The Real Gladstone Part 6

'"We who did our lineage high Draw from beyond the starry sky, Are yet upon the other side, To earth and to its dust allied."

And so the Church Establishment, regarded in its theory and its aim, is beautiful and attractive. Yet what is it but an appropriation of public property-an appropriation of the fruits of labour and skill to certain purposes; and unless those purposes are fulfilled, that appropriation cannot be justified. Therefore, sir, I think we must set aside fears, which thrust themselves upon the imagination, and act upon the sober dictates of our judgment. I think it has been shown that the cause for action is strong-not for precipitate action, not for action beyond our powers, but for such action as the opportunities of the times and the condition of Parliament, if there is a ready will, will amply and easily admit of. If I am asked as to my expectations of the issue of this struggle, I begin by frankly avowing that I, for one, would not have entered into it unless I had believed that the final hour _was_ about to sound. "Venit summa dies et ineluctabile fatum." And I hope that the n.o.ble lord will forgive me if I say that before last Friday I thought that the thread of the remaining life of the Irish Established Church was short, but that since Friday last, when at half-past four o'clock in the afternoon the n.o.ble lord stood at that table, I have regarded it as being shorter still. The issue is not in our hands. What we had and have to do is to consider deeply and well before we take the first step in an engagement such as this, but, having entered into the controversy, there and then to acquit ourselves like men, and to use every effort to remove what still remains of the scandals and calamities in the relations that exist between England and Ireland, and to make our best efforts, at least, to fill up with the cement of human concord the n.o.ble fabric of the British Empire.'

Mr. Gladstone triumphed. Mr. Disraeli contented himself with the victory of his great rival. Mr. M'Cullagh Torrens writes that he happened to pa.s.s near the Conservative leader in the cloisters as he m.u.f.fled to resist the outer air, and could not help asking him what he thought of Gladstone's speech in introducing the Bill. 'Oh,' he said, 'perfectly wonderful! n.o.body but himself could have gone through such a ma.s.s of statistics, history, and computations.' And then, after a pause: 'And so characteristic in the finish to throw away the surplus on the other idiots.'

CHAPTER IX.

EDUCATION AND IRELAND.

During the Educational debates Mr. Miall said that the Premier had 'led one section of the Liberal party through the valley of humiliation; but once bit, twice shy, and we can't stand this sort of thing much longer.'

Mr. Gladstone sharply replied: 'I hope that my hon. friend will not continue his support of the Government one moment longer than he deems it consistent with his sense of duty and right. For G.o.d's sake, sir, let him withdraw it the moment he thinks it better for the cause he has at heart that he should do so. So long as my hon. friend thinks fit to give us his support, we will co-operate with my hon. friend for any purpose we have in common, but when we think his opinions and demands exacting, when we think that he looks too much to the section of the community he adorns, and too little to the interests of the people at large, we must then recollect that we are the Government of the Queen, and that those who have a.s.sumed the high responsibility of administering the affairs of the empire must endeavour to forget the part in the whole, and must, in the great measures they introduce into the House, propose to themselves no meaner or narrower object-no other object than the welfare of the empire at large.' Again, in opposing Mr. Miall's motion for doing to the English Church what had been done to the Irish, he said: 'The Church of England is not a foreign Church; it is the growth of the history and traditions of the country. It is not the number of its members or the millions of its revenue-it is the mode in which it has been from a period shortly after the Christian era, and has never for 1,300 years ceased to be, the Church of the country, having been at every period engrained into the hearts and feelings of the great ma.s.s of the people, and having entwined itself with the local habits and feelings, so that I do not believe there lives the man who could either divine the amount and character of the work my honourable friend would have to undertake were he doomed to be responsible for the execution of his own propositions, or who could in the least degree define or antic.i.p.ate the consequences by which it would be attended. If Mr. Miall sought to convert the majority of the House of Commons to his views, he must begin by converting to his views the opinions of the majority of the people of England.'

The attempt to carry an Irish University Bill led Mr. Gladstone to resign. Mr. W. E. Forster writes: 'Gladstone rose with the House dead against him, and made a wonderful speech, easy-almost playful-with pa.s.sages of great power and eloquence, but with a graceful ease which enabled him to plant daggers into Horsman, Fitzmaurice and Co.' Again he writes: 'Gladstone determined to resign; outside opinion very strongly for resignation. Gladstone made quite a touching little speech; he began playfully. This was the last of a hundred Cabinets, and he wished to say to his colleagues with what profound grat.i.tude-and then he broke down, and could only say that he would not enter on the details. Tears came into my eyes, and we were all very touched.' As Mr. Disraeli was unable to form a Government, Mr. Gladstone, however, soon returned to power, he resuming his old place as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Touching the Irish University Bill, Lord Blachford writes: 'Coleridge is sanguine about Gladstone's Irish University Bill. He seems to have started with the Cabinet against him, and to have converted them all (their point being, I suppose, to have something that would _pa.s.s_), especially some whom Coleridge describes as full of admiration for the scheme. I don't understand it, but I imagine that it gives or leaves to everybody enough to stop their mouths without infuriating their neighbours.' As stated, Mr. Gladstone returned to office, only to leave it in the following year, when he dissolved Parliament and the Tories had a majority. Mr.

Gladstone retained his seat for Greenwich, but a local Tory was at the head of the poll.

Lord Russell's charges against Mr. Gladstone of indifference on colonial questions is somewhat borne out by his conduct with regard to the annexation of Fiji, which he opposed in 1873, but which was ultimately carried out by the Government that succeeded his in the following year.

In reply to Sir W. M'Arthur's motion in the House for the annexation of Fiji, Mr. Gladstone said: 'Nothing was easier than to make out a plausible case of appropriation of this kind, and yet nothing would so much excite the displeasure of those who cheered his honourable friend the member for Lambeth, than when for such appropriations a similar disposition was shown by other countries. It might be the chill of old age that was coming upon him, but he confessed he did not feel that excitement for the acquisition of new territory which animated the hon.

gentleman.' As to commerce, with our inability 'to cope with expanding opportunities, he did not feel the pressure of the argument for securing special guarantees for our trade in every part of the world.' He was more discursive in replying to what he called, 'in no taunting spirit, the philanthropic part of the question.'

Nothing was more unexpected, or, as it happened, nothing more disastrous, than Mr. Gladstone's sudden dissolution of Parliament in 1874. Mr.

M'Cullagh Torrens writes: 'On January 24 I was amused at breakfast by a paragraph read by one of my family-which, in the profundity of legislative wisdom, I treated as an editorial jest-announcing an immediate dissolution. When convinced at last by reference to an address to Greenwich that the decree had really gone forth, my breath was again taken away by learning that the immediate cause was the authoritative confession that the Cabinet had lost the necessary influence in directing public opinion, and that the new departure requisite for its recovery consisted in the offer to abolish the income-tax, and the creation of a number of peasant boroughs instead of those which might be still spared as belonging to the upper cla.s.ses.' Mr. Chamberlain severely described Mr. Gladstone's address containing these proposals as 'the meanest public doc.u.ment which had ever in like circ.u.mstances proceeded from a statesman of the first rank.' It fell flat on the public.

In 1875 Mr. Gladstone, to the surprise of his friends, announced his determination to retire from the leaders.h.i.+p of his party, and the Marquis of Hartington was selected in his stead, and held that post until the end of the session of 1879. The situation was a little embarra.s.sing. The difficulties he had to encounter as leader of a minority in the House of Commons were enormously increased by the fact that he had to deal, not merely with his followers, but with his brilliant predecessor, who could at any moment, by his own individual action, lead the Liberal party into any course in which he chose to direct them.

Continuing his career as a reformer, we find Mr. Gladstone repealing the Ecclesiastical t.i.tles Bill, and abolis.h.i.+ng religious tests in the Universities; and as the Lords threw out his Bill for the Abolition of Purchase in the Army, he abolished it by Royal Warrant. Many old Whigs questioned the wisdom of the procedure, as they did also his conduct in the _Alabama_ Claims, which he referred to arbitration, when, as is always the case, the arbitrators decided against us and in favour of America. Earl Russell, who has a claim to be heard on the question, writes that he declined to submit the claims to arbitration by a foreign Power because 'it appeared to me that we could not consistently with our position as an independent State allow a foreign Power to decide either that Great Britain had been wanting in good faith or that our law officers did not understand so well as a foreign Power or State the meaning of a British statute.'

His lords.h.i.+p severely criticised the way in which Mr. Gladstone formed his Ministry, as done with little tact or discrimination. 'I cannot think,' he continues, 'that I was mistaken in giving way to Mr. Gladstone as head of the Whig-Radical party of England. During Lord Palmerston's Ministry I had every reason to admire the boldness and the judgment with which he had directed our finances. I had no reason to suppose that he was less attached than I was to our national honour; that he was less proud than I was of our national achievements by land or sea; that he disliked the extension of our colonies; or that his measures would tend to reduce the great and glorious empire of which he was put in charge to a manufactory of cheap cloth and a market for cheap goods, with an army and navy reduced by paltry savings to a standard of weakness and inefficiency.'

In March, 1874, Mr. Gladstone addressed a letter to Lord Granville, in which he said: 'At my age I must reserve my entire freedom to divest myself of all the responsibilities of leaders.h.i.+p at no distant date. . . .

I should be desirous shortly before the season of 1874 to consider whether there would not be an advantage in my placing my services for a time at the disposal of the Liberal party, or whether I should claim exemption from the duties I have hitherto discharged.' Mr. Gladstone at that time was sixty-four-certainly no great age for himself or any other statesman of his time; and when Mr. Russell Gurney proposed to legislate on Ritualism, Mr. Gladstone was back in the field. After his unsuccessful intervention, Mr. Gladstone again retired from active partic.i.p.ation in affairs; but he returned to the subject in the autumn by contributing an article to the _Contemporary Review_, in which he pa.s.sionately protested against the attempt to impose uniformity of practice on the clergy of the Church of England by legislation. In the following pa.s.sage he did much to offend the Roman Catholics: 'As to the question whether a handful of clergy are or are not engaged in an utterly hopeless and visionary attempt to Romanize the Church and the people of England, at no time since the b.l.o.o.d.y reign of Queen Mary has such a scheme been possible. But if it had been possible in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, it would still have become impossible in the nineteenth, when Rome has subst.i.tuted for the proud boast of _semper eadem_ a policy of violence and change in faith; when she has refurbished every rusty weapon she was fondly thought to have disused; when no one can become her convert without renouncing his mental and moral freedom, and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another; and when she has equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history.' This article was followed up by his celebrated pamphlet, 'The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance.'

Ministers had an easy time of it till they got to the purchase of the shares in the Suez Ca.n.a.l, which Mr. Gladstone vehemently opposed, though it seems to have turned out well. When Mr. Gladstone declared that it was an unprecedented thing to spend the money of the nation in that way, Sir Stafford Northcote replied: 'So is the ca.n.a.l.' Mr. Gladstone was soon to prove how far from real was his intention of retiring into private life. We began to hear of Bulgarian atrocities and of the Turkish horrors. It was a cause into which Mr. Gladstone threw himself heart and soul. He published an article in the _Contemporary Review_, advocating the expulsion of 'the unspeakable Turk,' bag and baggage, from the country. His pamphlets were in every hand. In the meanwhile we had another crisis in the East. We were on the verge of war with Russia, and the Jingoes, as the war party came to be denominated, went about the streets singing:

'We don't want to fight; but, by Jingo! if we do, We've got the s.h.i.+ps, we've got the men, we've got the money too!'

Mr. Disraeli had sought refuge in the House of Lords as Earl Beaconsfield. All this time Mr. Gladstone kept rather quiet in Parliament, but from time to time he addressed meetings in the country, denouncing the Jingoes. We find him, however, supporting a vote of censure on the Government, moved by Lord Hartington, he himself having already moved one. It was a false move in tactics, as the Government obtained a crus.h.i.+ng majority. But the Ministry were doomed, nevertheless. At the General Election in 1880 they had a decisive defeat, mainly due to Mr. Gladstone, who had gone to Scotland to win Midlothian, hitherto the stronghold of the Duke of Buccleugh, and who had carried the fiery cross in triumph from London to the North. Never had he exerted himself more, and never with such splendid results. As Mr.

Disraeli had said when referring to Mr. Gladstone's temporary retirement from political life, 'There will be a return from Elba;' nor was that return long delayed. Once more he was Premier.

But there was a difficulty. At the time of the victory Lord Hartington, not Mr. Gladstone, was the leader of the Liberal party. When Lord Beaconsfield resigned, which he had the grace to do without meeting Parliament, the Queen, according to precedent, sent for Lord Hartington.

He could do nothing, and then the Queen summoned Lord Granville, the Liberal leader in the Lords. The two statesmen went together to the Queen, and a.s.sured her that the victory was Mr. Gladstone's, and that he was the only possible Premier. They returned to London in the afternoon, and called upon Mr. Gladstone in Harley Street. He was expecting the message which they brought, and he went down to Windsor without a moment's delay. This was on April 23. That evening he kissed hands and returned to London, a second time Premier. The prospect was not cheering. On a vote on the Bradlaugh affair the Government majority was seventy-five. There were difficulties about Sir Bartle Frere at the Cape, about Cyprus, about the Employers' Liability Bill, and a hot debate on opium. 'Gladstone,' writes Sir Stafford Northcote, 'had been dining out to meet the auth.o.r.ess of "Sister Dora" (Miss Lonsdale), who was very much alarmed by the rapidity and variety of his questions, and only came back in time to express his opinion that the House was too much influenced by sentiment and too little by judgment. It must be as good as a play to hear such sentiments from such a quarter.' In the course of one of the debates on the Bradlaugh affair, Sir Stafford Northcote writes: 'Gladstone spoke early, and evidently under great anxiety. His speech, especially in the earlier part, was a very fine one, and produced a considerable impression. Towards the end, however, he refined too much, and seemed a little to lose his hold of his audience. Gibson followed him with a very able and telling speech, but, unfortunately, the House had greatly emptied for dinner when Mr. Gladstone sat down. It is a favourite habit of his to speak into the dinner-hour, so that his opponent must speak either to empty benches or forego the advantage of replying on the instant.' The Opposition when the division was taken had a majority of forty-four, 'a result,' adds Sir Stafford Northcote, 'wholly unexpected on our side, the more sanguine having only hoped for a close run, and being prepared to renew the fight by moving the previous question, and adjourning the debate on it. The excitement when the numbers were given was greater than I ever remember. There was shouting, cheering, clapping of hands, and other demonstrations, both louder and longer than any I ever heard in my Parliamentary life.'

It may be stated that ultimately the question of Bradlaugh was settled by Mr. Gladstone's moving a resolution to admit all persons who may claim their right to do so, without question and subject to their liability to penalties by the State.

When the new Parliament a.s.sembled the Liberals were in a majority of more than a hundred, if the Irish Home Rulers were counted as neutral. If they were added to the Liberal ranks, their majority became 170. No one then thought of adding them to the Conservatives, though half of them-the Parnellites-subsequently voted with the Conservatives in a vast number of divisions, and finally contributed to Mr. Gladstone's downfall.

CHAPTER X.

IRELAND UNDER MR. FORSTER.

When Mr. Gladstone returned to power, Mr. Forster was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, with Lord Cowper as Viceroy. There was great distress-as there generally is in Ireland-and exceptional efforts had been made, both by the Government and the people of this country, to meet it. A benevolent fund had been raised, chiefly through the influence of the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, wife of the Lord-Lieutenant, and a Distress Relief Act had been carried by Parliament to empower the application of three-quarters of a million of the Irish Church Surplus Fund, and some good had unquestionably been done by the public and private effort thus made to relieve distress; but it was clear, from the results of the elections, and from the speeches of the popular Irish leaders, that it was not to measures of this kind that the people looked for permanent relief. The unusual distress of 1879 had intensified and aggravated the chronic disaffection, and sixty members had been returned to Parliament who were pledged to do their utmost to put an end to English rule in Ireland by securing Home Rule. Flushed with the brilliant success they had achieved, the Liberal party entered upon office confident that a career of prosperity lay before them. Lord Beaconsfield's defeat had been brought about by the national repudiation of his foreign policy; and, in the first instance, it was of foreign, rather than domestic, affairs that the new House of Commons was thinking. But Ireland at once came to the front. The existing Coercion Act would expire in a few weeks, and it was necessary to secure its renewal before it lapsed; but the Cabinet resolved to try the experiment of governing by means of the ordinary law.

The Lords threw out Mr. Forster's measures intended to relieve Ireland.

He did not scruple to avow his vexation and resentment at their summary rejection, and the dangerous effect it would have in the disturbed districts during the coming winter, which might lead to the adoption of much stronger measures, both of concession and coercion, than the Government had hitherto attempted. In response, Mr. Parnell, in addressing a great audience at Ennis, enunciated the plan already known as boycotting, whereby every man who took an evicted farm, and everyone who aided or abetted eviction, should be shunned as a leper in the fair, refused custom in the market, and treated as an intruder at the altar.

Before the year was out the courts established by the Land League publicly heard and determined the merits of each case as it arose. The signal for acts of summary violence was set by the fate of Lord Mountmorres, who had incurred popular dislike by his conduct as a rigorous magistrate, and was put to death on the highway near his own house in open daylight. Mr. Forster early proposed to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and to prosecute the prominent movers of the agitation. Mr.

Gladstone clung to the hope that the friends of law and order would combine to suppress the tendencies to outrage, and wished to defer as long as possible the suspension of const.i.tutional freedom; but ere Parliament had rea.s.sembled in 1881, the progress of disorder and outrage had increased, and the Cabinet reluctantly authorized the introduction of a measure for the protection of life and property. Twenty-two nights were spent in debating it; but it was pa.s.sed by an overwhelming majority, comprising Ministerialists, Radicals, and Conservatives. But the obstruction systematically offered to repressive legislation at last provoked Speaker Brand to a.s.sert a discretionary power of terminating debate, which led to the introduction of a change of procedure, of which the most prominent measure was the Cloture.

The Irish Land Bill was the chief work of the session of 1881. Mr.

Forster's work at this time was arduous and untiring to keep the Cabinet up to duty. In October, 1881, Mr. Gladstone writes from Hawarden: 'Your sad and saddening letter supplies much food for serious reflection; but I need not reply at great length, mainly because I practically agree with you. I almost take for granted, and I shall a.s.sume until you correct me, that your meaning about ruin to property is as follows: You do not mean the ruin to property which may directly result from exclusive dealing, but you mean ruin to property by violence-_e.g._, burning of a man's haystack because he had let his cars on hire to the constabulary. On this a.s.sumption I feel politically quite prepared to concur with you in acting upon legal advice to this effect; nor do I dissent, under the circ.u.mstances, from the series of propositions by which you seek to connect Parnell and Co. with the prevalent intimidation. But I hardly think that so novel an application of the Protection Act should be undertaken without the Cabinet.'

In the same month Mr. Gladstone went to Leeds, where he had a reception which exceeded all expectations. In his speech he devoted himself to the Irish Question. Amidst enthusiastic cheers from the vast audience, he pointed to Mr. Forster's name, and spoke in generous terms of the arduous and painful task in which he was then engaged; and then he went on in clear and forcible language to denounce the conduct of Mr. Parnell and of the other Land League leaders in striving to stand between the people of Ireland and the Land Act, in order that the beneficial effects of that measure might not be allowed to reach them. Such conduct, Mr. Gladstone declared, would not be tolerated. 'The resources of civilization were,'

he observed, 'not exhausted.' Then followed the arrest of Mr. Parnell.

Within twelve hours the news was spread over the civilized world, and everywhere it created a great sensation. Mr. Gladstone, speaking at a meeting at the Guildhall on the same day, first announced the fact of Mr.

Parnell's arrest to the people of England, and the statement was received with an enthusiastic outburst that startled even the speaker himself. It was hailed as if it were the news of a signal victory. Throughout England the belief-so soon to be dissipated-was held that the imprisonment of Mr. Parnell at Kilmainham must mean the downfall of his authority, and the extinction of the great organization of which he was the head; in reality, the outrages and a.s.sa.s.sinations became greater.

One result was a change in the policy of the Government. The English public was asked to believe that the Irish policy of the Government was not the policy of Mr. Gladstone, but of Mr. Forster alone. On March 24, 1882, Mr. Gladstone wrote to Mr. Forster, who was then in Dublin, pointing out to him the growing opposition to the Ministerial proposals for inst.i.tuting the Closure, and the prevalent belief among the Irish members in the House that by stopping the Closure they might prevent the renewal of the Protection Act. The Prime Minister added 'that, with the Land Act working briskly, resistance to process disappearing, and rents increasingly and even generally, though not uniformly, paid, a renewal of so odious a power as that we now hold _is_ impossible, and that whatever may be needed by way of supplement to the ordinary law must be found in other forms.'

Mr. Parnell, speaking at Wexford on October 10, 1881, said: 'He (Mr.

Gladstone) would have you believe that he is not afraid of you, because he has disarmed you, because he has attempted to disorganize you, because he knows that the Irish nation is to-day disarmed as far as physical weapons go, but he does not hold this kind of language with the Boers (cheers for the Boers. A Voice: 'We will be Boers too!'). What did he do at the commencement of the session? He said something of this kind with regard to the Boers. He said that he was going to put them down, and as soon as he discovered that they were able to shoot straighter than his own soldiers, he allowed those few men to put him and his Government down, and although he has attempted to regain some of his lost position in the Transvaal by subsequent chicanery and diplomatic negotiations, yet that st.u.r.dy and small people in the distant Transvaal have seen through William Ewart Gladstone; and they have told him again, for the second time, that they will not have their liberties filched from them; and I believe that, as a result, we shall see that William Ewart Gladstone will again yield to the people of the Transvaal (hear, hear). And I trust that, as the result of this great movement, we shall see that, just as Gladstone by the Act of 1881 has eaten all his old words, has departed from all his formerly declared principles, now we shall see that these brave words of this English Prime Minister will be scattered as chaff before the united and advancing determination of the Irish people to regain for themselves their lost land and their lost legislative independence (loud and continued cheering).'

Miss Parnell termed him a h.o.a.ry-headed old miscreant; Miss Helen Taylor, of the London School Board, described him as a dastard and a recreant; Mr. O'Donnell, M.P., said Gladstone was a Judas, who had betrayed Ireland by the kiss of peace to the persecutor and tormentor. In Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, the effigy of Mr. Gladstone was burned by a crowd of fifteen hundred Irish under the direction of the League leaders.

Even in Hawarden the magistrates had to place four additional constables to protect Mr. Gladstone from the effects of Irish revenge. Mr.

Gladstone, said Mr. Parnell at Wexford just before he was arrested, was the greatest coercionist, the greatest and most unrivalled slanderer of the Irish nation, that ever lived.

The situation was gloomy. Naturally Mr. Gladstone made as light as possible of the situation in the speech he delivered at the Lord Mayor's banquet. The speech for the moment silenced the murmurs of dissension inside the Cabinet. 'You said,' Mr. Gladstone wrote to Forster, 'that if we are to ask for a suspension of Habeas Corpus, it must be on a case of great strength and clearness. But do these figures, after all the allowance to be made for protection, indicate such a case? As far as I can judge, there is a tendency in Ireland upon a series of years to a decline in the total number of homicides. The immense increase in property offences, agrarian, for 1880 seems to me to mark the true character of the crisis and the true source of the mischief of the Land League. But I incline to a.s.sume that any suspension of Habeas Corpus must be founded on danger to life.'

When Parliament met in 1881 began the long running fight between Mr.

Forster and Mr. Parnell. As the chief representative of the Land League, Mr. Parnell had spoken defending the action of the League, and Mr.

Forster retorted that the meetings of that body had constantly been followed by outrage, and that the object of the Land Leaguers was not to bring about an alteration in the law of the land by const.i.tutional means, but to prevent any payment of rent save such as might be in accordance with the unwritten law of Mr. Parnell. In Parliament Government carried a Protection Act, an Arms Bill, and an Irish Land Bill. The Acts were of no avail. Outrages increased after the pa.s.sing of the Protection Act.

In May Mr. John Dillon was arrested and others of his party. In September it was resolved to arrest Mr. Parnell, 'the uncrowned king,' as his followers called him. Mr. Gladstone a.s.sented to the arrest if in the opinion of the law officers of the Crown he had by his speeches been guilty of treasonable practices.

On one occasion, when Mr. Forster had suggested that he had better retire, Mr. Gladstone wrote by return of post to acknowledge 'the very grave letter,' which he thought ought to be laid before the Cabinet.

'With regard to your leaving Ireland,' wrote the Prime Minister, 'there is an a.n.a.logy between your position and mine. Virtually abandoning the hope of vital change for the better, I come on my own behalf to an antic.i.p.ation projected a little further into the future-that after the winter things may mend, and that my own retirement may give facilities for the fulfilment of your very natural desire.' It was in a day or two after this Mr. Gladstone congratulated Forster upon the manner in which he had accomplished a difficult and delicate task in connection with the Irish Executive. 'It is not every man,' he writes, 'who in difficult circ.u.mstances can keep a cool head with a warm heart-and that is what you are doing.'

In 1882 the situation in Ireland became increasingly difficult and dangerous. As the time drew near for the meeting of Parliament, it was evident that the session would be a stormy one. In all quarters attacks upon the Chief Secretary seemed to be in course of preparation. The Protection Act had not put an end to the outrages, despite the fact that hundreds of prisoners, including Mr. Parnell and other members of Parliament, were under lock and key. Above all, the Protection Act would expire during the year, and consequently Ministers must allow it to expire, or must ask Parliament to spend weeks, or possibly months, in renewing it. Yet in the Queen's Speech it was stated that the condition of Ireland showed signs of improvement, and encouraged the hope that perseverance in the course hitherto pursued would be rewarded with the happy results which were so much to be desired. The Lords resolved to find fault with the working of the Land Act. The challenge of the Lords was taken up by the Government in the House of Commons, and a resolution moved by Mr. Gladstone, that any inquiry at that time into the working of the Land Act would defeat its operation, and must be injurious to the interests of good government in Ireland, was carried by a majority of 303 to 235.

After the Easter recess the attacks on Forster were renewed. It was demanded that he should be removed from office, and that the suspects should be immediately released, on the plea that their imprisonment had not prevented the continuance of the outrages. To make matters worse, the American Government became urgent in their demands for the release of those prisoners who could prove that they were citizens of the United States, while, in addition to the political perplexities thus created, the atrocious murder of Mrs. H. J. Smythe, as she was driving home from church in West Meath, sent a thrill of horror through the country. At this time Forster, in a letter to Mr. Gladstone, writes: 'That if now or at any future time' (the _Pall Mall_ had been suggesting his resignation) 'you think that from _any cause_ it would be to the advantage of the public service or for the good of Ireland that I should resign, I most unreservedly place my resignation in your hands.'

In reply, Mr. Gladstone wrote from Hawarden, April 5, 1882: 'Yesterday morning I was unwell, and did not see the papers, so that I have only just become aware of the obliging suggestion that you should retire. I suspect it is partly due to a few (not many) Tory eulogies. There is one consideration which grievously tempts me towards the acceptance of the offer conveyed in your most handsome letter. It is that if you go, and go on Irish grounds, surely I must go too. . . . We must continue to face our difficulties with an unbroken front and with a stout heart. I do not admit your failure, and I think you have admitted it rather too much-at any rate, by omission-by not putting forward the main fact that in the deadly fight with the social revolution you have not failed, but are succeeding. Your failure, were it true, is our failure; and outrage, though a grave fact, is not the main one. Were there a change in the features of the case, I would not hesitate to recognise it, with whatever pain, as unreservedly as I now record their actual condition. I do not suppose we ought to think of legislating on the Irish case until after Whitsuntide.'

But, nevertheless, Mr. Forster did resign. In April Lord Spencer succeeded Earl Cowper as Irish Viceroy, and negotiations were carried on between Captain O'Shea and Mr. Parnell-known now as the Kilmainham Treaty-of which Mr. Forster strongly complained. Mr. Gladstone took a different view. Writing to Forster, he expressed the satisfaction with which he had read Mr. Parnell's letter. With regard to the expression in the letter of the writer's willingness to co-operate in future with the Liberal party, Mr. Gladstone wrote: 'This is a _hors d'uvre_ which we had no right to expect. I may be far wide of the mark, but I can scarcely wonder at O'Shea saying, "The thing is done. . . ." On the whole, Parnell's letter is the most extraordinary I ever read. I cannot help feeling indebted to O'Shea.'

In May Mr. Forster resigned. Writing on the 2nd of that month, Mr.

Gladstone, in reply, says: 'I have received your letter with much grief, but on this it would be selfish to expatiate. I have no choice-followed or not followed, I must go on. . . . One thing, however, I wish to say.