III
On Feb. 14, Mr. Gladstone reported to the Queen:—
The general impression last night appeared to be that the friends of Trinity College were relieved; that the liberal party and the nonconformists were well satisfied with the conformity between the proposed measure and the accepted principles of university organisation in England; but that the Roman catholics would think themselves hardly or at least not generously used. All that Mr. Gladstone has heard this morning through private channels, as well as the general tone of the press, tends to corroborate the favourable parts of what he gathered last night, and to give hope that reasonable and moderate Roman catholics may see that their real grievances will be removed; generally also to support the expectation that the bill is not likely to pass.
Delane of the Times said to Manning when they were leaving the House of Commons, “This is a bill made to pass.” Manning himself heartily acquiesced. Even the bitterest of Mr. Gladstone's critics below the gangway on his own side agreed, that if a division could have been taken while the House was still under the influence of the three hours' speech, the bill would have been almost unanimously carried.[284] “It threw the House into a mesmeric trance,” said the seconder of a hostile motion. Effects like these, not purple passages, not epigrams nor aphorisms, are the test of oratory. Mr. Bruce wrote home (Feb. 15): “Alas! I fear all prospect of ministerial defeat is over. The University bill is so well received that people say there will not be even a division on the second reading. I see no other rock ahead, but sometimes they project their snouts unexpectedly, and cause shipwreck.”
Soon did the projecting rocks appear out of the smooth water. Lord Spencer had an interview with Cardinal Cullen [pg 440] at Dublin Castle (Feb. 25), and found him though in very good humour and full of gratitude for fair intentions, yet extremely hostile to the bill. It was in flat opposition, he said, to what the Roman catholics had been working for in Ireland for years; it continued the Queen's Colleges, and set up another Queen's College in the shape of Trinity College with a large endowment; it perpetuated the mixed system of education, to which he had always been opposed, and no endowment nor assistance was given to the catholic university; the council might appoint professors to teach English literature, geology, or zoology who would be dangerous men in catholic eyes. Lord Spencer gathered that the cardinal would be satisfied with a sum down to redress inequality or a grant for buildings.
Archbishop Manning wrote to Cardinal Cullen the day after the bill was produced, “strongly urging them to accept it.” It seemed to him to rest on a base so broad that he could not tell how either the opposition or the radical doctrinaires could attack it without adopting “the German tyranny.” He admitted that he was more easily satisfied than if he were in Ireland, but he thought the measure framed with skill and success. After a fortnight the archbishop told Mr. Gladstone, that he still saw reason to believe that the Irish hierarchy would not refuse the bill. On March 3rd, he says he has done his utmost to conciliate confidence in it. By the 7th he knew that his efforts had failed, but he urges Mr. Gladstone not to take the episcopal opposition too much to heart. “Non-endowment, mixed education, and godless colleges, are three bitter things to them.” “This,” he wrote to Mr. Gladstone, when all was over (March 12) “is not your fault, nor the bill's fault, but the fault of England and Scotland and three anti-catholic centuries.”
Hostility Of Irish Bishops
The debate began on March 3rd, and extended to four sittings. The humour of the House was described by Mr. Gladstone as “fitful and fluctuating.” Speeches “void of real argument or point, yet aroused the mere prejudices of a section of the liberal party against popery and did much to place the bill in danger.” Then that cause of apprehension [pg 441] disappeared, and a new change passed over the shifting sky, for the intentions of Irish members were reported to be dubious. There was not a little heat and passion, mainly from below the ministerial gangway. The gagging clauses jarred horribly, though they were trenchantly defended by Mr. Lowe, the very man to whose line of knowledge and intellectual freedom they seemed likely to be most repugnant. It soon appeared that neither protestant nor catholic set any value on these securities for conscience, and the general assembly of the presbyterians declared war upon the whole scheme. The cabinet—“most harmonious at this critical time,”—still held firmly that the bill was well constructed, so that if it once reached committee it would not be easy to inflict mortal wounds. On March 8th the prime minister reported to the Queen:—
Strange to say, it is the opposition of the Roman catholic bishops that brings about the present difficulty; and this although they have not declared an opposition to the bill outright, but have wound up their list of objections with a resolution to present petitions praying for its amendment. Still their attitude of what may be called growling hostility has had these important results. Firstly, it has deadened that general willingness of the liberal party, which the measure itself had created, to look favourably on a plan such as they might hope would obtain acquiescence, and bring about contentment. Secondly, the great majority of the bishops are even more hostile than the resolutions, which were apparently somewhat softened as the price of unanimity; and all these bishops, working upon liberal Irish members through their political interest in their seats, have proceeded so far that from twenty to twenty-five may go against the bill, and as many may stay away. When to these are added the small knot of discontented liberals and mere fanatics which so large a party commonly contains, the government majority, now taken at only 85, disappears....
It is not in the power or the will of your Majesty's advisers to purchase Irish support by subserviency to the Roman bishops. Their purpose has been to offer justice to all, and their hope has been that what was just would be seen to be advantageous. As far [pg 442] as the Roman catholics of Ireland are concerned, the cabinet conceive that they are now at perfect liberty to throw up the bill. But they are also of opinion that its abandonment would so impair or destroy their moral power, as to render it impossible for them to accept the defeat. There are whispers of a desire in the liberal party, should the catastrophe arrive, to meet it by a vote of confidence, which would probably be carried by a still larger majority. But the cabinet look with extreme disfavour upon this method of proceeding, which would offer them the verbal promise of support just when its substance had been denied.
He then proceeds to more purely personal aspects and contingencies:—
What lies beyond it would be premature to describe as having been regularly treated or even opened to-day. Mr. Gladstone considers himself far more tied to the bill and the subject than his colleagues; and if they upon a defeat were disposed to carry on the government without him, he would with your Majesty's sanction take effectual means to provide at least against his being an impediment in the way of an arrangement eligible in so many points of view. But his colleagues appear at present indisposed to adopt this method of solution. There would then remain for them the question whether they should humbly tender their resignations to your Majesty, or whether they should advise a dissolution of the parliament, which was elected under other auspices. This would be a matter of the utmost gravity for consideration at the proper time. Mr. Gladstone as at present advised has no foregone conclusion in favour of either alternative, and would act with his colleagues as between them. But he does not intend to go into opposition, and the dissolution of this government, brought about through languor and through extensive or important defections in the liberal party which has made him its leader, would be the close of his political life. He has now for more than forty years striven to serve the crown and country to the best of his power, and he is willing, though with overtaxed faculties and diminishing strength, to continue the effort longer, if he sees that the continuance can be conducive to the objects [pg 443] which he has heretofore had at heart; but the contingency to which he has last referred, would be for him the proof that confidence was gone, that usefulness was at an end, and that he might and ought to claim the freedom which best befits the close of life.
The next day, in reporting that the estimates of the coming division were far from improving, Mr. Gladstone returned in a few words to the personal point:—
Mr. Gladstone is very grateful for your Majesty's caution against being swayed by private feelings, and he will endeavour to be on his guard against them. He has, however, always looked to the completion of that commission, so to call it, which events in a measure threw into his hands five years ago, as the natural close of the main work of the present government; and many circumstances have combined to impress him with the hope that thus an honourable path would be opened for his retirement. He ought, perhaps, to add that he has the strongest opinion, upon political grounds and grounds other than political, against spending old age under the strain of that perpetual contention which is inseparable from his present position; and this opinion could only be neutralised by his perceiving a special call to remain: that is to say, some course of public service to be done by him better than if it were in other hands. Such a prospect he neither sees nor anticipates. But it is premature to trouble your Majesty on this minor subject.
On the 9th Cardinal Cullen blazed forth in a pastoral that was read in all the churches. He described the bill as richly endowing non-catholic and godless colleges, and without giving one farthing to catholics, inviting them to compete in their poverty, produced by penal laws and confiscations, with those left in possession of enormous wealth. The new university scheme only increased the number of Queen's Colleges, so often and so solemnly condemned by the catholic church and by all Ireland, and gave a new impulse to that sort of teaching that separates education from religion and its holy influences, and banishes God, the author of all good, from our schools. The prelate's pastoral had a decisive effect in regions far removed from the ambit of his crosier. [pg 444] The tory leader could not resist a temptation thus offered by the attitude of the Irish cardinal, and the measure that had been much reviled as a dark concordat between Mr. Gladstone and the pope, was now rejected by a concordat between the pope's men and Mr. Disraeli.
The discussion was on a high level in Mr. Gladstone's judgment. Lyon Playfair criticised details with some severity and much ability, but intended to vote for the bill. Miall, the nonconformist leader, supported the second reading, but required alterations that were admissible enough. On March 10 Mr. Harcourt, who was not yet an old member, “opened the discussion by a speech in advance of any he has yet delivered as to effect upon the House. Severe in criticism on detail, he was favourable to the substance of the bill.” One significant incident of the debate was a declaration by Bentinck, a conservative ultra, that he would vote against the bill in reliance on the declaration of Mr. Hardy, which he understood to be a pledge for himself and others near him, not to take office during the existence of the present parliament. “Mr. Hardy remained silent during this appeal, which was several times repeated.” Then the end came (March 11-12):—
Mr. Disraeli rose at half-past ten, and spoke amidst rapt attention till midnight. Mr. Gladstone followed in a speech of two hours, and at two o'clock the division was called. During the whole evening the greatest uncertainty had prevailed; for himself Mr. Gladstone leaned to expecting an unfavourable result. The numbers were, Ayes (for the government), 284; Noes, 287; majority against the government, 3. It is said that 45 adherents of the government, or thereabouts, voted against them. It was the Irish vote that grew continually worse.[285]
Ministers Defeated
Of the speech in which the debate was wound up Forster says in his diary: “Gladstone, with the House dead against [pg 445] him and his bill, made a wonderful speech—easy, almost playful, with passages of great power and eloquence, but with a graceful play, which enabled him to plant deep his daggers of satire in Horsman and Co.”[286] Speaker Brand calls it “a magnificent speech, generous, high-minded, and without a taint of bitterness, although he was sorely tried, especially by false friends.” He vindicated the obnoxious clauses, but did not wish to adhere to them if opinion from all quarters were adverse, and he admitted that it was the opposition of members from Ireland that principally acted on his hearers. His speech contained a remarkable passage, pronouncing definitely against denominational endowment of university education.