The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume III Part 19

_To Lord Granville._

_Hawarden, Oct. 8, 1885._-Chamberlain came here yesterday and I have had a great deal of conversation with him. He is a good man to talk to, not only from his force and clearness, but because he speaks with reflection, does not misapprehend or (I think) suspect, or make unnecessary difficulties, or endeavour to maintain pedantically the uniformity and consistency of his argument throughout.

As to the three points of which he was understood to say that they were indispensable to the starting of a liberal government, I gather that they stand as follows:-

1. As to the authority of local authorities for compulsory expropriation.(138) To this he adheres; though I have said I could not see the justification for withholding countenance from the formation of a government with considerable and intelligible plans in view, because it would not at the first moment bind all its members to this doctrine. He intimates, however, that the form would be simple, the application of the principle mild; that he does not expect wide results from it, and that Hartington, he conceives, is not disposed wholly to object to everything of the kind.

2. As regards readjustment of taxation, he is contented with the terms of my address, and indisposed to make any new terms.

3. As regards free education, he does not ask that its principle be adopted as part of the creed of a new cabinet. He said it would be necessary to reserve his right individually to vote for it. I urged that he and the new school of advanced liberals were not sufficiently alive to the necessity of refraining when in government from declaring by _vote_ all their individual opinions; that a vote founded upon time, and the engagements of the House at the moment with other indispensable business, would imply no disparagement to the principle, which might even be expressly saved ("without prejudice") by an amending resolution; that he could hardly carry this point to the rank of a _sine qua non_. He said,-That the sense of the country might bind the liberal majority (presuming it to exist) to declare its opinion, even though unable to give effect to it at the moment; that he looked to a single declaration, not to the sustained support of a measure; and he seemed to allow that if the liberal sense were so far divided as not to show a unanimous front, in that case it might be a question whether some plan other than, and short of, a direct vote might be pursued.(139)

The question of the House of Lords and disestablishment he regards as still lying in the remoter distance.

All these subjects I separated entirely from the question of Ireland, on which I may add that he and I are pretty well agreed; unless upon a secondary point, namely, whether Parnell would be satisfied to acquiesce in a County Government bill, good so far as it went, maintaining on other matters his present general att.i.tude.(140) We agreed, I think, that a prolongation of the present relations of the Irish party would be a national disgrace, and the civilised world would scoff at the political genius of countries which could not contrive so far to understand one another as to bring their differences to an accommodation.

All through Chamberlain spoke of reducing to an absolute minimum his idea of necessary conditions, and this conversation so far left untouched the question of men, he apparently a.s.suming (wrongly) that I was ready for another three or four years'

engagement.

_Hawarden, Oct. 8, 1885._-In another "private," but less private letter, I have touched on measures, and I have now to say what pa.s.sed in relation to men.

He said the outline he had given depended on the supposition of my being at the head of the government. He did not say he could adhere to it on no other terms, but appeared to stipulate for a new point of departure.

I told him the question of my time of life had become such, that in any case prudence bound him, and all who have a future, to think of what is to follow me. That if a big Irish question should arise, and arise in such a form as to promise a possibility of settlement, that would be a crisis with a beginning and an end, and perhaps one in which from age and circ.u.mstances I might be able to supply aid and service such as could not be exactly had without me.(141) Apart from an imperious demand of this kind the question would be that of dealing with land laws, with local government, and other matters, on which I could render _no_ special service, and which would require me to enter into a new contest for several years, a demand that ought not to be made, and one to which I could not accede. I did not think the adjustment of personal relations, or the ordinary exigencies of party, const.i.tuted a call upon me to continue my long life in a course of constant pressure and constant contention with half my fellow-countrymen, until nothing remained but to step into the grave.

He agreed that the House of Lords was not an available resort. He thought I might continue at the head of the government, and leave the work of legislation to others.(142) I told him that all my life long I had had an essential and considerable share in the legislative work of government, and to abandon it would be an essential change, which the situation would not bear.

He spoke of the constant conflicts of opinion with Hartington in the late cabinet, but I reverted to the time when Hartington used to summon and lead meetings of the leading commoners, in which he was really the least antagonistic of men.

He said Hartington might lead a whig government aided by the tories, or might lead a radical government.... I recommended his considering carefully the personal composition of the group of leading men, apart from a single personality on which reliance could hardly be placed, except in the single contingency to which I have referred as one of a character probably brief.

He said it might be right for him to look as a friend on the formation of a liberal government, having (as I understood) moderate but intelligible plans, without forming part of it. I think this was the substance of what pa.s.sed.

Interesting as was this interview, it did not materially alter Mr.

Gladstone's disposition. After it had taken place he wrote to Lord Granville (Nov. 10):-

_To Lord Granville._

I quite understand how natural it is that at the present juncture pressure, and even the whole pressure, should from both quarters be brought to bear upon me. Well, if a special call of imperial interest, such as I have described, should arise, I am ready for the service it may entail, so far as my will is concerned. But a very different question is raised. Let us see how matters stand.

A course of action for the liberals, moderate but substantial, has been sketched. The party in general have accepted it. After the late conversations, there is no reason to antic.i.p.ate a breach upon any of the conditions laid down anywhere for immediate adoption, between the less advanced and the more advanced among the leaders.

It must occupy several years, and it may occupy the whole parliament. According to your view they will, unless on a single condition [_i.e._ Mr. Gladstone's leaders.h.i.+p], refuse to combine in a cabinet, and to act, with a majority at their back; and will make over the business voluntarily to the tories in a minority, at the commencement of a parliament. Why? They agree on the subjects before them. Other subjects, unknown as yet, may arise to split them. But this is what may happen to any government, and _it_ can form no reason.

But what _is_ the condition demanded? It is that a man of seventy-five,(143) after fifty-three years' service, with _no_ particular qualification for the questions in view should enter into a fresh contract of service in the House of Commons, reaching according to all likelihood over three, four, or five years, and without the smallest reasonable prospect of a break. And this is not to solve a political difficulty, but to soothe and conjure down personal misgivings and apprehensions. I have not said jealousies, because I do _not_ believe them to be the operative cause; perhaps they do not exist at all.

I firmly say this is not a reasonable condition, or a tenable demand, in the circ.u.mstances supposed. Indeed no one has endeavoured to show that it is. Further, abated action in the House of Commons is out of the question. We cannot have, in these times, a figurehead prime minister. I have gone a very long way in what I have said, and I really cannot go further.

Lord Aberdeen, taking office at barely seventy in the House of Lords, apologised in his opening speech for doing this at a time when his mind ought rather to be given to "other thoughts." Lord Palmerston in 1859 did not speak thus. But he was bound to no plan of any kind; and he was seventy-four, _i.e._ in his seventy-fifth year.

II

It is high time to turn to the other deciding issue in the case. Though thus stubborn against resuming the burden of leaders.h.i.+p merely to compose discords between Chatsworth and Birmingham, Mr. Gladstone was ready to be of use in the Irish question, "if it should take a favourable turn." As if the Irish question ever took a favourable turn. We have seen in the opening of the present chapter, how he spoke to Lord Hartington of a certain speech of Mr. Parnell's in September, "as bad as bad could be."

The secret of that speech was a certain fact that must be counted a central hinge of these far-reaching transactions. In July, a singular incident had occurred, nothing less strange than an interview between the new lord-lieutenant and the leader of the Irish party. To realise its full significance, we have to recall the profound odium that at this time enveloped Mr. Parnell's name in the minds of nearly all Englishmen. For several years and at that moment he figured in the public imagination for all that is sinister, treasonable, dark, mysterious, and unholy. He had stood his trial for a criminal conspiracy, and was supposed only to have been acquitted by the corrupt connivance of a Dublin jury. He had been flung into prison and kept there for many months without trial, as a person reasonably suspected of lawless practices. High treason was the least dishonourable of the offences imputed to him and commonly credited about him. He had been elaborately accused before the House of Commons by one of the most important men in it, of direct personal responsibility for outrages and murders, and he left the accusation with scant reply. He was constantly denounced as the apostle of rapine and rebellion. That the viceroy of the Queen should (M87) without duress enter into friendly communication with such a man, would have seemed to most people at that day incredible and abhorrent. Yet the incredible thing happened, and it was in its purpose one of the most sensible things that any viceroy ever did.(144)

The interview took place in a London drawing-room. Lord Carnarvon opened the conversation by informing Mr. Parnell, first, that he was acting of himself and by himself, on his own exclusive responsibility; second, that, he sought information only, and that he had not come for the purpose of arriving at any agreement or understanding however shadowy; third, that he was there as the Queen's servant, and would neither hear nor say one word that was inconsistent with the union of the two countries. Exactly what Mr. Parnell said, and what was said in reply, the public were never authentically told. Mr. Parnell afterwards spoke(145) as if Lord Carnarvon had given him to understand that it was the intention of the government to offer Ireland a statutory legislature, with full control over taxation, and that a scheme of land purchase was to be coupled with it. On this, the viceroy denied that he had communicated any such intention. Mr. Parnell's story was this:-

Lord Carnarvon proceeded to say that he had sought the interview for the purpose of ascertaining my views regarding-should he call it?-a const.i.tution for Ireland. But I soon found out that he had brought me there in order that he might communicate his own views upon the matter, as well as ascertain mine.... In reply to an inquiry as to a proposal which had been made to build up a central legislative body upon the foundation of county boards, I told him I thought this would be working in the wrong direction, and would not be accepted by Ireland; that the central legislative body should be a parliament in name and in fact.... Lord Carnarvon a.s.sured me that this was his own view also, and he strongly appreciated the importance of giving due weight to the sentiment of the Irish in this matter.... He had certain suggestions to this end, taking the colonial model as a basis, which struck me as being the result of much thought and knowledge of the subject....

At the conclusion of the conversation, which lasted for more than an hour, and to which Lord Carnarvon was very much the larger contributor, I left him, believing that I was in complete accord with him regarding the main outlines of a settlement conferring a legislature upon Ireland.(146)

It is certainly not for me to contend that Mr. Parnell was always an infallible reporter, but if closely scrutinised the discrepancy in the two stories as then told was less material than is commonly supposed. To the pa.s.sage just quoted, Lord Carnarvon never at any time in public offered any real contradiction. What he contradicted was something different. He denied that he had ever stated to Mr. Parnell that it was the intention of the government, if they were successful at the polls, to establish the Irish legislature, with limited powers and not independent of imperial control, which he himself favoured. He did not deny, any more than he admitted, that he had told Mr. Parnell that on opinion and policy they were very much at one. How could he deny it, after his speech when he first took office? Though the cabinet was not cognisant of the nature of these proceedings, the prime minister was. To take so remarkable a step without the knowledge and a.s.sent of the head of the government, would have been against the whole practice and principles of our ministerial system.

Lord Carnarvon informed Lord Salisbury of his intention of meeting Mr.

(M88) Parnell, and within twenty-four hours after the meeting, both in writing and orally, he gave Lord Salisbury as careful and accurate a statement as possible of what had pa.s.sed. We can well imagine the close attention with which the prime minister followed so profoundly interesting a report, and at the end of it he told the viceroy that "he had conducted the conversation with Mr. Parnell with perfect discretion." The knowledge that the minister responsible for the government of Ireland was looking in the direction of home rule, and exchanging home rule views with the great home rule leader, did not shake Lord Salisbury's confidence in his fitness to be viceroy.

This is no mere case of barren wrangle and verbal recrimination. The transaction had consequences, and the Carnarvon episode was a pivot. The effect upon the mind of Mr. Parnell was easy to foresee. Was I not justified, he asked long afterwards, in supposing that Lord Carnarvon, holding the views that he now indicated, would not have been made viceroy unless there was a considerable feeling in the cabinet that his views were right?(147) Could he imagine that the viceroy would be allowed to talk home rule to him-however shadowy and vague the words-unless the prime minister considered such a solution to be at any rate well worth discussing? Why should he not believe that the alliance formed in June to turn Mr. Gladstone out of office and eject Lord Spencer from Ireland, had really blossomed from being a mere lobby manuvre and election expedient, into a serious policy adopted by serious statesmen? Was it not certain that in such remarkable circ.u.mstances Mr. Parnell would throughout the election confidently state the national demand at its very highest?

In 1882 and onwards up to the Reform Act of 1885, Mr. Parnell had been ready to advocate the creation of a central council at Dublin for administrative purposes merely. This he thought would be a suitable achievement for a party that numbered only thirty-five members. But the a.s.sured increase of his strength at the coming election made all the difference. When semi-official soundings were taken from more than one liberal quarter after the fall of the Gladstone government, it was found that Mr. Parnell no longer countenanced provisional reforms. After the interview with Lord Carnarvon, the mercury rose rapidly to the top of the tube. Larger powers of administration were not enough. The claim for legislative power must now be brought boldly to the front. In unmistakable terms, the Irish leader stated the Irish demand, and posed both problem and solution. He now declared his conviction that the great and sole work of himself and his friends in the new parliament would be the restoration of a national parliament of their own, to do the things which they had been vainly asking the imperial parliament to do for them.(148)

III

When politicians ruminate upon the disastrous schism that followed Mr.

Gladstone's attempt to deal with the Irish question in 1886, they ought closely to study the general election of 1885. In that election, though leading men foresaw the approach of a marked Irish crisis, and awaited the outcome of events with an overshadowing sense of pregnant issues, there was nothing like general concentration on the Irish prospect. The strife of programmes and the rivalries of leaders were what engrossed the popular attention. The main body of the British electors were thinking mainly of promised agrarian booms, fair trade, the church in danger, or some other of their own domestic affairs.

Few forms of literature or history are so dull as the narrative of political debates. With a few exceptions, a political speech like the manna in the wilderness loses its savour on the second day. Three or four marked utterances of this critical autumn, following all that has been set forth already, will enable the reader to understand the division of counsel that prevailed immediately before the great change of policy in 1886, and the various strategic evolutions, masked movements, and play of mine, sap, and countermine, that led to it. As has just been described, and with good reason, (M89) for he believed that he had the Irish viceroy on his side, Mr. Parnell stood inflexible. In his speech of August 24 already mentioned, he had thrown down his gauntlet.

Much the most important answer to the challenge, if we regard the effect upon subsequent events, was that of Lord Salisbury two months later. To this I shall have to return. The two liberal statesmen, Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain, who were most active in this campaign, and whose activity was well spiced and salted by a lively political antagonism, agreed in a tolerably stiff negative to the Irish demand. The whig leader with a slow mind, and the radical leader with a quick mind, on this single issue of the campaign spoke with one voice. The whig leader(149) thought Mr. Parnell had made a mistake and ensured his own defeat: he overestimated his power in Ireland and his power in parliament; the Irish would not for the sake of this impossible and impracticable undertaking, forego without duress all the other objects which parliament was ready to grant them; and it remained to be seen whether he could enforce his iron discipline upon his eighty or ninety adherents, even if Ireland gave him so many.

The radical leader was hardly less emphatic, and his utterance was the more interesting of the two, because until this time Mr. Chamberlain had been generally taken throughout his parliamentary career as leaning strongly in the nationalist direction. He had taken a bold and energetic part in the proceedings that ended in the release of Mr. Parnell from Kilmainham. He had with much difficulty been persuaded to acquiesce in the renewal of any part of the Coercion Act, and had absented himself from the banquet in honour of Lord Spencer. Together with his most intimate ally in the late government, he had projected a political tour in Ireland with Mr.

Parnell's approval and under his auspices. Above all, he had actually opened his electoral campaign with that famous declaration which was so long remembered: "The pacification of Ireland at this moment depends, I believe, on the concession to Ireland of the right to govern itself in the matter of its purely domestic business. Is it not discreditable to us that even now it is only by unconst.i.tutional means that we are able to secure peace and order in one portion of her Majesty's dominions? It is a system as completely centralised and bureaucratic as that with which Russia governs Poland, or as that which prevailed in Venice under the Austrian rule. An Irishman at this moment cannot move a step-he cannot lift a finger in any parochial, munic.i.p.al, or educational work, without being confronted with, interfered with, controlled by, an English official, appointed by a foreign government, and without a shade or shadow of representative authority. I say the time has come to reform altogether the absurd and irritating anachronism which is known as Dublin Castle. That is the work to which the new parliament will be called."(150) Masters of incisive speech must pay the price of their gifts, and the sentence about Poland and Venice was long a favourite in many a debate. But when the Irish leader now made his proposal for removing the Russian yoke and the Austrian yoke from Ireland, the English leader drew back. "If these," he said, "are the terms on which Mr. Parnell's support is to be obtained, I will not enter into the compact." This was Mr. Chamberlain's response.(151)

IV

The language used by Mr. Gladstone during this eventful time was that of a statesman conscious of the magnitude of the issue, impressed by the obscurity of the path along which parties and leaders were travelling, and keenly alive to the perils of a premature or unwary step. Nothing was easier for the moment either for quick minds or slow minds, than to face the Irish demand beforehand with a bare, blank, wooden _non possumus_. Mr.

Gladstone had pondered the matter more deeply. His gift of political imagination, his wider experience, and his personal share in some chapters of the modern history of Europe and its changes, planted him on a height whence he commanded a view of possibilities (M90) and necessities, of hopes and of risks, that were unseen by politicians of the beaten track.

Like a pilot amid wandering icebergs, or in waters where familiar buoys had been taken up and immemorial beacons put out, he scanned the scene with keen eyes and a gla.s.s sweeping the horizon in every direction. No wonder that his words seemed vague, and vague they undoubtedly were.

Suppose that Cavour had been obliged to issue an election address on the eve of the interview at Plombieres, or Bismarck while he was on his visit to Biarritz. Their language would hardly have been pellucid. This was no moment for ultimatums. There were too many unascertained elements. Yet some of those, for instance, who most ardently admired President Lincoln for the caution with which he advanced step by step to the abolition proclamation, have most freely censured the English statesman because he did not in the autumn of 1885 come out with either a downright Yes or a point-blank No. The point-blank is not for all occasions, and only a simpleton can think otherwise.