Decision by majorities is as much an expedient as lighting by gas.
In adopting it as a rule, we are not realising perfection, but
bowing to an imperfection. It has the great merit of avoiding, and
that by a test perfectly definite, the last resort to violence;
and of making force itself the servant instead of the master of
authority. But our country rejoices in the belief that she does
not decide all things by majorities.—GLADSTONE (1858).
I
“The word procedure,” said Mr. Gladstone to a club of young political
missionaries in 1884, “has in it something homely, and it is difficult for
any one, except those who pass their lives within the walls of parliament,
to understand how vital and urgent a truth it is, that there is no more
urgent demand, there is no aim or purpose more absolutely essential to the
future victories and the future efficiency of the House of Commons, than
that it should effect, with the support of the nation—for it can be
effected in no other way—some great reform in the matter of its
procedure.” He spoke further of the “absolute and daily-growing necessity
of what I will describe as a great internal reform of the House of
Commons, quite distinct from that reform beyond its doors on which our
hearts are at present especially set.” Reform from within and reform from
without were the two tasks, neither of them other than difficult in
themselves and both made supremely difficult by the extraordinary spirit
of faction at that time animating the minority. The internal reform had
been made necessary, as Mr. Gladstone expressed it, by systematised
obstruction, based upon the abuse of ancient and generous rules, under
which system the House of Commons “becomes more and more the slave of some
of the poorest and most insignificant among its members.” Forty years
before he told the provost of Oriel, “The forms of parliament are little
more than a mature expression of the principles of justice in their
application to the proceedings of deliberative bodies, having it for their
object to secure freedom and reflection, and well fitted to attain that
object.” These high ideals had been gradually lowered, for Mr. Parnell had
found out that the rules which had for their object the security of
freedom and reflection, could be still more effectually wrested to objects
the very opposite.
In Mr. Gladstone’s first session (1833) 395 members (the speaker excluded)
spoke, and the total number of speeches was 5765. Fifty years later, in
the session of 1883, the total number of speeches had risen to 21,160. The
remedies proposed from time to time in this parliament by Mr. Gladstone
were various, and were the occasion of many fierce and stubborn conflicts.
But the subject is in the highest degree technical, and only intelligible
to those who, as Mr. Gladstone said, “pass their lives within the walls of
parliament”—perhaps not by any means to all even of them. His papers
contain nothing of interest or novelty upon the question either of
devolution or of the compulsory stoppage of debate. We may as well,
therefore, leave it alone, only observing that the necessity for the
closure was probably the most unpalatable of all the changes forced on Mr.
Gladstone by change in social and political circumstance. To leave the
subject alone is not to ignore its extreme importance, either in the
effect of revolution in procedure upon the character of the House, and its
power of despatching and controlling national business; or as an
indication that the old order was yielding in the political sphere as
everywhere else to the conditions of a new time.
II
The question of extending to householders in the country the franchise
that in 1867 had been conferred on householders in boroughs, had been
first pressed with eloquence and resolution by Mr. Trevelyan. In 1876 he
introduced two resolutions, one for extended franchise, the other for a
new (M46) arrangement of seats, made necessary by the creation of the new
voters. In a tory parliament he had, of course, no chance. Mr. Gladstone,
not naturally any more ardent for change in political machinery than Burke
or Canning had been, was in no hurry about it, but was well aware that the
triumphant parliament of 1880 could not be allowed to expire without the
effective adoption by the government of proposals in principle such as
those made by Mr. Trevelyan in 1876. One wing of the cabinet hung back.
Mr. Gladstone himself, reading the signs in the political skies, felt that
the hour had struck; the cabinet followed, and the bill was framed. Never,
said Mr. Gladstone, was a bill so large in respect of the numbers to have
votes; so innocent in point of principle, for it raised no new questions
and sprang from no new principles. It went, he contended and most truly
contended, to the extreme of consideration for opponents, and avoided
several points that had especial attractions for friends. So likewise, the
general principles on which redistribution of seats would be governed,
were admittedly framed in a conservative spirit.
The comparative magnitude of the operation was thus described by Mr.
Gladstone (Feb. 28, 1884):—
In 1832 there was passed what was considered a Magna Charta of
British liberties; but that Magna Charta of British liberties
added, according to the previous estimate of Lord John Russell,
500,000, while according to the results considerably less than
500,000 were added to the entire constituency of the three
countries. After 1832 we come to 1866. At that time the total
constituency of the United Kingdom reached 1,364,000. By the bills
which were passed between 1867 and 1869 that number was raised to
2,448,000. Under the action of the present law the constituency
has reached in round numbers what I would call 3,000,000. This
bill, if it passes as presented, will add to the English
constituency over 1,300,000 persons. It will add to the Scotch
constituency, Scotland being at present rather better provided in
this respect than either of the other countries, over 200,000, and
to the Irish constituency over 400,000; or in the main, to the
present aggregate constituency of the United Kingdom taken at
3,000,000 it will add 2,000,000 more, nearly twice as much as was
added since 1867, and more than four times as much as was added in
1832.
The bill was read a second time (April 7) by the overwhelming majority of
340 against 210. Even those who most disliked the measure admitted that a
majority of this size could not be made light of, though they went on in
charity to say that it did not represent the honest opinion of those who
composed it. It was in fact, as such persons argued, the strongest proof
of the degradation brought into our politics by the Act of 1867. “All the
bribes of Danby or of Walpole or of Pelham,” cried one excited critic,
“all the bullying of the Tudors, all the lobbying of George III., would
have been powerless to secure it in the most corrupt or the most servile
days of the ancient House of Commons.”(74)
On the third reading the opposition disappeared from the House, and on Mr.
Gladstone’s prompt initiative it was placed on record in the journals that
the bill had been carried by a unanimous verdict. It went to the Lords,
and by a majority, first of 59 and then of 50, they put what Mr. Gladstone
mildly called “an effectual stoppage on the bill, or in other words did
practically reject it.” The plain issue, if we can call it plain, was
this. What the tories, with different degrees of sincerity, professed to
dread was that the election might take place on the new franchise, but
with an unaltered disposition of parliamentary seats. At heart the bulk of
them were as little friendly to a lowered franchise in the counties, as
they had been in the case of the towns before Mr. Disraeli educated them.
But this was a secret dangerous to let out, for the enfranchised workers
in the towns would never understand why workers in the villages should not
have a vote. Apart from this, the tory leaders believed that unless the
allotment of seats went with the addition of a couple of million new
voters, the prospect would be ruinously unfavourable to their party, and
they offered determined resistance to the chance of a jockeying operation
of this (M47) kind. At least one very eminent man among them had privately
made up his mind that the proceeding supposed to be designed by their
opponents—their distinct professions notwithstanding—would efface the tory
party for thirty years to come. Mr. Gladstone and his government on the
other hand agreed, on grounds of their own and for reasons of their own,
that the two changes should come into operation together. What they
contended was, that to tack redistribution on to franchise, was to scotch
or kill franchise. “I do not hesitate to say,” Mr. Gladstone told his
electors, “that those who are opposing us, and making use of this topic of
redistribution of seats as a means for defeating the franchise bill, know
as well as we do that, had we been such idiots and such dolts as to
present to parliament a bill for the combined purpose, or to bring in two
bills for the two purposes as one measure—I say, they know as well as we
do, that a disgraceful failure would have been the result of our folly,
and that we should have been traitors to you, and to the cause we had in
hand.”(75) Disinterested onlookers thought there ought to be no great
difficulty in securing the result that both sides desired. As the Duke of
Argyll put it to Mr. Gladstone, if in private business two men were to
come to a breach, when standing so near to one another in aim and
profession, they would be shut up in bedlam. This is just what the
judicious reader will think to-day.
The controversy was transported from parliament to the platform, and a
vigorous agitation marked the autumn recess. It was a double agitation.
What began as a campaign on behalf of the rural householder, threatened to
end as one against hereditary legislators. It is a well-known advantage in
movements of this sort to be not only for, but also against, somebody or
something; against a minister, by preference, or if not an individual,
then against a body. A hereditary legislature in a community that has
reached the self-governing stage is an anachronism that makes the easiest
of all marks for mockery and attack, so long as it lasts. Nobody can doubt
that if Mr. Gladstone had been the frantic demagogue or fretful
revolutionist that his opponents thought, he now had an excellent chance
of bringing the question of the House of Lords irresistibly to the front.
As it was, in the midst of the storm raised by his lieutenants and
supporters all over the country, he was the moderating force, elaborately
appealing, as he said, to the reason rather than the fears of his
opponents.
One reproachful passage in his speeches this autumn acquires a rather
peculiar significance in the light of the events that were in the coming
years to follow. He is dealing with the argument that the hereditary House
protects the nation against fleeting opinions:—
How is it with regard to the solid and permanent opinion of the
nation? We have had twelve parliaments since the Reform Act,—I
have a right to say so, as I have sat in every one of them,—and
the opinion, the national opinion, has been exhibited in the
following manner. Ten of those parliaments have had a liberal
majority. The eleventh parliament was the one that sat from 1841
to 1847. It was elected as a tory parliament; but in 1846 it put
out the conservative government of Sir Robert Peel, and put in and
supported till its dissolution, the liberal government of Lord
John Russell. That is the eleventh parliament. But then there is
the twelfth parliament, and that is one that you and I know a good
deal about [Lord Beaconsfield’s parliament], for we talked largely
on the subject of its merits and demerits, whichever they may be,
at the time of the last election. That parliament was, I admit, a
tory parliament from the beginning to the end. But I want to know,
looking back for a period of more than fifty years, which
represented the solid permanent conviction of the nation?—the ten
parliaments that were elected upon ten out of the twelve
dissolutions, or the one parliament that chanced to be elected
from the disorganized state of the liberal party in the early part
of the year 1874? Well, here are ten parliaments on the one side;
here is one parliament on the other side.... The House of Lords
was in sympathy with the one parliament, and was in opposition ...
to the ten parliaments. And yet you are told, when—we will say for
forty-five years out of fifty—practically the nation has
manifested its liberal tendencies by the election of liberal
parliaments, and once only has chanced to elect a thoroughly tory
parliament, you are told that it is the thoroughly tory parliament
that represents the solid and permanent opinion of the
country.(76)
In time a curious thing, not yet adequately explained, fell out, for the
extension of the franchise in 1867 and now in 1884 resulted in a reversal
of the apparent law of things that had ruled our political parties through
the epoch that Mr. Gladstone has just sketched. The five parliaments since
1884 have not followed the line of the ten parliaments preceding,
notwithstanding the enlargement of direct popular power.
III
In August Mr. Gladstone submitted to the Queen a memorandum on the
political situation. It was much more elaborate than the ordinary official
submissions. Lord Granville was the only colleague who had seen it, and
Mr. Gladstone was alone responsible for laying it before the sovereign. It
is a masterly statement of the case, starting from the assumption for the
sake of argument that the tories were right and the liberals wrong as to
the two bills; then proceeding on the basis of a strongly expressed desire
to keep back a movement for organic change; next urging the signs that
such a movement would go forward with irresistible force if the bill were
again rejected; and concluding thus:—
I may say in conclusion that there is no personal act if it be
compatible with personal honour and likely to contribute to an end
which I hold very dear, that I would not gladly do for the purpose
of helping to close the present controversy, and in closing it to
prevent the growth of one probably more complex and more
formidable.
This document, tempered, unrhetorical, almost dispassionate, was the
starting-point of proceedings that, after enormous difficulties had been
surmounted by patience and perseverance, working through his power in
parliament and his authority in the country, ended in final pacification
and a sound political settlement. It was Mr. Gladstone’s statesmanship
that brought this pacification into sight and within reach.
The Queen was deeply struck both by the force of his arguments and the
earnest tone in which they were pressed. Though doubting whether there was
any strong desire for a change in the position of the House of Lords,
still she “did not shut her eyes to the possible gravity of the situation”
(Aug. 31). She seemed inclined to take some steps for ascertaining the
opinion of the leaders of opposition, with a view to inducing them to
modify their programme. The Duke of Richmond visited Balmoral (Sept. 13),
but when Mr. Gladstone, then himself on Deeside, heard what had passed in
the direction of compromise, he could only say, “Waste of breath!” To all
suggestions of a dissolution on the case in issue, Mr. Gladstone said to a
confidential emissary from Balmoral:—
Never will I be a party to dissolving in order to determine
whether the Lords or the Commons were right upon the Franchise
bill. If I have anything to do with dissolution, it will be a
dissolution upon organic change in the House of Lords. Should this
bill be again rejected in a definite manner, there will be only
two courses open to me, one to cut out of public life, which I
shall infinitely prefer; the other to become a supporter of
organic change in the House of Lords, which I hate and which I am
making all this fuss in order to avoid. We have a few weeks before
us to try and avert the mischief. After a second rejection it will
be too late. There is perhaps the alternative of advising a large
creation of peers; but to this there are great objections, even if
the Queen were willing. I am not at present sure that I could
bring myself to be a party to the adoption of a plan like that of
1832.
When people talked to him of dissolution as a means of bringing the Lords
to account, he replied in scorn: “A marvellous conception! On such a
dissolution, if the country disapproved of the conduct of its
representatives, it would cashier them; but, if it disapproved of the
conduct of the peers, it would simply have to see them resume their place
of power, to employ it to the best of their ability as opportunity might
serve, in thwarting the desires of the country expressed through its
representatives.”
It was reported to Mr. Gladstone that his speeches in (M48) Scotland
(though they were marked by much restraint) created some displeasure at
Balmoral. He wrote to Lord Granville (Sept. 26):—
The Queen does not know the facts. If she did, she would have
known that while I have been compelled to deviate from the
intention, of speaking only to constituents which (with much
difficulty) I kept until Aberdeen, I have thereby (and again with
much difficulty in handling the audiences, every one of which
would have wished a different course of proceeding) been enabled
to do much in the way of keeping the question of organic change in
the House of Lords out of the present stage of the controversy.
Sir Henry Ponsonby, of course at the Queen’s instigation, was
indefatigable and infinitely ingenious in inventing devices of possible
compromise between Lords and Commons, or between Lords and ministers, such
as might secure the passing of franchise and yet at the same time secure
the creation of new electoral areas before the extended franchise should
become operative. The Queen repeated to some members of the opposition—she
did not at this stage communicate directly with Lord Salisbury—the essence
of Mr. Gladstone’s memorandum of August, and no doubt conveyed the
impression that it had made upon her own mind. Later correspondence
between her secretary and the Duke of Richmond set up a salutary ferment
in what had not been at first a very promising quarter.
Meanwhile Mr. Gladstone was hard at work in other directions. He was
urgent (Oct. 2) that Lord Granville should make every effort to bring more
peers into the fold to save the bill when it reappeared in the autumn
session. He had himself “garnered in a rich harvest” of bishops in July.
On previous occasions he had plied the episcopal bench with political
appeals, and this time he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury:—
_July 2, 1884._—I should have felt repugnance and scruple about
addressing your Grace at any time on any subject of a political
nature, if it were confined within the ordinary limits of such
subjects. But it seems impossible to refuse credit to the
accounts, which assure us that the peers of the opposition, under
Lord Salisbury and his coadjutors, are determined to use all their
strength and influence for the purpose of throwing out the
Franchise bill in the House of Lords; and thus of entering upon a
conflict with the House of Commons, from which at each step in the
proceeding it may probably become more difficult to retire, and
which, if left to its natural course, will probably develop itself
into a constitutional crisis of such an order, as has not occurred
since 1832....
To Tennyson, the possessor of a spiritual power even more than
archiepiscopal, who had now a place among peers temporal, he addressed a
remonstrance (July 6):—
... Upon consideration I cannot help writing a line, for I must
hope you will reconsider your intention. The best mode in which I
can support a suggestion seemingly so audacious is by informing
you, that all sober-minded conservative peers are in great dismay
at this wild proceeding of Lord Salisbury; that the ultra-radicals
and Parnellites, on the other hand, are in a state of glee, as
they believe, and with good reason, that the battle once begun
will end in some great humiliation to the House of Lords, or some
important change in its composition. That (to my knowledge)
various bishops of conservative leanings are, on this account,
going to vote with the government—as may be the case with lay
peers also. That you are the _only_ peer, so far as I know,
associated with liberal ideas or the liberal party, who hesitates
to vote against Lord Salisbury.
In the later stage of this controversy, Tennyson shot the well-known lines
at him—
Steersman, be not precipitate in thine act
Of steering, for the river here, my friend,
Parts in two channels, moving to one end—
This goes straight forward to the cataract:
That streams about the bend.
But tho’ the cataract seems the nearer way,
Whate’er the crowd on either bank may say,
Take thou “the bend,” ’twill save thee many a day.
To a poet who made to his generation such exquisite gifts of beauty and
pleasure, the hardest of party-men may pardon unseasonable fears about
franchise and one-horse constituencies. As matter of fact and in plain
prose, this (M49) taking of the bend was exactly what the steersman had
been doing, so as to keep other people out of cataracts.
“Then why should not Lord Granville try his hand on ambassadors, pressing
them to save their order from a tempest that must strain and might wreck
it?” To Mr. Chamberlain, who was in his element, or in one of his
elements, Mr. Gladstone wrote (Oct. 8):—
I see that Salisbury by his declaration in the _Times_ of
Saturday, that the Lords are to contend for the simultaneous
passing of the two bills, has given you an excellent subject for
denunciation, and you may safely denounce him to your heart’s
content. But I earnestly hope that you will leave us all elbow
room on other questions which _may_ arise. If you have seen my
letters (virtually) to the Queen, I do not think you will have
found reason for alarm in them. I am sorry that Hartington the
other day used the word compromise, a word which has never passed
my lips, though I believe he meant nothing wrong. If we could find
anything which, though surrendering nothing substantial, would
build a bridge for honourable and moderate men to retreat by, I am
sure you would not object to it. But I have a much stronger plea
for your reserve than any request of my own. It is this, that the
cabinet has postponed discussing the matter until Wednesday simply
in order that you may be present and take your share. They meet at
twelve. I shall venture to count on your doing nothing to narrow
the ground left open to us, which is indeed but a stinted one.
Three days later (Oct. 11) the Queen writing to the prime minister was
able to mark a further stage:—
Although the strong expressions used by ministers in their recent
speeches have made the task of conciliation undertaken by the
Queen a most difficult one, she is so much impressed with the
importance of the issue at stake, that she has persevered in her
endeavours, and has obtained from the leaders of the opposition an
expression of their readiness to negotiate on the basis of Lord
Hartington’s speech at Hanley. In the hope that this _may_ lead to
a compromise, the Queen has suggested that Lord Hartington may
enter into communication with Lord Salisbury, and she trusts, from
Mr. Gladstone’s telegram received this morning, that he will
empower Lord Hartington to discuss the possibility of an agreement
with Lord Salisbury.
In acknowledgment, Mr. Gladstone offered his thanks for all her Majesty’s
“well-timed efforts to bring about an accommodation.” He could not,
however, he proceeded, feel sanguine as to obtaining any concession from
the leaders, but he is very glad that Lord Hartington should try.
Happily, and as might have been expected by anybody who remembered the
action of the sensible peers who saved the Reform bill in 1832, the rash
and headstrong men in high places in the tory party were not allowed to
have their own way. Before the autumn was over, prudent members of the
opposition became uneasy. They knew that in substance the conclusion was
foregone, but they knew also that just as in their own body there was a
division between hothead and moderate, so in the cabinet they could count
upon a whig section, and probably upon the prime minister as well. They
noted his words spoken in July, “It is not our desire to see the bill
carried by storm and tempest. It is our desire to see it win its way by
persuasion and calm discussion to the rational minds of men.”(77)
Meanwhile Sir Michael Hicks Beach had already, with the knowledge and
without the disapproval of other leading men on the tory side, suggested
an exchange of views to Lord Hartington, who was warmly encouraged by the
cabinet to carry on communications, as being a person peculiarly fitted
for the task, “enjoying full confidence on one side,” as Mr. Gladstone
said to the Queen, “and probably more on the other side than any other
minister could enjoy.” These two cool and able men took the extension of
county franchise for granted, and their conferences turned pretty
exclusively on redistribution. Sir Michael pressed the separation of urban
from rural areas, and what was more specifically important was his
advocacy of single-member or one-horse constituencies. His own long
experience of a scattered agricultural division had convinced him that
such areas with household suffrage would be unworkable. Lord Hartington
knew the advantage of two-member constituencies (M50) for his party,
because they made an opening for one whig candidate and one radical. But
he did not make this a question of life or death, and the ground was
thoroughly well hoed and raked. Lord Salisbury, to whom the nature of
these communications had been made known by the colleague concerned, told
him of the suggestion from the Queen, and said that he and Sir Stafford
Northcote had unreservedly accepted it. So far the cabinet had found the
several views in favour with their opponents as to electoral areas, rather
more sweeping and radical than their own had been, and they hoped that on
the basis thus informally laid, they might proceed to the more developed
conversation with the two official leaders. Then the tory ultras
interposed.
IV
On the last day of October the Queen wrote to Mr. Gladstone from
Balmoral:—
The Queen thinks that it would be a means of arriving at some
understanding if the leaders of the parties in both Houses could
exchange their views personally. The Duke of Argyll or any other
person unconnected for the present with the government or the
opposition might be employed in bringing about a meeting, and in
assisting to solve difficulties. The Queen thinks the government
should in any project forming the basis of resolutions on
redistribution to be proposed to the House, distinctly define
their plans at such a personal conference. The Queen believes that
were assurance given that the redistribution would not be wholly
inimical to the prospects of the conservative party, their
concurrence might be obtained. The Queen feels most strongly that
it is of the utmost importance that in this serious crisis such
means, even if unusual, should be tried, and knowing how fully Mr.
Gladstone recognises the great danger that might arise by
prolonging the conflict, the Queen _earnestly_ trusts that he will
avail himself of such means to obviate it.
The Queen then wrote to Lord Salisbury in the same sense in which she had
written to the prime minister. Lord Salisbury replied that it would give
him great pleasure to consult with anybody the Queen might desire, and
that in obedience to her commands he would do all that lay in him to bring
the controversy finally to a just and honourable issue. He went on however
to say, in the caustic vein that was one of his ruling traits, that while
cheerfully complying with the Queen’s wishes, he thought it right to add
that, so far as his information went, no danger attached to the
prolongation of the controversy for a considerable time, nor did he
believe that there was any real excitement in the country about it. The
Queen in replying (Nov. 5) said that she would at once acquaint Mr.
Gladstone with what he had said.
The autumn session began, and the Franchise bill was introduced again.
Three days later, in consequence of a communication from the other camp,
the debate on the second reading was conciliatory, but the tories won a
bye-election, and the proceedings in committee became menacing and
clouded. Discrepancies abounded in the views of the opposition upon
redistribution. When the third reading came (Nov. 11), important men on
the tory side insisted on the production of a Seats bill, and declared
there must be no communication with the enemy. Mr. Gladstone was
elaborately pacific. If he could not get peace, he said, at least let it
be recorded that he desired peace. The parleys of Lord Hartington and Sir
Michael Hicks Beach came to an end.
Mr. Gladstone, late one night soon after this (Nov. 14), had a long
conversation with Sir Stafford Northcote at the house of a friend. He had
the authority of the cabinet (not given for this special interview) to
promise the introduction of a Seats bill before the committee stage of the
Franchise bill in the Lords, provided he was assured that it could be done
without endangering or retarding franchise. Northcote and Mr. Gladstone
made good progress on the principles of redistribution. Then came an
awkward message from Lord Salisbury that the Lords could not let the
Franchise bill through, until they got the Seats bill from the Commons. So
negotiations were again broken off.
The only hope now was that a sufficient number of Lord Salisbury’s
adherents would leave him in the lurch, if he (M51) did not close with
what was understood to be Mr. Gladstone’s engagement, to procure and press
a Seats bill as soon as ever franchise was out of danger. So it happened,
and the door that had thus been shut, speedily opened. Indirect
communication reached the treasury bench that seemed to show the leaders
of opposition to be again alive. There were many surmises, everybody was
excited, and two great tory leaders in the Lords called on Lord Granville
one day, anxious for a _modus vivendi_. Mr. Gladstone in the Commons, in
conformity with a previous decision of the cabinet, declared the
willingness of the government to produce a bill or explain its provisions,
on receiving a reasonable guarantee that the Franchise bill would be
passed before the end of the sittings. The ultras of the opposition still
insisted on making bets all round that the Franchise bill would not become
law; besides betting, they declared they would die on the floor of the
House in resisting an accommodation. A meeting of the party was summoned
at the Carlton club for the purpose of declaring war to the knife, and
Lord Salisbury was reported to hold to his determination. This resolve,
however, proved to have been shaken by Mr. Gladstone’s language on a
previous day. The general principles of redistribution had been
sufficiently sifted, tested, and compared to show that there was no
insuperable discrepancy of view. It was made clear to Lord Salisbury
circuitously, that though the government required adequate assurances of
the safety of franchise before presenting their scheme upon seats, this
did not preclude private and confidential illumination. So the bill was
read a second time.
All went prosperously forward. On November 19, Lord Salisbury and Sir S.
Northcote came to Downing Street in the afternoon, took tea with the prime
minister, and had a friendly conversation for an hour in which much ground
was covered. The heads of the government scheme were discussed and handed
to the opposition leaders. Mr. Gladstone was well satisfied. He was much
struck, he said after, with the quickness of the tory leader, and found it
a pleasure to deal with so acute a man. Lord Salisbury, for his part, was
interested in the novelty of the proceeding, for no precedent could be
found in our political or party history for the discussion of a measure
before its introduction between the leaders of the two sides. This novelty
stirred his curiosity, while he also kept a sharp eye on the main party
chance. He proved to be entirely devoid of respect for tradition, and Mr.
Gladstone declared himself to be a strong conservative in comparison. The
meetings went on for several days through the various parts of the
questions, Lord Hartington, Lord Granville, and Sir Charles Dilke being
also taken into council—the last of the three being unrivalled master of
the intricate details.
The operation was watched with jealous eyes by the radicals, though they
had their guardians in the cabinet. To Mr. Bright who, having been all his
life denounced as a violent republican, was now in the view of the new
school hardly even so much as a sound radical, Mr. Gladstone thought it
well to write (Nov. 25) words of comfort, if comfort were needed:—
I wish to give you the assurance that in the private
communications which are now going on, liberal principles such as
we should conceive and term them, are in no danger. Those with
whom we confer are thinking without doubt of party interests, as
affected by this or that arrangement, but these are a distinct
matter, and I am not so good at them as some others; but the
general proposition which I have stated is I think one which I can
pronounce with some confidence.... The whole operation is
essentially delicate and slippery, and I can hardly conceive any
other circumstance in which it would be justified, but in the
present very peculiar case I think it is not only warranted, but
called for.
On November 27 all was well over; and Mr. Gladstone was able to inform the
Queen that “the delicate and novel communications” between the two sets of
leaders had been brought to a happy termination. “His first duty,” he
said, “was to tender his grateful thanks to your Majesty for the wise,
gracious, and steady influence on your Majesty’s part, which has so
powerfully contributed to bring about this accommodation, and to avert a
serious crisis of affairs.” He (M52) adds that “his cordial
acknowledgments are due to Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford Northcote for
the manner in which they have conducted their difficult communications.”
The Queen promptly replied: “I gladly and thankfully return your
telegrams. To be able to be of use is all I care to live for now.” By way
of winding up negotiations so remarkable, Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord
Salisbury to thank him for his kindness, and to say that he could have
desired nothing better in candour and equity. Their conversation on the
Seats bill would leave him none but the most agreeable recollections.
The Queen was in high good humour, as she had a right to be. She gave Mr.
Gladstone ample credit for his conciliatory spirit. The last two months
had been very trying to her, she said, but she confessed herself repaid by
the thought that she had assisted in a settlement. Mr. Gladstone’s
severest critics on the tory side confessed that “they did not think he
had it in him.” Some friends of his in high places even suggested that
this would be a good moment for giving him the garter. He wrote to Sir
Arthur Gordon (Dec. 5): “The time of this government has been on the whole
the most stormy and difficult that I have known in office, and the last
six weeks have been perhaps the most anxious and difficult of the
government.”
V
One further episode deserves a section, if the reader will turn back for a
moment or two. The question whether the extension of the parliamentary
franchise to rural householders should be limited to Great Britain or
should apply to the whole kingdom, had been finally discussed in a couple
of morning sittings in the month of May. Nobody who heard it can forget
the speech made against Irish inclusion by Mr. Plunket, the eloquent
grandson of the most eloquent of all the orators whom Ireland has sent to
the imperial senate. He warned the House that to talk of assimilating the
franchise in Ireland to the franchise in England, was to use language
without meaning; that out of seven hundred and sixty thousand inhabited
houses in Ireland, no fewer than four hundred and thirty-five thousand
were rated at one pound and under; that those whom the bill would
enfranchise would be taken from a class of whom more than forty per cent.
could neither read nor write; that the measure would strengthen the hands
of that disloyal party who boasted of their entire indifference to English
opinion, and their undivided obligation to influences which Englishmen
were wholly unable to realise. Then in a lofty strain Mr. Plunket foretold
that the measure which they were asked to pass would lead up to, and would
precipitate, the establishment of a separate Irish nationality. He
reminded his hearers that the empire had been reared not more by the
endurance of its soldiers and sailors than by the sagacity and firmness,
the common sense and patriotism, of that ancient parliament; and he ended
with a fervid prayer that the historian of the future might not have to
tell that the union of these three kingdoms on which rested all its honour
and all its power—a union that could never be broken by the force of
domestic traitor or foreign foe—yielded at last under the pressure of the
political ambitions and party exigencies of British statesmen.
The orator’s stately diction, his solemn tone, the depth of his
conviction, made a profound impression. Newer parliamentary hands below
the government gangway, as he went on, asked one another by what arts of
parliamentary defence the veteran minister could possibly deal with this
searching appeal. Only a quarter of an hour remained. In two or three
minutes Mr. Gladstone had swept the solemn impression entirely away.
Contrary to his wont, he began at once upon the top note. With high
passion in his voice, and mastering gesture in his uplifted arm, he dashed
impetuously upon the foe. What weighs upon my mind is this, he said, that
when the future historian speaks of the greatness of this empire, and
traces the manner in which it has grown through successive generations, he
will say that in that history there was one chapter of disgrace, and that
chapter of disgrace was the treatment of Ireland. It is the scale of
justice that will determine the issue of the conflict with Ireland, if
conflict there is to be. There is nothing we can do, cried the orator,
(M53) turning to the Irish members, except the imprudence of placing in
your hands evidence that will show that we are not acting on principles of
justice towards you, that can render you for a moment formidable in our
eyes, should the day unfortunately arise when you endeavour to lay hands
on this great structure of the British empire. Let us be as strong in
right as we are in population, in wealth, and in historic traditions, and
then we shall not fear to do justice to Ireland. There is but one mode of
making England weak in the face of Ireland—that is by applying to her
principles of inequality and principles of injustice.
As members sallied forth from the House to dine, they felt that this
vehement improvisation had put the true answer. Mr. Plunket’s fine appeal
to those who had been comrades of the Irish loyalists in guarding the
union was well enough, yet who but the Irish loyalists had held Ireland in
the hollow of their hands for generation upon generation, and who but they
were answerable for the odious and dishonouring failure, so patent before
all the world, to effect a true incorporation of their country in a united
realm? And if it should happen that Irish loyalists should suffer from
extension of equal civil rights to Irishmen, what sort of reason was that
why the principle of exclusion and ascendency which had worked such
mischief in the past, should be persisted in for a long and indefinite
future? These views, it is important to observe, were shared, not only by
the minister’s own party, but by a powerful body among his opponents. Some
of the gentlemen who had been most furious against the government for not
stopping Irish meetings in the autumn of 1883, were now most indignant at
the bare idea of refusing or delaying a proposal for strengthening the
hands of the very people who promoted and attended such meetings. It is
true also that only two or three months before, Lord Hartington had
declared that it would be most unwise to deal with the Irish franchise.
Still more recently, Mr. W. H. Smith had declared that any extension of
the suffrage in Ireland would draw after it “confiscation of property,
ruin of industry, withdrawal of capital,—misery, wretchedness, and war.”
The valour of the platform, however, often expires in the keener air of
cabinet and parliament. It became Lord Hartington’s duty now to move the
second reading of provisions which, he had just described as most unwise
provisions, and Mr. Smith found himself the object of brilliant mockery
from the daring leader below the gangway on his own side.
Lord Randolph produced a more serious, though events soon showed it to be
not any more solid an argument, when he said that the man who lives in a
mud cabin very often has a decent holding, and has money in the savings’
bank besides, and more than that, he is often more fit to take an interest
in politics, and to form a sound view about them, than the English
agricultural labourer. The same speaker proceeded to argue that the Fenian
proclivities of the towns would be more than counterbalanced by the
increased power given to the peasantry. The incidents of agricultural
life, he observed, are unfavourable to revolutionary movements, and the
peasant is much more under the proper and legitimate influence of the
Roman catholic priesthood than the lower classes of the towns. On the
whole, the extension of the franchise to the peasantry of Ireland would
not be unfavourable to the landlord interest. Yet Lord Randolph, who
regaled the House with these chimerical speculations, had had far better
opportunities than almost any other Englishman then in parliament of
knowing something about Ireland.
What is certain is that English and Scotch members acted with their eyes
open. Irish tories and Irish nationalists agreed in menacing predictions.
The vast masses of Irish people, said the former, had no sense of loyalty
and no love of order to which a government could appeal. In many districts
the only person who was unsafe was the peace officer or the relatives of a
murdered man. The effect of the change would be the utter annihilation of
the political power of the most orderly, the most loyal, the most educated
classes of Ireland, and the swamping of one-fourth of the community,
representing two-thirds of its property. A representative of the great
house of Hamilton in the Commons, amid a little cloud of the dishevelled
prophecies (M54) too common in his class, assured the House that everybody
knew that if the franchise in Ireland were extended, the days of home rule
could not be far distant. The representative of the great house of
Beresford in the Lords, the resident possessor of a noble domain, an able
and determined man, with large knowledge of his country, so far as large
knowledge can be acquired from a single point of view, expressed his
strong conviction that after the passage of this bill the Irish outlook
would be blacker than it had ever been before.(78)
Another person, far more powerful than any Hamilton or Beresford, was
equally explicit. With characteristic frigidity, precision, and
confidence, the Irish leader had defined his policy and his expectations.
“Beyond a shadow of doubt,” he had said to a meeting in the Rotunda at
Dublin, “it will be for the Irish people in England—separated, isolated as
they are—and for your independent Irish members, to determine at the next
general election whether a tory or a liberal English ministry shall rule
England. This is a great force and a great power. If we cannot rule
ourselves, we can at least cause them to be ruled as we choose. This force
has already gained for Ireland inclusion in the coming Franchise bill. We
have reason to be proud, hopeful, and energetic.”(79) In any case, he
informed the House of Commons, even if Ireland were not included in the
bill, the national party would come back seventy-five strong. If household
suffrage were conceded to Ireland, they would come back ninety strong.(80)
That was the only difference. Therefore, though he naturally supported
inclusion,(81) it was not at all indispensable to the success of his
policy, and he watched the proceedings in the committee as calmly as he
might have watched a battle of frogs and mice.