XX. CROSS CURRENTS
‘Surely there is no better way to stop the rising of sects and schisms than to reform abuses; to compound the smaller differences; to proceed mildly, and not with sanguinary persecutions; and rather to take off the principal authors, by winning and advancing them, than to enrage by violence and bitterness.’--BACON.
Sixteen months had passed, after Lord Randolph Churchill resigned, before he became involved in a serious and open difference with the Conservative Government. That he was separated from them by sentiment and conviction, not only upon various considerable questions of method, but upon the general character and temper of their policy, has been abundantly explained. But his misgivings were concealed from the public by his consistent defence of the Union, by an unaffected partisanship and by the lively attacks which he made upon the Opposition. It is true that the criticisms upon naval and military administration which had been a necessary feature of his crusade of economy had naturally won him little favour in Ministerial circles, and his open independence of the official leaders could not be welcomed by his party. But the details of departmental administration, though of immense practical importance, do not usually raise, and ought scarcely ever to raise, questions of confidence and loyalty. The efficient conduct of the services and the doctrines of public thrift are--formally, at least--included in the principles of both great political organisations. Except at rare intervals, they lie apart from the ordinary scope of Parliamentary conflict; and their discussion should never seriously divide political associates. But Ireland opened chasms of a very different kind.
When Sir Michael Hicks-Beach recovered his eyesight, Lord Salisbury was anxious for him to rejoin the Government and offered him--no other post being vacant--the Presidency of the Board of Trade. Beach, for whom office had few attractions, who was on many questions in full sympathy with Lord Randolph, and who was always bound to him by firm friendship, was in no hurry to accept. He proposed to Lord Randolph, as they walked down one day to the House together, that he should decline Lord Salisbury’s offer and that they should both sit together and work together for the rest of the Parliament. Lord Randolph would not, however, countenance this generous attempt to relieve the isolation of his position. He urged Sir Michael to join the Government. ‘They need you,’ he said, ‘and besides, I shall like to feel I have one friend there’ (February 1888).
During the whole of 1887 Lord Randolph had regularly supported his late colleagues. Any opinions he had expressed on the Budget and the Land Bill had been of a friendly nature and in the interests of those measures. He had joined in the debates of the House with the same tone and intention as he would have spoken in the Cabinet. No divergence of principle on a dominant issue had yet occurred. The Government had acted--however uninspiringly--in conformity with the main lines of the policy declared at the General Election. It was not until the year 1888 that the question of Irish Local Government and the Suakin operations provoked a definite and notorious disagreement. On both these matters Lord Randolph Churchill had made public declarations of the plainest character in Opposition or as Leader of the House of Commons, and to those pledges he adhered with a truly Quixotic disregard of his personal interests.
‘On this question of Local Government,’ Lord Randolph had stated in August 1886, speaking in the House of Commons in the name of the Conservative party, and with the full authority of the Cabinet as a whole, of the Prime Minister, of the Chief Secretary of the day, and of the leaders of the Liberal Unionists--‘the great sign-posts of our policy are equality, similarity and, if I may use such a word, simultaneity, as far as is practicable, in the development of a genuinely popular system of Local Government in the four countries which form the United Kingdom.’ The months had slipped away. A year and a half were gone. When Lord Randolph left the Government their good resolutions in respect of Ireland faded. Their pledges were long to remain unredeemed. The arguments appropriate to such occasions were employed: the circumstances had changed; the disaffection of the people was patent; the Irish were unfitted by character and history for popular institutions.
It was a Wednesday afternoon (April 25), and under the old rules of procedure the House rose at half-past five. A Nationalist member had moved the second reading of an Irish County Government Bill, roughly designed to merge boards of guardians, lunatic asylum boards and town commissioners in smaller towns into county councils. To this a reasoned amendment was moved, with the concurrence of the Government, by a private member from the Unionist benches, setting forth the inexpediency at that time of introducing any large constitutional change in Ireland. Mr. Gladstone spoke in support of the Bill, and Mr. Balfour made an airy reply, instancing the improper conduct of Irish local bodies and declaring that that country was not fit for any extension of Local Government. Something in his easy manner, thus dismissing unceremoniously--almost, as it seemed, unconsciously--solemn pledges elaborately given to the electorate at a time of choice, and renewed in Parliament after the decision, seems to have stirred Lord Randolph’s blood. He got up immediately the Chief Secretary finished. Speaking with much restraint, but with sufficient sharpness of manner to prevent him referring to his old comrade as a ‘right honourable friend,’ he reminded the Government and the swiftly-offended party of the declarations by which they were bound, and the authority upon which those declarations had been made.
‘All the circumstances,’ he said, ‘upon which the Chief Secretary has enlarged this afternoon, showing the defects which exist in the working of popular institutions in Ireland and the dangers that might be anticipated from their extension, were before the Government of Lord Salisbury at the time when they had to take a decision--a most momentous decision--upon this question.... The idea of the Government at that time was that a certain just extension, within reasonable limits, of Local Government in Ireland was to be looked upon as a remedy for the great evils which have been dwelt upon by the Chief Secretary.... I recollect that the pledges given by the Unionist party were large and liberal, were distinct and full, and that there was no reservation in those pledges with respect to all the defects pointed out this afternoon in the Irish character and in respect of Irish unfitness for Local Government--nothing of the kind. We pledged ourselves that we would at the very earliest opportunity extend to Ireland the same amount of Local Government which we might give to England and Scotland. I venture to say--and I do not care how much I am contradicted, or what the consequences may be--that that was the foundation of the Unionist party; and, more, that that is the only platform on which you can resist Repeal. If you are going to the English people, relying merely on the strength of your Executive power--if you are going to preach that the Irish must for an indefinite time be looked upon as an inferior community--unfit for the privileges which the English people enjoy--then I tell you that you may retain that position for a time, but only for a time, and that the time will probably be a short one.... The words I used in representing the Government at that table were that in approaching this momentous question of Local Government we should do so with similarity, equality and simultaneity. The time has gone by altogether for me to bear, and I will be content no longer to bear, solely the responsibility of those words; and I do not think that there would be a bonâ fide carrying-out of the policy I then announced if Ireland is not to have a measure of Local Government, until the state of order in that country is satisfactory to the Executive Government.’
Only a short time remained before the sitting must end. Chamberlain rose at once from the Front Opposition Bench and in a speech of four minutes said that he should vote with the Government on the understanding that measures of local reform for Ireland were simply delayed by pressure of business. Before the Leader of the House could add anything to the debate Mr. Parnell moved the Closure--the Irish desiring to obtain the division usual on such private members’ Bills--and the incident ended. But it left an estrangement behind.
The second quarrel did not arise till eight months later. In November 1888 the chronic skirmishing and raiding around Suakin developed into a regular blockade of that place, and the squalid, worthless, pestilential Red Sea port became again a bone of strife between brave men in the desert and wise men in the Senate. I do not need to remind the reader of the vehement attacks which Lord Randolph Churchill had made upon Mr. Gladstone’s Egyptian policy, or of the support and approval which those attacks had received from the Conservative party and the Conservative press. No part of those strictures had been more effective or more violent than that which referred to the operations around Suakin. They had not, as many people on both sides of politics had believed and freely stated, been impelled mainly by a factious desire to discredit and embarrass Mr. Gladstone’s Administration. That was, no doubt, an obvious contributory motive; but behind it lay a profound detestation of the purposeless bloodshed with which Soudan history, and especially Suakin history, had since 1883 been stained. ‘I do not hesitate to say,’ he declared in 1888, ‘that I hate the Soudan. The idea to me of risking the life of a single British soldier in that part of the world is inexpressibly repugnant.’ Whatever he might have thought at another time, when the finances of Egypt were restored and the Dervish fires had burnt low, of a methodical and scientific reconquest of the country, he was sincerely opposed in 1888, as in Mr. Gladstone’s day, to the policy known as ‘kill and retire.’ It seemed to him the highest unwisdom, whether from a political or military point of view, to despatch a single British battalion, swamped among four thousand Egyptian soldiers, with no other object, even if successful, than to fight a battle, decimate the hostile tribesmen and return. He recalled the small beginnings and the insufficient forces out of which great and far-reaching events in Zululand and in the Transvaal had sprung. And he did not lack, as was afterwards proved, the support of high authorities for his opinion. ‘I can assure you,’ telegraphed Lord Cromer (then Sir Evelyn Baring) to Lord Salisbury on December 6, ‘that, unless great care is taken, the Government may be dragged into another big Soudan business almost before they are aware of it’; and, again, ‘all sorts of arguments will probably be put forward about tranquillising the Soudan once and for all. I believe that these arguments are of very little value and that for the present the Soudan cannot be tranquillised without the re-occupation of Khartoum, which would require a large force.’[66]
On these subjects and in this tenor Lord Randolph delivered three speeches in the House of Commons, which were, as may be easily imagined, met with unstinted resentment by his party. He spoke first on December 1, a general debate on the vote for embassies and foreign missions having been raised by Mr. Morley; and three days later he moved the adjournment of the House. This step created extravagant surprise and anger. He rose, as the newspapers took care to point out, to make his motion absolutely alone on the Government side of the House. He was supported by the whole Opposition. He spoke--as, indeed, throughout the Parliament of 1886--with gravity and moderation, and made a quiet, earnest appeal to the House to prevent the renewal of the Soudan warfare. His motion for the adjournment was unexpected, and the Government were for some time, during the debate that followed, in a minority. At a quarter-past six, however, when the division was taken, they secured a majority of forty-two, although a half-dozen Conservatives--among whom Mr. Hanbury was probably the best-known--voted against them.
Loud and long was the expression of Ministerial wrath. ‘In order to discredit his views,’ wrote Jennings, in his preface to Lord Randolph Churchill’s speeches, ‘it was necessary to bring into play those formidable weapons of misrepresentation which can never be used with greater effect than when they are directed by persons who have the entire machinery of a great party at their command.’ He was accused forthwith of having laid a plot with the Opposition to destroy the Government on a snap division; and the ‘treachery’ and ‘ingratitude’ of such conduct were for some days a popular and fertile theme. He was even forced to defend himself in public from such imputations. His reply was explicit: ‘(1) If I had desired,’ he wrote to an inquiring person, ‘to snatch a surprise division on the motion for the adjournment of the House, which I made on Tuesday last with regard to Suakin, I should not have occupied fifty minutes of the time of the House with my own speech. (2) If I had desired by the aid of the Opposition to defeat the Government, I should not have selected an evening when the supporters of the Government, under the pressure of a five-line whip, were likely to be present in great numbers in order to take part in a division on an Irish vote which had been arranged to come off before the dinner-hour. (3) The fact of the matter is that the case against the Suakin expedition is so strong, and the line taken with respect to similar expeditions by the Tories when they were in Opposition was so marked, that I felt very confident of receiving appreciable support from the ranks of the Ministerialists. For that reason I welcomed every circumstance which was likely to bring together a full House.’
It is not suggested that Lord Randolph Churchill was unwilling to defeat the Government by his motion. Its object was to prevent the proposed action in the Soudan. That object could only have been attained by an adverse vote in the House of Commons. Whether such a vote would have involved the resignation of Ministers is uncertain. The pretence that a simple motion for adjournment, necessarily unaccompanied by any substantive censure of policy, should directly involve a change of Government is a modern abuse of Parliamentary practice. But even had the fate of the Government turned on the division--as, of course, they declared it would--conscientious conviction in an urgent matter of life and death would have fully justified Lord Randolph in the course he took. His action was reasonable, consistent and fair. Whether he was right on the merits of the question or as to its importance in relation to the general political situation, must be judged by others.
The Government profited both by the counsels which were offered them and by the result of their final decision. The British force despatched to Suakin was reinforced. The scope of the warfare was rigidly confined. Nothing that might prove extensive or entangling was permitted and, on the other hand, the limited operation was in itself completely successful. On December 21 an engagement was fought outside Suakin. The Dervishes were routed with heavy slaughter and driven away into the desert, whence--as it luckily happened--they did not subsequently choose to return in numbers sufficient to cause anxiety to the garrison or seriously disturb the peace of the Red Sea Littoral.
The speeches of Lord Randolph Churchill in Parliament during the years from 1887 to 1890 were the best in manner and command he ever made. He stood alone, surrounded by enemies who were once his supporters, and faced by opponents whose plaudits he did not desire; but if he had still been Leader of the House he could not have been more at his ease and more sure of himself. His style was serious enough to suit the dullest; and yet point after point was made with a clearness and rhetorical force to which the dullest could not be insensible. His voice penetrated everywhere without apparent effort. Every tone was full of meaning. He was sparing of gesture and cared little for oratorical ornament. He was always heard with profound attention by the House, with obvious anxiety by the Government, and usually in silence by the Conservative party.
The influence which he exerted upon the course of affairs outside the ordinary divisions of party was palpable and noteworthy. With the full consent of the Government he moved (February 16, 1888) the Address to the Crown, which being assented to unanimously by the House, called into being the Royal Commission upon the alleged corruption and improprieties of the Metropolitan Board of Works. When a member of Parliament had been guilty of a libel upon the Speaker, it was Lord Randolph Churchill who with formidable authority of manner, and complete mastery of Parliamentary practice, persuaded, and indeed compelled, the House to resolve his suspension for an entire month (July 20, 1888). One hot summer afternoon (June 27, 1888) he appeared unexpectedly in his place and practically laughed the Channel Tunnel Bill--supported though it was by Mr. Gladstone and many prominent Tories--out of the House of Commons. Sir Edward Watkin, the promoter, had explained a device by which a Minister of State by touching a button could in an instant blow up the entrance to the tunnel. ‘Imagine,’ exclaimed Lord Randolph, drawing an airy finger along the Treasury bench--‘Imagine a Cabinet Council sitting in the War Office around the button. Fancy the present Cabinet gathered together to decide who should touch the button and when it should be touched.’ He had intended to add, ‘Fancy the right honourable member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith) rising at length in his place with the words “I move that the button be now touched,”’ but the laughter from all parties which this diverting picture had already excited led him to forget the climax he had contemplated. The Bill was rejected by 307 to 165. Few private members, divorced alike from office and from the official Opposition, have in modern times been able by their unaided personal force so powerfully to sway the opinion of Parliament.
And now must be related an incident which, though not in itself of historical importance, created a great hubbub at the time and involved an open political dispute and severance between Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr. Chamberlain. Although Lord Randolph was comfortably settled in Paddington and enjoyed the luxury of a safe seat, he always hankered after Birmingham. Contact with a democratic electorate in a centre of active political thought was always personally very alluring to him; and it is singular that he never achieved his ambition of representing a popular constituency. But if these were general predilections, Birmingham offered attractions of its own. His association with the Birmingham Tories during the fighting days of 1884 and 1885 had formed ties of mutual regard and comradeship which proved strong enough--in the case of those who had come into personal touch with him, at any rate--to stand all the strains of the lean and melancholy years that followed. No amount of party disapprobation, of pressure from headquarters, of newspaper abuse, affected the faithfulness of those with whom he had fought side by side. They scorned every suggestion that he was ‘disloyal’ to the party. They held by him through thick and thin. In spite of the frowns of party leaders, and sometimes of real divergences of opinion, the controlling forces in the Midland Conservative Club were always unswerving in his support; and the last time he ever appeared on a public platform was in the Birmingham Town Hall.
There were, moreover, obvious reasons why, in the early part of 1889, Lord Randolph should have wished to be sustained by the vote of a great constituency. He was out of joint with his party. He was almost alone in the House of Commons. All the orthodox and official forces in the Conservative party were hostile to him. He had taken an independent course on various important questions, and that course had twice been directly opposed to Lord Salisbury’s Government. There was asserted to be a definite compact between the local Conservative leaders in Birmingham and the Liberal Unionists that, in the event of a vacancy in the Central Division, Lord Randolph Churchill was to be invited by both wings of the Unionist party to stand. This agreement was personal to Lord Randolph and particular to Birmingham, and quite independent of any general arrangement respecting Conservative and Liberal-Unionist seats; and a clear understanding to this effect existed between Lord Randolph and Mr. Chamberlain. There was, therefore, no doubt that if a vacancy occurred Lord Randolph had a right to stand and to look for the support of both sections of the party. If he did not stand himself, then only the nomination of a candidate would rest properly with the Liberal Unionists. It was admitted that in such a contest he would be victorious by a majority of two or three thousand votes; and his friends believed, almost without exception, that such a victory, involving as it did a popular endorsement of all that he had done since he left the Cabinet, must enormously raise his prestige in Parliament and the country.
All through the year 1888 Mr. Bright lay desperately ill. At the end of May Mr. Chamberlain, who had just returned from his American trip, and who was still on most friendly terms with Lord Randolph, wrote to tell him that he feared the end was approaching, to ask what Lord Randolph would do, and to promise him support should he decide to stand. Lord Randolph replied (May 30, 1888): ‘I hope Mr. Bright will get better. The news this morning is more favourable. In the event of a vacancy occurring, I should not leave Paddington unless it was the strong and unanimous wish of the Tories and of your party combined, and unless they were of opinion that there was real danger of the seat being lost if I did not stand. I do not imagine, however, that these two conditions are likely to arise. The seat is a Liberal-Unionist seat and that party has a clear right to put forward one of their own number, and to receive a full measure of Tory support.’ These communications were on both sides informal. They did not in any way affect the compact. They were merely assurances as to what the writers would do personally under the compact as it existed, if the issue were raised at that time. The issue was not raised. Mr. Bright rallied and survived almost for another year. When he died, on March 27, 1889, quite a different situation had been created. Lord Randolph Churchill ardently desired to stand. Mr. Chamberlain was vehement to prevent him. The dispute that followed is not in its essence difficult to understand. A definite agreement exists between two friends. They agree as friends to interpret it in a particular manner. They cease to be friends as regards politics. They wish to interpret it in another manner; and they quote one another’s friendly assurances as if they were an integral part of the agreement itself. Neither is legally bound; both are morally embarrassed. In the present case the complexity of the dispute was aggravated by all sorts of conflicting statements and promises made at different times by the local leaders. Into these it is not necessary to enter.
[Sidenote: 1889 ÆT. 40]
Lord Randolph Churchill’s right to stand was, of course, incontestable. Compact or no compact, his claim upon the Liberal-Unionist vote was strong. He had polled 4,216 Conservative votes against Mr. Bright himself in that very constituency. He had only been defeated by 773. The Conservative organisation was unanimous in his favour. He was ‘idolised’ (this is the word that is used most frequently in contemporary accounts) by the rank and file. They outnumbered by three or four to one the Liberal Unionists in the division. Their votes had contributed four-fifths of the poll of all the Liberal-Unionist members in the city. Lord Randolph had himself been the principal agent by which the return of these gentlemen had been secured. On the day after the vacancy was declared the Birmingham Daily Post, the official Liberal-Unionist organ, published an article supporting his candidature and giving the Conservatives reason to believe that it would be accepted by both parties; nor did Mr. Chamberlain himself deny that if Lord Randolph came forward it would be his duty to support him. The only question was: Should he come forward?
No sooner was Mr. Bright dead than the Birmingham Conservatives appealed to Lord Randolph. All his friends and well-wishers pressed him to stand. Mr. Jennings was insistent. FitzGibbon urged him to ‘chuck another big town’ at the ‘old gang.’ ‘It would be like the Paris elections to Boulanger,’ said others. Colonel North, with the blunt decision of a business man, telegraphed to him from Santiago: ‘Be sure contest Birmingham.’ Faithful supporters offered to place their seats at his disposal in case of accidents. Lord Randolph does not seem to have anticipated any opposition from Mr. Chamberlain; yet it should have been sufficiently evident that Mr. Chamberlain’s interests and inclinations were not likely to be served by the establishment of ‘Two kings in Brentford.’ So long as they were allies working in concert, it might be--perhaps it must be--endured. Now that they were separated and pursuing independent, and even divergent, courses the idea was intolerable. No difficulty or dispute was, however, apprehended. On April 2, when the writ was moved, Lord Randolph Churchill had every reason to suppose that complete unanimity prevailed. A deputation of Birmingham Tories waited on him at the House of Commons on that day with a hearty invitation. It seemed that his election was secured, and that a giant majority was certain.
And here I leave the account to Mr. Jennings:--
Mr. Jennings’s Account of the Birmingham Affair.
Tuesday, April 2, 1889.
On my going to the House I met R. C. in the lobby. He drew me aside, and whispered that the deputation would be here presently. Would I meet them in the outer lobby, bring them inside, and talk to them till he came back? He was just going to see Hicks-Beach a few moments. He was turning away, but came back and said: ‘May I ask you to do me another favour? Go and draw up a draft farewell address to the electors of South Paddington and an address to the electors of Birmingham.’ ‘When do you want them?’ ‘This afternoon.’ he said. After a few more words he went away.
I made arrangements with Mr. Mattinson (M.P. for a Liverpool division) to meet the deputation while I went into the library to write out the addresses. I had finished the one for South Paddington and was half-way through the other when Mattinson came to me and told me the deputation were outside. I went to them, and had a little chat. They were radiant, having no reason whatever to anticipate a refusal. Mr. Rowlands told me R. C. was sure of a majority of between 2,000 and 3,000. After a talk I went back to finish the address, but met E. Beckett in one of the corridors. He said; ‘Have you heard what he has done?’ ‘No.’ ‘He has left it to Hartington and Chamberlain to decide what he will do.’ I was completely bewildered, and went into the smoking-room to look for R. C. Directly he saw me he came up and led me out into the corridor. There we walked up and down a long time, talking about it. He said he had been with Hicks-Beach, who was dead against his going to Birmingham. While they two were talking a knock came at the door and someone said Lord Hartington particularly wished to see Lord R. C. R. C. said: ‘Let him come in here.’ H. did so, and said Chamberlain was ‘furious’ at the idea of R. C. going to Birmingham--that he was ‘in a state of extreme irritability.’ Would they (Beach and Churchill) mind having Chamberlain in to hear what he had to say? Churchill said no, but he would go away for half an hour and leave them to discuss the matter. He would abide by their decision.
When he told me this I said: ‘Surely you must know what their decision will be? Why, they would not want half a minute to decide that you shall not go. Chamberlain is “Boss” in Birmingham, and he means to remain so. He does not want you there, dividing his popularity with him or, most likely, taking the lion’s share of it.’ And so on.
R. C. did not seem to think it so certain that they would decide against him and said, moreover, that he could not take the responsibility of dividing the Unionist party. After a time he said he would go back and hear their decision. In the meanwhile Akers-Douglas had carried off the Birmingham deputation to his own room.
I should think about a quarter of an hour elapsed, when R. C. reappeared in the lobby, from the House, and made for the outer door. He saw me and said: ‘Where are the deputation--in the Conference Room?’ I told him where they were. ‘It is all over,’ he said. ‘I cannot stand for the seat. I’ll tell you all about it by-and-by.’
I would not go into the room, because I am not on terms with Akers-Douglas; but when a division-bell rang, and Akers-Douglas came out, I went in. The deputation were very incensed and loudly declared they had been cheated, and would go back and vote for the Gladstonian candidate. R. C. tried to smooth them down, but it was quite useless....
The deputation were not alone in their disgust. Mr. Jennings was so vexed by what he conceived to be the weak and capricious abandonment of a cherished plan that for several days he could hardly bring himself to discuss it with Lord Randolph. His other friends were puzzled and discouraged. They ridiculed the impartiality of the committee of three. Chamberlain was an interested party, with a perfectly open and declared wish to prevent Lord Randolph standing. Hartington as leader of the Liberal Unionists could not act against the interests of his own followers. Beach, though a staunch friend, was a member of the Government. No wonder they had been able to come so promptly to a decision. To Lord Randolph himself the result was a cruel disappointment. He was isolated. He had few loyal followers and many powerful enemies. He could ill afford to surrender such advantages as he possessed. The others were armed with all the resources of a vast confederacy. Of his little he gave freely. In their prosperity and power they accepted the sacrifice as a matter of course. Mr. Chamberlain, it is true, was careful to say publicly[67] that Lord Randolph’s action was ‘in loyal accord with the arrangements made with the Conservative leaders, including himself, in 1886,’ and to emphasise his ‘honourable determination not to break the national compact of which he was a chief party in 1886.’ But the Times, then in the closest agreement with the governing forces of the Conservative party, though admitting that Lord Randolph had acted ‘with thorough loyalty to the great cause that unites us all,’ permitted itself (April 6) to observe that ‘if the Birmingham Conservatives had any right to be aggrieved at the loss of their pet candidate it was to him, and to no one else, that they ought to address their complaints.’
The dispute was continued passionately at Birmingham. Mr. John Albert Bright was duly brought forward as the Liberal-Unionist candidate for the Central Division. The Conservative leaders there--Rowlands, Sawyer, Satchell-Hopkins, Moore Bayley--utterly refused to support him. They were local men, and against them were arrayed the whole authority of their party chiefs and the force and influence of a great national politician. But they had fought hard battles before, and although they thought themselves deserted by Lord Randolph Churchill they faced the situation with obstinacy. They declared that the Liberal Unionists had broken faith with them and that Mr. Chamberlain had intrigued and used unfair pressure to prevent Lord Randolph from standing. Their determination not to support Mr. J. A. Bright was endorsed by their followers. For several days it seemed as if the Gladstonian candidate, Mr. Phipson Beale, would carry the seat.
So critical was the position that Mr. Balfour was hurried down to restore peace. A crowded meeting was held, at which Mr. Rowlands was bold enough to say that the Birmingham Conservatives were not prepared to bow down to anything that might be settled in London, and the more vigorous members of the Midland Conservative Club shouted ‘No surrender!’ Mr. Balfour was at his best. He dwelt upon Lord Randolph’s refusal to stand--‘he had absolutely declined to do so.’ There was almost a suggestion that the speaker doubted the wisdom of that decision--but there it was! He then asserted the unimpeachable right of the local Conservatives to choose their own candidate. He deprecated strongly the interference of London politicians in local matters. But he urged them, in the free exercise of their discretion, utterly uninfluenced by such interference, to oppose the return of a Gladstonian. He carried the meeting with him. The local leaders were divided. Some acquiesced; some stood aside for a time. The part Mr. Rowlands had played had been too bold and prominent for retreat or pardon. Birmingham politics are bitter. Notwithstanding that every Conservative organisation in the city passed resolutions urging him to retain his leadership, he resigned his offices and withdrew altogether from public life. He should be remembered for having carried out the arrangement of 1886, whereby the Conservatives gave their full support to the Radical Unionists, ‘asking for no return, making no boast or taunt,’ on which arrangement Mr. Chamberlain’s second empire in Birmingham was ultimately established; and also for his firmness and courage amid peculiar and uncertain circumstances. Mr. John Albert Bright was elected by a large majority, practically the whole Conservative party having voted in his support.
Mr. Chamberlain and his friends, like practical people, said nothing until the election was over and their candidate was returned. Then he addressed a letter to the Birmingham papers challenging the local Conservatives to make good their charges of bad faith and intrigue. ‘I am perfectly ready,’ he wrote, ‘to accept full responsibility for the advice which, in common with Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and Lord Hartington, was tendered to Lord Randolph Churchill when he asked our opinions. I had no right and no wish to conceal my view that Lord Randolph Churchill’s candidature might possibly be unsuccessful, and would certainly be regarded with disfavour by Liberal Unionists in all parts of the country, as taking from the party one of the comparatively few seats held by them in 1886. While, however, I maintained this opinion, I expressed my readiness to do all in my power to promote his return if he should finally decide to come forward.’ To the challenge to produce proofs of a broken compact the Conservatives replied with vigour and volubility. A whole page of the Birmingham Gazette was occupied with their statements, which appear to have been both explicit and complete. But as the dispute turned largely on the exact terms of the ‘understanding,’ whether those terms constituted a ‘compact,’ and how far this compact, if it existed, was modified by a general compact relating to Liberal-Unionist seats throughout the country, and as both parties relied mainly on their recollection of conversations which had taken place at intervals during the preceding year, no definite issue could be reached. But the Birmingham Conservatives were provoked anew by the triumphant resolution passed by the Liberal Unionists affirming that the recent election had proved their ‘preponderance of power’ in the Central Division, and the quarrel was protracted with the rancour of civil war and the amenities of political discussion in Birmingham.
These proceedings, which were reported very fully throughout the country, forced Lord Randolph Churchill to publish on April 23 a detailed statement in the form of a letter to Mr. Chamberlain. After dealing at length with the questions of the compact he continued:--
My going to Birmingham as candidate or not going always practically rested with you, as you perfectly well know, and you decided, no doubt on public grounds alone, that I was not to go. Now you have had your way, you have seated your nominee. I may claim to have assisted you materially, not only by yielding to your desire that I should refuse the request of the Birmingham Conservatives, but also by counsel, oral and written, as Mr. Rowlands and others can testify, to my friends in Birmingham to support Mr. John Albert Bright. If ever a man was compelled by duty to be magnanimous, or could afford to be magnanimous, it was yourself after such a conspicuous success. Your position demanded that you should neglect to notice any words which legitimate disappointment may have prompted, that you should do your best to soothe irritated but just susceptibilities, that you should suggest arrangements by which, in future electoral contests, the two sections of the Unionist party might work together cordially for their mutual advantage.
How widely different, however, has been your action! How curious the return you make to the Conservatives who voted in such large numbers for Mr. Bright, and to me, who thought I was your friend, and who certainly--to put the matter in the most negative and colourless manner--did nothing to interfere with Mr. Bright’s return.
As far as I am concerned, you endeavour to embroil me and my friends in Birmingham by representing, and by seeking to make it appear, that I have played fast and loose with them, although in dealing with the incident I have regarded your interests a great deal more than my own; and in respect of the Conservative party in Birmingham they are rewarded by an acrimonious attack from you and their leaders, by contumely and denunciation being poured upon men to whom they owe much and whose services they highly value; and, finally, in order that insult may be heaped upon injury, you allow the Liberal-Unionist Association, which is completely under your control, at a meeting over which you presided, to set forth in a formal and written resolution an assertion so questionable as to be almost ridiculous, to the effect that the recent election has shown ‘that the preponderance of political power in Central Birmingham is with the Liberal-Unionist party.’
I have entered into this controversy with you with much reluctance and have in no way sought it; but I owe too much to the Conservatives in Birmingham not to take up pen in their behalf when, as it appears to me, they are treated with unqualified injustice.
There the matter ends so far as this account is concerned; for it is not necessary to follow the long and vexatious discussions by which, after years had passed, the representation of the Edgbaston Division in lieu of the Central Division was ultimately conceded to the Conservative party. Lord Randolph’s decision has been exposed to various criticisms, but the explanation is not obscure. He looked back with pride to the great compact of 1886. He could not bear to take action which would be misrepresented as hostile to the fundamental basis of the Unionist alliance; and he knew well that the forces for influencing public opinion against him were strong enough, whatever the actual rights and wrongs of the Birmingham dispute, to create that impression. This reasoning may have been sufficient; but it does not cover the fact of his submitting his claims to the arbitrament of such a committee. Whatever the circumstances, he himself should have decided. The responsibility was his alone; and although it might be prudent to receive the counsels of Lord Hartington and of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and to hear Mr. Chamberlain’s opinion, he should have informed them, and not they him, of the decision that was finally taken.
It should be said that Lord Randolph Churchill never considered that Mr. Chamberlain had treated him with any want of candour in this affair. He did not think he had been generous in action or in victory. But he recognised that a natural divergence had opened between them and, this, although acute, was confined to political and public limits and did not extend to personal relations. To the end of his life he was accustomed to say that their only quarrel was over the Aston Riots; and they met, though less frequently, on courteous terms. The blow was a bitter one to Lord Randolph. His enforced desertion of his Birmingham friends cut him to the quick. As he came out of the Whips’ room, where he had given his answer to the deputation, a friend noticed upon his face the shadow of that drawn and ghastly look with which it was in a few years to be stamped.
So considerable an interval elapsed after the Suakin debates before Lord Randolph Churchill again addressed the House of Commons that he provoked a laugh by drolly asking ‘the indulgence usually accorded to a new member.’ The session of 1889 had almost reached its close without the question of making the necessary provision by Parliamentary grant for the children of the Prince of Wales having been debated. When he rose (July 26), in succession to Mr. Bradlaugh, from his accustomed seat immediately behind the Treasury Bench, the Conservative members seemed in some doubt as to his intention, and he was greeted by only a very faint cheer. But his first words made his position manifest: ‘I have always held an opinion, amounting to absolute conviction, as to the indisputable right of the Crown to apply to Parliament to make provision for the Royal Family and to rely upon the liberality of Parliament in respect of such applications.’ Then followed one of the most happy speeches he ever achieved. The argument, which was elaborate and precise, was concerned largely with figures and precedents showing the small cost of the British Monarchy compared with other forms of Government, and the conduct of the reigning Sovereign with respect to claims upon Parliament in comparison with some of her later predecessors. The constitutional doctrine involved and the mode of presenting such a case to a popular assembly are worthy of the attention of politicians; but the whole was enlivened and adorned by a sustained sparkle of what in those days had come to be called ‘Randolphian humour,’ which kept the rapidly assembled House in continued laughter and applause. When, for instance, he referred to Mr. Mundella as having ‘addressed his constituents in Paradise--Square,’ with just the slightest pause after ‘Paradise,’ the whole House collapsed; and Mr. Gladstone, whose sense of humour was somewhat uneven, is said to have laughed more than at any other jest he had ever heard in Parliament.
The effect of this speech, which occupied more than an hour, was to produce for the moment a complete reconciliation between Lord Randolph and his party. All about him as he sat down was a stir of enthusiasm. The Treasury Bench turned a row of delighted faces towards him. Among his papers I find a bundle of letters, full of gratitude and praise, written from the House by Conservative members while the impression was strong in their minds. But Lord Randolph Churchill knew he had that to say two days later in the Midlands which would speedily dissipate such transient and uncourted approbation.
On successive evenings at Walsall and Birmingham he outlined an extensive, yet not unpractical, programme of domestic legislation, dealing especially with land and housing, and with temperance. A single extract will show how far his mind had travelled from those serene pastures where the Government lambs were nourished:--
...The great obstacle to temperance reform undoubtedly is the wholesale manufacturers of alcoholic drink. Those manufacturers are small in number, but they are very wealthy. They exercise enormous influence. Every publican in the country almost, certainly nine-tenths of the publicans in the country, are their abject and tied slaves. Public-houses in nine cases out of ten are tied houses. There is absolutely no free-will, and these wholesale manufacturers of alcoholic drink have an enormously powerful political organisation, so powerful and so highly prepared that it is almost like a Prussian army: it can be mobilised at any moment and brought to bear on the point which is threatened. Up to now this great class has successfully intimidated a Government and successfully intimidated members of Parliament; in fact, they have directly overthrown two Governments, and I do not wonder, I do not blame Governments for being a little timid of meddling with them. But, in view of the awful misery which does arise from the practically unlimited and uncontrolled sale of alcoholic drinks in this country, I tell you my frank opinion--the time has already arrived when we must try our strength with that party.... Do imagine what a prodigious social reform, what a bound in advance we should have made if we could curb and control this destructive and devilish liquor traffic, if we could manage to remove from amongst us what I have called on former occasions the fatal facility of recourse to the beerhouse which besets every man and woman, and really one may almost say every child, of the working classes in England.
The next day he spoke at Birmingham. Ireland was his principal theme. For the first time on this subject since he resigned he unburdened his mind without restraint. He showed how much he hated the harsh and ill-tempered opinions then so powerful. He advocated two great measures by which the Conservative party might with wisdom and propriety assuage the bitter discontent of the Irish people--Local Government and land purchase. He even named the sum of money for which the credit of the United Kingdom might be pledged to create a peasant proprietary. ‘Something like one hundred millions,’ he said; and the audience gasped suspiciously. What folly to think the Conservative party would touch such measures! And yet they have passed them into law!
Surely the reader will linger on the wit and wisdom of this concluding passage, remembering always how great a price in influence and personal fortunes the speaker willingly paid for the privilege of telling the truth:--
I dare say many of us have read, and a great many of you remember, a charming novel of Mr. Dickens, ‘Our Mutual Friend’; and it may be in your recollection that there was a certain character in that novel of great interest, the delineation of which, by Mr. Dickens, is a subject of great amusement to the reader. His name was Mr. Podsnap; and, if you recollect, Mr. Podsnap was a person in easy circumstances, who was very content with himself and was extremely surprised that all the world was not equally contented like him; and if anyone suggested to Mr. Podsnap that there were possible causes of discontent among the people Mr. Podsnap was very much annoyed. He declared that the person making such a suggestion was flying in the face of Providence. He declared that the subject was an unpleasant one; he would go so far as to say it was an odious one; and he refused to consider it, he refused to admit it, and with a wave of his arm, you recollect, he used to sweep it away and to remove it off the face of the earth.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that Mr. Podsnap is a character of fiction. I know him well. I often meet Mr. Podsnap in London society. Mr. Podsnap hates me; he looks upon me as a person of most immoral and most evil tendency; but, with that morbid love of contemplating and prying into things essentially evil which is possessed, I think, by a great many good men, Mr. Podsnap cannot restrain himself sometimes from conversing with me, and this is the sort of remark Mr. Podsnap makes when he accosts me. He says, ‘Young man’--he always begins in that way, though I believe he is not very much older than myself--he says, ‘Are you not more and more impressed day by day with the constant proof and illustration of the hopeless and hereditary wickedness of the Irish people?’ I say ‘No;’ that I have had some experience of the Irish people, and I have lived amongst them for some years, and that I have always found them a very pleasant people and a very amiable people, and very easy to get on with if you take them the right way. And then Mr. Podsnap is painfully annoyed; he shows his indignation, he declares that the subject is an unpleasant one, and he will go so far as to say an odious one. He refuses to admit it, he refuses to consider it, and he removes it and sweeps it away from off the face of the earth. Well, sometimes I like, when I have nothing better to do, to try and draw Mr. Podsnap, and I go up to him and I ask him whether he does not think on the whole it might be a good thing after balancing everything--if we could find some dodge which might keep the Irish members out of prison. And then Mr. Podsnap is startled, and he is much annoyed, and he says, ‘Do you mean seriously to argue that the Irish members, if they had their deserts, ought not to be hanged, drawn and quartered in front of Westminster Hall?’ Then I reply that no doubt that is one way of dealing with the Irish members and one way of governing Ireland, but that it appears to me a somewhat singular way of maintaining the Parliamentary union between two countries; and then Mr. Podsnap is very wroth, and he sweeps me away and he removes me and the Irish members and Ireland from off the face of the earth. But Mr. Podsnap is not a bad fellow on the whole, so long as you do not pay the smallest attention to him. But undoubtedly, at the present moment, what Mr. Dickens calls Podsnappery is rampant and rife in London, and I think this Podsnappery we ought to make a great effort to put down.
I am certain that intolerance and contempt of Irish opinion and prejudice, hopeless prejudice against Irish ideas, produce a corresponding rancour and hatred among the Irish people against us, and terribly envenom the feelings and the relations between the two countries. No, let us rather have recourse, and confident recourse, to justice, to liberality, to generosity and, above all, to sympathy in our Irish policy. You may be certain of this, that a free manifestation of those qualities in your Irish policy would work such a miracle in Ireland as you have no conception of. I hope most earnestly that I shall never live to see the day when there may be established in Ireland a separate Parliament and a separate Government; but I hope equally earnestly and equally strongly, that I may live to see the day, and that possibly it may be in my power somewhat to contribute to the advent of that time, and that that time may not be at any very distant or remote date, when the Irish shall not only be prosperous, but free--free in the full and proper sense of the word--free as the English, as the Scotch, and as the Welsh are free; and when a strong conviction of the benefits and a strong affection for the ties of union with Great Britain shall pervade and fill Irish hearts and minds, when the recollections of the former strife of nations shall be all forgotten, and when our children shall wonderingly inquire of us how it was that through so many weary years Ireland was a source of danger and of distress to the British Empire.
These two speeches in the Midlands, especially the first, at Walsall, were a terrible rock of offence. The landlords, the brewers and the opponents of land purchase were incensed and alarmed. ‘They are all up in arms against you,’ wrote Jennings sadly from the House of Commons. ‘The speech on the Royal Grants did you so much good with the party, and now ... the Conservatives say you are nothing better than a Socialist, and the Radicals are, for a wonder, equally hostile. They are all agreed in denouncing you. The wind is due east, I must admit, and very keen and biting.’
‘I am sorry to have to tell you,’ wrote a Conservative member who had been pressing Lord Randolph to visit his constituency, ‘that the local Fathers in * * * think that in the interests of the party it would be undesirable to hold a meeting there, and that you would not meet with a good reception from our own people. All of them expressed the opinion that they could not afford to offend the brewers and publicans, who have done so much for us in the past, and that any scheme proposing a loan of money to Ireland to buy out Irish landlords was most unpopular and regarded as Gladstonianism pure and simple.’
In Birmingham especially a bad impression was created, and Lord Randolph’s influence, already terribly injured by his refusal to stand, was further weakened. It need scarcely be said that Mr. Chamberlain was much shocked by the open profession of doctrines so advanced in constituencies which bordered on his own, and on the first convenient occasion he felt it his duty to administer a suitable rebuke:--
I observed the other day [he said] that a most distinguished nobleman, Lord Randolph Churchill, addressed various speeches to audiences in Birmingham and the neighbourhood, and that he declared himself to be a Tory. I can only say his programme is a programme which, I am perfectly certain, will be absolutely repudiated by Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour. I dare say you have often seen at a bazaar or elsewhere a patchwork quilt brought out for sale, which is made up of scraps from old dresses and from left-off garments which the maker has been able to borrow for the purpose. I am told that in America they call a thing of this kind a ‘crazy quilt.’ I think that the fancy programme which Lord Randolph Churchill put before you the other day may well be described as a ‘crazy quilt.’ He borrowed from the cast-off policy of all the extreme men of all the different sections. He took his Socialism from Mr. Burns and Mr. Hyndman; he took his Local Option from Sir Wilfrid Lawson; he took his Egyptian policy from Mr. Illingworth; he took his metropolitan reform from Mr. Stuart; and he took his Irish policy from Mr. John Morley. Is this Toryism?
All this was especially edifying, pronounced as it was within four years of the ‘Unauthorised Programme.’ But Lord Randolph was not, as some who wrote to him seemed to suppose, trying to ingratiate himself with the House of Commons Tories, or seeking to win re-entry to the Cabinet. ‘I decline,’ he said sardonically, ‘to enter into competition with Mr. Chamberlain for the smiles of Hatfield.’ He understood perfectly what reception the ruling class in the Conservative party would accord to his democratic ideas. The worthy Conservative gentlemen who had pressed their congratulations upon him after his speech on the Royal Grants could hardly restrain their indignation now. Finding themselves at one time in complete agreement with him, and at another in vehement dissent, they assumed, not unnaturally, that he was unbalanced and insincere. Yet these speeches, variously greeted as they were, arose from the same logical and coherent system of political thought to which, rightly or wrongly, he had always adhered through good and evil fortune. The principal speeches which he made in 1889 almost covered, and were designed to cover, the whole field of ‘Tory Democracy.’ In justifying the Royal Grants he had affirmed that loyalty to the Crown which every true Tory Democrat must be prepared to practise and sustain. At Walsall and Birmingham he urged that energetic sympathy with practical social reform and indifference to selfish class instincts which alone can convince democracy that time-honoured institutions are not merely safeguards, but may be made effective instruments of progress. In Wales during the autumn he championed the Established Church. In Scotland later in the year he defended the Union. Something was, however, still wanting to complete his political faith. It remained to assert the sanctity of those constitutional barriers by which liberty and justice are secured. That omission the near future was to repair.
XXI. THE PARNELL COMMISSION
“Iam non ad culmina rerum Injustos crevisse queror: tolluntur in altum Ut lapsu graviore ruant.” CLAUDIAN.
It is no part of my task to examine the proceedings of the Special Commission, nor to supply a narrative of that long-drawn and embittered controversy known as ‘Parnellism and Crime.’ Those are matters of history, and even such allusion to their course and character as might have been required for the coherency of this story seems unnecessary in view of an account recently given to the world by Mr. Morley,[68] combining the vivid and picturesque character which only an eye-witness can command, with that brevity in regard to general questions indispensable to biography. I am concerned only to pick out Lord Randolph Churchill’s part and to trace the steps which led him to an utter breach with the Government and quarrel with the Conservative party; and this can be done mainly in his own words.
The letter involving Mr. Parnell in complicity with the Phoenix Park murders was printed in facsimile in the Times of April 18, 1887, and was doubtless intended to be a spur to the Unionist party on the day of the introduction of the Coercion Bill. That same night Mr. Parnell declared it to be a forgery. His denial was received with incredulity by the Ministerialists and he was at once asked why he did not take action for libel. His reasons for not doing so were apparently that he and his advisers had no confidence that their case would be considered without prejudice by a Middlesex jury, and that if a favourable verdict were obtained in Ireland similar English suspicions would deprive it of moral effect. No action being taken by Mr. Parnell, a motion was made by a private member for a Select Committee of Inquiry. This was debated on May 5, and the Select Committee was refused by the Government. Lord Randolph, who on this occasion, as on various other questions of privilege, was consulted by Mr. Smith, supported the Government decision, and warmly defended the Leader of the House from attacks which were made upon him. Although the murder charges against Mr. Parnell were repeated in various forms at partisan meetings, and even received countenance from several of the Conservative Ministers, the whole matter lapsed so far as Parliament was concerned, and would never have been resuscitated but for the perversity of chance.
An action for libel against the Times was instituted in November 1887 by an Irishman who had sat in the late Parliament as a follower of Mr. Parnell and who felt himself damaged by the various allegations contained in the series of letters headed ‘Parnellism and Crime.’ This suit was tried before Lord Coleridge in July 1888. The Times happened to be defended by Sir Richard Webster, the principal law officer of the Crown--acting, however, as he explained, to his own satisfaction, purely professionally and not as a member of the Government. In the course of the trial the Attorney-General repeated during three days the general charges and allegations of the Times articles, and produced a further batch of incriminating letters alleged to be signed by the Irish leader. On this the Parliamentary case was reopened, and Parnell himself demanded a Select Committee of Inquiry. The Government, as before, refused the Committee, but--to general astonishment--they now proceeded to offer, and finally to insist upon, a Commission of three judges with statutory power to inquire not merely into the specific matter of the letters, but rovingly into the whole of the charges and allegations of the Times, whether against members of Parliament or ‘other persons.’ The necessary Bill was introduced on July 16.
Lord Randolph Churchill was dismayed by this unexpected departure. He felt it his duty to protest from the very beginning against such procedure. Yet he did not wish to embarrass the Government or to hamper them in their Irish policy. Instead of speaking in the debates upon the Bill, he drew up on the day of its introduction a memorandum which he sent to Mr. Smith, and which is at once a convenient narrative of the case and perhaps the most powerful statement he ever penned. If it were necessary to base his reputation for political wisdom upon a single document, I should select this.
Memorandum.
It may be assumed that the Tory party are under an imperative obligation to avoid seeking escape from political difficulties by extra-constitutional methods. The above is a general rule. The exception to it can scarcely be conceived.
The case of ‘Parnellism and Crime’ is essentially a political and Parliamentary difficulty of a minor kind. A newspaper has made against a group of members of the House of Commons accusations of complicity in assassination, crime and outrage. In the commencement the parties accused do not feel themselves specially aggrieved. They take no action; the Government responsible for the guidance of the House of Commons does not feel called upon to act in the matter. A member of Parliament, acting on his own responsibility, brings the matter before the House of Commons as a matter of privilege and a Select Committee is moved for to inquire into the allegations.
The Government take up an unexceptionable and perfectly constitutional position. They refuse the Select Committee on the ground marked out by Sir Erskine May, that matters which may or ought to come within the cognisance of the Courts of Law are not fit for inquiry by Select Committee.
The Government press upon the accused parties their duty, should they feel themselves aggrieved, to proceed against the newspaper legally and, with a generosity hardly open to condemnation, offer to make the prosecution of the newspaper, so far as expense is concerned, a Government prosecution. The offer is not accepted, the view of duty is disagreed from by the accused persons, the motion for a Select Committee is negatived and the matter drops, the balance of disadvantage remaining with the accused persons.
Owing to an abortive and obscurely originated action for libel, the whole matter revives. The original charges are reiterated in a court of law by the Attorney-General, but owing to the course of the suit no evidence is called to sustain the allegations. A fresh demand is made by the accused persons for a Select Committee and is refused by the Government on the same grounds as before and, as before, with a preponderating assent of public opinion. So far all is satisfactory, except to the accused parties and their sympathisers.
For reasons not known, the Government take a new departure of a most serious kind. They offer to constitute by statute a tribunal with exceptional powers, to be composed mainly of judges of the Supreme Court, to inquire into the truth of the allegations. To this course the following objections are obvious and unanswerable:
1. The offer, to a large extent, recognises the wisdom and justice of the conduct of the accused persons in avoiding recurrence to the ordinary tribunals.
2. It is absolutely without precedent. The Sheffield case, the Metropolitan Board of Works case, are by no means analogous. Into those two cases not a spark of political feeling entered. The case of ‘Parnellism and Crime’ in so far as it is not criminal is entirely political. In any event the political character of the case would predominate over the criminal.
3. It is submitted that it is in the highest degree unwise and, indeed, unlawful to take the judges of the land out of their proper sphere of duty, and to mix them up in political conflict. In this ease, whichever way they decide, they will be the object of political criticism and animadversion. Whatever their decision, speaking roughly, half the country will applaud, the other half condemn, their action; their conduct during the trial in its minutest particulars, every ruling as to evidence, every chance expression, every question put by them, will be keenly watched, canvassed, criticised, censured or praised. Were judges in England ever placed in such a position before? Will any judge emerge from this inquiry the same for all judicial purposes, moral weight and influence as he went into it? Have you a right to expose your judges, and in all probability your best judges, to such an ordeal?
4. The tribunal will conduct its proceedings by methods different to a court of law. The examination will mainly be conducted by the tribunal itself; a witness cannot refuse to reply on the ground that the answer would criminate himself. Evidence in this way will be extracted which might be made the basis of a criminal prosecution against other persons. Indemnities might be given to persons actually guilty of very grave crime, and persons much less guilty of direct participation in grave crime might, under such protected evidence, be made liable to a prosecution.
The whole course of proceeding, if the character of the allegations is remembered, will, when carefully considered, be found to be utterly repugnant to our English ideas of legal justice, and wholly unconstitutional. It is hardly exaggerating to describe the Commission contemplated as ‘a revolutionary tribunal’ for the trial of political offenders, If there is any truth in the above or colour for such a statement, can a Tory Government safely or honourably suggest and carry through such a proposal?
I would suggest that the constitutional legality of this proposed tribunal be submitted to the judges for their opinion.
It is not for the Government, in matters of this kind, to initiate extra-constitutional proceedings and methods. One can imagine an excited Parliament or inflamed public opinion forcing such proceedings on a Government. In this case there is no such pressure. The first duty of a Government would be to resist being driven outside the lines of the Constitution. In no case, except when public safety is involved, can they be justified in taking the lead. They are the chief guardians of the Constitution. The Constitution is violated or strained in this country when action is taken for which there is no reasonably analogous precedent. Considerations of this kind ought to influence powerfully the present Government.
It is said that the honour of the House of Commons is concerned. This is an empty phrase. The tribunal, whatever its decision, will not prevent the Irish constituencies from returning as representatives the parties implicated. In such an event the honour of the House of Commons could only be vindicated by repeated expulsion, followed by disfranchisement. Does any reasonable person contemplate such a course?
The proceedings of the tribunal cannot be final. In the event of a decision to the effect that the charges are not established, proceedings for libel against the newspaper might be resorted to, the newspaper being placed under a most grossly unjust disadvantage. In the event of a decision to the contrary effect, a criminal prosecution would seem to be imperative. Regarded from the high ground of State policy in Ireland such a prosecution would probably be replete with danger and disaster.
These reflections have been sketched out concisely. If submitted to a statesman, or to anyone of great legal learning and attainments, many more and much graver reflections would probably be suggested.
I do not examine the party aspects of the matter; I only remark that the fate of the Union may be determined by the abnormal proceedings of an abnormal tribunal. Prudent politicians would hesitate to go out of their way to play such high stakes as these.--R. H. S. C.
July 17, 1888.
[Sidenote: 1890 ÆT. 41]
Nearly two years had passed since these words were written. During all that time Lord Randolph Churchill kept silence. The Government persevered in their courses. The Bill for the Special Commission was driven swiftly through the House of Commons by guillotine closure. The Judges slowly unravelled the vast tangle of evidence and ethics which had been thrust upon them. Not until the fiftieth sitting of the court was the letter reached which was the reason for the whole proceeding. Then there was an acceleration. In two days a wretched man was proved a forger. In five days he was dead. The only charge that gave birth to the Commission perished by the pistol-shot that destroyed Pigott. The other allegations, melancholy and voluminous as they were, useful as they may have been for political controversy, revealed only the bitterness of the national and racial struggle; and expressed in the language of the victorious party a condemnation of methods of political warfare, more or less lawless, certainly deplorable, but essentially characteristic of revolutionary movements, open or veiled.
The report of the Commission came before the House of Commons on March 3, 1890. In spite of every effort to broaden the issue and to escape from narrow and definite charges of murder, which had been disproved, to general charges of lawlessness and disloyalty which required no proof, the impression produced in the country was adverse to the Government. The party orator dilated on the heinous conduct of the Irish members. The plain man stopped short at Pigott. Ministers had stained the cause of the Union by unconstitutional action and had allowed others to stain it by felony. Lord Randolph’s private letters reveal from time to time the abhorrence with which he regarded the whole transaction. The by-elections attested the opinion of the public. There was too much truth in Parnell’s savage accusation:[69] ‘You wanted to use this question of the forged letters as a political engine. You did not care whether they were forged or not. You saw that it was impossible for us under the circumstances, or for anybody under the circumstances, to prove that they were forgeries. It was a very good question for you to win elections with.... It was also a suitable engine to enable you to obtain an inquiry into a much wider field and very different matters, an inquiry which you never would have got apart from these infamous productions.’
The feeling that some reparation was due to men against whom a charge of complicity in murder had been falsely preferred and who had been pursued by such unwonted means, was by no means confined to the Opposition. But the Government were resolved to brazen it out; and the party machine, local and national, held firm. The speech of the Conservative leader was grudging and unsympathetic; and Mr. Gladstone’s condemnation and appeal rang through a responsive House. The debate on his amendment ebbed and flowed through four Parliamentary days, and from the division by which it was terminated fourteen Unionists, including Lord Randolph, abstained. Meanwhile, on March 7, Mr. Jennings--with the concurrence, as was generally known, of Lord Randolph Churchill--had given notice of the following amendment: ‘And, further, this House deems it to be its duty to record its condemnation of the conduct of those who are responsible for the accusations of complicity in murder brought against members of this House, discovered to be based mainly on forged letters, and declared by the Special Commission to be false.’ Such a notice, coming from the Unionist benches and believed to have the support of Lord Randolph Churchill, of course attracted general attention. He himself was, however, in the greatest perplexity. Party feeling ran high. It is when the attack is grave and damaging, when there is fullest justification for censure, when manifestly Ministers are wrong, that those who adhere to them through thick and thin, are most impatient of reproach. He knew well that by speaking he would greatly injure himself in the eyes of his party. And yet could he honourably keep silent? He regretted that he had encouraged Jennings to put his amendment down. He asked him to withdraw it. But Mr. Jennings refused. It was not until Mr. Gladstone’s amendment had been disposed of on the fourth day of the discussion that he made up his mind to speak, when the House should meet at the next sitting (March 11). By custom, though not by rule, the Speaker would have called upon the movers of other amendments, once that stage of debate has begun. But Lord Randolph, after much consideration, decided that he had better say what he had to say upon the main question, neither interfering with, nor being limited by, Mr. Jennings’s amendment or others that stood before it; and technically he was within his right, if the Speaker should call on him.
He was heard by the House in a strained unusual silence, which seemed to react upon him; for he spoke with strange slowness, deliberation and absence of passion--like a judge deciding on a point of law, and without any of the lightness and humour of old Opposition days. He examined the question frigidly and with severity--how the Government had discarded the ordinary tribunals of the land; how they had instituted a special tribunal wherein the functions of judge and jury were cumulated upon three individuals; how the persons implicated had had no voice in the constitution of that tribunal; how they were in part the political opponents of the Government of the day; and how one result had been to levy upon both parties to the action a heavy pecuniary fine. All these things were described in the same even, passionless voice, and heard by the House with undiminished attention and by the Ministerial supporters with growing resentment. Presently came a pause. He asked those about him for a glass of water. Not a man moved. Fancying he had not been heard, he asked again: and so bitter was party passion that even this small courtesy was refused. At length, seeing how the matter stood, Mr. Baumann, a young Conservative member from below the Gangway, went out for some. As he returned, the Irish--always so quick to perceive a small personal incident--greeted him with a half-sympathetic, half-ironical cheer, and Lord Randolph, taking the glass from his hand, said solemnly and elaborately in a penetrating undertone: ‘I hope this will not compromise you with your party.’
At length he began to speak louder. ‘The procedure which we are called upon to stamp with our approval to-night is a procedure which would undoubtedly have been gladly resorted to by the Tudors and their judges. It is procedure of an arbitrary and tyrannical character, used against individuals who are political opponents of the Government of the day--procedure such as Parliament has for generations and centuries struggled against and resisted--procedure such as we had hoped, in these happy days, Parliament had triumphantly overcome. It is procedure such as would have startled even Lord Eldon; it is procedure such as Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham would have protested against; it is procedure which, if that great lawyer Earl Cairns had been alive, the Tory party would never have carried. But a Nemesis awaits a Government that adopts unconstitutional methods. What,’ he asked, ‘has been the result of this uprootal of constitutional practice? What has been the one result?’ Then in a fierce whisper, hissing through the House, ‘Pigott!’--then in an outburst of uncontrollable passion and disgust--‘a man, a thing, a reptile, a monster--Pigott!’--and then again, with a phrase at which the House shuddered,[70] ‘Pigott! Pigott! Pigott!’
Let us return to Hansard. ‘Why do I bring these things before the House? [An honourable member laughed derisively.] Ah! yes; I know there are lots of high-minded and generous members, who not long ago were my friends, who are ready to impute--and much more likely to impute than openly assert--that I am animated by every evil motive. I bring these matters before the House of Commons because I apprehend the time--which I trust may be remote, but which I sometimes fear may be nigh--when the party which vaunts itself as the constitutional party may, by the vicissitudes of fortune, find itself in a position of inferiority similar to that which it occupied in 1832--when the rights of the minority may be trampled upon and overridden, when the views of the minority may be stifled, and when individual political opponents may be proceeded against as you have proceeded against your political opponents.’
He then explained how that these were no new views of his, that they had not been formed in consequence of the results of the trial--‘as those who are always ready to form a most unfavourable opinion of me have said’--but that two years before, when the Bill for the Special Commission was before Parliament, he had embodied them in a document which he had ‘respectfully laid before the First Lord of the Treasury.’ ‘There was a time,’ he said at the end, ‘not very long ago, when my words had some weight with honourable gentlemen on this side of the House; and in recalling that time I will add--I cannot refrain from the remark--that the prospects of the party were brighter than they are now. When I had the honour, the memorable honour, of counselling them, the Unionist majority was more than a hundred. It has now fallen to about seventy. If there are any lingering memories on these benches of those days--when, I think, our fortunes were better--it is by those memories I would appeal to the Conservative party to give a fair and impartial and unprejudiced consideration to the counsels which I now lay before them. But if my words are to fall on deaf ears--if the counsels I most honestly submit are to be spurned and scorned, then I declare that I look forward to the day when a future Parliament shall expunge from the Journals of this House the record of this melancholy proceeding; and in taking such action--inspired, I trust, not by party passion, party vindictiveness or party rancour, but acting on constitutional grounds, and on those alone--it will administer to its predecessor a deserved and wholesome rebuke for having outraged and violated constitutional liberty and will establish a signpost full of warning and guidance to Parliaments yet unborn.’
He sat down very much exhausted--for his health was already weakening--by the strain to which he had been put. He had never spoken with more consciousness of right, never with less regard to his own interests and scarcely ever with greater effect. Deep down in the heart of the old-fashioned Tory, however unreflecting, there lurks a wholesome respect for the ancient forms and safeguards of the English Constitution and a recognition of the fact that some day they may be found of great consequence and use. Moreover, the case was black and overwhelming. But a formidable champion was at hand to succour and shield the Ministry; and it was Chamberlain who rose from the Front Opposition Bench to reply on behalf of the Government. His speech was couched in a friendly and respectful tone--not unmindful, perhaps, of an old compact as to the asperities of political warfare--but in every part it made clear the breach which now existed between these former allies, and the bonds which were steadily strengthening between this Radical leader and his Conservative friends.
To all this Mr. Jennings had listened with impatience and resentment. His amendment had not, it seemed, been merely deserted by Lord Randolph Churchill; it had been compromised. The opportunity for moving it was irretrievably spoiled. The consequence that had attached to it, was gone. The crowded house was melting. No man about to address a critical assembly on a matter which he considers important, resolved to do his very best by his argument and braced against the expected disapprobation of his own friends, can be free from nervous tension; and the better the speaker, the greater the strain. At such a moment small things do not always appear small and grave decisions are not always taken on serious grounds. Mr. Jennings had been several times disappointed in Lord Randolph. He had failed to carry him forward into a Fair Trade campaign. He had been bitterly discouraged by the Birmingham surrender. He had watched with mortification the decline of Lord Randolph’s popularity. He had disapproved of the Radicalism of the later speeches. And now, on the top of all the rest, came this sharp collision. He took it as an act of mortal treachery and insult. In that flood of anger the comradeship of four stormy years was swept away as if it had been a feather. While Mr. Chamberlain was replying he leaned over the bench and told Lord Randolph shortly that after such a speech he would not move his amendment, and would tell the House why. Lord Randolph, who had been absorbed by his own struggle, was amazed at his fierce manner, and realised for the first time that he had caused deep offence. He wished at once to put it right. But Jennings would not answer. He had made up his mind. Two pencil notes, written on slips torn from the order paper, were put into his hands. He read them, folded them, put them carefully away, and they have drifted here, like the wreckage tossed up on the shore long after a ship has foundered. ‘I hope you will reflect before making any public attack upon me. It would be a thousand pities to set all the malicious tongues wagging, when later you will understand what my position was.’ And again--probably after Jennings had spoken--‘How can you so wilfully misunderstand my action and so foolishly give way to temper in dealing with grave political matters?’
As soon as Mr. Chamberlain had finished, Mr. Jennings rose, and struck as hard as he could. ‘He had not been prepared for the tone and manner of the speech of his noble friend.’ The delivery of a speech so hostile ‘to the Government’ had considerably embarrassed him. ‘It is said,’ he proceeded in his cold, measured way, ‘that I derive my opinions from my noble friend, but occasionally, and at intervals, I am capable of forming opinions of my own, and such an interval has occurred now.’ ‘The noble lord has a genius for surprises: sometimes he surprises his opponents; sometimes he takes his best friends unawares.’ Finally, he declined to move his amendment, as a means of dissociating himself from any attempt ‘to stab his party in the back.’ During this speech the occupants of the Treasury Bench took, as may be imagined, no pains to conceal their satisfaction. In a very brief personal explanation Lord Randolph Churchill declared that his own speech had been made without reference to any of the amendments on the paper, solely because it was pertinent to the main question rather than to any amendment. Mr. Caine, who was then on the verge of returning to the Liberal party, moved the dropped amendment without comment. Almost alone among Conservative members, Lord Randolph supported it, as he had promised and always intended, in the division lobby, and it was rejected by a majority of sixty-two.
The outcry raised against Lord Randolph Churchill for his speech and vote was immediate and astonishing. The entire Conservative press denounced him as a traitor, and he was deluged with abuse. The Standard declared that he had no further right to be regarded as a member of the Unionist party. ‘The utter failure of his career points a moral of peculiar significance. Seldom has it been possible to give a more convincing proof of the fact that the man who is ready to sacrifice principle to personal ambition will not only lose the esteem of the worthiest among his fellow-countrymen, but will even fail in the object to which he is willing to surrender his convictions.’ But more important even than such pronouncements was the feeling in the country. The meeting which he was to have addressed at Colchester was cancelled ‘owing to the illness of Lord Brooke.’ The Chairman of his Association in Paddington resigned; the various clubs in the borough passed strong resolutions in condemnation of their member, and a meeting of the Council was convened for the 17th to consider his conduct. Opinion in Birmingham was very hostile. Even the Midland Conservative Club met together to pass a vote of censure.
Lord Randolph Churchill met these manifestations with composure not unmingled with scorn. To the resolution of the Paddington Council he replied in a letter described by the much-shocked Times as ‘characteristically pert and saucy,’ and dated from the Jockey Club Rooms at Newmarket. ‘I have no reason to suppose,’ he wrote, ‘that the Council are in error in committing themselves to the opinion that my action is “entirely out of harmony” with the views of the Conservative electors of the division; but I remark with satisfaction that the Council, with a prudence which I cannot too highly or respectfully commend, have abstained from expressing any opinion as to whether my action was right or wrong.’ If they wished him to take the opinion of the electors on the question they knew the steps which were necessary, but meanwhile he reminded them that the Council was not the Association and still less the constituency of South Paddington.
On the same morning of this meeting in Paddington Lord Randolph published in the Morning Post--which almost alone among Metropolitan newspapers remained well disposed towards him--the memorandum which he had written nearly two years before. The memorandum, he explained, had been intended to be ‘a strong but friendly protest against the measure.’ The speech of the previous Tuesday was intended, so far as lay in his power, to prevent such a measure being ever proposed by a Government again. This document had a marked and decided effect upon public opinion. Seldom had a political prophet been so completely vindicated by the event. It was now proved that two years before the exposure of Pigott he had warned the Government of the discredit in which the Special Commission would involve them and had described beforehand in exact detail many of the evil consequences by which they were now overtaken.
All of a sudden party indignation began to subside, and that keen sense of justice never far removed from the English mind reasserted itself. The journalists and the wirepullers had laboured to excess and the inevitable reaction followed. Numbers of plain people began to write to the newspapers to protest against the attacks made upon one who had been so greatly concerned with famous Conservative victories. At Birmingham the Old Guard--Rowlands, Sawyer, and Moore-Bayley--contrived to parry the vote of censure by a simple resolution of confidence in the Government, which the rest, when it came to the point, were content to accept. Mr. Fardell resumed the Chairmanship of the Paddington Council, and that body received their member’s reply without further comment or action. So that Lord Randolph was enabled, without more hindrance, to pursue his own path in his own way.
But while he cared little for the displeasure of political associates and nothing at all for the party outburst, there was one breach which caused him regret. Louis Jennings had been for the past four years an intimate friend and a close and valuable ally. He had become a friend at a time when others were falling away and after Lord Randolph had given up the power to help and reward good service. He had adhered to his leader with constancy, through much unpopularity and ridicule, and at the cost of his own political future--such as it might have been. Whatever cause he may have had for complaint, he had certainly repaid the injury to the utmost of his power. Nothing could be more disparaging to Lord Randolph Churchill personally or more prejudicial to the opinions he had expressed than that he and they should be publicly repudiated by the one man who of all others had stood by him until now. The political world found it difficult to believe that the tone of a speech apart from its tenor, a dispute about an amendment, or the accident of debate, could in themselves be a complete explanation of a sudden severance between such close political associates. Jennings volunteered no further information on the subject; and Lord Randolph Churchill to persistent inquiries merely replied: ‘I was not aware, and could not be aware, that my speech would cause Mr. Jennings to withdraw his amendment, and I am altogether unable to understand his reasons for this action. I had told him that I would vote for his amendment and speak in favour of it, and, as a matter of fact, I did so. Mr. Jennings has acquired the reputation of being a man of reason, ability and sense, and his actions are presumably guided by those qualities. That being so, any further examination of his action against me last Tuesday does not particularly attract me.’
Mr. Jennings left, however, among his private papers a statement carefully prepared while the episode was fresh in his mind. I am content to place this upon record exactly as it was written.[71]
The breach was never repaired. Lord Randolph Churchill would gladly have made friends, and took pains to let the fact be known to Mr. Jennings. But no communication, written or spoken, ever passed between them again. Whether from an enduring sense of wrong, or from vain regrets at such a miserable ending to four years of loyalty and labour, Mr. Jennings continued in antagonism, and from time to time employed his dexterous pen in sharp and sarcastic attack. There is an air of musty tragedy about old letters. Week after week, in packet after packet, since 1886, Jennings’s neat handwriting recurs. Suddenly his letters stop, just as the Gorst letters had stopped five years before. He passes out of this story--was soon, indeed, to pass out of all stories men can tell. On that exciting night in March Lord Randolph Churchill had only five years to live. But Mr. Jennings had less than three. He took little further part in politics. He was returned for Stockport again at the General Election; but almost at once he declared that he must retire from public life. An internal malady had afflicted him, and he died somewhat suddenly on February 9, 1893, aged fifty-six years. The circumstances of his quarrel with Lord Randolph Churchill, no matter whether his anger was deserved or not, or on which side the balance of misunderstanding may have lain, cannot exclude from this account a full acknowledgment of his loyal, industrious and fearless comradeship. He suffered the vexations and disappointments which must always harass those who fight for lost causes and falling men.
The strange and memorable episode of the Parnell Commission lies at the present in a twilight. It has drifted out of the fierce and uncertain glare of political controversy. It is not yet illumined by the calm lamp of the historian. Those whose influence initiated or sustained the policy seem abundantly vindicated by events. Their action was ratified by Parliament and never seriously impugned by the nation. Whatever injury resulted at the time to the cause of the Union--and no doubt the injury was grave--was more than healed by the unexpected proceedings in the Divorce Courts at the end of the year. If it be true, as some may think, that the conduct of Irish affairs by the Conservative Cabinet of ‘86 enabled Mr. Gladstone to advance the flag of Home Rule again at the head of a Parliamentary majority, it is also true that this second onslaught encountered a not less stubborn resistance and ended in an even more decisive and lasting success. Those who were responsible have no apparent cause to regret the course they took. Those who, on the other hand, opposed it, from whatever motive, were brushed aside, and could never persuade the public of their case. And yet such a strange place is England that there is scarcely anyone, from the Ministers who bear the burden, to the Times newspaper--left, through the policy of the Government it supported, loyal and indignant, with a quarter of a million to pay--who will not to-day confess, and even declare, that these proceedings were a grand and cardinal blunder from beginning to end; that an Executive has no business to thrust itself into disputes which the parties concerned may settle in the courts, and no right to erect special machinery for the examination of charges perfectly within the knowledge and scope of the law. So that if these things are affirmed while the light is dim, while even the dust of conflict has not altogether subsided, we may be hopeful of the judgment which history will pronounce.
* * * * *
In these later years Lord Randolph Churchill was drawn increasingly towards a Collectivist view of domestic politics. Almost every speech which he made from 1889 to 1891 gives evidence of the steady development of his opinions. His interest in the problems of the labouring classes grew warmer and keener as time passed. He spoke his mind without the smallest regard to the susceptibilities of his party, or to his own influence and position; and he favoured or accepted doctrines and tendencies before which Liberals recoiled and even the most stalwart Radicals paused embarrassed. He urged the House of Commons to examine the demand for a general eight hours’ day ‘with a total absence of anything like dogmatism.’ He replied with some asperity to Mr. Bradlaugh, whose outspoken condemnation of the State regulation of the hours of adult labour had evoked delighted cheers from the Conservative party. He often wondered, he said, whether Mr. Bradlaugh or Mr. Chamberlain would be the first to take a seat on the Treasury Bench. He was sceptical, in the face of Income Tax and Revenue Returns, about ‘the narrow margin of profit’ remaining to capital. His answer to a deputation of miners who waited in succession on him and Mr. Gladstone to urge the enforcement of an eight hours’ day in the coal trade was accepted by them as far more favourable to their desires than anything that fell from the Liberal leader. He voted for the principle of the payment of members of Parliament. He took a leading part in the movement to provide North-West London with a polytechnic institution--‘a university for labour,’ as he described it. ‘An Englishman,’ he said, ‘possesses over Europeans one immeasurable and inestimable advantage. Out of the life of every German, every Frenchman, every Italian, every Austrian, every Russian, the respective Governments of those countries take three years for compulsory military service. If you estimate those three years at eight hours per day for six days a week, you will find that out of the life of every European in those nations no fewer than 7,500 hours are taken by the Governments of those countries for compulsory military service, during which time the individual so deprived is, for the purposes of contributing to the wealth of the community as a whole by his labour, as idle and useless and unprofitable as if he had never been born. But in our free and happy country, where the freedom of existence has practically no reasonable limits and where only a very minute portion of the population voluntarily embraces a military career, every man who lives to the age of twenty-three or twenty-four, possesses as an advantage over the inhabitants of foreign countries an extra capital of at least 7,500 hours. That immeasurable superiority, if properly taken advantage of by the provision of adequate educational institutions, is what should enable us to put aside alarm as to foreign competition.’ His Licensing Bill, which he introduced on April 29, 1890, in the last great speech he ever made to the House of Commons, while it affirmed the justice of compensation, asserted for the first time in Parliament the principle of popular control over the issue of licences.
All these questions trench too closely upon current politics to be conveniently examined here. But it is not difficult to understand why his opinions did not win Lord Randolph Churchill the support of every section of the Conservative party. And yet all the while, in spite of his public declarations--obstinately repeated--there continued in the Tory ranks a steady and at times a powerful pressure to bring him back to the Government. Session after session had been scrambled through in dispiriting fashion. The mismanagement of Parliamentary business, the failure of important legislative projects, the abiding discredit of the Pigott forgery, the lack of any life or fire or inspiration in the conduct of affairs, sank the Conservative party and the Unionist alliance lower and lower in public estimation.
By June 1890 Lord Salisbury’s Administration was in the utmost peril. The Government majority upon a decisive division fell to four.[72] Their licensing proposals were ignominiously withdrawn. Their attempt to carry business over to an autumn session failed. And in these hard times many Conservatives who disagreed altogether with Lord Randolph Churchill’s views felt that his return to a commanding place was a necessary condition, if the waning fortunes of their party were to be retrieved. Ministers of importance approached Lord Salisbury. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach urged him not to allow the object of excluding Lord Randolph Churchill to prejudice the interests of the Unionist cause. Tory papers wrote favourable articles. Tory worthies met together in the Conservative Club under the presidency of Sir Algernon Borthwick, to entertain the ‘prodigal son.’ ‘Randolph must return’ was everywhere the whisper and the word. But Lord Salisbury was firm. Nothing would induce him to divide his authority again. And having regard to all the circumstances which have been related, he was, from his own point of view, unquestionably right. He knew well that Lord Randolph Churchill had altered no whit, had retracted nothing; and that, if he rejoined the Ministry, he would labour as of old, without stint or pause, with riper gifts of knowledge and experience and under conditions more favourable perhaps than in 1886, to guide and to deflect the policy of a Conservative Government into democratic and progressive paths. Better a party or a personal defeat; better a Parliamentary collapse; better even an Imperial disaster!
Fortune favours the brave. The courage and tenacity of the Prime Minister received an unexpected relief. The downfall of Parnell was at hand. Her Majesty’s Government regained in the Divorce Court the credit they had lost before the Special Commission. The ranks of the English Home Rule party, lately so exultant, were broken in dismay; and Nationalist Ireland, hitherto united under one controlling hand, was distracted by enduring and ferocious feuds. This peculiar episode may have settled decisively the fate of the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland. It also terminated for ever, without hope or expectation of renewal, the protracted conflict between the New Tories and the Old.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1887-1893]
Meanwhile outside the House of Commons and the forbidding circles of politics Lord Randolph was developing during these years new interests and amusements. Excitement in one form or another always attracted him, and after his resignation he sought it on the Turf. In partnership with Lord Dunraven he soon acquired a number of horses, to whose training and running he paid the closest attention. He became a shrewd judge of ‘form.’ In handicaps especially, his forecasts were so often fulfilled that he acquired quite a reputation among his sporting friends. On the morning of a race meeting he would sit for hours pencilling upon the card, by the aid of Ruff’s Guide, calculations which led very often to conclusions that were right and still more often to conclusions that were nearly right. Under his eye Sherwood’s stable became successful and for two years at least stood high in the winning lists. His footsteps fell upon some odd streaks of luck. While he was away fishing in Norway, in the summer of 1889, his mare the Abbesse de Jouarre won the Oaks at odds of twenty to one. At Doncaster, the year before, he dreamed he saw a number hoisted. On consulting his card the next day he found that only one horse running had so high a number. Inquiries led to the belief that this horse had a much better chance than the odds at which it stood suggested. Lord Randolph backed it heavily and won a considerable sum. Against the advice of his trainer he insisted on running the Abbesse de Jouarre for the Manchester Cup in 1889, and her victory constituted perhaps his most fortunate speculation. Of other horses which he owned or leased it is not necessary to speak, but during the years 1887 to 1891 Lord Randolph’s colours--‘chocolate, pink sleeves and cap’--were often to the fore.
Standing, as he did, apart from the ordinary groupings of party, he cultivated during these years pleasant relations with politicians of every shade. At his sister Lady Tweedmouth’s house he met Mr. Gladstone more frequently than he had ever done before. Lord Randolph treated the illustrious old man with the utmost deference, and each appears to have derived much satisfaction from the other’s society. ‘He was the most courtly man I ever met,’ observed Mr. Gladstone in later years to Mr. Morley. At one dinner at Brook House Mr. Gladstone had talked with great vivacity and freedom and held everyone breathless. ‘And that,’ said Lord Randolph to a Liberal-Unionist friend, as they walked out of the room together, ‘that is the man you have left? How could you have done it?’
His own society was eagerly sought by his friends; for he had much treasure to give as a companion, if only he were in the giving vein. The gay and reckless brilliancy of his conversation fascinated all who came within its range. He would talk and argue with entire freedom on every subject. He loved to defend daring paradoxes; and when forced to exert himself he would produce arguments so original and ingenious that the listeners were delighted, even if they were unconvinced. He sometimes amused himself by saying things on purpose to shock ponderous people, and in painting himself extravagantly in the darkest hues, so that they departed grieved to think there was so much wickedness left in the world. He excelled in all kinds of chaff and conversational sword-play--from sombre irony to schoolboy fun. When he wanted to persuade people to do any particular thing, he took enormous pains, seeming to touch by instinct all the feelings and reasons which moved or disturbed them, and very often he coaxed or compelled them to his wishes. On the other hand, he did not care how rude he was to those who wearied or irritated him, and he would toss and gore fools with true Johnsonian vigour and zest. In this abrupt and impulsive way he hurt the feelings of some harmless people and disquieted a good many more; but if he were sorry afterwards, as he very often was, he could nearly always make amends by a word or a smile or some little courtesy, and the sun shone out all the brighter for the storm. Although in his later years the nervous irritability of his nature became extreme, he steadily enlarged the circle of his private friends, and those who had known him long were increasingly attached to him. Not without justice could they apply to him Addison’s well-known lines:--
In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow, Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow, Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee, There is no living with thee, nor without thee.[73]
Lord Randolph was wont to pass much of the autumn and winter abroad and each year he pushed his travels further afield and remained a longer time. In August of 1888 he had visited Tarbes--the constituency which returned his friend the Marquis de Breteuil to the French Chamber--and here spent some placid agreeable weeks of fine weather amid splendid mountains, while his companion conciliated the principal electors by intercourse and entertainment. Of the attractions of Tarbes and its neighbourhood--better known, perhaps, to French and Spanish visitors than to the English tourist--it would be superfluous to write, for they were set forth by the local newspaper in a passage whose hospitable extravagance I shall venture to quote:--
Nous apprenons l’arrivée dans notre département de lord Randolph Churchill, qui vient y retrouver son ami M. le Marquis de Breteuil.
Nous souhaitons la bienvenue dans nos montagnes au noble Lord, au brillant orateur de la Chambre des Communes.
Il est certain d’y recevoir un accueil cordial de la part de nos députés et courtois de la part de nos populations qui n’ont jamais failli aux devoirs de l’hospitalité.
Il y retrouvera, avec un climat plus doux même que celui du Devonshire, des sites plus enchanteurs encore, des sommets plus élevés que le Snowdon, des lacs aussi bleus que le Lomond, des torrents plus impétueux que le Glen et le Liddel.
Si le daim, le cerf et la grouse nous font défaut, nous avons l’izard, la caille savoureuse, la perdrix noire, la perdrix blanche, le coq de bruyère, la bécasse, le lièvre, etc. L’ours même s’y rencontre, mais ... difficilement.
Chose plus importante encore, si l’honorable membre de la Chambre des Communes avait, victime de son éloquence, le larynx fatigué, les eaux merveilleuses de Cauterets seraient là pour le guérir.
De toutes les façons, nous avons la conviction que lord Churchill emportera de nos Pyrénées un bon souvenir.
To his Wife.
Tarbes: August 1, 1888.
Here we are very peaceable and comfortable--beautiful weather, splendid mountains, and nothing to bother about. This is a charming place; house and garden both very pretty. Breteuil’s electors drop in at odd times and some remain to breakfast and some to dinner. They are not very amusing, but very harmless and interesting as types of French provincial society. The worst of the electors is that they will not go to bed; but remain very late. I suppose they are too glad to get an evening out.
The charm of this place is the absence of any crowd. French and Spaniards are the only people who come here and English and Americans are conspicuous by their absence. I tried the ‘douches’ at Cauterets. They are very pleasant at the moment, but, I think, enervating. We dined last night in company with Mons. de Gontaut, formerly Ambassador in Berlin--a charming old man.... Yesterday we drove to Lourdes, a very extraordinary place--a monument of ‘la bêtise humaine.’ A great number of electors are coming to dinner in the evening.
* * * * *
I have just seen a man 118 years old. His father lived to be 114, and died from a fall from a horse; his mother lived to be 108. He is a Spaniard who lives at Tarbes--quite a poor man, subsisting on charity; looks about 70 years old, has all his teeth, lots of grey hair, and he walked here all the way from the town--about three-quarters of a mile. There is no doubt about his age, as his papers are all in order. He served eight years in the French army in Spain and was present at the siege of Saragossa. He said he would be glad to die, as he was quite tired of living so long.... Breteuil’s colleague in the representation of this department arrived this morning.
Now in 1890 he would go to Egypt, where with two old friends he had leased a dahabeah on the Nile. His letters to his wife, from which I make a few extracts, describe the even progress of the journey.
Monte Carlo: November 25, 1890.
So to-day is the meeting of Parliament. How thankful I am not to be going down to the House! In this morning’s Galignani there is a sensational announcement that a dissolution of Parliament is to take place in the spring. I do not believe it, though perhaps, as Parnell’s love affairs have thrown disarray among the Home Rulers, some of the Ministers might think it a good moment. But ‘a bird in the hand’ is what Lord S. will be guided by.
Rome: December 3, 1890.
Your nice long letter was very pleasant to receive. I should like to get them very often. I also got your telegram about a letter from Fardell posted to Naples, which I suppose I will receive to-morrow. I hope he does not announce a dissolution. Parnell’s manifesto is a masterpiece. He lifts the issue between himself and Mr. Gladstone from the small ground of the divorce up to the large ground of a great political question. He may hold his own; but it must mean a complete smash-up of the Home Rule alliance.... The Government will be fools if they do not dissolve. This crash of the Home Rule party, this repudiation by Parnell of Mr. G.’s scheme, is the most complete and glaring justification of the Unionist cause. They will never get a better chance. However, I hope they won’t do so, as it would spoil my Egyptian plans.... I fear that bad Land Bill may now pass and make heaps of difficulty and trouble for future Governments....
Dahabeah, Ammon Ra, near Luxor: December 28, 1890.
It was very pleasant on waking up this morning to find a bundle of letters from you and others. They were brought down the river by one of Cook’s steamers from Luxor, where we shall arrive in about an hour.... We have been eight days on the journey from Assiout, as, except for two days, the wind has not been favourable and our steam launch is not strong enough to tow us more than about three miles an hour. I cannot tell you how pleasant it has been; one day more perfect than another, and yet the heat has never been oppressive. The days slip by as if they were hours. The newspapers came to hand at Assiout--though newspapers here seem to be superfluities--and I was able to read up all the news to the 13th.... It certainly looks as if the Government had been immeasurably strengthened and would require no help from anyone. But all these things concern me very little. We are enjoying ourselves immensely. Life on the Nile is ideal. The scenery would be monotonous if it were not on so vast a scale; but as it is, one never tires of it. Certainly this is the only place to pass the winter if fine warm weather is desired.... I must say I wish you were on board this boat--a week of this weather and rest would make you as strong as a horse. Perhaps next winter, if we are alive and well, we may do it together....
[Sidenote: 1891 ÆT. 41]
Dahabeah, Ammon Ra, Denderah: January 6, 1891.
I can, I fear, ill repay you for your very interesting letter of the 24th. All I can say is that it was thoroughly appreciated. I have little or nothing to tell you. A life without incident and without emotion has many advantages; but does not lend itself to correspondence, either as regards energy or material. I have seen Philæ and the Cataract, as also the temples of Edfoo and of this place--most interesting. Also a long expedition from Luxor to the tombs of the kings, some four thousand years old. Each king must have passed his lifetime in making his tomb, and if it was not finished when he died he had to go without. The weather has been perfect--day after day of cloudless skies, cool breezes and unparalleled sunsets. We read, we smoke, we lounge, we play picquet--at which I continue to hold exceedingly indifferent cards.... We shall dawdle out our time here as much as possible, as we do not want to be more than a day in Cairo.
To Sir Henry James, who wrote him accounts of the strange developments at Westminster, he framed a more elaborate reply than was usual with him in private correspondence:--
Dahabea, ‘Ammon Ra.’ Edfu, 60 miles south of Luxor: Jan. 3, 1891.
Your amiable and friendly letter reached me here this morning on my return from a visit to and prolonged study of a temple erected by the Ptolemies 250 B.C. It is ridiculously modern compared with Karnac, but its comparatively perfect state enables one usefully to imagine what Karnac was. In such a frame of mind, embracing a period of 10,000 years, your home politics, your House of Commons interests, the eloquence of Smith, the courage of Balfour, the honesty of Hartington, the financial genius of Goschen and the adroitness of Joe, all acted upon, stimulated and developed by the lax morals of Parnell, present themselves to my mental optics much in the same manner as fleas may attract the notice of an elephant. I am living with Rameses, Thotmes and Seti, and I have despised the Ptolemies as parvenus, and Cleopatra as ----! Imagine therefore how infinitely little becomes the struggle of the Kilkenny factions, the senile drivellings of Mr. Gladstone on Ravenswood which you think worthy of mention, the remorse of the officeless Harcourt or the doubting gloom of Morley. Here on this placid expanse of limitless plain and river and among these Egyptian temples you appear to me, as I say, like performing fleas. I was once a flea like you and skipped as nimbly as any of you, but have by some Pythagorean process emerged from that abject condition, and prefer musings over an immense past to worryings over a little present.
In addition to the attractions of this country and of its historic associations, we have and enjoy ideal weather, perfect peace, absence of all noise and a floating domicile in all respects comfortable; good food, hock, champagne, Pilsener beer, Marquis chocolate, ripe bananas, fresh dates, and literally hundreds of French novels, recourse to which is interrupted by games of picquet, in which the lucky Harry T[yrrwhit] has gained of me 10,000 1_d._ points. French novels, cards and Egyptian temples assimilate pleasantly, but English newspapers and English news are out of tune with these surroundings. And what pleases me most in your letter is the reflection to which it gives rise, that I still exist in the memory of a friend.
This is the part of the world in which you must pass your next winter. This heavenly climate will tame the most ferocious gout and tranquillise the most irritated nerves. If all is well, I will conduct you here next winter, introduce to you my friends Rameses & Co., forbid you the acquaintance of the vulgar Ptolemies, and gain from you 10,000 1_d._ points at picquet.
We have reached our Southern limit at Assouan, and are now leisurely floating down the current back to Cairo, back to noise, back to cold, back to tiresome women, back to Times leading articles, all inventions of the devil from which Providence has preserved the waters of the Nile....
I do not think I have ever experienced so pleasant a time as during the last three weeks. I have arrived at the condition of the true philosopher; nerves calm, health good, everything to please the eye and the mind. The past affords matter for agreeable reflection. The future appears without vexation. I can inform myself with interest but without emotions either of pleasure or displeasure of the good or evil fortunes of my enemies or my friends, and I please myself with the imagination that if I were to die to-morrow, I should have experienced and exhausted, prudently abandoning before satiation, every form of human excitement. This is what you can come to if you spend your next winter in Egypt; and it is to repay you for your letter that I thus lengthily suggest to you the prospect of obtaining at least six weeks of happiness and peace in the year of our Lord 1891.
[Sidenote: 1887-1890]
It is instructive to notice that Lord Randolph’s conduct during the years that followed his resignation will bear a far more exacting scrutiny than the years of his good fortune. Differing as he did on many questions from the Government, separated from them by the personal dislike or distrust with which he was regarded, he had nevertheless given them, so far as he conscientiously could, a loyal and regular support. He had never spoken against them except when compelled by opinions plainly declared in former years, or moved by deep feeling; and then he had always practised a moderation in tone and language foreign to his disposition. He had done nothing to embarrass them or hamper them. He had never made a personal attack on any of his late colleagues, nor can I discover any unkind or acrimonious word used about them. From time to time he had tried to influence their policy in directions which he believed the public interest and their own equally required; but these occasions had been rare and he had usually been right. Although the object of much abuse and even hatred from his old friends, he nourished no thoughts of permanent separation. ‘Born and bred,’ he wrote in 1891, ‘in the Conservative party, I could never join the ranks of their opponents.’ ‘I have always been,’ he told his constituents (February 22, 1891), ‘more or less of an independent member. From the year 1874, when I entered Parliament, to the year 1880--during the time of Lord Beaconsfield’s Government--I felt it my duty on more than one occasion to vote and speak against that powerful Government, and at times when in certain circles in London even to whisper a doubt as to its wisdom was considered almost treasonable. From 1880 to 1885 I pursued a course in Parliament of the greatest freedom and independence. More than once I went my own way, not caring much whether anyone followed; but I hardly think there are those who will assert that my action from 1880 to 1885 did injury to the Tory party. I have been unable even of late years to divest myself of my independent character. Lord Melbourne--or was it Lord Palmerston?--once characterised an independent member of Parliament as a member who could not be depended upon. Well, this much is certain. If I am called upon to support a reactionary and antiquated policy, then I am not to be depended upon. If I am called upon to approve illiberal or sham legislation, then I am not to be depended upon. If I am called upon to support an aggressive policy or a policy of large expenditure, then I am not to be depended upon. But if I am called upon to abide by pledges I have given on any platform or in any published letter or to support the political principles I have advocated, since I entered Parliament, then I can confidently point out to you my past career as a proof that I am to be depended upon--more, perhaps, than any devoted partisan of the present Government.’
These were the best years of his intellectual power--a short summer when his mind was most fertile and his judgment ripe and prescient. Almost alone and unsupported he had by sheer personal force and persuasive speech commanded respect and procured important decisions. Grave or gay, in attack, defence, or exposition, on all sorts of subjects and in all sorts of humours, the House of Commons had delighted to hear him; and what he said in Parliament or out of doors, whether about politics or other matters, was received and examined with national attention. But let it be observed that Lord Randolph Churchill was beaten, whatever he did, when he played the national game; and was victorious, whatever he did, while he played the party game. No question of ‘taste’ or ‘patriotism’ was raised when what he said, however outrageous, suited his party. No claim of truth counted when what he said, however incontrovertible, was awkward for his party. Yet almost fiercely he asserted his loyalty to the Unionist cause.
‘It was not difficult for me to notice,’ he wrote in 1891, in a letter to his constituents, never published, ‘that after power was assured to the Tory leaders for some years by the General Election of 1886, it was their intention to stand on the old ways of Toryism in respect to Ireland, foreign policy and expenditure. Then I went away from them. On three occasions since during the last long five years have I gone against them: (1) When they threatened to recommence the policy of military expenditure in the Soudan; (2) when in 1888 the present Leader of the House of Commons, then Chief Secretary, ridiculed and denounced in the House the demand of the Irish members for Local Self-government; (3) when in 1890 I declared against the iniquitous and infamous policy of the Parnell Commission. With these three exceptions I often supported the Government by speech and vote in Parliament; I even spoke and voted in favour of their Coercion Bill in 1887, though I was much startled and disquieted afterwards by the manner of its administration; and in 1887, 1888, and 1889 I addressed large public meetings in their support. For the rest of the time, when I disagreed and doubted--as was often the case--I stood aloof and held my peace; and you must well remember that on more than one occasion in past sessions this strong Government and party managed to get themselves into the sorest straits, and that opportunities were offered of paying off some old scores which, if personal considerations had influenced me, I should not have neglected and which, I expect, not many politicians would have allowed to pass by. Bear this in mind, I pray you, in common justice when you hear me freely accused--as I have often been, and shall be again--of disloyalty to the Tory or the Unionist party; contrast the line of action I have followed with action followed in former Parliaments towards former Governments by former out-going Ministers; and I call upon you to acquit me fully of any charge of disloyalty.’
It had been proved to utter conviction in those barren years that ‘ten men armed can subdue one man in his shirt.’ One friend after another had fallen away from Lord Randolph. The hostility of the Prime Minister and the tireless machine-like detraction of the party press had not been without effect. His Parliamentary position was one of complete isolation and his popularity in the country had declined. Others--scarcely heard of in the days of battle--were now bearing the burden of the Unionist cause, and the public eye was fixed upon a stout-hearted bookseller whose perseverance as Leader was making of his repeated failures a curious but undoubted success, and upon an Irish Secretary whose reputation was every day enhanced by the taunts and revilings he provoked from his opponents. The Minister who seemed so powerful in 1886, the people’s favourite, the necessary Parliamentarian, the central link of the Unionist alliance, certainly its most redoubtable champion, stood outside all political combinations, actual or potential. The Government of such a sickly infancy was grown up into a strong, if not a healthy manhood. The sunrise of wealth and extending comfort which in every nation lighted up the last quarter of the nineteenth century was strengthening by an unseen yet irresistible process the forces upon which Conservatism depends; and the millstone of Home Rule bowed and strangled the Liberals. There was neither need nor place for a leader of Tory Democracy.
All this was perfectly appreciated by Lord Randolph Churchill, and his detached contented mood and habit of thought were carefully and laboriously assumed and fortified by every trick of mental discipline he knew. A studied disdain of the course of public events, the influence of movement and of changing scenes, the delights of summer-lands, books, friends and mild Egyptian cigarettes--all were to him the incidents of an elaborate art. But the characters of valetudinarian, pleasure-seeker, traveller, sportsman, failed to satisfy, and served scarcely to distract. Always at hand, though forbidden his mind, lurked the hopes and the schemes, once so real, now turned to shadows: and the thought--never quite to be chased away--of that multitude of working people he knew so well, who had trusted him as their champion; who were still ready, if they knew how, to do him honour; but for whom--though their problems were still unsolved, uncared for, or cared for only as counters in the game of politics--it was beyond his power to do the smallest service. And although the great river, gliding impassively along by the sands of the desert and the temples of forsaken faiths, might seem to smile at fretful aspirations, the reproach and disappointment silently consumed him.
* * * * *
Further and further afield! After the session of 1890 Lord Randolph Churchill abandoned the House of Commons. He attended seldom; he never spoke. In the summer of 1891 he sailed for South Africa in quest of sport and gold--and peace. A journey to Mashonaland was in those days an enterprise of some difficulty; nor, indeed, before the overthrow of the Matabele power, devoid of risk. Elaborate arrangements were required to conduct even a small party in comfort through these untrodden fields. The command of the miniature expedition was entrusted to Major Giles, a traveller well acquainted with the country. As killing game was a necessity as well as an amusement, one of the best hunters in South Africa, Hans Lee, was included in the party; and Mr. Perkins, a mining engineer of the highest eminence, was engaged to search for gold.
The interest with which Lord Randolph was regarded by the public had survived his popularity and all these preparations excited general curiosity and afforded fertile themes for comment and satire. He was persuaded to write a long series of letters for the Daily Graphic by the extraordinary offer of a hundred pounds for each letter. Every incident of his journey, even the most trivial, especially the most personal that could be discovered, was telegraphed to England by assiduous reporters and discussed with genial malice by the Conservative newspapers. He was burlesqued on the Gaiety stage with a wit so pointed that the song was stopped by the intervention of the Lord Chamberlain. While paragraphs, lampoons and caricatures exhibited him daily to the ridicule of his countrymen; while the delegates of the National Union hooted his name at their annual conference; and while the chiefs of the Tories complacently admired the fulness of their triumph, the ex-Minister plunged into vast solitudes. Across the veldt by bush and kloof and kopje, through the drifts of flooded rivers, by mining camps and frontier posts into magnificent wildernesses toiled the tiny caravan. A gust of bracing air and rough exertion breaks in upon the artificial ventilation of the House of Commons. The crowded benches, with the yellow light streaming down upon them from the ceiling, recede into the distance. Waggons creak and jolt along stony tracks, camp-fires twinkle in the waste, antelope gallop over spacious pastures, lions roar beneath the stars----
All this has been described by Lord Randolph Churchill himself in the book in which his published letters were finally compiled.[74] I will not tell a twice-told tale. It was not perhaps surprising that a relentless criticism should have denied to these productions all title to literary merit. Their commercial value consisted mainly in the personality of the writer; and that personality was the object of powerful and widespread prejudice. The extravagant price paid for them was an incitement to every sharp pen less generously rewarded. The letters themselves make no pretence to elegance. Here and there a touch of quaint humour, a caustic or jingling phrase, or a rhetorical passage--but for the most part they tell a plain story of sport and travel, as such stories have often been told before.
One extract shall suffice:--
We were riding along through a small open glade covered with high grass, Lee a few yards ahead of me, when I suddenly saw him turn round, cry out something to me, and point with his finger ahead. I looked, and saw lolloping along through and over the grass, about forty yards off, a yellow animal about as big as a small bullock. It flashed across me that it was a lion--the last thing in the world that I was thinking of. I was going to dismount and take aim, for I was not frightened at the idea of firing at a retreating lion; but Lee called out in succession five or six times, ‘Look, look!’ at the same time pointing with his finger in different directions in front. I saw to my astonishment, and rather to my dismay, that the glade appeared to be alive with lions. There they were, trooping and trotting along ahead of us like a lot of enormous dogs, great yellow objects, offering such a sight as I had never dreamed of. Lee turned to me and said, ‘What will you do?’ I said, ‘I suppose we must go after them,’ thinking all the time that I was making a very foolish answer. This I am the more convinced of now, for Lee told me afterwards that many old hunters in South Africa will turn away from such a troupe of lions as we had before us. We trotted on after them a short distance to where the grass was more open, the lions trotting along ahead of us in the most composed and leisurely fashion, very different from the galloping-off of a surprised and startled antelope. Lee now dismounted and fired at a lion about fifty yards off. I saw the brute fall forward on his head, twist round and round and stagger into a patch of high grass slightly to the left of where I was riding.
I did not venture to dismount with such a lot of these brutes all around ahead of me, not feeling at all sure that I should be able to remount quickly enough and gallop away after shooting. My horse, untrained to the gun, would not allow me to fire from his back and would probably have thrown me off had I done so. I stuck close to Lee, determined to leave the shooting to him unless things became critical, as his aim was true. His nerves were steady, which was more than mine were, though I do not admit that I was at all frightened. I counted seven lions; Lee says there were more. I saw, and cried out to Lee, pointing to a great big fellow with a heavy black mane trotting along slightly ahead of the rest. He was just crossing a small spruit about one hundred yards ahead and as he climbed the opposite bank offered his hind quarters as a fair target. Lee fired at him, at which he quickened his pace and disappeared in front. We approached the spruit and, almost literally under my nose, I saw three lions tumble up out of it, climb the opposite side and disappear. Now I own I longed for my shooting pony Charlie, for they offered me splendid shots, quite close, such as I could hardly have missed. I raised my rifle to take aim at the last; but, perhaps fortunately for me, he disappeared, before I could fire, in the high grass on the other side. I saw Lee fire from his horse at one as it was climbing the bank, which he wounded badly. It retreated into a patch of thick grass the other side of the spruit, uttering sounds something between a growl, a grunt and a sob.
Mashonaland yielded no golden results to the practised eye of Mr. Perkins; and it was not until the expedition had returned to Johannesburg that he unfolded his novel theory of deep levels. At this time the outcrop of the Great Banket reef was the only gold area which was being worked. Mr. Perkins observed the slant at which the strata emerged from the upper soil. He calculated accordingly. He advised the purchase of farms and properties along the south side of the ridge. By striking down directly into the earth the Great Banket reef would again be overtaken--richer perhaps than ever before. Lord Randolph Churchill must have stood at this time very close to an almost immeasurable fortune. Such a vital thought could not, however, remain secret--was already occurring to other minds. But the investments which he made were not inconsiderable or ill-judged, and were sold at his death for upwards of 70,000_l._
While such business and adventure occupied his mind the leadership of the House of Commons fell vacant. Mr. Smith’s heavy task was at an end. For two sessions he had struggled against ever-increasing physical distresses. Hour after hour he had sat on his Bench with his rug across his knees--a pathetic and not unheroic figure. Night after night he had risen in his place to discharge in singularly bad speeches his duty--as he would have phrased it--to ‘Queen and country.’ Now he was gone, and Lord Salisbury made haste to appoint Mr. Balfour in his stead. His selection was almost universally applauded.
Lord Randolph Churchill to his Wife.
Mafeking, November 23, 1891.
So Arthur Balfour is really leader--and Tory Democracy, the genuine article, at an end! Well, I have had quite enough of it all. I have waited with great patience for the tide to turn, but it has not turned, and will not now turn in time. In truth, I am now altogether déconsidéré. I feel sure the other party will come in at the next election. The South Molton election is another among many indications. No power will make me lift hand or foot or voice for the Tories, just as no power would make me join the other side. All confirms me in my decision to have done with politics and try to make a little money for the boys and for ourselves. I hope you do not all intend to worry me on this matter and dispute with me and contradict me. More than two-thirds, in all probability, of my life is over, and I will not spend the remainder of my years in beating my head against a stone wall. I expect I have made great mistakes; but there has been no consideration, no indulgence, no memory or gratitude--nothing but spite, malice and abuse. I am quite tired and dead-sick of it all, and will not continue political life any longer. I have not Parnell’s dogged, but at the same time sinister, resolution; and have many things and many friends to make me happy, without that horrid House of Commons work and strife. After all, A. B. cannot beat my record; and it was I who got him first into the Government, and then into the Cabinet. This he and Lord S. know well.... It is so pleasant getting near home again. I have had a good time (out here), but now reproach myself for having left you all for so long, and am dying to be again at Connaught Place.
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