Chapter X: The ‘ministry of Caretakers’ (2)

I have written twenty-one letters to-day, some of them long ones,
so you won’t be vexed if I only send a short scrawl. I think your
letter to Lady Dufferin admirable and all your plans with regard to
her Fund most excellent. I am sure Moore will do anything you want.
I should advise you to get hold of Mr. Buckle and fascinate him,
and make him write you up. I have been very glad to get Sir
Frederick Roberts here, and have had long conversations with him on
many Indian subjects. Did you not find him very nice? It has been
everything for me getting him up here. I never could have had any
real satisfactory _pow-wow_ in London. He is coming to dine with me
on October 6, to meet some of the other Ministers--only a man
party. I hope the new cook will be on his mettle....

He found time to pay a flying visit to Howth--thus combining pleasure with certain matters of importance which drew him to Dublin.

_Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Justice FitzGibbon_.

Auchnashellach, Dingwall, N.B.: September 21, 1885.

A line to tell you that on Tuesday, 29th inst., I commence my
journey to Howth. A considerable business. I shall go by Carlisle
to Holyhead, and imagine I ought to arrive at Kingstown on Thursday
morning. From there I shall proceed to the Attorney-General’s abode
at Monkstown, and later in the day move on in the direction of ‘the
Eye.’[35] Will you keep me for two nights? I have asked the
Lord-Lieutenant to let me go to him on the Saturday. Can you
possibly manage to put up my secretary, Cecil Wolff? He is here
with me and, while we are exploring the bay and deluding the wily
lobster, will decipher telegrams and look after papers--a work I am
perfectly unequal to. I hope the ‘Tutissimus’[36] will be on the
spot and David Plunket--also I shall have to go and see O. V. G.
L.,[37] who wrote to me from Buxton the other day; and there are
many other old friends I am greatly looking forward to seeing
again--you first.

Auchnashellach, Dingwall, N.B.: September 27, 1885.

Many thanks for your letter and telegram. My complete physical
restoration absolutely depends upon an evening with Father James
Healy.

I shall try to get to you early Saturday morning, and I fear I must
leave Monday night, as our great Prime Minister has summoned a
Cabinet for Tuesday. I shall go to the Attorney-General’s on
Thursday morning in order to get myself into a proper state of mind
and body before meeting the Lord-Lieutenant. Could you not run out
to Monkstown in the early morning, in order that we may deliberate
as to the proper employment of Saturday and Sunday and Monday, and
also that I may hear at first hand from authentic sources what the
FitzGibbon Commission (Endowed Schools) has been up to. I see you
have made a lot of jobbing appointments. Wolff is very pleased with
your kind letter.

Can’t you get O. V. G. L. over to Howth on Sunday? This would be
better than any amount of Church.

Please tell Baillie Gage privately that an intelligent telegraph
clerk at Howth while I am there would be a great advantage. The
cypher telegrams require care, or else are worse than useless. They
come pretty thick now.

The Irish capital under Lord Carnarvon was disturbed by many whisperings of Parnellite intrigue, Maamtrasna alliances, Catholic Universities and Repeal. What if they had known of the conversation in Grosvenor Square? Lord Randolph’s sudden arrival in Dublin created a new flutter. It had been very freely said that he had committed himself to the Parnellites on Home Rule, and his visit was attributed in some newspapers to the purpose of further negotiation. He soon reassured his Irish friends. At the Vice-Regal he had a long conversation with Lord Carnarvon. The Viceroy made no mention of his communications with Parnell; but his language excited Lord Randolph’s suspicions. He called upon Mr. Holmes, the Attorney-General, early one morning, as he had proposed. They talked much on Irish politics. At length Lord Randolph got up to go. As he reached the door he paused, and, pointing with his finger, said, almost harshly and in a tone of command: ‘Now, mind. None of us must have anything to do with Home Rule in any shape or form.’ For the rest of his visit he amused himself at Howth, playing whist, chaffing his old friends, and catching lobsters in the bay. The cypher telegrams came in thickly. The short holiday was soon at an end.

Election oratory is not illuminating. The tags, the personalities, the arguments which spring into being in the excitement of the moment, may pass muster in the scrimmage. It were a harsh measure to call them forth one by one in cold blood to justify themselves before austere tribunals of taste and truth. The passions of these stormy months drew Lord Randolph Churchill into a dispute with Lord Hartington very soon to be regretted by both. It was natural that Whigs and Tory Democrats should eye each other with mutual dislike. The Whigs saw with jealousy the hold which the Tory party were gaining upon popular sympathies; with disgust their readiness to outbid old-fashioned Liberalism in all that appealed to the new democracy; and with alarm the excesses to which their own Radicals were encouraged or goaded thereby. The Tory Democrat, on the other hand, was incensed to see the ægis of aristocracy and wealth and all the solid assurance of respectability spread, however reluctantly, in protection over levelling and revolutionary doctrines. Both exerted influences upon their respective parties--the one of restraint, the other of propulsion--contrary to the general tendency of those parties. It needed but a step from these considerations for each to regard the other as insincere. The Whig accused the Tory Democrat of unscrupulous opportunism; the Tory said that the Whig was a humbug.

The actual dispute arose in this wise. Lord Hartington’s examination of Mr. Chamberlain’s programme led him to utter many sentiments about the rights of property which were not less gratifying to the Conservative party than his blunt repudiation of Mr. Parnell and Home Rule. ‘If,’ said Lord Randolph Churchill at Sheffield, after reading one of Lord Hartington’s speeches, ‘this is really all you can bring yourself to utter on political questions, you cannot indicate any difference between yourself and your friends and the Government now in power. If, on the contrary, you are compelled by the honesty of your nature to indicate the strongest possible difference with a certain section of the Liberal party with whom for years you have hopelessly and vainly tried to agree, then I say you have no longer the right as a patriot and a citizen to oppose the Conservative Government simply on the ground of antiquated names; nor the right to act with Mr. Chamberlain and his friends, who would not only destroy the Constitution, but would destroy with it that great party of the Revolution--the Whigs--under whose guidance that noble Constitution was framed.... I say to Lord Hartington before you all--not by any backstairs intrigue, not by any secret negotiations, but in the face of this meeting and before all England--to Lord Hartington, to his friends, and to his following, words which were said to men nearly two thousand years ago, who were destined to become great political guides, “Come over and help us.”’

This invitation was rejected by Lord Hartington with some asperity. It was comically suggested that he had written to inquire ‘Who’s “us”?’ and had received the answer ‘“Us” is me.’ Radicals earnestly besought him to follow the advice which had been offered. He would be much happier in the Conservative camp. It would be better for all parties if he took the plunge. To a proud man profoundly attached to historic Liberalism, painfully conscious of the increasing difficulties of his position, these taunts were galling in the extreme. In more than one speech he denounced the New Conservatives, of whom he said that they arrogated to themselves the title of Tory Democracy, had no distinctly marked political opinions, and looked on politics only as a game by which they might attain office. One shaft at least was shrewdly aimed. He taunted Lord Randolph Churchill with going about the country with ‘a great policy of grand pretensions but absolutely no legislation.’

The Secretary of State for India spoke in Manchester on November 6. It was the eve of the poll. The election fever was at its height. The streets leading to the St. James’s Hall were impassable, through the crowd waiting to catch a glimpse of their favourite.[38] The vast hall itself was crammed with excited people. Lord Randolph was in his element. He cast away every kind of restraint and devoted himself for an hour and a half with zeal and relish to an unmeasured attack upon the Whigs, their record, their leaders, their influence, and their aims. He showed how Lord Hartington had opposed almost every reform that the Liberal party had ultimately carried--the ballot, household suffrage, the abolition of flogging in the army--and yet under pressure had in the end consented to them all; how he was still professedly opposed to manhood suffrage and Disestablishment, but how in the near future he would be forced to support them; how he already advocated that extension of Local Government to Ireland which only the year before he had denounced. This was political principle! And now? ‘Did any of you ever go,’ inquired the speaker, ‘to the Zoological Gardens? If you go there on some particular day in the week you may have the good fortune to observe the feeding of the boa-constrictor, which is supplied with a great fat duck or a rabbit. If you are lucky and patient and if the boa-constrictor is hungry, you may be able to trace the progress of the duck or the rabbit down his throat and all along the convolutions of his body. Just in the same way, by metaphor and analogy, the British public can trace the digestion and the deglutition by the Marquess of Hartington of the various morsels of the Chamberlain programme which from time to time are handed to him; and the only difference between the boa-constrictor and the Marquess of Hartington is this--that the boa-constrictor enjoys his food and thrives on it and Lord Hartington loathes his food and it makes him sick....’ ‘Ah! the Whigs hate the New Conservatism and the Tory Democracy because they are democratic and because they are popular. They hate the Tory Democracy because it has cut the ground from under their feet; because Tory Democracy has taken the place of the Whigs and swept away that baffling and confusing medley party which at every crisis obscures the issues before the people. No; I quite admit that there is nothing democratic about the Whig. He is essentially a cold and selfish aristocrat who believes that the British Empire was erected by Providence and exists for no other purpose than to keep in power a few Whig families, and who thinks that our toiling and struggling millions of labourers and artisans are struggling and toiling for no other purpose than to maintain in splendour, opulence, and power the Cavendishes and the Russells.’

The audience were delighted at this hard hitting. Certainly Lord Randolph had set his mark upon the Whig leader in unmistakable fashion. It is said by some who were present and who followed his movements closely, that on no occasion in Lancashire, not excepting the celebrated ‘Chips’ speech at Blackpool in 1884, was his command from minute to minute of a meeting containing a large proportion of opponents so strikingly displayed. Lord Hartington was deeply and personally offended. ‘I hear,’ wrote Lord Randolph to his wife a few days later, ‘that Hartington says he will never speak to me again. _Je m’en moque._’ But ‘never’ is a hard word in political strife.

The contest in Birmingham was watched with the keenest interest all over the country. The fame of Mr. Bright, the popularity of his young challenger, the antagonisms which Mr. Chamberlain and his doctrines had excited, the daring of the assault upon the stronghold of Radicalism, the incidents of the Aston Riots, still fresh in the public mind, united so many picturesque and personal elements that the rough and tumble of a modern election assumed the glamour of a Homeric combat. Even Mr. Balfour seems to have become enthusiastic. Considering how intimate his relations with Lord Randolph must have been during these years, it is curious how few of his letters are to be found among Lord Randolph’s extensive correspondence. But the Birmingham election drew from him a warm private message of encouragement and congratulation, written in his own hand, in the midst of his own fight in Manchester. Every word uttered by Lord Randolph was diligently reported. Not merely the regular speeches in the Town Hall with which the campaign was opened, but accounts of every petty ward meeting were telegraphed verbatim to the newspapers. Lord Randolph’s address[39] had been issued as early as October 10. From October 24 till the poll a month later he prosecuted his candidature with seemingly inexhaustible vigour and fertility; and as the days slipped by the tide of popular approval seemed to flow ever more strongly in his favour. At the Radical headquarters there had been at first some disposition to treat the attack with indulgent and superior contempt. But soon feelings of incredulous anxiety broke in upon complacency, and Mr. Schnadhorst and his myrmidons bent again over their finished--‘perhaps too highly finished,’ as Lord Randolph suggested--organisation, ciphering their pledged electors out again by wards and streets and alleys with all that American thoroughness for which the Caucus was remarkable. The progress of the fight, strangely enough, provoked no personal ill-feeling between Lord Randolph and Mr. Chamberlain. Their renewed friendship continued unimpaired. They exchanged various small civilities and avoided, so far as possible, attacking each other in irritating terms. When, for instance, Mr. Chamberlain described Lord Randolph’s address as ‘colourless’ and the reporters wrote ‘scurrilous,’ Mr. Chamberlain at once telegraphed to explain the mistake and added a friendly inquiry about Lord Randolph’s health. For the rest, the contest in all the seven divisions was bitter and fierce. Lord Randolph was helped from morn till night by his wife and his mother, at the head of their Primrose Dames. These ladies canvassed the whole of the Central Division street by street and house by house; and the Duchess of Marlborough--who was, as these pages perhaps suggest, a woman of remarkable character and capacity--visited the factories and addressed the workmen effectively on her son’s behalf. If it were in human power to command success, the Central Division of Birmingham would have been won. Against any other candidate Lord Randolph must have prevailed. But the personal loyalty of the people to their famous representative resisted all efforts. ‘I like your husband,’ said an old fellow to Lady Randolph on one of her canvassing tours, ‘and I like what he says; but I can’t throw off John Bright like an old coat.’

Not until the very eve of the General Election did the Liberal party realise that their victory in England and Scotland would not be complete and was even doubtful. For the first time since the Conservatives had taken office in June all talk of triumphant and crushing Gladstonian majorities died away. Tales of distress came in on every hand from the boroughs. Crowds of ardent Conservative working men--utterly unexpected phenomena--assembled to cheer and support the Government candidates. The Conservative party was found, moreover, to have gained vastly in prestige by its short tenure of power. Lord Salisbury’s conduct of foreign affairs extorted admiration even from his opponents. The Afghan difficulty had been removed and the Russian crisis was at an end. The Egyptian settlement was proceeding smoothly. Good relations had been restored between Great Britain and the two Empires of Germany and Turkey, from which under the late Government she had been estranged. The charges of ‘rashness’ and ‘Jingoism’ which it had been so fashionable to make against Lord Salisbury found their answer in actual events. The new Ministers had shown themselves competent and capable men. It was no longer denied that the Conservative party could produce an efficient alternative to any Government Mr. Gladstone might form.

The voting began on November 23. Forty-four borough constituencies which had been represented in the late Parliament by 35 Liberals and 20 Conservatives now (after redistribution) returned 26 Conservatives and 18 Liberals. Liverpool elected 8 Conservatives and 1 Parnellite (Mr. T. P. O’Connor); Manchester 5 Conservatives to 1 Liberal; Leeds and Sheffield 3 Conservatives each to 2 Liberals. Other large towns like Stockport, Blackburn, Oldham, Staleybridge, Bolton, Brighton, hitherto for the most part strictly Liberal, were now represented mainly or wholly by Conservatives. London, which in 1880 had sent up 14 Liberals and 8 Conservatives, now returned 62 Members, of whom 36 were Conservatives and 26 Liberals. Wherever the influence of Lord Randolph Churchill upon the Tory Democracy had been the strongest, that is to say, in the great centres of population and of active political thought, victory--all the more dazzling because so desperately won--rested with the constitutional cause. Two ex-Cabinet Ministers and quite a litter of underlings from the late Government fell before the storm. Whereas, in 1880, 287 English borough members had mustered only 85 Conservatives; in 1885, 226 English borough members numbered 116 Conservatives to 106 Liberals, 3 Independents, and 1 Parnellite. And it was, moreover, noticed that even in boroughs where the Tories were outnumbered the increase in their vote was heavy and almost universal.

Yet it is remarkable that, amid so many successes, the Conservative party should have derived enormous encouragement from a defeat. The result of the Birmingham election was declared late on the night of the 24th. Seven Liberals or Radicals were returned for its seven divisions. But the Conservative minorities were everywhere largely increased, and raised in the aggregate from 15,000 voters to 23,000. Whereas in 1880 the proportion of Liberals to Tories in Birmingham was as 2 to 1, it was in 1885 as 3 to 2. Mr. Alderman Kenrick, the Chairman of the National Liberal Federation, saved his seat by scarcely 600 votes from Mr. Matthews. In the Central Division Lord Randolph Churchill was defeated by Mr. Bright by 4,989 votes to 4,216, a majority of less than 800. It was claimed by Conservative, and generally admitted by Liberal, writers that no more significant proof of the change of opinion in English cities could be furnished than this result. But while the political world was fully aware of the meaning of the Birmingham elections, the Tories who had fought the battle with so much earnestness and enthusiasm were bitterly disappointed. Hope, growing stronger, had even ripened into confidence as the contest had proceeded, and the crowd of local leaders in the Midland Conservative Club awaited the declaration of the poll in intense excitement. As one by one the adverse results came in, the hum of eager conversation died away and gloom overspread every face. The figures of the Central Division were still delayed. ‘Churchill’s in!’ shouted a voice from the street; and a frantic cheer went up. ‘At the bottom!’ cried the mocker; and fled. Then the truth arrived. There was a sickly silence. In a moment Lord Randolph was upon his feet. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘the man who cannot stand a knock-down blow isn’t worth a damn.’ The Midland Conservative Club were accustomed to regard this remark with a respect which they did not always extend to more edifying political pronouncements.

Lord Randolph returned to London next day and was almost immediately elected by a majority of more than 2 to 1 for South Paddington, where he then lived. The Fourth Party had fought everywhere in the front line. Mr. Balfour, forsaking the shelter of Hertford, had captured an immense working-class constituency in Manchester. Mr. Gorst was returned again for Chatham. Only Sir Henry Wolff--still far away in Egypt--fell at Portsmouth, and passes as a Parliamentary politician out of this story altogether. Tory confidence flared high during the first few days of the election and ‘Back to 1874’ was everywhere the word. Lord Justice FitzGibbon was in London when the returns from the boroughs were coming in, and after spending the small hours among an excited crowd at the tape machine in the Grand Hotel, he hurried round to Connaught Place to see his now famous friend. ‘Ah!’ said Lord Randolph, pacing up and down in excited satisfaction, ‘the Whigs can no longer call us the party of the classes. If they do, I’ll chuck big cities at their heads.’

But after the boroughs, the counties. While Liberals all over the country were beginning to lose heart, while whispers of utter defeat and panic were flying about among the wire-pullers, Mr. Gladstone stoutly proclaimed his undiminished confidence that the new voters would reverse the decision of the old; and so it proved. Scotland voted solidly Liberal--only nine Conservatives being returned. In the English counties the agricultural labourers tramped doggedly to vote down the farmers’ and landlords’ candidates. Mr. Farrer Ecroyd’s Fair Trade movement, which had proved so popular in Lancashire towns, exerted an opposite effect in villages, where Corn Law memories were still wakeful. Mr. Chamberlain’s speeches had fallen upon a fertile soil. The country party, with all its immense territorial influence and candidates of county families, was shattered, never to be restored, except as a shadow of its old strength. Henceforth the Conservative leaders, if they were to rule the land, must build in town and country upon the foundation of democracy.

THE WAITS.

_Punch._ December 26, 1885.]

Ireland was a portent. Not a single Liberal was returned. The Irish Whigs were as a party and a force totally exterminated. Ulster elected 16 Tory members and 17 Nationalists. Out of 89 contests Mr. Parnell won 85, the greater part by overwhelming majorities. Upon such national authority could he base his demand for Home Rule. The leaders of both the great English parties understood the meaning of the Irish elections. On November 30 Mr. Gladstone was still appealing to his counties for a clear and strong majority over the combined forces of Conservatives and Parnellites. ‘There seems to be still hope,’ wrote Lord Salisbury to Lord Randolph Churchill, as late as December 3, ‘that we may be above low-water mark--_i.e._ Tories + Parnellites = Liberals.’ The hopes of both were falsified by the event. The final result of the General Election of 1885 sent to the House of Commons 335 Liberals, 249 Conservatives, and 86 Parnellites. ‘Low-water mark’ it was.

‘What will happen now?’ Lord Randolph was asked by a friend. ‘I shall lead the Opposition for five years. Then I shall be Prime Minister for five years. Then I shall die.’ In respect to the span of his life the words came true almost to the day. But his personal fortunes and the destinies of Britain were about to receive a vast and unanticipated twist.