Letters of Lord Acton Part 11

Your letter has been indeed a joy in the midst of trouble.[139] You have understood so much of what it is hard to write....

[Sidenote: _Munich Oct. 15, 1881_]

She has taken with her one of the strongest links that attached me to this world, but I do not follow less keenly the movements of the man who, of all now living, has the greatest power of doing good. The Irish speech on Friday, and the economic speech on Sat.u.r.day, made the strongest impression on me.

I fancy the man who attacked the calculation of national profit in the latter, misunderstood his own case, and might have made something of it if he had spoken of the distribution, not of the increase of wealth.

The treatment of Home Rule as an idea conceivably reasonable, which was repeated at Guildhall, delighted me. I felt less sure of the distinction between that as a colourable scheme, and the Land League, as now working, as one altogether revolutionary and evil. At least, the censure and arrest of Parnell made me regret more than ever the monument and the eulogy of Disraeli. But then, you know that that is my favourite heresy.

{106}

What has most struck me in these speeches of the Recess is that they do almost more than the parliamentary oratory to make the whole country familiar with Mr. Gladstone's ways of thought, and to stamp his mind on the nation. I fear they must be fatiguing to him, because I have always thought that he found an intellectual audience most easy to deal with. In the Palmerstonian days I remember your brother[140] asking me at Twickenham what I thought of our prospects; and I answered that the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not water his wine enough. And I believe he thought me a fool. But it was quite true: he tried to make us understand his figures, in the House; but he did not much unfold his thoughts for the public; and I used to be surprised to find that men who knew him well, Lord Granville, Argyll,[141] S. Wilberforce, saw neither the connection nor the consequence of his ideas. This is so much altered now, that he does not dislike to sit for his mental portrait, and his philosophy of government is the study of thousands.

So he is moulding the mind of the nation as no man ever did.

I wonder whether you will have patience to talk to me about him at Cannes? We are just starting for the Madeleine, through Switzerland....

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine, Oct. 27, 1881_]

What might, possibly, be done in a moment of triumph,[142] would be desertion and disaster to the party at any other moment. n.o.body can hope that next Easter, or for a couple of years, we can be altogether crowned with laurel. In the presence of Mr. Gladstone {107} himself the Tories are recovering spirits. They would take a leap forward if Achilles was safe in his tent.

That is so clear to any one looking below the surface that it suggests another objection--there might be an appearance of retreat at the first turning of the tide, of an inclination to escape, individually, from a prospect of losing battles and declining prosperity, and to leave others to face the renewal of disintegration and reaction, such as we saw in 1873. I know that this is not a consideration where duty is visibly concerned; but it is a valid consideration where policy is concerned. And it must be remembered that he may resign office but cannot abandon power.

Herbert's const.i.tuents[144] were probably more deeply impressed than I was by the repeated, but too suggestive, eulogy on Hartington and Lord Granville. Has Mr. Gladstone fairly faced the question, What will the party do without him? I may quote my own sentiment, because I grew up among Russells, Ellices, Byngs; and though I am very suspicious of early impressions and of doctrines unaccounted for, I know I am much more favourable to the great Whig connection, to the tradition of Locke and Somers, Adam Smith and Burke and Macaulay, than Mr. Gladstone would like. Yet it would seem dust and ashes, but for him.... The idea that politics is an affair of principle, that it is an affair of morality, that it touches eternal interests as much as vices and virtues do in private life, that idea will not live in the party. Indeed it is already overshadowed by the Beaconsfield monument, described by that prophet, Pope.[145]

Besides, the party would become unable, from internal divisions, to govern the country. I take the letter to {108} be a recognition of the fact that the P.M. ought to be in the House of Commons. In that case it is on the cards that Lord Granville would retire at the same time.

Where should we be in the Lords, if neither Argyll, nor Derby, nor Lord G. sat on the Treasury Bench; if Northbrook, Carlingford, and Kimberley were left to face Salisbury and Cairns? And then, if Selborne resigns the woolsack, and it becomes necessary to choose a Chancellor for his debating power? The future is as gloomy in the Commons with Bright and your father away, Goschen out of office, Hartington liable, any day, to leave it. In both cases we come to the level of mediocrity; we depend on the second rank....

The new const.i.tuency gives increased weight to the Democratic leaders, and it will be impossible for the Whigs to control them or to do without them. They will force their programme on the party by keeping it out of office until they prevail. This must come sooner or later.

But Mr. Gladstone ought not to retire until he has provided for the future of the party he has remodelled. With respect to persons, if he does not bring Derby and Goschen in, n.o.body else can. As to Goschen--whose position will be a considerable one, as the best financier of the party, afterwards--it has been unfortunate that the overtures were not made by the P.M. himself. They would have been far more flattering; probably also more clear and definite. The measure[146] he objects to is considerably postponed. The way is crowded with bills on which he agrees with ministers.

As to Derby, I hope to learn all about your visit,[147] how you get on with her, and whether you all took {109} care to acknowledge her good influence and services. There will never be any great intimacy between him and your father. But, in his proper place, he could be made very useful.

There is something graver than the question of persons. There is his own Church policy, the Eastern--especially Egyptian and Armenian question, the decentralisation of H. of Commons business, redistribution of seats, and ever so much more. I should like him to see more of the Prince of Wales,[148] that something of his influence should survive in the Royal Family. And his present power is such that there will be a real failure in his career if he retires without employing it to secure the future of the party. It would be wasting or burying the fortune of Rothschild, the most enormous capital ever collected in one hand.

The resistance to G. Eliot, the preference for Scott, the desire to confide in ----, are all one and the same thing: idealism. When Disraeli sat down exclaiming, "The time will come when you will hear me," his neighbour slapped him on the back and said, "So they will."

That encouraging neighbour was ----. He can never take to a man of strong principle and purpose. He is little better than a vague Jingo: and he is the most indiscreet, and not the most accurate of men. To trust him with such a secret is like rejecting G. Eliot as cynical, gloomy, and uncharitable in her views of life. A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark. There is just one thing on which the P.M.

is wilfully a little superficial!

Private Secretaries have no time for letters of their own; otherwise I think with pleasure of your new occupation. Don't let it tire you. In many ways it {110} will interest you; and J. S. Mill would highly have approved of it, as portending an end to the subjection of women.

Please let me beg that you will not read anonymous communications. If you receive any, I think they ought to go to the police. Not, of course, to Mr. Gladstone. What he does not mind himself might worry him being sent to you.

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Nov. 9, 1881_]

I am sorry to have lost the Knowsley letters, as I know something of your accounts of country houses. The envelope raised expectations which added to my disappointment; for there was no danger that the dulness of the company would affect the record. The newspaper list of visitors surprised me....

The point, however, is the good impression which Derby made during their walk, as there was no previous liking.

Your suggestion of a visit to Hawarden is as tempting as it is kind. I should like nothing so much if I thought it suited Mr. and Mrs.

Gladstone; but at this moment I am wanted, sadly wanted, here; and the ingenious indiscretion of somebody has provoked a demonstration more impressive than any arguments of mine. It has shown what the triumph of the Tories, what the helplessness of the Liberals would be. Mr.

Gladstone must see now that his resolution must depend on facts, and not on wishes. What he is to the cause and the party I fear he will never understand.

Touching the future, I can abate nothing of what I said. It is odd, especially for me to say, who often disagree with him in maxims if not in aims, but you undervalue him in comparison with other men. Is it the {111} strife in the Cabinet, the defection of friends, the zeal of opponents, the slow growth of results, the versatility of popular feeling, the coldness of Continental opinion, that depresses you? or is it Morley's book?[149] T. B. Potter has just arrived, I hope with a copy for me. I see from the extracts that it is a piece of very superior work. At first I expected an oblique attack on your father, as a dilatory and inconsistent convert, prompted by Cobden's long distrust, by Bright's early denunciations, by the aversion of literal economists, of Equalitarian Democrats, of stubborn unbelievers in those qualities which raise him above the highest level of Liberalism. But I can fancy that you might be impressed by so vigorous, sincere, and complete a system of politics very distinct from his own. The lieutenants of Alexander, Napoleon and his Marshals, are the only fit comparisons to describe the interval between the P.M. and the best of those who come next to him.

We lose a weak, an ornamental, an unstable, but patriotic man in ----.

As he has been the guiltiest misleader in ecclesiastical questions, his retirement is appropriate at the moment when we are trying to get the ear of the Pope. There are, of course, better reasons for that just now than the state of Ireland, and I think he (the Pope) deserves the kind of help it must give him. His impulses seem almost always right, whilst his execution, depending on others, and requiring force of character as well as good intentions, is generally poor and shabby. If the Powers had been quicker to understand how strongly he contrasts with his predecessor they might have enabled him to prevail against his court.

John O'Hagan, the chief of the new Land Court, is {112} a man whom I tried to bring forward, and made much of in the beginning of his career. He has the stamp of 1848 upon him as deep as Duffy,[150] and I found him rather literary than politic, more full of good and gracious aspiration than practical and solid. The Court has done two things which must, I imagine, raise doubts at Hawarden. They undertake to fix a rent such as will fairly enable a man to live--that is a rule which would reduce rent per acre in proportion to the smallness of the holding, and would extinguish it altogether in the smallest. And they judge not by the land and buildings, but by the capacity of the tenant--that will lead them to do more for the worse farmer and less for the better. On the other hand, it is terrible to read that farmers cultivating 20 or 30 acres never eat butcher's meat. In France I find that the families of day labourers have meat for dinner every day. I am told that there is scarcely an exception.

Hawarden after Knowsley must have been a relief, especially with Lightfoot, Goldwin Smith, and may I say Harcourt? There is no room--there never is--for what I have to say.

[Sidenote: _Cannes Nov. 25, 1881_]

I have been away from Cannes for a few days, and am ashamed to be again behindhand.

If I had not known it before, I should discover now what a good fellow Alfred Lyttelton is. F. C.'s view does not convince me. The impeding facts will be there, but the strong will[151] and the untimely gift of self-disparagement may be too much for the facts.

I am struck by what you say of the omission in Morley's book, which I am to receive in a few days. A person who has had a large and legitimate share in {113} its preparation spoke to me some time ago in a manner which led me to expect that the Treaty narrative would be hostile to Mr. Gladstone, and would reveal soreness against him on the part of Cobden. I discussed the thing with him a good deal, but without materials which would justify me in hoping that I had made an impression. Since then, Mr. Gladstone has become P.M. and Morley is editor of one of the princ.i.p.al organs of a part of the ministry. That explains some degree of reticence, if my former impression was correct.

I do not think such reticence quite worthy of the occasion and the men; and it would be well that the true story should be told, unless it should be likely in any way to embarra.s.s the new negotiation. That is a question that can only be settled at Hawarden.

Knowles proposed that I should review the book, having a Tory review already undertaken. He offered to bring the volumes to Cannes before the end of this month. That would not give me the needful time. It would be necessary, in the dearth of books here, and of all sources of information besides T. B. Potter, to have some things looked up in England, by slow process of post. And it would be quite essential to ascertain how much of what is omitted may be supplied. Not feeling sure of that, and of the time, I was obliged to decline. If Knowles comes here, as he portended, I shall have an opportunity of talking it over with him.

Many, many thanks for the glimpse into that precious Diary.[152] You will have observed how he {114} demolishes his own argument. He compares what I say now with what people said of Palmerston. Those people were wrong because Palmerston left a better man than himself behind him. But Mr. Gladstone goes on to say that there is n.o.body behind him fit to lead, except ----. Just work out the sum in Proportion: as G. to P., so is X. to G.

And it is not only a question of men, but of elements. There are many things in the glimpse that are {115} very notable. I fancy that Goschen's late speech has done him good; but it still seems clear that he will not shut the door on the Tories. I am in communication with them[153] again, and should perhaps see them on my way back, if I could come to Hawarden.

I write this off in haste, before I have an opportunity of showing Mrs.

Gladstone's most kind letter to Lady Acton. I don't like to answer her until I have done so.

Of course I should like to come beyond anything. If Parliament does not meet before the proper time, it might be possible to come early in January. The middle of December would not be quite so easy, for reasons here. But please tell me if it would be very much better for reasons paramount. Two thousand miles would be nothing for a good hour's talk with him, and several hours with his Secretary. I hope the Temple of Peace would not lose that character by my invasion of its pacific precincts.

Seeley would be hard on Lecky if he applied those words to his "Eighteenth Century," which is a weighty, thoughtful book. But the two former works, by which he became famous, do not really rise much above the vulgar level. There is nothing in his writings nearly equal to the new Bampton Lectures.[154]

[Sidenote: _Cannes Nov. 29, 1881_]

Hartington's speech has not arrived yet; but the French papers describe him as differing about Ireland from the P.M. and not repelling the idea of Compensation. As this was not urged at the time, it would now be a reproach to the Act, which might never have {116} pa.s.sed with such conditions. And one neither sees how compensation is to be regulated, nor by whom; whether by a commission stultifying the present one, or by the same contradicting itself. And it is very unlike the economic policy of the P.M. But I can conceive a very powerful argument on the other side, which the Tories are not likely to use.