=Source.=--Morley's _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii., pp. 364-368.
(Macmillans.)
As it happened, all this [Randolph Churchill's resignation of the
Exchequer, and Goschen's appointment] gave a shake to both of
the Unionist wings. The ominous clouds of coercion were sailing
slowly but discernibly along the horizon, and this made men in the
Unionist camp still more restless and uneasy. Mr. Chamberlain, on
the very day of the announcement of the Churchill resignation,
had made a speech that was taken to hold out an olive-branch to
his old friends. Sir William Harcourt ... thought the break-up
of a great political combination to be so immense an evil as to
call for almost any sacrifices to prevent it. He instantly wrote
to Birmingham to express his desire to co-operate in reunion,
and in the course of a few days five members of the original
Liberal Cabinet of 1886 met at his house in what is known as the
Round Table Conference (Sir W. Harcourt, Mr. Chamberlain, Lord
Herschell, Sir George Trevelyan, and myself).... Mr. Gladstone gave
the Round Table his blessing, his "general idea being that he had
better meddle as little as possible with the Conference, and retain
a free hand." Lord Hartington would neither join the Conference
nor deny that he thought it premature.... On the other side,
both English Liberals and Irish Nationalists were equally uneasy
lest the unity of the party should be bought by the sacrifice of
fundamentals.... Mr. Parnell, though alive to the truth that when
people go into a conference it usually means that they are willing
to give up something, was thoroughly awake to the satisfactory
significance of the Birmingham overtures.
Things at the Round Table for some time went smoothly enough.
Mr. Chamberlain gradually advanced the whole length. He publicly
committed himself to the expediency of establishing some kind of
legislative authority in Dublin in accordance with Mr. Gladstone's
principle, with a preference, in his own mind, for a plan on the
lines of Canada. This he followed up, also in public, by the
admission that of course the Irish legislature must be allowed
to organize their own form of executive government, either by an
imitation on a small scale of all that goes on at Westminster and
Whitehall, or in whatever other shape they might think proper....
Then the surface became mysteriously ruffled. Language was used
by some of the plenipotentiaries in public, of which each side in
turn complained as inconsistent with conciliatory negotiations in
private. At last, on the very day on which the provisional result
of the Conference was laid before Mr. Gladstone, there appeared
in a print called _The Baptist_ an article from Mr. Chamberlain
containing an ardent plea for the disestablishment of the Welsh
Church, but warning the Welshmen that they and the Scotch crofters,
and the English labourers--thirty-two millions of people--must all
go without much-needed legislation because three millions were
disloyal, while nearly six hundred members of Parliament would
be reduced to forced inactivity because some eighty delegates,
representing the policy and receiving the pay of the Chicago
Convention, were determined to obstruct all business until their
demands were conceded. Men naturally asked what was the use of
continuing a discussion when one party to it was attacking in this
peremptory fashion the very persons and the policy that in private
he was supposed to accept. Mr. Gladstone showed no implacability
... he said ... "I am inclined to think we can hardly do more
now.... We are quite willing that the subject should stand over for
resumption at a convenient season."
The resumption never happened. Two or three weeks later Mr.
Chamberlain announced that he did not intend to return to the
Round Table. No other serious and formal attempt was ever made on
either side to prevent the Liberal Unionists from hardening into a
separate species. When they became accomplices in coercion they cut
off the chances of reunion.