eminent and conspicuous Ultramontane divine with the respect he might
show to Andrewes or Leighton, or to Grotius or Baxter, he ignores or is
ignorant of the moral objection, and he surrenders so much that he has
hardly a citadel to shelter him. I dare say he would give me a very
good answer, and I do not hesitate to utter his praises. But I have no
idea what the answer would be, and so must leave room for a doubt.
I should hardly have resolved to say all this to anybody but yourself,
relying on you not to {188} misunderstand the exact and restricted
meaning of my letter. I should like my reason for misgiving to be
understood. But I care much more to be understood as an admirer, not
an accuser of Canon Liddon. My explanation is worthless if it fails to
justify me there.
[Sidenote: _St. Martin Haute Autriche June 20, 1884_]
The idleness of Coombe Warren[220] has much to answer for. I was taken
by surprise when you sent me that letter,[221] and would have given a
great deal to escape the necessity of answering it. Ever since, it has
stood grievously in the way of writing to you; and I have conquered my
difficulty with extreme reluctance. Try to forgive my not
writing--try, much harder, to forgive my writing.
* * * * *
When I come I shall have to congratulate you on your authorship. I do
not do so now, because it would be meaningless, the C.R.[222] being due
here to-morrow only. I do hope you liked doing it, and like having
done it, and like to think of doing it again.
I still think that we ought to evacuate;[223] but I thought there would
be no time for Mr. Gladstone to do it, and no obligation on others.
The convention is a very dexterous way of laying compulsion on the
Ministers, whoever they may be, several years hence. It meets what I
thought an insurmountable difficulty, if it succeeds, as I hope it
will. But I cannot look with satisfaction on the principle as
compensation for the risk of failure. The cause does not seem to me so
sacred or so pure as to offer consolation for the fall of the Ministry.
{189}
It is an indefinite principle, depending for its application on
variable circumstances. It is not clean cut. We retain certain
ill-gotten possessions, obtained by treaty or by necessity. It is not
evident that we should surrender a possession which is not ill-gotten.
Our motives for surrender are mixed. It is to relieve us from a very
troublesome and very dangerous engagement, to avoid a formidable
expenditure, to disarm the menacing jealousy of other Powers. The
mixture of motives is obvious, and we are not in a position to claim
the merit which belongs to the purest among them.
The Ministry would not be united for common action on this question, if
the motives of expediency did not come to aid the motive of principle.
The bit of gold has to be beaten very thin to gild the whole of them.
One sees and recognises the surface gilding, but one knows that there
is inferior metal beneath.
The position would be loftier and more correct if we retired from an
enterprise crowned with success, in the fulness of conscious
superiority as well as of conscious rectitude. But we have not
accomplished triumphantly the work from which we withdraw. We are not
incurring the sacrifice of stopping short in a career of victory and of
political triumphs, so that the world wonders at our moderation and
self-control. We are giving up an undertaking in which we have
disappointed the expectation of the world, in which we have shown
infirmity of purpose, want of forethought, a rather spasmodic and
inconclusive energy, occasional weakness and poverty of resource; and
our presence and promise have been mixed blessings for the Egyptian
people. So that the principle is not {190} large enough as a basis for
such a structure, nor clear enough to yield me comfort for the enforced
close of such a career.
Do not be angry with me for saying all this--you have heard it before.
[Sidenote: _St. Martin Aug. 15, 1884_]
In spite of breakfast, dinner, and tea, of garden parties and evening
parties, of road and rail, I have brought away with me a feeling of
having hardly seen you, and of having had very little talk, so that I
begin at once to look forward to next time and the good opportunities
it may yield. It will, I hope, be very early in November. We left you
for a very pleasant day at Seacox with Morier, and an easy journey,
diversified by meeting young Lacaita at Wurzburg, and travelling with
him all night.
* * * * *
You never told me what plans there are for the short recess. I am glad
the Scottish campaign is to be soon, so as to give guidance to the
popular movement. There is a good deal of nonsense in the air; but I
hope there will be strength.
Salisbury's avowal of numerical principles set me thinking. I cannot
make out whether it is a surrender or a snare. It confirms the
expectation that they will put the minority theory forward, which is, I
think, their best card. Not so much because I agree with them, as
because it divides the Liberal party, and rescues them from the
position of mere resistance.
The objections to Northbrook's mission[224] are obvious; and yet I
should have liked to go out with him, and try to understand the problem
as it now stands; for it is taking a new shape, unwelcome, I fear, to
{191} Mr. Gladstone, and yet not unforeseen, at least since the
appearance of Blignieres. It does not seem impossible to combine rigid
principle with practical necessities.
There is not a brighter spot in my retrospect than our visit to
Cambridge, the execution of it, as well as the delight of it, due to
you. Looking back I fancy that I can never have said to you nearly how
much I was impressed by Sidgwick's conversation--to say nothing of
their hospitality. But the fact is we never talked over anything, and
it is all to come.
Alfred's[225] triumphant bowling makes me hold his coat and umbrella
comparatively cheap, yet I suppose we got beaten after all.[226]...
I have been staying at Tegernsee with Doellinger. The impending vacancy
at Lincoln was announced while I was there, and I am sorry to say that
we did not quite agree in the speculations which it suggested. I hope
you will see my dear friend at Chester.[227] There is not a greater
Tory in England, or a greater ornament to that perverse party.
[Sidenote: _St. Martin Aug. 29, 1884_]
There was nothing definite to quote in my conversation with the
Professor[228] about Liddon. He hardly knows the better side of
Liddon, as a preacher, and as a religious force. He sees that he is
not a very deep scholar, and thinks his admiration for Pusey a sign of
weakness, I think he once used the term fanatical--meaning a large
allowance of one-sidedness in his way of looking at things. Indeed,
Doellinger is influenced by nearly the same misgivings that I felt some
months ago; and he has not had the same opportunities for getting rid
of them. For instance, {192} the Dean of St. Paul's[229] assured me
that Liddon, far from reclining on others, is masterful and fond of his
own opinion. Moreover, Liddon's attitude in the question of Church and
State, is a matter which the Professor and I judge very differently,
and it is a difference which it is useless to discuss any more.
I am waiting very eagerly for the speeches in Midlothian. They will be
almost the most important of his whole career.
Forwood's proposal of equal electoral districts is another sign of
dissolution in Toryism. The principle of setting a limit to inequality
might be defended much more plausibly. I am glad to figure in your
company in Northumberland as well as at Cambridge. Your
experiment[230] is perhaps worth trying, and Stuart knows his people
too well to promote it if it is likely to fail. An outsider has not
any secure means of forecasting; but I shall retain some hesitation.
Your letter was waiting here when I came from Tegernsee, where I have
spent another few days with my Professor.[231] Knesebeck, the Empress'
secretary, was there; and I was dismayed to learn that Morier has
spoken to him in the most hostile terms of our foreign policy. I was
sorry, in London, that you did not see more of that strong diplomatist
in Downing Street.
In the doubt as to your movements I direct to Hawarden, where I hope
you will see the excellent, learned, homely, humble Bishop of Chester,
whose virtues ought to disarm even the recalcitrant Dean.[232] In
about two months I hope we shall meet.
* * * * *
{193}
[Sidenote: _St. Martin Sept. 10, 1884_]
I was able to realise your late experience,[233] even to the tones of
voice in certain passages, and I envied you. It must make one change.
He[234] cannot any longer elaborately and perversely ignore the fact
that he himself is the life and the force of the Liberal party. His
reception by Midlothian in 1880, when he did not appear as a candidate
for office, constrained him to become Prime Minister; and the more
definite issue laid before Midlothian in 1884, still more emphatically
answered, determines that he must remain P.M. Just as he accepted the
consequences then, when they involved withdrawal of public
declarations, he must accept them now, when they compel, and are very
definitely designed to compel, the surrender of private aspirations.
The public voice has spoken this time more loudly and more consciously.
It would not be right towards the country, but especially towards his
colleagues, to obey it then and to resist it now. It would be not only
a breach of the contract now made by something more than implication,
but a yielding up of the party to its enemies in an inextricable
crisis. I have not the least doubt that the position will be so
understood.
I think less of the gain which the Ministry derives from the policy,
the limitation and the enormous effect of the speeches. It is
possible, I think, to detect a weak place in them. When one speaks in
answer to opponents who are present, and who state their own case, the
thing to do is to demolish it. But when one addresses the public, in
the absence of debate, it is often good policy to state the opposite
case in one's own way, prior to demolition; one's own way is the way
one would state it if it was one's own: and {194} everybody knows that
he would make the Tory position more logical, more plausible, and
stronger than they make it themselves, if he was on their side. It is
a process one has to go through for oneself, to see what the
adversary's case looks like, stripped of all the passion, ignorance,
and fallacy with which he presents it. We are not sure we are right
until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong; and
we are strictly bound not to transform the sophisms of the advocate
into flaws in his case.
An intelligent Tory might say that this figure or precept of rhetoric
was not followed, and that their argument was presented, not unfairly,
but not at its best.
Of course he would see the point of the speeches in the restraint of
agitation, and the offer to make terms. I hope--against hope--that
this moderation is founded on knowledge of what is going on among the
Tories. One sees signs of collapse in their policy of reform, but not
in their determination to resist, and my own impression is that even
Wemyss meant to fight it out, only in another way. But if there is no
collapse, I see no resource except the agitation which Mr. Gladstone
still deprecates.
To my mind the most significant passage was that in which he spoke of
the probable fall of several Ministries. That means that the Home
Rulers are going to be the arbiters of party government. That means
ruin to the Liberal party. Many Liberals see the moment looming when
they will have more sympathy with a party led by moderate Conservatives
than with a party inspired by Radical Democrats. The looming will be
quickened by the necessity of presenting a front to the Irish. But
that is only a small part {195} of the argument accumulating against
retirement before the next Parliament, when the new constituencies will
be fixed for generations.
Odo Russell[235] leaves a larger gap than he filled, and he is
difficult to replace at a moment of peculiar soreness and strain. In
the service, I should prefer Dufferin; out of it--Bedford! I
understand that he would not accept. I find Lord Granville quite feels
that our strongest diplomatist, Morier, is out of the question at
Berlin, but it will be ten times worse to send Carlingford, and an
indication of weakness.
Many, very many, thanks for your letter, which did not seem to me to
suffer from the distractions and dissipations of Dalmeny. The best
part of it is the good report of your father's health and spirits.
[Sidenote: _Cannes Nov. 12, 1884_]
Your delightful letter came from Munich this evening after I had posted
mine.
It is an exquisite pleasure to look forward to meeting in such a short
time. I should so much wish to have a glimpse of you, and a chat,
before the plot thickens with us, so as to get the bearings. If all
goes well, I have some chance of arriving pretty early on Monday, and
my first business will be to ask if there is a line from you at the
Athenaeum. There is an uncertainty about the through trains, as there
are no travellers yet, and so I may be disappointed.
It is a very important crisis, as there is a possibility of such
complete and perfect success for Mr. Gladstone's policy of Reform; and
I do so hope he may have it in all fulness. There never was such
personal ascendency; and I trust nothing will happen in Africa to
disturb it.
{196}
Yes, I would give a trifle to have heard the discussion of our
Revolution by our greatest statesman[236] and our greatest
historian.[237] The latter betrayed his uncompromising Conservatism by
half a parenthesis at Keble. It is very superficially disguised in his
book, and he ought to have been more grateful to me than he was for
abusing Macaulay. Brewer was just like him in judging those events,
and Gardiner contrives only by an effort not to revile the good old
Cause. We are well out of the monotonous old cry about Hampden and
Russell.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Nov. 12, 1884_]
We have had a long journey from St. Martin, and are hardly settled down
in the midst of a vast solitude, when the unreasonable success of the
Government compels me to pack my bag once more.
What makes it a pleasure, I need not say. If all things go as I
expect, I shall be in town on Monday night or early on Tuesday.
If you are so very kind as to send a line to the Athenaeum suggesting
the right end and object and reward of travel, please put outside, _to
wait arrival_.
I do not stay with the Granvilles this time, that I may vote against
Ministers at my ease. And I do not bring M----, which is a grief;
still, I look forward to a deal of riotous living, and to many sources
of public and private satisfaction.
[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Dec. 9, 1884_]
... M-- received an account which pleased her, of my bath of goodness
and spirituality at Oxford; and the writing to her about scenes and
people she knows, {197} and trying to explain thoughts and facts, has
been half the pleasure of my solitary journey.
The meeting at your door[238] of the professors of heterodoxy[239] and
chatterboxy[240] in political economy is delightful, and I hope it will
fructify. But my friend the "nice little old gentleman"[241] will
always be too strenuous and urgent for the Fra Angelico of Economists;
and besides, we live in the Gladstonian era--and the glory of Europe is
extinguished for ever. That, however, might be a bond of union between
those Sophisters.
In London I could not escape a luncheon with ----, who threatens me
with a friendly visit next month at Cannes. Next week I expect Bryce
with Robertson Smith. Did I tell you of my pleasant dinner with them
on Wednesday, and meeting Creighton?[242] He is an agreeable and
superior man, whom you would like; and he is full of general knowledge.
But I am afraid you will find his book[243] a severe study.
Thursday--Rather an uninteresting dinner at ----; but one goes there to
eat. Lord G. not in very good spirits. I conciliated Enfield, who ...
was a little shocked to find that I agree with Courtney.
There was not a gap of time for a farewell in Downing Street, and I had
to decline dinners with the Granvilles, Mays, and Pagets, and a visit
to Seacox--Hamlet left out.
The journey succeeded beautifully, for it was the roughest passage I
remember, and I was none the {198} worse for it. At Calais one gets
into a sleeping-car and gets out of it at Cannes, after dining and
sleeping comfortably. A young Englishman described the Grasse Hotel to
me, where he had lived with Cross, who was writing a book. He did not
discover that it[244] was the book in my hand. I have sent it back
with some considerable suggestions.
Mrs. Green writes an amusing account of Dr. Stubbs's violent language
in politics when she approaches him with her history. I have advised
her to sacrifice everything and everybody to the object of securing his
help. Leviathan will not aid her.
I have strongly urged May to write a new chapter of Constitutional
History, coming down to this our era of Good Feeling, as Americans call
the last administration of Monroe.[245] It is the greatest landmark in
English Politics; and it has the merit of all well-defined epochs, that
it is not going to last.
At the British Museum, Gardiner was working, and I wished him joy on
the endowment of Research.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _Cannes Dec. 18, 1884_]
If sleeplessness comes on again do represent the merits of Cannes in
their proper light. January is often the finest month, and this is the
finest season ever known. Also it is the emptiest. I hear that
Thorenc is not to let, in the hope that the Wolvertons may take it.
Such rest and change as he would get here, after so much hard work,
might be quite invaluable, especially if it is in his thoughts that the
Session of 1885 is to be his last in office. That would be {199} worth
refreshing for; and we shall do our best to occupy and distract him,
and all of you, during your stay.
Croker[246] was so large and promising a morsel that I postponed
temptation and read no part of him carefully; besides it is a question
hot with hidden fire. Have you not discovered, have I never betrayed,
what a narrow doctrinaire I am, under a thin disguise of levity? The
Duke of Orleans nearly described my feelings when he spoke,
testamentarily, of his religious _flag_ and his political _faith_.
Politics come nearer religion with me, a party is more like a church,
error more like heresy, prejudice more like sin, than I find it to be
with better men. And by these canons I am forced to think ill of Peel,
to think, if you won't misunderstand me, that he was not a man of
principle. The nature of Toryism is to be entangled in interests,
traditions, necessities, difficulties, expedients, to manage as best
one may, without creating artificial obstacles in the shape of dogma,
or superfluous barriers of general principle. "Perissent les colonies
plutot que les principes" (which is a made-up sentence, no more
authentic than "Roma locuta est"), expresses the sort of thing
Liberalism means and Toryism rejects. Government must be carried on,
even if we must tolerate some measure of wrong, use some bad reasons,
trample on some unlucky men. Other people could recognise the face and
the sanctity of morality where it penetrated politics, taking the shape
of sweeping principle, as in Emancipation, Free Trade, and so many
other doctrinaire questions. Peel could not until he was compelled by
facts. Because he was reluctant to admit the sovereignty of
considerations which {200} were not maxims of state policy, which
condemned his own past and the party to which he belonged.
But if party is sacred to me as a body of doctrine, it is not, as an
association of men bound together, not by common convictions but by
mutual obligations and engagements. In the life of every great man
there is a point where fidelity to ideas, which are the justifying
cause of party, diverges from fidelity to arrangements and
understandings, which are its machinery. And one expects a great man
to sacrifice his friends--at least his friendship--to the higher cause.
Progress depends not only on the victory, the uncertain and
intermittent victory, of Liberals over Conservatives, but on the
permeation of Conservatism with Liberal ideas, the successive
conversion of Tory leaders, the gradual desertion of the Conservative
masses by their chiefs--Fox, Grenville, Wellesley, Canning, Huskisson,
Peel--Tory ministers passing Emancipation, Free Trade, Reform--are in
the order of historic developments. Still the complaints of Croker are
natural. He had been urged along a certain line, and being a coarse,
blatant fellow, he overdid it, and wrote things from which there was no
release. It was not in his brutal nature to appreciate the other side
of questions. He did not begin by seeing the strong points of his
enemy's case, and so far he was dishonest.
My impression is that Peel was justified towards his party in 1846 by
what occurred in 1845. He explained his views; some of his friends
declared against them; and he resigned. After the exchange of Stanley
for Mr. Gladstone, it was a new Ministry, a new departure on distinct
lines. Nobody was betrayed. Peel did not carry his friends with him
{201} because he had not the ascendency which his great lieutenant
possesses. The Radicals have been made to look as foolish as Croker.
The bread has been taken out of their mouths, as they are not to devour
the Lords. They have consolations in the future which the
Protectionists have not; but they are in as false a position as the
Protectionists were; and yet they stand fire on the whole well, and
without secession.--But I am conscious of more nearly hating Croker
than anybody, except Lord Clare, in English history. It was my one
link with a late, highly-lamented statesman and novelist.[247]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Jan. 14, 1885_]
Yes! at last, foreign affairs are in a very wretched way, and are
unjustly and unreasonably injuring Mr. Gladstone's own position. If
Morier is still in England, I wish he could see him before Petersburg.
He is our only strong diplomatist; but he is only strong.
I have bored the P.M. to extinction with praise of Liddon, and as all I
could say is obvious to others, I am not tempted to repeat the offence.
But the death of that uninteresting, good Bishop Jackson[248] disturbs
my rest. It is clear, very clear to me, that it would not be right to
pass Liddon over now that there are two important vacancies to fill;
and one asks oneself why he should not be chosen for the more important
of the two, and who is manifestly worthier to occupy the greatest see
in Christendom? The real answer, I suppose, is that his appointment
will give great offence, and that he is {202} a decided partisan, and a
partisan of nearly the same opinions as the P.M. himself.
No doubt there would be much irritation on the thorough Protestant
side, and in quarters very near Downing Street, and I feel, myself,
more strongly than many people, that partisanship in Liddon runs to
partiality, to one-sidedness, to something very like prejudice. And
with all that strong feeling, I cannot help being agitated with the
hope that the great and providential opportunity will not be lost.
Assuredly Liddon is the greatest power in the conflict with sin, and in
turning the souls of men to God, that the nation now possesses. He is
also, among all the clergy, the man best known to numbers of Londoners.
There must be a very strong reason to justify a Minister in refusing
such a bishop to such a diocese.
The argument of continuity does not convince me, because it was
disregarded when Philpotts died. Still more, because so eminent a
representative of Church principles had not occupied the see of London
within living memory, and there is a balance to redress. When I think
of his lofty and gracious spirit, his eloquence, his radiant
spirituality, all the objections which I might feel, vanish entirely.