GLADSTONE VERSUS DISRAELI
The history of the Disraeli Ministry which in 1874 followed that of
Gladstone is almost entirely a history of foreign policy. The new Premier
had described the domestic activity of his predecessor as a policy of
plundering and blundering, and he himself avoided the imputation of either
form of error by doing little of any significance at home. In effect he
revived the system of Palmerston, and endeavoured to distract the popular
attention from domestic grievances by splendid demonstrations abroad. One
or two useful Liberal measures, besides the Employers and Workmen Act, were
passed into law. An Artisans Dwellings Act empowered municipal corporations
to acquire land by compulsory purchase, for the erection of workmen's
houses. This was an entirely wise application of the new collectivist
principles, and a belated individualist was discovered in Mr. Fawcett, who
opposed the Bill, on strictly logical grounds, as "class legislation." The
same argument would abolish the Poor Law. Another measure of great utility
was forced on the Government by Plimsoll, a Liberal philanthropist. It
provided for the inspection and detention of unseaworthy ships, and was a
notable example of interference with private property and freedom of
contract in the interest of a class of adult men. A third reform of a
Liberal kind was due to Parnell, the new leader of the Irish Nationalists,
who amended the Prison Bill of 1877 by inserting a clause that persons
guilty of seditious libel should be treated as {266} first-class
misdemeanants and not as common criminals. This was the high-water mark of
the reaction from the eighteenth-century treatment of political criticism.
In 1777 an honest Republican might have been treated as a felon. Since 1877
allowance has been made for the motives even of the advocate of Revolution.
Even the law shows respect for the right of the common man to censure his
governors. A last Liberal measure was the Act of 1878, which enabled
Universities to confer medical degrees upon women. These Acts were
substantially all the important domestic legislation of the Ministry.
While thus abstaining from activity at home, Disraeli gratified his
instinct for magnificence abroad, and sacrificed morality and interest on
the altar of prestige. One bold stroke was to buy from the Khedive of Egypt
his shares in the Suez Canal. This feat was not so splendid as it was
claimed to be. It gave England no additional hold over the route to India,
which, in time of war, can only be maintained by the fleet, whether the
Canal is English or Egyptian. But it gave England a deciding voice in the
management of a neutral waterway, and prevented it from falling into the
hands of other and less altruistic Powers. This action at least did no
harm. The other proceedings of the Government were almost uniformly
disgraceful, and most disgraceful where they were most pretentious. In the
Balkans and in Afghanistan they were guilty of conduct which was at once
vainglorious, unsuccessful, and wrong, and neither in objects, nor methods,
nor results was there anything worthy of credit. The first of these shabby
performances took place in the Near East, where they adopted Palmerston's
policy of protecting Turkey without any of his excuse. It could be urged in
favour of the Crimean War that it was undertaken to enable the Turks to set
their house in order, and a firm belief in the possibility of that
regeneration might justify an honest man in supporting Turkey against
Russia. Palmerston retained that belief until his death. At the time of
Disraeli's accession it could not have existed in the mind of any
reasonable being. After twenty years, Turkish Government of subject
Christian races remained what it had always been, and in {267} 1876 a just
and necessary revolt in Bulgaria was suppressed with the usual Turkish
incidents of massacre, burning alive, rape, torture, and destruction of
property. Gladstone was inspired to a passionate demand for armed
intervention, and the British peoples have never been so deeply stirred as
by his pamphlet to ignore the distinctions of party, class, and creed.
Disraeli treated the news of outrage with characteristic flippancy, and
talked airily of "coffee-house babble," even when Lord Derby, his Foreign
Secretary, was instructing the British Ambassador at Constantinople to
protest against the atrocities of the Turkish agents. The responsibility of
Great Britain could not be questioned. We had taken Turkey under our
protection twenty years before, to serve our private ends, and as we had
helped to maintain the system of government, so we were entitled to
denounce its abuse. There was indeed only one step for an honourable and
courageous people to take, to confess our error and to confine Turkish
sovereignty to Turkish people. There was no question of single-handed
action. Russia, Austria, and Germany agreed, in the Berlin Memorandum, to
require the Sultan to reform his government, and France and Italy
concurred. Great Britain refused to join the others, on the ground that she
had not been consulted from the first. This policy had but one motive,
distrust of Russia; it had but one consequence, the encouragement of
Turkey. The joint Memorandum was ineffective, and in the face of
Anglo-Russian jealousy, the Sultan snapped his fingers at suggestions of
reform.
The climax was reached when Great Britain refused to join Russia in a naval
demonstration in the Bosphorus. The Tsar then declared that he would act
alone, and gave the British Ambassador his word of honour that he had no
intention of annexing any part of the Turkish dominions or of permanently
occupying Constantinople. On the lips of the Tsar Nicholas of the Crimean
War such a pledge might have meant little. On the lips of the Tsar
Alexander, a genuine Liberal, who had emancipated the serfs and given his
subjects, for the first time in their history, courts of law in place of
bureaucratic caprice, it {268} meant very much. Nothing is more certain
than that the Tsar was honest in his professions, and that he was impelled
by a disinterested wave of enthusiasm among his subjects. The Balkan
question is the one question on which a Russian Government always expresses
the opinions of the Russian people. But even if the Tsar had been
dishonest, and if England had been placed in a real dilemma, it was
entirely England's fault. The Tory Government, by refusing to act in
concert with the other Powers, had left only two alternatives possible to
Russia: to do nothing, or to interfere single-handed. When she showed signs
of adopting the second, Disraeli at the Lord Mayor's Banquet made ominous
references to war. Everything was done by the Tory Press to inflame the
popular mind against Russia, and to divert attention from the real issue.
Even the Liberal Opposition was distracted, and in Parliament Mr. Gladstone
maintained his straight and courageous course almost without a helper.[310]
When the Russians had crossed the border, and, after an astonishingly
successful resistance by the Turks, were actually approaching
Constantinople, the balance of English opinion swung against them, and the
Government openly prepared for war.[311] The music-halls rallied to their
support, the name of Jingo was invented, and Gladstone's windows were
broken by the mob. But the conclusion of peace by the Treaty of San Stefano
ended the war between Turkey and Russia and prevented the war between
Russia and Great Britain. The Tory Government was saved, by no fault of its
own, from a moral disaster which no material successes could have effaced.
During the negotiations which followed the Treaty they made full use of the
dangerous temper which they had aroused.
The terms of the Treaty gave them an opportunity of enforcing a Liberal
principle, and for the first time Russia made {269} a false step. The
treaty gave Russia a small indemnity and a little territory. Bulgaria was
made an independent principality, and the Turks, as Gladstone had demanded,
"one and all, bag and baggage, cleared out from the province they had
desolated and profaned." Russia had done single-handed what it should have
been the duty and the pride of England to help her to do. But the treaty,
as it stood, was as much an infraction of the Treaty of Paris as the
placing of armed ships upon the Black Sea, and the British Government very
properly required an international agreement. Russia at first refused, and
if this difficult situation had not been the direct result of their own
unprincipled conduct, the British Government would have had a very good
excuse for war. A disaster was once more imminent, and Lord Derby finally
resigned. He was succeeded by Lord Cranborne,[312] and the Tory Press once
more fanned the flames of national hatred.
But Disraeli was above all things a contriver of effects, and while his
followers applauded his firmness and resolution in maintaining the Treaty
of Paris, he was privately engaged in pulling it to pieces. He made a
secret treaty with Russia, agreeing to support her at the international
conference in asking substantially for what she had obtained by the Treaty
of San Stefano. He then proceeded with great solemnity to Berlin, after
having apparently humiliated his adversary, and Russia obtained what she
wanted without difficulty. The Treaty of Berlin made few alterations in the
Treaty of San Stefano, and the most important was unquestionably for the
worse. The extent of the New Bulgaria was reduced, and it was divided into
two provinces, which a few years later joined together to form the present
State. The reduction was effected by the restoration of Macedonia to
Turkey, and as these words are being written that unhappy district, after
another generation of distress, has become the cause of another Balkan war.
The policy of Disraeli was for the time as popular as that of Palmerston
had ever been. Surveyed after thirty-five years, it appears to have
consisted in {270} encouraging Turkey to fight in defence of an iniquitous
system of government, and, after nearly involving the British people in a
war for a vile cause, in forcing the inhabitants of Macedonia to suffer for
another generation at the hands of their unregenerate oppressors. Through
this policy, for the last thirty years the Macedonian peasant, setting out
in the morning for the fields, has not known that on his return in the
evening he would not find his house burnt to the ground and his wife
dishonoured. Through this policy, the bloody issue of the Balkans has now
been settled for the second time by a savage and destructive war. The
transaction, so selfish in its origin, so shameless in its methods, and so
horrible in its consequences, is generally described by admirers of
Beaconsfield in his own words, as his achievement of "Peace with
Honour."[313]
The next scene for the display of this reckless and improvident system was
Afghanistan. The Viceroy of India was Lord Lytton, whose strong character
was expressed in a wise and vigorous conduct of domestic affairs, and a
conduct of foreign affairs which was only vigorous. His attention was
directed, soon after the Balkan difficulty began, to Central Asia. In that
quarter Russia, following her usual habit of advancing in Asia whenever she
was repulsed in Europe, had come into touch with the Afghans. The policy of
the Gladstone Government, in similar circumstances, had always been to
negotiate directly with Russia, and they had steadily refused to use other
peoples as tools of their diplomacy. This was not merely a moral, it was
also a wise rule of conduct. Just as strong and independent Balkan States
were better barriers against Russia than a corrupt {271} and enfeebled
Turkey, so the best bulwarks of India were native tribes who had no reason
to fear British aggression, and every reason to believe that she would
protect them against the encroachments of other States. The policy of
Liberalism coincided with that of almost every Indian statesman of
experience. Everything had been done, in past times, to avoid the
appearance of dictating to the small peoples beyond the frontier. "Surround
India," wrote Lord Lytton's predecessor, "with strong, friendly, and
independent states, who will have more interest in keeping well with us
than with any other Power."[314]
This was the policy of wisdom. Lord Lytton and his Home Government
preferred to adopt the other policy, and to make the Amir of Afghanistan a
pawn in their game with Russia. "A tool in the hands of Russia I will never
allow him to become. Such a tool it would be my duty to break before it
could be used."[315] In other words, the Amir was to put himself into the
hands of England in order that he might be unable to put himself in the
hands of Russia. He was requested to receive a British Envoy in terms which
would have been more properly addressed to an open enemy than to an ally,
and from the first Lord Lytton adopted a tone which did nothing to
conciliate and everything to disturb a race who are, beyond almost all
others, suspicious of foreign interference. The result was that Shere Ali
was driven into the arms of Russia, whose manners were better if her aims
were not less selfish than those of the British Viceroy. Russia was not
reluctant to embarrass England in Central Asia, and the Bulgarian dispute
was followed by the despatch of a Russian mission to Kabul. The Amir
objected, but was powerless. The Russian representative soon left the
country, but not before his object, the provocation of the Viceroy, had
been achieved. Lord Lytton retaliated by sending {272} an envoy of his own,
who was turned back at the Kyber Pass. War began in November, 1878, and the
Parliamentary parties were divided more sharply than by the threatened war
with Russia.
Gladstone was on this occasion supported by all the Liberal Opposition, and
in the House of Lords, Lord Lawrence, one of the greatest Englishmen who
had ever governed in India, was on the same side.[316] Liberal principles
had been offended in more than one way. The Viceroy had bullied Afghanistan
as Palmerston had bullied China. He had attempted to interfere with her
independence. He had endeavoured to repair the blunders of his diplomacy by
war, and to supply his own deficiency of wisdom by brute force. If he had
had any real cause of quarrel it was with Russia, and he had used
Afghanistan simply as an unwilling means to an end of his own, on account
of transactions in which she had had no freedom and no responsibility.
"Having a cause of complaint against the strong," said Whitbread, "they
fixed the quarrel on the weak; and they have brought us to a war, in which
already gallant men's lives have been lost, and homes made desolate, to
atone for the blunders and errors of their administration."[317] Mr.
Chamberlain, the rising hope of the uncompromising Radicals, reiterated
those general principles which are familiar to all who have read the
debates on the China War in 1860. "Is it sufficient to call a man a
barbarian in order to discharge oneself of all obligations to treat him
with common fairness and consideration?... Only admit that a country has to
follow the law of self-preservation without reference to others, and it is
evidently a justification for an attack, say of France upon Belgium, or
Germany upon Holland, or the absorption of Canada by the United States, and
this deliberate attempt to substitute might for right in dealing with
Indian Princes, and the law of force for the law of nations, is certain, in
my opinion, to {273} have a most disastrous effect upon the true
foundations of our Indian Empire."[318]
Force triumphed, for the time, over morals. But retribution came with more
than its usual swiftness. The Afghans were beaten in the field. Shere Ali
disappeared, and his son Yakub Khan took his place. Lord Lytton had
distrusted the father, who was no worse than weak. He confided in the son,
who was thoroughly bad. Major Cavagnari entered Kabul as British Envoy on
the 24th of July, 1879. On the 3rd of September he was murdered with all
his people. A second war was undertaken, more lives were lost, and the
Government actually proposed to partition Afghanistan, and to incorporate
the eastern part in the Indian Empire. This course could have produced only
three consequences. Free Afghanistan would have been thrust into the arms
of Russia. British Afghanistan would have been in a perpetual condition of
unrest. Our military responsibilities would have been extended beyond the
natural barrier of the great mountains at the same time that they would
have been indefinitely increased by the direct contact with the Russian
frontier. Entangled in difficult passes, and surrounded by unfriendly hill
tribes, our troops would have been infinitely less formidable to Russia
than in the plains of India. The General Election of 1880 extricated Great
Britain from this dangerous folly, and the new Government evacuated
Afghanistan and abandoned the project of a British Envoy at Kabul. From
that day to this the Afghans have been treated according to the principles
laid down by the Liberal Opposition.[319] They have been encouraged to
believe that Great Britain will protect them against external aggression,
and nothing has been done to make them suspect that she has any intention
of interfering with their independence.
One other action of this Tory Government betrayed the same {274} desire to
acquire territory and to extend responsibilities as their enterprise in
Central Asia. In 1877 they annexed the Transvaal Republic. This step was
prompted partly by military motives, as giving additional security against
the Zulus, whose quarrels with the scattered Dutch farmers caused perpetual
unrest. It was also part of a scheme for South African federation, which
was the offspring of the growing spirit of Imperialism. Nor did it seem at
first that annexation was contrary to Boer sentiment. The Republic was
loosely organized, its finances were in a bad state, its great mineral
wealth was unknown, and some of the inhabitants were anxious to obtain the
stability which the British connection would afford. If the promise of
representative institutions, which was made at the time, had been fulfilled
with reasonable speed, the hostile section might have been reduced to
insignificance. But the British Government seemed to forget that it was
dealing with a race whose dislike of foreign domination was as stubborn as
that of their own people. It is unquestionable that the bulk of the Boer
population resented the annexation, and used every peaceful means of
expressing its real wishes. But in spite of deputations, public meetings,
and petitions signed by practically every elector of the old Republic, the
Disraeli Ministry continued to govern by the arbitrary methods of Crown
Colony Government. When the Liberals came into power, in 1880, three years
after the annexation, the Boers were still without the promised
institutions, and the opponents of England were no longer a faction, but
the whole people. Want of imagination never stumbled into a worse folly.
The General Election of 1880 is the only election which has ever been
fought in Great Britain on the general principles of foreign policy.
Gladstone had retired from the nominal leadership of the Liberal party
after his defeat in 1874. But there was no question who had directed its
policy in the last few years, and Lord Hartington, in 1880, was obviously
no more than the lieutenant of his principal follower. Any doubts which may
have before existed were dispelled by Gladstone's election campaign {275}
in Midlothian. He invaded the strongest Tory constituency in Scotland, beat
the nominee of the Duke of Buccleuch, and in his speeches dictated the
issues upon which candidates fought all over Great Britain. These speeches
were almost entirely concerned with the Liberal case against egoism in
foreign affairs, and the result of the polls was an emphatic approval of
their principles. There were some errors in the speeches. To represent the
Zulu War as an outrage of the same kind as the annexation of the Transvaal,
or the invasion of Afghanistan, was absurd. The rights of bloodthirsty and
aggressive savages are different from those of civilized white men or even
the comparatively peaceful tribes of Asia. But this was only an unwise
application of the sound general principles which were expressed in the
speeches.
The Midlothian speeches reproduced the opinions of Granville's Memorandum
of 1851 and those of Clarendon's statement of 1871. Gladstone dissented
from the absolute pacificism of the Manchester School.[320] But while he
admitted the occasional necessity for war, and pointed to his own readiness
to protect Belgium as a proof that he did not believe in peace at any
price, he required that a real and sober policy should be substituted for
the ostentatious vanities of the Tories. "What we want in foreign policy is
the substitution of what is true and genuine for what is imposing and
pretentious, but unreal.... Let us get rid of all these shams and fall back
upon realities, the character of which is to be quiet, to be
unostentatious, to pretend to nothing, not to thrust claims and
unconstitutional claims for ascendancy and otherwise in the teeth of your
neighbour, but to maintain your rights and to respect the rights of others
as much as your own."[321] "The great duty of a Government, especially in
foreign affairs, is to soothe and tranquillize the minds of a people, not
to set up false phantoms of glory which are to delude them into calamity,
not to flatter their infirmities by leading them to believe that they are
better than the rest of the world, and so encourage the baleful {276}
spirit of domination; but to proceed upon a principle that recognizes the
sisterhood and equality of nations, the absolute equality of public right
among them."[322] The speaker denounced Beaconsfield's reference to
"Imperium et Libertas" as he had once before denounced Palmerston's use of
"Civis Romanus Sum," and appealed to "the sound and sacred principle that
Christendom is formed of a band of nations who are united to one another in
the bonds of right; that they are without distinction of great and small;
there is an absolute equality between them, the same sacredness defends the
narrow limits of Belgium as attaches to the extended frontiers of Russia,
or Germany, or France."[323] From this admission of the equality of nations
came the need for the observance of public law. "There is no duty so
sacred, incumbent upon any Government in its foreign policy, as that
careful and strict regard to public law."[324]
Gladstone laid down six general principles by which our foreign policy
should be guided. "The first thing is to foster the strength of the Empire
by just legislation and economy at home, thereby producing two of the great
elements of national power--namely, wealth, which is a physical element,
and union and contentment, which are moral elements--and to reserve the
strength of the Empire, to reserve the expenditure of that strength for
great and worthy occasions abroad.... My second principle ... is this--that
its aim ought to be to preserve to the nations of the world ... the
blessings of peace. My third principle is this--when you do a good thing,
you may do it in so bad a way that you may entirely spoil the beneficial
effect; and if we were to make ourselves the apostles of peace in the sense
of conveying to the minds of other nations that we thought ourselves more
entitled to an opinion on that subject than they are, or to deny their
rights--well, very likely we should destroy the whole value of our
doctrines. In my opinion the third sound principle is this--to strive to
cultivate and maintain, ay, to the very uttermost, what is called the
Concert of Europe; to keep the Powers of {277} Europe in union together.
And why? Because by keeping all in union together you neutralize and fetter
and bind up the selfish aims of each.... My fourth principle is that you
should avoid needless and entangling engagements. You may boast about them,
you may brag about them. You may say you are procuring consideration for
the country. You may say that an Englishman can now hold up his head among
the nations.... But what does all this come to, gentlemen? It comes to
this, that you are increasing your engagements without increasing your
strength; ... you really reduce the Empire and do not increase it.... My
fifth principle is, to acknowledge the equal rights of all nations. You may
sympathize with one nation more than another.... But in point of right all
are equal, and you have no right to set up a system under which one of them
is to be placed under moral suspicion or espionage, or to be made the
constant subject of invective.... The sixth principle is that ... subject
to all the limitations that I have described, the foreign policy of England
should always be inspired by the love of freedom. There should be a
sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon
visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within
the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest
foundations both of loyalty and order; the firmest foundations for the
development of individual character, and the best provision for the
happiness of the nation at large.... It is that sympathy, not a sympathy
with disorder, but, on the contrary, founded upon the deepest and most
profound love of order, ... which ought to be the very atmosphere in which
a Foreign Secretary of England ought to live and to move."[325] The most
important of these general principles was that of the equality of nations,
"because, without recognizing that principle, there is no such thing as
public right, and without public international right there is no instrument
available for settling the transactions of mankind except material force.
Consequently the principle of equality among nations lies ... at the very
basis and root of a Christian {278} civilization, and when that principle
is compromised or abandoned, with it must depart our hopes of tranquillity
and of progress for mankind." The policy of the Tory Government had been
"unregardful of public right, and it has been founded upon ... an untrue,
arrogant, and dangerous assumption that we were entitled to assume for
ourselves some dignity, which we should also be entitled to withhold from
others, and to claim on our part authority to do things which we would not
permit to be done by others."[326] These general rules, to be applied, not
in the temper of logical pedantry, but, like all general political rules,
as far as the circumstances of each case will permit, form the complete
theory of a Liberal foreign policy.
Every one of Gladstone's principles had been violated by the Government.
The welfare of the people had been subordinated to a costly display of
energy abroad. The ordinary expenditure on armaments had increased by more
than six millions in five years, and a special vote of credit had been
required by the quarrel with Russia. The acquisitions in the Transvaal, in
Zululand, in Cyprus, and in Afghanistan had increased our burdens without
adding to our strength. Peace had always been in danger, and had more than
once been broken. The Government had claimed a peculiar right to dictate to
Turkey, had threatened Russia with war for appearing to claim a similar
right, and had made international action impossible by refusing to join the
Concert of Europe. They had prevented Russia from making a separate treaty
with Turkey because it violated the Treaty of Paris, and they had
themselves made a treaty with Turkey which violated the Treaty of Paris in
the same way and to the same extent. They had made an indefinite engagement
with Turkey to go to war in defence of her Asiatic territory, no matter how
she abused her sovereign rights. They had been partial and capricious in
their friendships and in their antipathies. Russia could do nothing right,
Turkey could do nothing wrong. The claims of freedom had been ignored. The
Transvaal had been annexed against the formally expressed wish of its
inhabitants. {279} The Afghans had been coerced into accepting an envoy.
Nothing had been done to help the Bulgarians against the Turks, and when
Russia undertook the work which England should have done, she had been
opposed instead of helped. The worst thing that Gladstone said of his
opponents is the worst thing that posterity can say of them. He quoted from
a dispatch of the Turkish Government: "The Sultan's Ministers lay great
stress on the maintenance of the Beaconsfield Cabinet, which has given so
many proofs of its benevolent intentions for the Turkish Empire." The
approbation of these men, whose praise was blame, is more damning to the
Tory foreign policy of this period than any censure of their party enemies.
Gladstone made some mistakes in his general attack. But posterity has
seldom been so nearly unanimous as in its belief that on his two main
lines, Turkey and Afghanistan, he was completely right.
The history of the Liberal Ministry which succeeded that of Beaconsfield is
not a splendid record. The Cabinet and the party were in fact in process of
disintegration, and even without the Irish controversy, some new grouping
of the parties would soon have taken place. All sections of the Liberals
were united in their dislike of the Imperialist foreign policy of their
predecessors. But the younger men, headed by Mr. Chamberlain and Sir
Charles Dilke, were aggressively Radical, deeply tinged with new theories
about land, capital and labour, and the unfair distribution of wealth.
Older men, like the Duke of Argyll, held by the individualist ideas of a
previous generation, and Goschen refused to join the Government at all
because he objected to proposed extensions of the franchise. The internal
differences of such a composite Ministry inevitably weakened it in the face
of the enemy. The external difficulties were also unusually great. A trade
depression in 1878 and 1879 caused great distress among the working
classes. Ireland was again seething with discontent, the Land League had
begun a campaign against the payment of rent, and agrarian and political
crime soon attained to such proportions that it seemed as if Society would
be dissolved. In Parliament, the Irish Nationalists {280} made the
obstruction of business a fine art, and the Fourth Party,[327] shouldering
Sir Stafford Northcote out of the leadership, conducted the Conservative
Opposition with equal vigour and success. These different obstacles reduced
the real power of the Government below its apparent strength. But it
contrived, nevertheless, to apply Liberal principles with considerable
success, both at home and abroad.
The progress of reform was along the lines which had been marked out by the
last Liberal Government. Education was made compulsory in 1881, almost
without opposition. The household franchise, conferred upon dwellers in
towns by the Act of 1867, was extended to rural districts by an Act of
1884, and so far as men were concerned, the right of the individual to
control his own government was thus secured, nearly a hundred years after
the French Revolution began. Almost more significant than this legislation
as a mark of the appreciation of the voter was the construction of the
modern party machine on the model of Mr. Chamberlain's system in
Birmingham. Electors are now grouped in wards and divisions, each section
having its elected committee, and all linked up together in a central
caucus. Communication between voters and representatives has thus become
more direct than ever before, and the Member of Parliament is now
completely subject to the authority of those whom he is supposed to govern.
Both parties, and the women auxiliaries who, about this time, were
organized in connection with them, adopted this organization of public
opinion between 1880 and 1890, and the effect on political life has been
very great. The common man is brought into direct touch with the machinery
of the State, his information is more precise, and the expression of his
wishes more effective. The party system as it exists to-day has in fact
completely reversed the eighteenth-century theory of government. In 1812
the Legislature, within very wide limits, enforced the wishes of its
members upon the people. In 1912 the people, within very {281} wide limits,
enforced its wishes upon the members of the Legislature. Ministers have
ceased to be the leaders of the Houses in which they sit, and have become
leaders of the people. Their appeal is direct to the constituencies, and it
is among the rank and file of their party in the country that they find
their strength. The new system is not without its dangers. If it is a more
efficient check upon abuse of the common people than the old, it offers
less freedom to the independent member, and where we once contrived party
as a means of controlling our government, we are now rather inclined to
cast about for some contrivance which will control our party. The extent to
which the Cabinet, relying upon its hold over the party machine, is enabled
to dictate its wishes to the members who depend upon that machine for their
own success, is the greatest danger to real political freedom which at
present exists. The Cabinet is now almost as much a legislative as an
executive body. But whatever the difficulties and the risks involved, the
construction of this political machinery in 1880 was a distinct mark in the
progress of Liberalism.
The condition of women once more attracted the attention of a Liberal
Parliament. An Act of 1882 finally separated the wife from her husband in
all matters concerned with property, and permitted her to make contracts,
and to acquire, hold, and dispose of property as if she were a single
woman. Even this reform was incomplete. A husband is still responsible for
all the civil wrongs of his wife, except those which consist in breach of
contract, and the year 1912 has seen a husband sent to prison because he
could not pay income tax on his wife's income which she earned by her own
exertions and had not disclosed to him. But the existing relics of the old
legal theory which subjected the wife to the husband, and made him
responsible for her conduct as if she were a child, are not very numerous
or important. Substantially, so far as the law allows, the wife has been
economically independent of her husband since 1882. The Contagious Diseases
Acts were suspended in 1883, and were finally repealed in 1886. In 1885 the
Criminal Law {282} Amendment Act raised the age of consent to sixteen, and
penalties were at last imposed upon those who procured women and girls for
immoral purposes. Another reform was effected by administrative act.
Professor Fawcett, the Postmaster-General, began to employ women in the
inferior posts in his department, and so opened to the sex the whole of the
large field of labour provided by the Civil Service. These successive
improvements in the state of women were made with little difficulty except
such as sprang from ignorance, and the indifference of legislators to the
special claims of disfranchised classes. As has always been the case,
practical reforms were executed by the Legislature when the demand for the
enfranchisement of women became urgent. This House of Commons actually
contained a majority who had promised to vote for Woman Suffrage. The
pledges, given in response to pressure from the women of the middle class,
were of that easy, good-natured sort in which Parliamentary candidates
indulge in matters to which party is indifferent. The women trusted that
they would be carried into effect by an amendment of the Reform Bill of
1884. But the House of Lords offered so much opposition to the Bill as it
stood, that Gladstone spoke against the inclusion of women, and the
proposal was defeated. The Toryism of class was destroyed. That of sex
remained, and it was not until the Liberal revival of twenty years later
that it was ever again threatened.
On ancient subjects of party controversy temper again rose high. Church and
Chapel fought the last of many battles over the Burials Bill. The point
raised by this measure was very simple. In more than 10,000 parishes the
only burial ground was the churchyard. In large towns, where there were
public cemeteries, and in districts where Nonconformists were wealthy, and
could purchase private ground, no difficulty arose. But in the other cases
no Nonconformist could be buried except with the Burial Service of the
Established Church. The service, however majestic in its language,
expressed opinions which were obnoxious to many Nonconformists, and the
Burials Bill provided that any person might be buried in the yard of the
parish church with {283} such religious service as his relatives desired.
The Church party, while claiming that the Church was the Church of the
nation and not of a sect, protested against being deprived of the absolute
control of the public burial grounds. Any person might be buried there, but
only on such terms as they chose to appoint. It was a plain case of a
conflict between public right and private privilege. The Bill had been
passed four times by the last Liberal House of Commons. It was beaten in
the following Tory House. In the Parliament of 1880 it was at last accepted
by the Lords, and the Nonconformist grievance was removed.
A second religious controversy provided a useful illustration of the
difference between Liberalism and the Liberal party. The Nonconformist
members, in debating the Burials Bill, had expressed the pure Liberal
doctrine that no man should be prevented from exercising a public right by
his opinions on matters of conscience. When they came to deal with Charles
Bradlaugh, many of them showed themselves to be as Tory in their essential
habit of mind as the most bigoted vicar who ever shut out a Quaker funeral
from his churchyard. Bradlaugh was a dogmatic atheist, and as honest a man
as was ever elected to Parliament. He was chosen for Northampton with Henry
Labouchere, who was a man of no more Christian opinions and of much less
pure character than himself. Labouchere, like other easy-going men, had no
scruples about taking the oath required from Members of Parliament;
Bradlaugh refused to swear, and claimed to make affirmation in the form
prescribed by Statute for witnesses in courts of law. A Committee of the
House decided against him, and he then offered to take the oath in the
ordinary way. There arose such a storm of bigotry and insolence as is
generally to be found only in Orange Lodges. Gladstone and Bright, two men
in whom Christianity was usually conspicuous, contended in vain, not only
against Tories, but against those of their own party whose religious
tolerance did not extend beyond the Jews. It was resolved that Bradlaugh
could neither swear nor affirm, and when he refused to withdraw he was
committed to the Clock Tower. Eventually, he made affirmation and took his
seat, {284} speaking on several occasions with good sense. But the matter
was not ended. An informer obtained a judgment against him in the King's
Bench Division, and his seat was declared vacant. He was re-elected, and
again attempted to enter the House. On this occasion he was thrown out by
the police. A third election sent him back again, and he sat for some time
below the bar of the House. In 1883 a special Bill was introduced which
enabled any person, who thought fit, to make affirmation instead of taking
an oath. It was thrown out. Bradlaugh resigned, and was elected for the
fourth time in February, 1884. But it was not until the end of this
Parliament, and after an enormous waste of time, energy, and money in
agitation and litigation, that his struggle came to an end. He was elected
to the new Parliament of 1885, and took the oath without serious
opposition. In 1888 he himself introduced and carried through the enabling
Bill. In 1891, when he died, all the hostile resolutions were expunged from
the records of the House, and freedom of conscience received at last full
recognition.
The whole proceeding did little credit to a Liberal House of Commons.
Parliament had been opened to Dissenters in 1828, to Catholics in 1829, and
to Jews in 1858. If these reforms had any significance at all, they meant
that for political posts only political tests were to be applied, and that
a man's opinions upon subjects which were not political were not the
concern of the State. Liberty of thinking is one and indivisible. As
Gladstone, himself the most dogmatic of Churchmen, put it, "On every
religious ground, as well as on every political ground, the true and the
wise course is not to deal out religious liberty by halves, quarters, and
fractions, but to deal it out entire, and make no distinctions between man
and man on the ground of religious differences from one end of the land to
the other."[328] Every argument which could shut out Bradlaugh could shut
out a Quaker or a Wesleyan. The atheist was to the Nonconformist of the
day, what the Nonconformist had been to the Churchman of 1800, a person who
held opinions other than his own. {285} Experience of toleration should
have satisfied those who could not see truth by their own light. The ablest
men in the Cabinet were of the utmost possible diversity of religious
belief. The Prime Minister was a High Churchman, Lord Hartington was a Low
Churchman, Bright was a Quaker, Mr. Chamberlain was a Unitarian, Forster
belonged to no Church and professed no creed. But there were members of the
Liberal party who tolerated this latitude in their leaders, and yet could
not bear the society of an avowed atheist. They drew the line at God. The
case was made somewhat worse by Bradlaugh's opinions on the limitation of
population. But the real weight of the charge against him was that he did
not believe in the existence of a deity, and was sufficiently honest and
sufficiently public-spirited to endeavour to preach his gospel. Some
Liberals abstained from voting in these divisions. Others joined the most
bigoted and reactionary of their usual opponents, and used arguments
against Bradlaugh which, if logically applied, would have excluded from
Parliament more than one of the best men in the Cabinet.
While old issues were thus fought out, the new economics made a further
impression upon legislation. Fawcett again led the way by making the Post
Office extend its activities farther into the field of private enterprise,
and experiment as a Savings Bank, in the creation of annuities, and in the
management of the telegraph. About this time also began the modern
development of municipal trading, which has converted the local authority
from a mere regulating body to a body which supplies the means of light,
heat, and locomotion to the inhabitants of its area. The debts of English
municipalities in 1875 amounted to about L93,000,000. In 1905 they were
about L483,000,000, and the bulk of this increase is represented by the
various gas, water, electricity, and tramway enterprises which are managed
by the local bodies. All this large part of national industry is now
monopolized by collective management, and it is not now denied that on the
whole the public wants are better supplied by these municipal monopolies
than by the competition of private traders.
An extension of national and municipal enterprises was {286} accompanied by
more direct legislative restrictions upon economic freedom. The Employers'
Liability Act of 1880 began the series of statutes which have compelled
employers to insure their workmen against accident. The legal doctrine of
"common employment" had produced a stupid state of affairs. A man who was
injured through the negligence of another man's servant, acting in his
employer's business, might recover damages from the employer. But if both
men were the servants of the same employer, and if the transaction in which
the injury was inflicted was part of their common business as servants of
the same master, no claim for compensation was allowed. A master was liable
for the negligence of his workmen to everybody but his other workmen. The
Act of 1880, in the face of loud opposition from employers of all parties,
to some extent abolished this absurd distinction, and made the master
liable to his men for injuries sustained through the negligence of his
superintendents or foremen. An Act giving the English tenant the right to
kill game on his own land was followed by an Agricultural Holdings Act,
which entitled him to compensation against his landlord for unexhausted
improvements. In 1884, in response to an agitation which had nothing to do
with party, the Government appointed a Royal Commission to inquire into the
housing of the poor, and thus prepared for an extension of the system which
had been begun by their predecessors.[329] But the most striking economic
experiment made by this Liberal Government, as by the last, was made in
Ireland. The condition of that country was now more dangerous than at any
time since the Rebellion of 1798. The wholesale and systematic depopulation
of the country by rack-renting and evictions had demoralized and degraded
those whom it had not driven out of the country or starved to death, and
throughout the most congested districts no spirit was to be found {287} but
hatred of the landlords and the English connection. Boycotting had now been
invented, and boycotting was accompanied by agrarian outrages of the most
brutal description. The Land League was supreme. Rents could not be
collected. No man would work for a tenant who paid his rent, or for a man
who took a farm from which a former tenant had been evicted. The whole
country seemed to be in sympathy with the Moonlighters and maimers of
cattle, informers were murdered or intimidated, and the perpetrators of
some of the most atrocious crimes were never discovered. The Government
applied itself at once to the suppression of disorder and to the redress of
grievances. Drastic Coercion Acts armed the executive with new powers, and
in 1881 Gladstone introduced and carried, practically single-handed, a new
Land Act.
This Act went farther than any previous Act of Parliament in interfering
with freedom of contract. It strained the relations of the two sections of
the Cabinet almost to breaking point, and the Duke of Argyll actually
resigned. The Act of 1870 had provided that the tenant should be
compensated for eviction except in case of non-payment of rent. The
exception took nine-tenths of the virtue out of the Act. The country was
crowded with poor people who wanted land and could not live without it. The
tenant got no compensation so long as he kept his farm, and so long as he
kept it he was rack-rented. If he was at last evicted, he was probably no
better off for his compensation, because he had little chance of getting a
second farm on any better conditions than the first. In these
circumstances, bad landlords did very much as they pleased, and a Royal
Commission reported that "Freedom of contract did not in fact exist."[330]
The tenant was at the mercy of the landlord in every case. The Government
therefore stepped in to protect him, on the principle that interference is
justified "where the necessities of one of the parties to a bargain deprive
his seeming freedom of choice of all substance."[331] Their Bill accepted
the recommendations of the {288} Royal Commission, and established what
were known as "the three F's," fair rent, fixity of tenure, and freedom of
sale. The amount of the rent was to be fixed by an impartial Land Court.
The tenant was to pay this rent for fifteen years, after which it might be
revised. The right to remain in the holding at this rent was to be
transferable to any purchaser. No tenant whose land was worth less than
L200 a year could contract himself out of the benefits of the Act. This
sweeping reform prevented the rack-renting of tenants. But the state of
Ireland was now such as no remedies could affect. Parnell, the Irish
Nationalist leader, was imprisoned in October, and all the extraordinary
powers of the executive were employed. But in 1882 Lord Frederick
Cavendish, the newly appointed Secretary for Ireland, was brutally murdered
in Phoenix Park, and the release of Mr. Parnell, and an Act for
extinguishing arrears of rent, were accompanied by new measures of
coercion. Two years of hard administration of the law suppressed the
disorder. But the national feeling was as ill as ever, and no Liberal
Ministry could confound the maintenance of order with government. To
produce moral corruption in his subjects is the worst wrong of which any
governor can be capable, and coercion disgraces government more than it
punishes crime. The disease of lawlessness was not to be cured by the mere
suppression of its symptoms. So long as the temper of the people remains
unchanged, obedience to the commands of authority is worth little or
nothing. The attempt to find a new method of Irish government in 1885
settled the course of English politics for a whole generation.
Two disasters overtook the Government in foreign affairs. The first
occurred in the Transvaal, and it was entirely their own fault. They had
criticized the annexation when it took place: it had obviously been carried
through in haste and contrary to the wishes of the inhabitants, and the
right and wise course was to withdraw. Crown Colony Government, which meant
government by Sir Owen Lanyon, an honest but unsympathetic official, had
brought the Boers to the verge of revolt by the time that the {289}
Liberals came into office. They were in fact restrained only by their
confidence that a change of government would mean a change of policy. But
this very absence of turbulence deceived the new Ministry. They were
officially informed that the Boers were reconciled to British rule, and
Gladstone, Bright, and Chamberlain were overruled by their less Liberal
colleagues. Unofficial warnings went astray, arrived too late, or were
disregarded. By January, 1881, the Boers were in arms, and had repulsed Sir
George Colley at Laing's Nek. The Government, at last aware that the
population of the Transvaal wanted independence, opened negotiations. A
rash move by Colley produced the defeat at Majuba and his own death.
The situation was now such that the Government could gain little credit,
even by doing what was right. They had the choice of three alternatives.
They could defeat the Boers and keep the Transvaal. They could defeat the
Boers and give up the Transvaal. They could stop fighting and give up the
Transvaal. The first meant that in order to avenge a defeat in a battle
which ought never to have been fought they should do some more men to
death, and then keep a country which they confessed they should never have
taken. Having been guilty in the first place of robbery, they should
endeavour to repair its consequences by murder, and having made it
difficult to work with the Boers by apparent insincerity, they were to make
it impossible by deliberate cruelty. The second course meant simply that
they should do men to death to gratify their own wounded vanity. Either
course was brutal, and the first was also stupid. No Liberal Government,
with the case of Ireland before its eyes, could undertake the permanent
domination of a free white people by force of arms. The Ministry, in the
face of a loud outcry from those who believed that the strength of England
consisted in her readiness to assert her own brute strength at the expense
of others, chose the third way out of the difficulty. What was right before
Majuba was not wrong after Majuba. The negotiations which had been begun
were allowed to proceed. No more lives were destroyed, and the Transvaal
regained its independence, subject {290} to some vague provisions for
British suzerainty. In 1884 all references to this suzerainty were struck
out of the Convention by the hand of the Colonial Secretary himself, and
there is no question that it was then implied that England waived all right
to interfere in the domestic concerns of the Dutch Republic. The Government
acted as a Liberal Government was bound to act. It preferred to act
according to moral rules, and to do what it thought right without regard to
the protests of national egoism. This was the moral and the courageous
course. But tardy moral courage is not an adequate political substitute for
timely wisdom. For twenty years the two races cherished the memories of
this miserable episode, and the recollections of wounded pride on the one
hand and of hard-won triumph on the other were at last found to be
excellent fuel for the flames of a second war.
The blunders of the Government in South Africa were balanced by other
blunders in North Africa. Beaconsfield had declined to occupy Egypt openly
and with the sanction of the Concert of Europe. Gladstone stumbled into it
against his will, asking in vain for European sanction, and protesting his
intention to withdraw at the earliest possible moment. Never was such a
successful experiment in government begun in such an irresolute and
unmethodical way. The details of the occupation of Egypt are not important
for this book. The main outlines are clear enough. To increase the extent
of the Empire by the appropriation of any country was a violation of the
principles of the Midlothian speeches, and there is no question that the
entry into Egypt was made with misgiving and reluctance. But circumstances
were too strong, and for the first and last time in his life Gladstone
masqueraded in the trappings of Imperialism.
Egypt, nominally subject to the Sultan of Egypt, had long enjoyed an
insolvent independence under its Khedive. In 1879 its finances had been
entrusted, in the interest of foreign bondholders, to the joint control of
England and France, represented for the purpose by a large and costly army
of officials. The entanglement of England in Egypt was thus the first
example of what is now a common political case, the disposition of the
{291} fortunes of a whole people by its investing class. Plutocracy was
beginning to usurp the temper, as well as the place, of aristocracy. In
1881 a revolt began, which was partly due to military discontent, and
partly to a nationalist dislike of foreign domination. Had the British
Government been free to act as they pleased, they would probably have
abstained from interference, and would have recognized and supported the
first Nationalist Government of Egypt, whatever its constitution might have
been. But their hands were tied by the financial arrangements of their
predecessors. The Khedive was acting under the advice of England and
France, and could not be deserted. When the revolt became fanatical, and
Europeans were massacred in the streets of Alexandria, there was no longer
any room for choice. The other Powers declined to interfere, France
withdrew when it came to the use of armed force, and the revolt was
suppressed by English ships and English troops. One step after another led
England deeper into occupation. In 1883 the Dual Control was abolished, and
Sir Auckland Colvin became the sole Financial Adviser of the Khedive. By
1885 British financial control was established throughout Egypt, and
evacuation, though the intention of it was not abandoned by either Liberals
or Conservatives for some time afterwards, really became impossible. The
total effect of this new acquisition can hardly yet be estimated. It was
infinitely less equivocal in origin than our conquest of India, and the
material benefits which it has conferred upon the native population are
immense. The real test of its temper will arise when the Egyptians desire
to take the control of their own affairs into their own hands. If the
British bureaucracy can surrender its supremacy as generously as, on the
whole, it has employed it, it will prove itself a miracle of magnanimity.
In the meantime, the events of this time are important as marking the
intrusion of high finance into foreign politics, and the beginning of a
series of huge extensions of territory, which have reacted very forcibly
upon the fortunes of the British peoples.
The Gladstone Government, having been pushed and dragged into Egypt, was at
least determined to go no farther. A wise {292} application of Liberal
principle was the withdrawal from the Soudan. The death of General Gordon,
who ought never to have been sent to Khartoum, has invested this operation
with an unreal significance. To conquer and hold the southern provinces
would have been as difficult and as costly as to conquer and hold
Afghanistan. Being in Egypt, the Government wisely decided to restrict
their responsibilities. The reorganization of finance was the first
condition of the conquest of the Soudan, and a few years later the swift,
successful, and cheap campaign of Lord Kitchener did what could at that
time only have been done at the cost of enormous financial burdens. The
wisdom of the policy of evacuation is not now questioned. But the loss of
Gordon, due as much to his own disobedience to orders as to the tardiness
of the Government, was very damaging to their reputation. They ought either
to have kept out of Egypt altogether, or to have gone into it with a
determination to do the work thoroughly. A vote of censure was averted in
February, 1885, by only fourteen votes, and it was obvious that the days of
the Government were numbered.
One flash of vigour illuminated their decline. The Ameer of Afghanistan, by
the judicious treatment of Lord Ripon and Lord Dufferin, had been converted
into a firm friend of Great Britain. An advance by Russia in Central Asia
made some definition of boundaries necessary, and while negotiations
between the two Powers were in progress some Russian troops made an attack
upon Afghans in Penjdeh. The Government promptly obtained a vote of credit
for six and a half millions, and showed Russia plainly that, however
anxious they were to restrict the extent of the Empire, they were ready at
all times to defend those peoples whom they had taken under their
protection. The dispute was referred to the arbitration of the King of
Denmark. The reference was denounced by the Tories as a cowardly surrender.
The Liberals were content with the victory of morality over prestige. This
affair took place in April. In the middle of June the Government,
distracted by the prospect of more coercion in Ireland, resigned, and Lord
Salisbury became Prime Minister. {293}
In spite of their difficulties, this Liberal Ministry had contrived to do
much for the cause of Liberalism. They had extended the control of the
individual over his government to substantially all men. They had raised
the value of women. They had removed one of the few remaining disabilities
of the Dissenters. They had restored freedom to the Transvaal, and saved
incalculable expense to both Great Britain and India by withdrawing from
Afghanistan. They had blundered into Imperialism in Egypt, and though they
had treated Ireland without egoism, like all their predecessors they had
failed to pacify it. In the new spirit of collectivism they had stepped in
between the economically weak and the economically strong. The Irish
peasant had been further protected against the Irish landlord. The English
farmers had got compensation for improvements and the right to protect
their crops against game. Something had been done to get the poor into
better houses. Workmen had got some protection against the negligence of
their employers. The record of emancipation in the various fields of class,
of sex, of race, and of wealth was respectable, if not glorious. Everything
except the state of Ireland indicated the future course of Liberalism with
clearness. Mr. Chamberlain expressed the opinions of the advance guard when
he demanded the reform of the House of Lords, the compulsory purchase of
land for agricultural holdings, free as well as compulsory education, the
disestablishment of the Church, and a graduated income tax. This was the
work to be done, to reduce the power of aristocracy in government, which
had been displayed of late in more than one conflict between the two
Houses, to perfect the equalization of sects in the State, to employ the
superfluity of wealth in mitigating the conditions in which poverty lived.
But the actual course of events was determined by the state of Ireland.
* * * * *
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