CHAPTER IV

IRELAND UNDER STORM

‘Your oppression taught them to hate--your concessions to brave

you; you exhibited to them how scanty was the stream of your

bounty, and how full the tribute of your fear.’--LORD JOHN RUSSELL

(_Speech_, Feb. 7, 1837).

The decision of the constituencies in 1880 had no reference to Ireland.

Lord Beaconsfield’s warning letter was regarded as a somewhat

transparent attempt to divert attention from the record of his

Government. Politicians were absorbed by controversies upon foreign and

colonial affairs, upon Turkish atrocities, Afghan disasters, and South

African annexations. The Prime Minister seemed to be under the

impression that the Irish Question had been settled, so far as he was

concerned, by the Church Act of 1869 and the Land Act of 1870. The

Queen’s Speech contained no suggestion of Irish Land legislation; and

the supporters of the Ministry had assembled at Westminster eager to

discuss every subject--from the Treaty of Berlin to the shooting of

hares and rabbits--except the subject of Ireland. They soon found

themselves debating little else. ‘I frankly admit,’ said Mr. Gladstone

four years later, ‘I had had much upon my hands connected with the

doings of the Beaconsfield Government in almost every quarter of the

world, and I did not know the severity of the crisis that was already

swelling upon the horizon and that shortly after rushed upon us like a

flood.’

For more than three years Irish conditions had been growing steadily

worse. The yield and value of the crops had dwindled under three

successive bad seasons and the number of evictions had increased. There

was a deep and general feeling of unrest and discontent among the

peasantry. All the permanent elements of revolt were nervously awake. A

new man had seized upon the national leadership; a new movement was

gathering behind him. The Fenian societies and the Clan-na-Gael had long

been hampered in practical action by the purity of their principles.

Armed insurrection for the sake of national independence is a spirited

and uncompromising creed, but the opportunities in which it can be

carried into actual practice must necessarily be rare. Meanwhile it

blocked the way of less heroic expedients. The Fenians contained within

their ranks many men who were willing, ‘when the time came,’ to risk or

cast away life and liberty in their country’s cause. They could not be

accused of insincerity. But ‘the hour’ lagged; the time did not come;

and nothing remained but to keep alive from year to year, in all its

orthodox integrity, the Fenian doctrine.

The process, when maintained over a considerable period, of professing

opinions and intentions for the execution of which no occasion is

afforded, is apt to become artificial. The most blood-curdling oaths and

sentiments tend to degenerate into ritual. They may preserve in all

their vivid squalor the hateful memories of the past; they cannot be

said to exert much influence upon the politics of the present. Had the

flag of Ireland been unfurled in civil war, the Fenian societies would

have assumed a gigantic importance. Pending that event, they stood aside

and allowed the English Government to proceed on its path unmolested.

They had long despised Parliamentary agitation. They regarded the House

of Commons, not without reason, as a school for Anglicising Irishmen.

They expelled from their order any man who took the Parliamentary oath.

They abhorred constitutional methods, however effective they might be,

as involving some tacit recognition of British institutions. They paid

no attention to social movements or to agrarian conflicts. Looking with

profound distrust upon all who would not go the whole way with them,

they remained a great, secret, silent army, gathered around the

watch-fires of unquenchable hatred, morosely forecasting the chances of

a battle on which the day would never dawn.

The rise of Parnell in Parliament and the anger which his obstructive

tactics evidently excited in England filled these fierce dreamers with a

new interest. The impression which his reserved yet commanding

personality made upon all who were brought into contact with it, was

intense. The deepening discontent and distress of the peasantry seemed

to herald the approach of a new opportunity. Fenian opinion was

perplexed and divided. Some scorned the hateful alliance with

constitutionalism. ‘Freedom comes from God’s right hand.’ A pretence of

loyalty, but in reality treason all along the line, would dishonour a

national movement and end in sham loyalty and sham treason. Others urged

with Davitt that unless the Fenians threw their hearts into the real

stirrings of the Irish people, and helped them in their immediate and

material need, they would cease to represent the life of their country.

In 1879 the principles of doctrinaire treason were preferred. In 1880 a

more practical view prevailed and the ‘new departure’ was sanctioned.

The situation was not brought into being by any deliberate or definite

action on the part of individuals. It developed of itself in the

mysterious unravellings of events. First came Mr. Butt with his

organised party of constitutional Home Rulers, then Parnell with his

band of fighting obstructives, then Michael Davitt with his schemes of

‘agrarian agitation,’ and finally the failure of the potato and the

cruel severity of the winter of 1879. Economic well-being often takes

the heart out of racial animosities. The cause of nationality may excite

the educated revolutionist; but the pinch of famine is required before

the humble tiller of the soil can be enlisted in his thousands. A

political movement to be dangerous must find its substance in social

evil. It was the combination of agrarian with national aspirations and

the gathering together of all their several forces in one determined

hand that imparted sinister and terrible a complexion to Ireland in

1880. Scarcity and poverty supplied the impulse, and misery brought

forth her progeny of outrage.

All this formidable movement had already become defined and was rapidly

developing when the change of Government occurred. The elections in

Ireland had returned sixty pledged Home Rulers to the House of Commons,

and a majority of these elected Mr. Parnell as their leader. Mr.

Forster, the new Chief Secretary, found many causes for anxiety in the

accounts which were given him at the Castle. The sufferings of the

winter of 1879 had roused a spirit of violent discontent among the

people. The numerous tenant defence societies had been formed by Michael

Davitt into the one great organisation of the Land League. Mr. Parnell,

after some hesitation, had thrown in his lot whole-heartedly with the

agrarian agitation. In his speeches at Westport and Limerick he had

urged the farmers to keep ‘a firm grip on their homesteads’ and not to

allow themselves to be dispossessed. One thousand and ninety-eight

evictions, or more than double the number of 1877, had been carried out,

amid scenes of riot and misery, in 1879. A furious animosity against the

landlords convulsed the tenantry; and the Fenian and Parliamentary

leaders openly declared their intention of using the driving power of

the land movement as the means by which national independence was to be

achieved.

In the face of these facts the first decision of the new Minister, or

that forced upon him by his colleagues in the Cabinet, was singularly

ill-judged. The Peace Preservation Act which had been passed in 1870,

and continued amended by the late Government in 1875, would expire on

June 1. It was a mild but not ineffective measure which provided for the

compulsory attendance of witnesses, for taxing localities with the

payment of compensation, for the suppression of seditious newspapers;

and prohibited the carrying of arms in party processions--and other

similar regulations. Certainly nothing in the state of Ireland disclosed

by every channel of official information, either in regard to agrarian

discontent or secret associations, justified its being allowed to lapse.

The draft of the Bill for its renewal, prepared by his predecessor,

confronted the new Minister on his arrival at the Castle. Out of

sixty-nine resident magistrates consulted, sixty-one had declared the

re-enactment indispensable and eleven of these had asked for further

powers. The growth of agrarian crime told its own tale. But Lord

Beaconsfield’s letter, though it had not produced much impression on

British electors, had at least had the effect of throwing the Irish vote

in the English boroughs solidly on to the Liberal side. Many sympathetic

speeches and friendly offices had been exchanged between Liberal

candidates and Irish politicians, many lofty sentiments about the rights

of nationalities had been uttered, and all had proceeded together to the

poll as the equal friends of freedom. It would have been awkward after

this--as the late Government in fixing the date of the dissolution may

have uncharitably foreseen--to inaugurate the new era for Ireland by

‘exceptional legislation in abridgment of liberty.’ The Royal Speech

accordingly announced that the Peace Preservation Act would not be

renewed and that the Government would rely ‘upon the provisions of the

ordinary law, firmly administered, for the maintenance of peace and

order.’ Thus, at a time when measures of exceptional precaution,

together with large remedial legislation, were both indispensable, the

existing securities of the law were relaxed and remedial legislation was

entirely neglected. The failure to deal with so vast and complicated a

question as Irish land on the part of Ministers who had just taken

office may be understood. The abandonment of the Peace Preservation Act

in the face of growing danger cannot be defended. It was immediately

condemned in the House of Lords by the Duke of Marlborough fresh from

his Lord-Lieutenancy, and it was generally believed that the Cabinet had

not come to their decision without considerable misgivings.

All illusions as to the comparative unimportance of Irish troubles were

quickly dispelled as the session advanced. The state of the country grew

worse from day to day. The Irish members maintained an unrelenting

clamour in the House of Commons. The good harvest of 1880 left the

peasantry still hampered with arrears and in many cases quite unable to

pay the rents demanded of them. More than a thousand evictions had

already been effected during the first six months of 1880. In June a

‘Compensation for Disturbance Bill’ was introduced by Mr. Forster with

the object of staying, or at least diminishing, the other evictions

which were threatening in hundreds all over the country. This Bill--‘a

ten minutes’ Bill, if ever there was one,’ as Lord Randolph Churchill

called it--‘an after-thought, not a deliberately counselled measure; an

inspiration, but not from above’--could be justified only by the acute

and imminent danger of the Irish situation. And as yet public opinion in

England was not sufficiently impressed with that danger. The Bill was

fiercely disputed in the House of Commons, the Fourth Party ever in the

forefront of the battle; and although Lord Hartington supported it in a

speech of exceptional power, many Liberals were absent from the division

when it passed and more than twenty voted with the Conservative party.

It was summarily rejected by the House of Lords.

Upon this measure Lord Randolph delivered the first of those Irish

speeches which, in the course of the next three years, were to win him

acceptance as an authority upon Irish questions. The importance of

enterprise and pertinacity in the conduct of Parliamentary Opposition

cannot be underrated when Ministers have to be harassed and minorities

inflamed. But mere activity, however bold and tireless, will never by

itself make a Parliamentary reputation, and the readiest tactician in

the House of Commons will lack real influence unless he is master of

some important subject upon which he can add to the information and

distinction of debate. Lord Randolph’s training in Ireland--official and

unofficial alike--equipped him as scarcely any other English member was

equipped for the discussion of the one vast and predominant question of

the day. He took rank almost at once among those to whom Parliament

would most gladly or most gravely listen upon Irish affairs, and in his

speeches he revealed a range of thought, an authority of manner, and a

wealth of knowledge which neither friends nor foes attempted to dispute.

‘I happened,’ he said (July 5), ‘for a period of ten weeks, when the

distress was at its height, to be associated with a committee that was

relieving that distress on a very vast scale, and my work in connection

with it occupied me from eight to ten hours a day. I was in constant

communication with the Local Government Board and its inspectors and

with the inspectors employed by the committee and with chairmen of

boards of guardians in all parts of the country. If any person, free

from official responsibility and perfectly unprejudiced, had an

opportunity of ascertaining the extent of the distress, I was that

person; and I do not hesitate to say that, although it was severe at

times and in certain districts, and would have been disastrous but for

the timely relief afforded; yet it never at any time justified, and does

not now warrant, the introduction of a Bill of this kind. Not only was

food distributed in enormous quantities, but clothes and bedding, and

excellent seed which would contribute to prepare for a return of former

prosperity. But although the distress was great, the fraud and imposture

which sprang up alongside of it were also great. If Ireland, under God’s

providence, is this year favoured with a good harvest, the Irish people

will, I believe, be able to extricate themselves from their

difficulties, without recourse being had to any such legislation as is

now proposed.’

Having described the Bill as ‘the first step in a social war,’ and

criticised it in correct and elaborate detail, he made an attack on the

Chief Secretary as true as it was unkind. ‘When the right honourable

gentleman took office, he somewhat rashly accepted the popular verdict

that in so doing he conferred a great honour upon Ireland. He seemed to

be under the impression that his acceptance of the post would change the

face of the country and the nature of the people; that from the mere

fact of his disembarkation at Kingstown would result a state of things

in which the inhabitants of the country would be found contented, and

that law, order, property, and life would become immediately secure. He

declared that with himself at the helm, legislation of a coercive nature

was no longer necessary, that he could with ease carry on the government

of Ireland by means of the ordinary law. His conduct seems to resemble

the conduct of a miner going into a fiery and explosive mine and

declaring that safety lamps were unnecessary, that an ordinary tallow

candle was good enough for him. Meeting with difficulties at the

outset, the Chief Secretary came to the conclusion that the best thing

to do was to repair to the House with a policy of appeals. He appealed

to the Protestants and Catholics of Ireland to unite in an hysterical

embrace in celebration of his accession to office. He made a pathetic

appeal to the Irish members and landlords to help him; the whole burden

of the business being, “For God’s sake, keep the country quiet, or what

trouble I shall be in!” The policy of appeals not proving altogether

satisfactory, the Chief Secretary produced the policy of bribes--a

policy which was marked by the generosity which is characteristic of

people who are dealing with the property of others. I fear that the next

phase of the Government policy will be one of repression.’

The rejection of this Bill, although not unexpected, was a heavy blow to

Mr. Forster and the signal for a fierce accession to the Irish

agitation. The Government pocketed the affront which had been offered

them and had perforce to content themselves with promising a Land Bill

next session. Most disquieting reports continued to come from Ireland.

Evictions led to riots; tenants who took the places of evicted occupiers

were assaulted, their ricks were burned, their beasts were mutilated;

arms were stolen from a vessel in Queenstown Harbour; and rumours of

secret brotherhoods and of dynamite conspiracies were rife. So the

Parliamentary session came to an end.

The winter of 1880-1 was cruel. In the very beginning, in a speech at

Ennis (September 19), Mr. Parnell prescribed the methods of the Land

League. ‘Depend upon it,’ he said, ‘the measure of the Land Bill next

session will be the measure of your activity and energy this winter.’ He

then explained his new invention; ‘better than any 81-ton gun,’ as it

was afterwards described by enthusiastic followers. ‘When a man takes a

farm from which another has been evicted, you must _show_ him on the

roadside when you meet him [a voice ‘shun him’], in the streets of the

town, at the shop counter, in the fair, in the market place, and even in

the house of worship, by leaving him severely alone, by putting him into

a moral Coventry, by isolating him from his kind as if he were a leper

of old--you must show him your detestation of the crime he has

committed.’

The advice was taken. Three days later Lord Erne’s agent, a certain

Captain Boycott, served ejectment notices upon a number of tenants. His

servants left him. The local shopkeepers refused to serve him. The

blacksmith and the laundress declined his orders. His crops remained

ungathered on the ground. He was ‘left severely alone.’ The tale of

these doings spread to Ulster. One hundred Orangemen offered to march

with arms to his relief and to the rescue of his crops. The Government

consented. Under protection of infantry, cavalry, and two field guns,

and amid the taunts of the cottagers, the harvest was gathered in and

the process of ‘boycotting’ was advertised to the whole world. It

spread throughout Ireland. Nothing was more unexpected than the

precision with which an impulsive and undisciplined peasantry gave

effect to this new plan. Whole counties conspired together to make it

complete. Every class in the population acquiesced. Public opinion

supported the Land League and no moral force sustained the government of

the Queen.

Behind and beneath this strange system of excommunication came outrages

of various kinds upon property, upon animals, and upon life. There were

in 1880 10,457 persons evicted compared with 2,177 in 1877, and 2,590

agrarian crimes compared with 236 in the earlier year. ‘It rained

evictions,’ says Mr. Parnell’s biographer; ‘it rained outrages. Cattle

were houghed and maimed; tenants who paid unjust rents or who took farms

from which others had been evicted were dragged from their beds,

assaulted, sometimes forced to their knees while shots were fired over

their heads, to make them promise submission to the popular desires in

future. Bands of peasants scoured the country, firing into the houses of

obnoxious individuals. Graves were dug before the doors of evicting

landlords. Murder was committed. A reign of terror had in truth

commenced.’[9]

‘I must say,’ wrote General Gordon, who visited the West of Ireland in

1880, ‘that the state of our fellow-countrymen in the parts I have

named, is worse than that of any people in the world, let alone Europe.

I believe that these people are made as we are; that they are patient

beyond belief; loyal, but broken-spirited and desperate; lying on the

verge of starvation in places where we would not keep cattle.’

Amid such grim and gloomy surroundings the Lord-Lieutenant and his Chief

Secretary passed the winter. As early as October they were asking the

Cabinet for special powers. Strong reinforcements of troops were moved

into the island. In the first days of November a State prosecution was

instituted against Mr. Parnell and other leaders of the Land League.

Late in that same month the Viceroy, Lord Cowper, intimated that, unless

power was taken to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, he must resign. In

December he reiterated his intention and pressed that Parliament should

be called together. National and even international attention were

riveted upon Ireland. Cabinets were frequent, protracted, vexatious, and

indecisive. The harassed Chief Secretary hurried to and fro between the

two capitals.

‘What more lamentable and ridiculous spectacle,’ exclaimed Lord Randolph

Churchill at Preston (December 21, 1880), ‘has ever been presented than

this great Liberal statesman from Bradford, tossed like a shuttlecock

from the Irish Executive on to the English Government, tossed back again

contemptuously by the English Government on to the Irish

Executive--arriving in Dublin and being immediately seized by that

horrid, choking nightmare, Revolution--flying back to London and,

finding himself amongst its peaceful citizens and busy streets, fancying

that he had been the victim of a bad dream, laughed out of his

convictions by his sneering colleagues--and tearing back again to

Dublin, only once more to become a prey to hideous realities!’

The two Ministers who were responsible for Ireland united in a demand

for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act and eventually, after

struggles which nearly broke up the Cabinet, they procured the assent of

their colleagues. The remedy was desperate, unwarranted, and ill-chosen.

Shocking as were the outrages, they were the least part of the dangers

that threatened the fabric of society. They were, moreover, much

exaggerated by the official figures. Only seven persons were actually

murdered during the winter. The statistics were swollen by 1,300

outrages which proved on examination to consist merely of threatening

letters and notices. Many more were trivial annoyances. What rendered

them formidable were the temper of the people and the constant

apprehension of some fearful outburst. Boycotting was the weapon of the

Land League, and indeed it may be said that its sinister efficiency was

in great measure a preventive of worse crime. In one fashion or another

evictions were greatly diminished. Landlords did not dare to assert

their rights. The unwritten law of the Land League, supported by public

opinion, superseded the law of the land, backed as it was only by

physical force.

It was not easy in 1880, though the science of Coercion has made some

progress since, to discover what remedies Mr. Forster should have

chosen. It is certain that the remedy he chose was wrong. He seems to

have imagined that the agitation depended for its vitality upon certain

local leaders; that a comparatively small number of ‘village ruffians,’

against whom no legal proof existed, but the strongest moral suspicion,

were the indispensable and irreplaceable agents of the whole movement.

If they were removed, he believed the whole apparatus of terrorism would

collapse. If he could obtain power to arrest these men, who were

notorious, peace and order would ensue. No greater misreading of the

situation was possible. In dealing with a movement which was formidable

only because of its almost universal character, he struck at individuals

of minor prominence. He encountered profound communistic stirrings,

bitter racial hatred, and intense national aspirations by methods which

might have been effective against the rowdy larrikins of a slum. In face

of widespread lawlessness, principally petty in its character, the head

of the Irish Executive fell back on that supreme abrogation of civil law

which authorises arrest and imprisonment without trial. Staking his

official existence upon a demand for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus

Act, he prevailed upon a shivering and reluctant Cabinet.

Parliament was summoned to meet on January 7. ‘How,’ asked Lord Randolph

Churchill (Preston, December 21), in a speech which, from the fact that

it was the first of his speeches to be reported _verbatim_ in a

Metropolitan newspaper, attracted much attention, ‘will this Government,

who have been only eight months in office, meet Parliament; and what

will be the message which they will have to announce? They will have to

acknowledge the fact that Ireland is in open and successful rebellion;

that another government, which knows not the Queen, has supplanted the

Government which the English and Scotch people recognise; that this

alien government is now, with impunity, directing the destinies of

Ireland, issuing its decrees to the Irish people, and has, for six

months or more, suspended the liberties, confiscated the property, and

imperilled the lives of hundreds and of thousands of the Queen’s

subjects. They will have to announce that this alien government has its

own revenues, its own executive, its own courts of justice, in which

persons are arraigned, tried, and condemned, and that persons who are

not provided with the passports of that government and who have not

enrolled themselves as its subjects, are unable to obtain the

necessaries of life and are cut off root and branch from the society of

their fellows. They will have to acknowledge that this alien government

is the growth of the brief period during which they have held office;

that nothing like it has yet been seen in the history of Ireland; and

that, before it, the Government of the Queen recoils paralysed and

impotent.’

The turbulent course of Irish affairs and Mr. Forster’s policy laid the

Government open to damaging attack from every quarter. Of this their

regular opponents took the fullest advantage and among them no one was

more prominent than Lord Randolph Churchill. It was not difficult for a

Conservative--or, indeed, for an economist--to find fault with the

Compensation for Disturbance Bill of 1880, or the Land Bill of 1881; and

the Fourth Party encountered both with zeal and ingenuity. But the

repressive measures, involving as they did immense abridgments of

liberty and wholesale suspension of the most elementary civil rights,

offended deeper instincts in Lord Randolph’s nature. If as a party man

he disliked the Government, he hated Coercion for its own sake; and this

double tide of antagonism carried him to lengths which, for a time,

disturbed and even destroyed the harmony of the Fourth Party.

‘People sometimes talk,’ he said, ‘too lightly of Coercion; it means

that hundreds of Irishmen who, if law had been maintained unaltered and

had been firmly enforced, would now have been leading peaceful,

industrious, and honest lives, will soon be torn off to prison without

trial; that others will have to fly the country into hopeless exile;

that others, driven to desperation through such cruel alternatives, will

perhaps shed their blood and sacrifice their lives in vain resistance to

the forces of the Crown; that many Irish homes, which would have been

happy if evil courses had been firmly checked at the outset, will soon

be bereaved of their most promising ornaments and support, disgraced by

a felon’s cell and by a convict’s garb; and if you look back over the

brief period which has been necessary to bring about such terrible

results, the mind recoils in horror from the ghastly spectacle of

murdered landlords, tenant-farmers tortured, mutilated dumb animals,

which everywhere disfigure the green and fertile pastures of Ireland.

It is to me, and many others who, like myself, have had the good fortune

to live amongst the people of that country, to discover their high

qualities and their many virtues, and to know that, under a firm and

statesmanlike government, immense prosperity must have been their lot,

as it is their due--it is, I say, appalling to reflect that all this

promise has been for a time blotted out, all progress arrested, and all

industry thrown back by one reckless and wanton act on the part of a

Government who, at the outset of their career and in the heyday of their

youth and of their strength, knew no higher object and had no nobler aim

than to obtain at any cost a momentary and apparent advantage over their

opponents.’

The troubles of the Ministry did not come singly. The storm in South

Africa, like the storm in Ireland, was gathering fast when the change of

Government occurred. In both countries the new Ministers were the heirs

of error or neglect; in both their own policy was unfortunate. The

freedom of races was perhaps the main inspiration of Midlothian. The

annexation of the Transvaal in 1879 had been denounced by Mr. Gladstone

again and again in terms of eloquent and indignant candour: ‘A free

European Christian republican community “transformed” against the will

of more than three-fourths of the entire people’ into ‘subjects of a

monarchy.’ ‘Is it not wonderful,’ he asked (December 29, 1879), ‘to

those who are freemen and whose fathers have been freemen and who hope

that their children will be freemen and who consider that freedom is an

essential condition of civil life and that without it you can have

nothing great and nothing noble in political society, that we are led by

an Administration ... to march upon another body of freemen and against

their will to subject them to despotic government?’ These were important

declarations, and they had been unmistakably approved by the nation. Was

it strange that the Boers were led to expect from a Government headed

and controlled by the man who had uttered them the restoration of the

liberties of which they had been deprived?

Moreover, much could be urged in favour of the annexation of 1879 which

could not be urged in favour of its continuance. While the Transvaal and

Natal alike lay under the shadow of the great Zulu power, it may have

been a practical necessity to assume some control over the dealings of

the Boers with their terrible neighbour, lest a quarrel recklessly or

wrongfully provoked should not only bring massacre into the Transvaal,

but also upon those who dwelt within the Queen’s dominions. Great

Britain was perhaps forced, in the interests of the white man in South

Africa, to afford protection to the Boers, and where she extended

protection she had a right to claim obedience. But the danger was now

removed; the Zulu power was broken; Cetewayo was a prisoner and his

armies and military system destroyed. With the close of the Zulu War the

all-important argument for annexation disappeared.

The British Government had already carried forward a considerable

account with the Boers. ‘They are,’ said Mr. Gladstone, ‘a people

vigorous, obstinate, and tenacious in character, even as we are

ourselves.’ Driven ever northwards--across the Orange, across the Sand,

across the Vaal, by abiding dislike of British rule and organised

Government; retreating, like the game they hunted, from the noise of the

township and the whistle of the train, the huge white tilted ox-waggons

with their nimble horsemen had found a resting-place in a wilderness

more savage, more perilous, than any into which the white man had

broken. For nearly forty years they had lived alone--fierce, ignorant,

and devout, with no law but their rifles, no books but their Bibles and

scarcely any occupation but the chase. Gradually, in the valleys, by the

drifts of the rivers, under the shelter of gigantic boulders, farms and

tiny villages had crept into being. Gradually the long arm of the

detested Government, tampering, protecting, enfolding and at last

controlling, had embraced them--even here. Was it to be borne? Boer

prejudices, Boer sullenness, Boer obstinacy, were bywords. Boer

marksmanship was as yet unknown.

To give back the country to the Boers would no doubt have provoked a

noisy conflict in Parliament. But the Minister was, partly for that

reason, provided with a large majority. The policy of retrocession was

right in principle; it would have proved eminently wise in practice; and

had Mr. Gladstone’s Government acted in office up to the spirit of their

declarations in Opposition, South Africa might have escaped a long

concatenation of disasters.

Ministers were ill served by their agents. On November 19, 1880, Sir

Owen Lanyon, in a despatch to the Colonial Office, stated that

three-fourths of the population were secretly in favour of the continued

annexation and that the excitement was the work of a few agitators.[10]

Less than a month afterwards nearly the whole male population of the

Transvaal was in arms. On December 20 the deadly rifle-fire at Bronker’s

Spruit proclaimed the beginnings of serious war. The few regular troops

available hurried to the scene, were badly led and soundly beaten. What

the Government had denied to justice, they conceded to force. During a

series of small combats negotiations were actively pressed and reached a

successful termination a few days after the flight of the British

detachments from Majuba Hill (February 27, 1881). By this arrangement

all the disadvantages of every conceivable policy--and all abounded in

disadvantage--were combined. Territory was abandoned; reconciliation was

not achieved. The Boers owed little gratitude to the great Power from

whom they had shaken themselves free. They rejoiced in the victory of a

chosen race over the Midianites. Their Dutch kinsfolk throughout the

Colony were naturally proud of their unexpected victories. The British

settlers were everywhere humiliated. The British flag was in South

Africa associated only with surrender. The loyalists who had fought and

risked their all in faith of British power and justice were left to

shift for themselves. The attempt to make a virtue of necessity failed

ignominiously. And at home in England powerful classes, smarting under

insult and unaccustomed shame, sat down to nurse revenge.

These errors or misfortunes were hardly to be retrieved. Time might have

healed all scars--was already, after fifteen years, in a fair way to

heal them--but a more tragic and tremendous history awaited South

Africa. When the Transvaal and its rugged inhabitants would have been

forgotten, they became famous. The rocks of their wilderness turned, in

the perversity of fortune, to gold and diamonds, and a scattered folk

who beyond all others shunned the eye of civilisation were thrust into

the very centre of the world’s affairs. Their notoriety revived a

slumbering shame. Their new-found wealth armed at once their own

resentful ambition and directed upon them the envy and the malevolence

of their British neighbours; and from an unjust annexation and a

dishonoured peace there hung an unbroken chain of ever-expanding and

ever-darkening events.

The circumstances of the military operations and of the Majuba peace

were vehemently denounced in Parliament by the Conservative party. Lord

Randolph Churchill seems to have taken little part in these debates.

Three years afterwards he condemned the Boers in strong terms for their

treatment of the natives, and when the Majuba peace had passed out of

the circle of real and burning questions and had become part of the

ordinary stock-in-trade of party patter and recrimination, he seems to

have bestowed upon it more than one passing taunt. But at the time,

vigilant as he was to seize every foothold for attacking Mr. Gladstone’s

Government, he neglected this large opportunity. His silence finds an

explanation in the following curious letter to Sir Henry Wolff, written,

be it remembered, at a time when England was ringing with denunciations

of Boer ‘treachery’ in the ‘massacre’ at Bronker’s Spruit:--

University Club: December 27, 1880.

I attach the greatest importance to this news from South Africa,

and am of opinion that the question of reducing the Boers will

divide the Liberal party by a sharper and more insuperable line

than any Irish question. The arguments that formerly were of force

for the annexation of the Transvaal, can no longer be used with

effect. The Zulus are broken, and Secocoeni and his tribe gone, and

there is no danger of a native irruption into Natal. The Boers, on

the other hand, cannot be said to have ever ceased to be an

independent nationality, and are showing now their perfect fitness

to take care of themselves.

Your natural and marvellous ingenuity will show you how the

strength of this position may be developed. Courtney, if he decides

to oppose the ‘coercion’ of the Boers, will have a great following

of Liberals and the entire Irish party. The Fourth Party are

individually and collectively unpledged to the annexation of the

Transvaal, and it occurs to me one of us (like a thunderbolt in a

clear sky) should on the Address pronounce for the independence of

the Boers, and protest against British blood and treasure being

wasted in reducing a gallant nationality which is perfectly able to

take care of itself, taking into consideration the immense

difficulties which beset the Home Government in Ireland, the East

of Europe, Afghanistan, and Basutoland. Think this over in your

‘anxious mind,’ and consider the numerous advantageous features

which the position offers.

Sir Henry Wolff was not to be persuaded into such a course. He reminded

his friend of the events of 1857, when Palmerston, confronted on the

China War by an adverse majority of Radicals and Conservatives, raised

the cry of the ‘Honour of England,’ dissolved Parliament, and was

returned to power by ‘a rattling majority.’ His counsels prevailed, and

the thunderbolt remained unexpended; but the sentiments expressed by

Lord Randolph, although partly concealed under the form of partisan

tactics, are not to be mistaken. And even the forecast that ‘the

question of reducing the Boers will divide the Liberal party by a

sharper and more insuperable line than any Irish question’ was in the

end to prove not wholly unfounded. His opinions seem to have been

strengthened by time, and ten years later, when he visited South Africa,

Lord Randolph wrote[11]:--

[Sidenote: 1881 ÆT. 32]

‘The surrender of the Transvaal and the peace concluded by Mr. Gladstone

with the victors of Majuba Hill were at the time, and still are, the

object of sharp criticism and bitter denunciation from many politicians

at home--_quorum pars parva fui_. Better and more precise information,

combined with cool reflection, leads me to the conclusion that had the

British Government of that day taken advantage of its strong military

position and annihilated, as it could easily have done, the Boer forces,

it would indeed have regained the Transvaal, but it would have lost

Cape Colony.... The actual magnanimity of the peace with the Boers

concluded by Mr. Gladstone’s Ministry after two humiliating military

reverses suffered by the arms under their control became plainly

apparent to the just and sensible mind of the Dutch Cape Colonist,

atoned for much of past grievance, and demonstrated the total absence in

the English mind of any hostility or unfriendliness to the Dutch race.

Concord between Dutch and English in the Colony from that moment became

possible.’

Lord Randolph could not foresee in 1891 the Raid of 1896 or the greater

catastrophe that lay behind it. Yet the forces which produced both were

steadily, though subterraneously, at work; and the Jameson

incursion--surprising, detached, eccentric though it appeared at the

time--was itself only one vicious consequence of a fatal past.

Let us return to the session of 1881.

Before Parliament met it was known that Ministers had prepared a

Coercion Bill and that the Houses were summoned to meet as early as the

first week in January for the express purpose of passing it. But the

nature of the powers for which Mr. Forster would ask, was a well-guarded

secret. The Fourth Party took counsel together betimes. Lord Randolph

proposed that they should move an amendment limiting the duration of the

Act to one year. The plan was audacious. It would have enabled all the

forces opposed to the Government--from whatever cause--the Irish

Nationalists, the Conservative party, the dissentient Radicals and

Liberals, to vote together. The passage of the Bill must have been

rendered more difficult and protracted than ever. And as in all

probability Mr. Gladstone would have had to submit to a yearly limit as

a compromise, the whole grim business must have been undertaken again in

the next session, after hanging like a sword over the Government in the

intervening months. On the other hand, it was a dangerous policy for a

Conservative party of law and order to adopt. The matter was long

debated by the four partners. It was at length decided to consult Lord

Beaconsfield; and Mr. Gorst, entrusted with this mission, laid the plan

before him on the last day of December 1880. Lord Beaconsfield at first

seemed not at all unfavourable. He listened attentively, and

acknowledged the idea to be shrewd and good. He asked for time to

consider it and promised to send a definite answer in a few days. On the

eve of the session the four friends dined together in state and, as no

negative reply had arrived, Lord Randolph was full of hope that his plan

would be adopted by the official leaders of the Conservative party.

Great was his disappointment when the next day Lord Beaconsfield decided

that the proposal, however good in itself as a Parliamentary

manœuvre, was not practicable for a Conservative Opposition.

The Fourth Party accepted Lord Beaconsfield’s decision as final; not so

Lord Randolph. He had manufactured what he called ‘political dynamite.’

He knew it to be deadly. With or without Lord Beaconsfield’s approval,

he was prepared to go on. But he failed to persuade the others and in

the process their disagreement developed into a regular quarrel. He

seems at length to have been prevailed on by his father to give up the

idea and, although he said (February 4) in debate that he was very

strongly in favour of the Act being allowed to expire in 1882, by which

time the Coercion measures of the Government, coupled with their

remedial legislation, should have pacified the country, no such

amendment ever appeared on the order paper. But for the first three

months of the session of 1881 the Fourth Party, greatly to the

satisfaction of the Government, practically ceased to exist as a

political force or even as a friendly association. Not until the renewal

of the Bradlaugh debates was their comradeship restored.

The Queen’s Speech of 1880 had contained only a passing reference to

Ireland and the intention of the Government to rule without exceptional

legislation. The Queen’s Speech of 1881 referred to little else but

Ireland and the intention of the Government to adopt measures of

Coercion. The course of the session followed the lines of the gracious

speech. Ireland monopolised attention. Coercion Bills were forced

through the House of Commons in the teeth of frantic Nationalist

opposition. Scenes and suspensions were the order of the day. A

forty-one hours’ sitting was terminated only by the arbitrary and

extraordinary intervention of the Speaker. New rules of procedure,

lopping off Parliamentary liberties cherished for ages, were devised.

The Land Bill took four months to pass. Armed with his new powers,

which enabled him to lock up everyone and anyone he pleased, Mr. Forster

swept several hundred alleged ‘village ruffians’ into Kilmainham, where

they lived together in great comfort, consulted freely, received visits

from their friends, transacted their business, and even wrote letters to

the newspapers. They thus achieved cheaply-won martyrdom, often crowned

with Parliamentary honours, and their places were eagerly filled by

others. The land agitation increased in vehemence and outrages in

number. The measure, to obtain which so much had been sacrificed, proved

utterly futile.

Through all this turmoil Lord Randolph pursued his wayward course alone.

After the Speaker’s _coup d’état_ (February 2) he spoke in support of

the Nationalist motion for adjournment, because, as he said, ‘one

section of the House was greatly irritated, another section greatly

fatigued, and a third greatly alarmed’ by what had happened. On this Mr.

Balfour at once declared his intention of voting with Sir Stafford

Northcote in the Government Lobby, though he contrived to defend Lord

Randolph from the criticisms which his speech drew upon him from the

highly strained nerves and tempers of the forces of law and order. On

the 4th Lord Randolph spoke on the first of the Coercion measures--the

Protection of Persons and Property Bill.

‘I support this Bill,’ he said, ‘with reluctance and distrust. I am

confident that a proper and vigorous administration of the ordinary law

last summer and last autumn would have saved us from this Bill. I

cannot with satisfaction entrust extraordinary powers to a Minister who

has proved unequal to the administration of the ordinary law of the

land. I know that those powers require to be administered with firmness

and decision. The more these qualities abound, the sooner the necessity

for extraordinary powers will cease; but I fear that we shall have

indecision and timidity and consequently injustice and protracted

Coercion.’

On the 15th he supported an amendment to provide every person arrested

under the new Acts with a copy of the warrant and a statement of the

crime or crimes of which he was suspected, making at the same time a

contemptuous reference to ‘members who still called themselves Liberals,

while they supported a Bill for the suspension of the liberties of the

Irish people.’ On the 16th he voted for an amendment providing that

persons arrested on mere suspicion should be treated differently from

ordinary prisoners while incarcerated without trial. This was conceded

by the Government after much discussion. On the 18th he urged that the

arrest of members of Parliament under special legislation should in all

cases be reported to the House. Indeed, throughout these discussions his

conduct was considered very reprehensible and shocking.

If Mr. Forster’s policy was unfortunate, his position, although

supported by overwhelming majorities of both great parties, was

certainly unenviable. It is hard to cope with revolution; but to attempt

to do so without offending the susceptibilities of a Liberal Cabinet or

a democratic party surpasses the wit and patience of man. The reports

which reached him every day from magistrates and police, were alarming.

His office table at the Castle was littered with letters of fierce and

tragic reproach. Indignant landowners claimed imperiously that

protection for life and property which even the basest of civilised

Governments have rarely denied. The widow wrote from beside the body of

her murdered husband, declaring that his blood was upon the head of the

recreant Minister. The country seethed with sedition. Tales of tyranny

and terror lacerated the warm heart of the Chief Secretary; and although

police and detectives dogged his steps, his life was in constant

jeopardy. In Parliament he was the object of frantic and virulent abuse

from the Nationalist members. Many Chief Secretaries have faced that

form of attack since then. English ears have become accustomed to

it--and even deaf to it. But Forster was the first example, and an

impression was produced that he was a man specially repugnant to Irish

feeling. He was exposed to galling attack from every quarter.

‘It is unfortunate for Ireland,’ observed Mr. Parnell, ‘that the Tories

are not now in office. If they were, Parliament would not have seen this

measure of Coercion, because in that case the Irish would have had the

assistance of the united Whig and Radical parties. We should have had

all those platitudes as to the love of liberty which the Liberal party

entertain and all those stock phrases which do Liberal Cabinets such

good service when they are out of office. The two great parties are now

united, but only for one purpose--namely, to crush, put down, and bully

a poor, weak, and starving nation....’ But although the Government were

supported in their repressive legislation by both parties and openly

opposed by scarcely any English or Scottish members, the dissatisfaction

against them on both sides of the House grew steadily as the session

advanced. The regular Opposition neglected nothing that could discredit

the Ministry, whether by accusing them of being responsible for the

disorder, or by cavilling at their remedies and pointing out how

inconsistent these were with their principles.

Although he allowed himself to be persuaded against making a hostile

motion, Lord Randolph’s detestation of the Coercion Bill grew as he

watched its course. ‘This Bill,’ he said (March 11, 1881), ‘is now

passing away from the House, and with it disappears all that

liberty-destroying machinery--urgency, _clôtures_, _coups d’état_, and

dictatorships--never, I hope, to return again. We shall now be told to

turn our attention to remedial legislation. I make no remark beyond

this--that remedial measures which are planted under the shadow of

Coercion and watered and nourished by the suspension of the

Constitution, must be from their nature poor and sickly plants of

foreign origin, almost foredoomed to perish before they begin to grow.

It was upon their capacity to give contentment and happiness to Ireland

that the Liberals relied to gain for themselves immortal credit and to

secure a perpetual lease of power. The Chief Secretary went to Ireland

in April last, bearing with him the hopes and blessings of an

enthusiastic and victorious party. He gave us all to understand that he

was to become an emancipator greater even than O’Connell; and within

twelve months of office he has come to the House to ask for powers more

stringent and more oppressive than were ever granted to or demanded by

Lord Castlereagh, the Duke of Wellington, or Lord Grey. I wish the Chief

Secretary joy of these beautiful Bills; but I may tell the right

honourable gentleman that he has acquired by them the undying dislike

and distrust of the Irish people. While I have never denied that some

measure of this kind, owing to the conduct of the Government, and that

alone, was only too necessary for Ireland--and while I have always

admitted that as to the nature and extent of that measure her Majesty’s

Government, who were the culprits, must be the judges--I still

recollect, with unqualified satisfaction, that Coercion is a

double-edged weapon and has before now fatally wounded those

Administrations which have been compelled by their own folly to have

recourse to it.’

Sir William Harcourt, as Home Secretary, was put forward by the

Government to reply to this. ‘It is difficult,’ he said, ‘to treat the

noble lord the member for Woodstock as a serious politician, or to

discover to which of the four parties he belongs. He once belonged to

his own--the Fourth Party; but he has managed by his conduct during the

discussion of this Bill to dissolve that minute party; and his feats in

that respect only afford a fresh illustration of the infinite

divisibility of matter.’ Sir William went on to say, amid general

approval, that, being no more leader of the Fourth Party, Lord Randolph

had become adviser to the Third Party (the Nationalists).

But, for all that, the undercurrents of disapproval of Ministerial

policy flowed ever more strongly in Parliament, and nothing less than

Mr. Gladstone’s unparalleled authority and skill could have sustained

the Irish Secretary through the session. His colleagues in the Cabinet

were doubtful, and some actively hostile. There was a feeling of

suppressed resentment in the Liberal party against the Minister who had

been responsible for forcing them into courses so obnoxious to their

principles and so damaging to their reputation. Radicals below the

gangway became increasingly outspoken in their attacks. A considerable

section of the party press was openly hostile. Under these many

anxieties and embarrassments the hair of the Chief Secretary grew

visibly grey.

Whatever may have been the demerits of the Land Bill of 1881, it was

sufficiently large and effective to threaten to take the agrarian wind

out of the sails of the revolutionary movement. Unable to oppose openly

a measure which conferred real benefits upon the tenants, Parnell

resolved to obstruct its working and to prevent the tenants from

resorting to the Land Courts. So soon as this intention was made clear

the Government seem to have decided upon his arrest. The Prime Minister

delivered a preparatory onslaught upon him at Leeds, where he charged

the Irish leader with ‘standing between the living and the dead--not,

like Aaron, to stay the plague, but to spread it’; and he hinted that

the resources of civilisation were not exhausted. Parnell replied

savagely at Wexford. ‘If you are arrested,’ inquired apprehensive

friends, ‘who will take your place?’ ‘“Captain Moonlight” will take my

place,’ replied Parnell. Two days later he was imprisoned in Kilmainham.

In the ten months preceding the Coercion Act (March-December 1880) the

number of outrages was 2,379; in the ten months which followed, 3,331.

The gravest increase was in crime affecting life. Murders and attempts

to murder were more than trebled. The Land League, when suppressed, was

replaced by an even more sinister and even less responsible

organisation. The failure of Mr. Forster’s repressive measures was

signal.

[Sidenote: 1882 ÆT. 33]

The arrest of Mr. Parnell may be regarded as a single exception. As the

months slipped by the prisoner at Kilmainham began to grow uneasy. He

had regular and perfect information of the state of the country. He

found the control of the agitation passing from his hands into those of

unknown and desperate people. Captain Moonlight was exercising and

delegating his sovereignty. New associations, secret and deadly in their

purposes, were sprouting. Parnell required his liberty, and he resolved

to treat. Nothing could exceed the satisfaction of the Prime Minister

when this was conveyed to him. The mood of the principals being

agreeable, ambassadors were found on both sides to arrange conditions.

Upon the basis that no sort of agreement existed, Mr. Gladstone

undertook to introduce an Arrears Bill and the Irish leader promised to

‘slow down the agitation.’ A delighted Cabinet ratified the non-existent

bargain. Parnell and his colleagues were released; the Lord-Lieutenant,

Earl Cowper, and the Chief Secretary, who remained stubbornly

unconvinced, resigned. Such was the Kilmainham Treaty. Parnell, free

once more, set to work to gather up the threads of authority. It was too

late. He was released on May 2. On the 6th, the day of Earl Spencer’s

entry as Lord-Lieutenant, Lord Frederick Cavendish, the new Chief

Secretary, and Mr. Burke, the Permanent Under-Secretary, were murdered

in the Phœnix Park.

Mr. Forster’s political fate was reached with the inexorable precision

of Greek tragedy. If ever a good man was overwhelmed with successive

waves of adversity, it was he. Called at a moment’s notice to an office

with which he had no special acquaintance, and confronted with dismal

alternatives, he had chosen wrongly at the first. An evil fortune dogged

his steps. Had he assumed power a year earlier he might have guarded

against the outbreak; a year later he would have been free to stem it

without any accusation of responsibility for its cause. As a Tory Chief

Secretary he might have achieved a glorious reputation as a Coercionist.

As a Liberal Minister he was ruined. His errors of judgment were not

small. He was, wrote Mr. Gladstone, ‘a very impracticable man in a

position of great responsibility.’ The style and tenor of his letters

lend some sanction to this opinion. But, whatever may be thought of his

wisdom or, what is of more importance in politics, of his instinct, the

courage and integrity which he displayed, command the tribute of all who

review, however briefly, his public conduct. What a worthy Englishman

might do, he did. No labour was too exacting; no peril deterred him. He

faced obloquy and assassination with equal calmness. He chased away the

vigilant guards by whom he was surrounded. Almost alone and unprotected

he penetrated the most distracted regions, talking to the people face to

face and striving with hopeless optimism to allay by argument the

passions of centuries.

‘If I had thought,’ he said in the House of Commons in introducing his

Coercion Bill, ‘that this duty would devolve on the Irish Secretary, I

would never have held the office; if I could have foreseen that this

would have been the result of twenty years’ Parliamentary life, I would

have left Parliament rather than have undertaken it.’ ‘If you think,’ he

wrote to Mr. Gladstone, April 4, 1881, ‘that _from any cause_ it would

be for the advantage of the public service or for the good of Ireland

that I should resign, I place my resignation in your hands. You might

come to this opinion ... without any disagreement with my official

action; and I earnestly beg of you not to allow yourself to be

influenced, for a moment, by any personal consideration for me of any

kind whatever. For instance, I must request you to pay no regard to the

fact that I should probably appear discredited--to have failed,’ &c.,

&c. On the morrow of the tragedy in the Phœnix Park he offered to

return to Ireland and fill his old place, so speedily made vacant. But

the Prime Minister had come to the conclusion that Ireland was no place

for his talents or his virtues. He passed for ever out of the Ministry,

to become during the rest of the Parliament one of its most dangerous

and vigilant opponents. He was neither the first nor the last able man

to be crushed between Irish national passions and English party needs.

In all these moving events Lord Randolph bore little part. At the

beginning of the session of 1882 he was in his place with his three

allies, all thoroughly reunited and intent upon the Government’s

misdeeds. Upon the Address the Fourth Party made a combined attack, in

which Mr. Forster was accused, with a good deal of evidence, of having

illegally transgressed even the wide limits of executive power which the

special legislation had assigned him. On February 21 there was another

Bradlaugh scene. The member for Northampton, advancing suddenly to the

table, produced a book, said to be a Testament, from his pocket, and

duly swore himself upon it, to the consternation of the members. Lord

Randolph was the first to recover from the surprise which this act of

audacity created. He declared that Mr. Bradlaugh, by the outrage of

taking in defiance of the House an oath of a meaningless character upon

a book alleged to be a Testament--‘it might have been the “Fruits 1882

of Philosophy”’--had vacated his seat and should be treated ‘as if he

were dead.’ In moving for a new writ he implored the House to act

promptly and vindicate its authority. Mr. Gladstone, however, persuaded

both sides to put off the decision till the next day. On the 22nd

therefore a debate on privilege ensued. Sir Stafford Northcote merely

moved to exclude Mr. Bradlaugh from the precincts of the House, thus

modifying Lord Randolph’s motion for a new writ. Lord Randolph protested

against such ‘milk and water’ policy and urged the immediate punishment

of the offender. After a long discussion, in which the temper of all

parties was inflamed by Mr. Bradlaugh’s repeated interruptions, Sir

Stafford substituted for his simple motion of exclusion a proposal to

expel Mr. Bradlaugh from the House; and this being carried the seat for

Northampton was thereby vacated.

Lord Randolph seems to have gained much credit in Tory circles for the

promptness and energy with which he had acted; but it was to be almost

his last intervention in the debates of the session. At the end of

February he was afflicted with a long and painful illness and lay in

bed--at first at Wimborne House and afterwards at a little cottage near

Wimbledon--for nearly five months. His absence was a grievous loss to

the Opposition during the Irish crisis. The public announcement that the

imprisoned members had been released was accompanied by a well-founded

rumour of some political bargain between the Government and Mr. Parnell.

Mr. Forster’s explanations exposed the fact that the Kilmainham

negotiations, whatever their nature, had been conducted independently of

the Irish Secretary by Mr. Chamberlain. Upon all this came the terrible

news of the murders in the Phœnix Park. The new Minister, ‘an

innocent man’ even to the fiercest Fenians, a man honoured and liked by

all who knew him, the envoy of peace and reconciliation, was stabbed to

death on the very day of his landing. The excitement throughout England

was tremendous. After the dead had been buried with every circumstance

of national grief and indignation the ‘Kilmainham Treaty’ came under

pitiless review. The Fourth Party headed the attack. They pointed out

Mr. Chamberlain as the mysterious ‘Number One’ of the Fenian inner

circle; and Mr. Balfour, speaking with altogether unexpected power,

denounced the ‘Kilmainham Treaty’ as ‘an infamy.’ This was the first

speech he ever made that commanded general attention, or gave any

promise of his future distinction. So intense was the feeling in the

House that it was freely stated, and acknowledged even on the Liberal

benches, that had Lord Randolph Churchill been at hand to strike the

blow the Government might have fallen.

It was not until the autumn that he was strong enough to return to the

House of Commons. Irish obstruction had reached its inevitable

conclusion; and Parliament was assembled for a renewal of the session at

the end of October to effect a drastic revision in its procedure. Mr.

Gladstone’s ‘new rules’ were ingenious and comprehensive. All sorts of

liberties and privileges of debate were ruthlessly lopped off or

deformed in the attempt to destroy the abuses by which they had been

encumbered. There were restrictions upon dilatory motions of all kinds

and devices for checking irrelevance or repetition in debate; but the

Closure--_clôture_, as its opponents called it with elaborate foreign

accent--was the most formidable instrument upon which the Government

relied. Into the discussion of all these grave and novel questions Lord

Randolph threw himself with a recuperated strength. The members had no

sooner met together than he was in possession of the House with a

constitutional protest--based on precedents going back to ‘the ninth

year of King Henry the Fourth’--against the impropriety of taking

Government business after the Appropriation Act for the year had been

passed. And thenceforward, late and early, on small matters and on

great, he and his nimble friends were the tyrants of debate.

Before the session was a week old it was everywhere admitted that the

whole conduct and temper of the Opposition had undergone a change and

that that change was ultimately connected with Lord Randolph’s return.

Mr. Gladstone had barely had time to offer him some courteous

congratulations upon his recovery when they were engaged together in the

liveliest of disputes. He contrived over and over again, by repeated

allusions to the ‘Kilmainham Treaty’ (an expression which Mr. Gladstone

always regarded with extreme disfavour), or to the course of affairs in

Egypt (to which reference will presently be made), to provoke the Prime

Minister into indignant declamation. He jeered at the Liberal party--who

had been exhorted by their Whips not to take too much part in the

discussion--‘for assisting in the capacity of mutes at the funeral

obsequies of free speech.’ Irritated by various motions for adjournment

upon Irish and Egyptian affairs, the supporters of the Ministry covered

the notice paper with ‘blocking notices,’ then a newly discovered

device, relating to almost every conceivable subject. Lord Randolph

deliberately described these as ‘bogus motions put down to prevent

discussion of _bona-fide_ motions.’ ‘Oh!’ said Mr. Labouchere, much

shocked, ‘I move that those words be taken down.’ ‘I second that,’

rejoined Lord Randolph instantly, and forthwith proceeded to repeat the

expression. The usual squabbles, unavoidable perhaps--certainly not very

earnestly avoided--soon sprang up between the solemn elders of the Front

Opposition Bench and the clever energetic men who impelled them forward

while they were supposed to follow. One night Mr. Gibson voted against

an amendment, proposed by the Fourth Party, to prevent the debate on

motions for adjournment being confined solely to the question of whether

the House should or should not adjourn. When, on the very next day, the

restricting rule having been passed with his concurrence, he was himself

called to order for breaking it, Lord Randolph’s joy was unconcealed.

But a more serious difference arose on the question of the closure.

Lord Randolph Churchill wished the Conservative party to meet this with

an utterly uncompromising resistance. He wrote (November 4) a fiery

letter to the _Times_ urging the Opposition, under the euphonious phrase

of making ‘a determined use of the rights of Parliamentary minorities,’

to bring about a dead-lock before their powers were for ever destroyed

by the new rules, and so to force Mr. Gladstone to appeal to the country

against a Conservative cry of ‘freedom of speech for the Commons.’ ‘It

is not altogether astonishing,’ observed the _Times_ (November 6), ‘that

the prospect of fighting a stout battle with ten times as many followers

as Mr. Parnell ever commanded should have a fascination for the ardent

spirit of Lord Randolph Churchill.’ The leaders of the Conservative

party, however, resolved to assume a temperate and reasonable manner in

the hopes of obtaining larger concessions from the Government. In this

praiseworthy spirit Mr. Gibson moved an amendment, not challenging the

principle of the closure, but requiring the vote of two-thirds of those

present to make it operative. Lord Randolph delivered on this occasion

(November 1) one of those speeches by which his Parliamentary reputation

was established. At the moment it commanded absolutely the attention of

the House and its conclusions have been sustained by the practice of all

the years that have followed.

‘The _clôture_,’ he said, ‘has been called an innovation--a foreign

practice--but it appears to me that a proportionate majority, or what is

called a two-thirds _clôture_, is a much greater innovation than the

_clôture_ itself, and is absolutely foreign to all our principles,

ideas, or customs. I know of nothing in the history of this country, or

in its laws, or in its Constitution, which can be adduced as a precedent

or as an analogy for the proposal in the amendment that the House should

require two-thirds of its members to affirm any proposition. We do not

require proportionate majorities for the election of our

representatives, nor would any proposition to that effect have the

slightest chance of being accepted by the country. London, Manchester,

Liverpool, Birmingham, and Glasgow can return members to this House for

a period of seven years by simple majorities, and the member so returned

is as fully and as firmly the member of that constituency as if he had

been elected unanimously. And I think that the election of a member for

a great constituency for a period of seven years is a much more

important matter and would seem to require a much stronger title, than

the closing of an occasional debate in the House of Commons. We know,

moreover, that many of the greatest reforms in our laws have been

carried by majorities which did not number double figures; and it is

undoubtedly, in theory, in the power of Parliament, by a majority of

one, to change the Constitution of this country from a monarchy into a

republic--which, again, I should say, would be a much more important

matter than the closing of an occasional debate. I own I am a firm

believer in the general infallibility of simple majorities: they have

practically governed the British Empire from time immemorial; and I

must express my surprise that the Tory party, or the Constitutional

party, which recoils with horror from the Radical innovation of the

_clôture_, should propose with eagerness, with anxiety, almost with

desperation, the much greater Radical innovation of a two-thirds

majority....

‘I imagine that many of those who support this amendment are animated by

a secret conviction that the palmy days of Tory government are over, and

that the Tory party have nothing to look forward to but a long period of

endless opposition, perhaps occasionally chequered by little glimpses of

office with a minority. I believe that view to be not only incorrect,

but absurdly incorrect. That it is held by many I have no doubt, and

those who hold it propose by this amendment to build, as it were, a

little dyke, behind which they fancy that they will be able to shelter

themselves for a long time to come. A more hopeless delusion never

before led astray a political party. How many times does anyone in this

House think that the present Prime Minister would permit the Tory party

to refuse him the necessary two-thirds majority for getting on with his

business? I think he might allow it twice, perhaps three times; but, as

sure as he sits there, after the third time, he would come down to this

House and declare that the state of public business was deplorable, that

the session was one of discomfort and disaster, and that the two-thirds

majority must be exchanged for a simple majority; and within a

fortnight or three weeks from the date of that declaration this precious

little dyke, which was to shelter the Tory party for a long time to

come, this little exotic which was so carefully introduced, nurtured,

and protected so that the Tory party might repose under its shade, would

be abolished, cut down, and swept away into the great dustbin of all

modern constitutional checks. The best protection, the best

constitutional check against a Liberal Minister which the Tory party can

look to is the House of Lords; yet how often does the House of Lords,

with its centuries of prescription, with all its vast territorial

influence, venture to stand in the way of a Liberal majority? And yet,

with this historic caution, not to say timidity, on the part of the

House of Lords in your minds, and before your eyes, does anyone really

seriously imagine that this wretched device, this miserable safeguard of

a two-thirds majority, could for one moment arrest the tide of popular

reform, a safeguard compared with which Don Quixote’s helmet was a

miracle of protection, or Mrs. Partington’s mop a monster of energy and

strength?

‘But let us look a little further ahead. No one will deny that there are

great and burning questions coming on rapidly for settlement--questions

relating to the franchise and to the representation of the

people--questions relating to the revenue and to trade--questions

relating to the land and agriculture--questions affecting the relations

between Great Britain and Ireland. Is the Tory party prepared--is it

determined--to abdicate and renounce all title to the initiative of

legislation on these great questions? Is the attitude of the great Tory

Democracy, which Lord Beaconsfield’s party constructed, to be one of

mere dogged opposition? And is it true, what our foes say of us, that

Coercion for Ireland and foreign war is to be the ‘be-all and the

end-all’ of Tory Ministries? I think not; and yet it is on the ability,

and not only on the ability, but on the rapidity, with which, in the

face of unscrupulous opposition, you may be able to legislate on these

questions that your title to power and that your tenure of office will

mainly depend. Nevertheless, here you are, under the influence of an

Hibernian legal mind, elaborately and laboriously endeavouring to forge

for yourselves an instrument which, if you do come into office, will

paralyse you so effectually that your power will be as tottering as a

house of cards, your tenure of office as evanescent as a summer’s day.

No, sir, oppose the _clôture_ if you will; defeat it if you can; resort

for that purpose, if you have the courage, to all those forms and

privileges which a Parliamentary minority still possesses, in order, if

possible, to compel the Prime Minister to abandon his project, or to

appeal to the country to decide between you and him; but, whatever you

do, for Heaven’s sake do not be seduced by interested counsels into

following foreign fancies, and do not be persuaded by any desire to

think only of the moment, and to disembarrass yourselves of all care for

what is to come.’

There was great discontent among the Conservative party at this speech.

Its force was undeniable, and the members recognised reluctantly and

uneasily that they had been led, in support of a vicious compromise, on

to ground equally unsuited for defence or attack. All the more were they

inclined to resent the proof of their leaders’ unwisdom. Mr. Balfour

lost no time in making it clear that he disagreed with Lord Randolph

Churchill, and when he rose next day to renew the debate he declared

himself definitely in favour of the principle of the two-thirds majority

to enforce the Closure. Mr. Goschen had praised Lord Randolph’s

arguments and Mr. Balfour, after alluding to the ‘portentous coalition

between a discontented Whig and an independent Tory,’ devoted his speech

entirely to refuting them. In this he was, according to Sir Stafford

Northcote, very successful. ‘My noble friend, the member for Woodstock,’

said the leader of the Opposition naïvely, ‘has somehow or other managed

to elevate himself into a position from which he finds himself capable

of looking down on the Front Benches on both sides and of regarding all

parties in the House of Commons with an impartiality which is quite

sublime. I do not know what can have taken my noble friend into such

heights, or whether he went there to consult the angel Gabriel, or, what

is sometimes suspected, to look for the lost principles of the Liberal

party--some of which have gone to the planet Saturn and some to the

planet Mars--but, whatever may have become of them, his argument seems

to me to have been completely answered by the honourable member for

Hertford, who sits near him, and I do not think it necessary to dwell

further upon it. It certainly seems to me that my noble friend has

overlooked, from the great heights from which he regards these matters,

the real importance of those safeguards which he treats as little lights

which would be very quickly swept away. I can only say that if he is

right, and if they would be quickly swept away, we would not be in a

worse position than if we never had them at all.’

Even this rejoinder could not sustain the fortunes of the debate. The

division showed how ill-conceived the Opposition tactics had been. The

Irish party, who naturally looked upon a Closure which required a

two-thirds majority as a device specially directed against them, voted

in a body against the amendment. The Whigs were somewhat divided, but

the greater number followed Mr. Goschen into the Government lobby. The

Fourth Party, consisting of three persons, abstained. Mr. Gibson’s

amendment was therefore defeated by 322 to 288, or nearly double the

majority that had been generally expected. Thus, against their will and

in spite of their leaders, the Conservative party became possessed of

that great engine of government by which during nearly twenty years of

power they were to silence and overcome their political opponents.

Ever since then, obstruction and Closure have struggled against each

other in a warfare which has respected no neutral boundaries and

recognised no public law. Scarcely any Parliamentary custom or privilege

has escaped their joint depredations. Every device or formality designed

in the careful wisdom of former ages to safeguard the rights of a

minority has been recklessly exploited by the one faction and ruthlessly

demolished by the other. The historic procedure of the House of Commons

has been reduced to the rigid framework which had hitherto served a

purpose only in Continental or Colonial imitations. The whole theatre of

war has been devastated. Almost everything within the range of the

combatants that was destructible has perished--and has perished beyond

repair. So long as the House of Commons contains no body of opinion

which, because more or less independent of party organisations, is

capable of being won or estranged by argument or conduct, the vicious

conflict must run its appointed course. The end is, however, in sight.

The majority must prevail. An elaborate and comprehensive time-table,

fixed no doubt with some impartiality, may soon assign immovable limits

to all debate. The victory of Closure will be complete. Obstruction will

disappear through being at once unnecessary and impossible. But the

remedy may prove more painful than the disease and the strength and

reality of representative institutions may very easily disappear as

well. Certain it is that if the House of Commons is ever to regain its

vanished freedom and to preserve its vanishing authority, it will be by

new and original treatment and not by belated attempts to revive the

systems of the past. A larger and more generous freedom in choosing the

subjects to be discussed might compensate for the mechanical regulation

of the time allotted to discussion. The delegation of financial and

legislative detail to Committees, and the devolution upon local,

provincial, or national bodies of much contentious business proper to

their respective jurisdictions, would abundantly increase the total time

available. And perhaps those more complicated but more scientific

methods of Parliamentary election, generally described as ‘Proportional

Representation,’ will some day secure that detached, august, impartial

element in British councils whose influence and favour all factions

would strive to win.

Lord Beaconsfield’s death early in the year 1881 had been a heavy blow

to the Fourth Party. Great men at the height of their power often, to

their cost, refuse to recognise the ability of new comers. Peel had

scorned Disraeli. Gladstone never understood Mr. Chamberlain’s capacity

till he faced him as a foe. Smaller persons, called from time to time to

the conduct of public affairs, exhibit the same failing in an aggravated

degree with greater regularity and more disastrous results to

themselves. The jealousy and dislike with which the leaders of the

Conservative party in the House of Commons regarded the activities of

Lord Randolph and his friends, had been apparent even before the session

of 1880 had come to an end. From all such feelings Lord Beaconsfield was

free. His character and the hard experiences of his earlier years made

him seek eagerly for the first signs of oncoming power. He was an old

man lifted high above his contemporaries and he liked to look past them

to the new generation and to feel that he could gain the sympathy and

confidence of younger men. If he liked youth, he liked Tory Democracy

even more. He had, moreover, good reason to know how a Parliamentary

Opposition should be conducted. He saw with perfect clearness the

incapacity above the gangway and the enterprise and pluck below it. Had

his life been prolonged for a few more years the Fourth Party might have

marched, as his Young Guard, by a smoother road, and this story might

have reached a less melancholy conclusion. He stood above personal

rivalries. He was removed from the petty vexations of the House of

Commons. Surely he would not have allowed these clever ardent men to

drift into antagonism against the mass of the Conservative party and

into fierce feud with its leaders. He alone could have kept their

loyalty, as he alone commanded their respect; and never would he have

countenanced the solemn excommunication by dulness and prejudice of all

that preserved the sparkling life of Toryism in times of depression and

defeat. But Lord Beaconsfield was gone; and those whom he had left

behind had other views of how his inheritance--such as it was--should be

divided.