wmmmm^mm''^m -r:o)Tv nc riMirnRNix A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES VOL. V. WORKS BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY, M.P. A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, from the Accession of Queen Victoria to the General Election of 1880. 4 vols, demy Svo. cloth, 12^. each ; also a Popular Edition, in 4 vols, crown 8vo. cloth, 6s. each ; and the Jubilf.e Edition, 2 vols, large post Svo. cloth, 7^. W. each A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, from 1880 to the Diamond Jubilee. Demy Svo. cloth extra, 12s. A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. Crown Svo. cloth, 6s. ; also the Popular Edition, post Svo. cloth, 2^. 6d. A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 4 vols, demy Svo. cloth extra, 12s. each. (Vols. I. and II. ready.) Crown Svo. cloth, 3J. 6ii. each ; post Svo. illustrated boards, 2s. each ; cloth limp, 2S. 6d. each. DEAR LADY DISDAIN. LINLEY ROCHFORD. MY ENEMY'S DAUGHTER. THE WATERDALE NEIGH- BOURS. A FAIR SAXON. MISS MISANTHROPE. DONNA QUIXOTE. THE COMET OF A SEASON. MAID OF ATHENS. CAMIOLA: a Girl with a For- tune. THE DICTATOR. RED DIAMONDS. THE RIDDLE RING. Crown Svo. cloth, 3.. 6d. HE RIGHT HONOURABLE.' By Justin Mc Mrs. Campbell Praed. Crown Svo. cloth, 6s. London: CHATTO & WINDUS, in St. Martin's Lane, W.C. « THE RIGHT HONOURABLE.' By Justin McCarthy, M.P., and Mrs. Campbell Praed. Crown Svo. cloth, 6s. A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES FROM 1880 TO THE DIAMOND JUBILEE BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY, M.P. AUTIIOK OI" 'A HISTORY OK THE FOUR GEORGKS ' KTC. LONDON C H A T T O & W I N D U S 1897 PRINTED BV SFOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STKELT S(JfAIvE LONDON PA 5 BO PREFACE The first and second volumes of ' A History of Oar Own Times' appeared in 1878. It liad occurred to the author that one of the most difficult tasks for a young student just then was to get hold of the history of our own times. If anybody wanted to learn some- thing of the facts concerning the reign of Elizabeth, or the reign of Anne, or the reign of George the Third, or the years of the great Eeform Bill, there were standard books on every subject, which could be got at in every public Hbrary, and which indeed stood on the shelves of most men's private libraries ; but, to make oneself acquainted with what had hap- pened in the reign of Queen Victoria, there were only the interminable files of newspapers to consult, except, of course, for some special works dealing with particular chapters of history, such as the Crimean War or the Indian Mutiny. This was the want which the author of the History was anxious to supply, and he started upon his task with the conviction that there was no necessity for making vi PREFACE even contemporary history a dry record of facts and dates. A third and fourth volume were added to the story somewhat later, and the review of events pass- ing within our own recollection was brought up to the crisis of 1880, when Mr. Gladstone, at the head of the Liberal Party, once more returned to power. The present supplemental volume takes up the story at that momentous epoch. Its object is to pass in review all that has happened in the affairs of the Empire from that time until the ' Diamond Jubilee ' of the Queen's long reign ; and it is hoped that it may be found worth reading for the sake of the events described in its pages, and even apart from any interest it might have as a successor to former volumes. That it is written without undue sway of party or partisan feeling, the author trusts that the general public, from knowledge of the previous volumes, may be kindly disposed to believe. Ajn-il, 1897. CONTENTS I. The New Liberal Administration ... 1 11. The Beadlaugh Episode 19 III. Inherited Responsibilities— and others . 41 IV. The Irish Question G6 V. ' On Fame's Eternal Beadroll ' . . .98 VI. 'Oh! whither hast thou led me, Egypt?' . 113 VII. Some Losses to the World— one Gain, at LEAST, TO Parliament 133 VIII. Reform amid Storm 156 IX. Fall of the Liberal Government . . . 181 X. Home Rule 204 XI. Wreck of Many Kinds 238 XII. 'Parnellism and Crime' 252 XIII. The Year of Jubilee 274 XIV. Only a Death-roll 300 XV. Home Rule without Parnell .... 332 XVI. Mr. Gladstone Resigns — Lord Rosebery Succeeds 354 XVII. The Cordite Explosion 380 viii CONTENTS CHAPTEH PAGE XVIII. The Eastekn Question once moee . . . 401 XIX. Venezuela and South Africa . . . 419 XX, Death — and Dynamite 450 XXI. The Dongola Cabipaign ..... 478 XXII. ' The City op Blood ' . . . .... 497 XXIII. Pitman — Spencer Wells — The Appeal of the Prince of Wales 508 XXIV. The South Africa Committee . . . . 522 XXV. Blondin — Nansen — The Penrhyn Quarries —The Education Bill .... 529 INDEX 547 Errauim Page 245, line 20, far 1894 read 1895. A PIISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CHAPTEE I. THE NK\V LIBERAL ADMINISTRATIOX. In the early spring days of 1880 the Liberals, after a long exile from office, came back to power with a triumphant majority and with Mr. Gladstone as their leader. Mr. Gladstone found himself confronted with the difficulty which meets every Prime Minister who has to form an Administration suddenly and after his party had long been shut out of office. This would be something of a difficulty in any case, and we have several highly humorous presentations of it in some of Mr. Disraeli's novels. Must we really have this man again ? Can't w^e get rid of that man ? Isn't it about time that such a person was going to the House of Lords ? Would a baronetcy satisfy such another ? Some of these new men must come in, or there will be a row in the countr3\ The Whips insist that a place must be found for this or that rising man, but several of the risen men imply that they won't play any more if the rising man is brought into the 2 A HISTOEY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. i. Admiuistnition. In 18S0, however, the difficulty was much greater and more compHcated than usuaL Many changes had taken place during the retirement of Mr. Gladstone from the leadership of the Liberal party. New and serious responsibilities had been imposed upon the Liberal statesmen succeeding to power by the foreign policy of their Conservative predecessors. There were ^roubles in Western Asia, in Egypt, and in South Africa. The Liberals had inherited a war or two as yet unfinished. Some of the men who were most necessary to a strong Liberal Administration were in their hearts, and according- to their repeated public professions, utterly opposed to any policy which aimed at the extension of territory or warhke enterprise of whatever kind. One of the first questions which came up to the lips of everyone was, What will John Bright think about Afghanistan, and Egypt, and South Africa ? Yet, if it was doubtful whether Mr. Bright would consent to take office under such conditions, it was quite certain that a really strong Liberal Administration could not be formed without him just then. There were home difficulties and home troubles as well. They came into the hght at every popular meeting of Eadicals, and were well known to all the provincial agents and managers of local parties. One fact was certain, beyond any possible question or doubt. That fact was, that the great bulk of the Eadicals had long been weary of the leadership of Lord Hartington. There was nothing of the born leader about him. He could not lead— he could only 1880 LOED HARTIXGTON. 3 be pushed along to do his work. He had not sought the position of leader : it had been imposed upon him. Pie had accepted its obligations manfully, because there was no one else at hand to take them. He had done his very best to improve himself as a debater, and he had succeeded to a surprising degree. From being one of the worst speakers in the House of Commons he had drilled himself to become a really effective, and sometimes even a powerful, debater. But he could not lead. Mr. Chamberlain had publicly described him in the House of Commons as ' the late leader of the Opposition,' while he was still the titular successor to Mr. Gladstone. That was at the time when the Eadicals, in conjunction with the Irish Nationalists, were making their great fight for the abolition of flogging in the army and the navy, and for a reform in the system of prison discipline. Lord Hartington moved forward in obedience to the ^oad, and did his best with tlie rest of tlie work for the time ; Init a leader who will not move without the goad is not likely to excite the enthusiasm of his followers. Therefore the very difficulty of dealino- with Lord Hartington only made the Radicals more eager for forward movement under the guidance of Mr. Gladstone. Not much in the way of forward movement was expected any longer from Mr. Bright. The great popular trilmne, although younger than Mr. Gladstone, was in feeble health and somewhat wear}^ of battle. Moreover, he never had been an advocate of rapid change when once the great reforms to which he had devoted his eloquence and his enero-y B 2 A HISTORY OF OUE OWN TIMES. ch. i. had been wholly or for the most part accomplished. Therefore all men, Liberals or Conservatives, looked upon Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain as the two strong pillars of Democracy in the reconstructed Liberal party. It was clear from the moment when Mr. Gladstone took office that one or other of these men must have a place in the Administration, if not actually in the Cabinet. Both Dilke and Chamberlain knew very well that most of Mr. Gladstone's older col- leao-ues would do all thev could to reduce to its lowest possibihty the admission of the men wdio represented the new Radical element in political and social life. Some of the appointments to the new Ministry were easy and obvious enough. There were ex- cellent men ready for the posts — men who had proved their worth by service in former Administrations, men who could not in any case l)e overlooked. Lord Selborne became Lord Chancellor. He had been Solicitor-General and Attorney-General under former Liberal Administrations, and he might have been Lord Chancellor when Mr. Gladstone came back to power in 1868. But Sir Eoundell Palmer (as he then was) could not see his way to a thorough acceptance of Mr. Gladstone's L'ish Church policy. He had no objection to the disestablishment of the Irish State Church, but he could not stomach its dis- endowment. He was a man full of nice scruples. He was a theological politician, the theologian perhaps predominating over the politician. Later on, when Lord Hatherley resigned office, he became Lord Chancellor under Mr. Gladstone, and now becomes 1880 LORD SELBORXE — THE DUKE OF ARGYLL. 5 Lord Chancellor again. His name was identified with many endeavours at useful and practical law reform, and he will always be remembered among the great lawyers of this country who w^ere as strongly in favour of progress as Lord Eldon was in favour of standstill. He had been accounted at one time a power in the debates of the House of Commons, but in 1880 this fame had become a sort of tradition, the foundation of which young and sceptical members were inclined to question. It is needless to explain that there is a fashion in Parlia- mentary debate, as there is in dress and in social usage, and it is enough, perhaps, to say tliat Sir Eoundell Palmer's style had gone out of fashion. But he was unquestionably a man of great ability, a man of the highest character, a man of the most exalted purpose. The Duke of Argyll was naturally offered a seat in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet. For the third time he became Lord Privy Seal. The Duke of Argyll could hardly be called a very stable politi- cian. He had a little too much of the essayist and the small philosopher in him to be a stalwart political figure. But he was one of the finest speakers in the House of Lords, a master of phrase and polish and rounded sentence; just the sort of orator that an old-fashioned French Academician would be sure to admire. Such a man was of value to an Administra- tion like Mr. Gladstone's, although even when he ac- cepted office there were some people who thought that he was not likely to get on ver}' well with the new Radical principles, and that he probably would not 6 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. t. long hold his place in the Cabinet. Lord Kimberley, a safe and steady-going man, also joined the new Administration as Secretary of State for the Colonies. Mr. Fawcett was appointed Postmaster-General. Mr. Fawcett's remarkable career, pursued so patiently under such cruel difficulties, has been described already in this History. He would no doubt have been received into the Cabinet but for his blindness. It was thought impossible to accept as a Cabinet minister a man who had to be indebted to the eyes of others for an exposition of the contents of the most confidential and secret despatches. Sir William Har- court became Home Secretary. He had long since made up his mind to renounce any career that might come from his profession as a lawyer. Mr. Childers, Mr. Mundella, Sir Henry James, and Mr. Dodson, afterwards raised to the peerage as Lord Monk-Bret- ton, had places in the new Administration. Mr. Grant Duff, who had formerly been Under-Secretary for India, became Under-Secretary for the Colonies. At that time Mr. Grant Duff was still held to be a man who had the possibihty of a great career before him. He was not eloquent, and he had not the voice for elo- quence ; but he was a man of intellect and a man of thought, and he had studied European politics, partly as a political philosopher, partly as a traveller, and partly as ^fldnmr. He wrote a book, called ' Studies in European Pohtics,' which made at the time a jjreat mark on the minds of thinking men, and some chapters of which foreshadowed with prophetic mstmct the rearrangements which would have to 1880 GRANT DUFF — W. E. FORSTER. 'f be made in the European dominions of the Ottoman Porte. When the war between France and Prussia broke out in 1870, Mr. Cardwell, then Minister for War, declared in the lobby of the House of Commons that it meant the French in Berlin in six weeks. Mr. Grant DufF, on the other hand, maintained that it meant the Germans in Paris in six months. Mr. Grant Duff, however, did not go so far as most people expected. After a w^hile he gave up the House of Conmions, and accepted the office of Lieutenant- Governor of Madras on the death of Mr. William Adam, once a Liberal Whip, and the only man who distinctly foresaw, and figured up, and announced in advance the signal victory of the Liberals in 1880. Mr. Forster was made Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. In the minds of English Liberals and of Irish Nationalists alike this seemed at the moment a very hopeful appointment. Mr. Forster liad been in strong sympathy with Ireland and with Irish men. His father and he had rendered signal personal service to the Irish peasantry during the famine of 1846 and 1847. He was the brother- in-laM' of Matthew Arnold, whose Celtic sympathies were part of his nature, and informed and suffused his poetry. Mr. Forster had a seat in the Cabinet, for it w^as easily understood that he was not likely to be a mere subordinate instrument in the work of other men. One possible difficulty in Mr. Gladstones way was removed by the personal action of Lord Lytton, the Viceroy of India. Lord Lytton was a man of high intellect, of charming poetic and literary gifts, a 8 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. i. fascinating talker, a delightful companion. But he was inspired by all Lord Beaconsfield's theories and dreams about the extension of our Indian Empire. No one knew precisely what he wanted to have done in India, just as no one knew what Lord Beaconsfield had in his mind to accomphsh there. But it was clear to all reasonable men that a great Eastern empire could not be estabhshed by talking the language of Marlowe's Tamburlaine, or incessantly calling out, with trumpet accompaniment of hyperbolical phrase- ology, ' Go to ! Let us make ourselves the supreme Oriental Power.' Lord Lytton saw, of course, that with the fall of Lord Beaconsfield had come up a more prosaic and less perilous time for Indian Vice- roys. He resigned his post, and was succeeded by Lord Eipon. It required some courage on the part of Mr. Gladstone to make Lord Eipon Viceroy of India. For Lord Eipon had lately committed an offence which, in the minds at least uf some influential Enghshmen, was absolutely unpardonable : he had become a Eoman Catholic. Some even of the Eadical newspapers expressed a doubt as to whether a public man who had shown himself thus out of touch with the great majority of the English, Scottish, and Welsh people was the best who could be found for such a place as that of Indian Viceroy. Mr. Gladstone, however, took no account of such criticisms, coming from friend or enemy. Lord Eipon went out to India. We shall have to speak of his career as Viceroy later on, but this much, 1880 LORD RIPON. 9 at least, may be said for him in advance — tliat if the feehngs and the judgment of the native populations are to be taken into any account, their feelings and their judgment undoubtedly approved and endorsed Lord Eipon's administration. Except for Lord Eipon's appointment there was nothing, so far, which put any real difficulty in Mr. Gladstone's way, and even Lord Eipon's appointment did not cause him one moment's hesitation. The serious trouble was as to the manner in which the Eadicals of the Liberal party were to be represented in the new Administration. The days of Lord Pal- merston had quite gone by. The suffrage had been largely extended. The working classes all over the country had been endowed with a quite new power. There had been political organisation and trade organisation everywhere. Even amongst agricultural labourers there had been, as we have seen already, an uprising of political agitation and an ordering of ranks for political purposes. No Liberal statesman could possibly fail to take account of the movement in town and village : the movement of Hodge, as well as of Alton Locke, Kingsley's tailor hero. Durino- Mr. Gladstone's retirement from the leadership of the Liberal party many personal changes had been showing themselves in political life, both on his side of the field and on that of his Parliamentary adversaries. Xew men had been coming to the front — and not merely new men, but, it might quite fairly be said, new groups or sections or parties. On the Liberal side there had been a 10 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. I. sudden and a powerful strain towards advanced Eadicalism. Two of the most influential among the ris- ing Liberals were Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamber- lain. We have had occasion to say something about Sir Charles Dilke in the fourth volume of this History. We have heard him avow himself a Eepublican in theory ; and although more lately he suppressed his Eepubhcanism, he had never repudiated it, nor was he even supposed to have renounced it. He merely put it away because he was an eminently practical politician, and he saw clearly that if ever the ques- tion of a republic was to come u]3 in the England of his time, it certainly had not come up just then, and was not likely to come up soon. He continued to be an advanced Eadical and to carry his Eadical principles into practical action. He was a man of great ability and indomitable force of character. He was not eloquent in the richer sense of the word, for he had no imagination and no gift of ' phrasing ' ; but he was a most self-possessed, dogged, and formidable debater, and he took care to speak only on subjects with which he was thoroughly acquainted. He had an intimate knowledge of home politics and parties, and probably no other man in the House of Commons knew nearly so much of foreign and colonial afTairs. He had been an immense traveller, and he had travelled with a purpose. Burke spoke of Howard as having made a circumnavigation of pllilantllrop}^ Sir Charles Dilke had made many a circumnavigation of personal instruction. No question of foreign or colonial policy could well come up in the House 1880 SIR CHARLES BlLKE. 11 of Commons about which he was not able to say : ' 1 know the place ; I know the conditions ; I know the men.' Ha was as much at home in Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia as he was in any of the capitals of Europe. He had carried the Eed Cross of Geneva over many a stricken field. Once in the House of Commons he was speaking on some military subject. He was expressing an earnest opinion, a little dogmatic, perhaps, when he was interrupted rather contemptuously by a military officer, a member of the Tory party, who seemed to be annoyed at the idea of a mere civilian presuming to offer any opinion on such a question. ' May I assure the honourable and gallant general,' Dilke said, quite composedly, ' that I have seen more battlefields than he has ever seen.' Dilke had put himself at the head of the Radical democracy of the metropolis, and he was looked up to with confidence and admiration by the working men of Great Britain. He was on the most cordial terms with the Irish Home Rule party, and avowed himself frankly to be in favour of Home Rule for Ireland. Xothing could be more natural for a man who had seen on the spot what Home Rule had done for Canada, for the Australasian colonies, and for South Africa. Xothing could be more clear than the fact that Sir Charles Dilke must be reckoned with in the construction of the new Liberal Govern- ment. The reixular old-sta^-ers of Liberal Administra- tions were a good deal disconcerted by the look of things ; but the days of the mere Whigs were done. To most of them Gladstone seemed far too rapid and 12 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. i. forward in liis movements ; but then it was clear that they could not do without Gladstone, and must even take him as he was. Yet it seemed a little hard to have to put up with Dilke and with Chamberlain. For Mr. Joseph Chamberlain was one of the strong men without whom the new Liberal party could not hope to get on. Mr. Chamberlain had what may fairly be called a great reputation, in its way, before he became a member of the House of Commons. His was, however, altogether a pro- vincial, and for the most part a municipal, reputation. He had acquired a kind of fame as a municipal administrator of Birmingham, then as now one of the best-managed cities in England. But he was known as a politician also, and he was understood to be one of the most advanced of advanced Eadicals. The notion of the average Tory or Whig member of the House of Commons was that Chamberlain's main object in life was to overthrow, first the Throne, and then the altar, or first the altar and then the Throne —the honest average Tory or Whig did not pledge himself to the exact order of succession. When Mr. Chamberlain was first elected to the House of Com- mons, in 1876, his very appearance, and still more his maiden speech, astonished most of his pohtical opponents. They expected a Boanerges in out- landish costume; they found a quiet, soft-spoken, well-dressed and dapper gentleman. Mr. Chamber- lain soon proved himself to be one of the keenest and most formidable debaters in the House. He had a clear, incisive voice, which he never had occa- 1880 MU. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIX THEX. 13 sion to strain in order to make himself heard over all the benches ; lie had a perfect self-control, and showed when interrupted a i^reat readiness of repartee. He had none of the imagination which G'oes to the making of an orator, and his reading was too limited to allow him to bring up that apt illus- tration from history and from literature which tells so well in the House of Commons. But the whole House felt at once that what Mr. Eudyard Kipling- calls ' a lirst-class fighting-man ' had been added to its ranks, and he was, therefore, cordially welcomed, even by those M'ho most thoroughly dreaded and detested what were then understood to be his political opinions. Mr. Chamberlain, too, was a man with whom it was absolutely necessary i'ov Mv. Gladstone to reckon. Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain were great friends and allies. Theif })()li('y was under- stood to represent llic higli-water mark of what may be called liadicalism, as distinct from Socialism. Even on the question of Irish Home Eule it was understood that they were in general agreement. There was a certain difference, as one of the two explained to a friend on an important occasion. Sir Charles Dilke was convinced that Home Eule for Ireland was a thing actually desirable in itself — that it would be for the jrood of Ireland and for the sood of Great Britain too. Mr. Chamberlain was for trying to satisfy Ireland by giving her a full and fair share of all the advantages which Great Britain possessed, but if all that did not bring about a per- 14 A HISTORY OF OUIl OWN TIMES, ch. r. feet union, lie was prepared to go the full length of Home Eule. Both men were in constant and cor- dial alliance with the Home Eule party in the House of Commons. The Home Eulers and the Eadicals had fought many a fight side by side on the South African policy of the Tory Government, on prison discipline, and, as has been already said, on flogging in the army and the navy. It was the humour of the House of Commons at that time to call Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain the Attorney-Genci-al and Solicitor-General for the Irish Xalionalist part}'. Therefore there was a great strength of English demo- cracy and of Irish Nationalism behind Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain. It was believed at the time, and with very good reason, that Sir Cliarles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain had entered into an under- standing that neither of them would take oflice of any kind unless one or other were offered a seat in the Cabinet. Nothing could l)e more jnstirial)le, and IVom every point of view more honourable, than such an agreement. It was impossible that men like Dilke and Chamberlain could take any share in the formimr of a new Administration which left the risincr Eadical party without a representative in the Cabinet. In the natural course of things it might have seemed that Sir Charles Dilke, who had been for several years in the House, should have had the first claim. But we believe it was Dilke's own desire and deter- mination that Chamberlain should be pressed forward. Accordingly, Mr. Chamberlain was brought into the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade, and Sir 1880 JOHX P.ETGHT — JAMES STANSFELD 15 Charles Dilke became Under-Secretary of State for Foreii^ii Affairs. Mr. Bright consented to join the Administration as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He had occupied the same position before. On the former occasion, as on the later, it had been a strong wish of Mr. Gladstone that Mr. Bright should accept one of the great secretaryships in the Administration. Each time, however, Mr. Bright felt compelled to de- cline the offer. His condition of health had been for many years a trouble to him. He could only consent to take a place which involved comparatively little work and still less responsibility. Lord Granville, youthful and buoyant as ever, although in his sixty- fifth year, once more became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Two noted names were absent from the list of ministers. One was that of Mr. Stansfeld, who had held important office before, and wlio had ])een one of the foremost of the younger liadical party in the days when it yet had all its work to do. Mr. Stans- feld's first speech in the House of Commons had won a genial tribute of praise from Mr. Disraeli, who, no matter how lie might disagree with a man's political opinions, had always a genuine zeal for the recognition of rising talent. Mr. Stansfeld had held various offices in Liberal Administrations. He had been a Junior Lord of the Admiralty in 1863, and he resigned the post a year after because of the absurd and grotesque attack made upon him in the House of Commons on the ground of his intimacy with Mazzini. We have 10 A HTRTOr.Y OF Om OWN TIMES. ch. t. already told the story. He was made a Lord of the Treasury when Mr. Gladstone came into office m 1868, and he succeeded Mr. Goschen as President of the Poor Law Board in 1871. When the new Local Government Board was created, in August 1871, he was made its President, and he held that position until Mr. Gladstone's resignation in 1874. In all these various offices he obtained the credit of being a workino' administrator of the first class. In the House of Commons he was a powerful and an eloquent debater, and his personal character was of the highest order. He was sincere, self-sacrificing, heroic, sometimes even to a quixotic degree. He had one persistent enemy — ill-health. He could not always command his physical energies, and bring them to work as his mind was able to do. Therefore he begged to be allowed to remain out of the Adminis- tration of 1880. But lie returned to office later on ; and meanwhile the Lil)eral Government then formed could count on no supporter more loyal to Liberal and Eadical pohcy than Mr. Stansfeld. Another man who disappeared at once from office and the House of Commons was Mr. Robert Lowe. Mr. Lowe was made Lord Sherbrooke, and vanished in the House of Lords. No assembly could have been less sympathetic to his peculiar nature and his way of thinking ; for although he had spoken with contempt of ' the people who live in those small houses,' he loved brilliancy and sparkle in the occupants of any house whatever, and he found not much of these in the House of Lords. On the day 1880 ROBERT LOWE A PEER. 17 when the report of his elevation to the peerage appeared in the morning papers he met a friend, a member of the House of Commons, in a West-end London street, The friend asked him, somewhat timidly, if it was true that he was about to become a peer, and, if so, whether he, the friend, ought to congratulate him. Lowe answered, not without a certain tone of acerbity : ' It is true I am going into the House of Lords, but I should have thought you would know better than to talk of ofiering me any congratulation.' Lord Sherbrooke never tried to make any figure in the House of Lords. His day was done. He died not very long after he had be- come a peer. His short-lived fame is already fading in the public mind. But he will always be remem- bered by readers of English Parliamentary history as one ' who blazed the comet of a season.' The familiar face of Mr. Goschen was missed for a time in the House of Commons. Mr. Goschen had rendered zealous service to the British bondholders in Egypt when, with the French delegate, M. Joubert, he went out in 1876 to concert measures for the con- version of the debt. Lnmediately after Mr. Glad- stone's return to office in 1880, he was sent out to Constantinople as Ambassador-Extraordinary, in order to press for the execution of unfulfilled promises made by the Porte in the Treaty of Berlin. We may as well dispose of this part of our story at once. The claims which the Porte had not satis- fied, and apparently was not even thinking about satisfying, were those of the Montenegrins for the l8 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIIMES. CH. t. cession of the port of Dulcigno, on the Adriatic, which had been assigned to them by the Treaty of Berlin, and the possession of which was almost essential to the continued existence of the plucky little State; and the demand of Greece for the cession of Thessaly and a general rectification of frontier, also promised by the Treaty. Turkey delayed and delayed about the cession of Dulcigno, and the port was at one time actually occupied by the Albanians, who forestalled the Montenegrins, the Turkish Government having withdrawn their troops, and making no attempt to interfere. Then Mr. Gladstone induced the Great Powers who had signed the Treaty of Berlin to make a concerted demonstration of warships in the Adriatic. This ' naval demonstration,' as it was called, was the subject of much merriment all over Europe. Still, it seems to have had its effect. The Turkish Govern- ment took the demonstration seriously in the end, and sent a force to turn the Albanians out of Dulcigno, which was accordingly handed over to Montenegro. Greece, too, after much diplomatic delay and many popular demonstrations and calls for warlike action by the populace of Athens, obtained the settlement of her claims ; and with the cession of territory and the rectification of frontier came the almost com- plete disappearance of brigandage from the Kingdom of the Hellenes. The Turkish frontier was up to that time far too easily and quickly reached and crossed by the brigands in the regions where brigandage drove its best trade. 1880 19 CHAriER II. THE BKADLAUGII EPISODE. Among the new men whom the general election brought into the House of Commons on the Liberal side, the two most remarkable were Mr. Labouchere and Mr. Bradlaugh. Mr. Labouchere, indeed, could not be called in the strict sense a new member, for he had been in the House of Commons twice before : once Avlien he sat for Windsor, and later when he sat for Middlesex. Jkit he had only held a seat in the House for a short season each time, and had not taken much pains to make a great fioure in politics — had only given proof that he was a very advanced Eadical indeed for that period of political growth. He was a nephew of Lord Taunton, the ' H. Labouchere ' Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieu- tenant of O'Connell's time, and he was understood to have inherited his uncle's fortune. He had been in the diplomatic service in various parts of the world, and was believed to have made a keen study of men and manners wherever he went. He had a taste for journalism., and had founded a paper named Truth, which quickly became at once a briUiant and a solid success ; and in it he expressed his own opinions with 20 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. ii. an utter disregard for the supposed trammels of party. . He had undoubtedly rendered many times a great public service by his fearless exposure of various commercial and charitable shams and frauds, and the threat of an action never had any other effect on him than to make him repeat the charge and invite his menacer to a court of law. He usually expressed his opinions, both in and out of the House of Commons, in the form of satire and sarcasm. He had inherited a marvellous gift of humour, perhaps from some of his French Huguenot ancestors, and many solemn Englishmen could not quite believe in the poli- tical sincerity of one who made so many good jokes. Mr. Bradlaugh was a man of a different mould and a very different bringing-up. Poverty cowered over his early years. He had been an office-boy ; he had been a coal-dealer in a very small way ; he had been a trooper in the 7th Dragoon Guards ; he had been clerk to a firm of solicitors, during which occupation he had picked up a great practical knowledge of law, which afterwards served him in good stead ; and he became a pubHc lecturer, and started a newspaper for the expression of his own very pecuhar opinions on rehgion. He was a man of great ability, an indomitable hard-worker, and he taught himself much more than he could possibly have learned at the one or two elementary schools which he attended. He loved reading; lie loved poetry and music ; and he acquired a knowledge of several languages. He was very popular as a lecturer on pohtical and social questions, and under 1880 CHARLES P.RADLAUGH — 'ICONOCLAST.' 21 the assumed and transparent disguise of the name ' Iconoclast ' he made himself notorious as an advo- cate of atheistic principles. He had passed through the fire of many a court of law in his determination to set himself against the tenets of Christianity, and, indeed, of every religion known to human beings. It would be needless to say that he made for himself hosts of public enemies wherever he went ; it would be unfair not to say, too, that he was followed by hosts of admiring friends. Nature had given him a powerful voice and a very commanding presence. He had stood for a Parliamentary constituency several times, but without success until the general election of 1880, when he was returned for North- ampton as a colleague of Mr. Labouchere. Few men in modern days have entered the House of Commons for the first time heralded by just such a notoriety as that which preceded Mr. Bradlaugh. His name and his career were well known to every- body. His battles with the law courts would alone have been enough to make him an object of intense curiosity. Many men in the House of Commons — probably the majority there — were inclined to resent his coming among them as an intrusion and an insult. To add to his unpopularity, there were stories persistently repeated of him which ascribed to him a course of action at a public meeting which, if the stories were true, would have been simply blasphemy run mad. They were not true — there was not a word of truth in them. Their untruth was proved over and over again in courts 22 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. ti. of law. But some persons still insisted on believing the tale, and insisted on believing it to the end. At the time of Mr. Bradlangh's election it had a great effect in sweUing the cry of indignation at the idea of such a man becoming a member of the House of Commons. Everybody knew that a storm was coming ; probably not many anticipated just such a storm as that which came. On Thursday, April 29, 1880, the new Parliament was opened by Commission, The first business of every Parliament is, of course, the election of a Speaker of the House of Commons, for without a Speaker nothing can be done. Mr. Henry Brand was elected to the chair without opposition, and had, we may assume, little anticipation of the troublous time through which he would have to pass. After the election of Speaker the House met for several days for the purpose of swearing in the members and the issuing of new writs for the seats which had been vacated by men who had accepted office under the Crown since their election, and to provide for double returns in the case — which happens often at a general election — when one man is chosen for two constituencies. In such a case the man thus doubly favoured makes known to the Speaker his choice of a seat, and a writ has to be issued to fill the vacancy m the other constituency. As a general rule, nothing can be less dignified or less interesting than the pro- ceedings of the House of Commons during these few days. The new members come in whenever they like, and in what order Jhey can, to be. sworn in or 1880 'SWEARING IN.' 23 to affirm. At the opening of a new Parliament no member is introduced. There is no one to introduce him. He is of the same date as all the rest. The great anxiety of each member is to get sworn in as fast as he can, and be done with the whole formality. Members are usually sworn in groups or batches of four or five. One copy of the New Testament does service for each little cluster. There is at times a somewhat unseemly scramble for a copy of the Testament, and when some little group has got hold of one, and an opportunity offers, the swearing in of that group takes place. Some words are muttered. The words of late years are : ' I do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, her heirs and successors, according to law ; so help me God.' Each member mutters over the same words, each puts his lips to the Testament, and the ceremony is complete. This performance goes on for the whole day until the time fixed for adjournment has arrived ; and it goes on day after day. No one takes any interest in it except the members who are still waiting to be sworn ; and even their interest is only represented by their personal anxiet}^ to get through the ordeal at the first possible moment and go away. Such a time is, as a general rule, almost the only time in the House of Commons when nothing exciting could possibly be expected. It was otherwise, however, with the opening of Parliament in 1880. On the third day of the session Mr. Bradlaugh presented himself at the table of the House, and handed to -one of the clerks a written 24 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch, ii. claim to be allowed to make a solemn affirmation instead of taking the oath. The Speaker called on Mr. Bradlaugh to state his reason for making such a claim. Mr. Bradlaugh rephed that the Parliamen- tary Oaths Act of 1866 gave the right to affirm to every person for the time being permitted by law to make affirmation. ' I am such a person,' he pleaded, ' and I have repeatedly for nine years past affirmed in the hiohest courts of jurisdiction in this reahu.' ' I am ready,' he added, ' to make the declaration or affirmation of allegiance.' The Speaker would not take it on himself to decide the question, but sub- mitted it to the judgment of the House. Perhaps this was an unfortunate decision. Perhaps it would have been better to allow Mr. liradlaucrh to make the affirmation at his own risk, and let anyone who thought fit sue him in a court of law for the statutory penalties provided l)y law against anyone who sat and voted in the House of Commons without the proper legal qualification. The Speaker's decision, or rather refusal to give a decision, was, indeed, the letting out of the waters. The House was taken thoroughly by surprise. No leading member of the Government was present. Indeed, most of the leading members of the Government had, for the time, ceased to be members of the House. Lord Frederick Cavendish, who held a subordinate office, moved the appointment of a select committee to con- sider and report as to the construction of the statutes on which Mr. Bradlaugh rested his claim. There was some discussion, more or less at random, over 1880 SIR HENRY DRUMMOND WOLFF. 25 this proposition, but the proposal was finally agreed to. There was discussion again over the numbers and the nomination of the committee, and at last it became evident that the whole subject was to be turned to account by certain opponents of the Government for the distinct purpose of embarrassing the Liberal Administration at the very outset of its career. As the wrancfle — for at this time it was onlv a wrangle — went on it grew more and more apparent that the chance afforded by Mr. Bradlaugh's action had been the impulse to the formation of a new Parliamentary party. Sir Henry Drummond AVolff led at first the opposition to the appointment of the committee and led the whole of the operations designed to embarrass the Liberal Government. Sir Henry Wolff had been for some time in Parliament, but had not made, or even tried to make, any conspicuous figure there. He was a man of decided ability, who had been well trained in diplomacy and had a varied knowledge of foreign countries and foreign courts, and was acquainted better than most men with that perennial source of modern trouble which is called the Eastern Question. He was son of the famous missionary, traveller, and scholar. Dr. Wolff, at one time honoured by all the world for the fearless and determined, although unsuccessful, efforts he made to rescue the captive English officers. Colonel Stoddart and Captain Connolly, in Bokhara — a sad tale, told in an earlier volume of this History. Sir Henry Wolff )/vas above all things a fighting politician. He prob- 26 A HISTOEY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. ii. ably did not care three straws whether Mr. Bradlaugh was or was not allowed to affirm, or, indeed, whether Mr. Bradlaugh was to be permitted to enter the House of Commons or was to be kept out of it. But he saw a splendid opportunity for harassing not only the leaders of the Government, but likewise the leaders of the Opposition, by seizing on the first chance of obstruc- tion. Lord Eandolph Churchill came to his aid so readily that it seemed rather uncertain at first which was to be the leader and which was to be the follower. But the energy and the ' masterful ' ways of Lord Eandolph Churchdl soon made it clear that he was to command and Sir Henry Wolff to obey. Lord Eandolph Churchill had been in the House for some years, but up to this time he had made no impression on it. He had spoken occasionally, and once, at least, very well ; but he was listened to chiefly because he was the son of the Duke of Marl- borough and bore an illustrious, historic name, and most people wished him success in any career he chose to adopt. Little by httle the opportunities given by the wranglings over Mr. Bradlaugh inspired Lord Eandolph with the idea of forming a new party, ' all of his own and none of his neighbours,' as an old Scottish proverb used to say. Usually there were only two parties in the House, the Liberals and the Tories, or the Government and the Opposition. JMore lately the Irish Nationalists had won recot?nition for themselves as the Third party. Xow came Lord Eandolph with his new group, having its distinct individual |"purpose, and it claimed to be recognised 1880 D'ARTAGNAN AND THE THREE MUSKETEERS. 27 as the Fourth paiiy. It was, indeed, in more than one sense a Fourth part}^ because it was a party of four. Lord Eandolph was the general, and the army consisted of Sir Henry Wolff, Mr. Arthur James Balfour, and Mr. Gorst, now Sir John Gorst. Wliat was the purpose of the Fourth party ? As it gradu- ally developed itself it became apparent that Lord Eandolph Churchill had some notion of reviving and embodying in practical form Mr. Disraeli's idea of a Tory Democrat. But this purpose only revealed it- self gradually, perhaps was only shaped gradually, for Lord Kandolph's first impulse was merely to harass with impartial energy the leaders of the Government and the leaders of the Opposition. He made war upon the Liberals, of course — that was part of his political creed and his political business. But his youthful ardour revolted against the slow-going, jog-trot, prosaic action of his own titular leaders. The suavity, moderation, and methodical movement of men like Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Cross set him wild. Such men had no ' go ' in them, he thought, and he became possessed with a passion to make them ' sit up,' according to a slang phrase not j^et wholly out of date. The other members of his party may have had, to begin with, the same motives. Probably Mr. Arthur Balfour found some amusement in the whole thing ; perhaps others, like Hamlet, lacked advancement. Anyhow, the one fact certain was that the party did form itself and did become, small as its numbers were, a power in the House of Commons. Had Mr. Bradlauoii not begun his Parr 28 A HISTOEY OF OUR OWX TIMES. ch. n. liamentary career by claiming a right to affirm instead of taking the oath no one can tell when the Fourth party might have been formed, or whether, indeed, it might have been formed at all. Meanwhile the discussion and debating over Mr. Bradlaugh's claim went on. The committee was appointed by a large majority, the Fourth party objecting to everything suggested from either of the front benches, and generally making things uncom- fortable for everybody. The committee reported against Mr. Bradlaugh's claim to be allowed to affirm. But its decision was carried by only a casting-vote of the chairman, and it was by no means certain that the House would have adopted the finding of the com- mittee under such conditions. Mr. Bradlaugh, how- ever, did not wait for any decision from the House. In a letter to the newspapers he announced that as the committee had decided against his claim to be allowed to affirm, he had made up his mind to come to the table of the House and take the oath. He added that he felt bound to act on the mandate of his constituents, who had sent him to the House of Commons, and that he would do so, even though he should have to submit to a form less solemn to him than the affirmation he would have reverently made, and to repeat words which to him were sounds con- veying no clear and definite meaning. He declared, however, that if he were permitted to take the oath he would regard himself as bound, not by the letter of its words, but by the spirit which the affirmation would have conveyed, had he been allowed to make 1880 MR. BRADLAUGH OFFERS] TO TAKe]tHE OATH. 29 it. In'^conformity with the terms of that announce- ment Mr. Bradlaugh, a day or two after, presented himself at the table of the House, evidently for the purpose of taking the oath. Thereupon Sir Henry Wolff sprang to his feet and interposed. He objected to the administration of the oath under such condi- tions, and Mr. Bradlaugh was ordered to withdraw from the House while the subject was under debate. Sir Henry Wolff's argument was simply to the efiect that Mr. Bradlaugh, having proclaimed himself an Atheist, was not entitled to take an oath. Mr. Glad- stone raised the question whether the House of Commons was by law, or custom, or precedent of any kind, entitled to prevent a duly elected member from taking the oath which the law itself prescribed. Mr. Gladstone therefore moved for the appointment of a select committee to consider and report on that particular part of the w^hole subject. Then the flood of discussion rose high once more. Sir Henry Wolff had the satisfaction of seeing the leader of the Opposi- tion, Sir Stafford Northcote, going into the lobby in favour of the Fourth party's motion. For it was the Fourth party's motion distinctly. It used to be said in the House at the time — and the story is not without foundation — that Lord Eandolph Churchill ' called to his nearest follower, or henchman ' : ' We have got hold of a good thing — let us stick to it.' To do them justice they did stick to it accordingly. The business of the House stood still for the time, and Lord Randolph and his merry men were particularly happy. There were now three distinct questions involved, 30 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. cti. it. which kept running in and out of each other all the time, and perplexing the scruples and the consciences of men. Two were of minor degree and importance. These were : first, whether a man might be allowed to affirm who had objected to take the oath on the oround that some of the words it contained — the words ' So help me God ! ' — had for him no manner of meaning ; and second, whether a man ,vho had objected at first to taking the oath ought to be allowed to change his mind and take the oath after all. But the great question really disturbing the minds of serious men was, whether a professing and proclaimed Atheist ought to be allowed to sit in the House of Com- mons. No one argued that an Atheist ought not to be allowed to sit in the House — that is, no one contended that there ought to be a religious inquisition by Mr. Speaker, or by anybody else, of each elected representative in order to find out how far he had gone in' the way of free-thought. Every one knew that there were Atheists, according to the common understanding of the term, in every House of Commons. But the question was whether a man who proclaimed himself an Atheist ought to be allowed to sit in the House. There was an irritated feeling with many men that Bradlaugh had made a needless fuss about his opinions, and that as he was willing to take the oath then, he ought to have taken it in the first instance, and said nothing at all about it. Many men pointed to the example of John Stuart Mill, who had taken the oath without protest, and the}' asked angrily, if what was good enough for 1880 MR. GLADSTONE MOVES FOR A COMMITTEE 3l Stuart Mill was not quite good enough for Brad- laugh. But the cases were entirely different. Mill had never proclaimed himself an Atheist, and in point of fact never was an Atheist in Mr. Bradlaugh's sense of the word. Mill was in all his sympathies a Christian, although he could not identify himself with any one form of Christian faith. He had no more conscientious objection to taking the Par- liamentary oath than he would have had to taking off his hat on entering St. Paul's Cathedral in London or St. Peter's in Eome. But Bradlaugh was a con- vinced and an aggressive Atheist, the organiser of a propaganda of atheism, and his followers would have been amazed indeed if their leader had hauled down his flag and consented to take the oath without even a word of protest. Mr. Gladstone's motion for a committee was accepted after a prolonged discussion, in which Mr. Bright took an important part. Mr. Bright, about whose religious convictions there could be no possible doubt, appealed to the House to discuss the whole question of Mr. Bradlaugh's claim as a ques- tion of right and of law, and not to regard it solely as a matter of each individual's sectarian views Mr. Bright pointed out that the oath had been modified to meet the conscientious views of Eoman Catholics and to satisfy the demands of the Jews. Still further back, as he showed, the Quakers, whose religious scruples did not allow them to take an oath, had been permitted by law to make an affirmation. Mr. Bright dwelt with impressive emphasis on the 32 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. cH. li. difficulty and danger attending a conflict between the House of Commons and some resolute constituency. He referred to the case of John Wilkes ; he might also have referred to the case of Lord Cochrane. Mr. Gladstone's motion was adopted in the end. The committee was appointed. Mr. Bradlaugii pleaded his own case before the committee, and submitted himself to cross-examination. He main- tained that he had never said the oath would not be binding on his conscience ; he had only said that it would not bind him more firmly than his con- science would be bound by an affirmation. He only objected to the oath because it contained certain words which, he declared, conveyed to his mind no clear and definite meaning. The committee, after prolonged sittings, announcedby a large majority the opinion that Mr. Bradlaugh could not be allowed to take the oath, but added a recommendation that he should be permitted to affirm at his own risk, subject to any legal penalties which might be consequent upon his sitting and voting in the House without the proper statutory qualification. The recommendation was rejected by a majority of the House, a majority of forty-five, and it was de- clared that Mr. Bradlaugh must not be allowed either to affirm or to take the oath. The majority of those who voted for this resolution did so, either avowedly or impliedly, on the ground that a professed and pro- claimed Atheist ought not to be allowed to sit in the House of Commons. Several of the Irish Home Eule members declared pubhcly in the House that such 1880 BRAULAUGH AT THE 'BAR.' 33 was their conscientious conviction. On the other hand, Mr. Parnell and two or three of his followers spoke and voted in favour of Mr. Bradlaugh's being allowed to take the oath. Mr. Bradlaugh presented himself again at the table of the House, and asserted his right to be sworn in. He was ordered to with- draw, but before withdrawing he asked to be heard at the Bar of the House. The House agreed to this request, some of those who had been most strong against his claim to take the oath being equally strong and outspoken in support of his claim to be heard in his own defence. He was heard at the Bar. The Bar of the House is a real entity, and not an imaginary line like the Equator. It is made up of a sort of double-sided brass cylinder, which is brought to meet across the floor of the House beside the chair of the Serjeant-at-Arms. Leaning on this bar, Mr. Brad- laugh addressed the House in a speech of about twenty minutes' length, which undoubtedly impressed everyone who listened to it ; and the House, as might have been expected, was crowded to excess. Mr. Bradlaugh had, as has been said, a commanding presence. His form almost approached the gigantic, and he had a broad intellectual forehead. His voice was very powerful and resonant. It could be heard over any assembly, and although in some notes it was strident and brassy, yet it had shades of softer and of musical tone. It was as strong as the voice of Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Bright ; but it had not the flexibility, the marvellous variety, and the exquisite beauty of either voice. Mr. Bradlaugh pleaded his V. D 34 A HISTORY OF OUR OWX TIMES. ch. ii. case manfully, insisted that he had done nothing to warrant his exclusion, and strongly appealed to the Government and tlie whole House of Commons against any course of action which might lead to a conflict with the constituents of Northampton. It cannot be doubted that Mr. Bradlaugh favour- ably impressed the great majority of those who listened to him ; but no impression, favourable or otherwise, made by the orator just then could seriously affect the decision of the House. Mr. Bradlaugh was ordered to withdraw after the resolve of the House had been declared concerning his claim to take the oath, and he refused to obey. He was removed by the Serjeant-at-Arms, l)ut instantl}'- walked into the House again, declaring that he admitted no right on the part of the majority to exclude him from its benches. He was then taken into custody by the Serjeant-at-Arms and lodged in the Clock Tower. Next day, however, he was released, and the House resolved, on the motion of Mr. Gladstone, that every person claiming to be per- mitted by law to make an affirmation should be allowed to do so, subject to any liability by statute. This resolution broke the controversy into two separate channels. There was the dispute in the House of Commons and the dispute in the courts of law. We need not follow the story through all its wearisome details. Some of its passages were ludicrous, and even farcical ; some were grave, odious, and lamentable. Mr. Bradlaugh kept on making httle rushes at the House of Commons. 1880 A RUN FOR THE TABLE. 35 Every now and then he ran unexpectedly up the floor, and made for the table in front of the Speaker's chair, and clutched the Testament, in the hope of being sworn in or with the view of swearinsf himself in. Then the Serjeant-at-Arms and the Deputy-Serjeant sprang after him, and seized him at the table. Each caught him by either arm, and thus seized he con- sented to be led back again to the Bar of the House. The moment the officials released his arms he started oiT again on his run to the table. Then the officials toiled after him once more, and again he was led back to the Bar of the House ; and again, on being- released, he made for the table as before. An)- thing more ludicrous, anything more ignoble, any- thing more degrading to the character of a great Parliamentary assembly could hardly be imagined. Once the struggle assumed that grimmer and more lamentable character to which we have already referred. Time was going on, and the fight was still kept up. Mr. Bradlaugh was for a while excluded from the House itself — that is, from the benches of the Chamber — but he was allowed to sit in one of the rows of seats which are nearly on a level with the floor of the House. There he occupied what an Irish member called ' an enjoyable nook,' where he could hear all the debates without having to trouble himself by taking a part in them. Meanwhile he was again and again expelled from the House, or at least declared incapable of sitting and voting there ; and again and again he resigned his seat, and on all such occasions he sought re-election, and was immediately 36 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. ii. re-elected by liis constituents. He was sued every other day for penalties in a court of law because during some of the intervals after he had been per- mitted to affirm he had sat and voted in the House. It began to seem after a while as if the burden of penalties and costs imposed upon him must grow to something like the amount of the National Debt. On one occasion an order was made that Mr. Bradlaugh should be removed from the precincts of the House. He declared his determination to resist the order, and he was actually dragged and driven out of the House by the force of ten policemen. He had presented himself in the lobby, and was about to enter the House itself, when the order was given by the officials for his removal. He was forced down the flights of winding stone steps which lead from the central lobby to the private entrance of members. He was, as has been said, a man of extraordinary physical strength, and he fought like one desperate. The ten policemen had all their work to do in forcing and dragging him down the flights of steps. Of course the policemen were anxious, as far as they possibly could, not to hurt or injure him. At last they got him out into Palace Yard. His clothes were torn, his face was flushed, his limbs were trembling ; but it must be owned that he bore himself with imperturbable good-humour, and talked politely and civilly with the police officials when the struggle was over. The whole scene, however, was utterly unworthy of any House of Parliament. Nothing of the kind, so far as we 1860-86 AN IGiXUBLE SCUiTLE. 3< know, had ever been seen in the legislative assembly of the smallest South American Eepublic. Nothing of the kind had ever been known in the Capitol at Washington in the stormy days just before the American Civil War. We shall not attempt to inquire who was to blame — at least, who was es- pecially to blame. Probably everybody was to blame. There must certainly have been some possible way of settling an important constitutional question without dances on the floor of the House of Commons, and scuffles in the lobby and on the staircase leading down to Palace Yard. Moreover, the whole of the scufflings came to nothing, so far as the efforts of those were concerned who wished to pre- vent Mr. Bradlaugh at any risk from sitting in the House of Commons. He had to be allowed to sit there in the end. A new Parliament came to be elected, and a new Speaker was chosen to the office. When Mr, Bradlaugh once more presented himself to take the oath at the table of the House, the new Speaker, Mr. Arthur Peel, declared that neither the Speaker nor anyone else had a right to prevent a member from taking the oath which he was willing to take. Not long after the whole controversy was put to rest by the passing of an Act which allowed any member to affirm, if he preferred affirmation to the oath. Mr. Bradlaugh was for several years an active and useful member of the House of Commons. We are anticipating time in order to bring the whole story, or the whole episode, to a close. He con- cerned himself very much in practical questions, and 38 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. li. made himself a master of the rules and business of the House. He took frequent part in debate, but he never spoke at too great length. He got the ear of the House very soon, and he kept it, because he made it quite plain that he only meant to speak when he had something to say, and that when he had said what he wanted to say he would instantly sit down. These are peculiarities which have an immense charm for a House frequently outwearied and outworn by the talk of men who only speak because they wish to hear their own voices, and because the impulse of talk is on them. Mr. Brad- laugh won upon the House by his genial manners, by his perfect good-temper, and by his willingness to meet his worst political opponent on the friendliest terms. He became positively a sort of favourite with the old Tories in the House towards the close of his political career. Many of these men were chivalrous enough to feel disposed to make advances towards the man against whom they had battled so hard, and who had battled so hard against them. Bradlaugh soon found that, when mere prejudice and passion are away, there is no finer type of gentleman than the genuine Tory of the old school. He took part in several debates on merely pohtical questions, and he always held his own. He seemed to find a positive enjoyment in his Parliamentary occupations. There was a certain amount of vanity in him which was absolutely inoffensive, and was, indeed, almost child- hke — a vanity which he made no attempt to conceal, which delighted with a frank delight in the applause 1880-91 BRADLAUGH'S BREAKDOWN. 39 of the House of Commons. He worked very hard on committees, and on some important commissions which he had himself mainly helped to create. Alto- gether he was bidding fair to be one of the most popular men in the House of Commons. But Mr. Bradlaugh's Parliamentary career was destined to be short. He had worked even his tremendous physical strength too much. He had never spared himself, and he had to encounter during all his Parliamentary years that terrible struggle against poverty which has borne down so many a man who strove to make a living while striving also to attend night and day to his Parliamentary duties. In order that he and his family might live Bradlaugh had to undertake incessant lecturing en- gagements, and to write incessant articles, while he was doing his very best to attend every important debate in the House and to take part in every important division. He devoted himself with cha- racteristic energy to every attempt made, in and out of Parliament, for the benefit of the native populations of India. At last his strength completely broke down. He had put a motion on the order paper of the House for the erasing from the Journals of the old resolutions which had been passed to exclude him. He was not able to propose the motion himself, but his friend Dr. Hunter brought it forward on his behalf, and after some demur the leaders of the Opposition consented to accept it in substance. The motion was therefore carried nemine 40 A HISTOKY OF OtJR OWN TI3IES. ch. ii. contradicente, as Mr. Gladstone took care to mention with emphasis, and not only was the whole struggle over, but even the records which justified the House in the exclusion of Mr. Bradlaugh were erased from its Journals. Mr. Bradlaugh died before he had time to read of his final victory. On the morning of January oO, ] 891, he was dead, having lived little more than fifty- seven years. He had undoubtedly lived, like the hero of the Scottish ballad, ' a life of sturt and strife.' His views on the subject of religion were unquestionably odious to the vast majority of his countrymen, and, indeed, to the vast majority of civilised men all over the world. Often, too, he was injudicious, and sometimes even coarse, in his mere manner of giving expression to his opinions. His mind was of a rugged order, and he carried an atmosphere of passion and turmoil about him. In the end, however, the public in general came to appreciate the sincerity and the manhood of his character. Everyone admitted that he was sincere and self-sacrificing, that there was nothing sordid in his nature, and that those were mistaken who at one time regarded him as the mere bravo of a religious controversy. He was borne to earth, if we may quote the words of Macaulay concerning a greater Englishman, ' in peace after so inuch strife, in honour after so much obloquy.' 41 CHAPTER III. INHERITED RESPONSIBILITIES — AND OTHERS. We have spoken already of the burden of responsi- bihty for foreign disturbance entailed upon the Government by its predecessor. Sir Theophilus Shepstone had accepted the easiest evidence of a popular desire on the position of the Boers of the Transvaal Eepublic to become a portion of the British Empire. The Boers, or at least the vast majority of them, were a fierce, proud, lonely sort of people, who loved above all other things their independence and their curious self-made nationality. They were nearly all of Dutch descent, and many of tliem were even of Dutch birth. But they did not regard them- selves as Dutchmen. They regarded themselves as Boers, and as independent Republicans of the Trans- vaal. They did not trouble themselves about their Dutch origin. They were proud of it, in a certain way, when they recalled it to mind, as a Virginian or a Massachusetts man might have been proud, when he thought about the matter, of his English progeni- tors, but remained all the time a Virginian or a Massacliusetts man above everything else. The Boers had, in fact, made up a kind of language of their 42 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. hi. own, one great beauty of which, according to their ideas, was that it contained a very limited vocabulary and gave little chance for roundabout, evasive dis- course, or for pompous phraseology. They did not even like to mass together amongst themselves. The Boer's idea was to live at a good distance from even his best friend, and to live to himself and his family as much as possible. Looking back on the events now, it seems hard indeed to understand how Sir Theophilus Shepstone, or Sir Bartle Frere, or Sir Garnet Wolseley, as he then was, could possibly have believed that the majority of the Boers were willing to become part of the English dominion. Yet it is certain that these distinguished men did allow such a belief to take firm hold of their minds. This was at the time when Lord Carnarvon, then Secretary for the Colonies, had set his heart upon a scheme of South African federation under English rule. It all seemed to Lord Carnarvon so easy, so symmetrical, and so natural to piece such a federa- tion together, that he could not believe in the possibility of the Boers being so unreasonable and so cross-grained as to put themselves in the way of such an arrangement. Sir Bartle Frere advised the Boers, ' as a friend,' not to believe one word of anybody who said that the Enghsh people would ever consent to give up the Transvaal. Sir Garnet Wolseley declared that ' the Transvaal shall be, and shall continue to be for ever, an integral portion of her Majesty's dominions in South Africa.' 'So long as the sun shmes,' he proclaimed on another occasion, ' the 1879-83 THE TRANSVAAL REPUBLIC. 43 Transvaal will remain British territory.' The sun kept on shining, and seems likely to shine for a good long time yet, but the Transvaal soon ceased to be British territory. Sir Garnet Wolseley himself had to admit very soon after, in a despatch to the Colonial Office, that there was very serious discontent in the Transvaal, that the main body of the Dutch population were opposed to English rule, and that it seemed to be the determination of the Boers to appeal to arms for their independence. The Boers sent several deputations to England to appeal against the annexation, and they appealed in vain. Yet they found not a few sympathisers in England. Among these was no less a person than Mr. Gladstone himself. Mr. Gladstone denounced in public the policy which had led to the annexation of the Transvaal, and had endeavoured to transform a free European, Christian, Eepublican community into subjects of a monarchy against the will of more than three-fourths of the entire people. The Transvaal, Mr. Gladstone said in a speech on November 25, 1879, ' is a country where we have chosen, most unwisely, I am tempted to say insanely, to place ourselves in the strange predicament of the free sub- jects of a monarchy going to coerce the free subjects of a republic, and to compel them to accept a citizenship which they decline and refuse.' A month or so later on he asks : ' Is it not wonderful to those who are freemen, and whose fathers had been free- men, and who hope that their children will be free- men, and consider that freedom is an essential condi- 44 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. CH. ni. tion of civil life, and that without it you can have nothing great and nothing noble in political society, that we are led by an Administration, and led, I admit, by Parliament, to find ourselves in this position — that we are to march upon another body of freemen, and against their will to subject them to despotic government ? ' In a memorable sentence Mr. Gladstone described the Boers of the Transvaal as ' a people vigorous, obstinate, and tenacious in character, even as we are ourselves.' It was often charged afterwards against Mr. Gladstone that he had by these very speeches, spoken on the verge of a great crisis in English political affairs, given the strongest encouragement to the Boers to rise in arms against us, as they soon afterwards did. There cannot be the slightest doubt that Mr. Gladstone's words inspired the Boers with new courage and new hope. A great statesman's speeches, even at that time, reached all parts of the woi-ld almost in a breath. But Mr. Gladstone Avas bound to express his condemnation of a false and futile policy, and the Boers would undoubtedly have risen in arms aiifainst us if he had never opened his lips upon the subject. That spirit, at all events, they inherited from their Dutch progenitors. They might be extirpated, but they could not be held in subjection. The Boers very soon proved the genuineness of their resolve. Some trivial dispute with the British authority precipitated the uprising which was certain to have come soon or late. The Boers took up arms against us. The Transvaal was once a<^ain 1880-81 STEPHEN JOHN PAUL KPtUGER. 45 proclaimed a Eepublic, and it established a triumvirate Government, and the triumvirate announced their intention to defend their Eepublic with arms The first of the triumvirate who signed his name to the proclamation was one of whom we have heard a great deal in these latter days, Stephen John Paul Kruger — ' Oom Paul,' or ' Uncle Paul,' as he was affectionately called by his people. The result is too well known to need any long description. The Boers triumphed completely over our military commanders and our soldiers. If we were to do anything at all, we had to invade the regions of the Transvaal where the Boers were strong, and there the Boers were masters of the situation. Our men fought gallantly, our officers never lost their heads. Sir George Colley, the commander-in-chief, was killed by a rifle-ball while he was giving his orders as composedly as if he had been at one of the autumn manoeuvres at home in England. But the Boers knew their mountains and their passes. They were all splendid marksmen. They went on the principle of taking aim at the English officers first of all, and they had lodged themselves well behind rocks and above ravines. An English naval officer said at a later day, that if you want to dislodge a Boer with a rifle from behind a rock you must spend at least the lives of six English soldiers in the attempt. We had not the English soldiers to spare and on the spot, and, to cut the story short, the campaign was over, the English were defeated, and the Transvaal was independent again. 46 A IIISTOIJY OF OUR OWX TIMES. ch. hi. What was the next step to be taken ? A tremen- dous outcry was raised at home. This was worse, it was cried aloud, than even the defeat by Cetewayo, because you never know where to have those savages, and nobody sets any account on their mihtary glory. But here is a people of Dutch extraction, who claim to have a regular Eepublic and a regular Administra- tion, and to rank in their way among civilised popu- lations, and they, when declared a part of the British Empire, not only will not have the favour conferred on them, but rise in arms against it, and defeat the Enghsh troops, and actually shoot down on the battle-field the English commanding officer. Now it was quite certain to every mind that Mr. Gladstone intended to recognise the domestic inde- pendence of the Transvaal Eepublic and to make peace. Before the final day of Majuba Hill, where Sir George Colley was killed. Sir Evelyn Wood had been sent out with reinforcements ; but he had been sent out unquestionably for the purpose of accepting a proposal of armistice, if it should be made, during which there could be founded a substantial agree- ment for peace in the future. It is much to. be regretted that, when once such a determination had been adopted by the English Government, it was not proclaimed on the instant. Even Mr. Gladstone said something to the effect that it was very difficult to grant terms of peace while the inhabitants of the Transvaal were still in arms against the sovereign power of England. If at the moment of his coming to office he had announced that he would no longer 1880-84 THE SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC. 47 be responsible for a policy of coercion applied to the Boers, he would have been acting in accordance with his speeches during the winter, and, what must have seemed to him of all men much more important still, he might have saved some gallant lives. However, we must make much allowance for the action of a statesman striving to do his best between the policy of his predecessors and the purpose and the responsibility of his own Government. The peace was made in the end, but the negotia- tions and arrangements dragged out for a long time. We are anticipating dates somewhat recklessly in order to bring this one particular chapter of history to a close. Lord Derby had by this time accepted office under Mr. Gladstone as Colonial Secretary, and he was not so impassioned as Lord Carnarvon had been about the creation of a federated South Africa under the sceptre of England. Indeed, Lord Derby was not a man likely to become impassioned about any idea or any enterprise. He was a clear-headed, practical, unenthusiastic person. He had filled many administrative offices, and, unlike most English statesmen of that day, at all events, he had seen a great deal of the world. He had received the delegates from the Transvaal with courtesy, and even with encouragement. On February 27, 1884, a new Convention for the Transvaal was signed at the Colonial Office by Sir Hercules Eobinson (now Lord Eosmead), representing the Queen, and by the delegates of what was to be known in future as the South African Republic. The Convention really gave 48 A niSTOIlY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. hi. the South African Eepublic all that it could reasonably have asked for. It gave to the Boers what was in substance complete domestic independence. Certain restrictions, of course, were made : the restrictions which Enshsh statesmen of all times would necessarilv make when consenting to the existence of a new State in South Africa. These conditions forbade the intro- duction of slavery into the Transvaal Eepublic, insisted upon liberty of religious worship being allowed to all the residents in the Transvaal, and secured for the native populations the right to buy and possess land, and to have access to the courts of justice. The British Government, very reasonably, as it seems to us, reserved to itself a right of veto over the actual conclusion of any treaties that the South African Eepublic might enter into with any foreign Power. This last condition was absolutely necessary as a guarantee against the possibilities of most serious trouble. Even already a rush of Belgians, Germans, Italians, and Portuguese was being made upon all the hitherto unoccupied portions of manageable Africa. No statesman in the British Foreijzn or Colonial Office could tell when some trouble might not arise if the Transvaal Eepublic were aUovved to enter into a treaty with any great continental State in total disregard of the interests of England, which had given her back her independence. Had the Boers refused to accept that article of agreement, the strength of those who clamoured in England for a reconquest of the Transvaal might have made itself irresistible. The Boer Government, however, showed 1880 'THE DISGRACE OE MAJUBA HILL.' 49 then, as in later times, cool, hard-headed, and sensible, and accepted the terms offered by Mr. Gladstone's Government. The Transvaal passed away for ever, we may hope, from the government of England, and became, except for the few conditions already mentioned, a free and independent Eepublic. We shall hear of the Transvaal Eepublic again before this History closes. All this might seem perfectly satisfactory ; but it was not regarded as cj^uite satisfactory here at home. The usual outcry was raised about the humiliation of England under the guidance of the Liberal Government. A considerable j)ortion of Englishmen, among whom were found Liberals just as well as Tories, cried out that the disgrace of Majuba Hill ought to have been effaced in blood before England con- sented to let the Transvaal go. Now there cannot be the slightest doubt that, if England had wished to wipe out with blood the humiliation of Majuba Hill, she could have done so at comparatively small cost to herself, and without any dread whatever of intervention on the part of any powerful neighbours. The Government had already sent out Sir Frederick Eoberts to take charge of militar}' affairs for a time in South Africa. The Government could have sent him troops enough to reduce the Transvaal Eepublic not only to subjection, but to annihila- tion. England could have sent men and weapons enough to slaughter every man, woman and child in the Transvaal, and to float her banner triumph- 50 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. Hi. antly over a territory which contained only Eno-lish officials. Mr. Gladstone believed that England was strong enough to act with justice and have no fear. He saw no disgrace to England in a refusal to crush a feeble enemy because the feeble enemy had done what everybody else with a grain of spirit would have done under the condi- tions. It simply came to this : we were wrong all through. We were wrono^ when we allowed Sir Theophilus Shepstone to convince us by his hasty and superficial arguments that the Boers were eager to be under our dominion. We ought to have known well enough, long before Sir Theophilus Shepstone went out, that the Boer was a man who had no in- clination for any kind of rule but the rule of his own people. If we did not know this, then cer- tainly we ought to have known it. We ought to have known, too, that the Boer, like his Dutch ancestor, would fight against any odds to maintain his national independence. However, as we did not appear to have known all this, and as we certainly did not appear to have acted on any such know- ledge, it did not seem to Mr. Gladstone's mind that we were bound to slaughter a certain number of Boers because we had not taken care enough to find out what they really wanted, and what they really did not want. Therefore Mr. Gladstone made peace, and allowed the Eepublic to work its way within the reasonable limitations which we have already described. All the same, it was made a trouble to him that he allowed the Boers to carry their point 1880 OUTCEY AGAINST GLADSTONE'S POLICY. 51 by war. i\.gain and again he was attacked by Tory orators in the Lords and in the Commons, on the ground that he had permitted the meteor flag of England to be trailed in the sand of the Transvaal. Eight and morality were all on Mr. Gladstone's side. But none the less it was inconvenient for a minister to have to come into power and to announce that he meant to reverse the policy of his predecessors, even to the extent of giving freedom to men who had fought against the troops of England. Of course, to talk of the men of the Transvaal as rebels was the grossest absurdity. They had never, as a people, accepted our dominion. Only some few persons had told Sir Theophilus Shepstone that, out of regard for present perils threatening the Eepublic, they might be glad of England's protec- tion. No pains whatever were taken to find out whether that was or was not the opinion of the vast majority of Boers. We decreed their annexation, and they refused to stand it, and they rose against our pretensions, and they defeated our troops, and there was an end. So, at least, Mr. Gladstone thought. We might have gone back and slaughtered them all, but that would not make our wron^doino- a riolit. o O O So Mr. Gladstone wisely resolved to accept the lesson of events and to let the Transvaal go. But it cannot be doubted that the first effect of the announcement of his policy was to give courage to all his political enemies and to dishearten some of his friends. The impression, far too general in Eng- land, seemed to be, that even if Great Britain makes 52 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMElS. eft. lit. a mistake in policy, and is willing and anxious to re- pair it, slie has no right to offer any reparation until she has slaughtered enough of those who op- posed her to make it evident that she has not yielded to their pleadings out of any feelings of national fear. It may be freely admitted that the policy of Mr. Gladstone in refusing to consent to a needless mas- sacre of the Transvaal Boers did tend somewhat for the moment to diminish his popularity in Great Britain. The revenge that we were told he ought to have taken would in any case have been nothing different from the old-time slaughter of a number of enemies around the grave of some popular hero. The right or wrong of the questions at issue between Great Britain and the Transvaal would not have been brought in any way nearer to a settlement by a massacre to the tnanes of Sir George Colley. Still, the time is far distant when an English Prime Minister can venture to say : ' We were wrong ' in this or that dispute, ' and as we were wrong, our duty is to own our mistake and let matters be frankly settled accordingly.' In private life, of course, it always would be so amongst civilised nations of the modern days ; but for some persons who profess to be proud of their country, their highest idea of that country's glory appears to be that it shall trample its own path over any inferior nation that comes in its way, or rather in whose way it chooses to come, and that its national pride is only to be satisfied when the victim at his last gasp cries out for mercy. Such an idea, we are glad to know, was never 1882 KING CETEWAYO. 53 Mr. Gladstone's idea, and he proved it in liis dealings with the Transvaal Eepublic. In speaking of South African affairs it may l^e appropriate and interesting to notice the visit of England's old enemy, King Cetewa3^o, to London. The visit was made in the summer of 1882, and Cete- wayo was for a time a sort of lion with London sight- seers. Fie was provided with an aesthetic house in the Kensington quarter, and received many curious visitors every day while public interest in him lasted, which was not very long. He was a man of the most un- questionable courage and daring in the battlefield, but he used to tremble at first while going up and down the stairs of his London house. Despite his corpulency he was by no means an unkingly per- sonage to look at. It was not always easy for the interpreter, a son of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, to explain to him who his visitors were. A late governor of Hong Kong went to pay him a visit, and Cetewayo was told that the visitor came from China. The King made not a bad shot ; he said he had heard of China — that it was somewhere near India. The lady in one of Disraeli's early novels who is travellinsf in an Encrlish mail-coach hears a soldier talking to somebody about Thibet. 'Thibet ? — that's in India ? ' she interposes inquiringly. ' In a manner, madam — in a manner,' the polite soldier says, unable quite to confirm, yet unwilling to con- tradict. Cetewayo's definition of China was good enough for his visitors. The King soon returned to his own country, got into a war with another chief 54 A HISTORY OF OUR OWX TIMES. ch. hi. there, and was defeated ; put himself under EngUsh authority again, and died not long after. We have described somewhat fully in the fourth volume of this History the growth and the develop- ment of the new troubles in Afghanistan which came to be part of Mr. Gladstone's unwelcome inheritance. The Afghan troubles were all a distinct creation of Lord Beaconsfield's Oriental policy, which Lord Lytton was aptly selected to carry out. The English troops occupied Cabul after the abdication of the Ameer, Yakoub Khan, whom England had signed a treaty to maintain against any foreign enemy with money, arms, and men, and had agreed to pay an allowance of 60,000Z. a year. Li return, Yakoub Khan consented to allow a British envoy to reside in Cabul. Out of that arrangement came the Cal^ul massacres, which we have already described. The British troops fought their way again into that city of disaster. Yakoub Khan abdicated, and gave him- self up as a prisoner, and was sent packing to Lidia. Cabul was secure for the time ; but the important consideration was what the English Government intended to do with it, and whom they proposed to put into it as ruler. One of Yakoub's generals, a furious fanatic, and at the same time a very clever schemer, rose up against the British, and many of the fierce hill tribes supported the revolt. The English troops had withdrawn as winter came near into the Sherpur cantonments. An army of more than ten thousand men, led by the fanatic and schemer whom we have mentioned, swooped upon Cabul, occupied 1880-81 CABUL AGAIN. 55 it, and went to work to besiege Slierpur. Not much impression, however, was made upon Sherpur. The British troops in the cantonments held out so obstinately against their assailants that time was given for reinforcements to arrive, and before the end of the year Cabul was once more open to the British. A new candidate for the Afghan crown came forward on the introduction of Eussia — Abdurrahman Khan, the grandson of the famous Dost Mahomed. Abdurrahman had long been conspiring unsuccessfully against Shere Ali, his brother, and lately had been living at Samarcand, and was doing his very best to induce the Eussians to support his claim, which they did in the end. There were other claimants for the crown as well ; but it is an old story now, and we need not go into it minutely. It is, however, well to remark that whatever may have been the rivalries of the different candidates, they all seemed to have had one common purpose of hatred and hostility to England. ' I claim to be ruler,' said one, and ' I claim to be ruler,' said the second and the third and the fourth. But, whatever lengths each was prepared to go to against the other, they all appear to have made up their minds that the first step towards agreement or arbi- trament, whether in peace or after war, was the extir- pation of the British. Abdurrahman seemed to English statesmen on the spot to have the best claim, or, at all events, the best chance of success, and the Indian Government entered into negotiations with him through Mr. Lepel Griffin (now Sir Lepel Griffin), 56 A HISTORY OF OUPt OWN TIMES. cii. in. who was brought to Cabul for the purpose. In the meantime England was again unfortunate, English arms suffered a calamity near Candahar as terrible as any that had been put upon them in all England's dealings with Afghanistan. Candahar was under the command of General Primrose, an officer of undoubted courage and skill, not yet past his prime, who had had much experience in dealing with Asiatic races and populations. Candahar was not a place to be held easily against any strong attacking force. Yet the authorities in India decided that some small portion of even that small force should be sent out from Candahar to stay the advance of Ayoob Khan, one of the rival candidates, and encounter him in the field. It was a curious blunder in every way. There was not a force in Candahar stron^f enouali to resist any formidable enemy. Ayoob Khan, a very for- midable enemy, was known to be on the march to Candahar. It is very doubtful whether the whole force in Candahar could have held the place against Ayoob Khan. It ought to have been quite certain that a greatly diminished force could not possibly have upheld Candahar. It ought to have been quite certain, too, that a force of some two thousand men, detached and sent out to meet the enemy, could not humanly have succeeded in stopping his march. The blunder was double-edged. The Indian authorities had neither strength for the one purpose nor for the other. It turned out that the strength of Ayoob Khan's army had l)een i^reatlv under-estimated. The 1880 EGBERTS TO THE RESCUE. 57 result was what might well have been foreseen. The English soldiers fought desperately, and with splendid skill; but many of the Sepoys had little or no experience in war, and some of them, it was said, had never fired a ball-cartridge up to the day of that battle. There was a complete defeat. The retreat, or flight, or whatever it might be called, only ex- hibited the horrors of the flight to Jellalabad all over again. Ayoob Khan now laid siege to Candahar. General Primrose was shut up there with his small force and whatever was left of the fugitives from the battle with Ayoob Khan. Yet just then, as so often happens in the story of England's struggles in India, the darkest hour proved to l)e that just before the dawn. The military authorities at Cabul determined on one daring stroke, on which everything that con- cerned our arms in Afghanistan must depend. General Sir Frederick Eoberts (as he was then) was sent out with some ten thousand men, British, Ghoorkas, and Sikhs — all that could possibly be spared to him — to raise the siege of Candahar. For three weeks and more nothing w^hatever was heard of him and his march. There was not much convey- ance of authentic news in the vast and trackless region that lay between Cabul and Candahar. That march ought to be one of the famous military move- ments of history. It had to be done up to time as if it were arranged by clockwork. It had to be done at the uppermost speed, as though the regions it had to traverse were civilised, cultivated, and friendly, and were provided with splendid roads. The British 58 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. hi. public held its breath during the long time while that march was on its way. At last Sir Frederick Roberts and his men emerged from darkness, and emerged in time to save Candahar. The place was still holding out when General Eoberts came out of the mist, and at once flung himself upon Ayoob Khan and cut his army to pieces. Candahar was saved. Many such chances have occurred in the history of England's dealings with India and the bordering States. Again and again the moment has arrived when everything depended on the success of some all but desperate enterprise, and the success has come at the last. This was one of the most striking events of the kind that Englishmen in India can call to memory. The success ought to have had some effect in lightening the load of responsibilities imposed upon the new Government by the Eastern policy of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Lytton. So marvellous a triumph might perhaps have made up for any previous disaster or failure. But Mr. Glad- stone and his colleagues could hardly claim the success as theirs, and leave the whole of the disasters and failures to their predecessors. Things had turned out better than might have been expected, and that was all. In the meantime, Abdurrahman had been received as Sovereign of Afghanistan. But the trouble was not over yet. Abdurrahman was a favourite of Eussia, and we had the Eussian spectre haunting us for many years. The public mind of Europe was kept for a long time — down to the other day, it might almost be said — in perturbation by the 1880 GLADSTONE ON AUSTRIA. 59 imagined presence of that Eussian spectre. There came again and again a crisis when the shghtest turn of the wheel of destiny might have compelled England to go to war with Russia, and all on account of the ruler of Afghanistan and his supposed com- plicity in the hostile designs of Russia upon our Indian Empire. Among the responsibilities entailed on him by his return to office Mr. Gladstone had to make public apology and atonement for what we may call, to adopt the phrase once famous, a ' magnificent indis- cretion.' In one of his Midlothian speeches, delivered on March 17, 1880, Mr. Gladstone made reference to an account given in the London papers of certain observations said to have been made by the Emperor of Austria. Mr. Gladstone appa- rently assumed that, the story being in the papers, must needs be true, and so he spoke of it as if he were dealing with an official report. ' Did you see,' he asked of his audience, ' that the Emperor of Austria sent for the British ambassador. Sir Henry Elliot, and told Sir Henry Elliot what a pestilent person he considered a certain Mr. Gladstone to be, as a man that did not approve of the foreign policy of Austria ; and how anxious he was — so the Emperor of Austria was condescendingly pleased to say, for the guidance of the British people, and of the electors of Midlothian — how anxious he was, gentleman, that you should, all of you, give your votes in the way to maintain the Ministry of Lord Beaconsfield ! Well, gentlemen, if you approve of 60 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. hi. tlie foreign policy of Austria, the foreign policy that Austria has usually pursued, I advise you to do that very thing. . . . What has that policy of Austria been? Austria has been the steady, un- flinching foe of freedom in every country in Europe. Eussia, I am sorry to say, has been the foe of freedom too ; but in Eussia there is one exception — Eussia has been the friend of Slavonic freedom ; but Austria has never been the friend of Slavonic freedom. Austria trampled Italy under foot, Austria resisted the unity of Germany, Austria did all she could to prevent the creation of Belgium, Austria never lifted a finger for the regeneration and constitution of Greece. There is not an instance, there is not a spot upon the whole map, where you can lay your finger and say, " There Austria did good." ' It needs no argument to show that such declara- tions as these, and coming from such a man, were likely to have a most dangerous influence upon the public mind of England. Mr. Gladstone had been Prime Minister before. He was on his way to be Prime Minister again. It was most important that he should not make new troubles for Enoland in con- tinental politics, and that he should not speak words of offence to the Sovereign of one of the great European Powers, with whom England was on terms of peace and goodwill. We must make every allowance for Mr. Gladstone's own feeliuiys towards Austrian pohcy. Austria had for many years of his hfe represented the most reactionary and despotic force in the affairs of the European continent. She 1880 THE EMPEROR Is EVER SAID IT. 61 was associated in his mind with the suppression of every impulse towards freedom and unity in Germany. She was associated with the arbitrary rule of Lombardy and Venetia. She had called in the aid of Eussia to crush the gallant efforts of Hungary for the recovery of her constitutional freedom ; and she had not even, as Mr. Gladstone pointed out, the one merit which Eussia possessed — the merit of beinuj a friend to the Slavonic race. Still, it would be a hitrhlv inconvenient thinsf indeed for the nations of the world if their leading states- men were to live in a perpetual Palace of Truth, and to speak out their opinions about each other's ways and each other's conduct and policy with a frankness which recognised no limits but those of positive accuracy. Even if the Emperor of Austria had uttered the words ascribed to him in the news- paper reports, nothing could have been more un- wise than for a statesman of Mr. Gladstone's posi- tion to make them a subject of public denunciation. But it soon became known that the Emperor of Austria had not said anything of the kind. Sir Henry Elliot at once declared that the Emperor of Austria had never made to him any observations bearing even the slightest resemblance to the words ascribed to him. In the meantime, Mr. Gladstone had made things still worse in another Midlothian speech, in which he said that, ' outside of Austria — making no reproach as to what is inside of it — that, outside of Austria, the name of Austria has, upon all occasions known to me, been the symbol of mis- 62 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. in. government and oppression in other countries ; that neither in Germany, nor in Belgium, nor in Greece, nor in Italy — where most of all she was concerned, for she was the virtual mistress of Italy until Italy was made a kingdom — in no one of these is her name known, except in conjunction with the promotion of what you and I believe to be wrong and the repres- sion of what you and I believe to be right.' Further- more, he went on to declare that he saw ' menacing signs that the Austrian Government of to-day, and especially the Hungarian portion of its subjects . . . . is engaging in schemes for repressing and putting down the liberty of the lately emancipated communi- ties in the Balkan Peninsula, and for setting up her own supremacy over them, whether they like it or not,' Nothing can be more obvious than that, if there were such an intention on the part of Austria, a public denunciation from a great English statesman would not be likely to help towards a satisfactory settlement of arrangements between Austria and England. Public feeling in Austria was roused to anger and hostility by Mr. Gladstone's outspoken assertions, and when, after the general election, he became Prime Minister once more, he and his colleagues alike felt that it was absolutely necessary that some public expression of regret should be made by him. Mr. Gladstone, as everybody will admit, seldom does things by halves. He at once entered into a corre* spondence with Count Karolyi, the Austrian ambassa- dor to England, and he finally sent to the Count a letter which was in fact an apology to the Emperor. 1880 GLADSTONE'S APOLOGY. 63 ' At the moment,' Mr. Gladstone said, ' when I accepted from the Queen the duty of forming an Administration I forthwith resolved that I would not, as a minister, either repeat or even defend in argument polemical language in regard to more than one foreign Power which I had used individually when in a position of greater freedom and less re- sponsibility.' Then, having disclaimed any hostile feelings towards Austria, and professing, no doubt quite sincerely, his good wishes for her in the work of consolidating her empire, he went on to say : ' With respect to my animadversion on the foreign policy of Austria at times when it was active beyond the borders, I will not conceal from your Excellency that grave apprehensions had been excited in my mind lest Austria should play a part in the Balkan Peninsula hostile to the freedom of the emancipated populations, and to the reasonable and warranted hopes of the subjects of the Sultan. These apprehen- sions were founded, it is true, upon secondary evi- dence, bui it was not the evidence of hostile witnesses, and it was the best at my command.' Mr. Gladstone acknowledged with satisfaction the assur- ance of Count Karolyi that Austria had no intention of endeavouring to extend the rights given to her under the Treaty of Berlin. ' Had I been,' says Mr. Gladstone, ' in possession of such an assurance as I have now been able to receive, I never would have uttered any one of the words which your Excellency justly describes as of a painful and wounding character. Whether it was my misfortune or my 64 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. iii. fault that I was not so supplied I will not now attempt to determine, but will at once express my serious concern that I should, in default of it, have been led to refer to transactions of an earlier period, or to use terms of censure which I can now wholly banish from my mind.' The letter closed with the words : ' I think that the explanation I now tender should be made not less public than the speech which has supplied the occasion for it ; and as to the form of such publicity, I desire to accede to whatever may be your Excellency's wash.' The Emperor of Austria is said to have exclaimed, when the letter of Mr. Gladstone was shown to him, that it was the letter of an Enoflish ojentleman. Certainly no apology could have been more complete and unreserved. But it did not satisfy Mr. Glad- stone's political enemies in England. Lord George Hamilton denounced the apology as ' shameful and shameless.' In the House of Commons, Tory after Tory accused Mr. Gladstone of having humiliated his country as well as himself. Lord Salisbury, while agreeing with Lord George Hamilton's description of the apology, could only express his amazement that Austria could find any contentment in it, seeing that Mr. Gladstone had withdrawn nothing, and ' only promised, in recognition of the assurance given him by Count Karolyi that Austria would not desire to advance beyond where she now stood, that he would not renew the accusation.' Some of Mr. Gladstone's friends, on the other hand, thousht he had withdrawn too much. 1880 ' MAGNIFICENT INDISCRETIONS.' 65 They asked why Mr. Gladstone could henceforth banish from his mind all censure with regard to Austrian policy in the past merely because Austrian statesmen now assured him that they had no inten- tion of going outside the provisions of the Treaty of Berlin. Everyone now agreed that it would have been better if the past or present policy of Austria had not been denounced in the Midlothian speeches. But many of Mr. Gladstone's best friends main- tained, nevertheless, that the indictment against Austria's policy in the past, however inopportunely made, ought not to have been publicly quashed by Mr. Gladstone himself merely because Austria promised to keep her ' hands off' the emancipated populations of the Balkan Peninsula. The whole affair was felt as a certain humiliation to the Prime Minister and to the country, and it seemed an in- auspicious omen for the beginning of the new Administration. All that could be said in Mr. Gladstone's support would be, that if we wanted to have a statesman always and absolutely cautious, retentive, and self- controlled, we might have many excellent Ministers, but we certainly could not have Mr. Gladstone. He was well worth having, people said, despite his occasional magnificent indiscretions. 66 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. iv. CHAPTEE IV. THE IRISH QUESTION. The Government was threatened by a greater diffi- culty than any that could have come just then from abroad. This was the Irish difficulty, which was pressed to the front the very moment that the first scenes of the Bradlaugh episode allowed the House of Commons to get on with its regular work. It was not until May 29 that the Queen's Speech was read in the House of Lords by the Lord Chancellor. The speech had not very much in substance to deal with. Her Majesty had opened Parliament and had given a speech to be read little more than three months before. The speech read on May 29 announced the intention of the Government to abandon what was called the Peace Preservation Act in Ireland, and to bring in measures on the subjects of ground game, the liability of employers to work- men for injuries suffered in their service, for the extension of the Irish borough franchise, and for a settlement of the long-vexed Burials question, which had been brought forward in the House of Commons session after session for many years by Mr. Osborne Morgan, who was now a member of the new Ad- 1880 THE IRISH NATIONALIST QUESTION. 67 ministration. All this looked quiet enough. The Duke of Marlborough, on behalf of the Tory Oppo- sition in the House of Lords, expressed his great regret at the decision of the Government to abandon the Peace Preservation Act in Ireland, and to govern the island under the ordinary law. That, of course, was what the Duke of Marlborough would naturally do. Lord Granville replied on behalf of the Govern- ment, and the business was settled for that day, at all events. When the address had been moved in the House of Commons, an amendment was proposed on the part of the Irish Nationalist members, complaining that no allusion to the Irish Land question had been made in the Queen's Speech, and bringing forward an addition to the address which should declare that the subject demanded the immediate and most serious attention of the Government. Mr. Gladstone replied in a conciliatory tone and temper. He de- clared that the subject would of necessity receive the promptest and most serious attention from the Government, but he appealed to the Irish members themselves to say whether it was not unreasonable to expect that an Administration only a few days in existence should already have so mastered all the details of so complicated a subject as to make an authoritative announcement upon it. To this it was replied by more than one Irish Nationalist member, that the Irish people did not expect an instantaneous settlement of such a question, or even an instan- taneous approach to it, but that they had expected F 2 68 HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. iv. two or three lines in the Queen's Speech, couched in sympathetic terms, to let them know that the new Government was interested in the Irish Land ques- tion, and was preparing for a settlement of it. Mr. Forster, Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, made the obvious official reply, that it was the custom not to mention in the Speech from the Throne any measure which it was not intended to bring forward in that same session. Some suggestions were made by Irish members, to the effect that as nothing comprehensive could possibly be expected from the Government in that session, there might at least be an interim measure introduced to stay the eviction of tenants from their holdings until the Government could make up its mind as to some thorough and complete legislation. In other words, the Irish trouble was to the front again, although it came in the begiiming with quiet steps and with a deprecation of any hostile purpose. The trouble was this, to begin with. Mr. Gladstone had himself already acknowledged that the Irish land-tenure system had thoroughly broken down. He made that acknowledgment the foundation for the A.ct of 1870, which his Government introduced, and which was a good measure so far as it went, but was wholly inadequate to deal with the compli- cated system of Irish land tenure. It was only a compromise, and was only meant to be a com- promise. Mr. Gladstone thought at the time that he was doing the best he could, considering the extreme difficulty there was to pass any measure for the 1880 EVICTION. 69 relief of the Irish tenant throiio-h the House of Lords, or even through the House of Commons. But we are satisfied that Mr. Gladstone did not at the time believe that he had settled the Irish Land question. The whole scope, purpose, and effect of the bill has been described in an earlier volume, and it is only necessary to say now that the bill which was passed into law in 1870 was the fitting founda- tion for a final settlement, inasmuch as it rejected the long-enforced principle that the landlord's right in dealing with his tenants w^as absolute and un- limited, and it recognised a certain partnership or property of the tenant in tJie land which he tilled and had made to bear fruit. The point of the former controversy was found in the question whether a landlord was entitled to raise the tenant's rent because of every improvement which the tenant, by his own labour and by his own means, and wholly unassisted by the landlord, had made in the farm. To this question Mr. Gladstone's Act of 1870 gave an explicit answer. The landlord has no such right. If the tenant takes the land on what Mr. Bright expressively termed ' prairie value,' and by his own labour and his own resources converts it into prosperous and fertile soil, the landlord has no right to evict him without at least giving him a reasonable compensation for the improvement he has made. That was the principle established by the Land Act of 1870, and in so far it was a beneficent measure, perfectly safe against any reactionary process. But then, the provisions of the Act fell far short 70 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. iv. of accomplishing all that Mr. Gladstone undoubtedly wished to do. It was an experiment in a right direction, and nothing more. The evictions of hard- working and honest tenants were still going on all over Ireland, merely because the tenant demurred to paying a higher rent, inflicted on him as the penalty of his own industry and energy. The machinery of the Act was utterly inadequate for its complicated purposes, and the measure, although not exactly a failure, inasmuch as it had set up a rightful principle, left the Irish Land question still an open sore and a grievance that always cried out for redress. This was the bemnninjT of the trouble the Liberal Government had to encounter. There had been in the winter of 1879 and the early months of 1880 a great failure of the crops in Ireland, and a very widespread and keen distress. Failure of crops meant a difficulty in the paying of the rents, and a difficulty in the payment of rent, especially where an increased rent was demanded, meant eviction, and eviction meant such miseries and horrors as civihsation in modern days had rarely seen. The coming of Mr. Gladstone to power had been hailed with hope, and even with enthusiasm, by the great majority of the Irish people. They remembered with gratefulness how he had disestablished and disendowed that Irish Slate Church which had been a grievance and an insult for centuries. They founded much hope also on the spirit he had shown when pressing through the House of Commons and 1880 'COMPENSATION FOR DISTURBANCE.' 71 the House of Lords his Land Act of 1870. It has already been mentioned that the appointment of Mr. Forster as Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieu- tenant had been cordially welcomed in Ireland. Perhaps, therefore, the Irish people expected too much from the Liberal Administration — expected more than it would have been then in the power of any English Administration to do. The Irish Nationalist party put forward a prompt practical contribution towards a temporary arrangement. They brought in a bill to legalise compensation for disturbance ; in other words, to enact that if, pending complete legislation, an Irish landlord should evict a tenant, the landlord should be bound to aUow him compensation for any improvement in the value of the land which the tenant might have accomplished by his own labour and his own money. Mr. Gladstone thoroughly accepted the principle of the bill, and finally consented to the introduction by the Government of a Compensation for Disturb- ance Bill of its own. The bill was strongly opposed by the Conservatives and fiercely debated. Many of the Irish members objected to it as insufiicient, and some of them abstained from voting when it was finally carried on July 26. It was then sent to the House of Lords, and rejected after a debate of two nights, and by an overwhelming majority. Therefore the Irish members found themselves to- wards the end of the session exactly in the same position as that which they had occupied before the whole question came up, and, indeed, the session 72 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. iv. began. The land-tenure question in Ireland was once again relegated back to chaos. But now, in the meantime, a great change had taken place in the condition of the Irish National party. It had become a strength with which every Ministry would have to reckon. Its numbers were still comparatively small. There were, in fact, three distinct Irish parties in the House of Commons when Mr. Gladstone's Government of 1880 beoan its work. There were the Irish Tory landlords, who sat for certain constituencies in the North of Ireland, and compared with whom an ordinary old-fashioned English Tory would have seemed like a man of en- lightenment and of progress. Then there were the Irish members whom Mr. Gladstone later on de- scribed by a happy, perhaps partly unconsciously happy, phrase as ' the nominal Home Eulers.' These men were what might be called the Whigs of Irish politics. They were for the most part highly respectable men — landlords, bankers, merchants, barristers, and others, elected on a very high and restricted suffrage, and having but little real interest in the Irish national movement. Mr. Isaac Butt was able to keep these men together well enough while he was leader of the party. During his time, how- ever, no very serious trouble took place. Mr. Butt made an annual motion in the House of Commons for a committee to inquire into the reasonableness of the Home Eule demand. There was what is called in Parliament ' a full-dress debate,' lasting over two or three nights, and then, of course, the Home Eule 1880 THE IRISH LAND LEAGUE. 73 members were hopelessly outvoted, and the subject went to sleep again for the rest of that session. During Mr. Butt's time also the Irish Land question had not got thoroughly mixed up with the Irish demand for Home Eule. The Irish Land question suggested a reform which every Home Rule member was bound to demand, just as he was bound to de- mand an extension of the Parliamentary and the municipal franchise in Ireland. But by the time Mr. Gladstone came into power the Irish Land League had been formed, and had become a living part of every Irish Parliamentary movement. Other changes also had occurred. The Irish party had got a new leader. After the death of Mr. Butt, Mr. WilHani Shaw had been elected to the leadership of the party. Mr. Shaw was an excellent type of the Irish Whig Home Euler who has been already described. He was a very able and thoroughly sincere man, a man of the utmost integrity, a man of distinguished position in his own part of his country, and he had undoubtedly got the ear of the House of Commons, by whom he was greatly respected. But he was not a man to lead the Irish party in the struggles which were now coming up. After the general election of 1880 the extreme section of the Irish Nationalists came to the House of Commons with a great addition to their numbers. In fact, a new movement had been started in Ireland by Mr. Parnell, and the whole system of Irish Parliamentary agitation was destined to undergo a change. The Irish Nationalist party met in Dublin immediately after the elections. Mr. 74 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. iv. Shaw was again proposed as leader, but after a long debate and a division he was put aside, and Mr. Parnell was elected in his stead. Now there cannot be the slightest doubt that Mr. Parnell was by far the most powerful Parhamentary figure that had risen in Irish history since the death of Daniel O'Connell. More than that, he soon made himself one of the most conspicuous figures in European politics, and this in the days of Gladstone and Bismarck, We are not comparing him for intellectual greatness with the two illustrious states- men we have named ; but it must be remembered that he had to fight on a much narrower field, and with the poorest resources to sustain him. Parnell, the most resolute Irish Nationalist of his day, was not Irish on either side of his house. On his father's side he came of an old English family who had moved at a comparatively recent period from Congleton, in Cheshire, and had set up their home in the county Wicklow. One of the family was Thomas Parnell, the poet, whose name figures so often in the letters and in the verse of Swift, and whom Pope describes as ' with softest manners, gentlest arts adorned, blest in each science, blest in every strain.' The praises of ParneU the poet by most of his great contemporaries would fall rather flat on the ears of the present generation, by whom, indeed, his name would be almost altogether forgotten had not the political career of Charles Stewart Parnell revived a faint, reflected interest in the author of ' The Hermit.' Sir John Parnell, Mr. Parnell's ffreat-jirandfather, M^as 1880 THE PARNELLS. 75 for many years Chancellor of tlie Exchequer in the Irish Parliament, and resigned his office because he would not and could not vote for the Act of Union. Sir Henry Parnell, Mr. Parnell's grand-uncle, held high office in the English Ministry, and was raised to the peerage as Lord Congleton in 1841. His end was a tragedy : his brain was overwrought ; he lost his reason, and died by his own hand. Mr. Parnell's mother was an American, a daughter of Admiral Charles Stewart, a famous American naval officer, who fought against the English in the war of 1814, and who was affectionately termed by his sailors and his friends, ' Old Ironsides.' So far as we know there was not a drop of Irish blood in Charles Parnell's veins, although his whole public career absorbed itself into the Irish question. During all his earliest years he had had no interest whatever in politics of any kind. He was sent to various private schools in England, and afterwards went to Magdalene College, Cambridge. Here it was, so far as we can learn, his curious fate to make no impression whatever on his teachers or his comrades. He did not distinguish himself in any way, and although he had at all times a great love for science, especially for applied science, lie did not make his mark in any branch of study. While he was at Cambridge the Eenian movement broke out in Ireland. His mother was then in his an- cestral house at Avondale, in the county of Wicklow. She was supposed to have some sympathy with the movement, and to have sheltered Fenians in the house. Avondale was searched by the police, and even Mrs. 76 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. it. Parnell's bedroom was not allowed to be sacred from the investigation. When young Parnell heard of this indignity offered to his mother, he became suddenly filled with a passion of hatred for English government in Ireland. That was the first time that he ever thought anything about an Irish national movement, and from that moment forth he became the inveterate enemy of English rule in Ireland. Parnell never went in for any scheme for sepa- ration, or for armed rebellion. His mind was thoroughly and above all things practical, and his dream for Ireland was of a National Parliament in Dublin, while the connection with England on terms of willing partnership was to be maintained. lie was entirely opposed to any attempt at rebellion by physical force, because he held, first, that there was no chance for a physical-force struggle ; and next, that there was no necessity for any attempt of the kind. He firmly believed that an Irish National party in the House of Commons, acting together, could succeed in obtaining from the English Parliament the great measure which he desired to carry. It is only the barest justice to the memory of the man whose character and purposes were afterwards so .cruelly misrepresented and maligned, to say that he had absolutely no sympathy whatever with any form of criminal outrage, and that during all his years of political power he exerted every influence he had, and to a great extent with success, to maintain the national agitation within the limits of constitutional order. He was not privately what would be called 1880 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 77 an intellectual man. He had read no books except works on applied science, Parliamentary Blue books, and ' Hansard.' The whole literary and artistic side of existence was a blank to him. But it was im- possible for a reading man, for even a scholar, to talk to him without being soon impressed by the curious originality, freshness, and strength of his ideas. We have already described the opening of his Parliamentary career. He came into the House of Commons absolutely unknown to the vast majority of its members. Much was against him. He was a poor and untrained speaker. At no time did he ever show any gift of oratory, except so much of eloquence as consists in the art of saying all one wants to say in the fewest and strongest words. Mr. Gladstone said of him, at a somewhat later period of Parnell's career, that he had never heard any man, not except- ing even Lord Palmerston, who had so completely the art of saying every word he wanted to say, and not a word more. Parnell's voice was strong and penetrating, but there was no music in it. His style was one which might have been thought the least likely to inspire an Irish audience with enthusiasm. The oratory of O'Connell must have swept any Celtic audience along with it, as, indeed, it swept many and many a British audience along with it. But Parnell was always cold, calm, self-restrained, with hardly a gleam of passion, unless in moments of rare excite- ment, without a spark of imagination or a touch of poetic feeling. Yet he was able to hold his Irish audiences, his great open-air meetings, hanging upon 78 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. iv. liis words, and before long lie was able to maintain the fixed attention of the House of Commons to every sentence he uttered. His appearance was much in his favour, and suited exactly with the position he occupied. He was tall, stately, with a clear-cut, handsome, pallid, statuesque face. Strangers coming into the House of Commons, not knowing who he was, were attracted by that pale, marble-like face, and asked, Who is that ? Parnell did not begin the policy of obstruction. The policy of obstruction had always been a more or less recognised weapon in the House of Commons. There was an organised obstruction to Lord John Eussell's Eeform Bill in 1831 and 1832. Mr. Glad- stone obstructed the passing of the Divorce Act to the very best of his power. Sir Charles Dilke, Mr. Leonard Courtney, and Mr. Chamberlain kept, with Mr. Parnell's assistance, the House of Commons at work for more than one all-night sitting. But there was a very distinct difference between Mr. Parnell's policy and that of other men. Obstruction in other cases had to do with some particular measure, which its opponents were determined not to allow to pass into law if they could by any constitutional process forbid it to go further ; or, with regard to certain questions, it was an obstruction which said to the Government of the day : ' You shall not liave this measure at all unless you allow into it certain amendments which we propose to make.' But Mr. Parnell's obstruction had a different and a wider object. It is not likely that he saw in the first 1880-81 PARNELL'S OBSTRUCTION POLICY, 79 instance the full use that might be made of the instrument he was employing. But the idea soon dawned upon him and overspread his strong mind. He was not a lover of England ; he was not in feeling much of a democrat. But he was thoroughly con- vinced that if the attention of the English people, and more especially of the English democracy, could be really aroused to the Irish national claim, the conscience of the majority of Englishmen would be compelled to recognise its justice, and the cause of Home Eule would be gained. Now that and nothing else was the meaning of Mr. Parnell's policy of obstruction — the policy which he carried on, for example, after Mr. Gladstone had come into office in 1880, and when Parnell was made leader of the Irish party. Many people set him down merely as a man who, out of some sort of sinister purpose or malignity, wished to interfere with and harass, ob- struct, and irritate every English Government and the whole House of Commons. Mr. Parnell had no feeling of the kind. His was a deliberate purpose, and it was even by the process of exasperation that he tried to fix the attention of the House and the country on the fact that there was an Irish national demand, which it would be necessary to listen to and to take into consideration. Parnell's creed was that the House of Commons was the one great public platform, of the country. From that platform he was determined to appeal to and arouse the English people. Therefore he said in substance to the House of Commons : ' If you will not listen to our Irish 80 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. iv. national claim, then we will not allow you to discuss any other question whatever of which we can prevent the discussion.' He acted on the inspiration of the woman in the Eastern story — of which woman he had probably never heard — who, having tried in vain to get a petition delivered to the Sultan, took her place with her little children in the public street, and waited until the Sultan rode that way, and then flung herself and her babes in front of his horse's hoofs, and declared that she would not move from that spot until he had listened to her appeal or had trampled her and hers to death. That was the real meaning of the later policy of obstruction. It had its effect. It did attract the attention of the outer public, and of the House of Commons too, to the fact that there was an Irish national grievance and an Irish national demand, and at last people began to ask each other, doubtfully, ' What if, after all, there should be something in these claims that Parnell is making ? What if the Irish people have been badly treated about their National Parliament ? May it not be that some of the great newspapers, whom we trusted implicitly, have not been guiding us quite rightly all this time ? ' Of course, when questions of this kind raise themselves in the public mind, then, in a country like England, a demand that has justice behind it is sure to be recognised sooner or later. It is only a question of a little sooner or a little later. Mr. Parnell meanwhile was becomino- a recoo-- nised power in the House of Commons. 1879 A CHANCE 3IISSED 81 Sir Stafford Northcote, while he was still leader of the Government in that House, objected once to Mr. Parnell's tone, as that of one who thought he ought to be dealt with by the Ministry on the conditions of equal powers. Truly Mr. Parnell was even then a man with whom a wise Government miq-ht have been well pleased to treat on such conditions. No man had anything like the same influence over all the Irish race at home and abroad. He was strongly disliked by most of the advocates of physical force, and thoroughly detested by what we may call the ' out- rage men ' ; but the great majority of the Fenians, who, of course, were not outrage men, but only men who believed in the possibility of winning Ireland's freedom in the battlefield, were satisfied that Parnell and his policy ought to have a chance, and they were quite determined that they at least would hold their hand, and not interfere with the success of the Home Kule party in Parliament. The vast majority of the Irish at home, in Great Britain, in America, and in Australasia, who had nothing to do with Fenianism, were strong in their support of Parnell. It would not have taken much trouble at that time for an English Government to come to an understanding with Mr. Parnell, and such an understandincr mi^yht have saved us from many a calamity and prevented many a crime. For it is certain now, to all who understood the whole question then or later, that the gradual success of the constitutional Home Eule movement would have meant the gradual, and, some time or other, the final, pacification of Ireland and v. G 82 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. iv. the reconciliation of the English and the Irish peoples. In the meantime, however, things had not advanced quite so far as all that, and Mr. Parnell was still re- garded by most English statesmen as a mere mischief- maker and a firebrand. It is right to say that there w^ere at least three prominent public men in England who even then did not share that opinion. Sir Charles Dilke was one ; Mr, Chamberlain, however he may have been led more lately to change his opinions, was certainly another ; Mr. John Morley was the third. These men regarded Mr. Parnell as a patriot, as a statesman, and as one with whom English statesmen ought to try to come to an under- standing. But this view was not shared by many on either side of the House of Commons, and even Mr, Bright did not thoroughly understand the nature and the purpose of Mr. Parnell' s movement. In truth, it is not easy for men always to see the possibility of good purpose in any movement which keeps them up night after night, sitting and wrangling in the weari- some House of Commons. An Enoiish member for a Western constituency embodied the common idea very simply and naturally when he said, in Mr. Parnell's presence, that Mr. Parnell's return to Parliament had been a curse to the House of Commons. Yes — there it was. He was a curse to the House of Commons. He kept men sitting up all night. He did not care three straws about the dinner-hour. He never wanted to dine out. He never went into society. He disturbed or disregarded social arrancrements with a pitiless indifference. He had his one sole 1879-86 'A CURSE TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.' 83 business in life, and he stuck to it ; and if it disturbed the social conveniences, or even the sleeping-hours, of the great majority of members, he really did not seem to care. From the point of view of the ordinary member of Parliament, who obtains a seat mainly with a hope of certain social possibilities, what could a man like Mr. Parnell be but a curse to the House of Commons ? It is not necessary to go through the whole story of the Irish trouble session by session. It is a distinct story all to itself, and had best be told as an unbroken narrative. The rejection by the House of Lords of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill created consternation among the Irish tenantry. In proportion to the greatness of their hopes was the depth of their fall into despair. The Government was strongly urged by the Irish members, and by some of the English democratic members, to send up another bill for the same general purpose to the House of Lords in that same session. It is quite possible that if a firmer tone had been adopted by the Government with regard to the House of Lords the Peers might have given way. But though Mr. Forster, on behalf of the Government, had acknowledged that there was a great increase of evictions, and a partial failure of the crops in Ireland, and that the prospect for the winter was very gloomy, yet he did not seem to think that there was anything which could be done by the Government at the time. There were stormy and prolonged debates, and suspensions of Irish Nationalist members, and many all-night sittings, 84 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. iv. and a bitter hostility began between Mr. Forster and the Irish members. One of the new Home Eule Nationalists in the House was Mr. John Dillon, whose name afterwards became of great importance in every Irish movement. He was the son of Mr. John Blake Dillon, already mentioned in this History as a high-minded and patriotic Irishman, who took part in a rebellion, about the success of which he had no hope, rather than abandon his leader, Mr. Smith O'Brien, to his fate. The elder Dillon was at a much later period, and while he was a member of the House of Commons, a foremost mover in the attempt to bring about an alliance between the English Eadicals and the Irish Nationalists, to which Mr. Bright lent his most cordial co-operation. The younger Dillon, quite a young man indeed when he entered Parlia- ment, had all his father's devotion to the national cause, and his father's intellect, education and culture. Outside Parliament, the most prominent and influential Irishman was the inspiring force of the Land League, Michael Davitt. Mr. Davitt was born of the peasant class, and got his first impression of the Irish land-tenure system by the eviction of his family and himself, in his childhood, from their road- side cabin. The family sought shelter in England, and Mr. Davitt was sent in his boyhood to work in a factory. By an accident among the machinery he lost his right arm, and thus heavily handicapped had to set out in the struggle for life. He was filled with a passionate zeal for the national cause, and for 1867-80 MICHAEL DAVITT. 85 the redress of the wrongs which he beheved lo oppress the Irishman. He took part in the Fenian movement of 1867. He was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to penal servitude for fifteen years. After he had served about eight years of the time, for the most part in Dartmoor convict prison, he was released on ticket-of-leave, and in 1879 he, in con- junction with Mr. Parnell, founded the Land League organisation. Mr. Davitt's strong faith in the justice of the Irish cause, both as regarded Home Eule and land tenure, was a passion, and was often expressed in the language of passion. Yet somehow he succeeded in impressing everybody wdth a conviction of his personal sincerity, and of his absolute freedom from any unworthy purpose whatever. It is not too much to say that during the most tumultuous days of the Irish agitation in Ireland, and in the House of Commons, Mr. Davitt won for himself the personal respect of every Englishman who came near him. It was well known that ambition, or the desire for personal advancement, or for individual success, or for gain of any kind, counted for nothing with him. Mr. Davitt, then, had become a great force outside the House of Commons just at a time when Mr. Parnell was beginning to be a great force inside it, and the two forces were now thoroughly combined. The winter, as had been expected, turned out to be one of widespread disturbance in Ireland. General Gordon, the Gordon of Khartoum, went over to Ireland to see things with his own eyes, and form an opinion for himself. A letter of his, written to a 86 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. iv. friend, was published in the Times on December 3, 1880. 'I have lately,' he said, 'been over the South-west of Ireland, in the hope of discovering how some settlement could be made of the Irish question, which, like a fretting cancer, eats away our vitals as a nation.' He deplored the complete lack of sympathy between the landlord and the tenant class, and he declared, ' No half-measured Acts, which left the landlord with any say to ihe tenantry of these portions of Ireland, will be of any use. They would be rendered, as past Land Acts in Ireland have been, quite abortive ; for the landlords will insert clauses to do away with their force. Any half-measures will only place the Government face to face with the people of Ireland as the champions of the landlord class.' Gordon's idea was that the Government should, at a cost of eighty millions, convert the greater part of the South-west of Ireland into Crown land, wherein landlords should have no power of control. ' For the rest of Ireland I would pass an Act allowing free sale of leases, fair rents, and a Government valuation. In conclusion, I must say, from all accounts and my own observations, that the state of our fellow-countrymen in the parts I have named is worse than that of any people in the world, let alone Europe. I believe that these people are made as we are ; that they are patient beyond behef, loyal, but at the same time broken-spirited and desperate, living on the verge of starvation in places where we would not keep our cattle. Our comic prints do an infinity of harm by their 1880 ' CHINESE ' GORDON'S WORDS ON IRELAND. 87 caricatures. Firstly, the caricatures are not true, for the crime in Ireland is not greater than that in England ; and secondly, they exasperate the people on both sides of the Channel, and they do no good. It is ill to laugh and scoff at a question which affects our existence.' General Gordon's letter made a deep impression on all men with thinking minds. Of course, on the average man of the world it made no impression at all. An Irish member proposed in the House of Commons that the Government should be invited to place the management of Ireland for a time in the hands of General Gordon. The sugges- tion was made seriously and in all good faith ; but we need hardly say that it was not taken seriously by the Government, or, for that matter, by the House of Commons. Yet there is no saying how profoundly the whole condition of things in Ireland and in England miight have been altered for the better if it had been possible then to put the conduct of Irish affairs into the strong and sympathetic hands of General Gordon. As it was, things only went on from bad to worse. Undoubtedly there was much disturbance in Ireland, and there were many outrages of various kinds — mutilations of cattle and murders of men. The tenants formed a sort of trade union of their own, by which they refused to deal with or work for any man who had taken land from which its former occupier had been evicted. The agitation created a new word for the English language. Captain Boycott was an Englishman, and an agent of a great Irish 88 A HISTORY OF OUR OAVN TIMES. CH. it. landlord in Connemara. Nobody in the neighbour- hood would work for him ; he could get no domestic servants ; he and his wife had to do all their house- hold work and their field work for themselves, and he had for a long time to be under police protection. The verb to ' boycott ' came in with him, and, to use an old familiar way of putting things, it will probably last as long as the English language itself. It is only right to say that Mr, Parnell and Mr. Davitt, while they did not discourage mere boycotting, which Mr. Davitt considered an un- avoidable incident in the great strike of tenants against landlords, both did their very utmost to warn the peasantry against deeds of actual violence. The Government, however, believed that the Land League was guilty of encouraging and inciting to out- rage. The customary steps were taken, as in all such Irish movements, and with the customary result. A State prosecution was instituted against Mr. Parnell, Mr. Biggar, Mr. Sexton, Mr. Dillon, and all the executive body of the Land League. The prosecution of course came to nothing. It would have been impossible to find any jury then in Leinster, Munster, or Connaught who, if not packed by the Crown officials, would have con- victed Mr. Parnell of sedition. So the jury in these cases did not agree, and the accused men had to be discharged. The officials at the Castle had not really measured the nature of the struggle that was going on. To the mind of the Irish tenant it had become simply a question of life or death. It 1881 IRELAND'S DISAPPOINTMENT. 89 would have been better for Ireland, and for England also, if at the time the Tory Government had been in office, although the Tory Government had done everything that the Liberal Government was doing. Irishmen would have suffered and groaned, indeed, but they would have said to themselves that there was nothing else to be expected from the Tories. Now, however, there came in surprise, shock, dis- appointment and despair. Irishmen believed that a Liberal Government would have been their friend, and now, behold ! the Liberal Government was showing itself, so Irishmen thought, their bitter enemy. What hope, they asked, is left for us now, when even the men whom we believed in as our only friends in England seem to have turned against us ? Then there set in a recrudescence of all the old forms of secret society and conspiracy in Ireland. So long as the Parliamentary agitation seemed to be succeeding, and so long as Mr. Glad- stone and the Liberals were friends of Ireland, there was little chance for the masked assassin. But when constitutional agitation began for a time to seem barren and hopeless, then the blunderbuss came to its work again. A dreary and even a ghastly period succeeded. Mr. Forster became as unpopular in Ireland as any English Chief Secretary could possibly have been. He was sometimes actually accused, and in good faith, by his accusers of taking a delight in the sufferings of the Irish evicted tenant. Of course this was outrageously and grotesquely unjust and absurd, and it is only mentioned here as a sign of 90 A HISTOEY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. iv. the times and an illustration of the distorting passion of hatred which had grown up amongst many men in Ireland towards some of the Liberal states- men. Those who knew Mr. Forster, knew well that he was a humane, single-minded, and Christian man. But the truth is that he was not what most people believed him to be — a strong man. His whole appearance, his huge frame, his massive head, his energetic movements, all seemed to proclaim the strong man. But he was not strong in the best meaning of the word ; certainly he was not strong enough for the difficulties by which he found himself surrounded. He had enough of personal courage. Where it came to be a question of meet- ing danger he never took heed of the risk. But, to put it in familiar language, he lost his head when he found himself confronted with the terrible troubles of the Chief Secretary's office in Ireland. He became completely and, if I may use the expression, senti- mentally disappointed with the Irish people. He believed that they had failed to appreciate him, that they had not given him enough of their confidence, that they had shown themselves distrustful of him and impatient with him, and so he allowed his heart to turn against them. They were to him the un- grateful people, who would make no allowance for the difficulties with which he was beset, and who turned against him because he could not give them all they asked for at once. Mr. Forster ap- parently ideahsed the Irish people, and regarded it as one ungrateful man. 1881 MR. FORSTER'S FAILURE. 91 Let us, however, make some allowance for the Irish tenant, who firmly believed that when the author of the Land Act of 1870 came back to power the wrongs of the Irish tenantry would be redressed, and who now found himself, under the rule of a Liberal Government, turned out of house and home by his landlord, turned out of the farm that his own energy had converted from prairie value to pros- perity, with his wife and his little children crouching beside him on the wintry roadside, and with no prospect but the pitiful prospect of workhouse shelter. Now, let it be also observed that, unless every Government, Liberal or Tory, which came into office since that time was utterly wrong and unscrupulous, the demand of the Irish tenant during Mr. Forster's period of office was absolutely justified. Every Government, as we have said, Tory as well as Liberal, that has come into office since Mr. Forster's day has made some endeavour to amend the Irish land-tenure system in the interests of the tenant. We cannot, therefore, be surprised if the Irish people in the south and west and midlands felt that they had been grievously ill-used by Mr. Forster's policy. Mr. Forster now seemed to go in resolutely for a sort of stand-up fight against the Irish people. He carried measures through the House of Commons, not without fierce and prolonged resistance from the Irish members, which enabled him to imprison at will anyone against whom there was ' reasonable suspicion ' of an inclination to disturb the country. The men thus imprisoned were not charged with 92 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. iv. anything, or to be charged with anything. They were not to be brought to trial at all. They were simply to be locked up, or ' interned ' for the safety of the community until quieter times should come round. Mr. Forster put his demands with the greatest candour and clearness. He insisted that a vast deal of harm was done bj'' the ' village tyrant ' and the ' dissolute ruffian,' who never brought them- selves within the reach of the existing law, but were always urging others on to mischief and to outrage. The present Lord Chief Justice of England, then Mr. Charles Eussell, made one of the happiest quotations heard for long in the House of Commons when he asked Mr. Forster whether his village tyrant might not sometimes be ' some village Hampden who, with dauntless breast, the petty tyrant of his fields withstood.' But Mr. Forster was determined to have the power of locking up any village Hampden or village tyrant whom he thought it right to incar- cerate, and he carried his measure after lonof nights of obstruction, of commotion, and disorder in the House of Commons, after the suspension of Irish Nationalist members in batches, and a tumult in Ireland which seemed as though it could never be appeased. Then he went to work with what, no doubt, he sincerely regarded as heroic energy, and he soon had under lock and key a vast number of ' suspects,' as they were called, taken from every town and vil- lage and hillside in Ireland. He used to boast that he had every dangerous person in the island under lock and key. Of course Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, 1881-82 IRELAND UNDER LOCK AND KEY. 93 Mr. Sexton, and numbers of other prominent Irish- men were amongst the prisoners. Men of the highest character in Ireland — distinguished physicians, well- known barristers, men against whose personal repu- tation not a word had been said, men of the landlord class even, who had become adherents of the national cause — came under the net of this extraordinary legislation. As it afterwards turned out, Mr. Forster only failed in imprisoning the few real criminals whose deeds afterwards appalled and horrified the world. Some of these men, as we all came to know later on, had hatched a regular conspiracy to take his own life, and were watching and waiting for a chance to murder him ; and he knew nothing about them or their schemes, while he was cramming the Irish prisons with men whose only offence was that they were pressing too passionately for land reforms which Mr. Forster's own Government acknowledged to be needed. In the meantime Mr. Gladstone had brouo-ht in a new Land Bill for Ireland. It was a distinct improve- ment on the measure of 187U ; but then, ten years and more had gone by, and the new bill, in the opinion of the Irish Nationalists, was not equal to the occa- sion and the demand. Most of the Irish Nationalist members abstained accordingly from voting on the second reading of the bill. The bill w*as passed into law ; but that it was not adequate to the needs of the country is amply proved by the fact that every succeeding Government, Liberal or Tory, has 94 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch iv. expanded and amended it. All this time the Home Eule question was allowed to remain in a sort of abeyance. It was in the mind of everybody, and everybody knew well it would come forward in strength again ; but for the season the great struggle about the land was holding the field, and nothing else could occupy public attention. The troubles arising out of the land struggle and the futile measures taken for their suppression held almost the whole attention of the House of Commons. Hardly any other business, except the inevitable work of finance and the services, could be done in the House. We all know now that Mr. Gladstone in his heart never felt any genuine sympathy with the measures of coercion on which Mr. Forster had insisted. But Mr. Forster had declared that without such powers in his hands he could not undertake to govern Ireland, and he, as Chief Secretary, was understood to know all about the condition of the country. Mr. Gladstone therefore showed confidence in his colleague, and allowed himself too much to be guided by Mr. Forster's representations. The whole situation was quickly tending to become, as it did at last become, impossible. There were English Eadical members of the Government who had no more sympathy with Mr. Forster's policy than any of the Irish Nationalist members had. Somehow or other an approach was made to Mr. Parnell, then in prison (or it may be that the advance came from Mr. Parnell himself), towards some sort of understandino- by which the hopeless struggle against the Irish 1881-82 THE KIL31AINHAM TREATY. 95 people could be brought to a close. Mr. Parnell, it was understood, begau to grow alarmed at the reports of the disturbed condition of Ireland which reached him in his prison, and he was very naturally under the impression that if he were free again he could do something to keep agitation within due bounds. However the arrangement may have been suffoested, it is certain that a member of Mr. Glad- stone's Cabinet represented to the Prime Minister that there were conditions under which Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary colleagues might be released from prison with advantage to the public safety. Out of all this came what is called ' the Kilmainham Treaty,' the full history of which we fancy has not yet been written. Mr. Parnell and other Irish members of Parliament were made free men once more, and Mr. Forster instantly resigned his office. Mr. Forster was for carrying on the stand-up fight against the Irish people to the very last, and he would not remain in Dublin Castle under any other conditions. Then came the important question about the appointment of his successor. There was a strong desire among the Irish Nationalists in the House of Commons that either Sir Charles Dilke or Mr. Chamberlain should be entrusted with the office of Chief Secretary. For a time the general conviction was that the place would be offered to Mr. Chamber- lain. That, indeed, was Mr. Chamberlain's own con- viction, and, acting on it, he very reasonably called together a few of the leading Irish members, in the 96 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. iv. belief that a frank interchange of ideas might lead to some satisfactory results. The place, however, was not offered to Mr. Chamberlain. As a matter of fact it was offered to Sir Charles Dilke, but with the stipulation that he was not to have a seat in the Cabinet. Sir Charles Dilke refused to accept the office under such conditions, and, as it seems to us, his refusal was amply justified. The Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant is in any case the actual governor of Ireland, and it was out of the question that, at a time of such stress and trouble, Sir Charles Dilke could undertake duties which he was not him- self to have an opportunity of defending in the Cabinet. The appointment then was conferred on Lord Frederick Cavendish, a younger brother of Lord Hartington, and one of the most popular men in the House of Commons — especially popular, it may be added, among the L4sh Nationalist members, to whom, while he held the office of Junior Lord of the Treasury, he had always shown himself courteous and friendly. Lord Frederick Cavendish was not supposed to be very strong as a statesman ; but the explanation of the appointment was popularly believed to be found in the fact that Mr. Gladstone, who had a great friendship for Lord Frederick, and to whom Lord Frederick was absolutely devoted, intended to govern L^eland himself through the medium of the new Chief Secretary. All hopeful expectations were, however, soon brought to a close. We need not tell over again the ghastly story of the murders in the Ph(]enix Park, Dublin. The plot of 1882 THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS. 9T the assassins was doubtless aimed in the first instance against the life of Mr. Thomas Burke, the Permanent Under-Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, who, it is now known, was getting the threads of a great murder conspiracy within his hands, and whom, therefore, the assassins believed it necessary to remove from the scene. Lord Frederick was in com- pany with Mr. Burke, and met his death while gallantly striving to rescue his friend from the knives of the murderers. The heavens might well have been hung in black that day ! The news reached London late on the night of Saturday, May 6, 1882, but it was not made generally known in London until the following day. Perhaps no other piece of news in our time has really made so distinct an impression on the very appearance of the Sunday streets in London. The crimes were at once denounced in a manifesto issued on behalf of the L*isli Nationalists which bore the signatures of Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. Davitt. it 98 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. ch. v. CHAPTER V. ' ON fame's eternal beadroll.' The close of the year 1880 rang down the curtain on the hfe of one of the greatest EngUsh novelists. On December 29, 1880, the woman whose literary name was George Eliot died. We have already expressed in this History our opinion as to the genius, the greatness, the peculiar merits, and the peculiar defects of George Eliot. Criticism would come in but poorly just now, and, at any rate, we have said all that we desire to say in that way. George Eliot was undoubtedly amongst the greatest English novelists. She ranks with Fielding, with Jane Austen, with Dickens, with Thackeray, and with Charlotte Bronte. Of late years there has been a sort of reaction asjainst her influence. From havinof been absolutely worshipped in her time, she has come now to be the subject of a certain revulsion, and, at all events, of a considerable neglect. This, indeed, would seem to be one of the conditions of literary fame. The younger generation gets tired of those who were the idols of its elders — tired of them simply, perhaps, because the elders sang their praises too much. In literature one has to pay later on the 1880 DEATH OF GEORGE ELIOT. 99 penalty of popularity. At the present time there is a sort of reaction, not only against George Eliot, but against Dickens and Thackeray, and, in a different field, against Macaulay and Stuart Mill. Charlotte Bronte at the present hour is little read by the outer public, and an American writer has lately said that people in America do not talk much about Nathaniel Hawthorne now. These men and women have, in fact, become classics, and the ' up-to-date ' reader, to use a vile slang phrase of the present day, does not much care about classics. The up-to-date reader of any day did not care much about classics. But the fame endured, and, more than that, there is always a new set of readers growing up, as education spreads and deepens among the lowly and the poor, who care nothing in particular about writing merely because it is up to date, and turn back eagerly to the great writers that are out of date. Every year in England there are new editions, cheaper and cheaper editions, put into circulation of Scott, and Dickens, and Thackeray, and George Eliot, and Charlotte Bronte, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. To be a classic means, it would seem, only to be inde- pendent of actual date, and to find new readers in each generation. Certainly no woman novelist in England ever rose to a higher level than that attained by George Eliot, and the year becomes one of melancholy note when she passed out of life. Her later writings had not been quite up to the level of her (jreat successes. She was fallin CO., XEW-fcTKl-KT SmUAUE LONDON Messrs. CHATTO & WINDUS'S NEW PREMISES III ST. MARTIN'S LANE LONDON, VV.C. [April 1897. LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY CHATTO & WINDUS III ST. MARTIN'S LANE, CHARING CROSS, LONDON, W.C. About (Edmond).— The Fellah: An Egyptian Novel. Sir Raxdal Robfrts. Post 8vo. illustrated boards, ss. Translated bv Adams (W. Davenport), Works by. 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