Chapter XXII: Opposition Once More (2)

He spent Christmas at Howth. The old circle of friends were gathered once more, and they saw with sadness that their hopes of his return to power, cherished for so many years, would never be fulfilled. When he came back to England for the beginning of the Session, the hounds were hard upon his track. But it was not till June that he consented to yield. The doctors ordered complete rest. ‘They told me,’ he wrote to his mother, ‘that I was to give up political life for a year. I did not agree directly, but said I would think it over. I returned next day and explained to them my plan [of a journey round the world]. Of this they fully approved.’ And now followed only a few dinners of farewell to good friends--who knew they would never see him again--and busy preparations for a long journey. He sailed, with his wife, for America on June 27 under a sentence of death, operative within twelve months; and he realised perfectly that his time was very short. But now Nature began mercifully to apply increasing doses of her own anæsthetics, and for the space there was yet to travel he suffered less than those who watched him. Indeed, in an odd way he was positively happy in these last few months; for the changing scenes kept him from sombre reflections, and the increasing attention which he paid to details of all kinds occupied his mind. Nothing was too small to command his interest, and neither in America nor in Japan was ever seen so methodical a tourist. The light faded steadily. At intervals small blood-vessels would break in the brain, producing temporary coma, and leaving always a little less memory or faculty behind. His physical strength held out till he reached Burma, ‘which I annexed,’ and which he had earnestly desired to see. But when it failed, the change was sudden and complete. The journey was curtailed, and in the last days of 1894 he reached England as weak and helpless in mind and body as a little child. For a month, at his mother’s house, he lingered pitifully, until very early in the morning of January 24 the numbing fingers of paralysis laid that weary brain to rest.

The illness of Lord Randolph Churchill had been followed with attention throughout the country, and the tragic termination of his career evoked greater manifestations of sympathy than are accorded to many who have played a longer part in the world’s affairs. Politicians of all ranks and parties attended the service in Westminster Abbey. Large crowds assembled in the streets through which the funeral procession passed. The journey lay, by a strange coincidence, from Paddington to Woodstock. The London terminus was thronged with representatives of the Metropolitan constituency. Woodstock gathered around the churchyard at Bladon. Thither, too, came deputations of the Birmingham Tories and Irish friends. Over the landscape, brilliant with sunshine, snow had spread a glittering pall. He lies close by the tower of the village church, and the plain granite cross which marks the spot, can almost be discerned, across a mile of lawn and meadow, from the great house which was his childhood’s home, and whose sinister motto his varied fortunes had not ill-sustained. A statue is erected to his memory in Blenheim Chapel; and a bust by the same hand was set up in the House of Commons by private subscription among the members, and unveiled with a few simple and well-chosen words by his oldest and truest political comrade, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach.

* * * * *

The story of Lord Randolph Churchill’s life is complete in itself and needs no comment from the teller. That he was a great elemental force in British politics, that he was broken irrecoverably at the moment of maturity, should be evident from these pages. It is idle to speculate upon what his work and fortunes might have been, had he continued to lead the House of Commons and influence against its inclinations the Conservative party. It is certain only that the course of domestic policy in Finance, in Temperance and other social questions would have been widely deflected from that which has been in fact pursued. Most of all, perhaps, was Ireland a loser by his downfall; for more than any other Unionist of authority he understood the Irish people--their pride, their wants, their failings, their true inspiration. What would have happened to him, aye, and to others had he lived the ordinary span of men--after all, he was but forty-six--are questionings even more shadowy and unreal. How would he have regarded a naval and military expenditure of seventy millions in time of peace? What would he have thought of the later developments of those Imperialistic ideas, the rise of which he had powerfully, yet almost unconsciously, aided? What action would have been wrung from him by the stresses of the South African war? Would he, under the many riddles the future had reserved for such as he, have snapped the tie of sentiment that bound him to his party, resolved at last to ‘shake the yoke of inauspicious stars’; or would he by combining its Protectionist appetites with the gathering forces of labour have endeavoured to repeat as a Tory-Socialist in the new century the triumphs of the Tory-Democrat in the old?

For all its sense of incompleteness, of tragic interruption, his life presents a harmony and unity of purpose and view. Verbal consistency is of small value. Yet even his verbal consistency was not especially open to challenge. But the ‘climate of opinion’ in which he lived, the mood and intention with which he faced the swiftly changing problems of a stormy period, were never sensibly or erratically altered. The principles and convictions which he developed in the Parliament of 1874, and professed during the Parliament of 1880, were those, which guided him to the end. That the period was brief in which he swayed and almost dominated the Conservative party is not wonderful. The marvel is that he should ever have won to power in it at all. Only the peculiar conditions of the Parliament of 1880, in the House of Commons and out of doors, made his career, as I have described it, a possibility, and enabled him to attack a Liberal Government for oppression and war and to appeal to a Conservative party in the name of Peace, Retrenchment and Reform. Tory Democracy was necessarily a compromise (perilously near a paradox in the eye of a partisan) between widely different forces and ideas: ancient permanent institutions becoming the instruments of far-reaching social reforms: order conjoined with liberty; stability and yet progress; the Tory party and daring legislation! Yet narrow as was the path along which he moved, multitudes began to follow. Illogical and unsymmetrical as the idea might seem--an idea not even novel--it grew vital and true at his touch. At a time when Liberal formulas and Tory inertia seemed alike chill and comfortless, he warmed the heart of England and strangely stirred the imagination of her people.

He contained in his nature and in his policy all the elements necessary to ruin and success. If the principles he championed from 1880 to 1885 were the cause of his rise, they were also the cause of his fall. All his pledges he faithfully fulfilled. The Government changed. The vast preponderance of power in the State passed from one great party to the other. Lord Randolph Churchill remained exactly the same. He thought and said the same sort of things about foreign and domestic policy, about armaments and expenditure, about Ireland, about Egypt, while he was a Minister as he had done before. He continued to repeat them after he had left office for ever. The hopes he had raised among the people, the promises he had made, the great support and honour he had received from them, seemed to require of him strenuous exertions. And when all exertions had failed, he paid cheerfully the fullest and the only forfeit in his power.

Lord Randolph Churchill’s name will not be recorded upon the bead-roll of either party. The Conservatives, whose forces he so greatly strengthened, the Liberals, some of whose finest principles he notably sustained, must equally regard his life and work with mingled feelings. A politician’s character and position are measured in his day by party standards. When he is dead all that he achieved in the name of party, is at an end. The eulogies and censures of partisans are powerless to affect his ultimate reputation. The scales wherein he was weighed are broken. The years to come bring weights and measures of their own.

There is an England which stretches far beyond the well-drilled masses who are assembled by party machinery to salute with appropriate acclamation the utterances of their recognised fuglemen; an England of wise men who gaze without self-deception at the failings and follies of both political parties; of brave and earnest men who find in neither faction fair scope for the effort that is in them; of ‘poor men’ who increasingly doubt the sincerity of party philanthropy. It was to that England that Lord Randolph Churchill appealed; it was that England he so nearly won; it is by that England he will be justly judged.

APPENDICES

V

_TWO ELECTION ADDRESSES_

1886.

_To the Electors of South Paddington._

Gentlemen,--A ‘people’s dissolution’ has come upon us. Such is the title given by Mr. Gladstone to the most wanton political convulsion which has, in our time, afflicted our country. The caprice of an individual is elevated to the dignity of an act of the people by the boundless egoism of the Prime Minister. The United Kingdom is to be disunited for the purpose of securing in office, if only for a little while, by the aid of a disloyal faction subsisting on foreign gold, a Government deserted by all who could confer upon it character or reputation.

Mr. Gladstone has reserved for his closing days a conspiracy against the honour of Britain and the welfare of Ireland more startlingly base and nefarious than any of those other numerous designs and plots which, during the last quarter of a century, have occupied his imagination. Nor are the results of the repeal of the Union, whatever they may be, a matter of moment to him. No practical responsibility for those results will fall upon his shoulders. He regards with the utmost unconcern, or with inconceivable frivolity, the fact that upon those who come after him will devolve the impossible labour of rebuilding a shattered empire, of re-uniting a divided kingdom. Let a credulous electorate give him, for the third time, a Parliamentary majority by the aid of which another Irish revolution may be consummated, and this most moderate of Ministers will be satisfied, will complacently retire to that repose for which he tells us ‘nature cries aloud.’ Nature, to whose cries he has for so long turned a stone-deaf ear.

This design for the separation of Ireland from Britain, this insane recurrence to heptarchical arrangements, this trafficking with treason, this condonation of crime, this exaltation of the disloyal, this abasement of the loyal, this desertion of our Protestant co-religionists, this monstrous mixture of imbecility, extravagance and political hysterics, better known as ‘the Bill for the future Government of Ireland,’ is furnished by its author with the most splendid attributes and clothed in the loftiest language. (1) Under its operation a nation of slaves paying tribute is to be filled with exuberant love for Britain which it now hates, but with which it is now on a footing of perfect political equality. (2) Persons who have subsisted and flourished on the effects of crime and outrage are to be immediately transformed into governors wise, moral and humane. (3) A peasantry which has for years exhibited a marked disinclination to pay contract rents to many landlords will instantly commence and for the next fifty years continue with cheerful alacrity and fidelity to pay rent to one single landlord; that landlord, moreover, assuming the garb of a foreign and alien Government. (4) A people without manufactures, longing for protection by which to create and foster manufactures, are to become in a moment ardent converts to the blessings of free trade. (5) A Parliament, in which any and every legislative project or deliberative proceeding or executive act, may be vetoed for three years, is to abound in rapid legislation, and to surpass our ancient historic Parliament in efficiency of procedure. (6) A financial system, under which by no possibility can revenue be adequate to expenditure, is to perform prodigies of economy and ‘to scatter plenty o’er a smiling land.’ (7) A pauper population is to roll in riches. (8) Law and order and rights of property are immediately to take their place as the most sacred and cherished institutions of a country a great portion of whose people hitherto, from time immemorial, have regarded them only to deride them and violate them, &c. &c.

The united and concentrated genius of Bedlam and Colney Hatch would strive in vain to produce a more striking tissue of absurdities.

Yet this is the policy, the last specific for Ireland, which is gravely recommended by senile vanity to the favourable consideration of a people renowned for common sense, the possessors of an Empire erected and preserved by the constant flow of common sense and, I doubt not, the progenitors of a posterity equally powerful, equally courageous and equally wise.

For the sake of this fifth message of peace to Ireland, this farrago of superlative nonsense, the vexatious and costly machinery of a general election is to be put in motion, all business other than what may be connected with political agitation, is to be impeded and suspended; trade and commercial enterprise, now suffering sadly from protracted bad times, and which political stability can alone re-invigorate, are to be further harassed and handicapped; all useful and desired reforms are to be indefinitely postponed, the British Constitution is to be torn up, the Liberal party shivered into fragments.

And why? For this reason and no other: To gratify the ambition of an old man in a hurry.

How long, gentlemen, will you and your brother electors tolerate this one-man power?

Since 1868, when this one-man power began to show itself in an acute form, have you enjoyed domestic security or foreign credit?

From that time to the present day, Ireland has been a struggling victim in Mr. Gladstone’s hands. The Irish Church, a great agency for moral, social, and religious order, has been swept away; two special confiscations of landed property were confidently recommended to, and accepted by, Parliament as certain to produce peace; six coercion Acts of the most stringent character Mr. Gladstone has obtained; and all to no purpose. Confusion has become worse confounded; the fabric of Government in Ireland has been shattered; lawlessness and disorder have been triumphant and supreme; the present state of Ireland is one of ‘grave disease,’ says Mr. John Morley; and the blame is cast by Mr. Gladstone on the system, on the Constitution, on the Union.

It would be as reasonable to cast the blame upon the Equator.

The blame for this disgrace cannot be cast upon the system or upon the Constitution or upon the Union.

The blame must be borne by the man who has been Minister and who is Minister now.

Under the baneful insecurity which is inseparably connected with his name, your trade has gone from bad to worse, your Parliament has become demoralised, your foreign credit shaken, your colonies alienated, your Indian Empire imperilled.

Naturally enough, Ireland has suffered most of all, for Ireland, of all the Queen’s dominions, was least able to stand a strain.

What frightful and irreparable Imperial catastrophe is necessary to tear the British people from the influence of this fetish, this idol, this superstition, which has brought upon them and upon the Irish unnumbered woes?

The negotiator of the ‘Alabama’ arbitration, the hero of the Transvaal surrender, the perpetrator of the bombardment of Alexandria, the decimator of the struggling Soudan tribes, the betrayer of Khartoum, the person guilty of the death of Gordon, the patentee of the Penjdeh shame, now stands before the country all alone, rejected by a democratic House of Commons.

No longer can he conceal his personality under the shelter of the Liberal party. One hundred members of that party in Parliament, representing thousands of electors, refused, in spite of all manner of blandishments, deceits and menaces, to support his Irish measure. All his colleagues have abandoned him. From the Duke of Argyll to Mr. Bright, from Lord Hartington to Mr. Chamberlain, one by one he has shed them all; none is near him of his former colleagues save certain placemen unworthy of notice. Last, but not least, the leading lights of Nonconformity, such as Dr. Dale and Mr. Spurgeon, hitherto the pillars of the Liberal party, stand aloof in utter dismay.

Known to the country under various ‘aliases’--‘the People’s William,’ ‘the Grand Old Man,’ ‘the old Parliamentary hand,’ now, in the part of ‘the Grand electioneering agent,’ he demands a vote of confidence from the constituencies.

Confidence in what?

In the Liberal party? No! The Liberal party, as we knew it, exists no longer. In his Irish project? No! It is dead; to be resuscitated or not, either wholly or in part, just as may suit the personal convenience of the author. In his Government? No! They are a mere collection of ‘items,’ whom he does not condescend to consult. In himself? Yes!

This is the latest and most perilous innovation into our constitutional practices. A pure unadulterated personal _plébiscite_, that is the demand; a political expedient borrowed from the last and worst days of the Second Empire.

Gentlemen, it is time that some one should speak out. I have written to you plainly, some may think strongly; but whatever the English vocabulary may contain of plainness and strength is inadequate to describe truly and to paint realistically the present political situation.

At this moment, so critical, we have not got to deal with a Government, or a party, or a policy. We have to deal with a man; with a man who makes the most unparalleled claim for dictatorial power which can be conceived by free men. It is for that reason that I deliberately addressed myself to the personal aspects of the question, and that I have drawn the character of the claimant from recent history, and from facts well within the recollection of all.

Mr. Gladstone in his speech in Edinburgh on Friday recommended himself to the country in the name of Almighty God.

Others cannot and will not emulate such audacious profanity; but I do dare, in soliciting a renewal of your confidence, to recommend the policy of the Unionist party to you in the name of our common country, our great Empire, upon whose unity and effective maintenance so largely depend the freedom, the happiness and the progress of mankind.

I am, Gentlemen, yours obediently, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.

Committee Room, 26 London Street, Paddington, June 19, 1886.

1892.

_To the Electors of South Paddington._

Gentlemen,--A General Election is immediately before us. I desire again to solicit the honour of representing South Paddington in the House of Commons. It is pleasant to me to record my strong appreciation of, and my abiding gratitude for, the kindness and indulgence which you have consistently shown me and for the large measure of confidence which during six years you have accorded me. I most earnestly trust that as long as I have the good fortune to take part in public life the connection between us may remain as close and strong as it has ever been at any former time.

My opinions on the policy of Home Rule for Ireland are unaltered and unalterable. The impracticability and futility of such a policy become more apparent and glaring as discussion and argument proceed. The insanity of a scheme to create an independent Parliament in an island inhabited by two races controlled by two religious creeds separated from each other by an impassable abyss; the insoluble problem raised by such a scheme as to the representation or non-representation of Ireland in the British Parliament; the impossibility of guaranteeing effectually, under any such scheme, justice to the Protestant minority, mainly residing in Ulster; the endless and bitter conflicts which must arise again, as they arose before, between the Irish and British Parliaments, in addition to those which must surely arise between Irish and British Administrations; the constitutional impossibility of establishing any tribunal to pronounce authoritatively on the validity of laws passed by either Parliament; the certain divergence of commercial and financial policy to be followed by Ireland and Great Britain respectively; all this Himalayan range of obstacles appears more utterly insuperable the closer it is looked at, the more attentively it is studied. A conclusive proof of the truth of these propositions is afforded by the impenetrable reserve maintained by Mr. Gladstone and by all his colleagues even as to the general form and outline of their Home Rule legislative project. The formula which I have more than once expressed, that it is impossible to put Home Rule into a Bill, is more rooted than ever in my mind; and even if the Party of Repeal were to be furnished with ever so great a majority at the coming General Election, that party is, I am convinced, condemned to political impotence and sterility so long as they continue to exhaust their energies in solving the insoluble, in accomplishing the impossible.

After six years of trial and labour the Unionist Party return to the country with a record of work and action cleaner and less open to serious attack than any other political party which I have known or read of in modern times. Ireland, on which country the last General Election turned, which was pronounced by our opponents to be ungovernable by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, is now simply and easily governed. Ireland was agitated in 1886; it is calm in 1892. Ireland was distressed in 1886; it is prosperous in 1892. No real grievance now oppresses and irritates the Irish peasant, nor can persons possessing reason and experience doubt that the energies and sense of a new Parliament, if this Parliament is swayed by a Unionist majority, will be employed in constructing a scheme of Local Government for the Irish people so broad and generous that the last vestiges of difference, inequality, inferiority (if such there still be), between Ireland and Great Britain will be swept away.

Facts like these, written so largely on the history of the past six years, cannot fail to strike and to arouse the common sense of the British people as a whole; they must serve to dissipate the factious fury of baffled opponents, to neutralise the allurements of innumerable reckless and irredeemable promises. British electors at the present moment are in duty bound to draw largely on their memories and to make a very practical use of their experience. They cannot afford to forget or to neglect the lessons they learnt from the anxious and even terrible times which Ireland passed through during Mr. Gladstone’s former administration. Remembering how gloomy and hopeless was the outlook, how frantic were the popular rage and passion which during all those years distracted and paralysed Ireland, how impotent were the measures of Mr. Gladstone’s Government either to pacify or control; looking at Ireland now, tranquil, materially prosperous, crime (ordinary and extraordinary) reduced to an unprecedented minimum, the British electors must be compelled to realise that an invaluable period, rarely in history brighter, more full of justified hope and confidence, has at length, after infinite difficulty, been attained, and that even to run the risk of recurrence to former evils and perils would be an act of national folly difficult to characterise, ominous of Imperial ruin. I do not doubt but that South Paddington, in common with all other constituencies where knowledge and political study extensively prevail, will pronounce without hesitation in favour of the wisdom of the Unionist policy, of the continuance in power of the Unionist Party.

My views as to the reforms in the public service which public safety and economy alike urgently call for, are, I think, well known to you; they have undergone no change, save that I hold them more strongly than ever. You are also, I imagine, not unaware of my desire to meet with all legitimate sympathy and good-will the newly-formed but very articulate and well-defined demands of the labouring classes.

Thus recording my political faith, I trust that you may be willing and satisfied to dispose of your political confidence as you have done in former years since South Paddington became a separate borough, and that I may be enabled again to serve in Parliament our constituency and the country.

I have the honour to be Your obedient servant, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.

2 Connaught Place, W.: June 21, 1892.

VI

_PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE_

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL’S LETTER TO MR. SPEAKER AND HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. GLADSTONE IN 1886.

_Lord Randolph Churchill to the Speaker._

Treasury Chambers, Whitehall, S.W.: Nov. 30, 1886.

Dear Mr. Speaker,--I venture to submit to you for your information
and consideration, the result of the deliberations of the Committee
of the Cabinet on the question of Parliamentary Procedure.

It would be of the greatest possible advantage to me if I could
have the honour of an interview with you, in order to examine and
explain more fully than I could do by letter the effect and object
of the various rules proposed. In case you should be coming to town
before the 22nd or 23rd December and would make an appointment with
me, I would be happy to wait upon you at any time or place which
would be most convenient to you.

Two of the proposed new provisions especially concern the Chair:

1. The Closure of debate. (Rule No. 1.)

2. Motions for adjournment of the House at question time. (Rule No.
6.)

On the first these have been my views: The length of debate is
essentially a question of ‘order.’ The Chair is the only judge of
‘order.’ By the present rule an unfair responsibility is thrown
upon the Chair, in that the initiative with regard to Closure is
thrown upon it, which initiative has to undergo the ordeal of a
vote of the House. It is difficult and almost impracticable for the
Chair to possess the information with regard to the proper time for
the exercise of the initiative, without which action in the
direction of Closure would be unsafe.

The Government propose to give the initiative of any Closure motion
to the House, and a veto to the Chair with respect to receiving and
putting such a motion. The Chair, under this provision, is not only
the protector of fair and orderly debate (its chief function), but
also guards against abuse of the Closure rule from motives of
frivolity, obstruction, haste or tyranny. Nor can the decisions of
the Chair be questioned or overruled, for no question is put to the
House unless with the permission of the Chair.

Further, in the event of the House agreeing to the proposal, the
association of the Chair with the exercise of the closing power
will have been, for a second time, deliberately affirmed. This is a
far better and more durable protection for minorities than any
arrangement of numbers. An extreme and violent Government in
office, supported by a powerful majority, would very soon make
short work of any protective arrangement of proportionate
majorities which might prove embarrassing to them. It would be a
much more difficult matter to dissociate and exclude the Chair from
all connection with, or control over, the Closure after that
Parliament had on two occasions laid down a contrary principle.

Speaking generally, this Closure (as per enclosed) is aimed at
persistent, deliberate, wilful obstruction. The Speaker can at any
time permit an appeal to the House by a member, or a Minister, as
to whether such obstruction is or is not being resorted to. This
Closure is also designed to facilitate and render possible earlier
hours of session and prevent unnecessary, stupid and perverse
‘talking out.’

In respect of Rule 6 (adjournment of House at question time):
After much anxious consideration I see no alternative to total
abolition of the power of moving such adjournment, except the
method proposed in the paper--of making the Chair the judge whether
the subject to be discussed on adjournment motion is of such
cardinal importance as to justify the postponement of the regular
assigned business of the day. I imagine that the expression ‘urgent
matter of definite public importance’ would receive, under the new
arrangement, a strict and proper interpretation, and regard this
matter, as the former one, as primarily a question of ‘order.’

Please excuse this lengthy letter, and Believe me to remain Yours respectfully and faithfully, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.

The Right Hon. the Speaker.

_Lord Randolph Churchill to Mr. Gladstone._

_Confidential._

Treasury Chambers, Whitehall, S.W.: December 17, 1886.

Dear Sir,--By the desire of the First Lord of the Treasury I have
the honour to submit to you, for your information and convenience,
the draft of the alterations in the procedure of the House of
Commons which it is the intention of Her Majesty’s Government to
recommend to the consideration of the House next session.

I express the feelings of the Government when I assure you that in
the event of its being within your power, and in accordance with
your wishes, to offer any criticism or comment or suggestion on
these draft proposals prior to the meeting of Parliament, such
would be received and considered by the Government with every
respect and attention.

I may add that in the opinion of the Government the House of
Commons would do well to arrive at conclusions as to the reforms of
procedure before commencing the regular business of the session;
that it is with that object that Parliament has been summoned so
early in the year; and that the Government, as at present advised,
will press this course upon the House of Commons.

I have the honour to be Your faithful servant, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.

The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P.

_Mr. Gladstone to Lord Randolph Churchill._

_Confidential._

Hawarden Castle, Chester: December 18, ‘86.

My dear Lord,--I have to thank you for your courtesy in apprising
me at this early date of the particulars in which the Government
propose to amend the procedure of the House of Commons and of their
intention to give precedence to the subject.

In the last stages of this important matter, that of the present
year, I had but a minor concern, and I will therefore at once
communicate with Sir W. Harcourt, who represented principally the
late Administration on the Committee. The matter will remain
strictly confidential, and will not go beyond those of my late
colleagues who were specially concerned. In the meantime I do not
trouble you with any observations, but I thank you for your
obliging readiness to consider any suggestion which I may tender to
you.

I remain Faithfully yours, W. E. GLADSTONE.

Right Hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

VII

_POLITICAL LETTERS OF LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL_

1884-1893.

_Freedom of Contract._

_Mr. Moore Bayley to Lord Randolph Churchill._

57 Colmore Row, Birmingham: March 22, 1884.

My Lord,--I am a Conservative and an elector of the borough of
Birmingham, and as such hope at no distant period to render your
lordship, as a Conservative candidate for this borough, whatever
political service lies in my power.

But before committing myself further in the compact that arose when
you were accepted as such Conservative candidate I should like to
know, as would a considerable number of political friends, how much
further your lordship’s views on the rights of contract proceed in
the direction expressed in your speech in the House of Commons when
you supported the second reading of Mr. Broadhurst’s Leaseholders
(Facilities of Purchase of Fee Simple) Bill.

The enactments of the present Government have in many particulars
so violated the rights of contract between subject and subject that
I am sure your lordship will not consider my request for
information unreasonable as to the extent you are willing to commit
your supporters in the furtherance of such like principles.

I remain Yours obediently, J. MOORE BAYLEY.

_Lord Randolph Churchill to Mr. Moore Bayley._

2 Connaught Place, W.: March 24, 1884.

Dear Sir,--I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the
22nd inst. In answer to your question as to my views on the rights
of contract I beg to inform you that where it can be clearly shown
that genuine freedom of contract exists I am quite averse to State
interference, so long as the contract in question may be either
moral or legal. I will never, however, be a party to wrong and
injustice, however much the banner of freedom of contract may be
waved for the purpose of scaring those who may wish to bring
relief. The good of the State, in my opinion, stands far above
freedom of contract; and when these two forces clash, the latter
will have to submit. If you will study the course of legislation
during the last fifty years, you will find that the Tory party have
interfered with and restricted quite as largely freedom of contract
as the Liberals have done. With respect to the two leading
instances of interference with freedom of contract during the
present Parliament, viz. the Irish Land Act and the Agricultural
Holdings Act, the Duke of Richmond’s Agricultural Commission and
the House of Lords must divide the responsibility for this
legislation with Mr. Gladstone’s Government. The latter had it in
their power to reject this legislation, and did not do so; the
former laid down the principles on which it was founded.

In comparison with legislation of that kind the compulsory
conversion of long leaseholds into freeholds in towns, full and
ample compensation being paid to the freeholder, is, as I called it
in my speech in the House of Commons, ‘a trifling matter.’

You will find the principle of this measure advocated in the
_British Quarterly Review_ five years ago (a very orthodox organ of
Tory doctrine). You will find the principle again contained in the
65th section of the Conveyancing Law and Properties Act, passed by
Lord Cairns in 1881. I may also add that Lord Cairns dealt a very
severe blow at the rights of owners of freehold property when he
gave to the courts of law power to protect leaseholders from
forfeiture for breaches of covenant.

Under all these circumstances I am inclined to think that you will
agree with me that all this outcry against the supporters of Mr.
Broadhurst’s Bill--this gabble about Socialism, Communism, and Mr.
George, &c.--is highly inconsistent and ridiculous, and betrays a
prevalence of very deplorable and shocking ignorance as to the
extent to which the rights of property can be tolerated, and the
relation of the State thereto.

I remain Yours faithfully, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.

_Lord Randolph Churchill on Temperance._

_Private._

2 Connaught Place, W.: November 29, 1888.

My dear Sir,--I am extremely obliged to you for your interesting
letter, with a great deal of the contents of which I am disposed to
concur.

I think it would not be difficult to find a good many Conservatives
willing to make a considerable step towards a restrictive
regulation of the sale of alcoholic liquor.

The party with which you are connected ought, however, in my
opinion, to consider practically the question of compensation in
some form or other to the retail trader. I exclude compensation to
the brewers and distillers as an impracticable and impossible
demand. The retail trader stands on a very different footing, and
any glaring injustice towards him would alienate many who would
otherwise join the Temperance movement.

One good result of buying up retail liquor interests by charges on
the rates would be to give a permanence to any local decision in
favour of largely diminishing the number of or even abolishing
public-houses.

The community would be most indisposed, by any reversal of its
Temperance policy, to run the risk of having again to face fresh
compensation liabilities.

Caprice in popular decisions is a danger to be guarded against.

I shall continue from time to time to urge the importance of strong
dealing with the Licensing Question. I only trust that your party
will not take up the position of ‘everything or nothing,’ but, if
good proposals are made, will accept them--reserving to themselves,
of course, the right to continue their agitation for more.

We shall, however, not effect much against the publicans unless we
act vigorously in the direction of better houses for the poor. As
long as we allow such an immense portion of our population to live
in pigsties, the warmth and false cheerfulness of the public-house
will be largely sought after.

The two questions appear to me to be inseparable.

I shall always be very glad to talk over these matters with you
should you feel disposed for conference.

I am Yours very faithfully, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.

James Whyte, Esq., United Kingdom Alliance.

_Lord Randolph Churchill on Home Rule._

2 Connaught Place, W.: February 10, 1891.

Dear Sir,--I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the
4th inst.

I am not at all surprised to learn that you, in common with, I
expect, the overwhelming majority of members of the English Home
Rule party, find yourself puzzled, embarrassed and anxious in
consequence of the recent very interesting disturbance of the
harmony of the Irish Home Rule party.

I have always been of opinion that, however attractive Home Rule
for Ireland might be in theory, it was an absolute impossibility to
put Home Rule into a Bill. You might just as well try to square the
circle.

The dispute between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Parnell as to what took
place at what you call ‘the notorious interview at Hawarden’ brings
out this fact with exceeding clearness; and if you, and those who
agree with you politically, insist upon shutting your eyes rather
than contemplate a disagreeable truth, it will, I fear, be the sad
fate of your party to waste years of time and strength in fruitless
efforts to arrive at a solution of the hopeless problem ‘How to put
Home Rule into a Bill.’

You ask me, in conclusion, for my opinion as to what would be the
best policy for Ireland.

In reply I would refer you to several speeches which I have
delivered and letters which I have written in recent years, in
which I have declared my conviction that in a large, liberal,
generous and courageous development of Local Government in Ireland
on lines similar to those which have been so successfully followed
in this country and in Scotland, will be found the best and the
only prospect of political tranquillity for the Irish people.

I am Yours faithfully, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.

John Ogilvy, Esq.

50 Grosvenor Square, W.: March 19, 1893.

My dear Sir,--In accordance with your wishes I write a few lines to
you for the County Longford Meeting which is to be held to-morrow.

It is a pleasure to me to offer my congratulations to the Unionists
of Longford on the energy and courage which they display in
publicly demonstrating, among a population apparently hostile,
their firm and tried attachment to the Parliamentary Union between
Ireland and Great Britain and their determination to resist all
efforts to sever that Union.

I used in the foregoing sentence the word ‘apparently’ for indeed I
do not believe that the bulk of the farmers and peasant farmers of
Ireland are by any means confident as to the blessings which are to
flow from Home Rule. I hear from many quarters, some of them of
great authority, that there is arising and spreading in the minds
of the Irish agricultural population an anxious doubt as to what
will be their position under an Irish Parliament and whether the
taxes which that Parliament will be forced to levy on income or on
land, will not be far more onerous and exhausting than the rents
they formerly paid to the landlords.

They will remember and reflect that under an Irish Parliament not
only will they be absolutely cut off, in times of difficulty and of
depression and of failure of crops, from all the sources of relief
which from the Imperial Parliament they can now confidently draw
upon and be assisted by; but they will be in the hands of a
Government which, from sheer financial exigencies, will be
compelled to treat the Irish taxpayer with the utmost rigour and
harshness, to lay upon him imposts heavier than he can bear, and to
exact relentlessly the payment of those imposts to the last
farthing and on the earliest day that they become due.

I think you may well impress upon the farmers and peasant farmers
the perfect security of property which they now enjoy under the
protection of the Imperial Parliament; the perfect freedom which
they possess from oppression of any kind, either from heavy
taxation or from the unjust exactions of a pauper Government and
Parliament; the great advantages in respect of their rentals
secured to them by the Imperial Parliament and the great facilities
afforded for the easy purchase of their freeholds by its
liberality, which opportunities under the Home Rule Parliament
will, from the squalid poverty of its resources, become illusory
and insecure and in time absorbed by the hopeless insolvency of the
Irish Government.

These are the great truths and facts which the loyal minority in
Irish counties can urge upon the farmers and the peasantry. The
Irish people, in respect of their material interests, have always
been bright and quick-witted; they will, with their ready
imagination, quickly discern that though it may be pleasant and
profitable to be represented in the Imperial Parliament by an
independent and numerically powerful party who can extract from the
British Exchequer and legislature no inconsiderable concessions to
Irish wants, necessities and demands, it will be a widely different
state of things when they (the Irish agricultural population) are
handed over, body and soul, tied and bound and without appeal, to
the uncontrolled domination of that ‘separate and independent’
party who--untrained in the art of just and economical government,
eager to enjoy at any cost, and even only for a brief period, the
profits of office and the delights of a reckless exercise of
patronage and power--will have given over to their insatiable
appetites the lives and properties of those who now exist and
flourish, in tolerable prosperity and in perfect safety, by the
cultivation of the Irish soil.

I have always been opposed to what is called ‘Home Rule’ more upon
the grounds that to the Irish people themselves it must bring
distress, poverty, misery and ruin, than on account of the dangers
it will entail upon the British Empire, though those dangers are
exceedingly great.

I trust that you may be able to continue with ardour and success
the patriotic and excellent work among the Irish people which you
inaugurate to-morrow; you may be sure that the full sympathy and
genuine support of a vast majority of the English people will
attend you in the struggle and you may be confident that the dark
and menacing thunder-cloud that now impends over your country,
almost turning Irish day into night, will soon be dissipated by
the brightness of a recurring dawn of a new era of peace and
prosperity for Ireland under the enlightened rule of a United
Imperial Parliament.

Believe me to be Most faithfully yours, RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.

J. M. Wilson, Esq.

VIII

_MR. JENNINGS’ ACCOUNT OF HIS QUARREL WITH LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL_

MARCH, 1890.

_Mr. Jennings’ Memorandum._

On Friday, the 7th of March, I called upon Lord Randolph Churchill,
to tell him my opinions with regard to the Resolution proposed by
the Government on the Report of the Special Commission. I told him
I thought some express reference should be made in the Resolution
to the emphatic acquittal of Mr. Parnell and his colleagues on what
I called the ‘murder charges,’ and gave him my reasons. With these
reasons he seemed to be much impressed, and after talking the
matter over he urged me _not_ to speak upon the main question, as I
intended, but to embody my ideas in an Amendment, for then the
Speaker could call upon me and I should have a recognised place in
the debate. Otherwise I might not be called upon at all, and have
no chance of speaking. I said that if any Amendment were drawn up,
it should be in the most moderate terms, so that it might avoid the
faults and disadvantages of Mr. Gladstone’s on the same subject. He
then went to his table and drew up the Amendment, saying, when he
handed it to me, ‘I think no one can object to this--there is not a
single adjective in it.’ We considered it well, and at one o’clock
or so I left him, asking him to turn the subject well over in his
mind before we met at the House and to let me know whether he was
still in favour of the Amendment. At a little after three we met in
the lobby, and he assured me that he was confident the Amendment
was the right thing, and that he did not see how any reasonable
objection could be made to it. I then went into the House, and
after Questions gave notice of the Amendment.

On Saturday night I dined with Lord R. and a party at the Junior
Carlton Club, but we did not have much conversation on the subject
until the end of the evening, when Lord Justice FitzGibbon came up
to us and condemned the Amendment. Lord R. then asked me to go to
his house the next morning, and talk the matter over with ‘Fitz.’ I
said that it was rather too late to ‘talk it over’ on the line
taken up by FitzGibbon, for I was committed to the Amendment and
intended to move it; that I should be very busy the next day, and
would rather be excused going to his house. But Lord R. pressed me
very earnestly to go and accordingly I did so.

On entering his room (Sunday, the 9th), FitzGibbon having been with
him some time before, Lord R. said: ‘I am sorry you put that
Amendment down; it is a mistake; can’t be defended.’ I was
astounded. ‘But,’ I said, ‘it is your own Amendment.’ ‘Yes,’ he
said coolly: ‘but I have changed my mind.’ I was silent a minute or
two, and then asked him to tell me why he had changed his mind.
‘FitzGibbon has been talking it over with me,’ he said, ‘and I am
sure he is right.’ ‘Then,’ I said, ‘I am sorry Lord Justice
FitzGibbon was not here last Friday morning.’ I listened to what
FitzGibbon had to say--it had all been in the papers before--and as
soon as I could, I left. I felt, however, much disheartened at
hearing the author of the Amendment which I had been induced to
move, denounce it as ‘all a mistake.’

The next evening (Monday) Lord Randolph’s brother-in-law (Lord
Curzon) came to me as I was sitting in the House and said he had
something important to say to me about the Amendment. We went
outside into the corridor by the library, and there he told me that
‘Randolph had made up his mind to stand altogether aloof from the
Amendment; he thought it would be best not to support it; he did
not see his way clear to have anything to do with it’--with more to
the same effect. I said: ‘What will people think of him? He has
himself told one of the newspaper correspondents that he intends to
speak and vote for the Amendment.’ ‘Yes,’ replied Lord Curzon,
‘that is the nuisance of his talking to those correspondents.’ I
said: ‘I know what _I_ shall think of his behaviour--first
Birmingham, and now _this_. You cannot doubt what my opinion will
be.’

I should have mentioned that earlier in the day Lord R. C. had
called me to his side in the smoking-room and said: ‘I shall
probably say something to-day on the main question, if I get a
chance.’ I did not quite see what he meant, and when afterwards he
went away (at dinner-time) without speaking I thought he had meant
nothing. Afterwards came Lord Curzon’s message, just referred to.
On the Tuesday, when the Amendment was to be moved, just as I was
going into the House, Lord Curzon again came to me, and said,
‘Randolph will not take any part in the debate unless you are
attacked.’ He added: ‘I cannot support you.’ I said but little, and
went into the House, quite determined to go on.

The House was crowded, and just before Questions were over R. C.
leaned back to me and said: ‘I am going to speak on the main
question.’ I asked him ‘When?’ ‘Now,’ he said. ‘How can you, after
one Amendment has been voted on?’ ‘It is all right,’ he said; ‘I
have arranged it with the Speaker.’ There was no time for
explanation or remonstrance. He was evidently quite determined, and
in a few moments the Speaker called upon him.

He then delivered a violent diatribe against the Government,
accusing them, in effect, of having called the forger Pigott into
existence--‘the bloody, rotten, ghastly fœtus, Pigott, Pigott,
Pigott’--pointing with his finger at the Ministry each time he
mentioned the name. He suggested the possibility of a Pigott being
employed against himself. While he was speaking several friends who
had intended to support me came to me and whispered that they could
not be identified with so outrageous an attack upon the Ministry.
‘You will be linked with it,’ said several of them. ‘Everybody will
believe that the entire programme to-night was arranged between
you.’

Smarting under the deliberate and treacherous manner in which I had
been thrown over, and at the utter want of consideration shown by a
leader for a follower placed _by_ that leader in a very responsible
and difficult position, I determined not to move the Amendment, and
to tell the House why I adopted that course. When R. C. sat down I
informed him that I should do this, and he made several attempts to
dissuade me. I was quite resolved, however, and am glad that I was
not induced to waver, although to throw up the Amendment was the
sorest disappointment I have ever had; and--for the time, at any
rate--the whole transaction has sickened me of political life.

L. J. J.

[I think it right to add to this memorandum the following note by Lord Justice FitzGibbon.--W. S. C.]

‘Mr. Jennings’ memorandum seems to me to give an unduly unfavourable impression of Lord Randolph’s action. Lord Randolph told me that when Mr. Jennings first showed him the draft of the amendment he stated plainly that he wished to take the whole responsibility for it, and intended to move it whether Lord Randolph supported it or not. Afterwards, at Connaught Place, on the day before the debate, the whole subject was fully discussed by Lord Randolph, Jennings and myself, and the conversation ended in a distinct statement by Lord Randolph to Mr. Jennings that, on fuller consideration, he thought the amendment a mistake, and that although he would not vote against it, he could not speak in favour of it, but would speak upon the main question if he spoke at all. His speech was, in substance, an examination of the constitutional position which he had adopted, and a vindication of his action in warning the Unionist leaders, two years before, of the dangers and difficulties into which the Special Commission must lead them. When I read the report of his speech in the _Times_, it seemed to me that, but for the sudden loss of self-control indicated in the text, which, as much by manner as by actual words, made it appear to be a bitter attack upon the Government, it was conceived in a moderate tone. But, after what had happened on the previous morning, I cannot understand how Jennings could have imagined that there was a breach of faith with him.’

IX

_LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL’S MEMORANDUM ON ARMY AND NAVY ADMINISTRATION_

_Included in the Report of Lord Hartington’s Commission, March 21, 1890._

The Royal Commission desires, I apprehend, to recommend to her Majesty’s Ministers a system of government and management for the Army and the Navy which shall appear to secure the _maximum_ of efficiency which can be reasonably expected from normal expenditure on those services. By the consent of all, under present arrangements, this _maximum_ has not been attained.