The fall of the Government was hastened by the Premier's anxiety to
fulfil his pledge to pacify Ireland. The Church question was settled,
the land problem on its way to solution, and now Gladstone turned his
attention to the grievances of Roman Catholics on the question of a
university. The Prime Minister's pose as the only man capable of
settling Irish affairs had not been strengthened by the passing of a
coercion act in the spring of 1870, but if he imprisoned Fenians, he
generally followed it up by pressing for their release. And firmly
believing that if he conciliated the Roman Catholics he would bring
peace to the country, he introduced a measure into the House of Commons
seeking powers to establish a university acceptable to all classes and
creeds. It was defeated by three votes in one of the most memorable
and significant divisions Parliament has known. Friends and foes
abstained, and friends and foes voted with surprising inconsistency,
but the net result was the discomfiture of the Gladstonians and the
immediate resignation of the premier, the latter act prompted, no
doubt, by the knowledge that there was no other possible leader of a
Government in the country. {272} Mr. Gladstone came back--as he knew
he would--but the effects of the Irish University bill were felt right
down to the day that the leader of the Liberal party heard the results
of the General Election of 1874, and realized that his great rival,
Benjamin Disraeli, was at last at the head of a working majority.
When writing of Gladstone's colleagues, it is difficult to resist the
temptation to turn from them to speak of their chief. Lord Spencer,
however, was something more than a mere official obeying the orders of
his superior. His first term in Ireland laid the foundation of his
public life, and exhibited those principles of devotion to duty, as he
considered his duty to be, and a single-minded adherence to the
political principles that distinguished him above his changing and
vacillating colleagues. When Mr. Gladstone proposed his university
reforms, the viceroy worked his hardest, and Dublin Castle witnessed
numberless interviews between him and representatives of both Churches.
He saw Cardinal Cullen and obtained his views. As usual, the Roman
Catholic hierarchy, never doubtful as to its wants, asked too much, but
Spencer listened politely, and in due course informed Gladstone.
Doubtless, the English nobleman failed to understand the extraordinary
mixture of politics and religion that is always part of Irish affairs,
but he tried to understand and even to sympathize.
Gladstone's defeat in 1874 meant, of course, the viceroy's retirement
from Dublin, and if the majority of the members of the Liberal
administration {273} regretted their defeat, Lord Spencer was not one
of them. He merited the rest opposition gave him, and for six years
Tory noblemen acted as viceroys of Ireland.
The Duke of Abercorn's second viceroyalty was quiet and threadbare.
Disraeli was not the man to attempt heroic measures. Perhaps he
laboured to avoid Irish affairs, which since the Union had threatened
to monopolize the time of Parliament. He sent Sir Michael Hicks-Beach,
afterwards Viscount St. Aldwyn, to the Irish office, and trusted to the
viceroy and the Chief Secretary to shield him from the worries created
by the awkward fact that a Prime Minister's duties were not confined to
England. When the Duke of Abercorn sent in his resignation, in
December, 1876, owing to the state of his wife's health, Disraeli
prevailed upon another duke to take his place. This was the sixth Duke
of Marlborough, who had declined the viceroyalty in the first days of
the Government's existence. The Duke and Duchess of Abercorn retired
into private life, popular and respected, the duke living until 1885.
[Sidenote: The Duke of Marlborough]
The incoming Lord-Lieutenant was in his fifty-fifth year when in the
early days of 1877 he was sworn in as Viceroy of Ireland. One of
Disraeli's personal friends, the influence of the duke had helped the
Prime Minister from the outer ring of plebeian obscurity into the inner
circle of Conservative exclusiveness. Disraeli had a passion for
dukes, although that rank suggested dulness to his bizarre and Oriental
imagination. Marlborough {274} had been Lord President of the Council
in 1868 during Disraeli's first administration, and he was induced to
reconsider his decision not to join the ministry when the Duke of
Abercorn retired.
The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough directed their attention to the
amelioration of the lot of the poverty-stricken peasantry, and they
endeavoured also to aid the trade of Ireland. When the failure of the
crops brought a famine, the duchess inaugurated a relief fund, which,
with the help of the Mansion House, London, brought over L170,000 to
the rescue of the sufferers. Many other acts of kindness could be
recorded of them, and although their reign necessarily concluded in
May, 1880, on the destruction of the Tory Government, they accomplished
much in a brief space of time, and, without being great reformers,
achieved something in the way of reform. Her Excellency had been
before her marriage Lady Frances Tempest, and was a daughter of the
third Marquis of Londonderry. She was a dignified chatelaine of Dublin
Castle, a fit partner for a great nobleman. The rumblings of the Home
Rule agitation storm could be heard before they vacated the viceregal
position, for by now Charles Stewart Parnell had arisen to sound a new
battle-cry for Nationalist Ireland. The old methods of dead-and-gone
agitators were to be improved upon, new ones invented and exploited,
and a decisive battle fought for Irish independence.
[Sidenote: Agitation and crime]
The records of the day state that the Duke of Marlborough was 'popular'
and 'successful,' but {275} these are the records written by partisans.
A popular viceroy generally means a Lord-Lieutenant who exhibits an
amiable weakness to let things remain as they are, and as Marlborough
did this, he was an especial favourite of the official party. He was,
however, wise in his generation. Before his time history had taught
the vital lesson that the viceroy who did his best to please all
parties earned the hatred of all, and the men who ignored the pressing
problems of the day, and turned his term of office into a social orgy,
was acclaimed by the unthinking multitudes. Riots, and evictions, and
murders, were common enough in the closing months of Marlborough's
viceroyalty, but beyond giving his sanction to the various acts that
dealt with agrarian crimes and the troublous land problem, the viceroy
made no display of statesmanship or endangered his ducal equanimity.
It was to the Duke of Marlborough that Disraeli addressed his letter
asking the electors for a fresh mandate. He lived long enough to feel
thankful that the English electors decided in 1880 to have nothing to
do with Toryism, and so ordained that, instead of Beaconsfield
nominating a viceroy, the task should be Gladstone's. During his stay
in Dublin Marlborough had for private secretary Lord Randolph
Churchill. In 1883 the duke died at the comparatively early age of
sixty-one.
It was expected that Lord Spencer would return to Ireland, but he was
selected to fill the decorative post of Lord President of the Council,
and Earl Cowper was sent to cope with Parnell's {276} followers.
Cowper was forty-six years of age, and ten years previous to his
appointment had married a daughter of the fourth Lord Northampton. He
was a man of great strength of character, a charming host, and famous
for a temperament that he never allowed to be ruffled. A perfect host,
and a man of the world endowed with many talents, Earl Cowper might
have succeeded at almost anything except the one particular task to
which he was assigned. When he arrived in Dublin the country was in a
state of rebellion, the remarkable success of Parnell in uniting all
shades of Nationalists under his leadership having the result of
presenting the most formidable opposition to the Government yet
experienced in the history of both countries. Parnell had entered
Parliament in 1875, and four years later was popularly acclaimed the
new leader of the Irish people. His lightest words were sufficient to
render null and void the most important Act of Parliament, his orders
were reverenced and obeyed by a vast majority of his countrymen. When
Lord Cowper took up his duties Parnell was the ruler of Ireland, and
the efforts of the English Government to maintain a semblance of
authority would have been ludicrous if the results had not been so
tragic. Landlords, agents, and tenants were murdered in cold blood,
peaceful citizens were dragged into foul conspiracy by their bullying
neighbours, and Parnell went about in open defiance of the Government,
preaching rebellion and its ghastly accompaniments wherever he came.
Mr. W. E. Forster, the Chief Secretary, induced his official chief to
advise the {277} Cabinet to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and when
Gladstone hesitated, a practical demonstration of its necessity was
furnished by the arrest of Parnell charged with seditious conspiracy,
his abortive trial owing to the disagreement of the Dublin jury, and
the Irish leader's consequent triumph over his opponents. Then the
power to imprison without trial was given to the Irish executive, and
soon the gaols of the country were full to overflowing. With the
suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act the Land League was born, and a new
terror to officialism created.
[Sidenote: The Land League]
Lord Cowper's viceroyalty has been tersely described as occupying 'two
dismal years--the most dismal of the nineteenth century.' His own life
was threatened, elaborate plots to terminate the Chief Secretary's
existence were discovered as fast as an overworked detective department
could unravel its agents' reports, and from all over the country
murders were reported until it seemed that all sense of decency had
long since departed from the country. Encouraged by the success of the
Land League, a fresh series of revolting crimes shocked civilization.
Terrified English ministers tried the effects of another Land Act, and
in 1881 it was placed in the statute-book. This was a great triumph
for the Land League, and was regarded by its members as the
justification of its existence. Again a desire to conciliate had been
interpreted as a sign of weakness.
The new Land Act did not decrease the agitation, and on October 12,
1881, a five-hour sitting of the Cabinet resulted in an order to the
viceroy {278} to have Parnell arrested under the Coercion Act. The
Irish leader was thereupon taken to Kilmainham Gaol, and remained there
for six months. Optimists expected that this bold stroke would
intimidate the intimidators; it had an opposite effect. Mr. Forster
had to report that crime was actually on the increase, and that the
Land Act had not been of the slightest use. It was easy to imprison
Parnell, but the spirit of the movement remained abroad in the people.
In despair Gladstone turned to Parnell, clutching at the straw
presented by one of the Irishman's friends that Parnell was willing to
discuss terms of peace with the Government. The premier was willing,
anxious, in fact, to remove the reproach from his Government the state
of Ireland entailed, and he sent Forster to open negotiations with the
prisoner, who was a dictator. When Lord Cowper heard of the
preliminaries to what became known as the Kilmainham Treaty he
resigned, rightly deeming it demeaning and humiliating for responsible
ministers to treat with a man who had roused the passions of the
uncontrollables, and who, to his lasting disgrace, never denounced the
crimes the Land League produced until the greatest crime of all
convinced him that sometimes murder is a mistake. Mr. Gladstone
appealed to Lord Spencer, a member of his Cabinet, and an experienced
administrator of Irish affairs, to take up the most dangerous and
irksome post in the Government. The earl could not, of course, refuse,
for refusal in the circumstances could have been construed into a
confession of cowardice. {279} He had agreed in the Cabinet to the
_pourparlers_ with Parnell, and he was determined to give the Irish
leader an opportunity of retrieving the blunders of the Land League,
and doing so with a show of victory over the Government, which did not
care about its reputation on Irish matters provided an end was made of
the reign of the murderers.
[Sidenote: State of the country]
Immediate events justified Lord Cowper up to the hilt, who must have
watched with a grim satisfaction the terrible results of Mr.
Gladstone's Irish policy in the early eighties. When the time came
that disclosed Mr. Gladstone as the champion of Home Rule, Lord Cowper
took a leading part in the forces arrayed against his old chief. At a
meeting in a London theatre addressed by Lord Salisbury and the Marquis
of Hartington, Lord Cowper was in the chair, and his presence was a
tower of strength to the cause. After the final defeat of Liberal Home
Rule he dropped out of public life, and at his death--on July 19,
1905--he was almost forgotten by his contemporaries.
There is an admirable and eloquent description in Viscount Morley's
'Life of Gladstone' of the condition of Ireland when Lord Spencer began
his second viceroyalty: 'In 1882 Ireland seemed to be literally a
society on the verge of dissolution. The Invincibles still roved with
knives about the streets of Dublin. Discontent had been stirred in the
ranks of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and a dangerous mutiny broke out
in the metropolitan force. Over half of the country the demoralization
of every class, the terror, the fierce hatred, {280} the universal
distrust, had grown to an incredible pitch. The moral cowardice of
what ought to have been the governing class was astounding. The
landlords would hold meetings and agree not to go beyond a certain
abatement, and then they would go individually and privately offer to
the tenant a greater abatement. Even the agents of the law and the
Courts were shaken in their duty. The power of random arrest and
detention under the Coercion Act of 1881 had not improved the morale of
magistrates and police. The Sheriff would let the word get out that he
was coming to make a seizure, and profess surprise that the cattle had
vanished. The whole countryside turned out thousands in half the
counties in Ireland to attend flaming meetings, and if a man did not
attend angry neighbours trooped up to know the reason why. The clergy
hardly stirred a finger to restrain the wildness of the storm; some did
their best to raise it. All that was what Lord Spencer had to deal
with, the very foundations of the social fabric rocking.'
[Illustration: Earl Spencer, K.G.]
The appointment of Earl Spencer was not pleasing to Mr. Forster, and he
sent in his resignation, his ostensible reason being the proposed
suspension of the Coercion Act, which had enabled the Irish executive
to imprison Parnell. Forster, however, was more concerned with his own
status. Lord Spencer would retain his seat in the Cabinet, which meant
that the Chief Secretary's position would be of less importance than
hitherto. The Prime Minister accepted the resignation without more
than the expected and usual formal expressions {281} of regret. Lord
Frederick Cavendish was selected to succeed him, and on the same day
the viceroy and the Chief Secretary crossed the Channel. This was the
fatal May 6, 1882. Lord Spencer was sworn in at Dublin Castle, and
during the afternoon he was engaged in 'that grim apartment in Dublin
Castle, where successive Secretaries spend unshining hours in saying
"No" to impossible demands and hunting for plausible answers to
insoluble riddles.' At five o'clock the Viceroy started to ride to
Phoenix Park, and at six Lord Frederick Cavendish followed. In the
Park he was overtaken by Mr. Burke, the Under-Secretary, and a few
minutes later both men were foully murdered within sight of the
Viceregal Lodge.
[Sidenote: The Phoenix Park murders]
Lord Spencer wrote the following account of his knowledge of the
murders--a statement inspired by a report that he had actually
witnessed the affray and innocently regarded it as an unimportant
scuffle:
'It is said that I saw the murder. That is not so. I had asked
Cavendish to drive to the Park with me. He said he would not; he would
rather walk with Burke. Of course, if he had come with me it would not
have happened. I then rode to the Park with a small escort--I think,
my aide-de-camp and a trooper. Curiously enough, I stopped to look at
the polo-match which Carey described, so that he and I seem to have
been together on that occasion. I then turned towards the Viceregal
Lodge. The ordinary and more direct way for me to go was over the very
scene {282} of the murder. Had I so gone the murders would not
probably have been committed. Three men coming up would have prevented
anything of that kind. But I made a slight detour, and got to the
lodge another way. When I reached the Lodge I sat down near the window
and began to read some papers. Suddenly I heard a shriek which I shall
never forget. I seem to hear it now; it is always in my ears. This
shriek was repeated again and again. I got up to look out. I saw a
man rushing along. He jumped over the palings, and dashed up to the
Lodge shouting: "Mr. Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish are killed!"
There was great confusion, and immediately I rushed out; but someone of
the household stopped me, saying that it might be a ruse to get me out,
and advising me to wait and make inquiries. Of course, the inquiries
were made, and the truth soon discovered. I always deplore my
unfortunate decision to make that detour, always feeling that if I had
gone to the Lodge by the ordinary way the murders would have been
prevented. I have said that I did not see the murder, but my servant
did. He was upstairs, and saw a scuffle going on, but, of course, did
not know what it was about.'
No political crime produced as great a sensation as these senseless and
stupid murders. The news came to London late in the evening, when
Ministers were dining out. The Home Secretary was attending a
dinner-party at the Austrian Embassy when a messenger hurried in to
tell of the dreadful calamity, and very soon all his colleagues were in
possession of the dreadful tidings.
{283}
[Sidenote: Another Coercion Act]
The murders meant the end of the policy of conciliation, and the House
of Commons gave a ready assent to another Coercion Act. Parnell wrote
to Gladstone offering to resign his seat, but the premier was not the
person to judge members of the House of Commons. With perfect courtesy
he acknowledged the feeling that had prompted the Irish leader's
letter, though he must have known that if there had been no Land League
there would have been no Phoenix Park murders.
It is one of the most difficult of tasks to write familiar history in
an original manner. The worthless lives of the assassins paid the
penalty of the law, and a crude justice was meted out to Carey, the
informer, who was shot dead by O'Donnell on board the liner which was
taking him to safety. O'Donnell was brought back from South Africa and
executed, but the punishment of the actual murderers was a small part
of the after-effects of the whole disastrous episode.
It was not long before the party of progress by murder and revolution
cast off the sackcloth it had donned on the deaths of Mr. Burke and
Lord Frederick Cavendish. The viceroy, with his back against the wall,
was compelled to fight for his own life as well as for the existence of
law and order. The Parnellites, confident in their well-established
reputation for obstruction and their followers' capacity for riot,
looked forward to the day when they could dictate terms to one of the
great political parties in England. The granting of an extended
franchise in 1884 had cleared the {284} way for an all-Nationalist
Ireland. The Liberal party was, as usual, blindly handing to their
opponents weapons to be used for the destruction of Liberalism.
Mr. Gladstone was always a difficult leader to follow, but when he was
dealing with Irish affairs his movements resembled the lines created by
a maze. With the best of motives he performed the worst and most
foolish of actions, and Lord Spencer's task became more difficult every
day. The Government was defeated on the Budget, and a prolonged crisis
ensued. But before the resignation of the Cabinet Lord Spencer had to
deal with the notorious Maamtrasna case. This was, in brief, the trial
of some forty persons for the murder of an entire family. Twenty-one
of the convicted prisoners were executed, and it was alleged that some
of these were innocent. A fierce debate absorbed three days in the
House of Commons, and later on, when Lord Salisbury was premier and Sir
Michael Hicks-Beach was leader of the Commons, a motion was brought
forward censuring the administration of Earl Spencer. The only result
was to draw public attention once more to the fearless manner in which
the viceroy had carried out his duties, and even Tory members had to
rise and protest in forcible language against the action of Tory
leaders in condemning the man who risked his life to maintain law and
order.
[Sidenote: Lord Spencer's character]
A month after his retirement from the viceroyalty 300 members of both
houses of Parliament attended a banquet in his honour. It was {285}
noticed that Mr. Chamberlain was absent, but the presence of Lord
Hartington in the chair and Mr. Bright among the company testified
eloquently to the general opinion of Lord Spencer's conduct of Irish
affairs.
The three years of office that remained to Lord Spencer subsequent to
the Phoenix Park murders brought into prominence in Irish affairs Mr.
G. O. Trevelyan and Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, successive Chief
Secretaries. Neither was a pronounced success. The only person in the
limelight was the viceroy. His personal bravery dismayed his cowardly
foes, who, judging human nature by their own standard, could not but
stand in awe of the man who could ride to hounds while the country
round seethed with assassins. Trevelyan could earn the title of
'jelly-fish,' while Campbell-Bannerman utilized the position of Chief
Secretary to try and convince his superiors that he could do something
better if given greater opportunities. The viceroy was firm, just,
knowing no fear and showing no favour. The fury of his opponents found
expression in the attempt of an hysterical woman to horsewhip him, but
she got no farther than stopping the horses and brandishing her whip.
He was first called 'Rufus' because of his red beard, but this being
deemed too genial, was changed to the 'Red Earl,' and accepted as an
omen of his alleged 'red policy' of punishing murderers by hanging
them. It was hinted that the Lord Chancellor, Sir Edward Sullivan, was
the power behind the viceregal throne, and when the great lawyer died
the first {286} favourable opportunity that presented itself to taunt
the Lord-Lieutenant with leniency towards the criminal political
classes he was declared to have lost his backbone. On one occasion it
was thought that he was suffering from lumbago because he was seen
pressing his back with his hands; but a malicious wit declared that it
was only 'His Excellency feeling for his backbone.' The joke would
have been more effective if it contained just a grain of truth to
flavour it, but if there was one charge that could not be levelled
against Lord Spencer it was this taunt of lack of firmness. His only
piece of good fortune was the submission of the Irish bishops to the
Pope, who had censured them for disloyalty. This was a great help to
the castle. A keen pleasure to the viceroy and a cause of anxiety to
the police was a visit paid to Lord Spencer by the Prince of Wales on
April 8, 1885.
In the summer of 1885 Lord Salisbury formed a Government, and appointed
Lord Carnarvon Viceroy of Ireland. Within eight months a General
Election placed Mr. Gladstone in power once more, and Lord Aberdeen
spent the few but extremely critical months of life vouchsafed to the
Liberal party until Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill split up his
followers, and another General Election endorsed Lord Salisbury's claim
that the Conservatives and Unionists represented the real opinion of
the country on the question of Ireland and its government.
[Sidenote: Defeat of the Home Rule Bill]
Lord Spencer was President of the Council in 1885, and in 1892, when
Mr. Gladstone became {287} Prime Minister for the fourth and last time,
he was given the post of First Lord of the Admiralty. That ministry
brought in another Home Rule Bill, and passed it through the Commons;
but the House of Lords rejected it by the overwhelming majority of 378,
the actual figures being 419 for its rejection and 41 against. Mr.
Gladstone did not appeal to the country, and thus Home Rule passed out
of the Liberal repertoire for nineteen years.
If Queen Victoria had consulted Mr. Gladstone on the question of a
successor, he would have advised Lord Spencer's selection. Her
Majesty, however, sent for that brilliant dilettante, Lord Rosebery,
and Lord Spencer remained on at the Admiralty. There was some talk of
the premiership for him shortly before the resignation of Mr. Balfour's
Ministry at the close of 1905, but by then he was a spent force, worn
out and ill. He could not join Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Cabinet,
but he lent it his moral support, and that was not the least important
factor in bringing to reason the members of the egregious Liberal
Imperialist League, who at first viewed with suspicion the new premier,
and then rushed with one accord to be received into the strangest
political fold ever presided over by a Liberal shepherd. Lord Spencer
died in 1910 at the age of seventy-four, and it can be said of him, as
of the late Duke of Devonshire, that he could have risen to greater
heights had he not been born with a sense of modesty adorned by a good
nature that permitted younger men to pass him, and left him without a
{288} trace of rancour or bitterness. He had the satisfaction of
witnessing the amazing triumph of the Liberal party, and could die with
the knowledge that it savoured of the Gladstonian Liberalism of the
middle eighties and the early nineties--the Liberalism he fought for
and in whose interest he had sacrificed his best years.
{289}