Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography Part 9

"Candidates are creatures not very susceptible of affronts, and would rather, I suppose, climb in at a window than be absolutely excluded. Mr. Grenville, advancing towards me, shook me by the hand with a degree of cordiality that was extremely seducing.... He is very young, genteel, and handsome, and the town seems to be much at his service."

_W. Cowper_, 1784.

Gladstone's first administration, which had begun so gloriously in 1868, ended rather ignominiously at the General Election of 1874. Matthew Arnold wrote to his friend, Lady de Rothschild, "What a beating it is!

You know that Liberalism did not seem to me quite the beautiful and admirable thing it does to the Liberal party in general, and I am not sorry that a new stage in its growth should commence, and that the party should be driven to examine itself, and to see how much real stuff it has in its mind, and how much claptrap."

That wholesome discipline of self-examination was greatly a.s.sisted by the progress of events. England was now subjected to the personal rule of Disraeli. In 1868 he had been for ten months Prime Minister on sufferance, but now for the first time in his life he was in power. His colleagues were serfs or cyphers. He had acquired an influence at Court such as no other Minister ever possessed. He had conciliated the House of Lords, which in old days had looked askance at the picturesque adventurer. He was supported by a strong, compact, and determined majority in the House of Commons. He was the idol of Society, of the Clubs, and of the London Press. He was, in short, as nearly a dictator as the forms of our const.i.tution permit; and the genius, which for forty years had been hampered and trammelled by the exigencies of a precarious struggle, could now for the first time display its true character and significance. Liberals who had been bored and provoked by the incessant blunders of the Liberal ministry in its last years, and, like Matthew Arnold, had welcomed a change of government, soon began to see that they had exchanged what was merely fatuous and foolish for what was actively mischievous. They were forced to ask themselves how much of the political faith which they had professed was "real stuff," and how much was "claptrap." Disraeli soon taught them that, even when all "claptrap" was laid aside, the "real stuff" of Liberalism--its vital and essential part--was utterly incompatible with Disraelitish ideals.

The Session of 1874 began quietly enough, and the first disturbance proceeded from a quite unexpected quarter. The two Primates of the English Church were at this time Archbishop Tait and Archbishop Thomson.

Both were masterful men. Both hated Ritualism; and both wors.h.i.+pped the Man in the Street. The Man in the Street was supposed to be an anti-Ritualist; so the two Archbishops conceived the happy design of enlisting his aid in the destruction of a religious movement which, with their own unaided resources, they had failed to crush. Bishop Wilberforce, who would not have suffered the Ritualists to be bullied, had been killed in the previous summer. Gladstone, notoriously not unfriendly to Ritualism, was dethroned; so all looked smooth and easy for a policy of persecution. On the 20th of April, 1874, Archbishop Tait introduced his "Public Wors.h.i.+p Regulation Bill" into the House of Lords; and, in explanation of this measure, Tait's biographers say that it merely "aimed at reviving in a practical shape the _forum domestic.u.m_ of the Bishops, with just so much of coercive force added as seemed necessary to meet the changed circ.u.mstances of modern times." I have always loved this sentence. _Forum domestic.u.m_ is distinctly good, and so is "coercive force." The _forum domestic.u.m_ has quite a comfortable sound, and, as to the "coercive force" which lurks in the background, Ritualists must not enquire too curiously. The Bishops were to have it all their own way, and everyone was to be happy. Such was the Bill as introduced; but in Committee it was made infinitely more oppressive.

Henceforward a single lay-judge, to be appointed by the two Archbishops, was to hear and determine all cases relating to irregularities in Public Wors.h.i.+p.

When the Bill reached the House of Commons, it was powerfully opposed by Gladstone; but the House was dead against him, and Sir William Harcourt, who, six months before, had been his Solicitor-General, distinguished himself by the truculence with which he a.s.sailed the Ritualists. On the 5th of August, Gladstone wrote to his wife: "An able but yet frantic tirade from Harcourt, extremely bad in tone and taste, and chiefly aimed at poor me.... I have really treated him with forbearance before, but I was obliged to let out a little to-day."

Meanwhile, Disraeli, seeing his opportunity, had seized it with characteristic skill. He adopted the Bill with great cordiality. He rejected all the glozing euphemisms which had lulled the House of Lords.

He uttered no pribbles and prabbles about _forum domestic.u.m_, and paternal guidance, and the authoritative interpretation of ambiguous formularies. "This," he said, "is a Bill to put down Ritualism." So the naked truth, carefully veiled from view in episcopal ap.r.o.ns and lawn-sleeves, was now displayed in all its native charm. Its success was instant and complete. The Second Reading pa.s.sed unanimously; and the Archbishops' masterpiece became at once a law and a laughing-stock. The instrument of tyranny broke in the clumsy hands which had forged it, and its fragments to-day lie rusting in the lumber-room of archiepiscopal failures.

But in the meantime the debates on the Bill had produced some political effects which its authors certainly had not desired. Gladstone's vehement attacks on the Bill, and his exhilarating triumph over the recalcitrant Harcourt, showed the Liberal party that their chief, though temporarily withdrawn from active service, was as vivacious and as energetic as ever, as formidable in debate, and as unquestionably supreme in his party whenever he chose to a.s.sert his power. Another important result of the controversy was that Gladstone was now the delight and glory of the Ritualists. The Committee organized to defend the clergy of St. Alban's, Holborn, against the _forum domestic.u.m_ and "coercive force" of Bishop Jackson, made a formal and public acknowledgment of their grat.i.tude for Gladstone's "n.o.ble and unsupported defence of the rights of the Church of England." Cultivated and earnest Churchmen, even when they had little sympathy with Ritualism, were attracted to his standard, and turned in righteous disgust from the perpetrator of clumsy witticisms about "Ma.s.s in masquerade." In towns where, as at Oxford and Brighton, the Church is powerful, the effect of these desertions was unmistakably felt at the General Election of 1880.

It has been truly said that among the subjects which never fail to excite Englishmen is Slavery. "No public man," said Matthew Arnold, "in this country will be damaged by having even 'fanaticism' in his hatred of slavery imputed to him." In July, 1875, the Admiralty issued to Captains of Her Majesty's s.h.i.+ps a Circular of Instructions which roused feelings of anger and of shame. This circular ran counter alike to the jealousy of patriots and to the sentiment of humanitarians. It directed that a fugitive slave should not be received on board a British vessel unless his life was in danger, and that, if she were in territorial waters, he should be surrendered on legal proof of his condition. If the s.h.i.+p were at sea, he should only be received and protected until she reached the country to which he belonged. These strange and startling orders were not in harmony either with the Law of Nations or with the law of England. They infringed the invaluable rule which prescribes that a man-of-war is British territory, wherever she may be; and they seemed to challenge the famous decision of Lord Mansfield, that a slave who enters British jurisdiction becomes free for ever. Parliament had risen for the recess just before the circular appeared, so it could not be challenged in the House of Commons; but it raised a storm of indignation out of doors which astonished its authors. Disraeli wrote "The incident is grave;" and, though in the subsequent session the Government tried to whittle down the enormity, the "incident" proved to be graver than even the Premier had imagined; for it showed the Liberals once again that Toryism is by instinct hostile to freedom.

But events were now at hand before which the Public Wors.h.i.+p Regulation Act and the Slave Circular paled into insignificance.

In the autumn of 1875 an insurrection had broken out in Bulgaria, and the Turkish Government despatched a large force to repress it. This was done, and repression was followed by a hideous orgy of ma.s.sacre and outrage. A rumour of these horrors reached England, and public indignation spontaneously awoke. Disraeli, with a strange frankness of cynical brutality, sneered at the rumour as "Coffee-house babble," and made odious jokes about the Oriental way of executing malefactors. But Christian England was not to be pacified with these Asiatic pleasantries, and in the autumn of 1876 the country rose in pa.s.sionate indignation against what were known as "the Bulgarian Atrocities."

Preaching in St. Paul's Cathedral, Liddon made a signal departure from his general rule of avoiding politics in the pulpit, and gave splendid utterance to the pa.s.sion which was burning in his heart. "Day by day we English are learning that this year of grace 1876 has been signalized by a public tragedy which, I firmly believe, is without a parallel in modern times.... Not merely armed men, but young women and girls and babes, counted by hundreds, counted by thousands, subjected to the most refined cruelties, subjected to the last indignities, have been the victims of the Turk." And then came a fine burst of patriotic indignation. "That which makes the voice falter as we say it is that, through whatever misunderstanding, the Government which is immediately responsible for acts like these has turned for sympathy, for encouragement, not to any of the historical homes of despotism or oppression, not to any other European Power, but alas! to England--to free, humane, Christian England. The Turk has, not altogether without reason, believed himself, amid these scenes of cruelty, to be leaning on our country's arm, to be sure of her smile, or at least of her acquiescence."

And soon a mightier voice than even Liddon's was added to the chorus of righteous indignation. Gladstone had resigned the leaders.h.i.+p of the Liberal Party at the beginning of 1875, and for sixteen months he remained buried in his library at Hawarden. But now he suddenly reappeared, and flung himself into the agitation against Turkey with a zeal which in his prime he had never excelled, if, indeed, he had equalled it. On Christmas Day, 1876, he wrote in his diary--"The most solemn I have known for long; I see that eastward sky of storm and of underlight!" When Parliament met in February, 1877, he was ready with all his unequalled resources of eloquence, argumentation, and inconvenient enquiry, to drive home his great indictment against the Turkish Government and its champion, Disraeli, who had now become Lord Beaconsfield. For three arduous years he sustained the strife with a versatility, a courage, and a resourcefulness, which raised the enthusiasm of his followers to the highest pitch, and filled his antagonists with a rage akin to frenzy. I well remember that in July, 1878, just after Lord Beaconsfield's triumphant return from Berlin, a lady asked me as a special favour to dine with her: "Because I have got the Gladstones coming, and everyone declines to meet him." Strange, but true.

1878 was perhaps the most critical year of the Eastern question. Russia and Turkey were at death-grips, and Lord Beaconsfield seemed determined to commit this country to a war in defence of the Mahomedan Power, which for centuries has persecuted the wors.h.i.+ppers of Christ in the East of Europe. By frustrating the sinister design Gladstone saved England from the indelible disgrace of a second Crimea. But it was not only in Eastern Europe that he played the hero's part. In Africa, and India, and wherever British arms were exercised and British honour was involved, he dealt his resounding blows at that odious system of bl.u.s.ter and swagger and might against right, on which the Prime Minister and his colleagues bestowed the tawdry nickname of Imperialism. In his own phrase he devoted himself to "counterworking the purpose of Lord Beaconsfield,"

and all that was ardent and enthusiastic and adventurous in Liberalism flocked to his standard.

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven."

One could not stand aloof--the call to arms was too imperious. We saw our Leader contending single-handed with "the obscene empires of Mammon and Belial," and we longed to be at his side in the thick of the fight.

To a man born and circ.u.mstanced as I was the call came with peculiar power. I had the love of Freedom in my blood. I had been trained to believe in and to serve the Liberal cause. I was incessantly reminded of the verse, which, sixty years before, Moore had addressed to my uncle, Lord John Russell,

"Like the boughs of that laurel, by Delphi's decree Set apart for the Fane and its service divine, So the branches that spring from the old Russell tree Are by Liberty claimed for the use of her shrine."

In 1841 that same uncle wrote thus to his eldest brother: "Whatever may be said about other families, I do not think ours ought to retire from active exertion. In all times of popular movement, the Russells have been on the 'forward' side. At the Reformation, the first Earl of Bedford; in Charles the First's days, Francis, the Great Earl; in Charles the Second's, William, Lord Russell; in later times, Francis, Duke of Bedford; our father; you; and lastly myself in the Reform Bill."

These hereditary appeals were strong, but there were influences which were stronger. A kind of romantic and religious glamour, such as one had never before connected with politics, seemed to surround this attack on the strongholds of Anti-Christ. The campaign became a crusade.

Towards the end of 1879 I accepted an invitation to contest "the Borough and Hundreds of Aylesbury" at the next General Election. The "Borough"

was a compact and attractive-looking town, and the "Hundreds" which surrounded it covered an area nearly coextensive with the present division of Mid Bucks. Close by was Hampden House, unaltered since the day when four thousand freeholders of Buckinghams.h.i.+re rode up to Westminster to defend their impeached member, John Hampden. All around were those beech-clad recesses of the Chiltern Hills, in which, according to Lord Beaconsfield, the Great Rebellion was hatched. I do not vouch for that fact, but I can affirm that thirty years ago those recesses sheltered some of the stoutest Liberals whom I have ever known.

The town and its surroundings were, for parliamentary purposes, a Borough, and, as all householders in Boroughs had been enfranchised by the Reform Act of 1867, the Agricultural Labourers of the district were already voters.

It happens that Agricultural Labourers are the cla.s.s of voters with which I am most familiar; and an intimate acquaintance with these men has taught me increasingly to admire their staunchness, their shrewdness, and their racy humour. Two or three of the old sayings come back to memory as I write. "More pigs and less parsons" must have been a survival from the days of t.i.the. "The Black Recruiting Sergeant" was a nickname for a canva.s.sing Inc.u.mbent. "I tell you how it is with a State-Parson," cried a Village Hampden: "if you take away his book, he can't preach. If you take away his gown he mayn't preach. If you take away his screw, he'll be d--d if he'll preach." A Radical M.P. suddenly deserted his const.i.tuency and took a peerage, and this was the verdict of the Village Green: "Mister So-and-so says he's going to the House of Lords to 'leaven it with Liberal principles.' Bos.h.!.+ Mr. So-and-so can't no more leaven the House of Lords than you can sweeten a cartload of muck with a pot of marmalade."

Aylesbury returned two Members to Parliament, and its political history had been chequered. When first I came to know it, the two members were Mr. Samuel George Smith and Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild (afterwards Lord Rothschild). Mr. Smith was a Tory. Sir Nathaniel professed to be a Liberal; but, as his Liberalism was of the sort which had doggedly supported Lord Beaconsfield all through the Eastern Question, the more enthusiastic spirits in the const.i.tuency felt that they were wholly unrepresented. It was they who invited me to stand. From the first, Sir Nathaniel made it known that he would not support or coalesce with me; and perhaps, considering the dissimilarity of our politics, it was just as well. So there were three candidates, fighting independently for two seats; there was no Corrupt Practices Act in those days; and the situation was neatly summarized by a tradesman of the town. "Our three candidates are Mr. S. G. Smith, head of 'Smith, Payne & Co.;' Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild, head of 'N. M. Rothschild & Sons,' and Mr.

George Russell, who, we understand, has the Duke of Bedford behind him.

So we are looking forward to a very interesting contest." That word _interesting_ was well chosen.

Now began the most vivid and enjoyable portion of my life. Everything conspired to make it pleasant. In the first place, I believed absolutely in my cause. I was not, as Sydney Smith said, "stricken by the palsy of candour." There were no doubts or questionings or ambiguities in my mind. My creed with regard both to foreign and to domestic politics was clear, positive, and deliberate. I was received with the most extraordinary kindness and enthusiasm by people who really longed to have a hand in the dethronement of Lord Beaconsfield, and who believed in their politics as part of their religion.

After my first speech in the Corn Exchange of Aylesbury I was severely reprehended because I had called Lord Beaconsfield a "Jew." If I had known better, I should have said "a Semite" or "an Israelite," or--his own phrase--"a Mosaic Arab," and all would have been well. I had and have close friends among the Jews, so my use of the offending word was not dictated by racial or social prejudice. But it expressed a strong conviction. I held then, and I hold now, that it was a heavy misfortune for England that, during the Eastern Question, her Prime Minister was one of the Ancient Race. The spiritual affinity between Judaism and Mahomedanism, founded on a common denial of the Christian Creed, could not be without its influence on a statesman whose deepest convictions, from first to last, were with the religion of his forefathers. In 1876 Mr. Gladstone wrote--"Some new lights about Disraeli's Judaic feeling, in which he is both consistent and conscientious, have come in upon me."

And similar "lights" dictated my action and my language at the crisis of 1879-1880.

Another element of enjoyment was that I was young--only twenty-six.

Youth is an invaluable a.s.set in a first campaign. Youth can canva.s.s all day, and harangue all night. It can traverse immense distances without fatigue, make speeches in the open air without catching cold, sleep anywhere, eat anything, and even drink port with a grocer's label on it, at five in the afternoon. Then again, I had a natural and inborn love of public speaking, and I have known no enjoyment in life equal to that of addressing a great audience which you feel to be actively sympathetic.

Yes, that spring of 1880 was a delightful time. As the condemned highwayman said to the chaplain who was exhorting him to repentance for his life of adventure on the road--"You dog, it was delicious." It was all so new. One emerged (like Herbert Gladstone) from the obscurity of College rooms or from the undistinguished herd of London ball-goers, or from the stables and stubbles of a country home, and became, all in a moment, a Personage. For the first time in one's life one found that people--grown-up, sensible, vote-possessing people--wished to know one's opinions, and gave heed to one's words. For the first time, one had "Colours" of one's own, as if one were a Regiment or a University; for the first time one beheld one's portrait, flattering though perhaps mud-bespattered, on every wall. For the first time one was cheered in the street, and entered the Corn-Exchange amid what the Liberal paper called "thunders of applause," and the opponent's organ whittled down to "cheers."

But canva.s.sing cannot, I think, be reckoned among the pleasures of a candidature. One must be very young indeed to find it even tolerable. A candidate engaged in a house-to-house canva.s.s has always seemed to me (and not least clearly when I was the candidate) to sink beneath the level of humanity. To beg for votes, as if they were alms or broken victuals, is a form of mendicancy which is incompatible with common self-respect, and yet it is a self-abas.e.m.e.nt which thirty years ago custom imperatively demanded. "If my vote ain't worth calling for, I suppose it ain't worth 'aving" was the formula in which the elector stated his requirement.

To trudge, weary and footsore, dusty and deliquescent, from door to door; to ask, with d.a.m.nable iteration, if Mr. So-and-so is at home, and to meet the invariable rejoinder, "No, he isn't," not seldom running on with--"And, if he was, he wouldn't see you;" to find oneself (being Blue) in a Red quarter, where the very children hoot at you, and inebriate matrons shout personalities from upper windows--all this is detestable enough. But to find the voter at home and unfriendly is an experience which plunges the candidate lower still. A curious tradition of privileged insolence, which runs through all English history from the days when great men kept Jesters and the Universities had their _Terrae Filii_, a.s.serts itself, by immemorial usage, at an election. People who would be perfectly civil if one called on them in the ordinary way, and even rapturously grateful if they could sell one six boxes of lucifers or a pound of toffee, permit themselves a freedom of speech to the suppliant candidate, which tests the fibre of his manhood. If he loses his temper and answers in like sort, the door is shut on him with some Parthian jeer, and, as he walks dejectedly away, the agent says--"Ah, it's a pity you offended that fellow. He's very influential in this ward, and I believe a civil word would have won him." If, on the other hand, the candidate endures the raillery and smiles a sickly smile, he really fares no better. After a prolonged battle of wits (in which he takes care not to be too successful) he discovers that the beery gentleman in s.h.i.+rtsleeves has no vote, and that, in the time which he has spent in these fruitless pleasantries, he might have canva.s.sed half the street.

There is, of course, a pleasanter side to canva.s.sing. It warms the c.o.c.kles of one's heart to be greeted with the words, "Don't waste your time here, sir. My vote's yours before you ask for it. There's your picture over the chimney-piece." And when a wife says, "My husband is out at work, but I know he means to vote for you," one is inclined to embrace her on the spot.

These are the amenities of electioneering; but a man who enters on a political campaign expecting fair treatment from his opponents is indeed walking in a vain shadow. The ordinary rules of fairplay and straightforward conduct are forgotten at an election. In a political contest people say and do a great many things of which in every-day life they would be heartily ashamed. An election-agent of the old school once said to me in the confidence of after-dinner claret, "For my own part, when I go into a fight, I go in to win, and I'm not particular to a shade or two." All this is the common form of electioneering, but in one respect I think my experience rather unusual. I have been all my life as keen a Churchman as I am a Liberal, and some of my closest friends are clergymen. I never found that the Nonconformists were the least unfriendly to me on this account. They had their own convictions, and they respected mine; and we could work together in perfect concord for the causes of Humanity and Freedom. But the most unscrupulous opponents whom I have ever encountered have been the parochial clergy of the Church to which I belong, and the bands of "workers" whom they direct.

Tennyson once depicted a clergyman who--

"From a throne Mounted in heaven should shoot into the dark Arrows of lightnings,"

and graciously added that he "would stand and mark." But, when the Vicar from his pulpit-throne launches barbed sayings about "those who would convert our schools into seminaries of Atheism or Socialism, and would degrade this hallowed edifice into a Lecture-Hall--nay, a Music-Hall,"

then the Liberal candidate, constrained to "sit and mark" these bolts aimed at his cause, is tempted to a breach of charity. The Vicar's "workers" follow suit, but descend a little further into personalities.

"You know that the Radical Candidate arrived drunk at one of his meetings? He had to be lifted out of the carriage, and kept in the Committee Room till he was sober. Shocking, isn't it? and then such shameful hypocrisy to talk about Local Option! But can you wonder? You know he's an atheist? Oh yes, I know he goes to Church, but that's all a blind. His one object is to do away with Religion. Yes, they do say he has been in the Divorce Court, but I should not like to say I know it, though I quite believe it. His great friend, Mr. Comus, certainly was, and Mr. Quickly only got off by paying an immense sum in hush-money.

They're all tarred with the same brush, and it really is a religious duty to keep them out of Parliament."

Such I have observed to be the att.i.tude of parochial clergy and church-workers towards Liberal candidates.

"They said their duty both to man and G.o.d Required such conduct--which seemed very odd."

I suppose they would have justified it by that zeal for Established Churches and Sectarian Schools which, if it does not actually "eat up"

its votaries, certainly destroys their sense of proportion and perspective.[29]

Though I have said so much about the pugnacity of the clergy, I would not have it supposed that the Tory laity were slack or backward in political activity. To verbal abuse one soon became case-hardened; but one had also to encounter physical violence. In those days, stones and cabbage-stalks and rotten eggs still played a considerable part in electioneering. Squires hid their gamekeepers in dark coppices with instructions to pelt one as one drove past after dark. The linch-pin was taken out of one's carriage while one was busy at a meeting; and it was thought seriously unsafe for the candidate to walk unescorted through the hostile parts of the borough.

But, after all, this animosity, theological, moral, physical, did no great harm. It quickened the zeal and strengthened the resolve of one's supporters; and it procured one the inestimable aid of young, active, and pugnacious friends, who formed themselves into a body-guard and a cycle-corps, protecting their candidate when the play was rough, and spreading the light all over the const.i.tuency.

Why did not Lord Beaconsfield dissolve Parliament in July, 1878, when he returned in a blaze of triumph from the Congress of Berlin? Probably because his nerve had failed him, and he chose to retain his supremacy unquestioned, rather than commit it to the chances of a General Election. Anyhow, he let the moment pa.s.s; and from that time on his Government began to lose ground. In 1879 _Vanity Fair_, a strongly Disraelitish organ, p.r.o.nounced (under a cartoon) that Gladstone was the most popular man in England. In the autumn of that year, the "Mid-Lothian Campaign" raised him to the very summit of his great career; and, when Christmas came, most Liberals felt that it was all over except the shouting.