Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
resounded from every Liberal platform, and even so lethargic 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 we now know, 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 law, we would 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 terms; then they wavered; and then again
they hardened their hearts. Lord Salisbury reported that they would not
let the Franchise Bill through till they got the Redistribution Bill
from the Commons. Meanwhile, all sorts of mysterious negotiations 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 six
months had been expended in protesting that we could never do what now
we meekly did. It was the beginning of 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 to me an amazing instance 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 Government
Board a deputation of the Unemployed, who then were beginning to agitate
the habitual calm of the well-fed and the easy-going. It was a curious
experience. The deputation consisted of respectable-looking and
apparently earnest men, some of whom spoke the language of _Alton
Locke_, while others talked in a more modern strain of dynamite, Secret
Societies, and "a life for a life." The most conspicuous figure in the
deputation was an engineer called John Burns,[40] and those who are
interested in political development may find something 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 Embankment, where the following resolution was carried, and
despatched to the President of the Local Government Board:
"That this meeting of the unemployed, having heard the answer given
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 recommendation to bring
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
members of the Government, individually and collectively, guilty of
the murder of those who may die in the next few weeks, 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 with which the leaders of the Unemployed regaled us derived
a pleasing 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 examining these phenomena when another crash shook the
whole building, and we found that an infernal machine had been exploded
in the House of Commons, tearing the doors off their hinges, wrecking
the galleries, and smashing the Treasury Bench into matchwood. The
French Ambassador, M. Waddington, entered the House with me, and for a
while stood silent and amazed. At length he said, "There's no other
country in the world where this could happen." Certainly it must be
admitted that at that moment our detective organization was not at its
best.
However, neither mock-heroics nor actual outrage could obscure the fact
that during the spring of 1885 there Was an immense amount of
unemployment, and consequent suffering, among 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 them, not
to invent work, but to push forward works which, owing to the rapid
extension of London into the suburbs, were becoming 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.
Some well-meaning 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 me
to some not unkindly ridicule.
Child of the Whigs whose name you flout,
Slip of the tree you fain would fell;
Your colleagues own, I cannot doubt,
Your plan, George Russell, likes them well,
"What will regain," 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
time we had become inured to Tory votes of censure on our Egyptian
policy, and had always contrived to escape by the skin of our teeth;
but we were 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, contemplated resignation. 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 came unexpectedly. The Budget introduced by Hugh
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--told me at luncheon that we were to be turned out on the
following day, and so, sure enough, we were, on an amendment to the
Budget moved by Sir Michael Hicks-Beach.[41] It was thought at the time
that the Liberal wirepullers welcomed this defeat, as a way out of
difficulties. Certainly no strenuous efforts were made to avert it. The
scene in the House when the fatal figures were announced has been often
described, and in my mind's eye I see clearly the image 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 common foe. But the parting of the ways soon became painfully
apparent. The fall of the Government involved, of course, the return of
Lord Spencer from Ireland, and some of his friends resolved, after the
manner of admiring Englishmen, to give him a public dinner. The current
phrase was that we were 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 was well entitled to all the honours which we could give him. So it
was arranged 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 am not going, 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 may be forced
into it." However, as I had greatly admired Lord Spencer's
administration, and as his family and mine had been politically
associated for a century, I made a point of attending, and a capital
evening we had. There was an enthusiastic and representative company of
two hundred Liberals. Lord Hartington presided, and extolled Lord
Spencer to the skies; and Lord Spencer justified the Crimes Act by
saying that, when it was passed, there was an organization of thirty
thousand Fenians, aided by branches in Scotland and England, and by
funds from America, defying 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 dreaming what the next six months had in store for
us.
Though I was thoroughly in favour of resolute dealing with murder and
outrage, 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
same as those set forth with extraordinary vigour and effect in a long
series of speeches by Mr. Chamberlain, who was now unmuzzled, and was
making 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-fashioned people
called Socialism, and this was to Gladstone an abomination. One day, to
my consternation, he asked me if it was true that Socialism had made
some way among the younger Liberals, of whom I was then one.