Footnotes
[1.]Above, vol. ii. pp. 563-8.[2.]March 25-6, 1881.[3.]Bradlaugh, who was a little vain of his legal skill, founded this claim upon the Evidence Amendment Act, taken in connection with the Parliamentary Oaths and other Acts.[4.]See vol. i. p. 138.[5.]Speech on second reading of Affirmation bill, 1883.[6.]Lord Hampden's Diaries.[7.]Perhaps the best equivalent for begeistert here is “daemonic.”[8.]Lucretius, ii. 646. “For the nature of the gods must ever of itself enjoy repose supreme through endless time, far withdrawn from all concerns of ours; free from all our pains, free from all our perils, strong in resources of its own, needing nought from us, no favours win it, no anger moves.”[9.]Religious Disabilities Removal bill, Feb. 4, 1891.[10.]Vol. ii. p. 583.[11.]Sir Garnet Wolseley to Sir M. Hicks Beach, Nov. 13, 1879.[12.]In H. of C, Jan. 21, 1881.[13.]Speeches in Scotland, i. pp. 48, 63.[14.]C, 2586, No. 3.[15.]Mr. Grant Duff, then colonial under-secretary, said in the House of Commons, May 21, 1880, “Under the very difficult circumstances of the case, the plan which seemed likely best to conciliate the interests at once of the Boers, the natives and the English population, was that the Transvaal should receive, and receive with promptitude, as a portion of confederation, the largest possible measure of local liberties that could be granted, and that was the direction in which her Majesty's present advisers meant to move.”[16.]At Birmingham, June 1881.[17.]C, 2367, p. 55.[18.]Afghanistan and S. Africa: A letter to Mr. Gladstone by Sir Bartle Frere. Murray, 1891, pp. 24-6. Frere, on his return to England, once more impressed on the colonial office the necessity of speedily granting the Boers a constitution, otherwise there would be serious trouble. (Life, ii. p. 408.)[19.]Sir George Colley pressed Lord Kimberley in his correspondence with the reality of this grievance, and the urgency of trying to remove it. This was after the Boers had taken to arms at the end of 1880.[20.]Before the Gladstone government came into office, between August 1879 and April 1880, whilst General Wolseley was in command, the force in Natal and the Transvaal had been reduced by six batteries of artillery, three companies of engineers, one cavalry regiment, eleven battalions of infantry, and five companies of army service corps. The force at the time of the outbreak was: in Natal 1772, and in the Transvaal 1759—a total of 3531. As soon as the news of the insurrection reached London, large reinforcements were at once despatched to Colley, the first of them leaving Gibraltar on Dec. 27, 1880.[21.]Sir B. Frere was recalled on August 1, 1880, and sailed for England September 15. Sir Hercules Robinson, his successor, did not reach the Cape until the end of January 1881. In the interval Sir George Strahan was acting governor.[22.]Lord Kimberley justified this decision on the ground that it was impossible to send a commissioner to inquire and report, at a moment when our garrisons were besieged, and we had collected no troops to relieve them, and when we had just received the news that the detachment of the 94th had been cut off on the march from Lydenberg to Pretoria. “Is it not practically certain,” he wrote, “that the Boers would have refused at that time to listen to any reasonable terms, and would have simply insisted that we should withdraw our troops and quit the country?” Of course, the Boer overture, some six weeks after the rejection by Lord Kimberley of the Cape proposal, and after continued military success on the side of the Boers, showed that this supposed practical certainty was the exact reverse of certain.[23.]“I do not know whether I am indebted to you or to Mr. Childers or to both, for the continuance of H.M.'s confidence, but I shall always feel more deeply grateful than I can express; and can never forget H.M.'s gracious message of encouragement at a time of great trouble.”—Colley to Kimberley, Jan. 31, 1881.[24.]“The directions to Colley,” says Mr. Bright in a cabinet minute, “intended to convey the offer of a suspension of hostilities on both sides, with a proposal that a commissioner should be appointed to enter into negotiations and arrangements with a view to peace.”[25.]Life of Childers, ii. p. 24.[26.]Colley's letter to Childers, Feb. 23, Life of Childers, ii. p. 24.[27.]See Selborne's Memorials, ii. p. 3, and also a speech by Lord Kimberley at Newcastle, Nov. 14, 1899.[28.]In a speech at Edinburgh (Sept. 1, 1884), Mr. Gladstone put the same argument—“The people of the Transvaal, few in number, were in close and strong sympathy with their brethren in race, language, and religion. Throughout South Africa these men, partly British subjects and partly not, were as one man associated in feeling with the people of the Transvaal; and had we persisted in that dishonourable attempt, against all our own interests, to coerce the Transvaal as we attempted to coerce Afghanistan, we should have had the whole mass of the Dutch population at the Cape and throughout South Africa rising in arms against us.”[29.]July 25, 1881.[30.]One of the most determined enemies of the government in 1881, ten years later, in a visit to South Africa, changed his mind. “The Dutch sentiment in the Cape Colony, wrote Lord Randolph Churchill, 'had been so exasperated by what it considered the unjust, faithless, and arbitrary policy pursued towards the free Dutchmen of the Transvaal by Frere, Shepstone, and Lanyon, that the final triumph of the British arms, mainly by brute force, would have permanently and hopelessly alienated it from Great Britain.... On the whole, I find myself free to confess, and without reluctance to admit, that the English escaped from a wretched and discreditable muddle, not without harm and damage, but perhaps in the best possible manner.”[31.]“I apprehend, whether you call it a Protectorate, or a Suzerainty, or the recognition of England as a Paramount Power, the fact is that a certain controlling power is retained when the state which exercises this suzerainty has a right to veto any negotiations into which the dependent state may enter with foreign powers. Whatever suzerainty meant in the Convention of Pretoria, the condition of things which it implied still remains; although the word is not actually employed, we have kept the substance. We have abstained from using the word because it was not capable of legal definition, and because it seemed to be a word which was likely to lead to misconception and misunderstanding.”—Lord Derby in the House of Lords, March 17, 1884. I do not desire to multiply points of controversy, but the ill-starred raising of the ghost of suzerainty in 1897-9 calls for the twofold remark that the preamble was struck out by Lord Derby's own hand, and that alike when Lord Knutsford and Lord Ripon were at the colonial office, answers were given in the House of Commons practically admitting that no claim of suzerainty could be put forward.[32.]Works of T. H. Green, iii. 382.[33.]House of Commons, April 4, 1882. [34.]Edinburgh, Sept. 1, 1884.[35.]See vol. ii. book vi. chap. II.[36.]Proceedings had been instituted in the Dublin courts against Parnell and others for seditious conspiracy. The jury were unable to agree on a verdict.[37.]Tried by Lord Spencer in Westmeath in 1871, it had been successful, but the area of disturbance was there comparatively insignificant.[38.]For a plain and precise description of the Coercion Act of 1881, see Dicey's Law of the Constitution, pp. 243-8.[39.]See vol. ii. p. 284.[40.]At the Cloth Hall banquet, Leeds, Oct. 8, 1881.[41.]Speech to the Leeds Chamber of Commerce, Oct. 8, 1881.[42.]Introduced by Mr. Redmond.[43.]It had been Mr. Burke's practice to drive from the Castle to the Park gate, then to descend and walk home, followed by two detectives. On this occasion he found at the gate that the chief secretary had passed, and drove forward to overtake him. The detectives did not follow him as usual. If they had followed, he would have been saved.[44.]Life of Dean Church, p. 299.[45.]Nineteenth Century, August, 1877; Gleanings, iv. p. 357.[46.]July 27, 1882.[47.]Granville and Malet, November 4, 1881.[48.]Before Midlothian, however, Mr. Gladstone had in 1877 drawn an important distinction: “If I find the Turk incapable of establishing a good, just, and well-proportioned government over civilised and Christian races, it does not follow that he is under a similar incapacity when his task shall only be to hold empire over populations wholly or principally Orientals and Mahomedans. On this head I do not know that any verdict of guilty has yet been found by a competent tribunal.”—Gleanings, iv. p. 364.[49.]Fortnightly Review, July 1882.[50.]Defining the claims of the European bondholder on revenue.[51.]Fortnightly Review, July 1882.[52.]Lord Granville to Lord Dufferin. Oct. 5, 1882.[53.]A share of the credit of success is due to the admirable efficiency of Mr. Childers at the War Office. See Sir Garnet's letter to him, Life of Childers, ii. p. 117.[54.]Considerate la vostra semenza:
Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
Ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza.
—Inferno, xxvi. 118.[55.]Times, Dec. 8, 1882.[56.]Standard, Nov. 16, 1882.[57.]Morning Post, Oct. 20, 1882.[58.]Traill's New Lucian, pp. 305-6,—in spite of politics, a book of admirable wit, scholarship, and ingenious play of mind.[59.]To Mr. Hazzopolo, Dec. 22, 1882.[60.]Life of Tait, i. p. 109.[61.]Bishop Browne writes to a friend (Life, p. 457): “Gladstone, I learned both from himself and others, searched into all precedents from the Commonwealth to the present day for a primate who began his work at seventy, and found none but Juxon. Curiously, I have been reading that he himself, prompted by Bishop Wilberforce, wanted Palmerston to appoint Sumner (of Winchester) when he was seventy-two. It was when they feared they could not get Longley (who was sixty-eight).”[62.]Life and Letters of Dean Church, p. 307.[63.]Life and Letters of Dean Church, p. 307.[64.]See vol. i. p. 47.[65.]Gleanings, ii. p. 287.[66.]Lord Derby had refused office in the previous May. [67.]The matter itself has no importance, but a point of principle or etiquette at one time connected with it is perhaps worth mentioning. To a colleague earlier in the year Mr. Gladstone wrote: “I can affirm with confidence that the notion of a title in the cabinet to be consulted on the succession to a cabinet office is absurd. It is a title which cabinet ministers do not possess. During thirty-eight years since I first entered the cabinet, I have never known more than a friendly announcement before publicity, and very partial consultation perhaps with one or two, especially the leaders in the second House.”[68.]See Appendix.[69.]The lines from Lucretius (in his speech on the Affirmation bill). See above, p. [19.][70.]In a party sense, as he told the cabinet, it might be wise enough to grant it, as it would please the public, displease the tories, and widen the breach between the fourth party and their front bench. Mr. Gladstone had suffered an unpleasant experience in another case, of the relations brought about by the refusal of a political pension after inquiry as to the accuracy of the necessary statement as to the applicant's need for it.[71.]By an odd coincidence, on the day after my selection of this letter, I read that the French prime minister, M. Combes, laid down the doctrine that the government is never committed by a minister's individual declarations, but only by those of the head of the government. He alone has the power of making known the direction given to policy, and each minister individually has authority only for the administration of his department (September 25, 1902). Of course this is wholly incompatible with Mr. Gladstone's ideas of parliamentary responsibility and the cabinet system.[72.]Many indications of this could be cited, if there were room. A parade of the victors of Tel-el-Kebir through the streets of London stirred little excitement. Two ministers went to make speeches at Liverpool, and had to report on returning to town that references to Egypt fell altogether flat.[73.]Milner's England in Egypt, p. 185.[74.]Saturday Review, April 12, 1884.[75.]Edinburgh, August 30, 1884.[76.]Corn Exchange, Edinburgh, August 30, 1884.[77.]Dinner of the Eighty Club, July 11, 1884.[78.]Lord Waterford, July 7, 1884.[79.]December 11, 1883.[80.]“I am not at all sure,” Mr. Forster rashly said (March 31, 1884), “that Mr. Parnell will increase his followers by means of this bill.”[81.]This was only the second occasion on which his party in cardinal divisions voted with the government.[82.]Wingate, pp. 50, 51.[83.]The Soudan was conquered in 1819 by Ismail Pasha, the son of Mehemet Ali, and from that date Egypt had a more or less insecure hold over the country. In 1870 Sir Samuel Baker added the equatorial provinces to the Egyptian Soudan.[84.]Mr. Gladstone said on Nov. 2, 1882: “It is no part of the duty incumbent upon us to restore order in the Soudan. It is politically connected with Egypt in consequence of its very recent conquest; but it has not been included within the sphere of our operations, and we are by no means disposed to admit without qualification that it is within the sphere of our responsibility.” Lord Granville, May 7, 1883: “H.M. government are in no way responsible for the operations in the Soudan, which have been undertaken under the authority of the Egyptian government, or for the appointment or actions of General Hicks.”[85.]It was a general mistake at that time to suppose that wherever a garrison fell into the hands of the Mahdi, they were massacred. At Tokar, for instance, the soldiers were incorporated by the victors. See Wingate, p. 553.[86.]Granville to Baring, Dec. 1, 1883; Jan. 10, 1884.[87.]Gordon had suppressed the Taiping rising in China in 1863. In 1874 he was appointed by the Egyptian government governor-general of the equatorial provinces of central Africa. In 1876 he resigned owing to trouble with the governor-general of the Soudan upon the suppression of the slave trade, but was appointed (1877) governor-general of the Soudan, Darfur, the equatorial provinces, and the Red Sea littoral. He held this position till the end of 1879, suppressing the slave trade with a strong hand and improving the means of communication throughout the Soudan. He succeeded in establishing comparative order. Then the new Egyptian government reversed Gordon's policy, and the result of his six years' work soon fell to pieces.[88.]Gordon's Letters to Barnes, 1885. Lord Granville took his ticket, Lord Wolseley carried the General's bag, and the Duke of Cambridge held open the carriage door.[89.]Baring's Instructions to Gordon (Jan. 25, 1884).[90.]Gladstone to Granville, Jan. 19, 1884.—“I telegraphed last night my concurrence in your proceedings about Gordon: but Chester would not awake and the message only went on this morning.”[91.]Dilke in House of Commons, Feb. 14, 1884. See also Lord Granville to Sir E. Baring, March 28, 1884. In recapitulating the instructions given to General Gordon, Lord Granville says: “His (Gordon's) first proposal was to proceed to Suakin with the object of reporting from thence on the best method of effecting the evacuation of the Soudan.... His instructions, drawn up in accordance with his own views, were to report to her Majesty's government on the military situation in the Soudan,” etc.[92.]For the full text of these instructions, see Appendix.[93.]Baring to Granville, January 28, 1884.[94.]Dated, Steamship “Tanjore,” at Sea, Jan. 22, 1884.[95.]Granville to Baring, March 28.[96.]Feb. 23, 1885.[97.]May 13, 1884.[98.]Wingate's Mahdism, p. 109.[99.]Baring to Granville, Jan. 28.—“I had a good deal of conversation with General Gordon as to the manner in which Zobeir Pasha should be treated. Gen. Gordon entertains a high opinion of Zobeir Pasha's energy and ability. He possesses great influence in the Soudan, and General Gordon is of opinion that circumstances might arise which would render it desirable that he should be sent back to the Soudan.”[100.](From his diary.) March 9.—... At night recognised the fact of a cold, and began to deal with it. 10th. Kept my bed all day. 11th. The cabinet sat, and Granville came to and fro with the communications, Clark having prohibited my attendance. Read Sybil. 12th. Bed as yesterday. 13th. Got to my sitting-room in the evening. It has, however, taken longer this time to clear the chest, and Clark reports the pulse still too high by ten. Saw Granville. Conclave, 7-½ to 8-½, on telegram to Baring for Gordon. I was not allowed to attend the cabinet.[101.]The case of the government was stated with all the force and reason of which it admitted, in Lord Granville's despatch of March 28, 1884.[102.]
In the light of this proceeding, the following is curious: “There is one subject which I cannot imagine any one differing about. That is the impolicy of announcing our intention to evacuate Khartoum. Even if we were bound to do so we should have said nothing about it. The moment it is known we have given up the game, every man will go over to the Mahdi. All men worship the rising sun. The difficulties of evacuation will be enormously increased, if, indeed, the withdrawal of our garrison is not rendered impossible.”—Interview with General Gordon, Pall Mall Gazette, Jan. 8, 1884.
... “In the afternoon of Feb. 13 Gordon assembled all the influential men of the province and showed them the secret firman. The reading of this document caused great excitement, but at the same time its purport was received evidently with much gratification. It is worthy of note that the whole of the notables present at this meeting subsequently threw in their cause with the Mahdi.”—Henry William Gordon's Events in the Life of Charles George Gordon, p. 340.
Result of General Election of 1885:—
English and Welsh boroughs and universities, 93 L., 86 C., 1 P.
Metropolis, 26, 36, 0
English and Welsh counties, 152, 101, 0
Scottish boroughs, 30, 3, 0
Scottish counties, 32, 7, 0
Ireland, 0, 18, 85
Totals, 333 L., 251 C., 86 P.
The following figures may also be found interesting:—
Election of 1868—
English and Welsh Liberals, 267
Tories, 225
Majority, 42
In 1880—
English and Welsh Liberals, 284
Tories, 205
Majority, 79
In 1885—
English and Welsh Liberals, 270
Tories, 223
Majority, 47
The cabinet was finally composed as follows:—
Mr. Gladstone, First lord of the treasury.
Lord Herschell, Lord chancellor.
Lord Spencer, President of council.
Sir W. Harcourt, Chancellor of exchequer.
Mr. Childers, Home secretary.
Lord Rosebery, Foreign secretary.
Lord Granville, Colonial secretary.
Lord Kimberley, Indian secretary.
Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, War secretary.
Lord Ripon, Admiralty.
Mr. Chamberlain, Local government.
Mr. Morley, Irish secretary.
Mr. Trevelyan, Scotch secretary.
Mr. Mundella, Board of trade.
The Lord chancellor, Mr. C.-Bannerman, Mr. Mundella, and myself now sat in cabinet for the first time. After the two resignations at the end of March, Mr. Stansfeld came in as head of the Local government board, and we sat with the ominous number of thirteen at table.
Here is the text of this once famous piece:—
'15/5/82.
“Dear Sir,—I am not surprised at your friend's anger, but he and you should know that to denounce the murders was the only course open to us. To do that promptly was plainly our best policy. But you can tell him and all others concerned, that though I regret the accident of Lord F. Cavendish's death, I cannot refuse to admit that Burke got no more than his deserts. You are at liberty to show him this, and others whom you can trust also, but let not my address be known. He can write to the House of Commons.—Yours very truly,
“Chas. S. Parnell.”
Era già l'ora, che volge 'l disio
A' naviganti, e 'ntenerisce 'l cuore
Lo di ch' han detto a' dolci amici addio, etc.
Purg. viii.
Byron's rendering is well enough known.
ναυτίλε, μὴ πεύθου τίνος ἐνθάδε τύμβος ὅδ᾽ εἰμί,
ἀλλ αὐτὸς πόντου τύγχανε χρηστοτέρου.
“Ask not, mariner, whose tomb I am here, but be thine own fortune a kinder sea.”—Mackail.
Here is the Fourth Cabinet:—
First lord of the treasury and privy seal, W. E. Gladstone.
Lord chancellor, Lord Herschell.
President of the council and Indian secretary, Earl of Kimberley.
Chancellor of the exchequer, Sir W. V. Harcourt.
Home secretary, H. H. Asquith.
Foreign secretary, Earl of Rosebery.
Colonial secretary, Marquis of Ripon.
Secretary for war, H. Campbell-Bannerman.
First lord of the admiralty, Earl Spencer.
Chief secretary for Ireland, John Morley.
Secretary for Scotland, Sir G. O. Trevelyan.
President of the board of trade, A. J. Mundella.
President of the local government board, H. H. Fowler.
Chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, James Bryce.
Postmaster-general, Arnold Morley.
First commissioner of works, J. G. Shaw Lefevre.
Vice-president of the council, A. H. D. Acland.