A Cabinet Meeting
And now will the Muses assist me while I sing an altogether new song?
On the Tuesday the Cabinet met at the First Lord’s official residence
in Downing Street, and I will attempt to describe what, according to
the bewildered brain of a poor fictionist, was said or might have
been said, what was done or might have been done, on so august an
occasion.
The poor fictionist very frequently finds himself to have been wrong
in his description of things in general, and is told so, roughly by
the critics, and tenderly by the friends of his bosom. He is moved
to tell of things of which he omits to learn the nature before he
tells of them--as should be done by a strictly honest fictionist. He
catches salmon in October; or shoots his partridges in March. His
dahlias bloom in June, and his birds sing in the autumn. He opens the
opera-houses before Easter, and makes Parliament sit on a Wednesday
evening. And then those terrible meshes of the Law! How is a
fictionist, in these excited days, to create the needed biting
interest without legal difficulties; and how again is he to steer his
little bark clear of so many rocks,--when the rocks and the shoals
have been purposely arranged to make the taking of a pilot on board a
necessity? As to those law meshes, a benevolent pilot will, indeed,
now and again give a poor fictionist a helping hand,--not used,
however, generally, with much discretion. But from whom is any
assistance to come in the august matter of a Cabinet assembly? There
can be no such assistance. No man can tell aught but they who will
tell nothing. But then, again, there is this safety, that let the
story be ever so mistold,--let the fiction be ever so far removed
from the truth, no critic short of a Cabinet Minister himself can
convict the narrator of error.
It was a large dingy room, covered with a Turkey carpet, and
containing a dark polished mahogany dinner-table, on very heavy
carved legs, which an old messenger was preparing at two o’clock in
the day for the use of her Majesty’s Ministers. The table would have
been large enough for fourteen guests, and along the side further
from the fire, there were placed some six heavy chairs, good
comfortable chairs, stuffed at the back as well as the seat,--but on
the side nearer to the fire the chairs were placed irregularly; and
there were four armchairs,--two on one side and two on the other.
There were four windows to the room, which looked on to St. James’s
Park, and the curtains of the windows were dark and heavy,--as became
the gravity of the purposes to which that chamber was appropriated.
In old days it had been the dining-room of one Prime Minister after
another. To Pitt it had been the abode of his own familiar prandial
Penates, and Lord Liverpool had been dull there among his dull
friends for long year after year. The Ministers of the present day
find it more convenient to live in private homes, and, indeed, not
unfrequently carry their Cabinets with them. But, under Mr. Mildmay’s
rule, the meetings were generally held in the old room at the
official residence. Thrice did the aged messenger move each armchair,
now a little this way and now a little that, and then look at them as
though something of the tendency of the coming meeting might depend
on the comfort of its leading members. If Mr. Mildmay should find
himself to be quite comfortable, so that he could hear what was said
without a struggle to his ear, and see his colleagues’ faces clearly,
and feel the fire without burning his shins, it might be possible
that he would not insist upon resigning. If this were so, how
important was the work now confided to the hands of that aged
messenger! When his anxious eyes had glanced round the room some
half a dozen times, when he had touched each curtain, laid his
hand upon every chair, and dusted certain papers which lay upon a
side-table,--and which had been lying there for two years, and at
which no one ever looked or would look,--he gently crept away and
ensconced himself in an easy chair not far from the door of the
chamber. For it might be necessary to stop the attempt of a rash
intruder on those secret counsels.
Very shortly there was heard the ring of various voices in the
passages,--the voices of men speaking pleasantly, the voices of men
with whom it seemed, from their tone, that things were doing well
in the world. And then a cluster of four or five gentlemen entered
the room. At first sight they seemed to be as ordinary gentlemen as
you shall meet anywhere about Pall Mall on an afternoon. There was
nothing about their outward appearance of the august wiggery of
statecraft, nothing of the ponderous dignity of ministerial position.
That little man in the square-cut coat,--we may almost call it a
shooting-coat,--swinging an umbrella and wearing no gloves, is no
less a person than the Lord Chancellor,--Lord Weazeling,--who made
a hundred thousand pounds as Attorney-General, and is supposed
to be the best lawyer of his age. He is fifty, but he looks to
be hardly over forty, and one might take him to be, from his
appearance,--perhaps a clerk in the War Office, well-to-do, and
popular among his brother-clerks. Immediately with him is Sir Harry
Coldfoot, also a lawyer by profession, though he has never practised.
He has been in the House for nearly thirty years, and is now at the
Home Office. He is a stout, healthy, grey-haired gentleman, who
certainly does not wear the cares of office on his face. Perhaps,
however, no minister gets more bullied than he by the press, and men
say that he will be very willing to give up to some political enemy
the control of the police, and the onerous duty of judging in all
criminal appeals. Behind these come our friend Mr. Monk, young Lord
Cantrip from the colonies next door, than whom no smarter young peer
now does honour to our hereditary legislature, and Sir Marmaduke
Morecombe, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Why Sir
Marmaduke has always been placed in Mr. Mildmay’s Cabinets nobody
ever knew. As Chancellor of the Duchy he has nothing to do,--and were
there anything, he would not do it. He rarely speaks in the House,
and then does not speak well. He is a handsome man, or would be but
for an assumption of grandeur in the carriage of his eyes, giving to
his face a character of pomposity which he himself well deserves. He
was in the Guards when young, and has been in Parliament since he
ceased to be young. It must be supposed that Mr. Mildmay has found
something in him, for he has been included in three successive
liberal Cabinets. He has probably the virtue of being true to Mr.
Mildmay, and of being duly submissive to one whom he recognises as
his superior.
Within two minutes afterwards the Duke followed, with Plantagenet
Palliser. The Duke, as all the world knows, was the Duke of St.
Bungay, the very front and head of the aristocratic old Whigs of the
country,--a man who has been thrice spoken of as Prime Minister, and
who really might have filled the office had he not known himself to
be unfit for it. The Duke has been consulted as to the making of
Cabinets for the last five-and-thirty years, and is even now not an
old man in appearance;--a fussy, popular, clever, conscientious man,
whose digestion has been too good to make politics a burden to him,
but who has thought seriously about his country, and is one who will
be sure to leave memoirs behind him. He was born in the semi-purple
of ministerial influences, and men say of him that he is honester
than his uncle, who was Canning’s friend, but not so great a man as
his grandfather, with whom Fox once quarrelled, and whom Burke loved.
Plantagenet Palliser, himself the heir to a dukedom, was the young
Chancellor of the Exchequer, of whom some statesmen thought much as
the rising star of the age. If industry, rectitude of purpose, and
a certain clearness of intellect may prevail, Planty Pall, as he is
familiarly called, may become a great Minister.
Then came Viscount Thrift by himself;--the First Lord of the
Admiralty, with the whole weight of a new iron-clad fleet upon his
shoulders. He has undertaken the Herculean task of cleansing the
dockyards,--and with it the lesser work of keeping afloat a navy that
may be esteemed by his countrymen to be the best in the world. And he
thinks that he will do both, if only Mr. Mildmay will not resign;--an
industrious, honest, self-denying nobleman, who works without ceasing
from morn to night, and who hopes to rise in time to high things,--to
the translating of Homer, perhaps, and the wearing of the Garter.
Close behind him there was a ruck of Ministers, with the
much-honoured grey-haired old Premier in the midst of them. There was
Mr. Gresham, the Foreign Minister, said to be the greatest orator
in Europe, on whose shoulders it was thought that the mantle of Mr.
Mildmay would fall,--to be worn, however, quite otherwise than Mr.
Mildmay had worn it. For Mr. Gresham is a man with no feelings
for the past, void of historical association, hardly with
memories,--living altogether for the future which he is anxious to
fashion anew out of the vigour of his own brain. Whereas, with Mr.
Mildmay, even his love of reform is an inherited passion for an
old-world Liberalism. And there was with them Mr. Legge Wilson, the
brother of a peer, Secretary at War, a great scholar and a polished
gentleman, very proud of his position as a Cabinet Minister, but
conscious that he has hardly earned it by political work. And Lord
Plinlimmon is with them, the Comptroller of India,--of all working
lords the most jaunty, the most pleasant, and the most popular, very
good at taking chairs at dinners, and making becoming speeches at the
shortest notice, a man apparently very free and open in his ways of
life,--but cautious enough in truth as to every step, knowing well
how hard it is to climb and how easy to fall. Mr. Mildmay entered
the room leaning on Lord Plinlimmon’s arm, and when he made his way
up among the armchairs upon the rug before the fire, the others
clustered around him with cheering looks and kindly questions. Then
came the Privy Seal, our old friend Lord Brentford, last,--and
I would say least, but that the words of no councillor could go
for less in such an assemblage than will those of Sir Marmaduke
Morecombe, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
Mr. Mildmay was soon seated in one of the armchairs, while Lord
Plinlimmon leaned against the table close at his elbow. Mr. Gresham
stood upright at the corner of the chimney-piece furthest from Mr.
Mildmay, and Mr. Palliser at that nearest to him. The Duke took the
armchair close at Mr. Mildmay’s left hand. Lord Plinlimmon was, as I
have said, leaning against the table, but the Lord Chancellor, who
was next to him, sat upon it. Viscount Thrift and Mr. Monk occupied
chairs on the further side of the table, near to Mr. Mildmay’s end,
and Mr. Legge Wilson placed himself at the head of the table, thus
joining them as it were into a body. The Home Secretary stood before
the Lord Chancellor screening him from the fire, and the Chancellor
of the Duchy, after waiting for a few minutes as though in doubt,
took one of the vacant armchairs. The young lord from the Colonies
stood a little behind the shoulders of his great friend from the
Foreign Office; and the Privy Seal, after moving about for a while
uneasily, took a chair behind the Chancellor of the Duchy. One
armchair was thus left vacant, but there was no other comer.
“It is not so bad as I thought it would be,” said the Duke, speaking
aloud, but nevertheless addressing himself specially to his chief.
“It was bad enough,” said Mr. Mildmay, laughing.
“Bad enough indeed,” said Sir Marmaduke Morecombe, without any
laughter.
“And such a good bill lost,” said Lord Plinlimmon. “The worst of
these failures is, that the same identical bill can never be brought
in again.”
“So that if the lost bill was best, the bill that will not be lost
can only be second best,” said the Lord Chancellor.
“I certainly did think that after the debate before Easter we should
not have come to shipwreck about the ballot,” said Mr. Mildmay.
“It was brewing for us all along,” said Mr. Gresham, who then with a
gesture of his hand and a pressure of his lips withheld words which
he was nearly uttering, and which would not, probably, have been
complimentary to Mr. Turnbull. As it was, he turned half round and
said something to Lord Cantrip which was not audible to any one else
in the room. It was worthy of note, however, that Mr. Turnbull’s name
was not once mentioned aloud at that meeting.
“I am afraid it was brewing all along,” said Sir Marmaduke Morecombe
gravely.
“Well, gentlemen, we must take it as we get it,” said Mr. Mildmay,
still smiling. “And now we must consider what we shall do at once.”
Then he paused as though expecting that counsel would come to him
first from one colleague and then from another. But no such counsel
came, and probably Mr. Mildmay did not in the least expect that it
would come.
“We cannot stay where we are, of course,” said the Duke. The Duke was
privileged to say as much as that. But though every man in the room
knew that it must be so, no one but the Duke would have said it,
before Mr. Mildmay had spoken plainly himself.
“No,” said Mr. Mildmay; “I suppose that we can hardly stay where we
are. Probably none of us wish it, gentlemen.” Then he looked round
upon his colleagues, and there came a sort of an assent, though there
were no spoken words. The sound from Sir Marmaduke Morecombe was
louder than that from the others;--but yet from him it was no more
than an attesting grunt. “We have two things to consider,” continued
Mr. Mildmay,--and though he spoke in a very low voice, every word was
heard by all present,--“two things chiefly, that is; the work of the
country and the Queen’s comfort. I propose to see her Majesty this
afternoon at five,--that is, in something less than two hours’ time,
and I hope to be able to tell the House by seven what has taken place
between her Majesty and me. My friend, his Grace, will do as much in
the House of Lords. If you agree with me, gentlemen, I will explain
to the Queen that it is not for the welfare of the country that we
should retain our places, and I will place your resignations and my
own in her Majesty’s hands.”
“You will advise her Majesty to send for Lord de Terrier,” said Mr.
Gresham.
“Certainly;--there will be no other course open to me.”
“Or to her,” said Mr. Gresham. To this remark from the rising
Minister of the day, no word of reply was made; but of those present
in the room three or four of the most experienced servants of the
Crown felt that Mr. Gresham had been imprudent. The Duke, who had.
ever been afraid of Mr. Gresham, told Mr. Palliser afterwards that
such an observation should not have been made; and Sir Harry Coldfoot
pondered upon it uneasily, and Sir Marmaduke Morecombe asked Mr.
Mildmay what he thought about it. “Times change so much, and with the
times the feelings of men,” said Mr. Mildmay. But I doubt whether Sir
Marmaduke quite understood him.
There was silence in the room for a moment or two after Mr. Gresham
had spoken, and then Mr. Mildmay again addressed his friends. “Of
course it may be possible that my Lord de Terrier may foresee
difficulties, or may find difficulties which will oblige him, either
at once, or after an attempt has been made, to decline the task which
her Majesty will probably commit to him. All of us, no doubt, know
that the arrangement of a government is not the most easy task in
the world; and that it is not made the more easy by an absence of a
majority in the House of Commons.”
“He would dissolve, I presume,” said the Duke.
“I should say so,” continued Mr. Mildmay. “But it may not improbably
come to pass that her Majesty will feel herself obliged to send again
for some one or two of us, that we may tender to her Majesty the
advice which we owe to her;--for me, for instance, or for my friend
the Duke. In such a matter she would be much guided probably by what
Lord de Terrier might have suggested to her. Should this be so, and
should I be consulted, my present feeling is that we should resume
our offices so that the necessary business of the session should be
completed, and that we should then dissolve Parliament, and thus
ascertain the opinion of the country. In such case, however, we
should of course meet again.”
“I quite think that the course proposed by Mr. Mildmay will be the
best,” said the Duke, who had no doubt already discussed the matter
with his friend the Prime Minister in private. No one else said a
word either of argument or disagreement, and the Cabinet Council was
broken up. The old messenger, who had been asleep in his chair, stood
up and bowed as the Ministers walked by him, and then went in and
rearranged the chairs.
“He has as much idea of giving up as you or I have,” said Lord
Cantrip to his friend Mr. Gresham, as they walked arm-in-arm together
from the Treasury Chambers across St. James’s Park towards the clubs.
“I am not sure that he is not right,” said Mr. Gresham.
“Do you mean for himself or for the country?” asked Lord Cantrip.
“For his future fame. They who have abdicated and have clung to their
abdication have always lost by it. Cincinnatus was brought back
again, and Charles V. is felt to have been foolish. The peaches of
retired ministers of which we hear so often have generally been
cultivated in a constrained seclusion;--or at least the world so
believes.” They were talking probably of Mr. Mildmay, as to whom some
of his colleagues had thought it probable, knowing that he would now
resign, that he would have to-day declared his intention of laying
aside for ever the cares of office.
Mr. Monk walked home alone, and as he went there was something of
a feeling of disappointment at heart, which made him ask himself
whether Mr. Turnbull might not have been right in rebuking him for
joining the Government. But this, I think, was in no way due to Mr.
Mildmay’s resignation, but rather to a conviction on Mr. Monk’s part
that that he had contributed but little to his country’s welfare by
sitting in Mr. Mildmay’s Cabinet.