CHAPTER XVII
The viceroyalty of Lord Wodehouse brought him an earldom in the year he retired from office—1868—but it would be an exaggeration to say that he was conspicuously successful. Until his appointment to Ireland, Wodehouse had had experience of under-secretaryships only, at the Foreign and Indian Offices, and Lord Palmerston's selection came as a surprise. It may have been due to the fact that Lord Wodehouse's wife was a daughter of an Irish peer, the last Earl of Clare, and there have been selections for the viceroyalty based on even more frivolous and cynical reasons. There was, of course, a great deal of anxious and dangerous work for Lord Wodehouse to do, and within a few months of his arrival in Dublin he was coping night and day with the Fenian rising. At first all the viceroy's energy and the underground activities of his subordinates seemed helpless against the efforts of the latest society for bringing about separation from England, but Lord Wodehouse was not dismayed, and he met murder with execution and assassination with the rope. The Fenian movement culminated in 1867 in a series of shameless murders that once more drew the attention of the English nation to the disturbed condition of Ireland.
In the May of 1867 Mr. Gladstone declared in the House of Commons that the time was near when the Government would have to deal with the Irish Church, one of the strongest arguments of the Fenian party. Following this declaration came the murder of a policeman in Manchester, when an attempt was made to rescue two Fenian prisoners. Three men were executed for the crime, and as the 'Manchester martyrs' they are to be found in the calendar of Nationalism. There was a melodramatic attempt to blow up a London prison, and thus free a Fenian incarcerated within its walls. Everywhere the mention of the name of Ireland produced a feeling of panic and an expression of profound contempt.
The Earl of Kimberley
Meanwhile Lord Wodehouse, whose administration, ending in 1866, was wholly political, acted with rigour and fearlessness. The Home Rulers mocked him, issuing imitation proclamations signed 'Woodlouse.' He turned aside from signing warrants to welcome, in May, 1865, the Prince of Wales—afterwards King Edward VII.—to Dublin to open the International Exhibition, but that was almost the only occasion when he made a public appearance unassociated with politics. There was some effort to maintain the social side of Dublin Castle government, but the times were not favourable to hospitality, and when in 1866 the viceroy was succeeded by the Marquis of Abercorn, and took his place in Mr. Gladstone's first ministry as Lord Privy Seal, under his new title of Earl of Kimberley, there was neither regret nor gratitude expressed for his departure. The Nationalists and their Fenian allies could not be expected to show approval or disapproval of persons who merely administered the same system. To them Dublin Castle was the outward token of England's rule in Ireland, and their object was to destroy its existence.
Lord Kimberley died in 1902, aged seventy-six. He is not remembered for his Irish viceroyalty, but as Foreign Secretary under Lord Rosebery in 1892-94 he displayed an ability that was something above mere industry. He declined to join an alliance which had for its object the coercion of Japan after the latter's victory over China, and this far-seeing act was the first step towards the Anglo-Japanese alliance which many consider Lord Lansdowne's greatest achievement during his tenure of the Foreign Office. Lord Kimberley was Colonial Secretary in the days when the affairs of the outer Empire were not considered very important, and a knowledge of the colonies something akin to bad form. His administration of Indian affairs was decidedly tame, but he did no harm. It was his fate who once had been a member of the strongest Liberal Cabinet in the history of party government to witness the Liberal debacle that followed the resignation of the Rosebery Government. In the palmy days of Liberalism it was his good fortune to serve under Gladstone—towards the close of his life he sat in the Cabinet of a man who, having won the greatest prize of political life too easily, treated it with contempt, and in doing so wrecked the party which enabled him to win some fame as a statesman. To Lord Kimberley fell the task of leading the Liberal minority in the House of Lords, and when he died in 1902, the Conservative and Unionist party was in an apparently impregnable position, and Liberalism was in the depths.
The fall of the Liberal ministry brought Lord Derby to the head of the Government, with Disraeli as his Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Prime Minister thereupon asked the Marquis of Abercorn to accept the difficult and laborious post of Viceroy of Ireland, and the hazardous position was accepted from a sense of duty. Lord Abercorn was in 1866 fifty-five years of age, and thirty-four years earlier he had married Lady Louisa Russell, a daughter of the sixth Duke of Bedford, another viceregal family. The viceroy was a popular landlord, though he, too, had a constitutional objection to tenants who would not pay their rents. But the respectable classes admired him, and those who knew him personally considered that he was the right man for Ireland. He was the proudest man in Ireland, with a flamboyant love of display. Fenianism was most active during his first term, and Abercorn was compelled to adopt similar methods in dealing with the trouble as had been part of the Liberal administration of his predecessor. Ireland has always refused to accept the spirit of the English party system, and whether Liberal or Conservative ministry was in power, Dublin Castle remained the same. There were the usual evictions, riots, murders, and other crimes scarcely less reprehensible, and the viceroy, although protected to some extent by the Chief Secretary, who was, of course, the mouthpiece of the Irish Government in the House of Commons, found himself compelled by force of circumstances to undertake political work against which his soul revolted. Lord Abercorn was not a man to revel in a display of the power of the police, or even of the tenacity and strength of the Castle bureaucracy. He aimed at the improvement of the masses, the progress of education, and the cultivation of the fine arts. In society the viceroy and the marchioness were most popular. He was an intimate friend of the queen. No charge of alienism could be laid against the head of the Irish Hamiltons, and while every other great landlord had his land troubles, the tenants of the Marquis of Abercorn had realized in a practical manner their indebtedness to their landlord. If anybody should have been the ideal viceroy Lord Abercorn was the man; but here, again, any success achieved was purely social, and confined to a small area. The unruly state of the country, its increasing poverty, and its record of crime, found no palliative in the reign of the proudest of the Hamiltons.
Prince and Princess of Wales
In April, 1868, the Prince and Princess of Wales visited Dublin, to prove again that if Ireland had the reputation of being a nation of rebels, it could be courteous to distinguished visitors. Lord and Lady Abercorn received them in Dublin, and there were great rejoicings. The executive had taken the most elaborate precautions for the safety of the royal pair, but events proved that they were quite unnecessary, and Ireland might have been one of the most prosperous countries in the world for all the prince and princess saw to the contrary. Within the sacred walls of St. Patrick's Cathedral the Lord-Lieutenant presided over a gorgeous ceremony, which formally created the Prince of Wales a Knight of St. Patrick, and the banquet that followed in St. Patrick's Hall was one of great splendour. The dinner brought together not only all the notables of Ireland, but also the largest gathering of English and Irish detectives that the Castle has ever contained. The number of the detectives was quite embarrassing, but it was considered necessary, with recollections of Manchester and Clerkenwell. The royal guests were ignorant of this part of the programme, however, although the prince once addressed a question to a gentleman whom he thought was the viceroy's secretary. He was not enlightened as to the identity of the detective-inspector from London, who was part of his bodyguard.
Benjamin Disraeli was Prime Minister at the time of the royal visit to Ireland, and he had no difficulty in getting Abercorn a dukedom. On August 10, 1868, his elevation was announced, and Ireland's only duke—his Grace of Leinster—was joined by a second wearer of the strawberry leaves. The new dignity had been earned years before Lord Abercorn lived in Dublin Castle, and by no stretch of official imagination could it be said to hallmark the Abercorn administration of 1866 to 1868. The General Election in the latter year displaced Disraeli, and gave Mr. Gladstone the reins of power, and the Duke of Abercorn went out with the Tory Government to enjoy himself in opposition until 1874, when Disraeli tasted the sweets of office again.
The Irish Church disestablished
We have Mr. Gladstone's own admission that the Fenian agitation of the sixties was the primary cause of English interest in the Irish Church, and in the great land question. It is one of the truisms of history that agitation on unconstitutional methods is more effective than the employment of peaceful persuasion. Catholic Emancipation proved that. When Gladstone took office it was known that he would attempt to create a contented Ireland by disestablishing the Irish Church, and by passing a great Land Act. He chose as his Irish viceroy Earl Spencer, then an unknown and untried young man in his thirty-third year. To be the representative of the premier in Ireland was the most onerous and dangerous position in the Government. The viceroy found society, lay and clerical, against him, and with the passing of the Land Act of 1870 the upper-class Irish believed what they had only doubted before—that Gladstone was the worst enemy of Ireland, and that Lord Spencer was his dangerous satellite. There is no need to enter into the controversy that ensued when Gladstone introduced the Bill disestablishing the Church of Ireland, as the Protestant minority was termed absurdly. Archbishop Trench declared passionately that the disestablishment would 'put to the Irish Protestants the choice between apostasy and expatriation, and every man among them who has money or position, when he sees his Church go, will leave the country. If you do that,' he continued, 'you will find the country so difficult to manage that you will have to depend upon the gibbet and the sword.' It would be unfair to dwell upon the ludicrous moanings of the Church party; they prophesied not only the extinction of the Irish Protestants, but the end of Christendom. We can be content with the knowledge that time has given us of the prosperity and progress of Protestantism in Ireland.
It is a splendid example of the irony of life to recall Mr. Gladstone's declaration when the telegram arrived at Hawarden, informing him that an emissary was on his way from Windsor Castle. 'My mission,' he said, 'is to pacify Ireland.' That may have been true, but Gladstone brought a sword rather than peace to the country which had such a long and fateful connection with the statesmanship of the great Liberal. Lord Spencer, his first viceroy, experienced all the fury of rebellious Nationalism, and during his second viceroyalty had the unfortunate distinction of being the governor of a country where no man's life was safe, and where murder and outrage were as common as sand.
This is, however, anticipating events. The refusal of Lord Halifax to accept the viceroyalty had restricted Gladstone's choice. Liberalism, even in its mildest state, has never appealed to territorial magnates, and the Whiggism of Lord Spencer was scarcely the fire-and-thunder Liberalism of his chief, but he stepped into the breach, and for the rest of his life was one of the strongest champions of a political faith unpopular amongst his own class. Born in 1836, and married at the age of twenty-two, he brought the courage of youth to bear upon the Irish situation. Gladstone never had a more faithful colleague and Dublin Castle a more conscientious occupant. Dublin society was inclined to frown upon the viceroy, and there was some talk of a boycott of the viceregal functions, but Lord and Lady Spencer were independent of the support of the official and professional class which forms what is called society in the capital of Ireland. A great English landlord and his wife could create any society they chose, being somewhat in a similar position to the Scotsman who declared that wherever he sat was the head of the table. Lord Hartington, better known as the Duke of Devonshire, was Chichester Fortescue's successor as Chief Secretary, and the two noblemen carried out Gladstone's reforms with a thoroughness that for a time gave the impression that at last the Irish nation was to be pacified and made amenable to English rule.
The Land Act of 1870
The disestablishment of the Protestant Church in Ireland was, however, a minor reform compared with the great Land Act of 1870. This was a measure of reform that took away the breath of the Tory leaders, but it has proved a most beneficial act, and when in the course of time it became obsolete, it was a Unionist administration that improved upon it, and passed an Act which, compared with that of 1870, or even that of 1881, out-Gladstoned Gladstone. It was not a brilliant success, because it tried to do too much, and, of course, offended both parties; but as the first attempt on a large scale to settle this many-sided question, it deserves a high place in the records of Gladstone's memorable Government of 1868-74.
Any determined effort to ostracize the viceroy was soon killed by the presence and influence of Lady Spencer. She had been no more than twenty-four hours in Dublin when she was nicknamed "Spencer's Fairy Queen," a most flattering description of a great beauty and a charming woman. Lord Spencer's skill as a horseman was in his favour, and his regular attendance in the chase earned him the respect of a large community which has a hereditary affection for the noblest of animals.
Castle seasons were enlivened by visits from the Prince of Wales, the Princess Louise, and the Prince Arthur, now the Duke of Connaught; while the important Dublin Exhibition was opened, and numerous Irish industries patronized and helped.