The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume III Part 14

Chapter X. Interior Of The Cabinet. (1895)

I am aware that the age is not what we all wish, but I am sure that the only means to check its degeneracy is heartily to concur in whatever is best in our time.-BURKE.

I

The year 1885 must be counted as in some respects the severest epoch of Mr. Gladstone's life. The previous twelve months had not ended cheerfully.

Sleep, the indispensable restorer, and usually his constant friend, was playing him false. The last entry in his diary was this:-

The year closed with a bad night, only one hour and a half of sleep, which will hardly do to work upon. There is much that I should like to have recorded.... But the pressure on me is too great for the requisite recollection. It is indeed a time of _Sturm und Drang_. What with the confusion of affairs, and the disturbance of my daily life by the altered character of my nights, I cannot think in calm, but can only trust and pray.

He was unable to be present at the dinner of the tenants, and his eldest son in his absence dwelt once more on his father's wish to retire, whenever occasion should come, from the public service, or at least from that kind of service to the public which imposed on him such arduous efforts.

One great element of confusion was the sphinx's riddle of Egyptian finance. On his birthday, among a dozen occupations, he says: "A little woodcraft for helping sleep; wrote mem. on Egyptian finance which I hope may help to clear my brain and nerves." And this was a characteristic way of seeking a cure; for now and at every time, any task that demanded close thought and firm expression was his surest (M67) sedative. More perplexing even than the successive problems of the hour, was the threatened disorganisation, not only of his cabinet, but of the party and its future.

On January 20 he was forced to London for two Egyptian cabinets, but he speedily returned to Hawarden, whence he immediately wrote a letter to Lord Granville:-

_January 22, 1885._-Here I am after a journey of 5- hours from door to door, through the unsought and ill-deserved kindness of the London and North-Western railway, which entirely spoils me by special service.

There was one part of my conversation of to-day with Hartington which I should like not to leave in any case without record. He referred to the difficulties he had had, and he "gratefully"

acknowledged the considerateness of the cabinet. He said the point always urged upon him was, not to break up the liberal party. But, he said, can we avoid its breaking up, within a very short time after you retire, and ought this consideration therefore to be regarded as of such very great force? I said, my reply is in two sentences. First, I admit that from various symptoms it is not improbable there may be a plan or intention to break up the party.

But if a rupture of that kind comes,-this is my second sentence-it will come upon matters of principle, known and understood by the whole country, and your duty will probably be clear and your position unembarra.s.sed. But I entreat you to use your utmost endeavour to avoid bringing about the rupture on one of the points of this Egyptian question, which lies outside the proper business of a government and is beyond its powers, which does not turn upon clear principles of politics, and about which the country understands almost nothing, and cares, for the most part, very little. All this he took without rejoinder.

_P.S._-We are going to Holker next week, and Hartington said he would try to come and see me there.

As we have already seen,(111) Mr. Gladstone paid his visit to Holker (January 30), where he found the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re "wonderfully well, and kind as ever," where he was joined by Lord Hartington, and where they together spelled out the cipher telegram (on February 5) bringing the evil news of the fall of Khartoum.

It is not uninteresting to see how the notion of Mr. Gladstone's retirement, now much talked of in his family, affected a friendly, philosophic, and most observant onlooker. Lord Acton wrote to him (February 2):-

You mean that the new parliament, the first of our democratic const.i.tution, shall begin its difficult and perilous course without the services of a leader who has greater experience and authority than any other man. You design to withdraw your a.s.sistance when most urgently needed, at the moment of most conservative apprehension and most popular excitement. By the choice of this particular moment for retirement you increase the danger of the critical transition, because n.o.body stands as you do between the old order of things and the new, or inspires general confidence; and the lieutenants of Alexander are not at their best. Next year's change will appear vast and formidable to the suspicious foreigner, who will be tempted to doubt our ident.i.ty.

It is in the national interest to reduce the outer signs of change, to bridge the apparent chasm, to maintain the traditional character of the state. The unavoidable elements of weakness will be largely and voluntarily aggravated by their untimely coincidence with an event which must, at any time, be a blow to the position of England among the Powers. Your absence just then must grievously diminish our credit.... You alone inspire confidence that what is done for the great ma.s.ses shall be done with a full sense of economic responsibility.... A divided liberal party and a weak conservative party mean the supremacy of the revolutionary Irish....

To this Mr. Gladstone replied:-

_10 Downing Street, Feb. 11, 1885._ Your argument against letting the outworn hack go to gra.s.s, depends wholly on a certain proposition, namely this, that there is about to be a crisis in the history of the const.i.tution, growing out of the extension of the franchise, and that it is my duty to do what I can in aiding to steer the s.h.i.+p through the boiling waters of this crisis. My answer is simple. There is no crisis at all in view. There is a process of slow modification and development mainly in directions which I view with misgiving. "Tory democracy," the favourite idea on that side, is no more like the conservative party in which I was bred, than it is like liberalism. In fact less. It is demagogism, only a demagogism not enn.o.bled by love and appreciation of liberty, but applied in the worst way, to put down the pacific, law-respecting, economic elements which enn.o.bled the old conservatism, living upon the fomentation of angry pa.s.sions, and still in secret as obstinately attached as ever to the evil principle of cla.s.s interests. The liberalism of to-day is better in what I have described as enn.o.bling the old conservatism; nay, much better, yet far from being good. Its pet idea is what they call construction,-that is to say, taking into the hands of the state the business of the individual man. Both the one and the other have much to estrange me, and have had for many, many years.

But, with all this, there is no crisis. I have even the hope that while the coming change may give undue encouragement to "construction," it will be favourable to the economic, pacific, law-regarding elements; and the sense of justice which abides tenaciously in the ma.s.ses will never knowingly join hands with the fiend of Jingoism. On the whole, I do not abandon the hope that it may mitigate the chronic distemper, and have not the smallest fear of its bringing about an acute or convulsive action. You leave me therefore rooted in my evil mind....

The activity of the left wing, acute, perhaps, but not convulsive, became much more embarra.s.sing than the desire of the right wing to be inactive.

Mr. Chamberlain had been rapidly advancing in public prominence, and he now showed that the agitation against the House of Lords was to be only the beginning and not the end. At Ipswich (January 14), he said this country had been called the paradise of the rich, and warned his audience no longer to allow it to remain the purgatory of the poor. He told them that reform of local government must be almost the first reform of the next parliament, and spoke in favour of allotments, the creation of small proprietors, the placing of a small tax on the total property of the taxpayer, and of free education. Mr. Gladstone's attention was drawn from Windsor to these utterances, and he replied (January 22) that though he thought some of them were "on various grounds open to grave objection,"

yet they seemed to raise no "definite point on which, in his capacity of prime minister, he was ent.i.tled to interfere and lecture the speaker." A few days later, more terrible things were said by Mr. Chamberlain at Birmingham. He p.r.o.nounced for the abolition of plural voting, and in favour of payment of members, and manhood suffrage. He also advocated a bill for enabling local communities to acquire land, a graduated income-tax, and the breaking up of the great estates as the first step in land reform. This deliverance was described by not unfriendly critics as "a little too much the speech of the agitator of the future, rather than of the minister of the present." Mr. Gladstone made a lenient communication to the orator, to the effect that "there had better be some explanations among them when they met." To Lord Granville he wrote (January 31):-

Upon the whole, weak-kneed liberals have caused us more trouble in the present parliament than radicals. But I think these declarations by Chamberlain upon matters which cannot, humanly speaking, become practical before the next parliament, can hardly be construed otherwise than as having a remote and (in that sense) far-sighted purpose which is ominous enough. The opposition can hardly fail in their opportunity, I must add in their duty, to make them matter of attack. Such things will happen casually from time to time, and always with inconvenience-but there is here a degree of method and system which seem to give the matter a new character.

It will be seen from his tone that Mr. Gladstone, in all the embarra.s.sments arising from this source, showed complete freedom from personal irritation. Like the lofty-minded man he was, he imputed no low motives to a colleague because the colleague gave him trouble. He recognised by now that in his cabinet the battle was being fought between old time and new. He did not allow his dislike of some of the new methods of forming public opinion, to prevent him from doing full justice to the energetic and sincere public spirit behind them. He had, moreover, quite enough to do with (M68) the demands of the present, apart from signs that were ominous for the future. A year before, in a letter to Lord Granville (March 24, 1884), he had attempted a definition that will, perhaps, be of general interest to politicians of either party complexion. It is, at any rate, characteristic of his subtlety, if that be the right word, in drawing distinctions:-

What are divisions in a cabinet? In my opinion, differences of views stated, and if need be argued, and then advisedly surrendered with a view to a common conclusion are not "divisions in a cabinet." By that phrase I understand unaccommodated differences on matters standing for immediate action.

It was unaccommodated differences of this kind that cost Mr. Disraeli secessions on the Reform bill, and secessions no less serious on his eastern policy, and it is one of the wonders of his history that Mr.

Gladstone prevented secession on the matters now standing for immediate action before his own cabinet. During the four months between the meeting of parliament and the fall of the government, the two great difficulties of the government-Egypt and Ireland-reached their climax.

II

The news of the fall of Khartoum reached England on February 5. One of the least points, as Mr. Gladstone wrote on the day, was that the grievous news would put an end to the government, and so it very nearly did. As was to be expected, Sir Stafford Northcote moved a vote of censure. Mr.

Gladstone informed the Queen, on the day before the division, that the aspect of the House was "dubious and equivocal." If there was a chance of overthrowing the ministry, he said, the nationalists were pretty sure to act and vote as a body with Sir Stafford. Mr. Forster, Mr. Goschen, and some members of the whig section of the liberal party, were likely either to do the same, or else to abstain. These circ.u.mstances looked towards an unfavourable issue, if not in the shape of an adverse majority, yet in the form of a majority too small to enable the government to carry on with adequate authority and efficiency. In the debate, said Mr. Gladstone, Lord Hartington re-stated with measured force the position of the government, and overthrew the contention that had taken a very forward place in the indictment against ministers, that their great offence was the failure to send forward General Graham's force to relieve General Gordon. In the course of this debate Mr. Goschen warned the government that if they flinched from the policy of smas.h.i.+ng the Mahdi at Khartoum, he should vote against them. A radical below the gangway upon this went to the party whip and declared, with equal resolution, that if the government insisted on the policy, then it would be for him and others to vote against them. Sir William Harcourt, in a speech of great power, satisfied the gentlemen below the gangway, and only a small handful of the party went into the lobby with the opposition and the Irish. The division was taken at four in the morning (February 28), and the result was that the government which had come in with morning radiance five years ago, was worn down to an attenuated majority of fourteen.(112)

When the numbers were declared, Mr. Gladstone said to a colleague on the bench, "_That will do._" Whether this delphic utterance meant that the size of the majority would justify resignation or retention, the colleague was not sure. When the cabinet met at a more mellowed hour in the day, the question between going out of office and staying in, was fully discussed.

Mere considerations of ease all pointed one way, for, if they held on, they would seem to be dependent on tory support; trouble was brewing with Russia, and the Seats bill would not be through in a hurry. On the other hand, fourteen was majority enough to swear by, the party would be surprised by resignation and discouraged, and retirement would wear the look of a false position. In fact Mr. Gladstone, in spite of his incessant sighs for a hermit's calm, was always for fighting out every position to the last trench. I can think of no exception, and even when the time came ten years later, he thought his successors pusillanimous for (M69) retiring on a small scratch defeat on cordite.(113) So now he acted on the principle that with courage cabinets may weather almost any storm. No actual vote was taken, but the numbers for and against retirement were equal, until Mr. Gladstone spoke. He thought that they should try to go on, at least until the Seats bill was through. This was the final decision.

All this brought once more into his mind the general consideration that now naturally much haunted him. He wrote to the Queen (February 27):-

Mr. Gladstone believes that circ.u.mstances independent of his own will enable him to estimate, with some impartiality, future political changes, and he is certainly under the impression that, partly from the present composition and temper of the liberal party, and still more, and even much more, from the changes which the conservative party has been undergoing during the last forty years (especially the last ten or fifteen of them), the next change of government may possibly form the introduction to a period presenting some new features, and may mean more than what is usually implied in the transfer of power from one party to another.

Mr. Bright has left a note of a meeting with him at this time:-

_March 2, 1885._-Dined with Mrs. Gladstone. After dinner, sat for half an hour or more with Mr. Gladstone, who is ill with cold and hoa.r.s.eness. Long talk on Egypt. He said he had suffered torment during the continuance of the difficulty in that country. The sending Gordon out a great mistake,-a man totally unsuited for the work he undertook. Mr. Gladstone never saw Gordon. He was appointed by ministers in town, and Gladstone concurred, but had never seen him.

At this moment clouds began to darken the remote horizon on the north-west boundary of our great Indian possessions. The entanglement in the deserts of the Soudan was an obvious temptation to any other Power with policies of its own, to disregard the susceptibilities or even the solid interests of Great Britain. As we shall see, Mr. Gladstone was as little disposed as Chatham or Palmerston to shrink from the defence of the legitimate rights or obligations of his country. But the action of Russia in Afghanistan became an added and rather poignant anxiety.

As early as March 12 the cabinet found it necessary to consider the menacing look of things on the Afghan frontier. Military necessities in India, as Mr. Gladstone described to the Queen what was in the mind of her ministers, "might conceivably at this juncture come to overrule the present intentions as to the Soudan as part of them, and it would consequently be imprudent to do anything which could practically extend our obligations in that quarter; as it is the entanglement of the British forces in Soudanese operations, which would most powerfully tempt Russia to adopt aggressive measures." Three or four weeks later these considerations came to a head. The question put by Mr. Gladstone to his colleagues was this: "Apart from the defence of Egypt, which no one would propose to abandon, does there appear to be any obligation of honour or any inducement of policy (for myself I should add, is there any moral warrant?) that should lead us in the present state of the demands on the empire, to waste a large portion of our army in fighting against nature, and I fear also fighting against liberty (such liberty as the case admits) in the Soudan?" The a.s.sumptions on which the policy had been founded had all broken down. Osman Digna, instead of being readily crushed, had betaken himself to the mountains and could not be got at. The railway from Suakin to Berber, instead of serving the advance on Khartoum in the autumn, could not possibly be ready in time. Berber, instead of being taken before the hot season, could not be touched. Lord Wolseley, instead of being able to proceed with his present forces or a moderate addition, was already asking for twelve more battalions of infantry, with a proportion of other arms.

Mr. Gladstone's own view of this crisis is to be found in a memorandum dated April 9, circulated to the cabinet three or four days before the question came up for final settlement. (M70) It is long, but then the case was intricate and the stages various. The reader may at least be satisfied to know that he will have little more of it.(114)

Three cabinets were held on three successive days (April 13-15). On the evening of the first day Mr. Gladstone sent a telegram to the Queen, then abroad, informing her that in the existing state of foreign affairs, her ministers felt bound to examine the question of the abandonment of offensive operations in the Soudan and the evacuation of the territory.

The Queen, in reply, was rather vehement against withdrawal, partly on the ground that it would seriously affect our position in India. The Queen had throughout made a great point that the fullest powers should be granted to those on the spot, both Wolseley and Baring having been selected by the government for the offices they held. No question cuts deeper in the art of administering a vast system like that of Great Britain, than the influence of the agent at a distant place; nowhere is the balance of peril between too slack a rein from home and a rein too tight, more delicate.

Mr. Gladstone, perhaps taught by the experience of the Crimean war, always strongly inclined to the school of the tight rein, though I never heard of any representative abroad with a right to complain of insufficient support from a Gladstone cabinet.(115) On this aspect of matters, so raised by the Queen, Mr. Gladstone had (March 15) expressed his view to Sir Henry Ponsonby:-