Part 8 (2/2)

The plan of the caucus was delightfully si constituencies--was divided into districts, and the Liberals of each district were allotted a certain number of seats on the Central Liberal association This association generally consisted of so many hundreds of persons, and it thus came to pass that the association became known as the Huddersfield Two Hundred, the Leeds Four Hundred, the Biriven day in each constituency, the Liberal electors in the various districts met, and elected their representatives on the Central association Every known Liberal had a vote, so that the constitution of the central body was, in theory at all events, delightfully dened to sweep away the old systenates, which had prevailed ever since the passing of the Refor the inventors of the caucus that by means of this plan they would secure the predoes of wealth and rank were henceforth to count for nothing in the councils of Liberalism Every man was to have a vote, not merely for a member of Parliament, but for the local body which was to select candidates, enerally determine the character of the Liberalism professed by the constituency

Every year the different Hundreds were to elect representatives ere to act as their delegates at the conferences of the National Liberal Federation; and the Federation itself was to be regarded as the legitimate and indisputable representative of the Liberalism of the country as a whole

It was a bold and far-reaching scheme, and whatever its effectthe fortunes of Liberalisreat, 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 attitude But its practical effect has been to drive the greater proportion of the moneyed classes out of the Liberal party They further professed to wish to put an end to the influence exercised by cliques and privileged classes or persons in the party The majority was to rule under all conceivable circumstances

Those who, like myself, have had an active and intimate association with the caucus and the Federation know that in practice the new syste the rule of cliques, merely substituted 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 conity attaching to it, beca 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, andin earnest for some special object or fad, becae that was gradually wrought in the Liberal party between 1875 and 1885

At the outset I was veheainst the, 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 clai of the newly-formed Liberal association 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 assus of their committee, and found that they were at all ti my support When I spoke to one of the officials of the new association of thethat was to be held to choose a candidate, and , I was bluntly told that I should not be admitted I had not, it appeared, been elected a member of the Four Hundred As aabout 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 association, to whom I went to demand admittance, stood upon the strict letter of the law I had not been elected by s 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 Itof Liberals the person who, by reason of his position, had ic is logic,” and under the new system any claim founded upon mere influence, or even upon past services, was inade this fact at the time, and I bluntly delivered an ultimatum to the President of the association ”You ,” 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 sis, and to-morrow the _Leeds Mercury_ will make its own no, I fear, andwhat power the caucus syste 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 theof 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 entleham, who denounced Sir Edward Baines for the assistance he had given in the passing of that iniquitous entleman 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 ere palpably selfish and insincere As I listened to that debate, reat revolution had been suddenly and silently wrought, and that the control of the Liberal party had, in a great measure, passed out of the hands of its old leaders into those of the ed the new ” this story of the caucus, it is still, I feel, one that is worth telling, for it illustrates 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 as chosen as the Liberal candidate The choice of the caucus fell upon the worthy President of that body, the late Sir John Barran, an ah 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 establishressive course, and inspired all of us with alarm In course of time, however, I realised the fact that there were certain severe liainst the country when the country was in earnest It could not give that inspiration to a party without which victory cannot be achieved No aanisation, however skilfully devised, could supply the place of a great popular rasped these facts, and for a tiave my assistance to it, locally in Leeds and, in its national work, in the office of the National Liberal Federation Yet I ah I have not altered my view as to the liard it as harreat harm has been done, not merely to the spirit of Liberalism, but to the actual fortunes of the Liberal party, by the new systeht 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 iven the reater power than it is right that he should possess, seeing that as a rule his power is not accoree of responsibility Above all, it has lowered the status of a ate who is bound to yield to the wishes, not of his constituents as a whole, but of the party organisation which seeks to usurp the place of the constituency The story of the struggles of Mr Forster with the Bradford caucus is familiar to political students I was les, and always on the side of Mr Forster, who stoutly refused to accept the dictation of the caucus and the theory that a ate 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

Chath, and became the predominant factor in the Liberal party

In the early autuitation I ever witnessed broke over the country with startling suddenness

Parlia when the _Daily News_ published its first account of the hideous criarian atrocities Mr Disraeli, when questioned in the House of Co based upon ”coffee-house babble” If he really believed this, he ely ill-informed The terrible tale which shocked the civilised world was communicated to the _Daily News_ by its Constantinople correspondent, Mr Edwin Pears The ave to the world was Dr Washbourne, the head of the Robert College at Constantinople I know both Mr Pears and Dr

Washbourne They are rity, 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 e 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 blossoation took place Mr

Walter Baring, as attached to our Constantinople Eed outrages, and to inquire into the truth of the allegations lish 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 Bashi+-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 Rouht 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 circue nor sex had been respected Indeed, children, old es Upon the woe was perpetrated before the knife of the assassin 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 passion of righteous rage in the breast of any person endoith the ordinary instincts of humanity The old fear of Russia as our rival in Eastern Europe still constituted the chief influence in detern policy, and the old idea of the Turk as our friend and ally was still popular ast us But these revelations for theon both these points Mr

Gladstone, roused to action by his sympathy with the victims of so cruel an oppression, left his retirearian horrors which raised the feeling of the country to a higher point than I have ever known it reach before or since, except in so our very existence as a State

That land 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 the excites were uttered at the ave expression to the horror inspired by the Sultan's criest utterances were seized upon by his fervent admirers and were carried to an extreme from which he himself would have shrunk It was a ind, a tornado of political passion that swept over the country during those sunny Septe was just and noble in itself; but who can hold a ind in check? It is not wonderful that this great outbreak of national indignation did alood

The whole condition of our doitation, 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 Govern 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 aained 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 de 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 Governood fortune to be present at that wonderfulin St James's Hall Never was there such a political platfor before Mr Gladstone, Lord Shaftesbury, the Dukes of Westyll, 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 noblemen like the Marquess of Bath sat side by side with Radicals fro to soathering was reh tide of political agitation in my own experience

A siion of passion 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 one with the tide, and ht 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 bla at heart little better than a philo-Turk I had, in short, to meet the usual fate of the man ill 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 passion subsided, and the old alarain became rampant, I found er assailed as a philo-Turk, but as a Russophil

CHAPTER X

CONTRIBUTIONS TO BRONTe LITERATURE

A Visit to Haworth--Feeling Against the Brontes in Yorkshi+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 Ehts”--Miss Nussey's Visit to Haworth after Charlotte's Marriage