Chapter XVI. Prime Minister. (1868)

Geworden ist ihm eine Herrsoherseele,

Und ist gestellt auf einen Herrscherplatz.

Wohl uns, dass es so ist!...

Wohl dem Ganzen, findet

Sich einmal einer, der ein Mittelpunkt

Für viele Tausend wird, ein Halt.

—SCHILLER.

He is possessed by a commanding spirit,

And his, too, is the station of command.

And well for us it is so....

Well for the whole if there be found a man

Who makes himself what Nature destined him,

The pause, the central point of thousand thousands.

—_Coleridge’s Translation._

I

During the election (Nov. 23) Mr. Gladstone published his _Chapter of

Autobiography_, the history of his journey from the book of 1838 to the

resolutions thirty years later.(170) Lord Granville told him frankly that

he never liked nor quite understood the first book; that the description

of it in the new “Chapter” gave him little pleasure; that he had at first

a feeling that the less a person in Mr. Gladstone’s position published,

the better; and that unnecessary explanation would only provoke fresh

attacks. But as he read on, these misgivings melted away; he thought the

description of a certain phase of the history of the English church one of

the most eloquent and feeling passages he ever read; the reference to the

nonconformists was a graceful amend to them for being so passionate an

Oxonian and churchman; the piece of controversy with Macaulay rather an

exaggeration and not easy to understand; the closing pages admirable. In

short, he was all for publication. Another close friend of Mr.

Gladstone’s, Sir Robert Phillimore, told him (Nov. 29): “I am satisfied

that you have done wisely and justly both with reference to the immediate

and future influence of your character as a statesman. It is exactly what

a mere man of the world would not have done. His standard would have been

the ephemeral opinion of the clubs, and not the earnest opinion of the

silent but thoughtful persons to whom the moral character of their chief

is a matter of real moment and concern.” Newman wrote to him from the

Oratory at Birmingham, “It is most noble, and I can congratulate you with

greater reason and more hearty satisfaction upon it, than I could upon a

score of triumphs at the hustings.” The man of the world and the man at

the club did not hide their disgust, but Phillimore was right, and great

hosts of people of the other sort welcomed in this publication a sign of

sincerity and simplicity and desire to take the public into that full

confidence, which makes the ordinary politician tremble as undignified and

indecorous.

That Mr. Gladstone had rightly divined the state of public feeling about

Ireland was shown by the result. Manning put the case in apt words when he

wrote to him: “I have been much struck by the absence of all serious

opposition to your policy, and by the extensive and various support given

to it in England and Scotland. It is not so much a change in men’s

thoughts, but a revelation of what they have been thinking.” Heart and

soul he flung himself into the labours of his canvass. The constituency

for which he had sat in the expiring parliament was now divided, and with

Mr. H. R. Grenfell for a colleague, he contested what had become

South-West Lancashire. The breadth, the elevation, the freshness, the

power, the measure, the high self-command of these speeches were never

surpassed by any of his performances. When publicists warn us, and rightly

warn us, that rash expenditure of money extracted from the taxpayer and

the ratepayer is the besetting vice and peril of democracy, and when some

of them in the same breath denounce Mr. Gladstone as a demagogue pandering

to the multitude, they should read the speech at Leigh, in which he

assailed the system of making things pleasant all round, stimulating local

cupidity to feed upon the public purse, and scattering grants at the

solicitation of individuals and classes. No minister that ever lived

toiled more sedulously, in office and out of office, to avert this curse

of popular government. The main staple of his discourse was naturally the

Irish case, and though within the next twenty years he acquired a wider

familiarity with detail, he never exhibited the large features of that

case with more cogent and persuasive mastery. He told the story of the

transformation of the franchise bill with a combined precision,

completeness and lightness of hand that made his articles of charge at

once extremely interesting and wholly unanswerable. In a vein of pleasant

mockery, on the accusation that he was going to ruin and destroy the

constitution, he reminded them that within his own recollection it had

been wholly ruined and destroyed eight times: in 1828 by the repeal of the

Corporation and Test acts; in 1829 by admitting Roman catholics to

parliament; in 1832 by reform; in 1846 by free trade; in 1849 by repeal of

the navigation law; in 1858 when Jews were allowed to sit in parliament;

in 1866 when the government of Lord Russell had the incredible audacity to

propose a reform bill with the intention of carrying it or falling in the

attempt.

(M74) It was a magnificent campaign. But in South-West Lancashire the

church of England was strong; orange prevailed vastly over green; and Mr.

Gladstone was beaten. Happily he had in anticipation of the result, and by

the care of friends, already been elected for Greenwich.(171) In the

kingdom as a whole he was triumphant. The liberal majority was 112. When

the gross votes were added up, it was calculated that the liberals had a

million and a half and the conservatives less than a million.(172) After a

long era of torpor a powerful party thus once more came into being. The

cause was excellent, but more potent than the cause was the sight of a

leader with a resolute will, an unresting spirit of reform, and the genius

of political action. This ascendency Mr. Gladstone maintained for quarter

of a century to come.

II

On the afternoon of the first of December, he received at Hawarden the

communication from Windsor. “I was standing by him,” says Mr. Evelyn

Ashley, “holding his coat on my arm while he in his shirt sleeves was

wielding an axe to cut down a tree. Up came a telegraph messenger. He took

the telegram, opened it and read it, then handed it to me, speaking only

two words, ‘Very significant,’ and at once resumed his work. The message

merely stated that General Grey would arrive that evening from Windsor.

This of course implied that a mandate was coming from the Queen charging

Mr. Gladstone with the formation of his first government.... After a few

minutes the blows ceased, and Mr. Gladstone resting on the handle of his

axe, looked up and with deep earnestness in his voice and with great

intensity in his face, exclaimed, ‘My mission is to pacify Ireland.’ He

then resumed his task, and never said another word till the tree was

down.”(173) General Grey reached Hawarden the next day, bringing with him

the letter from the Queen.

_From the Queen._

_December 1st_, 1868.—Mr. Disraeli has tendered his resignation to

the Queen. The result of the appeal to the country is too evident

to require its being proved by a vote in parliament, and the Queen

entirely agrees with Mr. Disraeli and his colleagues in thinking

that the most dignified course for them to pursue, as also the

best for the public interests, was immediate resignation. Under

these circumstances the Queen must ask Mr. Gladstone, as the

acknowledged leader of the liberal party, to undertake the

formation of a new administration. With one or two exceptions, the

reasons for which she has desired General Grey (the bearer of this

letter) to explain, the Queen would impose no restrictions on Mr.

Gladstone as to the arrangement of the various offices in the

manner which he believes to be best for the public service, and

she trusts that he will find no difficulty in filling them up, or

at least the greater part of them, so that the council may be held

before the 13th. Mr. Gladstone will understand why the Queen would

wish to be spared making any arrangements of this nature for the

next few days after the 13th. The Queen adds what she said on a

similar occasion two years and a half ago to Lord Derby, that she

will not name any time for seeing Mr. Gladstone, who may wish to

have an opportunity of consulting some of his friends, before he

sees her; but that, as soon as he shall have done so, and

expresses a desire to see the Queen, she will be ready to receive

him.

(M75) One of his first letters after undertaking to form a government was

to Lord Russell, to whom he said that he looked forward with hope and

confidence to full and frequent communications, and to the benefit of his

friendship and advice. “There remains, however, a question,” he went on;

“you have an experience and knowledge to which no living statesman can

pretend; of the benefit to be derived from it, I am sure that all with

whom I can be likely to act would be deeply sensible. Would it be too

great an invasion of your independence to ask you to consider whether you

could afford it as a member of the cabinet without the weight of any other

responsibility?” Lord Russell replied in cordial terms, but said that the

servitude of a cabinet, whether with or without a special office, was what

he did not wish to encounter. “What I should have said,” he added at a

later date (Dec. 28), “if the office of the president of the council or

the privy seal had been offered me, I do not know: at all events I am

personally very well satisfied to be free from all responsibility.” Sir

George Grey also declined, on the ground of years: he was within one of

the threescore and ten allotted to mortal man. Lord Halifax, on whose

ability and experience both the Queen and Mr. Gladstone set special value,

declined the Irish viceroyalty, and stood good-naturedly aside until 1870

when he joined as privy seal. The inclusion in the same cabinet of Mr.

Bright, who had been the chief apostle of reform, with Mr. Lowe, its

fiercest persecutor, startled the country. As for Lowe, Lord Acton told me

that he once informed Mr. Gladstone that Lowe had written the review of

his _Financial Statements_ in the periodical of which Acton was editor.

“He told me at Grillion’s that I thereby made him chancellor of the

exchequer.” With Bright he had greater difficulties. He often described

how he wrestled with this admirable man from eleven o’clock until past

midnight, striving to overcome his repugnance to office. The next day

Bright wrote to him (Dec. 5): “Since I left you at midnight I have had no

sleep, from which you may imagine the mental disturbance I have suffered

from our long conversation last night. Nevertheless I am driven to the

conclusion to take the step to which you invite me, surrendering my

inclination and my judgment to your arguments and to the counsel of some

whom I have a right to consider my friends.... I am deeply grateful to you

for the confidence you are willing to place in me, and for the many kind

words you spoke to me yesterday.” In the parched air of official politics

the relation of these two towards one another is a peculiar and a

refreshing element. In the case of Lord Clarendon, some difficulty was

intimated from Windsor before Mr. Gladstone began his task. Mr. Gladstone

says in one of his late notes:—

Clarendon had already held with credit and success for a

lengthened period the seals of the foreign office, and his

presumptive title to resume them was beyond dispute. He was a man

of free and entertaining and almost jovial conversation in

society, and possibly some remark culled from the dinner hour had

been reported to the Queen with carelessness or malignity. I do

not know much, of the interior side of court gossip, but I have a

very bad opinion of it, and especially on this ground, that while

absolutely irresponsible it appears to be uniformly admitted as

infallible. In this case, it was impossible for me to recede from

my duty, and no grave difficulty arose. So far as I can recollect

the Queen had very little to say in objection, and no keen desire

to say it. Clarendon was the only living British statesman whose

name carried any influence in the councils of Europe. Only

eighteen or twenty months remained to him; they were spent in

useful activity. My relations with him were, as they were

afterwards with Granville, close, constant, and harmonious.

(M76) Of this cabinet Mr. Gladstone always spoke as one of the best

instruments for government that ever were constructed.(174) Nearly

everybody in it was a man of talent, character, and force, and showed high

capacity for public business. In one or two cases, conformably to the old

Greek saying, office showed the man; showed that mere cleverness, apart

from judgment and discretion is only too possible, and that good intention

only makes failure and incapacity in carrying the intention out, so much

the more mortifying. The achievements of this cabinet as a whole, as we

shall see, are a great chapter in the history of reform and the prudent

management of national affairs. It forms one of the best vindications of

the cabinet system, and of the powers of the minister who created, guided,

controlled, and inspired it.

“And so,” Manning, the close friend of other years, now wrote to him, “you

are at the end men live for, but not, I believe, the end for which you

have lived. It is strange so to salute you, but very pleasant.... There

are many prayers put up among us for you, and mine are not wanting.” At an

earlier stage sympathetic resolutions had been sent to him from

nonconformist denominations, and in writing to Dr. Allon who forwarded

them, Mr. Gladstone said: “I thank you for all the kind words contained in

your letter, but most of all for the assurance, not the first I am happy

to say which has reached me, that many prayers are offered on my behalf. I

feel myself by the side of this arduous undertaking a small creature; but

where the Almighty sends us duties, He also sends the strength needful to

perform them.” To Mr. Arthur Gordon, the son of Lord Aberdeen, he wrote

(Jan. 29, 1869):—

As regards my own personal position, all its interior relations

are up to this time entirely satisfactory. I myself, at the period

of the Aberdeen administration, was as far as the world in general

could possibly be, from either expecting or desiring it. I thought

at that time that when Lord Russell’s career should end, the Duke

of Newcastle would be the proper person to be at the head of the

government. But during the government of Lord Palmerston, and long

before his health broke down, I had altered this opinion; for I

thought I saw an alteration both in his tone of opinion, and in

his vigour of administration and breadth of view. Since that time

I have seen no alternative but that which has now come about,

although I am sensible that it is a very indifferent one.

On December 29 he enters in his diary: “This birthday opens my sixtieth

year. I descend the hill of life. It would be a truer figure to say I

ascend a steepening path with a burden ever gathering weight. The Almighty

seems to sustain and spare me for some purpose of His own, deeply unworthy

as I know myself to be. Glory be to His name.” In the closing hours of the

year, he enters:—

This month of December has been notable in my life as follows:

_Dec. 1809._—Born. 1827.—Left Eton. 1831.—Classes at Oxford.

1832.—Elected to parliament. 1838.—Work on Church and State

published. 1834.—Took office as lord of the treasury.

1845.—Secretary of state. 1852.—Chancellor of exchequer.

1868.—First lord. Rather a frivolous enumeration. Yet it would not

be so if the love of symmetry were carried with a

well-proportioned earnestness and firmness into the higher parts

of life. I feel like a man with a burden under which he must fall

and be crushed if he looks to the right or left or fails from any

cause to concentrate mind and muscle upon his progress step by

step. This absorption, this excess, this constant ἄγαν is the

fault of political life with its insatiable demands, which do not

leave the smallest stock of moral energy unexhausted and available

for other purposes.... Swimming for his life, a man does not see

much of the country through which the river winds, and I probably

know little of these years through which I busily work and

live.... It has been a special joy of this December that our son

Stephen is given to the church, “whose shoe latchet I am not

worthy to unloose.”

BOOK VI. 1869-1874

Chapter I. Religious Equality. (1869)

In the removal of this establishment I see the discharge of a debt

of civil justice, the disappearance of a national, almost a

worldwide reproach, a condition indispensable to the success of

every effort to secure the peace and contentment of that country;

finally relief to a devoted clergy from a false position, cramped

and beset by hopeless prejudice, and the opening of a freer career

to their sacred ministry.—GLADSTONE.

I

Anybody could pulverise the Irish church in argument, and to show that it

ought to be disestablished and disendowed was the easiest thing in the

world. But as often happens, what it was easy to show ought to be done,

was extremely hard to do. Here Mr. Gladstone was in his great element. It

was true to say that “never were the wheels of legislative machinery set

in motion under conditions of peace and order and constitutional

regularity to deal with a question greater or more profound,” than when

the historic protestant church in Ireland was severed from its sister

church in England and from its ancient connection with the state. The case

had been fully examined in parliament. After examination and decision

there, it was discussed and decided in the constituencies of the United

Kingdom. Even then many held that the operation was too gigantic in its

bearings, too complex in the mass of its detail, to be practicable. Never

was our political system more severely tested, and never did it achieve a

completer victory. Every great organ of the national constitution came

into active play. The sovereign performed a high and useful duty. The

Lords fought hard, but yielded before the strain reached a point of

danger. The prelates in the midst of anger and perturbation were forced

round to statesmanship. The Commons stood firm and unbroken. The law, when

at length it became law, effected the national purpose with extraordinary

thoroughness and precision. And the enterprise was inspired, guided,

propelled, perfected, and made possible from its inception to its close by

the resource, temper, and incomparable legislative skill of Mr. Gladstone.

That the removal of the giant abuse of protestant establishment in Ireland

made a deeper mark on national well-being than other of his legislative

exploits, we can hardly think, but—quite apart from the policy of the act,

as to which there can now be scarcely two opinions—as a monument of

difficulties surmounted, prejudices and violent or sullen heats overcome,

rights and interests adjusted, I know not where in the records of our

legislation to find its master.

(M77) With characteristic hopefulness and simplicity Mr. Gladstone tried

to induce Archbishop Trench and others of the Irish hierarchy to come to

terms. Without raising the cry of no surrender, they declined all

approaches. If Gladstone, they said, were able to announce in the House of

Commons a concordat with the Irish clergy, it would ruin them both with

the laity of the Irish establishment, and with the English conservatives

who had fought for them at the election and might well be expected, as a

piece of party business if for no better reasons, to fight on for them in

the House of Lords. Who could tell that the Gladstone majority would hold

together? Though “no surrender” might be a bad cry, it was even now at the

eleventh hour possible that “no popery” would be a good one. In short,

they argued, this was one of the cases where terms could only be settled

on the field of battle. There were moderates, the most eminent being

Bishop Magee of Peterborough, who had an interview with Mr. Gladstone at

this stage, but nothing came of it. One Irish clergyman only, Stopford the

archdeacon of Meath, a moderate who disliked the policy but wished to make

the best of the inevitable, gave Mr. Gladstone the benefit of his

experience and ability. When the work was done, Mr. Gladstone wrote to the

archdeacon more than once expressing his sense of the advantage derived

from his “thorough mastery of the subject and enlightened view of the

political situation.” He often spoke of Stopford’s “knowledge, terseness,

discrimination, and just judgment.”

Meanwhile his own course was clear. He did not lose a day:—

_Dec. 13, 1868._—Saw the Queen at one, and stated the case of the

Irish church. It was graciously received. 24.—At night went to

work on draft of Irish church measure, feeling the impulse.

25.—Christmas Day. Worked much on Irish church _abbozzo_. Finished

it at night. 26.—Revised the Irish church draft and sent it to be

copied with notes.

The general situation he described to Bishop Hinds on the last day of the

year:—

We cannot wait for the church of Ireland to make up her mind. We

are bound, nay compelled, to make up ours. Every day of the

existence of this government is now devoted to putting forward by

some step of inquiry or deliberation the great duty we have

undertaken. Our principles are already laid in the resolutions of

the late House of Commons. But in the mode of applying them much

may depend on the attitude of resistance or co-operation assumed

by the Irish church. It is idle for the leading Irish churchmen to

think “we will wait and see what they offer and then ask so much

more.” Our mode of warfare cannot but be influenced by the troops

we lead. Our three _corps d’armée_, I may almost say, have been

Scotch presbyterians, English and Welsh nonconformists, and Irish

Roman catholics. We are very strong in our minority of clerical

and lay churchmen, but it is the strength of weight not of

numbers. The English clergy as a body have done their worst

against us and have hit us hard, as I know personally, in the

counties. Yet we represent the national force, tested by a

majority of considerably over a hundred voices. It is hazardous in

these times to tamper with such a force.

The preparation of the bill went rapidly forward:—

_Hawarden, Jan. 13, 1869._—Wrote out a paper on the plan of the

measure respecting the Irish church, intended perhaps for the

Queen. Worked on Homer. We felled a lime. 14.—We felled another

tree. Worked on Homer, but not much, for in the evening came the

Spencers [from Dublin], also Archdeacon Stopford, and I had much

Irish conversation with them. 15.—We felled an ash. Three hours

conversation with the viceroy and the archdeacon. I went over much

of the roughest ground of the intended measure; the archdeacon

able and helpful. Also conversation with the viceroy, who went

before 7. Worked on Homer at night. 19.—One hour on Homer with Sir

J. Acton. Whist in evening. 20.—Further and long conversations on

the Irish church question and its various branches with Granville,

the attorney-general for Ireland, and in the evening with Dean

Howson, also with Sir J. Acton. 21.—Wrote a brief abstract of the

intended bill. Woodcutting. 23.—Saw the Queen [at Osborne] on the

Irish church especially, and gave H.M. my paper with explanation,

which appeared to be well taken. She was altogether at ease. We

dined with H.M. afterwards. 24.—Saw her Majesty, who spoke very

kindly about Lord Clarendon, Mr. Bright, Mr. Lowe, the Spanish

crown, Prince Leopold, Mr. Mozley, and so forth, but not a word on

the Irish church. _Feb. 4._—A letter from H.M. to-day showed much

disturbance, which I tried to soothe.

In February Lord Granville thought that it might do good if the Queen were

to see Bishop Magee. Mr. Gladstone said to him in reply (Feb. 7, ’69):—

The case is peculiar and not free from difficulty. On the whole I

think it would be wrong to place any limit upon the Queen’s

communications to the Bishop of Peterborough except this, that

they would doubtless be made by H.M. to him for himself only, and

that no part of them would go beyond him to any person whatever.

(M78) On Feb. 12, the Queen wrote to Mr. Gladstone from Osborne:—

The Queen has seen the Bishop of Peterborough according to the

suggestion made by Lord Granville with the sanction of Mr.

Gladstone, and has communicated to him in the strictest confidence

the correspondence which had passed between herself and Mr.

Gladstone on the subject of the Irish church. She now sends Mr.

Gladstone a copy of the remarks made by the bishop on the papers

which she placed in his hands for perusal, and would earnestly

entreat Mr. Gladstone’s careful and dispassionate consideration of

what he says. She would point especially to the suggestion which

the bishop throws out of the intervention of the bench of English

bishops. The country would feel that any negotiation conducted

under the direction of the Archbishop of Canterbury would be

perfectly safe, and from the concessions which the Bishop of

Peterborough expresses his own readiness to make, the Queen is

sanguine in her hope that such negotiations would result in a

settlement of the question on conditions which would entirely

redeem the pledges of the government and be satisfactory to the

country. The Queen must therefore strongly deprecate the hasty

introduction of the measure, which would serve only to commit the

government to proposals from which they could not afterwards

recede, while it is _certain_ from what the bishop says, that they

would not be accepted on the other side, and thus an acrimonious

contest would be begun, which, however it ended, would make any

satisfactory settlement of the question impossible.

He replied on the following day:—

_Feb. 13._—First the bishop suggests that the endowments posterior

to the Reformation should be given to the church, and those

preceding it to the Roman catholics. It would be more than idle

and less than honest, were Mr. Gladstone to withhold from your

Majesty his conviction that no negotiation founded on such a basis

as this could be entertained, or, if entertained, could lead to

any satisfactory result. Neither could Mr. Gladstone persuade the

cabinet to adopt it, nor could the cabinet persuade the House of

Commons, nor could cabinet and House of Commons united persuade

the nation to acquiesce, and the very attempt would not only

prolong and embitter controversy, but would weaken authority in

this country. For the thing contemplated is the very thing that

the parliament was elected not to do.

_Osborne, Feb. 14._—The Queen thanks Mr. Gladstone for his long

letter, and is much gratified and relieved by the conciliatory

spirit expressed throughout his explanations on this most

difficult and important question. The Queen thinks it would indeed

be most desirable for him to see the Archbishop of Canterbury—and

she is quite ready to write to the archbishop to inform him of her

wish and of Mr. Gladstone’s readiness to accede to it, should he

wish it.

“My impression is,” Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Granville (Feb. 14), “that

we should make a great mistake if we were to yield on the point of time.

It is not time that is wanted; we have plenty of time to deal with the

Bishop of Peterborough’s points so far as they can be dealt with at all.

Sir R. Palmer has been here to-day with overtures from persons of

importance unnamed. I think probably the Archbishop of Canterbury and

others.(175) I do not doubt that on the other side they want time, for

their suggestions are crude.”

(M79) On the following day (Feb. 15) the Queen wrote to the archbishop,

telling him that she had seen Mr. Gladstone, “who shows the most

conciliatory disposition,” and who at once assured her “of his

readiness—indeed, his anxiety—to meet the archbishop and to communicate

freely with him.” The correspondence between the Queen and the archbishop

has already been made known, and most of that between the archbishop and

Mr. Gladstone, and I need not here reproduce it, for, in fact, at this

first stage nothing particular came of it.(176) “The great mistake, as it

seems to me,” Mr. Gladstone writes to Archdeacon Stopford (Feb. 8), “made

by the Irish bishops and others is this. They seem to think that our

friends are at the mercy of our adversaries, whereas our adversaries are

really at the mercy of our friends, and it is to these latter that the

government, especially in the absence of other support, must look.”

Meanwhile the bill had made its way through the cabinet:—

_Feb. 8._—Cabinet, on the heads of Irish Church bill.. 9.—Cabinet,

we completed the heads of the Irish Church measure to my great

satisfaction. 19.—At Lambeth, 12-1-½ explaining to the archbishop.

22.—Conclave on Irish church, 3-4-½ and 5-½-7-3/4. After twenty

hours’ work we finished the bill for this stage.

II

On March 1, Mr. Gladstone brought his plan before a House of Commons eager

for its task, triumphant in its strength out of doors, and confident that

its leader would justify the challenge with which for so many months the

country had been ringing. The details are no longer of concern, and only

broader aspects survive. A revolutionary change was made by the complete

and definite severance of the protestant episcopal church in Ireland alike

from the established church of England and from the government of the

United Kingdom. A far more complex and delicate task was the winding up of

a great temporal estate, the adjustment of many individual and corporate

interests, and the distribution of some sixteen millions of property among

persons and purposes to be determined by the wisdom of a parliament, where

rival claims were defended by zealous and powerful champions influenced by

the strongest motives, sacred and profane, of party, property, and church.

It was necessary to deal with the sums, troublesome though not

considerable, allotted to the presbyterians and to the catholic seminary

at Maynooth. Machinery was constructed for the incorporation of a body to

represent the emancipated church, and to hold property for any of its uses

and purposes. Finally, the residue of the sixteen millions, after all the

just demands upon it had been satisfied, computed at something between

seven and eight millions, was appropriated in the words of the preamble,

“not for the maintenance of any church or clergy, nor for the teaching of

religion, but mainly for the relief of unavoidable calamity and suffering”

not touched by the poor law.

The speech in which this arduous scheme was explained to parliament was

regarded as Mr. Gladstone’s highest example of lucid and succinct

unfolding of complicated matter. Mr. Disraeli said there was not a single

word wasted. So skilfully were the facts marshalled, that every single

hearer believed himself thoroughly to comprehend the eternal principles of

the commutation of tithe-rent-charge, and the difference in the justice

due to a transitory and a permanent curate. Manning said that the only two

legislative acts in our history that approached it in importance for

Ireland were the repeal of the penal laws and the Act of Union. However

this may be, it is hardly an excess to say that since Pitt, the author of

the Act of Union, the author of the Church Act was the only statesman in

the roll of the century, capable at once of framing such a statute and

expounding it with the same lofty and commanding power.(177)

(M80) In a fugitive note, Mr. Gladstone named one or two of the speakers

on the second reading: “Ball: elaborate and impressive, answered with

great power by Irish attorney-general. Bright: very eloquent and striking.

Young George Hamilton: a first speech of great talent, admirably

delivered. Hardy: an uncompromising defence of laws and institutions as

they are, with a severe picture of the character and civil conduct of the

Irish population.” Mr. Disraeli’s speech was even more artificial than

usual. It was Mr. Hardy and Dr. Ball who gave cogent and strenuous

expression to the argument and passion of the church case. When the

division came, called by Mr. Gladstone “notable and historic” (March 24),

the majority in a crowded house was 118.(178) “Our division this morning,”

Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Granville, “even exceeded expectations, and

will powerfully propel the bill.” The size of this majority deserves the

reader’s attention, for it marked the opening of a new parliamentary era.

In 1841 Peel had turned out the whigs by a majority of 91. Lord John

Russell was displaced in 1852 by 9. The Derby government was thrown out in

December 1852 by 19. The same government was again thrown out seven years

later by 13. Palmerston was beaten in 1857 by 14, and the next year by 19.

In 1864 Palmerston’s majority on the Danish question was only 18. The

second reading of the Franchise bill of 1866 was only carried by 5, and

ministers were afterwards beaten upon it by 11. With Mr. Gladstone’s

accession the ruling majority for a long time stood at its highest both in

size and stability.

With invincible optimism, Mr. Gladstone believed that he would now have

“material communications from the heads of the Irish church”; but letters

from Lord Spencer at Dublin Castle informed him that, on the contrary,

they were angrier after they knew what the majority meant, than they were

before. At the diocesan conferences throughout Ireland the bill was

denounced as highly offensive to Almighty God, and the greatest national

sin ever committed. The Archdeacon of Ossory told churchmen to trust to

God and keep their powder dry, though he afterwards explained that he did

not allude to carnal weapons. The cabinet was called a cabinet of

brigands, and protestant pastors were urged to see to it that before they

gave up their churches to an apostate system a barrel of gunpowder and a

box of matches should blow the cherished fabrics to the winds of heaven.

Even Mr. Disraeli’s astuteness was at fault. The Archbishop of Canterbury

perceived from his conversation that he was bent on setting the liberals

by the ears, that he looked for speeches such as would betray utter

dissension amid professed agreement, that he had good hopes of shattering

the enemy, and “perhaps of playing over again the game that had destroyed

Lord Russell’s Reform bill of 1866.” The resounding majority on the second

reading, he told the archbishop, was expected; it created no enthusiasm;

it was a mechanical majority.(179)

The bill swept through the stages of committee without alteration of

substance and with extraordinary celerity, due not merely to the “brute

majority,” nor to the confidence that all was sure to be undone in another

place, but to the peculiar powers developed by the minister. From the

speech in which he unfolded his plan, down to the last amendment on

report, he showed a mastery alike of himself and of his project and of the

business from day to day in hand, that routed opposition and gave new

animation and ardour to the confidence of his friends. For six or seven

hours a day he astonished the House by his power of attention, unrelaxed

yet without strain, by his double grasp of leading principle and intricate

detail, by his equal command of legal and historic controversy and of all

the actuarial niceties and puzzles of commutation. “In some other

qualities of parliamentary statesmanship,” says one acute observer of that

time, “as an orator, a debater, and a tactician he has rivals; but in the

powers of embodying principles in legislative form and preserving unity of

purpose through a multiplicity of confusing minutiae he has neither equal

nor second among living statesmen.”(180) The truth could not be better

summed up. He carried the whole of his party with him, and the average

majority in divisions on the clauses was 113. Of one dangerous corner, he

says:—

_May 6._—H of C, working Irish Church bill. Spoke largely on

Maynooth. [Proposal to compensate Maynooth out of the funds of the

Irish church.] The final division on the pinching point with a

majority of 107 was the most creditable (I think) I have ever

known.

By a majority of 114 the bill was read a third time on the last day of

May.

III

(M81) The contest was now removed from the constituencies and their

representatives in parliament to the citadel of privilege. The issue was

no longer single, and the struggle for religious equality in Ireland was

henceforth merged before the public eye in a conflict for the supremacy of

the Commons in England. Perhaps I should not have spoken of religious

equality, for in fact the establishment was known to be doomed, and the

fight turned upon the amount of property with which the free church was to

go forth to face its new fortunes. “I should urge the House of Lords,”

wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury to Mr. Gladstone (June 3), “to give all

its attention to saving as large an endowment as possible.”

As at the first stage the Queen had moved for conciliatory courses, so now

she again desired Archbishop Tait to communicate with the prime minister.

To Mr. Gladstone himself she wrote from Balmoral (June 3): “The Queen

thanks Mr. Gladstone for his kind letter. She has invariably found him

most ready to enter into her views and to understand her feelings.” The

first question was whether the Lords should reject the bill on the second

reading:—

It is eminently desirable, Mr. Gladstone wrote to the archbishop

(June 4), that the bill should be read a second time. But if I

compare two methods, both inexpedient, one that of rejection on

the second reading, the other that of a second reading followed by

amendments inconsistent with the principle, I know no argument in

favour of the latter, except what relates to the very important

question of the position and true interest of the House of Lords

itself.

At the same time he promised the archbishop that any views of his upon

amendments would have the most careful attention of himself and his

colleagues, and “they would be entertained in a spirit not of jealousy but

of freedom, with every desire to bring them into such a shape that they

may be in furtherance, and not in derogation, of the main design of the

bill.”

General Grey, the Queen’s secretary, told Mr. Gladstone that she had

communicated with the archbishop, “having heard that violent counsels were

likely to prevail, and that in spite of their leaders, the opposition in

the House of Lords was likely to try and throw out the measure on the

second reading.” Her own feeling was expressed in General Grey’s letter to

the archbishop of the same date, of which a copy was sent to the prime

minister:—

Mr. Gladstone is not ignorant (indeed the Queen has never

concealed her feeling on the subject) how deeply her Majesty

deplores the necessity, under which he conceived himself to lie,

of raising the question as he has done; or of the apprehensions of

which she cannot divest herself, as to the possible consequences

of the measure which he has introduced. These apprehensions, her

Majesty is bound to say, still exist in full force; but

considering the circumstances under which the measure has come to

the House of Lords, the Queen cannot regard without the greatest

alarm the probable effect of its absolute rejection in that House.

Carried, as it has been, by an overwhelming and steady majority

through a House of Commons, chosen expressly to speak the feeling

of the country on the question, there seems no reason to believe

that any fresh appeal to the people would lead to a different

result. The rejection of the bill, therefore, on the second

reading, would only serve to bring the two Houses into collision,

and to prolong a dangerous agitation on the subject.

Mr. Gladstone replied:—

_June 5._—From such information as has indirectly reached Mr.

Gladstone, he fears that the leaders of the majority in the House

of Lords will undoubtedly oppose the second reading of the Irish

Church bill, of which Lord Harrowby is to propose the rejection.

He understands that Lord Salisbury, as well as Lord Carnarvon,

decidedly, but in vain, objected to this course at the meeting

held to-day at the Duke of Marlborough’s. Very few of the bishops

were present. Lord Derby, it is said, supported the resolution.

Although a division must now be regarded as certain, and as very

formidable, all hope need not be abandoned that your Majesty’s

wise counsels through the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the

sagacity of the peers themselves with reference to the security

and stability of their position in the legislature, may avail to

frustrate an unwise resolution.

“How much more effectually,” Mr. Gladstone wrote to Hawarden, “could the

Queen assist in the settlement of this question were she not six hundred

miles off.” As it was, she took a step from which Mr. Gladstone hoped for

“most important consequences,” in writing direct to Lord Derby, dwelling

on the danger to the Lords of a collision with the Commons. In a record of

these proceedings prepared for Mr. Gladstone (August 4, ’69), Lord

Granville writes:—

Before the second reading of the Irish Church bill in the House of

Lords, I was asked by the Archbishop of York to meet him and the

Archbishop of Canterbury. They said it was impossible for them to

vote for the second reading in any case, but before they decided

to abstain from voting against it they wished to know how far the

government would act in a conciliatory spirit. I made to them the

same declaration that I afterwards made in the House, and after

seeing you I had another interview with the Archbishop of

Canterbury. I told his grace that it was impossible for the

government to suggest amendments against themselves, but I gave a

hint of the direction in which such amendments might be framed,

and, without mentioning that the suggestion came from you, I said

that if his grace would tell Dr. Ball that he only wished to

propose amendments which it would be possible for the government

to accept, that learned gentleman would know better than others

how it could be done. The archbishop, however seems chiefly to

have made use of Dr. Ball to supply him with arguments against the

government.

The result was doubtful to the very end. It was three o’clock in the

morning (June 19) before the close of a fine debate—fine not merely from

the eloquence of the speakers and cogency of argument on either side, but

because there was a deep and real issue, and because the practical

conclusion was not foregone. It was the fullest House assembled in living

memory. Three hundred and twenty-five peers voted. The two English

archbishops did not vote, and Thirlwall was the only prelate who supported

the second reading. It was carried by a majority of 33. In 1857 Lord

Derby’s vote of censure on Palmerston for the China war was defeated by

36, and these two were the only cases in which the conservatives had been

beaten in the Lords for twenty years. Thirty-six conservative peers,

including Lord Salisbury, voted away from their party in favour of the

second reading.

IV

(M82) For the moment ministers breathed freely, but the bill was soon in

the trough of the sea. The archbishop wrote to the Queen that they had

decided if they could not get three million pounds to float the new church

upon, they would take their chance of what might happen by postponing the

bill until next year. Asked by the Queen what could be done (July 10),

Lord Granville, being at Windsor, answered that the cabinet would not make

up their mind until they knew how far the Lords would go in resistance,

but he thought it right to tell her that there was no chance of ministers

agreeing to postpone the bill for another year. The day after this

conversation, the Queen wrote again to the archbishop, asking him

seriously to reflect, in case the concessions of the government should not

go quite so far as he might himself wish, whether the postponement of the

settlement for another year would not be likely to result rather in worse

than in better terms for the church. She trusted that he would himself

consider, and endeavour to induce others to consider, any concessions

offered by the House of Commons in the most conciliatory spirit, rather

than to try and get rid of the bill. “The amendments,” said Mr. Gladstone,

“seem to mean war to the knife.”

After the second reading a tory lady of high station told Lord Clarendon

and Mr. Delane that in her opinion a friendly communication might have

great influence on Lord Salisbury’s course.

I therefore wrote to him (Lord Granville says in the memorandum

already referred to), stating why on public and personal grounds

it was desirable that he should meet you. I said that although it

would be difficult for us to initiate suggestions, yet from your

personal regard for him such a conversation would advance matters.

He consented, stating that he was in communication as to

amendments with Lord Cairns and the archbishop. He was extremely

desirous that no one should know of the interview. You were of

opinion that the interview had done good, and I wrote to ask Lord

Salisbury whether he would like me to put dots on some of your

i’s. He declined, and considered the interview had been

unsatisfactory, but gave me an assurance of his desire to avoid a

conflict.... On the 4th of July I wrote again suggesting a

compromise on Lord Carnarvon’s clause. He declined, that clause

being the one thing they cared about. He ended by telling me his

growing impression was, that there would be no Church bill this

session.

The general result of the operations of the Lords was to leave

disestablishment complete, and the legal framework of the bill

undisturbed. Disendowment, on the other hand, was reduced to a shadow. An

additional sum of between three and four millions was taken for the

church, and the general upshot was, out of a property of sixteen millions,

to make over thirteen or fourteen millions to an ecclesiastical body

wholly exempt from state control. This, Mr. Gladstone told the Queen, the

House of Commons would never accept, and the first effect of persistence

in such a course would be a stronger move against the episcopal seats in

the House of Lords than had been seen for more than two hundred years. He

ridiculed as it deserved the contention that the nation had not passed

judgment on the question of disendowment, and he insisted that the

government could not go further than three quarters of a million towards

meeting the extravagant claims of the Lords. Confessing his disappointment

at the conduct of the episcopal body, even including the archbishop, he

found a certain consolation in reflecting that equally on the great

occasions of 1829 and 1831, though ’the mild and wise Archbishop Howley

was its leader,’ that body failed either to meet the desires of the

country, or to act upon a far-sighted view of the exigencies of the

church. One point obstinately contested was the plan for the future

application of the surplus. A majority of the Lords insisted on casting

out the words of the preamble providing that the residue should not be

applied for purposes of religion, and substituting in one shape or another

the principle of concurrent endowment, so hostile, as Mr. Gladstone judged

it, to the peace of Ireland, and so irreconcilable with public feeling in

England and Scotland.

On July 12, the bill came back to the Commons. The tension had hardly yet

begun to tell upon him, but Mr. Gladstone enters on these days:—

_July 11._—Formidable accounts from and through Windsor. 12.—The

time grows more and more anxious. 15.—This day I received from a

Roman catholic bishop the assurance that he offered mass, and that

many pray for me; and from Mr. Spurgeon (as often from others), an

assurance of the prayers of the nonconformists. I think in these

and other prayers lies the secret of the strength of body which

has been given me in unusual measure during this very trying year.

This was the day on which, amid the ardent cheers of his party, he arose

to announce to the House the views of the government. He was in no

compromising mood. In a short speech he went through the amendments made

by men so out of touch with the feeling of the country that they might

have been “living in a balloon.” One by one he moved the rejection of all

amendments that involved the principle of concurrent endowment, the

disposal of the surplus, or the postponement of the date of

disestablishment. He agreed, however, to give a lump sum of half a million

in lieu of private benefactions, to readjust the commutation terms, and

make other alterations involving a further gift of £280,000 to the church.

When the Commons concluded the consideration of the Lords’ amendments

(July 16), Mr. Gladstone observed three things: first, that the sentiment

against concurrent endowment in any form was overwhelming; second, that

not only was no disposition shown to make new concessions, but concessions

actually made were sorely grudged; and third, that the tories were eager

to postpone the destination of the residuary property.

V

(M83) On July 16, the bill, restored substantially to its first shape, was

again back on the table of the Lords, and shipwreck seemed for five days

to be inevitable. On July 20, at eleven o’clock, by a majority of 175 to

93, the Lords once more excluded from the preamble the words that the

Commons had placed and replaced there, in order to declare the policy of

parliament on matters ecclesiastical in Ireland. This involved a meaning

which Mr. Gladstone declared that no power on earth could induce the

Commons to accept. The crisis was of unsurpassed anxiety for the prime

minister. He has fortunately left his own record of its phases:(181)—

_Saturday, July 17._—On the 16th of July the amendments made by

the Lords in the Irish Church bill had been completely disposed of

by the House of Commons. The last division, taken on the disposal

of the residue, had, chiefly through mere lazy absences, reduced

the majority for the government to 72. This _relative_ weakness

offered a temptation to the opposition to make play upon the

point. The cabinet met the next forenoon. We felt on the one hand

that it might be difficult to stake the bill on the clause for the

disposal of the residue, supposing that to be the single remaining

point of difference; but that the postponement of this question

would be a great moral and political evil, and that any concession

made by us had far better be one that would be of some value to

the disestablished church.

By desire of the cabinet I went to Windsor in the afternoon, and

represented to H.M. what it was in our power to do; namely,

although we had done all we could do upon the merits, yet, for the

sake of peace and of the House of Lords, [we were willing], (_a_)

to make some one further pecuniary concession to the church of

sensible though not very large amount; (_b_) to make a further

concession as to curates, slight in itself; (_c_) to amend the

residue clause so as to give to parliament the future control, and

to be content with simply declaring the principle on which the

property should be distributed. The Queen, while considering that

she could not be a party to this or that particular scheme, agreed

that it might be proper to make a representation to the archbishop

to the general effect that the views of the government at this

crisis of the measure were such as deserved to be weighed, and to

promote confidential communication between us. She intimated her

intention to employ the Dean of Windsor as a medium of

communication between herself and the archbishop, and wished me to

explain particulars fully to him. I went to the deanery, and, not

finding the dean, had written as much as here follows on a scrap

of paper, when he came in....

The object of this paper was to induce the archbishop to

discountenance any plan for pressing the postponement of the

provisions respecting the residue, and to deal with us in

preference respecting any practicable concession to the church.

When the dean came in, I explained this further, recited the

purport of my interview with the Queen, and on his asking me

confidentially for his own information, I let him know that the

further pecuniary concession we were prepared to recommend would

be some £170,000 or £180,000.

_Sunday, July 18._—In the afternoon Lord Granville called on me

and brought me a confidential memorandum, containing an overture

which Mr. Disraeli had placed in the hands of Lord Bessborough for

communication to us. [Memorandum not recoverable.] He had

represented the terms as those which he had with much difficulty

induced Lord Cairns to consent to. While the contention as to the

residue was abandoned, and pecuniary concessions alone were

sought, the demand amounted, according to our computation, to

between £900,000 and £1,000,000.... This it was evident was

utterly inadmissible. I saw no possibility of approach to it; and

considered that a further quarter of a million or thereabouts was

all that the House of Commons could be expected or asked further

to concede. On the same afternoon Lord Granville, falling in with

Mr. Goschen, asked him what he thought the very most that could be

had—would it be £500,000? Goschen answered £300,000, and with this

Glyn agreed. Mr. Disraeli desired an answer before three on

Monday.

_Monday, July 19._—Those members of the government who had acted

as a sort of committee in the Irish church question met in the

afternoon. We were all agreed in opinion that the Disraeli

overture must be rejected, though without closing the door; and a

reply was prepared in this sense, which Lord Granville undertook

to send. [_Draft, in the above sense that no sum approaching

£1,000,000 could be entertained._]

Meantime the archbishop had arrived in Downing Street, in

pursuance of the arrangements of Saturday; and a paper was either

now drawn, or sanctioned by my colleagues, I do not remember

which, in order to form the basis of my communication to the

archbishop. I returned from my interview, and reported, as I

afterwards did to the Dean of Windsor, that his tone was friendly,

and that he appeared well disposed to the sort of arrangement I

had sketched.

_Tuesday, July 20._—The archbishop, who had communicated with Lord

Cairns in the interval, came to me early to-day and brought a

memorandum as a basis of agreement, which, to my surprise,

demanded higher terms than those of Mr. Disraeli.(182) I told the

archbishop the terms in which we had already expressed ourselves

to Mr. Disraeli.... Meantime an answer had come from Mr. Disraeli

stating that he could not do more. Then followed the meeting of

the opposition peers at the Duke of Marlborough’s.

On the meeting of the Houses, a few of us considered what course

was to be taken if the Lords should again cast out of the preamble

the words which precluded concurrent endowment; and it was agreed

to stay the proceedings for the time, and consider among ourselves

what further to do. [Lord Granville has a pencil note on the

margin, “The first order I received was to throw up the bill, to

which I answered that I could not do more than adjourn the

debate.”] Lord Granville made this announcement accordingly after

the Lords had, upon a hot debate and by a large majority, again

excluded our words from the preamble [173: 95]. This had been

after a speech from Lord Cairns, in which he announced his

intention of moving other amendments which he detailed, and which

were in general conformable to the proposals already made to us.

The first disposition of several of us this evening, myself

included, was to regard the proceeding of the opposition as now

complete; since the whole had been announced, the first stroke

struck, and the command shown of a force of peers amply sufficient

to do the rest.(183) ... The idea did not, however, include an

absolute abandonment of the bill, but only the suspension of our

responsibility for it, leaving the opposition to work their own

will, and with the intention, when this had been done, of

considering the matter further....

_Wednesday, July 21._—The cabinet met at 11; and I went to it in

the mind of last night. We discussed, however, at great length all

possible methods of proceeding that occurred to us. The result was

stated in a letter of mine to the Queen, of which I annex a copy.

[_See __Appendix__. He enumerates the various courses considered,

and states that the course adopted was to go through the endowment

amendments, and if they were carried adversely, then to drop their

responsibility._]

Most of the cabinet were desirous to go on longer; others, myself

included, objected to proceeding to the end of the bill or

undertaking to remit the bill again to the House of Commons as of

our own motion. It occurred to me, however, that we might proceed

as far as to the end of the many amendments, about the middle of

the bill; and this appeared to meet the views of all, even of

those who would have preferred doing more, or less.

_Thursday, July 22._—I was laid up to-day, and the transactions

were carried on by Lord Granville, in communication with me from

time to time at my house. First he brought me a note he had

received from Lord Cairns.

(M84) This, dated July 22, was to the effect that Lord Cairns had no right

and no desire to ask for any information as to the course proposed that

night; but that if the statements as to the intention of the government to

proceed with the consideration of the amendments were correct, and if Lord

Granville thought any advantage likely to result from it, Lord Cairns

would be ready, “as you know I have throughout been, to confer upon a mode

by which without sacrifice of principle or dignity upon either side the

remaining points of difference might be arranged.” The proceedings of this

critical day are narrated by Lord Granville in a memorandum to Mr.

Gladstone, dated August 4:—

After seeing you I met Lord Cairns at the colonial office. He

offered me terms.(184) ... I asked him whether, in his opinion,

he, the archbishop, and I could carry anything we agreed upon. He

said, “Yes, certainly.” After seeing you I met Lord Cairns a

second time in his room at the House of Lords. I asked as a

preliminary to giving any opinion on his amendments, how he

proposed to deal with the preamble. He said, “to leave it as

amended by the Lords.” I then proposed the words which were

afterwards adopted in the 68th clause. He was at first taken

aback, but admitted that he had personally no objection to them.

He asked what was the opposition to be feared. I suggested some

from Lord Grey. He believed this to be certain, but immaterial. I

objected _in toto_ to Lord Salisbury’s clause or its substitute.

He was unwilling to yield, chiefly on Lord Salisbury’s account,

but finally consented. We agreed upon the commutation clause if

the 7 and the 5 per cent. were lumped together. On the curates

clause we could come to no agreement. He proposed to see Lord

Salisbury and the archbishop, and to meet again at four at the

colonial office. He spoke with fairness as to the difficulty of

his position, and the risk he ran with his own party. I again saw

you and asked the Irish attorney-general to be present at the last

interview. I stated to him in Lord Cairns’s presence how far we

agreed, and expressed my regret that on the last point—the

curates—our difference was irreconcilable. Lord Cairns said he

hoped not, and proceeded to argue strongly in favour of his

proposal. He at last, however, at 4.30, compromised the matter by

accepting five years instead of one. I shook his hand, which was

trembling with nervousness. We discussed the form of announcing

the arrangement to the House. We at once agreed it was better to

tell the whole truth, and soon settled that it would be better for

its success that he should announce the details. I was afterwards

apprehensive that this latter arrangement might be disadvantageous

to us, but nothing could be better or fairer than his statement. I

cannot finish this statement, which I believe is accurate, without

expressing my admiration at the firmness and conciliation which

you displayed in directing me in all these negotiations.

“The news was brought to me on my sofa,” Mr. Gladstone says, “and between

five and six I was enabled to telegraph to the Queen. My telegram was

followed up by a letter at 7 P.M., which announced that the arrangement

had been accepted by the House of Lords, and that a general satisfaction

prevailed.” To the Queen he wrote (July 22):—

Mr. Gladstone is at a loss to account for the great change in the

tone and views of the opposition since Sunday and Monday, and even

Tuesday last, but on this topic it is needless to enter. As to the

principal matters, the basis of the arrangement on the side of the

government is much the same as was intended when Mr. Gladstone had

the honour of an audience at Windsor on Saturday; but various

minor concessions have been added. Mr. Gladstone does not doubt

that, if the majority of the House of Lords should accede to the

advice of Lord Cairns, the government will be able to induce the

House of Commons to agree on the conditions proposed. Mr.

Gladstone would in vain strive to express to your Majesty the

relief, thankfulness, and satisfaction, with which he contemplates

not only the probable passing of what many believe to be a

beneficent and necessary measure, but the undoubted and signal

blessing of an escape from a formidable constitutional conflict.

The skill, patience, assiduity, and sagacity of Lord Granville in

the work of to-day demand from Mr. Gladstone the tribute of his

warm admiration.

On reviewing this whole transaction, and doing full justice to the

attitude both of the Queen and the archbishop, the reader will be inclined

to agree with old Lord Halifax: “I think we owe a good turn to Cairns,

without whose _decision_ on Thursday I hardly think that the settlement

could have been effected. Indeed Derby’s conduct proves what difficulty

there would have been, if Cairns had not taken upon himself the

responsibility of acting as he did.”

Among interesting letters was one from Manning (July 24): “My joy over the

event is not only as a catholic, though that must be, as it ought to be,

my highest motive, but as an Englishman to whom, as I remember your once

saying, the old English monarchy is dear next after the catholic church.

But at this time I will only add that I may wish you joy on personal

reasons. I could hardly have hoped that you could so have framed,

mastered, and carried through the bill from first to last so complete, so

unchanged in identity of principle and detail, and let me add with such

unwearying and sustained self-control and forbearance.”

The diary gives us a further glimpse of these agitating days:—

_July 20._—Conclave of colleagues on Irish church proceedings. An

anxious day, a sad evening. 21.—Cabinet 11-2-1/4, stiff, but good.

22.—I was obliged to take to my sofa and spent the day so in

continual interviews with Granville, Glyn, West,

Sullivan—especially the first—on the details and particulars of

the negotiations respecting the Irish Church bill. The favourable

issue left me almost unmanned in the reaction from a sharp and

stern tension of mind. 23.—My attack did not lessen. Dr. Clark

came in the morning and made me up for the House, whither I went

2-5 P.M., to propose concurrence in the Lords’ amendments. Up to

the moment I felt very weak, but this all vanished when I spoke

and while the debate lasted. Then I went back to bed. 25.—Weak

still. I presumed over much in walking a little and fell back at

night to my lowest point.

Sir Robert Phillimore records:—

_July 21._—Found Gladstone at breakfast, calm, pale, but without a

doubt as to the course which the government must pursue, viz.: to

maintain upon every important point the bill as sent back by the

Commons, probably an autumn session, a bill sternly repeated by

the Commons, too probably without the clauses favourable to the

Irish church. 23.—Nothing talked or written of but the political

marvel of yesterday. Gladstone in a speech universally praised

proposed to the House of Commons the bill as now modified, and it

passed with much harmony, broken by an Orange member. Gladstone

very unwell, and ought to have been in bed when he made his

speech. 24.—Gladstone still very weak but in a state of calm

happiness at the unexpected turn which the Irish bill had taken.

Does not now know the origin or history of the sudden resolution

on the part of the leaders of the opposition. I am satisfied that

Disraeli was alarmed and thoroughly frightened at the state of the

House of Commons and the country, that Cairns was determined to

regain what he had practically lost or was losing, the leadership

of the Lords, and that many of his party were frightened at the

madness and folly of Tuesday night considered after a day’s

reflection.... Above all there was a well-grounded alarm on the

part of Cairns and his immediate supporters in the Lords, that

their order was in imminent danger. Bluster disappeared, and a

retreat, as decent as well could be expected, was made from a

situation known to be untenable. They had never expected that

Gladstone would drop the bill. 25.—Much conversation with

Gladstone, who is still very weak. He wrote to the Archbishop of

Dublin to say in effect, that as a private churchman he would be

glad to assist in any way the archbishop could point out in the

organising of the voluntary church in Ireland.

Sir Thomas Acland writes, August 3, 1869:—

I stayed at House of Commons perforce till about 1.30 or 2, and

then walked away with Gladstone through the Park. It is beautiful

to see his intense enjoyment of the cool fresh air, the trees, the

sky, the gleaming of light on the water, all that is refreshing in

contrast to the din of politics.

A month later the Archbishop of Canterbury found Mr. Gladstone at Lord

Granville’s at Walmer Castle:—

Reached Walmer Castle about 6.30. Found Gladstone lying in

blankets on the ramparts eating his dinner, looking still very

ill.... He joined us at night full of intelligence. His fierce

vigour all the better for being a little tempered.... Much

interesting conversation about the state of the church and

morality in Wales, also about leading ecclesiastics. I gather that

he will certainly nominate Temple for a bishopric.(185)

Chapter II. First Chapter Of An Agrarian Revolution. (1870)

The Irish Land Act of 1870 in its consequences was certainly one

of the most important measures of the nineteenth century.—LECKY.

I

In the beginning of 1870 one of Mr. Gladstone’s colleagues wrote of him to

another, “I fear that he is steering straight upon the rocks.” So it might

well seem to any who knew the unplumbed depths on which he had to shape

his voyage. Irish history has been said to resemble that of Spain for the

last three centuries,—the elaboration of all those ideas of law and

political economy most unsuited to the needs of the nation concerned. Such

ideas, deeply cherished in Britain where they had succeeded, Mr. Gladstone

was now gradually drawn forward to reverse and overthrow in Ireland where

they had ended in monstrous failure. Here a pilot’s eye might well see

jagged reefs. The occasion was the measure for dealing with the land of

Ireland, that he had promised at the election. The difficulty arose from

the huge and bottomless ignorance of those in whose hands the power lay.

Mr. Gladstone in the course of these discussions said, and said truly, of

the learned Sir Roundell Palmer, that he knew no more of land tenures in

Ireland than he knew of land tenures in the moon. At the beginning much

the same might have been observed of the cabinet, of the two houses of

parliament, and of the whole mass of British electors. No doubt one effect

of this great ignorance was to make Mr. Gladstone dictator. Still

ignorance left all the more power to prejudice and interests. We may

imagine the task. The cabinet was in the main made up of landlords,

lawyers, hardened and convicted economists,—not economists like Mill, but

men saturated with English ideas of contract, of competitive rent, of

strict rule of supply and demand. Mr. Bright, it is true, had a profound

conviction that the root of Irish misery and disorder lay in the land

question. Here he saw far and deep. But then Mr. Bright had made up his

mind that the proper solution of the land question was the gradual

transformation of the tenants into owners, and this strong preconception

somewhat narrowed his vision. Even while Mr. Gladstone was in the middle

of his battle on the church, Bright wrote to him (May 21, ’69):—

When the Irish church question is out of the way, we shall find

all Ireland, north and south alike, united in demanding something

on the land question much broader than anything hitherto offered

or proposed in compensation bills. If the question is to go on

without any real remedy for the grievance, the condition of

Ireland in this particular will become worse, and measures far

beyond anything I now contemplate will be necessary. I am most

anxious to meet the evil before it is too great for control, and

my plan _will meet_ it without wrong to any man.

(M85) “I have studied the Irish land question,” said Bright, “from a point

of view almost inaccessible to the rest of your colleagues, and from which

possibly even you have not had the opportunity of regarding it.... I hope

you are being refreshed, as I am, after the long nights in the House—long

nights which happily were not fruitless. I only hope our masters in the

other House will not undo what we have done.” Mr. Gladstone replied the

next day, opening with a sentence that, if addressed to any one less

revered than Bright, might have seemed to veil a sarcasm: “I have this

advantage for learning the Irish land question, that I do not set out with

the belief that I know it already; and certainly no effort that I can make

to acquire the mastery of it will be wanting.” He then proceeds to express

his doubts as to the government embarking on a very large operation of

land-jobbing, buying up estates from landlords and reselling them to

tenants; and whether the property bought and sold again by the state would

not by force of economic laws gradually return again to fewer hands. He

then comes still closer to the pith of the matter when he says to Mr.

Bright: “Your plan, if adopted in full, could only extend, to a small

proportion of the two or three hundred millions worth of land in Ireland;

and I do not well see how the unprotected tenants of the land in general

would take essential benefit from the purchase and owning of land by a few

of their fortunate brethren.” If the land question was urgent, and Bright

himself, like Mill, thought that it was, this answer of Mr. Gladstone’s

was irrefragable. In acknowledging the despatch of this correspondence

from Mr. Gladstone, Lord Granville says to him (May 26, 1869):—

This question may break us up. Bright is thin-skinned; the attacks

in the Lords ruffle him more than he chooses to admit. I cannot

make out how far he likes office, the cabinet, and his new

position. It will be particularly disagreeable to him to have this

plan, of which he is so much enamoured and for which he has

received so much blame and a little praise, snuffed out by the

cabinet. And yet how is it possible to avoid it, even putting

aside the strong opinions of Lowe, Cardwell, and others? My only

hope is that you have got the germ of some larger and more

comprehensive plan in your head, than has yet been developed.

The plan ultimately adopted, after a severe struggle and with momentous

consequences, did not first spring from Mr. Gladstone’s brain. The idea of

adapting the law to custom in all its depth and breadth, and extending the

rooted notion of tenant-right to its furthest bearings, was necessarily a

plant of Irish and not of English growth. Mr. Chichester Fortescue, the

Irish chief secretary and an Irishman, first opened a bold expansion of

the familiar principle of many tenant-right bills. He had introduced such

a bill himself in 1866, and the conservative government had brought in

another in 1867. It is believed that he was instigated to adopt the new

and bolder line by Sir Edward Sullivan, then the Irish attorney-general.

Away from Sullivan, it was observed, he had little to say of value about

his plan. In the cabinet Fortescue was not found effective, but he was

thoroughly at home in the subject, and his speeches in public on Irish

business had all the cogency of a man speaking his native tongue, and even

genius in an acquired language is less telling. What is astonishing is the

magic of the rapid and sympathetic penetration with which Mr. Gladstone

went to the heart of the problem, as it was presented to him by his Irish

advisers. This was his way. When acts of policy were not of great or

immediate concern, he took them as they came; but when they pressed for

treatment and determination, then he swooped down upon them with the

strength and vision of an eagle.

II

His career in the most deeply operative portion of it was so intimately

concerned with Ireland, that my readers will perhaps benignantly permit a

page or two of historic digression. I know the subject seems uninviting.

My apology must be that it occupied no insignificant portion of Mr.

Gladstone’s public life, and that his treatment of it made one of his

deepest marks on the legislation of the century. After all, there is no

English-speaking community in any part of the wide globe, where our tragic

mismanagement of the land of Ireland, and of those dwelling on it and

sustained by it, has not left its unlucky stamp.

(M86) If Englishmen and Scots had not found the theme so uninviting, if

they had given a fraction of the attention to the tenure and history of

Irish land, that was bestowed, say, upon the Seisachtheia of Solon at

Athens, or the Sempronian law in ancient Rome, this chapter in our annals

would not have been written. As it was, parliament had made laws for

landlord and tenant in Ireland without well understanding what is either

an Irish landlord or an Irish tenant. England has been able to rule India,

Mill said, because the business of ruling devolved upon men who passed

their lives in India, and made Indian interests their regular occupation.

India has on the whole been governed with a pretty full perception of its

differences from England. Ireland on the contrary, suffering a worse

misfortune than absentee landlords, was governed by an absentee

parliament. In England, property means the rights of the rent-receiver who

has equipped the land and prepared it for the capital and the skill of the

tenant. In Ireland, in the minds of the vast majority of the population,

for reasons just as good, property includes rights of the cultivator,

whose labour has drained the land, and reclaimed it, and fenced it, and

made farm-roads, and put a dwelling and farm buildings on it, and given to

it all the working value that it possesses. We need suppose no criminality

on either side. The origin of the difference was perfectly natural. In

Ireland the holdings were small and multitudinous; no landlord who was not

a millionaire, could have prepared and equipped holdings numbered by

hundreds or thousands; and if he could, the hundreds and thousands of

tenants had not a straw of capital. This peculiarity in social

circumstances made it certain, therefore, that if the moral foundation of

modern ideas of property is that he who sows shall reap, the idea of

property would grow up in the mind of the cultivator, whenever the outer

climate permitted the growth in his mind of any ideas of moral or

equitable right at all.

In 1843 the Devon Commission had reported that it is the tenant who has

made the improvements; that large confiscations of these improvements had

been systematically practised in the shape of progressive enhancements of

rent; that crime and disorder sprang from the system; and that parliament

ought to interfere. A bill was proposed by the Peel government in 1845 for

protecting the rightful interests of the tenant against the landlord. It

was introduced in the House mainly composed of landlords. There it had

such contumelious greeting, that it was speedily dropped. This was a

crowning illustration of the levity of the imperial parliament dealing

with Irish problems. The vital necessity for readjusting the foundations

of social life demonstrated; a half measure languidly attempted; attempt

dropped; bills sent to slumber in limbo; dry rot left quietly alone for a

whole generation, until bloody outrage and murder awoke legislative

conscience or roused executive fear. The union was seventy years old

before the elementary feature in the agrarian condition of Ireland was

recognised by the parliament which had undertaken to govern Ireland.

Before the union Ireland was governed by the British cabinet, through the

Irish landed gentry, according to their views, and in their interests.

After the union it was just the same. She was treated as a turbulent and

infected province within the larger island; never as a community with an

internal economy peculiarly her own, with special sentiments, history,

recollections, points of view, and necessities all her own. Between the

union and the year 1870, Acts dealing with Irish land had been passed at

Westminster. Every one of these Acts was in the interest of the landlord

and against the tenant. A score of Insurrection Acts, no Tenant-right Act.

Meanwhile Ireland had gone down into the dark gulfs of the Famine

(1846-7).

Anybody can now see that the true view of the Irish cultivator was to

regard him as a kind of copyholder or customary freeholder, or whatever

other name best fits a man who has possessory interests in a piece of

land, held at the landlord’s will, but that will controlled by custom. In

Ulster, and in an embryo degree elsewhere, this was what in a varying and

irregular way actually had come about. Agrarian customs developed that

undoubtedly belong to a backward social system, but they sprang from the

necessities of the case. The essence of such customs in Ulster was first,

a fair rent to be fixed not by competition, but by valuation, and

exclusive of tenant’s improvements; second, the right of the tenant to

transfer to somebody else his goodwill, or whatever else we may call his

right of occupancy in the holding.

Instead of adapting law to custom, habit, practice, and equity, parliament

proceeded to break all this down. With well-meaning but blind violence it

imported into Ireland after the famine the English idea of landed property

and contract. Or rather, it imported these ideas into Ireland with a

definiteness and formality that would have been impracticable even in

England. Just as good people thought they could easily make Ireland

protestant if only she could be got within earshot of evangelical truth,

so statesmen expected that a few clauses on a parchment would suffice to

root out at a stroke the inveterate habits and ideas of long generations.

We talk of revolutionary doctrinaires in France and other countries.

History hardly shows such revolutionary doctrinaires anywhere as the whig

and tory statesmen who tried to regenerate Ireland in the middle of the

nineteenth century. They first of all passed an Act (1849) inviting the

purchase of the estates of an insolvent landlord upon precisely the same

principles as governed the purchase of his pictures or his furniture. We

passed the Encumbered Estates Act, Mr. Gladstone said, “with lazy,

heedless, uninformed good intentions.” The important rights given by

custom and equity to the cultivator were suddenly extinguished by the

supreme legal right of the rent-receiver. About one-eighth of the whole

area of the country is estimated to have changed hands on these terms. The

extreme of wretchedness and confusion naturally followed. Parliament

thought this must be due to some misunderstanding. That there might be no

further mistake, it next proceeded formally to declare (1860) that the

legal relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland were to be those of

strict contract.(186) Thus blunder was clenched by blunder. The

cultivators were terror-struck, and agitation waxed hot.

Oliver Cromwell had a glimpse of the secret in 1649. “These poor people,”

he said, “have been accustomed to as much injustice and oppression from

their landlords, the great men, and those who should have done them right,

as any people in that which we call Christendom. Sir, if justice were

freely and impartially administered here, the foregoing darkness and

corruption would make it look so much the more glorious and beautiful.” It

was just two hundred and twenty years before another ruler of England saw

as deep, and applied his mind to the free doing of justice.

III

Almost immediately after recovering from the fatigues of the session of

1869, Mr. Gladstone threw himself upon his new task, his imagination

vividly excited by its magnitude and its possibilities. “For the last

three months,” he writes to the Duke of Argyll (Dec. 5), “I have worked

daily, I think, upon the question, and so I shall continue to do. The

literature of it is large, larger than I can master; but I feel the

benefit of continued reading upon it. We have before us a crisis, and a

great crisis, for us all, to put it on no higher ground, and a great

honour or a great disgrace. As I do not mean to fail through want of

perseverance, so neither will I wilfully err through precipitancy, or

through want of care and desire at least to meet all apprehensions which

are warranted by even the show of reason.”

It was not reading alone that brought him round to the full measure of

securing the cultivator in his holding. The crucial suggestion, the

expediency, namely, of making the landlord pay compensation to the tenant

for disturbing him, came from Ireland. To Mr. Chichester Fortescue, the

Irish secretary, Mr. Gladstone writes (Sept. 15):—

I heartily wish, it were possible that you, Sullivan, and I could

have some of those preliminary conversations on land, which were

certainly of great use in the first stages of the Irish Church

bill. As this is difficult, let us try to compare notes as well as

we can in writing. I anticipate that many members of the cabinet

will find it hard to extend their views to what the exigencies of

the time, soberly considered, now require; but patience, prudence,

and good feeling will, I hope, surmount all obstacles.

Like you, I am unwilling to force a peasant proprietary into

existence.... The first point in this legislation, viz., that the

presumption of law should give improvements to the tenant, is now,

I suppose, very widely admitted, but no longer suffices to settle

the question.... Now as to your “compensation for disturbance.”

This is indeed a question full of difficulty. It is very desirable

to prevent the using of augmentation of rent as a method of

eviction. I shall be most curious to see the means and provisions

you may devise, without at present being too sanguine.

(M87) Meanwhile he notes to Lord Granville (Sept. 22) how critical and

arduous the question is, within as well as without the cabinet, and

wonders whether they ought not to be thinking of a judicious cabinet

committee:—

The question fills the public mind in an extraordinary degree, and

we can hardly avoid some early step towards making progress in it.

A committee keeps a cabinet quiet. It is highly necessary that we

should be quite ready when parliament meets, and yet there is so

much mental movement upon the question from day to day, as we see

from a variety of curious utterances (that of the _Times_

included), that it is desirable to keep final decisions open. Much

information will be open, and this a committee can prepare in

concert with the Irish government. It also, I think, affords a

means of bringing men’s minds together.

He tells the Irish secretary that so far as he can enter into the

secretary’s views, he “enters thoroughly into the spirit of them.” But

many members of the cabinet, laden sufficiently with their own labours,

had probably not so closely followed up the matter:—

The proposition, that _more_ than compensation to tenants for

their improvements will be necessary in order to settle the Irish

land laws, will be unpalatable, or new, to several, and naturally

enough. You will have observed the total difference in the

internal situation between this case and that of the Irish church,

where upon all the greater points our measure was in a manner

outlined for us by the course of previous transactions.

At the end of October the question was brought formally before the

cabinet:—

_Oct. 30._—Cabinet, 2-5-½.... We broke ground very satisfactorily

on the question of Irish land. _Nov. 3._—Cabinet. Chiefly on Irish

land, and stiff. 9.—To Guildhall, where I spoke for the

government. The combination of physical effort with measured words

is difficult. 22.—Worked six hours on my books, arranging and

re-arranging. The best brain rest I have had, I think, since

December last.

The brain rest was not for long. On Dec. 1 he tells Lord Granville that

Argyll is busy on Irish land, and in his views is misled by “the rapid

facility of his active mind.” “It is rather awkward at this stage to talk

of breaking up the government, and that is more easily said than done.” I

know no more singular reading in its way than the correspondence between

Mr. Gladstone and the Duke of Argyll; Mr. Gladstone trying to lead his

argumentative colleague over one or two of the barest rudiments of the

history of Irish land, and occasionally showing in the process somewhat of

the quality of the superior pupil teacher acquiring to-day material for

the lesson of to-morrow. Mr. Gladstone goes to the root of the matter when

he says to the Duke: “What I would most earnestly entreat of you is not to

rely too much on Highland experience, but to acquaint yourself by careful

reading with the rather extensive facts and history of the Irish land

question. My own studies in it are very imperfect, though pursued to the

best of my ability; but they have revealed to me many matters of fact

which have seriously modified my views, most of them connected with and

branching out of the very wide extension of the idea and even the practice

of tenant right, mostly perhaps _un_recognised beyond the limits of the

Ulster custom.”

Then Lord Granville writes to him that Clarendon has sent him two letters

running, talking of the certainty of the government being broken up. “The

sky is very far from clear,” Mr. Gladstone says to Mr. Fortescue (Dec. 3),

“but we must bate no jot of heart or hope.” The next day it is Mr. Bright

to whom he turns in friendly earnest admonition. His words will perhaps be

useful to many generations of cabinet ministers:—

It is not the courageous part of your paper to which I now object,

though I doubt the policy of the reference to feebleness and

timidity, as men in a cabinet do not like what may _seem_ to imply

that they are cowards. It is your argument (a very over-strained

one in my opinion) against Fortescue’s propositions, and your

proposal (so it reads) to put them back in order of discussion to

the second place _now_, when the mind of the cabinet has been upon

them for six weeks.... Had the cabinet adopted at this moment _a

good and sufficient scheme for dealing with the Irish tenants as

tenants_, I should care little how much you depreciated such a

scheme in comparison with one for converting them into owners. But

the state of things is most critical. This is not a time at which

those who in substance agree, can afford to throw away strength by

the _relative_ depreciation of those parts of a plan of relief, to

which they do not themselves give the first place in importance.

It is most dangerous to discredit _propositions which you mean to

adopt_, in the face of any who (as yet) do not mean to adopt them,

and who may consistently and honourably use all your statements

against them, nay, who would really be bound to do so. No part of

what I have said is an argument against your propositions.... If

your seven propositions were law to-day, you would have made but a

very small progress towards settling the land question of Ireland.

For all this very plain speech, you will, I am sure, forgive me.

A letter from Mr. Gladstone to Fortescue (Dec. 5) shows the competition

between Bright’s projects of purchase by state-aid, and the scheme for

dealing with the tenants as tenants:—

I am a good deal staggered at the idea of any interference with

present rents. But I shall not speak on this subject to others. It

will be difficult enough to carry the substance of the plan you

proposed, without any enlargement of it. I hope to see you again

before the question comes on in the cabinet.... Bright is very

full of waste lands, and generally of his own plans, considerably

(at present) to the detriment of yours. He wants the government to

buy waste lands, and says it is not against political economy, but

yours is. I think he will come right. It appears to me we might in

the case of waste lands lend money (on proper conditions) to _any

buyers_; in the case of other lands we are only to lend to

occupiers. What do you think of this?

(M88) At this date he was still in doubt whether anybody would agree to

interference with existing rents, but he had for himself hit upon the

principle that became the foundation of his law. He put to Fortescue (Dec.

9) as a material point:—

Whether it is expedient to adopt, wherever it can be made

available, _the custom of the country as the basis for

compensation on eviction and the like_. I cannot make out from

your papers whether you wholly dissent from this. I hoped you had

agreed in it. I have acquired a strong conviction upon it, of

which I have written out the grounds; but I shall not circulate

the paper till I understand your views more fully.

Lowe, at the other extremity, describes himself as more and more

“oppressed by a feeling of heavy responsibility and an apprehension of

serious danger,” and feeling that he and the minority (Clarendon, Argyll,

and Cardwell—of whom he was much the best hand at an argument)—were being

driven to choose between their gravest convictions, and their allegiance

to party and cabinet. They agreed to the presumption of law as to the

making of improvements; to compensation for improvements, retrospective

and prospective; to the right of new tenants at will to compensation on

eviction. The straw that broke the camel’s back was compensation for

eviction, where no custom could be proved in the case of an existing

tenancy. Mr. Gladstone wrote a long argumentative letter to Lord Granville

to be shown to Lowe, and it was effectual. Lowe thought the tone of it

very fair and the arguments of the right sort, but nevertheless he added,

in the words I have already quoted, “I fear he is steering straight upon

the rocks.”

What might surprise us, if anything in Irish doings could surprise us, is

that though this was a measure for Irish tenants, it was deemed heinously

wrong to ascertain directly from their representatives what the Irish

tenants thought. Lord Bessborough was much rebuked in London for

encouraging Mr. Gladstone to communicate with Sir John Gray, the owner of

the great newspaper of the Irish tenant class. Yet Lord O’Hagan, the

chancellor, who had the rather relevant advantage of being of the same

stock and faith as three-fourths of the nation concerned, told them that

“the success or failure of the Land bill depends on the _Freeman’s

Journal_; if it says, We accept this as a fixity of tenure, every priest

will say the same, and _vice versâ_.” It was, however, almost a point of

honour in those days for British cabinets to make Irish laws out of their

own heads.

(M89) Almost to the last the critical contest in the cabinet went on.

Fortescue fought as well as he could even against the prime minister

himself, as the following from Mr. Gladstone to him shows (Jan. 12):—

There can surely be no advantage in further argument between you

and me at this stage—especially after so many hours and pages of

it—on the recognition of usage beyond the limit of Ulster custom

as a distinct head. You pressed your view repeatedly on the

cabinet, which did not adopt it. Till the cabinet alters its mind,

we have no option except to use every effort to get the bill drawn

according to its instructions.

How much he had his Irish plans at heart, Mr. Gladstone showed by his

urgency that the Queen should open parliament. His letter to her (Jan. 15)

on the subject, he told Lord Granville, “expresses my desire, not founded

on ordinary motives, nor having reference to ordinary circumstances”:—

We have now to deal with the _gros_ of the Irish question, and the

Irish question is in a category by itself. It would be almost a

crime in a minister to omit anything that might serve to mark, and

bring home to the minds of men, the gravity of the occasion.

Moreover, I am persuaded that the Queen’s own sympathies would be,

not as last year, but in the same current as ours. To this great

country the state of Ireland after seven hundred years of our

tutelage is in my opinion so long as it continues, an intolerable

disgrace, and a danger so absolutely transcending all others, that

I call it the only real danger of the noble empire of the Queen. I

cannot refrain from bringing before her in one shape or another my

humble advice that she should, if _able_, open parliament.

IV

Public opinion was ripening. The _Times_ made a contribution of the first

importance to the discussion, in a series of letters from a correspondent,

that almost for the first time brought the facts of Irish land before the

general public. A pamphlet from Mill, then at the height of his influence

upon both writers and readers, startled them by the daring proposition

that the only plan was to buy out the landlords. The whole host of whig

economists and lawyers fell heavily upon him in consequence. The new

voters showed that they were not afraid of new ideas. It was not until

Jan. 25 that peril was at an end inside the government:—

_Jan. 25, ’70._—Cabinet. The great difficulties of the Irish Land

bill _there_ are now over. Thank God! _Feb. 7._—With the Prince of

Wales 3-1/4-4-1/4 explaining to him the Land bill, and on other

matters. He has certainly much natural intelligence. 15.—H. of C.

Introduced the Irish Land bill in a speech of 3-1/4 hours. Well

received by the House at large. _Query_, the Irish popular party?

Lord Dufferin, an Irish landlord, watching, as he admits, with

considerable jealousy exceptional legislation in respect to Ireland, heard

the speech from the peers’ gallery, and wrote to Mr. Gladstone the next

day: “I feel there is no one else in the country who could have

recommended the provisions of such a bill to the House of Commons, with a

slighter shock to the prejudices of the class whose interests are chiefly

concerned.” He adds: “I happened to find myself next to Lord Cairns. When

you had done, he told me he did not think his people would oppose any of

the leading principles of your bill.”

The policy of the bill as tersely explained by Mr. Gladstone in a letter

to Manning, compressing as he said eight or ten columns of the _Times_,

was “to prevent the landlord from using the terrible weapon of undue and

unjust eviction, by so framing the handle that it shall cut his hands with

the sharp edge of pecuniary damages. The man evicted without any fault,

and suffering the usual loss by it, will receive whatever the custom of

the country gives, and where there is no custom, according to a scale,

besides whatever he can claim for permanent buildings or reclamation of

land. Wanton eviction will, as I hope, be extinguished by provisions like

these. And if they extinguish wanton eviction, they will also extinguish

those demands for _unjust_ augmentations of rent, which are only

formidable to the occupier, because the power of wanton or arbitrary

eviction is behind them.” What seems so simple, and what was so necessary,

marked in truth a vast revolutionary stride. It transferred to the tenant

a portion of the absolute ownership, and gave him something like an estate

in his holding. The statute contained a whole code of minor provisions,

including the extension of Mr. Bright’s clauses for peasant proprietorship

in the Church Act, but this transfer was what gave the Act its place in

solid legal form.

(M90) The second reading was carried by 442 to 11, the minority being

composed of eight Irish members of advanced type, and three English

tories, including Mr. Henley and Mr. James Lowther, himself Irish

secretary eight years later. The bill was at no point fought high by the

opposition. Mr. Disraeli moved an amendment limiting compensation to

unexhausted improvements. The government majority fell to 76, “a result to

be expected,” Mr. Gladstone reports, “considering the natural leanings of

English and Scotch members to discount in Ireland what they would not

apply in Great Britain. They are not very familiar with Irish land

tenures.” One fact of much significance he notes in these historic

proceedings. Disraeli, he writes to the Duke of Argyll (April 21, 1870),

“has not spoken one word against valuation of rents or perpetuity of

tenure.” It was from the house of his friends that danger came:—

_April 4._—H. of C. Spoke on Disraeli’s amendment. A majority of

76, but the navigation is at present extremely critical. 7.—H. of

C. A most ominous day from end to end. Early in the evening I gave

a review of the state of the bill, and later another menace of

overturn if the motion of Mr. William Fowler [a liberal banker],

which Palmer had unfortunately (as is too common with him) brought

into importance, should be carried. We had a majority of only 32.

To Lord Russell he writes (April 12):—

I am in the hurry-scurry of preparation for a run into the country

this evening, but I must not omit to thank you for your very kind

and welcome letter. We have had a most anxious time in regard to

the Irish Land bill.... The fear that our Land bill may cross the

water creates a sensitive state of mind among all tories, many

whigs, and a few radicals. Upon this state of things comes Palmer

with his legal mind, legal point of view, legal aptitude and

inaptitude (_vide_ Mr. Burke), and stirs these susceptibilities to

such a point that he is always near bringing us to grief. Even

Grey more or less goes with him.

Phillimore records a visit in these critical days:—

_April 8._—Gladstone looked worn and fagged. Very affectionate and

confidential. Annoyed at Palmer’s conduct. Gladstone feels keenly

the want of support in debate. Bright ill. Lowe no moral weight.

“I feel when I have spoken, that I have not a shot in my locker.”

As a very accomplished journalist of the day wrote, there was something

almost painful in the strange phenomenon of a prime minister fighting as

it were all but single-handed the details of his own great measure through

the ambuscades and charges of a numerous and restless enemy—and of an

enemy determined apparently to fritter away the principle of the measure

under the pretence of modifying its details. “No prime minister has ever

attempted any task like it—a task involving the most elaborate

departmental readiness, in addition to the general duties and fatigues of

a prime minister, and that too in a session when questions are showered

like hail upon the treasury bench.”(187)

Then the government put on pressure, and the majority sprang up to 80. The

debate in the Commons lasted over three and a half months, or about a

fortnight longer than had been taken by the Church bill. The third reading

was carried without a division. In the Lords the bill was read a second

time without a division. Few persons “clearly foresaw that it was the

first step of a vast transfer of property, and that in a few years it

would become customary for ministers of the crown to base all their

legislation on the doctrine that Irish land is not an undivided ownership,

but a simple partnership.”(188)

In March Mr. Gladstone had received from Manning a memorandum of ill omen

from the Irish bishops, setting out the amendments by them thought

necessary. This paper included the principles of perpetuity of tenure for

the tiller of the soil and the adjustment of rent by a court. The reader

may judge for himself how impossible it would have been, even for Mr.

Gladstone, in all the plenitude of his power, to persuade either cabinet

or parliament to adopt such invasions of prevailing doctrine. For this,

ten years more of agitation were required, and then he was able to

complete the memorable chapter in Irish history that he had now opened.

V

(M91) Neither the Land Act nor the Church Act at once put out the hot

ashes of Fenianism. A Coercion Act was passed in the spring of 1870. In

the autumn Mr. Gladstone tried to persuade the cabinet to approve the

release of the Fenian prisoners, but it was not until the end of the year

that he prevailed. A secret committee was thought necessary in 1871 to

consider outrages in Westmeath, and a repressive law was passed in

consequence. Mr. Gladstone himself always leaned strongly against these

exceptional laws, and pressed the Irish government hard the other way.

“What we have to do,” he said, “is to defy Fenianism, to rely on public

sentiment, and so provide (as we have been doing) the practical measures

that place the public sentiment on our side, an operation which I think is

retarded by any semblance of _severity_ to those whose offence we admit

among ourselves to have been an ultimate result of our misgovernment of

the country. I am afraid that local opinion has exercised, habitually and

traditionally, too much influence in Ireland, and has greatly compromised

the character of the empire. _This_ question I take to be in most of its

aspects an imperial question.” The proposal for a secret committee was the

occasion of a duel between him and Disraeli (Feb. 27, 1871)—“both,” said

Lord Granville, “very able, but very bitter.” The tory leader taunted Mr.

Gladstone for having recourse to such a proceeding, after posing as the

only man capable of dealing with the evils of Ireland, and backed by a

majority which had legalised confiscation, consecrated sacrilege, and

condoned high treason.

Chapter III. Education—The Career And The Talents. (1870)

He that taketh away-weights from the motions, doth the same as he

that addeth wings.—PYM.

I

Amid dire controversies that in all countries surround all questions of

the school, some believe the first government of Mr. Gladstone in its

dealing with education to have achieved its greatest constructive work.

Others think that, on the contrary, it threw away a noble chance. In the

new scheme of national education established in 1870, the head of the

government rather acquiesced than led. In his own words, his

responsibility was that of concurrence rather than of authorship. His

close absorption in the unfamiliar riddles of Irish land, besides the mass

of business incident to the office of prime minister, might well account

for his small share in the frame of the education bill. More than this,

however, his private interest in public education did not amount to zeal,

and it was at bottom the interest of a churchman. Mr. Gladstone afterwards

wrote to Lord Granville (June 14, ’74), “I have never made greater

personal concessions of opinion than I did on the Education bill to the

united representations of Ripon and Forster.” His share in the adjustments

of the Act was, as he said afterwards, a very simple one, and he found no

occasion either to differ from departmental colleagues, or to press upon

them any proposals of his own. If they had been dealing with an untouched

case, he would have preferred the Scotch plan, which allowed the local

school board to prescribe whatever religious education pleased it best.

Nor did he object to a strict limitation of all teaching paid for in

schools aided or provided out of public money, whether rate or tax, to

purely secular instruction. In that case, however, he held strongly that,

subject to local consent, the master who gave the secular teaching should

be allowed to give religious teaching also at other times, even within the

school-house.(189)

(M92) What Mr. Gladstone cared for was the integrity of religious

instruction. What he disliked or dreaded was, in his own language, the

invasion of that integrity “under cover of protecting exceptional

consciences.” The advance of his ideas is rather interesting. So far back

as 1843,(190) in considering the education clauses of the Factory bill of

that year, he explained to Lord Lyttelton that he was not prepared to

limit church teaching in the schools in the exposition of scripture. Ten

years later, he wrote to his close friend, Bishop Hamilton of Salisbury:—

I am not friendly to the idea of constraining by law either the

total or the partial suppression of conscientious differences in

religion, with a view to fusion of different sects whether in

church or school. I believe that the free development of

conviction is upon the whole the system most in favour both of

truth and of charity. Consequently you may well believe that I

contemplate with satisfaction the state of feeling that prevails

in England, and that has led all governments to adopt the system

of separate and independent subsidies to the various religious

denominations.

As for the government bill of that year (1853), he entirely repudiated the

construction put upon some of its clauses, namely, “that people having the

charge of schools would be obliged to admit children of all religious

creeds, as well as that having admitted them, they would be put under

control as to the instruction to be given.” Ten years later still, we find

him saying, “I deeply regret the aversion to ‘conscience clauses,’ which I

am convinced it would be most wise for the church to adopt. As far back as

1838 I laboured hard to get the National Society to act upon this

principle permissively; and if I remember right, it was with the approval

of the then Bishop of London.” In 1865 he harps on the same string in a

letter to Lord Granville:—

... Suppose the schoolmaster is reading with his boys the third

chapter of St. John, and he explains the passage relating to

baptism in the sense of the prayer book and articles—the

dissenters would say this is instruction in the doctrine of the

church of England. Now it is utterly impossible for you to tell

the church schoolmaster or the clergyman that he must not in the

school explain any passage of scripture in a sense to which any of

the parents of the children, or at least any sect objects; for

_then you would in principle entirely alter the character of the

religious teaching for the rest of the scholars, and in fact upset

the whole system_. The dissenter, on the other hand, ought (in my

opinion) to be entitled to withdraw his child from the risk (if he

considers it such) of receiving instruction of the kind I

describe.

Mr. Gladstone had therefore held a consistent course, and in cherishing

along with full freedom of conscience the integrity of religious

instruction, he had followed a definite and intelligible line. Unluckily

for him and his government this was not the line now adopted.

II

When the cabinet met in the autumn of 1869, Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord de

Grey (afterwards Ripon) (Nov. 4):—

I have read Mr. Forster’s able paper, and I follow it very

generally. On one point I cannot very well follow it.... Why not

adopt frankly the principle that the State or the local community

should provide the secular teaching, and either leave the option

to the ratepayers to go beyond this _sine quâ non_, if they think

fit, within the limits of the conscience clause, or else simply

leave the parties themselves to find Bible and other religious

education from voluntary sources?

Early in the session before the introduction of the bill, Mr. Gladstone

noted in his diary, “Good hope that the principal matters at issue may be

accommodated during the session, but great differences of opinion have

come to the surface, and much trouble may arise.” In fact trouble enough

arose to shake his ministry to its foundations. What would be curious if

he had not had the Land bill on his hands, is that he did not fight hard

for his own view in the cabinet. He seems to have been content with

stating it, without insisting. Whether he could have carried it in the

midst of a whirlwind of indeterminate but vehement opinions, may well be

doubted.

(M93) The Education bill was worked through the cabinet by Lord de Grey as

president of the council, but its lines were laid and its provisions in

their varying forms defended in parliament, by the vice-president, who did

not reach the cabinet until July 1870. Mr. Forster was a man of sterling

force of character, with resolute and effective power of work, a fervid

love of country, and a warm and true humanity. No orator, he was yet an

excellent speaker of a sound order, for his speaking, though plain and

even rough in style, abounded in substance; he always went as near to the

root of the matter as his vision allowed, and always with marked effect

for his own purposes. A quaker origin is not incompatible with a militant

spirit, and Forster was sturdy in combat. He had rather a full share of

self-esteem, and he sometimes exhibited a want a tact that unluckily

irritated or estranged many whom more suavity might have retained. Then,

without meaning it, he blundered into that most injurious of all positions

for the parliamentary leader, of appearing to care more for his enemies

than for his friends. As Mr. Gladstone said of him, “destiny threw him on

the main occasions of his parliamentary career into open or qualified

conflict with friends as well as foes, perhaps rather more with friends

than foes.” A more serious defect of mind was that he was apt to approach

great questions—Education, Ireland, Turkey—without truly realising how

great they were, and this is the worst of all the shortcomings of

statesmanship. There was one case of notable exception. In all the stages

and aspects of the American civil war, Forster played an admirable part.

The problem of education might have seemed the very simplest. After the

extension of the franchise to the workmen, everybody felt, in a happy

phrase of that time, that “we must educate our masters.” Outside events

were supposed to hold a lesson. The triumphant North in America was the

land of the common school. The victory of Prussians over Austrians at

Sadowa in 1866 was called the victory of the elementary school teacher.

Even the nonconformists had come round. Up to the middle of the sixties

opinion among them was hostile to the intervention of the state in

education. They had resisted Graham’s proposals in 1843, and Lord John

Russell’s in 1847; but a younger generation, eager for progress, saw the

new necessity that change of social and political circumstance imposed.

The business in 1870 was to provide schools, and to get the children into

them.(191)

It is surprising how little serious attention had been paid even by

speculative writers in this country to the vast problem of the relative

duties of the State and the Family in respect of education. Mill devoted a

few keen pages to it in his book upon political economy. Fawcett, without

much of Mill’s intellectual power or any of his sensitive temperament, was

supposed to represent his principles in parliament; yet in education he

was against free schools, while Mill was for them. All was unsettled;

important things were even unperceived. Yet the questions of national

education, answer them as we will, touch the moral life and death of

nations. The honourable zeal of the churches had done something, but most

of the ground remained to be covered. The question was whether the system

about to be created should merely supplement those sectarian, private,

voluntary schools, or should erect a fabric worthy of the high name of

national. The churchman hoped, but did not expect, the first. The

nonconformist (broadly speaking), the academic liberal, and the hard-grit

radical, were keen for the second, and they were all three well

represented in the House of Commons.

(M94) What the government proposed was that local boards should be called

into existence to provide schools where provision was inadequate and

inefficient, these schools to be supported by the pence of the children,

the earned grant from parliament, and a new rate to be levied upon the

locality. The rate was the critical element. If the boards chose, they

could make bye-laws compelling parents to send their children to school;

and they could (with a conscience clause) settle what form of religious

instruction they pleased. The voluntary men were to have a year of grace

in which to make good any deficiency in supply of schools, and so keep out

the boards. The second reading was secured without a division, but only on

assurances from Mr. Gladstone that amendments would be made in committee.

On June 16, the prime minister, as he says, “explained the plans of the

government to an eager and agitated house.”

Two days before, the cabinet had embarked upon a course that made the

agitation still more eager. Mr. Gladstone wrote the pregnant entry: “_June

14._ Cabinet; decided on making more general use of machinery supplied by

voluntary schools, avoidance of religious controversy in local boards.”

This meant that the new system was in no way to supersede the old

non-system, but to supplement it. The decision was fatal to a national

settlement. As Mr. Forster put it, their object was “to complete the

voluntary system and to fill up gaps.” Lord Ripon used the same language

in the Lords. Instead of the school boards being universal, they should

only come into existence where the ecclesiastical party was not strong

enough in wealth, influence, and liberality to keep them out. Instead of

compulsory attendance being universal, that principle could only be

applied where a school board was found, and where the school board liked

to apply it. The old parliamentary grant to the denominational schools was

to be doubled. This last provision was Mr. Gladstone’s own. Forster had

told him that it was impossible to carry a proposal allowing school boards

to contribute to denominational schools, and the only compensation open

was a larger slice of the grant from parliament.

III

The storm at once began to rage around the helmsman’s ears. Some days

earlier the situation had been defined by Mr. Brand, the whip, for his

leader’s guidance. The attempt, he said, made by Fawcett, Dilke, and

others, to create a diversion in favour of exclusively secular education

has signally failed; the opinion of the country is clearly adverse. On the

other hand, while insisting on the religious element, the country is just

as strongly opposed to dogmatic teaching in schools aided by local rates.

“You ask me,” said Mr. Gladstone to Mr. Brand (May 24), “to solve the

problem in the words ‘to include religion, and to exclude dogma,’ which,

as far as I know, though it admits of a sufficient practical handling by

individuals acting for themselves, has not yet been solved by any state or

parliament.” Well might he report at Windsor (June 21) that, though the

auspices were favourable, there was a great deal of crude and

indeterminate opinion on the subject in the House as well as elsewhere,

and “the bill, if carried, would be carried by the authority and

persistence of the government, aided by the acquiescence of the

opposition.” It was this carrying of the bill by the aid of the tory

opposition that gave fuel to the liberal flame, and the increase of the

grant to the sectarian schools made the heat more intense. The most

critical point of the bill, according to Mr. Gladstone, was a proposal

that now seems singularly worded, to the effect that the teaching of

scriptures in rate schools should not be in favour of, or opposed to,

tenets of any denomination. This was beaten by 251 to 130. “The minority

was liberal, but more than half of the liberal party present voted in the

majority.”

(M95) “We respect Mr. Forster,” cried Dale of Birmingham, “we honour Mr.

Gladstone, but we are determined that England shall not again be cursed

with the bitterness and strife from which we had hoped that we had for

ever escaped, by the abolition of the church rate.”(192) Writing to a

brother nonconformist, he expresses his almost unbounded admiration for

Mr. Gladstone, “but it is a bitter disappointment that his government

should be erecting new difficulties in the way of religious equality.”

Under the flashing eye of the prime minister himself the nonconformist

revolt reared its crest. Miall, the veteran bearer of the flag of

disestablishment, told Mr. Gladstone (July 22) that he was leading one

section of the liberal party through the valley of humiliation. “Once bit,

twice shy. We can’t stand this sort of thing much longer,” he said. In a

flame of natural wrath Mr. Gladstone replied that he had laboured not to

gain Mr. Miall’s support, but to promote the welfare of the country. “I

hope my hon. friend will not continue his support to the government one

moment longer than he deems it consistent with his sense of right and

duty. For God’s sake, sir, let him withdraw it the moment he thinks it

better for the cause he has at heart that he should do so.” The

government, he said, had striven to smooth difficulties, to allay

passions, to avoid everything that would excite or stimulate, to endeavour

to bring men to work together, to rise above mere sectional views, to

eschew all extremes, and not to make their own narrow choice the model of

the measure they were presenting to parliament, but to admit freely and

liberally into its composition those great influences which were found

swaying the community. Forster wrote to a friend, “it does not rest with

me now whether or no the state should decree against religion—decree that

it is a thing of no account. Well, with my assent the state shall not do

this, and I believe I can prevent it.”(193) Insist, forsooth, that

religion was not a thing of no account against men like Dale, one of the

most ardent and instructed believers that ever fought the fight and kept

the faith; against Bright, than whom no devouter spirit breathed, and who

thought the Education Act “the worst Act passed by any liberal parliament

since 1832.”

The opposition did not show deep gratitude, having secured as many favours

as they could hope, and more than they had anticipated. A proposal from

the government (July 14) to introduce secret voting in the election of

local boards was stubbornly contested, in spite, says Mr. Gladstone, “of

the unvarying good temper, signal ability and conciliatory spirit of Mr.

Forster,” and it was not until after fourteen divisions that a few

assuaging words from Mr. Gladstone brought the handful of conservative

opposition to reason. It was five o’clock before the unflagging prime

minister found his way homewards in the broad daylight.

It is impossible to imagine a question on which in a free government it

was more essential to carry public opinion with the law. To force parents

to send children to school, was an enterprise that must break down if

opinion would not help to work it. Yet probably on no other question in

Mr. Gladstone’s career as law-maker was common opinion so hard to weigh,

to test, to focus and adjust. Of the final settlement of the question of

religious instruction, Mr. Gladstone said to Lord Lyttelton when the

battle was over (Oct. 25, ’70):—

... I will only say that it was in no sense my choice or that of

the government. Our first proposition was by far the best. But it

received no active support even from the church, the National

Society, or the opposition, while divers bishops, large bodies of

clergy, the Education Union, and earliest of all, I think,

Roundell Palmer in the House of Commons, threw overboard the

catechism. We might then have fallen back upon the plan of

confining the application of the rate to secular subjects; but

this was opposed by the church, the opposition, most of the

dissenters, and most of our own friends. As it was, I assure you,

the very utmost that could be done was to arrange the matter as it

now stands, where the exclusion is limited to the formulary, and

to get rid of the popular imposture of undenominational

instruction.

(M96) At bottom the battle of the schools was not educational, it was

social. It was not religious but ecclesiastical, and that is often the

very contrary of religious. In the conflicts of the old centuries whence

Christian creeds emerged, disputes on dogma constantly sprang from

rivalries of race and accidents of geography. So now quarrels about

education and catechism and conscience masked the standing jealousy

between church and chapel—the unwholesome fruit of the historic mishaps of

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that separated the nation into two

camps, and invested one of them with all the pomp and privilege of social

ascendency. The parent and the child, in whose name the struggle raged,

stood indifferent. From the point of party strategy, the policy of this

great statute was fatal. The church of England was quickened into active

antagonism by Irish disestablishment, by the extinction of sectarian tests

at Oxford and Cambridge, and by the treatment of endowed schools. This

might have been balanced by the zeal of nonconformists. Instead of zeal,

the Education Act produced refrigeration and estrangement.

We may be sure that on such a subject Mr. Gladstone looked further than

strategies of party. “I own to you,” said he to a correspondent before the

battle was quite over, “that the history of these last few months leaves

upon my mind some melancholy impressions, which I hope at some fancied

period of future leisure and retirement to study and interpret.” He soon

saw how deep the questions went, and on what difficult ground the state

and the nation would be inevitably drawn. His notions of a distinctive

formula were curious. Forster seems to have put some question to him on

the point whether the three creeds were formularies within the Act. It

appears to me, Mr. Gladstone answered (October 17, 1870):—

It is quite open to you at once to dispose of the Nicene and

Athanasian Creeds and to decline inquiring whether they are

distinctive, upon the ground that they are not documents employed

in the instruction of young children.... Obviously no one has a

right to call on you to define the distinctive character of a

formulary such as the Thirty-nine Articles, or of any but such as

are employed in schools. With respect to the Apostles’ Creed, it

appears to me not to be a distinctive formulary in the sense of

the Act. Besides the fact that it is acknowledged by the great

bulk of all Christendom, it is denied or rejected by no portion of

the Christian community; and, further, it is not controversial in

its form, but sets forth, in the simplest shape a series of the

leading facts on which Christianity, the least abstract of all

religions, is based.

Manning plied him hard (September, October, November, 1871). The state of

Paris (Commune blazing that year, Tuileries and Hôtel de Ville in ashes,

and the Prussian spiked helmets at the gates) was traceable to a godless

education—so the archbishop argued. In England the Christian tradition was

unbroken. It was only a clique of doctrinaires, Huxley at the head of

them, who believing nothing trumpeted secular education. “Delighted to see

Mr. Forster attacked as playing into the hands of the clergy.” Mr.

Gladstone should stimulate by every agency in his power the voluntary

religious energies of the three kingdoms. “The real crisis is in the

formation of men. They are as we make them, and they make society. The

formation of men is the work you have given to the school boards. God gave

it to the parents. Neither you nor Mr. Forster meant this; you least of

all men on your side of the House. Glad to see you lay down the broad and

intelligible line that state grants go to secular education, and voluntary

efforts must do the rest. Let us all start fair in this race. Let every

sect, even the Huxleyites, have their grant if they fulfil the conditions.

As for the school-rate conscience, it is a mongrel institution of

quakerism.” How Mr. Gladstone replied on all these searching issues, I do

not find.

IV

The passing of the Act did not heal the wound. The nonconformist revolt

was supported in a great conference at Manchester in 1872, representing

eight hundred churches and other organizations. Baptist unions and

congregational unions were unrelenting. We may as well finish the story.

It was in connection with this struggle that Mr. Chamberlain first came

prominently into the arena of public life—bold, intrepid, imbued with the

keen spirit of political nonconformity, and a born tactician. The issue

selected for the attack was the twenty-fifth section of the Education Act,

enabling school boards to pay in denominational schools the fees of

parents who, though not paupers, were unable to pay them. This provision

suddenly swelled into dimensions of enormity hitherto unsuspected. A

caustic onlooker observed that it was the smallest ditch in which two

great political armies ever engaged in civil war. Yet the possibility

under cover of this section, of a sectarian board subsidising church

schools was plain, and some cases, though not many, actually occurred in

which appreciable sums were so handed over. The twenty-fifth section was a

real error, and it made no bad flag for an assault upon a scheme of error.