IX. THE FALL OF THE GOVERNMENT
‘Of this, however, I am well persuaded, that it is better to be impetuous than cautious. For Fortune is a woman who to be kept under must be beaten and roughly handled; and we see that she suffers herself to be more readily mastered by those who treat her so, than by those who are more timid in their approaches. And always, like a woman, she favours the young, because they are less scrupulous and fiercer, and command her with greater audacity.’--MACHIAVELLI: The Prince, chapter XXV.
[Sidenote: 1885 ÆT. 36]
This account, which has hitherto been concerned with the doings of Lord Randolph Churchill and the steps by which he attained power in his party and in Parliament, must now for a time be greatly extended. However strictly the thread of personal narrative be followed, biography broadens insensibly into history, and the career of a private member becomes a recognisable part of the fortunes of the nation. We enter upon a period of tumult and change. Within little more than a year two General Elections were fought and four separate Administrations took their seats on the Treasury Bench. In order to find an equal convulsion it is necessary to go back almost exactly a hundred years, to the time between the fall of Lord North’s Administration in 1782 and the final triumph of Mr. Pitt after his dissolution in 1784. In each period Ministries were constructed and fell like houses of cards; in each a new, young figure sprang suddenly into universal attention; in each, one of the historic parties in the State entered into a disastrous coalition; and the other, after taking office in a minority, secured a predominance which lasted for a generation.
The Administration of 1880 tottered to its fall in tragedy and disaster. General Gordon perished and Khartoum fell in February. The expeditionary columns recoiled in sorrow and failure from the desert and the Nile. The Queen telegraphed her displeasure openly to the Prime Minister; and on a vote of censure the Government escaped only by a majority of fourteen (February 27). Few more critical divisions have been taken in modern times; for the defection of eight more discontented Whigs or Liberals would have procured a dissolution before either the Reform or Redistribution Act could have come into operation. In the temper of the moment, upon the votes of the old electorate, the Conservative party could hardly have failed to gain a clear majority. With such a prize in view the attacks of the Opposition increased in vehemence, bitterness, and effect. Votes of censure succeeded each other with almost bewildering rapidity. Early in the year Mr. Chamberlain began to proclaim the new demands of Radicalism in a series of crudely impressive speeches. Nationalist Ireland struggled in the grip of Dublin Castle. The menace of Russian aggression towards the Indian frontier grew into reality. Dynamite explosions tore up the Treasury Bench and shook the structure of Westminster Hall. A momentous General Election drew near. It was indeed, as Mr. Gladstone noted in his diary, ‘a time of Sturm und Drang.’
Lord Randolph Churchill returned from India in March, to find himself in a position of unusual importance. He had won no battle, negotiated no peace; he had passed no great measure of reform; he had never held public office; he was not even a Privy Councillor; yet he was welcomed on all sides with interest or acclamation. The political temperature was steadily rising with the approach of the General Election. The Fourth Party received him with joy and the House of Commons with satisfaction. Mr. Gladstone in his courtly way walked across the House to shake hands with him. His absence had been felt on his own side. He was looked to as a man who would infuse a belligerent energy into the Opposition and range their lines for the impending battle. It was evident to all men that he occupied a position in which he might turn the balance of many great things. ‘What place will you give him when the Government is formed?’ Sir Stafford Northcote was asked by a friend. ‘Say rather,’ replied the leader of the Opposition, ‘what place will he give me?’ ‘I had no idea,’ said Lord Randolph calmly when this was repeated to him, ‘that he had so much wit.’
The passage of a year had wrought important changes. Birmingham, divided by the Reform Bill into seven seats, was no longer the great three-member constituency which had invited him to stand. Colonel Burnaby, his good comrade, had been killed at Abu Klea.[28] But the Central Division sent a pressing requisition. Although the acceptance involved a direct contest with Mr. Bright himself, Lord Randolph considered himself bound by his former promise to come forward; but, lest fortune should be adverse in Birmingham, Mr. Kerans voluntarily withdrew from the candidature of South Paddington, so that that seat also might be at his disposal.
It is not easy to estimate, and quite impossible to explain, the personal ascendency which he had by this time acquired in the House of Commons. The Conservative Opposition almost instinctively yielded to his decisions. His authority seemed to have grown in his absence. On the motion to go into Committee on the Egyptian Loan Bill (April 16) Sir Richard Cross moved an amendment urging that the Suez Canal Convention should be submitted to the House before it was finally settled. The ground was ill-chosen and the occasion inauspicious. The speech of the mover could not fully surmount these disadvantages. But the amendment was moved with all the sanction and authority of the official Opposition, and the party Whips had summoned their followers from far and near to support it. Lord Randolph Churchill made a short speech, suave and friendly in substance, elaborately polite in form, but with just a suspicion of irony. He deprecated the amendment. He persuaded both sides of the House that it was unfortunate. The debate came abruptly to a conclusion. All determination of dividing oozed out of the Opposition. The amendment was withdrawn. This was a typical incident.
Lord Randolph had returned from India at a time when Indian problems occupied all minds. The turbulence of English politics was hushed for a space by a perilous interlude. In the year 1884, after the occupation of Merv, the Russian Empire attained the limits of its expansion southwards and came at last into contact with the territories of the Amir, to whom, by the engagements of 1880, Great Britain had given a pledge of protection against external aggression. A joint demarcation of the northern boundary of Afghanistan was decided on by the British and Russian Governments, from the Persian border eastwards to a point on the Oxus, beyond which that river had been recognised by the agreement of 1873 as constituting the limits of Afghan territory. The Commissioners of the two Powers had met on the frontier in November 1884, and devoted themselves to their task with that air of leisurely diligence inseparable from international undertakings. On March 30 the tangled negotiations were torn to pieces by an act of violence. While diplomatists were groping for scientific frontiers upon imperfect maps and amid unfamiliar names, General Komaroff advanced, ‘covenant’ notwithstanding, collided with the Afghan pickets upon the debatable ground, and in a short but bloody action at Penjdeh drove the Amir’s forces from the field. All England was stirred. The newspapers were hot to counsel war. A wave of double panic swept across the country. The national temper rose and the funds fell. A period of acute suspense followed.
On all that concerned the safety of India Lord Randolph spoke in picturesque and thoughtful language. ‘Our rule in India,’ he said at the Primrose League banquet in the St. James’s Hall on April 18, ‘is, as it were, a sheet of oil spread out over the surface of, and keeping calm and quiet and unruffled by storms, an immense and profound ocean of humanity. Underneath that rule lie hidden all the memories of fallen dynasties, all the traditions of vanquished races, all the pride of insulted creeds....’ He spoke of the advance of Russia on the North-West Frontier--‘that sometimes stealthy, sometimes open, always gradual, always sure advance of countless hosts, now resembling the gliding of a serpent, now the bound of a tiger’--as a perpetual injury to stability and progress in the Government and people of India. And his counsels, like those of Lord Salisbury, seemed full of the menace of war.
On April 27 Mr. Gladstone asked the House of Commons for his vote of credit of 11,000,000_l._ He unfolded the ‘case for preparation’ in an impressive harangue. Tory blood, long chilled, stirred in his veins. The eloquence and authority of his great war speech covered everything behind it--even the total abandonment of the Soudan, which was foreshadowed almost incidentally--and carried everything before it. He sat down while the House was ringing with the united acclamations of Radicals who hated war and of Tories who hated him. The debate collapsed. Notices of motion and amendment disappeared as if by magic. The vote was carried without a single protest.
But it was no part of the policy of the Opposition to allow Mr. Gladstone to obtain personal triumphs of this character. Though for the time they were dazzled by his rhetoric, they felt no confidence that the honour of the country was safe in his hands; and the parlous condition to which British relations with Russia had come, only made them more anxious to get possession of the Government. Lord Randolph, who had freed himself altogether from the Gladstone spell, saw in the collapse of the debate only another proof of that feeble and ineffective leadership of the Opposition against which he had warred so ruthlessly. Hitherto his communications with Lord Salisbury had been scanty and formal. Since the settlement of the National Union dispute no letters had passed between them; and although they were supposed to be working in harmonious agreement, they hardly knew each other at all. But Lord Randolph’s vexation prompted him to write with much more freedom than he had yet allowed himself; and this proved the beginning of an intimate correspondence and association only to cease after the crisis in British politics was over.
Private.
Turf Club, Piccadilly: April 27, 1885. 11 P.M.
Dear Lord Salisbury,--The Opposition cannot be conducted to any other goal but smash if things are to go on as they did to-night. At first all went well. We divided, and were only beaten by 43--a respectable position, the only unpleasant feature of which was the slack attendance of our party. A four-line whip had been out for a week. Many telegrams had been despatched yesterday, and yet only about 160 Tories came up to the scratch. The worst was to come, and I blame myself as much as anyone for what happened. Mr. Gladstone was evidently much annoyed by the opposition to his vote of credit arrangements and commenced his statement in Committee by the most wanton, outrageous, violent, and yet wretchedly weak attack upon the late Government. He then went on into a very elaborate and easily exposed apology for the evacuation of the Soudan, and finally wound up (and this part I did not hear) with a very warlike denunciation of Russian aggression, which H. Fowler of the Home Office told me he thought was too strong. Would you believe it? The whole Front Opposition Bench sat as mute as mummies--though, after all, it was they who had been flouted--and the Prime Minister got his 11,000,000_l._ at one gulp, without a remark of any sort or kind. I have not really the right to complain or criticise, as I went away in the middle of his speech to dine; but it never occurred to me for a moment that Sir S. N. would allow his intemperate remarks to pass unnoticed, or that the debate would collapse in such an ignominious manner for the Opposition.
It is quite possible that the Metropolitan Press may not notice this so strongly, but the Liberal provincial Press will; and the fact remains that at this time of day Gladstone has the audacity to revive in their worst form all the stale and exploded charges against the Beaconsfield Government, and that Northcote, the man most concerned, has not a word to say in reply. The effect in the House of Commons has been deplorable. All the Liberals are cock-a-whoop, and Gladstone has been allowed to obtain, gratuitously, an unparalleled Parliamentary triumph. It is probable that in the next few weeks crisis and sensation will follow each other closely. You know that under these circumstances, in the House of Commons, if the leader of the Opposition does not move, no one else can; and if to-night’s proceedings are to be repeated, we are done. Excuse, I pray you, a hurried scrawl. I thought you might like to have an account fresh from the House of Commons.
Yours very sincerely, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.
The reply was prompt and friendly.
‘I sympathise with you very heartily,’ replied Lord Salisbury late the same night. ‘But what can I do? It is not a case where advice would be of any service. In fact, I sometimes think my advice does more harm than good; for, if only partially followed, it may produce exactly the reverse of the intended effect. I hope the papers will attribute the collapse to our exalted patriotism. At least, that is the only hope with which one can console oneself.’
Lord Randolph wrote again:--
Private and Confidential.
Carlton Club: April 28, 1885.
Dear Lord Salisbury,--I have been thinking of nothing else but the events of last night in the House of Commons and, encouraged by your kind note received this morning, I venture to inflict upon you another letter.
The tone of the Metropolitan Press this morning is not unfavourable to us; but the Metropolitan Press is most misleading. I see every day the provincial Press, and I know well how in their London correspondence and in their articles they will magnify the personal triumph of Mr. Gladstone. He had been running down for some time, but has now, for the time, completely recovered his old position by the extraordinary and unprecedented coup he carried off last night. That coup has done us, as a party, more real harm with the constituencies than any event in this Parliament which I can remember. This sort of thing did not matter in 1880; but we are now within six months of a General Election, and any event which greatly elevates the Liberals and depresses our own people has a terrible effect. That triumph of last night will be repeated unless very decided and energetic steps are taken now. The personal ascendency of Mr. Gladstone is our great difficulty. If we can destroy or mitigate that, we gain adherents. I know what the little Fourth Party did in ‘80 and ‘81 and what support and sympathy they acquired in the country on that account. That old Fourth Party has disappeared; but the time has come when another body of the same nature, but on much better and weightier lines, might be formed, and might effect astonishing Parliamentary success.
I quite perceive that anything in the nature of open revolt against Sir S. N. would be fatal in every way. At the same time it is madness to blind yourself to the fact that whatever abilities he once possessed for guiding a party are utterly gone and that his influence upon the vigour and vitality of the party now enervates and enfeebles; and that at a moment when the greatest possible party life and vigour is a matter of life and death.
I have suggested to Sir Michael Hicks-Beach that he should remain permanently in town for the remainder of the Session and should be always in the House of Commons when it is sitting; and I have told him that if he can pledge himself to this, I believe a certain number of M.P.’s would pledge themselves to be always at his back. I allude principally to the old Fourth Party, to Raikes and Chaplin, to Dyke and Gibson, and to one or two more very talented and ambitious young members of the party. The effect of the constant attendance and skilful action of such a body night after night upon the Government cannot be over-estimated. It might lead them to throw up the sponge, either by one or more unexpected defeats. But, in any case, it would keep our party in the country alive and in good heart and should supply them with endless topics for local controversy. It is absolutely essential that some member of real position and influence upon the Front Bench should be at the head of such a combination. The weakness of the old Fourth Party was that they had no point d’appui; they were always a body of skirmishers altogether en l’air. And yet House of Commons history would be altogether misread if their disintegrating effect upon the Liberal party was underestimated or ignored. To show you what might have been done last night, I have ascertained from so reliable a source as Lord R. Grosvenor that all the elements of the Courtney faction and the Labouchere faction might have been let loose last night, if only Sir S. N. had not weakly yielded to an evanescent impression created by Gladstone’s gingerbread rhetoric, and allowed the debate to collapse. I think under high persuasion Sir M. Hicks-Beach would be prepared to make great sacrifices and run some personal risks, and it is for that reason that I bring all these matters to your notice. I may, without overmuch presumption, claim some little authority on these party interests. My letters to the Times in 1882 and my article in the Fortnightly clearly foretold the ultimate effect of Sir S. N.’s leadership. They brought much odium upon me at the time and may indeed have embarrassed persons I wished not to embarrass, but my word has been justified by events and by present public opinion.
I pray you not to allow yourself to imagine that either then or now was I or am I actuated by much, or indeed any, personal ambition. My only desire is to see the game properly and scientifically played, and the Conservative party fairly strong in the next Parliament; and I do not care a rap who carries off the laurels or the credit. The plan I propose for efficient Parliamentary action during the remainder of the Session may be skilfully carried out without any formal communication to Sir S. N. But not only does it depend upon Sir Michael being supported by a certain number of M.P.’s; that body will have to be inspired by yourself and will have to show that in their action they are receiving and deserving your support and approval.
I am ashamed of myself for worrying you with this interminable MS. It is only the critical condition of our party prospects which enables me to do it.
Yours very sincerely, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.
‘I concur very much,’ wrote Lord Salisbury in answer to this lengthy appeal, ‘in your estimate of the evil; and your idea of surrounding the Sultan with a body of Janissaries under Sir M. Beach is likely to be very effective if vigorously carried out. I will gladly do anything I can to help, but always with one reservation. I am bound to Sir S. N.--as a colleague--by a tie, not of expediency, but of honour; and I could not take part in anything which would be at variance with entire loyalty to him. But what you propose will rather take the form of assistance than supersession. I think that, properly managed, your jeune garde may do great things and acquire considerable practical authority. I will talk the matter over with Beach whenever I can see him. But he must abandon agriculture.’
The Conservative party had repented of their enthusiasm by May 4, when the Committee stage of the vote of credit was again set down for discussion. The decision to abandon the Soudan altogether and admit defeat in that quarter of the world had soaked in. They now learned, besides, that--vote of 11,000,000_l._ notwithstanding--Anglo-Russian differences were to be submitted to arbitration--‘surrender disguised as arbitration,’ as Lord Randolph Churchill called it. They were indignant at what they considered a betrayal. But how to show their displeasure? Sir Michael Hicks-Beach protested against the vote of credit being proceeded with in the altered circumstances without further delay. Lord Randolph, who had a speech all ready, intimated meekly that, unless the vote of credit was forthwith debated, he would obstruct the passage of Supply. The Government, anxious to get their business through, and uncertain which section in the Opposition would prove the more recalcitrant, proposed a compromise. Lord Randolph waved it aside and remained obdurate. The vote of credit came on at once.
The speech which he then delivered was a speech of minute detail, but of accurate detail. In twenty-four hours he had mastered an enormous Blue Book. No one could contradict him at any point. ‘So far as I know,’ said Lord Salisbury later, ‘that description [of Russian proceedings] is historically unimpeachable.’ Into the entanglements of General Komaroff’s action, of the strategic value of Merv, of the opinions of Baron Jomini, or of the territorial rights of the Amir in the disputed regions of the Murghab and Khushk rivers it is not, fortunately, necessary to enter. But one episode in Lord Randolph’s second speech on May 11 is worthy of record. The complacency with which the Government, and particularly the Prime Minister, had abandoned, in the Soudan, enterprises for the sake of which so many lives, British and Arab, had been sacrificed, had excited general wonder and even disgust.
‘I was reading in the Times this morning,’ said Lord Randolph, dropping his voice and buttoning up his coat--‘does the Prime Minister ever read the Times?’ Mr. Gladstone tossed his head disdainfully. ‘It is a pity, because if the Prime Minister had read the Times this morning he could not have failed to notice the review of a very interesting book--“The Home Letters of Lord Beaconsfield”--edited by Mr. Ralph Disraeli, who is, I believe, a friend of the Prime Minister’s.’ (‘Nothing of the sort,’ said Mr. Gladstone.) ‘Lord Beaconsfield, it appears, went many years ago to Yanina, where he had an interview with a very celebrated Minister--Redschid Pasha. There had recently been a great insurrection in Albania which had been put down by the Turks. This is Lord Beaconsfield’s account of the interview: “I bowed with all the nonchalance of St. James’s Street to a little, ferocious-looking, shrivelled, careworn man, plainly dressed, with a brow covered with wrinkles and a countenance clouded with anxiety and thought. I seated myself on the divan of the Grand Vizier (‘who,’ the Austrian Consul observed, ‘has destroyed in the course of the last three months--not in war--upwards of four thousand of my acquaintance’) with the self-possession of a morning call. Our conversation I need not repeat. We congratulated him on the pacification of Albania. He rejoined that the peace of the world was his only object and the happiness of mankind his only wish.”’ Here there was a long pause, intensified by the hush with which the House awaited the delayed conclusion. ‘There,’ cried Lord Randolph, raising his voice suddenly, hissing his words and pointing savagely across the House at Mr. Gladstone--‘there, upon the Treasury Bench, is the resuscitated Redschid Pasha.’
I have tried to revive the spirit of this attack as some of those who listened describe it, for Hansard reduces it to a very bald account. But, although Lord Randolph Churchill never commanded the surge and majesty of Mr. Gladstone’s oratory, he held the House docile and responsive in his grip. Whatever liberties he chose to take, they chose to cheer. So through a speech of an hour and a half, all devoted to a pitiless reproach of ‘that policy of base and cowardly surrender to Russia which marks your daily life.’ Was it wonderful that party newspapers and party men rallied to this bold champion of their grievances? ‘Why was it left to Lord Randolph Churchill,’ they asked, ‘alone to raise a protest against Mr. Gladstone’s treacherous conduct? Where were the occupants of the Front Opposition Bench? Have they resigned their functions? If so, let them resign their position’; and so forth. The next day Lord Granville took occasion to refer to this speech at length in the House of Lords. He declared that he had marked no less than nine passages, ‘some of them inaccurate and some exactly opposed to the truth.’ Lord Randolph rejoined, through the columns of the Times, in a celebrated--or perhaps I should write ‘notorious’--letter. He accused Lord Granville, among other things, of showing ‘the petty malice of a Whig’; ‘of his usual shamelessness’; and of ‘sneaking down to the House of Lords to make without notice a variety of deliberate misrepresentations, deliberate misquotations, and false assertions which were quite in accordance with the little that was known about the public career of Earl Granville, Knight of the Garter, and, to the misfortune of his country, Her Majesty’s principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.’ The Times was so horrified at this that, not content with printing the letter in a column of its largest type, it devoted another column and a half to repeating, for the purpose of dissociating itself from, its insults, and rebuking the bad taste of the author.
But the fate of the Government was not to be settled by anything arising out of the stormy events in the East. Another cause, nearer home and more intimately affecting party politics, was to operate decisively. The Crimes Act was to expire in August. Lord Spencer insisted upon its renewal and his demand was backed by most of the Whig Ministers. The Radical representatives, however, refused to associate themselves with such legislation and moderate Liberals were scarcely less reluctant to tar their hands with Coercion before presenting themselves to the electors as the champions of liberty. On May 15 Mr. Gladstone gave notice that the Government would propose what was, at any rate, a partial continuation of the measure. Five days later Lord Randolph Churchill, at the St. Stephen’s Club, struck what was, according to Mr. Morley, a mortal blow. He intimated that a Conservative Government would not think it necessary to renew the Act. His language was guarded and carefully chosen. He had to carry his audience with him and he knew with what satisfaction many of his colleagues in the House of Commons would repudiate his words if they thought their repudiation would be effective. He said, in short, that he was shocked that so grave an announcement as the renewal of a Coercion Bill should be taken as a matter of course. The state of Ireland must be much worse than was commonly supposed for the Radical members of the Cabinet to assent to such a proposal. What a comment it was on Liberal administration, and on the boasted Viceroyalty of Lord Spencer, that the Liberal party could not govern Ireland without that arbitrary force ‘which all their greatest orators have over and over again declared is no remedy for lawlessness!’ ‘I believe most firmly,’ he concluded, ‘that this ought to be the attitude of the Tory party--that while they are ready and willing to grant to any Government of the Queen whatever powers may be necessary, on evidence adduced, for the preservation of law and order, they ought to be anxious and careful beyond measure not to be committed to any act or policy which should unnecessarily wound and injure the feelings and the sentiments of our brothers on the other side of the Channel of St. George.’ That was all, but it was enough. The speaker was not disavowed. The Tory party remained mute. The words were observed and weighed both by the Irish Nationalists and the English Radicals. Within a few days Mr. Morley gave a notice of motion to oppose the renewal of the Crimes Act. The Radical members of the Cabinet stiffened their backs, and the days of the Ministry were numbered.
As the weakness and embarrassments of the Government and the dissensions in the Cabinet became glaring, it was evident the end could not be distant. But no one could tell when the moment would come; and the imminent possibility of a transference of power forced grave considerations into the minds of the chiefs of the Opposition. They hated the Government. They believed its continuance to be deeply injurious to the country. They were mortified by the dishonour which had been inflicted on British arms and British reputation. The cry of their supporters in the country for unceasing Parliamentary attack was vehement. They were bound to fight their hardest. But, upon the other hand, what if they succeeded? They could not dissolve, because of the Reform Bill. Until the new registers for the reconstructed constituencies had been prepared, and other indispensable mechanical details settled, a General Election was physically impossible. Could they, then, take office? Even if some Ministers were anxious to escape from power, willing to ride for a fall--and this was certainly not the disposition of the Prime Minister--the Government majority was enormous. The only chance of overturning the Gladstone Administration was by a division on some issue which should at once divide the Liberals and secure the Irish vote. No mere lukewarmness on the part of Ministerialists would suffice.
It was quite plain that an incoming Government, in a minority, without the power of dissolution, brought into office by Nationalist votes, could never carry a Coercion Bill through Parliament. But was a Coercion Bill necessary? Mr. Gibson on whom the Conservatives relied as their Irish authority, was of opinion that it would not be necessary. But certainly Mr. Parnell could make it necessary! The question was long and painfully debated. Clearly they had to fight. Not to do so was to discourage the whole party on the eve of the election. Clearly they might win. To refuse then to undertake the task, to admit that the Conservative party had neither the men nor the cohesion to carry on the Government, would equally injure them in the national estimation. It was a grim dilemma. But the decision did not lie altogether in the hands of particular men. Had it been possible for any one man to give orders which would be obeyed with military discipline, he could not have failed, were he a Conservative, to decide against any attempt to turn out the Government; and, conversely, a Minister must have sought for any decent pretext to resign. But the forces at work were not to be so nicely governed. It is in the nature of Ministries to survive in spite of their inclinations. It is in the nature of Oppositions to strive to win, even in spite of their interests. Borne along by the stream, the Conservative leaders determined to overthrow the Government if they could, and they solaced themselves with Mr. Gibson’s assurances that the state of Ireland did not require the renewal of the Crimes Act to protect the lives and liberties of Her Majesty’s lieges.
Lord Randolph Churchill made a regular practice of preserving every letter he received. He made notes of many important interviews. Nothing that related to politics, whether creditable or not, whether important or petty, seems to have been excluded from his archives. Had any agreement been made with Mr. Parnell sufficiently definite or formal to be called a ‘compact,’ it is most unlikely that no written record would have been preserved. No scrap of paper referring directly or indirectly to this subject can, however, be traced. On the other hand, it is certain that he had more than one conversation with the Irish leader; that he stated to him his opinion of what a Conservative Government would do should it be formed; and that he declared that he considered himself precluded by public utterances from joining a Government which would at once renew the Crimes Act. No bargain could, in the nature of things, have been made. The chances of Lord Randolph joining a Conservative Administration were undetermined. The Conservative party would certainly not have ratified such a bargain. Lord Randolph Churchill could not presume to speak in their name; and even if their official leaders had bound themselves, their action might well have been repudiated by important sections of their followers both in Parliament and in the country. ‘There was no compact or bargain of any kind,’ Lord Randolph said to FitzGibbon a year later, ‘but I told Parnell when he sat on that sofa [in Connaught Place] that if the Tories took office and I was a member of their Government, I would not consent to renew the Crimes Act. Parnell replied, “In that case, you will have the Irish vote at the Elections.”’
So far as the vote in the House was concerned, the Nationalists wanted little temptation to turn out a Coercionist Liberal Administration. They had long been looking for an opportunity of revenge. They shared the general expectation that the lowering of the franchise would give a great advantage to the Liberal party. Their interest was clearly, and their intention was notoriously, to play for an equalisation in party strength by supporting the weaker side at the dissolution. If the Conservatives would give them any reasonable excuse for preferring them to the Liberal Government, if they would avoid studied causes of offence, the Irish party would be content to support them in the House and to throw their vote--so far as it could be thrown--for the Conservative candidates in the election. On some such tacit understanding as this Lord Salisbury’s first Administration came into power and held sway. Neither party gave away any point of practical importance, or entered into any confidential relationship. Both Tories and Nationalists pursued their own ends. They used each other for their own purposes; and in the end the Conservatives came off the winners. All suggestions of a more definite compact belong to the regions of romance.
Within the space of a single year both great English parties were supported by the votes of the Irish members and were to some extent dependent on their good-will. But there was an important difference between the relations which respectively existed. The Conservatives, consciously or unconsciously, used the Irish party. The Liberals, willingly or unwillingly, were used by them. And whereas the former moved on through that association to prosperous years of power, the latter sank into paralysis and decay. But it should not be inferred from these unedifying reflections that Lord Randolph Churchill in his declarations against the re-enactment of the Crimes Act in 1885 was animated solely by a hard desire to effect a political combination. His views on Irish men and Irish matters were very different in character from the general opinion of his party. He knew Ireland well and liked her people. He had been in former days the friend of Mr. Butt. For five years of hard Parliamentary fighting he and his associates had sat in front of the Irish Nationalists, and many a reciprocal service or manœuvre had built up a House of Commons comradeship. ‘You can always trust them,’ he used to say, ‘if you know them and understand them.’ In office or Opposition, in good fortune or defeat, he detested the use of special legislation in Ireland; and, although he remained an unwavering opponent of Repeal, these pages will show that he at least did not approach Irish questions in a spirit of selfish opportunism.
Lord Randolph’s votes and speeches during all the Coercion struggles of the Parliament were, moreover, upon record. The Irish members, on their part, knew that he had often supported them, to the detriment of his reputation among his own friends, while the most brilliant representatives of the Liberal Cabinet were scourging them without pity. They remembered that he had always been civil and friendly to them in days when scarcely any other English member would speak to them. They were attracted by his stormy, rebellious nature. They delighted in his attacks upon the Government. Parnell, we are told, liked him personally, though their acquaintance was scanty. Among prominent English politicians, he was at that time the best friend, and the only friend, Nationalist Ireland could find. Any Government in which he was powerful must be better than the Ministry from which Irish members had received so much ill-usage. It was upon the opinion they had formed of him during several years as a man, and upon their estimate of his influence with his party, and not on any compact or bargain, that they acted in 1885.
In some fashion or another, however, Cabinet and Administration had held together till the Whitsuntide holidays. The third period of the session is dangerous to Governments. Most of the measures of the year, and usually the Budget, are in the Committee stage and liable at any moment to be challenged by a vote. At the same time, when vigilance is most needed, a feeling of languor or exhaustion steals over the House of Commons. With the advent of hot weather weary members seek escape from London. Divisions are frequent; majorities precarious; an accident always possible. Rumours had, however, gained acceptance that Cabinet differences on Irish policy were not incapable of adjustment, and many Liberal members thought that for the session at least the danger of defeat was passed. But meanwhile a third and, as it proved, a fatal blow had been aimed against the Ministry. An amendment to the Budget had been framed at a meeting in Mr. Balfour’s house in Carlton Gardens, at which Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, the Fourth Party, and Mr. Raikes alone were present. It was approved by Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford Northcote and placed upon the paper in the name of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. To a casual observer the amendment might have appeared unimportant. It condemned the proposed increase of the beer and spirit duties in the absence of a corresponding increase in the duties upon wine, and declined to add to the duty on real property without relief to the rates. But it was, in fact, artfully and deliberately contrived to unite the Opposition on an issue easily defensible in the country and likely to secure support from the Irish and from the liquor interest in the House. It acquired significance from a rumour that the Radical section of the Cabinet had severely criticised Mr. Childers’s increase of the beer duties and wished to substitute therefor an additional duty on spirits.
The debate was not remarkable and until late in the evening neither in the House nor outside it was there any expectation of the actual result. But after the dinner-hour a feeling of apprehension seemed to pervade the air. When the division was about to be taken, the ranks of the Ministerialists were unusually thin. Suddenly it was realised that the result must be narrow. A thrill of excitement swept through the House. The doors were closed, and the counting proceeded. When the tellers advanced to the table it was seen that Lord Richard Grosvenor, the Government Whip, stood at the left instead of at the right of the line. For a moment the significance was not appreciated; then the Opposition burst into exultant cheering, renewed again and again. Four Liberals and 42 Irishmen had voted against Ministers: 74 Liberals were absent, mostly unpaired: the Government was defeated by 12.
It had come, after all. The mighty Government which had towered up august and formidable in 1880, which during five long years, in spite of disastrous enterprise and so many evil turns of fortune, had presented an unbroken front to all attacks, was overthrown at last. So often had good and careful plans miscarried; so often had skill, patience, and courage led only to disappointment that, although a dark curtain of perplexity obscured the future, this at least was triumph now. Lord Randolph had seen the shot strike home. The aim was shrewd and sure. His famous antagonist was down at last and he did not care, or was not able, to contain his joy. He jumped on his seat below the gangway and, waving his handkerchief, led the cheers of the astonished and delighted Conservative party. Well might they have cheered if they had only known that events would follow from that June division which should lead in direct and unbroken sequence to their long supremacy in the State; and, having regard to the repression and firmness which the next few days would require of Lord Randolph Churchill, his jubilation may be pardoned.
A threefold crisis now supervened: first, the national emergency, arising from grave affairs in Egypt and with Russia, and the political fermentation at home and in Ireland; secondly, a constitutional situation peculiar and unprecedented in character; and thirdly, the struggle within the Conservative party. All these operated simultaneously and sympathetically affected each other. The Liberal Administration was defeated on June 8. On the 9th Mr. Gladstone tendered his resignation to the Queen. The Queen expressed surprise that he should make his defeat a vital question and inquired whether, if Lord Salisbury were unwilling to form a Government, the Cabinet would remain. Mr. Gladstone replied that they would not remain. The Queen thereupon accepted the resignations, which were announced to Parliament on the 12th, and sent for Lord Salisbury. Anticipating, or having private notice of, the formal summons, Lord Salisbury had already approached Lord Randolph Churchill through Sir Michael Hicks-Beach:--
June 10, 1885.
My dear Lord Randolph,--Lord Salisbury has asked me to tell you that he would be very glad to talk to you on the general position, if you would call on him: and I very much hope that no such ideas as those which you seemed to entertain this afternoon will prevent you from doing so.
I feel convinced (though I am not authorised to give you more than my own belief) that he has asked no one to call on him, and that his reason for not doing so is that he thinks that to do so would be to usurp the position of leader, which no one has as yet conferred on him.
It would be simply ridiculous that this idea on his part, combined with your idea as to ‘place-hunting,’ should keep you two apart just now.
Yours sincerely, MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH.
And the next day, on the eve of his departure to Balmoral, Lord Salisbury himself wrote:--
Confidential.
20 Arlington Street, S.W.: Thursday, June 11, 4.45.
My dear Churchill,--I have just received a communication which makes me anxious to see you. Could you call on me to-night after dinner, or to-morrow morning?
Yours very truly, SALISBURY.
Lord Randolph thought it better to defer his visit until after Lord Salisbury had seen the Queen. His opinion had already been given as to the conditions under which it would be desirable for the Conservatives to take office, and was involved in the decision to try to turn out the Liberal Government by means of the Irish vote on the Beach Amendment. He had nothing new to say about that. If Lord Salisbury should decide not to undertake the commission, there would be no necessity to raise the thorny and painful questions connected with Sir Stafford Northcote.
In ordinary circumstances Lord Salisbury’s course would have been simple. He would have advised a dissolution of Parliament. This solution was, however, impossible until November, owing to the Franchise and Seats Acts. Therefore his legal and constitutional right of recommending a dissolution was in abeyance; and, upon the other hand, the party of which he was the head would be compelled, if he took office, to carry the Budget, Supply, and other indispensable business of the year through a House of Commons in which they were in a minority of nearly 100. Lord Salisbury was so impressed by the difficulty of the situation that he went to Balmoral with the intention of declining to form a Government.
At Balmoral, however, the Queen persuaded him to make the attempt if Mr. Gladstone would not resume; and several attempts to induce Mr. Gladstone to resume having failed, Lord Salisbury accepted the duty and returned to London to discharge it. His first care was to seek from Mr. Gladstone an assurance of support in the measures absolutely necessary to bring the session to a close. The negotiations were protracted for many days; but eventually Mr. Gladstone agreed that facilities for expediting Supply might reasonably be provided, so long as the liberties of the House of Commons were not placed in abeyance; and he added the assurance that there was no idea on the part of the Opposition of withholding the Ways and Means required for the public service. During this discussion Lord Salisbury addressed himself to the formation of a Government. He forthwith invited Sir Stafford Northcote to become Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons; and Sir Stafford Northcote agreed. He asked Sir Michael Hicks-Beach to be Colonial Secretary; and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach agreed. Lord Salisbury then applied to Lord Randolph Churchill, whom he desired to take the India Office. But Lord Randolph refused to join the Government if Sir Stafford Northcote continued to lead in the House of Commons.
From this position nothing could move him. He remained silent and stubborn. While Lord Salisbury was still undecided whether to go on without him or not, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach intervened. He was, in his own words, ‘deeply impressed with the conviction that Lord Randolph Churchill’s active assistance as a member of the Government was vital to any hope of Conservative success at the General Election, for his popularity with the new electorate was greater than that of any other member of the party’;[29] and therefore, as soon as he learned that Lord Randolph had refused to join, he told Lord Salisbury--though without Lord Randolph’s knowledge, and entirely without pre-arrangement of any kind--that in the altered circumstances he could not join either. The dead-lock was again complete.
The narrative must here be somewhat interrupted, so far at least as chronology is concerned, to admit Lord Randolph Churchill’s own account of his action. He left behind him a considerable memorandum from which I quote all that is relevant to this situation.
‘In the events,’ he wrote (as I should judge, early in 1889, though the paper is undated), ‘which led to the formation of the Conservative Government in June 1885, I bore a part, and am induced to record my recollection of their nature; for one reason among others, that in my belief they were the main cause which led to the adoption by Mr. Gladstone of the policy of Repeal.
‘In the spring of 1885 it was a matter of notoriety among well-informed and studious politicians that the question as to the expediency of the renewal by the Government then in power of the Irish Crimes Act--which was to expire in September[30]--was one on which the Cabinet could come to no agreement. In the speeches which I made in the month of May at the St. Stephen’s Club and at Bow I endeavoured by diffuse examination of the question to do what I could to add to the difficulties which in connection with this subject embarrassed the Ministry.
‘My remarks at the former place were followed by a decisive intimation from Mr. J. Morley that he would oppose any measure for the renewal of any portion of the Crimes Act. This intimation practically terminated the duration of Mr. Gladstone’s Government. Agreement in the Cabinet on this question became impossible. The Ministers determined to court defeat in Parliament as a method of escape from the dilemma by resignation. A General Election was impending and the Opposition eagerly clutched at any opportunity of discrediting and defeating the Liberal party, and with this eagerness I was in thorough accord. Two attempts to place Ministers in a minority failed--one arising out of the events in the Soudan, the other out of a dispute concerning election expenses and local rates. A third attempt, against the Budget, met with unexpected success. The hostility of the licensed victuallers, who considered themselves aggrieved by Mr. Childers’s financial proposals, and the almost admitted connivance of Lord Richard Grosvenor, then the Head Whip of the Liberal party, secured the absence from the division of some sixty or more members of the Ministerial forces. The Government was placed in a minority and resigned.
‘The Opposition now found themselves in a position of immense difficulty, and though the difficulty had been foreseen by the leaders it was not on that account in any degree diminished.
‘The difficulty was twofold: personal and political.
‘1. For a long time there had been a division of opinion in the Conservative party on the question of the leadership--on the question as to whether Lord Salisbury or Sir Stafford Northcote ought to be the head of any Conservative Administration which events might bring into existence. While, on the one hand, there was a unanimous recognition by the party of the sterling worth and high character of the latter, there was, on the other, an equally unanimous but certainly not equally expressed opinion that he was indisposed by nature and training to place himself in entire harmony with the intense and acute party polemics of the moment; that he was, as he once admitted in a public speech, “deficient in go”; and that Lord Salisbury, though he was much less personally known to members of the House of Commons and much less popular than Sir Stafford, was more qualified for the conduct of a pitched battle such as we had to face.
‘I had identified myself with this latter opinion, and had expressed it publicly and privately in one way and another since the year 1883. In that year I had committed myself to such an extent that my action was much resented by the party in the House of Commons, who adopted and presented to Sir Stafford an address expressing their full confidence in and great admiration of him. My belief is that in this controversy, the existence of which was notorious, the principals had no share; that Sir Stafford and Lord Salisbury behaved with the utmost loyalty to each other, and remained throughout on the most intimate and friendly terms.
‘In June 1885, the crucial moment came. Mr. Gladstone resigned. “Whom would the Queen send for?” was a question in everyone’s mouth. Lord Salisbury was sent for. His intention was, if he formed a Government, that Sir Stafford should become Leader of the House of Commons. To this proposition, when proper opportunity offered, I declined to agree, adhering to my former opinions as to the indisposition of Sir Stafford for acute party warfare. Whether I was right or wrong I do not argue; public opinion in the party and outside was certainly not with me, and soon after, and since, I have been strongly drawn to the conclusion that I was in error. The fact remains for record: I declined to take office unless there was a change in the leadership of the party in the House of Commons.
‘My conviction is that Lord Salisbury was most reluctant to attempt to form a Government. It was most distasteful to him to be brought into any conflict with Sir Stafford, to be preferred above him--thus shattering what had been Sir Stafford’s great and honourable ambition. Finally, when it was demanded of him that he should put a slight upon Sir Stafford, and depose him from the leadership of the party in the House of Commons, Lord Salisbury almost determined to renounce the duty imposed upon him by the Sovereign. For days the matter was in suspense. Conversations, suggested arrangements, even intrigues were rife in the Carlton and in the Lobby. I have only a general and second-hand knowledge of what then went on. I kept entirely aloof, saw hardly anyone, and took no part in the controversy beyond what I had originally taken. Ultimately representations were made to Sir Stafford--how and by whom I do not know--which induced him to consent to accept the sinecure office of First Lord of the Treasury and a peerage with the title of Earl of Iddesleigh and Viscount St. Cyres. All I do know is that in these pourparlers Lord Ashbourne (then Mr. Gibson) was very busy and prominent and that he constantly and to many expressed his astonishment and displeasure that the susceptibilities or predilections attributed to Sir Stafford should form any obstacle to the formation of a Conservative Government. At that time Mr. Gibson exercised considerable influence with the Conservative party in the House of Commons.’
Lord Randolph seems to have overrated the importance of the part played in these negotiations by Mr. Gibson, though there is reason to believe that his influence was, so far as it was effective, exerted--and properly exerted--in the direction described. It is probable that Mr. Smith was the principal agent. Like other colleagues who sat beside him on the Bench, he knew, perhaps better than Sir Stafford Northcote’s family, how often the progress of heart disease incapacitated the Leader of the Opposition from Parliamentary work, and sometimes even reduced him to a lethargic condition. Mr. Smith had recently taken Sir Stafford for a long cruise in his yacht, the Pandora, and had the best reasons for judging his true condition, as well as the best right to make representations to him about it. But to return to Lord Randolph.
‘The second part of the difficulty,’ proceeds the memorandum, ‘which confronted Lord Salisbury was political and arose entirely out of the question whether it was or was not essential and necessary to seek from Parliament a renewal of the expiring Irish Crimes Act. This question had been more than once discussed in small conciliabules before the fall of Mr. Gladstone’s Government, and a sort of decision arrived at. I alluded publicly to the subject in a speech I made at Sheffield in the following September. But the former semi-decision did not help Lord Salisbury much when the actual crisis came. The whole question was again gone over with great care. Mr. Gibson in this difficulty was the real arbiter. He was the principal, and indeed the only, adviser to whom Lord Salisbury and his friends could have recourse for Irish information. In all the recurring debates on the state of Ireland and on the Irish land legislation which had marked the preceding sessions since 1880 he had been the real leader, and with him naturally it rested now to decide practically this grave and difficult question. I use the adjective “grave” because I believe that the decision not to attempt to renew the Crimes Act, more than any other event, finally determined Mr. Gladstone no longer to resist Repeal, and by some process or calculation not open to ordinary persons led Mr. Gladstone to the conclusion that there was a real working alliance arrived at between the Tories and the party of Mr. Parnell, the legitimate results of which would be proposals by the Tory Government in the nature of very large concessions to the Irish in the direction of Repeal.
‘My own part in the matter was to express no opinion beyond what was contained in the following formula, from which I never departed, and which was accepted by Lord Salisbury and his friends: If it is decided that the state of Ireland is such as to require the further continuance of the Crimes Act, then the Conservative party cannot accept office, as the period of the session and the Parliamentary weakness of the party preclude the possibility of their passing through the House of Commons the necessary measure. If a contrary decision is arrived at--viz. that the Act may be allowed to expire--then the Conservative party might succeed the Liberal Government with safety and advantage. It was well known that personally I would not have taken office had it been thought necessary by a Conservative Government to attempt to renew the Crimes Act.
‘Such was the nature of the difficulty which Lord Salisbury had to solve. I repeat my impression that he was most reluctant to form a Government. The personal difficulties alluded to above deterred him, and the recollections of Lord Derby’s Ministries of 1852, 1858, and 1866 were heavily against an attempt to carry on the business of the country without the support of a majority in the House of Commons. The pressure, however, from the local organisations in the country was strong to cause him to undertake the unattractive duty, and the prevalent feeling of the party in Parliament was in accord with this pressure.
‘For the decision he ultimately arrived at I can claim little responsibility and in it I had little or no share. I had no prepossession one way or the other, unless it was that the precedent set by Mr. Disraeli in 1873 under similar circumstances, and the apparent results of Mr. Disraeli’s action, were very vividly before my mind. I would have consented with equal cheerfulness to one decision or the other; nor do I believe that either decision would have affected numerically the results of the General Election which took place in November.
‘Looking back on those events after January 1886, and after the resolution arrived at by Mr. Gladstone to introduce a measure for the Repeal of the Union, I came to the conclusion that in June 1885, we had been most unfortunately inspired. I can trace a clear connection of cause and effect between Lord Salisbury’s accession to office in 1885 and Mr. Gladstone’s new departure in 1886.’
For five days uncertainty and rumour were supreme. Lord Randolph maintained an unbroken reserve. Good friends who had knowledge of what was going forward pressed him hard. Those who cared about his career thought he was ruining himself. Even Sir Henry James, a political opponent, but a personal friend, was provoked to address him.
The letter is interesting for its frank recognition that ‘Tory Democracy’ was a faith of its own.
Sir Henry James to Lord Randolph Churchill.
Temple: Saturday Morning.
My dear Friend,--I am so afraid that you are about to make a grave mistake, most injurious to your interests, that I must intrude my thoughts upon your breakfast.
I assume Salisbury ‘accepts the commission’; of course he will offer you office. If there be any definite measure--say the Crimes Act--which he insists upon and you object to, you will be quite justified in refusing office. For you will have a justification which you can make public, and everyone will give you credit for having acted according to your principles and conscience. But if your reasons are indefinite--say, for instance, because you cannot obtain a declaration in favour of a Liberal Toryism--you will have no explanation to give which the public will ever be able to understand. Between this and November no policy can be carried into effect by legislation, and so it is scarcely possible that any difference existing between the Salisbury Tories and yourself could be brought to a practical issue. And so, if you now refuse office on theoretical grounds which you can never explain, you will obtain the credit amongst the whole Tory party of having plotted against Salisbury and of having prevented him and them from coming into office. It will be time enough for you to fight the battle of Tory Democracy when some action (by way of legislation or administration) is taken adverse to the principles you hold.
Surely you ought to be catholic now, and let all shades of Toryism enjoy a gleam of success. If you do not, you will much endanger the cause of ‘Tory Democracy’; for although you can at any time be the leader of a Democracy, your power with the Tory element will be sadly shaken.
Ever yours, H. J.
Men who presume to deal with great affairs must cultivate an unyielding disposition. It is easy to withstand the reproaches or attacks of opponents; but the honest advice of a friend and well-wisher at once disinterested and experienced saps the foundations of judgment. There was one appeal which must have greatly disturbed Lord Randolph. Nothing in his private life was more striking and constant than his affection for his mother and his respect for her opinion. ‘I have been thinking,’ she wrote (June 14), ‘very quietly and calmly over your position, and I think you might go to see Lord Salisbury before his meeting, to show him your friendly feeling while you maintain your own position. You see, in the winter you felt acutely he did not consult or notice you. He may say on this critical occasion he came to you before anyone else and offered you one of the highest places in his Cabinet, and you refused your assistance. Yesterday he sends his secretary to bid you to go to his meeting. This, from reasons, you are obliged to decline. But do you not think you owe him some explanation?... He told you to consider his offer; so that, it seems to me, you are almost in duty bound to go to see him; and if you simply refrain from going, he will think you decidedly hostile. There is no doubt he is in a very difficult position, and may say you require not any policy or special measure, but simply that he should kill an old friend whom all respect.... I do hope you may be guided rightly.’
But Lord Randolph Churchill remained unresponsive. No communication of any kind passed between him and Lord Salisbury until the crisis was ended.
‘At this time,’ writes a Bencher of the Middle Temple, ‘an event occurred which strangely evidenced the strength of Lord Randolph’s popularity. But a description of the scene needs some explanation. Amongst the Inns of Court the Middle Temple is fortunate in the possession of a Hall grand in its construction and rich in evidence of associations extending over seven centuries. In this Hall, during Term time, the barristers and students dine. From amongst the barristers a governing body, called the Benchers, is selected. On the Grand Day of the summer Term the Benchers entertain distinguished guests at a sumptuous banquet held in the Hall. On these occasions Benchers and guests enter the Hall walking two and two, in procession, to the Daïs, upon which they dine. After the dinner is concluded, in like procession they leave the Hall, walking throughout its full length from the Bar to the door which leads to the Parliament Chamber.
‘A Grand Day of the Middle Temple occurred on June 10, 1885. Never before or since has so remarkable a company gathered within that Hall.
‘Nearly every Bencher was present, for fifty-five were there. Amongst them were the Prince of Wales and his eldest son, Prince Albert Victor, who on that day was called to the Bench. But many distinguished visitors were also present, for amongst the guests were the Archbishop of Canterbury, Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, Lord Derby, Lord Cranbrook, Sir Stafford Northcote, Mr. John Bright and other leading politicians; and yet it seemed as if there was only one of whom the gathering was thinking--and he was Randolph Churchill. The first sign of the great interest was shown when the loving-cup was being handed round; for when it was placed in Lord Randolph’s hands and he stood up to drink from it, the whole assemblage in the body of the Hall sprang to their feet and cheered him vociferously. No such demonstration had ever occurred in the Middle Temple Hall. And, again, when the dinner was concluded and the Benchers and their guests, walking two and two, proceeded to leave the Hall, a still more marked demonstration took place. The Royal Princes passed almost unheeded, whilst the Hall rang with shouts of “Randolph!” “Randolph!” “Churchill!” “Churchill!” No other name was uttered. It seemed as if all present wished to show that they regarded him--and him alone--as being the political victor of the hour.’
Yet, in contrast with these signs of triumph, what inward misgivings darkened Lord Randolph Churchill’s mind! In the presence of a trusted friend he dropped with relief his mask of unconcerned reserve and revealed himself plunged for a while in one of those fits of despondency which so often followed or preceded the crisis and action of his life. ‘I am very near the end of my tether,’ he said to this friend who met him at the Turf Club in these anxious days. ‘In the last five years I have lived twenty. I have fought Society. I have fought Mr. Gladstone at the head of a great majority. I have fought the Front Opposition Bench. Now I am fighting Lord Salisbury. I have said I will not join the Government unless Northcote leaves the House of Commons. Lord Salisbury will never give way. I’m done.’ To the remark that Lord Salisbury could not form a Ministry without him he answered drily, ‘He can form a Ministry if necessary with waiters from the Carlton Club.’ His companion on this proceeded amiably to suggest that if all was really over with the Conservative party, Liberalism offered a wide field for the activities of a Tory Democrat. ‘Ah, no!’ said Lord Randolph in utter pessimism, ‘Chamberlain and the Birmingham Caucus will swallow you all. It is they who will govern the people of England for the future.’ ‘The working classes must have leaders.’ ‘Yes, but they will not want aristocrats.’
The whole country was agog about the political interregnum and busy in the fascinating employment of Cabinet-making. Two main opinions were focussed by the newspapers--one was for a Cabinet of ‘old and tried public servants,’ to maintain an orderly and decorous Government during the few months that must elapse before the election; the other for a ‘Cabinet of Compromise,’ which should include the Tory Democrats and secure their powerful aid in the coming fight. But meanwhile the business of the House of Commons was not wholly interrupted and a curious Parliamentary incident occurred. On the evening of the 15th Mr. Gladstone proposed to consider, before adjourning, the Lords’ amendments to the Seats Bill. He moved accordingly; but on the question being put Sir Henry Wolff at once moved the adjournment of the debate. He pointed out that the Lords’ amendments were matters of substance and importance--as, indeed, they were--and ought not to have been inserted by them into the Redistribution Bill. He declared that such matters could not be decided upon in the absence of a responsible Government or a responsible Opposition. Sir Charles Dilke replied on behalf of the Government that the insertion of these amendments in the Redistribution Bill had the approval of Lord Salisbury himself, and was, in fact, adopted to avoid inconvenient delay. Sir Stafford Northcote thought it right to confirm the statement that it had been agreed that the matter should be dealt with in the Redistribution Bill instead of by a separate Bill. But the Fourth Party were not inclined to change their minds on that account. Mr. Gorst argued against haste without good reason for haste. Lord Randolph also spoke sharply in favour of the adjournment. What were the leaders of the so-called constitutional party about that they should tolerate the transaction of important business connected with reform under prevailing conditions? He also accused the Government bluntly of having produced the difficulty by procuring defeat.
Sir Michael Hicks-Beach then got up from the Front Opposition Bench and, to the astonishment of his colleagues on the Treasury Bench, spoke in favour of the adjournment and against his leader. In the division the Conservative party split into puzzled fragments, and persons who thought they might be Under-Secretaries--and in such circumstances they are a respectable body--suffered acutely. Thirty-five members voted with Sir Michael and Lord Randolph for the adjournment. Sir Henry Wolff and Mr. Gorst were their tellers. The rest, with Sir Stafford Northcote at their head, went into the Government lobby to support Mr. Gladstone. Sir Henry Wolff’s colleague in the representation of Portsmouth was a venerable member of the orthodox Conservative party. As he passed the Front Opposition Bench on his way to vote with Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir Stafford Northcote said reproachfully: ‘These are the times when one can tell one’s friends.’ ‘At such a crisis,’ replied the old gentleman ruefully, ‘and with such an election before us, the representation of Portsmouth must be undivided.’
This was the end. Two days later it was formally announced that Sir Stafford Northcote would retire to the House of Lords and that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach would lead the House of Commons. It has been asserted that this division settled the struggle and that Lord Salisbury, confronted with this plain proof that Sir Stafford Northcote’s leadership would not be accepted by a powerful and active section of his party, capitulated to Lord Randolph Churchill. This is not quite true. No doubt the division clinched the issues; but the personal negotiations which resulted in Sir Stafford’s elevation were already far advanced; and he himself notes in his diary of June 15: ‘This has apparently been my last night in the House of Commons.’ Indeed, there seems to have been less design in the affair than is commonly supposed. Few people--even among the most intelligent and informed--will believe how much in modern English politics is settled by the accident or caprice of the hour. Lord Randolph Churchill had often voted and spoken against the leader of the Opposition before. He thought the acquiescence in Mr. Gladstone’s wishes on this occasion stupid, and he said so. He thought the House should adjourn without transacting business and he voted in that sense. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was party to no plot. He did not enter the House until late and had not heard Sir Stafford’s speech. He gathered from the debate that the Fourth Party and the ‘Janissaries’ were attacking the Government and he supported them on general principles. Not until he sat down did he learn what he had done. Moreover, before the division had taken place Lord Salisbury’s hopes of a settlement were already so good that he had sent the following letter to Lord Randolph Churchill:--
Private.
20 Arlington Street, S.W.: June 15, 1885.
My dear Churchill,--I was very sorry you were not able to come to our meeting this morning. The general sense of those present, with one or two exceptions, was that we could not well refuse to take office, after all that has happened this year, if the Government have finally determined not to resume it. Still I think everyone present recognised that in a party sense this obligation was a misfortune.
Though I fear I must draw an unfavourable inference from your absence, I still venture to express a hope that you will allow me to put down your name for the Indian Secretaryship on the list which I must submit to the Queen on Wednesday.
I should be very glad to talk these matters over if you like to come and see me. I shall be in all the morning.
Yours very truly, SALISBURY.
Lord Randolph replied as if nothing had happened:--
2 Connaught Place: June 16, 1885.
Dear Lord Salisbury,--I am deeply sensible of the extreme kindness towards myself which you show me by your letter received this morning, and if not inconvenient to you I will do myself the honour of waiting upon you about eleven o’clock to-day.
Believe me to be Yours most sincerely, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.
That the interview was friendly and in the main satisfactory may be inferred from the following letter written later in the day, which shows, among other things, that in the hour of victory Lord Randolph Churchill was not inclined to desert those who had worked with him:--
2 Connaught Place: June 16, 1885.
Dear Lord Salisbury,--I do hope you will not be annoyed if I add to your many difficulties by these few lines. Of course, since I saw you this morning I have thought about little else than all that you were kind enough to say to me on many subjects. I do feel very uneasy indeed about Wolff and Gorst, and I cannot think that I have submitted to you their position as regards myself with the urgency which they are entitled to expect from me. If it were possible for you to consider whether it might not be in your power to recommend Wolff for the high dignity of a Privy Councillor I should be easy in my mind about him, and I venture to press this desire of mine upon you.
Gorst ... knows his powers, his position in the House, his hitherto barely recognised claims, and it makes me perfectly wretched to feel that it must occur to his mind that his failure to obtain that for which so many persons of knowledge consider he is fitted in every way is due to lukewarmness on my part. If I did not know what the general feeling of the House of Commons will be as regards myself on this point, I would have hesitated to trouble you; but I am certain that if with respect to these two cases things remain in the position you gave me to understand this morning they would be, I shall be considered to have failed my friends, and my powers, whatever they may be, of being useful to your Government will be impaired.
Yours most sincerely, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.
Lord Salisbury, thus appealed to, consented to submit Mr. Gorst’s name to the Queen for the office of Solicitor-General and Sir Henry Wolff’s for a Privy Councillorship. When the lavish hand with which high appointments were distributed among persons who had borne no share in the battle is remembered, it cannot be said that these rewards were disproportioned to services or talent.
The difficulties within the Conservative party were now settled; but the delays in the formation of the Government and consequent uncertainty were prolonged in order to extract from Mr. Gladstone further assurances in regard to the passage of necessary public business while the Government were in a minority in the House of Commons; and meanwhile Lord Salisbury retreated to Hatfield. Of the interviews and negotiations incidental upon this, a complete account was afterwards given to Parliament; and on June 23 the acceptance of office by Lord Salisbury and the composition of the Ministry, the main features of which had become generally known, were formally announced, and the constitutional and party crisis came to an end.
‘What a triumph!’ wrote Mr. Chamberlain on June 18, when the issue became apparent. ‘You have won all along the line. Moriturus te saluto.’ And with this an important chapter in Lord Randolph Churchill’s life may be conveniently closed.
X. THE ‘MINISTRY OF CARETAKERS’
‘This is no man of system, then; he is only a man of instincts and insights. A man, nevertheless, who will glare fiercely on any object; and see through it, and conquer it; for he has intellect, he has will, force beyond other men. A man not with logic-spectacles; but with an eye!’--CARLYLE on Mirabeau, French Revolution, bk. iv. ch. iv.
The first trials of a Prime Minister are often the most severe. The most formidable obstacles lie at the beginning. Once these have been surmounted, the path is comparatively smooth. Nearly all the rest of Lord Salisbury’s life was spent at the head of the Government. In a period of seventeen years he filled for more than twelve the greatest office in the State. Four separate Administrations were formed under his hand. Responsibilities not less grave than those of 1885, far more important legislation, wide acquisitions of territory, vast decisions of peace and war attended their course. But, as with Mr. Pitt, the first two years of his service perhaps exceeded in personal stress all the years that were to follow. And it is probable that no part of those two years was more clouded with anxious perplexity than the autumn of 1885. His own position was not assured. Public confidence in his character and judgment had yet to be won; his authority within his party had yet to be consolidated. That party itself had struggled back to power, weak in numbers, nervously excited by its efforts, upon curious and compromising terms. It was torn by the very inspiration that revived its strength. It awaited in acute apprehension an imminent and momentous election, the result of which no man could foretell. Very different were those after-years, when the old statesman, towering above his colleagues in the Cabinet and commanding the implicit obedience of his followers, had gathered patiently together round the standards of Conservatism almost all the strongest forces in the country.
Yet while resources were still slender the difficulties and dangers of the situation were tremendous. The dispute with Russia about the Afghan boundary was in its most critical stage. For at least two months the Cabinet faced the chance of war with a formidable military Empire. The triumphant Mahdi was ravaging the Soudan, and Egypt, withdrawn behind her narrowest frontiers, was threatened without and utterly disorganised within. The British finances were oppressed by a deficit. Ireland smouldered. All the elements of Irish national life were banded together under the supreme authority of Parnell and that efficient Protestant rebel was methodically preparing his campaign for an Irish Parliament. In the English provinces Mr. Chamberlain, released from such partial restraint as official obligations had hitherto imposed, unfolded the ‘Unauthorised Programme’ to an exulting Radical democracy. And behind all ‘two million intelligent citizens,’ newly enfranchised, impatiently awaited the opportunity of casting their votes. Such were the perils and embarrassments amid which the ‘Ministry of Caretakers’ came into being. Nor was it strange that eminent politicians were willing to prophesy that after a brief and inglorious career they would be ‘swept off the face of the earth.’ But Lord Salisbury, reminding the House of Lords that several of the longest Administrations in English history had come into being under precarious conditions, and fortifying himself by the examples and experiences of Mr. Pitt in 1784, of Lord Liverpool in 1812, and of Lord Palmerston in 1855, addressed himself to his heavy task with serene determination.
The Fourth Party was translated bodily to a higher sphere. Lord Randolph Churchill became Secretary of State for India--at that time, with the exception of the Foreign Office, the most anxious and important of all Ministerial posts. Mr. Balfour, though not admitted to the Cabinet, was appointed President of the Local Government Board. Sir Henry Wolff was despatched on a special mission to Turkey and Egypt with wide and peculiar authority over the whole field of Egyptian affairs. Mr. Gorst accepted the position of Solicitor-General. Three out of the four friends who had worked together more or less harmoniously in Opposition were sworn Privy Councillors upon the same cushion; and it was also noticed that an unusual proportion of the thirty-five members who had voted with the Fourth Party in the division upon Sir Henry Wolff’s motion during the interregnum were included in the Government.
Lord Randolph’s popularity was enhanced by his promotion. Those commanding qualities which the House of Commons had so frankly accepted, and Tory Democracy so loudly proclaimed, were now recognised by persons and by classes who had hitherto schooled themselves to regard him merely as an unedifying example of irresponsible audacity. The vigorous assertions of youth were stamped with the seal of official authority and over all hung the glitter of success. His friends, old and new, hastened to offer their congratulations. One of his acknowledgments may be recorded:--
June 25, 1885.
Dear Mr. Tabor,--I was so pleased to receive this morning your kind letter and I trust that your congratulations may be to some extent justified by results. As it is the fact that whatever of success I may have attained is mainly owing to the six years which I passed at Cheam, may I ask as a favour for a holiday for all those young gentlemen who are now deriving from you similar advantages to those which befell me? It would be a pleasure to me to know that I have not asked anything which was not in your power to grant.
Yours most sincerely, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.
Now that Lord Randolph had accepted ‘an office of profit under the Crown’ his seat at Woodstock was vacated and he had to submit himself to re-election. The leaders of the Liberal party did not encourage opposition to Ministers in such circumstances at this juncture. When they had themselves forced upon the Conservative party the task of Administration, it seemed factious to impede the return of individuals necessary for that purpose. Moreover, they were sensible of the advantage which almost always accrues to anyone who is singled out for attack by the opposite side. But the personality of the candidate gave promise of distinction to his opponent, the nice balance of parties in the old Borough held out a hope of success, and Mr. Corrie Grant hurried down from London to voice the hot and not unreasonable resentment of the Radical rank and file. This gentleman appealed to the electors upon a single issue. It was not, he declared, a fight of politics against politics, or of principle against principle--it was a fight against a man. The statements and expressions which Lord Randolph had employed against the Liberal party, its leaders, and in particular Mr. Gladstone, made it necessary at all costs to challenge his return.
Because of the immense pressure of work at the India Office and also no doubt not to treat his opponent too seriously, Lord Randolph declared himself unable to take part in the contest personally and left his election entirely to his constituents and friends. He contented himself with a short address. Having never held office before, it was necessary for him to give double the time of more fortunate persons to acquiring knowledge of his duties. ‘Under these circumstances it is impossible for me to leave London and to go among you as has been on former occasions my practice and my pleasure. But I console myself with the recollection that I am no stranger to any of you, that for nearly twelve years my public life has been before you, and that on no occasion had I any reason to imagine that I had forfeited your confidence or gone against your general political sentiments.’ ‘Whatever may be, in your opinion, the position I now occupy, that position you have made; it is mainly your work. And that position I am perfectly certain no stranger or carpet-bagger or any hirelings from the Birmingham Caucus will persuade you to damage or destroy.’
The campaign was opened immediately and with determination on both sides. Sir Henry Wolff, Lord Curzon, Sir Frederick Milner, Mr. St. John Brodrick,[31] a nephew of the former Liberal candidate, arrived in Woodstock to support Lord Randolph; and the Opposition was aided by a zealous contingent from Birmingham to such an extent that at the opening meeting Sir Henry Wolff described Mr. Corrie Grant as ‘the delegate of Mr. Schnadhorst and Mr. Chamberlain.’ This statement caused Mr. Chamberlain annoyance and he wrote at once to Lord Randolph disclaiming all responsibility for the contest and any desire to cause him trouble. Lord Randolph replied as follows:--
To Mr. Chamberlain.
July 1, 1885.
I think the mention of your name in Wolff’s speech was either wrongly reported or else not in the least meant ill-naturedly.... In any case, no mischief is to be made by anyone between you and me as far as I am concerned. I was quite sure that you had nothing to do with the Woodstock contest, but even if you had, I never should have thought it anything else but perfectly fair and legitimate. In the meantime many thanks for your kind letter, which I much value. Don’t be angry with Wolff.
There were, notwithstanding, several reasons for uneasiness as to the result. The absence of the candidate was an undoubted drawback. The propaganda of Mr. Joseph Arch had produced a considerable impression upon a section of the labourers. A more formidable consideration was the attitude of the Duke of Marlborough. Lord Randolph’s father had wielded immense personal influence in the borough and had neglected nothing that might constitutionally be done to secure the return of his nominee. Two years before, the new Duke would no doubt have exerted himself to the utmost to help his brother; but the sale of the Blenheim pictures had produced a serious quarrel in the family. Lord Randolph had vehemently protested against the dispersal of so many of the treasures for which Blenheim had been famous and a complete estrangement had ensued. The Duke, moreover, after the opposition which had been threatened to his candidature for the Carlton, had relapsed into political independence. He now declared himself so strictly neutral during the contest that Lady Randolph and the friends who came down to fight the election for her husband, were fain for the first night of their arrival to shelter at the Bear Hotel. Sir Henry Wolff’s diplomacy soon proved equal to those difficulties. Friendly relations were restored; Blenheim opened its gates to the Conservatives; and the Duke, stung by a statement in the press that he had himself been a party to Mr. Corrie Grant’s candidature, finished by lending his carriages to convey Lord Randolph’s supporters to the poll. The election was nevertheless fought under some disadvantage as compared with former occasions.
But the Secretary for India found in Lady Randolph and in his sister, Lady Curzon, a mainstay of support and enthusiasm. ‘I should be very glad,’ he wrote to his wife on June 29, ‘if you could arrange to stay in Woodstock till Friday. If I win, you will have all the glory.’ Driving about the widely extended constituency in a smart tandem profusely decorated with pink ribbons, well known to most and with a smile for all, these ladies canvassed indefatigably from morn till night. Their Primrose badges--still an object of amusement in high Tory circles--were the first to be worn in actual political warfare; and their influence, supplying as it did that personal element without which enthusiasm is scarcely ever excited, became a factor in the fight, against which the eloquence of two Liberal ladies from Girton--specially imported to meet the emergency--was utterly unable to prevail.
The result of the election was announced on the evening of July 3:--
Lord Randolph Churchill 532 Mr. Corrie Grant 405
The majority for Lord Randolph Churchill was 127, or more than double that by which he had been returned in 1880. Needless to relate, the declaration of the poll was received with the utmost satisfaction by the crowd in front of the Bear Hotel, to whom Lady Randolph, Lord Curzon, Sir Henry Wolff, and later on Mr. Corrie Grant made brief but appropriate speeches; and the fact that over six hundred ‘result messages’ were despatched from the local post-office that evening showed the interest taken by the world at large in this the last of the Woodstock elections.
Even before Lord Randolph was re-elected for Woodstock, he was required in the House of Commons. Portentous extracts were read from his speeches as a private member, and his secretary in the House was cross-questioned about them. Did he still adhere to his charges against the Khedive? Were his views on Ireland what he had declared them to be at Edinburgh? To all such inquiries Lord Randolph sent a simple answer, which may be recommended to others similarly circumstanced: ‘I neither withdraw nor apologise for anything that I have said at any time, believing as I do that anything which I may have said at any time was perfectly justified by the special circumstances of that time, and by the amount of information I may have had in my possession.’
The new Ministers met Parliament with general statements of their views and intentions on July 6. In both Houses they made a good appearance. They achieved at once the requisite pomposity of public utterance, and handled power as to the manner born. To the Peers Lord Salisbury declared that the pledges of any British Government were sacred, and that all existing obligations would be faithfully observed in the further conduct of the negotiations with the Court of Russia. In answer to the taunt, made out-of-doors, that the Conservatives would postpone the date of the election for the purpose of prolonging their enjoyment ‘of what some persons are pleased to call the sweets of office,’ he invited Lord Granville to admit that the new Government had endeavoured to amend the Redistribution Bill so as even to accelerate the dissolution. Lord Carnarvon justified the attempt to govern Ireland under the ordinary law by statistics which showed the diminution of agrarian crime. He spoke of former statesmen who had failed in Ireland--‘so many that the wrecks of them lie strewn about’--and he seemed to wrestle modestly, but hopefully, against the conviction that he himself would be added to the number. In the Commons Mr. Bradlaugh again presented himself and was received by the new Leader of the House with the usual resolutions of prohibition and exclusion, affirmed by the usual majorities. The next day Sir Michael Hicks-Beach explained the few uncontentious legislative projects which the Government would try to carry through and asked for the time of the House to enable them to wind up the business of the Session. Mr. Gladstone declared that the request was not unreasonable and that he would himself endeavour to help the Ministry by his vote and by the example of his silence. Lord Randolph, in what is called ‘a statesmanlike tone,’ described the late Prime Minister’s conduct as magnanimous and considerate; and a Radical motion of want of confidence in the new Administration finding only two supporters, the prevailing harmony remained unbroken.
The position of the Government, faced by a large majority in nominal opposition, dependent upon Nationalist favour for the avoidance of defeat at any moment and on any question, mistrusted by many of their own friends, bitterly hated by Whigs and Radicals, and unable to escape from constant humiliation by resignation or dissolution, was one of extreme discomfort. But there seemed to be a kind of truce at Westminster, in vivid contrast to the rising strife elsewhere. Under such happy conditions, and with the cessation of Irish obstruction, the end of the Session proved curiously fruitful. The Budget was uncontroversial. The Government helped Lord Rosebery to carry his Secretary for Scotland Bill through both Houses. Lord Salisbury passed a measure dealing with the housing of the working classes, in spite of some murmurings among the Peers at its socialistic flavour. Mr. Balfour took charge of a Medical Relief Bill which ultimately became law, although the Liberal majority ‘improved’ it to such an extent that the Government disclaimed responsibility for it. Mutual concessions and genuine co-operation placed both a Land Bill and a Labourers Bill for Ireland upon the statute book. The Land Bill, or the ‘Ashbourne Act,’ as it was called, took extensive effect, and was the foundation and the precursor of all subsequent Land Purchase Acts, culminating in the Land Act of 1903. Sir William Harcourt and the new Home Secretary aided each other to effect most important amendments in the criminal law; and, finally, the Colonial Secretary, firmly refusing to allow the objections of New South Wales to defeat the wishes of the other Australian Colonies, succeeded in passing a Federation Bill which opened the door to a Commonwealth of Australia. Indeed, a Parliamentary Paradise, albeit enduring only upon sufferance, seemed to have sprung into being in the midst of a Political Inferno. The good sense and tolerance of the nation were gathered within the sheltering walls of Parliament, while discord, faction, and electioneering clamour reigned supreme outside.
One curious legislative feat must be recorded. An Irish Educational Endowments Bill had been brought down from the Lords and read a first time in the Commons early in the session (May 12) as one of Mr. Gladstone’s Government Bills. It had been practically abandoned before the change of Ministry. Not one of the members of the new Government had read a line of it; but Lord Randolph--interested as ever in Irish education--was persuaded by FitzGibbon, in the early days of August, that the Bill might be so altered as to make a useful measure and he exerted himself to salve the derelict. The difficulties seemed insuperable. The Chief Secretary for Ireland, Sir William Hart-Dyke, indignant at a proposal to introduce important legislation in the last week of the last session of an expiring Parliament, refused to have anything to do with it. The Leader of the House only consented to allow the attempt upon the condition that the session should not be prolonged by a single day. The Bill had to be redrafted from beginning to end. It could not be advanced a stage without the concurrence of the Nationalist party. Three or four perfectly distinct and usually antagonistic sections of Irish opinion had to be conciliated and the negotiations between Lord Randolph and FitzGibbon on the one hand, and Mr. Sexton and Mr. Healy on the other, afforded some beautiful specimens of Hibernian diplomacy. All obstacles were surmounted. The Irish Attorney-General, Mr. Holmes--with whom Lord Randolph had made friends--undertook the conduct of the redrafted Bill. It was read a second time on August 11. The amendments, covering whole pages of the order paper, entirely altering the Bill from its original shape, unintelligible to everyone except the Minister who moved them and the two or three Irish members who discussed them, were considered on the 12th. On the 13th the Bill was recommitted, to introduce the necessary money clauses, read a third time and sent to the House of Lords: and the next day, on which the session closed, it passed and received the Royal Assent. None of its thirty-eight sections have given rise to any difficulty and during the nine years which followed its passing it was constantly renewed until the endowments and management of upwards of 1,350 Primary Schools and more than 100 Intermediate and Collegiate Institutions had been reorganised under its operation.
Mr. Holmes, the Attorney-General, like many others who worked under Lord Randolph Churchill, became warmly attached to him. Their joint labours on this Bill impressed him with the extraordinary power of conciliating persons and overcoming difficulties possessed by a man so often associated only with violence. Above all he admired his courage. ‘I feel,’ he wrote two years afterwards, when the leader of Tory Democracy was leader no more, ‘like one of Rupert’s soldiers serving under a Dutch Burgomaster.’
One harsh note jarred upon the ears of these Elysian legislators. The new Ministers had scarcely taken office before the shadowy relations which existed between the Conservative Government and the Irish party issued in a substantial form. Nationalist opinion in Ireland had long been excited over one of those dark and curious police cases the savagely disputed details of which are thrust from time to time before the House of Commons, to the bewilderment of British members. In August of 1882 a whole family of the name of Joyce had, with the exception of one young boy, been murdered under circumstances of peculiar atrocity at Maamtrasna. Ten men were arrested upon the evidence of three witnesses who professed to have seen them enter the house in which the crime was committed. This evidence was confirmed by two of the prisoners who turned approvers. After three successive trials three men were condemned to death and executed, and the remaining five, having pleaded guilty, received death sentences, afterwards commuted to penal servitude for life. So far the story was grimly simple. But it was now alleged that two of the murderers hanged had, in their dying depositions, declared the innocence of the third, Myles Joyce; while this man himself had protested always and to the last that he was not guilty. One of the informers next came forward and swore that he had been told by an official that his evidence would not be accepted by the Crown unless it applied to all the prisoners, that he was given twenty minutes to decide, and that then from ‘terror of death’ he had been induced to swear away the life of Myles Joyce. An appeal from the Archbishop of Tuam to the Lord-Lieutenant had led to an inquiry by Lord Spencer and this inquiry resulted in the conclusion that the verdict and sentence were right and just.
Hatred of a Coercion Viceroy and the profound distrust which divided all who administered the law in Ireland from the mass of the people, magnified this squalid tragedy into a political issue of importance. It was asserted that as a result of Coercionist procedure and the overweening desire of the Government to secure convictions, not only had an innocent man been done to death, but that some of those still in prison had been wrongfully convicted. When the case was raised in Parliament during the Autumn Session of 1884, the Government, representing the vote as one of confidence or want of confidence in Lord Spencer, refused all further inquiry. In this they were generally supported by both great parties and the Irish motion was rejected by 219 to 48. But Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir Henry Wolff, and Mr. Gorst had voted in the minority with the Nationalists and Lord Randolph had spoken strongly in their favour.
Almost as soon as the formation of the new Cabinet was complete Mr. Parnell moved (July 17) a resolution reflecting on Lord Spencer and demanding a fresh inquiry. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach opposed this resolution in the name of the Government; but at the same time he said that it was the right of every prisoner at any time to appeal to the Lord-Lieutenant for the reconsideration of his sentence. ‘The present Lord-Lieutenant [Lord Carnarvon] has authorised me to state that, if memorials should be presented on behalf of those persons referred to in this motion, they will be considered by him with the same personal attention which he would feel bound to give to all cases, whether great or small, ordinary or exceptional, coming before him.’ That was all; and it may not seem a very large concession to Irish national feeling, but it was enough to draw upon the head of the Minister a storm of reproach. Sir William Harcourt, undisturbed by the significant absence of Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, rose to express the indignation of the Liberal party that law and order should be subverted to political expediency and the decision of a Viceroy impugned. These sentiments were received with undisguised approval on the Conservative benches. Lord Randolph Churchill replied. So far as he was personally concerned his task would have been easy. He, at least, had consistently supported the Irish demand for an inquiry. He was to defend in office a smaller concession than he had urged in Opposition. But what with Ulster growlings, sympathetically echoed by the Tory party on the one hand, and on the other the plain need of Nationalist good-will, if peace and order were to be maintained in Ireland under the ordinary law, the path was not easy to find and perilously narrow to tread. His speech, in fact, resolved itself into a series of depreciatory comments upon Lord Spencer’s administration. Sir William Harcourt had spoken of it with pride. ‘We were proud of the administration of Lord Spencer.’ Who did ‘we’ include? It was the prerogative of royalty to speak in the plural number. Sir William Harcourt had once before electrified the country by claiming royal descent. Was it in that exalted character that he used the ‘we,’ or did he mean that the late Cabinet were united in their admiration of Lord Spencer’s Viceroyalty? The division list would show. For himself he had had no confidence in the administration of Lord Spencer. For that reason he had a year before voted in favour of an inquiry into this particular case. The new Government ought not unnecessarily to go out of their way to assume responsibility for the acts of the late Administration. They would now pronounce no opinion upon the merits of the case. The new Lord-Lieutenant would inquire carefully and impartially into it; and pending that inquiry, having full confidence in Lord Carnarvon, Ministers would vote against the motion of Mr. Parnell which seemed to prejudge the issue. On this Mr. Parnell rose at once and said that he was content to await Lord Carnarvon’s decision. He therefore asked leave to withdraw his motion. But the discussion did not terminate. The Ulster members and their friends--always so powerful in the Conservative party--were offended by the concession, small though it was, which had been made to their hereditary foes. The friendly tone of the Irish leader, and the Nationalist cheers with which Lord Randolph’s strictures upon Lord Spencer had been received, excited Orange wrath and Tory disapproval. Liberals who had smarted under the taunt ‘Kilmainham Treaty’ were not slow to retort ‘Maamtrasna Alliance.’ Mr. Brodrick, a young Conservative who had not been included in the new Government as his talents deserved, and who believed, perhaps with reason, that his exclusion was due to the fact that he had voted with Sir Stafford Northcote and against Lord Randolph Churchill in the interregnum division, expressed with much force the Conservative discontent. He was supported by the vehement outcry of an Ulster member. Mr. Gorst, who now for the first time defended the Government as Solicitor-General, unwittingly fanned the flames by allowing himself to use the candid but unfortunate expression ‘reactionary Ulster members.’ The stern reproaches with which Lord Hartington closed the debate, were endorsed by many Conservatives in the House and by an influential section of the party press.
The Maamtrasna incident was a factor in great events. It profoundly disturbed the Conservative party. It thrust the Whigs for a space back upon Mr. Gladstone. It prepared Mr. Gladstone’s mind for the reception of other impressions which were to reach him later. Upon Lord Spencer its influence was perhaps decisive; and the Viceroy who for three years had ruled Ireland with dignity and courage, yet with despotic power, whose name had become a synonym for the maintenance of law and order by drastic measures, finding the standard of Coercion abandoned even by Tory Ministers, came by one wide yet not irrational sweep to the conclusion that Home Rule in some form or other was not to be prevented. There can be no doubt that he was deeply wounded by Lord Randolph Churchill’s speech. Connected though they were by many ties of kinship, their friendly relations were not for several years repaired and were never perfectly restored.
Heavy censures have been laid upon Lord Randolph Churchill for his share in this affair. The Maamtrasna inquiry has often been described as part of the purchase price paid by the Conservative party to Irish Nationalism for power. On this a word may be said. Although no bargain of any kind existed, it is obvious that Lord Salisbury’s Government--which had come into office upon Nationalist votes, which was forced to govern Ireland by the ordinary law, and which possessed no majority in the House of Commons--was dependent largely upon Nationalist good-will. To preserve that good-will was vital to their power to bring the necessary work of the expiring Parliament to a creditable conclusion and to the success of their struggle with Mr. Gladstone. Many other issues of domestic and Imperial politics, far greater in their importance than Irish affairs, were at stake in the approaching election. The times were tempestuous; the need was great; the concession pitifully small. In the event, Lord Carnarvon received, considered, and in due course rejected the memorials which were sent him. No decision was reversed; no prisoners were released; but the Irish people, satisfied that the inquiry had been fair, accepted its conclusions. It would not be difficult, from another point of view, to justify on its merits an examination into the administration of justice in an island which for five years had lain in the grip of what was almost martial law, where the most elementary civil rights had been in abeyance and where nearly every safeguard of British judicial procedure had been destroyed--more especially when that examination was demanded by recognised representatives from a Government of which they were in a sense constituents. This is, however, to raise questions beyond the scope of these pages. The merits of the Maamtrasna inquiry will be variously appraised. Lord Salisbury’s first Administration must collectively share the responsibility, as they shared the advantage. But, whether right or wrong, Lord Randolph Churchill’s personal sincerity cannot be doubted by anyone who reads his consistent declarations upon this and kindred Irish subjects or who studies his life and opinions as a whole.
The feeling excited among the Ulster members and so largely shared by orthodox unbending Conservatives was not concealed. The Standard abused the Tory leaders in the Commons as vigorously as any Liberal newspaper. Lord Randolph Churchill had promised to attend a great meeting at Liverpool at which Conservative working men from all parts of Lancashire were to present him with a great number of addresses. July 29 was fixed for the ceremony. On the afternoon of the 28th he learned that Lord Claud Hamilton, one of his old opponents in the National Union fight, and another local member declined to attend. Regarding this as a deliberate insult to the Government and to himself, he telegraphed at once to the Chairman of the meeting:--
Telegram from Lord Randolph Churchill to A. B. Forwood, Esq.
Lord Claud Hamilton has just informed me that he and Mr. Whitley do not intend to be present at the meeting to-morrow, assigning as their reason that they disapprove so strongly of the policy of the Government on Irish questions that, if they were present, they would be obliged to express publicly their disapproval. Under these circumstances I distinctly decline to attend a meeting of the Tory party in Liverpool at which the two senior members refuse to be present. I think it in the highest degree ungenerous and unpatriotic that two gentlemen professing Tory principles should show at a difficult and critical time such a deplorable want of confidence in a Government which, in all other parts of the United Kingdom, has received from its friends a hearty and cordial sympathy.
From this determination the most frantic appeals from Liverpool failed to move him, and the meeting was abandoned at the last moment, to the great disappointment and inconvenience of all concerned. The Lancashire Tories were not, however, to be discouraged from their purpose and resolutions were immediately passed by the Liverpool Conservative Association inviting Lord Randolph to another similar meeting a few weeks later and urging the local members to attend.
The relations of Ministers with the Irish party which were thought so improper by good Conservatives, and were certainly compromising, did not end with the Maamtrasna inquiry. The appointment of Lord Carnarvon as Viceroy had been a part of the general policy of concession to Irish feeling which the new Government was forced to adopt. His opinions were known to be sympathetic to Irish aspirations and he was for that reason agreeable to the Nationalist party. That he had carried Federation in Canada, had tried to carry it in South Africa, and was well known to be familiar with the machinery of subordinate legislatures and Colonial Parliaments, were facts not in those days devoid of significance. His first speech, in the House of Lords, as Lord-Lieutenant had been a declaration of the abandonment of Coercion and an appeal, in terms of generous sincerity, for a kindlier feeling between the two countries. Beginning thus, Lord Carnarvon was soon treading that path of hope and peril which seems to possess an almost irresistible fascination for English statesmen who are invited to watch at close quarters the detailed workings of Irish administration.
Lord Randolph Churchill was always inclined to blame Lord Ashbourne for his absence from Ireland at this critical time. ‘The Irish Chancellor’s constant presence in Dublin,’ he wrote in 1889 in the memorandum already quoted, ‘might have been of inestimable service to the Viceroy and the Government.... Lord Carnarvon, a nobleman of broad sympathies, liberal mind, and warm imagination, was left alone, without any previous knowledge of the country, to survey Ireland, to realise its condition, to appreciate the difficulties of its government, under the influence and guidance of Sir Robert Hamilton, at that time permanent Under-Secretary, who was possessed of great ability and long experience of the Civil Service, and who had some time previously arrived at the conclusion that the concession of Home Rule in some shape or other was inevitable. There was no countervailing influence of knowledge and authority with the Viceroy such as Lord Ashbourne might have afforded and Lord Carnarvon glided gently into the heresy which so grievously embarrassed and damaged his colleagues and correspondingly strengthened the party of Repeal.’
At the end of July Lord Carnarvon’s opinions were so far advanced that he sought an interview with Mr. Parnell. The famous ‘empty house’ meeting was arranged. In a drawing-room in Grosvenor Square, dismantled and deserted at the end of the London season, the representative of the Queen in Ireland and the executive head of the Irish Government met the man whom the mass of the English people, high and low, had been taught during five years, by the leaders of both political parties, to regard as guilty at least of high treason and probably of complicity in murder. From the accounts which have since been made public, the conversation that ensued seems to have been interesting and agreeable. Lord Carnarvon carefully explained that he spoke for no one but himself, that he sought for information only, and that as the Queen’s servant he could listen to nothing inconsistent with the Union of the two countries. After this formality had been assented to by Mr. Parnell, the two rulers of Ireland--coroneted impotence and uncrowned power--rambled discursively over such topics as self-government and national aspirations, Colonial Parliaments and a central legislative body which might, it appeared, possess--a remarkable licence--the right of protecting Irish industries. Altogether a very instructive afternoon!
When Lord Carnarvon first explained this incident in the House of Lords (June 10, 1886) he stated emphatically that he had had no communication with the Cabinet on the subject either before or after the interview took place and that he had received ‘no authorisation’ from the Cabinet. Not until two years more had passed (May 3, 1888) did he reveal the fact that he had acted throughout with Lord Salisbury’s consent. ‘I should have been wanting in my duty if I had failed to inform my noble friend at the head of the Government of my intention of holding that meeting with Mr. Parnell, and still more should I have failed in my duty, if I had not acquainted him with what had passed between us at the interview, at the earliest possible moment. Accordingly, both by writing and by words, I gave the noble Marquess as careful and as accurate a statement as possible of what had occurred within twenty-four hours after the meeting and my noble friend was good enough to say that I had conducted that conversation with perfect discretion.’[32]
Lord Salisbury, however, kept this matter entirely to himself. No one of his colleagues, not even the Leader of the House of Commons, was made aware of the incident until the fact was declared in Parliament. Lord Randolph Churchill was subsequently both astonished and offended at this concealment of such an important political event from Cabinet Ministers by the head of the Government.
The fact that Lord Carnarvon met Mr. Parnell and, with the knowledge and assent of the Prime Minister, discussed at large with him projects of Home Rule, has been held by many people to prove that the Tory Cabinet was considering such a policy in the autumn. But, as Lord Salisbury never apprised his colleagues of this interview, the inference is obviously incorrect. No Home Rule proposals were ever submitted to the Cabinet of 1885. Had proposals of this kind been submitted, taking the form of the establishment of a Parliament in Ireland, the Cabinet would inevitably have rejected them. If Lord Salisbury had been a convinced Home Ruler he could not have imposed his view upon his colleagues. Principle, prejudice, obstinacy, conviction, would each and all together have paralysed him. Apart from the Irish Viceroy, the two Ministers who might have been expected--according to prevailing impressions and suspicions--to give the most favourable consideration to such proposals were Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. It is certain that both Lord Randolph and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach would have resigned rather than support such proposals, still less be responsible for their conduct through the House of Commons; and in resigning they would have been followed by the great majority of their colleagues. If these two leading Ministers had agreed with Lord Salisbury upon a plan, the Cabinet would have broken in pieces; and even if the entire Cabinet had agreed, it is by no means likely that they would have succeeded in carrying the Conservative party with them.
What ground is there for believing that Lord Salisbury was ever inclined towards Home Rule, or contemplated, even in the vaguest terms, making proposals to the Cabinet? No one knew better than he the character of his party and the disposition of his Government. His method had always been to obtain and use power only through the party and by the party and no English statesman in the nineteenth century was less likely to split his party or to lead some forlorn, uncalculated crusade of enthusiasm or adventure. Certainly, if any idea had crossed his mind of making a settlement on Nationalist lines with Mr. Parnell, Lord Randolph Churchill would have been the Minister he would earliest have approached. Lord Salisbury was on intimate terms with Lord Randolph. They communicated with the greatest freedom and fulness almost every day and almost always by letter. In all the extensive correspondence that remains no trace can be discovered which suggests even remotely the existence or the recognition of such an idea. The Prime Minister’s letters to Lord Randolph, so far as they relate to Ireland, proceed on the fundamental assumption that they are leagued together to resist Home Rule. They speak of the ‘onslaught that is impending.’ They examine the resources with which it can be met. But that either or both could join the attacking forces is a suggestion in itself so widely improbable, of such inherent absurdity and unimagined remoteness, that it is not even mentioned for the purpose of being dismissed. The same may be said generally of the correspondence of the 1885 Cabinet of which Lord Randolph’s archives contain an extensive store.
Why, then, did Lord Salisbury allow and authorise the Irish Viceroy to confer with Mr. Parnell? It is not for me to attribute motives to persons with whom this story is only indirectly connected; but the question cannot be avoided and certain interpretations of his action irresistibly obtrude themselves. It seems, in the first place, a reasonable assumption that Lord Salisbury allowed the Viceroy to meet Mr. Parnell because the Viceroy was anxious for such a meeting and because Lord Salisbury did not think that such a meeting would do any harm. If the officer responsible for the Government of Ireland thought that his task would be made easier by private consultation with any particular Irishman, why should the head of an Administration avowedly pursuing a conciliatory policy to Irish Nationalism and earnestly endeavouring to preserve order without a special Act, refuse to allow such consultation? Lord Carnarvon was warned to make it perfectly clear that he was acting for himself and by himself, that the communications were from his lips alone, that the conversation was with reference to information only, that no agreement or understanding--however shadowy--was in question, and that the Viceroy must neither hear nor say a word that was inconsistent with the union of the two countries. Lord Carnarvon always asserted that he had made these conditions perfectly clear. Mr. Parnell did not in all respects concur. He declared that he did not recollect that these conditions were made. The conflict of evidence was direct. Even if it were admitted that Lord Carnarvon failed to convey fully to Mr. Parnell these important preliminaries to their discussion, the fact that he honestly tried to do so to the best of his ability and believed that he had in fact done so, relieves him from any imputation of intentional bad faith as regards Mr. Parnell and clears à fortiori the Prime Minister--a person more remote from the transaction. But if Mr. Parnell chose to place upon Lord Carnarvon’s words a construction which they would not bear or to attach to them an authority which they did not possess; if he chose deliberately, or through natural inclination, to magnify the importance of the whole incident, to treat it as a formal negotiation of a treaty, was Lord Salisbury to blame for that? And if Mr. Parnell thought fit for his own purposes to convey a detailed and highly-coloured account of his interview to Mr. Gladstone and other Liberal leaders, was Lord Salisbury responsible for that? And if Mr. Gladstone jumped at conclusions upon insufficient and questionable evidence, was Lord Salisbury responsible for that? Could he foresee these possible consequences of the permission he had given to Lord Carnarvon? Ought he to have foreseen them; and if he had foreseen them, ought he to have refused to allow the meeting to take place? These are questions which it is difficult to answer here. A sufficient explanation is that Lord Salisbury allowed the interview to take place in order to pacify the Viceroy and soothe Mr. Parnell and that he did not communicate the fact to his colleagues because he thought the matter would make more trouble in the Cabinet than it was worth. Mr. Parnell’s biographer has explained with ingenuous candour the delicate and elaborate manœuvres in which his hero was at this time engaged. ‘The course of the Irish leader,’ he tells us, ‘was perfectly clear. He had to threaten Mr. Chamberlain with Lord Randolph Churchill, and Mr. Gladstone with both, letting the whole world know meanwhile that his weight would ultimately be thrown in the scale that went down upon the side of Ireland.’ Tactics like these, though perfectly legitimate for a public object earnestly cherished, are not of a character to entitle those who adopt them to any special consideration.
The session had no sooner ended than the campaign in the country began. The Liberal party went down to the General Election of 1885 in a spirit of comfortable over-confidence. Their leaders occupied themselves more in correcting each other than in assailing the Conservative Government. Indeed, it would seem that in the fulness of their power, with all the prestige of the ‘Old Man’ and the ‘old cause’ and the expected reinforcement of ‘two million intelligent citizens,’ they believed sincerely that the future lay exclusively in their hands and that the only questions of real importance were those which divided the ranks of the predominant party. Of these questions, however, there seemed to be no lack. Mr. Chamberlain’s views upon Local Government, free education, graduated taxation and, above all, upon the transfer, tenure, and compulsory acquisition of land, set forth in a series of remarkable addresses, soon drew him into a lively controversy with Lord Hartington and Mr. Goschen. Speech for speech they followed him about the country, until in the end he declared that he would accept office in no Government which ‘deliberately excluded’ the reforms he had advocated--in other words, in no Government of which they were members. Next came the question of Disestablishment, raised by stern Liberals, who found phrases about ‘the old cause’ and ‘the old ship’ soothing rather than satisfying in point of precision and substance. It was supported positively, as it appeared, by 374 Liberal candidates, and eagerly snatched at as a bone of contention by Wales and by English and Scotch Dissenters on the one hand and by Tory Churchmen and--let it be added--Tory politicians, on the other. In the last week of August Mr. Parnell demanded a national Parliament for Ireland. The whole press, Metropolitan and provincial, Liberal and Conservative, denounced his claim as destructive and impossible. ‘There was no sign,’ said the Manchester Guardian, ‘of any appreciable section of Englishmen who would not unhesitatingly condemn or punish any party or any public man who attempted to walk in the path traced by Mr. Parnell.’ Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain--differing so widely on all else--representing as they did the extreme limits of Whig and Radical opinion, rivalled each other in terms of prompt, explicit, and unqualified condemnation. Ministers were silent. Lord Randolph Churchill, speaking at Sheffield a few days later, ranged over many subjects, dwelt long upon the state of Ireland and the decision not to renew the Crimes Act, but made no reference of any kind to Home Rule.
Upon all these grave matters Mr. Gladstone was called to pronounce; and, like other party leaders under similar circumstances, he exerted himself rather to find a common basis of agreement between followers who fundamentally disagreed than to point a path of his own. He would apparently go as far with Mr. Chamberlain in domestic reform as he could carry Lord Hartington. Disestablishment, he observed cautiously, was a gigantic question, ‘and I am very far from saying that if I were twenty years younger, and circumstances were ripe for taking a matter of this kind in hand--either on the one side or the other--I should urge you not to give it the first place in your thoughts and actions.’ Upon Ireland and the future he was majestically mysterious and uttered stately phrases about the supremacy of the Crown, the unity of the Empire, and the authority of Parliament, mingled with aspirations towards ‘an equitable settlement’ and ‘another effort to complete a reconciling work.’ Mr. Gladstone’s utterances were officially declared to have united the Liberal party and, fortified by this assurance, all its sections resumed their warfare with ever-increasing turbulence, amid a babel of conflicting voices.
From this clamour and darkness the lines of battle slowly but surely ranged themselves much as Lord Randolph Churchill had expected and desired. The menace to the Established Church and to denominational teaching consolidated the Conservative party. It provided a new and perfectly unimpeachable bond of union between them and the Irish Nationalists. The cry of the ‘Church in danger’ rendered Lord Salisbury very tractable on all other questions. To preserve that sacred vessel, to him precious beyond all else in English life, there was scarcely any concession he was not prepared to make--no merchandise he would not jettison. At Newport (October 7) he showed in unmistakable language that he was ready to make common cause with Tory Democrats, though they were Radicals at heart, and with Irish Nationalists, who were rebels by profession, thereby the better to resist the onslaught of secularism and atheism. Viewed in this light, boycotting seemed to him a very small matter, probably intangible to the law, depending ‘on the passing humour of the population,’ ‘more like the excommunication or interdict of the Middle Ages than anything we know now’; and in fine his Conservative principles made shift to accommodate themselves to a political programme which was morosely admitted by friends and foes alike to be little less than the Gladstonian manifesto.
The Irish vote came over solid and unstinted into the Tory lines upon a Parnellite denunciation of Mr. Gladstone and all his works, which in tone and language might have been an extract from one of Lord Randolph’s speeches. ‘In 1880,’ ran this document,[33] ‘the Liberal party promised peace, and it afterwards made unjust wars; economy, and its Budget reached the highest point yet attained; justice to aspiring nationalities, and it mercilessly crushed the national movement in Egypt under Arabi Pasha. To Ireland more than to any other country it bound itself by most solemn pledges. It denounced Coercion, and it practised a system of Coercion more brutal than that of any previous Administration, Liberal or Tory.’
Among the millions who at the General Election of 1885 exercised, many of them for the first time, the proud privilege of the franchise, no human being could have explained with any approach to accuracy what a vote for either of the great parties in the State actually involved, whether in principle or action. Leaders on both sides, swept to and fro by turbulent cross-currents, took refuge in ambiguous obscurity, even where the most fiercely contested questions were concerned. Official Liberalism had no decided opinion about Disestablishment, nor Toryism about Fair Trade. Every politician had his own ideas about a social programme; and Ireland was a riddle at which neither party cared to guess in the absence of the electoral returns. What a mockery of statesmen’s leadership and foresight the future was to unveil! The Parnellite manifesto and the Irish vote weakened, perhaps fatally, the Liberals who a few months later were to stake their fortunes upon Home Rule. Sir William Harcourt, who derided the Conservative party for ‘stewing in Parnellite juice,’ was himself to stew in that juice for the rest of his life. Lord Salisbury, whose philosophic defence of boycotting had excited general consternation, stood on the threshold of a Coercion Bill and ‘twenty years of resolute government.’ Mr. Gladstone, appealing for a majority independent of Irish members, became evermore dependent upon them. Mr. Chamberlain was soon to fight for political existence side by side with that same Lord Hartington whom he now described as Rip Van Winkle, to sit for years in the same Cabinet as the Mr. Goschen he now ran up and down the land to denounce, and to be driven from the Liberal party, locked in fast alliance with the very Whigs he was now striving in the name of Radicalism to expel. Whether Lord Randolph Churchill surpassed these standards of consistency the reader will be able to judge as the account proceeds.
These were perhaps the busiest days of his life, and the amount of work of the most exhausting character which he contrived to discharge astonished all who knew him. Besides the anxious and incessant attention which the India Office required, and the ordinary labours of a Cabinet Minister, he had to watch the Irish situation and to prosecute his Birmingham candidature from week to week. In addition to all this he darted to and fro about the country--to Dorsetshire, Sheffield, Worcester, Lynn, Manchester--commending the Conservative cause to the electors in speeches in which serious argument was garnished with a vigour of metaphor and a raciness of language that delighted the Tory Democracy and attracted universal attention. Lord Salisbury, who knew what the management of the India Office at this time involved, seems to have been genuinely concerned lest his lieutenant should break himself down by attempting a platform campaign as well as his departmental work. ‘The strain of doing the two things together,’ he wrote (September 13) in a letter almost paternal in the kindness of its tone, ‘is enormous: and if you once go a step too far--if you once break the spring--you may take years to get over it.’ But Lord Randolph persevered; and though he was forced by ill-health to take a few weeks’ rest at the end of September, he managed to carry out nearly all the engagements he had undertaken.
Such brief leisure as he could secure he spent mainly salmon-fishing in the Carron at Auchnashellach--a house and river in Scotland then the property of his brother-in-law, Lord Wimborne. Thither also went Sir Frederick Roberts before leaving to take up the Indian command. Lord Randolph was delighted to renew a friendship so happily begun the year before at Rewah.[34]
To his Wife.
Auchnashellach: September 27.
I have written twenty-one letters to-day, some of them long ones, so you won’t be vexed if I only send a short scrawl. I think your letter to Lady Dufferin admirable and all your plans with regard to her Fund most excellent. I am sure Moore will do anything you want. I should advise you to get hold of Mr. Buckle and fascinate him, and make him write you up. I have been very glad to get Sir Frederick Roberts here, and have had long conversations with him on many Indian subjects. Did you not find him very nice? It has been everything for me getting him up here. I never could have had any real satisfactory pow-wow in London. He is coming to dine with me on October 6, to meet some of the other Ministers--only a man party. I hope the new cook will be on his mettle....
He found time to pay a flying visit to Howth--thus combining pleasure with certain matters of importance which drew him to Dublin.
Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Justice FitzGibbon.
Auchnashellach, Dingwall, N.B.: September 21, 1885.
A line to tell you that on Tuesday, 29th inst., I commence my journey to Howth. A considerable business. I shall go by Carlisle to Holyhead, and imagine I ought to arrive at Kingstown on Thursday morning. From there I shall proceed to the Attorney-General’s abode at Monkstown, and later in the day move on in the direction of ‘the Eye.’[35] Will you keep me for two nights? I have asked the Lord-Lieutenant to let me go to him on the Saturday. Can you possibly manage to put up my secretary, Cecil Wolff? He is here with me and, while we are exploring the bay and deluding the wily lobster, will decipher telegrams and look after papers--a work I am perfectly unequal to. I hope the ‘Tutissimus’[36] will be on the spot and David Plunket--also I shall have to go and see O. V. G. L.,[37] who wrote to me from Buxton the other day; and there are many other old friends I am greatly looking forward to seeing again--you first.
Auchnashellach, Dingwall, N.B.: September 27, 1885.
Many thanks for your letter and telegram. My complete physical restoration absolutely depends upon an evening with Father James Healy.
I shall try to get to you early Saturday morning, and I fear I must leave Monday night, as our great Prime Minister has summoned a Cabinet for Tuesday. I shall go to the Attorney-General’s on Thursday morning in order to get myself into a proper state of mind and body before meeting the Lord-Lieutenant. Could you not run out to Monkstown in the early morning, in order that we may deliberate as to the proper employment of Saturday and Sunday and Monday, and also that I may hear at first hand from authentic sources what the FitzGibbon Commission (Endowed Schools) has been up to. I see you have made a lot of jobbing appointments. Wolff is very pleased with your kind letter.
Can’t you get O. V. G. L. over to Howth on Sunday? This would be better than any amount of Church.
Please tell Baillie Gage privately that an intelligent telegraph clerk at Howth while I am there would be a great advantage. The cypher telegrams require care, or else are worse than useless. They come pretty thick now.
The Irish capital under Lord Carnarvon was disturbed by many whisperings of Parnellite intrigue, Maamtrasna alliances, Catholic Universities and Repeal. What if they had known of the conversation in Grosvenor Square? Lord Randolph’s sudden arrival in Dublin created a new flutter. It had been very freely said that he had committed himself to the Parnellites on Home Rule, and his visit was attributed in some newspapers to the purpose of further negotiation. He soon reassured his Irish friends. At the Vice-Regal he had a long conversation with Lord Carnarvon. The Viceroy made no mention of his communications with Parnell; but his language excited Lord Randolph’s suspicions. He called upon Mr. Holmes, the Attorney-General, early one morning, as he had proposed. They talked much on Irish politics. At length Lord Randolph got up to go. As he reached the door he paused, and, pointing with his finger, said, almost harshly and in a tone of command: ‘Now, mind. None of us must have anything to do with Home Rule in any shape or form.’ For the rest of his visit he amused himself at Howth, playing whist, chaffing his old friends, and catching lobsters in the bay. The cypher telegrams came in thickly. The short holiday was soon at an end.
Election oratory is not illuminating. The tags, the personalities, the arguments which spring into being in the excitement of the moment, may pass muster in the scrimmage. It were a harsh measure to call them forth one by one in cold blood to justify themselves before austere tribunals of taste and truth. The passions of these stormy months drew Lord Randolph Churchill into a dispute with Lord Hartington very soon to be regretted by both. It was natural that Whigs and Tory Democrats should eye each other with mutual dislike. The Whigs saw with jealousy the hold which the Tory party were gaining upon popular sympathies; with disgust their readiness to outbid old-fashioned Liberalism in all that appealed to the new democracy; and with alarm the excesses to which their own Radicals were encouraged or goaded thereby. The Tory Democrat, on the other hand, was incensed to see the ægis of aristocracy and wealth and all the solid assurance of respectability spread, however reluctantly, in protection over levelling and revolutionary doctrines. Both exerted influences upon their respective parties--the one of restraint, the other of propulsion--contrary to the general tendency of those parties. It needed but a step from these considerations for each to regard the other as insincere. The Whig accused the Tory Democrat of unscrupulous opportunism; the Tory said that the Whig was a humbug.
The actual dispute arose in this wise. Lord Hartington’s examination of Mr. Chamberlain’s programme led him to utter many sentiments about the rights of property which were not less gratifying to the Conservative party than his blunt repudiation of Mr. Parnell and Home Rule. ‘If,’ said Lord Randolph Churchill at Sheffield, after reading one of Lord Hartington’s speeches, ‘this is really all you can bring yourself to utter on political questions, you cannot indicate any difference between yourself and your friends and the Government now in power. If, on the contrary, you are compelled by the honesty of your nature to indicate the strongest possible difference with a certain section of the Liberal party with whom for years you have hopelessly and vainly tried to agree, then I say you have no longer the right as a patriot and a citizen to oppose the Conservative Government simply on the ground of antiquated names; nor the right to act with Mr. Chamberlain and his friends, who would not only destroy the Constitution, but would destroy with it that great party of the Revolution--the Whigs--under whose guidance that noble Constitution was framed.... I say to Lord Hartington before you all--not by any backstairs intrigue, not by any secret negotiations, but in the face of this meeting and before all England--to Lord Hartington, to his friends, and to his following, words which were said to men nearly two thousand years ago, who were destined to become great political guides, “Come over and help us.”’
This invitation was rejected by Lord Hartington with some asperity. It was comically suggested that he had written to inquire ‘Who’s “us”?’ and had received the answer ‘“Us” is me.’ Radicals earnestly besought him to follow the advice which had been offered. He would be much happier in the Conservative camp. It would be better for all parties if he took the plunge. To a proud man profoundly attached to historic Liberalism, painfully conscious of the increasing difficulties of his position, these taunts were galling in the extreme. In more than one speech he denounced the New Conservatives, of whom he said that they arrogated to themselves the title of Tory Democracy, had no distinctly marked political opinions, and looked on politics only as a game by which they might attain office. One shaft at least was shrewdly aimed. He taunted Lord Randolph Churchill with going about the country with ‘a great policy of grand pretensions but absolutely no legislation.’
The Secretary of State for India spoke in Manchester on November 6. It was the eve of the poll. The election fever was at its height. The streets leading to the St. James’s Hall were impassable, through the crowd waiting to catch a glimpse of their favourite.[38] The vast hall itself was crammed with excited people. Lord Randolph was in his element. He cast away every kind of restraint and devoted himself for an hour and a half with zeal and relish to an unmeasured attack upon the Whigs, their record, their leaders, their influence, and their aims. He showed how Lord Hartington had opposed almost every reform that the Liberal party had ultimately carried--the ballot, household suffrage, the abolition of flogging in the army--and yet under pressure had in the end consented to them all; how he was still professedly opposed to manhood suffrage and Disestablishment, but how in the near future he would be forced to support them; how he already advocated that extension of Local Government to Ireland which only the year before he had denounced. This was political principle! And now? ‘Did any of you ever go,’ inquired the speaker, ‘to the Zoological Gardens? If you go there on some particular day in the week you may have the good fortune to observe the feeding of the boa-constrictor, which is supplied with a great fat duck or a rabbit. If you are lucky and patient and if the boa-constrictor is hungry, you may be able to trace the progress of the duck or the rabbit down his throat and all along the convolutions of his body. Just in the same way, by metaphor and analogy, the British public can trace the digestion and the deglutition by the Marquess of Hartington of the various morsels of the Chamberlain programme which from time to time are handed to him; and the only difference between the boa-constrictor and the Marquess of Hartington is this--that the boa-constrictor enjoys his food and thrives on it and Lord Hartington loathes his food and it makes him sick....’ ‘Ah! the Whigs hate the New Conservatism and the Tory Democracy because they are democratic and because they are popular. They hate the Tory Democracy because it has cut the ground from under their feet; because Tory Democracy has taken the place of the Whigs and swept away that baffling and confusing medley party which at every crisis obscures the issues before the people. No; I quite admit that there is nothing democratic about the Whig. He is essentially a cold and selfish aristocrat who believes that the British Empire was erected by Providence and exists for no other purpose than to keep in power a few Whig families, and who thinks that our toiling and struggling millions of labourers and artisans are struggling and toiling for no other purpose than to maintain in splendour, opulence, and power the Cavendishes and the Russells.’
The audience were delighted at this hard hitting. Certainly Lord Randolph had set his mark upon the Whig leader in unmistakable fashion. It is said by some who were present and who followed his movements closely, that on no occasion in Lancashire, not excepting the celebrated ‘Chips’ speech at Blackpool in 1884, was his command from minute to minute of a meeting containing a large proportion of opponents so strikingly displayed. Lord Hartington was deeply and personally offended. ‘I hear,’ wrote Lord Randolph to his wife a few days later, ‘that Hartington says he will never speak to me again. Je m’en moque.’ But ‘never’ is a hard word in political strife.
The contest in Birmingham was watched with the keenest interest all over the country. The fame of Mr. Bright, the popularity of his young challenger, the antagonisms which Mr. Chamberlain and his doctrines had excited, the daring of the assault upon the stronghold of Radicalism, the incidents of the Aston Riots, still fresh in the public mind, united so many picturesque and personal elements that the rough and tumble of a modern election assumed the glamour of a Homeric combat. Even Mr. Balfour seems to have become enthusiastic. Considering how intimate his relations with Lord Randolph must have been during these years, it is curious how few of his letters are to be found among Lord Randolph’s extensive correspondence. But the Birmingham election drew from him a warm private message of encouragement and congratulation, written in his own hand, in the midst of his own fight in Manchester. Every word uttered by Lord Randolph was diligently reported. Not merely the regular speeches in the Town Hall with which the campaign was opened, but accounts of every petty ward meeting were telegraphed verbatim to the newspapers. Lord Randolph’s address[39] had been issued as early as October 10. From October 24 till the poll a month later he prosecuted his candidature with seemingly inexhaustible vigour and fertility; and as the days slipped by the tide of popular approval seemed to flow ever more strongly in his favour. At the Radical headquarters there had been at first some disposition to treat the attack with indulgent and superior contempt. But soon feelings of incredulous anxiety broke in upon complacency, and Mr. Schnadhorst and his myrmidons bent again over their finished--‘perhaps too highly finished,’ as Lord Randolph suggested--organisation, ciphering their pledged electors out again by wards and streets and alleys with all that American thoroughness for which the Caucus was remarkable. The progress of the fight, strangely enough, provoked no personal ill-feeling between Lord Randolph and Mr. Chamberlain. Their renewed friendship continued unimpaired. They exchanged various small civilities and avoided, so far as possible, attacking each other in irritating terms. When, for instance, Mr. Chamberlain described Lord Randolph’s address as ‘colourless’ and the reporters wrote ‘scurrilous,’ Mr. Chamberlain at once telegraphed to explain the mistake and added a friendly inquiry about Lord Randolph’s health. For the rest, the contest in all the seven divisions was bitter and fierce. Lord Randolph was helped from morn till night by his wife and his mother, at the head of their Primrose Dames. These ladies canvassed the whole of the Central Division street by street and house by house; and the Duchess of Marlborough--who was, as these pages perhaps suggest, a woman of remarkable character and capacity--visited the factories and addressed the workmen effectively on her son’s behalf. If it were in human power to command success, the Central Division of Birmingham would have been won. Against any other candidate Lord Randolph must have prevailed. But the personal loyalty of the people to their famous representative resisted all efforts. ‘I like your husband,’ said an old fellow to Lady Randolph on one of her canvassing tours, ‘and I like what he says; but I can’t throw off John Bright like an old coat.’
Not until the very eve of the General Election did the Liberal party realise that their victory in England and Scotland would not be complete and was even doubtful. For the first time since the Conservatives had taken office in June all talk of triumphant and crushing Gladstonian majorities died away. Tales of distress came in on every hand from the boroughs. Crowds of ardent Conservative working men--utterly unexpected phenomena--assembled to cheer and support the Government candidates. The Conservative party was found, moreover, to have gained vastly in prestige by its short tenure of power. Lord Salisbury’s conduct of foreign affairs extorted admiration even from his opponents. The Afghan difficulty had been removed and the Russian crisis was at an end. The Egyptian settlement was proceeding smoothly. Good relations had been restored between Great Britain and the two Empires of Germany and Turkey, from which under the late Government she had been estranged. The charges of ‘rashness’ and ‘Jingoism’ which it had been so fashionable to make against Lord Salisbury found their answer in actual events. The new Ministers had shown themselves competent and capable men. It was no longer denied that the Conservative party could produce an efficient alternative to any Government Mr. Gladstone might form.
The voting began on November 23. Forty-four borough constituencies which had been represented in the late Parliament by 35 Liberals and 20 Conservatives now (after redistribution) returned 26 Conservatives and 18 Liberals. Liverpool elected 8 Conservatives and 1 Parnellite (Mr. T. P. O’Connor); Manchester 5 Conservatives to 1 Liberal; Leeds and Sheffield 3 Conservatives each to 2 Liberals. Other large towns like Stockport, Blackburn, Oldham, Staleybridge, Bolton, Brighton, hitherto for the most part strictly Liberal, were now represented mainly or wholly by Conservatives. London, which in 1880 had sent up 14 Liberals and 8 Conservatives, now returned 62 Members, of whom 36 were Conservatives and 26 Liberals. Wherever the influence of Lord Randolph Churchill upon the Tory Democracy had been the strongest, that is to say, in the great centres of population and of active political thought, victory--all the more dazzling because so desperately won--rested with the constitutional cause. Two ex-Cabinet Ministers and quite a litter of underlings from the late Government fell before the storm. Whereas, in 1880, 287 English borough members had mustered only 85 Conservatives; in 1885, 226 English borough members numbered 116 Conservatives to 106 Liberals, 3 Independents, and 1 Parnellite. And it was, moreover, noticed that even in boroughs where the Tories were outnumbered the increase in their vote was heavy and almost universal.
Yet it is remarkable that, amid so many successes, the Conservative party should have derived enormous encouragement from a defeat. The result of the Birmingham election was declared late on the night of the 24th. Seven Liberals or Radicals were returned for its seven divisions. But the Conservative minorities were everywhere largely increased, and raised in the aggregate from 15,000 voters to 23,000. Whereas in 1880 the proportion of Liberals to Tories in Birmingham was as 2 to 1, it was in 1885 as 3 to 2. Mr. Alderman Kenrick, the Chairman of the National Liberal Federation, saved his seat by scarcely 600 votes from Mr. Matthews. In the Central Division Lord Randolph Churchill was defeated by Mr. Bright by 4,989 votes to 4,216, a majority of less than 800. It was claimed by Conservative, and generally admitted by Liberal, writers that no more significant proof of the change of opinion in English cities could be furnished than this result. But while the political world was fully aware of the meaning of the Birmingham elections, the Tories who had fought the battle with so much earnestness and enthusiasm were bitterly disappointed. Hope, growing stronger, had even ripened into confidence as the contest had proceeded, and the crowd of local leaders in the Midland Conservative Club awaited the declaration of the poll in intense excitement. As one by one the adverse results came in, the hum of eager conversation died away and gloom overspread every face. The figures of the Central Division were still delayed. ‘Churchill’s in!’ shouted a voice from the street; and a frantic cheer went up. ‘At the bottom!’ cried the mocker; and fled. Then the truth arrived. There was a sickly silence. In a moment Lord Randolph was upon his feet. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘the man who cannot stand a knock-down blow isn’t worth a damn.’ The Midland Conservative Club were accustomed to regard this remark with a respect which they did not always extend to more edifying political pronouncements.
Lord Randolph returned to London next day and was almost immediately elected by a majority of more than 2 to 1 for South Paddington, where he then lived. The Fourth Party had fought everywhere in the front line. Mr. Balfour, forsaking the shelter of Hertford, had captured an immense working-class constituency in Manchester. Mr. Gorst was returned again for Chatham. Only Sir Henry Wolff--still far away in Egypt--fell at Portsmouth, and passes as a Parliamentary politician out of this story altogether. Tory confidence flared high during the first few days of the election and ‘Back to 1874’ was everywhere the word. Lord Justice FitzGibbon was in London when the returns from the boroughs were coming in, and after spending the small hours among an excited crowd at the tape machine in the Grand Hotel, he hurried round to Connaught Place to see his now famous friend. ‘Ah!’ said Lord Randolph, pacing up and down in excited satisfaction, ‘the Whigs can no longer call us the party of the classes. If they do, I’ll chuck big cities at their heads.’
But after the boroughs, the counties. While Liberals all over the country were beginning to lose heart, while whispers of utter defeat and panic were flying about among the wire-pullers, Mr. Gladstone stoutly proclaimed his undiminished confidence that the new voters would reverse the decision of the old; and so it proved. Scotland voted solidly Liberal--only nine Conservatives being returned. In the English counties the agricultural labourers tramped doggedly to vote down the farmers’ and landlords’ candidates. Mr. Farrer Ecroyd’s Fair Trade movement, which had proved so popular in Lancashire towns, exerted an opposite effect in villages, where Corn Law memories were still wakeful. Mr. Chamberlain’s speeches had fallen upon a fertile soil. The country party, with all its immense territorial influence and candidates of county families, was shattered, never to be restored, except as a shadow of its old strength. Henceforth the Conservative leaders, if they were to rule the land, must build in town and country upon the foundation of democracy.
Ireland was a portent. Not a single Liberal was returned. The Irish Whigs were as a party and a force totally exterminated. Ulster elected 16 Tory members and 17 Nationalists. Out of 89 contests Mr. Parnell won 85, the greater part by overwhelming majorities. Upon such national authority could he base his demand for Home Rule. The leaders of both the great English parties understood the meaning of the Irish elections. On November 30 Mr. Gladstone was still appealing to his counties for a clear and strong majority over the combined forces of Conservatives and Parnellites. ‘There seems to be still hope,’ wrote Lord Salisbury to Lord Randolph Churchill, as late as December 3, ‘that we may be above low-water mark--i.e. Tories + Parnellites = Liberals.’ The hopes of both were falsified by the event. The final result of the General Election of 1885 sent to the House of Commons 335 Liberals, 249 Conservatives, and 86 Parnellites. ‘Low-water mark’ it was.
‘What will happen now?’ Lord Randolph was asked by a friend. ‘I shall lead the Opposition for five years. Then I shall be Prime Minister for five years. Then I shall die.’ In respect to the span of his life the words came true almost to the day. But his personal fortunes and the destinies of Britain were about to receive a vast and unanticipated twist.