The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume II Part 18

(M63) Among other objects of his keen and active interest was the preservation for its established uses of the famous monastery founded by St. Benedict thirteen centuries before at Monte Ca.s.sino,-the first home of that great rule and inst.i.tute which for long ages played so striking part in the history of civilisation in the western world. He now visited Monte Ca.s.sino in the company of Padre Tosti. The historian of this venerable nursery of learning was his friend long before now-they met first at Naples in 1850-and he had induced Mr. Gladstone to subscribe for the reparation of the tomb of the founder. In 1863 Dean Stanley visited the monastery with a letter from Mr. Gladstone: "It secured for me not only the most hospitable reception, but an outpouring of Padre Tosti's whole soul on pope and church, and Italy and Europe, past and present, in an almost unbroken conversation of three hours." In 1866, it seemed as if the hand of the Italian government were about to fall as heavily on Monte Ca.s.sino as on any other monastic establishment. Mr. Gladstone besides doing his best with Ricasoli and others, wrote a letter of admirable spirit to his friend Sir James Lacaita:-

It seems, he said, as if one of the lamps of learning were put out; much promise for the future extinguished; and a sacred link of union, with the past broken. If it be asked why Englishmen should speak and feel on this Italian subject, my answer would be this: that the foundation and history of Monte Ca.s.sino have the interest for us which the Americans of the States feel in Alfred, in Edward III., in Henry V. They are part of the great current of Italian civilisation which has been diffused and distributed over all European lands. Much of my life has been devoted to the promotion of public wealth, and of that vast exterior activity which distinguishes the age; but I am deeply anxious for the preservation of all those centres, not too numerous, at which the power of thought may be cultivated, and the inner and higher life of man maintained. It has, as you know, been pressed upon me that I should endeavour to make a respectful appeal to the Italian government on this subject through the medium of a discussion in the House of Commons. But I shrink from taking such a course, as I fear that the general effect might be to present all appearance of intrusive and impertinent interference with the affairs of a foreign country, and that the very country towards which I should least wish to offer the appearance of a slight I cannot likewise refuse to cherish, the hope that the enlightened mind of Baron Ricasoli and his colleagues may lead them either to avert or mitigate this blow.

On his return he pa.s.sed through Paris. The previous year a signal honour had been bestowed upon him by the ill.u.s.trious Inst.i.tute of France-founded on that Academy, in which Richelieu had crowned the fame of arms and statesmans.h.i.+p by honour to purity in national language and competence in letters.(151) In acknowledging the election, he wrote to Mignet, the historian, then perpetual secretary:-

_11 Carlton House Terrace, March 9, 1865._-I have already expressed although in an imperfect manner to your distinguished colleagues Count Wolowski and M. Guizot, the sentiments of grat.i.tude with which I accept the signal and most unexpected honour of my election as a foreign a.s.sociate of the Inst.i.tute of France. Even the pressure, and what I might call the tumult, of my daily occupations do not render me insensible to the nature of this distinction, which carries with it a world-wide fame. I will not, however, dwell further on the nature of the honour, or on my own unworthiness to receive it: except to refer for a moment to the gentleman whose name was placed in compet.i.tion with my own. I cannot but be aware of his superior claims. I fear that, for once, the judgment of the Academy has erred, and that in preferring me to Mr. Mill, its suffrages have taken a wrong direction. I am only consoled by reflecting that such a body, with such renown, and with its ranks so filled, can afford to suffer the detriment attaching to a single mistake. I have the honour to be, etc.

(M64) This distinction brought with it the duty of attending the funeral of a writer eminent among the philosophers and men of letters of his day.

It had been said of him that three days in the week he was absurd, three days mediocre, and one day sublime. The verdict seems to be confirmed.

_Jan. 23._-From 10 to 3.45 at the successive stages of Victor Cousin's interment, in my character of member of the Inst.i.tute. It was of great interest. I saw many most eminent Frenchmen, so many that they remained as a cloud upon my recollection, except Berryer, Thiers, and some whom I had known before. _Jan.

26._-Attended the meeting of the Inst.i.tute 12-2. Spent the rest of the afternoon with M. Jules Simon in seeing certain quarters of Paris.

"Yesterday," he wrote to Mr. Brand (Jan. 27), "a dinner was given to Cardwell and me at the Grand Hotel, by the Society of Political Economists of France, and I did my best to improve the occasion in terms which might imply censure on the military measures here and the new turn of affairs.

Also I am a known accomplice of M. Fould's. So I let all this be balanced by dining with the Emperor to-day, and with Rouher to-morrow." Of the reception at court, he says, "Dined at the Tuileries, and was surprised at the extreme attention and courtesy of both their majesties, with whom I had much interesting conversation." The fates with no halting foot were drawing near. The palace was a heap of ashes, host and hostess were forlorn exiles, before in no long span of time they met their guest again.

Chapter XIV. The Struggle For Household Suffrage. (1867)

First of all we had a general intimation and promise that something would be done; then a series of resolutions, which strutted a brief hour upon the stage and then disappeared; then there was a bill, which we were told, on the authority of a cabinet minister, was framed in ten minutes, and which was withdrawn in very little more than ten minutes; and lastly, there was a bill which-undergoing the strangest transformations in its course through parliament-did, I will not say, become the law of the land, but was altered into something like that which became the law of the land.-GLADSTONE.

I

From Rome Mr. Gladstone kept a watchful eye for the approaching political performances at Westminster. He had written to Mr. Brand a month after his arrival:-

_51 P. di Spagna, Oct. 30, '66._-The Clarendons are to be here this evening to stay for a fortnight or three weeks. Dean and Lady A. Stanley are in the house with us. I doubt if there are any other English parties in Rome.

The reform movement is by degrees complicating the question. It is separating Bright from us, and in one sense thus clearing our way.

But then it may become too strong for us; or at least too strong to be stayed with our bill of last year. I do not envy Lord Derby and his friends their reflections this autumn on the course they have pursued. Meanwhile I wish that our press, as far as we may be said to have one, would write on this text: _that a bill from them, to be accepted by the people, must be larger, and not smaller, than would have been, or even would be, accepted from us_. For confidence, or credit, stands in politics in lieu of ready money. If, indeed, your enemy is stronger than you are, you must take what he gives you. But in this case he is weaker, and not stronger. A good bill from them would save us much trouble and anxiety. A straightforward bill, such an 8 franchise without tricks, would be easily dealt with. But their bill will be neither good nor straightforward. The mind of Disraeli, as leader of the House of Commons, and standing as he does among his compeers, will predominate in its formation. Now he has made in his lifetime three attempts at legislation-the budget of 1852, the India bill of 1858, the Reform bill of 1859. All have been thoroughly tortuous measures. And the Ethiopian will not change his skin. His Reform bill of 1867 will be tortuous too. But if you have to drive a man out of a wood, you must yourself go into the wood to drive him. We may have to meet a tortuous bill by a tortuous motion.

This is what I am afraid of, and what I am, for one, above all things anxious to avoid. In 1859 the liberal party had to play the obstructive, and with evil consequences. It would be most unfortunate if they should be put into such a position again. Pray consider this. I do not like what I see of Bright's speeches. We have no claim upon him, more than the government have on us; and I imagine he will part company the moment he sees his way to more than we would give him.

II

(M65) The general character of the operations of 1867, certainly one of the most curious in our parliamentary history, was described by Mr.

Gladstone in a fragment written thirty years after. Time had extinguished the volcanic fires, and the little outline is sketched with temper and a sort of neutrality:-

When the parliament rea.s.sembled in 1867, parties and groups were curiously distributed. The two great bodies were the regular supporters of the Tory ministry, and those grouped around us who had been expelled. The first did not know what course they would have to take; that depended on the secret counsels of another mind. To keep to the _drapeau_ was the guiding motive, as has been since the creed and practice of Peel were subverted by the opposite principles of Disraeli, who on a franchise question had his peer colleagues at his feet. Besides these, other divisions had to be recognised. The Salisbury secession from the government, supported by Sir W. Heathcote and Beresford Hope, was high in character, but absolutely insignificant in numbers. There was Lowe, so great among the Adullamites of 1866, but almost alone among them in the singleness and strength of his opposition to reform. There was the bulk of the Adullamite body, unable to place themselves in declared opposition to the liberal ma.s.s, but many of them disposed to tamper with the question, and to look kindly on the tory government as the power which would most surely keep down any enlargement of the franchise to its minimum. It would be idle to discuss the successive plans submitted by the government to the House of Commons with an unexampled rapidity. The governing idea of the man who directed the party seemed to be not so much to consider what ought to be proposed and carried, as to make sure that, whatever it was, it should be proposed and carried by those now in power. The bill on which the House of Commons eventually proceeded was a measure, I should suppose, without precedent or parallel, as, on the other hand it was, for the purpose of the hour, and as the work of a government in a decided minority, an extraordinary stroke of parliamentary success. Our position, on the other hand, was this: (1) We felt that if household suffrage were to be introduced into the boroughs, it ought to be a real household suffrage. (2) The existing state of our legislation, under which a large majority of the householders made no disburs.e.m.e.nt of rates, but paid them without distinction in their rent, showed that a bill professedly for household suffrage, but taking no notice of compounding, would be in the first place a lottery, and in the second an imposture. Some towns would have large enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, some none at all, and no principle but the accidental state of local law would determine on which side of the line any town was to be found. And the aggregate result would be ludicrously small as a measure of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. Of such a measure we could not approve. We did not wish to make at once so wide a change as that involved in a genuine household suffrage (always in our minds involving county as well as town), and we could not fairly separate ourselves from Bright on such a point.

(3) So we adhered to our idea of an extension, considerable but not violent, and performing all it promised.

But the Adullamite spirit went to work, and finding that the bill had the popular recommendation of a great phrase [household suffrage], combined with the recommendation to them of a narrow sphere of practical operation, determined to support the principle of the bill and abandon our plan, although our mode of operation had been warmly approved at party meetings held at my house. The result was in a tactical sense highly damaging to us. Perhaps we ought to have recognised that the idea of household suffrage, when the phrase had once been advertised by a government as its battle-ground, was irresistible, and that the only remaining choice was whether it should be a household suffrage cribbed, cabined, and confined by the condition of personal ratepaying, or a household suffrage fairly conforming in substance and operation to the idea that the phrase conveyed. The first was in our view totally inadmissible; the second beyond the wants and wishes of the time. But the government, it must be admitted, bowled us over by the force of the phrase; and made it our next duty to bowl them over by bringing the reality of the bill into correspondence with its great profession. This we were able to do in some degree, when we reached the committee, for some of the restrictions included in the measure were such as the double-facing liberal fringe did not venture to uphold against the a.s.saults of their own party. But the grand question of compound householding, which was really to determine the character of our legislation, was one on which we could not reckon upon either the conscientious or the intimidated and prudential support of our liberal fringe. The government were beyond all doubt, at least for the moment, masters of the situation. The question was raised, if not in its fullest breadth yet in a form of considerable efficiency, by a proposal from Mr.

Hodgkinson, member for Newark, and a local solicitor little known in the House.(152) He went there to support it, but without an idea that it could be carried, and antic.i.p.ating its defeat by a majority of a hundred. Never have I undergone a stranger emotion of surprise than when, as I was entering the House, our whip met me and stated that Disraeli was about to support Hodgkinson's motion. But so it was, and the proposition was adopted without disturbance, as if it had been an affair of trivial importance.

How it came about I partially learned at a later date. A cabinet was held after the fact, which Sir John Lambert, the great statistician of the day, was summoned to attend. The cabinet had had no idea that the Hodgkinson amendment was to be accepted; the acceptance was the sole act of Mr. Disraeli; and when it had been done the ministers a.s.sembled in order to learn from Sir John Lambert what was the probable addition that it would make to the const.i.tuency.

I do not suppose that in the whole history of the 'mystery-man,'

this proceeding can be surpa.s.sed. The tories, having been brought to accept household suffrage on the faith of the limitation imposed by personal payment of the rates, found at a moment's notice that that limitation had been thrown overboard, and that their leader had given them a bill virtually far larger than any that Mr. Bright had sought to impose upon them. It was certainly no business of ours to complain, and they made it no business of theirs. I imagine that they still relied upon rectification of the bill by the House of Lords. And the Lords did rectify it largely; but these rectifications were all rejected when the bill returned to us, except the minority [representation], which Mr. Disraeli was strong enough to secure by means of the votes of a body of liberals who approved it, and which he accepted to humour or comfort the Lords a little, while he detested it, and made, as Bright said, the best speech ever delivered against it. So came about the establishment of an effective household suffrage in the cities and boroughs of England.

III

(M66) The process effecting this wide extension of political power to immense cla.s.ses. .h.i.therto without it, was in every respect extraordinary.

The great reform was carried by a parliament elected to support Lord Palmerston, and Lord Palmerston detested reform. It was carried by a government in a decided minority. It was carried by a minister and by a leader of opposition, neither of whom was at the time in the full confidence of his party. Finally, it was carried by a House of Commons that the year before had, in effect, rejected a measure for the admission of only 400,000 new voters, while the measure to which it now a.s.sented added almost a million voters to the electorate.(153)

We always do best to seek rational explanations in large affairs. It may be true that "if there were no blunders there would be no politics," but when we have made full allowance for blunder, caprice, chance, folly, craft, still reason and the nature of things have a share. The secret of the strange reversal in 1867 of all that had been said, attempted, and done in 1866, would seem to be that the tide of public opinion had suddenly swelled to flood. The same timidity that made the ruling cla.s.ses dread reform, had the compensation that very little in the way of popular demonstration was quite enough to frighten them into accepting it. Here the demonstration was not little. Riots in Hyde Park, street processions measured by the mile in the great cities from London up to Glasgow, open-air meetings attended by a hundred, two hundred, two hundred and fifty thousand people at Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, showed that even though the workmen might not be anxious to demand the franchise, yet they would not stand its refusal. In the autumn of 1868 Mr. Bright led a splendid campaign in a series of speeches in England, Scotland, and Ireland, marked by every kind of power. It is worthy of remark that not one of the main changes of that age was carried in parliament without severe agitation out of doors. Catholic emanc.i.p.ation was won by O'Connell; the reform act of 1832 by the political unions; free trade by the league against the corn law. Household suffrage followed the same rule.

It was undoubtedly true in a sense that Mr. Gladstone was at the head of a majority in 1866, and now again in. 1867. But its composition was peculiar. Sir Thomas Acland (April 10, 1867) describes Mr. Gladstone as hampered by three sets of people: "1. Radicals, who will vote for household suffrage, but don't want it carried. 2. Whigs (aristocrats), who won't risk a collision with the government, and hope that very little reform will be carried, and want to discredit Gladstone. 3. A large body who care for nothing except to avoid a dissolution." "There is a fresh intrigue," he adds, "every twelve hours."

The trenchant and sardonic mind of the leader of the revolt that had destroyed the bill of 1866, soon found food for bitter rumination. On the eve of the session Lowe admitted that he had very little hope of a successful end to his efforts, and made dismal protests that the reign of reason was over. In other words, he had found out that the men whom he had placed in power, were going to fling him overboard in what he called this miserable auction between two parties, at which the country was put up for sale, and then knocked down to those who could produce the readiest and swiftest measure for its destruction.

The liberal cave of the previous year was broken up, Lowe and the ablest of its old denizens now voting with Mr. Gladstone, but the great majority going with the government. The place of the empty cave was taken by a new group of dissidents, named from their habitat the party of the Tea-Room.

Many, both whigs above the gangway and even radicals below, were averse to bringing Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone back again; they thought a bill would have a better chance with the tories than with the old leaders.

Insubordination and disorganisation were complete. "I have never seen anything like it," says the new Lord Halifax;(154) "but the state of things this year enables me to understand what was very inexplicable in all I heard of last year." We can hardly wonder that the strain was often difficult to bear. A friend, meeting Mr. Gladstone at dinner about this time (March 25), thought that he saw signs of irritated nerve. "What an invaluable gift," he reflects, "a present of phlegm from the G.o.ds would be! If we could roll up Thompson [master of Trinity] or Bishop Thirlwall with him and then bisect the compound, we should get a pair as invincible as the Dioscuri." An accomplished observer told his const.i.tuents that one saw the humour of the great parliamentary chess tournament, looking at the pieces on the board and the face of Disraeli; its tragic side in a glimpse of the face of Gladstone; in the mephistophelian nonchalance of one, the melancholy earnestness of the other.(155)

(M67) Everybody knew that Disraeli, as he watched the scene from behind his mask, now and again launching a well-devised retort, was neither liked nor trusted, though more than a little feared; and that Gladstone, with his deeply lined face, his "glare of contentious eagerness," his seeming over-righteousness, both chafed his friends and exasperated his foes. As it was excellently put by a critic in the press,-the House was indifferent, and Mr. Gladstone was earnest; the House was lax and he was strict; it was cynical about popular equality, and he was enthusiastic; it was lazy about details, he insisted upon teaching it the profoundest minutiae.(156) About this time, Lord Russell told Lord Halifax that he had gone down to see his brother the Duke of Bedford when he was dying, and had said to him that things were drifting into the country being governed by Disraeli and Gladstone, and the Duke observed that neither of them was fit for it. And Halifax himself went on to say that Gladstone had, in truth, no sympathy or connection with any considerable party in the House of Commons. For the old whig party remembered him as an opponent for many years; the radicals knew that on many points, especially on all church matters, he did not agree with them, and though they admired his talents, and hailed his recent exertions in favour of reform, they had no great attachment to him, nor did he seem to be personally popular with any of them.

Far away from the world of politics, we have an estimate of Mr. Gladstone at this time from the piercing satirist of his age. "Is not he at any rate a man of principle?" said a quaker lady to Carlyle. "Oh, Gladstone!" the sage replied, "I did hope well of him once, and so did John Sterling, though I heard he was a Puseyite and so forth; still it seemed the right thing for a state to feel itself bound to G.o.d, and to lean on Him, and so I hoped that something might come of him. But now, he has been declaiming that England is such a wonderfully prosperous state, meaning that it has plenty of money in its breeches pocket.... But that's not the prosperity we want. And so I say to him, 'You are not the life-giver to England. I go my way, you go yours, good morning (with a most dramatic and final bow).' "(157) England however thought otherwise about life-givers, and made a bow of a completely different sort. Yet not at once. It was Mr.

Disraeli who played the leading part in this great transaction, not by inventing the phrase of household suffrage, for that principle was Mr.

Bright's; nor by giving his bill the shape in which it ultimately became law, for that shape was mainly due to Mr. Gladstone, but as the mind by whose secret counsels the arduous and intricate manuvre was directed.

"The most wonderful thing," wrote Bishop Wilberforce at the end of the session, "is the rise of Disraeli. It is not the mere a.s.sertion of talent.

He has been able to teach the House of Commons almost to ignore Gladstone, and at present lords it over him, and, I am told, says that he will hold him down for twenty years."(158) If Mr. Disraeli said this, he proved almost as much mistaken as when Fox was confident of holding the young Pitt down in 1783. Still he impressed his rival. "I met Gladstone at breakfast," says Lord Houghton (May), "he seems quite awed by the diabolical cleverness of Dizzy." Awe, by no means the right word, I fancy.

IV

(M68) On April 12 the first act of the Reform question of 1867 ended in an awkward crisis for Mr. Gladstone. The details of the story are intricate and not much to our purpose. Mr. Gladstone's version printed above discovers its general features. Some particulars, properly biographic, will fill up his sketch. "If you have to drive a man out of a wood," Mr.

Gladstone said, "you must yourself go into the wood to drive him." The bystander of a later time, however, may be content to keep outside the thicket until the driver and the driven both emerge. Mr. Disraeli began by preparing a series of resolutions-plat.i.tudes with little relation to realities. He told the House that reform should no longer be allowed to determine the fate of cabinets, and the House laughed. Yet if Mr. Disraeli had only at this time enjoyed the advantage of a better character-if he had been Althorp, Russell, Peel-instead of laughing, his hearers would perhaps have recognised good sense and statesmans.h.i.+p. As he said later, whig prime ministers, coalition prime ministers, coalition chancellors of the exchequer, had one after another had their innings, and with a majority at their back; was it not well now to try something that might be carried by consent? Under pressure from Mr. Gladstone the government explained their plan, dropped the resolutions, and brought in a bill.(159) Men were to have votes who had university degrees, or were members of learned professions, or had thirty pounds in a savings bank, or fifty pounds in the funds, or paid a pound in direct taxes; but the fighting point was that every householder who paid rates should have a vote. A scheme for seats accompanied. To comfort his party for giving so wide a suffrage, the minister provided checks by conferring a double vote on certain cla.s.ses of citizens, and imposing strict terms as to residence.

Three members of his cabinet, of whom Lord Cranborne was the most important, refused the unsubstantial solace and resigned. But Mr. Disraeli saw that he would regain by disorganising his opponents more than he would lose by dislocating his friends.