The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume II Part 19

Mr. Gladstone flew down upon the plan with energy, as a measure of illusory concessions, and securities still more illusory. His speech was taken in some quarters in a conservative sense, for Lowe at once wrote to him (March 21) urging him to follow it up by resisting the second reading on the principle of righting rent against rating. Since Callimachus, the Athenian polemarch, had to give the casting vote at Marathon when the ten generals were equally divided on the question of fighting the Persians or not fighting, "no one," cried Lowe, "ever had a weightier case to decide"

than Mr. Gladstone now. He forgot that the brave Callimachus was slain, and Mr. Gladstone would in a political sense have been slain likewise if he had taken Lowe's advice, for, as he says, Disraeli had by talk of household suffrage "bowled them over." A meeting of 278 liberals was held at his house, and he addressed them for nearly an hour, concurring not over-willingly in the conclusion that they should not resist the second reading.(160) He had a long conversation with Mr. Bright two days before, whom he found 'sensible, moderate, and firm,' and whose view was no doubt the opposite of Lowe's. The bill was read a second time without a division (March 26).

A few entries in Sir Robert Phillimore's journal help us to realise the state of the case during this extraordinary session:-

_April 9._-Entire collapse of Gladstone's attack on government yesterday. _Tea-room_ schism of liberal members, including the H.

of C. Russell. Disraeli's insolent triumph. 10.-Returned to the Coppice with Ld. Richard Cavendish. He tells me Hastings Russell and his brother cannot bear Gladstone as their leader. 12.-In the middle of the day saw Gladstone and Mrs. Gladstone. His _disgust_ and _deep mortification_ at the defection of his party, mingled with due sense of the loyalty of the greater number, and especially of his old cabinet. The expression of my wish that, if deserted, he will abdicate and leave them to find another leader fully responded to by him. 13.-Defeat of the opposition last night; great triumph of Disraeli; a surprise, I believe, to both parties; 289 voted with Gladstone. What will he do? _Query._-Ought he on account of the defection of 20 to leave so considerable a party?

(M69) The occasion just mentioned marked a climax. Mr. Gladstone moved an amendment to remove the personal payment of rates as an essential qualification, and to confer the franchise on the householder whether he paid the rate direct or through the landlord. The next day the diary records: _April 12._-"Spoke in reply and voted in 289-310. A smash perhaps without example. A victory of 21 for ministers." A new secession had taken place, and 43 liberal members voted with the government, while nearly 20 were absent. The Cranborne secession was small, and some who had been expected to stay away voted with the government. "Gladstone expressed himself strongly to five or six members of the late government whom he summoned to his house in the morning. He spoke of retiring to a back bench, and announcing that he would give up the ostensible post of leader of the opposition. He was dissuaded from doing this at the present moment, and went out of town, as indeed did almost everybody else."(161) Still the notion of a back bench did lodge itself in his mind for long. The "smash"

was undoubtedly severe. As Mr. Gladstone wrote to one of the members for the City, a supporter, it showed that the liberals whose convictions allowed united action upon reform were not a majority but a minority of the House of Commons. Considering the large number who supported his proposal, he told his correspondent that though he would move no further amendment of his own, he was not less willing than heretofore to remain at the service of the party. "The friendly critics," he said to Brand, "note a tone of despondency in my letter to Crawford. That is all owing to Granville and others who cut off a fine peac.o.c.k's tail that I had appended." So day after day amid surf and breakers he held to his oar. If Mr. Gladstone was much buffeted in the house of his friends, he was not without valiant backers, and among them none was more stout than Mr.

Bright, the least effusive of all men in the direction of large panegyric.

Speaking to his const.i.tuents at Birmingham, "Who is there in the House of Commons," he demanded, "who equals Mr. Gladstone in knowledge of all political questions? Who equals him in earnestness? Who equals him in eloquence? Who equals him in courage and fidelity to his convictions? If these gentlemen who say they will not follow him have any one who is equal, let them show him. If they can point out any statesman who can add dignity and grandeur to the stature of Mr. Gladstone, let them produce him." A deputation against the bill from some popular body came to him (May 11). Mr. Disraeli at once regretted that these "spouters of stale sedition," these "obsolete incendiaries," should have come forward to pay their homage to one who, wherever he may sit, must always remain the pride and ornament of the House-

"Who but must laugh if such a man there be?

Who would not weep if Atticus were he?"

V

To the d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland Mr. Gladstone wrote (July 9):-

I do not plead guilty to the indictment for "non-attendance." I think that for three months I have been in the House for more hours than the Speaker. I have heard every important word that has been spoken on the Reform bill, and at least nine-tenths of all the words. True, outside the Reform bill I only attend when I think there is a chance of being useful; and in the present state of the House these opportunities are few. I act from no personal motive. But for me to be present and interfere continuously, or so far continuously as I might in other circ.u.mstances, would exhibit needlessly from day to day the divisions and consequent weakness of the liberal party. I admit also that time tells on a man of my age and temperament; and my brain tells me that I want more rest and not less. Is this unreasonable? I am against all needless waste of life or anything else. Everything should be husbanded. I must add that more attendance would but aggravate the susceptibility which depends on nerves rather than will, and already makes my attendance less useful.

The Phillimore diary gives us one or two glimpses more:-

_May 9._-Carnarvon delighted with Gladstone's speech at S.P.G.

meeting. 10.-Called on Gladstone in bed at 1.30. Ill from effect of the great exertion of yesterday-S.P.G. in the morning, H. of C.

in the evening.... The effect of these defeats of Gladstone in the H. of C. has been to bind the whigs closer to him. 24.-The dinner to Brand and presentation of plate deferred, ostensibly on the ground of his health and necessity of going to German waters, really because at present Gladstone refuses to take the chair at the dinner, though attached to Brand, because many who had deserted him (G.) would attend the dinner. Gladstone will not countenance the appearance of a sham union when the party is discredited. _June 7._-Attack on Gladstone as being in debt "hard pressed by creditors," and therefore wis.h.i.+ng for office. The malice against him is wonderful. _29._-Dined at Newspaper Press Fund. Gladstone in the chair, made a really faultless speech.

Never did I hear his voice better, nor the flow of his eloquence more unbroken.

Two or three items more from Mr. Gladstone's diary are worth recording:-

_May 6._-The underground tone of the House most unsatisfactory.

_May 9._-Spoke earnestly and long for compound householders, in vain. Beaten by 322-256. Much fatigued by heat and work. _May 28._-Spoke (perforce) on Disraeli's astonis.h.i.+ng declaration of consistency. _July 15._-Third reading of Reform bill. A remarkable night. Determined at the last moment not to take part in the debate, for fear of doing mischief on our own side.

The conservative leader himself was exposed to onslaughts from his followers and confederates of the previous year as severe as have ever fallen on the head of an English party. "Never," cried Mr. Lowe, in desolation and chagrin, "never was there tergiversation so complete. Such conduct may fail or not; it may lead to the retention or the loss of office; but it merits alike the contempt of all honest men, and the execration of posterity." Lord Cranborne, the chief conservative seceder, described the bill in its final shape, after undergoing countless transformations, as the result of the adoption of the principles of Bright at the dictation of Gladstone. It was at Mr. Gladstone's demand that lodgers were invested with votes; that the dual vote, voting papers, educational franchise, savings-bank franchise, all disappeared; that the distribution of seats was extended into an operation of enormously larger scale. In his most biting style, Lord Cranborne deplored that the House should have applauded a policy of legerdemain; talked about borrowing their ethics from the political adventurer; regretted, above all things, that the Reform bill should have been purchased at the cost of a political betrayal that had no parallel in our parliamentary annals, and that struck at the very root of that mutual confidence which is the very soul of our party government.

Merciless storms of this kind Mr. Disraeli bore imperturbably. He complained of the intolerant character of the discussions. "Everybody who does not agree with somebody else is looked upon as a fool, or as being mainly influenced by a total want of principle in the conduct of public affairs." He doubted whether Mr. Bright or anybody else could show that the tory party had changed their opinions. He had not changed his own opinions; the bill was in harmony with the general policy they had always maintained, though adapted, of course, to the requirements of the year. On Mr. Lowe's "most doleful vaticinations that ever were heard," about the new voters repudiating the national debt and adopting an inconvertible paper currency, he poured easy ridicule. Yet only a year before this Mr.

Disraeli himself had prophesied that the end of a seven pound franchise would be a parliament of no statesmans.h.i.+p, no eloquence, no learning, no genius. "Instead of these you will have a horde of selfish and obscure mediocrities, incapable of anything but mischief, and that mischief devised and regulated by the raging demagogue of the hour."

Mr. Gladstone summed the matter up in a sentence to Dr. Pusey: "We have been pa.s.sing through a strange and eventful year: a deplorable one, I think, for the character and conduct of the House of Commons, but yet one of promise for the country, though of a promise not unmixed with evils."

Chapter XV. Opening Of The Irish Campaign. (1868)

"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now at the end of three years'

struggle, the nation's condition is not what either party or any man desired or expected."-ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1864).

I

Writing to his brother-in-law, Lord Lyttelton, in April 1865, Mr.

Gladstone sets out pretty summarily the three incidents that had been taken to mark the line of his advance in the paths of extreme and visionary politics. When it was written, his speech on the franchise the previous year had not ripened,(162) and his speech on the Irish church was only on the eve, nor did he yet know it, of taking shape as a deliberate policy of action.

_To Lord Lyttelton._

_11 Carlton House Terrace, S.W., April 9, '65._-Our interesting conversation of Wednesday evening, which looked before and after, and for your share in which I heartily thank you, has led me to review the subject matters, a process which every man in public life as well as elsewhere ought often to perform, but which the pressure of overwork, and the exhaustion it leaves behind, sadly hinder. But I sum up in favour of a verdict of "Not guilty," on the following grounds.

As far as I know, there are but three subjects which have exposed me to the charge of radicalism: the Irish church, the franchise, the paper duty, and the consequent struggle with the House of Lords.

My opinions on the Irish church were, I know, those of Newcastle and Sidney Herbert twenty years ago; and they were not radicals.

Ever since Maynooth, in 1845, I have seen that resistance _in principle_ was gone. That was the main reason which led me to make such a serious affair of my own case about the Maynooth grant in that year. But I held this embryo opinion in my mind as there was no cause to precipitate it into life, and waited to fortify or alter or invalidate it by the teachings of experience. At last the time for speaking, and therefore for formulating my ideas came, and I have spoken according as I believe to be the sense of all the leading men with whom I acted from Peel's death onwards, and within the sense not only of Lord Macaulay, but of the present Lord Grey.

With respect to the franchise, my belief is that the objection taken to my speech really turned not upon the doctrine of _prima facie_ t.i.tle, but upon the fact that it was a speech decisively and warmly in favour of the 6 franchise or something equivalent to it. That is to say, of the very franchise which as a member of the cabinet I had supported in 1860, on the credit and promise of which Lord Derby had been put out in 1859, and which, if it did not appear in the Aberdeen Reform bill of 1852, was represented there by other concessions equally large. The truth is this, that ever since the Aberdeen Reform bill, I have remained just where it placed me; but many seem to think that it is a subject to be played with or traded on. In thinking and acting otherwise I feel myself to be upholding principles essential to the confidence of the people in governments and parliaments, and also a measure which promises by reasonably widening the basis of our inst.i.tutions to strengthen the structure above.

To the repeal of the paper duty the House of Commons, when led by the Derby government, chose to commit itself unanimously, and this at a time when the tea duty was at 17d. per lb. In 1860 and 1861 the cabinet considered the respective claims, and took the same course which the Derby government had a.s.sisted the House of Commons to take before. Upon this it was found that the measure which they had approved had become in my hands a radical one; the House of Lords was encouraged to rescue the finance of the country from the hands of the House of Commons; and the claims of tea were declared to be paramount to those of paper. In proposing the repeal of the last remaining excise duty upon a simple article of manufacture, I adopted a principle which had already received an unanimous acceptance. In resisting to the uttermost of my power the encroachment of the House of Lords, I acted, as I believe, on the only principle which makes it practicable to defend the true, legitimate, and const.i.tutional powers of that House itself against encroachment from other quarters.

Now let me look at the other side of the question. On church rates, on university tests, on clerical subscription (the two last being the only two questions really of principle which, as far as I remember, have been raised), I have held my ground; and on the two last the cabinet of which I form a part has in the main adopted a course essentially (but with a little _c_) conservative.

The question of franchise was settled, the question of the powers of the Lords in matters of taxation was settled. The Irish church held its ground. In 1865 Mr. Gladstone voted against a radical member who had moved that the case of the Irish church "called for the early attention of the government." He agreed with the mover on the merits, but did not believe that the time had come. In 1866, when he was leader of the House, he concurred with Lord Russell, then first minister, in meeting a motion against the Irish church with a direct negative. "In meeting a question with a negative," he wrote to the Irish secretary (April 7), "we may always put it on the ground of time, as well as on the merits. To meet a motion of this kind with the previous question only, implies almost an engagement to take it up on some early occasion, and this I take it we are not prepared for." In the summer of 1865 he wrote to the warden of Glenalmond that the question was "remote and apparently out of all bearing on the practical politics of the day." So far as his own judgment went, he had told Sir Roundell Palmer in 1863, that he had made up his mind on the subject, and should not be able to keep himself from giving expression to his feelings. Why did he say that he did not then believe that the question would come on in his time? "A man," he replied, "who in 1865 completed his thirty-third year of a laborious career, who had already followed to the grave the remains of almost all the friends abreast of whom he had started from the university in the career of public life; and who had observed that, excepting two recent cases [I suppose Palmerston and Russell], it was hard to find in our whole history a single man who had been permitted to reach the fortieth year of a course of labour similar to his own within the walls of the House of Commons; such a man might be excused ... if he formed a less sanguine estimate of the fraction of s.p.a.ce yet remaining to him, than seems to have been the case with his critics."(163)

It was Maynooth that originally cut from under his feet the principle of establishment in Ireland as an obligation of the state. When that went, more general reflections arose in his mind. In 1872 he wrote to Guizot:-

It is very unlikely that you should remember a visit I paid you, I think at Pa.s.sy in the autumn of 1845, with a message from Lord Aberdeen about international copyright. The Maynooth Act had just been, pa.s.sed. Its author, I think, meant it to be final. I had myself regarded it as _seminal_. And you in congratulating me upon it, as I well remember, said we should have the sympathies of Europe in the work of giving Ireland justice-a remark which evidently included more than the measure just pa.s.sed, and which I ever after saved and pondered. It helped me on towards what has been since done.

"I must own," he wrote to Lord Granville (April 11, 1868), "that for years past I have been watching the sky with a strong sense of the obligation to act with the first streak of dawn." He now believed the full sun was up, and he was right. In an autobiographic note, undated but written near to the end of his days, he says:-

I am by no means sure, upon a calm review, that Providence has endowed me with anything that can be called a striking gift. But if there be such a thing entrusted to me it has been shown at certain political junctures, in what maybe termed appreciations of the general situation and its result. To make good the idea, this must not be considered as the simple acceptance of public opinion, founded upon the discernment that it has risen to a certain height needful for a given work, like a tide. It is an insight into the facts of particular eras, and their relation one to another, which generates in the mind a conviction that the materials exist for forming a public opinion and for directing it to a particular end.

There are four occasions of my life with respect to which I think these considerations may be applicable. They are these: 1. The renewal of the Income-tax in 1853; 2. The proposal of religious equality for Ireland, 1868....