MAYNOOTH
(_1844-1845_)
When I consider how munificently the colleges of Cambridge and
Oxford are endowed, and with what pomp religion and learning are
there surrounded; ... when I remember what was the faith of Edward
III. and of Henry VI., of Margaret of Anjou and Margaret of
Richmond, of William of Wykeham and William of Waynefleet, of
Archbishop Chichele and Cardinal Wolsey; when I remember what we
have taken from the Roman catholics, King's College, New College,
Christ Church, my own Trinity; and when I look at the miserable
Dotheboys' Hall which we have given them in exchange, I feel, I
must own, less proud than I could wish of being a protestant and a
Cambridge man.--MACAULAY.
IRISH POLICY OF CONCILIATION
In pursuit of the policy of conciliation with which he was now
endeavouring to counter O'Connell, Peel opened to his colleagues in 1844
a plan for dealing with the sum annually voted by parliament to the
seminary for the training of catholic clergy at Maynooth. The original
grant was made by the Irish parliament, protestant as it was; and was
accepted even by anti-catholic leaders after 1800 as virtually a portion
of the legislative union with Ireland. Peel's proposal, by making an
annual grant permanent, by tripling the amount, by incorporating the
trustees, established a new and closer connection between the state and
the college. It was one of the boldest things he ever did. What Lord
Aberdeen wrote to Madame de Lieven in 1852 was hardly a whit less true
in 1845: 'There is more intense bigotry in England at this moment than
in any other country in Europe.' Peel said to Mr. Gladstone at the
beginning of 1845--'I wish to speak without any reserve, and I ought to
tell you, I think it will very probably be fatal to the government.'
'He explained that he did not know whether the feeling among Goulburn's
constituents [the university of Cambridge] might not be too strong for
him; that in Scotland, as he expected, there would be a great
opposition; and he seemed to think that from the church also there might
be great resistance, and he said the proceedings in the diocese of
Exeter showed a very sensitive state of the public mind.' During the
whole of 1844 the project simmered. At a very early moment Mr. Gladstone
grew uneasy. He did not condemn the policy in itself, but whatever else
might be said, it was in direct antagonism to the principle elaborately
expounded by him only six years before, as the sacred rule and
obligation between a Christian state and Christian churches. He had
marked any departure from that rule as a sign of social declension, as a
descent from a higher state of society to a lower, as a note in the ebb
and flow of national life. Was it not inevitable, then, that his
official participation in the extension of the public endowment of
Maynooth would henceforth give to every one the right to say of him,
'That man cannot be trusted'? He was not indeed committed, by anything
that he had written, to the extravagant position that the peace of
society should be hazarded because it could no longer restore its
ancient theories of religion; but was he not right in holding it
indispensable that any vote or further declaration from him on these
matters should be given under circumstances free from all just
suspicions of his disinterestedness and honesty?[167]
In view of these approaching difficulties upon Maynooth, on July 12 he
made a truly singular tender to the head of the government. He knew Peel
to be disposed to entertain the question of a renewal of the public
relations with the papal court at Rome, first to be opened by indirect
communications through the British envoy at Florence or Naples. 'What I
have to say,' Mr. Gladstone now wrote to the prime minister, 'is that if
you and Lord Aberdeen should think fit to appoint me to Florence or
Naples, and to employ me in any such communications as those to which I
have referred, I am at your disposal.' Of this startling offer to
transform himself from president of the board of trade into Vatican
envoy, Mr. Gladstone left his own later judgment upon record; here it
is, and no more needs to be said upon it:--
About the time of my resignation on account of the contemplated
increase of the grant to the College of Maynooth, I became
possessed with the idea that there was about to be a renewal in
some shape of our diplomatic [relations] with the see of Rome, and
I believe that I committed the gross error of tendering myself to
Sir Robert Peel to fill the post of envoy. I have difficulty at
this date (1894) in conceiving by what obliquity of view I could
have come to imagine that this was a rational or in any way
excusable proposal: and this, although I vaguely think my friend
James Hope had some hand in it, seems to show me now that there
existed in my mind a strong element of fanaticism. I believe that I
left it to Sir R. Peel to make me any answer or none as he might
think fit; and he with great propriety chose the latter
alternative.
INTENTION TO RESIGN
In the autumn of 1844, the prime minister understood that if he
proceeded with the Maynooth increase, he would lose Mr. Gladstone. The
loss, Peel said to Graham, was serious, and on every account to be
regretted, but no hope of averting it would justify the abandonment of a
most important part of their Irish policy. Meanwhile, in the midst of
heavy labours on the tariff in preparation for the budget of 1845, Mr.
Gladstone was sharply perturbed, as some of his letters to Mrs.
Gladstone show:--
_Whitehall, Nov. 22, '44._--It is much beyond my expectation that
Newman should have taken my letter so kindly; it seemed to me so
like the operation of a clumsy, bungling surgeon upon a sensitive
part. I cannot well comment upon his meaning, for as you may easily
judge, what with cabinet, board, and Oak Farm, I have enough in my
head to-day--and the subject is a fine and subtle one. But I may
perhaps be able to think upon it to-night, in the meantime I think
yours is a very just conjectural sketch. We have not got in cabinet
to-day to the really pinching part of the discussion, the Roman
catholic religious education. That comes on Monday. My mind does
not waver; pray for me, that I may do right. I have an appointment
with Peel to-morrow, and I rather think he means to say something
to me on the question.
_Nov. 23._--You will see that whatever turns up, I am sure to be in
the wrong. An invitation to Windsor for us came this morning, and I
am _sorry to say_ one including Sunday--Nov. 30 to Dec. 2. I have
had a long battle with Peel on the matters of my office; not
another syllable. So far as it goes this tends to make me think he
does not calculate on any change in me; yet on the whole I lean the
other way. Manning comes up on Monday.
_Nov. 25._--Events travel fast and not slow. My opinion is that I
shall be out on Friday evening. We have discussed Maynooth to-day.
An intermediate letter which Sir James Graham has to write to
Ireland for information causes thus much of delay. I have told them
that if I go, I shall go on the ground of what is required by my
personal character, and not because my mind is _made up_ that the
course which they propose can be avoided, far less because I
consider myself bound to resist it. I had the process of this
declaration to repeat. I think they were prepared for it, but they
would not assume that it was to be, and rather proceeded as if I
had never said a word before upon the subject. It was painful, but
not so painful as the last time, and by an effort I had altogether
prevented my mind from brooding upon it beforehand. At this moment
(6¼) I am sure they are talking about it over the way. I am going
to dine with Sir R. Peel. Under these circumstances the Windsor
visit will be strange enough! In the meantime my father writes to
me most urgently, desiring me to come to Liverpool. I _hope_ for
some further light from him on Wednesday morning....
_Nov. 26._--I have no more light to throw upon the matters which I
mentioned yesterday. The dinner at Peel's went off as well as could
be expected; I did not sit near him. Lord Aberdeen was with me
to-day, and said very kindly it _must_ be prevented. But I think it
cannot, and friendly efforts to prolong the day only aggravate the
pain. Manning was with me all this morning; he is well, and is to
come back to-morrow.
_Jan. 9, '45._--Another postponement; but our explanations were as
satisfactory as could possibly be made under such circumstances.
The tone and manner as kind as at any time--nothing like murmur. At
the same time Peel said he thought it right to intimate a belief
that the government might very probably be shipwrecked upon the
Maynooth question, partly in connection with my retirement, but
also as he intimated from the uncertainty whether there might not
be a very strong popular feeling against it. _He_ takes upon
himself all responsibility for any inconvenience to which the
government may possibly be put from the delay and a consequent
abrupt retirement, and says I have given him the fullest and
fairest notice.... I saw Manning for two hours this morning, and
let the cat out of the bag to him in part. Have a note from
Lockhart saying the Bishop of London had sent his chaplain to
Murray to express high approval of the article on Ward--and
enclosing the vulgar addition of £63.
AT WINDSOR CASTLE
_Windsor Castle, Jan. 10._--First, owing to the Spanish
ambassador's not appearing, Lady Lyttelton was suddenly invited,
and fell to my lot to hand in and sit by, which was very pleasant.
I am, as you know, a shockingly bad witness to looks, but she
appeared to me, I confess, a little worn and aged. She ought to
have at least two months' holiday every year. After dinner the
Queen inquired as usual about you, and rather particularly with
much interest about Lady Glynne. I told her plainly all I could.
This rather helped the Queen through the conversation, as it kept
me talking, and she was evidently hard pressed at the gaps. Then we
went to cards, and played commerce; fortunately I was never the
worst hand, and so was not called upon to pay, for I had locked up
my purse before going to dinner; but I found I had won 2s. 2d. at
the end, 8d. of which was paid me by the Prince. I mean to keep the
2d. piece (the 6d. I cannot identify) accordingly, unless I lose it
again to-night. I had rather a nice conversation with him about the
international copyright convention with Prussia....
_Whitehall, Jan. 11._--I came back from Windsor this morning, very
kindly used. The Queen mentioned particularly that you were not
asked on account of presumed inconvenience, and sent me a private
print of the Prince of Wales, and on my thanking for it through
Lady Lyttelton, another of the Princess. Also she brought the
little people through the corridor yesterday after luncheon, where
they behaved very well, and she made them come and shake hands with
me. The Prince of Wales has a very good countenance; the baby I
should call a very fine child indeed. The Queen said, After your
own you must think them dwarfs; but I answered that I did not think
the Princess Royal short as compared with Willy. We had more cards
last evening; Lady ---- made more blunders and was laughed at as
usual....
_Jan. 13._--I think there will certainly be at least one cabinet
more in the end of the week. My position is what would commonly be
called uncomfortable. I do not know how long the Maynooth matter
may be held over. I may remain a couple of months, or only a
week--may go at any time at twenty-four hours' notice. I think on
the whole it is an even chance whether I go before or after the
meeting of parliament, so that I am unfeignedly put to obey the
precept of our Lord, 'Take no thought for the morrow; the morrow
will take thought for the things of itself.' I am sorry that a part
of the inconvenience falls on your innocent head. I need not tell
you the irksomeness of business is much increased, and one's
purposes unmanned by this indefiniteness. Still, having very
important matters in preparation, I must not give any signs of
inattention or indifference.
_Cabinet Room, Jan. 14._--I have no news to give you about myself,
but continue to be quite in the dark. There is a certain Maynooth
bill in preparation, and when that appears for decision my time
will probably have come, but I am quite ignorant when it will be
forthcoming. I am to be with Peel to-morrow morning, but I think on
board of trade business only. Graham has just told us that the
draft of the Maynooth bill will be ready on Saturday; but it
cannot, I think, be _considered_ before the middle of next week at
the earliest.
_Jan. 15._--The nerves are a little unruly on a day like this
between (official) life and death; so much of feeling mixes with
the more abstract question, which would be easily disposed of if it
stood alone. (_Diary._)
It was February 3 before Mr. Gladstone wrote his last note from his desk
at the board of trade, thanking the prime minister for a thousand acts
of kindness which he trusted himself not readily to forget. The feeling
of the occasion he described to Manning:--
Do you know that daily intercourse and co-operation with men upon
matters of great anxiety and moment interweaves much of one's being
with theirs, and parting with them, leaving them under the pressure
of their work and setting myself free, feels, I think, much like
dying: more like it than if I were turning my back altogether upon
public life. I have received great kindness, and so far as personal
sentiments are concerned, I believe they are as well among us as
they can be.
One other incident he describes to his wife:--
Peel thought I should ask an audience of the Queen on my
retirement, and accordingly at the palace to-day (Feb. 3) he
intimated, and then the lord-in-waiting, as is the usage, formally
requested it. I saw the Queen in her private sitting-room. As she
did not commence speaking immediately after the first bow, I
thought it my part to do so; and I said, 'I have had the boldness
to request an audience, madam, that I might say with how much pain
it is that I find myself separated from your Majesty's service, and
how gratefully I feel your Majesty's many acts of kindness.' She
replied that she regretted it very much, and that it was a great
loss. I resumed that I had the greatest comfort I could enjoy under
the circumstances in the knowledge that my feelings towards her
Majesty's person and service, and also towards Sir R. Peel and my
late colleagues, were altogether unchanged by my retirement. After
a few words more she spoke of the state of the country and the
reduced condition of Chartism, of which I said I believed the main
feeder was want of employment. At the pauses I watched her eye for
the first sign to retire. But she asked me about you before we
concluded. Then one bow at the spot and another at the door, which
was very near, and so it was all over.
_Feb. 4._--Ruminated on the dangers of my explanation right and
left, and it made me unusually nervous. H. of C. 4½-9. I was kindly
spoken of and heard, and I hope attained practically purposes I had
in view, but I think the House felt that the last part by taking
away the sting reduced the matter to flatness.
RESIGNATION OF OFFICE
According to what is perhaps a questionable usage, Lord John Russell
invited the retiring minister to explain his secession from office to
the House. In the suspicion, distraction, tension that marked that
ominous hour in the history of English party, people insisted that the
resignation of the head of the department of trade must be due to
divergence of judgment upon protection. The prime minister, while
expressing in terms of real feeling his admiration for Mr. Gladstone's
character and ability, and his high regard for his colleague's private
qualities, thought well to restate that the resignation came from no
question of commercial policy. 'For three years,' he went on, 'I have
been closely connected with Mr. Gladstone in the introduction of
measures relating to the financial policy of the country, and I feel it
my duty openly to avow that it seems almost impossible that two public
men, acting together so long, should have had so little divergence in
their opinions upon such questions.' If anybody found fault with Mr.
Gladstone for not resigning earlier, the prime minister was himself
responsible: 'I was unwilling to lose until the latest moment the
advantages I derived from one whom I consider capable of the highest and
most eminent services.'[168]
The point of Mr. Gladstone's reply was in fact an extremely simple and a
highly honourable one. While carefully abstaining from laying down any
theory of political affairs as under all circumstances inflexible and
immutable, yet he thought that one who had borne such solemn testimony
as he had borne in his book, to a particular view of a great question,
ought not to make himself responsible for a material departure from it,
without at least placing himself openly in a position to form a judgment
that should be beyond all mistake at once independent and unsuspected.
That position in respect of the Maynooth policy he could not hold, so
long as he was a member of the cabinet proposing it, and therefore he
had resigned, though it was understood that he would not resist the
Maynooth increase itself. All this, I fancy, might easily have been made
plain even to those who thought his action a display of overstrained
moral delicacy. As it was, his anxiety to explore every nook and cranny
of his case, and to defend or discover in it every point that human
ingenuity could devise for attack, led him to speak for more than an
hour; at the end of which even friendly and sympathetic listeners were
left wholly at a loss for a clue to the labyrinth. 'What a marvellous
talent is this,' Cobden exclaimed to a friend sitting near him; 'here
have I been sitting listening with pleasure for an hour to his
explanation, and yet I know no more why he left the government than
before he began.' 'I could not but know,' Mr. Gladstone wrote on this
incident long years after, 'that I should inevitably be regarded as
fastidious and fanciful, fitter for a dreamer or possibly a schoolman,
than for the active purposes of public life in a busy and moving
age.'[169]
VIEWS OF HIS RESIGNATION
Sir Robert Inglis begged him to lead the opposition to the bill. In the
course of the conversation Inglis went back to the fatal character and
consequences of the Act of 1829; and wished that his advice had then
been taken, which was that the Duke of Cumberland should be sent as lord
lieutenant to Ireland with thirty thousand men. 'As that good and very
kind man spoke the words,' Mr. Gladstone says, 'my blood ran cold, and
he too had helped me onwards in the path before me.' William Palmer
wrote that the grant to Maynooth was the sin of 1829 over again, and
would bring with it the same destruction of the conservative party. Lord
Winchilsea, one of his patrons at Newark, protested against anything
that savoured of the national endowment of Romanism. Mr. Disraeli was
reported as saying that with his resignation on Maynooth Mr. Gladstone's
career was over.
The rough verdict pronounced his act a piece of political prudery. One
journalistic wag observed, 'A lady's footman jumped off the Great
Western train, going forty miles an hour, merely to pick up his hat.
Pretty much like this act, so disproportional to the occasion, is Mr.
Gladstone's leap out of the ministry to follow his book.' When the time
came he voted for the second reading of the Maynooth bill (April 11)
with remarkable emphasis. 'I am prepared, in opposition to what I
believe to be the prevailing opinion of the people of England and of
Scotland, in opposition to the judgment of my own constituents, from
whom I greatly regret to differ, and in opposition to my own deeply
cherished predilections, to give a deliberate and even anxious support
to the measure.'
The 'dreamer and the schoolman' meanwhile had left behind him a towering
monument of hard and strenuous labour in the shape of that second and
greater reform of the tariff, in which, besides the removal of the
export duty on coal and less serious commodities, no fewer than four
hundred and thirty articles were swept altogether away from the list of
the customs officer. Glass was freed from an excise amounting to twice
or thrice the value of the article, and the whole figure of remission
was nearly three times as large as the corresponding figure in the bold
operations of 1842. Whether the budget of 1842 or that of 1845 marked
the more extensive advance, we need not discuss; it is enough that Mr.
Gladstone himself set down the construction of these two tariffs among
the principal achievements in the history of his legislative works. His
unofficial relations with the colleagues whom he had left were perfectly
unchanged. 'You will be glad to know,' he writes to his father, 'that
the best feeling, as I believe, subsists between us. Although our powers
of entertaining guests are not of the first order, yet with a view
partly to these occurrences we asked Sir R. and Lady Peel to dinner
to-day, and also Lord and Lady Stanley and Lord Aberdeen. All accepted,
but unfortunately an invitation to Windsor has carried off Sir R. and
Lady Peel. A small matter, but I mention it as a symbol of what is
material.'
Before many days were over, he was working day and night on a projected
statement, involving much sifting and preparation, upon the recent
commercial legislation. Lord John Russell had expressed a desire for a
competent commentary on the results of the fiscal changes of 1842, and
the pamphlet in which Mr. Gladstone showed what those results had been
was the reply. Three editions of it were published within the year.[170]
This was not the only service that Mr. Gladstone had an opportunity of
rendering in the course of the session to the government that he had
quitted. 'Peel,' he says, 'had a plan for the admission of free labour
sugar on terms of favour. Lord Palmerston made a motion to show that
this involved a breach of our old treaties with Spain. I examined the
case laboriously, and, though I think his facts could not be denied, I
undertook (myself out of office) to answer him on behalf of the
government. This I did, and Peel, who was the most conscientious man I
ever knew in spareness of eulogium, said to me when I sat down, "That
was a wonderful speech, Gladstone."' The speech took four hours, and
was, I think, the last that he made in parliament for two years and a
half, for reasons that we shall presently discover.
THOUGHTS OF VISITING IRELAND
In the autumn of 1845, Mr. Gladstone made a proposal to Hope-Scott. 'As
Ireland,' he said, 'is likely to find this country and parliament so
much employment for years to come, I feel rather oppressively an
obligation to try and see it with my own eyes instead of using those of
other people, according to the limited measure of my means.' He
suggested that they should devote some time 'to a working tour in
Ireland, eschewing all grandeur and taking little account of scenery,
compared with the purpose of looking at close quarters at the
institutions for religion and education of the country and at the
character of the people.' Philip Pusey was inclined to join them. 'It
will not alarm you,' says Pusey, 'if I state my belief that in these
agrarian outrages the Irish peasants have been engaged in a justifiable
civil war, because the peasant ejected from his land could no longer by
any efforts of his own preserve his family from the risk of starvation.
This view is that of a very calm utilitarian, George Lewis.'[171] They
were to start from Cork and the south and work their way round by the
west, carrying with them Lewis's book, blue books, and a volume or two
of Plato, Æschylus, and the rest. The expedition was put off by Pusey's
discovery that the _Times_ was despatching a correspondent to carry on
agrarian investigations. Mr. Gladstone urged that the Irish land
question was large enough for two, and so indeed it swiftly proved, for
Ireland was now on the edge of the black abysses of the famine.
FOOTNOTES:
[167] The letters from Mr. Gladstone to Peel on this topic are given by
Mr. Parker, _Peel_, iii. pp. 160, 163, 166.
[168] In the course of May, 1845, Peel made some remarks on
resignations, of which Mr. Gladstone thought the report worth
preserving:--'I admit that there may be many occasions when it would be
the duty of a public man to retire from office, rather than propose
measures which are contrary to the principles he has heretofore
supported. I think that the propriety of his taking that course will
mainly depend upon the effect which his retirement will have upon the
success of that public measure, which he believes to be necessary for
the good of his country. I think it was perfectly honourable, perfectly
just, in my right honourable friend the late president of the board of
trade to relinquish office. The hon. gentleman thinks I ought to have
pursued the same course in 1829. That was precisely the course I wished
to pursue--it was precisely the course which I intended to pursue. Until
within a month of the period when I consented to bring forward the
measure for the relief of the Roman catholics, I did contemplate
retiring from office--not because I shrank from the responsibility of
proposing that measure--not from the fear of being charged with
inconsistency--not because I was not prepared to make the painful
sacrifice of private friendships and political connections, but because
I believed that my retirement from office would promote the success of
the measure. I thought that I should more efficiently assist my noble
friend in carrying that measure if I retired from office, and gave the
measure my cordial support in a private capacity. I changed my opinion
when it was demonstrated to me that there was a necessity for
sacrificing my own feelings by retaining office--when it was shown to me
that, however humble my abilities, yet, considering the station which I
occupied, my retiring from office would render the carrying of that
measure totally impossible--when it was proved to me that there were
objections in the highest quarters which would not be overcome unless I
was prepared to sacrifice much that was dear to me--when it was
intimated to my noble friend that there was an intention on the part of
the highest authorities in the church of England to offer a decided
opposition to the measure, and when my noble friend intimated to me that
he thought, if I persevered in my intention to retire, success was out
of the question. It was then I did not hesitate to say that I would not
expose others to obloquy or suspicions from which I myself shrunk.'
[169] _Gleanings_, vii. p. 118.
[170] 'Remarks upon recent Commercial Legislation suggested by the
expository statement of the Revenue from Customs, and other Papers
lately submitted to Parliament, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P.
for Newark.' London, Murray, 1845. Mr. Gladstone had written on the same
subject in the _Foreign and Colonial Quarterly Review_, January 1843.
[171] See his memorable work on Irish Disturbances, published in 1836.