




                               The Life Of

                         William Ewart Gladstone

                                    By

                               John Morley

                        In Three Volumes--Vol. III.

                               (1890-1898)

                                 Toronto

                   George N. Morang & Company, Limited

                             Copyright, 1903

                         By The Macmillan Company





CONTENTS


Book VIII. 1880-1885
   Chapter I. Opening Days Of The New Parliament. (1880)
   Chapter II. An Episode In Toleration. (1880-1883)
   Chapter III. Majuba. (1880-1881)
   Chapter IV. New Phases Of The Irish Revolution. (1880-1882)
   Chapter V. Egypt. (1881-1882)
   Chapter VI. Political Jubilee. (1882-1883)
   Chapter VII. Colleagues--Northern Cruise--Egypt. (1883)
   Chapter VIII. Reform. (1884)
   Chapter IX. The Soudan. (1884-1885)
   Chapter X. Interior Of The Cabinet. (1895)
   Chapter XI. Defeat Of Ministers. (May-June 1885)
   Chapter XII. Accession Of Lord Salisbury. (1885)
Book IX. 1885-1886
   Chapter I. Leadership And The General Election. (1885)
   Chapter II. The Polls In 1885. (1885)
   Chapter III. A Critical Month (December 1885)
   Chapter IV. Fall Of The First Salisbury Government. (January 1886)
   Chapter  V. The New Policy. (1886)
   Chapter VI. Introduction Of The Bill. (1886)
   Chapter VII. The Political Atmosphere. Defeat Of The Bill. (1886)
Book X. 1886-1892
   Chapter I. The Morrow Of Defeat. (1886-1887)
   Chapter II. The Alternative Policy In Act. (1886-1888)
   Chapter III. The Special Commission. (1887-1890)
   Chapter IV. An Interim. (1889-1891)
   Chapter V. Breach With Mr. Parnell. (1890-1891)
   Chapter VI. Biarritz. (1891-1892)
   Chapter VII. The Fourth Administration. (1892-1894)
   Chapter VIII. Retirement From Public Life. (1894)
   Chapter IX. The Close. (1894-1898)
   Chapter X. Final.
Appendix
   Irish Local Government, 1883. (Page 103)
   General Gordon's Instructions. (Page 153)
   The Military Position In The Soudan, April 1885. (Page 179)
   Home Rule Bill, 1886. (Page 308)
   On The Place Of Italy. (Page 415)
   The Naval Estimates Of 1894.
   Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet Colleagues. (Page 525)
Chronology
Footnotes






BOOK VIII. 1880-1885




Chapter I. Opening Days Of The New Parliament. (1880)


    Il y a bien du factice dans le classement politique des hommes.
                                                    --GUIZOT.

    There is plenty of what is purely artificial in the political
    classification of men.



I


On May 20, after eight-and-forty years of strenuous public life, Mr.
Gladstone met his twelfth parliament, and the second in which he had been
chief minister of the crown. "At 4.15," he records, "I went down to the
House with Herbert. There was a great and fervent crowd in Palace Yard,
and much feeling in the House. It almost overpowered me, as I thought by
what deep and hidden agencies I have been brought back into the midst of
the vortex of political action and contention. It has not been in my power
during these last six months to have made notes, as I would have wished,
of my own thoughts and observations from time to time; of the new access
of strength which in some important respects has been administered to me
in my old age; and of the remarkable manner in which Holy Scripture has
been applied to me for admonition and for comfort. Looking calmly on this
course of experience, I do believe that the Almighty has employed me for
His purposes in a manner larger or more special than before, and has
strengthened me and led me on accordingly, though I must not forget the
admirable saying of Hooker, that even ministers of good things are like
torches, a light to others, waste and destruction to themselves."

One who approached his task in such a spirit as this was at least
impregnable to ordinary mortifications, and it was well; for before many
days were over it became perceptible that the new parliament and the new
majority would be no docile instrument of ministerial will. An acute chill
followed the discovery that there was to be no recall of Frere or Layard.
Very early in its history Speaker Brand, surveying his flock from the
august altitude of the Chair with an acute, experienced, and friendly eye,
made up his mind that the liberal party were "not only strong, but
determined to have their own way in spite of Mr. Gladstone. He has a
difficult team to drive." Two men of striking character on the benches
opposite quickly became formidable. Lord Randolph Churchill headed a
little group of four tories, and Mr. Parnell a resolute band of five and
thirty Irishmen, with momentous results both for ministers and for the
House of Commons.

No more capable set of ruling men were ever got together than the cabinet
of 1880; no men who better represented the leading elements in the
country, in all their variety and strength. The great possessors of land
were there, and the heirs of long governing tradition were there; the
industrious and the sedate of the middle classes found their men seated at
the council board, by the side of others whose keen-sighted ambition
sought sources of power in the ranks of manual toil; the church saw one of
the most ardent of her sons upon the woolsack, and the most illustrious of
them in the highest place of all; the people of the chapel beheld with
complacency the rising man of the future in one who publicly boasted an
unbroken line of nonconformist descent. They were all men well trained in
the habits of business, of large affairs, and in experience of English
life; they were all in spite of difference of shade genuinely liberal; and
they all professed a devoted loyalty to their chief. The incident of the
resolutions on the eastern question(1) was effaced from all (M1) memories,
and men who in those days had assured themselves that there was no return
from Elba, became faithful marshals of the conquering hero. Mediocrity in
a long-lived cabinet in the earlier part of the century was the object of
Disraeli's keenest mockery. Still a slight ballast of mediocrity in a
government steadies the ship and makes for unity--a truth, by the way, that
Mr. Disraeli himself, in forming governments, sometimes conspicuously put
in practice.

In fact Mr. Gladstone found that the ministry of which he stood at the
head was a coalition, and what was more, a coalition of that vexatious
kind, where those who happened not to agree sometimes seemed to be almost
as well pleased with contention as with harmony. The two sections were not
always divided by differences of class or station, for some of the peers
in the cabinet often showed as bold a liberalism as any of the commoners.
This notwithstanding, it happened on more than one critical occasion, that
all the peers _plus_ Lord Hartington were on one side, and all the
commoners on the other. Lord Hartington was in many respects the lineal
successor of Palmerston in his coolness on parliamentary reform, in his
inclination to stand in the old ways, in his extreme suspicion of what
savoured of sentiment or idealism or high-flown profession. But he was a
Palmerston who respected Mr. Gladstone, and desired to work faithfully
under him, instead of being a Palmerston who always intended to keep the
upper hand of him. Confronting Lord Hartington was Mr. Chamberlain, eager,
intrepid, self-reliant, alert, daring, with notions about property,
taxation, land, schools, popular rights, that he expressed with a
plainness and pungency of speech that had never been heard from a privy
councillor and cabinet minister before, that exasperated opponents,
startled the whigs, and brought him hosts of adherents among radicals out
of doors. It was at a very early stage in the existence of the government,
that this important man said to an ally in the cabinet, "I don't see how
we are to get on, if Mr. Gladstone goes." And here was the key to many
leading incidents, both during the life of this administration and for the
eventful year in Mr. Gladstone's career that followed its demise.

The Duke of Argyll, who resigned very early, wrote to Mr. Gladstone after
the government was overthrown (Dec. 18, 1885), urging him in effect to
side definitely with the whigs against the radicals:--


    From the moment our government was fairly under way, I saw and
    felt that speeches _outside_ were allowed to affect opinion, and
    politically to commit the cabinet in a direction which was not
    determined by you deliberately, or by the government as a whole,
    but by the audacity... of our new associates. Month by month I
    became more and more uncomfortable, feeling that there was no
    paramount direction--nothing but _slip_ and _slide_, what the
    Scotch call "slithering." The outside world, knowing your great
    gifts and powers, assume that you are dictator in your own
    cabinet. And in one sense you are so, that is to say, that when
    you choose to put your foot down, others will give way. But your
    amiability to colleagues, your even extreme gentleness towards
    them, whilst it has always endeared you to them personally, has
    enabled men playing their own game... to take out of your hands
    the _formation_ of opinion.


On a connected aspect of the same thing, Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord
Rosebery (Sept. 16, 1880):--


   ... All this is too long to bore people with--and yet it is not so
    long, nor so interesting, as one at least of the subjects which we
    just touched in conversation at Mentmore; the future of politics,
    and the food they offer to the mind. What is outside parliament
    seems to me to be fast mounting, nay to have already mounted, to
    an importance much exceeding what is inside. Parliament deals with
    laws, and branches of the social tree, not with the root. I always
    admired Mrs. Grote's saying that politics and theology were the
    only two really great subjects; it was wonderful considering the
    atmosphere in which she had lived. I do not doubt which of the two
    she would have put in the first place; and to theology I have no
    doubt she would have given a wide sense, as including everything
    that touches the relation between the seen and the unseen.


What is curious to note is that, though Mr. Gladstone in making his
cabinet had thrown the main weight against (M2) the radicals, yet when
they got to work, it was with them he found himself more often than not in
energetic agreement. In common talk and in partisan speeches, the prime
minister was regarded as dictatorial and imperious. The complaint of some
at least among his colleagues in the cabinet of 1880 was rather that he
was not imperious enough. Almost from the first he too frequently allowed
himself to be over-ruled; often in secondary matters, it is true, but
sometimes also in matters on the uncertain frontier between secondary and
primary. Then he adopted a practice of taking votes and counting numbers,
of which more than one old hand complained as an innovation. Lord
Granville said to him in 1886, "I think you too often counted noses in
your last cabinet."

What Mr. Gladstone described as the severest fight that he had ever known
in any cabinet occurred in 1883, upon the removal of the Duke of
Wellington's statue from Hyde Park Corner. A vote took place, and three
times over he took down the names. He was against removal, but was unable
to have his own way over the majority. Members of the government thought
themselves curiously free to walk out from divisions. On a Transvaal
division two members of the cabinet abstained, and so did two other
ministers out of the cabinet. In other cases, the same thing happened, not
only breaking discipline, but breeding much trouble with the Queen. Then
an unusual number of men of ability and of a degree of self-esteem not
below their ability, had been left out of the inner circle; and they and
their backers were sometimes apt to bring their pretensions rather
fretfully forward. These were the things that to Mr. Gladstone's
temperament proved more harassing than graver concerns.



II


All through the first two months of its business, the House showed signs
of independence that almost broke the spirit of the ministerial whips. A
bill about hares and rabbits produced lively excitement, ministerialists
moved amendments upon the measure of their own leaders, and the minister
in charge boldly taxed the mutineers with insincerity. A motion for local
option was carried by 229 to 203, both Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington
in the minority. On a motion about clerical restrictions, only a strong
and conciliatory appeal from the prime minister averted defeat. A more
remarkable demonstration soon followed. The Prince Imperial, unfortunate
son of unfortunate sire, who had undergone his famous baptism of fire in
the first reverses among the Vosges in the Franco-German war of 1870, was
killed in our war in Zululand. Parliament was asked to sanction a vote of
money for a memorial of him in the Abbey. A radical member brought forward
a motion against it. Both Mr. Gladstone and Sir Stafford Northcote
resisted him, yet by a considerable majority the radical carried his
point. The feeling was so strong among the ministerialists, that
notwithstanding Mr. Gladstone's earnest exhortation, they voted almost to
a man against him, and he only carried into the lobby ten official votes
on the treasury bench.

The great case in which the government were taken to have missed the
import of the election was the failure to recall Sir Bartle Frere from
South Africa. Of this I shall have enough to say by and by. Meanwhile it
gave an undoubted shock to the confidence of the party, and their
energetic remonstrance on this head strained Mr. Gladstone's authority to
the uttermost. The Queen complained of the tendency of the House of
Commons to trench upon the business of the executive. Mr. Gladstone said
in reply generally, that no doubt within the half century "there had been
considerable invasion by the House of Commons of the province assigned by
the constitution to the executive," but he perceived no increase in recent
times or in the present House. Then he proceeded (June 8, 1880):--


   ... Your Majesty may possibly have in view the pressure which has
    been exercised on the present government in the case of Sir Bartle
    Frere. But apart from the fact that this pressure represents a
    feeling which extends far beyond the walls of parliament, your
    Majesty may probably remember that, in the early part of 1835, the
    House of Commons addressed the crown against the appointment of
    Lord Londonderry to be ambassador at St. Petersburg, on (M3)
    account, if Mr. Gladstone remembers rightly, of a general
    antecedent disapproval. This was an exercise of power going far
    beyond what has happened now; nor does it seem easy in principle
    to place the conduct of Sir B. Frere beyond that general right of
    challenge and censure which is unquestionably within the function
    of parliament and especially of the House of Commons.


In the field where mastery had never failed him, Mr. Gladstone achieved an
early success, and he lost no time in justifying his assumption of the
exchequer. The budget (June 10) was marked by the boldness of former days,
and was explained and defended in one of those statements of which he
alone possessed the secret. Even unfriendly witnesses agreed that it was
many years since the House of Commons had the opportunity of enjoying so
extraordinary an intellectual treat, where "novelties assumed the air of
indisputable truths, and complicated figures were woven into the thread of
intelligible and animated narrative." He converted the malt tax into a
beer duty, reduced the duties on light foreign wines, added a penny to the
income tax, and adjusted the licence duties for the sale of alcoholic
liquors. Everybody said that "none but a _cordon bleu_ could have made
such a sauce with so few materials." The dish was excellently received,
and the ministerial party were in high spirits. The conservatives stood
angry and amazed that their own leaders had found no device for the repeal
of the malt duty. The farmer's friends, they cried, had been in office for
six years and had done nothing; no sooner is Gladstone at the exchequer
than with magic wand he effects a transformation, and the long-suffering
agriculturist has justice and relief.

In the course of an effort that seemed to show full vigour of body and
mind, Mr. Gladstone incidentally mentioned that when a new member he
recollected hearing a speech upon the malt tax in the old House of Commons
in the year 1833. Yet the lapse of nearly half a century of life in that
great arena had not relaxed his stringent sense of parliamentary duty.
During most of the course of this first session, he was always early in
his place and always left late. In every discussion he came to the front,
and though an under-secretary made the official reply, it was the prime
minister who wound up. One night he made no fewer than six speeches,
touching all the questions raised in a miscellaneous night's sitting.

In the middle of the summer Mr. Gladstone fell ill. Consternation reigned
in London. It even exceeded the dismay caused by the defeat at Maiwand. A
friend went to see him as he lay in bed. "He talked most of the