III.
After the tempestuous scene of March 19th, Sir Charles had remained on the whole a silent member of Parliament.
'I am going to keep quiet till the general election' (he says in a letter of May 1st, 1873) 'as the best means of retaining my present seat. If I should be turned out, look out for squalls, as I should then stand on an extreme platform for every vacancy in the North.'
The main objects of the Radical group were, first, extension and redistribution of the voting power, and, secondly, a universal system of compulsory education, controlled by elective school boards. In October of this year (1872) Sir Charles and Lady Dilke went down as Mr. Chamberlain's guests to Birmingham, where Sir Charles spoke on free schools (basing himself, as usual, on his observation of other countries) with Mr. Chamberlain in the chair. In November there was a return visit, and Mr. Chamberlain spoke under Dilke's chairmanship at St. James's Hall on electoral reform. 'Chamberlain's was the first important speech that he had delivered to a London public meeting,' and probably these reciprocal visits and chairmanships gave the first general intimation of an alliance which for a dozen years was destined to influence Liberal policy.
In the autumn of 1872, Sir Charles 'started a small Electoral Reform Committee.' Its purpose was to assist, first, the Bill of Mr. Trevelyan making the qualification for a vote in counties the same as in boroughs, and, secondly, his own resolution which demanded that seats should be redistributed in proportion to the number of electors. The outcome was an arrangement under which Mr. Trevelyan substituted for his Bill a resolution dealing with both matters; and this resolution, moved by him and seconded by Sir Charles, afforded annually a gauge of the progress made, as indicated by the division list.
'Chamberlain co-operated with me, but was more keen about his own education subjects.'
At this time the attitude of Sir Charles and his associates towards the Liberal party was one of detachment bordering on hostility. Chamberlain, writing from Birmingham on March 2nd, 1873, noted that the Irish University Bill was "going badly in the country, and the Noncons. and Leaguers in the House ought to have the game in their hands." He wished "they would have the pluck to tell Mr. Gladstone that they will do nothing to bolster up a Ministry which will not give satisfactory assurances upon English education;" and he wanted Mr. George Dixon to go on with his resolution in favour of universal free schools and carry it to a division.
"If members do not vote with him, and there is a general election soon, they will have a nice little crow to pick with their constituents; whereas if there is no division on this issue, all our labour during the recess is lost, and our friends are disheartened…. Viewed ab extra, there is no doubt the boldest policy is the best. It is probable from what I have seen that the weakest course is best suited to the atmosphere of what some people are pleased to call a 'reformed House of Commons.'"
In the following week the Irish University Bill which was "going badly in the country" received a new and unexpected stab: Cardinal Cullen denounced it in a pastoral on March 9th. The debate on the second reading terminated during the small hours of March 12th. Government was defeated by three on a division of 284-287. On the 13th Mr. Gladstone's Ministry tendered their resignations, and the Queen sent for Mr. Disraeli, who declined either to accept office or to recommend a dissolution. By March 20th it was formally announced that the Government would go on, but it went on with power and prestige greatly diminished.
On July 6th Chamberlain wrote to Dilke advocating an "irreconcilable policy," and asking for news of any "fanatics willing to join the Forlorn Hope and help in smashing up that whited sepulchre called the Liberal party." This letter concluded with an attack on Mr. Bright, who had just joined the reconstructed Ministry, but whose influence Mr. Chamberlain thought was "quite too small to save the Government." [Footnote: One cause of the Government's unpopularity was the attempt of Mr. Ayrton (First Commissioner of Public Works) to limit the right of public meeting in Hyde Park, to which there is this allusion: 'In July I was greatly occupied in the House of Commons in fighting against Ayrton's Parks Bill. It was at dinner at my house one night that, in his dry, quiet way, old Kinglake chirped out, "For so insignificant a personage Mr. Ayrton is quite the most pompous individual that I know." Mr. Ayrton's unpopularity was a powerful cause of Mr. Gladstone's downfall in 1874.'] Sir William Harcourt, though hardly less discontented, was openly more conformable, and towards the close of 1873 took office as Solicitor- General. He wrote:
"I do not know if I have done a very wise or a very foolish thing. Probably the latter. But it is done, and my friends must help me to make the best of it. It was a great inducement to me the having Henry James [Footnote: Sir Henry James became Attorney-General in September, 1873.] as a colleague…. I feel like an old bachelor going to leave his lodgings and marry a woman he is not in love with, in grave doubt whether he and she will suit. However, fortunately, she is going to die soon, and we shall soon again be in opposition below the gangway. The Duke of Argyll says that now I am in harness I must be driven in blinkers; but, then, dukes are insolent by nature. Whatever comes, I shall never leave the House of Commons. I do not see why I am not to be a politician because I am a law officer. Law officers used to be politicians some years ago."
The Civil List question was raised again in Parliament in this year, when the Crown Private Estates Bill was introduced; and an amendment moved by Mr. George Anderson, member for Glasgow, complaining of the secrecy which attached to Royal wills, was supported, not only by Sir Charles, but by "the leader of the old Whigs in the House of Commons," Mr. E. P. Bouverie, a Privy Councillor, who to his horror found himself named to tell against the Bill, and thus identified with the "republican" opposition. 'Speaker Brand no doubt owed him some grudge.' [Footnote: The Right Hon. E. P. Bouverie had been a very successful Chairman of Committees of the whole House, and was indicated by public option as a probable Speaker. He was recognized as a leading authority on the Law of Parliament.] Dilke's own speech had demanded the annual publication of the receipts and disbursements of the Crown Private Estates, and though he waited long to carry his point, he saw this amongst other proposals adopted on the recommendation of the Civil List Committee of 1910, on which he served.
Proof was not wanting that his determined attitude on these matters had won him the support of great masses of the democracy. Miners' Unions and Labourers' Unions wrote, begging, some for his portrait, others for an address; also, in places where opposition had been offered to his speaking, reprisals were exacted.
'Early in January, 1873, we went to Derby, at the request of the chairman of my meeting at Derby which had failed in the winter of '71-72, when, though a majority were upon our side, a gang of hired poachers had entrenched themselves in a corner of the room, had burned cayenne pepper, and defied all attempts to drive them out. The chairman was a man of determination who did not mean to be beaten. He organized his meeting on this occasion with almost too much care, for I fancy he brought fighting friends from Nottingham and other bruising places to it. The Tory roughs appeared, as on the former occasion. Before we were allowed to enter the room they were charged by means of battering rams with such effect that their entrenchments were destroyed, and they themselves were mostly stunned and carried out one by one. No one was dangerously hurt, but there were many broken heads. Lady Dilke was present in the thick of it, and, according to the newspaper reports, anxiously begged the stewards to deal gently with those whom they threw out. After this the meeting was held in peace. But the result was a formal Government inquiry, and the removal of the chairman of the meeting from the County Bench by the Lord Chancellor. He turned clergyman, to the benefit of Notes and Queries and of the societies for antiquarian research, for, being a man of active mind, and finding the care of small parishes of ritualistic tendencies insufficient to occupy his whole time, he became the author of the famous book, Churches of Derbyshire, and of much other antiquarian work.'
Sir Charles notes that this address at Derby was in fact his first pronouncement on "Free Land." In the following week, at Chelsea, he spoke upon Free Trade, and in both these speeches used the phrase, "Free land, free church, free schools, free trade, free law," laying down, early in 1873, 'the principles on which Chamberlain and John Morley afterwards went in the construction of the pamphlet known as The Radical Programme.'
Sir G. Trevelyan writes:
"In the first months of 1872 he was supposed to have injured himself greatly by his proceedings with regard to the Civil List; and yet, _to my knowledge, within a very few years Mr. Disraeli stated it as his opinion that Sir Charles Dilke was the most useful and influential member, among quite young men, that he had ever known."
In pursuit of his plan of "keeping quiet" till the impending dissolution, he took no prominent action in these months; but he backed independent Liberalism whenever he saw a chance, as, for instance, by subscribing to forward the candidature of Mr. Burt, who had then been selected by the Morpeth miners to represent them. There was, however, a further reason for this quiescence. Lady Dilke at the close of the season was seriously ill, and it was late in autumn before she could be taken abroad to Monaco. Here, under the associations of the place, Dilke wrote his very successful political fantasy, Prince Florestan.
Another event which clouded 1873 was Mill's death—'a great loss to us. Ours was the last house at which he dined, and we, with the Hills' (the editor of the Daily News and his wife), 'were the last friends who dined with him. The Watts portrait for which he had consented to sit was finished for me just when he died.'
'I loved him greatly,' Sir Charles writes. The relation between the two had been that of master and disciple, and Mill may be said to have carried on and completed the work of old Mr. Dilke.
[Illustration: JOHN STUART MILL.
From the painting by G. F. Watts, R.A., in the Westminster Town Hall.]