One friend of O'Connell was succeeded by another, and George William Frederick Villiers, fourth Earl of Clarendon, was sworn in as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland shortly after Lord Bessborough's death. It was understood that he was to be the last Viceroy of Ireland. He was then forty-seven years of age, twenty-seven of which had been spent in the service of the country. At twenty he was an attaché to the British Embassy at St. Petersburg; from 1827 to 1829 a commissionership of Customs took him to Ireland, where he studied the Irish question so effectively that the Lord-Lieutenant, the Marquis of Anglesey, was glad to have his advice. When he left Madrid, the Spanish Government struck a medal in his honour as a tribute to his successful occupancy of an embassy by no means the easiest in Europe. In 1838 he declined the Governor-Generalship of Canada: indeed, he made a habit of declining honours, amongst these being a twice-offered marquisate and two pressing invitations to govern India. In 1847, however, he accepted the post of Viceroy of Ireland, and with Lady Clarendon, who was a daughter of the Earl of Verulam, he entered upon his remarkable term of office. A year before he had presided over the Board of Trade, and this was his most onerous ministerial appointment until he went to Ireland.
The strongest and wisest of men would have failed in Ireland during the period bounded by the years 1847 and 1852—the time covered by Lord Clarendon's viceroyalty—and the Lord-Lieutenant was by no means entitled to be considered above the average in strength and wisdom. He was a Liberal, and a Free Trader, and a friend of O'Connell, and he had numerous ideas that he hoped would fructify to Ireland's gain, but he never had a real chance. In succession he had to face the Young Ireland insurrection, the famine, Orange disturbances in several counties, the ghastly economic problems created by the increasing emigration of the peasantry, and the consequent bankruptcy of the landlords. Clarendon laboured at the Castle and in London in a hopeless endeavour to restore order out of chaos. To defeat William Smith O'Brien and his followers was ridiculously easy, but it was another matter coping with a famine that threatened to wipe the peasant population out of existence. Ireland, ever the thorn in the crown of British statesmanship, drove Russell to distraction, and made Clarendon old before his time. Daily plots to assassinate him were duly reported to the police, and by them to the viceroy; Lady Clarendon was induced to spend most of her time in England, and eventually so virulent did the enemies of the Government become that for days the viceroy was placed in the humiliating position of being unable to go beyond the precincts of Dublin Castle. At viceregal parties a large percentage of those present consisted of spies and detectives. In the country blood was being shed—at the Castle lives were being worn out. Clarendon was courageous enough, but courage is only a secondary attribute in a statesman. Wisdom was wanted, and wisdom was not to be found. The executive at Dublin scarcely understood the temper of the country. The Lord-Lieutenant's policy was vigorous, but its administration haphazard and spasmodic.
Whenever an experiment or change was tried, it was abandoned in panic before anyone could judge the results. The viceroy overshadowed the Chief Secretary, and thus all the acts of the queen's representative were coloured by the opinions of one political party. To the mass of the people of Ireland the throne of England symbolized oppression and persecution.
In this vague and bewildering state of affairs there was no room for social pleasantries, though Castle seasons came and went with grim regularity. There was, however, some compensation in store for the harassed viceroy, for to everybody's surprise it was announced that Queen Victoria intended to visit Ireland.
Queen Victoria's first visit
The first visit to Ireland of Queen Victoria took place in 1849. Her Majesty was accompanied by the Prince Consort, and the royal parents brought their children with them. Their stay in Ireland had to be limited to five days, and a great deal had to be compressed into the short time at their disposal. Ireland has always been courteous to its visitors of whatever rank, but Queen Victoria received an enthusiastic welcome that voiced her popularity with every class and creed in the country. She had undertaken the journey from a strong sense of duty; she actually experienced a sense of pleasure, and from that time forward there was at least one eminent person in England who understood the good qualities of the people of Ireland. On the surface, and to suit the phrase-mongers, they might be disloyal, but at heart they entertained a strong affection for the occupant of the throne of England. Queen Victoria knew this, and her opinion was endorsed by her successors, King Edward VII. and King George V., when they made the acquaintance of the people of the 'kingdom of Ireland.'
The royal visit accomplished, Dublin returned to its old condition of squalor. Agitation was rife, fostered by the pens and voices of a group of brilliant Irishmen. They had started the Nation newspaper, and had made it one of the most powerful organs in the country; other offshoots of the Young Ireland Press helped to pepper the Government, and as there was no champion on the English side, the patriots appeared to have matters all their own way. Arguments were unanswered, and were, therefore, accepted as infallible, and this condition of things continued for a time until the viceroy and his secretary, Mr. Corry Conellan, decided to have a newspaper champion of their very own. Sir William Somerville, the Chief Secretary, was called into the conference, and ways and means discussed. There can be no doubt of the fact that the Lord-Lieutenant could have had the aid of any one of a dozen clever journalists, but ashamed, perhaps, of their methods, they enlisted in their service a person of the name of Birch, whose only claim to notoriety was the proprietorship of the World, and a conviction ending in six months' imprisonment for having threatened to publish a defamatory article about a public official unless the latter paid for its suppression. Lord Clarendon was, of course, unaware of his hireling's police-court experiences, and he agreed with his private secretary's recommendation of Mr. Birch. The latter was, therefore, regularly supplied with opinions from the Castle upon all subjects relating to Ireland, and week by week the World did its best to counteract the effect produced by every issue of the Nation. It was a feeble attempt on Birch's part, who possessed neither the wit nor the talent of the Nation writers, and his employers tired of his futilities. The hack was given notice, and his World was abandoned by the viceregal party. But Mr. Birch was a gentleman with a knowledge of a greater world; he decided that Lord Clarendon and his Chief Secretary could be made to pay, and so he concocted a list of services rendered and demanded a honorarium of £7,000 for his trouble.
A 'cause célèbre'
When the claim was first made, the Lord-Lieutenant declined to pay a penny more. He reminded Birch that he had received nearly £2,000 in return for very little work, but the journalist did not wish to argue the rights or wrongs of his claim—he wanted money, or else he would bring them into court and open his mouth. This frightened Lord Clarendon, who compromised with Birch by paying him the sum of £2,000 to withdraw his action. The journalist accepted, and turned his attention to the Chief Secretary, who wisely refused to be blackmailed, and accordingly, in the month of December, 1851, the élite of Dublin crowded the approaches to the Four Courts, to witness the spectacle of a viceroy in the witness-box being cross-examined by counsel for the plaintiff. There were rumours that the most sensational disclosures would be made, and in official circles there was much trepidation. By now the viceroy had learned the lesson that to attempt to conciliate a blackmailer was the most stupid form folly could assume. He agreed to submit himself to cross-examination—the only course if he desired to free himself from his late confederate.
Birch boldly stated his case, and described how he had been sent for by the viceroy's private secretary, and bought over by the Government. He had been instructed to reply to the attacks of the Nation, and, so he said, given a free hand in the spending of money. One story is good until another is told, and Birch's was largely discounted when the defence made its explanation. Lord Clarendon confessed that he had paid £3,700 altogether to Birch, and had received practically nothing in return. Of this sum £2,000 had been paid to the journalist to abandon an action he had entered against the viceroy, claiming £4,800 and £3 10s. costs. The action tried was ostensibly against Sir William Somerville, the Chief Secretary, but everybody knew that it was merely another attempt on the insatiable Birch's part to extract more money from the Lord-Lieutenant.
The trial lasted several days, but when the jury were allowed to retire, they made short work of Birch, whose cross-examination had killed his chances of success. Four minutes' deliberation was sufficient for the jurymen to bring in a verdict for the defendants, to whom they awarded costs to the amount of sixpence. It was a blow to the prestige of Lord Clarendon, though the right-minded admitted his honesty in declining to be blackmailed by an adventurer. Naturally, the opposition party made great capital out of it, and the Nation attained the dignity of a classic. For many weeks its pages were never without a reference to the cause célèbre, one of these being a neat epigram, which read:
'"Lord C. has grown most awfully religious,"
Said Corry Conellan with a rueful air;
"At least, his trepidation is prodigious
As to how in the next World he'll fare!":
With all the stubbornness of an English gentleman, the viceroy remained on at his post. He was anxious to discover the solution to the problems of the day. English money poured into the country to relieve the famine-stricken areas, and the landlords were helped also, but this did not augur tranquillity in the future. In despair the viceroy began a policy of favouring the patriotic party; he tried conciliation, made advances, and offered the hand of friendship, only to be called a coward, and earn the distrust of his own party. He then reversed his policy with the usual result—nobody was pleased, and when in 1852 Lord Clarendon's term came to an end, he was adjudged by all classes to have failed, although in such times Clarendon's failure was not without its personal compensations. He had the satisfaction of knowing that no man could have succeeded, and history has proved that to be a fact. His subsequent career is part of the history of England, for he was Foreign Secretary from 1853 to 1858, an epoch rendered memorable by the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny. In 1870 he died suddenly, seventy years of age.
A remarkable sportsman
Lord Derby's first Government began on February 27, 1852, and ended in the following December. During that short period the Viceroy of Ireland was Lord Eglinton and Winton, a nobleman who is best remembered as the promoter of the Eglinton tournament, an attempt to revive the old-time glory of the age of chivalry. This freak cost him £40,000, a small sum to one possessed of great wealth, a fact he made evident throughout his stay in Dublin. His lavish entertainments created a new era in viceregal hospitality. Lord Eglinton was essentially what may be described as a sportsman, using the term in the old sense, and not as it is now understood. His racing stable was about the largest and most successful in England, and during the forty-nine years (1812-61) he lived, he helped to enliven the crowd. He was devoted to sport, and some surprise was expressed when he agreed to govern Ireland, but he liked the country, and in 1858, on Lord Derby's return, he went back to Dublin, but within sixteen months he resigned, and in June, 1859, it became necessary to find a successor. He was scarcely interested in politics, though in 1854 he moved a resolution in the Lords asking for a commission to inquire into the working of the Board of Education in Ireland. During his second viceroyalty he married again—the first Lady Eglinton having died in 1853—and for a few months a daughter of the Earl of Essex acted as the hostess of Dublin Castle and the Viceregal Lodge. Personally untouched by the political difficulties of the country, Lord Eglinton had the merit of realizing the hopelessness of trying to solve Irish problems, and he did more good with his lavish dinners than the well-meaning Clarendon had with his painstaking investigations into, and midnight studies of, what are termed, for want of a better name, 'Irish affairs.' He was given the United Kingdom peerage of Winton—an earldom—on his retirement from Ireland, the grateful ministry thus acknowledging his popularity as a sportsman, and helping us to remember that he won the St. Leger three times and the Derby once.
Political affairs having terminated Lord Eglinton's first viceroyalty towards the close of 1852, Lord Aberdeen, the Prime Minister, appointed the Earl of St. Germans to Ireland. It was yet another attempt to meet the criticism that English statesmen and Irish viceroys were absolutely ignorant of and indifferent to Irish problems. Lord St. Germans was fifty-four, and for some years—1841 to 1845—had been Chief Secretary for Ireland. He was a man of ability and courage, and as the author of the Eliot Convention taught the participants in the Carlist rising in Spain something of the decencies of warfare. As Chief Secretary for Ireland, his time had been spent in dealing with the numerous petty rebellions and their leaders; he introduced a Bill to restrict the sale of firearms and the importation of ammunition; the Government found it unacceptable, and Eliot went out of office to be given the Postmaster-Generalship by Peel, and later the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland.
Lord St. Germans married in 1824 a grand-daughter of the first Marquis Cornwallis, and both became intimate friends of the royal family. In 1853 Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort visited Dublin to open the great International Exhibition, and, of course, they were enthusiastically welcomed by the whole of the country. Lord and Lady St. Germans took the lead in a splendid series of festivities that celebrated the visit of the queen. Political motives may have suggested the visit, but in all probability the anxiety of Her Majesty to see Ireland again was not lessened by the fact that her friend was the viceroy.
The Earl of Carlisle
St. Germans' retirement in 1855 to become Lord Steward and confidant of the queen until his death, at the age of seventy-nine, in 1877, was followed by Lord Carlisle's first term of office. As Lord Morpeth he had been Chief Secretary for more than six years—1835-41—the post having been given him because it was his amendment to the address that turned out the Peel administration in the spring of 1835. Lord Morpeth, as he was known during the twenty odd years he sat in Parliament, was the most workmanlike minister of his generation. With the assistance of Thomas Drummond, his under-secretary, he framed the Irish Tithe Bill, the Irish Municipal Reform Bill, and the Irish Poor Law Bill; and, although hampered by the House of Lords and by the fact that he was regarded as Lord Melbourne's hostage for good behaviour to Daniel O'Connell, he was a most successful Chief Secretary in a time when success was very dearly bought. He was, therefore, essentially a safe man when he became viceroy on the nomination of Lord Palmerston in February, 1855. He held the post until October, 1864, with the exception of the sixteen months occupied by Lord Eglinton's second viceroyalty, between February, 1858, and June, 1859.
It is not possible to say that any Viceroy of Ireland has been successful, because there is no such thing as pleasing the numerous parties into which the democracy and aristocracy of the country is divided, but Lord Carlisle went as near success as any human being could. A fine statue by J. H. Foley, erected in Phoenix Park in 1870, is evidence of the popularity of George William Frederick Howard, seventh Earl of Carlisle. He was an emancipationist when it was dangerous to confess to such ultra-Liberalism, and his speech when introducing the Irish Tithe Bill in the House of Commons in 1835—he was but thirty-three—remains one of the best speeches by an Englishman on Irish affairs. He took a genuine interest in the welfare of the country, and did his best. The 'patriots' denounced him as a tool of a tyrannical Government; the few that made his personal acquaintance discovered a scholarly nobleman with the most amiable manner in the world. He never married, and consequently did not entertain on the same lavish and indiscriminate scale as his predecessors, but Dublin Castle was all the better for its acquaintance with the eminent persons the viceroy dined and wined there. Another visit of the Queen and Prince Albert, inspired by the fact that the Prince of Wales was quartered with his regiment at the Curragh, was a feature of Lord Carlisle's term.
There were, of course, the usual political agitations, and although the Smith O'Brien rising had collapsed ignominiously, a new force in Irish affairs came into existence about the time that Lord Carlisle was concluding his first viceroyalty. The Irish in America had begun to take a practical interest in Irish affairs. They subscribed large sums of money to aid the cause of Irish independence, and for six years, beginning with 1858, great preparations were made for the striking of the decisive blow. James Stephens and others founded the Fenian organization described by Mr. Gladstone as having its root in Ireland and its branches in the United States. During the latter months of Lord Carlisle's viceroyalty there were one or two small attempts on the part of the Fenians to make themselves prominent, but it was not until Lord Wodehouse was in power at Dublin Castle that English ministers realized the gravity of the new situation created by Stephens and his friends. Lord Carlisle's resignation was brought about by ill-health, and in October, 1864, he left Ireland, to die before the close of the year. It illustrates the viceroy's position in social and literary circles to recall the fact that when the country celebrated in 1864 the tercentenary of the birth of William Shakespeare, Lord Carlisle should be selected to preside over the festivities at Stratford-on-Avon.
The viceroyalty of Lord Wodehouse brought him an earldom in the year he retired from office—1868—but it would be an exaggeration to say that he was conspicuously successful. Until his appointment to Ireland, Wodehouse had had experience of under-secretaryships only, at the Foreign and Indian Offices, and Lord Palmerston's selection came as a surprise. It may have been due to the fact that Lord Wodehouse's wife was a daughter of an Irish peer, the last Earl of Clare, and there have been selections for the viceroyalty based on even more frivolous and cynical reasons. There was, of course, a great deal of anxious and dangerous work for Lord Wodehouse to do, and within a few months of his arrival in Dublin he was coping night and day with the Fenian rising. At first all the viceroy's energy and the underground activities of his subordinates seemed helpless against the efforts of the latest society for bringing about separation from England, but Lord Wodehouse was not dismayed, and he met murder with execution and assassination with the rope. The Fenian movement culminated in 1867 in a series of shameless murders that once more drew the attention of the English nation to the disturbed condition of Ireland.
In the May of 1867 Mr. Gladstone declared in the House of Commons that the time was near when the Government would have to deal with the Irish Church, one of the strongest arguments of the Fenian party. Following this declaration came the murder of a policeman in Manchester, when an attempt was made to rescue two Fenian prisoners. Three men were executed for the crime, and as the 'Manchester martyrs' they are to be found in the calendar of Nationalism. There was a melodramatic attempt to blow up a London prison, and thus free a Fenian incarcerated within its walls. Everywhere the mention of the name of Ireland produced a feeling of panic and an expression of profound contempt.
The Earl of Kimberley
Meanwhile Lord Wodehouse, whose administration, ending in 1866, was wholly political, acted with rigour and fearlessness. The Home Rulers mocked him, issuing imitation proclamations signed 'Woodlouse.' He turned aside from signing warrants to welcome, in May, 1865, the Prince of Wales—afterwards King Edward VII.—to Dublin to open the International Exhibition, but that was almost the only occasion when he made a public appearance unassociated with politics. There was some effort to maintain the social side of Dublin Castle government, but the times were not favourable to hospitality, and when in 1866 the viceroy was succeeded by the Marquis of Abercorn, and took his place in Mr. Gladstone's first ministry as Lord Privy Seal, under his new title of Earl of Kimberley, there was neither regret nor gratitude expressed for his departure. The Nationalists and their Fenian allies could not be expected to show approval or disapproval of persons who merely administered the same system. To them Dublin Castle was the outward token of England's rule in Ireland, and their object was to destroy its existence.
Lord Kimberley died in 1902, aged seventy-six. He is not remembered for his Irish viceroyalty, but as Foreign Secretary under Lord Rosebery in 1892-94 he displayed an ability that was something above mere industry. He declined to join an alliance which had for its object the coercion of Japan after the latter's victory over China, and this far-seeing act was the first step towards the Anglo-Japanese alliance which many consider Lord Lansdowne's greatest achievement during his tenure of the Foreign Office. Lord Kimberley was Colonial Secretary in the days when the affairs of the outer Empire were not considered very important, and a knowledge of the colonies something akin to bad form. His administration of Indian affairs was decidedly tame, but he did no harm. It was his fate who once had been a member of the strongest Liberal Cabinet in the history of party government to witness the Liberal debacle that followed the resignation of the Rosebery Government. In the palmy days of Liberalism it was his good fortune to serve under Gladstone—towards the close of his life he sat in the Cabinet of a man who, having won the greatest prize of political life too easily, treated it with contempt, and in doing so wrecked the party which enabled him to win some fame as a statesman. To Lord Kimberley fell the task of leading the Liberal minority in the House of Lords, and when he died in 1902, the Conservative and Unionist party was in an apparently impregnable position, and Liberalism was in the depths.
The fall of the Liberal ministry brought Lord Derby to the head of the Government, with Disraeli as his Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Prime Minister thereupon asked the Marquis of Abercorn to accept the difficult and laborious post of Viceroy of Ireland, and the hazardous position was accepted from a sense of duty. Lord Abercorn was in 1866 fifty-five years of age, and thirty-four years earlier he had married Lady Louisa Russell, a daughter of the sixth Duke of Bedford, another viceregal family. The viceroy was a popular landlord, though he, too, had a constitutional objection to tenants who would not pay their rents. But the respectable classes admired him, and those who knew him personally considered that he was the right man for Ireland. He was the proudest man in Ireland, with a flamboyant love of display. Fenianism was most active during his first term, and Abercorn was compelled to adopt similar methods in dealing with the trouble as had been part of the Liberal administration of his predecessor. Ireland has always refused to accept the spirit of the English party system, and whether Liberal or Conservative ministry was in power, Dublin Castle remained the same. There were the usual evictions, riots, murders, and other crimes scarcely less reprehensible, and the viceroy, although protected to some extent by the Chief Secretary, who was, of course, the mouthpiece of the Irish Government in the House of Commons, found himself compelled by force of circumstances to undertake political work against which his soul revolted. Lord Abercorn was not a man to revel in a display of the power of the police, or even of the tenacity and strength of the Castle bureaucracy. He aimed at the improvement of the masses, the progress of education, and the cultivation of the fine arts. In society the viceroy and the marchioness were most popular. He was an intimate friend of the queen. No charge of alienism could be laid against the head of the Irish Hamiltons, and while every other great landlord had his land troubles, the tenants of the Marquis of Abercorn had realized in a practical manner their indebtedness to their landlord. If anybody should have been the ideal viceroy Lord Abercorn was the man; but here, again, any success achieved was purely social, and confined to a small area. The unruly state of the country, its increasing poverty, and its record of crime, found no palliative in the reign of the proudest of the Hamiltons.
Prince and Princess of Wales
In April, 1868, the Prince and Princess of Wales visited Dublin, to prove again that if Ireland had the reputation of being a nation of rebels, it could be courteous to distinguished visitors. Lord and Lady Abercorn received them in Dublin, and there were great rejoicings. The executive had taken the most elaborate precautions for the safety of the royal pair, but events proved that they were quite unnecessary, and Ireland might have been one of the most prosperous countries in the world for all the prince and princess saw to the contrary. Within the sacred walls of St. Patrick's Cathedral the Lord-Lieutenant presided over a gorgeous ceremony, which formally created the Prince of Wales a Knight of St. Patrick, and the banquet that followed in St. Patrick's Hall was one of great splendour. The dinner brought together not only all the notables of Ireland, but also the largest gathering of English and Irish detectives that the Castle has ever contained. The number of the detectives was quite embarrassing, but it was considered necessary, with recollections of Manchester and Clerkenwell. The royal guests were ignorant of this part of the programme, however, although the prince once addressed a question to a gentleman whom he thought was the viceroy's secretary. He was not enlightened as to the identity of the detective-inspector from London, who was part of his bodyguard.
Benjamin Disraeli was Prime Minister at the time of the royal visit to Ireland, and he had no difficulty in getting Abercorn a dukedom. On August 10, 1868, his elevation was announced, and Ireland's only duke—his Grace of Leinster—was joined by a second wearer of the strawberry leaves. The new dignity had been earned years before Lord Abercorn lived in Dublin Castle, and by no stretch of official imagination could it be said to hallmark the Abercorn administration of 1866 to 1868. The General Election in the latter year displaced Disraeli, and gave Mr. Gladstone the reins of power, and the Duke of Abercorn went out with the Tory Government to enjoy himself in opposition until 1874, when Disraeli tasted the sweets of office again.
The Irish Church disestablished
We have Mr. Gladstone's own admission that the Fenian agitation of the sixties was the primary cause of English interest in the Irish Church, and in the great land question. It is one of the truisms of history that agitation on unconstitutional methods is more effective than the employment of peaceful persuasion. Catholic Emancipation proved that. When Gladstone took office it was known that he would attempt to create a contented Ireland by disestablishing the Irish Church, and by passing a great Land Act. He chose as his Irish viceroy Earl Spencer, then an unknown and untried young man in his thirty-third year. To be the representative of the premier in Ireland was the most onerous and dangerous position in the Government. The viceroy found society, lay and clerical, against him, and with the passing of the Land Act of 1870 the upper-class Irish believed what they had only doubted before—that Gladstone was the worst enemy of Ireland, and that Lord Spencer was his dangerous satellite. There is no need to enter into the controversy that ensued when Gladstone introduced the Bill disestablishing the Church of Ireland, as the Protestant minority was termed absurdly. Archbishop Trench declared passionately that the disestablishment would 'put to the Irish Protestants the choice between apostasy and expatriation, and every man among them who has money or position, when he sees his Church go, will leave the country. If you do that,' he continued, 'you will find the country so difficult to manage that you will have to depend upon the gibbet and the sword.' It would be unfair to dwell upon the ludicrous moanings of the Church party; they prophesied not only the extinction of the Irish Protestants, but the end of Christendom. We can be content with the knowledge that time has given us of the prosperity and progress of Protestantism in Ireland.
It is a splendid example of the irony of life to recall Mr. Gladstone's declaration when the telegram arrived at Hawarden, informing him that an emissary was on his way from Windsor Castle. 'My mission,' he said, 'is to pacify Ireland.' That may have been true, but Gladstone brought a sword rather than peace to the country which had such a long and fateful connection with the statesmanship of the great Liberal. Lord Spencer, his first viceroy, experienced all the fury of rebellious Nationalism, and during his second viceroyalty had the unfortunate distinction of being the governor of a country where no man's life was safe, and where murder and outrage were as common as sand.
This is, however, anticipating events. The refusal of Lord Halifax to accept the viceroyalty had restricted Gladstone's choice. Liberalism, even in its mildest state, has never appealed to territorial magnates, and the Whiggism of Lord Spencer was scarcely the fire-and-thunder Liberalism of his chief, but he stepped into the breach, and for the rest of his life was one of the strongest champions of a political faith unpopular amongst his own class. Born in 1836, and married at the age of twenty-two, he brought the courage of youth to bear upon the Irish situation. Gladstone never had a more faithful colleague and Dublin Castle a more conscientious occupant. Dublin society was inclined to frown upon the viceroy, and there was some talk of a boycott of the viceregal functions, but Lord and Lady Spencer were independent of the support of the official and professional class which forms what is called society in the capital of Ireland. A great English landlord and his wife could create any society they chose, being somewhat in a similar position to the Scotsman who declared that wherever he sat was the head of the table. Lord Hartington, better known as the Duke of Devonshire, was Chichester Fortescue's successor as Chief Secretary, and the two noblemen carried out Gladstone's reforms with a thoroughness that for a time gave the impression that at last the Irish nation was to be pacified and made amenable to English rule.
The Land Act of 1870
The disestablishment of the Protestant Church in Ireland was, however, a minor reform compared with the great Land Act of 1870. This was a measure of reform that took away the breath of the Tory leaders, but it has proved a most beneficial act, and when in the course of time it became obsolete, it was a Unionist administration that improved upon it, and passed an Act which, compared with that of 1870, or even that of 1881, out-Gladstoned Gladstone. It was not a brilliant success, because it tried to do too much, and, of course, offended both parties; but as the first attempt on a large scale to settle this many-sided question, it deserves a high place in the records of Gladstone's memorable Government of 1868-74.
Any determined effort to ostracize the viceroy was soon killed by the presence and influence of Lady Spencer. She had been no more than twenty-four hours in Dublin when she was nicknamed "Spencer's Fairy Queen," a most flattering description of a great beauty and a charming woman. Lord Spencer's skill as a horseman was in his favour, and his regular attendance in the chase earned him the respect of a large community which has a hereditary affection for the noblest of animals.
Castle seasons were enlivened by visits from the Prince of Wales, the Princess Louise, and the Prince Arthur, now the Duke of Connaught; while the important Dublin Exhibition was opened, and numerous Irish industries patronized and helped.
The fall of the Government was hastened by the Premier's anxiety to fulfil his pledge to pacify Ireland. The Church question was settled, the land problem on its way to solution, and now Gladstone turned his attention to the grievances of Roman Catholics on the question of a university. The Prime Minister's pose as the only man capable of settling Irish affairs had not been strengthened by the passing of a coercion act in the spring of 1870, but if he imprisoned Fenians, he generally followed it up by pressing for their release. And firmly believing that if he conciliated the Roman Catholics he would bring peace to the country, he introduced a measure into the House of Commons seeking powers to establish a university acceptable to all classes and creeds. It was defeated by three votes in one of the most memorable and significant divisions Parliament has known. Friends and foes abstained, and friends and foes voted with surprising inconsistency, but the net result was the discomfiture of the Gladstonians and the immediate resignation of the premier, the latter act prompted, no doubt, by the knowledge that there was no other possible leader of a Government in the country. Mr. Gladstone came back—as he knew he would—but the effects of the Irish University bill were felt right down to the day that the leader of the Liberal party heard the results of the General Election of 1874, and realized that his great rival, Benjamin Disraeli, was at last at the head of a working majority.
When writing of Gladstone's colleagues, it is difficult to resist the temptation to turn from them to speak of their chief. Lord Spencer, however, was something more than a mere official obeying the orders of his superior. His first term in Ireland laid the foundation of his public life, and exhibited those principles of devotion to duty, as he considered his duty to be, and a single-minded adherence to the political principles that distinguished him above his changing and vacillating colleagues. When Mr. Gladstone proposed his university reforms, the viceroy worked his hardest, and Dublin Castle witnessed numberless interviews between him and representatives of both Churches. He saw Cardinal Cullen and obtained his views. As usual, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, never doubtful as to its wants, asked too much, but Spencer listened politely, and in due course informed Gladstone. Doubtless, the English nobleman failed to understand the extraordinary mixture of politics and religion that is always part of Irish affairs, but he tried to understand and even to sympathize.
Gladstone's defeat in 1874 meant, of course, the viceroy's retirement from Dublin, and if the majority of the members of the Liberal administration regretted their defeat, Lord Spencer was not one of them. He merited the rest opposition gave him, and for six years Tory noblemen acted as viceroys of Ireland.
The Duke of Abercorn's second viceroyalty was quiet and threadbare. Disraeli was not the man to attempt heroic measures. Perhaps he laboured to avoid Irish affairs, which since the Union had threatened to monopolize the time of Parliament. He sent Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, afterwards Viscount St. Aldwyn, to the Irish office, and trusted to the viceroy and the Chief Secretary to shield him from the worries created by the awkward fact that a Prime Minister's duties were not confined to England. When the Duke of Abercorn sent in his resignation, in December, 1876, owing to the state of his wife's health, Disraeli prevailed upon another duke to take his place. This was the sixth Duke of Marlborough, who had declined the viceroyalty in the first days of the Government's existence. The Duke and Duchess of Abercorn retired into private life, popular and respected, the duke living until 1885.
The Duke of Marlborough
The incoming Lord-Lieutenant was in his fifty-fifth year when in the early days of 1877 he was sworn in as Viceroy of Ireland. One of Disraeli's personal friends, the influence of the duke had helped the Prime Minister from the outer ring of plebeian obscurity into the inner circle of Conservative exclusiveness. Disraeli had a passion for dukes, although that rank suggested dulness to his bizarre and Oriental imagination. Marlborough had been Lord President of the Council in 1868 during Disraeli's first administration, and he was induced to reconsider his decision not to join the ministry when the Duke of Abercorn retired.
The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough directed their attention to the amelioration of the lot of the poverty-stricken peasantry, and they endeavoured also to aid the trade of Ireland. When the failure of the crops brought a famine, the duchess inaugurated a relief fund, which, with the help of the Mansion House, London, brought over £170,000 to the rescue of the sufferers. Many other acts of kindness could be recorded of them, and although their reign necessarily concluded in May, 1880, on the destruction of the Tory Government, they accomplished much in a brief space of time, and, without being great reformers, achieved something in the way of reform. Her Excellency had been before her marriage Lady Frances Tempest, and was a daughter of the third Marquis of Londonderry. She was a dignified chatelaine of Dublin Castle, a fit partner for a great nobleman. The rumblings of the Home Rule agitation storm could be heard before they vacated the viceregal position, for by now Charles Stewart Parnell had arisen to sound a new battle-cry for Nationalist Ireland. The old methods of dead-and-gone agitators were to be improved upon, new ones invented and exploited, and a decisive battle fought for Irish independence.
Agitation and crime
The records of the day state that the Duke of Marlborough was 'popular' and 'successful,' but these are the records written by partisans. A popular viceroy generally means a Lord-Lieutenant who exhibits an amiable weakness to let things remain as they are, and as Marlborough did this, he was an especial favourite of the official party. He was, however, wise in his generation. Before his time history had taught the vital lesson that the viceroy who did his best to please all parties earned the hatred of all, and the men who ignored the pressing problems of the day, and turned his term of office into a social orgy, was acclaimed by the unthinking multitudes. Riots, and evictions, and murders, were common enough in the closing months of Marlborough's viceroyalty, but beyond giving his sanction to the various acts that dealt with agrarian crimes and the troublous land problem, the viceroy made no display of statesmanship or endangered his ducal equanimity. It was to the Duke of Marlborough that Disraeli addressed his letter asking the electors for a fresh mandate. He lived long enough to feel thankful that the English electors decided in 1880 to have nothing to do with Toryism, and so ordained that, instead of Beaconsfield nominating a viceroy, the task should be Gladstone's. During his stay in Dublin Marlborough had for private secretary Lord Randolph Churchill. In 1883 the duke died at the comparatively early age of sixty-one.
It was expected that Lord Spencer would return to Ireland, but he was selected to fill the decorative post of Lord President of the Council, and Earl Cowper was sent to cope with Parnell's followers. Cowper was forty-six years of age, and ten years previous to his appointment had married a daughter of the fourth Lord Northampton. He was a man of great strength of character, a charming host, and famous for a temperament that he never allowed to be ruffled. A perfect host, and a man of the world endowed with many talents, Earl Cowper might have succeeded at almost anything except the one particular task to which he was assigned. When he arrived in Dublin the country was in a state of rebellion, the remarkable success of Parnell in uniting all shades of Nationalists under his leadership having the result of presenting the most formidable opposition to the Government yet experienced in the history of both countries. Parnell had entered Parliament in 1875, and four years later was popularly acclaimed the new leader of the Irish people. His lightest words were sufficient to render null and void the most important Act of Parliament, his orders were reverenced and obeyed by a vast majority of his countrymen. When Lord Cowper took up his duties Parnell was the ruler of Ireland, and the efforts of the English Government to maintain a semblance of authority would have been ludicrous if the results had not been so tragic. Landlords, agents, and tenants were murdered in cold blood, peaceful citizens were dragged into foul conspiracy by their bullying neighbours, and Parnell went about in open defiance of the Government, preaching rebellion and its ghastly accompaniments wherever he came. Mr. W. E. Forster, the Chief Secretary, induced his official chief to advise the Cabinet to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and when Gladstone hesitated, a practical demonstration of its necessity was furnished by the arrest of Parnell charged with seditious conspiracy, his abortive trial owing to the disagreement of the Dublin jury, and the Irish leader's consequent triumph over his opponents. Then the power to imprison without trial was given to the Irish executive, and soon the gaols of the country were full to overflowing. With the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act the Land League was born, and a new terror to officialism created.
The Land League
Lord Cowper's viceroyalty has been tersely described as occupying 'two dismal years—the most dismal of the nineteenth century.' His own life was threatened, elaborate plots to terminate the Chief Secretary's existence were discovered as fast as an overworked detective department could unravel its agents' reports, and from all over the country murders were reported until it seemed that all sense of decency had long since departed from the country. Encouraged by the success of the Land League, a fresh series of revolting crimes shocked civilization. Terrified English ministers tried the effects of another Land Act, and in 1881 it was placed in the statute-book. This was a great triumph for the Land League, and was regarded by its members as the justification of its existence. Again a desire to conciliate had been interpreted as a sign of weakness.
The new Land Act did not decrease the agitation, and on October 12, 1881, a five-hour sitting of the Cabinet resulted in an order to the viceroy to have Parnell arrested under the Coercion Act. The Irish leader was thereupon taken to Kilmainham Gaol, and remained there for six months. Optimists expected that this bold stroke would intimidate the intimidators; it had an opposite effect. Mr. Forster had to report that crime was actually on the increase, and that the Land Act had not been of the slightest use. It was easy to imprison Parnell, but the spirit of the movement remained abroad in the people.
In despair Gladstone turned to Parnell, clutching at the straw presented by one of the Irishman's friends that Parnell was willing to discuss terms of peace with the Government. The premier was willing, anxious, in fact, to remove the reproach from his Government the state of Ireland entailed, and he sent Forster to open negotiations with the prisoner, who was a dictator. When Lord Cowper heard of the preliminaries to what became known as the Kilmainham Treaty he resigned, rightly deeming it demeaning and humiliating for responsible ministers to treat with a man who had roused the passions of the uncontrollables, and who, to his lasting disgrace, never denounced the crimes the Land League produced until the greatest crime of all convinced him that sometimes murder is a mistake. Mr. Gladstone appealed to Lord Spencer, a member of his Cabinet, and an experienced administrator of Irish affairs, to take up the most dangerous and irksome post in the Government. The earl could not, of course, refuse, for refusal in the circumstances could have been construed into a confession of cowardice. He had agreed in the Cabinet to the pourparlers with Parnell, and he was determined to give the Irish leader an opportunity of retrieving the blunders of the Land League, and doing so with a show of victory over the Government, which did not care about its reputation on Irish matters provided an end was made of the reign of the murderers.
State of the country
Immediate events justified Lord Cowper up to the hilt, who must have watched with a grim satisfaction the terrible results of Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy in the early eighties. When the time came that disclosed Mr. Gladstone as the champion of Home Rule, Lord Cowper took a leading part in the forces arrayed against his old chief. At a meeting in a London theatre addressed by Lord Salisbury and the Marquis of Hartington, Lord Cowper was in the chair, and his presence was a tower of strength to the cause. After the final defeat of Liberal Home Rule he dropped out of public life, and at his death—on July 19, 1905—he was almost forgotten by his contemporaries.
There is an admirable and eloquent description in Viscount Morley's 'Life of Gladstone' of the condition of Ireland when Lord Spencer began his second viceroyalty: 'In 1882 Ireland seemed to be literally a society on the verge of dissolution. The Invincibles still roved with knives about the streets of Dublin. Discontent had been stirred in the ranks of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and a dangerous mutiny broke out in the metropolitan force. Over half of the country the demoralization of every class, the terror, the fierce hatred, the universal distrust, had grown to an incredible pitch. The moral cowardice of what ought to have been the governing class was astounding. The landlords would hold meetings and agree not to go beyond a certain abatement, and then they would go individually and privately offer to the tenant a greater abatement. Even the agents of the law and the Courts were shaken in their duty. The power of random arrest and detention under the Coercion Act of 1881 had not improved the morale of magistrates and police. The Sheriff would let the word get out that he was coming to make a seizure, and profess surprise that the cattle had vanished. The whole countryside turned out thousands in half the counties in Ireland to attend flaming meetings, and if a man did not attend angry neighbours trooped up to know the reason why. The clergy hardly stirred a finger to restrain the wildness of the storm; some did their best to raise it. All that was what Lord Spencer had to deal with, the very foundations of the social fabric rocking.'