CHAPTER III

THE FOURTH PARTY

His birth, it seems, by Merlin’s calculation,

Was under Venus, Mercury, and Mars;

His mind with all their attributes was mixt;

And, like those planets, wandering and unfixt....

His schemes of war were sudden, unforeseen,

Inexplicable both to friend and foe;

It seemed as if some momentary spleen

Inspired the project and impelled the blow.

HOOKHAM FRERE, _The Monks and the Giants_.

Great expectations were entertained of the Parliament of 1880 by the

Liberal members who assembled at Westminster after the election. Indeed,

the position of their party was one of immense strength and advantage.

The Government enjoyed the support of a majority in the House of Commons

who outnumbered the Conservatives and the Irish combined by more than 50

votes and amounted for practical purposes to between 100 and 130. In the

House of Lords they could count upon the wealth and talents of the great

Whig houses, the influence of the Cavendishes and the Russells, the

experience of Lord Granville, and the eloquence of the Duke of Argyll.

They were led by the finest Parliamentarian of this or any other age,

whose incomparable powers had won him an almost superstitious

veneration; and around him were gathered a band of men of distinguished

ability, well known to the country, practised in public affairs and

yielding ready subordination to the genius of their chief. Upon the

Treasury Bench were seated statesmen like Mr. Bright, Mr. Forster, and

Lord Hartington. Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain represented the

growing Radicalism and the future hope of their party. And when the view

was extended from the walls of Parliament to the larger arena of the

electorate no less powerful resources were displayed. The tendency of

the day was strongly progressive. The ability and authority of the

Press--whether Metropolitan, provincial, or local--were ranged in

overwhelming preponderance upon the Liberal side. Scotland and London,

almost all the great cities, nearly every centre of active political

thought--Edinburgh, Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford,

Sheffield, Bristol--sent their representatives in vast majority to

uphold the new Administration; and a Reform Bill promised an almost

equal advantage in the counties. Many active and vigilant societies and

a multitude of political clubs stimulated the energies of the rank and

file; and the whole was bound together and directed to a common end by a

formidable and opulent organisation.

The position of the Conservative party, upon the other hand, was weak

and miserable in the extreme. The sympathies and the intellect of the

nation were estranged. Lord Beaconsfield, the only man who could touch

the imagination of the people, was withdrawn from the popular assembly.

Many of the Tory strongholds--family boroughs and the like--were

threatened by approaching Redistribution. The Front Opposition Bench,

cumbered with the ancient and dreary wreckage of the late

Administration, was utterly unequal to the Government in eloquence or

authority. The attendance of Conservative members, as in all dispirited

Oppositions, was slack and fitful.

Outmatched in debate, outnumbered in division, the party was pervaded by

a profound feeling of gloom. They had nothing to give to their

followers, nothing to promise to the people: no Garters for Dukes, no

peerages for wealth, no baronetcies or knighthoods or trinkets for

stalwarts. Although the new spirit created by Disraeli--_Imperium_

abroad, _Libertas_ at home--still lived in the Tory party, it had been

profoundly discouraged by the results of the election; and many of those

who swayed Conservative counsels could think of no plan of action except

an obstinate but apathetic resistance to change. Jeered at as ‘the

stupid party,’ haunted by profound distrust of an ever-growing

democracy, conscious that the march of ideas was leaving them behind,

these desponding counsellors could discern in the future no sign of

returning fortune and seemed to find the sole function of the

Conservative minority in delaying and restricting the movements of the

age by means of electoral inequalities, by Parliamentary procedure, and

through the prejudices of interest and of class.

What political prophet or philosopher, surveying the triumphant Liberal

array, would have predicted that this Parliament, from which so much was

hoped, would be indeed the most disastrous and even fatal period in

their party history? Or who could have foreseen that these dejected

Conservatives in scarcely five years, with the growing assent of an

immense electorate, would advance to the enjoyment of twenty years of

power? It needed a penetrating eye to discover the method, and a bold

heart first to stem and finally to turn the tide. Who would have thought

of breaking up the solid phalanx of Liberalism by driving in a wedge

between the Radicals and the Whigs; or dreamt of using the Irish to

overthrow the great apostle of reconciliation between peoples; and who

without the audacity of genius would have dared to force the

Conservative party to base the foundations of their authority with

confidence upon the very masses they dreaded and to teach those masses

to venerate and guard the institutions they had formerly despised?

The Liberal majority, who had arrived at Westminster in such excellent

spirits after their victory at the polls, were enabled quite early in

the session to take part in a Government defeat. The electors of

Northampton, which was in those days reputed the most Radical town in

England, had returned Mr. Bradlaugh as one of their representatives.

Charles Bradlaugh came to the House of Commons by strange paths of

thought and action. Forty-seven years before he had been born in a

religious family, the son of a very poor solicitor’s clerk. For a time

he was a teacher in an Evangelical Sunday-school; but he began to ask

many questions about his faith and its foundations, which appear to have

been indifferently answered by a clergyman to whom he applied. Later he

was a Chartist, and spoke often at open-air meetings, at first on the

Christian side; but after a public disputation with an anti-Christian

opponent he became a declared atheist and found shelter for a while in

an anti-Christian family. Harassed by poverty he enlisted in the East

India Company’s army, was exchanged into the British Service, served

with credit several years in the 7th Dragoon Guards, and bought his

discharge with a legacy that had come to him from an aunt. Next he was

an office-boy to a solicitor, whence he rose soon to manage the common

law department of the firm. These harsh and varied experiences had

inflamed his mind against many established institutions, human and

divine. As a bold and effective platform speaker, or under the pseudonym

of ‘Iconoclast,’ he was accustomed to set forth what occurred to him

against Christianity, the Bible, and the House of Brunswick, to the

severe displeasure of the more prosperous or more contented classes in

the nation. In the year 1877 he intruded upon still more dangerous

ground and made himself responsible for the republication of a pamphlet

about over-population, its evils and its remedies and other Malthusian

topics, which, being among the most tremendous of natural problems, have

long been judged unfit for public discussion. The pamphlet is said to

have attained a sale of 180,000 copies, and the publisher was sentenced

to six months’ imprisonment, from which he only escaped through the

timely discovery of some legal flaw. Mr. Bradlaugh’s struggles against

authority, penury, and obloquy were now to be transferred to a more

brightly-lighted stage.

On May 3, 1880, Charles Bradlaugh presented himself at the table of the

House of Commons and claimed to affirm instead of taking the oath. The

Speaker, whom he had acquainted with his intention some days earlier,

decided on his own responsibility to leave the question to the decision

of the House, and Lord Frederick Cavendish, representing the Government

in the absence of Ministers--whose seats had been vacated by taking

office--moved accordingly for a Select Committee of Inquiry. Sir

Stafford Northcote, the Leader of the Opposition, being as it appears

personally willing to substitute an affirmation for the oath, seconded

the motion. When the House met again (May 5) Sir Henry Wolff gave notice

that he would oppose the reference to a committee; and when it was

nominated he moved (May 11) ‘the previous question,’ on the ground that

to proceed to general business before the Queen’s Speech had announced

to members the reasons for which Parliament was summoned would be to

invade the Royal Prerogative. He was supported by Mr. Gorst, the member

for Chatham. A debate ensued, in the course of which some prominent

Conservatives deprecated Sir Henry Wolff’s motion, and several of the

Conservative leaders abstained from the division in which it was

defeated by 171 to 74. But the question had already begun to excite

attention. The delay was fatal to its settlement. If Mr. Bradlaugh had

been content to take the oath unostentatiously among a crowd of members

at the beginning of the session, it is almost certain that no question

would have been raised. He chose instead in the most public manner to

cast down a challenge. It was eagerly accepted. From the caprice that

prompted one private member to stir a smouldering fire and the chance

interposition of another who happened to observe him arose a protracted

and ferocious controversy, which, in Mr. Morley’s words, ‘went on as

long as the Parliament, clouded the radiance of the party triumph, threw

the new Government at once into a minority and dimmed the ascendency of

the great Minister.’

By a majority of one the committee decided against Mr. Bradlaugh’s claim

to affirm. He thereupon wrote to the newspapers that he considered it

his duty to accept the mandate of his constituents and that if to do so

he had to submit to a form less solemn than the affirmation, so much the

worse for those who forced him to repeat words which were to him sounds

conveying no clear and definite meaning. Having by this, as he no doubt

supposed, settled the matter to the extreme discomfiture of his

opponents, he repaired to the House on May 21--the third day of its

meeting for regular business--resolved to take the oath in the usual

form. But in the meantime Sir Henry Wolff had not been idle. With the

assistance of Mr. Grantham--now one of His Majesty’s Judges--he had

studied the legal aspect of the question and had drafted a resolution.

He had consulted with his friends and in particular with the young

member for Woodstock, with whom he had struck up a friendly acquaintance

in the last Parliament and of whose talents he had formed a high

opinion. Mr. Bradlaugh’s letter had, moreover, produced an astonishing

effect. The House--almost irrespective of party--was profoundly offended

and even outraged by his words and by the action he intended. Anger

flamed in the Lobbies. Ministers were justly apprehensive of the

difficulties that might arise if the question of Mr. Bradlaugh’s right

to take the oath was held to be one for the determination of the House.

They held a council in the Speaker’s Library, and proposed to meet the

hostile motion, which was now certain when Mr. Bradlaugh should present

himself, by moving ‘the previous question.’ But the Whips reported that

the feeling in the House was ‘uncontrollable.’ The Liberal majority

could not be relied on to support ‘the previous question’ and the Prime

Minister was forced to content himself with proposing a new committee to

search for precedents.

When the hour came, Mr. Bradlaugh advanced to the table to take the

oath. Thereupon Sir Henry Wolff sprang up and objected to its being

administered to him. Mr. Dillwyn, a Liberal member, intervened,

submitting that it was out of order to question the right of any member

to take the oath; but the Speaker, adhering to the intention he had

expressed in private, ruled--although in very doubting language--in

favour of Sir Henry Wolff. The Speaker directed the member for

Northampton to withdraw while Sir Henry Wolff explained his reasons.

These were, in short, that Mr. Bradlaugh’s declared opinions upon

religion and Royalty necessarily rendered any oath of allegiance that he

might take meaningless in form and valueless in fact.

The Prime Minister made an effort to narrow the issue to the simple

judicial question of whether a duly elected member could be prevented by

the House from fulfilling his statutory obligations and he proposed his

Select Committee. The debate which followed was long, serious, and

savage. Two views, both held with intensity, prevailed about the man:

first, that he was a blatant contumacious atheist who made a living by

blasphemy, republicanism, and indecent literature, and sought in

Parliamentary honours a fresh advertisement for his hateful trade; and,

secondly, that he was a martyr gone wrong, whose zeal and

convictions--honest, albeit pernicious--had caused him to suffer in

private prospects and public life. The unfavourable view predominated in

the House and was adopted with vehemence by the Conservative party.

There was a third view--that the House of Commons was no judge of such

matters, that it had received no evidence but common report, and even so

had no business to exclude members because of their opinions. But such

arguments, although urged by orators like Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright,

found little acceptance. Extracts were read from ‘The Impeachment of the

House of Brunswick’ and ‘The Fruits of Philosophy.’ Mr. Bradlaugh’s

declaration that an oath was to him an idle and meaningless ceremony was

repeated over and over again. Was the House to connive at an act of

blasphemy? Mr. Gibson from the Front Opposition Bench, taking the Bible

in his hands from the table on which it lay, read out impressively the

solemn words which were to be mockingly invoked. Mr. F. H. O’Donnell, a

militant Irish Catholic, spoke in unmeasured abhorrence of the Bradlaugh

doctrines, which he said would degrade human love and human wedlock to

something lower than union of beast with beast. The speech of Mr. Walter

of the Times, which, although favouring the appointment of a Select

Committee, declared that Mr. Bradlaugh could not be permitted to go

through the form of taking the oath, was regarded as representing an

important element of moderate Liberal opinion.

Partisanship was not slow to perceive its opportunity. Sir Stafford

Northcote and the whole Conservative party made haste to support Sir

Henry Wolff. Opposition speakers sought to identify the Liberal party

and Mr. Gladstone himself with the member for Northampton. He had been

their candidate, he was now their comrade. The division, according to

one gentleman, would be between those who were on the side of atheism,

disloyalty, and immorality and those who were not. Amid such fury many

very wise and worthy exhortations to preserve a judicial spirit were

overwhelmed. Lord Randolph Churchill resumed the debate on May 24. For

the first time he addressed a crowded House and was supported by the

cheers of a great party. There was in his character a strong element of

religious feeling. He spoke with a kind of half-restrained passion which

commanded attention. He opposed the appointment of a committee. The

matter was simple. Let it be decided by what Lord Beaconsfield had

called ‘the unerring instinct of the House of Commons.’ Like others who

had spoken, he quoted from the Bradlaugh writings. He stood at the

corner seat of the third bench below the gangway and when he had

finished reading the extract beginning ‘I loathe these small German

breast-bestarred wanderers,’ he cast ‘The Impeachment of the House of

Brunswick’ upon the floor and stamped upon it, to the surprise of the

assembly. Although this was his first entry into the dispute, he seems

at once to have been accepted as a principal. Henceforward, upon the

Bradlaugh question, he took his natural place as a leader and before two

years had passed he was credited by the public with having begun the

whole controversy.

Sir Henry Wolff’s motion was rejected in favour of the Ministerial

amendment proposing a committee by 214-289. There was another dispute on

May 28 over the names of the committee, Lord Randolph being ironically

or mischievously anxious that Nonconformists should be more numerous on

it. Mr. Gladstone, in reply, concerned himself almost entirely with the

arguments of Lord Randolph and Sir Henry Wolff. The committee was

appointed. Its search for precedents was barren. It reported that Mr.

Bradlaugh could not take the oath, but recommended that he should be

allowed to affirm at his own risk, in order that the matter might be

settled in the Courts. The Government accepted the view of the

committee. On June 21, therefore, Mr. Labouchere moved that his

colleague be permitted to affirm. Sir Hardinge Giffard, in the name of

the Conservative party, met this by an amendment which declared that Mr.

Bradlaugh should not be permitted either to affirm or swear. After two

days’ debate (June 21 and 22) the first great division of the new

Parliament was taken. Mr. Labouchere’s motion, although supported by the

whole Ministry, was rejected by 275 votes to 230 and Sir Hardinge

Giffard’s amendment was adopted in its stead. In the clamorous

excitement which followed the declaration of the numbers some have

discovered the joy of the Tory party at their first revenge for

Midlothian.

The account of this episode need not be pursued in detail. How Mr.

Bradlaugh presented himself the next day and claimed to swear; how the

Prime Minister, his solution having been rejected, refused his guidance

to the House; how the Speaker called upon Mr. Bradlaugh to withdraw; how

he resisted; how he was heard at the Bar; how he was expelled; how he

was committed to the Clock Tower upon the motion of the Leader of the

Opposition; how action was taken against him in the Courts for sitting

and voting without statutory qualification, are upon record. How he was

unseated and re-elected, and in what manner he finally took the oath,

must presently be described. The Bradlaugh case was inexhaustible in

scenes and sensations. It recurred almost month after month throughout

the Parliament, and whenever it occupied the stage the Government was

powerless; the leadership of the House was abandoned by its first and

greatest member; the overwhelming majority of the Midlothian campaign

became divided and untrustworthy. The credit of the Ministry was injured

in Parliament and in the country the Liberal party and its leaders were,

not unsuccessfully, represented as the champions of Bradlaugh and his

abominated doctrines.

The Fourth Party grew out of the Bradlaugh incident. To Wolff belonged

the merit of discovery. The others in coming to his aid had learned the

value of co-operation. They had seized an opportunity while regular

leaders hesitated. They had helped each other to use it with

determination. The whole party had in the end been glad to follow their

lead and great and admitted advantage had ensued. They resolved

forthwith to make permanent that comradeship which had proved so happy

on occasion. Three of them already sat on the Front Bench below the

gangway, and during the early days of the session Lord Randolph

abandoned his perch on the back benches and came forward to sit with

them. An old and respected member of the Conservative party had been

accustomed to sit in the corner seat. In a few weeks he departed to

serener quarters, saying to Sir Henry Wolff, ‘This is getting too hot

for me’; and Lord Randolph thenceforward was regarded as the rightful

owner of that coveted place. The compact which bound the ‘Fourth Party,’

as they were soon called by general consent, was simple and elastic. No

questions of policy or leadership arose. Each was free to act in perfect

independence; but it was agreed that, whenever one of them was attacked,

the others should defend him. Upon these conditions was created a

Parliamentary group which proved, in proportion to its numbers, the most

formidable and effective force for the purposes of Opposition in the

history of the House of Commons.

The four men who had thus come together were, each in his own way,

remarkable. The first mention of Sir Henry Wolff in Lord Randolph’s

letters occurs in 1879. ‘I am dining to-night at the Garrick with Sir

Henry Wolff and a large party of M.P.’s.’ Then again, a few months

later, ‘Wolff and I are going to London together in order that the

questions of the leadership of the party may be complicated by our

presence.’ When the Parliament of 1880 assembled they seem to have

become already fairly intimate friends. Sir Henry Wolff, the son of a

distinguished traveller and scholar whose name in the early ’forties was

respected in many countries outside his own, had entered Parliament as

member for Christchurch in 1874, and had already, by his knowledge of

foreign affairs and diplomatic methods, gained a reputation in the

House of Commons. He was now member for Portsmouth. He was fifteen years

older than Lord Randolph and possessed a large and varied fund of

experience and information. Shrewd, suave, witty, and imperturbable,

versed in Parliamentary procedure, fertile in schemes, clever at

managing people, a master of smoothly-turned sentences and plausible

debating points, a ready speaker, an industrious politician, old enough

to compel respectful treatment from the House, young enough to love

fighting and manœuvres for their own sake, Sir Henry Wolff was, at

the beginning of 1880, just the kind of man to make a Ministry

uncomfortable. If he contributed notably to the strength of the Fourth

Party in public, he added still more to the gaiety of its secret

councils. He rallied generously to the chaff in which Lord Randolph

always delighted, and the comradeship which grew between them was

abiding. No cloud darkened, no conflict of interests or opinions

disturbed it. Of the intimate relations between these four allies, the

friendship of Lord Randolph and Sir Henry Wolff was the only one to

survive unimpaired the vicissitudes of political life.

Mr. Gorst possessed temper and talents of a different kind. His mood was

serious, his ability distinguished, his industry enormous. His career in

the past had been more noteworthy than that of any of his companions. He

was a rapidly rising lawyer. He had sat in Parliament as early as 1866.

He had been entrusted with the reorganisation of the Conservative party

machinery after the defeat of 1868, and Mr. Disraeli always regarded the

victory of 1874 as largely due to his arrangements, and treated him with

special favour and confidence. He probably knew more about politics,

public and secret, than all his three colleagues together, and his

knowledge of law proved on repeated occasions of inestimable value to

the rest. In conjunction with Lord Randolph Churchill his abilities

became doubly effective. A few years later Sir Henry James publicly

complained, in a Standing Committee, of such an alliance. It was, he

said, a poacher’s combination--a pointer to find game and a greyhound to

run it down.

The career of the remaining member of the Fourth Party is not yet

complete. Mr. Arthur Balfour in 1880 was an affable and rather idle

young gentleman, who had delicately toyed with philosophy and diplomacy,

was earnest in the cause of popular concerts, and brought to the House

of Commons something of Lord Melbourne’s air of languid and well-bred

indifference. How he came at all to be drawn into that circle of fierce

energy which radiated from Lord Randolph Churchill was a puzzle to those

who knew him best. In the early days of the Fourth Party no

one--certainly not his comrades--regarded him as a serious politician.

Lord Randolph, who delighted in nicknames, used to call him

‘Postlethwaite,’ and made him the object of much harmless and friendly

chaff. In private life he already exercised that personal charm and

fascination which in later years were curiously to deflect the course of

great events. But he seemed so lacking in energy, so entirely devoid of

anything like ambition, so slenderly and uncertainly attached to

politics at all, that his friends feared he would withdraw altogether,

and none recognised or imagined in this amiable, easy-going member for a

family borough the calculating, tenacious, and unwearying Minister who

was destined through so many years to control the House of Commons and

shape the policy of the State.

The Employers’ Liability Bill afforded the new confederacy a wide and

fertile field for their exertions. The law, as it had been formed by

judicial decisions, was, according to modern ideas, strangely harsh upon

the workman. The employer was liable for any injury done to third

parties by the negligence of his servants but not for injuries done by

one servant to another. If, for instance, there occurred at his mills an

explosion which killed and wounded both outsiders and his own workmen,

the employer might be sued for damages in respect of person or property

by the outsiders or their representatives, but injured fellow-workmen

had no legal claim because they were in what was called ‘common

employment.’ Complaint against this anomaly had been loud and long. Two

extreme remedies were proposed by the respective interests. On the one

hand, the employers desired to be free from all liability for injuries

done, except by themselves personally; on the other, the workmen

demanded the abolition of the doctrine of ‘common employment’ and an

assertion of the consequent liability of the employer to all alike. A

Bill had been introduced in the preceding Parliament by Mr. Brassey, a

private member, which proposed a middle course. It sought to extend the

liability of the employer by nullifying the plea of ‘common employment’

whenever the injury was caused by a defect in the machinery, by the

negligence of an authorised superintendent, or as the result of

obedience to the employer’s rules or bye-laws. When the new Ministers

assumed office the session was already advanced; and under a hasty

necessity for providing a certain legislative pabulum for the activities

of Parliament, the Government adopted, with very scanty examination, Mr.

Brassey’s Bill. The complications in which this plan involved them were

numerous. It had not originated in the great departments of the State

and was, both in principle and drafting, an amateurish suggestion which

might, indeed, sound very plausible and accommodating; but which had not

been clearly thought out in a scientific spirit with the advantages of

official information. No division was taken upon the second reading; but

the debate aroused the Ministers in charge of the measure to the

consciousness that they were committed to a confused and ill-considered

proposal. It was necessary to move that the Bill should be re-committed,

and before it reappeared it was almost entirely rewritten. Its general

character as a compromise was, however, preserved.

The Fourth Party held deep council as to their policy upon this

measure. They saw that a Bill had practically been thrown to the House

to be moulded into shape by debate. They resolved to address themselves

conscientiously to the task of perfecting the crude conceptions of the

Government. But they resolved further the direction in which their

influence should be exerted. The manufacturers and capitalists, who in

those days were numerous and influential in the Liberal party, were

already greatly perturbed at the extent to which their liability was to

be increased, and the Government was constrained to listen to their

grumbles. Sitting immediately behind Ministers, Sir Henry Mather Jackson

groaned forth his anxieties. Not so the Fourth Party. They approached

the question with open minds, as independent persons who desired only to

do right between man and man and cared nothing for the sordid interests

involved. Whereas Ministers had expected that Tory opposition would

naturally take the form of a defence of the employers’ position, the

Fourth Party proceeded to criticise the measure entirely in the

interests of the working class. This secured them two advantages, which

it may be presumed they desired equally. First, it was in accordance

with the spirit of Lord Beaconsfield’s progressive Toryism and would

really benefit the labouring people, for whose sake the Bill was

designed. Secondly, nothing could be more embarrassing to a Liberal

Government than Conservative opposition on the grounds that the Bill did

not go far enough. ‘Be thorough,’ exclaimed these Tories to the

Government. ‘Fulfil your election pledges. If you intend to deal with

industrial questions let it be in an honest and courageous spirit.’ The

Government was gravely disconcerted. They found themselves between two

fires. Below the gangway the Radicals stirred uneasily at such

unanswerable argument; and behind the Treasury Bench the wealthiest

supporters of the party were gnashing their teeth at such reckless

proposals.

Whenever the subject came before the House the four friends were in

their places. There was not a single sitting from which they were

absent, or a single clause which they did not amend, or seek to amend.

It is, moreover, true that many important alterations in the scope and

detail of the measure were conceded to their insistence and that many of

their proposals, though rejected by the Government of 1880, have now

become the law of the land. The unforeseen complexity of the measure

afforded an indefinite scope to their ingenious minds. All sorts of hard

cases were propounded, to which the Government could find no

satisfactory reply. An employer was to be liable for accidents which

occurred through his defective plant or stock. Did this include animate

as well as inanimate things? The Ministers in charge had not made up

their minds. They had contemplated in the word ‘stock’ a stack of timber

or bricks which might fall and cause injury through negligent stacking.

They were now invited to consider the case of live-stock. Lord Randolph

said that a farmer might have a horse which he knew perfectly well had

a disease of the foot and was liable to come down at any moment. Would

the workman riding home from plough and injured by the fall be secured

compensation under the Bill? ‘No,’ replied the law officers, ‘for the

disease of the foot would not be due to the negligence of the employer.’

‘But suppose,’ asked Mr. Balfour, ‘the employer had thrown down the

horse and broken his knees, and that on a subsequent occasion, in

consequence of the horse having been thrown down by his carelessness,

his servant was thrown and broke his arm, what then?’ And it then

appeared there might be liability.

And what was a defect in ‘stock’? The bricks or timber might be stacked

so as to cause injury and yet be themselves most excellent materials.

The defect was not in them but in the person who stacked them. Someone

recollected that the rays of the sun had ignited lucifer matches lying

in a shop window, which in turn set fire to gunpowder and produced a

serious explosion. Where was the defect? If anywhere, it was in the

glass which had concentrated the rays of the sun. Amid such questionings

and the utter confusion to which they led, Mr. Dodson and his friends

passed many uncomfortable hours. Lord Randolph and Mr. Gorst were very

profuse in regrets for the slow progress of the Bill. But when the

Government themselves did not understand their own measure it was

necessary to be very careful indeed--and, after all, there was plenty of

time; better sit till November than scamp public duties and pass

slovenly or unworkable legislation.

Another dilemma was supplied by the case of domestic servants. Mr.

Balfour and Lord Randolph together protested against their exclusion

from the benefits of the Act--‘merely because they had no votes.’ ‘What

is the special characteristic of footmen or chambermaids,’ asked the

latter, ‘which disentitles them to compensation?’ No answer could be

discovered except that the risks of such persons were not great. Lord

Randolph suggested the case of the man who worked both in the house and

in the stable: injured in the house, he received no compensation,

injured in the stable, it was his right. How could it be contended that

domestic servants ran no risks? ‘Suppose,’ inquired the member for

Woodstock, in a speech which caused keen irritation to the Ministers and

almost equal amusement to the House, ‘an explosion of gas. An employer

comes home late at night. He does not, perhaps, altogether know what he

is doing. He blows out the gas. An explosion results, and the servant is

seriously injured; ought he not to receive compensation?’ ‘And what of

lifts?’ chimed in Mr. Gorst. There were lifts in hotels as well as in

factories. Suppose through some defect in the machinery of the lift a

servant at a hotel was injured, why was his claim to compensation less

good than that of the workman injured through a similar defect in a

similar lift in a factory? To the reproach that zeal for the working

classes was a new-found virtue in the Tory party and had not been

apparent in the conduct of the late Government, Mr. Balfour replied

tartly that the late Government had not been formed from members below

the gangway, and that if it had the claims of the working classes would

no doubt have been met.

So through all the sultry days of August the discussion went forward

tirelessly. But it should not be supposed that these objections of

detail were advanced frivolously with no general purpose behind them.

Lord Randolph had, early in the debates, denounced the doctrine of

‘common employment’; and on the third reading Mr. Gorst moved the

re-committal of the Bill in the name of the Fourth Party, on account of

its multifold inequities and anomalies, and urged the recognition of

some simple general principle which would equally govern the rights of

all classes of outsiders, or workmen or servants, whether in factories,

private or Government employ, whether in or out of doors. This

conclusion is one which modern legislation has already largely secured

and which its progress must ultimately achieve.

As with the Employers’ Liability Bill, so with Hares and Rabbits, and so

with Burials, though the task of perfecting these two latter measures

seems principally to have been discharged by Mr. Balfour and Sir Henry

Wolff. At every point the Fourth Party were armed with facts and

arguments; on every question they had a plan, in all difficulties they

sustained each other. The Government were repeatedly exhorted to spare

no labour for the public weal. Legislation of an important character,

they were reminded, could not be passed in haste, or without proper

intervals for reflection on the part of those who were responsible for

it. Whenever the Government and their partisans showed signs of

impatience--and, judging by the interruptions which are sprinkled in the

columns of ‘Hansard,’ this was not infrequent--a motion, or the threat

of a motion, to report progress or to adjourn was found an admirable

weapon to employ; while all the time the House as a whole was kept in

subjection and often in good-humour, by the excellent quality of the

speeches, the wit by which they were adorned, the fertility of resource

which distinguished them and the reality of the arguments advanced.

Not content with discharging--however conscientiously--the functions of

criticism, the Fourth Party aspired to legislate constructively. With

the object of encouraging private thrift and ready-money transactions,

Lord Randolph introduced in 1881 a Small Debts Bill which sought to make

debts of under one hundred pounds irrecoverable after one year from the

date of their being contracted. Sir Henry Wolff carried a measure

satirically described by Sir William Harcourt as the ‘Bournemouth Reform

Bill,’ which enabled the inhabitants of seaside resorts to let their

houses for short periods without impairing their voting qualification.

In every Parliamentary incident, great or small, the four allies were

prominent, if not supreme. The question of erecting a monument in

Westminster Abbey to the Prince Imperial of France, killed in the Zulu

War, produced differences in the Government, and from the division by

which the proposal was rejected several Ministers abstained by

withdrawing to the two small rooms behind the Chair which are used for

the minor consultations of colleagues or opponents. Sir Henry Wolff at

once raised a debate upon this alleged impropriety and, although Sir

Stafford Northcote deprecated his action, a long wrangle followed, from

which the Government emerged with ruffled plumes. When Mr. Dodson, the

President of the Local Government Board, by an absurd mistake got

himself elected for a second constituency without having previously

applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, it was Lord Randolph Churchill who

drew attention to the irregularity; and as the procedure of the House

rendered it difficult to debate the matter without some artful device,

he himself moved for a new writ for the borough of Chester, while Mr.

Gorst--by collusion, as Mr. Gladstone unwarrantably asserted--gave

notice of an amendment which would have brought the discussion within

the bounds of order.

Nothing could excel the industry of the Fourth Party in Supply. They

presented themselves nightly as the vigilant guardians of the public

purse. No item of expenditure was too small to be criticised; no economy

too petty to be cherished. ‘If,’ said Lord Randolph Churchill, with a

paternal look at Sir Stafford Northcote and his colleagues, ‘the late

Tory Government had been more attentive to the principles involved in

paltry matters of expenditure, they might still be sitting on the

Treasury Bench.’ On one warm evening when the bulk of the Conservative

party was scattered on its holidays--in pursuit of grouse according to

tradition, indulging their wives and families at the seaside according

to fact--and when the weary Ministerialists gasped amid the parching

streets of London, Lord Randolph Churchill subjected to the most minute

examination the grants-in-aid accorded to various learned societies. He

inquired about the Meteorological Office and canvassed the value of

weather reports. He compared the weather forecasts of Greenwich with

those of America. Satisfied upon this, he turned to the Academy of Music

and raised further important points for the Minister, Lord Frederick

Cavendish, to explain. When the diplomatic vote was taken, Mr. Balfour

and Sir Henry Wolff were at hand with stores of knowledge and that keen

thirst for information which is only to be gained by personal

experience. With only seventeen men to go into the Lobby with them, the

Fourth Party were formidable and feared. Nothing could provoke them to

anger or to levity. Their dignity and politeness were undisturbed by

charges of obstruction. They desired only to further public business and

to aid the Government in their responsible duties; and they moved to

report progress lest ill-temper should result from the natural

impatience of weaker and less conscientious legislators. Under these

inflictions the Liberal party groaned and its champions grunted.[8]

It was inevitable that disagreements should spring up between the

official leaders on the Front Opposition Bench and the active group

below the gangway. At first, to the amusement of the House and later

somewhat to its irritation, the Fourth Party claimed to be totally

distinct from and independent of all existing parties. ‘There are two

great parties in the State,’ said a member one night. MR. PARNELL:

‘Three.’ LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL: ‘Four.’ (Laughter.) Fortified by this

assumption, the Fourth Party moved whatever amendments and took whatever

course seemed good to them, upon any and every question. As they did not

consult their leaders, it often happened that differences arose about

their tactics. And when, as we have seen, the influence of these

free-lances was so often employed in making Liberal Bills more Radical,

it was not surprising that the old Tories and ex-Ministers began to view

their busy allies with apprehension.

The leader of the Conservative party in the House of Commons was an old

and distinguished man. Sir Stafford Northcote had held high office,

first as Secretary of State for India, afterwards as Chancellor of the

Exchequer, under Disraeli in 1867 and in 1874. He had led the Commons

upon Mr. Disraeli’s retirement to the House of Lords. Upon finance he

enjoyed a reputation second only to that of Mr. Gladstone. He is said to

have possessed the common virtues in special excellence. Although Mr.

Gladstone, with that marvellous power great men acquire of looking at

things only from their own point of view, described him as ‘not strong

enough to convince his party that they were wrong,’ he also spoke of him

as admirable in good-temper, self-sacrifice, quickness, sound knowledge,

and general integrity. This eulogy was not undeserved at Mr. Gladstone’s

hands. Sir Stafford Northcote had in ancient Corn Law days, when Peel

was the honoured leader of the Conservative party, been private

secretary to Mr. Gladstone at the Board of Trade. The reverence in which

he held his former chief was undiminished by the passage of years, and

his natural amiability of character led him to express it and display it

on many suitable and unsuitable occasions. But the virtues of Sir

Stafford Northcote were not those most needed in the stormy times amid

which he closed his long career.

‘His gentle disposition and good intentions,’ said Lord Randolph long

afterwards, ‘would have saved anyone from attack except a leader of

Opposition.’ The very qualities which endeared him to his friends and

family and won him the compliments of his opponents, disheartened,

irritated, and paralysed his followers in the House of Commons. The

deference which he delighted to show to the Prime Minister, offended a

party which had just struggled back, smarting and reduced, from a

crushing electoral disaster. His lack of enterprising vigour was from

the first session of the new Parliament painfully apparent even to his

most faithful friends--and all of those who sat below the gangway were

not his friends. His speeches were tame and ineffective. When party

rancour festered to hate, when crisis at home followed hot on crisis

abroad, the mild expostulations with which Sir Stafford was accustomed

to conclude the debates, disappointed his followers. The Opposition,

always hopelessly outmatched in their official spokesman, were never

more plainly at a disadvantage than when their leader undertook to

encounter Mr. Gladstone. Sir Stafford Northcote’s character was

estimable, his talents were distinguished, his experience had been long;

but scarcely any Parliamentary chief has been more unequal to the

particular work he had to do. And yet though his strength failed year by

year and extraordinary physical disabilities oppressed him with

increasing severity, his fingers, nerveless for aught else, closed

tenaciously upon the reins of power. Unfit for any serious exertion or

important business even in private life, he was willing--not, indeed,

from any selfish or sordid motive, but from a high sense of public

duty--to fill the most arduous offices of State. In a condition when, as

a doctor, lawyer, or business man, he would have been unable properly to

discharge his duties, he was prepared to form Governments, to grapple

with Mr. Gladstone at the head of a great majority, and to guide the

Conservative party through the fiercest political tumult of a hundred

years. Heedless of the warnings of Nature and blind to the plainest

teaching of fact, he struggled gallantly forward until he died in

harness beneath burdens he was utterly unable either to relinquish or

sustain.

The Fourth Party were soon openly antagonistic to Sir Stafford Northcote

and took no especial pains to conceal their feeling. In private they

invariably called him ‘the Goat.’ This was at first a personal allusion

to his beard, but it was afterwards more generally applied to all

Conservatives who were thought to be ‘weak-kneed.’ They found themselves

hampered in their conflicts with Mr. Gladstone by those who should have

led the onset. They viewed the line of ex-Ministers on the Front Bench

with those feelings of impatience which are natural to able men who see,

or think they see, great opportunities of warfare cast away by persons

much less able. They suspected Sir Stafford himself of being anxious to

form a coalition with the Whigs; and, although they carefully preserved

in public an air of elaborate politeness towards their leader, their

true disposition was not in doubt.

Their opinions were held by many others in the Conservative party before

the session of 1880 was ended; and, as always happens under such

circumstances, there grew up a counter-faction in Sir Stafford

Northcote’s support. This was the beginning of strife. It would be

profitless to attempt to trace the petty differences upon which mutual

dislike was founded. But by the time the recess drew near disagreements

were rife. The Fourth Party decided openly to condemn the want of energy

and foresight which marked the leadership of the Opposition. The

opportunity presented itself at a party meeting held in the Carlton

Club on August 20. The plan was drawn up by the four colleagues in

convivial conclave at the Garrick Club. It was arranged that Mr. Balfour

should, in the name of his colleagues, indicate the failure of Sir

Stafford Northcote to lead the party in the House of Commons to the

satisfaction of its more active adherents. In pursuance of this Mr.

Balfour made a very clever speech, in which he contrived to deliver a

most damaging criticism of Sir Stafford Northcote’s methods without

actually mentioning his name or using any discourteous phrase. He

obtained a considerable measure of assent from the meeting.

On the same day Mr. Balfour, by arrangement with his three friends,

attacked the Government for their conduct of public business. His

indictment had been carefully drawn up by the four partners, and

involved a comprehensive survey of the whole session. He complained that

the attempt of Ministers to cram too much into a limited time had

resulted in general confusion and in the most improper invasion of

private members’ rights, and he moved that it was inexpedient that

‘important measures should be brought under the consideration of the

House at a period of the session when it is impossible that they should

receive adequate discussion.’ Mr. Gladstone was absent through illness

and Lord Hartington undertook to reply to these reproaches. He read out

to the House some figures, which had been prepared, of the activities of

the Fourth Party during the four months since the dissolution. From this

it appeared that Mr. Gorst had spoken one hundred and five times, and

had asked eighteen questions; that Sir Henry Wolff had made sixty-eight

speeches and had asked thirty-four questions; and that Lord Randolph

Churchill had made seventy-four speeches and had asked twenty-one

questions. This statement caused much amusement; and after Sir Stafford

Northcote had defended the Conservatives at length from the general

charge of obstruction which had been urged on behalf of the Government,

Lord Randolph rose to vindicate the honour of the Fourth Party. He had

prepared himself for this not unexpected duty by a careful study of an

article written by Mr. Gladstone when in Opposition in 1879, justifying

or at any rate excusing obstruction. Some of the quotations were very

effective. ‘The public,’ wrote Mr. Gladstone, ‘has lately heard much on

the subject of obstruction in the House of Commons.... But to prolong

debate even by persistent iteration on legislative measures is not

necessarily an outrage, an offence, or even an indiscretion. For in some

cases it is only by the use of this instrument that a small minority

with strong views can draw adequate attention to those views.... There

are abundant instances in which obstruction of this kind has led to the

removal of perilous or objectionable matter from legislative measures,

and thus to the avoidance of great public evils.’ Lord Randolph

proceeded to read a sentence which seemed to have been specially

conceived in advance to protect the Fourth Party. ‘Now, if a great party

may obstruct, it is hazardous to award narrower limits to the small

one; for it is precisely in the class of cases where the party is small

and the conviction strong that the best instances of warrantable

obstruction may be found.’ Lord Randolph declared that these passages

would be the charter of himself and ‘those who acted with him.’ He

deplored the absence from the House of the Prime Minister and pleaded

that, acting upon the sanction of his great Parliamentary experience,

the Fourth Party ought to have escaped Lord Hartington’s rebuke. He

ended by exhorting the Government to cultivate ‘the magic of patience.’

The last appearance of the Fourth Party in the session of 1880 was upon

the third reading of the Appropriation Bill, which was not reached till

September 4. Notwithstanding the heat of the season and the exhaustion

of the House, the member for Woodstock and his friends preserved an air

of unrelenting vigilance. Lord Randolph Churchill moved an amendment

dwelling on the gravity of the defeat at Maiwand, which he sought to

prove, by an elaborate argument based upon the Blue Books, to have been

‘mainly attributable to want of foresight, of military knowledge and of

caution on the part of the Indian Executive.’ His criticisms drew from

Lord Hartington a reasonable and weighty reply. Both Sir Henry Wolff and

Mr. Balfour spoke at later stages in the debate, and thus the session

reached its close. ‘The rise of a small body of Conservative free-lances

below the gangway,’ said the _Times_ (September 7), in its review of the

session, ‘of whom Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr. Gorst are the chiefs,

is a curious incident, and has originated the half-serious nickname of

the “Fourth Party.”’

Such were the circumstances attending the rise of the Fourth Party in

the beginning of the new Parliament. It must be admitted that Mr.

Gladstone was at once their most powerful antagonist and their mainstay.

His quick eye discerned very early in the session the menace that was

growing below the gangway, and he hastened to respond to the challenge.

Perhaps, if he had not been a great and famous Parliamentarian, he would

have tried to treat with disdain the arguments of unproved or youthful

opponents. He would have left the House during their speeches or,

ignoring their criticisms altogether, have contented himself with

replying only to the ex-officials on the Front Bench. But his nature

prompted him to meet the strongest opposition from whatever quarter it

might be offered. His generous care for the life and vigour of the House

of Commons drew from him a frank recognition of talent wherever or

however displayed. He had his favourites on both sides of the House, and

he rallied with measureless good-temper and all his most formidable and

glittering weapons of debate to the attacks of the Fourth Party and

especially of their leader. Often and often he riddled them and crushed

them and pulverised them or reasoned with them patiently or cast them

aside with a stern rebuke; and as often they returned by other paths

unwearied to the attack.

The Prime Minister was indeed on various occasions the innocent cause

of delaying his own legislation. He was always delighted to expound

obscure or difficult questions for the benefit of friends or opponents.

Of this amiable weakness Lord Randolph and his friends took, we may be

sure, the fullest advantage whenever the pace of Government business

seemed to be undesirably rapid. In his most insinuating manner the

member for Woodstock--‘Woodcock,’ it was irreverently called on one

occasion--would rise in his place and request the Prime Minister to

explain some clause or subsection of a Bill to the Committee. Mr.

Gladstone would invariably respond to this invitation with evident

alacrity and frequently at considerable length. The wealth of fact and

argument with which in a single unpremeditated speech he often enriched

the debate served lesser mortals with new ideas. When these were

exhausted, Mr. Gorst would get up and thank the Prime Minister for his

lucid exposition, which he would say had made everything perfectly

intelligible to him, with the exception of one point, upon which he

would be most grateful to receive further information. When Mr.

Gladstone had made a second lengthy speech upon this, it was Sir Henry

Wolff’s turn to state how clear all had been made to his comprehension

also--with a single exception. ‘If you speak again,’ growled Sir William

Harcourt, a sterner partisan, on one celebrated occasion to his chief,

‘we shall be here till morning.’ But it should not be supposed from this

account that Mr. Gladstone lost by his invariable practice of giving his

best to the House. Although now and then his opponents may have

snatched some trifling advantage from the superabundance of his

strength, no qualities but his own could have surmounted the amazing

perplexities of the ‘80 Parliament or have guided the Liberal party

through its perils. So long as his light lasted the House of Commons

lived, and amid the fiercest passions and even scenes of violence

preserved its hold upon the sympathies and the imagination of the whole

world; and at his death it sank at once, perhaps for ever, in public

esteem.

The proceedings and progress of the Fourth Party in the House of Commons

did not escape the attention of Lord Beaconsfield and that great man

regarded them from the first with high approval. Sir Henry Wolff had

already consulted him upon the Bradlaugh controversy. He had known Lord

Randolph since Oxford days. He was on friendly terms with all the four

friends; but it was Mr. Gorst with whom his relations were most

intimate. He took a keen interest in all their Parliamentary

manœuvres. He liked to feel himself in touch with the new men and

especially with the young men whom the Parliament was bringing into

notice and, so far from frowning on their independence, he encouraged

them with advice and approbation. He did not often revisit the House of

Commons after his elevation to the peerage; but one of these rare

excursions was for the purpose of watching the Fourth Party at work and

to hear Lord Randolph speak. He made particular inquiries as to what was

thought of the Fourth Party in Ministerial circles. In the early spring

of 1881, immediately before the commencement of his last illness, he met

Sir Henry James at a dinner given by Sir William Harcourt. ‘Well,’ he

said, ‘what do you think of Randolph?’ Sir Henry James praised his

Parliamentary instincts and aptitude. ‘Ah, yes, you are quite right,’

rejoined Lord Beaconsfield, ‘when they come in they will have to give

him anything he chooses to ask for and in a very short time they will

have to take anything he chooses to give them.’ During the autumn Lord

Beaconsfield invited Mr. Gorst to visit him at Hughenden, and talked to

him with much freedom about the policy and influence of the Fourth

Party, about Ireland and the general political situation.

‘Lord B.,’ wrote Gorst to Lord Randolph Churchill (November 9), ‘was in

his talk anything but Goaty: he generally expressed great confidence in

us, thought we had a brilliant future before us, and promised to help

and advise us as much as he could. I can in a letter only state

dogmatically what the oracle said, without giving all his arguments:--

‘1. We ought _not_ to pledge ourselves to support the Government in

any coercive measures for Ireland. They have encouraged agitation:

they have adopted dilatory and inefficient proceedings: and they

don’t deserve the confidence of Parliament. We should therefore

hold ourselves free to take what course we think best when the

Government lay their proposals before us. B. will prevent

Northcote, if he can, from making any more pledges. Meanwhile our

attitude may be ostentatiously one of reserve. There is a precedent

for suspending the Habeas Corpus to suppress Ribbon outrages in the

Westmeath Act of 1871. ‘2. B. himself broached the idea that

Gladstone may buy off the Irish landlords. He thinks this would be

to us a very dangerous move. But there is no use in talking about

it either in public or private. Nor can we say how the matter

should be dealt with till the move is made. B. has always been in

favour of the purchase by the tenant under Bright’s clauses: Lord

Salisbury has always supported an extension of this.

‘3. He scouted the idea of Northcote thinking of coalition or being

inclined to Derby; and did not bear out what Wolff said about his

supporting Derby in the late Cabinet. We need not consult Northcote

when Parliament is not sitting. It would be good policy to abuse

Government for not summoning Parliament to consider the state of

Ireland, and to say that their object in not doing so was to

conceal their Eastern policy. We should always courteously inform

N., through the Whip, of any step we are about to take in the House

of Commons, and listen with respect and attention to anything he

may say about it; his remarks, even when we disagree with him, will

be well worth attention. But just at present _we need not be too

scrupulous about obeying our leader_. An open rupture between us

would, however, be most disastrous; but Lord B. thinks if we are

courteous and firm Northcote will make no open rupture, and will

not throw us over....

‘4. Upon alteration of the rules of the House there is to be the

most absolute and unyielding resistance. Cairns has agreed to this,

and they will force N. to be firm. There was a committee on the

subject twenty years ago, which took some very interesting

evidence, including that of M. Guizot on the _clôture_, which we

ought to look up.’

Mr. Gorst was not the only member of the Fourth Party who was encouraged

by the Tory leader. ‘Lord Beaconsfield,’ writes Sir Henry Wolff, ‘whom I

had known nearly from my childhood, having asked me to call, I went in

the autumn of 1880 to the house in Curzon Street where he was then

living and where the next year he died. We discussed the situation and I

explained how the action of the Conservative party was crippled by the

over-caution--not to say indecision--of Sir Stafford Northcote, which

led him constantly to throw us over. He replied almost word for word as

follows:--

‘When Mr. Gladstone announced his withdrawal from public life I fully

believed his statement, which was confirmed to me from special sources

in which I placed the most implicit reliance. I thought that when he was

gone Northcote would be able to cope with anyone likely to assume the

lead on the other side, and I wanted rest. I now much regret having

retired from the House of Commons, as Mr. Gladstone, contrary to my firm

persuasion, returned. I fully appreciate your feelings and those of your

friends; but you must stick to Northcote. He represents the

respectability of the party. I wholly sympathise with you all, because I

never was respectable myself. In my time the respectability of the party

was represented by * * * a horrid man; but I had to do as well as I

could; you must do the same. Don’t on any account break with Northcote;

but defer to him as often as you can. Whenever it becomes too difficult

you can come to me and I will try to arrange matters. Meanwhile I will

speak to him.’

The countenance and kindness thus shown to a rebellious group by so

great a man as Lord Beaconsfield filled the hearts of the Fourth Party

with a sense of elation. They reflected with satisfaction upon the

events of the session. With astonishing rapidity they had risen to a

position of influence in Parliament; their action attracted every day an

increasing interest from the public. They commanded the serious

attention of the Conservative party and enjoyed the favour of its famous

leader. Ministers and ex-Ministers eyed them with equal apprehension.

Older members were inquisitive about their plans. They looked forward to

the brightest future. Yet there were already gathering clouds.

Jealousies in a numerous troop had followed closely on success. Their

own contemporaries in the party were quick to resent the formation of a

clique and still more the prominence which was accorded to it. The great

Tory newspapers laboured assiduously to ignore their existence and, when

compelled, alluded to their proceedings only with a sneer. The life and

soul of the Tory Opposition, they were freely represented as hostile to

its interests. Sir Stafford Northcote seems from the beginning to have

scented danger. ‘I am inclined to think,’ he wrote complacently to

Gorst, as soon as Parliament had risen (September 15, 1880), ‘that the

Fourth Party has done enough for its fame, and that it will be the wiser

course for its members now quietly to take their places in the main

body, where they will have work enough and to spare.’ Gorst, in reply,

descanted on the advantages of combination. Each member of the Fourth

Party felt stronger for the support and wiser for the counsel of his

friends; and he assured Sir Stafford that together they would form a

weapon of political warfare which could not fail to be formidable ‘in

his hands.’

Thus Mr. Gorst to his leader. But the next day a new plan presented

itself to him and this he imparted half in fun to his friends. It was in

effect that Sir Stafford’s proposition should be solemnly embraced, that

the Fourth Party should after mature deliberation, at his request, give

up the idea--which they had never seriously entertained--of a separate

party and ‘take their places in the main body,’ by sitting immediately

behind their leader on the second bench above the gangway. From this new

position, adopted at Sir Stafford’s special desire, Mr. Gorst thought

that the conduct of the Opposition could be much more effectively

directed than from below the gangway and that its leader would very soon

fall completely under the control of the masterful men behind him. Lord

Randolph Churchill and Sir Henry Wolff both scouted this proposal and

supplied a number of reasons against it. Sir Henry Wolff was greatly

perturbed at the idea of relinquishing ground which seemed to give the

right to treat with party leaders, as he described it, _de puissance à

puissance_; and he pointed to Sir Stafford’s anxiety as a proof of the

advantages of independence. Mr. Balfour’s argument was single,

substantial, and conclusive. The length of his legs made it

indispensable to his comfort that he should sit upon a Front Bench and

nothing would induce him to change his quarters. So the matter was

settled accordingly; but it is curious that in after-years Lord

Randolph used often to relate this story as an instance of Mr. Gorst’s

Parliamentary knowledge and shrewdness and would frankly admit that if

his advice had been followed all legitimate objects might have been

attained without the friction and disturbance that ensued.

The Fourth Party had other friends beside Lord Beaconsfield.

_Sir Henry Wolff to Lord Randolph Churchill._

Cromwell House, Putney: September 29, 1880.

My dear Randolph,--After you left yesterday I received two very

handsome tributes to the Fourth Party--one from Lord Cadogan, who

said that he would look with dread at its being done away with, as

being the only portion of the Conservative party that did any good

at all--the other was from a man whose name I cannot recollect, and

who came up to me in St. James Street to say he had been staying

with Chenery, the Editor of the _Times_, who had expressed himself

very warmly as to the future of the Fourth Party. I shall try and

see Chenery; and as Burrows was sent to the Wali’s forces I shall

endeavour, I hope with better success, to confirm his fidelity,

Ever yours sincerely,

H. D. W.

While opinions were thus divided it was not unnatural that Lord Randolph

and his friends should wish to give some public demonstration of their

influence and to show that they were not without friends in high places.

Mr. Balfour became their ambassador and Lord Salisbury, probably after

consultation with Lord Beaconsfield, accepted an invitation to address

a meeting at Woodstock. Just outside the Woodstock gate of Blenheim Park

the road passes through a considerable courtyard, surrounded on every

side by lofty walls and pierced only by the gateway. A temporary roof of

tarpaulins erected over this converted the highway into a spacious hall;

and here on November 30, 1880, Lord Salisbury and Lord Randolph

Churchill first appeared together in political association. The meeting

attracted much notice in the country and the attitude of the Tory

leaders in the House of Lords towards the independent group which had so

severely hustled their colleagues in the House of Commons was, of

course, the subject of much comment and speculation. This delicate topic

was, however, handled with dexterous caution by the principal speakers.

Lord Randolph Churchill, who took the chair, enlarged upon the loyalty

of himself and his friends to Lord Beaconsfield but avoided all mention

of Sir Stafford Northcote’s name. Lord Salisbury, on his part, was

careful to pay an ample tribute to the ‘sagacious guidance’ of Sir

Stafford early in his speech and then he proceeded to praise the energy

and ability of the member for Woodstock. The meaning of the

demonstration was variously interpreted by the newspapers. The Liberal

organs regarded it as a further proof of the growing power of the Fourth

Party. The Conservative papers believed, or affected to believe, that

the rebellious partnership was now dissolved and that the erring friends

had been welcomed back to the party fold. ‘It appears,’ said the

_Times_, ‘that Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Henry Wolff are not bent

on forming a new party with the assistance of Mr. Balfour and Mr.

Gorst.’

The correspondence of the Fourth Party is extensive and would be highly

diverting to anyone who knew the Conservative side of the House of

Commons in the early ‘eighties. Lord Randolph’s private letters do not

lend themselves to publication as readily as those of some other eminent

persons. They are spontaneous and scrappy. They deal with the little

ordinary commonplaces of the writer’s life. They reflect his mood at the

moment. They are full of personal allusions which would be pointless

without names and much too pointed with them. He abominated priggishness

in all its forms. No one ever wrote to his friends with less regard to

ceremony or with more unaffected frankness. Any piece of gossip, any

quaint conceit or joke or piece of solemn drollery, any sharp judgment

that occurred to him, went upon the paper without an after-thought.

Every passing shadow or gleam of sunlight which fell upon him marked his

pages with strong contrasts of feeling often extravagantly and

recklessly expressed. Nevertheless his correspondence with Sir Henry

Wolff has an air of gay and generous friendship, strong with an

attractiveness of its own. But there runs through it a recurring sense

of weariness and of disgust at politics, which seems to have alternated

with his periods of great exertion even during these most merry and

successful years of his life.

[Sidenote: 1880-1884]

He delighted in receiving Wolff’s letters at all times: ‘The only fault

I find with them is that they are too short; I should like several

volumes.’ ‘Your letters are to me like a glass of the best

champagne--exhilarating and stimulating.’ ‘You have such an entrancing

style, even when writing about the simplest matters, that one recognises

at once the statesman and the man of letters.’ ‘It is only your

versatile and brilliant genius which could produce such lively

correspondence in the dull season.’ He paints his own oratorical

achievements in glowing colours: ‘I had a most warm welcome at Oldham.

The meeting numbered some six hundred--all working men. I spoke for

fifty-five minutes--quite entrancing (my speech). What would you have

given to have heard it!!! I will, however, declaim it to you when we

meet. Fair Trade and taxing the foreigner went down like butter. How the

latter is to be done I don’t know....’ (September 10, 1881.)

[Sidenote: 1880-1884]

And a few weeks later: ‘Well! Hull was a triumph. I never had such a

success with a large audience. Every point told surprisingly. In my

second speech my reference to your successful contest with Bradlaugh

provoked the greatest enthusiasm. I was received yesterday at the

Carlton _à bras ouverts_. I see the Radical provincial press is beside

itself with indignation’ (November 3, 1881). ‘I received the Glasgow

invitation--most politely worded it is, and I have accepted it. I only

hope it may turn out well, and that you are not trying me _au dessus de

mes forces_. It seems a presumptuous thing to go and preach to a lot of

Scotchmen on home politics, which they probably understand much better

than I do. However, _de l’audace_, &c.’ (October 24, 1882.)

When Lord Randolph was abroad--as he often was for his health, or in

1883 during his retirement after his father’s death--Wolff kept him

informed about political things. These did not always allure him. ‘All

your news,’ he wrote in January, 1882, from Monte Carlo, ‘about your

conversation with various distinguished people concerning myself is very

pleasant reading, but my disinclination to return to England for the

meeting of Parliament grows stronger every day and I seem to have lost

all interest in things political. I am happy in Capua, and the thought

of once more engaging with Goats and Gibsons _et hoc genus omne_ makes

me sick. Old * * * came and bored me yesterday for more than an hour,

and I had a providential escape from * * * the other day; and yet it is

this class of individual of whom the great Tory party is mainly

composed. I think I shall copy Gladstone and take to reading Dante and

Homer--after,’ he adds prudently, ‘I have got through one or two French

novels I have by me.’

He always followed his friend’s doings with attention. ‘I have just

risen,’ he writes July 31, 1883, ‘in a state of singular emotion after

perusing your Demosthenic oration at Portsmouth’; and again, ‘I wonder

how things are going to-night. I dare say you are delivering a telling

speech. (It is the dinner hour, 8.30 P.M.!) How I wish I was there to

listen and cheer!’ And again (August 17, 1883): ‘You appear to have been

sustaining the whole weight of Opposition. I hope you mean to take a

good holiday when it is all over. I am quite clear that W. E. G. has

been very much bothered by your Suez Canal questions.’ At another time

he counsels reserve: ‘I read with interest both your speeches at Banbury

and at Portsmouth, and think that they were as good as the occasion

admitted of or demanded. At the same time I wish I could convince you of

what Chief Justice Morris calls “the energy of silence.”... Gorst and I

took a walk on Sunday on Hampstead Heath. I have never been there

before. There is a capital inn there called “Jack Straw’s Castle,” where

Gorst and I agreed the Fourth Party ought to go for Saturday and Sunday

during the Session to recruit their strength’ (October 2, 1882). He was

bitterly offended by the opposition which on various grounds--partly, no

doubt, to annoy him--was threatened against his brother’s candidature

for the Carlton Club. ‘I am more vexed,’ he wrote from Gastein, ‘than I

can tell you about this business of Blandford and the Carlton Club. I

wrote to Dyke before starting, particularly enjoining on him the

necessity of making no move unless the consent of the committee was

assured. And now how can anyone occupy a more unpleasant position than

Blandford does? He has publicly changed his politics, to please me more

than for any other reason, and owing to H. Chaplin’s action his

overtures to the Conservatives are spurned.... H. Chaplin and Baron de

Worms together will soon make the Tory party too hot to hold me. I shall

certainly take my name off the Carlton when I return to town, and a very

little would make me consummate H. C.’s and B. de W.’s joy by retiring

altogether from the party and Parliament. They do not know how easy it

would be to get rid of me. I am sick of politics, which only play the

dickens with one’s health, and are a dreadful tie. I think the party

occupies a worse position now than it did in 1880. But its leading

members are so purblind, so given over to the most utter infatuation,

that I believe they are of opinion that the country would replace them

in power. I only trust, for the sake of the country, that they are as

mistaken as I believe them to be.’ (August 8, 1883.)

Here is the account of a most famous event of which Gastein was the

scene:--

‘You will be glad to hear that the Emperor of Germany had the honour of

being introduced to me on Saturday last at a tea-party at Count

Lehndorff’s. This Count, I must tell you, is a Prussian who owns the

_bicoque_ which I am inhabiting with my suite. He waited on us on

Saturday afternoon, and with almost Oriental deference begged that we

would honour the Emperor by meeting him. I write all this, lest you

should see garbled accounts in the newspapers. The Emperor, I must

admit, was very guarded in his conversation, which was confined to

asking me how long I had been here and whether I had come for my health.

I imitated his reserve. My wife, however, sat by him at tea, and had

much conversation, which, I have ascertained, was confined to the most

frivolous topics. I have reason to believe, though it is humiliating to

confess it, that the fame of the Fourth Party has not yet reached the

ears of this despot. I must say he is a very fine old fellow, and the

Germans seem really to love him. There were several other Prussians and

Austrians present; but I was rather bored on the whole and so was my

wife. They wanted us to go the next night, when they had arranged some

_tableaux_ for the old boy; but I sent an excuse on the ground that I

was in deep mourning. We did not come here to kowtow to monarchs.

* * * * *

‘I have just been reading a book on cribbage and I find that in all the

games we have played together we have played wrong. The non-dealer at

the commencement has the right to mark three holes as compensation for

his not having the crib. This you have never allowed me to do. Please

therefore send me, by return of post, a cheque for 25_l._, being the

amount you have unjustly and illegally taken from me.’ (November 14,

1883.)

Sometimes his letters take a graver tone:--

Blenheim Palace: October 30, 1883.

My dear Wolff,--Your suspicions of intrigues are apparently so

deep-rooted that they do not even exclude me from the range of

their operations. I have not seen or heard of Chenery since he

dined with me last June, nor should I at any time have any

communication with him of which you would not be fully cognisant.

I cannot explain the sentence in Saturday’s _Times_ which seems to

have exercised you so much; but, in any case, I wonder that you do

not see that these recurring speculations or statements anent the

Fourth Party, as to whether it is alive or dead, whether it is

united or disrupted, is a strong testimony to its value as a

political instrument, and as to the proof of the interest and

curiosity of the public in its proceedings. The more Chenery or

others in the Press make statements about it, the more I am

pleased. I will be at the Carlton at eight o’clock on Thursday.

Yours ever,

RANDOLPH S. C.

And here is a rebuke:--

Blenheim Palace: December 31, 1883.

My dear Wolff,--I have had a very curious letter from the Queen,

which I will not show you when we meet.

Yours ever,

RANDOLPH S. C.

Blenheim Palace: January 2, 1884.

My dear Wolff,--You are not generally slow to take a hint,

therefore your failure to understand my letter which you received

on New Year’s Day is, I think, a pretence. In political friendships

confidence must be mutual, and measure for measure the rule. You

wrote to me that you had received a very curious letter from Lord

S., and that you would show it to me when we met. When I receive

‘very curious letters from political personages’ I have hitherto

sent them to you without delay. Your cautious behaviour about Lord

S.’s letter seemed to call for similar caution on my part. I

therefore wrote to you that I had received a very curious letter

from the Queen, which I should not show you when we met, and I

shall not.

Yours ever,

RANDOLPH S. C.

[Illustration:

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL SIR HENRY WOLFF MR. BALFOUR. MR. GORST.

THE FOURTH PARTY.

_Reproduced from Leslie Ward’s Cartoon, December 1st, 1880, by

permission of the proprietors of “Vanity Fair.”_]

Lord Randolph’s correspondence with Sir Henry Wolff has carried the

reader somewhat in advance of the regular course of the narrative. His

letters in 1883 and 1884 belong to a region of more serious disputes

than those with which this chapter deals. The swift unravelling of

events was to bring varied fortunes and many adventures to the four

friends who now delighted to ‘act together.’ They were to play a

decisive part in great affairs. Yet it is probable that the early

sessions of their comradeship were the joyous days of the Fourth Party.

‘Politics,’ wrote Lady Randolph, ‘seemed more like a game of chess than

the life-and-death struggle it was so soon to become for some of them.’

Plots and ambuscades prepared with severe impartiality, amid fun and

laughter, against both Front Benches; stormy battles in the House;

generous comradeship and glorious discomfiture of foes; miniature

Cabinet Councils; toy whitebait dinners, filled the years with merry

excitement. One single enormous sofa could contain the whole

party--leaders and followers--at once. They were cartooned together in

_Vanity Fair_--Lord Randolph speaking from his famous corner seat, the

others and Mr. Balfour (who travelled from Scotland in order to be

painted) sprawling on the Bench beside him. Dinner with the Fourth Party

was regarded as a rare distinction and justly restricted in its scope.

Their political action was not always the result of long premeditation.

‘On one occasion,’ writes Sir Henry Wolff, ‘Balfour gave a dinner at his

house, to which he invited the Fourth Party and some other members of

Parliament, amongst them Sir R. Cross and Mr. Pell. Someone at length

said, “We must return to the House on account of the Bill,” of which I

do not remember the subject. Randolph said, “We will all go and all

speak.” Cabs were sent for, and the one I drove in was a few minutes

later than his. When I arrived at the House he was already speaking.’

Sometimes their fiercest opponents, Sir William Harcourt or Sir Charles

Dilke, shared their board; though not, it is presumed, their secrets.

Nay, Mr. Chamberlain himself was invited, though this greatly shocked

the Duke of Marlborough, who did not understand how his son could

cultivate social relations with a person of such pernicious opinions,

and was quite sure House of Commons traditions must have greatly changed

since he succeeded. One member of the Government, mentioning to the

Liberal Whips that he was dining with the Fourth Party, was told that

‘so long as he kept those four fellows away he could stay any length of

time he liked.’ Lord Randolph’s house, in St. James’s Place, was _next

door_ to Sir Stafford Northcote’s; but luckily the walls were thick; and

here we see the Fourth Party gathered in festive council round the

dining-room table, amid the haze of countless cigarettes. Wolff has

discovered some new intrigue among the ‘Goats’ or the Radicals or the

Parnellites. Gorst has a plan for meeting it. Their leader examines it

all with a gay and brilliant vivacity which made his companionship

precious to those to whom it was frankly given; and in the background,

rather silent, ready enough with chaff and counsel, but difficult to

rouse to action, sits Arthur Balfour, dreamily revolving longer

calculations of his own.

Here, then, for the present we may leave them and their leader, happy in

the enjoyment of active and pugnacious irresponsibility, tasting the

first pleasures of success and fame and displacing with the haughty

assertions of youthful ardour the tame acceptances of age. It is time to

turn to those grave events which marched in crowded and uninterrupted

procession from almost every quarter of the Queen’s dominions, to the

embarrassment and perplexity of her Ministers.