Descending from her alien throne, the Irish church had now taken her place among the most prosperous of free communions. To Irish cultivators a definite interest of possession had been indirectly confirmed in the land to which most of its value had been given by their own toil. A third branch of the upas tree of poisonous ascendency described by Mr. Gladstone during the election of 1868, still awaited his axe. The fitness of an absentee parliament to govern Ireland was again to be tested. This time the problem was hardest of all, for it involved direct concession by nations inveterately protestant, to a catholic hierarchy having at its head an ultramontane cardinal of uncompromising opinions and inexorable will.
Everybody knew that the state of university education in Ireland stood in the front rank of unsettled questions. Ever since the establishment of three provincial colleges by Peel's government in 1845, the flame of the controversy had been alight. Even on the very night when Graham introduced the bill creating them, no less staunch a tory and protestant than Sir Robert Inglis had jumped up and denounced “a gigantic [pg 435] scheme of godless education.” The catholics loudly echoed this protestant phrase. The three colleges were speedily condemned by the pope as fatal to faith and morals, and were formally denounced by the synod of Thurles in 1850. The fulminations of the church did not extinguish these modest centres of light and knowledge, but they cast a creeping blight upon them. In 1865 a demand was openly made in parliament for the incorporation by charter of a specifically catholic university. Mr. Gladstone, along with Sir George Grey, then admitted the reality of a grievance, namely, the absence in Ireland of institutions of which the catholics of the country were able to avail themselves. Declining, for good reasons or bad, to use opportunities of college education by the side of protestants, and not warmed by the atmosphere and symbols of their own church and faith, catholics contended that they could not be said to enjoy equal advantages with their fellow-citizens of other creeds. They repudiated a system of education repugnant to their religious convictions, and in the persistent efforts to force 'godless education' on their country, they professed to recognise another phase of persecution for conscience' sake.
In 1866, Lord Russell's government tried its hand with a device known as the supplemental charter. It opened a way to a degree without passing through the godless colleges. This was set aside by an injunction from the courts, and it would not have touched the real matter of complaint, even if the courts had let it stand. Next year the tories burnt their fingers, though Mr. Disraeli told parliament that he saw no scars. For a time, he believed that an honourable and satisfactory settlement was possible, and negotiations went on with the hierarchy. The prelates did not urge endowment, Mr. Disraeli afterwards said, but “they mentioned it.” The country shrank back from concurrent endowment, though, as Mr. Disraeli truly said, it was the policy of Pitt, of Grey, of Russell, of Peel, and of Palmerston. Ever since 1794, catholic students had been allowed to graduate at Trinity College, and ever since the disestablishment of the Irish church in 1869, Trinity had asked parliament for power to admit catholics to her fellowships and emoluments. This, [pg 436] however, did not go to the root, whether we regard it as sound or unsound, of the catholic grievance, which was in fact their lack of an endowed institution as distinctively catholic in all respects as Trinity was protestant.
Such was the case with which Mr. Gladstone was called upon to grapple, and a delicate if not even a desperate case it was. The prelates knew what they wished, though they lay in shadow. What they wanted a protestant parliament, with its grip upon the purse, was determined that they should not have. The same conclusion as came to many liberals by prejudice, was reached by the academic school on principle. On principle they held denominational endowment of education to be retrograde and obscurantist. Then there was the discouraging consideration of which Lord Halifax reminded Mr. Gladstone. “You say with truth,” he observed when the situation had developed, “that the liberal party are behaving very ill, and so they are. But liberal majorities when large are apt to run riot. No men could have stronger claims on the allegiance of their party than Lord Grey and Lord Althorp after carrying the Reform bill. Nevertheless, the large majority after the election of 1832-3 was continually putting the government into difficulty.” So it befell now, and now as then the difficulty was Irish.
Well knowing the hard work before him, Mr. Gladstone applied himself with his usual indomitable energy to the task. “We go to Oxford to-morrow,” he writes to Lord Granville (Nov. 12), “to visit Edward Talbot and his wife; forward to London on Thursday, when I dine with the Templars. My idea of work is that the first solid and heavy bit should be the Irish university—some of this may require to be done in cabinet. When we have got that into shape, I should be for taking to the yet stiffer work of local taxation—most of the cabinet take a personal interest in this. I think it will require immeasurable talking over, which might be done chiefly in an open informal cabinet, before any binding resolutions are taken. But I propose to let Palmer [pg 437] have his say (general) about law reform on Friday.” At Oxford he saw Dr. Pusey, “who behaved with all his old kindness, and seemed to have forgotten the Temple283 business, or rather as if it had never been.” On November 20, he records, “Cabinet 2-3/4-6-½. Some heads of a measure on Irish university education.” No communications were opened with the Irish bishops beforehand, probably from a surmise that they would be bound to ask more than they could obtain.
Phillimore has an interesting note or two on his friend at this critical time:—
The leading provisions of the measure, though found by the able and expert draftsman unusually hard to frame, may be very shortly stated, for the question by the way is still in full blast. A new university of Dublin was to rise, a teaching as well as an examining body, governed by a council who were to appoint officers and regulate all matters and things affecting the university. The constitution of this governing council was elaborately devised, and it did not make clerical predominance ultimately impossible. The affiliation of colleges, not excluding purely denominational institutions, was in their hands. There were to be no religious tests for either teachers or taught, and religious profession was to be no bar to honours and emoluments. Money was provided by Trinity College, the consolidated fund, and the church surplus, to the tune of £50,000 a year. The principle was the old formula of mixed or united education, in which protestants and catholics might side by side participate.
What many found intolerably obnoxious were two “gagging clauses.” By one of these a teacher or other person of authority might be suspended or deprived, who should in speaking or writing be held to have wilfully given offence to the religious convictions of any member. The second and graver of them was the prohibition of any university teacher in theology, modern history, or moral and mental philosophy. The separate affiliated colleges might make whatever arrangements they pleased for these subjects, but the new university would not teach them directly and authoritatively. This was undoubtedly a singular limitation for a university that had sent forth Berkeley and Burke; nor was there ever a moment when in spite of the specialisation of [pg 439] research, the deepest questions in the domain of thought and belief more inevitably thrust themselves forward within common and indivisible precincts.
On Feb. 14, Mr. Gladstone reported to the Queen:—
Delane of the Times said to Manning when they were leaving the House of Commons, “This is a bill made to pass.” Manning himself heartily acquiesced. Even the bitterest of Mr. Gladstone's critics below the gangway on his own side agreed, that if a division could have been taken while the House was still under the influence of the three hours' speech, the bill would have been almost unanimously carried.284 “It threw the House into a mesmeric trance,” said the seconder of a hostile motion. Effects like these, not purple passages, not epigrams nor aphorisms, are the test of oratory. Mr. Bruce wrote home (Feb. 15): “Alas! I fear all prospect of ministerial defeat is over. The University bill is so well received that people say there will not be even a division on the second reading. I see no other rock ahead, but sometimes they project their snouts unexpectedly, and cause shipwreck.”
Soon did the projecting rocks appear out of the smooth water. Lord Spencer had an interview with Cardinal Cullen [pg 440] at Dublin Castle (Feb. 25), and found him though in very good humour and full of gratitude for fair intentions, yet extremely hostile to the bill. It was in flat opposition, he said, to what the Roman catholics had been working for in Ireland for years; it continued the Queen's Colleges, and set up another Queen's College in the shape of Trinity College with a large endowment; it perpetuated the mixed system of education, to which he had always been opposed, and no endowment nor assistance was given to the catholic university; the council might appoint professors to teach English literature, geology, or zoology who would be dangerous men in catholic eyes. Lord Spencer gathered that the cardinal would be satisfied with a sum down to redress inequality or a grant for buildings.
Archbishop Manning wrote to Cardinal Cullen the day after the bill was produced, “strongly urging them to accept it.” It seemed to him to rest on a base so broad that he could not tell how either the opposition or the radical doctrinaires could attack it without adopting “the German tyranny.” He admitted that he was more easily satisfied than if he were in Ireland, but he thought the measure framed with skill and success. After a fortnight the archbishop told Mr. Gladstone, that he still saw reason to believe that the Irish hierarchy would not refuse the bill. On March 3rd, he says he has done his utmost to conciliate confidence in it. By the 7th he knew that his efforts had failed, but he urges Mr. Gladstone not to take the episcopal opposition too much to heart. “Non-endowment, mixed education, and godless colleges, are three bitter things to them.” “This,” he wrote to Mr. Gladstone, when all was over (March 12) “is not your fault, nor the bill's fault, but the fault of England and Scotland and three anti-catholic centuries.”
The debate began on March 3rd, and extended to four sittings. The humour of the House was described by Mr. Gladstone as “fitful and fluctuating.” Speeches “void of real argument or point, yet aroused the mere prejudices of a section of the liberal party against popery and did much to place the bill in danger.” Then that cause of apprehension [pg 441] disappeared, and a new change passed over the shifting sky, for the intentions of Irish members were reported to be dubious. There was not a little heat and passion, mainly from below the ministerial gangway. The gagging clauses jarred horribly, though they were trenchantly defended by Mr. Lowe, the very man to whose line of knowledge and intellectual freedom they seemed likely to be most repugnant. It soon appeared that neither protestant nor catholic set any value on these securities for conscience, and the general assembly of the presbyterians declared war upon the whole scheme. The cabinet—“most harmonious at this critical time,”—still held firmly that the bill was well constructed, so that if it once reached committee it would not be easy to inflict mortal wounds. On March 8th the prime minister reported to the Queen:—
Strange to say, it is the opposition of the Roman catholic bishops that brings about the present difficulty; and this although they have not declared an opposition to the bill outright, but have wound up their list of objections with a resolution to present petitions praying for its amendment. Still their attitude of what may be called growling hostility has had these important results. Firstly, it has deadened that general willingness of the liberal party, which the measure itself had created, to look favourably on a plan such as they might hope would obtain acquiescence, and bring about contentment. Secondly, the great majority of the bishops are even more hostile than the resolutions, which were apparently somewhat softened as the price of unanimity; and all these bishops, working upon liberal Irish members through their political interest in their seats, have proceeded so far that from twenty to twenty-five may go against the bill, and as many may stay away. When to these are added the small knot of discontented liberals and mere fanatics which so large a party commonly contains, the government majority, now taken at only 85, disappears....
It is not in the power or the will of your Majesty's advisers to purchase Irish support by subserviency to the Roman bishops. Their purpose has been to offer justice to all, and their hope has been that what was just would be seen to be advantageous. As far [pg 442] as the Roman catholics of Ireland are concerned, the cabinet conceive that they are now at perfect liberty to throw up the bill. But they are also of opinion that its abandonment would so impair or destroy their moral power, as to render it impossible for them to accept the defeat. There are whispers of a desire in the liberal party, should the catastrophe arrive, to meet it by a vote of confidence, which would probably be carried by a still larger majority. But the cabinet look with extreme disfavour upon this method of proceeding, which would offer them the verbal promise of support just when its substance had been denied.
He then proceeds to more purely personal aspects and contingencies:—
What lies beyond it would be premature to describe as having been regularly treated or even opened to-day. Mr. Gladstone considers himself far more tied to the bill and the subject than his colleagues; and if they upon a defeat were disposed to carry on the government without him, he would with your Majesty's sanction take effectual means to provide at least against his being an impediment in the way of an arrangement eligible in so many points of view. But his colleagues appear at present indisposed to adopt this method of solution. There would then remain for them the question whether they should humbly tender their resignations to your Majesty, or whether they should advise a dissolution of the parliament, which was elected under other auspices. This would be a matter of the utmost gravity for consideration at the proper time. Mr. Gladstone as at present advised has no foregone conclusion in favour of either alternative, and would act with his colleagues as between them. But he does not intend to go into opposition, and the dissolution of this government, brought about through languor and through extensive or important defections in the liberal party which has made him its leader, would be the close of his political life. He has now for more than forty years striven to serve the crown and country to the best of his power, and he is willing, though with overtaxed faculties and diminishing strength, to continue the effort longer, if he sees that the continuance can be conducive to the objects [pg 443] which he has heretofore had at heart; but the contingency to which he has last referred, would be for him the proof that confidence was gone, that usefulness was at an end, and that he might and ought to claim the freedom which best befits the close of life.
The next day, in reporting that the estimates of the coming division were far from improving, Mr. Gladstone returned in a few words to the personal point:—
On the 9th Cardinal Cullen blazed forth in a pastoral that was read in all the churches. He described the bill as richly endowing non-catholic and godless colleges, and without giving one farthing to catholics, inviting them to compete in their poverty, produced by penal laws and confiscations, with those left in possession of enormous wealth. The new university scheme only increased the number of Queen's Colleges, so often and so solemnly condemned by the catholic church and by all Ireland, and gave a new impulse to that sort of teaching that separates education from religion and its holy influences, and banishes God, the author of all good, from our schools. The prelate's pastoral had a decisive effect in regions far removed from the ambit of his crosier. [pg 444] The tory leader could not resist a temptation thus offered by the attitude of the Irish cardinal, and the measure that had been much reviled as a dark concordat between Mr. Gladstone and the pope, was now rejected by a concordat between the pope's men and Mr. Disraeli.
The discussion was on a high level in Mr. Gladstone's judgment. Lyon Playfair criticised details with some severity and much ability, but intended to vote for the bill. Miall, the nonconformist leader, supported the second reading, but required alterations that were admissible enough. On March 10 Mr. Harcourt, who was not yet an old member, “opened the discussion by a speech in advance of any he has yet delivered as to effect upon the House. Severe in criticism on detail, he was favourable to the substance of the bill.” One significant incident of the debate was a declaration by Bentinck, a conservative ultra, that he would vote against the bill in reliance on the declaration of Mr. Hardy, which he understood to be a pledge for himself and others near him, not to take office during the existence of the present parliament. “Mr. Hardy remained silent during this appeal, which was several times repeated.” Then the end came (March 11-12):—
Of the speech in which the debate was wound up Forster says in his diary: “Gladstone, with the House dead against [pg 445] him and his bill, made a wonderful speech—easy, almost playful, with passages of great power and eloquence, but with a graceful play, which enabled him to plant deep his daggers of satire in Horsman and Co.”286 Speaker Brand calls it “a magnificent speech, generous, high-minded, and without a taint of bitterness, although he was sorely tried, especially by false friends.” He vindicated the obnoxious clauses, but did not wish to adhere to them if opinion from all quarters were adverse, and he admitted that it was the opposition of members from Ireland that principally acted on his hearers. His speech contained a remarkable passage, pronouncing definitely against denominational endowment of university education.
A week of lively and eventful interests followed,—not only interesting in the life of Mr. Gladstone, but raising points with important constitutional bearings, and showing a match between two unsurpassed masters of political sword-play. The story was told generally and partially in parliament, but the reader who is curious about either the episode itself, or Mr. Gladstone's modes of mind and action, will find it worth a little trouble to follow details with some closeness.
March 11.—H. of C. Spoke 12-2, and voted in a division of 284-287—which was believed to cause more surprise to the opposite side than it did to me. At 2.45 a.m. I apprised the Queen of our defeat.
Thursday, March 12.—Saw the Queen at 12.15. Failed to find Granville. Cabinet 1-2-3/4. We discussed the matter with a general tendency to resignation rather than dissolving. Confab. on my position with Granville and Glyn, then joined by Bright. To the Queen again at six to keep her informed. Large dinner party for the Duke of Edinburgh, and an evening party afterwards, to hear Joachim.
Friday, March 13.—After seeing Mr. Glyn and Lord F. Cavendish, I went at 10.40 to see Dr. Clark. He completed his examination, and gave me his careful judgment. I went to Lord [pg 447] Granville, sketched out to him and Glyn my views, and went to the cabinet at 12.15. Stated the case between the two alternatives of resignation and dissolution as far as regarded myself. On the side of resignation it would not be necessary to make any final announcement [of his retirement from the leadership]. I am strongly advised a temporary rest. On the other hand, if we now dissolve, I anticipate that afterwards before any long time difficulties will arise, and my mission will be terminated. So that the alternatives are not so unequally weighed. The cabinet without any marked difference, or at least without any positive assertion to the contrary, determined on tendering their resignations.287 After cabinet saw Hartington and others respecting honours. At 2.45 saw the Queen and resigned. The Queen informed me that she would send for Mr. Disraeli; suggested for consideration whether I would include the mention of this fact in my announcement to parliament, and added as I was leaving the room, without looking (apparently) for an answer, that she would inform me of what might take place. At 3.45 saw Granville respecting the announcements. Made announcement in House of Commons at 4.30. More business at Downing Street, and home at six.
At a quarter to seven, or a little later, Colonel Ponsonby called with a communication from her Majesty. “Any news?” I said. “A great deal,” he replied; and informed me as follows. Mr. Disraeli had been with the Queen; did not see the means of carrying on the government by the agency of his party under present circumstances; did not ask for the dissolution of parliament (this was understood to mean did not offer to become minister on condition of being permitted to dissolve); did not say that his renunciation of the task was final; recommended that the Queen should call for my advice. Upon this the Queen sent Colonel Ponsonby, and he said, “She considers this as sending for you anew.” I replied that I did not regard the Queen's reference of this intelligence to me, as her calling upon me anew to undertake the work of government; that none of my obligations [pg 448] to the sovereign were cancelled or impaired by the resignation tendered and accepted; that I was still the minister for the purpose of rendering any service she might be pleased to call for in the matter on which she is engaged, exactly as before, until she has a new minister, when my official obligations will come to an end. That I felt there was great inconvenience and danger of misapprehension out of doors in proceeding over-rapidly with a matter of such gravity, and that each step in it required to be well measured and ascertained before proceeding to consider of the next following step. That I had great difficulty in gathering any precise idea of Mr. Disraeli's account of what he could not do, and what he either could or did not say that he could not. That as this account was to present to me the state of facts on which I was commanded to advise, it was quite necessary for me to have an accurate idea of it, in order that I might do justice to her Majesty's commands. I would therefore humbly suggest that Mr. Disraeli might with great propriety be requested to put his reply into writing. That I presumed I might receive this reply, if it were her Majesty's pleasure to make it known to me, at some not late hour to-morrow, when I would at once place myself in a condition to tender my humble advice. This is an account of what Colonel Ponsonby might fairly consider as my answer to her Majesty's communication. I enlarged the conversation, however, by observing that the division which overthrew us was a party division. It bore the express authentic symbol of its character in having party tellers on the opposition as well as on the government side; that we were aware of the great, even more than ordinary, efforts of Colonel Taylor, with Mr. Disraeli's countenance, to bring members to London and to the House; that all this seemed to impose great obligations on the opposition; and if so, that it would be the duty of the leader of the opposition to use every exertion of consultation with his friends and otherwise before declining the task, or in any manner advising the Queen to look elsewhere. To Colonel Ponsonby indeed, I observed that I thought Mr. Disraeli was endeavouring, by at once throwing back on me an offer which it was impossible for me at the time and under the circumstances to accept, to get up a case of absolute necessity founded upon this refusal of mine, and thus, becoming the indispensable man and [pg 449] party, to have in his hands a lever wherewith to overcome the reluctance and resistance of his friends, who would not be able to deny that the Queen must have a government.
Mr. Disraeli's reply to the Queen's inquiry whether he was prepared to form a government, was put into writing, and the two operative paragraphs of it were sent through Colonel Ponsonby to Mr. Gladstone. They ran as follows:—
Viewing these paragraphs as forming the answer offered by Mr. Disraeli to the Queen, Mr. Gladstone reported to her (March 14) that “he did not find himself able to gather their precise effect”:—
The former of the two, if it stood alone, would seem to imply that Mr. Disraeli was prepared to accept office with a view to an immediate dissolution of parliament, but not otherwise; since it states that he believes himself able to form a suitable administration, but not “to carry on your Majesty's government in the present House of Commons.” In the latter of the two paragraphs Mr. Disraeli has supposed your Majesty to have remarked that “Mr. Gladstone was not inclined to recommend a dissolution of parliament,” and has stated that “he himself would not advise your Majesty to take that step.” Your Majesty will without doubt remember that Mr. Gladstone tendered no advice on the subject of dissolution generally, but limited himself to comparing it with the alternative of resignation, which was the only question at issue, and stated that on the part of the cabinet he humbly submitted resignation of their offices, which they deemed to be the step most conformable to their duty. Mr. Gladstone does not clearly comprehend the bearing of Mr. Disraeli's closing words; as he could not tender advice to your [pg 450] Majesty either affirmatively or negatively on dissolution, without first becoming your Majesty's adviser. Founding himself upon the memorandum, Mr. Gladstone is unable to say to what extent the apparent meaning of the one paragraph is modified or altered by the other; and he is obliged to trouble your Majesty, however reluctantly, with this representation, inasmuch as a perfectly clear idea of the tenor of the reply is a necessary preliminary to his offering any remark or advice upon it; which, had it been a simple negative, he would have felt it his duty to do.
Between six and seven in the evening Colonel Ponsonby came with a letter from the Queen to the effect that Mr. Disraeli had unconditionally declined to undertake the formation of a government. In obedience to the Queen's commands Mr. Gladstone proceeded to give his view of the position in which her Majesty was placed:—
March 15.—Not being aware that there can be a question of any intermediate party or combination of parties which would be available at the present juncture, he presumes that your Majesty, if denied the assistance of the conservative or opposition party, might be disposed to recur to the services of a liberal government. He is of opinion, however, that either his late colleagues, or any statesman or statesmen of the liberal party on whom your Majesty might call, would with propriety at once observe that it is still for the consideration of your Majesty whether the proceeding which has taken place between your Majesty and Mr. Disraeli can as yet be regarded as complete. The vote of the House of Commons on Wednesday morning was due to the deliberate and concerted action of the opposition, with a limited amount of adventitious numerical aid. The division was a party division, and carried the well-known symbol of such divisions in the appointment of tellers of the opposition and government respectively. The vote was given in the full knowledge, avowed in the speech of the leader of the opposition, that the government had formally declared the measure on which the vote was impending to be vital to its existence. Mr. Gladstone humbly conceives that, according to the well-known principles of our parliamentary government, an opposition which has in this [pg 451] manner and degree contributed to bring about what we term a crisis, is bound to use and to show that it has used its utmost efforts of counsel and inquiry to exhaust all practicable means of bringing its resources to the aid of the country in its exigency. He is aware that his opinion on such a subject can only be of slight value, but the same observation will not hold good with regard to the force of a well-established party usage. To show what that usage has been, Mr. Gladstone is obliged to trouble your Majesty with the following recital of facts from the history of the last half century.... [This apt and cogent recital the reader will find at the end of the volume, see Appendix.]... There is, therefore, a very wide difference between the manner in which the call of your Majesty has been met on this occasion by the leader of the opposition, and the manner which has been observed at every former juncture, including even those when the share taken by the opposition in bringing about the exigency was comparatively slight or none at all. It is, in Mr. Gladstone's view, of the utmost importance to the public welfare that the nation should be constantly aware that the parliamentary action certain or likely to take effect in the overthrow of a government; the reception and treatment of a summons from your Majesty to meet the necessity which such action has powerfully aided in creating; and again the resumption of office by those who have deliberately laid it down,—are uniformly viewed as matters of the utmost gravity, requiring time, counsel, and deliberation among those who are parties to them, and attended with serious responsibilities. Mr. Gladstone will not and does not suppose that the efforts of the opposition to defeat the government on Wednesday morning were made with a previously formed intention on their part to refuse any aid to your Majesty, if the need should arise, in providing for the government of the country; and the summary refusal, which is the only fact before him, he takes to be not in full correspondence either with the exigencies of the case, or as he has shown, with the parliamentary usage. In humbly submitting this representation to your Majesty, Mr. Gladstone's wish is to point out the difficulty in which he would find himself placed were he to ask your Majesty for authority to inquire from his late colleagues whether they or any of them were prepared, if your [pg 452] Majesty should call on them, to resume their offices; for they would certainly, he is persuaded, call on him, for their own honour, and in order to the usefulness of their further service if it should be rendered, to prove to them that according to usage every means had been exhausted on the part of the opposition for providing for the government of the country, or at least that nothing more was to be expected from that quarter.
This statement, prepared after dinner, Mr. Gladstone took to Lord Granville that night (March 14). The next morning he again saw Lord Granville and Colonel Ponsonby, and despatched his statement to the Queen. “At 2.45,” he writes to Granville:—
The Queen sent Mr. Gladstone's long letter to Mr. Disraeli, and he replied in a tolerably long letter of his own. He considered Mr. Gladstone's observations under two heads: first, as an impeachment of the opposition for contributing to the vote against the bill, when they were not prepared to take office; second, as a charge against Mr. Disraeli himself that he summarily refused to take office without exhausting all practicable means of aiding the country in the exigency. On the first article of charge, he described the doctrine advanced by Mr. Gladstone as being “undoubtedly sound so far as this: that for an opposition to use its strength for the express purpose of throwing out a government which it is at the time aware that it cannot replace—having that object in view and no other—would be an act of recklessness and faction that could not be too strongly condemned.” But this, he contended, could not be imputed to the conservative opposition of 1873. The Irish bill was from the first strongly [pg 453] objected to by a large section of the liberal party, and on the same grounds that led the conservative opposition to reject it, namely, that it sacrificed Irish education to the Roman catholic hierarchy. The party whom the bill was intended to propitiate rejected it as inadequate. If the sense of the House had been taken, irrespective of considerations of the political result of the division, not one-fourth of the House would have voted for it. Mr. Gladstone's doctrine, Disraeli went on, amounted to this, that “whenever a minister is so situated that it is in his power to prevent any other parliamentary leader from forming an administration likely to stand, he acquires thereby the right to call on parliament to pass whatever measures he and his colleagues think fit, and is entitled to denounce as factious the resistance to such measures. Any such claim is one not warranted by usage, or reconcilable with the freedom of the legislature. It comes to this: that he tells the House of Commons, ‘Unless you are prepared to put some one in my place, your duty is to do whatever I bid you.’ To no House of Commons has language of this kind ever been addressed; by no House of Commons would it be tolerated.”
As for the charge of summary refusal to undertake government, Mr. Disraeli contented himself with a brief statement of facts. He had consulted his friends, and they were all of opinion that it would be prejudicial to the public interests for a conservative ministry to attempt to conduct business in the present House of Commons. What other means were at his disposal? Was he to open negotiations with a section of the late ministry, and waste days in barren interviews, vain applications, and the device of impossible combinations? Was he to make overtures to the considerable section of the liberal party that had voted against the government? The Irish Roman catholic gentlemen? Surely Mr. Gladstone was not serious in such a suggestion. The charge of deliberate and concerted action against the Irish bill was 'not entirely divested of some degree of exaggeration.' His party was not even formally summoned to vote against the government measure, but to support an amendment which was seconded from the liberal benches, [pg 454] and which could only by a violent abuse of terms be described as a party move.
On Saturday afternoon Mr. Gladstone had gone down to Cliveden, and there at ten o'clock on the Sunday evening (March 16) he received a message from the Queen, enclosing Mr. Disraeli's letter, and requesting him to say whether he would resume office. This letter was taken by Mr. Gladstone to show that “nothing more was to be expected in that quarter,” and at eleven o'clock he sent off the messenger with his answer in the affirmative:—
Tuesday, March 18.—[To the Queen] The cabinet met informally at this house [11 Carlton House Terrace] at 2 p.m., and sat till 5-½.
[pg 455]The whole of the cabinet were ready to resume their offices. It was decided to carry on the government in the present parliament, without contemplating any particular limit of time for existence in connection with the recent vote.
Wednesday, March 19.—Went down to Windsor at midday; 3/4 hour with the Queen on the resignation, the statement tomorrow, the Duke of Edinburgh's marriage, royal precedence, Tennyson's honour; also she mentioned railway accidents and an assault on a soldier, and on luxury in food and dress. Dined with the Duke of Cambridge. Speaker's levee, saw Mr. Fawcett [who had been active in fomenting hostility] and other members. Then Mrs. Glyn's party.
Thursday, March 20.—H. of C. Made my explanation. Advisedly let pass Mr. Disraeli's speech without notice.
Mr. Gladstone said among other things:—
I felt reluctance personally from a desire for rest, the title to which had possibly been ... earned by labour. Also politically, because I do not think that as a general rule the experience we have had in former years of what may be called returning or resuming governments, has been very favourable in its character.... The subsequent fortunes of such governments lead to the belief that upon the whole, though such a return may be the lesser of two evils, yet it is not a thing in itself to be desired. It reminds me of that which was described by the Roman general according to the noble ode of Horace:—
Mr. Disraeli made a lengthy statement, covering a much wider field. The substance of the whole case after all was this. The minister could not dissolve for the reason that the [pg 456] defeat had strengthened all the forces against the bill and against the government, and the constituencies who had never looked on it with much favour after its rejection by the Irish to satisfy whom it had been invented, now regarded it with energetic disfavour. The leader of the opposition, on the other hand, produced a long string of ingenious reasons for not abiding by the result of what was his own act: as, for example, that dissolution could not be instant; to form a government would take time; financial business must be arranged; a policy could not be shaped without access to official information; in this interval motions would be made and carried on plausible questions, and when the election came, his friends would go to the country as discredited ministers, instead of being a triumphant opposition. In writing to his brother Robertson, Mr. Gladstone glances at other reasons:—
Speaker Brand says: “Disraeli's tactics are to watch and wait, not showing his hand nor declaring a policy; he desires to drive Gladstone to a dissolution, when he will make the most of Gladstone's mistakes, while he will denounce a policy of destruction and confiscation, and take care to announce no policy of his own. His weakness consists in the want of confidence of some of his party.”