doctrine which decent people abhor, had been returned as one of the
Members for Northampton. When the other Members were sworn, he claimed a
right to affirm, which was disallowed on legal grounds. He thereupon
proposed to take the oath in the ordinary way; the Tories objected, and
the Speaker weakly gave way. The House, on a division, decided that
Bradlaugh must neither affirm nor swear. In effect, it decreed that a
duly elected Member was not to take his seat. On the 23rd of June,
Bradlaugh came to the table of the House, and again claimed his right to
take the oath. The Speaker read the Resolution of the House forbidding
it. Thereupon Bradlaugh asked to be heard, and addressed the House from
the Bar. I happened to be dining that night with Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone
in Downing Street. Gladstone came in full of excitement, and pronounced
Bradlaugh's speech "consummate." However, it availed nothing. Bradlaugh
was ordered to withdraw from the House; refused, and was committed to a
farcical imprisonment of two days in the Clock Tower; and so, as Lord
Morley says, there "opened a series of incidents that went on as long as
the Parliament, clouded the radiance of the Party triumph, threw the new
Government at once into a minority, dimmed the ascendancy of the great
Minister, and showed human nature at its worst." From the day when
Bradlaugh's case was first mooted, it became apparent that the Liberal
Party contained a good many men who had only the frailest hold on the
primary principles of Liberalism, and who, under the pressure of social
and theological prejudice, were quite ready to join the Tories in a
tyrannical negation of Religious Liberty. Gladstone, though deserted and
defeated by his own followers, maintained the righteous cause with a
signal consistency and courage. There was no one in the world to whom
Bradlaugh's special opinions could have been more abhorrent; but he
felt--and we who followed him felt the same--that the cause of God and
morality can never be served by the insolent refusal of a civil right.
There is no need to recapitulate the story in all its stages, but one
incident deserves commemoration. In April, 1883, Gladstone brought in an
Affirmation Bill, permitting Members of Parliament (as witnesses in
Law-Courts were already permitted) to affirm their allegiance instead of
swearing it. On the 26th of April he moved the Second Reading of the
Bill in the finest speech which I have ever heard. Under the existing
system (which admitted Jews to Parliament, but excluded Atheists), to
deny the existence of God was a fatal bar, but to deny the Christian
Creed was no bar at all. This, as Gladstone contended, was a formal
disparagement of Christianity, which was thereby relegated to a place of
secondary importance. And then, on the general question of attaching
civil penalties to religious misbelief, he uttered a passage which no
one who heard it can forget. "Truth is the expression of the Divine
Mind; and, however little our feeble vision may be able to discern the
means by which God may provide for its preservation, we may leave the
matter in His hands, and we may be sure that a firm and courageous
application of every principle of equity and of justice is the best
method we can adopt for the preservation and influence of Truth."
The Bill was lost by a majority of three, recreant Liberals again
helping to defeat the just claim of a man whom they disliked; and
Bradlaugh did not take his seat until the new Parliament in 1886
admitted, without a division, the right which the old Parliament had
denied. Meanwhile, a few of us, actuated by the desperate hope of
bringing the clergy to a right view of the controversy, printed
Gladstone's speech as a pamphlet, and sent a copy, with a covering
letter, to every beneficed clergyman in England, Scotland, and Ireland.
One of the clergy thus addressed sent me the following reply, which has
ever since been hoarded among my choicest treasures:
June 16th, 1883.
MY DEAR SIR,
I have received your recommendation to read carefully the speech of
Mr. Gladstone in favour of admitting the infidel Bradlaugh into
Parliament. I did so, when it was delivered, and I must say that
the strength of argument rests with the Opposition. I fully expect,
in the event of a dissolution, the Government will lose between 50
and 60 seats.
Any conclusion can be arrived at, according to the premises laid
down. Mr. G. avoided the Scriptural lines and followed his own. All
parties knew the feeling of the country on the subject, and,
notwithstanding the bullying and majority of Gladstone, he was
defeated.
Before the Irish Church was robbed, I was nominated to the Deanery
of Tuam; but, Mr. Disraeli resigning, I was defrauded of my just
right by Mr. Gladstone, and my wife, Lady ---- ----, the only
surviving child of an Earl, was sadly disappointed, but there is a
just Judge above. The letter of nomination is still in my
possession.
I am, dear Sir,
Yours faithfully,
---- ----, D.D. and LL.D.
One is often asked if Gladstone had any sense of humour. My simple and
sufficient reply is that, when he had read this letter, he returned it
to my hands with a knitted brow and flashing eyes, and this indignant
question: "What does the fellow mean by quoting an engagement entered
into by my predecessor as binding on me?"
The good fortune, which had so signally attended Gladstone's campaign
against Lord Beaconsfield, seemed to desert him as soon as the victory
was won. The refusal of the House to follow his lead in Bradlaugh's case
put heart of grace into his opponents, who saw thus early in the new
Parliament a hopeful opening for vicious attack. The Front Opposition
Bench, left to its own devices, would not have accomplished much, but it
was splendidly reinforced by the Fourth Party--a Party of Four--Lord
Randolph Churchill, Sir Henry Drummond-Wolff, Sir John Gorst, and Mr.
Arthur Balfour. Some light has been cast by recent memoirs on the mutual
relations of the Four; but beyond question the head and front of the
Party was Lord Randolph. That ingenious man possessed a deadly knack of
"drawing" Gladstone, as the boys say. He knew the great man's
"vulnerable temper and impetuous moods,"[34] and delighted in exercising
them. He pelted Gladstone with rebukes and taunts and gibes, and the
recipient of these attentions "rose freely." There was something rather
unpleasant in the spectacle of a man of thirty playing these tricks upon
a man of seventy; but one could not deny that the tricks were extremely
clever; and beyond doubt they did a vast deal to consolidate the
performer's popularity out of doors. It is not too much to say that, by
allowing himself to be drawn, Gladstone made Lord Randolph.
The most formidable enemy of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons
was Parnell; and, when he joined forces with the Fourth Party and their
adherents, the conjunction was disastrous to Liberalism. He figures in
Lord Morley's "Life" of Gladstone as a high-souled and amiable patriot.
I always thought him entirely destitute of humane feeling, and a bitter
enemy of England. I remember the late Lord Carlisle, then George Howard
and Member for East Cumberland, gazing at Parnell across the House and
quoting from _The Newcomes_--"The figure of this garçon is not
agreeable. Of pale, he has become livid." A lady who met him in a
country house wrote me this interesting account of him:
"I cannot exaggerate the impression he made on me. I never before felt
such power and magnetic force in any man. As for his eyes, if he looks
at you, you can't look away, and, if he doesn't, you are wondering how
soon he will look at you again. I'm afraid I have very little trust in
his goodness--I should think it a very minus quantity; but I believe
absolutely in his strength and his power of influence. I should be sorry
if he were my enemy, for I think he would stop at nothing."
At the General Election of 1880, Irish questions were completely in the
background. The demand for Home Rule was not taken seriously, even by
Mr. John Morley,[35] who stood unsuccessfully for Westminster. Ireland
was politically tranquil, and the distress due to the failure of the
crops had been alleviated by the combined action of Englishmen
irrespective of party. But during the summer of 1880 it was found that
the Irish landlords were evicting wholesale the tenants whom famine had
impoverished. To provide compensation for these evicted tenants was the
object of a well-meant but hastily drawn "Disturbance Bill," which the
Government passed through the Commons. It was rejected by an
overwhelming majority in the Lords, and the natural consequence of its
rejection was seen in the ghastly record of outrage and murder which
stained the following winter.
The Session of 1881 opened on the 6th of January. The speech from the
Throne announced two Irish Bills--one to reform the tenure of land, and
one to repress crime and outrage. The combination was stigmatized by Mr.
T. P. O'Connor as "weak reform and strong coercion"; and the same
vivacious orator, alluding to Mr. Chamberlain's supposed sympathy with
the Irish cause, taunted the Right Honourable gentleman with having had
"if not the courage of his convictions, at least the silence of his
shame."
The debate on the Address in the Commons lasted eleven nights, the
Irish Members moving endless amendments, with the avowed object of
delaying the Coercion Bill, which was eventually brought in by Forster
on the 24th January. The gist of the Bill was arrest on suspicion and
imprisonment without trial. The Irish Members fought it tooth and nail,
and were defied by Gladstone in a speech of unusual fire. "With fatal
and painful precision," he exclaimed, "the steps of crime dogged the
steps of the Land League; and it is not possible to get rid of facts
such as I have stated, by vague and general complaints, by imputations
against parties, imputations against England, or imputations against
Government. You must meet them, and confute them, if you can. None will
rejoice more than myself if you can attain such an end. But in the
meantime they stand, and they stand uncontradicted, in the face of the
British House of Commons." The speech in which this tremendous
indictment was delivered attracted loud cheers from Liberals and
Conservatives alike, but stirred the Irish to fury. I remember Mr.
O'Connor saying to me, "If only Gladstone had been in opposition, how he
would have enjoyed tearing into shreds the statistics which he has just
quoted!" The resistance to the Bill became impassioned. The House sat
continuously from the afternoon of January 31st to the forenoon of
February 2nd. Members were divided, like miners, into Day-Shifts and
Night-Shifts. The Refreshment-Rooms at the House were kept open all
night, and we recruited our exhausted energies with grilled bones,
oysters, and champagne, and went to bed at breakfast-time. At 9.30 on
Wednesday morning, February 2nd, Mr. Speaker Brand, who had been absent
from the House for some hours, suddenly resumed the Chair, and, without
waiting for J. G. Biggar to finish his speech, put the question that
leave be given to bring in the Coercion Bill. The Irish raved and
stormed, and cried out against the Speaker's action as "a Breach of
Privilege." That it was not; but it was an unexpected and a salutary
revolution. When questioned, later in the day, as to the authority on
which he had acted, the Speaker said, "I acted on my own responsibility,
and from a sense of my duty to the House." Thus was established,
summarily and under unprecedented circumstances, that principle of
Closure which has since developed into an indispensable feature of
Parliamentary procedure.
The Session as a whole was extremely dull. The Irish Land Bill was so
complicated that, according to common report, only three persons in the
House understood it, and they were Gladstone, the Irish Chancellor,[36]
and Mr. T. M. Healy. The only amusing incident was that on the 16th of
June, owing to the attendance of Liberal Members at Ascot Races, the
majority on a critical division fell to twenty-five. Having occupied the
whole Session, the Bill was so mangled by the House of Lords that the
best part of another year had to be spent on mending it. Meanwhile, the
Coercion Bill proved, in working, a total failure. Forster had averred
that the police knew the "Village Ruffians" who incited to crime, and
that, if only he were empowered to imprison them without trial, outrages
would cease. But either he did not lay hold of the right men, or else
imprisonment had no terrors; for all through the autumn and winter of
1881 agrarian crimes increased with terrible rapidity. In a fit of
desperation, Forster cast Parnell into prison, and Gladstone announced
the feat amid the tumultuous applause of the Guildhall. But things only
went from bad to worse, and soon there were forty agrarian murders
unpunished. Having imprisoned Parnell without trial, and kept him in
prison for six months, the Government now determined to release him, in
the hope, for certainly there was no assurance, that he would behave
like a repentant child who has been locked up in a dark cupboard, and
would use his influence to restore order in Ireland. Dissenting, as well
he might, from this policy, Forster resigned. His resignation was
announced on the 2nd of May. That evening I met Gladstone at a party,
and, in answer to an anxious friend, he said: "The state of Ireland is
very greatly improved." Ardent Liberals on both sides of the Channel
shared this sanguine faith, but they were doomed to a cruel
disappointment. On the 6th of May, the Queen performed the public
ceremony of dedicating Epping Forest, then lately rescued from
depredation, to the service of the public. It was a forward spring; the
day was bright, and the forest looked more beautiful than anything that
Doré ever painted. I was standing in the space reserved for the House of
Commons, by W. H. O'Sullivan, M.P. for the County of Limerick. He was an
ardent Nationalist, but recent events had touched his heart, and he
overflowed with friendly feeling. "This is a fine sight," he said to
me, "but, please God, we shall yet see something like it in Ireland. We
have entered at last upon the right path. You will hear no more of the
Irish difficulty." Within an hour of the time at which he spoke, the
newly-appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland--the gallant and high-minded
Lord Frederick Cavendish--and the Under Secretary, Mr. Burke, were
stabbed to death in the Phoenix Park at Dublin, and the "Irish
difficulty" entered on the acutest phase which it has ever known.
At that time Lord Northbrook was First Lord of the Admiralty, and on
Saturday evening, the 6th of May, he gave a party at his official
residence. The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh were among the guests, and
there was some music after dinner. In the middle of the performance, I
noticed a slight commotion, and saw a friend leading Mrs. Gladstone out
of the room. The incident attracted attention, and people began to
whisper that Gladstone, who was not at the party, must have been taken
suddenly ill. While we were all wondering and guessing, a waiter leaned
across the buffet in the tea-room, and said to me, "Lord Frederick
Cavendish has been murdered in Dublin. I am a Messenger at the Home
Office, and we heard it by telegram this evening." In an incredibly
short time the ghastly news spread from room to room, and the guests
trooped out in speechless horror. That night brought a condition more
like delirium than repose. One felt as though Hell had opened her mouth,
and the Powers of Darkness had been let loose. Next day London was like
a city of the dead, and by Monday all England was in mourning. Sir
Wilfrid Lawson thus described that awful Sunday: "The effect was
horrifying--almost stupefying. No one who walked in the streets of
London that day can ever forget the sort of ghastly depression which
seemed to affect everyone. Perfect strangers seemed disposed to speak in
sympathizing, horror-stricken words with those whom they met. In short,
there was a moral gloom which could be felt over the whole place."
FOOTNOTES:
[31] Lord Beaconsfield. _Endymion._
[32] The following incident may be worth recording for the information
of such as are interested in the antiquities of Parliament. I first took
my seat on the highest bench above and behind the Treasury Bench, under
the shadow of the Gallery. A few days later, an old Parliamentarian said
to me, "That's quite the wrong place for you. That belongs to ancient
Privy Councillors, and they sit there because, if any difficulty arises,
the Minister in charge of the business can consult them, without being
observed by everyone in the House." That was the tradition in 1880, but
it has long since died out.
[33] Afterwards Lord Gladstone.
[34] Gladstone's own phrase.
[35] Afterwards Lord Morley of Blackburn.
[36] The Right Hon. Hugh Law.
XI
POLITICS
"Ne'er to these chambers, where the mighty rest,
Since their foundation came a nobler guest;
Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss conveyed
A fairer spirit, or more welcome shade."
T. TICKELL, _On the death of Mr. Addison_.
Lord Frederick Cavendish was laid to rest with his forefathers at
Edensor, near Chatsworth, on the 11th of May, 1882--and on the evening
of that day the Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt, brought in a
"Prevention of Crimes Bill" for Ireland, designed to supersede the
Coercion Act which had proved such a dismal failure. The new Bill
provided for the creation of special tribunals composed of Judges of the
Superior Courts, who could sit without juries; and gave the police the
right of search at any time in proclaimed districts, and authorized them
to arrest any persons unable to give an account of themselves. The Bill
was succinctly described as "Martial Law in a Wig," and, as such, it
was exactly adapted to the needs of a country in which social war had
raged unchecked for two years. The murderous conspiracy died hard, but
experience soon justified those who had maintained that, as soon as a
proper tribunal was constituted, evidence would be forthcoming. The Act
was courageously administered by Lord Spencer and Sir George Trevelyan,
under circumstances of personal and political peril which the present
generation can hardly realize. In less than two years the murderers of
Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke had been hanged; the conspiracy
which organized the murders had been broken up; and social order was
permanently re-established.
Such were the excellent effects of the Crimes Act of 1882, and annalists
treating of this period have commonly said that the Act was due to the
murders in the Phoenix Park. Some years ago Lord James of Hereford,
who, as Attorney-General, had been closely associated with these events,
placed in my hands a written statement of the circumstances in which the
Act originated, and begged that, if possible, the truth of the matter
might be made known. This may be a convenient opportunity for giving his
testimony.
"The Bill of 1882 was designed, and on the stocks, during the month of
April. I saw F. Cavendish as to some of its details almost immediately
before his starting for Ireland. As Chief Secretary, he discussed with
me the provisions the Bill should contain. On Sunday, May 7, 1882, when
the news of F. Cavendish's murder became known, I went to see Harcourt.
He begged me to see that the drawing of the Bill was hastened on. About
2 o'clock I went to the Irish Office, and found the Irish
Attorney-General hard at work on the Bill. The first draft of it was
then in print. No doubt F. Cavendish's death tended to affect the
subsequent framing of the Bill. Harcourt came upon the scenes. T---- and
J---- were called to the assistance of the Irish draftsmen, and no doubt
the Bill was rendered stronger in consequence of the events of May 6.
"I also well remember the change of front about the power of Search. The
Irish Members in the most determined manner fought against the creation
of this power.... Harcourt, who had charge of the Bill, would listen to
none of these arguments, but Mr. Gladstone was much moved by them. There
was almost a crisis produced in consequence of this disagreement; but
Harcourt gave way, and the concession was announced."
It is not my purpose in these chapters to speak about my own
performances in Parliament, but the foregoing allusion to the concession
on the Right of Search tempts me to a personal confession. In the Bill,
as brought in, there was a most salutary provision giving the police the
right to search houses in which murders were believed to be plotted.
After making us vote for this clause three times--on the First Reading,
on the Second Reading, and in Committee--the Government, as we have just
seen, yielded to clamour, and proposed on Report to alter the clause by
limiting the Right of Search to day-time. I opposed this alteration, as
providing a "close time for murder," and had the satisfaction of helping
to defeat the Government. The Big-Wigs of the Party were extremely
angry, and Mr. R. H. Hutton, in _The Spectator_, rebuked us in his most
grandmotherly style. In reply, I quoted some words of his own. "There is
nothing which injures true Liberalism more than the sympathy of its left
wing with the loose ruffianism of unsettled States." "Such a State," I
said, "is Ireland; and if, under the pressure of extraordinary
difficulties, Ministers vacillate or waver in their dealings with it,
the truest Liberalism, I believe, is that which holds them firmly to
their duty."
In that sad Session of 1882 the troubles of the Government "came not
single spies, but in battalions," and the most enduring of those
troubles arose in Egypt. For the benefit of a younger generation, let me
recall the circumstances.
Ismail Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, had accumulated a national debt of
about £100,000,000, and the pressure on the wretched peasants who had to
pay was crushing. Presently they broke out in revolt, partly with the
hope of shaking off this burden, and partly with a view to establishing
some sort of self-government. But the financiers who had lent money to
Egypt took fright, and urged the Government to interfere and suppress
the insurrection. A meeting of Tories was held in London on June 29th
and the Tory Leaders made the most inflammatory speeches. Unhappily, the
Government yielded to this show of violence. It was said by a close
observer of Parliamentary institutions that "When the Government of the
day and the Opposition of the day take the same side, one may be almost
sure that some great wrong is at hand," and so it was now. On July 10th
our fleet bombarded Alexandria, smashing its rotten forts with the
utmost ease, and killing plenty of Egyptians. I remember to this day the
sense of shame with which I read our Admiral's telegraphic despatch:
"Enemy's fire weak and ineffectual."
The protest delivered on the following day, by Sir Wilfrid Lawson, the
most consistent and the most disinterested politician whom I ever knew,
deserves to be remembered.
"I say deliberately, and in doing so I challenge either Tory or Liberal
to contradict me, that no Tory Government could have done what the
Liberal Government did yesterday in bombarding those forts. If such a
thing had been proposed, what would have happened? We should have had
Sir William Harcourt stumping the country, and denouncing Government by
Ultimatum. We should have had Lord Hartington coming down, and moving a
Resolution condemning these proceedings being taken behind the back of
Parliament. We should have had Mr. Chamberlain summoning the Caucuses.
We should have had Mr. Bright declaiming in the Town Hall of Birmingham
against the wicked Tory Government; and as for Mr. Gladstone, we all
know that there would not have been a railway-train, passing a roadside
station, that he would not have pulled up at, to proclaim
non-intervention as the duty of the Government."
On the 12th of July John Bright retired from the Government, as a
protest against the bombardment, and made a short speech full of solemn
dignity. "I asked my calm judgment and my conscience what was the path I
ought to take. They pointed it out to me, as I think, with an unerring
finger, and I am humbly endeavouring to follow it."
But it was too late. The mischief was done, and has not been undone to
this day. I remember Mr. Chamberlain saying to me: "Well, I confess I
was tired of having England kicked about all over the world. I never
condemned the Tory Government for going to war; only for going to war on
the wrong side." It was a characteristic saying; but this amazing lapse
into naked jingoism spread wonder and indignation through the Liberal
Party, and shook the faith of many who, down to that time, had regarded
Gladstone as a sworn servant of Peace. The Egyptian policy of 1882 must,
I fear, always remain the blot on Gladstone's scutcheon; and three
years later he gave away the whole case for intervention, and threw the
blame on his predecessors in office. In his Address to the Electors of
Midlothian before the General Election of 1885 he used the following
words: "We have, according to my conviction from the very first (when
the question was not within the sphere of Party contentions), committed
by our intervention in Egypt a grave political error, and the
consequence which the Providential order commonly allots to such error
is not compensation, but retribution."