=Source.=--Morley's _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii., pp. 188-245.
(Macmillans.)
On May 15 Mr. Gladstone announced ... that they proposed to
continue what he described as certain clauses of a valuable and
equitable description in the existing Coercion Act.
No Parliamentary situation could be more tempting to an astute
Opposition. The signs that the Cabinet was not united were
unmistakable.... The key to an operation that should at once, with
the aid of the disaffected Liberals and the Irish, turn out Mr.
Gladstone and secure the English elections, was an understanding
with Mr. Parnell.... Lord Salisbury and his confidential friends
had resolved [previous to the defeat of the Government], subject
to official information, to drop coercion, and the only visible
reason why they should form the resolution at that particular
moment was its probable effect upon Mr. Parnell. [Meanwhile] the
policy of the Central Board [for Ireland], of which Mr. Gladstone
so decisively approved, had been killed.... When it came to the
full Cabinet it could not be carried. [June 6. Government defeated
on an amendment to the Budget by 264 to 252.] The defeat of the
Gladstone Government was the first success of a combination
between Tories and Irish that proved of cardinal importance to
policies and parties for several critical months to come.... The
new Government were not content with renouncing coercion for the
present. They cast off all responsibility for its practice in
the past.... In July a singular incident occurred, nothing less
strange than an interview between the new Lord-Lieutenant [Lord
Carnarvon] and the leader of the Irish party. To realize its full
significance we have to recall the profound odium that at this
time enveloped Mr. Parnell's name in the minds of nearly all
Englishmen.... The transaction had consequences, and the Carnarvon
episode was a pivot. The effect on the mind of Mr. Parnell was easy
to foresee.... Why should he not believe that the alliance formed
in June ... had really blossomed from a mere lobby manœuvre and
election expedient into a policy adopted by serious statesmen?
[In Midlothian, on November 9, Mr. Gladstone said:] "It will be a
vital danger to the country and to the empire, if at a time when a
demand from Ireland for larger powers of self-government is to be
dealt with, there is not in Parliament a party totally independent
of the Irish vote." ... Mr. Gladstone's cardinal deliverance in
November had been preceded by an important event. On October 7,
1885, Lord Salisbury made that speech at Newport which is one of
the tallest and most striking landmarks in the shifting sands of
this controversy.... Some of the more astute of the Minister's own
colleagues were delighted with his speech, as keeping the Irishmen
steady to the Tory party.... The question on which side the Irish
vote in Great Britain should be thrown seems not to have been
decided until after Mr. Gladstone's speech. It was then speedily
settled. On November 21 a manifesto was issued, handing over the
Irish vote in Great Britain solid to the orator of the Newport
speech. The tactics were obvious. It was Mr. Parnell's interest to
bring the two contending British parties as near as might be to a
level, and this he could only hope to do by throwing his strength
upon the weaker side. It was from the weaker side, if they could
be maintained in office, that he would get the best terms....
Some estimated the loss to the Liberal party in this island at
twenty seats, others at forty. Whether twenty or forty, these
lost seats made a fatal difference in the division on the Irish
Bill a few months later.... But this was not all, and was not the
worst of it.... Passions were roused, and things were said about
Irishmen that could not at once be forgotten; and the great task
of conversion in 1886, difficult in any case, was made a thousand
times more difficult still by the antipathies of the electoral
battle of 1885. Meanwhile it was for the moment, and for the
purposes of the moment, a striking success.