XVII. THE TURN OF THE TIDE…

XVII. THE TURN OF THE TIDE

‘The rising unto place is laborious; ... the standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall or at least an eclipse which is a melancholy thing.’--BACON.

Lord Randolph Churchill had divested himself by a single short letter of all that authority which is centred in a political chief and a Minister of the Crown. The solid array of Conservative members who had stoutly sustained him, ‘proud to follow a leader who was proud to lead them on’; the wise and busy secretaries of a great department with their hives of fact and counsel; hundreds of sharp pens, thousands of friendly voices; the vast, pervading, persisting machinery of party, all hitherto obedient in his service, now in a moment fell away. He was only the representative of a Metropolitan constituency who possessed some skill in speaking and a small house overlooking Hyde Park. He had cast away all advantages. He had neglected every preparation. He had chosen bad ground and the worst time. Moreover, as shall be seen, he had bound himself hand and foot. Yet such was the personal importance this man had acquired, so highly were his services valued, so much was his hostility feared, that for a time the British Government tottered and his place remained unfilled.

Mr. Chamberlain to Lord Randolph Churchill.

Highbury, Moor Green, Birmingham: December 23, 1886.

My dear Churchill,--Whew! The cat is among the pigeons with a vengeance.

My sympathies are entirely with you, and I think you may rely on my cordial co-operation, if it can be of any value.

I have to speak to-night, and must express my first thoughts on what is an entirely changed situation.

I wish I was able to communicate with you beforehand, but if you have any wishes or ideas as to immediate action let me know. If necessary we will arrange a meeting, and I will run up to London again.

The Government is doomed, and I suspect we may have to re-form parties on a new basis. You and I are equally adrift from the old organisations.

Yours ever, J. CHAMBERLAIN.

Mr. Chamberlain to Lord Randolph Churchill.

Highbury, Moor Green, Birmingham: December 26, 1886.

My dear Churchill,--Yours of 24th with its very interesting enclosures only reached me to-day.

The breach was inevitable. There is much to be said pro and con about the estimates, but you were altogether in a false position. You had to fight--alone and single-handed--for every point, and were necessarily condemned to gain on each a partial victory, which left you with all the responsibility, but without a consistent and thoroughly defensible policy.

You will have a hard time to go through. Your case will be mine almost exactly, and I can tell you it is a bitter pilgrimage which is in prospect. The party tie is the strongest sentiment in this country--stronger than patriotism or even self-interest. But it will all come right in the end for both of us.

I assume that you will maintain an independent position, and in that case you will be a power that your party cannot ignore. The Standard has a right to be angry, and the Caucuses will denounce you; but in their hearts they know you are indispensable, and when they find they cannot bully you into submission they will come to your terms. Next time, however, that either you or I join a Cabinet we must be certain of our majority in it.

My speech has fluttered the dovecotes tremendously, and my correspondence shows that many of the Gladstonians are very uncomfortable and anxious to come to terms. But I do not believe that there will be any practical result. Mr. Gladstone does not give way on the main point--neither will I.

Whenever I come to London I will let you know, and we will have another talk. Meanwhile you have made the situation intensely interesting.

With all good wishes, Yours sincerely, J. CHAMBERLAIN.

Mr. Labouchere to Lord Randolph Churchill.

Private.

10 Queen Anne’s Gate: December 23.

Dear Churchill,--In your own interests think it over. This would have been all very well if you had not been Leader of the House, or if you had been Leader for some years. In the former case, you might have upset your friends and been Leader; in the latter case you would have become a fetish.

Parties just now do not hang together by principles. They are gangs greedy of office. You got your lot in--there is a wide difference between this and aiding in getting them out.

You and Chamberlain seem to me both to make the same mistake. You ignore the power of the ‘machine.’ It has crushed many an able man--Horsman, Lowe, Goschen, and Salisbury himself.

Whether Hartington joins or not, he will not be sorry that you have resigned, and he will be all the more inclined to help the Government. They only want thirty Unionists to have a good working majority. The tendency of the Government will be to yield a little more to him in order to revenge itself on you.

Joe is of no good to you. You have no idea of the feeling of the Radicals against him. There is a good deal of sentiment in these things; and just as Gladstone is their Christ, Joe is their Anti-Christ. They will laugh to scorn his ‘Grand Councils.’ They are, indeed, absurd. There are only two policies for Ireland--Coercion, or a domestic legislature, &c. All else is intrigue. You are not a Radical; on that line Joe will always cut you out.

I don’t think that the occasion you have selected is a good one. There is a strong public opinion, even amongst Liberals, for an expenditure on armaments. It is true that Salisbury may wish to obtain the money in order eventually to join in some absurd European war, but this cannot be proved, and the basis of politics is ‘hand to mouth.’

I should have thought that your game was rather a waiting one. Sacrifice everything to becoming a fetish; then and only then, you can do as you like. Hartington must go to the Lords. There is no such thing in politics as burning boats, until there have been explanations in the House of Commons. A Conservative Government must spend, and generally a Liberal Government suffers from not spending.

I write this--not, as you will perceive, in the interests of my party, but in your individual interests. Surely when it is a question of figures, and the figures are not known, there are the elements of an arrangement.

Yours truly, H. LABOUCHERE.

Lord Randolph Churchill’s resignation had been received with universal surprise; but astonishment was swiftly succeeded by anger. His enemies--and they multiplied rapidly--raised an exultant chorus of ‘I told you so!’ His friends everywhere found themselves without an answer. The Unionist Press was unanimous in its censures, and the London clubs were loud in their abuse. The cohorts of tale-bearers and gossips on the flanks of a Government were eager to impute the worst and meanest motives, and his action, already difficult to vindicate, was variously attributed to temper, to treachery, and to both. The whole strength of the party organisation was exerted against him. The public was informed through a thousand channels that he had aimed a deadly blow at the Union upon an impulse of personal ambition or of personal spite. His rupture with Lord Salisbury was utter and complete. The Queen was grievously offended by his premature disclosure to the Times; and in the mood that was abroad he found, like Macaulay before him, that to write on Windsor Castle paper may sometimes be accounted as a crime. Yet, although he was thus the object of so much reproach, he was of course unable to defend himself. He requested permission to publish his letters of resignation.

‘I cannot agree,’ replied Lord Salisbury by telegraph. ‘It would be entirely at variance with the accepted practice, according to which such explanations should be reserved for Parliament. You clearly cannot do it without the Queen’s leave.’

‘Obviously,’ rejoined Lord Randolph, ‘the letters have been shown to the Standard.’

‘No,’ was the answer. ‘Your supposition is incorrect; the letters referred to have not been seen by anyone.’

The Prime Minister was plainly within his rights in his refusal; yet while Lord Randolph Churchill was prevented by constitutional observance from publicly anticipating the explanation to be made in Parliament, and so from making any effective reply to his traducers, that explanation was being discounted in a dozen informal versions, disparaging sometimes by lavish falsehood, sometimes by ungenerous truth.

After accepting the resignation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Salisbury turned at once to Lord Hartington. He had hitherto, as we have seen, resisted the introduction of the Whigs into the Ministry; but the situation was now critical, if not indeed desperate, and he accepted the necessity. He therefore telegraphed to Lord Hartington, who was in Rome, and invited his co-operation, offering either to make such Cabinet arrangements as might suit him and his friends, or to serve under him if he would himself undertake to form a Government. Above all, he pressed for his immediate return to England. Lord Hartington responded to these appeals without alacrity. He tarried in Rome till the night of Sunday the 26th. Thence he proceeded to Monte Carlo ‘to pick up his letters.’ On the 28th he resumed his journey. It was not until the evening of the 29th that he arrived in London. His deliberation was justified by events.

The Prime Minister, having collected his Cabinet together from all parts of the country, met them on Tuesday, December 28, with a statement of his views upon the situation. ‘Master of tactics,’ as Lord Randolph called him, he rigidly confined the dispute to the single special question of the Estimates. The Ministers responsible for the defence of the Empire demanded a certain sum. The Minister responsible for the finances had refused that sum. The head of the Government, having to choose between them, was bound as a patriot to stand by the Empire. In the face of a vast Imperial issue and of the grave crisis in European affairs, the ordinary disputations of party politics--and, indeed, all personal predilections--must stand aside. The coaling stations, on which the British fleet depended for its world-wide mobility, were at stake. To defend them or not to defend them--that was the question: and who would hesitate in his answer, especially when the sum involved was remarkably small? Such, at least, was the version semi-officially communicated to the public and faithfully reproduced in every form of artistic variation by the party press, from the Times newspaper to the remotest ramifications of the provincial and local journals.

Lord Salisbury also informed his colleagues that he was in communication with Lord Hartington, and he laid before them the nature of the offers he had made. The proceedings of the Cabinet were reported to be so harmonious that the Times and many other Ministerial journals came to the conclusion that a Coalition with the Whigs was certain, and devoted many columns of print to preparing the minds of their readers for so excellent an arrangement. It was not until the next day that it dawned upon the journalistic world that numerous and influential members of the Government were very much averse on public grounds--the Empire, and, no doubt, the European crisis--from that ‘wide reconstruction’ which a Coalition or a Hartington Administration incidentally, but necessarily, involved. This reluctance was shared, not without reason, by the Conservative party generally, and voiced by the large number of members of Parliament whom the crisis had drawn to the Carlton Club. The Conservative party, although wanting thirty-five of an absolute majority in the House of Commons, were nevertheless by far the strongest and most compact party in the country; and they were by no means ready to acquiesce in their leader’s disinterested willingness to surrender the chief place in the Administration and to work on equal terms with a party which only numbered seventy. By the time that Lord Hartington’s train reached Charing Cross, on the night of the 29th, a Coalition Government had become excessively unpopular, and the Times was forced to admit, with a blush for the frailty of political mankind, ‘that Lord Salisbury’s foresight and patriotism were a good deal above the level of the rank and file.’ Lord Randolph Churchill had counted upon Tory Democracy. It was not Tory Democracy that stopped the Coalition; but Tadpole and Taper.

[Sidenote: 1887 ÆT. 37]

By December 31 all prospect of a Coalition Ministry had been definitely abandoned. Lord Hartington’s prudent and dignified delay had alone prevented him from being placed in a false position. During the whole of the 30th he consulted his friends and considered the reports which reached him of the temper of the Conservative party. He had no difficulty in coming to a decision. Even if the opinion of the Tory party had been as favourable as it was unfavourable, it was certain that the Liberal Unionists were not ripe for a Coalition, and that any attempt to force them forward would lead to their disruption, and certainly end in a separation from Mr. Chamberlain and his followers. There was another obstacle--small, but not insignificant. Lord Hartington’s position at Rossendale was not so secure as to make his re-election certain. A Coalition was, in fact, so difficult and undesirable that it could only be attempted in the last resort. And until Lord Salisbury’s Government had been defeated in the House of Commons no one could say that all alternatives had been exhausted. Lord Hartington therefore declined, on January 1, the various propositions which Lord Salisbury had made to him.

Three courses were now, according to the Times, open to the Prime Minister: ‘To endeavour to induce Mr. Goschen to take the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer; to come to an understanding with Lord Randolph Churchill; or to reconstruct the Ministry from the Conservative ranks.’ All three were strenuously debated throughout the country. The idea of a reconciliation on some compromise between Lord Randolph Churchill and Lord Salisbury obtained powerful support. Rumour was tireless in formulating the terms on which peace might be made--was to be made. The Morning Post, always an ardent and faithful friend to Lord Randolph Churchill, never ceased to urge reunion with all the weight of its unimpeachable Toryism. Every movement of the Prime Minister and his late colleague was watched with cat-like attention. No one could call at Arlington Street or Connaught Place without the closest scrutiny; and when it became known that Lord Abergavenny, Lord Rowton and Sir Henry Wolff had visited both houses, the gossips and quidnuncs of the clubs thought the dispute as good as settled.

It was pointed out at this time that the circumstances of Lord Randolph Churchill’s resignation bore a very curious resemblance to those in which Lord Palmerston had resigned the Home Secretaryship in 1853. Lord Palmerston had resigned on December 15, ostensibly on certain details of the Reform Bill. It was asserted that he differed from the Cabinet upon its policy in Eastern Europe; and this was strenuously denied by the adherents of the Ministry. Lord Palmerston’s resignation was made public before he had heard that it had been accepted by the Queen. Inspired articles attacking Lord Palmerston appeared in the Times. Lord Derby, writing to Lord Malmesbury, observed that Lord Palmerston is ‘much, and justly, annoyed’ at this. ‘As his lips are sealed, Aberdeen has no business to speak through the newspapers.’ To cap all this, there were on both occasions heavy falls of snow, which made communications difficult and slow. After some days of suspense Lord Palmerston was prevailed upon to withdraw his resignation and to resume office. Would the parallel be completed?

Lord Randolph Churchill had so little expected to fail in his conflict with the Cabinet that he had not clearly thought out how he would stand in that event. Lord Salisbury’s acceptance of his resignation, without interview, remonstrance, or offer of compromise, had surprised him; but he faced the situation calmly. Not to be behindhand in determination, he had clinched matters by himself publishing the news. He realised at once how serious were the consequences and how narrowed and difficult his position had become. He found himself, alone and unprepared, on ground most unfavourable; yet he did not seek to avoid the issue. He made no suggestions of reconciliation. Even after the failure of the Hartington coalition he would lend himself to no overtures. He forbade his friends to concern themselves in the affair. He rebuked Wolff with unnecessary violence for an unauthorised attempt, not ill-received by Lord Salisbury, to make peace: ‘Do you think you can manage me like one of your Cairene Pashas?’ During the whole fortnight that the Cabinet was in flux he abstained from the slightest action, covert or overt, which could aggravate the crisis.

To remodel the Government and to allow the excitement to cool down, Ministers prorogued Parliament from January 13--the date which Lord Randolph had fixed--till January 27, and the time when an explanation could be offered was further delayed. But in face of harsher misrepresentation and abuse than has been directed against any politician since, Lord Randolph remained absolutely silent to the public. He said nothing, he did nothing: and yet there were many close observers of politics who thought more than once that all would fall back into his hands, that Lord Salisbury would be forced to invite him to rejoin upon terms or leave him to form a Government of his own.

To Chamberlain, who had spoken of him in words of warm appreciation a few days before--saying, among other things, that Lord Randolph Churchill’s position in the Government had been a guarantee that they would not pursue a reactionary policy--he wrote with complete candour:--

December 24, 1886.

Your letter just received and your speech gave me equal delight. I told you that a Ministerial crisis was coming when you dined with me, but I own I did not think that I should have failed to persuade Lord S. to take a broad view of the situation. I had no choice but to go; he had been for weeks prepared for it, and possibly courted the crash. I did my best for his Government while I was in it, but I had ceased to be useful.... Their innate Toryism is rampant and irrepressible.

Party papers seem to think the most awful crime which a modern politician can commit is to have a spark of principle or a regard for former pledges.... I feel much in the dark as to the future; my position is completely déclassé. I hear the Carlton would like to tear me limb from limb; and yet does no blame or responsibility attach [to Lord S.?] The anxiety of the last two days has made me very seedy.

His mother had, as usual, a somewhat more hopeful account.

Treasury Chambers, Whitehall: December 28, 1886.

I have as yet no news. Hartington may join. Goschen is to meet him in Paris to-morrow; it all depends whether he can be re-elected or not. Wolff is too faithful for description. I am pleased with the general tone of the Press. I expected it to be much worse. I can’t bear to leave this room, where I can sit and think and hear everything quickly. The matter is very critical, but by no means desperate, and may drag on indefinitely for some days.

I am very well and in very good spirits. Please do not worry about me or put off your journey.

The pleasant party at Howth, to which he had been looking forward, must be forsaken.

Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Justice FitzGibbon.

Treasury Chambers, Whitehall, S.W.: December 24, 1886.

You see my Irish hopes are shattered. I mean the Howth hopes. I have nothing to do but to keep very quiet for the moment, and pleasure is out of the question.

I hope you do not blame me hastily. It was certain to come, and delay produced danger.

I should like to tell you all about it; it is too long to write.

I feel rather seedy, as the anxiety has wearied me awfully; so do not write more.

Treasury Chambers, Whitehall, S.W.: December 26, 1886.

I cannot manage Howth this year, though you must know what a disappointment to me it is not to join you. But I should be a wet-blanket altogether, and, moreover, I could not stand the ‘Tutissimus.’[60] He would drive me wild with his airs of moral triumph and success.

What a time we are having! Lord S. has committed a capital blunder in again prostrating himself before Hartington. Why did he not set his back to the wall and go on, coûte que coûte? Still, you must not think I have any illusions about myself. In inflicting on the old gang this final fatal blow, I have mortally wounded myself. But the work is practically done; the Tory Party will be turned into a Liberal Party, and in that transformation may yet produce a powerful governing force. If not, G.O.M., Labby, anarchy, &c., are triumphant.

Interesting times, my dear FitzGibbon! I wonder what old Ball says.

So far as the political world was concerned, he contented himself with writing a private letter to Mr. Akers-Douglas for the assurance of his political friends and for the information of Conservative members of Parliament who might inquire. It is remarkable that this letter has never yet been published:--

Treasury Chambers, Whitehall, S.W.: New Year’s Day, 1887.

My dear Douglas,--Having noticed in the newspapers this morning a variety of mischievous nonsense taking the form of statements as to my reasons for quitting the Government, my views as to what would be necessary to secure my return to the Government, and suggestions as to terms of reconciliation, I think it proper in the public interest, and as much for purposes of future record as for any other more immediate object, to lay before you my views on the position.

The primary object of all government at the present moment is to maintain the Union, to maintain it not for a session or for a Parliament, but for our time. The maintenance of the Union is, to my mind, in no way a question of men, but entirely a question of measures and administration. Mr. Gladstone has identified the Liberal party with the policy of Repeal; he has behind him Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and no inconsiderable portion of England. In the event of the Conservative Government and party pursuing in the coming session a policy, foreign and domestic, which for one reason or another becomes unpopular with, and is discredited in the eyes of, that great portion of the English electorate which, after a tremendous struggle, has been kept true to the principle of the Union, the inevitable result will be that at the next election Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal party will return to power, pledged to immediate Repeal, and in a position to give immediate effect to their pledge.

The composition of the present Parliament renders it a matter of no insuperable difficulty to carry on the government of the Queen for a session or two, or even longer, tant bien que mal; but such a proceeding, so limited and so narrow in its view, would be, to my mind, the most fallacious and dangerous of statesmanship. From the time when I joined the Government I have never taken my eyes off the next General Election. My one desire has been that Lord Salisbury should be in a position to go boldly to the country at any moment, confident of popular support. To this end every word of advice on any subject which I have ever offered him has been directed, and it was only when it was forced upon me that these views did not practically commend themselves either to him or his colleagues that I took the grave and serious step of releasing myself from all responsibility for a policy which in two or three years would, as far as human judgment may be exercised in such a matter, have led straight to Repeal.

A foreign policy which may at any moment involve this country in a European war; a domestic policy which would be marked by stagnation rather than progress; free expenditure, necessitating continued high taxation, when combined with the defence of the Union, would without doubt weigh down and crush out of all popular life that great and vital Imperial principle. Not only so, but a policy of which the above were the main characteristics not only involved so insignificant a person as myself in a marked violation of pledges given to the public, but also to all intents and purposes the entire Conservative party in the House of Commons. From 1880 to 1885 every Conservative speaker on every public platform has proclaimed, with every variety of style and paraphrase, that the Liberal party have been false to their traditions, and that ‘Peace, Retrenchment and Reform’ could only be practically given effect to by the Tories. Nor can it be doubted that this persistent iteration of a political position which, so far as the Liberals were concerned, could be demonstrated by facts, produced an immense effect upon the masses in the great English towns. Should, however, the results of a year or two of Tory government show that the accusations against the Tory party so constantly made by the Liberals--namely, that the Tory party are the war party, that they are the extravagant party, that they are the do-nothing and obstructive party--can be demonstrated by actual facts and events, it seems certain that the great town electorate, which we have had so much trouble in winning, will sway back violently to the Liberal party, their earlier love, and that the disaster of 1880 will be repeated on a larger scale and with more deadly effect.

To avert such a disaster there is nothing I would not do, nothing I would not sacrifice; but if the catastrophe must come, I will not that anyone shall be able to say that any large portion of responsibility rested upon me.

It was if possible by a desperate effort (so profoundly was I convinced of the magnitude of the peril into which the Tory Government and party were drifting by looking too much to tiding over the difficulties of the moment, and not at all to the next General Election) to rouse my friends to a sense of the position that I resigned my office and incurred with much equanimity the tornado of slander, obloquy and every variety of misrepresentation that friends, and possibly even colleagues, have let loose upon me.

I seek for no re-entry into the present Government; I decline to commence any undignified or unworthy bargaining and huckstering as to the terms of reconciliation; but this I say--that if by any coalition, fusion or reconstruction a Government is formed which by its composition and its policy will be an earnest and a guarantee to the country that a period of peaceful progressive administration has in reality set in, I would serve that Government with the utmost loyalty in any capacity, however humble, either as a member or a follower, only too glad that by any sacrifice or any action of mine I might possibly have averted danger to the State.

Furthermore, this I add: that whatever course the Prime Minister may take at this moment, he need not for one moment fear the smallest opposition, direct or indirect, from me, in Parliament or in the country. I shall make no further attempt to defend my action, lest by any such attempt I might, even by one iota, increase the difficulties which surround him; but, recognising to the full my great fallibility of judgment, I shall watch silently and sadly the progress of events.

Believe me to be Very sincerely yours, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.

Mr. Chamberlain’s comment was characteristic:--

Highbury, Moor Green, Birmingham: January 3, 1887.

My dear Churchill,--I return your very interesting Memorandum. If I had been you I do not think I should have added the last paragraph. When a man says that in no case will he return a blow, he is very likely to be cuffed.

However, I dare say Lord Salisbury will not take you too literally at your word, and will avoid any extreme test of your most Christian disposition.

I heard before I left that Goschen was likely to join. He will certainly carry no one else with him, but he may be able to commit Hartington to a more unqualified support than he would otherwise have given to a purely Tory Government.

I understood that one cause of his hesitation was his fear that you would be actively hostile, if he took your place. Probably he has since been reassured by a sight of your letter to Akers-Douglas.

I do not know yet whether anything will come of negotiations between the Gladstonians and the Radical Unionists. I never felt less like ‘a surrender’ in my life, and Labouchere and his crew may put what interpretation they like on the matter, but they will not be able to show that I have advanced one iota from the position of my telegram to the Unionist meeting, extended as it was by my speech in Birmingham.

The future is still obscure to me, but the game is exceedingly interesting at this moment.

Yours sincerely, J. CHAMBERLAIN.

Another explanation was not neglected:--

Lord Randolph Churchill to Sir Henry Ponsonby.

2 Connaught Place, W.: January 13, 1887.

Dear Sir Henry Ponsonby,--I saw His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to-day, and from an observation which he made I learnt for the first time on authority that the publication of the news of my resignation took place before the matter had been made the subject of official communication to Her Majesty, and that in so far as my action was responsible for such publicity the Queen had cause for displeasure with me.

I am much grieved at this news, and anxious to place on record the facts bearing upon the matter as they are known to me. On Thursday, December 18, I had a long conversation with Lord Salisbury, in which I intimated to him that the expenditure proposed for the Army and Navy was considerably higher than what I could be responsible for in view of my reiterated public pledges as to the necessity for and possibility of retrenchment. On Monday, the 20th, I had a long conversation with the Secretary of State for War, and a written communication from the First Lord of the Admiralty which confirmed me in the views which I had communicated to Lord Salisbury on the previous Thursday.

On Monday, the 20th, in the evening, I wrote from Windsor to Lord Salisbury intimating my desire to withdraw from the Government.

It would have been a source of immense relief to me if I had been able to acquaint Her Majesty with what was passing when I had the honour of dining at Windsor, but my great want of experience of official life led me to believe that had I initiated so grave a matter in the conversation which Her Majesty was graciously pleased to hold with me I should have been guilty of a most unusual breach of etiquette and of Ministerial practice and decorum: all the more as no opening presented itself for bringing up the subject, though in truth my mind was entirely absorbed by it.

Lord Salisbury received my letter early Tuesday morning, the 21st, and no answer from him reached me till eight o’clock on Wednesday evening--a considerable interval, remembering the proximity of Hatfield either to Windsor or London. Lord Salisbury’s answer was of a most definite character, accepting my resignation; and bearing in mind the interval which had elapsed, I made perfectly certain that the fullest communications on the subject had passed between Her Majesty and Lord Salisbury, and that Lord Salisbury’s answer was written with Her Majesty’s knowledge. In fact, it never crossed my mind that the reverse could be the case, and I thought myself justified in no longer making any secret of the fact that I no longer had the honour of belonging to the Government. If I erred in this, it was from ignorance and from misunderstanding, and not the least from design and I would be intensely distressed if it might be supposed that by any action of mine I had been wanting in that profound respect to Her Majesty which it is the high and grateful duty of all to render, and which Her Majesty’s most gracious treatment of myself on several occasions doubly and trebly imposed upon me.

Perhaps indeed I am doing wrong in making you this communication. If so, I trust to your kindness to inform me on the subject before making any use of this letter.

Believe me to be Yours very truly, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.

The reply was frigid:--

Sir Henry Ponsonby to Lord Randolph Churchill.

Osborne: January 15, 1887.

Dear Lord Randolph,--The Queen has read your letter relating to the announcement of your resignation before it had been accepted by Her Majesty; and commands me to thank you for your explanation.

Yours very truly, HENRY PONSONBY.

It was about this time, when many from whom he might have expected service were falling away, that Lord Randolph received the sympathy and support of an able man with whom during the next four years he was to be associated, and from whom he was ultimately destined to part in very gloomy circumstances. Mr. Louis Jennings, the Conservative member for Stockport and a full-blooded Fair Trader, looked upon ‘Tory Democracy’ as a living political faith. He was a man of strong character and extensive information who had reached the House of Commons late in life, after a varied career. He had travelled widely, and had taken an active part in the politics of other countries than his own. As the editor of the Times of India he had been largely concerned in the agitation which had led to the suppression of the Juggernaut ceremonial. With the New York Times as his weapon he had broken up, by a prolonged and pitiless audit of their accounts, the Tammany Ring in 1871; and, after a struggle in which his life was said to be in danger, he had hunted the notorious ‘Boss’ Tweed to the gaol in which he died. Taught alike by experience and study, a man of action and a writer, Mr. Jennings was well fitted to become an effective political force, and, as the editor of the Croker papers, he did not lack recognition in the world of letters. He now made himself known to Lord Randolph Churchill in a style which expresses the sincerity of his feelings and reveals the slenderness of their acquaintance:--

73 Elm Park Gardens, S.W.: December 31, 1886.

My Lord,--At a time when all the busybodies and nobodies in the country are thrusting advice upon you I am very reluctant to appear to join the throng. I hope, however, you will permit me to assure you that I have tried to keep my own constituency from committing the gross injustice of condemning a man before he is heard. For my own part, it will take a great deal to convince me that in the great sacrifices you have made, and the grave responsibilities you have incurred, you have not been actuated by a high sense of duty and by the purest and best motives. If this be so--as I feel sure it is--there will be a reaction against all this wild clamour, and the people will do you justice.

I am, my Lord, Yours very truly, L. J. JENNINGS.

Lord Hartington’s determination having been made public, Lord Salisbury next turned to Mr. Goschen. Mr. Goschen’s position was different and distinct from that of Lord Hartington. He was not tied to any particular constituency, and in respect of a seat could avail himself of the large resources of the Conservative party. He had for several years been out of tune with the Liberal policy and, more than any other Whig, he had been alarmed and estranged by the growing influence of Radicalism. He had not joined the Government of 1880, and he was free alike from responsibility for its failures and resentment towards its assailants. Lord Hartington was the leader of a party with the obligations and restrictions of leadership. Mr. Goschen was eminent, but detached. Moreover, his high financial authority would strengthen the Government at the very point where it had been most seriously weakened. He was now invited to go to the Treasury, and it was generally believed that, whatever temporary arrangements were made, the leadership in the Commons would soon devolve upon him.

Mr. Goschen nevertheless showed some hesitation in joining the Government. To participate in a regular Coalition in company with political friends wore a different complexion from entering the Cabinet of the opposite political party alone. He desired most strongly to preserve his relations with Lord Hartington and his character as a Liberal; and even when reassured on these points he stipulated that two other Whigs should be included in the Cabinet to give him countenance and support. Places were thereupon offered to Lord Northbrook and Lord Lansdowne. But at this the Conservative party, so far as it was represented by the Carlton Club, again showed such disapproval that these peers felt it their duty to decline office, and in the end Mr. Goschen was fain to join without them. For the rest, Mr. Smith became First Lord of the Treasury, with the leadership of the House of Commons; Stanhope took the War Office and Sir Henry Holland the Colonies; while Lord Salisbury himself assumed, none too soon, the direction of foreign affairs.

Mr. Goschen’s acceptance of office definitely put an end to the Cabinet crisis. ‘The new Chancellor of the Exchequer,’ observed the Times tartly, ‘will take Lord Randolph Churchill’s place in more senses than one.’ The Government was completely reconstituted, and no expectation of overtures or reconciliation could be entertained. It has in consequence often been represented that this appointment was to Lord Randolph a contingency utterly unforeseen. The saying, so often attributed to him, ‘I forgot Goschen,’ is interpreted as a key to deep designs. In an elaborate calculation he had overlooked a vital factor. In the moment of success he was ruined by an inexplicable neglect. The evidence upon these pages does not sustain this view. He marshalled no forces against the Prime Minister. With an imprudence born of repeated success, he prepared no combination, either of circumstances or men, to support his demands. He went into battle without allies or armour. He set his unaided personal power--as he had often done before--to back his opinions, and awaited the issue with an easy mind. He had not, of course, considered Mr. Goschen’s financial reputation in connection with a vacancy at the Exchequer; but, so far from forgetting Mr. Goschen himself, he was constantly solicitous for him. A Coalition with all or any of the Whigs had been for three years his consistent and persistent aim. After the election of 1885 he was willing to resign, that Mr. Goschen might join the Administration. In his memorandum written before the first meeting of Parliament in 1886 he again strongly pressed upon Lord Salisbury that places should be offered to the Whigs, including Mr. Goschen. In November he was concerned that Mr. Goschen should be elected to Parliament and urged Lord Salisbury to put him forward for a seat which might soon be vacant. And lastly, on December 18, two days before his letter of resignation, when the dispute in the Cabinet was at its height, both Lord Salisbury and Mr. Goschen were his guests at a dinner the avowed object of which was to bring them together. However decisive, however disastrous to Lord Randolph the inclusion of Mr. Goschen in the Government at this time may have been, it was no surprise; for he had always been its advocate. It was not fatal to his schemes; for there were no schemes.

Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Dunraven.

2 Connaught Place, W.: January 12, 1887.

My dear Dunraven,--I consider honestly that you are quite as good a judge as to what the political position requires from moderate progressive politicians as I am. You have seen all the correspondence between me and Lord Salisbury, as well as my letter to Akers-Douglas, about which last Lord S. says it makes the breach unbridgeable. Therefore my explanation, when it comes, will add little or nothing to your knowledge.

With respect to persons like ----, ----, &c., whom I look upon as my friends, I have been most careful to check any tendency to follow my example, for resignation might be fatal to their political career, on which they depend almost for social existence, and I was most fearful of any responsibility attaching to me for having led them to extinction.

With you I feel in a different position. You have a social and political position of your own, which the holding of a minor office in the Government by no means enhances, and which the loss of such an office would by no means affect.

Tory Democracy may be a bad name, but it represents to you and me and many more certain distinct political principles which you and I hold very strongly. That those principles are in the utmost peril just now there can be no doubt. We know what Lord Salisbury is, and we know what Goschen is, and we know that our views are regarded by both with unrelenting distrust and aversion.

On the whole, I think you are in a position to try a bold course; and you must not undervalue your strength in the country, where you are well known, followed by many, and greatly regarded by all. However, let us talk it over this afternoon at the Carlton.

Yours ever, RANDOLPH S. C.

Eventually Lord Dunraven decided to resign the office which he held, of Under-Secretary for the Colonies; but his partnership with Lord Randolph Churchill proved in the end more noticeable at Newmarket than at Westminster.

Perhaps some day it may be possible to publish in a complete form the letters, some of which have been quoted in these pages, which passed between Lord Salisbury and Lord Randolph Churchill during their eventful association. Although the period scarcely extended above two years, the correspondence would attain considerable dimensions. Yet the reader would be wise to persevere: for when we consider the easy yet forceful pens employed; the profound and secret knowledge of political movements and forces at work which both possessed; the importance, range and fascinating variety of subjects; the changing relationships and antagonisms of the writers; above all, the free and candid style of their intercourse--whether in regard to men or things--one cannot imagine any compilation which would more truthfully illuminate the dark and stormy history of those times. All that, however, is a matter for the future. Such as it had been, the correspondence was now to close, for hardly any communication--and that only of a formal nature--was desired on either side in the years which followed. Nevertheless, its conclusion was not unworthy.

Lord Iddesleigh had been apparently forgotten in the reconstruction of the Cabinet. In the strife and excitement of these harsh days this unwarlike figure had dropped out of men’s minds. Lord Salisbury’s assumption of the Foreign Office necessarily displaced him; and he was, perhaps not unreasonably, offended to read the first news of it in the daily papers of January 12. It was said by the wags that ‘Randolph had driven him from the House of Commons in his rise, and from the Cabinet in his fall.’ Tragedy, never very far behind the curtain, came forward swiftly on the heels of this. That same afternoon Lord Iddesleigh called upon Lord Salisbury at Downing Street, and, being overtaken in the anteroom by the heart disease from which he had so long been afflicted, he expired in the presence of the Prime Minister.

The disputes between Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Stafford Northcote have been very fully recorded in this story; and I fear their harsh features cannot truthfully be softened or smoothed away. They must be judged as a whole and in relation to the circumstances of the time. Here is the last word upon them:--

Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Salisbury.

2 Connaught Place, W.: January 13, 1887.

Dear Lord Salisbury,--Although a great and wide political difference has separated me from you officially, I cannot refrain (even possibly at the risk of being misunderstood) from writing you a line to express how greatly I grieve for the shock you must have experienced owing to the melancholy occurrence of yesterday afternoon. It seems very hard on you that this grave event should have come now to add its own weight to the many other troubles and worries which circumstances purely political have occasioned.

I felt much the old Lord’s death, for he had for years past gone through much bother, disappointment, and probably vexation, nor can I conveniently repress the reflection quorum pars magna fui. But this I can say from my own knowledge, consisting of the recollection of many facts and conversations, that never in public life did any man have a truer friend and colleague than Lord Iddesleigh had in you; and certainly if rewards, honours and the praise of men are sources of satisfaction, Lord Iddesleigh enjoyed them in a fuller measure than any other contemporary, and that he did so I consider to be mainly owing to the unwavering loyalty with which you invariably supported him, checked all depreciation, and stimulated constant recognition of his public services.

I like to place this on record, though possibly it may be deemed somewhat presumptuous, for it has been my fortune in the last two or three years to see as much almost perhaps as anyone into the inner and more concealed working of our party life.

Believe me to be, with much sympathy,

Yours most sincerely, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.

Lord Salisbury to Lord Randolph Churchill.

Hatfield House, Hatfield, Herts: January 14, 1887.

My dear Randolph,--I am very grateful for the kind sympathy expressed in your letter of yesterday, and very much touched by it. Your testimony to my bearing towards our old friend in the past is thoughtful and generous.

It was a very painful scene that I witnessed on Wednesday in Downing Street. I had never happened to see anyone die before--and therefore, even apart from the circumstances, the suddenness of this unexpected death would have been shocking. But here was, in addition, the thought of our thirty years’ companionship in political life; and the reflection that now, just before this sudden parting, by some strange misunderstanding which it is hopeless to explain, I had, I believe for the first time in my life, seriously wounded his feelings. As I looked upon the dead body stretched before me I felt that politics was a cursed profession.

I have received very kind and considerate letters from his family.

Thanking you again for the thoughtfulness of your letter,

Believe me Yours very truly, SALISBURY.

As the time for the meeting of Parliament drew near, it was necessary for Lord Randolph to think very carefully upon the explanation he would offer for the unexpected events of the Recess. Circumstances complex and adverse made his position one of extreme disadvantage. It was hardly possible for him to move in any direction without estranging friends or exposing himself to enemies.

The spirit of his differences with Ministers was vital, but the actual matter in dispute could only be regarded as trivial. Two courses therefore presented themselves at the outset: either to fight on the large ground of the unsatisfied aspirations of Tory Democracy, as set forth in his letter to Mr. Akers-Douglas, or upon the small ground of the Estimates. The first involved a downright assault upon the Conservative Government, an irreparable breach with its leaders, and the breaking of many old friendships and associations. The second whittled the difference down to a question of not very important figures, on which Parliament must soon decide. The one promised a chance of successful strife, the other offered a prospect of reconciliation; the one led soon into very deep waters, the other lay among the shallows. But, in all respects save one, the first was the path of courage, of consistency and perhaps of prudence also. It suited his nature. It freed his hands. It justified and explained his action in a manner which the people could easily understand. ‘I fondly hoped to make the Conservative party the instrument of Tory Democracy. It was “an idle schoolboy’s dream.” I must look elsewhere.’

No doubt that was the road to tread. It might have ended in Liberalism; but from that he would not at a later date have shrunk. Chamberlain and Rosebery were better friends to him personally and politically than Smith or Hamilton or Balfour could ever be. To act with the Conservative party meant political paralysis, perhaps for years. To stand independently, or upon a moderate Liberal platform, putting away once and for all any thought of reconciliation, meant usefulness, support and growing power. But one great barrier interposed. The Union was a cause to which he was pledged, not only by memorable votes and speeches, but by profound and unalterable conviction.

So this first course, with its various chances, was forbidden. The second was scarcely more satisfactory and far less congenial. In whatever proportion he restricted the dispute to a mere question of expenditure, he deprived himself of the power of defending his resignation, and therefore weakened his position with the country. To fight on finance alone, when the other differences were known to his late colleagues, looked like repentance and admission of error. It was a course which counted on generosity where generosity was lacking; which counted on gratitude for past services, while in politics present and proximate utility is mainly considered; and it was a course requiring in an unusual degree patience and restraint. But, so far as outside influences could avail, this course was made easy for him. His friends and his family besought him not to break with his party. Ministers addressed him in terms uniformly friendly and considerate. ‘The subject on which he parted from us,’ wrote Lord Salisbury to the Duchess of Marlborough on January 11, ‘is one which the House of Commons must decide one way or the other very shortly, and no one would dispute that its decision, once gained, must be accepted. After that it will be quite open to Randolph to rejoin this or any other Conservative Ministry as soon as opportunity occurs.’

And Mr. Smith on the 13th:--

You have a perfect right to hold the views you expressed to me in my room. I differed then and now from you, but it may turn out that you are right and that I am wrong, and I shall accept a demonstration of that fact without the very slightest personal annoyance.

But, however that may be, all that has happened is an incident in the career of a young politician of quite a temporary character, and, unless my life is cut short as Northcote’s has been, I look forward with confidence to a future--and the sooner it comes the better--when I shall be in the retirement I long for, and you will be leading a great party with prudence and firmness and courage.

Lord Randolph chose to follow the second course; he avowed himself an independent supporter of the Government, and his formal request for permission to explain made no allusion to differences on foreign policy or legislation.

Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Salisbury.

2 Connaught Place, W.: January 18, 1887.

Dear Lord Salisbury,--May I ask you to be so kind as to obtain for me Her Majesty’s permission to make to the House of Commons the necessary explanation of my reasons for quitting the Government? I propose, if this permission is granted, to state briefly the nature and amount of the expenditure to which I objected, to answer with equal brevity certain precipitate criticisms on that resignation to which many Members of Parliament and much of the Press are committed, and to conclude by reading the three letters which passed between us, viz. mine of the 20th, yours of the 22nd, and my reply of the same date.

Believe me to be Very truly yours, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.

Lord Salisbury to Lord Randolph Churchill.

10 Downing Street, Whitehall: January 19, 1887.

My dear Randolph,--In pursuance of a message I got from you through Douglas I asked and obtained the requisite permission when I was at Osborne the other day. The form in which you propose to give your explanation seems to me quite correct.

Believe me Yours very sincerely, SALISBURY.

Mr. Goschen having failed to secure election at Liverpool, Parliament met upon January 27 without a Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Speaker had indicated the proper time for explanation; and when Lord Randolph Churchill rose, immediately after the notices of motion, from the second bench above the gangway, the appearance of the House was a proof of the interest with which that explanation was awaited. He followed punctiliously the course he had indicated in his letter to the Prime Minister; and his tone, though a little sarcastic, was not at all unfriendly to the Government. As a statement his speech was unexceptionable in all respects; as an explanation it was necessarily inadequate. Little was added to the knowledge of the public; and although the calm antagonism of the letters on both sides was not without its effect upon the House, the general feeling when he sat down was of disappointment. This impression, which was deepened by a most dreary fog which invaded the chamber, found abundant record in the prints of next day.

He spoke again three days later in the debate on the Address, following, as it happened, in succession to Mr. Bradlaugh. Preserving throughout a jaunty air of independence, he nevertheless made it perfectly clear that he intended to remain a supporter of the Union and of the Conservative Administration. He derided the Plan of Campaign, and defended and eulogised, with humour and effect, the policy of the Chief Secretary, who had been, as usual, assailed by the violence of one Irish party and by the suspicions of the other, and who was, moreover, suffering from the severe affection of the eyes which was soon to necessitate his retirement. He pointed out that the Procedure proposals, for which he had been personally so much attacked, were in precisely the same form as when he resigned, and that the legislative programme of the gracious Speech ‘bore a strong family resemblance to that set forth in a certain speech made in Kent not long ago.’ He noticed the revival of the old paragraph that the Estimates had been framed with due regard to economy and efficiency. ‘They must have been greatly altered,’ he observed, ‘since I left the Cabinet.’ He spoke, in characteristic words--the truth of which has not been unpaired by time--of the difficulties which the House of Commons encounters in any attempt to control or even criticise expenditure.

But the passage of greatest significance referred to the Chamberlain overtures and negotiations with the Gladstonian Liberals, which were at that time taking the form of the celebrated Round Table Conference. ‘I notice,’ he said, ‘a tendency of the party of the Union to attach too much importance to precarious Parliamentary alliances, which are as transient and uncertain as the shifting wind, and too little to the far more important question how to keep the English people at the back of the party of the Union. When I was in the Government I made it my constant thought and desire to make things as easy as possible for the Liberal Unionists, to introduce such measures as they might conscientiously support as being in accordance with their general principles, and to make such electoral arrangements as might enable them to preserve their seats. But I frankly admit that I regarded the Liberal Unionists as a useful kind of crutch, and I looked forward to the time, and no distant time, when the Tory party might walk alone, strong in its own strength and conscious of its own merits; and it is to the Tory party, and solely to the Tory party, that I looked for the maintenance of the Union.’ He went on to say that Mr. Chamberlain, in these negotiations, was pursuing ‘an erroneous and mistaken course.’ ‘The Tory party will, I think, never follow a line of policy which by any reasonable construction can create in Dublin anything in the nature of an Irish Parliament. That is our clear position, from which, under no pretence of local self-government, shall we depart; and it would be well for the right honourable gentleman the Member for Birmingham, who is now indulging in such extraordinary gyrations, to recognise that, whatever schemes of Home Rule for Ireland may commend themselves to him, they are not, under any circumstances, likely to commend themselves to members on this side of the House.’

These somewhat discursive observations were in themselves brilliantly successful and were heard by the House with keen pleasure and attention. ‘Very many thanks for last night,’ wrote Beach; ‘you are a good friend.’ But in spite of this, and although the intervention attracted so much notice from subsequent speakers as to excite the remark that the debate proceeded less upon the Queen’s Speech than upon Lord Randolph Churchill’s, it cannot be called well conceived. The weak, and at the same time the strong, point was the ‘crutch.’ Those who were independent of such support laughed and laughed again; but the Liberal-Unionist members, and those who owed their seats to Liberal-Unionist votes, were at once offended and alarmed. Although intended in a spirit of sober candour, it had about it a suspicion of reckless mischief, which his many opponents were not slow to turn to profit. Mr. Chaplin belaboured him vigorously in reply. The Unionist newspapers adopted uniformly an attitude of solemn rebuke; and while Government speakers in a long succession denounced or deplored such disrespect of loyal allies, Mr. Jennings alone among his friends was able to offer an effective defence. Moreover, the Liberal Unionists at this stage of their transition were the natural and legitimate associates of a Democratic Tory. They looked to the progressive elements in the Conservative party to make the Unionist alliance easy in Parliament and to give them countenance in the constituencies. Their leaders were far from being unsympathetic to the cause of economy; and Chamberlain especially, who had shown himself willing and anxious to co-operate in various ways, and whose position at this time was difficult, delicate and insecure, had, it must be admitted, good grounds for his complaint.

Mr. Chamberlain to Lord Randolph Churchill.

Private.

40 Prince’s Gardens, S.W.: February 2, 1887.

My dear Churchill,--Why will you insist on being an Ishmael--your hand against every man? Why did you go out of your way on Monday to attack me?

You know that I am the mildest of men, but I have a strong inclination to hit out at those who strike me, and my experience teaches me that no private friendship can long resist the effect of public contest.

You and I have plenty of enemies. Is it not possible for us each to pursue his own way without coming into personal conflict?

Surely we shall have our hands fully occupied without tearing out each other’s eyes.

Yours sincerely, J. CHAMBERLAIN.

Lord Randolph seems to have realised that there was for the moment nothing that he could usefully do; and on the morrow of his speech he came suddenly to a decision.

To his Mother.

2 Connaught Place, W.: February 2, 1887.

After great reflection and balancing of everything I have decided upon a little holiday abroad and am off to-morrow night. I shall be away, I expect, about six weeks, and H. Tyrwhitt and I contemplate going to Algiers, Tunis, Malta, Palermo, Naples, and so home. It will, I think, be a grand rest for me, and good for the nerves. I don’t see that I can do any good by hanging on here day after day. The Address will go on for a long time; then will come Procedure, then Coercion; so that when I come back they will not be much further ahead than they are now. I think my speech last night did a lot of good, and H. Chaplin’s violent attack shows how much the enemy is alarmed. I am told H. C. did not go down very well, and Jennings answered him capitally. George[61] will watch after my interests, and I shall ask him to take charge of my correspondence.

I have no information as to what is passing inside Ministerial circles, but I have an instinctive feeling that all is not right and that they will come to grief. Beach was very grateful to me for what I said about him.

I wish I could have seen you before going, for a farewell talk over everything. I have a lot to do to put things in order and to get ready.

To Chamberlain he wrote (February 3) in amicable terms, not withdrawing in any way from his discouragement of the Round Table Conference, but indicating his difficulties and announcing his project. ‘I do not think I said anything which ought even to ruffle our private friendship, which--though it may seem a paradox to say so--is one of the chief and few remaining attractions of political life. For the moment I am quite tired and worn out. “Many dogs have come about me, and the council of the wicked layeth siege against me.” Therefore I seek a temporary refuge and repose in a flight to the south and to the sun.’

His friends, for the most part, thought him right to go. ‘Be of good cheer,’ wrote the warm-hearted Jennings; ‘you are by no means alone. As for the men whom you have put into office, or who would not be in office but for you, their conduct makes me sick. I am very glad you are going away for rest and change. It will give time for events to shape themselves; and when you are gone, you will be missed, and kinder feelings will enter into the consideration of your position. You could not do much good just now, and anything that went wrong would be laid on your shoulders. You will come back in time to save both party and Ministry from the consequences of their own incapacity. My deepest sympathies will always be with you in your unequal, but just and honourable, struggle. I would stake my life upon your ultimate success.’ Sometimes, perhaps, these wagers are accepted.

The next night--February 3--Lord Randolph left England, and I shall not offer to the reader other accounts of his wanderings than his own.

To his Wife.

February 9, 1887: Hôtel Régence, Algiers.

...It is certainly very pleasant getting away from the cold and worry of London. I have hardly given two thoughts to politics since I left; but I wonder whether there is still much carping going on against me, or whether my flight has disarmed my enemies.

To his Mother.

Biskra: February 15, 1887.

I suppose this will find you back in London. I was so glad to get your letter, long and interesting, from the Castle. I expect you must have found it pleasant there on the whole. If anything could remove any lingering doubts I may have had as to the prudence of leaving the Government, it would be the charm of this place, which I should not have experienced except for that rather strong proceeding.

The weather is beautiful--the air quite cold, and the sun not too hot. We shall remain here till the end of the week. Harry Tyrwhitt is a most amiable companion, and possesses the additional qualification of being fond of chess, so we are never at a loss to pass the time.

We had a long drive from Batna, twelve hours, but through an attractive and varied country. This place is right in the true desert, and is a great grove of palm-trees of all sorts, shapes and sizes, difficult to get to, but well worth the trouble. In another two years they will have finished the railway right up to here, and then the quiet of the place will probably be spoilt.

We shall leave Friday or Saturday for Constantine, and then on to Tunis. I saw in a French paper that Goschen had got in, but it did not give the numbers. However, I confess I do not think much of politics, and rejoice over my freedom and idleness--which I hope will not shock you.

To his Mother.

Constantine: February 21, 1887.

I was so glad to find here, on arrival last night, your two letters of the 10th and 12th. I read and pondered very carefully all you wrote about what Ashbourne said. But I do not think there will ever be any question of my rejoining the present Government. When the old gang with their ideas are quite played out and proved to be utter failures, then, perhaps, people will turn to the young lot. Till this time comes, and I do not think it is far off, I must wait patiently. I consider my position a very good one, and, though it may seem a strange thing to say, better than if I was in my old place in the Government. I am not mixed up or responsible for their policy or their proceedings, which are, I think, faulty and feeble and hopelessly inadequate to what the times require. I am very glad Dunraven resigned. He is a man of considerable importance, and has made a position for himself with the working men.

I am so glad you liked Ireland, and I delight to hear of Castlereagh’s success. I always felt sure he was admirably fitted for the post. George writes me invaluable reports on House of Commons affairs. I should like to form a Government, if only to give him a real good place; his letters are most able. If you are giving any little dinners, I wish you would ask Jennings, M.P. He is a very clever man, and would interest you.

This is certainly a pleasant and amusing country to travel in, if only the hotels were a little better. The weather, though bright, is not warm, and I wear thick clothes, as in England.

We go to Tunis to-morrow. I am feeling very well, I am thankful to say, and keep blessing my stars I am not in the House of Commons. If people only knew how little official life really attracts me, they would judge one’s actions differently.

To his Wife.

Tunis: February 25, 1887.

We have decided to go on to Palermo to-night, for there is no other boat till to-day week; and if it was stormy weather then, we should have to cross whether we liked it or no--whereas now the weather is beautiful and calm, so we take advantage of it to get over the Mediterranean and hope to arrive at Palermo Saturday evening.... This is a more interesting place than any we have yet seen--much more truly Eastern. The old native bazaar is delightfully curious. I bought you a few pieces of stuff which will serve to cover cushions or to make portières. Having once seen the town, there is nothing much more to see, and I do not know how we should pass a week here.... We passed through much beautiful country coming here from Constantine; it is all well worth seeing. Last night we went to see Aïss Sawa, an extraordinary troop of fanatic Arabs who dance and yell, cut themselves with swords, and eat nails, broken glass and scorpions. I think there is a good deal of humbug and trickery in it; but it was very curious and very barbarous, and for noise a pandemonium....

To his Wife.

Palermo: March 2, 1887.

I have to-day got hold of a whole week’s file of the Times, down to the 25th, which has posted me up in political matters. I think the Government are earning a rather second-rate kind of succès d’estime, but I fancy I detect signs of feebleness and inefficiency, which will become obvious when real difficulty arises. I own W. H. Smith has done better than I expected, for I expected a complete breakdown; but, having made that admission, his speeches read to me most commonplace, and I think before long the House and the party will get much bored with him. I am amused at the Government surrender about my Army and Navy Estimates Committee in reply to a question from George C.[62] I expect the Burnley election quickened their sluggish economic impulses. The election I look upon as very significant, and as bearing out what I wrote to A. Douglas. They may plod on in Parliament, but they are losing their hold on the imagination and enthusiasm of the country generally. However, all this is speculation. In any case, I am in no hurry to come home--and am, too, thankful I went away. Really I have had a nice time hitherto....

To his Mother.

Messina: March 9.

Here we are, caught like rats in a trap. Just as we were packing up yesterday to leave for Naples it was announced that on account of cholera at Catania quarantine had been imposed in Sicily, and that we could not leave. This is a great blow, for we do not know how long we may be detained here. There is nothing to see or do, and the hotel is dirty and uncomfortable. We are in despair....

To his Wife.

Naples: March 12, 1887.

I send you the enclosed under what the Foreign Office calls ‘Flying Seal,’ which means you are to read it and send it on; it will tell you of our proceedings. At last we have got here, but without either servants or luggage; goodness knows when they will come. Harry T. and I made up our minds we would not stand being detained prisoners indefinitely at Messina. We made a fruitless application to the Ambassador at Rome to be exempted from quarantine; all regular steamboats had been taken off, and even if we had got a passage we should have had to do five days’ quarantine at Gaeta--a horrible prospect. So we went to the Consul--a character he is! He introduced us to a man who knew a man who knew some Sicilian fishermen who for a consideration would put us across the Straits. Nous n’avons fait ni un ni deux, but pursued the project. We embarked in an open boat at eight o’clock on Wednesday evening in Messina harbour, with nothing but a tiny bag and a rug, with a dissolute sort of half-bred Englishman and Sicilian, to act as interpreter and guide, and six wild, singing, chattering Sicilian fishermen. We reached the Calabrian coast about 9.30; but the difficulty was to find a landing-place where there were no gendarmes or coastguards or inhabitants awake. The last danger was the greatest, for the peasantry are awfully superstitious about cholera, and are a wild, savage people; and we might have had rough treatment if any number of them happened to see us.

At last we found a little fishing village where all was quiet. In we ran, out we jumped, and off went the boat like lightning. After clambering up some precipitous rocks, fortunately without waking anyone or breaking our necks, we found temporary shelter in a miserable inn, where we represented ourselves as having come by boat from Reggio, and being unable to get back on account of the strong Sirocco wind which was blowing. We had to wait about an hour here all alone, with two wild men and a wild woman, while our guide was quietly endeavouring to find a conveyance. At last he got a common cart, and about eleven o’clock we started for the house of an Englishman at San Giovanni who has a silk mill, and to whom we had a letter from the Consul. The innkeeper and his companions asked a lot of tiresome questions and seemed very suspicious, but in the end let us go quietly. Just after starting we met two gendarmes, and afterwards two coastguards, but fortunately, they asked no questions; so everything went well for some four or five miles, except for the awful jolting of the cart, which exceeded anything in the way of shaking you ever dreamt of. All of a sudden the peasant who was driving the mule ran the cart against a great stone, and sent us all flying into the road. I never saw such a sprawling spill. Fortunately we were only shaken and dirty, but the driver was much hurt, which served him right, and he groaned and moaned terribly for the remainder of the journey; being a big fat man, he had fallen heavily, and I should not be surprised if he had since died.

At last, at one in the morning, we reached the house we were looking for, and had a great business to awaken the people; nor did we know how we should be received, arriving in so strange a manner. The Englishman, however, was very good, took us in, gave us supper, and we lay quiet until the evening of the following day, when we slipped into the direct train for this place, which we reached without further trouble. But what a thing it is to have an evil conscience! I kept thinking that every station-master and gendarme on the road scrutinised us unnecessarily; and what a trouble and scandal it would have made if we had been arrested and put in prison! However, all is well that ends well, and I had the delight of finding an immense bundle of letters from you and others at the post here. We had to buy shirts and socks and everything, for we were without change of any kind; and what the hotel people here thought of us I cannot imagine. But they were civil and made no remark. Our quarters are very comfortable after the filth of Messina, and I think that our journey was adventurous enough to have taken place a hundred years ago.

I can quite understand the political situation, having read all you and Curzon and Jennings wrote. For me it is not unsatisfactory; but for the general Tory prospects it is most gloomy. What a fool Lord S. was to let me go so easily!

Give Winston the enclosed Mexican stamp.

To his Mother.

Naples: March 14, 1887.

I was very glad to get your letter of the 7th the day before yesterday. We are very comfortable and happy here. The weather is lovely and the hotel most comfortable.

We have heard nothing yet of our servants and luggage, and conclude they are still at Messina, unable to get away. How fortunate it was for us that we made the bolt we did! I have not seen anyone here I know, except one of the FitzGeorges. We have been to the opera and the circus; both very good. We amuse ourselves by contemplating excursions to Pompeii and even Vesuvius; but we are both such lazy sightseers that I doubt whether we shall ever go there. Sitting in the gardens listening to the band, or driving along the coast, is more our line.

I have just received a long and most interesting letter from George. I cannot think for what political reasons anyone should wish me to return; I could do no good. I make out from the papers that since I left the Government the Estimates--Army and Navy, supplementary and annual--have been reduced by over 700,000_l._ If this is so, some friend in the House should proclaim it. If George looks at two letters from Jackson[63] just after I went out, among my papers, and at my speech on resignation, and compares them with the Estimates actually produced, he will find out if I am right in my supposition. He might ask Jackson, privately, as a friend, the truth of the matter. You see, the Government have adopted my suggestions as to the printed statements of Estimates and as to Parliamentary Committee; so altogether my action is not unjustified by events.

Smith seems to make a poor Leader as far as debate goes. He seems to leave the management of procedure to Raikes and Ritchie and to be unable to take any part himself. I think they were very foolish to accept that amendment of Hartington’s; it makes them look more than ever like a patronised and protected Government. Coercion will be very difficult for them in view of the reported evidence of the Cowper Commission. Many Tory M.P.s are pledged against Coercion, and fear to lose their seats. Beach is a great loss to them in respect of this question. However, all these things do not interest me much. Che sarà sarà.

I shall probably stop a few days in Paris, so as to let the House rise for the Easter holidays, before I get back. I suppose I must make a speech in Paddington in the holidays. George might ascertain from Fardell what would be a good day.

How men may for a time prosper continually, whatever they do, and then for a time fail continually, whatever they do, is a theme in support of which history and romance supply innumerable examples. This chapter marks such a change in the character of the story I have to tell. Hitherto the life of Lord Randolph Churchill has been attended by almost unvarying success. His most powerful enemies had become his friends. His instinct when to strike and when to stay was unerring. Fortune seemed to shape circumstances to his moods. The forces which should have controlled him became obedient in his service. The frowns of age and authority melted at his advance, and rebuke and envy pursued him idly. All this was now to be changed. During the rest of his public life he encountered nothing but disappointment and failure. First, while his health lasted, the political situation was so unfavourable that, although his talents shone all the brighter, he could effect nothing. Then, when circumstances offered again a promising aspect, the physical apparatus broke down. When he had the strength, he had not the opportunity. When opportunity returned, strength had fled. So that at first, by sensible gradations, his political influence steadily diminished; and afterwards, by a more rapid progress, he declined to disease and death.

When a politician dwells upon the fact that he is thankful to be rid of public cares, and finds serene contentment in private life, it may usually be concluded that he is extremely unhappy. Although Lord Randolph’s letters to his mother, to give her pleasure, were written in a cheery and optimistic vein, there is no doubt that he felt very bitterly the sudden reversal of his fortunes and the arrest of his career. During this voyage, of which he gives so gay an account, he was afflicted by fits of profound depression and would often sit by himself for hours plunged in gloomy thought. And I think he had good reason to be dejected; for although he had parted from his colleagues under all guise of courtesy and good-will, he knew well that enormous barriers were building themselves against him, and that no talents, no services, no needs--short of the bluntest compulsion--would induce them to share their power with him.

Lord Randolph Churchill procured by his resignation almost every point of detail for which he had struggled in vain in the Cabinet. The reductions of 700,000_l._ in the Navy Estimates, which had been conceded to his insistence, were ratified and maintained by his successor. The Estimates for the Army, which had been declared utterly irreducible, were reduced by 170,000_l._ after his resignation. The Supplementary Estimate of 500,000_l._ for the defences of the Egyptian frontier, to which he had long demurred, was promptly rejected by Mr. Goschen as an unauthorised charge on British funds. He might therefore claim with perfect truth that he had saved the taxpayers 1,400,000_l._; and although our sense of financial proportion has been largely modified by time, this was considered in those days a not insignificant sum. It is not necessary here to examine the policy of these economies. It is sufficient that they were strongly resisted, in spite of his advocacy, while he was a member of the Government, and admitted on their merits after he had resigned.

The coaling stations--of such vital urgency in December 1886--were left untouched by additional expenditure until 1888, and strengthened then only to an inconsiderable extent. Seven coaling stations which figured in the estimates presented to Lord Randolph Churchill--namely, Halifax, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Esquimault, Ascension, Trincomalee and Sierra Leone, have been in the light of modern experience reduced (1905) by Conservative Ministers, the heirs of the Government of 1886, to ‘skeletons,’ on which no money is to be spent in peace time.

The objections which Lord Randolph had entertained to the Eastern policy which Lord Iddesleigh seemed inclined to pursue, were justified by Lord Salisbury’s action at the Foreign Office. All idea of interference in the internal affairs of the Balkan States vanished so completely from the minds of Conservative statesmen that it was held libellous to assert that it had ever existed; and the instructions that were sent by the new Foreign Minister to Sir William White, were of such a nature that Lord Randolph could say of them, ‘the English people may now be certain that they are not likely to be involved in any European struggle arising out of Bulgarian complications.’ The new Procedure rules, which he had been accused of forcing upon unwilling colleagues, were presented to Parliament unaltered; the Local Government Bill took the extensive form he had desired; the introduction of a Whig element into the Cabinet was secured; and the Dartford programme, for which he had been condemned as a Radical in disguise, became the prosperous and successful policy of the Conservative party. The spirit of the Administration and the aims which it pursued--at home, in Ireland, and abroad--in policy and in administration, were indeed widely different from those of any Government he would have guided; but in so far as the special points in conflict were concerned, Lord Randolph Churchill’s resignation was vindicated in the most definite and tangible manner by the actions of those who had most strenuously opposed him.

All this availed him nothing. Ministers in plenty had quitted English Governments before without dissociating themselves from the party to which they belonged; but whether their course was inspired by honest principle or dictated by unworthy motives, whether it was marked by support of their successors or by intrigues and assaults to procure their overthrow, scarcely one was more relentlessly assailed than Lord Randolph Churchill. Even more pertinent and remarkable than the resignation of Lord Palmerston in 1853 is the case of Lord Salisbury himself. The Derby-Disraeli Ministry was in 1867 in a minority in the House of Commons and their position was highly insecure. The question of Reform pressed upon them, urgent and inevitable. A failure to deal with it effectively, still more an attempt to shirk it, might have inflicted enduring injury upon the Conservative party. Lord Salisbury met the Bill with uncompromising opposition. When Mr. Disraeli stood firm, he immediately resigned--and not alone; for by his personal influence he carried with him both Lord Carnarvon and General Peel. In this crisis nothing but the determination of Disraeli sustained the Government. Yet Lord Salisbury by writings, by vigorous and even violent attacks, by co-operation in Parliament with Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, did not hesitate to compass its defeat. And he was wrong! But how was he treated? His good faith was never challenged; his disinterested abandonment of great office was admired; his error was condoned. When Disraeli returned to power in 1874 he allowed no prejudice or consideration of former hostility to separate him from the man who had dubbed him a ‘political adventurer,’ and it was upon that association--stamped into the imagination of the people by the Congress of Berlin, that Lord Salisbury’s chief claim to leadership afterwards rested.

Why, then, was Lord Randolph Churchill so hardly used by the party which owed so much to his efforts up till the year 1887, and might have often been grateful for support, and more often still for silences, afterwards? Why was such unusual and uncompromising advantage taken of the false step he had made? No doubt much must be set down to the animosities he had excited; much to the alarm of a Cabinet at so impulsive and imperious a colleague; something to Lord Salisbury’s desire that the leadership of the House of Commons and all that might follow therefrom should be secured to Mr. Balfour. Perhaps, too, they felt less compunction in dealing with him than with an older man, and thought with Smith that all this was ‘only an incident in the life of a young politician’; that ten years later, or twenty years even, he might serve with his own contemporaries or lead a younger generation. Time would cool the blood of the Reformer, and the experience of adversity might temper an impatience born of extraordinary success. Little did they know how short was the span, or at what a cost in life and strength the immense exertions of the struggle had been made. That frail body, driven forward by its nervous energies, had all these last five years been at the utmost strain. Good fortune had sustained it; but disaster, obloquy and inaction now suddenly descended with crushing force, and the hurt was mortal.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XVIII. ECONOMY

When I consider life, ’tis all a cheat; Yet, fool’d with hope, men favour the deceit; Trust on and think to-morrow will repay. To-morrow’s falser than the former day; Lies worse; and while it says we shall be blessed With some new joys, cuts off what we possest. Strange cozenage! none would live past years again; Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And from the dregs of life think to receive What the first sprightly running could not give. DRYDEN, Aurung-Zebe.

The position of a Minister who has withdrawn from a Cabinet is always difficult and peculiar. If for the sake of some principle which he considers vital he is prepared openly to attempt to wreck the Government and inflict upon the party a defeat at the polls, and if the issue is one which must soon be decided, the course, however painful, is plain. He has only to drive steadfastly on through the storm, like Lord Salisbury in 1867 or Lord Hartington in 1886, careless of consequences so long as he does his duty, disdainful of the anger of friends, if he holds them mistaken, and looking for vindication to the calm, just judgments of the after-time. But if the question on which he has separated from his colleagues is not paramount or urgent, and if, while differing strongly from the Government, he is yet determined not to injure the party from which that Government is drawn, his position becomes impossible. The more powerful he has been, the more powerless he becomes; the higher his office, the greater his fall.

From his place in Parliament he is bound, in common-sense and consistency, to uphold and justify his immediate contention. It may be economy; it may be Free Trade. Whenever that subject is raised he must be in his place, alike for his own defence and for the sake of his cause, to show that there was good reason for his action and that the public interest was at stake. If he feels strongly, he will speak strongly. Convictions harden and grow, and differences magnify and ossify as the controversy progresses. His party and his former colleagues are embarrassed by his proceedings, however legitimate or honest they may admit them to be. The more effective his advocacy, and weighty his charges, the more they are resented. The Opposition are naturally pleased. They take from the ex-Minister’s statements whatever they may consider useful to themselves and they employ his phrases and arguments to belabour in the House and in the country the party and the Government they are seeking to overthrow. Thus assailed, the Ministerial press and the party machine--with all its scribes, agents, orators and small fry--retaliate after their kind. In a hundred newspapers, from a hundred platforms, hitherto voluble in his praise, the ex-Minister becomes the object of depreciation and censure, expressed in varying degrees of vulgar and untruthful imputation. And all the while, since he will not declare general war upon his party, he is prevented from defeating calumny by vigorous action or answering malice by attack.

When Lord Randolph Churchill pressed his charges of extravagance and inefficiency against the public departments, the party which happened to be responsible at the time were themselves offended. When the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer urged the need of economy and spoke his mind, in all courteous moderation, upon the financial policy of his successor, the Government Whips whispered that it was only his jealousy and spite. If, on the other hand, he had remained silent, the judgment of the nation on the great question for which he had sacrificed so much would have gone by default. To do nothing was to abandon his cause; to move was to quarrel with his party.

These embarrassments are only aggravated when the resigning Minister has been exercising in the Cabinet a general authority over the whole field of policy. As Leader of the House of Commons Lord Randolph had become acquainted with almost every question which was likely at that time to come before Parliament. On many of these he had formed strong views of his own. He knew exactly how he had intended to handle them when they became subjects of debate. When therefore he heard them mishandled, or a course adopted at variance with Cabinet decisions he had previously obtained, it was natural that he should wish to criticise or demur. Such conditions pointed inevitably, if the tension were prolonged, to a total rupture between the most patient ex-Minister and the most generous Government; and Lord Randolph was not the most patient of men, nor the Government the most generous of Governments.

Looking back on the circumstances and events of those years in the light of after-knowledge, there may be some who will find it easy to say what Lord Randolph should have done after his resignation. He should have stated the whole grounds of his difference with the Tory Cabinet, minimising nothing, keeping nothing back. In two or three speeches in Parliament and in the country he should broadly have outlined his general political conception of the course the Conservative party should follow, and then, unless he was prepared to wage relentless war upon the Government for the purpose of compelling them to adopt that course, he should forthwith have withdrawn himself entirely from public life. Leaving his party in the place of power to which he had raised them, with all the glamour of three years of cumulative and unexampled success still untarnished, he might well have been content to stand for a season apart from the floundering progress of the Administration, leaving to others to muddle away the majority he had made. And he could have counted, not without reason, upon the continued affection of the Conservative working classes. The party press would have been silent or even conciliatory. The relentless irritation of the machine would have been prevented. As the years passed by and the discredit of the Government increased, the Tory Democracy would have turned again to the lost leader by whom the victories of the past had been won.

Lord Randolph Churchill chose otherwise. He did not lay deep or long plans. His nature prompted him to speak as he felt, and to deal with the incident of the hour as it occurred. He was solemnly in earnest about economy and departmental mismanagement. He wanted to curb expenditure; and, while at that business, he was not at all concerned with his ‘prestige’ or his ‘career.’ Deeply injurious to himself and to his influence with the Conservative party as his course ultimately proved, it was at any rate perfectly simple and straightforward. He returned to England at the end of March, and plunged at once into the vortex of politics. In three speeches which he delivered during the month of April to public audiences at Paddington (where he defended particularly his resignation), at Birmingham, and at Nottingham, he made clear what his attitude towards Lord Salisbury’s Government would be. He was entirely independent of that Government. He had resigned from it on important grounds of difference. He desired a liberal and progressive policy in domestic affairs, and he was determined to wage war on extravagance and expenditure. But in the main lines of their policy he was a supporter of the Government; and to the cause of the Union, as to the large and permanent interests of the Conservative party, he remained perfectly loyal. From these intentions he never in any degree varied or departed in the years that followed. ‘You are quite right,’ he wrote to FitzGibbon (November 5, 1887), ‘in supposing that mere returning to office has never been in my mind. I fight for a policy and not for place; and when I go back to office (if ever) I shall have secured my policy.’ A Tory Democratic policy could only be furthered from within the Conservative party, and to that party he faithfully adhered. Besides Mr. Jennings, Lord Randolph had two good friends among the younger men in the House of Commons--his brother-in-law, Lord Curzon, and Mr. Ernest Beckett, the member for Whitby. These gentlemen stood by him, worked with him, and rendered him many political services in the years that followed his resignation, for which they were not extravagantly beloved in the high places of their party.

With these three exceptions the late Leader of the House of Commons was entirely alone. To do him justice he made no effort to increase his following and discouraged several who would have willingly worked with him. Profoundly as he disagreed with much that the Government did, and disliked the temper that inspired it, fiercely as he resented the Lobby slanders and the steady detraction of the party press, never in the five years that followed--the last five years, as they were fated to be, of his physical strength--did he contemplate alliance of any sort with the Liberal party or seek to cause cave, clique or faction in the Conservative ranks.

The introduction of the Budget on April 21 afforded Lord Randolph his first opportunity of opening his ‘economy’ campaign. Mr. Goschen’s ingenious Budget differed widely from the ambitious proposals of his predecessor. The reductions in the Estimates for which Lord Randolph had fought were, indeed, maintained--and even increased. The result was a surplus of 776,000_l._ This Mr. Goschen now increased by an addition to the stamp duties, yielding 100,000_l._, and by a reduction of the Sinking Fund and Debt Charge from 28 millions to 26 millions. The total sum, amounting in the balance to a surplus of 2,779,000_l._, was to be expended in taking a penny off the income-tax, at a cost of 1,560,000_l._; in reducing the duties on tobacco by 600,000_l._; and by granting 330,000_l._ in aid of the local rates, leaving a final estimated surplus of 289,000_l._

The Budget was, on the whole, applauded. The Conservative party, whose consciences were a little uneasy on financial questions, were delighted. The very questionable resort to the Sinking Fund--not for any special emergency nor general scheme of fiscal revision, but simply for the purpose of courting popularity by inconsiderable reductions of taxation--was sustained by Mr. Goschen’s financial record. ‘Great,’ exclaimed Lord Randolph Churchill, ‘is the worldly worth of a reputation!’ In complete good-humour, albeit with a sharp edge, he rallied the Chancellor of the Exchequer--‘the canonised saint of the financial purists’--on his lapse from the austere principles he had formerly professed; and both on the night of the Budget’s introduction and four days later when he spoke next after Mr. Gladstone, he addressed to the Government and to the Conservative party earnest counsels of retrenchment and departmental reform. He added:--

It is not necessary to touch the Sinking Fund. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has ample resources at his disposal. If he leaves the Sinking Fund alone, and remits a penny of the income-tax, he will still have a balance of 400,000_l._ If he does not reduce the income-tax, and prefers to take off the tobacco duty, he will have a balance of 800,000_l._ If he touches neither of these, and relieves the rates, he will have a balance of 300,000_l._ He can do any of these things if he will only leave the Sinking Fund alone; and he is touching it for a purpose so paltry and frivolous that I fail to understand why it entered his mind. I pray the Chancellor of the Exchequer to believe that I only make these remarks because of my intense and earnest desire that the present Government--whose career, I hope, is going to be a long one--may enter upon the paths of financial stability.

On this Mr. Gladstone enters in his diary: ‘R. Churchill excellent.’

The Parliamentary Committee on Army and Navy Estimates, for which Lord Randolph had asked at the beginning of the year, had been promised by the Government in reply to a question, put during his absence, by Lord Curzon. But weeks and even months were allowed to slip by without the necessary motion being made. When at length it was put on the paper it was immediately blocked; and thus it would have probably remained. But one day, when the first business happened to be the vote for the decoration of Westminster Abbey, Lord Randolph asked abruptly if the Government really meant to say that they considered the decoration of Westminster Abbey more important than a Parliamentary inquiry into the naval and military expenditure. After this the motion was put down at a reasonable hour, and it passed by general consent. On May 14 Mr. Smith wrote:--

10 Downing Street, Whitehall: May 14, 1887.

My dear R. C.,--Before we proceed to nominate the Committee on Army and Navy Estimates I should be glad to know if you would take a leading place upon it.

I cannot, of course, nominate the Chairman; but, so far as I am concerned, I should be very glad indeed if you would take the Chair, and I should say so to my friends, as I have complete confidence that your influence would be exercised with absolute impartiality and for the good of the public service.

Believe me Yours very sincerely, W. H. SMITH.

Lord Randolph replied at once in the affirmative; but the delay in nominating the members continued, and his patience broke again:--

2 Connaught Place, W.: May 24, 1887.

My dear Smith,--I must ask you to excuse me from having the honour of dining with you to-night. The dinner is, of course, an official one, and the names of the guests will be in the papers, and it will be assumed by the public that those who dine with the Leader of the House are thoroughly satisfied with the policy and conduct of the Government.

As far as I am concerned such an assumption would be entirely unfounded. I have watched a great deal in the action of the Government which I deplore more than I can say; but I cannot pass over without notice your neglect to nominate the Army and Navy Estimates Committee last night, or rather this morning, and your postponing of that most important matter till after Whitsuntide. The delay in appointing that Committee is scandalous and inexcusable. It might long ago have commenced its work had the Government been in earnest about the matter; but last night you gave me a positive promise that you would nominate it without further delay, and, relying on that, I spent the evening till 12.30 in examination of the Estimates with two other gentlemen, and, being then very tired, did not return to the House. I dare say you are all right in thinking that you can afford to indulge in this kind of treatment of one of your supporters, but you cannot expect me to show publicly pleasure or satisfaction. Hodie tibi, cras mihi.

Yours very truly, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.

Smith replied softly:--

3 Grosvenor Place, London, S.W.: May 24, 1887.

My Dear R. C.,--I am very sorry you do not dine with me this evening, and still more for the cause.

At half-past five this morning I moved that the Committee be nominated, but I was met by cries from the other side of the House that it was opposed, and by murmurs from our own benches, and I felt it was impossible to proceed further at that hour with a jaded and heated house.

I am sure you would have done as I did if you had been in my place.

Yours very sincerely, W. H. SMITH.

But the Committee was appointed without further delay.

Meanwhile Lord Randolph had been industriously preparing his general indictment of War Office and Admiralty maladministration. To the intricate and detailed information which he had acquired at the Treasury, he added a mass of material accumulated with the greatest care and trouble by Mr. Jennings and amplified and checked by various expert authorities, with whom he was in communication. Basing himself on this and on the papers presented to Parliament he formulated his charges at Wolverhampton on June 3. He seems to have believed sincerely that it would be possible for him to effect a large reduction in the cost of government. He recalled to his mind the fact that the Government of 1860 was determined on a retrenchment policy, and the Army and Navy Estimates were in five years reduced from 27½ millions to 22½ millions; and that whereas in 1868 the estimates were 25 millions, by 1871 they had been reduced to 21 millions. Such examples may prove the possibility of retrenchment, but they were the achievements of a giant Minister working year by year from inside the Cabinet, and using the whole leverage of the great department over which he presided; and we have since learned from Mr. Morley’s pages that even in Liberal Cabinets elected on the famous watchwords of ‘Peace, Retrenchment and Reform’ Mr. Gladstone had to fight for his economies at the constant peril of his official life.

It is instructive to study the course of an agitation for naval and military economy directed by anyone outside the circle of the Government of the day and without the aid of the machinery of State. It may begin in all undivided earnestness in a simple demand for a reduction of expenditure. The Government and its official advisers will reply that they, too, are the zealous advocates of such a policy, if only they can be shown how to effect it; and they invite suggestions of a specific character. That is the first stage. Thus challenged, the economist leaves for the moment the enunciation of great principles of finance and national policy and descends to grapple with masses of technical details. He discovers a quantity of muddles and jobs, and arrays imposing instances of waste and inefficiency. His statements are, of course, contradicted, and his charges are wrangled over seriatim. Expert is set against expert, and assertion against assertion. The reformer is accused--not, generally, without some justice--of exaggeration; and he is in part and in detail inevitably betrayed into inaccuracy. But in the issue enough is proved to awaken public anxiety and even indignation. Certain main facts of discreditable and disquieting character are clearly established. Many weaknesses, neglects, incompetencies are revealed. There are guns without ammunition. There are fortresses without provisions. There are regiments without reserves. There are ships imperfectly constructed. There are weapons which are obsolete or bad. But in the process of the controversy the movement has been insensibly and irresistibly deflected from its original object. It began in a cry for economy; it has become a cry for efficiency. That is the second stage. The Government and their official advisers at the proper moment now shift their ground with an adroitness born of past experience. They admit the damaging facts which can no longer be denied. The politicians explain that they arise from the neglect or incapacity of their predecessors. They recognise the public demand for more perfect instruments of war. They declare that they will not flinch from their plain duty (whatever others may have done); they will repair the deficiencies which clearly exist; they will correct the abuses which have been exposed; and in due course they will send in the bill to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. So that the third stage of an unofficial agitation in favour of a reduction of expenditure and a more modest establishment becomes an agitation in favour of an increase of expenditure and a more lavish establishment.

All this happened exactly in the case of Lord Randolph Churchill. In his earlier speeches since his resignation he had confined himself to the need of retrenchment, and this had been the ground on which he had fought in the Cabinet. But at Wolverhampton he sought to show that, in spite of the great and increasing expenditure, the services were in a wholly unsatisfactory and even dangerous condition. And in this he was beyond all question brilliantly successful. In a fierce speech of an hour and forty minutes he unfolded a comprehensive catalogue of follies. His audience, consisting of about 4,000 persons--mainly Conservative working men--at first doubtful and apathetic, were gradually raised, as the newspaper reports testify, to a state of indignation. With a display of feeling unusual even at a partisan meeting, and still more remarkable when the currents of ordinary partisanship were running against the speaker, they interrupted him repeatedly with cries of anger, and he ended amid a perfect tumult of assent.

It is not necessary to this account to examine the details of his charges. Each generation has its own jobs and scandals to confront. The administrative follies of 1887 have passed away. Some survived, to be dwarfed by more astonishing successors; others were corrected, but not extirpated. All have produced a prosperous progeny, nourished in richer pastures, and attaining proportions of which their ancestors could hardly have dreamed. The main outlines of the indictment must, however, be placed on record. The condition of the British Army and Navy in the year 1887 was, in sober truth, a serious public danger. Mr. Gladstone’s Government of 1880 had had, during their tenure of office, to deal with all kinds of military and Colonial enterprises for the effective execution of which a Liberal Administration is not naturally fitted. They detested their work heartily; they executed it very badly. In truth the Cabinet, distracted by the violence of Egyptian and Irish affairs and the gravity of the Eastern situation, torn by the increasing demands of Radicalism, and harassed by a relentless Opposition, was incapable of giving to naval and military matters adequate consideration. There had followed upon all this the two years of political revolution with which this story has been largely concerned. It was natural, it was inevitable, that in the interval which had elapsed since the great Army Reform Parliament of 1868 much waste and inefficiency should have crept into the military system; and in the same period, from considerations altogether outside the course of British politics, an enormous extension and complexity had affected the responsibilities and functions of the Navy.

Lord Randolph alleged in respect of the Army that not a single fortress was properly armed; that no reserve of heavy guns existed; that the artillery, both horse and field, was obsolete; that the rifle of the infantry was defective; that the swords and bayonets broke and bent under the required tests; and that, notwithstanding these deficiencies, the cost of the land service had increased in twelve years by over four millions a year. He charged the Admiralty with such waste as exporting Australian tinned meat to Australia, rum and sugar to Jamaica, flour to Hong Kong, and rice to India; with making improvident contracts for ships, engines, and materials of various kinds; with disarming the Spithead and Portsmouth forts in order to arm warships. He asserted that the whole of the 43-ton guns designed by the Ordnance Department, on which 200,000_l._ had been spent, were worthless and liable to burst even with reduced charges; that the Ordnance officials had been told beforehand by the principal experts of Messrs. Armstrong that this type of gun was imperfect; that they persisted in making them; that one of the guns had already burst; that the others had been condemned; but that they were nevertheless to be employed on her Majesty’s ships. The most serious count, however, dealt with various classes of ships which had in important particulars failed to realise the expectations of the designers and were in consequence unfit for active service.

He instanced especially the Ajax and the Agamemnon, the battleships of the Admiral class and the Australia class of cruisers. Of the armoured cruiser Impérieuse he declared that she drew four feet more water than was expected, with the result that the armour which should have been above water was now below water, and in consequence the ship was actually unprotected. ‘The result of all this is that in the last twelve or thirteen years eighteen ships have been either completed or designed by the Admiralty to fulfil certain purposes, and on the strength of the Admiralty statements Parliament has faithfully voted ... about ten millions, and it is now discovered and officially acknowledged that in respect of the purposes for which these ships were designed, the whole of the money has been absolutely misapplied, utterly wasted and thrown away.’ The foundation for this somewhat sweeping statement was supplied by the explanatory memorandum to the Navy Estimates, 1887. ‘In one important particular,’ so this document affirmed, ‘there is a discrepancy between ... the original design and its result which, in the case of the Impérieuse and her sister ship the Warspite, attracted some attention, and which is likely to recur in the case of the belted cruisers, seven in number, the Warspite and the armoured vessels of the Admiral class.... If the whole of the 900 tons [of coal] ... be placed on board [the Impérieuse] the top of the belt will, on the ship’s first going to sea, be six inches below the water.’

The Wolverhampton speech made a considerable stir. In spite of the pressure of Irish affairs and the general instability of the political situation, it was for some days the principal topic of public discussion. The powerful interests assailed, retorted at once, and the newspapers were filled with censure and contradiction. Even those which, like the Times, were forced to acknowledge Lord Randolph Churchill ‘right in his main contention,’ rebuked him ponderously for extravagance of statement and violence of language. His strictures on naval construction brought Sir Nathaniel Barnaby, the late chief constructor to the Admiralty--to whom Lord Randolph had personally alluded--into voluminous protest in the columns of the Times, and an acrimonious correspondence ensued. Sir Nathaniel denied that he had been ‘dismissed’ from his post and pointed in disproof to his having been made a Knight Commander of the Bath. Lord Randolph replied acidly ‘that K.C.B.’s and official testimonials were the usual manner in which the country requited long service when the intentions had been honest, no matter how deplorably defective might have been the capacity’; and expressed himself willing to substitute the phrase ‘allowed to retire’ for the word ‘dismissed.’ On the main question Sir Nathaniel appealed to Lord George Hamilton; and Lord Randolph brought up Sir Edward Reed, a rival constructor of great repute, who confirmed and even aggravated most of his statements. Both parties fell back upon official records, memoranda and Blue Books; and a battle royal developed, around the outskirts of which naval authorities of every rank and description cruised, seeking to intervene, on the one side or the other, with masses of highly technical information couched in highly controversial terms.

Lord Randolph’s contention that the Ajax and the Agamemnon were failures was not seriously disputed, Sir Nathaniel Barnaby himself admitting (Times, June 7) that he was ‘thankful they were the only approximately circular and shallow sea-going ships we built.’ The fiercest strife raged around the cruiser Impérieuse. Sir Nathaniel Barnaby met the assertion that the money spent upon her was ‘absolutely misapplied, utterly wasted and thrown away,’ by quoting a later Admiralty memorandum which declared her to be, ‘if not actually the most powerful, one of the most powerful ironclad cruisers afloat of her tonnage.’ But Sir Edward Reed was able to show that this was not extravagant eulogy, for that there was only one other ‘ironclad cruiser of her tonnage’ in existence. He also showed that, to lighten her, she had already been deprived of her masts and consequently of her intended sailing powers; and that even so, to bring her to her intended draught, it was necessary to take out the whole of her coal. When the smoke had at length a little lifted, it was generally held that, although Lord Randolph Churchill’s charges were sustained on almost every substantial point, he had injured his case by over-stating it. Full marks were also awarded to the ‘distinguished ex-public servant cruelly assailed in his professional character.’

Lord Randolph Churchill was duly elected Chairman of the Army and Navy Committee. Mr. Jennings, who was also a member, laboured indefatigably to collect, sift and arrange material. The Committee met without delay, and collected much valuable and startling evidence. They discovered, for instance, that one branch of the War Office cost 5,000_l._ a year in supervising an expenditure of 250_l._ a year. ‘Would it have been possible,’ the Accountant-General was asked, ‘for any private member to have ascertained from the Estimates laid before Parliament from 1870 to the present year that the total increase of net ordinary Army expenditure amounted to almost nine millions of money?--A. ‘It would have been extremely difficult.’ Q. ’ ...or that since 1875 there had been an increase of about five millions?’--A. ‘I do not think it would.’ ‘Up to now,’ Lord Randolph suggested, ‘Parliament has never had the smallest idea of what was the total cost of the services?’--‘Taking the whole of the services,’ replied Mr. Knox, ‘it has not.’ It would be easy to multiply these specimens of the evidence collected by the Select Committee. Day by day, as it was published, it was commented on by the press, and public and Parliamentary scrutiny was increasingly directed towards the Estimates of the two services.

Here is a note which it is pleasant to transcribe:--

One odd effect of your Committee: [wrote Jennings July 27]. Bradlaugh came to me this afternoon--said he had been reading the evidence--was immensely struck with it--thought you had done enormous service already. I told him a little more about it. He said: ‘He has done so much good that I really think I must close up my account against him.’ ‘Well, surely,’ I said, ‘there is no use in keeping it open any longer. It only looks like vindictiveness.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think I will close the ledger.’

It will be convenient to follow Lord Randolph’s economy campaign to its conclusion. As it gradually became directed to efficiency rather than simple economy it enlisted an increasing measure of professional support. By May 1888, public opinion had become so vigilant that, following upon some outspoken and not very temperate statements by Lord Wolseley, then Adjutant-General, the Government determined--momentous resolve!--to appoint a Royal Commission with Lord Hartington at its head. Mr. Smith invited Lord Randolph Churchill to join it:--

10 Downing Street, Whitehall: May 18, 1888.

My dear R. C.,--You will render great service to the administrative reform of the two great departments if you will join the Royal Commission over which Lord Hartington will preside.

Mr. Gladstone has asked Mr. Campbell-Bannerman to represent the Opposition; I am to go on, on behalf of the Government; and you would represent those who believe that efficiency and economy may result from a change of system. General Brackenbury will join as a soldier, and Sir F. Richards, who has just returned from sea, as the sailor. Two civilians with extensive knowledge of large business transactions are to be added, and Sir Richard Temple will also be asked as a capable and successful Indian Administrator. These are the people with whom you would be associated in the effort to improve our system, and I hope most sincerely that you will not refuse your help.

Believe me Yours very truly, W. H. SMITH.

I enclose a copy of the reference.

‘To inquire into the civil and professional administration of the Naval and Military Departments and the relation of those Departments to each other and to the Treasury; and to report what changes in their existing system would tend to the efficiency and the economy of the Public Service.’

Lord Randolph, however, knowing a good deal of the ways of such bodies, declined. He was persuaded by Lord Hartington, who wrote:--

Hôtel du Rhin, 4 Place Vendôme: May 26, 1888.

My dear Churchill,--Smith has sent me your letter declining to serve on the Army and Navy Commission. I hope very much that if you have not absolutely made up your mind you may be induced to reconsider your decision, as we are both very anxious to have your assistance.

I think that your Committee has taken some very valuable evidence which shows the inefficiency and defects of the present system. But I should doubt whether you will effect much more by the examination of minor officials or by investigating the details of the separate votes; and I should think it might be possible for you to leave the inquiry to be finished by some one else. My own opinion is that we shall never get either efficiency or economy until we can find some way of giving the professional men more power and at the same time more responsibility; but how this can be done in combination with our Parliamentary system is a very difficult problem which requires bold and original treatment.

If we cannot suggest a more efficient and intelligent system of superior administration, I think that we shall do very little good by exposing details of maladministration in minor matters; and as the subject-matter of our inquiry is to be the real centre of the whole question of administrative reform, I cannot help thinking that you would find our inquiry more interesting and important than any which you can take up or continue on other branches of the same question.

I remain

Yours sincerely, HARTINGTON.

The Commission appointed on June 17, 1888, did not report till March, 1890. Lord Randolph’s separate memorandum, which will be found in the Appendix, is well known. Its sweeping proposals were not adopted by the majority of the Commissioners; but it has been so often quoted, and bears so closely upon modern controversies, that the reader who is interested in these subjects should not neglect to study it. The indirect results of his agitation were, perhaps, more fruitful. Lord George Hamilton, with whom he so often engaged in sharp argument when Navy Estimates recurred, bears a generous tribute to the unseen influence which severe public criticism exerts upon the workings of a great department. It would seem that Lord Randolph Churchill’s belief that considerable economies were possible on the establishments of 1886 was not without foundation.

Lord George Hamilton writes, October 4, 1904:--

During my tenure of office at the Admiralty great changes were made, and in the foremost rank of these reforms was the reorganisation and renovation of the Royal dockyards. These establishments had been allowed to grow and develop without a sufficient regard to the revolution in shipbuilding which the substitution of iron and steel for wood had caused. Laxity in supervision, connivance at practices neither economical nor efficient, dawdling over work, obsolete machinery and ill-adjusted establishments, associated with Estimates framed for political exigence rather than naval needs, all combined to bring these great national building yards into disrepute. The personnel was first-rate both in ability and integrity and the material used as good as money could obtain. All that was required was a thorough readjustment of the establishments to the work they were called upon to do, by the reduction of the redundant and superfluous workmen, by the dismissal of the incompetent, and an increase to the numbers working in steel and iron. Changes such as these, if associated with the introduction of the methods and checks in force in the best private yards, were quite sufficient to put our dockyards in the first rank of building establishments. But whoever undertook the task would be subject to much obloquy, both local and Parliamentary. The stern suppression of long-standing malpractices, the dismissal of a large number of unnecessary and indifferent workmen, if enforced on a large scale, required a strong current of public opinion behind it for its consummation. This assistance I obtained from Lord Randolph Churchill’s crusade on economy. He and I differed on many questions of naval administration, but we were at one as to the necessity of dockyard reform. Many economists who, though agreeing in the abstract with Lord Randolph’s views, hesitated to cut down the effective fighting forces of the Army and Navy, were delighted to co-operate with him in so non-contentious an improvement. The Labour party was not then as well organised or represented in Parliament as they have since become, and their opposition to dockyard dismissals was less strenuous than it would be now.

I was thus enabled, after two years of continuous labour and trouble, to organise the dockyards from top to bottom, to put down establishments that were not required, to dismiss the loiterers, and to establish, modelled on the practice of the best private yards, a completely new system of supervision, check, and control. The effect was electrical. The dockyards at once became the cheapest and most economical builders of warships in the world. The largest ironclad ever designed, up to 1889, was built, completed and commissioned ready for sea in two years and eight months from the date of the laying down of its keel. No large ironclad had been previously completed within five years. Up to 1886 the average cost of the big ships building in these yards was 40 per cent. above their original estimate; since then the estimates have rarely been exceeded. In the first year of the new system there was an instantaneous saving of 400,000_l._ The continuous and satisfactory progress of our vast and annually increasing building programme is mainly due to those changes, and Lord Randolph could, I think, fairly claim that, though his name was not publicly associated with the great national gain thus achieved, it was the public opinion which he aroused, which largely contributed to the consummation of dockyard reform.

Lord Randolph Churchill addressed five meetings in the autumn and winter of 1887--two at Whitby and Stockport respectively for his two friends, Mr. Beckett and Mr. Jennings; and three in the North. The Whitby meeting in September afforded an opportunity for a display of the hostility with which he was regarded by the dominant section of the Conservative party, for several prominent local worthies publicly refused to attend--a proceeding which even the Times was compelled to censure. The 7,000 persons who gathered upon the sands and around the slopes of a kind of natural amphitheatre under the west cliff gave him a very different welcome, and listened with delighted attention during that beautiful afternoon to a spirited and ingenious defence of the miserable session through which the Government had shuffled. In Yorkshire and Lancashire, as in the earlier meetings of the year, and later in the North, his popularity with the Conservative masses was still undimmed. He was greeted everywhere by immense crowds. The largest halls were much too small. Paddington was loyal and contented. His Birmingham supporters asked no better than to fight for him at once. At Nottingham, long before his arrival, the streets were thronged; and all the way from the station to the Albert Hall he passed through continuous lines of cheering people.[64] Similar scenes took place at Wolverhampton, and the Conservative Association of that borough passed a formal resolution supporting his policy of economy. In the North he made a regular progress. He visited three important centres in a single week and made a ‘trilogy of speeches’--no light task for a speaker whose every word is reported and examined. He spoke on the afternoon of October 20 at Sunderland, at great length, in reply to a previous speech of Mr. Gladstone, covering the whole field of domestic policy and defining the immediate limits of the Tory Democratic programme. These proved sufficiently comprehensive to include Free Education, Local Option in the sale of drink, a compulsory Employer’s Liability Act, the abolition of the power of entailing land upon unborn lives, ‘One man, one vote,’ and Parliamentary registration at the cost of local bodies. At Newcastle, two days later, he spoke in defence of the Union, justified the Government policy in Ireland, and vehemently attacked Mr. Gladstone for the countenance which he showed towards lawlessness and disorder.

On the Monday he spoke at Stockton, and here he turned aside to deal with another subject which had been thrust much upon him of late. Mr. Jennings, like Lord Dunraven, was, as the reader is aware, a Fair Trader, and throughout the year--from the very beginning of their association--he had laboured tactfully, but persistently, to win Lord Randolph to his views. He knew that although the cry of ‘Less waste and no jobbery’ might appeal to many, ‘Economy’ was not in itself a popular cause to submit to a Democratic electorate, and was, moreover, foreign to the instincts and traditions of Toryism. ‘Fair Trade,’ on the contrary, touched a very tender spot in a Conservative breast; and, quite apart from this consideration, Mr. Jennings was an enthusiast. He had examined the question both from an American and a British point of view. He possessed a large and well-stored arsenal of fact and argument. On such subjects as ‘One-sided Free Trade,’ ‘Our Ruined Industries,’ ‘The Dumping of Sweated Goods,’ ‘The Commercial Union of the Empire’ or ‘Our Dwindling Exports’ he could write, as his frequent letters show, with force and feeling. Scarcely since St. Anthony had there been such a temptation on the one hand or such austerity on the other.

‘The main reason,’ Lord Randolph had said at Sunderland, ‘why I do not join myself with the Protectionists is that I believe that low prices in the necessaries of life and political stability in a democratic Constitution are practically inseparable, and that high prices in the necessaries of life and political instability in a democratic Constitution are also practically inseparable.’ And this having drawn upon him the wrath of Mr. Chaplin, he proceeded at Stockport to make his case good. He used no economic arguments. He pointed to the supremacy of the Conservative party as a proof of political stability under low food-prices. He pointed to the conversion of Sir Robert Peel as a proof of political instability, under high food-prices. To make wheat-farming profitable a duty was required which would raise the price of corn from 28_s_. a quarter to something between 40_s_. and 45_s_. a quarter. Would anyone propose a sufficient tax on imported corn to make it worth while for the rural voter to pay the higher prices which Fair Trade would secure for the manufactures of the urban voter? How did the Fair Traders propose to deal with India? How did they propose to deal with Ireland? Could they prove that France, Austria and Germany were more prosperous than Great Britain? ‘It is no use saying to me, “Go to America or New South Wales.” I will not go to America, and I will not go to New South Wales. There is not the smallest analogy between those countries and England. America is a self-contained country and almost everything she requires for her people she can produce in abundance. We cannot. We have more people than we can feed; and not only for food, but for our manufactures, we depend upon raw material imported from abroad. Therefore I decline to go to America or New South Wales; but I would go to European countries--to France, Austria and Germany--and I want to know whether the Fair Traders can prove that the people of those countries are more prosperous than ours.’

This Stockton speech was naturally a great disappointment to Jennings. ‘I cannot deny,’ he wrote, ‘that you gave many of your followers a bitter pill to swallow. I think I could give you satisfactory grounds for admitting that your objections to “Fair Trade” will not stand much investigation; but, of course, the real difficulty is that in many of our constituencies the question is popular. We have been partly elected on the strength of it; and when you attack it, you fire a broadside into your own supporters and give the Radicals in our boroughs a stick to beat us with. It is hard for us to fight against your authority, especially when we have been drilling into the minds of the people that yours are the views they should adopt. If you ever had half an hour to spare, I wish you would allow me to put the facts before you. You would soon see, for example,....’ And then follow pages of tersely stated arguments of a kind with which most people are now only too familiar.

They produced no effect upon Lord Randolph. ‘The policy which you advocate,’ he replied (October 30), ‘of duties on foreign imports for revenue purposes, much attracted me at one time; but I came to the conclusion that, although such a policy would gain the adhesion of the manufacturing towns, it is open to such fearful attack from the Radicals among the country population that we should lose more than we should gain. I cannot see how you can persuade yourself that the country population would accept a method of raising revenue which would directly benefit the manufacturing population at their expense. The election of ‘85 made a great impression upon me. Then the defection of the rural vote completely neutralised our great successes in the English boroughs.’ And again on November 3, after the discussions at the conference of Conservative Associations: ‘Do you see how the Fair Traders have been wrangling and disputing with each other--everyone going in a different direction--confirming all that I said at Stockton about their not knowing their own minds?’ Late in November came an invitation from the ‘British Union,’ a Protectionist Association having its headquarters in Manchester--of all places--to which Lord Randolph replied as follows:--

2 Connaught Place, W.: November 26, 1887.

I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 25th inst. I understand that your Committee are good enough to do me the honour of asking me to preside at a meeting to be held on January 24 in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, in favour of Fair Trade.

You allude to the recent vote of the Conservative National Union bearing upon this subject, and inquire as to what effect that vote has had upon my mind. I may reply: ‘None whatever, except to confirm me in the opinions I expressed at Stockton in the course of last month.’ Both at the Fair Trade Conference recently held, as well as at the conference of the delegates of the National Union, I observed that the sentence which would best characterise those discussions was quot homines tot sententiæ. There is not among those who desire extensive fiscal reform the slightest approach to real agreement either as to objects or to methods. I must also point out that the delegates of the National Union do not appear to have had any instructions from those whom they were supposed to represent to debate and to decide on the question of Fair Trade, neither did they in any way specially represent trade interests. Their decision in favour of Fair Trade, therefore, is not more weighty than their decision in favour of ‘Women’s Suffrage,’ which latter would certainly not be accepted by the Tory party as a whole.

Under these circumstances you will see that it is not possible for me to depart in any way from the views I have recently expressed on Fair Trade; nor could I, as you kindly invite me to do, ‘take the helm of a movement’ which up to the present remains altogether vague and undefined.

So far as I have been able to discover, this was, with one exception, his last public word on the subject.[65] His objections to Fair Trade were not based on principle. They were entirely practical. He cared little for theory. He hated what he used to call ‘chopping logic.’ He was not at all concerned to vindicate Mr. Cobden, and he mocked at ‘professors’ of all kinds. But he thought that as a financial expedient a complicated tariff would not work, and he was sure that as a party manœuvre it would not pay. He saw no way by which the conflicting interests of the counties and the boroughs could be reconciled and he believed that without such reconciliation the movement would prove disastrous to the Conservative cause. He was, no doubt, strengthened in his views by his desire so far as possible to work in harmony with Mr. Chamberlain and so to combine and fuse together all the Democratic forces which supported the Union. Yet Fair Trade had much to offer to a Conservative statesman. To him, above all other Tory leaders, the prospect was alluring. That section of Tory Democracy which had received the gospel of Mr. Farrer Ecroyd--and it was already important--would have followed a Fair Trade champion through thick and thin. In every town he would have secured faithful and active supporters. His earlier speeches had prepared the way. His own immediate allies in Parliament, his best friends in the press, were ardent Fair Traders. Hardly a day passed, as he said at Stockton, without his receiving letters from all classes of people imploring him to come forward as a Fair Trader. He had only to raise the standard to obtain a following of his own strong enough to defy the party machine. The National Union might still afford the necessary organisation. And had he been, as it was the fashion to say, willing to advance his personal position regardless of the interests of the Conservative party, there lay ready to his hand a weapon with which he might have torn the heart out of Lord Salisbury’s Government.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XIX. THE NATIONAL PARTY

‘Love as if you should hereafter hate; and hate as if you should hereafter love.’--BIAS (quoted by Aristotle).

‘All the politics of the moment,’ said Lord Salisbury on March 5, 1887, to the members of the National Conservative Club, ‘are summarised in the word “Ireland.”’ The fierce struggle in the English constituencies was over. The Home Rulers had been totally defeated. Mr. Gladstone had been driven from office. A Conservative Government, strong in its own resources of discipline and class, strengthened by most of the forces of wealth and authority which had hitherto been at the service of the Liberal party, and supported by the energetic multitudes of Tory Democracy, sat in the place of power. Among the ranks of the Opposition, fortified in their midst, with leaders of their own upon their Front Bench, was a solid band of seventy gentlemen of unusual ability actively engaged in preventing the return of their neighbours to office. Such was the grim aspect of the field upon the morrow of the great battle. Such was the change of fortune which a year of Irish policy had brought to the Liberal party. But, although the relative forces of the combatants in the political arena had been so surprisingly altered, the question in dispute remained utterly unsettled and ‘Ireland’ was still the vital and dominant factor in the political situation.

So long as the Liberal Unionists adhered to Lord Salisbury’s Government it was, of course, unshakable; for it enjoyed the double advantage of their support and of the cleavage which they caused in the Opposition. But the conditions under which Liberal-Unionist support would be continued could not be definitely known; and its withdrawal meant the immediate fall of the Administration. Forced thus to live from day to day upon the goodwill of its allies, with few means of knowing and not always a right to inquire when that goodwill might be impaired, the Government was apparently deficient in real stability or power. Nor could it be said to make up in talent what it lacked in strength. The retirement of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach deprived the Treasury Bench of its sole remaining Conservative Parliamentarian; Mr. Goschen’s position was, at any rate for the first year, difficult and peculiar; Mr. Balfour had yet his name to make; and the choice of Mr. Smith for the leadership of the House of Commons, however justified by his courage and his character, so far as the distinction of debate was concerned, only revealed the nakedness of the land.

In all these circumstances it was with no little anxiety that the Conservative party watched the progress of the negotiations which attended the Round Table Conference and endeavoured to estimate the effect upon those negotiations and upon the general attitude of the Liberal-Unionist party of the growing tension of Irish affairs. Mr. Chamberlain’s intentions were especially uncertain. His effective co-operation with the Conservatives had been largely facilitated by his good relations with Lord Randolph Churchill and the very considerable agreement in political matters which existed between them. But Lord Randolph Churchill had now left the Government; and how could a Radical support a policy from which a progressive Tory had been forced to separate? Moreover, Mr. Chamberlain was closely associated with Sir George Trevelyan. They had resigned together from the Home Rule Cabinet. They fought side by side in the election which followed. They were the joint representatives of Liberal Unionism at the Round Table Conference. On January 22, 1886, while the issue of that conference was still undetermined, Mr. Chamberlain was the chief speaker at a demonstration at Hawick in Sir George Trevelyan’s honour; and Sir George Trevelyan was all the time known to be earnestly and eagerly labouring for the reunion of the Liberal party. ‘It is because I believe,’ said Mr. Chamberlain on this occasion, ‘that at all events a great approximation to peace, if not a complete agreement, may be attained without a betrayal of the trust which has been reposed in us that I ask you to await with hope and confidence the result of our further deliberations.’ Lord Hartington took, indeed, no part in these negotiations. ‘Some one,’ he said, characteristically, ‘must stay at home to look after the camp;’ but he proceeded to wish the Conference ‘every measure of success,’ and he was careful not to destroy by any words of his the prospects of reconciliation.

The whole situation--already delicate, uncertain and seemingly critical--could not fail to be profoundly influenced by the course of events in Ireland. The winter of 1886 was accompanied by a widespread, though by no means general, refusal or inability to pay rents. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach had never been too enthusiastic in his sympathy with the Irish landowner, and during the winter he had endeavoured to mitigate the severities of the time by the exercise of a kind of ‘dispensing power.’ Landlords were given to understand that the whole machinery of the Executive would not necessarily be at their disposal for the purpose of enforcing against their tenants claims which, in the opinion of the Chief Secretary, were harsh or unjust. This rough-and-ready method was heartily supported by Sir Redvers Buller, and to its adoption the comparative crimelessness of the winter was largely due. But, however satisfactory its results in practice might be, it was easily and justly assailable in principle; and after the Lord Chief Baron Palles had authoritatively declared that the attempt to withdraw the police from supporting the legal claims of private persons was altogether unjustifiable, the ‘dispensing power’ had to be abandoned, and the law took its regular course. The consequence of the numerous and, in some cases, ruthless evictions which followed was a formidable agrarian conspiracy. The tenants on different estates joined themselves together to offer to the landlord whatever rent they considered just, and where it was refused as insufficient they deposited the whole sum with a managing committee to be used for the purposes of resistance. This movement, known to history as the ‘Plan of Campaign,’ was the immediate result. The secondary, though not less direct, result was the advent in the House of Commons of a Land Bill and a Coercion Bill, both of which must expose to uncalculated strains the composite forces on which the Government depended.

But now and in the years that were to come the far-seeing statecraft with which the Conservative leaders had stimulated and sustained the schism in the Liberal party and had dealt with the crisis of the General Election was to be vindicated. They had built far stronger than they knew. Underneath the smooth words of the Liberal-Unionist leaders towards their former friends, and behind all the generous emotions of the Round Table Conference, stubborn brute forces were at work which, though they did not necessarily conduce to the stability of the Conservative Government, were inevitably fatal to Liberal reunion. The Liberal-Unionist members who had come back safely to Westminster, having broken with their party organisations and defied the Grand Old Man, were very particular to call themselves Liberals and to deny that they had severed themselves in any degree from the principles and traditions of Liberalism. They banned Tory colours and Tory clubs. When they attended public meetings they took care that the complexion of the platform should be Liberal Unionist. Even Mr. Goschen, after taking office in a Conservative Government, thought it necessary to assert in his election address his unaltered and unalterable character as a Liberal, and to apologise to the Conservative electors for the strain put upon their natural partisanship by his candidature. And there is no doubt that they were perfectly honest in their belief. They were not conscious of any abandonment of principle. They declared that they agreed with the Liberal party on every other question except the Irish Question, and even in regard to Ireland there was agreement on three points out of four. The Conservatives had exacted no pledges from them. They did not feel themselves divorced from one body of doctrine and engaged to another. They remained in political opinion on all the great contested questions of the day exactly where they had been when Parliament met in January 1885, and they sat in the same places and among the same party.

But, in fact, one change had taken place in their character of more practical importance than all the symbols and nomenclature of party, and counting more in political warfare than any change of principles, however sudden or sweeping: they had changed sides. Abstract principles and party labels might be the same, but whereas in January 1886 they wished and worked for a Liberal victory and a Conservative defeat, in January 1887 they wanted to see the Conservatives win and the Liberals beaten. Otherwise no change! No disagreement, outside Ireland, with the Liberal party--except that they sought its overthrow; no difference except the one difference which swallows up all others--the difference between alliance and war. And this difference, be it noted, was not founded on any passing mood of anger or caprice which smooth words and fair offers might dispel. It was fundamental and innate. It was the basis of the election of these seventy members. They had stood as opponents of Mr. Gladstone and all the forces he directed. They were elected for the very purpose of preventing his return to power by electors nine-tenths of whom at least were Conservatives. While they opposed Mr. Gladstone, they responded to the constituent bodies by whom they were returned. If they made friends with him--no matter upon what terms--they ceased to represent nine-tenths at least of their electorates.

Moreover, few men go through the experience of an internecine quarrel, with its taunts and charges of treachery and ingratitude exchanged between old comrades who know each other well, and with all the wrenching and tearing asunder of friendships and associations, without contracting a deep and abiding antagonism for those from whom they have broken. Sir George Trevelyan--unembarrassed by a constituency--indeed went back; but he went back alone. The rest remained to justify, by their consistent action, the wisdom of Conservative tactics; to prove, as the years went by, the most trustworthy supporters of the Conservative party, and in the end to secure the main control of its policy. From that strange pilgrimage--‘that bitter pilgrimage,’ as Mr. Chamberlain calls it (was it so very bitter, after all?), there could be no turning back after the first decisive steps were taken.

All this was, however, either unknown or imperfectly appreciated in 1887; and even if the Liberal-Unionists’ mind had been thoroughly understood, the uncertainty of the political situation would not have been by any means concluded. For, although there never was any real chance of Liberal reunion, there were repeated possibilities of a Conservative collapse. The Liberal Unionists were resolved to do nothing that would bring Mr. Gladstone back to power. Apart from imperilling the cause of the Union, that process would probably involve the political extinction of most of their party. But, subject to that dominant proviso, they could not feel any particular affection for Lord Salisbury’s Government. They disliked much of its action, they did not agree with its general views, and they could not be impressed by the Parliamentary exposition with which they were favoured. Their leaders were not desirous of office for its own sake; but they were gravely disquieted by the policy adopted towards Ireland, and more than once drawn to the conclusion that a wide reconstruction of the Cabinet would be necessary to maintain the reputation of the Unionist party in Parliament and the country. In view of their evident power to change the Government at any moment by a vote, the passage of the Irish Bills through the House of Commons was attended with extreme danger to the Ministry. On more than one occasion its life depended upon a single hand, and once it was decided that that hand should be withdrawn.

About Ireland and all that concerned her Lord Randolph cared intensely. He felt responsible in no small degree for the denial of Home Rule. As to that he had no doubts; but he had always intended, and had been allowed, with the full sanction of the Cabinet, to declare that the counterpart of the assertion of the Union was a generous, sympathetic, and liberal policy towards the Irish people in regard to religion, self-government, and land. Intimately acquainted as he was with many shades of Irish opinion, he was both grieved and angered at the temper displayed by the conquerors in the years that followed their victory. To Coercion, indeed, so far as it should be necessary to maintain the law, he had made up his mind before he left the Cabinet, and he had no thoughts of going back on that; but the Bill and its enforcement stirred all the latent Liberalism in his character. He discovered, as time went on, that special legislation was not regarded by the Government as a hateful necessity; but as something good in itself, producing a salutary effect upon the Irish people and raising the temper of the Ministerial party. He was offended by the calm assumption of social and racial superiority displayed, as a matter of course, by Ministers towards their Irish opponents, and the studied disregard of Nationalist sentiments and feelings which, even when no public object was to be gained, marked these dark years of Unionist policy; and with all his determination never in any degree weakened to maintain the Union, it was in the conduct of Irish affairs from 1887 to 1890 that he realised most acutely his differences with the Government, and out of which his open quarrel with the Conservative party ultimately sprang.

The retirement of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach from the Irish office on account of his eyesight was the first blow.

‘I waited till I got home,’ Lord Randolph wrote on March 30, ‘before writing to you, as I did not know where a letter might find you: but I feel sure no letter from me was needed for you to be convinced how profoundly grieved I was at your having to give up official work, and at the cause. I knew you had trouble before you, but was in great hopes that it might have been for long delayed. I saw Roose yesterday, and it was very pleasant to hear him assert with confidence that you would be as strong and well as ever before the close of the year. Indeed, you are a great loss to Ireland and to the party and to me. Now that you are gone, there is no one in the Government I care a rap about.... I should so much like to see you and have a long talk. I have as yet seen none of my late colleagues, nor do I want to. Don’t trouble to answer this; but believe that there is no one who more truly and earnestly wishes for your renewed health and strength.’

The Land Bill opened various difficulties. Many of the Liberal Unionists thought it inadequate, and both Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Randolph had decided opinions of their own upon several of its most important clauses. All through the summer of 1887 these two disinherited chiefs of democracy drew closely together. They were both, as Mr. Chamberlain describes it, ‘adrift from the regular party organisations.’ Yet each possessed great influence in Parliament and the country. It was natural that the idea of some Central party should present itself to their minds in a favourable light. And, indeed, the increasing weakness of the Government in the House of Commons and the apparently uncertain character of its majority made such speculations very reasonable. On at least two occasions a defeat in Committee on the Land Bill appeared certain; and in that emergency only a coalition headed by Lord Hartington and strengthened by both Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Randolph Churchill could have prevented the return of the Home Rulers to power, with a disastrous election to follow. In many letters and in several speeches the idea of a ‘National party’ recurs. In July the situation appeared so critical and the prospects of a collapse so imminent that Lord Hartington himself seems to have regarded the reconstruction of the Government as inevitable. In that event it was known that the two democratic leaders stood together and that neither would enter any Cabinet without the other.

The crisis passed, and with it the agreement. With the best will in the world Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Randolph Churchill found it very difficult to work in close accord. Their opinions were nearly alike, but their political positions were different. They had similar aims, but divergent antagonisms. The disputes within a party are always fiercer than those between regular political opponents and their rage burns long in the breast. Mr. Chamberlain had resigned from Mr. Gladstone’s Cabinet, and his attitude tended to become mainly one of opposition to him. All other political leaders, of whatever complexion, stood more or less in shadow. Lord Randolph, on the other hand, had resigned from Lord Salisbury’s Cabinet and the differences which most concerned him were those which separated him from the ‘old gang.’ Hence that strenuous alliance which was the necessary foundation of the National party was, from the very outset, subjected to perilous strains. Further difficulties arose from the topography of the House of Commons. The two friends sat on opposite sides of the House. No intercourse in the Chamber was possible without exciting notice and perhaps remark. On the other hand, the shifting course of the debates made constant consultings indispensable to harmonious action. Without them misunderstandings and disagreements were bound to arise. Both men formed strong and immediate opinions on every small point that arose. Both spoke with dangerous facility. Both had sharp tongues and some readiness to use them when provoked. During the long-drawn session of 1887 several petty disagreements, taking the form of public expression, arose.

One of these incidents occurred during the consideration of the bankruptcy clauses of the Irish Land Bill, August 1, 1887. The subject was technical, and the issue mixed. Lord Randolph Churchill had made a short argumentative speech upon an amendment which had been moved from the Liberal-Unionist benches. Mr. Chamberlain followed, and took a totally different line. ‘The noble lord,’ he said, ‘has not told the Committee how he intends to vote on this amendment.’ Lord Randolph said he would vote with the Government. ‘I confess,’ said Mr. Chamberlain, ‘I did not come to that conclusion from his speech. I thought the noble lord intended to support the amendment, and upon that I was going to point out to him that the greater part of his speech was against it.’ He then proceeded to indicate considerable differences with Lord Randolph on the merits of the question. The House was in Committee, and both men could therefore speak again. Lord Randolph referred to Mr. Chamberlain’s opening remarks as ‘a characteristic sneer.’ ‘The right honourable gentleman evidently does not understand the process of differing from one’s party and yet supporting it. On this question of the Irish land I hold certain opinions which I have ventured--I hope, with moderation--to press very rarely--I think, only three times--on Her Majesty’s Government. And then, if the Government have not altogether agreed with these opinions, I do not think it necessary to assume that the Government are entirely wrong or that I am infallibly right. Well, on the whole, I adhere to my view of the case. I see nothing inconsistent in supporting them after the remarks I have made--not in a dictatorial, but in a pleading manner.’ Mr. Chamberlain’s retort was prompt and sharp. He denied that he had intended a sneer of any kind. He was sincerely in doubt as to how Lord Randolph would have voted. ‘I am rather glad,’ he said, ‘that this incident has occurred, inasmuch as it has enabled the noble lord to pay me a compliment; and I can assure him that, coming from him, I very much value it. The noble lord said that I, at any rate, am not one of those who differ from their party and yet support it; neither am I one who speaks one way and votes another.’ There the matter dropped so far as the House of Commons was concerned. Mr. Chamberlain wrote the next day to put matters right. ‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that in this case it is ira amantium redintegratio amoris.’

Lord Randolph was not, however, easily placated. ‘I freely confess,’ he replied, ‘that I had viewed your action last night with the greatest possible surprise and some vexation, which I thought proper to express. When on Clause IV. you took similar action, hostile to my views, I refrained from any public comment. I am quite at a loss to understand why you have thought it necessary on two occasions within a week to express in a most marked manner your entire disagreement with me; but I am sure you have excellent reasons for all you do.’

This ill-humour lasted only a few days. Within the week the two men were dining and consulting with each other on personal terms as friendly as before. Yet some scars seem to have smarted, for there are signs in Lord Randolph’s correspondence that from this date he began to draw more closely in matters political towards Lord Hartington, and less freely to confide in his former ally. One morning soon after this Lord Randolph and Mr. Chamberlain went for a walk together in Hyde Park. They discussed the whole position in the frankest way and decided by mutual consent to work independently and to pursue the objects they sought in common by separate paths. Thus ended that intimate political understanding which had united these fiery spirits during the period of storm in a comradeship which had not been without its effects upon public affairs. They parted, with many expressions of goodwill, to follow after a time different roads and to face in the end contrasted fortunes. Their alliance had been brief. Even in the few years with which this account is concerned, they will be seen in sharp antagonism. Yet both were accustomed to preserve, amid the inexhaustible vicissitudes of politics, pleasant memories of those exciting and eventful days.

With this separation the prospects of a National party fade again into that dreamland whence so many have wished to recall them. Few, indeed, are the politicians who have not cherished these visions at times when ordinary party machinery is not at their disposal. To build from the rock a great new party--free alike from vested interests and from holy formulas, able to deal with national problems on their merits, patient to respect the precious bequests of the past, strong to drive forward the wheels of progress--is without doubt a worthy ideal. Alas, that the degeneracy of man should exclude it for ever from this wicked world!

Late in August Ministers determined to put their powers under the Crimes Act into force. All the independent men who kept them in office, seem to have been pained and dismayed by this decision. They feared its effects upon the majority, and doubted its necessity in Ireland.

‘I am desperately puzzled,’ wrote Lord Randolph to Lord Hartington (August 20), ‘to know what line to take about this last action of the Government. I disapprove of it profoundly, but distrust my own opinion--all the more that I do not know what special information Ministers have to support their action. There is unquestionably a smack of vindictiveness about the proclamation, prima facie, which the country will be quick to feel. This, coupled with their singular treatment of the Land Act, cannot produce a good effect. I am anxious to know whether, before their final decision, they secured your concurrence, as in that case I should keep my opinions to myself and give a silent vote in their support.

‘I have a letter from Chamberlain showing considerable irritation and impatience at your last communication to him, and great alarm for the future and his future; but he says he has decided to postpone any action tending to emphasise any difference of opinion between yourself and him. This, however, was written apparently before he was aware of the proclamation of the League and I do not know what effect that may produce on him.’

Lord Hartington’s measured reply makes plain the debt which the Conservative Government owed to this grave, calm, slow-moving man:--

Private.

Bolton Abbey, Skipton: August 21, 1887.

My dear Churchill,--The Government did not obtain or ask for my concurrence before deciding on the proclamation of the League. They have throughout on this question seemed disposed to take their own course and have not consulted me, as they have done on other subjects. The first I heard of it was from A. Balfour, who told me some weeks ago that they would probably proclaim before the end of the Session.

I have had several conversations with Smith, Goschen, and Balfour, in which I have expressed my serious doubts as to the policy of the measure, although I could not tell what information they might have from Ireland. They seem to have felt, and I cannot complain of it, that this was a measure rather of Executive responsibility than of policy, and to have rather carefully abstained from asking me to share their responsibility with them. I also have felt that, not being able to share it with them, I could not press them very strongly on a matter in which they had knowledge which I did not possess.

I sent Balfour a very strong letter of remonstrance from Chamberlain, telling him at the same time from myself that the proclamation appeared to be open to every sort of Parliamentary and political objection, but that I could not tell what information they might have as to its necessity.

I shall come up on Wednesday night or Thursday, if it is settled to take the debate on Thursday.

Yours sincerely, HARTINGTON.

Lord Randolph, though reluctant and disquieted, was willing to acquiesce in this sober opinion. From FitzGibbon, who wrote to him distressfully, he did not hide his dissatisfaction:--

‘I am against this proclamation business--as, I imagine, are most people of common sense and possessing knowledge of Ireland. But I must keep my opinion to myself and give a silent vote for the Government. It is no use finding fault with H.M.G. They are stupid, and there is no more to be said. I think there is nothing extravagant or improbable in the supposition that the G.O.M. will be Prime Minister before next Easter.’ And he added, with more shrewdness, ‘The Land Bill has been sadly mismanaged. I fear nothing will kill Home Rule except a second trial by Gladstone and a second failure.’

But Chamberlain was the gloomiest of all. Nothing can exceed the despondency of his letters at this time. He refrained, at the earnest requests of Lord Hartington and Lord Randolph Churchill, from publishing his alternative plan of Irish Local Government which he believed the political situation required. He never wavered for an hour as to his own course. The darker the Unionist horizon, the more uncompromising was his attitude towards the Gladstonians. But he evidently expected the speedy downfall of the Government and perhaps the triumph of Repeal. Throughout the autumn he faced the public with deep anxiety at his heart. ‘Every day of Coercion,’ wrote this experienced judge of electoral possibilities (October 2), ‘adds to the Gladstonian strength, and I see no probability that the strong measures which are disgusting our friends in England, will effectually dispose of the League in Ireland.... I cannot see how Mr. G. can be kept out much longer. If he comes back he will dissolve and most of the Liberal-Unionists will go to the wall. I do not feel absolutely certain of a single seat, though I think that I am safe myself. Then he will propose and carry his new plan, whatever that may be. I expect we shall not like it any better than the old one.’ From these embarrassments he was glad to depart altogether, and the Government, not perhaps without cunning, suggested an attractive and important mission to the United States to negotiate a fishery treaty. He left England late in November, and did not return till March in the New Year. This interval gave practical effect to his political separation from Lord Randolph Churchill.

In the meanwhile the session ended and His Majesty’s Government--as Governments do in a changeable world--ran for the time out of storms into calmer water. Lord Randolph continued in a twilight mood. He disliked the Ministry, but did his best so far as he truthfully could to sustain their policy. In the winter he revolved plans for an Irish Education Bill, and endeavoured to pick up again the threads he had been forced to drop incontinently two years before.

_Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Justice FitzGibbon._

2 Connaught Place, W.: November 21, 1887.

This should be the plan of campaign. Assume that you are a benevolent despot with unlimited power for carrying out your own sweet will in respect of a legal solution of the Education Question:

1. Draw your Bill as per documents forwarded to me.

2. Ascertain from Walsh how far the draft meets with his concurrence and would secure his support; or what modifications or extensions would be necessary to that end. And, further, whether, if you and he are agreed, he and his party would desire that I should submit the matter to the House of Commons.

I have a better chance, I think, of carrying a Bill than the Government; for, although I have not the Government command of the time of the House, I can put very considerable pressure upon them to give me facilities, and it would be much easier for the Irish to support a private member than to accept anything whatever at the hands of a Coercion Government. Moreover, I feel confident of Liberal-Unionist support and, being very friendly with John Morley, I feel pretty sure of his benevolent neutrality--probably of his assistance also.

I will assent to, and assume Parliamentary responsibility for, any scheme which you and the Archbishop can agree upon. I do not think there is any difficulty as to the position of a private member opposing a grant of public money for certain purposes. The transfer of the expenditure on Model Schools to other purposes is certainly within the power of a private member.

When you have got your scheme drafted, and feel sure of your Archbishop, then I will get hold of Beach, and approach the Government. I cannot move until I get a draft Bill.

For strategic purposes, leave alone Erasmus Smith, Incorporated Society, Irish Society and London Companies; so that, if I am troubled by factious opposition from those interests, I may threaten reprisals by moving to appropriate radically their resources.

Would you approve of making your Bill very comprehensive and in three parts?

1. Elementary (see your paragraph, p. 18, of your Report).

2. Intermediate (see following paragraph).

3. University (i.e. the creation of a Catholic University out of the existing Royal University, endowed by the moneys now paid to the Queen’s Colleges, and as a subsidiary measure a “Stincomalee” at Belfast).

A large Bill often moves through the House, by its own momentum, with greater ease than a small one, and the prospect of abolition of the Model Schools and the godless Colleges would, I think, be a lure which the Catholic clergy and laity would greedily swallow.

Your great organising mind could easily arrange a Bill of this dimension, and many circumstances lead me to think that the moment is very propitious for the launching of such a scheme.

2 Connaught Place, W.: February 6, 1888.

I think the education matter had better wait until you are able to come over to London and we can thrash it out together in conversation. Walsh’s absence is decisive against doing anything yet. Perhaps H.M.G. contemplate moving on their own account. Do not say anything to them to give them the idea that you and I contemplate moving.

2 Connaught Place, W.: February 10, 1888.

I hope you will come over soon and arrange to remain several days. The Session comes in like a lamb. I am reminded of the earlier Sessions of the 1874 Parliament. I saw H.E. the Lord-Lieutenant yesterday; he tells me he often sees you, which I am glad of. The inconceivable apathy of the House of Lords prevented H.E. from delivering his views on Ireland; I am very sorry he was not able to speak. I have to give an address on the Irish Question to the Oxford Union on the 22nd. This must be a grave and moderate statement of our case. Do, if you have time, send me some good and novel views and, if possible, some effective references and quotations.

2 Connaught Place, W.: February 15, 1888.

It was very good of you writing me such a long letter and sending me so much good information. My thoughts, however, when I was preparing my speech for the Oxford Union led me away from the line you suggested and I fear you will think that I gave you a lot of trouble all for nothing. Balfourism acts like a blister on Ireland and the Irish, and has the bad and good effects which such treatment generally produces. A too protracted application of the blister might do much harm.

Doncaster came in the nick of time. I think we shall probably hold Deptford. Things look fairly well in Parliament. There are hints and insinuations from some quarters as to my rejoining the Government. I am, however, very happy and contented where I am, and usually able to exert a good deal of influence if I take the trouble, without being saddled with any inconvenient responsibilities. I hope you will be running over soon.

[Sidenote: 1888 ÆT. 39]

2 Connaught Place, W.: July 14, 1888.

I wish very much we could meet the Archbishop’s views. It is a great pity that Irish education should be complicated and embarrassed by other political questions. Next year, if all is well, we must make a great effort to get forward. I hope to be in Ireland the end of August or beginning of September; and if so, perhaps I may have the great advantage of personally ascertaining the Archbishop’s opinions.

If I can only attain full agreement with him I do not anticipate any difficulty with the Cabinet. The present moment is most propitious for action. Later on we may become again involved in the chaotic and whirling conflict of Home Rule, and education will be indefinitely postponed.

From the oratory of the recess and the rumours of reconstruction Lord Randolph hurried away upon an expedition to which he had for some months past been looking forward. To travel abroad, particularly in Europe, always amused him; and he found no better relaxation after a spell of political activity than in new scenes, fresh men and another atmosphere. He had always wanted to visit Russia; and to go there now, in circumstances personally so convenient and when the international situation was full of interest, was a project to him very attractive. Like most men whose lot it is to live a part of their lives on the world’s stage, to mingle with large crowds and to submit themselves to public comment or applause, he was especially jealous of the privacy of his holidays; and in order to prevent gossip of various kinds he had allowed it to be understood that he would spend a part of the winter in Spain. This device succeeded admirably until he was discovered about to start for St. Petersburg. Then the newspapers awoke. The Continental press manufactured rumours with that fertile ingenuity for which it has always been distinguished, and on these the London newspapers dilated with preternatural gravity. The Times led the way with a solemn warning to the Czar not to be misled, as his predecessor had been by a certain Quaker deputation on the eve of the Crimean War, by any assurances of British friendship which might be offered by the ‘most versatile and volatile’ of English politicians. Lesser journals were less restrained. All the gossip of the previous year was revived. He was making a political journey. He was charged with a secret mission. He was an ‘officious’ ambassador from Lord Salisbury. He was gathering materials for a campaign against the Government. If he were neither for nor against the Government, why should he be there at all? Why, except for grave reasons of State, should a man not physically robust exchange Spain for Russia in December? It was understood Lord Randolph was to seek health and warmth in the South; but here, in midwinter, he was ‘deserting the Guadalquivir for the Neva, and the sun of Seville for the snows of St. Petersburg.’ That he was ‘accompanied by his wife’ was apparently a matter of additional significance. The explanation that he was going to Russia as a tourist because he wanted to see Russia and the Russian Court was offered by his friends. But no one was so simple as to believe that; and at length an official communiqué was published from the Foreign Office: ‘Lord Randolph Churchill has no mission from the Government to M. de Giers. His presence in St. Petersburg is wholly without the knowledge of the Foreign Office and he has no official status’; and then followed a sentence which seemed to bear the marks of a certain sharply pointed pen--‘His lordship alone knows why he gave up a contemplated Spanish tour for a visit to northern latitudes.’ After this the lower Ministerial press struck a different note. The Czar would refuse to see a vulgar globe-trotter. There was no person whom the Russians more heartily despised than the member for Paddington--‘a boastful, rattling, noisy egotist with no principle and, apparently, with no conception of duty or honour.’

Meanwhile the object of this merry chatter was enjoying himself. When the word has gone forth in Russia that a visitor is to be well received, he need not trouble himself about details. Everything moves sur les roulettes; railway officials and Custom House officers are transformed into attentive servants--often a considerable transformation; carriages are reserved in every train; and luggage passes untouched through every cordon. Lord Randolph arrived expeditiously at St. Petersburg, assailed by newspaper correspondents--‘mischievous people’ whom he refused to see (after all, they must live, like everybody else)--and met by his friends from the Embassy. The next day he saw M. de Giers; and the day after the Czar, without waiting for the usual New Year’s Day reception, summoned him to Gatschina. Lord Randolph has left a carefully written account of his conversation with this great personage, which I have but slightly abbreviated. After driving in bright sun and bitter cold to the Winter Palace, and long delays, relieved by cups of tea, in interminable corridors adorned by wonderfully dressed servants with panaches of red and orange ostrich feathers, he was conducted to the Emperor’s apartment. The Czar was sitting at a large writing-table in a small cabinet d’affaires, and told his visitor to seat himself on a low yellow banquette on the opposite side of the table. After cigarettes had been produced and lighted, the conversation began in French, ‘which,’ writes Lord Randolph, ‘was a great disappointment to me, for he can speak English perfectly; and sometimes he talked rather low and in his beard, so that I, who do not hear very well, missed some of his remarks.’

Lord Randolph’s account proceeds:--

‘After some general observations as to the time when he was in England last and when I was presented to him, and inquiries as to my stay in Russia and intentions of going to Moscow, His Majesty said: “Well, I hope you have been long enough in St. Petersburg to find out that we are not so terribly warlike as we are made out to be.” I replied that I did not think that anyone in England of information had the smallest doubts of the strong desire of His Majesty for peace and of the reluctance of the Russian Government to go to war. This had been abundantly shown by several incidents in the course of the last two years. The Czar remarked that the English journals were very bitter against Russia and attributed all sorts of malignant intentions to her. He added that he had been told that some of them were subsidised by Monsieur de Bismarck and excited against Russia by him. I told him that I could not think there was any foundation for the last statement, though I had heard a story of the * * * * having been paid by Monsieur de Bismarck to insert some months ago some startling announcement as to the relations between Germany and France; but that it was said that one of the proprietors had lost a large sum of money owing to the fall in securities which followed that announcement. Speaking generally on the question of English journals, I expressed a hope that His Majesty would not pay much attention to the remarks of English newspapers; that no public man in England ever cared a rap for anything they said; that they were quite irresponsible, and on foreign affairs as a rule very ill-informed. I particularly urged the non-importance of the London press as any guide to English public opinion, which was far better expressed and followed by the provincial press and the leading daily journals of our large towns. His Majesty seemed struck by this and said that some one had told him the same thing once before.

‘After saying that he had a great wish to go to England for the purpose of ascertaining the drift of English policy, he asked after Mr. Gladstone and whether there was any chance of his returning to office. I replied that Mr. Gladstone was very old and aged, that there seemed to be no reason why the present Parliament should not last for three or four years, and that it was hardly conceivable that after that period Mr. Gladstone would be physically capable of official duty, even if other circumstances were favourable. This latter contingency was extremely remote, as in my opinion the combination of parties against him was too strong to be resisted, and would probably keep the Opposition out of office for years. In a word, that no rational politician would count on Mr. Gladstone’s return to office as a practical factor in politics. His Majesty appearing to be under the impression that the breach between Mr. Gladstone and the party of Lord Hartington was not a very irreparable one, and might be made up, I told His Majesty that at the commencement that was so, but the course of events during this year had hopelessly embittered the quarrel; and that Lord Hartington had taken up, with the assent of his followers, a very strong position of opposition in general to Mr. Gladstone, mainly on account of their conviction that Mr. Gladstone’s internal policy was anarchical. His Majesty asked after several other public men--Lord Granville (un homme charmant), Lord Derby, Mr. Goschen.

‘His Majesty then went on to say that he was anxious to have visited England in order to have a full explanation with Lord Salisbury ”jusqu’à présent l’ennemi acharné de la Russie.” I reminded His Majesty that at the time of the Conference of Constantinople Lord Salisbury had by no means been such an enemy, but that at that time he probably had great sympathy for Russia; that after that events had taken an unfortunate turn, and that Lord Beaconsfield’s influence had prevailed, and English policy been directed into an anti-Russian groove; but I also reminded His Majesty that Lord Salisbury had in August last made a speech at the Mansion House--which, coming from him, was of great significance--which was marked by a tone of perfect friendship for Russia and a strong belief in the possibility of good relations between the two countries.

‘His Majesty did not disagree to all this, and said he hoped it was so, as he must have an understanding (or settlement) with England une jois pour toutes. These words he repeated more than once in the conversation. I said the great difficulty between us had been the Central Asian Question. He said it ought not to be a difficulty any longer, that the Russians wanted no more, that they had more than they could manage; but that the policy of the neutral zone had altogether broken down and proved to be nonsense; that the two Powers must be limitrophes, that we were making a great mistake in still pursuing the neutral-zone policy by insisting on the independence of Afghanistan, which we ought to take and govern ourselves. To this I replied, in the first place, that I had never understood that Afghan territories were included in any neutral zone; that, on the contrary, I thought it had always been accorded that Afghanistan was outside Russian influence and must be solely under British influence. To this His Majesty said nothing. I went on to say that it was vital to us in India to exclude all foreign influence from Afghanistan, and to retain its government under our sole guidance; that we could not tolerate the smallest departure from this principle, and I said that if His Majesty thought we were too strong and unyielding on this matter he had only to recollect the essential nature of the Indian Government--250,000 whites ruling 250 million indigènes; that a Government of that kind rested almost entirely on its morale and prestige; and that la moindre attente against its prestige, if not promptly and effectively dealt with, might become the gravest wound; that any attempt to exercise influence other than British in Afghanistan would be such an attente. I went on to say that our position was not perhaps quite logical; for that, holding such opinions, we ought to take Afghanistan. This, I said, we could not do, as public opinion and the Parliament would be invincibly opposed to any such large extension of our Indian Empire, except under circumstances of the most critical and forcible character; that that was our position--that while we could allow no interference by others we would not assume the responsibility of direct government by ourselves; and that it seemed to me that a frank acceptance of that position would be essential to any understanding between the two countries. His Majesty having commented generally on this, and having contrasted our position with his own as regarded Khiva and Bokhara--which, he averred, were now most tranquil and prosperous, instead of utterly disordered as they used to be--went on to speak of the European position as it affected the two countries.

‘“With regard to the Black Sea and the Dardanelles, if you desire peace and friendship with Russia, you must not mix yourselves up there against us. We will never suffer,” His Majesty said, with some slight approach to excitement, “any other Power to hold the Dardanelles except the Turks or ourselves; and if the Turks ultimately go out, it is by Russians that they will be succeeded.”

‘I replied that I had always understood that that was the Russian view and that I would offer no criticism or comment on it, as it appeared to me to be too speculative for practical purposes; that as regarded present European difficulties Constantinople was in no way en jeu; and that I did not think that questions concerning its ultimate fate ought to disturb relations between England and Russia.

‘With respect to Bulgaria I expressed my own strong opinion that England had no direct or important interests in that part of Europe and that it could be no object to us to oppose the exercise of what I admitted was legitimate Russian influence there; that, if we had any interests, they were purely platonic, on behalf of liberty generally, and springing from a general anxiety that treaties should be maintained; beyond that they did not go. I added that in my opinion the policy of the Crimean War, which was also adopted in ‘76-‘78 by England, had come to an end with the election of 1880 and was not likely to be renewed or resumed; that the English people were not likely to fight for the Turks, nor for the Bulgarians; and that they were not likely to associate themselves with Austria; that the policy which the English people would prefer about that part of Europe was complete neutrality and non-intervention. I said more than once that I knew nothing whatever of the Government policy; that I had no connection with the Government, direct or indirect; that I only spoke as one who had had much opportunity of learning the disposition of Parliament and the tendency of opinion among the people.

‘His Majesty asked me if the views I had expressed were shared by Lord Hartington. I replied that it was almost impossible to say accurately what Lord Hartington’s views were, as he was a man of remarkable reserve, but His Majesty would recollect that from 1880 to 1885, when the English Government pursued in Europe a policy which was certainly one of friendship and loyalty to Russia and of undisguised indifference as to the fate of the Turk, Lord Hartington was, after Mr. Gladstone, the leading man in that Government, and that I had no reason to suppose that he had in any way receded from the foreign policy he then contributed to give effect to. His Majesty, speaking about Egypt, said that Russia had no desire to interfere with us there in any way. On the contrary, they had no interests in that country. He added that he did not see why England and France should not be perfectly good friends on all Egyptian matters. To this I replied that understandings with France appeared to be impossible; that not only did Governments succeed each other there with hopeless rapidity, but that the very form of Government in France was ephemeral. To this His Majesty quite assented, and said: “Well, if you like, you have a great task before you on your return to England--to improve the relations between Russia and England.” I replied that for some time past I had worked in that direction and should continue to do so, although in certain quarters, Parliamentary and otherwise, my views had not hitherto been regarded with favour; but that I had formed a strong opinion that a thorough understanding between England and Russia was possible and would be of the greatest advantage to both. I added that I had said nothing, either to His Majesty or to M. de Giers, which I had not very often said to Lord Salisbury while I was his colleague.

‘His Majesty, who throughout the interview had been wonderfully kind, quiet and simple, talking evidently with unreserve and allowing me to do the same without displeasure, then brought to a close a conversation which had lasted for about forty-five minutes.’

The next day Lord and Lady Randolph had intended to go to Moscow; but an invitation, equal to a command, to a party at Gatschina, delayed them. ‘It was,’ wrote Lord Randolph, ‘certainly a very pretty and interesting sight. The Emperor and the Empress were very kind to us, and I sat at supper, at the Empress’s table, between the Grand Duchess Elizabeth (daughter of the Duke of Hesse and very beautiful) and the Grand Duchess Catharine. I made the acquaintance of some interesting people, entre autres of General Ignatieff. M. de Giers sat by me during most of the play. There was first a French play, then a quartette from Rigoletto, then the duo from The Huguenots, then a Russian play (quite unintelligible), and then another French play. The programme was too long. Between the pieces the Emperor and Empress walked about and spoke to people, and there was a large buffet where everyone went and lapped. The whole thing was splendidly done.’

The marked consideration shown to the English visitor increased the gossip--good-humoured and spiteful alike--at home; and in the Russian capital, where everyone takes his cue from the Czar, Lord and Lady Randolph for some days almost engrossed the attention of Society and the press. Reporters and telegram agents hovered gloomily round the hotel from morn till dusk. Skating parties, in which Lady Randolph much distinguished herself, and visits to important people occupied the days, and banquets and receptions the nights. Long tours through peerless galleries and museums, where Lord Randolph recognised with regret not a few alienated Blenheim treasures; a flying visit to Moscow; the ‘Blessing of the Waters’ on the feast of the Epiphany, ‘when the Emperor had to stand bareheaded in the cold for a good long time’; a rout of 800 persons given in his honour by Lady Morier at the British Embassy, were among the incidents of a brilliant fortnight. ‘I am sure in England,’ Lord Randolph wrote to his mother, ‘it would bore me dreadfully to go to all these dinners and parties and things, but here it amuses me. I wonder why it is.... You must not believe a word the newspapers say. I was most careful and guarded in all my communications and confined myself to general beaming upon everyone. Lord S. may or may not be angry, but I am certain that my going to Russia has had a good effect and can at any rate do no harm.’

He lingered a little on the homeward journey both in Berlin and Paris.

To his Mother.

British Embassy, Berlin.

Here we are very comfortable. I never travelled with so much circumstance before. The Malets are most kind and anxious to make everything very pleasant. On Monday night the opera, where was represented all Berlin Society en grande tenue; the old Emperor looking very brisk. Yesterday the picture gallery, in which I observed three Blenheim pictures--the Fornarina by Raphael (now called a Sebastian del Piombo), the Andromeda of Rubens and the great Bacchanalia picture by Rubens.... To-night Malet has an immense feast--thirty-six persons. I went this morning to Potsdam to write my name on Prince William, who called on us yesterday and saw Jennie while I was out. Then luncheon with Herbert Bismarck--very pleasant--no one else but Herr von Pothenberg, Prince Bismarck’s chef de cabinet. We talked very freely for a long time, and drank a great deal of beer, champagne, claret, sherry and brandy! H.B. is delightful, so frank and honest.... I have not a doubt that the Chancellor kept away purposely. He is a grincheux old creature, and knows quite well that I will use all my influence, as I have done, to prevent Lord S. from being towed in his wake.... Some correspondents have been to see me, but I have been very snubby to them.

And so back to England, pursued by rumours with which the Times thought it worth while to fill three columns of its foreign telegrams.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us