CHAPTER XIII
RENEWAL OF ACTIVITY
I.
On his return from Algeria Sir Charles reached Paris and crossed to
England in the last week of January, 1875.
'On reaching London, instead of going to Harcourt's, I had to go first to my own house, for I was sickening with disease, and had, indeed, a curious very slight attack of smallpox, which passed off, however, in about two days, but I had to be isolated for another week. When I became what the doctors called well I moved to Harcourt's; but my hand still shook, and I had contracted a bad habit of counting the beating of my heart, and I was so weak of mind that the slightest act of kindness made me cry. To my grandmother and brother I wrote to ask them to let me go on living with Harcourt for the present, not because I preferred him to them, but because I could not live in my own house, and should have a better chance of sleep if I returned elsewhere at night from the House of Commons.'
From this prostration he slowly recovered, occupying himself partly in arranging for the publication by Murray of Papers of a Critic, which he describes as 'a reprint of some of my grandfather's articles, with a memoir of him by myself which I had written while in Paris.'
The book was well received, and a copy sent to Mr. Disraeli brought this acknowledgment:
"2, WHITEHALL GARDENS, "June 28th, '75.
"DEAR SIR CHARLES,
"I am obliged to you for sending me your book; I find it agreeable and amusing. Belles Lettres are now extremely rare, but, I must confess, very refreshing. Your grandfather had a true literary vein, and you have done wisely in collecting his papers.
"Very much yours,
"B. DISRAELI."
This pleasant note was the beginning of an acquaintance, though by a series of chances Sir Charles never met the Tory leader outside Parliament till Lord Beaconsfield was in the last year of his life.
When coming through Paris he had, 'of course at once' gone to see Gambetta, whom he found 'privately ridiculing the various suggestions made as to a constitution for his country.' Gambetta suggested as an alternative that they should allow the National Assembly elected after the war—
'to continue to govern the country without filling up death vacancies, and with the provision that when at last it became reduced to one member, he should take any title or give to any person that he pleased any title, or adopt any form of government that he should think fit!'
Shortly after Mr. John Morley went with an introduction from Sir Charles to Gambetta, which nearly miscarried.
"I went for two nights" (he wrote) "to Gambetta's office (the office of the République Française), and found him 'not come.' As I would not sit up late three nights … I desisted. Then he wrote me the most courteous letter, making a more sensible appointment at his private quarters. This I kept. He gave a most gracious and even caressing reception, and I was intensely interested in him."
On this Sir Charles comments: 'Morley was no doubt told by Gambetta's faithful secretary to call at "2 a.m.," which was a playful way this old gentleman had of choking off callers.'
As his health became re-established Sir Charles took an increasing part in political life. The independent man is on much better terms with his party when that party is in opposition; his critical faculty is directed against other men's measures, and if he has force, he easily passes into the position of being consulted. The process was the easier in Sir Charles's case, because the governing group of the Liberal party in Parliament was much disorganized. A great effort was being made to escape from the unsatisfactory relations between Liberals and their Front Bench, which a witty member had defined by saying that the party sat "like Scotch communicants trying aspirants for the ministry of their church by their sermons."
'Fierce fighting was taking place over the choice of a leader of the Liberal party. Up to the day on which there went out the notices for the meeting there was the greatest doubt as to the result…. Sir H. James reported 'Forster very loyal and quite willing to give way. Hartington careless. Mundella, Fawcett, and Trevelyan working hard for Forster, but Adam" (the Chief Whip) "says the great bulk of our men all for Hartington. Richard very strong against Forster, and he represents a great many Nonconformists. Adam says Fawcett is going to Birmingham to-morrow in order to support Forster there, but this I do not believe.' James added that he had ventured to say to Adam that as far as he knew Harcourt was not disposed to take any part, one way or the other, in reference to the matter, which was the case also with himself.'
Sir Charles had declined to attend the meeting, but before it took place the matter was arranged.
'At one moment, after a fiasco by Mr. Bright at Birmingham, it had looked as though Forster might win, in spite of Chamberlain and the Nonconformists. Although James professed Harcourt's indifference in the matter, Harcourt and James were both, as a fact, for Hartington. Harcourt had conceived a strong feeling against Fawcett immediately before this, in January, for trying to keep Mr. Gladstone as the leader, a course to which Harcourt was bitterly opposed….'
In these years Sir William Harcourt, then a widower devoted to his one boy, stood nearer to Sir Charles than any other of his English friends. Dilke wrote to him: "How little credit you get for your heart! How few people know you have one!"
'In this month of February, 1875,' he goes on to say, 'I revived an acquaintance which had slumbered for thirteen years, but was destined not again to drop.'
Account has already been given of Sir Charles's boyish friendship with Emilia Strong, a brilliant girl three years his elder. In 1861 she had married Mark Pattison, the Rector of Lincoln College, and from that time onward Dilke, although he had seen something of the famous scholar, her husband, had scarcely met Mrs. Pattison, as she seldom came to London, and he at that time never went to Oxford. Now, in 1875, she was staying with her husband in Gower Street, under the roof of Sir Charles Newton, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, and was gradually becoming convalescent after a terrible attack of gout, which had left both her arms useless for many months. During this time they were strapped to her sides, and she had to invent a machine to turn over the pages of her book. But the bracing influence of her mind on those around her was unimpaired. In the years which followed, the habit of correspondence grew up between them, strengthening, until at any important crisis in his political life it became natural to him to consult her or take her into his confidence.
We have also at this moment reference to the beginnings of an acquaintance with a remarkable opponent.
Sir Charles notes that at Easter, 1875, when crossing to France, he met
Lord Randolph Churchill, already known to him in the House, who expressed
a wish to be presented to Gambetta. The meeting was a success, and
Gambetta, delighted with his talk, asked him to breakfast along with
Dilke, fixing the hour at noon; but later there came this note:
"MON CHER AMI,
"Je vous prie en grâce de vouloir bien avancer notre déjeuner au Café
Anglais et de prévenir votre ami de ce petit dérangement.
L'enterrement d'Edgar Quinet doit avoir lieu à une heure à
Montparnasse et je ne peux manquer à cette cérémonie. Donc à demain
lundi 11h au Caf. Anglais.
"Votre toujours dévoué,
"LEON GAMBETTA."
At the breakfast talk turned naturally on Quinet, the professor and critic who was exiled after the coup d'état, and whom the Third Republic welcomed back to his place on the Extreme Left. This led to mention of the recent occasion when Gambetta had "assisted" at the funeral of another famous Republican exile, Ledru-Rollin, who had died on the last day of 1874. Hereupon—
'Randolph turned to Gambetta, and in his most apologetic style, which is extremely taking, said: "Would you mind telling me who Ledru- Rollin was?" Gambetta looked him all up and down, as though to say, "What sort of a politician are you, never to have heard of Ledru- Rollin?" and then broke into a laugh, and replied: "Ledru-Rollin was a republican in the days when there were none, so we were bound to give him a first-class funeral."'
Sir Charles adds:
'When I was a boy, Hepworth Dixon used to tell a story of how an omnibus driver had nudged him one day when he was sitting on the box- seat, and pointing out Ledru-Rollin in Oxford Street, had said, "See that gentleman? I have heard say how he once was King of France"— which had been pretty true at the beginning of 1848.'
After the Easter recess 'was the moment of the German war scare' of 1875 in France—
'Bourke' (the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs) 'kept me quiet in the Commons by keeping me informed. He told me of the Queen's letter to the Emperor William the day it went. Gavard, the French Charge d'Affaires, told me that England and Russia received official thanks from France for preventing war by pressure at Berlin. Peace was not in danger.'
There is a note referring to conversations held earlier in 1875 with
Gambetta, and to other conversations with Bismarck in 1889:
'I had heard a rumour that Thiers had signed secret articles of peace in addition to the public treaty, and further that in these articles there was something about the number of men to be kept under arms by France. In the Arnim trial it came out that one of the despatches concerned Prussian spies in France in 1872, while two of the despatches were "so secret that they could not be even named or catalogued." It was thought that these despatches concerned the secret articles, and it was sought in this way to explain the efforts made by Germany to prevent the fall of Thiers on the ground that he must be kept on his legs for fear a different Government would disregard his secret articles. Bismarck himself, it should be remembered, spoke of the two uncatalogued despatches as "perhaps decisive of the question of peace or war." [Footnote: Secret articles of the Versailles and Frankfort.]
When at Friedrichsruh in September, 1889, [Footnote: This was during Sir Charles's visit to Prince Bismarck, described in Chapter L. (Volume II.).] as Bismarck was talking very freely about everything that was past and gone, I asked him about this, and he said that I should agree with him that it was plain that the suggestions as to the limit of the number of men had been wrong, inasmuch as France had repeatedly increased her forces; but the sudden risk of war between France and Germany which arose in 1875, when war was only prevented by the interference of the Russian Emperor, has never been adequately explained.
On this point Sir Charles afterwards pencilled in the margin: 'The Prussian Staff wanted war; I doubt whether the old German Emperor intended to permit it.'
There follow other references of this year to foreign politics and politicians:
'Don Alfonso at this moment (January, 1875) had become King of Spain. Two years previously Moret told me to a day when Amedeo, whose Ambassador in England he then was, would fall; and on Boxing Day of 1874 in Paris, before I left for Algeria, he recalled to me this prophecy, and told me that Serrano would "bring back" Alfonso that week, and so he did. [Footnote: Marshal Serrano was Minister of War to Queen Isabella II., with whom he had great influence. His opposition to the illegal prorogation of the Cortes led to his imprisonment, but after the revolution of 1868, when Isabella was dethroned and her dynasty proscribed, he became Regent of Spain from 1868 to 1871. He resigned this power when Amedeo I. entered Madrid, but remained President of the Council and Minister of War. On the abdiction of Amedeo and proclamation of a Republic he was again at the head of affairs until Alfonso II., son of Isabella, was "brought back."]
'Sigismund Moret is not only the handsomest and pleasantest of men, but about the cleverest; but at this moment his country offered him no place, and his friends could only regret that he could find nothing better to do than play whist. He afterwards became Prime Minister.
'Alfonso was said to be greatly under the influence at this time of the Duchesse de Sesto—my old friend of 1860, the Duchesse de Morny, lovely of the lovely at that time at Trouville, but afterwards when I saw her at La Bourboule, I think in 1881, become much like other people, and somewhat weighed down by the responsibility of being the mother of that terrible young man "Le petit Duc."
'It was about this time that Rochefort, who had escaped from New Caledonia with Pascal Grousset (died 1909), came to London, and I saw them. I afterwards quarrelled with Rochefort, or rather ceased to see him, for I had seen him only this once, because of his behaviour towards Gambetta, who had been very good to him.'
Of Grousset Sir Charles writes:
'This handsome youth had in 1868 just become notorious for his grossly impertinent and indecent reply to the President of the Tribunal at the trial of Prince Peter Bonaparte for shooting Victor Noir. Grousset was the principal witness, and when asked the usual first question of French law, "Witness, are you the husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, ascendant or descendant, or any relation of the prisoner?" replied: "It is impossible to say; Madame Letitia was not particular"—alluding to the mother of Napoleon the Great.
'Grousset had conducted the "Foreign Affairs" of the Commune of Paris, and had been so polite to the representatives of the Embassies that George Sheffield, the private secretary to Lord Lyons, who conducted British affairs at Paris, used to declare that of all the many French Governments he had known the Commune was the only one that knew how to behave itself in society….'
But this feeling was not universal.
'Mrs. Wodehouse (formerly Minnie King, an American beauty, and
afterwards Lady Anglesey) asked me to breakfast with her to meet
Grousset.' (She was receiving the refugee at the request of Madame
Novikoff.)
'When her butler, who was an old French gendarme, found who was coming to breakfast, he refused to serve, and a hired waiter had to be called in, the old man saying that he had had charge of Grousset to convey him from Versailles to the hulks before the Communalists had been sent to New Caledonia, and that Grousset had been so impertinent to him that nothing would induce him to wait upon him as a servant.
'This clever boy of all the persons deeply compromised in the Commune was, with one exception, the one who made his peace most rapidly with French society, and in 1890 he was received by the President of the Republic officially as elected Director of the federation of all the Gymnastic Societies of France.' [Footnote: It was perhaps on account of his youthful appearance that Pascal Grousset was described as a boy. He was only two years younger than Sir Charles, and was twenty- six at the time of the Commune. He was later, for twenty years, one of the Deputies for Paris.]
II.
Sir Charles in this Session contributed to the gaiety of Parliament by his motion upon unreformed Borough Corporations, and, said the newspapers, "kept the House of Commons in a roar."
'But the fact was that the subject was so funny that it was impossible to make a speech about it which would not have been amusing, and Randolph Churchill, who replied to me, was funnier than I was, though he was not equally regardful of the truth.'
'One of the Corporations which I had attacked was that of Woodstock, and Randolph Churchill brought the Prince of Wales down to the House to hear his defence of his constituency. I had said in my speech that the Mayor of Woodstock had been lately fined by his own Bench, he being a publican, for breaking the law in a house the property of the Corporation, and that he had said on that occasion in public court, after hearing the evidence of the police: "I have always had a high respect for the police, but in future I shall have none." Randolph Churchill, answering me, said that I had slightly mistaken the Mayor's words, and that what he had really said was: "I have always had a high respect for the police, but in future I shall have more." After this debate was over, Randolph came up to me outside, and said: "I was terrified lest you should have heard anything to-day, but I see you have not." I said: "What?" He said: "He was fined again yesterday."'
In the same speech the case of New Romney was described—"the worst of all" the Cinque Ports, where the number of freemen, twenty-one at the passing of the Reform Act (of 1832), had fallen to eight—
"the only town in England in which six gentlemen elected themselves to every office, appointed themselves magistrates, let the whole of the valuable town properties exclusively to themselves, audited their own accounts, and never showed a balance sheet."
A cartoon in one of the comic papers displayed one selfsame and highly
complacent person, first as "Our Grocer," then as "Our Mayor," then as
"The Gentleman who elects our Mayor," "The Gentleman who disposes of our
Public Trusts," "The Gentleman who benefits by our Public Trusts, "and
"The Committee appointed annually to look into the Accounts of the
Gentleman who disposes of our Public Trusts."
Another of Sir Charles's topics in 1875 was the working of the Ballot Act. 'A dull speech on a dull subject,' it secured, however, the appointment of a Committee to inquire whether secrecy of voting was not menaced by the form in which ballot papers were issued. But the main object of his activity in the field of electoral reform was redistribution, and this object was the hardest to attain, because more than 400 members of the House sat for constituencies not numerically entitled to representation. The over-represented had a majority of two-thirds in Parliament, and this was a tremendous vested interest to assail. Still, the whole Liberal party was now committed to the support of his principle.
The same general support was given to his Bill 'known as the Allotments Extension Bill, to provide for the letting to cottagers of lands held for the benefit of the poor'—a scheme originally proposed by Mill.
'My Parliamentary Session of 1875 was my most successful.
'My motion on Ballot Act,
" " " Unreformed Boroughs,
" " " Redistribution,
" Bill " Allotments,
were all four great successes, and so spoken of in all the papers. On
the first I got my way. On the second I prepared it for next year, and
on the third and fourth I got the support of the whole Liberal party
and most of the Press.'
There are a good many pleasant stories of what seems to have been a very easy-going Session of Parliament:
'At this time Plimsoll's name was in every mouth, and the only formidable opposition in the House was that which he offered to the Government in the sailors' name. Old Adderley, afterwards Lord Norton, who was at the Board of Trade, assured me, in his solid hatred of the man, that when Plimsoll told the House of Commons that he had stopped a fearful shipwreck by taking a telegram to the Board of Trade at 3 a.m., and ringing for the porter and sending it then and there to the President's house, Plimsoll had neglected to state that this telegram had reached him at five o'clock in the afternoon, and had been kept back by him till the middle of the night for the production of a sensation….
'The other hero of the Session was Major O'Gorman, a hero of four-and- twenty stone, who on two occasions at least made the House laugh as they never laughed before, nor have laughed since. We used at first to lose him at a quarter to twelve each night, as he had to get to the Charing Cross Hotel, where he lived on the fourth storey, before the lift had gone up for the last time. But later in the Session we managed to keep him till 1.15, for he made the brilliant discovery that the luggage lift, which just suited him, was available till 1.30.
'Some of his finest things are lost in the reports. For example, "Swill the whisky through the streets till the very curs lie prostrate," and this, which, however, in a weakened form, survives in Mr. Lucy's Diary: "Some men who call themselves my constituents tell me that if I oppose this Bill I shall never sit again. Well, what then?" (This in a stentorian voice that nearly blew the windows out.) "Athens ostracized Aristides."
'After midnight a postponed Bill is fixed for the next sitting by the words "This day." O'Gorman was opposing and watching such a Bill, and shouted out: "What day?" "This day" was solemnly repeated. Then the puzzled Major, looking at the clock, and bowing to the chair, said: "Mr. Speaker, is it yesterday or is it to-morrow?" I never heard a question more difficult of reply under the circumstances of the case.
The best Irish bull uttered within his own hearing was, says Dilke, Sir
Patrick O'Brien's defence of Mr. Gladstone addressed to the Irish
Nationalists: "The right honourable gentleman has done much for our common
country. He has broken down the bridges that divided us."
III.
When the Session was ended, Sir Charles, according to his custom, set out on travel, following a scheme mapped out far ahead. In December, 1874, he had written to Miss Kate Field, correspondent of the New York Tribune and a friend of Sir Charles and of his first wife, that he would be in America in the following September on a journey round the world, and there accordingly he appeared—'on my way to Japan, China, Java, Singapore, and the Straits of Malacca—taking with me as travelling companion my scheme for a history of the nineteenth century,' a work projected on such ample lines that a note of this year sets down 1899 as the probable date of completion, "if I live so long."
The record of this journey is to be found in the additional chapters to Greater Britain, first issued in 1876 as magazine articles, and added to the eighth edition in 1885. He saw Japan before the Satsuma rebellion had broken out in a last attempt to restore the old feudal regime, and he stayed in the Tartar General's yamen at Canton, where at gun-fire he and the other Europeans in the same house were shut up within barred gates, only representatives of the white race among 2,000,000 Chinese. As for the Japanese, he wrote:
"I'm in love with this country and people…. The theatre is where I spend all my time…. There alone can you now see the soldiers in masks, ferocious and hairy, with the chain-armour and javelins of fifteen years ago. [Footnote: This was written in 1875.] There alone can you now see the procession of daimios accompanied by two-sworded Samurai, there alone have the true old Japan of the times before this cursed 'New Reform Government' arose."
'My stay at Tokio was at the same moment as that of Shimadzu Suboro, the old Satsuma Chief, uncle and adoptive father to the Satsuma Princes, and last constitutional light of the Feudal party. The "great Marshal" Saigo was commanding in chief the forces, and was in the next year to head the Satsuma rebellion. The Corean Envoys—tall men, with wondrous stars in their hair—were at the capital also, and I met them often.'
The beauty of Java, where he stayed at the Governor's Palace at
Buitenzorg, charmed him.
His journey from the East was very rapid, and January, 1876, saw him back in England. He was in time to address his constituents as usual before the opening of Parliament.
The speech contains what he points out as notable in one who 'so seldom spoke upon the Irish question'—an attack on the Coercion Bill of the previous year. It might be better, he said, to govern Ireland on the assumption that human nature is much the same everywhere, and Irishmen under no special bar of incapacity. A majority of the Irish representatives were in favour of Home Rule, and "a reformed dual constitution might possibly be devised which would work fairly well." This was an extreme attitude for those days, and he went on to recommend "the immediate creation of a local elective body, having power to deal with public works and the like"—in short, very much what Mr. Chamberlain advocated in 1885.
The speech also protested against Lord Carnarvon's policy as Colonial Minister, "in sending out Mr. Froude to stump South Africa against the local Ministers of the Crown, which was the beginning of all the frightful evils which afflicted South African affairs for the next nine years."
The conduct of the Opposition did not escape comment. "The duty of a Liberal leader is to follow his party, and this Lord Hartington has done with exemplary fidelity and unexampled patience." Another phrase noted that the Session of 1875 had left its mark on the House of Commons, "for pillows had been for the first time provided for members who wished to sleep," and the same atmosphere of repose marked the Session of 1876. The Memoir sketches some Parliamentary operations with which Sir Charles was connected:
'Early in this session occurred the introduction of the Royal Titles Bill, conferring the Imperial title upon the Queen, and I wrote for Fawcett a motion for an address to pray the Queen that she would be graciously pleased not to assume any addition to her title in respect of India other than the title of Queen. When the matter came on for discussion Cowen, who had now come into the House for Newcastle, rose to make his first speech. He had succeeded his old father, who was a Whig in politics and an old fogey in appearance, the son being now an ultra-Radical, now a democratic Tory, dressing like a workman, with a black comforter round his neck, and the only wideawake hat at that time known in the House of Commons. The next day Mr. Disraeli said: "I am told that we are blamed for not having put up a Minister to answer Cowen. How could we? I came into the House while he was speaking. I saw a little man with one hand in his pocket, and the other arm raising and waving uncouthly a clenched fist, making what appeared to be a most impassioned oration. But I was in this difficulty. I did not understand a word of it. I turned to my colleagues, and found that they were in the same position. We could not reply to him; we did not understand the tongue in which the speech was delivered." Cowen spoke with a Newcastle burr so strong that it was not easy to follow his words, and it was only by the context that one could guess what he meant, when he used, for example, such a word as "rowing," which he pronounced "woane."…
'I again brought forward my motion with regard to unreformed corporations, with fresh illustrations and new jokes, and the second edition was voted as popular as the first. Corfe Castle, with the Lord High Admiral of the Isle of Purbeck, and a Corporation consisting of one person, was a gem. Sir John Holker, who had to deal with the question for the Government, and who prepared the Royal Commission which sat to consider it in consequence of my motions, laid down some law for my information, which I doubted, and thereon showed to Harcourt, who said: "You will find the Attorney-General's law as bad as might be expected." Holker was personally popular. But he certainly, though a great winner of verdicts from juries, was one of the dullest men who ever addressed the House of Commons.'
Although Sir Charles was active and, generally speaking, successful during this session, on two points he found himself without support. One was his opposition to the principle of the Bills dealing with the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, on both of which he "took a highly Conservative tone without securing any assistance from Conservative opinion." But a passage in his diary, March, 1877, describes his action and that of the Liberal party on the "Universities Bill" of that year, and mentions a meeting at which Lord Hartington, Goschen, Harcourt, Fawcett, and Fitzmaurice were present, and at which 'it was decided to support my amendments to the Bill.' [Footnote: See Appendix, p. 200.]
His conservatism in academic matters revealed itself fully in 1878, as did that abiding feeling for his old college which characterized every after— allusion to it or to his University life. The Papal diplomatist, Bishop Bateman, founder of Trinity Hall, was mentioned by Sir Charles with the respect due to a patron saint. No traditions were dearer to him than those of Trinity Hall. Speaking at the College annual dinner, he impressed upon the reforming Fellows their obligation, in the college interests, to retain its exclusive teaching and qualifications for fellowship as laid down by its founder, "for the study of the canon and civil law." [Footnote: A scrap of the menu of the dinner of June 19th, 1878, is preserved, which shows these toasts: '"The Lord Chief Justice of England— proposed by the Master; responded to by the Lord Chief Justice of England, Sir Alexander Cockburn. Fellows and ex-Fellows—proposed by Sir Charles Dilke, Bart., M.P.; responded to by (Fellows) Professor Fawcett, M.P., (ex-Fellows) R. Romer, Esq. Our Old Blues and Captains of the T.H. Boat and Cricket Clubs—Proposed by Leslie Stephen, Esq."]
"It is a good thing for a small college that it should not be merely one of the herd. It is a bad thing that a small college should be driven to teach everything—classics, mathematics, law, theology, medicine, and science, physical and moral—for if it teaches so many things, of necessity, from its poverty in money and in men, it cannot teach all well. A small college can only keep at a high moral and social and intellectual level by having a distinguishing note or accent. In our dear old House we have already in existence by our history and by the Instrument of Foundation that special mark to distinguish us from others which the most advanced University Reformers clamour to see created as regards each College in the University….
"It should keep its distinguishing note, and flourish for another five hundred and twenty-eight years, not only in manners, good-fellowship, and rowing, but as a school of law.
"In rowing and law it had fallen off, but good-fellowship still differentiates the College, and prevents it from surrendering to the prevailing tendency to make the colleges in our grand old University pale copies of French lycées—all cut on one pattern and administered by schoolmasters, who will rule over dunces of universal acquirements examined to the point of death."
The other question on which he failed to secure support was his attack on the Royal Academy:
'What I really wanted was that the Academy should be reminded that they obtained their present magnificent site upon conditions which have not been observed, and that they ought at least to give a free day a week at their exhibition, and give up a portion of their privileges against outsiders.'
But the attack, as he admits, was not pressed with spirit for he had only the Pall Mall Gazette and the Examiner with him in the Press. In the House Lord Elcho [Footnote: Better known as Lord Wemyss, long the venerable father of Parliament.] and Mr. George Bentinck 'alone understood the question,' and the latter was too intimate with all the Academy leaders to afford a hope that he would do otherwise than take their side. So, feeling his isolation in the matter, Dilke limited himself to moving for some papers, which were given.
By the summer of 1876 Sir Charles was well again:
'I began this year to stay a great deal at Lady Waldegrave's, both at Dudbrook in Essex and at Strawberry Hill; and ultimately I had a room at Strawberry Hill, to which I went backwards and forwards as I chose. The house was extremely pleasant, and so was Fortescue, and he passionately adored his wife, and was afterwards completely broken down and almost killed by her death. Fortescue was my friend; but she was an excellent hostess, and the house was perfectly pleasant, and that in a degree in which no other house of our time has been. The other house which was always named as "the rival establishment," Holland House, I also knew. Some of the same people went there— Abraham Hayward, commonly called the "Viper," and Charles Villiers, for example. Lady Waldegrave always made everybody feel at home, which Lady Holland did not always do. Those of whom I saw the most this year, in addition to the Strawberry Hill people (who were Harcourt, James, Ayrton, Villiers, Hayward, Dr. Smith the editor of the Quarterly, Henry Reeve the editor of the Edinburgh, the Comte de Paris, and the Due d'Aumale), were Lord Houghton and Mrs. Duncan Stewart. Lord Houghton never met me without referring to a review of his collected works, which appeared in the Athenaeum in the spring, and which had cut the old man to the heart' (because it rated his poetry on a level with that of Eliza Cook).
'One of the most agreeable parties of clever people to which I ever went was a luncheon given by Mrs. Stewart, when she was living a few doors from me in my street, at which I was the only man, the party chiefly consisting of old ladies; indeed, I was by far the youngest person present. Besides Mrs. Stewart herself, there were friends, Lady Hamilton Gordon, Lady Pollock, Lady Hopetoun, Mrs. Frank Hill, Mrs. Oliphant, and Mrs. Lynn Linton—Lady Gordon, a remarkably able woman, one of the bedchamber women of the Queen and a great gossip; Lady Pollock, slow, but full of theatrical anecdote, being stage-mad, as was her husband, old Sir Frederick, the Queen's Remembrancer, father of my Cambridge friend Professor Pollock (now Sir Frederick) and of Walter Pollock, the editor of the Saturday Review. A few days later I met Lady Pollock at a great party given by Lord Houghton. Irving was coming down the stairs, at the bottom of which we stood, having Mrs. Singleton (now, 1894, the Ambassadress, Lady Currie) upon his arm. Old Lady Pollock, clutching at my arm, exclaimed: "Who is that woman with Irving?" To which I answered: "Mrs. Singleton, author of Denzil Place—Violet Fane." "She won't do him any harm, will she?" was the embarrassing question by which Lady Pollock replied to me.'
In this summer Sir Charles gave dinner-parties which included ladies—'a plan which I found so uncomfortable for a politician who had only a grandmother to entertain them that I dropped it after August, 1876.' His dinners were always among the pleasantest in London, but till 1886 they were only dinners of men.
Of men friends of this year he specially notes 'Gennadius, the Greek
Secretary, afterwards Minister,' with whom his friendship was lifelong.
APPENDIX
A meeting was held at Devonshire House on March 1st, 1877:
'There were present, besides Lord Hartington and myself, Lowe, Goschen, Harcourt, Fawcett, and Fitzmaurice.—It was decided to support Grant Duff in adding the names of Huxley and Max Müller, and not to support Fitzmaurice in adding Bryce, but to support him in adding Hooker, and Goschen in adding Professor Bartholomew Price to the Oxford Commission, and to support Hartington in moving to add Dr. Bateson, the Master of John's, to the Cambridge Commission. Bouverie was to be proposed by Harcourt, as against Cockburn, for chairman of the Cambridge Commission, because we objected to overworked Judges being on Commissions. The name of Bradley, afterwards Dean of Westminster, was suggested for the Oxford Commission by Lowe, but not supported by the meeting, and it was decided to support my amendments to the Bill. The Commissions as originally suggested were badly composed. The best men suggested were not good—Dr. Bellamy (President of St. John's, Oxford), for example, the wealthiest of all college officials, a precise, old-fashioned, kind-hearted nonentity, a simple tool of more intelligent Conservatives; and Henry Smith, an Irishman of the keenest order of intelligence, ready to give an intellectual assent to the abstract desirability of the best and highest in all things. On another of the names originally suggested I may quote Smith himself, for when Dean Burgon's appointment was attacked in the House of Commons by me and others, Smith, approaching Lord Salisbury at a party, and engaging in conversation upon the matter, said that the reasons for appointing him were overwhelming, at which Lord Salisbury was greatly pleased; when Henry Smith went on: "No such Commission could possibly be complete without its buffoon."'
CHAPTER XIV
REVIVAL OF THE EASTERN QUESTION
Sir Charles at this period of his career was passing from the status of a formidable independent member to that of a recognized force in his party. In May, 1876, he became Chairman of the Elections Committee at the Liberal Central Association, and from that time forward up to 1880 'took a very active part in connection with the choice of candidates.'@@Mr. Joseph Chamberlain had been elected for Birmingham. He was lame from gout, and resented it, saying to Sir Charles 'that it was an illness which should be exclusively reserved by a just Providence for Tories.' On July 8th, 1876, he wrote to Dilke that before coming up to take his seat he had called his friends together and settled a programme and general course of action. "I think there is every chance of our Union being productive of useful practical results, but it is agreed that our arrangements shall remain strictly private for the present. Omne ignotum pro magnifico." On August 2nd Sir Charles introduced to Lord Hartington at Devonshire House 'a great private deputation upon the Education Bill from the North Country Liberal Associations, which was in fact the first movement by what was afterwards the National Liberal Federation.' So the "Caucus" began to make itself felt in domestic affairs.
Sir Charles notes that he 'for the first time began to be summoned to meetings respecting the course to be taken by the party.' Here already he found that—
'Mr. Gladstone began, although somewhat ostentatiously proclaiming in public the opposite principle, to interfere a good deal in Hartington's leadership, and even Harcourt, who only a few months before had ridiculed Mr. Gladstone's pretensions in such strong terms, on the rare occasions when he was unable to get his way with Hartington always now went off to Mr. Gladstone, to try to make use of the power of his name.'
"Foreign affairs had suddenly risen out of complete obscurity into a position in which they overshadowed all other things, and left home politics in stagnation." [Footnote: Speech at Notting Hill, August, 1876.] These complications were destined to bring Mr. Gladstone back into an activity not merely unimpaired, but redoubled, and to shake the power of Mr. Disraeli to its fall.
Sir Charles was, first and foremost, a "good European"; he conceived of Europe as a body politic, bound in honour to regulate its own members. Isolation appeared to him a mere abandonment of the duty of civilized powers to maintain order in the civilized world. Corporate action was to be encouraged, because, in most cases, the mere threat of it would suffice either as between States to prevent wars of aggression, or as between ruler and ruled to assert the ordinary principles of just government.
The enforcement of this view might involve its support by force of arms, and he worked all his life for our military preparedness, holding that it was the best guarantee that armed intervention would be unnecessary, as it was also the best guarantee of our own immunity from attack.
At this moment "foreign affairs" meant the Eastern Question, in regard to which the future of two nations, Russia and Greece, specially interested him. He was notably a Phil-Hellene, who "dreamed of a new Greece"—a "force of the future instead of a force of the past; a force of trade instead of a force of war; European instead of Asiatic; intensely independent, democratic, maritime." Here, and not in any Slavonic State, did he see the rightful successors to the Ottoman dominion. Towards Russia his feelings were complex: admiration for the people accompanied detestation of the Government, and the unscrupulous power commanding the services of so vast and virile a people always appeared in his eyes as a menace to civilization. Yet in the future of Russia he "firmly believed," and he repeats in speech after speech this creed: "Behind it are ranged the forces of the future." "To compare the Russia of to-day to the Russia that is to come is to compare chaos to the universe." "If by Russia we mean the leading Slavonic power, whether a Russia one and indivisible, or a Slavonian confederation, we mean one of the greatest forces of the future." [Footnote: Speech at Notting Hill, August, 1876.]
Sir Charles's speeches, taken in conjunction with the diary, give the story of these Eastern troubles from the outside as well as from the inside. His constituents had little excuse for being carried away by popular cries. In his speech on the last day of the session he advocated the sending of a "strong and efficient man to Constantinople in the name of the Western Powers to carry out that policy of protection of Christian subjects of Turkey which England had intended after the Crimea," [Footnote: Ibid.] But while condemning with the greatest energy the Turkish barbarities in Bulgaria, he warned his constituents against overlooking atrocities committed elsewhere, "for there was not one pin to choose between Circassian ruffians on the one side and Montenegrin ruffians on the other." To those who "were carried away by their belief that the conflict was one between the present and the past, and between Christianity and Islamism, and declared that the Turks must be driven out of Europe," he pointed out the larger questions at stake.
Turning to the Balkan States, he did not believe in a continuous united movement among these "which would suffice to drive the Mohammedan out of Europe." "To allow the Russians to interfere openly" would rouse Austria, a Power which, in spite of the difficulties presented by its internal "differences of creed and hostilities of races," must in the interests of South-Eastern Europe be "bolstered up." In this instance he urged the need for joint action, and laid bare some underlying difficulties awaiting diplomacy. It was a situation complicated by the fact that "this Europe is probably mined beneath our feet with secret treaties." [Footnote: Sir Charles notes later: 'Since the accession of George III. the country had concluded about forty treaties or separate articles of a secret nature which were not communicated to Parliament at the time of their conclusion, and in some instances not at all; but these secret engagements were mostly concluded in anticipation of war, or during war, and ceased to have effect when war was over.']
In his speech of January 15th, 1878, in Kensington, at one of the critical moments of the struggle, he told the whole story, which began in August, 1875, when Mr. Disraeli's Government consented "with reluctance" to take part in sending a European Consular Mission to inquire into disturbances occasioned by Turkish misrule in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Great Britain's reluctance weakened, so Sir Charles thought, the European concert, and the mission resulted only in delusive promises of reform. In the following winter Turkey was increasingly encouraged to lean upon British support in withstanding pressure from the other Powers; and in May, 1876, after disturbances in Bulgaria had been repressed with appalling ferocity, Mr. Disraeli's Cabinet positively refused to join in a demand for certain reforms to be carried out by Turkey under European supervision.
'Our Government had refused to sign the Berlin Memorandum on account of a reference in it to the possible need of taking "efficacious measures" to secure good government in Turkey.
'But' (commented Sir Charles in 1878, making plain exactly what he meant by European intervention) 'it was England who, not shrinking from mere words, but herself proposing deeds, had taken a really "efficacious" part in the "efficacious measures" of 1860, when, after the massacres in the Lebanon, Europe sent Lord Dufferin to Syria with a French armed force—the Powers making that engagement not to accept territory which could also have been made in 1876. In 1860 Lord Dufferin, in the name of Europe, hanged a guilty Pasha and pacified the Lebanon, which to this moment still enjoys, in consequence of European intervention, a better government than the rest of Turkey, and this with the result of an increase of strength to the Turkish, power. Only the obstructiveness of our Government prevented the still more easy pacification of the European provinces of Turkey in 1876, and caused the present war with all its harm to British trade and all its risks to "British interests."' [Footnote: Speech delivered at Kensington on January 15th, 1878.]
Holding these views, Sir Charles encouraged Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice to place on the notice paper of the House of Commons a formal resolution of censure on the Government for refusing to join in the Berlin Memorandum without making a counter-proposal of their own. It was believed that Mr. Gladstone approved the course indicated, but he was still in retirement, and not only did Lord Granville and Lord Hartington think that any formal action in the House would be impolitic, but many of the 'peace-at-any- price' Radicals, who regarded Lord Derby's extreme policy of non- intervention with favour, refused to support the proposed censure. The resolution accordingly had to be withdrawn, amid the general disapproval, however, of the Liberal Press. Thus the first attempt at action at once betrayed a profound cleavage of opinion. This was unfortunately only typical of everything which followed in this chapter of events, though the debate which took place towards the end of the Session proved very damaging to the Government. [Footnote: See Hansard, cxlii. 22; Life of Gladstone, ii, 549; _Life of Granville, ii. 166 and 264, where Lord Ampthill, writing in 1882, expresses the opinion that Lord Derby's policy was most unfortunate.]
It was on May 19th, 1876, that the British Government dated their refusal to intervene. As early as June, accounts of what had been done in Bulgaria began to appear in the Press. Mr. Disraeli ridiculed them in the House of Commons, but testimony soon accumulated, and the most important evidence was that of Mr. Eugene Schuyler, then attached to the American Legation at Constantinople. As American Consul at St. Petersburg in 1869-70, he had become acquainted with Sir Charles, and had seen a good deal of him in London during the earlier part of 1875. It was, therefore, to Dilke that Schuyler wrote his account of the massacres at Batak, based upon his visit to the spot, which he found still horrible with unburied corpses; and in August, on the last day of the Session, Dilke, addressing his constituents at Notting Hill, read Schuyler's letter to them.
Early in September, 1876, public indignation was set ablaze by Mr. Gladstone's famous pamphlet, which demanded that the Turk should clear out of Bulgaria, "bag and baggage." On the 14th of the same month Mr. Baring's official report confirmed the Schuyler letter, and on the 21st Lord Derby sent a despatch, which, says Sir Charles, 'in the sharpest words ever, I think, used in a despatch, demanded reparation, and the "signal, conspicuous, and exemplary punishment" of Chefket Pasha, director of the Bulgarian massacres.'
Meanwhile Servia and Montenegro, feudatory States of the Porte, had gone to war with their overlord; and in order to induce the Turks to grant an armistice, Russia and Austria proposed to England a joint naval demonstration, carried out in the name of Europe, by England and France. Lord Derby proposed instead a conference of Europe to take place at Constantinople, and to this the Powers agreed. But Russia, not contented with this step, presented an ultimatum to Turkey demanding an armistice for Servia, and obtained it on November 1st. Thus, by Lord Derby's action, 'the armistice was refused to Europe and yielded to a Russian ultimatum.'
The conference met at Constantinople in December, 1876, and on the 14th Lord Salisbury, who represented England, was advocating the "efficacious measure" of occupying Bulgaria by English troops, and, when this was refused, proposed the employment of Belgians. But—
'It was now too late. Turkey had been encouraged by us into mobilization. Russia had been thwarted by us into mobilization. The time was past when we might have averted war, might have pacified the East, protected alike the Eastern Christians and "British interests" by a signature.'
Replying to a common argument, he said: 'Want of money will not cause Russia to terminate the war. Machiavelli has truly said that nothing is more false than the common belief that money is the sinews of war.'
The conference failing, all Ambassadors were withdrawn from the Porte, and Russia continued to parley with the other Powers. 'Early in March, 1877, a draft Protocol regarding the expectation of the Powers with regard to Turkish reforms was handed to Lord Derby, who promised to sign if Russia would promise to disarm.' Russia specified the conditions on which she would 'disarm,' and Lord Derby then signed the Protocol, but added a declaration that his signature should be null unless disarmament followed both in Russia and Turkey. This, in Sir Charles's judgment, was tantamount to a refusal to sign, because Lord Derby must have known that Turkey would never grant, except under coercion, the conditions on which Russia had consented to disarm. "All Turkish promises are of one material— paper," he said, and in severely criticizing the action of the Government added: "The unreformed state of Turkey is, and will continue to be, the greatest standing menace to the peace of Europe."
Further, at the same moment England again separated herself from the other Powers by sending an Ambassador—Mr. Layard—to Constantinople, 'to which the Turks replied: "The Porte is very sensible of this delicate mark of attention."'
The effect was to encourage Turkey to count on English support, and
Russia, unable to secure concerted action, declared war single-handed.
Thus, not only was the result missed which Sir Charles desired and thought possible—namely, the restoration of order by joint action of Europe—but the way was paved for another result which he deplored—the extension of Russia's influence, and even of her territorial sway.
As his speeches gave the story of the European position, so his diary provides a commentary on that story from within:
'Things generally were in a disturbed condition at this moment. The Eastern Question, which was to be so prominent for the next four years, had grown critical, and Bourke, the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (afterwards Lord Connemara and Governor of Madras), said to me at the House of Commons: "The one thing that astonishes me is the confidence of people in Lord Derby." Now, Lord Derby was his chief. This proved pretty clearly that Mr. Disraeli was, in fact, his own Foreign Secretary, and had made up his mind that Lord Derby should "go." [Footnote: Lord Derby did not "go" till the spring of 1878.]
'June 28th, 1876, is the date of the first of my letters mentioning the Eastern Question. It is from Auberon Herbert: "We are sure to get into some frightful trouble if Dizzy is to be allowed uninterruptedly to offer what sacrifices he will on the altar of his vanity. You all seem to me to be living in Drowsy Hollow, while Dizzy is consulting his imagination, and Hartington politely bowing. What can you all be doing? Is it the hot weather? Or are all of you secretly pleased at England's 'determined attitude'? Please, dear Neros, cease fiddling for a short time, and let us poor, harmless, innocent-minded country- folk have some assurance that you are not going to fight all Europe…. You sleepy and unfaithful guardians." …
'Although I was the first politician to make a speech upon the Bulgarian massacres, [Footnote: See reference to Eugene Schuyler's letter in speech of August, 1876, p. 207.] I afterwards refused to follow Mr. Gladstone into what was called the "atrocity agitation," because I feared that we should find ourselves plunged into a war with Turkey in alliance with Russia, of which I should have disapproved.'
He subscribed, however, to the funds of those who took charge of the fugitives on both sides.
The agitation offended him by its extravagance. "If Gladstone goes on much longer, I shall turn Turk," he wrote to Sir William Harcourt. There was general disquiet in the Liberal party. On October 10th, 1876, Sir William Harcourt wrote:
"Things here are in the most damnable mess that politics have ever been in in my time. Gladstone and Dizzy seem to cap one another in folly and in pretence, and I do not know which has made the greatest ass of himself. Blessed are they that hold their tongue and wait to be wise after the event. To this sagacious policy you will see we" (i.e., the Hartington section) "have adhered, and shall adhere. I had a long letter from Hartington from Constantinople (whither, as you will see, he has prudently retired), full of his usual good sense and caution. I quite concur with him that, though a strong case can be made against the Government for their deliberate status quo policy during the months of June, July, and August, there is little fault to find with what they have been doing since Derby has taken the matter into his own hands in September. There is a decided reaction against Gladstone's agitation. The Brooksite Whigs are furious with him, and so are the commercial gents and the Norwood-Samuda [Footnote: Leading shipowners and Members of Parliament.] lot, whose pecuniary interests are seriously compromised. The Bucks election [Footnote: This by- election, on September 22nd, 1876, was consequent on Mr. Disraeli's acceptance of a Peerage. The Conservative (Hon. T. F. Fremantle) beat the Liberal (Mr. R. Carington, brother to Lord Carrington), but only by 186 votes on a poll of over 5,000.] has a good smell for Dizzy. All the Rothschild tenants voted Tory, though, to save his own skin, Nat. went on Carington's committee. The Rothschilds will never forgive Gladstone and Lowe for the Egyptian business. Chamberlain and Fawcett … are using the opportunity to demand the demission of Hartington and the return of Gladstone. But you need not … prepare for extreme measures."
By the same post came a letter from Mr. Chamberlain, who declared that he was "not Gladstonian," but considered that—
"After all, he is our best card. You see Forster's speech—trimming as usual, and trying to dish the Radicals by bidding for the Whigs and Moderates. Gladstone is the best answer to this sort of thing, and if he were to come back for a few years he would probably do much for us, and pave the way for more. Lord Hartington … is away and silent, besides which he is pro-Turk. If Gladstone could be induced formally to resume the reins, it would be almost equivalent to a victory, and would stir what Bright calls 'the masses of my countrymen' to the depths."
Sir Charles's own considered opinion was written to Sir William Harcourt on October 16th:
"I, as you know, think Hartington the best man for us—the Radicals— because he is quite fearless, always goes with us when he thinks it safe for the party, and generally judges rightly—or takes the soundest advice on this point. In fact, I don't think he's ever made a mistake at all—as yet; but Chamberlain seems, by a sort of quasi- hereditary Birmingham position, to look at him as Bright used to look at Palmerston. This is serious, because Chamberlain is a strong man and does not easily change, unlike the other member of our triumvirate, Cowen, who is as fickle as the wind, one day Hartington, one day you, one day Gladstone, and never seeming to know even his own mind."
Mr. Gladstone's return to leadership was more and more assured, but he would not find his old antagonist face to face with him in the House of Commons. At the close of the Session of 1876 Sir Charles had unknowingly witnessed a great withdrawal.
'On the night of August 11th I had listened to Mr. Disraeli's last speech as a Commoner, and had noticed that on leaving the House in a long white overcoat and dandified lavender kid gloves, leaning on his secretary's arm, he had shaken hands with a good many people, none of whom knew that he was bidding farewell to the House of Commons.'
This withdrawal marked no lessening of power. As Sir Charles had perceived, Disraeli was his own Foreign Secretary, and a Foreign Minister's influence gained by being exercised in the House of Lords. Meanwhile, in Gladstone's absence the Liberal party seemed broken and divided beyond hope of recovery. In the country, though the campaign launched by the Bulgarian pamphlet had seemed so immediately effective that a Tory county member said to Mr. Gladstone, "If there were a dissolution now, I should not get a vote," yet the reaction, spoken of in Harcourt's letter to Dilke on October 10th, very quickly developed. Those who supported Mr. Gladstone identified themselves unreservedly with the Slav as against the Turk. But by others the demand for ejection of the Turk, "bag and baggage," from Bulgaria was construed as an invitation for Russia to seize Constantinople, and thus as a direct infringement of British interests in Egypt and the Mediterranean. Lord Beaconsfield skilfully played upon this feeling, and there ensued a condition of affairs in which Mr. Gladstone made triumphal progresses through the north of England, and was hooted weekly in the streets of London.
Sir Charles himself was in a great difficulty, being as he says, 'anti- Russian without being for that pro-Turk.' Sharing to the full the general detestation of these massacres, of which the earliest complete exposure had been made public [Footnote: See p. 207, Schuyler's letter.] by him, he held that there ought to be armed intervention. But he knew too much of Russia's action in conquered provinces to feel that the matter could be settled satisfactorily by allowing Russian influence to replace Turkish control.
What was more, he knew that in 1870, when Russia repudiated the Black Sea article in the Treaty of Paris, March 30th, 1856, Mr. Gladstone's Government had pressed the Powers of Europe to make general the Tripartite Treaty, April 27th, 1856, 'Our Government (Gladstone-Granville) proposed to answer the Russian Circular by extending the Tripartite Treaty to all the Powers, and it was only Germany's refusal that stopped it.' By this treaty, 'France, Austria, and the United Kingdom bound themselves to consider any breach of the Treaty of Paris, 1856, or any invasion of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, as a casus belli.' In other words, the Liberal Government had been anxious in 1870 that all the Powers should guarantee for all time the power of the Turk in its full extension, though Turkish methods were in 1870 and before it no other than they revealed themselves at Batak in 1876. Sir Charles thought that, as Liberals had been precipitate in their desire to guarantee Ottoman integrity in 1870, so now they were precipitate in their Pan-Slavism. Moreover, the vacillation of the Liberal leaders had put a weapon into the hands of the Government. 'Fancy what a temptation to the present Government to publish the despatches,' notes Sir Charles, in comment on Sir William Harcourt's remark 'that the Tripartite Treaty discussion would be a mine of gunpowder to the Liberal Front Bench.'
He set forth his position in a speech to his constituents at Kensington on January 9th, 1877. He condemned Lord Derby, who had neither "the energy nor the force of character to fit him for the post of Foreign Secretary," and whose policy had left them at the close of 1876 in "absolute isolation." Yet, "on the other hand, he marvelled to see Radicals, for years the enemies of Russian autocracy, propose the immediate adoption of the policy of Canon Liddon and of the Emperor Alexander." [Footnote: Dr. H. P. Liddon and Dr. Malcolm MacColl were conspicuous as enthusiastic supporters of Mr. Gladstone's campaign.] And he went on to depict what that policy might mean:
"The world could not afford to see 120,000,000 of Slavs united under the sceptre of an absolute despot, holding at Constantinople the strongest position in all Europe, stretching from the Adriatic to Kamskatka and the Behring Straits, and holding in Corea the strongest position in the Pacific." Then he recalled the record of "that Power with which the Liberals of England were to strike alliance—an absolute autocracy of the purest type, the Power which crushed Poland, the Power which crushed Hungary for Austria." And by what methods! The long story of violation "both of the public and the moral law" was repeated, with citation of British Ministers who had spoken in fierce condemnation of, Russian methods; the decoration of Mouravief, the "woman-flogging General," was set off against the promotion of Chefket Pasha. He himself had seen in 1869 "long processions of Polish exiles, who were still being sent by hundreds into the solitudes of Siberia." In Turkestan General Kaufmann had ordered a massacre of women and children, and Kaufmann, "loaded with favours by the Emperor Alexander, still ruled in Turkestan." It was a vehement denunciation of the autocracy of Russia, and he notes that he had never before so moved his hearers. To his attack on the Russian Government were added some severe strictures on the barbarities perpetrated by Servians, and by Mr. Gladstone's special favourites, the Montenegrins, inhabitants of "countries whose civilization had not sufficiently progressed to allow of the belief that they were the unselfish champions of an outraged Christianity."
Holding these views, and holding them the more strongly because they were the outcome of personal experience and knowledge laboriously acquired, he was in a considerable degree isolated, not only from the Liberal party as a whole, but even from that more intimate organization whose existence was already recognized in the autumn of 1876, when Mr. Knowles asked him to write in the Nineteenth Century on the "New Party."
His closest associate, now and henceforward, was Mr. Chamberlain, who in 1877 stayed a great deal in Sloane Street, and Dilke notes that in February of that year he was giving dinners almost every night to introduce the member for Birmingham to London. But the "New Party," when Mr. Knowles made his unsuccessful request, consisted
'of Chamberlain and myself and Cowen in the House of Commons, and Morley outside of it…. As Chamberlain and Cowen failed to agree upon any subject whatever, the House of Commons portion of the party soon dwindled to two leaders, in the persons of Chamberlain and myself, who, however, picked up one faithful follower in Dillwyn. From September, 1876, to April, 1880, there did exist a very real and very influential, but little numerous, party, consisting of Chamberlain and myself, followed blindly by dear old Dillwyn, and supported in the Press by Morley. As Randolph Churchill afterwards said to me, shaking his head over Balfour's desertion: "When you and Chamberlain were together, your party was not too large." He had begun with four (three regular and one half-attached), and found it certainly one, perhaps two, and I sometimes think three, too many, though Wolff indeed followed him almost as steadily as Dillwyn followed us.'
For a time the "New Party" consisted of six. Mr. Edmund Dwyer Gray, an Irish Nationalist, owner of the Freeman's Journal, was of it, but soon dropped out, and for a time Mr. Burt—Father of the House in 1910—was also included.
At the beginning of 1877 summons was sent to a meeting before the opening of Parliament, to which Mr. Chamberlain replied solemnly: "The party will be complete." Further solemnity was added by the holding, at 76, Sloane Street, of a Queen's Speech dinner in due form on the eve of the Session, but—
'the dinner of six members, which assembled democratically without dressing in order to suit Burt's habits, was not graced by that copy of the Queen's Speech which is sent by Government to the leaders of the regular Opposition.'
The "New Party" of 1876-77 differed notably in one respect from the other small and influential group of which it was the forerunner. It had no leader.
'On Saturday, February 17th, Chamberlain dined with the Prince of Wales. In noting the invitation in my diary I put down: "The Prince of Wales has asked Chamberlain to dinner for Saturday. I call this 'nobbling my party.'" But the possessive pronoun with regard to the party was not according to my custom. We always said that the party consisted of three in all—two leaders and a follower—and Dillwyn acknowledged Chamberlain and myself as equal leaders.'
'On July 4th I drove Dillwyn down to Chiswick to the Duke of Devonshire's garden party. The Prince of Wales was there, and gave Dillwyn a very friendly bow, whereupon I asked Dillwyn how he came to know him so well, to which "the party" answered that he had shot pigeons with him; and on my reproaching my old friend for indulging in such sport, he said that he not only shot pigeons, but that the Prince had been so struck with his shooting that he had asked who the old gentleman was "who looked like a Methodist parson and shot like an angel."'
At the beginning of 1877, when they were still six, division existed even in that small group on the burning question of the hour. Mr. Cowen was strongly influenced by his intercourse with a settlement of Poles at Newcastle, and—
'although his anti-Russian views were only the same as my own, yet he allowed them, as I think, without reason, to drive him into a position of support of the Government which from this time forward separated him from the Liberal party.'
None of Sir Charles's other colleagues approached the Eastern Question entirely on its own merits as distinct from party. His study of foreign politics had, however, forced him to understand the issues, and thus his position was rendered difficult: 'I was anti-Russian, and in this with Hartington. On the other hand, I was for avowed intervention in the East, and in this more extreme than Mr. Gladstone.' But at the same time his exceptional competence in the discussion brought him steadily to the front. Without any sacrifice of independent judgment he found himself increasingly consulted.
His Memoir gives, therefore, an interesting picture of the movement of opinion in the Liberal party. At the beginning of the Session, when it was known that Lord Salisbury had advocated active interference in the name of Europe, Sir Charles found that 'only Harcourt and the Duke of Argyll were for strong action in the sense of coercion of Turkey.' The Duke, however, soon made two converts, and Dilke wrote to his brother on January 6th, 1877:
"Lord Granville and Lord Hartington will, I am delighted to say, speak for concerted intervention. The only man who strongly opposed their doing so was Mr. Gladstone, who ran away from his own views." Against this Sir Charles notes later: 'Both at the meeting of Parliament in 1877, and also later on in the Session in the case of his own memorable resolutions.'
'Mr. Gladstone had in private conversation told Harcourt that such a course as European intervention to coerce Turkey "should only be resolved upon after much deliberation." To this Harcourt had retorted: "Well, Mr. Gladstone, if people outside knew what you were saying, they might reflect it was you that hung the bag of powder on the door."'