take the debate on Thursday.
Yours sincerely,
HARTINGTON.
Lord Randolph, though reluctant and disquieted, was willing to acquiesce
in this sober opinion. From FitzGibbon, who wrote to him distressfully,
he did not hide his dissatisfaction:--
‘I am against this proclamation business--as, I imagine, are most people
of common sense and possessing knowledge of Ireland. But I must keep my
opinion to myself and give a silent vote for the Government. It is no
use finding fault with H.M.G. They are stupid, and there is no more to
be said. I think there is nothing extravagant or improbable in the
supposition that the G.O.M. will be Prime Minister before next Easter.’
And he added, with more shrewdness, ‘The Land Bill has been sadly
mismanaged. I fear nothing will kill Home Rule except a second trial by
Gladstone and a second failure.’
But Chamberlain was the gloomiest of all. Nothing can exceed the
despondency of his letters at this time. He refrained, at the earnest
requests of Lord Hartington and Lord Randolph Churchill, from publishing
his alternative plan of Irish Local Government which he believed the
political situation required. He never wavered for an hour as to his own
course. The darker the Unionist horizon, the more uncompromising was his
attitude towards the Gladstonians. But he evidently expected the speedy
downfall of the Government and perhaps the triumph of Repeal. Throughout
the autumn he faced the public with deep anxiety at his heart. ‘Every
day of Coercion,’ wrote this experienced judge of electoral
possibilities (October 2), ‘adds to the Gladstonian strength, and I see
no probability that the strong measures which are disgusting our friends
in England, will effectually dispose of the League in Ireland.... I
cannot see how Mr. G. can be kept out much longer. If he comes back he
will dissolve and most of the Liberal-Unionists will go to the wall. I
do not feel absolutely certain of a single seat, though I think that I
am safe myself. Then he will propose and carry his new plan, whatever
that may be. I expect we shall not like it any better than the old one.’
From these embarrassments he was glad to depart altogether, and the
Government, not perhaps without cunning, suggested an attractive and
important mission to the United States to negotiate a fishery treaty. He
left England late in November, and did not return till March in the New
Year. This interval gave practical effect to his political separation
from Lord Randolph Churchill.
In the meanwhile the session ended and His Majesty’s Government--as
Governments do in a changeable world--ran for the time out of storms
into calmer water. Lord Randolph continued in a twilight mood. He
disliked the Ministry, but did his best so far as he truthfully could to
sustain their policy. In the winter he revolved plans for an Irish
Education Bill, and endeavoured to pick up again the threads he had
been forced to drop incontinently two years before.
_Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Justice
FitzGibbon._
2 Connaught Place, W.: November 21, 1887.
This should be the plan of campaign. Assume that you are a
benevolent despot with unlimited power for carrying out your own
sweet will in respect of a legal solution of the Education
Question:
1. Draw your Bill as per documents forwarded to me.
2. Ascertain from Walsh how far the draft meets with his
concurrence and would secure his support; or what modifications or
extensions would be necessary to that end. And, further, whether,
if you and he are agreed, he and his party would desire that I
should submit the matter to the House of Commons.
I have a better chance, I think, of carrying a Bill than the
Government; for, although I have not the Government command of the
time of the House, I can put very considerable pressure upon them
to give me facilities, and it would be much easier for the Irish to
support a private member than to accept anything whatever at the
hands of a Coercion Government. Moreover, I feel confident of
Liberal-Unionist support and, being very friendly with John Morley,
I feel pretty sure of his benevolent neutrality--probably of his
assistance also.
I will assent to, and assume Parliamentary responsibility for, any
scheme which you and the Archbishop can agree upon. I do not think
there is any difficulty as to the position of a private member
opposing a grant of public money for certain purposes. The transfer
of the expenditure on Model Schools to other purposes is certainly
within the power of a private member.
When you have got your scheme drafted, and feel sure of your
Archbishop, then I will get hold of Beach, and approach the
Government. I cannot move until I get a draft Bill.
For strategic purposes, leave alone Erasmus Smith, Incorporated
Society, Irish Society and London Companies; so that, if I am
troubled by factious opposition from those interests, I may
threaten reprisals by moving to appropriate radically their
resources.
Would you approve of making your Bill very comprehensive and in
three parts?
1. Elementary (see your paragraph, p. 18, of your Report).
2. Intermediate (see following paragraph).
3. University (_i.e._ the creation of a Catholic University out of
the existing Royal University, endowed by the moneys now paid to
the Queen’s Colleges, and as a subsidiary measure a “Stincomalee”
at Belfast).
A large Bill often moves through the House, by its own momentum,
with greater ease than a small one, and the prospect of abolition
of the Model Schools and the godless Colleges would, I think, be a
lure which the Catholic clergy and laity would greedily swallow.
Your great organising mind could easily arrange a Bill of this
dimension, and many circumstances lead me to think that the moment
is very propitious for the launching of such a scheme.
2 Connaught Place, W.: February 6, 1888.
I think the education matter had better wait until you are able to
come over to London and we can thrash it out together in
conversation. Walsh’s absence is decisive against doing anything
yet. Perhaps H.M.G. contemplate moving on their own account. Do
not say anything to them to give them the idea that you and I
contemplate moving.
2 Connaught Place, W.: February 10, 1888.
I hope you will come over soon and arrange to remain several days.
The Session comes in like a lamb. I am reminded of the earlier
Sessions of the 1874 Parliament. I saw H.E. the Lord-Lieutenant
yesterday; he tells me he often sees you, which I am glad of. The
inconceivable apathy of the House of Lords prevented H.E. from
delivering his views on Ireland; I am very sorry he was not able to
speak. I have to give an address on the Irish Question to the
Oxford Union on the 22nd. This must be a grave and moderate
statement of our case. Do, if you have time, send me some good and
novel views and, if possible, some effective references and
quotations.
2 Connaught Place, W.: February 15, 1888.
It was very good of you writing me such a long letter and sending
me so much good information. My thoughts, however, when I was
preparing my speech for the Oxford Union led me away from the line
you suggested and I fear you will think that I gave you a lot of
trouble all for nothing. Balfourism acts like a blister on Ireland
and the Irish, and has the bad and good effects which such
treatment generally produces. A too protracted application of the
blister might do much harm.
Doncaster came in the nick of time. I think we shall probably hold
Deptford. Things look fairly well in Parliament. There are hints
and insinuations from some quarters as to my rejoining the
Government. I am, however, very happy and contented where I am, and
usually able to exert a good deal of influence if I take the
trouble, without being saddled with any inconvenient
responsibilities. I hope you will be running over soon.
[Sidenote: 1888 ÆT. 39]
2 Connaught Place, W.: July 14, 1888.
I wish very much we could meet the Archbishop’s views. It is a
great pity that Irish education should be complicated and
embarrassed by other political questions. Next year, if all is
well, we must make a great effort to get forward. I hope to be in
Ireland the end of August or beginning of September; and if so,
perhaps I may have the great advantage of personally ascertaining
the Archbishop’s opinions.
If I can only attain full agreement with him I do not anticipate
any difficulty with the Cabinet. The present moment is most
propitious for action. Later on we may become again involved in the
chaotic and whirling conflict of Home Rule, and education will be
indefinitely postponed.
From the oratory of the recess and the rumours of reconstruction Lord
Randolph hurried away upon an expedition to which he had for some months
past been looking forward. To travel abroad, particularly in Europe,
always amused him; and he found no better relaxation after a spell of
political activity than in new scenes, fresh men and another atmosphere.
He had always wanted to visit Russia; and to go there now, in
circumstances personally so convenient and when the international
situation was full of interest, was a project to him very attractive.
Like most men whose lot it is to live a part of their lives on the
world’s stage, to mingle with large crowds and to submit themselves to
public comment or applause, he was especially jealous of the privacy of
his holidays; and in order to prevent gossip of various kinds he had
allowed it to be understood that he would spend a part of the winter in
Spain. This device succeeded admirably until he was discovered about to
start for St. Petersburg. Then the newspapers awoke. The Continental
press manufactured rumours with that fertile ingenuity for which it has
always been distinguished, and on these the London newspapers dilated
with preternatural gravity. The _Times_ led the way with a solemn
warning to the Czar not to be misled, as his predecessor had been by a
certain Quaker deputation on the eve of the Crimean War, by any
assurances of British friendship which might be offered by the ‘most
versatile and volatile’ of English politicians. Lesser journals were
less restrained. All the gossip of the previous year was revived. He was
making a political journey. He was charged with a secret mission. He was
an ‘officious’ ambassador from Lord Salisbury. He was gathering
materials for a campaign against the Government. If he were neither for
nor against the Government, why should he be there at all? Why, except
for grave reasons of State, should a man not physically robust exchange
Spain for Russia in December? It was understood Lord Randolph was to
seek health and warmth in the South; but here, in midwinter, he was
‘deserting the Guadalquivir for the Neva, and the sun of Seville for the
snows of St. Petersburg.’ That he was ‘accompanied by his wife’ was
apparently a matter of additional significance. The explanation that he
was going to Russia as a tourist because he wanted to see Russia and the
Russian Court was offered by his friends. But no one was so simple as to
believe that; and at length an official _communiqué_ was published from
the Foreign Office: ‘Lord Randolph Churchill has no mission from the
Government to M. de Giers. His presence in St. Petersburg is wholly
without the knowledge of the Foreign Office and he has no official
status’; and then followed a sentence which seemed to bear the marks of
a certain sharply pointed pen--‘His lordship alone knows why he gave up
a contemplated Spanish tour for a visit to northern latitudes.’ After
this the lower Ministerial press struck a different note. The Czar would
refuse to see a vulgar globe-trotter. There was no person whom the
Russians more heartily despised than the member for Paddington--‘a
boastful, rattling, noisy egotist with no principle and, apparently,
with no conception of duty or honour.’
Meanwhile the object of this merry chatter was enjoying himself. When
the word has gone forth in Russia that a visitor is to be well received,
he need not trouble himself about details. Everything moves _sur les
roulettes_; railway officials and Custom House officers are transformed
into attentive servants--often a considerable transformation; carriages
are reserved in every train; and luggage passes untouched through every
cordon. Lord Randolph arrived expeditiously at St. Petersburg, assailed
by newspaper correspondents--‘mischievous people’ whom he refused to see
(after all, they must live, like everybody else)--and met by his friends
from the Embassy. The next day he saw M. de Giers; and the day after the
Czar, without waiting for the usual New Year’s Day reception, summoned
him to Gatschina. Lord Randolph has left a carefully written account of
his conversation with this great personage, which I have but slightly
abbreviated. After driving in bright sun and bitter cold to the Winter
Palace, and long delays, relieved by cups of tea, in interminable
corridors adorned by wonderfully dressed servants with _panaches_ of red
and orange ostrich feathers, he was conducted to the Emperor’s
apartment. The Czar was sitting at a large writing-table in a small
_cabinet d’affaires_, and told his visitor to seat himself on a low
yellow banquette on the opposite side of the table. After cigarettes had
been produced and lighted, the conversation began in French, ‘which,’
writes Lord Randolph, ‘was a great disappointment to me, for he can
speak English perfectly; and sometimes he talked rather low and in his
beard, so that I, who do not hear very well, missed some of his
remarks.’
Lord Randolph’s account proceeds:--
‘After some general observations as to the time when he was in England
last and when I was presented to him, and inquiries as to my stay in
Russia and intentions of going to Moscow, His Majesty said: “Well, I
hope you have been long enough in St. Petersburg to find out that we are
not so terribly warlike as we are made out to be.” I replied that I did
not think that anyone in England of information had the smallest doubts
of the strong desire of His Majesty for peace and of the reluctance of
the Russian Government to go to war. This had been abundantly shown by
several incidents in the course of the last two years. The Czar remarked
that the English journals were very bitter against Russia and
attributed all sorts of malignant intentions to her. He added that he
had been told that some of them were subsidised by Monsieur de Bismarck
and excited against Russia by him. I told him that I could not think
there was any foundation for the last statement, though I had heard a
story of the * * * * having been paid by Monsieur de Bismarck to insert
some months ago some startling announcement as to the relations between
Germany and France; but that it was said that one of the proprietors had
lost a large sum of money owing to the fall in securities which followed
that announcement. Speaking generally on the question of English
journals, I expressed a hope that His Majesty would not pay much
attention to the remarks of English newspapers; that no public man in
England ever cared a rap for anything they said; that they were quite
irresponsible, and on foreign affairs as a rule very ill-informed. I
particularly urged the non-importance of the London press as any guide
to English public opinion, which was far better expressed and followed
by the provincial press and the leading daily journals of our large
towns. His Majesty seemed struck by this and said that some one had told
him the same thing once before.
‘After saying that he had a great wish to go to England for the purpose
of ascertaining the drift of English policy, he asked after Mr.
Gladstone and whether there was any chance of his returning to office. I
replied that Mr. Gladstone was very old and aged, that there seemed to
be no reason why the present Parliament should not last for three or
four years, and that it was hardly conceivable that after that period
Mr. Gladstone would be physically capable of official duty, even if
other circumstances were favourable. This latter contingency was
extremely remote, as in my opinion the combination of parties against
him was too strong to be resisted, and would probably keep the
Opposition out of office for years. In a word, that no rational
politician would count on Mr. Gladstone’s return to office as a
practical factor in politics. His Majesty appearing to be under the
impression that the breach between Mr. Gladstone and the party of Lord
Hartington was not a very irreparable one, and might be made up, I told
His Majesty that at the commencement that was so, but the course of
events during this year had hopelessly embittered the quarrel; and that
Lord Hartington had taken up, with the assent of his followers, a very
strong position of opposition in general to Mr. Gladstone, mainly on
account of their conviction that Mr. Gladstone’s internal policy was
anarchical. His Majesty asked after several other public men--Lord
Granville (_un homme charmant_), Lord Derby, Mr. Goschen.
‘His Majesty then went on to say that he was anxious to have visited
England in order to have a full explanation with Lord Salisbury
”_jusqu’à présent l’ennemi acharné de la Russie_.” I reminded His
Majesty that at the time of the Conference of Constantinople Lord
Salisbury had by no means been such an enemy, but that at that time he
probably had great sympathy for Russia; that after that events had
taken an unfortunate turn, and that Lord Beaconsfield’s influence had
prevailed, and English policy been directed into an anti-Russian groove;
but I also reminded His Majesty that Lord Salisbury had in August last
made a speech at the Mansion House--which, coming from him, was of great
significance--which was marked by a tone of perfect friendship for
Russia and a strong belief in the possibility of good relations between
the two countries.
‘His Majesty did not disagree to all this, and said he hoped it was so,
as he must have an understanding (or settlement) with England _une jois
pour toutes_. These words he repeated more than once in the
conversation. I said the great difficulty between us had been the
Central Asian Question. He said it ought not to be a difficulty any
longer, that the Russians wanted no more, that they had more than they
could manage; but that the policy of the neutral zone had altogether
broken down and proved to be nonsense; that the two Powers must be
_limitrophes_, that we were making a great mistake in still pursuing the
neutral-zone policy by insisting on the independence of Afghanistan,
which we ought to take and govern ourselves. To this I replied, in the
first place, that I had never understood that Afghan territories were
included in any neutral zone; that, on the contrary, I thought it had
always been accorded that Afghanistan was outside Russian influence and
must be solely under British influence. To this His Majesty said
nothing. I went on to say that it was vital to us in India to exclude
all foreign influence from Afghanistan, and to retain its government
under our sole guidance; that we could not tolerate the smallest
departure from this principle, and I said that if His Majesty thought we
were too strong and unyielding on this matter he had only to recollect
the essential nature of the Indian Government--250,000 whites ruling 250
million _indigènes_; that a Government of that kind rested almost
entirely on its _morale_ and prestige; and that _la moindre attente_
against its prestige, if not promptly and effectively dealt with, might
become the gravest wound; that any attempt to exercise influence other
than British in Afghanistan would be such an _attente_. I went on to say
that our position was not perhaps quite logical; for that, holding such
opinions, we ought to take Afghanistan. This, I said, we could not do,
as public opinion and the Parliament would be invincibly opposed to any
such large extension of our Indian Empire, except under circumstances of
the most critical and forcible character; that that was our
position--that while we could allow no interference by others we would
not assume the responsibility of direct government by ourselves; and
that it seemed to me that a frank acceptance of that position would be
essential to any understanding between the two countries. His Majesty
having commented generally on this, and having contrasted our position
with his own as regarded Khiva and Bokhara--which, he averred, were now
most tranquil and prosperous, instead of utterly disordered as they used
to be--went on to speak of the European position as it affected the two
countries.
‘“With regard to the Black Sea and the Dardanelles, if you desire peace
and friendship with Russia, you must not mix yourselves up there against
us. We will never suffer,” His Majesty said, with some slight approach
to excitement, “any other Power to hold the Dardanelles except the Turks
or ourselves; and if the Turks ultimately go out, it is by Russians that
they will be succeeded.”
‘I replied that I had always understood that that was the Russian view
and that I would offer no criticism or comment on it, as it appeared to
me to be too speculative for practical purposes; that as regarded
present European difficulties Constantinople was in no way _en jeu_; and
that I did not think that questions concerning its ultimate fate ought
to disturb relations between England and Russia.
‘With respect to Bulgaria I expressed my own strong opinion that England
had no direct or important interests in that part of Europe and that it
could be no object to us to oppose the exercise of what I admitted was
legitimate Russian influence there; that, if we had any interests, they
were purely platonic, on behalf of liberty generally, and springing from
a general anxiety that treaties should be maintained; beyond that they
did not go. I added that in my opinion the policy of the Crimean War,
which was also adopted in ‘76-‘78 by England, had come to an end with
the election of 1880 and was not likely to be renewed or resumed; that
the English people were not likely to fight for the Turks, nor for the
Bulgarians; and that they were not likely to associate themselves with
Austria; that the policy which the English people would prefer about
that part of Europe was complete neutrality and non-intervention. I said
more than once that I knew nothing whatever of the Government policy;
that I had no connection with the Government, direct or indirect; that I
only spoke as one who had had much opportunity of learning the
disposition of Parliament and the tendency of opinion among the people.
‘His Majesty asked me if the views I had expressed were shared by Lord
Hartington. I replied that it was almost impossible to say accurately
what Lord Hartington’s views were, as he was a man of remarkable
reserve, but His Majesty would recollect that from 1880 to 1885, when
the English Government pursued in Europe a policy which was certainly
one of friendship and loyalty to Russia and of undisguised indifference
as to the fate of the Turk, Lord Hartington was, after Mr. Gladstone,
the leading man in that Government, and that I had no reason to suppose
that he had in any way receded from the foreign policy he then
contributed to give effect to. His Majesty, speaking about Egypt, said
that Russia had no desire to interfere with us there in any way. On the
contrary, they had no interests in that country. He added that he did
not see why England and France should not be perfectly good friends on
all Egyptian matters. To this I replied that understandings with France
appeared to be impossible; that not only did Governments succeed each
other there with hopeless rapidity, but that the very form of Government
in France was ephemeral. To this His Majesty quite assented, and said:
“Well, if you like, you have a great task before you on your return to
England--to improve the relations between Russia and England.” I replied
that for some time past I had worked in that direction and should
continue to do so, although in certain quarters, Parliamentary and
otherwise, my views had not hitherto been regarded with favour; but that
I had formed a strong opinion that a thorough understanding between
England and Russia was possible and would be of the greatest advantage
to both. I added that I had said nothing, either to His Majesty or to M.
de Giers, which I had not very often said to Lord Salisbury while I was
his colleague.
‘His Majesty, who throughout the interview had been wonderfully kind,
quiet and simple, talking evidently with unreserve and allowing me to do
the same without displeasure, then brought to a close a conversation
which had lasted for about forty-five minutes.’
The next day Lord and Lady Randolph had intended to go to Moscow; but an
invitation, equal to a command, to a party at Gatschina, delayed them.
‘It was,’ wrote Lord Randolph, ‘certainly a very pretty and interesting
sight. The Emperor and the Empress were very kind to us, and I sat at
supper, at the Empress’s table, between the Grand Duchess Elizabeth
(daughter of the Duke of Hesse and very beautiful) and the Grand Duchess
Catharine. I made the acquaintance of some interesting people, _entre
autres_ of General Ignatieff. M. de Giers sat by me during most of the
play. There was first a French play, then a quartette from _Rigoletto_,
then the duo from _The Huguenots_, then a Russian play (quite
unintelligible), and then another French play. The programme was too
long. Between the pieces the Emperor and Empress walked about and spoke
to people, and there was a large buffet where everyone went and lapped.
The whole thing was splendidly done.’
The marked consideration shown to the English visitor increased the
gossip--good-humoured and spiteful alike--at home; and in the Russian
capital, where everyone takes his cue from the Czar, Lord and Lady
Randolph for some days almost engrossed the attention of Society and the
press. Reporters and telegram agents hovered gloomily round the hotel
from morn till dusk. Skating parties, in which Lady Randolph much
distinguished herself, and visits to important people occupied the days,
and banquets and receptions the nights. Long tours through peerless
galleries and museums, where Lord Randolph recognised with regret not a
few alienated Blenheim treasures; a flying visit to Moscow; the
‘Blessing of the Waters’ on the feast of the Epiphany, ‘when the Emperor
had to stand bareheaded in the cold for a good long time’; a rout of 800
persons given in his honour by Lady Morier at the British Embassy, were
among the incidents of a brilliant fortnight. ‘I am sure in England,’
Lord Randolph wrote to his mother, ‘it would bore me dreadfully to go
to all these dinners and parties and things, but here it amuses me. I
wonder why it is.... You must not believe a word the newspapers say. I
was most careful and guarded in all my communications and confined
myself to general beaming upon everyone. Lord S. may or may not be
angry, but I am certain that my going to Russia has had a good effect
and can at any rate do no harm.’
He lingered a little on the homeward journey both in Berlin and Paris.
_To his Mother._
British Embassy, Berlin.
Here we are very comfortable. I never travelled with so much
circumstance before. The Malets are most kind and anxious to make
everything very pleasant. On Monday night the opera, where was
represented all Berlin Society _en grande tenue_; the old Emperor
looking very brisk. Yesterday the picture gallery, in which I
observed three Blenheim pictures--the Fornarina by Raphael (now
called a Sebastian del Piombo), the Andromeda of Rubens and the
great Bacchanalia picture by Rubens.... To-night Malet has an
immense feast--thirty-six persons. I went this morning to Potsdam
to write my name on Prince William, who called on us yesterday and
saw Jennie while I was out. Then luncheon with Herbert
Bismarck--very pleasant--no one else but Herr von Pothenberg,
Prince Bismarck’s _chef de cabinet_. We talked very freely for a
long time, and drank a great deal of beer, champagne, claret,
sherry and brandy! H.B. is delightful, so frank and honest.... I
have not a doubt that the Chancellor kept away purposely. He is a
_grincheux_ old creature, and knows quite well that I will use all
my influence, as I have done, to prevent Lord S. from being towed
in his wake.... Some correspondents have been to see me, but I have
been very snubby to them.
And so back to England, pursued by rumours with which the _Times_
thought it worth while to fill three columns of its foreign telegrams.
CHAPTER XX
CROSS CURRENTS
‘Surely there is no better way to stop the rising of sects and
schisms than to reform abuses; to compound the smaller differences;
to proceed mildly, and not with sanguinary persecutions; and rather
to take off the principal authors, by winning and advancing them,
than to enrage by violence and bitterness.’--BACON.
Sixteen months had passed, after Lord Randolph Churchill resigned,
before he became involved in a serious and open difference with the
Conservative Government. That he was separated from them by sentiment
and conviction, not only upon various considerable questions of method,
but upon the general character and temper of their policy, has been
abundantly explained. But his misgivings were concealed from the public
by his consistent defence of the Union, by an unaffected partisanship
and by the lively attacks which he made upon the Opposition. It is true
that the criticisms upon naval and military administration which had
been a necessary feature of his crusade of economy had naturally won him
little favour in Ministerial circles, and his open independence of the
official leaders could not be welcomed by his party. But the details of
departmental administration, though of immense practical importance, do
not usually raise, and ought scarcely ever to raise, questions of
confidence and loyalty. The efficient conduct of the services and the
doctrines of public thrift are--formally, at least--included in the
principles of both great political organisations. Except at rare
intervals, they lie apart from the ordinary scope of Parliamentary
conflict; and their discussion should never seriously divide political
associates. But Ireland opened chasms of a very different kind.
When Sir Michael Hicks-Beach recovered his eyesight, Lord Salisbury was
anxious for him to rejoin the Government and offered him--no other post
being vacant--the Presidency of the Board of Trade. Beach, for whom
office had few attractions, who was on many questions in full sympathy
with Lord Randolph, and who was always bound to him by firm friendship,
was in no hurry to accept. He proposed to Lord Randolph, as they walked
down one day to the House together, that he should decline Lord
Salisbury’s offer and that they should both sit together and work
together for the rest of the Parliament. Lord Randolph would not,
however, countenance this generous attempt to relieve the isolation of
his position. He urged Sir Michael to join the Government. ‘They need
you,’ he said, ‘and besides, I shall like to feel I have one friend
there’ (February 1888).
During the whole of 1887 Lord Randolph had regularly supported his late
colleagues. Any opinions he had expressed on the Budget and the Land
Bill had been of a friendly nature and in the interests of those
measures. He had joined in the debates of the House with the same tone
and intention as he would have spoken in the Cabinet. No divergence of
principle on a dominant issue had yet occurred. The Government had
acted--however uninspiringly--in conformity with the main lines of the
policy declared at the General Election. It was not until the year 1888
that the question of Irish Local Government and the Suakin operations
provoked a definite and notorious disagreement. On both these matters
Lord Randolph Churchill had made public declarations of the plainest
character in Opposition or as Leader of the House of Commons, and to
those pledges he adhered with a truly Quixotic disregard of his personal
interests.
‘On this question of Local Government,’ Lord Randolph had stated in
August 1886, speaking in the House of Commons in the name of the
Conservative party, and with the full authority of the Cabinet as a
whole, of the Prime Minister, of the Chief Secretary of the day, and of
the leaders of the Liberal Unionists--‘the great sign-posts of our
policy are equality, similarity and, if I may use such a word,
simultaneity, as far as is practicable, in the development of a
genuinely popular system of Local Government in the four countries which
form the United Kingdom.’ The months had slipped away. A year and a half
were gone. When Lord Randolph left the Government their good resolutions
in respect of Ireland faded. Their pledges were long to remain
unredeemed. The arguments appropriate to such occasions were employed:
the circumstances had changed; the disaffection of the people was
patent; the Irish were unfitted by character and history for popular
institutions.
It was a Wednesday afternoon (April 25), and under the old rules of
procedure the House rose at half-past five. A Nationalist member had
moved the second reading of an Irish County Government Bill, roughly
designed to merge boards of guardians, lunatic asylum boards and town
commissioners in smaller towns into county councils. To this a reasoned
amendment was moved, with the concurrence of the Government, by a
private member from the Unionist benches, setting forth the inexpediency
at that time of introducing any large constitutional change in Ireland.
Mr. Gladstone spoke in support of the Bill, and Mr. Balfour made an airy
reply, instancing the improper conduct of Irish local bodies and
declaring that that country was not fit for any extension of Local
Government. Something in his easy manner, thus dismissing
unceremoniously--almost, as it seemed, unconsciously--solemn pledges
elaborately given to the electorate at a time of choice, and renewed in
Parliament after the decision, seems to have stirred Lord Randolph’s
blood. He got up immediately the Chief Secretary finished. Speaking with
much restraint, but with sufficient sharpness of manner to prevent him
referring to his old comrade as a ‘right honourable friend,’ he reminded
the Government and the swiftly-offended party of the declarations by
which they were bound, and the authority upon which those declarations
had been made.
‘All the circumstances,’ he said, ‘upon which the Chief Secretary has
enlarged this afternoon, showing the defects which exist in the working
of popular institutions in Ireland and the dangers that might be
anticipated from their extension, were before the Government of Lord
Salisbury at the time when they had to take a decision--a most momentous
decision--upon this question.... The idea of the Government at that time
was that a certain just extension, within reasonable limits, of Local
Government in Ireland was to be looked upon as a remedy for the great
evils which have been dwelt upon by the Chief Secretary.... I recollect
that the pledges given by the Unionist party were large and liberal,
were distinct and full, and that there was no reservation in those
pledges with respect to all the defects pointed out this afternoon in
the Irish character and in respect of Irish unfitness for Local
Government--nothing of the kind. We pledged ourselves that we would at
the very earliest opportunity extend to Ireland the same amount of Local
Government which we might give to England and Scotland. I venture to
say--and I do not care how much I am contradicted, or what the
consequences may be--that that was the foundation of the Unionist party;
and, more, that that is the only platform on which you can resist
Repeal. If you are going to the English people, relying merely on the
strength of your Executive power--if you are going to preach that the
Irish must for an indefinite time be looked upon as an inferior
community--unfit for the privileges which the English people
enjoy--then I tell you that you may retain that position for a time,
but only for a time, and that the time will probably be a short one....
The words I used in representing the Government at that table were that
in approaching this momentous question of Local Government we should do
so with similarity, equality and simultaneity. The time has gone by
altogether for me to bear, and I will be content no longer to bear,
solely the responsibility of those words; and I do not think that there
would be a _bonâ fide_ carrying-out of the policy I then announced if
Ireland is not to have a measure of Local Government, until the state of
order in that country is satisfactory to the Executive Government.’
Only a short time remained before the sitting must end. Chamberlain rose
at once from the Front Opposition Bench and in a speech of four minutes
said that he should vote with the Government on the understanding that
measures of local reform for Ireland were simply delayed by pressure of
business. Before the Leader of the House could add anything to the
debate Mr. Parnell moved the Closure--the Irish desiring to obtain the
division usual on such private members’ Bills--and the incident ended.
But it left an estrangement behind.
The second quarrel did not arise till eight months later. In November
1888 the chronic skirmishing and raiding around Suakin developed into a
regular blockade of that place, and the squalid, worthless, pestilential
Red Sea port became again a bone of strife between brave men in the
desert and wise men in the Senate. I do not need to remind the reader
of the vehement attacks which Lord Randolph Churchill had made upon Mr.
Gladstone’s Egyptian policy, or of the support and approval which those
attacks had received from the Conservative party and the Conservative
press. No part of those strictures had been more effective or more
violent than that which referred to the operations around Suakin. They
had not, as many people on both sides of politics had believed and
freely stated, been impelled mainly by a factious desire to discredit
and embarrass Mr. Gladstone’s Administration. That was, no doubt, an
obvious contributory motive; but behind it lay a profound detestation of
the purposeless bloodshed with which Soudan history, and especially
Suakin history, had since 1883 been stained. ‘I do not hesitate to say,’
he declared in 1888, ‘that I hate the Soudan. The idea to me of risking
the life of a single British soldier in that part of the world is
inexpressibly repugnant.’ Whatever he might have thought at another
time, when the finances of Egypt were restored and the Dervish fires had
burnt low, of a methodical and scientific reconquest of the country, he
was sincerely opposed in 1888, as in Mr. Gladstone’s day, to the policy
known as ‘kill and retire.’ It seemed to him the highest unwisdom,
whether from a political or military point of view, to despatch a single
British battalion, swamped among four thousand Egyptian soldiers, with
no other object, even if successful, than to fight a battle, decimate
the hostile tribesmen and return. He recalled the small beginnings and
the insufficient forces out of which great and far-reaching events in
Zululand and in the Transvaal had sprung. And he did not lack, as was
afterwards proved, the support of high authorities for his opinion. ‘I
can assure you,’ telegraphed Lord Cromer (then Sir Evelyn Baring) to
Lord Salisbury on December 6, ‘that, unless great care is taken, the
Government may be dragged into another big Soudan business almost before
they are aware of it’; and, again, ‘all sorts of arguments will probably
be put forward about tranquillising the Soudan once and for all. I
believe that these arguments are of very little value and that for the
present the Soudan cannot be tranquillised without the re-occupation of
Khartoum, which would require a large force.’[66]
On these subjects and in this tenor Lord Randolph delivered three
speeches in the House of Commons, which were, as may be easily imagined,
met with unstinted resentment by his party. He spoke first on December
1, a general debate on the vote for embassies and foreign missions
having been raised by Mr. Morley; and three days later he moved the
adjournment of the House. This step created extravagant surprise and
anger. He rose, as the newspapers took care to point out, to make his
motion absolutely alone on the Government side of the House. He was
supported by the whole Opposition. He spoke--as, indeed, throughout the
Parliament of 1886--with gravity and moderation, and made a quiet,
earnest appeal to the House to prevent the renewal of the Soudan
warfare. His motion for the adjournment was unexpected, and the
Government were for some time, during the debate that followed, in a
minority. At a quarter-past six, however, when the division was taken,
they secured a majority of forty-two, although a half-dozen
Conservatives--among whom Mr. Hanbury was probably the best-known--voted
against them.
Loud and long was the expression of Ministerial wrath. ‘In order to
discredit his views,’ wrote Jennings, in his preface to Lord Randolph
Churchill’s speeches, ‘it was necessary to bring into play those
formidable weapons of misrepresentation which can never be used with
greater effect than when they are directed by persons who have the
entire machinery of a great party at their command.’ He was accused
forthwith of having laid a plot with the Opposition to destroy the
Government on a snap division; and the ‘treachery’ and ‘ingratitude’ of
such conduct were for some days a popular and fertile theme. He was even
forced to defend himself in public from such imputations. His reply was
explicit: ‘(1) If I had desired,’ he wrote to an inquiring person, ‘to
snatch a surprise division on the motion for the adjournment of the
House, which I made on Tuesday last with regard to Suakin, I should not
have occupied fifty minutes of the time of the House with my own speech.
(2) If I had desired by the aid of the Opposition to defeat the
Government, I should not have selected an evening when the supporters of
the Government, under the pressure of a five-line whip, were likely to
be present in great numbers in order to take part in a division on an
Irish vote which had been arranged to come off before the dinner-hour.
(3) The fact of the matter is that the case against the Suakin
expedition is so strong, and the line taken with respect to similar
expeditions by the Tories when they were in Opposition was so marked,
that I felt very confident of receiving appreciable support from the
ranks of the Ministerialists. For that reason I welcomed every
circumstance which was likely to bring together a full House.’
It is not suggested that Lord Randolph Churchill was unwilling to defeat
the Government by his motion. Its object was to prevent the proposed
action in the Soudan. That object could only have been attained by an
adverse vote in the House of Commons. Whether such a vote would have
involved the resignation of Ministers is uncertain. The pretence that a
simple motion for adjournment, necessarily unaccompanied by any
substantive censure of policy, should directly involve a change of
Government is a modern abuse of Parliamentary practice. But even had the
fate of the Government turned on the division--as, of course, they
declared it would--conscientious conviction in an urgent matter of life
and death would have fully justified Lord Randolph in the course he
took. His action was reasonable, consistent and fair. Whether he was
right on the merits of the question or as to its importance in relation
to the general political situation, must be judged by others.
The Government profited both by the counsels which were offered them and
by the result of their final decision. The British force despatched to
Suakin was reinforced. The scope of the warfare was rigidly confined.
Nothing that might prove extensive or entangling was permitted and, on
the other hand, the limited operation was in itself completely
successful. On December 21 an engagement was fought outside Suakin. The
Dervishes were routed with heavy slaughter and driven away into the
desert, whence--as it luckily happened--they did not subsequently choose
to return in numbers sufficient to cause anxiety to the garrison or
seriously disturb the peace of the Red Sea Littoral.
The speeches of Lord Randolph Churchill in Parliament during the years
from 1887 to 1890 were the best in manner and command he ever made. He
stood alone, surrounded by enemies who were once his supporters, and
faced by opponents whose plaudits he did not desire; but if he had still
been Leader of the House he could not have been more at his ease and
more sure of himself. His style was serious enough to suit the dullest;
and yet point after point was made with a clearness and rhetorical force
to which the dullest could not be insensible. His voice penetrated
everywhere without apparent effort. Every tone was full of meaning. He
was sparing of gesture and cared little for oratorical ornament. He was
always heard with profound attention by the House, with obvious anxiety
by the Government, and usually in silence by the Conservative party.
The influence which he exerted upon the course of affairs outside the
ordinary divisions of party was palpable and noteworthy. With the full
consent of the Government he moved (February 16, 1888) the Address to
the Crown, which being assented to unanimously by the House, called into
being the Royal Commission upon the alleged corruption and improprieties
of the Metropolitan Board of Works. When a member of Parliament had been
guilty of a libel upon the Speaker, it was Lord Randolph Churchill who
with formidable authority of manner, and complete mastery of
Parliamentary practice, persuaded, and indeed compelled, the House to
resolve his suspension for an entire month (July 20, 1888). One hot
summer afternoon (June 27, 1888) he appeared unexpectedly in his place
and practically laughed the Channel Tunnel Bill--supported though it was
by Mr. Gladstone and many prominent Tories--out of the House of Commons.
Sir Edward Watkin, the promoter, had explained a device by which a
Minister of State by touching a button could in an instant blow up the
entrance to the tunnel. ‘Imagine,’ exclaimed Lord Randolph, drawing an
airy finger along the Treasury bench--‘Imagine a Cabinet Council sitting
in the War Office around the button. Fancy the present Cabinet gathered
together to decide who should touch the button and when it should be
touched.’ He had intended to add, ‘Fancy the right honourable member for
Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith) rising at length in his place with the
words “I move that the button be now touched,”’ but the laughter from
all parties which this diverting picture had already excited led him to
forget the climax he had contemplated. The Bill was rejected by 307 to
165. Few private members, divorced alike from office and from the
official Opposition, have in modern times been able by their unaided
personal force so powerfully to sway the opinion of Parliament.
And now must be related an incident which, though not in itself of
historical importance, created a great hubbub at the time and involved
an open political dispute and severance between Lord Randolph Churchill
and Mr. Chamberlain. Although Lord Randolph was comfortably settled in
Paddington and enjoyed the luxury of a safe seat, he always hankered
after Birmingham. Contact with a democratic electorate in a centre of
active political thought was always personally very alluring to him; and
it is singular that he never achieved his ambition of representing a
popular constituency. But if these were general predilections,
Birmingham offered attractions of its own. His association with the
Birmingham Tories during the fighting days of 1884 and 1885 had formed
ties of mutual regard and comradeship which proved strong enough--in the
case of those who had come into personal touch with him, at any rate--to
stand all the strains of the lean and melancholy years that followed. No
amount of party disapprobation, of pressure from headquarters, of
newspaper abuse, affected the faithfulness of those with whom he had
fought side by side. They scorned every suggestion that he was
‘disloyal’ to the party. They held by him through thick and thin. In
spite of the frowns of party leaders, and sometimes of real divergences
of opinion, the controlling forces in the Midland Conservative Club were
always unswerving in his support; and the last time he ever appeared on
a public platform was in the Birmingham Town Hall.
There were, moreover, obvious reasons why, in the early part of 1889,
Lord Randolph should have wished to be sustained by the vote of a great
constituency. He was out of joint with his party. He was almost alone in
the House of Commons. All the orthodox and official forces in the
Conservative party were hostile to him. He had taken an independent
course on various important questions, and that course had twice been
directly opposed to Lord Salisbury’s Government. There was asserted to
be a definite compact between the local Conservative leaders in
Birmingham and the Liberal Unionists that, in the event of a vacancy in
the Central Division, Lord Randolph Churchill was to be invited by both
wings of the Unionist party to stand. This agreement was personal to
Lord Randolph and particular to Birmingham, and quite independent of any
general arrangement respecting Conservative and Liberal-Unionist seats;
and a clear understanding to this effect existed between Lord Randolph
and Mr. Chamberlain. There was, therefore, no doubt that if a vacancy
occurred Lord Randolph had a right to stand and to look for the support
of both sections of the party. If he did not stand himself, then only
the nomination of a candidate would rest properly with the Liberal
Unionists. It was admitted that in such a contest he would be victorious
by a majority of two or three thousand votes; and his friends believed,
almost without exception, that such a victory, involving as it did a
popular endorsement of all that he had done since he left the Cabinet,
must enormously raise his prestige in Parliament and the country.
All through the year 1888 Mr. Bright lay desperately ill. At the end of
May Mr. Chamberlain, who had just returned from his American trip, and
who was still on most friendly terms with Lord Randolph, wrote to tell
him that he feared the end was approaching, to ask what Lord Randolph
would do, and to promise him support should he decide to stand. Lord
Randolph replied (May 30, 1888): ‘I hope Mr. Bright will get better. The
news this morning is more favourable. In the event of a vacancy
occurring, I should not leave Paddington unless it was the strong and
unanimous wish of the Tories and of your party combined, and unless they
were of opinion that there was real danger of the seat being lost if I
did not stand. I do not imagine, however, that these two conditions are
likely to arise. The seat is a Liberal-Unionist seat and that party has
a clear right to put forward one of their own number, and to receive a
full measure of Tory support.’ These communications were on both sides
informal. They did not in any way affect the compact. They were merely
assurances as to what the writers would do personally under the compact
as it existed, if the issue were raised at that time. The issue was not
raised. Mr. Bright rallied and survived almost for another year. When he
died, on March 27, 1889, quite a different situation had been created.
Lord Randolph Churchill ardently desired to stand. Mr. Chamberlain was
vehement to prevent him. The dispute that followed is not in its essence
difficult to understand. A definite agreement exists between two
friends. They agree as friends to interpret it in a particular manner.
They cease to be friends as regards politics. They wish to interpret it
in another manner; and they quote one another’s friendly assurances as
if they were an integral part of the agreement itself. Neither is
legally bound; both are morally embarrassed. In the present case the
complexity of the dispute was aggravated by all sorts of conflicting
statements and promises made at different times by the local leaders.
Into these it is not necessary to enter.
[Sidenote: 1889 ÆT. 40]
Lord Randolph Churchill’s right to stand was, of course, incontestable.
Compact or no compact, his claim upon the Liberal-Unionist vote was
strong. He had polled 4,216 Conservative votes against Mr. Bright
himself in that very constituency. He had only been defeated by 773. The
Conservative organisation was unanimous in his favour. He was ‘idolised’
(this is the word that is used most frequently in contemporary accounts)
by the rank and file. They outnumbered by three or four to one the
Liberal Unionists in the division. Their votes had contributed
four-fifths of the poll of all the Liberal-Unionist members in the city.
Lord Randolph had himself been the principal agent by which the return
of these gentlemen had been secured. On the day after the vacancy was
declared the _Birmingham Daily Post_, the official Liberal-Unionist
organ, published an article supporting his candidature and giving the
Conservatives reason to believe that it would be accepted by both
parties; nor did Mr. Chamberlain himself deny that if Lord Randolph came
forward it would be his duty to support him. The only question was:
Should he come forward?
No sooner was Mr. Bright dead than the Birmingham Conservatives appealed
to Lord Randolph. All his friends and well-wishers pressed him to stand.
Mr. Jennings was insistent. FitzGibbon urged him to ‘chuck another big
town’ at the ‘old gang.’ ‘It would be like the Paris elections to
Boulanger,’ said others. Colonel North, with the blunt decision of a
business man, telegraphed to him from Santiago: ‘Be sure contest
Birmingham.’ Faithful supporters offered to place their seats at his
disposal in case of accidents. Lord Randolph does not seem to have
anticipated any opposition from Mr. Chamberlain; yet it should have been
sufficiently evident that Mr. Chamberlain’s interests and inclinations
were not likely to be served by the establishment of ‘Two kings in
Brentford.’ So long as they were allies working in concert, it might
be--perhaps it must be--endured. Now that they were separated and
pursuing independent, and even divergent, courses the idea was
intolerable. No difficulty or dispute was, however, apprehended. On
April 2, when the writ was moved, Lord Randolph Churchill had every
reason to suppose that complete unanimity prevailed. A deputation of
Birmingham Tories waited on him at the House of Commons on that day with
a hearty invitation. It seemed that his election was secured, and that a
giant majority was certain.
And here I leave the account to Mr. Jennings:--
_Mr. Jennings’s Account of the Birmingham Affair._
Tuesday, April 2, 1889.
On my going to the House I met R. C. in the lobby. He drew me
aside, and whispered that the deputation would be here presently.
Would I meet them in the outer lobby, bring them inside, and talk
to them till he came back? He was just going to see Hicks-Beach a
few moments. He was turning away, but came back and said: ‘May I
ask you to do me another favour? Go and draw up a draft farewell
address to the electors of South Paddington and an address to the
electors of Birmingham.’ ‘When do you want them?’ ‘This afternoon.’
he said. After a few more words he went away.
I made arrangements with Mr. Mattinson (M.P. for a Liverpool
division) to meet the deputation while I went into the library to
write out the addresses. I had finished the one for South
Paddington and was half-way through the other when Mattinson came
to me and told me the deputation were outside. I went to them, and
had a little chat. They were radiant, having no reason whatever to
anticipate a refusal. Mr. Rowlands told me R. C. was sure of a
majority of between 2,000 and 3,000. After a talk I went back to
finish the address, but met E. Beckett in one of the corridors. He
said; ‘Have you heard what he has done?’ ‘No.’ ‘He has left it to
Hartington and Chamberlain to decide what he will do.’ I was
completely bewildered, and went into the smoking-room to look for
R. C. Directly he saw me he came up and led me out into the
corridor. There we walked up and down a long time, talking about
it. He said he had been with Hicks-Beach, who was dead against his
going to Birmingham. While they two were talking a knock came at
the door and someone said Lord Hartington particularly wished to
see Lord R. C. R. C. said: ‘Let him come in here.’ H. did so, and
said Chamberlain was ‘furious’ at the idea of R. C. going to
Birmingham--that he was ‘in a state of extreme irritability.’ Would
they (Beach and Churchill) mind having Chamberlain in to hear what
he had to say? Churchill said no, but he would go away for half an
hour and leave them to discuss the matter. He would abide by their
decision.
When he told me this I said: ‘Surely you must know what their
decision will be? Why, they would not want half a minute to decide
that you shall not go. Chamberlain is “Boss” in Birmingham, and he
means to remain so. He does not want you there, dividing his
popularity with him or, most likely, taking the lion’s share of
it.’ And so on.
R. C. did not seem to think it so certain that they would decide
against him and said, moreover, that he could not take the
responsibility of dividing the Unionist party. After a time he said
he would go back and hear their decision. In the meanwhile
Akers-Douglas had carried off the Birmingham deputation to his own
room.
I should think about a quarter of an hour elapsed, when R. C.
reappeared in the lobby, from the House, and made for the outer
door. He saw me and said: ‘Where are the deputation--in the
Conference Room?’ I told him where they were. ‘It is all over,’ he
said. ‘I cannot stand for the seat. I’ll tell you all about it
by-and-by.’
I would not go into the room, because I am not on terms with
Akers-Douglas; but when a division-bell rang, and Akers-Douglas
came out, I went in. The deputation were very incensed and loudly
declared they had been cheated, and would go back and vote for the
Gladstonian candidate. R. C. tried to smooth them down, but it was
quite useless....
The deputation were not alone in their disgust. Mr. Jennings was so
vexed by what he conceived to be the weak and capricious abandonment of
a cherished plan that for several days he could hardly bring himself to
discuss it with Lord Randolph. His other friends were puzzled and
discouraged. They ridiculed the impartiality of the committee of three.
Chamberlain was an interested party, with a perfectly open and declared
wish to prevent Lord Randolph standing. Hartington as leader of the
Liberal Unionists could not act against the interests of his own
followers. Beach, though a staunch friend, was a member of the
Government. No wonder they had been able to come so promptly to a
decision. To Lord Randolph himself the result was a cruel
disappointment. He was isolated. He had few loyal followers and many
powerful enemies. He could ill afford to surrender such advantages as he
possessed. The others were armed with all the resources of a vast
confederacy. Of his little he gave freely. In their prosperity and power
they accepted the sacrifice as a matter of course. Mr. Chamberlain, it
is true, was careful to say publicly[67] that Lord Randolph’s action was
‘in loyal accord with the arrangements made with the Conservative
leaders, including himself, in 1886,’ and to emphasise his ‘honourable
determination not to break the national compact of which he was a chief
party in 1886.’ But the _Times_, then in the closest agreement with the
governing forces of the Conservative party, though admitting that Lord
Randolph had acted ‘with thorough loyalty to the great cause that unites
us all,’ permitted itself (April 6) to observe that ‘if the Birmingham
Conservatives had any right to be aggrieved at the loss of their pet
candidate it was to him, and to no one else, that they ought to address
their complaints.’
The dispute was continued passionately at Birmingham. Mr. John Albert
Bright was duly brought forward as the Liberal-Unionist candidate for
the Central Division. The Conservative leaders there--Rowlands, Sawyer,
Satchell-Hopkins, Moore Bayley--utterly refused to support him. They
were local men, and against them were arrayed the whole authority of
their party chiefs and the force and influence of a great national
politician. But they had fought hard battles before, and although they
thought themselves deserted by Lord Randolph Churchill they faced the
situation with obstinacy. They declared that the Liberal Unionists had
broken faith with them and that Mr. Chamberlain had intrigued and used
unfair pressure to prevent Lord Randolph from standing. Their
determination not to support Mr. J. A. Bright was endorsed by their
followers. For several days it seemed as if the Gladstonian candidate,
Mr. Phipson Beale, would carry the seat.
So critical was the position that Mr. Balfour was hurried down to
restore peace. A crowded meeting was held, at which Mr. Rowlands was
bold enough to say that the Birmingham Conservatives were not prepared
to bow down to anything that might be settled in London, and the more
vigorous members of the Midland Conservative Club shouted ‘No
surrender!’ Mr. Balfour was at his best. He dwelt upon Lord Randolph’s
refusal to stand--‘he had absolutely declined to do so.’ There was
almost a suggestion that the speaker doubted the wisdom of that
decision--but there it was! He then asserted the unimpeachable right of
the local Conservatives to choose their own candidate. He deprecated
strongly the interference of London politicians in local matters. But he
urged them, in the free exercise of their discretion, utterly
uninfluenced by such interference, to oppose the return of a
Gladstonian. He carried the meeting with him. The local leaders were
divided. Some acquiesced; some stood aside for a time. The part Mr.
Rowlands had played had been too bold and prominent for retreat or
pardon. Birmingham politics are bitter. Notwithstanding that every
Conservative organisation in the city passed resolutions urging him to
retain his leadership, he resigned his offices and withdrew altogether
from public life. He should be remembered for having carried out the
arrangement of 1886, whereby the Conservatives gave their full support
to the Radical Unionists, ‘asking for no return, making no boast or
taunt,’ on which arrangement Mr. Chamberlain’s second empire in
Birmingham was ultimately established; and also for his firmness and
courage amid peculiar and uncertain circumstances. Mr. John Albert
Bright was elected by a large majority, practically the whole
Conservative party having voted in his support.
Mr. Chamberlain and his friends, like practical people, said nothing
until the election was over and their candidate was returned. Then he
addressed a letter to the Birmingham papers challenging the local
Conservatives to make good their charges of bad faith and intrigue. ‘I
am perfectly ready,’ he wrote, ‘to accept full responsibility for the
advice which, in common with Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and Lord
Hartington, was tendered to Lord Randolph Churchill when he asked our
opinions. I had no right and no wish to conceal my view that Lord
Randolph Churchill’s candidature might possibly be unsuccessful, and
would certainly be regarded with disfavour by Liberal Unionists in all
parts of the country, as taking from the party one of the comparatively
few seats held by them in 1886. While, however, I maintained this
opinion, I expressed my readiness to do all in my power to promote his
return if he should finally decide to come forward.’ To the challenge to
produce proofs of a broken compact the Conservatives replied with vigour
and volubility. A whole page of the _Birmingham Gazette_ was occupied
with their statements, which appear to have been both explicit and
complete. But as the dispute turned largely on the exact terms of the
‘understanding,’ whether those terms constituted a ‘compact,’ and how
far this compact, if it existed, was modified by a general compact
relating to Liberal-Unionist seats throughout the country, and as both
parties relied mainly on their recollection of conversations which had
taken place at intervals during the preceding year, no definite issue
could be reached. But the Birmingham Conservatives were provoked anew by
the triumphant resolution passed by the Liberal Unionists affirming that
the recent election had proved their ‘preponderance of power’ in the
Central Division, and the quarrel was protracted with the rancour of
civil war and the amenities of political discussion in Birmingham.
These proceedings, which were reported very fully throughout the
country, forced Lord Randolph Churchill to publish on April 23 a
detailed statement in the form of a letter to Mr. Chamberlain. After
dealing at length with the questions of the compact he continued:--
My going to Birmingham as candidate or not going always practically
rested with you, as you perfectly well know, and you decided, no
doubt on public grounds alone, that I was not to go. Now you have
had your way, you have seated your nominee. I may claim to have
assisted you materially, not only by yielding to your desire that I
should refuse the request of the Birmingham Conservatives, but also
by counsel, oral and written, as Mr. Rowlands and others can
testify, to my friends in Birmingham to support Mr. John Albert
Bright. If ever a man was compelled by duty to be magnanimous, or
could afford to be magnanimous, it was yourself after such a
conspicuous success. Your position demanded that you should neglect
to notice any words which legitimate disappointment may have
prompted, that you should do your best to soothe irritated but just
susceptibilities, that you should suggest arrangements by which, in
future electoral contests, the two sections of the Unionist party
might work together cordially for their mutual advantage.
How widely different, however, has been your action! How curious
the return you make to the Conservatives who voted in such large
numbers for Mr. Bright, and to me, who thought I was your friend,
and who certainly--to put the matter in the most negative and
colourless manner--did nothing to interfere with Mr. Bright’s
return.
As far as I am concerned, you endeavour to embroil me and my
friends in Birmingham by representing, and by seeking to make it
appear, that I have played fast and loose with them, although in
dealing with the incident I have regarded your interests a great
deal more than my own; and in respect of the Conservative party in
Birmingham they are rewarded by an acrimonious attack from you and
their leaders, by contumely and denunciation being poured upon men
to whom they owe much and whose services they highly value; and,
finally, in order that insult may be heaped upon injury, you allow
the Liberal-Unionist Association, which is completely under your
control, at a meeting over which you presided, to set forth in a
formal and written resolution an assertion so questionable as to be
almost ridiculous, to the effect that the recent election has shown
‘that the preponderance of political power in Central Birmingham is
with the Liberal-Unionist party.’
I have entered into this controversy with you with much reluctance
and have in no way sought it; but I owe too much to the
Conservatives in Birmingham not to take up pen in their behalf
when, as it appears to me, they are treated with unqualified
injustice.
There the matter ends so far as this account is concerned; for it is not
necessary to follow the long and vexatious discussions by which, after
years had passed, the representation of the Edgbaston Division in lieu
of the Central Division was ultimately conceded to the Conservative
party. Lord Randolph’s decision has been exposed to various criticisms,
but the explanation is not obscure. He looked back with pride to the
great compact of 1886. He could not bear to take action which would be
misrepresented as hostile to the fundamental basis of the Unionist
alliance; and he knew well that the forces for influencing public
opinion against him were strong enough, whatever the actual rights and
wrongs of the Birmingham dispute, to create that impression. This
reasoning may have been sufficient; but it does not cover the fact of
his submitting his claims to the arbitrament of such a committee.
Whatever the circumstances, he himself should have decided. The
responsibility was his alone; and although it might be prudent to
receive the counsels of Lord Hartington and of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach
and to hear Mr. Chamberlain’s opinion, he should have informed them, and
not they him, of the decision that was finally taken.
It should be said that Lord Randolph Churchill never considered that Mr.
Chamberlain had treated him with any want of candour in this affair. He
did not think he had been generous in action or in victory. But he
recognised that a natural divergence had opened between them and, this,
although acute, was confined to political and public limits and did not
extend to personal relations. To the end of his life he was accustomed
to say that their only quarrel was over the Aston Riots; and they met,
though less frequently, on courteous terms. The blow was a bitter one to
Lord Randolph. His enforced desertion of his Birmingham friends cut him
to the quick. As he came out of the Whips’ room, where he had given his
answer to the deputation, a friend noticed upon his face the shadow of
that drawn and ghastly look with which it was in a few years to be
stamped.
So considerable an interval elapsed after the Suakin debates before Lord
Randolph Churchill again addressed the House of Commons that he provoked
a laugh by drolly asking ‘the indulgence usually accorded to a new
member.’ The session of 1889 had almost reached its close without the
question of making the necessary provision by Parliamentary grant for
the children of the Prince of Wales having been debated. When he rose
(July 26), in succession to Mr. Bradlaugh, from his accustomed seat
immediately behind the Treasury Bench, the Conservative members seemed
in some doubt as to his intention, and he was greeted by only a very
faint cheer. But his first words made his position manifest: ‘I have
always held an opinion, amounting to absolute conviction, as to the
indisputable right of the Crown to apply to Parliament to make provision
for the Royal Family and to rely upon the liberality of Parliament in
respect of such applications.’ Then followed one of the most happy
speeches he ever achieved. The argument, which was elaborate and
precise, was concerned largely with figures and precedents showing the
small cost of the British Monarchy compared with other forms of
Government, and the conduct of the reigning Sovereign with respect to
claims upon Parliament in comparison with some of her later
predecessors. The constitutional doctrine involved and the mode of
presenting such a case to a popular assembly are worthy of the attention
of politicians; but the whole was enlivened and adorned by a sustained
sparkle of what in those days had come to be called ‘Randolphian
humour,’ which kept the rapidly assembled House in continued laughter
and applause. When, for instance, he referred to Mr. Mundella as having
‘addressed his constituents in Paradise--Square,’ with just the
slightest pause after ‘Paradise,’ the whole House collapsed; and Mr.
Gladstone, whose sense of humour was somewhat uneven, is said to have
laughed more than at any other jest he had ever heard in Parliament.
The effect of this speech, which occupied more than an hour, was to
produce for the moment a complete reconciliation between Lord Randolph
and his party. All about him as he sat down was a stir of enthusiasm.
The Treasury Bench turned a row of delighted faces towards him. Among
his papers I find a bundle of letters, full of gratitude and praise,
written from the House by Conservative members while the impression was
strong in their minds. But Lord Randolph Churchill knew he had that to
say two days later in the Midlands which would speedily dissipate such
transient and uncourted approbation.
On successive evenings at Walsall and Birmingham he outlined an
extensive, yet not unpractical, programme of domestic legislation,
dealing especially with land and housing, and with temperance. A single
extract will show how far his mind had travelled from those serene
pastures where the Government lambs were nourished:--
...The great obstacle to temperance reform undoubtedly is the
wholesale manufacturers of alcoholic drink. Those manufacturers are
small in number, but they are very wealthy. They exercise enormous
influence. Every publican in the country almost, certainly
nine-tenths of the publicans in the country, are their abject and
tied slaves. Public-houses in nine cases out of ten are tied
houses. There is absolutely no free-will, and these wholesale
manufacturers of alcoholic drink have an enormously powerful
political organisation, so powerful and so highly prepared that it
is almost like a Prussian army: it can be mobilised at any moment
and brought to bear on the point which is threatened. Up to now
this great class has successfully intimidated a Government and
successfully intimidated members of Parliament; in fact, they have
directly overthrown two Governments, and I do not wonder, I do not
blame Governments for being a little timid of meddling with them.
But, in view of the awful misery which does arise from the
practically unlimited and uncontrolled sale of alcoholic drinks in
this country, I tell you my frank opinion--the time has already
arrived when we must try our strength with that party.... Do
imagine what a prodigious social reform, what a bound in advance we
should have made if we could curb and control this destructive and
devilish liquor traffic, if we could manage to remove from amongst
us what I have called on former occasions the fatal facility of
recourse to the beerhouse which besets every man and woman, and
really one may almost say every child, of the working classes in
England.
The next day he spoke at Birmingham. Ireland was his principal theme.
For the first time on this subject since he resigned he unburdened his
mind without restraint. He showed how much he hated the harsh and
ill-tempered opinions then so powerful. He advocated two great measures
by which the Conservative party might with wisdom and propriety assuage
the bitter discontent of the Irish people--Local Government and land
purchase. He even named the sum of money for which the credit of the
United Kingdom might be pledged to create a peasant proprietary.
‘Something like one hundred millions,’ he said; and the audience gasped
suspiciously. What folly to think the Conservative party would touch
such measures! And yet they have passed them into law!
Surely the reader will linger on the wit and wisdom of this concluding
passage, remembering always how great a price in influence and personal
fortunes the speaker willingly paid for the privilege of telling the
truth:--
I dare say many of us have read, and a great many of you remember,
a charming novel of Mr. Dickens, ‘Our Mutual Friend’; and it may be
in your recollection that there was a certain character in that
novel of great interest, the delineation of which, by Mr. Dickens,
is a subject of great amusement to the reader. His name was Mr.
Podsnap; and, if you recollect, Mr. Podsnap was a person in easy
circumstances, who was very content with himself and was extremely
surprised that all the world was not equally contented like him;
and if anyone suggested to Mr. Podsnap that there were possible
causes of discontent among the people Mr. Podsnap was very much
annoyed. He declared that the person making such a suggestion was
flying in the face of Providence. He declared that the subject was
an unpleasant one; he would go so far as to say it was an odious
one; and he refused to consider it, he refused to admit it, and
with a wave of his arm, you recollect, he used to sweep it away and
to remove it off the face of the earth.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that Mr. Podsnap is a
character of fiction. I know him well. I often meet Mr. Podsnap in
London society. Mr. Podsnap hates me; he looks upon me as a person
of most immoral and most evil tendency; but, with that morbid love
of contemplating and prying into things essentially evil which is
possessed, I think, by a great many good men, Mr. Podsnap cannot
restrain himself sometimes from conversing with me, and this is the
sort of remark Mr. Podsnap makes when he accosts me. He says,
‘Young man’--he always begins in that way, though I believe he is
not very much older than myself--he says, ‘Are you not more and
more impressed day by day with the constant proof and illustration
of the hopeless and hereditary wickedness of the Irish people?’ I
say ‘No;’ that I have had some experience of the Irish people, and
I have lived amongst them for some years, and that I have always
found them a very pleasant people and a very amiable people, and
very easy to get on with if you take them the right way. And then
Mr. Podsnap is painfully annoyed; he shows his indignation, he
declares that the subject is an unpleasant one, and he will go so
far as to say an odious one. He refuses to admit it, he refuses to
consider it, and he removes it and sweeps it away from off the face
of the earth. Well, sometimes I like, when I have nothing better to
do, to try and draw Mr. Podsnap, and I go up to him and I ask him
whether he does not think on the whole it might be a good thing
after balancing everything--if we could find some dodge which might
keep the Irish members out of prison. And then Mr. Podsnap is
startled, and he is much annoyed, and he says, ‘Do you mean
seriously to argue that the Irish members, if they had their
deserts, ought not to be hanged, drawn and quartered in front of
Westminster Hall?’ Then I reply that no doubt that is one way of
dealing with the Irish members and one way of governing Ireland,
but that it appears to me a somewhat singular way of maintaining
the Parliamentary union between two countries; and then Mr. Podsnap
is very wroth, and he sweeps me away and he removes me and the
Irish members and Ireland from off the face of the earth. But Mr.
Podsnap is not a bad fellow on the whole, so long as you do not pay
the smallest attention to him. But undoubtedly, at the present
moment, what Mr. Dickens calls Podsnappery is rampant and rife in
London, and I think this Podsnappery we ought to make a great
effort to put down.
I am certain that intolerance and contempt of Irish opinion and
prejudice, hopeless prejudice against Irish ideas, produce a
corresponding rancour and hatred among the Irish people against us,
and terribly envenom the feelings and the relations between the two
countries. No, let us rather have recourse, and confident recourse,
to justice, to liberality, to generosity and, above all, to
sympathy in our Irish policy. You may be certain of this, that a
free manifestation of those qualities in your Irish policy would
work such a miracle in Ireland as you have no conception of. I hope
most earnestly that I shall never live to see the day when there
may be established in Ireland a separate Parliament and a separate
Government; but I hope equally earnestly and equally strongly, that
I may live to see the day, and that possibly it may be in my power
somewhat to contribute to the advent of that time, and that that
time may not be at any very distant or remote date, when the Irish
shall not only be prosperous, but free--free in the full and proper
sense of the word--free as the English, as the Scotch, and as the
Welsh are free; and when a strong conviction of the benefits and a
strong affection for the ties of union with Great Britain shall
pervade and fill Irish hearts and minds, when the recollections of
the former strife of nations shall be all forgotten, and when our
children shall wonderingly inquire of us how it was that through so
many weary years Ireland was a source of danger and of distress to
the British Empire.
These two speeches in the Midlands, especially the first, at Walsall,
were a terrible rock of offence. The landlords, the brewers and the
opponents of land purchase were incensed and alarmed. ‘They are all up
in arms against you,’ wrote Jennings sadly from the House of Commons.
‘The speech on the Royal Grants did you so much good with the party, and
now ... the Conservatives say you are nothing better than a Socialist,
and the Radicals are, for a wonder, equally hostile. They are all agreed
in denouncing you. The wind is due east, I must admit, and very keen and
biting.’
‘I am sorry to have to tell you,’ wrote a Conservative member who had
been pressing Lord Randolph to visit his constituency, ‘that the local
Fathers in * * * think that in the interests of the party it would be
undesirable to hold a meeting there, and that you would not meet with a
good reception from our own people. All of them expressed the opinion
that they could not afford to offend the brewers and publicans, who have
done so much for us in the past, and that any scheme proposing a loan of
money to Ireland to buy out Irish landlords was most unpopular and
regarded as Gladstonianism pure and simple.’
In Birmingham especially a bad impression was created, and Lord
Randolph’s influence, already terribly injured by his refusal to stand,
was further weakened. It need scarcely be said that Mr. Chamberlain was
much shocked by the open profession of doctrines so advanced in
constituencies which bordered on his own, and on the first convenient
occasion he felt it his duty to administer a suitable rebuke:--
I observed the other day [he said] that a most distinguished
nobleman, Lord Randolph Churchill, addressed various speeches to
audiences in Birmingham and the neighbourhood, and that he declared
himself to be a Tory. I can only say his programme is a programme
which, I am perfectly certain, will be absolutely repudiated by
Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour. I dare say you have often seen at a
bazaar or elsewhere a patchwork quilt brought out for sale, which
is made up of scraps from old dresses and from left-off garments
which the maker has been able to borrow for the purpose. I am told
that in America they call a thing of this kind a ‘crazy quilt.’ I
think that the fancy programme which Lord Randolph Churchill put
before you the other day may well be described as a ‘crazy quilt.’
He borrowed from the cast-off policy of all the extreme men of all
the different sections. He took his Socialism from Mr. Burns and
Mr. Hyndman; he took his Local Option from Sir Wilfrid Lawson; he
took his Egyptian policy from Mr. Illingworth; he took his
metropolitan reform from Mr. Stuart; and he took his Irish policy
from Mr. John Morley. Is this Toryism?
All this was especially edifying, pronounced as it was within four years
of the ‘Unauthorised Programme.’ But Lord Randolph was not, as some who
wrote to him seemed to suppose, trying to ingratiate himself with the
House of Commons Tories, or seeking to win re-entry to the Cabinet. ‘I
decline,’ he said sardonically, ‘to enter into competition with Mr.
Chamberlain for the smiles of Hatfield.’ He understood perfectly what
reception the ruling class in the Conservative party would accord to his
democratic ideas. The worthy Conservative gentlemen who had pressed
their congratulations upon him after his speech on the Royal Grants
could hardly restrain their indignation now. Finding themselves at one
time in complete agreement with him, and at another in vehement dissent,
they assumed, not unnaturally, that he was unbalanced and insincere. Yet
these speeches, variously greeted as they were, arose from the same
logical and coherent system of political thought to which, rightly or
wrongly, he had always adhered through good and evil fortune. The
principal speeches which he made in 1889 almost covered, and were
designed to cover, the whole field of ‘Tory Democracy.’ In justifying
the Royal Grants he had affirmed that loyalty to the Crown which every
true Tory Democrat must be prepared to practise and sustain. At Walsall
and Birmingham he urged that energetic sympathy with practical social
reform and indifference to selfish class instincts which alone can
convince democracy that time-honoured institutions are not merely
safeguards, but may be made effective instruments of progress. In Wales
during the autumn he championed the Established Church. In Scotland
later in the year he defended the Union. Something was, however, still
wanting to complete his political faith. It remained to assert the
sanctity of those constitutional barriers by which liberty and justice
are secured. That omission the near future was to repair.
CHAPTER XXI
THE PARNELL COMMISSION
“Iam non ad culmina rerum
Injustos crevisse queror: tolluntur in altum
Ut lapsu graviore ruant.”
CLAUDIAN.
It is no part of my task to examine the proceedings of the Special
Commission, nor to supply a narrative of that long-drawn and embittered
controversy known as ‘Parnellism and Crime.’ Those are matters of
history, and even such allusion to their course and character as might
have been required for the coherency of this story seems unnecessary in
view of an account recently given to the world by Mr. Morley,[68]
combining the vivid and picturesque character which only an eye-witness
can command, with that brevity in regard to general questions
indispensable to biography. I am concerned only to pick out Lord
Randolph Churchill’s part and to trace the steps which led him to an
utter breach with the Government and quarrel with the Conservative
party; and this can be done mainly in his own words.
The letter involving Mr. Parnell in complicity with the Phoenix Park
murders was printed in facsimile in the _Times_ of April 18, 1887, and
was doubtless intended to be a spur to the Unionist party on the day of
the introduction of the Coercion Bill. That same night Mr. Parnell
declared it to be a forgery. His denial was received with incredulity by
the Ministerialists and he was at once asked why he did not take action
for libel. His reasons for not doing so were apparently that he and his
advisers had no confidence that their case would be considered without
prejudice by a Middlesex jury, and that if a favourable verdict were
obtained in Ireland similar English suspicions would deprive it of moral
effect. No action being taken by Mr. Parnell, a motion was made by a
private member for a Select Committee of Inquiry. This was debated on
May 5, and the Select Committee was refused by the Government. Lord
Randolph, who on this occasion, as on various other questions of
privilege, was consulted by Mr. Smith, supported the Government
decision, and warmly defended the Leader of the House from attacks which
were made upon him. Although the murder charges against Mr. Parnell were
repeated in various forms at partisan meetings, and even received
countenance from several of the Conservative Ministers, the whole matter
lapsed so far as Parliament was concerned, and would never have been
resuscitated but for the perversity of chance.
An action for libel against the _Times_ was instituted in November 1887
by an Irishman who had sat in the late Parliament as a follower of Mr.
Parnell and who felt himself damaged by the various allegations
contained in the series of letters headed ‘Parnellism and Crime.’ This
suit was tried before Lord Coleridge in July 1888. The _Times_ happened
to be defended by Sir Richard Webster, the principal law officer of the
Crown--acting, however, as he explained, to his own satisfaction, purely
professionally and not as a member of the Government. In the course of
the trial the Attorney-General repeated during three days the general
charges and allegations of the _Times_ articles, and produced a further
batch of incriminating letters alleged to be signed by the Irish leader.
On this the Parliamentary case was reopened, and Parnell himself
demanded a Select Committee of Inquiry. The Government, as before,
refused the Committee, but--to general astonishment--they now proceeded
to offer, and finally to insist upon, a Commission of three judges with
statutory power to inquire not merely into the specific matter of the
letters, but rovingly into the whole of the charges and allegations of
the _Times_, whether against members of Parliament or ‘other persons.’
The necessary Bill was introduced on July 16.
Lord Randolph Churchill was dismayed by this unexpected departure. He
felt it his duty to protest from the very beginning against such
procedure. Yet he did not wish to embarrass the Government or to hamper
them in their Irish policy. Instead of speaking in the debates upon the
Bill, he drew up on the day of its introduction a memorandum which he
sent to Mr. Smith, and which is at once a convenient narrative of the
case and perhaps the most powerful statement he ever penned. If it were
necessary to base his reputation for political wisdom upon a single
document, I should select this.
_Memorandum._
It may be assumed that the Tory party are under an imperative
obligation to avoid seeking escape from political difficulties by
extra-constitutional methods. The above is a general rule. The
exception to it can scarcely be conceived.
The case of ‘Parnellism and Crime’ is essentially a political and
Parliamentary difficulty of a minor kind. A newspaper has made
against a group of members of the House of Commons accusations of
complicity in assassination, crime and outrage. In the commencement
the parties accused do not feel themselves specially aggrieved.
They take no action; the Government responsible for the guidance of
the House of Commons does not feel called upon to act in the
matter. A member of Parliament, acting on his own responsibility,
brings the matter before the House of Commons as a matter of
privilege and a Select Committee is moved for to inquire into the
allegations.
The Government take up an unexceptionable and perfectly
constitutional position. They refuse the Select Committee on the
ground marked out by Sir Erskine May, that matters which may or
ought to come within the cognisance of the Courts of Law are not
fit for inquiry by Select Committee.
The Government press upon the accused parties their duty, should
they feel themselves aggrieved, to proceed against the newspaper
legally and, with a generosity hardly open to condemnation, offer
to make the prosecution of the newspaper, so far as expense is
concerned, a Government prosecution. The offer is not accepted, the
view of duty is disagreed from by the accused persons, the motion
for a Select Committee is negatived and the matter drops, the
balance of disadvantage remaining with the accused persons.
Owing to an abortive and obscurely originated action for libel, the
whole matter revives. The original charges are reiterated in a
court of law by the Attorney-General, but owing to the course of
the suit no evidence is called to sustain the allegations. A fresh
demand is made by the accused persons for a Select Committee and is
refused by the Government on the same grounds as before and, as
before, with a preponderating assent of public opinion. So far all
is satisfactory, except to the accused parties and their
sympathisers.
For reasons not known, the Government take a new departure of a
most serious kind. They offer to constitute by statute a tribunal
with exceptional powers, to be composed mainly of judges of the
Supreme Court, to inquire into the truth of the allegations. To
this course the following objections are obvious and unanswerable:
1. The offer, to a large extent, recognises the wisdom and justice
of the conduct of the accused persons in avoiding recurrence to the
ordinary tribunals.
2. It is absolutely without precedent. The Sheffield case, the
Metropolitan Board of Works case, are by no means analogous. Into
those two cases not a spark of political feeling entered. The case
of ‘Parnellism and Crime’ in so far as it is not criminal is
entirely political. In any event the political character of the
case would predominate over the criminal.
3. It is submitted that it is in the highest degree unwise and,
indeed, unlawful to take the judges of the land out of their proper
sphere of duty, and to mix them up in political conflict. In this
ease, whichever way they decide, they will be the object of
political criticism and animadversion. Whatever their decision,
speaking roughly, half the country will applaud, the other half
condemn, their action; their conduct during the trial in its
minutest particulars, every ruling as to evidence, every chance
expression, every question put by them, will be keenly watched,
canvassed, criticised, censured or praised. Were judges in England
ever placed in such a position before? Will any judge emerge from
this inquiry the same for all judicial purposes, moral weight and
influence as he went into it? Have you a right to expose your
judges, and in all probability your best judges, to such an ordeal?
4. The tribunal will conduct its proceedings by methods different
to a court of law. The examination will mainly be conducted by the
tribunal itself; a witness cannot refuse to reply on the ground
that the answer would criminate himself. Evidence in this way will
be extracted which might be made the basis of a criminal
prosecution against other persons. Indemnities might be given to
persons actually guilty of very grave crime, and persons much less
guilty of direct participation in grave crime might, under such
protected evidence, be made liable to a prosecution.
The whole course of proceeding, if the character of the allegations
is remembered, will, when carefully considered, be found to be
utterly repugnant to our English ideas of legal justice, and wholly
unconstitutional. It is hardly exaggerating to describe the
Commission contemplated as ‘a revolutionary tribunal’ for the trial
of political offenders, If there is any truth in the above or
colour for such a statement, can a Tory Government safely or
honourably suggest and carry through such a proposal?
I would suggest that the constitutional legality of this proposed
tribunal be submitted to the judges for their opinion.
It is not for the Government, in matters of this kind, to initiate
extra-constitutional proceedings and methods. One can imagine an
excited Parliament or inflamed public opinion forcing such
proceedings on a Government. In this case there is no such
pressure. The first duty of a Government would be to resist being
driven outside the lines of the Constitution. In no case, except
when public safety is involved, can they be justified in taking the
lead. They are the chief guardians of the Constitution. The
Constitution is violated or strained in this country when action
is taken for which there is no reasonably analogous precedent.
Considerations of this kind ought to influence powerfully the
present Government.
It is said that the honour of the House of Commons is concerned.
This is an empty phrase. The tribunal, whatever its decision, will
not prevent the Irish constituencies from returning as
representatives the parties implicated. In such an event the honour
of the House of Commons could only be vindicated by repeated
expulsion, followed by disfranchisement. Does any reasonable person
contemplate such a course?
The proceedings of the tribunal cannot be final. In the event of a
decision to the effect that the charges are not established,
proceedings for libel against the newspaper might be resorted to,
the newspaper being placed under a most grossly unjust
disadvantage. In the event of a decision to the contrary effect, a
criminal prosecution would seem to be imperative. Regarded from the
high ground of State policy in Ireland such a prosecution would
probably be replete with danger and disaster.
These reflections have been sketched out concisely. If submitted to
a statesman, or to anyone of great legal learning and attainments,
many more and much graver reflections would probably be suggested.
I do not examine the party aspects of the matter; I only remark
that the fate of the Union may be determined by the abnormal
proceedings of an abnormal tribunal. Prudent politicians would
hesitate to go out of their way to play such high stakes as
these.--R. H. S. C.
July 17, 1888.
[Sidenote: 1890 ÆT. 41]
Nearly two years had passed since these words were written. During all
that time Lord Randolph Churchill kept silence. The Government
persevered in their courses. The Bill for the Special Commission was
driven swiftly through the House of Commons by guillotine closure. The
Judges slowly unravelled the vast tangle of evidence and ethics which
had been thrust upon them. Not until the fiftieth sitting of the court
was the letter reached which was the reason for the whole proceeding.
Then there was an acceleration. In two days a wretched man was proved a
forger. In five days he was dead. The only charge that gave birth to the
Commission perished by the pistol-shot that destroyed Pigott. The other
allegations, melancholy and voluminous as they were, useful as they may
have been for political controversy, revealed only the bitterness of the
national and racial struggle; and expressed in the language of the
victorious party a condemnation of methods of political warfare, more or
less lawless, certainly deplorable, but essentially characteristic of
revolutionary movements, open or veiled.
The report of the Commission came before the House of Commons on March
3, 1890. In spite of every effort to broaden the issue and to escape
from narrow and definite charges of murder, which had been disproved, to
general charges of lawlessness and disloyalty which required no proof,
the impression produced in the country was adverse to the Government.
The party orator dilated on the heinous conduct of the Irish members.
The plain man stopped short at Pigott. Ministers had stained the cause
of the Union by unconstitutional action and had allowed others to stain
it by felony. Lord Randolph’s private letters reveal from time to time
the abhorrence with which he regarded the whole transaction. The
by-elections attested the opinion of the public. There was too much
truth in Parnell’s savage accusation:[69] ‘You wanted to use this
question of the forged letters as a political engine. You did not care
whether they were forged or not. You saw that it was impossible for us
under the circumstances, or for anybody under the circumstances, to
prove that they were forgeries. It was a very good question for you to
win elections with.... It was also a suitable engine to enable you to
obtain an inquiry into a much wider field and very different matters, an
inquiry which you never would have got apart from these infamous
productions.’
The feeling that some reparation was due to men against whom a charge of
complicity in murder had been falsely preferred and who had been pursued
by such unwonted means, was by no means confined to the Opposition. But
the Government were resolved to brazen it out; and the party machine,
local and national, held firm. The speech of the Conservative leader was
grudging and unsympathetic; and Mr. Gladstone’s condemnation and appeal
rang through a responsive House. The debate on his amendment ebbed and
flowed through four Parliamentary days, and from the division by which
it was terminated fourteen Unionists, including Lord Randolph,
abstained. Meanwhile, on March 7, Mr. Jennings--with the concurrence, as
was generally known, of Lord Randolph Churchill--had given notice of the
following amendment: ‘And, further, this House deems it to be its duty
to record its condemnation of the conduct of those who are responsible
for the accusations of complicity in murder brought against members of
this House, discovered to be based mainly on forged letters, and
declared by the Special Commission to be false.’ Such a notice, coming
from the Unionist benches and believed to have the support of Lord
Randolph Churchill, of course attracted general attention. He himself
was, however, in the greatest perplexity. Party feeling ran high. It is
when the attack is grave and damaging, when there is fullest
justification for censure, when manifestly Ministers are wrong, that
those who adhere to them through thick and thin, are most impatient of
reproach. He knew well that by speaking he would greatly injure himself
in the eyes of his party. And yet could he honourably keep silent? He
regretted that he had encouraged Jennings to put his amendment down. He
asked him to withdraw it. But Mr. Jennings refused. It was not until Mr.
Gladstone’s amendment had been disposed of on the fourth day of the
discussion that he made up his mind to speak, when the House should meet
at the next sitting (March 11). By custom, though not by rule, the
Speaker would have called upon the movers of other amendments, once that
stage of debate has begun. But Lord Randolph, after much consideration,
decided that he had better say what he had to say upon the main
question, neither interfering with, nor being limited by, Mr. Jennings’s
amendment or others that stood before it; and technically he was within
his right, if the Speaker should call on him.
He was heard by the House in a strained unusual silence, which seemed to
react upon him; for he spoke with strange slowness, deliberation and
absence of passion--like a judge deciding on a point of law, and without
any of the lightness and humour of old Opposition days. He examined the
question frigidly and with severity--how the Government had discarded
the ordinary tribunals of the land; how they had instituted a special
tribunal wherein the functions of judge and jury were cumulated upon
three individuals; how the persons implicated had had no voice in the
constitution of that tribunal; how they were in part the political
opponents of the Government of the day; and how one result had been to
levy upon both parties to the action a heavy pecuniary fine. All these
things were described in the same even, passionless voice, and heard by
the House with undiminished attention and by the Ministerial supporters
with growing resentment. Presently came a pause. He asked those about
him for a glass of water. Not a man moved. Fancying he had not been
heard, he asked again: and so bitter was party passion that even this
small courtesy was refused. At length, seeing how the matter stood, Mr.
Baumann, a young Conservative member from below the Gangway, went out
for some. As he returned, the Irish--always so quick to perceive a small
personal incident--greeted him with a half-sympathetic, half-ironical
cheer, and Lord Randolph, taking the glass from his hand, said solemnly
and elaborately in a penetrating undertone: ‘I hope this will not
compromise you with your party.’
At length he began to speak louder. ‘The procedure which we are called
upon to stamp with our approval to-night is a procedure which would
undoubtedly have been gladly resorted to by the Tudors and their judges.
It is procedure of an arbitrary and tyrannical character, used against
individuals who are political opponents of the Government of the
day--procedure such as Parliament has for generations and centuries
struggled against and resisted--procedure such as we had hoped, in these
happy days, Parliament had triumphantly overcome. It is procedure such
as would have startled even Lord Eldon; it is procedure such as Lords
Lyndhurst and Brougham would have protested against; it is procedure
which, if that great lawyer Earl Cairns had been alive, the Tory party
would never have carried. But a Nemesis awaits a Government that adopts
unconstitutional methods. What,’ he asked, ‘has been the result of this
uprootal of constitutional practice? What has been the one result?’ Then
in a fierce whisper, hissing through the House, ‘Pigott!’--then in an
outburst of uncontrollable passion and disgust--‘a man, a thing, a
reptile, a monster--Pigott!’--and then again, with a phrase at which the
House shuddered,[70] ‘Pigott! Pigott! Pigott!’
Let us return to Hansard. ‘Why do I bring these things before the House?
[_An honourable member laughed derisively._] Ah! yes; I know there are
lots of high-minded and generous members, who not long ago were my
friends, who are ready to impute--and much more likely to impute than
openly assert--that I am animated by every evil motive. I bring these
matters before the House of Commons because I apprehend the time--which
I trust may be remote, but which I sometimes fear may be nigh--when the
party which vaunts itself as the constitutional party may, by the
vicissitudes of fortune, find itself in a position of inferiority
similar to that which it occupied in 1832--when the rights of the
minority may be trampled upon and overridden, when the views of the
minority may be stifled, and when individual political opponents may be
proceeded against as you have proceeded against your political
opponents.’
He then explained how that these were no new views of his, that they had
not been formed in consequence of the results of the trial--‘as those
who are always ready to form a most unfavourable opinion of me have
said’--but that two years before, when the Bill for the Special
Commission was before Parliament, he had embodied them in a document
which he had ‘respectfully laid before the First Lord of the Treasury.’
‘There was a time,’ he said at the end, ‘not very long ago, when my
words had some weight with honourable gentlemen on this side of the
House; and in recalling that time I will add--I cannot refrain from the
remark--that the prospects of the party were brighter than they are
now. When I had the honour, the memorable honour, of counselling them,
the Unionist majority was more than a hundred. It has now fallen to
about seventy. If there are any lingering memories on these benches of
those days--when, I think, our fortunes were better--it is by those
memories I would appeal to the Conservative party to give a fair and
impartial and unprejudiced consideration to the counsels which I now lay
before them. But if my words are to fall on deaf ears--if the counsels I
most honestly submit are to be spurned and scorned, then I declare that
I look forward to the day when a future Parliament shall expunge from
the Journals of this House the record of this melancholy proceeding; and
in taking such action--inspired, I trust, not by party passion, party
vindictiveness or party rancour, but acting on constitutional grounds,
and on those alone--it will administer to its predecessor a deserved and
wholesome rebuke for having outraged and violated constitutional liberty
and will establish a signpost full of warning and guidance to
Parliaments yet unborn.’
He sat down very much exhausted--for his health was already
weakening--by the strain to which he had been put. He had never spoken
with more consciousness of right, never with less regard to his own
interests and scarcely ever with greater effect. Deep down in the heart
of the old-fashioned Tory, however unreflecting, there lurks a wholesome
respect for the ancient forms and safeguards of the English Constitution
and a recognition of the fact that some day they may be found of great
consequence and use. Moreover, the case was black and overwhelming. But
a formidable champion was at hand to succour and shield the Ministry;
and it was Chamberlain who rose from the Front Opposition Bench to reply
on behalf of the Government. His speech was couched in a friendly and
respectful tone--not unmindful, perhaps, of an old compact as to the
asperities of political warfare--but in every part it made clear the
breach which now existed between these former allies, and the bonds
which were steadily strengthening between this Radical leader and his
Conservative friends.
To all this Mr. Jennings had listened with impatience and resentment.
His amendment had not, it seemed, been merely deserted by Lord Randolph
Churchill; it had been compromised. The opportunity for moving it was
irretrievably spoiled. The consequence that had attached to it, was
gone. The crowded house was melting. No man about to address a critical
assembly on a matter which he considers important, resolved to do his
very best by his argument and braced against the expected disapprobation
of his own friends, can be free from nervous tension; and the better the
speaker, the greater the strain. At such a moment small things do not
always appear small and grave decisions are not always taken on serious
grounds. Mr. Jennings had been several times disappointed in Lord
Randolph. He had failed to carry him forward into a Fair Trade campaign.
He had been bitterly discouraged by the Birmingham surrender. He had
watched with mortification the decline of Lord Randolph’s popularity. He
had disapproved of the Radicalism of the later speeches. And now, on the
top of all the rest, came this sharp collision. He took it as an act of
mortal treachery and insult. In that flood of anger the comradeship of
four stormy years was swept away as if it had been a feather. While Mr.
Chamberlain was replying he leaned over the bench and told Lord Randolph
shortly that after such a speech he would not move his amendment, and
would tell the House why. Lord Randolph, who had been absorbed by his
own struggle, was amazed at his fierce manner, and realised for the
first time that he had caused deep offence. He wished at once to put it
right. But Jennings would not answer. He had made up his mind. Two
pencil notes, written on slips torn from the order paper, were put into
his hands. He read them, folded them, put them carefully away, and they
have drifted here, like the wreckage tossed up on the shore long after a
ship has foundered. ‘I hope you will reflect before making any public
attack upon me. It would be a thousand pities to set all the malicious
tongues wagging, when later you will understand what my position was.’
And again--probably after Jennings had spoken--‘How can you so wilfully
misunderstand my action and so foolishly give way to temper in dealing
with grave political matters?’
As soon as Mr. Chamberlain had finished, Mr. Jennings rose, and struck
as hard as he could. ‘He had not been prepared for the tone and manner
of the speech of his noble friend.’ The delivery of a speech so hostile
‘to the Government’ had considerably embarrassed him. ‘It is said,’ he
proceeded in his cold, measured way, ‘that I derive my opinions from my
noble friend, but occasionally, and at intervals, I am capable of
forming opinions of my own, and such an interval has occurred now.’ ‘The
noble lord has a genius for surprises: sometimes he surprises his
opponents; sometimes he takes his best friends unawares.’ Finally, he
declined to move his amendment, as a means of dissociating himself from
any attempt ‘to stab his party in the back.’ During this speech the
occupants of the Treasury Bench took, as may be imagined, no pains to
conceal their satisfaction. In a very brief personal explanation Lord
Randolph Churchill declared that his own speech had been made without
reference to any of the amendments on the paper, solely because it was
pertinent to the main question rather than to any amendment. Mr. Caine,
who was then on the verge of returning to the Liberal party, moved the
dropped amendment without comment. Almost alone among Conservative
members, Lord Randolph supported it, as he had promised and always
intended, in the division lobby, and it was rejected by a majority of
sixty-two.
The outcry raised against Lord Randolph Churchill for his speech and
vote was immediate and astonishing. The entire Conservative press
denounced him as a traitor, and he was deluged with abuse. The
_Standard_ declared that he had no further right to be regarded as a
member of the Unionist party. ‘The utter failure of his career points a
moral of peculiar significance. Seldom has it been possible to give a
more convincing proof of the fact that the man who is ready to sacrifice
principle to personal ambition will not only lose the esteem of the
worthiest among his fellow-countrymen, but will even fail in the object
to which he is willing to surrender his convictions.’ But more important
even than such pronouncements was the feeling in the country. The
meeting which he was to have addressed at Colchester was cancelled
‘owing to the illness of Lord Brooke.’ The Chairman of his Association
in Paddington resigned; the various clubs in the borough passed strong
resolutions in condemnation of their member, and a meeting of the
Council was convened for the 17th to consider his conduct. Opinion in
Birmingham was very hostile. Even the Midland Conservative Club met
together to pass a vote of censure.
Lord Randolph Churchill met these manifestations with composure not
unmingled with scorn. To the resolution of the Paddington Council he
replied in a letter described by the much-shocked _Times_ as
‘characteristically pert and saucy,’ and dated from the Jockey Club
Rooms at Newmarket. ‘I have no reason to suppose,’ he wrote, ‘that the
Council are in error in committing themselves to the opinion that my
action is “entirely out of harmony” with the views of the Conservative
electors of the division; but I remark with satisfaction that the
Council, with a prudence which I cannot too highly or respectfully
commend, have abstained from expressing any opinion as to whether my
action was right or wrong.’ If they wished him to take the opinion of
the electors on the question they knew the steps which were necessary,
but meanwhile he reminded them that the Council was not the Association
and still less the constituency of South Paddington.
On the same morning of this meeting in Paddington Lord Randolph
published in the _Morning Post_--which almost alone among Metropolitan
newspapers remained well disposed towards him--the memorandum which he
had written nearly two years before. The memorandum, he explained, had
been intended to be ‘a strong but friendly protest against the measure.’
The speech of the previous Tuesday was intended, so far as lay in his
power, to prevent such a measure being ever proposed by a Government
again. This document had a marked and decided effect upon public
opinion. Seldom had a political prophet been so completely vindicated by
the event. It was now proved that two years before the exposure of
Pigott he had warned the Government of the discredit in which the
Special Commission would involve them and had described beforehand in
exact detail many of the evil consequences by which they were now
overtaken.
All of a sudden party indignation began to subside, and that keen sense
of justice never far removed from the English mind reasserted itself.
The journalists and the wirepullers had laboured to excess and the
inevitable reaction followed. Numbers of plain people began to write to
the newspapers to protest against the attacks made upon one who had been
so greatly concerned with famous Conservative victories. At Birmingham
the Old Guard--Rowlands, Sawyer, and Moore-Bayley--contrived to parry
the vote of censure by a simple resolution of confidence in the
Government, which the rest, when it came to the point, were content to
accept. Mr. Fardell resumed the Chairmanship of the Paddington Council,
and that body received their member’s reply without further comment or
action. So that Lord Randolph was enabled, without more hindrance, to
pursue his own path in his own way.
But while he cared little for the displeasure of political associates
and nothing at all for the party outburst, there was one breach which
caused him regret. Louis Jennings had been for the past four years an
intimate friend and a close and valuable ally. He had become a friend at
a time when others were falling away and after Lord Randolph had given
up the power to help and reward good service. He had adhered to his
leader with constancy, through much unpopularity and ridicule, and at
the cost of his own political future--such as it might have been.
Whatever cause he may have had for complaint, he had certainly repaid
the injury to the utmost of his power. Nothing could be more disparaging
to Lord Randolph Churchill personally or more prejudicial to the
opinions he had expressed than that he and they should be publicly
repudiated by the one man who of all others had stood by him until now.
The political world found it difficult to believe that the tone of a
speech apart from its tenor, a dispute about an amendment, or the
accident of debate, could in themselves be a complete explanation of a
sudden severance between such close political associates. Jennings
volunteered no further information on the subject; and Lord Randolph
Churchill to persistent inquiries merely replied: ‘I was not aware, and
could not be aware, that my speech would cause Mr. Jennings to withdraw
his amendment, and I am altogether unable to understand his reasons for
this action. I had told him that I would vote for his amendment and
speak in favour of it, and, as a matter of fact, I did so. Mr. Jennings
has acquired the reputation of being a man of reason, ability and sense,
and his actions are presumably guided by those qualities. That being so,
any further examination of his action against me last Tuesday does not
particularly attract me.’
Mr. Jennings left, however, among his private papers a statement
carefully prepared while the episode was fresh in his mind. I am content
to place this upon record exactly as it was written.[71]
The breach was never repaired. Lord Randolph Churchill would gladly have
made friends, and took pains to let the fact be known to Mr. Jennings.
But no communication, written or spoken, ever passed between them again.
Whether from an enduring sense of wrong, or from vain regrets at such a
miserable ending to four years of loyalty and labour, Mr. Jennings
continued in antagonism, and from time to time employed his dexterous
pen in sharp and sarcastic attack. There is an air of musty tragedy
about old letters. Week after week, in packet after packet, since 1886,
Jennings’s neat handwriting recurs. Suddenly his letters stop, just as
the Gorst letters had stopped five years before. He passes out of this
story--was soon, indeed, to pass out of all stories men can tell. On
that exciting night in March Lord Randolph Churchill had only five years
to live. But Mr. Jennings had less than three. He took little further
part in politics. He was returned for Stockport again at the General
Election; but almost at once he declared that he must retire from public
life. An internal malady had afflicted him, and he died somewhat
suddenly on February 9, 1893, aged fifty-six years. The circumstances of
his quarrel with Lord Randolph Churchill, no matter whether his anger
was deserved or not, or on which side the balance of misunderstanding
may have lain, cannot exclude from this account a full acknowledgment of
his loyal, industrious and fearless comradeship. He suffered the
vexations and disappointments which must always harass those who fight
for lost causes and falling men.