Part 8 (2/2)
It was a bold and far-reaching scheme, and whatever its effect may have been in temporarily restoring the fortunes of Liberalism, its influence upon the political life of England has been great, and--I fear I must say--has not been beneficial. The founders of the caucus professed to resent the intrusion of the influence of money into political affairs.
Within certain limits this was an admirable att.i.tude. But its practical effect has been to drive the greater proportion of the moneyed cla.s.ses out of the Liberal party. They further professed to wish to put an end to the influence exercised by cliques and privileged cla.s.ses or persons in the party. The majority was to rule under all conceivable circ.u.mstances.
Those who, like myself, have had an active and intimate a.s.sociation with the caucus and the Federation know that in practice the new system, so far from destroying the rule of cliques, merely subst.i.tuted one set of cliques for another. The active busybody, who had little business of his own to attend to, or to whom the position of member of a local committee was one to be striven after for the sake of the dignity attaching to it, became the ruling spirit of the caucus. In thousands of cases the older and more sober Liberals were driven out of the councils of their party in disgust, and more and more the extreme men, who were fighting in earnest for some special object or fad, became the predominant powers in Liberalism. This was the change that was gradually wrought in the Liberal party between 1875 and 1885.
At the outset I was vehemently opposed to the new methods, and protested stoutly against them in the _Leeds Mercury_. It was not very long, indeed, before I had personal experience of the way in which the caucus system worked. Mr. Carter, the Radical, who had been returned for Leeds in 1874, retired from Parliament two years later. It would have been the natural and proper course for the Liberal party to invite its former representative, Sir Edward Baines, to become a candidate for the vacancy.
He was the man who undoubtedly had the chief claim upon the Liberal party in the town. A meeting of the newly-formed Liberal a.s.sociation was called to consider the question of choosing a candidate. As editor of the chief Liberal paper, I had been taken into the counsels of the local Liberal leaders ever since a.s.suming that post, had been invited to attend the meetings of their committee, and found that they were at all times desirous of securing my support. When I spoke to one of the officials of the new a.s.sociation of the meeting that was to be held to choose a candidate, and mentioned my intention of attending, I was bluntly told that I should not be admitted. I had not, it appeared, been elected a member of the Four Hundred. As a matter of fact, very few persons in Leeds had known anything about the election of this body when it took place. It was a startling revelation of the change that had taken place to be thus refused admittance to a body which, in former times, would have been only too anxious to secure my support.
The President of the a.s.sociation, to whom I went to demand admittance, stood upon the strict letter of the law. I had not been elected by my district committee, which held its meetings in a local public-house, and it was therefore impossible that I should be allowed to attend the deliberations of the sacred body. Looking back, I can see that the president was absolutely justified in the line he took. It might seem absurd to shut out from a meeting of Liberals the person who, by reason of his position, had more political influence in Leeds than any other man. But ”logic is logic,” and under the new system any claim founded upon mere influence, or even upon past services, was inadmissible. I was too young, however, to acknowledge this fact at the time, and I bluntly delivered an ultimatum to the President of the a.s.sociation. ”You may hold your caucus meeting,” I said, ”but if it is to be private so far as I am concerned, it shall be private so far as the reporters of the _Leeds Mercury_ are concerned also. I shall simply ignore your proceedings, and to-morrow the _Leeds Mercury_ will make its own nomination for the vacancy.” This was all very wrong, I fear, and most irregular.
Indeed, remembering what power the caucus system subsequently attained, I look back with something like astonishment at my own audacious action.
But the caucus was still in its infancy, and my worthy friend the President, after a hurried consultation with his fellow-officials, capitulated. I was invited to be present at the meeting of the sacred body.
It was the first meeting of that description I had ever attended, but it was typical of many that I have attended since then. As I expected, it was proposed by those who had long been recognised as the leaders of the Liberal party in Leeds that Sir Edward Baines should be the candidate.
Forthwith a most violent opposition was offered to the proposal by men who had never before been heard of in Leeds politics, and some of whom had only been resident in the town for a few months. I remember that the most violent of these gentlemen was a schoolmaster from Birmingham, who denounced Sir Edward Baines for the a.s.sistance he had given in the pa.s.sing of that iniquitous measure, the Education Act. Another gentleman denounced him with equal violence because he was the proprietor of the _Leeds Mercury_, a journal which had dared to speak disrespectfully of the truest and most honest Liberal of the day, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.
That was the first occasion on which my fellow-Liberals in Leeds belaboured me with the name of Mr. Chamberlain. On all sides I heard extreme opinions expressed by men whose faces and names were quite unfamiliar to me, and I found to my dismay that the more extreme the opinions, the warmer was their reception by these representative Liberals. They would hardly listen to their old leaders, who had grown grey in fighting the battles of Liberalism. They treated with contumely any words of soberness or moderation. They applauded even speakers who were palpably selfish and insincere. As I listened to that debate, my eyes were opened, and I realised the fact that a great revolution had been suddenly and silently wrought, and that the control of the Liberal party had, in a great measure, pa.s.sed out of the hands of its old leaders into those of the men who managed the new ”machine.” If I have been tedious in telling this story of the caucus, it is still, I feel, one that is worth telling, for it ill.u.s.trates one, at least, of the great changes in the political conditions of this country that have happened during my lifetime.
It was not, of course, Sir Edward Baines who was chosen as the Liberal candidate. The choice of the caucus fell upon the worthy President of that body, the late Sir John Barran, an amiable man and a good citizen, though his claims to Parliamentary distinction at that time were certainly unequal to those of Sir Edward Baines. The revolution had taken place, however, and the Liberal party found itself under the command of new masters. For some time after the establishment of the caucus, it pursued a distinctly aggressive course, and inspired all of us with alarm. In course of time, however, I realised the fact that there were certain severe limitations upon its power. It could not stand against the country when the country was in earnest. It could not give that inspiration to a party without which victory cannot be achieved. No amount of organisation, however skilfully devised, could supply the place of a great popular movement. I became reconciled to the caucus when I grasped these facts, and for a time I not only looked upon it as harmless, but gave my a.s.sistance to it, locally in Leeds and, in its national work, in the office of the National Liberal Federation. Yet I am compelled to confess now that, though I have not altered my view as to the limitations of the power of the party machine, I no longer regard it as harmless.
It is, I think, impossible to deny that very great harm has been done, not merely to the spirit of Liberalism, but to the actual fortunes of the Liberal party, by the new system. It has brought a new spirit into the direction of our party, a spirit which is too apt to regard the catching of votes as the one great object to be pursued and attained, no matter by what means. It has given the mere machine man, the intriguer and wire-puller, far greater power than it is right that he should possess, seeing that as a rule his power is not accompanied by a corresponding degree of responsibility. Above all, it has lowered the status of a member of Parliament, and made him more or less of a delegate who is bound to yield to the wishes, not of his const.i.tuents as a whole, but of the party organisation which seeks to usurp the place of the const.i.tuency. The story of the struggles of Mr. Forster with the Bradford caucus is familiar to political students. I was mixed up with all those struggles, and always on the side of Mr. Forster, who stoutly refused to accept the dictation of the caucus and the theory that a member of Parliament was no more than a delegate. He was victorious in his prolonged struggle with the Bradford Radicals, but he only succeeded in virtue of his own strength of character and dogged courage. Weaker men went to the wall by scores, and, as they did so, the caucus, of which Mr.
Chamberlain was at this time the ruling spirit, gained strength, and became the predominant factor in the Liberal party.
In the early autumn of 1876 the most remarkable political agitation I ever witnessed broke over the country with startling suddenness.
Parliament was just on the point of rising when the _Daily News_ published its first account of the hideous crimes which became known as the Bulgarian atrocities. Mr. Disraeli, when questioned in the House of Commons, sneered at the reports in the _Daily News_ as being based upon ”coffee-house babble.” If he really believed this, he must have been strangely ill-informed. The terrible tale which shocked the civilised world was communicated to the _Daily News_ by its Constantinople correspondent, Mr. Edwin Pears. The man who supplied Mr. Pears with the terrible facts which he gave to the world was Dr. Washbourne, the head of the Robert College at Constantinople. I know both Mr. Pears and Dr.
Washbourne. They are men of the highest honour and integrity, whilst Dr.
Washbourne, who is by birth an American, has been for many years the best authority on the question of the treatment of the Christians of the Ottoman Empire by the Sultan. No one who knew the source from which the _Daily News_ stories emanated could dream of dismissing those stories as coffee-house babble. Mr. Disraeli, as a matter of duty, should have made himself acquainted with the authority on which these stories rested before he took it upon himself to denounce them as sensational fables. But in spite of Mr. Disraeli, who at this very moment blossomed into the Earl of Beaconsfield, an official investigation took place. Mr.
Walter Baring, who was attached to our Constantinople Emba.s.sy, was directed to proceed to the scene of the alleged outrages, and to inquire into the truth of the allegations made in the _Daily News_. Mr.
Baring was an English official of the best stamp. He not only ascertained the truth, but he reported it in plain language to the Home Government.
It was then found that the _Daily News_ had, if anything, understated the case. The ruffianly Bas.h.i.+-Bazouks, employed by the Sultan to keep down the Christians of European Turkey, had been let loose upon the people of certain villages in Bulgaria and Roumelia, as a pack of wolves might have been let loose upon a flock of sheep.
The crimes that were committed do not admit of description. Thousands of innocent people had been murdered in circ.u.mstances of atrocious cruelty.
Neither age nor s.e.x had been respected. Indeed, children, old men, and women seemed to be the favourite victims of the savages. Upon the women every conceivable outrage was perpetrated before the knife of the a.s.sa.s.sin cut short their misery. It was a story which, when told in the dry, official language of a Foreign Office report, was still sufficient to arouse a pa.s.sion of righteous rage in the breast of any person endowed with the ordinary instincts of humanity. The old fear of Russia as our rival in Eastern Europe still const.i.tuted the chief influence in determining our foreign policy, and the old idea of the Turk as our friend and ally was still popular amongst us. But these revelations for the moment reversed the national feeling on both these points. Mr.
Gladstone, roused to action by his sympathy with the victims of so cruel an oppression, left his retirement at Hawarden and issued a pamphlet on the Bulgarian horrors which raised the feeling of the country to a higher point than I have ever known it reach before or since, except in some crisis affecting our very existence as a State.
That month of September, 1876, saw England and Scotland convulsed with a terrible emotion. The old divisions of parties were effaced, and the Government, because of its suspected sympathy with the Sultan, found itself the object of almost universal execration. Naturally, the less discreet politicians of the day were unable to control themselves under the influence of the prevailing excitement. Many foolish and many dangerous things were uttered at the meetings at which every town and village gave expression to the horror inspired by the Sultan's crimes.
Mr. Gladstone's strongest utterances were seized upon by his fervent admirers and were carried to an extreme from which he himself would have shrunk. It was a whirlwind, a tornado of political pa.s.sion that swept over the country during those sunny September weeks. The impulse from which it sprang was just and n.o.ble in itself; but who can hold a whirlwind in check? It is not wonderful that this great outbreak of national indignation did almost as much harm as good.
The whole condition of our domestic politics was changed by this Bulgarian atrocities agitation, as it was called. It riveted the attention of the country upon a great question of foreign policy. It weakened enormously, for the moment, the power of the Tory Government, which still enjoyed so commanding a majority in Parliament. Domestic affairs lost their savour for the ordinary elector, and, writing nearly a quarter of a century after this episode, I am inclined to believe that they have never since regained all that they then lost. In the late autumn, a Conference on the subject of our relations with Turkey was held in St. James's Hall. This was no demonstration on the part of a caucus, but a gathering of the notables of all the great towns of England. No doubt the majority of those present were Liberals, but a very considerable minority were Conservatives who had hitherto supported the Government. It was my good fortune to be present at that wonderful meeting in St. James's Hall. Never was there such a political platform seen at a public meeting before. Mr. Gladstone, Lord Shaftesbury, the Dukes of Westminster and Argyll, Mr. Freeman, the historian, the Bishop of Oxford, Henry Fawcett--these are but a few of the names that occur to my memory as I recall the memorable scene. Great Tory n.o.blemen like the Marquess of Bath sat side by side with Radicals from Birmingham, and the pa.s.sionate earnestness, amounting to something more than enthusiasm, that inspired the whole gathering was remarkable. It may be said to have marked the high tide of political agitation in my own experience.
A simple accident had saved me from the full force of the contagion of pa.s.sion that swept over the country in September. I had left Leeds to spend some weeks with my family in a house on the Clyde, where I was far from the sounds of political tumult. Possibly, if I had stayed in Leeds at my post at the _Mercury_ office, I might have gone with the tide, and might have been just as extreme and as reckless as anybody else. But I looked on from a distance, and, as it happened, I was absorbed at the time in other work. The consequence was that I could see the evil, as well as the good, of this extraordinary upheaval of popular emotion, and when I returned later on to my work at Leeds I took a cooler view of the whole question than most Liberal journalists did, and dealt with it, not from the merely emotional standpoint, but from that of our duty and interests as a people. Of course, I was blamed for this by the more fervent, and was suspected of being at heart little better than a philo-Turk. I had, in short, to meet the usual fate of the man who will not cry either black or white when it is his misfortune to see only a confusion of colours. By-and-by, however, when the popular pa.s.sion subsided, and the old alarm about Russia again became rampant, I found myself blamed for precisely the opposite reason. I was no longer a.s.sailed as a philo-Turk, but as a Russophil.
CHAPTER X.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BRONTe LITERATURE.
A Visit to Haworth--Feeling Against the Brontes in Yorks.h.i.+re--Miss Nussey and her Discontent with Mrs. Gaskell's ”Me”--Publication of ”Charlotte Bronte: a Monograph”--Mr. Swinburne's Appreciation--An Abortive Visit to the Poet--Lecture on Emily Bronte and ”Wuthering Heights”--Miss Nussey's Visit to Haworth after Charlotte's Marriage.
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