Even if this ultimatum had been accepted, there would still have remained

the difficulty of the Land bill, of which Mr. Chamberlain had announced

that he would move the rejection. In the face of ever-growing

embarrassments and importunities, recourse was had to the usual device of

a meeting of the party at the foreign office (May 27). The circular

calling the meeting was addressed to those liberals who, while retaining

full freedom on all particulars in the bill, were “in favour of the

establishment of a legislative body in Dublin for the management of

affairs specifically and exclusively Irish.” This was henceforth to be the

test of party membership. A man who was for an Irish legislative body was

expected to come to the party meeting, and a man who was against it was

expected to stay (M122) away. Many thought this discrimination a mistake.

Some two hundred and twenty members attended. The pith of the prime

minister’s speech, which lasted for an hour, came to this: that the

government would not consent to emasculate the principle of the bill, or

turn it into a mockery, a delusion, and a snare; that members who did not

wholly agree with the bill, might still in accordance with the strict

spirit of parliamentary rules vote for the second reading with a view to

its amendment in committee; that such a vote would not involve support of

the Land bill; that he was ready to consider any plan for the retention of

the Irish members, provided that it did not interfere with the liberty of

the Irish legislative body, and would not introduce confusion into the

imperial parliament. Finally, as to procedure—and here his anxious

audience fell almost breathless—they could either after a second reading

hang up the bill, and defer committee until the autumn; or they could wind

up the session, prorogue, and introduce the bill afresh with the proper

amendments in October. The cabinet, he told them, inclined to the later

course.

Before the meeting Mr. Parnell had done his best to impress upon ministers

the mischievous effect that would be produced on Irish members and in

Ireland, by any promise to withdraw the bill after the second reading. On

the previous evening, I received from him a letter of unusual length. “You

of course,” he said, “are the best judges of what the result may be in

England, but if it be permitted me to express an opinion, I should say

that withdrawal could scarcely fail to give great encouragement to those

whom it cannot conciliate, to depress and discourage those who are now the

strongest fighters for the measure, to produce doubt and wonder in the

country and to cool enthusiasm; and finally, when the same bill is again

produced in the autumn, to disappoint and cause reaction among those who

may have been temporarily disarmed by withdrawal, and to make them at once

more hostile and less easy to appease.” This letter I carried to Mr.

Gladstone the next morning, and read aloud to him a few minutes before he

was to cross over to the foreign office. For a single instant—the only

occasion that I can recall during all these severe weeks—his patience

broke. The recovery was as rapid as the flash, for he knew the duty of the

lieutenant of the watch to report the signs of rock or shoal. He was quite

as conscious of all that was urged in Mr. Parnell’s letter as was its

writer, but perception of risks on one side did not overcome risks on the

other. The same evening they met for a second time:—

_May 27._—... Mr. Gladstone and Parnell had a conversation in my

room. Parnell courteous enough, but depressed and gloomy. Mr.

Gladstone worn and fagged.... When he was gone, Parnell repeated

moodily that he might not be able to vote for the second reading,

if it were understood that after the second reading the bill was

to be withdrawn. “Very well,” said I, “that will of course destroy

the government and the policy; but be that as it may, the cabinet,

I am positive, won’t change their line.”

The proceedings at the foreign office brought to the supporters of

government a lively sense of relief. In the course of the evening a score

of the waverers were found to have been satisfied, and were struck off the

dissentient lists. But the relief did not last for many hours. The

opposition instantly challenged ministers (May 28) to say plainly which of

the two courses they intended to adopt. Though short, this was the most

vivacious debate of all. Was the bill to be withdrawn, or was it to be

postponed? If it was to be withdrawn, then, argued the tory leader (Sir

M.H. Beach) in angry tones, the vote on the second reading would be a

farce. If it was to be postponed, what was that but to paralyse the forces

of law and order in Ireland in the meantime? Such things were trifling

with parliament, trifling with a vital constitutional question, and

trifling with the social order which the government professed to be so

anxious to restore. A bill read a second time on such terms as these would

be neither more nor less than a Continuance-in-Office bill.

This biting sally raised the temper of the House on both sides, and Mr.

Gladstone met it with that dignity which did not often fail to quell even

the harshest of his adversaries. “You pronounce that obviously the motive

of the government is to ensure their own continuance in office. They

prefer that to all the considerations connected with the great issue

before them, and their minds in fact are of such a mean and degraded

order, that they can only be acted upon, not by motives of honour and

duty, but simply by those of selfishness and personal interest. Sir, I do

not condescend to discuss that imputation. The dart aimed at our shield,

being such a dart as that, is _telum imbelle sine ictu_.”(211)

The speaker then got on to the more hazardous part of the ground. He

proceeded to criticise the observation of the leader of the opposition

that ministers had undertaken to remodel the bill. “That happy word,” he

said, “as applied to the structure of the bill, is a pure invention.” Lord

Randolph interjected that the word used was not “remodelled,” but

“reconstructed.” “Does the noble lord dare to say,” asked the minister,

“that it was used in respect of the bill?” “Yes,” said the noble lord.

“Never, never,” cried the minister, with a vehemence that shook the hearts

of doubting followers; “it was used with respect to one particular clause,

and one particular point of the bill, namely so much of it as touches the

future relation of the representatives of Ireland to the imperial

parliament.” Before the exciting episode was over, it was stated

definitely that if the bill were read a second time, ministers would

advise a prorogation and re-introduce the bill with amendments. The effect

of this couple of hours was to convince the House that the government had

made up their minds that it was easier and safer to go to the country with

the plan as it stood, than to agree to changes that would entangle them in

new embarrassments, and discredit their confidence in their own handiwork.

Ingenious negotiators perceived that their toil had been fruitless. Every

man now knew the precise situation that he had to face, in respect alike

of the Irish bill and liberal unity.

On the day following this decisive scene (May 29), under the direction of

the radical leader an invitation to a conference was issued to those

members “who being in favour of some sort of autonomy for Ireland,

disapproved of the government bills in their present shape.” The form of

the invitation is remarkable in view of its ultimate effect on Irish

autonomy. The meeting was held on May 31, in the same committee room

upstairs that four years later became associated with the most cruel of

all phases of the Irish controversy. Mr. Chamberlain presided, and some

fifty-five gentlemen attended. Not all of them had hitherto been

understood to be in favour either of some sort, or of any sort, of

autonomy for Ireland. The question was whether they should content

themselves with abstention from the division, or should go into the lobby

against the government. If they abstained, the bill would pass, and an

extension of the party schism would be averted. The point was carried, as

all great parliamentary issues are, by considerations apart from the nice

and exact balance of argument on the merits. In anxious and distracting

moments like this, when so many arguments tell in one way and so many tell

in another, a casting vote often belongs to the moral weight of some

particular person. The chairman opened in a neutral sense. It seems to

have been mainly the moral weight of Mr. Bright that sent down the scale.

He was not present, but he sent a letter. He hoped that every man would

use his own mind, but for his part he must vote against the bill. This

letter was afterwards described as the death-warrant of the bill and of

the administration. The course of the men who had been summoned because

they were favourable to some sort of home rule was decided by the

illustrious statesman who opposed every sort of home rule. Their boat was

driven straight upon the rocks of coercion by the influence of the great

orator who had never in all his career been more eloquent than when he was

denouncing the mischief and futility of Irish coercion, and protesting

that force is no remedy.

One of the best speakers in the House, though not at that time in the

cabinet, was making an admirably warm and convinced defence alike of the

policy and the bill while these proceedings were going on. But Mr. Fowler

was listened to by men of pre-occupied minds. All knew what (M123)

momentous business was on foot in another part of the parliamentary

precincts. Many in the ranks were confident that abstention would carry

the day. Others knew that the meeting had been summoned for no such

purpose, and they made sure that the conveners would have their way. The

quiet inside the House was intense and unnatural. As at last the news of

the determination upstairs to vote against the bill ran along the benches

before the speaker sat down, men knew that the ministerial day was lost.

It was estimated by the heads of the “Chamberlain group” that if they

abstained, the bill would pass by a majority of five. Such a bill carried

by such a majority could of course not have proceeded much further. The

principle of autonomy would have been saved, and time would have been

secured for deliberation upon a new plan. More than once Mr. Gladstone

observed that no decision taken from the beginning of the crisis to the

end was either more incomprehensible or more disastrous.

IV

The division was taken a little after one o’clock on the morning of the

8th of June. The Irish leader made one of the most masterly speeches that

ever fell from him. Whether agreeing with or differing from the policy,

every unprejudiced listener felt that this was not the mere dialectic of a

party debater, dealing smartly with abstract or verbal or artificial

arguments, but the utterance of a statesman with his eye firmly fixed upon

the actual circumstances of the nation for whose government this bill

would make him responsible. As he dealt with Ulster, with finance, with

the supremacy of parliament, with the loyal minority, with the settlement

of education in an Irish legislature,—soberly, steadily, deliberately,

with that full, familiar, deep insight into the facts of a country, which

is only possible to a man who belongs to it and has passed his life in it,

the effect of Mr. Parnell’s speech was to make even able disputants on

either side look little better than amateurs.

The debate was wound up for the regular opposition by Sir Michael Hicks

Beach, who was justly regarded throughout the session as having led his

party with remarkable skill and judgment. Like the Irish leader, he seemed

to be inspired by the occasion to a performance beyond his usual range,

and he delivered the final charge with strong effect. The bill, he said,

was the concoction of the prime minister and the Irish secretary, and the

cabinet had no voice in the matter. The government had delayed the

progress of the bill for a whole long and weary month, in order to give

party wirepullers plenty of time in which to frighten waverers. To treat a

vote on the second reading as a mere vote on a principle, without

reference to the possibility of applying it, was a mischievous farce.

Could anybody dream that if he supported the second reading now, he would

not compromise his action in the autumn and would not be appealed to as

having made a virtual promise to Ireland, of which it would be impossible

to disappoint her? As for the bill itself, whatever lawyers might say of

the theoretic maintenance of supremacy, in practice it would have gone.

All this side of the case was put by the speaker with the straight and

vigorous thrust that always works with strong effect in this great arena

of contest.

Then came the unflagging veteran with the last of his five speeches. He

was almost as white as the flower in his coat, but the splendid compass,

the flexibility, the moving charm and power of his voice, were never more

wonderful. The construction of the speech was a masterpiece, the temper of

it unbroken, its freedom from taunt and bitterness and small personality

incomparable. Even if Mr. Gladstone had been in the prime of his days,

instead of a man of seventy-six years all struck; even if he had been at

his ease for the last four months, instead of labouring with indomitable

toil at the two bills, bearing all the multifarious burdens of the head of

a government, and all the weight of the business of the leader of the

House, undergoing all the hourly strain and contention of a political

situation of unprecedented difficulty,—much of the contention being of

that peculiarly trying and painful sort which means the parting of

colleagues and friends,—his closing speech would still have been a

surprising effort of free, argumentative, and fervid appeal. With the

fervid (M124) appeal was mingled more than one piece of piquant mockery.

Mr. Chamberlain had said that a dissolution had no terrors for him. “I do

not wonder at it. I do not see how a dissolution can have any terrors for

him. He has trimmed his vessel, and he has touched his rudder in such a

masterly way, that in whichever direction the winds of heaven may blow

they must fill his sails. Supposing that at an election public opinion

should be very strong in favour of the bill, my right hon. friend would

then be perfectly prepared to meet that public opinion, and tell it, ‘I

declared strongly that I adopted the principle of the bill.’ On the other

hand, if public opinion were very adverse to the bill, he again is in

complete armour, because he says, ‘Yes, I voted against the bill.’

Supposing, again, public opinion is in favour of a very large plan for

Ireland, my right hon. friend is perfectly provided for that case also.

The government plan was not large enough for him, and he proposed in his

speech on the introduction of the bill that we should have a measure on

the basis of federation, which goes beyond this bill. Lastly—and now I

have very nearly boxed the compass—supposing that public opinion should

take quite a different turn, and instead of wanting very large measures

for Ireland, should demand very small measures for Ireland, still the

resources of my right hon. friend are not exhausted, because he is then

able to point out that the last of his plans was for four provincial

circuits controlled from London.” All these alternatives and provisions

were visibly “creations of the vivid imagination, born of the hour and

perishing with the hour, totally unavailable for the solution of a great

and difficult problem.”

Now, said the orator, was one of the golden moments of our history, one of

those opportunities which may come and may go, but which rarely return, or

if they return, return at long intervals, and under circumstances which no

man can forecast. There was such a golden moment in 1795, on the mission

of Lord Fitzwilliam. At that moment the parliament of Grattan was on the

point of solving the Irish problem. The cup was at Ireland’s lips, and she

was ready to drink it, when the hand of England rudely and ruthlessly

dashed it to the ground in obedience to the wild and dangerous intimations

of an Irish faction. There had been no great day of hope for Ireland

since, no day when you might completely and definitely hope to end the

controversy till now—more than ninety years. The long periodic time had at

last run out, and the star had again mounted into the heavens.

This strain of living passion was sustained with all its fire and speed to

the very close. “Ireland stands at your bar expectant, hopeful, almost

suppliant. Her words are the words of truth and soberness. She asks a

blessed oblivion of the past, and in that oblivion our interest is deeper

even than hers. You have been asked to-night to abide by the traditions of

which we are the heirs. What traditions? By the Irish traditions? Go into

the length and breadth of the world, ransack the literature of all

countries, find if you can a single voice, a single book, in which the

conduct of England towards Ireland is anywhere treated except with

profound and bitter condemnation. Are these the traditions by which we are

exhorted to stand? No, they are a sad exception to the glory of our

country. They are a broad and black blot upon the pages of its history,

and what we want to do is to stand by the traditions of which we are the

heirs in all matters except our relations with Ireland, and to make our

relation with Ireland to conform to the other traditions of our country.

So we treat our traditions, so we hail the demand of Ireland for what I

call a blessed oblivion of the past. She asks also a boon for the future;

and that boon for the future, unless we are much mistaken, will be a boon

to us in respect of honour, no less than a boon to her in respect of

happiness, prosperity and peace. Such, sir, is her prayer. Think, I

beseech you; think well, think wisely, think, not for the moment, but for

the years that are to come, before you reject this bill.”

The question was put, the sand glass was turned upon the table, the

division bells were set ringing. Even at this moment, the ministerial

whips believed that some were still wavering. A reference made by Mr.

Parnell to harmonious communications in the previous summer with a tory

minister, (M125) inclined them to vote for the bill. On the other hand,

the prospect of going to an election without a tory opponent was no weak

temptation to a weak man. A common impression was that the bill would be

beaten by ten or fifteen. Others were sure that it would be twice as much

as either figure. Some on the treasury bench, perhaps including the prime

minister himself, hoped against hope that the hostile majority might not

be more than five or six. It proved to be thirty. The numbers were 343

against 313. Ninety-three liberals voted against the bill. These with the

two tellers were between one-third and one-fourth of the full liberal

strength from Great Britain. So ended the first engagement in this long

campaign. As I passed into his room at the House with Mr. Gladstone that

night, he seemed for the first time to bend under the crushing weight of

the burden that he had taken up.

V

When ministers went into the cabinet on the following day, three of them

inclined pretty strongly towards resignation as a better course than

dissolution; mainly on the ground that the incoming government would then

have to go to the country with a policy of their own. Mr. Gladstone,

however, entirely composed though pallid, at once opened the case with a

list of twelve reasons for recommending dissolution, and the reasons were

so cogent that his opening of the case was also its closing. They were

entirely characteristic, for they began with precedent and the key was

courage. He knew of no instance where a ministry defeated under

circumstances like ours, upon a great policy or on a vote of confidence,

failed to appeal to the country. Then with a view to the enthusiasm of our

friends in this country, as well as to feeling in Ireland, it was

essential that we should not let the flag go down. We had been constantly

challenged to a dissolution, and not to take the challenge up would be a

proof of mistrust, weakness, and a faint heart. “My conclusion is,” he

said, “a dissolution is formidable, but resignation would mean for the

present juncture abandonment of the cause.” His conclusion was accepted

without comment. The experts outside the cabinet were convinced that a

bold front was the best way of securing the full fighting power of the

party. The white feather on such an issue, and with so many minds

wavering, would be a sure provocative of defeat.

Mr. Gladstone enumerated to the Queen what he took to be the new elements

in the case. There were on the side of the government, 1. The transfer of

the Irish vote from, the tories, 2. The popular enthusiasm in the liberal

masses which he had never seen equalled. But what was the electoral value

of enthusiasm against (_a_) anti-Irish prejudices, (_b_) the power of

rank, station, and wealth, (_c_) the kind of influence exercised by the

established clergy, ’perversely applied as of course Mr. Gladstone thinks

in politics, but resting upon a very solid basis as founded on the

generally excellent and devoted work which they do in their parishes’?

This remained to be proved. On the other side there was the whig

defection, with the strange and unnatural addition from Birmingham. “Mr.

Gladstone himself has no skill in these matters, and dare not lay an

opinion before your Majesty on the probable general result.” He thought

there was little chance, if any, of a tory majority in the new parliament.

Opinion taken as a whole seemed to point to a majority not very large,

whichever way it may be.

No election was ever fought more keenly, and never did so many powerful

men fling themselves with livelier activity into a great struggle. The

heaviest and most telling attack came from Mr. Bright, who had up to now

in public been studiously silent. Every word, as they said of Daniel

Webster, seemed to weigh a pound. His arguments were mainly those of his

letter already given, but they were delivered with a gravity and force

that told powerfully upon the large phalanx of doubters all over the

kingdom. On the other side, Mr. Gladstone’s plume waved in every part of

the field. He unhorsed an opponent as he flew past on the road; his voice

rang with calls as thrilling as were ever heard in England; he appealed to

the individual, to his personal responsibility, to the best elements in

him, to the sense of justice, to the powers of hope and of sympathy; he

(M126) displayed to the full that rare combination of qualities that had

always enabled him to view affairs in all their range, at the same time

from the high commanding eminence and on the near and sober level.

He left London on June 17 on his way to Edinburgh, and found “wonderful

demonstrations all along the road; many little speeches; could not be

helped.” “The feeling here,” he wrote from Edinburgh (June 21), “is truly

wonderful, especially when, the detestable state of the press is

considered.” Even Mr. Goschen, whom he described as “supplying in the

main, soul, brains, and movement to the dissentient body,” was handsomely

beaten in one of the Edinburgh divisions, so fatal was the proximity of

Achilles. “_June 22._ Off to Glasgow, 12-¾. Meeting at 3. Spoke an hour

and twenty minutes. Off at 5.50. Reached Hawarden at 12.30 or 40. Some

speeches by the way; others I declined. The whole a scene of triumph. God

help us, His poor creatures.” At Hawarden, he found chaos in his room, and

he set to work upon it, but he did not linger. On June 25, “off to

Manchester; great meeting in the Free Trade Hall. Strain excessive. Five

miles through the streets to Mr. Agnew’s; a wonderful spectacle half the

way.” From Manchester he wrote, “I have found the display of enthusiasm

far beyond all former measure,” and the torrid heat of the meeting almost

broke him down, but friends around him heard him murmur, “I must do it,”

and bracing himself with tremendous effort he went on. Two days later

(June 28) he wound up the campaign in a speech at Liverpool, which even

old and practised political hands who were there, found the most

magnificent of them all. Staying at Courthey, the residence of his

nephews, in the morning he enters, “Worked up the Irish question once more

for my last function. Seven or eight hours of processional uproar, and a

speech of an hour and forty minutes to five or six thousand people in

Hengler’s Circus. Few buildings give so noble a presentation of an

audience. Once more my voice held out in a marvellous manner. I went in

bitterness, in the heat of my spirit, but the hand of the Lord was strong

upon me.”

He had no sooner returned to Hawarden, than he wrote to tell Mrs.

Gladstone (July 2) of a stroke which was thought to have a curiously

dæmonic air about it:—

The Leith business will show you I have not been inactive

here.—former M.P. _attended my meeting in the Music Hall_, and was

greeted by me accordingly (he had voted against us after wobbling

about much). Hearing by late post yesterday that waiting to the

last he had then declared against us, I telegraphed down to

Edinburgh in much indignation, that they might if they liked put

me up against him, and I would go down again and speak if they

wished it. They seem to have acted with admirable pluck and

promptitude. Soon after mid-day to-day I received telegrams to say

I am elected for Midlothian,(212) and _also for Leith_,—having

retired rather than wait to be beaten. I told them instantly to

publish this, as it may do good.

The Queen, who had never relished these oratorical crusades whether he was

in opposition or in office, did not approve of the first minister of the

crown addressing meetings outside of his own constituency. In reply to a

gracious and frank letter from Balmoral, Mr. Gladstone wrote:—

He must state frankly what it is that has induced him thus to

yield [to importunity for speeches]. It is that since the death of

Lord Beaconsfield, in fact since 1880, the leaders of the

opposition, Lord Salisbury and Lord Iddesleigh (he has not

observed the same practice in the case of Sir M. H. Beach) have

established a rule of what may be called popular agitation, by

addressing public meetings from time to time at places with which

they were not connected. This method was peculiarly marked in the

case of Lord Salisbury as a peer, and this change on the part of

the leaders of opposition has induced Mr. Gladstone to deviate on

this critical occasion from the rule which he had (he believes)

generally or uniformly observed in former years. He is, as he has

previously apprised your Majesty, aware of the immense

responsibility he has assumed, and of the severity of just

condemnation which will be pronounced upon him, if he should

eventually prove to have been wrong. But your Majesty will be the

first to perceive that, even if it had been possible for him to

decline this great contest, it was not possible for him having

entered upon it, to conduct it in a half-hearted manner, or to

omit the use of any means requisite in order to place (what he

thinks) the true issue before the country.

Nature, however, served the royal purpose. Before his speech at Liverpool,

he was pressed to speak in the metropolis:—

As to my going to London,—he wrote in reply,—I have twice had my

chest rather seriously strained, and I have at this moment a sense

of internal fatigue within it which is quite new to me, from the

effects of a bad arrangement in the hall at Manchester. Should

anything like it be repeated at Liverpool to-morrow I shall not be

fit physically to speak for a week, if then. Mentally I have never

undergone such an uninterrupted strain as since January 30 of this

year. The forming and reforming of the government, the work of

framing the bills, and _studying the subject_ (which none of the

opponents would do), have left me almost stunned, and I have the

autumn in prospect with, perhaps, most of the work to do over

again if we succeed.

But this was not to be. The incomparable effort was in vain. The sons of

Zeruiah were too hard for him, and England was unconvinced.

The final result was that the ministerialists or liberals of the main body

were reduced from 235 to 196, the tories rose from 251 to 316, the

dissentient liberals fell to 74, and Mr. Parnell remained at his former

strength. In other words, the opponents of the Irish policy of the

government were 390, as against 280 in its favour; or a unionist majority

of 110. Once more no single party possessed an independent or absolute

majority. An important member of the tory party said to a liberal of his

acquaintance (July 7), that he was almost sorry the tories had not played

the bold game and fought independently of the dissentient liberals. “But

then,” he added, “we could not have beaten you on the bill, without the

compact to spare unionist seats.”

England had returned opponents of the liberal policy in the proportion of

two and a half to one against its friends; but Scotland approved in the

proportion of three to two, Wales approved by five to one, and Ireland by

four and a half to one. Another fact with a warning in it was that, taking

the total poll for Great Britain, the liberals had 1,344,000, the seceders

397,000, and the tories 1,041,000. Therefore in contested constituencies

the liberals of the main body were only 76,000 behind the forces of tories

and seceders combined. Considering the magnitude and the surprise of the

issue laid before the electors, and in view of the confident prophecies of

even some peculiar friends of the policy, that both policy and its authors

would be swept out of existence by a universal explosion of national anger

and disgust, there was certainly no final and irrevocable verdict in a

hostile British majority of no more than four per cent, of the votes

polled. Apart from electoral figures, coercion loomed large and near at

hand, and coercion tried under the new political circumstances that would

for the first time attend it, might well be trusted to do much more than

wipe out the margin at the polls. “There is nothing in the recent defeat,”

said Mr. Gladstone, “to abate the hopes or to modify the anticipations of

those who desire to meet the wants and wishes of Ireland.”

VI

The question now before Mr. Gladstone was whether to meet the new

parliament or at once to resign. For a short time he wavered, along with

an important colleague, and then he and all the rest came round to

resignation. The considerations that guided him were these. It is best for

Ireland that the party strongest in the new parliament should be at once

confronted with its responsibilities. Again, we were bound to consider

what would most tend to reunite the liberal party, and it was in

opposition that the chances of such reunion would be likely to stand

highest, especially in view of coercion which many of the dissidents had

refused to contemplate. If he could remodel the bill or frame a new one,

that might be a possible ground for endeavouring to make up a majority,

but he could not see his way to any (M127) such process, though he was

ready for certain amendments. Finally, if we remained, an amendment would

be moved definitely committing the new House against home rule.

The conclusion was for immediate resignation, and his colleagues were

unanimous in assent. The Irish view was different and impossible.

Returning from a visit to Ireland I wrote to Mr. Gladstone (July 19):—

You may perhaps care to see what —— [not a secular politician]

thinks, so I enclose you a conversation between him and ——. He

does not show much strength of political judgment, and one can

understand why Parnell never takes him into counsel. Parnell, of

course, is anxious for us to hold on to the last moment. Our fall

will force him without delay to take up a new and difficult line.

But his letters to me, especially the last, show a desperate

willingness to blink the new parliamentary situation.

Mr. Parnell, in fact, pressed with some importunity that we should meet

the new parliament, on the strange view that the result of the election

was favourable on general questions, and indecisive only on Irish policy.

We were to obtain the balance of supply in an autumn sitting, in January

to attack registration reform, and then to dissolve upon that, without

making any Irish proposition whatever. This curious suggestion left

altogether out of sight the certainty that an amendment referring to

Ireland would be at once moved on the Address, such as must beyond all

doubt command the whole of the tories and a large part, if not all, of the

liberal dissentients. Only one course was possible for the defeated

ministers, and they resigned.

On July 30, Mr. Gladstone had his final audience of the Queen, of which he

wrote the memorandum following:—

_Conversation with the Queen, August 2, 1886._

The conversation at my closing audience on Friday was a singular

one, when regarded as the probable last word with the sovereign

after fifty-five years of political life, and a good quarter of a

century’s service rendered to her in office.

The Queen was in good spirits; her manners altogether pleasant.

She made me sit at once. Asked after my wife as we began, and sent

a kind message to her as we ended. About me personally, I think,

her single remark was that I should require some rest. I remember

that on a closing audience in 1874 she said she felt sure I might

be reckoned upon to support the throne. She did not say anything

of the sort to-day. Her mind and opinions have since that day been

seriously warped, and I respect her for the scrupulous avoidance

of anything which could have seemed to indicate a desire on her

part to claim anything in common with me.

Only at three points did the conversation touch upon anything even

faintly related to public affairs.... The second point was the

conclusion of some arrangement for appanages or incomes on behalf

of the third generation of the royal house. I agreed that there

ought at a suitable time to be a committee on this subject, as had

been settled some time back, she observing that the recent

circumstances had made the time unsuitable. I did not offer any

suggestion as to the grounds of the affair, but said it seemed to

me possible to try some plan under which intended marriages should

be communicated without forcing a reply from the Houses. Also I

agreed that the amounts were not excessive. I did not pretend to

have a solution ready: but said it would, of course, be the duty

of the government to submit a plan to the committee. The third

matter was trivial: a question or two from her on the dates and

proceedings connected with the meeting. The rest of the

conversation, not a very long one, was filled up with nothings. It

is rather melancholy. But on neither side, given the conditions,

could it well be helped.

On the following day she wrote a letter, making it evident that,

so far as Ireland was concerned, she could not trust herself to

say what she wanted to say....

Among the hundreds of letters that reached him every week was one from an

evangelical lady of known piety, enclosing him a form of prayer that had

been issued against home rule. His acknowledgment (July 27) shows none of

the impatience of the baffled statesman:—

I thank you much for your note; and though I greatly deplored the

issue, and the ideas of the prayer in question, yet, from the

moment when I heard it was your composition, I knew perfectly well

that it was written in entire good faith, and had no relation to

political controversy in the ordinary sense. I cannot but think

that, in bringing the subject of Irish intolerance before the

Almighty Father, we ought to have some regard to the fact that

down to the present day, as between the two religions, the offence

has been in the proportion of perhaps a hundred to one on the

protestant side, and the suffering by it on the Roman side. At the

present hour, I am pained to express my belief that there is far

more of intolerance in action from so-called protestants against

Roman catholics, than from Roman catholics against protestants. It

is a great satisfaction to agree with you, as I feel confident

that I must do, in the conviction that of prayers we cannot

possibly have too much in this great matter, and for my own part I

heartily desire that, unless the policy I am proposing be for the

honour of God and the good of His creatures, it may be trampled

under foot and broken into dust. Of your most charitable thoughts

and feelings towards me I am deeply sensible, and I remain with

hearty regard.

As he wrote at this time to R. H. Hutton (July 2), one of the choice

spirits of our age, “Rely upon it, I can never quarrel with you or with

Bright. What vexes me is when differences disclose baseness, which

sometimes happens.”

BOOK X. 1886-1892

Chapter I. The Morrow Of Defeat. (1886-1887)

Charity rendereth a man truly great, enlarging his mind into a

vast circumference, and to a capacity nearly infinite; so that it

by a general care doth reach all things, by an universal affection

doth embrace and grace the world.... Even a spark of it in

generosity of dealing breedeth admiration; a glimpse of it in

formal courtesy of behaviour procureth much esteem, being deemed

to accomplish and adorn a man.—BARROW.

I

After the rejection of his Irish policy in the summer of 1886, Mr.

Gladstone had a period of six years before him, the life of the new

parliament. Strangely dramatic years they were, in some respects unique in

our later history. The party schism among liberals grew deeper and wider.

The union between tories and seceders became consolidated and final. The

alternative policy of coercion was passed through parliament in an extreme

form and with violent strain on the legislative machinery, and it was

carried out in Ireland in a fashion that pricked the consciences of many

thousands of voters who had resisted the proposals of 1886. A fierce storm

rent the Irish phalanx in two, and its leader vanished from the field

where for sixteen years he had fought so bold and uncompromising a fight.

During this period Mr. Gladstone stood in the most trying of all the

varied positions of his life, and without flinching he confronted it in

the strong faith that the national honour as well as the assuagement

(M128) of the inveterate Irish wound in the flank of his country, were the

issues at stake.

This intense pre-occupation in the political struggle did not for a single

week impair his other interests, nor stay his ceaseless activity in

controversies that were not touched by politics. Not even now, when the

great cause to which he had so daringly committed himself was in decisive

issue, could he allow it to dull or sever what had been the standing

concerns of life and thought to him for so long a span of years. As from

his youth up, so now behind the man of public action was the diligent,

eager, watchful student, churchman, apologist, divine. And what is curious

and delightful is that he never set a more admirable example of the tone

and temper in which literary and religious controversy should be

conducted, than in these years when in politics exasperation was at its

worst. It was about this time that he wrote: “Certainly one of the lessons

life has taught me is that where there is known to be a common object, the

pursuit of truth, there should also be a studious desire to interpret the

adversary in the best sense his words will fairly bear; to avoid whatever

widens the breach; and to make the most of whatever tends to narrow it.

These I hold to be part of the laws of knightly tournament.” And to these

laws he sedulously conformed. Perhaps at some happy time before the day of

judgment they may be transferred from the tournament to the battle-fields

of philosophy, criticism, and even politics.

II

After the defeat in which his tremendous labours had for the moment ended,

he made his way to what was to him the most congenial atmosphere in the

world, to the company of Döllinger and Acton, at Tegernsee in Bavaria.

“Tegernsee,” Lord Acton wrote to me (Sept. 7), “is an out-of-the-way

place, peaceful and silent, and as there is a good library in the house, I

have taken some care of his mind, leading in the direction of little

French comedies, and away from the tragedy of existence. It has done him

good, and he has just started with Döllinger to climb a high mountain in

the neighbourhood.”

_To Mrs. Gladstone._

_Tegernsee, Aug. 28, 1886._—We found Döllinger reading in the

garden. The course of his life is quite unchanged. His

constitution does not appear at all to have given way. He beats me

utterly in standing, but that is not saying much, as it never was

one of my gifts; and he is not conscious (eighty-seven last

February) of any difficulty with the heart in going up hill. His

deafness has increased materially, but not so that he cannot carry

on very well conversation with a single person. We have talked

much together even on disestablishment which he detests, and

Ireland as to which he is very apprehensive, but he never seems to

shut up his mind by prejudice. I had a good excuse for giving him

my pamphlet,(213) but I do not know whether he will tell us what

he thinks of it. He was reading it this morning. He rises at six

and breakfasts alone. Makes a _good_ dinner at two and has nothing

more till the next morning. He does not appear after dark. On the

whole one sees no reason why he should not last for several years

yet.

“When Dr. Döllinger was eighty-seven,” Mr. Gladstone wrote later, “he

walked with me seven miles across the hill that separates the Tegernsee

from the next valley to the eastward. At that time he began to find his

sleep subject to occasional interruptions, and he had armed himself

against them by committing to memory the first three books of the

_Odyssey_ for recital.”(214) Of Mr. Gladstone Döllinger had said in 1885,

“I have known Gladstone for thirty years, and would stand security for him

any day; his character is a very fine one, and he possesses a rare

capability for work. I differ from him in his political views on many

points, and it is difficult to convince him, for he is clad in triple

steel.”(215)

Another high personage in the Roman catholic world sent him letters

through Acton, affectionately written and with signs of serious as well as

sympathising study of his Irish policy. A little later (Sept. 21) Mr.

Gladstone writes to his wife at Hawarden:—

Bishop Strossmayer may make a journey all the way to Hawarden, and

it seems that Acton may even accompany him, which would make it

much more manageable. His coming would be a great compliment, and

cannot be discouraged or refused. It would, however, be a serious

affair, for he speaks no language with which as a spoken tongue we

are familiar, his great cards being Slavonic and Latin.

Unfortunately I have a very great increase of difficulty in

_hearing_ the words in foreign tongues, a difficulty which I hope

has hardly begun with you as yet.

Like a good host, Lord Acton kept politics out of his way as well as he

could, but some letter of mine “set him on fire, and he is full of ——’s

blunder and of Parnell’s bill.” Parliamentary duty was always a sting to

him, and by September 20 he was back in the House of Commons, speaking on

the Tenants Relief (Ireland) bill. Then to the temple of peace at Hawarden

for the rest of the year, to read the _Iliad_ “for the twenty-fifth or

thirtieth time, and every time richer and more glorious than before”; to

write elaborately on Homeric topics; to receive a good many visitors; and

to compose the admirable article on Tennyson’s second _Locksley Hall_. On

this last let us pause for an instant. The moment was hardly one in which,

from a man of nature less great and powerful than Mr. Gladstone, we should

have counted on a buoyant vindication of the spirit of his time. He had

just been roughly repulsed in the boldest enterprise of his career; his

name was a target for infinite obloquy; his motives were largely denounced

as of the basest; the conflict into which he had plunged and from which he

could not withdraw was hard; friends had turned away from him; he was old;

the issue was dubious and dark. Yet the personal, or even what to him were

the national discomfitures of the hour, were not allowed to blot the sun

out of the heavens. His whole soul rose in challenge against the tragic

tones of Tennyson’s poem, as he recalled the solid tale of the vast

improvements, the enormous mitigation of the sorrows and burdens of

mankind, that had been effected in the land by public opinion and public

authority, operative in the exhilarating sphere of self-government during

the sixty years between the first and second _Locksley Hall_.

The sum of the matter seems to be that upon the whole, and in a

degree, we who lived fifty, sixty, seventy years back, and are

living now, have lived into a gentler time; that the public

conscience has grown more tender, as indeed was very needful; and

that in matters of practice, at sight of evils formerly regarded

with indifference or even connivance, it now not only winces but

rebels; that upon the whole the race has been reaping, and not

scattering; earning and not wasting; and that without its being

said that the old Prophet is wrong, it may be said that the young

Prophet was unquestionably right.

Here is the way in which a man of noble heart and high vision as of a

circling eagle, transcends his individual chagrins. All this optimism was

the natural vein of a statesman who had lived a long life of effort in

persuading opinion in so many regions, in overcoming difficulty upon

difficulty, in content with a small reform where men would not let him

achieve a great one, in patching where he could not build anew, in

unquenchable faith, hope, patience, endeavour. Mr. Gladstone knew as well

as Tennyson that “every blessing has its drawbacks, and every age its

dangers”; he was as sensitive as Tennyson or Ruskin or any of them, to the

implacable tragedy of industrial civilisation—the city children

“blackening soul and sense in city slime,” progress halting on palsied

feet “among the glooming alleys,” crime and hunger casting maidens on the

street, and all the other recesses of human life depicted by the poetic

prophet in his sombre hours. But the triumphs of the past inspired

confidence in victories for the future, and meanwhile he thought it well

to remind Englishmen that “their country is still young as well as old,

and that in these latest days it has not been unworthy of itself.”(216)

On his birthday he enters in his diary:—

_Dec. 29, 1886._—This day in its outer experience recalls the

Scotch usage which would say, “terrible pleasant.” In spite of the

ruin of telegraph wires by snow, my letters and postal arrivals of

to-day have much exceeded those of last year. Even my share of the

reading was very heavy. The day was gone before it seemed to have

begun, all amidst stir and festivity. The estimate was nine

hundred arrivals. O for a birthday of recollection. It is long

since I have had one. There is so much to say on the soul’s

history, but bracing is necessary to say it, as it is for reading

Dante. It has been a year of shock and strain. I think a year of

some progress; but of greater absorption in interests which,

though profoundly human, are quite off the line of an old man’s

direct preparation for passing the River of Death. I have not had

a chance given me of creeping from this whirlpool, for I cannot

abandon a cause which is so evidently that of my fellow-men, and

in which a particular part seems to be assigned to me. Therefore

am I not disturbed “though the hills be carried into the middle of

the sea.”

III

_To Lord Acton._

_Hawarden, Jan. 13, 1887._—It is with much pleasure that I read

your estimate of Chamberlain. His character is remarkable, as are

in a very high degree his talents. It is one of my common sayings

that to me characters of the political class are the most

mysterious of all I meet, so that I am obliged to travel the road

of life surrounded by an immense number of judgments more or less

in suspense, and getting on for practical purposes as well as I

can.

I have with a clear mind and conscience not only assented to but

promoted the present conferences, and I had laboured in that sense

long before Mr. Chamberlain made his speech at Birmingham. It will

surprise as well as grieve me if they do harm; if indeed they do

not do some little good. Large and final arrangements, it would be

rash I think to expect.

The tide is flowing, though perhaps not rapidly, in our favour.

Without our lifting a finger, a crumbling process has begun in

both the opposite parties. “In quietness and in confidence shall

be your strength” is a blessed maxim, often applicable to

temporals as well as spirituals. I have indeed one temptation to

haste, namely, that the hour may come for me to say farewell and

claim my retirement; but inasmuch as I remain _in situ_ for the

Irish question only, I cannot be so foolish as to allow myself to

ruin by precipitancy my own purpose. Though I am writing a paper

on the Irish question for Mr. Knowles, it is no trumpet-blast, but

is meant to fill and turn to account a season of comparative

quietude.

The death of Iddesleigh has shocked and saddened us all. He was

full of excellent qualities, but had not the backbone and strength

of fibre necessary to restore the tone of a party demoralised by

his former leader. In gentleness, temper, sacrifice of himself to

the common purpose of his friends, knowledge, quickness of

perception, general integrity of intention, freedom from personal

aims, he was admirable.... I have been constantly struggling to

vindicate a portion of my time for the pursuits I want to follow,

but with very little success indeed. Some rudiments of Olympian

religion have partially taken shape. I have a paper ready for

Knowles probably in his March number on the Poseidon of Homer, a

most curious and exotic personage.... Williams and Norgate got me

the books I wanted, but alack for the time to read them! In

addition to want of time, I have to deplore my slowness in

reading, declining sight, and declining memory; all very serious

affairs for one who has such singular reason to be thankful as to

general health and strength.

I wish I could acknowledge duly or pay even in part your

unsparing, untiring kindness in the discharge of your engagements

as “Cook.” Come early to England—and stay long. We will try what

we can to bind you.

A few months later, he added to his multifarious exercises in criticism

and controversy, a performance that attracted especial attention.(217)

“Mamma and I,” he wrote to Mrs. Drew, “are each of us still separately

engaged in a death-grapple with _Robert Elsmere_. I complained of some of

the novels you gave me to read as too stiff, but they are nothing to this.

It is wholly out of the common order. At present I regard with doubt and

dread the idea of doing anything on it, but cannot yet be sure whether

your observations will be verified or not. In any case it is a tremendous

book.” And on April 1 (1888), he wrote, “By hard work I have finished and

am correcting my article on _Robert Elsmere_. It is rather stiff work. I

have had two letters from her. She is much to be liked personally, but is

a fruit, I think, of what must be called Arnoldism.”

_To Lord Acton._

_Aston Clinton, Tring, Easter Day, April 1, ’88._—I do not like to

let too long a time elapse without some note of intercourse, even

though that season approaches which brings you back to the shores

of your country. Were you here I should have much to say on many

things; but I will now speak, or first speak, of what is

uppermost, and would, if a mind is like a portmanteau, be taken or

tumble out first.

You perhaps have not heard of _Robert Elsmere_, for I find without

surprise, that it makes its way slowly into public notice. It is

not far from twice the length of an ordinary novel; and the labour

and effort of reading it all, I should say, sixfold; while one

could no more stop in it than in reading Thucydides. The idea of

the book, perhaps of the writer, appears to be a movement of

retreat from Christianity upon Theism: a Theism with a Christ

glorified, always in the human sense, but beyond the ordinary

measure. It is worked out through the medium of a being—one ought

to say a character, but I withhold the word, for there is no

sufficient substratum of character to uphold the qualities—gifted

with much intellectual subtlety and readiness, and almost every

conceivable moral excellence. He finds vent in an energetic

attempt to carry his new gospel among the skilled artisans of

London, whom the writer apparently considers as supplying the

_norm_ for all right human judgment. He has extraordinary success,

establishes a new church under the name of the new Christian

brotherhood, kills himself with overwork, but leaves his project

flourishing in a certain “Elgood Street.” It is in fact (like the

Salvation Army), a new Kirche der Zukunft.

I am always inclined to consider this Theism as among the least

defensible of the positions alternative to Christianity. Robert

Elsmere who has been a parish clergyman, is upset entirely, as it

appears, by the difficulty of accepting miracles, and by the

suggestion that the existing Christianity grew up in an age

specially predisposed to them.

I want as usual to betray you into helping the lame dog over the

stile; and I should like to know whether you would think me

violently wrong in holding that the period of the Advent was a

period when the appetite for, or disposition to, the supernatural

was declining and decaying; that in the region of human thought,

speculation was strong and scepticism advancing; that if our Lord

were a mere man, armed only with human means, His whereabouts was

in this and many other ways misplaced by Providence; that the

gospels and the New Testament must have much else besides miracle

torn out of them, in order to get us down to the _caput mortuum_

of Elgood Street. This very remarkable work is in effect identical

with the poor, thin, ineffectual production published with some

arrogance by the Duke of Somerset, which found a quack remedy for

difficulties in what he considered the impregnable citadel of

belief in God.

Knowles has brought this book before me, and being as strong as it

is strange, it cannot perish still-born. I am tossed about with

doubt as to writing upon it.

_To Lord Acton._

_Oxford, April 8, ’88._—I am grateful for your most interesting

letter, which contains very valuable warnings. On the other side

is copied what I have written on two of the points raised by the

book. Have I said too much of the Academy? I have spoken only of

the first century. You refer to (apparently) about 250 A.D. as a

time of great progress? But I was astonished on first reading the

census of Christian clergy in Rome _temp._ St. Cyprian, it was so

slender. I am not certain, but does not Beugnot estimate the

Christians, before Constantine’s conversion, in the west at

one-tenth of the population? Mrs. T. Arnold died yesterday here.

Mrs. Ward had been summoned and she is coming to see me this

evening. It is a very singular phase of the controversy which she

has opened. When do you _repatriate_?

I am afraid that my kindness to the Positivists amounts only to a

comparative approval of their not dropping the great human

tradition out of view; _plus_ a very high appreciation of the

personal qualities of our friend ——.

_To Lord Acton._

_Dollis Hill, May 13, ’88._—Your last letter was one of extreme

interest. It raised such a multitude of points, after your perusal

of my article on R. Elsmere, as to stimulate in the highest degree

my curiosity to know how far you would carry into propositions,

the ideas which you for the most part obliquely put forward. I

gave the letter to Mary, who paid us a flying visit in London,

that she might take it to Hawarden for full digestion. For myself

I feed upon the hope that when (when ?) you come back to England

we may go over the points, and I may reap further benefits from

your knowledge. I will not now attempt anything of the kind. But I

will say this generally, that I am not so much oppressed as you

appear to be, with the notion that great difficulties have been

imported by the researches of scientists into the religious and

theological argument. As respects cosmogony and _geogony_, the

Scripture has, I think, taken much benefit from them. Whatever be

the date of the early books, Pentateuch or Hexateuch in their

present _edition_, the Assyriological investigations seem to me to

have fortified and accredited their substance by producing similar

traditions in variant forms inferior to the Mosaic forms, and

tending to throw them back to a higher antiquity, a fountainhead

nearer the source. Then there is the great chapter of the

Dispersal: which Renan (I think) treats as exhibiting the

marvellous genius (!) of the Jews. As to unbroken sequences in the

physical order, they do not trouble me, because we have to do not

with the natural but the moral order, and over this science, or as

I call it natural science, does not wave her sceptre. It is no

small matter, again (if so it be, as I suppose), that, after

warring for a century against miracle as unsustained by

experience, the assailants should now have to abandon that ground,

stand only upon sequence, and controvert the great facts of the

New Testament only by raising to an extravagant and unnatural

height the demands made under the law of testimony in order to

[justify] a rational belief. One admission has to be made, that

death did not come into the world by sin, namely the sin of Adam,

and this sits inconveniently by the declaration of Saint Paul.

Mrs. Ward wrote to thank me for the tone of my article. Her first

intention was to make some reply in the _Nineteenth Century_

itself. It appears that —— advised her not to do it. But Knowles

told me that he was labouring to bring her up to the scratch

again. There, I said, you show the cloven foot; you want to keep

the _Nineteenth Century_ pot boiling.

I own that your reasons for not being in England did not appear to

me cogent, but it would be impertinent to make myself a judge of

them. The worst of it was that you did not name _any_ date. But I

must assume that you are coming; and surely the time cannot now be

far. Among other things, I want to speak with you about French

novels, a subject on which there has for me been quite recently

cast a most lurid light.

Acton’s letters in reply may have convinced Mr. Gladstone that there were

depths in this supreme controversy that he had hardly sounded; and

adversaria that he might have mocked from a professor of the school or

schools of unbelief, he could not in his inner mind make light of, when

coming from the pen of a catholic believer. Before and after the article

on _Robert Elsmere_ appeared, Acton, the student with his vast historic

knowledge and his deep penetrating gaze, warned the impassioned critic of

some historic point overstated or understated, some dangerous breach left

all unguarded, some lack of nicety in definition. Acton’s letters will one

day see the light, and the reader may then know how candidly Mr. Gladstone

was admonished as to the excess of his description of the moral action of

Christianity; as to the risk of sending modern questions to ancient

answers, for the apologists of an age can only meet the difficulties of

their age; that there are leaps and bounds in the history of thought; how

well did Newman once say that in theology you have to meet questions that

the Fathers could hardly have been made to understand; how if you go to

St. Thomas or Leibnitz or Paley for rescue from Hegel or Haeckel your

apologetics will be a record of disaster. You insist broadly, says Acton,

on belief in the divine nature of Christ as the soul, substance, and

creative force of Christian religion; you assign to it very much of the

good the church has done; all this with little or no qualification or

drawback from the other side:—

Enter Martineau or Stephen or —— (unattached), and loq.:—Is this

the final judgment of the chief of liberals? the pontiff of a

church whose fathers are the later Milton and the later Penn,

Locke, Bayle, Toland, Franklin, Turgot, Adam Smith, Washington,

Jefferson, Bentham, Dugald Stewart, Romilly, Tocqueville,

Channing, Macaulay, Mill? These men and others like them

disbelieved that doctrine established freedom, and they undid the

work of orthodox Christianity, they swept away that appalling

edifice of intolerance, tyranny, cruelty, which believers in

Christ built up to perpetuate their belief.

The philosophy of liberal history, Acton proceeds, which has to

acknowledge the invaluable services of early Christianity, feels the

anti-liberal and anti-social action of later Christianity, before the rise

of the sects that rejected, some of them the divinity of Christ; others,

the institutions of the church erected upon it. Liberalism if it admits

these things as indifferent, surrenders its own _raison d’être_, and

ceases to strive for an ethical cause. If the doctrine of Torquemada make

us condone his morality, there can be no public right and no wrong, no

political sin, no secular cause to die for. So it might be said that—

You do not work really from the principle of liberalism, but from

the cognate, though distinct principles of democracy, nationality,

progress, etc. To some extent, I fear, you will estrange valued

friends, not assuredly by any expression of theological belief,

but by seeming to ignore the great central problem of Christian

politics. If I had to put my own doubts, instead of the average

liberal’s, I should state the case in other words, but not

altogether differently.(218)

Chapter II. The Alternative Policy In Act. (1886-1888)

Those who come over hither to us from England, and some weak

people among ourselves, whenever in discourse we make mention of

liberty and property, shake their heads, and tell us that “Ireland

is a depending kingdom,” as if they would seem by this phrase to

intend, that the people of Ireland are in some state of slavery or

dependence different from those of England.—JONATHAN SWIFT.

I

In the ministry that succeeded Mr. Gladstone in 1886, Sir Michael Hicks

Beach undertook for the second time the office of Irish secretary, while

Lord Randolph Churchill filled his place at the exchequer and as leader of

the House. The new Irish policy was to open with the despatch of a

distinguished soldier to put down moonlighters in Kerry; the creation of

one royal commission under Lord Cowper, to inquire into land rents and

land purchase; and another to inquire into the country’s material

resources. The two commissions were well-established ways of marking time.

As for Irish industries and Irish resources, a committee of the House of

Commons had made a report in a blue book of a thousand pages only a year

before. On Irish land there had been a grand commission in 1880, and a

committee of the House of Lords in 1882-3. The latest Purchase Act was

hardly yet a year old. Then to commission a general to hunt down little

handfuls of peasants who with blackened faces and rude firearms crept

stealthily in the dead of night round lonely cabins in the remote

hillsides and glens of Kerry, was hardly more sensible than it would be to

send a squadron of life-guards to catch pickpockets in a London slum.

A question that exercised Mr. Gladstone at least as sharply as the

proceedings of ministers, was the attitude (M129) to be taken by those who

had quitted him, ejected him in the short parliament of 1886, and fought

the election against him. We have seen how much controversy arose long

years before as to the question whereabouts in the House of Commons the

Peelites should take their seats.(219) The same perplexity now confronted

the liberals who did not agree with Mr. Gladstone upon Irish government.

Lord Hartington wrote to him, and here is his reply:—

_August 2, 1886._—I fully appreciate the feeling which has

prompted your letter, and I admit the reality of the difficulties

you describe. It is also clear, I think, that so far as title to

places on the front opposition bench is concerned, your right to

them is identical with ours. I am afraid, however, that I cannot

materially contribute to relieve you from embarrassment. The

choice of a seat is more or less the choice of a symbol; and I

have no such acquaintance with your political views and

intentions, as could alone enable me to judge what materials I

have before me for making an answer to your inquiry. For my own

part, I earnestly desire, subject to the paramount exigencies of

the Irish question, to promote in every way the reunion of the

liberal party; a desire in which I earnestly trust that you

participate. And I certainly could not directly or indirectly

dissuade you from any step which you may be inclined to take, and

which may appear to you to have a tendency in any measure to

promote that end.

A singular event occurred at the end of the year (1886), that produced an

important change in the relations of this group of liberals to the

government that they had placed and maintained in power. Lord Randolph,

the young minister who with such extraordinary rapidity had risen to

ascendency in the councils of the government, suddenly in a fatal moment

of miscalculation or caprice resigned (Dec. 23). Political suicide is not

easy to a man with energy and resolution, but this was one of the rare

cases. In a situation so strangely unstable and irregular, with an

administration resting on the support of a section sitting on benches

opposite, and still declaring every day that they adhered to old liberal

principles and had no wish to sever old party ties, the withdrawal of Lord

Randolph Churchill created boundless perturbation. It was one of those

exquisite moments in which excited politicians enjoy the ineffable

sensation that the end of the world has come. Everything seemed possible.

Lord Hartington was summoned from the shores of the Mediterranean, but

being by temperament incredulous of all vast elemental convulsions, he

took his time. On his return he declined Lord Salisbury’s offer to make

way for him as head of the government. The glitter of the prize might have

tempted a man of schoolboy ambition, but Lord Hartington was too

experienced in affairs not to know that to be head of a group that held

the balance was, under such equivocal circumstances, far the more

substantial and commanding position of the two. Mr. Goschen’s case was

different, and by taking the vacant post at the exchequer he saved the

prime minister from the necessity of going back under Lord Randolph’s

yoke. As it happened, all this 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, ever holding

stoutly in fair weather and in foul to the party ship, 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 re-union, and in the

course of a few days five members of the original liberal cabinet of 1886

met at his house in what was known as the Round Table Conference.(220)

A letter of Mr. Gladstone’s to me puts some of his views on the situation

created by the retirement of Lord Randolph:—

_Hawarden, Christmas Day, 1886._—Between Christmas services, a

flood of cards and congratulations for the season, and many

interesting letters, I am drowned in work to-day, having just at

1-¼ P.M. ascertained what my letters _are_. So forgive me if,

first thanking you very much for yours, I deal with some points

rather abruptly.

1. Churchill has committed an outrage as against the Queen, and

also the prime minister, in the method of resigning and making

known his resignation. This, of course, they will work against

him. 2. He is also entirely wrong in supposing that the finance

minister has any ruling authority on the great estimates of

defence. If he had, he would be the master of the country. But

although he has no right to demand the concurrence of his

colleagues in his view of the estimates, he has a rather special

right, because these do so much towards determining budget and

taxation, to indicate his own views by resignation. I have

repeatedly fought estimates to the extremity, with an intention of

resigning in _case_. But to send in a resignation makes it

impossible for his colleagues as men of honour to recede. 3. I

think one of his best points is that he had made before taking

office recent and formal declarations on behalf of economy, of

which his colleagues must be taken to have been cognisant, and

Salisbury in particular. He may plead that he could not reduce

these all at once to zero. 4. Cannot something be done, without

reference to the holes that may be picked, to give him some

support as a champion of economy? This talk about the continental

war, I for one regard as pure nonsense when aimed at magnifying

our estimates.

5. With regard to Hartington. What he will do I know not, and our

wishes could have no weight with him.... The position is one of

such difficulty for H. that I am very sorry for him, though it was

never more true that he who makes his own bed in a certain way

must lie in it. Chamberlain’s speech hits him very hard in case of

acceptance. I take it for granted that he will not accept to sit

among thirteen tories, but will have to demand an entry by force,

_i.e._ with three or four friends. To accept upon that footing

would, I think, be the logical consequence of all he has said and

done since April. In logic, he ought to go forward, _or_, as

Chamberlain has done, backward. The Queen will, I have no doubt,

be brought to bear upon him, and the nine-tenths of his order. If

the Irish question rules all others, all he has to consider is

whether he (properly flanked) can serve his view of the Irish

question. But with this logic we have nothing to do. The question

for us also is (I think), what is best for our view of the Irish

question? I am tempted to wish that he should accept; it would

clear the ground. But I do not yet see my way with certainty.

6. With regard to Chamberlain. From what has already passed

between us you know that, apart from the new situation and from

his declaration, I was very desirous that everything honourable

should be done to conciliate and soothe. Unquestionably his speech

is a new fact of great weight. He is again a liberal, _quand

même_, and will not on all points (as good old Joe Hume used to

say) swear black is white for the sake of his views on Ireland. We

ought not to waste this new fact, but take careful account of it.

On the other hand, I think he will see that the moment for taking

account of it has not come. Clearly the first thing is to see who

are the government. When we see this, we shall also know something

of its colour and intentions. I do not think Randolph can go back.

He would go back at a heavy discount. If he wants to minimise, the

only way I see is that he should isolate his vote on the

estimates, form no _clique_, and proclaim strong support in Irish

matters and general policy. Thus he might pave a roundabout road

of return.... In _many_ things Goschen is more of a liberal than

Hartington, and he would carry with him next to nobody.

7. On the whole, I rejoice to think that, come what may, this

affair will really effect progress in the Irish question.

A happy Christmas to you. It will be happier than that of the

ministers.

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. While negotiation was going on, he

said, somebody must stay at home, guard the position, and keep a watch on

the movements of the enemy, and this duty was his. In truth, after

encouraging or pressing Mr. (M130) Goschen to join the government, it was

obviously impossible to do anything that would look like desertion either

of him or of them. 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. The conference was denounced from

this quarter as an attempt to find a compromise that would help a few men

sitting on the fence to salve “their consciences at the expense of a

nation’s rights.” Such remarks are worth quoting, to illustrate the temper

of the rank and file. Mr. Parnell, though alive to the truth that when

people go into a conference it usually means that they are ready 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 organise 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.(221) To assent to an Irish legislature for such affairs as

parliament might determine to be distinctively Irish, with an executive

responsible to it, was to accept the party credo on the subject. 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 negotiation 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_(222) 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 had been 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. Viewing the actual character of the _Baptist_ letter, he

said to Sir W. Harcourt, “I am inclined to think we can hardly do more

now, than to say we fear it has interposed an unexpected obstacle in the

way of any attempt at this moment to sum up the result of your

communications, which we should otherwise hopefully have done; but on the

other hand we are unwilling that so much ground apparently gained should

be lost, that a little time may soften or remove the present ruffling of

the surface, and that 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.(223) 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 re-union.

Coercion was the key to the new situation. Just as at the beginning of

1886, the announcement of it by the tory government marked the parting of

the ways, so was it now.

II

We must now with reasonable cheerfulness turn our faces back towards

Ireland. On the day of his return from (M131) Ireland (August 17, 1886)

Mr. Parnell told me that he was quite sure that rents could not be paid in

the coming winter, and if the country was to be kept quiet, the government

would have to do something. He hoped that they would do something;

otherwise there would be disturbance, and that he did not want. He had

made up his mind that his interests would be best served by a quiet

winter. For one thing he knew that disturbance would be followed by

coercion, and he knew and often said that of course strong coercion must

always in the long run win the day, little as the victory might be worth.

For another thing he apprehended that disturbance might frighten away his

new political allies in Great Britain, and destroy the combination which

he had so dexterously built up. This was now a dominant element with him.

He desired definitely that the next stage of his movement should be in the

largest sense political and not agrarian. He brought two or three sets of

proposals in this sense before the House, and finally produced a Tenants

Relief bill. It was not brilliantly framed. For in truth it is not in

human nature, either Irish or any other, to labour the framing of a bill

which has no chance of being seriously considered.

The golden secret of Irish government was always to begin by trying to

find all possible points for disagreement with anything that Mr. Parnell

said or proposed, instead of seeking whether what he said or proposed

might not furnish a basis for agreement. The conciliatory tone was soon

over, and the Parnell bill was thrown out. The Irish secretary denounced

it as permanently upsetting the settlement of 1881, as giving a death-blow

to purchase, and as produced without the proof of any real grounds for a

general reduction in judicial rents. Whatever else he did, said Sir

Michael Hicks Beach, he would never agree to govern Ireland by a policy of

blackmail.(224)

A serious movement followed the failure of the government to grapple with

arrears of rent. The policy known as the plan of campaign was launched.

The plan of campaign was this. The tenants of a given estate agreed with

one another what abatement they thought just in the current half-year’s

rent. This in a body they proffered to landlord or agent. If it was

refused as payment in full, they handed the money to a managing committee,

and the committee deposited it with some person in whom they had

confidence, to be used for the purpose of the struggle.(225) That such

proceeding constituted an unlawful conspiracy nobody doubts, any more than

it can be doubted that before the Act of 1875 every trade combination of a

like kind in this island was a conspiracy.

At an early stage the Irish leader gave his opinion to the present

writer:—

_Dec. 7, 1886._—Mr. Parnell called, looking very ill and worn. He

wished to know what I thought of the effect of the plan of

campaign upon public opinion. “If you mean in Ireland,” I said,

“of course I have no view, and it would be worth nothing if I had.

In England, the effect is wholly bad; it offends almost more even

than outrages.” He said he had been very ill and had taken no

part, so that he stands free and uncommitted. He was anxious to

have it fully understood that the fixed point in his tactics is to

maintain the alliance with the English liberals. He referred with

much bitterness, and very justifiable too, to the fact that when

Ireland seemed to be quiet some short time back, the government

had at once begun to draw away from all their promises of remedial

legislation. If now rents were paid, meetings abandoned, and

newspapers moderated, the same thing would happen over again as

usual. However, he would send for a certain one of his

lieutenants, and would press for an immediate cessation of the

violent speeches.

_December 12._—Mr. Parnell came, and we had a prolonged

conversation. The lieutenant had come over, and had defended the

plan of campaign. Mr. Parnell persevered in his dissent and

disapproval, and they parted with the understanding that the

meetings should be dropped, and the movement calmed as much as

could be. I told him that I had heard from Mr. Gladstone, and that

he could not possibly show any tolerance for illegalities.

That his opponents should call upon Mr. Gladstone to denounce the plan of

campaign and cut himself off from its authors, was to be expected. They

made the most of it. (M132) But he was the last man to be turned aside

from the prosecution of a policy that he deemed of overwhelming moment, by

any minor currents. Immediately after the election, Mr. Parnell had been

informed of his view that it would be a mistake for English and Irish to

aim at uniform action in parliament. Motives could not be at all points

the same. Liberals were bound to keep in view (next to what the Irish

question might require) the reunion of the liberal party. The Irish were

bound to have special regard to the opinion and circumstances of Ireland.

Common action up to a certain degree would arise from the necessities of

the position. Such was Mr. Gladstone’s view. He was bent on bringing a

revolutionary movement to what he confidently anticipated would be a good

end; to allow a passing phase of that movement to divert him, would be to

abandon his own foundations. No reformer is fit for his task who suffers

himself to be frightened off by the excesses of an extreme wing.

In reply to my account of the conversation with Mr. Parnell, he wrote to

me:—

_Hawarden, December 8, 1886._—I have received your very clear

statement and reply in much haste for the post—making the same

request as yours for a return. I am glad to find the —— speech is

likely to be neutralised, I hope effectually. It was really very

bad. I am glad you write to ——. 2. As to the campaign in Ireland,

I do not at present feel the force of Hartington’s appeal to me to

speak out. I do not recollect that he ever spoke out about

Churchill, of whom he is for the time the enthusiastic

follower.(226) 3. But all I say and do must be kept apart from the

slightest countenance direct or indirect to illegality. We too

suffer under the power of the landlord, but we cannot adopt this

as a method of breaking it. 4. I am glad you opened the question

of intermediate measures.... 5. Upon the whole I suppose he sees

he cannot have countenance from us in the plan of campaign. The

question rather is how much disavowal. I have contradicted a tory

figment in Glasgow that I had approved.

At a later date (September 16, 1887) he wrote to me as to an intended

speech at Newcastle: “You will, I have no doubt, press even more earnestly

than before on the Irish people the duty and policy of maintaining order,

and in these instances I shall be very glad if you will associate me with

yourself.”

“The plan of campaign,” said Mr. Gladstone, “was one of those devices that

cannot be reconciled with the principles of law and order in a civilised

country. Yet we all know that such devices are the certain result of

misgovernment. With respect to this particular instance, if the plan be

blameable (I cannot deny that I feel it difficult to acquit any such plan)

I feel its authors are not one-tenth part so blameable as the government

whose contemptuous refusal of what they have now granted, was the parent

and source of the mischief.”(227) This is worth looking at.

The Cowper Commission, in February 1887, reported that refusal by some

landlords explained much that had occurred in the way of combination, and

that the growth of these combinations had been facilitated by the fall in

prices, restriction of credit by the banks, and other circumstances making

the payment of rent impossible.(228) Remarkable evidence was given by Sir

Redvers Buller. He thought there should be some means of modifying and

redressing the grievance of rents being still higher than the people can

pay. “You have got a very ignorant poor people, and the law should look

after them, instead of which it has only looked after the rich.”(229) This

was exactly what Mr. Parnell had said. In the House the government did not

believe him; in Ireland they admitted his case to be true. In one instance

General Buller wrote to the agents of the estate that he believed it was

impossible for the tenants to pay the rent that was demanded; there might

be five or six rogues among them, but in his opinion the greater number of

them were nearer famine than paying rent.(230) In this very case ruthless

evictions followed. The same scenes were enacted elsewhere. The landlords

were within their rights, the courts were bound by the law, the police had

no choice but to back (M133) the courts. The legal ease was complete. The

moral case remained, and it was through these barbarous scenes that in a

rough and non-logical way the realities of the Irish land system for the

first time gained access to the minds of the electors of Great Britain.

Such devices as the plan of campaign came to be regarded in England and

Scotland as what they were, incidents in a great social struggle. In a

vast majority of cases the mutineers succeeded in extorting a reduction of

rent, not any more immoderate than the reduction voluntarily made by good

landlords, or decreed in the land-courts. No agrarian movement in Ireland

was ever so unstained by crime.

Some who took part in these affairs made no secret of political motives.

Unlike Mr. Parnell, they deliberately desired to make government

difficult. Others feared that complete inaction would give an opening to

the Fenian extremists. This section had already shown some signs both of

their temper and their influence in certain proceedings of the Gaelic

association at Thurles. But the main spring was undoubtedly agrarian, and

the force of the spring came from mischiefs that ministers had refused to

face in time. “What they call a conspiracy now,” said one of the insurgent

leaders, “they will call an Act of parliament next year.” So it turned

out.

The Commission felt themselves “constrained to recommend an earlier

revision of judicial rents, on account of the straitened circumstances of

Irish farmers.” What the commissioners thus told ministers in the spring

was exactly what the Irish leader had told them in the previous autumn.

They found that there were “real grounds” for some legislation of the kind

that the chief secretary, unconscious of what his cabinet was so rapidly

to come to, had stigmatised as the policy of blackmail.

On the last day of March 1887, the government felt the necessity of

introducing a measure based on facts that they had disputed, and on

principles that they had repudiated. Leaseholders were admitted, some

hundred thousand of them. That is, the more solemn of the forms of

agrarian contract were set aside. Other provisions we may pass over. But

this was not the bill to which the report of the Commission pointed. The

pith of that report was the revision and abatement of judicial rents, and

from the new bill this vital point was omitted. It could hardly have been

otherwise after a curt declaration made by the prime minister in the

previous August. “We do not contemplate any revision of judicial rents,”

he said—immediately, by the way, after appointing a commission to find out

what it was that they ought to contemplate. “We do not think it would be

honest in the first place, and we think it would be exceedingly

inexpedient.”(231) He now repeated that to interfere with judicial rents

because prices had fallen, would be to “lay your axe to the root of the

fabric of civilised society.”(232) Before the bill was introduced, Mr.

Balfour, who had gone to the Irish office on the retirement of Sir M. H.

Beach in the month of March, proclaimed in language even more fervid, that

it would be folly and madness to break these solemn contracts.(233)

For that matter, the bill even as it first stood was in direct

contravention to all such high doctrine as this, inasmuch as it clothed a

court with power to vary solemn contracts by fixing a composition for

outstanding debt, and spreading the payment of it over such a time as the

judge might think fit. That, however, was the least part of what finally

overtook the haughty language of the month of April. In May the government

accepted a proposal that the court should not only settle the sum due by

an applicant for relief for outstanding debt, but should fix a reasonable

rent for the rest of the term. This was the very power of variation that

ministers had, as it were only the day before, so roundly denounced. But

then the tenants in Ulster were beginning to growl. In June ministers

withdrew the power of variation, for now it was the landlords who were

growling. Then at last in July the prime minister called his party

together, and told them that if the bill were not altered, Ulster would be

lost to the unionist cause, and that after all he must put into the bill a

general revision of judicial rents for three years. So finally, as it was

put by a speaker of that time, (M134) you have the prime minister

rejecting in April the policy which in May he accepts; rejecting in June

the policy which he had accepted in May; and then in July accepting the

policy which he had rejected in June, and which had been within a few

weeks declared by himself and his colleagues to be inexpedient and

dishonest, to be madness and folly, and to be a laying of the axe to the

very root of the fabric of civilised society. The simplest recapitulation

made the bitterest satire.

The law that finally emerged from these singular operations dealt, it will

be observed in passing, with nothing less than the chief object of Irish

industry and the chief form of Irish property. No wonder that the

landlords lifted up angry voices. True, the minister the year before had

laid it down that if rectification of rents should be proved necessary,

the landlords ought to be compensated by the state. Of this consolatory

balm it is needless to say no more was ever heard; it was only a graceful

sentence in a speech, and proved to have little relation to purpose or

intention. At the Kildare Street club in Dublin members moodily asked one

another whether they might not just as well have had the policy of Mr.

Parnell’s bill adopted on College Green, as adopted at Westminster.

III

The moment had by this time once more come for testing the proposition

from which Mr. Gladstone’s policy had first started. The tory government

had been turned out at the beginning of 1886 upon coercion, and Mr.

Gladstone’s government had in the summer of that year been beaten upon

conciliation. “I ventured to state in 1886,” said Mr. Gladstone a year

later,(234) “that we had arrived at the point where two roads met, or

rather where two roads parted; one of them the road that marked the

endeavour to govern Ireland according to its constitutionally expressed

wishes; the other the road principally marked by ultra-constitutional

measures, growing more and more pronounced in character.” Others, he said,

with whom we had been in close alliance down to that date, considered that

a third course was open, namely liberal concession, stopping short of

autonomy, but upon a careful avoidance of coercion. Now it became visible

that this was a mistake, and that in default of effective conciliation,

coercion was the inevitable alternative. So it happened.

The government again unlocked the ancient armoury, and brought out the

well-worn engines. The new Crimes bill in most particulars followed the

old Act, but it contained one or two serious extensions, including a

clause afterwards dropped, that gave to the crown a choice in cases of

murder or certain other aggravated offences of carrying the prisoner out

of his own country over to England and trying him before a Middlesex jury

at the Old Bailey—a puny imitation of the heroic expedient suggested in

1769, of bringing American rebels over for trial in England under a

slumbering statute of King Henry VIII. The most startling innovation of

all was that the new Act was henceforth to be the permanent law of

Ireland, and all its drastic provisions were to be brought into force

whenever the executive government pleased.(235) This Act was not

restricted as every former law of the kind had been in point of time, to

meet an emergency; it was made a standing instrument of government.

Criminal law and procedure is one of the most important of all the

branches of civil rule, and certainly is one of the most important of all

its elements. This was now in Ireland to shift up and down, to be one

thing to-day and another thing to-morrow at executive discretion. Acts

would be innocent or would be crimes, just as it pleased the Irish

minister. Parliament did not enact that given things were criminal, but

only that they should be criminal when an Irish minister should choose to

say so.(236) Persons charged with them would have the benefit of a jury or

would be deprived of a jury, as the Irish minister might think proper.

(M135) Mr. Parnell was in bad health and took little part, but he made

more than one pulverising attack in that measured and frigid style which,

in a man who knows his case at first hand, may be so much more awkward for

a minister than more florid onslaughts. He discouraged obstruction, and

advised his followers to select vital points and to leave others alone.

This is said to have been the first Coercion bill that a majority of Irish

members voting opposed.

It was at this point that the government suddenly introduced their

historic proposal for closure by guillotine. They carried (June 10) a

resolution that at ten o’clock on that day week the committee stage should

be brought compulsorily to an end, and that any clauses remaining

undisposed of should be put forthwith without amendment or debate. The

most remarkable innovation upon parliamentary rule and practice since

Cromwell and Colonel Pride, was introduced by Mr. Smith in a

characteristic speech, well larded with phrases about duty, right,

responsibility, business of the country, and efficiency of the House.

These solemnising complacencies’ did not hide the mortifying fact that if

it had really been one of the objects of Irish members for ten years past

to work a revolution in the parliament where they were forced against

their will to sit, they had at least, be such a revolution good or bad,

succeeded in their design.

Perhaps looking forward with prophetic eye to a day that actually arrived

six years later, Mr. Gladstone, while objecting to the proposal as

unjustified, threw the responsibility of it upon the government, and used

none of the flaming colours of defiance. The bulk of the liberals

abstained from the division. This practical accord between the two sets of

leading men made the parliamentary revolution definite and finally

clenched it. It was not without something of a funereal pang that members

with a sense of the old traditions of the power, solemnity, and honour of

the House of Commons came down on the evening of the seventeenth of June.

Within a week they would be celebrating the fiftieth year of the reign of

the Queen, and that night’s business was the strange and unforeseen goal

at which a journey of little more than the same period of time along the

high, democratic road had brought the commonalty of the realm since 1832.

Among the provisions that went into the bill without any discussion in

committee were those giving to the Irish executive the power of stamping

an association as unlawful; those dealing with special juries and change

of the place of trial; those specifying the various important conditions

attaching to proclamations, which lay at the foundation of the Act; those

dealing with rules, procedure, and the limits of penalty. The report next

fell under what Burke calls the accursed slider. That stage had taken

three sittings, when the government moved (June 30) that it must close in

four days. So much grace, however, was not needed; for after the motion

had been carried the liberals withdrew from the House, and the Irishmen

betook themselves to the galleries, whence they looked down upon the

mechanical proceedings below.

IV

In Ireland the battle now began in earnest. The Irish minister went into

it with intrepid logic. Though very different men in the deeper parts of

character, Macaulay’s account of Halifax would not be an ill-natured

account of Mr. Balfour. “His understanding was keen, sceptical,

inexhaustibly fertile in distinctions and objections, his taste refined,

his sense of the ludicrous exquisite; his temper placid and forgiving, but

fastidious, and by no means prone either to malevolence or to enthusiastic

admiration.” His business was to show disaffected Ireland that parliament

was her master. Parliament had put the weapon into his hands, and it was

for him to smite his antagonists to the ground. He made no experiments in

judicious mixture, hard blows and soft speech, but held steadily to force

and fear. His apologists argued that after all substantial justice was

done even in what seemed hard cases, and even if the spirit of law were

sometimes a trifle strained. Unluckily the peasant with the blunderbuss,

as he waits behind the hedge for the tyrant or the traitor, says just the

same. The forces of disorder were infinitely less formidable than they had

been a hundred times before. The contest was child’s play compared with

(M136) the violence and confusion with which Mr. Forster or Lord Spencer

had to deal. On the other hand the alliance between liberals and Irish

gave to the struggle a parliamentary complexion, by which no coercion

struggle had ever been marked hitherto. In the dialectic of senate and

platform, Mr. Balfour displayed a strength of wrist, a rapidity, an

instant readiness for combat, that took his foes by surprise, and roused

in his friends a delight hardly surpassed in the politics of our day.

There was another important novelty this time. To England hitherto Irish

coercion had been little more than a word of common form, used without any

thought what the thing itself was like to the people coerced. Now it was

different. Coercion had for once become a flaming party issue, and when

that happens all the world awakes. Mr. Gladstone had proclaimed that the

choice lay between conciliation and coercion. The country would have liked

conciliation, but did not trust his plan. When coercion came, the two

British parties rushed to their swords, and the deciding body of neutrals

looked on with anxiety and concern. There has never been a more

strenuously sustained contest in the history of political campaigns. No

effort was spared to bring the realities of repression vividly home to the

judgment and feelings of men and women of our own island. English visitors

trooped over to Ireland, and brought back stories of rapacious landlords,

violent police, and famishing folk cast out homeless upon the wintry

roadside. Irishmen became the most welcome speakers on British platforms,

and for the first time in all our history they got a hearing for their

lamentable tale. To English audiences it was as new and interesting as the

narrative of an African explorer or a navigator in the Pacific. Our Irish

instructors even came to the curious conclusion that ordinary

international estimates must be revised, and that Englishmen are in truth

far more emotional than Irishmen. Ministerial speakers, on the other hand,

diligently exposed inaccuracy here or over-colouring there. They appealed

to the English distaste for disorder, and to the English taste for

mastery, and they did not overlook the slumbering jealousy of popery and

priestcraft. But the course of affairs was too rapid for them, the strong

harsh doses to the Irish patient were too incessant. The Irish convictions

in cases where the land was concerned rose to 2805, and of these rather

over one-half were in cases where in England the rights of the prisoner

would have been guarded by a jury. The tide of common popular feeling in

this island about the right to combine, the right of public meeting, the

frequent barbarities of eviction, the jarring indignities of prison

treatment, flowed stronger and stronger. The general impression spread

more and more widely that the Irish did not have fair play, that they were

not being treated about speeches and combination and meetings as

Englishmen or Scotchmen would be treated. Even in breasts that had been

most incensed by the sudden reversal of policy in 1886, the feeling slowly

grew that it was perhaps a pity after all that Mr. Gladstone had not been

allowed to persevere on the fair-shining path of conciliation.

V

The proceedings under exceptional law would make an instructive chapter in

the history of the union. Mr. Gladstone followed them vigilantly, once or

twice without his usual exercise of critical faculty, but always bringing

into effective light the contrast between this squalid policy and his

anticipations of his own. Here we are only concerned with what affected

British opinion on the new policy. One set of distressing incidents, not

connected with the Crimes Act, created disgust and even horror in the

country and set Mr. Gladstone on fire. A meeting of some six thousand

persons assembled in a large public square at Mitchelstown in the county

of Cork.(237) It was a good illustration of Mr. Gladstone’s habitual

strategy in public movements, that he should have boldly and promptly

seized on the doings at Mitchelstown as an incident well fitted to arrest

the attention of the country. “Remember Mitchelstown” became a watchword.

The chairman, speaking from a carriage that did duty for a platform,

opened the proceedings. Then a file of police endeavoured to force a way

through the densest part of the (M137) crowd for a government note-taker.

Why they did not choose an easier mode of approach from the rear, or by

the side; why they had not got their reporter on to the platform before

the business began; and why they had not beforehand asked for

accommodation as was the practice, were three points never explained. The

police unable to make a way through the crowd retired to the outskirt. The

meeting went on. In a few minutes a larger body of police pressed up

through the thick of the throng to the platform. A violent struggle began,

the police fighting their way through the crowd with batons and clubbed

rifles. The crowd flung stones and struck out with sticks, and after three

or four minutes the police fled to their barracks—some two hundred and

fifty yards away. So far there is no material discrepancy in the various

versions of this dismal story. What followed is matter of conflicting

testimony. One side alleged that a furious throng rushed after the police,

attacked the barrack, and half murdered a constable outside, and that the

constables inside in order to save their comrade and to beat off the

assailing force, opened fire from an upper window. The other side declared

that no crowd followed the retreating police at all, that the assault on

the barrack was a myth, and that the police fired without orders from any

responsible officer, in mere blind panic and confusion. One old man was

shot dead, two others were mortally wounded and died within a week.

Three days later the affray was brought before the House of Commons. Any

one could see from the various reports that the conduct of the police, the

resistance of the crowd, and the guilt or justification of the bloodshed,

were all matters in the utmost doubt and demanding rigorous inquiry. Mr.

Balfour pronounced instant and peremptory judgment. The thing had happened

on the previous Friday. The official report, however rapidly prepared,

could not have reached him until the morning of Sunday. His officers at

the Castle had had no opportunity of testing their official report by

cross-examination of the constables concerned, nor by inspection of the

barrack, the line of fire, and other material elements of the case. Yet on

the strength of this hastily drawn and unsifted report received by him

from Ireland on Sunday, and without even waiting for any information that

eye-witnesses in the House might have to lay before him in the course of

the discussion, the Irish minister actually told parliament once for all,

on the afternoon of Monday, that he was of opinion, “looking at the matter

in the most impartial spirit, that the police were in no way to blame, and

that no responsibility rested upon any one except upon those who convened

the meeting under circumstances which they knew would lead to excitement

and might lead to outrage.”(238) The country was astounded to see the most

critical mind in all the House swallow an untested police report whole; to

hear one of the best judges in all the country of the fallibility of human

testimony, give offhand, in what was really a charge of murder, a verdict

of Not Guilty, after he had read the untested evidence on one side.

The rest was all of a piece. The coroner’s inquest was held in due course.

The proceedings were not more happily conducted than was to be expected

where each side followed the counsels of ferocious exasperation. The jury,

after some seventeen days of it, returned a verdict of wilful murder

against the chief police officer and five of his men. This inquisition was

afterwards quashed (February 10, 1888) in the Queen’s bench, on the ground

that the coroner had perpetrated certain irregularities of form. Nobody

has doubted that the Queen’s bench was right; it seemed as if there had

been a conspiracy of all the demons of human stupidity in this tragic

bungle, from the first forcing of the reporter through the crowd, down to

the inquest on the three slain men and onwards. The coroner’s inquest

having broken down, reasonable opinion demanded that some other public

inquiry should be held. Even supporters of the government demanded it. If

three men had been killed by the police in connection with a public

meeting in England or Scotland, no home secretary would have dreamed for

five minutes of resisting such a demand. Instead of a public inquiry, what

the chief secretary did was to appoint a (M138) confidential departmental

committee of policemen privately to examine, not whether the firing was

justified by the circumstances, but how it came about that the police were

so handled by their officers that a large force was put to flight by a

disorderly mob. The three deaths were treated as mere accident and

irrelevance. The committee was appointed to correct the discipline of the

force, said the Irish minister, and in no sense to seek justification for

actions which, in his opinion, required no justification.(239) Endless

speeches were made in the House and out of it; members went over to

Mitchelstown to measure distances, calculate angles, and fire imaginary

rifles out of the barrack window; all sorts of theories of ricochet shots

were invented, photographs and diagrams were taken. Some held the police

to be justified, others held them to be wholly unjustified. But without a

judicial inquiry, such as had been set up in the case of Belfast in 1886,

all these doings were futile. The government remained stubborn. The

slaughter of the three men was finally left just as if it had been the

slaughter of three dogs. No other incident of Irish administration stirred

deeper feelings of disgust in Ireland, or of misgiving and indignation in

England.

Here was, in a word, the key to the new policy. Every act of Irish

officials was to be defended. No constable could be capable of excess. No

magistrate could err. No prison rule was over harsh. Every severity

technically in order must be politic.

VI

Among other remarkable incidents, the Pope came to the rescue, and sent an

emissary to inquire into Irish affairs. The government had lively hopes of

the emissary, and while they beat the Orange drum in Ulster with one hand,

with the other they stealthily twitched the sleeve of Monsignor Persico.

It came to little. The Congregation at Rome were directed by the Pope to

examine whether it was lawful to resort to the plan of campaign. They

answered that it was contrary both to natural justice and Christian

charity. The papal rescript, embodying this conclusion, was received in

Ireland with little docility. Unwisely the cardinals had given reasons,

and the reasons, instead of springing in the mystic region of faith and

morals, turned upon issues of fact as to fair rents. But then the Irish

tenant thought himself a far better judge of a fair rent, than all the

cardinals that ever wore red hats. If he had heard of such a thing as

Jansenism, he would have known that he was in his own rude way taking up a

position not unlike that of the famous teachers of Port Royal two hundred

and thirty years before, that the authority of the Holy See is final as to

doctrine, but may make a mistake as to fact.

Mr. Parnell spoke tranquilly of “a document from a distant country,” and

publicly left the matter to his catholic countrymen.(240) Forty catholic

members of parliament met at the Mansion House in Dublin, and signed a

document in which they flatly denied every one of the allegations and

implications about fair rents, free contract, the land commission and all

the rest, and roundly declared the Vatican circular to be an instrument of

the unscrupulous foes both of the Holy See and of the people of Ireland.

They told the Pope, that while recognising unreservedly as catholics the

spiritual jurisdiction of the Holy See, they were bound solemnly to affirm

that Irish catholics recognise no rights in Rome to interfere in their

political affairs. A great meeting in the Phœnix Park ratified the same

position by acclamation. At Cork, under the presidency of the mayor, and

jealously watched by forces of horse and foot, a great gathering in a

scene of indescribable excitement protested that they would never allow

the rack-renters of Ireland to grind them down at the instigation of

intriguers at Rome. Even in many cities in the United States the same

voice was heard. The bishops knew well that the voice was strongly marked

by the harsh accent of their Fenian adversaries. They issued a declaration

of their own, protesting to their flocks that the rescript was confined

within the spiritual sphere, and that his holiness was far from wishing to

prejudice the nationalist movement. In the closing week of the year, the

Pope himself judged that the time had come for him to make known (M139)

that the action which had been “so sadly misunderstood,” had been prompted

by the desire to keep the cause in which Ireland was struggling from being

weakened by the introduction of anything that could justly be brought in

reproach against it.(241) The upshot of the intervention was that the

action condemned by the rescript was not materially affected within the

area already disturbed; but the rescript may have done something to

prevent its extension elsewhere.

VII

Among the entries for 1887 there occur:—

_Sandringham, Jan. 29._—A large party. We were received with the

usual delicacy and kindness. Much conversation with the Prince of

Wales.... Walk with ——, who charmed me much. _Jan. 31._—Off by 11

A.M. to Cambridge.... Dined with the master of Trinity in hall.

Went over the Newnham buildings: greatly pleased. Saw Mr.

Sidgwick. Evening service at King’s.... _Feb. 2._—Hawarden at

5.30. Set to work on papers. Finished Greville’s Journals. _Feb.

3._—Wrote on Greville. _Feb. 5._—Felled a chestnut. _Feb.

27._—Read Lord Shaftesbury’s _Memoirs_—an excellent discipline for

me. _March 5._— Dollis Hill [a house near Willesden often lent to

him in these times by Lord and Lady Aberdeen] a refuge from my

timidity, unwilling at 77 to begin a new London house. _March

9._—Windsor [to dine and sleep]. The Queen courteous as always;

somewhat embarrassed, as I thought. _March 29._—Worked on Homer,

Apollo, etc. Then turned to the Irish business and revolved much,

with extreme difficulty in licking the question into shape. Went

to the House and spoke 1-½ hours as carefully and with as much

measure as I could. Conclave on coming course of business. _April

5._—Conversation with Mr. Chamberlain—ambiguous result, but some

ground made. _April 18._—H. of C. 4-½-8-¼ and 10-2. Spoke 1-¼ h.

My voice did its duty but with great effort. _April 25._—Spoke for

an hour upon the budget. R. Churchill excellent. Conclave on the

forged letters. _May 4._—Read earlier speeches of yesterday with

care, and worked up the subject of Privilege. Spoke 1-¼ h.

In June (1887) Mr. Gladstone started on a political campaign in South

Wales, where his reception was one of the most triumphant in all his

career. Ninety-nine hundredths of the vast crowds who gave up wages for

the sake of seeing him and doing him honour were strong protestants, yet

he said to a correspondent, “they made this demonstration in order to

secure firstly and mainly justice to catholic Ireland. It is not after all

a bad country in which such things take place.”

It was at Swansea that he said what he had to say about the Irish members.

He had never at any time from the hour when he formed his government, set

up their exclusion as a necessary condition of home rule. All that he ever

bargained for was that no proposal for inclusion should be made a ground

for impairing real and effective self-government. Subject to this he was

ready to adjourn the matter and to leave things as they were, until

experience should show the extent of the difficulty and the best way of

meeting it. Provisional exclusion had been suggested by a member of great

weight in the party in 1886. The new formula was provisional inclusion.

This announcement restored one very distinguished adherent to Mr.

Gladstone, and it appeased the clamour of the busy knot who called

themselves imperial federationists. Of course it opened just as many new

difficulties as it closed old ones, but both old difficulties and new fell

into the background before the struggle in Ireland.

_June 2, 1887._—Off at 11.40. A tumultuous but interesting journey

to Swansea and Singleton, where we were landed at 7.30. Half a

dozen speeches on the way. A small party to dinner. 3.—A “quiet

day.” Wrote draft to the associations on the road, as model. Spent

the forenoon in settling plans and discussing the lines of my

meditated statement to-morrow with Sir Hussey Vivian, Lord

Aberdare, and Mr. Stuart Rendel. In the afternoon we went to the

cliffs and the Mumbles, and I gave some hours to writing

preliminary notes on a business where all depends on the manner of

handling. Small party to dinner. Read Cardiff and Swansea guides.

4.—More study and notes. 12-4-½ the astonishing procession. Sixty

thousand! Then spoke for near an hour. Dinner at 8, near an

hundred, arrangements perfect. Spoke for nearly another hour; got

through a most difficult business as well as I could expect.

5.—Church 11 A.M., notable sermon and H. C. (service long), again

6-½ P.M., good sermon. Wrote to Sir W. Harcourt, Mr. Morley, etc.

Walked in the garden. Considered the question of a non-political

address “in council”; we all decided against it. 6.—Surveys in the

house, then 12-4 to Swansea for the freedom and opening the town

library. I was rather jealous of a non-political affair at such a

time, but could not do less than speak for thirty or thirty-five

minutes for the two occasions. 4-8 to Park Farm, the beautiful

vales, breezy common and the curious chambered cairn. Small

dinner-party. 7.—Off at 8.15 and a hard day to London, the

occasion of processions, hustles, and speeches; that at Newport in

the worst atmosphere known since the Black Hole. Poor C. too was

an invalid. Spoke near an hour to 3000 at Cardiff; about ¼ hour at

Newport; more briefly at Gloucester and Swindon. Much enthusiasm

even in the English part of the journey. Our party was reduced at

Newport to the family, at Gloucester to our two selves. C. H.

Terrace at 6.20. Wrote to get off the House of Commons. It has

really been a “progress,” and an extraordinary one.

In December 1887, under the pressing advice of his physician, though “with

a great lazy reluctance,” Mr. Gladstone set his face with a family party

towards Florence. He found the weather more northern than at Hawarden, but

it was healthy. He was favourably impressed by all he saw of Italian

society (English being cultivated to a degree that surprised him), but he

did his best to observe Sir Andrew Clark’s injunction that he should

practise the Trappist discipline of silence, and the condition of his

voice improved in consequence. He read Scartazzini’s book on Dante, and

found it fervid, generally judicial, and most unsparing in labour; and he

was much interested in Beugnot’s _Chute du Paganisme_. And as usual, he

returned homeward as unwillingly as he had departed. During the session he

fought his Irish battle with unsparing tenacity, and the most conspicuous

piece of his activity out of parliament was a pilgrimage to Birmingham

(November 1888). It was a great gathering of lieutenants and leading

supporters from, every part of the country. Here is a note of mine:—

On the day of the great meeting in Bingley Hall, somebody came to

say that Mr. Gladstone wanted to know if I could supply him with a

certain passage from a speech of Lord Hartington’s. I found him in

his dressing-gown, conning his notes and as lively as youth. He

jumped up and pressed point after point on me, as if I had been a

great public meeting. I offered to go down to the public library

and hunt for the passage; he deprecated this, but off I went, and

after some search unearthed the passage, and copied it out. In the

evening I went to dine with him before the meeting. He had been

out for a short walk to the Oratory in the afternoon to call on

Cardinal Newman. He was not allowed, he told me, to see the

cardinal, but he had had a long talk with Father Neville. He found

that Newman was in the habit of reading with a reflector candle,

but had not a good one. “So I said I had a good one, and I sent it

round to him.” He was entirely disengaged in mind during dinner,

ate and drank his usual quantity, and talked at his best about all

manner of things. At the last moment he was telling us of John

Hunter’s confirmation, from his own medical observation, of

Homer’s remark about Dolon; a bad fellow, whose badness Homer

explains by the fact that he was a brother brought up among

sisters only:—

αὐτὰρ δ᾽ μοῦνος ἔην μετὰ πέντε κασιγνήτῃσιν.(242)

Oliver Cromwell, by the way, was an only surviving boy among seven

sisters, so we cannot take either poet or surgeon for gospel. Time

was up, and bore us away from Homer and Hunter. He was perfectly

silent in the carriage, as I remembered Bright had been when years

before I drove with him to the same hall. The sight of the vast

meeting was almost appalling, from fifteen to seventeen thousand

people. He spoke with great vigour and freedom; the fine passages

probably heard all over; many other passages certainly not heard,

but his gestures so strong and varied as to be almost as

interesting as the words would have been. The speech lasted an

hour and fifty minutes; and he was not at all exhausted when he

sat down. The scene at the close was absolutely indescribable and

incomparable, overwhelming like the sea.

He took part in parliamentary business at the beginning of December. On

December 3rd he spoke on Ireland with immense fervour and passion. He was

roused violently by the chairman’s attempt to rule out strong language

from debate, and made a vehement passage on that point. The substance of

the speech was rather thin and not new, but the delivery magnificent. The

Irish minister rose to reply at 7.50, and Mr. Gladstone reluctantly made

up his mind to dine in the House. A friend by his side said No, and at

8.40 hurried him down the back-stairs to a hospitable board in Carlton

Gardens. He was nearly voiceless, until it was time for the rest of us to

go back. A speedy meal revived him, and he was soon discoursing on

O’Connell and many other persons and things, with boundless force and

vivacity.

A few days later he was carried off to Naples. Hereto, he told Lord Acton,

“we have been induced by three circumstances. First, a warm invitation

from the Dufferins to Rome; as to which, however, there are _cons_ as well

as _pros_ for a man who like me is neither Italian nor Curial in the view

of present policies. Secondly, our kind friend Mr. Stuart Rendel has

actually offered to be our conductor thither and back, to perform for us

the great service which you rendered us in the trip to Munich and Saint

Martin. Thirdly, I have the hope that the stimulating climate of Naples,

together with an abstention from speech greater than any I have before

enjoyed, may act upon my ‘vocal cord,’ and partially at least restore it.”

Chapter III. The Special Commission. (1887-1890)

My Lords, it appears to me that the measure is unfortunate in its

origin, unfortunate in its scope and object, and unfortunate in

the circumstances which accompanied its passage through the other

House. It appears to me to establish a precedent most novel, and

fraught with the utmost danger.—LORD HERSCHELL.(243)

I

Mr. Gladstone’s ceaseless attention to the many phases of the struggle

that was now the centre of his public life, was especially engaged on what

remains the most amazing of them. I wish it were possible to pass it over,

or throw it into a secondary place; but it is too closely connected with

the progress of Mr. Gladstone’s Irish policy in British opinion at a

critical stage, and it is still the subject of too many perversions that

affect his name. Transactions are to be found in our annals where wrong

was done by government to individuals on a greater scale, where a powerful

majority devised engines for the proscription of a weak minority with

deadlier aim, and where the omnipotence of parliament was abused for the

purpose of faction with more ruthless result. But whether we look at the

squalid fraud in which the incident began, or at the tortuous

parliamentary pretences by which it was worked out, or at the perversion

of fundamental principles of legal administration involved in sending men

to answer the gravest charges before a tribunal specially constituted at

the absolute discretion of their bitterest political opponents—at the

moment engaged in a fierce contest with them in another field—from

whatever point of view we approach, the erection of the Special Commission

of 1888 stands out as one of the ugliest things done in the name and under

the forms of law in this island during the century.

(M140) In the spring of 1887 the conductors of _The Times_, intending to

strengthen the hands of the government in their new and doubtful struggle,

published a series of articles, in which old charges against the Irish

leader and his men were served up with fresh and fiery condiments. The

allegations of crime were almost all indefinite; the method was by

allusion, suggestion, innuendo, and the combination of ingeniously

selected pieces, to form a crude and hideous mosaic. Partly from its

extravagance, partly because it was in substance stale, the thing missed

fire.

On the day on which the division was to be taken on the second reading of

the Coercion bill, a more formidable bolt was shot. On that morning (April

18th, 1887), there appeared in the newspaper, with all the fascination of

facsimile, a letter alleged to be written by Mr. Parnell. It was dated

nine days after the murders in the Phœnix Park, and purported to be an

apology, presumably to some violent confederate, for having as a matter of

expediency openly condemned the murders, though in truth the writer

thought that one of the murdered men deserved his fate.(244) Special point

was given to the letter by a terrible charge, somewhat obliquely but still

unmistakably made, in an article five or six weeks before, that Mr.

Parnell closely consorted with the leading Invincibles when he was

released on parole in April 1882; that he probably learned from them what

they were about; and that he recognised the murders in the Phœnix Park as

their handiwork.(245) The significance of the letter therefore was that,

knowing the bloody deed to be theirs, he wrote for his own safety to

qualify, recall, and make a humble apology for the condemnation which he

had thought it politic publicly to pronounce. The town was thrown into a

great ferment. At the political clubs and in the lobbies, all was

complacent jubilation on the one side, and consternation on the other.

Even people with whom politics were a minor interest were shocked by such

an exposure of the grievous depravity of man.

Mr. Parnell did not speak until one o’clock in the morning, immediately

before the division on the second reading of the bill. He began amid the

deepest silence. His denial was scornful but explicit. The letter, he

said, was an audacious fabrication. It is fair to admit that the

ministerialists were not without some excuse of a sort for the incredulous

laughter with which they received this repudiation. They put their trust

in the most serious, the most powerful, the most responsible, newspaper in

the world; greatest in resources, in authority, in universal renown.

Neglect of any possible precaution against fraud and forgery in a document

to be used for the purpose of blasting a great political opponent would be

culpable in no common degree. Of this neglect people can hardly be blamed

for thinking that the men of business, men of the world, and men of honour

who were masters of the _Times_, must be held absolutely incapable.

Those who took this view were encouraged in it by the prime minister.

Within four-and-twenty hours he publicly took the truth of the story, with

all its worst innuendoes, entirely for granted. He went with rapid stride

from possibility to probability, and from probability to certainty. In a

speech, of which precipitate credulity was not the only fault, Lord

Salisbury let fall the sentence: “When men who knew gentlemen who

intimately knew Mr. Parnell murdered Mr. Burke.” He denounced Mr.

Gladstone for making a trusted friend of such a man—one who had “mixed on

terms of intimacy with those whose advocacy of assassination was well

known.” Then he went further. “You may go back,” he said, “to the

beginning of British government, you may go back from decade to decade,

and from leader to leader, but you will never find a man who has accepted

a position, in reference to an ally tainted with the strong presumption of

conniving at assassination, which has been accepted by Mr. Gladstone at

the present time.”(246) Seldom has party spirit led eminent personages to

greater lengths of dishonouring absurdity.

Now and afterwards people asked why Mr. Parnell did not promptly bring his

libellers before a court of law. The answer was simple. The case would

naturally have been tried in London. In other words, not only the

plaintiff’s own character, but the whole movement that he represented,

would have been submitted to a Middlesex jury, with all the national and

political prejudices inevitable in such a body, and with all the twelve

chances of a disagreement, that would be almost as disastrous to Mr.

Parnell as an actual verdict for his assailants. The issues were too great

to be exposed to the hazards of a cast of the die. Then, why not lay the

venue in Ireland? It was true that a favourable verdict might just as

reasonably be expected from the prepossessions of Dublin, as an

unfavourable one from the prepossessions of London. But the moral effect

of an Irish verdict upon English opinion would be exactly as worthless, as

the effect of an English verdict in a political or international case

would be upon the judgment and feeling of Ireland. To procure a

condemnation of the _Times_ at the Four Courts, as a means of affecting

English opinion, would not be worth a single guinea. Undoubtedly the

subsequent course of this strange history fully justified the advice that

Mr. Parnell received in this matter from the three persons in the House of

Commons with whom on this point he took counsel.

II

The prudent decision against bringing a fierce political controversy

before an English judge and jury was in a few months brought to nought,

from motives that have remained obscure, and with results that nobody

could foresee. The next act in the drama was the institution of

proceedings for libel against the _Times_ in November 1887, by an Irishman

who had formerly sat in parliament as a political follower of Mr. Parnell.

The newspaper met him by denying that the articles on _Parnellism and

Crime_ related to him. It went on to plead that the statements in the

articles were true in substance and in fact. The action was tried before

Lord Coleridge in July 1888, and the newspaper was represented by the

advocate who happened to be the principal law officer of the crown. The

plaintiff’s counsel picked out certain passages, said that his client was

one of the persons intended to be libelled, and claimed damages. He was

held to have made an undoubted _prima facie_ case on the two libels in

which he had been specifically named. This gave the enemy his chance. The

attorney general, speaking for three days, opened the whole case for the

newspaper; repeated and enlarged upon the charges and allegations in its

articles; stated the facts which he proposed to give in evidence; sought

to establish that the fac-simile letter was really signed by Mr. Parnell;

and finally put forward other letters, now produced for the first time,

which carried complicity and connivance to a further point. These charges

he said that he should prove. On the third day he entirely changed his

tack. Having launched this mass of criminating imputation, he then

suddenly bethought him, so he said, of the hardships which his course

would entail upon the Irishmen, and asked that in that action he should

not be called upon to prove anything at all. The Irishmen and their leader

remained under a load of odium that the law officer of the crown had cast

upon them, and declined to substantiate.

The production of this further batch of letters stirred Mr. Parnell from

his usual impassiveness. His former determination to sit still was shaken.

The day after the attorney general’s speech, he came to the present writer

to say that he thought of sending a paragraph to the newspapers that

night, with an announcement of his intention to bring an action against

the _Times_, narrowed to the issue of the letters. The old arguments

against an action were again pressed upon him. He insisted, on the other

side, that he was not afraid of cross-examination; that they might

cross-examine as much as ever they pleased, either about the doings of the

land league or the letters; that his hands would be found to be clean, and

the letters to be gross (M141) forgeries. The question between us was

adjourned; and meanwhile he fell in with my suggestion that he should the

next day make a personal statement to the House. The personal statement

was made in his most frigid manner, and it was as frigidly received. He

went through the whole of the letters, one by one; showed the palpable

incredibility of some of them upon their very face, and in respect of

those which purported to be written by himself, he declared, in words free

from all trace of evasion, that he had never written them, never signed

them, never directed nor authorised them to be written.

So the matter was left on the evening of Friday (July 6, 1888). On Monday

Mr. Parnell came to the House with the intention to ask for a select

committee. The feeling of the English friend to whom he announced his

intention in the lobby, still was that the matter might much better be

left where it stood. The new batch of letters had strengthened his

position, for the Kilmainham letter was a fraud upon the face of it, and a

story that he had given a hundred pounds to a fugitive from justice after

the murders, had been demolished. The press throughout the country had

treated the subject very coolly. The government would pretty certainly

refuse a select committee, and what would be the advantage to him in the

minds of persons inclined to think him guilty, of making a demand which he

knew beforehand would be declined? Such was the view now pressed upon Mr.

Parnell. This time he was not moved. He took his own course, as he had a

paramount right to do. He went into the House and asked the ministers to

grant a select committee to inquire into the authenticity of the letters

read at the recent trial. Mr. Smith replied, as before, that the House was

absolutely incompetent to deal with the charges. Mr. Parnell then gave

notice that he would that night put on the paper the motion for a

committee, and on Thursday demand a day for its discussion.

When Thursday arrived, either because the hot passion of the majority was

irresistible, or from a cool calculation of policy, or simply because the

situation was becoming intolerable, a new decision had been taken, itself

far more intolerable than the scandal that it was to dissipate. The

government met the Irish leader with a refusal and an offer. They would

not give a committee, but they were willing to propose a commission to

consist wholly or mainly of judges, with statutory power to inquire into

“the allegations and charges made against members of parliament by the

defendants in the recent action.” If the gentlemen from Ireland were

prepared to accept the offer, the government would at once put on the

paper for the following Monday, notice of motion for leave to bring in a

bill.(247)

When the words of the notice of motion appeared in print, it was found

amid universal astonishment that the special commission was to inquire

into the charges and allegations generally, not only against certain

members of parliament, but also against “other persons.” The enormity of

this sudden extension of the operation was palpable. A certain member is

charged with the authorship of incriminating letters. To clear his

character as a member of parliament, he demands a select committee. We

decline to give a committee, says the minister, but we offer you a

commission of judges, and you may take our offer or refuse, as you please;

only the judges must inquire not merely into your question of the letters,

but into all the charges and allegations made against all of you, and not

these only, but into the charges and allegations made against other people

as well. This was extraordinary enough, but it was not all.

It is impossible to feel much surprise that Mr. Parnell was ready to

assent to any course, however unconstitutional that course might be, if

only it led to the exposure of an insufferable wrong. The credit of

parliament and the sanctity of constitutional right were no supreme

concern of his. He was burning to get at any expedient, committee or

commission, which should enable him to unmask and smite his hidden foes.

Much of his private language at this time was in some respects vague and

ineffectual, but he was naturally averse to any course that might, in his

own words, look like backing down. “Of course,” he said, “I am not sure

that we shall come off with flying colours. But I think we shall. I am

never sure of anything.” He was still confident that he had the clue.