Chapter XII: The Crisis. (1873)

.. alla fortuna, come vuol, son presto..
Pero giri fortuna la sua rota,
Come le piace, e il villan la sua marra.
—_Inferno_, xv. 93.

For fortune as she wills I am ready.. so
let her turn her wheel as she may please,
and the churl his spade.

I

A week of lively and eventful interests followed,—not only interesting in the life of Mr. Gladstone, but raising points with important constitutional bearings, and showing a match between two unsurpassed masters of political sword-play. The story was told generally and partially in parliament, but the reader who is curious about either the episode itself, or Mr. Gladstone’s modes of mind and action, will find it worth a little trouble to follow details with some closeness.

_March 11._—H. of C. Spoke 12-2, and voted in a division of
284-287—which was believed to cause more surprise to the opposite
side than it did to me. At 2.45 A.M. I apprised the Queen of our
defeat.

_Thursday, March 12._—Saw the Queen at 12.15. Failed to find
Granville. Cabinet 1-2-3/4. We discussed the matter with a general
tendency to resignation rather than dissolving. Confab. on my
position with Granville and Glyn, then joined by Bright. To the
Queen again at six to keep her informed. Large dinner party for
the Duke of Edinburgh, and an evening party afterwards, to hear
Joachim.

_Friday, March 13._—After seeing Mr. Glyn and Lord F. Cavendish, I
went at 10.40 to see Dr. Clark. He completed his examination, and
gave me his careful judgment. I went to Lord Granville, sketched
out to him and Glyn my views, and went to the cabinet at 12.15.
Stated the case between the two alternatives of resignation and
dissolution as far as regarded myself. On the side of resignation
it would not be necessary to make any final announcement [of his
retirement from the leadership]. I am strongly advised a temporary
rest. On the other hand, if we now dissolve, I anticipate that
_afterwards_ before any long time difficulties will arise, and my
mission will be terminated. So that the alternatives are not so
unequally weighed. The cabinet without any marked difference, or
at least without any positive assertion to the contrary,
determined on tendering their resignations.(287) After cabinet saw
Hartington and others respecting honours. At 2.45 saw the Queen
and resigned. The Queen informed me that she would send for Mr.
Disraeli; suggested for consideration whether I would include the
mention of this fact in my announcement to parliament, and added
as I was leaving the room, without looking (apparently) for an
answer, that she would inform me of what might take place. At 3.45
saw Granville respecting the announcements. Made announcement in
House of Commons at 4.30. More business at Downing Street, and
home at six.

At a quarter to seven, or a little later, Colonel Ponsonby called
with a communication from her Majesty. “Any news?” I said. “A
great deal,” he replied; and informed me as follows. Mr. Disraeli
had been with the Queen; did not see the means of carrying on the
government by the agency of his party under present circumstances;
did not ask for the dissolution of parliament (this was understood
to mean did not offer to become minister on condition of being
permitted to dissolve); did not say that his renunciation of the
task was final; recommended that the Queen should call for my
advice. Upon this the Queen sent Colonel Ponsonby, and he said,
“She considers this as sending for you anew.” I replied that I did
not regard the Queen’s reference of this intelligence to me, as
her calling upon me anew to undertake the work of government; that
none of my obligations to the sovereign were cancelled or impaired
by the resignation tendered and accepted; that I was still the
minister for the purpose of rendering any service she might be
pleased to call for in the matter on which she is engaged, exactly
as before, until she has a new minister, when my official
obligations will come to an end. That I felt there was great
inconvenience and danger of misapprehension out of doors in
proceeding over-rapidly with a matter of such gravity, and that
each step in it required to be well measured and ascertained
before proceeding to consider of the next following step. That I
had great difficulty in gathering any precise idea of Mr.
Disraeli’s account of what he could not do, and what he either
could or did not say that he could not. That as this account was
to present to me the state of facts on which I was commanded to
advise, it was quite necessary for me to have an accurate idea of
it, in order that I might do justice to her Majesty’s commands. I
would therefore humbly suggest that Mr. Disraeli might with great
propriety be requested to put his reply into writing. That I
presumed I might receive this reply, if it were her Majesty’s
pleasure to make it known to me, at some not late hour to-morrow,
when I would at once place myself in a condition to tender my
humble advice. This is an account of what Colonel Ponsonby might
fairly consider as my answer to her Majesty’s communication. I
enlarged the conversation, however, by observing that the division
which overthrew us was a party division. It bore the express
authentic symbol of its character in having party tellers on the
opposition as well as on the government side; that we were aware
of the great, even more than ordinary, efforts of Colonel Taylor,
with Mr. Disraeli’s countenance, to bring members to London and to
the House; that all this seemed to impose great obligations on the
opposition; and if so, that it would be the duty of the leader of
the opposition to use every exertion of consultation with his
friends and otherwise before declining the task, or in any manner
advising the Queen to look elsewhere. To Colonel Ponsonby indeed,
I observed that I thought Mr. Disraeli was endeavouring, by at
once throwing back on me an offer which it was impossible for me
at the time and under the circumstances to accept, to get up a
case of absolute necessity founded upon this refusal of mine, and
thus, becoming the indispensable man and party, to have in his
hands a lever wherewith to overcome the reluctance and resistance
of his friends, who would not be able to deny that the Queen must
have a government.

(M147) Mr. Disraeli’s reply to the Queen’s inquiry whether he was prepared to form a government, was put into writing, and the two operative paragraphs of it were sent through Colonel Ponsonby to Mr. Gladstone. They ran as follows:—

In answer, Mr. Disraeli said he was prepared to form an
administration which he believed would carry on her Majesty’s
affairs with efficiency, and would possess her confidence; but he
could not undertake to carry on her Majesty’s government in the
present House of Commons. Subsequently, her Majesty having
remarked that Mr. Gladstone was not inclined to recommend a
dissolution of parliament, Mr. Disraeli stated that he himself
would not advise her Majesty to take that step.

Viewing these paragraphs as forming the answer offered by Mr. Disraeli to the Queen, Mr. Gladstone reported to her (March 14) that “he did not find himself able to gather their precise effect”:—

The former of the two, if it stood alone, would seem to imply that
Mr. Disraeli was prepared to accept office with a view to an
immediate dissolution of parliament, but not otherwise; since it
states that he believes himself able to form a suitable
administration, but not “to carry on your Majesty’s government in
the present House of Commons.” In the latter of the two paragraphs
Mr. Disraeli has supposed your Majesty to have remarked that “Mr.
Gladstone was not inclined to recommend a dissolution of
parliament,” and has stated that “he himself would not advise your
Majesty to take that step.” Your Majesty will without doubt
remember that Mr. Gladstone tendered no advice on the subject of
dissolution generally, but limited himself to comparing it with
the alternative of resignation, which was the only question at
issue, and stated that on the part of the cabinet he humbly
submitted resignation of their offices, which they deemed to be
the step most conformable to their duty. Mr. Gladstone does not
clearly comprehend the bearing of Mr. Disraeli’s closing words; as
he could not tender advice to your Majesty either affirmatively or
negatively on dissolution, without first becoming your Majesty’s
adviser. Founding himself upon the memorandum, Mr. Gladstone is
unable to say to what extent the apparent meaning of the one
paragraph is modified or altered by the other; and he is obliged
to trouble your Majesty, however reluctantly, with this
representation, inasmuch as a perfectly clear idea of the tenor of
the reply is a necessary preliminary to his offering any remark or
advice upon it; which, had it been a simple negative, he would
have felt it his duty to do.

Between six and seven in the evening Colonel Ponsonby came with a letter from the Queen to the effect that Mr. Disraeli had unconditionally declined to undertake the formation of a government. In obedience to the Queen’s commands Mr. Gladstone proceeded to give his view of the position in which her Majesty was placed:—

_March 15._—Not being aware that there can be a question of any
intermediate party or combination of parties which would be
available at the present juncture, he presumes that your Majesty,
if denied the assistance of the conservative or opposition party,
might be disposed to recur to the services of a liberal
government. He is of opinion, however, that either his late
colleagues, or any statesman or statesmen of the liberal party on
whom your Majesty might call, would with propriety at once observe
that it is still for the consideration of your Majesty whether the
proceeding which has taken place between your Majesty and Mr.
Disraeli can as yet be regarded as complete. The vote of the House
of Commons on Wednesday morning was due to the deliberate and
concerted action of the opposition, with a limited amount of
adventitious numerical aid. The division was a party division, and
carried the well-known symbol of such divisions in the appointment
of tellers of the opposition and government respectively. The vote
was given in the full knowledge, avowed in the speech of the
leader of the opposition, that the government had formally
declared the measure on which the vote was impending to be vital
to its existence. Mr. Gladstone humbly conceives that, according
to the well-known principles of our parliamentary government, an
opposition which has in this manner and degree contributed to
bring about what we term a crisis, is bound to use and to show
that it has used its utmost efforts of counsel and inquiry to
exhaust all practicable means of bringing its resources to the aid
of the country in its exigency. He is aware that his opinion on
such a subject can only be of slight value, but the same
observation will not hold good with regard to the force of a
well-established party usage. To show what that usage has been,
Mr. Gladstone is obliged to trouble your Majesty with the
following recital of facts from the history of the last half
century.... [_This apt and cogent recital the reader will find at
the end of the volume, see _Appendix_._]... There is, therefore, a
very wide difference between the manner in which the call of your
Majesty has been met on this occasion by the leader of the
opposition, and the manner which has been observed at every former
juncture, including even those when the share taken by the
opposition in bringing about the exigency was comparatively slight
or none at all. It is, in Mr. Gladstone’s view, of the utmost
importance to the public welfare that the nation should be
constantly aware that the parliamentary action certain or likely
to take effect in the overthrow of a government; the reception and
treatment of a summons from your Majesty to meet the necessity
which such action has powerfully aided in creating; and again the
resumption of office by those who have deliberately laid it
down,—are uniformly viewed as matters of the utmost gravity,
requiring time, counsel, and deliberation among those who are
parties to them, and attended with serious responsibilities. Mr.
Gladstone will not and does not suppose that the efforts of the
opposition to defeat the government on Wednesday morning were made
with a previously formed intention on their part to refuse any aid
to your Majesty, if the need should arise, in providing for the
government of the country; and the summary refusal, which is the
only fact before him, he takes to be not in full correspondence
either with the exigencies of the case, or as he has shown, with
the parliamentary usage. In humbly submitting this representation
to your Majesty, Mr. Gladstone’s wish is to point out the
difficulty in which he would find himself placed were he to ask
your Majesty for authority to inquire from his late colleagues
whether they or any of them were prepared, if your Majesty should
call on them, to resume their offices; for they would certainly,
he is persuaded, call on him, for their own honour, and in order
to the usefulness of their further service if it should be
rendered, to prove to them that according to usage every means had
been exhausted on the part of the opposition for providing for the
government of the country, or at least that nothing more was to be
expected from that quarter.

This statement, prepared after dinner, Mr. Gladstone took to Lord Granville that night (March 14). The next morning he again saw Lord Granville and Colonel Ponsonby, and despatched his statement to the Queen. “At 2.45,” he writes to Granville:—

I saw the Queen, not for any distinct object, but partly to fill
the blank before the public. H.M. was in perfect humour. She will
use the whole or part of my long letter by sending it to Disraeli.
She seemed quite to understand our point of view, and told me
plainly what shows that the artful man _did_ say, if it came back
to him again at this juncture, he would not be bound by his
present refusal. I said, “But, ma’am, that is not before me.” “But
he told it to me,” she said.

(M148) The Queen sent Mr. Gladstone’s long letter to Mr. Disraeli, and he replied in a tolerably long letter of his own. He considered Mr. Gladstone’s observations under two heads: first, as an impeachment of the opposition for contributing to the vote against the bill, when they were not prepared to take office; second, as a charge against Mr. Disraeli himself that he summarily refused to take office without exhausting all practicable means of aiding the country in the exigency. On the first article of charge, he described the doctrine advanced by Mr. Gladstone as being “undoubtedly sound so far as this: that for an opposition to use its strength for the express purpose of throwing out a government which it is at the time aware that it cannot replace—having that object in view and no other—would be an act of recklessness and faction that could not be too strongly condemned.” But this, he contended, could not be imputed to the conservative opposition of 1873. The Irish bill was from the first strongly objected to by a large section of the liberal party, and on the same grounds that led the conservative opposition to reject it, namely, that it sacrificed Irish education to the Roman catholic hierarchy. The party whom the bill was intended to propitiate rejected it as inadequate. If the sense of the House had been taken, irrespective of considerations of the political result of the division, not one-fourth of the House would have voted for it. Mr. Gladstone’s doctrine, Disraeli went on, amounted to this, that “whenever a minister is so situated that it is in his power to prevent any other parliamentary leader from forming an administration likely to stand, he acquires thereby the right to call on parliament to pass whatever measures he and his colleagues think fit, and is entitled to denounce as factious the resistance to such measures. Any such claim is one not warranted by usage, or reconcilable with the freedom of the legislature. It comes to this: that he tells the House of Commons, ‘Unless you are prepared to put some one in my place, your duty is to do whatever I bid you.’ To no House of Commons has language of this kind ever been addressed; by no House of Commons would it be tolerated.”

As for the charge of summary refusal to undertake government, Mr. Disraeli contented himself with a brief statement of facts. He had consulted his friends, and they were all of opinion that it would be prejudicial to the public interests for a conservative ministry to attempt to conduct business in the present House of Commons. What other means were at his disposal? Was he to open negotiations with a section of the late ministry, and waste days in barren interviews, vain applications, and the device of impossible combinations? Was he to make overtures to the considerable section of the liberal party that had voted against the government? The Irish Roman catholic gentlemen? Surely Mr. Gladstone was not serious in such a suggestion. The charge of deliberate and concerted action against the Irish bill was ’not entirely divested of some degree of exaggeration.’ His party was not even formally summoned to vote against the government measure, but to support an amendment which was seconded from the liberal benches, and which could only by a violent abuse of terms be described as a party move.

On Saturday afternoon Mr. Gladstone had gone down to Cliveden, and there at ten o’clock on the Sunday evening (March 16) he received a message from the Queen, enclosing Mr. Disraeli’s letter, and requesting him to say whether he would resume office. This letter was taken by Mr. Gladstone to show that “nothing more was to be expected in that quarter,” and at eleven o’clock he sent off the messenger with his answer in the affirmative:—

_March 16, 1873_, 10-3/4 P.M.—It is quite unnecessary for him to
comment upon any of the statements or arguments advanced by Mr.
Disraeli, as the point referred by your Majesty for him to
consider is not their accuracy, sufficiency, or relevancy, but
simply whether any further effort is to be expected from the
opposition towards meeting the present necessity. Your Majesty has
evidently judged that nothing more of this kind can be looked for.
Your Majesty’s judgment would have been conclusive with Mr.
Gladstone in the case, even had he failed to appreciate the full
cogency of the reason for it; but he is bound to state that he
respectfully concurs with your Majesty upon that simple question,
as one not of right but of fact. He therefore does not hesitate at
once to answer your Majesty’s gracious inquiry by saying that he
will now endeavour to prevail upon your Majesty’s late advisers
generally to resume their offices, and he again places all such
service as it is in his power to offer, at your Majesty’s
disposal. According to your Majesty’s command, then, he will
repair to London to-morrow morning, and will see some of the most
experienced members of the late government to review the position
which he regards as having been seriously unhinged by the shock of
last Wednesday morning; to such an extent indeed, that he doubts
whether either the administration or parliament can again be what
they were. The relations between them, and the course of business
laid down in the royal speech, will require to be reconsidered, or
at least reviewed with care.

II

_Tuesday, March 18._—[_To the Queen_] The cabinet met informally
at this house [11 Carlton House Terrace] at 2 P.M., and sat till
5-½.

The whole of the cabinet were ready to resume their offices. It
was decided to carry on the government in the present parliament,
without contemplating any particular limit of time for existence
in connection with the recent vote.

_Wednesday, March 19._—Went down to Windsor at midday; 3/4 hour
with the Queen on the resignation, the statement tomorrow, the
Duke of Edinburgh’s marriage, royal precedence, Tennyson’s honour;
also she mentioned railway accidents and an assault on a soldier,
and on luxury in food and dress. Dined with the Duke of Cambridge.
Speaker’s levee, saw Mr. Fawcett [who had been active in fomenting
hostility] and other members. Then Mrs. Glyn’s party.

_Thursday, March 20._—H. of C. Made my explanation. Advisedly let
pass Mr. Disraeli’s speech without notice.

Mr. Gladstone said among other things:—

I felt reluctance personally from a desire for rest, the title to
which had possibly been ... earned by labour. Also politically,
because I do not think that as a general rule the experience we
have had in former years of what may be called returning or
resuming governments, has been very favourable in its
character.... The subsequent fortunes of such governments lead to
the belief that upon the whole, though such a return may be the
lesser of two evils, yet it is not a thing in itself to be
desired. It reminds me of that which was described by the Roman
general according to the noble ode of Horace:—

... Neque amissos colores
Lana refert medicata fuco,
Nec vera virtus cum semel excidit
Curat reponi deterioribus.(288)

Mr. Disraeli made a lengthy statement, covering a much wider field. The substance of the whole case after all was this. The minister could not dissolve for the reason that the defeat had strengthened all the forces against the bill and against the government, and the constituencies who had never looked on it with much favour after its rejection by the Irish to satisfy whom it had been invented, now regarded it with energetic disfavour. The leader of the opposition, on the other hand, produced a long string of ingenious reasons for not abiding by the result of what was his own act: as, for example, that dissolution could not be instant; to form a government would take time; financial business must be arranged; a policy could not be shaped without access to official information; in this interval motions would be made and carried on plausible questions, and when the election came, his friends would go to the country as discredited ministers, instead of being a triumphant opposition. In writing to his brother Robertson, Mr. Gladstone glances at other reasons:—

_March 21._—We have gone through our crisis; and I fear that
nobody is much the better for it. For us it was absolutely
necessary to show that we did not consider return, as we had not
considered resignation, a light matter. As to the opposition, the
speech of Disraeli last night leaves it to be asked why did he not
come in, wind up the business of the session, and dissolve? There
is no reason to be given, except that a portion of his party was
determined not to be educated again, and was certain that if he
got in he would again commence this educating process. The
conservative party will never assume its natural position until
Disraeli retires; and I sometimes think he and I might with
advantage pair off together.

Speaker Brand says: “Disraeli’s tactics are to watch and wait, not showing his hand nor declaring a policy; he desires to drive Gladstone to a dissolution, when he will make the most of Gladstone’s mistakes, while he will denounce a policy of destruction and confiscation, and take care to announce no policy of his own. His weakness consists in the want of confidence of some of his party.”