Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
I quote these words from a statesman who knew the House of Commons more
thoroughly than anyone else has ever known it; and, though Lord
Beaconsfield was describing the Parliament which assembled in August,
1841, his description would fit, with scarcely the alteration of a word,
the Parliament in which I took my seat in April, 1880.[32]
The "acquaintance with the forms and habits of the House," which Lord
Beaconsfield attributes to his favourite Endymion, was also mine; from
my earliest years I had been familiar with every nook and corner of the
Palace of Westminster. My father's official residence in Speaker's Court
communicated by a private door with the corridors of the Palace, and my
father's privilege as Sergeant-at-Arms enabled him to place me in, or
under, the Gallery whenever there was a debate or a scene of special
interest. I was early initiated into all the forms and ceremonies of
the House; the manoeuvres of the mace, the obeisances to the Chair,
the rap of "Black Rod" on the locked door, the daily procession of Mr.
Speaker and his attendants (which Sir Henry Irving pronounced the most
theatrically effective thing of its kind in our public life).
The Sergeant-at-Arms has in his gift the appointment of all the
doorkeepers, messengers, and attendants of the House; and, as my father
was Sergeant from 1848 to 1875, the staff was almost exclusively
composed of men who had been servants in our own or our friends'
families. This circumstance was vividly brought home to me on the day on
which I first entered the House. In the Members' Lobby I was greeted by
a venerable-looking official who bowed, smiled, and said, when I shook
hands with him, "Well, sir, I'm glad, indeed, to see you here; and, when
I think that I helped to put both your grandfather and your grandmother
into their coffins, it makes me feel quite at home with you."
The first duty of a new House of Commons is to elect a Speaker, and on
the 7th of April, 1880, we re-elected Mr. Henry Brand (afterwards Lord
Hampden), who had been Speaker since 1872. Mr. Brand was a short man,
but particularly well set up, and in his wig and gown he carried himself
with a dignity which fully made up for the lack of inches. His voice was
mellow, and his utterance slightly pompous, so that the lightest word
which fell from his lips conveyed a sense of urbane majesty. He looked
what he was, and what the traditions of the House required--a country
gentleman of the highest type. One of the most noticeable traits was his
complexion, fresh and rosy as a boy's. I well remember one day, after a
stormy "all-night sitting," saying to his train-bearer, "The Speaker has
borne it wonderfully. He looks as fresh as paint." Whereupon the
train-bearer, a man of a depressed spirit, made answer, "Ah! sir, it's
the Speaker's 'igh colour that deceives you. 'E'll 'ave that same 'igh
colour when 'e's laid out in 'is coffin."
The election of the Speaker having been duly accomplished, and the
Members sworn in, the House adjourned till the 20th of May, then to meet
for the despatch of business; and this may be a convenient point for a
brief recapitulation of recent events.
Lord Hartington (afterwards eighth Duke of Devonshire) had been, ever
since the beginning of 1875, the recognized leader of the Liberal Party.
But, when Gladstone re-entered the field as the foremost assailant of
Lord Beaconsfield's policy, Lord Hartington's authority over his party
was sensibly diminished. Indeed, it is not too much to say that he was
brushed on one side, and that all the fervour and fighting power of the
Liberal Party were sworn to Gladstone's standard.
When the General Election of 1880 reached its close, everyone felt that
Gladstone was now the real, though not the titular, leader of the
Liberal Party, and the inevitable Prime Minister. Lord Beaconsfield did
not wait for an adverse vote in the new House, but resigned on the 18th
of April. We do not at present know, but no doubt we shall know when Mr.
Monypenny's "Life" is completed, whether Queen Victoria consulted Lord
Beaconsfield as to his successor. A friend of mine once asked the Queen
this plain question: "When a Prime Minister goes out, does he recommend
a successor?" And the Queen replied, with equal plainness, "Not unless I
ask him to do so." There can, I think, be little doubt that Her Majesty,
in April, 1880, asked Lord Beaconsfield's advice in this delicate
matter, and we may presume that the advice was that Her Majesty should
follow the constitutional practice, and send for Lord Hartington, as
being the leader of the victorious party. This was done, and on the 22nd
of April Lord Hartington waited on Her Majesty at Windsor, and was
invited to form an Administration. Feeling in the Liberal Party ran very
high. It was not for this that we had fought and won. If Gladstone did
not become Prime Minister, our victory would be robbed of half its joy;
and great was our jubilation when we learned that the task had been
declined. As the precise nature of the transaction has often been
misrepresented, it is as well to give it in Lord Hartington's own
words--
"The advice which Lord Hartington gave to the Queen from first to last
was that Her Majesty should send for Mr. Gladstone, and consult him as
to the formation of a Government; and that, if he should be willing to
undertake the task, she should call upon him to form an Administration.
"Lord Hartington had up to that time had no communication with Mr.
Gladstone on the subject, and did not know what his views as to
returning to office might be. With the Queen's permission, Lord
Hartington, on his return from Windsor, informed Mr. Gladstone and Lord
Granville, but no other person, of what had passed between Her Majesty
and himself."
The result of that interview was a foregone conclusion. If Lord
Hartington consented to form an Administration, Gladstone would not take
a place in it. If he was not to be Prime Minister, he must remain
outside. Having put this point beyond the reach of doubt, Lord
Hartington returned next day to Windsor, accompanied by Lord Granville,
who led the Liberal Party in the House of Lords. They both assured the
Queen that the victory was Gladstone's, and that the Liberal Party would
be satisfied with no other Prime Minister. The two statesmen returned to
London in the afternoon, and called on Gladstone. He was expecting them
and the message which they brought. He went down to Windsor without an
hour's delay, and that evening "kissed hands" as Prime Minister for the
second time.
This was the climax of his career. He had dethroned Lord Beaconsfield.
He had vindicated the cause of humanity and freedom all over the world;
and he had been recalled, by unanimous acclamation, to the task of
governing the British Empire. On the 20th of May he met his twelfth
Parliament, and the second in which he had been Chief Minister of the
Crown. "At 4.15," he wrote in his diary, "I went down to the House with
Herbert.[33] There was a great and fervent crowd in Palace Yard, and
much feeling in the House. It almost overpowered me, as I thought by
what deep and hidden agencies I have been brought into the midst of the
vortex of political action and contention.... Looking calmly on the
course of experience, I do believe that the Almighty has employed me for
His purposes in a manner larger or more special than before, and has
strengthened me and led me on accordingly, though I must not forget the
admirable saying of Hooker, that even ministers of good things are like
torches--a light to others, waste and destruction to themselves."
The conviction so solemnly expressed by Gladstone was entertained by not
a few of his followers. We felt that, _Deo adjuvante_, we had won a
famous victory for the cause of Right; and, as a Party, we "stood on the
top of golden hours." An overwhelming triumph after a desperate fight;
an immense majority, in which internecine jealousies were, at least for
the moment, happily composed; a leader of extraordinary powers and
popularity; an administration of All the Talents; an attractive and
practicable programme of Ministerial measures--these were some of the
elements in a condition unusually prosperous and promising. But trained
observers of political phenomena laid even greater stress on Gladstone's
personal ascendancy over the House of Commons. Old and experienced
Members of Parliament instructed the newcomer to watch carefully the
methods of his leadership, because it was remarkable for its
completeness, its dexterity, and the willing submission with which it
was received.
The pre-eminence of the Premier was, indeed, the most noteworthy feature
which the new House presented to the student of Parliamentary life.
Whether considered morally or intellectually, he seemed to tower a head
and shoulders above his colleagues, and above the Front Opposition
Bench. The leader of the Opposition was the amiable and accomplished Sir
Stafford Northcote, afterwards Lord Iddesleigh, a
"scrupulous, good man,
Who would not, with a peremptory tone,
Assert the nose upon his face his own."
In his youth he had been Gladstone's Private Secretary, and he still
seemed to tremble at his old chief's glance.
But, when everything looked so fair and smiling, Speaker Brand quietly
noted in his diary, that the Liberal Party "were not only strong, but
determined to have their way in spite of Mr. Gladstone." And this
determination to "have their way" was soon and startlingly manifested,
and challenged the personal ascendancy of which we had heard so much.
Charles Bradlaugh, a defiant Atheist, and the teacher of a social
doctrine which decent people abhor, had been returned as one of the
Members for Northampton. When the other Members were sworn, he claimed a
right to affirm, which was disallowed on legal grounds. He thereupon
proposed to take the oath in the ordinary way; the Tories objected, and
the Speaker weakly gave way. The House, on a division, decided that
Bradlaugh must neither affirm nor swear. In effect, it decreed that a
duly elected Member was not to take his seat. On the 23rd of June,
Bradlaugh came to the table of the House, and again claimed his right to
take the oath. The Speaker read the Resolution of the House forbidding
it. Thereupon Bradlaugh asked to be heard, and addressed the House from
the Bar. I happened to be dining that night with Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone
in Downing Street. Gladstone came in full of excitement, and pronounced
Bradlaugh's speech "consummate." However, it availed nothing. Bradlaugh
was ordered to withdraw from the House; refused, and was committed to a
farcical imprisonment of two days in the Clock Tower; and so, as Lord
Morley says, there "opened a series of incidents that went on as long as
the Parliament, clouded the radiance of the Party triumph, threw the new
Government at once into a minority, dimmed the ascendancy of the great
Minister, and showed human nature at its worst." From the day when
Bradlaugh's case was first mooted, it became apparent that the Liberal
Party contained a good many men who had only the frailest hold on the
primary principles of Liberalism, and who, under the pressure of social
and theological prejudice, were quite ready to join the Tories in a
tyrannical negation of Religious Liberty. Gladstone, though deserted and
defeated by his own followers, maintained the righteous cause with a
signal consistency and courage. There was no one in the world to whom
Bradlaugh's special opinions could have been more abhorrent; but he
felt--and we who followed him felt the same--that the cause of God and
morality can never be served by the insolent refusal of a civil right.
There is no need to recapitulate the story in all its stages, but one