Liberal Hari-Kari (1885)

Chapter XVI

Liberal Hari-Kari (1885)

After the Franchise crisis had been shelved, a large unsettled question affecting Ireland loomed up.

In July, 1885, the Crimes Act of 1882 would expire, and Lord Spencer, the Irish Viceroy, insisted that it must be renewed. Gladstone, plied with embarrassing questions by Conservatives, stood at bay. He called a meeting of his Cabinet to decide the problem in May, 1885. John Morley, who two years earlier entered the Commons as Member for Newcastle-on-Tyne, was sent by Chamberlain to Dublin to try to persuade Spencer against the renewal of coercion. I saw Morley, to my surprise, walking in the Phoenix Park as I was driving there with my wife. His visit had been kept secret, and he looked up sadly as we passed.

I stopped the car, saying, “What wind blows you here?” Morley had sought my help with the Irish voters in Newcastle on his election, and the reply he made was to jerk his thumb in the direction of the Viceregal Lodge, uttering one word, “Hopeless!”

It was as eloquent a gesture as if he squandered hours in denouncing Spencer. He had not then held office, but, oddly enough, his ” Recollections” (Vol. 1, page 219) give the date as 1882. He adds that two years later he was made “Commander in Dublin Castle,” although he did not become Chief Secretary until 1886. Such carelessness as to dates, in one who held office, is unusual. A week after I met Morley in the Phoenix Park, Earl Spencer came to London to attend a Cabinet meeting, being determined that the Crimes Act should be renewed.

Peers of his school illustrate British tradition. They came to Ireland knowing nothing of its history, and left as unwise. Great libraries they had at home, but the books on their shelves they could scarcely mention. Grands seigneurs, fox-hunters, fishermen, dancers, they moved through a land in the grip of officialdom, while every step they took was eyed by the natives with distrust.

Spencer, on attending the Cabinet, found that a Radical wing led by Chamberlain had been strengthened by the presence of Dilke, Trevelyan, Mundella and Shaw Lefevre, endowed with an outlook opposed to his. The earlier ingredients of that Cabinet in 1880, W. E. Forster, the Duke of Argyll, the Marquess of Lansdowne and Lord Derby, had disappeared.

Chamberlain was resolved to end the Irish trouble, but as his plans were undisclosed our Party was not grateful enough to him. He held occasional conferences with Parnell, and tried to get his assent to some modification of the Crimes Act as the date of its renewal approached. Parnell pretended pliancy, but was pressed for a written answer. This he promised, and when O’Shea brought him a copy of the Act, he took it in hand and ran his pen through most of its clauses. Then, pointing to the skeleton which remained, he said, “I will agree to these.” No Bill thus whittled down would be acceptable to Loud Spencer or Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the new Chief Secretary. Struggles within the Cabinet grew bitter. Spencer flung the taunt at Trevelyan, “These, sir, were not your sentiments when you were my secretary!

Sir George, however, held firm. Despite the chasm yawning in the Government after this scene, Gladstone strode into the House to answer a question by Sir Drummond Wolff, who demanded whether the Crimes Act was to be renewed. “Yes, Sir,” he said; certain equitable and valuable provisions of that Measure will be re-enacted.” Conservatives chuckled, Liberals were dismayed, and the Irish were enraged.

Dilke invited me to his room that afternoon. I had held parleys with him on the Franchise and Redistribution Bills, but after Gladstone’s declaration in favour of Coercion I hesitated. A second message then reached me, and I went.

Duke’s smiling assurance greeted me: “Don’t mind the Prime Minister’s statement. No Bill to renew the Crimes Act will be introduced. Instead we shall ride for a fall.” In other words, Ministers would arrange to be defeated, and throw on the Conservatives the difficulty of renewing the Crimes Act. Both Parties would have to face a largely increased electorate in November, and this seemed “good politics.”

The date of the General Election was fixed for November by the Redistribution Act. Every one knew that a transformation in the Irish electoral position would take place, and that Parnell’s Party would increase from 30 to over 80.

The fissure in the Administration was not unknown to us. A letter to Bobby Spencer from Lord Hartington (afterwards Duke of Devonshire), relating to a purchase of horses, written from the Viceregal Lodge, where he was staying with the Lord-Lieutenant in 1885, was shown me by Labouchere. Hartington was then Secretary of State for India, and a pillar of Gladstone’s Cabinet. A postscript to Bobby asked, “When is this damned Government going out?”

It was, therefore, discernible that a Liberal disaster impended. To attribute Lord Spencer’s obduracy against Ireland to the influence of the Prince of Wales I believe is wrong. The Life of King Edward VII seems to imply it, but unless that view can be supported by documents I disbelieve it.

Spencer, as far back as the spring of 1883, made a speech to tenants in Co. Carlow (Gowran, where he was trustee for Lord Clifton), announcing that the limits of concession had been reached, and that farmers must expect nothing further.

In the next score years a dozen amending Land Acts and Purchase Acts studded the Statute Book. To-day, landlords have been compensated to extinction. The only measures of a remedial nature for Ireland, not yielded to crime, were those of Arthur Balfour, Gerald Balfour, and George Wyndham.

On the 7th June, i885, late at night, I received a telegram from Parnell asking me to catch the morning mail to London. I reached there next evening about 6 p.m., and found the House of Commons almost empty. A few hours later it became a raging stithy.

When I arrived nothing electrical quickened the air. Parnell asked me who had come over, and was angry at hearing there would be two absentees, John O’Connor and William Redmond. They had remained to sleep in Dublin after a night journey from Cork, yet if either had known what was toward they would not have failed. Few realized that the fall of Gladstone’s Government was impending. I doubt that the Conservatives knew it.

The mechanism of downfall was as simple as the spring of a mouse-trap. A resolution by Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, condemning the additional sixpence on the whisky duty, was under debate. The Ministerial Whips were instructed not to send out urgent summonses for the division. Sir Charles McLaren, now Lord Aberconway, in a letter to the Daily News next day, stated that he had got no whip, which was never denied.

About 11 p.m. a languid House became interested. At 1.30 a.m. the division bells rang. Ten minutes later the Clerk at the Table handed the paper (on which the numbers appeared) to the Tory Whip. It showed that the Government was beaten, and in a minority of twelve.

Fierce cries rent the air. Lord Randolph Churchill sprang on the bench which his well-dressed form so often dignified. There, pulling out his blue handkerchief, he waved it over his head and shouted taunts at the Liberals. Others of the Fourth Party behaved similarly. Philip Callan quenched his emotion on the aristocratic bosom of Lord Henry Thynne. Roar after roar of joy went up from the Irish benches.

Liberal Ministers thus jockeyed the Irish Viceroy and “rode for a fall.” Gladstone in the commotion did not raise his eyes from the paper on which he wrote his nightly letter to Queen Victoria. With a pad on his knee he scribbled calmly as if nothing unusual was going on.

When his Chief Whip, Lord Richard Grosvenor (an astute manager), came beside him he shook his hand. Then he trotted off composedly. He had dished the Die-hards, and the Govern ment, born in 1880 of the Mid-Lothian Campaign and the Eastern Question, ended. The Western Question had entered unannounced, and the East vanished in mist.

Irish members who had borne the burden of coercion and its jails flocked after the division to the smoke-room. With throats so strained from cheering that we could hardly greet one another, we exchanged rejoicings. At William O’Brien I flung a line from Davis’s Fontenoy -” O’Brien’s voice is hoarse with joy, as shouting he commands.” All yelled thereat. Biggar came in to break the spell, peremptorily calling, “Come home, Tim!”

So finished in fever a night begun in fog. Lord Spencer’s Irish “policy” perished in a whisky ambuscade.

All of us except Parnell were sorry for Gladstone. His courtesy was unfailing. Even to an Irish apple-woman who, when the Courts at in Westminster Hall, installed herself near the entrance, he raised his hat as he passed in. She had known Daniel O’Connell, and that was a link between them.

Gladstone’s habit was to pay high deference to Mr. Speaker, whoever he might be. He bowed lower and more deferentially to him than anyone when he came up the floor.

Labouchere once led him to the smoke-room to allow his hand to be “felt” by Stewart Cumberland, a thought-reader. The feat was designed to attest the possibility of discovering the thought of another - such as the number of a bank-note undisclosed to the medium. The smoke-room was crowded, and when the Grand Old Man entered there was no seat for him. As no one offered him a chair I gave him mine. He sent his son to thank me next day.

At this séance Cumberland asked Gladstone had he a bank-note, and in a deep voice got the answer, “I suppose as First Lord of the Treasury I should acknowledge that possession.” The thought- reader then told tArn to think of its number, took his hand, and without hesitation wrote on the blackboard the figures on the note. “Wonderful ! ” said the Prime Minister.

Twenty years later the magician gave an account of this scene in his book, which did himself injustice. Stating that he never kept a diary or made notes he adds that he relied on a good memory, yet he omitted to chronicle his bank-note, triumph, and made Gladstone the subject of a much less marvellous feat. Memory is leaky, even in thought-readers, when decades have flown.

Parnell’s hatred of Gladstone since the Kilmainham imprisonment never died away. Before that, during Disraeli’s administration, even while he was obstructing the Conservative Government, Parnell disliked Gladstone, who was so unpopular in London that his windows were broken during the agitation against Turkey. Parnell confided to me in 1878 that he and his sister used to walk past Gladstone’s house, and that the sister had “a stone in her stocking” which she would have thrown at his window but for the police. When I entered the House I advised Parnell to make some composition with Gladstone - until he took up Coercion under the malign counsels of Forster.

As Gladstone advanced to his seat In evening dress, with a red rose flaming in his buttonhole, he made a dignified picture to look upon. Yet Parnell said to me in 1885, “Look at him! He wears spring heels in his boots to make him appear taller than he is.” This was sheer imagination.

In 1885, during the Penjdeh debate (in the Russian crisis), Parnell vowed to me he would not have stayed to hear him only s for the crush which wedged him in his seat and blocked the doors.

Great a man as Gladstone was, he was not without his foibles. On the Franchise debates of 1885 he brought about a defeat of his Government by a slant of acting. He had been to the Lyceum Theatre to see Sir Henry Irving, and afterwards led that fine per former to the House of Commons. To secure a ticket “under the clock” he went to the Speaker, for having admired Irving’s acting at the Lyceum, he was evidently determined to give the player a chance of admiring his own performance at Westminster. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, before he arrived, had on behalf of the Opposition secured the assent of Sir William Harcourt (Home Secretary) to a proposal that the expense of the new and enlarged register of voters necessitated by the extension of the franchise should not be thrown on the local rates. Gladstone got up and ridiculed the idea, unaware that his second-in-command had assented to it in his absence. This, doubtless, gave Sir Henry Irving a taste of his quality, but indignation broke out amongst the Conservatives, and the “country Liberals” felt sold. A division was taken and Gladstone had the mortification of being beaten by the votes of his own Party.

As for the baffled Viceroy, Lord Spencer, whose mulishness brought down the Liberal Government, he, under Gladstone’s sunny influence later on, and to some extent because of Lord Salisbury’s speech at Newport in October, 1885, became friendly to Home Rule. In 1886 he was boycotted by London society for accepting Gladstone’s Irish Bill.

In 1885 General Gordon’s death injured the Liberals, although his mission was forced on them. The expedition to relieve him by Lord Wolseley failed. In 1893 at an officers’ mess in Fermoy after a court-martial, I heard the Colonel of one of the regiments (I think the 18th Royal Irish) assert that they were commanded to retreat when they were in sight of Khartoum. This, he said, was a blunder, because his regiment could have rescued Gordon had it not been ordered back.

Scudamore, son of the British Postmaster at Constantinople in the ‘seventies (who published his Memoirs as a war correspondent), told me that on this expedition one of the Fanti bearers died, and the tribesmen laid on his grave in the desert a loaf of bread and a jug of water. Scudamore asked their interpreter did the Fantis believe that the dead man would come forth to eat the bread and drink the water. ” No,” was the reply, “but the spirit of the dead will come forth and eat the spirit of the bread, and drink the spirit of the water.”

In June, 1885, the new Conservative Government was formed. It did not renew the Crimes Act, and Lord Randolph Churchill went to the India Office. The Liberal Chiefs who supported coercion in Ireland grew enraged at having been driven from office as they watched the closeness of the Tory-Irish alliance. They winced when Parnell on the 17th July, 1885, reopened the case of the Maamtrasna prisoners. Parnell’s speech was well-documented. He appealed to the new Government for clemency, but Ulster M.P.’s, on the alert to discern any trace of yielding to the Nationalists by the Tory Cabinet, took Lord Spencer’s side. Sir William Harcourt and Lord Hartington pronounced eulogies on the ex-Lord Lieutenant, and by glorifying him they aimed at baffling the Nationalists and making it impossible for the Conservatives to reverse his policy. To create a diversion I called attention to an utterance in Leeds of Herbert Gladstone three days earlier, declaring for Home Rule. For the first time he revealed his father’s mind, and justified the Tory trend towards a similar policy. I argued that Home Rule, and not Lord Spencer’s administration, would be the issue at the Dissolution (only four months off), and asked the admirers of Lord Spencer if they agreed with the declarations of Gladstone’s son. His words, now commonplace, were then a new evangel in British politics.

He said: “Let them then end the mockery of what was called constitutional government in Ireland, and let them form a system of government which was based entirely on popular wishes and popular sentiment… . His experience of what 20 or 30 determined Irishmen could do in the House of Commons showed him that 80 could make our present system of government practically unworkable… . They must either satisfy the reasonable demands of the Irish people or eject them from the House and govern the country by martial law. If then the Irish nation desired a parliament upon a Federal basis, if the Irish leaders agreed that they could formulate and work a practical scheme - and he believed they could - if they loyally accepted the supremacy of the Crown and of the Imperial Parliament, then in God’s name give them a parliament in College Green!”

This shattered the effect of the Hartington-Harcourt onslaught, and amazed their following. Scarcely had I sat down when Lord Randolph invited me to his room. He thanked me warmly, for his Whips feared that the Whigs had arranged to spring a division on the Government to snub and outnumber it on an Irish issue. Randolph said I had sent wobbling Liberals home, fearing to take part in the intrigue. He seemed afraid of Michael Davitt’s extremeness, for he asked me if I would go to Co. Kerry, where disorder was feared, in the autumn to address the people. Davitt was not an obstacle to peace, as Randolph supposed. I mentioned his suggestion to William O’Brien, who had then achieved the peak of popularity, and he agreed to join me. Randolph made no pledge on Home Rule to me, nor did I ask for any. This was Parnell’s business, and the new Lord-Lieutenant, Lord Carnarvon, had been authorized by the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, to meet him. In October, 1885, at Newport, Salisbury used language consistent only with the grant of Home Rule.

The ejection of the Liberal Government (amongst other upheavals) put the late Ashmead-Bartlett into a minor post. Bartlett being an American, a skit on him in Punch showed on his breastplate the legend, “We came over with the Cunarders.” He received a post in the Admiralty, and brought in a Chelsea Pensioners Bill, which readily passed the Commons. He forgot, however, to propose a series of clauses which the draftsman wished inserted.

Yet in the Bill as printed in the Lords these appeared, although they had not been passed by the Lower House. Wharton, M.P. for Bridport, detected this. He was a faithful Tory, and asked my opinion of the lapse. I expected Home Rule from the Conservatives, and Wharton a job (which he got), so we decided jointly and severally to hold our tongues. The Salisbury administration would have been discredited had such a scandal become public, for, though the Bill was harmless, both Houses of Parliament had been deceived.

At no time has either House any proof of what the other passes, beyond parchments tendered by the Clerks of each Assembly to one another as they come to the Bar. In both Houses the Clerks were able and seasoned officials. Milman, the Junior Clerk in the Commons, had a greater grasp of parliamentary practice than the Senior Clerk, Sir Erskine May. At first Milman was bitter against Ireland, and tried to render our questions ineffective by excisions. After 20 years he softened so much that, when an effort was made to put a junior over him (nephew of Sir R. Webster), my support was asked for, and he said to a colleague, “I knew I was safe when dear Tim took my side.”

In a previous generation Isaac Butt, when an attempt was made to appoint Mr. Erskine Serjeant-at-Arms over the head of Captain Gossett, an older servitor, took a like stand, and as successfully. A dozen years after Butt’s death Gossett retired, and Parnell in 1885 made a most charming speech in support of the vote of thanks and the pension to Gossett. He recalled that though the late Serjeant had several times helped to eject us from the House, yet because he sat near our benches, he had gradually become Hibernicis ipsis Hibernior.

Gossett told me he commanded the dragoons who arrested Smith O’Brien, M.P., in 1848. He used to spend his holidays off Wexford, conger-eel fishing. In his room he kept a keg of Irish whisky for the entertainment of his friends. In prompting “counts-out ” he was a sworn ally of Biggar. The promotion of Mr. Erskine, a most dignified, just and gentlemanly Serjeant, was not too long delayed. Such men never appear in the limelight, yet they have their place in history. Erskine had been page to Queen Victoria, and but for Disraeli’s influence with Her Majesty, she would not have yielded to Butt’s intervention, as the office was in her gift.

In those times there was a stricter code amongst Ministers and members as to work than that prevailing in a later generation. Week-ends were unknown. Gladstone held his Cabinets on Saturday. No one left town over Sunday. Yerkes, the American railway magnate, complained 20 years later that he could not do business in London between Thursday night and Monday mormng; whereas in New York, if he neglected his railways for that space of time they would be stolen from him!

Everybody (who was anybody) wore a silk hat. The “topper” went out when the “safety” bicycle came in about 1887. I heard Lord Spencer tell Gladstone in 1892, at a dinner given by Arnold Morley, M.P., that the Prince of Wales (Edward VII) begged him to ride beside him in Rotten Row (at the request of the hatters) in a silk hat. They rode for a week so apparelled, but could not restore the old headgear. After the safety bicycle, came the motor, which further changed the countryside and the habits and fashions of town.

The Liberals in 1885 sustained a heavy blow in the fall of Sir Charles Dilke. Crawford, a Scottish M.P., claimed a divorce from his wife, and named Dilke as co-respondent. Gladstone was much upset, for Dilke had become a power. Outwardly cold and passionless, Dilke’s sympathies ran with the under-dog. He came to Dublin on a Royal Commission with the Prince of Wales (Edward VII), and was so shocked at the workers’ homes that, to help them in a small way, he utilized a Rathmines Private Bill to enlarge the municipal franchise in that township. No Irish member then had the parliamentary knowledge which he used, to engraft an extension of the ratepayers’ vote on a Bill which had nothing to do with the franchise.

Whatever clouds lowered on him afterwards, his earlier memory deserves respect. When Duke’s fate loomed darkest, Gladstone sought out Labouchere, saying, “Can nothing be done to prevent the ruin of such a pillar of Liberalism? ” He had just left office, and Labouchere replied after parley, “Well, sir, I’ll do my best.” Labby failed to move the aggrieved husband, and again met Gladstone, who asked, “Have you managed to make a settlement? “No, sir,” he answered, “but I have tried,” and told the story that Crawford wanted too big a price. “What price?” queried Gladstone. “He actually wants a judgeship,” said Labby “A Scottish judgeship, I presume?” remarked the old man. “Oh, no; he demands to be made an English judge, which, of course, I told him was impossible.” By this yarn he hoped to be spared a further unpleasant errand, but Gladstone said, to his amazement, “Why impossible? Can any good reason be brought forward against his being made an English judge?” Filled with admiration at such a burst of compassion for Dilke especially considering that the disparity in years made improbable their further personal co-operation, Labby promised again to find Crawford, but had at length to confess that from the outset he refused any terms of accommodation.

Parnell, unwarned by the Dilke catastrophe, pursued blindfold the “primrose path” to Brighton and Eltham. When Chamberlain in 1889, after the collapse of The Times’ charges against Parnell, discussed matters with O’Shea (as javelinman), can it be doubted that they bore Duke’s disaster in mind?

Crawford was a friend of Earl Spencer, and in 1893 came to me as to a charge of connivance I made against the late Viceroy nine years before. I had said that one of his officials, called French (against whom United Ireland made a serious accusation for which he was suspended), had sworn an affidavit declaring he was not suspended, when in fact he was, and that Spencer must have known this to be false, yet took no action upon it. The case of “Cornwall v. William O’Brien” had set Ireland agog, and we believed that French’s perjury must have come through the Press to the Viceroy’s notice, and that in any event his subordinates were responsible for condoning a lie to deceive the courts. No Nationalist had any idea that Viceroys were “run in blinkers” by their underlings. But Crawford assured me on the Earl’s behalf that he had never seen or heard of the affidavit. So I at once made a public amende to the ex-Lord-Lieutenant, although surprised that he should be unaware of a cardinal feature in the trial of one of his chief officials, which was blazoned in the Dublin newspapers.

Towards the close of the session of 1885 the Scotch manager of the Munster Bank, Farquharson, closed its doors in Dublin, though the concern was absolutely sound (as its liquidation proved). Ruin befell many. The object Farquharson had was to smother up his own defalcations. He fled from Ireland, but no effort was made by the authorities to arrest or extradite him. This favouritism corroded the Irish public mind, and had a powerful political effect. People recalled the case of John Sadleir, M.P. (a Lord of the Treasury), on the failure of the Tipperary Bank in the ‘fifties, whose abettors also slipped through the meshes of the law. Yet in England Jabez Balfour, M.P., was brought back from South America by the law officers of the Liberal Party, to which he belonged, and sent to penal servitude for fraud. They ordered things differently in Dublin at that date.

When the Bank failure came, I recalled that in 1883 I saw a gentleman-like fellow exercising in the Richmond Jail yard and pitied him. I said so to my warder Foster. “That’s Lodge,” he replied, “the clerk who robbed the Munster Bank.” Farquharson had procured Lodge’s arrest for theft. Before his trial a dog nosing along the edge of the Grand Canal rooted out the notes which the accused was alleged to have stolen, and he was acquitted.

When Farquharson absconded it was feared that the fall of the Bank would affect similar institutions. There was in our Party then a director of the Hibernian Bank, Nicholas Lynch, a wealthy man, who, on the hustings or in the House of Commons, was unable to open his mouth. His Bank, like the Munster, circulated the notes of the Bank of Ireland. If credit were curtailed by the latter Bank a panic might force the Hibernian also to close its doors. Lynch, fearing this, begged me to get a meeting of the Party to insist that if it were threatened with a “run” the Bank of Ireland should come to its aid. Accordingly, a scratch meeting of the Party was got together, and Lynch, hitherto its silent ornament, made one of the most eloquent and moving speeches I ever heard, appealing to us not to allow his institution to be ruined by what he called “Farquharson tactics.”

Parnell was in the chair, and though few were present, we authorized Lynch to proceed to Dublin and tell his directors to inform the Bank of Ireland that if a “run” were attempted on the Hibernian any failure to come to its assistance would be met by us by a manifesto to the people to refuse Bank of Ireland notes. The result was no “run” took place. The Bank of Ireland, as a precaution, imported a million sovereigns from London, the insurance of which alone cost £40,000.

So unjustifiable was the closing down of the Munster Bank that its liquidator, Mr. Murphy, ultimately not only paid twenty shillings in the pound, but founded in its stead the powerful “Munster and Leinster Bank” which to-day possesses over ten millions to its credit.

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