Chapter VI. Midlothian. (1879)
μηδὲ μαλθακὸς γένῃ.
τί δρᾴς? ἀνίστω, μή σε νικάτω κόπος.
Æsch. Eum., 74-128.
Turn not faint of heart. What doest thou? Let not weariness overcome thee.
I
Candidature Decided
After the general election of 1874, Mr. Gladstone resolved not again to offer himself as candidate for Greenwich, and in 1878 he formally declined an invitation from the liberals in that constituency. At the end of the year it was intimated to him that he might have a safe seat in the city of Edinburgh without a contest. In January 1879, more ambitious counsels prevailed, and it was resolved by the liberal committee of Midlothian, with Lord Rosebery in the front, and amid infinite resolution, enthusiasm, and solid sense of responsibility, that Mr. Gladstone should be invited to contest the metropolitan county of Scotland. Mr. Adam, the Scotch whip, entered into the design, Lord Wolverton approved, and Lord Granville sent Adam a letter assenting. The sitting member was Lord Dalkeith, eldest son of that Duke of Buccleuch who had been Mr. Gladstone's colleague in Peel's cabinet nearly forty years before, and who had left it in the memorable December of 1845. Parties had always been closely balanced, although the tories had held their own pretty firmly, and only two contests had been fought for forty years. The Midlothian tory was described to Mr. Gladstone as of the hardest and narrowest type, and the battle was therefore sure to be fierce. Some of the voters, however, [pg 585] told the canvassers that they would no longer support ministers. “If the government continues much longer,” they said, “the whole nation will be in the poorhouse.” The delight of the constituency was intense at the prospect of having for their champion one whom they described as the greatest living Scotchman, and Adam (January 10, 1879) predicted a majority of two hundred. Mr. Gladstone rapidly, but not without deliberation, entered into the project. “I am now only anxious,” he wrote to Mr. Adam (January 11), “under your advice and Wolverton's, about making the ground sure before the plunge is taken; after it is taken, you may depend on me.” On the same day he wrote to Lord Granville:—
I believe you have been cognizant of the proceedings about the county of Midlothian, which are now beginning to bear a practical aspect. Generally, when one knows the tree is a large tree, yet on coming close up to the trunk it looks twice as large as it did before. So it is with this election. If it goes on, it will gather into itself a great deal of force and heat, and will be very prominent. Thus far I am not sure whether I have put the matter pointedly before you, or have been content to assume your approval of what I found Adam pressing strongly upon me. It will be a tooth and nail affair.
Lord Granville replied, that he was doing a “very plucky and public-spirited thing.” “Your friends,” he said, “must begin working the coach at once, but I should think you had better not appear too early in the field. Act Louis xiv.” “Having received your approval,” Mr. Gladstone told Lord Granville, “I wrote on the same day to Adam accordingly.” He then went into details with his usual care and circumspection. When the public were made aware of what was on foot, the general interest became hardly less lively all over the island than it was in the constituency itself. It was observed at the time how impossible many people seemed to find it to treat anything done by Mr. Gladstone as natural and reasonable. Nothing would appear to be a more simple and unobjectionable act than his compliance with the request of the electors of Midlothian, yet “he was attacked as if he were guilty of some monstrous piece of vanity and [pg 586] eccentricity.”[357] Relentless opponents amused themselves by saying that “Mr. Gladstone lives personally in Wales and intends to live politically in Scotland; and his most fervently held opinions, like the Celtic population of the island, have very much followed the same line of withdrawal.”
Mr. Gladstone described the general outlook in a letter to his son Henry in India (May 16):—
The government declines, but no one can say at what rate. Elections are tolerably satisfactory to us—not, I think, more. A sure though evil instinct has guided them in choosing rather to demoralise our finance, than to pay their way by imposing taxes, but I do not see how they are long to escape this difficulty.... Our people look forward comfortably to the election. The government people say they will not have it this year. But if we come to the conclusion that we ought to have it, I am by no means sure but that though a minority, we can force it by putting our men into the field, and making it too uncomfortable for them to continue twelve or fifteen months in hot water. I am safe in Midlothian, unless they contrive a further and larger number of faggot votes.
Adam looked forward with alarm to the mischief that might be done if the general election were to be protracted beyond the autumn of 1880. “In order to neutralise the present majority,” he told Mr. Gladstone, “they will have to create faggots to a disgraceful extent, but they are not troubled by scruples of conscience.” The charity that thinketh no evil is perhaps less liberally given to party whips than even to other politicians.
Apart from Midlothian Mr. Adam, in January 1879, said to Mr. Gladstone that the liberals were helpless even in the best agricultural counties of England; that he saw no hope of improvement; they had neither candidates nor organisation in most of them, and there was no means that he knew of (and he had done all that he could) to wake them up. By November 1879, he reported that he had been carefully over the list, taking a very moderate calculation of the [pg 587] chances at the coming election; and he believed they ought to have a majority of 20 to 30, independent of home rulers. Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Granville:—
Aug. 6, '79.—Salisbury's speech indicates, and for several reasons I should believe, that they intend sailing on the quiet tack. Having proved their spirit, they will now show their moderation. In other words they want all the past proceedings to be in the main “stale fish” at the elections. Except financial shuffling they will very likely commit no new enormity before the election. In my view that means they will not supply any new matter of such severe condemnation as what they have already furnished. Therefore, my idea is, we should keep the old alive and warm. This is the meaning of my suggestion as to autumn work, rather than that I expect a dissolution. It seems to me good policy to join on the proceedings of 1876-9 by a continuous process to the dissolution. Should this happen, which I think likely enough about March, there will have been no opportunity immediately before it of stirring the country. I will not say our defeat in 1874 was owing to the want of such an opportunity, but it was certainly, I think, much aggravated by that want.