(M97) Great things were hoped from Mr. Bright’s return to the government

in the autumn of 1873. The correspondence between Mr. Gladstone and him

sheds some interesting light upon the state into which the Education Act,

and Mr. Forster’s intractable bearing in defence of it, had brought

important sections of the party:—

_Mr. Bright to Mr. Gladstone._

_Aug. 12, 1873._—So far as I can hear, there is no intention to

get up an opposition at Birmingham, which is a comfort, as I am

not in force to fight a contested election. I am anxious not to go

to the election, fearing that I shall not have nerve to speak to

the 5000 men who will or may crowd the town hall. Before I go, if

I go, I shall want to consult you on the difficult matter—how to

deal frankly and wisely with the education question. I cannot

break with my “noncon.” friends, the political friends of all my

life; and unless my joining you can do something to lessen the

mischief now existing and _still growing_, I had better remain as

I have been since my illness, a spectator rather than an actor on

the political field.... I hope you are better, and that your

troubles, for a time, are diminished. I wish much you could have

announced a change in the education department; it would have

improved the tone of feeling in many constituencies.

Mr. Gladstone himself had touched “the watchful jealousy” of Bright’s

nonconformist friends by a speech made at the time at Hawarden. This

speech he explained in writing to Bright from Balmoral (Aug. 21):—

The upshot, I think, is this. My speech could not properly have

been made by a man who thinks that boards and public rates ought

to be used for the purpose of putting down as quickly as may be

the voluntary schools. But the recommendation which I made might

have been consistently and properly supported by any one whose

opinions fell short of this, and did not in the least turn upon

any preference for voluntary over compulsory means.(194)

As he said afterwards to Lord Granville, “I personally have no fear of the

secular system; but I cannot join in measures of repression against

voluntary schools.”

“There is not a word said by you at Hawarden,” Bright replied (Aug. 25),

“that would fetter you in the least in considering the education question;

but at present the general feeling is against the idea of any concession

on your part.... What is wanted is some definite willingness or resolution

to recover the goodwill and confidence of the nonconformist leaders in the

boroughs; for without this, reconstruction is of no value.... Finance is

of great moment, and people are well pleased to see you in your old office

again; but no budget will heal the soreness that has been created—it is

not of the pocket but of the feelings.... I want you just to know where I

am and what I feel; but if I could talk to you, I could say what I have to

say with more precision, and with a greater delicacy of expression. I ask

you only to put the best construction on what I write.”

If Forster could only have composed himself to the same considerate

spirit, there might have been a different tale to tell. Bright made his

election speech at Birmingham, and Forster was in trouble about it. “I

think,” said the orator to Mr. Gladstone, “he ought rather to be thankful

for it; it will enable him to get out of difficulties if he will improve

the occasion. There is no question of changing the policy of the

government, but of making minor concessions.... I would willingly change

the policy of irritation into one of soothing and conciliation.” Nothing

of great importance in the way even of temporary reconciliation was

effected by Mr. Bright’s return. The ditch of the twenty-fifth clause

still yawned. The prime minister fell back into the position of August.

The whole situation of the ministry had become critical in every

direction. “Education must be regarded as still to a limited extent an

open question in the government.”

When the general election came, the party was still disunited. Out of 425

liberal candidates in England, Scotland, and Wales, 300 were pledged to

the repeal of the 25th clause. Mr. Gladstone’s last word was in a letter

to Bright (Jan. 27, 1874):—

The fact is, it seems to me, that the noncons. have not yet as a

body made up their minds whether they want unsectarian religion,

or whether they want simple secular teaching, so far as the

application of the rate is concerned. I have never been strong

against the latter of these two which seems to me impartial, and

not, if fairly worked, of necessity in any degree unfriendly to

religion. The former is in my opinion glaringly partial, and I

shall never be a party to it. But there is a good deal of leaning

to it in the liberal party. Any attempt to obtain definite pledges

now will give power to the enemies of both plans of proceeding. We

have no rational course as a party but one, which is to adjourn

for a while the solution of the grave parts of the education

problem; and this I know to be in substance your opinion.

V

(M98) The same vigorous currents of national vitality that led to new

endeavours for the education of the poor, had drawn men to consider the

horrid chaos, the waste, and the abuses in the provision of education for

the directing classes beyond the poor. Grave problems of more kinds than

one came into view. The question, What is education? was nearly as hard to

answer as the question of which we have seen so much, What is a church?

The rival claims of old classical training and the acquisition of modern

knowledge were matters of vivacious contest. What is the true place of

classical learning in the human culture of our own age? Misused charitable

trusts, and endowments perverted by the fluctuations of time, by lethargy,

by selfishness, from the objects of pious founders, touched wakeful

jealousies in the privileged sect, and called into action that adoration

of the principle of property which insists upon applying all the rules of

individual ownership to what rightfully belongs to the community. Local

interests were very sensitive, and they were multitudinous. The battle was

severely fought, and it extended over several years, while commission upon

commission explored the issues.

In a highly interesting letter (1861) to Lord Lyttelton Mr. Gladstone set

out at length his views upon the issue between ancient and modern, between

literary training and scientific, between utilitarian education and

liberal. The reader will find this letter in an appendix, as well as one

to Sir Stafford Northcote.(195) While rationally conservative upon the

true basis of attainments in “that small proportion of the youth of any

country who are to become in the fullest sense educated men,” he is

rationally liberal upon what the politics of the time made the burning

question of the sacrosanctity of endowments. “It is our habit in this

country,” he said, “to treat private interests with an extravagant

tenderness. The truth is that all laxity and extravagance in dealing with

what in a large sense is certainly public property, approximates more or

less to dishonesty, or at the least lowers the moral tone of the persons

concerned.”

The result of all this movement, of which it may perhaps be said that it

was mainly inspired and guided by a few men of superior energy and social

weight like Goldwin Smith, Temple, Jowett, Liddell, the active interest of

the classes immediately concerned being hardly more than middling—was one

of the best measures in the history of this government of good measures

(1869). It dealt with many hundreds of schools, and with an annual income

of nearly six hundred thousand pounds. As the Endowed Schools bill was one

of the best measures of the government, so it was Mr. Forster’s best piece

of legislative work. That it strengthened the government can hardly be

said; the path of the reformer is not rose-strewn.(196)

VI

(M99) In one region Mr. Gladstone long lagged behind. He had done a fine

stroke of national policy in releasing Oxford from some of her antique

bonds in 1854;(197) but the principle of a free university was not yet

admitted to his mind. In 1863 he wrote to the vice-chancellor how entirely

the government concurred in the principle of restricting the governing

body of the university and the colleges to the church. The following year

he was willing to throw open the degree; but the right to sit in

convocation he guarded by exacting a declaration of membership of the

church of England.(198) In 1865 Mr. Goschen—then beginning to make a mark

as one of the ablest of the new generation in parliament, combining the

large views of liberal Oxford with the practical energy of the city of

London, added to a strong fibre given him by nature—brought in a bill

throwing open all lay degrees. Mr. Gladstone still stood out, conducting a

brisk correspondence with dissenters. “The whole controversy,” he wrote to

one of them, “is carried on aggressively, as if to disturb and not to

settle. Abstract principles urged without stint or mercy provoke the

counter-assertion of abstract principles in return. There is not power to

carry Mr. Goschen’s speech either in the cabinet, the parliament, or the

country. Yet the change in the balance of parties effected by the

elections will cast upon the liberal majority a serious responsibility. I

would rather see Oxford level with the ground, than its religion regulated

in the manner which would please Bishop Colenso.”

Year by year the struggle was renewed. Even after the Gladstone government

was formed, Coleridge, the solicitor-general, was only allowed in a

private capacity to introduce a bill removing the tests. When he had been

two years at the head of administration, Mr. Gladstone warned Coleridge:

“For me individually it would be beyond anything odious, I am almost

tempted to say it would be impossible, after my long connection with

Oxford, to go into a new controversy on the basis of what will be taken

and alleged to be an absolute secularisation of the colleges; as well as a

reversal of what was deliberately considered and sanctioned in the

parliamentary legislation of 1854 and 1856. I incline to think that this

work is work for others, not for me.”

It was not until 1871 that Mr. Gladstone consented to make the bill a

government measure. It rapidly passed the Commons and was accepted by the

Lords, but with amendments. Mr. Gladstone when he had once adopted a

project never loitered; he now resolutely refused the changes proposed by

the Lords, and when the time came and Lord Salisbury was for insisting on

them, the peers declined by a handsome majority to carry the fight

further. It is needless to add that the admission of dissenters to degrees

and endowments did not injuriously affect a single object for which a

national university exists. On the other hand, the mischiefs of

ecclesiastical monopoly were long in disappearing.

VII

(M100) We have already seen how warmly the project of introducing

competition into the civil service had kindled Mr. Gladstone’s enthusiasm

in the days of the Crimean war.(199) Reform had made slow progress. The

civil service commission had been appointed in 1855, but their

examinations only tested the quality of candidates sent before them on

nomination. In 1860 a system was set up of limited competition among three

nominated candidates, who had first satisfied a preliminary test

examination. This lasted until 1870. Lowe had reform much at heart. At the

end of 1869, he appealed to the prime minister: “As I have so often tried

in vain, will you bring the question of the civil service before the

cabinet to-day? Something must be decided. We cannot keep matters in this

discreditable state of abeyance. If the cabinet will not entertain the

idea of open competition, might we not at any rate require a larger number

of competitors for each vacancy? five or seven or ten?”

Resistance came from Lord Clarendon and, strange to say, from Mr. Bright.

An ingenious suggestion of Mr. Gladstone’s solved the difficulty. All

branches of the civil service were to be thrown open where the minister at

the head of the department approved. Lowe was ready to answer for all the

departments over which he had any control,—the treasury, the board of

works, audit office, national debt office, paymaster-general’s office,

inland revenue, customs and post-office. Mr. Cardwell, Mr. Childers, Mr.

Goschen, and Lord de Grey were willing to do the same, and finally only

Clarendon and the foreign office were left obdurate. It was true to say of

this change that it placed the whole educated intellect of the country at

the service and disposal of the state, that it stimulated the acquisition

of knowledge, and that it rescued some of the most important duties in the

life of the nation from the narrow class to whom they had hitherto been

confided.

Chapter IV. The Franco-German War. (1870)

Of all the princes of Europe, the king of England alone seemed to

be seated upon the pleasant promontory that might safely view the

tragic sufferings of all his neighbours about him, without any

other concernment than what arose from his own princely heart and

Christian compassion, to see such desolation wrought by the pride

and passion and ambition of private persons, supported by princes

who knew not what themselves would have.—CLARENDON.

I

During the years in which England had been widening the base of her

institutions, extending her resources of wealth and credit, and

strengthening her repute in the councils of Christendom, a long train of

events at which we have glanced from time to time, had slowly effected a

new distribution of the force of nations, and in Mr. Gladstone’s phrase

had unset every joint of the compacted fabric of continental Europe. The

spirit in which he thought of his country’s place in these transactions is

to be gathered from a letter addressed by him to General Grey, the

secretary of the Queen, rather more than a year before the outbreak of the

Franco-German war. What was the immediate occasion I cannot be sure, nor

does it matter. The letter itself is full of interest, for it is in truth

a sort of charter of the leading principles of Mr. Gladstone’s foreign

policy at the moment when he first incurred supreme responsibility for our

foreign affairs:—

_Mr. Gladstone to General Grey._

_April 17, 1869._—... Apart from this question of the moment,

there is one more important as to the tone in which it is to be

desired that, where matter of controversy has arisen on the

continent of Europe, the diplomatic correspondence of this country

should be carried on. This more important question may be the

subject of differences in the country, but I observe with joy that

her Majesty approves the general principle which Lord Clarendon

sets forth in his letter of the 16th. I do not believe that

England ever will or can be unfaithful to her great tradition, or

can forswear her interest in the common transactions and the

general interests of Europe. But her credit and her power form a

fund, which in order that they may be made the most of, should be

thriftily used.

The effect of the great revolutionary war was to place England in

a position to rely upon the aid of her own resources. This was no

matter of blame to either party; it was the result of a desperate

struggle of over twenty years, in which every one else was down in

his turn, but England was ever on her feet; in which it was found

that there was no ascertained limit either to her means, or to her

disposition to dispense them; in which, to use the language of Mr.

Canning, her flag was always flying “a signal of rallying to the

combatant, and of shelter to the fallen.” The habit of appeal and

of reliance thus engendered by peculiar circumstances, requires to

be altered by a quiet and substantial though not a violent

process. For though Europe never saw England faint away, _we_ know

at what a cost of internal danger to all the institutions of the

country, she fought her way to the perilous eminence on which she

undoubtedly stood in 1815.

If there be a fear abroad that England has forever abjured a

resort to force other than moral force, is that fear justified by

facts? In 1853, joining with France, we made ourselves the

vindicators of the peace of Europe; and ten years later, be it

remembered, in the case of Denmark we offered to perform the same

office, but we could get no one to join us. Is it desirable that

we should go further? Is England so uplifted in strength above

every other nation, that she can with prudence advertise herself

as ready to undertake the general redress of wrongs? Would not the

consequence of such professions and promises be either the

premature exhaustion of her means, or a collapse in the day of

performance? Is _any_ Power at this time of day warranted in

assuming this comprehensive obligation? Of course, the answer is,

No. But do not, on the other hand, allow it to be believed that

England will never interfere. For the eccentricities of other

men’s belief no one can answer; but for any reasonable belief in

such an abnegation on the part of England, there is no ground

whatever. As I understand Lord Clarendon’s ideas, they are fairly

represented by his very important diplomatic communications since

he has taken office. They proceed upon such grounds as these: That

England should keep entire in her own hands the means of

estimating her own obligations upon the various states of facts as

they arise; that she should not foreclose and narrow her own

liberty of choice by declarations made to other Powers, in their

real or supposed interests, of which they would claim to be at

least joint interpreters; that it is dangerous for her to assume

alone an advanced, and therefore an isolated position, in regard

to European controversies; that, come what may, it is better for

her to promise too little than too much; that she should not

encourage the weak by giving expectations of aid to resist the

strong, but should rather seek to deter the strong by firm but

moderate language, from aggressions on the weak; that she should

seek to develop and mature the action of a common, or public, or

European opinion, as the best standing bulwark against wrong, but

should beware of seeming to lay down the law of that opinion by

her own authority, and thus running the risk of setting against

her, and against right and justice, that general sentiment which

ought to be, and generally would be, arrayed in their favour. I am

persuaded that at this juncture opinions of this colour being true

and sound, are also the only opinions which the country is

disposed to approve. But I do not believe that on that account it

is one whit less disposed than it has been at any time, to cast in

its lot upon any fitting occasion with the cause it believes to be

right.... I therefore hope and feel assured her Majesty will

believe that Lord Clarendon really requires no intimation from me

to ensure his steadily maintaining the tone which becomes the

foreign minister of the Queen.

(M101) Heavy banks of cloud hung with occasional breaks of brighter sky

over Europe; and all the plot, intrigue, conspiracy, and subterranean

scheming, that had been incessant ever since the Crimean war disturbed the

old European system, and Cavour first began the recasting of the map, was

but the repulsive and dangerous symptom of a dire conflict in the depths

of international politics. The Mexican adventure, and the tragedy of

Maximilian’s death at Queretaro, had thrown a black shadow over the

iridescent and rotten fabric of Napoleon’s power. Prussian victory over

Austria at Sadowa had startled Europe like a thunderclap. The reactionary

movement within the catholic fold, as disclosed in the Vatican council,

kindled many hopes among the French clericals, and these hopes inspired a

lively antagonism to protestant Prussia in the breast of the Spanish-born

Empress of the French. Prussia in 1866 had humiliated one great catholic

power when she defeated the Austrian monarchy on the battlefields of

Bohemia. Was she to overthrow also the power that kept the pope upon his

temporal throne in Rome? All this, however, was no more than the fringe,

though one of the hardest things in history is to be sure where substance

begins and fringe ends. The cardinal fact for France and for Europe was

German unity. Ever since the Danish conflict, as Bismarck afterwards told

the British government,(200) the French Emperor strove to bring Prussia to

join him in plans for their common aggrandisement. The unity of Germany

meant, besides all else, a vast extension of the area from which the

material of military strength was to be drawn; and this meant the relative

depression of the power of French arms. Here was the substantial fact,

feeding the flame of national pride with solid fuel. The German

confederation of the Congress of Vienna was a skilful invention of

Metternich’s, so devised as to be inert for offence, but extremely

efficient against French aggression. A German confederation under the

powerful and energetic leadership of Prussia gave France a very different

neighbour.

In August 1867, the French ambassador at Berlin said to the ambassador of

Great Britain, “We can never passively permit the formation of a German

empire; the position of the Emperor of the French would become untenable.”

The British ambassador in Paris was told by the foreign minister there,

that “there was no wish for aggrandisement in the Emperor’s mind, but a

solicitude for the safety of France.” This solicitude evaporated in what

Bismarck disdainfully called the policy of _pourboires_, the policy of

tips and pickings—scraps and slips of territory to be given to France

under the diplomatic name of compensation. For three years it had been no

secret that peace was at the mercy of any incident that might arise.

The small Powers were in trepidation, and with good reason. Why should not

France take Belgium, and Prussia take Holland? The Belgian press did not

conceal bad feeling, and Bismarck let fall the ominous observation that if

Belgium persisted in that course, “she might pay dear for it.” The Dutch

minister told the British ambassador in Vienna that in 1865 he had a long

conversation with Bismarck, and Bismarck had given him to understand that

without colonies Prussia could never become a great maritime nation; he

coveted Holland less for its own sake, than for her wealthy colonies. When

reminded that Belgium was guaranteed by the European Powers, Bismarck

replied that “a guarantee was in these days of little value.” This remark

makes an excellent register of the diplomatic temperature of the hour.

Then for England. The French Emperor observed (1867), not without an

accent of complaint, that she seemed “little disposed to take part in the

affairs of the day.” This was the time of the Derby government. When war

seemed inevitable on the affair of Luxemburg, Lord Stanley, then at the

foreign office, phlegmatically remarked (1867) that England had never

thought it her business to guarantee the integrity of Germany. When

pressed from Prussia to say whether in the event of Prussia being forced

into war by France, England would take a part, Lord Stanley replied that

with the causes of that quarrel we had nothing to do, and he felt sure

that neither parliament nor the public would sanction an armed

interference on either side. Belgium, he added, was a different question.

General non-intervention, therefore, was the common doctrine of both our

parties.

(M102) After Mr. Gladstone had been a year in power, the chance of a

useful part for England to perform seemed to rise on the horizon, but to

those who knew the racing currents, the interplay of stern forces, the

chance seemed but dim and faint. Rumour and gossip of a pacific tenor

could not hide the vital fact of incessant military preparation on both

sides—steadfast and scientific in Prussia, loose and ill-concerted in

France. Along with the perfecting of arms, went on a busy search by France

for alliances. In the autumn of 1869 Lord Clarendon had gone abroad and

talked with important personages. Moltke told him that in Prussia they

thought war was near. To Napoleon the secretary of state spoke of the

monster armaments, the intolerable burden imposed upon the people, and the

constant danger of war that they created. The Emperor agreed—so Lord

Clarendon wrote to Mr. Gladstone (Sept. 18, ’69)—but went on to say that

during the King of Prussia’s life, and as long as the present Prussian

system lasted, he thought no change of importance could be effected. Still

the seed by and by appeared to have fallen on good ground. For in January

1870, in a conversation with the British ambassador, the French foreign

minister (Daru) suggested that England might use her good offices with

Prussia, to induce a partial disarmament in order that France might disarm

also. The minister, at the same time, wrote a long despatch in the same

sense to the French ambassador at St. James’s. Lord Clarendon perceived

the delicacy of opening the matter at Berlin, in view of the Prussian

monarch’s idolatry of his army. He agreed, however, to bring it before the

king, not officially, but in a confidential form. This would compromise

nobody. The French ambassador in London agreed, and Lord Clarendon wrote

the draft of a letter to Loftus in Berlin. He sent the draft to Mr.

Gladstone (Jan. 31, 1870) for “approval and criticism.” Mr. Gladstone

entered eagerly into Lord Clarendon’s benevolent correspondence:—

_Mr. Gladstone to Lord Clarendon._

_31 Jan. 1870._—The object of your letter on disarmament is noble,

and I do not see how the terms of the draft can be improved. I

presume you will let the Queen know what you are about, and

possibly circumstances might arrive in which she could help?

_7 Feb._—The answer to your pacific letter as reported by Loftus

throws, I think, a great responsibility on the King of Prussia.

_12 Feb._—I hope, with Daru, that you will not desist from your

efforts, whatever be the best mode of prosecuting the good design.

I thought Bismarck’s case, on Loftus’s letter, a very bad one. I

do not think Lyons’s objections, towards the close of his letter,

apply in a case where you have acted simply as a friend, and not

in the name and on behalf of France.

_18 Feb._—I return Bismarck’s confidential letter on disarmament.

As the matter appears to me, the best that can be said for this

letter is that it contains matter which might be used with more or

less force in a conference on disarmament, by way of abating the

amount of relative call on Prussia. As an argument against

entertaining the subject, it is futile, and he ought at any rate

to be made to feel his responsibility,—which, I daresay, you will

contrive while acknowledging his civility.

_9 April._—I presume you have now only in the matter of

disarmament to express your inability to recede from your

opinions, and your regret at the result of the correspondence. If

inclined to touch the point, you might with perfect justice say

that while our naval responsibilities for our sea defence have no

parallel or analogue in the world, we have taken not far short of

two millions off our estimates, and have not announced that the

work of reduction is at an end: which, whether satisfactory or

not, is enough, to show that you do not preach wholly without

practising.

It is a striking circumstance, in view of what was to follow, that at this

moment when Mr. Gladstone first came into contact with Bismarck,—the

genius of popular right, and free government, and settled law of nations,

into contact with the genius of force and reason of state and blood and

iron—the realist minister of Prussia seemed to be almost as hopeful for

European peace as the minister of England. “The political horizon,”

Bismarck wrote (Feb. 22), “seen from Berlin appears at present so

unclouded that there is nothing of interest to report, and I only hope

that no unexpected event will render the lately risen hope of universal

peace questionable.”(201) The unexpected event did not tarry, and

Bismarck’s own share in laying the train is still one of the historic

enigmas of our time.

II

(M103) Ever since 1868 the statesmen of revolutionary Spain had looked for

a prince to fill their vacant throne. Among others they bethought

themselves of a member of a catholic branch of the house of Hohenzollern,

and in the autumn of 1869 an actual proposal was secretly made to Prince

Leopold. The thing lingered. Towards the end of February, 1870, Spanish

importunities were renewed, though still under the seal of strict secrecy,

even the Spanish ambassador in Paris being kept in the dark.(202) Leopold

after a long struggle declined the glittering bait. The rival pretenders

were too many, and order was not sure. Still his refusal was not

considered final. The chances of order improved, he changed his mind, and

on June 28 the Spanish emissary returned to Madrid with the news that the

Hohenzollern prince was ready to accept the crown. The King of Prussia,

not as king, but as head of the house, had given his assent. That Bismarck

invented the Hohenzollern candidature the evidence is not conclusive. What

is undoubted is that in the late spring of 1870 he took it up, and was

much discontented at its failure in that stage.(203) He had become aware

that France was striving to arrange alliances with Austria, and even with

Italy, in spite of the obnoxious presence of the French garrison at Rome.

It was possible that on certain issues Bavaria and the South might join

France against Prussia. All the hindrances to German unity, the jealousies

of the minor states, the hatred of the Prussian military system, were

likely to be aggravated by time, if France, while keeping her powder dry,

were to persevere in a prudent abstention. Bismarck believed that Moltke’s

preparations were more advanced than Napoleon’s. It was his interest to

strike before any French treaties of alliance were signed. The Spanish

crown was an occasion. It might easily become a pretext for collision if

either France or Germany thought the hour had come. If the Hohenzollern

candidate withdrew, it was a diplomatic success for France and a

humiliation to Germany; if not, a king from Prussia planted across the

Pyrenees, after the aggrandizements of north German power in 1864 and

1866, was enough to make Richelieu, Mazarin, Louis XIV., Bonaparte, even

Louis Philippe, turn in their graves.

On June 27, 1870, Lord Clarendon died, and on July 6 Lord Granville

received the seals of the foreign department from the Queen at Windsor.

The new chief had visited his office the day before, and the permanent

under-secretary coming into his room to report, gave him the most

remarkable assurance ever received by any secretary of state on first

seating himself at his desk. Lord Granville told the story in the House of

Lords on July 11, when the crash of the fiercest storm since Waterloo was

close upon them:—

The able and experienced under-secretary, Mr. Hammond, at the

foreign office told me, it being then three or four o’clock, that

with the exception of the sad and painful subject about to be

discussed this evening [the murders by brigands in Greece] he had

never during his long experience known so great a lull in foreign

affairs, and that he was not aware of any important question that

I should have to deal with. At six o’clock that evening I received

a telegram informing me of the choice that had been made by the

provisional government of Spain of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern,

and of his acceptance of the offer. I went to Windsor the

following day, and had the honour of receiving the seals of the

foreign office from her Majesty. On my return I saw the Marquis de

Lavalette, who informed me of the fact which I already knew, and

in energetic terms remarked on the great indignity thus offered to

France, and expressed the determination of the government of the

Emperor not to permit the project to be carried out. M. Lavalette

added that he trusted that her Majesty’s government, considering

its friendly relations with France and its general desire to

maintain peace, would use its influence with the other parties

concerned. I told M. de Lavalette that the announcement had taken

the prime minister and myself entirely by surprise.(204)

Yet two days before Mr. Hammond told Lord Granville that he was not aware

of anything important to be dealt with at the foreign department, a

deputation had started from Madrid with an invitation to Prince Leopold.

At the moment when this singular language was falling from our

under-secretary’s lips, the Duc de Gramont, the French foreign minister,

was telling Lord Lyons at Paris that France would not endure the insult,

and expressing his hope that the government of the Queen would try to

prevent it. After all, as we have seen, Bismarck in February had used

words not very unlike Mr. Hammond’s in July.

On July 5, the Emperor, who was at St. Cloud, sent for Baron Rothschild

(of Paris), and told him that as there was at that moment no foreign

minister in England, he wished to send through him a message to Mr.

Gladstone. He wanted Mr. Gladstone to be informed, that the council of

ministers at Madrid had decided to propose Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern

for the Spanish throne, that his candidature would be intolerable to

France, and that he hoped Mr. Gladstone would endeavour to secure its

withdrawal. The message was telegraphed to London, and early on the

morning of July 6, the present Lord Rothschild deciphered it for his

father, and took it to Carlton House Terrace. He found Mr. Gladstone on

the point of leaving for Windsor, and drove with him to the railway

station. For a time Mr. Gladstone was silent. Then he said he did not

approve of the candidature, but he was not disposed to interfere with the

liberty of the Spanish people to choose their own sovereign.

Lord Granville put pressure on the provisional government at Madrid to

withdraw their candidate, and on the government at Berlin “effectually to

discourage a project fraught with risks to the best interests of Spain.”

The draft of this despatch was submitted by Lord Granville to Mr.

Gladstone, who suggested a long addition afterwards incorporated in the

text. The points of his addition were an appeal to the magnanimity of the

King of Prussia; an injunction to say nothing to give ground for the

supposition that England had any business to discuss the abstract right of

Spain to choose her own sovereign; that the British government had not

admitted Prince Leopold’s acceptance of the throne to justify the

immediate resort to arms threatened by France; but that the secrecy with

which the affair had been conducted was a ground for just offence, and the

withdrawal of the prince could alone repair it.(205) Austria made

energetic representations at Berlin to the same effect. In sending this

addition to Lord Granville, Mr. Gladstone says (July 8), “I am doubtful

whether this despatch should go till it has been seen by the cabinet,

indeed I think it should not, and probably you mean this. The Queen

recollects being told something about this affair by Clarendon—without

result—last year. I think Gramont exacts too much. It would never do for

us to get up a combination of Powers in this difficult and slippery

matter.”

Events for a week—one of the great critical weeks of the century—moved at

a dizzy speed towards the abyss. Peace unfortunately hung upon the

prudence of a band of statesmen in Paris, who have ever since, both in

their own country and everywhere else, been a byword in history for

blindness and folly. The game was delicate. Even in the low and broken

estate into which the moral areopagus of Europe had fallen in these days,

it was a disadvantage to figure as the aggressor. This disadvantage the

French Empire heedlessly imposed upon itself. Of the diplomacy on the side

of the government of France anterior to the war, Mr. Gladstone said that

it made up “a chapter which for fault and folly taken together is almost

without a parallel in the history of nations.”(206)

On July 6 the French Ministers made a precipitate declaration to their

Chambers, which was in fact an ultimatum to Prussia. The action of Spain

was turned into Prussian action. Prussia was called to account in a form

that became a public and international threat, as Bismarck put it, “with

the hand on the sword-hilt.” These rash words of challenge were the first

of the French disasters. On July 8 the Duc de Gramont begged her Majesty’s

government to use all their influence to bring about the voluntary

renunciation by Prince Leopold of his pretensions. This he told Lord Lyons

would be “a most fortunate solution” of the question. Two days later he

assured Lord Lyons that “if the Prince of Hohenzollern should, on the

advice of the King of Prussia, withdraw his acceptance of the crown the

whole affair would be at an end.”

On July 10 Lord Granville suggests to Mr. Gladstone: “What do you think of

asking the Queen whether there is any one to whom she could write

confidentially with a view to persuade Hohenzollern to refuse?” Mr.

Gladstone replies:—

1. I should think you could not do wrong in asking the Queen, as

you propose, to procure if she can a refusal from Hohenzollern,

through some private channel. 2. I suppose there could be no

objection to sounding the Italian government as to the Duke of

Aosta. 3. If in the meantime you have authentic accounts of

military movements in France, would it not be right formally to

ask their suspension, if it be still the desire of the French

government that you should continue to act in the sense of

procuring withdrawal?

The ambassador at Paris was instructed to work vigorously in this sense,

and to urge self-possession and measure upon the Emperor’s council. On

July 12, however, the prospects of peace grew more and more shadowy. On

that day it became known that Prince Leopold had spontaneously renounced

the candidature, or that his father had renounced it on his behalf. The

French ministers made up their minds that the defeat of Prussia must be

more direct. Gramont told Lyons (July 12) that the French government was

in a very embarrassing position. Public opinion was so much excited that

it was doubtful whether the ministry would not be overthrown, if it went

down to the Chamber and announced that it regarded the affair as finished,

without having obtained some more complete satisfaction from Prussia. So

the Emperor and his advisers flung themselves gratuitously under

Bismarck’s grinding wheels by a further demand that not only should the

candidature be withdrawn, but the King should pledge himself against its

ever being at any time revived. Mr. Gladstone was not slow to see the

fatal mischief of this new development.

_Mr. Gladstone to Lord Granville._

_July 12_, 11.30 P.M.—I have seen, since Rothschild’s

telegram,(207) that of Lyons, dated 7.55 P.M. It seems to me that

Lyons should be supplied with an urgent instruction by telegram

before the council of ministers to-morrow. France appealed to our

support at the outset. She received it so far as the immediate

object was concerned. It was immediately and energetically given.

It appears to have been named by the French minister in public

inclusively with that of other Powers. Under these circumstances

it is our duty to represent the immense responsibility which will

rest upon France, if she does not at once accept as satisfactory

and conclusive, the withdrawal of the candidature of Prince

Leopold.

The substance of this note was despatched to Paris at 2.30 A.M. on the

morning of July 13. It did not reach Lord Lyons till half-past nine, when

the council of ministers had already been sitting for half an hour at St.

Cloud. The telegram was hastily embodied in the form of a tolerably

emphatic letter and sent by special messenger to St. Cloud, where it was

placed in M. de Gramont’s hand, at the table at which he and the other

ministers were still sitting in council in the presence of the Emperor and

the Empress.(208) At the same time Lord Granville strongly urged M. de

Lavalette in London, to impress upon his government that they ought not to

take upon themselves the responsibility of pursuing the quarrel on a

matter of form, when they had obtained what Gramont had assured Lord Lyons

would put an end to the dispute. Though Mr. Disraeli afterwards imputed

want of energy to the British remonstrances, there is no reason to suppose

that Lord Lyons was wanting either in directness or emphasis. What

warnings were likely to reach the minds of men trembling for their

personal popularity and for the dynasty, afraid of clamour in the streets,

afraid of the army, ignorant of vital facts both military and diplomatic,

incapable of measuring such facts even if they had known them, committed

by the rash declaration of defiance a week before to a position that made

retreat the only alternative to the sword? At the head of them all sat in

misery, a sovereign reduced by disease to a wavering shadow of the will

and vision of a man. They marched headlong to the pit that Bismarck was

digging for them.

(M104) On July 14 Mr. Gladstone again writes to Lord Granville, suggesting

answers to questions that might be asked that night in parliament. Should

they say that the candidature was withdrawn, and that with this withdrawal

we had a right to hope the whole affair would end, but that communications

were still continued with Prussia? In duty to all parties we were bound to

hope that the subject of complaint having disappeared, the complaint

itself and the danger to the peace of Europe would disappear also. Then he

proceeds: “What if you were to telegraph to Lyons to signify that we think

it probable questions may be asked in parliament to-day; that having been

called in by France itself, we cannot affect to be wholly outside the

matter; and that it will be impossible for us to conceal the opinion that

the cause of quarrel having been removed, France ought to be satisfied.

While this might fairly pass as a friendly notice, it might also be useful

as admonition. Please to consider. The claim in the telegrams for more

acknowledgment of the conduct of Prussia in parliament, seems to me to

deserve consideration.”

On July 13 Gramont asked Lord Lyons whether he could count upon the good

offices of England in obtaining the prohibition of any future candidature,

at the same time giving him a written assurance that this would terminate

the incident. Lord Lyons declined to commit himself, and referred home for

instructions. The cabinet was hastily summoned for noon on the 14th. It

decided that the demand could not be justified by France, and at the same

time took a step of which Gramont chose to say, that it was the one act

done by the English government in favour of peace. They suggested to

Bismarck that as the King of Prussia had consented to the acceptance by

Prince Leopold of the Spanish crown, and had thereby, in a certain sense,

become a party to the arrangement, so he might with perfect dignity

communicate to the French government his consent to the withdrawal of the

acceptance, if France waived her demand for an engagement covering the

future. This suggestion Bismarck declined (July 15) to bring before the

King, as he did not feel that he could recommend its acceptance. As he had

decided to hold France tight in the position in which her rulers had now

planted her, we can understand why he could not recommend the English

proposal to his master. Meanwhile the die was cast.

III

(M105) The King of Prussia was taking the waters of Ems. Thither

Benedetti, the French ambassador to his court, under instructions followed

him. The King with moderation and temper told him (July 11) he had just

received a telegram that the answer of Prince Leopold would certainly

reach him the next day, and he would then at once communicate it.

Something (some say Bismarck) prevented the arrival of the courier for

some hours beyond the time anticipated. On the morning of the 13th the

King met Benedetti on the promenade, and asked him if he had anything new

to say. The ambassador obeyed his orders, and told the King of the demand

for assurances against a future candidature. The King at once refused this

new and unexpected concession, but in parting from Benedetti said they

would resume their conversation in the afternoon. Meanwhile the courier

arrived, but before the courier a despatch came from Paris conveying the

suggestion that the King might write an apologetic letter to the French

Emperor. This naturally gave the King some offence, but he contented

himself with sending Benedetti a polite message by an aide-de-camp that he

had received in writing from Prince Leopold the intelligence of his

renunciation. “By this his Majesty considered the question as settled.”

Benedetti persevered in seeking to learn what answer he should make to his

government on the question of further assurances. The King replied by the

same officer that he was obliged to decline absolutely to enter into new

negotiations; that what he had said in the morning was his last word in

the matter. On July 14, the King received Benedetti in the railway

carriage on his departure for Berlin, told him that any future

negotiations would be conducted by his government, and parted from him

with courteous salutations. Neither king nor ambassador was conscious that

the country of either had suffered a shadow of indignity from the

representative of the other.

Bismarck called upon the British ambassador in those days, and made what,

in the light of later revelations, seems a singular complaint. He observed

that Great Britain “should have forbidden France to enter on the war. She

was in a position to do so, and her interests and those of Europe demanded

it of her.”(209) Later in the year he spoke in the same sense at

Versailles: “If, at the beginning of the war, the English had said to

Napoleon, ‘There must be no war,’ there would have been none.”(210) What

is certain is that nobody would have been more discomfited by the success

of England’s prohibition than Count Bismarck. The sincerity and substance

of his reproach are tested by a revelation made by himself long after.

Though familiar, the story is worth telling over again in the biography of

a statesman who stood for a type alien to policies of fraud.

(M106) Bismarck had hurried from Varzin to Berlin on July 12, in profound

concern lest his royal master should subject his country and his minister

to what, after the menace of Gramont and Ollivier on July 6, would be

grave diplomatic defeat. He had resolved to retire if the incident should

end in this shape, and the chief actor has himself described the strange

sinister scene that averted his design. He invited Moltke and Roon to dine

with him alone on July 13. In the midst of their conversation, “I was

informed,” he says, “that a telegram from Ems in cipher, if I recollect

rightly, of about 200 ‘groups’ was being deciphered. When the copy was

handed me it showed that Abeken had drawn up and signed the telegram at

his Majesty’s command, and I read it out to my guests, whose dejection was

so great that they turned away from food and drink. On a repeated

examination of the document I lingered upon the authorisation of his

Majesty, which included a command, immediately to communicate Benedetti’s

fresh demand and its rejection to our ambassadors and to the press. I put

a few questions to Moltke as to the extent of his confidence in the state

of our preparations, especially as to the time they would still require in

order to meet this sudden risk of war. He answered that if there was to be

war he expected no advantage to us by deferring its outbreak.... Under the

conviction that war could be avoided only at the cost of the honour of

Prussia, I made use of the royal authorisation to publish the contents of

the telegram; and in the presence of my two guests I reduced the telegram

by striking out words, but without adding or altering, to the following

form: ‘After the news of the renunciation of the hereditary Prince of

Hohenzollern had been officially communicated to the imperial government

of France by the royal government of Spain, the French ambassador at Ems

further demanded of his Majesty the King that he would authorise him to

telegraph to Paris that his Majesty the King bound himself for all future

time never again to give his consent if the Hohenzollerns should renew

their candidature. His Majesty the King thereupon decided not to receive

the French ambassador again, and sent to tell him through the aide-de-camp

on duty that his Majesty had nothing further to communicate to the

ambassador.’ The difference in the effect of the abbreviated text of the

Ems telegram, as compared with that produced by the original, was not the

result of stronger words but of the form, which made this announcement

appear decisive, while Abeken’s version would only have been regarded as a

fragment of a negotiation still pending and to be continued at Berlin.

After I had read out the concentrated edition to my two guests, Moltke

remarked: ‘Now it has a different ring; it sounded before like a parley;

now it is like a flourish in answer to a challenge.’ I went on to explain:

‘If in execution of his Majesty’s order I at once communicate this text,

which contains no alteration in or addition to the telegram, not only to

the newspapers, but also by telegraph to all our embassies, it will be

known in Paris before midnight, and not only an account of its contents,

but also an account of the manner of its distribution, will have the

effect of a red rag upon the Gallic bull. Fight we must, if we do not want

to act the part of the vanquished without a battle. Success, however,

essentially depends upon the impression which the origination of the war

makes upon us and others; it is important that we should be the party

attacked, and that we fearlessly meet the public threats of France.’ This

explanation brought about in the two generals a revulsion to a more joyous

mood, the liveliness of which surprised me. They had suddenly recovered

their pleasure in eating and drinking, and spoke in a more cheerful vein.

Roon said: ‘Our God of old lives still, and will not let us perish in

disgrace.’ ”(211)

The telegram devised at the Berlin dinner-party soon reached Paris. For a

second time the 14th day of July was to be a date of doom in French

history. The Emperor and his council deliberated on the grave question of

calling out the reserves. The decisive step had been pressed by Marshal

Lebœuf the night before without success. He now returned to the charge,

and this time his proposal was resolved upon. It was about four o’clock.

The marshal had hardly left the room before new scruples seized his

colleagues. The discussion began over again, and misgivings revived. The

Emperor showed himself downcast and worn out. Towards five o’clock

somebody came to tell them it was absolutely necessary that ministers

should present themselves before the Chambers. Gramont rose and told them

that if they wished an accommodation, there was still one way, an appeal

to Europe. The word congress was no sooner pronounced than the Emperor,

seized by extraordinary emotion at the thought of salvation by his own

favourite chimera, was stirred even to tears. An address to the Powers was

instantly drawn up, and the council broke off. At six o’clock Lebœuf

received a note from the Emperor, seeming to regret the decision to call

out the reserves. On Lebœuf’s demand the council was convoked for ten

o’clock that night. In the interval news came that the Ems telegram had

been communicated to foreign governments. As Bismarck had calculated, the

affront of the telegram was aggravated by publicity. At ten o’clock the

council met, and mobilisation was again considered. By eleven it was

almost decided that mobilisation should be put off. At eleven o’clock a

foreign office despatch arrived, and was read at the council. What was

this despatch, is not yet known—perhaps from the French military agent at

Berlin, with further news of Prussian preparations. It was of such a kind

that it brought about an instant reaction. The orders for mobilisation

were maintained.(212)

(M107) An inflammatory appeal was made to the Chambers. When a

parliamentary committee was appointed, a vital document was suppressed,

and its purport misrepresented. Thus in point of scruple, the two parties

to the transaction were not ill-matched, but Bismarck had been watchful,

provident, and well informed, while his opponents were men, as one of them

said, “of a light heart,” heedless, uncalculating, and ignorant and wrong

as to their facts.(213)

On July 15 Mr. Gladstone reported to the Queen:—

Mr. Disraeli made inquiries from the government respecting the

differences between France and Prussia, and in so doing expressed

opinions strongly adverse to France as the apparent aggressor. Mr.

Gladstone, in replying, admitted it to be the opinion of the

government that there was no matter known to be in controversy of

a nature to warrant a disturbance of the general peace. He said

the course of events was not favourable, and the decisive moment

must in all likelihood be close at hand.

“At a quarter past four,” says a colleague, “a cabinet box was handed down

the treasury bench to Gladstone. He opened it and looking along to us,

said—with an accent I shall never forget—‘_War declared against

Prussia._’ ”(214) “Shall I ever forget,” says Archbishop Tait,

“Gladstone’s face of earnest care when I saw him in the lobby?”(215)

The British cabinet made a final effort for peace. Lord Granville

instructed our ambassadors to urge France and Prussia to be so far

controlled by the treaty of Paris that before proceeding to extremities

they should have recourse to the good offices of some friendly Power,

adding that his government was ready to take any part that might be

desired in the matter. On the 18th Bismarck replied by throwing the onus

of acceptance on France. On the 19th France declined the proposal.

Just as Bismarck said that England ought to have prevented the war,

Frenchmen also said that we ought to have held the Emperor back. With what

sanction could Mr. Gladstone have enforced peremptory counsel? Was France

to be made to understand that England would go to war on the Prussian

side? Short of war, what more could she have done? Lord Granville had told

Gramont that he had never in despatch or conversation admitted that after

the French had received satisfaction in substance, there was a case for a

quarrel on pure form. The British cabinet and their ambassador in Paris

had redoubled warning and remonstrance. If the Emperor and his advisers

did not listen to the penetrating expostulations of Thiers, and to his

vigorous and instructed analysis of the conditions of their case, why

should they listen to Lord Granville? Nor was there time, for their

precipitancy had kindled a conflagration before either England or any

other Power had any chance of extinguishing the blaze.(216)

To Michel Chevalier Mr. Gladstone wrote a few days later:—

I cannot describe to you the sensation of pain, almost of horror,

which, has thrilled through this country from end to end at the

outbreak of hostilities, the commencement of the work of blood. I

suppose there was a time when England would have said, “Let our

neighbours, being, as they are, our rivals, waste their energies,

their wealth, their precious irrevocable lives, in destroying one

another: they will be the weaker, we shall be relatively the

stronger.” But we have now unlearned that bad philosophy; and the

war between France and Prussia saddens the whole face of society,

and burdens every man with a personal grief. We do not pretend to

be sufficient judges of the merits: I now mean by “we” those who

are in authority, and perhaps in a condition to judge least ill.

We cannot divide praise and blame as between parties. I hope you

do not think it unkind that I should write thus. Forgive the

_rashness_ of a friend. One of the purposes in life dear to my

heart has been to knit together in true amity the people of my own

country with those of your great nation. That web of concord is

too tender yet, not to suffer under the rude strain of conflicts

and concussions even such as we have no material share in. I think

that even if I err, I cannot be without a portion of your

sympathy: now when the knell of the brave begins to toll. As for

us, we have endeavoured to cherish with both the relations of

peace and mutual respect. May nothing happen to impair them!

Though good feeling prevented Mr. Gladstone from dividing praise and blame

between the two governments, his own judgment was clear. The initial

declaration of July 6, followed by the invention of a second demand by

France upon Prussia after the first had been conceded, looked to him, as

it did to England generally, like a fixed resolution to force a quarrel.

In September he wrote of the proceedings of the French government:—

Wonder rises to its climax when we remember that this feverish

determination to force a quarrel was associated with a firm belief

in the high preparation and military superiority of the French

forces, the comparative inferiority of the Germans, the

indisposition of the smaller states to give aid to Prussia, and

even the readiness of Austria, with which from his long residence

at Vienna the Duc de Gramont supposed himself to be thoroughly

acquainted, to appear in arms as the ally of France. It too soon

appeared that, as the advisers of the Emperor knew nothing of

public rights and nothing of the sense of Europe, so they knew

nothing about Austria and the mind of the German states, and less

than nothing about not only the Prussian army, but even their

own.(217)

Chapter V. Neutrality And Annexation. (1870)

The immediate purpose with which Italians and Germans effected the

great change in the European constitution was unity, not liberty.

They constructed not securities but forces. Machiavelli’s time had

come.—ACTON.

I

(M108) “The war is a grievous affair,” Mr. Gladstone said to Brand, “and

adds much to our cares, for to maintain our neutrality in such a case as

this, will be a most arduous task. On the face of the facts France is

wrong, but as to personal trustworthiness the two moving spirits on the

respective sides, Napoleon and Bismarck, are nearly on a par.” His

individual activity was unsparing. He held almost daily conferences with

Lord Granville at the foreign office; criticised and minuted despatches;

contributed freely to the drafts. “There has not, I think,” he wrote to

Bright (Sept. 12), “been a single day on which Granville and I have not

been in anxious communication on the subject of the war.” When Lord

Granville went to Walmer he wrote to Mr. Gladstone, “I miss our

discussions here over the despatches as they come in very much.” “I hope I

need not say that while you are laid up with gout at Walmer,” Mr.

Gladstone wrote in October, “I am most ready to start at a few hours’

notice at any time of day or night, to join you upon any matter which you

may find to require it. Indeed I could not properly or with comfort remain

here upon any other terms.” Details of this agitating time, with all its

convulsions and readjustments, belong to the history of Europe. The part

taken by Mr. Gladstone and his cabinet was for several months in pretty

close harmony with the humour of the country. It will be enough for us to

mark their action at decisive moments.

On July 16 he wrote to Cardwell at the war office:—

If, unhappily, which God forbid, we have to act in this war, it

will not be with six months’, nor three months’, nor even one

month’s notice. The real question is, supposing an urgent call of

honour and of duty in an emergency for 15,000 or 20,000 men, what

would you do? What answer would the military authorities make to

this question, those of them especially who have brains rather

than mere position? Have you no fuller battalions than those of

500? At home or in the Mediterranean? If in the latter, should

they not be brought home? Childers seemed to offer a handsome

subscription of marines, and that the artillery would count for

much in such a case is most probable. What I should like is to

study the means of sending 20,000 men to Antwerp with as much

promptitude as at the Trent affair we sent 10,000 to Canada.

The figures of the army and navy were promptly supplied to the prime

minister, Cardwell adding with, a certain shrillness that, though he had

no wish to go either to Antwerp or anywhere else, he could not be

responsible for sending an expedition abroad, unless the army were fitted

for that object by measures taken now to increase its force.

I entirely agree with you, Mr. Gladstone replied, that _when_ it

is seriously intended to send troops to Antwerp or elsewhere

abroad, “immediate measures must be taken to increase our force.”

I feel, however, rather uneasy at what seems to me the extreme

susceptibility on one side of the case of some members of the

cabinet. I hope it will be balanced by considering the effect of

any forward step by appeal to parliament, in compromising the true

and entire neutrality of our position, and in disturbing and

misdirecting the mind of the public and of parliament. I am afraid

I have conveyed to your mind a wrong impression as to the state of

my own. It is only a far outlook which, in my opinion, brings into

view as a possibility the sending a force to Antwerp. Should the

day arrive, we shall then be on the very edge of war, with

scarcely a hope of not passing onward into the abyss.

Cardwell sent him a paper by a high military authority, on which Mr.

Gladstone made two terse ironic comments. “I think the paper,” he said,

“if it proves anything proves (1) That generals and not ministers are the

proper judges of those weights in the political scales which express the

likelihood of war and peace; (2) That there is very little difference

between absolute neutrality and actual war. I advise that Granville should

see it.”

On July 25 the _Times_ divulged the text of a projected agreement in 1869

(it was in truth 1867) between the French and Prussian governments in five

articles, including one that the incorporation of Belgium by France would

not be objected to by Prussia. The public was shocked and startled, and

many were inclined to put down the document for a forgery and a hoax. As a

matter of fact, in substance it was neither. The Prussian ambassador a few

days before had informed Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville personally and

in strict secrecy, that the draft of such a project existed in the

handwriting of M. Benedetti. This private communication was taken by Mr.

Gladstone to have been made with the object of prompting him to be the

agent in producing the evil news to the world, and thus to prejudice

France in the judgment of Europe. He thought that no part of his duty, and

took time to consider it, in the expectation that it was pretty sure to

find its way into print by some other means, as indeed soon happened. “For

the sake of peace,” Bismarck explained to Lord Granville (July 28, 1870),

“I kept the secret, and treated the propositions in a dilatory manner.”

When the British ambassador on one occasion had tried to sound him on the

suspected designs of France, Bismarck answered, “It is no business of mine

to tell French secrets.”

(M109) There were members of the cabinet who doubted the expediency of

England taking any action. The real position of affairs, they argued, was

not altered: the draft treaty only disclosed what everybody believed

before, namely that France sought compensation for Prussian

aggrandisement, as she had secured it for Italian aggrandisement by taking

Savoy and Nice. That Prussia would not object, provided the compensations

were not at the expense of people who spoke German, had all come out at

the time of the Luxemburg affair. If France and Prussia agreed, how could

we help Belgium, unless indeed Europe joined? But then what chance was

there of Russia and Austria joining against France and Prussia for the

sake of Belgium, in which neither of them had any direct interest? At the

same time ministers knew that the public in England expected them to do

something, though a vote for men and money would probably suffice. The

cabinet, however, advanced a step beyond a parliamentary vote. On July 30

they met and took a decision to which Mr. Gladstone then and always after

attached high importance. England proposed a treaty to Prussia and France,

providing that if the armies of either violated the neutrality of Belgium,

Great Britain would co-operate with the other for its defence, but without

engaging to take part in the general operations of the war. The treaty was

to hold good for twelve months after the conclusion of the war. Bismarck

at once came into the engagement. France loitered a little, but after the

battle of Wörth made no more difficulty, and the instrument was signed on

August 9.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

The mind of the government was described by Mr. Gladstone in a letter to

Bright (August 1):—

Although some members of the cabinet were inclined on the outbreak

of this most miserable war to make military preparations, others,

Lord Granville and I among them, by no means shared that

disposition, nor I think was the feeling of parliament that way

inclined. But the publication of the treaty has altered all this,

and has thrown upon us the necessity either of doing something

fresh to secure Belgium, or else of saying that under no

circumstances would we take any step to secure her from

absorption. This publication has wholly altered the feeling of the

House of Commons, and no government could at this moment venture

to give utterance to such an intention about Belgium. But neither

do we think it would be right, even if it were safe, to announce

that we would in any case stand by with folded arms, and see

actions done which would amount to a total extinction of public

right in Europe.

The idea of engagements that might some day involve resort to force made

Bright uneasy, and Mr. Gladstone wrote to him again (August 4):—

It will be a great addition to the domestic portion of the griefs

of this most unhappy war, if it is to be the cause of a political

severance between you and the present administration. To this I

know you would justly reply that the claims of conviction are

paramount. I hope, however, that the moment has not quite

arrived.... You will, I am sure, give me credit for good faith

when I say, especially on Lord Granville’s part as on my own, who

are most of all responsible, that we take this step in the

interest of peace.... The recommendation set up in opposition to

it generally is, that we should simply declare _we_ will defend

the neutrality of Belgium by arms in case it should be attacked.

Now the sole or single-handed defence of Belgium would be an

enterprise which we incline to think Quixotic; if these two great

military powers combined against it—that combination is the only

serious danger; and this it is which by our proposed engagements

we should I hope render improbable to the very last degree. I add

for myself this confession of faith. If the Belgian people desire,

on their own account, to join France or any other country, I for

one will be no party to taking up arms to prevent it. But that the

Belgians, whether they would or not, should go ’plump’ down the

maw of another country to satisfy dynastic greed, is another

matter. The accomplishment of such a crime as this implies, would

come near to an extinction of public right in Europe, and I do not

think we could look on while the sacrifice of freedom and

independence was in course of consummation.

II

(M110) By the end of the first week of August the storm of war had burst

upon the world. “On the 2nd of August, in the insignificant affair of

Saarbrück, the Emperor of the French assumed a feeble offensive. On the

4th, the Prussians replied energetically at Wissemburg. And then what a

torrent, what a deluge of events! In twenty-eight days ten battles were

fought. Three hundred thousand men were sent to the hospitals, to

captivity, or to the grave. The German enemy had penetrated into the

interior of France, over a distance of a hundred and fifty miles of

territory, and had stretched forth everywhere as he went the strong hand

of possession. The Emperor was a prisoner, and had been deposed with

general consent; his family wanderers, none knew where; the embryo at

least of a republic, born of the hour, had risen on the ruins of the

empire, while proud and gorgeous Paris was awaiting with divided mind the

approach of the conquering monarch, and his countless host.”(218) This was

Mr. Gladstone’s description of a marvellous and shattering hour.

Talleyrand was fond in the days of 1815 at Vienna, of applying to any

diplomatist who happened to agree with him the expression, “a good

European.” He meant a statesman who was capable of conceiving the

state-system of the western world as a whole. The events of August made

the chief minister of Austria now exclaim, “I see no longer any Europe.”

All the notions of alliance that had so much to do with the precipitation

of the war were dissipated. Italy, so far from joining France, marched

into Rome. Austria ostentatiously informed England that she was free from

engagements. The Czar of Russia was nephew of the Prussian king and German

in his leanings, but Gortchakoff, his minister, was jealous of Bismarck,

and his sympathies inclined to France, and Czar and minister alike nursed

designs in the Black Sea. With such materials as these Mr. Pitt himself

with all his subsidies could not have constructed a fighting coalition.

Even the sons of stricken France after the destruction of the empire were

a divided people. For side by side with national defence against the

invader, republican and monarchic propagandism was at work, internecine in

its temper and scattering baleful seeds of civil war.

“Many,” Mr. Gladstone wrote to Chevalier in September, “seem so

over-sanguine as to suppose that it is in our power at any moment, by

friendly influence of reasoning, to solve the problem which has brought

together in the shock of battle the two greatest military powers of

Europe.... I do not see that it is an offence on our part not to interfere

when the belligerents differ so widely, when we have not the hope of

bringing them together, and when we cannot adopt without reserve the

language and claims of either.” Material responsibility and moral

responsibility both pointed to a rigid equity between the combatants, and

to strict neutrality. The utmost to be done was to localise the war; and

with this aim, the British cabinet induced Italy, Austria, Russia, and

smaller powers to come to a common agreement that none of them would

depart from neutrality without a previous understanding with the rest.

This league of the neutrals, though negative, was at least a shadow of

collective action, from which good might come if the belligerents should

some day accept or invite mediation. To this diplomatic neutrality the

only alternative was an armed neutrality, and armed neutrality has not

always served pacific ends.

To the German contention at one stage after the overthrow of the empire,

that the Empress was still the only authority existing legally for France,

Mr. Gladstone was energetically opposed. “It embodied,” he said, “the

doctrine that no country can have a new government without the consent of

the old one.” “Ought we,” he asked Lord Granville (Sept. 20), “to witness

in silence the promulgation of such a doctrine, which is utterly opposed

to the modern notions of public right, though it was in vogue fifty years

back, and though it was acted on with most fatal consequences by the

Prussians of eighty years back?” Then as for mediation, whether isolated

or in common, he saw no hope in it. He said to the Duke of Argyll (Sept.

6), “I would not say a word ever so gently. I believe it would do great

mischief. As at present advised, I see but two really safe grounds for

mediation, (1) a drawn battle; (2) the request of both parties.” Ever

since 1862, and his error in the American war—so he now wrote to Lord

Granville—“in forming and expressing an opinion that the Southerners had

virtually established their independence, I have been very fearful of

giving opinions with regard to the proper course of foreign nations to

pursue in junctures, of which, after all, I think they have better means

of forming a judgment than foreigners can possess.”

In the middle of September Thiers, in the course of his valiant mission to

European courts, reached London. “Yesterday,” Mr. Gladstone writes (Sept.

14), “I saw Thiers and had a long conversation with him; he was very clear

and touching in parts. But the purpose of his mission is vague. He seems

come to do just what he can.” The vagueness of Thiers did but mirror the

distractions of France. Not even from his ingenious, confident, and

fertile mind could men hope for a clue through the labyrinth of European

confusions. Great Britain along with four other powers recognised the new

government of the Republic in France at the beginning of February 1871.

(M111) It was about this time that Mr. Gladstone took what was for a prime

minister the rather curious step of volunteering an anonymous article in a

review, upon these great affairs in which his personal responsibility was

both heavy and direct.(219) The precedent can hardly be called a good one,

for as anybody might have known, the veil was torn aside in a few hours

after the _Edinburgh Review_ containing his article appeared. Its object,

he said afterwards, was “to give what I thought needful information on a

matter of great national importance, which involved at the time no

interest of party whatever. If such interests had been involved, a rule

from which I have never as a minister diverted would have debarred me from

writing.” Lord Granville told him that, “It seemed to be an admirable

argument, the more so as it is the sort of thing Thiers ought to have said

and did not.” The article made a great noise, as well it might, for it was

written with much eloquence, truth, and power, and was calculated to

console his countrymen for seeing a colossal European conflict going on,

without the privilege of a share in it. One passage about happy

England—happy especially that the wise dispensation of Providence had cut

her off by the streak of silver sea from continental dangers—rather

irritated than convinced. The production of such an article under such

circumstances was a striking illustration of Mr. Gladstone’s fervid

desire—the desire of a true orator’s temperament—to throw his eager mind

upon a multitude of men, to spread the light of his own urgent conviction,

to play the part of missionary with a high evangel, which had been his

earliest ideal forty years before. Everybody will agree that it was better

to have a minister writing his own articles in a respectable quarterly,

than doctoring other people’s articles with concomitants from a reptile

fund.

III

On the vital question of the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, Mr.

Gladstone’s view was easy to anticipate. He could not understand how the

French protests turned more upon the inviolability of French soil, than on

the attachment of the people of Alsace and North Lorraine to their

country. The abstract principle he thought peculiarly awkward in a nation

that had made recent annexations of her own. Upon all his correspondents

at home and abroad, he urged that the question ought to be worked on the

basis of the sentiments of the people concerned, and not upon the

principle of inviolability. He composed an elaborate memorandum for the

cabinet, but without effect. On the last day of September, he records:

“_Sept. 30_: Cabinet 2-1/4-6. I failed in my two objects. 1. An effort to

speak with the other neutral Powers against the transfer of Alsace and

Lorraine without reference to the populations. 2. Immediate release of

Fenian prisoners.”

To Mr. Bright, who was still prevented by illness from attending cabinets,

and who had the second of the two objects much at heart, he wrote the next

day:—

I send for your private perusal the enclosed mem. which I proposed

to the cabinet yesterday, but could not induce them to adopt. It

presupposes the concurrence of the neutral Powers. They agreed in

the opinions, but did not think the expression of them timely. My

opinion certainly is that the transfer of territory and

inhabitants by mere force calls for the reprobation of Europe, and

that Europe is entitled to utter it, and can utter it with good

effect.

The ground taken by him in the cabinet was as follows:—

A matter of this kind cannot be regarded as in principle a

question between the two belligerents only, but involves

considerations of legitimate interest to all the Powers of Europe.

It appears to bear on the Belgian question in particular. It is

also a principle likely to be of great consequence in the eventual

settlement of the Eastern question. Quite apart from the subject

of mediation, it cannot be right that the neutral Powers should

remain silent, while this principle of consulting the wishes of

the population is trampled down, should the actual sentiment of

Alsace and Lorraine be such as to render that language applicable.

The mode of expressing any view of this matter is doubtless a

question requiring much consideration. The decision of the cabinet

was that the time for it had not yet come. Any declaration in the

sense described would, Mr. Gladstone thought, entail, in fairness,

an obligation to repudiate the present claim of France to obtain

peace without surrendering “either an inch of her territory or a

stone of her fortresses.”

Mr. Bright did not agree with him, but rather favoured the principle of

inviolability. In November Mr. Gladstone prepared a still more elaborate

memorandum in support of a protest from the neutral Powers. The Duke of

Argyll put what was perhaps the general view when he wrote to Mr.

Gladstone (Nov. 25, 1870), “that he had himself never argued in favour of

the German annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, but only against our having

any right to oppose it otherwise than by the most friendly dissuasion.”

The Duke held that the consent of populations to live under a particular

government is a right subject to a great many qualifications, and it would

not be easy to turn such a doctrine into the base of an official

remonstrance. After all, he said, the instincts of nations stand for

something in this world. The German did not exceed the ancient

acknowledged right of nations in successful wars, when he said to Alsace

and Lorraine, “Conquest in a war forced upon me by the people of which you

form a part, gives me the _right_ to annex, if on other grounds I deem it

expedient, and for strategic reasons I do so deem it.”

Mr. Gladstone, notwithstanding his cabinet, held to his view energetically

expressed as follows:—

If the contingency happen, not very probable, of a sudden

accommodation which shall include the throttling of Alsace and

part of Lorraine, without any voice previously raised against it,

it will in my opinion be a standing reproach to England. There is

indeed the Russian plan of not recognising that in which we have

had no part; but it is difficult to say what this comes to.

On December 20 he says to Lord Granville what we may take for a last word

on this part of the case: “While I more and more feel the deep culpability

of France, I have an apprehension that this violent laceration and

transfer is to lead us from bad to worse, and to be the _beginning_ of a

new series of European complications.”

While working in the spirit of cordial and even eager loyalty to the prime

minister, Lord Granville disagreed with him upon the question of

diplomatic action against annexation. Palmerston, he said to Mr. Gladstone

in October, “wasted the strength derived by England by the great war by

his brag. I am afraid of our wasting that which we at present derive from

moral causes, by laying down general principles when nobody will attend to

them, and when in all probability they will be disregarded. My objection

to doing at present what you propose is, that it is impossible according

to my views to do so without being considered to throw our weight into the

French scale against Germany, with consequent encouragement on one side

and irritation on the other.”

Like Thiers, Mr. Gladstone had been leaning upon the concurrence of the

neutral Powers, and active co-operation at St. Petersburg. Russian objects

were inconsistent with the alienation of Germany, and they made a fatal

bar to all schemes for lowering the German terms. This truth of the

situation was suddenly brought home to England in no palatable way.

Chapter VI. The Black Sea. (1870-1871)

“You are always talking to me of principles. As if your public law

were anything to me; I do not know what it means. What do you

suppose that all your parchments and your treaties signify to me?”

—ALEXANDER I. To TALLEYRAND.

I

At the close of the Crimean war in 1856 by the provisions of the treaty of

Paris, Russia and Turkey were restrained from constructing arsenals on the

coast of the Euxine, and from maintaining ships of war on its waters. No

serious statesman believed that the restriction would last, any more than

Napoleon’s restraint on Prussia in 1808 against keeping up an army of more

than forty thousand men could last. Palmerston had this neutralisation

more at heart than anybody else, and Lord Granville told the House of

Lords what durability Palmerston expected for it:—

General Ignatieff told me that he remarked to Lord Palmerston,

“These are stipulations which you cannot expect will last long,”

and Lord Palmerston replied, “They will last ten years.” A learned

civilian, a great friend of mine, told me he heard Lord Palmerston

talk on the subject, and say, “Well, at all events they will last

my life.” A noble peer, a colleague of mine, an intimate friend of

Lord Palmerston, says Lord Palmerston told him they would last

seven years.(220)

In 1856 Mr. Gladstone declared his opinion, afterwards often repeated,

that the neutralisation of the Black Sea, popular as it might be in

England at the moment, was far from being a satisfactory arrangement.(221)

Were the time to come, he said, when Russia might resume aggressive

schemes on Turkey, he believed that neutralisation would mean nothing but

a series of pitfalls much deeper than people expected.(222) These pitfalls

now came into full view. On the last day of October Prince Gortchakoff

addressed a circular to the Powers, announcing that his imperial master

could “no longer consider himself bound to the terms of the treaty of

March 1856, in so far as these limit his rights of sovereignty in the

Black Sea.” On the merits there was very little real dispute in Europe. As

Lord Granville once wrote to Mr. Gladstone: “There was no doubt about

Germany having at Paris, and subsequently, always taken the Russian view.

France made an intimation to the same effect very soon after the

conclusion of the treaty. And Austria later. Italy did the same, but not

in so decided a manner.... I have frequently said in public that with the

exception of ourselves and the Turks, all the co-signatories of the treaty

of Paris had expressed views in favour of modifying the article, previous

to Prince Gortchakoff’s declaration.”(223)

(M112) To have a good case on the merits was one thing, and to force it at

the sword’s point was something extremely different. As Mr. Gladstone put

it in a memorandum that became Lord Granville’s despatch, “the question

was not whether any desire expressed by Russia ought to be carefully

examined in a friendly spirit by the co-signatory powers, but whether they

are to accept from her an announcement that by her own act, without any

consent from them, she has released herself from a solemn covenant.”(224)

Mr. Gladstone, not dissenting on the substance of the Russian claim, was

outraged by the form. The only parallel he ever found to Gortchakoff’s

proceedings in 1870 was a certain claim, of which we shall soon see

something, made by America in 1872. “I have had half an idea,” he wrote to

Lord Granville, “that it might be well I should see Brunnow [the Russian

ambassador] either with you or alone. All know the mischief done by the

Russian idea of Lord Aberdeen, and the opposition are in the habit of

studiously representing me as his double, or his heir in pacific

traditions. This I do not conceive to be true, and possibly I might

undeceive Brunnow a little.”

In this country, as soon as the news of the circular was made known, the

public excitement was intense. Consols instantly dropped heavily. Apart

from the form of the Russian claim, the public still alert upon the

eastern question, felt that the question was once more alive. As Mr.

Gladstone had said to Lord Granville (Oct. 4, 1870), “Everybody at a time

like this looks out for booty; it will be hard to convince central Europe

that Turkey is not a fair prize.” From France Lord Lyons wrote to Mr.

Gladstone (Nov. 14) that the Russian declaration was looked upon with

complacency, because it might lead to a congress, and at all events it

might, by causing a stir among the neutrals, give a check to Prussia as

well as to Russia.

Lord Granville wrote to Mr. Gladstone, who was at Hawarden (Nov. 21):—

I am very sorry to hear that you are not well. Of course, you must

run no risk, but as soon as you can you will, I hope, come up and

have a cabinet. Childers has been here. He tells me there is a

perfect howl about ministers not meeting. He is more quiet in his

talk than I hear some of our colleagues are. But he says if there

is to be war, every day lost is most injurious. I have told him

that it is impossible to say that we may not be driven into it by

Russia, or by other foreign powers, or by our own people; that we

must take care of our dignity; but if there ever was a cabinet

which is bound not to drift into an unnecessary war, it is ours.

Mr. Gladstone replied next day:—

I will frankly own that I am much disgusted with a good deal of

the language that I have read in the newspapers within the last

few days about immediate war with Russia. I try to put a check on

myself to prevent the reaction it engenders. Your observation on

drifting into war is most just: though I always thought

Clarendon’s epithet in this one case inapplicable as well as

unadvisable. I know, however, nothing more like drifting into war

than would be a resort to any military measures whatever, except

with reference either to some actual fact or some well defined

contingency....

II

The courses open to the British Government in the face of the circular

were these. They might silently or with a protest acquiesce. Or they might

declare an offensive war (much deprecated by Turkey herself) against a

nation that had peculiar advantages for defence, and for an object that

every other signatory power thought in itself a bad object. Third, they

might, in accordance with a wonderfully grand scheme suggested to

ministers, demand from Germany, all flushed as she was with military

pride, to tell us plainly whether she was on our side or Russia’s; and if

the German answer did not please us, then we should make an offensive

alliance with France, Austria, Italy, and Turkey checking Russia in the

east and Germany in the west. A fourth plan was mutely to wait, on the

plea that whatever Russia might have said, nothing had been done. The

fifth plan was a conference. This was hardly heroic enough to please

everybody in the cabinet. At least it saved us from the insanity of a war

that would have intensified European confusion, merely to maintain

restraints considered valuable by nobody. The expedient of a conference

was effectively set in motion by Bismarck, then pre-occupied in his

critical Bavarian treaty and the siege of Paris. On November 12, Mr. Odo

Russell left London for Versailles on a special mission to the Prussian

king. The intrepidity of our emissary soon secured a remarkable success,

and the episode of Bismarck’s intervention in the business was important.

(M113) Mr. Odo Russell had three hours’ conversation with Count Bismarck

on November 21. Bismarck told him that the Russian circular had taken him

by surprise; that though he had always thought the treaty of 1856 too hard

upon Russia, he entirely disapproved both of the manner and time chosen

for forcing on a revision of it; that he could not interfere nor even

answer the circular, but to prevent the outbreak of another war he would

recommend conferences at Constantinople.(225) The conversation broke off

at four o’clock in the afternoon, with this unpromising cast. At ten in

the evening it was resumed; it was prolonged until half an hour beyond

midnight. “I felt I knew him better,” Mr. Russell in an unofficial letter

tells Lord Granville (Nov. 30), “and could express more easily all that I

had determined to say to convince him that unless he could get Russia to

withdraw the circular, we should be compelled with or without allies to go

to war.” Bismarck remained long obstinate in his professed doubts of

England going to war; but he gradually admitted the truth of the

consequences to which a pacific acceptance of “the Russian kick must

inevitably lead. And so he came round to the British point of view, and

felt that in our place he could not recede.”

It was not hard to see Bismarck’s interests. The mischief to Germany of

another European war before Paris had fallen; the moral support to be

derived by the Tours government from a revival of the old Anglo-French

alliance; the chances of Beust and other persons fishing in the troubled

waters of an extended European conflict; the vital importance of peace to

the reconstruction of Germany—these were the disadvantages to his own

country and policy, of a war between England and Russia; these worked the

change in his mind between afternoon and midnight, and led him to support

the cause of England and peace against Gortchakoff and his circular.

Characteristically, at the same time he strove hard to drive a bargain

with the English agent, and to procure some political advantages in

exchange for his moral support. “In politics,” he said, “one hand should

wash the other” (_eine Hand die andere waschen muss_). In Mr. Odo Russell,

however, he found a man who talked the language, kept the tone and was

alive to all the arts of diplomatic business, and no handwashing followed.

When Mr. Russell went to his apartment in the Place Hoche at Versailles

that night, he must have felt that he had done a good day’s work.

In the following year, papers were laid before parliament, and attention

was drawn to the language used by Mr. Russell to Bismarck, in the pregnant

sentence about the question being of a nature in its present state to

compel us with or without allies, to go to war with Russia.(226) Mr.

Gladstone, when directly challenged, replied (Feb. 16) that the agent had

used this argument without specific authority or instruction from the

government, but that the duty of diplomatic agents required them to

express themselves in the mode in which they think they can best support

the proposition of which they wish to procure acceptance. Mr. Odo Russell

explained to Mr. Gladstone (Feb. 27) that he was led to use the argument

about England being compelled to go to war with or without allies by these

reasons: that we were bound by a definite treaty to regard any

retractation of the stipulations of March 30, 1856, as a cause of

war;(227) that Gortchakoff’s assumption of a right to renounce provisions

directly touching Russian interests seemed to carry with it the assumption

of a right to renounce all the rest of the treaty; that Mr. Gladstone’s

government had declared (Nov. 10) that it was impossible to sanction the

course announced by Gortchakoff; that, therefore, France being otherwise

engaged, and Austria being unprepared, we might be compelled by our joint

and several obligations under the tripartite treaty, to go to war with

Russia for proceedings that we pronounced ourselves unable to sanction;

finally, that he had never been instructed to state to Prussia, that the

question was not one compelling us ever to go to war, notwithstanding our

treaty engagements. What was Mr. Gladstone’s reply to this I do not find,

but Lord Granville had very sensibly written to him some weeks before

(Dec. 8, 1870):—

I am afraid our whole success has been owing to the belief that we

would go to war, and to tell the truth, I think that war in some

shape or other, sooner or later, was a possible risk after our

note. In any case, I would reassure nobody now. Promising peace is

as unwise as to threaten war. A sort of instinct that the bumps of

combativeness and destructiveness are to be found somewhere in

your head, has helped us much during the last five months.

III

(M114) Having undertaken to propose a conference, Bismarck did the best he

could for it. The British cabinet accepted on condition that the

conference was not to open with any previous assumption of Gortchakoff’s

declaration, and they objected to Petersburg as the scene of operations.

Mr. Gladstone in some notes prepared for the meeting of his colleagues

(Nov. 26), was very firm on the first and main point, that “Her Majesty’s

government could enter into no conference which should assume any portion

of the treaty to have been already abrogated by the discretion of a single

Power, and it would be wholly out of place for them, under the present

circumstances, to ask for a conference, as they were not the parties who

desire to bring about any change in the treaty.” Russia made difficulties,

but Bismarck’s influence prevailed. The conference assembled not at

Petersburg but in London, and subject to no previous assumption as to its

results.(228)

The close of a negotiation is wont to drop the curtain over embarrassments

that everybody is glad to forget;(229) but the obstacles to an exact

agreement were not easily overcome. Lord Granville told Mr. Gladstone that

no fewer than thirteen or fourteen versions of the most important protocol

were tried before terms were reached. In the end Lord Granville’s

conclusion was that, as no just rights had been sacrificed, it was a

positive advantage that Russia should be gratified by the removal of

restraints naturally galling to her pride.

The conference opened at the foreign office on Dec. 17, and held its final

meeting on March 13. Delay was caused by the difficulty of procuring the

attendance of a representative of France. Jules Favre was appointed by the

government at Bordeaux, but he was locked up in Paris, and he and Bismarck

could not agree as to the proper form of safe-conduct. What was even more

important, the governing men in France could not agree upon his

instructions; for we must remember that all this time along with the

patriotic struggle against the Prussians, there went on an internal

struggle only a degree less ardent between republicans and monarchists. It

was not until the final meeting of the conference, that the Duc de Broglie

was accredited as representative of his country.(230) At the first formal

meeting a special protocol was signed recording it as “an essential

principle of the law of nations that no Power can liberate itself from the

engagements of a treaty, nor modify the stipulations thereof, unless with

the consent of the contracting Powers by means of an amicable

arrangement.”

To give a single signatory Power the right of forbidding a change desired

by all the others, imposes a kind of perpetuity on treaty stipulations,

that in practice neither could nor ought to be insisted upon. For instance

it would have tied fast the hands of Cavour and Victor Emmanuel in the

Italian transactions which Mr. Gladstone had followed and assisted with so

much enthusiasm, for Austria would never have assented. It is, moreover,

true that in the ever recurring eras when force, truculent and unabashed,

sweeps aside the moral judgments of the world, the mere inscription of a

pious opinion in a protocol may seem worth little trouble. Yet it is the

influence of good opinion, tardy, halting, stumbling, and broken, as it

must ever be, that upholds and quickens the growth of right. The good

rules laid down in conferences and state-papers may look tame in the glare

of the real world of history as it is. Still, if we may change the figure,

they help to dilute the poisons in the air.

IV

(M115) In England opinion veered round after Sedan. The disappearance of

the French empire had effectively dispelled the vivid suspicions of

aggression. The creation of the empire of a united Germany showed a new

Europe. The keen word of an English diplomatist expressed what was dawning

in men’s minds as a new misgiving. “Europe,” he said, “has lost a mistress

and got a master.” Annexation wore an ugly look. Meetings to express

sympathy with France in her struggle were held in London and the

provinces. Still on the whole the general verdict seemed to be decisively

in favour of a resolute neutrality, for in fact, nobody who knew anything

of the state of Europe could suggest a policy of British intervention that

would stand an hour of debate.

One proposal favoured by Mr. Gladstone, and also, I remember, commended by

Mill, was the military neutralisation of Alsace and Lorraine, and the

dismantling of the great border fortresses, without withdrawing the

inhabitants from their French allegiance. The idea was worked out in a

pamphlet by Count Gasparin. On this pamphlet Mr. Max Müller put what Mr.

Gladstone called the fair question, whether its author was likely to

persuade the European powers to guarantee border neutrality. “I will try

to give you a fair answer,” Mr. Gladstone said (Jan. 30, 1871). “You will

not think it less fair because it is individual and unofficial; for a man

must be a wretch indeed, who could speak at this most solemn juncture,

otherwise than from the bottom of his heart. First, then, I agree with you

in disapproving the declaration, or reputed declaration, of Lord Derby

(then Stanley) in 1867, about the Luxemburg guarantee. I have in

parliament and in my present office, declined or expressly forborne to

recognise that declaration.(231) Secondly, as to the main question. It is

great. It is difficult. But I should not despair. I may add I should

desire to find it practicable; for I think it would be a condition fair to

both parties, and one on which Germany would have an absolute title to

insist. Some of the most excusable errors ever committed,” he said, in

closing the letter, “have also been the most ruinous in their

consequences. The smallest in the forum of conscience, they are the

greatest in the vast theatre of action. May your country, justly indignant

and justly exultant, be preserved from committing one of these errors.”

Three months later, when all was at an end, he repeated the same thought:—

The most fatal and in their sequel most gigantic errors of men are

also frequently the most excusable and the least gratuitous. They

are committed when a strong impetus of right carries them up to a

certain point, and a residue of that impetus, drawn from the

contact with human passion and infirmity, pushes them beyond it.

They vault into the saddle; they fall on the other side. The

instance most commonly present to my mind is the error of England

in entering the Revolutionary war in 1793. Slow sometimes to go

in, she is slower yet to come out, and if she had then held her

hand, the course of the revolution and the fate of Europe would in

all likelihood have been widely different. There might have been

no Napoleon. There might have been no Sedan.

The changes in the political map effected by these dire months of

diplomacy and war were almost comparable in one sense to those of the

treaty of Münster, or the treaty of the Pyrenees, or the treaties of

Vienna, save that those great instruments all left a consolidated Europe.

Italy had crowned her work by the acquisition of Rome. Russia had wiped

out the humiliation of 1856. Prussia, after three wars in six years, had

conquered the primacy of a united Germany. Austria had fallen as Prussia

rose. France had fallen, but she had shaken off a government that had no

root in the noblest qualities of her people.

Chapter VII. “Day’s Work Of A Giant”. (1870-1872)

We have not been an idle government. We have had an active life,

and that is substantially one of the conditions of a happy

life.... I am thankful to have been the leader of the liberal

party at a period of the history of this country, when it has been

my privilege and my duty to give the word of advance to able

coadjutors and trusty and gallant adherents.—GLADSTONE.

I

The most marked administrative performance of Mr. Gladstone’s great

government was the reform and reorganisation of the army. In Mr. Cardwell

he was fortunate enough to have a public servant of the first order; not a

political leader nor a popular orator, but one of the best disciples of

Peel’s school; sound, careful, active, firm, and with an enlightened and

independent mind admirably fitted for the effective despatch of business.

Before he had been a month at the war office, the new secretary of state

submitted to Mr. Gladstone his ideas of a plan that would give us an

effective force for defence at a greatly reduced cost. The reorganisation

of the army was one of the results of that great central event, from which

in every direction such momentous consequences flowed—the victory of

Prussian arms at Sadowa. The victory was a surprise, for even Lord Clyde,

after a close inspection of the Prussian army, had found no more to report

than that it was a first-rate militia. Sadowa disclosed that a soldier,

serving only between two and three years with the colours, could yet show

himself the most formidable combatant in Europe. The principle of

Cardwell’s plan was that short enlistment is essential to a healthy

organisation of the army, and this reform it was that produced an

efficient reserve, the necessity for which had been one of the lessons of

the Crimean war. A second, but still a highly important element, was the

reduction of the whole force serving in the colonies from fifty thousand

men to less than half that number.(232) “To this change,” said Mr.

Cardwell, “opposition will be weak, for the principle of colonial

self-reliance is very generally assented to.” The idea, as Lord Wolseley

says, that a standing army during peace should be a manufactory for making

soldiers rather than either a costly receptacle for veterans, or a

collection of perfectly trained fighters, “had not yet taken, hold of the

military mind in England.”(233) The details do not concern us here, and

everybody knows the revolution effected by the changes during Mr.

Gladstone’s great administration in the composition, the working, and the

professional spirit of the army.

(M116) Army reform first brought Mr. Gladstone into direct collision with

reigning sentiment at court. In spite of Pym and Cromwell and the untoward

end of Charles I. and other salutary lessons of the great rebellion, ideas

still lingered in high places that the sovereign’s hand bore the sword,

and that the wearer of the crown through a commander-in-chief had rights

of control over the army, not quite dependent on parliament and secretary

of state. The Queen had doubted the policy of disestablishing the church

in Ireland, but to disestablish the commander-in-chief came closer home,

and was disliked as an invasion of the personal rights of the occupant of

the throne. This view was rather firmly pressed, and it was the first of a

series of difficulties—always to him extremely painful, perhaps more

painful than any other—that Mr. Gladstone was called upon in his long

career to overcome. The subject was one on which the temper of a reforming

parliament allowed no compromise, even if the prime minister himself had

been inclined to yield. As it was, by firmness, patience, and that tact

which springs not from courtiership but from right feeling, he succeeded,

and in the June of 1870 the Queen approved an order in council that put an

end to the dual control of the army, defined the position of the

commander-in-chief, and removed him corporeally from the horse guards to

the war office in Pall Mall.(234) This, however, by no means brought all

the military difficulties to an end.

One particular incident has a conspicuous place on the political side of

Mr. Gladstone’s life. Among the elements in the scheme was the abolition

of the practice of acquiring military rank by money purchase. Public

opinion had been mainly roused by Mr. Trevelyan, who now first made his

mark in that assembly where he was destined to do admirable work and

achieve high eminence and popularity. An Act of George III. abolished

selling of offices in other departments, but gave to the crown the

discretion of retaining the practice in the army, if so it should seem

fit. This discretion had been exercised by the issue of a warrant

sanctioning and regulating that practice; commissions in the army were

bought and sold for large sums of money, far in excess of the sums fixed

by the royal warrant; and vested interests on a large scale grew up in

consequence. The substitution, instead of this abusive system, of

promotion by selection, was one of the first steps in army reform. No

effective reorganisation was possible without it. As Mr. Gladstone put it,

the nation must buy back its own army from its own officers. No other

proceeding in the career of the ministry aroused a more determined and

violent opposition. It offended a powerful profession with a host of

parliamentary friends; the officers disliked liberal politics, they rather

disdained a civilian master, and they fought with the vigour peculiar to

irritated caste.

The first question before parliament depended upon the Commons voting the

money to compensate officers who had acquired vested interests. If that

were secure, there was nothing to hinder the crown, in the discretion

committed to it by the statute, from cancelling the old warrant. Instead

of this, ministers determined to abolish purchase by bill. Obstruction was

long and sustained. The principle of the bill was debated and re-debated

on every amendment in committee, and Mr. Gladstone reported that “during

his whole parliamentary life, he had been accustomed to see class

interests of all kinds put themselves on their defence under the

supposition of being assailed, yet he had never seen a case where the

modes of operation adopted by the professing champions were calculated to

leave such a painful impression on the mind.” Credible whispers were heard

of the open hostility of high military personages. In one of the debates

of this time upon the army (Mar. 23, 1871), speakers freely implied that

the influence of what was called the horse guards was actively adverse to

reform. Mr. Gladstone, taking this point, laid it down that “military

authorities without impairing in the slightest degree the general

independence of their political opinions, should be in full harmony with

the executive as to the military plans and measures which it might

propose; and that only on this principle could the satisfactory working of

our institutions be secured.”

The correspondence with the Queen was copious. In one letter, after

mentioning that parliament had been persuaded to extend the tenure of the

commander-in-chief’s office beyond five years, and to allow the patronage

and discipline of the army to be vested in him, though the secretary of

state was responsible, Mr. Gladstone proceeds:—

It would have been impossible to procure the acquiescence of

parliament in these arrangements, unless they had been accompanied

with the declaration of Mr. Cardwell, made in the name of the

cabinet, and seen and approved by your Majesty, that “it is of

course necessary for the commander-in-chief to be in harmony with

the government of the day” (Feb. 21, 1871), and with a similar

declaration of Mr. Gladstone on March 23, 1871, also reported to,

and approved by your Majesty, that while all political action

properly so called was entirely free, yet the military plans and

measures of the government must always have the energetic

co-operation of the military chiefs of the army.

(M117) The end was of course inevitable.(235) The bill at last passed the

Commons, and then an exciting stage began. In the Lords it was immediately

confronted by a dilatory resolution. In view of some such proceeding, Mr.

Gladstone (July 15) wrote to the Queen as to the best course to pursue,

and here he first mentioned the step that was to raise such clamour:—

As the government judge that the illegality of over-regulation

prices cannot continue, and as they can only be extinguished by

putting an end to purchase, what has been chiefly considered is

how to proceed with the greatest certainty and the smallest shock,

and how to secure as far as may be for the officers all that has

hitherto been asked on their behalf. With this view, the

government think the first step would be to abolish the warrant

under which prices of commissions are fixed. As the resolution of

the House of Lords states the unwillingness of the House to take

part in abolishing purchase until certain things shall have been

done, it would not be applicable to a case in which, without its

interposition, purchase would have been already abolished.

Two days later (July 17) the Lords passed what Sir Roundell Palmer called

“their ill-advised resolution.” On July 18 the cabinet met and resolved to

recommend the cancelling of the old warrant regulating purchase, by a new

warrant abolishing purchase. It has been said or implied that this

proceeding was forced imperiously upon the Queen. I find no evidence of

this. In the language of Lord Halifax, the minister in attendance, writing

to Mr. Gladstone from Osborne (July 19, 1871), the Queen “made no sort of

difficulty in signing the warrant” after the case had been explained. In

the course of the day she sent to tell Lord Halifax, that as it was a

strong exercise of her power in apparent opposition to the House of Lords,

she should like to have some more formal expression of the advice of the

cabinet than was contained in an ordinary letter from the prime minister,

dealing with this among other matters. Ministers agreed that the Queen had

a fair right to have their advice on such a point of executive action on

her part, recorded in a formal and deliberate submission of their opinion.

The advice was at once clothed in the definite form of a minute.

On July 20 Mr. Gladstone announced to a crowded and anxious House the

abolition of purchase by royal warrant. The government, he said, had no

other object but simplicity and despatch, and the observance of

constitutional usage. Amid some disorderly interruptions, Mr. Disraeli

taunted the government with resorting to the prerogative of the crown to

get out of a difficulty of their own devising. Some radicals used the same

ill-omened word. After a spell of obstruction on the ballot bill, the

bitter discussion on purchase revived, and Mr. Disraeli said that what had

occurred early in the evening was “disgraceful to the House of Commons,”

and denounced “the shameful and avowed conspiracy of the cabinet” against

the House of Lords. The latter expression was noticed by the chairman of

committee and withdrawn, though Mr. Gladstone himself thought it the more

allowable of the two.

In a letter to his brother-in-law, Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Gladstone

vindicated this transaction as follows:—

_July 26, ’71._—I should like to assure myself that you really

have the points of the case before you. 1. Was it not for us an

indispensable duty to extinguish a gross, wide-spread, and most

mischievous illegality, of which the existence had become certain

and notorious? 2. Was it not also our duty to extinguish it in the

best manner? 3. Was not the best manner that which, (_a_) made the

extinction final; (_b_) gave the best, _i.e._ a statutory, title

for regulation prices; (_c_) granted an indemnity to the officers;

(_d_) secured for them compensation in respect of over-regulation

prices? 4. Did not the vote of the House of Lords stop us in this

best manner of proceeding? 5. Did it absolve us from the duty of

putting an end to the illegality? 6. What method of putting an end

to it remained to us, except that which we have adopted?

(M118) Sir Roundell Palmer wrote, “I have always thought and said that the

issuing of such a warrant was within the undoubted power of the crown....

It did and does appear to me that the course which the government took was

the least objectionable course that could be taken under the whole

circumstances of the case.”(236) I can find nothing more clearly and more

forcibly said upon this case than the judgment of Freeman, the historian—a

man who combined in so extraordinary a degree immense learning with

precision in political thought and language, and added to both the true

spirit of manly citizenship:—

I must certainly protest against the word “prerogative” being

used, as it has so often been of late, to describe Mr. Gladstone’s

conduct with regard to the abolition of purchase in the army. By

prerogative I understand a power not necessarily contrary to law,

but in some sort beyond law—a power whose source must be sought

for somewhere else than in the terms of an act of parliament. But

in abolishing purchase by a royal warrant Mr. Gladstone acted

strictly within the terms of an act of parliament, an act so

modern as the reign of George III. He in truth followed a course

which that act not only allowed but rather suggested.... I am not

one of those who condemn Mr. Gladstone’s conduct in this matter;

still I grant that the thing had an ill look. The difference I

take to be this. Mr. Gladstone had two courses before him: he

might abolish purchase by a royal warrant—that is, by using the

discretion which parliament had given to the crown; or he might

bring a bill into parliament to abolish purchase.... What gave the

thing an ill look was that, having chosen the second way and not

being able to carry his point that way, he then fell back on the

first way. I believe that it was better to get rid of a foul abuse

in the way in which it was got rid of, than not to get rid of it

at all, especially as the House of Commons had already decided

against it. Still, the thing did not look well. It might seem that

by electing to bring a bill into parliament Mr. Gladstone had

waived his right to employ the royal power in the matter.... I

believe that this is one of those cases in which a strictly

conscientious man like Mr. Gladstone does things from which a less

conscientious man would shrink. Such a man, fully convinced of his

own integrity, often thinks less than it would be wise to think of

mere appearances, and so lays himself open to the imputation of

motives poles asunder from the real ones.(237)

These last words undoubtedly explain some acts and tendencies that gave a

handle to foes and perplexed friends.

II

Next let us turn to reform in a different field. All the highest abstract

arguments were against secret voting. To have a vote is to have power; as

Burke said, “liberty is power, when men act in bodies”; but the secret

vote is power without responsibility. The vote is a trust for the

commonwealth; to permit secrecy makes it look like a right conferred for a

man’s own benefit. You enjoin upon him to give his vote on public grounds;

in the same voice you tell him not to let the public know how he gives it.

Secrecy saps the citizen’s courage, promotes evasion, tempts to downright

lying. Remove publicity and its checks, then all the mean motives of

mankind—their malice, petty rivalries, pique, the prejudices that men

would be ashamed to put into words even to themselves—skulk to the polling

booth under a disguising cloak. Secrecy, again, prevents the statesman

from weighing or testing the forces in character, stability, persistency,

of the men by whom a majority has been built up, and on whose fidelity his

power of action must depend. This strain of argument was worked out by J.

S. Mill(238) and others, and drew from Mr. Bright, who belonged to a

different school of liberals, the gruff saying, that the worst of great

thinkers is that they so often think wrong.

Though the abstract reasoning might be unanswerable, the concrete case the

other way was irresistible. Experience showed that without secrecy in its

exercise the suffrage was not free. The farmer was afraid of his landlord,

and the labourer was afraid of the farmer; the employer could tighten the

screw on the workman, the shopkeeper feared the power of his best

customers, the debtor quailed before his creditor, the priest wielded

thunderbolts over the faithful. Not only was the open vote not free; it

exposed its possessor to so much bullying, molestation, and persecution,

that his possession came to be less of a boon than a nuisance.

(M119) For forty years this question had been fought. The ballot actually

figured in a clause of an early draft of the Reform bill of 1832. Grote,

inspired by James Mill whose vigorous pleas for the ballot in his

well-known article in 1830 were the high landmark in the controversy,

brought it before parliament in an annual motion. When that admirable man

quitted parliament to finish his great history of Greece, the torch was

still borne onwards by other hands. Ballot was one of the five points of

the charter. At nearly every meeting for parliamentary reform between the

Crimean war and Disraeli’s bill of 1867, the ballot was made a cardinal

point. General opinion fluctuated from time to time, and in the sixties

journals of repute formally dismissed it as a dead political idea. The

extension of the franchise in 1867 brought it to life again, and Mr.

Bright led the van in the election of 1868 by declaring in his address

that he regarded the ballot as of the first importance. “Whether I look,”

he said, “to the excessive cost of elections, or to the tumult which so

often attends them, or to the unjust and cruel pressure which is so

frequently brought to bear upon the less independent class of voters, I am

persuaded that the true interest of the public and of freedom will be

served by the system of secret and free voting.” J. S. Mill had argued

that the voter should name his candidate in the polling booth, just as the

judge does his duty in a court open to the public eye. No, replied Bright,

the jury-room is as important as the judge’s bench, and yet the jury-room

is treated as secret, and in some countries the verdict is formally given

by ballot. Some scandals in the way of electoral intimidation did much to

ripen public opinion. One parliamentary committee in 1868 brought evidence

of this sort to light, and another committee recommended secret voting as

the cure.

Among those most ardent for the change from open to secret voting, the

prime minister was hardly to be included. “I am not aware,” he wrote to

Lord Shaftesbury (Dec. 11, 1871), “of having been at any time a vehement

opponent of the ballot. I have not been accustomed to attach to it a vital

importance, but at any time, I think, within the last twenty or

twenty-five years I should have regarded it as the legitimate complement

of the present suffrage.”(239) In the first speech he made as prime

minister at Greenwich (Dec. 21, 1868) be said that there were two subjects

that could not be overlooked in connection with the representation of the

people. “One of them is the security afforded by the present system for

perfect freedom in the giving of the vote, which vote has been not only

not conferred as a favour, but imposed as a duty by the legislature on the

members of the community. I have at all times given my vote in favour of

open voting, but I have done so before, and I do so now, with an important

reservation, namely, that whether by open voting or by whatsoever means,

free voting must be secured.”

A bill providing for vote by ballot, abolishing public nominations and

dealing with corrupt practices in parliamentary elections was introduced

by Lord Hartington in 1870. Little progress was made with it, and it was

eventually withdrawn. But the government were committed to the principle,

and at the end of July Mr. Gladstone took the opportunity of explaining

his change of opinion on this question, in the debate on the second

reading of a Ballot bill brought in by a private member. Now that great

numbers who depended for their bread upon their daily labour had acquired

the vote, he said, their freedom was threatened from many quarters. The

secret vote appeared to be required by the social conditions under which

they lived, and therefore it had become a necessity and a duty to give

effect to the principle.

(M120) Yet after the cabinet had decided to make the ballot a ministerial

measure, the head of the cabinet makes a rather pensive entry in his

diary: “_July 27, 1870._—H. of C. Spoke on ballot, and voted in 324-230

with mind satisfied, and as to feeling, a lingering reluctance.” How far

this reluctance was due to misgivings on the merits of the ballot, how far

to the doubts that haunt every ministerial leader as to the possibilities

of parliamentary time, we do not know. The bill, enlarged and reintroduced

next year, was entrusted to the hands of Mr. Forster—himself, like Mr.

Gladstone, a latish convert to the principle of secret voting—and by

Forster’s persistent force and capacity for hard and heavy labour, after

some eighteen days in committee, it passed through the House of Commons.

After obstruction had been at last broken down, other well-known resources

of civilisation remained, and the Lords threw out the bill.(240) It was

novel, they said; it was dangerous, it had not been considered by the

country or parliament (after eighteen days of committee and forty years of

public discussion), it was incoherent and contradictory, and to enact vote

by ballot was inevitably to overthrow the monarchy. Even the mightiest of

American orators had said as much. “Above all things,” Daniel Webster had

adjured Lord Shaftesbury, “resist to the very last the introduction of the

ballot; for as a republican, I tell you that the ballot can never co-exist

with monarchical institutions.”

The rejection by the Lords stimulated popular insistence. At Whitby in the

autumn (Sept. 2), Mr. Gladstone said the people’s bill had been passed by

the people’s House, and when it was next presented at the door of the

House of Lords, it would be with an authoritative knock. He told Lord

Houghton that he was sorry to see the agitation apparently rising against

the House of Lords, though he had a strong opinion about the imprudence of

its conduct on the Army bill, and especially on the Ballot bill. “There is

no Duke of Wellington in these days. His reputation as a domestic

statesman seems to me to rest almost entirely on his leadership of the

peers between 1832 and 1841.”

The bill was again passed through the Commons in 1872. Mr. Gladstone was

prepared for strong measures. The cabinet decided that if the House of

Lords should hold to what the prime minister styled “the strange provision

for optional secrecy,” the government would withdraw the bill and try an

autumn session, and if the Lords still hardened their hearts, “there would

remain nothing but the last alternative to consider,”—these words, I

assume, meaning a dissolution. Perhaps the opposition thought that a

dissolution on the ballot might give to the ministerial Antæus fresh

energy. This time the Lords gave way, satisfied that the Measure had now

at last been more adequately discussed,—the said discussion really

consisting in no more than an adequate amount of violent language out of

doors against the principle of a hereditary legislature.(241)

The results of the general election two years later as they affected

party, are an instructive comment on all this trepidation and alarm. In

one only of the three kingdoms the ballot helped to make a truly vital

difference; it dislodged the political power of the Irish landlord. In

England its influence made for purity, freedom, and decency, but it

developed no new sources of liberal strength. On this aspect of things the

first parliamentary precursor of the ballot made remarks that are worth a

few lines of digression. “You will feel great satisfaction,” his wife said

to Grote one morning at their breakfast, “at seeing your once favourite

measure triumph over all obstacles.” “Since the wide expansion of the

voting element,” the historian replied, “I confess that the value of the

ballot has sunk in my estimation. I don’t, in fact, think the elections

will be affected by it one way or another, as far as party interests are

concerned.” “Still,” his interlocutor persisted, “you will at all events

get at the genuine preference of the constituency.” “No doubt; but then,

again, I have come to perceive that the choice between one man and another

among the English people, signifies less than I used formerly to think it

did. The English mind is much of one pattern, take whatsoever class you

will. The same favourite prejudices, amiable and otherwise; the same

antipathies, coupled with ill-regulated though benevolent efforts to

eradicate human evils, are well-nigh universal. A House of Commons cannot

afford to be above its own constituencies in intelligence, knowledge, or

patriotism.”(242) In all this the element of truth is profound enough. In

every change of political machinery the reformer promises and expects a

new heaven and a new earth; then standing forces of national tradition,

character, and institution assert their strength, our millennium lags, and

the chilled enthusiast sighs. He is unreasonable, as are all those who

expect more from life and the world than life and the world have to give.

Yet here at least the reformer has not failed. The efficacy of secret

voting is negative if we will, but it averts obvious mischiefs alike from

old privileged orders in states and churches and from new.

III

(M121) In finance the country looked for wonders. Ministers were called

the cabinet of financiers. The cabinet did, in fact, contain as many as

five men who were at one time or another chancellors of the exchequer, and

its chief was recognised through Europe as the most successful financier

of the age. No trailing cloud of glory, as in 1853 or 1860, attended the

great ministry, but sound and substantial results were achieved,

testifying to a thrifty and skilful management, such as might have

satisfied the ambition of a generation of chancellors. The head of the new

government promised retrenchment as soon as the government was formed. He

told his constituents at Greenwich (Dec. 21, 1868) that he was himself

responsible for having taken the earliest opportunity of directing the

public mind to the subject of expenditure at an opening stage of the late

election; for “although there may be times when the public mind may become

comparatively relaxed in regard to the general principles of economy and

thrift, it is the special duty of public men to watch the very beginnings

of evil in that department. It is a very easy thing to notice these

mischiefs when they have grown to a gigantic size; but it commonly happens

that when financial error has arisen to those dimensions, the case has

become too aggravated for a remedy.” He reminded them of the addition that

had been made to the standing charges of the country in the ordinary and

steadily recurring annual estimates presented to parliament. He said that

he knew no reason why three millions should have been added during the two

years of tory government to the cost of our establishments:—

It is one thing, I am very well aware, to put on three millions;

it is another thing to take them off. When you put three millions

on to the public expenditure, you create a number of new

relations, a number of new offices, a number of new claims, a

number of new expectations. And you can’t, and what is more, you

ought not to, destroy all these in a moment. And, therefore, the

work of retrenchment must be a well-considered and a gradual work.

But I ask you to look at the names of the men who have been,

placed in charge of the great spending departments of the country.

The study, the idea that has governed the formation of the present

administration has been to place able and upright men in charge of

the public purse—men of administrative experience, men of proved

ability, men, lastly, holding their seats in the House of Commons,

and, therefore, immediately responsible to the representatives of

the people. It would not become me to promise what we can do; but

this I can tell you, that my friends connected with the various

departments most concerned in the public expenditure have, even

before the early moment at which I speak, directed their very

first attention to this subject, and that I, for one, shall be as

deeply disappointed as you can be, if in the estimates which it

will be our duty to present in February you do not already

perceive some results of their opening labours.

One of Mr. Gladstone’s first letters to a colleague was addressed to Mr.

Lowe, containing such hints and instructions upon treasury administration

as a veteran pilot might give about lights, buoys, channels, currents, to

a new captain. “No man wants so much sympathy,” he said, “as the

chancellor of the exchequer, no man gets so little. Nor is there any

position so lamentable for him as to be defeated in proposing some new

charge on the public conceived or adopted by himself. He is like an

ancient soldier wounded in the back. Whereas even defeat in resisting the

raids of the House of Commons on the public purse is honourable, and

always turns out well in the end.” He sent Mr. Lowe a list of the subjects

that he had tried in parliament without success, and of those that he had

in his head but was not able to take in hand. They make a fine example of

an active and reforming mind.(243) “What commonly happened, in cases of

this kind, in my time, was as follows: The opposition waited for a

development of discontent and resistance among some small fraction of

liberal members. When this was compact in itself, or was at all stimulated

by constituencies, they sent out habitually strong party whips, and either

beat me, or forced me to withdraw in order to avoid beating, or exposing

our men to local disadvantage. This game, I hope, will not be quite so

easy now.”

(M122) The first two of Mr. Lowe’s budgets were on the lines thus traced

beforehand. The shilling duty on a quarter of corn was abolished—“an

exceeding strong case,” as Mr. Gladstone called it—taxes on conveyances

were adjusted, and the duty on fire insurance was removed. The only

notable contribution to the standing problem of widening the base of

taxation was the proposal to put a tax on matches.(244) This was a notion

borrowed from the United States, and much approved by Mr. Wells, the

eminent free-trade financier of that country. In England it was greeted

with violent disfavour. It was denounced as reactionary, as violating the

first principles of fiscal administration, and as the very worst tax that

had been proposed within recent memory, for is not a match a necessary of

life, and to tax a necessary of life is to go against Adam Smith and the

books. The money, it was said, ought to have been got either by raising

the taxes on tea and sugar, or else by putting the shilling duty back on

corn again, though for that matter, tea, sugar, and corn are quite as much

necessaries of life as, say, two-thirds of the matches used.(245) No care,

however, was given to serious argument; in fact, the tax was hardly argued

at all. Some hundreds of poor women employed at a large match factory in

the east end of London trooped to protest at Westminster, and the tax was

quickly dropped. It was perhaps unlucky that the proposal happened to be

associated with Mr. Lowe, for his uncomplimentary criticisms on the

working class four or five years before were neither forgotten nor

forgiven. A Latin pun that he meant to print on the proposed halfpenny

match stamp, _ex luce lucellum_, “a little gain out of a little light,”

was good enough to divert a college common room, but it seemed flippant to

people who expected to see the bread taken out of their mouths.