Parnell owes the release of his family estate from the encumbrances that he inherited. Parliament soon grew sick of the Irish Question in 1883.

Mr. Bradlaugh, however, furnished the House of Commons once more with a personal diversion. Lord Hartington’s pledge that the Attorney-General would bring in an Affirmation Bill was followed by an undertaking from Mr. Bradlaugh, that he would not press his claim to be sworn till the fate of this measure had been determined. Though the arguments for and against such a project had already been thrashed out, it was debated for a fortnight, the Tories straining every effort to waste time over its discussion. Finally it was defeated by a vote of 292 to 289; and when Mr. Bradlaugh wrote to the Speaker claiming his right to take the oath, Sir Stafford Northcote carried a resolution prohibiting him from doing so. On the 9th of July, in reply to Mr. Bradlaugh’s threat to treat this decision as invalid, Sir Stafford revived the resolution excluding him from the precincts of the House. Mr. Bradlaugh then brought an action against the Serjeant-at-Arms for enforcing this order, which the Attorney-General was instructed to defend.

The only real progress made by the Government with business before Easter was with the Bankruptcy Bill, the main object of which was to provide for an independent examination into all circumstances of insolvency, to be conducted by officials of the Board of Trade. It was read a second time and referred to the Grand Committee on Trade, who sent it back to the House of Commons on the 25th of June. The House of Lords passed it without cavil, and Mr. Chamberlain, who had charge of the measure, was congratulated on the ability and tact which he had displayed in conducting it. The Patents Bill, which reduced inventors’ fees, had the same happy history as the Bankruptcy Bill, in whose wake it followed. The Law Bills of the Ministry were less fortunate. The Bill establishing a Court of Appeal in criminal cases was fiercely opposed by the Tories, under the leadership of Sir Richard Cross, Sir Hardinge Giffard, and Mr. Gibson. It was before the Grand Committee on Law from the 2nd of April till the 26th of June, when it was reported to the House and dropped by the Government. The Criminal Code Bill was read a second time on the 12th of April, in spite of the hostility of the Irish Party, who resisted one of the provisions enabling magistrates to examine suspected persons. In the Standing Committee, however, the Bill was so pertinaciously obstructed by Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. Gorst, and Sir H. D. Wolff, that Sir Henry James abandoned it in despair. When Sir Henry James mentioned this fact in the House of Commons on the 21st of June, Sir H. D. Wolff asked Mr. Gladstone derisively “whether, having regard to the signal success of the principle of delegation and devolution,” he intended to refer any other Bills to Grand Committees. This question was accentuated by loud outbursts of mocking laughter from Lord Randolph Churchill, which, Mr. Gladstone declared, rendered it impossible for him even to hear the terms of the interpellation.

The Budget was introduced on the 5th of April by Mr. Childers, who stated that his estimated revenue and expenditure for the coming year would be £88,480,000 and £85,789,000. This showed a comfortable surplus which he exhausted by taking 1-1/2d. off the Income Tax, by making provisions to meet an expected loss on the introduction of sixpenny telegrams, by reductions on railway passenger duty, and by slight changes in the gun licence and in tax-collection. He also carried, in spite of strenuous opposition, a Bill to reduce the National Debt. By this Bill Mr. Childers created £40,000,000 of Chancery Stock into terminable annuities for twenty years, to follow those expiring in 1885. Then he created £30,000,000 of Savings Bank Stock into shorter annuities. As each fell in, it was to be followed by a longer one, so as to absorb the margin between the actual interest on the Debt and the sum set aside for its permanent service, thus hypothecating the taxes of the future. Mr. Childers promised, by his system, to wipe out £172,000,000 of debt in twenty years.

The Corrupt Practices Bill was read a second time on the 4th of June, and it not only restricted expenditure on elections, but inflicted stringent penalties for bribery and intimidation in every form, making candidates responsible for the acts of their agents, prohibiting the use of public-houses as committee-rooms, and the payment of conveyances to bring voters to the poll. The Tories, the Parnellites, and one or two Radicals like Mr. Peter Rylands, fought hard to relax the stringency of the measure. It was obstructed in Committee, but ultimately passed both Houses with no important alterations. The Agricultural Holdings Bill was also strongly opposed. It gave tenants a right to compensation for improvements, which was to be inalienable by contract. The most important amendment, which was moved and carried by Mr. A. J. Balfour, limiting compensation to the actual outlay, represented the spirit in which the Opposition sought to destroy the utility of the Bill. As Mr. Clare Sewell Read (one of the Conservatives who represented the agricultural interests) observed, this amendment enabled the landlord to say to the tenant, “Heads I win; tails you lose. If your improvement succeeds, I get the profit out of it, and you only the outlay; if it does not succeed, you get the loss.” The amendment was struck out on Report, and, though the House of Lords tried to mutilate the Bill, their worst amendments were rejected by the Commons, and the measure passed. The controversy in the House of Lords was remarkable for Lord Salisbury’s failure to hold his Party at the end firm to the policy of resistance. A useful Bill prohibiting payment of wages in public-houses was also passed. Nor was Ireland neglected. The Tramways Act enabled Irish Local Authorities to construct, with the support of Government guarantees, tramways and light railways, and the Government further assented to provisions to promote by State aid a scheme for transferring labourers from “congested” to thinly-peopled districts. In August a Bill was passed setting apart a portion of the Irish Church surplus to promote the building of fishing harbours. A useful Irish Registration Bill was rejected by the Peers, but Mr. T. P. O’Connor contrived to pass a Bill enabling Rural Sanitary Authorities to borrow money from the Government for the construction of labourers’ cottages. It cannot, however, be said that the Irish Members were grateful for these measures. They still pursued their favourite policy of exasperation, and their alliance with the Tories led to a more systematic and daring use of obstruction than had ever been seen in the House of Commons. At first Sir Stafford Northcote seemed unwilling to countenance obstructive tactics; but Lord Randolph Churchill’s bitter attacks on his leadership in the Times (April 2), and the impatience of the Tory Party, forced the hesitating hand of their leader in the Commons. The evil assumed such serious dimensions that Mr. Bright denounced at Birmingham, in terms of indignant eloquence,[185] “the men who now afflict the House, and who from night to night insult the majesty of the British people.” Thus it came to pass, as the Times said in its review of the Session, that “the main part of the legislation of the year, with the exception of one or two Bills, was huddled together, and hustled through in both Houses during the month of August, amidst an ever-dwindling attendance of Members.” There was only one Bill which was not obstructed—the Explosives Act; in fact, it was passed in a panic. The events that led to its production were somewhat startling. On the night of the 15th of March an attempt was made to blow up the Local Government Board Offices in Whitehall by dynamite, and about the same time a similar outrage was perpetrated on the offices of the Times in Printing House Square. Guards of soldiers and police were immediately posted at all places likely to be attacked, and the connection of these crimes with the seizures of dynamite which were from time to time made by the police in provincial towns, and the arrest of eight conspirators engaged in the “dynamite war” at Liverpool in March, could scarcely be doubted. On the 9th of April Sir William Harcourt’s Explosives Act was therefore carried through both Houses after an unavailing protest from Lord Salisbury, who complained that the Peers were taken by surprise.[186] After the Bill had become law packages of dynamite were seized at Leicester and Cupar-Fife; four men were condemned at Liverpool as dynamitards; several arrests were made at Glasgow; and on the 30th of October there were two explosions in the tunnel of the Metropolitan Railway—between Westminster and Charing Cross, and between Praed Street and Edgware Road.

Egypt furnished the Opposition with many opportunities for embarrassing the Ministry. Lord Hartington had seriously damaged the prestige of the Government by his pusillanimous declaration at the opening of the Session that the English troops would be recalled from Egypt in six months. Though Mr. Gladstone, on his return from Cannes, was compelled to throw his colleague over and explain that this statement was purely conjectural, the distrust which Lord Hartington had inspired could not be completely eradicated. A more serious difficulty, however, arose out of the exorbitant tolls which the Suez Canal Company levied on the shipping trade. Yielding to the pressure of shipping and commercial interests, Mr. Gladstone sanctioned an agreement by which M. de Lesseps was to provide additional accommodation by digging a second canal. He was also to reduce the tolls gradually, and admit a few Englishmen to his Board of Management. In return the British Government were to procure him the concession of the land for the second canal, and enable him to raise a loan of £8,000,000 at 3-1/4 per cent. A storm of opposition was raised to this project, on the ground that it recognised M. de Lesseps’s monopoly to the canalisation of the Isthmus of Suez. The agreement, which was announced on the 28th of April, was abandoned on the 23rd of July.

In South Africa the policy of the Government was attacked during the Session on the ground that it connived at the oppression of the native chiefs by the Boers, who were not carrying out the Transvaal Convention. The restoration and overthrow of Cetewayo also provoked criticism, but the verdict of the country was that the debates all ended in demonstrating one point, which was this: the existing tangle of affairs in South Africa was entirely due to the policy of the late Government, and the existing Government had not been able to discover any way of satisfactorily neutralising the blunders of their predecessors. But no question arising in British dependencies created so much strife as the Indian Criminal Procedure Amendment Bill, popularly called the Ilbert Bill. Lord Lytton had laid down a rule whereby every year one-sixth of the vacancies in the Indian Civil Service must be filled up by natives. As they advanced in the Magistracy and became eligible for service as District Magistrates and Sessions Judges, a difficulty arose. Either they must, like European officials of the same grades, be allowed to try Europeans as well as native offenders against the Criminal Law, or they must be virtually wasted. Moreover, an offensive slight must be put on the Indian servants of the Empress, by prohibiting them from exercising all the functions pertaining to their grade and rank. In Presidency towns no difficulty arose. There native magistrates of this grade were allowed to have jurisdiction over Europeans, the theory being that they acted under the moral censorship of a European press. But in country districts it was alleged that they could not be trusted. In fact, European magistrates must, according to the opponents of the Bill, be found for every district in which even a handful of Europeans were living. Yet, as Lord Lytton had diminished the number of Europeans in the Service and put natives in their places, a serious administrative difficulty might be created if the native judges were not entrusted with the duties of the Europeans whom they had displaced. An explosion of race-hatred was the result of the Ilbert Bill, and the same class of Anglo-Indians who denounced “Clemency” Canning during the “White Terror” of 1857, now denounced Lord Ripon in the same violent language. They even attempted to induce the Volunteers to resign, and Sir Donald Stewart, the Commander-in-Chief, who, like Sir Frederick Roberts, supported the measure, condemned the “wicked and criminal attempts” which the opponents of the Bill had made to stir up animosity against the Government in the Army. Ultimately a compromise was arrived at, by which a European when tried before a native judge could claim a jury, of which not less than one-half must consist of Europeans or Americans. Curiously enough, at the time this controversy was being developed into a fierce antagonism of races in India, tidings came to England to the effect that a tribe in Orissa had begun to worship the Queen as a goddess.[187] When the natives on the frontier elevated General John Nicholson to the dignity of a god, the stout soldier used to order his worshippers to be flogged for their idolatry. Whether any official steps were taken to discourage a cult that might have rendered the Queen-Empress ridiculous, was never known. The sect who took her for their deity seems to have vanished from Indian history.

The Queen played but a slight part in public life in the early part of 1883. Whilst at Osborne in January she awarded the Albert Medal to the survivors of the gallant exploring party who distinguished themselves by saving life at the Baddesley Colliery Explosion in May, 1882, and she sent to the Mayor of Bradford an expression of sympathy with the sufferers from the fall of a great chimney stack in that town at the end of the year—a disaster involving the sacrifice of fifty-three lives. On the 14th of February her Majesty held a Council at Windsor, and revised the Royal Speech for the opening of the Session. On the 19th of February she attended the funeral of Pay-Sergeant Mayo, of the Coldstream Guards, at Windsor, who had died suddenly whilst on duty at the Castle, and on the same day, owing to the Prince of Wales holding the opening levee of the season on her behalf, her Majesty was able to be present as one of the sponsors at the baptism of the infant son of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught at Windsor. On the 6th and 13th of March, however, her Majesty held Drawing Rooms at Buckingham Palace. On the 17th of March Lady Florence Dixie alleged that a murderous attack had been made on her in the shrubbery of her house at Windsor, by two men disguised as women. As her ladyship had been writing a good deal on the Irish Question, and as the town was in a panic over the dynamite war waged by the Fenians against public buildings, it was suggested that this outrage might have been planned by one of the Irish Secret Societies. Investigation, however, indicated that Lady Florence must have been labouring under a mistake, and the incident would have passed out of sight but for its effect on the Queen’s peace of mind. Lady Florence Dixie’s story had alarmed the Queen, showing her, as it did, that there was peril almost at the doors of Windsor Castle. Her Majesty sent Lord Methuen, Lady Ely, and Sir Henry Ponsonby with messages of sympathy to Lady Florence Dixie, and finally the Queen’s personal attendant, Mr. John Brown, was despatched to examine the ground and report on the circumstances of the outrage. He caught a chill in the shrubbery of Lady Florence Dixie’s villa, and when he returned to Windsor Castle complained of being ill. He died of erysipelas on the 27th of March, the day after the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Albany was christened. Brown was the son of a tenant of Colonel Farquharson’s and began life as gillie to the Prince Consort. For nineteen years he was the personal attendant of the Queen, and no servant was ever so completely trusted by a royal master or mistress. “John Brown,” writes the Queen in a note to her “Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands,” “in 1858 became my regular attendant out of doors everywhere in the Highlands. He commenced as gillie in 1859, and was selected by Albert and me to go with my carriage. In 1857 he entered our service permanently, and began in that year leading my pony, and advanced step by step by his good conduct and intelligence. His attentive care and faithfulness cannot be exceeded, and the state of my health, which of late years has been sorely tried and weakened, renders such qualifications most valuable, and, indeed, most needful upon all occasions. He has since most deservedly been promoted to be an upper servant and my permanent personal attendant (December, 1865). He has all the independence and elevated feelings peculiar to the Highland race, and is singularly straightforward, simple-minded, kind-hearted, and disinterested, always ready to oblige, and of a discretion rarely to be met with.” By all accounts Brown seems to have been an honest brusque sort of man, whose fidelity to his master and mistress won their entire confidence. Extraordinary stories were told in Society of his influence over the Queen, and of the almost despotic authority which he wielded over the Royal Family. Even the highest officers of the Royal Household had to speak him fairly, otherwise trouble came to them. He attended the Queen in all her walks and drives, and had the privilege of speaking to her with the rough candour in which he habitually indulged, on any subject he chose to talk about. He had often been engaged in services of a delicate nature for the Royal Family, and it was said that nothing could be said or done, no matter how secretly, at or about the Court, without his immediately knowing of it. Löhlein, the Prince Consort’s old valet, was the only person in the Household whom Brown never dared to meddle with. Through the Court Circular the Queen bewailed the “grievous shock” she felt at the “irreparable loss” of “an honest, faithful, and devoted follower, a trustworthy, discreet, and straightforward man,” whose fidelity “had secured for himself the real friendship of the Queen.” This grief was not only natural but eminently creditable to her. Brown had for years been the guardian of her life, and in the case of Connor’s attack he had defended her with the grim courage of his race. But for him her Majesty could not have enjoyed that freedom of movement out of doors which had been of

vital consequence to her health and strength. Old servants, when possessed of Brown’s sterling qualities of manhood, in process of time gradually pass into the category of old friends. Their lives become intertwined in many ways with the life of the family to which they are attached. Their death leaves behind it in the hearts of their masters and mistresses the sting of a personal bereavement. This was, in a special sense, the case with the Queen, whose fate it has been to see the circle of old familiar faces round her contracting every year. Her expressions of sorrow over Brown’s grave, though they provoked rude criticism, merely gave expression to a sentiment of melancholy which was the natural outgrowth of her life of “lonely splendour.”[188]

From the 18th of April to the 8th of May the Court was at Osborne, and the state of the Queen’s health was such as to cause her medical advisers some concern. The dynamite scare, a slight accident that had happened to her through slipping on the stairs at Windsor Castle, the deaths of her friend Mrs. Stonor[189] and her attendant, Brown—all contributed to produce an attack of nervous debility that could only be remedied by repose.

In the third week of April the Queen created quite a panic among the sheep farmers and the fashionable purveyors of the large towns. She had read many gloomy articles in the papers, lamenting the decrease in the number of English sheep. Instead of anticipating, by a few days, the appearance of Easter lamb at the Royal table, as did Napoleon I. on one occasion, her Majesty notified that no lamb would be consumed in her Household. The effect of the notice was magical. The price of lamb went down in a few hours to 4d. a pound, and farmers, who had at enormous expense bred and fed large stocks of lamb for the Easter market, saw bankruptcy staring them in the face. The economic fallacy was obvious. The Queen forgot that the slaughter of lambs which were bred for the butcher, and which but for the Easter market would not be bred at all, was not the cause of the scarcity of sheep. In a few weeks the notice was withdrawn.

Though the Queen was still unable to walk, yet on the 8th of May she was so much benefited by her holiday at Osborne, that she was able, under the care of the Princess Beatrice, to return to Windsor. On the 26th of May, though still in feeble health, she went to Balmoral. Extraordinary precautions were taken to prevent the time-table of the Royal train on this occasion from being published, and her Majesty sent orders from Windsor that spectators must be excluded from the stations at which she stopped. Railway directors were not even allowed to be present when her Majesty arrived at Ferryhill station, Aberdeen, from whence she drove to Balmoral by the road on the south side of the Dee—a road she had never taken before. Life at Balmoral was gloomy, for all the old festivities had been stopped, and everybody was in deep mourning for John Brown. The Queen hardly ever left her own grounds, and the Court gladly returned to Windsor on the 23rd of June. On the 3rd of July a shocking accident occurred near Glasgow, which deeply impressed the mind of the Queen. As a new steamer, the Daphne, was being launched from Messrs. Stephen’s Yard she heeled over and sank. A hundred and fifty lives were lost, and the Queen not only sent a message of sympathy to the survivors, but a subscription of £200 to a fund raised for their relief. The Court removed to Osborne on the 24th of July, where a few days later the Queen received M. Waddington, the new French Ambassador. On the 24th of August her Majesty left Osborne for Balmoral, which she reached on the following day. She conferred the Order of the Garter on her grandson, Prince Albert Victor of Wales, on the 4th of September. It was thought strange that this distinction should be granted to the Prince whilst he was still a minor: George IV., for example, was not admitted to the Order till long after he had come of age. What was stranger still was that the investiture should have been a private function, conducted in the drawing-room at Balmoral, and not a public ceremonial in St. George’s Chapel. The exceptional character of the distinction was a proof of the high favour in which her Majesty held her grandson. Excursions to Braemar, Glassalt Shiel, Glen Cluny, and the neighbourhood were made during September. The Duke and Duchess of Connaught visited her Majesty in October on the eve of their departure for India, and the ex-Empress Eugénie, who was at Abergeldie, came to her almost every day, and long excursions in the bleak scenery of the Aberdeenshire mountains were organised for the Royal party. It was not till the 21st of November that the Court came back to Windsor—the same day on which the Duke and Duchess of Connaught landed at Bombay. After her return the Queen seems to have been engrossed with business to an unusual extent—much of it relating to troublesome private matters, and it was stated that her Majesty and Sir Henry Ponsonby during the first week had to work together for five and six hours at a stretch, ere they could overtake their task. Every day, however, the Queen drove in the Park, and every evening she gave a dinner-party, to which not more than fifteen guests were invited. On the 12th of December her Majesty received the Siamese Envoys, and it was intimated that she intended to raise the poet Laureate to the Peerage. On the 18th of December the Court removed to Osborne, where Christmas-tide was spent.

Politically and socially the Recess of 1883 was full of interest. Just as Parliament was prorogued Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville brought an irritating controversy with France to a close. In the spring, Admiral Pierre had been sent with a squadron to enforce French claims of sovereignty over a portion of the north-west of Madagascar. In the course of operations at Tamatave the Admiral had behaved rudely to the British Consul. He had insulted the commander of H.M.S. Dryad, and he had illegally arrested and imprisoned Mr. Shaw, an English missionary. Mr. Gladstone had alluded gravely, but in terms of studied moderation and courtesy, to these events in the House of Commons. The Opposition, however, harried him with attacks; and all over the land Conservative writers and speakers denounced the Government for its cowardly subservience to France. The only effect which these indiscreet criticisms could have was obviously to convince France that she ran no risk in refusing reparation to the Englishmen whom her agents had injured. Fortunately the Government of the French Republic had a keen sense of justice. It did not misunderstand the firm but temperate tone of the English Foreign Office; and the French Government accordingly offered an apology and compensation to Mr. Shaw. It turned out that Admiral Pierre, who died in France soon after his recall, had been suffering from an exhausting disease at the time he had offended Captain Johnstone of the Dryad. There was no disposition on either side, therefore, to exaggerate the personal aspect of the question, and the dispute ended in a manner highly creditable to the diplomacy of both nations.

In Ireland the National League, which had been founded in 1882 as a continuation of the old Land League, was extending its organisation. Mr. Healy’s electoral victory in Monaghan suggested that an attack should be made on the last stronghold of the Unionist Party in Ireland. League meetings were therefore held in Ulster; but the Orangemen, terrified by this invasion of Home Rulers into their loyal territory, attempted to repel it by force. They organised rival meetings, and planned armed attacks on the Leaguers. Occasionally Mr. Trevelyan had to suppress the demonstrations of both “Orange” and “Green” by proclamation. In England the Recess was one of stormy political agitation. The Liberal Party felt that it was necessary to submit some measure to Parliament in 1884, on which, if need be, they might risk an appeal to the constituencies. Hence, at Leeds, their provincial leaders and delegates resolved to press a measure of Parliamentary Reform on the country. A small minority, who urged that the reform of the Municipality of London and of County and Local Government should have the first place, were overruled by those who raised the famous cry of “Franchise first.” The Tory leaders, when they spoke on the subject, merely suggested that the problem of Parliamentary Reform was encumbered with difficulties. For some time the Liberal leaders rarely spoke save to contradict each other either as to the order of legislation in the coming Session, or as to whether, if Household Suffrage were extended to the counties, the Redistribution of Seats would be dealt with by a separate Bill. During the Recess, Sir Stafford Northcote roused the Conservatism of North Wales and Ulster. Lord Salisbury attempted to thrill his party with terror by an article in the Quarterly Review, bewailing the “disintegration” of English society under Mr. Gladstone’s malefic influence; and in another periodical—the National Review—he appealed strongly for popular support by a strong semi-Socialistic paper advocating the better housing of the poor. In fact, the end of 1883 and the beginning of 1884 will be long remembered for an outbreak of dilletante Socialism among the upper classes. The powerful pen of a gifted novelist had revealed, as by flashes of lightning, the unexplored regions of the East End of London. In fact, Mr. Walter Besant’s vivid pictures of its dull grey life of toil, varied only by hunger, and ending only in death, had seared the conscience, if they had not touched the heart, of a brilliant society of pleasure. Beneath the bright wit and mocking humour of the satirist,

there glowed the fire and fervour of the prophet; and when a voice which, like Mr. Besant’s, had the ear of a hundred millions of English-speaking people, preached in the most fascinating of parables the doctrine that Wealth owes, and ever will owe, an undischarged duty to Poverty—a mighty impetus was given to the cause of social reform. Hands swift to do good were stretched forth from the West End to the East End, and a movement destined to realise, in the Jubilee Year of the Victorian era, some of Mr. Besant’s ideals in “All Sorts and Conditions of Men,” was now initiated. Unfortunately it was vulgarised by much imposture at the outset. The pace of three London seasons had been unusually rapid, and Society at this juncture had exhausted its resources of amusement and its capacities for pleasure. The town was fuller than usual, for Cabinet Councils had been unwontedly early; and the great families who flock to London when they get the first hint that the autumnal period of political intrigue has set in, had abandoned their country houses sooner in the year than was customary. The theatres were unattractive. The Fisheries Exhibition had closed; and the world of fashion was hungry for some fresh object of interest. Like Matthew Arnold’s patrician, though Society made its feast and crowned its brows with roses in the winter of 1883-4, it was still left lamenting that

The movement in philanthropy which Mr. Besant’s writings originated, and which Lord Salisbury’s essay on the Housing of the Poor stamped with the imprimatur of British respectability, was just what was needed to supply a stimulus to which the blunted nerves of the idlest pleasure-seeker would respond. In the days of Lord Tom Noddy and Sir Carnaby Jenks persons of quality in similar circumstances would have gone to see a man hanged. Some years later, as M. Henri Taine notes, they would have applied for an escort of police and inspected the thieves’ kitchens and other hideous lairs of crime. Now, under escorts of enchanted philanthropists, lay and clerical, male and female, curious parties were organised in the West End to visit the slums, just as they were arranged to visit the opera. These amateur explorers were, indeed, dubbed “slummers” by cynical writers in the Press; and the verb to “slum” almost made good its footing in the English vocabulary. Few of these strange visitors remained behind in the East End to help in the work of charity whose objects excited their morbid curiosity. It was also an untoward coincidence that of these few some of the most fussy and bustling subsequently figured conspicuously in the Divorce Court.

It had been the intention of the Government to reduce the number of the troops in Egypt, and some hint of this had been given by Mr. Gladstone at the Lord Mayor’s banquet in the Guildhall. But before the plan could be carried out a catastrophe happened in Egypt which interfered with it. It had always been the ambition of the Khedivial family to extend their dominion to the Equator. They had drained Egypt of men and money to conquer that vast and difficult region known as the Soudan, and under the pretext of suppressing the slave trade, they had endeavoured to sanctify their policy of costly conquest. When, however, disturbances broke out in Lower Egypt, the wild tribes of the Soudan, ever ready to revolt against the Egyptians or “Turks,” whom they regarded as brutal extortioners, joined the standards of a pretended prophet, called the Mahdi, and Colonel Hicks, a retired Indian officer, was sent with an Egyptian army to suppress the rising. The British Government sanctioned, but gave no aid to the expedition. By their foolish policy they made themselves morally responsible for its fate without taking steps to make its success a certainty. In November Hicks Pasha and his army were cut to pieces at El Obeid, and Egyptian authority in the Soudan was represented by a few beleaguered garrisons at such places as Khartoum, Suakim, and Sinkat. The British Government dissuaded Tewfik Pasha from trying to re-conquer the Soudan, but advised him merely to relieve the garrisons and hold the Red Sea coast and the Nile Valley as far as Wady Halfa. By thus blocking the only outlets for its produce the insurrection in the province might be strangled. Here the Ministry delivered themselves into the hands of their enemies. If they tried to re-conquer the Soudan the Tories could denounce a blood-guilty policy that wasted the substance of Egypt to gratify Khedivial ambition. If they induced Tewfik Pasha to let the Soudan alone, they could be denounced for abandoning one of the conquests of civilisation to barbarism and the slave trade. But in the first weeks of 1884 there was a lull in political agitation, which was only partially broken by Mr. Gladstone’s address to his tenants at the Hawarden Rent Dinner on the 9th of January. It was in this speech that he advised farmers groaning under prolonged agricultural distress, aggravated by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, to seek consolation in pensive reflection on the Hares and Rabbits Act, and in an energetic application of their industry to the production of jam.

CHAPTER XXVII.

GENERAL GORDON’S MISSION.

Parliament met on the 5th of February, 1884. The Queen’s Speech admitted that the unexpected success of the Mahdi in the Soudan had delayed the evacuation of Cairo and the reduction of the British army of occupation. It also referred to the steps that had been taken to relieve Khartoum by the despatch of General Gordon—accompanied by Colonel Stewart—to that doomed city. An imposing programme of domestic legislation was put forward. There was to be a Reform Bill, a Bill to improve the government of London, and legislation was promised dealing with shipping, railways, the government of Scotland, education, Sunday Closing in Ireland, and intermediate education in Wales. The Egyptian Policy of the Government was naturally taken as the point for attack by the Opposition in the House of Lords and in the House of Commons. The position of England in Egypt was now so peculiar and embarrassing that any policy open to the Government was open to objection. So far as the interests of the English and Egyptian people were concerned, the best thing that could have been done for them would have been to render the frontier at Wady Halfa impregnable, to forbid any further interference with the Soudan, and to leave the Egyptian garrisons and colonies there to make the best terms they could with the Mahdi. This would not have been a noble or heroic, but it would have been a sensible course, and it would have prevented the perfectly useless expenditure of precious blood and treasure. On the other hand, only a Minister unselfish enough to brave the obloquy which would be cast on him by his rivals for adopting a sordid policy in the interests of his country, could venture on such a policy. It would have been possible to a Bismarck, who can boast that he will never break the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier for the sake of the Eastern Question. It was not possible to Mr. Gladstone, some of whose colleagues were already in a bellicose mood. Assuredly, too, it would in 1884 have been unpopular with the electors. In foreign complications, involving the issues of peace or war, their

Ministers therefore chose the course which, on the whole, divided the country least. They decided to cut the connection between Egypt and the Soudan, but at the same time to arrange for the safe return of the Egyptian garrisons and colonists to Lower Egypt. They selected General Gordon—better known as “Chinese” Gordon—who, as Gordon Pasha, had been Viceroy of the Soudan, to make the best arrangements he could for the future of the country, and bring back the garrisons and colonists in safety. Gordon’s great name and unbounded popularity caused this plan to be hailed with unalloyed delight by the people. He arrived at Cairo on the 23rd of January, and was permitted to receive from the Khedive a firman appointing him Governor-General of the Soudan, and vesting him, as the Khedive’s Viceroy, with absolute power. Gordon thus held two commissions—one from the English Government as the Agent of the Foreign Office, another from the Khedive as Viceroy of the Soudan. He crossed the desert without an escort, and was making his way to Khartoum when Parliament met. It was a dramatic coincidence that when the debate on Egypt was going on, news of a serious disaster from the Soudan came to hand. Baker Pasha had advanced from Trinkitat on the 4th of February, and near Tokar his force was attacked by the Mahdi’s followers and driven back to Suakim. By an accident the discussion collapsed without any Ministerial reply being given to the Tory attack. Then Sir Stafford Northcote, on the 7th of February, moved his vote

of censure, on the ground that the disasters in the Soudan were due to “the vacillating and inconsistent policy” pursued by the Government. Possibly the disaster of the division in the Commons when this motion was rejected may have in turn been traceable to the “vacillating and inconsistent” tactics of the Opposition. They toiled with wearisome iteration to prove that England, having incurred responsibility for the government of Egypt after Tel-el-Kebir, was responsible for the massacre of Hicks Pasha and his army. So she was; but instead of drawing the logical inference from the facts, namely, that the English authorities in Egypt were to blame for not vetoing Hicks’s expedition, Sir Stafford Northcote and Lord Salisbury blamed the English Government for not helping him with “advice,” and for not forcing the Khedive to make his army strong enough for its task. Here it became manifest to the House of Commons that the Opposition had only got up a sham faction fight. For when Sir Stafford Northcote hotly repudiated the notion that he would have sent a British army to reinforce Hicks or avenge his death, he gave up his whole case. It was then seen that the alternative policy of the Opposition was to have goaded the Egyptian Government to a war of re-conquest in the Soudan, and in the event of failure to leave it in the lurch. Alike in the Commons and in the Lords the responsible leaders of the Opposition admitted that Mr. Gladstone was right in advising Egypt to abandon the Soudan, and in refusing to send British troops there to conduct the evacuation. What they argued was that he was wrong in not telling the Khedive’s Cabinet how to get out of the Soudan, though he would in that event, according to them, have been quite right to refuse the Khedive aid, if, in acting on Mr. Gladstone’s suggestions, his Highness met with disaster in the rebellious province. It was a sad surprise to Lord Salisbury to find his censure carried in the Upper House only by a vote of 181 to 81—for the majority did not represent half of a Chamber two-thirds of which were his followers. It was, however, no surprise to Sir Stafford Northcote to find his motion rejected in the House of Commons, though he had the advantage of the Irish vote. As for the country, its verdict was that there was no difference between the two parties except on one point. The Tories would have pestered the Khedive with instructions, but would have repudiated responsibility for them if when acted on they had ended in failure. The Government had, through fear of incurring this responsibility, left the Khedive too much to his own devices, and when these brought trouble they found they could not get rid of all responsibility for it.

What ought to have been said was what neither Lord Salisbury nor Sir Stafford Northcote dared say. It was that England, after Tel-el-Kebir, should have boldly proclaimed a Protectorate over Egypt, the moral authority of which would have sufficed to hold her fretful and mutinous provinces in awe, till steps for their reconstruction could be taken.[190] Failure seemingly rendered the Opposition reckless. Even the heroic and high-hearted envoy of the Government at Khartoum did not escape the shafts of their malice. He had proclaimed the Mahdi as Sultan of Kordofan in order to induce him to negotiate for the peaceful withdrawal of the garrisons. He had burned in public the archives of the Egyptian Government, in which the arrears of taxes were recorded, as a pledge that the oppressed people of Khartoum should be no longer the prey of corrupt extortioners. He had set free the prisoners who were unjustly pining in the gaols. He had proclaimed that the right of property in domestic slaves would be recognised—thereby neutralising the intrigues of the Mahdists, who were persuading the wavering people that if they remained true to Egypt, the Government would rob them of their household servants. Finding it impossible to discover a less objectionable native chief fit to undertake the task of keeping order at Khartoum, Gordon recommended for that purpose his old enemy, Zebehr Pasha, once known as “King of the Slave-Traders.”

The Tories now attacked Gordon and his policy with much bitterness. They jeered at him as a madman. They denounced him for sanctioning slavery—he who had given the best days of his life to the suppression of the trade. They tried to rouse public opinion against the Government for tolerating his proceedings. In fact, no effort was wanting to embarrass him and the Ministry in solving the difficult problem of extricating the military and civil population of Khartoum from their dangerous position. The factiousness of the Opposition had one bad result. It frightened the Government into refusing their sanction to Gordon’s proposal for handing over Khartoum to Zebehr Pasha. For at this time the Tories delighted to describe Zebehr as the kind of monster of savagery, with whom a statesman of Mr. Gladstone’s character naturally sought a close alliance.

When the tidings of General Baker’s defeat at Teb were followed by news of the massacre of the garrison of Sinkat, Ministers, in obedience to public opinion, decided to abandon their policy of inaction in the Soudan. On the 10th of February, Admiral Hewett took supreme command at Suakim. On the 18th a small British force under General Graham landed at that place. By this time Tokar had fallen, but Graham, advancing from Trinkitat, fought and beat the Arabs under Osman Digna at El Teb. Osman retired to Tamanieb, and was attacked there by Graham on the 13th of March. At first the British force wavered and broke under the impetuous shock of the Arab charge, but in the end the Arabs were defeated, and Osman Digna’s camp was destroyed. Gordon had made an unsuccessful sortie from Khartoum on the 16th of March, and he had found not only his army but the civil population of the city honeycombed with treason. In vain he implored the Government to send two squadrons of cavalry to Berber to aid the escape of two thousand fugitives whom he proposed to send down the Nile. The Government, on the contrary, recalled General Graham and his troops from Suakim, thereby leading the Arabs to believe that Gordon was abandoned by his countrymen. His negotiations with the Mahdi proved to be a failure. In May his protests against the desertion of Khartoum were published in official form, and the Opposition then gave expression to popular opinion when they moved, though they did not carry, another vote of censure on the Ministry. The defence of the Government was that Gordon was in no danger, and that when he was, Ministers would quickly send him aid. The financial position of Egypt was now so bad that Mr. Gladstone resolved to ease the pressure of her debt at the expense of the bondholders. For this purpose it was necessary to summon a Conference of the Powers. France opposed the English project, and the diplomatic negotiations between England and France were seriously embarrassed by incessant interpellations from the Opposition in Parliament, and by their abortive votes of censure. In spite of these difficulties, however, Ministers were able, on the 23rd of June, to announce that they had come to an arrangement with France. She formally abandoned the Dual Control, which had really been destroyed by the Khedive’s decree in 1882, and bound herself not to send troops to Egypt unless on the invitation of England. England, on the other hand, agreed to evacuate Egypt on the 1st of January, 1888, unless the Powers considered that order could not be kept after the British troops were recalled. The question of the debt was virtually left to the Conference, but it was agreed that after the 1st of January, 1888, Egypt was to be neutralised and the Suez Canal put under international management. Even these arrangements were, however, to depend on the decisions of the Conference, which, Mr. Gladstone said, would in turn need Parliamentary sanction before they could be considered binding on the British Government. The Conference broke up owing to the impossibility of reconciling English and French interests, and Mr. Gladstone on the 2nd of August told the House of Commons that England had regained entire freedom of action. With this freedom the Government acquired fresh energy. They sent Lord Northbrook to Egypt to report upon its condition, and obtained from Parliament a Vote of Credit of £300,000 with which to send succour to Gordon if he required it. At this time, though Khartoum was isolated and surrounded by the Mahdi’s troops, Lord Hartington refused to admit that Egypt was in danger from an Arab invasion, or to give any definite promise to send Gordon aid.

The Egyptian Question sadly exhausted the energies of the House of Commons. Mr. Arthur Peel had been chosen as Speaker on the 26th of February, in succession to Sir Henry Brand, who was elevated to the Peerage as Viscount Hampden. Sir Stafford Northcote again succeeded in preventing Mr. Bradlaugh from taking his seat, and when Mr. Bradlaugh resigned it, and was again re-elected for Northampton, the resolution excluding him from the House was once more revived on the 21st of February.

The Budget was not presented till the last week of April, and Mr. Childers