Part 12 (1/2)

In this year--1883--Gladstone's Governained some portion of the popularity and success which they had lost; but when the year ran out, their success was palpably on the wane, and their popularity of course waned with it The endless contradictions and perplexities, criyptian policy becainning of 1884 the Govern and fatal blunder On the 18th of January, Lord Hartington (Secretary of State for War), Lord Granville, Lord Northbrook, and Sir Charles Dilke had an intervieith General Gordon, and determined that he should be sent to evacuate the Soudan Gladstone assented, and Gordon started that evening on his ill-starred errand In view of subsequent events, it is worth recording that there were some Liberals who, fro The dithyrambics of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ drew fro protest:

”January 21, 1884

”It's really ludicrous--the P M G professing a clearly suprarational faith in an elderly Engineer, saying that he will cook the goose if no one interferes with hio to Suakim, 'summon' a barbarous potentate, make him supply his escort to Khartouht and left; as if he could act without subaltern officers, old, etc; as if he were an _homme drapeau_, and had an old army out there ready to troop round him, as the French veterans round Bonaparte at Frejus”

In Parliament, the principal work of 1884 was to extend the Parliaricultural Labourer A Tory Member said in debate that the labourers were no more fit to have the franchise than the beasts they tended; and Lord Goschen, who had reiving them the vote, used to say to the end of his life that, if the Union were ever destroyed, it would be by the agricultural labourers I, however, who had lived a them all my life and knew that they were at least as fit for political responsibility as the artisans, threw myself with ardour into the advocacy of their cause (By the way,of the Franchise Bill was answered by the present Speaker[39] in his ed The Lords did not refuse to pass the Bill, but said that, before they passed it, theyscheme of Redistribution It was not a very unreasonable demand, but Gladstone denounced it as an unheard-of usurpation We all took our cue from him, and vowed that ould smash the House of Lords into atohout the Parliamentary recess, the voices of protest resounded froic a politician as Lord Hartington harangued a huge gathering in the Park at Chatsworth Everything wore the appearance of a constitutional crisis

Queen Victoria, as , was seriously perturbed, and did her utmost to avert a rupture between Lords and Commons But still we persisted in our outcry The Lords must pass the Franchise Bill without conditions, and when it was laould discuss Redistribution A new Session began on 23rd of October The Franchise Bill was brought in again, passed, and sent up to the Lords At first the Lords seemed resolved to insist on their terain they hardened their hearts Lord Salisbury reported that they would not let the Franchise Bill through till they got the Redistribution Bill frootiations were going on between the ”moderate” men on both sides; and it was known that Gladstone dared not dissolve on the old franchise, as he was sure to be beaten in the Boroughs His only hope was in the agricultural labourers Then, acting under pressure which is not known but can be easily guessed, he suddenly announced, on the 17th of November, that he was prepared to introduce the Redistribution Bill before the Lords went into Committee on the Franchise Bill It was the point for which the Tories had been contending all along, and by conceding it, Gladstone made an absolute surrender All the sound and fury of the last sixthat we could never do what noeof troubles which have lasted to this day The House of Lords learned the welcome lesson that, when the Liberal Party railed, they only had to sit still; and the lesson learnt in 1884 was applied in each succeeding crisis down to August 1911 It has always been toinstance of Gladstone's powers of self-deception that to the end of his life he spoke of this pernicious surrender as a signal victory

Early in 1885, it became my duty to receive at the Local Governinning to agitate the habitual cal It was a curious experience The deputation consisted of respectable-looking and apparently earnest e of _Alton Locke_, while others talked in a more modern strain of dynamite, Secret Societies, and ”a life for a life” The ineer called John Burns,[40] and those who are interested in political develop to their mind in the report of the deputation in _The Times_ of February 17th, 1885

There they will read that, after leaving Whitehall, the crowd adjourned to the E resolution was carried, and despatched to the President of the Local Govern of the uneiven by the Local Government Board to their deputation, considers the refusal to start public works to be a sentence of death on thousands of those out of work, and the reco pressure to bear on the local bodies to be a direct incitement to violence; further, it will hold Mr G W E Russell and the uilty of the murder of those who may die in the next feeeks, and whose lives would have been saved had the suggestion of the deputation been acted on

(Signed) JOHN BURNS, _Engineer_

JOHN E WILLIAMS, _Labourer_

WILLIAM HENRY, _Foreman_

JAMES MACDONALD, _Tailor_”

The threats hich the leaders of the Une actuality from the fact that on the 24th of January simultaneous explosions had occurred at the Tower and in the House of Commons I did not see the destruction at the Tower, but I went straight across from my office to the House of Commons, and saw a curious object-lesson in scientific Fenianism In Westminster Hall there was a hole in the pavement six feet wide, and another in the roof I had scarcely done exa these pheno, and we found that an infernalthe doors off their hinges, wrecking the galleries, and s the Treasury Bench into ton, entered the House with th he said, ”There's no other country in the world where this could happen” Certainly it anization was not at its best

However, neither e could obscure the fact that during the spring of 1885 there Was an i the unskilled labourers I suggested that we should issue from the Local Government Board a Circular Letter to all the Local Authorities in London, asking the to the rapid extension of London into the suburbs, were beco absolutely necessary But the President of the Board, a bond slave of Political Economy, would not sanction even this very mild departure from the precepts of the Dismal Science The distress was peculiarly acute at the Docks, where work is precarious and uncertain in the highest degree

So people at the West End instituted a plan of ”Free Breakfasts” to be served at the Dock-Gates to men who had failed to obtain employment for the day On one of these occasions--and very pathetic they were--I was the host, and the _Saturday Review_ treated s whose name you flout, Slip of the tree you fain would fell; Your colleagues own, I cannot doubt, Your plan, George Russell, likes theain,” you heard them cry, ”That popular praise we once enjoyed?”

And instant was your smart reply, ”Free Breakfasts to the Unemployed”

And then, after six more verses of rhythmical chaff, this prophetic stanza:

And howsoe'er profusely flow The tea and coffee round the board, The hospitality you show Shall nowise lack its due reward

For soon, I trust, our turn 'twill be, With joy by no regret alloyed, To give the present Ministry A Breakfast for the Unemployed

The Parliamentary work of 1885 was Redistribution The principles had been settled in secret conclave by the leaders on both sides; but the details were exhaustively discussed in the House of Commons By this tiyptian policy, and had always contrived to escape by the skin of our teeth; but ere in a disturbed and uneasy condition We knew--for there was an incessant leakage of official secrets--that the Cabinet was rent by acute dissensions The Whiggish section was in favour of renewing the Irish Crimes Act The Radicals wished to let it expire, and proposed to conciliate Ireland by a scheme of National Councils Between the middle of April and the middle of May, nine members of the Cabinet, for one cause or another, contenation After one of these disputes Gladstone said to a friend: ”A very fair Cabinet to-day--only three resignations” Six months later, after his Government had fallen, he wrote: ”A Cabinet does not exist out of office, and no one in his senses could covenant to call _the late Cabinet_ together” The solution of these difficulties cah Childers on the 30th of April proposed to meet a deficit by additional duties on beer and spirits; and was therefore extremely unpopular

Silently and skilfully, the Tories, the Irish, and the disaffected Liberals laid their plans On Sunday, June 7th, Lord Henry Lennox--a leading Tory--toldday, and so, sure enough, ere, on an aet ht at the time that the Liberal wirepullers welcomed this defeat, as a way out of difficulties Certainly no strenuous efforts were ures were announced has been often described, and in e of Lord Randolph Churchill, dancing a kind of triumphant hornpipe on the bench which for five momentous years had been the seat of the Fourth Party On the 24th of June Lord Salisbury became Prime Minister for the first time

The break-up of the Government revealed to all the world the fact that the Liberal Party was cleft in twain The Whig section was led by Lord Hartington, and the Radical section by Mr Chamberlain Gladstone did his best to mediate between the two, and so to present an unbroken front to the co of the ways soon became painfully apparent The fall of the Government involved, of course, the return of Lord Spencer from Ireland, and solishive him a public dinner The current phrase was that ere to ”Dine Spencer for coercing the Irish” As he had done that thoroughly for the space of three years, and, at the risk of his own life, had destroyed a treasonable and murderous conspiracy, he ell entitled to all the honours which we could give hied that the dinner was to take place at the Westminster Palace Hotel on the 24th of July Shortly before the day arrived, Mr

Chamberlain said to me: ”I think you had better not attend that dinner to Spencer I a, nor is D---- Certainly Spencer has done his duty, and shown capital pluck; but I hope we should all have done the same, and there's no reason to mark it by a dinner And, after all, coercion is not a nice business for Liberals, though we reatly admired Lord Spencer's administration, and as his family and mine had been politically associated for a century, Iwe had There was an enthusiastic and representative coton presided, and extolled Lord Spencer to the skies; and Lord Spencer justified the Crianization of thirty thousand Fenians, aided by branches in Scotland and England, and by funds fro the law of the land in Ireland Not a word in all this about Home Rule, or the Union of Hearts, but we cheered it to the echo, little dreah I was thoroughly in favour of resolute dealing with e, I was also--and this was a combination which sorely puzzled _The Spectator_--an enthusiastic Radical, and specially keen on the side of social reform My views on domestic politics were substantially the saour and effect in a long series of speeches by Mr Cha the fullest use of his freedom He was then at the very zenith of his powers, and the scheme of political and social reform which he expounded is still, in my opinion, the best compendium of Radical politics; but it tended in the direction of what old-fashi+oned people called Socialism, and this was to Gladstone an abomination One day, to my consternation, he askedthe younger Liberals, of who to parry a question which uilt, I feebly asked if by Socialis private property for public uses, or the perforht to be left to the individual; whereupon he replied, with startling eate for the attack on private property”

On the 18th of September Gladstone issued his Address to the Electors of Midlothian--an exceedingly long-winded docu in particular _Verbosa et grandis epistola_, said Mr John Morley ”An old man's manifesto,” wrote the _Pall Mall_ By contrast with this colourless but authoritative document, Mr Chararamme I was a zealous promoter

As soon as the Franchise Bill and the Redistribution Bill had passed into law, it was arranged that the dissolution should take place in Nove The newly-enfranchised labourers seemed friendly to the Liberal cause, but our bewildered candidates saw that their leaders were divided into two sections--one s which boded disaster to the Liberal Party; but Gladstone never realized that Chamberlain was a pohich it was madness to alienate