Chapter II. The Polls In 1885. (1885)
I
The election ran a chequered course (Nov. 23-Dec. 19). It was the first trial of the whole body of male householders, and it was the first trial of the system of single-member districts. This is not the place for a discussion of the change of electoral area. As a scheme for securing representation of minorities it proved of little efficacy, and many believe that the substitution of a smaller constituency for a larger one has tended to slacken political interest, and to narrow political judgment. Meanwhile some of those who were most deeply concerned in establishing the new plan, were confident that an overwhelming liberal triumph would be the result. Many of their opponents took the same view, and were in despair. A liberal met a tory minister on the steps of a club in Pall Mall, as they were both going to the country for their elections. “I suppose,” said the tory, “we are out for twenty years to come.” O pectora cæca! He has been in office for nearly fifteen of the eighteen years since. In September one of the most authoritative liberal experts did not see how the tories were to have more than 210 out of the 670 seats, including the tory contingent from Ireland. Two months later the expert admitted that the tory chances were improving, mainly owing to what in electioneering slang was called the church scare. Fair trade, too, had made many converts in Lancashire. On the very eve of the polls the estimate at liberal headquarters was a majority of forty over tories and Irishmen combined.
II
As I should have told the reader on an earlier page, Mr. Gladstone had proceeded to his own constituency on November 9. The previous month had found, as usual, endless other interests to occupy him, quite apart from politics. These are the ordinary entries. “Worked, say, five hours on books. Three more hours reduced my books and rooms to apparent order, but much detail remains. Worked mildly on books.” In this region he would have said of disorder and disarray what Carlyle said to dirt, “Thou shalt not abide with me.” As to the insides of books, his reading was miscellaneous: Madame d'Arblay, Bodley's Remains, Bachaumont's Anecdotes, Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, Whewell on Astronomy, the Life of B. Gilpin, Hennell's Inquiry, Schmidt's Social Effects of Christianity, Miss Martineau's Autobiography, Anderson on Glory of the Bible, Barrow's Towards the Truth, and so on—many of the books now stone-dead. Besides such reading as this, he “made a beginning of a paper on Hermes, and read for it,” and worked hard at a controversial article, in reply to M. Réville, upon the Dawn of Creation and Worship. When he corrected the proof, he found it ill-written, and in truth we may rather marvel at, than admire, the hardihood that handled such themes amid such distractions.159 Much company arrived. “Count Münster came to luncheon; long walk and talk with him. The Derby-Bedford party came and went. I had an hour's good conversation with Lord D. Tea in the open air. Oct. 7.—Mr. Chamberlain came. Well, and much conversation. Oct. 8.—Mr. Chamberlain. Three hours of conversation.”
Before the end of the month the doctors reported excellently of the condition of his vocal cords, and when he started for Dalmeny and the scene of the exploits of 1880 once more, he was in spirits to enjoy “an animated journey,” and the vast enthusiasm with which Edinburgh again received him. His speeches were marked by undiminished fire. He boldly challenged a verdict on policy in the Soudan, while freely admitting that in some points, not immaterial, his cabinet had fallen into error, though in every case the error was fostered by the party opposite; and he pointed to the vital [pg 248] fact that though the party opposite were in good time, they never dreamed of altering the policy. He asked triumphantly how they would have fared in the Afghan dispute, if the policy anterior to 1880 had not been repudiated. In his address he took the same valiant line about South Africa. “In the Transvaal,” he said, “we averted a war of European and Christian races throughout South African states, which would have been alike menacing to our power, and scandalous in the face of civilisation and of Christendom. As this has been with our opponents a favourite subject of unmeasured denunciation, so I for one hail and reciprocate their challenge, and I hope the nation will give a clear judgment on our refusal to put down liberty by force, and on the measures that have brought about the present tranquillity of South Africa.” His first speech was on Ireland, and Ireland figured, as we have seen, largely and emphatically to the last. Disestablishment was his thorniest topic, for the scare of the church in danger was working considerable havoc in England, and every word on Scottish establishment was sure to be translated to establishment elsewhere. On the day on which he was to handle it, his entry is: “Much rumination, and made notes which in speaking I could not manage to see. Off to Edinburgh at 2.30. Back at 6. Spoke seventy minutes in Free Kirk Hall: a difficult subject. The present agitation does not strengthen in my mind the principle of establishment.” His leading text was a favourite and a salutary maxim of his, that “it is a very serious responsibility to take political questions out of their proper time and their proper order,” and the summary of his speech was that the party was agreed upon certain large and complicated questions, such as were enough for one parliament to settle, and that it would be an error to attempt to thrust those questions aside, to cast them into the shade and the darkness, “for the sake of a subject of which I will not undervalue the importance, but of which I utterly deny the maturity at the present moment.”160
On Nov. 27 the poll was taken; 11,241 electors out of 12,924, or 87 per cent., recorded their votes, and of these 7879 voted for Mr. Gladstone, and 3248 for Mr. Dalrymple, or a majority of 4631. So little impression had been made [pg 249]
in Midlothian by Kilmainham, Majuba, Khartoum, Penjdeh, and the other party cries of a later period.
III
Let us turn to the general result, and the final composition of Mr. Gladstone's thirteenth parliament. The polls of the first three or four days were startling. It looked, in the phrases of the time, as if there were conservative reaction all round, as if the pendulum had swung back to the point of tory triumph in 1874, and as if early reverses would wind up in final rout. Where the tories did not capture the seat, their numbers rose and the liberal majorities fell. At the end of four days the liberals in England and Wales had scored 86 against 109 for their adversaries. When two-thirds of the House had been elected, the liberals counted 196, the tories 179, and the Irish nationalists 37. In spite of the early panic or exultation, it was found that in boroughs of over 100,000 the liberals had after all carried seventeen, against eight for their opponents. But the tories were victorious in a solid Liverpool, save one Irish seat; they won all the seats in Manchester save one; and in London, where liberals had been told by those who were believed to know, that they would make a clean sweep, there were thirty-six tories against twenty-six liberals. Two members of the late liberal cabinet and three subordinate ministers were thrown out. “The verdict of the English borough constituencies,” cried the Times, “will be recorded more emphatically than was even the case in 1874 in favour of the conservatives. The opposition have to thank Mr. Chamberlain not only for their defeat at the polls, but for the irremediable disruption and hopeless disorganisation of the liberal party with its high historic past and its high claims to national gratitude. His achievement may give him such immortality as was won by the man who burned down the temple of Diana at Ephesus.”161 The same writers have ever since ascribed the irremediable disruption to Mr. Gladstone and the Irish question.
Now came the counties with their newly enfranchised [pg 250] hosts. Here the tide flowed strong and steady. Squire and parson were amazed to see the labourer, of whose stagnant indifference to politics they had been so confident, trudging four or five miles to a political meeting, listening without asking for a glass of beer to political speeches, following point upon-point, and then trudging back again dumbly chewing the cud. Politicians with gifts of rhetoric began to talk of the grand revolt of the peasants, and declared that it was the most remarkable transformation since the conversion of the Franks. Turned into prose, this meant that the liberals had extended their area into large rural provinces where hitherto tory supremacy had never been disputed. Whether or no Mr. Chamberlain had broken the party in the boroughs, his agrarian policy together with the natural uprising of the labourer against the party of squire and farmer, had saved it in the counties. The nominees of such territorial magnates as the Northumberlands, the Pembrokes, the Baths, the Bradfords, the Watkin Wynns, were all routed, and the shock to territorial influence was felt to be profound. An ardent agrarian reformer, who later became a conspicuous unionist, writing to Mr. Gladstone in July a description of a number of great rural gatherings, told him, “One universal feature of these meetings is the joy, affection, and unbounded applause with which your name is received by these earnest men. Never in all your history had you so strong a place in the hearts of the common people, as you have to-day. It requires to be seen to be realised.”
All was at last over. It then appeared that so far from there being a second version of the great tory reaction of 1874, the liberals had now in the new parliament a majority over tories of 82, or thirty under the corresponding majority in the year of marvel, 1880. In great Britain they had a majority of 100, being 333 against 233.162 But [pg 251]
they had no majority over tories and Irishmen combined. That hopeful dream had glided away through the ivory gate.
Shots between right wing and left of the liberal party were exchanged to the very last moment. When the borough elections were over, the Birmingham leader cried that so far from the loss in the boroughs being all the fault of the extreme liberals, it was just because the election had not been fought on their programme, but was fought instead on a manifesto that did not include one of the points to which the extreme liberals attached the greatest importance. For the sake of unity, they had put aside their most cherished principles, disestablishment for instance, and this, forsooth, was the result.163 The retort came as quickly as thunder after the flash. Lord Hartington promptly protested from Matlock, that the very crisis of the electoral conflict was an ill-chosen moment for the public expression of doubt by a prominent liberal as to the wisdom of a policy accepted by the party, and announced by the acknowledged leader of the whole party. When the party had found some more tried, more trusted, more worthy leader, then might perhaps be the time to impugn the policy. These reproachful ironies of Lord Hartington boded ill for any prospect of the heroes of this fratricidal war of the platform smoothing their wrinkled fronts in a liberal cabinet.
IV
In Ireland the result shed a strong light on the debating prophecies that the extension of the county franchise would [pg 252] not be unfavourable to the landlord interest; that it would enable the deep conservative interest of the peasantry to vindicate itself against the nationalism of the towns; that it would prove beyond all doubt that the Irish leader did not really speak the mind of a decided majority of the people of Ireland. Relying on the accuracy of these abstract predictions, the Irish tories started candidates all over the country. Even some of them who passed for shrewd and candid actually persuaded themselves that they were making an impression on the constituencies. The effect of their ingenuous operations was to furnish such a measure of nationalist strength, as would otherwise have seemed incredible almost to the nationalists themselves. An instance or two will suffice. In two divisions of Cork, the tories polled 300 votes against nearly 10,000 for the nationalists. In two divisions of Mayo, the tories polled 200 votes against nearly 10,000 for the nationalists. In one division of Kilkenny there were 4000 nationalist votes against 170 for the tory, and in another division 4000 against 220. In a division of Kerry the nationalist had over 3000 votes against 30 for the tory,—a hundred to one. In prosperous counties with resident landlords and a good class of gentry such as Carlow and Kildare, in one case the popular vote was 4800 against 750, and in the other 3169 against 467. In some fifty constituencies the popular majorities ranged in round numbers from 6500 the highest, to 2400 the lowest. Besides these constituencies where a contest was so futile, were those others in which no contest was even attempted.
In Ulster a remarkable thing happened. This favoured province had in the last parliament returned nine liberals. Lord Hartington attended a banquet at Belfast (Nov. 5) just before the election. It was as unlucky an affair as the feast of Belshazzar. His mission was compared by Orange wits to that of the Greek hero who went forth to wrestle with Death for the body of an old woman. The whole of the liberal candidates in Ulster fell down as dead men. Orangemen and catholics, the men who cried damnation to King William and the men who cried “To hell with the Pope,” joined hands against them. In Belfast itself, nationalists were [pg 253]
seen walking to the booths with orange cards in their hats to vote for orangemen against liberals.164 It is true that the paradox did not last, and that the Pope and King William were speedily on their old terms again. Within six months, the two parties atoned for this temporary backsliding into brotherly love, by one of the most furious and protracted conflagrations that ever raged even in the holy places of Belfast. Meanwhile nationalism had made its way in the south of the province, partly by hopes of reduced rents, partly by the energy of the catholic population, who had not tasted political power for two centuries. The adhesion of their bishops to the national movement in the Monaghan election had given them the signal three years before. Fermanagh, hitherto invariably Orange, now sent two nationalists. Antrim was the single county out of the thirty-two counties of Ireland that was solid against home rule, and even in Antrim in one contest the nationalist was beaten only by 35 votes.
Not a single liberal was returned in the whole of Ireland. To the last parliament she had sent fourteen. They were all out bag and baggage. Ulster now sent eighteen nationalists and seventeen tories. Out of the eighty-nine contests in Ireland, Mr. Parnell's men won no fewer than eighty-five, and in most of them they won by such overwhelming majorities as I have described. It was noticed that twenty-two of the persons elected, or more than one-fourth of the triumphant party, had been put in prison under the Act of 1881. A species of purge, moreover, had been performed. All half-hearted nationalists, the doubters and the faithless, were dismissed, and their places taken by men pledged either to obey or else go.
The British public now found out on what illusions they had for the last four years been fed. Those of them who had memories, could recollect how the Irish secretary of the day, on the third reading of the first Coercion bill in 1881, had boldly appealed from the Irish members to the People of Ireland. “He was sure that he could appeal with confidence from gentlemen sitting below the gangway opposite to their constituents.”165 They remembered all the [pg 254] talk about Mr. Parnell and his followers being a mere handful of men and not a political party at all, and the rest of it. They had now a revelation what a fool's paradise it had been.
As a supreme electoral demonstration, the Irish elections of 1885 have never been surpassed in any country. They showed that neither remedial measures nor repressive measures had made even the fleeting shadow of an impression on the tenacious sentiment of Ireland, or on the powerful organisation that embodied and directed it. The Land Act had made no impression. The two Coercion Acts had made none. The imperial parliament had done its best for five years. Some of the ablest of its ministers had set zealous and intrepid hands to the task, and this was the end. Whether you counted seats or counted votes, the result could not be twisted into anything but what it was—the vehement protest of one of the three kingdoms against the whole system of its government, and a strenuous demand for its reconstruction on new foundations.
Endeavours were made to discredit so startling and unwelcome a result. It was called “the carefully prepared verdict of a shamefully packed jury.” Much was made of the number of voters who declared themselves illiterate, said to be compelled so to do in order that the priest or other intimidatory person might see that they voted right. As a matter of fact the percentage of illiterate voters answered closely to the percentage of males over twenty-one in the census returns, who could neither read nor write. Only two petitions followed the general election, one at Belfast against a nationalist, and the other at Derry against a tory, and in neither of the two was undue influence or intimidation alleged. The routed candidates in Ireland, like the same unlucky species elsewhere, raised the usual chorus of dolorous explanation. The register, they cried, was in a shameful condition; the polling stations were too few or too remote; the loyalists were afraid, and the poll did not represent their real numbers; people did not believe that the ballot was really secret; the percentage of illiterates was monstrous; promises and pledges went for nothing. Such are ever the too familiar voices of mortified electioneering.
[pg 255]
There was also the best known of all the conclusive topics from tory Ireland. It was all done, vowed the tories, by the bishops and clergy; they were indefatigable; they canvassed at the houses and presided at meetings; they exhorted their flocks from the altar, and they drilled them at the polling-booths. The spiritual screw of the priest and the temporal screw of the league—there was the whole secret. Such was the story, and it was not wholly devoid of truth; but then what balm, what comfort, had even the truth of it for British rulers?
Some thousands of voters stayed away from the polls. It was ingeniously explained that their confidence in British rule had been destroyed by the Carnarvon surrender; a shopkeeper would not offend his customers for the sake of a Union Jack that no longer waved triumphant in the breeze. They were like the Arab sheikhs at Berber, who, when they found that the Egyptian pashas were going to evacuate, went over to the Mahdi. The conventions appointed to select the candidates were denounced as the mere creatures of Mr. Parnell, the Grand Elector. As if anything could have shown a more politic appreciation of the circumstances. There are situations that require a dictator, not to impose an opinion, but to kindle an aspiration; not to shape a demand, but to be the effective organ of opinion and demand. Now in the Irish view was one of those situations. In the last parliament twenty-six seats were held by persons designated nominal home rulers; in the new parliament, not one. Every new nationalist member pledged himself to resign whenever the parliamentary party should call upon him. Such an instrument grasped in a hand of iron was indispensable, first to compel the British government to listen, and second, to satisfy any British government disposed to listen, that in dealing with Mr. Parnell they were dealing with nationalist Ireland, and with a statesman who had the power to make his engagements good. You need greater qualities, said Cardinal De Retz, to be a good party leader than to be emperor of the universe. Ireland is not that portion of the universe in which this is least true.
Chapter III. A Critical Month (December 1885)
I
The month of December was passed by Mr. Gladstone at Hawarden, in such depth of meditation as it is easy for us to conjecture. The composition of his party, the new situation in parliament, the mutual relations of important individuals, the Irish case, his own share in respect of the Irish case, the strange new departure in Irish policy announced and acted upon by the subsisting cabinet—from all these points of view it was now his business to survey the extraordinary scene. The knot to be unravelled in 1886 was hardly less entangled than that which engaged the powerful genius of Pitt at the opening of the century. Stripped of invidious innuendo, the words of Lord Salisbury a few weeks later state with strength and truth the problem that now confronted parliament and its chief men. “Up to the time,” said the tory prime minister, “when Mr. Gladstone took office, be it for good or evil, for many generations Ireland had been governed through the influence and the action of the landed gentry. I do not wish to defend that system. There is a good deal to be said for it, and a good deal to be said against it. What I wish to insist upon is, not that that system was good, but that the statesman who undertook to overthrow it, should have had something to put in its place. [pg 257] He utterly destroyed it. By the Land Act of 1870, by the Ballot Act of 1872, by the Land Act of 1881, and last of all by the Reform bill of 1884, the power of the landed gentry in Ireland is absolutely shattered; and he now stands before the formidable problem of a country deprived of a system of government under which it had existed for many generations, and absolutely without even a sketch of a substitute by which the ordinary functions of law and order can be maintained. Those changes which he introduced into the government of Ireland were changes that were admirable from a parliamentary point of view. They were suited to the dominant humour of the moment. But they were barren of any institutions by which the country could be governed and kept in prosperity for the future.”166 This is a statement of the case that biographer and historian alike should ponder. Particularly should they remember that both parties had renounced coercion.
Mr. Gladstone has publicly explained the working of his mind, and both his private letters at the time, and many a conversation later, attest the hold which the new aspect, however chimerical it may now seem to those who do not take long views, had gained upon him. He could not be blind to the fact that the action and the language of the tory ministers during the last six months had shown an unquestionable readiness to face the new necessities of a complex situation with new methods. Why should not a solution of the present difficulties be sought in the same co-operation of parties, that had been as advantageous as it was indispensable in other critical occasions of the century? He recalled other leading precedents of national crisis. There was the repeal of the Test Act in 1828; catholic emancipation in 1829; the repeal of the corn law in 1846; the extension of the franchise in 1867. In the history of these memorable transactions, Mr. Gladstone perceived it to be extremely doubtful whether any one of these measures, all carried as they were by tory governments, could have become law except under the peculiar conditions which secured for [pg 258] each of them both the aid of the liberal vote in the House of Commons, and the authority possessed by all tory governments in the House of Lords. What was the situation? The ministerial party just reached the figure of two hundred and fifty-one. Mr. Gladstone had said in the course of the election that for a government in a minority to deal with the Irish question would not be safe, such an operation could not but be attended by danger; but the tender of his support to Lord Salisbury was a demonstration that he thought the operation might still properly be undertaken.167
To Herbert Gladstone.
December 10, 1885.—1. The nationalists have run in political alliance with the tories for years; more especially for six months; most of all at the close during the elections, when they have made us 335 (say) against 250 [conservatives] instead of 355 against 230. This alliance is therefore at its zenith. 2. The question of Irish government ought for the highest reasons to be settled at once, and settled by the allied forces, (1) because they have the government, (2) because their measure will have fair play from all, most, or many of us, which a measure of ours would not have from the tories. 3. As the allied forces are half the House, so that there is not a majority against them, no constitutional principle is violated by allowing the present cabinet to continue undisturbed for the purpose in view. 4. The plan for Ireland ought to be produced by the government of the day. Principles may be laid down by others, but not the detailed interpretation of them in a measure. I have publicly declared I produce no plan until the government has arrived at some issue with the Irish, as I hope they will. 5. If the moment ever came when a plan had to be considered with a view to production on behalf of the liberal party, I do not at present see how such a question could be dissociated from another vital question, namely, who are to be the government. For a government alone can carry a measure, though some outline of essentials might be put out in a motion or resolution.
Happening in these days to meet in the neighbouring [pg 259]
palace of a whig magnate, Mr. Balfour, a young but even then an important member of the government, with whom as a veteran with a junior of high promise he had long been on terms of friendly intimacy, Mr. Gladstone began an informal conversation with him upon the condition of Ireland, on the stir that it was making in men's minds, and on the urgency of the problem. The conversation he followed up by a letter (Dec. 20). Every post, he said, bore him testimony to the growing ferment. In urging how great a calamity it would be if so vast a question should fall into the lines of party conflict, he expressed his desire to see it taken up by the government, and to be able, with reserve of necessary freedom, to co-operate in their design. Mr. Balfour replied with courteous scepticism, but promised to inform Lord Salisbury. The tactical computation was presumably this, that Lord Salisbury would lose the Orange group from Ireland and the extreme tories in England, but would keep the bulk of his party. On the other hand, Mr. Gladstone in supporting a moderate home rule would drop some of the old whigs and some of the extreme radicals, but he too would keep the bulk of the liberal party. Therefore, even if Mr. Parnell and his followers should find the scheme too moderate to be endurable, still Lord Salisbury with Mr. Gladstone's help would settle the Irish question as Peel with the help of the whigs settled the question of corn.
Both at the time and afterwards Mr. Gladstone was wont to lay great stress upon the fact that he had opened this suggestion and conveyed this proffer of support. For instance, he writes to Lord Hartington (Dec. 20): “On Tuesday I had a conversation with Balfour at Eaton, which in conformity with my public statements, I think, conveyed informally a hope that they would act, as the matter is so serious, and as its becoming a party question would be a great national calamity. I have written to him to say (without speaking for others) that if they can make a proposal for the purpose of settling definitely the question of Irish government, I shall wish with proper reserves to treat it in the spirit in which I have treated Afghanistan and the Balkan Peninsula.”
The language of Lord Carnarvon when he took office and [pg 260] of Lord Salisbury at Newport, coupled with the more substantial fact of the alliance between tories and nationalists before and during the election, no doubt warranted Mr. Gladstone's assumption that the alliance might continue, and that the talk of a new policy had been something more than an electioneering manœuvre. Yet the importance that he always attached to his offer of support for a definite settlement, or in plainer English, some sort of home rule, implies a certain simplicity. He forgot in his patriotic zeal the party system. The tory leader, capable as his public utterances show of piercing the exigencies of Irish government to the quick, might possibly, in the course of responsible consultations with opponents for a patriotic purpose, have been drawn by argument and circumstance on to the ground of Irish autonomy, which he had hitherto considered, and considered with apparent favour, only in the dim distance of abstract meditation or through the eyes of Lord Carnarvon. The abstract and intellectual temperament is sometimes apt to be dogged and stubborn; on the other hand, it is often uncommonly elastic. Lord Salisbury's clear and rationalising understanding might have been expected to carry him to a thoroughgoing experiment to get rid of a deep and inveterate disorder. If he thought it politic to assent to communication with Mr. Parnell, why should he not listen to overtures from Mr. Gladstone? On the other hand, Lord Salisbury's hesitation in facing the perils of an Irish settlement in reliance upon the co-operation of political opponents is far from being unintelligible. His inferior parliamentary strength would leave him at the mercy of an extremely formidable ally. He may have anticipated that, apart from the ordinary temptations of every majority to overthrow a minority, all the strong natural impulses of the liberal leader, his vehement sympathy with the principle of nationality, the irresistible attraction for him of all the grand and eternal commonplaces of liberty and self-government, would inevitably carry him much further on the Irish road than either Lord Salisbury himself may have been disposed to travel, or than he could be sure of persuading his party to follow. He may [pg 261]
well have seen grounds for pause before committing himself to so delicate and precarious an enterprise.
II
Early in December Lord Granville was at Hawarden, and the two discussed the crucial perplexities of the hour, not going further than agreement that responsibility lay with the government, and that the best chance for settlement lay in large concession. From Hawarden Lord Granville went to Chatsworth, where he found Lord Spencer on his way to visit Mr. Gladstone; but nothing important passed among the three leaders thus brought together under the roof of Lord Hartington. Lord Granville imparted to Lord Spencer and Lord Hartington that Mr. Gladstone was full of Ireland in the direction of some large concession of self-government. The host discussed the thing dispassionately without much expression of opinion. Proceeding to Hawarden, Lord Spencer was there joined by Lord Rosebery. Their chief repeated to them the propositions already stated (p. 258). Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Granville (Dec. 9):
Lord Spencer was hardly second in weight to Mr. Gladstone himself. His unrivalled experience of Irish administration, his powers of firm decision in difficult circumstances, and the impression of high public spirit, uprightness, and fortitude, which had stamped itself deep upon the public mind, gave him a force of moral authority in an Irish crisis that was unique. He knew the importance of a firm and continuous system in Ireland. Such a system he had inflexibly carried out. Extreme concessions had been extorted from him by the radicals in the cabinet, and when the last moment [pg 262] of the eleventh hour had arrived, it looked as if he would break up the government by insisting. Then the government was turned out, and the party of “law and order” came in. He saw his firm and continuous system at the first opportunity flouted and discarded. He was aware, as officials and as the public were aware, that his successor at Dublin Castle made little secret that he had come over to reverse the policy. Lord Spencer, too, well knew in the last months of his reign at Dublin that his own system, in spite of outward success, had made no mark upon Irish disaffection. It is no wonder that after his visit to Hawarden, he laboured hard at consideration of the problem that the strange action of government on the one hand, and the speculations of a trusted leader on the other, had forced upon him. On Mr. Gladstone he pressed the question whether a general support should be given to Irish autonomy as a principle, before particulars were matured. In any case he perceived that the difficulty of governing Ireland might well be increased by knowledge of the mere fact that Mr. Gladstone and himself, whether in office or in opposition, were looking in the direction of autonomy. Somebody said to Mr. Gladstone, people talked about his turning Spencer round his thumb. “It would be more true,” he replied, “that he had turned me round his.” That is, I suppose, by the lessons of Lord Spencer's experience.
In the middle of the month Lord Hartington asked Mr. Gladstone for information as to his views and intentions on the Irish question as developed by the general election. The rumours in the newspapers, he said, as well as in private letters, were so persistent that it was hard to believe them without foundation. Mr. Gladstone replied to Lord Hartington in a letter of capital importance in its relation to the prospects of party union (Dec. 17):—
To Lord Hartington.
The whole stream of public excitement is now turned upon me, and I am pestered with incessant telegrams which I have no defence against, but either suicide or Parnell's method of self-concealment. The truth is, I have more or less of opinions and ideas, [pg 263] but no intentions or negotiations. In these ideas and opinions there is, I think, little that I have not more or less conveyed in public declarations; in principle nothing. I will try to lay them before you. I consider that Ireland has now spoken; and that an effort ought to be made by the government without delay to meet her demands for the management by an Irish legislative body of Irish as distinct from imperial affairs. Only a government can do it, and a tory government can do it more easily and safely than any other. There is first a postulate that the state of Ireland shall be such as to warrant it. The conditions of an admissible plan are—
1. Union of the empire and due supremacy of parliament.
2. Protection for the minority—a difficult matter on which I have talked much with Spencer, certain points, however, remaining to be considered.
3. Fair allocation of imperial charges.
4. A statutory basis seems to me better and safer than the revival of Grattan's parliament, but I wish to hear much more upon this, as the minds of men are still in so crude a state on the whole subject.
5. Neither as opinions nor as instructions have I to any one alive promulgated these ideas as decided on by me.
6. As to intentions, I am determined to have none at present, to leave space to the government—I should wish to encourage them if I properly could—above all, on no account to say or do anything which would enable the nationalists to establish rival biddings between us. If this storm of rumours continues to rage, it may be necessary for me to write some new letter to my constituents, but I am desirous to do nothing, simply leaving the field open for the government until time makes it necessary to decide. Of our late colleagues I have had most communication with Granville, Spencer, Rosebery. Would you kindly send this on to Granville?
I think you will find this in conformity with my public declarations, though some blanks are filled up. I have in truth thought it my duty without in the least committing myself or any one else, to think through the subject as well as I could, being equally convinced of its urgency and bigness. If H. and N. are with you, pray show them this letter, which is a very hasty one, [pg 264] for I am so battered with telegrams that I hardly know whether I stand on my head or my heels....
With regard to the letter I sent you, my opinion is that there is a Parnell party and a separation or civil war party, and the question which is to have the upper hand will have to be decided in a limited time. My earnest recommendation to everybody is not to commit himself. Upon this rule, under whatever pressure, I shall act as long as I can. There shall be no private negotiation carried on by me, but the time may come when I shall be obliged to speak publicly. Meanwhile I hope you will keep in free and full communication with old colleagues. Pray put questions if this letter seems ambiguous....
Pray remember that I am at all times ready for personal communication, should you think it desirable.
III
Before receiving this letter, Lord Hartington was startled, as all the world was, to come on something in the newspapers that instantly created a new situation. Certain prints published on December 17 what was alleged to be Mr. Gladstone's scheme for an Irish settlement.168 It proposed in terms the creation of an Irish parliament. Further particulars were given in detail, but with these we need not concern ourselves. The Irish parliament was enough. The public mind, bewildered as it was by the situation that the curious issue of the election had created, was thrown by this announcement into extraordinary commotion. The facts are these. Mr. Herbert Gladstone visited London at this time (Dec. 14), partly in consequence of a speech made a few days before by Sir C. Dilke, and of the club talk which the speech had set going. It was taken to mean that he and Mr. Chamberlain, the two radical leaders, thought that such an Irish policy as might be concocted between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Parnell would receive no general support from the liberal party, and that it would be much safer to [pg 265]
leave the tories in power, in the expectation that some moderate measures of reform might be got from them, and that meanwhile they would become committed with the Irishmen. Tactics of this kind were equivalent to the exclusion of Mr. Gladstone, for in every letter that he wrote he pronounced the Irish question urgent. Mr. Herbert Gladstone had not been long in London before the impression became strong upon him, that in the absence of a guiding hint upon the Irish question, the party might be drifting towards a split. Under this impression he had a conversation with the chief of an important press agency, who had previously warned him that the party was all at sea. To this gentleman, in an interview at which no notes were taken and nothing read from papers—so little formal was it—he told his own opinions on the assumed opinions of Mr. Gladstone, all in general terms, and only with the negative view of preventing friendly writers from falling into traps. Unluckily it would seem to need at least the genius of a Bismarck, to perform with precision and success the delicate office of inspiring a modern oracle on the journalistic tripod. Here, what was intended to be a blameless negative soon swelled, as the oracular fumes are wont to do, into a giant positive. In conversations with another journalist, who was also his private friend (Dec. 15), he used language which the friend took to justify the pretty unreserved announcement that Mr. Gladstone was about to set to work in earnest on home rule.
“With all these matters,” Mr. Herbert Gladstone wrote to a near relative at the time, “my father had no more connection than the man in the moon, and until each event occurred, he knew no more of it than the man in the street.” Mr. Gladstone on the same day (Dec. 17) told the world by telegraph that the statement was not an accurate representation of his views, but a speculation upon them; he added that it had not been published with his knowledge or authority. There can be no doubt, whatever else may be said, that the publication was neither to his advantage, nor in conformity with his view of the crisis. No statesman in our history has ever been more careful of the golden rule of [pg 266] political strategy—to neglect of which Frederick the Great traced the failure of Joseph II.—not to take the second step before you have taken the first. Neither scheme nor intention had yet crystallised in his mind. Never was there a moment when every consideration of political prudence more imperatively counselled silence. Mr. Gladstone's denial of all responsibility was not found to be an explicit contradiction; it was a repudiation of the two newspapers, but it was not a repudiation of an Irish parliament. Therefore people believed the story the more. Friends and foes became more than ever alert, excited, alarmed, and in not a few cases vehemently angry. This unauthorised publication with the qualified denial, placed Mr. Gladstone in the very position which he declared that he would not take up; it made him a trespasser on ground that belonged to the government. Any action on his part would in his own view not only be unnecessary; it would be unwarrantable; it would be in the highest degree injurious and mischievous.169 Yet whatever it amounted to, some of this very injury and mischief followed.
Lord Hartington no sooner saw what was then called the Hawarden kite flying in the sky, than he felt its full significance. He at once wrote to Mr. Gladstone, partly in reply to the letter of the 17th already given, and pointed with frankness to what would follow. No other subject would be discussed until the meeting of parliament, and it would be discussed with the knowledge, or what would pass for knowledge, that in Mr. Gladstone's opinion the time for concession to Ireland had arrived, and that concession was practicable. In replying to his former letter Mr. Gladstone had invited personal communication, and Lord Hartington thought that he might in a few days avail himself of it, though (December 18) he feared that little advantage would follow. In spite of urgent arguments from wary friends, Lord Hartington at once proceeded to write to his chairman in Lancashire (December 20), informing the public that no proposals of liberal policy on the Irish demand had been communicated to him; for his own part he stood to what [pg 267]
he said, at the election. This letter was the first bugle note of an inevitable conflict between Mr. Gladstone and those who by and by became the whig dissentients.
To Lord Hartington resistance to any new Irish policy came easily, alike by temperament and conviction. Mr. Chamberlain was in a more embarrassing position; and his first speech after the election showed it. “We are face to face,” he said, “with a very remarkable demonstration by the Irish people. They have shown that as far as regards the great majority of them, they are earnestly in favour of a change in the administration of their government, and of some system which would give them a larger control of their domestic affairs. Well, we ourselves by our public declarations and by our liberal principles are pledged to acknowledge the justice of this claim.” What was the important point at the moment, Mr. Chamberlain declared that in his judgment the time had hardly arrived when the liberal party could interfere safely or with advantage to settle this great question. “Mr. Parnell has appealed to the tories. Let him settle accounts with his new friends. Let him test their sincerity and goodwill; and if he finds that he has been deceived, he will approach the liberal party in a spirit of reason and conciliation.”170
Translated into the language of parliamentary action, this meant that the liberals, with a majority of eighty-two over the tories, were to leave the tory minority undisturbed in office, on the chance of their bringing in general measures of which liberals could approve, and making Irish proposals to which Mr. Parnell, in the absence of competition for his support, might give at least provisional assent. In principle, these tactics implied, whether right or wrong, the old-fashioned union of the two British parties against the Irish. Were the two hundred and fifty tories to be left in power, to carry out all the promises of the general election, and fulfil all the hopes of a new parliament chosen on a new system? The Hawarden letter-bag was heavy with remonstrances from newly elected liberals against any such course.
[pg 268]Second only to Mr. Gladstone in experience of stirring and perilous positions, Lord Granville described the situation to one of his colleagues as nothing less than “thoroughly appalling.” A great catastrophe, he said, might easily result from any of the courses open: from the adoption of coercion by either government or opposition; from the adoption by either of concession; from the attempt to leave the state of Ireland as it was. If, as some think, a great catastrophe did in the end result from the course that Mr. Gladstone was now revolving in his own mind at Hawarden, and that he had commended to the meditations of his most important colleagues, what alternative was feasible?
IV
The following letters set out the various movements in a drama that was now day by day, through much confusion and bewilderment, approaching its climax.
To Lord Granville.
December 18, '85.—... Thinking incessantly about the matter, speaking freely and not with finality to you, and to Rosebery and Spencer—the only colleagues I have seen—I have trusted to writing to Hartington (who had had Harcourt and Northbrook with him) and to you for Derby.
If I have made any step in advance at all, which I am not sure of, it has most certainly been in the direction of leaving the field open for the government, encouraging them to act, and steadily refusing to say or do anything like negotiation on my own behalf. So I think Derby will see that in the main I am certainly with him.... What will Parnell do? What will the government do? How can we decide without knowing or trying to know, both if we can, but at any rate the second? This letter is at your discretion to use in proper quarters.
December 22.—In the midst of these troubles, I look to you as the great feud-composer, and your note just received is just what I should have hoped and expected. Hartington wrote to me on Saturday that he was going up to see Goschen, but as I thought inviting a letter from me, which I wrote [December 17, above], and it was with no small surprise that I read him yesterday in [pg 269] the Times. However, I repeated yesterday to R. Grosvenor all that I have said to you about what seems to me the plain duty of the party, in the event of a severance between nationalists and tories. Meantime I care not who knows my anxiety to prevent that severance, and for that reason among others to avoid all communications of ideas and intentions which could tend to bring it about.
On December 27, Lord Granville wrote to Mr. Gladstone at Hawarden:—
Mr. Gladstone answered, as those acquainted with his modes of mind might have been sure that he would:—
December 28.—Thank you for stopping the request to which your letter of yesterday refers. A cabinet does not exist out of office, and no one in his senses could covenant to call the late cabinet together, I think, even if there were something on which it was ready to take counsel, which at this moment there is not. On the other hand, you will have seen from my letter that the idea before me has been that of going unusual lengths in the way of consulting beforehand, not only leading men but the party, or undertaking some special obligation to be assured of their concurrence generally, before undertaking new responsibilities.
The one great difficulty in proceeding to consult now, I think, is that we cannot define the situation for ourselves, as an essential element of it is the relation between nationalists and tories, which they—not we—have to settle. If we meet on Tuesday 12th to choose a Speaker, so far as I can learn, regular business will not begin before the 19th. By the 12th we shall have given ourselves a much better chance of knowing how the two parties stand together; and there will be plenty of time for our consultations. Thus at least I map out the time; pray give me any comments you think required.
[pg 270]I begged you to keep Derby informed; would you kindly do the same with Harcourt? Rosebery goes to London to-morrow.
Two days before this resistance to the request for a meeting, he had written to Lord Granville with an important enclosure:—
The memorandum itself must here be quoted, for it sets out in form, succinct, definite, and exhaustive, the situation as Mr. Gladstone at that time regarded it:—
Secret. Hawarden Castle, Chester, Dec. 26, 1885.
1. Government should act.
2. Nationalists should support them in acting.
3. I have done what I can to bring about (1). I am confident the nationalists know my desire. They also publicly know there can be no plan from me in the present circumstances.
4. If (1) and (2) come about, we, who are half the House of Commons, may under the circumstances be justified in waiting for the production of a plan.
5. This would be in every sense the best situation.
6. But if ministers refuse to take up the question—or if from their not actually taking it up, or on any grounds, the nationalists publicly dissolve their alliance with them, the government then have a party of 250 in the face of 420, and in the face of 335 who were elected to oppose them.
7. The basis of our system is that the ministry shall have the confidence of the House of Commons. The exception is, when it is about to appeal to the people. The rule applies most strongly when an election has just taken place. Witness 1835, 1841, 1859, [pg 271] and the three last elections, after each of which, the rule has been acted upon, silent inference standing instead of a vote.
8. The present circumstances warrant, I think, an understanding as above, between ministers and the nationalists; but not one between us and the nationalists.
9. If from any cause the alliance of the tories and nationalists which did exist, and presumably does exist, should be known to be dissolved, I do not see how it is possible for what would then be the liberal majority to shrink from the duty appertaining to it as such, and to leave the business of government to the 250 men whom it was elected to oppose.
10. This looks towards an amendment to the Address, praying her Majesty to choose ministers possessed of the confidence of the House of Commons.
11. Which under the circumstances should, I think, have the sanction of a previous meeting of the party.
12. An attempt would probably be made to traverse the proceeding by drawing me on the Irish question.
13. It is impossible to justify the contention that as a condition previous to asserting the right and duty of a parliamentary majority, the party or the leaders should commit themselves on a measure about which they can form no final judgment, until by becoming the government they can hold all the necessary communications.
14. But in all likelihood jealousy will be stronger than logic; and to obviate such jealousy, it might be right for me [to go] to the very farthest allowable point.
15. The case supposed is, the motion made—carried—ministers resign—Queen sends for me.
Might I go so far as to say at the first meeting that in the case supposed, I should only accept the trust if assured of the adequate, that is of the general, support of the party to a plan of duly guarded home rule?
16. If that support were withheld, it would be my duty to stand aside.
17. In that event it would, I consider, become the duty of that portion of the party, which was not prepared to support me in an effort to frame a plan of duly guarded home rule, to form a government itself if invited by the Queen to do so.
[pg 272]18. With me the Irish question would of course remain paramount; but preferring a liberal government without an adequate Irish measure to a tory government similarly lacking, such a liberal government would be entitled to the best general support I could give it.
The reference of this memorandum to Lords Granville and Spencer was regarded as one of the first informal steps towards a consultation of leaders. On receiving Lord Spencer's reply on the point of procedure Mr. Gladstone wrote to him (December 30):—
To Lord Spencer.
I understand your idea to be that inasmuch as leaders of the party are likely to be divided on the subject of a bold Irish measure, and a divergence might be exhibited in a vote on the Address, it may be better to allow the tory government, with 250 supporters in a house of 670, to assume the direction of the session and continue the administration of imperial affairs. I do not undervalue the dangers of the other course. But let us look at this one—
1. It is an absolute novelty.
2. Is it not a novelty which strikes at the root of our parliamentary government? under which the first duty of a majority freshly elected, according to a uniform course of precedent and a very clear principle, is to establish a government which has its confidence.
3. Will this abdication of primary duty avert or materially postpone the (apprehended) disruption of the party? Who can guarantee us against an Irish or independent amendment to the Address? The government must in any case produce at once their Irish plan. What will have been gained by waiting for it? The Irish will know three things—(1) That I am conditionally in favour of at least examining their demand. (2) That from the nature of the case, I must hold this question paramount to every interest of party. (3) That a part, to speak within bounds, of the liberal party will follow me in this respect. Can it be supposed that in these circumstances they will long refrain, or possibly refrain at all? With their knowledge of possibilities behind them, [pg 273] dare they long refrain? An immense loss of dignity in a great crisis of the empire would attend the forcing of our hands by the Irish or otherwise. There is no necessity for an instant decision. My desire is thoroughly to shake up all the materials of the question. The present leaning of my mind is to consider the faults and dangers of abstention greater than those of a more decided course. Hence, in part, my great anxiety that the present government should move. Please send this on to Granville.
Finding Mr. Gladstone immovable at Hawarden, four of the members of the last liberal cabinet of both wings met at Devonshire House on New Year's day. All, save one, found themselves hopeless, especially after the Hawarden revelations, as to the possibility of governing Ireland by mere repression. Lord Hartington at once communicated the desires of the conclave for information of his views and designs. Mr. Gladstone replied (January 2, 1886):—
On the 17th December I communicated to you all the opinions I had formed on the Irish question. But on the 21st you published in the Times a re-affirmation of opposite opinions.
On the Irish question, I have not a word to add to that letter. I am indeed doing what little the pressure of correspondence permits, to prepare myself by study and reflection. My object was to facilitate study by you and others—I cannot say it was wholly gained. But I have done nothing, and shall do nothing, to convert those opinions into intentions, for I have not the material before me. I do not know whether my “postulate” is satisfied.... I have taken care by my letter of the 17th that you should know my opinions en bloc. You are quite welcome to show it, if you think fit, to those whom you met. But Harcourt has, I believe, seen it, and the others, if I mistake not, know the substance.... There is no doubt that a very grave situation is upon us, a little sooner or a little later. All my desire and thought was how to render it less grave, for next to the demands of a question far higher than all or any party interests, is my duty to labour for the consolidation of the party.... Pray show this letter, if you think fit, to those on whose behalf you write. I propose to be available in London about 4 p.m., for any who wish to see me.
V
Signals and intimations were not wholly wanting from the Irish camp. It was known among the subalterns in that rather impenetrable region, partly by the light of nature, partly by the indiscretions of dubiously accredited ambassadors, that Mr. Gladstone was not disposed on any terms to meet the Irish demand by more coercion. For the liberal party as a whole the Irish had a considerable aversion. The violent scenes that attended the Coercion bill of 1881, the interchange of hard words, the suspensions, the imprisonments—all mechanically acquiesced in by the ministerial majority—had engendered both bitterness and contempt. The Irishmen did not conceal the satisfaction with which they saw the defeat of some of those liberals who had openly gloated over their arrests and all the rest of their humiliations. Mr. Gladstone, it is true, had laid a heavy and chastening hand upon them. Yet, even when the struggle had been fiercest, with the quick intuition of a people long oppressed, they detected a note of half-sympathetic passion which convinced them that he would be their friend if he could, and would help them when he might.
Mr. Parnell was not open to impressions of this order. He had a long memory for injuries, and he had by no means satisfied himself that the same injuries might not recur. As soon as the general election was over, he had at once set to work upon the result. Whatever might be right for others, his line of tactics was plain—to ascertain from which of the two English parties he was most likely to obtain the response that he desired to the Irish demand, and then to concert the procedure best fitted to place that party in power. He was at first not sure whether Lord Salisbury would renounce the Irish alliance after it had served the double purpose of ousting the liberals from office, and then reducing their numbers at the election. He seems also to have counted upon further communications with Lord Carnarvon, and this expectation was made known to Mr. Gladstone, who expressed his satisfaction at the news, though it was also made known to him that Mr. Parnell doubted [pg 275]
Lord Carnarvon's power to carry out his unquestionably favourable dispositions. He at the same time very naturally did his best to get some light as to Mr. Gladstone's own frame of mind. If neither party would offer a solution of the problem of Irish government, Mr. Parnell would prefer to keep the tories in office, as they would at least work out gradually a solution of the problems of Irish land. To all these indirect communications Mr. Gladstone's consistent reply was that Mr. Parnell's immediate business was with the government of the day, first, because only the government could handle the matter; second, because a tory government with the aid that it would receive from liberals, might most certainly, safely, and quickly settle it. He declined to go beyond the ground already publicly taken by him, unless by way of a further public declaration. On to this new ground he would not go, until assured that the government had had a fair opportunity given them.
By the end of December Mr. Parnell decided that there was not the slightest possibility of any settlement being offered by the conservatives under the existing circumstances. “Whatever chance there was,” he said, “disappeared when the seemingly authoritative statements of Mr. Gladstone's intention to deal with the question were published.” He regarded it as quite probable that in spite of a direct refusal from the tories, the Irish members might prefer to pull along with them, rather than run the risk of fresh coercion from the liberals, should the latter return to power. “Supposing,” he argued, “that the liberals came into office, and that they offered a settlement of so incomplete a character that we could not accept it, or that owing to defections they could not carry it, should we not, if any long interval occurred before the proposal of a fresh settlement, incur considerable risk of further coercion?” At any rate, they had better keep the government in, rather than oust them in order to admit Lord Hartington or Mr. Chamberlain with a new coercion bill in their pockets.
Foreseeing these embarrassments, Mr. Gladstone wrote in a final memorandum (December 24) of this eventful year, “I used every effort to obtain a clear majority at the election, [pg 276] and failed. I am therefore at present a man in chains. Will ministers bring in a measure? If ‘Aye,’ I see my way. If ‘No’: that I presume puts an end to all relations of confidence between nationalists and tories. If that is done, I have then upon me, as is evident, the responsibilities of the leader of a majority. But what if neither Aye nor No can be had—will the nationalists then continue their support and thus relieve me from responsibility, or withdraw their support [from the government] and thus change essentially my position? Nothing but a public or published dissolution of a relation of amity publicly sealed could be of any avail.”
So the year ended.