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RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 WESTMINSTER AND INDIA. 
 
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 Westminster and India 
 
 BY 
 
 . J. M. MACLEAN 
 
 M.P. for Oldham, 1885-92; M.P. for Cardiff, 1895-1900 
 
 MANCHESTER 
 
 SHERRATT & HUGHES 
 
• • » « 
 
 •• • • • 
 
 • » • • 
 
 * • • • 
 
 ji^-a- 
 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 A large portion of this book has already been 
 
 published in the " Manchester Guardian," and I am 
 
 indebted to the courtesy of the Editor of that paper 
 
 for permission to republisJi it. The book has been 
 
 thoroughly revised, and considerable additions have 
 
 beefi made to it, the chapter relating to my Indian 
 
 career, in particular, having been greatly extended. 
 
 I have also included in the zvork a number of letters 
 
 from public men, several of wJiicJi, arid notably those 
 
 of Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Bartle Frere, 
 
 are of real historical importance. 
 
 458324 
 
**^ov, always loamincj witb a bungr^ beart, 
 /Iftucb bave 5 seen anD F^novvn.'* 
 
 — Tennyson^ s Ulysses. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Early Years — School Days — First Efforts in Journalism 
 — "The Newcastle Chronicle" — "The Manchester 
 Guardian " — " The Bombay Gazette " — Life in 
 India, 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 Resolve to enter Parliament — Contest for the Elgin 
 Burghs in 1880 — Experience of Parliamentary 
 Work in London — The Council of the National 
 Union — Personal Relations with Lord Randolph 
 Churchill — His Quarrel with Lord Salisbury — 
 Letters from Public Men — Lord Randolph 
 Churchill, Mr. W. H. Smith, Sir Bartle Frere — 
 Lord Salisbury, Mr. E. Stanhope — Lord G. 
 Hamilton. 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 Elected for Oldham in 1885 — Impressions of the 
 House of Commons. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 Disagreement with the Trade Unionists of Oldham — 
 Causes of my Defeat in 1892 — Bimetallism in the 
 Country and in Parliament. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Return to Parliament in 1895 as M.P. for Cardiff — 
 The Political Situations There — The House of 
 Commons of 1900. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 The South African War. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Our Policy in China — The Great Siberian 
 Railway — An Overland Railway from Calais 
 to Calcutta. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 India — Lord Curzon — The Land Settlement 
 and Indian Famines — Frontier Policy — 
 
 Afghanistan. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Present Political Situation — How to End 
 the War. 
 
I I • • 
 
 : :• ■ 
 > I < > 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Early Years — School Days — First Efforts in 
 Journalism — "The Newcastle Chronicle" — 
 "The Manchester Guardian" — "The Bombay 
 Gazette" — Life in India. 
 
c r 
 c r 
 
 c e 
 
 c c 
 
3 t i 1 
 
 ^ » > » J 
 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF INDIA AND 
 
 WESTMINSTER. 
 
 L 
 
 I wish to eive in this book a faithful record 
 of my career as a pubHc man in India and in 
 the House of Commons. It would seem to 
 require a bold spirit to attempt an account 
 of life in the House of Commons, which 
 so many facile and accomplished pens are 
 occupied every day in describing. But sketches 
 in Parliament are nearly always the work of 
 outsiders, and, if sometimes they are con- 
 tributed by members, the chief object of 
 their authors appears to be to conceal their 
 identity. I propose, on the other hand, to 
 relate freely and frankly my own personal 
 experiences in the mightiest and most fascinating 
 of all public assemblies, believing, as I do, that 
 

 EARLY DAYS. 
 
 I have some things to tell which may be of 
 general interest, and not feeling daunted by the 
 consideration that a man who sits down to write 
 his reminiscences might as well write his own 
 epitaph. 
 
 Probably I ought to begin by stating what 
 are my qualifications for the task, and giving a 
 short history of the preparation I went through 
 to fit me for the work of becoming an active 
 member and an observant critic of the Imperial 
 Parliament. I frequently see myself spoken of 
 as a retired Anglo-Indian who, having made 
 a little money after a long period of service in 
 the East, suddenly took a plunge into English 
 public life. But as a matter of fact I have only 
 spent twelve out of sixty-five years in India, 
 though I have given close and constant study 
 for very many years to Indian affairs. I had a 
 very good training in England before I went 
 to India. 
 
 My father was a Highland gentleman from 
 the Island of Uist, in the furthest Hebrides. 
 He came of a good stock, one of his cousins 
 being Chief Justice in Canada, where his name 
 is still remembered with honour. The Macleans 
 
THE CLAN MACLEAN. 3 
 
 and Macdonalds were the two chief clans of 
 the Western Highlands. In the eighteenth 
 century, before the era of clearances and 
 emigration began, the Hebrides were much 
 more thickly populated than they are now. 
 They supplied the bulk of the followers of 
 Prince Charlie, and, after the '45, the Highland 
 lairds sent many hundreds of them to enlist in 
 the Royal Army of King George which fought 
 at Minden and Fontenoy, and afterwards, under 
 Wolfe, at Quebec. When the French had 
 been expelled from North America, many of 
 the Macleans who had served In the army 
 obtained grants of land in Canada. They 
 brouo-ht their friends, and the clan flourished 
 so vigorously in their new Canadian home 
 that the present chief of the clan Maclean, 
 Colonel Sir Fitzroy Maclean, Bart., C.B., tells 
 me he might, when he commanded a regiment 
 at Montreal, have been guarded by a battalion 
 of Canadian volunteers entirely composed of 
 Macleans. These men worshipped in a parish 
 church where the minister, the father of Major 
 J. Bayne Maclean, of Montreal, preached a 
 sermon in Gaelic every Sunday. So tenaciously 
 
4 FAMILY TROUBLES. 
 
 do Scotsmen, all over the world, clln^ to 
 
 sentiment and old custom — 
 
 " From the low shieling on the misty island 
 
 Mountains divide us, and a waste of seas ; 
 But still our blood is strongf, our hearts are 
 highland, 
 
 And in our dreams we see the Hebrides." 
 My father and two of his brothers went out 
 while quite young men to Jamaica, and acquired 
 considerable landed estates there. Returning 
 rather late in life, when the coming emancipation 
 of the slaves had already greatly reduced the 
 value of all West Indian property, my father 
 married a lowland lady, and settled down in the 
 parish of Liberton, on the Braid Hills, near 
 Edinburgh, from which Marmion caught his 
 his first view of the Scottish capital. Liberton 
 is also known in literature as the parish of 
 Jeanie Deans. My mother's family name was 
 Baigrie, which, according to an old book on 
 Scottish genealogies, was a corruption of the 
 nickname Beau-gre, given to a young French- 
 man who came to Scotland in the train of the 
 Earl of Errol, when that nobleman returned 
 from exile after the '45. My young brother 
 
CHRIST S HOSPITAL. 5 
 
 and myself were brought up with good expec- 
 tations, which, however, became much less 
 bright before my father's death in 1839, when 
 I was only four years old. My mother, alarmed 
 at the gradual diminution of her income, moved 
 to Newcastle-on-Tyne to be near friends there, 
 and to take a smaller establishment, and, as the 
 railway had not then reached Edinburgh, I 
 remember travelling across the Cheviot Hills 
 in the coach from Dalkeith in the depth of 
 winter. The head of a great banking and 
 mercantile firm, in London, with whom the 
 remnant of our property was deposited, wrote 
 to my mother soon afterwards offering her a 
 presentation to Christ's Hospital for one of her 
 boys, and, as I was the only one young- enough 
 to accept it, the presentation was made out in 
 my name. So, one dark, grey morning my 
 mother consigned me to the care of the guard 
 belonging to the coach that ran to Darlington, 
 then the terminus of the railway, and in 1844 I 
 arrived from the north at Euston Station. 
 
 There was nobody there to meet me, and I sat 
 down disconsolately on my little box, like David 
 Copperfield when he was left alone in life, as I 
 
6 PROGRESS AT SCHOOL. 
 
 often afterwards thought, till a man in livery 
 came up and asked me if I was going to Wimpole 
 Street. I was received there very coldly by the 
 master of the hcuse, a saturnine, miserable 
 looking man, who hardly seemed to look at me, 
 but his widowed daughter in the drawing-room 
 made much of me, and for many years after- 
 wards received me as a welcome guest on all 
 my holidays in London. Being under nine 
 years of age, I was sent first to the preparatory 
 school at Hertford, but only remained there a 
 few months. I had been very well trained in 
 the North, having begun Latin when quite a 
 child at the Circus Place School in Edinburgh, 
 and having afterwards attended for two years 
 the famous grammar school in Newcastle, kept 
 by the well-known antiquary, Dr. Bruce ; and 
 my education was much further advanced than 
 that of most of the Blue-coat boys, who indeed, 
 in many cases, had had hardly any education at 
 all. My first success at the school was when I 
 was chosen to read prayers to the assembled 
 boys in the dining hall. Then I was pushed 
 forward to London before I was ten years old, 
 and, when I was once there, I ran rapidly 
 
SCHOOL DAYS. 7 
 
 through the classes, and attained the coveted 
 distinction of becoming a Grecian, and being 
 kept on for three years, after I was sixteen, to 
 be prepared for the university. 
 
 Christ's Hospital in those days was very 
 different from the school it has since become. 
 The food, though good of its kind, was of 
 Spartan simplicity and very meagre in 
 quantity. Half a small loaf of bread in 
 the morning, with a bowl of milk and water, 
 a slice of meat at one o'clock, and dry bread 
 with poor cheese and quite unpalatable beer for 
 supper in the evening, was all we had to eat. 
 Prisoners were much better fed, and it is pleasant 
 to learn that the boys have now plenty to eat, 
 and a great deal of variety at all their meals. 
 We were often hungry enough, but it is a con- 
 solation to reflect that, although two-thirds of 
 the boys were sons of poor clergymen, they 
 always seemed to be provided with plenty of 
 pocket-money. Holidays were short, and prizes 
 almost unknown, and the school hours were very 
 long. What seemed a superfluous piece of 
 cruelty was that the boys all through the summer 
 time rose early and went to school at seven 
 
8 LIFE AT THE BLUE COAT SCHOOL. 
 
 o'clock for an hour before breakfast. It Is 
 needless to say that the masters were then cross 
 and usually late for duty, and that very little 
 real work was done. 
 
 There were practically no playing grounds 
 except the gravel yard facing Newgate Street; 
 and, while we enjoyed a vigorous game at 
 football, which the present generation would 
 have sneered at as unscientific, we were obliged 
 to go to the Oval on holidays for cricket, 
 or to the Thames at Richmond or Lea Bridge 
 for boating. But we had an excellent plunge 
 bath, and were mostly good swimmers. The 
 great merits of the school were the perfect 
 equality of the boys, and the free and 
 manly spirit which prevailed amongst 
 them. The latter was, in great measure, due 
 to the perfect independence allowed them to 
 roam about London, and to see everything 
 worth seeing in the great capital. We had 
 long holidays twice a week, and knew the parks, 
 the picture galleries, and all the sights of 
 London more thoroughly than most people do. 
 Many was the holiday I spent at the Great 
 Exhibition of 1851, which had an air of poetry 
 
PRESENTED AT COURT. 9 
 
 about it not matched since the creation of 
 Aladdin's palace. Another sight, which has 
 always lingered in my memory, was the funeral 
 of the great Duke of Wellington. The wail of 
 the regimental bands playing the funeral march 
 as they turned the corner of St. James's Street, 
 and the lone lines of streets crowded from the 
 roadway to the attics, powerfully impressed the 
 youthful imagination. 
 
 On another occasion I had the honour, 
 at a very early age, of going to Court. 
 This is a privilege, dating from Charles 
 the Second's time, of the King's boys at 
 Christ's Hospital who are trained to go to 
 sea. One of these boys was ill, and the Head 
 Mathematical Master, with whom I was a 
 favourite, sent me to hold his drawing in his 
 place. We all had new coats and white kid 
 gloves, drove to St. James's in broughams, 
 and passed through great rooms filled with the 
 fashionable company who had come to Court 
 for the first drawing room of the season. We 
 were introduced to the Throne Room first of 
 all — this was the old custom, but it was found 
 inconvenient, and the Queen latterly received 
 
lO SCHOOL TEACHING. 
 
 the boys at Windsor Castle — and we were 
 rano-ed in a semicircle in front of the orreat 
 
 o o 
 
 ladies of the Court who stood round the throne. 
 Ministers and other orreat officers of state stood 
 on either side. Presently the Queen was an- 
 nounced, and she entered with the Prince 
 Consort and children. We fell on one knee, 
 holding out our drawings, and the Queen, then a 
 comely and happy-looking young matron, walked 
 through the room, saying a kindly word or two, 
 as she passed us, to the Prince. I noticed 
 particularly that she shook hands with no one 
 except the Duke of Wellington, then a very 
 old man, whom it had been my great ambition 
 to see. 
 
 The education at the school was excellent. 
 A good many mercantile houses in the City 
 used then to get their clerks at Christ's Hospital 
 — a practice which, it is to be hoped, will be 
 continued when the school is removed to 
 Horsham, though out of sight is often out of 
 mind — and writing, arithmetic, and other 
 branches of a commercial education were taught 
 very carefully. The elder boys had also the 
 advantage of studying under a famous French 
 
THE GRECIANS. I I 
 
 master, the late M. Delille, whose conversation 
 classes, in which he himself played the principal 
 part, were most enjoyable. 
 
 The Grecians lived quite apart from the rest 
 of the boys. Each of them had a ward of fifty 
 boys to look after, but had no more to do with 
 them than a commissioned officer has with the 
 rank and file of a reolment. There were twelve 
 Grecians In the class, four new ones being 
 appointed every year, and four going away to 
 Oxford and Cambridge, where they had scholar- 
 ships of ^ 80 a year for four years given by the 
 school. Each Grecian had a separate study 
 and sleeping room, and they had a common 
 room for the evening, enriched with a capital 
 library bequeathed by an Anglo-Indian named 
 Thackeray, one of the family of the famous 
 novelist. They did not have their meals with the 
 other boys, and were allowed to take breakfast 
 and tea In their own rooms, on the condition 
 well-known in the British army, that a soldier 
 may have extra rations if he likes to pay for 
 them. Luckily an unknown benefactor had 
 left a considerable sum of money to provide, with 
 the interest, pocket money for the Grecians, so 
 
12 HOW HOLIDAYS WERE SPENT. 
 
 that we always had something to go on with, and 
 we were allowed to take pupils whom we coached 
 both in the school itself and in the City, for 
 whom we charged an average fee of eight 
 guineas a year, so that we had perhaps more 
 money to spend than was quite good for us. 
 We had perfect liberty to go out at all times 
 after regular school hours, and occasionally 
 could get leave till 1 1 o'clock at night to go to 
 a theatre. The head master. Dr. Rice, loved 
 the stage, and was well pleased that we should 
 go to the Princess's to see Charles Kean in his 
 revival of Shaksperian plays. I don't know 
 that he would have been quite as well pleased 
 if he had known that some of us went to see 
 Charles Mathews and Miss Oliver in the Game 
 of Speculation. It was a great delight in those 
 days, when stalls were still unknown, to wait 
 patiently for the first rush into the pit, and get 
 seats in the front row next to the orchestra. 
 There was a well-known inn in Newgate 
 Street which we sometimes frequented, the 
 "Salutation," where there was a green room 
 that had been sacred to the Grecians since the 
 days of Coleridge, and at this inn we tasted the 
 
CHANGE OF PROSPECTS. 1 3 
 
 forbidden fruit of billiard playing and skitdes. 
 In fact, we had far more licence than usually 
 falls to the share of young men aged from 1 7 
 to 19. Dr. Rice, however, was very strict 
 about work, and turned out some capital 
 scholars. Out of only three Grecians who went 
 to Cambridge we had the remarkable honour of 
 winning the position of Senior Classic in two 
 successive years. All the Grecians were ex- 
 pected to go in for honours, and as a rule they 
 did so, having gone through at school the whole 
 University course, so that they went up to 
 college better equipped mentally than most men 
 who have taken their degree. 
 
 So time passed pleasantly enough, and I 
 had already been entered at Trinity, Cam- 
 bridge, when circumstances made it necessary 
 for me to give up a university career 
 and to look about for the means of earning 
 an immediate livelihood. I cannot say that 
 this grieved me very much. I had always 
 been of an adventurous disposition, and 
 had great confidence in myself. I remember 
 Dr. Rice once said to me, with regard to some 
 boyish escapade, " You are the sort of fellow 
 
14 FIRST ATTEMPTS IN JOURNALISM. 
 
 who would get on very well in the colonies. If 
 I were you that is the sort of life I should 
 choose. What is the good of going to the 
 University, and becoming a schoolmaster, and 
 coming back here to teach for the rest of your 
 days ? " This was said in bitter irony, but I 
 fancy the Doctor was also thinking somewhat 
 sorrowfully of his own life, which had been 
 spent in this fashion. Anyhow, I took my plunge 
 into the world with a light heart. The Doctor 
 wrote of me that I was " a grood classical scholar 
 and had considerable facility in English com- 
 position, and more general knowledge and a 
 greater extent of modern reading than young 
 men of his age can in general pretend to." The 
 Head Mathematical Master bade me good-bye 
 with tears in his eyes, and said that I had 
 " gone through a comprehensive course of 
 mathematics beyond most of my years." Armed 
 with these testimonials I felt I could, like 
 Vivian Grey and Ancient Pistol, treat the world 
 as " mine oyster." 
 
 I had already written a few trifles for the 
 Leader, at that time a remarkably independent 
 London paper, and the very clever editor of the 
 
''NEWCASTLE CHRONICLE." 1 5 
 
 Leader, Mr. £. M. Whitty, advised me to take 
 up the career of a journalist. I learned short- 
 hand, which fortunately I never had occasion 
 to use, and soon obtained an appointment in 
 the office of the Newcastle Chronicle, a news- 
 paper with whose proprietor my family were 
 acquainted, and a year afterwards, before I was 
 twenty, I was promoted to the position of editor 
 of that paper, which I held for three years. 
 From that date till now, a period extending 
 over 45 years, I have never ceased to play a 
 more or less prominent part in the public life of 
 the Empire. At Newcastle I counted among 
 my intimate friends Mr. W. Bell Scott, the Pre- 
 Raphaelite painter and poet. Dr. Thomas Hayle, 
 and Mr. Joseph Cowen. At the latter s table I 
 met all the chief democratic conspirators of 
 Europe, whom Mr. Cowen at that time financed, 
 such as Mazzini, Kossuth, and Garibaldi, and I 
 'had the perhaps questionable honour of shaking 
 hands with Orsini, who was at that time 
 collecting funds for some mysterious enterprise 
 which was to set free the Continent, and which 
 turned out to be the assassination of Napoleon 
 III. When I left Newcasde in 1858 I had a 
 
l6 "MANCHESTER GUARDIAN. 
 
 n 
 
 great dinner given me at which Mr. Cowen 
 took the chair. 
 
 From Newcastle I went to Manchester 
 for two years as a member of the editorial 
 staff of the Manchester Guardian. The repeal 
 of the ''taxes on knowledge" had just made 
 possible an immense development of English 
 journalism, and Mr. J. E. Taylor, with a fore- 
 sight which has since been most richly 
 rewarded, bought out all his old partners in 
 the Gtiardian, who dreaded making any change 
 in their high-priced steady-going old property, 
 and converted it into a penny daily paper. 
 
 At the end of 1859, when I had had five 
 years' steady work as an English journalist and 
 had written largely on both political and commer- 
 cial affairs, I went out to India to take up the 
 editorship of the Bombay Gazette. This position 
 had been offered to me through Mr. Alexander 
 Russel, of the Scotsman, one of the wittiest and 
 most kind-hearted of men, who had previously 
 recommended me to the proprietors of the 
 Manchester Gttardian. I had known nothing 
 of Mr. Russel originally, but he wrote to me of 
 his own accord saying he had observed my 
 
MR. ALEXANDER RUSSEL. 1 7 
 
 articles, and asking if I would care to go to a 
 new daily paper at Manchester. From that 
 time we became firm friends, and many was the 
 pleasant holiday I spent at his hospitable house 
 in Ramsay Gardens, Edinburgh, near the Castle 
 Gate, where the fishermen from '' The Nest," 
 on the Tweed, met on many jovial evenings. 
 What I learnt chiefly at Manchester was to 
 write intelligently on business matters, and 
 to become a firm disciple of the gospel of 
 Free Trade. Mr. Russel suggested to me 
 that by going to India I might take up imperial 
 questions, and so " lay down a double line of 
 rails." It is difficult, however, to imagine a 
 position more forlorn than that of an Indian 
 journalist in those days, when there was no 
 telegraph to Bombay and only a mail from 
 England once a fortnight. Newspaper offices 
 were badly organised and not too well provided 
 with the means of undertaking new enter- 
 prises. Indian questions were unfamiliar 
 and distasteful, and an editor too often found 
 himself in the luckless state of being obliged 
 to make bricks without straw. I soon found 
 my employment so intolerable that I threw it 
 
1 8 *' BOMBAY SATURDAY REVIEW." 
 
 up, with the intention of returning to England. 
 I had, however, made a good many friends, 
 who persuaded me to try my fortune once again 
 in India. 
 
 With their help I founded a weekly critical 
 paper which I called the Bombay Saturday 
 Review. In form it was closely modelled on its 
 famous London prototype, but it gave much 
 more prominence to commercial affairs, and in 
 this respect was modelled upon the Economist. 
 No venture of the kind had previously been 
 started in India, and the new paper attracted 
 much attention, and soon acquired considerable 
 circulation and influence. 
 
 There happened at that time to be in Bombay, 
 in connection with the founding of the new 
 university, a band of highly intellectual and 
 literary men, fresh from the English univer- 
 sities, where they had been selected among the 
 most promising young men of the day. These 
 men, including Sir Alexander Grant (himself 
 an old Saturday Reviewer), Mr. E. J. Howard, 
 Professor Hughlings, and Prof. Wordsworth, 
 rallied round me and wrote regularly for my 
 paper, and I also had the invaluable assistance 
 
MR. CHISHOLM ANSTEY. 1 9 
 
 of such men as Sir George Birdwood and Sir 
 Raymond West (of the Civil Service), while 
 the Governor himself, Sir Bartle Frere, did not 
 disdain to send me some occasional notes. I 
 also had the occasional aid of that miracle of 
 quaint learning and rhetorical vehemence and 
 prolixity, the late Mr. Chisholm Anstey, who, 
 after a meteoric career in the English House 
 of Commons, passed the evening of his days as 
 a practising barrister in Bombay. 
 
 Mr. Anstey had distinguished himself in the 
 House of Commons by his attacks on the 
 policy of Lord Palmerston, and everyone, there- 
 fore, was surprised when in the Pacifico Debate 
 he rose and made a speech in which he 
 defended the action of the Foreign Secretary. 
 A few days afterwards, he told me, he received 
 a card of invitation to one of Lady Palmerston's 
 receptions at Cambridge House. Anstey con- 
 sulted his old associate, David Urquhart, as to 
 what he should do, but Urquhart denounced 
 him as a renegade and told him he must take 
 his own course. Anstey finally tore up the 
 card. He went, however, the next week to a 
 reception given by Lady Campbell, whose 
 
20 MR. CHISHOLM ANSTEY. 
 
 husband was then Lord Chancellor, and 
 his hostess took him across the room to 
 introduce him to a lady, who, she said, par- 
 ticularly wished to make his acquaintance. 
 This, of course, was Lady Palmerston, who 
 made room for him to sit beside her on a couch, 
 and remarked to him, " Now, Mr. Anstey, I see 
 you go to the houses of the wives of other 
 Cabinet Ministers, and I insist that you shall 
 come to mine." In a day or two he received 
 another card, and this time the invitation was 
 not resisted. Anstey went, and was conquered. 
 Lady Palmerston, when he was announced, took 
 his arm and marched him up and down the 
 room ; and then, said Anstey, with a touch of 
 grim humour, " my independence was gone for 
 ever." It was not long before he accepted 
 an appointment under the Crown as Attorney 
 General at Hong Kong, where he at once got into 
 hot water. It was said that Palmerston, on beine 
 asked why he had sent Anstey to Hong Kong, 
 cruelly replied, " Well, if you could have told 
 me of any other place a little further from 
 London, I should have been happy to send 
 him there." 
 
MR. R. B. BARTON. 2 1 
 
 Anstey's intractable temper left him almost 
 without friends in Bombay. His gaunt, meagre 
 figure, crowned with a stubble of stiff white hair, 
 was not made more attractive by a pair of green 
 goggles w^hich he always wore. This suggested 
 an amusing onslaught upon him by a witty Irish 
 barrister, who w^as the exact autotype of Anstey, 
 a jovial, amusing companion, named R. B. 
 Barton, who sang a capital song and told a 
 good story, and who had a very good 
 practice at the Criminal Bar. He and Anstey 
 were opposed to one another in a conspiracy 
 case. Barton had no defence for his client, a 
 little, round, fat man, so he ingeniously quoted 
 the words Shakspeare puts into the mouth of 
 Caesar as to the harmlessness of men who are 
 fat, and such as sleep of nights ; and then, 
 pointing a forefinger at Anstey, who sat, fuming 
 with rage and scorn, he exclaimed, " Yond' 
 Cassius hath a lean and hungry look. I wonder, 
 gentlemen of the jury, did Cassius ever wear a 
 barrister's gown and a pair of green spectacles?" 
 Risu solvtiutur tabulce. The court was dissolved 
 in laughter, and the defendant was triumphantly 
 acquitted. Barton finally got a public appoint- 
 
22 THE INDIAN UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 ment, and closed his career In Bombay as a 
 very capable and popular Chief Magistrate. 
 
 Captain E. W. West, a member of the Political 
 Department, whose promise of future distinction 
 was cut short by a premature death, was also 
 one of my most regular contributors. Mr. and 
 Mrs. Lockwood Kipling, the parents of Mr. 
 Rudyard Kipling, who were then residents in 
 Bombay, gave me frequent help. I had thus 
 surrounded myself with colleagues who could 
 really turn out first-rate work. 
 
 The Oxford men belonged to the new school 
 which succeeded the pious era of Newman and 
 Gladstone ; they had not much faith in anything 
 except intellectual freedom, and they took the 
 keenest enjoyment in starting a university in 
 which the youth of India could have a 
 thoroughly godless education, and learn to value 
 the principles of civil and religious liberty. I 
 remember that Sir A. Grant sent me an essay 
 by one of his best graduates, who recalled the 
 days of the great Sivaji and Mahratta supremacy, 
 and, in a spirit of patriotic fervour, asked if India, 
 with her splendid memories, was alwaysto bekept 
 in subjection by a little island 6,000 miles away 
 
SOCIAL LIFE IN BOMBAY. 23 
 
 in the Northern Seas ; and Sir Alexander asked 
 me if this was not an essay worthy of Milton in 
 his youthful prime. The Government of India 
 now, when it is much too late, deplores the 
 licence of its universities, and would fain tame 
 and tutor the rising generation to its will ; but 
 it is only reaping what it sowed. 
 
 Many a pleasant evening we spent in those 
 days at the Byculla Club in symposia which w^ere 
 not unworthy to be classed with the " Noctes 
 Ambrosianse" of Christopher North; and here let 
 me pay a passing tribute to the delightful society 
 which flourished in India forty or fifty years 
 ago. The Anglo-Indians of Bombay then 
 formed a community of a democratic kind such 
 as could not be found elsewhere. It com- 
 prised no old men or children, and comparatively 
 few women. There were no millionaires or 
 paupers. All menial offices were discharged 
 by the native population. Every Englishman 
 was comfortably off, had been well educated, 
 and belonged either to the civil or military 
 service of the crown, or to the mercantile or 
 professional classes. 
 
 Everybody, therefore, lived on a footing of 
 
24 THE MERCHANTS OF FIFTY YEARS SINCE. 
 
 perfect equality ; Intercourse was easy and 
 pleasant, and there was none of the appalling 
 snobbishness towards good society and people 
 In high places which Is the curse of London life, 
 and which has been stimulated to a height never 
 dreamt of even by Thackeray by the eager 
 competition of American and Colonial capitalists 
 anxious to make their way to the front. I 
 suppose that for a parallel to such a community 
 as then existed In Bombay It would be 
 necessary to go back to the old Greek 
 Republics. Conversation was very frank 
 and outspoken, and criticism very prolific 
 and enlightened, for the Government had not 
 then thought It necessary, as they now have, to 
 close the safety valve by formally prohibiting 
 public servants, on pain of dismissal, from 
 making any observations on the conduct of their 
 superiors In office. 
 
 There were great merchants In those days 
 who lived for many years In Bombay, kept 
 great houses on Malabar Hill, and entertained 
 in good style. Their place has now been 
 taken by clerks who are mere agents for firms 
 at home, or for the German or Greek houses 
 
THE NATIVES OF INDIA. 25 
 
 which everywhere do so much business under 
 the British flag. Nothing surprised me so 
 much, when I went back to India on a visit 
 three years ago, than to find that the Europeans 
 in Bombay had taken a back seat. All the best 
 houses in the island w^ere occupied by wealthy 
 natives, and Englishmen seemed to possess 
 nothing except the fringe of ground adjoining 
 the harbour on wdiich the Yacht Club is built. 
 In my time the Englishman walked about 
 Bombay as if he realised Goldsmith's descrip- 
 tion : — 
 
 " Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, 
 I see the lords of humankind pass by." 
 The natives then occupied a distinctly inferior 
 position, and they did not seem to resent it. 
 Most of them had made money through English 
 agency, and they looked up to the heads of the 
 great firms, like Michael Scott, John Fleming, 
 and Donald Graham, w^ith pride and affection. 
 They loved to give great entertainments in 
 honour of their English friends, and never 
 forgot them when the Englishmen came home. 
 The feelings of good will between Englishmen 
 and natives were much stronger and more last- 
 
26 THE NATIVES OF INDIA. 
 
 ing then than they are now, when there Is 
 much less of the feeling of fellowship between 
 the two races. 
 
 My personal relations with leading natives 
 were always of a pleasant character, and I made 
 many friends among them, who, when I went 
 to India in 1899, after nearly twenty years' 
 absence, crowded round me, and gave me a 
 cordial welcome. But I always opposed the 
 political views of the ambitious young natives 
 who dreamed of self-government for India, and 
 so aroused the lasting resentment of the 
 Maratha Brahmins of Poona. The Parsees of 
 Bombay, however, have cherished a warm 
 feeling of gratitude towards me since I took up 
 their cause against a mob that had wrecked 
 their fire temples in 1874. 
 
 A good many of the Europeans lived In 
 houses of their own, but many of them stayed 
 at the Clubs, which were always a main source 
 of attraction In the evening In a city which, as 
 a rule, was destitute of theatrical performances. 
 When we became more wealthy, we tried the 
 experiment of importing an opera company from 
 Italy, but it did not succeed. When I first 
 
SIR JAMES OUTRAM. 2/ 
 
 went out, soon after the Mutiny, the miHtary 
 element was much stronger than it afterwards 
 became. There were twenty or more com- 
 missioned officers to every regiment, and their 
 mess tents were the scene of much hospitahty. 
 They had the pleasant custom of inviting resi- 
 dents in Bombay to become honorary members 
 of the mess, and on guest nights it was not 
 unusual for forty or fifty men to sit down to 
 dinner. I thus extended my acquaintance very 
 largely, and became known to many of the men 
 who afterwards made their mark. 
 
 When I first went out I struck up a friend- 
 ship on board ship with a fellows-traveller, 
 Dr. Ogilvie, who was Sir James Outram's 
 literary right hand. He introduced me to 
 Sir James, who talked to me very freely, 
 and showed me all the minutes he had 
 written against the scheme then on foot 
 for transferring the local European regiments 
 to the Crown. This scheme was a favourite 
 one with the Prince Consort, who hated the 
 idea of having an army in India which was not 
 directly subject to the authority of the Crown, 
 and it found great favour after the white 
 
28 LORD NAPIER. 
 
 mutiny of the East India Company's European 
 regiments, which had planned marching on Delhi 
 and seizing the great arsenal at Ferozipore, 
 because the Government would not pay them 
 a bonus on re-enlistment when the Company, 
 with whom their contract was, came to an end 
 in 1859. The Government gave way, and the 
 matter was hushed up ; but Sir James Outram 
 strongly urged that the system of sending out 
 annual reinforcements of regular army battalions 
 for a few years' service in India would never 
 work, and that you must have seasoned soldiers 
 for such duties, and recent experience of the 
 complete breakdown of the short service system 
 in India under the strain of even a small war 
 has shown that he was right. 
 
 I also made the acquaintance at that time of 
 another famous general. Lord Napier, who after- 
 wards became Commander-in-Chief in Bombay, 
 and finally for all India. He used to lay much 
 stress to me on the fatal consequences of the 
 system now in favour, by which public servants, 
 both civil and military, are always running home 
 on short leave to England. '' Why," he 
 said, " I served forty years in India before 
 
SIR HUGH ROSE. 29 
 
 I went home." He was strongly pre- 
 judiced, too, in favour of the old patronage 
 system. The East India Directors, who enjoyed 
 the patronage, were obliged, he said, for the 
 sake of their own reputation, to pick out 
 the most promising men they knew for India, 
 and all the men who made a name durino- the 
 Mutiny had entered the Service in this way. 
 The hero of that time in Bombay was Sir 
 Hueh Rose, a man of iron will and immense 
 energy, whose brilliant Central Indian Campaign 
 had eclipsed the reputation of Lord Clyde. 
 Sir Hugh looked more like a weary man of the 
 world than a young lady's hero. His small 
 army could not encumber itself with prisoners, 
 and it was said that when men were taken in 
 arms, the General used to give the order, "Take 
 these men to the rear and shoot them." But the 
 soldiers generally disarmed them and let them 
 go. Another distinguished man I knew was 
 Colonel Baird Smith, to whom, after John 
 Nicholson, we may ascribe the capture of Delhi. 
 He had just written for the Government of India 
 an invaluable State paper on the results of the 
 Famine in the North-west, and he made me a 
 
30 AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 
 
 convert, once and for all, to his theory that the 
 way to salvation for the Indian ryot lay in a 
 permanent settlement of the land revenue. 
 
 We had, therefore, plenty of grave political 
 questions to occupy our thoughts. But events 
 now hurried onward at a prodigious pace, and 
 a sudden revolution took place in the fortunes 
 of Bombay. 
 
 The American Civil War had just begun. 
 The unprecedented demand which then arose 
 for Indian cotton breathed new life into Bombay. 
 Wealth beyond the dreams of avarice poured 
 into the town ; splendid buildings sprang up on 
 all sides during the four years the war lasted ; 
 there was no speculation which the mercantile 
 community was not ready to undertake ; 
 everyone became suddenly a millionaire ; and 
 existence followed as fast and furious a course 
 as in Califonia or Melbourne during the height 
 of the gold fever. 
 
 One of the first fruits of this rush for wealth 
 was the starting of scores of schemes for the 
 acquisition of land and the building of great 
 public works and docks. Sir Bartle Frere had 
 given an impetus to such schemes by throwing 
 
SPECULATION IN BOMBAY. 3 1 
 
 down the fortifications of Bombay and opening 
 out an Immense area of new building land, and 
 his desire to create a new Bombay blinded him 
 to the possible dangers of such a policy. The 
 principal scheme concerned the reclamation of 
 Back Bay, a false harbour on the western shore 
 of the island. The whole community, European 
 and native, went perfectly mad over the 
 concessions granted by the Government for 
 levelling and filling up Back Bay, and speculation 
 rose to such an unheard of height that shares 
 were actually sold at a profit of ^^2,500 before 
 a load of gravel had been emptied into the bay. 
 I made a considerable name for myself, and 
 offended nearly all my personal friends, by 
 denouncing this reclamation scheme as iniquitous, 
 but the game went merrily on. The whole 
 community was debauched, and the Governor, 
 alarmed too late, warned members of the civil 
 service to have nothing to do with It ; but, as 
 one hicrh civilian said to me, " I have made 
 more money out of these shares than I have 
 saved during all my service in India, and I 
 don't mean to give It up." All went well till 
 suddenly, one day, Lee surrendered with his 
 
32 PURCHASE OF THE " BOxMBAY GAZETTE." 
 
 whole army at Appomattox, and the American 
 Civil War was at an end. Indian cotton fell at 
 once from 24d. to 6d. a pound, and the whole 
 fabric of speculation collapsed. Men who had 
 been reputed millionaires, and to whom services 
 of gold plate had been presented for their public 
 services, were left penniless, the Bombay Bank 
 fell with a crash, a dozen other banks followed 
 suit, one firm after another went into liquidation, 
 and so widespread was the ruin that the 
 Government passed a special Act to relieve 
 insolvents, and the lawyers swept up the debris. 
 So far as I was personally concerned my 
 business prospered largely with the growth of 
 the town, and I was thus enabled in 1864 to 
 put down ;/^ 1 5,000 for the purchase of the daily 
 paper, the Bombay Gazette, of which I re- 
 mained the proprietor till 1880, when I finally 
 left India. Thus at the age of thirty I had 
 become my own master, with a fair income and 
 a good position, and I had now acquired what 
 Gibbon calls " the first of earthly blessings, 
 independence." 
 
 I had by this time learnt to feel myself quite 
 at home in Bombay society, and had become 
 
SIR BARTLE FRERE ^^ 
 
 one of the most active members of the com- 
 munity. I ahvays regard it as one of the most 
 fortunate circumstances of my career that I had 
 the honour to be reckoned among the intimate 
 friends of Sir Bartle Frere, who from 1862 to 
 1867 held the office of Governor of Bombay. 
 The singular simplicity and modesty of his 
 character made him one of the most lovable of 
 men, and at the same time he was most broad- 
 minded and courageous in the views he took of 
 political affairs, and had shaken himself entirely 
 free from that spirit of monopoly which is 
 the chief defect of the Indian Civil Service. 
 There were no free institutions in Bombay — 
 neither a Parliament nor a municipality ; 
 and the Government was a despotism, tem- 
 pered only by the criticism of the news- 
 papers. Sir Bartle Frere recognised the 
 fact that Bombay possessed a considerable 
 body of independent citizens — adventurers they 
 were called in the old days, — barristers, solici- 
 tors, engineers, professors, merchants, and 
 others, who had nothing to do with the adminis- 
 tration of the town whose prosperity they 
 created. He therefore enlarged the Bench of 
 
34 MUNICIPAL REVOLUTION IN BOMBAY. 
 
 Justices, which had a general supervision of 
 local affairs, adding to it a considerable number 
 of English and native gentlemen, and the con- 
 sequence was an immediate outburst of public 
 spirit which led to great changes and in- 
 augurated a system of local self-government 
 in India. 
 
 The Justices found fault with the expense 
 and inefficiency of the autocratic govern- 
 ment of the city, and after a debate which 
 lasted over two weeks I carried a resolution 
 censuring the Municipal Commissioner or Pre- 
 fect of Bombay and calling upon the Govern- 
 ment to orrant to the citizens the riorht to manag^e 
 their own affairs. As soon as this vote had 
 been carried the Commissioner hurriedly left 
 Bombay, and the Governor sent for me and 
 asked my advice as to what ought to be done. 
 I put forward a plan, which was afterwards 
 adopted, for dividing the town into wards and 
 entrusting the Qfovernment to an elected muni- 
 cipality. In this municipality, which, with 
 whatever drawbacks, has always done its work 
 well, I subsequently became Chairman of the 
 Town Council, and in this capacity I acted as 
 
(( ^^^_.^_ ^^ ^^,»^.,. " 
 
 THE GUIDE TO BOMBAY. 35 
 
 secretary of the Reception Committee when 
 the Prince of Wales visited Bombay, and wrote 
 the address presented to him when he landed 
 and the farewell address he received before 
 leaving India. 
 
 It was on the occasion of the Prince's visit 
 that I brought out my Guide to Bombay, a 
 historical and descriptive handbook for all 
 Western India, from the time of the English 
 Conquest to the present day. This book, 
 which the Prince assured me he had read with 
 interest, had a remarkable success, and has 
 been continued as an annual ever since. One 
 London paper said of it : "There is not, there 
 never has been, and there never can be, a 
 better book of its kind than Macleans Gttide to 
 Bombay,'' and only this year I have had the 
 pleasure of reading a glowing eulogy of the 
 book in the Daily News, which described the 
 Guide as ''an admirable little work, still in its 
 kind unsurpassed." 
 
 I have recalled these things, not in an idly 
 pretentious or egotistical spirit, but to show that 
 from early manhood I always was a man of busi- 
 ness, and took a leading part in the discussion 
 
36 PUBLIC SPIRIT IN BOMBAY. 
 
 and administration of public affairs in every com- 
 munity with which I was associated. It will be 
 acknowledged by all residents In Western India 
 that I organised In Bombay a public opinion 
 such as existed nowhere else in India, and to 
 which the Government itself was compelled to 
 bow. This work was greatly facilitated by the 
 existence in Bombay of a large commercial and 
 professional class of non-official Europeans, and 
 by the great variety and the progressive spirit of 
 the native races inhabiting the town, who showed 
 an independence to which the majority of their 
 countrymen are strangers. On one occasion 
 we succeded In holding a public meeting of 
 Europeans and natives, some 5,000 strong, to 
 protest against the action of the Government 
 In levying an Income tax from which Indian 
 civil servants were exempted. A petition to 
 Parliament which I had drawn up was unani- 
 mously adopted and ordered to be sent to Mr. 
 Fawcett for presentation to the House of Com- 
 mons, and the obnoxious law was soon after- 
 wards repealed. This is the only Instance of 
 which I am aware of public opinion In India 
 overcoming the authority of the Government. 
 
THE ASIATIC SOCIETY S LIBRARY. 2)1 
 
 As I have said above, other influences were 
 at work to cause me not to give attention exclu- 
 sively to matters connected only with Bombay, 
 but to turn my mind to the study of Imperial 
 affairs. Sir Bartle Frere was never happier 
 than when he could talk to me for an hour in 
 his library on the differences between himself 
 and Lord Lawrence, and pull down books and 
 maps to illustrate his frontier policy. I never 
 saw him excited but once, and that was when 
 I brought him some news about Egypt. He 
 rose from his chair and paced excitedly up 
 and down the room, exclaiming, " Ah ! the 
 Nile, the Nile. If we only had the Nile, we 
 should be the masters of the world." I also had 
 the advantacre of seeinor and conversinor with 
 most of the leadino- Ano-lo-Indian statesmen 
 and generals who passed through Bombay, 
 and who were glad to cultivate the press in 
 the absence of the free institutions which 
 exist in most other civilised countries. But, 
 above all, I was indebted to one of the 
 best libraries in the world, that of the 
 Royal Asiatic Society of Bombay, of which 
 I had the free range. The ten years of a 
 
^8 THE GAEKWAR OF BARODA. 
 
 O 
 
 man's life from twenty to thirty are those which 
 he can most profitably devote to study ; and in 
 India the absence of all the amusements which 
 take up so much time in England give one 
 ample leisure for reading. I simply devoured 
 every book I could lay hands upon ; and, from 
 knowing nothing about Indian topics, I be- 
 came quite familiar, for instance, with such a 
 problem as the land settlement of India, which 
 the great Anglo- Indians of forty years since 
 wished to make general and perpetual, but 
 which their puny successors have let slip out of 
 remembrance. My apprenticeship to public life 
 covered, therefore, a very wide area. 
 
 I have already referred to the visit of the 
 Prince of Wales, which indirectly had the effect 
 of greatly stimulating the circulation of Indian 
 newspapers. Up to that time the number of 
 copies sold by any of the daily papers was sur- 
 prisingly small, though luckily the price was 
 large and the advertisements were good, but 
 from that date the native, as well as the 
 European, public began to take a lively interest 
 in public affairs. Another event which greatly 
 increased the number of newspaper readers 
 
ACTION FOR LIBEL. 39 
 
 was the deposition of the Gaekwar of Baroda 
 on the charge of attempting to poison Colonel 
 Phayre, and the State trial which took place at 
 Baroda. The attempt on Colonel Phayre's 
 life was first brought to light by the Bombay 
 Gazette, and it created a prodigious sensation. 
 The Government of India appointed a mixed 
 commission of Europeans and natives to try 
 the case, and Serjeant Ballantine came out 
 specially to Bombay to defend the Maharaja 
 Mulharrao, " that unhappy prince," as the Ser- 
 jeant persisted in calling him. It was understood 
 that Serjeant Ballantine received a fee of ^10,000 
 for the defence, which was not very ably con- 
 ducted, and he promptly lost the whole of the 
 money at Monte Carlo on his way home. The 
 native judges hesitated to find the prisoners 
 guilty, and the Government of India was forced 
 to set them aside and to take the matter into its 
 own hands. 
 
 A curious incident happened to myself in 
 connection with the case. The native judges 
 had come down to Bombay to settle what 
 their verdict should be, and one morning Sir 
 Frank Souter, the Commissioner of Police, 
 
40 LORD CROMER. 
 
 called at my house, and told me his detectives 
 had found the native advocates for the defence 
 were communicating secretly with the judges. I 
 published this statement on my own authority, 
 and was at once threatened with an action for 
 libel. Then I received another visit from Sir 
 Frank Souter, who entreated me not to publish 
 his name, as that would ruin him. The only 
 evidence I possessed was thus withdrawn from 
 me, and I had no option left me but to 
 apologize and withdraw the charge. My life 
 has been one of perpetual controversy, but this 
 is the only occasion on which I have ever found 
 It necessary to make an apology, and this w^as 
 done in the Interest of the public service. The 
 revelation I made was not without effect in 
 determinino- the decision of the Government of 
 India. The Viceroy of that day was Lord 
 Northbrook, who did not pass for a strong man 
 himself, but who had the advanta^re of beinof 
 guided by a most capable Private vSecretary, the 
 present Lord Cromer, the natural force of whose 
 political genius first found free play In India. 
 It is extraordinary what a deep impression the 
 character of Lord Cromer, then Captain Evelyn 
 
OPENING OF THE SUEZ CANAL. 4 1 
 
 Baring, made on every one who approached 
 him, and how convinced all his friends and 
 admirers in India were that he was destined to 
 future greatness. 
 
 Another historical event of supreme inter- 
 national importance which recurred while I 
 had control of the Bombay Gazette was the 
 opening of the Suez Canal. This took place 
 while I was in England, and I went to Egypt 
 as one of the Khedive's guests to represent both 
 my own paper and the Manchester Guardian. 
 Mr. Russel, who represented the Scotsman^ 
 shared a cabin with me, and it delighted him to 
 introduce me to our fellow-voyagers as one who 
 did "bestride the narrow world like a Colossus," 
 and had one foot in the old and one in the new 
 world. I had been over the Canal works some 
 months previously, having stayed a week in Egypt 
 on my way home for the purpose. I went by boat 
 alone the Freshwater Canal from Suez to 
 Ismailia along w^ith Consul West, of Suez, an 
 enthusiastic canaliste^ and rode across the 
 desert to see the 7^eversoir, where the blue 
 waters of the Mediterranean were pouring in to 
 fill up the basin of the Bitter Lakes. This was 
 
42 ISMAIL S FESTIVITIES IN EGYPT. 
 
 a truly inspiring- sight, and struck one as 
 far more suggestive than the completed 
 canal itself, which is singularly tame and 
 uninteresting. 
 
 The work done by the Canal is chiefly visible 
 in the growing activity of its two termini, Suez 
 and Port Said. Ismailia, too, has sprung into a 
 place of some importance, and the Freshwater 
 Canal is changing a large part of the desert 
 between that place and Suez into cultivated 
 ground. The festivities organised by Ismail 
 Pasha in honour of the opening of the Canal 
 were planned and carried out on a most magni- 
 ficent scale. Cairo was at that time still the city 
 of the Arabian Nights, and it was the pleasure 
 of Ismail to conduct his revels in the style of 
 one of the old Arabian Caliphs. A multitude 
 of guests, ladies and gentlemen, had been 
 brought out at his expense to Egypt, and repre- 
 sentatives of all the crowned heads of Europe 
 were present. There was the beauteous Empress 
 Eugenie, of France, already tortured, as we 
 know from her letters, by secret anxiety about 
 the prospects of the Napoleon dynasty, but 
 looking quite happy as she passed round the 
 
ISMAIL S CHARACTER. 43 
 
 ballroom at Ismallla, on the arm of the Crown 
 Prince of Prussia, afterwards the ill-fated 
 Emperor Frederick, who was to take a leading 
 part, only a year afterwards, in the great war 
 between France and Germany. This was the 
 last friendly meeting of these two illustrious 
 personages, for both of whom fate reserved so 
 sad a destiny. The Khedive impressed all 
 the resources of his kingdom to entertain 
 his guests, who lodged, ate, and drank, drove 
 about, and went up the Nile, at his expense, 
 and many of whom took everything as a 
 matter of course, never gave a thought to 
 the poor people, and even grudged in many 
 cases giving a silver coin or two to the Egyptians, 
 whose personal services and fortunes had been 
 commandeered for the occasion. The fellaheen 
 must, I should say, be still paying interest on 
 the millions the opening of the Canal cost 
 Ismail. 
 
 But this Prince was a most masterful 
 ruler, and his motto seemed to be, ''after 
 me, the deluge." During his reign Egypt 
 became the happy hunting ground of all the 
 speculators of Europe and America, and the 
 
44 ENGLISHMEN AND THE CANAL. 
 
 profusion and corruption which went on in 
 Egypt drew to the great cities a host of 
 adventurers, male and female, from all the States 
 of Europe and the Levant. Crime was rampant 
 among these people, and the surroundings in 
 which they lived were unutterably vile. English 
 rule has at least made Egypt more wholesome. 
 Ismail, It used to be said, had a way of his own 
 for getting rid occasionally of the profligacy of 
 Alexandria. He w^ould make a clean sweep of 
 a few hundreds of the low Greeks who lived 
 there, put them on board ship, and send them to 
 sea, with orders to the crew to bore holes in 
 the bottom of the ship and then make their 
 escape. 
 
 I went to the opening of the Canal from 
 Alexandria in an Egyptian steamer, which 
 stuck fast on a sand bank after leaving Ismailia. 
 Sir John Pender, whose yacht, the Hawk, im- 
 mediately followed the French Empress's vessel, 
 which led the procession, seeing our plight, sent 
 back a boat, and invited a number of us whom 
 he knew to go on board the Hawk. This we 
 gladly did, and so had the pleasure of being pre- 
 sent at the great dinner Sir John gave in the 
 
FAREWELL TO BOMBAY. 45 
 
 evening to a large number of the most distln- 
 o^uished gruests. 
 
 What seemed to me the most remarkable 
 feature of the speeches at this banquet was 
 the calm way in which most of the Englishmen 
 present, who had actually passed through the 
 Canal, were sull quite sure that it could not be 
 freely used by large ships and would never pay. 
 Sir John Pender, with true commercial fore- 
 sight, astonished them by saying, " Gentlemen, 
 in ten years' time two thirds of the Eastern 
 trade will pass through this Canal." English- 
 men generally had the most obstinate prejudice 
 against this great work. The Directors of the 
 P. and O. Company scoffed at the Canal, and 
 clung to their old-fashioned boats till the Com- 
 pany was nearly ruined. It was then that 
 Mr. Thomas Sutherland, at that time the 
 Company's agent at Hong Kong, found his 
 opportunity. He sent home a memorandum 
 showing the necessity of re-constituting the 
 fleet, and building vessels to use the Canal. 
 The Directors had the sense to take his advice, 
 and called him home to take a seat on the 
 Board. He quickly restored the fortunes of 
 
46 DINNER AT THE BYCULLA CLUB. 
 
 the Company, became its chairman, and so 
 gained his present commanding position in the 
 world of commerce. 
 
 I have now recalled most of the leading 
 incidents connected with my life in India. Busy 
 as I had always been I pined, as most English- 
 men in India do, for the broader and freer 
 public life of England, and longed to measure 
 myself against more formidable foes than I had 
 encountered in the East. A crood chance was 
 offered me of selling the Gazette at a fair price, 
 and I resolved to take advantage of it. My 
 numerous friends in Bombay gave me a fare- 
 well dinner at the Byculla Club, at which about 
 150 gentlemen, including all the leading mem- 
 bers of the English community, both civil and 
 military, were present. I highly appreciated 
 this compliment, as the distinction of being 
 invited to a public dinner at the Byculla Club 
 had never, up to that time, been conferred on any 
 non-official Anglo-Indian. Sir Lyttleton Bayley, 
 late Chief Justice of Bombay, was in the chair, 
 and the Governor, Sir Richard Temple, made a 
 long speech in my honour. An amusing incident 
 occurred in connection with this speech. Sir 
 
SIR RICHARD TEMPLE. 47 
 
 Richard described my disposition in the famous 
 words of Milton's Satan — 
 
 " What though the field be lost ? 
 All is not lost — the unconquerable will, 
 The courage never to submit or yield." 
 Talkinor with Sir Richard after the dinner 
 I asked him, laughingly, why he had omitted 
 the line — 
 
 '' Immortal hate, the study of revenge." 
 This quite put him out, and he said to one of 
 his staff (Dr. Waters), who had supplied him 
 with the quotation, " I say, it was an awkward 
 thing, Maclean knew those lines from Milton, 
 and asked me why I had left out the ' immortal 
 hate.' " As ! have mentioned Sir Richard, the 
 last Governor of Bombay in my time, I may as 
 well say that he impressed me as one of the 
 most kind-hearted and hospitable of men. In 
 those days he was a man of indefatigable 
 energy. He rode over the whole Presidency 
 on horseback at a great pace, and hardly any 
 of his staff were able to keep up with him. It 
 was the common joke that the Government of 
 India would be obliged to annex the Central 
 Provinces to Bombay, because otherwise Sir 
 
48 MY POLITICAL VIEWS. 
 
 Richard Temple would not have room enough 
 for his morning ride. The great mistake 
 Sir Richard made as Governor of Bombay 
 was to let break of gauge be Introduced 
 on the through railway to Delhi and the 
 North-West. This may not matter much in 
 time of peace, but, as Lord Napier pointed out, 
 It mio-ht have the most disastrous effects in time 
 of war. Consider what would be the state of 
 affairs in South Africa, if, In addition to the 
 evils of a single line, the military leaders were 
 embarrassed with a break of gauge and the 
 necessity for keeping a double set of rolling 
 stock. 
 
 I cannot sum up the results of my work In 
 Bombay better than in the flattering reference 
 made to me by an old friend. Sir George Bird- 
 wood, in speaking last June at the Society of 
 Arts as chairman of a meeting at which Mn 
 L. R. W. Forrest read a paper on " The Town 
 and Island of Bombay " : — 
 
 *' The imperial position of Bombay Is due first 
 to Sir Bartle Frere, then to Mr. Arthur Craw- 
 ford, and then to Mr. James Maclean, the 
 ablest publicist we ever had In India, who. 
 
LORD BEACONSFIELD. 49 
 
 gifted with a weighty and well-graced literary 
 style, and the perfervid genius of his race, 
 steadily magnified the name of New Bombay, 
 gave it its inspiring motto, Urbs prima in 
 Indis, and crystallised its progress in an in- 
 comparable guide to Bombay." 
 
 I may close this chapter of my life with a 
 brief reference to my political faith. In the last 
 year of my residence in India my attention was 
 wholly engrossed by the warlike proceedings in 
 which the Empire was engaged. Indian opinion 
 is nothing if not critical, and pays very little 
 regard to the party bonds which tie men up so 
 tightly in England. I never considered in 
 writing: whether the views I advocated were 
 those of Conservatives or Liberals. For the 
 warlike policy of Lord Lytton, who showed as 
 great rashness in sending British troops into 
 Afghanistan as he showed precipitation in with- 
 drawing them as soon as they suffered a check, 
 I had no feeling but one of conte mpt ; but, on 
 the other hand, I was filled with admiration for 
 the Imperial designsof Lord Beaconsfield and the 
 determination with which he upheld them before 
 the world. His motto, " Imperium et Libertas," 
 
 E 
 
50 LORD BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 seemed to me to indicate the real sources of 
 England's greatness, and I resolved that, al- 
 though my opinions on home politics and on 
 questions of political economy were far more 
 advanced that those of the still only half- 
 educated Conservative party, I would cast in 
 my lot with the politicians who accepted Mr. 
 Disraeli as their leader. Such were my 
 
 sentiments in the spring of 1880, when, having 
 parted with my Bombay property, I made my 
 way homewards, and heard at Rome that Mr. 
 Disraeli had suddenly dissolved Parliament. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 Resolve to enter Parliament — Contest for the 
 Elgin Burghs in 1880 — Experience of Par- 
 liamentary Work in London — The Council 
 of the National Union — Personal Relations 
 with Lord Randolph Churchill — His Quarrel 
 with Lord Salisbury — Letters from Public 
 Men— Lord Randolph, Mr. W. H. Smith, 
 Sir Bartle Frere — Lord Salisbury — Mr. E. 
 Stanhope — Lord G. Hamilton. 
 
II. 
 
 The news of the dissolution of Parliament 
 reached me, as I have said, at Rome. I had 
 made up my mind to take the first opportunity 
 that came within my reach to try my fate in 
 public life, and I wrote at once to Mr. Stan- 
 hope, then Under Secretary for India, to ask 
 him if he could find me a vacant seat to contest. 
 Mr. Stanhope telegraphed to me to come over 
 at once, but in a letter he wrote me he took 
 a more guarded tone, said that all the best 
 chances had already been snapped up, and 
 warned me that whatever was left would be not 
 much better than a forlorn hope. This rebuff 
 did not frighten me, as I had resolved that I 
 must make my name known at any cost. I found 
 on reaching London that there was a deputa- 
 tion waiting to press me to go down and contest 
 the Elgin Burghs against Mr. (now Sir M. E.) 
 Grant Duff, I knew nothing of the far north 
 of Scotland, but was sufficiently familiar with 
 politics to be aware that in such a constituency 
 the success of a Conservative candidate was 
 
54 CONTEST FOR THE ELGIN BURGHS. 
 
 quite hopeless. However, I set out for Aberdeen 
 with a Hght heart, and found that the Con- 
 servatives there — unfortunately they were like 
 the British infantry, there were too few of them 
 — were eager to welcome a bona-fide candidate, 
 whom they had never expected to see, as if he 
 had been an angel from heaven. The Elgin 
 Burghs constituency is a long and straggling one, 
 stretching from Elgin on the west to Peterhead, 
 at the extreme north-east end of Scotland. I 
 found that the electors, with the exception of 
 some retired people living on their income in 
 Elgin, were violently Radical. At several places 
 I was mobbed and pelted with flour, and at 
 Peterhead an attempt, only frustrated by a 
 stalwart prize-fighter who had taken the pre- 
 caution to go down to the pier with me, was 
 made to throw me into the sea. The custom of 
 taking the candidate round for a personal can- 
 vass still prevailed in this primitive community, 
 and I shall not readily forget the back-hander I 
 received from a well-to-do tradesman who, 
 when I was introduced to him, looked me care- 
 fully up and down and then quietly remarked, 
 '' Weel, I think ye might be better employed," 
 
THE DUKE OF FIFE. 55 
 
 a prophecy which the result of the poll showed 
 to have been well founded. Another elector, 
 of a more polite turn, gave utterance to a 
 general sentiment when he said to me, regret- 
 fully, "Oh! y're no a Leeberal," as if that 
 were a conclusive answer to every argument. 
 In those days — I do not know if it Is the case 
 now — Scotchmen lived in a perpetual state of 
 awe of some great proprietor in the neighbour- 
 hood, whose opinions and wishes were quoted 
 as if they had been decrees of Providence 
 In the Elgin Burghs the Earl, now the Duke, 
 of Fife, was the Cock of the North ; and, 
 as he was at that time as fervent a Gladstonian 
 as Lord Rosebery in the south, it is no wondej 
 that the name of Mr. Disraeli was held in 
 as great detestation as if he had been the 
 Evil One himself. One cannot help smiling 
 at the thought that within a few years' time 
 the Duke of Fife and Sir M. E. Grant Duff 
 became pillars of that Liberal Unionism which 
 now, we are told, dominates the whole north 
 of Scotland. On the whole, my time during 
 the three weeks the election lasted was spent 
 pleasantly enough. I had capital meetings, and 
 
56 SELECTION FOR THE CARLTON CLUB. 
 
 made a great stir by airing opinions which 
 the dour Scotchmen had never so much as 
 heard of ; and the great people on our own side 
 made much of me, the Earl and Countess ot 
 Seaiield inviting me to stay for a week at Cullen 
 Castle, and the late Lord Errol driving into 
 Peterhead and insisting that I should go and 
 spend the Saturday to Monday at his picturesque 
 home in Slaines Castle, which is built into the 
 granite rocks and washed by the surges of the 
 North Sea. The chiefs of the Conservative party 
 in Scotland were so well pleased with the results 
 of my adventure that they wrote a strong letter 
 in my behalf to London ; and the result was that 
 in the spring of 1880, nearly six years before I 
 entered Parliament, I received a letter from the 
 Carlton Club saying that the Committee had 
 placed my name on the list of the ten members 
 they are authorised to select every year. This 
 was In the prae- H ooley era, when it was still a high 
 distinction to be selected as a member of the 
 greatest political and social club in London ; and 
 I accepted the compliment as one of which any 
 man might well be proud. 
 
 I now o;rew intimate with most of the leading 
 
CHOSEN TO FIGHT OLDHAM. 57 
 
 Conservatives in London, and had a good many 
 tentative proposals made to me to stand for 
 different constituencies. Finally I accepted an 
 invitation from the electors of Oldham to become 
 one of their candidates ; and I sat down 
 patiently to the siege of that borough, and 
 laboured most assiduously at this work up to 
 the general election of 1885, when I was suc- 
 cessful in capturing the seat. At that time 
 the Conservative reaction had not made any 
 remarkable progress in Lancashire, and I 
 remember that Sir Stafford Northcote made 
 some discouraorino- reference to " even Radical 
 Oldham " just at the time when I first came 
 before the constituency, I always considered, 
 however, that a politician who had any ambition 
 in him could distino-uish himself and do eood 
 service to his party, better by undertaking to 
 fight a large constituency which had been held 
 by the enemy, than by looking out for one of 
 those safe seats which are usually reserved for 
 the spoilt children of fortune ; and I had no 
 reason to regret the consequences of my enter- 
 prise in Oldham. 
 
 But before I speak of my experience there I 
 
58 LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. 
 
 must refer to one or two political Incidents of 
 Importance which happened in 1884, the year 
 before the election. About the middle of this 
 year, 1884, I was surprised one day to receive 
 a letter from a grentleman whom I had known in 
 India, and who held a high position in the English 
 Civil Service, asking me if I could come and 
 see him about a matter which he did not care 
 to write about. I called, as desired, and after 
 beating about the bush a little my friend asked 
 me what I thought of Lord Randolph Churchill, 
 who was at that time making himself famous 
 and putting new life into the dry bones of the 
 Conservative party all over the country by the 
 freedom and point of his criticisms on " the old 
 gang " who then led the party. I expressed my 
 feelings on the subject pretty warmly, as I 
 thoroughly agreed with the late Colonel Burnaby, 
 who in a conversation I had with him about 
 this time said to me, " Randolph Is the 
 coming man. You know that as well as 
 I do." My friend then proposed that I 
 should attend a meeting Lord Randolph in- 
 tended to call at his house of friends on 
 whom he could rely. To this I agreed, and, 
 
COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL UNION. 59 
 
 having soon afterwards received a cordial invi- 
 tation from Lord Randolph himself, I was 
 present at several meetings at which his projects 
 were discussed, and promised to help him all I 
 could. I found that his immediate aim was to 
 be elected a member of the National Union, and 
 then to become Chairman of the Council. The 
 Union was just then struggling to gain an inde- 
 pendent existence, and Lord Randolph thought 
 that if he could obtain for it a large grant from 
 the party funds and set it free from the yoke of 
 the party Whips he might weld the Council into 
 a powerful political organisation strong enough 
 to set the " front-bench men " at defiance. I 
 was myself at this time a member of the Council, 
 having been persuaded to join it by Mr. W. H. 
 Smith, who told me I might be of use in advising 
 upon the drawing up and circulation of Con- 
 servative pamphlets and leaflets. 
 
 One of my first duties as a member of the 
 National Union Council was to wTite, at Mr. 
 Smith's request, a paper which I entitled " The 
 Story of the Transvaal," for circulation by the 
 Conservative party. I was humiliated and in- 
 dignant at Mr. Gladstone's surrender after 
 
6o THE STORY OF THE TRANSVAAL. 
 
 Majuba, and my old friendship with Sir Barde 
 Frere, who, however, was as shabbily treated 
 by Sir M. H. Beach as by Mr. Gladstone, made 
 me feel the blow all the more keenly. Mr. 
 Smith, to whom I sent a copy, made me the 
 followinof acknowledofment : — 
 
 Letter from W. H. SMITH. 
 
 3, Grosvenor Place, 
 
 April 29th, 1882. 
 My Dear Maclean, 
 
 I will not alter a line of this, but it has been 
 suggested that it would be more telling and effective 
 if the matter was broken up into paragraphs with 
 little headings, something after the American news- 
 paper practice. We want to catch the eye of the 
 indifferent working man, and he must be attracted 
 to read. 
 
 Will you let me know at what price per 1,000 they 
 can be procured. 
 
 I think we might distribute 100,000 at least with 
 effect. 
 
 Your other brochure is the best political satire I 
 have seen for a long time. What steps have been 
 taken to circulate it ? 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 W. H. SMITH. 
 
 Sir Bartle Frere was then in England, and I 
 enclosed a copy of the paper to him. I give 
 
MAJUBA SURRENDER. 6 1 
 
 his long and interesting reply in full, because it 
 may be considered historical : — 
 
 Letter from SIR BARTLE FRERE. 
 
 February 22nd, 1883. 
 Dear Maclean, 
 
 Your note of the 19th has just reached me 
 here. I am very glad to hear that there is a call for 
 the continuation of the excellent paper you wrote on 
 the Transvaal, and I think you could not do better 
 than republish it, as it stands, and add a postscript 
 showing the " Results of the Surrender." 
 
 The Convention, under which the Transvaal was 
 
 given up, stipulated for many things to be done by 
 
 the new Government of the Republic, none of which 
 
 have yet been accomplished, and for the most part 
 
 they have not been attempted. The chief reason 
 
 given for retaining a British " Suzerainty " (whatever 
 
 that may imply) over the Transvaal, was that it would 
 
 be some protection to the 700,000 loyal native subjects, 
 
 against any aggression by the Boer Government. It 
 
 has not, however, been of the slightest use for that or 
 
 any other visible purpose. The natives scattered 
 
 among the European farms have been reduced to the 
 
 condition of serfdom in which we found them before 
 
 the annexation. Mapock and other chiefs to the East 
 
 and North-east, who had been loyal to British rule, have 
 
 been attacked ; great numbers of their followers have 
 
 been slaughtered ; a large " Commando," said to 
 
 comprise 2,000 Burghers, with two cannon supplied 
 
62 BOERS AND NATIVES. 
 
 by the Cape Government, is at present engaged in 
 crushing this tribe, blowing up their caves with 
 dynamite. Their greatest offence is fideHty to the 
 British Government. To the South-west, tribes 
 beyond the Transvaal boundary as fixed by the 
 Convention are being attacked by Boer commandos, 
 and the Chiefs who had been loyal to the British 
 Government are being despoiled of their lands {vidt 
 " Bechuanaland," of which a copy is enclosed), whilst 
 their people are murdered in cold blood. The 
 Transvaal Government, when appealed to, say " the 
 country is beyond their jurisdiction." To the natives 
 of Transvaal and its neighbourhood, the surrender by 
 the British Government has brought loss of all security 
 for liberty, life, or prosperity. 
 
 To the white population of the Transvaal the 
 consequences of surrender have been scarcely less 
 disastrous. Though many months have passed since 
 the Convention was signed no settled government has 
 yet been organised. None of the promises to pay 
 debts or indemnities have yet been performed. The 
 English banks have withdrawn, following a large 
 proportion of the loyal settlers, and the only districts 
 where industry is not paralysed are the gold fields, to 
 which there has been of late a considerable immigration 
 of diggers, amongst whom it will require a strong 
 government to keep order. 
 
 This stagnation seriously affects the neighbouring 
 British colonies of Natal and the Cape, where trade 
 suffers, and where the loyal party have not recovered 
 
OUR COMPACTS WITH THE BOERS. 63 
 
 from the disgrace and alienation consequent on the 
 
 abandonment by the British Government of the loyal 
 
 party in the Transvaal ; so that in short it cannot be 
 
 said that either in the Transvaal or in our older 
 
 colonies any benefit has resulted from the pusillanimous 
 
 conduct of the British Government either to Europeans 
 
 or natives. We have got nothing to show as a set off 
 
 for our disgraceful loss of character. 
 
 I hope you will be able to abbreviate this sad story, 
 
 and that you will send me a few copies, and believe 
 
 me 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 H. B. E. FRERE. 
 
 I did not follow up Sir Bartle's suggestion, 
 because it was not expedient to go so fully into 
 detail, and the British public was already begin- 
 ning to grow weary of the whole business. But 
 it seemed to me at that time that England could 
 easily have upheld the annexation, and that, the 
 contest between the two nations having been so 
 brief, Dutch and English would soon have settled 
 down and lived together in harmony. But the 
 Government of the day thought otherwise. It 
 bound England by a convention to restore free- 
 dom to the Boers, and confirmed this concession 
 by a stronger bond in 1884, and the charge 
 against the present Government is that they did 
 
64 LITERARY WORK IN LONDON. 
 
 not observe these international obligations, but 
 entered into a conspiracy with Mr. Rhodes to 
 upset the freedom of the nation to which 
 England herself had voluntarily given inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 I did not write many more papers for the 
 Conservative party, as I had much profitable 
 literary work to do, and could not spare the 
 time for amateur pamphleteering. This may be 
 the place to mention that, after I became my 
 own master in Bombay, I spent much time in 
 England and in foreign travel, and did not 
 give myself up entirely to holiday-making but 
 tried to do some literary work in London 
 besides. I knew Mr. Meredith Townsend, of 
 the Spectator, who had had experience of Indian 
 journalism and showed me much civility, and 
 through him I became acquainted with his 
 colleague, Mr. R. H. Hutton. It gave me 
 much pleasure, one morning, to receive the 
 followinor cordial letter from Mr. Hutton : — 
 
 Letter from Mr. R. H. HUTTON. 
 
 The Spectator Office, 
 
 . July 25, 1866. 
 Dear Mr. Maclean, 
 
 Could you not write for us sometimes ? Your 
 
" THE SPECTATOR." 65 
 
 help would be very useful to us occasionally, and your 
 co-operation very pleasant. I am going away for a 
 month's holiday. Could you call to discuss articles 
 for the week while I am away ; and if you stay during 
 September, when I shall be here alone, I hope you will 
 help me. And, after we are both back, I think it is 
 likely we shall still be glad of some regular help 
 from you. Believe me, 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 R. H. HUTTON. 
 
 I took advantage of this opportunity to 
 contribute some articles to the Spectator, and I 
 also wrote, in a desultory fashion, for other 
 well-known papers. I remember that Mr. 
 Hutton at that time introduced me to Mr. 
 George Smith, the proprietor of the Pall Mall 
 Gazette^ which was then enjoying the full 
 splendour of its early success. Mr. Smith, 
 afterwards better known as the founder of that 
 great work, the Dictionary of National 
 Biography, remarked to me, after Mr. Hutton 
 had left the room, " Ah ! if you would write 
 leaders like Richard Hutton's, I would come 
 to you with my hat in my hand." Such a 
 compliment indicates the extraordinary and 
 well-deserved distinction Mr. Hutton had won 
 
 F 
 
66 " THE WESTERN MAIL. 
 
 >> 
 
 as a journalist. For my own part, I soon found 
 that, as the success of my paper in Bombay 
 depended largely on personal supervision, it 
 was necessary for me to make frequent visits to 
 India, and that, in these circumstances, I could 
 not hope to form any permanent literary 
 connexion in England. After I finally left 
 India in 1880, I bought an interest in the 
 Western Mail, which secured to me the right 
 to express my own opinions in that paper. For 
 about twenty years I wrote a weekly letter of 
 some two columns which attracted a grood deal 
 of attention, and was largely instrumental in 
 bringing about that Conservative reaction in 
 Souih Wales which was one of the distinguishing 
 features of the general election of 1895. But an 
 eminent journalist, who is still, happily, a member 
 of the House of Commons, once very wisely 
 said to me, " You will find that you cannot be 
 both a journalist and a member of Parliament. 
 The two occupations are bound to clash with 
 one another." So it turned out with me. The 
 freedom of my criticisms, after the election, on 
 the management of South African affairs 
 provoked a feeling of warm hostility among my 
 
LORD Randolph's alms. 67 
 
 constituents, which gradually made things at 
 Cardiff uncomfortable, and ultimately intolerable 
 for me. But I have noticed this peculiarity 
 about the South African war, that a great many 
 estimable people in England absolutely refuse 
 to discuss it in a reasonable spirit. When it is 
 mentioned they consider it a sacred duty to fly 
 into a fit of patriotic fury, and w^ill not listen 
 to a word of explanation or remonstrance. 
 
 My attention w^as now more and more taken 
 up with the intrigue for mastery which dis- 
 tracted the National Union Council. My 
 friendship with Lord Randolph continued, and 
 on December 15th, 1883, he wrote to me as 
 
 follows : — - 
 
 Letter from 
 
 LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL 
 
 December 15th, 1883. 
 Dear Mr. Maclean, 
 
 I have to thank you very much for your most 
 able statement on the Ilbert Bill, which you have 
 been kind enough to send me, and I will endeavour, 
 on the first suitable opportunity, to avail myself of 
 the information. I am going to a meeting at Black- 
 pool in January, and think that will be a good 
 occasion to allude to Indian affairs. 
 
 The next meeting of the National Union Council 
 
68 THE TORY LEADERSHIP. 
 
 will be on Friday, February ist, and it is likely to be 
 an important one. I should be very glad if you will 
 meet a few of our friends at luncheon here on that 
 day. The Organisation Committee, which was ap- 
 pointed at the last meeting, has decided on requesting 
 an interview with Lord Salisbury. Lord Salisbury 
 has consented to the interview, which will take place 
 early in January. 
 
 Believe me to remain, 
 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 RANDOLPH T. CHURCHILL. 
 
 All went well for a time, and I assisted in 
 getting- Lord Randolph elected as Chairman of 
 the Council and in passing some motions directed 
 against the Stafford Northcote section of the 
 party ; but It soon became apparent that Lord 
 Randolph's ambition did not stop here, and 
 that nothing would satisfy him short of taking 
 the whole control of the party organisation 
 out of the hands of Lord Salisbury. Now 
 personally I had always been a firm believer 
 in Lord Salisbury. I had backed up Lord 
 Randolph because I wished to overthrow 
 the dual control of Salisbury and Northcote, 
 which had been established after the death of 
 Lord Beaconsfield, and which was a source of 
 
LORD RANDOLPH AND LORD SALISBURY. 69 
 
 divided councils and weakness in action, but I 
 had never contemplated the supersession of 
 Lord Salisbury as leader of the party. 
 
 In many respects Lord Randolph was the 
 more attractive of the two leaders. Though 
 aristocratic in his habits, he was thoroughly 
 democratic in his sentiments, and he had that 
 popular instinct which makes men public 
 favourites. He had, too, that perfect fearless- 
 ness in attacking not merely Mr. Gladstone but 
 his own leaders in the House of Commons as 
 well, which commands admiration and strikes 
 terror. You could guess the man's character by 
 seeing him walking in the Park with quick, 
 eager, impetuous step, swinging his cane before 
 him, and looking as if the world were his 
 football, which he was kicking along Rotten 
 Row. There can be no doubt that Lord Salis- 
 bury's colleagues in the House of Commons were 
 completely cowed by Lord Randolph, and did 
 not know how to deal with him. One of them 
 stopped me in the street and said to me, " I 
 believe you are one of Lord Randolph's great 
 friends. I wish you would find out what he 
 wants. Anything he desires we will do for him, 
 
70 CHARACTER OF LORD SALISBURY. 
 
 if only he will work cordially with the party." 
 All my inclinations, therefore, were favourable 
 to Lord Randolph. But I had a great respect 
 and esteem for Lord Salisbury, whose public 
 services I recocrnised and whose claims on 
 public confidence were only marred by his 
 haughty reserve and by the intellectual scorn 
 which made him often blurt out plain truths 
 which perplexed and disconcerted his followers. 
 The Prime Minister is personally a very 
 broad-minded man. He likes to talk frankly 
 even on matters of high politics with anyone who 
 he thinks has really made a study of public affairs, 
 and he is pleased with the impact of a fresh 
 mind upon his own. But even when he seems 
 to be most careless in conversation his intelli- 
 gence is wide awake, and he pounces mercilessly 
 on any slip made by the person he is talking to. 
 While, too, he is very free in the expression of 
 his opinions, he always reserves his authority, 
 and is firmly convinced that the caste to which 
 he belonp-s has the sole rioht to rule the 
 
 o o 
 
 country. 
 
 I hesitated a long time whether I should 
 go with Lord Randolph all the way or not. 
 
DIFFERENCE WITH LORD RANDOLPH. "] \ 
 
 but finally I shrank from the confusion which 
 would be caused by a domestic revolution 
 in the Conservative party, and I gave notice of 
 a motion in the National Union Council which 
 virtually upheld Lord Salisbury's power. By this 
 time the antagonism between Lord Randolph 
 and Lord Salisbury had been publicly declared, 
 and it is a curious fact, which shows how 
 blood is thicker than water, that Mr. Arthur 
 Balfour, who had been one of Lord Randolph's 
 associates in the Fourth Party, became one of 
 his chief opponents as soon as Lord Salisbury's 
 position seemed to be endangered. Before we 
 came to open strife in the Council I attended 
 one day a meeting of Lord Randolph's friends, 
 at which I arrived before any of the others. 
 Lord Randolph entered immediately afterwards, 
 and, coming up to me, pulled out of his pocket 
 a roll of manuscript, which turned out to be a 
 long letter to Lord Salisbury, and which was 
 afterwards published in the newspapers. This he 
 read to me v/ith much emphasis, saying at the 
 end,'T think Lord Salisbury has grossly insulted 
 me." I could not help remarking in reply, 
 " Well, you have paid him out in his own coin." 
 
72 A POLITICAL INTRIGUE. 
 
 He gave me a quick look, and then began 
 a coolness between us which ended in estrange- 
 ment. Lord Randolph announced that if any 
 motion were carried by the Council he would 
 resign the chairmanship, and great efforts were 
 made on both sides to secure votes for the 
 critical division. Lord Randolph wrote me a 
 long and impassioned appeal, in which he stated 
 that Lord Salisbury had been on the point of 
 giving way, but had now determined to wait 
 for the result of the division. This, however, 
 did not move me. I had not consulted Lord 
 Salisbury or anybody else in the matter, but 
 was simply doing what I thought best for the 
 interests of the whole party. 
 
 To make the narrative quite clear, I append 
 the letters which now came to me fast and 
 furious from Lord Randolph. 
 
 Letter from 
 LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. 
 
 April 29th, 1884. 
 Dear Mr. Maclean, 
 
 I think it right to tell you what has been the 
 effect of your notice of motion being placed on the 
 agenda paper for the next meeting of the N. U. 
 Council on Friday. Since the last meeting negotia- 
 
LETTERS FROM LORD RANDOLPH. "] 'X, 
 
 tions have been actively proceeding between members 
 of the Executive Committee, and the leaders, whips, 
 and Central Committee. I have taken no personal 
 part in those negotiations beyond saying that I would 
 agree to anything which offered an honourable modus 
 Vivendi to the N. U. consistently with the resolution 
 of the Birmingham Conference. Those negotiations 
 had reached such a point that all our reasonable 
 demands were practically conceded ; the organisation 
 of the party, as far as associations were concerned, 
 was to be left to the N. U. ; the circulation of literature, 
 information, and the provision of and arrangements 
 for lectures and speakers likewise left to the National 
 Union. A definite sum of money from the party 
 funds, I believe ;^3,coo, was to be given to us for 
 those purposes, and an arrangement was to be made 
 by which the chief whip of the party in the House of 
 Commons was to have a seat on the Council. Several 
 prominent members of the party interested themselves 
 in this matter, and supported the views of the Council. 
 This compromise would have been formally agreed 
 to at the meeting of the Central Committee to-day at 
 Lord Salisbury's house, but for Lord Salisbury's 
 declaration that his attention had been drawn to your 
 notice of motion, and he would agree to nothing till 
 it had been discovered whether that motion was 
 successful or not in breaking up the party in the 
 Council. If you put down your notice of motion 
 from an independent standpoint, I think it right you 
 should know this. 
 
74 LETTERS FROM LORD RANDOLPH. 
 
 If, on the other hand, it was put down by you in 
 consequence of suggestions from Stanhope, Percy, &c., 
 then you have attained all the success you could wish 
 for. I cannot, however, assume this latter contingency, 
 because all along you have supported the majority in 
 the Council so loyally, and have communicated with 
 me so frankly and fully on all matters which have 
 come before the Council, that I feel sure you would 
 not lend yourself to interested and personal intrigues 
 for the purpose of baffling the Council of the N. U. 
 and of ultimately destroying the N. U. This, how- 
 ever, will be the effect of your motion if carried on 
 Friday, which will necessitate what I have been most 
 anxious to avoid, an appeal to the public to pronounce 
 on the present organisation of the Conservative party. 
 I know you would wish me to write as frankly to you 
 as you have done to me on more than one occasion, 
 and that is my excuse for this letter. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL. 
 
 Letter from 
 LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. 
 
 April 30th. 
 Dear Mr. Maclean, 
 
 I can assure you the facts are as I stated them 
 in my letter of yesterday, because one of the Central 
 
 Committee related them to . Lord Salisbury and 
 
 his friends know perfectly well that you have been one 
 of the firmest and most influential supporters of the 
 
THE END OF THE STRUGGLE. 75 
 
 majority on the Council, and the moment they saw 
 your notice they naturally concluded there was a split 
 in the majority, and with their usual bad faith broke 
 off negotiations. After all, what is your resolution ? 
 It is a motion of want of confidence in the Executive 
 Committee, and particularly in the Chairman. I could 
 not treat it otherwise. It is no use appointing an 
 Executive Committee if you at once appoint a com- 
 mittee to supersede the executive one, which is 
 practicall}' what your motion would do. However, I 
 shall hope to see you at luncheon on Eriday, and talk 
 over the matter with you. It would be a great pity, 
 however, if all our long struggle were to be abortive 
 at the last moment owing to a slight want of dignified 
 determination to attain what are our undoubted rights. 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 
 RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. 
 
 I had by this time been approached by the 
 late Mr. Stanhope, representing" " the old gang." 
 The chief obstacle to a reconciliation, I found, 
 lay In the suspicions the two parties had 
 regarding each other's good faith. Lord 
 Randolph, it will be seen from Letter No. 2, 
 gives very free utterance to his sentiments, but 
 the more cautious Mr. Stanhope was equally 
 prejudiced against Lord Randolph. This Is 
 made quite clear from the following letter : — 
 
76 LETTER FROM MR. E. STANHOPE. 
 
 Letter from Mr. E. STANHOPE, 
 
 23, Eccleston Square, 
 
 March 19th, 1884. 
 Dear Mr. Maclean, 
 
 Many thanks for your letter, which largely 
 represents my own opinion. May I remind you, 
 however, that not one single word has ever been said 
 to the Central Committee by the Council since the 
 commencement of their unfortunate discussions in the 
 autumn. 
 
 Had we ever been approached, I, for one, am quite 
 ready to urge that approaches should be met in a 
 friendly spirit. But, from first to last, the avowed 
 object of Lord Randolph has been not to work on 
 friendly terms with any Central Committee, but to 
 crush it, if he could. 
 
 One word more of explanation. 
 
 When you speak of the meeting held last year, and 
 say that no member of the Council was asked to it, 
 you cannot, I think, be aware of the nature of the 
 meeting. We asked only the Chairmen of the Central 
 Committees, or whatever you call the organisation, in 
 every borough and county. If we had approached 
 the Associations generally, without also asking your 
 Council, you would have had a right to complain. 
 
 The Central Committee, which is nominated by the 
 leaders of the party, and entrusted by them with 
 important functions, cannot afford to request assistance- 
 in its work from any quarter. We certainly should 
 never do so. And if you can induce Lord Randolph 
 
THE ULTIMATUM. 77 
 
 and Mr. Gorst to approach Lord Salisbury and Sir 
 Stafford with a desire to assist and not to oppose 
 them, I see no reason why a modus vivendi should not 
 be established which would recognize the value of the 
 National Union, and give it adequate and distinct 
 functions in harmony with the leaders of the party. 
 You are aw^are, of course, that the present position 
 of the Union was that established by Mr. Gorst, when 
 he was the paid member of the Central Committee and 
 Vice-Chairman of the Union. 
 Believe me. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 EDWARD STANHOPE. 
 
 If you wish it, I should be glad to see you any day 
 except Thursday. Do come. 
 
 As I wished, if possible, to reconcile the two 
 hostile forces, I accepted this appointment, and 
 finally, after a long conversation with Mr. 
 Stanhope, he wrote to me enclosing the follow 
 ing memorandum as a sort of ultimatum : — 
 
 I have fully explained the purport of our conversa- 
 tion to-day to Lord Salisbury and Sir S. Northcote. 
 They are of opinion that a basis of arrangement may 
 be arrived at, and can best be accomplished by a con- 
 ference between two or three of their representatives, 
 and two or three members of your Council ; and they 
 would suggest that steps should be taken at your 
 meeting to-morrow for carrying this into effect. 
 
yS EUTHANASIA OF THE NATIONAL UNION. 
 
 To this Lord Randolph curtly responded 
 
 that it was ''all d d nonsense," and nothing 
 
 remained but to press the matter to a division. 
 
 My motion was carried, Lord Randolph 
 resigned, and then the local associations through- 
 out the country, with the late Sir A. B. Forwood 
 as their representative, took the question up 
 and demanded Lord Randolph's reinstatement. 
 Finally an appeal to the whole body of Con- 
 servative electors was resolved upon. A great 
 meeting was held at Sheffield, where Lord 
 Randolph carried his own list of candidates by 
 a small majority, but at the same time most of 
 us who had opposed him were also returned to 
 the Council, and it became evident to him that 
 he could not have his own way. He then 
 made a very clever move. He saw Mr. Arthur 
 Balfour and said he was tired of all this 
 wrangling and wished to be on friendly terms 
 once more with Lord Salisbury. Mr. Balfour, 
 nothing loth, undertook the part of mediator, 
 and Lord Salisbury invited all the members of 
 the Council to a dinner in Arlington Street, at 
 which it was announced that Sir M. Hicks- 
 Beach would be the new chairman, and a reign 
 
RELATIONS WITH LORD RANDOLPH. 79 
 
 of peace was established for ever. This was 
 the euthanasia of the National Union Council, 
 which has never since been of any use. 
 
 It may be convenient here to state what was 
 my subsequent connection with Lord Randolph. 
 Though of a very capricious temper, he was not 
 wanting in magnanimity, and in 1886, when he 
 had been appointed leader of the House of 
 Commons and I had been elected for the second 
 time member for Oldham, I was surprised to get 
 a cordial letter from him inviting me to second 
 the Address at the opening of Parliament. 
 Here are two letters from him on this subject: — 
 
 Letter from 
 LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. 
 
 August loth, 1886. 
 Dear Mr. Maclean, 
 
 At Lord Salisbury's request I write to ask 
 you if you will undertake the duty of seconding the 
 address in answer to the Queen's speech which will be 
 moved on Thursday, the 19th, by Colonel King 
 Harman. 
 
 It is in accordance with the practice of our party 
 that the address should be moved by a county member 
 and seconded by a member of an important borough 
 constituency. 
 
 On the coming occasion the difficulty of successfully 
 . discharging the task will be rather greater than usual, 
 
8o SECONDING THE ADDRESS IN 1 886. 
 
 for the Queen's speech, I may state to you in confidence, 
 will be extremely brief, and will have reference solely 
 to the remaining business of supply. 
 
 Of course the address and the speeches in support 
 of it must be almost entirely of the same nature, nor 
 should any opening be given to the enemy to introduce 
 wide controversial matter about Ireland, unless they are 
 prepared to take the extreme course of moving an 
 amendment to the address, in which case naturally 
 we should be delighted to meet them. 
 
 Lord Salisbury is anxious that the business should 
 be undertaken by one who, like yourself,has experience 
 of Parliament and public affairs rather than, as is often 
 the case, by some new member. 
 
 Will you let me have a line in reply to No. 2, 
 Connaught Place, London, W. 
 
 Believe me to be, 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL. 
 
 Letter from 
 LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. 
 
 August 1 2th, 1 886. 
 My dear Mr. Maclean, 
 
 I am much obliged to you for your letter, and 
 much pleased that you consent to discharge the duty 
 of seconding the address. If I can be of any use to 
 you in giving information please command me. 
 Believe me to be. 
 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL. 
 
LORD Randolph's resignation. 8i 
 
 On this subject he had very clear and good 
 ideas of what ought to be done. I went to take 
 his instructions at the Treasury, and he impressed 
 upon me the necessity of avoiding, in a speech 
 on a ceremonial occasion, all matters of con- 
 troversy, and said I should prepare a speech 
 which would be, as the French say, bien senti. 
 He had not, however, lost sight of the check I 
 gave him in 1884, and once, when I thwarted 
 him in the House on some Indian question, he 
 so far forgot himself afterwards in conversation 
 as to reproach me with having betrayed him. 
 I said, '' Well, at all events I never got my 
 thirty pieces of silver," and he laughed and held 
 out his hand, saying that was quite true. We 
 afterwards became pretty good friends again. 
 
 His resignation took all his friends by surprise, 
 and a public man who was probably more in his 
 confidence than anyone else told me he knew 
 nothing about the matter till, driving away from 
 the City with Lord Randolph, he said some- 
 thing laughingly about the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, and Lord Randolph replied, " I 
 don't know if I am Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 for I resigned this morning." This step was 
 
 G 
 
82 REASONS FOR THIS STEP. 
 
 due to a miscalculation. Lord Randolph be- 
 lieved that the Government could not oret on 
 without him, and when Mr. Goschen joined the 
 Ministry all his plans were upset. I wrote to 
 him expressing my regret at what had happened, 
 and received the following answer : — 
 
 Letter from 
 LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. 
 
 January, I2th, 1887. 
 Dear Mr. Maclean, 
 
 I am much obliged to you for your letter and 
 enclosure. The fair manner in which you expressed 
 yourself on the matter of my resignation is in perfect 
 accordance with what I have always observed as to 
 your general attitude on all political questions. 
 
 It would be well if a similar fairness was more 
 diffused among our modern politicians. 
 
 Believe me to be. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL. 
 
 I happened to sit next him at dinner soon 
 afterwards. He was full of the subject, 
 and talked to me with his usual frankness 
 and fluency. It would, he said, be a great 
 mistake to suppose that there had been 
 only one point of difference between himself 
 and Lord Salisbury ; they were at issue on 
 
A STORY ABOUT " ORME." S;^, 
 
 many questions of public policy. " As regards 
 foreign affairs, for instance," added Lord Ran- 
 dolph, " I saw him day after day and tried to 
 impress upon him that the English people were 
 unalterably opposed to a strong foreign policy." 
 I could not help thinking to myself how bitterly 
 Lord Salisbury would resent this interference by 
 another Minister with a department which was 
 peculiarly his own. But I merely said that the 
 situation had always reminded me of what took 
 place before the battle of Salamanca, when Wel- 
 lington and Marmont manoeuvred against one 
 another for some days, and at last Marmont 
 made a slip and Wellington shut up his field- 
 glass, exclaiming '' Marmont's lost." He 
 admitted the aptness of the comparison. It 
 occurred to me that he would be sorry the next 
 morning that he had spoken to me so freely, so, 
 to change the subject I asked him, as he had 
 become a great sportsman, what he thought of 
 the poisoning of Orme, This brought forth a 
 characteristic outburst : " Oh ! " said Lord Ran- 
 dolph, " it's that Duke of Westminster. He 
 thinks he has a divine right to win races, and 
 that his horses shouldn't be ill like other people's 
 
84 THE END OF LORD RANDOLPH. 
 
 Depend upon it, I have seen as much of Dukes 
 as anybody ; they are the greatest set of fools 
 Heaven ever created, not excepting even the 
 ' Royalties.' " 
 
 Despite the impending collapse of his 
 health. Lord Randolph hoped to be restored 
 to the leadership, and he had many warm parti- 
 sans who worked zealously on his behalf. I 
 always looked upon him as a beaten man when 
 he finally resolved not to contest one of the 
 seats at Birmingham. Lord Randolph had at 
 first consented to go down, and he actually 
 asked myself and some other members to go 
 with him and make a platform for him. Strong 
 influences were, however, brought to bear 
 against him. Mr. Chamberlain was thoroughly 
 alarmed at the threatened intrusion of Lord 
 Randolph into his own preserves ; and the latter 
 was persuaded to refer the matter to the arbi- 
 tration of a committee on which the Liberal 
 Unionist Influence prevailed, and, of course, 
 the decision went against him. Lord Randolph 
 retired, and from that moment his star paled 
 before that of Mr. Arthur Balfour. 
 
 Looking back now on the circumstances of 
 
AN OBVIOUS REFLECTION. 85 
 
 the time, I see clearly that if Lord Randolph 
 had not been checked on the National Council 
 Lord Salisbury's position would have become 
 intolerable, and Lord Randolph, already very 
 popular with the rank and hie of the party, 
 enjoying an immense aristocratic connexion, 
 and having an unlimited command of money, 
 for the men who held the strings of the money- 
 bags had secretly promised him support, 
 would have become the undisputed chief of the 
 party. But Lord Salisbury always displayed 
 perfect unconsciousness that such a crisis had 
 arisen. 
 
 Such are the advantages of a diplomatic 
 training. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Elected ior Oldham in 1885 — Impressions of the 
 House of Commons. 
 
III. 
 
 Lord Salisbury took office very reluctantly, 
 and only yielding* to the importunities of his 
 friends, in 1885, and a general election was held 
 in the autumn of that year. On this occasion 
 the electors of Oldham repaid me for my careful 
 nursing of the constituency by returning me to 
 Parliament. I had not got on with them very 
 well at first. Coming among them a complete 
 stranger, with neither wealth, a family name, 
 nor local connection to recommend me, I was 
 at first stiff and awkward in addressing them. 
 Mr. Hilton Greaves, the capable but eccentric 
 chief of the Conservative party in Oldham, said 
 to me after my first meeting. " I dare say you 
 will like to know what these people say about 
 you. They say, ' He is a clever fellow, no doubt ; 
 but he would do with waking up a bit.' " I took 
 the hint, and woke up accordingly, with such 
 effect that I became a popular favourite and was 
 called affectionately by the men of Oldham "The 
 Old Champion." Nor, although I was rejected 
 in 1892 after having been twice elected for the 
 borough, did I ever lose the good will of the 
 
90 DELIGHT OF A SUCCESSFUL ELECTION. 
 
 working men of Oldham, towards whom I have 
 always cherished a kindly feeling, and who, I 
 am convinced, resented the action of the two or 
 three small cliques who worked against me. 
 
 I do not think there is any pleasure in life to 
 be compared with the joyful excitement which 
 thrills one's whole being when one is for the first 
 time elected to Parliament to represent a great 
 popular constituency. I did not feel the same 
 emotion afterwards, either at Oldham or at Car- 
 diff, but in 1885 I would not have changed places 
 with any man in England. One of the chief 
 ambitions of my life had been fulfilled, and as 
 member for Oldham I could speak with authority 
 in the assembly that ruled the Empire. 
 Some of my friends wanted me after the 
 election to leave the Town Hall by a side 
 entrance, as the square in front was filled with a 
 shouting Radical mob, but I replied " No, I am 
 the member for Oldham, and I am going out 
 by the front door," and I went down into the 
 midst of them. There was a rush, and I was 
 carried off my feet, but my friends and a strong 
 guard of policemen gathered round me, and I 
 was half dragged down Clegg-street to the 
 
CONGRATULATIONS. 9 1 
 
 Conservative Club, and then hoisted on men's 
 shoulders and run up the stairs, breaking down 
 the balusters on the way, to the Committee- 
 room, where I was shovelled on to the table. 
 The delirious excitement of the gathering at 
 the Club and of the meetings that greeted me 
 on my way home through the town can never 
 be forgotten. 
 
 I took very easily to Parliamentary life, having 
 the business already at my fingers' ends, and 
 found I could spend my time at Westminster 
 very agreeably. I had many congratulations, 
 and Lord Salisbury wrote me a special letter of 
 thanks, warmly appreciating the good work I 
 had done. Annexed is his lordship's letter, and 
 also one from Lord George Hamilton, with 
 whom I was much better acquainted than with 
 most other members of the Government : — 
 
 Letter from LORD SALISBURY. 
 
 December 4th, 1883. 
 
 Dear Mr. Maclean, 
 
 I have not before had the opportunity of 
 writing to you to congratulate you, as I do most 
 heartily, upon the result of your hard work at Oldham. 
 It was a very satisfactory achievement in many points 
 
92 RETURNED AGAIN WITH A COLLEAGUE. 
 
 of view, and I have no doubt did much to influence 
 the action of the constituencies in the neighbourhood- 
 I believe that except in the case of Mr. Cobbert, who 
 had strong local and traditional influence, no conser- 
 vative before has been able to carry this seat. I 
 sincerely hope that at the next election you may not 
 only retain it but be able to bring back a colleague 
 with you. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 SALISBURY. 
 
 Lord Salisbury's expectation was fulfilled. 
 The local association found me a brieht and 
 capable young colleague in Sir Elliott Lees, and 
 we were both triumphantly returned at the head 
 of the poll In 1886. 
 
 Letter from LORD GEORGE HAMILTON. 
 
 November 30th, 1888. 
 Dear Mr. Maclean, 
 
 Hearing that you have come back to Chiswick, 
 I must write one line to congratulate you upon your 
 great victory. Your knowledge and speaking power 
 will be of the greatest use to the party in the House 
 of Commons, and I hope may be the means of bring- 
 ing political reputation and renown to yourself 
 
 Believe me, very truly, 
 
 GEORGE HAMILTON. 
 
LIFE IN THE HOUSE. 93 
 
 I found, too, that a very good feeling prevailed 
 among the Lancashire members of the House, 
 who were now a large body and who were 
 willing to work together on many questions of 
 public importance. But what chiefly struck me 
 was the spirit of Freemasonry, so to speak, 
 that animated all the members of the House. 
 Every new man, no matter who he might be, 
 felt that he was cordially welcomed, and was 
 placed at once on a footing of perfect equality. 
 The House is often spoken of as the best club 
 in London, but that is a wrong description of it. 
 It is not a nice place to dine at, and, although 
 the libraries are delightful rooms, I always 
 found It Impossible, owing to the constant stream 
 of men coming and going, to write or read 
 there for more than a short time. On the 
 other hand, to study the humours of the House 
 Itself and the characters of the various men 
 who took part In the debates was a never- 
 ending source of amusement and instruction, 
 and I failed to understand why so many mem- 
 bers wandered about the lobbies and the 
 reception-rooms and only came Into the House 
 itself for a division. The House of Commons 
 
94 CHARACTER OF THE HOUSE. 
 
 has always maintained the character of being 
 much more business-like and interesting than 
 other assembHes because real debating goes on 
 there. Members cannot sit at their desks and 
 write letters or read the newspapers ; they must 
 pay some attention to what is going on. In- 
 variably the best thought of the nation is 
 expressed here. Every man gets a hearing 
 on his own merits, and it rarely happens that 
 some fresh thought or happy expression does 
 not give a new turn to the debate. The House, 
 as I knew it, was singularly patient and at the 
 same time wonderfully sensitive. It could sit 
 still to listen to a bore by the hour together, 
 and then be roused into a fit of fury by an 
 orator who knew how to apply the lash skilfully. 
 Some animosity existed against the party led 
 by Mr. Parnell because they had systematically 
 attempted to worry the House, but otherwise 
 the utmost good-fellowship reigned. 
 
 I now^ made friends with Mr. Charles Brad- 
 laugh, who at that time figured largely in the 
 Parliamentary Debates. One has almost for- 
 gotten now the curious little squabbles that 
 arose on the question whether he should be 
 
MR. BRADLAUGH. 95 
 
 allowed to take his seat In the House. His 
 defence of himself on that occasion greatly 
 raised his reputation in the House, and made a 
 powerful impression on Mr. Gladstone. Some 
 of his rhetorical points were very good. He 
 offered to resip^n and underofo a fresh election if 
 the House would then accept him on his return. 
 Some unmannerly Tories laughed. Mr. Brad- 
 laugh turned upon them, and, drawing himself 
 up, exclaimed "Ah! you doubt me. Bradlaugh 
 is prouder than you." He was remarkably 
 amiable and fair-minded, and on some of the 
 social questions which he thoroughly under- 
 stood he was so manifestly in the right that 
 he obtained the support of many independent 
 Conservatives below the gangway." This de- 
 lighted him, and he used to say to me, " I 
 know I can always count on your front bench 
 below the gangway men." He always dined at 
 the House, but did not trouble himself to attend 
 every division and would always oblige a Conser- 
 vative friend by pairing with him. I have often 
 thought myself that the passion for multiplying 
 divisions is by no means a good test of Parlia- 
 mentary attendance. I used to tell my 
 
96 SIR RICHARD WEBSTER. 
 
 constituents that members who did not go 
 home to dinner either had not homes of their 
 own, or did not care to go to them. 
 
 One evening Mr. Bradlaugh and I were play- 
 ing chess together, and the game had reached 
 an Interesting stage. The division bell rang, 
 and he said to me, " Do you want to be 
 present at the division ? " 1 replied, " No," 
 and he said, '' Well, no more do I, so let 
 us stop here and finish the game." He was 
 curiously simple-minded In his vanity, which 
 was of a colossal character. I remarked 
 to him one evening that I was sorry I 
 nad missed a speech of his. He said, " Ah ! 
 you should read It ; It will give you an Idea of 
 the variety of my powers." He became a great 
 favourite in the House. One of the things on 
 which he used to plume himself was his know- 
 ledge of the law. The present Lord Chief 
 Justice, then Sir Richard Webster, one of the 
 most good natured and astute of men, used to 
 ]3lay upon this foible. He would cross the 
 floor of the House, call to Bradlaugh, take 
 him by the arm, and go out of the House with 
 him as If he were a bosom friend with whom he 
 
SIR CHARLES RUSSELL. 97 
 
 wished to discuss a knotty point of law. The 
 late Lord Chief Justice, Sir Charles Russell, 
 was a man of quite a different type. Quick, alert, 
 and eager for controversy, his impulsive temper 
 frequently plunged him into hot water, from 
 which, however, his natural goodness of dis- 
 position always rescued him. In playing at 
 chess, which he was fond of, if you beat him he 
 would look at you as if he washed to throw the 
 pieces at your head ; but he was most open and 
 cordial in his conversation, and I never knew 
 any one so ready with words of praise or 
 encouragement for a new member who he 
 thought had done well. 
 
 One oi^ the greatest taxes, I used to think, on 
 the time of a member of Parliament, was the 
 way in which his constituents, in these days of 
 rapid locomotion, came clown to the House and 
 called him out to show them and their families 
 over the whole Palace of Westminster. An 
 interesting debate might be going on which one 
 wished to listen to, or one might be waiting 
 anxiously to be called on for a speech ; but 
 there was no help for it, the gentleman in the 
 lobby must be attended to. It became necessary 
 
98 THE WORRIES OF AN M.P. 
 
 to go over the House of Lords and the library 
 where the warrant for the execution of Charles I. 
 was on show, the corridors with the pictures, 
 the crypt, the old room where Cromwell is 
 supposed to have signed the death warrant, the 
 libraries and lobbies of the House of Commons, 
 and, finally, after about half an hour's walk, 
 to entertain the ladies to tea on the 
 terrace. This final ceremony was indispens- 
 able. Ladies have a charming way of 
 abusing any privilege which is extended to 
 them, and every lady of one's acquaintance, 
 old or young, would regard it as a mortal offence 
 if she came down to Westminster and was not 
 invited to take tea on the Terrace. This addition 
 to London's fashionable amusements has been 
 sadly overdone, and many members must often 
 wish there were a law prohibiting the appearance 
 of ladies on the Terrace while a debate is going 
 on. On the other hand, young members seem to 
 like the institution, and some are so fond of it 
 that they encourage their friends to issue 
 regular invitations to tea parties on the Terrace. 
 The only hope of a change is that smart society 
 may some day suddenly find this form of 
 
HOME RULE. 99 
 
 enterialnment is a bore, and so give it up. 
 
 The Parliament of 1885 had not been long in 
 existence when Mr. Gladstone plunged the 
 whole country into confusion by declaring in 
 favour of Home Rule for Ireland ; but it is 
 wonderful, on looking back, to think how short 
 a time this controversy lasted. The debates 
 and election of 1886 were all over in six months, 
 and most of the time in the House of Commons 
 was taken up with Liberal Unionist speeches, as 
 every man who had left Mr. Gladstone thought 
 it necessary to explain why he had done so. 
 The Tories, therefore, had nothing to do but to 
 look on, and after Home Rule had been disposed 
 of in 1886 their chief occupation consisted in 
 cominor down to the House for an all-nioht 
 sitting, if necessary, and voting steadily for the 
 reforms of procedure which were required to put 
 down obstruction. I remember on one occasion 
 not getting away from the House till about 
 seven in the morning, and being back in my 
 place again by three in the afternoon. A member 
 in these days of early hours would indignantly 
 resent being kept out of his bed after one o'clock. 
 
 I turned my attention to Indian affairs, and 
 
lOO MR. COWEN AND MR. CHAMBERLAIN. 
 
 was lucky enough to make a hit with the first 
 speech I deHvered in the House, on the con- 
 quest and annexation of Burmah. A member of 
 the Liberal front bench assured me I was the 
 only man who had ever succeeded in making- an 
 Indian question interesting, and my old friend 
 Mr. Joseph Cowen — the kindly spirit and man 
 of political genius who represented Newcastle- 
 on-Tyne, and who had taken the chair at a 
 farewell dinner given me when I left that town 
 in 1858 — came to me and said : " Now you 
 have got the ear of the House; mind you keep 
 it. Debates," he added, " are not what they used 
 to be in the House ; the Irish have killed 
 debating. But it is still a pleasure to know that 
 what you say here will be listened to by the 
 whole world." Mr. Chamberlain was speaking 
 at the time, and Mr. Cowen went on to say : 
 ** Mark that man. He is the shallowest and 
 most self-complacent politician in the House 
 of Commons. If ever he comes into 
 power, he will do some mortal harm to the 
 State." It cannot be fairly said any longer that 
 Mr. Chamberlain is shallow ; education has 
 broadened him slowly down to the level of his 
 
> 5 
 ■) » 
 
 
 AN INDIAN DEBATE. lOI 
 
 colleagues on the Treasury bench, but that he is 
 still intemperate and reckless is shown by his 
 whole career. 
 
 Some time afterwards I had another oppor- 
 tunity of using my Indian experience. A 
 motion was brouoht forward in the House 
 
 o 
 
 for reinstating in the Indian Civil Service 
 Mr. William Tayler, of Patna, who had 
 been dismissed for failure, as the Government 
 thought, to do his duty during the Mutiny. I 
 held the opinion that Mr. Tayler had been justly 
 punished, and I had prepared a speech on the 
 subject. During the debate one of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's colleaoues came across the House to me 
 and begged me to intervene, saying that Mr. 
 Gladstone had come down after dinner with a 
 strong impression that Mr. Tayler had been 
 badly treated, and intended to speak and vote 
 against the Government. Soon afterwards I 
 was called upon by the Speaker. When the 
 division was taken Mr. Gladstone walked into 
 the Government lobby, and his colleague told 
 me that the great man had said he was quite 
 satisfied with the case I had made out. As I 
 passed out of the house the Speaker (Mr. Peel) 
 
I02 COMPLIMENT FROM MR. LUCY. 
 
 called me up and shook hands with me, and 
 said he had never listened to a more interesting 
 debate. It was on this occasion that Mr. H. 
 W. Lucy, the Toby M. P. oi Punch, who has so 
 much power to make or mar Parliamentary 
 reputations, was good enough to pay me the 
 following pretty compliment : — '' Mr. Gladstone 
 was absorbed for a long time attentive to the 
 speech in which Mr. Maclean disclosed to an 
 unsuspecting House the addition of a first-class 
 Parliamentary debater." 
 
 An absurd incident arose out of this speech 
 of mine. Sir Henry Havelock Allan, who had 
 always been on good terms with me, was so 
 much annoyed at the part I had taken in 
 opposing a motion he had seconded that he 
 passed me by for a whole year without recog- 
 nising me. Then it happened that he wanted 
 me to do something, and he came and sat 
 beside me and began to speak as if nothing 
 had happened. 1 said to him that that was all 
 very well, but was he aware that he had cut me 
 for a year ? He replied, with a loud laugh, 
 "All right ; anything you like. Pistols for two 
 and coffee for one to-morrow morning, if you 
 
SIR H. HAVELOCK ALLAN. IO3 
 
 like." Nobody took Sir Henry seriously. He 
 was fond of placing himself below the gangway, 
 where I usually sat, and making in a loud voice 
 offensive remarks about the hot-tempered Irish- 
 men opposite. One day he said to me, "You see 
 that fellow opposite. Many's the shilling he has 
 had from me for holding my horse when I 
 commanded the troops at Cork. Now, just 
 you watch how I will drive him out of the 
 House." He went and seated himself on the 
 front bench opposite, and one by one the Irish- 
 men disappeared and left him alone there. 
 Then he winked solemnly to me and stalked 
 slowly out of the House. 
 
 I have referred once or twice to the Speaker, 
 and I may say that It is a fortunate thing in 
 these days, when liberty of speech in Parliament 
 Is so much curtailed and so much more authority 
 Is placed In the hands of the official who directs 
 Its debates, that the House of Commons has 
 found such excellent Speakers. The present 
 Lord Peel had a great reputation, and he looked 
 the part of Speaker to perfection. But sometimes 
 I was tempted to think that he overacted the 
 part. He was a very stern and austere guardian 
 
I04 LORD PEEL. 
 
 of the rights and privileges of the House, and 
 occasionally took somewhat too seriously matters 
 which he might w^ell have passed over with a 
 smile. Thus I remember that once a young 
 and ambitious barrister was very anxious to 
 speak in a great debate on Home Rule, and 
 rose in his place several times without catching 
 the Speaker's eye. A practical joker who 
 was a great friend of his wrote him a note 
 in pencil, saying, '' I am sorry I have not 
 been able to call you before, but if you get up 
 after the next speaker I will do so." This he 
 signed "A. W. P.," which might be taken for 
 the Speaker's initials. The victim of this joke 
 rose again several times, but was always over- 
 looked. At last he went to the Speaker and 
 expressed surprise that he had not been called, 
 especially after the note he had received. The 
 Speaker demanded to see the note, and then fell 
 into a state of righteous indignation, declaring 
 that he would bring the writer of the note before 
 the House and have him properly punished. It 
 required all the patient dexterity of Mr. Akers 
 Doucrlas to soothe him, and he never foroot the 
 liberty that had been taken with his name. 
 
TRADE UNIONISM IN LANCASHIRE. IO5 
 
 But I now approach more serious matters 
 which vitally affected the interests of my con- 
 stituents at Oldham and did me a lasting- 
 injury. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Disagreement with the Trade Unionists of 
 Oldham — Causes of my Defeat in 1892 — 
 BimetalHsm in the Country and in Parliament. 
 
IV. 
 
 Trade unionism is, as everybody knows, a 
 tremendous power in Lancashire, and from the 
 beginning of my connection with Oldham I had 
 been incHned to resent the dictatorial and arro- 
 gant airs which the trade-union leaders gave 
 themselves. I got on ver}^ well with them, 
 however, for a long time, although they did not 
 like the open way in which I scoffed at Fair 
 Trade. They were good enough to make me 
 the spokesman of Lancashire in opposing* 
 the abolition of the half-time movement, and 
 we won a considerable victory in the House 
 of Commons, which was all the more remark- 
 able because the leader of the House, Mn 
 W. H. Smith, told me privately he was in 
 favour of the abolition. But I committed 
 the inexpiable sin of speaking against a bill 
 brought in by Sir Henry James for compelling 
 masters to give workmen "particulars" of 
 the special work on which they were engaged. 
 The trade-union leaders had really drafted this 
 bill, and they were exceedingly angry with me 
 
no EMPLOYERS AND WORKMEN AT OLDHAM. 
 
 for not backing up their case. One of them 
 said to me, frankly enough, " We don't want to 
 quarrel with you, but we know how to manage 
 the mills better than the masters do, and we 
 mean to do it." In their organ, the Cotton 
 Factory Times, they denounced me for what they 
 called my bitterness of speech, and said of me, 
 '' Mr. Maclean is a many-sided man, and it is 
 difficult to take him all in at once." 
 
 My little sneers in the House of Commons 
 were, however, of a very mild character. After 
 the election of 1892 I met in Regent Street 
 a distinguished member of the Opposition, 
 who asked me how it was I had lost my 
 seat, which he had thought was quite safe. I 
 said I believed it was because I had ventured 
 to say in the House that even property still had 
 some rights in this country. The Radical chief 
 looked upwards thoughtfully, and remarked, 
 '' Ah ! that's a thing yoii may think, but you 
 mustn't say it in these days." I am not sure, 
 on looking back, that it was worth my while to 
 take the side of the masters, who are intensely 
 selfish, never work cordially together, and show 
 very little public spirit in taking up new ideas. 
 
LEGISLATION FOR WORKING MEN. Ill 
 
 Two illustrations I may give from my recent 
 Cardiff experience of the way in which employers 
 make a mess of things. The coalowners of 
 South Wales all rose in arms as^ainst the 
 Workmen's Compensation Bill, and Lord Bute's 
 agent, Sir W. T. Lewis, was constantly in the 
 Lobby with piles of statistics, in which the 
 most elaborate miscalculations were made by 
 gentlemen calling themselves experts as to 
 what would be the results of the new tax the 
 bill proposed to put upon the coal trade. The 
 result showed that employers could be insured 
 against loss on remarkably easy terms, and the 
 experience of only a year or two was so con- 
 vincing on this point that a bill extending the 
 principle of compensation to nearly all trades 
 was passed last year with general assent. 
 Another example in point is the outcry raised by 
 the railway directors against the introduction of 
 automatic couplings for railway waggons. So 
 warmly was this agitation taken up that Lord 
 Claud Hamilton, the chairman of the Great 
 Eastern Railway, broke off his connection with 
 the Conservative party because Mr. Ritchie, the 
 President of the Board of Trade, had introduced 
 
I I 2 BIMETALLISM. 
 
 such a bill. Mr. Ritchie, however, being a 
 strong man, stood firm, and appointed a Com- 
 mittee to investigate the whole question. The 
 report of this Committee was so conclusive that 
 the bill on being introduced again was passed 
 without any difficulty. These examples show 
 how careful the Legislature ought to be in 
 dealing with questions which affect the working 
 classes. 
 
 My indiscretion in quarrelling with the trade- 
 union leaders might perhaps have been par- 
 doned if I had not o-iven them a fresh and oraver 
 cause of offence. They had taken up warmly 
 the heresy of bimetallism, and had persuaded the 
 working men to believe that if they were 
 allowed to exchange gold for silver in India at 
 a fixed ratio they would get much better prices 
 for their oroods. I was an ardent advocate of 
 the single standard, and had taken a leading 
 part in the House of Commons in opposing Mr. 
 Chaplin's motion in favour of bimetallism. At 
 that time opinion was much divided on the 
 question, and Mr. Goschen, the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, with that curious strain of weakness 
 in his character which kept him from ever being 
 
THE ELECTION OF 1 892. II3 
 
 a great man, professed to be able to see the 
 intellectual side of bimetallism, and shirked 
 saying anything definite on the subject. I 
 myself pressed him to speak, but he told 
 me he did not want to declare himself and 
 would rather leave the matter in my hands. 
 The debate was talked out, much to the 
 chagrin of the bimetallists, who believed they 
 had a majority in the House, and the agita- 
 tion was kept up more warmly than ever in 
 the constituencies. 
 
 When the election of 1 892 drew near I was sur- 
 prised to find how many converts had been made 
 in Oldham to the principle of bimetallism. The 
 Bimetallic League, having plenty of money at 
 its command, had worked with all its might 
 to defeat the men who were known to be par- 
 tisans of the single standard, and a day or two 
 before the election Mr. Hilton Greaves, who 
 knew everything that was going on, told me I 
 should be beaten if I did not give way on this 
 point. '' There are," he said, '' enough of these 
 bimetallists to turn the election. You need not 
 speak about it ; you have only to give me a 
 nod, and that will satisfy them." I said I 
 
 K 
 
114 THE GOLD STANDARD. 
 
 would take a night to think over it, but the 
 next day, after reflection, I told Mr. Greaves 
 I could not give way. He put both hands on 
 my shoulders and said, " Well, I am chairman of 
 the party, and I am bound to do all I can to 
 win, but if I were you I would do as you do." 
 The end was that I was defeated, and a breach 
 was made in my Parliamentary career which 
 has never been healed over. 
 
 Still, I had my revenge upon the bimetallists. 
 After my election for Cardiff in 1895 these 
 gentlemen again showed much activity in the 
 House of Commons, and gave notice of a resolu- 
 tion which would have committed the House 
 to the adoption of the double standard. The 
 monometallists in the House held a meeting, 
 which was attended by more than a hundred 
 members, in one of the committee-rooms to 
 consider what ought to be done. Sir John 
 Lubbock was in the chair, and he suggested, in 
 his suave way, that no harm would be done if 
 we allow the bimetallic resolution to be passed 
 without opposition. I sprang to my feet and 
 hotly protested against such a surrender. Other 
 members followed on the same side, and finally. 
 
A NOTABLE PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE. I 1 5 
 
 on the motion of Sir H. Seymour King, the 
 matter was taken out of Sir John Lubbock's 
 hands and entrusted to me, with instructions to 
 frame a fipfhtinof amendment. This I did, and 
 placed it on the paper. 
 
 A day or two afterwards Sir WilHam 
 Harcourt came to me in the tea-room and 
 spoke about the tactics that ought to be 
 employed. He himself deprecated a division, 
 which, he said, might cause great alarm 
 and confusion in the country, and he asked 
 me if I could not see Sir M. Hicks- Beach, 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and get an 
 assurance from him which would show that the 
 Government did not intend to palter with 
 bimetallism in a double sense, but were firmly 
 resolved to stand by a single gold currency. I 
 said to Sir William that he himself had better 
 see Sir Michael, as he could speak with the 
 authority of the leader of a great party and had 
 more personal influence with the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer than anybody else, and he 
 promised to act on my suggestion. The next 
 evening Sir Michael sent me word that he 
 would like to see me in his private room. I went, 
 
ii6 SIR M. H. beach's declaration. 
 
 taking Mr. Brodie Hoare and other members 
 with me, and Sir Michael assured us that the 
 speech he meant to make would be quite satis- 
 factory to us. I promised, if that were so, that 
 I would withdraw my amendment. Sir Michael 
 was even better than his word, for he made 
 such an uncompromising and slashing speech in 
 defence of the existing currency system of this 
 country that Mr. Arthur Balfour and Mr. 
 Chaplin, who sat near him, were fairly beside 
 themselves with rao^e and could not refrain from 
 angry interruptions. The debate lasted all 
 night, but the speech of the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer had simply killed bimetallism, and 
 nothing more has been heard of the pestilent 
 heresy from that day to this. During the 
 evening I met a prominent member of the 
 Opposition, who said to me, "Well this debate 
 is going very nicely. Beach made an admirable 
 speech, but I never heard a man lay the lash 
 on to his own colleagues with such hearty good- 
 will in my life." This was the most consider- 
 able legislative achievement in which I took a 
 principal share in the House of Commons ; and 
 I shall always feel proud of having organised 
 
THE P. AND O. CONTRACT. II7 
 
 the debate which ended in the smashing of 
 bimetalHsm. 
 
 Another commercial matter in which I took 
 part with considerable success was the question 
 of the renewal of the P. and O. Company's 
 contract in 1886. The debate on the first 
 evening was marked by the development of 
 such strong opposition to the contract that the 
 Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Mr. W. L. 
 Jackson, took alarm, and postponed the 
 discussion. He came to me afterwards and 
 begged me to speak. I did so, taking the line 
 that the P. and O. Company had frequently 
 rendered great services to the State, and that it 
 was the interest of England to maintain an 
 Imperial line to India. My speech proved the 
 turning point of the debate. The opposition 
 collapsed, and the Company got its contract. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Return to Parliament in 1895 as M.P. for Cardiff— 
 The Political Situations There— The House 
 of Commons of 1900. 
 
V. 
 
 So much has been said in the papers for the 
 last twelve months regarding my relations with 
 the electors of Cardiff that I do not propose to 
 dwell at any length on this episode in my 
 career. The constituency was very well affected 
 towards me, and very proud of having returned 
 a Conservative member to the House of Com- 
 mons, after forty years of unavailing effort to 
 prevail against Radicalism. But Cardiff con- 
 sists, properly speaking, of two different towns, 
 There are the inhabitants of the municipal 
 borough, who live there all the year round, and 
 there are the floating mercantile population of 
 the docks, who come there every day to 
 transact business, but whose dwelling-houses 
 are at a distance from the town, and who 
 affect to belong to the county people and 
 look down upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. 
 A number of these gentlemen from the docks 
 are tenants of houses on the Penarth estate 
 of Lord Windsor, who was a chief agent 
 of Mr. Cecil Rhodes for establishing and 
 
122 DISSENSIONS AT CARDIFF. 
 
 maintaining the South African Association in 
 England, and who took a very active part in 
 promoting an agitation against me on account 
 of my opposition to Mr. Chamberlain in the 
 House of Commons. 
 
 This agitation was carefully nursed by the 
 central Liberal Unionist Association in London, 
 which exists for no other purpose than to 
 boycott and drive out of Parliament every- 
 one who will not bow the knee to the Colonial 
 Secretary. But the coalowners and ship- 
 owners of Cardiff had, at the same time, very 
 substantial reasons for resenting the conduct 
 of a member who would not do the bidding 
 of the Government. Cardiff is one of the towns, 
 like Birmingham, Sheffield, Barrow-in-Furness, 
 and the dockyard towns, which have been com- 
 pletely debauched by a war that has brought 
 them fabulous wealth. While the general 
 commerce of the country has suffered, the towns 
 which can furnish the Government with abun- 
 dant supplies of munitions of war have prospered 
 amazingly, and a Cardiff coal merchant very 
 honestly told me he must support the Govern- 
 ment on the principle that one good turn 
 
TACTICS OF THE UNIONIST LEADERS. 1 23 
 
 deserves another. Self-interest therefore played 
 a great part in the determination of the electors 
 of Cardiff to find a member to represent them 
 who could always be depended upon to vote 
 straight with the most beneficent Government 
 of modern times. 
 
 It would be unreasonable for me to make 
 a complaint on this score, but I do feel most 
 bitterly the treacherous action of the leaders 
 of the Unionist party In London, who 
 violated all the honourable traditions of party 
 organisation by putting forward a Conservative 
 candidate to oppose me while I was still the 
 member for Cardiff The chief of the Conserva- 
 tive Central Ofhce in London, Mr. R. W. E. 
 Middleton,came to me and professed the greatest 
 anxiety to close up the breach between myself and 
 my constituents, and after some conversation 
 he promised to write to Cardiff and suggest that 
 a great public meeting should be held, under the 
 presidency of some independent gentleman, at 
 which I should have the opportunity of vin- 
 dicating my public conduct. But while this 
 negotiation was going on, what was my 
 amazement to find that not only Mr. Middleton 
 
124 ELECTION OP^ 1 9OO AT CARDIFF. 
 
 himself, but Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour 
 had accepted invitations to a dinner given at the 
 Hotel Cecil by a gentleman who had offered, 
 without consulting me, to stand for Cardiff in 
 the Conservative interest, and who had arranged 
 this dinner to give himself a good start on his 
 political undertaking, I dare say Mr. Balfour 
 was as innocent as a child in this matter, though 
 Mr. Chamberlain was of course a principal party 
 to the intrigue, but it seems a pity that Mr. 
 Balfour's TOilelessness should lead him thus 
 astray. This, however, is the way in which the 
 present Government now manages its business. 
 As it happens, I was too ill to present myself 
 to the constituency at the general election ; but 
 I am happy to say that the intrigue against me 
 failed, and that the seat was captured by an 
 honest Radical, and not by Mr. Chamberlain's 
 nominee. 
 
 When I was returned for Cardiff, the first thing 
 that struck me was the change that had taken 
 place in the character of the House of Commons. 
 A shrewd observer once remarked to me that a 
 member who had lost his seat and been out of 
 Parliament for a time never found himself at 
 
LIBERAL UNIONISTS IN PARLIAMENT. 1 25 
 
 home when he came back again. This is only 
 natural. New members resent the intrusion 
 among them of one who can boast of his Parlia- 
 mentary experiences, and the contemporaries of 
 the returned member have formed new interests 
 and associations and learnt to regard politics 
 from a different point of view. But in other 
 respects the atmosphere of the House seemed 
 to have changed. I asked a fellow-member of 
 a humorous turn of mind where the Liberal 
 Unionists sat now, and he replied, " Confound 
 them, I believe they're all on the Treasury 
 bench." This was hardly an exaggeration, Mr. 
 Chamberlain had packed the Treasury bench 
 with all his immediate followers for whom he 
 could reasonably demand admittance into the 
 Government, and the rest of the Liberal 
 Unionists soon had their exceeding great reward. 
 It is fair to admit that the men belonging to 
 this party had stood aside for some years while 
 the Conservatives were in office, but in 1895 
 their eagerness to share in the spoils of office 
 could no longer be restrained, and it may be 
 said without exaooreration that since that time 
 every man who called himself a Liberal Unionist 
 
126 THE ABUSE OF TITULAR DISTINCTIONS. 
 
 has been promoted or decorated or rewarded in 
 some way or other. 
 
 Modern Governments have discovered in the 
 wholesale distribution of titular distinctions a 
 method of political corruption which Walpole 
 never dreamt of. Lord Salisbury has created 
 so many knights and baronets as to justify the 
 saying that you cannot throw a stone at a dog 
 without hitting a knight in London. Real power 
 the Prime Minister reserves for himself and his 
 friends, but he considers that people who press 
 inconvenient claims can be bought off cheaply 
 by the gift of a title. So keen, too, now is the 
 craving for these distinctions that the same 
 stamp of men who thirty or forty years ago 
 would have despised them are now seen wallow- 
 ing in the slough of servility for the sake of 
 writing "Sir" before their names, or, as Fal- 
 staff says, making any Joan ''my lady." There 
 can be no doubt that members' wives have a 
 great deal to do with this change of manners. 
 Rivalry in social ostentation is more especially 
 a ladies' foible, and I know of one well- 
 authenticated case in which one of the members 
 for a double-barrelled constituency threatened 
 
SOCIAL INFLUENCE IN THE HOUSE. 1 27 
 
 to resign unless he were knighted, as his wife 
 would not consent to go in to dinner after the 
 wife of his colleague, who had received this 
 honour. One Liberal Unionist member who is 
 afflicted with deafness is said to have o-ot his 
 baronetcy by watching Mr. Chamberlain's lips 
 and cheering loudly whenever he saw that his 
 leader had finished a sentence. Anyhow, the 
 Colonial Secretary has surrounded himself with 
 a grateful band of sycophants, who are always 
 ready to applaud everything he says or does. 
 
 There has, again, been a great increase of 
 late years in the number of young members 
 who represent what I am afraid must be 
 called the luxurious and corrupt society of 
 the West End of London. These young 
 gentlemen are all built on the same model. 
 It cannot be said that they have studied politics 
 very deeply, but they have all had the 
 same public-school training, they salute one 
 another by their Christian names, and they are 
 excellent companions, good sportsmen, and dash- 
 ing leaders of men ; but they have no brains, a 
 qualification which English public schools, un- 
 fortunately, omit from their curriculum. These 
 
128 A CHANGE FOR THE WORSE. 
 
 young men take up public affairs in the same 
 arrogant and vainglorious spirit which marked 
 our diplomatic negotiations with the Transvaal 
 and the early stages of the present war, and the 
 consequence has been a notable increase in the 
 intolerant spirit of the majority which keeps the 
 present Government in power. Anything ap- 
 proaching insubordination or even free criticism 
 is bitterly resented, and the man who is guilty of 
 such a crime is marked out for exemplary punish- 
 ment and finds it difficult even to get a fair 
 hearing. In this respect the House displays a 
 marked deterioration. Its character is also in- 
 jured by the predominance of the power of one 
 man. The present Parliament, which is not 
 much changed from that of 1 895, is Mr. Chamber- 
 lain's Parliament. The chief debates turns on 
 Mr. Chamberlain's merits or demerits, and 
 it is unfortunate that this Minister has involved 
 himself in an atmosphere of intrigue from 
 which he cannot shake himself free. The ques- 
 tions which constantly arise bearing upon his 
 personal honour impart an element of vulgarity 
 to all the deliberations of that august assembly 
 and lower the reputation of the House out of 
 
PARLIAMENT AND THE ARMY. I 29 
 
 doors. Most observers must have noticed the 
 failure of the present Parliament to produce 
 men who rise above the rank and file or give 
 promise of attaining to eminence. The truth is, 
 the system of debating as now carried on 
 affords few opportunities of acquiring distinc- 
 tion. It is for this reason, no doubt, that Lord 
 Salisbury, instead of selecting as his colleagues 
 a few superior men, surrounds himself with a 
 crowd of men of commonplace character and 
 mediocre abilities. If he cannot have quality in 
 the Cabinet, he is resolved at all events to have 
 quantity. 
 
 The failure of Parliament to do anything 
 worthy of notice has been shown most con- 
 spicuously in the way it has dealt with the great 
 question of army reform. The war is now well 
 advanced into its third year, but no steps 
 whatever have been taken to streng-then the 
 army or make it less of a fortuitous combination 
 of heterogeneous forces than it was before. All 
 available men have been pressed into the service 
 of South Africa. The yeomanry, the militia, 
 and the volunteers have been in turn appealed 
 to, and the name of Queen Victoria was made 
 
130 PARLIAMENT AND THE ARMY. 
 
 use of In an appeal to men, who had gone to the 
 war relying on the assurance that they should 
 soon return to their business, to show their 
 loyalty by staying till the end of the war. This 
 is not the way to make active service popular 
 with the voluntary forces. Having dragged 
 together all the men they could lay hands upon 
 in England and even weakened their power to 
 keep the Indian garrison up to the proper 
 standard, the Government then had recourse to 
 the clever device of borrowing soldiers from the 
 colonies at an absurdly high price. They have 
 compassed sea and land to obtain a few recruits, 
 and now they boast that they have brought the 
 colonies closer to the British Empire. Nobody 
 doubts that the fio-htinor instinct is stronor amono^ 
 the adventurous spirits who abound in the 
 colonies, or that our kinsmen beyond the seas 
 are proud of the chance of proving that their 
 manhood is equal to that of Englishmen. But 
 the colonies have nothing to do with our 
 quarrel in South Africa, and should not 
 already to have had enough of the sorry 
 have been draorored into it. If the war linoers 
 on much longer it may safely be predicted 
 
PARLIAMENT AND THE ARMY. I3I 
 
 that we shall be left alone to fight our 
 own battles. This we ought to have done long 
 ago, but the Government finds it an easier thing 
 to collect soldiers from every source than to go 
 to the House of Commons to ask for them. If, 
 however, we are committed to an Imperial 
 policy which binds us down to a succession of 
 wars of conquest, we ought to be ready to rise 
 to the height of our responsibilities and to co- 
 ordinate our whole strength in a national and 
 democratic army, instead of clinging to an army 
 which is nothing but the spoilt darling of smart 
 society in London. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 The South African War. 
 
VI. 
 
 The last two years of my Parliamentary 
 service were taken up entirely with the discus- 
 sion of the South African War, which became 
 the absorbing subject of political controversy. 
 " I cannot understand how any person who 
 approaches this matter with an unprejudiced 
 mind can fail to see that this struggle had to 
 come. The real issue behind all the negotia- 
 tions was the determination of the Boers to 
 secure the supremacy in South Africa, and 
 all their preparations were made for it." In 
 these words Mr. Chamberlain confidently offers 
 his final vindication of the policy that led to the 
 war, and herein we have his explanation of the 
 assertion he has frequently made that the war 
 was unavoidable. It may be useful to compare 
 the Colonial Minister's version of the negotia- 
 tions that preceded the war with the downright 
 statement of Steyn and De Wet in their latest 
 proclamation — " Be it known to all that the war 
 was forced upon the Republics by the British 
 Government." On which side does the truth 
 
I ^6 PREPARATIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA. 
 
 lie ? Was the war a just and righteous one, 
 provoked by Boer arrogance, or were the two 
 Dutch' Republics the victims of an intrigue? 
 Were they really jockeyed into declaring war, 
 as Napoleon III. was jockeyed by Bismarck? 
 Mr. Chamberlain has persistently maintained 
 that he hoped for peace to the last moment, and 
 that the despatch of the British Government 
 decided upon in the first week of September, 
 1899, granted to the Boers nine-tenths of their 
 demands, though unfortunately Mr. Kruger 
 sailed to interpret it in that sense. But anyone 
 who turns to a file of the Ti7nes, which enjoyed 
 the full confidence of the Imperial Government, 
 and reads the first leading article in that paper 
 for September 9th, 1899, will see that it w^as 
 nothing but a paean of exultation over the ulti- 
 matum which had been at last sent to South 
 Africa. The Government had made the war, 
 and it also made its own plan of campaign, 
 treating with contempt the warnings and advice 
 of the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Wolseley. 
 The Times rejoices that the Boers had been 
 addressed in a way which would give them 
 no further excuse for equivocation, and it 
 
WAS 23,000 INCREASE SUFFICIENT? I37 
 
 points to the resolve of the Government to 
 strengthen the garrison of South Africa as a 
 proof that serious business was meant. It is 
 true that this increase of our forces, mainly by 
 drafts from India, was not a very large one, 
 but nobody dreamt at that time that the Boers 
 could offer any serious resistance to the power 
 of the British Empire. " In the meantime,'' 
 said the Times, ''the British forces in South 
 Africa are to be increased by 10,000 men, and 
 Immediate measures will be taken to carry out 
 this order. When the reinforcements now 
 under orders have reached South Africa they 
 will raise the number of our troops there to 
 about 23,000 men, a force which ought to be at 
 least sufficient to secure our colonial frontiers 
 against any incursions." These declarations 
 prove conclusively that Her Majesty's Govern- 
 ment did not when the war began suspect the 
 Boers of having prepared plans for turning us 
 out of South Africa ; otherwise their despatch 
 of only 23,000 men to foil such a design would 
 have been an act of fatuous and criminal folly. 
 Nor have subsequent events shown that the 
 Boers ever possessed In men or arms the means 
 
138 THE BOER STRENGTH AND OUR OWN. 
 
 to carry out so prodigious a design. It is the 
 fashion now to exaggerate their strength so as 
 to prevent the confession of our own Incredible 
 blundering. But people who tell the truth — 
 like Mr. Bcnnet Burleigh, for Instance, the 
 distinguished correspondent of the Daily Tele- 
 graph — have told us with what an astonishingly 
 small force the Boer horsemen overran Natal 
 and spread terror to the gates of Durban, and it 
 is obvious from the statistics of killed and cap- 
 tured Boers which have been published that 
 with our great army of 250,000 men, drawn from 
 an Imperial population of 60,000,000, we have 
 never had more than 60,000 men to fight against. 
 We hold nearly 40,000 prisoners, Botha and De 
 Wet have forces still under arms which cannot 
 be reckoned at as many as 10,000, and probably 
 some 10,000 Boers have been killed during the 
 war. These figures would seem to account for 
 the whole able-bodied population of the Re- 
 publics, and it is childish to say that such a 
 small nation, governed by men of whom many 
 had visited Europe and seen the strength and 
 riches of England, conceived the desperate de- 
 sign of overthrowing British power in South 
 
MR. CHAMBERLAIN AND THE BOERS. 1 39 
 
 Africa or had any other motive than to guard 
 their cherished independence. 
 
 In any case Mr. Chamberlain is the last man 
 who should accuse them of going to war to fulfil 
 a long premeditated design. He says in his 
 latest apologia that the retrocession of the 
 Transvaal in 1880 was " a magnanimous act of 
 policy " which he and his friends thought would 
 have been accepted in the spirit in which it was 
 made, and he goes on to suggest that it was 
 abused by the Boers. This is the line of defence 
 taken up also by the Duke of Devonshire, who 
 shares with Mr. Chamberlain the responsibility 
 for the war, but it is historically inaccurate. 
 Both the Duke and Mr. Chamberlain are 
 blessed with conveniently short memories or 
 they would not have forgotten that the 
 magnanimous surrender of 1880 was succeeded 
 by the more business-like treaty of 1884, in 
 which, after several years' experience of the 
 way in which the Boers had used their 
 independence. The Liberal Government to 
 which the leaders of the Liberal Unionists 
 belonged, raised the Transvaal to the dignity 
 of a Republic, gave it the right to send envoys 
 
140 BOER INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 to foreie'n Courts, and struck out the term 
 suzerainty, to which the Boers had a rooted 
 objection. In fact, it may be said that for four- 
 teen of the best years of his life, from 1880 to 
 
 1894, and not, as he would now have us believe, 
 on one solitary occasion only, Mr. Chamberlain 
 was a warm partisan of Boer independence, 
 and would have scouted the idea that the Boers 
 entertained any scheme likely to endanger the 
 supremacy of the British Empire. It cannot 
 be supposed that he would have helped to build 
 up a State holding such ideas. The real pre- 
 parations of the Boers for war date only from 
 
 1895, and they can be fairly ascribed to the 
 alarm caused at Pretoria by the insurrection at 
 Johannesburg, the Jameson Raid, and the 
 incessant intrio-ues of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who 
 had the sympathy and active support of our 
 Colonial Office. 
 
 The controversy as to the origin of and 
 responsibility for the war will rage probably to 
 the end of this century ; it will serve a more 
 practical purpose to consider what is to be done 
 when the war comes to an end. The settlement 
 seems to be left entirely in the hands of Mr. 
 
CHARACTER OF MR. CHAMBERLAIN. I4I 
 
 Chamberlain. It was he who plunged the 
 country into the scrape, and the Opposition are 
 apparently content to leave it to him to drag us 
 out again. His courage is equal to the task, 
 and he seems to be the only man in Parliament 
 who has a definite plan for the reconstruction of 
 a federated South Africa under the British flaof. 
 This has been Mr. Chamberlain's strength 
 throughout the whole unhappy business. He 
 alone has been, like Lord Palmerston in the 
 Crimean Cabinet, the man who knew his own 
 mind, and so he has done what he would. Mr. 
 Chamberlain is not — Addison said that no man 
 of commanding ability could be — a general 
 favourite. His rash judgment and imperious 
 manner are constant causes of offence, and he 
 has a host of personal enemies even in the 
 Parliament which has undergone what is known 
 as "Chamberlain's purge." Although he has 
 thrust himself upon the aristocracy, he does not 
 belono^ to them. In tastes and habit of mind 
 he is essentially a middle-class man. He seems 
 to be devoid of the sporting instinct, and to have 
 none of the amiable weaknesses which stand out 
 as points of relief in the characters of men of 
 the world. 
 
142 HIS GOOD QUALITIES, 
 
 But " praise deserved no enemy can grudge," 
 and it is only fair to acknowledge that Mr. 
 Chamberlain is a consummate man of business. 
 One of his colleagues said to me long ago, 
 when I made some remarks in disparage- 
 ment of the Colonial Secretary — " Yes, that 
 is all very well, and to a certain extent I 
 agree with you, but if you want anything done 
 by this Government Chamberlain is the man to 
 do it." His skill as a debater has given him a 
 commanding place in an assembly in which 
 power and readiness of speech are rated at least 
 at their full value. His training and experience 
 have made him extremely quick of apprehension. 
 He must realise now that all the highest qualities 
 of statesmanship which any man can possess 
 are needed to bring the struggle between Boer 
 and Briton to a happy issue. He does not get 
 much help from his colleagues in the Govern- 
 ment. He must gnash his teeth with rage 
 at such a declaration as was made on the 
 opening day of the session by Lord Salisbury, 
 who has cultivated the art of blurting^ out 
 with cynical frankness, on the most unsuitable 
 occasions, sentiments which embody the most 
 
LORD SALISBURY ON THE WAR. 1 4 
 
 -^ 
 
 belated prejudices and the most secret desires 
 of the least enlightened of his followers. In 
 his speech on the Address the Prime Minister 
 said that local self-ofovernment mio-ht not be 
 given to the Boers for years, or "perhaps for 
 generations." Now this was a supremely silly 
 thing for any Prime Minister to say. It is 
 quite certain that the conscience of the English 
 people would revolt against any attempt to hold 
 the Dutch population of South Africa in sub- 
 jection " for generations." There is a general 
 disposition to give the Government the men 
 and the money required to bring the war to a 
 speedy termination, but it is hoped that after 
 this has been accomplished the Boers will soon 
 be placed on a footing of equality with our- 
 selves as reo^ards civil riohts. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain had a good impulse in 
 this direction when he made the speech last 
 November which gave such widespread pleasure, 
 but he has since orone back from this hio^h level 
 and followed too submissively the advice of 
 Lord Milner. The object of this administrator 
 is to inflict some public and never-to-be-for- 
 gotten humiliation on the handful of Boers 
 
144 THE CAPE LOYALISTS. 
 
 who are still in arms. It is urged by him 
 that unconditional surrender is the only offer 
 that ought to be made to the starving and 
 ragged peasants who have nothing to keep 
 them together but their own unconquerable 
 love of independence. But what is to be 
 gained by forcing these patriots, whose con- 
 dition should excite our pity and respect, to pass 
 under the Caudine Forks before they are allowed 
 to become British subjects ? Mr. Chamberlain 
 should beware of being influenced by opinion at 
 Capetown, where the British population seem 
 to have nursed themselves into a mood in which 
 nothing will satisfy them but the extermination 
 of the Boers. Projects for the establishment 
 of a British ascendancy are freely put forward. 
 The country is to be flooded with swarms of 
 immigrants and dragooned, possibly '' for 
 generations," by Baden-Powell's Police, drilled 
 after the model and on the scale of the Irish 
 Constabulary. The feeling at Capetown, in 
 fact, resembles the feeling that has prevailed in 
 Ulster against the rest of Ireland, and His 
 Majesty's Governtment is urged to establish for 
 ever the domination of the men who have 
 
WHAT SETTLEMENT IS POSSIBLE. 1 45 
 
 conquered South Africa. It is not on these 
 principles that a lasting peace can be restored 
 to the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. 
 Our first business must be to repatriate 
 the able-bodied prisoners and the women and 
 children in the land we have laid waste, and to 
 provide them with the means of gaining a live- 
 lihood. We profess to be anxious that there 
 should be friendship hereafter between Dutch 
 and English, and the first step to be taken 
 towards the attainment of this desirable con- 
 summation is to convince the Dutch that they 
 are not looked down upon. We have done 
 enough to show our military superiority. Now 
 the time has come when we can display our 
 magnanimity without the fear that it will be 
 misconstrued. Mr. Chamberlain will make a 
 fatal mistake if he inagines that by placing the 
 Dutch under military rule and then under the 
 rule of the Colonial Office for a term of years 
 he will prepare the way for free institutions. 
 Such a settlement would be only another form 
 of servitude and could never lead to a lasting 
 settlement. 
 
 M 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Our Policy in China — The Great Siberian 
 Railway — An Overland Railway from Calais 
 to Calcutta. 
 
VII. 
 
 During the whole of the nineteenth century 
 England enjoyed a practical monopoly of the 
 trade with China, and was recognised through- 
 out the Far East as the one Great Power which 
 represented European civilisation. To such an 
 extent was Chinese belief in English supremacy 
 carried that when the Americans first appeared 
 upon the stage to compete with us in commercial 
 enterprise they became known among the 
 Chinese as " No. 2 Eno-Hshmen." With the 
 dawn of the twentieth century this proud pre- 
 eminence has completely disappeared. England 
 is now only one of a multitude of rival Powers 
 jostling one another by dark intrigue for the 
 spoils of the dismemberment of China, and our 
 influence has decayed, chiefly through our own 
 fault, till we are less considered than any other 
 of the leading European Powers. 
 
 How has this deplorable change been brought 
 about ? To understand it we must look back 
 and see how our superiority was in the first 
 instance built up. We find that it was due 
 
150 ENGLISH SUPREMACY. 
 
 originally to the daring spirit of our sailors, and 
 then to the happy accident of our geographical 
 situation. The British navy first of all expelled 
 from the Eastern seas all our rivals — Dutch, 
 Portuguese, and French, — and enabled us to 
 complete at our leisure the conquest of India, 
 and to secure all the strong places on the trade 
 routes between Europe and the East. Then, the 
 Continent of Europe was so exhausted at the 
 close of the Napoleonic wars that for the rest 
 of the century competition with England at sea 
 was hardly dreamt of. Finally, our insular 
 situation fitted us for maritime expeditions and 
 made them indispensable to our existence as a 
 nation, and the want of seafaring genius among 
 the nations of the Continent made them too 
 timid to venture into the mare clausuni which 
 England had constituted beyond the Cape of 
 Good Hope. 
 
 The cutting of the Suez Canal struck the 
 first blow at England's predominance in the 
 East. That great work may have been of benefit 
 to civilisation, but it did a lasting injury to 
 English interests, and Lord Palmerston showed 
 his usual political insight when he determined 
 
FOREIGN RIVALRY. 151 
 
 that, as an English Minister whose business 
 it was first of all to defend the interests of 
 his own country, he was bound to oppose the 
 great scheme of M. de Lesseps. The opening^ 
 of the short cut to the East from Port Said to 
 Suez and the abolition of the long sea voyage 
 round the Cape of Good Hope have brought 
 the warships of all the European Powers into 
 Eastern waters, and with the exception — a 
 large one, no doubt — of India there is not now 
 any Oriental country in which onr authority 
 remains unchallenged. France has possessed 
 herself of Madagascar and a great part of Slam, 
 and has established the new empire of Tonquin 
 on the southern border of China. Russia has 
 annexed the whole of Central Asia up to 
 the frontiers of Afghanistan, and is now 
 pushing down feelers to the Persian Gulf, in 
 order to extend her commerce in that direction. 
 Germany, whose masterful and energetic spirit, 
 now that her people feel they have become 
 citizens of a mighty Empire, asserts its pre- 
 tensions at every point of the globe, has acquired 
 an immense extent of territory in East Africa, 
 and, what is still more serious, has used her 
 
152 GERMAN AMBITION IN MESOPOTAMIA. 
 
 influence at Constantinople to obtain a conces- 
 sion for the construction of a railway through 
 Mesopotamia to Bagdad and Bussorah, at the 
 head of the Persian Gulf, and so to get posses- 
 sion of the valley watered by the great river 
 Euphrates, which only wants decent government 
 to become once more what it was for many 
 ages in the old days, one of the chief granaries 
 of the world. 
 
 In a conversation I had a few years ago 
 with one of the most far-sighted and dis- 
 tinguished members of the Conservative party 
 I urged that the old policy of backing up 
 Turkey was obsolete, that Constantinople itself 
 was situated on a backwater, away from the 
 main highways of trade, and that we ought to 
 be content if, in the general break-up of the 
 Turkish Empire, we secured the Nile and the 
 delta of the Euphrates down to the Persian 
 Gulf The statesman to whom I was talking 
 said that he, for his part, considered any 
 English Ministry ought to be impeached which 
 allowed another Great Power to lay hands upon 
 Mesopotamia. Yet Germany is now doing this 
 before our eyes, and the Imperialist Govern- 
 
ENGLAND S ABDICATION. I 53 
 
 ment of England looks on with '* a sombre 
 acquiescence." What has been done in Persian 
 and Arabian waters has latterly been attempted 
 in China, and that immense Empire is in danger 
 of being torn in pieces by Powers which are 
 now keen to plunder where England once held 
 sway. 
 
 Lord Salisbury must bear the responsibility 
 for the abdication of England's position in the 
 East. He has never asserted our power, but 
 has given way at every point where we have 
 been threatened. His intimate friends often 
 make the excuse for him that his hands have 
 been full and that he could not, unless he chose 
 to go to war with all the world, defend English 
 interests wherever they were attacked. In 
 order to get a free hand in Egypt he may have 
 been forced to make concessions to other 
 Powers which act on the principle Do 2it des, 
 and in this way we can explain his silence in 
 the face of aggressions which he might have 
 been expected to resent. But no obligations of 
 honour or national interest forced him to under- 
 take the conquest of South Africa, which has tied 
 the hands of England and encouraged foreign 
 
154 OUR POLICY IN CHINA. 
 
 Powers to trade upon our embarrassments. 
 Our whole policy since the termination of the 
 war between China and Japan has been a pro- 
 longed series of blunders. We refused to inter- 
 fere ourselves, but allowed Russia and Germany 
 to do so, and these two Powers were thus 
 encouraged to establish themselves on the 
 Chinese mainland. This did not so much matter 
 in the case of Germany, as Kiaochow can never 
 become the centre cf a lucrative commerce ; but 
 the acquisition of Port Arthur by Russia marked 
 the completion of a political revolution. So 
 strongly was this felt to be the case by men who 
 understood the East that an active aoitation was 
 set on foot three years ago in England to compel 
 Lord Salisbury to check the Russian advance. 
 One of the chief promoters of this agitation was 
 Mr. Archibald Colquhoun, who brought to the 
 work not only his own great personal familiarity 
 with Chinese affairs but also the influence of the 
 Times, and a considerable body of members 
 on the Ministerial side of the House, inspired, 
 it is whispered, by one or two well-known 
 Ministers, followed the lead which had thus 
 been set. I myself attended the dinners and 
 
THE CHINA PARTY IN THE HOUSE. 1 55 
 
 meetings of what was called '' the China 
 party," which talked very boldly for some time, 
 but when, at one of the meetings, I ventured, 
 by way of experiment, to suggest that we 
 should call upon Lord Salisbury to go to war 
 for Port Arthur, I could find no support. This 
 is the usual end of mutinies among the Con- 
 servatives. The mutineers either have not a 
 definite policy or are afraid of giving offence to 
 the Ministers, and so the whole thing ends In 
 smoke. 
 
 It Is quite clear that If w^e really Intended 
 to make Russia hold her hand we ought to 
 have turned her out of Port Arthur. After- 
 wards, It was too late to do anything, and the 
 acquisition of Wei- Hal- Wei as a counterpoise 
 was merely throwing dust Into the eyes of the 
 British public. Port Arthur was not merely a 
 good harbour where Russia might securely carry 
 on trade ; it was the terminus of an Immense 
 Imperial work which had been carried on stead- 
 fastly by Russia through a long series of years, 
 and which Is likely to affect more powerfully than 
 the opening of the Suez Canal Itself the course 
 of trade and Industry In the East. By becoming 
 
156 PORT ARTHUR. 
 
 mistress of Port Arthur Russia establishes her- 
 self as a great military and maritime Power in 
 the Northern Pacific, connected by a line of 
 railroad with the Empire of Russia, and thus 
 rendered Independent of the maritime Powers 
 of Europe. We have only recently seen with 
 what ease she can now place large bodies of 
 troops In Manchuria. When the railway has 
 been thoroughly completed along its whole 
 length the Empire of Russia will be consolidated 
 from the Baltic to the Pacific, and trade, which 
 for some centuries now has been conveyed by 
 sea, will flow largely back again to its old land 
 channels and make all Eastern Europe Indepen- 
 dent of English shipping. 
 
 So entirely does the surrender of Port Arthur 
 to the Russians change the whole face of things 
 in the East that since it took place I have myself 
 urged the acceptance by England of a policy of 
 conciliation, as that of resistance had failed. 
 It Is obvious now that Russia has secured the 
 mastery of the whole of Northern and nearly 
 the whole of Central Asia, and our statesmen 
 should try to avail themselves of the great com- 
 mercial undertaking the Russians have finished, 
 
RUSSIA AND ENGLAND. 1 57 
 
 and to extend the line across Asia to Calcutta, 
 as well as to Pekin. But English Ministers, not 
 having had the courage to make Russia hold 
 her hand while yet there was time, now think 
 it a sagacious policy to murmur against what 
 cannot be undone. I confess I am perfectly 
 amazed at the fatuity of the action pursued by 
 our Government. Mr. Arthur Balfour invited 
 the Russians to come down to the Pacific ; he 
 did not, indeed, name Port Arthur, but every- 
 body understood that that was the only place 
 they could come down to. Then our Ambas- 
 sador at Pekin begins a diplomatic quarrel 
 with the Russian Minister, and he and the 
 Times correspondent send home telegrams 
 calculated to bring on war any clay between 
 Eng^land and Russia. 
 
 It is not surprising that the Imperial Court 
 at Pekin grew distracted with the strange 
 varieties of advice offered it by the foreign 
 Ministers. Each Minister had his own special 
 batch of favourite applicants for concessions, 
 and his own foreio-n oruard in readiness to 
 back them up. So all the ante-rooms of the 
 Imperial Palace were filled with company- 
 
158 HELPLESSNESS OF THE CHINESE. 
 
 promoters, including many members of Parlia- 
 ment, and the poor Chinese found that their 
 own land was in danger of being taken from 
 them. Then they rose in rebellion, and the 
 European Powers, in the name of Chris- 
 tianity and progress, are going to exact from 
 them a shamefully exorbitant penalty by way 
 of compensation, and then to establish at 
 Pekin a larger international guard than ever. 
 Is it not obvious that this guard is the root of 
 the whole mischief, and that so long as it exists 
 China can never recover her independence, 
 while the seeds will be sown of innumerable 
 jealousies and quarrels among the States of 
 Europe ? 
 
 The chief feature in the present situation in 
 Asia is the perpetual rivalry between England 
 and Russia, and the efforts of statesmen in both 
 countries are directed, from time to time, towards 
 substituting for that rivalry a friendly and lasting 
 agreement. I have lono- been convinced that 
 such an agreement might be brought about if 
 England would take advantao^e of Russian 
 enterprise in extending the Central Asian rail- 
 ways to Manchuria, and would propose that the 
 
AN ANGLO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE. 1 59 
 
 English and Russian systems should be linked 
 together, and a direct overland-railway line 
 built all the way to Calcutta. I have urged 
 this matter on public attention in letters to the 
 Times newspaper, and in papers read before 
 learned societies in London, and my recent 
 visit to India impressed so strongly upon me 
 the absolute necessity for such a change as I 
 advocated, that when I returned to England I 
 sought an interview with Lord Salisbury on the 
 subject. The Prime Minister received me with 
 cordiality, and encouraged me to talk to him for 
 a long time, not only on this question, but on 
 public affairs generally. He expressed himself 
 warmly in favour of a better understanding with 
 Russia, and thought favourably of the plan I 
 brought before him. I afterwards saw M. de 
 Staal, the Russian Ambassador, at Chesham 
 Place, and had a long conversation with him. 
 He was quite familiar with the railway project, 
 and said that all leading statesmen in both 
 countries were in favour of an agreement which 
 would put an end to perpetual conflicts ; but, 
 he added with a smile, ''We have Jingoes in 
 Russia as you have in England." This matter 
 
l6o THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY. 
 
 is one of such supreme international importance 
 that it is worthy to be discussed in a detailed 
 and exhaustive manner. 
 
 The beneficent commerce of the overland, or 
 caravan, routes through Asia was overthrown 
 by the Tartar conquests of the 15th century, 
 which depopulated vast regions of the continent, 
 extinguished industry and order, and trans- 
 formed the seats of mighty empires into 
 haunts of desolation and anarchy. But, in the 
 same century. Providence, working in its own 
 mysterious way, opened a new route to India, 
 that by the Cape of Good Hope, by which 
 the commerce of the East with Europe could 
 be securely and profitably carried on without 
 the risk of disturbance from the wars that 
 shook the continent of Asia. 
 
 From that time onwards the riches of India 
 have been the prize of the strongest among the 
 maritime Powers of Europe. England succes- 
 sively defeated all her rivals and gathered into her 
 own hands the whole trade of the East, including 
 not only India but China, where our commerce 
 gained a foothold largely through military enter- 
 prises undertaken from India. This monopoly 
 
WHAT ITS CONSTRUCTION MEANS. l6l 
 
 was consolidated during the long struggle with 
 France at the beginning of the 19th century, 
 when English fleets swept the seas clear of 
 every foreign ship, and it is certain that the 
 immense wealth derived by our merchants from 
 the Indian trade enabled England to bear with 
 ease the colossal burdens imposed upon this 
 country during the Napoleonic wars. 
 
 Now, it would appear that a new economical 
 and commercial revolution is impending, and 
 that maritime commerce is threatened with 
 serious competition from the new trans-con- 
 tinental railways which Russia, in particular, is 
 constructing with so much energy and foresight 
 in Asia, The line across Siberia has already 
 been carried, with only a break at Lake Beikal, 
 as far as the commencement of the navigable 
 water-way to Vladivostock, and, before five 
 years more have elapsed, it is probable that 
 direct communication will have been established 
 between Moscow and Pekin, and the Chinese 
 capital brought within a week's journey of 
 Europe. This immense change will breathe 
 fresh life into the dry bones of Asia, and 
 cannot but revive the great overland trade 
 
1 62 THE RENASCENCE OF ASIA. 
 
 which had fallen for so many centuries Into 
 desuetude. Russian and German commercial 
 travellers will swarm into the industrial districts 
 of the Chinese Empire, delighted at being set 
 free from the long and toilsome sea journey, 
 and bringing goods with them for exchange 
 against silk and tea, and gradually it will be 
 found that Chinese commodities brought by this 
 route will supply the wants of all Asia, and of 
 Europe, as far at least as the latitude of Berlin 
 and Vienna. 
 
 But what interests us to-day is the know- 
 ledge that the projects of the Russian 
 Emperor do not stop short with the completion 
 of the Siberian railway. A branch from the 
 main line has been projected and commenced 
 which will extend from Orenburg to Samar- 
 cand. This will complete, by a junction with 
 the Transcaspian railway, the iron girdle with 
 which all Central Asia will be embraced by 
 Russia, and a vast region of fertile soil restored 
 to civilisation. Moreover, it will bring the 
 famous birthplace of Tamerlane within six days' 
 unbroken land communication with Calais, and 
 offer a tempting opportunity for the further 
 
RUSSIAN AND INDIAN RAILWAYS. 1 63 
 
 progress of the railway through Afghanistan to 
 Peshawur, and for that Hnking-up of the Russian 
 and Indian railway systems which would reduce 
 to nine days the journey from London to 
 Calcutta, and would thus confer incalculable 
 benefits upon the whole of the East. 
 
 This has now become a practical possibility. 
 It needs nothino^ more than the construction of 
 a very few hundred miles through the passes 
 of the Hindoo Khoosh and the Himalayas ; 
 and this would be an easy task for modern 
 engineers. This route appears to me to possess 
 unquestionable advantages over any other that 
 can be named. Now that the Transcaspian 
 Railway through Russian territory has been 
 opened as far as Samarcand, and a branch 
 made as far as Kushk, in close proximity to 
 Herat, many people favour the completion of 
 this line of communication as far as Chaman, 
 below Candahar, which is the terminus of the 
 Indian railway system. The line from Herat 
 to Candahar, a distance not exceeding 500 
 miles, runs through a comparatively easy 
 country, and could be built cheaply and expedi- 
 tiously. But this line would debouch into India 
 
164 VARIOUS ROUTES DISCUSSED. 
 
 at its extreme western limit, and would be 
 complicated by the break of the Caspian Sea, 
 across which goods and passengers must be 
 conveyed by steamer. What is wanted is un- 
 broken land communication from Calais to 
 Calcutta, and this is supplied by a line through 
 Orenburg, which avoids both the Caspian and 
 the Sea of Aral, and runs for the greater part 
 of the way through a region well known in 
 ancient times for its fruitfulness. 
 
 A similar objection to that taken against the 
 Transcaspian line might be urged against the 
 new railway through Mesopotamia, for which 
 a G' rman syndicate has just obtained a 
 concession at Constantinople. This line runs 
 from the northern shore of the Bosporus to 
 Baghdad and Basra, and no doubt the pro- 
 moters contemplate ultimately extending it 
 along the eastern coast of the Persian Gulf as 
 far as Kurrachee. It seems an astonishing 
 thing, when we reflect that a survey for a 
 Euphrates railway was made sixty years ago, 
 and that for the greater part of this century 
 English influence has been supreme throughout 
 Turkey in Asia, to find that Germany has now 
 
LINE THROUGH MESOPOTAMIA. 1 65 
 
 Stepped in and appropriated the whole of this 
 fertile territory to herself, without, apparently, 
 encountering any protest on the part of our 
 Foreign Office. The Germans are our most 
 formidable commercial competitors, and we can 
 hardly view with equanimity the transfer to the 
 enterprising- German Empire of the right to 
 develop the country along the Euphrates and 
 Tigris valleys, and to gain access to the open 
 waters of the Persian Gulf. 
 
 A line as far as Baghdad might not seem so 
 objectionable, but this concession includes the 
 seaport of Basra as well, and It has always, and 
 rightly, been the instinctive tradition of our 
 Foreign Office to view with the utmost jealousy 
 the appropriation by any rival Power of a port at 
 the moutli of any of the great navigable rivers 
 of the world. It was the control of the Nile 
 Valley that made the conquest of the Soudan 
 so valuable to us, and there is not one of the 
 orreat rivers of Africa and Asia which we have 
 not annexed or thrown open to our commerce. 
 To a maritime nation, indeed, this access to the 
 alluvial valleys, watered by navigable streams, 
 is as the breath of its nostrils. The Germans 
 
1 66 BREAK OF BULK. 
 
 tells US that freedom comes from the mountains, 
 but I would add that civilisation dwells In the 
 valleys. Population, industry, and wealth 
 flourish on the banks of the rivers which carry 
 down to the sea the commerce that is thence 
 transported in our ocean steamers to all parts 
 of the world. Hard political necessity can 
 alone have moved Lord Salisbury to sanction 
 this German advance. He has probably 
 been influenced by two considerations — in 
 the first place, he has established German 
 authority In Syria and Mesopotamia, athwart 
 the direct lines of advance of Russia to the 
 Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf : and, in 
 the second place, he has secured for himself a 
 free hand to do what he likes in Egypt and 
 South Africa. 
 
 But, so far as communication with India Is 
 concerned, It does not appear to me that this 
 route can ever interfere seriously with our 
 over-sea commerce between Enoland and Bom- 
 bay. So long as the Bosporus is unbrldged, 
 transit through Turkey in Asia would always 
 be embarrassed by a break of bulk, and all 
 merchants are aware that this obstacle in 
 
A THROUGH LINE INDISPENSABLE. 1 67 
 
 itself would neutralise most other advantao^es. 
 
 <_> 
 
 Since the opening of the Suez Canal projects 
 of a Euphrates Valley railway have fallen 
 into disfavour in this country, because the im- 
 mensely increased facilities for quick maritime 
 communication have made it unlikely that any 
 combined sea and land line to India will attract 
 either goods or passengers. I come back, 
 therefore, to my conclusion that the present 
 over-sea route has no competition to fear except 
 that from a throuo-h land line from Calais to 
 
 o 
 
 Calcutta, which would enter India near its centre, 
 and be continued down the great valley of the 
 Ganges. 
 
 The most disquieting feature of all these 
 railway projects is the evidence they afford 
 of the immense commercial activity that is now 
 spurring on both Germany and Russia to new 
 enterprises. We know what a formidable rival 
 Germany has become to this country in all 
 parts of the world, but less heed has hitherto 
 been paid in England to the prodigious indus- 
 trial and trading development that has taken 
 place in Russia, Even the Trans-Siberian rail- 
 way has been promoted and pushed forwar<^ 
 
1 68 CALAIS TO CALCUTTA IN TEN DAYS. 
 
 for commercial rather than miUtary ends, 
 though I do not for a moment say that the 
 latter have been lost sight of When I was at 
 Aden, a little more than a year ago, there were 
 a number of vessels in the harbour fl) ing the 
 Russian flag, and I remarked to a Russian 
 diplomatist, who was travelling eastward in the 
 P. and O. steamer, that Russia appeared to be 
 sending a good many troops to Port Arthur. He 
 invited me to accompany him and see the ships 
 for myself I did so, and found these vessels 
 were crowded with emiorants from Southern 
 Russia, fathers of families with their wives and 
 children and household goods, who were on 
 their way to take up their residence in the 
 country opened by the new Siberian line of 
 railway. These emigrants are largely helped 
 by the Government, which supplies them with 
 houses, plots of land, and agricultural implements 
 free, and relieves them of all taxation for several 
 years. They will form a connecting link between 
 Russia and. Northern China, where already a 
 docile and industrial population provide a trade 
 which is rapidly increasing in volume. 
 
 The Siberian project was probably inspired 
 
RUSSIAN DEVELOPMENT OF SIBERIA. 1 69 
 
 by the great success which has attended the 
 completion of the Transcaspian railway through 
 Russia's new possessions in Central Asia. We 
 can most o( us remember the airs of superiority 
 that English politicians used to give themselves 
 in talking of Russian adventures in the almost 
 unknown country beyond the Caspian. To 
 take a conspicuous instance, the Duke of Argyll 
 ridiculed as " Mervousness " the apprehensions 
 entertained by far-sighted statesmen as to the 
 probable effects of the Russian conquest of Merv. 
 But Russia established and consolidated her 
 possessions up to and beyond the Oxus, and 
 bound them together by the railway to Samar- 
 ■cand, and now we find that, instead of "gorgons 
 and hydras and chimeras dire," this country of 
 the Turkomans is fruitful and prosperous, and 
 that a chain of cotton plantations exists where 
 once there was nothing but desert. Not only have 
 the Russians turned the whole of this territory 
 to account, but they have pushed their trade 
 successfully into Khorassan and the whole of 
 Northern Persia. They have built good roads 
 from the Caspian to both Meshed and Teheran, 
 and all the reports of our consular officers show 
 
170 HER EMPIRE CONSOLIDATED. 
 
 that Russian trade Is increasing, while EngHsh 
 trade is falling off in this part of the world. 
 The new Russo- Persian loan shows how Russia 
 is consolidating her financial position in Persia. 
 The Russians have also secured from the Shah 
 of Persia the renewal for another term of five 
 years of the exclusive right to construct railways 
 in Persia, and their administration is everywhere 
 marked by progress, while British trade is content 
 with the slow and uncertain transit of our goods 
 over a thousand miles of roadless and badly- 
 policed territory from Bushire and Bunder 
 Abbas. Yet I have been assured on excellent 
 authority that a good many years ago the Shah 
 of Persia made an application to our Foreign 
 Office for the Investment of British capital 
 In the construction of Persian railways ; but 
 this proposal was treated with contempt. The 
 greater intelligence shown by Russia Is already 
 havlnor the effect of transferrino- a considerable 
 portion of our trade to Russia. Formerly, tea 
 from China was brought to Bombay, and shipped 
 thence to the Persian Gulf ports for conveyance 
 by land into Central Asia. Now, however, the 
 middleman has discovered for himself that by 
 
INCREASE OF HER OVERLAND TRADE. 171 
 
 forwarding this tea from Colombo up the Red 
 Sea, and round to the port of Batoum In the 
 Black Sea, he can obtain a more secure and 
 expeditious, and a cheaper, transit for his goods 
 by the Trans-caucaslan railway as far as the 
 Caspian, and thence Into Central Asia ; and this 
 trade has been lost to Bombay. 
 
 We have perhaps been accustomed in this 
 country to fix our eyes too exclusively on the 
 advantages of maritime communication, and 
 to underrate the oiant strides which Continental 
 nations are making by means of their railways. 
 Let me take an illustration of what I mean. 
 When I first visited Venice, thirty years ago, I 
 found that by far the best mode of conveyance 
 for goods purchased there was by steamer to 
 London, and all trade with Italy was practically 
 carried on by English ships. Now, our consular 
 reports from Italy repeat year after year the old 
 story of the success in trade achieved by the 
 foreigner, and strong complaints are made of 
 the want of enterprise of the British merchant. 
 But is there not another and more natural cause 
 for the decay of British trade ? If we turn over 
 eyes to the map of Europe, and we shall see 
 
172 THE NEW VALUE OF LAND LINES. 
 
 that, largely through the energy and ingenuity 
 of Swiss railway engineers, the Alps, which 
 once shut off Italy by land from the rest 
 of Europe, have now ceased to exist. This 
 chain of mountains has not been levelled ; 
 but, what comes to the same thing, it has been 
 tunnelled in half a dozen different places from 
 the Mont Cenis to the Brenner Pass, and the 
 success of these tunnels has now led to the con- 
 struction of another route through the Simplon. 
 Now, any one who visits the Riviera can see 
 for himself that the Alpine railways, and 
 especially the St. Gothard route, bring swarms 
 of German excursionists into Southern France 
 and Northern Italy ; and the German traveller 
 is becoming a more important person in this 
 part of the Continent than even the English or 
 the American traveller. A similar chanoe has 
 taken place in the course of trade. Italy now 
 sends vast quantities of her agricultural produce 
 over the Alps into the thickly-populated valley 
 of the Rhine and the countries of Central 
 Europe, and she takes in return the manu- 
 factures of France and Germany, to the 
 prejudice of British trade, which can no 
 
T 'y 
 
 COURSE OF TRADE IN THE EAST. 1 7 
 
 longer compete with the cheap land traffic. 
 
 A similar revival of land traffic seems likely 
 to chano^e the face of all Asia. What we are 
 witnessing, in fact, is the renascence of Asia, 
 and it troubles one to reflect that England, 
 which was once supreme in Asia, is taking no 
 part in this great movement. Are we, in the 
 pursuit of a shadowy suzerainty in South 
 Africa, letting slip the substantial advantages 
 which lie ready to our hand in an infinitely 
 richer continent ? At all events, we let other 
 Powers take the initiative, while we remain 
 indifferent and apathetic. It was not always 
 so. More than sixty years ago the Court of 
 Directors of the East India Company sent 
 Alexander Burnes to Cabul and Bokhara to 
 report upon the new markets that might be 
 opened for Indian trade in Central Asia ; but 
 now every Asiatic market outside our own 
 Indian border has been seized by our rivals, 
 and the Indian Government is so much pre- 
 occupied with high politics and high jinks at 
 Simla that it leaves trade severely alone. 
 
 Our inaction is, of course, largely due to the 
 unfortunate relations which we maintain in 
 
174 OUR RELATIONS WITH AFGHANISTAN. 
 
 India with the Ameer of Afghanistan. Anglo- 
 Indian statesmen cherish, for the most part, a 
 rooted conviction that we must leave the Ameer 
 to go his own way without interference from 
 us ; and to such an extent is this doctrine of 
 total abstinence carried that we have actually 
 kept lying at Chaman, the terminus of the 
 Indian Railway system, beyond the tunnel 
 which we have constructed through the Khojah 
 Amran range, all the railway materials for the 
 buildinof of an extension to Candahar, which 
 we, nevertheless, do not venture to make. The 
 latest news we have from Afghanistan is that 
 the late Ameer actually broke up the roads 
 from Herat to Khushk on the Russian border, 
 to stop the growing trade in that direction. 
 Now, Afghanistan is simply an isolated remnant 
 of barbarism, enclosed between the two great 
 living empires of England and Russia, and 
 employing the mutual jealousy of these two 
 Powers to maintain its independence. The rule 
 of the late Ameer was not much less cruel or 
 oppressive than that of the Khalifa, whom we 
 have just destroyed in the Soudan. Yet we 
 support the Afghan ruler with a very large 
 
AFGHANISTAN. 1 75 
 
 subsidy, and in return he places heavy duties 
 on our commerce, and stirs up the frontier 
 tribes to make war upon us. 
 
 How much longer is this petty chief 
 to be allowed to block the high road of 
 civilisation, and to prevent the opening of free 
 and friendly intercourse between England and 
 Russia ? A joint representation from these 
 two Powers at the Court of Cabul would force 
 the Ameer to consent at once to the construc- 
 tion of railways throughout his dominions. 
 Calcutta and Kurrachee would then become 
 the seaports for Russian goods desiring an 
 outlet on the Indian Ocean, and India would be 
 able to conduct once more a large and lucrative 
 trade in her own articles of merchandise with 
 the Persian and Central Asian markets. I 
 have heard it said that through railways to 
 India ought not to be built, because we may 
 some day go to war with Russia. On the 
 same principle, express trains ought to cease 
 running from Paris to Berlin, because some 
 day war may again break out between France 
 and Germany. The objection has been made 
 that the linking up of the Indian and Russian 
 
176 RUSSIA. 
 
 railway lines would involve a much larger 
 military expenditure on our Indian defences. 
 But even now, while the Russians are hundreds 
 of miles away, we watch their every movement 
 with suspicion and alarm, and maintain a great 
 army in constant readiness to resist their 
 advance towards India. Our preparations for 
 war need not be more formidable if the two 
 empires were no longer separated by a belt of 
 neutral territory, and if both Powers well 
 understood that the first step beyond a fixed 
 line would be equivalent to a declaration of 
 war. 
 
 I am afraid that the only real obstacle to the 
 completion of a through overland line is the 
 unwillinorness of our Foreio^n Ofhce to move out 
 of its accustomed groove, and to exercise a little 
 ordinary foresight in dealing with a perfectly 
 changed condition of affairs. Lord Salisbury 
 was no doubt in the right twenty years ago 
 when he advised his fellow-countrymen to study 
 large maps ; but now the world has grown much 
 smaller, and the great capitals of Asia (Pekin 
 Samarcand, and Calcutta) have been, or can be, 
 brought within a week's easy journey from 
 
MR. BALFOUR S PHILOSOPHY. 1 77 
 
 Moscow. It is imperative, therefore, that we 
 should adapt ourselves to the changed circum- 
 stances of the time. Mr. Arthur Balfour, a 
 year ago, when speaking of the settled policy 
 of our Foreign Office, made use of the unfor- 
 tunate expression, " Sufficient unto the day is 
 the evil thereof." This maxim was, I believe, 
 the favourite motto of a king known in history 
 as Ethelred the Unready, and, if the Foreign 
 Office accepts it as a guide, it accounts for 
 much that has happened since Mr. Balfour 
 made his avowal. But I think you will agree 
 with me that the Department which administers 
 the foreign affairs of a mighty Empire should 
 be animated by a policy of greater courage, 
 determination, and enterprise. 
 
 o 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 India — Lord Curzon — The Land Settlement 
 
 and Indian Famines — Frontier Policy 
 
 Afghanistan. 
 
VIII. 
 
 Indian affairs have attracted of late years an 
 increasing* share of public attention, and the 
 Imperial problems they present for solution are 
 beginning to clamour loudly for debate. It is 
 easy and pleasant to accept the outward signs 
 of loyalty on the part of the princes and people 
 of India as conclusive proofs that that country is 
 convinced that it is governed by what Sir Henry 
 Fowler is fond of calling the best of all possible 
 administrations. But observers who look below 
 the surface are well aware that India was never 
 more profoundly disaffected to British rule than 
 she is at the present moment, that she was never 
 governed with less regard for the wishes and 
 interests of the subject-races, and that it is 
 only the hopelessness of resistance which pre- 
 vents the outbreak of formidable popular 
 insurrections. The old orood feelins^ between 
 conqueror and conquered, which thirty years ago 
 seemed to be of constant and rapid growth has 
 now quite died out, and the gulf between Euro- 
 pean and native is more firmly fixed than ever 
 
1 82 THE PRESENT STATE OF INDIA. 
 
 The confidence which the native community 
 used to feel in the good fortune and the power 
 of the Sirkar has been broken, and, despite the 
 hypocritical flatteries of interested courtiers, 
 the native of India, who used to accept English 
 domination as a divine institution, has begun to 
 ask himself what advantages he derives from 
 the rule of the alien. 
 
 This feeling is largely due to a sentiment of 
 despair caused by the apathy with which the 
 House of Commons has treated Indian questions. 
 India is unfit for representative institutions, but 
 for this very reason she is entitled to expect 
 that her affairs shall be treated by the Imperial 
 Parliament with intelligent consideration. I am 
 bound to say that there is now a bias, even on 
 the Ministerial side of the House of Commons, 
 in favour of treating India generously, but this 
 inclination is not sufficiently strong to take the 
 form of active and energetic action ; and I have 
 known several occasions on which members who 
 have cried shame with me beforehand against 
 instances in which India has been treated badly 
 have ended by going meekly into the lobby to 
 vote for the policy laid down by Lord George 
 
INDIAN QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE. 1 83 
 
 Hamilton at the bidding of his twice-pensioned 
 and thrice-decorated Council in Whitehall. 
 
 Immediately after the election of 1895 I came 
 into collision with the Government by criticising 
 in a hostile spirit the invasion and annexation 
 of Chitral. I am by no means opposed to a 
 well-conceived and resolutely pursued frontier 
 policy, but the series of successive advances 
 and retirements which the Government of India 
 has executed upon the territories of tribes which 
 were really well disposed tow^ards us seemed to 
 me to combine perpetual irritation with most 
 extravagant expenditure. Another quarrel I soon 
 after had with Ministers arose out of the shabbi- 
 ness of the great English Government in taking 
 away native Indian troops for the wars of 
 conquest in which we engage in Africa and 
 maintaining them, at the expense of the people 
 of India. On this occasion I seconded the vote 
 of censure moved from the front Opposition 
 bench ; and, although we were soundly beaten 
 on a division, it is a significant fact that the 
 Imperial Government has never, from that day 
 to this, ventured to move a single Sepoy out of 
 India for service in Africa without taking care 
 
184 FRONTIER POLICY. 
 
 that the cost of such an enterprise should be 
 borne by the English Treasury. The Frontier 
 Policy question came up again for discussion 
 with reference to the late Sir William Lockhart's 
 costly and inconclusive operations. I once more 
 interposed, and warned the Government of 
 India that they were going on the wrong tack 
 altogether. I think I may flatter myself that 
 this protest had some effect, for in conversation 
 with Lord George Hamilton some little time 
 afterwards I said to him, " You are getting into 
 a nice mess in India," and he replied, '' Oh, no ; 
 we shall soon get the business quietly settled. 
 We are going to grant the tribesmen very easy 
 terms. In fact we shall settle the matter on your 
 lines." When the official correspondence was 
 published, it turned out that the Secretary of State 
 had, in point of fact, restrained the impetuosity 
 of the Government of India and forced them to 
 withdraw their troops within their own frontier. 
 Soon afterwards Mr. George Curzon was 
 appointed to the high position of Viceroy of 
 India. But he is far too important a personage 
 to be disposed of at the end of a paragraph. 
 Lord Curzon, the present Viceroy of India, is 
 
LORD CURZON. 185 
 
 one of the very few men who in recent years 
 have made a considerable Parliamentary repu- 
 tation. Everything" from the beginning worked 
 in his favour. It is often said by people who 
 do not know English society that this is a 
 democratic age, but as a matter of fact an 
 Enorlish nobleman, althouofh his rank no lonofer 
 brings with it much direct political power, 
 enjoys a social influence such as his class never 
 before possessed, and has from early youth 
 opportunities of gaining distinction which are 
 hopelessly beyond the reach of ordinary men. 
 The son of an English peer begins life on 
 one of the highest steps of the ladder on 
 which a mere plebeian spends his whole life 
 in trying to secure a foothold. Mr. George 
 Curzon was born, so to speak, in the purple, 
 and has always turned this advantage of 
 the right of birth to the fullest use. With a 
 pleasing appearance, a good voice and a ready 
 gift of speech, he did justice to the clearness of 
 insight of Lord Salisbury, who introduced him 
 to public life as soon as he had made for himself 
 a name at the University. But, with a prudence 
 unusual in young men, Mr. Curzon borrowed 
 
1 86 HIS FARLIAMENTARY CAREER. 
 
 the art of the Dictator Sulla, who preferred to 
 call himself fortunate rather than skilful, and by 
 attributing- his success to his good luck disarmed 
 the ill-will of the populace. He has always 
 shown a magnanimous spirit, disclaiming any 
 special merit, and, though much attacked and 
 satirised, has never displayed impatience or irri- 
 tation against his assailants. But no man, to 
 whatever caste he may belong, can make his 
 mark in English public without possessing 
 exceptional abilities, and Mr. Curzon soon raised 
 himself to distinction as an orator, adminis- 
 trator, and man of letters. Nobody could have 
 shown more industry and energy than he did 
 in collecting and digesting every kind of infor- 
 mation, or in qualifying himself by travel and 
 reading for the highest political positions. His 
 prospects, consequently, soon became so bright 
 at home that surprise was felt when he accepted 
 the Viceroyalty of India, and so banished him- 
 self from the House of Commons. The usual 
 explanation of his conduct was that he had 
 chosen this great post because it would give 
 him an independence which he could not enjoy 
 as a member of the home Government. But it 
 
HIS POSITION AS INDIAN VICEROY. 1 8/ 
 
 soon became clear that nothing was further 
 from his intention than to take up the attitude 
 of antagonism to Ministers at Whitehall which 
 distinguished so many of his predecessors and 
 which so frequently caused embarrassment to 
 the Imperial Administration. When he first 
 went to India he was inclined to resent very 
 warmly the advances made by France and 
 Russia in the Persian Gulf, but Lord Salisbury 
 soon threw cold water on his efforts to raise 
 this Issue to the rank of an Imperial question. 
 From that time to this Lord Curzon has been 
 emphatically a good boy, and has never given 
 the worthy gentlemen upon the Treasury bench 
 the sliehtest cause for uneasiness. He has 
 surprised and disconcerted many of his former 
 admirers by resolutely setting his face against a 
 fire-eating frontier policy, and by withdrawing 
 within the Indian borders the troops who were 
 stationed in districts where their very presence 
 was a constant source of turbulence. Lord 
 Gorge Hamilton may have taken the initiative 
 in the conception of this new policy, but Lord 
 Curzon has carried it out boldly and con- 
 scientiously, and this is all the more to his 
 
1 88 COUNTERVAILING DUTIES IN INDIA. 
 
 credit because anything that seemed like with- 
 drawal on the frontier could not but be fiercely 
 resented by the military feeling of Anglo- Indians. 
 Another conspicuous example of the spirit of 
 unquestioning subordination to home influences 
 which animates the present Viceroy was given 
 in his ready obedience to the imperious demand 
 of Mr. Chamberlain and Lord George Hamilton 
 that we should, without a moment's delay, 
 pass an Act imposing countervailing duties on 
 sugar imported from foreign States into India, 
 and so compel the Indian people to buy dear 
 sugar for the benefit of the colony of Mauritius. 
 Although Lord Curzon lately, in what must have 
 been a tone of mockery, declared himself anxious 
 to consult public opinion in Bombay, he passed 
 his Sugar Bill without even taking the trouble 
 to wait for the opinions of his own official 
 advisers in Western India. Indeed the bill would 
 have passed without criticism if I had not called 
 attention to it as an instance of the way in 
 which the present Government is always 
 nibbling at Protection. My attention was first 
 called to the matter by some native merchants 
 in Bombay when I revisited that city in 1899. 
 
DEBATE IN THE HOUSE. 1 89 
 
 The mercantile community of Western India 
 had been inoculated with the English love of 
 freedom, and they had been alarmed to hear 
 that the Government of India contemplated 
 the imposition of countervailing* duties on the 
 imports of sugar. When I returned home I 
 found that a law to carry out this purpose had 
 already been framed, and that the Viceroy 
 intended to pass it by a coup de main. I had 
 the greatest difficulty in forcing the matter on 
 public notice, but finally by perseverance I 
 succeeded in raising a debate, in which I was 
 supported by the whole strength of the 
 Opposition. 
 
 My personal relations with Sir HenryCampbell 
 Bannerman had always been of a pleasant and 
 friendly character, and, much to my relief, the 
 leader of the Opposition came to the rescue 
 when I had put some searching questions to 
 the Government and received no satisfactory 
 reply. Sir Henry asked Mr. Balfour to name 
 a day for a debate on the subject, and this is, of 
 course, a request with which, when made from 
 such a quarter, the Government is bound to- 
 comply. A date was fixed, and Sir Henry 
 
190 SECONDING A VOTE OF CENSURE. 
 
 Fowler at once g'ave notice, on behalf of the 
 Front Opposition bench, that, when the debate 
 was opened, he should move an amendment 
 condemning" the proposed duties. The country 
 by this time was thoroughly awake to what was 
 going on. I had Issued a manifesto which was 
 published In all the papers, and to which the 
 Times did me the honour of devoting a long and 
 elaborate leading article, in which it attempted 
 to controvert my views. Lord Farrar wrote 
 me a warm letter of encouragement, asking 
 me to supply him w^ith detailed information, 
 the Secretary to the Cobden Club, Mr. Harold 
 Cox, gave me his able assistance, and Mr. 
 Rogers, the head of a leading confectionery firm 
 In the City, kept me well Informed as to the 
 sentiments of the trade. At the request of Sir 
 Henry Campbell- Bannerman, Sir H. Fowler 
 wrote and asked me to second his motion. 
 
 I hesitated to do so until I had consulted 
 Mr. Balfour, but, that gentleman assured me 
 that, although It would be a strong step for a 
 supporter of the Government to second a 
 motion of want of confidence, still he recognized 
 that I had a right to take an independent line 
 
RESULTS OF THE DISCUSSION. IQI 
 
 of action on Indian affairs, and he should not 
 resent my conduct if I chose to do what the 
 Opposition desired. I then felt free to act 
 according to my inclination, and I followed Sir 
 Henry Fowler and made a speech which aroused 
 the most furious animosity on the Treasury 
 bench, and especially in the breast of Mr. 
 Chamberlain, who, in his reply, delivered with 
 less than his usual coolness, dismayed many 
 men on the Ministerial benches by the uncom- 
 promising spirit of opposition to Free Trade 
 which he exhibited. Mr. Reed's picture in 
 Punch of Mr. Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, and 
 Lord George Hamilton, ''three life-long Free 
 Traders," as, with amusing inconsistency, they 
 called themselves, " listening to a Free Trade 
 speech," was one of the cleverest ever drawn 
 by that accomplished artist. I need not say 
 that we were soundly beaten in the division 
 lobby, but that was a matter of no moment. 
 The work which I took in hand when I 
 commenced the agitation was done. Anyone 
 who reads the speeches delivered by Lord 
 Curzon in the Calcutta Legislative Council 
 will see that the original intention of the 
 
192 ENGLAND AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 Government was not to confine this futile and 
 silly legislation to India, but to extend it to 
 the whole Empire. The Viceroy contempt- 
 uously ridiculed the "fetish of Free Trade," 
 and expressed a hope that what they were 
 doing would serve as a model for the mighty 
 world, and convince England in particular of 
 the error of her ways. The results showed that 
 the English people have not the slightest inten- 
 tion of abandoning the commercial policy of 
 the last fifty years. The Associated Chambers 
 of Commerce, by an overwhelming majority, 
 passed a resolution protesting against counter- 
 vailing duties, and the Government very 
 prudently resolved to have nothing more to do 
 with them. The Liverpool clique who are 
 always agitating against bounties, made some 
 mention of countervailing duties when the tax on 
 sugar was raised, but Sir Michael Hicks- Beach 
 promptly put his foot upon and crushed them. 
 The outcry. In fact, at the discovery the people 
 of this country had made against any taxes that 
 would affect the many and great industries 
 which owe their prosperity to cheap sugar was 
 quite sufficient to frighten a prudent Chancellor 
 
THE INDIAN FAMINE. 1 9 
 
 •-> 
 
 of the Exchequer, and we may now happily 
 consider that the danger of this imposition of a 
 countervaiHng duty on sugar in England may 
 be said to have passed away. 
 
 A more serious illustration of Lord Curzon's 
 subserviency to the home Government is afforded 
 by his neglect to ask for English help in mode- 
 rating the effects of last year's famine. Lord 
 George Hamilton has always taken up, with 
 regard to the famine, the perfectly safe position 
 that he w^as ready to grant aid from England 
 if India asked for it. But it is at the same 
 time perfectly evident from Sir M. H icks- Beach s 
 statement in the House of Commons that the 
 Viceroy had received a hint not to put forward 
 a request which might embarrass an Imperial 
 Government w^hich wanted all its money for 
 South Africa. On this hint Lord Curzon acted 
 loyally. It is curious that the Viceroy made 
 no attempt, in the long speech in which he sang 
 the praises of the Indian Administration for 
 the famine relief work it had accomplished, to 
 say how many people actually died last year. 
 His speech was full, as usual, of a fine flow of 
 rhetoric, but he does not explain why, if the 
 
194 INDIAN FAMINES. 
 
 hard- worked Indian officials were able to do so 
 much, they could not have done more with the 
 assistance of men and money from England. 
 The Viceroy shows no appreciation of the fact 
 that the famine has brought economic ruin upon 
 a large part of India, although he might have 
 read the letter in which the Chief Secretary to 
 the Government of Bombay, Mr. Monteath, 
 says, that the once flourishing and energetic 
 community of Western India, numbering some 
 15,000,000 of human beings, has been reduced 
 to a state in which society must be reconstructed 
 from its very foundations. 
 
 The Finance Commission, of which Sir 
 Antony Macdonell had been appointed Chairman 
 by the Viceroy, has now issued its report, and 
 the admissions it contains are all the more 
 damaging on account of the evident desire of 
 the Commission to make things as pleasant as 
 possible for the Government they serve. Public 
 criticism in India fastens upon the rigid and 
 inelastic character of the land assessment as the 
 one great cause of its harshness. In average 
 years, it is admitted, the assessment is not ex- 
 cessive, but in bad seasons it presses with 
 
PRESSURE OF LAND ASSESSMENT. 1 95 
 
 merciless weight upon the peasant cultivator, 
 who is forced by it into a state of indebtedness, 
 from which he can never shake himself free. 
 Hence the chronic state of poverty in which the 
 ryot lives, and his dependence upon the village 
 *'sowcar," or money-lender. 
 
 The curse of the ryot, say the officials on 
 the other hand, is his thriftlessness, and his 
 extravagant habit of spendmg far more than 
 he can afford on feasts and ornaments on 
 the occasion of a marriage in his family. But 
 anyone acquainted with the details of life in 
 a Hindoo village is aware that the money 
 spent on such festivities amounts merely to 
 the provision of sweetmeats and a few trinkets, 
 and costs very litde. What the ryot really 
 fears is the pitiless regularity of the demand 
 made by the State for a rent which is so heavy 
 that it leaves him no margin for saving in good 
 years. Sir Antony Macdonell's Commission 
 frankly acknowledges that in Bombay, where the 
 pressure of famine in recent years has been most 
 severely felt, the incidence of the land assess- 
 ment "is full," and it '* cannot be collected in short 
 years without forcing the cultivators into debt." 
 
196 THE RYOT AND THE MONEY-LENDER. 
 
 1 his is, of course, a complete condemna- 
 tion of the whole system. If a ryot, once 
 only in every five years, on the recurrence of 
 famines, is forced to borrow money to replenish 
 his stock and keep himself going, it is plain that 
 he must become permanently impoverished. 
 The money-lender has hitherto kept him sup- 
 plied with funds on the security of his land, 
 which he has had the rio-ht to transfer, hut 
 this security Lord Northcote's Government in 
 Bombay now proposes to take away from him. 
 A Bill has been introduced into the Bombay 
 Leofislative Council which has created an extra- 
 ordinary amount of agitation in Western India, 
 because, while professing to relieve the ryot 
 from the clutches of the sowcar, it really deprives 
 him of the only property he can pledge when 
 bad times come. The Bombay peasantry have 
 been absolutely ruined by the famine, and 
 are quite unable to pay the arrears of land 
 revenue. Then steps forward the Government, 
 and, in the true spirit of a usurer, declares 
 that those farms on which arrears exist shall 
 be forfeited, but that the Government will re- 
 grant them to the occupier on the condition that 
 
 1 
 
THE LAND POLICY OF PHARAOH. 1 97 
 
 he gives up his hereditary right of transfer. 
 He would, in this way, lose his tenure of the 
 land as a perpetual tenant, and would become a 
 mere tenant, who could be ousted whenever he 
 ceased to pay the yearly assessment in full. 
 
 There is nothing new in the system proposed 
 by Lord Northcote's Government. It was put 
 in force thousands of years ago by Joseph, the 
 astute Jewish Prime Minister of Pharaoh, when 
 the famine was sore in the land of Egypt. 
 Joseph induced the people to sell their birth- 
 right to Pharaoh in return for the o-rant of food 
 to themselves and their families, and so, as 
 Holy Writ pithily puts the result of the 
 transaction, "the land became Pharaoh's." 
 Lord Northcote's Government are resolved, 
 in like manner, that the land in future shall 
 become theirs, and not the ryots'. Lord 
 Northcote, with engaging simplicity, leaves us 
 in no doubt as to what is intended. ''It is 
 quite true," he says, " that a cultivator under 
 the new tenure will in the future have less 
 security to offer the money-lender, but the 
 obvious reply is that the ' sowcar ' will lend less 
 money." Precisely so. Strange as it may 
 
198 A PERMANENT SETTLEMENT. 
 
 appear to Lord Northcote, the ryot would 
 rather trust himself to the tender mercies of the 
 ''sowcar" than to those of a grasping and 
 unsympathetic Government. 
 
 Five of the non-official members of the 
 Bombay Council, after vehemently protesting 
 against the Bill, left the room by way of 
 protest when it was passed by the official 
 members, but this step will be considered 
 in these days a matter of no moment by 
 the official class. Do we not know by the 
 example of what has taken place in Malta that 
 the officials are always right, and that the 
 people never know what is good for them ? 
 This is the pure religion of modern statesman- 
 ship. Things were different a generation ago, 
 when Colonel Baird Smith converted Lord 
 Canning and Sir Charles Wood to the humane 
 and beneficent policy of permanently settling 
 the land revenue all over India. This policy 
 would have been carried into effect at that time 
 but for the sudden rise of the value of land in 
 Bombay as a consequence of the American War. 
 The Government imaoined that this rise would 
 last for ever, and so a great opportunity was lost. 
 
THE POVERTY OF INDIAN PEASANTS. 1 99 
 
 Yet whoever has lived in India knows 
 that for the sake of the Government itself it 
 were well to dissociate the civil servant from 
 the work of collecting the land revenue. The 
 Government is the worst of all absentee land- 
 lords, and nothing makes it so unpopular in India 
 as its yearly demand for rent. Whatever good 
 and kindly work is done for the people by 
 English administrators, the one drawback is 
 always remembered, that they have an interest 
 in doing it because it will increase the rent paid to 
 the State. The trail of the land tax is over it all. 
 
 One great source of the ryot's impoverishment 
 is the steady and officially admitted decrease in 
 the fertility of the soil, which no steps are taken, 
 by the skilful application of natural or artificial 
 manures, to restore to its original fruitfulness. 
 But there is one cause of the steady increase in 
 the poverty of India which has not yet received 
 the notice it deserves. Indeed I do not know 
 that any public man has ever taken it into 
 account, and I offer the idea now as original, with 
 the hope that it will provoke public discussion. 
 The intermeddling of the Government of India 
 with the currency of that country has done the 
 
200 MANIPULATING THE CURRENCY. 
 
 greatest possible mischief, and made the helpless- 
 ness of the ryot worse than ever. The Govern- 
 ment has tried in vain to force upon the people 
 of India a gold currency which they do not 
 want and will not have, and by stinting the 
 supply of silver has caused immense incon- 
 venience and disturbance to trade. But what 
 I would particularly insist upon is that the ryot 
 is practically defrauded by the Government when 
 he is forced to sell his crop at a fixed rate of 
 rupees to the pound sterling. 
 ' The only way in which he can dispose of his 
 crop is to sell it to the native capitalist, who in 
 his turn sells the bills of lading to one of the 
 exchange banks, which will only buy them at 
 the fixed official rate of is. ^d. for a rupee. 
 The margin of profit left to the poor ryot, 
 already small enough, is now artificially still 
 further reduced. 
 
 This is perfectly clear to anyone who con- 
 siders that the ryot receives payment in pounds 
 sterling which he can only exchange into rupees, 
 the currency he requires, at an over-valuation 
 of i6d. to the rupee instead of ii^d., the fair 
 market value. Thus, the ryot only gets about 
 
ARTIFICIAL VALUE OF THE RUPEE. 20I 
 
 thirteen rupees to the pound instead of over 
 twenty, and the value of the produce of his 
 land is correspondingly reduced. The depre- 
 ciation of silver, though causing inconvenience 
 to Government and a grievous loss to the 
 European official or merchant who wished to 
 remit money to England, conferred a large 
 bonus upon the Indian cultivator. This has 
 now been taken away from him, and at the 
 same time his rent has been raised by fully 25 
 per cent. Is it not obvious that his condition 
 must have been permanently impoverished by 
 the action of the Government ? 
 
 Since I begfan writinof this book I have found 
 that I am by no means singular in the view I have 
 taken, both here and in the House of Commons, 
 that the attempt to inflate the rupee by giving it 
 a fixed exchanoeable value is a mistake. Mr. 
 Wadia, of Bombay, a well-known financier and 
 man of business, says in a recent paper : — ''The 
 total exports of India last year came to 104 crores 
 of rupees at i6d. to the rupee, but at the true 
 value of the coin, viz., ii^d., the producers 
 would have received 146 crores, so evidently a 
 loss of about 42 crores, or, say, thirty millions 
 
202 THE OVER-VALUED RUPEE. 
 
 sterling, Is inflicted on the country on exports 
 alone. If fixity of exchange was the only 
 motive, why not fix the rupee at 1 1 ^d. as 
 Japan has done." Writing to me by last mail, 
 Mr. Wadia says that, while the Bombay 
 spinner is paying wages at the rate of i6d. to 
 the rupee, his rival in Japan is only paying 
 ii^d., andean, therefore, afford to undersell 
 him. Sir Antony Macdonnell said before the 
 Parliamentary Committee on the Currency that 
 taxation might be increased in India if people 
 had to pay their taxes in an over-valued rupee, 
 but, as this would be produced unconsciously, 
 he did not think the people would be "conscious 
 of any additional taxation." I wonder if Sir 
 A. Macdonnell and other civil servants were 
 *' unconscious " when their salaries were depre- 
 ciated by a movement of exchange in the 
 opposite direction ; they made an outcry 
 sufficient to rend the sky then. 
 
 The Indian Government has done this act of 
 injustice to the Indian peasantry because its 
 attention has always been fixed exclusively on 
 the Inconvenience caused to Itself by a heavy 
 fall in exchange, and has not taken sufficiently 
 
THE REAL CURSE OF INDIA. 203 
 
 into account the general well-being of the 
 people. Its great aim has been to keep the 
 treasury full rather than the pockets of the 
 people, and it has never perceived how much 
 good it might do to itself by letting the currency 
 alone and devoting its energies to a wise and 
 liberal assessment of the land. It is, unfor- 
 tunately, as true now as it was a hundred years 
 ago that there is no greater curse to India than 
 the able revenue officer. 
 
 A crisis, however, has now arisen in inter- 
 national politics which will profoundly disturb 
 the easy repose enjoyed by the Government of 
 India, and will put Lord Curzon's statesmanship 
 sharply to the proof. The death of the Ameer 
 Abdur Rahman of Cabul is an event of grave 
 moment, which cannot fail to affect all Central 
 Asia. The deceased Ameer was a bloodthirsty 
 despot of an even worse type than the Mahdi 
 of the Soudan, whom we put to death for his 
 crimes against Egyptian civilisation. But it 
 was our interest to maintain a strong ruler on the 
 throne of Afghanistan, and so we winked at his 
 misdeeds. Abdur Rahman knew his business 
 thoroughly, and had gauged to a nicety the 
 
204 THE LATE AMEER OF CABUL. 
 
 character of Lord Lytton, who as Viceroy of 
 India had invited him to fill the vacant throne. 
 He refused to be made kino- at Cabul unless 
 Candahar and Herat were also given over 
 to him, and, as Lord Lytton was as anxious 
 to o-et out of Afo-hanistan as he had been 
 two years before to get into the country, 
 he accepted Abdur Rahman's terms, and 
 even sacrificed our own friends to him. It 
 is now claimed by all the apologists of the 
 Indian Government that the deceased Prince 
 justified the choice made him by remaining 
 all his life a firm friend to the English alliance. 
 Like all Oriental potentates, the Ameer 
 could keep his own counsel, and we need not 
 accept too implicitly the rose-coloured accounts 
 given of him by the European adventurers 
 whom he employed, and whom, though he paid 
 them well, he treated as the dirt beneath his 
 feet. Nor is it likely that he opened his mind 
 freely to Lord Curzon, who had made a journey 
 to Cabul to interview him. Indeed, there is a 
 story current, w^hich may best be described as 
 unprintable, of the coarse way in which the 
 Ameer expressed his contempt for a visitor 
 
THE AMEER S CHARACTER. 205 
 
 who had reeled out to him a string of rhetorical 
 common-places. 
 
 There is sound truth in Lord Roberts's re- 
 mark, that no Afghan living can be trusted. 
 Abdur Rahman's main idea, it may safely be 
 said, was to keep both Russia and England at 
 a safe distance. He wished, like our own Charles 
 the Second, to remain a King till he died, and 
 
 so he dissembled his love and hate. An Afofhan 
 
 <_> 
 
 is always a shrewd bargainer, and so he took 
 advantage of our wish to secure his alliance by 
 demanding ever fresh concessions, which were 
 nearly always granted. He got his pension 
 doubled, and w^as given permission to establish 
 an arsenal at Cabul, where he prepared enormous 
 stores of excellent rifles and munitions of war. 
 He was also allowed to import through Calcutta 
 batteries of field-guns for the re-armament of his 
 artillery. He thus made Afghanistan a far more 
 formidable power than she had ever been before. 
 What he gave us in return it is difficult to say. 
 He has been more than suspected of having 
 secretly encouraged the frontier risings, with 
 which the Government of India of late years has 
 found it increasingly difficult to deal. What is 
 
206 THE TRANSIT TRADE. 
 
 certain is that, by diffierential duties, he has 
 stranMed the transit trade between British India 
 and the states of Central Asia. He has never 
 granted us permission to lay down the railway 
 from the Indian frontier to Candahar, though 
 all the material for this easy extension, including 
 even the framework of the stations, has been 
 lying ready on the spot for twenty years ; and 
 Lord Curzon, in despair, has been driven into 
 projecting a coast line through Seistan to 
 Eastern Persia, which it is perfectly childish to 
 imagine can ever come into serious competition 
 with the short roads from the Caspian to 
 Teheran and Khorassan which have been 
 opened by Russia. 
 
 So subservient had we become to the will 
 of the Ameer, that we actually congratulated 
 him on having told the Russians, who wished 
 to extend their Transcaspian Railway to 
 Herat, that the camels and asses, which had 
 served the needs of his ancestors, were good 
 enough for him, though it is notorious that 
 Lord Curzon had been trying to impress upon 
 him the advantages of opening his country to 
 railways. So Afghanistan continued, up to the 
 
THE NEW AMEER. 207 
 
 day of his death, to block the principal high- 
 way of civilisation in Asia, and to rejoice in its 
 barbarous isolation. The new Prince, Habi- 
 bullah, will no doubt desire to maintain the 
 state of things established by the late Ameer. 
 But personal character counts for everything in 
 Afghanistan, and of Habibullah's character we 
 as yet know nothing. He was kept in such 
 strict subordination by his late father that his 
 real disposition will only become known now 
 that he is his own master. Assuming that all 
 we hear about his virtue is true, we must still 
 remember that Afghanistan is a very turbulent 
 country, and that the people are unwilling to 
 submit to the rule of any one man until he has 
 proved his fitness to govern. The Ameer tried 
 to conciliate the goodwill of many powerful 
 families to his son by marrying him to no 
 fewer than seven different wives ; but family 
 alliances of this kind are apt rather to breed 
 than to allay rivalries in a land where the 
 Zenana is a hotbed of intrigue. 
 
 Moreover, the prize of getting the mastery 
 of the troops and the Arsenal and Treasury of 
 Cabul will in all likelihood prove an irresistible 
 
208 OUR CENTRAL ASIAN POLICY. 
 
 temptation to many a powerful chief. I do not 
 say for a moment that we should Interfere in any 
 of these tribal or dynastic fueds ; our best course 
 is to let the rivals fight their quarrel out 
 bv themselves. But the situation demands 
 constant care and watchfulness. Lord Curzon 
 is evidently on the alert, for he has already 
 mobilized two field batteries at Peshawar. 
 But the British o-arrison of India Is now 
 exceptionally weak, The troops lent to South 
 Africa have not yet been returned, and other 
 reoiments are now under orders to sail from 
 Bombay. The establishment of the remaining 
 regiments In India must be far below their 
 normal strength, for, owing to the strain of the 
 w^ar, the system of sending yearly reliefs from 
 England has broken down, or, which amounts 
 to the same thing, such immature youths have 
 been sent out as reinforcements that they have 
 been packed oft' home again as quite unfit for 
 Indian service. It shows the straits to which the 
 Government is reduced that a bonus of ^i6 a 
 head, or ^lo with a furlough to England, has 
 been offered to every time-expired man who will 
 re-enlist for a further term of service. We may 
 
RAILWAY THROUGH ASIA. 209 
 
 well pray, then, that the British Empire may be 
 delivered from another Afghan War. The mutual 
 jealousy of Russia and England may bring upon 
 us such a calamity, and I have endeavoured, 
 in the preceding chapter on China and our 
 position In the Far East, to point out by what 
 means these two great Powers may be brought 
 to act together in Central Asia. If England 
 and Russia were jointly to put pressure upon 
 the Ameer to open out his country, it is im- 
 probable that such advice would be disregarded. 
 To use force, In case of need, to compel the 
 Ameer to sanction the construction of an Inter- 
 national railway, might imperil his position, but 
 there is one concession we might make to him 
 which would carry great weight In his favour. 
 The chief desire of the late Ameer was to be 
 recognised by England as an Independent 
 sovereign, to escape from the tutelage of the 
 India Office, and to be repesented by a minister 
 resident In London. It was to press this 
 request upon the Imperial Government that he 
 sent the Shazada to England some years ago, 
 and this prince, Nasrulla, returned to Cabul 
 in disgrace because he had failed in his mission. 
 
 Q 
 
2IO HOW TO CONCILIATE THE AFGHANS. 
 
 1 
 
 Lord Rosebery, I am told, was willing to 
 consent, but Lord Salisbury succeeded to 
 power, and the matter fell through. We ^ 
 have here, however, the kind of bribe that 
 would be most acceptable to both Prince and 
 people In Afghanistan. We know how much 
 an Indian prince thinks of the addition of a gun 
 or two to his salute, and we may rest assured 
 that the Ameer would be delighted beyond 
 measure with any accession to his dignity. 
 The Government of India has affairs enough 
 at home to occupy all Its attention, and it can 
 easily afford to hand over Afghanistan to the 
 Imperial Government, more especially as In 
 Central Asia Its authority is already overlapped 
 by that of the Foreign Office. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Present Political Situation — How to End 
 the War. 
 
IX. 
 
 The general election of 1900 brought to an 
 end my Parliamentary career as member for 
 Cardiff For some time previously, owing to 
 the open letters I addressed to Lord Salisbury, 
 denouncing the war, and to the vote I gave in 
 the House of Commons condemning the policy 
 of Mr. Chamberlain, my relations with my con- 
 stituents had been greatly strained. The local 
 Committee of the Conservative party demanded 
 my resignation. In taking this action, they 
 arrogated to themselves a power to control the 
 member for the borough which they did not 
 posses'^, and which it w^as never intended 
 that they should possess. I had been elected by 
 the whole community, not by any committee ; 
 I had fulfilled all the pledges I made at the 
 general election of 1895 ; and I repudiated 
 the claim of a small committee to call upon 
 me to resign on account of my political 
 action regarding a question which had only 
 arisen since 1895, ^^^ ^^-^ ^^^^ before the 
 country at the election. I requested the 
 
2 14 RELATIONS WITH CARDIFP\ 
 
 committee to convene a public meeting, which I 
 promised to attend and to speak in my own 
 defence; but this they persistently refused 
 to do, and simply went on passing- resolutions 
 at clubs and committee meetino-s. I therefore 
 thought myself justified in retaining my seat 
 till a fresh general election remitted the 
 matter to the decision of the constituencies. 
 I should have come forward as an independent 
 candidate in 1890, but I was struck down 
 in the summer of that year by a severe illness, 
 which quite incapacitated me for several months 
 from taking part in public affairs. My health, 
 now happily restored, had given me much 
 anxiety for nearly three years, and I went to 
 India at the end of 1898 to try if a sea voyage 
 would do me any good. It was on this occasion 
 that my many friends in London did me the 
 honour of entertaining me at a public dinner in 
 the Hotel Cecil, at which Sir Thomas Sutherland 
 took the chair, and my old friend Mr. S. Digby, 
 of Bombay, kindly acted as Hon. Secretary. 
 This dinner was attended by nearly all the dis- 
 tinguished Anglo-Indians in London, by many 
 members of Parliament, and by delegates from 
 
DINNER AT THE HOTEL CECIL. 215 
 
 Oldham and Cardiff. Lord Roberts and the 
 present Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, wrote 
 letters expressing- their regret that they could not 
 come to the dinner; and the next day, at the Club, 
 Lord Curzon warmly congratulated me on having 
 had such a representative and authoritative 
 gathering. The voyage did me no good, and 
 finally I w^as laid up abroad for six months. I took 
 no part in the general election, and said not a word 
 to influence the result at Cardiff, but my friends 
 there showed what they thought by changing 
 my majority of i,ooo in 1895 into a minority 
 for the Conservative candidate of i,oco in 1900. 
 Since the election I have been released from 
 all party bonds, and have felt it my duty, as I 
 strongly sympathised with Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Bannerman in his desire for a reasonable settle- 
 ment in South Africa, to sever my connexion 
 w^ith the Carlton Club, of which I had been a 
 member for twenty years, and to which I w^as 
 endeared by long association and by many 
 warm friendships. 
 
 If, then, I conclude these reminiscences w^ith 
 some political observations, it will be under- 
 stood that I do so as a perfectly independent 
 
2l6 THE PRESENT POLITICAL SITUATION. 
 
 critic. It is not given to everyone to follow 
 the illustrious example of Lord Rosebery, and 
 to !nake only occasional forays into politics, 
 varied by long intervals devoted to ploughing a 
 lonely furrow, or to the composition of elaborate 
 essays on the virtues of King Alfred or the 
 faults of Napoleon. Versed, as I have been, 
 in public affairs all my life, I cannot willingly 
 stand aside when the State requires that every 
 man should contribute his mite towards the 
 formation of a common stock of public dis- 
 cussion and intelligence. 
 
 The public mind at present is in a very 
 irritated and uneasy state. Recent elections 
 conclusively show that the glamour of the war 
 has passed away, and that, while the country 
 would be ashamed not to fight the miserable 
 business to a finish, it is heartilv diso-usted with 
 what has been done and is now going on in 
 South Africa, and would gladly accept any 
 reasonable terms of accommodation with the 
 Boers. All the shouting is over. We have 
 come to our senses, and are beginning to treat 
 the war in a serious spirit. We have, in fact, been 
 rudely awakened from our vainglorious dreams. 
 
WEARINESS OF THE WAR. 217 
 
 It is humiliating- to discover, as we have done, that 
 we, a nation of 60,000,000 of human beings (in- 
 cluding the great colonies), with overwhelming 
 force and inexhaustible resources at our com- 
 mand, cannot break down the resistance of a 
 handful of peasants in South Africa. The 
 war drifts on from month to month, and the 
 lavish expenditure alone supplies food for 
 thought. The total addition already made to the 
 National Debt is 175 millions, besides the large 
 sums raised by increased taxation, and Parlia- 
 ment has been summoned to meet in January 
 in order to vote more money. This colossal 
 expenditure has hitherto brought us in no return. 
 The War has hardly produced a general whose 
 reputation has not been tarnished, and the 
 condition of our army has become a scandal and 
 a bye-word. Recruiting has fallen off, we have 
 no men to send to South Alrica except the weak 
 and ignorant off-scourings of our large towns, 
 whom Lord Kitchener contemptuously returns 
 on our hands as quite unfit to face the 
 hardships of campaigning*, and the system of 
 sending periodical reliefs for the Indian garrison 
 has completely broken down. The Chancellor 
 
2l8 IDLE AND COSTLY DRIFTING. 
 
 of the Exchequer, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach,, 
 with that curious lack of any sense of proportion 
 which distinguishes the present Government,, 
 says we are not spending nearly so much 
 money as our forefathers did in the war against 
 Napoleon. That is true, and, if we had to fight 
 an enemy like Napoleon, the country would not 
 grudge ten times the money. But what exas- 
 perates the English people is that our present 
 foe is so insignificant, and that still we make no 
 headway. 
 
 We might do better with conscription, and 
 to that, no doubt, we shall be driven if the 
 present state of things goes on. For my own 
 part I should welcome conscription. The 
 prejudice against It which is still cherished 
 by the Liberal party is only a relic of 
 '' a creed outworn." Liberals should rejoice 
 to see a really national and democratic army 
 replacing the present professional army, which 
 is only a preserve of class privilege and 
 social snobbery. Every Continental army has 
 adopted conscription ; our own great colonies 
 have taken it up as the cheap defence of nations; 
 and the training which young Englishmen now 
 
CONSCRIPTION. 219 
 
 get at public schools and in the volunteers 
 should make the burden exceedingly light for 
 them. The example of France shows that an 
 army which really represents the nation is bound 
 to be thoroughly peaceful in its disposition. 
 The frequent revolutions in Paris in the old 
 days were the w^ork of professional soldiers. 
 The fiercest street fighting recorded in history 
 is that of 1830, when the discharged soldiers of 
 the grand army of Napoleon were still active 
 and eager for revenge. The professional soldier 
 now in France is quite powerless, and, as we saw 
 in Boulanger's case, the national army will 
 not lend itself to carry out the designs of any 
 ambitious general. If conscription were the 
 parent of militarism, the present Government 
 would have adoped it long ago. What our 
 rulers love is a little army which will not get 
 out of hand, and whose officers form a great 
 social club, which is the obedient servant of 
 smart society in London. Hence, we have an 
 army officered by sportsmen who do not take 
 their business seriously, and who spend most of 
 their time in keeping in a flourishing condition 
 the clubs, the theatres, the restaurants, the 
 
2 20 PRESENT MILITARY SYSTEM. 
 
 fashionable shops, the evening newspapers, and 
 the other luxuries of the West End of London. 
 Such an army should never be tolerated by any 
 nation which was not " debauched with ease " 
 and long self-indulgence. 
 
 We are often told that, by way of compensa- 
 tion for the disasters which have crowded so 
 thickly upon the Empire, we have brought 
 the Colonies nearer to us, and welded the 
 Empire more closely together. But is this the 
 case ? While acknowledging, with pride and 
 gratitude, the intense loyalty of the colonies, 
 we can see that they have taken advantage of 
 the present opportunity to emancipate them- 
 selves completely and for ever from the 
 rule of Downing Street, and to make them- 
 selves thoroughly independent nations. They 
 have received the right to make their own laws, 
 to adopt their own commercial and financial 
 policy, to impose their own taxes, to have their 
 own armies and fleets, and even to conclude 
 treaties with foreign nations, and the very last 
 thing any one of them would ever agree to 
 would be to contribute a single shilling to any 
 committee of council or organisation sitting in 
 
THE COLONIES. 22 1 
 
 London. They refused even to send repre- 
 sentatives to poor Mr. Chamberlain's proposed 
 , Imperial Court of Appeal. So vanishes the 
 dream of Colonial Federation. 
 
 The Government has naturallv suffered 
 from the depression caused by the gloom)^ 
 political outlook. Signs abound that the- 
 Government has lost all its popularity, and 
 that any bold and capable leader could easily 
 upset it. The attitude of the nation towards 
 the Government is, to adapt the poet's words, 
 that of an angry people, which, creeping nigher, 
 " elares at one who nods and blinks beside a 
 slowly dying fire." Lord Salisbury himself has^ 
 ceased to count. He no longer, I deeply regret 
 to say, for it is painful to record the practical 
 effacement from public life of an illustrious man 
 w^ho has been an ornament to his ao-e, directs the 
 policy of the administration which is called by 
 his name. There is a famous picture, by Turner,, 
 of "the fighting 7 dm^raire'' being dragged to 
 her last moorings by a noisy, puffing little steam 
 tug. I sometimes think that this picture exactly 
 describes the present position of Lord Salisbury.. 
 Mr. Chamberlain has him in tow, and he is^ 
 
22 2 THE STATE OF THE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 quite helpless to steer his own course. Mr. 
 Balfour has conducted the House of Commons 
 in such a languid and lackadaisical fashion, as 
 if Parliamentary business should be regarded as 
 an interlude between a oame of ofolf in the 
 morning and an evening spent at the opera, 
 that he no longer commands popular respect. 
 Mr. Chamberlain is detested both in the House 
 of Commons and in the constituencies. As 
 for the remaining twenty members of the 
 Cabinet, or whatever their numbers may be, 
 does anybody even remember their names ? 
 
 Will the Liberals now come forward with a 
 straight and determined policy, and offer us the 
 chance of an alternative o-overnment ? Will 
 they cease astonishing the public with discus- 
 sions which, to use a phrase which was popular 
 thirty years ago, resemble nothing so much as 
 " the strange windy scufflings of kites and 
 crows " ? After the North-east Lanark election, 
 we need not give ourselves much more concern 
 about Liberal Imperialism, which is only a 
 cunning device of courtiers to play the game of 
 the Salisbury-Chamberlain combination. Nor 
 is it of any use to talk of domestic reforms 
 
THE LIBERAL PARTY. 223 
 
 which may find their place twenty years hence. 
 A definite issue must be placed before the 
 country, and Englishmen must be told how the 
 war can be ended and a lasting peace established 
 in South Africa. We have tried violence, 
 and that has failed. The only result of the 
 war so far has been to train all the Boers, 
 includino- the children who are to form the risino- 
 
 o o 
 
 _generation, to hate the English name with an 
 undying hatred. Is it not sheer mockery to 
 talk of settling this business by having recourse 
 to still harsher measures, in obedience to the 
 ferocious outcry of the ministerial press, which 
 shouts for more and more hangings and shoot- 
 ings as clamorously as the Roman crowd in the 
 amphitheatre used to shout Christianos ad 
 leones ? 
 
 The policy of Lord Milner has failed con- 
 spicuously. What can be thought of the judg- 
 ment of a man, who, coming over to England 
 professedly as an emissary of peace, could only 
 hiss out the words, " panoplied hatred, insensate 
 ambition, invincible ignorance," to describe the 
 people he said he wished to conciliate ? Not 
 only has he failed in any w^ay to bring the Boers 
 
2 24 LORD MILNER S POLICY. 
 
 of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State 
 to terms, but he has driven the whole of 
 Cape Colony also into rebellion. The Cape 
 was the most loyal and prosperous colony 
 that England possessed. It remained stead- 
 fast to the British connexion all through the 
 war, and even stood the strain of De Wet's 
 invasion. The last straw that broke the con- 
 fidence of the Cape Dutch in the English 
 Government was the institution of martial law, 
 with its arbitrary code of cruelty and injustice, 
 which followed close upon Lord Milner's scorn- 
 ful refusal to discuss in a reasonable spirit the 
 memorial adopted by the Dutch at Worcester. 
 Now, a great part of Cape Colony has risen in 
 arms against us, and the area subject to war 
 and desolation in South Africa has been in- 
 definitely extended. Every month that passes 
 removes the hope of reconciliation to a more 
 distant era, and the only hope of peace lies in 
 the chance that a Liberal leader in this country 
 will boldly formulate the terms on which he 
 thinks an arrano-ement with the Boers miofht be 
 made. It should be made clear that the 
 annexation imperiously demanded by Mr. 
 
CAPE COLONY. 225 
 
 Chamberlain and the annexation to which Sir 
 Henry Campbell- Bannerman gives his assent 
 are two very different things, and that the latter 
 form of annexation might be without difficulty 
 accepted by the Boers. 
 
 The Liberal leader has now declared that 
 negotiations with the Boers must be reopened, 
 and that they should be taken out of the hands 
 of Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Milner. Thus a 
 distinct issue has been raised, on which battle 
 can be joined, and the verdict of the constituen- 
 cies challenged. The Duke of Devonshire, in 
 a recent speech, has curiously missed the true 
 significance of the interesting account giv'en by 
 Mr. Adams of General Lee's surrender to 
 General Grant. The Duke says the moral of 
 the story is that true patriots do not continue a 
 useless war when they know they are beaten. 
 But the point made by Mr. Adams was that at 
 the crisis of a war the settlement should be taken 
 out of the hands of politicians and left to the 
 men who do the actual fighting. Jefferson 
 Davis, we are told, would have gone on with 
 the war, but Lee would not allow him. So the 
 generals in the field would long ago have made 
 
 R 
 
226 HOW TO END THE WAR. 
 
 terms with the Boers, if the poHticians had left 
 them alone. General Duller would have done 
 so after his interview with Louis Botha. Lord 
 Kitchener had actually settled matters with the 
 Boer commander-in-chief, when Mr. Chamberlain 
 interfered and said they were preposterous. Sir 
 Bindon Blood had an interview not lone aeo 
 with Ben Viljoen, and found him most reason- 
 able and moderate in his views. It is not the 
 generals who will not make peace but the 
 politicians. Why not throw over both Mr. 
 Kruger and Mr. Chamberlain, and send a man 
 of common sense to General Botha to explain 
 what we want ? 
 
 It is said that the Boer leaders will accept 
 nothing short of independence. But what do 
 they mean by independence ? Simply, I should 
 say, the right to govern their own little 
 Republics, which the British Empire can 
 easily spare. They do not seek to meddle 
 with imperial politics. They have felt the 
 power of England. Our flag, soiled at 
 Majuba, has now been washed red in the 
 blood of countless Boers. They have seen their 
 country laid waste by a host of British soldiers, 
 
CONCLUSION. 227 
 
 they know that we are masters of the sea, and 
 it would cost them no humiliation to admit that 
 we must be supreme in South Africa, so long 
 as they are left free to manage their own 
 business. Is there no one in England who will 
 listen to the voice of moderation, and meet the 
 enemy half way ? Surely we have had enough of 
 ''insensate" passion, born of wounded vanity 
 and vindictiveness, on both sides. The future of 
 all South Africa, perhaps of the Empire, is at 
 stake. Parliament is about to resume its de- 
 liberations. Will no one stand forward in that 
 august assembly to appeal to the national 
 conscience in favour of making such a settlement 
 as will bring salvation to South Africa, and 
 restore peace and prosperity to the British 
 Empire ? 
 
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