The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume III Part 32

Perhaps looking forward with prophetic eye to a day that actually arrived six years later, Mr. Gladstone, while objecting to the proposal as unjustified, threw the responsibility of it upon the government, and used none of the flaming colours of defiance. The bulk of the liberals abstained from the division. This practical accord between the two sets of leading men made the parliamentary revolution definite and finally clenched it. It was not without something of a funereal pang that members with a sense of the old traditions of the power, solemnity, and honour of the House of Commons came down on the evening of the seventeenth of June.

Within a week they would be celebrating the fiftieth year of the reign of the Queen, and that night's business was the strange and unforeseen goal at which a journey of little more than the same period of time along the high, democratic road had brought the commonalty of the realm since 1832.

Among the provisions that went into the bill without any discussion in committee were those giving to the Irish executive the power of stamping an a.s.sociation as unlawful; those dealing with special juries and change of the place of trial; those specifying the various important conditions attaching to proclamations, which lay at the foundation of the Act; those dealing with rules, procedure, and the limits of penalty. The report next fell under what Burke calls the accursed slider. That stage had taken three sittings, when the government moved (June 30) that it must close in four days. So much grace, however, was not needed; for after the motion had been carried the liberals withdrew from the House, and the Irishmen betook themselves to the galleries, whence they looked down upon the mechanical proceedings below.

IV

In Ireland the battle now began in earnest. The Irish minister went into it with intrepid logic. Though very different men in the deeper parts of character, Macaulay's account of Halifax would not be an ill-natured account of Mr. Balfour. "His understanding was keen, sceptical, inexhaustibly fertile in distinctions and objections, his taste refined, his sense of the ludicrous exquisite; his temper placid and forgiving, but fastidious, and by no means p.r.o.ne either to malevolence or to enthusiastic admiration." His business was to show disaffected Ireland that parliament was her master. Parliament had put the weapon into his hands, and it was for him to smite his antagonists to the ground. He made no experiments in judicious mixture, hard blows and soft speech, but held steadily to force and fear. His apologists argued that after all substantial justice was done even in what seemed hard cases, and even if the spirit of law were sometimes a trifle strained. Unluckily the peasant with the blunderbuss, as he waits behind the hedge for the tyrant or the traitor, says just the same. The forces of disorder were infinitely less formidable than they had been a hundred times before. The contest was child's play compared with (M136) the violence and confusion with which Mr. Forster or Lord Spencer had to deal. On the other hand the alliance between liberals and Irish gave to the struggle a parliamentary complexion, by which no coercion struggle had ever been marked hitherto. In the dialectic of senate and platform, Mr. Balfour displayed a strength of wrist, a rapidity, an instant readiness for combat, that took his foes by surprise, and roused in his friends a delight hardly surpa.s.sed in the politics of our day.

There was another important novelty this time. To England hitherto Irish coercion had been little more than a word of common form, used without any thought what the thing itself was like to the people coerced. Now it was different. Coercion had for once become a flaming party issue, and when that happens all the world awakes. Mr. Gladstone had proclaimed that the choice lay between conciliation and coercion. The country would have liked conciliation, but did not trust his plan. When coercion came, the two British parties rushed to their swords, and the deciding body of neutrals looked on with anxiety and concern. There has never been a more strenuously sustained contest in the history of political campaigns. No effort was spared to bring the realities of repression vividly home to the judgment and feelings of men and women of our own island. English visitors trooped over to Ireland, and brought back stories of rapacious landlords, violent police, and famis.h.i.+ng folk cast out homeless upon the wintry roadside. Irishmen became the most welcome speakers on British platforms, and for the first time in all our history they got a hearing for their lamentable tale. To English audiences it was as new and interesting as the narrative of an African explorer or a navigator in the Pacific. Our Irish instructors even came to the curious conclusion that ordinary international estimates must be revised, and that Englishmen are in truth far more emotional than Irishmen. Ministerial speakers, on the other hand, diligently exposed inaccuracy here or over-colouring there. They appealed to the English distaste for disorder, and to the English taste for mastery, and they did not overlook the slumbering jealousy of popery and priestcraft. But the course of affairs was too rapid for them, the strong harsh doses to the Irish patient were too incessant. The Irish convictions in cases where the land was concerned rose to 2805, and of these rather over one-half were in cases where in England the rights of the prisoner would have been guarded by a jury. The tide of common popular feeling in this island about the right to combine, the right of public meeting, the frequent barbarities of eviction, the jarring indignities of prison treatment, flowed stronger and stronger. The general impression spread more and more widely that the Irish did not have fair play, that they were not being treated about speeches and combination and meetings as Englishmen or Scotchmen would be treated. Even in b.r.e.a.s.t.s that had been most incensed by the sudden reversal of policy in 1886, the feeling slowly grew that it was perhaps a pity after all that Mr. Gladstone had not been allowed to persevere on the fair-s.h.i.+ning path of conciliation.

V

The proceedings under exceptional law would make an instructive chapter in the history of the union. Mr. Gladstone followed them vigilantly, once or twice without his usual exercise of critical faculty, but always bringing into effective light the contrast between this squalid policy and his antic.i.p.ations of his own. Here we are only concerned with what affected British opinion on the new policy. One set of distressing incidents, not connected with the Crimes Act, created disgust and even horror in the country and set Mr. Gladstone on fire. A meeting of some six thousand persons a.s.sembled in a large public square at Mitchelstown in the county of Cork.(237) It was a good ill.u.s.tration of Mr. Gladstone's habitual strategy in public movements, that he should have boldly and promptly seized on the doings at Mitchelstown as an incident well fitted to arrest the attention of the country. "Remember Mitchelstown" became a watchword.

The chairman, speaking from a carriage that did duty for a platform, opened the proceedings. Then a file of police endeavoured to force a way through the densest part of the (M137) crowd for a government note-taker.

Why they did not choose an easier mode of approach from the rear, or by the side; why they had not got their reporter on to the platform before the business began; and why they had not beforehand asked for accommodation as was the practice, were three points never explained. The police unable to make a way through the crowd retired to the outskirt. The meeting went on. In a few minutes a larger body of police pressed up through the thick of the throng to the platform. A violent struggle began, the police fighting their way through the crowd with batons and clubbed rifles. The crowd flung stones and struck out with sticks, and after three or four minutes the police fled to their barracks-some two hundred and fifty yards away. So far there is no material discrepancy in the various versions of this dismal story. What followed is matter of conflicting testimony. One side alleged that a furious throng rushed after the police, attacked the barrack, and half murdered a constable outside, and that the constables inside in order to save their comrade and to beat off the a.s.sailing force, opened fire from an upper window. The other side declared that no crowd followed the retreating police at all, that the a.s.sault on the barrack was a myth, and that the police fired without orders from any responsible officer, in mere blind panic and confusion. One old man was shot dead, two others were mortally wounded and died within a week.

Three days later the affray was brought before the House of Commons. Any one could see from the various reports that the conduct of the police, the resistance of the crowd, and the guilt or justification of the bloodshed, were all matters in the utmost doubt and demanding rigorous inquiry. Mr.

Balfour p.r.o.nounced instant and peremptory judgment. The thing had happened on the previous Friday. The official report, however rapidly prepared, could not have reached him until the morning of Sunday. His officers at the Castle had had no opportunity of testing their official report by cross-examination of the constables concerned, nor by inspection of the barrack, the line of fire, and other material elements of the case. Yet on the strength of this hastily drawn and unsifted report received by him from Ireland on Sunday, and without even waiting for any information that eye-witnesses in the House might have to lay before him in the course of the discussion, the Irish minister actually told parliament once for all, on the afternoon of Monday, that he was of opinion, "looking at the matter in the most impartial spirit, that the police were in no way to blame, and that no responsibility rested upon any one except upon those who convened the meeting under circ.u.mstances which they knew would lead to excitement and might lead to outrage."(238) The country was astounded to see the most critical mind in all the House swallow an untested police report whole; to hear one of the best judges in all the country of the fallibility of human testimony, give offhand, in what was really a charge of murder, a verdict of Not Guilty, after he had read the untested evidence on one side.

The rest was all of a piece. The coroner's inquest was held in due course.

The proceedings were not more happily conducted than was to be expected where each side followed the counsels of ferocious exasperation. The jury, after some seventeen days of it, returned a verdict of wilful murder against the chief police officer and five of his men. This inquisition was afterwards quashed (February 10, 1888) in the Queen's bench, on the ground that the coroner had perpetrated certain irregularities of form. n.o.body has doubted that the Queen's bench was right; it seemed as if there had been a conspiracy of all the demons of human stupidity in this tragic bungle, from the first forcing of the reporter through the crowd, down to the inquest on the three slain men and onwards. The coroner's inquest having broken down, reasonable opinion demanded that some other public inquiry should be held. Even supporters of the government demanded it. If three men had been killed by the police in connection with a public meeting in England or Scotland, no home secretary would have dreamed for five minutes of resisting such a demand. Instead of a public inquiry, what the chief secretary did was to appoint a (M138) confidential departmental committee of policemen privately to examine, not whether the firing was justified by the circ.u.mstances, but how it came about that the police were so handled by their officers that a large force was put to flight by a disorderly mob. The three deaths were treated as mere accident and irrelevance. The committee was appointed to correct the discipline of the force, said the Irish minister, and in no sense to seek justification for actions which, in his opinion, required no justification.(239) Endless speeches were made in the House and out of it; members went over to Mitchelstown to measure distances, calculate angles, and fire imaginary rifles out of the barrack window; all sorts of theories of ricochet shots were invented, photographs and diagrams were taken. Some held the police to be justified, others held them to be wholly unjustified. But without a judicial inquiry, such as had been set up in the case of Belfast in 1886, all these doings were futile. The government remained stubborn. The slaughter of the three men was finally left just as if it had been the slaughter of three dogs. No other incident of Irish administration stirred deeper feelings of disgust in Ireland, or of misgiving and indignation in England.

Here was, in a word, the key to the new policy. Every act of Irish officials was to be defended. No constable could be capable of excess. No magistrate could err. No prison rule was over harsh. Every severity technically in order must be politic.

VI

Among other remarkable incidents, the Pope came to the rescue, and sent an emissary to inquire into Irish affairs. The government had lively hopes of the emissary, and while they beat the Orange drum in Ulster with one hand, with the other they stealthily twitched the sleeve of Monsignor Persico.

It came to little. The Congregation at Rome were directed by the Pope to examine whether it was lawful to resort to the plan of campaign. They answered that it was contrary both to natural justice and Christian charity. The papal rescript, embodying this conclusion, was received in Ireland with little docility. Unwisely the cardinals had given reasons, and the reasons, instead of springing in the mystic region of faith and morals, turned upon issues of fact as to fair rents. But then the Irish tenant thought himself a far better judge of a fair rent, than all the cardinals that ever wore red hats. If he had heard of such a thing as Jansenism, he would have known that he was in his own rude way taking up a position not unlike that of the famous teachers of Port Royal two hundred and thirty years before, that the authority of the Holy See is final as to doctrine, but may make a mistake as to fact.

Mr. Parnell spoke tranquilly of "a doc.u.ment from a distant country," and publicly left the matter to his catholic countrymen.(240) Forty catholic members of parliament met at the Mansion House in Dublin, and signed a doc.u.ment in which they flatly denied every one of the allegations and implications about fair rents, free contract, the land commission and all the rest, and roundly declared the Vatican circular to be an instrument of the unscrupulous foes both of the Holy See and of the people of Ireland.

They told the Pope, that while recognising unreservedly as catholics the spiritual jurisdiction of the Holy See, they were bound solemnly to affirm that Irish catholics recognise no rights in Rome to interfere in their political affairs. A great meeting in the Phnix Park ratified the same position by acclamation. At Cork, under the presidency of the mayor, and jealously watched by forces of horse and foot, a great gathering in a scene of indescribable excitement protested that they would never allow the rack-renters of Ireland to grind them down at the instigation of intriguers at Rome. Even in many cities in the United States the same voice was heard. The bishops knew well that the voice was strongly marked by the harsh accent of their Fenian adversaries. They issued a declaration of their own, protesting to their flocks that the rescript was confined within the spiritual sphere, and that his holiness was far from wis.h.i.+ng to prejudice the nationalist movement. In the closing week of the year, the Pope himself judged that the time had come for him to make known (M139) that the action which had been "so sadly misunderstood," had been prompted by the desire to keep the cause in which Ireland was struggling from being weakened by the introduction of anything that could justly be brought in reproach against it.(241) The upshot of the intervention was that the action condemned by the rescript was not materially affected within the area already disturbed; but the rescript may have done something to prevent its extension elsewhere.

VII

Among the entries for 1887 there occur:-

_Sandringham, Jan. 29._-A large party. We were received with the usual delicacy and kindness. Much conversation with the Prince of Wales.... Walk with --, who charmed me much. _Jan. 31._-Off by 11 A.M. to Cambridge.... Dined with the master of Trinity in hall.

Went over the Newnham buildings: greatly pleased. Saw Mr.

Sidgwick. Evening service at King's.... _Feb. 2._-Hawarden at 5.30. Set to work on papers. Finished Greville's Journals. _Feb.

3._-Wrote on Greville. _Feb. 5._-Felled a chestnut. _Feb.

27._-Read Lord Shaftesbury's _Memoirs_-an excellent discipline for me. _March 5._- Dollis Hill [a house near Willesden often lent to him in these times by Lord and Lady Aberdeen] a refuge from my timidity, unwilling at 77 to begin a new London house. _March 9._-Windsor [to dine and sleep]. The Queen courteous as always; somewhat embarra.s.sed, as I thought. _March 29._-Worked on Homer, Apollo, etc. Then turned to the Irish business and revolved much, with extreme difficulty in licking the question into shape. Went to the House and spoke 1- hours as carefully and with as much measure as I could. Conclave on coming course of business. _April 5._-Conversation with Mr. Chamberlain-ambiguous result, but some ground made. _April 18._-H. of C. 4--8- and 10-2. Spoke 1- h.

My voice did its duty but with great effort. _April 25._-Spoke for an hour upon the budget. R. Churchill excellent. Conclave on the forged letters. _May 4._-Read earlier speeches of yesterday with care, and worked up the subject of Privilege. Spoke 1- h.

In June (1887) Mr. Gladstone started on a political campaign in South Wales, where his reception was one of the most triumphant in all his career. Ninety-nine hundredths of the vast crowds who gave up wages for the sake of seeing him and doing him honour were strong protestants, yet he said to a correspondent, "they made this demonstration in order to secure firstly and mainly justice to catholic Ireland. It is not after all a bad country in which such things take place."

It was at Swansea that he said what he had to say about the Irish members.

He had never at any time from the hour when he formed his government, set up their exclusion as a necessary condition of home rule. All that he ever bargained for was that no proposal for inclusion should be made a ground for impairing real and effective self-government. Subject to this he was ready to adjourn the matter and to leave things as they were, until experience should show the extent of the difficulty and the best way of meeting it. Provisional exclusion had been suggested by a member of great weight in the party in 1886. The new formula was provisional inclusion.

This announcement restored one very distinguished adherent to Mr.

Gladstone, and it appeased the clamour of the busy knot who called themselves imperial federationists. Of course it opened just as many new difficulties as it closed old ones, but both old difficulties and new fell into the background before the struggle in Ireland.

_June 2, 1887._-Off at 11.40. A tumultuous but interesting journey to Swansea and Singleton, where we were landed at 7.30. Half a dozen speeches on the way. A small party to dinner. 3.-A "quiet day." Wrote draft to the a.s.sociations on the road, as model. Spent the forenoon in settling plans and discussing the lines of my meditated statement to-morrow with Sir Hussey Vivian, Lord Aberdare, and Mr. Stuart Rendel. In the afternoon we went to the cliffs and the Mumbles, and I gave some hours to writing preliminary notes on a business where all depends on the manner of handling. Small party to dinner. Read Cardiff and Swansea guides.

4.-More study and notes. 12-4- the astonis.h.i.+ng procession. Sixty thousand! Then spoke for near an hour. Dinner at 8, near an hundred, arrangements perfect. Spoke for nearly another hour; got through a most difficult business as well as I could expect.

5.-Church 11 A.M., notable sermon and H. C. (service long), again 6- P.M., good sermon. Wrote to Sir W. Harcourt, Mr. Morley, etc.

Walked in the garden. Considered the question of a non-political address "in council"; we all decided against it. 6.-Surveys in the house, then 12-4 to Swansea for the freedom and opening the town library. I was rather jealous of a non-political affair at such a time, but could not do less than speak for thirty or thirty-five minutes for the two occasions. 4-8 to Park Farm, the beautiful vales, breezy common and the curious chambered cairn. Small dinner-party. 7.-Off at 8.15 and a hard day to London, the occasion of processions, hustles, and speeches; that at Newport in the worst atmosphere known since the Black Hole. Poor C. too was an invalid. Spoke near an hour to 3000 at Cardiff; about hour at Newport; more briefly at Gloucester and Swindon. Much enthusiasm even in the English part of the journey. Our party was reduced at Newport to the family, at Gloucester to our two selves. C. H.

Terrace at 6.20. Wrote to get off the House of Commons. It has really been a "progress," and an extraordinary one.

In December 1887, under the pressing advice of his physician, though "with a great lazy reluctance," Mr. Gladstone set his face with a family party towards Florence. He found the weather more northern than at Hawarden, but it was healthy. He was favourably impressed by all he saw of Italian society (English being cultivated to a degree that surprised him), but he did his best to observe Sir Andrew Clark's injunction that he should practise the Trappist discipline of silence, and the condition of his voice improved in consequence. He read Scartazzini's book on Dante, and found it fervid, generally judicial, and most unsparing in labour; and he was much interested in Beugnot's _Chute du Paganisme_. And as usual, he returned homeward as unwillingly as he had departed. During the session he fought his Irish battle with unsparing tenacity, and the most conspicuous piece of his activity out of parliament was a pilgrimage to Birmingham (November 1888). It was a great gathering of lieutenants and leading supporters from, every part of the country. Here is a note of mine:-

On the day of the great meeting in Bingley Hall, somebody came to say that Mr. Gladstone wanted to know if I could supply him with a certain pa.s.sage from a speech of Lord Hartington's. I found him in his dressing-gown, conning his notes and as lively as youth. He jumped up and pressed point after point on me, as if I had been a great public meeting. I offered to go down to the public library and hunt for the pa.s.sage; he deprecated this, but off I went, and after some search unearthed the pa.s.sage, and copied it out. In the evening I went to dine with him before the meeting. He had been out for a short walk to the Oratory in the afternoon to call on Cardinal Newman. He was not allowed, he told me, to see the cardinal, but he had had a long talk with Father Neville. He found that Newman was in the habit of reading with a reflector candle, but had not a good one. "So I said I had a good one, and I sent it round to him." He was entirely disengaged in mind during dinner, ate and drank his usual quant.i.ty, and talked at his best about all manner of things. At the last moment he was telling us of John Hunter's confirmation, from his own medical observation, of Homer's remark about Dolon; a bad fellow, whose badness Homer explains by the fact that he was a brother brought up among sisters only:-

a?t?? d? ????? ??? et? p??te ?as????t?s??.(242)

Oliver Cromwell, by the way, was an only surviving boy among seven sisters, so we cannot take either poet or surgeon for gospel. Time was up, and bore us away from Homer and Hunter. He was perfectly silent in the carriage, as I remembered Bright had been when years before I drove with him to the same hall. The sight of the vast meeting was almost appalling, from fifteen to seventeen thousand people. He spoke with great vigour and freedom; the fine pa.s.sages probably heard all over; many other pa.s.sages certainly not heard, but his gestures so strong and varied as to be almost as interesting as the words would have been. The speech lasted an hour and fifty minutes; and he was not at all exhausted when he sat down. The scene at the close was absolutely indescribable and incomparable, overwhelming like the sea.

He took part in parliamentary business at the beginning of December. On December 3rd he spoke on Ireland with immense fervour and pa.s.sion. He was roused violently by the chairman's attempt to rule out strong language from debate, and made a vehement pa.s.sage on that point. The substance of the speech was rather thin and not new, but the delivery magnificent. The Irish minister rose to reply at 7.50, and Mr. Gladstone reluctantly made up his mind to dine in the House. A friend by his side said No, and at 8.40 hurried him down the back-stairs to a hospitable board in Carlton Gardens. He was nearly voiceless, until it was time for the rest of us to go back. A speedy meal revived him, and he was soon discoursing on O'Connell and many other persons and things, with boundless force and vivacity.

A few days later he was carried off to Naples. Hereto, he told Lord Acton, "we have been induced by three circ.u.mstances. First, a warm invitation from the Dufferins to Rome; as to which, however, there are _cons_ as well as _pros_ for a man who like me is neither Italian nor Curial in the view of present policies. Secondly, our kind friend Mr. Stuart Rendel has actually offered to be our conductor thither and back, to perform for us the great service which you rendered us in the trip to Munich and Saint Martin. Thirdly, I have the hope that the stimulating climate of Naples, together with an abstention from speech greater than any I have before enjoyed, may act upon my 'vocal cord,' and partially at least restore it."

Chapter III. The Special Commission. (1887-1890)

My Lords, it appears to me that the measure is unfortunate in its origin, unfortunate in its scope and object, and unfortunate in the circ.u.mstances which accompanied its pa.s.sage through the other House. It appears to me to establish a precedent most novel, and fraught with the utmost danger.-LORD HERSCh.e.l.l.(243)

I

Mr. Gladstone's ceaseless attention to the many phases of the struggle that was now the centre of his public life, was especially engaged on what remains the most amazing of them. I wish it were possible to pa.s.s it over, or throw it into a secondary place; but it is too closely connected with the progress of Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy in British opinion at a critical stage, and it is still the subject of too many perversions that affect his name. Transactions are to be found in our annals where wrong was done by government to individuals on a greater scale, where a powerful majority devised engines for the proscription of a weak minority with deadlier aim, and where the omnipotence of parliament was abused for the purpose of faction with more ruthless result. But whether we look at the squalid fraud in which the incident began, or at the tortuous parliamentary pretences by which it was worked out, or at the perversion of fundamental principles of legal administration involved in sending men to answer the gravest charges before a tribunal specially const.i.tuted at the absolute discretion of their bitterest political opponents-at the moment engaged in a fierce contest with them in another field-from whatever point of view we approach, the erection of the Special Commission of 1888 stands out as one of the ugliest things done in the name and under the forms of law in this island during the century.