England under Gladstone

Front matter

DODDl=^DSflflO m

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Contents

CHAPTEE, PAGE.

I. The Fall op Lord Beaconsfikld ... 7

III. Mr. Bradlaugh. — The Fourth Party . . 41

Chapter I. The Fall Of Loed Beaconsfield

Ok March 8, 1880, Lord Beaconsfield addressed a letter to the Duke of Marlborough, in which he announced liis intention to dissolve Parliament and " afford an opportunity to the nation to decide upon a course which will materially influence its future fortunes and shape its destiny. " Rarely in the century, the letter went on to say, had there been an occasion more critical. The peace of Europe and the ascendency of England in the European councils depended upon the verdict she would now be called upon to give. But it was not upon any question of foreign policy that Lord Beaconsfield avowedly appealed to the country. It was the condition of Ireland which prompted him: the condition of Ireland was the first topic touched upon in the last letter of political importance he was ever destined to write. The Home Rule movement represented to Lord Beaconsfield a danger " scarcely less disastrous than pestilence and famine. '■' It had been insidiously supported by the Liberal party, who tried to destroy the '' imperial character " of England by a " policy of decomposition,^^ which Lord Beaconsfield called upon all ^' men of light and leading '^ to struggle against. The letter professed to attack the opponents of the Government for their desire to disintegrate the empire: it really called upon the English people to set the seal of their approval on the whole course of that policy which Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury delighted to style " imperial.'^

That same Monday, before Lord Beaconsfield^ s letter had yet been published, Sir Stafford Northcote rose to make a ministerial statement in the House of Commons. He spoke of the grave inconvenience that would be experienced by the members of that House if they went into the coun-

8 ENGLAKD UNDER GLADSTON'E.

try for Easter without knowing the intentions of the Government with respect to the dissohition of Parliament. The moment that the leader of the House of Commons mentioned the word dissolution there was a literal flight of members from the chamber. Every man knew that the stroke had fallen, and every man was eager to send at once to his constituents tlie first ncAvs of the intended appeal to the country. In a few minutes the tidings were borne by a thousand wires to every electorate in the kingdom. It was computed, for the benefit of those who love the small statistics of great events, that some seven hundred and twenty telegrams were wired from the House of Commons on that night.

The dissolution, though sudden, was scarcely unexpected. The Government had lived an unusually long life; six years had gone by since it came mto power, and it could, at the utmost, only have endured for another twelvemonth. Since the beginning of the sixteenth century only eleven had lived so long, and only four had endured for a longer period. Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal party had been arguing vehemently for some time before the dissolution that no Government ^ ought to completely exhaust their mandate by holding office to the last syllable of their recorded time. Whether they ought or ought not to do so, it was clear that they had a perfect right to remain in for the rest of their seventh session if so they j^leased ; but it was scarcely less clear that they would not act wisely in so doing. Ever since Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury came back from Berlin to delight shouting multitudes with their stately phrases about peace and honor, the poimlarity of the Conservative Ministry had been slowly, stea<:lily dwindling away.

The Government could only live on success, or the show of success. The fatal brand Althaea burned did not bear closer proportion to '' the princess heart of Calydon " than did noisy triumph and gaudy surprise to the well-being and the popularity of the Government. If Lord Beaconsfield had appealed to the country immediately after the return from Berlin, the Conservative party might have come back to power with an undiminished majority, but in the year that lay between that more than Roman triumph and the opening of the session of 1880 many things happened, all of which told against the popularity of the Government.

ENGLAi^TD UNDER GLADSTONE. 9'

In Afghanistan the revival of the Afghan policy of 1840 brought with it a hideous repetition of the massacre of 1841. Sir Alexander Burnes had been killed in 1841 by an Afghan mob, indignant at England ^s efforts to force a British envoy upon them against their will. For the same cause Sir Louis Oavagnari was murdered in the same way in the autumn of 1879. Once more England had a murdered envoy to avenge^, once more Oabul had to be occupied by an English army. In South Africa there were even more serious troubles. We had got into a war with the Zulu king, Oetewayo, and we had sustained one terrible defeat at Isandlana, where an English force was surrounded and literally cut to pieces by the Zulus. England was unaccustomed to such defeats, and the news of the disaster sent a profound shock of horror and dismay throughout the country. Of course victory could not be long doubtful or long delayed. Oetewayo was entirely defeated, his lands divided, and he himself captured and imprisoned. But the ministerial policy in Afghanistan and in South Africa did not increase the popularity of the Ministry. It was not, perhaps, so much the injustice of the policy itself that was condemned as its ill-success, and the bloodshed of English soldiers that accompanied it.

There were other influences of a more domestic nature working against the Government as well. Sir Eichard Cross, the Home Secretary, had identified his name and the name of the Government with a Water Bill, in which an arrangement was made with the City companies which was by no means popular. Their Water Bill helped to drive them to the country. Not that a Water Bill of some kind or other was unneeded. The London water- supply is very bad and very dear; perhaps at once the dearest and the impurest water-supply in the country. Sir Richard Cross — he was then only Mr. Cross — proposed in the summer of 1879 to bring in a Bill which should enable the Government to buy up the water companies and distribute pure water to the metropolis. In answer to Mr. Eawcett, he announced that the Government, in treating with the water companies, " would take the stocks as they found them on such a day — the last day of the half-year — and that no speculative' change in the value of stocks would have the smallest weight with the Government.^' Nothing could be more comforting than these assurances; nothing iO EKGLAKD UNDER GLADSTONE.

more disappointiug than to find in the autumn that, as a matter of fact, the Government were prepared to pay the water companies a very much larger jjrice than the market vahie of the shares in August, from which they had very considerably risen in the ensuing months. A sum of nine millions was sufficient to cover the original cost of the water- woi'ks; their market value in the August of Mr. Crosses reassuring speech was under nineteen millions. Yet Mr. Cross, on the basis of extraordinary calculations which wholly failed to impress not merely the public mind but the mind of the majority of his own party, proposed to pay the water companies very nearly thirty millions. • Tlie country railed and laughed at the new measure. Conservative adherents warned their leaders that they would not vote for it. This was bad ; but it was not all. It was felt for some time that the Budget would be unsatisfactory, and unsatisfactory it proved to be. The preceding years had not been years of signal prosperity; the foreign policy of the Prime Minister had made manj'^ exceptional demands of the heaviest kind upon the resources of the country. Wars in all directions, and the ostentatious preparations for wars which neV3r took the field, had swelled the total of the deficit to an alarming degree, while the revenue had not risen in anything like a proportionate measure. The receipts were only some eighty millions odd; the expenditure exceeded that sum by over three millions. An accumulated deficit ot some eight millions of outstanding bonds and bills Sir Stafford Northcote proposed to meet by renewing bills for two miUions, and creating terminable annuities to be paid olf at the end of 1885 to cover the remaining six millions. In order to liquidate these six millions during the five years, Sir Stafford Northcote required an annual payment of £1,400,000 to cover principal and interest. To meet this annual payment the Chancellor of the Exchequer added £800,000 to the National Debt, and seized upon the sinking fund which he had himself established for the purpose of slowly but surely reducing the National Debt. The Budget depressed the Conservatives and delighted the Liberals. It afforded Mr. Gladstone some of the best weapons with which to assail the Government. Sir Stafford Northcote^s proposal to increase the succession duties on joersonal property, and to leave the smaller duties on landed property untouched, was especially attacked by Mr. Glad-

IKGLAKD UKDEB GLADSTONE. 11

stone. The exemption of land from succession duties had long been looked upon with fierce disfavor by the majority, who were not landholders. Mr. Gladstone pointed out that while under the old arrangement the tradesman and the farmer paid three times as much succession duty as the landlord, by the new arrangement they would have to pay four times as much.

Under such conditions, with shattered prestige and faded laurels, the Tory Government decided to make that appeal to the country which, one year earlier, might not have been made in vain. The more hopeful among the Liberals rejoiced in the prospect of the struggle. Mr. Grissell, imprisoned in Newgate, for offense against the majesty of Parliament, rejoiced too, for the dissolution to him meant liberty. But it may be doubted whether there was much sense of rejoicing in many Tory bosoms. The more prudent among them must have regarded the election with doubt and dread. It is now certain that the Tory whips were much misled as to the prospects of the party, and that Lord Beaconsfield himself was unwittingly misled in consequence. However, the plunge was made. The Government hurriedly passed the Corrupt Practices at Elections Bill, which heightened the expense of elections by repealing the provision which made it illegal for candidates to pay the cost of carriages employed to bring voters to the poll. Then they went into the field and faced their enemies.

The elections soon showed that the Conservative Ministry had indeed outlived its popularity: election after election went in the Liberal interest, constituency after constituency declared in favor of a new Government and against the old, seat after seat changed from blue to buff. Never before in the history of the reign had a Ministry remained in power so long to fall from power so disastrously. When the elections were fairly over, the Liberals were found to have the largest majority on record in our time — a majority of one hundred and twenty. The reasons for this great victory were plain enough. There was the inevitable law of political reaction, which always makes a large number of persons vote on way because on the previous occasion they had voted another. There were the misfortunes of the Conservative Government: they had taxed the temper of the country very severely; their " imperial ^^ bubble, when swollen to its biggest, had been pricked and shattered

12 ENGLAI^D UNDER GLADSTONE.

by some liumiliating blunders and some bloody defeats;: most of all, there was the eloquence of Mr. Gladstone. Months before the ai^peal to the country he had made his famous Midlothian campaign^ pouring out speech after speech of scorn and contemi)t and invective against the Ministry; and every word he uttered was ca<rried to every corner of English land, and carried conviction along with it to some minds unconvinced before. The Midlothian speeches were brilliant — almost, it may be said, too brilliant. Mr. Gladstone can hardly have counted upon carrying the country before him in the way he did when he poured forth speech after speech of glowing phrase and passionate denunciation. The speeches literally swept tlie Conservatives away; but it must be admitted that the occasional extravagance which lent them their value as artistic efforts, and perhaps even as jDolitical weapons, was often made the cause of considerable uneasiness to Mr. Gladstone when he was once again in office. The Midlothian speeches were a little like the famous memorial which Gil Bias drew up for that Count d^Olivarez whose melancholy face frowns from the canvas of Velasquez in the gallery of Madrid. It was the duty of Gil Bias to present the Spanish people with a very uni^leasant account of the management of affairs, under the previous Prime Minister, the Duke de LerDTi.a. '* It is necessary now," said the Count d^Olivarez, '•' to. bring before the eyes of court and town the wretched state to which the monarchy is reduced. A picture must be painted which shall imjDress the people, and jorevent them from regretting my predecessor.^^ Gil Bias, iit will be remembered, acting u2)on these instructions, did paint a most alarming picture of the condition of the kingdom, with its finances dissipated, its revenues squandered, its marine' ruined, the very monarchy imperiled by the faults of' thepi'evious ruler. After havijig drawn a sufficiently fearful representation of the evils which threatened the kingdom, Gil Bias proceeded to raise the hopes of the jieople by describing the Count d^Olivarez as a reformer sent by Heaven- for the safety of the nation, and promised marvels in his name. It may be admitted by Mr. Glaclstojie^s warmest admirers that something of the spirit of Gil Bias lingered along the lines of the Midlothian speeches. But for the time they were completely successful; they stirred the country from end to end, and shook Lord Beaconsfield's

El^GLAKD UKDER GLADSTOKE. 13

government to its very center. When the elections came on, Mr. Gladstone went down into MidlotJiian again, of course, and made more sjDeeches, no less vigorous, no less impassioned, no less eloquent than their perdecessors; and once more they triumphed, not alone in Midlothian, but it might almost be said in every constituency which returned a Liberal candidate, certainly in every constituency which overturned a Tory representative and put a Liberal in his place. It would indeed be difficult to overestimate the effect of those Midlothian speeches upon the English people, and, in consequence, upon the Tory administration. It must be admitted, however, that their influence afterward was in more than one case injurious to the Government they had called into power, and embarrassing to the statesman who uttered them.

Some share of the victory was undoubtedly in many cases due to the influence and the assistance of the Irish vote. Lord Beaconsfield's letter to the Duke of Marlborough began with a direct attack upon the Irish Nationalists, and the Irish Nationalists in the House of Commons retorted by calling upon the Irish voters everywhere to rally tothe Liberal standards, and lend a hand to hurl the Conservatives from office. The appeal was eagerly responded to; in almost every case the Irish vote was all but unanimously given to a Liberal candidate, and in not a few constituencies the Irish vote was big enough to turn the balance one way or the other. Undoubtedly the sympathies of the bulk of the Irish electors in England were on the whole with the Liberal leaders; but they were now for the first time obeying a call to vote for the Liberal party, not so much because it was Liberal, as because it was not Tory.

The Liberals once in power, the question then came up who was to be their leader. In the popular mind there was no doubt at all. Through all the struggle that had resulted in the Liberal triumph, one man was as conspicuous on the Liberal side as Lord Beaconsfield was on the Tory side — the man who had been the peer and antagonist of Lord Beaconsfield for twenty years. Practically every one, friend or foe, felt that Mr. Gladstone was the choosen leader of the English Liberal party. But for a moment it seemed as if the great Liberal victory was to be followed by an absurd anticlimax. The great battle had been fought and won, and, lo! the wreath of laurel was to be placed upon the head, not of the conquering general, but of some respectable lieutenant, who had done his little share of the business very creditably along with half a score of others. It was hinted that Mr. Gladstone was unpopular at Court. Lord Hartington was sent for and invited to form a Ministry. The eyes of all England were metaphorically upon Lord Hartington, as he walked in the drizzling rain from Windsor Station to Windsor Castle in obedience to the royal summons, and walked back again, still in the rain, having declined to accept the responsibility of forming a Ministry. Lord Hartington may not unreasonably be accused of political ambition, for he has devoted himself with a patient persistence to a political life that must, it may be well imagined, have been exceedingly uncongenial, has conquered many difficulties and many defects, and has succeeded in earning distinction, and in marking out for himself a career.

It spoke well for his ability to play the part of a statesman that he was able to refuse the temptation to become Prime Minister, to see that a Hartington administration was not what the country was just then calling for. Lord Hartington being out of the question, the Queen sent for Lord Granville. Lord Granville, in all his long political career, had never been Prime Minister. In 1855 he had tried, and failed, to form a Ministry.* Lord Granville was an able man who might in other times, and under other conditions, have made an excellent Premier. His sweet intellectual nature, his long political experience, his exquisite facility for understanding men and questions — all combined to make him an admirable candidate for the first office of the State. Sir Henry Taylor in his essay on " The Statesman," urges the importance of general knowledge, * ^ if it were only to enable the statesman to escape the charge of general ignorance which men, j^erhaps more generally ignorant themselves, but armed with a specific knowledge, may otherwise be led to advance.'^ Lord Granville's statesmanship was of a kind which would deserve the approval of Sir Henry Taylor. He is one of the most cultured of statesmen; he is what the Prince Consort was, and what the late Lord Brougham wished to be, a man who excels in many branches of knowledge. Sharp, the Abolitionist, thought he had discovered in the great Napoleon the verification of the prophecy of the Little Horn in Daniel, and he tried to communicate his theory to

Pox. " Would you believe it?"*^ exclaimed tlie indignant Abolitionist to a friend after the interview. ** He did not so much as know what the Little Horn was. "

It would, probably, not be easy to find a subject — even the Little Horn — about which Lord Granville did not know something. Indeed, at one time Lord Granville was thought to be almost too cultured to find himself at home in the rough field of practical politics. The impression was a mistaken one. In one of Eugene Sue^s stories there is a slender, delicate young man, so slender and delicate that he can easily pass in feminine garb for a woman; and yet, in moments of danger, he displays tremendous strength, and fells practiced bullies and bruisers to the ground with the ease of Ajax. Like Sue^s hero. Lord Granville seemed too delicate, too gracious for the rough-and-ready business of parliamentary life; but he soon showed that, at the right time, he had as strong a grip, and could hit as hard, as the best. Just now we seem to have passed away from that order of things in which exceedingly yoimg men played the parts of Prime Ministers and leaders of Op- 23osition. Our statesmen now are, for the most part, elderly. Lord Beaconsfield's brilliant saying about the world being made by young men, would not hold good at all were it not for Lord Kandolph Churchill. But among elderly statesmen Lord Granville is conspicuous for his youth. Some years ago, speaking of his youthful days, he prettily said, ** No one ever was so young as I was once.^^ Something of this air of unparalleled youth still clings about Lord Granville, and makes people feel that, if he has not yet been Prime Minister, there is still plenty of time. Lord Granville is certainly of the stuff from which Prime Ministers are made, and well made. But in the early spring of 1880, it was obvious that there was only one possible Prime Minister, and that he was not Lord Granville. The inevitable had to be accepted; the inexorable was not to be argued with.

The task which lay before the new Premier was not overeasy. Had it been in his power to form a Ministry three times the size of that which custom and precedent permitted, he would have found it difficult to satisfy the crowd of politicians who thought themselves entitled to take office. There were, to begin with, a certain number of men who must obviously be included in any ministerial scheme that could possibly be formulated; men whose commanding position in the party, or whose signal services in former days, gave them the right to belong to the new Government. The names of Lord Hartington, Lord Granville, Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Bright, and others, leaped at once to the lips of every man in England who planned out — as who did not? — the personnel of the embryo Ministry. Then there were men who had been in office before, and who seemed to think that they had a sort of prescriptive right to some position in the new Ministry. These were often respectable fourth and fifth class men of average vestry abilit}^, but who had given their full parochial measure on former occasions, and were not worth trying again. Then there were the 7iovi Jwmines, the new men who had come j)rominently to the front during the long years of opposition, the free-lances from below the gangway who had marked themselves out as candidates for office whenever the Liberals should sit on the right hand of Mr. Speaker again. Sk Charles Dilke, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Leonard Courtney, Mr. Fawcett, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice — these were among the most conspicuous of these free companions. From all these various elements a Ministry had to be combined and a Cabinet evolved. The task was neither light nor pleasant. A satiric poet, a Juvenal or a Churchill, might have found excellent material for pungent and pitiless raillery in the struggles, the intrigues, the heart-burnings, the hatreds, the jealousies and the despairs, the hopes and fears that animated the breasts of all the mob of candidates for each and every place that it was in Mr. Gladstone's joower to bestow. Some politicians who were well known to have little love for Mr. Gladstone — who had, indeed, openly avowed that they would never again consent to take office under him — found the winter of their discontent melting away under the glorious summer of success, and showed themselves willing to waive their objections and enroll themselves once more beneath Mr. Gladstone's banner.

At first the process of Cabinet-making went smoothly ejiough. There was no difficulty in assigning the most important offices to the most obvious men. Lord Granville, Lord Hartington, Lord Northbrook, Lord Selborne, Mr. Childers, and Mr. Forster were easily apportioned off. Then came the critical question of the Radical strength. The

EKGLAi^D UKDER GLADSTONE. 17

Whigs, as a matter of coarse, did not like the idea of any Radical element being allowed to mix in the composition of the Cabinet. For them Mr. Bright, Mr. Forster, and Mr. Gladstone himself were quite revolutionary enough, and they wished to have nothing to do with the fiery spirits below the gangway. Even Mr. Gladstone, while ready to recognize the Radicals by giving them places in the Ministry, was said to be unwilling to allow men, as yet untried in office, to enter the Cabinet at once. But the Radicals were determined to have a representative in the Cabinet. Their leaders made a resolute stand. Some one of their number — it did not much matter which, but some prominent Radical — must have a place in the hqw Cabinet, or they would know the reason why. They had a perfect right to make this demand, and to take their stand upon it. In the years that had elapsed since Mr. Gladstone went out of office, in 1874, Radicalism had been growing more and more powerful every day. In Scotland, in the north of England, especially. Radicalism, and not Liberalism, was the antagonist of Conservatism. The Radicals of Birmingham, of Manchester, of ISTewcastle-on-Tyne, and all the great towns of the north, had learned to organize, had become, by organization, the most powerful body of opinion in the country. Of these men Mr. Chamberlain was the chosen captain. Sir Charles Dilke was the champion in especial of the Radical working-men of London. One or other of these two must be given a seat in the Cabinet; so the Radical fiat had gone forth, and Mr. Gladstone could not, had he been inclined, have aiforded to disregard that fiat. The idle gossip of the hour, the many-tongued rumor than ran during those eventful weeks through club-rooms and drawing-rooms and editors^ rooms, said that Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain had joine^i their fortunes, had packed cards together, and had entered into a solemn league with a seat in the Cabinet for its object, and that each was pledged to support, with all the strength of his influence and his following, the one who should be chosen. Whether this were so or not, the strong voice of Radicalism had declared that one of its two chiefs should be chosen, and liadicalism was likely to have its way.

Sir Charles Dilke declined to accept any office unless some representative of the Radical members below the gangway found his way into the Cabinet. He himself

18 EI^GLAKD UKDER GLADSTONE.

suggested Mr. Chamberlain, as a man'wliom all the Katli- (^als would be glad to see chosen. There was a distinct pause in tlie process of formation. Conference after conference was held; at the clubs intense excitement prevailed; rumor after rumor, in turn, took possession of the public mind. The excitement was well warranted. The situation almost deserved the dignity of a constitutional crisis. Were the Radical party already strong enough with the country to be able to dictate to a Ministry and demand a 23lace in the Cabinet? It was soon shown that they were. After some eventful days of expectancy and much going to and fro of embassadors from the two camps, it became known that the Radicals had carried their j)oint, and that Mr. Gladstone had accepted the situation and offered Mr. Chamberlain a seat in the Cabinet. It was judged wiser to risk oilending the Whigs than to reject the Radicals.

At last, in the end of April, the Cabinet was formed and the Ministry com23leted; so many ambitions had been gratified, so many encouraged, so many more had been frustrated. Mr. Gladstone took the two officers of the First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Great Seal and the Lord High Chancellorship were intrusted to Lord Selborne. Lord Granville became Foreign Secretary, Sir William Harcourt became Home Secretary, Lord Hartington became Secretary for India, Mr. Childers went to the War Office, Lord Kimberley undertook the affairs of the Colonies, Mr. Bright accepted the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster, Mr. Forster was made Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, Mr. Chamberlain represented Radicalism in the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. The Duke of Argyll as Privy Seal, Mr. Dodson as President of the Local Government Board, and Lord Spencer as Lord President of the Council completed the roll of the Cabinet.

Outside the Cabinet, the most important members of the Ministry were Sir Charles Dilke as Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Fawcett as Postmaster-General, and Si]' Henry James as Attorney-General. Mr. Grant Duff, a jiolitician of brilliant promise and scant performance, of wide information which he seemed unable to turn to much account, of abilities which would have made the fortunes of half a dozen other men and of which he made little enough, was Under Secretary for the Colonies. Mr.

Adam, who had long been famous for his services as Whip to the Liberal party, sought rest in. the Department of Public Works, only to weary soon enough of what he called " looking after flower-pots;^^ and, after seeking once more fit service for his energies in the administration of Madras, to die a too early death. Mr. Shaw Lefevre, -an able politician, who knew something more about land tenure than most people, and was valued accordingly, became Secretary to the Admiralty; Sir Farrer Herschell was Solicitor-General. Mr. MundeUa undertook the education, department as Vice-President of the Council. One man, whose name was conspicuously absent from the composition of the new Ministry, Mr. Stansfeld, was absent, not by omission, but by his own choice. His former services included him in the list of those to whom proffer of some place is inevitable; but the condition of his health did not allow him to enter once more into the harness of office. He remained outside the Ministry, and the Governmont, as some sign of recognition of his ability and his claims upon their consideration, afterward nominated him as a member of an important commission to inquire into the working of the English land system.