Chapter IV: Ireland Under Storm (2)

Mr. Forster’s political fate was reached with the inexorable precision of Greek tragedy. If ever a good man was overwhelmed with successive waves of adversity, it was he. Called at a moment’s notice to an office with which he had no special acquaintance, and confronted with dismal alternatives, he had chosen wrongly at the first. An evil fortune dogged his steps. Had he assumed power a year earlier he might have guarded against the outbreak; a year later he would have been free to stem it without any accusation of responsibility for its cause. As a Tory Chief Secretary he might have achieved a glorious reputation as a Coercionist. As a Liberal Minister he was ruined. His errors of judgment were not small. He was, wrote Mr. Gladstone, ‘a very impracticable man in a position of great responsibility.’ The style and tenor of his letters lend some sanction to this opinion. But, whatever may be thought of his wisdom or, what is of more importance in politics, of his instinct, the courage and integrity which he displayed, command the tribute of all who review, however briefly, his public conduct. What a worthy Englishman might do, he did. No labour was too exacting; no peril deterred him. He faced obloquy and assassination with equal calmness. He chased away the vigilant guards by whom he was surrounded. Almost alone and unprotected he penetrated the most distracted regions, talking to the people face to face and striving with hopeless optimism to allay by argument the passions of centuries.

‘If I had thought,’ he said in the House of Commons in introducing his Coercion Bill, ‘that this duty would devolve on the Irish Secretary, I would never have held the office; if I could have foreseen that this would have been the result of twenty years’ Parliamentary life, I would have left Parliament rather than have undertaken it.’ ‘If you think,’ he wrote to Mr. Gladstone, April 4, 1881, ‘that _from any cause_ it would be for the advantage of the public service or for the good of Ireland that I should resign, I place my resignation in your hands. You might come to this opinion ... without any disagreement with my official action; and I earnestly beg of you not to allow yourself to be influenced, for a moment, by any personal consideration for me of any kind whatever. For instance, I must request you to pay no regard to the fact that I should probably appear discredited--to have failed,’ &c., &c. On the morrow of the tragedy in the Phœnix Park he offered to return to Ireland and fill his old place, so speedily made vacant. But the Prime Minister had come to the conclusion that Ireland was no place for his talents or his virtues. He passed for ever out of the Ministry, to become during the rest of the Parliament one of its most dangerous and vigilant opponents. He was neither the first nor the last able man to be crushed between Irish national passions and English party needs.

In all these moving events Lord Randolph bore little part. At the beginning of the session of 1882 he was in his place with his three allies, all thoroughly reunited and intent upon the Government’s misdeeds. Upon the Address the Fourth Party made a combined attack, in which Mr. Forster was accused, with a good deal of evidence, of having illegally transgressed even the wide limits of executive power which the special legislation had assigned him. On February 21 there was another Bradlaugh scene. The member for Northampton, advancing suddenly to the table, produced a book, said to be a Testament, from his pocket, and duly swore himself upon it, to the consternation of the members. Lord Randolph was the first to recover from the surprise which this act of audacity created. He declared that Mr. Bradlaugh, by the outrage of taking in defiance of the House an oath of a meaningless character upon a book alleged to be a Testament--‘it might have been the “Fruits 1882 of Philosophy”’--had vacated his seat and should be treated ‘as if he were dead.’ In moving for a new writ he implored the House to act promptly and vindicate its authority. Mr. Gladstone, however, persuaded both sides to put off the decision till the next day. On the 22nd therefore a debate on privilege ensued. Sir Stafford Northcote merely moved to exclude Mr. Bradlaugh from the precincts of the House, thus modifying Lord Randolph’s motion for a new writ. Lord Randolph protested against such ‘milk and water’ policy and urged the immediate punishment of the offender. After a long discussion, in which the temper of all parties was inflamed by Mr. Bradlaugh’s repeated interruptions, Sir Stafford substituted for his simple motion of exclusion a proposal to expel Mr. Bradlaugh from the House; and this being carried the seat for Northampton was thereby vacated.

Lord Randolph seems to have gained much credit in Tory circles for the promptness and energy with which he had acted; but it was to be almost his last intervention in the debates of the session. At the end of February he was afflicted with a long and painful illness and lay in bed--at first at Wimborne House and afterwards at a little cottage near Wimbledon--for nearly five months. His absence was a grievous loss to the Opposition during the Irish crisis. The public announcement that the imprisoned members had been released was accompanied by a well-founded rumour of some political bargain between the Government and Mr. Parnell. Mr. Forster’s explanations exposed the fact that the Kilmainham negotiations, whatever their nature, had been conducted independently of the Irish Secretary by Mr. Chamberlain. Upon all this came the terrible news of the murders in the Phœnix Park. The new Minister, ‘an innocent man’ even to the fiercest Fenians, a man honoured and liked by all who knew him, the envoy of peace and reconciliation, was stabbed to death on the very day of his landing. The excitement throughout England was tremendous. After the dead had been buried with every circumstance of national grief and indignation the ‘Kilmainham Treaty’ came under pitiless review. The Fourth Party headed the attack. They pointed out Mr. Chamberlain as the mysterious ‘Number One’ of the Fenian inner circle; and Mr. Balfour, speaking with altogether unexpected power, denounced the ‘Kilmainham Treaty’ as ‘an infamy.’ This was the first speech he ever made that commanded general attention, or gave any promise of his future distinction. So intense was the feeling in the House that it was freely stated, and acknowledged even on the Liberal benches, that had Lord Randolph Churchill been at hand to strike the blow the Government might have fallen.

It was not until the autumn that he was strong enough to return to the House of Commons. Irish obstruction had reached its inevitable conclusion; and Parliament was assembled for a renewal of the session at the end of October to effect a drastic revision in its procedure. Mr. Gladstone’s ‘new rules’ were ingenious and comprehensive. All sorts of liberties and privileges of debate were ruthlessly lopped off or deformed in the attempt to destroy the abuses by which they had been encumbered. There were restrictions upon dilatory motions of all kinds and devices for checking irrelevance or repetition in debate; but the Closure--_clôture_, as its opponents called it with elaborate foreign accent--was the most formidable instrument upon which the Government relied. Into the discussion of all these grave and novel questions Lord Randolph threw himself with a recuperated strength. The members had no sooner met together than he was in possession of the House with a constitutional protest--based on precedents going back to ‘the ninth year of King Henry the Fourth’--against the impropriety of taking Government business after the Appropriation Act for the year had been passed. And thenceforward, late and early, on small matters and on great, he and his nimble friends were the tyrants of debate.

Before the session was a week old it was everywhere admitted that the whole conduct and temper of the Opposition had undergone a change and that that change was ultimately connected with Lord Randolph’s return. Mr. Gladstone had barely had time to offer him some courteous congratulations upon his recovery when they were engaged together in the liveliest of disputes. He contrived over and over again, by repeated allusions to the ‘Kilmainham Treaty’ (an expression which Mr. Gladstone always regarded with extreme disfavour), or to the course of affairs in Egypt (to which reference will presently be made), to provoke the Prime Minister into indignant declamation. He jeered at the Liberal party--who had been exhorted by their Whips not to take too much part in the discussion--‘for assisting in the capacity of mutes at the funeral obsequies of free speech.’ Irritated by various motions for adjournment upon Irish and Egyptian affairs, the supporters of the Ministry covered the notice paper with ‘blocking notices,’ then a newly discovered device, relating to almost every conceivable subject. Lord Randolph deliberately described these as ‘bogus motions put down to prevent discussion of _bona-fide_ motions.’ ‘Oh!’ said Mr. Labouchere, much shocked, ‘I move that those words be taken down.’ ‘I second that,’ rejoined Lord Randolph instantly, and forthwith proceeded to repeat the expression. The usual squabbles, unavoidable perhaps--certainly not very earnestly avoided--soon sprang up between the solemn elders of the Front Opposition Bench and the clever energetic men who impelled them forward while they were supposed to follow. One night Mr. Gibson voted against an amendment, proposed by the Fourth Party, to prevent the debate on motions for adjournment being confined solely to the question of whether the House should or should not adjourn. When, on the very next day, the restricting rule having been passed with his concurrence, he was himself called to order for breaking it, Lord Randolph’s joy was unconcealed.

But a more serious difference arose on the question of the closure. Lord Randolph Churchill wished the Conservative party to meet this with an utterly uncompromising resistance. He wrote (November 4) a fiery letter to the _Times_ urging the Opposition, under the euphonious phrase of making ‘a determined use of the rights of Parliamentary minorities,’ to bring about a dead-lock before their powers were for ever destroyed by the new rules, and so to force Mr. Gladstone to appeal to the country against a Conservative cry of ‘freedom of speech for the Commons.’ ‘It is not altogether astonishing,’ observed the _Times_ (November 6), ‘that the prospect of fighting a stout battle with ten times as many followers as Mr. Parnell ever commanded should have a fascination for the ardent spirit of Lord Randolph Churchill.’ The leaders of the Conservative party, however, resolved to assume a temperate and reasonable manner in the hopes of obtaining larger concessions from the Government. In this praiseworthy spirit Mr. Gibson moved an amendment, not challenging the principle of the closure, but requiring the vote of two-thirds of those present to make it operative. Lord Randolph delivered on this occasion (November 1) one of those speeches by which his Parliamentary reputation was established. At the moment it commanded absolutely the attention of the House and its conclusions have been sustained by the practice of all the years that have followed.

‘The _clôture_,’ he said, ‘has been called an innovation--a foreign practice--but it appears to me that a proportionate majority, or what is called a two-thirds _clôture_, is a much greater innovation than the _clôture_ itself, and is absolutely foreign to all our principles, ideas, or customs. I know of nothing in the history of this country, or in its laws, or in its Constitution, which can be adduced as a precedent or as an analogy for the proposal in the amendment that the House should require two-thirds of its members to affirm any proposition. We do not require proportionate majorities for the election of our representatives, nor would any proposition to that effect have the slightest chance of being accepted by the country. London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Glasgow can return members to this House for a period of seven years by simple majorities, and the member so returned is as fully and as firmly the member of that constituency as if he had been elected unanimously. And I think that the election of a member for a great constituency for a period of seven years is a much more important matter and would seem to require a much stronger title, than the closing of an occasional debate in the House of Commons. We know, moreover, that many of the greatest reforms in our laws have been carried by majorities which did not number double figures; and it is undoubtedly, in theory, in the power of Parliament, by a majority of one, to change the Constitution of this country from a monarchy into a republic--which, again, I should say, would be a much more important matter than the closing of an occasional debate. I own I am a firm believer in the general infallibility of simple majorities: they have practically governed the British Empire from time immemorial; and I must express my surprise that the Tory party, or the Constitutional party, which recoils with horror from the Radical innovation of the _clôture_, should propose with eagerness, with anxiety, almost with desperation, the much greater Radical innovation of a two-thirds majority....

‘I imagine that many of those who support this amendment are animated by a secret conviction that the palmy days of Tory government are over, and that the Tory party have nothing to look forward to but a long period of endless opposition, perhaps occasionally chequered by little glimpses of office with a minority. I believe that view to be not only incorrect, but absurdly incorrect. That it is held by many I have no doubt, and those who hold it propose by this amendment to build, as it were, a little dyke, behind which they fancy that they will be able to shelter themselves for a long time to come. A more hopeless delusion never before led astray a political party. How many times does anyone in this House think that the present Prime Minister would permit the Tory party to refuse him the necessary two-thirds majority for getting on with his business? I think he might allow it twice, perhaps three times; but, as sure as he sits there, after the third time, he would come down to this House and declare that the state of public business was deplorable, that the session was one of discomfort and disaster, and that the two-thirds majority must be exchanged for a simple majority; and within a fortnight or three weeks from the date of that declaration this precious little dyke, which was to shelter the Tory party for a long time to come, this little exotic which was so carefully introduced, nurtured, and protected so that the Tory party might repose under its shade, would be abolished, cut down, and swept away into the great dustbin of all modern constitutional checks. The best protection, the best constitutional check against a Liberal Minister which the Tory party can look to is the House of Lords; yet how often does the House of Lords, with its centuries of prescription, with all its vast territorial influence, venture to stand in the way of a Liberal majority? And yet, with this historic caution, not to say timidity, on the part of the House of Lords in your minds, and before your eyes, does anyone really seriously imagine that this wretched device, this miserable safeguard of a two-thirds majority, could for one moment arrest the tide of popular reform, a safeguard compared with which Don Quixote’s helmet was a miracle of protection, or Mrs. Partington’s mop a monster of energy and strength?

‘But let us look a little further ahead. No one will deny that there are great and burning questions coming on rapidly for settlement--questions relating to the franchise and to the representation of the people--questions relating to the revenue and to trade--questions relating to the land and agriculture--questions affecting the relations between Great Britain and Ireland. Is the Tory party prepared--is it determined--to abdicate and renounce all title to the initiative of legislation on these great questions? Is the attitude of the great Tory Democracy, which Lord Beaconsfield’s party constructed, to be one of mere dogged opposition? And is it true, what our foes say of us, that Coercion for Ireland and foreign war is to be the ‘be-all and the end-all’ of Tory Ministries? I think not; and yet it is on the ability, and not only on the ability, but on the rapidity, with which, in the face of unscrupulous opposition, you may be able to legislate on these questions that your title to power and that your tenure of office will mainly depend. Nevertheless, here you are, under the influence of an Hibernian legal mind, elaborately and laboriously endeavouring to forge for yourselves an instrument which, if you do come into office, will paralyse you so effectually that your power will be as tottering as a house of cards, your tenure of office as evanescent as a summer’s day. No, sir, oppose the _clôture_ if you will; defeat it if you can; resort for that purpose, if you have the courage, to all those forms and privileges which a Parliamentary minority still possesses, in order, if possible, to compel the Prime Minister to abandon his project, or to appeal to the country to decide between you and him; but, whatever you do, for Heaven’s sake do not be seduced by interested counsels into following foreign fancies, and do not be persuaded by any desire to think only of the moment, and to disembarrass yourselves of all care for what is to come.’

There was great discontent among the Conservative party at this speech. Its force was undeniable, and the members recognised reluctantly and uneasily that they had been led, in support of a vicious compromise, on to ground equally unsuited for defence or attack. All the more were they inclined to resent the proof of their leaders’ unwisdom. Mr. Balfour lost no time in making it clear that he disagreed with Lord Randolph Churchill, and when he rose next day to renew the debate he declared himself definitely in favour of the principle of the two-thirds majority to enforce the Closure. Mr. Goschen had praised Lord Randolph’s arguments and Mr. Balfour, after alluding to the ‘portentous coalition between a discontented Whig and an independent Tory,’ devoted his speech entirely to refuting them. In this he was, according to Sir Stafford Northcote, very successful. ‘My noble friend, the member for Woodstock,’ said the leader of the Opposition naïvely, ‘has somehow or other managed to elevate himself into a position from which he finds himself capable of looking down on the Front Benches on both sides and of regarding all parties in the House of Commons with an impartiality which is quite sublime. I do not know what can have taken my noble friend into such heights, or whether he went there to consult the angel Gabriel, or, what is sometimes suspected, to look for the lost principles of the Liberal party--some of which have gone to the planet Saturn and some to the planet Mars--but, whatever may have become of them, his argument seems to me to have been completely answered by the honourable member for Hertford, who sits near him, and I do not think it necessary to dwell further upon it. It certainly seems to me that my noble friend has overlooked, from the great heights from which he regards these matters, the real importance of those safeguards which he treats as little lights which would be very quickly swept away. I can only say that if he is right, and if they would be quickly swept away, we would not be in a worse position than if we never had them at all.’

Even this rejoinder could not sustain the fortunes of the debate. The division showed how ill-conceived the Opposition tactics had been. The Irish party, who naturally looked upon a Closure which required a two-thirds majority as a device specially directed against them, voted in a body against the amendment. The Whigs were somewhat divided, but the greater number followed Mr. Goschen into the Government lobby. The Fourth Party, consisting of three persons, abstained. Mr. Gibson’s amendment was therefore defeated by 322 to 288, or nearly double the majority that had been generally expected. Thus, against their will and in spite of their leaders, the Conservative party became possessed of that great engine of government by which during nearly twenty years of power they were to silence and overcome their political opponents.

Ever since then, obstruction and Closure have struggled against each other in a warfare which has respected no neutral boundaries and recognised no public law. Scarcely any Parliamentary custom or privilege has escaped their joint depredations. Every device or formality designed in the careful wisdom of former ages to safeguard the rights of a minority has been recklessly exploited by the one faction and ruthlessly demolished by the other. The historic procedure of the House of Commons has been reduced to the rigid framework which had hitherto served a purpose only in Continental or Colonial imitations. The whole theatre of war has been devastated. Almost everything within the range of the combatants that was destructible has perished--and has perished beyond repair. So long as the House of Commons contains no body of opinion which, because more or less independent of party organisations, is capable of being won or estranged by argument or conduct, the vicious conflict must run its appointed course. The end is, however, in sight. The majority must prevail. An elaborate and comprehensive time-table, fixed no doubt with some impartiality, may soon assign immovable limits to all debate. The victory of Closure will be complete. Obstruction will disappear through being at once unnecessary and impossible. But the remedy may prove more painful than the disease and the strength and reality of representative institutions may very easily disappear as well. Certain it is that if the House of Commons is ever to regain its vanished freedom and to preserve its vanishing authority, it will be by new and original treatment and not by belated attempts to revive the systems of the past. A larger and more generous freedom in choosing the subjects to be discussed might compensate for the mechanical regulation of the time allotted to discussion. The delegation of financial and legislative detail to Committees, and the devolution upon local, provincial, or national bodies of much contentious business proper to their respective jurisdictions, would abundantly increase the total time available. And perhaps those more complicated but more scientific methods of Parliamentary election, generally described as ‘Proportional Representation,’ will some day secure that detached, august, impartial element in British councils whose influence and favour all factions would strive to win.

Lord Beaconsfield’s death early in the year 1881 had been a heavy blow to the Fourth Party. Great men at the height of their power often, to their cost, refuse to recognise the ability of new comers. Peel had scorned Disraeli. Gladstone never understood Mr. Chamberlain’s capacity till he faced him as a foe. Smaller persons, called from time to time to the conduct of public affairs, exhibit the same failing in an aggravated degree with greater regularity and more disastrous results to themselves. The jealousy and dislike with which the leaders of the Conservative party in the House of Commons regarded the activities of Lord Randolph and his friends, had been apparent even before the session of 1880 had come to an end. From all such feelings Lord Beaconsfield was free. His character and the hard experiences of his earlier years made him seek eagerly for the first signs of oncoming power. He was an old man lifted high above his contemporaries and he liked to look past them to the new generation and to feel that he could gain the sympathy and confidence of younger men. If he liked youth, he liked Tory Democracy even more. He had, moreover, good reason to know how a Parliamentary Opposition should be conducted. He saw with perfect clearness the incapacity above the gangway and the enterprise and pluck below it. Had his life been prolonged for a few more years the Fourth Party might have marched, as his Young Guard, by a smoother road, and this story might have reached a less melancholy conclusion. He stood above personal rivalries. He was removed from the petty vexations of the House of Commons. Surely he would not have allowed these clever ardent men to drift into antagonism against the mass of the Conservative party and into fierce feud with its leaders. He alone could have kept their loyalty, as he alone commanded their respect; and never would he have countenanced the solemn excommunication by dulness and prejudice of all that preserved the sparkling life of Toryism in times of depression and defeat. But Lord Beaconsfield was gone; and those whom he had left behind had other views of how his inheritance--such as it was--should be divided.