On the other side of the national account Mr. Gladstone was more

successful. He fought with all his strength for a reduction of the public

burdens, and in at least one of these persistent battles with colleagues

of a less economising mind than himself, he came near to a breach within

the walls of his cabinet. In this thankless region he was not always

zealously seconded. On Dec. 14, 1871, he enters in his diary: “Cabinet,

3-7. For two and a half hours we discussed army estimates, mainly on

reduction, and the chancellor of exchequer did not speak one word.” The

result is worth recording. When Mr. Gladstone was at the exchequer the

charge on naval, military, and civil expenditure had been reduced between

1860 and 1865 from thirty-eight millions to thirty-one. Under the

Derby-Disraeli government the figure rose in two or three years to

thirty-four millions and three-quarters. By 1873 it had been brought down

again to little more than thirty-two millions and a quarter.(246) That

these great reductions were effected without any sacrifice of the

necessary strength and efficiency of the forces, may be inferred from the

fact that for ten years under successive administrations the charge on

navy and army underwent no substantial augmentation. The process had been

made easier, or made possible, by the necessity under which the German war

laid France, then our only rival in naval force, to reduce her expenditure

upon new ships. The number of seamen was maintained, but a reduction was

effected in the inefficient vessels in the foreign squadrons; two costly

and almost useless dockyards were suppressed (much to the disadvantage of

Mr. Gladstone’s own constituents), and great abuses were remedied in the

dockyards that were left. In the army reduction was made possible without

lessening the requisite strength, by the withdrawal of troops from Canada,

New Zealand, and the Cape. This was due to the wise policy of Lord

Granville and Mr. Gladstone. In spite of the increased cost of education,

of army purchase, of the rise of prices, and all the other causes that

swell estimates, the country was still spending no more in 1873 than when

Mr. Gladstone took office in 1868.(247) To this story we have to add that

nearly thirty millions of debt were paid off in the five years. Well might

men point to such a record, as the best proof that the promises of economy

made at the hustings had been seriously kept.(248)

(M123) When the time came for him to take stock of his own performances,

Mr. Lowe, who was apt to be cleverer than he was wise, made a speech at

Sheffield, in September 1873, that almost recalls the self-laudation of

Cicero over the immortal glories of his consulate. He disclaimed any share

of the admirable genius for finance that had been seen in Pitt, Peel, or

Gladstone, but he had read in the Latin grammar that economy was a great

revenue, and he thought that he could at least discharge the humble task

of hindering extravagance. “The first thing I did as chancellor of the

exchequer,” he said, “was to issue an order that no new expenditure

whatever would be allowed without my opinion first being taken upon it....

In an evil hour for my own peace and quietness I took upon myself—I

believe it was never taken upon himself by any chancellor of the exchequer

before—the duty of protecting the revenue, instead of leaving it to be

done by an inferior official.” After reciting his figures, he wound up

with a resounding pæan: “So far as I am aware, up to the present time

there is no one who can challenge comparison with what has been done

during these years. Sir R. Peel and Mr. Gladstone routed out protection in

your trade, a measure that conferred immortal honour on them, but so far

as relieving you from taxation is concerned, I believe you would seek in

vain in British history for anything like what has been done during these

last four years.” This strange vein was more than a little distasteful to

the prime minister, as a letter to Lord Granville upon it shows (Sept. 9,

1873):—

Lowe’s speech at Sheffield is really too bad, and free as it is

from all evil intention, it illustrates the invariable solecisms

of his extraordinary mind.... He says no chancellor of the

exchequer before did treasury business, but left it to a

subordinate official.... Some have done more, some less. No one,

probably, as much as Lowe, but some almost as much. I did less,

perhaps much less. But I hold that the first duties of the

chancellor of the exchequer are outside the treasury. One of them

is to look after and control the great expenditures and estimates.

In this duty I am sorry to say he was wretchedly deficient; yet he

coolly takes to himself the credit of army and navy reductions,

which is due to Cardwell and Childers (who, in his admirable

speech, did not say a word, I think, for himself), and with which

every member of the cabinet had almost as much to do as he had. I

can speak from experience, for I know what it has been to have had

cast upon my shoulders the most important and most offensive duty

of the financial minister.... He has ample merit to stand on, in a

great amount of labour done, and generally well done, and with

good results for the public. Much of the unpopularity is unjust; a

little patience would set all right.

Chapter VIII. Autumn Of 1871. Decline Of Popularity. (1871-1872)

For the present at least the reformation will operate against the

reformers. Nothing is more common than for men to wish, and call

loudly too, for a reformation, who when it arrives do by no means

like the severity of its aspect. Reformation is one of those

pieces which must be put at some distance in order to please. Its

greatest favourers love it better in the abstract than in the

substance.

—BURKE.

I

In July, 1871, Mr. Gladstone paid a Sunday visit to Tennyson among the

Surrey hills. They had two interesting days, “with talk ranging

everywhere.” The poet read the _Holy Grail_, which Mr. Gladstone admired.

They discussed the Goschen parish council plan, and other social reforms;

Lacordaire and liberal collectivism; politics and the stormy times ahead.

Mr. Gladstone assured them that he was a conservative, and feared extreme

measures from the opposition. “A very noble fellow,” Tennyson called him,

“and perfectly unaffected.”(249) Mr. Gladstone, for his part, records in

his diary that he found “a characteristic and delightful abode. In

Tennyson are singularly united true greatness, genuine simplicity, and

some eccentricity. But the latter is from habit and circumstance, the

former is his nature. His wife is excellent, and in her adaptation to him

wonderful. His son Hallam is most attractive.”

After a laborious and irksome session, “in which, we have sat, I believe,

150 hours after midnight,” the House rose (Aug. 21). Mr. Gladstone spent

some time at Whitby with his family, and made a speech to his eldest son’s

constituents (Sept. 2) on the ballot, and protesting against the spirit of

“alarmism.” Towards the end of the month he went on to Balmoral. On

September 26 he was presented with the freedom of Aberdeen, and made a

speech on Irish home rule, of which, as we shall see, he heard a great

deal fifteen years later:—

_To Mrs. Gladstone._

_Balmoral, Sept. 28._—The time is rolling on easily at this

_quiet_ place.... We breakfast six or eight. The Prince and

Princess Louis of Hesse dine most days. To-day I walked with her

and her party. She is quick, kind, and well informed. I got her

to-day on the subject of the religious movement in the Roman

catholic church in Germany. She is imbued with her father’s ideas,

and, I think, goes beyond them. She quoted Strauss to me, as

giving his opinion that the movement would come to nothing. She

said the infallibility was the legitimate development of the Roman

system. I replied that the Roman system had grown up by a

multitude of scarcely perceptible degrees out of the earliest form

of Christianity, and if we adopted this notion of legitimate

development, we ran a risk of making Saint Paul responsible for

the Vatican council. She talked much about the hospitals, in which

she worked so hard while nursing her baby, a very fine one, whom

she introduced to me, with two flourishing elder children. She

hates war; and is not easy as to the future.

_Sept. 29._—I have had a twelve-mile stretch to-day, almost all on

wild ground, and so solitary! not a living creature except three

brace of grouse all the way. I am glad to report that I came in

very fresh. ... What a mess the Bishop of Winchester has made of

this Glengarry kirk business.

_Sept. 30._—Last night we dined ten at Abergeldie. The Prince of

Wales had his usual pleasant manners. He is far lighter in hand

than the Duke of Edinburgh. After dinner he invited me to play

whist. I said, “For love, sir?” He said, “Well, shillings and

half-a-crown on the rubber,” to which I submitted. Ponsonby and I

against the Prince and Brasseur, a charming old Frenchman, his

tutor in the language. The Prince has apparently an _immense_

whist memory, and plays well accordingly. To-day the Queen was to

have seen me at six, but sent to postpone it till to-morrow on

account of expecting the Princess of Wales, who was to come over

and pay her a visit from Abergeldie. I think she is nervous, and

shrinks from talk; but I do not mean to say a word that would give

her trouble, as there would be no good in it at this moment.

_Oct. 3._—I have seen the Queen again this morning. She conversed

longer, near an hour, and was visibly better and stronger, and in

good spirits. She told me much about her illness. ... She wished

me a pleasant journey.

_Ballater, Oct. 4._—Here am I ensconced in the station-master’s

box at Ballater, after a 15 or 16 mile walk round through the

hills, the regular train being postponed for an hour or more to

let the couple from Mar Lodge go off special. They had two

carriages laden with luggage, besides their own carriage! I hope

to be at Colwyn soon after six. These solitary walks among the

hills, I think, refresh and invigorate me more than anything else.

To-day the early part of the day was glorious, and the wind most

bracing as it came over the mass of mountains. I bade farewell

reluctantly to Balmoral, for it is as homelike as any place away

from home can be, and wonderfully safe from invasions. I had all

the grand mountains in view at once, with their snow caps; the

lowest, about the same as Snowdon. I came by the falls of the

Muich, which, after the rain, were very fine. I had an interesting

conversation with Princess Louise about the Queen this morning.

_Oct. 4._—Nothing sets me up in mind and body like a mountain

solitude, not even, perhaps, the sea. Walked from Balmoral to

Ballater, 15 miles, in 4 hrs. 5 m. 6.—Walked 20 miles in 5 hrs.

and 45 minutes. 7.—Walked 15 miles.—(_Diary._)

_To Mrs. Gladstone._

_Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, Oct. 8, 1871._—I got here last night

before seven, and had the most affectionate welcome from the dean

that you can conceive; a dinner-party followed, and now I have for

the _first time_ since the government was formed had a holiday of

two whole days. Last night the lord advocate tried to talk to me

about the Scotch endowed schools and I refused to have anything to

say to him. I have no time to write about my walk, beyond this,

that it was quite successful. The dean [Ramsay] preached at St.

John’s this morning about Ruth. The sermon was beautiful, and the

voice and manner with his venerable age made it very striking. He

put an astonishing energy into it, and his clear melodious tones

rang through and through as they did when I first heard him 43½

years ago. It was altogether most touching, and he told me

afterwards that he had wished to preach to me once more before he

died. But I rejoice to say his life seems a very good one. I would

not have missed the occasion for much.

_London, Oct. 27._—Went to Sir R. Murchison’s funeral, the last of

those who had known me or of me from infancy. And so a step

towards the end is made visible. It was a great funeral. 28.—My

expedition to Greenwich, or rather, Blackheath. I spoke 1 h. 50

m.; too long, yet really not long enough for a full development of

my points. Physically rather an excess of effort. All went well,

thank God!—(_Diary._)

(M124) This speech at Blackheath was a fine illustration both of Mr.

Gladstone’s extraordinary power, and of the sure respect of a British

audience for manful handling and firm dealing in a minister, if only the

appeal be high enough. It was one of the marked scenes of his life. In the

cold mist of the October afternoon he stood bareheaded, pale, resolute,

before a surging audience of many thousands, few of them enthusiastically

his friends, a considerable mass of them dockyard workmen, furious at

discharge or neglect by an economising government. He was received with

loud and angry murmurs ominous of storm, but curiosity, interest, and a

sense that even a prime minister should have fair play prevailed. His rich

tones and clear articulation—and Mr. Gladstone had studied all the arts

for husbanding vocal resources—carried his words beyond the five or six

thousand persons that are commonly understood to be the limit of possible

hearers in the open air. After half an hour of struggle he conquered a

hold upon them that became more intense as he went on—touching topic after

topic, defending all that had been done for the reform and efficiency of

the army, denouncing extreme opinions on the Education Act, vindicating

the ballot bill, laughing at various prescriptions of social

quackery—until at the close of a speech nearly two hours long, he retired

amid sustained hurricanes of earnest applause. Well might he speak of

rather an excess of physical effort, to say nothing of effort of mind.

On his return to Hawarden he had a visit from Mr. Bright, whom he

earnestly hoped to bring back into the cabinet.(250)

_Nov. 13._—Hawarden. Two long conversations with Mr. Bright, who

arrived at one. 14.—Some five hours in conversation with Mr.

Bright; also I opened my proposal to him, which he took kindly

though cautiously. My conversation with him yesterday evening kept

me awake till four. A most rare event; but my brain assumes in the

evening a feminine susceptibility, and resents any unusual strain,

though, strange to say, it will stand a debate in the H. of C.

15.—Forenoon with Bright, who departed, having charmed everybody

by his gentleness. Began the cutting of a large beech. #/

_To Lord Granville._

_Nov. 15, 1871._—Bright has been here for forty-eight hours, of

which we passed I think more than a fourth in conversation on

public affairs. Everything in and everything out of the cabinet I

told him as far as my memory would serve, and I think we pretty

well boxed the political compass. On the whole I remained

convinced of two things: first, that his heart is still altogether

with us; secondly, that his health, though requiring great care,

is really equal to the moderate demands we should make upon him.

The truth is I was quite as much knocked up with our conversation

as he was, but then I had the more active share. In the whole

range of subjects that we travelled over, we came to no point of

sharp difference, and I feel confident that he could work with the

cabinet as harmoniously and effectually as before. In saying this

I should add that I told him, with respect to economy, that I

thought we should now set our faces in that direction. I told him

that we should not expect of him ordinary night attendance in the

House of Commons, and that his attendance in the cabinet was the

main object of our desire. He was pleased and touched with our

desire, and he has not rejected the proposal. He has intimated

doubts and apprehensions, but he reserves it for consideration,

and seemed decidedly pleased to learn that the question _might_ be

held open until the meeting of parliament in case of need.... I

did not think it fair to put to him the request by which I

endeavoured to hold him in December 1868, viz.: that he would not

determine in the matter without seeing me again; but I begged and

pressed that he should in no case refuse without taking the

opinion of a first-rate London physician, as these are the people

whose wide experience best enables them to judge in such cases.

Altogether my experience of him was extremely pleasant, and he was

popular beyond measure in the house, where the guests were one or

two ladies and four gentlemen, Sir G. Prevost, a high church (but

most excellent) archdeacon, John Murray, the tory publisher, and

Hayward—whom to describe it needs not. One and all were charmed

with Bright. In his character the mellowing process has continued

to advance, and whatever he may have been thirty years ago, he is

now a gentle and tender being. Yesterday he had five hours of

conversation with me and much with others, also an hour and a half

walk in the rain, which seemed to do him no harm whatever. I will

add but one word. He was deeply impressed with the royalty

question.... Details I will report to the cabinet.

Mr. Bright did not yet feel able to return, and an important year, the

third of the administration, drew to its close.

II

Two stubborn and noisy scuffles arose in the autumn of 1871, in

consequence of a couple of appointments to which Mr. Gladstone as prime

minister was a party. One was judicial, the other was ecclesiastical.

(M125) Parliament, authorising the appointment of four paid members of the

judicial committee of the privy council, had restricted the post to

persons who held at the date of their appointment, or had previously held,

judicial office in this country or in India.(251) Difficulty arose in

finding a fourth member of the new court from the English bench. The

appointment being a new one, fell to the prime minister, but he was

naturally guided by the chancellor. The office was first offered by Mr.

Gladstone to Lord Penzance, who declined to move. Application was then

made to Willes and to Bramwell. They also declined, on the ground that no

provision was made for their clerks. Willes could not abandon one who had

been “his officer, he might say friend, for thirty years.” Bramwell spoke

of the pecuniary sacrifice that the post would involve, “for I cannot let

my clerks, who between them have been with me near half a century, suffer

by the change.” The chancellor mentioned to Mr. Gladstone a rumour that

there was ’an actual strike among the judges’ in the matter. Nobody who

knew Bramwell would impute unreasonable or low-minded motives to him, and

from their own point of view the judges had a sort of case. It was

ascertained by the chancellor that Blackburn and Martin had said expressly

that they should decline. Mr. Gladstone felt, as he told Lord Hatherley,

that “it was not right to hawk the appointment about,” and he offered it

to Sir Robert Collier, then attorney-general. Collier’s claim to the

bench, and even to the headship of a court, was undisputed; his judicial

capacity was never at any time impugned; he acquired no additional

emolument. In accepting Mr. Gladstone’s offer (Oct. 1871) he reminded him:

“You are aware that in order to qualify me it will be necessary first to

make me a common law judge.” Three days later, the chancellor told Mr.

Gladstone, “It would hardly do to place the attorney-general on the common

law bench and then promote him.” Still under the circumstances he thought

it would be best to follow the offer up, and Collier was accordingly made

a judge in the common pleas, sat for a few days, and then went on to the

judicial committee. The proceeding was not taken without cabinet

authority, for Lord Granville writes to Mr. Gladstone: “Nov. 12, ’71: The

cabinet completely assented to the arrangement. Sufficient attention was

perhaps not given to the technical point. For technical it only is.... I

think you said at the cabinet that Collier wished to have three months’

tenure of the judgeship, and that we agreed with you that this would have

been only a sham.”

Cockburn, the chief justice of the Queen’s bench, opened fire on Mr.

Gladstone (Nov. 10) in a long letter of rather over-heroic eloquence,

protesting that a colourable appointment to a judgeship for the purpose of

getting round the law seriously compromised the dignity of the judicial

office, and denouncing the grievous impropriety of the proceeding as a

mere subterfuge and evasion of the statute. Mr. Gladstone could be

extremely summary when he chose, and he replied in three or four lines,

informing the chief justice that as the transaction was a joint one, and

as “the completed part of it to which you have taken objection, was the

official act of the lord chancellor,” he had transmitted the letter for

his consideration. That was all he said. The chancellor for his part

contented himself with half a dozen sentences, that his appointment of

Collier to the puisne judgeship had been made with a full knowledge of Mr.

Gladstone’s intention to recommend him for the judicial committee; that he

thus “acted advisedly and with the conviction that the arrangement was

justified as regards both its fitness and its legality”; and that he took

upon himself the responsibility of thus concurring with Mr. Gladstone, and

was prepared to vindicate the course pursued. This curt treatment of his

Junius-like composition mortified Cockburn’s literary vanity, and no

vanity is so easily stung as that of the amateur.

(M126) Collier, when the storm was brewing, at once wrote to Mr. Gladstone

(Nov. 13) proposing to retain his judgeship to the end of the term, then

to resign it, and act gratuitously in the privy council. He begged that it

might not be supposed he offered to do this merely as matter of form.

“Though I consider the objection to my appointment wholly baseless, still

it is not pleasant to me to hold a salaried office, my right to which is

questioned.” “I have received your letter,” Mr. Gladstone replied (Nov..

14), “which contains the offer that would only be made by a high-spirited

man, impatient of suspicion or reproval, and determined to place himself

beyond it.... I have not a grain of inclination to recede from the course

marked out, and if you had proposed to abandon the appointment, I should

have remonstrated.”

What Mr. Gladstone called “a parliamentary peppering” followed in due

course. It was contended that the statute in spirit as in letter exacted

judicial experience, and that formal passing through a court was a breach

of faith with parliament. As usual, lawyers of equal eminence were found

to contend with equal confidence that a fraud had been put upon the law,

and that no fraud had been put upon it; that the law required judicial

status not experience, and on the other hand that what it required was

experience not status. Lord Hatherley and Roundell Palmer were all the

virtues, whether public or private, personified; they were at the top of

the legal ladder; and they agreed in Palmer’s deliberate judgment

that—after other judges with special fitness had declined the terms

offered by parliament—in nominating the best man at the bar who was

willing to take a vacant puisne judgeship upon the understanding that he

should be at once transferred to the judicial committee, the government

were innocent of any offence against either the spirit or substance of the

law.(252)

Yet the escape was narrow. The government only missed censure in the Lords

by a majority of one. In the Commons the evening was anxious. “You will

see,” says Mr. Bruce (Feb. 20, 1872), “that we got but a small majority

last night. The fact is that our victory in the Lords made men slack about

coming to town, and Glyn got very nervous in the course of the evening.

However, Palmer’s and Gladstone’s speeches, both of which were excellent,

improved the feeling, and many who had announced their intention to go

away without voting, remained to support us.” At one moment it even looked

as if the Speaker might have to give a casting vote, and he had framed it

on these lines: “I have concluded that the House while it looks upon the

course taken by government as impolitic and injudicious, is not prepared

at the present juncture to visit their conduct with direct parliamentary

censure.”(253) In the end, ministers had a majority of twenty-seven, and

reached their homes at three in the morning with reasonably light hearts.

III

(M127) The ecclesiastical case of complaint against Mr. Gladstone was of a

similar sort. By an act of parliament passed in 1871 the Queen was

entitled to present to the rectory of Ewelme, but only a person who was a

member of convocation of the university of Oxford. This limitation was

inserted by way of compensation to the university for the severance of the

advowson of the rectory from a certain chair of divinity. The living fell

vacant, and the prime minister offered it (June 15) to Jelf of Christ

Church, a tory and an evangelical. By Jelf it was declined. Among other

names on the list for preferment was that of Mr. Harvey, a learned man who

had published an edition of Irenæus, a work on the history and theology of

the three creeds, articles on judaism, jansenism, and jesuitism, and other

productions of merit. As might perhaps have been surmised from the nature

of his favourite pursuits, he was not a liberal in politics, and he had

what was for the purposes of this preferment the further misfortune of

being a Cambridge man. To him Mr. Gladstone now offered Ewelme, having

been advised that by the process of formal incorporation in the Oxford

convocation the requirement of the statute would be satisfied. Mr. Harvey

accepted. He was told that it was necessary that he should become a member

of convocation before he could be appointed. A little later (Aug. 1) he

confessed to the prime minister his misgivings lest he should be

considered as an “interloper in succeeding to the piece of preferment that

parliament had appropriated to bona-fide members of the university of

Oxford.” These scruples were set aside, he was incorporated as a member of

Oriel in due form, and after forty-two days of residence was admitted to

membership of convocation, but whether to such plenary membership as the

Ewelme statute was taken to require, became matter of dispute. All went

forward, and the excellent man was presented and instituted to his rectory

in regular course. There was no secret about operations at Oxford; the

Oriel men were aware of his motive in seeking incorporation, and the

vice-chancellor and everybody else concerned knew all about it. Mr.

Gladstone, when squalls began to blow, wrote to Mr. Harvey (Feb. 26, ’72)

that he was advised that the presentation was perfectly valid.

The attack in parliament was, as such attacks almost always are, much

overdone. Mr. Gladstone, it appeared, was far worse than Oliver Cromwell

and the parliament of the great rebellion; for though those bad men forced

three professors upon Oxford between 1648 and 1660, still they took care

that the intruders should all be men trained at Oxford and graduates of

Oxford. Who could be sure that the prime minister would not next appoint

an ultramontane divine from Bologna, or a Greek from Corfu? Such

extravagances did as little harm as the false stories about Mr. Harvey

being jobbed into the living because he had been at Eton with Mr.

Gladstone and was his political supporter. As it happened he was a

conservative, and Mr. Gladstone knew nothing of him except that a number

of most competent persons had praised his learning. In spite of all this,

however, and of the technical validity of the appointment, we may wish

that the rector’s doubts had not been overruled. A worthy member regaled

the House by a story of a gentleman staying in the mansion of a friend;

one morning he heard great noise and confusion in the yard; looking out he

saw a kitchen-maid being put on a horse, and so carried round and round

the yard. When he went downstairs he asked what was the matter, and the

groom said, “Oh, sir, ’tis only that we’re going to take the animal to the

fair to sell, and we want to say he has carried a lady.” The apologue was

not delicate, but it conveyed a common impression. “Gladstone spoke,” says

Mr. Bruce (March 9, 1872), “with great vigour and eloquence on the Ewelme

case; but I think that, with the best possible intentions, he had placed

himself in a wrong position.”

IV

In 1872 the wide popularity of the government underwent a marked decline.

The award at Geneva caused lively irritation. The most active

nonconformists were in active revolt. The Licensing bills infuriated the

most powerful of all trade interests. The Collier case and the Ewelme case

seemed superfluous and provoking blunders. A strong military section

thirsted for revenge on the royal warrant. Mr. Goschen’s threatened bill

on local rating spread vague terrors. Individual ministers began to excite

particular odium.

As time went on, the essentially composite character of a majority that

was only held together by Mr. Gladstone’s personality, his authority in

the House, and his enormous strength outside, revealed itself in awkward

fissures. The majority was described by good critics of the time, as made

up of three sections, almost well defined enough to deserve the name of

three separate parties. First were the whigs, who never forgot that the

prime minister had been for half his life a tory; who always suspected

him, and felt no personal attachment to him, though they valued his

respect for property and tradition, and knew in any case that he was the

only possible man. Then came the middle-class liberals, who had held

predominance since 1832, who were captivated by Mr. Gladstone’s genius for

finance and business, and who revered his high moral ideals. Third, there

was the left wing, not strong in parliament but with a certain backing

among the workmen, who thought their leader too fond of the church, too

deferential to the aristocracy, and not plain enough and thorough enough

for a reforming age. The murmurs and suspicions of these hard and logical

utilitarians of the left galled Mr. Gladstone as ungrateful. Phillimore

records of him at this moment:—

_Feb. 21, 1872._—Gladstone in high spirits and in rather a

conservative mood. 29.—Gladstone sees that the time is fast coming

when he must sever himself from his extreme supporters. He means

to take the opportunity of retiring on the fair plea that he does

not like to oppose those who have shown such great confidence in

him, or to join their and his opponents. The plea seems good for

retirement, but not for refraining in his individual capacity from

supporting a government which is liberal and conservative.

Here is a sketch from the Aberdare papers of the temper and proceedings of

the session:—

_April 19._—We have had a disastrous week—three defeats, of which

much the least damaging was that on local taxation, where we

defended the public purse against a dangerous raid. There is no

immediate danger to be apprehended from them. But these defeats

lower prestige, encourage the discontented and envious, and

animate the opposition. I think that Gladstone, who behaved

yesterday with consummate judgment and temper, is personally very

indifferent at the result. He is vexed at the ingratitude of men

for whom he has done such great things which would have been

simply impossible without him, and would not be unwilling to leave

them for a while to their own guidance, and his feeling is shared

by many of the ministry. Our measures must for the most part be

taken up by our successors, and we should of course be too happy

to help them. But I don’t see the end near, although, of course,

everybody is speculating.

Yet business was done. Progress of a certain kind was made in the thorny

field of the better regulation of public houses, but Mr. Gladstone seems

never to have spoken upon it in parliament. The subject was in the hands

of Mr. Bruce, the home secretary, an accomplished and amiable man of the

purest public spirit, and he passed his bill; but nothing did more to

bring himself and his colleagues into stern disfavour among the especially

pagan strata of the population. An entry or two from Mr. Bruce’s papers

will suffice to show Mr. Gladstone’s attitude:—

_Home Office, Dec. 9, 1869._—I am just returned from the cabinet,

where my Licensing bill went through with flying colours. I was

questioned a great deal as to details, but was ready, and I think

that Gladstone was very well pleased.

_Jan. 16, 1871._—I called upon Gladstone yesterday evening. He was

in high spirits and full of kindness. He said that he had told

Cardwell that I must be at the bottom of the abuse the press was

pouring upon him, as I had contrived to relieve myself of it.

“Some one minister,” he added, “is sure to be assailed. You caught

it in the autumn, and now poor Cardwell is having a hard time of

it.” I went with him afterwards to the Chapel Royal, which he

never fails to attend.

_Dec. 14._—We have a cabinet to-day, when I hope to have my

Licensing bill in its main principles definitely settled.

Unfortunately Gladstone cares for nothing but “free trade” [in the

sale of liquor], which the House won’t have, and I cannot get him

really to interest himself in the subject.

This is Speaker Brand’s account of the general position:—

Throughout the session the opposition, ably led by Disraeli, were

in an attitude of watchfulness. He kept his eye on the proceedings

of the government day by day on the Alabama treaty. Had that

treaty failed, no doubt Disraeli would have taken the sense of the

House on the conduct of the government. For the larger part of the

session the Alabama question hung like a cloud over the

proceedings, but as soon as that was settled, the sky cleared. It

has been a good working session.... Of the two leading men,

Gladstone and Disraeli, neither has a strong hold on his

followers. The radicals below the right gangway are turbulent and

disaffected, and the same may be said of the independent

obstruction below the left gangway.... B., E., H., L. avowedly

obstruct all legislation, and thus bring the House into discredit.

(M128) It was now that Mr. Disraeli discerned the first great opportunity

approaching, and he took the field. At Manchester (April 3) he drew the

famous picture of the government, one of the few classic pieces of the

oratory of the century:—

Extravagance is being substituted for energy by the government.

The unnatural stimulus is subsiding. Their paroxysms end in

prostration. Some take refuge in melancholy, and their eminent

chief alternates between a menace and a sigh. As I sit opposite

the treasury bench, the ministers remind me of one of those marine

landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You

behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers upon a

single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There

are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumblings

of the sea.

On midsummer day he essayed at the Crystal Palace a higher flight, and

first struck the imperialist note. He agreed that distant colonies could

only have their affairs administered by self-government. “Self-government,

when it was conceded, ought to have been conceded as part of a great

policy of imperial consolidation. It ought to have been accomplished by an

imperial tariff, by securities for the people of England, for the

enjoyment of the unappropriated lands which belonged to the sovereign as

their trustee, and by a military code which should have precisely defined

the means and the responsibilities by which the colonies should have been

defended, and by which, if necessary, this country should call for aid

from the colonies themselves. It ought further to have been accompanied by

the institution of some representative council in the metropolis which

would have brought the colonies into constant and continuous relations

with the home government.” He confessed that he had himself at one time

been so far caught by the subtle views of the disintegrationists, that he

thought the tie was broken. Opinion in the country was at last rising

against disintegration. The people had decided that the empire should not

be destroyed. “In my judgment,” he said, “no minister in this country will

do his duty who neglects any opportunity of reconstructing as much as

possible our colonial empire, and of responding to those distant

sympathies which may become the source of incalculable strength and

happiness to this land.” Toryism now sought three great objects: “the

maintenance of our institutions, the preservation of our empire, and the

improvement of the condition of the people.” The time was at hand when

England would have to decide between national and cosmopolitan principles,

and the issue was no mean one. “You must remember,” he concluded, “that in

fighting against liberalism or the continental system, you are fighting

against those who have the advantage of power—against those who have been

high in place for nearly half a century. You have nothing to trust to but

your own energy and the sublime instinct of an ancient people.”

Disraeli’s genius, at once brooding over conceptions and penetrating in

discernment of fact, had shown him the vast tory reserves that his

household suffrage of 1867 would rally to his flag. The same genius again

scanning the skies read aright the signs and characteristics of the time.

Nobody would seriously have counselled intervention in arms between France

and Germany, yet many felt a vague humiliation at a resettlement of Europe

without England. Nobody seriously objected to the opening of the Black

Sea, yet many were affected by a restive consciousness of diplomatic

defeat. Everybody was glad that—as I am about to describe in the following

chapter—we had settled the outstanding quarrel with America, yet most

people were sore at the audacity of the indirect claims, followed by the

award of swingeing damages. National pride in short was silently but

deeply stirred; the steady splendour of the economic era for a season

paled in uncalculating minds. This coming mood the tory leader, with his

rare faculty of wide and sweeping forecast, confidently divined, and he

found for it the oracle of a party cry in phrases about Empire and Social

Reform. When power fell into his hands, he made no single move of solid

effect for either social reform or imperial unity. When Mr. Gladstone

committed himself to a policy, he brought in bills to carry it out.

Forecast without a bill is interesting, but not to be trusted.

Chapter IX. Washington And Geneva. (1870-1872)

Although I may think the sentence was harsh in its extent, and

unjust in its basis, I regard the fine imposed on this country as

dust in the balance compared with the moral value of the example

set when these two great nations of England and America—which are

among the most fiery and the most jealous in the world with regard

to anything that touches national honour—went in peace and concord

before a judicial tribunal rather than resort to the arbitrament

of the sword.—GLADSTONE.(254)

I

One morning in the summer of 1862 a small wooden sloop, screw and steam,

of a little over a thousand tons register dropped slowly down the waters

of the Mersey. The decks were rough and unfinished, but guests on board

with bright costumes made a gay picture, flags were flying, and all wore

the look of a holiday trial trip. After luncheon in the cabin, the scene

suddenly changed. At a signal from the vessel a tug came alongside, the

cheerful visitors to their surprise were quickly transferred, and the

sloop made off upon her real business. She dropped anchor in a bay on the

coast of Anglesey, where she took twenty or thirty men mostly English on

board from a tug sent after her from Liverpool, with or without the

knowledge of the officials. Thence she sailed to the Azores, where a

steamer from London and a steamer from Liverpool brought officers,

armaments, and coal. As soon as these were trans-shipped, the British

ensign was hauled down, the Confederate flag run up, and the captain

opened sealed orders directing him to sink, burn, or destroy, everything

that flew the ensign of the so-called United States of America. These

orders the captain of the rover faithfully executed, and in a few months

the _Alabama_—for that was henceforth her memorable name—had done much to

sweep the commercial marine of America from the ocean.

(M129) On the day on which she sailed (July 29), the government made up

its mind that she should be detained, on the strength of affidavits that

had been almost a week in their hands. The bird of prey had flown. The

best definition of due diligence in these matters would seem to be, that

it is the same diligence and exactness as are exercised in proceedings

relating to imposts of excise or customs. We may guess how different would

have been the vigilance of the authorities if a great smuggling operation

had been suspected. This lamentable proceeding, for which the want of

alacrity and common sense at the foreign office and the bias or blundering

of the customs agents at Liverpool, may divide the grave discredit, opened

a diplomatic campaign between England and the United States that lasted as

long as the siege of Troy, and became an active element in the state of

moral war that prevailed during that time between the two kindred

communities. Mr. Gladstone, like other members of the Palmerston

administration, held for several years that the escape of the _Alabama_

was no wrong done by us. Lord Russell admitted (1863) that the cases of

the _Alabama_ and the _Oreto_ were “a scandal and in some degree a

reproach to our laws,” though he stated in the same sentence that the

cabinet thought the law sufficient where legal evidence also was

sufficient. It was true that Britain is the greatest shipbuilding country

in the world; that to interfere with ships or any other article of

commerce is in so far to impose on a neutral some of the calamities of a

belligerent; and that restriction of trade was no element in the policy

and spirit of foreign enlistment acts either here or in America, which was

the first country that by positive legislation sought to restrain its

citizens within definite limits of neutrality. By a law of this kind

parliament intended to forbid all subjects within its jurisdiction to make

war on people at peace with the British sovereign. It is only, in the

words of Canning, when the elements of armament are combined, that they

come within the purview of such law. This is not by way of controversy,

but to define an issue. Chief Justice Cockburn, an ardent champion of his

country if ever there was one, pronounced in his judgment at Geneva, when

the day for a verdict at length arrived, that the cruiser ought to have

been detained a week before; that the officials of customs were misled by

legal advice “perhaps erroneous”; and that the right course to take was

“plain and unmistakable.” Even Lord Russell after many years of obdurate

self-defence, at last confessed in manly words: “I assent entirely to the

opinion of the lord chief justice that the _Alabama_ ought to have been

detained during the four days I was waiting for the opinion of the law

officers. But I think that the fault was not that of the commissioners of

customs; it was my fault as secretary of state for foreign affairs.”(255)

Before the _Alabama_ some ten vessels intended for Confederate service had

been detained, inquired into, and if released, released by order of a

court for want of evidence. After the _Alabama_, no vessel on which the

American minister had made representation to the foreign office succeeded

in quitting a British port. But critical cases occurred. Emboldened by the

successful escape of the _Alabama_, the Confederate agents placed two

ironclad rams upon the stocks at the Birkenhead shipyard; Mr. Adams, the

American minister in London, renewed his bombardment of the foreign office

with proof of their object and design; the foreign office repeated its

perplexed pleas against interference, made still more difficult by a

colourable transfer of the rams to a French owner; and the whole dreary

tragi-comedy of the _Alabama_ seemed likely to be acted over again. By the

autumn of 1863 the rams were ready to take the water, and the builders

were again talking of a trial trip. This time Lord Russell gave orders

that the rams were to be stopped (Sept. 3). He felt the mortification of

an honourable man at the trick, of which he had allowed himself to be made

the dupe in the case of the _Alabama_. Perhaps also he had been impressed

by language used by Mr. Adams to a member of the cabinet, and more

formally to himself, to the effect that the departure of the rams would

mean the practical opening to the Southern Confederates of full liberty to

use this country as a base for hostile expeditions against the North.

“This,” said Mr. Adams, “is war.”(256)

The affair of the rams was followed by Mr. Gladstone with absorbed

attention. He confessed to the Duke of Argyll (Sept. 30, 1863) that he

could not get the ironclads out of his head, and his letter shows with

what exhaustive closeness he argued the case. The predicament was exactly

fitted to draw out some of his most characteristic qualities—minute

precision, infinite acuteness, infinite caution, the faculty of multiplied

distinction upon distinction, an eye for the shadows of a shade. The

points are no longer of living interest, but they exhibit a side of him

that is less visible in his broader performances of parliament or

platform.

As might have been expected, Mr. Adams was instructed to solicit redress

for the doings of the _Alabama_. Lord Russell (Dec. 19, 1862), declaring

that government had used every effort to stop her, refused to admit that

we were under any obligation whatever to make compensation. Two years

later (Aug. 30, 1865) he still declined both compensation and a proposal

for arbitration. This opened a long struggle of extreme interest in the

ministerial life of Mr. Gladstone, and, what was more, in the history of

civilised nations. It was arbitration upon these issues that now began to

divide politicians both inside the cabinet and outside, just as mediation

and recognition had divided them in the earlier stages of the American

conflict.

(M130) In 1863 Mr. Adams was the first to point to what after a long

struggle became the solution of these difficulties, by assuring Lord

Russell that there was “no fair and equitable form of conventional

arbitrament or reference” to which America would not be willing to submit.

In 1865 (Sept. 2) Mr. Gladstone wrote a letter to Lord Russell, the reply

to which has already been published.(257) Always jealous for cabinet

authority, he began by submitting to Lord Russell that he had no idea that

a despatch refusing arbitration was to be written, without a cabinet being

held upon a subject so important. As it was, they had not disposed of the

question or even discussed it. On the merits, he inclined to believe that

the demand for arbitration was highly unreasonable; still though not

disposed to say “Yes” to the demand, he doubted “No.” The proper course

would be to lead the Americans to bring out the whole of their case, so

that the cabinet might have all the pleas before them previously to coming

to “a decision of great delicacy and moment.”

Lord Russell stood to his guns. “The question,” he said, “has been the

principal object of my thoughts for the last two years, and I confess I

think that paying twenty millions down would be far preferable to

submitting the case to arbitration.” England would be disgraced for ever

if a foreign government were left to arbitrate whether an English

secretary of state had been diligent or negligent in his duties, and

whether an English law officer was partial and prejudiced in giving his

opinion of English law. There the matter stood, and the moral war

smouldered on.

II

In 1870, the time arrived when Mr. Gladstone himself, no longer a minister

third in standing in a Palmerston government, was called upon to deal with

this great issue as a principal in his own administration. In 1868 the

conservative government had agreed to a convention, by which a mixed

commission, British and American, sitting in London should decide upon the

settlement of all claims by the subjects of either country upon the other;

and in respect of what were known generically as the _Alabama_ Claims,

proposing to refer these to the arbitration of the head of some friendly

state, in case the mixed commission should not agree. The idea of a

composite court or tribunal, as distinguished from a single sovereign

arbitrator, had not yet risen above the horizon. Before this project

ripened, Mr. Disraeli was out of government, Lord Clarendon had taken Lord

Stanley’s place at the foreign office, and the convention, with some

modifications, was signed by him (Jan. 14, 1869), and in due course

despatched to Washington. There the Senate, not on the merits but for

party and personal reasons, refused to ratify. Though this attempt failed,

neither of the two English political parties was in a position any longer

to refuse arbitration in principle.

Agreement in principle is of little avail, without driving force enough

for practice. The driving force was found mainly from a gradual change in

English sentiment, though the difficulties with Russia also counted for

something. Even so early as 1863 the tide of popular opinion in England

had begun slowly to swell in favour of the Northern cause. In 1866 victory

across the Atlantic was decided, the union was saved, and slavery was

gone. A desire to remove causes of difference between ourselves and the

United States grew at a remarkable speed, for the spectacle of success is

wont to have magical effects even in minds that would indignantly reject

the standards of Machiavelli. While benevolent feeling gained volume in

this country, statesmen in America took ground that made the satisfaction

of it harder. They began to base their claim for reparation on the

original proclamation of British neutrality when the American conflict

began. First made in 1866, this new pretension was repeated in despatches

of 1867, and in 1869 the American secretary formally recorded the

complaint that the Southern insurrection obtained its enduring vitality by

resources drawn from England, and as a consequence of England’s imperfect

discharge of her duties as neutral. England became, they said, the

arsenal, the navy-yard, and the treasury of the insurgent Confederacy.

In the discussion of the Clarendon convention of 1869 Mr. Sumner—a man of

some great qualities, but too often the slave of words where he thought

himself their master—made an extravagant speech against the British

government in the senate, assessing the claim of the United States upon

this country on principles that would have raised it to the modest figure

of some four hundred million pounds sterling due from us to them, or, as

Mr. Gladstone himself estimated it, to sixteen hundred millions. It does

not matter which. This was only a violent and fantastic exaggeration of an

idea of constructive claims for indirect damages that lay slumbering, but

by no means extinct, in American minds, until, as we shall see, in 1872 it

very nearly led to a disastrous explosion. This idea first found distinct

and official utterance in the despatch of 1869. Besides compensating

individuals for depredations, we were to pay for the cost to America of

chasing the cruisers; for the transfer of most of the American commercial

marine to the British flag; for enhanced insurance; and generally for the

increased difficulty of putting down the rebellion.

All through 1870 a rather troublesome exchange of letters went on between

Washington and the foreign office, and Mr. Gladstone took an active

concern in it. “I grieve to trouble you with so much manuscript,” Lord

Clarendon writes him on one occasion (Mar. 17, 1870), “but I don’t venture

single-handed to conduct a correspondence with the United States.... All

this correspondence can do nothing but harm, and I have made my answer as

short as is consistent with courtesy. I should like to send it on

Saturday, but if you have not time to look at it, or think it ought to be

seen by the cabinet, I could, make an excuse for the delay to Motley.” All

this was in entire conformity to Mr. Gladstone’s enduring conception of

the right relations between a prime minister and the foreign secretary. We

need not follow details, but one must not be omitted. In 1868 a royal

commission recommended various material changes in the Foreign Enlistment

Act, and in 1870 accordingly a new law was passed, greatly strengthening

the hands of the executive, and furnishing due means of self-protection

against such nefarious manœuvres as those of the _Alabama_.(258) By this

Act, among other things, it was made an offence to build a ship with

reasonable cause to believe that it would be employed in the service of a

foreign state at war with a friendly state.

As the year 1870 went on, the expediency of an accommodation with America

strengthened in Mr. Gladstone’s mind. One member of the cabinet pointed

out to the foreign secretary that if there was any chance of a war with

Russia about the Black Sea, it would be as well to get causes of

differences with America out of the way; otherwise, however unprepared the

United States might be at the moment, we should undoubtedly have them on

our hands sooner or later.(259) With Mr. Gladstone the desire was not a

consequence of the possible troubles with Russia. His view was wider and

less specific. He was alive to the extent to which England’s power in

Europe was reduced by the smothered quarrel with America, but he took even

higher ground than this in his sense of the blessing to the world of an

absolute reconciliation in good faith between the old England and the new.

At first the government proposed (Nov. 28, 1870) to send over Sir John

Rose to America. He was one of the many Scots who have carried the British

flag in its best colours over the face of the globe; his qualities had

raised him to great prominence in Canada; he had enjoyed good

opportunities of measuring the American ground; he was shrewd, wise, well

read in the ways of men and the book of the world, and he had besides the

virtue of being pleasant. Rose himself did not formally undertake the

mission, but he applied himself with diligence and success to bring the

American government to the project of a joint high commission to examine

and consider a situation that there was a common desire to terminate.

(M131) On Feb. 1, 1871, Mr. Gladstone was able to report to the Queen the

arrival of news that the government of the United States were willing to

concur in a commission for the discussion of international questions at

present depending, without a previous understanding that liability in

respect of the _Alabama_ was to be acknowledged by this country. The

cabinet naturally thought that on this they might close, and they at once

considered the composition of the commission and the proper instructions.

Lord de Grey consented to be its president. Lord Derby, on being invited

to join the commission, was very grateful for the compliment but declined,

being of opinion that firmness and not concession to the Americans was

what was wanted. Sir George Grey declined; so did Lord Halifax. “I asked

Northcote,” Lord Granville reports to Mr. Gladstone, “his eyes twinkled

through his spectacles. But he said he must ask Lady Northcote, and

requested permission to consult Dizzy. The former consented, ditto Dizzy,

which looks well.” So the commission was made up of Lord de Grey as the

head of it, Northcote, Thornton (the British minister at Washington), Sir

John Macdonald, as the representative of Canada, and Mr. Mountague

Bernard, a theoretic jurist, who had written a book about our neutrality

the year before.(260)

III

The personal relations of Lord de Grey and his brethren with their

American colleagues were excellent. They worked hard all day, and enjoyed

Washington hospitality in its full strength every night. In business, Mr.

Fish occasionally advanced or supported contentions thought by the

Englishmen to be almost amusing. For instance, Mr. Sumner in a memorandum

(Jan. 17, 1871) to Mr. Fish, had submitted a singular species of political

syllogism. He desired nothing so much, he said, as that entire goodwill

should prevail between Great Britain and the United States, and that the

settlement should be complete. Now the greatest trouble and peril in the

way of a complete settlement was Fenianism; Fenianism was excited by the

proximity of the British flag over the Canadian border; therefore, the

British flag should be withdrawn from the whole hemisphere, including the

islands, and the American flag should fly in its stead. In conformity with

this tight and simple chain of reasoning, Mr. Fish threw out a hint to

Lord de Grey that the cession of Canada might end the quarrel. The English

envoy contented himself with the dry remark that he did not find such a

suggestion in his instructions.(261)

Though sometimes amused, the commissioners soon understood that at heart

the American negotiators desired to settle. Difficulties with their own

people were great. A presidential campaign with all its necessities

approached. A settlement of outstanding accounts with England might be a

good card to play in the election; on the other hand, if the peace card

were not available, it was just possible that a war card might do nearly

as well. Mr. Fish was mortally afraid of Sumner, who had been chairman of

the foreign relations committee in the senate, and whose anti-English

temper, as we have seen, was red-hot. The constitutional requirement of a

two-thirds majority in the senate for the ratification of a treaty was

awkward and menacing, and it was necessary to secure dubious senators by

the exhibition of high national temper on the public stage. It is

interesting to note, in passing, that the English visitors were persuaded

how much better it would have been if, according to our own parliamentary

system at Westminster, the American system had allowed Mr. Fish to meet

Mr. Sumner on the floor of congress, and instead of seeking victory by

unseen manipulation, fight the battle out before the country.

(M132) The British commissioners were almost as much embarrassed by their

friends at home as by their friends or foes at Washington. Both ministers

and lawyers, from the safe distance of Downing Street, were sometimes

excessive in pressing small and trivial alterations, which the Americans

after the diplomatist’s manner insisted on treating as if they were not

small but great. The sharp corner in the London cabinet was the more

serious proposal, that certain rules as to the duty of neutrals should be

laid down, and should be made guiding principles for the arbitrators,

although the rules themselves had not been formally established when

England’s alleged breaches of neutral obligation had been committed. This

retro-active or _ex-post-facto_ quality, when the cabinet considered it

(March 18), gave trouble, and it was used by passionate and impolitic

persons to tarnish the whole policy in this country. Much heat was evoked,

for a cabinet of many talents is not always the same thing as a cabinet of

plain minds. One clever man objected at large to the commission, to

concession, to obtaining any principle of settlement for future

contingencies. A second was violent against all such arbitration as this,

and thought they had much better pay up at once and have done with it. A

third clever man even let fall some high words about “national dishonour.”

Granville, Argyll, Forster (the last described by a colleague as “a tower

of strength”), were steadfast and unfaltering for conciliation. Mr.

Gladstone agreed, but eager though he was for a settlement, he “agreed

with reluctance.” Sir Roundell Palmer had now great influence with him,

and Palmer had come round to the conclusion that the risk from translating

retrospectively into the form of a hypothetical international convention,

not existing when the events happened, a duty that we had recognised as

incumbent on us under our own law, might be safely run.(262) In plain

English, the adverse way of describing this peculiar substitute for a free

and open arbitration, was that Great Britain owed the Americans nothing,

and if she had not consented to accept a set of new-fangled rules, and to

be judged retro-actively by them, she could not possibly have been made to

pay anything. To this the short answer was that though the rules might or

might not be new-fangled as principles of international law, yet they were

not new as principles of English municipal law, which, as construed by the

British government itself, was coincident in substance with those rules.

Was it in fact reasonable to contend that ironclads might be built in the

Mersey, sent out a few miles beyond the river mouth, there armed from

lighters, and sent off to bombard New York? If not, was it reasonable that

England should invite the arbitrators to judge the _Alabama_ case

according to one rule in the past, and then to lay down another rule for

the future?

A minor objection raised by Mr. Gladstone gave much alarm to his

commissioners, and it is too characteristic to be omitted. Speaking of the

ardently desired treaty, he writes to Lord Granville (April 12, 1871):—

With regard to the preamble, it designates the late war in America

as “the rebellion.” I do not think it is right for us now to adopt

a mode of speech different from that which we maintained

throughout the struggle. Further, it tends to discredit our

recognition of belligerency. And if we declare it a rebellion, we

have given an example available to be quoted hereafter for the

dealings of a foreign power with rebels as belligerents. If, on

the other hand, the Americans object to speaking of the “civil

war,” it is quite easy (so I think) to leave out the words “during

the recent rebellion in the U.S.” altogether, and to say in the

years 186—or even to begin “Whereas H.B.M.” perhaps inserting in

after “U.S.” “in respect of such depredations.”

This is an instance of the tenacity with which he sometimes held his

ground after its relations and bearings had entirely changed. Something

too may doubtless be set down to the lingering remains of his old feeling,

of the strength of the constitutional argument of the South that sovereign

states had a right to withdraw from the union if they pleased. If the

proposal to drop the word “rebellion” had been brought without warning or

preparation before the full commission, assent would have been hopeless,

but by the discretion of informal interviews, the matter was canvassed

beforehand, the obnoxious word was silently left out, Mr. Gladstone’s

point was gained, and things went prosperously forward. “I am quite sure,”

wrote Sir Stafford Northcote to Mr. Gladstone (March 17), “that there was

no other way in which you could have hoped to settle these questions than

by such a commission as ours.... What may be our fate I do not presume to

guess, but if we succeed, it will be mainly due to de Grey’s excellent

sense, tact, and temper.” In the end, notwithstanding the power of the

senate over treaties, the want of control by the American government over

its party, and the exigencies of Canada, all at last fell into decent

shape, and the substantial objects in view were effectively maintained.

Canadian fishery questions were adjusted, and the boundary of San Juan

remitted to the arbitration of the newly made German Emperor.

(M133) After thirty-seven sittings, spread over a period of two months,

the treaty was signed on May 8, in a room decorated with flowers, with the

good omen of brilliant sunshine, and everybody in such good humour that

the American secretary of the commission tossed up with Lord Tenterden

which should sign first,—the Englishman happily winning. The treaty began

by the declaration that her Britannic Majesty authorised the commissioners

to express in a friendly spirit the regret felt by her Majesty’s

government for the escape, under whatever circumstances, of the _Alabama_

and other vessels from British ports, and for the depredations committed

by these vessels. It embraced a definition of the rules of maritime

neutrality, which some legal text-writers have applauded, and other legal

text-writers have therefore condemned. Finally, and most important of all,

whether we look at the immediate purpose or at its contribution to a great

though slow-moving cause, the treaty of Washington secured a judgment by

the arbitration of a tribunal, of all claims growing out of acts committed

by the cruisers, “and generically known as the _Alabama_ Claims.” The

tribunal was to consist of five members named by Great Britain, the United

States, Switzerland, Italy, and Brazil.

The effect of the rules of Washington as applied at Geneva remains, as I

have said, a topic of controversy. Maine, for example, while admitting

that the result for the occasion was good, holds that by making the rule

of neutral duty more severe, it marked reaction rather than progress in

the general drift of international law.(263) Others maintain that the

amended foreign enlistment Act of 1870, which is in fact a partial

incorporation of the Washington rules, went far beyond what international

law requires, and made a new crime out of an act, namely the building of a

ship, which is not forbidden either by the law of nations or by other

municipal laws.(264)

IV

(M134) Once, after some crowning mercy in the war, President Lincoln said

to his cabinet, “Now, gentlemen, we have got our harpoon into the monster,

but we must still take uncommon care, or else by a single flop of his tail

he will send us into all eternity.” This wholesome caution, too often

overlooked by headlong politicians, was suddenly found to be much needed

at the eleventh hour of the treaty of Washington. At the end of 1871, Mr.

Gladstone experienced a severe shock, for he found that the case put in by

America for the arbitrators insisted upon an adjudication by them not only

upon the losses suffered by individual American citizens, but upon the

indirect, constructive, consequential, and national claims first

propounded in their full dimensions by Mr. Sumner. A storm at once arose

in England, and nobody was more incensed than the prime minister. In

reporting to the Queen, he used language of extreme vehemence, and in the

House of Commons (Feb. 9, 1872) when Mr. Disraeli spoke of the indirect

claims as preposterous and wild, as nothing less than the exacting of

tribute from a conquered people, Mr. Gladstone declared that such words

were in truth rather under the mark than an exaggeration, and went on to

say that “we must be insane to accede to demands which no nation with a

spark of honour or spirit left could submit to even at the point of

death.” Speaking of the construction put upon the treaty by the

government, he declared such a construction to be “the true and

unambiguous meaning of the words, and therefore the only meaning

admissible, whether tried by grammar, by reason, by policy, or by any

other standard.” Some persons argued that this was to accuse the Americans

of dishonesty. “I learn really for the first time,” exclaimed Mr.

Gladstone to Lord Granville (Feb. 8), “that a man who affirms that in his

opinion a document is unambiguous in his favour, thereby affirms that one

who reads it otherwise is dishonest.” His critics retorted that surely a

construction that could not stand the test of grammar, of reason, of

policy, or any other test, must be due either to insanity or to

dishonesty; and as we could hardly assume General Grant, Mr. Fish, and the

others to be out of their wits, there was nothing for it but dishonesty.

For five anxious months the contest lasted. The difficulties were those of

time and form, often worse than those of matter and substance. Nor would

this have been the first case in which small points hinder the settlement

of great questions. The manner of proceeding, as Mr. Gladstone reports to

the Queen, was of such complication that hours were given almost every day

for many weeks, to the consideration of matter which on the day following

was found to have moved out of view. Suggestions came from Washington,

mostly inadmissible, whether their faults were due to accident and haste

or to design. Sometimes refusals of this suggestion or that from our side

were couched in “terms of scant courtesy and bordering upon harshness.”

Still the cabinet persisted in husbanding every chance of saving the

treaty. They charitably judged the attitude of the Washington government,

in Mr. Gladstone’s ample language, “to be directed by considerations

belonging to the sphere of its own domestic policy, and to the contentions

of party in that sphere. But they will attempt by patient consideration,

avoidance of self-laudation and of irritating topics, and a steady

endeavour to be right, to attain the great end in view of an honourable

settlement which it would be a sad disgrace as well as misfortune to both

countries now to miss.” And here occurs a consideration as we pass, upon

the American constitution. “The fact remains indisputable (June 1), that

there is no conclusive evidence of any serious subject the substance of

which is at present in dispute between the two governments, but the

difficulties arising on the American side from what may be termed

electioneering considerations are greatly aggravated by the position of

the American senate and the reference to that body for previous counsel,

for which it seems to be miserably unsuited, as it takes days and almost

weeks for debate, where a cabinet would require only hours.”

The opposition in parliament was patriotic, and as a rule made no

difficulties. “Mr. Disraeli,” reports Mr. Gladstone (June 3), “behaved

with the caution and moderation which have generally marked his conduct

with, regard to the Washington treaty.... On the whole the House of

Commons showed the same dignified self-command for which it has been

remarkable during the whole period since the opening of the session with

reference to this question; although the more inflammatory expressions,

which fell from a few members, were warmly cheered by a portion, and a

portion only, of the opposition.”

The cabinet was unanimous against the submission of the indirect claims,

but there were marked differences of leaning, as in fact there had been

throughout. All accepted Lord Ripon’s(265) view that if he had insisted on

getting into the treaty nothing less than a formal and express repudiation

of the indirect claims, no treaty at all would have been possible. Both

sides in the Washington conferences had been more anxious to submit to the

arbitrators the principle of allowing indirect claims, than to embark on

any discussion of them. The American commissioners knew this principle to

be unsound, but knowing also that their own people expected the claims to

be referred, they could only abstain from insisting on their inclusion.

The British commissioners were willing silently to waive an express

renunciation of them, being confident that the terms of the protocols and

the language of the treaty would be so construed by the arbitrators as to

exclude the indirect claims.(266) All this was a rational and truly

diplomatic temper on both sides; but then the immortal events of a hundred

years before had shown too plainly that Englishmen at home cannot always

be trusted to keep a rational and diplomatic temper; and many events in

the interval had shown that English colonists, even when transfigured into

American citizens, were still chips of the old block. The cabinet agreed

that a virtual waiver of the claims was to be found both in the protocols

of the conference, and in the language of the treaty. Lord Ripon and Mr.

Forster, however, thought it would be safe to go on at Geneva, in the

assurance that the arbitrators would be certain to rule the indirect

claims out. At the other extreme of the cabinet scale, the view was urged

that England should not go on, unless she put upon record a formal

declaration that did she not, and never would, assent to any adjudication

upon the indirect claims. To a certain minister who pressed for some

declaration in this sense,—also formulated in a motion by Lord Russell in

parliament, himself responsible for so much of the original

mischief(267)—Mr. Gladstone wrote as follows:—

_June 17._—... I doubt whether the cabinet can legitimately be

asked, as a cabinet, to make these affirmations, inasmuch as,

according to my view, they are not within the purview of its

present undertaking—that undertaking has reference exclusively to

the scope of the arbitration. We have contended all along that the

claims would not legitimately come before the arbitrators.... But

we had never demanded the assent of the Americans to our

reasoning, only to our conclusion that the claims were not within

the scope of the arbitration. It is my view (but this is quite

another matter) that they lie cast aside, a dishonoured carcass,

which no amount of force, fraud, or folly can again galvanise into

life. You will see then, in sum, that (if I rightly understand

you) I accept for myself broadly and freely what may be called the

extreme doctrine _about_ the indirect claims; but I think the

cabinet cannot fairly be challenged for an official judgment on a

matter really not before it.

The little entries in the diary give us a good idea of the pressure on the

prime minister:—

_Feb. 6, 1872._—Spoke an hour after Disraeli on the address....

The _Alabama_ and Washington question lay heavy on me till the

evening. Even during the speech I was disquieted, and had to

converse with my colleagues. _March 16._—Cabinet 2¾-7; laborious

chiefly on the Washington treaty. _17th._—Worked on part of the

despatch for America. _18th._—In conclave. Much heavy work on

_Alabama_. _22nd._—Severe bronchial attack. Transacted business

through West, W. H. G. [his son] Mr. Glyn, Lord Granville, and

Cardwell, who went to and fro between the cabinet below-stairs and

me. To all of them I whispered with some difficulty. _April

5._—Conclave on countercase. First with Cardwell and Lowe, then

with Tenterden and Sanderson. Much confusion. _May 12._—Saw Lord

Granville, who brought good news from America. _27th._—U.S.

question bristles with difficulties. _30th._—H. of C. During the

evening two long conferences on Washington treaty with Lord G. and

the lawyers, and a cabinet 10-1. Worked Uniformity bill through

committee at intervals. _June 3._—Cabinet 3-4-1/4. H. of C. Made a

statement on the treaty of Washington. The house behaved _well_.

Also got the Act of Uniformity bill read a third time. Its

preamble is really a notable fact in 1872. _6th._—H. of C. Spoke

on Washington treaty and Scots Education—the House _too_ well

pleased as to the former. _11th._—The cabinet met at 2. and sat

intermittently with the House to 5¾, again 9-1/4-1.

(M135) The arbitrators were to meet on June 15. Yet no break in the clouds

seemed likely. Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues had a meeting at the

foreign office, and did not separate until after midnight on June 11. The

British agent was to be directed to apply for an immediate adjournment,

and without lodging the summary of our case as provided by the treaty. If

the arbitrators declined to adjourn, either because the Americans

objected, or from a belief that they had no title to adjourn without a

formal opening of business by lodging summaries, then was or was not our

agent to change tack and lodge his summary? Or was the arbitration, and

with the arbitration the whole treaty, to fall to the ground for want of

it? On this question Mr. Gladstone thought it his duty to mention to the

Queen that it had not yet (June 13) been found possible to bring the

cabinet to a decision. For a day or two it looked as if the ministry might

fall to pieces, but the head of it was indomitable:—

_June 13_ (Thursday).—Since Tuesday morning I have constantly

resolved or discussed this proposition: that we should not be

justified in breaking off the proceedings at Geneva (if an

adjournment can be had after presentation of the summary), upon a

refusal to present it. My determination upon it is now firmly

rooted and tested by all the mental effort I can apply, and the

time I thought had come to-day for looking forward as well as

backward. I therefore wrote to the Queen in terms which might a

little prepare her for difficulties in the cabinet. I saw

Granville first, who had not reached my point, but seemed to come

up to it; then arranged for him to see Halifax, Ripon to see

Kimberley, and the chancellor [Lowe] to see Cardwell; as the

_knot_ of the probable difficulty is in these three. On the whole,

I hope we shall, in one way or another, work through. _At any

rate, if anything like a government can be held together, I will

not shrink._

_June 15._—Cabinet 12-2-1/4, and with brief intervals to 7-½.

Dined with Princess Louise. After dinner Granville and I went to

see Mr. Hammond, then on to the F. 0., where we got (before

midnight) the protocol of to-day from Geneva. Thank God that up to

a certain point the indications on this great controversy are

decidedly favourable.

_June 16._—Sunday (Bunker Hill anniversary? [No—June 17]). Cabinet

here 1-½-3-1/4. We sent off a telegram, which I hope may finish

the good work at Geneva.

What happened at Geneva was this. When the day came, the British agent did

not lodge his summary, but asked for an adjournment for eight months, as

the two governments did not agree upon the scope of the arbitration. This

looked dark enough, and the treaty seemed doomed. It was saved by Mr.

Adams, the American nominee on the tribunal. When he reached Geneva and

learned how things stood, he decided that the knot which they could not

untie must be cut.(268) His golden idea was this: the arbitrators should

make a spontaneous declaration that on the principles of international law

the indirect claims ought to be excluded from their consideration. Adams

saw his colleagues one by one, and brought them round to his view. The

English chief justice had made up his mind that the whole thing was dead,

as he had for many months been loudly telling all London that it ought to

be. But when asked by Mr. Adams whether the spontaneous extra-judicial

declaration would remove all obstacles to progress, Cockburn answered that

he thought it would. “I said,” Mr. Adams continued, “that in that event I

was prepared to make a proposition. I should be assuming a heavy

responsibility; but I should do so, not as an arbitrator representing my

country, but as representing all nations.” So the indirect claims were

summarily ruled out, and the arbitration proceeded. In some notes prepared

for the cabinet on all these proceedings (Feb. 4, 1873), Lord Tenterden,

the clever and experienced British agent at Geneva, writes, “I cannot

conclude this part of the memorandum without saying that the dignity,

tact, self-command, and moderation with which Mr. Adams discharged his

functions as arbitrator, did honour to his country.”

(M136) In September (1872) the five arbitrators at Geneva gave their

award. They were unanimous in finding Great Britain liable for the acts of

the _Alabama_; all save the British representative found her liable for

the _Florida_; the Italian, the Swiss, and the American against the

Englishman and the Brazilian found her liable for the _Shenandoah_ after

leaving Melbourne. They awarded in satisfaction and final settlement of

all claims, including interest, a gross sum of about three and a quarter

million pounds sterling. The award, though hardly a surprise, still

inflicted a lively twinge of mortification on the masterful and confident

people of this island. Opinion was divided, but the decision was not one

of those that cut deep or raise the public temperature to fever. The

prints of the opposition insisted that the result was profoundly

vexatious, it was a bungled settlement, and the arguments used in favour

of it were “wild sentimental rubbish.” On the other hand, the _Times_

regarded it with profound satisfaction, and ministerial writers with a

lyric turn hailed it as a magnificent victory, though we had to pay a

heavy bill. A little balm was extracted from the fact that the Americans

had preferred before the tribunal a demand of nine millions and a half,

and thus got little more than one-third of what they had asked. So ended

what has been called the greatest of all arbitrations, extinguishing the

embers that could not have been left to smoulder without constant peril of

a vast and fratricidal conflagration. The treaty of Washington and the

Geneva arbitration stand out as the most notable victory in the nineteenth

century of the noble art of preventive diplomacy, and the most signal

exhibition in their history of self-command in two of the three chief

democratic powers of the western world. For the moment the result did

something to impair the popularity of Mr. Gladstone’s government, but his

association with this high act of national policy is one of the things

that give its brightest lustre to his fame.

Chapter X. As Head Of A Cabinet. (1868-1874)

Rational co-operation in politics would be at an end, if no two

men might act together, until they had satisfied themselves that

in no possible circumstances could they be divided.—GLADSTONE.

I

The just complacency with which Mr. Gladstone regarded his cabinet on its

first construction held good:—

I look back with great satisfaction on the internal working of the

cabinet of 1868-74. It was a cabinet easily handled; and yet it

was the only one of my four cabinets in which there were members

who were senior to myself (the lord chancellor Hatherley, Lord

Clarendon), with many other men of long ministerial experience.

When this cabinet was breaking up in 1874, I took the opportunity

of thanking them for the manner in which they had uniformly

lightened my task in the direction of business. In reply, Halifax,

who might be considered as the senior in years and experience

taken jointly, very handsomely said the duty of the cabinet had

been made more easy by the considerate manner in which I had

always treated them. Some of them were as colleagues absolutely

delightful, from the manner in which their natural qualities

blended with their consummate experience. I refer especially to

Clarendon and Granville.

(M137) If we may trust some of those who were members of it, no cabinet

ever did its business with livelier industry or effect. Under Mr.

Gladstone’s hand it was a really working cabinet, not an assemblage of

departmental ministers, each minding his own affairs, available as casual

members of this or the other sub-committee, and without an eye for the

general drift and tendency of their proceedings. Of course ministers

differed in importance. One was pleasant and popular, but not forcible.

Another overflowed with knowledge and was really an able man, but somehow

he carried no guns, and nobody cared what he said. One had aptitude

without weight—perhaps the true definition of our grossly overworked

epithet of clever. Another had weight and character, without much

aptitude. The cabinet as a whole was one of extraordinary power, not

merely because its chief had both aptitude and momentum enough for a

dozen, but because it was actively homogeneous in reforming spirit and

purpose. This solidarity is the great element in such combinations, and

the mainspring of all vigorous cabinet work.

Of Mr. Gladstone as head of his first cabinet, we have a glimpse from Mr.

Stansfeld:—

Mr. Gladstone’s conduct in the cabinet was very curious. When I

first joined in 1871, I naturally thought that his position was so

commanding, that he would be able to say, “This is my policy;

accept it or not as you like.” But he did not. He was always

profuse in his expressions of respect for the cabinet. There was a

wonderful combination in Mr. Gladstone of imperiousness and of

deference. In the cabinet he would assume that he was nothing. I

thought he should have said, “This is my policy. What do you think

of it?” and then have fought it out until they had come to an

agreement. He always tried to lead them on by unconscious steps to

his own conclusions.(269)

To this we may add some words of Lord Granville used in 1883, but

doubtless just as true of 1868-74:—

I have served under several prime ministers, men for whom I had

high respect and to whom I had the greatest attachment, but I can

say that I never knew one who showed a finer temper, a greater

patience, or more consideration for his colleagues than Mr.

Gladstone in all deliberations on any important subject. In his

official position, with his knowledge, with his ability, and with

the wonderful power of work that characterises him, he of course

has an immense influence on the deliberations of the cabinet; but

notwithstanding his tenacity of purpose and his earnestness, it is

quite extraordinary how he attends to the arguments of all, and,

except on any question of real vital principle, he is ready to

yield his own opinion to the general sense of the colleagues over

whom he presides.(270)

Imputing his own qualities to others, and always keen to make the best of

people and not the worst, if he had once invited a man to office, he held

on to him to the last possible moment. “The next most serious thing to

admitting a man into the cabinet,” he said, “is to leave a man out who has

once been in.” Not seldom he carried his invincible courtesy, deference,

and toleration even beyond the domain where those qualities ought to be

supreme. This was part of what men meant, when they said that life was to

him in all its aspects an application of Christian teaching and example.

To this we must add another consideration of first importance, and one

that vulgar criticism of great statesmen too commonly ignores. In the

words of Lord Aberdeen (1856), who knew from sharp experience how much his

doctrine might cost a man: “A prime minister is not a free agent. To break

up a government, to renounce all the good you hoped to do and leave

imperfect all the good you have done, to hand over power to persons whose

objects or whose measures you disapprove, even merely to alienate and

politically to injure your friends, is no slight matter.”(271)

A member of this first cabinet wrote to Mr. Gladstone long after it had

come to an end: “I suppose there was no one of your then colleagues less

sympathetic with you, less in tune with your opinions and enthusiasms than

Lowe. Nevertheless this happened to me with him—after you had resigned.

Lowe opened to me one day, on the subject of your relations with your

colleagues. He spoke in terms of warm admiration, and to my great

surprise, ended by saying, ‘I have the same kind of feeling towards him

that I can suppose must be the feeling of a dog for his master.’ Lowe is a

perfectly sincere man. He would not have said this if he had not felt it.”

“In everything personal,” Mr. Gladstone replied, “Lowe was an excellent

colleague and member of cabinet. But I had never been in personal

relations with him before, and at the outset of the ministry of 1868 I

knew very little of him. Moreover, he was the occasion of much trouble to

me by his incessant broils with ——, who was an awkward customer.” In sheer

intellect Mr. Gladstone held that Lowe had not many equals, but in nobody

else did he discover so many mixed and contradictory qualities—“splendid

in attack, but most weak in defence, at times exhibiting pluck beyond

measure, but at other times pusillanimity almost amounting to cowardice;

one day headstrong and independent, and the next day helpless as a child

to walk alone; capable of tearing anything to pieces, but of constructing

nothing.”(272)

(M138) When Lord Clarendon died,—“An irreparable colleague,” Mr. Gladstone

notes in his diary, “a statesman of many gifts, a most lovable and genial

man.” Elsewhere he commemorates his “unswerving loyalty, his genial

temper, his kindness ever overflowing in acts yet more than in words, his

liberal and indulgent appreciation of others.” In the short government of

1865-6, Lord Granville had described Clarendon to Mr. Gladstone as

“excellent, communicating more freely with the cabinet and carrying out

their policy more faithfully, than any foreign secretary I have known.”

Mr. Gladstone himself told me twenty years after, that of the sixty men or

so who had been his colleagues in cabinet, Clarendon was the very easiest

and most attractive. It is curious to observe that, with the exception of

Mr. Bright, he found his most congenial adherents rather among the

patrician whigs than among the men labelled as advanced.

Mr. Bright, as we have seen, was forced by ill-health to quit the

government. Thirty years of unsparing toil, more than ten of them devoted

especially to the exhausting, but in his case most fruitful, labours of

the platform, had for the time worn down his stock of that energy of mind,

which in the more sinewy frame of the prime minister seemed as boundless

as some great natural element. To Mrs. Bright Mr. Gladstone wrote:—

It is not merely a selfish interest that all his colleagues feel

in him on account of his great powers, just fame, and political

importance; but it is one founded on the esteem and regard which,

one and all, they entertain towards him. God grant that any

anxieties you may entertain about him may soon be effectually

relieved. I wish I felt quite certain that he is as good a patient

as he is a colleague. But the chief object of my writing was to

say that the Queen has signified both by letter and telegraph her

lively interest in Mr. B.’s health; and she will not forgive me

unless I am able to send her frequent reports.

He is quite capable of dealing faithfully with colleagues breaking rules.

To a member of the cabinet who had transgressed by absence from a division

of life and death:—

I should not act frankly by you if I did not state it, without

hesitation as a general and prospective proposition, that, without

reference to the likelihood or unlikelihood of defeat, upon

motions which must from their nature be votes of confidence,

[there can] be but one rule for the members of the government, and

that is to give the votes themselves which at the same time the

government with less strong title is asking from the members of

their party.

He scolds a leading minister pretty directly for placing him in a

disagreeable and rather ludicrous position, by failing to give the proper

information about a government bill containing an important change, so

that nobody could explain the reason for it to the House. His own personal

example of absolutely unremitting attendance on the scene of action,

entitled him to rebuke slackness. Nothing escaped him. Here is the way in

which he called defaulters to their duty:—

_April 8, 1873._—The chancellor of the exchequer thinks he has

some reason to complain of your having quitted London on Thursday,

without any prior communication with him or Glyn, four days before

the budget. I have heard with regret that the state of your health

has compelled you to spend your vacation abroad; but scarcely even

a direct medical order, and certainly in my opinion nothing less,

could render such an example innocent in its effects, as is set by

a departure from London under such circumstances. Although it has

been a great pleasure to me to admit and recognise your

parliamentary services and distinctions, and though I have always

thought your accession to the government an acquisition of great

value, I must frankly avow my opinion that it is hardly possible

for the chancellor of exchequer to discharge his duties without

your constant and sedulous co-operation, or for the official corps

in general to avoid suffering, if the members of it make

themselves the judges of the question when and under what

circumstances their absence may be permitted during the sittings

of the House.

_June 25, 1870._—I am led to suppose by your absence from the

division yesterday, that there may not be a perfectly clear

understanding between us as to the obligations of members of the

government on these occasions. Yesterday gave occasion of much

inconvenience on account of the entertainment at Windsor, but all

the members of the government who could be expected to attend

voted in the division, except yourself. I can say from my own

recollection that as far as regards political officers, the

sovereign always permits the claim of the House of Commons to

prevail.

Changes among subordinate members of the government came early. Of one of

these ministers Mr. Gladstone writes to Lord Granville (August 18, 1869):

“He has great talent, and is a most pertinacious worker, with a good deal

of experience and widely dispersed knowledge of public affairs. But he

seems to be somewhat angular, and better adapted for doing business within

a defined province of his own, than in common stock or partnership with

others.” Unfortunately the somewhat angular man shared his work with a

chief who had intellectual angularities of his own, not very smoothly

concealed. As it happened, there was another minister of secondary rank

who did not come up to the expected mark. “Though he has great talents,

remarkable power of speech, and some special qualifications for his

department, he has not succeeded in it with the House of Commons, and does

not seem very thoroughly to understand pecuniary responsibility and the

management of estimates, and there is no doubt whatever that in his

department the present House of Commons will be vigilant and exacting,

while the rapid growth of its expenditures certainly shows that it should

be filled by some one capable of exercising control.” Not thoroughly “to

understand pecuniary responsibility” was counted a deadly sin in those

halcyon days. So the transgressor accepted a diplomatic mission, and this

made room to plant his angular colleague in what seemed a “province of his

own.” But few provinces are definite enough to be independent of the

treasury, and the quarrels between this minister and the chancellor of the

exchequer became something of a scandal and a weakness to the government.

One of the fiercest battles of the time (1872) broke out in respect of Kew

Gardens between the minister with a definite province of his own and a

distinguished member of “a scientific fraternity, which, valuable as it

is, has been unduly pampered of late from a variety of causes into a

somewhat overweening idea of its own importance.” The premier’s pacifying

resources were taxed by this tremendous feud to the uttermost; he holds a

stiffish tone to the minister, and tries balm for the _savant_ by

propitiatory reminder of “a most interesting fact made known to me when I

had the pleasure and advantage of seeing you at Kew, namely the

possibility of saving for purposes of food a portion of the substance of

the diseased potato. The rescue of a sensible percentage of this valuable

esculent will be a noble service rendered by scientific knowledge and

skill to the general community.” But science is touchy, and wounds are

sometimes too deep to be healed by words.

(M139) A point worth noting is his strict limitation of his own rights as

head of a government. “Hope you will not think,” he wrote to a colleague,

“I am evading my duties, but while it is my duty to deal with all

difficulties arising between members of the government, it is wholly

beyond my power, and in no way belongs to my province, to examine and

settle the controversies which may arise between them and civil servants

who are employed under them.” He is careful to distinguish his own words

from the words of the cabinet; careful both to lean upon, and to defer to,

the judgment of that body; and when the decision is taken, it is in their

name that he writes to the vexatious colleague (July 24, 1872): “The

cabinet have come to their conclusion, and directed me to make it known to

you.... If you think proper to make the announcement of these intentions

of the government, they are quite willing that you should do so. If

otherwise, Mr. Bruce will do it as home minister. Thus far as to making

known what will be done. As to the doing of it, the rules will have to be

cancelled at once by you.”

The reader of an authoritarian or arbitrary cast of mind may ask why he

did not throw a handful of dust upon the angry combatants. “It is easy,”

he wrote to Cardwell (Nov. 20, 1871) “to talk of uprooting X., but even if

it were just, it will, as Glyn [the party whip] would tell you, be very

difficult. But Y. perhaps proceeds more like Moloch, and X. in the manner

of Belial. Why cannot they follow the good example of those worthies, who

co-operated in pandemonium? If you thought you could manage Y., I would

try to tackle X. I commend this subject to your meditations.” Sulphureous

whiffs from this pandemonium were pretty copiously scented both by

parliament and the public, and did the ministry some harm.

Of a peer of much renown in points of procedure, private business, and the

like, he says, “he looks at everything out of blinkers, and has no side

lights.” Of one brilliant and able colleague in the first administration

he writes, that “he has some blank in his mental constitution, owing to

which he receives admonitions most kindly, and then straightway does the

same thing over again.” Of another colleague, “though much nearer the

rights of the case than many who were inclined to object, he is thin and

poor in the cabinet.” Some one else is “a sensitive man, given beyond most

men to speak out his innermost and perhaps unformed thoughts, and thereby

to put himself at a disadvantage.” Another public servant is “not

unmanageable, but he needs to be managed.” In the same letter he speaks of

the Hibernian presbyterian as “that peculiar cross between a Scotchman and

an Irishman.”

Of his incessant toil the reader has already a good idea. Here are a few

items. To one correspondent (Jan. 21, 1869) he writes: “I hope you do not

think my ‘holiday’ at Hawarden has proved my idleness, for I think ten

hours a day has been a moderate estimate of my work there on public

business, to which some other matters have had to be added.” To the

attorney-general he says when he has had three years more of it (Sept. 18,

1872): “I cannot say with you that my office never gives me a day without

business, for in the four ‘vacations’ so far as they have gone, I think I

have had no less than five days. This vacation has thus far been the best;

but heavy and critical work impends.” In October, 1871, he writes to Mrs.

Gladstone from Edinburgh: “I have for _the first time_ since the

government was formed, had a holiday of two whole days.” To Lord Clarendon

he writes from Lord Granville’s at Walmer (Sept. 2, 1869): “At the end of

a holiday morning of work, since I breakfasted at nine, which has lasted

till near four, I have yet to say a few words about....” To Archdeacon

Harrison, May 25, 1873: “As you may like to have the exact anatomy of my

holiday on the Queen’s birthday, I will give it you: 2-1/4 A.M., return

home from the H. of C. 10 A.M., two hours’ work in my room. 2-7, the

cabinet. Three-quarters of an hour’s walk. 8-12, thirty-two to dinner and

an evening party. 12, bed!” To Sir R. Phillimore, July 23, 1873: “Not once

this year (except a day in bed) have I been absent from the hours of

government business in the House, and the rigour of attendance is far

greater now than at earlier periods of the session.”

His colleagues grudged his absence for a day. On one occasion, in

accordance with a lifelong passion and rooted habit, he desired to attend

a funeral, this time in Scotland, and Lord Granville’s letter of

remonstrance to him is interesting in more points than one; it shows the

exacting position in which the peculiarities of some colleagues and of a

certain section of his supporters placed him:—

It is the unanimous desire of the cabinet that I should try to

dissuade you.... It is a duty of a high order for you to do all

you can for your health.... You hardly ever are absent from the

House without some screw getting loose. I should write much more

strongly if I did not feel I had a personal interest in the

matter. In so strained a state as Europe is now in, the slightest

thing may lead to great consequences, and it is possible that it

may be a disadvantage to me and to the _chose publique_ if

anything occurs during the thirty-six hours you are absent.

This letter of Lord Granville’s was written on July 10, 1870, just five

days before war was declared between France and Prussia.

He wrote to the _Spectator_ (May 1873) to correct a report “that every day

must begin for me with my old friend Homer.” He says: “As to my beginning

every day with Homer, as such a phrase conveys to the world a very untrue

impression of the demands of my present office, I think it right to

mention that, so far as my memory serves me, I have not read Homer for

fifty lines now for a quarter of an hour consecutively for the last four

years, and any dealings of mine with Homeric subjects have been confined

to a number of days which could be readily counted on the fingers.” Yet at

the end of 1869, he winds up a letter of business by saying, “I must

close; I am going to have a discussion with Huxley on the immortality of

the soul!”

Who can wonder that after a prolonged spell of such a strain as this, he

was found laying down strong doctrine about the age of a prime minister?

Bishop Wilberforce met him twice in the May of 1873. “Gladstone much

talking how little real good work any premier had done after sixty: Peel;

Palmerston, his work really all done before; Duke of Wellington added

nothing to his reputation after. I told him Dr. Clark thought it would be

physically worse for him to retire. ‘Dr. Clark does not know how

completely I should employ myself,’ he replied.” Four days later:

“Gladstone again talking of sixty as full age of premier.”(273)

II

In words already quoted, Mr. Gladstone spoke of most of his life having

been given to working the institutions of his country. Of all these

institutions—House of Commons, Lords, cabinet, church, stern courts of

law—that which he was most apt to idealise was the throne. His sense of

chivalry and his sense of an august tradition continuously symbolised by a

historic throne, moved him as the sight of the French Queen at Versailles

had moved the majestic political imagination of Burke a century before.

About the throne he sometimes used language that represented almost at its

highest the value set upon it in text-books of the constitution, and in

the current conventions of ceremonial speech.(274) Although what he called

the iron necessities of actual business always threw these conventions

into the background when the time came, yet his inmost feeling about the

crown and the person of its wearer was as sincere as it was fervid. In

business, it is true, he never yielded, yet even in his most anxious and

pressing hours he spared neither time nor toil in endeavours to show the

Queen why he could not yield. “Though decisions,” he said, “must

ultimately conform to the sense of those who are to be responsible for

them, yet their business is to inform and persuade the sovereign, not to

overrule him.” One writer describes the Queen as “superb in standing

sentry over the business of the empire.” This is obsequious phrase-making.

But I will borrow the figure in saying what is more real, that Mr.

Gladstone from beginning to end stood sentry over the interests, whether

profound and enduring or trivial and fleeting, of the ancient monarchy of

this kingdom. None who heard it will ever forget the moving and energetic

passage in which when he was the doughty veteran of eighty years, speaking

against his own followers on some question of a royal annuity, he moved

the whole House to its depths by the passionate declaration, “I am not

ashamed to say that in my old age I rejoice in any opportunity that

enables me to testify that, whatever may be thought of my opinions,

whatever may be thought of my proposals in general politics, I do not

forget the service that I have borne to the illustrious representative of

the British monarchy.”(275)

(M140) My readers have had opportunity enough of judging Mr. Gladstone’s

estimate of the Queen’s shrewdness, simplicity, high manners. Above all,

he constantly said how warmly he recognised her sincerity, frankness,

straight-forwardness, and love of truth. On the other side, his own eager

mobility, versatility, and wide elastic range was not likely to be to the

taste of a personage with a singular fixity of nature. Then the Queen was

by the necessity of her station a politician, as was Elizabeth or George

III., although oddly enough she had a bitter dislike of what she thought

the madness of “women’s rights.” As politician, she often took views that

were not shared either by the constituencies or by the ministers whom the

constituencies imposed upon her. The Queen in truth excellently

represented and incorporated in her proper person one whole set of those

qualities in our national character, on which the power of her realm had

been built up. Mr. Gladstone stood for a different and in some aspects and

on some occasions almost an antagonistic set of national qualities. The

Queen, according to those who knew her well,(276) dreaded what in the

eighteenth century they called enthusiasm: she dreaded or disdained it in

religion, and in politics almost more. Yet her Englishmen are full of

capacity for enthusiasm, and the Scots for whom she had such cordial

affection have enthusiasm in measure fuller still. Unhappily, in the case

of Ireland that occupied so much of Mr. Gladstone’s life, her sympathies

with his long and vigorous endeavour notoriously stood at zero. The

Queen’s loyalty to the constitution and to ministers in office was

unquestioned, but she was not well placed, nor was she perhaps by

character well fitted, to gauge the fluctuating movements of an age of

change, as it was the duty of her statesmen to gauge and plumb them. If a

cabinet with the confidence of the House of Commons decides upon a policy,

it must obviously be a premier’s duty to persist, and in that duty Mr.

Gladstone was resolute. If he had been otherwise, he knew that he would be

falling short in loyalty to the country, and to its chief magistrate most

of all.

In 1871 a wave of critical feeling began to run upon the throne. An

influential journalist of that day, singularly free from any tincture of

republican sentiment, thus describes it. “A few weeks ago,” he says, “a

deep and universal feeling of discontent at the Queen’s seclusion (or

rather at its consequences) found voice in the journals of the country. No

public print of any importance failed to take part in the chorus; which

was equally remarkable for its suddenness, fulness, and harmony. Indeed,

the suddenness of the cry was surprising—till we remembered that what was

then said had lain unexpressed in the minds of the whole community for

years, with annual increment; and that when popular feeling gathers in

that way, it is generally relieved at last by something of the nature of

an explosion.” He then goes on to speak of “republicanism of a very

revolutionary form flooding in,” and says that such a complexion of

affairs could be viewed with pleasure by no friend of the monarchy.(277)

The details of this movement are no longer of much interest, and they only

concern us here because they gave Mr. Gladstone real anxiety. For him it

was one of the special duties of a prime minister, as distinguished from

his cabinet, to watch and guard relations between the crown and the

country. Whether in office or in opposition, he lost no opportunity of

standing forth between the throne and even a faint shadow of popular or

parliamentary discontent. He had done it in the case of Prince

Albert,(278) and he did it now. When the end came after nearly thirty

years from our present date, the Queen wrote: “I shall ever gratefully

remember his devotion and zeal in all that concerned my personal welfare

and that of my family.” In 1871 his zeal went beyond the Queen’s personal

welfare, and his solicitude for the institution represented by the Queen

undoubtedly took a form of deferential exhortation—an exhortation that she

should return to a fuller discharge of public duty, which the Queen found

irksome. The Queen was as fond of Balmoral as Mr. Gladstone was fond of

Hawarden. The contrast between the formality of Windsor and the atmosphere

of simple attachment and social affection that surrounded her in Scotland,

was as delightful to her as the air and the scenery. A royal progress

through applauding multitudes in great cities made her ill. Hence, when

Mr. Gladstone pressed her to defer a northern journey, or to open

parliament, or to open a bridge, or otherwise emerge from seclusion, the

Queen, though well aware that he had not, and could not, have any motive

save her own and the public interest, undoubtedly felt that her energetic

minister was attempting to overwork her. This feeling, as most of us know,

breeds resistance, and even in time resentment. To say, however, that “in

his eagerness Mr. Gladstone pressed her to do what she knew to be not her

work so much as his,” is misleading and a little ludicrous.(279) Mr.

Gladstone had persuaded himself that in the humour of the day persistence

in seclusion did harm; it was his duty to give advice accordingly, and

this duty he could not consent to shirk.

In other ways his very awe of the institution made him set an exacting

standard for the individual who represented it. The letters contain a

hundred instances. One may suffice. On the occasion of the Irish Church

bill of 1869, the prime minister sent to the Queen a print of its clauses,

and along with this draft a letter, covering over a dozen closely-written

quarto pages, in explanation. Himself intensely absorbed and his whole

soul possessed by the vital importance of what he was doing, he could not

conceive that the sovereign, nursing a decided dislike of his policy,

should not eagerly desire to get to the bottom of the provisions for

carrying the policy out. The Queen read the letter, and reread it, and

then in despair desired a gentleman practised in dealing with

parliamentary bills, happening at that time to be at Osborne, to supply

her with a summary.(280) The gaunt virtues of a _précis_—a meagre thing

where qualifying sentences drop off, parentheses are cut out, adverbs

hardly count, the noun stands denuded of its sheltering adjective—were

never congenial to Mr. Gladstone’s copious exactitude in hypothesis,

conditions, and contingencies. Neither of these two illustrious personages

was without humour, and it seems at once a wonder and a pity that the

monarch did less than justice to this laborious and almost military sense

of discipline and duty in the minister; while the minister failed in

genial allowance for the moderation of a royal lady’s appetite for bread

and honey from the draftsman’s kitchen. If failing there were, it was

natural to a man of earnest and concentrated mind. Be all this as it may,

he became more and more conscious that the correspondence and occurrences

of 1871-2 had introduced a reserve that was new. Perhaps it recalled to

him the distance and formality that marked the relations between King

George III. and the proudest, the most intrepid, and the greatest of his

prime ministers.

III

Once in a conversation with Mr. Gladstone I asked him whether he

remembered Peel’s phrase to Cobden about the odious power that patronage

confers. He replied, “I never felt that, when I was prime minister. It

came in the day’s work like the rest. I don’t recall that I ever felt

plagued by improper applications. Peel was perhaps a little over fond of

talking of the sacrifices of office. A man has no business to lay himself

out for being prime minister, or to place himself in the way of it, unless

he is prepared to take all the incidents of the post whether disagreeable

or not. I’ve no sympathy with talk of that kind.” He was far from the mind

of Carteret. “What is it to me,” cried that glittering minister, “who is a

judge or who is a bishop? It is my business to make kings and emperors,

and to maintain the balance of Europe.”

(M141) To the bestowal of honours he brought the same diligent care as to

branches of public business that to men of Peel’s type seemed worthier of

care. He treated honours on fixed considerations. Especially in the

altitudes of the peerage, he tried hard to find solid political ground to

go upon. He noted the remarkable fact that though a very large majority of

the peerages granted since 1835 had been made on the advice of liberal

ministers, yet such is the influence of wealth and privileged station that

the liberal minority in the Lords had decreased. In 1869 the conservative

majority was between sixty and seventy, without counting bishops or

nominal liberals. Yet household suffrage at this very time had immensely

increased the moral strength of the House of Commons. The crisis upon the

Irish church had been borne with impatience, and Mr. Gladstone discerned a

combustible temper at the action of the Lords that might easily have burst

into flame. Still he saw no signal plan for improving the upper House. The

appointment of life peers might be desirable, he said, but it was not easy

to arrange, nor could its effect be great. The means of action therefore

for bringing the Lords into more conformity or better proportions to the

Commons, were very moderate. But that made it all the more important that

they should not be overlooked. The governing idea in respect of both

classes of hereditary honours was in his judgment the maintenance of a due

relation between the members in those elevated ranks, and the number of

persons offering the proper conditions for promotion of this kind, in a

country so rapidly growing in wealth and population.

With characteristic love of making knowledge quantitative—one definition,

I rather think, of science—Mr. Gladstone caused returns to be prepared for

him, which showed that in 1840 there were about seventeen peers for every

million of the population, while in 1869 this number had fallen to

fourteen (in 1880 it was about the same). Lord Palmerston in his second

government appears to have recommended sixteen peerages, and Lord Derby in

little more than a quarter of the time recommended fourteen. Mr. Gladstone

himself, during his first administration, excluding royal, non-political

and _ex-officio_ peerages, added thirty members to the House of Lords,

besides making five promotions. In the same period twelve peerages became

extinct. Lord Beaconsfield (counting the same exclusions) created between

1874 and 1880 twenty-six new peers, and made nine promotions.(281)

In two directions Mr. Gladstone made an honourable innovation. He

recommended a member of the Jewish faith for a peerage, and in the first

list of his submissions to the Queen two Roman catholics were included. No

catholic peer had been created within living memory. One of these two was

Lord Acton, afterwards so intimate a friend, whose character, he told the

Queen, “is of the first order, and he is one of the most learned and

accomplished, though one of the most modest and unassuming, men of the

day.” If religious profession was not in his eyes relevant in making

peers, neither was the negation of profession, for at the same time he

proposed a peerage to Grote. “I deeply and gratefully appreciate,” he

wrote to Mr. Gladstone, “the sentiments you are pleased to express

respecting my character and services. These I shall treasure up never to

be forgotten, coming as they do from a minister who has entered on the

work of reform with a sincerity and energy never hitherto paralleled. Such

recognition is the true and sufficient recompense for all useful labours

of mine.”(282)

At the same time the prime minister thought that some honour ought to be

tendered to Mr. Mill, but Lord Granville, whom he consulted, thought

otherwise, “merely on the ground that honours should go as much as

possible with general acceptance.” Lord Granville was a man of thoroughly

liberal and even generous mind; still not particularly qualified to be a

good judge either of the merits of a man like Mill, or of his “acceptance”

in circles well worth considering.

IV

It was to be expected that preferments in the church should get a special

share of Mr. Gladstone’s laborious attention, and so they did. As member

for Oxford he had been so much importuned in Lord Palmerston’s time, that

he wrote in a moment of unusual impatience (1863), “I think these church

preferments will be the death of me.” Palmerston favoured the

evangelicals, and Mr. Gladstone was mortified that Church did not succeed

Stanley in the chair of ecclesiastical history at Oxford, and that

Wilberforce was not elevated to the throne of York in 1862.

(M142) During his first administration he recommended for no fewer than

twelve bishoprics and eight deaneries. He was not unprepared to find, as

he put it to Acland, that “saints, theologians, preachers, pastors,

scholars, philosophers, gentlemen, men of business,—these are not to be

had every day, least of all are they to be commonly found in combination.

But these are the materials which ought to be sought out, and put forward

in the church of England, if she is to stand the trials, and do her work.”

According to his fashion, he wrote down upon a fragmentary piece of paper

what qualifications he ought to look for in a bishop, and this is the

list:—

Piety. Learning (sacred). Eloquence. Administrative power.

Faithful allegiance to the Church and to the church of England.

Activity. Tact and courtesy in dealings with men: knowledge of the

world. Accomplishments and literature. An equitable spirit.

Faculty of working with his brother bishops. Some legal habit of

mind. Circumspection. Courage. Maturity of age and character.

Corporal vigour. Liberal sentiments on public affairs. A

representative character with reference to shades of opinion

fairly allowable in the Church.

One of his earliest preferments, that of Dr. Temple to the bishopric of

Exeter, created lively excitement. He had been a contributor to _Essays

and Reviews_:—

On some of the papers contained in the volume, Mr. Gladstone wrote

to the Bishop of Lichfield, I look with a strong aversion. But Dr.

Temple’s responsibility prior to the publication was confined to

his own essay. The question whether he ought to have disclaimed or

denounced any part of the volume afterwards is a difficult one,

and if it was a duty, it was a duty in regard to which a generous

man might well go wrong. As regards his own essay, I read it at

the time of publication, and thought it of little value, but did

not perceive that it was mischievous.

In speaking of him to Acland in 1865, Mr. Gladstone had let fall a truly

remarkable saying, going deep down to the roots of many things:—

You need not assure me of Dr. Temple’s Christian character. I have

read his sermons, and if I had doubted—but I never did—they would

have removed the doubt. Indeed I think it a most formidable

responsibility, at the least, in these times to doubt any man’s

character on account of his opinions. The limit of possible

variation between character and opinion, ay, between character and

belief, is widening, and will widen.

How could the leading mark of progress made in Mr. Gladstone’s age be more

truly hit, how defined with more pith and pregnancy? How could the

illumination of his own vigorous mind in forty years of life and thought

be better demonstrated? It would even be no bad thing if those who are

furthest removed from Mr. Gladstone’s opinions either in religion or

politics could lay this far-reaching dictum of his to heart. By many men

in all schools his lesson is sorely needed. Shrill was the clamour. Dr.

Pusey, in Mr. Gladstone’s own phrase, was “rabid.” He justified his anger

by reputed facts, which proved to be no facts at all, but the anger did

not die with the fable. Even Phillimore was disquieted. “It has cut very

deep indeed,” he said. Mr. Gladstone, confident of his ground, was not

dismayed. “The movement against Dr. Temple is like a peculiar cheer we

sometimes hear in the House of Commons, vehement but thin.”

No appointment proved so popular and successful as that of Bishop Fraser

to Manchester. He was the first person named by Mr. Gladstone for the

episcopate without some degree of personal knowledge. A remarkable

concurrence of testimony established the great breadth of his sympathies,

a trait much in his favour for the particular see of Manchester. Yet

strange to say when by and by Stanley died, Mr. Gladstone was a party to

trying to remove Fraser from the north to Westminster.

When in 1883 Mr. Gladstone was challenged as confining his recommendations

to the high church side, he defended himself to sufficient purpose. He had

a list made out of appointments to bishoprics, deaneries, and the most

important parishes:—

There have been thirty important appointments. Out of them I have

recommended eleven who would probably be called high churchmen

(not one of them, so far as I know, unsympathetic towards other

portions of the clergy) and nineteen who are not. On further

examination it will appear that the high churchmen whom I take to

be a decided majority of the clergy as well as a decided minority

of my recommendations, have gone as a rule to the places of hard

work and little pay. For example, they have got five out of ten

_parochial_ recommendations; but, out of sixteen appointments to

deaneries and canonries, they have received four, and those, with

the exception of Mr. Furse, the worst. I could supply you with the

lists in detail.

One admission I must make; the evidently broad churchmen are too

large a proportion of the non-high, and the low churchmen rather

too small, a disproportion which I should hope to remove, but

undoubtedly the low churchman of the present day has a poorer

share than half a century ago of the working energy of the church.

All these terms, High, Low, and Broad, are rather repugnant to me,

but I use them as a currency of tokens with which it is difficult

to dispense.

Turning from this point of view to the recognition of learning and genius,

in the course of his first administration we find that he made Church dean

of St. Paul’s, and Scott of the Greek lexicon dean of Rochester, Liddon

and Lightfoot canons of St. Paul’s, Kingsley first canon of Chester, and

then of Westminster, Vaughan master of the Temple.

Chapter XI. Catholic Country And Protestant Parliament. (1873)

It is all very well to establish united education, but if the

persons to be educated decline to unite, your efforts will be

thrown away. The question then occurs whether it is best to

establish a system, rejected by those concerned, in the hope that

it will gradually work its way into acceptance in spite of the

intolerance of priests, or to endow the separate denominational

bodies on the ground that even such education is better than none,

or, finally, to do nothing. The question is one of statesmanship

enlightened by a knowledge of facts, and of the sentiments of the

population.—LESLIE STEPHEN.

I

Descending from her alien throne, the Irish church had now taken her place

among the most prosperous of free communions. To Irish cultivators a

definite interest of possession had been indirectly confirmed in the land

to which most of its value had been given by their own toil. A third

branch of the upas tree of poisonous ascendency described by Mr. Gladstone

during the election of 1868, still awaited his axe. The fitness of an

absentee parliament to govern Ireland was again to be tested. This time

the problem was hardest of all, for it involved direct concession by

nations inveterately protestant, to a catholic hierarchy having at its

head an ultramontane cardinal of uncompromising opinions and inexorable

will.

Everybody knew that the state of university education in Ireland stood in

the front rank of unsettled questions. Ever since the establishment of

three provincial colleges by Peel’s government in 1845, the flame of the

controversy had been alight. Even on the very night when Graham introduced

the bill creating them, no less staunch a tory and protestant than Sir

Robert Inglis had jumped up and denounced “a gigantic scheme of godless

education.” The catholics loudly echoed this protestant phrase. The three

colleges were speedily condemned by the pope as fatal to faith and morals,

and were formally denounced by the synod of Thurles in 1850. The

fulminations of the church did not extinguish these modest centres of

light and knowledge, but they cast a creeping blight upon them. In 1865 a

demand was openly made in parliament for the incorporation by charter of a

specifically catholic university. Mr. Gladstone, along with Sir George

Grey, then admitted the reality of a grievance, namely, the absence in

Ireland of institutions of which the catholics of the country were able to

avail themselves. Declining, for good reasons or bad, to use opportunities

of college education by the side of protestants, and not warmed by the

atmosphere and symbols of their own church and faith, catholics contended

that they could not be said to enjoy equal advantages with their

fellow-citizens of other creeds. They repudiated a system of education

repugnant to their religious convictions, and in the persistent efforts to

force ’godless education’ on their country, they professed to recognise

another phase of persecution for conscience’ sake.

In 1866, Lord Russell’s government tried its hand with a device known as

the supplemental charter. It opened a way to a degree without passing

through the godless colleges. This was set aside by an injunction from the

courts, and it would not have touched the real matter of complaint, even

if the courts had let it stand. Next year the tories burnt their fingers,

though Mr. Disraeli told parliament that he saw no scars. For a time, he

believed that an honourable and satisfactory settlement was possible, and

negotiations went on with the hierarchy. The prelates did not urge

endowment, Mr. Disraeli afterwards said, but “they mentioned it.” The

country shrank back from concurrent endowment, though, as Mr. Disraeli

truly said, it was the policy of Pitt, of Grey, of Russell, of Peel, and

of Palmerston. Ever since 1794, catholic students had been allowed to

graduate at Trinity College, and ever since the disestablishment of the

Irish church in 1869, Trinity had asked parliament for power to admit

catholics to her fellowships and emoluments. This, however, did not go to

the root, whether we regard it as sound or unsound, of the catholic

grievance, which was in fact their lack of an endowed institution as

distinctively catholic in all respects as Trinity was protestant.

Such was the case with which Mr. Gladstone was called upon to grapple, and

a delicate if not even a desperate case it was. The prelates knew what

they wished, though they lay in shadow. What they wanted a protestant

parliament, with its grip upon the purse, was determined that they should

not have. The same conclusion as came to many liberals by prejudice, was

reached by the academic school on principle. On principle they held

denominational endowment of education to be retrograde and obscurantist.

Then there was the discouraging consideration of which Lord Halifax

reminded Mr. Gladstone. “You say with truth,” he observed when the

situation had developed, “that the liberal party are behaving very ill,

and so they are. But liberal majorities when large are apt to run riot. No

men could have stronger claims on the allegiance of their party than Lord

Grey and Lord Althorp after carrying the Reform bill. Nevertheless, the

large majority after the election of 1832-3 was continually putting the

government into difficulty.” So it befell now, and now as then the

difficulty was Irish.

II

(M143) Well knowing the hard work before him, Mr. Gladstone applied

himself with his usual indomitable energy to the task. “We go to Oxford

to-morrow,” he writes to Lord Granville (Nov. 12), “to visit Edward Talbot

and his wife; forward to London on Thursday, when I dine with the

Templars. My idea of work is that the first solid and heavy bit should be

the Irish university—some of this may require to be done in cabinet. When

we have got that into shape, I should be for taking to the yet stiffer

work of local taxation—most of the cabinet take a personal interest in

this. I think it will require immeasurable talking over, which might be

done chiefly in an open informal cabinet, before any binding resolutions

are taken. But I propose to let Palmer have his say (general) about law

reform on Friday.” At Oxford he saw Dr. Pusey, “who behaved with all his

old kindness, and seemed to have forgotten the Temple(283) business, or

rather as if it had never been.” On November 20, he records, “Cabinet

2-3/4-6-½. Some heads of a measure on Irish university education.” No

communications were opened with the Irish bishops beforehand, probably

from a surmise that they would be bound to ask more than they could

obtain.

_Jan. 16, 1873, Hawarden._—Dr. Ingram [the distinguished fellow of

Trinity College] came in afternoon, and I was able to spend

several hours with him on the university question. 17.—Many hours

with Dr. Ingram on the bill and scheme; in truth, almost from

breakfast to dinner. Conversation with him in evening on Homer and

ancient questions. Read _Old Mortality_. 20.—Drew an abstract of

historical facts respecting Dublin university and college. 21.—Off

at 11. At 11 C.H.T. at 6 P.M. 25.—Mr. Thring 3-5-½ on Irish bill.

Attended Lord Lytton’s funeral in the Abbey. The church lighted in

a frost-fog was sublime. 31.—Cabinet spent many hours in settling

Irish university bill. _Feb._ 2.—Paid a mournful visit to the

death-bedside of my old friend Milnes Gaskell.... Death has been

very busy around me. 8.—Cabinet 2-½-6-½. Passed the Irish

university bill. 13.—Worked until three upon my materials. Then

drove and walked. H. of C. 4-1/4-8-½. I spoke three hours in

introducing the Irish university bill with much detailed

explanation. (_Diary._)

Phillimore has an interesting note or two on his friend at this critical

time:—

_Feb. 2._—Gladstone looking well, but much aged. Spoke of anxiety

to retire when he could do so with honour, said he had _forced_

himself into the study of the whole question relating to Trinity

College, Dublin, and that he was sure that his enemies did not

understand the very curious facts relative to the university. It

seemed as if he meant to frame the government measure on a

historical and antiquarian basis. This will not satisfy the

country if the practical result is to place more power in the

hands of the papists. 10.—Gladstone looked very worn and anxious.

Spoke about the relief he should experience after Thursday, the

weight of the matter which he had to deal with, and the general

misapprehension which prevailed; thought the tide was turning in

their favour. 11.—Gladstone in high spirits, confident of success

on Thursday. 14.—Dined at Gladstone’s. Our host in high spirits at

his achievement of yesterday.

The leading provisions of the measure, though found by the able and expert

draftsman unusually hard to frame, may be very shortly stated, for the

question by the way is still in full blast. A new university of Dublin was

to rise, a teaching as well as an examining body, governed by a council

who were to appoint officers and regulate all matters and things affecting

the university. The constitution of this governing council was elaborately

devised, and it did not make clerical predominance ultimately impossible.

The affiliation of colleges, not excluding purely denominational

institutions, was in their hands. There were to be no religious tests for

either teachers or taught, and religious profession was to be no bar to

honours and emoluments. Money was provided by Trinity College, the

consolidated fund, and the church surplus, to the tune of £50,000 a year.

The principle was the old formula of mixed or united education, in which

protestants and catholics might side by side participate.

(M144) What many found intolerably obnoxious were two “gagging clauses.”

By one of these a teacher or other person of authority might be suspended

or deprived, who should in speaking or writing be held to have wilfully

given offence to the religious convictions of any member. The second and

graver of them was the prohibition of any university teacher in theology,

modern history, or moral and mental philosophy. The separate affiliated

colleges might make whatever arrangements they pleased for these subjects,

but the new university would not teach them directly and authoritatively.

This was undoubtedly a singular limitation for a university that had sent

forth Berkeley and Burke; nor was there ever a moment when in spite of the

specialisation of research, the deepest questions in the domain of thought

and belief more inevitably thrust themselves forward within common and

indivisible precincts.

III