likes, and to disregard cavil. He is lifted above all considerations
which might weaken action at other times and in other men. No ill
consequences of his use of patronage can reach him. He can be guided
by the supreme motive, and by the supreme motive only. It may well be
that these are the last conspicuous ecclesiastical appointments that
{203} will be his to make. He is able now to bequeath an illustrious
legacy to the people of London.
And, speaking on a lower level, the shock of Liddon's elevation might
be blunted by the contemporaneous choice for Lincoln.
One qualification ought to be remembered. He is more in contact than
other churchmen with questions of the day. Not only politics and
criticism, but science. Paget delights to relate how Owen was
discoursing on the brevity of life in the days of the patriarchs, and
how beautifully Liddon baffled him by asking whether there is any
structural reason for a cockatoo to live ten times as long as a pigeon.
If it was my duty, which it is not, or my habit--which it is still
less--to speak all my mind, I would say that there is, within my range
of observation, some inclination to make too much of distinguished men
in the Church. I name no names, but if I did, I might name Pusey,
Wilberforce, Mozley, Church, Westcott, as men whom there has been some
tendency to overestimate, at least in comparison with Liddon. Not that
he is their superior, but that he seems to me to have fallen short of
his due as much as they, in various ways, have been overpaid, in
praise, confidence, and fame. If there have been reasons explaining
this, I think they ought not to operate now.
Who are conceivable candidates? Temple, Westcott, Wilkinson, Butler,
Lightfoot? Two of these are more learned and more indefinite
theologians; but I can see no other point of rivalry. And I do not
learn that Dunelm possesses unusual light in dealing with men. Fraser?
Who can say that he has the highest qualities in Liddon's measure?
Temple {204} is vigorous and open; but he is not highly spiritual, or
attractive, or impressive as a speaker; he has an arid mind, and a
provincial note in speech and manner. But he also understands science.
The Dean assures me that, Pusey being gone, Liddon will be under no
personal influence, that he has more confidence in himself and more
backbone than I was able to discover for myself.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Jan. 22, 1885_]
Of course I know very well that we shall not make our Bishop of London;
and ever since I wrote to you I have been seeking points of
consolation, and magnifying to myself my own sources of misgiving.
Yesterday I chanced to see, at Mentone, the best of the Anglican clergy
that I have ever known, a Mr. Sidebotham. He told me of a luncheon at
Bishop Hamilton's, where he sat, a young clergyman, between Liddon and
Tait. Liddon, after a few words, shut up like an oyster; and Tait took
a good deal of pains to please his neighbour and to draw him out. From
which experience, my friend, himself a truly Catholic Anglican, thinks
that Liddon, whom he deems the greatest preacher living, would not make
a good Bishop of London. This testimony, from a personal admirer and
theological adherent, was rather welcome to me. When I asked him
whether there was any dark horse, any candidate not obvious to
outsiders, he said "No"; but seemed to think that _Bedford_[249] would
be the sort of strong-backed prelate you mean. He fully expected
Temple's appointment. Thank you so much for speaking of Morier. You
know that for all people not private friends of his {205} own ---- is
disappointing. He is a bad listener, easily bored, and distrustful of
energetic men who make work for themselves and for the Foreign Office.
Morier, in particular, has force without tact, and stands ill with a
chief who has tact without force. He feels that he is unsupported and
not much appreciated. A few friendly words from above would set him up
wonderfully.
Although Chamberlain is not the only source of weakness in the
Government, he will be the cause of dissolution if your threat is
executed at Easter! I really must come over and make myself very
disagreeable if that goes on. It is time to play the last card in
one's hand, for one year more of office and power, for the sake of the
indefinite future. But perhaps the Vyner Cottage[250] may give me the
desired opportunity.
For this is a very central part of Europe. I have had Dilke and Ripon;
I saw Salisbury yesterday; and Scherer dines here on Saturday.
Cross is coming with his book[251] next week.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _Athenaeum Club Pall Mall Feb. 26, 1885_]
I shall be delighted to dine in bad company on Thursday. Goschen will
speak against Government to-morrow, but will vote for them. I dined
there yesterday with Morier, Milner,[252] and Albert Grey;[253] and the
same party dines with Morier this evening as soon as the P.M. sits
down. Several Ministers (Hartington, Spencer, and others) have said
too much that they wish to be beaten.
A very strong speech to-night would retrieve the {206} position. If
the enemy came in now, England would soon become no better than the
Continental powers, and our true greatness and prosperity would depart
from us.
[Sidenote: _Athenaeum March 3_]
I am so glad to know that he is getting better.
If you will burn my letters there will be less difficulty in voting for
Government. Certainly a peer cannot vote absolutely only as he
approves or disapproves--or I must have voted on the other side. I
shall be delighted to call at 12, and also to be your escort.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _La Madeleine April 9, 1885_]
The book[254] reveals a mental flaw I had not suspected. Because
Newman, or some of Newman's set, Faber, Ward, Morris, were narrow and
fanatical, he concludes that their doctrine is that of narrow-minded
fanatics. This is stumbling at the Ass's bridge. Scientific thought
begins with the separation between the idea and its exponent, just as
much as religious thought; and our peculiar difficulty in keeping them
apart is notoriously the great elementary defect of the English--not
the Scottish--mind.
Pattison himself suffers from the extreme narrowness of the Oxford
horizon in his time. He knows nothing about the other side of the
hill; and when he came to know, in later years, his religious spirit
was extinct. Newman had unfitted him for Rothe. A strong mind cannot
rest without thinking out its thoughts. But Pattison rests without
caring to explain which of the several systems which exist outside of
the churches {207} satisfied his conscience. He grew impatient of
theology. He does not recognise the great importance of Casaubon in
religious history, or of Milton's theological treatise on the progress
of his mind. Once, having reviewed Pascal, he said to me that he
thought, after all, the Jesuits were in the right. I disagreed, but I
remember that I was delighted at the openness of his mind. But now I
again find him hooded with prejudice. He rightly discerned that the
French Protestants created independent scientific learning, and
glorifies Scaliger as the type of them: and then he treats Petavius as
an impostor, got up by the Jesuits in defiance of Scaliger. Whereas
the Jesuit was one of the most deeply learned men that ever lived, by
no means inferior to Grotius or Ussher or Selden.
Every year some zealous Frenchman exposes the iniquities of the Tudors,
hoping to discredit the Church of England; and Taine fancies that to
show the horrors of the Revolution is a good argument against
democracy. Pattison must have stood, as to his inner man, nearly on
the same level of logic.
* * * * *
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _Cannes April 22, 1885_]
Scherer writes that he is going to publish a new volume, in which his
recent essay on the Life of George Eliot will be included. You will
read it with interest and surprise at the moral judgment.
He is also the great patron of Amiel, whom I read with delight as
having a savour of Vinet--with more serious culture and curiosity, and
inferior understanding for religion. There is a plot in Arnold's
circle to make him known and popular in England. Nobody thought
anything of him in his lifetime, at Geneva.
{208}
A careful study of my _Pall Mall_ has left me quite in the dark as to
Zulfikar, &c.[255] I thought there was a deliberate intention to force
us into war, and I did not imagine that there was any way out of it.
To my cheap and pacific mind it seemed a disaster not only without
remedy, but without even a remote compensation or consolation, in which
victory could do us no good, and in which the mere conflict would
degrade us to the brutal level of continental powers.
Nothing has so completely puzzled me for the last two years as the
hesitation of Russia to re-open the San Stefano question, while we are
not only at Cyprus, but in Egypt, and without any moral vantage ground
from which we can resist the overthrow of the European Turk. I would
willingly give up the whole country from Bulgaria to the AEgean for a
few miles of Afghan desert.
But it would be bad policy to give up both and have to fight for
existence in India whenever a capricious bell rings at Petersburgh.
* * * * *
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _Cannes April 27, 1885_]
I cannot imagine Russia drawing back in so supremely favourable a
position. What is hard to understand is her having gone so far, and
deliberately resolved on war. But I see that there is something in all
this that has entirely escaped me. It seems so clear that our policy
is to restore Russia to the position she had attained before the
Congress of Berlin, that, therefore, we are not only her best, but her
only friends--that I am quite bewildered, and half {209} suspect that
there has been some tremendous mistake in our management. I should
like to have the chance of distracting Mr. Gladstone with various talk,
in all this anxiety. Probably I shall be at Carlton H. Terrace on
Friday week. Will you tell me there when we can meet? ... Tennyson's
really profound animosity[256] against the P.M. has long been known to
people in his confidence, and has come out at last. It was one reason,
but not the only one, of my dislike to his peerage.
* * * * *
Maine, whose series of articles form in reality an assault on the
Government, promises to adopt all my remonstrances in the reprinting of
them. These filled twenty-six of my pages, in all; so I count on a
considerable modification of the text.
I hope there will be a possible play ... when we come to town.
---- is very intelligent, agreeable, amiable, a little complex in
design; accurate calculation sometimes resides in the corner of her
eye, and she knows how to regulate to a hair's breadth, when she
smiles, the thin red line of her lips.
[Sidenote: _Prince's Gate June 20, 1885_]
No one ever saw Mr. Gladstone in better spirits than he was at dinner
yesterday. I hope it was the hitch.[257] It is a bore to be away when
the thing is to be decided. May agrees with me, and with that other
Radical[258] from Cambridge, that even the ingeniously remodelled
assurances ought not to be given; when we {210} have preserved peace
with so much difficulty, no concession not absolutely required should
be made to these dangerous successors.[259] But it will need great
fortitude, and I do not seriously hope for success against the strong
wish of so many colleagues.
* * * * *
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _April, 1885_]
I have said that I am divided from G. Eliot by the widest of all
political and religious differences, and that political differences
essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles. Therefore I
cannot be suspected of blindness to her faults. More particularly
because I have insisted on another grave delinquency which has struck
few persons, her tolerance for Mazzini. That is a criminal matter,
independent of the laws of states and churches, which no variety of
theological opinion can by any means affect. We must never judge the
quality of a teaching by the quality of the Teacher, or allow the spots
to shut out the sun. It would be unjust, and it would deprive us of
nearly all that is great and good in this world. Let me remind you of
Macaulay. He remains to me one of the greatest of all writers and
masters, although I think him utterly base, contemptible and odious for
certain reasons which you know. And I might say as much of many other
men. To be truly impartial, that is, to be truly conscientious and
sincere, we must be open equally to the good and evil of character....
{211}
[Sidenote: _Cannes Nov. 11, 1885_]
I wish I had been with you in Norway or could have seen Hawarden during
this most interesting time. Other trouble and travel have made havoc
of my correspondence, and when you receive these superfluous lines, the
die will have been cast in Midlothian. For I fancy that the enemy's
only hope now is that Mr. Gladstone will not be able to address his
audience.
Lord Granville has kept me up to the mark as to important matters, and
announced the manifesto[260] in very warm terms; but his abrupt style
of composition is not favourable to the more delicate shades of party
division. One makes out, from afar, that Chamberlain is going off from
the X.P.M.[261] while Goschen is elaborately advancing towards him;
also that he, in fact, agrees better with Chamberlain, whilst the
policy of the moment draws him to Goschen.
Our Joe ought to know how to bide his time. I suppose he thinks that
something must be offered to the new voters that they care for. I
imagine that the Church question forms a very real cause of division.
Mr. Gladstone's authority will be able to keep it down for the time,
and no more.
Let us hope for an utterly overwhelming victory, in spite of some
perceptible progress on the part of the Tories. Through a friend I
have explained to Bismarck that he must be prepared for this, if only
the voice holds. Tories here tell me that they have no real hope.
Selborne's name being on the Grey manifesto, I conclude that he will
not be Chancellor. It will be possible to strengthen the new
Government immensely with new men, but I am afraid a certain {212}
friend of ours will claim the Woolsack. The Eastern question makes me
very impatient to see Mr. Gladstone in Downing Street again.
If Morier only came to luncheon, you hardly can have seen the change in
him. He is a strong man, resolute, ready, well-informed and with some
amount of real resource. But ambition long deferred, activity long
restrained, a certain coarseness of grain which is coming to the
surface, have turned him into a bully, quarrelsome and dangerous. A
dexterous Muscovite will always be able to provide an opportunity of
putting him in the wrong and getting up an ugly fracas. It is
extraordinary what dull men make sufficient diplomatists. Arnold
Morley is new to me; I gather from what you say that Russell[262] is
sure of his seat. I was disturbed to find the Duke so hard on him, and
so little support on the more amiable side of the family.
I quite agree with Chamberlain, that there is latent Socialism in the
Gladstonian philosophy. What makes me uncomfortable is his inattention
to the change which is going on in those things. I do not mean in
European opinion, but in the strict domain of science. A certain
conversation that you remember, when Stuart, fresh from the horny hands
of Democracy,[263] produced his heresies, was very memorable to me.
But it is not the popular movement, but the travelling of the minds of
men who sit in the seat of Adam Smith that is really serious and worthy
of all attention. Maine tells me that his book, a Manual of
unacknowledged Conservatism, is selling well. It is no doubt meant to
help the {213} enemy's cause, and more hostile to us than the author
cares to appear. For he requested me not to review it. You know that
the new Hatzfeldt is the son of the lady who protected Lassalle, and
that it is desirable to speak of his wife as little as of his mother.
He is a Berlin bureaucrat, _pur sang_. I have something to write
against time, which keeps me at work during the night until the end of
November. Don't mind it, but please tell me what happens, and whether
I may come and see you re-installed.
Fancy my disappointment: Paget[264] passed under our windows, and
Liddon--as he told the World--was at Tegernsee, and I missed them both.
The Pagets have set up a delightful daughter-in-law, and a near
relation of hers, a Balliol man, son, I believe, of the chief Tory
wire-puller in Shropshire, has just come out here....
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Nov. 28, 1885_]
It was a serious blow to find in your letter that you had no confidence
in the election,[265] but I am glad now to think that you were so much
better prepared to lose than I was, in spite of what I had also heard
about Bright's despondency. I only hope that it has not been a bad
time, otherwise, at Dalmeny, and that Mr. Gladstone has not suffered
from so much effort.
At this moment I know only the result of the first three days, and have
no Scottish news since Goschen got in. I conclude that we are beaten
past recovery, and wonder whether the Dark Horse[266] will make the
{214} Government independent of their Irish supporters. If not, the
rift in the lute will betray itself any time after the first Session.
As I am the only Englishman still so besotted as to feel Salisbury's
presence in Downing Street exactly as I should feel Bradlaugh's at
Lambeth, I will say nothing about my own sensations to a correspondent
necessarily unsympathetic. What strikes me most strongly is the
probability of Mr. Gladstone thinking that his release has come, and
that he is not bound to embark on a voyage which is very unlikely to
lead back to power until he is in his seventy-eighth year. For I
suppose that the secret of the situation is that Chamberlain has so far
played false, played, I mean, a private game, that he looked far ahead,
and did not care to come back to office in the old combination,
especially with the prospect of losing Dilke at first. So that, in
fact, the Gladstonian influence, which would be unshaken in the country
at large, was unable to control his own colleagues, and the old
inferiority in the management of men, compared with the management of
masses, which Goschen exemplified before, has appeared in the direction
of the Radical wing.
As I know his characteristic of caring for measures much more than for
the organisation which is to carry them, I conjecture he will say that
he is not harnessed for ever to the coach, that he will be grievously
tempted to give up leading an active opposition. Of course I should
deeply deplore such a decision, but my old arguments, which
circumstances did so much to impress, will be weaker now.
Three legitimate causes have told in favour of the Tories. They have
not done much to make them odious, and the position abroad is easier,
very decidedly, {215} though not very considerably, easier. Then, the
case against us in the Soudan is a very strong one. I may say so now
that Mr. Gladstone does not really resist it; and you, at any rate,
know how strongly I thought so before. That is not a positive
recommendation of the Tories, but it does weaken us, and the reproach
is not met, in the judgment of impartial men, by saying that the Tories
did nothing to restrain or to correct us. Thirdly, the Church argument
is logically against us. Mr. Gladstone's attitude gave no security
that the Liberals, if they returned strengthened from the poll, would
not eventually employ their increased strength to pave the way for
disestablishment.
What you say of a flaw in his reckoning is very true indeed. In his
literary occupations it appears still more strongly. The grasp is
often more remarkable than the horizon. I do not think that it has
been much of a drawback in politics, and the minds it would estrange
are very few.
You would have written a capital review of Greville.[267] It is very
odd that a man should be so shrewd, and so full of experience, and yet
so destitute of positive ideas. I see that I thought too much of him,
having known him before I knew the difference between common sense and
capacity. My friend Maine certainly did not fear that I should spoil
his effects, for I should never have found a point of contact with the
views of the general reader. I don't think he likes to admit that one
can have gone over the same ground, and have come impartially to
opposite conclusions. His book is a symptom of the change which is so
remarkable in the _Times_.
{216}
[Sidenote: _Cannes Jan. 1, 1886_]
It would have been a very great pleasure to be at Hawarden during these
festive days; and only very strong local ties oblige me to say that it
is impossible. There has never been a time when I was more anxious to
learn what is really going on, and to see things from the centre, and
it is therefore a disappointment to be away. But there is nothing that
I could say or do that would contribute an element to the momentous
decisions to be formed. That Mr. Gladstone will, in this great and
perhaps final crisis, put himself into the position of Irishmen and
view things not only from the point of their present wishes, but with
their historic eyes, and that he will hold that the ends of liberty are
the true ends of politics, that is the one thing certain and known to
all men, and it is the whole of the political baggage with which I set
out on the Irish expedition.
I know neither how to resist the claim of the Irish nation to govern
themselves nor even their claim to possess the land, and nobody really
familiar with the events of this century can say that the one is beyond
the resources of political, or the other, of economic science. They
are problems which have been solved repeatedly within the experience of
two generations. Many experiments have been made, and it is not
difficult to determine which solutions have failed, which have
succeeded, and to tell the reason why.
I have thought so for twenty years, and now that the question has
become perforce a practical one, nobody can be more heartily than I am
on the side which I understand to be Mr. Gladstone's, or, to speak
definitely, on the Irish side. The claim of duty exactly coincides
with the claim of necessity, and {217} that is all about it that one
can say from a distance, without having seen what is on paper, or felt
pulses all round.
Duty and necessity settle the question, but not as to policy in detail,
which I have no right to talk about without hearing more what is said
by people on the spot. Only let me say that I would not be influenced
by hope of a very brilliant success, even if it is possible to do what
would satisfy the better part of the Irish party. The people are so
demoralised, both laity and clergy, that we must be prepared to see the
best scheme fail. No Irish failure is so bad as the breakdown of
parliamentary government, so that even from a sordid point of view that
is not insuperable. But I would arm myself against disappointment.
There is another point of view from which I see much to apprehend and
prepare for. The elections send back Mr. Gladstone to Westminster, and
even to Downing Street, with some loss of influence. I see it not only
in the reduced majority, but still more in the increase of Conservative
minorities at the poll, the infidelity of most important colleagues,
and the reluctance with which he will be followed by members under
pressure from their constituencies.
We saw the centrifugal forces at work last Session in the Ministry
itself. Mr. Gladstone only retained office after the Egyptian vote by
the neutrality of Rosebery, and in the question of concession to
Parnell he had to yield to the Lords in the Cabinet.
How can they stand by him now, to support measures much more
formidable, probably, than that which they rejected last spring? And
could not Salisbury dexterously put the question in such a way {218}
that their vote then given should disable them altogether?
One sees the danger that Mr. Gladstone would be almost isolated among
his friends, even if there is a majority in the House, and I can
imagine no way of getting any considerable scheme through the Lords. I
wish you would tell me that all this has been provided for, and that
very careful negotiations have been carried on. Taking the question
grossly, in outline, I can only say that I hope fervently that he will
have strength to accomplish the only scheme of policy I can think
worthy of his fame.