3
The process by which the Government is formed is, constitutionally, most interesting; but even in the best of circumstances, and apart altogether from the limitations to his unfettered choice which I have set out, it must indeed be harassing to the Prime Minister. If his power and influence are great, so are his embarrassments and difficulties. “Lord Grey is in a dreadful state of anxiety and annoyance; thinks he shall break down under his load,” wrote Lord Tavistock to his brother, Lord John Russell, in 1830, during the making of the first Reform Administration. Disraeli, speaking in the House of Commons in March 1873, described the constitution of a new Government as “a work of great time, great labour, and of great responsibility,” and declared that the task had to be discharged solely by the Prime Minister. “It is a duty which can be delegated to no one,” he said. “All the correspondence and all the interviews must be conducted by himself, and, without dwelling on the sense of responsibility involved, the perception of fitness requisite, and the severe impartiality necessary in deciding on contending claims, the mere physical effort is not slight.” The only Prime Minister, perhaps, who approached the task of making an Administration with a sense of gaiety not unmingled with irresponsibility was Lord Palmerston. He had the engaging weakness of putting square men in round holes and round men in square holes, and the reconstruction of the Ministry which sometimes followed as a consequence was, to him, only a fresh source of laughter. “Ah, ha!” he would cry, “what a delightful comedy of errors!” Gladstone, while revelling in the power and authority of the position, was deeply impressed also by its gravity and solemnity. He writes in his diary, January 29, 1886: “At a quarter after midnight in came Sir H. Ponsonby with verbal communication from Her Majesty, which I at once accepted.” It was the command to form his third Administration, that which came quickly to grief on the question of Home Rule. Next day, Saturday, was spent by Gladstone in consultation with his principal colleagues. After church on Sunday, from one o’clock till eight, political business engrossed his attention. “At night came a painful and harassing succession of letters,” he writes, “and my sleep for once gave way; yet for the soul it was profitable, driving me to the hope that the strength of God might be made manifest in my weakness.” Next morning he went down to Osborne to attend the Queen, had two audiences with her Majesty, an hour and a half in all, and in the evening returned to London. He writes in his diary the following day: “I kissed hands, and am thereby Prime Minister for the third time. But, as I trust, for a brief time only—slept well. D. G.”
John Morley, summarizing in his Life of Gladstone the correspondence which Gladstone received while he was engaged in forming an Administration, writes: “One admirable man with intrepid naïveté proposed himself for the Cabinet, but was not admitted; another no less admirable was pressed to enter, but felt that he could be more useful as an independent Member, and declined—an honourable transaction, repeated by the same person on more than one occasion later. To one excellent member of his former Cabinet the Prime Minister proposed the Chairmanship of Committees, and it was with some tartness refused. Another equally excellent member of the old Administration he endeavoured to plant out in the Viceregal Lodge in Dublin, without the Cabinet, but in vain. To a third he proposed the Indian Viceroyalty, and received an answer that left him ‘stunned and out of breath.’”
It is also entertaining to study the varied feelings with which politicians have received the offer of office. “Dear Henry,” wrote Robert Lowe in a brief, laconic note to his brother in December 1868, “I am Chancellor of the Exchequer with everything to learn. Yours affectionately.” It was the surprise appointment of Gladstone’s first Administration, for Lowe had previously shown but little interest in finance. His administration of the office soon ended in an abortive attempt to impose a tax on matches. In another letter to a friend, Lowe said: “I have this day accepted the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer in Gladstone’s Government. I am almost angry with myself for not being more pleased. One gets these things, but gets them too late. Ten years ago I should have been very differently affected. However, it is something to have done what I said I would do.” It was a curious frame of mind in which to enter upon a great office. He had said he would be a Cabinet Minister, and the thing had come to pass. That was all.
That eminent lawyer, John Duke Coleridge, returned home from a concert on the night of December 4, 1868, to find—as he records in his diary—“Gladstone’s messenger waiting with an offer of the S.G., Collier to be A.G.” The letter of the Prime Minister was written from “11 Carlton House Terrace,” and marked “Most Private.” “I need not spend words,” said Gladstone, “in assuring you that I anticipate great advantage to the new Government from your most valuable aid, and that I look forward with great pleasure to the relations which will, I hope, be established between us.” Coleridge sent the messenger back with a note refusing the post absolutely. He doubted whether, as Solicitor-General, he could serve with satisfaction under the proposed Attorney-General, Sir Robert Collier. “I know well,” he wrote, “that a man who once puts office by puts it by probably for ever; and you will not suppose that I send this answer without regret and a considerable struggle. But I am sure it is my duty to do it.” Next morning Coleridge received another letter inviting him to come to 11 Carlton House Terrace. “So I had to go to him,” Coleridge writes on December 5th. “He was most kind, and urged me to accept.” Two days later he says: “So the deed is done, and I suppose in a few days I shall be Minister.” On Saturday, December 10th, he went down to Windsor, “with a lot of Ministers coming in and going out,” had luncheon, saw the Queen, and was knighted. “I could not help it,” he adds. What chance had his weak human disinclination for office against the working of resistless, inevitable Fate?
At a Press Club dinner in London, John Morley related the circumstances in which he received and accepted in 1886 the offer of the post of Chief Secretary for Ireland, with a seat in the Cabinet. “It was whilst I was writing a leading article for a certain periodical,” said he, “that I received a letter from an illustrious statesman, who was then forming a Government, offering me a post in his Cabinet.” “Gentlemen,” he added, amid the cheers and the laughter of the company, “so strong in me was the journalistic instinct that, after accepting the illustrious statesman’s offer, I went back and finished that leading article. And I can assure you that neither the grammar nor the style of the latter half of the article fell short of my usual standard.” One of the most humanly interesting books dealing with public life in England is From a Stonemason’s Bench to the Treasury Bench, in which Henry Broadhurst tells the story of his career. In 1886 he was Secretary to the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and a Member of Parliament. One busy day at his office a letter was handed to him by a messenger, and, opening the envelope, he found the following communication:
(Secret)
21 Carlton House Terrace, S.W.
February 5, 1886.
Dear Mr. Broadhurst,
I have great pleasure in proposing to you that you should accept office as Under-Secretary of State in the Home Department. Alike on private and on public grounds, I trust it may be agreeable to you to accept this appointment, which should remain strictly secret until your name shall have been laid before her Majesty.
I remain, with much regard, sincerely yours,
W. E. Gladstone.
According to custom, Broadhurst immediately called upon the Prime Minister. He said that if it were Mr. Gladstone’s wish that he should join the Administration, he hoped it would be in some capacity less important than that of Under-Secretary of the Home Office. But the Prime Minister would not listen to any objections to the offer. “I’ll answer for you myself,” said he, playfully. “You must prepare at once to enter upon the duties of the office.” Broadhurst adds: “I can honestly declare that I left Mr. Gladstone’s house without any of those feelings of exhilaration and pleasing excitement which the gift of office is generally supposed to awake in the breast of the politician.” He lived the hard struggle of his early years over again in the next half-hour. “The lowly beginning of my career,” he says, “its labours at the forge and the stonemason’s shop, the privations, the wanderings, and my varying fortunes, stood out in my mind’s eye as clearly as so many living pictures. Especially did my memory recall the months I had spent working on the very Government buildings which I was about to enter as a Minister of the Crown.” He deplored the lack of education in his early days, and visions of failure and humiliation in the discharge of his new duties, in consequence, tormented him.