HOME POLITICS--COMMERCIAL TREATY--PERSONAL MATTERS
I.
The opening successes of British foreign policy under the Gladstone
Government were to a large extent neutralized by other difficulties in
which the new Administration found itself at once involved. Ireland
carried confusion into the very heart of Imperial authority, and discord
into the counsels of the Government.
On October 30th, 1880, Lord Tenterden wrote:
'Odo Russell says there is a general opinion abroad that the Gladstone
Government will be in a minority when Parliament meets, ... and that
then the policy of England will have to be changed. There will be no
more demonstrations, or concerts, or inconvenient proposals. I told
him that such ideas were illegitimate offspring of Musurus and the
_Morning Post_.'
These rumours of coming defeat sprang from the Irish situation. Captain
Boycott's case had given a new word to the language; agrarian murders were
frequent; and the decision to seek no powers outside the ordinary law,
which had been pressed on Mr. Forster, was vehemently challenged by the
Opposition. Radicals wished for a Bill offering compensation to tenants
evicted under harsh conditions; but this proposal bred dissension in a
Government largely composed of great landlords, two of whom, Lords
Hartington and Lansdowne, possessed wide domains in Ireland. On June 13th,
1880, Sir Charles, after dining with Lord Rosebery in company with Mr.
Gladstone, noted that there was disagreement in the Cabinet, 'all the
peers being opposed to an Irish Land Bill, and all the Commoners
supporting Forster in this branch of his proposals.'
'On July 2nd trouble broke out in the Cabinet with a letter from Lord
Hartington advising the withdrawal of Forster's Irish Land Bill.
[Footnote: The Compensation for Disturbance measure.] ... I placed my
conditional resignation in Chamberlain's hands, and he his and mine in
Forster's, in case the latter was inclined to nail his colours to the
mast. I noted in my diary: "I do not care in the least about the Bill,
but I must either go out with these men or climb into the Cabinet over
their bodies, to either become a Whig or to eventually suffer the same
fate, so I prefer to make common cause. I suppose there will be a
compromise once more;" and so, at the Cabinet of the next day,
Saturday, the 3rd, there was.'
The compromise of July 3rd did not terminate dissension. Lord Lansdowne
retired from the Government, and in the first days of August the
Compensation for Disturbance Bill itself was rejected by the Lords, many
of Mr. Gladstone's nominal supporters voting against it.
This was the first revolt of the Whigs. The old order was passing, and
shrewd eyes perceived it. Lord Houghton wrote to Sir Charles from Vichy on
August 8th:
"I told Hugessen [Footnote: Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen had been created
Lord Brabourne in this summer.] that a peer always voted with his
party the first Session as a matter of etiquette; but it seems he does
not think so. The Government will have to decide in the vacation
whether they can govern without the Whigs or not. I am glad that I
have not to decide this point, but I own I am glad that I have lived
in a Whig world. It has been a wonderful combination of public order
and personal liberty. I do not care much for future order, but I care
a good deal for individual liberty, which is slipping away from under
us."
For the moment the House of Lords had given victory to the Whigs; but the
sequel was, in Mr. Gladstone's own words, "a rapid and vast extension of
agrarian disturbance," which grew all through the winter of that famine-
stricken year, presenting to the Chief Secretary the traditional Irish
problem, how to deal with a lawless demand for redress of grievances.
Towards the end of September Mr. Chamberlain wrote:
"Next Session will settle Forster one way or the other. Either he will
pass a Land Bill and be a great statesman, or he will fail and be a
pricked bubble for the rest of his natural life."
Mr. Forster wanted to pass a Land Bill, but he also wanted to deal with
lawlessness by coercive legislation, and, after the Cabinet hurriedly
called on September 28th, Mr. Chamberlain reported:
'"With regard to Ireland, Forster made a strong case for a Coercion
Bill, but the Cabinet thought it best that the insufficiency of the
present law should be thoroughly proved before new powers were asked
for."
'Chamberlain went on:
'"Probably a prosecution will be tried against Parnell and the Land
League for intimidating tenants and others. Even if it fails, it may
divert the attention of the Land League from its present agitation,
and so lead to a cessation of outrages."'
'I added in my diary: "I hope they will not commit the folly of
prosecuting Parnell, which they discussed to-day. I sent for Hill, and
got the _Daily News_ to damn the idea." But my intervention through
the _Daily News_ was not on this occasion sufficiently strong
ultimately to prevent this folly, for I had not, this time, any
following at my back.'
Later in the year he told Mr. Chamberlain that "to try to stop Irish land
agitation by making arrests was like firing a rifle at a swarm of midges."
Mr. Chamberlain replied from Birmingham on October 27th;
"I do not half like the Irish prosecutions, but I fear there is no
alternative, except, indeed, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus,
which I should like still less. Parnell is doing his best to make
Irish legislation unpopular with English Radicals. The workmen here do
not like to see the law set at defiance, and a dissolution on the
'Justice for Ireland' cry would under present circumstances be a
hazardous operation."
Mr. Forster was eager to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and wanted to have
Parliament specially summoned in order to carry through repressive
legislation.
'On Monday morning, November 15th, on my return to London, I saw
Harcourt, and told him that I should follow Chamberlain in resigning
if a special Irish Coercion Session without a Land Bill were to be
called. I saw Chamberlain immediately after the Cabinet which was held
this day. Bright and Chamberlain were as near splitting off at one end
as Lord Selborne at the other. Mr. Gladstone proposed at the Cabinet
the creation of English, Scotch, and Irish Grand Committees, but
obtained very little support....
'It seemed probable that there would be a Coercion Bill and a Land
Bill, and that the Land Bill (although the resignation of the Lord
Chancellor was threatened) would give what was known as "the three
F's," and that the Government would insist on both Bills. [Footnote:
The "three F's" were "Fair Rent" (_i.e._, judicially fixed rent),
"Free Sale" (of tenant right), and "Fixity of Tenure."] The Lords
would probably throw out the Land Bill, and the Government would
resign....
'Chamberlain had dined with me on November 17th, and had given me late
news of the condition of the Cabinet, which had been adjourned until
Friday, the 19th.
'The division was really a division between the Commons' members on
the one side (except Forster and Hartington, but with the support of
Lord Granville), and Forster and Hartington and the Peers upon the
other side; Lord Cowper, the Viceroy of Ireland' (who, although not a
member of the Cabinet, had been called in for the occasion), 'making
common cause, of course, with Forster....
'On the 19th the adjourned Cabinet was held; Forster was isolated, and
all became calm. The Queen had telegraphed on the previous evening to
Lord Granville in a personal telegram, in which she said that Mr.
Gladstone had told her nothing about the dissensions in the Cabinet,
and that she "must request Lord Granville either to tell her what
truth there is in the statement as to dissensions or to induce Mr.
Gladstone to do so!" Mr. Gladstone always held that the Queen ought
not to be told about dissensions in the Cabinet; that Cabinets existed
for the purpose of differing--that is, for the purpose of enabling
Ministers who differed to thrash out their differences--and that the
Queen was only concerned with the results which were presented to her
by, or in the name of, the Cabinet as a whole. This seems reasonable,
and ought, I think, to be the constitutional view; but the Queen
naturally ... hates to have personal differences going on of which she
is not informed....
'On November 23rd I noted in my diary that Hartington ... had grown
restive, and wanted to resign and get Forster to go with him, and that
Forster talked of it but did not mean it. Kimberley and Northbrook had
come over to Mr. Gladstone's side, and the other view was chiefly
represented by Lord Spencer and Lord Selborne; and I could not help
feeling that if, as I expected, the split with Whiggery had to come,
it had better be this split, so that we should have the great names of
Gladstone and Bright upon our side. One could not help feeling that we
had no men to officer our ranks, and that really, besides Mr.
Gladstone, who was an old man, there was only Chamberlain....
Hartington was a real man, but a man on the wrong side, and with
little chance of his getting rid of his prejudices, which were those,
not of stupidity, but of ignorance; with his stables and his wealth it
was useless to expect him to do serious work. Bright was a great name,
and had a power of stringing together a series of sound commonplaces,
so put that they were as satisfactory to the ear as distinct
statements of policy would be; and had a lovely voice, but it was
rhetoric all the same--rhetoric very different from Disraeli's
rhetoric, but equally rhetoric, and not business.'
By November 25th the severity of the crisis may be gathered from a letter
of Sir Charles's to Mrs. Pattison, which describes the grouping of forces.
On the one side were "Gladstone, Bright, Chamberlain, Granville, Harcourt,
Kimberley, Childers, Dodson, Northbrook; on the other Hartington, Forster,
Spencer, Argyll, the Chancellor." "Forster," he wrote, "talks about
resigning, but does not mean it. It is _meaning_ it which gives us so much
power."
'"If Chamberlain and I should be driven to resign alone, we shall have a
great deal of disagreeable unpopularity and still more disagreeable
popularity to go through." His old kinsfolk who cared for him were "hard-
bitten Tories": Mr. Dilke of Chichester; his cousin, John Snook, of
Belmont Castle; and Mrs. Chatfield, if she were still able to follow
political events, would "badger him horribly." Worse still, he would have
to endure "patting on the back by Biggar," to which he would prefer stones
from "a Tory mob."
The lull in Cabinet troubles was only momentary:
'On December 10th, Chamberlain, the stormy petrel, came to stay. When
we were at dinner there suddenly arrived a summons for a Cabinet to be
held on Monday, instead of Thursday for which it stood, and we went
off to Harcourt's. We found that he was not in the secret, and
therefore decided that the Cabinet must have been called at the demand
of the Queen on the suggestion of Dizzy, who was staying with her at
this moment; "but it may have been called on account of Forster's
renewed demand for coercion," as I noted.
'The next morning, December 11th, Lulu Harcourt came, and brought a
note: "Dear Dilke, L. will tell you what he heard from Brett. It is
odd that the Sawbones should know what we are trying to find out."
Lulu reported that Dr. Andrew Clarke had told Reggie Brett,
Hartington's secretary, that Parliament was, after all, to meet before
Christmas. When Lulu was gone, Chamberlain and I decided that if there
was only a pretended and not a real change we would resign, whatever
our unpopularity. In the afternoon of the same day Harcourt wrote to
Chamberlain that he had seen Hartington; that Forster had written to
Gladstone that he could not wait till January 6th' (for extended
powers of coercion). 'Harcourt said that the reports were not much
worse, and only of a general kind; that Hartington thought Forster
worried and ill. "In fact, I think he is like the Yankee General after
Bull Run--not just afraid, but dreadful demoralized. I have only one
counsel to give--let us all stick to the ship, keep her head to the
wind, and cram her through it. Yours ever, W. V. H."
'_Monday, December 13th._--... called before the Cabinet to find out
whether the offer of Chamberlain's place would now tempt me to sell
him! We won, after all!'
Mr. Forster had accordingly to wait till the New Year for the introduction
of his Coercion Bill.
II.
A departmental change in the Foreign Office at this time greatly increased
the responsibilities of the Under-Secretary. Complaint had become frequent
in the House of Commons of an apparently insufficient representation of
the Government in regard to commercial questions, which belonged partly to
the sphere of the Board of Trade and partly to that of the Foreign Office,
with unsatisfactory results. Lord Granville determined, on returning to
office, to make a new distribution of duties, and to take advantage of the
Under-Secretaryship being occupied by a Member of Parliament whose
competence on commercial questions was universally recognized to place the
commercial business of the Office more completely under his control--as
supervising Under-Secretary. [Footnote: This arrangement continued in the
Under-Secretaryship of Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Mr. James Bryce, Mr.
Robert Bourke, and Sir James Fergusson, but was subsequently altered. See
also above, p. 314.]
'On Sunday, May 2nd, Lord Granville asked me to take over general
supervision of the commercial department of the Foreign Office, and,
although I should have preferred to keep free of all departmental work
in order to attend to larger affairs of policy, I admitted that there
were strong reasons for my taking the Commercial Department, inasmuch
as the commercial members of the House of Commons were dissatisfied
with its management, and because also it was certain that I should
have to defend in the House of Commons treaty negotiations with
foreign Powers, which would in any case force me to give much time to
the consideration of commercial questions. When I first agreed to take
over the Commercial Department, it was only with the view of keeping
it for a short time, but I was unable to rid myself of it during the
whole time I was at the Foreign Office, and it gave me heavy work.'
The first and chief instalment of this burden consisted in the
negotiations for a new commercial treaty with France.
In January Dilke had learnt from Gambetta that M. Léon Say, late President
of the Finance Committee of the Senate, would come to London as Ambassador
'when the trouble about "Article 7" was ended.' [Footnote: See Chapter
XX., p. 300.] It was in the month of May (when the "trouble" about M.
Ferry's attack on the religious Orders was by no means ended) that M. Say
arrived, charged with an important mission, specially suited to his
qualifications as an ex-Minister of Finance. France was revising her
commercial policy; several commercial treaties, including that with Great
Britain, had been only provisionally prolonged up to June 30th; and M. Say
was instructed to try to secure England's acceptance of the new general
tariff, which had not yet passed the Senate. Gambetta and his friends
still held to the ideals of Free Trade. M. Tirard, the Minister of
Commerce, supported the same view, but there was a strong Protectionist
campaign on foot.
M. Say arrived on May 5th, and on the 6th had his first interview with Sir
Charles:
'At this moment I was showing my disregard for the old Free-Trade
notions in which I had been brought up by my grandfather, and my
preference for reciprocitarian views, by carefully keeping back all
grievances with the countries with which we were negotiating upon
commercial matters, in order that they might be thrown in in the
course of the negotiations. On this ground I managed to cause the
Colonial Office to be directed to keep all Gibraltar grievances in
hand.
'Immediately on taking charge of the Commercial Department, I had sent
a memorandum on the wine duties to Mr. Gladstone, who replied, "I have
never yet seen my way to reduction below a shilling or to a uniform
rate. _At present, we have not a sixpence to give away._ I do not like
bargaining away revenue for treaties, or buying over again from France
what has been bought already.... In my view the treaty of 1860 was
exceptional; it was to form an accommodation to the exigencies of the
French Emperor's position. _We_ never professed to be exchanging
concessions, but only allowed him to say _he_ had done it. I am, of
course, open to argument, but must say, as at present advised, that I
see but very little room for what is called negotiating a commercial
treaty."'
This was discouraging, since it came from the author of the treaty of
1860, who by lowering the duties on light wines had brought into general
popularity the "Gladstone clarets"; and Mr. Gladstone's expression of
opinion, renewed in a second letter of May 11th, caused M. Say to 'let me
clearly understand that as Mr. Gladstone was unwilling to lower the wine
duties, he should resign his Embassy and try to become President of the
Senate,' then vacant by the resignation of M. Martel. In this he
succeeded, much to the regret of Gambetta, who afterwards said to Dilke:
'"People never know for what they are fit. There was Léon Say, the
best possible Ambassador at London, who insists on resigning the
Embassy in order to become a bad President of the Senate."'
But M. Léon Say, even in the act of resigning, advanced the possibility of
a treaty. While visiting Paris in May, to promote his candidature, he
'attacked Mr. Gladstone so fiercely through the French Press for not
offering to lower our wine duties that the Prime Minister, afraid to face
our merchants, gave way.' In the supplementary Budget, proposed on June
9th, provision was made for a reduction from one shilling to sixpence of
the duty on some wines. This new scale, however, was not to take effect
unless compensating advantages were obtained from other countries.
France, of course, was not the only country concerned; and the Portuguese
Minister, M. Dantas, wrote to Sir Charles holding out great prospects of
expansion for British trade if Portuguese wines were let into the English
market at a cheaper rate.
The Prime Minister first demurred, but finally agreed that the Portuguese
might be asked--
'"whether, supposing fiscal conditions allowed us to give a great
advantage to their wines between 26 and 36 degrees of alcoholic
strength, they could engage for some considerable improvements in
their duties upon our manufactures, and what would be their general
character and effect?
'"The Spaniards appear to have been much less unreasonable in their
demands. Please to consider whether the same question should be put to
them. Both probably should understand that _we have_ no money, and
should have to make it, so that their replies respectively would form
a serious factor in our deliberations."
'Here, at last, I had got all I wanted. I merely begged leave to put
the same questions at Rome and Vienna, and, obtaining his consent
("Pray do as you think best about Rome and Vienna.--W. E. G."), I went
on fast.'
Cipher telegrams were despatched on May 28th to Portugal, Spain, Italy,
and Austria--countries which produce strong wines more abundantly than
France--inquiring what corresponding advantages would be offered for a
change in the wine duties; and Sir Charles resumed his discussions with M.
Say, who had returned to London.
For a time there seemed hope of a settlement, based on a new
classification of wines; but when the bases of agreement arrived at were
seen in France, there was violent opposition to the proposed
countervailing 'amelioration,' which was construed to mean 'a lowering of
duties upon the principal products of British industry.' Protectionist
feeling ran too high to accept this.
While Lord Granville left commercial matters entirely to his junior
colleague, every detail of every proposal had to be thrashed out with the
Prime Minister, who was his own Chancellor of the Exchequer. In such a
correspondence there was much for a young Minister to learn; there was
also an opportunity for Mr. Gladstone to take the measure of a man whose
appetite for detail was equal to his own.
One of the minor difficulties lay in the fact that the Portuguese and
Spaniards wanted changes in the wine scale, but not the same as those
which the French required. Owing to the accumulation of obstacles, Mr.
Gladstone, on going into Committee with his Budget, dropped the proposed
alteration in the wine duties for that year. But in October Sir Charles
was sent to Paris in order to open the matter afresh, and on November 11th
Gambetta 'promised commercial negotiations in January in London, and an
immediate declaration in the Senate.' Beyond this nothing could be done in
1880. The details of this first phase of these long-drawn-out transactions
will be found in a very full despatch written by Sir Charles on August
6th, 1880 (and published subsequently in the Blue Book 'Commercial
Relations with France, 1880-1882'), which placed on record the whole of
the dealings between himself and the two successive French Ambassadors.
'On Tuesday, June 1st, Léon Say called on me to settle the words which
he should use before a Commission of the Senate in answer to a
question as to the new treaty. What I think he had really come about
was as to his successor. Challemel-Lacour, a friend of Gambetta, had
forced himself upon his Government; ... and Say came to tell me that
Gambetta did not really want Challemel to come, but wanted Noailles,
if an anticipated difficulty with the Queen could be got over.'
The difficulty was not got over, and so the appointment stood. The Memoir
gives another version of the story, which Sir Charles heard in 1896, when
he was staying with his friends the Franquevilles at Madame de Sévigné's
château, Bourbilly.
'Franqueville said that Lord Granville had told him that when the
Queen refused Noailles, the French Government had not meant to send
him, but that he had been proposed only in order that Challemel-
Lacour should be accepted. Lord G. had said: "The fact is that I told
them the Queen would not have Challemel. They said they must send him
or no one. Then said I, Propose Noailles.... She will refuse Noailles,
and, having done that, she will take Challemel! So it happened."'
'Stories were at once set afloat that Challemel had shot a lot of monks,
and various other inventions about him were started.' [Footnote: He had
been in authority at Lyons during the war.] Matters went so far that the
Prince of Wales wrote through his secretary suggesting that Sir Charles
should use his personal influence with Gambetta to have the appointment
cancelled. Trouble broke out in Parliament, where one Irish member put on
the order paper a question specifying all the charges against the new
Ambassador. The question having been (not without hesitation) allowed by
the Speaker, Sir Charles gave a full reply, completely exonerating the new
Ambassador from all these accusations. This, however, did not satisfy Mr.
O'Donnell, who proposed to discuss the matter on a motion for the
adjournment of the House. The Speaker interposed, describing this as an
abuse of privilege, and when Mr. O'Donnell proceeded, Mr. Gladstone took
the extreme course of moving that he be not heard. So began a most
disorderly discussion, which ended after several hours in Mr. O'Donnell's
giving notice of the questions which at a future date he proposed to put
on the matter, but which were never put.
Gambetta wrote to Dilke on June 18th:
"Let me thank you from the bottom of my heart for the lofty manner in
which you picked up the glove thrown down by that mad Irish clerical.
In my double capacity of friend and Frenchman, I am happy to have seen
you at this work."
A few days later the Prince of Wales's secretary wrote to say that the
Prince had received M. Challemel-Lacour, and found him very agreeable. On
this Dilke comments:
'Challemel was delightful when he pleased; but he did not always
please, except very late at night.'
In November of this year Dilke met Rouher, the great Minister of the
fallen Empire.
'He told me that he had quite dropped out of politics, and was
becoming a philosopher, and that Gambetta was the only man in France,
and could do anything he pleased with it.'
Sir Charles's own opinion of contemporary France was conveyed to Lord
Granville in one of several despatches, which have never been printed,
partly because the Queen raised objection to his writing officially from a
capital at which there was an Ambassador. It gives his impressions of the
state of things under "the Grévy régime," some years later exposed in
connection with the Wilson trial.
"Paris, _October_ 17, 1880.
"Your Lordship asked me to send you any general remarks that I might
have to offer upon the existing state of things in Paris, so that I
may perhaps be permitted to express the conviction which I feel that
at this moment there is an extraordinary contrast between the strength
and wealth of France and the incapacity of those who are responsible
for the administration of its Government. In addition, it is
impossible not to be struck with the atmosphere of jobbery which
surrounds the public offices. Transactions which in England would
destroy a Ministry, in Paris arouse at the most a whisper or a smile.
Something was heard in England of the terrible conversion of 'rentes'
scandal of last year, and there is reason to suppose that the
administration of Algeria by the persons who surround the brother of
the President of the Republic, its Governor-General (Albert Grévy),
constitutes a standing disgrace to France. The venality not only of
the Opposition, but also of the Ministerial Press, is admitted on all
sides, and the public offices are disorganised by the sudden dismissal
of well-trained public servants, who are replaced by the incompetent
favourites of those in power. The lightest suspicion of what is known
as clericalism, even when only a suspicion, based on anonymous and
calumnious denunciation, is sufficient to condemn a functionary. If it
be not trivial to give a simple example, I would quote one which will,
I think, remind your Lordship of the name of an old friend. Monsieur
Tresca, who was for more than thirty years the Assistant-Director of
the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, is a member of the Institute,
the most distinguished Civil Engineer in France, and not past work.
The Director having lately died, I expected to find that he had been
succeeded by Monsieur Tresca, but I discovered that this was not the
case. I took an opportunity while sitting next to the Prime Minister
at dinner at Her Majesty's Embassy to mention M. Tresca's name, in
order to see if I could discover the reason for his disgrace. 'Mais il
paraît qu'il est clérical,' was the phrase. Monsieur Tresca was a
moderate Orleanist who followed M. Thiers when the latter gave his
adhesion to the Republican form of government, and is certainly not a
man who could be properly described as clerical in his views.
"Strange as it may seem, however, I am not inclined to see in the
existing and increasing degradation of French politics an actual
danger to the form of government which has been adopted in France. It
is, on the contrary, an undoubted fact that the Imperialist,
Legitimist, and Orleanist parties are continuing steadily to lose
ground. But if the Government is not only to last, but to succeed,
those who are responsible for its guidance will have at all hazards to
abandon their present policy of suspicion and exclusion, and to adopt
that of tolerance and comprehension, which, with magnificent effect
upon the power of France, was followed by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1801.
If they continue in their present course, the result must be fatal to
the reputation and to the influence of France."
III.
'I was rather given to interfering in the affairs of other offices,
which is not as a rule a wise thing to do; but then it must be
remembered that I was in the position of having to represent the
interests and opinions of the men below the gangway, and that they
used to come to Chamberlain and to me in order to put pressure upon
our colleagues through us, and that I was the person approached in all
Indian, Colonial, naval, and military questions, and Chamberlain in
domestic ones.'
In the last week of May, 1880,
'I engaged in a struggle with Lord Northbrook over the proceedings of
some of his ships.... The town of Batanga, on the west coast of
Africa, had been bombarded, sacked, and burnt for a very trifling
outrage; and I succeeded in inducing Lord Northbrook to telegraph for
further information. Ultimately the First Lord reported that--"The
Commodore has only done what was forced upon him, but it is necessary
to look very sharply after our commercial and consular people in those
parts, who constantly want to use force."'
At the beginning of July hostilities between Russia and China seemed
probable, and there was a rumour of a Russian defeat on the Kashgar
frontier. Serious apprehensions were entertained, especially in India, as
to the effect on British trade:
'I went to W. H. Smith, and asked him to ask me whether we would
strengthen the China squadron in view of a possible Russian blockade
of the Treaty ports. I strongly recommended this increase of force,
but had been unable to get our people to agree to it; and through
Smith's question the thing was done....
'On May 31st I was asked to explain why I had taken the unusual course
for a member of the Government of walking out from a Government
division on the Secret Service money. I replied that I thought that
there was room for reduction in the sum, that I knew nothing about
what was spent in Ireland, but that what went abroad was chiefly spent
in America, "in buying Fenians to write reports about other Fenians,
probably at the wish of the latter, who divide the spoils." There was
a Consul at Philadelphia who was perpetually writing to us with plans
of infernal machines, models of bombs, specimens of new kinds of
dynamite, and so forth, and we had to forward all his letters to the
Home Office, and always received from Harcourt the same reply--that we
were very probably being imposed on, but that the matter was so
important that whether we were imposed on or not we must buy; so that
naturally there was a good deal of waste.' [Footnote: In 1881 Sir
Charles again abstained from voting on this question.]
Another note shows how some Secret Service money was expended:
'On December 2nd Sir Henry Thring told me that a great number of the
Queen's telegrams had been sent to be pulped, and that the pulper had
taken them to America, whence they were recovered by a plentiful
expenditure of Secret Service money.'
Dilke maintained his practice of seeing Gambetta every time he passed
through Paris to or from Toulon. But the British Embassy now gave him
another object in these visits, and he notes a pleasant story of the
Ambassador:
'As I was passing through Paris on my way to Toulon for Christmas, I
started with Lord Lyons negotiations for the renewal of representation
by England to the Mexican Republic, [Footnote: The Mexican
negotiations were not at this time successful, but in 1883 Lord Edmond
Fitzmaurice, who followed Sir Charles at the Foreign Office, again
raised the matter, and ultimately a representative was appointed. See
_Life of Granville_, vol. ii., p. 304.] which I thought important for
commercial reasons, and which was ultimately brought about. I said to
Lord Lyons as we were walking together across the bridge from the
Place de la Concorde to the Chamber: "If you bring about this renewal
of relations, you will have the popularity in the Service of making a
fresh place--for a Minister Plenipotentiary." "Yes," said he, "but if
I were to jump off this bridge I should be still more popular--as that
would make promotion _all the way down_."'
At the beginning of December Sir Charles received an offer from the Greek
Government of the Grand Cross of the Saviour, which he was obliged,
according to the English custom, to decline.
'But as I afterwards, when out of Parliament, declined the Turkish
Grand Cross of the Medjidieh, I became one of the few persons, I
should think, who ever had the chance of declining those two
decorations.'
His home anxieties in this year had been great. He tells very sadly of the
death of the grandmother who had kept house for him from his childhood.
Shortly after "her little old niece, Miss Folkard," who had always lived
with them, also passed away.
His uncle, Mr. Dilke of Chichester, and Mr. Chamberlain came often to stay
with him, but he was anxious as to the care and education of his little
boy. Early in the new year Mr. Chamberlain proposed that Wentworth Dilke
should come and live with his own children. A year later the boy was
sending messages to his father to say that 'he had made up his mind not to
return to London, but proposed to reside permanently at Birmingham, and
thought that I had better go to live there too.'
It was also for Sir Charles a year of change in one of the more intimate
relations of political life. Mr. George Murray, his secretary at the
Foreign Office, was taken 'by the Treasury, [Footnote: See mention of Mr.
George Murray, Chapter XX., p. 314.] and in his place was appointed Mr.
Henry Austin Lee, formerly a scholar and exhibitioner of Pembroke College,
Oxford.' Also his private secretary, Mr. H. G. Kennedy, who had been with
him for many years, was now in ill-health, and had been much away for two
years. On July 27th, 1880, his place was taken by 'a volunteer from
Oxford,' Mr. J. E. C. Bodley, the future author of _France_--one of the
few Englishmen who has attained to the distinction of writing himself
"Membre de l'Institut."