, and at the Conference of Constantinople the
cobwebs were spun and brushed away and spun again with diligence
unexampled. The proceedings were without any effect upon the course of
events. The Egyptian revolution ran its course. The moral support of
Turkish commissioners sent by the Sultan to Cairo came to nothing, and the
moral influence of the Anglo-French squadron at Alexandria came to
nothing, and in truth it did more harm than good. The Khedive’s throne and
life were alike in danger. The Christians flocked down from the interior.
The residents in Alexandria were trembling for their lives. At the end of
May our agent at Cairo informed his government that a collision between
Moslems and Christians might occur at any moment. On June 11 some fifty
Europeans were massacred by a riotous mob at Alexandria. The British
consul was severely wounded, and some sailors of the French fleet were
among the killed. Greeks and Jews were murdered in other places. At last a
decisive blow was struck. For several weeks the Egyptians had been at work
upon the fortifications of Alexandria, and upon batteries commanding the
British fleet. The British admiral was instructed (July 3) that if this
operation were continued, he should immediately destroy the earthworks and
silence the batteries. After due formalities he (July 11) opened fire at
seven in the morning, and by half-past five in the evening the Alexandria
guns were silenced. Incendiaries set the town on fire, the mob pillaged
it, and some murders were committed. The French ships had sailed away,
their government having previously informed the British ambassador in
Paris that the proposed operation would be an act of war against Egypt,
and such an act of war without the express consent of the Chamber would
violate the constitution.

The new situation in which England, now found herself was quickly
described by the prime minister to the House of Commons. On July 22, he
said: “We should not fully discharge our duty, if we did not endeavour to
convert the present interior state of Egypt from anarchy and conflict to
peace and order. We shall look during the time that remains to us to the
co-operation of the Powers of civilised Europe, if it be in any case open
to us. But if every chance of obtaining co-operation is exhausted, the
work will be undertaken by the single power of England.” As for the
position of the Powers it may be described in this way. Germany and
Austria were cordial and respectful; France anxious to retain a completely
friendly understanding, but wanting some equivalent for the inevitable
decline of her power in Egypt; Italy jealous of our renewing close
relations with France; Russia still sore, and on the lookout for some
plausible excuse for getting the Berlin arrangement of 1878 revised in her
favour, without getting into difficulties with Berlin itself.

France was not unwilling to take joint action with England for the defence
of the canal, but would not join England in intervention beyond that
object. At the same time Freycinet wished it to be understood that France
had no objection to our advance, if we decided to make an advance. This
was more than once repeated. Gambetta in vehement wrath declared his dread
lest the refusal to co-operate with England should shake an alliance of
priceless value; and lest besides that immense catastrophe, it should hand
over to the possession of England for ever, territories, rivers, and ports
where the French right to live and trade was as good as hers. The mighty
orator declaimed in vain. Suspicion of the craft of Bismarck was in France
more lively than suspicion of aggressive designs in the cabinet of Mr.
Gladstone, and the Chamber was reminded how extremely well it would suit
Germany that France should lock up her military force in Tunis yesterday,
in Egypt to-day. Ingenious speakers, pointing to Europe covered with camps
of armed men; pointing to the artful statesmanship that had pushed Austria
into Bosnia and (M33) Herzegovina, and encouraged France herself to occupy
Tunis; pointing to the expectant nations reserving their liberty for
future occasions—all urgently exhorted France now to reserve her own
liberty of action too. Under the influence of such ideas as these, and by
the working of rival personalities and parties, the Chamber by an immense
majority turned the Freycinet government out of office (July 29) rather
than sanction even such a degree of intervention as concerned the
protection of the Suez Canal.

Nine days after the bombardment of Alexandria, the British cabinet decided
on the despatch of what was mildly called an expeditionary force to the
Mediterranean, under the command of Sir Garnet Wolseley. The general’s
alertness, energy, and prescient calculation brought him up to Arabi at
Tel-el-Kebir (Sept. 13), and there at one rapid and decisive blow he
crushed the military insurrection.(53)



IV


The bombardment of Alexandria cost Mr. Gladstone the British colleague who
in fundamentals stood closest to him of them all. In the opening days of
July, amid differences of opinion that revealed themselves in frequent and
protracted meetings of the cabinet, it was thought probable that Mr.
Gladstone and Bright would resign rather than be parties to despatching
troops to the Mediterranean; and the two representative radicals were
expected to join them. Then came the bombardment, but only Bright went—not
until after earnest protestations from the prime minister. As Mr.
Gladstone described things later to the Queen, Bright’s letters and
conversation consisted very much more of references to his past career and
strong statements of feeling, than of attempts to reason on the existing
facts of the case, with the obligations that they appeared to entail. Not
satisfied with his own efforts, Mr. Gladstone turned to Lord Granville,
who had been a stout friend in old days when Bright’s was a name of
reproach and obloquy:—


    _July 12._—Here is the apprehended letter from dear old John
    Bright, which turns a white day into a black one. It would not be
    fair in me to beg an interview. His kindness would make him
    reluctant to decline; but he would come laden with an
    apprehension, that I by impetuosity and tenacity should endeavour
    to overbear him. But pray consider whether you could do it. He
    would not have the same fear of your dealings with him. I do not
    think you could get a _reversal_, but perhaps he would give you
    another short delay, and at the end of this the sky might be
    further settled.


Two days later Mr. Gladstone and Bright had a long, and we may be sure
that it was an earnest, conversation. The former of them the same day put
his remarks into the shape of a letter, which the reader may care to have,
as a statement of the case for the first act of armed intervention, which
led up by a direct line to the English occupation of Egypt, Soudan wars,
and to some other events from which the veil is not even yet lifted:—


    The act of Tuesday [the bombardment of Alexandria] was a solemn
    and painful one, for which I feel myself to be highly responsible,
    and it is my earnest desire that we should all view it now, as we
    shall wish at the last that we had viewed it. Subject to this
    testing rule, I address you as one whom I suppose not to believe
    all use whatever of military force to be unlawful; as one who
    detests war in general and believes most wars to have been sad
    errors (in which I greatly agree with you), but who in regard to
    any particular use of force would look upon it for a justifying
    cause, and after it would endeavour to appreciate its actual
    effect.

    The general situation in Egypt had latterly become one in which
    everything was governed by sheer military violence. Every
    legitimate authority—the Khedive, the Sultan, the notables, and
    the best men of the country, such as Cherif and Sultan pashas—had
    been put down, and a situation, of _force_ had been created, which
    could only be met by force. This being so, we had laboured to the
    uttermost, almost alone but not without success, to secure that if
    force were employed against the violence of Arabi, it should be
    force armed with the highest sanction of law; that it should be
    the force of the sovereign, authorised and restrained by the
    united Powers of Europe, who in such a case represent the
    civilised world.

    While this is going on, a by-question arises. The British fleet,
    lawfully present in the waters of Alexandria, had the right and
    duty of self-defence. It demanded the discontinuance of attempts
    made to strengthen the armament of the fortifications.... Met by
    fraud and falsehood in its demand, it required surrender with a
    view to immediate dismantling, and this being refused, it
    proceeded to destroy.... The conflagration which followed, the
    pillage and any other outrages effected by the released convicts,
    these are not due to us, but to the seemingly wanton wickedness of
    Arabi....

    Such being the amount of our act, what has been its reception and
    its effect? As to its reception, we have not received nor heard of
    a word of disapproval from any Power great or small, or from any
    source having the slightest authority. As to its effect, it has
    taught many lessons, struck a heavy, perhaps a deadly, blow at the
    reign of violence, brought again into light the beginnings of
    legitimate rule, shown the fanaticism of the East that massacre of
    Europeans is not likely to be perpetrated with impunity, and
    greatly advanced the Egyptian question towards a permanent and
    peaceable solution. I feel that in being party to this work I have
    been a labourer in the cause of peace. Your co-operation in that
    cause, with reference to preceding and collateral points, has been
    of the utmost value, and has enabled me to hold my ground, when
    without you it might have been difficult.


The correspondence closed with a wish from Mr. Gladstone: “Believe in the
sore sense of practical loss, and the (I trust) unalterable friendship and
regard with which I remain, etc.” When Bright came to explain his
resignation in parliament, he said something about the moral law, which
led to a sharp retort from the prime minister, but still their friendship
did appear to remain unalterable, as Mr. Gladstone trusted that it would.

When the question by and by arose whether Arabi should be put to death,
Bright wrote to the prime minister on behalf of clemency. Mr. Gladstone in
replying took a severe line: “I am sorry to say the inquiry is too likely
to show that Arabi is very much more than a rebel. Crimes of the gravest
kind have been committed; and with most of them he stands, I fear, in
_presumptive_ (that is, unproved) connection. In truth I must say that,
having begun with no prejudice against him, and with the strong desire
that he should be saved, I am almost driven to the conclusion that he is a
bad man, and that it will not be an injustice if he goes the road which
thousands of his innocent countrymen through him have trodden.” It is a
great mistake to suppose that Mr. Gladstone was all leniency, or that when
he thought ill of men, he stayed either at palliating words or at
half-measures.




Chapter VI. Political Jubilee. (1882-1883)


    ἀγωνίζεται γὰρ ὥσπερ ἀθλητὴς κατὰ τὸν βίον, ὅταν δὲ διαγωνίσηται,
    τότε τυγχάνει τῶν προσηκόντων.—PLUTARCH, _Moralia_, c. 18.

    He strives like an athlete all his life long, and then when he
    comes to the end of his striving, he has what is meet.

    ἐπάμεροι: τί δέ τις; τί δ᾽ οὔ τις; σκιᾶς ὄναρ
    ἄνθρωπος. ἀλλ᾽ ὅταν αἴγλα διόσδοτος ἔλθῃ,
    λαμπρὸν φέγγος ἔπεστιν ἀνδρῶν καὶ μείλικος αἰών.
    —PINDAR, _Pyth._ viii. 135.

    Things of a day! What is a man? What, when he is not? A dream of
    shadow is mankind. Yet when there comes down glory imparted from
    God, radiant light shines among men and genial days.

    θανεῖν δ᾽ οἷσιν ἀνάγκα, τί κέ τις ἀνώνυμον γῆρας ὲν σκότῳ
    καθήμενος ἔψοι μάταν;—_Ol._ i. 131.

    Die since we must, wherefore should a man sit idle and nurse in
    the gloom days of long life without aim, without name?



I


The words from “antique books” that I have just translated and
transcribed, were written out by Mr. Gladstone inside the cover of the
little diary for 1882-3. To what the old world had to say, he added
Dante’s majestic commonplace: “You were not to live like brutes, but to
pursue virtue and knowledge.”(54) These meditations on the human lot, on
the mingling of our great hopes with the implacable realities, made the
vital air in which all through his life he drew deep breath. Adjusted to
his ever vivid religious creed, amid all the turbid business of the
worldly elements, they were the sedative and the restorer. Yet here and
always the last word was Effort. The moods that in less strenuous natures
ended in melancholy, philosophic or poetic, to him were fresh incentives
to redeem the time.

The middle of December 1882 marked his political jubilee. It was now half
a century since he had entered public life, and the youthful graduate from
Oxford had grown to be the foremost man in his country. Yet these fifty
courses of the sun and all the pageant of the world had in some ways made
but little difference in him. In some ways, it seemed as if time had
rolled over him in vain. He had learned many lessons. He had changed his
party, his horizons were far wider, new social truths had made their way
into his impressionable mind, he recognised new social forces. His aims
for the church, that he loved as ardently as he gloried in a powerful and
beneficent state, had undergone a revolution. Since 1866 he had come into
contact with democracy at close quarters; the Bulgarian campaign and
Midlothian lighting up his early faith in liberty, had inflamed him with
new feeling for the voice of the people. As much as in the early time when
he had prayed to be allowed to go into orders, he was moved by a
dominating sense of the common claims and interests of mankind. ’The
contagion of the world’s slow stain’ had not infected him; the lustre and
long continuity of his public performances still left all his innermost
ideals constant and undimmed.

His fifty years of public life had wrought his early habits of severe
toil, method, exactness, concentration, into cast-iron. Whether they had
sharpened what is called knowledge of the world, or taught him insight
into men and skill in discrimination among men, it is hard to say. He
always talked as if he found the world pretty much what he had expected.
Man, he used often to say, is the least comprehensible of creatures, and
of men the most incomprehensible are the politicians. Yet nobody was less
of the cynic. As for Weltschmerz, world-weariness, ennui, tedium (M34)
vitæ—that enervating family were no acquaintances of his, now nor at any
time. None of the vicissitudes of long experience ever tempted him either
into the shallow satire on life that is so often the solace of the little
and the weak; or on the other hand into the _saeva indignatio_, the sombre
brooding reprobation, that has haunted some strong souls from Tacitus and
Dante to Pascal, Butler, Swift, Turgot. We may, indeed, be sure that
neither of these two moods can ever hold a place in the breast of a
commanding orator.



II


I have spoken of his new feeling for democracy. At the point of time at
which we have arrived, it was heartily reciprocated. The many difficulties
in the course of public affairs that confronted parliament and the nation
for two years or more after Mr. Gladstone’s second accession to power, did
little to weaken either his personal popularity or his hold upon the
confidence of the constituencies. For many years he and Mr. Disraeli had
stood out above the level of their adherents; they were the centre of
every political storm. Disraeli was gone (April 19, 1881), commemorated by
Mr. Gladstone in a parliamentary tribute that cost him much searching of
heart beforehand, and was a masterpiece of grace and good feeling. Mr.
Gladstone stood alone, concentrating upon himself by his personal
ascendency and public history the bitter antagonism of his opponents, only
matched by the enthusiasm and devotion of his followers. The rage of
faction had seldom been more unbridled. The Irish and the young fourth
party were rivals in malicious vituperation; of the two, the Irish on the
whole observed the better manners. Once Mr. Gladstone was wounded to the
quick, as letters show, when a member of the fourth party denounced as “a
government of infamy” the ministry with whose head he had long been on
terms of more than friendship alike as host and guest. He could not fell
his trees, he could not read the lessons in Hawarden church, without
finding these innocent habits turned into material for platform mockery.
“In the eyes of the opposition, as indeed of the country,” said a great
print that was never much his friend, “he is the government and he is the
liberal party,” and the writer went on to scold Lord Salisbury for wasting
his time in the concoction of angry epigrams and pungent phrases that were
neither new nor instructive.(55) They pierced no joint in the mail of the
warrior at whom they were levelled. The nation at large knew nothing of
difficulties at Windsor, nothing of awkward passages in the cabinet,
nothing of the trying egotisms of gentlemen out of the cabinet who
insisted that they ought to be in. Nor would such things have made any
difference except in his favour, if the public had known all about them.
The Duke of Argyll and Lord Lansdowne had left him; his Irish policy had
cost him his Irish secretary, and his Egyptian policy had cost him Mr.
Bright. They had got into a war, they had been baffled in legislation,
they had to raise the most unpopular of taxes, there had been the
frightful tragedy in Ireland. Yet all seemed to have been completely
overcome in the public mind by the power of Mr. Gladstone in uniting his
friends and frustrating his foes, and the more bitterly he was hated by
society, the more warmly attached were the mass of the people. Anybody who
had foreseen all this would have concluded that the government must be in
extremity, but he went to the Guildhall on the 9th of November 1882, and
had the best possible reception on that famous stage. One tory newspaper
felt bound to admit that Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues had
rehabilitated themselves in the public judgment with astounding rapidity,
and were now almost as strong in popular and parliamentary support as when
they first took office.(56) Another tory print declared Mr. Gladstone to
be stronger, more popular, more despotic, than at any time since the
policy to carry out which he was placed in office was disclosed.(57) The
session of 1882 had only been exceeded in duration by two sessions for
fifty years.

The reader has had pictures enough from friendly hands, so here is one
from a persistent foe, one of the most brilliant journalists of that time,
who listened to him from (M35) the gallery for years. The words are from
an imaginary dialogue, and are put into the mouth of a well-known whig in
parliament:—


    Sir, I can only tell you that, profoundly as I distrusted him, and
    lightly as on the whole I valued the external qualities of his
    eloquence, I have never listened to him even for a few minutes
    without ceasing to marvel at his influence over men. That
    white-hot face, stern as a Covenanter’s yet mobile as a
    comedian’s; those restless, flashing eyes; that wondrous voice,
    whose richness its northern burr enriched as the tang of the wood
    brings out the mellowness of a rare old wine; the masterly cadence
    of his elocution; the vivid energy of his attitudes; the fine
    animation of his gestures;—sir, when I am assailed through eye and
    ear by this compacted phalanx of assailants, what wonder that the
    stormed outposts of the senses should spread the contagion of
    their own surrender through the main encampment of the mind, and
    that against my judgment, in contempt of my conscience, nay, in
    defiance of my very will, I should exclaim, “This is indeed the
    voice of truth and wisdom. This man is honest and sagacious beyond
    his fellows. He must be believed, he must be obeyed!”(58)


On the day of his political jubilee (Dec. 13), the event was celebrated in
many parts of the country, and he received congratulatory telegrams from
all parts of the world; for it was not only two hundred and forty liberal
associations who sent him joyful addresses. The Roumelians poured out
aloud their gratitude to him for the interest he constantly manifested in
their cause, and for his powerful and persistent efforts for their
emancipation. From Athens came the news that they had subscribed for the
erection of his statue, and from the Greeks also came a splendid casket.
In his letter of thanks,(59) after remonstrating against its too great
material value, he said:—


    I know not well how to accept it, yet I am still less able to
    decline it, when I read the touching lines of the accompanying
    address, in itself an ample token, in which you have so closely
    associated my name with the history and destinies of your country.
    I am not vain enough to think that I have deserved any of the
    numerous acknowledgments which I have received, especially from
    Greeks, on completing half a century of parliamentary life. Your
    over-estimate of my deeds ought rather to humble than to inflate
    me. But to have laboured within the measure of justice for the
    Greece of the future, is one of my happiest political
    recollections, and to have been trained in a partial knowledge of
    the Greece of the past has largely contributed to whatever slender
    faculties I possess for serving my own country or my kind. I
    earnestly thank you for your indulgent judgment and for your too
    costly gifts, and I have the honour to remain, etc.


What was deeper to him than statues or caskets was found in letters from
comparative newcomers into the political arena thanking him not only for
his long roll of public service, but much more for the example and
encouragement that his life gave to younger men endeavouring to do
something for the public good. To one of these he wrote (Dec. 15):—


    I thank you most sincerely for your kind and friendly letter. As
    regards the prospective part of it, I can assure you that I should
    be slow to plead the mere title to retirement which long labour is
    supposed to earn. But I have always watched, and worked according
    to what I felt to be the measure of my own mental force. A monitor
    from within tells me that though I may still be equal to some
    portions of my duties, or as little unequal as heretofore, there
    are others which I cannot face. I fear therefore I must keep in
    view an issue which cannot be evaded.



III


As it happened, this volume of testimony to the affection, gratitude, and
admiration thus ready to go out to him from so many quarters coincided in
point of time with one or two extreme vexations in the conduct of his
daily business as head of the government. Some of them were aggravated by
the loss of a man whom he regarded as one of his two or three most
important friends. In September 1882 the Dean of Windsor died, and in his
death Mr. Gladstone (M36) suffered a heavy blow. To the end he always
spoke of Dr. Wellesley’s friendship, and the value of his sagacity and
honest service, with a warmth by this time given to few.


    _Death of the Dean of Windsor._

    _To Lord Granville, Sept. 18, 1882._—My belief is that he has been
    cognizant of every crown appointment in the church for nearly a
    quarter of a century, and that the whole of his influence has been
    exercised with a deep insight and a large heart for the best
    interests of the crown and the church. If their character during
    this period has been in the main more satisfactory to the general
    mind of the country than at some former periods, it has been in no
    small degree owing to him.

    It has been my duty to recommend I think for fully forty of the
    higher appointments, including twelve which were episcopal. I
    rejoice to say that every one of them has had his approval. But I
    do not scruple to own that he has been in no small degree a help
    and guide to me; and as to the Queen, whose heart I am sure is at
    this moment bleeding, I do not believe she can possibly fill his
    place as a friendly adviser either in ecclesiastical or other
    matters.

    _To the Duchess of Wellington, Sept. 24._—He might, if he had
    chosen, have been on his way to the Archbishopric of Canterbury.
    Ten or eleven years ago, when the present primate was not expected
    to recover, the question of the succession was considered, and I
    had her Majesty’s consent to the idea I have now mentioned. But,
    governed I think by his great modesty, he at once refused.

    _To Mrs. Wellesley, Nov. 19, 1882._—I have remained silent, at
    least to you, on a subject which for no day has been absent from
    my thoughts, because I felt that I could add nothing to your
    consolations and could take away nothing from your grief under
    your great calamity. But the time has perhaps come when I may
    record my sense of a loss of which even a small share is so large.
    The recollections of nearly sixty years are upon my mind, and
    through all that period I have felt more and more the force and
    value of your husband’s simple and noble character. No less have I
    entertained an ever-growing sense of his great sagacity and the
    singularly true and just balance of his mind. We owe much indeed
    to you both for your constantly renewed kindness, but I have
    another debt to acknowledge in the invaluable assistance which he
    afforded me in the discharge of one among the most important and
    most delicate of my duties. This void never can be filled, and it
    helps me in some degree to feel what must be the void to you.
    Certainly he was happy in the enjoyment of love and honour from
    all who knew him; yet these were few in comparison with those whom
    he so wisely and so warmly served without their knowing it; and
    the love and honour paid him, great as they were, could not be as
    great as he deserved. His memory is blessed—may his rest be deep
    and sweet, and may the memory and example of him ever help you in
    your onward pilgrimage.


The same week Dr. Pusey died—a name that filled so large a space in the
religious history of England for some thirty years of the century. Between
Mr. Gladstone and him the old relations of affectionate friendship
subsisted unbroken, notwithstanding the emancipation, as we may call it,
of the statesman from maxims and principles, though not, so far as I know,
from any of the leading dogmatic beliefs cherished by the divine. “I
hope,” he wrote to Phillimore (Sept. 20, 1882), “to attend Dr. Pusey’s
funeral to-morrow at Oxford.... I shall have another mournful office to
discharge in attending the funeral of the Dean of Windsor, more mournful
than the first. Dr. Pusey’s death is the ingathering of a ripe shock, and
I go to his obsequies in token of deep respect and in memory of much
kindness from him early in my life. But the death of Dean Wellesley is to
my wife and me an unexpected and very heavy blow, also to me an
irreparable loss. I had honoured and loved him from Eton days.”

The loss of Dean Wellesley’s counsels was especially felt in
ecclesiastical appointments, and the greatest of these was made necessary
by the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury at the beginning of December.
That the prime minister should regard so sage, conciliatory, and
large-minded a steersman as Dr. Tait with esteem was certain, and their
relations were easy and manly. Still, Tait had been an active liberal when
Mr. Gladstone was a tory, and (M37) from the distant days of the _Tracts
for the Times_, when Tait had stood amongst the foremost in open dislike
of the new tenets, their paths in the region of theology lay wide apart.
“I well remember,” says Dean Lake, “a conversation with Mr. Gladstone on
Tait’s appointment to London in 1856, when he was much annoyed at Tait’s
being preferred to Bishop Wilberforce, and of which he reminded me nearly
thirty years afterwards, at the time of the archbishop’s death, by saying,
‘Ah! I remember you maintaining to me at that time that his σεμνότης and
his judgment would make him a great bishop.’ ”(60) And so, from the point
of ecclesiastical statesmanship, he unquestionably was.

The recommendation of a successor in the historic see of Canterbury, we
may be very certain, was no common event to Mr. Gladstone. Tait on his
deathbed had given his opinion that Dr. Harold Browne, the Bishop of
Winchester, would do more than any other man to keep the peace of the
church. The Queen was strong in the same sense, thinking that the bishop
might resign in a year or two, if he could not do the work. He was now
seventy-one years old, and Mr. Gladstone judged this to be too advanced an
age for the metropolitan throne. He was himself now seventy-three, and
though his sense of humour was not always of the protective kind, he felt
the necessity of some explanatory reason, and with him to seek a plea was
to find one. He wrote to the Bishop of Winchester:—


    ... It may seem strange that I, who in my own person exhibit so
    conspicuously the anomaly of a disparate conjunction between years
    and duties, should be thus forward in interpreting the
    circumstances of another case certainly more mitigated in many
    respects, yet differing from my own case in one vital point, the
    newness of the duties of the English, or rather anglican or
    British, primacy to a diocesan bishop, however able and
    experienced, and the newness of mental attitude and action, which
    they would require. Among the materials of judgment in such an
    instance, it seems right to reckon precedents for what they are
    worth; and I cannot find that from the time of Archbishop Sheldon
    any one has assumed the primacy at so great an age as seventy.
    Juxon, the predecessor of Sheldon, was much older; but his case
    was altogether peculiar. I cannot say how pleasant it would have
    been to me personally, but for the barrier I have named, to mark
    my respect and affection for your lordship by making to you such a
    proposal. What is more important is, that I am directly authorised
    by her Majesty to state that this has been the single impediment
    to her conferring the honour, and imposing the burden, upon you of
    such an offer.(61)


The world made free with the honoured name of Church, the Dean of Saint
Paul’s, and it has constantly been said that he declined the august
preferment to Canterbury on this occasion. In that story there is no
truth. “Formal offer,” the Dean himself wrote to a friend, “there was
none, and could not be, for I had already on another occasion told my mind
to Gladstone, and said that reasons of health, apart from other reasons,
made it impossible for me to think of anything, except a retirement
altogether from office.”(62)

When it was rumoured that Mr. Gladstone intended to recommend Dr. Benson,
then Bishop of Truro, to the archbishopric, a political supporter came to
remonstrate with him. “The Bishop of Truro is a strong tory,” he said,
“but that is not all. He has joined Mr. Raikes’s election committee at
Cambridge; and it was only last week that Raikes made a violent personal
attack on yourself.” “Do you know,” replied Mr. Gladstone, “you have just
supplied me with a strong argument in Dr. Benson’s favour? For if he had
been a worldly man or self-seeker, he would not have done anything so
imprudent.” Perhaps we cannot wonder that whips and wirepullers deemed
this to be somewhat over-ingenious, a Christianity out of season. Even
liberals who took another point of view, still asked themselves how it was
(M38) that when church preferment came his way, the prime minister so
often found the best clergymen in the worst politicians. They should have
remembered that he was of those who believed “no more glorious church in
Christendom to exist than the church of England”; and its official
ordering was in his eyes not any less, even if it was not infinitely more,
important in the highest interests of the nation than the construction of
a cabinet or the appointment of permanent heads of departments. The church
was at this moment, moreover, in one of those angry and perilous crises
that came of the Elizabethan settlement and the Act of Uniformity, and the
anglican revival forty years ago, and all the other things that mark the
arrested progress of the Reformation in England. The anti-ritualist hunt
was up. Civil courts were busy with the conscience and conduct of the
clergy. Harmless but contumacious priests were under lock and key. It
seemed as if more might follow them, or else as if the shock of the great
tractarian catastrophe of the forties might in some new shape recur. To
recommend an archbishop in times like these could to a churchman be no
light responsibility.

With such thoughts in his mind, however we may judge them, it is not
altogether surprising that in seeking an ecclesiastical governor for an
institution to him the most sacred and beloved of all forms of human
association, Mr. Gladstone should have cared very little whether the
personage best fitted in spirituals was quite of the right shade as to
state temporals. The labour that he now expended on finding the best man
is attested by voluminous correspondence. Dean Church, who was perhaps the
most freely consulted by the prime minister, says, “Of one thing I am
quite certain, that never for hundreds of years has so much honest
disinterested pains been taken to fill the primacy—such inquiry and
trouble resolutely followed out to find the really fittest man, apart from
every personal and political consideration, as in this case.”(63)

Another ecclesiastical vacancy that led to volumes of correspondence was
the deanery of Westminster the year before. In the summer of 1881 Dean
Stanley died, and it is interesting to note how easy Mr. Gladstone found
it to do full justice to one for whom as erastian and latitudinarian he
could in opinion have such moderate approval. In offering to the Queen his
“cordial sympathy” for the friend whom she had lost, he told her how early
in his own life and earlier still in the dean’s he had opportunities of
watching the development of his powers, for they had both been educated at
a small school near the home of Mr. Gladstone’s boyhood.(64) He went on to
speak of Stanley’s boundless generosity and brilliant gifts, his genial
and attaching disposition. “There may be,” he said, “and must be much
diversity as to parts of the opinions of Dean Stanley, but he will be long
remembered as one who was capable of the deepest and widest love, and who
received it in return.”

Far away from these regions of what he irreverently called the shovel hat,
about this time Carlyle died (Feb. 4, 1881), a firm sympathiser with Mr.
Gladstone in his views of the unspeakable Turk, but in all else the rather
boisterous preacher of a gospel directly antipathetic. “Carlyle is at
least a great fact in the literature of his time; and has contributed
largely, in some respects too largely, towards forming its characteristic
habits of thought.” So Mr. Gladstone wrote in 1876, in a highly
interesting parallel between Carlyle and Macaulay—both of them honest, he
said, both notwithstanding their honesty partisans; both of them, though
variously, poets using the vehicle of prose; both having the power of
painting portraits extraordinary for vividness and strength; each of them
vastly though diversely powerful in expression, each more powerful in
expression than in thought; neither of them to be resorted to for
comprehensive disquisition, nor for balanced and impartial judgments.(65)
Perhaps it was too early in 1876 to speak of Carlyle as forming the
characteristic habits of thought of his time, but undoubtedly now when he
died, his influence was beginning to tell heavily against the speculative
liberalism that had reigned in England for two generations, with enormous
advantage to the peace, prosperity and power of (M39) the country and the
two generations concerned. Half lights and half truths are, as Mr.
Gladstone implies, the utmost that Carlyle’s works were found to yield in
philosophy and history, but his half lights pointed in the direction in
which men for more material reasons thought that they desired to go.



IV


A reconstruction of the ministry had become necessary by his own
abandonment of the exchequer. For one moment it was thought that Lord
Hartington might become chancellor, leaving room for Lord Derby at the
India office, but Lord Derby was not yet ready to join. In inviting Mr.
Childers to take his place as chancellor of the exchequer, Mr. Gladstone
told him (Dec. 1, 1882): “The basis of my action is not so much a desire
to be relieved from labour, as an anxiety to give the country a much
better finance minister than myself,—one whose eyes will be always ranging
freely and vigilantly over the whole area of the great establishments, the
public service and the laws connected with his office, for the purposes of
improvement and of good husbandry.”

The claim of Sir Charles Dilke to a seat in the cabinet had become
irresistible alike by his good service as undersecretary at the foreign
office, and by his position out of doors; and as the admission of a
radical must be balanced by a whig—so at least it was judged—Mr. Gladstone
succeeded in inducing Lord Derby to join, though he had failed with him
not long before.(66)

Apart from general objections at court, difficulties arose about the
distribution of office. Mr. Chamberlain, who has always had his full share
of the virtues of staunch friendship, agreed to give up to Sir C. Dilke
his own office, which he much liked, and take the duchy, which he did not
like at all. In acknowledging Mr. Chamberlain’s letter (Dec. 14) Mr.
Gladstone wrote to him, “I shall be glad, if I can, to avoid acting upon
it. But I cannot refrain from at once writing a hearty line to acknowledge
the self-sacrificing spirit in which it is written; and which, I am sure,
you will never see cause to repent or change.” This, however, was found to
be no improvement, for Mr. Chamberlain’s language about ransoms to be paid
by possessors of property, the offence of not toiling and spinning, and
the services rendered by courtiers to kings, was not much less repugnant
than rash assertions about the monarch evading the income-tax. All
contention on personal points was a severe trial to Mr. Gladstone, and any
conflict with the wishes of the Queen tried him most of all. One of his
audiences upon these affairs Mr. Gladstone mentions in his diary: “Dec.
11.—Off at 12.45 to Windsor in the frost and fog. Audience of her Majesty
at 3. Most difficult ground, but aided by her beautiful manners, we got
over it better than might have been expected.” The dispute was stubborn,
but like all else it came to an end; colleagues were obliging, holes and
pegs were accommodated, and Lord Derby went to the colonial office, and
Sir C. Dilke to the local government board. An officer of the court, who
was in all the secrets and had foreseen all the difficulties, wrote that
the actual result was due “to the judicious manner in which Mr. Gladstone
managed everything. He argued in a friendly way, urging his views with
moderation, and appealed to the Queen’s sense of courtesy.”

In the course of his correspondence with the Queen, the prime minister
drew her attention (Dec. 18) to the fact that when the cabinet was formed
it included three ministers reputed to belong to the radical section, Mr.
Bright, Mr. Forster, and Mr. Chamberlain, and of these only the last
remained. The addition of Lord Derby was an addition drawn from the other
wing of the party. Another point presented itself. The cabinet originally
contained eight commoners and six peers. There were now seven peers and
six commoners. This made it requisite to add a commoner. As for Mr.
Chamberlain, the minister assured the Queen that though he had not yet,
like Mr. Bright, undergone the mollifying influence of age and experience,
his leanings on foreign policy would be far more acceptable to her Majesty
than those of Mr. Bright, while his views were not known to be any more
democratic in principle. He further expressed his firm opinion (Dec. 22)
(M40) that though Lord Derby might on questions of peace and war be some
shades nearer to the views of Mr. Bright than the other members of the
cabinet, yet he would never go anything like the length of Mr. Bright in
such matters. In fact, said Mr. Gladstone, the cabinet must be deemed a
little less pacific now than it was at its first formation. This at least
was a consolatory reflection.

Ministerial reconstruction is a trying moment for the politician who
thinks himself “not a favourite with his stars,” and is in a hurry for a
box seat before his time has come. Mr. Gladstone was now harassed with
some importunities of this kind.(67) Personal collision with any who stood
in the place of friends was always terrible to him. His gift of sleep
deserted him. “It is disagreeable to talk of oneself,” he wrote to Lord
Granville (Jan. 2, 1883), “when there is so much of more importance to
think and speak about, but I am sorry to say that the incessant strain and
pressure of work, and especially the multiplication of these personal
questions, is overdoing me, and for the first time my power of sleep is
seriously giving way. I dare say it would soon right itself if I could
offer it any other medicine than the medicine in Hood’s ‘Song of the
Shirt.’ ” And the next day he wrote: “Last night I improved, 3-½-hours to
4-½, but this is different from 7 and 8, my uniform standard through
life.” And two days later: “The matter of sleep is with me a very grave
one. I am afraid I may have to go up and consult Clark. My habit has
always been to reckon my hours rather exultingly, and say how little I am
awake. It is not impossible that I may have to ask you to meet me in
London, but I will not do this except in necessity. I think that, to
convey a clear idea, I should say I attach no importance to the broken
sleep itself; it is the state of the brain, tested by my own sensations,
when I begin my work in the morning, which may make me need higher
assurance.” Sir Andrew Clark, “overflowing with kindness, as always,” went
down to Hawarden (Jan. 7), examined, and listened to the tale of heavy
wakeful nights. While treating the case as one of temporary and accidental
derangement, he instantly forbade a projected expedition to Midlothian,
and urged change of air and scene.

This prohibition eased some of the difficulties at Windsor, where
Midlothian was a name of dubious association, and in announcing to the
Queen the abandonment by Dr. Clark’s orders of the intended journey to the
north, Mr. Gladstone wrote (Jan. 8, 1883):—


    In your Majesty’s very kind reference on the 5th to his former
    visits to Midlothian, and to his own observations on the 24th
    April 1880, your Majesty remarked that he had said he did not then
    think himself a responsible person. He prays leave to fill up the
    outline which these words convey by saying he at that time (to the
    best of his recollection) humbly submitted to your Majesty his
    admission that he must personally bear the consequences of all
    that he had said, and that he thought some things suitable to be
    said by a person out of office which could not suitably be said by
    a person in office; also that, as is intimated by your Majesty’s
    words, the responsibilities of the two positions severally were
    different. With respect to the political changes named by your
    Majesty, Mr. Gladstone considers that the very safe measure of
    extending to the counties the franchise enjoyed by the boroughs
    stands in all likelihood for early consideration; but he doubts
    whether there can be any serious dealing of a general character
    with the land laws by the present parliament, and so far as
    Scottish disestablishment is concerned he does not conceive that
    that question has made progress during recent years; and he may
    state that in making arrangements recently for his expected visit
    to Midlothian, he had received various overtures for deputations
    on this subject, which he had been able to put aside.



V


On January 17, along with Mrs. Gladstone, at Charing Cross he said
good-bye to many friends, and at Dover to Lord Granville, and the
following afternoon he found himself at Cannes, the guest of the
Wolvertons at the Château (M41) Scott, “nobly situated, admirably planned,
and the kindness exceeded even the beauty and the comfort.” “Here,” he
says, “we fell in with the foreign hours, the snack early, déjeuner at
noon, dinner at seven, break-up at ten.... I am stunned by this wonderful
place, and so vast a change at a moment’s notice in the conditions of
life.” He read steadily through the _Odyssey_, Dixon’s _History of the
Church of England_, Scherer’s _Miscellanies_, and _The Life of
Clerk-Maxwell_, and every day he had long talks and walks with Lord Acton
on themes personal, political and religious—and we may believe what a
restorative he found in communion with that deep and well-filled mind—that
“most satisfactory mind,” as Mr. Gladstone here one day calls it. He took
drives to gardens that struck him as fairyland. The Prince of Wales paid
him kindly attentions as always. He had long conversations with the Comte
de Paris, and with M. Clémenceau, and with the Duke of Argyll, the oldest
of his surviving friends. In the evening he played whist. Home affairs he
kept at bay pretty successfully, though a speech of Lord Hartington’s
about local government in Ireland drew from him a longish letter to Lord
Granville that the reader, if he likes, will find elsewhere.(68) His
conversation with M. Clémenceau (whom he found “decidedly pleasing”) was
thought indiscreet, but though the most circumspect of men, the buckram of
a spurious discretion was no favourite wear with Mr. Gladstone. As for the
report of his conversation with the French radical, he wrote to Lord
Granville, “It includes much which Clémenceau did not say to me, and omits
much which he did, for our principal conversation was on Egypt, about
which he spoke in a most temperate and reasonable manner.” He read the
“harrowing details” of the terrible scene in the court-house at
Kilmainham, where the murderous Invincibles were found out. “About Carey,”
he said to Lord Granville, “the spectacle is indeed loathsome, but I
cannot doubt that the Irish government are distinctly _right_. In
accepting an approver you do not incite him to do what is in itself wrong;
only his own bad mind can make it wrong to him. The government looks for
the truth. Approvers are, I suppose, for the most part base, but I do not
see how you could act on a distinction of degree between them. Still, one
would have heard the hiss from the dock with sympathy.”

Lord Granville wrote to him (Jan. 31, 1883) that the Queen insisted much
upon his diminishing the amount of labour thrown upon him, and expressed
her opinion that his acceptance of a peerage would relieve him of the
heavy strain. Lord Granville told her that personally he should be
delighted to see him in the Lords, but that he had great doubts whether
Mr. Gladstone would be willing. From Cannes Mr. Gladstone replied (Feb.
3):—


    As to removal into the House of Lords, I think the reasons against
    it of general application are conclusive. At least I cannot see my
    way in regard to them. But at any rate it is obvious that such a
    step is quite inapplicable to the circumstances created by the
    present difficulty. It is really most kind of the Queen to testify
    such an interest, and the question is how to answer her. You would
    do this better and perhaps more easily than I.


Perhaps he remembered the case of Pulteney and of the Great Commoner.

He was not without remorse at the thought of his colleagues in harness
while he was lotus-eating. On the day before the opening of the session he
writes, “I feel dual: I am at Cannes, and in Downing Street eating my
parliamentary dinner.” By February 21 he was able to write to Lord
Granville:—


    As regards my health there is no excuse. It has got better and
    better as I have stayed on, and is now, I think, on a higher level
    than for a long time past. My sleep, for example, is now about as
    good as it can be, and far better than it was during the autumn
    sittings, _after_ which it got so bad. The pleasure I have had in
    staying does not make an argument at all; it is a mere expression
    or anticipation of my desire to be turned out to grass for
    good....


At last the end of the holiday came. “I part from Cannes with a heavy
heart,” he records on Feb. 26:—


    Read the _Iliad_, copiously. Off by the 12.30 train. We exchanged
    bright sun, splendid views, and a little dust at the beginning of
    our journey, for frost and fog, which however hid no scenery, at
    the end. _27th, Tuesday._—Reached Paris at 8, and drove to the
    Embassy, where we had a most kind reception [from Lord Lyons].
    Wrote to Lord Granville, Lord Spencer, Sir W. Harcourt. Went with
    Lord L. to see M. Grévy; also Challemel-Lacour in his most
    palatial abode. Looked about among the shops; and at the sad face
    of the Tuileries. An embassy party to dinner; excellent company.

    _To Lord Granville._

    _Feb. 27th._—I have been with Lord Lyons to see Grévy and
    Challemel-Lacour. Grevy’s conversation consisted of civilities and
    a mournful lecture on the political history of France, with many
    compliments to the superiority of England. Challemel thought the
    burdens of public life intolerable and greater here than in
    England, which is rather strong. Neither made the smallest
    allusion to present questions, and it was none of my business to
    introduce them....


After three days of bookstalls, ivory-hunting, and conversation, by the
evening of March 2 the travellers were once more after a bright day and
rapid passage safe in Downing Street.

Shortly after their return from the south of France the Gladstones paid a
visit to the Prince and Princess of Wales:—


    _March 30, 1883._—Off at 11.30 to Sandringham. Reception kinder if
    possible even than heretofore. Wrote.... Read and worked on London
    municipality. _31, Saturday_.—Wrote. Root-cut a small tree in the
    forenoon; then measured oaks in the park; one of 30 feet. In the
    afternoon we drove to Houghton, a stately house and place, but
    woe-begone. Conversation with Archbishop of Canterbury, Prince of
    Wales and others. Read ... _Life of Hatherley_, Law’s account of
    Craig. _April 1._—Sandringham church, morning. West Newton,
    evening. Good services and sermons from the archbishop. The Prince
    bade me read the lessons. Much conversation with the archbishop,
    also Duke of Cambridge. Read _Nineteenth Century_ on Revised
    Version; Manning on Education; _Life of Hatherley_; Craig’s
    _Catechism_. Wrote, etc. 2.—Off at 11. D. Street 3.15. Wrote to
    the Queen. Long conversation with the archbishop in the train.


Here a short letter or two may find a place:—


    _To Lady Jessel on her husband’s death._

    _March 30._—Though I am reluctant to intrude upon your sorrow
    still so fresh, and while I beg of you on no account to
    acknowledge this note, I cannot refrain from writing to assure you
    not only of my sympathy with your grief, but of my profound sense
    of the loss which the country and its judiciary have sustained by
    the death of your distinguished husband. From the time of his
    first entrance into parliament I followed his legal expositions
    with an ignorant but fervid admiration, and could not help placing
    him in the first rank, a rank held by few, of the many able and
    powerful lawyers whom during half a century I have known and heard
    in parliament. When I came to know him as a colleague, I found
    reason to admire no less sincerely his superiority to
    considerations of pecuniary interest, his strong and tenacious
    sense of the dignity of his office, and his thoroughly frank,
    resolute, and manly character. These few words, if they be a
    feeble, yet I assure you are also a genuine, tribute to a memory
    which I trust will long be cherished. Earnestly anxious that you
    may have every consolation in your heavy bereavement.

    _To Cardinal Manning._

    _April 19._—I thank you much for your kind note, though I am sorry
    to have given you the trouble of writing it. Both of us have much
    to be thankful for in the way of health, but I should have, hoped
    that your extremely spare living would have saved you from the
    action of anything like gouty tendencies. As for myself, I can in
    no way understand how it is that for a full half century I have
    been permitted and enabled to resist a pressure of special
    liabilities attaching to my path of life, to which so many have
    given way. I am left as a solitary, surviving all his compeers.
    But I trust it may not be long ere I escape into some position
    better suited to declining years.

    _To Sir W. V. Harcourt._

    _April 27._—A separate line to thank you for your more than kind
    words about my rather Alexandrine speech last night; as to which I
    can only admit that it contained one fine passage—six lines in
    length.(69) Your “instincts” of kindliness in all personal matters
    are known to all the world. I should be glad, on selfish grounds,
    if I could feel sure that they had not a little warped your
    judicial faculty for the moment. But this misgiving abates nothing
    from my grateful acknowledgment.


An application was made to him on behalf of a member of the opposite party
for a political pension, and here is his reply, to which it may be added
that ten years later he had come rather strongly to the view that
political pensions should be abolished, and he was only deterred from
trying to carry out his view by the reminder from younger ministers, not
themselves applicants nor ever likely to be, that it would hardly be a
gracious thing to cut off benefactions at a time when the bestowal of them
was passing away from him, though he had used them freely while that
bestowal was within his reach.


    _Political Pensions._

    _July 4, 1883._—You are probably aware that during the fifty years
    which have passed since the system of political and civil pensions
    was essentially remodelled, no political pension has been granted
    by any minister except to one of those with whom he stood on terms
    of general confidence and co-operation. It is needless to refer to
    older practice.

    This is not to be accounted for by the fact that after meeting the
    just claims of political adherents, there has been nothing left to
    bestow. For, although it has happened that the list of pensions of
    the first class has usually been full, it has not been so with
    political pensions of the other classes, which have, I think,
    rarely if ever been granted to the fullest extent that the Acts
    have allowed. At the present time, out of twelve pensions which
    may legally be conferred, only seven have been actually given, if
    I reckon rightly. I do not think that this state of facts can have
    been due to the absence of cases entitled to consideration, and I
    am quite certain that it is not to be accounted for by what are
    commonly termed party motives. It was obvious to me that I could
    not create a precedent of deviation from a course undeviatingly
    pursued by my predecessors of all parties, without satisfying
    myself that a new form of proceeding would be reasonable and safe.
    The examination of private circumstances, such as I consider the
    Act to require, is from its own nature difficult and invidious:
    but the examination of competing cases in the ex-official corps is
    a function that could not, I think, be discharged with the
    necessary combination of free responsible action, and of exemption
    from offence and suspicion. Such cases plainly may occur.(70)

    _To H.R.H. the Prince of Wales._

    _August 14th._—I am much shocked at an omission which I made last
    night in failing to ask your royal Highness’s leave to be the
    first to quit Lord Alcester’s agreeable party, in order that I
    might attend to my duties in the House of Commons. In my early
    days not only did the whole company remain united, if a member of
    the royal family were present, until the exalted personage had
    departed; but I well recollect the application of the same rule in
    the case of the Archbishop (Howley) of Canterbury. I am sorry to
    say that I reached the House of Commons in time to hear some
    outrageous speeches from the ultra Irish members. I will not say
    that they were meant to encourage crime, but they tended directly
    to teach the Irish people to withhold their confidence from the
    law and its administrators; and they seemed to exhibit Lord
    Spencer as the enemy to the mass of the community—a sad and
    disgraceful fact, though I need not qualify what I told your royal
    Highness, that they had for some time past not been guilty of
    obstruction.


Even in pieces that were in their nature more or less official, he touched
the occasions of life by a note that was not merely official, or was
official in its best form. To Mrs. Garfield he wrote (July 21, 1881):—


    You will, I am sure, excuse me, though a personal stranger, for
    addressing you by letter, to convey to you the assurance of my own
    feelings and those of my countrymen on the occasion of the late
    horrible attempt to murder the President of the United States, in
    a form more palpable at least than that of messages conveyed by
    telegraph. Those feelings have been feelings in the first instance
    of sympathy, and afterwards of joy and thankfulness, almost
    comparable, and I venture to say only second to the strong
    emotions of the great nation, of which he is the appointed head.
    Individually I have, let me beg you to believe, had my full share
    in the sentiments which have possessed the British nation. They
    have been prompted and quickened largely by what I venture to
    think is the ever-growing sense of harmony and mutual respect and
    affection between the two countries, and of a relationship which
    from year to year becomes more and more a practical bond of union
    between us. But they have also drawn much of their strength from a
    cordial admiration of the simple heroism which has marked the
    personal conduct of the President, for we have not yet wholly lost
    the capacity of appreciating such an example of Christian faith
    and manly fortitude. This exemplary picture has been made complete
    by your own contribution to its noble and touching features, on
    which I only forbear to dwell because I am directly addressing
    you.


Under all the conventional solemnities in Mr. Gladstone on such occasions,
we are conscious of a sincere feeling that they were in real relation to
human life and all its chances and changes.




Chapter VII. Colleagues—Northern Cruise—Egypt. (1883)


    Parran faville della sua virtute
    In non curar d’argento nè d’affanni.

    —_Paradiso_, xvii. 83.

    Sparks of his worth shall show in the little heed he gives either
    to riches or to heavy toils.



I


The session of 1883 was marked by one legislative performance of the first
order, the bill devised against corrupt practices at elections. This
invaluable measure was worked through the House of Commons mainly by Sir
Henry James, the attorney general, whose skill and temper in a business
that was made none the easier by the fact of every man in the House
supposing himself to understand the subject, excited Mr. Gladstone’s
cordial admiration; it strengthened that peculiarly warm regard in which
he held Sir Henry, not only now but even when the evil days of political
severance came. The prime minister, though assiduous, as he always was, in
the discharge of those routine and secondary duties which can never be
neglected without damage to the House, had, for the first session in his
career as head of a government, no burden in the shaping of a great bill.
He insisted, in spite of some opposition in the cabinet, on accepting a
motion pledging parliament to economy (April 3). In a debate on the Congo,
he was taken by some to have gone near to giving up the treaty-making
power of the crown. He had to face more than one of those emergencies that
were naturally common for the leader of a party with a zealous radical
wing represented in his cabinet, and in some measure these occasions beset
Mr. Gladstone from 1869 (M42) onwards. His loyalty and kindness to
colleagues who got themselves and him into scrapes by imprudent speeches,
and his activity and resource in inventing ways out of scrapes, were
always unfailing. Often the difficulty was with the Queen, sometimes with
the House of Lords, occasionally with the Irish members. Birmingham, for
instance, held a grand celebration (June 13) on the twenty-fifth
anniversary of Mr. Bright’s connection as its representative. Mr. Bright
used strong language about “Irish rebels,” and then learned that he would
be called to account. He consulted Mr. Gladstone, and from him received a
reply that exhibits the use of logic as applied to inconvenient displays
of the sister art of rhetoric:—


    _To Mr. Bright._

    _June 15, 1883._—I have received your note, and I am extremely
    sorry either that you should have personal trouble after your
    great exertions, or that anything should occur to cloud the
    brilliancy or mar the satisfaction of your recent celebration in
    Birmingham. I have looked at the extract from your speech, which
    is to be alleged as the _corpus delicti_, with a jealous eye. It
    seems well to be prepared for the worst. The points are, I think,
    _three_:—1. “Not a few” tories are guilty of determined
    obstruction. I cannot conceive it possible that this can be deemed
    a breach of privilege. 2. These members are found ’in alliance’
    with the Irish party. Alliance is often predicated by those who
    disapprove, upon the ground that certain persons have been voting
    together. This I think can hardly be a breach of privilege even in
    cases where it may be disputable or untrue.

    But then: 3. This Irish party are “rebels” whose oath of
    allegiance is broken by association with the enemies of the
    country. Whether these allegations are true or not, the following
    questions arise:—(a) Can they be proved; (b) Are they allegations
    which would be allowed in debate? I suppose you would agree with
    me that they cannot be proved; and I doubt whether they would be
    allowed in debate. The question whether they are a breach of
    privilege is for the House; but the Speaker would have to say, if
    called upon, whether they were allowable in debate. My impression
    is that he would say no; and I think you would not wish to use
    elsewhere expressions that you could not repeat in the House of
    Commons.


The Speaker has a jotting in his diary which may end this case of a great
man’s excess:—


    _June 18._—Exciting sitting. Bright’s language about Irish rebels.
    Certainly his language was very strong and quite inadmissible if
    spoken within the House. In conversation with Northcote I
    deprecated the taking notice of language outside the House, though
    I could not deny that the House, if it thought fit, might regard
    the words as a breach of privilege. But Northcote was no doubt
    urged by his friends.


Mr. Chamberlain’s was a heavier business, and led to much correspondence
and difficult conversation in high places. A little of it, containing
general principles, will probably suffice here:—


    _To Sir Henry Ponsonby._

    _June 22.—Re_ Chamberlain’s speech. I am sorry to say I had not
    read the report until I was warned by your letters to Granville
    and to Hamilton, for my sight does not allow me to read largely
    the small type of newspapers. I have now read it, and I must at
    once say with deep regret. We had done our best to keep the Bright
    celebration in harmony with the general tone of opinion by the
    mission which Granville kindly undertook. I am the more sorry
    about this speech, because Chamberlain has this year in parliament
    shown both tact and talent in the management of questions not
    polemical, such as the bankruptcy bill. The speech is open to
    exception from three points of view, as I think—first in relation
    to Bright, secondly in relation to the cabinet, thirdly and most
    especially in relation to the crown, to which the speech did not
    indicate the consciousness of his holding any special relation.

    _June. 26._—It appeared to me in considering the case of Mr.
    Chamberlain’s speech that by far the best correction would be
    found, if a natural opportunity should offer, in a speech
    differently coloured from himself. I found also that he was
    engaged to preside on Saturday next at the dinner of the Cobden
    Club. I addressed myself therefore to this point, and Mr.
    Chamberlain will revert, on that occasion, to the same line of
    thought.... But, like Granville, I consider that the offence does
    not consist in holding certain opinions, of which in my judgment
    the political force and effect are greatly exaggerated, but in the
    attitude assumed, and the tone and colour given to the speech.

    _To Lord Granville._

    _July 1, 1883._—I have read with care Chamberlain’s speech of last
    night [at the Cobden Club dinner].... Am I right or wrong in
    understanding the speech as follows? He admits without stint that
    in a cabinet concessions may be made as to action, but he seems to
    claim an unlimited liberty of speech. Now I should be as far as
    possible from asserting that under all circumstances speech must
    be confined within the exact limits to which action is tied down.
    But I think the dignity and authority, not to say the honour and
    integrity, of government require that the liberty of speaking
    beyond those limits should be exercised sparingly, reluctantly,
    and with much modesty and reserve. Whereas Chamberlain’s
    Birmingham speech exceeded it largely, gratuitously, and with a
    total absence of recognition of the fact that he was not an
    individual but a member of a body. And the claim made last night
    to liberty of speech must be read with the practical illustration
    afforded by the Birmingham discourse, which evidently now stands
    as an instance, a sort of moral instance, of the mode in which
    liberty of speech is to be reconciled with limitation of
    action.(71)

    In order to test the question, must we not bear in mind that the
    liberty claimed in one wing of a cabinet may also be claimed in
    another, and that while one minister says I support this measure,
    though it does not go far enough, another may just as lawfully say
    I support this measure, though it goes too far? For example,
    Argyll agreed to the Disturbance Compensation bill in 1880, mainly
    out of regard to his colleagues and their authority. What if he
    had used in the House of Lords language like that I have just
    supposed? Every extravagance of this kind puts weapons into the
    hands of opponents, and weakens the authority of government, which
    is hardly ever too strong, and is often too weak already.


In a letter written some years before when he was leader of the House, Mr.
Gladstone on the subject of the internal discipline of a ministerial corps
told one, who was at that time and now his colleague, a little story:—


    As the subject is one of interest, perhaps you will let me mention
    the incident which first obliged me to reflect upon it. Nearly
    thirty years ago, my leader, Sir R. Peel, agreed in the Irish
    Tithes bills to give 25 per cent. of the tithe to the landlord in
    return for that “Commutation.” Thinking this too much (you see
    that twist was then already in me), I happened to say so in a
    private letter to an Irish clergyman. Very shortly after I had a
    note from Peel, which inclosed one from Shaw, his head man in
    Ireland, complaining of my letter as making his work impossible if
    such things were allowed to go on. Sir R. Peel indorsed the
    remonstrance, and I had to sing small. The discipline was very
    tight in those days (and we were in opposition, not in
    government). But it worked well on the whole, and I must say it
    was accompanied on Sir R. Peel’s part with a most rigid regard to
    rights of all kinds within the official or quasi-official corps,
    which has somewhat declined in more recent times.


A minister had made some reference in a public speech, to what happened in
the cabinet of which he was a member. “I am sure it cannot have occurred
to you,” Mr. Gladstone wrote, “that the cabinet is the operative part of
the privy council, that the privy councillor’s oath is applicable to its
proceedings, that this is a very high obligation, and that no one can
dispense with it except the Queen. I may add that I believe no one is
entitled even to make a note of the proceedings except the prime minister,
who has to report its proceedings on every occasion of its meeting to the
Queen, and who must by a few scraps assist his memory.”

By the end of the session, although its labours had not (M43) been on the
level of either 1881 or 1882, Mr. Gladstone was somewhat strained. On Aug.
22 he writes to Mrs. Gladstone at Hawarden: “Yesterday at 4½ I entered the
House hoping to get out soon and write you a letter, when the Speaker told
me Northcote was going to raise a debate on the Appropriation bill, and I
had to wait, listen, and then to speak for more than an hour, which tired
me a good deal, finding me weak after sitting till 2.30 the night before,
and a long cabinet in the interval. Rough work for 73!”



II


In September he took a holiday in a shape that, though he was no hearty
sailor, was always a pleasure and a relief to him. Three letters to the
Queen tell the story, and give a glimpse of court punctilio:—


    _On the North Sea, Sept. 15. Posted at Copenhagen, Sept. 16,
    1883._—Mr. Gladstone presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and
    has to offer his humble apology for not having sought from your
    Majesty the usual gracious permission before setting foot on a
    foreign shore. He embarked on the 8th in a steamer of the Castles
    Company under the auspices of Sir Donald Currie, with no more
    ambitious expectation than that of a cruise among the Western
    Isles. But the extraordinary solidity, so to call it, of a very
    fine ship (the _Pembroke Castle_, 4000 tons, 410 feet long) on the
    water, rendering her in no small degree independent of weather,
    encouraged his fellow-voyagers, and even himself, though a most
    indifferent sailor, to extend their views, and the vessel is now
    on the North Sea running over to Christiansand in Norway, from
    whence it is proposed to go to Copenhagen, with the expectation,
    however, of again touching British soil in the middle of next
    week. Mr. Gladstone humbly trusts that, under these circumstances,
    his omission may be excused.

    Mr. Tennyson, who is one of the party, is an excellent sailor, and
    seems to enjoy himself much in the floating castle, as it may be
    termed in a wider sense than that of its appellation on the
    register. The weather has been variable with a heavy roll from the
    Atlantic at the points not sheltered; but the stormy North Sea has
    on the whole behaved extremely well as regards its two besetting
    liabilities to storm and fog.

    _Ship __“__Pembroke Castle,__”__ Mouth of the Thames. Sept. 20,
    1883._—Mr. Gladstone with his humble duty reports to your Majesty
    his return this evening from Copenhagen to London. The passage was
    very rapid, and the weather favourable. He had the honour, with
    his wife and daughter and other companions of his voyage, to
    receive an invitation to dine at Fredensborg on Monday. He found
    there the entire circle of illustrious personages who have been
    gathered for some time in a family party, with a very few
    exceptions. The singularly domestic character of this remarkable
    assemblage, and the affectionate intimacy which appeared to
    pervade it, made an impression upon him not less deep than the
    demeanour of all its members, which was so kindly and so simple,
    that even the word condescending could hardly be applied to it.
    Nor must Mr. Gladstone allow himself to omit another striking
    feature of the remarkable picture, in the unrestrained and
    unbounded happiness of the royal children, nineteen in number, who
    appeared like a single family reared under a single roof.

    [_The royal party, forty in number, visit the ship._]

    The Emperor of Russia proposed the health of your Majesty. Mr.
    Gladstone by arrangement with your Majesty’s minister at this
    court, Mr. Vivian, proposed the health of the King and Queen of
    Denmark, and the Emperor and Empress of Russia, and the King and
    Queen of the Hellenes. The King of Denmark did Mr. Gladstone the
    honour to propose his health; and Mr. Gladstone in acknowledging
    this toast, thought he could not do otherwise, though no speeches
    had been made, than express the friendly feeling of Great Britain
    towards Denmark, and the satisfaction with which the British
    people recognised the tie of race which unites them with the
    inhabitants of the Scandinavian countries. Perhaps the most
    vigorous and remarkable portion of the British nation had, Mr.
    Gladstone said, been drawn from these countries. After luncheon,
    the senior imperial and royal personages crowded together into a
    small cabin on the deck to hear Mr. Tennyson read two of his
    poems, several of the younger branches clustering round the doors.
    Between 2 and 3, the illustrious party left the _Pembroke Castle_,
    and in the midst of an animated scene, went on board the King of
    Denmark’s yacht, which steamed towards Elsinore.

    Mr. Gladstone was much pleased to observe that the Emperor of
    Russia appeared to be entirely released from the immediate
    pressure of his anxieties supposed to weigh much upon his mind.
    The Empress of Russia has the genial and gracious manners which on
    this, and on every occasion, mark H.R.H. the Princess of Wales.

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

    _Sept. 22, 1883._—Mr. Gladstone presents his humble duty to your
    Majesty, and has to acknowledge your Majesty’s letter of the 20th
    “giving him full credit for not having reflected at the time” when
    he decided, as your Majesty believes, to extend his recent cruise
    to Norway and Denmark.

    He may humbly state that he had no desire or idea beyond a glance,
    if only for a few hours, at a little of the fine and peculiar
    scenery of Norway. But he is also responsible for having
    acquiesced in the proposal (which originated with Mr. Tennyson) to
    spend a day at Copenhagen, where he happens to have some
    associations of literary interest; for having accepted an
    unexpected invitation to dine with the king some thirty miles off;
    and for having promoted the execution of a wish, again
    unexpectedly communicated to him, that a visit of the illustrious
    party to the _Pembroke Castle_ should be arranged. Mr. Gladstone
    ought probably to have foreseen all these things. With respect to
    the construction put upon his act abroad, Mr. Gladstone ought
    again, perhaps, to have foreseen that, in countries habituated to
    more important personal meetings, which are uniformly declared to
    be held in the interests of general peace, his momentary and
    unpremeditated contact with the sovereigns at Fredensborg would be
    denounced, or suspected of a mischievous design. He has, however,
    some consolation in finding that, in England at least, such a
    suspicion appears to have been confined to two secondary journals,
    neither of which has ever found (so far as he is aware) in any act
    of his anything but guilt and folly.

    Thus adopting, to a great extent, your Majesty’s view, Mr.
    Gladstone can confirm your Majesty’s belief that (with the
    exception of a sentence addressed by him to the King of the
    Hellenes singly respecting Bulgaria), there was on all hands an
    absolute silence in regard to public affairs....


In proposing at Kirkwall the health of the poet who was his fellow-guest
on the cruise, Mr. Gladstone let fall a hint—a significant and perhaps a
just one—on the comparative place of politics and letters, the difference
between the statesman and orator and the poet. “Mr. Tennyson’s life and
labour,” he said, “correspond in point of time as nearly as possible to my
own; but he has worked in a higher field, and his work will be more
durable. We public men play a part which places us much in view of our
countrymen, but the words which we speak have wings and fly away and
disappear.... But the Poet Laureate has written his own song on the hearts
of his countrymen that can never die.”



III


It was said in 1884 that the organisation of Egypt was a subject, whether
regarded from the English or the European point of view, that was probably
more complicated and more fraught with possible dangers in the future,
than any question of foreign policy with which England had had to deal for
the last fifty years or more.

The arguments against prolonged English occupation were tolerably clear.
It would freeze all cordiality between ourselves and the French. It would
make us a Mediterranean military power. In case of war, the necessity of
holding Egypt would weaken us. In diplomacy it would expose fresh surface
to new and hostile combinations. Yet, giving their full weight to every
one of these considerations, a British statesman was confronted by one of
those intractable dilemmas that make up the material of a good half of
human history. The Khedive could not stand by himself. The Turk would not,
and ought not to be endured for his protector. Some other European power
would step in and block the English road. Would common prudence in such a
case suffer England to acquiesce and stand aside? Did not subsisting
obligations also confirm the precepts of policy and self-interest? In many
minds this reasoning was clenched and clamped by the sacrifices that
England had made when she took, and took alone, the initial military step.

Egyptian affairs were one of the heaviest loads that (M44) weighed upon
Mr. Gladstone during the whole of 1884. One day in the autumn of this
year, towards the end of the business before the cabinet, a minister asked
if there was anything else. “No,” said Mr. Gladstone with sombre irony as
he gathered up his papers, “we have done our Egyptian business, and we are
an Egyptian government.” His general position was sketched in a letter to
Lord Granville (Mar. 22, 1884): “In regard to the Egyptian question
proper, I am conscious of being moved by three powerful considerations.
(1) Respect for European law, and for the peace of eastern Europe,
essentially connected with its observance. (2) The just claims of the
Khedive, who has given us no case against him, and his people as connected
with him. (3) Indisposition to extend the responsibilities of this
country. On the first two I feel very stiff. On the third I should have
due regard to my personal condition as a vanishing quantity.”

The question of the continuance of the old dual control by England and
France was raised almost immediately after the English occupation began,
but English opinion supported or stimulated the cabinet in refusing to
restore a form of co-operation that had worked well originally in the
hands of Baring and de Blignières, but had subsequently betrayed its
inherent weakness. France resumed what is diplomatically styled liberty of
action in Egypt; and many months were passed in negotiations, the most
entangled in which a British government was ever engaged. Why did not
England, impatient critics of Mr. Gladstone and his cabinet inquire, at
once formally proclaim a protectorate? Because it would have been a direct
breach of her moral obligations of good faith to Europe. These were
undisputed and indisputable. It would have brought her within instant
reach of a possible war with France, for which the sinister and interested
approval of Germany would have been small compensation.

The issue lay between annexation and withdrawal,—annexation to be veiled
and indirect, withdrawal to be cautious and conditional. No member of the
cabinet at this time seems to have listened with any favour whatever to
the mention of annexation. Apart from other objections, it would
undeniably have been a flagrant breach of solemn international
engagements. The cabinet was pledged up to the lips to withdrawal, and
when Lord Hartington talked to the House of Commons of the last British
soldier quitting Egypt in a few months, nobody ever doubted then or since
that he was declaring the sincere intention of the cabinet. Nor was any
doubt possible that the intention of the cabinet entirely coincided at
that time with the opinion and wishes of the general public. The
operations in Egypt had not been popular,(72) and the national temper was
still as hostile to all expansion as when it cast out Lord Beaconsfield.
Withdrawal, however, was beset with inextricable difficulties. Either
withdrawal or annexation would have simplified the position and brought
its own advantages. Neither was possible. The British government after
Tel-el-Kebir vainly strove to steer a course that would combine the
advantages of both. Say what they would, military occupation was taken to
make them responsible for everything that happened in Egypt. This
encouraged the view that they should give orders to Egypt, and make Egypt
obey. But then direct and continuous interference with the Egyptian
administration was advance in a path that could only end in annexation. To
govern Egypt from London through a native ministry, was in fact nothing
but annexation, and annexation in its clumsiest and most troublesome
shape. Such a policy was least of all to be reconciled with the avowed
policy of withdrawal. To treat native ministers as mere ciphers and
puppets, and then to hope to leave them at the end with authority enough
to govern the country by themselves, was pure delusion.

So much for our relations with Egypt internally. Then came Europe and the
Powers, and the regulation of a financial situation of indescribable
complexity. “I sometimes fear,” Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Granville
(Dec. 8, (M45) 1884), “that some of the foreign governments have the same
notion of me that Nicholas was supposed to have of Lord Aberdeen. But
there is no one in the cabinet less disposed than I am to knuckle down to
them in this Egyptian matter, about which they, except Italy, behave so
ill, some of them without excuse.” “As to Bismarck,” he said, “it is a
case of sheer audacity, of which he has an unbounded stock.” Two months
before he had complained to Lord Granville of the same powerful personage:
“Ought not some notice to be taken of Bismarck’s impudent reference to the
English exchequer? Ought you to have such a remark in your possession
without protest? He coolly assumes in effect that we are responsible for
all the financial wants and occasions of Egypt.”

The sensible reader would resist any attempt to drag him into the
Serbonian bog of Egyptian finance. Nor need I describe either the
protracted conference of the European Powers, or the mission of Lord
Northbrook. To this able colleague, Mr. Gladstone wrote on the eve of his
departure (Aug. 29, 1884):—


    I cannot let you quit our shores without a word of valediction.
    Your colleagues are too deeply interested to be impartial judges
    of your mission. But they certainly cannot be mistaken in their
    appreciation of the generosity and courage which could alone have
    induced you to undertake it. Our task in Egypt generally may not
    unfairly be called an impossible task, and with the impossible no
    man can successfully contend. But we are well satisfied that
    whatever is possible, you will achieve; whatever judgment,
    experience, firmness, gentleness can do, will be done. Our
    expectations from the nature of the case must be moderate; but be
    assured, they will not be the measure of our gratitude. All good
    go with you.


Lord Northbrook’s report when in due time it came, engaged the prime
minister’s anxious consideration, but it could not be carried further.
What the Powers might agree to, parliament would not look at. The
situation was one of the utmost delicacy and danger, as anybody who is
aware of the diplomatic embarrassments of it knows. An agreement with
France about the Suez Canal came to nothing. A conference upon finance
came to nothing. Bismarck was out of humour with England, partly from his
dislike of certain exalted English personages and influences at his own
court, partly because it suited him that France and England should be bad
friends, partly because, as he complained, whenever he tried to found a
colony, we closed in upon him. He preached a sermon on _do ut des_, and
while scouting the idea of any real differences with this country, he
hinted that if we could not accommodate him in colonial questions, he
might not find it in his power to accommodate us in European questions.
Mr. Gladstone declared for treating every German claim in an equitable
spirit, but said we had our own colonial communities to consider.

In March 1885, after negotiations that threatened to be endless, the
London Convention was signed and the riddle of the financial sphinx was
solved. This made possible the coming years of beneficent reform. The
wonder is, says a competent observer, how in view of the indifference of
most of the Powers to the welfare of Egypt and the bitter annoyance of
France at our position in that country, the English government ever
succeeded in inducing all the parties concerned to agree to so reasonable
an arrangement.(73)

Meanwhile, as we shall see all too soon, the question of Egypt proper, as
it was then called, had brought up the question of the Soudan, and with it
an incident that made what Mr. Gladstone called “the blackest day since
the Phœnix Park.” In 1884 the government still seemed prosperous. The
ordinary human tendency to croak never dies, especially in the politics of
party. Men talked of humiliation abroad, ruin at home, agricultural
interests doomed, trade at a standstill—calamities all obviously due to a
government without spirit, and a majority with no independence. But then
humiliation, to be sure, only meant jealousy in other countries because we
declined to put ourselves in the wrong, and to be hoodwinked into unwise
alliances. Ruin only meant reform without revolution. Doom meant an
inappreciable falling off in the vast volume of our trade.




Chapter VIII. Reform. (1884)


    Decision by majorities is as much an expedient as lighting by gas.
    In adopting it as a rule, we are not realising perfection, but
    bowing to an imperfection. It has the great merit of avoiding, and
    that by a test perfectly definite, the last resort to violence;
    and of making force itself the servant instead of the master of
    authority. But our country rejoices in the belief that she does
    not decide all things by majorities.—GLADSTONE (1858).



I


“The word procedure,” said Mr. Gladstone to a club of young political
missionaries in 1884, “has in it something homely, and it is difficult for
any one, except those who pass their lives within the walls of parliament,
to understand how vital and urgent a truth it is, that there is no more
urgent demand, there is no aim or purpose more absolutely essential to the
future victories and the future efficiency of the House of Commons, than
that it should effect, with the support of the nation—for it can be
effected in no other way—some great reform in the matter of its
procedure.” He spoke further of the “absolute and daily-growing necessity
of what I will describe as a great internal reform of the House of
Commons, quite distinct from that reform beyond its doors on which our
hearts are at present especially set.” Reform from within and reform from
without were the two tasks, neither of them other than difficult in
themselves and both made supremely difficult by the extraordinary spirit
of faction at that time animating the minority. The internal reform had
been made necessary, as Mr. Gladstone expressed it, by systematised
obstruction, based upon the abuse of ancient and generous rules, under
which system the House of Commons “becomes more and more the slave of some
of the poorest and most insignificant among its members.” Forty years
before he told the provost of Oriel, “The forms of parliament are little
more than a mature expression of the principles of justice in their
application to the proceedings of deliberative bodies, having it for their
object to secure freedom and reflection, and well fitted to attain that
object.” These high ideals had been gradually lowered, for Mr. Parnell had
found out that the rules which had for their object the security of
freedom and reflection, could be still more effectually wrested to objects
the very opposite.

In Mr. Gladstone’s first session (1833) 395 members (the speaker excluded)
spoke, and the total number of speeches was 5765. Fifty years later, in
the session of 1883, the total number of speeches had risen to 21,160. The
remedies proposed from time to time in this parliament by Mr. Gladstone
were various, and were the occasion of many fierce and stubborn conflicts.
But the subject is in the highest degree technical, and only intelligible
to those who, as Mr. Gladstone said, “pass their lives within the walls of
parliament”—perhaps not by any means to all even of them. His papers
contain nothing of interest or novelty upon the question either of
devolution or of the compulsory stoppage of debate. We may as well,
therefore, leave it alone, only observing that the necessity for the
closure was probably the most unpalatable of all the changes forced on Mr.
Gladstone by change in social and political circumstance. To leave the
subject alone is not to ignore its extreme importance, either in the
effect of revolution in procedure upon the character of the House, and its
power of despatching and controlling national business; or as an
indication that the old order was yielding in the political sphere as
everywhere else to the conditions of a new time.



II


The question of extending to householders in the country the franchise
that in 1867 had been conferred on householders in boroughs, had been
first pressed with eloquence and resolution by Mr. Trevelyan. In 1876 he
introduced two resolutions, one for extended franchise, the other for a
new (M46) arrangement of seats, made necessary by the creation of the new
voters. In a tory parliament he had, of course, no chance. Mr. Gladstone,
not naturally any more ardent for change in political machinery than Burke
or Canning had been, was in no hurry about it, but was well aware that the
triumphant parliament of 1880 could not be allowed to expire without the
effective adoption by the government of proposals in principle such as
those made by Mr. Trevelyan in 1876. One wing of the cabinet hung back.
Mr. Gladstone himself, reading the signs in the political skies, felt that
the hour had struck; the cabinet followed, and the bill was framed. Never,
said Mr. Gladstone, was a bill so large in respect of the numbers to have
votes; so innocent in point of principle, for it raised no new questions
and sprang from no new principles. It went, he contended and most truly
contended, to the extreme of consideration for opponents, and avoided
several points that had especial attractions for friends. So likewise, the
general principles on which redistribution of seats would be governed,
were admittedly framed in a conservative spirit.

The comparative magnitude of the operation was thus described by Mr.
Gladstone (Feb. 28, 1884):—


    In 1832 there was passed what was considered a Magna Charta of
    British liberties; but that Magna Charta of British liberties
    added, according to the previous estimate of Lord John Russell,
    500,000, while according to the results considerably less than
    500,000 were added to the entire constituency of the three
    countries. After 1832 we come to 1866. At that time the total
    constituency of the United Kingdom reached 1,364,000. By the bills
    which were passed between 1867 and 1869 that number was raised to
    2,448,000. Under the action of the present law the constituency
    has reached in round numbers what I would call 3,000,000. This
    bill, if it passes as presented, will add to the English
    constituency over 1,300,000 persons. It will add to the Scotch
    constituency, Scotland being at present rather better provided in
    this respect than either of the other countries, over 200,000, and
    to the Irish constituency over 400,000; or in the main, to the
    present aggregate constituency of the United Kingdom taken at
    3,000,000 it will add 2,000,000 more, nearly twice as much as was
    added since 1867, and more than four times as much as was added in
    1832.


The bill was read a second time (April 7) by the overwhelming majority of
340 against 210. Even those who most disliked the measure admitted that a
majority of this size could not be made light of, though they went on in
charity to say that it did not represent the honest opinion of those who
composed it. It was in fact, as such persons argued, the strongest proof
of the degradation brought into our politics by the Act of 1867. “All the
bribes of Danby or of Walpole or of Pelham,” cried one excited critic,
“all the bullying of the Tudors, all the lobbying of George III., would
have been powerless to secure it in the most corrupt or the most servile
days of the ancient House of Commons.”(74)

On the third reading the opposition disappeared from the House, and on Mr.
Gladstone’s prompt initiative it was placed on record in the journals that
the bill had been carried by a unanimous verdict. It went to the Lords,
and by a majority, first of 59 and then of 50, they put what Mr. Gladstone
mildly called “an effectual stoppage on the bill, or in other words did
practically reject it.” The plain issue, if we can call it plain, was
this. What the tories, with different degrees of sincerity, professed to
dread was that the election might take place on the new franchise, but
with an unaltered disposition of parliamentary seats. At heart the bulk of
them were as little friendly to a lowered franchise in the counties, as
they had been in the case of the towns before Mr. Disraeli educated them.
But this was a secret dangerous to let out, for the enfranchised workers
in the towns would never understand why workers in the villages should not
have a vote. Apart from this, the tory leaders believed that unless the
allotment of seats went with the addition of a couple of million new
voters, the prospect would be ruinously unfavourable to their party, and
they offered determined resistance to the chance of a jockeying operation
of this (M47) kind. At least one very eminent man among them had privately
made up his mind that the proceeding supposed to be designed by their
opponents—their distinct professions notwithstanding—would efface the tory
party for thirty years to come. Mr. Gladstone and his government on the
other hand agreed, on grounds of their own and for reasons of their own,
that the two changes should come into operation together. What they
contended was, that to tack redistribution on to franchise, was to scotch
or kill franchise. “I do not hesitate to say,” Mr. Gladstone told his
electors, “that those who are opposing us, and making use of this topic of
redistribution of seats as a means for defeating the franchise bill, know
as well as we do that, had we been such idiots and such dolts as to
present to parliament a bill for the combined purpose, or to bring in two
bills for the two purposes as one measure—I say, they know as well as we
do, that a disgraceful failure would have been the result of our folly,
and that we should have been traitors to you, and to the cause we had in
hand.”(75) Disinterested onlookers thought there ought to be no great
difficulty in securing the result that both sides desired. As the Duke of
Argyll put it to Mr. Gladstone, if in private business two men were to
come to a breach, when standing so near to one another in aim and
profession, they would be shut up in bedlam. This is just what the
judicious reader will think to-day.

The controversy was transported from parliament to the platform, and a
vigorous agitation marked the autumn recess. It was a double agitation.
What began as a campaign on behalf of the rural householder, threatened to
end as one against hereditary legislators. It is a well-known advantage in
movements of this sort to be not only for, but also against, somebody or
something; against a minister, by preference, or if not an individual,
then against a body. A hereditary legislature in a community that has
reached the self-governing stage is an anachronism that makes the easiest
of all marks for mockery and attack, so long as it lasts. Nobody can doubt
that if Mr. Gladstone had been the frantic demagogue or fretful
revolutionist that his opponents thought, he now had an excellent chance
of bringing the question of the House of Lords irresistibly to the front.
As it was, in the midst of the storm raised by his lieutenants and
supporters all over the country, he was the moderating force, elaborately
appealing, as he said, to the reason rather than the fears of his
opponents.

One reproachful passage in his speeches this autumn acquires a rather
peculiar significance in the light of the events that were in the coming
years to follow. He is dealing with the argument that the hereditary House
protects the nation against fleeting opinions:—


    How is it with regard to the solid and permanent opinion of the
    nation? We have had twelve parliaments since the Reform Act,—I
    have a right to say so, as I have sat in every one of them,—and
    the opinion, the national opinion, has been exhibited in the
    following manner. Ten of those parliaments have had a liberal
    majority. The eleventh parliament was the one that sat from 1841
    to 1847. It was elected as a tory parliament; but in 1846 it put
    out the conservative government of Sir Robert Peel, and put in and
    supported till its dissolution, the liberal government of Lord
    John Russell. That is the eleventh parliament. But then there is
    the twelfth parliament, and that is one that you and I know a good
    deal about [Lord Beaconsfield’s parliament], for we talked largely
    on the subject of its merits and demerits, whichever they may be,
    at the time of the last election. That parliament was, I admit, a
    tory parliament from the beginning to the end. But I want to know,
    looking back for a period of more than fifty years, which
    represented the solid permanent conviction of the nation?—the ten
    parliaments that were elected upon ten out of the twelve
    dissolutions, or the one parliament that chanced to be elected
    from the disorganized state of the liberal party in the early part
    of the year 1874? Well, here are ten parliaments on the one side;
    here is one parliament on the other side.... The House of Lords
    was in sympathy with the one parliament, and was in opposition ...
    to the ten parliaments. And yet you are told, when—we will say for
    forty-five years out of fifty—practically the nation has
    manifested its liberal tendencies by the election of liberal
    parliaments, and once only has chanced to elect a thoroughly tory
    parliament, you are told that it is the thoroughly tory parliament
    that represents the solid and permanent opinion of the
    country.(76)


In time a curious thing, not yet adequately explained, fell out, for the
extension of the franchise in 1867 and now in 1884 resulted in a reversal
of the apparent law of things that had ruled our political parties through
the epoch that Mr. Gladstone has just sketched. The five parliaments since
1884 have not followed the line of the ten parliaments preceding,
notwithstanding the enlargement of direct popular power.



III


In August Mr. Gladstone submitted to the Queen a memorandum on the
political situation. It was much more elaborate than the ordinary official
submissions. Lord Granville was the only colleague who had seen it, and
Mr. Gladstone was alone responsible for laying it before the sovereign. It
is a masterly statement of the case, starting from the assumption for the
sake of argument that the tories were right and the liberals wrong as to
the two bills; then proceeding on the basis of a strongly expressed desire
to keep back a movement for organic change; next urging the signs that
such a movement would go forward with irresistible force if the bill were
again rejected; and concluding thus:—


    I may say in conclusion that there is no personal act if it be
    compatible with personal honour and likely to contribute to an end
    which I hold very dear, that I would not gladly do for the purpose
    of helping to close the present controversy, and in closing it to
    prevent the growth of one probably more complex and more
    formidable.


This document, tempered, unrhetorical, almost dispassionate, was the
starting-point of proceedings that, after enormous difficulties had been
surmounted by patience and perseverance, working through his power in
parliament and his authority in the country, ended in final pacification
and a sound political settlement. It was Mr. Gladstone’s statesmanship
that brought this pacification into sight and within reach.

The Queen was deeply struck both by the force of his arguments and the
earnest tone in which they were pressed. Though doubting whether there was
any strong desire for a change in the position of the House of Lords,
still she “did not shut her eyes to the possible gravity of the situation”
(Aug. 31). She seemed inclined to take some steps for ascertaining the
opinion of the leaders of opposition, with a view to inducing them to
modify their programme. The Duke of Richmond visited Balmoral (Sept. 13),
but when Mr. Gladstone, then himself on Deeside, heard what had passed in
the direction of compromise, he could only say, “Waste of breath!” To all
suggestions of a dissolution on the case in issue, Mr. Gladstone said to a
confidential emissary from Balmoral:—


    Never will I be a party to dissolving in order to determine
    whether the Lords or the Commons were right upon the Franchise
    bill. If I have anything to do with dissolution, it will be a
    dissolution upon organic change in the House of Lords. Should this
    bill be again rejected in a definite manner, there will be only
    two courses open to me, one to cut out of public life, which I
    shall infinitely prefer; the other to become a supporter of
    organic change in the House of Lords, which I hate and which I am
    making all this fuss in order to avoid. We have a few weeks before
    us to try and avert the mischief. After a second rejection it will
    be too late. There is perhaps the alternative of advising a large
    creation of peers; but to this there are great objections, even if
    the Queen were willing. I am not at present sure that I could
    bring myself to be a party to the adoption of a plan like that of
    1832.


When people talked to him of dissolution as a means of bringing the Lords
to account, he replied in scorn: “A marvellous conception! On such a
dissolution, if the country disapproved of the conduct of its
representatives, it would cashier them; but, if it disapproved of the
conduct of the peers, it would simply have to see them resume their place
of power, to employ it to the best of their ability as opportunity might
serve, in thwarting the desires of the country expressed through its
representatives.”

It was reported to Mr. Gladstone that his speeches in (M48) Scotland
(though they were marked by much restraint) created some displeasure at
Balmoral. He wrote to Lord Granville (Sept. 26):—


    The Queen does not know the facts. If she did, she would have
    known that while I have been compelled to deviate from the
    intention, of speaking only to constituents which (with much
    difficulty) I kept until Aberdeen, I have thereby (and again with
    much difficulty in handling the audiences, every one of which
    would have wished a different course of proceeding) been enabled
    to do much in the way of keeping the question of organic change in
    the House of Lords out of the present stage of the controversy.


Sir Henry Ponsonby, of course at the Queen’s instigation, was
indefatigable and infinitely ingenious in inventing devices of possible
compromise between Lords and Commons, or between Lords and ministers, such
as might secure the passing of franchise and yet at the same time secure
the creation of new electoral areas before the extended franchise should
become operative. The Queen repeated to some members of the opposition—she
did not at this stage communicate directly with Lord Salisbury—the essence
of Mr. Gladstone’s memorandum of August, and no doubt conveyed the
impression that it had made upon her own mind. Later correspondence
between her secretary and the Duke of Richmond set up a salutary ferment
in what had not been at first a very promising quarter.

Meanwhile Mr. Gladstone was hard at work in other directions. He was
urgent (Oct. 2) that Lord Granville should make every effort to bring more
peers into the fold to save the bill when it reappeared in the autumn
session. He had himself “garnered in a rich harvest” of bishops in July.
On previous occasions he had plied the episcopal bench with political
appeals, and this time he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury:—


    _July 2, 1884._—I should have felt repugnance and scruple about
    addressing your Grace at any time on any subject of a political
    nature, if it were confined within the ordinary limits of such
    subjects. But it seems impossible to refuse credit to the
    accounts, which assure us that the peers of the opposition, under
    Lord Salisbury and his coadjutors, are determined to use all their
    strength and influence for the purpose of throwing out the
    Franchise bill in the House of Lords; and thus of entering upon a
    conflict with the House of Commons, from which at each step in the
    proceeding it may probably become more difficult to retire, and
    which, if left to its natural course, will probably develop itself
    into a constitutional crisis of such an order, as has not occurred
    since 1832....


To Tennyson, the possessor of a spiritual power even more than
archiepiscopal, who had now a place among peers temporal, he addressed a
remonstrance (July 6):—


    ... Upon consideration I cannot help writing a line, for I must
    hope you will reconsider your intention. The best mode in which I
    can support a suggestion seemingly so audacious is by informing
    you, that all sober-minded conservative peers are in great dismay
    at this wild proceeding of Lord Salisbury; that the ultra-radicals
    and Parnellites, on the other hand, are in a state of glee, as
    they believe, and with good reason, that the battle once begun
    will end in some great humiliation to the House of Lords, or some
    important change in its composition. That (to my knowledge)
    various bishops of conservative leanings are, on this account,
    going to vote with the government—as may be the case with lay
    peers also. That you are the _only_ peer, so far as I know,
    associated with liberal ideas or the liberal party, who hesitates
    to vote against Lord Salisbury.


In the later stage of this controversy, Tennyson shot the well-known lines
at him—


    Steersman, be not precipitate in thine act
    Of steering, for the river here, my friend,
    Parts in two channels, moving to one end—
    This goes straight forward to the cataract:
    That streams about the bend.
    But tho’ the cataract seems the nearer way,
    Whate’er the crowd on either bank may say,
    Take thou “the bend,” ’twill save thee many a day.


To a poet who made to his generation such exquisite gifts of beauty and
pleasure, the hardest of party-men may pardon unseasonable fears about
franchise and one-horse constituencies. As matter of fact and in plain
prose, this (M49) taking of the bend was exactly what the steersman had
been doing, so as to keep other people out of cataracts.

“Then why should not Lord Granville try his hand on ambassadors, pressing
them to save their order from a tempest that must strain and might wreck
it?” To Mr. Chamberlain, who was in his element, or in one of his
elements, Mr. Gladstone wrote (Oct. 8):—


    I see that Salisbury by his declaration in the _Times_ of
    Saturday, that the Lords are to contend for the simultaneous
    passing of the two bills, has given you an excellent subject for
    denunciation, and you may safely denounce him to your heart’s
    content. But I earnestly hope that you will leave us all elbow
    room on other questions which _may_ arise. If you have seen my
    letters (virtually) to the Queen, I do not think you will have
    found reason for alarm in them. I am sorry that Hartington the
    other day used the word compromise, a word which has never passed
    my lips, though I believe he meant nothing wrong. If we could find
    anything which, though surrendering nothing substantial, would
    build a bridge for honourable and moderate men to retreat by, I am
    sure you would not object to it. But I have a much stronger plea
    for your reserve than any request of my own. It is this, that the
    cabinet has postponed discussing the matter until Wednesday simply
    in order that you may be present and take your share. They meet at
    twelve. I shall venture to count on your doing nothing to narrow
    the ground left open to us, which is indeed but a stinted one.


Three days later (Oct. 11) the Queen writing to the prime minister was
able to mark a further stage:—


    Although the strong expressions used by ministers in their recent
    speeches have made the task of conciliation undertaken by the
    Queen a most difficult one, she is so much impressed with the
    importance of the issue at stake, that she has persevered in her
    endeavours, and has obtained from the leaders of the opposition an
    expression of their readiness to negotiate on the basis of Lord
    Hartington’s speech at Hanley. In the hope that this _may_ lead to
    a compromise, the Queen has suggested that Lord Hartington may
    enter into communication with Lord Salisbury, and she trusts, from
    Mr. Gladstone’s telegram received this morning, that he will
    empower Lord Hartington to discuss the possibility of an agreement
    with Lord Salisbury.


In acknowledgment, Mr. Gladstone offered his thanks for all her Majesty’s
“well-timed efforts to bring about an accommodation.” He could not,
however, he proceeded, feel sanguine as to obtaining any concession from
the leaders, but he is very glad that Lord Hartington should try.

Happily, and as might have been expected by anybody who remembered the
action of the sensible peers who saved the Reform bill in 1832, the rash
and headstrong men in high places in the tory party were not allowed to
have their own way. Before the autumn was over, prudent members of the
opposition became uneasy. They knew that in substance the conclusion was
foregone, but they knew also that just as in their own body there was a
division between hothead and moderate, so in the cabinet they could count
upon a whig section, and probably upon the prime minister as well. They
noted his words spoken in July, “It is not our desire to see the bill
carried by storm and tempest. It is our desire to see it win its way by
persuasion and calm discussion to the rational minds of men.”(77)

Meanwhile Sir Michael Hicks Beach had already, with the knowledge and
without the disapproval of other leading men on the tory side, suggested
an exchange of views to Lord Hartington, who was warmly encouraged by the
cabinet to carry on communications, as being a person peculiarly fitted
for the task, “enjoying full confidence on one side,” as Mr. Gladstone
said to the Queen, “and probably more on the other side than any other
minister could enjoy.” These two cool and able men took the extension of
county franchise for granted, and their conferences turned pretty
exclusively on redistribution. Sir Michael pressed the separation of urban
from rural areas, and what was more specifically important was his
advocacy of single-member or one-horse constituencies. His own long
experience of a scattered agricultural division had convinced him that
such areas with household suffrage would be unworkable. Lord Hartington
knew the advantage of two-member constituencies (M50) for his party,
because they made an opening for one whig candidate and one radical. But
he did not make this a question of life or death, and the ground was
thoroughly well hoed and raked. Lord Salisbury, to whom the nature of
these communications had been made known by the colleague concerned, told
him of the suggestion from the Queen, and said that he and Sir Stafford
Northcote had unreservedly accepted it. So far the cabinet had found the
several views in favour with their opponents as to electoral areas, rather
more sweeping and radical than their own had been, and they hoped that on
the basis thus informally laid, they might proceed to the more developed
conversation with the two official leaders. Then the tory ultras
interposed.



IV


On the last day of October the Queen wrote to Mr. Gladstone from
Balmoral:—


    The Queen thinks that it would be a means of arriving at some
    understanding if the leaders of the parties in both Houses could
    exchange their views personally. The Duke of Argyll or any other
    person unconnected for the present with the government or the
    opposition might be employed in bringing about a meeting, and in
    assisting to solve difficulties. The Queen thinks the government
    should in any project forming the basis of resolutions on
    redistribution to be proposed to the House, distinctly define
    their plans at such a personal conference. The Queen believes that
    were assurance given that the redistribution would not be wholly
    inimical to the prospects of the conservative party, their
    concurrence might be obtained. The Queen feels most strongly that
    it is of the utmost importance that in this serious crisis such
    means, even if unusual, should be tried, and knowing how fully Mr.
    Gladstone recognises the great danger that might arise by
    prolonging the conflict, the Queen _earnestly_ trusts that he will
    avail himself of such means to obviate it.


The Queen then wrote to Lord Salisbury in the same sense in which she had
written to the prime minister. Lord Salisbury replied that it would give
him great pleasure to consult with anybody the Queen might desire, and
that in obedience to her commands he would do all that lay in him to bring
the controversy finally to a just and honourable issue. He went on however
to say, in the caustic vein that was one of his ruling traits, that while
cheerfully complying with the Queen’s wishes, he thought it right to add
that, so far as his information went, no danger attached to the
prolongation of the controversy for a considerable time, nor did he
believe that there was any real excitement in the country about it. The
Queen in replying (Nov. 5) said that she would at once acquaint Mr.
Gladstone with what he had said.

The autumn session began, and the Franchise bill was introduced again.
Three days later, in consequence of a communication from the other camp,
the debate on the second reading was conciliatory, but the tories won a
bye-election, and the proceedings in committee became menacing and
clouded. Discrepancies abounded in the views of the opposition upon
redistribution. When the third reading came (Nov. 11), important men on
the tory side insisted on the production of a Seats bill, and declared
there must be no communication with the enemy. Mr. Gladstone was
elaborately pacific. If he could not get peace, he said, at least let it
be recorded that he desired peace. The parleys of Lord Hartington and Sir
Michael Hicks Beach came to an end.

Mr. Gladstone, late one night soon after this (Nov. 14), had a long
conversation with Sir Stafford Northcote at the house of a friend. He had
the authority of the cabinet (not given for this special interview) to
promise the introduction of a Seats bill before the committee stage of the
Franchise bill in the Lords, provided he was assured that it could be done
without endangering or retarding franchise. Northcote and Mr. Gladstone
made good progress on the principles of redistribution. Then came an
awkward message from Lord Salisbury that the Lords could not let the
Franchise bill through, until they got the Seats bill from the Commons. So
negotiations were again broken off.

The only hope now was that a sufficient number of Lord Salisbury’s
adherents would leave him in the lurch, if he (M51) did not close with
what was understood to be Mr. Gladstone’s engagement, to procure and press
a Seats bill as soon as ever franchise was out of danger. So it happened,
and the door that had thus been shut, speedily opened. Indirect
communication reached the treasury bench that seemed to show the leaders
of opposition to be again alive. There were many surmises, everybody was
excited, and two great tory leaders in the Lords called on Lord Granville
one day, anxious for a _modus vivendi_. Mr. Gladstone in the Commons, in
conformity with a previous decision of the cabinet, declared the
willingness of the government to produce a bill or explain its provisions,
on receiving a reasonable guarantee that the Franchise bill would be
passed before the end of the sittings. The ultras of the opposition still
insisted on making bets all round that the Franchise bill would not become
law; besides betting, they declared they would die on the floor of the
House in resisting an accommodation. A meeting of the party was summoned
at the Carlton club for the purpose of declaring war to the knife, and
Lord Salisbury was reported to hold to his determination. This resolve,
however, proved to have been shaken by Mr. Gladstone’s language on a
previous day. The general principles of redistribution had been
sufficiently sifted, tested, and compared to show that there was no
insuperable discrepancy of view. It was made clear to Lord Salisbury
circuitously, that though the government required adequate assurances of
the safety of franchise before presenting their scheme upon seats, this
did not preclude private and confidential illumination. So the bill was
read a second time.

All went prosperously forward. On November 19, Lord Salisbury and Sir S.
Northcote came to Downing Street in the afternoon, took tea with the prime
minister, and had a friendly conversation for an hour in which much ground
was covered. The heads of the government scheme were discussed and handed
to the opposition leaders. Mr. Gladstone was well satisfied. He was much
struck, he said after, with the quickness of the tory leader, and found it
a pleasure to deal with so acute a man. Lord Salisbury, for his part, was
interested in the novelty of the proceeding, for no precedent could be
found in our political or party history for the discussion of a measure
before its introduction between the leaders of the two sides. This novelty
stirred his curiosity, while he also kept a sharp eye on the main party
chance. He proved to be entirely devoid of respect for tradition, and Mr.
Gladstone declared himself to be a strong conservative in comparison. The
meetings went on for several days through the various parts of the
questions, Lord Hartington, Lord Granville, and Sir Charles Dilke being
also taken into council—the last of the three being unrivalled master of
the intricate details.

The operation was watched with jealous eyes by the radicals, though they
had their guardians in the cabinet. To Mr. Bright who, having been all his
life denounced as a violent republican, was now in the view of the new
school hardly even so much as a sound radical, Mr. Gladstone thought it
well to write (Nov. 25) words of comfort, if comfort were needed:—


    I wish to give you the assurance that in the private
    communications which are now going on, liberal principles such as
    we should conceive and term them, are in no danger. Those with
    whom we confer are thinking without doubt of party interests, as
    affected by this or that arrangement, but these are a distinct
    matter, and I am not so good at them as some others; but the
    general proposition which I have stated is I think one which I can
    pronounce with some confidence.... The whole operation is
    essentially delicate and slippery, and I can hardly conceive any
    other circumstance in which it would be justified, but in the
    present very peculiar case I think it is not only warranted, but
    called for.


On November 27 all was well over; and Mr. Gladstone was able to inform the
Queen that “the delicate and novel communications” between the two sets of
leaders had been brought to a happy termination. “His first duty,” he
said, “was to tender his grateful thanks to your Majesty for the wise,
gracious, and steady influence on your Majesty’s part, which has so
powerfully contributed to bring about this accommodation, and to avert a
serious crisis of affairs.” He (M52) adds that “his cordial
acknowledgments are due to Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford Northcote for
the manner in which they have conducted their difficult communications.”
The Queen promptly replied: “I gladly and thankfully return your
telegrams. To be able to be of use is all I care to live for now.” By way
of winding up negotiations so remarkable, Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord
Salisbury to thank him for his kindness, and to say that he could have
desired nothing better in candour and equity. Their conversation on the
Seats bill would leave him none but the most agreeable recollections.

The Queen was in high good humour, as she had a right to be. She gave Mr.
Gladstone ample credit for his conciliatory spirit. The last two months
had been very trying to her, she said, but she confessed herself repaid by
the thought that she had assisted in a settlement. Mr. Gladstone’s
severest critics on the tory side confessed that “they did not think he
had it in him.” Some friends of his in high places even suggested that
this would be a good moment for giving him the garter. He wrote to Sir
Arthur Gordon (Dec. 5): “The time of this government has been on the whole
the most stormy and difficult that I have known in office, and the last
six weeks have been perhaps the most anxious and difficult of the
government.”



V


One further episode deserves a section, if the reader will turn back for a
moment or two. The question whether the extension of the parliamentary
franchise to rural householders should be limited to Great Britain or
should apply to the whole kingdom, had been finally discussed in a couple
of morning sittings in the month of May. Nobody who heard it can forget
the speech made against Irish inclusion by Mr. Plunket, the eloquent
grandson of the most eloquent of all the orators whom Ireland has sent to
the imperial senate. He warned the House that to talk of assimilating the
franchise in Ireland to the franchise in England, was to use language
without meaning; that out of seven hundred and sixty thousand inhabited
houses in Ireland, no fewer than four hundred and thirty-five thousand
were rated at one pound and under; that those whom the bill would
enfranchise would be taken from a class of whom more than forty per cent.
could neither read nor write; that the measure would strengthen the hands
of that disloyal party who boasted of their entire indifference to English
opinion, and their undivided obligation to influences which Englishmen
were wholly unable to realise. Then in a lofty strain Mr. Plunket foretold
that the measure which they were asked to pass would lead up to, and would
precipitate, the establishment of a separate Irish nationality. He
reminded his hearers that the empire had been reared not more by the
endurance of its soldiers and sailors than by the sagacity and firmness,
the common sense and patriotism, of that ancient parliament; and he ended
with a fervid prayer that the historian of the future might not have to
tell that the union of these three kingdoms on which rested all its honour
and all its power—a union that could never be broken by the force of
domestic traitor or foreign foe—yielded at last under the pressure of the
political ambitions and party exigencies of British statesmen.

The orator’s stately diction, his solemn tone, the depth of his
conviction, made a profound impression. Newer parliamentary hands below
the government gangway, as he went on, asked one another by what arts of
parliamentary defence the veteran minister could possibly deal with this
searching appeal. Only a quarter of an hour remained. In two or three
minutes Mr. Gladstone had swept the solemn impression entirely away.
Contrary to his wont, he began at once upon the top note. With high
passion in his voice, and mastering gesture in his uplifted arm, he dashed
impetuously upon the foe. What weighs upon my mind is this, he said, that
when the future historian speaks of the greatness of this empire, and
traces the manner in which it has grown through successive generations, he
will say that in that history there was one chapter of disgrace, and that
chapter of disgrace was the treatment of Ireland. It is the scale of
justice that will determine the issue of the conflict with Ireland, if
conflict there is to be. There is nothing we can do, cried the orator,
(M53) turning to the Irish members, except the imprudence of placing in
your hands evidence that will show that we are not acting on principles of
justice towards you, that can render you for a moment formidable in our
eyes, should the day unfortunately arise when you endeavour to lay hands
on this great structure of the British empire. Let us be as strong in
right as we are in population, in wealth, and in historic traditions, and
then we shall not fear to do justice to Ireland. There is but one mode of
making England weak in the face of Ireland—that is by applying to her
principles of inequality and principles of injustice.

As members sallied forth from the House to dine, they felt that this
vehement improvisation had put the true answer. Mr. Plunket’s fine appeal
to those who had been comrades of the Irish loyalists in guarding the
union was well enough, yet who but the Irish loyalists had held Ireland in
the hollow of their hands for generation upon generation, and who but they
were answerable for the odious and dishonouring failure, so patent before
all the world, to effect a true incorporation of their country in a united
realm? And if it should happen that Irish loyalists should suffer from
extension of equal civil rights to Irishmen, what sort of reason was that
why the principle of exclusion and ascendency which had worked such
mischief in the past, should be persisted in for a long and indefinite
future? These views, it is important to observe, were shared, not only by
the minister’s own party, but by a powerful body among his opponents. Some
of the gentlemen who had been most furious against the government for not
stopping Irish meetings in the autumn of 1883, were now most indignant at
the bare idea of refusing or delaying a proposal for strengthening the
hands of the very people who promoted and attended such meetings. It is
true also that only two or three months before, Lord Hartington had
declared that it would be most unwise to deal with the Irish franchise.
Still more recently, Mr. W. H. Smith had declared that any extension of
the suffrage in Ireland would draw after it “confiscation of property,
ruin of industry, withdrawal of capital,—misery, wretchedness, and war.”
The valour of the platform, however, often expires in the keener air of
cabinet and parliament. It became Lord Hartington’s duty now to move the
second reading of provisions which, he had just described as most unwise
provisions, and Mr. Smith found himself the object of brilliant mockery
from the daring leader below the gangway on his own side.

Lord Randolph produced a more serious, though events soon showed it to be
not any more solid an argument, when he said that the man who lives in a
mud cabin very often has a decent holding, and has money in the savings’
bank besides, and more than that, he is often more fit to take an interest
in politics, and to form a sound view about them, than the English
agricultural labourer. The same speaker proceeded to argue that the Fenian
proclivities of the towns would be more than counterbalanced by the
increased power given to the peasantry. The incidents of agricultural
life, he observed, are unfavourable to revolutionary movements, and the
peasant is much more under the proper and legitimate influence of the
Roman catholic priesthood than the lower classes of the towns. On the
whole, the extension of the franchise to the peasantry of Ireland would
not be unfavourable to the landlord interest. Yet Lord Randolph, who
regaled the House with these chimerical speculations, had had far better
opportunities than almost any other Englishman then in parliament of
knowing something about Ireland.

What is certain is that English and Scotch members acted with their eyes
open. Irish tories and Irish nationalists agreed in menacing predictions.
The vast masses of Irish people, said the former, had no sense of loyalty
and no love of order to which a government could appeal. In many districts
the only person who was unsafe was the peace officer or the relatives of a
murdered man. The effect of the change would be the utter annihilation of
the political power of the most orderly, the most loyal, the most educated
classes of Ireland, and the swamping of one-fourth of the community,
representing two-thirds of its property. A representative of the great
house of Hamilton in the Commons, amid a little cloud of the dishevelled
prophecies (M54) too common in his class, assured the House that everybody
knew that if the franchise in Ireland were extended, the days of home rule
could not be far distant. The representative of the great house of
Beresford in the Lords, the resident possessor of a noble domain, an able
and determined man, with large knowledge of his country, so far as large
knowledge can be acquired from a single point of view, expressed his
strong conviction that after the passage of this bill the Irish outlook
would be blacker than it had ever been before.(78)

Another person, far more powerful than any Hamilton or Beresford, was
equally explicit. With characteristic frigidity, precision, and
confidence, the Irish leader had defined his policy and his expectations.
“Beyond a shadow of doubt,” he had said to a meeting in the Rotunda at
Dublin, “it will be for the Irish people in England—separated, isolated as
they are—and for your independent Irish members, to determine at the next
general election whether a tory or a liberal English ministry shall rule
England. This is a great force and a great power. If we cannot rule
ourselves, we can at least cause them to be ruled as we choose. This force
has already gained for Ireland inclusion in the coming Franchise bill. We
have reason to be proud, hopeful, and energetic.”(79) In any case, he
informed the House of Commons, even if Ireland were not included in the
bill, the national party would come back seventy-five strong. If household
suffrage were conceded to Ireland, they would come back ninety strong.(80)
That was the only difference. Therefore, though he naturally supported
inclusion,(81) it was not at all indispensable to the success of his
policy, and he watched the proceedings in the committee as calmly as he
might have watched a battle of frogs and mice.




Chapter IX. The Soudan. (1884-1885)


    You can only govern men by imagination: without imagination they
    are brutes.... ’Tis by speaking to the soul that you electrify
    men.—NAPOLEON.



I


In the late summer of 1881 a certain native of Dongola, proclaiming
himself a heaven-inspired Mahdi, began to rally to his banner the wild
tribes of the southern Soudan. His mission was to confound the wicked, the
hypocrite, the unbeliever, and to convert the world to the true faith in
the one God and his prophet. The fame of the Mahdi’s eloquence, his piety,
his zeal, rapidly spread. At his ear he found a counsellor, so well known
to us after as the khalifa, and this man soon taught the prophet politics.
The misrule of the Soudan by Egypt had been atrocious, and the combination
of a religious revival with the destruction of that hated yoke swelled a
cry that was irresistible. The rising rapidly extended, for fanaticism in
such regions soon takes fire, and the Egyptian pashas had been sore
oppressors, even judged by the rude standards of oriental states. Never
was insurrection more amply justified. From the first, Mr. Gladstone’s
curious instinct for liberty disclosed to him that here was a case of “a
people rightly struggling to be free.” The phrase was mocked and derided
then and down to the end of the chapter. Yet it was the simple truth.
“During all my political life,” he said at a later stage of Soudanese
affairs, “I am thankful to say that I have never opened my lips in favour
of a domination such as that which has been exercised upon certain
countries by certain other countries, and I am not going now to begin.”
(M55) “I look upon the possession of the Soudan,” he proceeded, “as the
calamity of Egypt. It has been a drain on her treasury, it has been a
drain on her men. It is estimated that 100,000 Egyptians have laid down
their lives in endeavouring to maintain that barren conquest.” Still
stronger was the Soudanese side of the case. The rule of the Mahdi was
itself a tyranny, and tribe fought with tribe, but that was deemed an
easier yoke than the sway of the pashas from Cairo. Every vice of eastern
rule flourished freely under Egyptian hands. At Khartoum whole families of
Coptic clerks kept the accounts of plundering raids supported by Egyptian
soldiers, and “this was a government collecting its taxes.” The function
of the Egyptian soldiers “was that of honest countrymen sharing in the
villainy of the brigands from the Levant and Asia Minor, who wrung money,
women, and drink from a miserable population.”(82) Yet the railing against
Mr. Gladstone for saying that the “rebels” were rightly struggling to be
free could not have been more furious if the Mahdi had been for dethroning
Marcus Aurelius or Saint Louis of France.

The ministers at Cairo, however, naturally could not find in their hearts
to withdraw from territory that had been theirs for over sixty years,(83)
although in the winter of 1882-3 Colonel Stewart, an able British officer,
had reported that the Egyptian government was wholly unfit to rule the
Soudan; it had not money enough, nor fighting men enough, nor
administrative skill enough, and abandonment at least of large portions of
it was the only reasonable course. Such counsels found no favour with the
khedive’s advisers and agents, and General Hicks, an Indian officer,
appointed on the staff of the Egyptian army in the spring of 1883, was now
despatched by the government of the khedive from Khartoum, for the
recovery of distant and formidable regions. If his operations had been
limited to the original intention of clearing Sennaar of rebels and
protecting Khartoum, all might have been well. Unluckily some trivial
successes over the Mahdi encouraged the Cairo government to design an
advance into Kordofan, and the reconquest of all the vast wildernesses of
the Soudan. Lord Dufferin, Sir E. Malet, Colonel Stewart, were all of them
clear that to attempt any such task with an empty chest and a worthless
army was madness, and they all argued for the abandonment of Kordofan and
Darfur. The cabinet in London, fixed in their resolve not to accept
responsibility for a Soudan war, and not to enter upon that responsibility
by giving advice for or against the advance of Hicks, stood aloof.(84) In
view of all that followed later, and of their subsequent adoption of the
policy of abandoning the Soudan, British ministers would evidently have
been wiser if they had now forbidden an advance so pregnant with disaster.
Events showed this to have been the capital miscalculation whence all else
of misfortune followed. The sounder the policy of abandonment, the
stronger the reasons for insisting that the Egyptian government should not
undertake operations inconsistent with that policy. The Soudan was not
within the sphere of our responsibility, but Egypt was; and just because
the separation of Egypt from the Soudan was wise and necessary, it might
have been expected that England would peremptorily interpose to prevent a
departure from the path of separation. What Hicks himself, a capable and
dauntless man, thought of the chances we do not positively know, but he
was certainly alive to the risks of such a march with such material. On
November 5 (1883) the whole force was cut to pieces, the victorious
dervishes were free to advance northwards, and the loose fabric of
Egyptian authority was shattered to the ground.



II


(M56) The three British military officers in Cairo all agreed that the
Egyptian government could not hold Khartoum if the Mahdi should draw down
upon it; and unless a British, an Indian, or a Turkish force came to the
rescue, abandonment of the Soudan was the only possible alternative. The
London cabinet decided that they would not employ British or Indian troops
in the Soudan, and though they had no objection to the resort to the Turks
by Egypt, if the Turks would pay their own expenses (a condition fatal to
any such resort), they strongly recommended the khedive to abandon all
territory south of Assouan or Wady-Halfa. Sir Evelyn Baring, who had now
assumed his post upon a theatre where he was for long years to come to
play the commanding part, concurred in thinking that the policy of
complete abandonment was the best admitted by the circumstances. It is the
way of the world to suppose that because a given course is best, it must
therefore be possible and ought to be simple. Baring and his colleagues at
Cairo were under no such illusion, but it was the foundation of most of
the criticism that now broke forth in the English press.

The unparalleled difficulties that ultimately attended the evacuation of
the Soudan naturally led inconsiderate critics,—and such must ever be the
majority,—to condemn the policy and the cabinet who ordered it. So apt are
men in their rough judgments on great disputable things, to mistake a mere
impression for a real opinion; and we must patiently admit that the
Result—success or failure in the Event—is the most that they have time
for, and all that they can go by. Yet two remarks are to be made upon this
facile censure. The first is that those who knew the Soudan best, approved
most. On January 22, 1884, Gordon wrote to Lord Granville that the Soudan
ever was and ever would be a useless possession, and that he thought the
Queen’s ministers “fully justified in recommending evacuation, inasmuch as
the sacrifices necessary towards securing good government would be far too
onerous to admit of such an attempt being made.” Colonel Stewart quite
agreed, and added the exclamation that nobody who had ever visited the
Soudan could escape the reflection, “What a useless possession and what a
huge encumbrance on Egypt!” As we shall see, the time soon came when
Gordon accepted the policy of evacuation, even with an emphasis of his
own. The second remark is that the reconquest of the Soudan and the
holding of Khartoum were for the Egyptian government, if left to its own
resources, neither more nor less than impossible; these objects, whether
they were good objects or bad, not only meant recourse to British troops
for the first immense operations, but the retention of them in a huge and
most inhospitable region for an indefinite time. A third consideration
will certainly not be overlooked by anybody who thinks on the course of
the years of Egyptian reform that have since elapsed, and constitute so
remarkable a chapter of British administration,—namely, that this
beneficent achievement would have been fatally clogged, if those who
conducted it had also had the Soudan on their hands. The renovation or
reconstruction of what is called Egypt proper, its finances, its army, its
civil rule, would have been absolutely out of reach, if at the same time
its guiding statesmen had been charged with the responsibilities
recovering and holding that vaster tract which had been so rashly acquired
and so mercilessly misgoverned. This is fully admitted by those who have
had most to do with the result.



III


The policy of evacuation was taken as carrying with it the task of
extricating the Egyptian garrisons. This aim induced Mr. Gladstone’s
cabinet once more to play an active military part, though Britain had no
share in planting these garrisons where they were. Wise men in Egypt were
of the same mind as General Gordon, that in the eastern Soudan it would
have been better for the British government to keep quiet, and “let events
work themselves out.” Unfortunately the ready clamour of headlong
philanthropists, political party men, and the men who think England
humiliated if she ever lets slip an excuse for drawing her sword, drove
the cabinet on to the rocks. When the decision of the cabinet was (M57)
taken (Feb. 12, 1883) to send troops to Suakin, Mr. Gladstone stood alone
in objecting. Many thousands of savages were slaughtered under
humanitarian pressure, not a few English lives were sacrificed, much
treasure flowed, and yet Sinkat fell, and Tokar fell, and our labours in
the eastern Soudan were practically fruitless.(85) The operations had no
effect upon the roll of the fierce mahdi wave over the Soudan.

In England, excitement of the unsound sort that is independent of
knowledge, consideration, or deliberation; independent of any weighing of
the actual facts and any forecast of latent possibilities, grew more and
more vociferous. Ministers quailed. Twice they inquired of their agent in
Egypt(86) whether General Gordon might not be of use, and twice they
received an adverse reply, mainly on the ground that the presence in
authority of a Christian officer was a dubious mode of confronting a
sweeping outbreak of moslem fanaticism, and would inevitably alienate
tribes that were still not caught by the Mahdi.(87) Unhappily a third
application from London at last prevailed, and Sir E. Baring, supported by
Nubar, by Sir Evelyn Wood, by Colonel Watson, who had served with Gordon
and knew him well, all agreed that Gordon would be the best man if he
would pledge himself to carry out the policy of withdrawing from the
Soudan as quickly as possible. “Whoever goes,” said Sir E. Baring in
pregnant words to Lord Granville, will “undertake a service of great
difficulty and danger.” This was on January 16th. Two days later the die
was cast. Mr. Gladstone was at Hawarden. Lord Granville submitted the
question (Jan. 14, 1884) to him in this form: “If Gordon says he believes
he could by his personal influence excite the tribes to escort the
Khartoum garrison and inhabitants to Suakin, a little pressure on Baring
might be advisable. The destruction of these poor people will be a great
disaster.” Mr. Gladstone telegraphed that to this and other parts of the
same letter, he agreed. Granville then sent him a copy of the telegram
putting “a little pressure on Baring.” To this Mr. Gladstone replied (Jan.
16) in words that, if they had only been taken to heart, would have made
all the difference:—


    I can find no fault with your telegram to Baring _re_ Chinese
    Gordon, and the main point that strikes me is this: While his
    opinion on the Soudan may be of great value, must we not be very
    careful in any instruction we give, that he does not shift the
    centre of gravity as to political and military responsibility for
    that country? In brief, if he reports what should be done, he
    should not be the judge _who_ should do it, nor ought he to commit
    us on that point by advice officially given. It would be extremely
    difficult after sending him to reject such advice, and it should
    therefore, I think, be made clear that he is not our agent for the
    purpose of advising on that point.


On January 18, Lord Hartington (then secretary of state for war), Lord
Granville, Lord Northbrook, and Sir Charles Dilke met at the war office in
Pall Mall. The summons was sudden. Lord Wolseley brought Gordon and left
him in the ante-room. After a conversation with the ministers, he came out
and said to Gordon, “Government are determined to evacuate the Soudan, for
they will not guarantee the future government. Will you go and do it?” “_I
said_, ‘Yes.’ _He said_, ‘Go in.’ _I went in and saw them. They said_,
‘Did Wolseley tell you our orders?’ _I said_, ‘Yes.’ _I said_, ‘You will
not guarantee future government of the Soudan, and you wish me to go up
and evacuate now.’ _They said_, ‘Yes,’ _and it was over, and I left at 8
p.m. for Calais_.”(88) This graphic story does not pretend to be a full
version of all that passed, though it puts the essential point
unmistakably enough. Lord Granville seems to have drawn Gordon’s (M58)
special attention to the measures to be taken for the security of the
Egyptian garrisons (plural) still holding positions in the Soudan and to
the best mode of evacuating the interior.(89) On the other hand, according
to a very authentic account that I have seen, Gordon on this occasion
stated that the danger at Khartoum was exaggerated, and that he would be
able to bring away the garrisons without difficulty.

Thus in that conclave of sober statesmen a tragedy began. The next day one
of the four ministers met another; “We were proud of ourselves
yesterday—are you sure we did not commit a gigantic folly?” The prime
minister had agreed at once on receiving the news of what was done at the
war office, and telegraphed assent the same night.(90) The whole cabinet
met four days later, Mr. Gladstone among them, and the decision was
approved. There was hardly a choice, for by that time Gordon was at
Brindisi. Gordon, as Mr. Gladstone said, was a hero of heroes. He was a
soldier of infinite personal courage and daring; of striking military
energy, initiative, and resource; a high, pure, and single character,
dwelling much in the region of the unseen. But as all who knew him admit,
and as his own records testify, notwithstanding an under-current of shrewd
common-sense, he was the creature, almost the sport, of impulse; his
impressions and purposes changed with the speed of lightning; anger often
mastered him; he went very often by intuitions and inspirations rather
than by cool inference from carefully surveyed fact: with many variations
of mood he mixed, as we often see in people less famous, an invincible
faith in his own rapid prepossessions while they lasted. Everybody now
discerns that to despatch a soldier of this temperament on a piece of
business that was not only difficult and dangerous, as Sir E. Baring said,
but profoundly obscure, and needing vigilant sanity and self-control, was
little better than to call in a wizard with his magic. Mr. Gladstone
always professed perplexity in understanding why the violent end of the
gallant Cavagnari in Afghanistan, stirred the world so little in
comparison with the fate of Gordon. The answer is that Gordon seized the
imagination of England, and seized it on its higher side. His religion was
eccentric, but it was religion; the Bible was the rock on which he founded
himself, both old dispensation and new; he was known to hate forms,
ceremonies, and all the “solemn plausibilities”; his speech was sharp,
pithy, rapid, and ironic; above all, he knew the ways of war and would not
bear the sword for nought. All this was material enough to make a popular
ideal, and this is what Gordon in an ever-increasing degree became, to the
immense inconvenience of the statesmen, otherwise so sensible and wary,
who had now improvidently let the genie forth from the jar.



IV


It has been sometimes contended that all the mischief that followed was
caused by the diversion of Gordon from Suakin, his original destination.
If he had gone to the Red Sea, as originally intended, there to report on
the state and look of things in the Soudan, instead of being waylaid and
brought to Cairo, and thence despatched to Khartoum, they say, no
catastrophe would have happened. This is not certain, for the dervishes in
the eastern Soudan were in the flush of open revolt, and Gordon might
either have been killed or taken prisoner, or else he would have come back
without performing any part of his mission. In fact, on his way from
London to Port Said, Gordon had suggested that with a view to carrying out
evacuation, the khedive should make him governor-general of the Soudan.
Lord Granville authorised Baring to procure the nomination, and this Sir
Evelyn did, “for the time necessary to accomplish the evacuation.” The
instructions were thus changed, in an important sense, but the change was
suggested by Gordon and sanctioned by Lord Granville.(91)

(M59) When Gordon left London his instructions, drafted in fact by
himself, were that he should “consider and report upon the best mode of
effecting the evacuation of the interior of the Soudan.” He was also to
perform such duties as the Egyptian government might wish to entrust to
him, and as might be communicated to him by Sir E. Baring.(92) At Cairo,
Baring and Nubar, after discussion with Gordon, altered the mission from
one of advice and report to an executive mission—a change that was
doubtless authorised and covered by the original reference to duties to be
entrusted to him by Egypt. But there was no change in the policy either at
Downing Street or Cairo. Whether advisory or executive, the only policy
charged upon the mission was abandonment. When the draft of the new
instructions was read to Gordon at Cairo, Sir E. Baring expressly asked
him whether he entirely concurred in “the policy of abandoning the
Soudan,” and Gordon not only concurred, but suggested the strengthening
words, that he thought “it should on no account be changed.”(93) This
despatch, along with the instructions to Gordon making this vast
alteration, was not received in London until Feb. 7. By this time Gordon
was crossing the desert, and out of reach of the English foreign office.

On his way from Brindisi, Gordon had prepared a memorandum for Sir E.
Baring, in which he set out his opinion that the Soudan had better be
restored to the different petty sultans in existence before the Egyptian
conquest, and an attempt should be made to form them into some sort of
confederation. These petty rulers might be left to accept the Mahdi for
their sovereign or not, just as they pleased. But in the same document he
emphasised the policy of abandonment. “I understand,” he says, “that
H.M.’s government have come to the irrevocable decision not to incur the
very onerous duty of granting to the peoples of the Soudan a just future
government.” Left to their independence, the sultans “would doubtless
fight among themselves.” As for future good government, it was evident
that “this we could not secure them without an inordinate expenditure of
men and money. The Soudan is a useless possession; ever was so, and ever
will be so. No one who has ever lived in the Soudan, can escape the
reflection, What a useless possession is this land.” Therefore—so he winds
up—“I think H.M.’s government are fully justified in recommending the
evacuation, inasmuch as the sacrifices necessary towards securing a good
government would be far too onerous to admit of any such attempt being
made. Indeed, one may say it is impracticable at any cost. _H.M.’s
government will now leave them as God has placed them._”(94)

It was, therefore, and it is, pure sophistry to contend that Gordon’s
policy in undertaking his disastrous mission was evacuation but not
abandonment. To say that the Soudanese should be left in the state in
which God had placed them, to fight it out among themselves, if they were
so minded, is as good a definition of abandonment as can be invented, and
this was the whole spirit of the instructions imposed by the government of
the Queen and accepted by Gordon.

Gordon took with him instruments from the khedive into which, along with
definite and specific statements that evacuation was the object of his
mission, two or three loose sentences are slipped about “establishing
organised government in the different provinces of the Soudan,”
maintaining order, and the like. It is true also that the British cabinet
sanctioned the extension of the area of evacuation from Khartoum to the
whole Soudan.(95) Strictly construed, the whole body of instructions,
including firmans and khedive’s proclamations, is not technically compact
nor coherent. But this is only another way of saying that Gordon was to
have the widest discretionary powers as to the manner of carrying out the
policy, and the best time and mode of announcing it. The policy itself, as
well understood by Gordon as by everybody else, was untouched, and it was:
to leave the Soudanese in the state in which God had placed them.

The hot controversy on this point is idle and without substance—the idlest
controversies are always the hottest—for (M60) not only was Gordon the
last man in all the world to hold himself bound by official instructions,
but the actual conditions of the case were too little known, too shifting,
too unstable, to permit of hard and fast directions beforehand how to
solve so desperate a problem. Two things at any rate were clear—one, that
Gordon should faithfully adhere to the policy of evacuation and
abandonment which he had formally accepted; the other, that the British
government should leave him a free hand. Unhappily neither of these two
clear things was accepted by either of the parties.



V


Gordon’s policies were many and very mutable. Viewing the frightful
embarrassments that enveloped him, we cannot wonder. Still the same
considerateness that is always so bounteously and so justly extended to
the soldier in the field, is no less due in its measure to the councillor
in the cabinet. This is a bit of equity often much neglected both by
contemporaries and by history.

He had undertaken his mission without any serious and measured forecast,
such as his comrade, Colonel Stewart, was well fitted to supply. His first
notion was that he could restore the representatives of the old rulers,
but when he got into the country, he found that there were none; with one
by no means happy exception, they had all disappeared. When he reached
Berber, he learned more clearly how the question of evacuation was
interlaced with other questions. Once at Khartoum, at first he thought
himself welcome as a deliverer, and then when new light as to the real
feelings of the Soudanese broke upon him, he flung the policy of his
mission overboard. Before the end of February, instead of the suzerainty
of Egypt, the British government should control Soudanese administration,
with Zobeir as their governor-general. “When Gordon left this country,”
said Mr. Gladstone, “and when he arrived in Egypt, he declared it to be,
and I have not the smallest doubt that it was—a fixed portion of his
policy, that no British force should be employed in aid of his
mission.”(96) When March came, he flung himself with ardour into the
policy of “smashing up” the Mahdi, with resort to British and Indian
troops. This was a violent reversal of all that had been either settled or
dreamed of, whether in London or at Cairo. A still more vehement stride
came next. He declared that to leave outlying garrisons to their fate
would be an “indelible disgrace.” Yet, as Lord Hartington said, the
government “were under no moral obligation to use the military resources
of this empire for the relief of those garrisons.” As for Gordon’s opinion
that “indelible disgrace” would attach to the British government if they
were not relieved, “I do not admit,” said the minister very sensibly,
“that General Gordon is on this point a better authority than anybody
else.”(97) All this illustrates the energy of Gordon’s mental movements,
and also, what is more important, the distracting difficulties of the case
before him. In one view and one demand he strenuously persevered, as we
shall now see.

Mr. Gladstone at first, when Gordon set all instructions at defiance, was
for recalling him. A colleague also was for recalling him on the first
instant when he changed his policy. Another important member of the
cabinet was, on the contrary, for an expedition. “I cannot admit,” wrote a
fourth leading minister, “that either generals or statesmen who have
accepted the offer of a man to lead a forlorn hope, are in the least bound
to risk the lives of thousands for the uncertain chance of saving the
forlorn hope.” Some think that this was stern common sense, others call it
ignoble. The nation, at any rate, was in one of its high idealising
humours, though Gordon had roused some feeling against himself in this
country (unjustly enough) by his decree formally sanctioning the holding
of slaves.

The general had not been many hours in Khartoum (February 18) before he
sent a telegram to Sir E. Baring, proposing that on his withdrawal from
Khartoum, Zobeir Pasha should be named his successor as governor-general
of the Soudan: he should be made a K.C.M.G., and have presents given to
him. This request was strenuously pressed by Gordon. Zobeir had been a
prime actor in the (M61) devastations of the slave trade; it was he who
had acquired Darfur for Egypt; he was a first-rate fighting man, and the
ablest leader in the Soudan. He is described by the English officer who
knows the Soudan best, as a far-seeing, thoughtful man of iron will—a born
ruler of men.(98) The Egyptian government had desired to send him down to
aid in the operations at Suakin in 1883, but the government in London
vetoed him, as they were now to veto him a second time. The Egyptian
government was to act on its own responsibility, but not to do what it
thought best. So now with Gordon.

Gordon in other days had caused Zobeir’s son to be shot, and this was
supposed to have set up an unquenchable blood-feud between them. Before
reaching Cairo, he had suggested that Zobeir should be sent to Cyprus, and
there kept out of the way. This was not done. On Gordon’s way through
Cairo, the two men met in what those present describe as a highly dramatic
interview. Zobeir bitterly upbraided Gordon: “You killed my son, whom I
entrusted to you. He was as your son. You brought my wives and women and
children in chains to Khartoum.” Still even after that incident, Gordon
declared that he had “a mystical feeling” that Zobeir and he were all
right.(99) What inspired his reiterated demand for the immediate despatch
of Zobeir is surmised to have been the conviction forced upon him during
his journey to Khartoum, that his first idea of leaving the various petty
sultans to fight it out with the Mahdi, would not work; that the Mahdi had
got so strong a hold that he could only be met by a man of Zobeir’s
political capacity, military skill, and old authority. Sir E. Baring,
after a brief interval of hesitation, now supported Gordon’s request. So
did the shrewd and expert Colonel Stewart. Nubar too favoured the idea.
The cabinet could not at once assent; they were startled by the change of
front as to total withdrawal from the Soudan—the very object of Gordon’s
mission, and accepted by him as such. On February 21 Mr. Gladstone
reported to the Queen that the cabinet were of opinion that there would be
the gravest objection to nominating by an assumption of British authority
a successor to General Gordon in the Soudan, nor did they as yet see
sufficient reasons for going beyond Gordon’s memorandum of January 25, by
making special provision for the government of that country. But at first
it looked as if ministers might yield, if Baring, Gordon, and Nubar
persisted.

As ill-fortune had it, the Zobeir plan leaked out at home by Gordon’s
indiscretion before the government decided. The omnipotent though not
omniscient divinity called public opinion intervened. The very men who had
most loudly clamoured for the extrication of the Egyptian garrisons, who
had pressed with most importunity for the despatch of Gordon, who had been
most urgent for the necessity of giving him a free hand, now declared that
it would be a national degradation and a European scandal to listen to
Gordon’s very first request. He had himself unluckily given them a capital
text, having once said that Zobeir was alone responsible for the slave
trade of the previous ten years. Gordon’s idea was, as he explained, to
put Zobeir into a position like that of the Ameer of Afghanistan, as a
buffer between Egypt and the Mahdi, with a subsidy, moral support, and all
the rest of a buffer arrangement. The idea may or may not have been a good
one; nobody else had a better.

It was not at all surprising that the cabinet should ask what new reason
had come to light why Zobeir should be trusted; why he should oppose the
Mahdi whom at first he was believed to have supported; why he should turn
the friend of Egypt; why he should be relied upon as the faithful ally of
England. To these and other doubts Gordon had excellent answers (March 8).
Zobeir would run straight, because it was his interest. If he would be
dangerous, was not the Mahdi dangerous, and whom save Zobeir could you set
up against the Mahdi? You talked of slave-holding and slave-hunting, but
would slave-holding and slave-hunting (M62) stop with your own policy of
evacuation? Slave-holding you cannot interfere with, and as for
slave-hunting, that depended on the equatorial provinces, where Zobeir
could be prevented from going, and besides he would have his hands full in
consolidating his power elsewhere. As for good faith towards Egypt,
Zobeir’s stay in Cairo had taught him our power, and being a great trader,
he would rather seek Egypt’s close alliance. Anyhow, said Gordon, “if you
do not send Zobeir, you have no chance of getting the garrisons away.”

The matter was considered at two meetings of the cabinet, but the prime
minister was prevented by his physician from attending.(100) A difference
of opinion showed itself upon the despatch of Zobeir; viewed as an
abstract question, three of the Commons members inclined to favour it, but
on the practical question, the Commons members were unanimous that no
government from either side of the House could venture to sanction Zobeir.
Mr. Gladstone had become a strong convert to the plan of sending Zobeir.
“I am better in chest and generally,” he wrote to Lord Granville, “but
unfortunately not in throat and voice, and Clark interdicts my appearance
at cabinet; but I am available for any necessary communication, say with
you, or you and Hartington.” One of the ministers went to see him in his
bed, and they conversed for two hours. The minister, on his return,
reported with some ironic amusement that Mr. Gladstone considered it very
likely that they could not bring parliament to swallow Zobeir, but
believed that he himself could. Whether his confidence in this was right
or wrong, he was unable to turn his cabinet. The Queen telegraphed her
agreement with the prime minister. But this made no difference. “On
Saturday 15,” Mr. Gladstone notes, “it seemed as if by my casting vote
Zobier was to be sent to Gordon. But on Sunday —— and —— receded from
their ground, and I gave way. The nature of the evidence on which
judgments are formed in this most strange of all cases, precludes (in
reason) pressing all conclusions, which are but preferences, to extremes.”
“It is well known,” said Mr. Gladstone in the following year when the
curtain had fallen on the catastrophe, “that if, when the recommendation
to send Zobeir was made, we had complied with it, an address from this
House to the crown would have paralysed our action; and though it was
perfectly true that the decision arrived at was the judgment of the
cabinet, it was also no less the judgment of parliament and the people.”
So Gordon’s request was refused.

It is true that, as a minister put it at the time, to send Zobeir would
have been a gambler’s throw. But then what was it but a gambler’s throw to
send Gordon himself? The Soudanese chieftain might possibly have done all
that Gordon and Stewart, who knew the ground and were watching the quick
fluctuation of events with elastic minds, now positively declared that he
would have the strongest motives not to do. Even then, could the issue
have been worse? To run all the risks involved in the despatch of Gordon,
and then immediately to refuse the request that he persistently
represented as furnishing him his only chance, was an incoherence that the
parliament and people of England have not often surpassed.(101) All
through this critical month, from the 10th until the 30th, Mr. Gladstone
was suffering more or less from indisposition which he found it difficult
to throw off.



VI


The chance, whatever it may have been, passed like a flash. Just as the
proposal inflamed many in England, so it did mischief in Cairo. Zobeir
like other people got wind of it; enemies of England at Cairo set to work
with him; Sir E. Baring might have found him hard to deal with. It was
Gordon’s rashness that had made the design public. Gordon, too, as it
happened, had made a dire mistake on his way up. At Berber he had shown
the khedive’s secret firman, (M63) announcing the intended abandonment of
the Soudan. The news spread; it soon reached the Mahdi himself, and the
Mahdi made politic use of it. He issued a proclamation of his own, asking
all the sheikhs who stood aloof from him or against him, what they had to
gain by supporting a pasha who was the next day going to give the Soudan
up. Gordon’s argument for this unhappy proceeding was that, the object of
his mission being to get out of the country and leave them to their
independence, he could have put no sharper spur into them to make them
organise their own government. But he spoke of it after as the fatal
proclamation, and so it was.(102)

What happened was that the tribes round Khartoum almost at once began to
waver. From the middle of March, says a good observer, one searches in
vain for a single circumstance hopeful for Gordon. “When the eye wanders
over the huge and hostile Soudan, notes the little pin-point garrisons,
each smothered in a cloud of Arab spears, and remembers that Gordon and
Stewart proceeded to rule this vast empire, already given away to others,
one feels that the Soudanese view was marked by common sense.”(103)
Gordon’s too sanguine prediction that the men who had beaten Hicks, and
the men who afterwards beat Baker, would never fight beyond their tribal
limits, did not come true. Wild forces gathered round the Mahdi as he
advanced northwards. The tribes that had wavered joined them. Berber fell
on May 26. The pacific mission had failed, and Gordon and his comrade
Stewart—a more careful and clear-sighted man than himself—were shut up in
Khartoum.

Distractions grew thicker upon the cabinet, and a just reader, now far
away from the region of votes of censure, will bear them in mind. The
Queen, like many of her subjects, grew impatient, but Mr. Gladstone was
justified in reminding her of the imperfect knowledge, and he might have
called it blank ignorance, with which the government was required on the
shortest notice to form conclusions on a remote and more than
half-barbarous region.

Gordon had told them that he wanted to take his steam vessels to Equatoria
and serve the king of the Belgians. This Sir Evelyn Baring refused to
allow, not believing Gordon to be in immediate danger (March 26). From
Gordon himself came a telegram (March 28), “I think we are now safe, and
that, as the Nile rises, we shall account for the rebels.” Mr. Gladstone
was still unwell and absent. Through Lord Granville he told the cabinet
(March 15) that, with a view to speedy departure from Khartoum, he would
not even refuse absolutely to send cavalry to Berber, much as he disliked
it, provided the military authorities thought it could be done, and
provided also that it was declared necessary for Gordon’s safety, and was
strictly confined to that object. The cabinet decided against an immediate
expedition, one important member vowing that he would resign if an
expedition were not sent in the autumn, another vowing that he would
resign if it were. On April 7, the question of an autumn expedition again
came up. Six were favourable, five the other way, including the prime
minister.

Almost by the end of March it was too probable that no road of retreat was
any longer open. If they could cut no way out, either by land or water,
what form of relief was possible? A diversion from Suakin to Berber—one of
Gordon’s own suggestions? But the soldiers differed. Fierce summer heat
and little water; an Indian force might stand it; even they would find it
tough. A dash by a thousand cavalry across two hundred miles of desert—one
hundred of them without water; without communication with its base, and
with the certainty that whatever might befall, no reinforcements could
reach it for months? What would be your feelings, and your language, asked
Lord (M64) Hartington, if besides having Gordon and Stewart beleaguered in
Khartoum, we also knew that a small force of British cavalry unable to
take the offensive was shut up in the town of Berber?(104) Then the
government wondered whether a move on Dongola might not be advantageous.
Here again the soldiers thought the torrid climate a fatal objection, and
the benefits doubtful. Could not Gordon, some have asked, have made his
retreat at an early date after reaching Khartoum, by way of Berber?
Answer—the Nile was too low. All this it was that at a later day, when the
time had come to call his government to its account, justified Mr.
Gladstone in saying that in such enterprises as these in the Soudan,
mistakes and miscarriages were inevitable, for they were the proper and
certain consequences of undertakings that lie beyond the scope of human
means and of rational and prudent human action, and are a war against
nature.(105) If anybody now points to the victorious expedition to
Khartoum thirteen years later, as falsifying such language as this, that
experience so far from falsifying entirely justifies. A war against nature
demands years of study, observation, preparation, and those who are best
acquainted with the conditions at first hand all agree that neither the
tribes nor the river nor the desert were well known enough in 1885, to
guarantee that overthrow in the case of the Mahdi, which long afterwards
destroyed his successor.

On April 14 Sir E. Baring, while as keenly averse as anybody in the world
to an expedition for the relief of Khartoum if such an expedition could be
avoided, still watching events with a clear and concentrated gaze, assured
the government that it was very likely to be unavoidable; it would be well
therefore, without loss of time, to prepare for a move as soon as ever the
Nile should rise. Six days before, Lord Wolseley also had written to Lord
Hartington at the war office, recommending immediate and active
preparations for an exclusively British expedition to Khartoum. Time, he
said, is the most important element in this question; and in truth it was,
for time was flying, and so were events. The cabinet were reported as
feeling that Gordon, “who was despatched on a mission essentially pacific,
had found himself, from whatever cause, unable to prosecute it
effectually, and now proposed the use of military means, which might fail,
and which, even if they should succeed, might be found to mean a new
subjugation of the Soudan—the very consummation which it was the object of
Gordon’s mission to avert.” On June 27 it was known in London that Berber
had fallen a month before.



VII


Lord Hartington, as head of the war department, had a stronger leaning
towards the despatch of troops than some of his colleagues, but, says Mr.
Gladstone to Lord Granville in a letter of 1888, “I don’t think he ever
came to any sharp issue (like mine about Zobeir); rather that in the main
he got what he wanted.” Wherever the fault lay, the issue was unfortunate.
The generals in London fought the battle of the routes with unabated
tenacity for month after month. One was for the approach to Khartoum by
the Nile; another by Suakin and Berber; a third by the Korosko desert. A
departmental committee reported in favour of the Nile as the easiest,
safest, and cheapest, but they did not report until July 29. It was not
until the beginning of August that the House of Commons was asked for a
vote of credit, and Lord Hartington authorised General Stephenson at Cairo
to take measures for moving troops southward. In his despatch of August 8,
Lord Hartington still only speaks of operations for the relief of Gordon,
“should they become necessary”; he says the government were still
unconvinced that Gordon could not secure the withdrawal of the garrison
from Khartoum; but “they are of opinion that the time had arrived for
obtaining accurate information as to his position,” and, “if necessary,
for rendering him assistance.”(106) As soon as the decision was taken,
preparations were carried out with rapidity and skill. In the same month
Lord Wolseley was (M65) appointed to command the expedition, and on
September 9 he reached Cairo. The difficulties of a military decision had
been great, said Lord Hartington, and there was besides, he added, a
difference of opinion among the military authorities.(107) It was October
5 before Lord Wolseley reached Wady-Halfa, and the Nile campaign began.

Whatever decision military critics may ultimately form upon the choice of
the Nile route, or upon the question whether the enterprise would have
been any more successful if the route had been by Suakin or Korosko, it is
at least certain that no position, whether strategically false or no, has
ever evoked more splendid qualities in face of almost preterhuman
difficulties, hardship, and labour. The treacherous and unknown river, for
it was then unknown, with its rapids, its shifting sandbanks and tortuous
channels and rocky barriers and heart-breaking cataracts; the Bayuda
desert, haunted by fierce and stealthy enemies; the trying climate, the
heat, the thirst, all the wearisome embarrassments of transport on camels
emaciated by lack of food and water—such scenes exacted toil, patience,
and courage as worthy of remark and admiration as if the advance had
successfully achieved its object. Nobody lost heart. “Everything goes on
swimmingly,” wrote Sir Herbert Stewart to Lord Wolseley, “_except as to
time_.” This was on January 14, 1885. Five days later, he was mortally
wounded.

The end of it all, in spite of the gallantry of Abu Klea and Kirbekan, of
desert column and river column, is only too well known. Four of Gordon’s
small steamers coming down from Khartoum met the British desert column at
Gubat on January 21. The general in command at once determined to proceed
to Khartoum, but delayed his start until the morning of the 24th. The
steamers needed repairs, and Sir Charles Wilson deemed it necessary for
the safety of his troops to make a reconnaissance down the river towards
Berber before starting up to Khartoum. He took with him on two of Gordon’s
steamers—described as of the dimensions of the penny boats upon the
Thames, but bullet proof—a force of twenty-six British, and two hundred
and forty Soudanese. He had also in tow a nugger laden with dhura. This
was what, when Khartoum came in sight (Jan. 28) the “relief force”
actually amounted to. As the two steamers ran slowly on, a solitary voice
from the river-bank now and again called out to them that Khartoum was
taken, and Gordon slain. Eagerly searching with their glasses, the
officers perceived that the government-house was a wreck, and that no flag
was flying. Gordon, in fact, had met his death two days before.

Mr. Gladstone afterwards always spoke of the betrayal of Khartoum. But
Major Kitchener, who prepared the official report, says that the
accusations of treachery were all vague, and to his mind, the outcome of
mere supposition. “In my opinion,” he says, “Khartoum fell from sudden
assault, when the garrison were too exhausted by privations to make proper
resistance.”(108) The idea that the relieving force was only two days late
is misleading. A nugger’s load of dhura would not have put an end to the
privations of the fourteen thousand people still in Khartoum; and even
supposing that the handful of troops at Gubat could have effected their
advance upon Khartoum many days earlier, it is hard to believe that they
were strong enough either to drive off the Mahdi, or to hold him at bay
until the river column had come up.



VIII


The prime minister was on a visit to the Duke of Devonshire at Holker,
where he had many long conversations with Lord Hartington, and had to deal
with heavy post-bags. On Thursday, Feb. 5, after writing to the Queen and
others, he heard what had happened on the Nile ten days before. “After 11
A.M.,” he records, “I learned the sad news of the fall or betrayal of
Khartoum. H[artington] and I, with C [his wife], went off by the first
train, and reached Downing Street soon after 8.15. The circumstances are
sad and trying. It is one of the least points about them that they may put
an end to this government.”(109) The next day the cabinet met; (M66)
discussions “difficult but harmonious.” The Queen sent to him and to Lord
Hartington at Holker an angry telegram—blaming her ministers for what had
happened—a telegram not in cipher as usual, but open. Mr. Gladstone
addressed to the Queen in reply (Feb. 5, 1885) a vindication of the course
taken by the cabinet; and it may be left to close an unedifying and a
tragic chapter:—


    _To the Queen._

    Mr. Gladstone has had the honour this day to receive your
    Majesty’s telegram _en clair_, relating to the deplorable
    intelligence received this day from Lord Wolseley, and stating
    that it is too fearful to consider that the fall of Khartoum might
    have been, prevented and many precious lives saved by earlier
    action. Mr. Gladstone does not presume to estimate the means of
    judgment possessed by your Majesty, but so far as his information
    and recollection at the moment go, he is not altogether able to
    follow the conclusion which your Majesty has been pleased thus to
    announce. Mr. Gladstone is under the impression that Lord
    Wolseley’s force might have been sufficiently advanced to save
    Khartoum, had not a large portion of it been detached by a
    circuitous route along the river, upon the express application of
    General Gordon, to occupy Berber on the way to the final
    destination. He speaks, however, with submission on a point of
    this kind. There is indeed in some quarters a belief that the
    river route ought to have been chosen at an earlier period, and
    had the navigation of the Nile in its upper region been as well
    known as that of the Thames, this might have been a just ground of
    reproach. But when, on the first symptoms that the position of
    General Gordon in Khartoum was not secure, your Majesty’s advisers
    at once sought from the most competent persons the best
    information they could obtain respecting the Nile route, the
    balance of testimony and authority was decidedly against it, and
    the idea of the Suakin and Berber route, with all its formidable
    difficulties, was entertained in preference; nor was it until a
    much later period that the weight of opinion and information
    warranted the definitive choice of the Nile route. Your Majesty’s
    ministers were well aware that climate and distance were far more
    formidable than the sword of the enemy, and they deemed it right,
    while providing adequate military means, never to lose from view
    what might have proved to be the destruction of the gallant army
    in the Soudan. It is probable that abundant wrath and indignation
    will on this occasion be poured out upon them. Nor will they
    complain if so it should be; but a partial consolation may be
    found on reflecting that neither aggressive policy, nor military
    disaster, nor any gross error in the application of means to ends,
    has marked this series of difficult proceedings, which, indeed,
    have greatly redounded to the honour of your Majesty’s forces of
    all ranks and arms. In these remarks which Mr. Gladstone submits
    with his humble devotion, he has taken it for granted that
    Khartoum has fallen through the exhaustion of its means of
    defence. But your Majesty may observe from the telegram that this
    is uncertain. Both the correspondent’s account and that of Major
    Wortley refer to the delivery of the town by treachery, a
    contingency which on some previous occasions General Gordon has
    treated as far from improbable; and which, if the notice existed,
    was likely to operate quite independently of the particular time
    at which a relieving force might arrive. The presence of the enemy
    in force would naturally suggest the occasion, or perhaps even the
    apprehension of the approach of the British army. In pointing to
    these considerations, Mr. Gladstone is far from assuming that they
    are conclusive upon the whole case; in dealing with which the
    government has hardly ever at any of its stages been furnished
    sufficiently with those means of judgment which rational men
    usually require. It may be that, on a retrospect, many errors will
    appear to have been committed. There are many reproaches, from the
    most opposite quarters, to which it might be difficult to supply a
    conclusive answer. Among them, and perhaps among the most
    difficult, as far as Mr. Gladstone can judge, would be the
    reproach of those who might argue that our proper business was the
    protection of Egypt, that it never was in military danger from the
    Mahdi, and that the most prudent course would have been to provide
    it with adequate frontier defences, and to assume no
    responsibility for the lands beyond the desert.


One word more. Writing to one of his former colleagues long after Mr.
Gladstone says:—


    _Jan. 10, ’90._—In the Gordon case we all, and I rather
    prominently, must continue to suffer in silence. Gordon was a
    hero, and a hero of heroes; but we ought to have known that a hero
    of heroes is not the proper person to give effect at a distant
    point, and in most difficult circumstances, to the views of
    ordinary men. It was unfortunate that he should claim the hero’s
    privilege by turning upside down and inside out every idea and
    intention with which he had left England, and for which he had
    obtained our approval. Had my views about Zobeir prevailed, it
    would not have removed our difficulties, as Forster would
    certainly have moved, and with the tories and the Irish have
    carried, a condemnatory address. My own opinion is that it is
    harder to justify our doing so much to rescue him, than our not
    doing more. Had the party reached Khartoum in time, he would not
    have come away (as I suppose), and the dilemma would have arisen
    in another form.


In 1890 an application was made to Mr. Gladstone by a certain foreign
writer who had undertaken an article on Gordon and his mission. Mr.
Gladstone’s reply (Jan. 11, ’90) runs to this effect:—


    I am much obliged by your kind letter and enclosure. I hope you
    will not think it belies this expression when I say that I feel
    myself precluded from supplying any material or entering upon any
    communications for the purpose of self-defence against the charges
    which are freely made and I believe widely accepted against myself
    and against the cabinet of 1880-5 in connection with General
    Gordon. It would be felt in this country, by friends I think in
    many cases as well as adversaries, that General Gordon’s
    much-lamented death ought to secure him, so far as we are
    concerned, against the counter-argument which we should have to
    present on his language and proceedings. On this account you will,
    I hope, excuse me from entering into the matter. I do not doubt
    that a true and equitable judgment will eventually prevail.(110)




Chapter X. Interior Of The Cabinet. (1895)


    I am aware that the age is not what we all wish, but I am sure
    that the only means to check its degeneracy is heartily to concur
    in whatever is best in our time.—BURKE.



I


The year 1885 must be counted as in some respects the severest epoch of
Mr. Gladstone’s life. The previous twelve months had not ended cheerfully.
Sleep, the indispensable restorer, and usually his constant friend, was
playing him false. The last entry in his diary was this:—


    The year closed with a bad night, only one hour and a half of
    sleep, which will hardly do to work upon. There is much that I
    should like to have recorded.... But the pressure on me is too
    great for the requisite recollection. It is indeed a time of
    _Sturm und Drang_. What with the confusion of affairs, and the
    disturbance of my daily life by the altered character of my
    nights, I cannot think in calm, but can only trust and pray.


He was unable to be present at the dinner of the tenants, and his eldest
son in his absence dwelt once more on his father’s wish to retire,
whenever occasion should come, from the public service, or at least from
that kind of service to the public which imposed on him such arduous
efforts.

One great element of confusion was the sphinx’s riddle of Egyptian
finance. On his birthday, among a dozen occupations, he says: “A little
woodcraft for helping sleep; wrote mem. on Egyptian finance which I hope
may help to clear my brain and nerves.” And this was a characteristic way
of seeking a cure; for now and at every time, any task that demanded close
thought and firm expression was his surest (M67) sedative. More perplexing
even than the successive problems of the hour, was the threatened
disorganisation, not only of his cabinet, but of the party and its future.
On January 20 he was forced to London for two Egyptian cabinets, but he
speedily returned to Hawarden, whence he immediately wrote a letter to
Lord Granville:—


    _January 22, 1885._—Here I am after a journey of 5-½ hours from
    door to door, through the unsought and ill-deserved kindness of
    the London and North-Western railway, which entirely spoils me by
    special service.

    There was one part of my conversation of to-day with Hartington
    which I should like not to leave in any case without record. He
    referred to the difficulties he had had, and he “gratefully”
    acknowledged the considerateness of the cabinet. He said the point
    always urged upon him was, not to break up the liberal party. But,
    he said, can we avoid its breaking up, within a very short time
    after you retire, and ought this consideration therefore to be
    regarded as of such very great force? I said, my reply is in two
    sentences. First, I admit that from various symptoms it is not
    improbable there may be a plan or intention to break up the party.
    But if a rupture of that kind comes,—this is my second sentence—it
    will come upon matters of principle, known and understood by the
    whole country, and your duty will probably be clear and your
    position unembarrassed. But I entreat you to use your utmost
    endeavour to avoid bringing about the rupture on one of the points
    of this Egyptian question, which lies outside the proper business
    of a government and is beyond its powers, which does not turn upon
    clear principles of politics, and about which the country
    understands almost nothing, and cares, for the most part, very
    little. All this he took without rejoinder.

    _P.S._—We are going to Holker next week, and Hartington said he
    would try to come and see me there.


As we have already seen,(111) Mr. Gladstone paid his visit to Holker
(January 30), where he found the Duke of Devonshire “wonderfully well, and
kind as ever,” where he was joined by Lord Hartington, and where they
together spelled out the cipher telegram (on February 5) bringing the evil
news of the fall of Khartoum.

It is not uninteresting to see how the notion of Mr. Gladstone’s
retirement, now much talked of in his family, affected a friendly,
philosophic, and most observant onlooker. Lord Acton wrote to him
(February 2):—


    You mean that the new parliament, the first of our democratic
    constitution, shall begin its difficult and perilous course
    without the services of a leader who has greater experience and
    authority than any other man. You design to withdraw your
    assistance when most urgently needed, at the moment of most
    conservative apprehension and most popular excitement. By the
    choice of this particular moment for retirement you increase the
    danger of the critical transition, because nobody stands as you do
    between the old order of things and the new, or inspires general
    confidence; and the lieutenants of Alexander are not at their
    best. Next year’s change will appear vast and formidable to the
    suspicious foreigner, who will be tempted to doubt our identity.
    It is in the national interest to reduce the outer signs of
    change, to bridge the apparent chasm, to maintain the traditional
    character of the state. The unavoidable elements of weakness will
    be largely and voluntarily aggravated by their untimely
    coincidence with an event which must, at any time, be a blow to
    the position of England among the Powers. Your absence just then
    must grievously diminish our credit.... You alone inspire
    confidence that what is done for the great masses shall be done
    with a full sense of economic responsibility.... A divided liberal
    party and a weak conservative party mean the supremacy of the
    revolutionary Irish....


To this Mr. Gladstone replied:—


    _10 Downing Street, Feb. 11, 1885._ Your argument against letting
    the outworn hack go to grass, depends wholly on a certain
    proposition, namely this, that there is about to be a crisis in
    the history of the constitution, growing out of the extension of
    the franchise, and that it is my duty to do what I can in aiding
    to steer the ship through the boiling waters of this crisis. My
    answer is simple. There is no crisis at all in view. There is a
    process of slow modification and development mainly in directions
    which I view with misgiving. “Tory democracy,” the favourite idea
    on that side, is no more like the conservative party in which I
    was bred, than it is like liberalism. In fact less. It is
    demagogism, only a demagogism not ennobled by love and
    appreciation of liberty, but applied in the worst way, to put down
    the pacific, law-respecting, economic elements which ennobled the
    old conservatism, living upon the fomentation of angry passions,
    and still in secret as obstinately attached as ever to the evil
    principle of class interests. The liberalism of to-day is better
    in what I have described as ennobling the old conservatism; nay,
    much better, yet far from being good. Its pet idea is what they
    call construction,—that is to say, taking into the hands of the
    state the business of the individual man. Both the one and the
    other have much to estrange me, and have had for many, many years.
    But, with all this, there is no crisis. I have even the hope that
    while the coming change may give undue encouragement to
    “construction,” it will be favourable to the economic, pacific,
    law-regarding elements; and the sense of justice which abides
    tenaciously in the masses will never knowingly join hands with the
    fiend of Jingoism. On the whole, I do not abandon the hope that it
    may mitigate the chronic distemper, and have not the smallest fear
    of its bringing about an acute or convulsive action. You leave me
    therefore rooted in my evil mind....


The activity of the left wing, acute, perhaps, but not convulsive, became
much more embarrassing than the desire of the right wing to be inactive.
Mr. Chamberlain had been rapidly advancing in public prominence, and he
now showed that the agitation against the House of Lords was to be only
the beginning and not the end. At Ipswich (January 14), he said this
country had been called the paradise of the rich, and warned his audience
no longer to allow it to remain the purgatory of the poor. He told them
that reform of local government must be almost the first reform of the
next parliament, and spoke in favour of allotments, the creation of small
proprietors, the placing of a small tax on the total property of the
taxpayer, and of free education. Mr. Gladstone’s attention was drawn from
Windsor to these utterances, and he replied (January 22) that though he
thought some of them were “on various grounds open to grave objection,”
yet they seemed to raise no “definite point on which, in his capacity of
prime minister, he was entitled to interfere and lecture the speaker.” A
few days later, more terrible things were said by Mr. Chamberlain at
Birmingham. He pronounced for the abolition of plural voting, and in
favour of payment of members, and manhood suffrage. He also advocated a
bill for enabling local communities to acquire land, a graduated
income-tax, and the breaking up of the great estates as the first step in
land reform. This deliverance was described by not unfriendly critics as
“a little too much the speech of the agitator of the future, rather than
of the minister of the present.” Mr. Gladstone made a lenient
communication to the orator, to the effect that “there had better be some
explanations among them when they met.” To Lord Granville he wrote
(January 31):—


    Upon the whole, weak-kneed liberals have caused us more trouble in
    the present parliament than radicals. But I think these
    declarations by Chamberlain upon matters which cannot, humanly
    speaking, become practical before the next parliament, can hardly
    be construed otherwise than as having a remote and (in that sense)
    far-sighted purpose which is ominous enough. The opposition can
    hardly fail in their opportunity, I must add in their duty, to
    make them matter of attack. Such things will happen casually from
    time to time, and always with inconvenience—but there is here a
    degree of method and system which seem to give the matter a new
    character.


It will be seen from his tone that Mr. Gladstone, in all the
embarrassments arising from this source, showed complete freedom from
personal irritation. Like the lofty-minded man he was, he imputed no low
motives to a colleague because the colleague gave him trouble. He
recognised by now that in his cabinet the battle was being fought between
old time and new. He did not allow his dislike of some of the new methods
of forming public opinion, to prevent him from doing full justice to the
energetic and sincere public spirit behind them. He had, moreover, quite
enough to do with (M68) the demands of the present, apart from signs that
were ominous for the future. A year before, in a letter to Lord Granville
(March 24, 1884), he had attempted a definition that will, perhaps, be of
general interest to politicians of either party complexion. It is, at any
rate, characteristic of his subtlety, if that be the right word, in
drawing distinctions:—


    What are divisions in a cabinet? In my opinion, differences of
    views stated, and if need be argued, and then advisedly
    surrendered with a view to a common conclusion are not “divisions
    in a cabinet.” By that phrase I understand unaccommodated
    differences on matters standing for immediate action.


It was unaccommodated differences of this kind that cost Mr. Disraeli
secessions on the Reform bill, and secessions no less serious on his
eastern policy, and it is one of the wonders of his history that Mr.
Gladstone prevented secession on the matters now standing for immediate
action before his own cabinet. During the four months between the meeting
of parliament and the fall of the government, the two great difficulties
of the government—Egypt and Ireland—reached their climax.



II


The news of the fall of Khartoum reached England on February 5. One of the
least points, as Mr. Gladstone wrote on the day, was that the grievous
news would put an end to the government, and so it very nearly did. As was
to be expected, Sir Stafford Northcote moved a vote of censure. Mr.
Gladstone informed the Queen, on the day before the division, that the
aspect of the House was “dubious and equivocal.” If there was a chance of
overthrowing the ministry, he said, the nationalists were pretty sure to
act and vote as a body with Sir Stafford. Mr. Forster, Mr. Goschen, and
some members of the whig section of the liberal party, were likely either
to do the same, or else to abstain. These circumstances looked towards an
unfavourable issue, if not in the shape of an adverse majority, yet in the
form of a majority too small to enable the government to carry on with
adequate authority and efficiency. In the debate, said Mr. Gladstone, Lord
Hartington re-stated with measured force the position of the government,
and overthrew the contention that had taken a very forward place in the
indictment against ministers, that their great offence was the failure to
send forward General Graham’s force to relieve General Gordon. In the
course of this debate Mr. Goschen warned the government that if they
flinched from the policy of smashing the Mahdi at Khartoum, he should vote
against them. A radical below the gangway upon this went to the party whip
and declared, with equal resolution, that if the government insisted on
the policy, then it would be for him and others to vote against them. Sir
William Harcourt, in a speech of great power, satisfied the gentlemen
below the gangway, and only a small handful of the party went into the
lobby with the opposition and the Irish. The division was taken at four in
the morning (February 28), and the result was that the government which
had come in with morning radiance five years ago, was worn down to an
attenuated majority of fourteen.(112)

When the numbers were declared, Mr. Gladstone said to a colleague on the
bench, “_That will do._” Whether this delphic utterance meant that the
size of the majority would justify resignation or retention, the colleague
was not sure. When the cabinet met at a more mellowed hour in the day, the
question between going out of office and staying in, was fully discussed.
Mere considerations of ease all pointed one way, for, if they held on,
they would seem to be dependent on tory support; trouble was brewing with
Russia, and the Seats bill would not be through in a hurry. On the other
hand, fourteen was majority enough to swear by, the party would be
surprised by resignation and discouraged, and retirement would wear the
look of a false position. In fact Mr. Gladstone, in spite of his incessant
sighs for a hermit’s calm, was always for fighting out every position to
the last trench. I can think of no exception, and even when the time came
ten years later, he thought his successors pusillanimous for (M69)
retiring on a small scratch defeat on cordite.(113) So now he acted on the
principle that with courage cabinets may weather almost any storm. No
actual vote was taken, but the numbers for and against retirement were
equal, until Mr. Gladstone spoke. He thought that they should try to go
on, at least until the Seats bill was through. This was the final
decision.

All this brought once more into his mind the general consideration that
now naturally much haunted him. He wrote to the Queen (February 27):—


    Mr. Gladstone believes that circumstances independent of his own
    will enable him to estimate, with some impartiality, future
    political changes, and he is certainly under the impression that,
    partly from the present composition and temper of the liberal
    party, and still more, and even much more, from the changes which
    the conservative party has been undergoing during the last forty
    years (especially the last ten or fifteen of them), the next
    change of government may possibly form the introduction to a
    period presenting some new features, and may mean more than what
    is usually implied in the transfer of power from one party to
    another.


Mr. Bright has left a note of a meeting with him at this time:—


    _March 2, 1885._—Dined with Mrs. Gladstone. After dinner, sat for
    half an hour or more with Mr. Gladstone, who is ill with cold and
    hoarseness. Long talk on Egypt. He said he had suffered torment
    during the continuance of the difficulty in that country. The
    sending Gordon out a great mistake,—a man totally unsuited for the
    work he undertook. Mr. Gladstone never saw Gordon. He was
    appointed by ministers in town, and Gladstone concurred, but had
    never seen him.


At this moment clouds began to darken the remote horizon on the north-west
boundary of our great Indian possessions. The entanglement in the deserts
of the Soudan was an obvious temptation to any other Power with policies
of its own, to disregard the susceptibilities or even the solid interests
of Great Britain. As we shall see, Mr. Gladstone was as little disposed as
Chatham or Palmerston to shrink from the defence of the legitimate rights
or obligations of his country. But the action of Russia in Afghanistan
became an added and rather poignant anxiety.

As early as March 12 the cabinet found it necessary to consider the
menacing look of things on the Afghan frontier. Military necessities in
India, as Mr. Gladstone described to the Queen what was in the mind of her
ministers, “might conceivably at this juncture come to overrule the
present intentions as to the Soudan as part of them, and it would
consequently be imprudent to do anything which could practically extend
our obligations in that quarter; as it is the entanglement of the British
forces in Soudanese operations, which would most powerfully tempt Russia
to adopt aggressive measures.” Three or four weeks later these
considerations came to a head. The question put by Mr. Gladstone to his
colleagues was this: “Apart from the defence of Egypt, which no one would
propose to abandon, does there appear to be any obligation of honour or
any inducement of policy (for myself I should add, is there any moral
warrant?) that should lead us in the present state of the demands on the
empire, to waste a large portion of our army in fighting against nature,
and I fear also fighting against liberty (such liberty as the case admits)
in the Soudan?” The assumptions on which the policy had been founded had
all broken down. Osman Digna, instead of being readily crushed, had
betaken himself to the mountains and could not be got at. The railway from
Suakin to Berber, instead of serving the advance on Khartoum in the
autumn, could not possibly be ready in time. Berber, instead of being
taken before the hot season, could not be touched. Lord Wolseley, instead
of being able to proceed with his present forces or a moderate addition,
was already asking for twelve more battalions of infantry, with a
proportion of other arms.

Mr. Gladstone’s own view of this crisis is to be found in a memorandum
dated April 9, circulated to the cabinet three or four days before the
question came up for final settlement. (M70) It is long, but then the case
was intricate and the stages various. The reader may at least be satisfied
to know that he will have little more of it.(114)

Three cabinets were held on three successive days (April 13-15). On the
evening of the first day Mr. Gladstone sent a telegram to the Queen, then
abroad, informing her that in the existing state of foreign affairs, her
ministers felt bound to examine the question of the abandonment of
offensive operations in the Soudan and the evacuation of the territory.
The Queen, in reply, was rather vehement against withdrawal, partly on the
ground that it would seriously affect our position in India. The Queen had
throughout made a great point that the fullest powers should be granted to
those on the spot, both Wolseley and Baring having been selected by the
government for the offices they held. No question cuts deeper in the art
of administering a vast system like that of Great Britain, than the
influence of the agent at a distant place; nowhere is the balance of peril
between too slack a rein from home and a rein too tight, more delicate.
Mr. Gladstone, perhaps taught by the experience of the Crimean war, always
strongly inclined to the school of the tight rein, though I never heard of
any representative abroad with a right to complain of insufficient support
from a Gladstone cabinet.(115) On this aspect of matters, so raised by the
Queen, Mr. Gladstone had (March 15) expressed his view to Sir Henry
Ponsonby:—


    Sir Evelyn Baring was appointed to carry onwards a declared and
    understood policy in Egypt, when all share in the management of
    the Soudan was beyond our province. To Lord Wolseley as general of
    the forces in Egypt, and on account of the arduous character of
    the work before him, we are bound to render in all military
    matters a firm and ungrudging support. We have accordingly not
    scrupled to counsel, on his recommendation, very heavy charges on
    the country, and military operations of the highest importance.
    But we have no right to cast on him any responsibility beyond what
    is strictly military. It is not surely possible that he should
    decide policy, and that we should adopt and answer for it, even
    where it is in conflict with the announcements we have made in
    parliament.


By the time of these critical cabinets in April Sir Evelyn Baring had
spontaneously expressed his views, and with a full discussion recommended
abandonment of the expedition to Khartoum.

On the second day the matter was again probed and sifted and weighed.

At the third cabinet the decision was taken to retire from the Soudan, and
to fix the southern frontier of Egypt at the line where it was left for
twelve years, until apprehension of designs of another European power on
the upper waters of the Nile was held to demand a new policy. Meanwhile,
the policy of Mr. Gladstone’s cabinet was adopted and followed by Lord
Salisbury when he came into office. He was sometimes pressed to reverse
it, and to overthrow the dervish power at Khartoum. To any importunity of
this kind, Lord Salisbury’s answer was until 1896 unwavering.(116)

It may be worth noting that, in the course of his correspondence with the
Queen on the change of policy in the Soudan, Mr. Gladstone casually
indulged in the luxury of a historical parallel. “He must assure your
Majesty,” he wrote in a closing sentence (April 20), “that at least he has
never in any cabinet known any question more laboriously or more
conscientiously discussed; and he is confident that the basis of action
has not been the mere change in the public view (which, however, is in
some cases imperative, as it was with King George III. in the case of the
American war), but a deep conviction of what the honour and interest of
the empire require them as faithful servants of your Majesty to advise.”
(M71) The most harmless parallel is apt to be a challenge to discussion,
and the parenthesis seems to have provoked some rejoinder from the Queen,
for on April 28 Mr. Gladstone wrote to her secretary a letter which takes
him away from Khartoum to a famous piece of the world’s history:—


    _To Sir Henry Ponsonby._

    In further prosecution of my reply to your letter of the 25th, I
    advert to your remarks upon Lord North. I made no reference to his
    conduct, I believe, in writing to her Majesty. What I endeavoured
    to show was that King George III., without changing his opinion of
    the justice of his war against the colonies, was obliged to give
    it up on account of a change of public opinion, and was not open
    to blame for so doing.

    You state to me that Lord North never flinched from his task till
    it became hopeless, that he then resigned office, but did not
    change his opinions to suit the popular cry. The implied contrast
    to be drawn with the present is obvious. I admit none of your
    three propositions. Lord North did not, as I read history, require
    to change his opinions to suit the popular cry. They were already
    in accordance with the popular cry; and it is a serious reproach
    against him that without sharing his master’s belief in the
    propriety of the war, he long persisted in carrying it on, through
    subserviency to that master.

    Lord North did not resign office for any reason but because he
    could not help it, being driven from it by some adverse votes of
    the House of Commons, to which he submitted with great good
    humour, and probably with satisfaction.

    Lord North did not, so far as I know, state the cause to be
    hopeless. Nor did those who were opposed to him. The movers of the
    resolution that drove him out of office did not proceed upon that
    ground. General Conway in his speech advised the retention of the
    ground we held in the colonies, and the resolution, which
    expressed the sense of the House as a body, bears a singular
    resemblance to the announcement we have lately made, as it
    declares, in its first clause, that the further prosecution of
    offensive war (on the continent of America) “will be the means of
    weakening the efforts of this country against her European
    enemies,” February 27, 1782. This was followed, on March 4, by an
    address on the same basis; and by a resolution declaring that any
    ministers who should advise or attempt to frustrate it should be
    considered “as enemies to his Majesty and to this country.” I
    ought, perhaps, to add that I have never stated, and I do not
    conceive, that a change in the public opinion of the country is
    the ground on which the cabinet have founded the change in their
    advice concerning the Soudan.



III


The reader has by this time perhaps forgotten how Mr. Gladstone
good-humouredly remonstrated with Lord Palmerston for associating him as
one of the same school as Cobden and Bright.(117) The twenty intervening
years had brought him more and more into sympathy with those two eminent
comrades in good causes, but he was not any less alive to the
inconvenience of the label. Speaking in Midlothian after the dissolution
in 1880, he denied the cant allegation that to instal the liberals in
power would be to hand over the destinies of the country to the Manchester
school.(118) “Abhorring all selfishness of policy,” he said, “friendly to
freedom in every country of the earth attached, to the modes of reason,
detesting the ways of force, this Manchester school, this peace-party, has
sprung prematurely to the conclusion that wars may be considered as having
closed their melancholy and miserable history, and that the affairs of the
world may henceforth be conducted by methods more adapted to the dignity
of man, more suited both to his strength and to his weakness, less likely
to lead him out of the ways of duty, to stimulate his evil passions, to
make him guilty before God for inflicting misery on his fellow-creatures.”
Such a view, he said, was a serious error, though it was not only a
respectable, it was even a noble error. Then he went on, “However much you
may detest war—and you cannot detest it too much—there is no war—except
one, the war for liberty—that does not contain in it elements of
corruption, as well as of misery, that are deplorable to recollect and to
consider; but however deplorable wars may be, they are among the
necessities of our condition; and there are times when justice, when
faith, when the welfare of mankind, require a man not to shrink from the
responsibility of undertaking them. And if you undertake war, so also you
are often obliged to undertake measures that may lead to war.”(119)

It is also, if not one of the necessities, at least one of the natural
probabilities of our imperfect condition, that when a nation has its
forces engaged in war, that is the moment when other nations may press
inconvenient questions of their own. Accordingly, as I have already
mentioned, when Egyptian distractions were at their height, a dangerous
controversy arose with Russia in regard to the frontier of Afghanistan.
The question had been first raised a dozen years before without effect,
but it was now sharpened into actuality by recent advances of Russia in
Central Asia, bringing her into close proximity to the territory of the
Ameer. The British and Russian governments appointed a commission to lay
down the precise line of division between the Turcoman territory recently
annexed by Russia and Afghanistan. The question of instructions to the
commission led to infinite discussion, of which no sane man not a
biographer is now likely to read one word. While the diplomatists were
thus teasing one another, Russian posts and Afghan pickets came closer
together, and one day (March 30, 1885) the Russians broke in upon the
Afghans at Penjdeh. The Afghans fought gallantly, their losses were heavy,
and Penjdeh was occupied by the Russians. “Whose was the provocation,” as
Mr. Gladstone said later, “is a matter of the utmost consequence. We only
know that the attack was a Russian attack. We know that the Afghans
suffered in life, in spirit, and in repute. We know that a blow was struck
at the credit and the authority of a sovereign—our protected ally—who had
committed no offence. All I say is, we cannot in that state of things
close this book and say, ‘We will look into it no more.’ We must do our
best to have right done in the matter.”

Here those who were most adverse to the Soudan policy stood firmly with
their leader, and when Mr. Gladstone proposed a vote of credit for eleven
millions, of which six and a half were demanded to meet “the case for
preparation,” raised by the collision at Penjdeh, he was supported with
much more than a mechanical loyalty, alike by the regular opposition and
by independent adherents below his own gangway. The speech in which he
moved this vote of a war supply (April 27) was an admirable example both
of sustained force and lucidity in exposition, and of a combined firmness,
dignity, reserve, and right human feeling, worthy of a great minister
dealing with an international situation of extreme delicacy and peril.
Many anxious moments followed; for the scene of quarrel was far off,
details were hard to clear up, diplomacy was sometimes ambiguous, popular
excitement was heated, and the language of faction was unmeasured in its
violence. The preliminary resolution on the vote of credit had been
received with acclamation, but a hostile motion was made from the front
opposition bench (May 11), though discord on a high imperial matter was
obviously inconvenient enough for the public interest. The mover declared
the government to have murdered so many thousand men and to have arranged
a sham arbitration, and this was the prelude to other speeches in the same
key. Sir S. Northcote supported the motion—one to displace the ministers
on a bill that it was the declared intention not to oppose. The division
was taken at half-past two in the morning, after a vigorous speech from
the prime minister, and the government only counted 290 against 260. In
the minority were 42 followers of Mr. Parnell. This premature debate
cleared the air. Worked with patience and with vigorous preparations at
the back of conciliatory negotiation, the question was prosecuted to a
happy issue, and those who had done their (M72) best to denounce Mr.
Gladstone and Lord Granville for trampling the interests and honour of
their country underfoot thought themselves very lucky, when the time came
for them to take up the threads, in being able to complete the business by
adopting and continuing the selfsame line. With justifiable triumph Mr.
Gladstone asked how they would have confronted Russia if “that insane
policy—for so I still must call it”—of Afghan occupation which he had
brought to an end in 1880, had been persevered in. In such a case, when
Russia came to advance her claim so to adjust boundaries as to make her
immediate neighbour to Afghanistan, she would have found the country full
of friends and allies, ready to join her in opposing the foreigner and the
invader; and she would have been recognised as the liberator.(120)



IV


In some respects Mr. Gladstone was never more wonderful than in the few
weeks that preceded the fall of his second administration. Between the
middle of April and the middle of May, he jots down with half-rueful
humour the names of no fewer than nine members of the cabinet who within
that period, for one reason or another and at one moment or another,
appeared to contemplate resignation; that is to say a majority. Of one
meeting he said playfully to a colleague, “A very fair cabinet to-day—only
three resignations.” The large packets of copious letters of this date,
written and received, show him a minister of unalterable patience,
unruffled self-command; inexhaustible in resource, catching at every straw
from the resource of others, indefatigable in bringing men of divergent
opinions within friendly reach of one another; of tireless ingenuity in
minimising differences and convincing recalcitrants that what they took
for a yawning gulf was in fact no more than a narrow trench that any
decent political gymnast ought to be ashamed not to be able to vault over.
Though he takes it all as being in the day’s work, in the confidence of
the old jingle, that be the day short or never so long, at length it
ringeth to evensong, he does not conceal the burden. To Mrs. Gladstone he
writes from Downing Street on May-day:—


    Rather oppressed and tired with the magnitude and the complication
    of subjects on my mind, I did not think of writing by the first
    post, but I will now supply the omission by making use of the
    second. As to all the later history of this ministry, which is now
    entering on its sixth year, it has been a wild romance of
    politics, with a continual succession of hairbreadth escapes and
    strange accidents pressing upon one another, and it is only from
    the number of dangers we have passed through already, that one can
    be bold enough to hope we may pass also through what yet remain.
    Some time ago I told you that dark as the sky was with many a
    thunder-cloud, there were the possibilities of an admirable
    situation and result, and _for me_ a wind-up better than at any
    time I could have hoped. Russia and Ireland are the two _great_
    dangers remaining. The “ray” I mentioned yesterday for the first
    is by no means extinct to-day, but there is nothing new of a
    serious character; what there is, is good. So also upon the Irish
    complications there is more hope than there was yesterday,
    although the odds may still be heavily against our getting forward
    unitedly in a satisfactory manner.


On May 2, as he was looking at the pictures in the Academy, Lord Granville
brought him tidings of the Russian answer, which meant peace. His short
entries tell a brave story:—


    _May 3, Sunday._—Dined at Marlborough House. They were most kind
    and pleasant. But it is so unsundaylike and unrestful. I am much
    fatigued in mind and body. Yet very happy. _May 4._—Wrote to Lord
    Spencer, Mr. Chamberlain, Sir C. Dilke, Lord Granville. Conclave.
    H. of C., 4-¾-8-½ and 9-½-2-½. Spoke on Russian question. A heavy
    day. Much knocked up. _May 5._—... Another anxious, very anxious
    day, and no clearing of the sky as yet. But after all that has
    come, what may not come? _May 14, Ascension Day._—Most of the day
    was spent in anxious interviews, and endeavours to bring and keep
    the members of the cabinet together. _May 15._—Cabinet 2-4-½.
    Again stiff. But I must not lose heart.


(M73) Difference of opinion upon the budget at one time wore a threatening
look, for the radicals disliked the proposed increase of the duty on beer;
but Mr. Gladstone pointed out in compensation that on the other hand the
equalisation of the death duties struck at the very height of class
preference. Mr. Childers was, as always, willing to accommodate
difficulties; and in the cabinet the rising storm blew over. Ireland never
blows over.

The struggle had gone on for three years. Many murderers had been hanged,
though more remained undetected; conspirators had fled; confidence was
restored to public officers; society in all its various grades returned
externally to the paths of comparative order; and the dire emergency of
three years before had been brought to an apparent close. The gratitude in
this country to the viceroy who had achieved this seeming triumph over the
forces of disorder was such as is felt to a military commander after a
hazardous and successful campaign. The country was once more
half-conquered, but nothing was advanced, and the other half of the
conquest was not any nearer. The scene was not hopeful. There lay
Ireland,—squalid, dismal, sullen, dull, expectant, sunk deep in hostile
intent. A minority with these misgivings and more felt that the minister’s
pregnant phrase about the government “having no moral force behind them”
too exactly described a fatal truth.




Chapter XI. Defeat Of Ministers. (May-June 1885)


    Οὔπω
    τὰν Διὸς ἁρμονίαν
    θνατῶν παρεξίασι βουλαί.

    —ÆSCH. _Prom._ V. 548.

    Never do counsels of mortal men thwart the ordered purpose of
    Zeus.



I


What was to be the Irish policy? The Crimes Act would expire in August,
and the state of parties in parliament and of sections within the cabinet,
together with the approach of the general election, made the question
whether that Act should be renewed, and if so on what terms, an issue of
crucial importance. There were good grounds for suspecting that tories
were even then intimating to the Irish that if Lord Salisbury should come
into office, they would drop coercion, just as the liberals had dropped it
when they came into office in 1880, and like them would rely upon the
ordinary law. On May 15 Mr. Gladstone announced in terms necessarily
vague, because the new bill was not settled, that they proposed to
continue what he described as certain clauses of a valuable and equitable
description in the existing Coercion Act.

No parliamentary situation could be more tempting to an astute opposition.
The signs that the cabinet was not united were unmistakable. The leader of
the little group of four clever men below the gangway on the tory side
gave signs that he espied an opportunity. This was one of the occasions
that disclosed the intrepidity of Lord Randolph Churchill. He made a
speech after Mr. Gladstone’s announcement of a (M74) renewal of portions
of the Crimes Act, not in his place but at a tory club. He declared
himself profoundly shocked that so grave an announcement should have been
taken as a matter of course. It was really a terrible piece of news.
Ireland must be in an awful state, or else the radical members of the
cabinet would never have assented to such unanswerable evidence that the
liberal party could not govern Ireland without resort to that arbitrary
force which their greatest orators had so often declared to be no remedy.
It did not much matter whether the demand was for large powers or for
small. Why not put some kind thoughts towards England in Irish minds, by
using the last days of this unlucky parliament to abrogate all that harsh
legislation which is so odious to England, and which undoubtedly abridges
the freedom and insults the dignity of a sensitive and imaginative race?
The tory party should be careful beyond measure not to be committed to any
act or policy which should unnecessarily wound or injure the feelings of
our brothers on the other side of the channel of St. George.(121)

The key to an operation that should at once, with the aid of the
disaffected liberals and the Irish, turn out Mr. Gladstone and secure the
English elections, was an understanding with Mr. Parnell. The price of
such an understanding was to drop coercion, and that price the tory
leaders resolved to pay. The manœuvre was delicate. If too plainly
disclosed, it might outrage some of the tory rank and file who would
loathe an Irish alliance, and it was likely, moreover, to deter some of
the disaffected liberals from joining in any motion for Mr. Gladstone’s
overthrow. Lord Salisbury and his friends considered the subject with
“immense deliberation some weeks before the fall of the government.” They
came to the conclusion that in the absence of official information, they
could see nothing to warrant a government in applying for a renewal of
exceptional powers. That conclusion they profess to have kept sacredly in
their own bosoms. Why they should give immense deliberation to a decision
that in their view must be worthless without official information, and
that was to remain for an indefinite time in mysterious darkness, was
never explained when this secret decision some months later was revealed
to the public.(122) If there was no intention of making the decision known
to the Irishmen, the purpose of so unusual a proceeding would be
inscrutable. Was it made known to them? Mr. McCarthy, at the time acting
for his leader, has described circumstantially how the Irish were
endeavouring to obtain a pledge against coercion; how two members of the
tory party, one of them its recognised whip, came to him in succession
declaring that they came straight from Lord Salisbury with certain
propositions; how he found the assurance unsatisfactory, and asked each of
these gentlemen in turn on different nights to go back to Lord Salisbury,
and put further questions to him; and how each of them professed to have
gone back to Lord Salisbury, to have conferred with him, and to have
brought back his personal assurance.(123) On the other hand, it has been
uniformly denied by the tory leaders that there was ever any compact
whatever with the Irishmen at this moment. We are not called upon here to
decide in a conflict of testimony which turns, after all, upon words so
notoriously slippery as pledge, compact, or understanding. It is enough to
mark what is not denied, that Lord Salisbury and his confidential friends
had resolved, subject to official information, to drop coercion, and that
the only visible reason why they should form the resolution at that
particular moment was its probable effect upon Mr. Parnell.



II


Let us now return to the ministerial camp. There the whig wing of the
cabinet, adhering to Lord Spencer, were for a modified renewal of the
Coercion Act, with the balm of a land purchase bill and a limited
extension of self-government in local areas. The radical wing were averse
to coercion, and averse to a purchase bill, but they were willing to yield
a milder form of coercion, on condition that the cabinet would agree not
merely to small measures of self-government in local areas, but to the
erection of a (M75) central board clothed with important administrative
functions for the whole of Ireland. In the House of Commons it was certain
that a fairly strong radical contingent would resist coercion in any
degree, and a liberal below the gangway, who had not been long in
parliament but who had been in the press a strong opponent of the coercion
policy of 1881, at once gave notice that if proposals were made for the
renewal of exceptional law, he should move their rejection. Mr. Gladstone
had also to inform the Queen that in what is considered the whig or
moderate section of the House there had been recent indications of great
dislike to special legislation, even of a mild character, for Ireland.
These proceedings are all of capital importance in an eventful year, and
bear pretty directly upon the better known crisis of the year following.

A memorandum by Mr. Gladstone of a conversation between himself and Lord
Granville (May 6) will best show his own attitude at this opening of a
momentous controversy:—


    ... I told him [Granville] I had given no pledge or indication of
    my future conduct to Mr. Chamberlain, who, however, knew my
    opinions to be strong in favour of some plan for a Central Board
    of Local Government in Ireland on something of an elective
    basis.... Under the circumstances, while the duty of the hour
    evidently was to study the means of possible accommodation, the
    present aspect of affairs was that of a probable split,
    _independently_ of the question what course I might individually
    pursue. My opinions, I said, were very strong and inveterate. I
    did not calculate upon Parnell and his friends, nor upon Manning
    and his bishops. Nor was I under any obligation to follow or act
    with Chamberlain. But independently of all questions of party, of
    support, and of success, I looked upon the extension of a strong
    measure of local government like this to Ireland, now that the
    question is effectually revived by the Crimes Act, as invaluable
    itself, and as the only hopeful means of securing crown and state
    from an ignominious surrender in the next parliament after a
    mischievous and painful struggle. (I did not advert to the
    difficulties which will in this session be experienced in carrying
    on a great battle for the Crimes Act.) My difficulty would lie not
    in my pledges or declarations (though these, of a public
    character, are serious), but in my opinions.

    Under these circumstances, I said, I take into view the freedom of
    my own position. My engagements to my colleagues are fulfilled;
    the great Russian question is probably settled; if we stand firm
    on the Soudan, we are now released from that embarrassment; and
    the Egyptian question, if the financial convention be safe, no
    longer presents any very serious difficulties. I am entitled to
    lay down my office as having done my work.

    Consequently the very last thing I should contemplate is opening
    the Irish difficulty in connection with my resignation, should I
    resign. It would come antecedently to any parliamentary treatment
    of that problem. If thereafter the secession of some members
    should break up the cabinet, it would leave behind it an excellent
    record at home and abroad. Lord Granville, while ready to resign
    his office, was not much consoled by this presentation of the
    case.


Late in the month (May 23) Mr. Gladstone wrote a long letter to the Queen,
giving her “some idea of the shades of opinion existing in the cabinet
with reference to legislation for Ireland.” He thought it desirable to
supply an outline of this kind, because the subject was sure to recur
after a short time, and was “likely to exercise a most important influence
in the coming parliament on the course of affairs.” The two points on
which there was considerable divergence of view were the expiry of the
Crimes Act, and the concession of local government. The Irish viceroy was
ready to drop a large portion of what Mr. Gladstone called coercive
provisions, while retaining provisions special to Ireland, but favouring
the efficiency of the law. Other ministers were doubtful whether any
special legislation was needed for Irish criminal law. Then on the point
whether the new bill should be for two years or one, some, including Mr.
Gladstone and Lord Spencer, were for the longer term, others, including
Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, for the shorter. At last the whole
cabinet agreed to two years. Next for local government,—some held that a
liberal move in this region (M76) would possibly obviate all need for
special criminal legislation, and would at any rate take the sting out of
it. To this “vastly important subject” the prime minister presumed to draw
the Queen’s special attention, as involving great and far-reaching
questions. He did not, he said, regard the differences of leaning in the
cabinet upon these matters with either surprise or dismay. Such
difficulties were due to inherent difficulties in the matters themselves,
and were to be expected from the action of independent and energetic minds
in affairs so complex.

There were two main opinions. One favoured the erection of a system of
representative county government in Ireland. The other view was that
besides the county boards, there should be in addition a central board for
all Ireland, essentially municipal and not political; in the main
executive and administrative, but also with a power to make bye-laws,
raise funds, and pledge public credit in such modes as parliament should
provide. The central board would take over education, primary, in part
intermediate, and perhaps even higher; poor law and sanitary
administration; and public works. The whole charge of justice, police, and
prisons would remain with the executive. This board would not be directly
elective by the whole Irish people; it would be chosen by the
representative county boards. Property, moreover, should have a
representation upon it distinct from numbers. This plan, “first made known
to Mr. Gladstone by Mr. Chamberlain,” would, he believed, be supported by
six out of the eight Commons ministers. But a larger number of ministers
were not prepared to agree to any plan involving the principle of an
elective central board as the policy of the cabinet. On account of this
preliminary bar, the particular provisions of the policy of a central
board were not discussed.

All this, however, was for the moment retrospective and historic, because
a fortnight before the letter was written, the policy of the central
board, of which Mr. Gladstone so decisively approved, had been killed. A
committee of the cabinet was appointed to consider it; some remained
stubbornly opposed; as the discussion went on, some changed their minds
and, having resisted, at last inclined to acquiesce. Ministers were aware
from the correspondence of one of them with an eminent third person, that
Mr. Parnell approved the scheme, and in consideration of it would even not
oppose a very limited Crimes bill. This, however, was no temptation to all
of them; perhaps it had the contrary effect. When it came to the full
cabinet, it could not be carried. All the peers except Lord Granville were
against it. All the Commoners except Lord Hartington were for it. As the
cabinet broke up (May 9), the prime minister said to one colleague, “Ah,
they will rue this day”; and to another, “Within six years, if it please
God to spare their lives, they will be repenting in sackcloth and ashes.”
Later in the day he wrote to one of them, “The division of opinion in the
cabinet on the subject of local government with a central board for
Ireland was so marked, and if I may use the expression, so diametrical,
that I dismissed the subject from my mind, and sorrowfully accepted the
negative of what was either a majority, or a moiety of the entire
cabinet.”

This decision, more profoundly critical than anybody excepting Mr.
Gladstone and perhaps Mr. Chamberlain seemed to be aware, left all
existing difficulties as acute as ever. In the middle of May things looked
very black. The scheme for a central board was dead, though, wrote Mr.
Gladstone to the viceroy, “for the present only. _It will quickly rise
again, as I think, perhaps in larger dimensions._” Some members of the
cabinet, he knew not how many, would resign rather than demand from
parliament, without a Central Board bill, the new Coercion Act. If such
resignations took place, how was a Coercion bill to be fought through the
House, when some liberals had already declared that they would resist it?

On May 15 drafts not only of a Coercion bill, but of a bill for land
purchase, came before the cabinet. Much objection was taken to land
purchase, especially by the two radical leaders, and it was agreed to
forego such a bill for the present session. The viceroy gravely lamented
this decision, and Mr. Gladstone entered into communication with Mr. (M77)
Chamberlain and Sir C. Dilke. From them he understood that their main
anxiety sprang from a fear lest the future handling of local government
should be prejudiced by premature disposal of the question of land
purchase, but that in the main they thought the question of local
government would not be prejudiced if the purchase bill only provided
funds for a year. Under this impression and with a full belief that he was
giving effect to the real desire of his colleagues in general to meet the
views of Lord Spencer, and finding the prospects of such a bill
favourable, Mr. Gladstone proceeded (May 20) to give notice of its
introduction. Mr. Chamberlain and Sir C. Dilke took this to be a reversal
of the position to which they had agreed, and would not assent to land
purchase unless definitely coupled with assurances as to local government.
They immediately resigned. The misapprehension was explained, and though
the resignations were not formally withdrawn, they were suspended. But the
two radical leaders did not conceal their view of the general state of the
case, and in very direct terms told Mr. Gladstone that they differed so
completely on the questions that were to occupy parliament for the rest of
the session, as to feel the continuance of the government of doubtful
advantage to the country. In Mr. Chamberlain’s words, written to the prime
minister at the time of the misunderstanding (May 21)—


    I feel there has been a serious misapprehension on both sides with
    respect to the Land Purchase bill, and I take blame to myself if I
    did not express myself with sufficient clearness.... I doubt very
    much if it is wise or was right to cover over the serious
    differences of principle that have lately disclosed themselves in
    the cabinet. I think it is now certain that they will cause a
    split in the new parliament, and it seems hardly fair to the
    constituencies that this should only be admitted, after they have
    discharged their function and are unable to influence the result.



III


Still the prime minister altogether declined, in his own phrase, to lose
heart, and new compromises were invented. Meanwhile he cheerfully went for
the Whitsuntide recess to Hawarden, and dived into Lechler’s _Wycliffe_,
Walpole’s _George III._, Conrad on German Union, Cooper on the Atonement,
and so forth. Among other guests at Hawarden came Lord Wolverton, “with
much conversation; we opened rather a new view as to my retirement.” What
the new view was we do not know, but the conversation was resumed and
again resumed, until the unwelcome day (June 4) for return to Downing
Street. Before returning, however, Mr. Gladstone set forth his view of the
internal crisis in a letter to Lord Hartington:—


    _To Lord Hartington._

    _May 30, 1885._—I am sorry but not surprised that your rather
    remarkable strength should have given way under the pressure of
    labour or anxiety or both. Almost the whole period of this
    ministry, particularly the year and a half since the defeat of
    Hicks, and most particularly of all, the four months since the
    morning when you deciphered the Khartoum telegram at Holker, have
    been without example in my experience, as to the gravity and
    diversity of difficulties which they have presented. What I hope
    is that they will not discourage you, or any of our colleagues, in
    your anticipations of the future. It appears to me that there is
    not one of them, viewed in the gross, which has been due to our
    own action. By viewing in the gross, I mean taking the Egyptian
    question as one. When we subdivide between Egypt proper and the
    Soudan, I find what seem to me two grave errors in our management
    of the Soudan business: the first our _landing_ at Suakin, the
    second the mission of Gordon, or rather the choice of Gordon for
    that mission. But it sometimes happens that the errors gravest in
    their consequences are also the most pardonable. And these errors
    were surely pardonable enough in themselves, without relying on
    the fact that they were approved by the public opinion of the day
    and by the opposition. Plenty of other and worse errors have been
    urged upon us which we have refused or avoided. I do not remember
    a single good measure recommended by opponents, which we have
    declined to adopt (or indeed any good measure which they have
    recommended at all). We certainly have worked hard. I believe that
    according to the measure of human infirmity, we have done fairly
    well, but the duties we have had to discharge have been duties, I
    mean in Egypt and the Soudan, which it was impossible to discharge
    with the ordinary measure of credit and satisfaction, which were
    beyond human strength, and which it was very unwise of our
    predecessors to saddle upon the country.

    At this moment we have but two great _desiderata_: the Egyptian
    Convention and the Afghan settlement (the evacuation of the Soudan
    being in principle a thing done). Were these accomplished, we
    should have attained for the empire at home and abroad a position
    in most respects unusually satisfactory, and both of them _ought_
    to be near accomplishment. With the Egyptian Convention fairly at
    work, I should consider the Egyptian question as within a few
    comparatively easy stages of satisfactory solution.

    Now as regards the immediate subject. What if Chamberlain and
    Dilke, as you seem to anticipate, raise the question of a
    prospective declaration about local government in Ireland as a
    condition of their remaining in the cabinet? I consider that
    question as disposed of for the present (much against my will),
    and I do not see that any of us, having accepted the decision, can
    attempt to disturb it. Moreover, their ground will be very weak
    and narrow; for their actual reason of going, if they go, will be
    the really small question arising upon the Land Purchase bill.

    I think they will commit a great error if they take this course.
    It will be straining at the gnat. No doubt it will weaken the
    party at the election, but I entertain no fear of the immediate
    effect. Their error will, however, in my view go beyond this.
    Forgive me if I now speak with great frankness on a matter, one of
    few, in which I agree with them, and not with you. I am firmly
    convinced that on local government for Ireland they hold a winning
    position; which by resignation now they will greatly compromise.
    You will all, I am convinced, have to give what they recommend; at
    the least what they recommend.

    There are two differences between them and me on this subject.
    First as to the matter; I go rather further than they do; for I
    would undoubtedly make a _beginning_ with the Irish police.
    Secondly as to the _ground_; here I differ seriously. I do not
    reckon with any confidence upon Manning or Parnell; I have never
    looked much in Irish matters at negotiation or the conciliation of
    leaders. I look at the question in itself, and I am deeply
    convinced that the measure in itself will (especially if
    accompanied with similar measures elsewhere, _e.g._ in Scotland)
    be good for the country and the empire; I do not say unmixedly
    good, but with advantages enormously outweighing any drawbacks.

    Apart from these differences, and taking their point of view, I
    think they ought to endeavour to fight the election with you; and
    in the _new state of affairs_ which will be presented after the
    dissolution, try and see what effect may be produced upon your
    mind, and on other minds, when you have to look at the matter
    _cominus_ and not _eminus_, as actual, and not as hypothetical. I
    gave Chamberlain a brief hint of these speculations when
    endeavouring to work upon him; otherwise I have not mentioned them
    to any one.



IV


On the day of his return to London from Hawarden Mr. Gladstone had an
interview with the two ministers with whom on the merits he was most
disposed to agree, though he differed strongly from them as to tactics.
Resignations were still only suspended, yet the prospects of compromise
were hopeful. At a cabinet held on the following day (June 5) it was
agreed that he should in the course of a week give notice of a bill to
take the place of the expiring Crimes Act. The point left open was whether
the operative provisions of such an Act—agreed on some time before—should
not be brought into operation without some special act of the executive
government, by proclamation, order in council, or otherwise. Local
government was still left open. Lord Spencer crossed over from Ireland on
the night of June 7, and the cabinet met next day. All differences were
narrowed down to the point whether the enactments against intimidation
should be inoperative unless and until the lord lieutenant should waken
them into life by proclamation. As it happened, intimidation had been for
a considerable time upon the increase—from which it might be inferred
either, on the one side, that coercion failed in its object, or, on the
other, that more coercion was still indispensable. The precise state in
which matters were left at the eleventh hour before the crisis, now
swiftly advancing, (M78) was set out by Mr. Gladstone in a letter written
by him to the Queen in the autumn (October 5), when he was no longer her
Majesty’s minister:—


    _To the Queen._

    ... He has perceived that in various quarters misapprehension
    prevails as to the point at which the deliberations of the late
    cabinet on the question of any renewal of, or substitution for,
    the Crimes Act in Ireland had arrived when their financial defeat
    on the 8th of June caused the tender of their resignation.

    Mr. Gladstone prays your Majesty’s gracious permission to remove
    this misapprehension by simply stating that which occurred in the
    cabinet at its latest meetings, with reference to this particular
    question. Substantially it would be a repetition, or little more
    (and without any mention of names), of his latest reports to your
    Majesty, to the effect—

    1. That the cabinet had long before arrived at the conclusion that
    the coercion clauses of the Act, properly so called, might be
    safely abandoned.

    2. With regard to the other clauses, which might be generally
    described as procedure clauses, they intended as a rule to advise,
    not their absolute re-enactment, but that the viceroy should be
    empowered to bring them into action, together or separately, as
    and when he might see cause.

    3. But that, with respect to the intimidation or boycotting
    provisions, it still remained for consideration whether they
    should thus be left subject to executive discretion, or whether,
    as the offence had not ceased, they should, as an effective
    instrument of repression, remain in direct and full operation.


It is worth noticing here as a signal instance of Mr. Gladstone’s
tenacious and indomitable will after his defeat, that in a communication
to the Queen four days later (June 12), he stated that the single
outstanding point of difference on the Crimes bill was probably in a fair
way of settlement, but that even if the dissent of the radical members of
the cabinet had become operative, it was his firm intention to make new
arrangements for filling the vacant offices and carrying on the
government. The overthrow came in a different way. The deliberations thus
summarised had been held under the shadow of a possibility, mentioned to
the Queen in the report of this last cabinet, of a coalition between the
tories and the Irish nationalists, in order to put an end to the existence
of the government on their budget. This cloud at last burst, though Mr.
Gladstone at any rate with his usual invincible adherence to the salutary
rule never to bid good morrow to the devil until you meet him, did not
strongly believe in the risk. The diary sheds no light on the state of his
expectations:—


    _June 6._... Read Amiel’s _Journal Intime_. Queen’s birthday
    dinner, 39; went very well. Much conversation with the Prince of
    Wales, who was handy and pleasant even beyond his wont. Also had
    some speech of his son, who was on my left. _June 7, Trinity
    Sunday._—Chapel Royal at noon and 5.30. Wrote.... Saw Lord
    Granville; ditto _cum_ Kimberley. Read Amiel. Edersheim on Old
    Testament. _June 8._—Wrote, etc.... Pitiless rain. Cabinet,
    2-3-¾.... Spoke on budget. Beaten by 264:252. Adjourned the House.
    This is a considerable event.


The amendment that led to this “considerable event” was moved by Sir
Michael Hicks Beach. The two points raised by the fatal motion were,
first, the increased duty on beer and spirits without a corresponding
increase on wine; and, second, the increase of the duty on real property
while no relief was given to rates. The fiscal issue is not material. What
was ominous was the alliance that brought about the result.

The defeat of the Gladstone government was the first success of a
combination between tories and Irish, that proved of cardinal importance
to policies and parties for several critical months to come. By a
coincidence that cut too deep to be mere accident, divisions in the
Gladstone cabinet found their counterpart in insurrection among the tory
opposition. The same general forces of the hour, working through the
energy, ambition, and initiative of individuals, produced the same effect
in each of the two parties; the radical programme of Mr. Chamberlain was
matched by the (M79) tory democracy of Lord Randolph Churchill; each saw
that the final transfer of power from the ten-pound householder to
artisans and labourers would rouse new social demands; each was aware that
Ireland was the electoral pivot of the day, and while one of them was
wrestling with those whom he stigmatised as whigs, the other by dexterity
and resolution overthrew his leaders as “the old gang.”




Chapter XII. Accession Of Lord Salisbury. (1885)


    Politics are not a drama where scenes follow one another according
    to a methodical plan, where the actors exchange forms of speech,
    settled beforehand: politics are a conflict of which chance is
    incessantly modifying the whole course.—SOREL.



I


In tendering his resignation to the Queen on the day following his
parliamentary defeat (June 9), and regretting that he had been unable to
prepare her for the result, Mr. Gladstone explained that though the
government had always been able to cope with the combined tory and
nationalist oppositions, what had happened on this occasion was the silent
withdrawal, under the pressure of powerful trades, from the government
ranks of liberals who abstained from voting, while six or seven actually
voted with the majority. “There was no previous notice,” he said, “and it
was immediately before the division that Mr. Gladstone was apprised for
the first time of the likelihood of a defeat.” The suspicions hinted that
ministers, or at least some of them, unobtrusively contrived their own
fall. Their supporters, it was afterwards remarked, received none of those
imperative adjurations to return after dinner that are usual on solemn
occasions; else there could never have been seventy-six absentees. The
majority was composed of members of the tory party, six liberals, and
thirty-nine nationalists. Loud was the exultation of the latter contingent
at the prostration of the coercion system. What was natural exultation in
them, may have taken the form of modest satisfaction among many liberals,
that they could go to the country without the obnoxious label of coercion
tied round their necks. As for ministers, it was observed that if in the
streets you saw a man coming along with a particularly elastic step and a
joyful frame of (M80) countenance, ten to one on coming closer you would
find that it was a member of the late cabinet.(124)

The ministerial crisis of 1885 was unusually prolonged, and it was
curious. The victory had been won by a coalition with the Irish; its
fruits could only be reaped with Irish support; and Irish support was to
the tory victors both dangerous and compromising. The normal process of a
dissolution was thought to be legally impossible, because by the
redistribution bill the existing constituencies were for the most part
radically changed; and a new parliament chosen on the old system of seats
and franchise, even if it were legally possible, would still be empty of
all semblance of moral authority. Under these circumstances, some in the
tory party argued that instead of taking office, it would be far better
for them to force Mr. Gladstone and his cabinet to come back, and leave
them to get rid of their internal differences and their Irish
embarrassments as they best could. Events were soon to demonstrate the
prudence of these wary counsels. On the other hand, the bulk of the tory
party like the bulk of any other party was keen for power, because power
is the visible symbol of triumph over opponents, and to shrink from office
would discourage their friends in the country in the electoral conflict
now rapidly approaching.

The Queen meanwhile was surprised (June 10) that Mr. Gladstone should make
his defeat a vital question, and asked whether, in case Lord Salisbury
should be unwilling to form a government, the cabinet would remain. To
this Mr. Gladstone replied that to treat otherwise an attack on the
budget, made by an ex-cabinet minister with such breadth of front and
after all the previous occurrences of the session, would be contrary to
every precedent,—for instance, the notable case of December 1852,—and it
would undoubtedly tend to weaken and lower parliamentary government.(125)
If an opposition defeated a government, they must be prepared to accept
the responsibility of their action. As to the second question, he answered
that a refusal by Lord Salisbury would obviously change the situation. On
this, the Queen accepted the resignations (June 11), and summoned Lord
Salisbury to Balmoral. The resignations were announced to parliament the
next day. Remarks were made at the time, indeed by the Queen herself, at
the failure of Mr. Gladstone to seek the royal presence. Mr. Gladstone’s
explanation was that, viewing “the probably long reach of Lord
Hartington’s life into the future,” he thought that he would be more
useful in conversation with her Majesty than “one whose ideas might be
unconsciously coloured by the limited range of the prospect before him,”
and Lord Hartington prepared to comply with the request that he should
repair to Balmoral. The visit was eventually not thought necessary by the
Queen.

In his first audience Lord Salisbury stated that though he and his friends
were not desirous of taking office, he was ready to form a government; but
in view of the difficulties in which a government formed by him would
stand, confronted by a hostile majority and unable to dissolve, he
recommended that Mr. Gladstone should be invited to reconsider his
resignation. Mr. Gladstone, however (June 13), regarded the situation and
the chain of facts that had led up to it, as being so definite, when
coupled with the readiness of Lord Salisbury to undertake an
administration, that it would be a mere waste of valuable time for him to
consult his colleagues as to the resumption of office. Then Lord Salisbury
sought assurances of Mr. Gladstone’s support, as to finance, parliamentary
time, and other points in the working of executive government. These
assurances neither Mr. Gladstone’s own temperament, nor the humour of his
friends and his party—for the embers of the quarrel with the Lords upon
the franchise bill were still hot—allowed him to give, and he founded
himself on the precedent of the communications of December 1845 between
Peel and Russell. In this default of assurances, Lord Salisbury thought
that he should render the Queen no useful service by taking office. So
concluded the first stage.

(M81) Though declining specific pledges, Mr. Gladstone now wrote to the
Queen (June 17) that in the conduct of the necessary business of the
country, he believed there would be no disposition to embarrass her
ministers. Lord Salisbury, however, and his colleagues were unanimous in
thinking this general language insufficient. The interregnum continued. On
the day following (June 18), Mr. Gladstone had an audience at Windsor,
whither the Queen had now returned. It lasted over three-quarters of an
hour. “The Queen was most gracious and I thought most reasonable.”
(_Diary._) He put down in her presence some heads of a memorandum to
assist her recollection, and the one to which she rightly attached most
value was this: “In my opinion,” Mr. Gladstone wrote, “the whole value of
any such declaration as at the present circumstances permit, really
depends upon the spirit in which it is given and taken. For myself and any
friend of mine, I can only say that the spirit in which we should
endeavour to interpret and apply the declaration I have made, would be the
same spirit in which we entered upon the recent conferences concerning the
Seats bill.” To this declaration his colleagues on his return to London
gave their entire and marked approval, but they would not compromise the
liberty of the House of Commons by further and particular pledges.

It was sometimes charged against Mr. Gladstone that he neglected his duty
to the crown, and abandoned the Queen in a difficulty. This is wholly
untrue. On June 20, Sir Henry Ponsonby called and opened one or two
aspects of the position, among them these:—


    1. Can the Queen do anything more?

    I answered, As you ask me, it occurs to me that it might help Lord
    Salisbury’s going on, were she to make reference to No. 2 of my
    memorandum [the paragraph just quoted], and to say that in her
    judgment he would be safe in receiving it in a spirit of trust.

    2. If Lord Salisbury fails, may the Queen rely on you?

    I answered that on a previous day I had said that if S. failed,
    the situation would be altered. I hoped, and on the whole thought,
    he would go on. But if he did not? I could not promise or expect
    smooth water. The movement of questions such as the Crimes Act and
    Irish Local Government might be accelerated. But my desire would
    be to do my best to prevent the Queen being left without a
    government.(126)


Mr. Gladstone’s view of the position is lucidly stated in the following
memorandum, like the others, in his own hand, (June 21):—


    1. I have endeavoured in my letters (_a_) to avoid all
    controversial matter; (_b_) to consider not what the incoming
    ministers had a right to ask, but what it was possible for us in a
    spirit of conciliation to give.

    2. In our opinion there was no right to demand from us anything
    whatever. The declarations we have made represent an extreme of
    concession. The conditions required, _e.g._ the first of them
    [control of time], place in abeyance the liberties of parliament,
    by leaving it solely and absolutely in the power of the ministers
    to determine on what legislative or other questions (except
    supply) it shall be permitted to give a judgment. The House of
    Commons may and ought to be disposed to facilitate the progress of
    all necessary business by all reasonable means as to supply and
    otherwise, but would deeply resent any act of ours by which we
    agreed beforehand to the extinction of its discretion.

    The difficulties pleaded by Lord Salisbury were all in view when
    his political friend, Sir M. H. Beach, made the motion which, as
    we apprised him, would if carried eject us from office, and are
    simply the direct consequences of their own action. If it be true
    that Lord Salisbury loses the legal power to advise and the crown
    to grant a dissolution, that cannot be a reason for leaving in the
    hands of the executive an absolute power to stop the action
    (except as to supply) of the legislative and corrective power of
    the House of Commons. At the same time these conditions do not
    appear to me to attain the end proposed by Lord Salisbury, for it
    would still be left in the power of the House to refuse supplies,
    and thereby to bring about in its worst form the difficulty which
    he apprehends.


It looked for a couple of days as if he would be compelled (M82) to
return, even though it would almost certainly lead to disruption of the
liberal cabinet and party.(127) The Queen, acting apparently on Mr.
Gladstone’s suggestion of June 20, was ready to express her confidence in
Mr. Gladstone’s assurance that there would be no disposition on the part
of himself or his friends to embarrass new ministers. By this expression
of confidence, the Queen would thus make herself in some degree
responsible as it were for the action of the members of the defeated
Gladstone government in the two Houses. Still Lord Salisbury’s
difficulties—and some difficulties are believed to have arisen pretty
acutely within the interior conclaves of his own party—remained for
forty-eight hours insuperable. His retreat to Hatfield was taken to mark a
second stage in the interregnum.

June 22 is set down in the diary as “a day of much stir and vicissitude.”
Mr. Gladstone received no fewer than six visits during the day from Sir
Henry Ponsonby, whose activity, judgment, and tact in these duties of
infinite delicacy were afterwards commemorated by Lord Granville in the
House of Lords.(128) He brought up from Windsor the draft of a letter that
might be written by the Queen to Lord Salisbury, testifying to her belief
in the sincerity and loyalty of Mr. Gladstone’s words. Sir Henry showed
the draft to Mr. Gladstone, who said that he could not be party to certain
passages in it, though willing to agree to the rest. The draft so altered
was submitted to Lord Salisbury; he demanded modification, placing a more
definite interpretation on the words of Mr. Gladstone’s previous letters
to the Queen. Mr. Gladstone was immovable throughout the day in declining
to admit any modifications in the sense desired; nor would he consent to
be privy to any construction or interpretation placed upon his words which
Lord Salisbury, with no less tenacity than his own, desired to extend.


    At 5.40 [June 22] Sir H. Ponsonby returned for a fifth interview,
    his infinite patience not yet exhausted.... He said the Queen
    believed the late government did not wish to come back. I simply
    reminded him of my previous replies, which, he remembered, nearly
    as follows:—That if Lord Salisbury failed, the situation would be
    altered. That I could not in such a case promise her Majesty
    smooth water. That, however, a great duty in such circumstances
    lay upon any one holding my situation, to use his best efforts so
    as, _quoad_ what depended upon him, not to leave the Queen without
    a government. I think he will now go to Windsor.—_June 22, ’85_, 6
    P.M.


The next day (June 23), the Queen sent on to Lord Salisbury the letter
written by Mr. Gladstone on June 21, containing his opinion that
facilities of supply might reasonably be provided, without placing the
liberties of the House of Commons in abeyance, and further, his
declaration that he felt sure there was no idea of withholding ways and
means, and that there was no danger to be apprehended on that score. In
forwarding this letter, the Queen expressed to Lord Salisbury her earnest
desire to bring to a close a crisis calculated to endanger the best
interests of the state; and she felt no hesitation in further
communicating to Lord Salisbury her opinion that he might reasonably
accept Mr. Gladstone’s assurances. In deference to these representations
from the Queen, Lord Salisbury felt it his duty to take office, the crisis
ended, and the tory party entered on the first portion of a term of power
that was destined, with two rather brief interruptions, to be prolonged
for many years.(129) In reviewing this interesting episode in the annals
of the party system, it is impossible not to observe the dignity in form,
the patriotism in substance, the common-sense in result, that marked the
proceedings alike of the sovereign and of her two ministers.



II


After accepting Mr. Gladstone’s resignation the Queen, on June 13,
proffered him a peerage:—


    _The Queen to Mr. Gladstone._

    Mr. Gladstone mentioned in his last letter but one, his intention
    of proposing some honours. But before she considers these, she
    wishes to offer him an Earldom, as a mark of her recognition of
    his long and distinguished services, and she believes and thinks
    he will thereby be enabled still to render great service to his
    sovereign and country—which if he retired, as he has repeatedly
    told her of late he intended to do shortly,—he could not. The
    country would doubtless be pleased at any signal mark of
    recognition of Mr. Gladstone’s long and eminent services, and the
    Queen believes that it would be beneficial to his health,—no
    longer exposing him to the pressure from without, for more active
    work than he ought to undertake. Only the other day—without
    reference to the present events—the Queen mentioned to Mrs.
    Gladstone at Windsor the advantage to Mr. Gladstone’s health of a
    removal from one House to the other, in which she seemed to agree.
    The Queen trusts, therefore, that Mr. Gladstone will accept the
    offer of an earldom, which would be very gratifying to her.


The outgoing minister replied on the following day:—


    Mr. Gladstone offers his humble apology to your Majesty. It would
    not be easy for him to describe the feelings with which he has
    read your Majesty’s generous, most generous letter. He prizes
    every word of it, for he is fully alive to all the circumstances
    which give it value. It will be a precious possession to him and
    to his children after him. All that could recommend an earldom to
    him, it already has given him. He remains, however, of the belief
    that he ought not to avail himself of this most gracious offer.
    Any service that he can render, if small, will, however, be
    greater in the House of Commons than in the House of Lords; and it
    has never formed part of his views to enter that historic chamber,
    although he does not share the feeling which led Sir R. Peel to
    put upon record what seemed a perpetual or almost a perpetual
    self-denying ordinance for his family.

    When the circumstances of the state cease, as he hopes they may
    ere long, to impose on him any special duty, he will greatly covet
    that interval between an active career and death, which the
    profession of politics has always appeared to him especially to
    require. There are circumstances connected with the position of
    his family, which he will not obtrude upon your Majesty, but
    which, as he conceives, recommend in point of prudence the
    personal intention from which he has never swerved. He might
    hesitate to act upon the motives to which he has last adverted,
    grave as they are, did he not feel rooted in the persuasion that
    the small good he may hope hereafter to effect, can best be
    prosecuted without the change in his position. He must beg your
    Majesty to supply all that is lacking in his expression from the
    heart of profound and lasting gratitude.


To Lord Granville, the nearest of his friends, he wrote on the same day:—


    I send you herewith a letter from the Queen which moves and almost
    upsets me. It must have cost her much to write, and it is really a
    pearl of great price. Such a letter makes the subject of it
    secondary—but though it would take me long to set out my reasons,
    I remain firm in the intention to accept nothing for myself.


Lord Granville replied that he was not surprised at the decision. “I
should have greatly welcomed you,” he said, “and under some circumstances
it might be desirable, but I think you are right now.”

Here is Mr. Gladstone’s letter to an invaluable occupant of the
all-important office of private secretary:—


    _To Mr. E. W. Hamilton._

    _June 30, 1885._—Since you have in substance (and in form?)
    received the appointment [at the Treasury], I am unmuzzled, and
    may now express the unbounded pleasure which it gives me, together
    with my strong sense (not disparaging any one else) of your
    desert. The modesty of your letter is as remarkable as its other
    qualities, and does you the highest honour. I can accept no
    tribute from you, or from any one, with regard to the office of
    private secretary under me except this, that it has always been
    made by me a strict and severe office, and that this is really the
    only favour I have ever done you, or any of your colleagues to
    whom in their several places and measures I am similarly obliged.

    As to your services to me they have been simply indescribable. No
    one I think could dream, until by experience he knew, to what an
    extent in these close personal relations devolution can be
    carried, and how it strengthens the feeble knees and thus also
    sustains the fainting heart.



III


The declaration of the Irish policy of the new government was made to
parliament by no less a personage than the lord-lieutenant.(130) The prime
minister had discoursed on frontiers in Asia and frontiers in Africa, but
on Ireland he was silent. Lord Carnarvon, on the contrary, came forward
voluntarily with a statement of policy, and he opened it on the broadest
general lines. His speech deserves as close attention as any deliverance
of this memorable period. It laid down the principles of that alternative
system of government, with which the new ministers formally challenged
their predecessors. Ought the Crimes Act to be re-enacted as it stood; or
in part; or ought it to be allowed to lapse? These were the three courses.
Nobody, he thought, would be for the first, because some provisions had
never been put in force; others had been put in force but found useless;
and others again did nothing that might not be done just as well under the
ordinary law. The re-enactment of the whole statute, therefore, was
dismissed. But the powers for changing venue at the discretion of the
executive; for securing special juries at the same discretion; for holding
secret inquiry without an accused person; for dealing summarily with
charges of intimidation—might they not be continued? They were not
unconstitutional, and they were not opposed to legal instincts. No, all
quite true; but then the Lords should not conceal from themselves that
their re-enactment would be in the nature of special or exceptional
legislation. He had been looking through coercion Acts, he continued, and
had been astonished to find that ever since 1847, with some very short
intervals hardly worth mentioning, Ireland had lived under exceptional and
coercive legislation. What sane man could admit this to be a satisfactory
or a wholesome state of things? Why should not they try to extricate
themselves from this miserable habit, and aim at some better solution?
“Just as I have seen in English colonies across the sea a combination of
English, Irish, and Scotch settlers bound together in loyal obedience to
the law and the crown, and contributing to the general prosperity of the
country, so I cannot conceive that there is any irreconcilable bar here in
their native home and in England to the unity and the amity of the two
nations.” He went to his task individually with a perfectly free, open,
and unprejudiced mind, to hear, to question, and, as far as might be, to
understand. “My Lords, I do not believe that with honesty and
single-mindedness of purpose on the one side, and with the willingness of
the Irish people on the other, it is hopeless to look for some
satisfactory solution of this terrible question. My Lords, these I believe
to be the opinions and the views of my colleagues.”(131)

This remarkable announcement, made in the presence of the prime minister,
in the name of the cabinet as a whole, and by a man of known purity and
sincerity of character, was taken to be an express renunciation, not
merely of the policy of which notice had been given by the outgoing
administration, but of coercion as a final instrument of imperial rule. It
was an elaborate repudiation in advance of that panacea of firm and
resolute government, which became so famous before twelve months were
over. It was the suggestion, almost in terms, that a solution should be
sought in that policy which had brought union both within our colonies,
and between the colonies and the mother country, and men did not forget
that this suggestion was being made by a statesman who had carried
federation in Canada, and tried to carry it in South Africa. We cannot
wonder that upon leading members of the late government, and especially
upon the statesman who had been specially responsible for Ireland, the
impression was startling and profound. Important members of the tory party
hurried (M83) from Ireland to Arlington Street, and earnestly warned their
leader that he would never be able to carry on with the ordinary law. They
were coldly informed that Lord Salisbury had received quite different
counsel from persons well acquainted with the country.

The new government were not content with renouncing coercion for the
present. They cast off all responsibility for its practice in the past.
Ostentatiously they threw overboard the viceroy with whom the only fault
that they had hitherto found, was that his sword was not sharp enough. A
motion was made by the Irish leader calling attention to the
maladministration of the criminal law by Lord Spencer. Forty men had been
condemned to death, and in twenty-one of these cases the capital sentence
had been carried out. Of the twenty-one executions six were savagely
impugned, and Mr. Parnell’s motion called for a strict inquiry into these
and some other convictions, with a view to the full discovery of truth and
the relief of innocent persons. The debate soon became famous from the
principal case adduced, as the Maamtrasna debate. The topic had been so
copiously discussed as to occupy three full sittings of the House in the
previous October. The lawyer who had just been made Irish chancellor, at
that time pronounced against the demand. In substance the new government
made no fresh concession. They said that if memorials or statements were
laid before him, the viceroy would carefully attend to them. No minister
could say less. But incidental remarks fell from the government that
created lively alarm in tories and deep disgust in liberals. Sir Michael
Hicks Beach, then leader of the House, told them that while believing Lord
Spencer to be a man of perfect honour and sense of duty, “he must say very
frankly that there was much in the Irish policy of the late government
which, though in the absence of complete information he did not condemn,
he should be very sorry to make himself responsible for.”(132) An even
more important minister emphasised the severance of the new policy from
the old. “I will tell you,” cried Lord Randolph Churchill, “how the
present government is foredoomed to failure. They will be foredoomed to
failure if they go out of their way unnecessarily to assume one jot or
tittle of the responsibility for the acts of the late administration. It
is only by divesting ourselves of all responsibility for the acts of the
late government, that we can hope to arrive at a successful issue.”(133)

Tory members got up in angry fright, to denounce this practical
acquiescence by the heads of their party in what was a violent Irish
attack not only upon the late viceroy, but upon Irish judges, juries, and
law officers. They remonstrated against “the pusillanimous way” in which
their two leaders had thrown over Lord Spencer. “During the last three
years,” said one of these protesting tories, “Lord Spencer has upheld
respect for law at the risk of his life from day to day, with the
sanction, with the approval, and with the acknowledgment inside and
outside of this House, of the country, and especially of the conservative
party. Therefore I for one will not consent to be dragged into any
implied, however slight, condemnation of Lord Spencer, because it happens
to suit the exigencies of party warfare.”(134) This whole transaction
disgusted plain men, tory and liberal alike; it puzzled calculating men;
and it had much to do with the silent conversion of important and leading
men.

The general sentiment about the outgoing viceroy took the form of a
banquet in his honour (July 24), and some three hundred members of the two
Houses attended, including Lord Hartington, who presided, and Mr. Bright.
The two younger leaders of the radical wing who had been in the late
cabinet neither signed the invitation nor were present. But on the same
evening in another place, Mr. Chamberlain recognised the high qualities
and great services of Lord Spencer, though they had not always agreed upon
details. He expressed, however, his approval both of the policy and of the
arguments which had led the new government to drop the Crimes Act. At the
same time he denounced the “astounding tergiversation” of ministers, and
energetically declared that “a strategic movement of that kind, executed
in opposition to the notorious convictions of the men who effected it,
carried out for party purposes and party purposes alone, is the most
flagrant instance of political dishonesty this country has ever known.”
(M84) Lord Hartington a few weeks later told his constituents that the
conduct of the government, in regard to Ireland, had dealt a heavy blow
“both at political morality, and at the cause of order in Ireland.” The
severity of such judgments from these two weighty statesmen testifies to
the grave importance of the new departure.

The enormous change arising from the line adopted by the government was
visible enough even to men of less keen vision than Mr. Gladstone, and it
was promptly indicated by him in a few sentences in a letter to Lord Derby
on the very day of the Maamtrasna debate:—


    Within the last two or three weeks, he wrote, the situation has
    undergone important changes. I am not fully informed, but what I
    know looks as if the Irish party so-called in parliament, excited
    by the high biddings of Lord Randolph, had changed what was
    undoubtedly Parnell’s ground until within a very short time back.
    It is now said that a central board will not suffice, and that
    there must be a parliament. This I suppose may mean the repeal of
    the Act of Union, or may mean an Austro-Hungarian scheme, or may
    mean that Ireland is to be like a great colony such as Canada. Of
    all or any of these schemes I will now only say that, of course,
    they constitute an entirely new point of departure and raise
    questions of an order totally different to any that are involved
    in a central board appointed for local purposes.


Lord Derby recording his first impressions in reply (July 19) took the
rather conventional objection made to most schemes on all subjects, that
it either went too far or did not go far enough. Local government he
understood, and home rule he understood, but a quasi-parliament in Dublin,
not calling itself such though invested with most of the authority of a
parliament, seemed to him to lead to the demand for fuller recognition. If
we were forced, he said, to move beyond local government as commonly
understood, he would rather have Ireland treated like Canada. “But the
difficulties every way are enormous.” On this Mr. Gladstone wrote a little
later to Lord Granville (Aug. 6):—


    As far as I can learn, both you and Derby are on the same lines as
    Parnell, in rejecting the smaller and repudiating the larger
    scheme. It would not surprise me if he were to formulate something
    on the subject. For my own part I have seen my way pretty well as
    to the particulars of the minor and rejected plan, but the idea of
    the wider one puzzles me much. At the same time, _if_ the election
    gives a return of a decisive character, the sooner the subject is
    dealt with the better.


So little true is it to say that Mr. Gladstone only thought of the
possibility of Irish autonomy after the election.



IV


Apart from public and party cares, the bodily machinery gave trouble, and
the fine organ that had served him so nobly for so long showed serious
signs of disorder.


    _To Lord Richard Grosvenor._

    _July 14._—After two partial examinations, a thorough examination
    of my throat (larynx _versus_ pharynx) has been made to-day by Dr.
    Semon in the presence of Sir A. Clark, and the result is rather
    bigger than I had expected. It is, that I have a fair chance of
    real recovery provided I keep silent almost like a Trappist, but
    all treatment would be nugatory without this rest; that the other
    alternative is nothing dangerous, but merely the constant passage
    of the organ from bad to worse. He asked what demands the H. of C.
    would make on me. I answered about three speeches of about five
    minutes each, but he was not satisfied and wished me to get rid of
    it altogether, which I must do, perhaps saying instead a word by
    letter to some friend. Much time has almost of necessity been
    lost, but I must be rigid for the future, and even then I shall be
    well satisfied if I get back before winter to a natural use of the
    voice in conversation. This imports a considerable change in the
    course of my daily life. Here it is difficult to organise it
    afresh. At Hawarden I can easily do it, but there I am at a
    distance from the best aid. I am disposed to “_top up_,” with a
    sea voyage, but this is No. 3—Nos. 1 and 2 being rest and then
    treatment.


The sea voyage that was to “top up” the rest of the treatment began on
August 8, when the Gladstones became the guests of Sir Thomas and Lady
Brassey on the _Sunbeam_. They sailed from Greenhithe to Norway, and after
a three weeks’ cruise, were set ashore at Fort George on September 1. Mr.
Gladstone made an excellent tourist; was full of interest in all he saw;
and, I dare say, drew some pleasure from the demonstrations of curiosity
and admiration that attended his presence from the simple population
wherever he moved. Long expeditions with much climbing and scrambling were
his delight, and he let nothing beat him. One of these excursions, the
ascent to the Vöringfos, seems to deserve a word of commemoration, in the
interest either of physiology or of philosophic musings after Cicero’s
manner upon old age. “I am not sure,” says Lady Brassey in her most
agreeable diary of the cruise,(135) “that the descent did not seem rougher
and longer than our journey up had been, although, as a matter of fact, we
got over the ground much more quickly. As we crossed the green pastures on
the level ground near the village of Sæbö we met several people taking
their evening stroll, and also a tourist apparently on his way up to spend
the night near the Vöringfos. The wind had gone down since the morning,
and we crossed the little lake with fair rapidity, admiring as we went the
glorious effects of the setting sun upon the tops of the precipitous
mountains, and the wonderful echo which was aroused for our benefit by the
boatmen. An extremely jolty drive, in springless country carts, soon
brought us to the little inn at Vik, and by half-past eight we were once
more on board the _Sunbeam_, exactly ten hours after setting out upon our
expedition, which had included a ride or walk, as the case might be, of
eighteen miles, independently of the journey by boat and cart—a hardish
day’s work for any one, but really a wonderful undertaking for a man of
seventy-five, who disdained all proffered help, and insisted on walking
the whole distance. No one who saw Mr. Gladstone that evening at dinner in
the highest spirits, and discussing subjects both grave and gay with the
greatest animation, could fail to admire his marvellous pluck and energy,
or, knowing what he had shown himself capable of doing in the way of
physical exertion, could feel much anxiety on the score of the failure of
his strength.”

He was touched by a visit from the son of an old farmer, who brought him
as an offering from his father to Mr. Gladstone a curiously carved
Norwegian bowl three hundred years old, with two horse-head handles.
Strolling about Aalesund, he was astonished to find in the bookshop of the
place a Norse translation of Mill’s _Logic_. He was closely observant of
all religious services whenever he had the chance, and noticed that at
Laurvig all the tombstones had prayers for the dead. He read perhaps a
little less voraciously than usual, and on one or two days, being unable
to read, he “meditated and reviewed”—always, I think, from the same point
of view—the point of view of Bunyan’s _Grace Abounding_, or his own
letters to his father half a century before. Not seldom a vision of the
coming elections flitted before the mind’s eye, and he made notes for what
he calls an _abbozzo_ or sketch of his address to Midlothian.





BOOK IX. 1885-1886




Chapter I. Leadership And The General Election. (1885)


    Our understanding of history is spoiled by our knowledge of the
    event.—HELPS.



I


Mr. Gladstone came back from his cruise in the _Sunbeam_ at the beginning
of September; leaving the yacht at Fort George and proceeding to Fasque to
celebrate his elder brother’s golden wedding. From Fasque he wrote to Lord
Hartington (Sept. 3): “I have returned to terra firma extremely well in
general health, and with a better throat; in full expectation of having to
consider anxious and doubtful matters, and now finding them rather more
anxious and doubtful than I had anticipated. As yet I am free to take a
share or not in the coming political issues, and I must weigh many things
before finally surrendering this freedom.” His first business, he wrote to
Sir W. Harcourt (Sept. 12), was to throw his thoughts into order for an
address to his constituents, framed only for the dissolution, and “written
with my best care to avoid treading on the toes of either the right or the
left wing.” He had communicated, he said, with Granville, Hartington, and
Chamberlain; by both of the two latter he had been a good deal buffeted;
and having explained the general idea with which he proposed to write, he
asked each of the pair whether upon the whole their wish was that he
should go on or cut out. “To this question I have not yet got a clear
affirmative answer from either of them.”

“The subject of Ireland,” he told Lord Hartington, “has perplexed me much
even on the North Sea,” and he expressed some regret that in a recent
speech his correspondent had felt it necessary at this early period to
join issue in so pointed a manner with Mr. Parnell and his party.
Parnell’s speech was, no doubt, he said, “as bad as bad could be, and
admitted of only one answer. But the whole question of the position which
Ireland will assume after the general election is so new, so difficult,
and as yet, I think, so little understood, that it seems most important to
reserve until the proper time all possible liberty of examining it.”

The address to his electors, of which he had begun to think on board the
_Sunbeam_, was given to the public on September 17. It was, as he said, as
long as a pamphlet, and a considerable number of politicians doubtless
passed judgment upon it without reading it through. The whigs, we are
told, found it vague, the radicals cautious, the tories crafty; but
everybody admitted that it tended to heal feuds. Mr. Goschen praised it,
and Mr. Chamberlain, though raising his own flag, was respectful to his
leader’s manifesto.(136)

The surface was thus stilled for the moment, yet the waters ran very deep.
What were “the anxious and doubtful matters,” what “the coming political
issues,” of which Mr. Gladstone had written to Lord Hartington? They were,
in a word, twofold: to prevent the right wing from breaking with the left;
and second, to make ready for an Irish crisis, which as he knew could not
be averted. These were the two keys to all his thoughts, words, and deeds
during the important autumn of 1885—an Irish crisis, a solid party. He was
not the first great parliamentary leader whose course lay between two
impossibilities.

All his letters during the interval between his return from the cruise in
the _Sunbeam_ and the close of the general election disclose with perfect
clearness the channels in which events and his judgment upon them were
moving. Whigs and radicals alike looked to him, and across him fought
their battle. The Duke of Argyll, for example, (M85) taking advantage of a
lifelong friendship to deal faithfully with him, warned him that the long
fight with “Beaconsfieldism” had thrown him into antagonism with many
political conceptions and sympathies that once had a steady hold upon him.
Yet they had certainly no less value and truth than they ever had, and
perhaps were more needed than ever in face of the present chaos of
opinion. To this Mr. Gladstone replied at length:—


    _To the Duke of Argyll._

    _Sept. 30, 1885._—I am very sensible of your kind and sympathetic
    tone, and of your indulgent verdict upon my address. It was
    written with a view to the election, and as a practical document,
    aiming at the union of all, it propounds for immediate action what
    all are supposed to be agreed on. This is necessarily somewhat
    favourable to the moderate section of the liberal party. You will
    feel that it would not have been quite fair to the advanced men to
    add some special reproof to them. And reproof, if I had presumed
    upon it, would have been two-sided. Now as to your suggestion that
    I should say something in public to indicate that I am not too
    sanguine as to the future. If I am unable to go in this
    direction—and something I may do—it is not from want of sympathy
    with much that you say. But my first and great cause of anxiety
    is, believe me, the condition of the tory party. As at present
    constituted, or at any rate moved, it is destitute of all the
    effective qualities of a respectable conservatism.... For their
    administrative spirit I point to the Beaconsfield finance. For
    their foreign policy they have invented Jingoism, and at the same
    time by their conduct _re_ Lord Spencer and the Irish
    nationalists, they have thrown over—and they formed their
    government only by means of throwing over—those principles of
    executive order and caution which have hitherto been common to all
    governments....

    There are other chapters which I have not time to open. I deeply
    deplore the oblivion into which public economy has fallen; the
    prevailing disposition to make a luxury of panics, which
    multitudes seem to enjoy as they would a sensational novel or a
    highly seasoned cookery; and the leaning of both parties to
    socialism, which I radically disapprove. I must lastly mention
    among my causes of dissatisfaction the conduct of the timid or
    reactionary whigs. They make it day by day more difficult to
    maintain that most valuable characteristic of our history, which
    has always exhibited a good proportion of our great houses at the
    head of the liberal movement. If you have ever noted of late years
    a too sanguine and high-coloured anticipation of our future, I
    should like to be reminded of it. I remain, and I hope always to
    be, your affectionate friend.


The correspondence with Lord Granville sets out more clearly than anything
else could do Mr. Gladstone’s general view of the situation of the party
and his own relation to it, and the operative words in this
correspondence, in view of the maelstrom to which they were all drawing
nearer, will be accurately noted by any reader who cares to understand one
of the most interesting situations in the history of party. To Lord
Granville he says (September 9, 1885), “The problem for me is to make if
possible a statement which will hold through the election and not to go
into conflict with either the right wing of the party for whom Hartington
has spoken, or the left wing for whom Chamberlain, I suppose, spoke last
night. I do not say they are to be treated as on a footing, but I must do
no act disparaging to Chamberlain’s wing.” And again to Lord Granville a
month later (Oct. 5):—


    You hold a position of great impartiality in relation to any
    divergent opinions among members of the late cabinet. No other
    person occupies ground so thoroughly favourable. I turn to myself
    for one moment. I remain at present in the leadership of the
    party, first with a view to the election, and secondly with a view
    to being, by a bare possibility, of use afterwards in the Irish
    question if it should take a favourable turn; but as you know,
    with the intention of taking no part in any schism of the party
    should it arise, and of avoiding any and all official
    responsibility, should the question be merely one of liberal _v._
    conservative and not one of commanding imperial necessity, such as
    that of Irish government may come to be after the dissolution.


He goes on to say that the ground had now been sufficiently laid for going
to the election with a united front, that ground being the common
profession of a limited creed (M86) or programme in the liberal sense,
with an entire freedom for those so inclined, to travel beyond it, but not
to impose their own sense upon all other people. No one, he thought, was
bound to determine at that moment on what conditions he would join a
liberal government. If the party and its leaders were agreed as to
immediate measures on local government, land, and registration, were not
these enough to find a liberal administration plenty of work, especially
with procedure, for several years? If so, did they not supply a ground
broad enough to start a government, that would hold over, until the proper
time should come, all the questions on which its members might not be
agreed, just as the government of Lord Grey held over, from 1830 to 1834,
the question whether Irish church property might or might not be applied
to secular uses?

As for himself, in the event of such a government being formed (of which I
suppose Lord Granville was to be the head), “My desire would be,” he says,
“to place myself in your hands for all purposes, except that of taking
office; to be present or absent from the House, and to be absent for a
time or for good, as you might on consultation and reflection think best.”
In other words Mr. Gladstone would take office to try to settle the Irish
question, but for nothing else. Lord Granville held to the view that this
was fatal to the chances of a liberal government. No liberal cabinet could
be constructed unless Mr. Gladstone were at its head. The indispensable
chief, however, remained obdurate.

An advance was made at this moment in the development of a peculiar
situation by important conversations with Mr. Chamberlain. Two days later
the redoubtable leader of the left wing came to Hawarden for a couple of
days, and Mr. Gladstone wrote an extremely interesting account of what
passed to Lord Granville:(137)—


    _To Lord Granville._

    _Hawarden, Oct. 8, 1885._—Chamberlain came here yesterday and I
    have had a great deal of conversation with him. He is a good man
    to talk to, not only from his force and clearness, but because he
    speaks with reflection, does not misapprehend or (I think)
    suspect, or make unnecessary difficulties, or endeavour to
    maintain pedantically the uniformity and consistency of his
    argument throughout.

    As to the three points of which he was understood to say that they
    were indispensable to the starting of a liberal government, I
    gather that they stand as follows:—

    1. As to the authority of local authorities for compulsory
    expropriation.(138) To this he adheres; though I have said I could
    not see the justification for withholding countenance from the
    formation of a government with considerable and intelligible plans
    in view, because it would not at the first moment bind all its
    members to this doctrine. He intimates, however, that the form
    would be simple, the application of the principle mild; that he
    does not expect wide results from it, and that Hartington, he
    conceives, is not disposed wholly to object to everything of the
    kind.

    2. As regards readjustment of taxation, he is contented with the
    terms of my address, and indisposed to make any new terms.

    3. As regards free education, he does not ask that its principle
    be adopted as part of the creed of a new cabinet. He said it would
    be necessary to reserve his right individually to vote for it. I
    urged that he and the new school of advanced liberals were not
    sufficiently alive to the necessity of refraining when in
    government from declaring by _vote_ all their individual opinions;
    that a vote founded upon time, and the engagements of the House at
    the moment with other indispensable business, would imply no
    disparagement to the principle, which might even be expressly
    saved (“without prejudice”) by an amending resolution; that he
    could hardly carry this point to the rank of a _sine quâ non_. He
    said,—That the sense of the country might bind the liberal
    majority (presuming it to exist) to declare its opinion, even
    though unable to give effect to it at the moment; that he looked
    to a single declaration, not to the sustained support of a
    measure; and he seemed to allow that if the liberal sense were so
    far divided as not to show a unanimous front, in that case it
    might be a question whether some plan other than, and short of, a
    direct vote might be pursued.(139)

    The question of the House of Lords and disestablishment he regards
    as still lying in the remoter distance.

    All these subjects I separated entirely from the question of
    Ireland, on which I may add that he and I are pretty well agreed;
    unless upon a secondary point, namely, whether Parnell would be
    satisfied to acquiesce in a County Government bill, good so far as
    it went, maintaining on other matters his present general
    attitude.(140) We agreed, I think, that a prolongation of the
    present relations of the Irish party would be a national disgrace,
    and the civilised world would scoff at the political genius of
    countries which could not contrive so far to understand one
    another as to bring their differences to an accommodation.

    All through Chamberlain spoke of reducing to an absolute minimum
    his idea of necessary conditions, and this conversation so far
    left untouched the question of men, he apparently assuming
    (wrongly) that I was ready for another three or four years’
    engagement.

    _Hawarden, Oct. 8, 1885._—In another “private,” but less private
    letter, I have touched on measures, and I have now to say what
    passed in relation to men.

    He said the outline he had given depended on the supposition of my
    being at the head of the government. He did not say he could
    adhere to it on no other terms, but appeared to stipulate for a
    new point of departure.

    I told him the question of my time of life had become such, that
    in any case prudence bound him, and all who have a future, to
    think of what is to follow me. That if a big Irish question should
    arise, and arise in such a form as to promise a possibility of
    settlement, that would be a crisis with a beginning and an end,
    and perhaps one in which from age and circumstances I might be
    able to supply aid and service such as could not be exactly had
    without me.(141) Apart from an imperious demand of this kind the
    question would be that of dealing with land laws, with local
    government, and other matters, on which I could render _no_
    special service, and which would require me to enter into a new
    contest for several years, a demand that ought not to be made, and
    one to which I could not accede. I did not think the adjustment of
    personal relations, or the ordinary exigencies of party,
    constituted a call upon me to continue my long life in a course of
    constant pressure and constant contention with half my
    fellow-countrymen, until nothing remained but to step into the
    grave.

    He agreed that the House of Lords was not an available resort. He
    thought I might continue at the head of the government, and leave
    the work of legislation to others.(142) I told him that all my
    life long I had had an essential and considerable share in the
    legislative work of government, and to abandon it would be an
    essential change, which the situation would not bear.

    He spoke of the constant conflicts of opinion with Hartington in
    the late cabinet, but I reverted to the time when Hartington used
    to summon and lead meetings of the leading commoners, in which he
    was really the least antagonistic of men.

    He said Hartington might lead a whig government aided by the
    tories, or might lead a radical government.... I recommended his
    considering carefully the personal composition of the group of
    leading men, apart from a single personality on which reliance
    could hardly be placed, except in the single contingency to which
    I have referred as one of a character probably brief.

    He said it might be right for him to look as a friend on the
    formation of a liberal government, having (as I understood)
    moderate but intelligible plans, without forming part of it. I
    think this was the substance of what passed.


Interesting as was this interview, it did not materially alter Mr.
Gladstone’s disposition. After it had taken place he wrote to Lord
Granville (Nov. 10):—


    _To Lord Granville._

    I quite understand how natural it is that at the present juncture
    pressure, and even the whole pressure, should from both quarters
    be brought to bear upon me. Well, if a special call of imperial
    interest, such as I have described, should arise, I am ready for
    the service it may entail, so far as my will is concerned. But a
    very different question is raised. Let us see how matters stand.

    A course of action for the liberals, moderate but substantial, has
    been sketched. The party in general have accepted it. After the
    late conversations, there is no reason to anticipate a breach upon
    any of the conditions laid down anywhere for immediate adoption,
    between the less advanced and the more advanced among the leaders.
    It must occupy several years, and it may occupy the whole
    parliament. According to your view they will, unless on a single
    condition [_i.e._ Mr. Gladstone’s leadership], refuse to combine
    in a cabinet, and to act, with a majority at their back; and will
    make over the business voluntarily to the tories in a minority, at
    the commencement of a parliament. Why? They agree on the subjects
    before them. Other subjects, unknown as yet, may arise to split
    them. But this is what may happen to any government, and _it_ can
    form no reason.

    But what _is_ the condition demanded? It is that a man of
    seventy-five,(143) after fifty-three years’ service, with _no_
    particular qualification for the questions in view should enter
    into a fresh contract of service in the House of Commons, reaching
    according to all likelihood over three, four, or five years, and
    without the smallest reasonable prospect of a break. And this is
    not to solve a political difficulty, but to soothe and conjure
    down personal misgivings and apprehensions. I have not said
    jealousies, because I do _not_ believe them to be the operative
    cause; perhaps they do not exist at all.

    I firmly say this is not a reasonable condition, or a tenable
    demand, in the circumstances supposed. Indeed no one has
    endeavoured to show that it is. Further, abated action in the
    House of Commons is out of the question. We cannot have, in these
    times, a figurehead prime minister. I have gone a very long way in
    what I have said, and I really cannot go further.

    Lord Aberdeen, taking office at barely seventy in the House of
    Lords, apologised in his opening speech for doing this at a time
    when his mind ought rather to be given to “other thoughts.” Lord
    Palmerston in 1859 did not speak thus. But he was bound to no plan
    of any kind; and he was seventy-four, _i.e._ in his seventy-fifth
    year.



II


It is high time to turn to the other deciding issue in the case. Though
thus stubborn against resuming the burden of leadership merely to compose
discords between Chatsworth and Birmingham, Mr. Gladstone was ready to be
of use in the Irish question, “if it should take a favourable turn.” As if
the Irish question ever took a favourable turn. We have seen in the
opening of the present chapter, how he spoke to Lord Hartington of a
certain speech of Mr. Parnell’s in September, “as bad as bad could be.”
The secret of that speech was a certain fact that must be counted a
central hinge of these far-reaching transactions. In July, a singular
incident had occurred, nothing less strange than an interview between the
new lord-lieutenant and the leader of the Irish party. To realise its full
significance, we have to recall the profound odium that at this time
enveloped Mr. Parnell’s name in the minds of nearly all Englishmen. For
several years and at that moment he figured in the public imagination for
all that is sinister, treasonable, dark, mysterious, and unholy. He had
stood his trial for a criminal conspiracy, and was supposed only to have
been acquitted by the corrupt connivance of a Dublin jury. He had been
flung into prison and kept there for many months without trial, as a
person reasonably suspected of lawless practices. High treason was the
least dishonourable of the offences imputed to him and commonly credited
about him. He had been elaborately accused before the House of Commons by
one of the most important men in it, of direct personal responsibility for
outrages and murders, and he left the accusation with scant reply. He was
constantly denounced as the apostle of rapine and rebellion. That the
viceroy of the Queen should (M87) without duress enter into friendly
communication with such a man, would have seemed to most people at that
day incredible and abhorrent. Yet the incredible thing happened, and it
was in its purpose one of the most sensible things that any viceroy ever
did.(144)

The interview took place in a London drawing-room. Lord Carnarvon opened
the conversation by informing Mr. Parnell, first, that he was acting of
himself and by himself, on his own exclusive responsibility; second, that,
he sought information only, and that he had not come for the purpose of
arriving at any agreement or understanding however shadowy; third, that he
was there as the Queen’s servant, and would neither hear nor say one word
that was inconsistent with the union of the two countries. Exactly what
Mr. Parnell said, and what was said in reply, the public were never
authentically told. Mr. Parnell afterwards spoke(145) as if Lord Carnarvon
had given him to understand that it was the intention of the government to
offer Ireland a statutory legislature, with full control over taxation,
and that a scheme of land purchase was to be coupled with it. On this, the
viceroy denied that he had communicated any such intention. Mr. Parnell’s
story was this:—


    Lord Carnarvon proceeded to say that he had sought the interview
    for the purpose of ascertaining my views regarding—should he call
    it?—a constitution for Ireland. But I soon found out that he had
    brought me there in order that he might communicate his own views
    upon the matter, as well as ascertain mine.... In reply to an
    inquiry as to a proposal which had been made to build up a central
    legislative body upon the foundation of county boards, I told him
    I thought this would be working in the wrong direction, and would
    not be accepted by Ireland; that the central legislative body
    should be a parliament in name and in fact.... Lord Carnarvon
    assured me that this was his own view also, and he strongly
    appreciated the importance of giving due weight to the sentiment
    of the Irish in this matter.... He had certain suggestions to this
    end, taking the colonial model as a basis, which struck me as
    being the result of much thought and knowledge of the subject....
    At the conclusion of the conversation, which lasted for more than
    an hour, and to which Lord Carnarvon was very much the larger
    contributor, I left him, believing that I was in complete accord
    with him regarding the main outlines of a settlement conferring a
    legislature upon Ireland.(146)


It is certainly not for me to contend that Mr. Parnell was always an
infallible reporter, but if closely scrutinised the discrepancy in the two
stories as then told was less material than is commonly supposed. To the
passage just quoted, Lord Carnarvon never at any time in public offered
any real contradiction. What he contradicted was something different. He
denied that he had ever stated to Mr. Parnell that it was the intention of
the government, if they were successful at the polls, to establish the
Irish legislature, with limited powers and not independent of imperial
control, which he himself favoured. He did not deny, any more than he
admitted, that he had told Mr. Parnell that on opinion and policy they
were very much at one. How could he deny it, after his speech when he
first took office? Though the cabinet was not cognisant of the nature of
these proceedings, the prime minister was. To take so remarkable a step
without the knowledge and assent of the head of the government, would have
been against the whole practice and principles of our ministerial system.
Lord Carnarvon informed Lord Salisbury of his intention of meeting Mr.
(M88) Parnell, and within twenty-four hours after the meeting, both in
writing and orally, he gave Lord Salisbury as careful and accurate a
statement as possible of what had passed. We can well imagine the close
attention with which the prime minister followed so profoundly interesting
a report, and at the end of it he told the viceroy that “he had conducted
the conversation with Mr. Parnell with perfect discretion.” The knowledge
that the minister responsible for the government of Ireland was looking in
the direction of home rule, and exchanging home rule views with the great
home rule leader, did not shake Lord Salisbury’s confidence in his fitness
to be viceroy.

This is no mere case of barren wrangle and verbal recrimination. The
transaction had consequences, and the Carnarvon episode was a pivot. The
effect upon the mind of Mr. Parnell was easy to foresee. Was I not
justified, he asked long afterwards, in supposing that Lord Carnarvon,
holding the views that he now indicated, would not have been made viceroy
unless there was a considerable feeling in the cabinet that his views were
right?(147) Could he imagine that the viceroy would be allowed to talk
home rule to him—however shadowy and vague the words—unless the prime
minister considered such a solution to be at any rate well worth
discussing? Why should he not believe that the alliance formed in June to
turn Mr. Gladstone out of office and eject Lord Spencer from Ireland, had
really blossomed from being a mere lobby manœuvre and election expedient,
into a serious policy adopted by serious statesmen? Was it not certain
that in such remarkable circumstances Mr. Parnell would throughout the
election confidently state the national demand at its very highest?

In 1882 and onwards up to the Reform Act of 1885, Mr. Parnell had been
ready to advocate the creation of a central council at Dublin for
administrative purposes merely. This he thought would be a suitable
achievement for a party that numbered only thirty-five members. But the
assured increase of his strength at the coming election made all the
difference. When semi-official soundings were taken from more than one
liberal quarter after the fall of the Gladstone government, it was found
that Mr. Parnell no longer countenanced provisional reforms. After the
interview with Lord Carnarvon, the mercury rose rapidly to the top of the
tube. Larger powers of administration were not enough. The claim for
legislative power must now be brought boldly to the front. In unmistakable
terms, the Irish leader stated the Irish demand, and posed both problem
and solution. He now declared his conviction that the great and sole work
of himself and his friends in the new parliament would be the restoration
of a national parliament of their own, to do the things which they had
been vainly asking the imperial parliament to do for them.(148)



III


When politicians ruminate upon the disastrous schism that followed Mr.
Gladstone’s attempt to deal with the Irish question in 1886, they ought
closely to study the general election of 1885. In that election, though
leading men foresaw the approach of a marked Irish crisis, and awaited the
outcome of events with an overshadowing sense of pregnant issues, there
was nothing like general concentration on the Irish prospect. The strife
of programmes and the rivalries of leaders were what engrossed the popular
attention. The main body of the British electors were thinking mainly of
promised agrarian booms, fair trade, the church in danger, or some other
of their own domestic affairs.

Few forms of literature or history are so dull as the narrative of
political debates. With a few exceptions, a political speech like the
manna in the wilderness loses its savour on the second day. Three or four
marked utterances of this critical autumn, following all that has been set
forth already, will enable the reader to understand the division of
counsel that prevailed immediately before the great change of policy in
1886, and the various strategic evolutions, masked movements, and play of
mine, sap, and countermine, that led to it. As has just been described,
and with good reason, (M89) for he believed that he had the Irish viceroy
on his side, Mr. Parnell stood inflexible. In his speech of August 24
already mentioned, he had thrown down his gauntlet.

Much the most important answer to the challenge, if we regard the effect
upon subsequent events, was that of Lord Salisbury two months later. To
this I shall have to return. The two liberal statesmen, Lord Hartington
and Mr. Chamberlain, who were most active in this campaign, and whose
activity was well spiced and salted by a lively political antagonism,
agreed in a tolerably stiff negative to the Irish demand. The whig leader
with a slow mind, and the radical leader with a quick mind, on this single
issue of the campaign spoke with one voice. The whig leader(149) thought
Mr. Parnell had made a mistake and ensured his own defeat: he
overestimated his power in Ireland and his power in parliament; the Irish
would not for the sake of this impossible and impracticable undertaking,
forego without duress all the other objects which parliament was ready to
grant them; and it remained to be seen whether he could enforce his iron
discipline upon his eighty or ninety adherents, even if Ireland gave him
so many.

The radical leader was hardly less emphatic, and his utterance was the
more interesting of the two, because until this time Mr. Chamberlain had
been generally taken throughout his parliamentary career as leaning
strongly in the nationalist direction. He had taken a bold and energetic
part in the proceedings that ended in the release of Mr. Parnell from
Kilmainham. He had with much difficulty been persuaded to acquiesce in the
renewal of any part of the Coercion Act, and had absented himself from the
banquet in honour of Lord Spencer. Together with his most intimate ally in
the late government, he had projected a political tour in Ireland with Mr.
Parnell’s approval and under his auspices. Above all, he had actually
opened his electoral campaign with that famous declaration which was so
long remembered: “The pacification of Ireland at this moment depends, I
believe, on the concession to Ireland of the right to govern itself in the
matter of its purely domestic business. Is it not discreditable to us that
even now it is only by unconstitutional means that we are able to secure
peace and order in one portion of her Majesty’s dominions? It is a system
as completely centralised and bureaucratic as that with which Russia
governs Poland, or as that which prevailed in Venice under the Austrian
rule. An Irishman at this moment cannot move a step—he cannot lift a
finger in any parochial, municipal, or educational work, without being
confronted with, interfered with, controlled by, an English official,
appointed by a foreign government, and without a shade or shadow of
representative authority. I say the time has come to reform altogether the
absurd and irritating anachronism which is known as Dublin Castle. That is
the work to which the new parliament will be called.”(150) Masters of
incisive speech must pay the price of their gifts, and the sentence about
Poland and Venice was long a favourite in many a debate. But when the
Irish leader now made his proposal for removing the Russian yoke and the
Austrian yoke from Ireland, the English leader drew back. “If these,” he
said, “are the terms on which Mr. Parnell’s support is to be obtained, I
will not enter into the compact.” This was Mr. Chamberlain’s
response.(151)



IV


The language used by Mr. Gladstone during this eventful time was that of a
statesman conscious of the magnitude of the issue, impressed by the
obscurity of the path along which parties and leaders were travelling, and
keenly alive to the perils of a premature or unwary step. Nothing was
easier for the moment either for quick minds or slow minds, than to face
the Irish demand beforehand with a bare, blank, wooden _non possumus_. Mr.
Gladstone had pondered the matter more deeply. His gift of political
imagination, his wider experience, and his personal share in some chapters
of the modern history of Europe and its changes, planted him on a height
whence he commanded a view of possibilities (M90) and necessities, of
hopes and of risks, that were unseen by politicians of the beaten track.
Like a pilot amid wandering icebergs, or in waters where familiar buoys
had been taken up and immemorial beacons put out, he scanned the scene
with keen eyes and a glass sweeping the horizon in every direction. No
wonder that his words seemed vague, and vague they undoubtedly were.
Suppose that Cavour had been obliged to issue an election address on the
eve of the interview at Plombières, or Bismarck while he was on his visit
to Biarritz. Their language would hardly have been pellucid. This was no
moment for ultimatums. There were too many unascertained elements. Yet
some of those, for instance, who most ardently admired President Lincoln
for the caution with which he advanced step by step to the abolition
proclamation, have most freely censured the English statesman because he
did not in the autumn of 1885 come out with either a downright Yes or a
point-blank No. The point-blank is not for all occasions, and only a
simpleton can think otherwise.

In September Mr. Childers—a most capable administrator, a zealous
colleague, wise in what the world regards as the secondary sort of wisdom,
and the last man to whom one would have looked for a plunge—wrote to Mr.
Gladstone to seek his approval of a projected announcement to his
constituents at Pontefract, which amounted to a tolerably full-fledged
scheme of home rule.(152) In view of the charitable allegation that Mr.
Gladstone picked up home rule after the elections had placed it in the
power of the Irish either to put him into office or to keep him out of
office, his reply to Mr. Childers deserves attention:—


    _To Mr. Childers._

    _Sept. 28, 1885._—I have a decided sympathy with the general scope
    and spirit of your proposed declaration about Ireland. If I offer
    any observations, they are meant to be simply in furtherance of
    your purpose.

    1. I would disclaim giving any exhaustive list of Imperial
    subjects, and would not “put my foot down” as to revenue, but
    would keep plenty of elbow-room to keep all customs and excise,
    which would probably be found necessary.

    2. A general disclaimer of particulars as to the form of any local
    legislature might suffice, without giving the Irish expressly to
    know it might be decided mainly by their wish.

    3. I think there is no doubt Ulster would be able to take care of
    itself in respect to education, but a question arises and forms, I
    think, the most difficult part of the whole subject, whether some
    defensive provisions for the owners of land and property should
    not be considered.

    4. It is evident you have given the subject much thought, and my
    sympathy goes largely to your details as well as your principle.
    But considering the danger of placing confidence in the leaders of
    the national party at the present moment, and the decided
    disposition they have shown to raise their terms on any favourable
    indication, I would beg you to consider further whether you should
    _bind_ yourself at present to any details, or go beyond general
    indications. If you say in terms (and this I do not dissuade) that
    you are ready to consider the question whether they can have a
    legislature for all questions not Imperial, this will be a great
    step in advance; and anything you may say beyond it, I should like
    to see veiled in language not such as to commit you.


The reader who is now acquainted with Mr. Gladstone’s strong support of
the Chamberlain plan in 1885, and with the bias already disclosed, knows
in what direction the main current of his thought must have been setting.
The position taken in 1885 was in entire harmony with all these
premonitory notes. Subject, said Mr. Gladstone, to the supremacy of the
crown, the unity of the empire, and all the authority of parliament
necessary for the conservation of that unity, every grant to portions of
the country of enlarged powers for the management of their own affairs,
was not a source of danger, but a means of averting it. “As to the
legislative union, I believe history and posterity will consign to
disgrace the name and memory of every man, be he who he may, and on
whichever side of the Channel he may dwell, that having the power to aid
in an equitable settlement between Ireland and Great Britain, shall use
that power not to aid, but to prevent or retard it.”(153) These and all
the other large and profuse sentences of the Midlothian address were
undoubtedly open to more than one construction, and they either admitted
or excluded home rule, as might happen. The fact that, though it was
running so freely in his own mind, he did not put Irish autonomy into the
forefront of his address, has been made a common article of charge against
him. As if the view of Irish autonomy now running in his mind were not
dependent on a string of hypotheses. And who can imagine a party leader’s
election address that should have run thus?—“ If Mr. Parnell returns with
a great majority of members, and if the minority is not weighty enough,
and if the demand is constitutionally framed, and if the Parnellites are
unanimous, then we will try home rule. And this possibility of a
hypothetical experiment is to be the liberal cry with which to go into
battle against Lord Salisbury, who, so far as I can see, is nursing the
idea of the same experiment.”

Some weeks later, in speaking to his electors in Midlothian, Mr. Gladstone
instead of minimising magnified the Irish case, pushed it into the very
forefront, not in one speech, but in nearly all; warned his hearers of the
gravity of the questions soon to be raised by it, and assured them that it
would probably throw into the shade the other measures that he had
described as ripe for action. He elaborated a declaration, of which much
was heard for many months and years afterwards. What Ireland, he said, may
deliberately and constitutionally demand, unless it infringes the
principles connected with the honourable maintenance of the unity of the
empire, will be a demand that we are bound at any rate to treat with
careful attention. To stint Ireland in power which might be necessary or
desirable for the management of matters purely Irish, would be a great
error; and if she was so stinted, the end that any such measure might
contemplate could not be attained. Then came the memorable appeal: “Apart
from the term of whig and tory, there is one thing I will say and will
endeavour to impress upon you, and it is this. It will be a vital danger
to the country and to the empire, if at a time when a demand from Ireland
for larger powers of self-government is to be dealt with, there is not in
parliament a party totally independent of the Irish vote.”(154) Loud and
long sustained have been the reverberations of this clanging sentence. It
was no mere passing dictum. Mr. Gladstone himself insisted upon the same
position again and again, that “for a government in a minority to deal
with the Irish question would not be safe.” This view, propounded in his
first speech, was expanded in his second. There he deliberately set out
that the urgent expediency of a liberal majority independent of Ireland
did not foreshadow the advent of a liberal government to power. He
referred to the settlement of household suffrage in 1867. How was the tory
government enabled to effect that settlement? Because there was in the
House a liberal majority which did not care to eject the existing
ministry.(155) He had already reminded his electors that tory governments
were sometimes able to carry important measures, when once they had made
up their minds to it, with greater facility than liberal governments
could. For instance, if Peel had not been the person to propose the repeal
of the corn laws, Lord John would not have had fair consideration from the
tories; and no liberal government could have carried the Maynooth
Act.(156)

The plain English of the abundant references to Ireland in the Midlothian
speeches of this election is, that Mr. Gladstone foresaw beyond all shadow
of doubt that the Irish question in its largest extent would at once
demand the instant attention of the new parliament; that the best hope of
settling it would be that the liberals should have a majority of their
own; that the second best hope lay in its settlement by the tory
government with the aid of the liberals; but that, in any case, the worst
of all conditions under which a settlement could be attempted—an attempt
that could not be avoided—would be a situation in which Mr. Parnell should
hold the balance between parliamentary parties.

The precise state of Mr. Gladstone’s mind at this moment is best shown in
a very remarkable letter written by him to Lord Rosebery, under whose roof
at Talmeny he was staying at the time:—


    _To Lord Rosebery._

    _Dalmeny Park, 13th Nov. 1885._—You have called my attention to
    the recent speech of Mr. Parnell, in which he expresses the desire
    that I should frame a plan for giving to Ireland, without
    prejudice to imperial unity and interests, the management of her
    own affairs. The subject is so important that, though we are
    together, I will put on paper my view of this proposal. For the
    moment I assume that such a plan can be framed. Indeed, if I had
    considered this to be hopeless, I should have been guilty of great
    rashness in speaking of it as a contingency that should be kept in
    view at the present election. I will first give reasons, which I
    deem to be of great weight, against my producing a scheme,
    reserving to the close one reason, which would be conclusive in
    the absence of every other reason.

    1. It is not the province of the person leading the party in
    opposition, to frame and produce before the public detailed
    schemes of such a class.

    2. There are reasons of great weight, which make it desirable that
    the party now in power should, if prepared to adopt the principle,
    and if supported by an adequate proportion of the coming House of
    Commons, undertake the construction and proposal of the measure.

    3. The unfriendly relations between the party of nationalists and
    the late government in the expiring parliament, have of necessity
    left me and those with whom I act in great ignorance of the
    interior mind of the party, which has in parliament systematically
    confined itself to very general declarations.

    4. That the principle and basis of an admissible measure have been
    clearly declared by myself, if not by others, before the country;
    more clearly, I think, than was done in the case of the Irish
    disestablishment; and that the particulars of such plans in all
    cases have been, and probably must be, left to the discretion of
    the legislature acting under the usual checks.

    But my final and paramount reason is, that the production at this
    time of a plan by me would not only be injurious, but would
    destroy all reasonable hope of its adoption. Such a plan, proposed
    by the heads of the liberal party, is so certain to have the
    opposition of the tories _en bloc_, that every computation must be
    founded on this anticipation. This opposition, and the appeals
    with which it will be accompanied, will render the carrying of the
    measure difficult even by a united liberal party; hopeless or most
    difficult, should there be serious defection.

    Mr. Parnell is apprehensive of the opposition of the House of
    Lords. That idea weighs little with me. I have to think of
    something nearer, and more formidable. The idea of constituting a
    legislature for Ireland, whenever seriously and responsibly
    proposed, will cause a mighty heave in the body politic. It will
    be as difficult to carry the liberal party and the two British
    nations in favour of a legislature for Ireland, as it was easy to
    carry them in the case of Irish disestablishment. I think that it
    may possibly be done; but only by the full use of a great
    leverage. That leverage can only be found in their equitable and
    mature consideration of what is due to the fixed desire of a
    nation, clearly and constitutionally expressed. Their
    prepossessions will not be altogether favourable; and they cannot
    in this matter be bullied.

    I have therefore endeavoured to lay the ground by stating largely
    the possibility and the gravity, even the solemnity, of that
    demand. I am convinced that this is the only path which can lead
    to success. With such a weapon, one might go hopefully into
    action. But I well know, from a thousand indications past and
    present, that a new project of mine launched into the air, would
    have no _momentum_ which could carry it to its aim. So, in my
    mind, stands the case....


Three days before this letter, Mr. Gladstone had replied to one from Lord
Hartington:—


    _To Lord Hartington._

    _Dalmeny, Nov. 10, 1885._—I made a beginning yesterday in one of
    my conversation speeches, so to call them, on the way, by laying
    it down that I was particularly bound to prevent, if I could, the
    domination of sectional opinion over the body and action of the
    party.

    I wish to say something about the modern radicalism. But I must
    include this, that if it is rampant and ambitious, the two most
    prominent causes of its forwardness have been: 1. Tory democracy.
    2. The gradual disintegration of the liberal aristocracy. On both
    these subjects my opinions are strong. I think the conduct of the
    Duke of Bedford and others has been as unjustifiable as it was
    foolish, especially after what we did to save the House of Lords
    from itself in the business of the franchise.

    Nor can I deny that the question of the House of Lords, of the
    church, or both, will probably split the liberal party. But let it
    split decently, honourably, and for cause. That it should split
    now would, so far as I see, be ludicrous.

    So far I have been writing in great sympathy with you, but now I
    touch a point where our lines have not been the same. You have, I
    think, courted the hostility of Parnell. Salisbury has carefully
    avoided doing this, and last night he simply confined himself to
    two conditions, which you and I both think vital; namely, the
    unity of the empire and an honourable regard to the position of
    the “minority,” _i.e._ the landlords. You will see in the
    newspapers what Parnell, _making_ for himself an opportunity, is
    reported to have said about the elections in Ulster now at hand.
    You have opened a vista which appears to terminate in a possible
    concession to Ireland of full power to manage her own local
    affairs. But I own my leaning to the opinion that, if that
    consummation is in any way to be contemplated, action at a stroke
    will be more honourable, less unsafe, less uneasy, than the
    jolting process of a series of partial measures. This is my
    opinion, but I have no intention, as at present advised, of
    signifying it. I have all along in public declarations avoided
    offering anything to the nationalists, beyond describing the
    limiting rule which must govern the question. It is for them to
    ask, and for us, as I think, to leave the space so defined as open
    and unencumbered as possible. I am much struck by the increased
    breadth of Salisbury’s declaration last night; he dropped the “I
    do not see how.”

    We shall see how these great and difficult matters develop
    themselves. Meantime be assured that, with a good deal of
    misgiving as to the future, I shall do what little I can towards
    enabling all liberals at present to hold together with credit and
    good conscience.



V


Mr. Gladstone’s cardinal deliverance in November had been preceded by an
important event. On October 7, 1885, Lord Salisbury made that speech at
Newport, which is one of the tallest and most striking landmarks in the
shifting sands of this controversy. It must be taken in relation to Lord
Carnarvon’s declaration of policy on taking office, and to his exchange of
views with Mr. Parnell at the end of July. Their first principle, said
Lord Salisbury, was to extend to Ireland, so far as they could, all the
institutions of this country. But one must remember that in Ireland the
population is on several subjects deeply divided, and a government is
bound ’on all matters of essential justice’ to protect a minority against
a majority. Then came remarkable sentences: “Local authorities are more
exposed to the temptation of enabling the majority to be unjust to the
minority when they obtain jurisdiction over a small area, than is the case
when the authority derives its sanction and extends its jurisdiction over
a wider area. In a large central authority, the wisdom of several parts of
the country will correct the folly and mistakes of one. In a local
authority, that correction is to a much greater extent wanting, and it
would be impossible to leave that out of sight, in any extension of any
such local authority in Ireland.” This principle was often used in the
later controversy as a recognition by Lord Salisbury that the creation of
a great central body would be a safer policy than the mere extension of
self-government in Irish counties. In another part of the speech, it is
true, the finger-post or weather-vane pointed in the opposite direction.
“With respect to the larger organic questions connected with Ireland,”
said Lord Salisbury, “I cannot say much, though I can speak emphatically.
I have nothing to say but that the traditions of the party to which we
belong, are on this point clear and distinct, and you may rely upon it our
party will not depart from them.” Yet this emphatic refusal to depart from
the traditions of the tory party did not prevent Lord Salisbury from
retaining at that moment in his cabinet an Irish viceroy, with whom he
(M91) was in close personal relations, and whose active Irish policy he
must have known to be as wide a breach in tory tradition as the mind of
man can imagine. So hard is it in distracted times, the reader may
reflect, even for men of honourable and lofty motive to be perfectly
ingenuous.

The speaker next referred to the marked way in which Mr. Parnell, a day or
two before, had mentioned the position of Austro-Hungary. “I gathered that
some notion of imperial federation was floating in his mind. With respect
to Ireland, I am bound to say that I have never seen any plan or any
suggestion which gives me at present the slightest ground for anticipating
that it is in that direction that we shall find any substantial solution
of the difficulties of the problem.” In an electric state of the political
atmosphere, a statesman who said that at present he did not think federal
home rule possible, was taken to imply that he might think it possible,
by-and-by. No door was closed.

It was, however, Lord Salisbury’s language upon social order that gave
most scandal to simple consciences in his own ranks. You ask us, he said,
why we did not renew the Crimes Act. There are two answers: we could not,
and it would have done no good if we could. To follow the extension of the
franchise by coercion, would have been a gross inconsistency. To show
confidence by one act, and the absence of confidence by a simultaneous
act, would be to stultify parliament. Your inconsistency would have
provoked such intense exasperation, that it would have led to ten times
more evil, ten times more resistance to the law, than your Crimes Act
could possibly have availed to check. Then the audience was favoured with
a philosophic view of boycotting. This, said the minister, is an offence
which legislation has very great difficulty in reaching. The provisions of
the Crimes Act against it had a very small effect. It grew up under that
Act. And, after all, look at boycotting. An unpopular man or his family go
to mass. The congregation with one accord get up and walk out. Are you
going to indict people for leaving church? The plain fact is that
boycotting “is more like the excommunication or interdict of the middle
ages, than anything that we know now.” “The truth about boycotting is that
it depends on the passing humour of the population.”

It is important to remember that in the month immediately preceding this
polished apologetic, there were delivered some of the most violent
boycotting speeches ever made in Ireland.(157) These speeches must have
been known to the Irish government, and their occurrence and the purport
of them must presumably have been known therefore to the prime minister.
Here was indeed a removal of the ancient buoys and beacons that had
hitherto guided English navigation in Irish waters. There was even less of
a solid ultimatum at Newport, than in those utterances in Midlothian which
were at that time and long afterwards found so culpably vague, blind, and
elusive. Some of the more astute of the minister’s own colleagues were
delighted with his speech, as keeping the Irishmen steady to the tory
party. They began to hope that they might even come within five-and-twenty
of the liberals when the polling began.

The question on which side the Irish vote in Great Britain should be
thrown seems not to have been decided until after Mr. Gladstone’s speech.
It was then speedily settled. On Nov. 21 a manifesto was issued, handing
over the Irish vote in Great Britain solid to the orator of the Newport
speech. The tactics were obvious. It was Mr. Parnell’s interest to bring
the two contending British parties as near as might be to a level, and
this he could only hope to do by throwing his strength upon the weaker
side. It was from the weaker side, if they could be retained in office,
that he would get the best terms.(158) The document was composed with
vigour and astuteness. But the phrases of the manifesto were the least
important part of it. It was enough that the hard word was passed. Some
estimated the loss to the liberal party in this island at twenty seats,
others at forty. Whether twenty or forty, these lost seats made a fatal
difference in the division on the Irish bill a few months later, and when
(M92) that day had come and gone, Mr. Parnell sometimes ruefully asked
himself whether the tactics of the electoral manifesto were not on the
whole a mistake. But this was not all and was not the worst of it. The
Irish manifesto became a fiery element in a sharp electioneering war, and
threw the liberals in all constituencies where there was an Irish vote
into a direct and angry antagonism to the Irish cause and its leaders;
passions were roused, and things were said about Irishmen that could not
at once be forgotten; and the great task of conversion in 1886, difficult
in any case, was made a thousand times more difficult still by the
arguments and antipathies of the electoral battle of 1885. Meanwhile it
was for the moment, and for the purposes of the moment, a striking
success.




Chapter II. The Polls In 1885. (1885)


    I would say that civil liberty can have no security without
    political power.—C. J. FOX.



I


The election ran a chequered course (Nov. 23-Dec. 19). It was the first
trial of the whole body of male householders, and it was the first trial
of the system of single-member districts. This is not the place for a
discussion of the change of electoral area. As a scheme for securing
representation of minorities it proved of little efficacy, and many
believe that the substitution of a smaller constituency for a larger one
has tended to slacken political interest, and to narrow political
judgment. Meanwhile some of those who were most deeply concerned in
establishing the new plan, were confident that an overwhelming liberal
triumph would be the result. Many of their opponents took the same view,
and were in despair. A liberal met a tory minister on the steps of a club
in Pall Mall, as they were both going to the country for their elections.
“I suppose,” said the tory, “we are out for twenty years to come.” _O
pectora cæca!_ He has been in office for nearly fifteen of the eighteen
years since. In September one of the most authoritative liberal experts
did not see how the tories were to have more than 210 out of the 670
seats, including the tory contingent from Ireland. Two months later the
expert admitted that the tory chances were improving, mainly owing to what
in electioneering slang was called the church scare. Fair trade, too, had
made many converts in Lancashire. On the very eve of the polls the
estimate at liberal headquarters was a majority of forty over tories and
Irishmen combined.



II


(M93) As I should have told the reader on an earlier page, Mr. Gladstone
had proceeded to his own constituency on November 9. The previous month
had found, as usual, endless other interests to occupy him, quite apart
from politics. These are the ordinary entries. “Worked, say, five hours on
books. Three more hours reduced my books and rooms to apparent order, but
much detail remains. Worked mildly on books.” In this region he would have
said of disorder and disarray what Carlyle said to dirt, “Thou shalt not
abide with me.” As to the insides of books, his reading was miscellaneous:
Madame d’Arblay, Bodley’s _Remains_, Bachaumont’s _Anecdotes_, Cuvier’s
_Theory of the Earth_, Whewell on _Astronomy_, the _Life of B. Gilpin_,
Hennell’s _Inquiry_, Schmidt’s _Social Effects of Christianity_, Miss
Martineau’s _Autobiography_, Anderson on _Glory of the Bible,_ Barrow’s
_Towards the Truth_, and so on—many of the books now stone-dead. Besides
such reading as this, he “made a beginning of a paper on Hermes, and read
for it,” and worked hard at a controversial article, in reply to M.
Réville, upon the Dawn of Creation and Worship. When he corrected the
proof, he found it ill-written, and in truth we may rather marvel at, than
admire, the hardihood that handled such themes amid such
distractions.(159) Much company arrived. “Count Münster came to luncheon;
long walk and talk with him. The Derby-Bedford party came and went. I had
an hour’s good conversation with Lord D. Tea in the open air. _Oct.
7._—Mr. Chamberlain came. Well, and much conversation. _Oct. 8._—Mr.
Chamberlain. Three hours of conversation.”

Before the end of the month the doctors reported excellently of the
condition of his vocal cords, and when he started for Dalmeny and the
scene of the exploits of 1880 once more, he was in spirits to enjoy “an
animated journey,” and the vast enthusiasm with which Edinburgh again
received him. His speeches were marked by undiminished fire. He boldly
challenged a verdict on policy in the Soudan, while freely admitting that
in some points, not immaterial, his cabinet had fallen into error, though
in every case the error was fostered by the party opposite; and he pointed
to the vital fact that though the party opposite were in good time, they
never dreamed of altering the policy. He asked triumphantly how they would
have fared in the Afghan dispute, if the policy anterior to 1880 had not
been repudiated. In his address he took the same valiant line about South
Africa. “In the Transvaal,” he said, “we averted a war of European and
Christian races throughout South African states, which would have been
alike menacing to our power, and scandalous in the face of civilisation
and of Christendom. As this has been with our opponents a favourite
subject of unmeasured denunciation, so I for one hail and reciprocate
their challenge, and I hope the nation will give a clear judgment on our
refusal to put down liberty by force, and on the measures that have
brought about the present tranquillity of South Africa.” His first speech
was on Ireland, and Ireland figured, as we have seen, largely and
emphatically to the last. Disestablishment was his thorniest topic, for
the scare of the church in danger was working considerable havoc in
England, and every word on Scottish establishment was sure to be
translated to establishment elsewhere. On the day on which he was to
handle it, his entry is: “Much rumination, and made notes which in
speaking I could not manage to see. Off to Edinburgh at 2.30. Back at 6.
Spoke seventy minutes in Free Kirk Hall: a difficult subject. The present
agitation does not strengthen in my mind the principle of establishment.”
His leading text was a favourite and a salutary maxim of his, that “it is
a very serious responsibility to take political questions out of their
proper time and their proper order,” and the summary of his speech was
that the party was agreed upon certain large and complicated questions,
such as were enough for one parliament to settle, and that it would be an
error to attempt to thrust those questions aside, to cast them into the
shade and the darkness, “for the sake of a subject of which I will not
undervalue the importance, but of which I utterly deny the maturity at the
present moment.”(160)

On Nov. 27 the poll was taken; 11,241 electors out of 12,924, or 87 per
cent., recorded their votes, and of these 7879 voted for Mr. Gladstone,
and 3248 for Mr. Dalrymple, or a majority of 4631. So little impression
had been made (M94) in Midlothian by Kilmainham, Majuba, Khartoum,
Penjdeh, and the other party cries of a later period.



III


Let us turn to the general result, and the final composition of Mr.
Gladstone’s thirteenth parliament. The polls of the first three or four
days were startling. It looked, in the phrases of the time, as if there
were conservative reaction all round, as if the pendulum had swung back to
the point of tory triumph in 1874, and as if early reverses would wind up
in final rout. Where the tories did not capture the seat, their numbers
rose and the liberal majorities fell. At the end of four days the liberals
in England and Wales had scored 86 against 109 for their adversaries. When
two-thirds of the House had been elected, the liberals counted 196, the
tories 179, and the Irish nationalists 37. In spite of the early panic or
exultation, it was found that in boroughs of over 100,000 the liberals had
after all carried seventeen, against eight for their opponents. But the
tories were victorious in a solid Liverpool, save one Irish seat; they won
all the seats in Manchester save one; and in London, where liberals had
been told by those who were believed to know, that they would make a clean
sweep, there were thirty-six tories against twenty-six liberals. Two
members of the late liberal cabinet and three subordinate ministers were
thrown out. “The verdict of the English borough constituencies,” cried the
_Times_, “will be recorded more emphatically than was even the case in
1874 in favour of the conservatives. The opposition have to thank Mr.
Chamberlain not only for their defeat at the polls, but for the
irremediable disruption and hopeless disorganisation of the liberal party
with its high historic past and its high claims to national gratitude. His
achievement may give him such immortality as was won by the man who burned
down the temple of Diana at Ephesus.”(161) The same writers have ever
since ascribed the irremediable disruption to Mr. Gladstone and the Irish
question.

Now came the counties with their newly enfranchised hosts. Here the tide
flowed strong and steady. Squire and parson were amazed to see the
labourer, of whose stagnant indifference to politics they had been so
confident, trudging four or five miles to a political meeting, listening
without asking for a glass of beer to political speeches, following point
upon-point, and then trudging back again dumbly chewing the cud.
Politicians with gifts of rhetoric began to talk of the grand revolt of
the peasants, and declared that it was the most remarkable transformation
since the conversion of the Franks. Turned into prose, this meant that the
liberals had extended their area into large rural provinces where hitherto
tory supremacy had never been disputed. Whether or no Mr. Chamberlain had
broken the party in the boroughs, his agrarian policy together with the
natural uprising of the labourer against the party of squire and farmer,
had saved it in the counties. The nominees of such territorial magnates as
the Northumberlands, the Pembrokes, the Baths, the Bradfords, the Watkin
Wynns, were all routed, and the shock to territorial influence was felt to
be profound. An ardent agrarian reformer, who later became a conspicuous
unionist, writing to Mr. Gladstone in July a description of a number of
great rural gatherings, told him, “One universal feature of these meetings
is the joy, affection, and unbounded applause with which your name is
received by these earnest men. Never in all your history had you so strong
a place in the hearts of the common people, as you have to-day. It
requires to be seen to be realised.”

All was at last over. It then appeared that so far from there being a
second version of the great tory reaction of 1874, the liberals had now in
the new parliament a majority over tories of 82, or thirty under the
corresponding majority in the year of marvel, 1880. In great Britain they
had a majority of 100, being 333 against 233.(162) But (M95) they had no
majority over tories and Irishmen combined. That hopeful dream had glided
away through the ivory gate.

Shots between right wing and left of the liberal party were exchanged to
the very last moment. When the borough elections were over, the Birmingham
leader cried that so far from the loss in the boroughs being all the fault
of the extreme liberals, it was just because the election had not been
fought on their programme, but was fought instead on a manifesto that did
not include one of the points to which the extreme liberals attached the
greatest importance. For the sake of unity, they had put aside their most
cherished principles, disestablishment for instance, and this, forsooth,
was the result.(163) The retort came as quickly as thunder after the
flash. Lord Hartington promptly protested from Matlock, that the very
crisis of the electoral conflict was an ill-chosen moment for the public
expression of doubt by a prominent liberal as to the wisdom of a policy
accepted by the party, and announced by the acknowledged leader of the
whole party. When the party had found some more tried, more trusted, more
worthy leader, then might perhaps be the time to impugn the policy. These
reproachful ironies of Lord Hartington boded ill for any prospect of the
heroes of this fratricidal war of the platform smoothing their wrinkled
fronts in a liberal cabinet.



IV


In Ireland the result shed a strong light on the debating prophecies that
the extension of the county franchise would not be unfavourable to the
landlord interest; that it would enable the deep conservative interest of
the peasantry to vindicate itself against the nationalism of the towns;
that it would prove beyond all doubt that the Irish leader did not really
speak the mind of a decided majority of the people of Ireland. Relying on
the accuracy of these abstract predictions, the Irish tories started
candidates all over the country. Even some of them who passed for shrewd
and candid actually persuaded themselves that they were making an
impression on the constituencies. The effect of their ingenuous operations
was to furnish such a measure of nationalist strength, as would otherwise
have seemed incredible almost to the nationalists themselves. An instance
or two will suffice. In two divisions of Cork, the tories polled 300 votes
against nearly 10,000 for the nationalists. In two divisions of Mayo, the
tories polled 200 votes against nearly 10,000 for the nationalists. In one
division of Kilkenny there were 4000 nationalist votes against 170 for the
tory, and in another division 4000 against 220. In a division of Kerry the
nationalist had over 3000 votes against 30 for the tory,—a hundred to one.
In prosperous counties with resident landlords and a good class of gentry
such as Carlow and Kildare, in one case the popular vote was 4800 against
750, and in the other 3169 against 467. In some fifty constituencies the
popular majorities ranged in round numbers from 6500 the highest, to 2400
the lowest. Besides these constituencies where a contest was so futile,
were those others in which no contest was even attempted.

In Ulster a remarkable thing happened. This favoured province had in the
last parliament returned nine liberals. Lord Hartington attended a banquet
at Belfast (Nov. 5) just before the election. It was as unlucky an affair
as the feast of Belshazzar. His mission was compared by Orange wits to
that of the Greek hero who went forth to wrestle with Death for the body
of an old woman. The whole of the liberal candidates in Ulster fell down
as dead men. Orangemen and catholics, the men who cried damnation to King
William and the men who cried “To hell with the Pope,” joined hands
against them. In Belfast itself, nationalists were (M96) seen walking to
the booths with orange cards in their hats to vote for orangemen against
liberals.(164) It is true that the paradox did not last, and that the Pope
and King William were speedily on their old terms again. Within six
months, the two parties atoned for this temporary backsliding into
brotherly love, by one of the most furious and protracted conflagrations
that ever raged even in the holy places of Belfast. Meanwhile nationalism
had made its way in the south of the province, partly by hopes of reduced
rents, partly by the energy of the catholic population, who had not tasted
political power for two centuries. The adhesion of their bishops to the
national movement in the Monaghan election had given them the signal three
years before. Fermanagh, hitherto invariably Orange, now sent two
nationalists. Antrim was the single county out of the thirty-two counties
of Ireland that was solid against home rule, and even in Antrim in one
contest the nationalist was beaten only by 35 votes.

Not a single liberal was returned in the whole of Ireland. To the last
parliament she had sent fourteen. They were all out bag and baggage.
Ulster now sent eighteen nationalists and seventeen tories. Out of the
eighty-nine contests in Ireland, Mr. Parnell’s men won no fewer than
eighty-five, and in most of them they won by such overwhelming majorities
as I have described. It was noticed that twenty-two of the persons
elected, or more than one-fourth of the triumphant party, had been put in
prison under the Act of 1881. A species of purge, moreover, had been
performed. All half-hearted nationalists, the doubters and the faithless,
were dismissed, and their places taken by men pledged either to obey or
else go.

The British public now found out on what illusions they had for the last
four years been fed. Those of them who had memories, could recollect how
the Irish secretary of the day, on the third reading of the first Coercion
bill in 1881, had boldly appealed from the Irish members to the People of
Ireland. “He was sure that he could appeal with confidence from gentlemen
sitting below the gangway opposite to their constituents.”(165) They
remembered all the talk about Mr. Parnell and his followers being a mere
handful of men and not a political party at all, and the rest of it. They
had now a revelation what a fool’s paradise it had been.

As a supreme electoral demonstration, the Irish elections of 1885 have
never been surpassed in any country. They showed that neither remedial
measures nor repressive measures had made even the fleeting shadow of an
impression on the tenacious sentiment of Ireland, or on the powerful
organisation that embodied and directed it. The Land Act had made no
impression. The two Coercion Acts had made none. The imperial parliament
had done its best for five years. Some of the ablest of its ministers had
set zealous and intrepid hands to the task, and this was the end. Whether
you counted seats or counted votes, the result could not be twisted into
anything but what it was—the vehement protest of one of the three kingdoms
against the whole system of its government, and a strenuous demand for its
reconstruction on new foundations.

Endeavours were made to discredit so startling and unwelcome a result. It
was called “the carefully prepared verdict of a shamefully packed jury.”
Much was made of the number of voters who declared themselves illiterate,
said to be compelled so to do in order that the priest or other
intimidatory person might see that they voted right. As a matter of fact
the percentage of illiterate voters answered closely to the percentage of
males over twenty-one in the census returns, who could neither read nor
write. Only two petitions followed the general election, one at Belfast
against a nationalist, and the other at Derry against a tory, and in
neither of the two was undue influence or intimidation alleged. The routed
candidates in Ireland, like the same unlucky species elsewhere, raised the
usual chorus of dolorous explanation. The register, they cried, was in a
shameful condition; the polling stations were too few or too remote; the
loyalists were afraid, and the poll did not represent their real numbers;
people did not believe that the ballot was really secret; the percentage
of illiterates was monstrous; promises and pledges went for nothing. Such
are ever the too familiar voices of mortified electioneering.

(M97) There was also the best known of all the conclusive topics from tory
Ireland. It was all done, vowed the tories, by the bishops and clergy;
they were indefatigable; they canvassed at the houses and presided at
meetings; they exhorted their flocks from the altar, and they drilled them
at the polling-booths. The spiritual screw of the priest and the temporal
screw of the league—there was the whole secret. Such was the story, and it
was not wholly devoid of truth; but then what balm, what comfort, had even
the truth of it for British rulers?

Some thousands of voters stayed away from the polls. It was ingeniously
explained that their confidence in British rule had been destroyed by the
Carnarvon surrender; a shopkeeper would not offend his customers for the
sake of a Union Jack that no longer waved triumphant in the breeze. They
were like the Arab sheikhs at Berber, who, when they found that the
Egyptian pashas were going to evacuate, went over to the Mahdi. The
conventions appointed to select the candidates were denounced as the mere
creatures of Mr. Parnell, the Grand Elector. As if anything could have
shown a more politic appreciation of the circumstances. There are
situations that require a dictator, not to impose an opinion, but to
kindle an aspiration; not to shape a demand, but to be the effective organ
of opinion and demand. Now in the Irish view was one of those situations.
In the last parliament twenty-six seats were held by persons designated
nominal home rulers; in the new parliament, not one. Every new nationalist
member pledged himself to resign whenever the parliamentary party should
call upon him. Such an instrument grasped in a hand of iron was
indispensable, first to compel the British government to listen, and
second, to satisfy any British government disposed to listen, that in
dealing with Mr. Parnell they were dealing with nationalist Ireland, and
with a statesman who had the power to make his engagements good. You need
greater qualities, said Cardinal De Retz, to be a good party leader than
to be emperor of the universe. Ireland is not that portion of the universe
in which this is least true.




Chapter III. A Critical Month (December 1885)


    Whoever has held the post of minister for any considerable time
    can never absolutely, unalterably maintain and carry out his
    original opinions. He finds himself in the presence of situations
    that are not always the same—of life and growth—in connection with
    which he must take one course one day, and then, perhaps, another
    on the next day. I could not always run straight ahead like a
    cannon ball.—BISMARCK.



I


The month of December was passed by Mr. Gladstone at Hawarden, in such
depth of meditation as it is easy for us to conjecture. The composition of
his party, the new situation in parliament, the mutual relations of
important individuals, the Irish case, his own share in respect of the
Irish case, the strange new departure in Irish policy announced and acted
upon by the subsisting cabinet—from all these points of view it was now
his business to survey the extraordinary scene. The knot to be unravelled
in 1886 was hardly less entangled than that which engaged the powerful
genius of Pitt at the opening of the century. Stripped of invidious
innuendo, the words of Lord Salisbury a few weeks later state with
strength and truth the problem that now confronted parliament and its
chief men. “Up to the time,” said the tory prime minister, “when Mr.
Gladstone took office, be it for good or evil, for many generations
Ireland had been governed through the influence and the action of the
landed gentry. I do not wish to defend that system. There is a good deal
to be said for it, and a good deal to be said against it. What I wish to
insist upon is, not that that system was good, but that the statesman who
undertook to overthrow it, should have had something to put in its place.
He utterly destroyed it. By the Land Act of 1870, by the Ballot Act of
1872, by the Land Act of 1881, and last of all by the Reform bill of 1884,
the power of the landed gentry in Ireland is absolutely shattered; and he
now stands before the formidable problem of a country deprived of a system
of government under which it had existed for many generations, and
absolutely without even a sketch of a substitute by which the ordinary
functions of law and order can be maintained. Those changes which he
introduced into the government of Ireland were changes that were admirable
from a parliamentary point of view. They were suited to the dominant
humour of the moment. But they were barren of any institutions by which
the country could be governed and kept in prosperity for the future.”(166)
This is a statement of the case that biographer and historian alike should
ponder. Particularly should they remember that both parties had renounced
coercion.

Mr. Gladstone has publicly explained the working of his mind, and both his
private letters at the time, and many a conversation later, attest the
hold which the new aspect, however chimerical it may now seem to those who
do not take long views, had gained upon him. He could not be blind to the
fact that the action and the language of the tory ministers during the
last six months had shown an unquestionable readiness to face the new
necessities of a complex situation with new methods. Why should not a
solution of the present difficulties be sought in the same co-operation of
parties, that had been as advantageous as it was indispensable in other
critical occasions of the century? He recalled other leading precedents of
national crisis. There was the repeal of the Test Act in 1828; catholic
emancipation in 1829; the repeal of the corn law in 1846; the extension of
the franchise in 1867. In the history of these memorable transactions, Mr.
Gladstone perceived it to be extremely doubtful whether any one of these
measures, all carried as they were by tory governments, could have become
law except under the peculiar conditions which secured for each of them
both the aid of the liberal vote in the House of Commons, and the
authority possessed by all tory governments in the House of Lords. What
was the situation? The ministerial party just reached the figure of two
hundred and fifty-one. Mr. Gladstone had said in the course of the
election that for a government in a minority to deal with the Irish
question would not be safe, such an operation could not but be attended by
danger; but the tender of his support to Lord Salisbury was a
demonstration that he thought the operation might still properly be
undertaken.(167)


    _To Herbert Gladstone._

    _December 10, 1885._—1. The nationalists have run in political
    alliance with the tories for years; more especially for six
    months; most of all at the close during the elections, when _they_
    have made us 335 (say) against 250 [conservatives] instead of 355
    against 230. This alliance is therefore at its zenith. 2. The
    question of Irish government ought for the highest reasons to be
    settled at once, and settled by the allied forces, (1) because
    they have the government, (2) because their measure will have fair
    play from all, most, or many of us, which a measure of ours would
    not have from the tories. 3. As the allied forces are half the
    House, so that there is not a majority against them, no
    constitutional principle is violated by allowing the present
    cabinet to continue undisturbed for the purpose in view. 4. The
    plan for Ireland ought to be produced by the government of the
    day. Principles may be laid down by others, but not the detailed
    interpretation of them in a measure. I have publicly declared I
    produce no plan until the government has arrived at some issue
    with the Irish, as I hope they will. 5. If the moment ever came
    when a plan had to be considered with a view to production on
    behalf of the liberal party, I do not at present see how such a
    question could be dissociated from another vital question, namely,
    who are to be the government. For a government alone can carry a
    measure, though some outline of essentials might be put out in a
    motion or resolution.


Happening in these days to meet in the neighbouring (M98) palace of a whig
magnate, Mr. Balfour, a young but even then an important member of the
government, with whom as a veteran with a junior of high promise he had
long been on terms of friendly intimacy, Mr. Gladstone began an informal
conversation with him upon the condition of Ireland, on the stir that it
was making in men’s minds, and on the urgency of the problem. The
conversation he followed up by a letter (Dec. 20). Every post, he said,
bore him testimony to the growing ferment. In urging how great a calamity
it would be if so vast a question should fall into the lines of party
conflict, he expressed his desire to see it taken up by the government,
and to be able, with reserve of necessary freedom, to co-operate in their
design. Mr. Balfour replied with courteous scepticism, but promised to
inform Lord Salisbury. The tactical computation was presumably this, that
Lord Salisbury would lose the Orange group from Ireland and the extreme
tories in England, but would keep the bulk of his party. On the other
hand, Mr. Gladstone in supporting a moderate home rule would drop some of
the old whigs and some of the extreme radicals, but he too would keep the
bulk of the liberal party. Therefore, even if Mr. Parnell and his
followers should find the scheme too moderate to be endurable, still Lord
Salisbury with Mr. Gladstone’s help would settle the Irish question as
Peel with the help of the whigs settled the question of corn.

Both at the time and afterwards Mr. Gladstone was wont to lay great stress
upon the fact that he had opened this suggestion and conveyed this proffer
of support. For instance, he writes to Lord Hartington (Dec. 20): “On
Tuesday I had a conversation with Balfour at Eaton, which in conformity
with my public statements, I think, conveyed informally a hope that they
would act, as the matter is so serious, and as its becoming a party
question would be a great national calamity. I have written to him to say
(without speaking for others) that if they can make a proposal for the
purpose of settling definitely the question of Irish government, I shall
wish with proper reserves to treat it in the spirit in which I have
treated Afghanistan and the Balkan Peninsula.”

The language of Lord Carnarvon when he took office and of Lord Salisbury
at Newport, coupled with the more substantial fact of the alliance between
tories and nationalists before and during the election, no doubt warranted
Mr. Gladstone’s assumption that the alliance might continue, and that the
talk of a new policy had been something more than an electioneering
manœuvre. Yet the importance that he always attached to his offer of
support for a definite settlement, or in plainer English, some sort of
home rule, implies a certain simplicity. He forgot in his patriotic zeal
the party system. The tory leader, capable as his public utterances show
of piercing the exigencies of Irish government to the quick, might
possibly, in the course of responsible consultations with opponents for a
patriotic purpose, have been drawn by argument and circumstance on to the
ground of Irish autonomy, which he had hitherto considered, and considered
with apparent favour, only in the dim distance of abstract meditation or
through the eyes of Lord Carnarvon. The abstract and intellectual
temperament is sometimes apt to be dogged and stubborn; on the other hand,
it is often uncommonly elastic. Lord Salisbury’s clear and rationalising
understanding might have been expected to carry him to a thoroughgoing
experiment to get rid of a deep and inveterate disorder. If he thought it
politic to assent to communication with Mr. Parnell, why should he not
listen to overtures from Mr. Gladstone? On the other hand, Lord
Salisbury’s hesitation in facing the perils of an Irish settlement in
reliance upon the co-operation of political opponents is far from being
unintelligible. His inferior parliamentary strength would leave him at the
mercy of an extremely formidable ally. He may have anticipated that, apart
from the ordinary temptations of every majority to overthrow a minority,
all the strong natural impulses of the liberal leader, his vehement
sympathy with the principle of nationality, the irresistible attraction
for him of all the grand and eternal commonplaces of liberty and
self-government, would inevitably carry him much further on the Irish road
than either Lord Salisbury himself may have been disposed to travel, or
than he could be sure of persuading his party to follow. He may (M99) well
have seen grounds for pause before committing himself to so delicate and
precarious an enterprise.



II


Early in December Lord Granville was at Hawarden, and the two discussed
the crucial perplexities of the hour, not going further than agreement
that responsibility lay with the government, and that the best chance for
settlement lay in large concession. From Hawarden Lord Granville went to
Chatsworth, where he found Lord Spencer on his way to visit Mr. Gladstone;
but nothing important passed among the three leaders thus brought together
under the roof of Lord Hartington. Lord Granville imparted to Lord Spencer
and Lord Hartington that Mr. Gladstone was full of Ireland in the
direction of some large concession of self-government. The host discussed
the thing dispassionately without much expression of opinion. Proceeding
to Hawarden, Lord Spencer was there joined by Lord Rosebery. Their chief
repeated to them the propositions already stated (p. 258). Mr. Gladstone
wrote to Lord Granville (Dec. 9):


    You have, I think, acted very prudently in not returning here. It
    would have been violently canvassed. Your report is as favourable
    as could be expected. I think my conversations with Rosebery and
    Spencer have also been satisfactory. What I expect is a healthful,
    slow fermentation in many minds, working towards the final
    product. It is a case of between the devil and the deep sea. But
    our position is a bed of roses, compared with that of the
    government....


Lord Spencer was hardly second in weight to Mr. Gladstone himself. His
unrivalled experience of Irish administration, his powers of firm decision
in difficult circumstances, and the impression of high public spirit,
uprightness, and fortitude, which had stamped itself deep upon the public
mind, gave him a force of moral authority in an Irish crisis that was
unique. He knew the importance of a firm and continuous system in Ireland.
Such a system he had inflexibly carried out. Extreme concessions had been
extorted from him by the radicals in the cabinet, and when the last moment
of the eleventh hour had arrived, it looked as if he would break up the
government by insisting. Then the government was turned out, and the party
of “law and order” came in. He saw his firm and continuous system at the
first opportunity flouted and discarded. He was aware, as officials and as
the public were aware, that his successor at Dublin Castle made little
secret that he had come over to reverse the policy. Lord Spencer, too,
well knew in the last months of his reign at Dublin that his own system,
in spite of outward success, had made no mark upon Irish disaffection. It
is no wonder that after his visit to Hawarden, he laboured hard at
consideration of the problem that the strange action of government on the
one hand, and the speculations of a trusted leader on the other, had
forced upon him. On Mr. Gladstone he pressed the question whether a
general support should be given to Irish autonomy as a principle, before
particulars were matured. In any case he perceived that the difficulty of
governing Ireland might well be increased by knowledge of the mere fact
that Mr. Gladstone and himself, whether in office or in opposition, were
looking in the direction of autonomy. Somebody said to Mr. Gladstone,
people talked about his turning Spencer round his thumb. “It would be more
true,” he replied, “that he had turned me round his.” That is, I suppose,
by the lessons of Lord Spencer’s experience.

In the middle of the month Lord Hartington asked Mr. Gladstone for
information as to his views and intentions on the Irish question as
developed by the general election. The rumours in the newspapers, he said,
as well as in private letters, were so persistent that it was hard to
believe them without foundation. Mr. Gladstone replied to Lord Hartington
in a letter of capital importance in its relation to the prospects of
party union (Dec. 17):—


    _To Lord Hartington._

    The whole stream of public excitement is now turned upon me, and I
    am pestered with incessant telegrams which I have no defence
    against, but either suicide or Parnell’s method of
    self-concealment. The truth is, I have more or less of opinions
    and ideas, but no intentions or negotiations. In these ideas and
    opinions there is, I think, little that I have not more or less
    conveyed in public declarations; in principle nothing. I will try
    to lay them before you. I consider that Ireland has now spoken;
    and that an effort ought to be made _by the government_ without
    delay to meet her demands for the management by an Irish
    legislative body of Irish as distinct from imperial affairs. Only
    a government can do it, and a tory government can do it more
    easily and safely than any other. There is first a postulate that
    the state of Ireland shall be such as to warrant it. The
    conditions of an admissible plan are—

    1. Union of the empire and due supremacy of parliament.

    2. Protection for the minority—a difficult matter on which I have
    talked much with Spencer, certain points, however, remaining to be
    considered.

    3. Fair allocation of imperial charges.

    4. A statutory basis seems to me better and safer than the revival
    of Grattan’s parliament, but I wish to hear much more upon this,
    as the minds of men are still in so crude a state on the whole
    subject.

    5. Neither as opinions nor as instructions have I to any one alive
    promulgated these ideas as decided on by me.

    6. As to intentions, I am determined to have none at present, to
    leave space to the government—I should wish to encourage them if I
    properly could—above all, on no account to say or do anything
    which would enable the nationalists to establish rival biddings
    between us. If this storm of rumours continues to rage, it may be
    necessary for me to write some new letter to my constituents, but
    I am desirous to do nothing, simply leaving the field open for the
    government until time makes it necessary to decide. Of our late
    colleagues I have had most communication with Granville, Spencer,
    Rosebery. Would you kindly send this on to Granville?

    I think you will find this in conformity with my public
    declarations, though some blanks are filled up. I have in truth
    thought it my duty without in the least committing myself or any
    one else, to think through the subject as well as I could, being
    equally convinced of its urgency and bigness. If H. and N. are
    with you, pray show them this letter, which is a very hasty one,
    for I am so battered with telegrams that I hardly know whether I
    stand on my head or my heels....

    With regard to the letter I sent you, my opinion is that there is
    a Parnell party and a separation or civil war party, and the
    question which is to have the upper hand will have to be decided
    in a limited time. My earnest recommendation to everybody is not
    to commit himself. Upon this rule, under whatever pressure, I
    shall act as long as I can. There shall be no private negotiation
    carried on by me, but the time may come when I shall be obliged to
    speak publicly. Meanwhile I hope you will keep in free and full
    communication with old colleagues. Pray put questions if this
    letter seems ambiguous....

    Pray remember that I am at all times ready for personal
    communication, should you think it desirable.



III


Before receiving this letter, Lord Hartington was startled, as all the
world was, to come on something in the newspapers that instantly created a
new situation. Certain prints published on December 17 what was alleged to
be Mr. Gladstone’s scheme for an Irish settlement.(168) It proposed in
terms the creation of an Irish parliament. Further particulars were given
in detail, but with these we need not concern ourselves. The Irish
parliament was enough. The public mind, bewildered as it was by the
situation that the curious issue of the election had created, was thrown
by this announcement into extraordinary commotion. The facts are these.
Mr. Herbert Gladstone visited London at this time (Dec. 14), partly in
consequence of a speech made a few days before by Sir C. Dilke, and of the
club talk which the speech had set going. It was taken to mean that he and
Mr. Chamberlain, the two radical leaders, thought that such an Irish
policy as might be concocted between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Parnell would
receive no general support from the liberal party, and that it would be
much safer to (M100) leave the tories in power, in the expectation that
some moderate measures of reform might be got from them, and that
meanwhile they would become committed with the Irishmen. Tactics of this
kind were equivalent to the exclusion of Mr. Gladstone, for in every
letter that he wrote he pronounced the Irish question urgent. Mr. Herbert
Gladstone had not been long in London before the impression became strong
upon him, that in the absence of a guiding hint upon the Irish question,
the party might be drifting towards a split. Under this impression he had
a conversation with the chief of an important press agency, who had
previously warned him that the party was all at sea. To this gentleman, in
an interview at which no notes were taken and nothing read from papers—so
little formal was it—he told his own opinions on the assumed opinions of
Mr. Gladstone, all in general terms, and only with the negative view of
preventing friendly writers from falling into traps. Unluckily it would
seem to need at least the genius of a Bismarck, to perform with precision
and success the delicate office of inspiring a modern oracle on the
journalistic tripod. Here, what was intended to be a blameless negative
soon swelled, as the oracular fumes are wont to do, into a giant positive.
In conversations with another journalist, who was also his private friend
(Dec. 15), he used language which the friend took to justify the pretty
unreserved announcement that Mr. Gladstone was about to set to work in
earnest on home rule.

“With all these matters,” Mr. Herbert Gladstone wrote to a near relative
at the time, “my father had no more connection than the man in the moon,
and until each event occurred, he knew no more of it than the man in the
street.” Mr. Gladstone on the same day (Dec. 17) told the world by
telegraph that the statement was not an accurate representation of his
views, but a speculation upon them; he added that it had not been
published with his knowledge or authority. There can be no doubt, whatever
else may be said, that the publication was neither to his advantage, nor
in conformity with his view of the crisis. No statesman in our history has
ever been more careful of the golden rule of political strategy—to neglect
of which Frederick the Great traced the failure of Joseph II.—not to take
the second step before you have taken the first. Neither scheme nor
intention had yet crystallised in his mind. Never was there a moment when
every consideration of political prudence more imperatively counselled
silence. Mr. Gladstone’s denial of all responsibility was not found to be
an explicit contradiction; it was a repudiation of the two newspapers, but
it was not a repudiation of an Irish parliament. Therefore people believed
the story the more. Friends and foes became more than ever alert, excited,
alarmed, and in not a few cases vehemently angry. This unauthorised
publication with the qualified denial, placed Mr. Gladstone in the very
position which he declared that he would not take up; it made him a
trespasser on ground that belonged to the government. Any action on his
part would in his own view not only be unnecessary; it would be
unwarrantable; it would be in the highest degree injurious and
mischievous.(169) Yet whatever it amounted to, some of this very injury
and mischief followed.

Lord Hartington no sooner saw what was then called the Hawarden kite
flying in the sky, than he felt its full significance. He at once wrote to
Mr. Gladstone, partly in reply to the letter of the 17th already given,
and pointed with frankness to what would follow. No other subject would be
discussed until the meeting of parliament, and it would be discussed with
the knowledge, or what would pass for knowledge, that in Mr. Gladstone’s
opinion the time for concession to Ireland had arrived, and that
concession was practicable. In replying to his former letter Mr. Gladstone
had invited personal communication, and Lord Hartington thought that he
might in a few days avail himself of it, though (December 18) he feared
that little advantage would follow. In spite of urgent arguments from wary
friends, Lord Hartington at once proceeded to write to his chairman in
Lancashire (December 20), informing the public that no proposals of
liberal policy on the Irish demand had been communicated to him; for his
own part he stood to what (M101) he said, at the election. This letter was
the first bugle note of an inevitable conflict between Mr. Gladstone and
those who by and by became the whig dissentients.

To Lord Hartington resistance to any new Irish policy came easily, alike
by temperament and conviction. Mr. Chamberlain was in a more embarrassing
position; and his first speech after the election showed it. “We are face
to face,” he said, “with a very remarkable demonstration by the Irish
people. They have shown that as far as regards the great majority of them,
they are earnestly in favour of a change in the administration of their
government, and of some system which would give them a larger control of
their domestic affairs. Well, we ourselves by our public declarations and
by our liberal principles are pledged to acknowledge the justice of this
claim.” What was the important point at the moment, Mr. Chamberlain
declared that in his judgment the time had hardly arrived when the liberal
party could interfere safely or with advantage to settle this great
question. “Mr. Parnell has appealed to the tories. Let him settle accounts
with his new friends. Let him test their sincerity and goodwill; and if he
finds that he has been deceived, he will approach the liberal party in a
spirit of reason and conciliation.”(170)

Translated into the language of parliamentary action, this meant that the
liberals, with a majority of eighty-two over the tories, were to leave the
tory minority undisturbed in office, on the chance of their bringing in
general measures of which liberals could approve, and making Irish
proposals to which Mr. Parnell, in the absence of competition for his
support, might give at least provisional assent. In principle, these
tactics implied, whether right or wrong, the old-fashioned union of the
two British parties against the Irish. Were the two hundred and fifty
tories to be left in power, to carry out all the promises of the general
election, and fulfil all the hopes of a new parliament chosen on a new
system? The Hawarden letter-bag was heavy with remonstrances from newly
elected liberals against any such course.

Second only to Mr. Gladstone in experience of stirring and perilous
positions, Lord Granville described the situation to one of his colleagues
as nothing less than “thoroughly appalling.” A great catastrophe, he said,
might easily result from any of the courses open: from the adoption of
coercion by either government or opposition; from the adoption by either
of concession; from the attempt to leave the state of Ireland as it was.
If, as some think, a great catastrophe did in the end result from the
course that Mr. Gladstone was now revolving in his own mind at Hawarden,
and that he had commended to the meditations of his most important
colleagues, what alternative was feasible?



IV


The following letters set out the various movements in a drama that was
now day by day, through much confusion and bewilderment, approaching its
climax.


    _To Lord Granville._

    _December 18, ’85._—... Thinking incessantly about the matter,
    speaking freely and not with finality to you, and to Rosebery and
    Spencer—the only colleagues I have seen—I have trusted to writing
    to Hartington (who had had Harcourt and Northbrook with him) and
    to you for Derby.

    If I have made _any_ step in advance at all, which I am not sure
    of, it has most certainly been in the direction of leaving the
    field open for the government, encouraging them to act, and
    steadily refusing to say or do _anything_ like negotiation on my
    own behalf. So I think Derby will see that in the main I am
    certainly with him.... What will Parnell do? What will the
    government do? How can we decide without knowing or trying to
    know, both if we can, but at any rate the second? This letter is
    at your discretion to use in proper quarters.

    _December 22._—In the midst of these troubles, I look to you as
    the great feud-composer, and your note just received is just what
    I should have hoped and expected. Hartington wrote to me on
    Saturday that he was going up to see Goschen, but as I thought
    inviting a letter from me, which I wrote [December 17, above], and
    it was with no small surprise that I read him yesterday in the
    _Times_. However, I repeated yesterday to R. Grosvenor all that I
    have said to you about what seems to me the plain duty of the
    _party_, in the event of a severance between nationalists and
    tories. Meantime I care not who knows my anxiety to prevent that
    severance, and for that reason among others to avoid all
    communications of ideas and intentions which could tend to bring
    it about.


On December 27, Lord Granville wrote to Mr. Gladstone at Hawarden:—


    I have been asked to request you to call a cabinet of your late
    colleagues to discuss the present state of affairs. I have
    declined, giving my reasons, which appear to me to be good. At the
    same time, I think it would calm some fussiness that exists, if
    you let it be known to a few that you will be in town and ready
    for consultation, before the actual meeting.


Mr. Gladstone answered, as those acquainted with his modes of mind might
have been sure that he would:—


    _December 28._—Thank you for stopping the request to which your
    letter of yesterday refers. A cabinet does not exist out of
    office, and no one in his senses could covenant to call _the late
    cabinet_ together, I think, even if there were something on which
    it was ready to take counsel, which at this moment there is not.
    On the other hand, you will have seen from my letter that the idea
    before me has been that of going unusual lengths in the way of
    consulting beforehand, not only leading men but the party, or
    undertaking some special obligation to be assured of their
    concurrence generally, before undertaking new responsibilities.

    The one great difficulty in proceeding to consult now, I think, is
    that we cannot define the situation for ourselves, as an essential
    element of it is the relation between nationalists and tories,
    which they—not we—have to settle. If we meet on Tuesday 12th to
    choose a Speaker, so far as I can learn, regular business will not
    begin before the 19th. By the 12th we shall have given ourselves a
    much better chance of knowing how the two parties stand together;
    and there will be plenty of time for our consultations. Thus at
    least I map out the time; pray give me any comments you think
    required.

    I begged you to keep Derby informed; would you kindly do the same
    with Harcourt? Rosebery goes to London to-morrow.


Two days before this resistance to the request for a meeting, he had
written to Lord Granville with an important enclosure:—


    _December 26, 1885._—I have put down on paper in a memorandum as
    well as I can, the possible forms of the question which may have
    to be decided at the opening of the session. I went over the
    ground in conversation with you, and afterwards with R. Grosvenor,
    and I requested R. Grosvenor, who was going to London, to speak to
    Hartington in that sense. After his recent act of publication, I
    should not like to challenge him by sending him the written paper.
    Please, however, to send it on to Spencer, who will send it back
    to me.


The memorandum itself must here be quoted, for it sets out in form,
succinct, definite, and exhaustive, the situation as Mr. Gladstone at that
time regarded it:—


    _Secret._ _Hawarden Castle, Chester, Dec. 26, 1885._

    1. Government should act.

    2. Nationalists should support them in acting.

    3. I have done what I can to bring about (1). I am confident the
    nationalists know my desire. They also publicly know there can be
    no plan from me in the present circumstances.

    4. If (1) and (2) come about, we, who are half the House of
    Commons, may under the circumstances be justified in waiting for
    the production of a plan.

    5. This would be in every sense the best situation.

    6. But if ministers refuse to take up the question—or if from
    their not actually taking it up, or on any grounds, the
    nationalists publicly dissolve their alliance with them, the
    government then have a party of 250 in the face of 420, and in the
    face of 335 who were elected to oppose them.

    7. The basis of our system is that the ministry shall have the
    confidence of the House of Commons. The exception is, when it is
    about to appeal to the people. The rule applies most strongly when
    an election has just taken place. Witness 1835, 1841, 1859, and
    the _three_ last elections, after each of which, the rule has been
    acted upon, silent inference standing instead of a vote.

    8. The present circumstances warrant, I think, an understanding as
    above, between ministers and the nationalists; but not one between
    us and the nationalists.

    9. If from any cause the alliance of the tories and nationalists
    which did exist, and presumably does exist, should be known to be
    dissolved, I do not see how it is possible for what would then be
    the liberal majority to shrink from the duty appertaining to it as
    such, and to leave the business of government to the 250 men whom
    it was elected to oppose.

    10. This looks towards an amendment to the Address, praying her
    Majesty to choose ministers possessed of the confidence of the
    House of Commons.

    11. Which under the circumstances should, I think, have the
    sanction of a previous meeting of the party.

    12. An attempt would probably be made to traverse the proceeding
    by drawing me on the Irish question.

    13. It is impossible to justify the contention that as _a
    condition previous_ to asserting the right and duty of a
    parliamentary majority, the party or the leaders should commit
    themselves on a measure about which they can form no final
    judgment, until by becoming the government they can hold all the
    necessary communications.

    14. But in all likelihood jealousy will be stronger than logic;
    and to obviate such jealousy, it might be right for me [to go] to
    the very farthest allowable point.

    15. The case supposed is, the motion made—carried—ministers
    resign—Queen sends for me.

    Might I go so far as to say at the first meeting that in the case
    supposed, I should only accept the trust if assured of the
    adequate, that is of the general, support of the party to a plan
    of duly guarded home rule?

    16. If that support were withheld, it would be my duty to stand
    aside.

    17. In that event it would, I consider, become the duty of that
    portion of the party, which was not prepared to support me in an
    effort to frame a plan of duly guarded home rule, to form a
    government itself if invited by the Queen to do so.

    18. With me the Irish question would of course remain paramount;
    but preferring a liberal government without an adequate Irish
    measure to a tory government similarly lacking, such a liberal
    government would be entitled to the best general support I could
    give it.


The reference of this memorandum to Lords Granville and Spencer was
regarded as one of the first informal steps towards a consultation of
leaders. On receiving Lord Spencer’s reply on the point of procedure Mr.
Gladstone wrote to him (December 30):—


    _To Lord Spencer._

    I understand your idea to be that inasmuch as leaders of the party
    are likely to be divided on the subject of a bold Irish measure,
    and a divergence might be exhibited in a vote on the Address, it
    may be better to allow the tory government, with 250 supporters in
    a house of 670, to assume the direction of the session and
    continue the administration of imperial affairs. I do not
    undervalue the dangers of the other course. But let us look at
    this one—

    1. It is an absolute novelty.

    2. Is it not a novelty which strikes at the root of our
    parliamentary government? under which the first duty of a majority
    freshly elected, according to a uniform course of precedent and a
    very clear principle, is to establish a government which has its
    confidence.

    3. Will this abdication of primary duty avert or materially
    postpone the (apprehended) disruption of the party? Who can
    guarantee us against an Irish or independent amendment to the
    Address? The government must in any case produce at once their
    Irish plan. What will have been gained by waiting for it? The
    Irish will know three things—(1) That I am conditionally in favour
    of at least examining their demand. (2) That from the nature of
    the case, I must hold this question paramount to every interest of
    party. (3) That a part, to speak within bounds, of the liberal
    party will follow me in this respect. Can it be supposed that in
    these circumstances they will long refrain, or possibly refrain at
    all? With their knowledge of possibilities behind them, _dare_
    they long refrain? An immense loss of dignity in a great crisis of
    the empire would attend the forcing of our hands by the Irish or
    otherwise. There is no necessity for an instant decision. My
    desire is thoroughly to shake up all the materials of the
    question. The present leaning of my mind is to consider the faults
    and dangers of abstention greater than those of a more decided
    course. Hence, in part, my great anxiety that the present
    government should move. Please send this on to Granville.


Finding Mr. Gladstone immovable at Hawarden, four of the members of the
last liberal cabinet of both wings met at Devonshire House on New Year’s
day. All, save one, found themselves hopeless, especially after the
Hawarden revelations, as to the possibility of governing Ireland by mere
repression. Lord Hartington at once communicated the desires of the
conclave for information of his views and designs. Mr. Gladstone replied
(January 2, 1886):—


    On the 17th December I communicated to you _all_ the opinions I
    had formed on the Irish question. But on the 21st you published in
    the _Times_ a re-affirmation of opposite opinions.

    On the Irish question, I have not a word to add to that letter. I
    am indeed doing what little the pressure of correspondence
    permits, to prepare myself by study and reflection. My object was
    to facilitate study by you and others—I cannot say it was wholly
    gained. But I have done nothing, and shall do nothing, to convert
    those opinions into intentions, for I have not the material before
    me. I do not know whether my “postulate” is satisfied.... I have
    taken care by my letter of the 17th that you should know my
    opinions _en bloc_. You are quite welcome to show it, if you think
    fit, to those whom you met. But Harcourt has, I believe, seen it,
    and the others, if I mistake not, know the substance.... There is
    no doubt that a very grave situation is upon us, a little sooner
    or a little later. All my desire and thought was how to render it
    less grave, for next to the demands of a question far higher than
    all or any party interests, is my duty to labour for the
    consolidation of the party.... Pray show this letter, if you think
    fit, to those on whose behalf you write. I propose to be available
    in London about 4 P.M., for any who wish to see me.



V


Signals and intimations were not wholly wanting from the Irish camp. It
was known among the subalterns in that rather impenetrable region, partly
by the light of nature, partly by the indiscretions of dubiously
accredited ambassadors, that Mr. Gladstone was not disposed on any terms
to meet the Irish demand by more coercion. For the liberal party as a
whole the Irish had a considerable aversion. The violent scenes that
attended the Coercion bill of 1881, the interchange of hard words, the
suspensions, the imprisonments—all mechanically acquiesced in by the
ministerial majority—had engendered both bitterness and contempt. The
Irishmen did not conceal the satisfaction with which they saw the defeat
of some of those liberals who had openly gloated over their arrests and
all the rest of their humiliations. Mr. Gladstone, it is true, had laid a
heavy and chastening hand upon them. Yet, even when the struggle had been
fiercest, with the quick intuition of a people long oppressed, they
detected a note of half-sympathetic passion which convinced them that he
would be their friend if he could, and would help them when he might.

Mr. Parnell was not open to impressions of this order. He had a long
memory for injuries, and he had by no means satisfied himself that the
same injuries might not recur. As soon as the general election was over,
he had at once set to work upon the result. Whatever might be right for
others, his line of tactics was plain—to ascertain from which of the two
English parties he was most likely to obtain the response that he desired
to the Irish demand, and then to concert the procedure best fitted to
place that party in power. He was at first not sure whether Lord Salisbury
would renounce the Irish alliance after it had served the double purpose
of ousting the liberals from office, and then reducing their numbers at
the election. He seems also to have counted upon further communications
with Lord Carnarvon, and this expectation was made known to Mr. Gladstone,
who expressed his satisfaction at the news, though it was also made known
to him that Mr. Parnell doubted (M102) Lord Carnarvon’s power to carry out
his unquestionably favourable dispositions. He at the same time very
naturally did his best to get some light as to Mr. Gladstone’s own frame
of mind. If neither party would offer a solution of the problem of Irish
government, Mr. Parnell would prefer to keep the tories in office, as they
would at least work out gradually a solution of the problems of Irish
land. To all these indirect communications Mr. Gladstone’s consistent
reply was that Mr. Parnell’s immediate business was with the government of
the day, first, because only the government could handle the matter;
second, because a tory government with the aid that it would receive from
liberals, might most certainly, safely, and quickly settle it. He declined
to go beyond the ground already publicly taken by him, unless by way of a
further public declaration. On to this new ground he would not go, until
assured that the government had had a fair opportunity given them.

By the end of December Mr. Parnell decided that there was not the
slightest possibility of any settlement being offered by the conservatives
under the existing circumstances. “Whatever chance there was,” he said,
“disappeared when the seemingly authoritative statements of Mr.
Gladstone’s intention to deal with the question were published.” He
regarded it as quite probable that in spite of a direct refusal from the
tories, the Irish members might prefer to pull along with them, rather
than run the risk of fresh coercion from the liberals, should the latter
return to power. “Supposing,” he argued, “that the liberals came into
office, and that they offered a settlement of so incomplete a character
that we could not accept it, or that owing to defections they could not
carry it, should we not, if any long interval occurred before the proposal
of a fresh settlement, incur considerable risk of further coercion?” At
any rate, they had better keep the government in, rather than oust them in
order to admit Lord Hartington or Mr. Chamberlain with a new coercion bill
in their pockets.

Foreseeing these embarrassments, Mr. Gladstone wrote in a final memorandum
(December 24) of this eventful year, “I used every effort to obtain a
clear majority at the election, and failed. I am therefore at present a
man in chains. Will ministers bring in a measure? If ‘Aye,’ I see my way.
If ‘No’: that I presume puts an end to all relations of confidence between
nationalists and tories. If that is done, I have then upon me, as is
evident, the responsibilities of _the leader of a majority_. But what if
neither Aye nor No can be had—will the nationalists then continue their
support and thus relieve me from responsibility, or withdraw their support
[from the government] and thus change essentially my position? Nothing but
a public or published dissolution of a relation of amity publicly sealed
could be of any avail.”

So the year ended.




Chapter IV. Fall Of The First Salisbury Government. (January 1886)


    Historians coolly dissect a man’s thoughts as they please; and
    label them like specimens in a naturalist’s cabinet. Such a thing,
    they argue, was done for mere personal aggrandizement; such a
    thing for national objects; such a thing from high religious
    motives. In real life we may be sure it was not so.—GARDINER.



I


Ministers meanwhile hesitated, balanced, doubted, and wavered. Their party
was in a minority, and so they had a fair plea for resigning and not
meeting the new parliament. On the other hand, they had a fair plea for
continuing in office, for though they were in a minority, no other party
had a majority. Nobody knew what the Hartington whigs would do, or what
the Irish would do. There seemed to be many chances for expert angling.
Then with what policy were they to meet the House of Commons? They might
adhere to the conciliatory policy of the summer and autumn, keep clear of
repressive legislation, and make a bold attempt in the direction of
self-government. Taking the same courageous plunge as was taken by
Wellington and Peel in 1829, by Peel in the winter of 1845, by Disraeli in
1867, they might carry the declarations made by Lord Carnarvon on behalf
of the government in July to their only practical conclusion. But then
they would have broken up their party, as Wellington and Peel broke it up;
and Lord Salisbury may have asked himself whether the national emergency
warranted the party risk.

Resistance then to the Irish demand being assumed, various tactics came
under review. They might begin by asking for a vote of confidence, saying
plainly that if they were turned out and Mr. Gladstone were put in, he
would propose home rule. In that case a majority was not wholly
impossible, for the whig wing might come over, nor was it quite certain
that the Irish would help to put the government out. At any rate the
debate would force Mr. Gladstone into the open, and even if they did not
have a majority, they would be in a position to advise immediate
dissolution on the issue of home rule.

The only other course open to the cabinet was to turn their backs upon the
professions of the summer; to throw overboard the Carnarvon policy as a
cargo for which there was no longer a market; to abandon a great
experiment after a ludicrously short trial; and to pick up again the old
instrument of coercion, which not six months before they had with such
elaborate ostentation condemned and discarded. This grand manœuvre was
kept carefully in the background, until there had been time for the whole
chapter of accidents to exhaust itself, and it had become certain that no
trump cards were falling to the ministerial hand. Not until this was quite
clear, did ministers reveal their poignant uneasiness about the state of
Ireland.

In the middle of October (1885) Lord Randolph Churchill visited the
viceroy in Dublin, and found him, as he afterwards said, extremely anxious
and alarmed at the growing power of the National League. Yet the viceroy
was not so anxious and alarmed as to prevent Lord Randolph from saying at
Birmingham a month after, on November 20, that up to the present time
their decision to preserve order by the same laws as in England had been
abundantly justified, and that on the whole crime and outrage had greatly
diminished. This was curious, and shows how tortuous was the crisis. Only
a fortnight later the cabinet met (December 2), and heard of the
extraordinary development and unlimited resources of the league. All the
rest of the month of December,—so the public were by and by informed,—the
condition of Ireland was the subject of the most anxious consideration.
With great deliberation, a decision was at length reached. It was that
ordinary law had broken down, and that exceptional means of repression
were indispensable. Then a (M103) serious and embarrassing incident
occurred. Lord Carnarvon “threw up the government of Ireland,” and was
followed by Sir William Hart Dyke, the chief secretary.(171) A measure of
coercion was prepared, its provisions all drawn in statutory form, but who
was to warrant the necessity for it to parliament?(172)

Though the viceroy’s retirement was not publicly known until the middle of
January, yet so early as December 17 the prime minister had applied to Mr.
Smith, then secretary of state for war, to undertake the duties of Irish
government.(173) This was one of the sacrifices that no man of public
spirit can ever refuse, and Mr. Smith, who had plenty of public spirit,
became Irish secretary. Still when parliament assembled more than a month
after Lord Salisbury’s letter to his new chief secretary, no policy was
announced. Even on the second night of the session Mr. Smith answered
questions for the war office. The parliamentary mystification was
complete. Who, where, and what was the Irish government?

The parliamentary session was rapidly approaching, and Mr. Gladstone had
good information of the various quarters whence the wind was blowing.
Rumours reached him (January 9) from the purlieus of Parliament Street,
that general words of confidence in the government would be found in the
Queen’s Speech. Next he was told of the report that an amendment would be
moved by the ultras of law and order,—the same who had mutinied on the
Maamtrasna debate,—censuring ministers for having failed to uphold the
authority of the Queen. The same correspondent (January 15), who was well
able to make his words good, wrote to Mr. Gladstone that even though home
rule might perhaps not be in a parliamentary sense before the House, it
was in a most distinct manner before the country, and no political party
could avoid expressing an opinion upon it. On the same day another
colleague of hardly less importance drew attention to an article in a
journal supposed to be inspired by Lord Randolph, to the effect that
conciliation in Ireland had totally failed, that Lord Carnarvon had
retired because that policy was to be reversed and he was not the man for
the rival policy of vigour, and finally, that the new policy would
probably be announced in the Queen’s Speech; in no circumstances would it
be possible to avoid a general action on the Address.



II


The current of domestic life at Hawarden, in the midst of all these
perplexities, flowed in its usual ordered channels. The engagement of his
second daughter stirred Mr. Gladstone’s deepest interest. He practised
occasional woodcraft with his sons, though ending his seventy-sixth year.
He spends a morning in reviewing his private money affairs, the first time
for three years. He never misses church. He corrects the proofs of an
article on Huxley; carries on tolerably profuse correspondence, coming to
very little; he works among his books, and arranges his papers; reads
Beaconsfield’s _Home Letters_, Lord Stanhope’s _Pitt_, Macaulay’s _Warren
Hastings_, which he counts the most brilliant of all that illustrious
man’s performances; Maine on _Popular Government_; _King Solomon’s Mines_;
something of Tolstoy; Dicey’s _Law of the Constitution_, where a chapter
on semi-sovereign assemblies made a deep impression on him in regard to
the business that now absorbed his mind. Above all, he nearly every day
reads Burke: “_December 18._—Read Burke; what a magazine of wisdom on
Ireland and America. _January 9._—Made many extracts from Burke—_sometimes
almost divine_.”(174) We may easily imagine how the heat from that
profound and glowing furnace still further inflamed strong purposes and
exalted resolution in Mr. Gladstone. The Duke of Argyll wrote to say that
he was sorry to hear of the study of Burke: “Your _perfervidum ingenium
Scoti_ does not need being touched with a live coal from that Irish altar.
Of course your reference to Burke indicates a tendency to compare our
position as regards Ireland to the position of George III. towards the
colonies. I deny that there is any parallelism or even analogy.” (M104) It
was during these months that he renewed his friendly intercourse with
Cardinal Manning, which had been suspended since the controversy upon the
Vatican pamphlets. In November Mr. Gladstone sent Manning his article on
the “Dawn of Creation.” The cardinal thanked him for the paper—“still more
for your words, which revive the memories of old days. Fifty-five years
are a long reach of life in which to remember each other. We have twice
been parted, but as the path declines, as you say, it narrows, and I am
glad that we are again nearing each other as we near our end.... If we
cannot unite in the realm where ‘the morning stars sang together’ we
should be indeed far off.” Much correspondence followed on the articles
against Huxley. Then his birthday came:—


    Postal deliveries and other arrivals were seven hundred.
    Immeasurable kindness almost overwhelmed us. There was also the
    heavy and incessant weight of the Irish question, which offers
    daily phases more or less new. It was a day for intense
    thankfulness, but, alas, not for recollection and detachment. When
    will that day come? Until then, why string together the
    commonplaces and generalities of great things, really unfelt?... I
    am certain there is one keen and deep desire to be extricated from
    the life of contention in which a chain of incidents has for the
    last four years detained me against all my will. Then, indeed, I
    should reach an eminence from which I could look before and after.
    But I know truly that I am not worthy of this liberty with which
    Christ makes free his elect. In his own good time, something, I
    trust, will for me too be mercifully devised.



III


At the end of this long travail, which anybody else would have found all
the sorer for the isolation and quietude that it was ever Mr. Gladstone’s
fashion in moments of emergency to seek, he reached London on January
11th; two days later he took the oath in the new parliament, whose life
was destined to be so short; and then he found himself on the edge of the
whirlpool. Three days before formalities were over, and the House
assembled for the despatch of business, he received a communication that
much perturbed him, and shed an ominous light on the prospect of liberal
unity. This communication he described to Lord Granville:—


    _21 Carlton House Terrace, Jan. 18, 1886._—Hartington writes to me
    a letter indicating the possibility that on Thursday, while I
    announce with reasons a policy of silence and reserve, he may feel
    it his duty to declare his determination “to maintain the
    legislative union,” that is to proclaim a policy (so I understand
    the phrase) of absolute resistance without examination to the
    demand made by Ireland through five-sixths of her members. This is
    to play the tory game with a vengeance. They are now, most rashly
    not to say more, working the Irish question to split the liberal
    party.

    It seems to me that if a gratuitous declaration of this kind is
    made, it must produce an explosion; and that in a week’s time
    Hartington will have to consider whether he will lead the liberal
    party himself, or leave it to chaos. He will make my position
    impossible. When, in conformity with the wishes expressed to me, I
    changed my plans and became a candidate at the general election,
    my motives were two. The _first_, a hope that I might be able to
    contribute towards some pacific settlement of the Irish question.
    The _second_, a desire to prevent the splitting of the party, of
    which there appeared to be an immediate danger. The second object
    has thus far been attained. But it may at any moment be lost, and
    the most disastrous mode of losing it perhaps would be that now
    brought into view. It would be certainly opposed to my convictions
    and determination, to attempt to lead anything like a home rule
    opposition, and to make this subject—the strife of nations—the
    dividing line between parties. This being so, I do not see how I
    could as leader survive a gratuitous declaration of opposition to
    me such as Hartington appears to meditate. If he still meditates
    it, ought not the party to be previously informed?

    Pray, consider whether you can bring this subject before him, less
    invidiously than I. I have explained to you and I believe to him,
    and I believe you approve, my general idea, that we ought not to
    join issue with the government on what is called home rule (which
    indeed the social state of Ireland may effectually thrust aside
    for the time); and that still less ought we to join issue among
    ourselves, if we have a choice, unless and until we are called
    upon to consider whether or not to take the government. I for one
    will have nothing to do with ruining the party if I can avoid it.


This letter discloses with precision the critical state of facts on the
eve of action being taken. Issue was not directly joined with ministers on
home rule; no choice was found to exist as to taking the government; and
this brought deep and long-standing diversities among the liberal leaders
to the issue that Mr. Gladstone had strenuously laboured to avoid from the
beginning of 1885 to the end.



IV


The Irish paragraphs in the speech from the throne (January 21, 1886) were
abstract, hypothetical, and vague. The sovereign was made to say that
during the past year there had been no marked increase of serious crime,
but there was in many places a concerted resistance to the enforcement of
legal obligations, and the practice of intimidation continued to exist.
“If,” the speech went on, “as my information leads me to apprehend, the
existing provisions of the law should prove to be inadequate to cope with
these growing evils, I look with confidence to your willingness to invest
my government with all necessary powers.” There was also an abstract
paragraph about the legislative union between the two islands.

In a fragment composed in the autumn of 1897, Mr. Gladstone has described
the anxiety with which he watched the course of proceedings on the
Address:—


    I had no means of forming an estimate how far the bulk of the
    liberal party could be relied on to support a measure of home
    rule, which should constitute an Irish parliament subject to the
    supremacy of the parliament at Westminster. I was not sanguine on
    this head. Even in the month of December, when rumours of my
    intentions were afloat, I found how little I could reckon on a
    general support. Under the circumstances I certainly took upon
    myself a grave responsibility. I attached value to the acts and
    language of Lord Carnarvon, and the other favourable
    manifestations. Subsequently we had but too much evidence of a
    deliberate intention to deceive the Irish, with a view to their
    support at the election. But in the actual circumstances I thought
    it my duty to encourage the government of Lord Salisbury to settle
    the Irish question, so far as I could do this by promises of my
    personal support. Hence my communication with Mr. Balfour, which
    has long been in the hands of the public.

    It has been unreasonably imputed to me, that the proposal of home
    rule was a bid for the Irish vote. But my desire for the
    adjustment of the question by the tories is surely a conclusive
    answer. The fact is that I could not rely upon the collective
    support of the liberals; but I could and did rely upon the support
    of so many of them as would make the success of the measure
    certain, in the event of its being proposed by the tory
    administration. It would have resembled in substance the liberal
    support given to Roman catholic emancipation in 1829, and the
    repeal of the corn laws in 1846. Before the meeting of parliament,
    I had to encounter uncomfortable symptoms among my principal
    friends, of which I think —— was the organ.

    I was, therefore, by no means eager for the dismissal of the tory
    government, though it counted but 250 supporters out of 670, as
    long as there were hopes of its taking up the question, or at all
    events doing nothing to aggravate the situation.

    When we came to the debate on the Address I had to face a night of
    extreme anxiety. The speech from the throne referred in a menacing
    way to Irish disturbances, and contained a distinct declaration in
    support of the legislative union. On referring to the clerks at
    the table to learn in what terms the Address in reply to the
    speech was couched, I found it was a “thanking” address, which did
    not commit the House to an opinion. What I dreaded was lest some
    one should have gone back to the precedent of 1833, when the
    Address in reply to the speech was virtually made the vehicle of a
    solemn declaration in favour of the Act of Union.(175)

    Home rule, rightly understood, altered indeed the terms of the Act
    of Union, but adhered to its principle, which was the supremacy of
    the imperial parliament. Still [it] was pretty certain that any
    declaration of a substantive character, at the epoch we had now
    reached, would in its moral effect shut the doors of the existing
    parliament against home rule.

    In a speech of pronounced clearness, Mr. Arthur Elliot endeavoured
    to obtain a movement in this direction. I thought it would be
    morally fatal if this tone were extensively adopted on the liberal
    side; so I determined on an effort to secure reserve for the time,
    that our freedom might not be compromised. I, therefore, ventured
    upon describing myself as an “old parliamentary hand,” and in that
    capacity strongly advised the party to keep its own counsel, and
    await for a little the development of events. Happily this counsel
    was taken; had it been otherwise, the early formation of a
    government favourable to home rule would in all likelihood have
    become an impossibility. For although our Home Rule bill was
    eventually supported by more than 300 members, I doubt whether, if
    the question had been prematurely raised on the night of the
    Address, as many as 200 would have been disposed to act in that
    sense.


In the debate on the Address the draft Coercion bill reposing in the
secret box was not mentioned. Sir Michael Hicks Beach, the leader of the
House, described the mischiefs then afoot, and went on to say that whether
they could be dealt with by ordinary law, or would require exceptional
powers, were questions that would receive the new chief secretary’s
immediate attention,(176) Parliament was told that the minister had
actually gone to Ireland to make anxious inquiry into these questions. Mr.
Smith arrived in Dublin at six o’clock on the morning of January 24, and
he quitted it at six o’clock on the evening of the 26th. He was sworn in
at the Castle in the forenoon of that day.(177) His views must have
reached the cabinet in London not later than the morning of the 26th. Not
often can conclusions on such a subject have been ripened with such
electrifying precocity.

“I intend to reserve my own freedom of action,” Mr. Gladstone said; “there
are many who have taken their seats for the first time upon these benches,
and I may avail myself of the privilege of old age to offer a
recommendation. I would tell them of my own intention to keep my counsel
and reserve my own freedom, until I see the moment and the occasion when
there may be a prospect of public benefit in endeavouring to make a
movement forward, and I will venture to recommend them, as an old
parliamentary hand, to do the same.”(178) Something in this turn of phrase
kindled lively irritation, and it drew bitter reproaches from more than
one of the younger whigs. The angriest of these remonstrances was listened
to from beginning to end without a solitary cheer from the liberal
benches. The great bulk of the party took their leader’s advice. Of course
the reserve of his speech was as significant of Irish concession, as the
most open declaration would have been. Yet there was no rebellion. This
was felt by ministers to be a decisive omen of the general support likely
to be given to Mr. Gladstone’s supposed policy by his own party. Mr.
Parnell offered some complimentary remarks on the language of Mr.
Gladstone, but he made no move in the direction of an amendment. The
public outside looked on with stupefaction. For two or three days all
seemed to be in suspense. But the two ministerial leaders in the Commons
knew how to read the signs. What Sir Michael (M105) Hicks Beach and Lord
Randolph foresaw, for one thing was an understanding between Mr. Gladstone
and the Irishmen, and for another, they foresaw the acquiescence of the
mass of the liberals. This twofold discovery cleared the ground for a
decision. After the second night’s debate ministers saw that the only
chance now was to propose coercion. Then it was that the ephemeral chief
secretary had started on his voyage for the discovery of something that
had already been found.



V


On the afternoon of the 26th, the leader of the House gave notice that two
days later the new Irish secretary would ask leave to introduce a bill
dealing with the National League, with intimidation, and with the
protection of life, property, and public order. This would be followed by
a bill dealing with land, pursuing in a more extensive sense the policy of
the Ashbourne Act of the year before. The great issue was thus at last
brought suddenly and nakedly into view. When the Irish secretary reached
Euston Square on the morning of the 27th, he found that his government was
out.

The crucial announcement of the 26th of January compelled a prompt
determination, and Mr. Gladstone did not shrink. A protest against a
return to coercion as the answer of the British parliament to the
extraordinary demonstration from Ireland, carried with it the
responsibility of office, and this responsibility Mr. Gladstone had
resolved to undertake.


    The determining event of these transactions,—he says in the
    fragment already cited,—was the declaration of the government that
    they would propose coercion for Ireland. This declaration put an
    end to all the hopes and expectations associated with the mission
    of Lord Carnarvon. Not perhaps in mere logic, but practically, it
    was now plain that Ireland had no hope from the tories. This being
    so, my rule of action was changed at once, and I determined on
    taking any and every legitimate opportunity to remove the existing
    government from office. Immediately on making up my mind about the
    rejection of the government, I went to call upon Sir William
    Harcourt and informed him as to my intentions and the grounds of
    them. He said, “What! Are you prepared to go forward without
    either Hartington or Chamberlain?” I answered, “Yes.” I believe it
    was in my mind to say, if I did not actually say it, that I was
    prepared to go forward without anybody. That is to say without any
    known and positive assurance of support. This was one of the great
    imperial occasions which call for such resolutions.


An amendment stood upon the notice-paper in the name of Mr. Collings,
regretting the omission from the speech of measures for benefiting the
rural labourer; and on this motion an immediate engagement was fought.
Time was important. An exasperating debate on coercion with obstruction,
disorder, suspensions, would have been a damning prologue to any policy of
accommodation. The true significance of the motion was not concealed. On
the agrarian aspect of it, the only important feature was the adhesion of
Mr. Gladstone, now first formally declared, to the policy of Mr.
Chamberlain. The author of the agrarian policy fought out once more on the
floor of the House against Lord Hartington and Mr. Goschen the battle of
the platform. It was left for Sir Michael Hicks Beach to remind the House
that, whatever the honest mover might mean, the rural labourer had very
little to do with the matter, and he implored the gentlemen in front of
him to think twice and thrice before they committed the future of this
country to the gravest dangers that ever awaited it.

The debate was not prolonged. The discussion opened shortly before dinner,
and by one o’clock the division was taken. The government found itself in
a minority of 79. The majority numbered 331, composed of 257 liberals and
74 Irish nationalists. The ministerialist minority was 252, made up of 234
tories and 18 liberals. Besides the fact that Lord Hartington, Mr.
Goschen, and Sir Henry James voted with ministers, there was a still more
ominous circumstance. No fewer than 76 liberals were absent, including
among them the imposing personality of Mr. Bright. In a memorandum written
for submission to the Queen a few days later, Mr. Gladstone said, “I must
express my personal conviction that had the late ministers remained in
office and proceeded with their proposed plan of repression, and even had
that plan received my support, it would have ended in a disastrous
parliamentary failure.”(179)

The next day (Jan. 28) ministers of course determined to resign. A liberal
member of parliament was overtaken by Lord Randolph on the parade ground,
walking away from the cabinet. “You look a little pensive,” said the
liberal. “Yes; I was thinking. I have plenty to think of. Well, we are
out, and you are in.” “I suppose so,” the liberal replied, “we are in for
six months; we dissolve; you are in for six years.” “Not at all sure,”
said Lord Randolph; “let me tell you one thing most solemnly and most
surely: the conservative party are not going to be made the instrument of
the Irish for turning out Mr. Gladstone, if he refuses repeal.” “Nobody,”
observed the sententious liberal, “should so often as the politician say
the prayer not to be led into temptation. Remember your doings last
summer.”




Chapter  V. The New Policy. (1886)


    In reason all government without the consent of the governed is
    the very definition of slavery; but in fact eleven men well armed
    will certainly subdue one single man in his shirt.... Those who
    have used to cramp liberty have gone so far as to resent even the
    liberty of complaining; although a man upon the rack was never
    known to be refused the liberty of roaring as loud as he thought
    fit.—JONATHAN SWIFT.



I


The tory government was defeated in the sitting of Tuesday (Jan. 26). On
Friday, “at a quarter after midnight, in came Sir H. Ponsonby, with verbal
commission from her Majesty, which I at once accepted.”(180) The whole of
Saturday was spent in consultations with colleagues. On Sunday, Mr.
Gladstone records, “except church, my day from one to eight was given to
business. I got only fragmentary reading of the life of the admirable Mr.
Suckling and other books. At night came a painful and harassing succession
of letters, and my sleep for once gave way; yet for the soul it was
profitable, driving me to the hope that the strength of God might be made
manifest in my weakness.” On Monday, Feb. 1, he went to attend the Queen.
“Off at 9.10 to Osborne. Two audiences: an hour and half in all.
Everything good in the main points. Large discourse upon Ireland in
particular. Returned at 7-¾. I kissed hands and am thereby prime minister
for the third time. But, as I trust, for a brief time only. Slept well,
_D.G._”

The first question was, how many of his colleagues in the liberal cabinet
that went out of office six months before, would now embark with him in
the voyage into stormy and unexplored seas. I should suppose that no such
difficulties (M106) had ever confronted the attempt at making a cabinet
since Canning’s in 1827.

Mr. Gladstone begins the fragment from which I have already quoted with a
sentence or two of retrospect, and then proceeds:—


    In 1885 (I think) Chamberlain had proposed a plan accepted by
    Parnell (and supported by me) which, without establishing in
    Ireland a national parliament, made very considerable advances
    towards self-government. It was rejected by a small majority of
    the cabinet—Granville said at the time he would rather take home
    rule. Spencer thought it would introduce confusion into executive
    duties.

    On the present occasion a full half of the former ministers
    declined to march with me. Spencer and Granville were my main
    supports. Chamberlain and Trevelyan went with me, their basis
    being that we were to seek for some method of dealing with the
    Irish case other than coercion. What Chamberlain’s motive was I do
    not clearly understand. It was stated that he coveted the Irish
    secretaryship.... To have given him the office would at that time
    have been held to be a declaration of war against the Irish party.

    Selborne nibbled at the offer, but I felt that it would not work,
    and did not use great efforts to bring him in.(181)

    When I had accepted the commission, Ponsonby brought me a message
    from the Queen that she hoped there would not be any Separation in
    the cabinet. The word had not at that time acquired the offensive
    meaning in which it has since been stereotyped by the so-called
    unionists; and it was easy to frame a reply in general but strong
    words. I am bound to say that at Osborne in the course of a long
    conversation, the Queen was frank and free, and showed none of the
    “armed neutrality,” which as far as I know has been the best
    definition of her attitude in the more recent years towards a
    liberal minister. Upon the whole, when I look back upon 1886, and
    consider the inveterate sentiment of hostility flavoured with
    contempt towards Ireland, which has from time immemorial formed
    the basis of English, tradition, I am much more disposed to be
    thankful for what we then and afterwards accomplished, than to
    murmur or to wonder at what we did not.


What Mr. Gladstone called the basis of his new government was set out in a
short memorandum, which he read to each of those whom he hoped to include
in his cabinet: “I propose to examine whether it is or is not practicable
to comply with the desire widely prevalent in Ireland, and testified by
the return of eighty-five out of one hundred and three representatives,
for the establishment by statute of a legislative body to sit in Dublin,
and to deal with Irish as distinguished from imperial affairs; in such a
manner as would be just to each of the three kingdoms, equitable with
reference to every class of the people of Ireland, conducive to the social
order and harmony of that country, and calculated to support and
consolidate the unity of the empire on the continued basis of imperial
authority and mutual attachment.”

No definite plan was propounded or foreshadowed, but only the proposition
that it was a duty to seek a plan. The cynical version was that a cabinet
was got together on the chance of being able to agree. To Lord Hartington,
Mr. Gladstone applied as soon as he received the Queen’s commission. The
invitation was declined on reasoned grounds (January 30). Examination and
inquiry, said Lord Hartington, must mean a proposal. If no proposal
followed inquiry, the reaction of Irish disappointment would be severe, as
it would be natural. His adherence, moreover, would be of little value. He
had already, he observed, in the government of 1880 made concessions on
other subjects that might be thought to have shaken public confidence in
him; he could go no further without destroying that confidence altogether.
However that might be, he could not depart from the traditions of British
statesmen, and he was opposed to a separate Irish legislature. At the same
time he concluded, in a sentence afterwards pressed by Mr. Gladstone on
the notice of the Queen: “I am fully convinced that the alternative policy
of governing Ireland without large concessions to the national sentiment,
presents difficulties of a tremendous character, which in my opinion could
now only be faced by the support of a nation united by the consciousness
that the fullest opportunity had been given for the production and
consideration of a conciliatory policy.”

A few days later (February 5) Lord Hartington wrote: “I have been told
that I have been represented as having been in general agreement with you
on your Irish policy, and having been prevented joining your government
solely by the declarations which I made to my constituents; and as not
intending to oppose the government even on home rule. On looking over my
letter I think that the general intention is sufficiently clear, but there
is part of one sentence which, taken by itself, might be understood as
committing me beyond what I intended or wished. The words I refer to are
those in which I say that it may be possible for me as a private member to
prevent obstacles being placed in the way of a fair trial being given to
the policy of the new government. But I think that the commencement of the
sentence in which these words occur sufficiently reserves my liberty, and
that the whole letter shows that what I desire is that the somewhat
undefined declarations which have hitherto been made should now assume a
practical shape.”(182)

The decision was persistently regarded by Mr. Gladstone as an important
event in English political history. With a small number of distinguished
individual exceptions, it marked the withdrawal from the liberal party of
the aristocratic element. Up to a very recent date this had been its
governing element. Until 1868, the whig nobles and their connections held
the reins and shaped the policy. After the accession of a leader from
outside of the caste in 1868, when Mr. Gladstone for the first time became
prime minister, they continued to hold more than their share of the
offices, but in cabinet they sank to the position of what is called a
moderating force. After 1880 it became every day more clear that even this
modest function was slipping away. Lord Hartington found that the
moderating force could no longer moderate. If he went on, he must make up
his mind to go under the Caudine forks once a week. The significant
reference, among his reasons for not joining the new ministry, to the
concessions that he had made in the last government for the sake of party
unity, and to his feeling that any further moves of the same kind for the
same purpose would destroy all public confidence in him, shows just as the
circumstances of the election had shown, and as the recent debate on the
Collings amendment had shown, how small were the chances, quite apart from
Irish policy, of uniting whig and radical wings in any durable liberal
government.

Mr. Goschen, who had been a valuable member of the great ministry of 1868,
was invited to call, but without hopes that he would rally to a cause so
startling; the interview, while courteous and pleasant, was over in a very
few minutes. Lord Derby, a man of still more cautious type, and a rather
recent addition to the officers of the liberal staff, declined, not
without good nature. Lord Northbrook had no faith in a new Irish policy,
and his confidence in his late leader had been shaken by Egypt. Most
lamented of all the abstentions was the honoured and trusted name of Mr.
Bright.

Mr. Trevelyan agreed to join, in the entirely defensible hope that they
“would knock the measure about in the cabinet, as cabinets do,” and mould
it into accord with what had until now been the opinion of most of its
members.(183) Mr. Chamberlain, who was destined to play so singular and
versatile a part in the eventful years to come, entered the cabinet with
reluctance and misgiving. The Admiralty was first proposed to him and was
declined, partly on the ground that the chief of the fighting and spending
departments was not the post for one who had just given to domestic
reforms the paramount place in his stirring addresses to (M107) the
country. Mr. Chamberlain, we may be sure, was not much concerned about the
particular office. Whatever its place in the hierarchy, he knew that he
could trust himself to make it as important as he pleased, and that his
weight in the cabinet and the House would not depend upon the accident of
a department. Nobody’s position was so difficult. He was well aware how
serious a thing it would be for his prospects, if he were to join a
confederacy of his arch enemies, the whigs, against Mr. Gladstone, the
commanding idol of his friends, the radicals. If, on the other hand, by
refusing to enter the government he should either prevent its formation or
should cause its speedy overthrow, he would be left planted with a
comparatively ineffective group of his own, and he would incur the deep
resentment of the bulk of those with whom he had hitherto been accustomed
to act.

All these were legitimate considerations in the mind of a man with the
instinct of party management. In the end he joined his former chief. He
made no concealment of his position. He warned the prime minister that he
did not believe it to be possible to reconcile conditions as to the
security of the empire and the supremacy of parliament, with the
establishment of a legislative body in Dublin. He declared his own
preference for an attempt to come to terms with the Irish members on the
basis of a more limited scheme of local government, coupled with proposals
about land and about education. At the same time, as the minister had been
good enough to leave him unlimited liberty of judgment and rejection, he
was ready to give unprejudiced examination to more extensive
proposals.(184) Such was Mr. Chamberlain’s excuse for joining. It is
hardly so intelligible as Lord Hartington’s reasons for not joining. For
the new government could only subsist by Irish support. That support
notoriously depended on the concession of more than a limited scheme of
local government. The administration would have been overthrown in a week,
and to form a cabinet on such a basis as was here proposed would be the
idlest experiment that ever was tried.

The appointment of the writer of these pages to be Irish secretary was at
once generally regarded as decisive of Mr. Gladstone’s ultimate intention,
for during the election and afterwards I had spoken strongly in favour of
a colonial type of government for Ireland. It was rightly pressed upon Mr.
Gladstone by at least one of his most experienced advisers, that such an
appointment to this particular office would be construed as a declaration
in favour of an Irish parliament, without any further examination at
all.(185) And so, in fact, it was generally construed.

Nobody was more active in aiding the formation of the new ministry than
Sir William Harcourt, in whose powerful composition loyalty to party and
conviction of the value of party have ever been indestructible instincts.
“I must not let the week absolutely close,” Mr. Gladstone wrote to him
from Mentmore (February 6), “without emphatically thanking you for the
indefatigable and effective help which you have rendered to me during its
course, in the difficult work now nearly accomplished.”

At the close of the operation, he writes from Downing Street to his son
Henry, then in India:—


    _February 12, 1886._ You see the old date has reappeared at the
    head of my letter. The work last week was extremely hard from the
    mixture of political discussions on the Irish question, by way of
    preliminary condition, with the ordinary distribution of offices,
    which while it lasts is of itself difficult enough.

    Upon the whole I am well satisfied with its composition. It is not
    a bit more radical than the government of last year; perhaps a
    little less. And we have got some good young hands, which please
    me very much. Yet short as the Salisbury government has been, it
    would not at all surprise me if this were to be shorter still,
    such are the difficulties that bristle round the Irish question.
    But the great thing is to be right; and as far as matters have yet
    advanced, I see no reason to be apprehensive in this capital
    respect. I have framed a plan for the land and for the finance of
    what must be a very large transaction. It is necessary to see our
    way a little on these at the outset, for, unless these portions of
    anything we attempt are sound and well constructed, we cannot hope
    to succeed. On the other hand, if we fail, as I believe the late
    ministers would have failed even to pass their plan of repressive
    legislation, the consequences will be deplorable in every way.
    There seems to be no doubt that some, and notably Lord R.
    Churchill, fully reckoned on my failing to form a government.(186)



II


The work pressed, and time was terribly short. The new ministers had
barely gone through their re-elections before the opposition began to
harry them for their policy, and went so far, before the government was
five weeks old, as to make the extreme motion for refusing supply. Even if
the opposition had been in more modest humour, no considerable delay could
be defended. Social order in Ireland was in a profoundly unsatisfactory
phase. That fact was the starting-point of the reversal of policy which
the government had come into existence to carry out. You cannot announce a
grand revolution, and then beg the world to wait. The very reason that
justified the policy commanded expedition. Anxiety and excitement were too
intense out of doors for anything but a speedy date, and it was quite
certain that if the new plan were not at once propounded, no other public
business would have much chance.

The new administration did not meet parliament until after the middle of
February, and the two Irish bills, in which their policy was contained,
were ready by the end of the first week of April. Considering the enormous
breadth and intricacy of the subjects, the pressure of parliamentary
business all the time, the exigencies of administrative work in the case
of at least one of the ministers principally concerned, and the
distracting atmosphere of party perturbation and disquiet that daily and
hourly harassed the work, the despatch of such a task within such limits
of time was at least not discreditable to the industry and concentration
of those who achieved it. I leave it still open to the hostile critic to
say, as Molière’s Alceste says of the sonnet composed in a quarter of an
hour, that time has nothing to do with the business.

All through March Mr. Gladstone laboured in what he called “stiff
conclaves” about finance and land, attended drawing rooms, and “observed
the variations of H.M.’s _accueils_”; had an audience of the Queen, “very
gracious, but avoided serious subjects”; was laid up with cold, and the
weather made Sir Andrew Clark strict; then rose up to fresh grapples with
finance and land and untoward colleagues, and all the “inexorable demands
of my political vocation.” His patience and self-control were as
marvellous as his tireless industry. Sorely tried by something or another
at a cabinet, he enters,—“Angry with myself for not bearing it better. I
ought to have been thankful for it all the time.” On a similar occasion, a
junior colleague showed himself less thankful than he should have been for
purposeless antagonism. “Think of it as discipline,” said Mr. (M108)
Gladstone. “But why,” said the unregenerate junior, “should we grudge the
blessings of discipline to some other people?”

Mr. Gladstone was often blamed even by Laodiceans among his supporters,
not wise but foolish after the event, because he did not proceed by way of
resolution, instead of by bill. Resolutions, it was argued, would have
smoothed the way. General propositions would have found readier access to
men’s minds. Having accepted the general proposition, people would have
found it harder to resist the particular application. Devices that
startled in the precision of a clause, would in the vagueness of a broad
and abstract principle have soothed and persuaded. Mr. Gladstone was
perfectly alive to all this, but his answer to it was plain. Those who
eventually threw out the bill would insist on unmasking the resolution.
They would have exhausted all the stereotyped vituperation of abstract
motions. They would have ridiculed any general proposition as mere
platitude, and pertinaciously clamoured for working details. What would
the resolution have affirmed? The expediency of setting up a legislative
authority in Ireland to deal with exclusively Irish affairs. But such a
resolution would be consistent equally with a narrow scheme on the one
hand, such as a plan for national councils, and a broad scheme on the
other, giving to Ireland a separate exchequer, separate control over
customs and excise, and practically an independent and co-ordinate
legislature.(187) How could the government meet the challenge to say
outright whether they intended broad or narrow? Such a resolution could
hardly have outlived an evening’s debate, and would not have postponed the
evil day of schism for a single week.

Precedents lent no support. It is true that the way was prepared for the
Act of Union in the parliament of Great Britain, by the string of
resolutions moved by Mr. Pitt in the beginning of 1799. But anybody who
glances at them, will at once perceive that if resolutions on their model
had been framed for the occasion of 1886, they would have covered the
whole ground of the actual bill, and would instantly have raised all the
formidable objections and difficulties exactly as the bill itself raised
them. The Bank Charter Act of 1833 was founded on eight resolutions, and
they also set forth in detail the points of the ministerial plan.(188) The
renewal of the East India Company’s charter in the same year went on by
way of resolutions, less abundant in particulars than the Bank Act, but
preceded by correspondence and papers which had been exhaustively
canvassed and discussed.(189) The question of Irish autonomy was in no
position of that sort.

The most apt precedent in some respects is to be found on a glorious
occasion, also in the year 1833. Mr. Stanley introduced the proposals of
his government for the emancipation of the West Indian slaves in five
resolutions. They furnished a key not only to policy and general
principles, but also to the plan by which these were to be carried
out.(190) Lord Howick followed the minister at once, raising directly the
whole question of the plan. Who could doubt that Lord Hartington would now
take precisely the same course towards Irish resolutions of similar scope?
The procedure on the India bill of 1858 was just as little to the point.
The general disposition of the House was wholly friendly to a settlement
of the question of Indian government by the existing ministry. No single
section of the opposition wished to take it out of their hands, for
neither Lord Russell nor the Peelites nor the Manchester men, and probably
not even Lord Palmerston himself, were anxious for the immediate return of
the last-named minister to power. Who will pretend that in the House, of
Commons in February 1886, anything at all like the same state of facts
prevailed? As for the resolutions in the case of the Irish church, they
were moved by Mr. Gladstone in opposition, and he thought it obvious that
a policy proposed in opposition stands on a totally different footing from
a policy laid before parliament on the responsibility of a government, and
a government bound by every necessity of the situation to prompt
action.(191)

(M109) At a later stage, as we shall see, it was actually proposed that a
vote for the second reading of the bill should be taken to mean no more
than a vote for its principle. Every one of the objections that instantly
sprang out of their ambush against this proposal would have worked just as
much mischief against an initial resolution. In short, in opening a policy
of this difficulty and extent, the cabinet was bound to produce to
parliament not merely its policy but its plan for carrying the policy out.
By that course only could parliament know what it was doing. Any other
course must have ended in a mystifying, irritating, and barren confusion,
alike in the House of Commons and in the country.(192)

The same consideration that made procedure by resolution unadvisable told
with equal force within the cabinet. Examination into the feasibility of
some sort of plan was most rapidly brought to a head by the test of a
particular plan. It is a mere fable of faction that a cast iron policy was
arbitrarily imposed upon the cabinet; as matter of fact, the plan
originally propounded did undergo large and radical modifications.

The policy as a whole shaped itself in two measures. First, a scheme for
creating a legislative body, and defining its powers; second, a scheme for
opening the way to a settlement of the land question, in discharge of an
obligation of honour and policy, imposed upon this country by its active
share in all the mischiefs that the Irish land system had produced. The
introduction of a plan for dealing with the land was not very popular even
among ministers, but it was pressed by Lord Spencer and the Irish
secretary, on the double ground that the land was too burning a question
to be left where it then stood, and next that it was unfair to a new and
untried legislature in Ireland to find itself confronted by such a
question on the very threshold.

The plan was opened by Mr. Gladstone in cabinet on March 13th, and Mr.
Chamberlain and Mr. Trevelyan at once wished to resign. He remonstrated in
a vigorous correspondence. “I have seen many and many a resignation,” he
said, “but never one based upon the intentions, nay the immature
intentions, of the prime minister, and on a pure intuition of what may
happen. Bricks and rafters are prepared for a house, but are not
themselves a house.” The evil hour was postponed, but not for long. The
Cabinet met again a few days later (March 26) and things came to a sharp
issue. The question was raised in a sufficiently definite form by the
proposition from the prime minister for the establishment of a statutory
body sitting in Dublin with legislative powers. No difficulty was made
about the bare proposition itself. Every one seemed to go as far as that.
It needed to be tested, and tests were at once forthcoming. Mr. Trevelyan
could not assent to the control of the immediate machinery of law and
order being withdrawn from direct British authority, among other reasons
because it was this proposal that created the necessity for buying out the
Irish landlords, which he regarded as raising a problem absolutely
insoluble.(193) Mr. Chamberlain raised four points. He objected to the
cesser of Irish representation; he could not consent to the grant of full
rights of taxation to Ireland; he resisted the surrender of the
appointment of judges and magistrates; and he argued strongly against
proceeding by enumeration of the things that an Irish government might not
do, instead of by a specific delegation of the things that it might
do.(194) That these four objections were not in themselves incapable of
accommodation was shown by subsequent events. The second was very
speedily, and the first was ultimately allowed, while the fourth was held
by good authority to be little more than a question of drafting. Even the
third was not a point either way on which to break up a government,
destroy a policy, and split a party. But everybody who is acquainted with
either the great or the small conflicts of human history, knows how little
the mere terms of a principle or of an objection are to be trusted as a
clue either to its practical significance, or (M110) to the design with
which it is in reality advanced. The design here under all the four heads
of objection, was the dwarfing of the legislative body, the cramping and
constriction of its organs, its reduction to something which the Irish
could not have even pretended to accept, and which they would have been no
better than fools if they had ever attempted to work.

Some supposed then, and Mr. Chamberlain has said since, that when he
entered the cabinet room on this memorable occasion, he intended to be
conciliatory. Witnesses of the scene thought that the prime minister made
little attempt in that direction. Yet where two men of clear mind and firm
will mean two essentially different things under the same name, whether
autonomy or anything else, and each intends to stand by his own
interpretation, it is childish to suppose that arts of deportment will
smother or attenuate fundamental divergence, or make people who are quite
aware how vitally they differ, pretend that they entirely agree. Mr.
Gladstone knew the giant burden that he had taken up, and when he went to
the cabinet of March 26, his mind was no doubt fixed that success, so
hazardous at best, would be hopeless in face of personal antagonisms and
bitterly divided counsels. This, in his view, and in his own phrase, was
one of the “great imperial occasions” that call for imperial resolves. The
two ministers accordingly resigned.

Besides these two important secessions, some ministers out of the cabinet
resigned, but they were of the whig complexion.(195) The new prospect of
the whig schism extending into the camp of the extreme radicals created
natural alarm but hardly produced a panic. So deep were the roots of
party, so immense the authority of a veteran leader. It used to be said of
the administration of 1880, that the world would never really know Mr.
Gladstone’s strength in parliament and the country, until every one of his
colleagues had in turn abandoned him to his own resources. Certainly the
secessions of the end of March 1886 left him undaunted. Every
consideration of duty and of policy bound him to persevere. He felt,
justly enough, that a minister who had once deliberately invited his party
and the people of the three kingdoms to follow him on so arduous and bold
a march as this, had no right on any common plea to turn back until he had
exhausted every available device to “bring the army of the faithful
through.”



III


From the first the Irish leader was in free and constant communication
with the chief secretary. Proposals were once or twice made, not I think
at Mr. Parnell’s desire, for conversations to be held between Mr.
Gladstone and himself, but they were always discouraged by Mr. Gladstone,
who was never fond of direct personal contentions, or conversations when
the purpose could be as well served otherwise, and he had a horror of what
he called multiplying channels of communication. “For the moment,” he
replied, “I think we may look to Mr. M. alone, and rely on all he says for
accuracy as well as fidelity. I have been hard at work, and to-day I mean
to have a further and full talk with Mr. M., who will probably soon after
wish for some renewed conversation with Mr. Parnell.” Mr. Parnell showed
himself acute, frank, patient, closely attentive, and possessed of
striking though not rapid insight. He never slurred over difficulties, nor
tried to pretend that rough was smooth. On the other hand, he had nothing
in common with that desperate species of counsellor, who takes all the
small points, and raises objections instead of helping to contrive
expedients. He measured the ground with a slow and careful eye, and fixed
tenaciously on the thing that was essential at the moment. Of constructive
faculty he never showed a trace. He was a man of temperament, of will, of
authority, of power; not of ideas or ideals, or knowledge, or political
maxims, or even of the practical reason in any of its higher senses, as
Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson had practical reason. But he knew what he
wanted.

(M111) He was always perfectly ready at this period to acquiesce in Irish
exclusion from Westminster, on the ground that they would want all the
brains they had for their own parliament. At the same time he would have
liked a provision for sending a delegation to Westminster on occasion,
with reference to some definite Irish questions such as might be expected
to arise. As to the composition of the upper or protective order in the
Irish parliament, he was wholly unfamiliar with the various utopian plans
that have been advanced for the protection of minorities, and he declared
himself tolerably indifferent whether the object should be sought in
nomination by the crown, or through a special and narrower elective body,
or by any other scheme. To such things he had given no thought. He was a
party chief, not a maker of constitutions. He liked the idea of both
orders sitting in one House. He made one significant suggestion: he wished
the bill to impose the same disqualification upon the clergy as exists in
our own parliament. But he would have liked to see certain ecclesiastical
dignitaries included by virtue of their office in the upper or protective
branch. All questions of this kind, however, interested him much less than
finance. Into financial issues he threw himself with extraordinary energy,
and he fought for better terms with a keenness and tenacity that almost
baffled the mighty expert with whom he was matched. They only met once
during the weeks of the preparation of the bill, though the indirect
communication was constant. Here is my scanty note of the meeting:—


    _April 5._—Mr. Parnell came to my room at the House at 8.30, and
    we talked for two hours. At 10.30 I went to Mr. Gladstone next
    door, and told him how things stood. He asked me to open the
    points of discussion, and into my room we went. He shook hands
    cordially with Mr. Parnell, and sat down between him and me. We at
    once got to work. P. extraordinarily close, tenacious, and sharp.
    It was all finance. At midnight, Mr. Gladstone rose in his chair
    and said, “I fear I must go; I cannot sit as late as I used to
    do.” “Very clever, very clever,” he muttered to me as I held open
    the door of his room for him. I returned to Parnell, who went on
    repeating his points in his impenetrable way, until the policeman
    mercifully came to say the House was up.


Mr. Gladstone’s own note must also be transcribed:—


    _April 5._—Wrote to Lord Spencer. The Queen and ministers. Four
    hours on the matter for my speech. 1-½ hours with Welby and
    Hamilton on the figures. Saw Lord Spencer, Mr. Morley, Mr. A. M.
    H. of C., 5-8. Dined at Sir Thomas May’s.

    1-½ hours with Morley and Parnell on the root of the matter;
    rather too late for me, 10-½-12. A hard day. (_Diary._)


On more than one financial point the conflict went perilously near to
breaking down the whole operation. “If we do not get a right budget,” said
Mr. Parnell, “all will go wrong from the very first hour.” To the last he
held out that the just proportion of Irish contribution to the imperial
fund was not one-fourteenth or one-fifteenth, but a twentieth or
twenty-first part. He insisted all the more strongly on his own more
liberal fraction, as a partial compensation for their surrender of fiscal
liberty and the right to impose customs duties. Even an hour or two before
the bill was actually to be unfolded to the House, he hurried to the Irish
office in what was for him rather an excited state, to make one more
appeal to me for his fraction. It is not at all improbable that if the
bill had gone forward into committee, it would have been at the eleventh
hour rejected by the Irish on this department of it, and then all would
have been at an end. Mr. Parnell never concealed this danger ahead.

In the cabinet things went forward with such ups and downs as are usual
when a difficult bill is on the anvil. In a project of this magnitude, it
was inevitable that some minister should occasionally let fall the
consecrated formula that if this or that were done or not done, he must
reconsider his position. Financial arrangements, and the protection of the
minority, were two of the knottiest points,—the first from the contention
raised on the Irish side, the second from misgiving in some minds as to
the possibility of satisfying protestant sentiment in England and
Scotland. Some kept the colonial type more strongly in view than others,
and the bill no doubt ultimately bore that cast.

(M112) The draft project of surrendering complete taxing-power to the
Irish legislative body was eventually abandoned. It was soon felt that the
bare possibility of Ireland putting duties on British goods—and it was not
more than a bare possibility in view of Britain’s position as practically
Ireland’s only market—would have destroyed the bill in every manufacturing
and commercial centre in the land. Mr. Parnell agreed to give up the
control of customs, and also to give up direct and continuous
representation at Westminster. On this cardinal point of the cesser of
Irish representation, Mr. Gladstone to the last professed to keep an open
mind, though to most of the cabinet, including especially three of its
oldest hands and coolest heads, exclusion was at this time almost vital.
Exclusion was favoured not only on its merits. Mr. Bright was known to
regard it as large compensation for what otherwise he viewed as pure
mischief, and it was expected to win support in other quarters generally
hostile. So in truth it did, but at the cost of support in quarters that
were friendly. On April 30, Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Granville, “I
scarcely see how a cabinet could have been formed, if the inclusion of the
Irish members had been insisted on; and now I do not see how the scheme
and policy can be saved from shipwreck, if the exclusion is insisted on.”

The plan was bound to be extensive, as its objects were extensive, and it
took for granted in the case of Ireland the fundamental probabilities of
civil society. He who looks with “indolent and kingly gaze” upon all
projects of written constitutions need not turn to the Appendix unless he
will. Two features of the plan were cardinal.

The foundation of the scheme was the establishment in Ireland of a
domestic legislature to deal with Irish as distinguished from imperial
affairs. It followed from this that if Irish members and representative
peers remained at Westminster at all, though they might claim a share in
the settlement of imperial affairs, they could not rightly control English
or Scotch affairs. This was from the first, and has ever since remained,
the Gordian knot. The cabinet on a review of all the courses open
determined to propose the plan of total exclusion, save and unless for the
purpose of revising this organic statute.

The next question was neither so hard nor so vital. Ought the powers of
the Irish legislature to be specifically enumerated? Or was it better to
enumerate the branches of legislation from which the statutory parliament
was to be shut out? Should we enact the things that they might do, or the
things that they might not do, leaving them the whole residue of
law-making power outside of these exceptions and exclusions? The latter
was the plan adopted in the bill. Disabilities were specified, and
everything not so specified was left within the scope of the Irish
authority. These disabilities comprehended all matters affecting the
crown. All questions of defence and armed force were shut out; all foreign
and colonial relations; the law of trade and navigation, of coinage and
legal tender. The new legislature could not meddle with certain charters,
nor with certain contracts, nor could it establish or endow any particular
religion.(196)



IV


Among his five spurious types of courage, Aristotle names for one the man
who seems to be brave, only because he does not see his danger. This, at
least, was not Mr. Gladstone’s case. No one knew better than the leader in
the enterprise, how formidable were the difficulties that lay in his path.
The giant mass of secular English prejudice against Ireland frowned like a
mountain chain across the track. A strong and proud nation had trained
itself for long courses of time in habits of dislike for the history, the
political claims, the religion, the temperament, of a weaker nation. The
violence of the Irish members in the last parliament, sporadic barbarities
in some of the wilder portions of the island, the hideous murders in the
Park, had all deepened and vivified the scowling impressions nursed by
large bodies of Englishmen for many ages past about unfortunate Ireland.
Then the practical operation of shaping an Irish constitution, whether on
colonial, federal, or any (M113) other lines, was in itself a task that,
even if all external circumstance had been as smiling as it was in fact
the opposite, still abounded in every kind of knotty, intricate, and
intractable matter.

It is true that elements could be discovered on the other side. First, was
Mr. Gladstone’s own high place in the confidence of great masses of his
countrymen, the result of a lifetime of conspicuous service and
achievement. Next, the lacerating struggle with Ireland ever since 1880,
and the confusion into which it had brought our affairs, had bred
something like despair in many minds, and they were ready to look in
almost any direction for relief from an intolerable burden. Third, the
controversy had not gone very far before opponents were astounded to find
that the new policy, which they angrily scouted as half insanity and half
treason, gave comparatively little shock to the new democracy. This was at
first imputed to mere ignorance and raw habits of political judgment.
Wider reflection might have warned them that the plain people of this
island, though quickly roused against even the shadow of concession when
the power or the greatness of their country is openly assailed, seem at
the same time ready to turn to moral claims of fair play, of conciliation,
of pacific truce. With all these magnanimous sentiments the Irish case was
only too easily made to associate itself. The results of the Irish
elections and the force of the constitutional demand sank deep in the
popular mind. The grim spectre of Coercion as the other alternative wore
its most repulsive look in the eyes of men, themselves but newly admitted
to full citizenship. Rash experiment in politics has been defined as
raising grave issues without grave cause. Nobody of any party denied in
this crisis the gravity of the cause.




Chapter VI. Introduction Of The Bill. (1886)


    Much have I seen and known; cities of men
    And manners, climates, councils, governments,
    Myself not least, but honour’d of them all....
    There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
    There gloom the dark broad seas.
                    —TENNYSON, _Ulysses_.



I


It was not within the compass either of human effort or human endurance
even for the most practised and skilful of orators to unfold the whole
plan, both government and land, in a single speech. Nor was public
interest at all equally divided. Irish land had devoured an immense amount
of parliamentary time in late years; it is one of the most technical and
repulsive of all political subjects; and to many of the warmest friends of
Irish self-government, any special consideration for the owners of Irish
land was bitterly unpalatable. Expectation was centred upon the plan for
general government. This was introduced on April 8. Here is the entry in
the little diary:—


    The message came to me this morning: “Hold thou up my goings in
    thy path, that my footsteps slip not.” Settled finally my figures
    with Welby and Hamilton; other points with Spencer and Morley.
    Reflected much. Took a short drive. H. of C., 4-½-8-¼.
    Extraordinary scenes outside the House and in. My speech, which I
    have sometimes thought could never end, lasted nearly 3-½ hours.
    Voice and strength and freedom were granted to me in a degree
    beyond what I could have hoped. But many a prayer had gone up for
    me, and not I believe in vain.


No such scene had ever been beheld in the House of Commons. Members came
down at break of day to secure their places; before noon every seat was
marked, and (M114) crowded benches were even arrayed on the floor of the
House from the mace to the bar. Princes, ambassadors, great peers, high
prelates, thronged the lobbies. The fame of the orator, the boldness of
his exploit, curiosity as to the plan, poignant anxiety as to the party
result, wonder whether a wizard had at last actually arisen with a spell
for casting out the baleful spirits that had for so many ages made Ireland
our torment and our dishonour, all these things brought together such an
assemblage as no minister before had ever addressed within those
world-renowned walls. The parliament was new. Many of its members had
fought a hard battle for their seats, and trusted they were safe in the
haven for half a dozen good years to come. Those who were moved by
professional ambition, those whose object was social advancement, those
who thought only of upright public service, the keen party men, the men
who aspired to office, the men with a past and the men who looked for a
future, all alike found themselves adrift on dark and troubled waters. The
secrets of the bill had been well kept. To-day the disquieted host were
first to learn what was the great project to which they would have to say
that Aye or No on which for them and for the state so much would hang.

Of the chief comrades or rivals of the minister’s own generation, the
strong administrators, the eager and accomplished debaters, the sagacious
leaders, the only survivor now comparable to him in eloquence or in
influence was Mr. Bright. That illustrious man seldom came into the House
in those distracted days; and on this memorable occasion his stern and
noble head was to be seen in dim obscurity. Various as were the emotions
in other regions of the House, in one quarter rejoicing was unmixed.
There, at least, was no doubt and no misgiving. There pallid and tranquil
sat the Irish leader, whose hard insight, whose patience, energy, and
spirit of command, had achieved this astounding result, and done that
which he had vowed to his countrymen that he would assuredly be able to
do. On the benches round him, genial excitement rose almost to tumult.
Well it might. For the first time since the union, the Irish case was at
last to be pressed in all its force and strength, in every aspect of
policy and of conscience, by the most powerful Englishman then alive.

More striking than the audience was the man; more striking than the
multitude of eager onlookers from the shore was the rescuer with
deliberate valour facing the floods ready to wash him down; the veteran
Ulysses, who after more than half a century of combat, service, toil,
thought it not too late to try a further “work of noble note.” In the
hands of such a master of the instrument, the theme might easily have lent
itself to one of those displays of exalted passion which the House had
marvelled at in more than one of Mr. Gladstone’s speeches on the Turkish
question, or heard with religious reverence in his speech on the
Affirmation bill in 1883. What the occasion now required was that passion
should burn low, and reasoned persuasion hold up the guiding lamp. An
elaborate scheme was to be unfolded, an unfamiliar policy to be explained
and vindicated. Of that best kind of eloquence which dispenses with
declamation, this was a fine and sustained example. There was a deep,
rapid, steady, onflowing volume of argument, exposition, exhortation.
Every hard or bitter stroke was avoided. Now and again a fervid note
thrilled the ear and lifted all hearts. But political oratory is action,
not words,—action, character, will, conviction, purpose, personality. As
this eager muster of men underwent the enchantment of periods exquisite in
their balance and modulation, the compulsion of his flashing glance and
animated gesture, what stirred and commanded them was the recollection of
national service, the thought of the speaker’s mastering purpose, his
unflagging resolution and strenuous will, his strength of thew and sinew
well tried in long years of resounding war, his unquenched conviction that
the just cause can never fail. Few are the heroic moments in our
parliamentary politics, but this was one.



II


The first reading of the bill was allowed to pass without a division. To
the second, Lord Hartington moved an (M115) amendment in the ordinary form
of simple rejection.(197) His two speeches(198) present the case against
the policy and the bill in its most massive form. The direct and
unsophisticated nature of his antagonism, backed by a personal character
of uprightness and plain dealing beyond all suspicion, gave a momentum to
his attack that was beyond any effect of dialectics. It was noticed that
he had never during his thirty years of parliamentary life spoken with
anything like the same power before. The debates on the two stages
occupied sixteen nights. They were not unworthy of the gravity of the
issue, nor of the fame of the House of Commons. Only one speaker held the
magic secret of Demosthenic oratory. Several others showed themselves
masters of the higher arts of parliamentary discussion. One or two
transient spurts of fire in the encounters of orange and green, served to
reveal the intensity of the glow behind the closed doors of the furnace.
But the general temper was good. The rule against irritating language was
hardly ever broken. Swords crossed according to the strict rules of
combat. The tone was rational and argumentative. There was plenty of
strong, close, and acute reasoning; there was some learning, a
considerable acquaintance both with historic and contemporary, foreign and
domestic fact, and when fact and reasoning broke down, their place was
abundantly filled by eloquent prophecy of disaster on one side, or
blessing on the other. Neither prophecy was demonstrable; both could be
made plausible.

Discussion was adorned by copious references to the mighty shades who had
been the glory of the House in a great parliamentary age. We heard again
the Virgilian hexameters in which Pitt had described the spirit of his
policy at the union:—


              “Paribus se legibus ambæ
    Invictæ gentes æterna in fœdera mittant.”


We heard once more how Grattan said that union of the legislatures was
severance of the nations; that the ocean forbade union, the channel
forbade separation; that England in her government of Ireland had gone to
hell for her principles and to bedlam for her discretion. There was, above
all, a grand and copious anthology throughout the debate from Burke, the
greatest of Irishmen and the largest master of civil wisdom in our tongue.

The appearance of a certain measure of the common form of all debates was
inevitable. No bill is ever brought in of which its opponents do not say
that it either goes too far, or else it does not go far enough; no bill of
which its defenders do not say as to some crucial flaw pounced upon and
paraded by the enemy, that after all it is a mere question of drafting, or
can be more appropriately discussed in committee. There was the usual
evasion of the strong points of the adversary’s case, the usual
exaggeration of its weak ones. That is debating. Perorations ran in a
monotonous mould; integrity of the empire on one side, a real, happy, and
indissoluble reconciliation between English and Irish on the other.

One side dwelt much on the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam in 1795, and the
squalid corruption of the union; the other, on the hopeless distraction
left by the rebellion of 1798, and the impotent confusion of the Irish
parliament. One speaker enumerated Mr. Pitt’s arguments for the union—the
argument about the regency and about the commercial treaty, the argument
about foreign alliances and confederacies and the army, about free trade
and catholic emancipation; he showed that under all these six heads the
new bill carefully respected and guarded the grounds taken by the minister
of the union. He was bluntly answered by the exclamation that nobody cared
a straw about what Mr. Pitt said, or what Sir Ralph Abercromby said; what
we had to deal with were the facts of the case in the year 1886. You show
your mistrust of the Irish by inserting all these safeguards in the bill,
said the opposition. No, replied ministers; the safeguards are to meet no
mistrusts of ours, but those entertained or feigned by other people. You
had no mandate for home rule, said the opposition. Still less, ministers
retorted, had you a mandate for coercion. (M116) Such a scheme as this,
exclaimed the critics, with all its checks and counterchecks, its
truncated functions, its vetoes, exceptions, and reservations, is
degrading to Ireland, and every Irish patriot with a spark of spirit in
his bosom must feel it so. As if, retorted the defenders, there were no
degradation to a free people in suffering twenty years of your firm and
resolute coercion. One side argued that the interests of Ireland and Great
Britain were much too closely intertwined to permit a double legislature.
The other argued that this very interdependence was just what made an
Irish legislature safe, because it was incredible that they should act as
if they had no benefit to receive from us, and no injury to suffer from
injury inflicted upon us. Do you, asked some, blot out of your minds the
bitter, incendiary, and rebellious speech of Irish members? But do you
then, the rejoinder followed, suppose that the language that came from
men’s hearts when a boon was refused, is a clue to the sentiment in their
hearts when the boon shall have been granted? Ministers were bombarded
with reproachful quotations from their old speeches. They answered the
fire by taunts about the dropping of coercion, and the amazing manœuvres
of the autumn of 1885. The device of the two orders was denounced as
inconsistent with the democratic tendencies of the age. A very impressive
argument forsooth from you, was the reply, who are either stout defenders
of the House of Lords as it is, or else stout advocates for some of the
multifarious schemes for mixing hereditary peers with fossil officials,
all of them equally alien to the democratic tendencies whether of this age
or any other. So, with stroke and counter-stroke, was the ball kept
flying.

Much was made of foreign and colonial analogies; of the union between
Austria and Hungary, Norway and Sweden, Denmark and Iceland; how in
forcing legislative union on North America we lost the colonies; how the
union of legislatures ended in the severance of Holland from Belgium. All
this carried little conviction. Most members of parliament like to think
with pretty large blinkers on, and though it may make for narrowness, this
is consistent with much practical wisdom. Historical parallels in the
actual politics of the day are usually rather decorative than substantial.

If people disbelieve premisses, nothing can be easier than to ridicule
conclusions; and what happened now was that critics argued against this or
that contrivance in the machinery, because they insisted that no machinery
was needed at all, and that no contrivance could ever be made to work,
because the Irish mechanicians would infallibly devote all their
infatuated energy and perverse skill, not to work it, but to break it in
pieces. The Irish, in Mr. Gladstone’s ironical paraphrase of these
singular opinions, had a double dose of original sin; they belonged wholly
to the kingdoms of darkness, and therefore the rules of that probability
which wise men have made the guide of life can have no bearing in any case
of theirs. A more serious way of stating the fundamental objection with
which Mr. Gladstone had to deal was this. Popular government is at the
best difficult to work. It is supremely difficult to work in a statutory
scheme with limits, reservations, and restrictions lurking round every
corner. Finally, owing to history and circumstance, no people in all the
world is less fitted to try a supremely difficult experiment in government
than the people who live in Ireland. Your superstructure, they said, is
enormously heavy, yet you are going to raise it on foundations that are a
quaking bog of incapacity and discontent. This may have been a good answer
to the policy of the bill. But to criticise its provisions from such a
point of view was as inevitably unfruitful as it would be to set a
hardened agnostic to revise the Thirty-nine articles or the mystic theses
of the Athanasian creed.

On the first reading, Mr. Chamberlain astounded allies and opponents alike
by suddenly revealing his view, that the true solution of the question was
to be sought in some form of federation. It was upon the line of
federation, and not upon the pattern of the self-governing colonies, that
we should find a way out of the difficulty.(199) Men could hardly trust
their ears. On the second reading, he startled us once more by declaring
that he was perfectly prepared, the very (M117) next day if we pleased, to
establish between this country and Ireland the relations subsisting
between the provincial legislatures and the dominion parliament of
Canada.(200) As to the first proposal, anybody could see that federation
was a vastly more revolutionary operation than the delegation of certain
legislative powers to a local parliament. Moreover before federating an
Irish legislature, you must first create it. As to the second proposal,
anybody could see on turning for a quarter of an hour to the Dominion Act
of 1867, that in some of the particulars deemed by Mr. Chamberlain to be
specially important, a provincial legislature in the Canadian system had
more unfettered powers than the Irish legislature would have under the
bill. Finally, he urged that inquiry into the possibility of satisfying
the Irish demand should be carried on by a committee or commission
representing all sections of the House.(201) In face of projects so
strangely fashioned as this, Mr. Gladstone had a right to declare that
just as the subject held the field in the public mind—for never before had
been seen such signs of public absorption in the House and out of the
House—so the ministerial plan held the field in parliament. It had many
enemies, but it had not a single serious rival.

The debate on the second reading had hardly begun when Lord Salisbury
placed in the hands of his adversaries a weapon with which they took care
to do much execution. Ireland, he declared, is not one nation, but two
nations. There were races like the Hottentots, and even the Hindoos,
incapable of self-government. He would not place confidence in people who
had acquired the habit of using knives and slugs. His policy was that
parliament should enable the government of England to govern Ireland.
“Apply that recipe honestly, consistently, and resolutely for twenty
years, and at the end of that time you will find that Ireland will be fit
to accept any gifts in the way of local government or repeal of coercion
laws that you may wish to give her.”(202) In the same genial vein, Lord
Salisbury told his Hottentot fellow-citizens—one of the two _invictæ
gentes_ of Mr. Pitt’s famous quotation—that if some great store of
imperial treasure were going to be expended on Ireland, instead of buying
out landlords, it would be far more usefully employed in providing for the
emigration of a million Irishmen. Explanations followed this inconvenient
candour, but explanations are apt to be clumsy, and the pungency of the
indiscretion kept it long alive. A humdrum speaker, who was able to
contribute nothing better to the animation of debate, could always by
insinuating a reference to Hottentots, knives and slugs, the deportation
of a million Irishmen, and twenty years of continuous coercion, make sure
of a roar of angry protest from his opponents, followed by a lusty
counter-volley from his friends.



V


The reception of the bill by the organs of Irish opinion was easy to
foretell. The nationalists accepted it in sober and rational language,
subject to amendments on the head of finance and the constabulary clauses.
The tories said it was a bill for setting up an Irish republic. It is
another selfish English plan, said the moderates. Some Irishmen who had
played with home rule while it was a phrase, drew back when they saw it in
a bill. Others, while holding to home rule, objected to being reduced to
the status of colonists. The body of home rulers who were protestant was
small, and even against them it was retorted that for every protestant
nationalist there were ten catholic unionists. The Fenian organs across
the Atlantic, while quarrelling with such provisions as the two orders,
“one of which would be Irish and the other English,” did justice to the
bravery of the attempt, and to the new moral forces which it would call
out. The florid violence which the Fenians abandoned was now with proper
variations adopted by Orangemen in the north. The General Assembly of the
presbyterian church in Ireland passed strong resolutions against a
parliament, in favour of a peasant proprietary, in favour of loyalty, and
of coercion. A few days later the general synod of the protestant
episcopal church followed suit, and denounced a parliament. The Orange
print in Belfast drew up a Solemn League and Covenant for Ulster, to
ignore and resist an Irish national government. Unionist prints in Dublin
declared and indignantly repelled “the selfish English design to get rid
of the Irish nuisance from Westminster, and reduce us to the position of a
tributary dependency.”(203)

The pivot of the whole policy was the acceptance of the bill by the
representatives of Ireland. On the evening when the bill was produced, Mr.
Parnell made certain complaints as to the reservation of the control of
the constabulary, as to the power of the first order to effect a deadlock,
and as to finance. He explicitly and publicly warned the government from
the first that, when the committee stage was reached, he would claim a
large decrease in the fraction named for the imperial contribution. There
was never any dissembling as to this. In private discussion, he had always
held that the fair proportion of Irish contribution to imperial charges
was not a fifteenth but a twentieth, and he said no more in the House than
he had persistently said in the Irish secretary’s room. There too he had
urged what he also declared in the House: that he had always insisted that
due representation should be given to the minority; that he should welcome
any device for preventing ill-considered legislation, but that the
provision in the bill, for the veto of the first order, would lead to
prolonged obstruction and delay. Subject to modification on these three
heads, he accepted the bill. “I am convinced,” he said in concluding,
“that if our views are fairly met in committee regarding the defects to
which I have briefly alluded,—the bill will be cheerfully accepted by the
Irish people, and by their representatives, as a solution of the
long-standing dispute between the two countries.”(204)

It transpired at a later date that just before the introduction of the
bill, when Mr. Parnell had been made acquainted with its main proposals,
he called a meeting of eight of his leading colleagues, told them what
these proposals were, and asked them whether they would take the bill or
leave it.(205) Some began to object to the absence of certain provisions,
such as the immediate control of the constabulary, and the right over
duties of customs. Mr. Parnell rose from the table, and clenched the
discussion by informing them that if they declined the bill, the
government would go. They at once agreed “to accept it _pro tanto_,
reserving for committee the right of enforcing and, if necessary,
reconsidering their position with regard to these important questions.”
This is neither more nor less than the form in which Mr. Parnell made his
declaration in parliament. There was complete consistency between the
terms of this declaration, and the terms of acceptance agreed to by his
colleagues, as disclosed in the black days of December four years later.
The charge of bad faith and hypocrisy so freely made against the Irishmen
is wholly unwarranted by a single word in these proceedings. If the whole
transaction had been known to the House of Commons, it could not have
impaired by one jot or tittle the value set by the supporters of the bill
on the assurances of the Irishmen that, in principle and subject to
modification on points named, they accepted the bill as a settlement of
the question, and would use their best endeavours to make it work.(206)




Chapter VII. The Political Atmosphere. Defeat Of The Bill. (1886)


    Everything on every side was full of traps and mines.... It was in
    the midst of this chaos of plots and counterplots ... that the
    firmness of that noble person [Lord Rockingham] was put to the
    proof. He never stirred from his ground; no, not an inch.—BURKE
    (1766).



I


The atmosphere in London became thick and hot with political passion.
Veteran observers declared that our generation had not seen anything like
it. Distinguished men of letters and, as it oddly happened, men who had
won some distinction either by denouncing the legislative union, or by
insisting on a decentralisation that should satisfy Irish national
aspirations, now choked with anger because they were taken at their word.
Just like irascible scholars of old time who settled controversies about
corrupt texts by imputing to rival grammarians shameful crimes, so these
writers could find no other explanation for an opinion that was not their
own about Irish government, except moral turpitude and personal
degradation. One professor of urbanity compared Mr. Gladstone to a
desperate pirate burning his ship, or a gambler doubling and trebling his
stake as luck goes against him. Such strange violence in calm natures,
such pharisaic pretension in a world where we are all fallen, remains a
riddle. Political differences were turned into social proscription. Whigs
who could not accept the new policy were specially furious with whigs who
could. Great ladies purified their lists of the names of old intimates.
Amiable magnates excluded from their dinner-tables and their country
houses once familiar friends who had fallen into the guilty heresy, and
even harmless portraits of the heresiarch were sternly removed from the
walls. At some of the political clubs it rained blackballs. It was a
painful demonstration how thin after all is our social veneer, even when
most highly polished.

When a royal birthday was drawing near, the prime minister wrote to Lord
Granville, his unfailing counsellor in every difficulty political and
social: “I am becoming seriously perplexed about my birthday dinner.
Hardly any peers of the higher ranks will be available, and not many of
the lower. Will the seceding colleagues come if they are asked? (Argyll,
to whom I applied privately on the score of old friendship, has already
_refused_ me.) I am for asking them; but I expect refusal. Lastly, it has
become customary for the Prince of Wales to dine with me on that day, and
he brings his eldest son now that the young Prince is of age. But his
position would be very awkward, if he comes and witnesses a great
nakedness of the land. What do you say to all this? If you cannot help me,
who can?” Most of the seceding colleagues accepted, and the dinner came
off well enough, though as the host wrote to a friend beforehand, “If
Hartington were to get up and move a vote of want of confidence after
dinner, he would almost carry it.” The Prince was unable to be present,
and so the great nakedness was by him unseen, but Prince Albert Victor,
who was there instead, is described by Mr. Gladstone as “most kind.”

The conversion of Peel to free trade forty years before had led to the
same species of explosion, though Peel had the court strongly with him.
Both then and now it was the case of a feud within the bosom of a party,
and such feuds like civil wars have ever been the fiercest. In each case
there was a sense of betrayal—at least as unreasonable in 1886 as it was
in 1846. The provinces somehow took things more rationally than the
metropolis. Those who were stunned by the fierce moans of London over the
assured decline in national honour and credit, the imminence of civil war,
and the ultimate destruction of British power, found their acquaintances
in the country excited and interested, but still clothed and in their
right minds. The gravity of the question was fully understood, but in
taking sides ordinary (M118) men did not talk as if they were in for the
battle of Armageddon. The attempt to kindle the torch of religious fear or
hate was in Great Britain happily a failure. The mass of liberal
presbyterians in Scotland, and of nonconformists in England and Wales,
stood firm, though some of their most eminent and able divines resisted
the new project, less on religious grounds than on what they took to be
the balance of political arguments. Mr. Gladstone was able to point to the
conclusive assurances he had received that the kindred peoples in the
colonies and America regarded with warm and fraternal sympathy the present
effort to settle the long-vexed and troubled relations between Great
Britain and Ireland:—


    We must not be discouraged if at home and particularly in the
    upper ranks of society, we hear a variety of discordant notes,
    notes alike discordant from our policy and from one another. You
    have before you a cabinet determined in its purpose and an
    intelligible plan. I own I see very little else in the political
    arena that is determined or that is intelligible.


Inside the House subterranean activity was at its height all through the
month of May. This was the critical period. The regular opposition spoke
little and did little; with composed interest they watched others do their
work. On the ministerial side men wavered and changed and changed again,
from day to day and almost from hour to hour. Never were the motions of
the pendulum so agitated and so irregular. So novel and complex a problem
was a terrible burden for a new parliament. About half its members had not
sat in any parliament before. The whips were new, some of the leaders on
the front benches were new, and those of them who were most in earnest
about the policy were too heavily engrossed in the business of the
measure, to have much time for the exercises of explanation, argument, and
persuasion with their adherents. One circumstance told powerfully for
ministers. The great central organisation of the liberal party came
decisively over to Mr. Gladstone (May 5), and was followed by nearly all
the local associations in the country. Neither whig secession nor radical
dubitation shook the strength inherent in such machinery, in a community
where the principle of government by party has solidly established itself.
This was almost the single consolidating and steadying element in that
hour of dispersion. A serious move in the opposite direction had taken
place three weeks earlier. A great meeting was held at the Opera House, in
the Haymarket, presided over by the accomplished whig nobleman who had the
misfortune to be Irish viceroy in the two dismal years from 1880, and it
was attended both by Lord Salisbury on one side and Lord Hartington on the
other. This was the first broad public mark of liberal secession, and of
that practical fusion between whig and tory which the new Irish policy had
actually precipitated, but to which all the signs in the political heavens
had been for three or four years unmistakably pointing.

The strength of the friends of the bill was twofold: first, it lay in the
dislike of coercion as the only visible alternative; and second, it lay in
the hope of at last touching the firm ground of a final settlement with
Ireland. Their weakness was also twofold: first, misgivings about the
exclusion of the Irish members; and second, repugnance to the scheme for
land purchase. There were not a few, indeed, who pronounced the exclusion
of Irish members to be the most sensible part of the plan. Mr. Gladstone
retained his impartiality, but knew that if we proposed to keep the
Irishmen, we should be run in upon quite as fiercely from the other side.
Mr. Parnell stood to his original position. Any regular and compulsory
attendance at Westminster, he said, would be highly objectionable to his
friends. Further, the right of Irish members to take part in purely
English as well as imperial business would be seized upon by English
politicians, whenever it should answer their purpose, as a pretext for
interfering in Irish affairs. In short, he foresaw, as all did, the
difficulties that would inevitably arise from retention. But the tide ran
more and more strongly the other way. Scotland grew rather restive at a
proposal which, as she apprehended, would make a precedent for herself
when her turn for extension of local powers should come, and Scotchmen had
no intention of being shut out (M119) from a voice in imperial affairs. In
England, the catholics professed alarm at the prospect of losing the only
catholic force in the House of Commons. “We cannot spare one of you,”
cried Cardinal Manning. Some partisans of imperial federation took it into
their heads that the plan for Ireland would be fatal to a plan for the
whole empire, though others more rationally conceived that if there was to
be a scheme for the empire, schemes for its several parts must come first.
Some sages, while pretending infinite friendship to home rule, insisted
that the parliament at Westminster should retain a direct and active veto
upon legislation at Dublin, and that Irish members should remain as they
were in London. That is to say, every precaution should be taken to ensure
a stiff fight at Westminster over every Irish measure of any importance
that had already been fought on College Green. Speaking generally, the
feeling against this provision was due less to the anomaly of taxation
without representation, than to fears for the unity of the empire and the
supremacy of parliament.

The Purchase bill proved from the first to be an almost intolerable dose.
Vivid pictures were drawn of a train of railway trucks two miles long,
loaded with millions of bright sovereigns, all travelling from the pocket
of the British son of toil to the pocket of the idle Irish landlord. The
nationalists from the first urged that the scheme for home rule should not
be weighted with a land scheme, though they were willing to accept it so
long as it was not used to prejudice the larger demand. On the other side
the Irish landlords themselves peremptorily rejected the plan that had
been devised for their protection.

The air was thick with suggestions, devices, contrivances, expedients,
possible or madly impossible. Proposals or embryonic notions of proposals
floated like motes in a sunbeam. Those to whom lobby diplomacy is as the
breath of their nostrils, were in their element. So were the worthy
persons who are always ready with ingenious schemes for catching a vote or
two here, at the cost of twenty votes elsewhere. Intrigue may be too dark
a word, but coaxing, bullying, managing, and all the other arts of party
emergency, went on at an unprecedented rate. Of these arts, the
supervising angels will hardly record that any section had a monopoly. The
legerdemain that makes words pass for things, and liquefies things into
words, achieved many flashes of success. But they were only momentary, and
the solid obstacles remained. The foundations of human character are much
the same in all historic ages, and every public crisis brings out the same
types.

Much depended on Mr. Bright, the great citizen and noble orator, who had
in the last five-and-forty years fought and helped to win more than one
battle for wise and just government; whose constancy had confronted storms
of public obloquy without yielding an inch of his ground; whose eye for
the highest questions of state had proved itself singularly sure; and
whose simplicity, love of right, and unsophisticated purity of public and
private conduct, commanded the trust and the reverence of nearly all the
better part of his countrymen. To Mr. Bright the eyes of many thousands
were turned in these weeks of anxiety and doubt. He had in public kept
silence, though in private he made little secret of his disapproval of the
new policy. Before the bill was produced he had a prolonged conversation
(March 20) with Mr. Gladstone at Downing Street. “Long and weighty” are
the words in the diary. The minister sketched his general design, Mr.
Bright stated his objections much in the form in which, as we shall see,
he stated them later. Of the exclusion of the Irish members he approved.
The Land bill he thought quite wrong, for why should so enormous an effort
be made for one interest only? He expressed his sympathy with Mr.
Gladstone in his great difficulties, could not but admire his ardour, and
came away with the expectation that the obstacles would be found
invincible, and that the minister would retire and leave others to
approach the task on other lines. Other important persons, it may be
observed, derived at this time a similar impression from Mr. Gladstone’s
language to them: that he might discern the impossibility of his policy,
that he would admit it, and would then hand the responsibility over to
Lord Hartington, or whoever else might be willing to face it.

(M120) On the other hand, Mr. Bright left the minister himself not without
hopes that as things went forward he might count on this potent auxiliary.
So late as the middle of May, though he could not support, it was not
certain that he would actively oppose. The following letter to Mr.
Gladstone best describes his attitude at this time:—


    _Mr. Bright to Mr. Gladstone._
    _Rochdale, May 13th, 1886._

    MY DEAR GLADSTONE,—Your note just received has put me in a great
    difficulty. To-day is the anniversary of the greatest sorrow of my
    life, and I feel pressed to spend it at home. I sent a message to
    Mr. Arnold Morley last evening to say that I did not intend to
    return to town before Monday next—but I shall now arrange to go
    to-morrow—although I do not see how I can be of service in the
    great trouble which has arisen.

    I feel outside all the contending sections of the liberal
    party—for I am not in favour of home rule, or the creation of a
    Dublin parliament—nor can I believe in any scheme of federation as
    shadowed forth by Mr. Chamberlain.

    I do not believe that with regard to the Irish question “the
    resources of civilisation are exhausted”; and I think the plan of
    your bill is full of complexity, and gives no hope of successful
    working in Ireland or of harmony between Westminster and Dublin. I
    may say that my regard for you and my sympathy with you have made
    me silent in the discussion on the bills before the House. I
    cannot consent to a measure which is so offensive to the whole
    protestant population of Ireland, and to the whole sentiment of
    the province of Ulster so far as its loyal and protestant people
    are concerned. I cannot agree to exclude them from the protection
    of the imperial parliament. I would do much to clear the rebel
    party from Westminster, and I do not sympathise with those who
    wish to retain them, but admit there is much force in the
    arguments on this point which are opposed to my views upon it.

    Up to this time I have not been able to bring myself to the point
    of giving a vote in favour of your bills. I am grieved to have to
    say this. As to the Land bill, if it comes to a second reading, I
    fear I must vote against it. It may be that my hostility to the
    rebel party, looking at their conduct since your government was
    formed six years ago, disables me from taking an impartial view of
    this great question. If I could believe them loyal, if they were
    honourable and truthful men, I could yield them much; but I
    suspect that your policy of surrender to them will only place more
    power in their hands, to war with greater effect against the unity
    of the three kingdoms with no increase of good to the Irish
    people.

    How then can I be of service to you or to the real interests of
    Ireland if I come up to town? I cannot venture to advise you, so
    superior to me in party tactics and in experienced statesmanship,
    and I am not so much in accord with Mr. Chamberlain as to make it
    likely that I can say anything that will affect his course. One
    thing I may remark, that it appears to me that measures of the
    gravity of those now before parliament cannot and ought not to be
    thrust through the House by force of a small majority. The various
    reform bills, the Irish church bill, the two great land bills,
    were passed by very large majorities. In the present case, not
    only the whole tory party oppose, but a very important section of
    the liberal party; and although numerous meetings of clubs and
    associations have passed resolutions of confidence in you, yet
    generally they have accepted your Irish government bill as a
    ’basis’ only, and have admitted the need of important changes in
    the bill—changes which in reality would destroy the bill. Under
    these circumstances it seems to me that more time should be given
    for the consideration of the Irish question. Parliament is not
    ready for it, and the intelligence of the country is not ready for
    it. If it be possible, I should wish that no division should be
    taken upon the bill. If the second reading should be carried only
    by a _small_ majority, it would not forward the bill; but it would
    strengthen the rebel party in their future agitation, and make it
    more difficult for another session or another parliament to deal
    with the question with some sense of independence of that party.
    In any case of a division, it is I suppose certain that a
    considerable majority of British members will oppose the bill.
    Thus, whilst it will have the support of the rebel members, it
    will be opposed by a majority from Great Britain and by a most
    hostile vote from all that is loyal in Ireland. The result will
    be, if a majority supports you it will be one composed in effect
    of the men who for six years past have insulted the Queen, have
    torn down the national flag, have declared your lord lieutenant
    guilty of deliberate murder, and have made the imperial parliament
    an assembly totally unable to manage the legislative business for
    which it annually assembles at Westminster.

    Pray forgive me for writing this long letter. I need not assure
    you of my sympathy with you, or my sorrow at being unable to
    support your present policy in the House or the country. The more
    I consider the question, the more I am forced in a direction
    contrary to my wishes.

    For thirty years I have preached justice to Ireland. I am as much
    in her favour now as in past times, but I do not think it justice
    or wisdom for Great Britain to consign her population, including
    Ulster and all her protestant families, to what there is of
    justice and wisdom in the Irish party now sitting in the
    parliament in Westminster.

    Still, if you think I can be of service, a note to the Reform Club
    will, I hope, find me there to-morrow evening.—Ever most sincerely
    yours,  JOHN BRIGHT.


An old parliamentary friend, of great weight and authority, went to Mr.
Bright to urge him to support a proposal to read the bill a second time,
and then to hang it up for six months. Bright suffered sore travail of
spirit. At the end of an hour the peacemaker rose to depart. Bright
pressed him to continue the wrestle. After three-quarters of an hour more
of it, the same performance took place. It was not until a third hour of
discussion that Mr. Bright would let it come to an end, and at the end he
was still uncertain. The next day the friend met him, looking worn and
gloomy. “You may guess,” Mr. Bright said, “what sort of a night I have
had.” He had decided to vote against the second reading. The same person
went to Lord Hartington. He took time to deliberate, and then finally
said, “No; Mr. Gladstone and I do not mean the same thing.”



II


The centre of interest lay in the course that might be finally taken by
those who declared that they accepted the principle of the bill, but
demurred upon detail. It was upon the group led from Birmingham that the
issue hung. “There are two principles in the bill,” said Mr. Chamberlain
at this time, “which I regard as vital. The first is the principle of
autonomy, to which I am able to give a hearty assent. The second is
involved in the method of giving effect to this autonomy. In the bill the
government have proceeded on the lines of separation or of colonial
independence, whereas, in my humble judgment, they should have adopted the
principle of federation as the only one in accordance with democratic
aspirations and experience.”(207) He was even so strong for autonomy, that
he was ready to face all the immense difficulties of federation, whether
on the Canadian or some other pattern, rather than lose autonomy. Yet he
was ready to slay the bill that made autonomy possible. To kill the bill
was to kill autonomy. To say that they would go to the country on the
plan, and not on the principle, was idle. If the election were to go
against the government, that would destroy not only the plan which they
disliked, but the principle of which they declared that they warmly
approved. The new government that would in that case come into existence,
would certainly have nothing to say either to plan or principle.

Two things, said Mr. Chamberlain on the ninth night of the debate, had
become clear during the controversy. One was that the British democracy
had a passionate devotion to the prime minister. The other was the display
of a sentiment out of doors, “the universality and completeness of which,
I dare say, has taken many of us by surprise, in favour of some form of
home rule to Ireland, which will give to the Irish people some greater
control over their own affairs.”(208) It did not need so acute a
strategist as Mr. Chamberlain to perceive that the only hope of rallying
any (M121) considerable portion of the left wing of the party to the
dissentient flag, in face of this strong popular sentiment embodied in a
supereminent minister, was to avoid as much as possible all irreconcilable
language against either the minister or the sentiment, even while taking
energetic steps to unhorse the one and to nullify the other.

The prime minister meanwhile fought the battle as a battle for a high
public design once begun should be fought. He took few secondary
arguments, but laboured only to hold up to men’s imagination, and to burn
into their understanding, the lines of central policy, the shame and
dishonour from which it would relieve us, the new life with which it would
inspire Ireland, the ease that it would bring to parliament in England.
His tenacity, his force and resource, were inexhaustible. He was harassed
on every side. The Irish leader pressed him hard upon finance. Old
adherents urged concession about exclusion. The radicals disliked the two
orders. Minor points for consideration in committee rained in upon him, as
being good reasons for altering the bill before it came in sight of
committee. Not a single constructive proposal made any way in the course
of the debate. All was critical and negative. Mr. Gladstone’s grasp was
unshaken, and though he saw remote bearings and interdependent
consequences where others supposed all to be plain sailing, yet if the
principle were only saved he professed infinite pliancy. He protested that
there ought to be no stereotyping of our minds against modifications, and
that the widest possible variety of modes of action should be kept open;
and he “hammered hard at his head,” as he put it, to see what could be
worked out in the way of admitting Irish members without danger, and
without intolerable inconvenience. If anybody considered, he continued to
repeat in endless forms, that there was another set of provisions by which
better and fuller effect could be given to the principle of the bill, they
were free to displace all the particulars that hindered this better and
fuller effect being given to the principle.(209)



III


At the beginning of May the unionist computation was that 119 on the
ministerial side of the House had, with or without qualification, promised
to vote against the second reading. Of these, 70 had publicly committed
themselves, and 23 more were supposed to be absolutely certain. If the
whole House voted, this estimate of 93 would give a majority of 17 against
the bill.(210) The leader of the radical wing, however, reckoned that 55
out of the 119 would vote with him for the second reading, if he
pronounced the ministerial amendments of the bill satisfactory. The
amendments demanded were the retention of the Irish members, a definite
declaration of the supremacy of the imperial parliament, a separate
assembly for Ulster, and the abolition of the restrictive devices for the
representation of minorities. Less than all this might have been taken in
committee, provided that the government would expressly say before the
second reading, that they would retain the Irish representation on its
existing footing. The repeated offer by ministers to regard this as an
open question was derided, because it was contended that if the bill were
once safe through its second reading, Mr. Bright and the whigs would
probably vote with ministers against Irish inclusion.

Even if this ultimatum had been accepted, there would still have remained
the difficulty of the Land bill, of which Mr. Chamberlain had announced
that he would move the rejection. In the face of ever-growing
embarrassments and importunities, recourse was had to the usual device of
a meeting of the party at the foreign office (May 27). The circular
calling the meeting was addressed to those liberals who, while retaining
full freedom on all particulars in the bill, were “in favour of the
establishment of a legislative body in Dublin for the management of
affairs specifically and exclusively Irish.” This was henceforth to be the
test of party membership. A man who was for an Irish legislative body was
expected to come to the party meeting, and a man who was against it was
expected to stay (M122) away. Many thought this discrimination a mistake.
Some two hundred and twenty members attended. The pith of the prime
minister’s speech, which lasted for an hour, came to this: that the
government would not consent to emasculate the principle of the bill, or
turn it into a mockery, a delusion, and a snare; that members who did not
wholly agree with the bill, might still in accordance with the strict
spirit of parliamentary rules vote for the second reading with a view to
its amendment in committee; that such a vote would not involve support of
the Land bill; that he was ready to consider any plan for the retention of
the Irish members, provided that it did not interfere with the liberty of
the Irish legislative body, and would not introduce confusion into the
imperial parliament. Finally, as to procedure—and here his anxious
audience fell almost breathless—they could either after a second reading
hang up the bill, and defer committee until the autumn; or they could wind
up the session, prorogue, and introduce the bill afresh with the proper
amendments in October. The cabinet, he told them, inclined to the later
course.

Before the meeting Mr. Parnell had done his best to impress upon ministers
the mischievous effect that would be produced on Irish members and in
Ireland, by any promise to withdraw the bill after the second reading. On
the previous evening, I received from him a letter of unusual length. “You
of course,” he said, “are the best judges of what the result may be in
England, but if it be permitted me to express an opinion, I should say
that withdrawal could scarcely fail to give great encouragement to those
whom it cannot conciliate, to depress and discourage those who are now the
strongest fighters for the measure, to produce doubt and wonder in the
country and to cool enthusiasm; and finally, when the same bill is again
produced in the autumn, to disappoint and cause reaction among those who
may have been temporarily disarmed by withdrawal, and to make them at once
more hostile and less easy to appease.” This letter I carried to Mr.
Gladstone the next morning, and read aloud to him a few minutes before he
was to cross over to the foreign office. For a single instant—the only
occasion that I can recall during all these severe weeks—his patience
broke. The recovery was as rapid as the flash, for he knew the duty of the
lieutenant of the watch to report the signs of rock or shoal. He was quite
as conscious of all that was urged in Mr. Parnell’s letter as was its
writer, but perception of risks on one side did not overcome risks on the
other. The same evening they met for a second time:—


    _May 27._—... Mr. Gladstone and Parnell had a conversation in my
    room. Parnell courteous enough, but depressed and gloomy. Mr.
    Gladstone worn and fagged.... When he was gone, Parnell repeated
    moodily that he might not be able to vote for the second reading,
    if it were understood that after the second reading the bill was
    to be withdrawn. “Very well,” said I, “that will of course destroy
    the government and the policy; but be that as it may, the cabinet,
    I am positive, won’t change their line.”


The proceedings at the foreign office brought to the supporters of
government a lively sense of relief. In the course of the evening a score
of the waverers were found to have been satisfied, and were struck off the
dissentient lists. But the relief did not last for many hours. The
opposition instantly challenged ministers (May 28) to say plainly which of
the two courses they intended to adopt. Though short, this was the most
vivacious debate of all. Was the bill to be withdrawn, or was it to be
postponed? If it was to be withdrawn, then, argued the tory leader (Sir
M.H. Beach) in angry tones, the vote on the second reading would be a
farce. If it was to be postponed, what was that but to paralyse the forces
of law and order in Ireland in the meantime? Such things were trifling
with parliament, trifling with a vital constitutional question, and
trifling with the social order which the government professed to be so
anxious to restore. A bill read a second time on such terms as these would
be neither more nor less than a Continuance-in-Office bill.

This biting sally raised the temper of the House on both sides, and Mr.
Gladstone met it with that dignity which did not often fail to quell even
the harshest of his adversaries. “You pronounce that obviously the motive
of the government is to ensure their own continuance in office. They
prefer that to all the considerations connected with the great issue
before them, and their minds in fact are of such a mean and degraded
order, that they can only be acted upon, not by motives of honour and
duty, but simply by those of selfishness and personal interest. Sir, I do
not condescend to discuss that imputation. The dart aimed at our shield,
being such a dart as that, is _telum imbelle sine ictu_.”(211)

The speaker then got on to the more hazardous part of the ground. He
proceeded to criticise the observation of the leader of the opposition
that ministers had undertaken to remodel the bill. “That happy word,” he
said, “as applied to the structure of the bill, is a pure invention.” Lord
Randolph interjected that the word used was not “remodelled,” but
“reconstructed.” “Does the noble lord dare to say,” asked the minister,
“that it was used in respect of the bill?” “Yes,” said the noble lord.
“Never, never,” cried the minister, with a vehemence that shook the hearts
of doubting followers; “it was used with respect to one particular clause,
and one particular point of the bill, namely so much of it as touches the
future relation of the representatives of Ireland to the imperial
parliament.” Before the exciting episode was over, it was stated
definitely that if the bill were read a second time, ministers would
advise a prorogation and re-introduce the bill with amendments. The effect
of this couple of hours was to convince the House that the government had
made up their minds that it was easier and safer to go to the country with
the plan as it stood, than to agree to changes that would entangle them in
new embarrassments, and discredit their confidence in their own handiwork.
Ingenious negotiators perceived that their toil had been fruitless. Every
man now knew the precise situation that he had to face, in respect alike
of the Irish bill and liberal unity.

On the day following this decisive scene (May 29), under the direction of
the radical leader an invitation to a conference was issued to those
members “who being in favour of some sort of autonomy for Ireland,
disapproved of the government bills in their present shape.” The form of
the invitation is remarkable in view of its ultimate effect on Irish
autonomy. The meeting was held on May 31, in the same committee room
upstairs that four years later became associated with the most cruel of
all phases of the Irish controversy. Mr. Chamberlain presided, and some
fifty-five gentlemen attended. Not all of them had hitherto been
understood to be in favour either of some sort, or of any sort, of
autonomy for Ireland. The question was whether they should content
themselves with abstention from the division, or should go into the lobby
against the government. If they abstained, the bill would pass, and an
extension of the party schism would be averted. The point was carried, as
all great parliamentary issues are, by considerations apart from the nice
and exact balance of argument on the merits. In anxious and distracting
moments like this, when so many arguments tell in one way and so many tell
in another, a casting vote often belongs to the moral weight of some
particular person. The chairman opened in a neutral sense. It seems to
have been mainly the moral weight of Mr. Bright that sent down the scale.
He was not present, but he sent a letter. He hoped that every man would
use his own mind, but for his part he must vote against the bill. This
letter was afterwards described as the death-warrant of the bill and of
the administration. The course of the men who had been summoned because
they were favourable to some sort of home rule was decided by the
illustrious statesman who opposed every sort of home rule. Their boat was
driven straight upon the rocks of coercion by the influence of the great
orator who had never in all his career been more eloquent than when he was
denouncing the mischief and futility of Irish coercion, and protesting
that force is no remedy.

One of the best speakers in the House, though not at that time in the
cabinet, was making an admirably warm and convinced defence alike of the
policy and the bill while these proceedings were going on. But Mr. Fowler
was listened to by men of pre-occupied minds. All knew what (M123)
momentous business was on foot in another part of the parliamentary
precincts. Many in the ranks were confident that abstention would carry
the day. Others knew that the meeting had been summoned for no such
purpose, and they made sure that the conveners would have their way. The
quiet inside the House was intense and unnatural. As at last the news of
the determination upstairs to vote against the bill ran along the benches
before the speaker sat down, men knew that the ministerial day was lost.
It was estimated by the heads of the “Chamberlain group” that if they
abstained, the bill would pass by a majority of five. Such a bill carried
by such a majority could of course not have proceeded much further. The
principle of autonomy would have been saved, and time would have been
secured for deliberation upon a new plan. More than once Mr. Gladstone
observed that no decision taken from the beginning of the crisis to the
end was either more incomprehensible or more disastrous.



IV


The division was taken a little after one o’clock on the morning of the
8th of June. The Irish leader made one of the most masterly speeches that
ever fell from him. Whether agreeing with or differing from the policy,
every unprejudiced listener felt that this was not the mere dialectic of a
party debater, dealing smartly with abstract or verbal or artificial
arguments, but the utterance of a statesman with his eye firmly fixed upon
the actual circumstances of the nation for whose government this bill
would make him responsible. As he dealt with Ulster, with finance, with
the supremacy of parliament, with the loyal minority, with the settlement
of education in an Irish legislature,—soberly, steadily, deliberately,
with that full, familiar, deep insight into the facts of a country, which
is only possible to a man who belongs to it and has passed his life in it,
the effect of Mr. Parnell’s speech was to make even able disputants on
either side look little better than amateurs.

The debate was wound up for the regular opposition by Sir Michael Hicks
Beach, who was justly regarded throughout the session as having led his
party with remarkable skill and judgment. Like the Irish leader, he seemed
to be inspired by the occasion to a performance beyond his usual range,
and he delivered the final charge with strong effect. The bill, he said,
was the concoction of the prime minister and the Irish secretary, and the
cabinet had no voice in the matter. The government had delayed the
progress of the bill for a whole long and weary month, in order to give
party wirepullers plenty of time in which to frighten waverers. To treat a
vote on the second reading as a mere vote on a principle, without
reference to the possibility of applying it, was a mischievous farce.
Could anybody dream that if he supported the second reading now, he would
not compromise his action in the autumn and would not be appealed to as
having made a virtual promise to Ireland, of which it would be impossible
to disappoint her? As for the bill itself, whatever lawyers might say of
the theoretic maintenance of supremacy, in practice it would have gone.
All this side of the case was put by the speaker with the straight and
vigorous thrust that always works with strong effect in this great arena
of contest.

Then came the unflagging veteran with the last of his five speeches. He
was almost as white as the flower in his coat, but the splendid compass,
the flexibility, the moving charm and power of his voice, were never more
wonderful. The construction of the speech was a masterpiece, the temper of
it unbroken, its freedom from taunt and bitterness and small personality
incomparable. Even if Mr. Gladstone had been in the prime of his days,
instead of a man of seventy-six years all struck; even if he had been at
his ease for the last four months, instead of labouring with indomitable
toil at the two bills, bearing all the multifarious burdens of the head of
a government, and all the weight of the business of the leader of the
House, undergoing all the hourly strain and contention of a political
situation of unprecedented difficulty,—much of the contention being of
that peculiarly trying and painful sort which means the parting of
colleagues and friends,—his closing speech would still have been a
surprising effort of free, argumentative, and fervid appeal. With the
fervid (M124) appeal was mingled more than one piece of piquant mockery.
Mr. Chamberlain had said that a dissolution had no terrors for him. “I do
not wonder at it. I do not see how a dissolution can have any terrors for
him. He has trimmed his vessel, and he has touched his rudder in such a
masterly way, that in whichever direction the winds of heaven may blow
they must fill his sails. Supposing that at an election public opinion
should be very strong in favour of the bill, my right hon. friend would
then be perfectly prepared to meet that public opinion, and tell it, ‘I
declared strongly that I adopted the principle of the bill.’ On the other
hand, if public opinion were very adverse to the bill, he again is in
complete armour, because he says, ‘Yes, I voted against the bill.’
Supposing, again, public opinion is in favour of a very large plan for
Ireland, my right hon. friend is perfectly provided for that case also.
The government plan was not large enough for him, and he proposed in his
speech on the introduction of the bill that we should have a measure on
the basis of federation, which goes beyond this bill. Lastly—and now I
have very nearly boxed the compass—supposing that public opinion should
take quite a different turn, and instead of wanting very large measures
for Ireland, should demand very small measures for Ireland, still the
resources of my right hon. friend are not exhausted, because he is then
able to point out that the last of his plans was for four provincial
circuits controlled from London.” All these alternatives and provisions
were visibly “creations of the vivid imagination, born of the hour and
perishing with the hour, totally unavailable for the solution of a great
and difficult problem.”

Now, said the orator, was one of the golden moments of our history, one of
those opportunities which may come and may go, but which rarely return, or
if they return, return at long intervals, and under circumstances which no
man can forecast. There was such a golden moment in 1795, on the mission
of Lord Fitzwilliam. At that moment the parliament of Grattan was on the
point of solving the Irish problem. The cup was at Ireland’s lips, and she
was ready to drink it, when the hand of England rudely and ruthlessly
dashed it to the ground in obedience to the wild and dangerous intimations
of an Irish faction. There had been no great day of hope for Ireland
since, no day when you might completely and definitely hope to end the
controversy till now—more than ninety years. The long periodic time had at
last run out, and the star had again mounted into the heavens.

This strain of living passion was sustained with all its fire and speed to
the very close. “Ireland stands at your bar expectant, hopeful, almost
suppliant. Her words are the words of truth and soberness. She asks a
blessed oblivion of the past, and in that oblivion our interest is deeper
even than hers. You have been asked to-night to abide by the traditions of
which we are the heirs. What traditions? By the Irish traditions? Go into
the length and breadth of the world, ransack the literature of all
countries, find if you can a single voice, a single book, in which the
conduct of England towards Ireland is anywhere treated except with
profound and bitter condemnation. Are these the traditions by which we are
exhorted to stand? No, they are a sad exception to the glory of our
country. They are a broad and black blot upon the pages of its history,
and what we want to do is to stand by the traditions of which we are the
heirs in all matters except our relations with Ireland, and to make our
relation with Ireland to conform to the other traditions of our country.
So we treat our traditions, so we hail the demand of Ireland for what I
call a blessed oblivion of the past. She asks also a boon for the future;
and that boon for the future, unless we are much mistaken, will be a boon
to us in respect of honour, no less than a boon to her in respect of
happiness, prosperity and peace. Such, sir, is her prayer. Think, I
beseech you; think well, think wisely, think, not for the moment, but for
the years that are to come, before you reject this bill.”

The question was put, the sand glass was turned upon the table, the
division bells were set ringing. Even at this moment, the ministerial
whips believed that some were still wavering. A reference made by Mr.
Parnell to harmonious communications in the previous summer with a tory
minister, (M125) inclined them to vote for the bill. On the other hand,
the prospect of going to an election without a tory opponent was no weak
temptation to a weak man. A common impression was that the bill would be
beaten by ten or fifteen. Others were sure that it would be twice as much
as either figure. Some on the treasury bench, perhaps including the prime
minister himself, hoped against hope that the hostile majority might not
be more than five or six. It proved to be thirty. The numbers were 343
against 313. Ninety-three liberals voted against the bill. These with the
two tellers were between one-third and one-fourth of the full liberal
strength from Great Britain. So ended the first engagement in this long
campaign. As I passed into his room at the House with Mr. Gladstone that
night, he seemed for the first time to bend under the crushing weight of
the burden that he had taken up.



V


When ministers went into the cabinet on the following day, three of them
inclined pretty strongly towards resignation as a better course than
dissolution; mainly on the ground that the incoming government would then
have to go to the country with a policy of their own. Mr. Gladstone,
however, entirely composed though pallid, at once opened the case with a
list of twelve reasons for recommending dissolution, and the reasons were
so cogent that his opening of the case was also its closing. They were
entirely characteristic, for they began with precedent and the key was
courage. He knew of no instance where a ministry defeated under
circumstances like ours, upon a great policy or on a vote of confidence,
failed to appeal to the country. Then with a view to the enthusiasm of our
friends in this country, as well as to feeling in Ireland, it was
essential that we should not let the flag go down. We had been constantly
challenged to a dissolution, and not to take the challenge up would be a
proof of mistrust, weakness, and a faint heart. “My conclusion is,” he
said, “a dissolution is formidable, but resignation would mean for the
present juncture abandonment of the cause.” His conclusion was accepted
without comment. The experts outside the cabinet were convinced that a
bold front was the best way of securing the full fighting power of the
party. The white feather on such an issue, and with so many minds
wavering, would be a sure provocative of defeat.

Mr. Gladstone enumerated to the Queen what he took to be the new elements
in the case. There were on the side of the government, 1. The transfer of
the Irish vote from, the tories, 2. The popular enthusiasm in the liberal
masses which he had never seen equalled. But what was the electoral value
of enthusiasm against (_a_) anti-Irish prejudices, (_b_) the power of
rank, station, and wealth, (_c_) the kind of influence exercised by the
established clergy, ’perversely applied as of course Mr. Gladstone thinks
in politics, but resting upon a very solid basis as founded on the
generally excellent and devoted work which they do in their parishes’?
This remained to be proved. On the other side there was the whig
defection, with the strange and unnatural addition from Birmingham. “Mr.
Gladstone himself has no skill in these matters, and dare not lay an
opinion before your Majesty on the probable general result.” He thought
there was little chance, if any, of a tory majority in the new parliament.
Opinion taken as a whole seemed to point to a majority not very large,
whichever way it may be.

No election was ever fought more keenly, and never did so many powerful
men fling themselves with livelier activity into a great struggle. The
heaviest and most telling attack came from Mr. Bright, who had up to now
in public been studiously silent. Every word, as they said of Daniel
Webster, seemed to weigh a pound. His arguments were mainly those of his
letter already given, but they were delivered with a gravity and force
that told powerfully upon the large phalanx of doubters all over the
kingdom. On the other side, Mr. Gladstone’s plume waved in every part of
the field. He unhorsed an opponent as he flew past on the road; his voice
rang with calls as thrilling as were ever heard in England; he appealed to
the individual, to his personal responsibility, to the best elements in
him, to the sense of justice, to the powers of hope and of sympathy; he
(M126) displayed to the full that rare combination of qualities that had
always enabled him to view affairs in all their range, at the same time
from the high commanding eminence and on the near and sober level.

He left London on June 17 on his way to Edinburgh, and found “wonderful
demonstrations all along the road; many little speeches; could not be
helped.” “The feeling here,” he wrote from Edinburgh (June 21), “is truly
wonderful, especially when, the detestable state of the press is
considered.” Even Mr. Goschen, whom he described as “supplying in the
main, soul, brains, and movement to the dissentient body,” was handsomely
beaten in one of the Edinburgh divisions, so fatal was the proximity of
Achilles. “_June 22._ Off to Glasgow, 12-¾. Meeting at 3. Spoke an hour
and twenty minutes. Off at 5.50. Reached Hawarden at 12.30 or 40. Some
speeches by the way; others I declined. The whole a scene of triumph. God
help us, His poor creatures.” At Hawarden, he found chaos in his room, and
he set to work upon it, but he did not linger. On June 25, “off to
Manchester; great meeting in the Free Trade Hall. Strain excessive. Five
miles through the streets to Mr. Agnew’s; a wonderful spectacle half the
way.” From Manchester he wrote, “I have found the display of enthusiasm
far beyond all former measure,” and the torrid heat of the meeting almost
broke him down, but friends around him heard him murmur, “I must do it,”
and bracing himself with tremendous effort he went on. Two days later
(June 28) he wound up the campaign in a speech at Liverpool, which even
old and practised political hands who were there, found the most
magnificent of them all. Staying at Courthey, the residence of his
nephews, in the morning he enters, “Worked up the Irish question once more
for my last function. Seven or eight hours of processional uproar, and a
speech of an hour and forty minutes to five or six thousand people in
Hengler’s Circus. Few buildings give so noble a presentation of an
audience. Once more my voice held out in a marvellous manner. I went in
bitterness, in the heat of my spirit, but the hand of the Lord was strong
upon me.”

He had no sooner returned to Hawarden, than he wrote to tell Mrs.
Gladstone (July 2) of a stroke which was thought to have a curiously
dæmonic air about it:—


    The Leith business will show you I have not been inactive
    here.—former M.P. _attended my meeting in the Music Hall_, and was
    greeted by me accordingly (he had voted against us after wobbling
    about much). Hearing by late post yesterday that waiting to the
    last he had then declared against us, I telegraphed down to
    Edinburgh in much indignation, that they might if they liked put
    me up against him, and I would go down again and speak if they
    wished it. They seem to have acted with admirable pluck and
    promptitude. Soon after mid-day to-day I received telegrams to say
    I am elected for Midlothian,(212) and _also for Leith_,—having
    retired rather than wait to be beaten. I told them instantly to
    publish this, as it may do good.


The Queen, who had never relished these oratorical crusades whether he was
in opposition or in office, did not approve of the first minister of the
crown addressing meetings outside of his own constituency. In reply to a
gracious and frank letter from Balmoral, Mr. Gladstone wrote:—


    He must state frankly what it is that has induced him thus to
    yield [to importunity for speeches]. It is that since the death of
    Lord Beaconsfield, in fact since 1880, the leaders of the
    opposition, Lord Salisbury and Lord Iddesleigh (he has not
    observed the same practice in the case of Sir M. H. Beach) have
    established a rule of what may be called popular agitation, by
    addressing public meetings from time to time at places with which
    they were not connected. This method was peculiarly marked in the
    case of Lord Salisbury as a peer, and this change on the part of
    the leaders of opposition has induced Mr. Gladstone to deviate on
    this critical occasion from the rule which he had (he believes)
    generally or uniformly observed in former years. He is, as he has
    previously apprised your Majesty, aware of the immense
    responsibility he has assumed, and of the severity of just
    condemnation which will be pronounced upon him, if he should
    eventually prove to have been wrong. But your Majesty will be the
    first to perceive that, even if it had been possible for him to
    decline this great contest, it was not possible for him having
    entered upon it, to conduct it in a half-hearted manner, or to
    omit the use of any means requisite in order to place (what he
    thinks) the true issue before the country.


Nature, however, served the royal purpose. Before his speech at Liverpool,
he was pressed to speak in the metropolis:—


    As to my going to London,—he wrote in reply,—I have twice had my
    chest rather seriously strained, and I have at this moment a sense
    of internal fatigue within it which is quite new to me, from the
    effects of a bad arrangement in the hall at Manchester. Should
    anything like it be repeated at Liverpool to-morrow I shall not be
    fit physically to speak for a week, if then. Mentally I have never
    undergone such an uninterrupted strain as since January 30 of this
    year. The forming and reforming of the government, the work of
    framing the bills, and _studying the subject_ (which none of the
    opponents would do), have left me almost stunned, and I have the
    autumn in prospect with, perhaps, most of the work to do over
    again if we succeed.


But this was not to be. The incomparable effort was in vain. The sons of
Zeruiah were too hard for him, and England was unconvinced.

The final result was that the ministerialists or liberals of the main body
were reduced from 235 to 196, the tories rose from 251 to 316, the
dissentient liberals fell to 74, and Mr. Parnell remained at his former
strength. In other words, the opponents of the Irish policy of the
government were 390, as against 280 in its favour; or a unionist majority
of 110. Once more no single party possessed an independent or absolute
majority. An important member of the tory party said to a liberal of his
acquaintance (July 7), that he was almost sorry the tories had not played
the bold game and fought independently of the dissentient liberals. “But
then,” he added, “we could not have beaten you on the bill, without the
compact to spare unionist seats.”

England had returned opponents of the liberal policy in the proportion of
two and a half to one against its friends; but Scotland approved in the
proportion of three to two, Wales approved by five to one, and Ireland by
four and a half to one. Another fact with a warning in it was that, taking
the total poll for Great Britain, the liberals had 1,344,000, the seceders
397,000, and the tories 1,041,000. Therefore in contested constituencies
the liberals of the main body were only 76,000 behind the forces of tories
and seceders combined. Considering the magnitude and the surprise of the
issue laid before the electors, and in view of the confident prophecies of
even some peculiar friends of the policy, that both policy and its authors
would be swept out of existence by a universal explosion of national anger
and disgust, there was certainly no final and irrevocable verdict in a
hostile British majority of no more than four per cent, of the votes
polled. Apart from electoral figures, coercion loomed large and near at
hand, and coercion tried under the new political circumstances that would
for the first time attend it, might well be trusted to do much more than
wipe out the margin at the polls. “There is nothing in the recent defeat,”
said Mr. Gladstone, “to abate the hopes or to modify the anticipations of
those who desire to meet the wants and wishes of Ireland.”



VI


The question now before Mr. Gladstone was whether to meet the new
parliament or at once to resign. For a short time he wavered, along with
an important colleague, and then he and all the rest came round to
resignation. The considerations that guided him were these. It is best for
Ireland that the party strongest in the new parliament should be at once
confronted with its responsibilities. Again, we were bound to consider
what would most tend to reunite the liberal party, and it was in
opposition that the chances of such reunion would be likely to stand
highest, especially in view of coercion which many of the dissidents had
refused to contemplate. If he could remodel the bill or frame a new one,
that might be a possible ground for endeavouring to make up a majority,
but he could not see his way to any (M127) such process, though he was
ready for certain amendments. Finally, if we remained, an amendment would
be moved definitely committing the new House against home rule.

The conclusion was for immediate resignation, and his colleagues were
unanimous in assent. The Irish view was different and impossible.
Returning from a visit to Ireland I wrote to Mr. Gladstone (July 19):—


    You may perhaps care to see what —— [not a secular politician]
    thinks, so I enclose you a conversation between him and ——. He
    does not show much strength of political judgment, and one can
    understand why Parnell never takes him into counsel. Parnell, of
    course, is anxious for us to hold on to the last moment. Our fall
    will force him without delay to take up a new and difficult line.
    But his letters to me, especially the last, show a desperate
    willingness to blink the new parliamentary situation.


Mr. Parnell, in fact, pressed with some importunity that we should meet
the new parliament, on the strange view that the result of the election
was favourable on general questions, and indecisive only on Irish policy.
We were to obtain the balance of supply in an autumn sitting, in January
to attack registration reform, and then to dissolve upon that, without
making any Irish proposition whatever. This curious suggestion left
altogether out of sight the certainty that an amendment referring to
Ireland would be at once moved on the Address, such as must beyond all
doubt command the whole of the tories and a large part, if not all, of the
liberal dissentients. Only one course was possible for the defeated
ministers, and they resigned.

On July 30, Mr. Gladstone had his final audience of the Queen, of which he
wrote the memorandum following:—


    _Conversation with the Queen, August 2, 1886._

    The conversation at my closing audience on Friday was a singular
    one, when regarded as the probable last word with the sovereign
    after fifty-five years of political life, and a good quarter of a
    century’s service rendered to her in office.

    The Queen was in good spirits; her manners altogether pleasant.
    She made me sit at once. Asked after my wife as we began, and sent
    a kind message to her as we ended. About me personally, I think,
    her single remark was that I should require some rest. I remember
    that on a closing audience in 1874 she said she felt sure I might
    be reckoned upon to support the throne. She did not say anything
    of the sort to-day. Her mind and opinions have since that day been
    seriously warped, and I respect her for the scrupulous avoidance
    of anything which could have seemed to indicate a desire on her
    part to claim anything in common with me.

    Only at three points did the conversation touch upon anything even
    faintly related to public affairs.... The second point was the
    conclusion of some arrangement for appanages or incomes on behalf
    of the third generation of the royal house. I agreed that there
    ought at a suitable time to be a committee on this subject, as had
    been settled some time back, she observing that the recent
    circumstances had made the time unsuitable. I did not offer any
    suggestion as to the grounds of the affair, but said it seemed to
    me possible to try some plan under which intended marriages should
    be communicated without forcing a reply from the Houses. Also I
    agreed that the amounts were not excessive. I did not pretend to
    have a solution ready: but said it would, of course, be the duty
    of the government to submit a plan to the committee. The third
    matter was trivial: a question or two from her on the dates and
    proceedings connected with the meeting. The rest of the
    conversation, not a very long one, was filled up with nothings. It
    is rather melancholy. But on neither side, given the conditions,
    could it well be helped.

    On the following day she wrote a letter, making it evident that,
    so far as Ireland was concerned, she could not trust herself to
    say what she wanted to say....


Among the hundreds of letters that reached him every week was one from an
evangelical lady of known piety, enclosing him a form of prayer that had
been issued against home rule. His acknowledgment (July 27) shows none of
the impatience of the baffled statesman:—


    I thank you much for your note; and though I greatly deplored the
    issue, and the ideas of the prayer in question, yet, from the
    moment when I heard it was your composition, I knew perfectly well
    that it was written in entire good faith, and had no relation to
    political controversy in the ordinary sense. I cannot but think
    that, in bringing the subject of Irish intolerance before the
    Almighty Father, we ought to have some regard to the fact that
    down to the present day, as between the two religions, the offence
    has been in the proportion of perhaps a hundred to one on the
    protestant side, and the suffering by it on the Roman side. At the
    present hour, I am pained to express my belief that there is far
    more of intolerance in action from so-called protestants against
    Roman catholics, than from Roman catholics against protestants. It
    is a great satisfaction to agree with you, as I feel confident
    that I must do, in the conviction that of prayers we cannot
    possibly have too much in this great matter, and for my own part I
    heartily desire that, unless the policy I am proposing be for the
    honour of God and the good of His creatures, it may be trampled
    under foot and broken into dust. Of your most charitable thoughts
    and feelings towards me I am deeply sensible, and I remain with
    hearty regard.


As he wrote at this time to R. H. Hutton (July 2), one of the choice
spirits of our age, “Rely upon it, I can never quarrel with you or with
Bright. What vexes me is when differences disclose baseness, which
sometimes happens.”





BOOK X. 1886-1892




Chapter I. The Morrow Of Defeat. (1886-1887)


    Charity rendereth a man truly great, enlarging his mind into a
    vast circumference, and to a capacity nearly infinite; so that it
    by a general care doth reach all things, by an universal affection
    doth embrace and grace the world.... Even a spark of it in
    generosity of dealing breedeth admiration; a glimpse of it in
    formal courtesy of behaviour procureth much esteem, being deemed
    to accomplish and adorn a man.—BARROW.



I


After the rejection of his Irish policy in the summer of 1886, Mr.
Gladstone had a period of six years before him, the life of the new
parliament. Strangely dramatic years they were, in some respects unique in
our later history. The party schism among liberals grew deeper and wider.
The union between tories and seceders became consolidated and final. The
alternative policy of coercion was passed through parliament in an extreme
form and with violent strain on the legislative machinery, and it was
carried out in Ireland in a fashion that pricked the consciences of many
thousands of voters who had resisted the proposals of 1886. A fierce storm
rent the Irish phalanx in two, and its leader vanished from the field
where for sixteen years he had fought so bold and uncompromising a fight.
During this period Mr. Gladstone stood in the most trying of all the
varied positions of his life, and without flinching he confronted it in
the strong faith that the national honour as well as the assuagement
(M128) of the inveterate Irish wound in the flank of his country, were the
issues at stake.

This intense pre-occupation in the political struggle did not for a single
week impair his other interests, nor stay his ceaseless activity in
controversies that were not touched by politics. Not even now, when the
great cause to which he had so daringly committed himself was in decisive
issue, could he allow it to dull or sever what had been the standing
concerns of life and thought to him for so long a span of years. As from
his youth up, so now behind the man of public action was the diligent,
eager, watchful student, churchman, apologist, divine. And what is curious
and delightful is that he never set a more admirable example of the tone
and temper in which literary and religious controversy should be
conducted, than in these years when in politics exasperation was at its
worst. It was about this time that he wrote: “Certainly one of the lessons
life has taught me is that where there is known to be a common object, the
pursuit of truth, there should also be a studious desire to interpret the
adversary in the best sense his words will fairly bear; to avoid whatever
widens the breach; and to make the most of whatever tends to narrow it.
These I hold to be part of the laws of knightly tournament.” And to these
laws he sedulously conformed. Perhaps at some happy time before the day of
judgment they may be transferred from the tournament to the battle-fields
of philosophy, criticism, and even politics.



II


After the defeat in which his tremendous labours had for the moment ended,
he made his way to what was to him the most congenial atmosphere in the
world, to the company of Döllinger and Acton, at Tegernsee in Bavaria.
“Tegernsee,” Lord Acton wrote to me (Sept. 7), “is an out-of-the-way
place, peaceful and silent, and as there is a good library in the house, I
have taken some care of his mind, leading in the direction of little
French comedies, and away from the tragedy of existence. It has done him
good, and he has just started with Döllinger to climb a high mountain in
the neighbourhood.”


    _To Mrs. Gladstone._

    _Tegernsee, Aug. 28, 1886._—We found Döllinger reading in the
    garden. The course of his life is quite unchanged. His
    constitution does not appear at all to have given way. He beats me
    utterly in standing, but that is not saying much, as it never was
    one of my gifts; and he is not conscious (eighty-seven last
    February) of any difficulty with the heart in going up hill. His
    deafness has increased materially, but not so that he cannot carry
    on very well conversation with a single person. We have talked
    much together even on disestablishment which he detests, and
    Ireland as to which he is very apprehensive, but he never seems to
    shut up his mind by prejudice. I had a good excuse for giving him
    my pamphlet,(213) but I do not know whether he will tell us what
    he thinks of it. He was reading it this morning. He rises at six
    and breakfasts alone. Makes a _good_ dinner at two and has nothing
    more till the next morning. He does not appear after dark. On the
    whole one sees no reason why he should not last for several years
    yet.


“When Dr. Döllinger was eighty-seven,” Mr. Gladstone wrote later, “he
walked with me seven miles across the hill that separates the Tegernsee
from the next valley to the eastward. At that time he began to find his
sleep subject to occasional interruptions, and he had armed himself
against them by committing to memory the first three books of the
_Odyssey_ for recital.”(214) Of Mr. Gladstone Döllinger had said in 1885,
“I have known Gladstone for thirty years, and would stand security for him
any day; his character is a very fine one, and he possesses a rare
capability for work. I differ from him in his political views on many
points, and it is difficult to convince him, for he is clad in triple
steel.”(215)

Another high personage in the Roman catholic world sent him letters
through Acton, affectionately written and with signs of serious as well as
sympathising study of his Irish policy. A little later (Sept. 21) Mr.
Gladstone writes to his wife at Hawarden:—


    Bishop Strossmayer may make a journey all the way to Hawarden, and
    it seems that Acton may even accompany him, which would make it
    much more manageable. His coming would be a great compliment, and
    cannot be discouraged or refused. It would, however, be a serious
    affair, for he speaks no language with which as a spoken tongue we
    are familiar, his great cards being Slavonic and Latin.
    Unfortunately I have a very great increase of difficulty in
    _hearing_ the words in foreign tongues, a difficulty which I hope
    has hardly begun with you as yet.


Like a good host, Lord Acton kept politics out of his way as well as he
could, but some letter of mine “set him on fire, and he is full of ——’s
blunder and of Parnell’s bill.” Parliamentary duty was always a sting to
him, and by September 20 he was back in the House of Commons, speaking on
the Tenants Relief (Ireland) bill. Then to the temple of peace at Hawarden
for the rest of the year, to read the _Iliad_ “for the twenty-fifth or
thirtieth time, and every time richer and more glorious than before”; to
write elaborately on Homeric topics; to receive a good many visitors; and
to compose the admirable article on Tennyson’s second _Locksley Hall_. On
this last let us pause for an instant. The moment was hardly one in which,
from a man of nature less great and powerful than Mr. Gladstone, we should
have counted on a buoyant vindication of the spirit of his time. He had
just been roughly repulsed in the boldest enterprise of his career; his
name was a target for infinite obloquy; his motives were largely denounced
as of the basest; the conflict into which he had plunged and from which he
could not withdraw was hard; friends had turned away from him; he was old;
the issue was dubious and dark. Yet the personal, or even what to him were
the national discomfitures of the hour, were not allowed to blot the sun
out of the heavens. His whole soul rose in challenge against the tragic
tones of Tennyson’s poem, as he recalled the solid tale of the vast
improvements, the enormous mitigation of the sorrows and burdens of
mankind, that had been effected in the land by public opinion and public
authority, operative in the exhilarating sphere of self-government during
the sixty years between the first and second _Locksley Hall_.


    The sum of the matter seems to be that upon the whole, and in a
    degree, we who lived fifty, sixty, seventy years back, and are
    living now, have lived into a gentler time; that the public
    conscience has grown more tender, as indeed was very needful; and
    that in matters of practice, at sight of evils formerly regarded
    with indifference or even connivance, it now not only winces but
    rebels; that upon the whole the race has been reaping, and not
    scattering; earning and not wasting; and that without its being
    said that the old Prophet is wrong, it may be said that the young
    Prophet was unquestionably right.


Here is the way in which a man of noble heart and high vision as of a
circling eagle, transcends his individual chagrins. All this optimism was
the natural vein of a statesman who had lived a long life of effort in
persuading opinion in so many regions, in overcoming difficulty upon
difficulty, in content with a small reform where men would not let him
achieve a great one, in patching where he could not build anew, in
unquenchable faith, hope, patience, endeavour. Mr. Gladstone knew as well
as Tennyson that “every blessing has its drawbacks, and every age its
dangers”; he was as sensitive as Tennyson or Ruskin or any of them, to the
implacable tragedy of industrial civilisation—the city children
“blackening soul and sense in city slime,” progress halting on palsied
feet “among the glooming alleys,” crime and hunger casting maidens on the
street, and all the other recesses of human life depicted by the poetic
prophet in his sombre hours. But the triumphs of the past inspired
confidence in victories for the future, and meanwhile he thought it well
to remind Englishmen that “their country is still young as well as old,
and that in these latest days it has not been unworthy of itself.”(216)

On his birthday he enters in his diary:—


    _Dec. 29, 1886._—This day in its outer experience recalls the
    Scotch usage which would say, “terrible pleasant.” In spite of the
    ruin of telegraph wires by snow, my letters and postal arrivals of
    to-day have much exceeded those of last year. Even my share of the
    reading was very heavy. The day was gone before it seemed to have
    begun, all amidst stir and festivity. The estimate was nine
    hundred arrivals. O for a birthday of recollection. It is long
    since I have had one. There is so much to say on the soul’s
    history, but bracing is necessary to say it, as it is for reading
    Dante. It has been a year of shock and strain. I think a year of
    some progress; but of greater absorption in interests which,
    though profoundly human, are quite off the line of an old man’s
    direct preparation for passing the River of Death. I have not had
    a chance given me of creeping from this whirlpool, for I cannot
    abandon a cause which is so evidently that of my fellow-men, and
    in which a particular part seems to be assigned to me. Therefore
    am I not disturbed “though the hills be carried into the middle of
    the sea.”



III


    _To Lord Acton._

    _Hawarden, Jan. 13, 1887._—It is with much pleasure that I read
    your estimate of Chamberlain. His character is remarkable, as are
    in a very high degree his talents. It is one of my common sayings
    that to me characters of the political class are the most
    mysterious of all I meet, so that I am obliged to travel the road
    of life surrounded by an immense number of judgments more or less
    in suspense, and getting on for practical purposes as well as I
    can.

    I have with a clear mind and conscience not only assented to but
    promoted the present conferences, and I had laboured in that sense
    long before Mr. Chamberlain made his speech at Birmingham. It will
    surprise as well as grieve me if they do harm; if indeed they do
    not do some little good. Large and final arrangements, it would be
    rash I think to expect.

    The tide is flowing, though perhaps not rapidly, in our favour.
    Without our lifting a finger, a crumbling process has begun in
    both the opposite parties. “In quietness and in confidence shall
    be your strength” is a blessed maxim, often applicable to
    temporals as well as spirituals. I have indeed one temptation to
    haste, namely, that the hour may come for me to say farewell and
    claim my retirement; but inasmuch as I remain _in situ_ for the
    Irish question only, I cannot be so foolish as to allow myself to
    ruin by precipitancy my own purpose. Though I am writing a paper
    on the Irish question for Mr. Knowles, it is no trumpet-blast, but
    is meant to fill and turn to account a season of comparative
    quietude.

    The death of Iddesleigh has shocked and saddened us all. He was
    full of excellent qualities, but had not the backbone and strength
    of fibre necessary to restore the tone of a party demoralised by
    his former leader. In gentleness, temper, sacrifice of himself to
    the common purpose of his friends, knowledge, quickness of
    perception, general integrity of intention, freedom from personal
    aims, he was admirable.... I have been constantly struggling to
    vindicate a portion of my time for the pursuits I want to follow,
    but with very little success indeed. Some rudiments of Olympian
    religion have partially taken shape. I have a paper ready for
    Knowles probably in his March number on the Poseidon of Homer, a
    most curious and exotic personage.... Williams and Norgate got me
    the books I wanted, but alack for the time to read them! In
    addition to want of time, I have to deplore my slowness in
    reading, declining sight, and declining memory; all very serious
    affairs for one who has such singular reason to be thankful as to
    general health and strength.

    I wish I could acknowledge duly or pay even in part your
    unsparing, untiring kindness in the discharge of your engagements
    as “Cook.” Come early to England—and stay long. We will try what
    we can to bind you.


A few months later, he added to his multifarious exercises in criticism
and controversy, a performance that attracted especial attention.(217)
“Mamma and I,” he wrote to Mrs. Drew, “are each of us still separately
engaged in a death-grapple with _Robert Elsmere_. I complained of some of
the novels you gave me to read as too stiff, but they are nothing to this.
It is wholly out of the common order. At present I regard with doubt and
dread the idea of doing anything on it, but cannot yet be sure whether
your observations will be verified or not. In any case it is a tremendous
book.” And on April 1 (1888), he wrote, “By hard work I have finished and
am correcting my article on _Robert Elsmere_. It is rather stiff work. I
have had two letters from her. She is much to be liked personally, but is
a fruit, I think, of what must be called Arnoldism.”


    _To Lord Acton._

    _Aston Clinton, Tring, Easter Day, April 1, ’88._—I do not like to
    let too long a time elapse without some note of intercourse, even
    though that season approaches which brings you back to the shores
    of your country. Were you here I should have much to say on many
    things; but I will now speak, or first speak, of what is
    uppermost, and would, if a mind is like a portmanteau, be taken or
    tumble out first.

    You perhaps have not heard of _Robert Elsmere_, for I find without
    surprise, that it makes its way slowly into public notice. It is
    not far from twice the length of an ordinary novel; and the labour
    and effort of reading it all, I should say, sixfold; while one
    could no more stop in it than in reading Thucydides. The idea of
    the book, perhaps of the writer, appears to be a movement of
    retreat from Christianity upon Theism: a Theism with a Christ
    glorified, always in the human sense, but beyond the ordinary
    measure. It is worked out through the medium of a being—one ought
    to say a character, but I withhold the word, for there is no
    sufficient substratum of character to uphold the qualities—gifted
    with much intellectual subtlety and readiness, and almost every
    conceivable moral excellence. He finds vent in an energetic
    attempt to carry his new gospel among the skilled artisans of
    London, whom the writer apparently considers as supplying the
    _norm_ for all right human judgment. He has extraordinary success,
    establishes a new church under the name of the new Christian
    brotherhood, kills himself with overwork, but leaves his project
    flourishing in a certain “Elgood Street.” It is in fact (like the
    Salvation Army), a new Kirche der Zukunft.

    I am always inclined to consider this Theism as among the least
    defensible of the positions alternative to Christianity. Robert
    Elsmere who has been a parish clergyman, is upset entirely, as it
    appears, by the difficulty of accepting miracles, and by the
    suggestion that the existing Christianity grew up in an age
    specially predisposed to them.

    I want as usual to betray you into helping the lame dog over the
    stile; and I should like to know whether you would think me
    violently wrong in holding that the period of the Advent was a
    period when the appetite for, or disposition to, the supernatural
    was declining and decaying; that in the region of human thought,
    speculation was strong and scepticism advancing; that if our Lord
    were a mere man, armed only with human means, His whereabouts was
    in this and many other ways misplaced by Providence; that the
    gospels and the New Testament must have much else besides miracle
    torn out of them, in order to get us down to the _caput mortuum_
    of Elgood Street. This very remarkable work is in effect identical
    with the poor, thin, ineffectual production published with some
    arrogance by the Duke of Somerset, which found a quack remedy for
    difficulties in what he considered the impregnable citadel of
    belief in God.

    Knowles has brought this book before me, and being as strong as it
    is strange, it cannot perish still-born. I am tossed about with
    doubt as to writing upon it.

    _To Lord Acton._

    _Oxford, April 8, ’88._—I am grateful for your most interesting
    letter, which contains very valuable warnings. On the other side
    is copied what I have written on two of the points raised by the
    book. Have I said too much of the Academy? I have spoken only of
    the first century. You refer to (apparently) about 250 A.D. as a
    time of great progress? But I was astonished on first reading the
    census of Christian clergy in Rome _temp._ St. Cyprian, it was so
    slender. I am not certain, but does not Beugnot estimate the
    Christians, before Constantine’s conversion, in the west at
    one-tenth of the population? Mrs. T. Arnold died yesterday here.
    Mrs. Ward had been summoned and she is coming to see me this
    evening. It is a very singular phase of the controversy which she
    has opened. When do you _repatriate_?

    I am afraid that my kindness to the Positivists amounts only to a
    comparative approval of their not dropping the great human
    tradition out of view; _plus_ a very high appreciation of the
    personal qualities of our friend ——.

    _To Lord Acton._

    _Dollis Hill, May 13, ’88._—Your last letter was one of extreme
    interest. It raised such a multitude of points, after your perusal
    of my article on R. Elsmere, as to stimulate in the highest degree
    my curiosity to know how far you would carry into propositions,
    the ideas which you for the most part obliquely put forward. I
    gave the letter to Mary, who paid us a flying visit in London,
    that she might take it to Hawarden for full digestion. For myself
    I feed upon the hope that when (when ?) you come back to England
    we may go over the points, and I may reap further benefits from
    your knowledge. I will not now attempt anything of the kind. But I
    will say this generally, that I am not so much oppressed as you
    appear to be, with the notion that great difficulties have been
    imported by the researches of scientists into the religious and
    theological argument. As respects cosmogony and _geogony_, the
    Scripture has, I think, taken much benefit from them. Whatever be
    the date of the early books, Pentateuch or Hexateuch in their
    present _edition_, the Assyriological investigations seem to me to
    have fortified and accredited their substance by producing similar
    traditions in variant forms inferior to the Mosaic forms, and
    tending to throw them back to a higher antiquity, a fountainhead
    nearer the source. Then there is the great chapter of the
    Dispersal: which Renan (I think) treats as exhibiting the
    marvellous genius (!) of the Jews. As to unbroken sequences in the
    physical order, they do not trouble me, because we have to do not
    with the natural but the moral order, and over this science, or as
    I call it natural science, does not wave her sceptre. It is no
    small matter, again (if so it be, as I suppose), that, after
    warring for a century against miracle as unsustained by
    experience, the assailants should now have to abandon that ground,
    stand only upon sequence, and controvert the great facts of the
    New Testament only by raising to an extravagant and unnatural
    height the demands made under the law of testimony in order to
    [justify] a rational belief. One admission has to be made, that
    death did not come into the world by sin, namely the sin of Adam,
    and this sits inconveniently by the declaration of Saint Paul.

    Mrs. Ward wrote to thank me for the tone of my article. Her first
    intention was to make some reply in the _Nineteenth Century_
    itself. It appears that —— advised her not to do it. But Knowles
    told me that he was labouring to bring her up to the scratch
    again. There, I said, you show the cloven foot; you want to keep
    the _Nineteenth Century_ pot boiling.

    I own that your reasons for not being in England did not appear to
    me cogent, but it would be impertinent to make myself a judge of
    them. The worst of it was that you did not name _any_ date. But I
    must assume that you are coming; and surely the time cannot now be
    far. Among other things, I want to speak with you about French
    novels, a subject on which there has for me been quite recently
    cast a most lurid light.


Acton’s letters in reply may have convinced Mr. Gladstone that there were
depths in this supreme controversy that he had hardly sounded; and
adversaria that he might have mocked from a professor of the school or
schools of unbelief, he could not in his inner mind make light of, when
coming from the pen of a catholic believer. Before and after the article
on _Robert Elsmere_ appeared, Acton, the student with his vast historic
knowledge and his deep penetrating gaze, warned the impassioned critic of
some historic point overstated or understated, some dangerous breach left
all unguarded, some lack of nicety in definition. Acton’s letters will one
day see the light, and the reader may then know how candidly Mr. Gladstone
was admonished as to the excess of his description of the moral action of
Christianity; as to the risk of sending modern questions to ancient
answers, for the apologists of an age can only meet the difficulties of
their age; that there are leaps and bounds in the history of thought; how
well did Newman once say that in theology you have to meet questions that
the Fathers could hardly have been made to understand; how if you go to
St. Thomas or Leibnitz or Paley for rescue from Hegel or Haeckel your
apologetics will be a record of disaster. You insist broadly, says Acton,
on belief in the divine nature of Christ as the soul, substance, and
creative force of Christian religion; you assign to it very much of the
good the church has done; all this with little or no qualification or
drawback from the other side:—


    Enter Martineau or Stephen or —— (unattached), and loq.:—Is this
    the final judgment of the chief of liberals? the pontiff of a
    church whose fathers are the later Milton and the later Penn,
    Locke, Bayle, Toland, Franklin, Turgot, Adam Smith, Washington,
    Jefferson, Bentham, Dugald Stewart, Romilly, Tocqueville,
    Channing, Macaulay, Mill? These men and others like them
    disbelieved that doctrine established freedom, and they undid the
    work of orthodox Christianity, they swept away that appalling
    edifice of intolerance, tyranny, cruelty, which believers in
    Christ built up to perpetuate their belief.


The philosophy of liberal history, Acton proceeds, which has to
acknowledge the invaluable services of early Christianity, feels the
anti-liberal and anti-social action of later Christianity, before the rise
of the sects that rejected, some of them the divinity of Christ; others,
the institutions of the church erected upon it. Liberalism if it admits
these things as indifferent, surrenders its own _raison d’être_, and
ceases to strive for an ethical cause. If the doctrine of Torquemada make
us condone his morality, there can be no public right and no wrong, no
political sin, no secular cause to die for. So it might be said that—


    You do not work really from the principle of liberalism, but from
    the cognate, though distinct principles of democracy, nationality,
    progress, etc. To some extent, I fear, you will estrange valued
    friends, not assuredly by any expression of theological belief,
    but by seeming to ignore the great central problem of Christian
    politics. If I had to put my own doubts, instead of the average
    liberal’s, I should state the case in other words, but not
    altogether differently.(218)




Chapter II. The Alternative Policy In Act. (1886-1888)


    Those who come over hither to us from England, and some weak
    people among ourselves, whenever in discourse we make mention of
    liberty and property, shake their heads, and tell us that “Ireland
    is a depending kingdom,” as if they would seem by this phrase to
    intend, that the people of Ireland are in some state of slavery or
    dependence different from those of England.—JONATHAN SWIFT.



I


In the ministry that succeeded Mr. Gladstone in 1886, Sir Michael Hicks
Beach undertook for the second time the office of Irish secretary, while
Lord Randolph Churchill filled his place at the exchequer and as leader of
the House. The new Irish policy was to open with the despatch of a
distinguished soldier to put down moonlighters in Kerry; the creation of
one royal commission under Lord Cowper, to inquire into land rents and
land purchase; and another to inquire into the country’s material
resources. The two commissions were well-established ways of marking time.
As for Irish industries and Irish resources, a committee of the House of
Commons had made a report in a blue book of a thousand pages only a year
before. On Irish land there had been a grand commission in 1880, and a
committee of the House of Lords in 1882-3. The latest Purchase Act was
hardly yet a year old. Then to commission a general to hunt down little
handfuls of peasants who with blackened faces and rude firearms crept
stealthily in the dead of night round lonely cabins in the remote
hillsides and glens of Kerry, was hardly more sensible than it would be to
send a squadron of life-guards to catch pickpockets in a London slum.

A question that exercised Mr. Gladstone at least as sharply as the
proceedings of ministers, was the attitude (M129) to be taken by those who
had quitted him, ejected him in the short parliament of 1886, and fought
the election against him. We have seen how much controversy arose long
years before as to the question whereabouts in the House of Commons the
Peelites should take their seats.(219) The same perplexity now confronted
the liberals who did not agree with Mr. Gladstone upon Irish government.
Lord Hartington wrote to him, and here is his reply:—


    _August 2, 1886._—I fully appreciate the feeling which has
    prompted your letter, and I admit the reality of the difficulties
    you describe. It is also clear, I think, that so far as title to
    places on the front opposition bench is concerned, your right to
    them is identical with ours. I am afraid, however, that I cannot
    materially contribute to relieve you from embarrassment. The
    choice of a seat is more or less the choice of a symbol; and I
    have no such acquaintance with your political views and
    intentions, as could alone enable me to judge what materials I
    have before me for making an answer to your inquiry. For my own
    part, I earnestly desire, subject to the paramount exigencies of
    the Irish question, to promote in every way the reunion of the
    liberal party; a desire in which I earnestly trust that you
    participate. And I certainly could not directly or indirectly
    dissuade you from any step which you may be inclined to take, and
    which may appear to you to have a tendency in any measure to
    promote that end.


A singular event occurred at the end of the year (1886), that produced an
important change in the relations of this group of liberals to the
government that they had placed and maintained in power. Lord Randolph,
the young minister who with such extraordinary rapidity had risen to
ascendency in the councils of the government, suddenly in a fatal moment
of miscalculation or caprice resigned (Dec. 23). Political suicide is not
easy to a man with energy and resolution, but this was one of the rare
cases. In a situation so strangely unstable and irregular, with an
administration resting on the support of a section sitting on benches
opposite, and still declaring every day that they adhered to old liberal
principles and had no wish to sever old party ties, the withdrawal of Lord
Randolph Churchill created boundless perturbation. It was one of those
exquisite moments in which excited politicians enjoy the ineffable
sensation that the end of the world has come. Everything seemed possible.
Lord Hartington was summoned from the shores of the Mediterranean, but
being by temperament incredulous of all vast elemental convulsions, he
took his time. On his return he declined Lord Salisbury’s offer to make
way for him as head of the government. The glitter of the prize might have
tempted a man of schoolboy ambition, but Lord Hartington was too
experienced in affairs not to know that to be head of a group that held
the balance was, under such equivocal circumstances, far the more
substantial and commanding position of the two. Mr. Goschen’s case was
different, and by taking the vacant post at the exchequer he saved the
prime minister from the necessity of going back under Lord Randolph’s
yoke. As it happened, all this gave a shake to both of the unionist wings.
The ominous clouds of coercion were sailing slowly but discernibly along
the horizon, and this made men in the unionist camp still more restless
and uneasy. Mr. Chamberlain, on the very day of the announcement of the
Churchill resignation, had made a speech that was taken to hold out an
olive branch to his old friends. Sir William Harcourt, ever holding
stoutly in fair weather and in foul to the party ship, thought the
break-up of a great political combination to be so immense an evil, as to
call for almost any sacrifices to prevent it. He instantly wrote to
Birmingham to express his desire to co-operate in re-union, and in the
course of a few days five members of the original liberal cabinet of 1886
met at his house in what was known as the Round Table Conference.(220)

A letter of Mr. Gladstone’s to me puts some of his views on the situation
created by the retirement of Lord Randolph:—


    _Hawarden, Christmas Day, 1886._—Between Christmas services, a
    flood of cards and congratulations for the season, and many
    interesting letters, I am drowned in work to-day, having just at
    1-¼ P.M. ascertained what my letters _are_. So forgive me if,
    first thanking you very much for yours, I deal with some points
    rather abruptly.

    1. Churchill has committed an outrage as against the Queen, and
    also the prime minister, in the method of resigning and making
    known his resignation. This, of course, they will work against
    him. 2. He is also entirely wrong in supposing that the finance
    minister has any ruling authority on the great estimates of
    defence. If he had, he would be the master of the country. But
    although he has no right to demand the concurrence of his
    colleagues in his view of the estimates, he has a rather special
    right, because these do so much towards determining budget and
    taxation, to indicate his own views by resignation. I have
    repeatedly fought estimates to the extremity, with an intention of
    resigning in _case_. But to send in a resignation makes it
    impossible for his colleagues as men of honour to recede. 3. I
    think one of his best points is that he had made before taking
    office recent and formal declarations on behalf of economy, of
    which his colleagues must be taken to have been cognisant, and
    Salisbury in particular. He may plead that he could not reduce
    these all at once to zero. 4. Cannot something be done, without
    reference to the holes that may be picked, to give him some
    support as a champion of economy? This talk about the continental
    war, I for one regard as pure nonsense when aimed at magnifying
    our estimates.

    5. With regard to Hartington. What he will do I know not, and our
    wishes could have no weight with him.... The position is one of
    such difficulty for H. that I am very sorry for him, though it was
    never more true that he who makes his own bed in a certain way
    must lie in it. Chamberlain’s speech hits him very hard in case of
    acceptance. I take it for granted that he will not accept to sit
    among thirteen tories, but will have to demand an entry by force,
    _i.e._ with three or four friends. To accept upon that footing
    would, I think, be the logical consequence of all he has said and
    done since April. In logic, he ought to go forward, _or_, as
    Chamberlain has done, backward. The Queen will, I have no doubt,
    be brought to bear upon him, and the nine-tenths of his order. If
    the Irish question rules all others, all he has to consider is
    whether he (properly flanked) can serve his view of the Irish
    question. But with this logic we have nothing to do. The question
    for us also is (I think), what is best for our view of the Irish
    question? I am tempted to wish that he should accept; it would
    clear the ground. But I do not yet see my way with certainty.

    6. With regard to Chamberlain. From what has already passed
    between us you know that, apart from the new situation and from
    his declaration, I was very desirous that everything honourable
    should be done to conciliate and soothe. Unquestionably his speech
    is a new fact of great weight. He is again a liberal, _quand
    même_, and will not on all points (as good old Joe Hume used to
    say) swear black is white for the sake of his views on Ireland. We
    ought not to waste this new fact, but take careful account of it.
    On the other hand, I think he will see that the moment for taking
    account of it has not come. Clearly the first thing is to see who
    are the government. When we see this, we shall also know something
    of its colour and intentions. I do not think Randolph can go back.
    He would go back at a heavy discount. If he wants to minimise, the
    only way I see is that he should isolate his vote on the
    estimates, form no _clique_, and proclaim strong support in Irish
    matters and general policy. Thus he might pave a roundabout road
    of return.... In _many_ things Goschen is more of a liberal than
    Hartington, and he would carry with him next to nobody.

    7. On the whole, I rejoice to think that, come what may, this
    affair will really effect progress in the Irish question.

    A happy Christmas to you. It will be happier than that of the
    ministers.


Mr. Gladstone gave the Round Table his blessing, his “general idea being
that he had better meddle as little as possible with the conference, and
retain a free hand.” Lord Hartington would neither join the conference,
nor deny that he thought it premature. While negotiation was going on, he
said, somebody must stay at home, guard the position, and keep a watch on
the movements of the enemy, and this duty was his. In truth, after
encouraging or pressing Mr. (M130) Goschen to join the government, it was
obviously impossible to do anything that would look like desertion either
of him or of them. On the other side, both English liberals and Irish
nationalists were equally uneasy lest the unity of the party should be
bought by the sacrifice of fundamentals. The conference was denounced from
this quarter as an attempt to find a compromise that would help a few men
sitting on the fence to salve “their consciences at the expense of a
nation’s rights.” Such remarks are worth quoting, to illustrate the temper
of the rank and file. Mr. Parnell, though alive to the truth that when
people go into a conference it usually means that they are ready to give
up something, was thoroughly awake to the satisfactory significance of the
Birmingham overtures.

Things at the round table for some time went smoothly enough. Mr.
Chamberlain gradually advanced the whole length. He publicly committed
himself to the expediency of establishing some kind of legislative
authority in Dublin in accordance with Mr. Gladstone’s principle, with a
preference in his own mind for a plan on the lines of Canada. This he
followed up, also in public, by the admission that of course the Irish
legislature must be allowed to organise their own form of executive
government, either by an imitation on a small scale of all that goes on at
Westminster and Whitehall, or in whatever other shape they might think
proper.(221) To assent to an Irish legislature for such affairs as
parliament might determine to be distinctively Irish, with an executive
responsible to it, was to accept the party credo on the subject. Then the
surface became mysteriously ruffled. Language was used by some of the
plenipotentiaries in public, of which each side in turn complained as
inconsistent with conciliatory negotiation in private. At last on the very
day on which the provisional result of the conference was laid before Mr.
Gladstone, there appeared in a print called the _Baptist_(222) an article
from Mr. Chamberlain, containing an ardent plea for the disestablishment
of the Welsh church, but warning the Welshmen that they and the Scotch
crofters and the English labourers, thirty-two millions of people, must
all go without much-needed, legislation because three millions were
disloyal, while nearly six hundred members of parliament would be reduced
to forced inactivity, because some eighty delegates, representing the
policy and receiving the pay of the Chicago convention, were determined to
obstruct all business until their demands had been conceded. Men naturally
asked what was the use of continuing a discussion, when one party to it
was attacking in this peremptory fashion the very persons and the policy
that in private he was supposed to accept. Mr. Gladstone showed no
implacability. Viewing the actual character of the _Baptist_ letter, he
said to Sir W. Harcourt, “I am inclined to think we can hardly do more
now, than to say we fear it has interposed an unexpected obstacle in the
way of any attempt at this moment to sum up the result of your
communications, which we should otherwise hopefully have done; but on the
other hand we are unwilling that so much ground apparently gained should
be lost, that a little time may soften or remove the present ruffling of
the surface, and that we are quite willing that the subject should stand
over for resumption at a convenient season.”

The resumption never happened. Two or three weeks later, Mr. Chamberlain
announced that he did not intend to return to the round table.(223) No
other serious and formal attempt was ever made on either side to prevent
the liberal unionists from hardening into a separate species. When they
became accomplices in coercion, they cut off the chances of re-union.
Coercion was the key to the new situation. Just as at the beginning of
1886, the announcement of it by the tory government marked the parting of
the ways, so was it now.



II


We must now with reasonable cheerfulness turn our faces back towards
Ireland. On the day of his return from (M131) Ireland (August 17, 1886)
Mr. Parnell told me that he was quite sure that rents could not be paid in
the coming winter, and if the country was to be kept quiet, the government
would have to do something. He hoped that they would do something;
otherwise there would be disturbance, and that he did not want. He had
made up his mind that his interests would be best served by a quiet
winter. For one thing he knew that disturbance would be followed by
coercion, and he knew and often said that of course strong coercion must
always in the long run win the day, little as the victory might be worth.
For another thing he apprehended that disturbance might frighten away his
new political allies in Great Britain, and destroy the combination which
he had so dexterously built up. This was now a dominant element with him.
He desired definitely that the next stage of his movement should be in the
largest sense political and not agrarian. He brought two or three sets of
proposals in this sense before the House, and finally produced a Tenants
Relief bill. It was not brilliantly framed. For in truth it is not in
human nature, either Irish or any other, to labour the framing of a bill
which has no chance of being seriously considered.

The golden secret of Irish government was always to begin by trying to
find all possible points for disagreement with anything that Mr. Parnell
said or proposed, instead of seeking whether what he said or proposed
might not furnish a basis for agreement. The conciliatory tone was soon
over, and the Parnell bill was thrown out. The Irish secretary denounced
it as permanently upsetting the settlement of 1881, as giving a death-blow
to purchase, and as produced without the proof of any real grounds for a
general reduction in judicial rents. Whatever else he did, said Sir
Michael Hicks Beach, he would never agree to govern Ireland by a policy of
blackmail.(224)

A serious movement followed the failure of the government to grapple with
arrears of rent. The policy known as the plan of campaign was launched.
The plan of campaign was this. The tenants of a given estate agreed with
one another what abatement they thought just in the current half-year’s
rent. This in a body they proffered to landlord or agent. If it was
refused as payment in full, they handed the money to a managing committee,
and the committee deposited it with some person in whom they had
confidence, to be used for the purpose of the struggle.(225) That such
proceeding constituted an unlawful conspiracy nobody doubts, any more than
it can be doubted that before the Act of 1875 every trade combination of a
like kind in this island was a conspiracy.

At an early stage the Irish leader gave his opinion to the present
writer:—


    _Dec. 7, 1886._—Mr. Parnell called, looking very ill and worn. He
    wished to know what I thought of the effect of the plan of
    campaign upon public opinion. “If you mean in Ireland,” I said,
    “of course I have no view, and it would be worth nothing if I had.
    In England, the effect is wholly bad; it offends almost more even
    than outrages.” He said he had been very ill and had taken no
    part, so that he stands free and uncommitted. He was anxious to
    have it fully understood that the fixed point in his tactics is to
    maintain the alliance with the English liberals. He referred with
    much bitterness, and very justifiable too, to the fact that when
    Ireland seemed to be quiet some short time back, the government
    had at once begun to draw away from all their promises of remedial
    legislation. If now rents were paid, meetings abandoned, and
    newspapers moderated, the same thing would happen over again as
    usual. However, he would send for a certain one of his
    lieutenants, and would press for an immediate cessation of the
    violent speeches.

    _December 12._—Mr. Parnell came, and we had a prolonged
    conversation. The lieutenant had come over, and had defended the
    plan of campaign. Mr. Parnell persevered in his dissent and
    disapproval, and they parted with the understanding that the
    meetings should be dropped, and the movement calmed as much as
    could be. I told him that I had heard from Mr. Gladstone, and that
    he could not possibly show any tolerance for illegalities.


That his opponents should call upon Mr. Gladstone to denounce the plan of
campaign and cut himself off from its authors, was to be expected. They
made the most of it. (M132) But he was the last man to be turned aside
from the prosecution of a policy that he deemed of overwhelming moment, by
any minor currents. Immediately after the election, Mr. Parnell had been
informed of his view that it would be a mistake for English and Irish to
aim at uniform action in parliament. Motives could not be at all points
the same. Liberals were bound to keep in view (next to what the Irish
question might require) the reunion of the liberal party. The Irish were
bound to have special regard to the opinion and circumstances of Ireland.
Common action up to a certain degree would arise from the necessities of
the position. Such was Mr. Gladstone’s view. He was bent on bringing a
revolutionary movement to what he confidently anticipated would be a good
end; to allow a passing phase of that movement to divert him, would be to
abandon his own foundations. No reformer is fit for his task who suffers
himself to be frightened off by the excesses of an extreme wing.

In reply to my account of the conversation with Mr. Parnell, he wrote to
me:—


    _Hawarden, December 8, 1886._—I have received your very clear
    statement and reply in much haste for the post—making the same
    request as yours for a return. I am glad to find the —— speech is
    likely to be neutralised, I hope effectually. It was really very
    bad. I am glad you write to ——. 2. As to the campaign in Ireland,
    I do not at present feel the force of Hartington’s appeal to me to
    speak out. I do not recollect that he ever spoke out about
    Churchill, of whom he is for the time the enthusiastic
    follower.(226) 3. But all I say and do must be kept apart from the
    slightest countenance direct or indirect to illegality. We too
    suffer under the power of the landlord, but we cannot adopt this
    as a method of breaking it. 4. I am glad you opened the question
    of intermediate measures.... 5. Upon the whole I suppose he sees
    he cannot have countenance from us in the plan of campaign. The
    question rather is how much disavowal. I have contradicted a tory
    figment in Glasgow that I had approved.


At a later date (September 16, 1887) he wrote to me as to an intended
speech at Newcastle: “You will, I have no doubt, press even more earnestly
than before on the Irish people the duty and policy of maintaining order,
and in these instances I shall be very glad if you will associate me with
yourself.”

“The plan of campaign,” said Mr. Gladstone, “was one of those devices that
cannot be reconciled with the principles of law and order in a civilised
country. Yet we all know that such devices are the certain result of
misgovernment. With respect to this particular instance, if the plan be
blameable (I cannot deny that I feel it difficult to acquit any such plan)
I feel its authors are not one-tenth part so blameable as the government
whose contemptuous refusal of what they have now granted, was the parent
and source of the mischief.”(227) This is worth looking at.

The Cowper Commission, in February 1887, reported that refusal by some
landlords explained much that had occurred in the way of combination, and
that the growth of these combinations had been facilitated by the fall in
prices, restriction of credit by the banks, and other circumstances making
the payment of rent impossible.(228) Remarkable evidence was given by Sir
Redvers Buller. He thought there should be some means of modifying and
redressing the grievance of rents being still higher than the people can
pay. “You have got a very ignorant poor people, and the law should look
after them, instead of which it has only looked after the rich.”(229) This
was exactly what Mr. Parnell had said. In the House the government did not
believe him; in Ireland they admitted his case to be true. In one instance
General Buller wrote to the agents of the estate that he believed it was
impossible for the tenants to pay the rent that was demanded; there might
be five or six rogues among them, but in his opinion the greater number of
them were nearer famine than paying rent.(230) In this very case ruthless
evictions followed. The same scenes were enacted elsewhere. The landlords
were within their rights, the courts were bound by the law, the police had
no choice but to back (M133) the courts. The legal ease was complete. The
moral case remained, and it was through these barbarous scenes that in a
rough and non-logical way the realities of the Irish land system for the
first time gained access to the minds of the electors of Great Britain.
Such devices as the plan of campaign came to be regarded in England and
Scotland as what they were, incidents in a great social struggle. In a
vast majority of cases the mutineers succeeded in extorting a reduction of
rent, not any more immoderate than the reduction voluntarily made by good
landlords, or decreed in the land-courts. No agrarian movement in Ireland
was ever so unstained by crime.

Some who took part in these affairs made no secret of political motives.
Unlike Mr. Parnell, they deliberately desired to make government
difficult. Others feared that complete inaction would give an opening to
the Fenian extremists. This section had already shown some signs both of
their temper and their influence in certain proceedings of the Gaelic
association at Thurles. But the main spring was undoubtedly agrarian, and
the force of the spring came from mischiefs that ministers had refused to
face in time. “What they call a conspiracy now,” said one of the insurgent
leaders, “they will call an Act of parliament next year.” So it turned
out.

The Commission felt themselves “constrained to recommend an earlier
revision of judicial rents, on account of the straitened circumstances of
Irish farmers.” What the commissioners thus told ministers in the spring
was exactly what the Irish leader had told them in the previous autumn.
They found that there were “real grounds” for some legislation of the kind
that the chief secretary, unconscious of what his cabinet was so rapidly
to come to, had stigmatised as the policy of blackmail.

On the last day of March 1887, the government felt the necessity of
introducing a measure based on facts that they had disputed, and on
principles that they had repudiated. Leaseholders were admitted, some
hundred thousand of them. That is, the more solemn of the forms of
agrarian contract were set aside. Other provisions we may pass over. But
this was not the bill to which the report of the Commission pointed. The
pith of that report was the revision and abatement of judicial rents, and
from the new bill this vital point was omitted. It could hardly have been
otherwise after a curt declaration made by the prime minister in the
previous August. “We do not contemplate any revision of judicial rents,”
he said—immediately, by the way, after appointing a commission to find out
what it was that they ought to contemplate. “We do not think it would be
honest in the first place, and we think it would be exceedingly
inexpedient.”(231) He now repeated that to interfere with judicial rents
because prices had fallen, would be to “lay your axe to the root of the
fabric of civilised society.”(232) Before the bill was introduced, Mr.
Balfour, who had gone to the Irish office on the retirement of Sir M. H.
Beach in the month of March, proclaimed in language even more fervid, that
it would be folly and madness to break these solemn contracts.(233)

For that matter, the bill even as it first stood was in direct
contravention to all such high doctrine as this, inasmuch as it clothed a
court with power to vary solemn contracts by fixing a composition for
outstanding debt, and spreading the payment of it over such a time as the
judge might think fit. That, however, was the least part of what finally
overtook the haughty language of the month of April. In May the government
accepted a proposal that the court should not only settle the sum due by
an applicant for relief for outstanding debt, but should fix a reasonable
rent for the rest of the term. This was the very power of variation that
ministers had, as it were only the day before, so roundly denounced. But
then the tenants in Ulster were beginning to growl. In June ministers
withdrew the power of variation, for now it was the landlords who were
growling. Then at last in July the prime minister called his party
together, and told them that if the bill were not altered, Ulster would be
lost to the unionist cause, and that after all he must put into the bill a
general revision of judicial rents for three years. So finally, as it was
put by a speaker of that time, (M134) you have the prime minister
rejecting in April the policy which in May he accepts; rejecting in June
the policy which he had accepted in May; and then in July accepting the
policy which he had rejected in June, and which had been within a few
weeks declared by himself and his colleagues to be inexpedient and
dishonest, to be madness and folly, and to be a laying of the axe to the
very root of the fabric of civilised society. The simplest recapitulation
made the bitterest satire.

The law that finally emerged from these singular operations dealt, it will
be observed in passing, with nothing less than the chief object of Irish
industry and the chief form of Irish property. No wonder that the
landlords lifted up angry voices. True, the minister the year before had
laid it down that if rectification of rents should be proved necessary,
the landlords ought to be compensated by the state. Of this consolatory
balm it is needless to say no more was ever heard; it was only a graceful
sentence in a speech, and proved to have little relation to purpose or
intention. At the Kildare Street club in Dublin members moodily asked one
another whether they might not just as well have had the policy of Mr.
Parnell’s bill adopted on College Green, as adopted at Westminster.



III


The moment had by this time once more come for testing the proposition
from which Mr. Gladstone’s policy had first started. The tory government
had been turned out at the beginning of 1886 upon coercion, and Mr.
Gladstone’s government had in the summer of that year been beaten upon
conciliation. “I ventured to state in 1886,” said Mr. Gladstone a year
later,(234) “that we had arrived at the point where two roads met, or
rather where two roads parted; one of them the road that marked the
endeavour to govern Ireland according to its constitutionally expressed
wishes; the other the road principally marked by ultra-constitutional
measures, growing more and more pronounced in character.” Others, he said,
with whom we had been in close alliance down to that date, considered that
a third course was open, namely liberal concession, stopping short of
autonomy, but upon a careful avoidance of coercion. Now it became visible
that this was a mistake, and that in default of effective conciliation,
coercion was the inevitable alternative. So it happened.

The government again unlocked the ancient armoury, and brought out the
well-worn engines. The new Crimes bill in most particulars followed the
old Act, but it contained one or two serious extensions, including a
clause afterwards dropped, that gave to the crown a choice in cases of
murder or certain other aggravated offences of carrying the prisoner out
of his own country over to England and trying him before a Middlesex jury
at the Old Bailey—a puny imitation of the heroic expedient suggested in
1769, of bringing American rebels over for trial in England under a
slumbering statute of King Henry VIII. The most startling innovation of
all was that the new Act was henceforth to be the permanent law of
Ireland, and all its drastic provisions were to be brought into force
whenever the executive government pleased.(235) This Act was not
restricted as every former law of the kind had been in point of time, to
meet an emergency; it was made a standing instrument of government.
Criminal law and procedure is one of the most important of all the
branches of civil rule, and certainly is one of the most important of all
its elements. This was now in Ireland to shift up and down, to be one
thing to-day and another thing to-morrow at executive discretion. Acts
would be innocent or would be crimes, just as it pleased the Irish
minister. Parliament did not enact that given things were criminal, but
only that they should be criminal when an Irish minister should choose to
say so.(236) Persons charged with them would have the benefit of a jury or
would be deprived of a jury, as the Irish minister might think proper.

(M135) Mr. Parnell was in bad health and took little part, but he made
more than one pulverising attack in that measured and frigid style which,
in a man who knows his case at first hand, may be so much more awkward for
a minister than more florid onslaughts. He discouraged obstruction, and
advised his followers to select vital points and to leave others alone.
This is said to have been the first Coercion bill that a majority of Irish
members voting opposed.

It was at this point that the government suddenly introduced their
historic proposal for closure by guillotine. They carried (June 10) a
resolution that at ten o’clock on that day week the committee stage should
be brought compulsorily to an end, and that any clauses remaining
undisposed of should be put forthwith without amendment or debate. The
most remarkable innovation upon parliamentary rule and practice since
Cromwell and Colonel Pride, was introduced by Mr. Smith in a
characteristic speech, well larded with phrases about duty, right,
responsibility, business of the country, and efficiency of the House.
These solemnising complacencies’ did not hide the mortifying fact that if
it had really been one of the objects of Irish members for ten years past
to work a revolution in the parliament where they were forced against
their will to sit, they had at least, be such a revolution good or bad,
succeeded in their design.

Perhaps looking forward with prophetic eye to a day that actually arrived
six years later, Mr. Gladstone, while objecting to the proposal as
unjustified, threw the responsibility of it upon the government, and used
none of the flaming colours of defiance. The bulk of the liberals
abstained from the division. This practical accord between the two sets of
leading men made the parliamentary revolution definite and finally
clenched it. It was not without something of a funereal pang that members
with a sense of the old traditions of the power, solemnity, and honour of
the House of Commons came down on the evening of the seventeenth of June.
Within a week they would be celebrating the fiftieth year of the reign of
the Queen, and that night’s business was the strange and unforeseen goal
at which a journey of little more than the same period of time along the
high, democratic road had brought the commonalty of the realm since 1832.
Among the provisions that went into the bill without any discussion in
committee were those giving to the Irish executive the power of stamping
an association as unlawful; those dealing with special juries and change
of the place of trial; those specifying the various important conditions
attaching to proclamations, which lay at the foundation of the Act; those
dealing with rules, procedure, and the limits of penalty. The report next
fell under what Burke calls the accursed slider. That stage had taken
three sittings, when the government moved (June 30) that it must close in
four days. So much grace, however, was not needed; for after the motion
had been carried the liberals withdrew from the House, and the Irishmen
betook themselves to the galleries, whence they looked down upon the
mechanical proceedings below.



IV


In Ireland the battle now began in earnest. The Irish minister went into
it with intrepid logic. Though very different men in the deeper parts of
character, Macaulay’s account of Halifax would not be an ill-natured
account of Mr. Balfour. “His understanding was keen, sceptical,
inexhaustibly fertile in distinctions and objections, his taste refined,
his sense of the ludicrous exquisite; his temper placid and forgiving, but
fastidious, and by no means prone either to malevolence or to enthusiastic
admiration.” His business was to show disaffected Ireland that parliament
was her master. Parliament had put the weapon into his hands, and it was
for him to smite his antagonists to the ground. He made no experiments in
judicious mixture, hard blows and soft speech, but held steadily to force
and fear. His apologists argued that after all substantial justice was
done even in what seemed hard cases, and even if the spirit of law were
sometimes a trifle strained. Unluckily the peasant with the blunderbuss,
as he waits behind the hedge for the tyrant or the traitor, says just the
same. The forces of disorder were infinitely less formidable than they had
been a hundred times before. The contest was child’s play compared with
(M136) the violence and confusion with which Mr. Forster or Lord Spencer
had to deal. On the other hand the alliance between liberals and Irish
gave to the struggle a parliamentary complexion, by which no coercion
struggle had ever been marked hitherto. In the dialectic of senate and
platform, Mr. Balfour displayed a strength of wrist, a rapidity, an
instant readiness for combat, that took his foes by surprise, and roused
in his friends a delight hardly surpassed in the politics of our day.

There was another important novelty this time. To England hitherto Irish
coercion had been little more than a word of common form, used without any
thought what the thing itself was like to the people coerced. Now it was
different. Coercion had for once become a flaming party issue, and when
that happens all the world awakes. Mr. Gladstone had proclaimed that the
choice lay between conciliation and coercion. The country would have liked
conciliation, but did not trust his plan. When coercion came, the two
British parties rushed to their swords, and the deciding body of neutrals
looked on with anxiety and concern. There has never been a more
strenuously sustained contest in the history of political campaigns. No
effort was spared to bring the realities of repression vividly home to the
judgment and feelings of men and women of our own island. English visitors
trooped over to Ireland, and brought back stories of rapacious landlords,
violent police, and famishing folk cast out homeless upon the wintry
roadside. Irishmen became the most welcome speakers on British platforms,
and for the first time in all our history they got a hearing for their
lamentable tale. To English audiences it was as new and interesting as the
narrative of an African explorer or a navigator in the Pacific. Our Irish
instructors even came to the curious conclusion that ordinary
international estimates must be revised, and that Englishmen are in truth
far more emotional than Irishmen. Ministerial speakers, on the other hand,
diligently exposed inaccuracy here or over-colouring there. They appealed
to the English distaste for disorder, and to the English taste for
mastery, and they did not overlook the slumbering jealousy of popery and
priestcraft. But the course of affairs was too rapid for them, the strong
harsh doses to the Irish patient were too incessant. The Irish convictions
in cases where the land was concerned rose to 2805, and of these rather
over one-half were in cases where in England the rights of the prisoner
would have been guarded by a jury. The tide of common popular feeling in
this island about the right to combine, the right of public meeting, the
frequent barbarities of eviction, the jarring indignities of prison
treatment, flowed stronger and stronger. The general impression spread
more and more widely that the Irish did not have fair play, that they were
not being treated about speeches and combination and meetings as
Englishmen or Scotchmen would be treated. Even in breasts that had been
most incensed by the sudden reversal of policy in 1886, the feeling slowly
grew that it was perhaps a pity after all that Mr. Gladstone had not been
allowed to persevere on the fair-shining path of conciliation.



V


The proceedings under exceptional law would make an instructive chapter in
the history of the union. Mr. Gladstone followed them vigilantly, once or
twice without his usual exercise of critical faculty, but always bringing
into effective light the contrast between this squalid policy and his
anticipations of his own. Here we are only concerned with what affected
British opinion on the new policy. One set of distressing incidents, not
connected with the Crimes Act, created disgust and even horror in the
country and set Mr. Gladstone on fire. A meeting of some six thousand
persons assembled in a large public square at Mitchelstown in the county
of Cork.(237) It was a good illustration of Mr. Gladstone’s habitual
strategy in public movements, that he should have boldly and promptly
seized on the doings at Mitchelstown as an incident well fitted to arrest
the attention of the country. “Remember Mitchelstown” became a watchword.
The chairman, speaking from a carriage that did duty for a platform,
opened the proceedings. Then a file of police endeavoured to force a way
through the densest part of the (M137) crowd for a government note-taker.
Why they did not choose an easier mode of approach from the rear, or by
the side; why they had not got their reporter on to the platform before
the business began; and why they had not beforehand asked for
accommodation as was the practice, were three points never explained. The
police unable to make a way through the crowd retired to the outskirt. The
meeting went on. In a few minutes a larger body of police pressed up
through the thick of the throng to the platform. A violent struggle began,
the police fighting their way through the crowd with batons and clubbed
rifles. The crowd flung stones and struck out with sticks, and after three
or four minutes the police fled to their barracks—some two hundred and
fifty yards away. So far there is no material discrepancy in the various
versions of this dismal story. What followed is matter of conflicting
testimony. One side alleged that a furious throng rushed after the police,
attacked the barrack, and half murdered a constable outside, and that the
constables inside in order to save their comrade and to beat off the
assailing force, opened fire from an upper window. The other side declared
that no crowd followed the retreating police at all, that the assault on
the barrack was a myth, and that the police fired without orders from any
responsible officer, in mere blind panic and confusion. One old man was
shot dead, two others were mortally wounded and died within a week.

Three days later the affray was brought before the House of Commons. Any
one could see from the various reports that the conduct of the police, the
resistance of the crowd, and the guilt or justification of the bloodshed,
were all matters in the utmost doubt and demanding rigorous inquiry. Mr.
Balfour pronounced instant and peremptory judgment. The thing had happened
on the previous Friday. The official report, however rapidly prepared,
could not have reached him until the morning of Sunday. His officers at
the Castle had had no opportunity of testing their official report by
cross-examination of the constables concerned, nor by inspection of the
barrack, the line of fire, and other material elements of the case. Yet on
the strength of this hastily drawn and unsifted report received by him
from Ireland on Sunday, and without even waiting for any information that
eye-witnesses in the House might have to lay before him in the course of
the discussion, the Irish minister actually told parliament once for all,
on the afternoon of Monday, that he was of opinion, “looking at the matter
in the most impartial spirit, that the police were in no way to blame, and
that no responsibility rested upon any one except upon those who convened
the meeting under circumstances which they knew would lead to excitement
and might lead to outrage.”(238) The country was astounded to see the most
critical mind in all the House swallow an untested police report whole; to
hear one of the best judges in all the country of the fallibility of human
testimony, give offhand, in what was really a charge of murder, a verdict
of Not Guilty, after he had read the untested evidence on one side.

The rest was all of a piece. The coroner’s inquest was held in due course.
The proceedings were not more happily conducted than was to be expected
where each side followed the counsels of ferocious exasperation. The jury,
after some seventeen days of it, returned a verdict of wilful murder
against the chief police officer and five of his men. This inquisition was
afterwards quashed (February 10, 1888) in the Queen’s bench, on the ground
that the coroner had perpetrated certain irregularities of form. Nobody
has doubted that the Queen’s bench was right; it seemed as if there had
been a conspiracy of all the demons of human stupidity in this tragic
bungle, from the first forcing of the reporter through the crowd, down to
the inquest on the three slain men and onwards. The coroner’s inquest
having broken down, reasonable opinion demanded that some other public
inquiry should be held. Even supporters of the government demanded it. If
three men had been killed by the police in connection with a public
meeting in England or Scotland, no home secretary would have dreamed for
five minutes of resisting such a demand. Instead of a public inquiry, what
the chief secretary did was to appoint a (M138) confidential departmental
committee of policemen privately to examine, not whether the firing was
justified by the circumstances, but how it came about that the police were
so handled by their officers that a large force was put to flight by a
disorderly mob. The three deaths were treated as mere accident and
irrelevance. The committee was appointed to correct the discipline of the
force, said the Irish minister, and in no sense to seek justification for
actions which, in his opinion, required no justification.(239) Endless
speeches were made in the House and out of it; members went over to
Mitchelstown to measure distances, calculate angles, and fire imaginary
rifles out of the barrack window; all sorts of theories of ricochet shots
were invented, photographs and diagrams were taken. Some held the police
to be justified, others held them to be wholly unjustified. But without a
judicial inquiry, such as had been set up in the case of Belfast in 1886,
all these doings were futile. The government remained stubborn. The
slaughter of the three men was finally left just as if it had been the
slaughter of three dogs. No other incident of Irish administration stirred
deeper feelings of disgust in Ireland, or of misgiving and indignation in
England.

Here was, in a word, the key to the new policy. Every act of Irish
officials was to be defended. No constable could be capable of excess. No
magistrate could err. No prison rule was over harsh. Every severity
technically in order must be politic.



VI


Among other remarkable incidents, the Pope came to the rescue, and sent an
emissary to inquire into Irish affairs. The government had lively hopes of
the emissary, and while they beat the Orange drum in Ulster with one hand,
with the other they stealthily twitched the sleeve of Monsignor Persico.
It came to little. The Congregation at Rome were directed by the Pope to
examine whether it was lawful to resort to the plan of campaign. They
answered that it was contrary both to natural justice and Christian
charity. The papal rescript, embodying this conclusion, was received in
Ireland with little docility. Unwisely the cardinals had given reasons,
and the reasons, instead of springing in the mystic region of faith and
morals, turned upon issues of fact as to fair rents. But then the Irish
tenant thought himself a far better judge of a fair rent, than all the
cardinals that ever wore red hats. If he had heard of such a thing as
Jansenism, he would have known that he was in his own rude way taking up a
position not unlike that of the famous teachers of Port Royal two hundred
and thirty years before, that the authority of the Holy See is final as to
doctrine, but may make a mistake as to fact.

Mr. Parnell spoke tranquilly of “a document from a distant country,” and
publicly left the matter to his catholic countrymen.(240) Forty catholic
members of parliament met at the Mansion House in Dublin, and signed a
document in which they flatly denied every one of the allegations and
implications about fair rents, free contract, the land commission and all
the rest, and roundly declared the Vatican circular to be an instrument of
the unscrupulous foes both of the Holy See and of the people of Ireland.
They told the Pope, that while recognising unreservedly as catholics the
spiritual jurisdiction of the Holy See, they were bound solemnly to affirm
that Irish catholics recognise no rights in Rome to interfere in their
political affairs. A great meeting in the Phœnix Park ratified the same
position by acclamation. At Cork, under the presidency of the mayor, and
jealously watched by forces of horse and foot, a great gathering in a
scene of indescribable excitement protested that they would never allow
the rack-renters of Ireland to grind them down at the instigation of
intriguers at Rome. Even in many cities in the United States the same
voice was heard. The bishops knew well that the voice was strongly marked
by the harsh accent of their Fenian adversaries. They issued a declaration
of their own, protesting to their flocks that the rescript was confined
within the spiritual sphere, and that his holiness was far from wishing to
prejudice the nationalist movement. In the closing week of the year, the
Pope himself judged that the time had come for him to make known (M139)
that the action which had been “so sadly misunderstood,” had been prompted
by the desire to keep the cause in which Ireland was struggling from being
weakened by the introduction of anything that could justly be brought in
reproach against it.(241) The upshot of the intervention was that the
action condemned by the rescript was not materially affected within the
area already disturbed; but the rescript may have done something to
prevent its extension elsewhere.



VII


Among the entries for 1887 there occur:—


    _Sandringham, Jan. 29._—A large party. We were received with the
    usual delicacy and kindness. Much conversation with the Prince of
    Wales.... Walk with ——, who charmed me much. _Jan. 31._—Off by 11
    A.M. to Cambridge.... Dined with the master of Trinity in hall.
    Went over the Newnham buildings: greatly pleased. Saw Mr.
    Sidgwick. Evening service at King’s.... _Feb. 2._—Hawarden at
    5.30. Set to work on papers. Finished Greville’s Journals. _Feb.
    3._—Wrote on Greville. _Feb. 5._—Felled a chestnut. _Feb.
    27._—Read Lord Shaftesbury’s _Memoirs_—an excellent discipline for
    me. _March 5._— Dollis Hill [a house near Willesden often lent to
    him in these times by Lord and Lady Aberdeen] a refuge from my
    timidity, unwilling at 77 to begin a new London house. _March
    9._—Windsor [to dine and sleep]. The Queen courteous as always;
    somewhat embarrassed, as I thought. _March 29._—Worked on Homer,
    Apollo, etc. Then turned to the Irish business and revolved much,
    with extreme difficulty in licking the question into shape. Went
    to the House and spoke 1-½ hours as carefully and with as much
    measure as I could. Conclave on coming course of business. _April
    5._—Conversation with Mr. Chamberlain—ambiguous result, but some
    ground made. _April 18._—H. of C. 4-½-8-¼ and 10-2. Spoke 1-¼ h.
    My voice did its duty but with great effort. _April 25._—Spoke for
    an hour upon the budget. R. Churchill excellent. Conclave on the
    forged letters. _May 4._—Read earlier speeches of yesterday with
    care, and worked up the subject of Privilege. Spoke 1-¼ h.


In June (1887) Mr. Gladstone started on a political campaign in South
Wales, where his reception was one of the most triumphant in all his
career. Ninety-nine hundredths of the vast crowds who gave up wages for
the sake of seeing him and doing him honour were strong protestants, yet
he said to a correspondent, “they made this demonstration in order to
secure firstly and mainly justice to catholic Ireland. It is not after all
a bad country in which such things take place.”

It was at Swansea that he said what he had to say about the Irish members.
He had never at any time from the hour when he formed his government, set
up their exclusion as a necessary condition of home rule. All that he ever
bargained for was that no proposal for inclusion should be made a ground
for impairing real and effective self-government. Subject to this he was
ready to adjourn the matter and to leave things as they were, until
experience should show the extent of the difficulty and the best way of
meeting it. Provisional exclusion had been suggested by a member of great
weight in the party in 1886. The new formula was provisional inclusion.
This announcement restored one very distinguished adherent to Mr.
Gladstone, and it appeased the clamour of the busy knot who called
themselves imperial federationists. Of course it opened just as many new
difficulties as it closed old ones, but both old difficulties and new fell
into the background before the struggle in Ireland.


    _June 2, 1887._—Off at 11.40. A tumultuous but interesting journey
    to Swansea and Singleton, where we were landed at 7.30. Half a
    dozen speeches on the way. A small party to dinner. 3.—A “quiet
    day.” Wrote draft to the associations on the road, as model. Spent
    the forenoon in settling plans and discussing the lines of my
    meditated statement to-morrow with Sir Hussey Vivian, Lord
    Aberdare, and Mr. Stuart Rendel. In the afternoon we went to the
    cliffs and the Mumbles, and I gave some hours to writing
    preliminary notes on a business where all depends on the manner of
    handling. Small party to dinner. Read Cardiff and Swansea guides.
    4.—More study and notes. 12-4-½ the astonishing procession. Sixty
    thousand! Then spoke for near an hour. Dinner at 8, near an
    hundred, arrangements perfect. Spoke for nearly another hour; got
    through a most difficult business as well as I could expect.
    5.—Church 11 A.M., notable sermon and H. C. (service long), again
    6-½ P.M., good sermon. Wrote to Sir W. Harcourt, Mr. Morley, etc.
    Walked in the garden. Considered the question of a non-political
    address “in council”; we all decided against it. 6.—Surveys in the
    house, then 12-4 to Swansea for the freedom and opening the town
    library. I was rather jealous of a non-political affair at such a
    time, but could not do less than speak for thirty or thirty-five
    minutes for the two occasions. 4-8 to Park Farm, the beautiful
    vales, breezy common and the curious chambered cairn. Small
    dinner-party. 7.—Off at 8.15 and a hard day to London, the
    occasion of processions, hustles, and speeches; that at Newport in
    the worst atmosphere known since the Black Hole. Poor C. too was
    an invalid. Spoke near an hour to 3000 at Cardiff; about ¼ hour at
    Newport; more briefly at Gloucester and Swindon. Much enthusiasm
    even in the English part of the journey. Our party was reduced at
    Newport to the family, at Gloucester to our two selves. C. H.
    Terrace at 6.20. Wrote to get off the House of Commons. It has
    really been a “progress,” and an extraordinary one.


In December 1887, under the pressing advice of his physician, though “with
a great lazy reluctance,” Mr. Gladstone set his face with a family party
towards Florence. He found the weather more northern than at Hawarden, but
it was healthy. He was favourably impressed by all he saw of Italian
society (English being cultivated to a degree that surprised him), but he
did his best to observe Sir Andrew Clark’s injunction that he should
practise the Trappist discipline of silence, and the condition of his
voice improved in consequence. He read Scartazzini’s book on Dante, and
found it fervid, generally judicial, and most unsparing in labour; and he
was much interested in Beugnot’s _Chute du Paganisme_. And as usual, he
returned homeward as unwillingly as he had departed. During the session he
fought his Irish battle with unsparing tenacity, and the most conspicuous
piece of his activity out of parliament was a pilgrimage to Birmingham
(November 1888). It was a great gathering of lieutenants and leading
supporters from, every part of the country. Here is a note of mine:—


    On the day of the great meeting in Bingley Hall, somebody came to
    say that Mr. Gladstone wanted to know if I could supply him with a
    certain passage from a speech of Lord Hartington’s. I found him in
    his dressing-gown, conning his notes and as lively as youth. He
    jumped up and pressed point after point on me, as if I had been a
    great public meeting. I offered to go down to the public library
    and hunt for the passage; he deprecated this, but off I went, and
    after some search unearthed the passage, and copied it out. In the
    evening I went to dine with him before the meeting. He had been
    out for a short walk to the Oratory in the afternoon to call on
    Cardinal Newman. He was not allowed, he told me, to see the
    cardinal, but he had had a long talk with Father Neville. He found
    that Newman was in the habit of reading with a reflector candle,
    but had not a good one. “So I said I had a good one, and I sent it
    round to him.” He was entirely disengaged in mind during dinner,
    ate and drank his usual quantity, and talked at his best about all
    manner of things. At the last moment he was telling us of John
    Hunter’s confirmation, from his own medical observation, of
    Homer’s remark about Dolon; a bad fellow, whose badness Homer
    explains by the fact that he was a brother brought up among
    sisters only:—

    αὐτὰρ δ᾽ μοῦνος ἔην μετὰ πέντε κασιγνήτῃσιν.(242)

    Oliver Cromwell, by the way, was an only surviving boy among seven
    sisters, so we cannot take either poet or surgeon for gospel. Time
    was up, and bore us away from Homer and Hunter. He was perfectly
    silent in the carriage, as I remembered Bright had been when years
    before I drove with him to the same hall. The sight of the vast
    meeting was almost appalling, from fifteen to seventeen thousand
    people. He spoke with great vigour and freedom; the fine passages
    probably heard all over; many other passages certainly not heard,
    but his gestures so strong and varied as to be almost as
    interesting as the words would have been. The speech lasted an
    hour and fifty minutes; and he was not at all exhausted when he
    sat down. The scene at the close was absolutely indescribable and
    incomparable, overwhelming like the sea.


He took part in parliamentary business at the beginning of December. On
December 3rd he spoke on Ireland with immense fervour and passion. He was
roused violently by the chairman’s attempt to rule out strong language
from debate, and made a vehement passage on that point. The substance of
the speech was rather thin and not new, but the delivery magnificent. The
Irish minister rose to reply at 7.50, and Mr. Gladstone reluctantly made
up his mind to dine in the House. A friend by his side said No, and at
8.40 hurried him down the back-stairs to a hospitable board in Carlton
Gardens. He was nearly voiceless, until it was time for the rest of us to
go back. A speedy meal revived him, and he was soon discoursing on
O’Connell and many other persons and things, with boundless force and
vivacity.

A few days later he was carried off to Naples. Hereto, he told Lord Acton,
“we have been induced by three circumstances. First, a warm invitation
from the Dufferins to Rome; as to which, however, there are _cons_ as well
as _pros_ for a man who like me is neither Italian nor Curial in the view
of present policies. Secondly, our kind friend Mr. Stuart Rendel has
actually offered to be our conductor thither and back, to perform for us
the great service which you rendered us in the trip to Munich and Saint
Martin. Thirdly, I have the hope that the stimulating climate of Naples,
together with an abstention from speech greater than any I have before
enjoyed, may act upon my ‘vocal cord,’ and partially at least restore it.”




Chapter III. The Special Commission. (1887-1890)


    My Lords, it appears to me that the measure is unfortunate in its
    origin, unfortunate in its scope and object, and unfortunate in
    the circumstances which accompanied its passage through the other
    House. It appears to me to establish a precedent most novel, and
    fraught with the utmost danger.—LORD HERSCHELL.(243)



I


Mr. Gladstone’s ceaseless attention to the many phases of the struggle
that was now the centre of his public life, was especially engaged on what
remains the most amazing of them. I wish it were possible to pass it over,
or throw it into a secondary place; but it is too closely connected with
the progress of Mr. Gladstone’s Irish policy in British opinion at a
critical stage, and it is still the subject of too many perversions that
affect his name. Transactions are to be found in our annals where wrong
was done by government to individuals on a greater scale, where a powerful
majority devised engines for the proscription of a weak minority with
deadlier aim, and where the omnipotence of parliament was abused for the
purpose of faction with more ruthless result. But whether we look at the
squalid fraud in which the incident began, or at the tortuous
parliamentary pretences by which it was worked out, or at the perversion
of fundamental principles of legal administration involved in sending men
to answer the gravest charges before a tribunal specially constituted at
the absolute discretion of their bitterest political opponents—at the
moment engaged in a fierce contest with them in another field—from
whatever point of view we approach, the erection of the Special Commission
of 1888 stands out as one of the ugliest things done in the name and under
the forms of law in this island during the century.

(M140) In the spring of 1887 the conductors of _The Times_, intending to
strengthen the hands of the government in their new and doubtful struggle,
published a series of articles, in which old charges against the Irish
leader and his men were served up with fresh and fiery condiments. The
allegations of crime were almost all indefinite; the method was by
allusion, suggestion, innuendo, and the combination of ingeniously
selected pieces, to form a crude and hideous mosaic. Partly from its
extravagance, partly because it was in substance stale, the thing missed
fire.

On the day on which the division was to be taken on the second reading of
the Coercion bill, a more formidable bolt was shot. On that morning (April
18th, 1887), there appeared in the newspaper, with all the fascination of
facsimile, a letter alleged to be written by Mr. Parnell. It was dated
nine days after the murders in the Phœnix Park, and purported to be an
apology, presumably to some violent confederate, for having as a matter of
expediency openly condemned the murders, though in truth the writer
thought that one of the murdered men deserved his fate.(244) Special point
was given to the letter by a terrible charge, somewhat obliquely but still
unmistakably made, in an article five or six weeks before, that Mr.
Parnell closely consorted with the leading Invincibles when he was
released on parole in April 1882; that he probably learned from them what
they were about; and that he recognised the murders in the Phœnix Park as
their handiwork.(245) The significance of the letter therefore was that,
knowing the bloody deed to be theirs, he wrote for his own safety to
qualify, recall, and make a humble apology for the condemnation which he
had thought it politic publicly to pronounce. The town was thrown into a
great ferment. At the political clubs and in the lobbies, all was
complacent jubilation on the one side, and consternation on the other.
Even people with whom politics were a minor interest were shocked by such
an exposure of the grievous depravity of man.

Mr. Parnell did not speak until one o’clock in the morning, immediately
before the division on the second reading of the bill. He began amid the
deepest silence. His denial was scornful but explicit. The letter, he
said, was an audacious fabrication. It is fair to admit that the
ministerialists were not without some excuse of a sort for the incredulous
laughter with which they received this repudiation. They put their trust
in the most serious, the most powerful, the most responsible, newspaper in
the world; greatest in resources, in authority, in universal renown.
Neglect of any possible precaution against fraud and forgery in a document
to be used for the purpose of blasting a great political opponent would be
culpable in no common degree. Of this neglect people can hardly be blamed
for thinking that the men of business, men of the world, and men of honour
who were masters of the _Times_, must be held absolutely incapable.

Those who took this view were encouraged in it by the prime minister.
Within four-and-twenty hours he publicly took the truth of the story, with
all its worst innuendoes, entirely for granted. He went with rapid stride
from possibility to probability, and from probability to certainty. In a
speech, of which precipitate credulity was not the only fault, Lord
Salisbury let fall the sentence: “When men who knew gentlemen who
intimately knew Mr. Parnell murdered Mr. Burke.” He denounced Mr.
Gladstone for making a trusted friend of such a man—one who had “mixed on
terms of intimacy with those whose advocacy of assassination was well
known.” Then he went further. “You may go back,” he said, “to the
beginning of British government, you may go back from decade to decade,
and from leader to leader, but you will never find a man who has accepted
a position, in reference to an ally tainted with the strong presumption of
conniving at assassination, which has been accepted by Mr. Gladstone at
the present time.”(246) Seldom has party spirit led eminent personages to
greater lengths of dishonouring absurdity.

Now and afterwards people asked why Mr. Parnell did not promptly bring his
libellers before a court of law. The answer was simple. The case would
naturally have been tried in London. In other words, not only the
plaintiff’s own character, but the whole movement that he represented,
would have been submitted to a Middlesex jury, with all the national and
political prejudices inevitable in such a body, and with all the twelve
chances of a disagreement, that would be almost as disastrous to Mr.
Parnell as an actual verdict for his assailants. The issues were too great
to be exposed to the hazards of a cast of the die. Then, why not lay the
venue in Ireland? It was true that a favourable verdict might just as
reasonably be expected from the prepossessions of Dublin, as an
unfavourable one from the prepossessions of London. But the moral effect
of an Irish verdict upon English opinion would be exactly as worthless, as
the effect of an English verdict in a political or international case
would be upon the judgment and feeling of Ireland. To procure a
condemnation of the _Times_ at the Four Courts, as a means of affecting
English opinion, would not be worth a single guinea. Undoubtedly the
subsequent course of this strange history fully justified the advice that
Mr. Parnell received in this matter from the three persons in the House of
Commons with whom on this point he took counsel.



II


The prudent decision against bringing a fierce political controversy
before an English judge and jury was in a few months brought to nought,
from motives that have remained obscure, and with results that nobody
could foresee. The next act in the drama was the institution of
proceedings for libel against the _Times_ in November 1887, by an Irishman
who had formerly sat in parliament as a political follower of Mr. Parnell.
The newspaper met him by denying that the articles on _Parnellism and
Crime_ related to him. It went on to plead that the statements in the
articles were true in substance and in fact. The action was tried before
Lord Coleridge in July 1888, and the newspaper was represented by the
advocate who happened to be the principal law officer of the crown. The
plaintiff’s counsel picked out certain passages, said that his client was
one of the persons intended to be libelled, and claimed damages. He was
held to have made an undoubted _prima facie_ case on the two libels in
which he had been specifically named. This gave the enemy his chance. The
attorney general, speaking for three days, opened the whole case for the
newspaper; repeated and enlarged upon the charges and allegations in its
articles; stated the facts which he proposed to give in evidence; sought
to establish that the fac-simile letter was really signed by Mr. Parnell;
and finally put forward other letters, now produced for the first time,
which carried complicity and connivance to a further point. These charges
he said that he should prove. On the third day he entirely changed his
tack. Having launched this mass of criminating imputation, he then
suddenly bethought him, so he said, of the hardships which his course
would entail upon the Irishmen, and asked that in that action he should
not be called upon to prove anything at all. The Irishmen and their leader
remained under a load of odium that the law officer of the crown had cast
upon them, and declined to substantiate.

The production of this further batch of letters stirred Mr. Parnell from
his usual impassiveness. His former determination to sit still was shaken.
The day after the attorney general’s speech, he came to the present writer
to say that he thought of sending a paragraph to the newspapers that
night, with an announcement of his intention to bring an action against
the _Times_, narrowed to the issue of the letters. The old arguments
against an action were again pressed upon him. He insisted, on the other
side, that he was not afraid of cross-examination; that they might
cross-examine as much as ever they pleased, either about the doings of the
land league or the letters; that his hands would be found to be clean, and
the letters to be gross (M141) forgeries. The question between us was
adjourned; and meanwhile he fell in with my suggestion that he should the
next day make a personal statement to the House. The personal statement
was made in his most frigid manner, and it was as frigidly received. He
went through the whole of the letters, one by one; showed the palpable
incredibility of some of them upon their very face, and in respect of
those which purported to be written by himself, he declared, in words free
from all trace of evasion, that he had never written them, never signed
them, never directed nor authorised them to be written.

So the matter was left on the evening of Friday (July 6, 1888). On Monday
Mr. Parnell came to the House with the intention to ask for a select
committee. The feeling of the English friend to whom he announced his
intention in the lobby, still was that the matter might much better be
left where it stood. The new batch of letters had strengthened his
position, for the Kilmainham letter was a fraud upon the face of it, and a
story that he had given a hundred pounds to a fugitive from justice after
the murders, had been demolished. The press throughout the country had
treated the subject very coolly. The government would pretty certainly
refuse a select committee, and what would be the advantage to him in the
minds of persons inclined to think him guilty, of making a demand which he
knew beforehand would be declined? Such was the view now pressed upon Mr.
Parnell. This time he was not moved. He took his own course, as he had a
paramount right to do. He went into the House and asked the ministers to
grant a select committee to inquire into the authenticity of the letters
read at the recent trial. Mr. Smith replied, as before, that the House was
absolutely incompetent to deal with the charges. Mr. Parnell then gave
notice that he would that night put on the paper the motion for a
committee, and on Thursday demand a day for its discussion.

When Thursday arrived, either because the hot passion of the majority was
irresistible, or from a cool calculation of policy, or simply because the
situation was becoming intolerable, a new decision had been taken, itself
far more intolerable than the scandal that it was to dissipate. The
government met the Irish leader with a refusal and an offer. They would
not give a committee, but they were willing to propose a commission to
consist wholly or mainly of judges, with statutory power to inquire into
“the allegations and charges made against members of parliament by the
defendants in the recent action.” If the gentlemen from Ireland were
prepared to accept the offer, the government would at once put on the
paper for the following Monday, notice of motion for leave to bring in a
bill.(247)

When the words of the notice of motion appeared in print, it was found
amid universal astonishment that the special commission was to inquire
into the charges and allegations generally, not only against certain
members of parliament, but also against “other persons.” The enormity of
this sudden extension of the operation was palpable. A certain member is
charged with the authorship of incriminating letters. To clear his
character as a member of parliament, he demands a select committee. We
decline to give a committee, says the minister, but we offer you a
commission of judges, and you may take our offer or refuse, as you please;
only the judges must inquire not merely into your question of the letters,
but into all the charges and allegations made against all of you, and not
these only, but into the charges and allegations made against other people
as well. This was extraordinary enough, but it was not all.

It is impossible to feel much surprise that Mr. Parnell was ready to
assent to any course, however unconstitutional that course might be, if
only it led to the exposure of an insufferable wrong. The credit of
parliament and the sanctity of constitutional right were no supreme
concern of his. He was burning to get at any expedient, committee or
commission, which should enable him to unmask and smite his hidden foes.
Much of his private language at this time was in some respects vague and
ineffectual, but he was naturally averse to any course that might, in his
own words, look like backing down. “Of course,” he said, “I am not sure
that we shall come off with flying colours. But I think we shall. I am
never sure of anything.” He was still confident that he had the clue.

On the second stage of the transaction, Mr. Smith, in answer to various
questions in the early part of the sitting, made a singular declaration.
The bill, he said, of which he had given notice, was a bill to be
introduced in accordance with the offer already made. “I do not desire to
debate the proposal; and I have put it in this position on the Order Book,
in order that it may be rejected or accepted by the honourable member in
the form in which it stands.” Then in the next sentence, he said, “If the
motion is received and accepted by the House, the bill will be printed and
circulated, and I will then name a day for the second reading. But I may
say frankly that I do not anticipate being able to make provision for a
debate on the second reading of a measure of this kind. It was an offer
made by the government to the honourable gentleman and his friends, to be
either accepted or rejected.”(248) The minister treated his bill as
lightly as if it were some small proposal of ordinary form and of even
less than ordinary importance. It is not inconceivable that there was
design in this, for Mr. Smith concealed under a surface of plain and
homely worth a very full share of parliamentary craft, and he knew well
enough that the more extraordinary the measure, the more politic it always
is to open with an air of humdrum.

The bill came on at midnight July 16, in a House stirred with intense
excitement, closely suppressed. The leader of the House made the motion
for leave to introduce the most curious innovation of the century, in a
speech of half-a-minute. It might have been a formal bill for a
provisional order, to be taken as of course. Mr. Parnell, his ordinary
pallor made deeper by anger, and with unusual though very natural
vehemence of demeanour, at once hit the absurdity of asking him whether he
accepted or rejected the bill, not only before it was printed but without
explanation of its contents. He then pressed in two or three weighty
sentences the deeper absurdity of leaving him any option at all. The
attorney general had said of the story of the fac-simile letter, that if
it was not genuine, it was the worst libel ever launched on a public man.
If the first lord believed his attorney, said Mr. Parnell, instead of
talking about making a bargain with me, he ought to have come down and
said, “The government are determined to have this investigation, whether
the honourable member, this alleged criminal, likes it or not.”(249)

That was in fact precisely what the government had determined. The
profession that the bill was a benevolent device for enabling the alleged
criminals to extricate themselves was very soon dropped. The offer of a
boon to be accepted or declined at discretion was transformed into a grand
compulsory investigation into the connection of the national and land
leagues with agrarian crime, and the members of parliament were virtually
put into the dock along with all sorts of other persons who chanced to be
members of those associations. The effect was certain. Any facts showing
criminality in this or that member of the league would be taken to show
criminality in the organisation as a whole, and especially in the
political leaders. And the proceeding could only be vindicated by the
truly outrageous principle that where a counsel in a suit finds it his
duty as advocate to make grave charges against members of parliament in
court, then it becomes an obligation on the government to ask for an Act
to appoint a judicial commission to examine those charges, if only they
are grave enough.

The best chance of frustrating the device was lost when the bill was
allowed to pass its first reading unopposed. Three of the leaders of the
liberal opposition—two in the Commons, one in the Lords—were for making a
bold stand against the bill from the first. Mr. Gladstone, on the
contrary, with his lively instinct for popular feeling out of doors,
disliked any action indicative of reluctance to face inquiry; and though
holding a strong view that no case had been made out for putting aside the
constitutional and convenient organ of a committee, yet he thought that an
(M142) inquiry under thoroughly competent and impartial judges, after the
right and true method of proceeding had been refused, was still better
than no proceeding at all. This much of assent, however, was qualified. “I
think,” he said, “that an inquiry under thoroughly competent and impartial
judges is better than none. But that inquiry must, I think, be put into
such a shape as shall correspond with the general law and principles of
justice.” As he believed, the first and most indispensable conditions of
an effective inquiry were wanting, and without them he “certainly would
have no responsibility whatever.”(250)

For the first few days politicians were much adrift. They had moments of
compunction. Whether friends or foes of the Irish, they were perplexed by
the curious double aspect of the measure. Mr. Parnell himself began to
feel misgivings, as he came to realise the magnitude of the inquiry, its
vast expense, its interminable length, its unfathomable uncertainties. On
the day appointed for the second reading of the bill appointing the
commission (July 23), some other subject kept the business back until
seven o’clock. Towards six, Mr. Parnell who was to open the debate on his
own side, came to an English friend, to ask whether there would be time
for him to go away for an hour; he wished to examine some new furnace for
assaying purposes, the existence of gold in Wicklow being one of his fixed
ideas. So steady was the composure of this extraordinary man. The English
friend grimly remarked to him that it would perhaps be rather safer not to
lose sight of the furnace in which at any moment his own assaying might
begin. His speech on this critical occasion was not one of his best.
Indifference to his audience often made him meagre, though he was scarcely
ever other than clear, and in this debate there was only one effective
point which it was necessary for him to press. The real issue was whether
the reference to the judges should be limited or unlimited; should be a
fishing inquiry at large into the history of an agrarian agitation ten
years old, or an examination into definite and specified charges against
named members of parliament. The minister, in moving the second reading,
no longer left it to the Irish members to accept or reject; it now rested,
he said, with the House to decide. It became evident that the acuter
members of the majority, fully awakened to the opportunities for
destroying the Irishmen which an unlimited inquisition might furnish, had
made up their minds that no limit should be set to the scope of the
inquisition. Boldly they tramped through a thick jungle of fallacy and
inconsistency. They had never ceased to insist, and they insisted now,
that Mr. Parnell ought to have gone into a court of law. Yet they fought
as hard as they could against every proposal for making the procedure of
the commission like the procedure of a law court. In a court there would
have been a specific indictment. Here a specific indictment was what they
most positively refused, and for it they substituted a roving inquiry,
which is exactly what a court never undertakes. They first argued that
nothing but a commission was available to test the charges against members
of parliament. Then, when they had bethought themselves of further
objects, they argued round that it was unheard of and inconceivable to
institute a royal commission for members of parliament alone.

All arguments, however unanswerable, were at this stage idle, because Mr.
Parnell had reverted to his original resolution to accept the bill, and at
his request the radicals sitting below him abandoned their opposition. The
bill passed the second reading without a division. This circumstance
permitted the convenient assertion, made so freely afterwards, that the
bill, irregular, unconstitutional, violent, as it might be, at any rate
received the unanimous assent of the House of Commons.

Stormy scenes marked the progress of the bill through committee. Seeing
the exasperation produced by their shifting of the ground, and the delay
which it would naturally entail, ministers resolved on a bold step. It was
now August. Government remembered the process by which they had carried
the Coercion bill, and they improved upon it. After three days of
committee, they moved that at one o’clock in the morning on the fourth
sitting the (M143) chairman should break off discussion, put forthwith the
question already proposed from the chair, then successively put forthwith
all the remaining clauses, and so report the bill to the House. This
process shut out all amendments not reached at the fatal hour, and is the
most drastic and sweeping of all forms of closure. In the case of the
Coercion bill, resort to the guillotine was declared to be warranted by
the urgency of social order in Ireland. That plea was at least plausible.
No such plea of urgency could be invoked for a measure, which only a few
days before the government had considered to be of such secondary
importance, that the simple rejection of it by Mr. Parnell was to be
enough to induce them to withdraw it. The bill that had been proffered as
a generous concession to Irish members, was now violently forced upon them
without debate. Well might Mr. Gladstone speak of the most extraordinary
series of proceedings that he had ever known.(251)



III


The three judges first met on September 17, 1888, to settle their
procedure. They sat for one hundred and twenty-eight days, and rose for
the last time on November 22, 1889. More than four hundred and fifty
witnesses were examined. One counsel spoke for five days, another for
seven, and a third for nearly twelve. The mammoth record of the
proceedings fills eleven folio volumes, making between seven and eight
thousand pages. The questions put to witnesses numbered ninety-eight
thousand.

It was a strange and fantastic scene. Three judges were trying a social
and political revolution. The leading actors in it were virtually in the
dock. The tribunal had been specially set up by their political opponents,
without giving them any effective voice either in its composition or upon
the character and scope of its powers. For the first time in England since
the Great Rebellion, men were practically put upon their trial on a
political charge, without giving them the protection of a jury. For the
first time in that period judges were to find a verdict upon the facts of
crime. The charge placed in the forefront was a charge of conspiracy. But
to call a combination a conspiracy does not make it a conspiracy or a
guilty combination, unless the verdict of a jury pronounces it to be one.
A jury would have taken all the large attendant circumstances into
account. The three judges felt themselves bound expressly to shut out
those circumstances. In words of vital importance, they said, “We must
leave it for politicians to discuss, and for statesmen to determine, in
what respects the present laws affecting land in Ireland are capable of
improvement. _We have no commission to consider whether the conduct of
which they are accused can be palliated by the circumstances of the time,
or whether it should be condoned in consideration of benefits alleged to
have resulted from their action._”(252) When the proceedings were over,
Lord Salisbury applauded the report as “giving a very complete view of a
very curious episode of our internal history.”(253) A very complete view
of an agrarian rising—though it left out all palliating circumstances and
the whole state of agrarian law!

Instead of opening with the letters, as the country expected, the accusers
began by rearing a prodigious accumulation of material, first for the
Irish or agrarian branch of their case, and then for the American branch.
The government helped them to find their witnesses, and so varied a host
was never seen in London before. There was the peasant from Kerry in his
frieze swallow-tail and knee-breeches, and the woman in her scarlet
petticoat who runs barefoot over the bog in Galway. The convicted member
of a murder club was brought up in custody from Mountjoy prison or
Maryborough. One of the most popular of the Irish representatives had been
fetched from his dungeon, and was to be seen wandering through the lobbies
in search of his warders. Men who had been shot by moonlighters limped
into the box, and poor women in their blue-hooded cloaks told pitiful
tales of midnight horror. The sharp spy was there, who disclosed sinister
secrets from cities across the Atlantic, and the uncouth informer who
betrayed or invented the history of rude and ferocious plots hatched at
the country cross-roads (M144) or over the peat fire in desolate cabins in
western Ireland. Divisional commissioners with their ledgers of agrarian
offences, agents with bags full of figures and documents, landlords,
priests, prelates, magistrates, detectives, smart members of that famous
constabulary force which is the arm, eye, and ear of the Irish
government—all the characters of the Irish melodrama were crowded into the
corridors, and in their turn brought out upon the stage of this surprising
theatre.

The proceedings speedily settled down into the most wearisome drone that
was ever heard in a court of law. The object of the accusers was to show
the complicity of the accused with crime by tracing crime to the league,
and making every member of the league constructively liable for every act
of which the league was constructively guilty. Witnesses were produced in
a series that seemed interminable, to tell the story of five-and-twenty
outrages in Mayo, of as many in Cork, of forty-two in Galway, of
sixty-five in Kerry, one after another, and all with immeasurable detail.
Some of the witnesses spoke no English, and the English of others was
hardly more intelligible than Erse. Long extracts were read out from four
hundred and forty speeches. The counsel on one side produced a passage
that made against the speaker, and then the counsel on the other side
found and read some qualifying passage that made as strongly for him. The
three judges groaned. They had already, they said plaintively, ploughed
through the speeches in the solitude of their own rooms. Could they not be
taken as read? No, said the prosecuting counsel; we are building up an
argument, and it cannot be built up in a silent manner. In truth it was
designed for the public outside the court,(254) and not a touch could be
spared that might deepen the odium. Week after week the ugly tale went
on—a squalid ogre let loose among a population demoralised by ages of
wicked neglect, misery, and oppression. One side strove to show that the
ogre had been wantonly raised by the land league for political objects of
their own; the other, that it was the progeny of distress and wrong, that
the league had rather controlled than kindled its ferocity, and that crime
and outrage were due to local animosities for which neither league nor
parliamentary leaders were answerable.

On the forty-fourth day (February 5) came a lurid glimpse from across the
Atlantic. The Irish emigration had carried with it to America the deadly
passion for the secret society. A spy was produced, not an Irishman this
time for a wonder, but an Englishman. He had been for eight-and-twenty
years in the United States, and for more than twenty of them he had been
in the pay of Scotland Yard, a military spy, as he put it, in the service
of his country. There is no charge against him that he belonged to that
foul species who provoke others to crime and then for a bribe betray them.
He swore an oath of secrecy to his confederates in the camps of the
Clan-na-Gael, and then he broke his oath by nearly every post that went
from New York to London. It is not a nice trade, but then the dynamiter’s
is not a nice trade either.(255) The man had risen high in the secret
brotherhood. Such an existence demanded nerves of steel; a moment of
forgetfulness, an accident with a letter, the slip of a phrase in the two
parts that he was playing, would have doomed him in the twinkling of an
eye. He now stood a rigorous cross-examination like iron. There is no
reason to think that he told lies. He was perhaps a good deal less trusted
than he thought, for he does not appear on any occasion to have forewarned
the police at home of any of the dynamite attempts that four or five years
earlier had startled the English capital. The pith of his week’s evidence
was his account of an interview between himself and Mr. Parnell in the
corridors of the House of Commons in April 1881. In this interview, Mr.
Parnell, he said, expressed his desire to bring the Fenians in Ireland
into line with his own constitutional movement, and to that end requested
the spy to invite a notorious leader of the physical force party in
America to come over to Ireland, to arrange a harmonious understanding.
Mr. Parnell had no recollection of the interview, (M145) though he thought
it very possible that an interview might have taken place. It was
undoubtedly odd that the spy having once got his line over so big a fish,
should never afterwards have made any attempt to draw him on. The judges,
however, found upon a review of “the probabilities of the case,” that the
conversation in the corridor really took place, that the spy’s account was
correct, and that it was not impossible that in conversation with a
supposed revolutionist, Mr. Parnell may have used such language as to
leave the impression that he agreed with his interlocutor. Perhaps a more
exact way of putting it would be that the spy talked the Fenian doctrine
of physical force, and that Mr. Parnell listened.



IV


At last, on the fiftieth day (February 14, 1889), and not before, the
court reached the business that had led to its own creation. Three batches
of letters had been produced by the newspaper. The manager of the
newspaper told his story, and then the immediate purveyor of the letters
told his. Marvellous stories they were.

The manager was convinced from the beginning, as he ingenuously said,
quite independently of handwriting, that the letters were genuine. Why? he
was asked. Because he felt they were the sort of letters that Mr. Parnell
would be likely to write. He counted, not wholly without some reason, on
the public sharing this inspiration of his own indwelling light. The day
was approaching for the division on the Coercion bill. Every journalist,
said the manager, must choose his moment. He now thought the moment
suitable for making the public acquainted with the character of the
Irishmen. So, with no better evidence of authority than his firm faith
that it was the sort of letter that Mr. Parnell would be likely to write,
on the morning of the second reading of the Coercion bill, he launched the
fac-simile letter. In the early part of 1888 he received from the same
hand a second batch of letters, and a third batch a few days later. His
total payments amounted to over two thousand five hundred pounds. He still
asked no questions as to the source of these expensive documents. On the
contrary he particularly avoided the subject. So much for the cautious and
experienced man of business.

The natural course would have been now to carry the inquiry on to the
source of the letters. Instead of that, the prosecutors called an expert
in handwriting. The court expostulated. Why should they not hear at once
where the letters came from; and then it might be proper enough to hear
what an expert had to say? After a final struggle the prolonged tactics of
deferring the evil day, and prejudicing the case up to the eleventh hour,
were at last put to shame. The second of the two marvellous stories was
now to be told.

The personage who had handed the three batches of letters to the
newspaper, told the Court how he had in 1885 compiled a pamphlet called
_Parnellism Unmasked_, partly from materials communicated to him by a
certain broken-down Irish journalist. To this unfortunate sinner, then in
a state of penury little short of destitution, he betook himself one
winter night in Dublin at the end of 1885. Long after, when the game was
up and the whole sordid tragi-comedy laid bare, the poor wretch wrote: “I
have been in difficulties and great distress for want of money for the
last twenty years, and in order to find means of support for myself and my
large family, I have been guilty of many acts which must for ever disgrace
me.”(256) He had now within reach a guinea a day, and much besides, if he
would endeavour to find any documents that might be available to sustain
the charges made in the pamphlet. After some hesitation the bargain was
struck, a guinea a day, hotel and travelling expenses, and a round price
for documents. Within a few months the needy man in clover pocketed many
hundreds of pounds. Only the author of the history of _Jonathan Wild the
Great_ could do justice to such a story of the Vagabond in Luck—a jaunt to
Lausanne, a trip across the Atlantic, incessant journeys backward and
forward to Paris, the jingling of guineas, the rustle of hundred-pound
notes, and now and then perhaps a humorous thought of simple and solemn
people in newspaper offices in London, or a moment’s meditation on that
perplexing law of human affairs by which the weak things (M146) of the
world are chosen to confound the things that are mighty.

The moment came for delivering the documents in Paris, and delivered they
were with details more grotesque than anything since the foolish baronet
in Scott’s novel was taken by Dousterswivel to find the buried treasure in
Saint Ruth’s. From first to last not a test or check was applied by
anybody to hinder the fabrication from running its course without a hitch
or a crease. When men have the demon of a fixed idea in their cerebral
convolutions, they easily fall victims to a devastating credulity, and the
victims were now radiant as, with microscope and calligraphic expert by
their side, they fondly gazed upon their prize. About the time when the
judges were getting to work, clouds arose on this smiling horizon. It is
good, says the old Greek, that men should carry a threatening shadow in
their hearts even under the full sunshine. Before this, the manager
learned for the first time, what was the source of the letters. The
blessed doctrine of intrinsic certainty, however, which has before now
done duty in far graver controversy, prevented him from inquiring as to
the purity of the source.

The toils were rapidly enclosing both the impostor and the dupes. He was
put into the box at last (Feb. 21). By the end of the second day, the
torture had become more than he could endure. Some miscalled the scene
dramatic. That is hardly the right name for the merciless hunt of an
abject fellow-creature through the doublings and windings of a thousand
lies. The breath of the hounds was on him, and he could bear the chase no
longer. After proceedings not worth narrating, except that he made a
confession and then committed his last perjury, he disappeared. The police
traced him to Madrid. When they entered his room with their warrant (March
1), he shot himself dead. They found on his corpse the scapulary worn by
devout catholics as a visible badge and token of allegiance to the
heavenly powers. So in the ghastliest wreck of life, men still hope and
seek for some mysterious cleansing of the soul that shall repair all.

This damning experience was a sharp mortification to the government, who
had been throughout energetic confederates in the attack. Though it did
not come at once formally into debate, it exhilarated the opposition, and
Mr. Gladstone himself was in great spirits, mingled with intense
indignation and genuine sympathy for Mr. Parnell as a man who had suffered
an odious wrong.



VI


The report of the commission was made to the crown on February 13, 1890.
It reached the House of Commons about ten o’clock the same evening. The
scene was curious,—the various speakers droning away in a House otherwise
profoundly silent, and every member on every bench, including high
ministers of state, plunged deep and eager into the blue-book. The general
impression was that the findings amounted to acquittal, and everybody went
home in considerable excitement at this final explosion of the damaged
blunderbuss. The next day Mr. Gladstone had a meeting with the lawyers in
the case, and was keen for action in one form or another; but on the whole
it was agreed that the government should be left to take the initiative.

The report was discussed in both Houses, and strong speeches were made on
both sides. The government (Mar. 3) proposed a motion that the House
adopted the report, thanked the judges for their just and impartial
conduct, and ordered the report to be entered on the journals. Mr.
Gladstone followed with an amendment, that the House deemed it to be a
duty to record its reprobation of the false charges of the gravest and
most odious description, based on calumny and on forgery, that had been
brought against members of the House; and, while declaring its
satisfaction at the exposure of these calumnies, the House expressed its
regret at the wrong inflicted and the suffering and loss endured through a
protracted period by reason of these acts of flagrant iniquity. After a
handsome tribute to the honour and good faith of the judges, he took the
point that some of the opinions in the report were in no sense and no
degree judicial. How, for instance, could three judges, sitting ten years
after the fact (1879-80), determine better than anybody (M147) else that
distress and extravagant rents had nothing to do with crime? Why should
the House of Commons declare its adoption of this finding without question
or correction? Or of this, that the rejection of the Disturbance bill by
the Lords in 1880 had nothing to do with the increase of crime? Mr.
Forster had denounced the action of the Lords with indignation, and was
not he, the responsible minister, a better witness than the three judges
in no contact with contemporary fact? How were the judges authorised to
affirm that the Land bill of 1881 had not been a great cause in mitigating
the condition of Ireland? Another conclusive objection was that—on the
declaration of the judges themselves, rightly made by them—what we know to
be essential portions of the evidence were entirely excluded from their
view.

He next turned to the findings, first of censure, then of acquittal. The
findings of censure were in substance three. First, seven of the
respondents had joined the league with a view of separating Ireland from
England. The idea was dead, but Mr. Gladstone was compelled to say that in
his opinion to deny the moral authority of the Act of Union was for an
Irishman no moral offence whatever. Here the law-officer sitting opposite
to him busily took down a note. “Yes, yes,” Mr. Gladstone exclaimed, “you
may take my words down. I heard you examine your witness from a pedestal,
as you felt, of the greatest elevation, endeavouring to press home the
monstrous guilt of an Irishman who did not allow moral authority to the
Act of Union. In my opinion the Englishman has far more cause to blush for
the means by which that Act was obtained.” As it happened, on the only
occasion on which Mr. Gladstone paid the Commission a visit, he had found
the attorney general cross-examining a leading Irish member, and this
passage of arms on the Act of Union between counsel and witness then
occurred.

The second finding of censure was that the Irish members incited to
intimidation by speeches, knowing that intimidation led to crime. The
third was that they never placed themselves on the side of law and order;
they did not assist the administration, and did not denounce the party of
physical force. As if this, said Mr. Gladstone, had not been the subject
of incessant discussion and denunciation in parliament at the time ten
years ago, and yet no vote of condemnation was passed upon the Irish
members then. On the contrary, the tory party, knowing all these charges,
associated with them for purposes of votes and divisions; climbed into
office on Mr. Parnell’s shoulders; and through the viceroy with the
concurrence of the prime minister, took Mr. Parnell into counsel upon the
devising of a plan for Irish government. Was parliament now to affirm and
record a finding that it had scrupulously abstained from ever making its
own, and without regard to the counter-allegation that more crime and
worse crime was prevented by agitation? It was the duty of parliament to
look at the whole of the facts of the great crisis of 1880-1—to the
distress, to the rejection of the Compensation bill, to the growth of
evictions, to the prevalence of excessive rents. The judges expressly shut
out this comprehensive survey. But the House was not a body with a limited
commission; it was a body of statesmen, legislators, politicians, bound to
look at the whole range of circumstances, and guilty of misprision of
justice if they failed so to do. “Suppose I am told,” he said in notable
and mournful words, “that without the agitation Ireland would never have
had the Land Act of 1881, are you prepared to deny that? I hear no
challenges upon that statement, for I think it is generally and deeply
felt that without the agitation the Land Act would not have been passed.
As the man responsible more than any other for the Act of 1881—as the man
whose duty it was to consider that question day and night during nearly
the whole of that session—I must record my firm opinion that it would not
have become the law of the land, if it had not been for the agitation with
which Irish society was convulsed.”(257)

This bare table of his leading points does nothing to convey the
impression made by an extraordinarily fine performance. When the speaker
came to the findings of acquittal, to the dismissal of the infamous
charges of the forged letters, of intimacy with the Invincibles, of being
(M148) accessory to the assassinations in the Park, glowing passion in
voice and gesture reached its most powerful pitch, and the moral appeal at
its close was long remembered among the most searching words that he had
ever spoken. It was not forensic argument, it was not literature; it had
every note of true oratory—a fervid, direct and pressing call to his
hearers as “individuals, man by man, not with a responsibility diffused
and severed until it became inoperative and worthless, to place himself in
the position of the victim of this frightful outrage; to give such a
judgment as would bear the scrutiny of the heart and of the conscience of
every man when he betook himself to his chamber and was still.”

The awe that impressed the House from this exhortation to repair an
enormous wrong soon passed away, and debate in both Houses went on the
regular lines of party. Everything that was found not to be proved against
the Irishmen, was assumed against them. Not proven was treated as only an
evasive form of guilty. Though the three judges found that there was no
evidence that the accused had done this thing or that, yet it was held
legitimate to argue that evidence must exist—if only it could be found.
The public were to nurse a sort of twilight conviction and keep their
minds in a limbo of beliefs that were substantial and alive—only the light
was bad.

In truth, the public did what the judges declined to do. They took
circumstances into account. The general effect of this transaction was to
promote the progress of the great unsettled controversy in Mr. Gladstone’s
sense. The abstract merits of home rule were no doubt untouched, but it
made a difference to the concrete argument, whether the future leader of
an Irish parliament was a proved accomplice of the Park murderers or not.
It presented moreover the chameleon Irish case in a new and singular
colour. A squalid insurrection awoke parliament to the mischiefs and
wrongs of the Irish cultivators. Reluctantly it provided a remedy. Then in
the fulness of time, ten years after, it dealt with the men who had roused
it to its duty. And how? It brought them to trial before a special
tribunal, invented for the purpose, and with no jury; it allowed them no
voice in the constitution of the tribunal; it exposed them to long and
harassing proceedings; and it thereby levied upon them a tremendous
pecuniary fine. The report produced a strong recoil against the flagrant
violence, passion, and calumny, that had given it birth; and it affected
that margin of men, on the edge of either of the two great parties by whom
electoral decisions are finally settled.




Chapter IV. An Interim. (1889-1891)


    The nobler a soul is, the more objects of compassion it hath.

    —BACON.



I


At the end of 1888 Mr. Gladstone with his wife and others of his house was
carried off by Mr. Rendel’s friendly care to Naples. Hereto, he told Lord
Acton, “we have been induced by three circumstances. First, a warm
invitation from the Dufferins to Rome; as to which, however, there are
_cons_ as well as _pros_, for a man who like me is neither Italian nor
Curial in the view of present policies. Secondly, our kind friend Mr.
Stuart Rendel has actually offered to be our conductor thither and back,
to perform for us the great service which you rendered us in the trip to
Munich and Saint-Martin. Thirdly, I have the hope that the stimulating
climate of Naples, together with an abstention from speech greater than
any I have before enjoyed, might act upon my ‘vocal cord,’ and partially
at least restore it.”

At Naples he was much concerned with Italian policy.


    _To Lord Granville._

    _Jan. 13, 1889._—My stay here where the people really seem to
    regard me as not a foreigner, has brought Italian affairs and
    policy very much home to me, and given additional force and
    vividness to the belief I have always had, that it was sadly
    impolitic for Italy to make enemies for herself beyond the Alps.
    Though I might try and keep back this sentiment in Rome, even my
    silence might betray it and I could not promise to keep silence
    altogether. I think the impolicy amounts almost to madness
    especially for a country which carries with her, nestling in her
    bosom, the “standing menace” of the popedom....

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

    _To J. Morley._

    _Jan. 10._—I hope you have had faith enough not to be troubled
    about my supposed utterances on the temporal power.... I will not
    trouble you with details, but you may rest assured I have never
    said the question of the temporal power was anything except an
    Italian question. I have a much greater anxiety than this about
    the Italian alliance with Germany. It is in my opinion an awful
    error and constitutes the great danger of the country. It may be
    asked, “What have you to do with it?” More than people might
    suppose. I find myself hardly regarded here as a foreigner. They
    look upon me as having had a real though insignificant part in the
    Liberation. It will hardly be possible for me to get through the
    affair of this visit without making my mind known. On this account
    mainly I am verging towards the conclusion that it will be best
    for me not to visit Rome, and my wife as it happens is not anxious
    to go there. If you happen to see Granville or Rosebery please let
    them know this.

    We have had on the whole a good season here thus far. Many of the
    days delicious. We have been subjected here as well as in London
    to a course of social kindnesses as abundant as the waters which
    the visitor has to drink at a watering place, and so enervating
    from the abstraction of cares that I am continually thinking of
    the historical Capuan writer. I am in fact totally demoralised,
    and cannot wish not to continue so. Under the circumstances
    Fortune has administered a slight, a very slight physical
    correction. A land-slip, or rather a Tufo rock-slip of 50,000
    tons, has come down and blocked the proper road between us and
    Naples.

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

    _To Lord Acton._

    _Jan. 23, 1889._—Rome is I think definitely given up. I shall be
    curious to know your reasons for approving this _gran rifiuto_.
    Meantime I will just glance at mine. I am not so much afraid of
    the Pope as of the Italian government and court. My sentiments are
    so very strong about the present foreign policy. The foreign
    policy of the government but not I fear of the government only. If
    I went to Rome, and saw the King and the minister, as I must, I
    should be treading upon eggs all the time with them. I could not
    speak out uninvited; and it is not satisfactory to be silent in
    the presence of those interested, when the feelings are very
    strong....


These feelings broke out in time in at least one anonymous article.(258)
He told Lord Granville how anxious he was that no acknowledgment of
authorship, direct or indirect, should come from any of his friends. “Such
an article of necessity lectures the European states. As one of a public
of three hundred and more millions, I have a right to do this, but not in
my own person.” This strange simplicity rather provoked his friends, for
it ignored two things—first, the certainty that the secret of authorship
would get out; second, if it did not get out, the certainty that the
European states would pay no attention to such a lecture backed by no name
of weight—perhaps even whether it were so backed or not. Faith in
lectures, sermons, articles, even books, is one of the things most easily
overdone.


    Most of my reading, he went on to Acton, has been about the Jews
    and the Old Testament. I have not looked at the books you kindly
    sent me, except a little before leaving Hawarden; but I want to
    get a hold on the broader side of the Mosaic dispensation and the
    Jewish history. The great historic features seem to me in a large
    degree independent of the critical questions which have been
    raised about the _redaction_ of the Mosaic books. Setting aside
    Genesis, and the Exodus proper, it seems difficult to understand
    how either Moses or any one else could have advisedly published
    them in their present form; and most of all difficult to believe
    that men going to work deliberately after the captivity would not
    have managed a more orderly execution. My thoughts are always
    running back to the parallel question about Homer. In that case,
    those who hold that Peisistratos or some one of his date was the
    compiler, have at least this to say, that the poems in their
    present form are such as a compiler, having liberty of action,
    might have aimed at putting out from his workshop. Can that be
    said of the Mosaic books? Again, are we not to believe in the
    second and third Temples as centres of worship because there was a
    temple at Leontopolis, as we are told? Out of the frying-pan, into
    the fire.


When he left Amalfi (Feb. 14) for the north, he found himself, he says, in
a public procession, with great crowds at the stations, including Crispi
at Rome, who had once been his guest at Hawarden.

After his return home, he wrote again to Lord Acton:—


    _April 28, 1889._—I have long been wishing to write to you. But as
    a rule I never can write any letters that I wish to write. My
    volition of that kind is from day to day exhausted by the worrying
    demand of letters that I do not wish to write. Every year brings
    me, as I reckon, from three to five thousand new correspondents,
    of whom I could gladly dispense with 99 per cent. May you never be
    in a like plight.

    Mary showed me a letter of recent date from you, which referred to
    the idea of my writing on the Old Testament. The matter stands
    thus: An appeal was made to me to write something on the general
    position and claims of the holy scriptures for the working men. I
    gave no pledge but read (what was for me) a good deal on the laws
    and history of the Jews with only two results: first, deepened
    impressions of the vast interest and importance attaching to them,
    and of their fitness to be made the subject of a telling popular
    account; secondly, a discovery of the necessity of reading much
    more. But I have never in this connection thought much about what
    is called the criticism of the Old Testament, only seeking to
    learn how far it impinged upon the matters that I really was
    thinking of. It seems to me that it does not impinge much.... It
    is the fact that among other things I wish to make some sort of
    record of my life. You say truly it has been very full. I add
    fearfully full. But it has been in a most remarkable degree the
    reverse of self-guided and self-suggested, with reference I mean
    to all its best known aims. Under this surface, and in its daily
    habit no doubt it has been selfish enough. Whether anything of
    this kind will ever come off is most doubtful. Until I am released
    from politics by the solution of the Irish problem, I cannot even
    survey the field.

    I turn to the world of action. It has long been in my mind to
    found something of which a library would be the nucleus. I incline
    to begin with a temporary building here. Can you, who have built a
    library, give me any advice? On account of fire I have half a mind
    to corrugated iron, with felt sheets to regulate the temperature.

    Have you read any of the works of Dr. Salmon? I have just finished
    his volume on Infallibility, which fills me with admiration of its
    easy movement, command of knowledge, singular faculty of
    disentanglement, and great skill and point in argument; though he
    does not quite make one love him. He touches much ground trodden
    by Dr. Döllinger; almost invariably agreeing with him.



II


July 25, 1889, was the fiftieth anniversary of his marriage. The Prince
and Princess of Wales sent him what he calls a beautiful and splendid
gift. The humblest were as ready as the highest with their tributes, and
comparative strangers as ready as the nearest. Among countless others who
wrote was Bishop Lightfoot, great master of so much learning:—


    I hope you will receive this tribute from one who regards your
    private friendship as one of the great privileges of his life.


And Döllinger:—


    If I were fifteen years younger than I am, how happy I would be to
    come over to my beloved England once more, and see you surrounded
    by your sons and daughters, loved, admired, I would almost say
    worshipped, by a whole grateful nation.


On the other side, a clever lady having suggested to Browning that he
should write an inscription for her to some gift for Mr. Gladstone,
received an answer that has interest, both by the genius and fame of its
writer, and as a sign of widespread feeling in certain circles in those
days:—


    Surely your kindness, even your sympathy, will be extended to me
    when I say, with sorrow indeed, that I am unable now
    conscientiously to do what, but a few years ago, I would have at
    least attempted with such pleasure and pride as might almost
    promise success. I have received much kindness from that
    extraordinary personage, and what my admiration for his
    transcendent abilities was and ever will be, there is no need to
    speak of. But I am forced to altogether deplore his present
    attitude with respect to the liberal party, of which I, the
    humblest unit, am still a member, and as such grieved to the heart
    by every fresh utterance of his which comes to my knowledge. Were
    I in a position to explain publicly how much the personal feeling
    is independent of the political aversion, all would be easy; but I
    am a mere man of letters, and by the simple inscription which
    would truly testify to what is enduring, unalterable in my esteem,
    I should lead people—as well those who know me as those who do
    not—to believe my approbation extended far beyond the bounds which
    unfortunately circumscribe it now. All this—even more—was on my
    mind as I sat, last evening, at the same table with the
    brilliantly-gifted man whom once—but that “once” is too sad to
    remember.


At a gathering at Spencer House in the summer of 1888, when this year of
felicitation opened, Lord Granville, on behalf of a number of subscribers,
presented Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone with two portraits, and in his address
spoke of the long span of years through, which, they had enjoyed “the
unclouded blessings of the home.” The expression was a just one. The
extraordinary splendour and exalted joys of an outer life so illustrious
were matched in the inner circle of the hearth by a happy order,
affectionate reciprocal attachments, a genial round of kindliness and
duty, that from year to year went on untarnished, unstrained, unbroken.
Visitors at Hawarden noticed that, though the two heads of the house were
now old, the whole atmosphere seemed somehow to be alive with the
freshness and vigour of youth; it was one of the youngest of households in
its interests and activities. The constant tension of his mind never
impaired his tenderness and wise solicitude for family and kinsfolk, and
for all about him; and no man ever had such observance of decorum with
such entire freedom from pharisaism.

Nor did the order and moral prosperity of his own home (M149) leave him
complacently forgetful of fellow-creatures to whom life’s cup had been
dealt in another measure. On his first entry upon the field of responsible
life, he had formed a serious and solemn engagement with a friend—I
suppose it was Hope-Scott—that each would devote himself to active service
in some branch of religious work.(259) He could not, without treason to
his gifts, go forth like Selwyn or Patteson to Melanesia to convert the
savages. He sought a missionary field at home, and he found it among the
unfortunate ministers to “the great sin of great cities.” In these humane
efforts at reclamation he persevered all through his life, fearless of
misconstruction, fearless of the levity or baseness of men’s tongues,
regardless almost of the possible mischiefs to the public policies that
depended on him. Greville(260) tells the story how in 1853 a man made an
attempt one night to extort money from Mr. Gladstone, then in office as
chancellor of the exchequer, by threats of exposure; and how he instantly
gave the offender into custody, and met the case at the police office.
Greville could not complete the story. The man was committed for trial.
Mr. Gladstone directed his solicitors to see that the accused was properly
defended. He was convicted and sent to prison. By and by Mr. Gladstone
inquired from the governor of the prison how the delinquent was conducting
himself. The report being satisfactory, he next wrote to Lord Palmerston,
then at the home office, asking that the prisoner should be let out. There
was no worldly wisdom in it, we all know. But then what are people
Christians for?

We have already seen(261) his admonition to a son, and how much importance
he attached to the dedication of a certain portion of our means to
purposes of charity and religion. His example backed his precept. He kept
detailed accounts under these heads from 1831 to 1897, and from these it
appears that from 1831 to the end of 1890 he had devoted to objects of
charity and religion upwards of seventy thousand pounds, and in the
remaining years of his life the figure in this account stands at thirteen
thousand five hundred—this besides thirty thousand pounds for his
cherished object of founding the hostel and library at Saint Deiniol’s.
His friend of early days, Henry Taylor, says in one of his notes on life
that if you know how a man deals with money, how he gets it, spends it,
keeps it, shares it, you know some of the most important things about him.
His old chief at the colonial office in 1846 stands the test most nobly.



III


Near the end of 1889 among the visitors to Hawarden was Mr. Parnell. His
air of good breeding and easy composure pleased everybody. Mr. Gladstone’s
own record is simple enough, and contains the substance of the affair as
he told me of it later:—


    _Dec. 18, 1889._—Reviewed and threw into form all the points of
    possible amendment or change in the plan of Irish government,
    etc., for my meeting with Mr. Parnell. He arrived at 5.30, and we
    had two hours of satisfactory conversation; but he put off the
    _gros_ of it. 19.—Two hours more with Mr. P. on points in Irish
    government plans. He is certainly one of the very best people to
    deal with that I have ever known. Took him to the old castle. He
    seems to notice and appreciate everything.


Thinking of all that had gone before, and all that was so soon to come
after, anybody with a turn for imaginary dialogue might easily upon this
theme compose a striking piece.

In the spring of 1890 Mr. Gladstone spent a week at Oxford of which he
spoke with immense enthusiasm. He was an honorary fellow of All Souls, and
here he went into residence in his own right with all the zest of a
virtuous freshman bent upon a first class. Though, I daresay, pretty
nearly unanimous against his recent policies, they were all fascinated by
his simplicity, his freedom from assumption or parade, his eagerness to
know how leading branches of Oxford study fared, his naturalness and
pleasant manners. He wrote to Mrs. Gladstone (Feb. 1):—


    Here I am safe and sound, and launched anew on my university
    career, all my days laid out and occupied until the morning of
    this day week, when I am to return to London. They press me to
    stay over the Sunday, but this cannot be thought of. I am received
    with infinite kindness, and the rooms they have given me are
    delightful. Weather dull, and light a medium between London and
    Hawarden. I have seen many already, including Liddon and Acland,
    who goes up to-morrow for a funeral early on Monday. Actually I
    have engaged to give a kind of Homeric lecture on Wednesday to the
    members of the union. The warden and his sisters are courteous and
    hospitable to the last degree. He is a unionist. The living here
    is very good, perhaps some put on for a guest, but I like the tone
    of the college; the fellows are men of a high class, and their
    conversation is that of men with work to do. I had a most special
    purpose in coming here which will be more than answered. It was to
    make myself safe so far as might be, in the articles(262) which
    eighteen months ago I undertook to write about the Old Testament.
    This, as you know perhaps, is now far more than the New, the
    battle-ground of belief. There are here most able and instructed
    men, and I am already deriving great benefit.


Something that fell from him one morning at breakfast in the common room
led in due time to the election of Lord Acton to be also an honorary
member of this distinguished society. “If my suggestion,” Mr. Gladstone
wrote to one of the fellows, “really contributed to this election, then I
feel that in the dregs of my life I have at least rendered one service to
the college. My ambition is to visit it and Oxford in company with him.”



IV


In 1890 both Newman and Döllinger died.


    I have been asked from many quarters, Mr. Gladstone said to Acton,
    to write about the Cardinal. But I dare not. First, I do not know
    enough. Secondly, I should be puzzled to use the little knowledge
    that I have. I was not a friend of his, but only an acquaintance
    treated with extraordinary kindness whom it would ill become to
    note what he thinks defects, while the great powers and qualities
    have been and will be described far better by others. Ever since
    he published his University Sermons in 1843, I have thought him
    unsafe in philosophy, and no Butlerian though a warm admirer of
    Butler. No; it was before 1843, in 1841 when he published Tract
    XC. The _general_ argument of that tract was unquestionable; but
    he put in sophistical matter without the smallest necessity. What
    I recollect is about General Councils: where in treating the
    declaration that they may err he virtually says, “No doubt they
    may—unless the Holy Ghost prevents them.” But he was a wonderful
    man, a holy man, a very refined man, and (to me) a most kindly
    man.


Of Dr. Döllinger he contributed a charming account to a weekly print,(263)
and to Acton he wrote:—


    I have the fear that my Döllinger letters will disappoint you.
    When I was with him, he spoke to me with the utmost freedom; and
    so I think he wrote, but our correspondence was only occasional. I
    think nine-tenths of my intercourse with him was oral; with
    Cardinal Newman nothing like one-tenth. But with neither was the
    mere _corpus_ of my intercourse great, though in D.’s case it was
    very precious, most of all the very first of it in 1845.... With
    my inferior faculty and means of observation, I have long adopted
    your main proposition. His attitude of mind was more historical
    than theological. When I first knew him in 1845, and he honoured
    me with very long and interesting conversations, they turned very
    much upon theology, and I derived from him what I thought very
    valuable and steadying knowledge. Again in 1874 during a long
    walk, when we spoke of the shocks and agitation of our time, he
    told me how the Vatican decrees had required him to reperuse and
    retry the whole circle of his thought. He did not make known to me
    any general result; but he had by that time found himself wholly
    detached from the Council of Trent, which was indeed a logical
    necessity from his preceding action. The Bonn Conference appeared
    to show him nearly at the standing-point of anglican theology. I
    thought him more liberal as a theologian than as a politician. On
    the point of church establishment he was as impenetrable as if he
    had been a Newdegate. He would not see that there were two sides
    to the question. I long earnestly to know what progress he had
    made at the last towards redeeming the pledge given in one of his
    letters to me, that the evening of his life was to be devoted to a
    great theological construction.... I should have called him an
    anti-Jesuit, but in _no_ other sense, that is in no sense, a
    Jansenist. I never saw the least sign of leaning in that
    direction.



V


Here the reader may care to have a note or two of talk with him in these
days:—


    _At Dollis Hill, Sunday, Feb. 22, 1891_.... A few minutes after
    eight Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone came in from church, and we three sat
    down to dinner. A delightful talk, he was in full force, plenty of
    energy without vehemence. The range of topics was pretty wide, yet
    marvellous to say, we had not a single word about Ireland.
    Certainly no harm in that.

    _J. M._—A friend set me on a hunt this morning through Wordsworth
    for the words about France standing on the top of golden hours. I
    did not find them, but I came across a good line of Hartley
    Coleridge’s about the Thames:—

    “And the thronged river toiling to the main.”

    _Mr. G._—Yes, a good line. Toiling to the main recalls Dante:—

    “Su la marina, dove’l Po discende,
    Per aver pace co’ seguaci sui.”(264)

    _J. M._—Have you seen Symonds’s re-issued volume on Dante? ’Tis
    very good. Shall I lend it to you?

    _Mr. G._—Sure to be good, but not in the session. I never look at
    Dante unless I can have a great continuous draught of him. He’s
    too big, he seizes and masters you.

    _J. M._—Oh, I like the picturesque bits, if it’s only for
    half-an-hour before dinner; the bird looking out of its nest for
    the dawn, the afternoon bell, the trembling of the water in the
    morning light, and the rest that everybody knows.

    _Mr. G._—No, I cannot do it. By the way, ladies nowadays keep
    question books, and among other things ask their friends for the
    finest line in poetry. I think I’m divided between three, perhaps
    the most glorious is Milton’s—[_Somehow this line slipped from
    memory, but the reader might possibly do worse than turn over
    Milton in search for his finest line._] Or else Wordsworth’s—“Or
    hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.” Yet what so splendid as
    Penelope’s about not rejoicing the heart of anybody less than
    Odysseus?

    μηδέ τι χείρονος ἀνδρὸς εὐφραίνοιμι νόημα.(265)

    He talked a great deal to-night about Homer; very confident that
    he had done something to drive away the idea that Homer was an
    Asiatic Greek. Then we turned to Scott, whom he held to be by far
    the greatest of his countrymen. I suggested John Knox. No, the
    line must be drawn firm between the writer and the man of action;
    no comparisons there.

    _J. M._—Well, then, though I love Scott so much that if any man
    chooses to put him first, I won’t put him second, yet is there not
    a vein of pure gold in Burns that gives you pause?

    _Mr. G._—Burns very fine and true, no doubt; but to imagine a
    whole group of characters, to marshal them, to set them to work,
    to sustain the action—I must count that the test of highest and
    most diversified quality.

    We spoke of the new Shakespeare coming out. I said I had been
    taking the opportunity of reading vol. i., and should go over it
    all in successive volumes. _Mr. G._—“Falstaff is wonderful—one of
    the most wonderful things in literature.”

    Full of interest in _Hamlet_, and enthusiasm for it—comes closer
    than any other play to some of the strangest secrets of human
    nature—what _is_ the key to the mysterious hold of this play on
    the world’s mind? I produced my favourite proposition that
    _Measure for Measure_ is one of the most modern of all the plays;
    the profound analysis of Angelo and his moral catastrophe, the
    strange figure of the duke, the deep irony of our modern time in
    it all. But I do not think he cared at all for this sort of
    criticism. He is too healthy, too objective, too simple, for all
    the complexities of modern morbid analysis.

    Talked of historians; Lecky’s two last volumes he had not yet
    read, but—had told him that, save for one or two blots due to
    contemporary passion, they were perfectly honourable to Lecky in
    every way. Lecky, said Mr. G., “has real insight into the motives
    of statesmen. Now Carlyle, so mighty as he is in flash and
    penetration, has no eye for motives. Macaulay, too, is so caught
    by a picture, by colour, by surface, that he is seldom to be
    counted on for just account of motive.”

    He had been reading with immense interest and satisfaction
    Sainte-Beuve’s _History of Port Royal_, which for that matter
    deserves all his praise and more, though different parts of it are
    written from antagonistic points of view. Vastly struck by
    Saint-Cyran. When did the notion of the spiritual director make
    its appearance in Europe? Had asked both Döllinger and Acton on
    this curious point. For his own part, he doubted whether the
    office existed before the Reformation.

    _J. M._—Whom do you reckon the greatest Pope?

    _Mr. G._—I think on the whole, Innocent III. But his greatness was
    not for good. What did he do? He imposed the dogma of
    transubstantiation; he is responsible for the Albigensian
    persecutions; he is responsible for the crusade which ended in the
    conquest of Byzantium. Have you ever realised what a deadly blow
    was the ruin of Byzantium by the Latins, how wonderful a fabric
    the Eastern Empire was?

    _J. M._—Oh, yes, I used to know my Finlay better than most books.
    Mill used to say a page of Finlay was worth a chapter of Gibbon:
    he explains how decline and fall came about.

    _Mr. G._—Of course. Finlay has it all.

    He tried then to make out that the eastern empire was more
    wonderful than anything done by the Romans; it stood out for
    eleven centuries, while Rome fell in three. I pointed out to him
    that the whole solid framework of the eastern empire was after all
    built up by the Romans. But he is philhellene all through past and
    present.




Chapter V. Breach With Mr. Parnell. (1890-1891)


    Fortuna vitrea est,—tum quum splendet frangitur.—PUBLIL. SYRUS.
    Brittle like glass is fortune,—bright as light, and then the
                crash.



I


It would have been a miracle if the sight of all the methods of coercion,
along with the ignominy of the forged letters, had not worked with strong
effect upon the public mind. Distrust began to creep at a very rapid pace
even into the ministerial ranks. The tory member for a large northern
borough rose to resent “the inexpedient treatment of the Irishmen from a
party point of view,” to protest against the ’straining and stretching of
the law’ by the resident magistrates, to declare his opinion that these
gentlemen were not qualified to exercise the jurisdiction entrusted to
them, “and to denounce the folly of making English law unpopular in
Ireland, and provoking the leaders of the Irish people by illegal and
unconstitutional acts.”(266) These sentiments were notoriously shared to
the full by many who sat around him. Nobody in those days, discredited as
he was with his party, had a keener scent for the drift of popular feeling
than Lord Randolph Churchill, and he publicly proclaimed that this sending
of Irish members of parliament to prison in such numbers was a feature
which he did not like. Further, he said that the fact of the government
not thinking it safe for public meetings of any sort to be held, excited
painful feelings in English minds.(267) All this was after the system had
been in operation for two years. Even strong unionist organs in the Irish
press could not stand it.(268) They declared that if (M150) the Irish,
government wished to make the coercive system appear as odious as
possible, they would act just as they were acting. They could only explain
all these doings, not by “wrong-headedness or imbecility,” but by a
strange theory that there must be deliberate treachery among the
government agents.

Before the end of the year 1889 the electoral signs were unmistakable.
Fifty-three bye-elections had been contested since the beginning of the
parliament. The net result was the gain of one seat for ministers and of
nine to the opposition. The Irish secretary with characteristic candour
never denied the formidable extent of these victories, though he mourned
over the evils that such temporary successes might entail, and was
convinced that they would prove to be dearly bought.(269) A year later the
tide still flowed on; the net gain of the opposition rose to eleven. In
1886 seventy-seven constituencies were represented by forty-seven
unionists and thirty liberals. By the beginning of October in 1890 the
unionist members in the same constituencies had sunk to thirty-six, and
the liberals had risen to forty-one. Then came the most significant
election of all.

There had been for some months a lull in Ireland. Government claimed the
credit of it for coercion; their adversaries set it down partly to the
operation of the Land Act, partly to the natural tendency in such
agitations to fluctuate or to wear themselves out, and most of all to the
strengthened reliance on the sincerity of the English liberals. Suddenly
the country was amazed towards the middle of September by news that
proceedings under the Coercion Act had been instituted against two
nationalist leaders, and others. Even strong adherents of the government
and their policy were deeply dismayed, when they saw that after three
years of it, the dreary work was to begin over again. The proceedings
seemed to be stamped in every aspect as impolitic. In a few days the two
leaders would have been on their way to America, leaving a half-empty war
chest behind them and the flame of agitation burning low. As the offences
charged had been going on for six months, there was clearly no pressing
emergency.

A critical bye-election was close at hand at the moment in the Eccles
division of Lancashire. The polling took place four days after a vehement
defence of his policy by Mr. Balfour at Newcastle. The liberal candidate
at Eccles expressly declared from his election address onwards, that the
great issue on which he fought was the alternative between conciliation
and coercion. Each candidate increased the party vote, the tory by rather
more than one hundred, the liberal by nearly six hundred. For the first
time the seat was wrested from the tories, and the liberal triumphed by a
substantial majority.(270) This was the latest gauge of the failure of the
Irish policy to conquer public approval, the last indication of the
direction in which the currents of public opinion were steadily
moving.(271) Then all at once a blinding sandstorm swept the ground.



II


One of those events now occurred that with their stern irony so mock the
statesman’s foresight, and shatter political designs in their most
prosperous hour. As a mightier figure than Mr. Parnell remorsefully said
on a grander stage, a hundred years before, cases sometimes befall in the
history of nations where private fault is public disaster.

At the end of 1889, the Irish leader had been made a party in a suit for
divorce. He betrayed no trace in his demeanour, either to his friends or
to the House, of embarrassment at the position. His earliest appearance
after the evil news, was in the debate on the first night of the session
(February 11, ’90), upon a motion about the publication of the forged
letter. Some twenty of (M151) his followers being absent, he wished the
discussion to be prolonged into another sitting. Closely as it might be
supposed to concern him, he listened to none of the debate. He had a
sincere contempt for speeches in themselves, and was wont to set down most
of them to vanity. A message was sent that he should come upstairs and
speak. After some indolent remonstrance, he came. His speech was
admirable; firm without emphasis, penetrating, dignified, freezing, and
unanswerable. Neither now nor on any later occasion did his air of
composure in public or in private give way.

Mr. Gladstone was at Hawarden, wide awake to the possibility of peril. To
Mr. Arnold Morley he wrote on November 4:—“I fear a thundercloud is about
to burst over Parnell’s head, and I suppose it will end the career of a
man in many respects invaluable.” On the 13th he was told by the present
writer that there were grounds for an impression that Mr. Parnell would
emerge as triumphantly from the new charge, as he had emerged from the
obloquy of the forged letters. The case was opened two days later, and
enough came out upon the first day of the proceedings to point to an
adverse result. A Sunday intervened, and Mr. Gladstone’s self-command
under storm-clouds may be seen in a letter written on that day to me:—


    _Nov. 16, 1890._—1. It is, after all, a thunder-clap about
    Parnell. Will he ask for the Chiltern Hundreds? He cannot continue
    to lead? What could he mean by his language to you? The Pope has
    now clearly got a commandment under which to pull him up. It
    surely cannot have been always thus; for he represented his
    diocese in the church synod. 2. I thank you for your kind scruple,
    but in the country my Sundays are habitually and largely invaded.
    3. Query, whether if a bye-seat were open and chanced to have a
    large Irish vote W—— might not be a good man there. 4. I do not
    think my Mem. is worth circulating but perhaps you would send it
    to Spencer. I sent a copy to Harcourt. 5. [A small parliamentary
    point, not related to the Parnell affair, nor otherwise
    significant.] 6. Most warmly do I agree with you about the Scott
    _Journal_. How one loves him. 7. Some day I hope to inflict on you
    a talk about Homer and Homerology (as I call it).


The court pronounced a condemnatory decree on Monday, November 17th.
Parliament was appointed to meet on Tuesday, the 25th. There was only a
week for Irish and English to resolve what effect this condemnation should
have upon Mr. Parnell’s position as leader of one and ally of the other.
Mr. Parnell wrote the ordinary letter to his parliamentary followers. The
first impulses of Mr. Gladstone are indicated in a letter to me on the day
after the decree:—


    _Nov. 18, 1890._—Many thanks for your letter. I had noticed the
    Parnell circular, not without misgiving. I read in the _P. M. G._
    this morning a noteworthy article in the _Daily Telegraph_,(272)
    or rather from it, with which I very much agree. But I think it
    plain that we have nothing to say and nothing to do in the matter.
    The party is as distinct from us as that of Smith or Hartington. I
    own to some surprise at the apparent facility with which the R. C.
    bishops and clergy appear to take the continued leadership, but
    they may have tried the ground and found it would not _bear_. It
    is the Irish parliamentary party, and that alone to which we have
    to look....


Such were Mr. Gladstone’s thoughts when the stroke first fell.



III


In England and Scotland loud voices were speedily lifted up. Some treated
the offence itself as an inexpiable disqualification. Others argued that,
even if the offence could be passed over as lying outside of politics, it
(M152) had been surrounded by incidents of squalor and deceit that
betrayed a character in which no trust could ever be placed again. In some
English quarters all this was expressed with a strident arrogance that set
Irishmen on fire. It is ridiculous, if we remember what space Mr. Parnell
filled in Irish imagination and feeling, how popular, how mysterious, how
invincible he had been, to blame them because in the first moment of shock
and bewilderment they did not instantly plant themselves in the judgment
seat, always so easily ascended by Englishmen with little at stake. The
politicians in Dublin did not hesitate. A great meeting was held at
Leinster Hall in Dublin on the Thursday (November 20th). The result was
easy to foresee. Not a whisper of revolt was heard. The chief nationalist
newspaper stood firm for Mr. Parnell’s continuance. At least one
ecclesiastic of commanding influence was supposed to be among the
journal’s most ardent prompters. It has since been stated that the bishops
were in fact forging bolts of commination. No lurid premonitory fork or
sheet flashed on the horizon, no rumble of the coming thunders reached the
public ear.

Three days after the decree in the court, the great English liberal
organization chanced to hold its annual meeting at Sheffield (November
20-21). In reply to a request of mine as to his views upon our position,
Mr. Gladstone wrote to me as follows:—


    _Nov. 19, 1890._—Your appeal as to your meeting of to-morrow gives
    matter for thought. I feel (1) that the Irish have abstractedly a
    right to decide the question; (2) that on account of Parnell’s
    enormous services—he has done for home rule something like what
    Cobden did for free trade, set the argument on its legs—they are
    in a position of immense difficulty; (3) that we, the liberal
    party as a whole, and especially we its leaders, have for the
    moment nothing to say to it, that we must be passive, must wait
    and watch. But I again and again say to myself, I say I mean in
    the interior and silent forum, “It’ll na dee.” I should not be
    surprised if there were to be rather painful manifestations in the
    House on Tuesday. It is yet to be seen what our Nonconformist
    friends, such a man as ——, for example, or such a man as —— will
    say.... If I recollect right, Southey’s _Life of Nelson_ was in my
    early days published and circulated by the Society for Promoting
    Christian Knowledge. It would be curious to look back upon it and
    see how the biographer treats his narrative at the tender points.
    What I have said under figure 3 applies to me beyond all others,
    and notwithstanding my prognostications I shall maintain an
    extreme reserve in a position where I can do no good (in the
    present tense), and might by indiscretion do much harm. You will
    doubtless communicate with Harcourt and confidential friends only
    as to anything in this letter. The thing, one can see, is not a
    _res judicata_. It may ripen fast. Thus far, there is a total want
    of moral support from this side to the Irish judgment.


A fierce current was soon perceived to be running. All the elements so
powerful for high enthusiasm, but hazardous where an occasion demands
circumspection, were in full blast. The deep instinct for domestic order
was awake. Many were even violently and irrationally impatient that Mr.
Gladstone had not peremptorily renounced the alliance on the very morrow
of the decree. As if, Mr. Gladstone himself used to say, it could be the
duty of any party leader to take into his hands the intolerable burden of
exercising the rigours of inquisition and private censorship over every
man with whom what he judged the highest public expediency might draw him
to co-operate. As if, moreover, it could be the duty of Mr. Gladstone to
hurry headlong into action, without giving Mr. Parnell time or chance of
taking such action of his own as might make intervention unnecessary. Why
was it to be assumed that Mr. Parnell would not recognise the facts of the
situation? “I determined,” said Mr. Gladstone “to watch the state of
feeling in this country. I made no public declaration, but the country
made up its mind. I was in some degree like the soothsayer Shakespeare
introduces into one of his plays. He says, ‘I do not make the facts; I
only foresee them.’ I did not foresee the facts even; they were present
before me.”(273)

(M153) The facts were plain, and Mr. Gladstone was keenly alive to the
full purport of every one of them. Men, in whose hearts religion and
morals held the first place, were strongly joined by men accustomed to
settle political action by political considerations. Platform-men united
with pulpit-men in swelling the whirlwind. Electoral calculation and moral
faithfulness were held for once to point the same way. The report from
every quarter, every letter to a member from a constituent, all was in one
sense. Some, as I have said, pressed the point that the misconduct itself
made co-operation impossible; others urged the impossibility of relying
upon political understandings with one to whom habitual duplicity was
believed to have been brought home. We may set what value we choose upon
such arguments. Undoubtedly they would have proscribed some of the most
important and admired figures in the supreme doings of modern Europe.
Undoubtedly some who have fallen into shift and deceit in this particular
relation, have yet been true as steel in all else. For a man’s character
is a strangely fitted mosaic, and it is unsafe to assume that all his
traits are of one piece, or inseparable in fact because they ought to be
inseparable by logic. But people were in no humour for casuistry, and
whether all this be sophistry or sense, the volume of hostile judgment and
obstinate intention could neither be mistaken, nor be wisely breasted if
home rule was to be saved in Great Britain.

Mr. Gladstone remained at Hawarden during the week. To Mr. Arnold Morley
he wrote (Nov. 23): “I have a bundle of letters every morning on the
Parnell business, and the bundles increase. My own opinion has been the
same from the first, and I conceive that the time for action has now come.
All my correspondents are in unison.” Every post-bag was heavy with
admonitions, of greater cogency than such epistles sometimes possess; and
a voluminous bundle of letters still at Hawarden bears witness to the
emotions of the time. Sir William Harcourt and I, who had taken part in
the proceedings at Sheffield, made our reports. The acute manager of the
liberal party came to announce that three of our candidates had bolted
already, that more were sure to follow, and that this indispensable
commodity in elections would become scarcer than ever. Of the general
party opinion, there could be no shadow of doubt. It was no application of
special rigour because Mr. Parnell was an Irishman. Any English politician
of his rank would have fared the same or worse, and retirement, temporary
or for ever, would have been inevitable. Temporary withdrawal, said some;
permanent withdrawal, said others; but for withdrawal of some sort, almost
all were inexorable.



IV


Mr. Gladstone did not reach London until the afternoon of Monday, November
24. Parliament was to assemble on the next day. Three members of the
cabinet of 1886, and the chief whip of the party,(274) met him in the
library of Lord Rendel’s house at Carlton Gardens. The issue before the
liberal leaders was a plain one. It was no question of the right of the
nationalists to choose their own chief. It was no question of inflicting
political ostracism on a particular kind of moral delinquency. The
question was whether the present continuance of the Irish leadership with
the silent assent of the British leaders, did not involve decisive
abstention at the polls on the day when Irish policy could once more be
submitted to the electors of Great Britain? At the best the standing
difficulties even to sanguine eyes, and under circumstances that had
seemed so promising, were still formidable. What chance was there if this
new burden were superadded? Only one conclusion was possible upon the
state of facts, and even those among persons responsible for this decision
who were most earnestly concerned in the success of the Irish policy,
reviewing all the circumstances of the dilemma, deliberately hold to this
day that though a catastrophe followed, a worse catastrophe was avoided.
It is one of the commonest of all secrets of cheap misjudgment in human
affairs, to start by assuming that there is always some good way out of a
bad case. Alas for us all, this is not so. Situations arise alike (M154)
for individuals, for parties, and for states, from which no good way out
exists, but only choice between bad way and worse. Here was one of those
situations. The mischiefs that followed the course actually taken, we see;
then, as is the wont of human kind, we ignore the mischiefs that as surely
awaited any other.

Mr. Gladstone always steadfastly resisted every call to express an opinion
of his own that the delinquency itself had made Mr. Parnell unfit and
impossible. It was vain to tell him that the party would expect such a
declaration, or that his reputation required that he should found his
action on moral censure all his own. “What!” he cried, “because a man is
what is called leader of a party, does that constitute him a censor and a
judge of faith and morals? I will not accept it. It would make life
intolerable.” He adhered tenaciously to political ground. “I have been for
four years,” Mr. Gladstone justly argued, “endeavouring to persuade voters
to support Irish autonomy. Now the voter says to me, ‘If a certain thing
happens—namely, the retention of the Irish leadership in its present
hands—I will not support Irish autonomy.’ How can I go on with the work?
We laboriously rolled the great stone up to the top of the hill, and now
it topples down to the bottom again, unless Mr. Parnell sees fit to go.”
From the point of view of Irish policy this was absolutely unanswerable.
It would have been just as unanswerable, even if all the dire confusion
that afterwards came to pass had then been actually in sight. Its force
was wholly independent, and necessarily so, of any intention that might be
formed by Mr. Parnell.

As for that intention, let us turn to him for a moment. Who could dream
that a man so resolute in facing facts as Mr. Parnell, would expect all to
go on as before? Substantial people in Ireland who were preparing to come
round to home rule at the prospect of a liberal victory in Great Britain,
would assuredly be frightened back. Belfast would be more resolute than
ever. A man might estimate as he pleased either the nonconformist
conscience in England, or the catholic conscience in Ireland. But the most
cynical of mere calculators,—and I should be slow to say that this was Mr.
Parnell,—could not fall a prey to such a hallucination as to suppose that
a scandal so frightfully public, so impossible for even the most mild-eyed
charity to pretend not to see, and which political passion was so
interested in keeping in full blaze, would instantly drop out of the mind
of two of the most religious communities in the world; or that either of
these communities could tolerate without effective protest so impenitent
an affront as the unruffled continuity of the stained leadership. All this
was independent of anything that Mr. Gladstone might do or might not do.
The liberal leaders had a right to assume that the case must be as obvious
to Mr. Parnell as it was to everybody else, and unless loyalty and good
faith have no place in political alliances, they had a right to look for
his spontaneous action. Was unlimited consideration due from them to him
and none from him to them?

The result of the consultation was the decisive letter addressed to me by
Mr. Gladstone, its purport to be by me communicated to Mr. Parnell. As any
one may see, its language was courteous and considerate. Not an accent was
left that could touch the pride of one who was known to be as proud a man
as ever lived. It did no more than state an unquestionable fact, with an
inevitable inference. It was not written in view of publication, for that
it was hoped would be unnecessary. It was written with the expectation of
finding the personage concerned in his usual rational frame of mind, and
with the intention of informing him of what it was right that he should
know. The same evening Mr. McCarthy was placed in possession of Mr.
Gladstone’s views, to be laid before Mr. Parnell at the earliest moment.


    _1 Carlton Gardens, Nov. 24, 1890._—MY DEAR MORLEY.—Having arrived
    at a certain conclusion with regard to the continuance, at the
    present moment, of Mr. Parnell’s leadership of the Irish party, I
    have seen Mr. McCarthy on my arrival in town, and have inquired
    from him whether I was likely to receive from Mr. Parnell himself
    any communication on the subject. Mr. McCarthy replied that he was
    unable to give me any information on the subject. I mentioned to
    him that in 1882, after the terrible murder in the Phœnix Park,
    Mr. Parnell, although totally removed from any idea of
    responsibility, had spontaneously written to me, and offered to
    take the Chiltern Hundreds, an offer much to his honour but one
    which I thought it my duty to decline.

    While clinging to the hope of a communication from Mr. Parnell, to
    whomsoever addressed, I thought it necessary, viewing the
    arrangements for the commencement of the session to-morrow, to
    acquaint Mr. McCarthy with the conclusion at which, after using
    all the means of observation and reflection in my power, I had
    myself arrived. It was that notwithstanding the splendid services
    rendered by Mr. Parnell to his country, his continuance at the
    present moment in the leadership would be productive of
    consequences disastrous in the highest degree to the cause of
    Ireland. I think I may be warranted in asking you so far to expand
    the conclusion I have given above, as to add that the continuance
    I speak of would not only place many hearty and effective friends
    of the Irish cause in a position of great embarrassment, but would
    render my retention of the leadership of the liberal party, based
    as it has been mainly upon the prosecution of the Irish cause,
    almost a nullity. This explanation of my views I begged Mr.
    McCarthy to regard as confidential, and not intended for his
    colleagues generally, if he found that Mr. Parnell contemplated
    spontaneous action; but I also begged that he would make known to
    the Irish party, at their meeting to-morrow afternoon, that such
    was my conclusion, if he should find that Mr. Parnell had not in
    contemplation any step of the nature indicated. I now write to
    you, in case Mr. McCarthy should be unable to communicate with Mr.
    Parnell, as I understand you may possibly have an opening
    to-morrow through another channel. Should you have such an
    opening, I beg you to make known to Mr. Parnell the conclusion
    itself, which I have stated in the earlier part of this letter. I
    have thought it best to put it in terms simple and direct, much as
    I should have desired had it lain within my power, to alleviate
    the painful nature of the situation. As respects the manner of
    conveying what my public duty has made it an obligation to say, I
    rely entirely on your good feeling, tact, and judgment.—Believe me
    sincerely yours, W. E. GLADSTONE.


No direct communication had been possible, though every effort to open it
was made. Indirect information had been received. Mr. Parnell’s purpose
was reported to have shifted during the week since the decree. On the
Wednesday he had been at his stiffest, proudest, and coldest, bent on
holding on at all cost. He thought he saw a way of getting something done
for Ireland; the Irish people had given him a commission; he should stand
to it, so long as ever they asked him. On the Friday, however (Nov. 21),
he appeared, so I had been told, to be shaken in his resolution. He had
bethought him that the government might possibly seize the moment for a
dissolution; that if there were an immediate election, the government
would under the circumstances be not unlikely to win; if so, Mr. Gladstone
might be thrown for four or five years into opposition; in other words,
that powerful man’s part in the great international transaction would be
at an end. In this mood he declared himself alive to the peril and the
grave responsibility of taking any course that could lead to consequences
so formidable. That was the last authentic news that reached us. His Irish
colleagues had no news at all. After this glimpse the curtain had fallen,
and all oracles fell dumb.

If Mr. Gladstone’s decision was to have the anticipated effect, Mr.
Parnell must be made aware of it before the meeting of the Irish party
(Nov. 25). This according to custom was to be held at two o’clock in the
afternoon, to choose their chairman for the session. Before the choice was
made, both the leader and his political friends should know the view and
the purpose that prevailed in the camp of their allies. Mr. Parnell kept
himself invisible and inaccessible alike to English and Irish friends
until a few minutes before the meeting. The Irish member who had seen Mr.
Gladstone the previous evening, at the last moment was able to deliver the
message that had been confided to him. Mr. Parnell replied that he should
stand to his guns. The other members of the Irish party came together,
and, wholly ignorant of the attitude taken by Mr. Gladstone, promptly and
with hardly a word of discussion re-elected their leader to his usual
post. The gravity of the unfortunate error (M155) committed in the failure
to communicate the private message to the whole of the nationalist
members, with or without Mr. Parnell’s leave, lay in the fact that it
magnified and distorted Mr. Gladstone’s later intervention into a
humiliating public ultimatum. The following note, made at the time,
describes the fortunes of Mr. Gladstone’s letter:—


    _Nov. 25._—I had taken the usual means of sending a message to Mr.
    Parnell, to the effect that Mr. Gladstone was coming to town on
    the following day, and that I should almost certainly have a
    communication to make to Mr. Parnell on Tuesday morning. It was
    agreed at my interview with his emissary on Sunday night (November
    23) that I should be informed by eleven on Tuesday forenoon where
    I should see him. I laid special stress on my seeing him before
    the party met. At half-past eleven, or a little later, on that day
    I received a telegram from the emissary that he could not reach
    his friend.(275) I had no difficulty in interpreting this. It
    meant that Mr. Parnell had made up his mind to fight it out,
    whatever line we might adopt; that he guessed that my wish to see
    him must from his point of view mean mischief; and that he would
    secure his re-election as chairman before the secret was out. Mr.
    McCarthy was at this hour also entirely in the dark, and so were
    all the other members of the Irish party supposed to be much in
    Mr. Parnell’s confidence. When I reached the House a little after
    three, the lobby was alive with the bustle and animation usual at
    the opening of a session, and Mr. Parnell was in the thick of it,
    talking to a group of his friends. He came forward with much
    cordiality. “I am very sorry,” he said, “that I could not make an
    appointment, but the truth is I did not get your message until I
    came down to the House, and then it was too late.” I asked him to
    come round with me to Mr. Gladstone’s room. As we went along the
    corridor he informed me in a casual way that the party had again
    elected him chairman. When we reached the sunless little room, I
    told him I was sorry to hear that the election was over, for I had
    a communication to make to him which might, as I hoped, still make
    a difference. I then read out to him Mr. Gladstone’s letter. As he
    listened, I knew the look on his face quite well enough to see
    that he was obdurate. The conversation did not last long. He said
    the feeling against him was a storm in a teacup, and would soon
    pass. I replied that he might know Ireland, but he did not half
    know England; that it was much more than a storm in a teacup; that
    if he set British feeling at defiance and brazened it out, it
    would be ruin to home rule at the election; that if he did not
    withdraw for a time, the storm would not pass; that if he withdrew
    from the actual leadership now as a concession due to public
    feeling in this country, this need not prevent him from again
    taking the helm when new circumstances might demand his presence;
    that he could very well treat his re-election as a public vote of
    confidence by his party; that, having secured this, he would
    suffer no loss of dignity or authority by a longer or shorter
    period of retirement. I reminded him that for two years he had
    been practically absent from active leadership. He answered, in
    his slow dry way, that he must look to the future; that he had
    made up his mind to stick to the House of Commons and to his
    present position in his party, until he was convinced, and he
    would not soon be convinced, that it was impossible to obtain home
    rule from a British parliament; that if he gave up the leadership
    for a time, he should never return to it; that if he once let go,
    it was all over. There was the usual iteration on both sides in a
    conversation of the kind, but this is the substance of what
    passed. His manner throughout was perfectly cool and quiet, and
    his unresonant voice was unshaken. He was paler than usual, and
    now and then a wintry smile passed over his face. I saw that
    nothing would be gained by further parley, so I rose and he
    somewhat slowly did the same. “Of course,” he said, as I held the
    door open for him to leave, “Mr. Gladstone will have to attack me.
    I shall expect that. He will have a right to do that.” So we
    parted.

    I waited for Mr. Gladstone, who arrived in a few minutes. It was
    now four o’clock. “Well?” he asked eagerly the moment the door was
    closed, and without taking off cape or hat. “Have you seen him?”
    “He is obdurate,” said I. I told him shortly what had passed. He
    stood at the table, dumb for some instants, looking at me as if he
    could not believe what I had said. Then he burst out that we must
    at once publish his letter to me; at once, that very afternoon. I
    said, “’Tis too late now.” “Oh, no,” said he, “the _Pall Mall_
    will bring it out in a special edition.” “Well, but,” I persisted,
    “we ought really to consider it a little.” Reluctantly he yielded,
    and we went into the House. Harcourt presently joined us on the
    bench, and we told him the news. It was by and by decided that the
    letter should be immediately published. Mr. Gladstone thought that
    I should at once inform Mr. Parnell of this. There he was at that
    moment, pleasant and smiling, in his usual place on the Irish
    bench. I went into our lobby, and sent somebody to bring him out.
    Out he came, and we took three or four turns in the lobby. I told
    him that it was thought right, under the new circumstances, to
    send the letter to the press. “Yes,” he said amicably, as if it
    were no particular concern of his, “I think Mr. Gladstone will be
    quite right to do that; it will put him straight with his party.”


The debate on the address had meanwhile been running its course. Mr.
Gladstone had made his speech. One of the newspapers afterwards described
the liberals as wearing pre-occupied countenances. “We were pre-occupied
with a vengeance,” said Mr. Gladstone, “and even while I was speaking I
could not help thinking to myself, Here am I talking about Portugal and
about Armenia, while every single creature in the House is absorbed in one
thing only, and that is an uncommonly long distance from either Armenia or
Portugal.” News of the letter, which had been sent to the reporters about
eight o’clock, swiftly spread. Members hurried to ex-ministers in the
dining-room to ask if the story of the letter were true. The lobbies were
seized by one of those strange and violent fevers to which on such
occasions the House of Commons is liable. Unlike the clamour of the Stock
Exchange or a continental Chamber, there is little noise, but the
perturbation is profound. Men pace the corridors in couples and trios, or
flit from one knot to another, listening to an oracle of the moment
modestly retailing a rumour false on the face of it, or evolving monstrous
hypotheses to explain incredible occurrences. This, however, was no common
crisis of lobby or gallery.

One party quickly felt that, for them at least, it was an affair of life
or death. It was no wonder that the Irish members were stirred to the very
depths. For five years they had worked on English platforms, made active
friendships with English and Scottish liberals in parliament and out of
it, been taught to expect from their aid and alliance that deliverance
which without allies must remain out of reach and out of sight; above all,
for nearly five years they had been taught to count on the puissant voice
and strong right arm of the leader of all the forces of British
liberalism.

They suddenly learned that if they took a certain step in respect of the
leadership of their own party, the alliance was broken off, the most
powerful of Englishmen could help them no more, and that all the dreary
and desperate marches since 1880 were to be faced once again in a blind
and endless campaign, against the very party to whose friendship they had
been taught to look for strength, encouragement, and victory. Well might
they recoil. More astounded still, they learned at the same time that they
had already taken the momentous step in the dark, and that the knowledge
of what they were doing, the pregnant meanings and the tremendous
consequences of it, had been carefully concealed from them. Never were
consternation, panic, distraction, and resentment better justified.

The Irishmen were anxious to meet at once. Their leader sat moodily in the
smoking-room downstairs. His faculty of concentrated vision had by this
time revealed to him the certainty of a struggle, and its intensity. He
knew in minute detail every element of peril both at Westminster and in
Ireland. A few days before, he mentioned to the present writer his
suspicion of designs on foot in ecclesiastical quarters, though he
declared that he had no fear of them. He may have surmised that the
demonstration at the Leinster Hall was superficial and impulsive. On the
other hand, his confidence in the foundations of his dictatorship was
unshaken. This being so, if deliberate calculation were the universal
mainspring of every statesman’s action—as it assuredly is not nor can ever
be—he would have spontaneously withdrawn for a season, in the (M156)
assurance that if signs of disorganisation were to appear among his
followers, his prompt return from Elba would be instantly demanded in
Ireland, whether or no it were acquiesced in by the leaders and main army
of liberals in England. That would have been both politic and decent, even
if we conceive his mind to have been working in another direction. He may,
for instance, have believed that the scandal had destroyed the chances of
a liberal victory at the election, whether he stayed or withdrew. Why
should he surrender his position in Ireland and over contending factions
in America, in reliance upon an English party to which, as he was well
aware, he had just dealt a smashing blow? These speculations, however,
upon the thoughts that may have been slowly moving through his mind, are
hardly worth pursuing. Unluckily, the stubborn impulses of defiance that
came naturally to his temperament were aroused to their most violent pitch
and swept all calculations of policy aside. He now proceeded passionately
to dash into the dust the whole fabric of policy which he had with such
infinite sagacity, patience, skill, and energy devised and reared.

Two short private memoranda from his own hand on this transaction, I find
among Mr. Gladstone’s papers. He read them to me at the time, and they
illustrate his habitual practice of shaping and clearing his thought and
recollection by committal to black and white:—


    _Nov. 26, 1890._—Since the month of December 1885 my whole
    political life has been governed by a supreme regard to the Irish
    question. For every day, I may say, of these five, we have been
    engaged in laboriously rolling up hill the stone of Sisyphus. Mr.
    Parnell’s decision of yesterday means that the stone is to break
    away from us and roll down again to the bottom of the hill. I
    cannot recall the years which have elapsed. It was daring,
    perhaps, to begin, at the age I had then attained, a process which
    it was obvious must be a prolonged one.

    Simply to recommence it now, when I am within a very few weeks of
    the age at which Lord Palmerston, the marvel of parliamentary
    longevity, succumbed, and to contemplate my accompanying the cause
    of home rule to its probable triumph a rather long course of years
    hence, would be more than daring; it would be presumptuous. My
    views must be guided by rational probabilities, and they exclude
    any such anticipation. My statement, therefore, that my leadership
    would, under the contemplated decision of Mr. Parnell, be almost a
    nullity, is a moderate statement of the case. I have been
    endeavouring during all these years to reason with the voters of
    the kingdom, and when the voter now tells me that he cannot give a
    vote for making the Mr. Parnell of to-day the ruler of Irish
    affairs under British sanction, I do not know how to answer him,
    and I have yet to ask myself formally the question what under
    those circumstances is to be done. I must claim entire and
    absolute liberty to answer that question as I may think right.

    _Nov. 28, 1890._—The few following words afford a key to my
    proceedings in the painful business of the Irish leadership.

    It was at first my expectation, and afterwards my desire, that Mr.
    Parnell would retire by a perfectly spontaneous act. As the
    likelihood of such a course became less and less, while time ran
    on, and the evidences of coming disaster were accumulated, I
    thought it would be best that he should be impelled to withdraw,
    but by an influence conveyed to him, at least, from within the
    limits of his own party. I therefore begged Mr. Justin McCarthy to
    acquaint Mr. Parnell of what I thought as to the consequences of
    his continuance; I also gave explanations of my meaning, including
    a reference to myself; and I begged that my message to Mr. Parnell
    might be made known to the Irish party, in the absence of a
    spontaneous retirement.

    This was on Monday afternoon. But there was no certainty either of
    finding Mr. Parnell, or of an impression on him through one of his
    own followers. I therefore wrote the letter to Mr. Morley, as a
    more delicate form of proceeding than a direct communication from
    myself, but also as a stronger measure than that taken through Mr.
    McCarthy, because it was more full, and because, as it was in
    writing, it admitted of the ulterior step of immediate
    publication. Mr. Morley could not find Mr. Parnell until after the
    first meeting of the Irish party on Monday. When we found that Mr.
    McCarthy’s representation had had no effect, that the Irish party
    had not been informed, and that Mr. Morley’s making known the
    material parts of my letter was likewise without result, it at
    once was decided to publish the letter; just too late for the
    _Pall Mall Gazette_, it was given for publication to the morning
    papers, and during the evening it became known in the lobbies of
    the House.



V


Mr. Parnell took up his new ground in a long manifesto to the Irish people
(November 29). It was free of rhetoric and ornament, but the draught was
skilfully brewed. He charged Mr. Gladstone with having revealed to him
during his visit at Hawarden in the previous December, that in a future
scheme of home rule the Irish members would be cut down from 103 to 32,
land was to be withdrawn from the competency of the Irish legislature, and
the control of the constabulary would be reserved to the Imperial
authority for an indefinite period, though Ireland would have to find the
money all the time. This perfidious truncation of self-government by Mr.
Gladstone was matched by an attempt on my part as his lieutenant only a
few days before, to seduce the Irish party into accepting places in a
liberal government, and this gross bribe of mine was accompanied by a
despairing avowal that the hapless evicted tenants must be flung
overboard. In other words, the English leaders intended to play Ireland
false, and Mr. Parnell stood between his country and betrayal. Such a
story was unluckily no new one in Irish history since the union. On that
theme Mr. Parnell played many adroit variations during the eventful days
that followed. Throw me to the English wolves if you like, he said, but at
any rate make sure that real home rule and not its shadow is to be your
price, and that they mean to pay it. This was to awaken the spectre of old
suspicions, and to bring to life again those forces of violence and
desperation which it had been the very crown of his policy to exorcise.

The reply on the Hawarden episode was prompt. Mr. Gladstone asserted that
the whole discussion was one of those informal exchanges of view which go
to all political action, and in which men feel the ground and discover the
leanings of one another’s minds. No single proposal was made, no
proposition was mentioned to which a binding assent was sought. Points of
possible improvement in the bill of 1886 were named as having arisen in
Mr. Gladstone’s mind, or been suggested by others, but no positive
conclusions were asked for or were expected or were possible. Mr. Parnell
quite agreed that the real difficulty lay in finding the best form in
which Irish representation should be retained at Westminster, but both saw
the wisdom and necessity of leaving deliberation free until the time
should come for taking practical steps. He offered no serious objection on
any point; much less did he say that they augured any disappointment of
Irish aspirations. Apart from this denial, men asked themselves how it was
that if Mr. Parnell knew that the cause was already betrayed, he yet for a
year kept the black secret to himself, and blew Mr. Gladstone’s praise
with as loud a trumpet as before?(276) As for my own guilty attempt at
corruption in proposing an absorption of the Irish party in English
politics by means of office and emolument, I denied it with reasonable
emphasis at the time, and it does not concern us here, nor in fact
anywhere else.



VI


We now come to what was in its day the famous story of Committee Room
Fifteen, so called from the chamber in which the next act of this dismal
play went on.(277) The proceedings between the leader and his party were
watched with an eagerness that has never been surpassed in this kingdom or
in America. They were protracted, intense, dramatic, and the issue for a
time hung in poignant doubt. The party interest of the scene was supreme,
for if the Irishmen should rally to their chief, then the English alliance
was at an end, Mr. Gladstone would virtually close (M157) his illustrious
career, the rent in the liberal ranks might be repaired, and leading men
and important sections would all group themselves afresh. “Let us all keep
quiet,” said one important unionist, “we may now have to revise our
positions.” Either way, the serpent of faction would raise its head in
Ireland, and the strong life of organised and concentrated nationalism
would perish in its coils. The personal interest was as vivid as the
political,—the spectacle of a man of infinite boldness, determination,
astuteness, and resource, with the will and pride of Lucifer, at bay with
fortune and challenging a malignant star. Some talked of the famous Ninth
Thermidor, when Robespierre fought inch by inch the fierce struggle that
ended in his ruin. Others talked of the old mad discord of Zealot and
Herodian in face of the Roman before the walls of Jerusalem. The great
veteran of English politics looked on, wrathful and astounded at a
preternatural perversity for which sixty years of public life could
furnish him no parallel. The sage public looked on, some with the same
interest that would in ancient days have made them relish a combat of
gladiators; others with glee at the mortification of political opponents;
others again with honest disgust at what threatened to be the ignoble rout
of a beneficent policy.

It was the fashion for the moment in fastidious reactionary quarters to
speak of the actors in this ordeal as “a hustling group of yelling
rowdies.” Seldom have terms so censorious been more misplaced. All depends
upon the point of view. Men on a raft in a boiling sea have something to
think of besides deportment and the graces of serenity. As a matter of
fact, even hostile judges then and since agreed that no case was ever
better opened within the walls of Westminster than in the three speeches
made on the first day by Mr. Sexton and Mr. Healy on the one side, and Mr.
Redmond on the other. In gravity, dignity, acute perception, and that good
faith which is the soul of real as distinct from spurious debate, the
parliamentary critic recognises them as all of the first order. So for the
most part things continued. It was not until a protracted game had gone
beyond limits of reason and patience, that words sometimes flamed high.
Experience of national assemblies gives no reason to suppose that a body
of French, German, Spanish, Italian, or even of English, Scotch, Welsh, or
American politicians placed in circumstances of equal excitement, arising
from an incident in itself at once so squalid and so provocative, would
have borne the strain with any more self-control.

Mr. Parnell presided, frigid, severe, and lofty, “as if,” said one
present, “it were we who had gone astray, and he were sitting there to
judge us.” Six members were absent in America, including Mr. Dillon and
Mr. O’Brien, two of the most important of all after Mr. Parnell himself.
The attitude of this pair was felt to be a decisive element. At first,
under the same impulse as moved the Leinster Hall meeting, they allowed
their sense of past achievement to close their eyes; they took for granted
the impossible, that religious Britain and religious Ireland would blot
what had happened out of their thoughts; and so they stood for Mr.
Parnell’s leadership. The grim facts of the case were rapidly borne in
upon them. The defiant manifesto convinced them that the leadership could
not be continued. Travelling from Cincinnati to Chicago, they read it,
made up their minds, and telegraphed to anxious colleagues in London. They
spoke with warmth of Mr. Parnell’s services, but protested against his
unreasonable charges of servility to liberal wirepullers; they described
the “endeavours to fasten the responsibility for what had happened upon
Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley” as reckless and unjust; and they foresaw in
the position of isolation, discredit, and international ill-feeling which
Mr. Parnell had now created, nothing but ruin for the cause. This
deliverance from such a quarter (November 30) showed that either
abdication or deposition was inevitable.

The day after Mr. Parnell’s manifesto, the bishops came out of their
shells. Cardinal Manning had more than once written most urgently to the
Irish prelates the moment the decree was known, that Parnell could not be
upheld in London, and that no political expediency could outweigh the
moral sense. He knew well enough that the bishops in (M158) Ireland were
in a very difficult strait, but insisted “that plain and prompt speech was
safest.” It was now a case, he said to Mr. Gladstone (November 29), of
_res ad triarios_, and it was time for the Irish clergy to speak out from
the housetops. He had also written to Rome. “Did I not tell you,” said Mr.
Gladstone when he gave me this letter to read, “that the Pope would now
have one of the ten commandments on his side?” “We have been slow to act,”
Dr. Walsh telegraphed to one of the Irish members (November 30), “trusting
that the party will act manfully. Our considerate silence and reserve are
being dishonestly misinterpreted.” “All sorry for Parnell,” telegraphed
Dr. Croke, the Archbishop of Cashel—a manly and patriotic Irishman if ever
one was—“but still, in God’s name, let him retire quietly and with good
grace from the leadership. If he does so, the Irish party will be kept
together, the honourable alliance with Gladstonian liberals maintained,
success at general election secured, home rule certain. If he does not
retire, alliance will be dissolved, election lost, Irish party seriously
damaged if not wholly broken up, home rule indefinitely postponed,
coercion perpetuated, evicted tenants hopelessly crushed, and the public
conscience outraged. Manifesto flat and otherwise discreditable.” This was
emphatic enough, but many of the flock had already committed themselves
before the pastors spoke. To Dr. Croke, Mr. Gladstone wrote (Dec. 2): “We
in England seem to have done our part within our lines, and what remains
is for Ireland itself. I am as unwilling as Mr. Parnell himself could be,
to offer an interference from without, for no one stands more stoutly than
I do for the independence of the Irish national party as well as for its
unity.”

A couple of days later (Dec. 2) a division was taken in Room Fifteen upon
a motion made in Mr. Parnell’s interest, to postpone the discussion until
they could ascertain the views of their constituents, and then meet in
Dublin. It was past midnight. The large room, dimly lighted by a few lamps
and candles placed upon the horse-shoe tables, was more than half in
shadow. Mr. Parnell, his features barely discernible in the gloom, held a
printed list of the party in his hand, and he put the question in cold,
unmoved tones. The numbers were 29 for the motion—that is to say, for him,
and 44 against him. Of the majority, many had been put on their trial with
him in 1880; had passed months in prison with him under the first Coercion
Act and suffered many imprisonments besides; they had faced storm,
obloquy, and hatred with him in the House of Commons, a place where
obloquy stings through tougher than Hibernian skins; they had undergone
with him the long ordeal of the three judges; they had stood by his side
with unswerving fidelity from the moment when his band was first founded
for its mortal struggle down to to-day, when they saw the fruits of the
struggle flung recklessly away, and the policy that had given to it all
its reason and its only hope, wantonly brought to utter foolishness by a
suicidal demonstration that no English party and no English leader could
ever be trusted. If we think of even the least imaginative of them as
haunted by such memories of the past, such distracting fears for the
future, it was little wonder that when they saw Mr. Parnell slowly casting
up the figures, and heard his voice through the sombre room announcing the
ominous result, they all sat, both ayes and noes, in profound and painful
stillness. Not a sound was heard, until the chairman rose and said without
an accent of emotion that it would now be well for them to adjourn until
the next day.

This was only the beginning. Though the ultimate decision of the party was
quite certain, every device of strategy and tactics was meanwhile
resolutely employed to avert it. His supple and trenchant blade was still
in the hands of a consummate swordsman. It is not necessary to
recapitulate all the moves in Mr. Parnell’s grand manœuvre for turning the
eyes of Ireland away from the question of leadership to the question of
liberal good faith and the details of home rule. Mr. Gladstone finally
announced that only after the question of leadership had been disposed
of—one belonging entirely to the competence of the Irish party—could he
renew former relations, and once more enter into confidential
communications with any of them. There was only one guarantee, he said,
that could be of any (M159) value to Ireland, namely the assured and
unalterable fact that no English leader and no party could ever dream of
either proposing or carrying any scheme of home rule which had not the
full support of Irish representatives. This was obvious to all the world.
Mr. Parnell knew it well enough, and the members knew it, but the members
were bound to convince their countrymen that they had exhausted compliance
with every hint from their falling leader, while Mr. Parnell’s only object
was to gain time, to confuse issues, and to carry the battle over from
Westminster to the more buoyant and dangerously charged atmosphere of
Ireland.

The majority resisted as long as they could the evidence that Mr. Parnell
was audaciously trifling with them and openly abusing his position as
chairman. On the evening of Friday (December 5) Mr. Sexton and Mr. Healy
went to Mr. Parnell after the last communication from Mr. Gladstone. They
urged him to bend to the plain necessities of the case. He replied that he
would take the night to consider. The next morning (December 6) they
returned to him. He informed them that his responsibility to Ireland would
not allow him to retire. They warned him that the majority would not
endure further obstruction beyond that day, and would withdraw. As they
left, Mr. Parnell wished to shake hands, “if it is to be the last time.”
They all shook hands, and then went once more to the field of action.

It was not until after some twelve days of this excitement and stress that
the scene approached such disorder as has often before and since been
known in the House of Commons. The tension at last had begun to tell upon
the impassive bronze of Mr. Parnell himself. He no longer made any
pretence of the neutrality of the chair. He broke in upon one speaker more
than forty times. In a flash of rage he snatched a paper from another
speaker’s hand. The hours wore away, confusion only became worse
confounded, and the conclusion on both sides was foregone. Mr. McCarthy at
last rose, and in a few moderate sentences expressed his opinion that
there was no use in continuing a discussion that must be barren of
anything but reproach, bitterness, and indignity, and he would therefore
suggest that those who were of the same mind should withdraw. Then he
moved from the table, and his forty-four colleagues stood up and silently
followed him out of the room. In silence they were watched by the minority
who remained, in number twenty-six.(278)



VII


A vacancy at Bassetlaw gave Mr. Gladstone an opportunity of describing the
grounds on which he had acted. His speech was measured and weighty, but
the result showed the effect of the disaster. The tide, that a few weeks
before had been running so steadily, now turned. The unionist vote
remained almost the same as in 1885; the liberal vote showed a falling off
of over 400 and the unionist majority was increased from 295 to 728.

About this time having to go to Ireland, on my way back I stopped at
Hawarden, and the following note gives a glimpse of Mr. Gladstone at this
evil moment (Dec. 17):—


    I found him in his old corner in the “temple of peace.” He was
    only half recovered from a bad cold, and looked in his worsted
    jacket, and dark tippet over his shoulders, and with his white,
    deep-furrowed face, like some strange Ancient of Days: so
    different from the man whom I had seen off at King’s Cross less
    than a week before. He was cordial as always, but evidently in
    some perturbation. I sat down and told him what I had heard from
    different quarters about the approaching Kilkenny election. I
    mentioned X. as a Parnellite authority. “What,” he flamed up with
    passionate vehemence, “X. a Parnellite! Are they mad, then? Are
    they clean demented?” etc. etc.

    I gave him my general impression as to the future. The bare idea
    that Parnell might find no inconsiderable following came upon him
    as if it had been a thunder-clap. He listened, and catechised, and
    knit his brow.

    _Mr. G._—What do you think we should do in case (1) of a divided
    Ireland, (2) of a Parnellite Ireland?

    _J. M._—It is too soon to settle what to think. But, looking to
    Irish interests, I think a Parnellite Ireland infinitely better
    than a divided Ireland. Anything better than an Ireland divided,
    so far as she is concerned.

    _Mr. G._—Bassetlaw looks as if we were going back to 1886. For me
    that is notice to quit. Another five years’ agitation at my age
    would be impossible—_ludicrous_ (with much emphasis).

    _J. M._—I cannot profess to be surprised that in face of these
    precious dissensions men should have misgivings, or that even
    those who were with us, should now make up their minds to wait a
    little.

    I said what there was to be said for Parnell’s point of view;
    that, in his words to me of Nov. 25, he “must look to the future”;
    that he was only five and forty; that he might well fear that
    factions would spring up in Ireland if he were to go; that he
    might have made up his mind, that whether he went or stayed, we
    should lose the general election when it came. The last notion
    seemed quite outrageous to Mr. G., and he could not suppose that
    it had ever entered Parnell’s head.

    _Mr. G._—You have no regrets at the course we took?

    _J. M._—None—none. It was inevitable. I have never doubted. That
    does not prevent lamentation that it was inevitable. It is the old
    story. English interference is always at the root of mischief in
    Ireland. But how could we help what we did? We had a right to
    count on Parnell’s sanity and his sincerity....

    Mr. G. then got up and fished out of a drawer the memorandum of
    his talk with Parnell at Hawarden on Dec. 18, 1889, and also a
    memorandum written for his own use on the general political
    position at the time of the divorce trial. The former contained
    not a word as to the constabulary, and in other matters only put a
    number of points, alternative courses, etc., without a single
    final or definite decision. While he was fishing in his drawer, he
    said, as if speaking to himself, “It looks as if I should get my
    release even sooner than I had expected.”

    “That,” I said, “is a momentous matter which will need immense
    deliberation.” So it will, indeed.

    _Mr. G._—Do you recall anything in history like the present
    distracted scenes in Ireland?

    _J. M._—Florence, Pisa, or some other Italian city, with the
    French or the Emperor at the gates?

    _Mr. G._—I’ll tell you what is the only thing that I can think of
    as at all like it. Do you remember how it was at the siege of
    Jerusalem—the internecine fury of the Jewish factions, the
    Ζηλωταί, and the rest—while Titus and the legions were marching on
    the city!

    We went in to luncheon. Something was said of our friend ——, and
    the new found malady, Renault’s disease.

    _J. M._—Joseph de Maistre says that in the innocent primitive ages
    men died of diseases without names.

    _Mr. G._—Homer never mentions diseases at all.

    _J. M._—Not many of them die a natural death in Homer.

    _Mr. G._—Do you not recollect where Odysseus meets his mother
    among the shades, and she says:—

    Οὔτε τις οὖν μοι νοῦσος ἐπήλυθεν ...
    ἀλλά με σός τε πόθος σά τε μήδεα, φαίδιμ᾽ Ὀδυσσεῦ,
    σή τ᾽ ἀγανοφροσύνη μελιηδέα θυμὸν ἀπηύρα.(279)

    _J. M._—Beautiful lines. Πόθος such a tender word, and it is
    untranslatable.

    _Mr. G._—Oh, _desiderium_.

    “Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus
    Tam cari capitis.”(280)

    _J. M._—The Scotch word “_wearying_” for somebody. And
    _Sehnsucht_.

    Then Mr. G. went off to his library to hunt up the reference, and
    when I followed him, I found the worn old _Odyssey_ open at the
    passage in the eleventh book. As he left the room, he looked at me
    and said, “Ah, this is very different stuff for talking about,
    from all the wretched work we were speaking of just now. Homer’s
    fellows would have cut a very different figure, and made short
    work in that committee room last week!” We had a few more words on
    politics.... So I bade him good-bye.... #/


(M160) In view of the horrors of dissension in Ireland, well-meaning
attempts were made at the beginning of the year to bring about an
understanding. The Irish members, returning from America where the schism
at home had quenched all enthusiasm and killed their operations, made
their way to Boulogne, for the two most important among them were liable
to instant arrest if they were found in the United Kingdom. They thought
that Mr. Parnell was really desirous to withdraw on such terms as would
save his self-respect, and if he could plead hereafter that before giving
way he had secured a genuine scheme of home rule. Some suspicion may well
have arisen in their minds when a strange suggestion came from Mr. Parnell
that the liberal leaders should enter into a secret engagement about
constabulary and the other points. He had hardly given such happy evidence
of his measure of the sanctity of political confidences, as to encourage
further experiments. The proposal was absurd on the face of it. These
suspicions soon became certainties, and the Boulogne negotiations came to
an end. I should conjecture that those days made the severest ordeal
through which Mr. Gladstone, with his extreme sensibility and his
abhorrence of personal contention, ever passed. Yet his facility and
versatility of mood was unimpaired, as a casual note or two of mine may
show:—


    ... Mr. G.’s confabulation [with an Irish member] proved to have
    been sought for the purpose of warning him that Parnell was about
    to issue a manifesto in which he would make all manner of
    mischief. Mr. G. and I had a few moments in the room at the back
    of the chair; he seemed considerably perturbed, pale, and
    concentrated. We walked into the House together; he picked up the
    points of the matter in hand (a motion for appropriating all the
    time) and made one of the gayest, brightest, and most delightful
    speeches in the world—the whole House enjoying it consumedly. Who
    else could perform these magic transitions?

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

    Mr. G. came into the House, looking rather anxious; gave us an
    account of his interview with the Irish deputation; and in the
    midst of it got up to say his few sentences of condolence with the
    Speaker on the death of Mrs. Peel—the closing phrases admirably
    chosen, and the tones of his voice grave, sincere, sonorous, and
    compassionate. When he sat down, he resumed his talk with H. and
    me. He was so touched, he said, by those “poor wretches” on the
    deputation, that he would fain, if he could, make some
    announcement that would ease their unlucky position.

    [A question of a letter in reply to some application prompted by
    Mr. Parnell. Mr. Gladstone asked two of us to try our hands at a
    draft.] At last we got it ready for him and presently we went to
    his room. It was now six o’clock. Mr. G. read aloud in full deep
    voice the letter he had prepared on the base of our short draft.
    We suggested this and that, and generally argued about phrases for
    an hour, winding up with a terrific battle on two prodigious
    points: (1) whether he ought to say, “after this statement of my
    views,” or “I have now fully stated my views on the points you
    raise”; (2) “You will _doubtless_ concur,” or “_probably_ concur.”
    Most characteristic, most amazing. It was past seven before the
    veteran would let go—and then I must say that he looked his full
    years. Think what his day had been, in mere intellectual strain,
    apart from what strains him far more than that—his strife with
    persons and his compassion for the unlucky Irishmen. I heard
    afterwards that when he got home, he was for once in his life done
    up, and on the following morning he lay in bed. All the same, in
    the evening he went to see _Antony and Cleopatra_, and he had a
    little ovation. As he drove away the crowd cheered him with cries
    of “Bravo, don’t you mind Parnell!” Plenty of race feeling left,
    in spite of union of hearts!


No leader ever set a finer example under reverse than did Mr. Gladstone
during these tedious and desperate proceedings. He was steadfastly loyal,
considerate, and sympathetic towards the Irishmen who had trusted him; his
firm patience was not for a moment worn out; in vain a boisterous wave now
and again beat upon him from one quarter or another. Not for a moment was
he shaken; even under these starless skies his faith never drooped. “The
public mischief,” he wrote to Lord Acton (Dec. 27, 1890), “ought to put
out of view every private thought. But the blow to me is very heavy—the
heaviest I ever have received. It is a great and high call to work by
faith and not by sight.”

Occasion had already offered for testing the feeling of Ireland. There was
a vacancy in the representation of Kilkenny, and the Parnellite candidate
had been defeated.


    _To J. Morley._

    _Hawarden, Dec. 23, 1890._—Since your letter arrived this morning,
    the Kilkenny poll has brightened the sky. It will have a great
    effect in Ireland, although it is said not to be a representative
    constituency, but one too much for us. It is a great gain; and yet
    sad enough to think that even here one-third of the voters should
    be either rogues or fools. I suppose the ballot has largely
    contributed to save Kilkenny. It will be most interesting to learn
    how the tories voted.

    I return your enclosure.... I have ventured, without asking your
    leave, on keeping a copy of a part. Only in one proposition do I
    differ from you. I would rather see Ireland disunited than see it
    Parnellite.

    I think that as the atmosphere is quiet for the moment we had
    better give ourselves the benefit of a little further time for
    reflection. Personally, I am hard hit. My course of life was
    daring enough as matters stood six weeks ago. How it will shape in
    the new situation I cannot tell. But this is the selfish part.
    Turning for a moment to the larger outlook, I am extremely
    indisposed to any harking back in the matter of home rule; we are
    now, I think, freed from the enormous danger of seeing P. master
    in Ireland; division and its consequences in diminishing force,
    are the worst we have to fear. What my mind leans to in a way
    still vague is to rally ourselves by some affirmative legislation
    taken up by and on behalf of the party. Something of this kind
    would be the best source to look to for reparative strength.

    _To Lord Acton._

    _Jan. 9, 1891._—To a greybeard in a hard winter the very name of
    the south is musical, and the kind letters from you and Lord
    Hampden make it harmony as well as melody. But I have been and am
    chained to the spot by this Parnell business, and every day have
    to consider in one shape or other what ought to be said by myself
    or others.... I consider the Parnell chapter of politics finally
    closed for us, the British liberals, at least during my time. He
    has been even worse since the divorce court than he was in it. The
    most astounding revelation of my lifetime.

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

    _To J. Morley._

    _Hawarden, Dec. 30, 1890._—I must not longer delay thanking you
    for your most kind and much valued letter on my birthday—a
    birthday more formidable than usual, on account of the recent
    disasters, which, however, may all come to good. If I am able to
    effect in the world anything useful, be assured I know how much of
    it is owed to the counsel and consort of my friends.

    It is not indeed the common lot of man to make serious additions
    to the friendships which so greatly help us in this pilgrimage,
    after seventy-six years old; but I rejoice to think that in your
    case it has been accomplished for me.



VIII


A few more sentences will end this chapter in Mr. Gladstone’s life. As we
have seen, an election took place in the closing days of December 1890.
Mr. Parnell flung himself into the contest with frantic activity. A fierce
conflict ended in the defeat of his candidate by nearly two to one.(281)
Three months later a contest occurred in Sligo. Here again, though he had
strained every nerve in the interval as well as in the immediate struggle,
his candidate was beaten.(282) Another three months, then a third election
at Carlow,—with the same result, the rejection of Mr. Parnell’s man by a
majority of much more than two to one.(283) It was in vain that his
adherents denounced those who had left him as mutineers and helots, and
exalted him as “truer than Tone, abler than Grattan, greater than
O’Connell, full of love for Ireland as Thomas Davis himself.” On the other
side, he encountered antagonism in every key, from pathetic remonstrance
or earnest reprobation, down to an unsparing fury that savoured (M161) of
the ruthless factions of the Seine. In America almost every name of
consideration was hostile.

Yet undaunted by repulse upon repulse, he tore over from England to
Ireland and back again, week after week and month after month, hoarse and
haggard, seamed by sombre passions, waving the shreds of a tattered flag.
Ireland must have been a hell on earth to him. To those Englishmen who
could not forget that they had for so long been his fellow-workers, though
they were now the mark of his attack, these were dark and desolating days.
No more lamentable chapter is to be found in all the demented scroll of
aimless and untoward things, that seem as if they made up the history of
Ireland. It was not for very long. The last speech that Mr. Parnell ever
made in England was at Newcastle-on-Tyne in July 1891, when he told the
old story about the liberal leaders, of whom he said that there was but
one whom he trusted. A few weeks later, not much more than ten months
after the miserable act had opened, the Veiled Shadow stole upon the
scene, and the world learned that Parnell was no more.(284)




Chapter VI. Biarritz. (1891-1892)


    Omnium autem ineptiarum, quæ sunt innumerabiles, haud sciam an
    nulla sit major, quam, ut illi solent, quocunque in loco,
    quoscunque inter homines visum est, de rebus aut difficillimis aut
    non necessariis argutissime disputare.—CICERO.

    Of all the numberless sorts of bad taste and want of tact, perhaps
    the worst is to insist, no matter where you are or with whom you
    are, on arguing about the hardest subjects to the full pitch of
    elaboration and detail.



I


We have seen how in 1889 Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone celebrated the fiftieth
anniversary of one of the most devoted and successful marriages that ever
was made, and the unbroken felicity of their home. In 1891, after the
shadows of approaching calamity had for many months hung doubtfully over
them, a heavy blow fell, and their eldest son died. Not deeply concerned
in ordinary politics, he was a man of many virtues and some admirable
gifts; he was an accomplished musician, and I have seen letters of his to
his father, marked by a rare delicacy of feeling and true power of
expression. “I had known him for nearly thirty years,” one friend wrote,
“and there was no man, until his long illness, who had changed so little,
or retained so long the best qualities of youth, and my first thought was
that the greater the loss to you, the greater would be the consolation.”

To Archbishop Benson, Mr. Gladstone wrote (July 6):—


    It is now forty-six years since we lost a child,(285) and he who
    has now passed away from our eyes, leaves to us only blessed
    recollections. I suppose all feel that those deaths which reverse
    the order of nature have a sharpness of their own. But setting
    this apart, there is nothing lacking to us in consolations human
    or divine. I can only wish that I may become less unworthy to have
    been his father.


To me he wrote (July 10):—


    We feel deeply the kindness and tenderness of your letter. It
    supplies one more link in a long chain of recollection which I
    deeply prize. Yes, ours is a tribulation, and a sore one, but yet
    we feel we ought to find ourselves carried out of ourselves by
    sympathy with the wife whose noble and absorbing devotion had
    become like an entire life of itself, and who is now face to face
    with the void. The grief of children too, which passes, is very
    sharp while it remains. The case has been very remarkable. Though
    with abatement of some powers, my son has not been without many
    among the signs and comforts of health during a period of nearly
    two and a half years. All this time the terrible enemy was lodged
    in the royal seat, and only his healthy and unyielding
    constitution kept it at defiance, and maintained his mental and
    inward life intact.... And most largely has human, as well as
    divine compassion, flowed in upon us, from none more conspicuously
    than from yourself, whom we hope to count among near friends for
    the short remainder of our lives.


To another correspondent who did not share his own religious beliefs, he
said (July 5):—


    When I received your last kind note, I fully intended to write to
    you with freedom on the subject of _The Agnostic Island_. But
    since then I have been at close quarters, so to speak, with the
    dispensations of God, for yesterday morning my dearly beloved
    eldest son was taken from the sight of our eyes. At this moment of
    bleeding hearts, I will only say what I hope you will in
    consideration of the motives take without offence, namely this: I
    would from the bottom of my heart that whenever the hour of
    bereavement shall befall you or those whom you love, you and they
    may enjoy the immeasurable consolation of believing, with all the
    mind and all the heart, that the beloved one is gone into eternal
    rest, and that those who remain behind may through the same mighty
    Deliverer hope at their appointed time to rejoin him.

    All this language on the great occasions of human life was not
    with him the tone of convention. Whatever the synthesis, as they
    call it,—whatever the form, whatever the creed and faith may be,
    he was one of that high and favoured household who, in Emerson’s
    noble phrase, “live from a great depth of being.”


Earlier in the year Lord Granville, who so long had been his best friend,
died. The loss by his death was severe. As Acton, who knew of their
relations well and from within, wrote to Mr. Gladstone (April 1):—


    There was an admirable fitness in your union, and I had been able
    to watch how it became closer and easier, in spite of so much to
    separate you, in mental habits, in early affinities, and even in
    the form of fundamental convictions, since he came home from your
    budget, overwhelmed, thirty-eight years ago. I saw all the
    connections which had their root in social habit fade before the
    one which took its rise from public life and proved more firm and
    more enduring than the rest.



II


In September he paid a visit to his relatives at Fasque, and thence he
went to Glenalmond—spots that in his tenacious memory must have awakened
hosts of old and dear associations. On October 1, he found himself after a
long and busy day, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he had never stayed since
his too memorable visit in 1862.(286) Since the defeat of the Irish policy
in 1886, he had attended the annual meeting of the chief liberal
organisation at Nottingham (1887), Birmingham (1888), and Manchester
(1889). This year it was the turn of Newcastle. On October 2, he gave his
blessing to various measures that afterwards came to be known as the
Newcastle programme. After the shock caused by the Irish quarrel, every
politician knew that it would be necessary to balance home rule by reforms
expected in England and Scotland. No liberal, whatever his particular
shade, thought that it would be either honourable or practical to throw
the Irish policy overboard, and if there (M162) were any who thought such
a course honourable, they knew it would not be safe. The principle and
expediency of home rule had taken a much deeper root in the party than it
suited some of the trimming tribe later to admit. On the other hand, after
five years of pretty exclusive devotion to the Irish case, to pass by the
British case and its various demands for an indefinite time longer, would
have been absurd.



III


In the eighties Mr. Gladstone grew into close friendship with one who had
for many years been his faithful supporter in the House of Commons as
member for Dundee. Nobody ever showed him devotion more considerate,
loyal, and unselfish than did Mr. Armitstead, from about the close of the
parliament of 1880 down to the end of this story.(287) In the middle of
December 1891 Mr. Armitstead planned a foreign trip for his hero, and
persuaded me to join. Biarritz was to be our destination, and the
expedition proved a wonderful success. Some notes of mine, though intended
only for domestic consumption, may help to bring Mr. Gladstone in his
easiest moods before the reader’s eye. No new ideas struck fire, no
particular contribution was made to grand themes. But a great statesman on
a holiday may be forgiven for not trying to discover brand-new keys to
philosophy, history, and “all the mythologies.” As a sketch from life of
the veteran’s buoyancy, vigour, genial freshness of heart and brain, after
four-score strenuous years, these few pages may be found of interest.

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

We left Paris at nine in the morning (Dec. 16), and were listening to the
swell of the mighty Bay resounding under our windows at Biarritz soon
after midnight.

The long day’s journey left no signs of fatigue on either Mr. or Mrs.
Gladstone, and his only regret was that we had not come straight through
instead of staying a night in Paris. I’m always for going straight on, he
said. For some odd reason in spite of the late hour he was full of stories
of American humour, which he told with extraordinary verve and enjoyment.
I contributed one that amused him much, of the Bostonian who, having read
Shakespeare for the first time, observed, “I call that a very clever book.
Now, I don’t suppose there are twenty men in Boston to-day who could have
written that book!”

_Thursday, Dec. 17._—Splendid morning for making acquaintance with a new
place. Saw the western spur of the Pyrenees falling down to the Bidassoa
and the first glimpse of the giant wall, beyond which, according to
Michelet, Africa begins, and our first glimpse of Spain.

After breakfast we all sallied forth to look into the shops and to see the
lie of the land. Mr. G. as interested as a child in all the objects in the
shops—many of them showing that we are not far from Spain. The consul very
polite, showed us about, and told us the hundred trifles that bring a
place really into one’s mind. Nothing is like a first morning’s stroll in
a foreign town. By afternoon the spell dissolves, and the mood comes of
Dante’s lines, “_Era già l’ora_,” etc.(288)

Some mention was made of Charles Austin, the famous lawyer: it brought up
the case of men who are suddenly torn from lives of great activity to
complete idleness.

_Mr. G._—I don’t know how to reconcile it with what I’ve always regarded
as the foundation of character—Bishop Butler’s view of habit. How comes it
that during the hundreds of years in which priests and fellows of Eton
College have retired from hard work to college livings and leisure, not
one of them has ever done anything whatever for either scholarship or
divinity—not one?

Mr. G. did not know Mazzini, but Armellini, another of the Roman
triumvirs, taught him Italian in 1832. (M163) I spoke a word for Gambetta,
but he would not have it. “Gambetta was _autoritaire_; I do not feel as if
he were a true liberal in the old and best sense. I cannot forget how
hostile he was to the movement for freedom in the Balkans.”

Said he only once saw Lord Liverpool. He went to call on Canning at
Glos’ter House (close to our Glos’ter Road Station), and there through a
glass door he saw Canning and Lord Liverpool talking together.

_Peel._—Had a good deal of temper; not hot; but perhaps sulky. Not a
farsighted man, but fairly clear-sighted. “I called upon him after the
election in 1847. The Janissaries, as Bentinck called us, that is the men
who had stood by Peel, had been 110 before the election; we came back only
50. Peel said to me that what he looked forward to was a long and fierce
struggle on behalf of protection. I must say I thought this foolish. If
Bentinck had lived, with his strong will and dogged industry, there might
have been a wide rally for protection, but everybody knew that Dizzy did
not care a straw about it, and Derby had not constancy and force enough.”

Mr. G. said Disraeli’s performances against Peel were quite as wonderful
as report makes them. Peel altogether helpless in reply. Dealt with them
with a kind of “righteous dulness.” The Protectionist secession due to
three men: Derby contributed prestige; Bentinck backbone; and Dizzy
parliamentary brains.

The golden age of administrative reform was from 1832 to the Crimean War;
Peel was always keenly interested in the progress of these reforms.

_Northcote._—“He was my private secretary; and one of the very best
imaginable; pliant, ready, diligent, quick, acute, with plenty of humour,
and a temper simply perfect. But as a leader, I think ill of him; you had
a conversation; he saw the reason of your case; and when he left, you
supposed all was right. But at the second interview, you always found that
he had been unable to persuade his friends. What could be weaker than his
conduct on the Bradlaugh affair! You could not wonder that the rank and
file of his men should be caught by the proposition that an atheist ought
not to sit in parliament. But what is a leader good for, if he dare not
tell his party that in a matter like this they are wrong, and of course
nobody knew better than N. that they were wrong. A clever, quick man with
fine temper. By the way, how is it that we have no word, no respectable
word, for backbone?”

_J. M._—Character?

_Mr. G._—Well, character; yes; but that’s vague. It means will, I suppose.
(I ought to have thought of Novalis’s well-known definition of character
as “a completely fashioned will.”)

_J. M._—Our inferiority to the Greeks in discriminations of language shown
by our lack of precise equivalents for φρόνησις, σοφία, σωφροσύνη, etc.,
of which we used to hear so much when coached in the _Ethics_.

Mr. G. went on to argue that because the Greeks drew these fine
distinctions in words, they were superior in conduct. “You cannot beat the
Greeks in noble qualities.”

_Mr. G._—I admit there is no Greek word of good credit for the virtue of
humility.

_J. M._—ταπεινότης? But that has an association of meanness.

_Mr. G._—Yes; a shabby sort of humility. Humility as a sovereign grace is
the creation of Christianity.

_Friday, December 18._—Brilliant sunshine, but bitterly cold; an east wind
blowing straight from the Maritime Alps. Walking, reading, talking. Mr. G.
after breakfast took me into his room, where he is reading Heine, Butcher
on Greek genius, and Marbot. Thought Thiers’s well-known remark on Heine’s
death capital,—“To-day the wittiest Frenchman alive has died.”

_Mr. G._—We have talked about the best line in poetry, etc. How do you
answer this question—Which century of English history produced the
greatest men?

_J. M._—What do you say to the sixteenth?

_Mr. G._—Yes, I think so. Gardiner was a great man. Henry VIII. was great.
But bad. Poor Cranmer. Like Northcote, he’d no backbone. Do you remember
Jeremy Collier’s sentence about his bravery at the stake, which (M164) I
count one of the grandest in English prose—“He seemed to repel the force
of the fire and to overlook the torture, by strength of thought.”(289)
Thucydides could not beat that.

The old man twice declaimed the sentence with deep sonorous voice, and his
usual incomparable modulation.

Mr. G. talked of a certain General ——. He was thought to be a first-rate
man; neglected nothing, looked to things himself, conceived admirable
plans, and at last got an important command. Then to the universal
surprise, nothing came of it; —— they said, “could do everything that a
commander should do, except say, _Quick march_.” There are plenty of
politicians of that stamp, but Mr. G. decidedly not one of them. I
mentioned a farewell dinner given to —— in the spring, by some rich man or
other. It cost £560 for forty-eight guests! Flowers alone £150. Mr. G. on
this enormity, recalled a dinner to Talfourd about copyright at the old
Clarendon Hotel in Bond Street, and the price was £2, 17s. 6d. a head. The
old East India Company used to give dinners at a cost of seven guineas a
head. He has a wonderfully lively interest for these matters, and his
curiosity as to the prices of things in the shop-windows is inexhaustible.
We got round to Goethe. Goethe, he said, never gave prominence to duty.

_J. M._—Surely, surely in that fine psalm of life, _Das Göttliche_?

_Mr. G._—Döllinger used to confront me with the _Iphigenie_ as a great
drama of duty.

He wished that I had known Döllinger—“a man thoroughly from beginning to
end of his life _purged of self_.” Mistook the nature of the Irish
questions, from the erroneous view that Irish Catholicism is ultramontane,
which it certainly is not.

_Saturday, Dec. 19._—

What is extraordinary is that all Mr. G.’s versatility, buoyancy, and the
rest goes with the most profound accuracy and intense concentration when
any point of public business is raised. Something was said of the salaries
of bishops. He was ready in an instant with every figure and detail, and
every circumstance of the history of the foundation of the Ecclesiastical
Commission in 1835-6. Then his _savoir faire_ and wisdom of parliamentary
conduct. “I always made it a rule in the H. of C. to allow nobody to
suppose that I did not like him, and to say as little as I could to
prevent anybody from liking me. Considering the intense friction and
contention of public life, it is a saving of wear and tear that as many as
possible even among opponents should think well of one.”

_Sunday, Dec. 20._—At table, a little discussion as to the happiness and
misery of animal creation. Outside of man Mr. G. argued against Tennyson’s
description of Nature as red in tooth and claw. Apart from man, he said,
and the action of man, sentient beings are happy and not miserable. But
Fear? we said. No; they are unaware of impending doom; when hawk or kite
pounces on its prey, the small bird has little or no apprehension; ’tis
death, but death by appointed and unforeseen lot.

_J. M._—There is Hunger. Is not the probability that most creatures are
always hungry, not excepting Man?

To this he rather assented. Of course optimism like this is indispensable
as the basis of natural theology.

Talked to Mr. G. about Michelet’s Tableau de la France, which I had just
finished in vol. 2 of the history. A brilliant tour de force, but strains
the relations of soil to character; compels words and facts to be the
slaves of his phantasy; the modicum of reality overlaid with violent
paradox and foregone conclusion. Mr. G. not very much interested—seems
only to care for political and church history.

_Monday, Dec. 31._—Mr. G. did not appear at table to-day, suffering from a
surfeit of wild strawberries the day before. But he dined in his dressing
gown, and I had some chat with him in his room after lunch.

_Mr. G._—“’Tis a hard law of political things that if a man shows special
competence in a department, that is the very thing most likely to keep him
there, and prevent his promotion.”

(M165) _Mr. G._—I consider Burke a tripartite man: America, France,
Ireland—right as to two, wrong in one.

_J. M._—Must you not add home affairs and India? His _Thoughts on the
Discontents_ is a masterpiece of civil wisdom, and the right defence in a
great constitutional struggle. Then he gave fourteen years of industry to
Warren Hastings, and teaching England the rights of the natives, princes
and people, and her own duties. So he was right in four out of five.

_Mr. G._—Yes, yes—quite true. Those two ought to be added to my three.
There is a saying of Burke’s from which I must utterly dissent. “Property
is sluggish and inert.” Quite the contrary. Property is vigilant, active,
sleepless; if ever it seems to slumber, be sure that one eye is open.

_Marie Antoinette._ I once read the three volumes of letters from Mercy
d’Argenteau to Maria Theresa. He seems to have performed the duty imposed
upon him with fidelity.

_J. M._—Don’t you think the Empress comes out well in the correspondence?

_Mr. G._—Yes, she shows always judgment and sagacity.

_J. M._—Ah, but besides sagacity, worth and as much integrity as those
slippery times allowed.

_Mr. G._—Yes (but rather reluctantly, I thought). As for Marie Antoinette,
she was not a striking character in any senses she was horribly frivolous;
and, I suppose, we must say she was, what shall I call it—a very
considerable flirt?

_J. M._—The only case with real foundation seems to be that of the _beau
Fersen_, the Swedish secretary. He too came to as tragic an end as the
Queen.

_Tuesday, Dec. 22._—Mr. G. still somewhat indisposed—but reading away all
day long. Full of Marbot. Delighted with the story of the battle of
Castiglione: how when Napoleon held a council of war, and they all said
they were hemmed in, and that their only chance was to back out, Augereau
roughly cried that they might all do what they liked, but he would attack
the enemy cost what it might. “Exactly like a place in the _Iliad_; when
Agamemnon and the rest sit sorrowful in the assembly arguing that it was
useless to withstand the sovereign will of Zeus, and that they had better
flee into their ships, Diomed bursts out that whatever others think, in
any event he and Sthenelus, his squire, will hold firm, and never desist
from the onslaught until they have laid waste the walls of Troy.”(290) A
large dose of Diomed in Mr. G. himself.

Talk about the dangerous isolation in which the monarchy will find itself
in England if the hereditary principle goes down in the House of Lords;
“it will stand bare, naked, with no shelter or shield, only endured as the
better of two evils.” “I once asked,” he said, “who besides myself in the
party cares for the hereditary principle? The answer was, That perhaps ——
cared for it!!”—naming a member of the party supposed to be rather sapient
than sage.

News in the paper that the Comte de Paris in his discouragement was about
to renounce his claims, and break up his party. Somehow this brought us
round to Tocqueville, of whom Mr. G. spoke as the nearest French approach
to Burke.

_J. M._—But pale and without passion. Who was it that said of him that he
was an aristocrat who accepted his defeat? That is, he knew democracy to
be the conqueror, but he doubted how far it would be an improvement, he
saw its perils, etc.

_Mr. G._—I have not much faith in these estimates, whether in favour of
progress or against it. I don’t believe in comparisons of age with age.
How can a man strike a balance between one government and another? How can
he place himself in such an attitude, and with such comprehensive sureness
of vision, as to say that the thirteenth century was better or higher or
worse or lower than the nineteenth?

_Thursday, Dec. 24._—At lunch we had the news of the Parnellite victory at
Waterford. A disagreeable reverse for us. Mr. G. did not say many words
about it, only that it would give heart to the mischief makers—only too
certain. But we said no more about it. He and I took a walk on the sands
in the afternoon, and had a curious talk (considering), about the
prospects of the church of England. He was (M166) anxious to know about my
talk some time ago with the Bishop of —— whom I had met at a feast at
Lincoln’s Inn. I gave him as good an account as I could of what had
passed. Mr. G. doubted that this prelate was fundamentally an Erastian, as
Tait was. Mr. G. is eager to read the signs of the times as to the
prospects of Anglican Christianity, to which his heart is given; and he
fears the peril of Erastianism to the spiritual life of the church, which
is naturally the only thing worth caring about. Hence, he talked with much
interest of the question whether the clever fellows at Oxford and
Cambridge now take orders. He wants to know what kind of defenders his
church is likely to have in days to come. Said that for the first time
interest has moved away both from politics and theology, towards the vague
something which they call social reform; and he thinks they won’t make
much out of that in the way of permanent results. The establishment he
considers safer than it has been for a long time.

As to Welsh disestablishment, he said it was a pity that where the
national sentiment was so unanimous as it was in Wales, the operation
itself should not be as simple as in Scotland. In Scotland sentiment is
not unanimous, but the operation is easy. In Wales sentiment is all one
way, but the operation difficult—a good deal more difficult than people
suppose, as they will find out when they come to tackle it.

[Perhaps it may be mentioned here that, though we always talked freely and
abundantly together upon ecclesiastical affairs and persons, we never once
exchanged a word upon theology or religious creed, either at Biarritz or
anywhere else.]

_Pitt._—A strong denunciation of Pitt for the French war. People don’t
realise what the French war meant. In 1812 wheat at Liverpool was 20s. (?)
the imperial bushel of 65 pounds (?)! Think of that, when you bring it
into figures of the cost of a loaf. And that was the time when Eaton,
Eastnor, and other great palaces were built by the landlords out of the
high rents which the war and war prices enabled them to exact.

Wished we knew more of Melbourne. He was in many ways a very fine fellow.
“In two of the most important of all the relations of a prime minister, he
was perfect; I mean first, his relations to the Queen, second to his
colleagues.”

Somebody at dinner quoted a capital description of the perverse fashion of
talking that prevailed at Oxford soon after my time, and prevails there
now, I fancy—“hunting for epigrammatic ways of saying what you don’t
think.” —— was the father of this pestilent mode.

Rather puzzled him by repeating a saying of mine that used to amuse
Fitzjames Stephen, that Love of Truth is more often than we think only a
fine name for Temper. I think Mr. G. has a thorough dislike for anything
that has a cynical or sardonic flavour about it. I wish I had thought, by
the way, of asking him what he had to say of that piece of Swift’s, about
all objects being insipid that do not come by delusion, and everything
being shrunken as it appears in the glass of nature, so that if it were
not for artificial mediums, refracted angles, false lights, varnish and
tinsel, there would be pretty much of a level in the felicity of mortal
man.

Am always feeling how strong is his aversion to seeing more than he can
help of what is sordid, mean, ignoble. He has not been in public life all
these years without rubbing shoulders with plenty of baseness on every
scale, and plenty of pettiness in every hue, but he has always kept his
eyes well above it. Never was a man more wholly free of the starch of the
censor, more ready to make allowance, nor more indulgent even; he enters
into human nature in all its compass. But he won’t linger a minute longer
than he must in the dingy places of life and character.

_Christmas Day, 1891._—A divine day, brilliant sunshine, and mild spring
air. Mr. G. heard what he called an admirable sermon from an English
preacher, “with a great command of his art.” A quietish day, Mr. G. no
doubt engaged in φρονεῖν τὰ ὅσια.

_Saturday, Dec. 26._—Once more a noble day. We started in a couple of
carriages for the Négress station, a couple of miles away or more, I with
the G.’s. Occasion produced the Greek epitaph of the nameless drowned
sailor (M167) who wished for others kinder seas.(291) Mr. G. felt its
pathos and its noble charm—so direct and simple, such benignity, such a
good lesson to men to forget their own misdeeds and mischance, and to pray
for the passer-by a happier star. He repaid me by two epigrams of a
different vein, and one admirable translation into Greek, of Tennyson on
Sir John Franklin, which I do not carry in my mind; another on a
boisterous Eton fellow—


    Didactic, dry, declamatory, dull,
    The bursar —— bellows like a bull.


Just in the tone of Greek epigram, a sort of point, but not too much
point.

_Parliamentary Wit._—Thought Disraeli had never been surpassed, nor even
equalled, in this line. He had a contest with General Grey, who stood upon
the general merits of the whig government, after both Lord Grey and
Stanley had left it. D. drew a picture of a circus man who advertised his
show with its incomparable team of six grey horses. One died, he replaced
it by a mule. Another died, and he put in a donkey, still he went on
advertising his team of greys all the same. Canning’s wit not to be found
conspicuously in his speeches, but highly agreeable pleasantries, though
many of them in a vein which would jar horribly on modern taste.

Some English redcoats and a pack of hounds passed us as we neared the
station. They saluted Mr. G. with a politeness that astonished him, but
was pleasant. Took the train for Irun, the fields and mountain slopes
delightful in the sun, and the sea on our right a superb blue such as we
never see in English waters. At Irun we found carriages waiting to take us
on to Fuentarabia. From the balcony of the church had a beautiful view
over the scene of Wellington’s operations when he crossed the Bidassoa, in
the presence of the astonished Soult. A lovely picture, made none the
worse by this excellent historic association. The alcalde was extremely
polite and intelligent. The consul who was with us showed a board on the
old tower, in which _v_ in some words was _b_, and I noted that the
alcalde spoke of Viarritz. I reminded Mr. G. of Scaliger’s epigram—


    Haud temere antiquas mutat Vasconia voces,
    Cui nihil est alind vivere quam bibere.


Pretty cold driving home, but Mr. G. seemed not to care. He found both the
churches at St. Jean and at Fuentarabia very noteworthy, though the latter
very popish, but both, he felt, “had a certain association with grandeur.”

_Sunday, Dec. 27._—After some quarter of an hour of travellers’ topics, we
plunged into one of the most interesting talks we have yet had. _Apropos_
of I do not know what, Mr. G. said that he had not advised his son to
enter public life. “No doubt there are some men to whom station, wealth,
and family traditions make it a duty. But I have never advised any
individual, as to whom I have been consulted, to enter the H. of C.”

_J. M._—But isn’t that rather to encourage self-indulgence? Nobody who
cares for ease or mental composure would seek public life?

_Mr. G._—Ah, I don’t know that. Surely politics open up a great field for
the natural man. Self-seeking, pride, domination, power—all these passions
are gratified in politics.

_J. M._—You cannot be sure of achievement in politics, whether personal or
public?

_Mr. G._—No; to use Bacon’s pregnant phrase, they are too immersed in
matter. Then as new matter, that is, new details and particulars, come
into view, men change their judgment.

_J. M._—You have spoken just now of somebody as a thorough good tory. You
know the saying that nobody is worth much who has not been a bit of a
radical in his youth, and a bit of a tory in his fuller age.

_Mr. G._ (laughing)—Ah, I’m afraid that hits me rather hard. But for
myself, I think I can truly put up all the change that has come into my
politics into a sentence; I (M168) was brought up to distrust and dislike
liberty, I learned to believe in it. That is the key to all my changes.

_J. M._—According to my observation, the change in my own generation is
different. They have ceased either to trust or to distrust liberty, and
have come to the mind that it matters little either way. Men are
disenchanted. They have got what they wanted in the days of their youth,
yet what of it, they ask? France has thrown off the Empire, but the
statesmen of the republic are not a great breed. Italy has gained her
unity, yet unity has not been followed by thrift, wisdom, or large
increase of public virtue or happiness. America has purged herself of
slavery, yet life in America is material, prosaic,—so say some of her own
rarest sons. Don’t think that I say all these things. But I know able and
high-minded men who suffer from this disenchantment.

_Mr. G._—Italy would have been very different if Cavour had only lived—and
even Ricasoli. Men ought not to suffer from disenchantment. They ought to
know that _ideals in politics are never realised_. And don’t let us forget
in eastern Europe the rescue in our time of some ten millions of men from
the harrowing domination of the Turk. (On this he expatiated, and very
justly, with much energy.)

We turned to our own country. Here he insisted that democracy had
certainly not saved us from a distinct decline in the standard of public
men.... Look at the whole conduct of opposition from ’80 to ’85—every
principle was flung overboard, if they could manufacture a combination
against the government. For all this deterioration one man and one man
alone is responsible, Disraeli. He is the grand corrupter. He it was who
sowed the seed.

_J. M._—Ought not Palmerston to bear some share in this?

_Mr. G._—No, no; Pam. had many strong and liberal convictions. On one
subject Dizzy had them too—the Jews. There he was much more than rational,
he was fanatical. He said once that Providence would deal good or ill
fortune to nations, according as they dealt well or ill by the Jews. I
remember once sitting next to John Russell when D. was making a speech on
Jewish emancipation. “Look at him,” said J. R., “how manfully he sticks to
it, tho’ he knows that every word he says is gall and wormwood to every
man who sits around him and behind him.” A curious irony, was it not, that
it should have fallen to me to propose a motion for a memorial both to
Pam. and Dizzy?

A superb scene upon the ocean, with a grand wind from the west. Mr. G. and
I walked on the shore; he has a passion for tumultuous seas. I have never
seen such huge masses of water shattering themselves among the rocks.

In the evening Mr. G. remarked on our debt to Macaulay, for guarding the
purity of the English tongue. I recalled a favourite passage from Milton,
that next to the man who gives wise and intrepid counsels of government,
he places the man who cares for the purity of his mother tongue. Mr. G.
liked this. Said he only knew Bright once slip into an error in this
respect, when he used “transpire” for “happen.” Macaulay of good example
also in rigorously abstaining from the inclusion of matter in footnotes.
Hallam an offender in this respect. I pointed out that he offended in
company with Gibbon.

_Monday, Dec. 28._—We had an animated hour at breakfast.

_Oxford and Cambridge._—Curious how, like two buckets, whenever one was
up, the other was down. Cambridge has never produced four such men of
action in successive ages as Wolsey, Laud, Wesley, and Newman.

_J. M._—In the region of thought Cambridge has produced the greatest of
all names, Newton.

_Mr. G._—In the earlier times Oxford has it—with Wycliff, Occam, above all
Roger Bacon. And then in the eighteenth century, Butler.

_J. M._—But why not Locke, too, in the century before?

This brought on a tremendous tussle, for Mr. G. was of the same mind, and
perhaps for the same sort of reason, as Joseph de Maistre, that contempt
for Locke is the beginning of knowledge. All very well for De Maistre, but
not for a man in line with European liberalism. I pressed the very obvious
point that you must take into account not only a man’s intellectual
product or his general stature, but also (M169) his influence as a
historic force. From the point of view of influence Locke was the origin
of the emancipatory movement of the eighteenth century abroad, and laid
the philosophic foundations of liberalism in civil government at home. Mr.
G. insisted on a passage of Hume’s which he believed to be in the history,
disparaging Locke as a metaphysical thinker.(292) “That may be,” said I,
“though Hume in his _Essays_ is not above paying many compliments to ‘the
great reasoner,’ etc., to whom, for that matter, I fancy that he stood in
pretty direct relation. But far be it from me to deny that Hume saw deeper
than Locke into the metaphysical millstone. That is not the point. I’m
only thinking of his historic place, and, after all, the history of
philosophy is itself a philosophy.” To minds nursed in dogmatic schools,
all this is both unpalatable and incredible.

Somehow we slid into the freedom of the will and Jonathan Edwards. I told
him that Mill had often told us how Edwards argued the necessarian or
determinist case as keenly as any modern.

_Tuesday, Dec. 29._—Mr. G. 82 to-day. I gave him Mackail’s Greek Epigrams,
and if it affords him half as much pleasure as it has given me, he will be
very grateful. Various people brought Mr. G. bouquets and addresses. Mr.
G. went to church in the morning, and in the afternoon took a walk with
me.... _Land Question._ As you go through France you see the soil
cultivated by the population. In our little dash into Spain the other day,
we saw again the soil cultivated by the population. In England it is
cultivated by the capitalist, for the farmer is capitalist. Some
astonishing views recently propounded by D. of Argyll on this matter.
Unearned increment—so terribly difficult to catch it. Perhaps best try to
get at it through the death duties. Physical condition of our
people—always a subject of great anxiety—their stature, colour, and so on.
Feared the atmosphere of cotton factories, etc., very deleterious. As
against bad air, I said, you must set good food; the Lancashire operative
in decent times lives uncommonly well, as he deserves to do. He agreed
there might be something in this.

The day was humid and muggy, but the tumult of the sea was most majestic.
Mr. G. delighted in it. He has a passion for the sound of the sea; would
like to have it in his ear all day and all night. Again and again he
recurred to this.

After dinner, long talk about Mazzini, of whom Mr. G. thought poorly in
comparison with Poerio and the others who for freedom sacrificed their
lives. I stood up for Mazzini, as one of the most morally impressive men I
had ever known, or that his age knew; he breathed a soul into democracy.

Then we fell into a discussion as to the eastern and western churches. He
thought the western popes by their proffered alliance with the mahometans,
etc., had betrayed Christianity in the east. I offered De Maistre’s view.

Mr. G. strongly assented to old Chatham’s dictum that vacancy is worse
than even the most anxious work. He has less to reproach himself with than
most men under that head.

He repeated an observation that I have heard him make before, that he
thought politicians are more _rapid_ than other people. I told him that
Bowen once said to me on this that he did not agree; that he thought
rapidity the mark of all successful men in the practical line of life,
merchants and stockbrokers, etc.

_Wednesday, Dec. 30._—A very muggy day. A divine sunset, with the
loveliest pink and opal tints in the sky. Mr. G. reading Gleig’s
_Subaltern_. Not a very entertaining book in itself, but the incidents
belong to Wellington’s Pyrenean campaign, and, for my own part, I rather
enjoyed it on the principle on which one likes reading _Romola_ at
Florence, _Transformation_ at Rome, _Sylvia’s Lovers_ at Whitby, and
_Hurrish_ on the northern edge of Clare.

_Thursday, Dec. 31._—Down to the pier, and found all the party watching
the breakers, and superb they were. Mr. G. exulting in the huge force of
the Atlantic swell and the beat of the rollers on the shore, like a
Titanic pulse.

After dinner Mr. G. raised the question of payment of members. He had been
asked by somebody whether he meant at Newcastle to indicate that everybody
should be paid, or only those who chose to take it or to ask (M170) for
it. He produced the same extraordinary plan as he had described to me on
the morning of his Newcastle speech—_i.e._ that the Inland Revenue should
ascertain from their own books the income of every M.P., and if they found
any below the limit of exemption, should notify the same to the Speaker,
and the Speaker should thereupon send to the said M.P. below the limit an
annual cheque for, say, £300, the name to appear in an annual return to
Parliament of all the M.P.’s in receipt of public money on any grounds
whatever. I demurred to this altogether, as drawing an invidious
distinction between paid and unpaid members; said it was idle to ignore
the theory on which the demand for paid members is based, namely, that it
is desirable in the public interest that poor men should have access to
the H. of C.; and that the poor man should stand there on the same footing
as anybody else.

_Friday, Jan. 1, 1892._—After breakfast Mrs. Gladstone came to my room and
said how glad she was that I had not scrupled to put unpleasant points;
that Mr. G. must not be shielded and sheltered as some great people are,
who hear all the pleasant things and none of the unpleasant; that the
perturbation from what is disagreeable only lasts an hour. I said I hoped
that I was faithful with him, but of course I could not be always putting
myself in an attitude of perpetual controversy. She said, “He is never
made angry by what you say.” And so she went away, and —— and I had a good
and most useful set-to about Irish finance.

At luncheon Mr. G. asked what we had made out of our morning’s work. When
we told him he showed a good deal of impatience and vehemence, and, to my
dismay, he came upon union finance and the general subject of the
treatment of Ireland by England....

In the afternoon we took a walk, he and I, afterwards joined by the rest.
He was as delighted as ever with the swell of the waves, as they bounded
over one another, with every variety of grace and tumultuous power. He
wondered if we had not more and better words for the sea than the
French—“breaker,” “billow,” “roller,” as against “flot,” “vague,” “onde,”
“lame,” etc.

At dinner he asked me whether I had made up my mind on the burning
question of compulsory Greek for a university degree. I said, No, that as
then advised I was half inclined to be against compulsory Greek, but it is
so important that I would not decide before I was obliged. “So with me,”
he said, “the question is one with many subtle and deep-reaching
consequences.” He dwelt on the folly of striking Italian out of the course
of modern education, thus cutting European history in two, and setting an
artificial gulf between the ancient and modern worlds.

_Saturday, Jan. 2._—Superb morning, and all the better for being much
cooler. At breakfast somebody started the idle topic of quill pens. When
they came to the length of time that so-and-so made a quill serve, “De
Retz,” said I, “made up his mind that Cardinal Chigi was a poor creature,
_maximus in minimis_, because at their first interview Chigi boasted that
he had used one pen for three years.” That recalled another saying of
Retz’s about Cromwell’s famous dictum, that nobody goes so far as the man
who does not know where he is going. Mr. G. gave his deep and eager Ah! to
this. He could not recall that Cromwell had produced many dicta of such
quality. “I don’t love him, but he was a mighty big fellow. But he was
intolerant. He was intolerant of the episcopalians.”

_Mr. G._—Do you know whom I find the most tolerant churchman of that time?
_Laud!_ Laud got Davenant made Bishop of Salisbury, and he zealously
befriended Chillingworth and Hales. (There was some other case, which I
forget.)

_The execution of Charles._—I told him of Gardiner’s new volume which I
had just been reading. “Charles,” he said, “was no doubt a dreadful liar;
Cromwell perhaps did not always tell the truth; Elizabeth was a tremendous
liar.”

_J. M._—Charles was not wholly inexcusable, being what he was, for
thinking that he had a good game in his hands, by playing off the
parliament against the army, etc.

_Mr. G._—There was less excuse for cutting off his head than in the case
of poor Louis XVI., for Louis was the excuse for foreign invasion.

(M171) _J. M._—Could you call foreign invasion the intervention of the
Scotch?

_Mr. G._—Well, not quite. I suppose it is certain that it was Cromwell who
cut off Charles’s head? Not one in a hundred in the nation desired it.

_J. M._—No, nor one in twenty in the parliament. But then, ninety-nine in
a hundred in the army.

In the afternoon we all drove towards Bayonne to watch the ships struggle
over the bar at high water. As it happened we only saw one pass out, a
countryman for Cardiff. A string of others were waiting to go, but a
little steamer from Nantes came first, and having secured her station,
found she had not force enough to make the bar, and the others remained
swearing impatiently behind her. The Nantes steamer was like Ireland. The
scene was very fresh and fine, and the cold most exhilarating after the
mugginess of the last two or three days. Mr. G., who has a dizzy head, did
not venture on the jetty, but watched things from the sands. He and I
drove home together, at a good pace. “I am inclined,” he said laughingly,
“to agree with Dr. Johnson that there is no pleasure greater than sitting
behind four fast-going horses.”(293) Talking of Johnson generally, “I
suppose we may take him as the best product of the eighteenth century.”
Perhaps so, but is he its most characteristic product?

_Wellington._—Curious that there should be no general estimate of W.’s
character; his character not merely as a general but as a man. No love of
freedom. His sense of duty very strong, but military rather than civil.

_Montalembert._—Had often come into contact with him. A very amiable and
attractive man. But less remarkable than Rio.

_Latin Poets._—Would you place Virgil first?

_J. M._—Oh, no, Lucretius much the first for the greatest and sublimest of
poetic qualities. Mr. G. seemed to assent to this, though disposed to make
a fight for the second _Aeneid_ as equal to anything. He expressed his
admiration for Catullus, and then he was strong that Horace would run
anybody else very hard, breaking out with the lines about Regulus—


    “Atqui sciebat quæ sibi barbarus
    Tortor pararet;” etc.(294)


_Blunders in Government._—How right Napoleon was when he said, reflecting
on all the vast complexities of government, that the best to be said of a
statesman is that he has avoided the biggest blunders.

It is not easy to define the charm of these conversations. Is charm the
right word? They are in the highest degree stimulating, bracing, widening.
That is certain. I return to my room with the sensations of a man who has
taken delightful exercise in fresh air. He is so wholly free from the
_ergoteur_. There’s all the difference between the _ergoteur_ and the
great debater. He fits his tone to the thing; he can be as playful as
anybody. In truth I have many a time seen him in London and at Hawarden
not far from trivial. But here at Biarritz all is appropriate, and though,
as I say, he can be playful and gay as youth, he cannot resist rising in
an instant to the general point of view—to grasp the elemental
considerations of character, history, belief, conduct, affairs. There he
is at home, there he is most himself. I never knew anybody less guilty of
the tiresome sin of arguing for victory. It is not his knowledge that
attracts; it is not his ethical tests and standards; it is not that
dialectical strength of arm which, as Mark Pattison said of him, could
twist a bar of iron to its purpose. It is the combination of these with
elevation, with true sincerity, with extraordinary mental force.

_Sunday, Jan. 3._—Vauvenargues is right when he says that to carry through
great undertakings, one must act as though one could never die. My
wonderful companion is a wonderful illustration. He is like M. Angelo,
who, just before he died on the very edge of ninety, made an allegorical
figure, and inscribed upon it, _ancora impara_, “still learning.”

At dinner he showed in full force.

(M172) _Heroes of the Old Testament._—He could not honestly say that he
thought there was any figure in the O. T. comparable to the heroes of
Homer. Moses was a fine fellow. But the others were of secondary
quality—not great high personages, of commanding nature.

_Thinkers._—Rather an absurd word—to call a man a thinker (and he repeated
the word with gay mockery in his tone). When did it come into use? Not
until quite our own times, eh? I said, I believed both Hobbes and Locke
spoke of thinkers, and was pretty sure that _penseur_, as in _libre
penseur_, had established itself in the last century. [Quite true;
Voltaire used it, but it was not common.]

_Dr. Arnold._—A high, large, impressive figure—perhaps more important by
his character and personality than his actual work. I mentioned M. A.’s
poem on his father, _Rugby Chapel_, with admiration. Rather to my
surprise, Mr. G. knew the poem well, and shared my admiration to the full.
This brought us on to poetry generally, and he expatiated with much
eloquence and sincerity for the rest of the talk. The wonderful continuity
of fine poetry in England for five whole centuries, stretching from
Chaucer to Tennyson, always a proof to his mind of the soundness, the sap,
and the vitality of our nation and its character. What people, beginning
with such a poet as Chaucer 500 years ago, could have burst forth into
such astonishing production of poetry as marked the first quarter of the
century, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, etc.

_J. M._—It is true that Germany has nothing, save Goethe, Schiller, Heine,
that’s her whole list. But I should say a word for the poetic movement in
France: Hugo, Gautier, etc. Mr. G. evidently knew but little, or even
nothing, of modern French poetry. He spoke up for Leopardi, on whom he had
written an article first introducing him to the British public, ever so
many years ago—in the _Quarterly_.

_Mr. G._—Wordsworth used occasionally to dine with me when I lived in the
Albany. A most agreeable man. I always found him amiable, polite, and
sympathetic. Only once did he jar upon me, when he spoke slightingly of
Tennyson’s first performance.

_J. M._—But he was not so wrong as he would be now. Tennyson’s Juvenilia
are terribly artificial.

_Mr. G._—Yes, perhaps. Tennyson has himself withdrawn some of them. I
remember W., when he dined with me, used on leaving to change his silk
stockings in the anteroom and put on grey worsted.

_J. M._—I once said to M. Arnold that I’d rather have been Wordsworth than
anybody [not exactly a modest ambition]; and Arnold, who knew him well in
the Grasmere country, said, “Oh no, you would not; you would wish you were
dining with me at the Athenæum. He was too much of the peasant for you.”

_Mr. G._—No, I never felt that; I always thought him a polite and an
amiable man.

Mentioned Macaulay’s strange judgment in a note in the _History_, that
Dryden’s famous lines,


    “... Fool’d with hope, men favour the deceit;
    Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay.
    To-morrow’s falser than the former day;
    Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest
    With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.
    Strange cozenage!...”


are as fine as any eight lines in Lucretius. Told him of an excellent
remark of —— on this, that Dryden’s passage wholly lacks the mystery and
great superhuman air of Lucretius. Mr. G. warmly agreed.

He regards it as a remarkable sign of the closeness of the church of
England to the roots of life and feeling in the country, that so many
clergymen should have written so much good poetry. Who, for instance? I
asked. He named Heber, Moultrie, Newman (_Dream of Gerontius_), and Faber
in at least one good poem, “The poor Labourer” (or some such title),
Charles Tennyson. I doubt if this thesis has much body in it. He was for
Shelley as the most musical of all our poets. I told him that I had once
asked M. to get Tennyson to write an autograph line for a friend of mine,
and Tennyson had sent this:—


    “Coldly on the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day.”


So I suppose the poet must think well of it himself. ’Tis (M173) from the
second _Locksley Hall_, and describes a man after passions have gone cool.

_Mr. G._—Yes, in melody, in the picturesque, and as apt simile, a fine
line.

Had been trying his hand at a translation of his favourite lines of
Penelope about Odysseus. Said that, of course, you could translate similes
and set passages, but to translate Homer as a whole, impossible. He was
inclined, when all is said, to think Scott the nearest approach to a
model.

_Monday, Jan. 4._—At luncheon, Mr. Gladstone recalled the well-known story
of Talleyrand on the death of Napoleon. The news was brought when T.
chanced to be dining with Wellington. “Quel événement!” they all cried.
“Non, ce n’est pas un événement,” said Talleyrand, “c’est une
nouvelle”—’Tis no event, ’tis a piece of news. “Imagine such a way,” said
Mr. G., “of taking the disappearance of that colossal man! Compare it with
the opening of Manzoni’s ode, which makes the whole earth stand still. Yet
both points of view are right. In one sense, the giant’s death was only
news; in another, when we think of his history, it was enough to shake the
world.” At the moment, he could not recall Manzoni’s words, but at dinner
he told me that he had succeeded in piecing them together, and after
dinner he went to his room and wrote them down for me on a piece of paper.
Curiously enough, he could not recall the passage in his own splendid
translation.(295)

Talk about handsome men of the past; Sidney Herbert one of the handsomest
and most attractive. But the Duke of Hamilton bore away the palm, as
glorious as a Greek god. “One day in Rotten Row, I said this to the
Duchess of C. She set up James Hope-Scott against my Duke. No doubt he had
an intellectual element which the Duke lacked.” Then we discussed the
best-looking man in the H. of C. to-day....

_Duke of Wellington._—Somebody was expatiating on the incomparable
position of the Duke; his popularity with kings, with nobles, with common
people. Mr. G. remembered that immediately after the formation of
Canning’s government in 1827, when it was generally thought that he had
been most unfairly and factiously treated (as Mr. G. still thinks, always
saving Peel) by the Duke and his friends, the Duke made an expedition to
the north of England, and had an overwhelming reception. Of course, he was
then only twelve years from Waterloo, and yet only four or five years
later he had to put up his iron shutters.

Approved a remark that a friend of ours was not simple enough, not ready
enough to take things as they come.

_Mr. G._—Unless a man has a considerable gift for taking things as they
come, he may make up his mind that political life will be sheer torment to
him. He must meet fortune in all its moods.

_Tuesday, Jan. 5._—After dinner to-day, Mr. G. extraordinarily gay. He had
bought a present of silver for his wife. She tried to guess the price, and
after the manner of wives in such a case, put the figure provokingly low.
Mr. G. then put on the deprecating air of the tradesman with wounded
feelings—and it was as capital fun as we could desire. That over, he fell
to his backgammon with our host.

_Wednesday, Jan. 6._—Mrs. Gladstone eighty to-day! What a marvel....

Léon Say called to see Mr. G. Long and most interesting conversation about
all sorts of aspects of French politics, the concordat, the schools, and
all the rest of it.

He illustrated the ignorance of French peasantry as to current affairs.
Thiers, long after he had become famous, went on a visit to his native
region; and there met a friend of his youth. “Eh bien,” said his friend,
“tu as fait ton chemin.” “Mais oui, j’ai fait un peu mon chemin. J’ai été
ministre même.” “Ah, tiens! je ne savais pas que tu étais protestant.”

I am constantly struck by his solicitude for the well-being and right
doing of Oxford and Cambridge—“the two eyes of the country.” This
connection between the higher education and the general movement of the
national mind engages his profound attention, and no doubt deserves such
attention (M174) in any statesman who looks beyond the mere surface
problems of the day. To perceive the bearings of such matters as these,
makes Mr. G. a statesman of the highest class, as distinguished from men
of clever expedients.

Mr. G. had been reading the Greek epigrams on religion in Mackail; quoted
the last of them as illustrating the description of the dead as the
inhabitants of the more populous world:—


    τῶν ἄπο κὴν ζωοῖσιν ἀκηδέα, κευτ᾽ ἄν ἵκηαι
    ὲς πλεόνων, ἕξεις θυμὸν ἐλαφρότερον.(296)


A more impressive epigram contains the same thought, where the old man,
leaning on his staff, likens himself to the withered vine on its dry pole,
and goes on to ask himself what advantage it would be to warm himself for
three or four more years in the sun; and on that reflection without
heroics put off his life, and changed his home to the greater company,


    κὴς πλεόνων ἦλθε μετοικεσίην.


All the rest of the evening he kept us alive by a stock of infinite
drolleries. A scene of a dish of over-boiled tea at West Calder after a
meeting, would have made the fortune of a comedian.

I said that in the all-important quality of co-operation, —— was only good
on condition of being in front. Mr. G. read him in the same sense.
Reminded of a mare he once had—admirable, provided you kept off spur,
curb, or whip; show her one of these things, and she would do nothing. Mr.
G. more of a judge of men than is commonly thought.

Told us of a Chinese despatch which came under his notice when he was at
the board of trade, and gave him food for reflection. A ship laden with
grain came to Canton. The administrator wrote to the central government at
Pekin to know whether the ship was to pay duty and land its cargo. The
answer was to the effect that the central government of the Flowery Land
was quite indifferent as a rule to the goings and comings of the
Barbarians; whether they brought a cargo or brought no cargo was a thing
of supreme unconcern. “But this cargo, you say, is food for the people.
There ought to be no obstacle to the entry of food for the people. So let
it in. Your Younger Brother commends himself to you, etc. etc.”

_Friday, Jan. 8._—A quiet evening. We were all rather piano at the end of
an episode which had been thoroughly delightful. When Mr. G. bade me
good-night, he said with real feeling, “More sorry than I can say that
this is our last evening together at Biarritz.” He is painfully grieved to
lose the sound of the sea in his ears.

_Saturday, Jan. 9._—Strolled about all the forenoon. “What a time of
blessed composure it has been,” said Mr. G. with a heavy sigh. The distant
hills covered with snow, and the voice of the storm gradually swelling.
Still the savage fury of the sea was yet some hours off, so we had to
leave Biarritz without the spectacle of Atlantic rage at its fiercest.

Found comfortable saloon awaiting us at Bayonne, and so under weeping
skies we made our way to Pau. The landscape must be pretty, weather
permitting. As it was, we saw but little. Mr. G. dozed and read Max
Müller’s book on Anthropological Religions.

Arrived at Pau towards 5.30; drenching rain: nothing to be seen.

At tea time, a good little discussion raised by a protest against Dante
being praised for a complete survey of human nature and the many phases of
human lot. Intensity he has, but insight over the whole field of character
and life? Mr. G. did not make any stand against this, and made the curious
admission that Dante was too optimist to be placed on a level with
Shakespeare, or even with Homer.

Then we turned to lighter themes. He had once said to Henry Taylor, “I
should have thought he was the sort of man to have a good strong grasp of
a subject,” speaking of Lord Grey, who had been one of Taylor’s many
chiefs at the Colonial Office. “I should have thought,” replied Taylor
slowly and with a dreamy look, “he was the sort of man to have a good
strong _nip_ of a subject.” Witty, and very applicable to many men.

Wordsworth once gave Mr. G. with much complacency, as an example of his
own readiness and resource, this story. A man came up to him at Rydal and
said, “Do you happen to have seen my wife.” “Why,” replied the Sage, “I
did not know you had a wife!” This peculiarly modest attempt at pointed
repartee much tickled Mr. G., as well it might.

_Tuesday, Jan. 12._—Mr. G. completely recovered from two days of
indisposition. We had about an hour’s talk on things in general, including
policy in the approaching session. He did not expect a dissolution, at the
same time a dissolution would not surprise him.

At noon they started for Périgord and Carcassonne, Nismes, Arles, and so
on to the Riviera full of kind things at our parting.




Chapter VII. The Fourth Administration. (1892-1894)


    Τῷ δ᾽ ἤδη δύο μὲν γενεαὶ μερόπων ἀνθρώπων
    ἐφθίαθ, οἷ οἱ πρόσθεν ἅμα τράφεν ἠδὲ γένοντο
    ἐν Πύλῳ ἠγαθέῃ, μετὰ δὲ τριτάτοισιν ἄνασσεν.

    _Iliad_, i. 250.

    Two generations of mortal men had he already seen pass away, who
    with him of old had been born and bred in sacred Pylos, and among
    the third generation he held rule.



I


In 1892 the general election came, after a session that was not very long
nor at all remarkable. Everybody knew that we should soon be dismissed,
and everybody knew that the liberals would have a majority, but the size
of it was beyond prognostication. Mr. Gladstone did not talk much about
it, but in fact he reckoned on winning by eighty or a hundred. A leading
liberal-unionist at whose table we met (May 24) gave us forty. That
afternoon by the way the House had heard a speech of great power and
splendour. An Irish tory peer in the gallery said afterwards, “That old
hero of yours is a miracle. When he set off in that high pitch, I said
that won’t last. Yet he kept it up all through as grand as ever, and came
in fresher and stronger than when he began.” His sight failed him in
reading an extract, and he asked me to read it for him, so he sat down
amid sympathetic cheers while it was read out from the box.

After listening to a strong and undaunted reply from Mr. Balfour, he asked
me to go with him into the tea-room; he was fresh, unperturbed, and in
high spirits. He told me he had once sat at table with Lord Melbourne, but
regretted that he had never known him. Said that of the sixty men or so
who had been his colleagues in cabinet, the (M175) very easiest and most
attractive was Clarendon. Constantly regretted that he had never met nor
known Sir Walter Scott, as of course he might have done. Thought the
effect of diplomacy to be bad on the character; to train yourself to
practise the airs of genial friendship towards men from whom you are doing
your best to hide yourself, and out of whom you are striving to worm that
which they wish to conceal. Said that he was often asked for advice by
young men as to objects of study. He bade them study and ponder, first,
the history and working of freedom in America; second, the history of
absolutism in France from Louis XIV. to the Revolution. It was suggested
that if the great thing with the young is to attract them to fine types of
character, the Huguenots had some grave, free, heroic figures, and in the
eighteenth century Turgot was the one inspiring example: when Mill was in
low spirits, he restored himself by Condorcet’s life of Turgot. This
reminded him that Canning had once praised Turgot in the House of Commons,
though most likely nobody but himself knew anything at all about Turgot.
Talking of the great centuries, the thirteenth, and the sixteenth, and the
seventeenth, Mr. Gladstone let drop what for him seems the remarkable
judgment that “Man as a type has not improved since those great times; he
is not so big, so grand, so heroic as he has been.” This, the reader will
agree, demands a good deal of consideration.

Then he began to talk about offices, in view of what were now pretty
obvious possibilities. After discussing more important people, he asked
whether, after a recent conversation, I had thought more of my own office,
and I told him that I fancied like Regulus I had better go back to the
Irish department. “Yes,” he answered with a flash of his eye, “I think so.
The truth is that we’re both chained to the oar; I am chained to the oar;
you are chained.”



II


The electoral period, when it arrived, he passed once more at Dalmeny. In
a conversation the morning after I was allowed to join him there, he
seemed already to have a grand majority of three figures, to have kissed
hands, and to be installed in Downing Street. This confidence was
indispensable to him. At the end of his talk he went up to prepare some
notes for the speech that he was to make in the afternoon at Glasgow. Just
before the carriage came to take him to the train, I heard him calling
from the library. In I went, and found him hurriedly thumbing the leaves
of a Horace. “Tell me,” he cried, “can you put your finger on the passage
about Castor and Pollux? I’ve just thought of something; Castor and Pollux
will finish my speech at Glasgow.” “Isn’t it in the Third Book?” said I.
“No, no; I’m pretty sure it is in the First Book”—busily turning over the
pages. “Ah, here it is,” and then he read out the noble lines with
animated modulation, shut the book with a bang, and rushed off exultant to
the carriage. This became one of the finest of his perorations.(297) His
delivery of it that afternoon, they said, was most majestic—the picture of
the wreck, and then the calm that gradually brought down the towering
billows to the surface of the deep, entrancing the audience like magic.

Then came a depressing week. The polls flowed in, all day long, day after
day. The illusory hopes of many months faded into night. The three-figure
majority by the end of the week had vanished so completely, that one
wondered how it could ever have been thought of. On July 13 his own
Midlothian poll was declared, and instead of his old majority of 4000, or
the 3000 on which he counted, he was only in by 690. His chagrin was
undoubtedly intense, for he had put forth every atom of his strength in
the campaign. But with that splendid suppression of vexation which is one
of the good lessons that men learn in public life, he put a brave face on
it, was perfectly cheery all through the luncheon, and afterwards took me
to the music-room, where instead of constructing a triumphant cabinet with
a majority of a hundred, he had to try to adjust an Irish policy to a
parliament with hardly a majority at all. These topics exhausted, with a
curiously quiet gravity of tone he told me (M176) that cataract had formed
over one eye, that its sight was gone, and that in the other eye he was
infested with a white speck. “One white speck,” he said, almost laughing,
“I can do with, but if the one becomes many, it will be a bad business.
They tell me that perhaps the fresh air of Braemar will do me good.” To
Braemar the ever loyal Mr. Armitstead piloted them, in company with Lord
Acton of whose society Mr. Gladstone could never have too much.



III


It has sometimes been made a matter of blame by friends no less than foes,
that he should have undertaken the task of government, depending on a
majority not large enough to coerce the House of Lords. One or two short
observations on this would seem to be enough. How could he refuse to try
to work his Irish policy through parliament, after the bulk of the Irish
members had quitted their own leader four years before in absolute
reliance on the sincerity and good faith of Mr. Gladstone and his party?
After all the confidence that Ireland had shown in him at the end of 1890,
how could he in honour throw up the attempt that had been the only object
of his public life since 1886? To do this would have been to justify
indeed the embittered warnings of Mr. Parnell in his most reckless hour.
How could either refusal of office or the postponement of an Irish bill
after taking office, be made intelligible in Ireland itself? Again, the
path of honour in Ireland was equally the path of honour and of safety in
Great Britain. Were British liberals, who had given him a majority, partly
from disgust at Irish coercion, partly from faith that he could produce a
working plan of Irish government, and partly from hopes of reforms of
their own—were they to learn that their leaders could do nothing for any
of their special objects?

Mr. Gladstone found some consolation in a precedent. In 1835, he argued,
“the Melbourne government came in with a British minority, swelled into a
majority hardly touching thirty by the O’Connell contingent of forty. And
they staid in for six years and a half, the longest lived government since
Lord Liverpool’s.(298) But the Irish were under the command of a master;
and Ireland, scarcely beginning her political life, had to be content with
small mercies. Lastly, that government was rather slack, and on this
ground perhaps could not well be taken as a pattern.” In the present case,
the attitude of the Parnellite group who continued the schism that began
in the events of the winter of 1890, was not likely to prove a grave
difficulty in parliament, and in fact it did not. The mischief here was in
the effect of Irish feuds upon public opinion in the country. As Mr.
Gladstone put it in the course of a letter that he had occasion to write
to me (November 26, 1892):—


    Until the schism arose, we had every prospect of a majority
    approaching those of 1868 and 1880. With the death of Mr. Parnell
    it was supposed that it must perforce close. But this expectation
    has been disappointed. The existence and working of it have to no
    small extent puzzled and bewildered the English people. They
    cannot comprehend how a quarrel, to them utterly unintelligible
    (some even think it discreditable), should be allowed to divide
    the host in the face of the enemy; and their unity and zeal have
    been deadened in proportion. Herein we see the main cause why our
    majority is not more than double what it actually numbers, and the
    difference between these two scales of majority represents, as I
    apprehend, the difference between power to carry the bill as the
    Church and Land bills were carried into law, and the default of
    such power. The main mischief has already been done; but it
    receives additional confirmation with the lapse of every week or
    month.


In forming his fourth administration Mr. Gladstone found one or two
obstacles on which he had not reckoned, and perhaps could not have been
expected to reckon. By that forbearance of which he was a master, they
were in good time surmounted. New men, of a promise soon amply fulfilled,
were taken in, including, to Mr. Gladstone’s own particular satisfaction,
the son of the oldest (M177) of all the surviving friends of his youth,
Sir Thomas Acland.(299)

Mr. Gladstone remained as head of the government for a year and a few
months (Aug. 1892 to March 3, 1894). In that time several decisions of
pith and moment were taken, one measure of high importance became law,
operations began against the Welsh establishment, but far the most
conspicuous biographic element of this short period was his own
incomparable display of power of every kind in carrying the new bill for
the better government of Ireland through the House of Commons.

In foreign affairs it was impossible that he should forget the case of
Egypt. Lord Salisbury in 1887 had pressed forward an arrangement by which
the British occupation was under definite conditions and at a definite
date to come to an end. If this convention had been accepted by the
Sultan, the British troops would probably have been home by the time of
the change of government in this country. French diplomacy, however, at
Constantinople, working as it might seem against its own professed aims,
hindered the ratification of the convention, and Lord Salisbury’s policy
was frustrated. Negotiations did not entirely drop, and they had not
passed out of existence when Lord Salisbury resigned. In the autumn of
1892 the French ambassador addressed a friendly inquiry to the new
government as to the reception likely to be given to overtures for
re-opening the negotiations. The answer was that if France had suggestions
to offer, they would be received in the same friendly spirit in which they
were tendered. When any communications were received, Mr. Gladstone said
in the House of Commons, there would be no indisposition on our part to
extend to them our friendly consideration. Of all this nothing came. A
rather serious ministerial crisis in Egypt in January 1893, followed by a
ministerial crisis in Paris in April, arrested whatever projects of
negotiation France may have entertained.(300)



IV


In December (1892), at Hawarden, Mr. Gladstone said to me one day after we
had been working for five or six hours at the heads of the new Home Rule
bill, that his general health was good and sound, but his sight and his
hearing were so rapidly declining, that he thought he might almost any day
have to retire from office. It was no moment for banal deprecation. He sat
silently pondering this vision in his own mind, of coming fate. It seemed
like Tennyson’s famous simile—


    So dark a forethought rolled about his brain,
    As on a dull day in an ocean cave
    The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall
    In silence.


It would have been preternatural if he had shown the same overwhelming
interest that had animated him when the Irish policy was fresh in 1886.
Yet the instinct of a strong mind and the lifelong habit of ardent
industry carried him through his Sisyphean toil. The routine business of
head of a government he attended to, with all his usual assiduity, and in
cabinet he was clear, careful, methodical, as always.

The preparation of the bill was carefully and elaborately worked by Mr.
Gladstone through an excellent committee (M178) of the cabinet.(301) Here
he was acute, adroit, patient, full of device, expedient, and the art of
construction; now and then vehement and bearing down like a three-decker
upon craft of more modest tonnage. But the vehemence was rare, and here as
everywhere else he was eager to do justice to all the points and arguments
of other people. He sought opportunities of deliberation in order to
deliberate, and not under that excellent name to cultivate the art of the
harangue, or to overwork secondary points, least of all to treat the many
as made for one. That is to say, he went into counsel for the sake of
counsel, and not to cajole, or bully, or insist on his own way because it
was his own way. In the high article of finance, he would wrestle like a
tiger. It was an intricate and difficult business by the necessity of the
case, and among the aggravations of it was the discovery at one point that
a wrong figure had been furnished to him by some department. He declared
this truly heinous crime to be without a precedent in his huge experience.

The crucial difficulty was the Irish representation at Westminster. In the
first bill of 1886, the Irish members were to come no more to the imperial
parliament, except for one or two special purposes. The two alternatives
to the policy of exclusion were either inclusion of the Irish members for
all purposes, or else their inclusion for imperial purposes only. In his
speech at Swansea in 1887, Mr. Gladstone favoured provisional inclusion,
without prejudice to a return to the earlier plan of exclusion if that
should be recommended by subsequent experience.(302) In the bill now
introduced (Feb. 13, 1893), eighty representatives from Ireland were to
have seats at Westminster, but they were not to vote upon motions or bills
expressly confined to England or Scotland, and there were other
limitations. This plan was soon found to be wholly intolerable to the
House of Commons. Exclusion having failed, and inclusion of reduced
numbers for limited purposes having failed, the only course left open was
what was called _omnes omnia_, or rather the inclusion of eighty Irish
members, with power of voting on all purposes.

Each of the three courses was open to at least one single, but very
direct, objection. Exclusion, along with the exaction of revenue from
Ireland by the parliament at Westminster, was taxation without
representation. Inclusion for all purposes was to allow the Irish to
meddle in our affairs, while we were no longer to meddle in theirs.
Inclusion for limited purposes still left them invested with the power of
turning out a British government by a vote against it on an imperial
question. Each plan, therefore, ended in a paradox. There was a fourth
paradox, namely, that whenever the British supporters of a government did
not suffice to build up a decisive majority, then the Irish vote
descending into one or other scale of the parliamentary balance might
decide who should be our rulers. This paradox—the most glaring of them
all—habit and custom have made familiar, and familiarity might almost seem
to have actually endeared it to us. In 1893 Mr. Gladstone and his
colleagues thought themselves compelled to change clause 9 of the new
bill, just as they had thought themselves forced to drop clause 24 of the
old bill.



V


It was Mr. Gladstone’s performances in the days of committee on the bill,
that stirred the wonder and admiration of the House. If he had been fifty
they would have been astonishing; at eighty-four they were indeed a
marvel. He made speeches of powerful argument, of high constitutional
reasoning, of trenchant debating force. No emergency arose for which he
was not ready, no demand that his versatility was not adequate to meet.
His energy never flagged. When the bill came on, he would put on his
glasses, pick up the paper of amendments, and running through them like
lightning, would say, “Of course, that’s absurd—that will never do—we can
never accept that—is there any harm in this?” Too many concessions made on
the spur of the (M179) moment to the unionists stirred resentment in the
nationalists, and once or twice they exploded. These rapid splendours of
his had their perils. I pointed out to him the pretty obvious drawbacks of
settling delicate questions as we went along with no chance of sounding
the Irishmen, and asked him to spare me quarter of an hour before
luncheon, when the draftsman and I, having threshed out the amendments of
the day, could put the bare points for his consideration. He was horrified
at the very thought. “Out of the question. Do you want to kill me? I must
have the whole of the morning for general government business. Don’t ask
me.”(303)

Obstruction was freely practised and without remorse. The chief fighting
debater against the government made a long second-reading speech, on the
motion that the clause stand part of the bill. A little before eight
o’clock when the fighting debater was winding up, Mr. Gladstone was
undecided about speaking. “What do you advise?” he asked of a friend. “I
am afraid it will take too much out of you,” the friend replied; “but
still, speak for twenty minutes and no more.” Up he rose, and for half an
hour a delighted House was treated to one of the most remarkable
performances that ever was known. “I have never seen Mr. Gladstone,” says
one observer, “so dramatic, so prolific of all the resources of the
actor’s art. The courage, the audacity, and the melodrama of it were
irresistible” (May 11).


    For ten minutes, writes another chronicler, Mr. Gladstone spoke,
    holding his audience spell-bound by his force. Then came a sudden
    change, and it seemed that he was about to collapse from sheer
    physical exhaustion. His voice failed, huskiness and
    indistinctness took the place of clearness and lucidity. Then
    pulling himself together for a great effort, Mr. Gladstone
    pointing the deprecatory finger at Mr. Chamberlain, warned the
    Irishmen to beware of him; to watch the fowler who would inveigle
    them in his snare. Loud and long rang the liberal cheers. In plain
    words he told the unionists that Mr. Chamberlain’s purpose was
    none other than obstruction, and he conveyed the intimation with a
    delicate expressiveness, a superabundant good feeling, a dramatic
    action and a marvellous music of voice that conspired in their
    various qualities to produce a _tour de force_. By sheer strength
    of enthusiasm and an overflowing wealth of eloquence, Mr.
    Gladstone literally conquered every physical weakness and secured
    an effect electric in its influence even on seasoned “old hands.”
    Amidst high excitement and the sound of cheering that promised
    never to die away the House gradually melted into the lobbies. Mr.
    Gladstone, exhausted with his effort, chatted to Mr. Morley on the
    treasury bench. Except for these two the government side was
    deserted, and the conservatives had already disappeared. The
    nationalists sat shoulder to shoulder, a solid phalanx. They eyed
    the prime minister with eager intent, and as soon as the venerable
    statesman rose to walk out of the House, they sprang to their feet
    and rent the air with wild hurrahs.


No wonder if the talk downstairs at dinner among his colleagues that
night, all turned upon their chief, his art and power, his union of the
highest qualities of brain and heart with extraordinary practical
penetration, and close watchfulness of incident and trait and personality,
disclosed in many a racy aside and pungent sally. The orator was fatigued,
but full of keen enjoyment. This was one of the three or four occasions
when he was induced not to return to the House after dinner. It had always
been his habit in taking charge of bills to work the ship himself. No
wonder that he held to this habit in this case.

On another occasion ministers had taken ground that, as the debate went
on, everybody saw they could not hold. An official spokesman for the bill
had expressed an opinion, or intention, that, as very speedily appeared,
Irish opposition would not allow to be maintained. There was no great
substance in the point, but even a small dose of humiliation will make a
parliamentary dish as bitter to one side as it is savoury to the other.
The opposition grew more and more radiant, as it grew more certain that
the official spokesman (M180) must be thrown over. The discomfiture of the
ministerialists at the prospect of the public mortification of their
leaders was extreme in the same degree. “I suppose we must give it up,”
said Mr. Gladstone. This was clear; and when he rose, he was greeted with
mocking cheers from the enemy, though the enemy’s chief men who had long
experience of his Protean resources were less confident. Beginning in a
tone of easy gravity and candour, he went on to points of pleasant banter,
got his audience interested and amused and a little bewildered; carried
men with him in graceful arguments on the merits; and finally, with
bye-play of consummate sport, showed in triumph that the concession that
we consented to make was so right and natural, that it must have been
inevitable from the very first. Never were tables more effectively turned;
the opposition watched first with amazement, then with excitement and
delight as children watch a wizard; and he sat down victorious. Not
another word was said or could be said. “Never in all my parliamentary
years,” said a powerful veteran on the front bench opposite, as he passed
behind the Speaker’s chair, “never have I seen so wonderful a thing done
as that.”

The state of the county of Clare was a godsend to the obstructive. Clare
was not at that moment quite as innocent as the garden of Eden before the
fall, but the condition was not serious; it had been twenty times worse
before without occupying the House of Commons five minutes. Now an evening
a week was not thought too much for a hollow debate on disorder in Clare.
It was described as a definite matter of urgent importance, though it had
slept for years, and though three times in succession the judge of assize
(travelling entirely out of his proper business) had denounced the state
of things. It was made to support five votes of censure in eight weeks.

On one of these votes of censure on Irish administration, moved by Mr.
Balfour (March 27), Mr. Gladstone listened to the debate. At 8 we begged
him not to stay and not to take the trouble to speak, so trumpery was the
whole affair. He said he must, if only for five minutes, to show that he
identified himself with his Irish minister. He left to dine, and then
before ten was on his feet, making what Lord Randolph Churchill rightly
called “a most impressive and entrancing speech.” He talked of Pat this
and Michael that, and Father the other, as if he had pondered their cases
for a month, clenching every point with extraordinary strength as well as
consummate ease and grace, and winding up with some phrases of wonderful
simplicity and concentration.

A distinguished member made a motion for the exclusion of Irish cabinet
ministers from their chamber. Mr. Gladstone was reminded on the bench just
before he rose, that the same proposal had been inserted in the Act of
Settlement, and repealed in 1705. He wove this into his speech with a
skill, and amplified confidence, that must have made everybody suppose
that it was a historic fact present every day to his mind. The attention
of a law-officer sitting by was called to this rapid amplification. “I
never saw anything like it in all my whole life,” said the law-officer;
and he was a man who had been accustomed to deal with some of the
strongest and quickest minds of the day as judges and advocates.

One day when a tremendous afternoon of obstruction had almost worn him
down, the adjournment came at seven o’clock. He was haggard and depressed.
On returning at ten we found him making a most lively and amusing speech
upon procedure. He sat down as blithe as dawn. “To make a speech of that
sort,” he said in deprecation of compliment, “a man does best to dine out;
’tis no use to lie on a sofa and think about it.”

Undoubtedly Mr. Gladstone’s method in this long committee carried with it
some disadvantages. His discursive treatment exposed an enormous surface.
His abundance of illustration multiplied points for debate. His fertility
in improvised arguments encouraged improvisation in disputants without the
gift. Mr. Gladstone always supposed that a great theme needs to be
copiously handled, which is perhaps doubtful, and indeed is often an exact
inversion of the true state of things. However that may be, copiousness is
a game at which two can play, as a patriotic opposition now and at other
times has effectually disclosed. Some thought in these days that a man
like Lord Althorp, for (M181) instance, would have given the obstructives
much more trouble in their pursuits than did Mr. Gladstone.

That Mr. Gladstone’s supporters should become restive at the slow motion
of business was natural enough. They came to ministers, calling out for a
drastic closure, as simple tribes might clamour to a rain-maker. It was
the end of June, and with a reasonable opposition conducted in decent good
faith, it was computed that the bill might be through committee in
nineteen days. But the hypothesis of reason and good faith was not thought
to be substantial, and the cabinet resolved on resort to closure on a
scale like that on which it had been used by the late government in the
case of the Crimes Act of 1887, and of the Special Commission. It has been
said since on excellent authority, that without speaking of their good
faith, Mr. Gladstone’s principal opponents were now running absolutely
short of new ammunition, and having used the same arguments and made the
same speeches for so many weeks, they were so worn out that the guillotine
was superfluous. Of these straits, however, there was little evidence. Mr.
Gladstone entered into the operation with a good deal of chagrin. He saw
that the House of Commons in which he did his work and rose to glory was
swiftly fading out of sight, and a new institution of different habits of
responsibility and practice taking its place.

The stage of committee lasted for sixty-three sittings. The whole
proceedings occupied eighty-two. It is not necessary to hold that the time
was too long for the size of the task, if it had been well spent. The
spirit of the debate was aptly illustrated by the plea of a brilliant
tory, that he voted for a certain motion against a principle that he
approved, because he thought the carrying of the motion “would make the
bill more detestable.” Opposition rested on a view of Irish character and
Irish feeling about England, that can hardly have been very deeply thought
out, because ten years later the most bitter opponents of the Irish claim
launched a policy, that was to make Irish peasants direct debtors to the
hated England to the tune of one hundred million pounds, and was to
dislodge by imperial cash those who were persistently called the only
friends of the imperial connection. The bill passed its second reading by
347 against 304, or a majority of 43. In some critical divisions, the
majority ran down to 27. The third reading was carried by 301 against 267,
or a majority of 34. It was estimated that excluding the Irish, there was
a majority against the bill of 23. If we counted England and Wales alone,
the adverse majority was 48. When it reached them, the Lords incontinently
threw it out. The roll of the Lords held 560 names, beyond the peers of
the royal house. Of this body of 560, no fewer than 419 voted against the
bill, and only 41 voted for it.



VI


The session was protracted until it became the longest in the history of
parliament. The House was sitting when Mr. Gladstone’s eighty-fourth
birthday arrived. “Before putting a question,” said Mr. Balfour in a tone
that, after the heat and exasperations of so many months, was refreshing
to hear, “perhaps the right honourable gentleman will allow me, on my own
part and on that of my friends, to offer him our most sincere
congratulations.” “Allow me to thank him,” said Mr. Gladstone, “for his
great courtesy and kindness.” The government pressed forward and carried
through the House of Commons a measure dealing with the liability of
employers for accidents, and a more important measure setting up elective
bodies for certain purposes in parishes. Into the first the Lords
introduced such changes as were taken to nullify all the advantages of the
bill, and the cabinet approved of its abandonment. Into the second they
forced back certain provisions that the Commons had with full deliberation
decisively rejected.

Mr. Gladstone was at Biarritz, he records, when this happened in January
of 1894. He had gone there to recruit after the incomparable exertions of
the session, and also to consider at a cool distance and in changed scenes
other topics that had for some weeks caused him some agitation. He now
thought that there was a decisive case against the House of Lords. Apart
from the Irish bill to which the (M182) Commons had given eighty-two days,
the Lords had maimed the bill for parish councils, to which had gone the
labour of forty-one days. Other bills they had mutilated or defeated. Upon
the whole, he argued, it was not too much to say that for practical
purposes the Lords had destroyed the work of the House of Commons,
unexampled as that work was in the time and pains bestowed upon it. “I
suggested dissolution to my colleagues in London, where half, or more than
half, the cabinet were found at the moment. I received by telegraph a
hopelessly adverse reply.” Reluctantly he let the idea drop, always
maintaining, however, that a signal opportunity had been lost. Even in my
last conversation with him in 1897, he held to his text that we ought to
have dissolved at this moment. The case, he said, was clear, thorough, and
complete. As has been already mentioned, there were four occasions on
which he believed that he had divined the right moment for a searching
appeal to public opinion on a great question.(304) The renewal of the
income tax in 1853 was the first; the proposal of religious equality for
Ireland in 1868 was the second; home rule was the third, and here he was
justified by the astonishing and real progress that he had made up to the
catastrophe at the end of 1890. The fourth case was this, of a dissolution
upon the question of the relations of the two Houses.




Chapter VIII. Retirement From Public Life. (1894)


    O, ’tis a burden, Cromwell, ’tis a burden
    Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven.

    _Henry VIII._ iii. 2.



I


“Politics,” wrote Mr. Gladstone in one of his private memoranda in March
1894, “are like a labyrinth, from the inner intricacies of which it is
even more difficult to find the way of escape, than it was to find the way
into them. My age did something but not enough. The deterioration of my
hearing helped, but insufficiently. It is the state of my sight which has
supplied me with effectual aid in exchanging my imperious public
obligations for what seems to be a free place on ‘the breezy common of
humanity.’ And it has only been within the last eight months, or
thereabouts, that the decay of working sight has advanced at such a pace
as to present the likelihood of its becoming stringently operative at an
early date. It would have been very difficult to fix that date at this or
that precise point, without the appearance of making an arbitrary choice;
but then the closing of the parliamentary session (1893-4) offered a
natural break between the cessation and renewal of engagements, which was
admirably suited to the design. And yet I think it, if not certain, yet
very highly probable at the least, that any disposition of mine to profit
by this break would—but for the naval scheme of my colleagues in the naval
estimates—have been frustrated by their desire to avoid the inconveniences
of a change, and by the pressure which they would have brought to bear
upon me in consequence. The effect of that scheme was not to bring about
the construction of an artificial cause, or pretext rather, of
resignation, but to compel me to act upon one that was rational,
sufficient, and ready to hand.”

This is the short, plain, and intelligible truth as to what now happened.
There can be no reason to-day for not stating what was for a long time
matter of common surmise, if not of common knowledge, that Mr. Gladstone
did not regard the naval estimates, opened but not settled in December
1893, as justified by the circumstances of the time. He made a speech that
month in parliament in reply to a motion from the front bench opposite,
and there he took a position undoubtedly antagonistic to the new scheme
that found favour with his cabinet, though not with all its members. The
present writer is of course not free to go into details, beyond those that
anybody else not a member of the cabinet would discover from Mr.
Gladstone’s papers. Nor does the public lose anything of real interest by
this necessary reserve. Mr. Gladstone said he wished to make me “his
depositary” as things gradually moved on, and he wrote me a series of
short letters from day to day. If they could be read aloud in Westminster
Hall, no harm would be done either to surviving colleagues or to others;
they would furnish no new reason for thinking either better or worse of
anybody; and no one with a decent sense of the value of time would concern
himself in all the minor detail of an ineffectual controversy. The central
facts were simple. Two things weighed with him, first his infirmities, and
second his disapproval of the policy. How, he asked himself, could he turn
his back on his former self by becoming a party to swollen expenditure?
True he had changed from conservative to liberal in general politics, but
when he was conservative, that party was the economic party, “Peel its
leader being a Cobdenite.” To assent to this new outlay in time of peace
was to revolutionise policy. Then he would go on—“Owing to the part which
I was drawn to take, first in Italy, then as to Greece, then on the
eastern question, I have come to be considered not only an English but a
European statesman. My name stands in Europe as a symbol of the policy of
peace, moderation, and non-aggression. What would be said of my active
participation in a policy that will be taken as plunging England into the
whirlpool of militarism? Third, I have been in active public life for a
period nearly as long as the time between the beginning of Mr. Pitt’s
first ministry and the close of Sir Robert Peel’s; between 1783 and
1846—sixty-two years and a half. During that time I have uniformly opposed
militarism.” Thus he would put his case.

After the naval estimates were brought forward, attempts were naturally
made at accommodation, for whether he availed himself of the end of the
session as a proper occasion of retirement or not, he was bound to try to
get the estimates down if he could. He laboured hard at the task of
conversion, and though some of his colleagues needed no conversion, with
the majority he did not prevail. He admitted that he had made limited
concessions to scares in 1860 and in 1884, and that he had besides been
repeatedly responsible for extraordinary financial provisions having
reference to some crisis of the day:—


    I did this, (1) By a preliminary budget in 1854; (2) By the final
    budget of July 1859; by the vote of credit in July 1870; and again
    by the vote of credit in 1884. Every one of these was special, and
    was shown in each case respectively to be special by the sequel:
    no one of them had reference to the notion of establishing
    dominant military or even naval power in Europe. Their amounts
    were various, but were adapted to the view taken, at least by me,
    of the exigency actually present.(305)



II


While the House after so many months of toil was still labouring manfully
upon English bills, two of them of no secondary importance, it was decided
by his family and their advisers that Mr. Gladstone should again try the
effects of Biarritz, and thither they went on January 13. Distance,
however, could not efface from his mind all thought of the decision that
the end of the session would exact from him. (M183) Rumours began to fly
about in London that the prime minister upon his return intended to
resign, and they were naturally clad with intrinsic probability. From
Biarritz a communication was made to the press with his authority. It was
to this effect, that the statement that Mr. Gladstone had definitely
decided, or had decided at all, on resigning office was untrue. It was
true that for many months past his age and the condition of his sight and
hearing had in his judgment made relief from public cares desirable, and
that accordingly his tenure of office had been at any moment liable to
interruption from these causes, in their nature permanent.

Nature meanwhile could not set back the shadow on the dial. On his coming
back from Biarritz (February 10) neither eyes nor ears were better. How
should they be at eighty-five? The session was ending, the prorogation
speech was to be composed, and the time had come for that “natural break”
between the cessation and renewal of his official obligations, of which we
have already heard him speak. His colleagues carried almost to importunity
their appeals to him to stay; to postpone what one of them called, and
many of them truly felt to be, this “moment of anguish.” The division of
opinion on estimates remained, but even if that could have been bridged,
his sight and hearing could not be made whole. The rational and sufficient
cause of resignation, as he only too justly described it, was strong as
ever. Whether if the cabinet had come to his view on estimates, he would
in spite of his great age and infirmities have come to their view of the
importance of his remaining, we cannot tell. According to his wont, he
avoided decision until the time had come when decision was necessary, and
then he made up his mind, “without the appearance of an arbitrary choice,”
that the time had come for accepting the natural break, and quitting
office.

On Feb. 27, arriving in the evening at Euston from Ireland, I found a
messenger with a note from Mr. Gladstone begging me to call on my way
home. I found him busy as usual at his table in Downing Street. “I suppose
’tis the long habit of a life,” he said cheerily, “but even in the midst
of these passages, if ever I have half or quarter of an hour to spare, I
find myself turning to my Horace translation.” He said the prorogation
speech would be settled on Thursday; the Queen would consider it on
Friday; the council would be held on Saturday, and on that evening or
afternoon he should send in his letter of resignation.

The next day he had an audience at Buckingham Palace, and indirectly
conveyed to the Queen what she might soon expect to learn from him. His
rigorous sense of loyalty to colleagues made it improper and impossible to
bring either before the Queen or the public his difference of judgment on
matters for which his colleagues, not he, would be responsible, and on
which they, not he, would have to take action. He derived certain
impressions at his audience, he told me, one of them being that the
Sovereign would not seek his advice as to a successor.

He wrote to inform the Prince of Wales of the approaching event:—


    In thus making it known to your royal Highness, he concluded, I
    desire to convey, on my own and my wife’s part our fervent thanks
    for the unbounded kindness which we have at all times received
    from your royal Highness and not less from the beloved Princess of
    Wales. The devotion of an old man is little worth; but if at any
    time there be the smallest service which by information or
    suggestion your royal Highness may believe me capable of
    rendering, I shall remain as much at your command as if I had
    continued to be an active and responsible servant of the Queen. I
    remain with heartfelt loyalty and gratitude, etc.


The Prince expressed his sincere regret, said how deeply the Princess and
he were touched by the kind words about them, and how greatly for a long
number of years they had valued his friendship and that of Mrs. Gladstone.
Mr. Balfour, to whom he also confidentially told the news, communicated
among other graceful words, “the special debt of gratitude that was due to
him for the immense public service he had performed in fostering and
keeping alive the great traditions of the House of Commons.” The day after
that (March 1) was his last cabinet council, and a painful day it (M184)
was. The business of the speech and other matters were discussed as usual,
then came the end. In his report to the Queen—his last—he said:—


    Looking forward to the likelihood that this might be the last
    occasion on which Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues might meet in
    the cabinet, Lord Kimberley and Sir William Harcourt on their own
    part and on that of the ministers generally, used words
    undeservedly kind of acknowledgment and farewell. Lord Kimberley
    will pray your Majesty to appoint a council for Saturday, at as
    early an hour as may be convenient.


Mr. Gladstone sat composed and still as marble, and the emotion of the
cabinet did not gain him for an instant. He followed the “words of
acknowledgment and farewell” in a little speech of four or five minutes,
his voice unbroken and serene, the tone low, grave, and steady. He was
glad to know that he had justification in the condition of his senses. He
was glad to think that notwithstanding difference upon a public question,
private friendships would remain unaltered and unimpaired. Then hardly
above a breath, but every accent heard, he said “God bless you all.” He
rose slowly and went out of one door, while his colleagues with minds
oppressed filed out by the other. In his diary he enters—“A really moving
scene.”

A little later in the afternoon he made his last speech in the House of
Commons. It was a vigorous assault upon the House of Lords. His mind had
changed since the day in September 1884 when he had declared to an
emissary from the court that he hated organic change in the House of
Lords, and would do much to avert that mischief.(306) Circumstances had
now altered the case; we had come to a more acute stage. Were they to
accept the changes made by the Lords in the bill for parish councils, or
were they to drop it? The question, he said, is whether the work of the
House of Lords is not merely to modify, but to annihilate the whole work
of the House of Commons, work which has been performed at an amount of
sacrifice—of time, of labour, of convenience, and perhaps of health—but at
any rate an amount of sacrifice totally unknown to the House of Lords. The
government had resolved that great as were the objections to acceptance of
the changes made by the Lords, the arguments against rejection were still
weightier. Then he struck a note of passion, and spoke with rising fire:—


    We are compelled to accompany that acceptance with the sorrowful
    declaration that the differences, not of a temporary or casual
    nature merely, but differences of conviction, differences of
    prepossession, differences of mental habit, and differences of
    fundamental tendency, between the House of Lords and the House of
    Commons, appear to have reached a development in the present year
    such as to create a state of things of which we are compelled to
    say that, in our judgment, it cannot continue. Sir, I do not wish
    to use hard words, which are easily employed and as easily
    retorted—it is a game that two can play at—but without using hard
    words, without presuming to judge of motives, without desiring or
    venturing to allege imputations, I have felt it a duty to state
    what appeared to me to be indisputable facts. The issue which is
    raised between a deliberative assembly, elected by the votes of
    more than 6,000,000 people, and a deliberative assembly occupied
    by many men of virtue, by many men of talent, of course with
    considerable diversities and varieties, is a controversy which,
    when once raised, must go forward to an issue.


Men did not know that they were listening to his last speech, but his
words fell in with the eager humour of his followers around him, and he
sat down amid vehement plaudits. Then when the business was at an end, he
rose, and for the last time walked away from the House of Commons. He had
first addressed it sixty-one years before.



III


The following day (March 2) he busied himself in packing his papers, and
working at intervals on his translation of Horace. He told me that he had
now reason to suppose that the Queen might ask him for advice as to his
successor. After some talk, he said that if asked he should advise her to
send for Lord Spencer. As it happened, his advice was not sought. That
evening he went to Windsor to dine and (M185) sleep. The next day was to
be the council. Here is his memorandum of the last audience on Saturday,
March 3(307):—


    As I crossed the quadrangle at 10.20 on my way to St. George’s
    Chapel, I met Sir H. Ponsonby, who said he was anxious to speak to
    me about the future. He was much impressed with the movement among
    a body of members of parliament against having any peer for prime
    minister. I signified briefly that I did not think there should be
    too ready a submission to such a movement. There was not time to
    say a great deal, and I had something serious to say, so we
    adjourned the conversation till half past eleven, when I should
    return from St. George’s.

    He came at that time and opened on the same lines, desiring to
    obtain from me whatever I thought proper to say as to persons in
    the arrangements for the future. I replied to him that this was in
    my view a most serious matter. All my thoughts on it were
    absolutely at the command of the Queen. And I should be equally at
    his command, if he inquired of me from her and in her name; but
    that otherwise my lips must be sealed. I knew from him that he was
    in search of information to report to the Queen, but this was a
    totally different matter.

    I entered, however, freely on the general question of the movement
    among a section of the House of Commons. I thought it impossible
    to say at the moment, but I should not take for granted that it
    would be formidable or regard it as _in limine_ disposing of the
    question. Up to a certain point, I thought it a duty to strengthen
    the hands of our small minority and little knot of ministers in
    the Lords, by providing these ministers with such weight as
    attaches to high office. All this, or rather all that touched the
    main point, namely the point of a peer prime minister, he without
    doubt reported.

    The council train came down and I joined the ministers in the
    drawing-room. I received various messages as to the time when I
    was to see the Queen, and when it would be most convenient to me.
    I interpret this variety as showing that she was nervous. It ended
    in fixing the time after the council and before luncheon. I
    carried with me a box containing my resignation, and, the council
    being over, handed it to her immediately, and told her that it
    contained my tender of resignation. She asked whether she ought
    then to read it. I said there was nothing in the letter to require
    it. It repeated my former letter of notice, with the requisite
    additions.

    I must notice what, though slight, supplied the only incident of
    any interest in this perhaps rather memorable audience, which
    closed a service that would reach to fifty-three years on
    September 3, when I was sworn privy councillor before the Queen at
    Claremont. When I came into the room and came near to take the
    seat she has now for some time courteously commanded, I did think
    she was going to “break down.” If I was not mistaken, at any rate
    she rallied herself, as I thought, by a prompt effort, and
    remained collected and at her ease. Then came the conversation,
    which may be called neither here nor there. Its only material
    feature was negative. There was not one syllable on the past,
    except a repetition, an emphatic repetition, of the thanks she had
    long ago amply rendered for what I had done, a service of no great
    merit, in the matter of the Duke of Coburg, and which I assured
    her would not now escape my notice if occasion should arise. There
    was the question of eyes and ears, of German _versus_ English
    oculists, she believing in the German as decidedly superior. Some
    reference to my wife, with whom, she had had an interview and had
    ended it affectionately,—and various nothings. No touch on the
    subject of the last Ponsonby conversation. Was I wrong in not
    tendering orally my best wishes? I was afraid that anything said
    by me should have the appearance of _touting_. A departing servant
    has some title to offer his hopes and prayers for the future; but
    a servant is one who has done, or tried to do, service in the
    past. There is in all this a great sincerity. There also seems to
    be some little mystery as to my own case with her. I saw no sign
    of embarrassment or preoccupation. The Empress Frederick was
    outside in the corridor. She bade me a most kind and warm
    farewell, which I had done nothing to deserve.


The letter tendered to the Queen in the box was this:—


    Mr. Gladstone presents his most humble duty to your Majesty. The
    close of the session and the approach of a new one have offered
    Mr. Gladstone a suitable opportunity for considering the condition
    of his sight and hearing, both of them impaired, in relation to
    his official obligations. As they now place serious and also
    growing obstacles in the way of the efficient discharge of those
    obligations, the result has been that he has found it his duty
    humbly to tender to your Majesty his resignation of the high
    offices which your Majesty has been pleased to intrust to him. His
    desire to make this surrender is accompanied with a grateful sense
    of the condescending kindnesses, which your Majesty has graciously
    shown him on so many occasions during the various periods for
    which he has had the honour to serve your Majesty. Mr. Gladstone
    will not needlessly burden your Majesty with a recital of
    particulars. He may, however, say that although at eighty-four
    years of age he is sensible of a diminished capacity for prolonged
    labour, this is not of itself such as would justify his praying to
    be relieved from the restraints and exigencies of official life.
    But his deafness has become in parliament, and even in the
    cabinet, a serious inconvenience, of which he must reckon on more
    progressive increase. More grave than this, and more rapid in its
    growth, is the obstruction of vision which arises from cataract in
    both his eyes. It has cut him off in substance from the
    newspapers, and from all except the best types in the best lights,
    while even as to these he cannot master them with that ordinary
    facility and despatch which he deems absolutely required for the
    due despatch of his public duties. In other respects than reading
    the operation of the complaint is not as yet so serious, but this
    one he deems to be vital. Accordingly he brings together these two
    facts, the condition of his sight and hearing, and the break in
    the course of public affairs brought about in the ordinary way by
    the close of the session. He has therefore felt that this is the
    fitting opportunity for the resignation which by this letter he
    humbly prays your Majesty to accept.


In the course of the day the Queen wrote what I take to be her last letter
to him:—


    _Windsor Castle, March 3, 1894._—Though the Queen has already
    accepted Mr. Gladstone’s resignation, and has taken leave of him,
    she does not like to leave his letter tendering his resignation
    unanswered. She therefore writes these few lines to say that she
    thinks that after so many years of arduous labour and
    responsibility he is right in wishing to be relieved at his age of
    these arduous duties. And she trusts he will be able to enjoy
    peace and quiet with his excellent and devoted wife in health and
    happiness, and that his eyesight may improve.

    The Queen would gladly have conferred a peerage on Mr. Gladstone,
    but she knows he would not accept it.


His last act in relation to this closing scene of the great official drama
was a letter to General Ponsonby (March 5):—


    The first entrance of a man to Windsor Castle in a responsible
    character, is a great event in his life; and his last departure
    from it is not less moving. But in and during the process which
    led up to this transaction on Saturday, my action has been in the
    strictest sense sole, and it has required me in circumstances
    partly known to harden my heart into a flint. However, it is not
    even now so hard, but that I can feel what you have most kindly
    written; nor do I fail to observe with pleasure that you do not
    speak absolutely in the singular. If there were feelings that made
    the occasion sad, such feelings do not die with the occasion. But
    this letter must not be wholly one of egotism. I have known and
    have liked and admired all the men who have served the Queen in
    your delicate and responsible office; and have liked most,
    probably because I knew him most, the last of them, that most
    true-hearted man, General Grey. But forgive me for saying you are
    “to the manner born”; and such a combination of tact and temper
    with loyalty, intelligence, and truth I cannot expect to see
    again. Pray remember these are words which can only pass from an
    old man to one much younger, though trained in a long experience.


It is hardly in human nature, in spite of Charles V., Sulla, and some
other historic persons, to lay down power beyond recall, without a secret
pang. In Prior’s lines that came to the mind of brave Sir Walter Scott, as
he saw the curtain falling on his days,—


    The man in graver tragic known,
    (Though his best part long since was done,)
    Still on the stage desires to tarry....
    Unwilling to retire, though weary.


Whether the departing minister had a lingering thought that in the
dispensations of the world, purposes and services would still arise to
which even yet he might one day be summoned, we do not know. Those who
were nearest to him believe not, and assuredly he made no outer sign.




Chapter IX. The Close. (1894-1898)


    Natural death is as it were a haven and a rest to us after long
    navigation. And the noble Soul is like a good mariner; for he,
    when he draws near the port, lowers his sails and enters it softly
    with gentle steerage.... And herein we have from our own nature a
    great lesson of suavity; for in such a death as this there is no
    grief nor any bitterness: but as a ripe apple is lightly and
    without violence loosened from its branch, so our soul without
    grieving departs from the body in which it hath been.—DANTE,
    _Convito_.(308)



I


After the first wrench was over, and an end had come to the demands,
pursuits, duties, glories, of powerful and active station held for a long
lifetime, Mr. Gladstone soon settled to the new conditions of his
existence, knowing that for him all that could be left was, in the figure
of his great Italian poet,“to lower sails and gather in his ropes.”(309)
He was not much in London, and when he came he stayed in the pleasant
retreat to which his affectionate and ever-attached friends, Lord and Lady
Aberdeen, so often invited him at Dollis Hill. Much against his will, he
did not resign his seat in the House, and he held it until the dissolution
of 1895.(310) In June (1895) he took a final cruise in one of Sir Donald
Currie’s ships, visiting Hamburg, the new North Sea canal, and Copenhagen
once more. His injured sight was a far deadlier breach in the habit of his
days than withdrawal from office or from parliament. His own tranquil
words written in the year in which he laid down his part in the shows of
the world’s huge stage, tell the story:—


    _July 25, 1894._—For the first time in my life there has been
    given to me by the providence of God a period of comparative
    leisure, reckoning at the present date to four and a half months.
    Such a period drives the mind in upon itself, and invites, almost
    constrains, to recollection, and the rendering at least internally
    an account of life; further it lays the basis of a habit of
    meditation, to the formation of which the course of my existence,
    packed and crammed with occupation outwards, never stagnant,
    oft-times overdriven, has been extremely hostile. As there is no
    life which in its detail does not seem to afford intervals of
    brief leisure, or what is termed “waiting” for others engaged with
    us in some common action, these are commonly spent in murmurs and
    in petulant desire for their termination. But in reality they
    supply excellent opportunities for brief or ejaculatory prayer.

    As this new period of my life has brought with it my retirement
    from active business in the world, it affords a good opportunity
    for breaking off the commonly dry daily journal, or ledger as it
    might almost be called, in which for seventy years I have recorded
    the chief details of my outward life. If life be continued I
    propose to note in it henceforward only principal events or
    occupations. This first breach since the latter part of May in
    this year has been involuntary. When the operation on my eye for
    cataract came, it was necessary for a time to suspend all use of
    vision. Before that, from the beginning of March, it was only my
    out-of-door activity or intercourse that had been paralysed....
    For my own part, _suave mari magno_ steals upon me; or at any
    rate, an inexpressible sense of relief from an exhausting life of
    incessant contention. A great revolution has been operated in my
    correspondence, which had for many years been a serious burden,
    and at times one almost intolerable. During the last months of
    partial incapacity I have not written with my own hand probably so
    much as one letter per day. Few people have had a smaller number
    of _otiose_ conversations probably than I in the last fifty years;
    but I have of late seen more friends and more freely, though
    without practical objects in view. Many kind friends have read
    books to me; I must place Lady Sarah Spencer at the head of the
    proficients in that difficult art; in distinctness of
    articulation, with low clear voice, she is supreme. Dearest
    Catherine has been my chaplain from morning to morning. My
    church-going has been almost confined to mid-day communions, which
    have not required my abandonment of the reclining posture for long
    periods of time. Authorship has not been quite in abeyance; I have
    been able to write what I was not allowed to read, and have
    composed two theological articles for the _Nineteenth Century_ of
    August and September respectively.(311)

    Independently of the days of blindness after the operation, the
    visits of doctors have become a noticeable item of demand upon
    time. Of physic I incline to believe I have had as much, in 1894
    as in my whole previous life. I have learned for the first time
    the extraordinary comfort of the aid which the attendance of a
    nurse can give. My health will now be matter of little interest
    except to myself. But I have not yet abandoned the hope that I may
    be permitted to grapple with that considerable armful of work,
    which had been long marked out for my old age; the question of my
    recovering sight being for the present in abeyance.

    _Sept. 13._—I am not yet thoroughly accustomed to my new stage of
    existence, in part because the remains of my influenza have not
    yet allowed me wholly to resume the habits of health. But I am
    thoroughly content with my retirement; and I cast no longing,
    lingering look behind. I pass onward from it _oculo irretorto_.
    There is plenty of work before me, peaceful work and work directed
    to the supreme, _i.e._ the spiritual cultivation of mankind, if it
    pleases God to give me time and vision to perform it.

    _Oct. 1._—As far as I can at present judge, all the signs of the
    eye being favourable, the new form of vision will enable me to get
    through in a given time about half the amount of work which would
    have been practicable under the old. I speak of reading and
    writing work, which have been principal with me when I had the
    option. In conversation there is no difference, although there are
    various drawbacks in what we call society. On the 20th of last
    month when I had gone through my crises of trials, Mr. Nettleship,
    [the oculist], at once declared that any further operation would
    be superfluous.

    I am unable to continue attendance at the daily morning service,
    not on account of the eyesight but because I may not rise before
    ten at the earliest. And so a Hawarden practice of over fifty
    years is interrupted; not without some degree of hope that it may
    be resumed. Two evening services, one at 5 P.M. and the other at
    7, afford me a limited consolation. I drive almost every day, and
    thus grow to my dissatisfaction more burdensome. My walking powers
    are limited; once I have exceeded two miles by a little. A large
    part of the day remains available at my table; daylight is
    especially precious; my correspondence is still a weary weight,
    though I have admirable help from children. Upon the whole the
    change is considerable. In early and mature life a man walks to
    his daily work with a sense of the duty and capacity of
    self-provision, a certain αὐτάρκεια [independence] (which the
    Greeks carried into the moral world). Now that sense is reversed;
    it seems as if I must, God knows how reluctantly, lay burdens upon
    others; and as if capacity were, so to speak, dealt out to me
    mercifully—but by armfuls.


Old age until the very end brought no grave changes in physical
conditions. He missed sorely his devoted friend, Sir Andrew Clark, to
whose worth as man and skill as healer he had borne public testimony in
May 1894. But for physician’s service there was no special need. His
ordinary life, though of diminished power, suffered little interruption.
“The attitude,” he wrote, “in which I endeavoured to fix myself was that
of a soldier on parade, in a line of men drawn up ready to march and
waiting for the word of command. I sought to be in preparation for prompt
obedience, feeling no desire to go, but on the other hand without
reluctance because firmly convinced that whatever He ordains for us is
best, best both for us and for all.”

He worked with all his old zest at his edition of Bishop Butler, and his
volume of studies subsidiary to Butler. He wrote to the Duke of Argyll
(Dec. 5, 1895):—


    I find my Butler a weighty undertaking, but I hope it will be
    useful at least for the important improvements of form which I am
    making.

    It is very difficult to keep one’s temper in dealing with M.
    Arnold when he touches on religious matters. His patronage of a
    Christianity fashioned by himself is to me more offensive and
    trying than rank unbelief. But I try, or seem to myself to try, to
    shrink from controversy of which I have had so much. Organic
    evolution sounds to me a Butlerish idea, but I doubt if he ever
    employed either term, certainly he has not the phrase, and I
    cannot as yet identify the passage to which you may refer.

    _Dec. 9._—Many thanks for your letter. The idea of evolution is
    without doubt deeply ingrained in Butler. The case of the animal
    creation had a charm for him, and in his first chapter he opens,
    without committing himself, the idea of their possible elevation
    to a much higher state. I have always been struck by the glee with
    which negative writers strive to get rid of “special creation,” as
    if by that method they got the idea of God out of their way,
    whereas I know not what right they have to say that the small
    increments effected by the divine workman are not as truly special
    as the large. It is remarkable that Butler has taken such hold
    both on nonconformists in England and outside of England,
    especially on those bodies in America which are descended from
    English non-conformists.


He made progress with his writings on the Olympian Religion, without
regard to Acton’s warnings and exhortations to read a score of volumes by
learned explorers with uncouth names. He collected a new series of his
_Gleanings_. By 1896 he had got his cherished project of hostel and
library at St. Deiniol’s in Hawarden village, near to its launch. He was
drawn into a discussion on the validity of anglican orders, and even wrote
a letter to Cardinal Rampolla, in his effort to realise the dream of
Christian unity. The Vatican replied in such language as might have been
expected by anybody with less than Mr. Gladstone’s inextinguishable faith
in the virtues of argumentative persuasion. Soon he saw the effects of
Christian disunion upon a bloodier stage. In the autumn of this year he
was roused to one more vehement protest like that twenty years before
against the abominations of Turkish rule, this time in Armenia. He had
been induced to address a meeting in Chester in August 1895, and now a
year later he travelled to Liverpool (Sept. 24) to a non-party gathering
at Hengler’s Circus. He always described this as the place most agreeable
to the speaker of all those with which he was acquainted. “Had I the years
of 1876 upon me,” he said to one of his sons, “gladly would I start
another campaign, even if as long as that.”

To discuss, almost even to describe, the course of his policy and
proceedings in the matter of Armenia, would bring us into a mixed
controversy affecting statesmen now living, who played an unexpected part,
and that controversy may well stand over for another, and let us hope a
very distant, day. Whether we had a right to interfere single-handed;
whether we were bound as a duty to interfere under the Cyprus Convention;
whether our intervention would provoke hostilities on the part of other
Powers and even kindle a general conflagration in Europe; whether our
severance of diplomatic relations with the Sultan or our withdrawal from
the concert of Europe would do any good; what possible form armed
intervention could take—all these are questions on which both liberals and
tories vehemently differed from one another then, and will vehemently
differ again. Mr. Gladstone was bold and firm in his replies. As to the
idea, he said, that all independent action on the part of this great
country was to be made chargeable for producing war in Europe, “that is in
my opinion a mistake almost more deplorable than almost any committed in
the history of diplomacy.” We had a right under the convention. We had a
duty under the responsibilities incurred at Paris in 1856, at Berlin in
1878. The upshot of his arguments at Liverpool was that we should break
off relations with the Sultan; that we should undertake not to turn
hostilities to our private advantage; that we should limit our proceedings
to the suppression of mischief in its aggravated form; and if Europe
threatened us with war it might be necessary to recede, as France had
receded under parallel circumstances from her individual policy on the
eastern question in 1840,—receded without loss either of honour or power,
believing that she had been right and wise and others wrong and unwise.

If Mr. Gladstone had still had, as he puts it, “the years of 1876,” he
might have made as deep a mark. As it was, his speech at Liverpool was his
last great deliverance to a public audience. As the year ended this was
his birthday entry:—


    _Dec. 29, 1896._—My long and tangled life this day concludes its
    87th year. My father died four days short of that term. I know of
    no other life so long in the Gladstone family, and my profession
    has been that of politician, or, more strictly, minister of state,
    an extremely short-lived race when their scene of action has been
    in the House of Commons, Lord Palmerston being the only complete
    exception. In the last twelve months eyes and ears may have
    declined, but not materially. The occasional contraction of the
    chest is the only inconvenience that can be called new. I am not
    without hope that Cannes may have a [illegible] to act upon it.
    The blessings of family life continue to be poured in the largest
    measure upon my unworthy head. Even my temporal affairs have
    thriven. Still old age is appointed for the gradual loosening and
    succeeding snapping of the threads. I visited Lord Stratford when
    he was, say, 90 or 91 or thereabouts. He said to me, “It is not a
    blessing.” As to politics, I think the basis of my mind is laid
    principally in finance and philanthropy. The prospects of the
    first are darker than I have ever known them. Those of the second
    are black also, but with more hope of some early dawn. I do not
    enter on interior matters. It is so easy to write, but to write
    honestly nearly impossible. Lady Grosvenor gave me to-day a
    delightful present of a small crucifix. I am rather too
    independent of symbol.


This is the last entry in the diaries of seventy years.

At the end of January 1897, the Gladstones betook themselves once more to
Lord Rendel’s _palazzetto_, as they called it, at Cannes.


    I had hoped during this excursion, he journalises, to make much
    way with my autobiographica. But this was in a large degree
    frustrated, first by invalidism, next by the eastern question, on
    which I was finally obliged to write something.(312) Lastly, and
    not least, by a growing sense of decline in my daily amount of
    brain force available for serious work. My power to read (but to
    read very slowly indeed since the cataract came) for a
    considerable number of hours daily, thank God, continues. This is
    a great mercy. While on my outing, I may have read, of one kind
    and another, twenty volumes. Novels enter into this list rather
    considerably. I have begun seriously to ask myself whether I shall
    ever be able to face “The Olympian Religion.”


The Queen happened to be resident at Cimiez at this time, and Mr.
Gladstone wrote about their last meeting:—


    A message came down to us inviting us to go into the hotel and
    take tea with the Princess Louise. We repaired to the hotel, and
    had our tea with Miss Paget, who was in attendance. The Princess
    soon came in, and after a short delay we were summoned into the
    Queen’s presence. No other English people were on the ground. We
    were shown into a room tolerably, but not brilliantly lighted,
    much of which was populated by a copious supply of Hanoverian
    royalties. The Queen was in the inner part of the room, and behind
    her stood the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge.
    Notwithstanding my enfeebled sight, my vision is not much impaired
    for practical purposes in cases such as this, where I am
    thoroughly familiar with the countenance and whole contour of any
    person to be seen. My wife preceded, and Mary followed me. The
    Queen’s manner did not show the old and usual vitality. It was
    still, but at the same time very decidedly kind, such as I had not
    seen it for a good while before my final resignation. She gave me
    her hand, a thing which is, I apprehended, rather rare with men,
    and which had never happened with me during all my life, though
    that life, be it remembered, had included some periods of rather
    decided favour. Catherine sat down near her, and I at a little
    distance. For a good many years she had habitually asked me to
    sit. My wife spoke freely and a good deal to the Queen, but the
    answers appeared to me to be very slight. As to myself, I
    expressed satisfaction at the favourable accounts I had heard of
    the accommodation at Cimiez, and perhaps a few more words of
    routine. To speak frankly, it seemed to me that the Queen’s
    peculiar faculty and habit of conversation had disappeared. It was
    a faculty, not so much the free offspring of a rich and powerful
    mind, as the fruit of assiduous care with long practice and much
    opportunity. After about ten minutes, it was signified to us that
    we had to be presented to all the other royalties, and so passed
    the remainder of this meeting.


In the early autumn of 1897 he found himself affected by (M186) what was
supposed to be a peculiar form of catarrh. He went to stay with Mr.
Armitstead at Butterstone in Perthshire. I saw him on several occasions
afterwards, but this was the last time when I found him with all the
freedom, full self-possession, and kind geniality of old days. He was
keenly interested at my telling him that I had seen James Martineau a few
days before, in his cottage further north in Inverness-shire; that
Martineau, though he had now passed his ninety-second milestone on life’s
road, was able to walk five or six hundred feet up his hillside every day,
was at his desk at eight each morning, and read theology a good many hours
before he went to bed at night. Mr. Gladstone’s conversation was varied,
glowing, full of reminiscence. He had written me in the previous May,
hoping among other kind things that “we may live more and more in sympathy
and communion.” I never saw him more attractive than in the short pleasant
talks of these three or four days. He discussed some of the sixty or
seventy men with whom he had been associated in cabinet life,(313) freely
but charitably, though he named two whom he thought to have behaved worse
to him than others. He repeated his expression of enormous admiration for
Graham. Talked about his own voice. After he had made his long budget
speech in 1860, a certain member, supposed to be an operatic expert, came
to him and said, “You must take great care, or else you will destroy the
_colour_ in your voice.” He had kept a watch on general affairs. The
speech of a foreign ruler upon divine right much incensed him. He thought
that Lord Salisbury had managed to set the Turk up higher than he had
reached since the Crimean war; and his policy had weakened Greece, the
most liberal of the eastern communities. We fought over again some old
battles of 1886 and 1892-4. Mr. Armitstead had said to him—“Oh, sir,
you’ll live ten years to come.” “I do trust,” he answered as he told me
this, “that God in his mercy will spare me that.”



II


Then came months of distress. The facial annoyance grew into acute and
continued pain, and to pain he proved to be exceedingly sensitive. It did
not master him, but there were moments that seemed almost of collapse and
defeat. At last the night was gathering


            About the burning crest
    Of the old, feeble, and day-wearied sun.(314)


They took him at the end of November (1897) to Cannes, to the house of
Lord Rendel.

Sometimes at dinner he talked with his host, with Lord Welby, or Lord
Acton, with his usual force, but most of the time he lay in extreme
suffering and weariness, only glad when they soothed him with music. It
was decided that he had better return, and in hope that change of air
might even yet be some palliative, he went to Bournemouth, which he
reached on February 22. For weeks past he had not written nor read, save
one letter that he wrote in his journey home to Lady Salisbury upon a
rather narrow escape of her husband’s in a carriage accident. On March 18
his malady was pronounced incurable, and he learned that it was likely to
end in a few weeks. He received the verdict with perfect serenity and with
a sense of unutterable relief, for his sufferings had been cruel. Four
days later he started home to die. On leaving Bournemouth before stepping
into the train, he turned round, and to those who were waiting on the
platform to see him off, he said with quiet gravity, “God bless you and
this place, and the land you love.” At Hawarden he bore the dreadful
burden of his pain with fortitude, supported by the ritual ordinances of
his church and faith. Music soothed him, the old composers being those he
liked best to hear. Messages of sympathy were read to him, and he listened
silently or with a word of thanks.

“The retinue of the whole world’s good wishes” flowed to the “large upper
chamber looking to the sunrising, where the aged pilgrim lay.” Men and
women of every communion offered up earnest prayers for him. Those who
were of no communion thought with pity, sympathy, and sorrow of


    A Power passing from the earth
    To breathless Nature’s dark abyss.


(M187) From every rank in social life came outpourings in every key of
reverence and admiration. People appeared—as is the way when death
comes—to see his life and character as a whole, and to gather up in his
personality, thus transfigured by the descending shades, all the best
hopes and aspirations of their own best hours. A certain grandeur
overspread the moving scene. Nothing was there for tears. It was “no
importunate and heavy load.” The force was spent, but it had been nobly
spent in devoted and effective service for his country and his fellow-men.

From the Prince of the Black Mountain came a telegram: “Many years ago,
when Montenegro, my beloved country, was in difficulties and in danger,
your eloquent voice and powerful pen successfully pleaded and worked on
her behalf. At this time vigorous and prosperous, with a bright future
before her, she turns with sympathetic eye to the great English statesman
to whom she owes so much, and for whose present sufferings she feels so
deeply.” And he answered by a message that “his interest in Montenegro had
always been profound, and he prayed that it might prosper and be blessed
in all its undertakings.”

Of the thousand salutations of pity and hope none went so much to his
heart as one from Oxford—an expression of true feeling, in language worthy
of her fame:—


    At yesterday’s meeting of the hebdomadal council, wrote the
    vice-chancellor, an unanimous wish was expressed that I should
    convey to you the message of our profound sorrow and affection at
    the sore trouble and distress which you are called upon to endure.
    While we join in the universal regret with which the nation
    watches the dark cloud which has fallen upon the evening of a
    great and impressive life, we believe that Oxford may lay claim to
    a deeper and more intimate share in this sorrow. Your brilliant
    career in our university, your long political connection with it,
    and your fine scholarship, kindled in this place of ancient
    learning, have linked you to Oxford by no ordinary bond, and we
    cannot but hope that you will receive with satisfaction this
    expression of deep-seated kindliness and sympathy from us.

    We pray that the Almighty may support you and those near and dear
    to you in this trial, and may lighten the load of suffering which
    you bear with such heroic resignation.


To this he listened more attentively and over it he brooded long, then he
dictated to his youngest daughter sentence by sentence at intervals his
reply:—


    There is no expression of Christian sympathy that I value more
    than that of the ancient university of Oxford, the God-fearing and
    God-sustaining university of Oxford. I served her, perhaps
    mistakenly, but to the best of my ability. My most earnest prayers
    are hers to the uttermost and to the last.


When May opened, it was evident that the end was drawing near. On the 13th
he was allowed to receive visits of farewell from Lord Rosebery and from
myself, the last persons beyond his household to see him. He was hardly
conscious. On the early morning of the 19th, his family all kneeling
around the bed on which he lay in the stupor of coming death, without a
struggle he ceased to breathe. Nature outside—wood and wide lawn and
cloudless far-off sky—shone at her fairest.



III


On the day after his death, in each of the two Houses the leader made the
motion, identical in language in both cases save the few final words about
financial provision in the resolution of the Commons:—


    That an humble Address be presented to her Majesty praying that
    her Majesty will be graciously pleased to give directions that the
    remains of the Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone be interred at
    the public charge, and that a monument be erected in the
    Collegiate Church of St. Peter, Westminster, with an inscription
    expressive of the public admiration and attachment and of the high
    sense entertained of his rare and splendid gifts, and of his
    devoted labours to parliament and in great offices of state, and
    to assure her Majesty that this House will make good the expenses
    attending the same.


The language of the movers was worthy of the British parliament at its
best, worthy of the station of those who (M188) used it, and worthy of the
figure commemorated. Lord Salisbury was thought by most to go nearest to
the core of the solemnity:—


    What is the cause of this unanimous feeling? Of course, he had
    qualities that distinguished him from all other men; and you may
    say that it was his transcendent intellect, his astonishing power
    of attaching men to him, and the great influence he was able to
    exert upon the thought and convictions of his contemporaries. But
    these things, which explain the attachment, the adoration of those
    whose ideas he represented, would not explain why it is that
    sentiments almost as fervent are felt and expressed by those whose
    ideas were not carried out by his policy. My Lords, I do not think
    the reason is to be found in anything so far removed from the
    common feelings of mankind as the abstruse and controversial
    questions of the policy of the day. They had nothing to do with
    it. Whether he was right, or whether he was wrong, in all the
    measures, or in most of the measures which he proposed—those are
    matters of which the discussion has passed by, and would certainly
    be singularly inappropriate here; they are really remitted to the
    judgment of future generations, who will securely judge from
    experience what we can only decide by forecast. It was on account
    of considerations more common to the masses of human beings, to
    the general working of the human mind, than any controversial
    questions of policy that men recognised in him a man
    guided—whether under mistaken impressions or not, it matters
    not—but guided in all the steps he took, in all the efforts that
    he made, by a high moral ideal. What he sought were the
    attainments of great ideals, and, whether they were based on sound
    convictions or not, they could have issued from nothing but the
    greatest and the purest moral aspirations; and he is honoured by
    his countrymen, because through so many years, across so many
    vicissitudes and conflicts, they had recognised this one
    characteristic of his action, which has never ceased to be felt.
    He will leave behind him, especially to those who have followed
    with deep interest the history of the later years—I might almost
    say the later months of his life—he will leave behind him the
    memory of a great Christian statesman. Set up necessarily on
    high—the sight of his character, his motives, and his intentions
    would strike all the world. They will have left a deep and most
    salutary influence on the political thought and the social thought
    of the generation in which he lived, and he will be long
    remembered not so much for the causes in which he was engaged or
    the political projects which he favoured, but as a great example,
    to which history hardly furnishes a parallel, of a great Christian
    man.


Mr. Balfour, the leader in the Commons, specially spoke of him as “the
greatest member of the greatest deliberative assembly that the world has
seen,” and most aptly pointed to Mr. Gladstone’s special service in
respect of that assembly.


    One service he did, in my opinion incalculable, which is
    altogether apart from the judgment that we may be disposed to pass
    upon particular opinions, or particular lines of policy which Mr.
    Gladstone may from time to time have advocated. Sir, he added a
    dignity, as he added a weight, to the deliberations of this House
    by his genius, which I think it is impossible adequately to
    replace. It is not enough for us to keep up simply a level, though
    it be a high level, of probity and of patriotism. The mere average
    of civic virtue is not sufficient to preserve this Assembly from
    the fate that has overcome so many other Assemblies, products of
    democratic forces. More than this is required; more than this was
    given to us by Mr. Gladstone. He brought to our debates a genius
    which compelled attention, he raised in the public estimation the
    whole level of our proceedings, and they will be most ready to
    admit the infinite value of his service who realise how much of
    public prosperity is involved in the maintenance of the worth of
    public life, and how perilously difficult most democracies
    apparently feel it to be to avoid the opposite dangers into which
    so many of them have fallen.


Sir William Harcourt spoke of him as friend and official colleague:—


    I have heard men who knew him not at all, who have asserted that
    the supremacy of his genius and the weight of his authority
    oppressed and overbore those who lived with him and those who
    worked under him. Nothing could be more untrue. Of all chiefs he
    was the least exacting. He was the most kind, the most tolerant,
    he was the most placable. How seldom in this House was the voice
    of personal anger heard from his lips. These are the true marks of
    greatness.


Lord Rosebery described his gifts and powers, his concentration, the
multiplicity of his interests, his labour of every day, and almost of
every hour of every day, in fashioning an intellect that was mighty by
nature. And besides this panegyric on the departed warrior, he touched
with felicity and sincerity a note of true feeling in recalling to his
hearers


    the solitary and pathetic figure, who for sixty years, shared all
    the sorrows and all the joys of Mr. Gladstone’s life, who received
    his confidence and every aspiration, who shared his triumphs with
    him and cheered him under his defeats; who by her tender
    vigilance, I firmly believe, sustained and prolonged his years.


When the memorial speeches were over the House of Commons adjourned. The
Queen, when the day of the funeral came, telegraphed to Mrs. Gladstone
from Balmoral:—


    My thoughts are much with you to-day, when your dear husband is
    laid to rest. To-day’s ceremony will be most trying and painful
    for you, but it will be at the same time gratifying to you to see
    the respect and regret evinced by the nation for the memory of one
    whose character and intellectual abilities marked him as one of
    the most distinguished statesmen of my reign. I shall ever
    gratefully remember his devotion and zeal in all that concerned my
    personal welfare and that of my family.



IV


It was not at Westminster only that his praise went forth. Famous men, in
the immortal words of Pericles to his Athenians, have the whole world for
their tomb; they are commemorated not only by columns and inscriptions in
their own land; in foreign lands too a memorial of them is graven in the
hearts of men. So it was here. No other statesman on our famous roll has
touched the imagination of so wide a world.

The colonies through their officers or more directly, sent to Mrs.
Gladstone their expression of trust that the worldwide admiration and
esteem of her honoured and illustrious husband would help her to sustain
her burden of sorrow. The ambassador of the United States reverently
congratulated her and the English race everywhere, upon the glorious
completion of a life filled with splendid achievements and consecrated to
the noblest purposes. The President followed in the same vein, and in
Congress words were found to celebrate a splendid life and character. The
President of the French republic wished to be among the first to associate
himself with Mrs. Gladstone’s grief: “By the high liberality of his
character,” he said, “and by the nobility of his political ideal, Mr.
Gladstone had worthily served his country and humanity.” The entire French
government requested the British ambassador in Paris to convey the
expression of their sympathy and assurance of their appreciation,
admiration, and respect for the character of the illustrious departed. The
Czar of Russia telegraphed to Mrs. Gladstone: “I have just received the
painful news of Mr. Gladstone’s decease, and consider it my duty to
express to you my feelings of sincere sympathy on the occasion of the
cruel and irreparable bereavement which has befallen you, as well as the
deep regret which this sad event has given me. The whole of the civilised
world will beweep the loss of a great statesman, whose political views
were so widely humane and peaceable.”

In Italy the sensation was said to be as great as when Victor Emmanuel or
Garibaldi died. The Italian parliament and the prime minister telegraphed
to the effect that “the cruel loss which had just struck England, was a
grief sincerely shared by all who are devoted to liberty. Italy has not
forgotten, and will never forget, the interest and sympathy of Mr.
Gladstone in events that led to its independence.” In the same key,
Greece: the King, the first minister, the university, the chamber,
declared that he was entitled to the gratitude of the Greek people, and
his name would be by them for ever venerated. From Roumania, Macedonia,
Norway, Denmark, tributes came “to the great memory of Gladstone, one of
the glories of mankind.” Never has so wide and honourable a pomp all over
the globe followed an English statesman to the grave.



IV


On May 25, the remains were brought from Hawarden, and in the middle of
the night the sealed coffin was placed in Westminster Hall, watched until
the funeral by the piety of relays of friends. For long hours each day
great multitudes filed past the bier. It was a striking demonstration of
national feeling, for the procession contained every rank, and contingents
came from every part of the kingdom. On Saturday, May 28, the body was
committed to the grave in Westminster Abbey. No sign of high honour was
absent. The heir to the throne and his son were among those who bore the
pall. So were the prime minister and the two leaders of the parties in
both Houses. The other pall-bearers were Lord Rosebery who had succeeded
him as prime minister, the Duke of Rutland who had half a century before
been Mr. Gladstone’s colleague at Newark, and Mr. Armitstead and Lord
Rendel, who were his private friends. Foreign sovereigns sent their
representatives, the Speaker of the House of Commons was there in state,
and those were there who had done stout battle against him for long years;
those also who had sat with him in council and stood by his side in
frowning hours. At the head of the grave was “the solitary and pathetic
figure” of his wife. Even men most averse to all pomps and shows on the
occasions and scenes that declare so audibly their nothingness, here were
only conscious of a deep and moving simplicity, befitting a great citizen
now laid among the kings and heroes. Two years later, the tomb was opened
to receive the faithful and devoted companion of his life.




Chapter X. Final.


Anybody can see the host of general and speculative questions raised by a
career so extraordinary. How would his fame have stood if his political
life had ended in 1854, or 1874, or 1881, or 1885? What light does it shed
upon the working of the parliamentary system; on the weakness and strength
of popular government; on the good and bad of political party; on the
superiority of rule by cabinet or by an elected president; on the
relations of opinion to law? Here is material for a volume of
disquisition, and nobody can ever discuss such speculations without
reference to power as it was exercised by Mr. Gladstone. Those thronged
halls, those vast progresses, those strenuous orations—what did they
amount to? Did they mean a real moulding of opinion, an actual impression,
whether by argument or temper or personality or all three, on the minds of
hearers? Or was it no more than the same kind of interest that takes men
to stage-plays with a favourite performer? This could hardly be, for his
hearers gave him long spells of power and a practical authority that was
unique and supreme. What thoughts does his career suggest on the relations
of Christianity to patriotism, or to empire, or to what has been called
neo-paganism? How many points arise as to the dependence of ethics on
dogma? These are deep and living and perhaps burning issues, not to be
discussed at the end of what the reader may well have found a long
journey. They offer themselves for his independent consideration.



I


Mr. Gladstone’s own summary of the period in which he (M189) had been so
conspicuous a figure was this, when for him the drama was at an end:—


    Of his own career, he says, it is a career certainly chargeable
    with many errors of judgment, but I hope on the whole, governed at
    least by uprightness of intention and by a desire to learn. The
    personal aspect may now readily be dismissed as it concerns the
    past. But the public aspect of the period which closes for me with
    the fourteen years (so I love to reckon them) of my formal
    connection with Midlothian is too important to pass without a
    word. I consider it as beginning with the Reform Act of Lord
    Grey’s government. That great Act was for England improvement and
    extension, for Scotland it was political birth, the beginning of a
    duty and a power, neither of which had attached to the Scottish
    nation in the preceding period. I rejoice to think how the
    solemnity of that duty has been recognised, and how that power has
    been used. The three-score years offer us the pictures of what the
    historian will recognise as a great legislative and administrative
    period—perhaps, on the whole, the greatest in our annals. It has
    been predominantly a history of emancipation—that is of enabling
    man to do his work of emancipation, political, economical, social,
    moral, intellectual. Not numerous merely, but almost numberless,
    have been the causes brought to issue, and in every one of them I
    rejoice to think that, so far as my knowledge goes, Scotland has
    done battle for the right.

    Another period has opened and is opening still—a period possibly
    of yet greater moral dangers, certainly a great ordeal for those
    classes which are now becoming largely conscious of power, and
    never heretofore subject to its deteriorating influences. These
    have been confined in their actions to the classes above them,
    because they were its sole possessors. Now is the time for the
    true friend of his country to remind the masses that their present
    political elevation is owing to no principles less broad and noble
    than these—the love of liberty, of liberty for all without
    distinction of class, creed or country, and the resolute
    preference of the interests of the whole to any interest, be it
    what it may, of a narrower scope.(315)


A year later, in bidding farewell to his constituents “with sentiments of
gratitude and attachment that can never be effaced,” he proceeds:—


    Though in regard to public affairs many things are disputable,
    there are some which belong to history and which have passed out
    of the region of contention. It is, for example as I conceive,
    beyond question that the century now expiring has exhibited since
    the close of its first quarter a period of unexampled activity
    both in legislative and administrative changes; that these
    changes, taken in the mass, have been in the direction of true and
    most beneficial progress; that both the conditions and the
    franchises of the people have made in relation to the former state
    of things, an extraordinary advance; that of these reforms an
    overwhelming proportion have been effected by direct action of the
    liberal party, or of statesmen such as Peel and Canning, ready to
    meet odium or to forfeit power for the public good; and that in
    every one of the fifteen parliaments the people of Scotland have
    decisively expressed their convictions in favour of this wise,
    temperate, and in every way remarkable policy.(316)


To charge him with habitually rousing popular forces into dangerous
excitement, is to ignore or misread his action in some of the most
critical of his movements. “Here is a man,” said Huxley, “with the
greatest intellect in Europe, and yet he debases it by simply following
majorities and the crowd.” He was called a mere mirror of the passing
humours and intellectual confusions of the popular mind. He had nothing,
said his detractors, but a sort of clever pilot’s eye for winds and
currents, and the rising of the tide to the exact height that would float
him and his cargo over the bar. All this is the exact opposite of the
truth. What he thought was that the statesman’s gift consisted in insight
into the facts of a particular era, disclosing the existence of material
for forming public opinion and directing public opinion to a given
purpose. In every one of his achievements of high mark—even in his last
marked failure of achievement—he expressly formed, or endeavoured to form
and create, the public opinion upon which he knew that in the last resort
he must depend.

(M190) We have seen the triumph of 1853.(317) Did he, in renewing the most
hated of taxes, run about anxiously feeling the pulse of public opinion?
On the contrary, he grappled with the facts with infinite labour—and half
his genius was labour—he built up a great plan; he carried it to the
cabinet; they warned him that the House of Commons would be against him;
the officials of the treasury told him the Bank would be against him; that
a strong press of commercial interests would be against him. Like the bold
and sinewy athlete that he always was, he stood to his plan; he carried
the cabinet; he persuaded the House of Commons; he vanquished the Bank and
the hostile interests; and in the words of Sir Stafford Northcote, he
changed and turned for many years to come, a current of public opinion
that seemed far too powerful for any minister to resist. In the
tempestuous discussions during the seventies on the policy of this country
in respect of the Christian races of the Balkan Peninsula, he with his own
voice created, moulded, inspired, and kindled with resistless flame the
whole of the public opinion that eventually guided the policy of the
nation with such admirable effect both for its own fame, and for the good
of the world. Take again the Land Act of 1881, in some ways the most
deep-reaching of all his legislative achievements. Here he had no flowing
tide, every current was against him. He carried his scheme against the
ignorance of the country, against the prejudice of the country, and
against the standing prejudices of both branches of the legislature, who
were steeped from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot in the
strictest doctrines of contract.

Then his passion for economy, his ceaseless war against public profusion,
his insistence upon rigorous keeping of the national accounts—in this
great department of affairs he led and did not follow. In no sphere of his
activities was he more strenuous, and in no sphere, as he must well have
known, was he less likely to win popularity. For democracy is spendthrift;
if, to be sure, we may not say that most forms of government are apt to be
the same.

In a survey of Mr. Gladstone’s performances, some would place this of
which I have last spoken, as foremost among his services to the country.
Others would call him greatest in the associated service of a skilful
handling and adjustment of the burden of taxation; or the strengthening of
the foundations of national prosperity and well-being by his reformation
of the tariff. Yet others again choose to remember him for his share in
guiding the successive extensions of popular power, and simplifying and
purifying electoral machinery. Irishmen at least, and others so far as
they are able to comprehend the history and vile wrongs and sharp needs of
Ireland, will have no doubt what rank in legislation they will assign to
the establishment of religious equality and agrarian justice in that
portion of the realm. Not a few will count first the vigour with which he
repaired what had been an erroneous judgment of his own and of vast hosts
of his countrymen, by his courage in carrying through the submission of
the Alabama claims to arbitration. Still more, looking from west to east,
in this comparison among his achievements, will judge alike in its result
and in the effort that produced it, nothing equal to the valour and
insight with which he burst the chains of a mischievous and degrading
policy as to the Ottoman empire. When we look at this exploit, how in face
of an opponent of genius and authority and a tenacity not inferior to his
own, in face of strongly rooted tradition on behalf of the Turk, and an
easily roused antipathy against the Russian, by his own energy and
strength of arm he wrested the rudder from the hand of the helmsman and
put about the course of the ship, and held England back from the enormity
of trying to keep several millions of men and women under the yoke of
barbaric oppression and misrule,—we may say that this great feat alone was
fame enough for one statesman. Let us make what choice we will of this or
that particular achievement, how splendid a list it is of benefits
conferred and public work effectually performed. Was he a good
parliamentary tactician, they ask? Was his eye sure, his hand firm, his
measurement of forces, distances, and possibilities of change in wind and
tide accurate? Did he usually hit the proper moment for a magisterial
intervention? Experts did not (M191) always agree on his quality as
tactician. At least he was pilot enough to bring many valuable cargoes
safely home.

He was one of the three statesmen in the House of Commons of his own
generation who had the gift of large and spacious conception of the place
and power of England in the world, and of the policies by which she could
maintain it. Cobden and Disraeli were the other two. Wide as the poles
asunder in genius, in character, and in the mark they made upon the
nation, yet each of these three was capable of wide surveys from high
eminence. But Mr. Gladstone’s performances in the sphere of active
government were beyond comparison.

Again he was often harshly judged by that tenacious class who insist that
if a general principle be sound, there can never be a reason why it should
not be applied forthwith, and that a rule subject to exceptions is not
worth calling a rule; and the worst of it is that these people are mostly
the salt of the earth. In their impatient moments they dismissed him as an
opportunist, but whenever there was a chance of getting anything done,
they mostly found that he was the only man with courage and resolution
enough to attempt to do it. In thinking about him we have constantly to
remember, as Sir George Lewis said, that government is a very rough affair
at best, a huge rough machine, not the delicate springs, wheels, and
balances of a chronometer, and those concerned in working it have to be
satisfied with what is far below the best. “Men have no business to talk
of disenchantment,” Mr. Gladstone said; “ideals are never realised.” That
is no reason, he meant, why men should not persist and toil and hope, and
this is plainly the true temper for the politician. Yet he did not feed
upon illusions. “The history of nations,” he wrote in 1876, “is a
melancholy chapter; that is, the history of governments is one of the most
immoral parts of human history.”



II


It might well be said that Mr. Gladstone took too little, rather than too
much trouble to be popular. His religious conservatism puzzled and
irritated those who admired and shared his political liberalism, just as
churchmen watched with uneasiness and suspicion his radical alliances.
Neither those who were churchmen first, nor those whose interests were
keenest in politics, could comprehend the union of what seemed
incompatibles, and because they could not comprehend they sometimes in
their shallower humours doubted his sincerity. Mr. Gladstone was never,
after say 1850, really afraid of disestablishment; on the contrary he was
much more afraid of the perils of establishment for the integrity of the
faith. Yet political disestablishers often doubted him, because they had
not logic enough to see that a man may be a fervent believer in anglican
institutions and what he thinks catholic tradition, and yet be as ready as
Cavour for the principle of free church in free state.

It is curious that some of the things that made men suspicious, were in
fact the liveliest tokens of his sincerity and simplicity. With all his
power of political imagination, yet his mind was an intensely literal
mind. He did not look at an act or a decision from the point of view at
which it might be regarded by other people. Ewelme, the mission to the
Ionian Islands, the royal warrant, the affair of the judicial committee,
vaticanism, and all the other things that gave offence, and stirred
misgivings even in friends, showed that the very last question he ever
asked himself was how his action would look; what construction might be
put upon it, or even would pretty certainly be put upon it; whom it would
encourage, whom it would estrange, whom it would perplex. Is the given end
right, he seemed to ask; what are the surest means; are the means as right
as the end, as right as they are sure? But right—on strict and literal
construction. What he sometimes forgot was that in political action,
construction is part of the act, nay, may even be its most important
part.(318)

The more you make of his errors, the more is the need to explain his vast
renown, the long reign of his authority, the substance and reality of his
powers. We call men great for many reasons apart from service wrought or
eminence of intellect or even from force and depth of character. To (M192)
have taken a leading part in transactions of decisive moment; to have
proved himself able to meet demands on which high issues hung; to combine
intellectual qualities, though moderate yet adequate and sufficient, with
the moral qualities needed for the given circumstance—with daring,
circumspection, energy, intrepid initiative; to have fallen in with one of
those occasions in the world that impart their own greatness even to a
mediocre actor, and surround his name with a halo not radiating from
within but shed upon him from without—in all these and many other ways men
come to be counted great. Mr. Gladstone belongs to the rarer class who
acquired authority and fame by transcendent qualities of genius within, in
half independence of any occasions beyond those they create for
themselves.



III


Of his attitude in respect of church parties, it is not for me to speak.
He has himself described at least one aspect of it in a letter to an
inquirer, which would be a very noble piece by whomsoever written, and in
the name of whatsoever creed or no-creed, whether Christian or Rationalist
or Nathan the Wise Jew’s creed. It was addressed to a clergyman who seems
to have asked of what section Mr. Gladstone considered himself an
adherent:—


    _Feb. 4, 1865._—It is impossible to misinterpret either the
    intention or the terms of your letter; and I thank you for it
    sincerely. But I cannot answer the question which you put to me,
    and I think I can even satisfy you that with my convictions I
    should do wrong in replying to it in any manner. Whatever reason I
    may have for being painfully and daily conscious of every kind of
    unworthiness, yet I am sufficiently aware of the dignity of
    religious belief to have been throughout a political life, now in
    its thirty-third year, steadily resolved never by my own voluntary
    act to make it the subject of any compact or assurance with a view
    to a political object. You think (and pray do not suppose I make
    this matter of complaint) that I have been associated with one
    party in the church of England, and that I may now lean rather
    towards another.... There is no one about whom information can be
    more easily had than myself. I have had and have friends of many
    colours, churchmen high and low, presbyterians, Greeks, Roman
    catholics, dissenters, who can speak abundantly, though perhaps
    not very well of me. And further, as member for the university, I
    have honestly endeavoured at all times to put my constituents in
    possession of all I could convey to them that could be considered
    as in the nature of a fact, by answering as explicitly as I was
    able all questions relating to the matters, and they are numerous
    enough, on which I have had to act or speak. Perhaps I shall
    surprise you by what I have yet further to say. I have never by
    any conscious act yielded my allegiance to any person or party in
    matters of religion. You and others may have called me (without
    the least offence) a churchman of some particular kind, and I have
    more than once seen announced in print my own secession from the
    church of England. These things I have not commonly contradicted,
    for the atmosphere of religious controversy and contradiction is
    as odious as the atmosphere of mental freedom is precious, to me;
    and I have feared to lose the one and be drawn into the other, by
    heat and bitterness creeping into the mind. If another chooses to
    call himself, or to call me, a member of this or that party, I am
    not to complain. But I respectfully claim the right not to call
    myself so, and on this claim, I have I believe acted throughout my
    life, without a single exception; and I feel that were I to waive
    it, I should at once put in hazard that allegiance to Truth, which
    is at once the supreme duty and the supreme joy of life. I have
    only to add the expression of my hope that in what I have said
    there is nothing to hurt or to offend you; and, if there be, very
    heartily to wish it unsaid.


Yet there was never the shadow of mistake about his own fervent faith. As
he said to another correspondent:—


    _Feb. 5, 1876._—I am in principle a strong denominationalist. “One
    fold and one shepherd” was the note of early Christendom. The
    shepherd is still one and knows his sheep; but the folds are many;
    and, without condemning any others, I am of opinion that it is
    best for us all that we should all of us be jealous for the honour
    of whatever we have and hold as positive truth, appertaining to
    the Divine Word and the foundation and history of the Christian
    community. I admit that this question becomes one of circumstance
    and degree, but I take it as I find it defined for myself by and
    in my own position.



IV


Of Mr. Gladstone as orator and improvisatore, enough has been said and
seen. Besides being orator and statesman he was scholar and critic.
Perhaps scholar in his interests, not in abiding contribution. The most
copious of his productions in this delightful but arduous field was the
three large volumes on _Homer and the Homeric Age_, given to the world in
1858. Into what has been well called the whirlpool of Homeric
controversies, the reader shall not here be dragged. Mr. Gladstone himself
gave them the go-by, with an indifference and disdain such as might have
been well enough in the economic field if exhibited towards a
protectionist farmer, or a partisan of retaliatory duties on manufactured
goods, but that were hardly to the point in dealing with profound and
original critics. What he too contemptuously dismissed as Homeric
“bubble-schemes,” were in truth centres of scientific illumination. At the
end of the eighteenth century Wolf’s famous _Prolegomena_ appeared, in
which he advanced the theory that Homer was no single poet, nor a name for
two poets, nor an individual at all; the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ were
collections of independent lays, folk-lore and folk-songs connected by a
common set of themes, and edited, redacted, or compacted about the middle
of the sixth century before Christ. A learned man of our own day has said
that F. A. Wolf ought to be counted one of the half dozen writers that
within the last three centuries have most influenced thought. This would
bring Wolf into line with Descartes, Newton, Locke, Kant, Rousseau, or
whatever other five master-spirits of thought from then to now the
judicious reader may select. The present writer has assuredly no
competence to assign Wolf’s place in the history of modern criticism, but
straying aside for a season from the green pastures of Hansard, and
turning over again the slim volume of a hundred and fifty pages in which
Wolf discusses his theme, one may easily discern a fountain of broad
streams of modern thought (apart from the particular thesis) that to Mr.
Gladstone, by the force of all his education and his deepest
prepossessions, were in the highest degree chimerical and dangerous.

He once wrote to Lord Acton (1889) about the Old Testament and Mosaic
legislation:—


    Now I think that the most important parts of the argument have in
    a great degree a solid standing ground apart from the destructive
    criticism on dates and on the text: and I am sufficiently aware of
    my own rawness and ignorance in the matter not to allow myself to
    judge definitely, or condemn. I feel also that I have a
    prepossession derived from the criticisms in the case of Homer. Of
    them I have a very bad opinion, not only in themselves, but as to
    the levity, precipitancy, and shallowness of mind which they
    display; and here I do venture to speak, because I believe myself
    to have done a great deal more than any of the destructives in the
    examination of the text, which is the true source of the materials
    of judgment. They are a soulless lot; but there was a time when
    they had possession of the public ear as much I suppose as the Old
    Testament destructives now have, within their own precinct. It is
    only the constructive part of their work on which I feel tempted
    to judge; and I must own that it seems to me sadly wanting in the
    elements of rational probability.


This unpromising method is sufficiently set out when he says: “I find in
the plot of the _Iliad_ enough of beauty, order, and structure, not merely
to sustain the supposition of its own unity, but to bear an independent
testimony, should it be still needed, to the existence of a personal and
individual Homer as its author.”(319) From such a method no permanent
contribution could come.

Yet scholars allow that Mr. Gladstone in these three volumes, as well as
in _Juventus Mundi_ and his _Homeric Primer_, has added not a little to
our scientific knowledge of the Homeric poems,(320) by his extraordinary
mastery of the text, the result of unwearied and prolonged industry, aided
(M193) by a memory both tenacious and ready. Taking his own point of view,
moreover, anybody who wishes to have his feeling about the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_ as delightful poetry refreshed and quickened, will find
inspiring elements in the profusion, the eager array of Homer’s own lines,
the diligent exploration of aspects and bearings hitherto unthought of.
The “theo-mythology” is commonly judged fantastic, and has been compared
by sage critics to Warburton’s _Divine Legation_—the same comprehensive
general reading, the same heroic industry in marshalling the particulars
of proof, the same dialectical strength of arm, and all brought to prove
an unsound proposition.(321) Yet the comprehensive reading and the
particulars of proof are by no means without an interest of their own,
whatever we may think of the proposition; and here, as in all his literary
writing distinguished from polemics, he abounds in the ethical elements.
Here perhaps more than anywhere else he impresses us by his love of beauty
in all its aspects and relations, in the human form, in landscape, in the
affections, in animals, including above all else that sense of beauty
which made his Greeks take it as one of the names for nobility in conduct.
Conington, one of the finest of scholars, then lecturing at Oxford on
Latin poets and deep in his own Virgilian studies, which afterwards bore
such admirable fruit, writes at length (Feb. 14, 1857) to say how grateful
he is to Mr. Gladstone for the care with which he has pursued into details
a view of Virgil that they hold substantially in common, and proceeds with
care and point to analyse the quality of the Roman poet’s art, as some
years later he defended against Munro the questionable proposition of the
superiority in poetic style of the graceful, melodious, and pathetic
Virgil to Lucretius’s mighty muse.

No field has been more industriously worked for the last forty years than
this of the relations of paganism to the historic religion that followed
it in Europe. The knowledge and the speculations into which Mr. Gladstone
was thus initiated in the sixties may now seem crude enough; but he
deserves some credit in English, though not in view of German, speculation
for an early perception of an unfamiliar region of comparative science,
whence many a product most unwelcome to him and alien to his own beliefs
has been since extracted. When all is said, however, Mr. Gladstone’s place
is not in literary or critical history, but elsewhere.

His style is sometimes called Johnsonian, but surely without good ground.
Johnson was not involved and he was clear, and neither of these things can
always be said of Mr. Gladstone. Some critic charged him in 1840 with
“prolix clearness.” The old charge, says Mr. Gladstone upon this, was
“obscure compression. I do not doubt that both may be true, and the former
may have been the result of a well-meant effort to escape from the
latter.” He was fond of abstract words, or the nearer to abstract the
better, and the more general the better. One effect of this was
undoubtedly to give an indirect, almost a shifty, air that exasperated
plain people. Why does he beat about the bush, they asked; why cannot he
say what he means? A reader might have to think twice or thrice or twenty
times before he could be sure that he interpreted correctly. But then
people are so apt to think once, or half of once; to take the meaning that
suits their own wish or purpose best, and then to treat that as the only
meaning. Hence their perplexity and wrath when they found that other doors
were open, and they thought a mistake due to their own hurry was the
result of a juggler’s trick. On the other hand a good writer takes all the
pains he can to keep his reader out of such scrapes.

His critical essays on Tennyson and Macaulay are excellent. They are
acute, discriminating, generous. His estimate of Macaulay, apart from a
piece of polemical church history at the end, is perhaps the best we have.
“You make a very just remark,” said Acton to him, “that Macaulay was
afraid of contradicting his former self, and remembered all he had written
since 1825. At that time his mind was formed, and so it remained. What
literary influences acted on the formation of his political opinions, what
were his religious sympathies, and what is his exact place among
historians, you have rather avoided discussing. There is still something
to say on these points.” To Tennyson Mr. Gladstone believed himself to
have been unjust, especially in the passages of _Maud_ devoted to the
war-frenzy, and when he came to reprint the article he admitted that he
had not sufficiently remembered that he was dealing with a dramatic and
imaginative composition.(322) As he frankly said of himself, he was not
strong in the faculties of the artist, but perhaps Tennyson himself in
these passages was prompted much more by politics than by art. Of this
piece of retractation the poet truly said, “Nobody but a noble-minded man
would have done that.”(323) Mr. Gladstone would most likely have chosen to
call his words a qualification rather than a recantation. In either case,
it does not affect passages that give the finest expression to one of the
very deepest convictions of his life,—that war, whatever else we may
choose to say of it, is no antidote for Mammon-worship and can never be a
cure for moral evils:—


    It is, indeed, true that peace has its moral perils and
    temptations for degenerate man, as has every other blessing,
    without exception, that he can receive from the hand of God. It is
    moreover not less true that, amidst the clash of arms, the noblest
    forms of character may be reared, and the highest acts of duty
    done; that these great and precious results may be due to war as
    their cause; and that one high form of sentiment in particular,
    the love of country, receives a powerful and general stimulus from
    the bloody strife. But this is as the furious cruelty of Pharaoh
    made place for the benign virtue of his daughter; as the
    butchering sentence of Herod raised without doubt many a mother’s
    love into heroic sublimity; as plague, as famine, as fire, as
    flood, as every curse and every scourge that is wielded by an
    angry Providence for the chastisement of man, is an appointed
    instrument for tempering human souls in the seven-times heated
    furnace of affliction, up to the standard of angelic and
    archangelic virtue.

    War, indeed, has the property of exciting much generous and noble
    feeling on a large scale; but with this special recommendation it
    has, in its modern forms especially, peculiar and unequalled
    evils. As it has a wider sweep of desolating power than the rest,
    so it has the peculiar quality that it is more susceptible of
    being decked in gaudy trappings, and of fascinating the
    imagination of those whose proud and angry passions it inflames.
    But it is, on this very account, a perilous delusion to teach that
    war is a cure for moral evil, in any other sense than as the
    sister tribulations are. The eulogies of the frantic hero in
    _Maud_, however, deviate into grosser folly. It is natural that
    such vagaries should overlook the fixed laws of Providence. Under
    these laws the mass of mankind is composed of men, women, and
    children who can but just ward off hunger, cold, and nakedness;
    whose whole ideas of Mammon-worship are comprised in the search
    for their daily food, clothing, shelter, fuel; whom any casualty
    reduces to positive want; and whose already low estate is yet
    further lowered and ground down, when “the blood-red blossom of
    war flames with its heart of fire.”...

    Still war had, in times now gone by, ennobling elements and
    tendencies of the less sordid kind. But one inevitable
    characteristic of modern war is, that it is associated throughout,
    in all particulars, with a vast and most irregular formation of
    commercial enterprise. There is no incentive to Mammon-worship so
    remarkable as that which it affords. The political economy of war
    is now one of its most commanding aspects. Every farthing, with
    the smallest exceptions conceivable, of the scores or hundreds of
    millions which a war may cost, goes directly, and very violently,
    to stimulate production, though it is intended ultimately for
    waste or for destruction. Even apart from the fact that war
    suspends, _ipso facto_, every rule of public thrift, and tends to
    sap honesty itself in the use of the public treasure for which it
    makes such unbounded calls, it therefore is the greatest feeder of
    that lust of gold which we are told is the essence of commerce,
    though we had hoped it was only its occasional besetting sin. It
    is, however, more than this; for the regular commerce of peace is
    tameness itself compared with the gambling spirit which war,
    through the rapid shiftings and high prices which it brings,
    always introduces into trade. In its moral operation it more
    resembles, perhaps the finding of a new gold-field, than anything
    else.


More remarkable than either of these two is his piece on Leopardi (1850),
the Italian poet, whose philosophy and (M194) frame of mind, said Mr.
Gladstone, “present more than any other that we know, more even than that
of Shelley, the character of unrelieved, unredeemed desolation—the very
qualities in it which attract pitying sympathy, depriving it of all
seductive power.” It is curious that he should have selected one whose
life lay along a course like Leopardi’s for commemoration, as a man who in
almost every branch of mental exertion seems to have had the capacity for
attaining, and generally at a single bound, the very highest excellence.
“There are many things,” he adds, “in which Christians would do well to
follow him: in the warmth of his attachments; in the moderation of his
wants; in his noble freedom from the love of money; in his all-conquering
assiduity.”(324) Perhaps the most remarkable sentence of all is this: “...
what is not needful, and is commonly wrong, namely, is to pass a judgment
on our fellow-creatures. Never let it be forgotten that there is scarcely
a single moral action of a single man of which other men can have such a
knowledge, in its ultimate grounds, its surrounding incidents, and the
real determining causes of its merits, as to warrant their pronouncing a
conclusive judgment upon it.”

The translation of poetry into poetry, as Coleridge said, is difficult
because the translator must give brilliancy without the warmth of original
conception, from which such brilliancy would follow of its own accord. But
we must not judge Mr. Gladstone’s translation either of Horace’s odes or
of detached pieces from Greek or Italian, as we should judge the professed
man of letters or poet like Coleridge himself. His pieces are the
diversions of the man of affairs, with educated tastes and interest in
good literature. Perhaps the best single piece is his really noble
rendering of Manzoni’s noble ode on the death of Napoleon; for instance:—


        From Alp to farthest Pyramid,
          From Rhine to Mansanar,
        How sure his lightning’s flash foretold
          His thunderbolts of war!
    To Don from Scilla’s height they roar,
    From North to Southern shore.
        And this was glory? After-men,
          Judge the dark problem. Low
        We to the Mighty Maker bend
          The while, Who planned to show
    What vaster mould Creative Will
      With him could fill.

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

        As on the shipwrecked mariner
          The weltering wave’s descent—
        The wave, o’er which, a moment since,
          For distant shores he bent
    And bent in vain, his eager eye;
      So on that stricken head
        Came whelming down the mighty Past.
          How often did his pen
        Essay to tell the wondrous tale
          For after times and men,
    And o’er the lines that could not die
      His hand lay dead.

        How often, as the listless day
        In silence died away,
        He stood with lightning eye deprest,
        And arms across his breast,
    And bygone years, in rushing train,
    Smote on his soul amain:
        The breezy tents he seemed to see,
        And the battering cannon’s course,
        And the flashing of the infantry,
        And the torrent of the horse,
    And, obeyed as soon as heard,
      Th’ ecstatic word.


Always let us remember that his literary life was part of the rest of his
life, as literature ought to be. He was no mere reader of many books, used
to relieve the strain of mental anxiety or to slake the thirst of literary
or intellectual curiosity. Reading with him in the days of his full vigour
was a habitual communing with the master spirits of mankind, as a
vivifying and nourishing part of life. As we have seen, he would not read
Dante in the session, nor unless he could have a large draught. Here as
elsewhere in the ordering of his days he was methodical, systematic, full.



V


(M195) Though man of action, yet Mr. Gladstone too has a place by
character and influences among what we may call the abstract, moral,
spiritual forces that stamped the realm of Britain in his age. In a new
time, marked in an incomparable degree by the progress of science and
invention, by vast mechanical, industrial, and commercial development, he
accepted it all, he adjusted his statesmanship to it all, nay, he revelled
in it all, as tending to ameliorate the lot of the “mass of men, women,
and children who can just ward off hunger, cold, and nakedness.” He did
not rail at his age, he strove to help it. Following Walpole and Cobden
and Peel in the policies of peace, he knew how to augment the material
resources on which our people depend. When was Britain stronger, richer,
more honoured among the nations—I do not say always among the diplomatic
chanceries and governments—than in the years when Mr. Gladstone was at the
zenith of his authority among us? When were her armed forces by sea and
land more adequate for defence of every interest? When was her material
resource sounder? When was her moral credit higher? Besides all this, he
upheld a golden lamp.

The unending revolutions of the world are for ever bringing old phases
uppermost again. Events from season to season are taken to teach sinister
lessons, that the Real is the only Rational, force is the test of right
and wrong, the state has nothing to do with restraints of morals, the
ruler is emancipated. Speculations in physical science were distorted for
alien purposes, and survival of the fittest was taken to give brutality a
more decent name. Even new conceptions and systems of history may be
twisted into release of statesmen from the conscience of Bishop Butler’s
plain man. This gospel it was Mr. Gladstone’s felicity to hold at bay.
Without bringing back the cosmopolitanism of the eighteenth century,
without sharing all the idealisms of the middle of the nineteenth, he
resisted with his whole might the odious contention that moral progress in
the relations of nations and states to one another is an illusion and a
dream.

This vein perhaps brings us too near to the regions of dissertation. Let
us rather leave off with thoughts and memories of one who was a vivid
example of public duty and of private faithfulness; of a long career that
with every circumstance of splendour, amid all the mire and all the
poisons of the world, lighted up in practice even for those who have none
of his genius and none of his power his own precept, “Be inspired with the
belief that life is a great and noble calling; not a mean and grovelling
thing, that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated and lofty
destiny.”





APPENDIX




Irish Local Government, 1883. (Page 103)


    _Mr. Gladstone to Lord Granville_

    _Cannes, Jan. 22, 1883._—Today I have been a good deal distressed
    by a passage as reported in Hartington’s very strong and able
    speech, for which I am at a loss to account, so far does it travel
    out into the open, and so awkward are the intimations it seems to
    convey. I felt that I could not do otherwise than telegraph to you
    in cipher on the subject. But I used words intended to show that,
    while I thought an immediate notification needful, I was far from
    wishing to hasten the reply, and desired to leave altogether in
    your hands the mode of touching a delicate matter. Pray use the
    widest discretion.

    I console myself with thinking it is hardly possible that
    Hartington can have meant to say what nevertheless both _Times_
    and _Daily News_ make him seem to say, namely, that we recede
    from, or throw into abeyance, the declarations we have constantly
    made about our desire to extend local government, properly so
    called, to Ireland on the first opportunity which the state of
    business in parliament would permit. We announced our intention to
    do this at the very moment when we were preparing to suspend the
    Habeas Corpus Act. Since that time we have seen our position in
    Ireland immensely strengthened, and the leader of the agitation
    has even thought it wise, and has dared, to pursue a somewhat
    conciliatory course. Many of his coadjutors are still as vicious,
    it may be, as ever, but how can we say (for instance) to the
    Ulster men, you shall remain with shortened liberties and without
    local government, because Biggar & Co. are hostile to British
    connection?

    There has also come prominently into view a new and powerful set
    of motives which, in my deliberate judgment, require us, for the
    sake of the United Kingdom even more than for the sake of Ireland,
    to push forward this question. Under the present highly
    centralised system of government, every demand which can be
    started on behalf of a poor and ill-organised country, comes
    directly on the British government and treasury; if refused it
    becomes at once a head of grievance, if granted not only a new
    drain but a certain source of political complication and
    embarrassment. The peasant proprietary, the winter’s distress, the
    state of the labourers, the loans to farmers, the promotion of
    public works, the encouragement of fisheries, the promotion of
    emigration, each and every one of these questions has a sting, and
    the sting can only be taken out of it by our treating it in
    correspondence with a popular and responsible Irish body,
    competent to act for its own portion of the country.

    Every consideration which prompted our pledges, prompts the
    recognition of them, and their extension, rather than curtailment.
    The Irish government have in preparation a Local Government bill.
    Such a bill may even be an economy of time. By no other means that
    I can see shall we be able to ward off most critical and
    questionable discussions on questions of the class I have
    mentioned. The argument that we cannot yet trust Irishmen with
    popular local institutions is the mischievous argument by which
    the conservative opposition to the Melbourne government resisted,
    and finally crippled, the reform of municipal corporations in
    Ireland. By acting on principles diametrically opposite, we have
    broken down to thirty-five or forty what would have been a party,
    in this parliament, of sixty-five home rulers, and have thus
    arrested (or at the very least postponed) the perilous crisis,
    which no man has as yet looked in the face; the crisis which will
    arise when a large and united majority of Irish members demand
    some fundamental change in the legislative relations of the two
    countries. I can ill convey to you how dear are my thoughts, or
    how earnest my convictions, on this important subject....




General Gordon’s Instructions. (Page 153)


_The following is the text of General Gordon’s Instructions (Jan. 18,
1884)_:—


    Her Majesty’s government are desirous that you should proceed at
    once to Egypt, to report to them on the military situation in the
    Soudan, and on the measures it may be advisable to take for the
    security of the Egyptian garrisons still holding positions in that
    country, and for the safety of the European population in
    Khartoum. You are also desired to consider and report upon the
    best mode of effecting the evacuation of the interior of the
    Soudan, and upon the manner in which the safety and good
    administration by the Egyptian government of the ports on the sea
    coast can best be secured. In connection with this subject you
    should pay especial consideration to the question of the steps
    that may usefully be taken to counteract the stimulus which it is
    feared may possibly be given to the slave trade by the present
    insurrectionary movement, and by the withdrawal of the Egyptian
    authority from the interior. You will be under the instructions of
    Her Majesty’s agent and consul-general at Cairo, through whom your
    reports to Her Majesty’s government should be sent under flying
    seal. You will consider yourself authorised and instructed to
    perform such other duties as the Egyptian government may desire to
    entrust to you, and as may be communicated to you by Sir E.
    Baring. You will be accompanied by Colonel Stewart, who will
    assist you in the duties thus confided to you. On your arrival in
    Egypt you will at once communicate with Sir E. Baring, who will
    arrange to meet you and will settle with you whether you should
    proceed direct to Suakin or should go yourself or despatch Colonel
    Stewart _viâ_ the Nile.




The Military Position In The Soudan, April 1885. (Page 179)


_This Memorandum, dated April 9, 1885, was prepared by Mr. Gladstone for
the cabinet_:—


    The commencement of the hot season appears, with other
    circumstances, to mark the time for considering at large our
    position in the Soudan. Also a declaration of policy is now
    demanded from us in nearly all quarters.... When the betrayal of
    Khartoum had been announced, the desire and intention of the
    cabinet were to reserve for a later decision the question of an
    eventual advance upon that place, should no immediate movement on
    it be found possible. The objects they had immediately in view
    were to ascertain the fate of Gordon, to make every effort on his
    behalf, and to prevent the extension of the area of disturbance.

    But Lord Wolseley at once impressed upon the cabinet that he
    required, in order to determine his immediate military movements,
    to know whether they were to be based upon the plan of an eventual
    advance on Khartoum, or whether the intention of such an advance
    was to be abandoned altogether. If the first plan were adopted,
    Lord Wolseley declared his power and intention to take Berber, and
    even gave a possible date for it, in the middle of March. The
    cabinet, adopting the phrase which Lord Wolseley had used, decided
    upon the facts as they then stood before it: (_a_) Lord Wolseley
    was to calculate upon proceeding to Khartoum after the hot season,
    to overthrow the power of the Mahdi there; (_b_) and,
    consequently, on this decision, they were to commence the
    construction of a railway from Suakin to Berber, in aid of the
    contemplated expedition; (_c_) an expedition was also to be sent
    against Osman Digna, which would open the road to Berber; but Lord
    Wolseley’s demand for this expedition applied alike to each of the
    two military alternatives which he had laid before the cabinet.

    There was no absolute decision to proceed to Khartoum at any time;
    and the declarations of ministers in parliament have treated it as
    a matter to be further weighed; but all steps have thus far been
    taken to prepare for it, and it has been regarded as at least
    probable. In approaching the question whether we are still to
    proceed on the same lines, it is necessary to refer to the motives
    which under the directions of the cabinet were stated by Lord
    Granville and by me, on the 19th of February, as having
    contributed to the decision, I copy out a part of the note from
    which he and I spoke:—

    Objects in the Soudan which we have always deemed fit for
    consideration as far as circumstances might allow:—

    1. The case of those to whom Gordon held himself bound in honour.

    2. The possibility of establishing an orderly government at
    Khartoum.

    3. Check to the slave trade.

    4. The case of the garrisons.

    A negative decision would probably have involved the abandonment
    at a stroke of all these objects. And also (we had to consider)
    whatever dangers, proximate or remote, in Egypt or in the East
    might follow from the triumphant position of the Mahdi; hard to
    estimate, but they may be very serious.

    Two months, which have passed since the decision of the government
    (Feb. 5), have thrown light, more or less, upon the several points
    brought into view on the 19th February. 1. We have now no
    sufficient reason to assume that any of the population of Khartoum
    felt themselves bound to Gordon, or to have suffered on his
    account; or even that any large numbers of men in arms perished in
    the betrayal of the town, or took his part after the enemy were
    admitted into it. 2. We have had no tidings of anarchy at
    Khartoum, and we do not know that it is governed worse, or that
    the population is suffering more, than it would be under a Turkish
    or Egyptian ruler. 3. It is not believed that the possession of
    Khartoum is of any great value as regards the slave trade. 4. Or,
    after the failure of Gordon with respect to the garrisons, that
    the possession of Khartoum would, without further and formidable
    extensions of plan, avail for the purpose of relieving them. But
    further, what knowledge have we that these garrisons are unable to
    relieve themselves? There seems some reason to believe that the
    army of Hicks, when the action ceased, fraternised with the
    Mahdi’s army, and that the same thing happened at Khartoum. Is
    there ground to suppose that they are hateful unless as
    representatives of Egyptian power? and ought they not to be
    released from any obligation to present themselves in that
    capacity?

    With regard to the larger question of eventual consequences in
    Egypt or the East from the Mahdi’s success at Khartoum, it is open
    to many views, and cannot be completely disposed of. But it may be
    observed—1. That the Mahdi made a trial of marching down the Nile
    and speedily abandoned it, even in the first flush of his success.
    2. That cessation of operations in the Soudan does not at this
    moment mean our military inaction in the East. 3. That the
    question is one of conflict, not with the arms of an enemy, but
    with Nature in respect of climate and supply. 4. There remains
    also a grave question of justice, to which I shall revert.

    Should the idea of proceeding to Khartoum be abandoned, the
    railway from Suakin, as now projected, would fall with it, since
    it was adopted as a military measure, subsidiary to the advance on
    Khartoum. The prosecution of it as a civil or commercial
    enterprise would be a new proposal, to be examined on its merits.

    The military situation appears in some respects favourable to the
    re-examination of the whole subject. The general has found himself
    unable to execute his intention of taking Berber, and this failure
    alters the basis on which the cabinet proceeded in February, and
    greatly increases the difficulty of the autumn enterprise. On the
    one hand Wolseley’s and Graham’s forces have had five or six
    considerable actions, and have been uniformly victorious. On the
    other hand, the Mahdi has voluntarily retired from Khartoum, and
    Osman Digna has been driven from the field, but cannot, as Graham
    says, be followed into the mountains.(325) While the present
    situation may thus seem opportune, the future of more extended
    operations is dark. In at least one of his telegrams, Wolseley has
    expressed a very keen desire to get the British army out of the
    Soudan.(326) He has now made very large demands for the autumn
    expedition, which, judging from previous experience and from
    general likelihood, are almost certain to grow larger, as he comes
    more closely to confront the very formidable task before him;
    while in his letter to Lord Hartington he describes this affair to
    be _the greatest __“__since 1815,__”_ and expresses his hope that
    all the members of the cabinet clearly understand this to be the
    case. He also names a period of between two or three years for the
    completion of the railway, while he expresses an absolute
    confidence in the power and resources of this country with vast
    effort to insure success. He means without doubt military success.
    Political success appears much more problematical.

    There remains, however, to be considered a question which I take
    to be of extreme importance. I mean the moral basis of the
    projected military operations. I have from the first regarded the
    rising of the Soudanese against Egypt as a justifiable and
    honourable revolt. The cabinet have, I think, never taken an
    opposite view. Mr. Power, in his letter from Khartoum before
    Gordon’s arrival, is decided and even fervent in the same sense.

    We sent Gordon on a mission of peace and liberation. From such
    information as alone we have possessed, we found this missionary
    of peace menaced and besieged, finally betrayed by some of his
    troops, and slaughtered by those whom he came to set free. This
    information, however, was fragmentary, and was also one-sided. We
    have now the advantage of reviewing it as a whole, of reading it
    in the light of events, and of some auxiliary evidence such as
    that of Mr. Power.

    I never understood how it was that Gordon’s mission of peace
    became one of war. But we knew the nobleness of his philanthropy,
    and we trusted him to the uttermost, as it was our duty to do. He
    never informed us that he had himself changed the character of the
    mission. It seemed strange that one who bore in his hands a
    charter of liberation should be besieged and threatened; but we
    took everything for granted in his favour, and against his
    enemies; and we could hardly do otherwise. Our obligations in this
    respect were greatly enhanced by the long interruption of
    telegraphic communication. It was our duty to believe that, if we
    could only know what he was prevented from saying to us,
    contradictions would be reconciled, and language of excess
    accounted for. We now know from the letters of Mr. Power that when
    he was at Khartoum with Colonel de Coetlogon before Gordon’s
    arrival, a retreat on Berber had been actually ordered; it was
    regarded no doubt as a serious work of time, because it involved
    the removal of an Egyptian population;(327) but it was deemed
    feasible, and Power expresses no doubt of its accomplishment.(328)
    As far as, amidst its inconsistencies, a construction can be put
    on Gordon’s language, it is to the effect that there was a
    population and a force attached to him, which he could not remove
    and would not leave.(329) But De Coetlogon did not regard this
    removal as impracticable, and was actually setting about it. Why
    Gordon did not prosecute it, why we hear no more of it from Power
    after Gordon’s arrival, is a mystery. Instructed by results we now
    perceive that Gordon’s title as governor-general might naturally
    be interpreted by the tribes in the light of much of the language
    used by him, which did not savour of liberation and evacuation,
    but of powers of government over the Soudan; powers to be used
    benevolently, but still powers of government. Why the Mahdi did
    not accept him is not hard to understand, but why was he not
    accepted by those local sultans, whom it was the basis of his
    declared policy to re-invest with their ancient powers, in spite
    of Egypt and of the Mahdi alike? Was he not in short interpreted
    as associated with the work of Hicks, and did he not himself give
    probable colour to this interpretation? It must be borne in mind
    that on other matters of the gravest importance—on the use of
    Turkish force—on the use of British force—on the employment of
    Zobeir—Gordon announced within a very short time contradictory
    views, and never seemed to feel that there was any need of
    explanation, in order to account for the contradictions. There is
    every presumption, as well as every sign, that like fluctuation
    and inconsistency crept into his words and acts as to the
    liberation of the country; and this, if it was so, could not but
    produce ruinous effects. Upon the whole, it seems probable that
    Gordon, perhaps insensibly to himself, and certainly without our
    concurrence, altered the character of his mission, and worked in a
    considerable degree against our intentions and instructions.

    There does not appear to be any question now of the security of
    the army, but a most grave question whether we can demonstrate a
    necessity (nothing less will suffice) for making war on a people
    who are struggling against a foreign and armed yoke, not for the
    rescue of our own countrymen, not for the rescue _so far as we
    know_ of an Egyptian population, but with very heavy cost of
    British life as well as treasure, with a serious strain on our
    military resources at a most critical time, and with the most
    serious fear that if we persist, we shall find ourselves engaged
    in an odious work of subjugation. The discontinuance of these
    military operations would, I presume, take the form of a
    suspension _sine die,_ leaving the future open; would require
    attention to be paid to defence on the recognised southern
    frontier of Egypt, and need not involve any precipitate
    abandonment of Suakin.




Home Rule Bill, 1886. (Page 308)


(M196) _The following summary of the provisions of the Home Rule bill of
1886 supplements the description of the bill given in Chapter V. Book
X._:—


    One of the cardinal difficulties of all free government is to make
    it hard for majorities to act unjustly to minorities. You cannot
    make this injustice impossible but you may set up obstacles. In
    this case, there was no novelty in the device adopted. The
    legislative body was to be composed of two orders. The first order
    was to consist of the twenty-eight representative peers, together
    with seventy-five members elected by certain scheduled
    constituencies on an occupation franchise of twenty-five pounds
    and upwards. To be eligible for the first order, a person must
    have a property qualification, either in realty of two hundred
    pounds a year, or in personalty of the same amount, or a capital
    value of four thousand pounds. The representative peers now
    existing would sit for life, and, as they dropped off, the crown
    would nominate persons to take their place up to a certain date,
    and on the exhaustion of the twenty-eight existing peers, then the
    whole of the first order would become elective under the same
    conditions as the seventy-five other members.

    The second order would consist of 206 members, chosen by existing
    counties and towns under the machinery now operative. The two
    orders were to sit and deliberate together, but either order could
    demand a separate vote. This right would enable a majority of one
    order to veto the proposal of the other. But the veto was only to
    operate until a dissolution, or for three years, whichever might
    be the longer interval of the two.

    The executive transition was to be gradual. The office of viceroy
    would remain, but he would not be the minister of a party, nor
    quit office with an outgoing government. He would have a privy
    council; within that council would be formed an executive body of
    ministers like the British cabinet. This executive would be
    responsible to the Irish legislature, just as the executive
    government here is responsible to the legislature of this country.
    If any clause of a bill seemed to the viceroy to be _ultra vires_,
    he could refer it to the judicial committee of the privy council
    in London. The same reference, in respect of a section of an Irish
    Act, lay open either to the English secretary of state, or to a
    suitor, defendant, or other person concerned.

    Future judges were to hold the same place in the Irish system as
    English judges in the English system; their office was to be
    during good behaviour; they were to be appointed on the advice of
    the Irish government, removable only on the joint address of the
    two orders, and their salaries charged on the Irish consolidated
    fund. The burning question of the royal Irish constabulary was
    dealt with provisionally. Until a local force was created by the
    new government, they were to remain at the orders of the lord
    lieutenant. Ultimately the Irish police were to come under the
    control of the legislative body. For two years from the passing of
    the Act, the legislative body was to fix the charge for the whole
    constabulary of Ireland.

    In national as in domestic housekeeping, the figure of available
    income is the vital question. The total receipts of the Irish
    exchequer would be £8,350,000, from customs, excise, stamps,
    income-tax, and non-tax revenue. On a general comparison of the
    taxable revenues of Ireland and Great Britain, as tested more
    especially by the property passing under the death duties, the
    fair proportion due as Ireland’s share for imperial purposes, such
    as interest on the debt, defence, and civil charge, was fixed at
    one-fifteenth. This would bring the total charge properly imperial
    up to £3,242,000. Civil charges in Ireland were put at £2,510,000,
    and the constabulary charge on Ireland was not to exceed
    £1,000,000, any excess over that sum being debited to England. The
    Irish government would be left with a surplus of £404,000. This
    may seem a ludicrously meagre amount, but, compared with the total
    revenue, it is equivalent to a surplus on our own budget of that
    date of something like five millions.

    The true payment to imperial charges was to be £1,842,000 because
    of the gross revenue above stated of £1,400,000 though paid in
    Ireland in the first instance was really paid by British consumers
    of whisky, porter, and tobacco. This sum, deducted from
    £3,342,000, leaves the real Irish contribution, namely £1,842,000.

    A further sum of uncertain, but substantial amount, would go to
    the Irish exchequer from another source, to which we have now to
    turn. With the proposals for self-government were coupled
    proposals for a settlement of the land question. The ground-work
    was an option offered to the landlords of being bought out under
    the terms of the Act. The purchaser was to be an Irish state
    authority, as the organ representing the legislative body. The
    occupier was to become the proprietor, except in the congested
    districts, where the state authority was to be the proprietor. The
    normal price was to be twenty years’ purchase of the net rental.
    The most important provision, in one sense, was that which
    recognised the salutary principle that the public credit should
    not be resorted to on such a scale as this merely for the benefit
    of a limited number of existing cultivators of the soil, without
    any direct advantage to the government as representing the
    community at large. That was effected by making the tenant pay an
    annual instalment, calculated on the gross rental, while the state
    authority would repay to the imperial treasury a percentage
    calculated on the net rental, and the state authority would pocket
    the difference, estimated to be about 18 per cent. on the sum
    payable to the selling landlord. How was all this to be secured?
    Principally, on the annuities paid by the tenants who had
    purchased their holdings, and if the holdings did not satisfy the
    charge, then on the revenues of Ireland. All public revenues
    whatever were to be collected by persons appointed by the Irish
    government, but these collectors were to pay over all sums that
    came into their hands to an imperial officer, to be styled a
    receiver-general. Through him all rents and Irish revenues
    whatever were to pass, and not a shilling was to be let out for
    Irish purposes until their obligations to the imperial exchequer
    had been discharged.




On The Place Of Italy. (Page 415)


    By the provisions of nature, Italy was marked out for a
    conservative force in Europe. As England is cut off by the
    channel, so is Italy by the mountains, from the continental
    mass.... If England commits follies they are the follies of a
    strong man who can afford to waste a portion of his resources
    without greatly affecting the sum total.... She has a huge free
    margin, on which she might scrawl a long list of follies and even
    crimes without damaging the letterpress. But where and what is the
    free margin in the case of Italy, a country which has contrived in
    less than a quarter of a century of peace, from the date of her
    restored independence, to treble (or something near it) the
    taxation of her people, to raise the charge of her debt to a point
    higher than that of England, and to arrive within one or two short
    paces of national bankruptcy?...

    Italy by nature stands in alliance neither with anarchy nor with
    Caesarism, but with the cause and advocates of national liberty
    and progress throughout Europe. Never had a nation greater
    advantages from soil and climate, from the talents and
    dispositions of the people, never was there a more smiling
    prospect (if we may fall back upon the graceful fiction) from the
    Alpine tops, even down to the Sicilian promontories, than that
    which for the moment has been darkly blurred. It is the heart’s
    desire of those, who are not indeed her teachers, but her friends,
    that she may rouse herself to dispel once and for ever the evil
    dream of what is not so much ambition as affectation, may
    acknowledge the true conditions under which she lives, and it
    perhaps may not yet be too late for her to disappoint the
    malevolent hopes of the foes of freedom, and to fulfil every
    bright and glowing prediction which its votaries have ever uttered
    on her behalf.—_“__The Triple Alliance and Italy’s Place in
    it__”__ (Contemporary Review, Oct. 1889)._




The Glasgow Peroration. (Page 492)


_After describing the past history of Ireland as being for more than five
hundred years ’one almost unbroken succession of political storm and
swollen tempest, except when those tempests were for a time interrupted by
a period of servitude and by the stillness of death,’ Mr. Gladstone went
on_:—


    Those storms are in strong contrast with the future, with the
    present. The condition of the Irish mind justifies us in
    anticipating. It recalls to my mind a beautiful legend of ancient
    paganism—for that ancient paganism, amongst many legends false and
    many foul, had also some that were beautiful. There were two
    Lacedæmonian heroes known as Castor and Pollux, honoured in their
    life and more honoured in their death, when a star was called
    after them, and upon that star the fond imagination of the people
    fastened lively conceptions; for they thought that when a ship at
    sea was caught in a storm, when dread began to possess the minds
    of the crew, and peril thickened round them, and even alarm was
    giving place to despair, that if then in the high heavens this
    star appeared, gradually and gently but effectually the clouds
    disappeared, the winds abated, the towering billows fell down to
    the surface of the deep, calm came where there had been uproar,
    safety came where there had been danger, and under the beneficent
    influence of this heavenly body the terrified and despairing crew
    came safely to port. The proposal which the liberal party of this
    country made in 1886, which they still cherish in their mind and
    heart, and which we trust and believe, they are about now to carry
    forward, that proposal has been to Ireland and the political
    relations of the two countries what the happy star was believed to
    be to the seamen of antiquity. It has produced already
    anticipations of love and good will, which are the first fruits of
    what is to come. It has already changed the whole tone and temper
    of the relations, I cannot say yet between the laws, but between
    the peoples and inhabitants of these two great islands. It has
    filled our hearts with hope and with joy, and it promises to give
    us in lieu of the terrible disturbances of other times, with their
    increasing, intolerable burdens and insoluble problems, the
    promise of a brotherhood exhibiting harmony and strength at home,
    and a brotherhood which before the world shall, instead of being
    as it hitherto has been for the most part, a scandal, be a model
    and an example, and shall show that we whose political wisdom is
    for so many purposes recognised by the nations of civilised Europe
    and America have at length found the means of meeting this oldest
    and worst of all our difficulties, and of substituting for
    disorder, for misery, for contention, the actual arrival and the
    yet riper promise of a reign of peace.—_Theatre Royal, Glasgow,
    July 2, 1892._




The Naval Estimates Of 1894.


(M197) _The first paragraph of this memorandum will be found on p. 508_:—


    This might be taken for granted as to 1854, 1870, and 1884. That
    it was equally true in my mind of 1859 may be seen by any one who
    reads my budget speech of July 18, 1859. I defended the provision
    as required by and for the time, and for the time only. The
    occasion in that year was the state of the continent. It was
    immediately followed by the China war (No. 3) and by the French
    affair (1861-2), but when these had been disposed of economy
    began; and, by 1863-4, the bulk of the new charge had been got rid
    of.

    There is also the case of the fortifications in 1860, which would
    take me too long to state fully. But I will state briefly (1) my
    conduct in that matter was mainly or wholly governed by regard to
    peace, for I believed, and believe now, that in 1860 there were
    only two alternatives; one of them, the French treaty, and the
    other, war with France. And I also believed in July 1860 that the
    French treaty must break down, unless I held my office. (2) The
    demand was reduced from nine millions to about five (has this been
    done now?) (3) I acted in concert with my old friend and
    colleague, Sir James Graham. We were entirely agreed.

    _Terse figures of new estimates_

    The “approximate figure” of charge involved in the new plan of the
    admiralty is £4,240,000, say 4-½ millions. Being an increase
    (subject probably to some further increase in becoming an act)

    1. On the normal navy estimate 1888-9 (_i.e._ before the Naval
    Defence Act) of, in round numbers, 4-¼ millions

    2. On the first year’s total charge under the Naval Defence Act of
    (1,979,000), 2 millions

    3. On the estimates of last year 1893-94 of 3 millions

    4. On the total charge of 1893-4 of (1,571,000), 1-½ million

    5. On the highest amount ever defrayed from the year’s revenue
    (1892-3), 1-½ million

    6. On the highest expenditure of any year under the Naval Defence
    Act which included 1,150,000 of borrowed money, 359,000




Mr. Gladstone’s Cabinet Colleagues. (Page 525)


_The following is the list of the seventy ministers who served in cabinets
of which Mr. Gladstone was a member_:—

1843-45.  Peel.
          Wellington.
          Lyndhurst.
          Wharncliffe.
          Haddington.
          Buccleuch.
          Aberdeen.
          Graham.
          Stanley.
          Ripon.
          Hardinge.
          Goulburn.
          Knatchbull.
1846.  Ellenborough.
          S. Herbert.
          Granville Somerset.
          Lincoln.
1852-55.  Cranworth.
          Granville.
          Argyll.
          Palmerston.
          Clarendon.
          C. Wood.
          Molesworth.
          Lansdowne.
          Russell.
          G. Grey.
1855.  Panmure.
          Carlisle.
1859-65.  Campbell.
          G. C. Lewis.
          Duke of Somerset.
          Milner Gibson.
          Elgin.
          C. Villiers.
1859-65.  Cardwell.
          Westbury.
          Ripon.
          Stanley of Alderley.
1865-66.  Hartington.
          Goschen.
1868-74.  Hatherley.
          Kimberley.
          Bruce.
          Lowe.
          Childers.
          Bright.
          C. Fortescue.
          Stansfeld.
          Selborne.
          Forster.
1880-85.  Spencer.
          Harcourt.
          Northbrook.
          Chamberlain.
          Dodson.
          Dilke.
          Derby.
          Trevelyan.
          Lefevre.
          Rosebery.
1886.  Herschell.
          C. Bannerman.
          Mundella.
          John Morley.
1892.  Asquith.
          Fowler.
          Acland.
          Bryce.
          A. Morley.





CHRONOLOGY


All speeches unless otherwise stated were made in the House of Commons.

1880.

Feb. “Free trade, railways and the growth of commerce,” in _Nineteenth
Century_.

Feb. 27. At St. Pancras on obstruction, liberal unity and errors of
government.

Feb. 27. On rules dealing with obstruction.

March “Russia and England,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

March 5. On motion in favour of local option.

March 11. Issues address to electors of Midlothian.

March 15. Criticises budget.

March 17. At Music Hall, Edinburgh, on government’s eastern policy.

March 18. At Corstorphine on Anglo-Turkish convention.

March 18. At Ratho on neglect of domestic legislation.

March 19. At Davidson’s Mains on indictment of the government. At Dalkeith
on the government and class interests.

March 20. At Juniper Green, and at Balerno, replies to tory criticism of
liberal party. At Midcalder on abridgment of rights of parliament.

March 22. At Gilmerton on church disestablishment. At Loanhead on the
eastern policy of liberal and tory parties.

March 23. At Gorebridge and at Pathhead.

March 25. At Penicuik on Cyprus.

March 30. At Stow on finance.

April “Religion, Achaian and Semitic,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

April 2. At West Calder on liberal record and shortcomings of the
government.

April 5. Elected for Midlothian: Mr. Gladstone, 1579; Lord Dalkeith, 1368.

April 7. Returns to Hawarden.

April 28. Second administration formed.

May. Anonymous article, “The Conservative Collapse,” in _Fortnightly
Review_.

May 8. Returned unopposed for Midlothian.

May 11. Publication of correspondence with Count Karolyi, Austrian
ambassador.

May 16. Receives deputation of farmers on agricultural reform.

May 20. On government’s Turkish policy.

May 21. Moves reference to committee of Mr. Bradlaugh’s claim to take his
seat in parliament.

May 25. On South African federation.

June 1. On government’s policy regarding Cyprus.

June 10. Introduces supplementary budget.

June 16. On reduction of European armaments.

June 18. On resolution in favour of local option. Moves second reading of
Savings Banks bill.

June 22. On resolution that Mr. Bradlaugh be allowed to make a
declaration.

July 1. On Mr. Bradlaugh’s case.

July 5, 26. On Compensation for Disturbances (Ireland) bill.

July 23. Explains government’s policy regarding Armenia.

July 30-Aug. 9. Confined to room by serious illness.

Aug. 26-Sept. 4. Makes sea trip in the _Grantully Castle_ round England
and Scotland.

Sept. 4. On government’s Turkish policy.

Nov. 9. At lord mayor’s banquet on Ireland and foreign and colonial
questions.

1881.

Jan. 6. On Ireland.

Jan. 21. On annexation of Transvaal.

Jan. 28. On Irish Protection of Person and Property bill.

Feb. 3. Brings in closure resolution.

Feb. 23. Falls in garden at Downing Street.

March 15. Moves vote of condolence on assassination of Alexander II.

March 16. On grant in aid of India for expenses of Afghan war.

March 28. On county government and local taxation.

April 4. Introduces budget.

April 7. Brings in Land Law (Ireland) bill.

April 26 and 27. On Mr. Bradlaugh’s case.

May 2. Resigns personal trusteeship of British Museum.

May 4. Supports Welsh Sunday Closing bill.

May 5. Supports vote of thanks on military operations in Afghanistan.

May 9. Tribute to Lord Beaconsfield.

May 16. On second reading of Irish Land bill.

June 10. On the law of entail.

June 24. On Anglo Turkish convention.

July 25. On vote of censure on Transvaal.

July 29. On third reading of Irish Land bill.

Aug. 6. At Mansion House on fifteen months’ administration.

Aug. 18. On Mr. Parnell’s vote of censure on the Irish executive.

Oct. 7. Presented with an address by corporation of Leeds: on land and
“fair trade.” At banquet in Old Cloth Hall on Ireland.

Oct. 8. Presented with address by Leeds Chamber of Commerce: on free
trade. Mass meeting of 25,000 persons in Old Cloth Hall on foreign and
colonial policy.

Oct. 13. Presented with address by city corporation at Guildhall: on
Ireland and arrest of Mr. Parnell.

Oct. 27. At Knowsley on the aims of the Irish policy.

Nov. 9. At lord mayor’s banquet on government’s Irish policy and
parliamentary procedure.

1882.

Jan. 12. At Hawarden on agriculture.

Jan. 31. On local taxation to deputation from chambers of agriculture.

Feb. 7. On Mr. Bradlaugh’s claim.

Feb. 9. On home rule amendment to address.

Feb. 16. On the Irish demand for home rule.

Feb. 20. Moves first of new procedure rules.

Feb. 21. On local taxation.

Feb. 21 and 22. On Mr. Bradlaugh’s case.

Feb. 27. Meeting of liberal party at Downing Street. On House of Lords’
committee to inquire into Irish Land Act.

Feb. 27. Moves resolution declaring parliamentary inquiry into Land Act
injurious to interests of good government.

March 3. On persecution of Jews in Russia.

March 6. Supports resolution for legislation on parliamentary oaths.

March 10. On proposed state acquisition of Irish railways.

March 17. On British North Borneo Company’s charter.

March 21. On parliamentary reform.

March 23. On grant to Duke of Albany.

March 30. On closure resolution.

March 31. On inquiry into ecclesiastical commission.

April 17. Opposes motion for release of Cetewayo.

April 18. On diplomatic communications with Vatican.

April 24. Introduces budget.

April 26. On the Irish Land Act Amendment bill.

May 2. Statement of Irish policy, announces release of “suspects,” and
resignation of Mr. Forster.

May 4. On Mr. Forster’s resignation.

May 8. Moves adjournment of the House on assassination of Lord F.
Cavendish and Mr. Burke.

May 15. Brings in Arrears of Rent (Ireland) bill.

May 19. On second reading of Prevention of Crime (Ireland) bill.

May 22. On Arrears bill.

May 24. On Prevention of Crime bill.

May 26-June 1. On government’s Egyptian policy.

June 14. On Egyptian crisis.

June 17. On Mr. Bright’s resignation.

July 12. On bombardment of Alexandria.

July 21. On third reading of Arrears bill.

July 24. Asks for vote of credit for £2,300,000.

July 27. Concludes debate on vote of credit.

July 28. On national expenditure.

Aug. 8. On Lords’ amendments to Arrears bill.

Aug. 9. On suspension of Irish members, July 1.

Aug. 16. On events leading to Egyptian war.

Oct. 25-31, and Dec. 1. On twelve new rules of procedure.

Oct. 26. Moves vote of thanks to forces engaged in Egyptian campaign.

Nov. 24. Opposes demand for select committee on release of Mr. Parnell.

Dec. 13. Celebrates political jubilee.

1883.

Jan. 6-16. Suffers from sleeplessness at Hawarden.

Jan. 17. Leaves England for south of France.

March 2. Returns to London.

March 14. On Irish Land Law (1881) Amendment bill.

March 16. On Boer invasion of Bechuanaland.

April 3. On Channel tunnel.

April 6. On increase in national expenditure.

April 17. On local taxation.

April 19. On Lords Alcester and Wolseley’s annuity bills.

April 26. On Parliamentary Oaths Act (1866) Amendment bill.

May 2. At National Liberal club on conservative legacy of 1880 and work of
liberal administration, 1880-1883.

May 7. On Contagious Diseases Acts.

May 25. On reforms in Turkey.

May 29. Meeting of liberal party at foreign office: on state of public
business.

June 2. At Stafford House: tribute to Garibaldi.

June 12. On revision of purchase clauses of Land Act.

June 23. On withdrawal of provisional agreement for second Suez canal.

July 27. On India and payment for Egyptian campaign.

July 30. On future negotiations with Suez canal company.

Aug. 6. On government’s Transvaal and Zululand policies.

Aug. 6-7. On British occupation of Egypt.

Aug. 18. Protests against violent speeches of Irish members.

Aug. 21. On work of the session.

Sept. Italian translation of Cowper’s hymn: “Hark my soul! It is the
Lord,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Aug. 8-21. In _Pembroke Castle_ round coast of Scotland to Norway and
Copenhagen.

Aug. 13. At Kirkwall: on changes during half century of his political
life.

Sept. 18. Entertains the Emperor and Empress of Russia, the King and Queen
of Denmark, at dinner on board _Pembroke Castle_ in Copenhagen harbour.

Dec. 22. At Hawarden, to deputation of liberal working men on reform of
the franchise.

1884.

Jan. 5. At Hawarden on condition of agriculture.

Jan 31. Receives deputations from Leeds conference, etc., on Franchise
bill.

Feb. 11 and 21. On Mr. Bradlaugh’s attempt to take the oath.

Feb. 12. On Egyptian and Soudan policy in reply to vote of censure.

Feb. 13. On re-establishment of grand committees.

Feb. 25. Moves resolution of thanks to Speaker Brand on his retirement.

Feb. 28. Explains provisions of Representation of the People (Franchise)
bill.

March 3. In defence of retention of Suakin.

March 6. On government’s Egyptian policy.

March 10-19. Confined to his room by a chill.

March 19 to April 7. Recuperates at Coombe Warren.

March 31. On death of Duke of Albany.

April 3. On General Gordon’s mission in Soudan.

April 7. On second reading of Franchise bill.

May 12. On vote of censure regarding General Gordon.

May 27. On Egyptian financial affairs.

June 10. Opposes amendment to Franchise bill granting suffrage to women.

June 23. On terms of agreement with France on Egypt.

June 26. On third reading of Franchise bill.

July 8. On second reading of London Government bill.

July 10. Meeting of the liberal party: on rejection of Franchise bill by
House of Lords.

July 11. On negotiations with Lord Cairns on Franchise bill.

July 18. At Eighty club on relation of politics of the past to politics of
the future.

Aug. 2. On failure of conference on Egyptian finance.

Aug. 11. On Lord Northbrook’s mission to Egypt.

Aug. 30. At Corn Exchange, Edinburgh, on Lords and Franchise bill.

Sept. 1. At Corn Exchange, Edinburgh, in defence of his administration.

Sept. 2. In Waverley Market on demand of Lords for dissolution.

Sept. 26. Returns to Hawarden.

Oct. 16. Cuts first sod on Wirral railway: on railway enterprise.

Oct. 23. On Franchise bill.

Oct. 28. Defends Lord Spencer’s Irish administration.

Nov. 4. Lays foundation stone of National Liberal club: on liberal
administrations of past half century.

Nov. 6 and 10. On second reading of Franchise bill.

Nov. 21. On Mr. Labouchere’s motion for reform of House of Lords.

Dec. 1. Brings in Redistribution bill.

Dec. 4. On second reading of Redistribution bill.

1885.

Feb. 23. On vote of censure on Soudan policy.

March 26. Moves ratification of Egyptian financial agreement.

April 9. Announces occupation of Penjdeh by Russians.

April 16. In defence of Egyptian Loan bill.

April 21. Asks for vote of credit for war preparations.

April 27. On Soudan and Afghanistan.

May 4. Announces agreement with Russia on Afghan boundary dispute.

May 14. On Princess Beatrice’s dowry.

June 8. Defends increase of duties on beer and spirits.

June 9. Resignation of government.

June 24. Reads correspondence on crisis.

July 6. On legislation on parliamentary oaths.

July 7. On intentions of the new government.

Aug. 8-Sept. 1. In Norway.

Sept. 17. Issues address to Midlothian electors.

Nov. “Dawn of Creation and of Worship,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Nov. 9. At Albert Hall, Edinburgh, on proposals of Irish party.

Nov. 11. At Free Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, on disestablishment.

Nov. 17. At West Calder on Ireland, foreign policy, and free trade.

Nov. 21. At Dalkeith on finance and land reform.

Nov. 23. At inauguration of Market Cross, Edinburgh: on history of the
cross.

Nov. 24. At Music Hall, Edinburgh, on tory tactics and Mr. Parnell’s
charges.

Nov. 27. Elected for Midlothian: Mr. Gladstone, 7879; Mr. Dalrymple, 3248.

1886.

Jan. “Proem to Genesis: a Plea for a Fair Trial,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Jan. 21. On government’s policy in India, the Near East and Ireland.

Jan. 26. In support of amendment for allotments.

Feb. 3. Third administration formed.

Feb. 4. Issues address to electors of Midlothian.

Feb. 10. Returned unopposed for Midlothian.

Feb. 22. On comparative taxation of England and Ireland. On annexation of
Burmah.

Feb. 23. On Ireland’s contribution to imperial revenue.

March 4. On condition of Ireland.

March 6-12. Confined to his room by a cold.

April 6. On death of Mr. W. E. Forster.

April 8. Brings in Government of Ireland (Home Rule) bill.

April 13. On first reading of Home Rule bill.

April 16. Explains provisions of Irish Land Purchase bill.

May 1. Issues address to electors of Midlothian on Home Rule bill.

May 10. Moves second reading of Home Rule bill.

May 27. Meeting of liberal party at the foreign office: on the Home Rule
bill.

May 28. Explains intentions regarding the Home Rule bill.

June 7-8. Concludes debate on Home Rule bill.

June 10. Announces dissolution of parliament.

June 14. Issues address to electors of Midlothian.

June 18. At Music Hall, Edinburgh, on home rule.

June 21. At Music Hall, Edinburgh, on home rule.

June 22. At Glasgow on home rule.

June 25. At Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on home rule.

June 28. At Liverpool on Ulster and home rule.

July 2. Returned unopposed for Midlothian and Leith.

July 20. Resignation of third administration.

Aug. 19-24. On government’s Irish, policy.

Aug. 25. Leaves England for Bavaria.

Aug 28. “_The Irish Question: (1) History of an Idea; (2) Lessons of the
Election_,” published.

Sept. 19. Returns to London.

Sept. 20. On Tenants Relief (Ireland) bill.

Oct. 4. At Hawarden. Receives address signed by 400,000 women of Ireland:
on home rule.

1887.

Jan. “_Locksley Hall_ and the Jubilee,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Jan. 27. Tribute to memory of Lord Iddesleigh.

Jan. 27. On Lord Randolph Churchill’s retirement and Ireland.

Feb. “Notes and Queries on the Irish Demand,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

March “The Greater Gods of Olympus: (1) Poseidon,” in _Nineteenth
Century_.

Match 17. To the liberal members for Yorkshire: on home rule.

March 24. On the exaction of excessive rents.

March 29. On Criminal Law Amendment (Ireland) bill.

April “The History of 1852-60 and Greville’s Latest Journals,” in _English
Historical Review_.

April 18. On second reading of Criminal Law Amendment bill.

April 19. At Eighty club on liberal unionist grammar of dissent.

April 25. Criticise Mr. Goschen’s budget.

May “The Greater Gods of Olympus: (2) Apollo,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

May 5. Moves for select committee to inquire into the _Times_ articles on
“Parnellism and Crime.”

May 11. At Dr. Parker’s house on Ireland.

May 31. On Crimes bill at Hawarden.

June Reviews Mr. Lecky’s _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_ in
_Nineteenth Century_.

June “The Great Olympian Sedition,” in _Contemporary Review_.

June 4. At Swansea, on Welsh nationality, Welsh grievances, and the Irish
Crimes bill.

June 6. At Singleton Abbey on home rule and retention of Irish members.

June 7. At Cardiff on home rule.

July “The Greater Gods of Olympus: (3) Athene,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

June 2. To the liberal members for Durham on Lord Hartington’s Irish
record.

June 7. Moves rejection of Irish Criminal Law Amendment bill.

June 9. Presented at Dollis Hill with address signed by 10,689 citizens of
New York.

June 14. On second reading of the Irish Land bill.

June 16. At National Liberal club: on Ireland and home rule movement in
Scotland and Wales.

June 29. At Memorial Hall on the lessons of bye-elections.

Aug. “Mr. Lecky and Political Morality,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Aug. 16. Lays first cylinder of railway bridge over the Dee: on railway
enterprise and the Channel tunnel.

Aug. 25. On proclamation of Irish land league.

Aug. 30. At Hawarden on Queen Victoria’s reign.

Sept. “Electoral Facts of 1887,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Sept. 12. On riot at Mitchelstown, Ireland.

Oct. “Ingram’s History of the Irish Union,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Oct. 4. At Hawarden on the absolutist methods of government.

Oct. 18. At National Liberal Federation, Nottingham, on conduct of Irish
police.

Oct. 19. At Skating Rink, Nottingham, on home rule.

Oct. 20. At Drill Hall, Derby, on Ireland.

Nov. “An Olive Branch from America,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Dec. 27. At Dover on free trade and Irish Crimes Act.

Dec. 28. Leaves England for Italy.

1888.

Jan. “A reply to Dr. Ingram,” in _Westminster Review_.

Feb. “The Homeric Herê,” in _Contemporary Review_.

Feb. 8. Returns to London.

Feb. 17. On coercion in Ireland.

March “Further Notes and Queries on the Irish Demand,” in _Contemporary
Review_.

March 23. On perpetual pensions.

April 9. On the budget.

April 11. At National Liberal club on the budget and Local Government
bill.

April 23. Moves an amendment in favour of equalising the death duties on
real and personal property.

April 25. On second reading of County Government (Ireland) bill.

May. “Robert Elsmere, and the Battle of Belief,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

May. A reply to Colonel Ingersoll on “Christianity,” in _North American
Review_.

May 1. On government control of railways.

May 2. Opens Gladstone library at National Liberal club: on books.

May 9. At Memorial Hall on Irish question.

May 26. At Hawarden condemns licensing clauses of Local Government bill.

May 30. Receives deputation of 1500 Lancashire liberals at Hawarden.

June 18. On death of German Emperor.

June 26. Condemns administration of Irish criminal law.

June 27. On Channel Tunnel bill.

June 30. At Hampstead on Ireland and the bye-elections.

July “The Elizabethan Settlement of Religion,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

July 6. On payment of members.

July 18. To liberal members for Northumberland and Cumberland on Parnell
commission and retention of Irish members.

July 23. On second reading of Parnell Commission bill.

July 25. Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone presented with their portraits on entering
on fiftieth year of married life.

July 30. On composition of Parnell commission.

Aug. 20. Receives deputation of 1500 liberals at Hawarden: on conservative
government of Ireland.

Aug. 23. At Hawarden on spade husbandry and the cultivation of fruit.

Sept. “Mr. Forster and Ireland,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Sept. 4. At Wrexham on Irish and Welsh home rule.

Sept. 4. At the Eisteddfod on English feeling towards Wales.

Nov. “Queen Elizabeth and the Church of England,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Nov. 5. At Town Hall, Birmingham, on liberal unionists and one man one
vote.

Nov. 6. To deputation at Birmingham on labour representation and payment
of members.

Nov. 7. At Bingley Hall, Birmingham, on Irish question.

Nov. 8. To deputation of Birmingham Irish National club on Irish
grievances.

Nov. 19. On Irish Land Purchase bill.

Dec. 3. On Mr. Balfour’s administration of Ireland.

Dec. 15. At Limehouse Town Hall on necessary English reforms and the Irish
question.

Dec. 17. On English occupation of Suakin.

Dec. 19. Leaves England for Naples.

1889.

Jan. “Daniel O’Connell,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Feb. Reviews _Divorce_ by Margaret Lee in _Nineteenth Century_.

Feb. 20. Returns to London.

March 1. On conciliatory measures in administration of Ireland.

March 29. On death of John Bright.

April Reviews _For the Right_ in _Nineteenth Century_.

April 4. On £21,000,000 for naval defence.

April 9. On Scotch home rule.

May “Italy in 1888-89,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

May 15. On second reading of Welsh Education bill.

May 16. Moves amendment to Mr. Goschen’s proposed death duties on estates
above £10,000.

June 5. At Southampton on lessons of the bye-elections.

June 7. At Romsey on Lord Palmerston.

June 8. At Weymouth on shorter parliaments and Ireland.

June 10. At Torquay on Ireland.

June 11. At Falmouth and Redruth on Ireland.

June 12. At Truro, St. Austell, and Bodmin on Ireland, one man one vote,
the death duties, etc.

June 14. At Launceston on dissentient liberals.

June 14. At Drill Hall, Plymouth, on home rule.

June 17. At Shaftesbury and Gillingham on the agricultural labourer.

July “Plain Speaking on the Irish Union,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

July 6. Presented with freedom of Cardiff; on free trade; on foreign
opinion of English rule in Ireland.

July 25. Golden wedding celebrated in London.

July 25. Speech on royal grants.

Aug. “Phœnician Affinities of Ithaca,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Aug. 22. At Hawarden on cottage gardens and fruit culture.

Aug. 26. Celebration of golden wedding at Hawarden.

Sept. 7. Entertained in Paris by Society of Political Economy.

Sept. 23. At Hawarden on dock strike and bimetallism.

Sept. “The Triple Alliance and Italy’s Place in it,” by Outidanos, in
_Contemporary Review_.

Oct. Reviews _Journal de Marie Bashkirtseff_ in _Nineteenth Century_.

Oct. 23. At Southport on Ireland.

Oct. 26. Opens literary institute at Saltney, Chester.

Nov. “The English Church under Henry the Eighth,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Nov. “The Question of Divorce,” in _North American Review_.

Dec. Reviews _Memorials of a Southern Planter_ in _Nineteenth Century_.

Dec. 2. At Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on liberal unionists and foreign
policy.

Dec. 3. In Free Trade Hall on government of Ireland.

Dec. 4. At luncheon at Town Hall on city of Manchester.

1890.

Jan. “A Defence of Free Trade,” in _North American Review_.

Jan. “The Melbourne Government: its Acts and Persons,” in _Nineteenth
Century_.

Jan. 9. At Hawarden on the effect of free trade on agriculture.

Jan. 22. At Chester on Ireland.

Feb. 5. At Oxford Union on vestiges of Assyrian mythology in Homer.

Feb. 11. On motion declaring publication by _Times_ of forged Parnell
letter to be breach of privilege.

March “On Books and the Housing of Them,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

March 3. On report of Parnell commission.

March 24. At National Liberal club on report of Parnell commission.

March 26. At Guy’s Hospital on the medical profession.

April 24. On second reading of Purchase of Land (Ireland) bill.

May 2. On disestablishment of church of Scotland.

May 12. On free trade at Prince’s Hall, Piccadilly.

May 15. On Local Taxation Duties bill.

May 16. At Norwich on Parnell commission, land purchase and licensing
question.

May 17. At Lowestoft on Siberian atrocities and the agricultural labourer.

April 27. Receives 10,000 liberals at Hawarden: on Mitchelstown, Irish
Land bill, and Licensing bill.

June 5. On Channel Tunnel bill.

June 13. On Local Taxation Duties bill.

June 18. To depositors in railways’ savings banks: on thrift.

July 17. At Burlington School, London, on the education of women.

July 24. On Anglo-German Agreement bill.

July 30. To Wesleyans at National Liberal club on Maltese marriage
question, and Ireland.

Aug. 21. At Hawarden on cottage gardening and fruit farming.

July 30. “Dr. Döllinger’s Posthumous Remains,” in the _Speaker_.

Sept. 12. At Dee iron works on industrial progress.

Oct. 21. At Corn Exchange, Edinburgh, on government’s Irish
administration.

Oct. 23. At West Calder on condition of working classes and Ireland.

Oct. 25. At Dalkeith on home rule for Scotland and Ireland.

Oct. 27. At Music Hall, Edinburgh, on retention of Irish members,
procedure and obstruction.

Oct. 29. At Dundee on free trade and the McKinley tariff. Opens Victorian
Art Gallery: on appreciation of beauty.

Nov. “Mr. Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Nov. 24. Letter to Mr. Morley on Mr. Parnell and leadership of Irish
party.

Dec. 1. Publishes reply to Mr. Parnell’s manifesto to Irish people.

Dec. 2. On Purchase of Land (Ireland) bill.

Dec. 11. At Retford on Mr. Parnell and the home rule cause.

Publishes _The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture_, a reprint of articles
in _Good Words_.

_Landmarks of Homeric Study, together with an Essay on the Points of
Contact between the Assyrian Tablets and the Homeric Text._

1891.

Jan. 27. Supports motion to expunge from journals of the House the
Bradlaugh resolution (1881).

Feb. “Professor Huxley and the Swine-Miracle,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Feb. 4. Moves second reading of Religious Disabilities Removal bill.

Feb. 13. Opens free library in St. Martin’s Lane: on free libraries.

Feb. 16. Condemns action of Irish executive in Tipperary trials.

Feb. 20. On disestablishment of church in Wales.

Feb. 27. On taxation of land.

March 3. On registration reform.

March 14. At Eton College on Homeric Artemis.

March 17. At Hastings on Mr. Goschen’s finance, Irish policy, and the
career of Mr. Parnell.

May “A Memoir of John Murray,” in _Murray’s Magazine_.

June 19. At St. James’s Hall, at jubilee of Colonial Bishoprics Fund, on
development of colonial church.

July 4. Death of W. H. Gladstone.

July 15. At Hawarden on fifty years of progress.

Sept. “Electoral Facts, No. III.,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Oct. “On the Ancient Beliefs in a Future State,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Oct. 1. At jubilee of Glenalmond College on study of nature and the
clerical profession.

Oct. 2. At Newcastle on the liberal programme.

Nov. 3. At Newcastle on local self-government and freedom of trade.

Nov. 28. At Wirral on home rule. At Sunlight Soap works on profit-sharing
and cooperation.

Dec. 11. At Holborn Restaurant to conference of labourers on rural
reforms.

Dec. 15. Leaves London for Biarritz.

1892.

Feb.-May “On the Olympian Religion,” in _North American Review_.

Feb. 29. Returns to London.

March 3. Opposes grant of £20,000 for survey of Uganda railway.

March 16. On Welsh Land Tenure bill.

March 24. On Small Agricultural Holdings bill.

March 28. On Indian Councils Act (1861) Amendment bill.

April Reviews _The Platform, its Rise and Progress_, in _Nineteenth
Century_.

April 28. On Church Discipline (Immorality) bill.

May 24. On Local Government (Ireland) bill.

May 31. At Memorial Hall on London government.

June “Did Dante Study in Oxford?” in _Nineteenth Century_.

June 5. At Dalkeith on Scotch home rule and disestablishment.

June 16. Receives deputation from London trades council on Eight Hours
bill.

June 18. To nonconformists at Clapham on Ulster and home rule.

June 21. Issues address to electors of Midlothian.

June 25. Struck in the eye by piece of gingerbread in Chester. At Liberal
club on the general election, the appeal to religious bigotry, and
disestablishment.

June 30. At Edinburgh Music Hall on Lord Salisbury’s manifesto, home rule,
and retention of Irish members.

July 2. At Glasgow on Orangeism and home rule.

July 4. At Gorebridge on labour questions.

July 6. At Corstorphine on government’s record.

July 7. At West Calder on protection, the hours of labour and home rule.

July 11. At Penicuik on conservative responsibility for recent wars,
finance, disestablishment, and Irish question.

July 13. Elected for Midlothian: Mr. Gladstone, 5845; Colonel Wauchope,
5155.

Aug. 9. On vote of want of confidence.

Aug. 15. Fourth administration formed.

Aug. 24. Returned unopposed for Midlothian.

Aug. 29. Knocked down by heifer in Hawarden Park.

Sept. 5. A paper on Archaic Greece and the East read before Congress of
Orientalists.

Sept. 12. At Carnarvon on case of Wales.

Oct. “A Vindication of Home Rule: a Reply to the Duke of Argyll,” in
_North American Review_.

Oct. 22. Cuts first sod of the new Cheshire railway: on migration of
population and mineral produce of Wales.

Oct. 24. Delivers Romanes lecture at Oxford on history of universities.

Dec. 3. Presented with freedom of Liverpool: on history of Liverpool and
Manchester ship canal.

Dec. 21. Leaves England for Biarritz.

1893.

Jan. 10. Returns to England.

Jan. 31. Replies to Mr. Balfour’s criticisms on the address.

Feb. 3. On Mr. Labouchere’s amendment in favour of evacuation of Uganda.

Feb. 8. On amendment praying for immediate legislation for agricultural
labourers.

Feb. 11. On motion for restriction of alien immigration.

Feb. 13. Brings in Government of Ireland (Home Rule) bill.

Feb. 28. On motion for international monetary conference.

March 3. Receives deputation from the miners’ federation on Eight Hours
bill.

March 20. On Sir Gerald Portal’s mission to Uganda.

March 27. Meeting of the liberal party at foreign office: on programme for
session.

March 27. On Mr. Balfour’s motion censuring action of Irish executive.

March 28. Receives deputations from Belfast manufacturers and city of
London merchants protesting against home rule.

April 6. Moves second reading of Home Rule bill.

April 19. Receives a deputation from the miners’ National Union on Eight
Hours bill.

April 21. Replies to criticisms on Home Rule bill.

May 1. On the occupation of Egypt.

May 2. Receives a deputation of the Mining Association in opposition to
Eight Hours bill.

May 3. On second reading of Miners’ Eight Hours bill.

May 11. Replies to Mr. Chamberlain’s speech on first clause of Home Rule
bill.

May 23. Opens Hawarden institute: on the working classes.

May 29. At Chester on Home Rule bill.

June “Some Eton Translations,” in _Contemporary Review_.

June 16. On arbitration between England and United States.

June 22. Statement regarding the financial clauses of Home Rule bill.

June 28. Moves resolution for closing debate on committee stage of Home
Rule bill.

July 12. Announces government’s decision regarding the retention of Irish
members at Westminster.

July 14. Moves address of congratulation on marriage of Duke of York.

July 21. Moves a new clause to Home Rule bill regulating financial
relations.

Aug. 5. At Agricultural Hall, Islington, on industry and art.

Aug. 30. Moves third reading of Home Rule bill.

Sept. 27. At Edinburgh on House of Lords and the Home Rule bill.

Nov. 9. On Matabeleland and the chartered company.

Dec. 19. On naval policy of the government.

1894.

Jan. 13. Leaves England for Biarritz.

Feb. 10. Returns to England.

March 1. On the Lords’ amendments to Parish Councils bill.

March 3. Resigns the premiership.

March 7. Confined to bed by severe cold.

March 17. At Brighton. Letter to Sir John Cowan—his farewell to
parliamentary life.

May “The Love Odes of Horace—five specimens,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

May 3. At Prince’s Hall on life and work of Sir Andrew Clark.

May 24. Right eye operated on for cataract.

July 7. Announces decision not to seek re-election to parliament.

Aug. “The Place of Heresy and Schism in the Modern Christian Church,” in
_Nineteenth Century_.

Aug. 14. On cottage gardening at Hawarden.

Aug. 16. Receives deputation of 1500 liberals from Torquay at Hawarden.

Sept. “The True and False Conception of the Atonement,” in _Nineteenth
Century_.

Dec. 29. Receives deputation from the Armenian national church at
Hawarden.

1895.

Jan. 7. Presented with an album by Irish-Americans: in favour of Irish
unity.

Jan. 8. Leaves England for south of France.

March Publishes _The Psalter with a concordance_.

Jan. “The Lord’s Day,” in _Church Monthly_; concluded in April number.

Jan. 23. Returns to England from France.

Jan. 15. At Hawarden to a deputation of Leeds and Huddersfield liberal
clubs: on English people and political power, and on advantages of
libraries.

June 12-24. Cruise in _Tantallon Castle_ to Hamburg, Copenhagen, and Kiel.

July 1. Farewell letter to Midlothian constituents.

Aug. 5. At Hawarden on small holdings and his old age.

Aug. 6. At Chester on Armenian question.

Nov. “Bishop Butler and his Censors,” in _Nineteenth Century_; concluded
in December number.

Dec. 28. Leaves England for Biarritz and Cannes.

1896.

Feb. Publishes _The Works of Bishop Butler_.

March 10. Returns to England from Cannes.

March 28. At Liverpool on the development of the English railway system.

April “The Future Life and the Condition of Man Therein,” in _North
American Review_.

April Contributes an article on “The Scriptures and Modern Criticism” to
the _People’s Bible_.

May _Soliloquium and Postscript_—a letter to the Archbishop of York,
published.

June “Sheridan,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

June 1. Letter on Anglican Orders published.

Aug. 3. At Hawarden horticultural show on rural life.

Sept. 1. At fête in aid of Hawarden Institute on progress of music.

Sept. 2. At Hawarden fête on Welsh music.

Sept. 24. At Hengler’s circus, Liverpool, on Armenian question.

Oct. “The Massacres in Turkey,” in _Nineteenth Century_.

Oct. 16. At Penmaenmawr in praise of seaside resorts.

1897.

Jan. 29. Leaves England for Cannes.

March 19. Letter to the Duke of Westminster on the Cretan question
published.

March 30. Returns to England from Cannes.

May 4. At Hawarden on the condition of the clergy.

June 2. Opens Victoria jubilee bridge over the Dee at Queensferry.

Aug. 2. At Hawarden horticultural show on small culture.

Nov. 26. Leaves England for Cannes.

1898.

Jan. 5. “Personal Recollections of Arthur H. Hallam,” in _Daily
Telegraph_.

Feb. 18. Returns to London from Cannes.

Feb. 22. Goes to Bournemouth.

March 22. Returns to Hawarden.

May 19. Death of Mr. Gladstone.

May 26, 27. Lying in state in Westminster Hall.

May 28. Burial in Westminster Abbey.






FOOTNOTES


    1 Above, vol. ii. pp. 563-8.

   M1 The Cabinet A Coalition
   M2 Character As Head Of The Cabinet
   M3 An Independent House Of Commons
   M4 Naval Demonstration

    2 March 25-6, 1881.

    3 Bradlaugh, who was a little vain of his legal skill, founded this
      claim upon the Evidence Amendment Act, taken in connection with the
      Parliamentary Oaths and other Acts.

   M5 The Bradlaugh Case

    4 See vol. i. p. 138.

    5 Speech on second reading of Affirmation bill, 1883.

   M6 On Theistic Tests
   M7 The Bradlaugh Case

_    6 Lord Hampden’s Diaries._

    7 Perhaps the best equivalent for _begeistert_ here is “_daemonic._”

   M8 Speech On Affirmation Bill

    8 Lucretius, ii. 646. “For the nature of the gods must ever of itself
      enjoy repose supreme through endless time, far withdrawn from all
      concerns of ours; free from all our pains, free from all our perils,
      strong in resources of its own, needing nought from us, no favours
      win it, no anger moves.”

   M9 End Of The Struggle

    9 Religious Disabilities Removal bill, Feb. 4, 1891.

   10 Vol. ii. p. 583.

  M10 Recall Of Sir Bartle Frere
  M11 Annexation Of The Transvaal

   11 Sir Garnet Wolseley to Sir M. Hicks Beach, Nov. 13, 1879.

  M12 Decision Of The Government

   12 In H. of C, Jan. 21, 1881.

_   13 Speeches in Scotland_, i. pp. 48, 63.

   14 C, 2586, No. 3.

   15 Mr. Grant Duff, then colonial under-secretary, said in the House of
      Commons, May 21, 1880, “Under the very difficult circumstances of
      the case, the plan which seemed likely best to conciliate the
      interests at once of the Boers, the natives and the English
      population, was that the Transvaal should receive, and receive with
      promptitude, as a portion of confederation, the largest possible
      measure of local liberties that could be granted, and that was the
      direction in which her Majesty’s present advisers meant to move.”

   16 At Birmingham, June 1881.

  M13 Decision Of The Government

   17 C, 2367, p. 55.

_   18 Afghanistan and S. Africa:_ A letter to Mr. Gladstone by Sir Bartle
      Frere. Murray, 1891, pp. 24-6. Frere, on his return to England, once
      more impressed on the colonial office the necessity of speedily
      granting the Boers a constitution, otherwise there would be serious
      trouble. (_Life_, ii. p. 408.)

  M14 Boer Rising

   19 Sir George Colley pressed Lord Kimberley in his correspondence with
      the reality of this grievance, and the urgency of trying to remove
      it. This was after the Boers had taken to arms at the end of 1880.

   20 Before the Gladstone government came into office, between August
      1879 and April 1880, whilst General Wolseley was in command, the
      force in Natal and the Transvaal had been reduced by six batteries
      of artillery, three companies of engineers, one cavalry regiment,
      eleven battalions of infantry, and five companies of army service
      corps. The force at the time of the outbreak was: in Natal 1772, and
      in the Transvaal 1759—a total of 3531. As soon as the news of the
      insurrection reached London, large reinforcements were at once
      despatched to Colley, the first of them leaving Gibraltar on Dec.
      27, 1880.

   21 Sir B. Frere was recalled on August 1, 1880, and sailed for England
      September 15. Sir Hercules Robinson, his successor, did not reach
      the Cape until the end of January 1881. In the interval Sir George
      Strahan was acting governor.

  M15 Paragraph In The Royal Speech

   22 Lord Kimberley justified this decision on the ground that it was
      impossible to send a commissioner to inquire and report, at a moment
      when our garrisons were besieged, and we had collected no troops to
      relieve them, and when we had just received the news that the
      detachment of the 94th had been cut off on the march from Lydenberg
      to Pretoria. “Is it not practically certain,” he wrote, “that the
      Boers would have refused at that time to listen to any reasonable
      terms, and would have simply insisted that we should withdraw our
      troops and quit the country?” Of course, the Boer overture, some six
      weeks after the rejection by Lord Kimberley of the Cape proposal,
      and after continued military success on the side of the Boers,
      showed that this supposed practical certainty was the exact reverse
      of certain.

  M16 Boer Overtures

   23 “I do not know whether I am indebted to you or to Mr. Childers or to
      both, for the continuance of H.M.’s confidence, but I shall always
      feel more deeply grateful than I can express; and can never forget
      H.M.’s gracious message of encouragement at a time of great
      trouble.”—Colley to Kimberley, Jan. 31, 1881.

   24 “The directions to Colley,” says Mr. Bright in a cabinet minute,
      “intended to convey the offer of a suspension of hostilities on both
      sides, with a proposal that a commissioner should be appointed to
      enter into negotiations and arrangements with a view to peace.”

_   25 Life of Childers_, ii. p. 24.

  M17 Repulse On Majuba Hill

   26 Colley’s letter to Childers, Feb. 23, _Life of Childers_, ii. p. 24.

  M18 Sir Evelyn Wood’s View

   27 See Selborne’s _Memorials_, ii. p. 3, and also a speech by Lord
      Kimberley at Newcastle, Nov. 14, 1899.

   28 In a speech at Edinburgh (Sept. 1, 1884), Mr. Gladstone put the same
      argument—“The people of the Transvaal, few in number, were in close
      and strong sympathy with their brethren in race, language, and
      religion. Throughout South Africa these men, partly British subjects
      and partly not, were as one man associated in feeling with the
      people of the Transvaal; and had we persisted in that dishonourable
      attempt, against all our own interests, to coerce the Transvaal as
      we attempted to coerce Afghanistan, we should have had the whole
      mass of the Dutch population at the Cape and throughout South Africa
      rising in arms against us.”

   29 July 25, 1881.

   30 One of the most determined enemies of the government in 1881, ten
      years later, in a visit to South Africa, changed his mind. “The
      Dutch sentiment in the Cape Colony, wrote Lord Randolph Churchill,
      ’had been so exasperated by what it considered the unjust,
      faithless, and arbitrary policy pursued towards the free Dutchmen of
      the Transvaal by Frere, Shepstone, and Lanyon, that the final
      triumph of the British arms, mainly by brute force, would have
      permanently and hopelessly alienated it from Great Britain.... On
      the whole, I find myself free to confess, and without reluctance to
      admit, that the English escaped from a wretched and discreditable
      muddle, not without harm and damage, but perhaps in the best
      possible manner.”

  M19 Case Considered
  M20 The Sequel

   31 “I apprehend, whether you call it a Protectorate, or a Suzerainty,
      or the recognition of England as a Paramount Power, the fact is that
      a certain controlling power is retained when the state which
      exercises this suzerainty has a right to veto any negotiations into
      which the dependent state may enter with foreign powers. Whatever
      suzerainty meant in the Convention of Pretoria, the condition of
      things which it implied still remains; although the word is not
      actually employed, we have kept the substance. We have abstained
      from using the word because it was not capable of legal definition,
      and because it seemed to be a word which was likely to lead to
      misconception and misunderstanding.”—_Lord Derby in the House of
      Lords_, March 17, 1884. I do not desire to multiply points of
      controversy, but the ill-starred raising of the ghost of suzerainty
      in 1897-9 calls for the twofold remark that the preamble was struck
      out by Lord Derby’s own hand, and that alike when Lord Knutsford and
      Lord Ripon were at the colonial office, answers were given in the
      House of Commons practically admitting that no claim of suzerainty
      could be put forward.

_   32 Works of T. H. Green_, iii. 382.

   33 House of Commons, April 4, 1882.

   34 Edinburgh, Sept. 1, 1884.

  M21 Action Of The Lords

   35 See vol. ii. book vi. chap. II.

   36 Proceedings had been instituted in the Dublin courts against Parnell
      and others for seditious conspiracy. The jury were unable to agree
      on a verdict.

   37 Tried by Lord Spencer in Westmeath in 1871, it had been successful,
      but the area of disturbance was there comparatively insignificant.

  M22 Disturbances In Ireland

   38 For a plain and precise description of the Coercion Act of 1881, see
      Dicey’s _Law of the Constitution_, pp. 243-8.

   39 See vol. ii. p. 284.

  M23 Great Agrarian Law
  M24 Its Reception In Ireland
  M25 Arrest Of Mr. Parnell

   40 At the Cloth Hall banquet, Leeds, Oct. 8, 1881.

   41 Speech to the Leeds Chamber of Commerce, Oct. 8, 1881.

  M26 Mr. Forster’s Resignation

   42 Introduced by Mr. Redmond.

  M27 The Murders In The Phœnix Park

   43 It had been Mr. Burke’s practice to drive from the Castle to the
      Park gate, then to descend and walk home, followed by two
      detectives. On this occasion he found at the gate that the chief
      secretary had passed, and drove forward to overtake him. The
      detectives did not follow him as usual. If they had followed, he
      would have been saved.

_   44 Life of Dean Church_, p. 299.

_   45 Nineteenth Century_, August, 1877; _Gleanings_, iv. p. 357.

  M28 Anti-European Rising

   46 July 27, 1882.

   47 Granville and Malet, November 4, 1881.

   48 Before Midlothian, however, Mr. Gladstone had in 1877 drawn an
      important distinction: “If I find the Turk incapable of establishing
      a good, just, and well-proportioned government over civilised and
      Christian races, it does not follow that he is under a similar
      incapacity when his task shall only be to hold empire over
      populations wholly or principally Orientals and Mahomedans. On this
      head I do not know that any verdict of guilty has yet been found by
      a competent tribunal.”—_Gleanings_, iv. p. 364.

  M29 Policy Of England And France

_   49 Fortnightly Review_, July 1882.

   50 Defining the claims of the European bondholder on revenue.

  M30 Gambetta

_   51 Fortnightly Review_, July 1882.

  M31 Diplomatic Labyrinth

   52 Lord Granville to Lord Dufferin. Oct. 5, 1882.

  M32 Bombardment Of Alexandria
  M33 Tel-El-Kebir

   53 A share of the credit of success is due to the admirable efficiency
      of Mr. Childers at the War Office. See Sir Garnet’s letter to him,
      _Life of Childers_, ii. p. 117.

   54 Considerate la vostra semenza:
      Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
      Ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza.
      —_Inferno_, xxvi. 118.

  M34 After Fifty Years

_   55 Times_, Dec. 8, 1882.

_   56 Standard_, Nov. 16, 1882.

_   57 Morning Post_, Oct. 20, 1882.

  M35 Parliamentary Power Unbroken

   58 Traill’s _New Lucian_, pp. 305-6,—in spite of politics, a book of
      admirable wit, scholarship, and ingenious play of mind.

   59 To Mr. Hazzopolo, Dec. 22, 1882.

  M36 Dean Wellesley
  M37 Recommendation To Canterbury

_   60 Life of Tait_, i. p. 109.

   61 Bishop Browne writes to a friend (_Life_, p. 457): “Gladstone, I
      learned both from himself and others, searched into all precedents
      from the Commonwealth to the present day for a primate who began his
      work at seventy, and found none but Juxon. Curiously, I have been
      reading that he himself, prompted by Bishop Wilberforce, wanted
      Palmerston to appoint Sumner (of Winchester) when he was
      seventy-two. It was when they feared they could not get Longley (who
      was sixty-eight).”

_   62 Life and Letters of Dean Church_, p. 307.

  M38 Church Appointments

_   63 Life and Letters of Dean Church_, p. 307.

   64 See vol. i. p. 47.

_   65 Gleanings_, ii. p. 287.

  M39 Reconstruction

   66 Lord Derby had refused office in the previous May.

  M40 Reconstruction

   67 The matter itself has no importance, but a point of principle or
      etiquette at one time connected with it is perhaps worth mentioning.
      To a colleague earlier in the year Mr. Gladstone wrote: “I can
      affirm with confidence that the notion of a title in the cabinet to
      be consulted on the succession to a cabinet office is absurd. It is
      a title which cabinet ministers do not possess. During thirty-eight
      years since I first entered the cabinet, I have never known more
      than a friendly announcement before publicity, and very partial
      consultation perhaps with one or two, especially the leaders in the
      second House.”

  M41 Holiday At Cannes

   68 See Appendix.

   69 The lines from Lucretius (in his speech on the Affirmation bill).
      See above, p. 19.

   70 In a party sense, as he told the cabinet, it might be wise enough to
      grant it, as it would please the public, displease the tories, and
      widen the breach between the fourth party and their front bench. Mr.
      Gladstone had suffered an unpleasant experience in another case, of
      the relations brought about by the refusal of a political pension
      after inquiry as to the accuracy of the necessary statement as to
      the applicant’s need for it.

  M42 Mr. Bright And The Irishmen

   71 By an odd coincidence, on the day after my selection of this letter,
      I read that the French prime minister, M. Combes, laid down the
      doctrine that the government is never committed by a minister’s
      individual declarations, but only by those of the head of the
      government. He alone has the power of making known the direction
      given to policy, and each minister individually has authority only
      for the administration of his department (September 25, 1902). Of
      course this is wholly incompatible with Mr. Gladstone’s ideas of
      parliamentary responsibility and the cabinet system.

  M43 Official Discipline
  M44 Occupation Of Egypt

   72 Many indications of this could be cited, if there were room. A
      parade of the victors of Tel-el-Kebir through the streets of London
      stirred little excitement. Two ministers went to make speeches at
      Liverpool, and had to report on returning to town that references to
      Egypt fell altogether flat.

  M45 Egyptian Finance

   73 Milner’s _England in Egypt_, p. 185.

  M46 County Franchise

_   74 Saturday Review_, April 12, 1884.

  M47 Bill Rejected By The Lords

   75 Edinburgh, August 30, 1884.

   76 Corn Exchange, Edinburgh, August 30, 1884.

  M48 Negotiation
  M49 Negotiation And Persuasion

   77 Dinner of the Eighty Club, July 11, 1884.

  M50 The Queen’s Suggestion
  M51 Conferences With Lord Salisbury
  M52 The Question Settled
  M53 Mr. Plunket’s Speech
  M54 The Case Of Ireland

   78 Lord Waterford, July 7, 1884.

   79 December 11, 1883.

   80 “I am not at all sure,” Mr. Forster rashly said (March 31, 1884),
      “that Mr. Parnell will increase his followers by means of this
      bill.”

   81 This was only the second occasion on which his party in cardinal
      divisions voted with the government.

  M55 The Mahdi

   82 Wingate, pp. 50, 51.

   83 The Soudan was conquered in 1819 by Ismail Pasha, the son of Mehemet
      Ali, and from that date Egypt had a more or less insecure hold over
      the country. In 1870 Sir Samuel Baker added the equatorial provinces
      to the Egyptian Soudan.

   84 Mr. Gladstone said on Nov. 2, 1882: “It is no part of the duty
      incumbent upon us to restore order in the Soudan. It is politically
      connected with Egypt in consequence of its very recent conquest; but
      it has not been included within the sphere of our operations, and we
      are by no means disposed to admit without qualification that it is
      within the sphere of our responsibility.” Lord Granville, May 7,
      1883: “H.M. government are in no way responsible for the operations
      in the Soudan, which have been undertaken under the authority of the
      Egyptian government, or for the appointment or actions of General
      Hicks.”

  M56 Policy Of Evacuation
  M57 Despatch Of Gordon

   85 It was a general mistake at that time to suppose that wherever a
      garrison fell into the hands of the Mahdi, they were massacred. At
      Tokar, for instance, the soldiers were incorporated by the victors.
      See Wingate, p. 553.

   86 Granville to Baring, Dec. 1, 1883; Jan. 10, 1884.

   87 Gordon had suppressed the Taiping rising in China in 1863. In 1874
      he was appointed by the Egyptian government governor-general of the
      equatorial provinces of central Africa. In 1876 he resigned owing to
      trouble with the governor-general of the Soudan upon the suppression
      of the slave trade, but was appointed (1877) governor-general of the
      Soudan, Darfur, the equatorial provinces, and the Red Sea littoral.
      He held this position till the end of 1879, suppressing the slave
      trade with a strong hand and improving the means of communication
      throughout the Soudan. He succeeded in establishing comparative
      order. Then the new Egyptian government reversed Gordon’s policy,
      and the result of his six years’ work soon fell to pieces.

   88 Gordon’s Letters to Barnes, 1885. Lord Granville took his ticket,
      Lord Wolseley carried the General’s bag, and the Duke of Cambridge
      held open the carriage door.

  M58 Character Of Gordon

   89 Baring’s Instructions to Gordon (Jan. 25, 1884).

   90 Gladstone to Granville, Jan. 19, 1884.—“I telegraphed last night my
      concurrence in your proceedings about Gordon: but Chester would not
      awake and the message only went on this morning.”

   91 Dilke in House of Commons, Feb. 14, 1884. See also Lord Granville to
      Sir E. Baring, March 28, 1884. In recapitulating the instructions
      given to General Gordon, Lord Granville says: “_His_ (Gordon’s)
      _first proposal_ was to proceed to Suakin with the object of
      reporting from thence on the best method of effecting the evacuation
      of the Soudan.... His instructions, _drawn up in accordance with his
      own views_, were to report to her Majesty’s government on the
      military situation in the Soudan,” etc.

  M59 Gordon’s Instructions

   92 For the full text of these instructions, see Appendix.

   93 Baring to Granville, January 28, 1884.

   94 Dated, _Steamship __“__Tanjore,__”__ at Sea, Jan. 22, 1884_.

   95 Granville to Baring, March 28.

  M60 Changes Of Policy

   96 Feb. 23, 1885.

   97 May 13, 1884.

  M61 Zobeir

   98 Wingate’s _Mahdism_, p. 109.

   99 Baring to Granville, Jan. 28.—“I had a good deal of conversation
      with General Gordon as to the manner in which Zobeir Pasha should be
      treated. Gen. Gordon entertains a high opinion of Zobeir Pasha’s
      energy and ability. He possesses great influence in the Soudan, and
      General Gordon is of opinion that _circumstances might arise which
      would render it desirable that he should be sent back to the
      Soudan_.”

  M62 Zobeir

  100 (_From his diary._) _March 9._—... At night recognised the fact of a
      cold, and began to deal with it. 10th. Kept my bed all day. 11th.
      The cabinet sat, and Granville came to and fro with the
      communications, Clark having prohibited my attendance. Read _Sybil_.
      12th. Bed as yesterday. 13th. Got to my sitting-room in the evening.
      It has, however, taken longer this time to clear the chest, and
      Clark reports the pulse still too high by ten. Saw Granville.
      Conclave, 7-½ to 8-½, on telegram to Baring for Gordon. I was not
      allowed to attend the cabinet.

  101 The case of the government was stated with all the force and reason
      of which it admitted, in Lord Granville’s despatch of March 28,
      1884.

  M63 Condition Of The Soudan

  102 In the light of this proceeding, the following is curious: “There is
      one subject which I cannot imagine any one differing about. That is
      the impolicy of announcing our intention to evacuate Khartoum. Even
      if we were bound to do so we should have said nothing about it. The
      moment it is known we have given up the game, every man will go over
      to the Mahdi. All men worship the rising sun. The difficulties of
      evacuation will be enormously increased, if, indeed, the withdrawal
      of our garrison is not rendered impossible.”—Interview with General
      Gordon, _Pall Mall Gazette_, Jan. 8, 1884.

      ... “In the afternoon of Feb. 13 Gordon assembled all the
      influential men of the province and showed them the secret firman.
      The reading of this document caused great excitement, but at the
      same time its purport was received evidently with much
      gratification. It is worthy of note that the whole of the notables
      present at this meeting subsequently threw in their cause with the
      Mahdi.”—Henry William Gordon’s _Events in the Life of Charles George
      Gordon_, p. 340.

  103 Wingate, p. 110.

  M64 Question Of An Expedition

  104 Lord Hartington, House of Commons, May 13, 1884. An admirable
      speech, and the best defence of ministers up to this date.

  105 Address to the electors of Midlothian, September 17, 1885.

  106 See the official _History of the Soudan Campaign_, by Colonel
      Colvile, Part 1. pp. 45-9.

  M65 The Expedition Starts

  107 February 27, 1885.

  108 Colvile, II., Appendix 47, p. 274. Apart from the authority of
      Kitchener, Gordon’s own language shows that he knew himself to be
      _in extremis_ by the end of December.

  109 The story that he went to the theatre the same night is untrue.

  M66 Mr. Gladstone’s Vindication

_  110 Belford’s Magazine_ (New York), Sept. 1890. A French translation of
      this letter will be found in _L’Égypte et ses Provinces Perdues_, by
      the recipient, Colonel C. Chaillé-Long Bey (1892), pp. 196-7. He was
      chief of the staff to Gordon in the Soudan, and consular-agent for
      the United States at Alexandria. Another book of his, published in
      1884, is _The Three Prophets; Chinese Gordon, El Mahdi, and Arabi
      Pasha_. Burton reviewed Gordon’s Khartoum Journals, _Academy_, June
      11, 1885.

  M67 Party Prospects

  111 Above, p. 166.

  M68 The Left Wing

  112 For the censure, 288; against, 302.

  M69 Narrow Escape In Parliament

  113 I often tried to persuade him that our retreat was to be explained
      apart from pusillanimity, but he would not listen.

  M70 Change Of Soudan Policy

  114 See Appendix.

  115 For instance when Mr. Gladstone fell from office in 1874, Lord Odo
      Russell wrote to him, “how sorry I feel at your retirement, and how
      grateful I am to you for the great advantage and encouragement I
      have enjoyed while serving under your great administration, in Rome
      and Berlin.”

  116 “We do not depart in any degree from the policy of leaving the
      Soudan. As to the civilisation which the noble and gallant earl
      [Lord Dundonald] would impose upon us the duty of restoring, it
      could only be carried out by a large and costly expedition,
      entailing enormous sacrifice of blood and treasure, and for the
      present a continuous expenditure, which I do not think the people of
      this country would sanction.... The defence of our retention of
      Suakin is that it is a very serious obstacle to the renewal and the
      conduct of that slave trade which is always trying to pass over from
      Africa into Asia. I do not think that the retention of Suakin is of
      any advantage to the Egyptian government. If I were to speak purely
      from the point of view of that government’s own interest, I should
      say, ‘Abandon Suakin at once.’ ”—Lord Salisbury, in the House of
      Lords, March 16, 1888.

  M71 A Historical Parallel

  117 Above, vol. ii. p. 49.

  118 Edinburgh, March 17, 1880.

  119 In the letter to Mr. Bright (July 14, 1882) already given, Mr.
      Gladstone went somewhat nearer to the Manchester school, and
      expressed his agreement with Bright in believing most wars to have
      been sad errors.

  M72 The Vote Of Credit

  120 West Calder, November 17, 1885.

  M73 State Of Ireland
  M74 Lord Randolph Churchill And The Irishmen

  121 May 20, 1885.

  122 The story was told by Lord R. Churchill in a speech at Sheffield,
      Sept 4, 1885.

  123 Mr. McCarthy’s speech at Hull, Dec. 15, 1887.

  M75 In The Ministerial Camp
  M76 Opinion In The Cabinet
  M77 Opinion In The Cabinet
  M78 Final Deliberations
  M79 Budget Rejected
  M80 Resignation Of Office

  124 Duke of Argyll, July 10, 1885.

  125 As the reader will remember (vol. i. pp. 436-440), on Dec. 16, 1852,
      Mr. Disraeli’s motion for imposing a house duty of a shilling in the
      pound was rejected by 305 to 286. Mr. Gladstone also referred to the
      case of the expulsion of the whigs by Peel. On May 13, 1841, after
      eight nights’ debate, the government were defeated by a majority of
      36 on their budget proposals in regard to sugar. Ministers not
      resigning, Sir Robert Peel moved a vote of want of confidence on May
      27, which was carried by a majority of 1 (312-311), June 4, 1841.
      Parliament thereupon was dissolved.

  M81 Ministerial Crisis

  126 Memo. by Mr. Gladstone, on a sheet of notepaper, June 20, 1885.

  M82 Crisis Prolonged

  127 Mr. Gladstone was reminded by a colleague that when Sir Robert Peel
      resumed office in 1845, at the request of the Queen, he did so
      before and without consultation with his colleagues. In the end they
      all, excepting Lord Stanley, supported him.

  128 June 25, 1885.

  129 The correspondence with the Queen up to June 21 was read by Mr.
      Gladstone in the House of Commons on June 24, and Lord Salisbury
      made his statement in the House of Lords on the next day. Mr.
      Gladstone told the House of Commons that he omitted one or two
      sentences from one of his letters, as having hardly any bearing on
      the real points of the correspondence. The omitted sentences related
      to the Afghan frontier, and the state of the negotiations with
      Russia.

  130 This proceeding was so unusual as to be almost without a precedent.
      Lord Mulgrave had addressed the House of Lords in 1837, and Lord
      Clarendon in 1850. But on each of these occasions the viceroy’s
      administration had been the object of vigorous attack, and no one
      but the viceroy himself was capable of making an effective
      parliamentary defence.

  131 July 6, 1885. _Hans._ 298, p. 1659.

  M83 The Maamtrasna Debate

  132 Sir M. H. Beach, July 17, 1885. _Hans._ 299, p. 1085.

_  133 Hans._ 299, p. 1098.

_  134 Ibid._ p. 1119.

  M84 Change In Situation

  135 In _The Contemporary Review_, October 1885, p. 491.

  136 See _Spectator_, Sept. 26, 1885.

  M85 Whigs And Radicals
  M86 Party Aspects

  137 Mr. Chamberlain has been good enough to read these two letters, and
      he assents to their substantial accuracy, with a demurrer on two or
      three points, justly observing that anybody reporting a very long
      and varied conversation is almost certain, however scrupulous in
      intention, to insert in places what were thoughts much in his own
      mind, rather than words actually spoken. In inserting these two
      letters, it may tend to prevent controversy if we print such
      corrective hints as are desired.

  138 In connection with a local government bill for small holdings and
      allotments, subsequently passed.

  139 He suggested, for instance, the appointment of a committee.

  140 Mr. Chamberlain puts it that he proposed to exclude home rule as
      impossible, and to offer a local government bill which he thought
      that Parnell might accept. Mr. Gladstone’s statement that he and his
      visitor were “pretty well agreed” on Ireland, cannot mean therefore
      that the visitor was in favour of home rule.

  141 This is not remembered.

  142 “Some misunderstanding here.”

  143 That is, in his seventy-sixth year.

  M87 A Remarkable Interview

  144 This episode was first mentioned in the House of Commons, June 7,
      1886. Lord Carnarvon explained in the Lords, June 10. Mr. Parnell
      replied in a letter to the _Times_, June 12. He revived the subject
      in the House of Commons, Feb. 13, 1888, and Lord Carnarvon explained
      a second time in the Lords on May 3. On Lord Carnarvon’s first
      explanation, the Duke of Argyll, while placing the utmost reliance
      on his personal honour and accuracy, “felt bound to observe that the
      statement did not appear to be complete, for he had omitted to
      explain what the nature of the communication [with Mr. Parnell]
      absolutely was.” Neither then nor two years later was the omission
      made good. Curiously enough on the first occasion Lord Carnarvon did
      not even mention that Lord Salisbury in any way shared his
      responsibility for the interview, and in fact his language pointed
      the other way. What remains is his asseveration, supported by Lord
      Salisbury, that he had made no formal bargain with Mr. Parnell, and
      gave him no sort of promise, assurance, or pledge. This is not only
      entirely credible, it is certain; for the only body that could carry
      out such a promise had not been consulted. “I may at least say this
      of what went on outside the cabinet—that I had no communication on
      the subject, _no authorisation_, and that I never communicated to
      them even that which I had done.”—_Hansard_, 306, p. 1258.

_  145 E.g._ _Hans._ 306, pp. 1181, 1199.

  146 Letter to the _Times_, June 12, 1886.

  M88 A Remarkable Interview

_  147 Hans._ 332, p. 336.

  148 August 24, 1885.

  M89 Lord Hartington And Mr. Chamberlain

  149 Lord Hartington at Waterfoot, August 29.

  150 June 17, 1885.

  151 Warrington, September 8.

  M90 Letter To Mr. Childers

_  152 Life of Childers_, ii. p. 230.

  153 Sept. 18, 1885.

  154 Nov. 9, 1885.

  155 Midlothian Speeches, p. 49.

_  156 Ibid._ p. 39.

  M91 Declarations From Lord Salisbury

  157 Some of them are set out in Special Commission _Report_, pp. 99,
      100.

  158 See Mr. Gladstone upon these tactics in his fifth Midlothian speech,
      Nov. 24, 1885. Also in the seventh, Nov. 28, pp. 159-60.

  M92 Irish Manifesto
  M93 In Midlothian

_  159 Nineteenth Century_, November 1885; reprinted in _Later Gleanings_.

  160 Speech in the Free Assembly Hall, Nov. 11, 1885.

  M94 First Days

  161 November 26, 1885.

_  162 Result of General Election of 1885_:—

      English and Welsh boroughs and universities, 93 L., 86 C., 1 P.
      Metropolis, 26, 36, 0
      English and Welsh counties, 152, 101, 0
      Scottish boroughs, 30, 3, 0
      Scottish counties, 32, 7, 0
      Ireland, 0, 18, 85
      Totals, 333 L., 251 C., 86 P.

      The following figures may also be found interesting:—

      _Election of 1868_—

      English and Welsh Liberals, 267
      Tories, 225
      Majority, 42

      _In 1880_—

      English and Welsh Liberals, 284
      Tories, 205
      Majority, 79

      _In 1885_—

      English and Welsh Liberals, 270
      Tories, 223
      Majority, 47

  M95 General Result

  163 Mr. Chamberlain at Leicester, December 3, 1885.

  M96 Extraordinary Results In Ireland

  164 Macknight’s _Ulster as it Is_, ii. p. 108.

  165 Mr. Forster, March 11, 1881.

  M97 Mr. Parnell As Dictator

  166 Lord Salisbury, at a dinner given in London to the four conservative
      members for Hertfordshire, February 17, 1886.

_  167 Special Aspects of the Irish Question_, p. 18.

  M98 Proffer Of Support
  M99 Leaders At Hawarden

  168 These statements first appeared in the _Leeds Mercury_ and the
      _Standard_ on Dec. 17, and in a communication from the National
      Press Agency issued on the night of Dec. 16. They were not published
      in the _Times_ and other London morning papers until Dec. 18. Mr.
      Gladstone’s telegram was printed in the evening papers on Dec. 17.

 M100 Reports From Hawarden

  169 Speech on the Address, January 21, 1886.

 M101 Notes Of Conflict

  170 At the Birmingham Reform Club, Dec. 17, 1885.

 M102 Views Of Mr. Parnell
 M103 Changes And Rumours

  171 Correspondence between Lord Salisbury and Lord Carnarvon, _Times_,
      Jan. 16, 1886.

_  172 Hans._ 302, pp. 1929-1993, March 4, 1886. See also Lord Randolph
      Churchill at Paddington, Feb. 13, 1886.

  173 Maxwell’s _Life of W. H. Smith_, ii. p. 163.

  174 If this seems hyperbole, let the reader remember an entry in
      Macaulay’s diary: “I have now finished reading again most of Burke’s
      works. Admirable! The greatest man since Milton.” Trevelyan’s
      _Life_, ii. p. 377.

 M104 End Of Seventy-Sixth Year

  175 In 1833 the King’s Speech represented the state of Ireland in words
      that might be used at the present time, and expressed confidence
      that parliament would entrust the King with “such additional powers
      as may be necessary for punishing the disturbers of the public peace
      and for preserving and strengthening the legislative union between
      the two countries, which with your support and under the blessing of
      divine Providence I am determined to maintain by all the means in my
      power.” The Address in answer assured his Majesty that his
      confidence should not be disappointed, and that “we shall be ready
      to entrust to H.M. such additional measures, etc., for preserving
      and strengthening the legislative union which we have determined,”
      etc. This was the address that Mr. O’Connell denounced as a “bloody
      and brutal address,” and he moved as an amendment that the House do
      resolve itself into a committee of the whole House to consider of an
      humble address to his Majesty. Feb. 8. Amendment negatived, Ayes
      being 428, Noes 40.—_Memo._ by Sir T. E. May for Mr. Gladstone, Jan.
      18, 1886. O’Connell, that is to say, did not move an amendment in
      favour of repeal, but proposed the consideration of the Address in
      committee of the whole House.

_  176 Hans._ 302, p. 128.

  177 Lord Carnarvon left Ireland on Jan. 28, and Lord Justices were then
      appointed. But the lawyers seem to hold that there cannot be Lord
      Justices without a viceroy, and Lord Carnarvon was therefore
      technically viceroy out of the kingdom (of Ireland), until Lord
      Aberdeen was sworn in upon Feb. 10, 1886. He must, accordingly, have
      signed the minute appointing Mr. Smith chief secretary, though of
      course Mr. Smith had gone over to reverse the Carnarvon policy.

_  178 Hans._ 302, p. 112.

 M105 Coercion Bill Announced

  179 Mr. Gladstone was often taunted with having got in upon the question
      of allotments, and then throwing the agricultural labourer
      overboard. “The proposition,” he said, “is not only untrue but
      ridiculous. If true, it would prove that Lord Grey in 1830 came in
      upon the pension list, and Lord Derby in 1852 on the militia.... For
      myself, I may say personally that I made my public declaration on
      behalf of allotments in 1832, when Mr. Jesse Collings was just
      born.”—To Mr. C. A. Fyffe, May 6, 1890.

_  180 Diary._

 M106 Again Prime Minister

  181 “When the matter was finally adjusted by Chamberlain’s retirement,
      we had against us—Derby, Northbrook, Carlingford, Selborne, Dodson,
      Chamberlain, Hartington, Trevelyan, Bright; and for—Granville,
      Spencer, Kimberley, Ripon, Rosebery, Harcourt, Childers, Lefevre,
      Dilke (unavailable).” Mr. Goschen was not in the cabinet of 1880.

  182 A few weeks later, Lord Hartington said on the point of Mr.
      Gladstone’s consistency: “When I look back to the declarations that
      Mr. Gladstone made in parliament, which have not been infrequent;
      when I look back to the increased definiteness given to these
      declarations in his address to the electors of Midlothian and in his
      Midlothian speeches; when I consider all these things, I feel that I
      have not, and that no one has, any right to complain of the
      declaration that Mr. Gladstone has recently made.”—Speech at the
      Eighty Club, March 5, 1886.

_  183 Hans._ 304, p. 1106.

 M107 Position Of Mr. Chamberlain

  184 January 30, 1886. _Hans._ 304, p. 1185.

  185 As for the story of my being concerned in Mr. Gladstone’s conversion
      to home rule, it is, of course, pure moonshine. I only glance at it
      because in politics people are ready to believe anything. At the
      general election of 1880, I had declined to support home rule. In
      the press, however, I had strenuously opposed the Forster Coercion
      bill of the following winter, as involving a radical misapprehension
      of the nature and magnitude of the case. In the course of that
      controversy, arguments pressed themselves forward which led much
      further than mere resistance to the policy of coercion. Without
      having had the advantage of any communication whatever with Mr.
      Gladstone upon Irish subjects for some years before, I had still
      pointed out to my constituents at Newcastle in the previous
      November, that there was nothing in Mr. Gladstone’s electoral
      manifesto to prevent him from proposing a colonial plan for Ireland,
      and I had expressed my own conviction that this was the right
      direction in which to look. A few days before the fall of the tory
      government, I had advocated the exclusion of Irish members from
      Westminster, and the production of measures dealing with the
      land.—Speech at Chelmsford, January 7, 1886.

  186 The cabinet was finally composed as follows:—

      Mr. Gladstone, _First lord of the treasury_.
      Lord Herschell, _Lord chancellor_.
      Lord Spencer, _President of council_.
      Sir W. Harcourt, _Chancellor of exchequer_.
      Mr. Childers, _Home secretary_.
      Lord Rosebery, _Foreign secretary_.
      Lord Granville, _Colonial secretary_.
      Lord Kimberley, _Indian secretary_.
      Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, _War secretary_.
      Lord Ripon, _Admiralty_.
      Mr. Chamberlain, _Local government_.
      Mr. Morley, _Irish secretary_.
      Mr. Trevelyan, _Scotch secretary_.
      Mr. Mundella, _Board of trade_.

      The Lord chancellor, Mr. C.-Bannerman, Mr. Mundella, and myself now
      sat in cabinet for the first time. After the two resignations at the
      end of March, Mr. Stansfeld came in as head of the Local government
      board, and we sat with the ominous number of thirteen at table.

 M108 On Procedure By Resolution

  187 See Mr. Chamberlain’s speech, June 1, 1886. _Hans._ 306, p. 677.
      Also Lord Hartington at Bradford, May 18, 1886.

  188 June 1, 1833. _Hans._ 18, p. 186.

  189 June 13, 1833. _Ibid._ p. 700.

  190 May 14, 1833. _Hans._ 17, p. 1230.

  191 There is also the case of the Reform bill of 1867. Disraeli laid
      thirteen resolutions on the table. Lowe and Bright both agreed in
      urging that the resolutions should be dropped and the bill at once
      printed. A meeting of liberal members at Mr. Gladstone’s house
      unanimously resolved to support an amendment setting aside the
      resolutions. Disraeli at once abandoned them.

 M109 Two Branches Of The Policy

  192 Lord Hartington’s argument on the second reading shows how a
      resolution would have fared. _Hans._ 305, p. 610.

_  193 Hans._ 304, p. 1116.

_  194 Hans._ 304, p. 1190.

 M110 Important Resignations

  195 Faint hopes were nourished that Mr. Bright might be induced to join,
      but there was unfortunately no ground for them. Mr. Whitbread was
      invited, but preferred to lend staunch and important support
      outside. Lord Dalhousie, one of the truest hearts that ever was
      attracted to public life, too early lost to his country, took the
      Scottish secretaryship, not in the cabinet.

 M111 Mr. Parnell
 M112 The Bill On The Anvil

  196 See Appendix.

 M113 Forces For And Against
 M114 Scene In Parliament
 M115 Character Of The Debate

  197 First reading, April 13. Motion made for second reading and
      amendment, May 10. Land bill introduced and first reading, April 16.

  198 April 9, May 10.

 M116 Stroke And Counter-Stroke

_  199 Hans._ 304, pp. 1204-6.

 M117 Lord Salisbury

_  200 Hans._ 306, p. 697.

_  201 Hans._ 304, p. 1202.

  202 May 15, 1886.

  203 See for instance, _Irish Times_, May 8, and _Belfast Newsletter_,
      May 17, 18, 21, 1886.

_  204 Hans._ 304, p. 1134. Also 305, p. 1252.

  205 When the bill was practically settled, he asked if he might have a
      draft of the main provisions, for communication to half a dozen of
      his confidential colleagues. After some demur, the Irish secretary
      consented, warning him of the damaging consequences of any premature
      divulgation. The draft was duly returned, and not a word leaked out.
      Some time afterwards Mr. Parnell recalled the incident to me. “Three
      of the men to whom I showed the draft were newspaper men, and they
      were poor men, and any newspaper would have given them a thousand
      pounds for it. No very wonderful virtue, you may say. But how many
      of your House of Commons would believe it?”

  206 For this point, see the _Times_ report of the famous proceedings in
      Committee-room Fifteen, collected in the volume entitled _The
      Parnellite Split_ (1891).

 M118 Subterranean Activity
 M119 Strength And Weakness
 M120 Correspondence With Mr. Bright

  207 Letter to Mr. T. H. Bolton, M.P. _Times_, May 8, 1886.

_  208 Hans._ 306, p. 698.

 M121 Few Secondary Arguments

_  209 Hans._ 306, p. 1218.

  210 In the end exactly 93 liberals did vote against the bill.

 M122 Party Meeting

_  211 Hans._ 306, p. 322.

 M123 Death-Warrant Of The Bill
 M124 End Of The Debate
 M125 Dissolution Of Parliament
 M126 At Edinburgh

  212 He was returned without opposition.

 M127 Cabinet Resign
 M128 At Tegernsee

  213 On the Irish Question.—“The History of an Idea and the Lesson of the
      Elections,” a fifty-page pamphlet prepared before leaving England.

_  214 Speaker_, Jan. 1, 1890.

_  215 Conversations of Döllinger._ By L. von Köbell, pp. 100, 102.

_  216 Nineteenth Century_, January 1887. See also speech at Hawarden, on
      the Queen’s Reign, August 30, 1887. The reader will remember Mr.
      Gladstone’s contrast between poet and active statesman at Kirkwall
      in 1883.

_  217 Robert Elsmere: the Battle of Belief_ (1888). Republished from the
      _Nineteenth Century_ in _Later Gleanings_, 1898.

  218 May 2, 1888.

 M129 Dissentient Position

  219 See vol. i. p. 423.

  220 Sir W. Harcourt, Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Herschell, Sir George
      Trevelyan, and myself.

 M130 Round Table Conference

  221 See speeches at Hawick, Jan. 22, and at Birmingham, Jan. 29, 1887.

_  222 Baptist_ article, in _Times_, Feb. 25, 1887.

  223 If anybody should ever wish further to disinter the history of this
      fruitless episode, he will find all the details in a speech by Sir
      William Harcourt at Derby, Feb, 27, 1889. See also Sir G. O.
      Trevelyan, _Times_, July 26, 1887, Mr. Chamberlain’s letter to Mr.
      Evelyn Ashley, _Times_, July 29, 1887, and a speech of my own at
      Wolverhampton, April 19, 1887.

 M131 State Of Ireland

_  224 Hans._ 309, Sept. 21, 1886.

  225 See _United Ireland_, Oct. 23, 1886.

 M132 Plan Of Campaign

  226 Lord Randolph had encouraged a plan of campaign in Ulster against
      home rule.

  227 Speech at the Memorial Hall, July 29, 1887.

  228 Report, p. 8, sect. 15.

_  229 Freeman_, Jan. 1887.

  230 Questions 16, 473-5.

 M133 Ministerial Vacillations

_  231 Hans._ August 19, 1886.

_  232 Ibid._ 313, March 22, 1887.

_  233 Ibid._ 312, April 22, 1887.

 M134 Singular Operations

  234 Speech on Criminal Law Amendment (Ireland) bill, March 29, 1887.

  235 This vital feature of the bill was discussed in the report stage, on
      a motion limiting the operation of the Act to three years. June 27,
      1887. _Hans._ 316, p. 1013. The clause was rejected by 180 to 119,
      or a majority of 61.

  236 See Palles, C. B., in Walsh’s case. _Judgments of Superior Courts in
      cases under the Criminal Law and Procedure Amendment Act_, 1887, p.
      110.

 M135 New Crimes Act
 M136 First Guillotine Closure

  237 On September 9, 1887.

 M137 Mitchelstown

  238 Sept. 12, 1887. _Hans._ 321, p. 327.

 M138 Intervention From Rome

  239 Dec. 3, 1888. _Hans._ 331, p. 916.

  240 May 8, 1888.

 M139 At Sandringham And Windsor

_  241 Tablet_, Jan. 5, 1889.

_  242 Iliad_, X. 317. See _Homer and Homeric Age_, iii. 467 n.

  243 House of Lords, August 10, 1888.

 M140 The Facsimile Letter

  244 Here is the text of this once famous piece:—

      ’15/5/82.

      “DEAR SIR,—I am not surprised at your friend’s anger, but he and you
      should know that to denounce the murders was the only course open to
      us. To do that promptly was plainly our best policy. But you can
      tell him and all others concerned, that though I regret the accident
      of Lord F. Cavendish’s death, I cannot refuse to admit that Burke
      got no more than his deserts. You are at liberty to show him this,
      and others whom you can trust also, but let not my address be known.
      He can write to the House of Commons.—Yours very truly,

      “CHAS. S. PARNELL.”

  245 The three judges held this to be a correct interpretation of the
      language used in the article of March 10th, 1887. Report, pp. 57-8.

  246 April 20, 1887.

 M141 Demand For A Committee

_  247 Hans._ July 12, 1888, p. 1102.

_  248 Hans._ July 16, p. 1410.

_  249 Hans._ July 16, 1888, p. 1495.

 M142 The Bill

_  250 Hans._ 329, July 23, 1888, p. 263.

 M143 The Tribunal Opened

_  251 Hans._ Aug. 2, 1888, p. 1282.

_  252 Report_, p. 5.

_  253 Hans._ 342, p. 1357.

 M144 Proceedings In Court

_  254 Evidence_, iv. p. 219.

  255 The common-sense view of the employment of such a man seems to be
      set out in the speech of Sir Henry James (Cassell and Co.), pp.
      149-51, and 494-5.

 M145 The Letters Reached

  256 Feb. 24, 1889. _Evidence_, vi. p. 20.

 M146 The Forgeries Exploded
 M147 On The Report

  257 See above, vol. iii. p. 56.

 M148 On The Report

  258 “The Triple Alliance and Italy’s Place in It.” By Outidanos.
      _Contemporary Review_, October 1889. See Appendix.

 M149 Blessings Of The Home

  259 See above, vol. i. pp. 99, 568.

  260 Third Part, vol. i. p. 62.

  261 Vol. i. p. 206.

  262 These articles appeared in _Good Words_ (March-November 1900), and
      were subsequently published in volume form under the title of _The
      Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture_.

_  263 Speaker_, Aug. 30, 1890.

_  264 Inf._ v. 98: “Where Po descends for rest with his tributary
      streams.”

_  265 Od._ xx. 82.

  266 Mr. Hanbury, August 1, 1889. _Hans._ 339, p. 98.

  267 At Birmingham, July 30, 1889.

_  268 E.g._ _Northern Whig_, February 21, 1889.

 M150 Advance Of Home Rule

  269 Mr. Balfour at Manchester. _Times_, October 21, 1889.

  270 October 22, 1890.

  271 See Mr. Roby’s speech at the Manchester Reform Club, Oct. 24, and
      articles in _Manchester Guardian_, Oct. 16 and 25, 1890. The _Times_
      (Oct. 23), while denying the inference that the Irish question was
      the question most prominent in the minds of large numbers of the
      electors, admitted that this was the vital question really before
      the constituency, and says generally, “The election, like so many
      other bye-elections, has been decided by the return to their party
      allegiance of numbers of Gladstonians who in 1886 absented
      themselves from the polling booths.”

 M151 The Catastrophe

  272 “That the effect of this trial will be to relegate Mr. Parnell for a
      time, at any rate, to private life, must we think be assumed....
      Special exemptions from penalties which should apply to all public
      men alike cannot possibly be made in favour of exceptionally
      valuable politicians to suit the convenience of their parties. He
      must cease, for the present at any rate, to lead the nationalist
      party; and conscious as we are of the loss our opponents will
      sustain by his resignation, we trust that they will believe us when
      we say that we are in no mood to exult in it.... It is no
      satisfaction to us to feel that a political adversary whose
      abilities and prowess it was impossible not to respect, has been
      overthrown by irrelevant accident, wholly unconnected with the
      struggle in which we are engaged.”—_Daily Telegraph_, Nov. 17, 1890.

 M152 Opinion In Ireland

  273 Speech at Retford, Dec. 11, 1890. _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act I. Sc.
      2.

 M153 Judgments In Great Britain

  274 Lord Granville, Sir W. Harcourt, Mr. Arnold Morley, and myself.

 M154 The Liberal Leaders
 M155 The Irish Leader Obdurate

  275 If anybody cares to follow all this up, he may read a speech of Mr.
      Parnell’s at Kells, Aug. 16, 1891, and a full reply of mine sent to
      the press, Aug. 17.

 M156 Mr. Parnell’s Decision

  276 On the day after leaving Hawarden Mr. Parnell spoke at Liverpool,
      calling on Lancashire to rally to their “grand old leader.” “My
      countrymen rejoice,” he said, “for we are on the safe path to our
      legitimate freedom and our future prosperity.” December 19, 1889.

  277 See _The Parnell Split_, reprinted from the _Times_ in 1891.
      Especially also _The Story of Room 15_, by Donal Sullivan, M.P., the
      accuracy of which seems not to have been challenged.

 M157 Committee Room Fifteen
 M158 The Irish Bishops
 M159 Break-Up Of The Irish Party

  278 The case for the change of mind which induced the majority who had
      elected Mr. Parnell to the chair less than a fortnight before, now
      to depose him, was clearly put by Mr. Sexton at a later date. To the
      considerations adduced by him nobody has ever made a serious
      political answer. The reader will find Mr. Sexton’s argument in the
      reports of these proceedings already referred to.

_  279 Od._ xi. 200. “It was not sickness that came upon me; it was
      wearying for thee and thy lost counsels, glorious Odysseus, and for
      all thy gentle kindness, this it was that broke the heart within
      me.”

  280 Hor. _Carm._ i. 24.

 M160 Severe Ordeal

  281 December 23, 1890.

  282 April 3, 1891.

  283 July 8, 1891.

 M161 Death Of Mr. Parnell

  284 October 6. He was in his forty-sixth year (_b._ June 1846), and had
      been sixteen years in parliament.

  285 Vol. i. p. 387.

  286 See above, vol. ii. p. 76.

 M162 At Newcastle

  287 Once Mr. Gladstone presented him with a piece of plate, and set upon
      it one of those little Latin inscriptions to which he was so much
      addicted, and which must serve here instead of further commemoration
      of a remarkable friendship: Georgio Armitstead, Armigero, D.D. Gul.
      E. Gladstone. Amicitiæ Benevolentiæ Beneficiorum delatorum Valde
      memor Mense Augusti A.D., 1894.

  288 Era già l’ora, che volge ’l disio
      A’ naviganti, e ’ntenerisce ’l cuore
      Lo di ch’ han detto a’ dolci amici addio, etc.

      _Purg._ viii.

      Byron’s rendering is well enough known.

 M163 Opinions On Statesmen
 M164 Table-Talk

  289 On some other occasion he set this against Macaulay’s praise of a
      passage in Barrow mentioned above, ii. p. 536.

 M165 Table-Talk

_  290 Iliad_, ix. 32.

 M166 Ecclesiastical
 M167 Fuentarabia

  291 ναυτίλε, μὴ πεύθου τίνος ἐνθάδε τύμβος ὅδ᾽ εἰμί,
      ἀλλ αὐτὸς πόντου τύγχανε χρηστοτέρου.

      “Ask not, mariner, whose tomb I am here, but be thine own fortune a
      kinder sea.”—MACKAIL.

 M168 Disenchantment A Mistake
 M169 Table-Talk

  292 I have not succeeded in hitting on the passage in the _History_.

 M170 Payment Of Members
 M171 At Bayonne

  293 Boswell, March 21, 1776. Repeated, with a very remarkable
      qualification, Sept. 19, 1777. Birkbeck Hill’s edition, iii. p. 162.

_  294 Carm._ iii. 5.

 M172 Table-Talk
 M173 Table-Talk

_  295 Translations by Lyttelton and Gladstone_, p. 166.

 M174 Table-Talk

  296 Thou shalt possess thy soul without care among the living, and
      lighter when thou goest to the place where most are.

 M175 Conversations

  297 See Appendix, Hor. _Carm._ i. 12, 25.

 M176 Question Of Undertaking Government

  298 Lord Palmerston’s government of 1859 was shorter by only a few days.

 M177 The Cabinet

  299 Here is the Fourth Cabinet:—

      _First lord of the treasury and privy seal_, W. E. Gladstone.
      _Lord chancellor_, Lord Herschell.
      _President of the council and Indian secretary_, Earl of Kimberley.
      _Chancellor of the exchequer_, Sir W. V. Harcourt.
      _Home secretary_, H. H. Asquith.
      _Foreign secretary_, Earl of Rosebery.
      _Colonial secretary_, Marquis of Ripon.
      _Secretary for war_, H. Campbell-Bannerman.
      _First lord of the admiralty_, Earl Spencer.
      _Chief secretary for Ireland_, John Morley.
      _Secretary for Scotland_, Sir G. O. Trevelyan.
      _President of the board of trade_, A. J. Mundella.
      _President of the local government board_, H. H. Fowler.
      _Chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster_, James Bryce.
      _Postmaster-general_, Arnold Morley.
      _First commissioner of works_, J. G. Shaw Lefevre.
      _Vice-president of the council_, A. H. D. Acland.

  300 See Mr. Gladstone’s speeches and answers to questions in the House
      of Commons, Jan. 1, Feb. 3, and May 1, 1893. See also the French
      Yellow Book for 1893, for M. Waddington’s despatches of Nov. 1,
      1892, May 5, 1893, and Feb. 1, 1893.

 M178 Preparation Of The Bill

  301 I hope I am not betraying a cabinet secret if I mention that this
      committee was composed of Mr. Gladstone, Lord Spencer, Lord
      Herschell, Mr. Campbell-Bannermann, Mr. Bryce, and myself.

  302 See above, p. 386.

 M179 Achievements In Debate

  303 One poor biographic item perhaps the tolerant reader will not grudge
      me leave to copy from Mr. Gladstone’s diary:—“_October 6, 1892._ Saw
      J. Morley and made him envoy to ——. He is on the whole ... about the
      best stay I have.”

 M180 Obstruction
 M181 The Guillotine
 M182 Question Of Dissolution

  304 See above, ii. p. 241.

  305 See Appendix for further elucidation.

 M183 Again At Biarritz
 M184 Last Cabinet

  306 Above, p. 130.

 M185 Last Audience

  307 Written down, March 5.

  308 Dr. Carlyle’s translation.

_  309 Inferno_, xxvii. 81.

  310 On July 1, 1895, he announced his formal withdrawal in a letter to
      Sir John Cowan, so long the loyal chairman of his electoral
      committee.

  311 “The Place of Heresy and Schism in the Modern Christian Church” and
      “The True and False Conception of the Atonement.”

_  312 Letter to the Duke of Westminster._

 M186 Last Meeting With The Queen

  313 For the list see Appendix.

_  314 King John._

 M187 Last Illness
 M188 Parliamentary Tributes
 M189 His Summary Of The Period

  315 Letter to Sir John Cowan, March 17, 1894.

  316 July 1, 1895.

 M190 Leader, Not Follower

  317 See vol. i. p. 457.

 M191 Achievements Compared

  318 See _Guardian_, Feb. 25, 1874.

 M192 Attitude To Church Parties

  319 iii. p. 396.

  320 For instance, Geddes, _Problem of the Homeric Poems_, 1878, p. 16.

 M193 On Homer

  321 Pattison, ii. p. 166.

_  322 Gleanings_, ii. p. 147.

_  323 Life_, i. p. 398.

 M194 Leopardi Translations

_  324 Gleanings_, ii. p. 129.

 M195 A Golden Lamp

  325 Telegram of April 4.

  326 Despatch, March 9.

  327 Power, p. 73 A.

_  328 Ibid._ 75 B.

  329 Egypt, No. 18, p. 34, 1884 (April); Egypt, No. 35, p. 122 (July 30).

 M196 Home Rule Bill, 1886
 M197 Naval Estimates Of 1894