SCENE IN THE BIRMINGHAM "NO POPERY" RIOTS. (See p. [475].)
This speech, so charmingly blended and tempered as it was, concealed under a cloud of plausible words the exact point which every one wanted to know—how far the Ministerial plan was due to the Queen's own initiative, and how much was suggested to her by the Premier. The only point about which there could be no mistake was that the Ministers meant to stay in till the autumn. The Liberals were greatly incensed; and although many of them must have keenly relished the joke, and internally done homage to the genius of this master of political legerdemain, the leaders of the party felt it as a very serious matter to be kept so long out of the fruits of a triumph which they had deemed secure. Mr. Disraeli was questioned and cross-questioned as to the exact nature of the communications that had taken place between the Queen and himself, and as to an apparent discrepancy between his own explanation of the circumstances, and that given by the Duke of Richmond in the other House. Nothing could be more ingenuous and candid than Mr. Disraeli's replies; nevertheless, the transaction continued to be wrapped in some degree of mystery and Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Lowe, and others protested against the course taken by the Ministry as unconstitutional and unprecedented. According to Lord Malmesbury, Mr. Gladstone wished to stop supplies, but could not obtain the support of his party. Mr. Bright, however, severely chastised Mr. Disraeli for his use of the Queen's name, and the Prime Minister winced under the castigation. To the statement of Mr. Lowe, that in not resigning the Ministry was treating the House with disrespect, since the large majorities by which Government had been defeated on the Irish Church Question amounted virtually to a vote of want of confidence, Mr. Disraeli replied that many of those who sided with the majority on these occasions had assured him that they did not so understand the votes they gave; and he challenged Mr. Lowe and those who agreed with him to propose a direct vote of want of confidence, which could be argued and decided on that plain issue. The challenge was not taken up, and the excitement on this particular matter gradually subsided.
To the three original resolutions of Mr. Gladstone a fourth was added in the course of the discussion, relating to the Maynooth Grant and the Regium Donum. The former, which was originally fixed at £8,000 a year, was raised by Sir Robert Peel, in 1845, to £30,000 a year, and charged upon the Consolidated Fund. It was devoted to the sustentation of the great Roman Catholic seminary for the training of priests at Maynooth, and was administered by the Irish bishops, subject to the control of the Executive. Before Maynooth was established, the Irish priests were generally educated in France, whence they brought back, as it was supposed, feelings of alienation and hostility towards England; it was therefore considered to be an act of wise statesmanship to subsidise a seminary in Ireland itself, so that the priests might be educated at home. The Regium Donum was an annual grant of about £38,000, first instituted by Charles II., in favour of the Irish Presbyterian Church, and distributed among the ministers in stipends of £75 each. Evidently the grounds of justice and conciliation upon which Mr. Gladstone relied in moving for the disendowment of the Irish Church were inapplicable in the case of the Maynooth Grant and the Regium Donum, both of which were of very modest amount relatively to the size of the religious communities to which they were allotted, and the payment of which involved no injustice nor inequality. But it was necessary for Mr. Gladstone to include these also in his scheme of disendowment, as, otherwise, he would have forfeited the support of the English Dissenters and the Scottish Radicals. With these the disendowment of the Irish Church was popular, not so much as an abatement of an injustice, as because it committed the State pro tanto to the principle of Voluntaryism. "Levelling down" was the only kind of equalisation which they approved of; they desired that all religious organisations should be denuded of State aid equally with themselves, whether that aid were much or little. This applies more particularly to the Dissenters; with the Scottish members the detestation of everything Roman Catholic was the chief motive for their claiming that the Maynooth Grant should be included in the work of demolition. Mr. Gladstone, in order to preserve the unity of his party, which he had just patched together again with such infinite trouble, was obliged to consent to this enlargement of his scheme; and the fourth resolution accordingly ran thus: "That when legislative effect shall have been given to the first resolution of this committee, respecting the Established Church of Ireland, it is right and necessary that the grant to Maynooth and the Regium Donum be discontinued, due regard being had to all personal interests."
The resolutions having been carried, in their final shape (May 8th), the Address to her Majesty respecting the temporalities of the Irish Church was duly presented. Some inconsiderate persons supposed that either Mr. Disraeli would advise the Queen, or that the Queen herself, under the influence of an imagined scruple as to the bearing of the Coronation Oath, would refuse, to surrender to Parliament her interest in the Irish temporalities in the manner requested. But both Mr. Disraeli and the Queen knew better the path prescribed to each by constitutional duty. The answer of her Majesty to the Commons' Address, received at the House on the 12th of May, stated that, relying on the wisdom of her Parliament, the Queen desired that her interest in the temporalities of the Irish Church should not stand in the way of the discussion of any measure that Parliament might deem necessary for the welfare of Ireland. To advise her Majesty to any other course would have been the less excusable, because it was quite unnecessary; Mr. Disraeli being serenely confident that the Tory majority in the House of Lords would allow no measure touching the temporalities to pass into law—at any rate that year. This was soon made evident, when, as soon as possible after the receipt of the Queen's consent to legislative action, Mr. Gladstone brought in a Suspensory Bill, the object of which was to stop the creation of new vested interests, by preventing for a limited time any new appointments in the Irish Church, and to restrain for the same period in certain respects the proceedings of the Irish Ecclesiastical Commissioners. The Suspensory Bill passed easily through the House of Commons; but when it came to the Lords it was criticised with great severity, and the second reading was refused by a majority of ninety-five.
The rest of the Session passed away with little that was eventful to mark its course. Government brought in an Education Bill, which contained one noteworthy and excellent feature—the provision of a real Minister of Education, in the shape of a new Secretary of State for that special department. But the general scheme proposed in the Bill was slight and not deeply considered; it therefore failed to stand its ground against the numerous objections raised against it, and was before long withdrawn by its promoters. The financial statement of Mr. Ward Hunt, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, showed that the revenue continued to exhibit that character of elasticity which it had maintained for several years. The plan for the public endowment of the Irish Catholic University fell to the ground at an early period of the Session. The Irish prelates (Archbishop Leahy and Bishop Derry) who had been appointed to conduct the negotiation on the part of the University authorities with the Chief Secretary, Lord Mayo, demanded powers so extensive, not only as to the appointment and dismissal of professors and other officers, but also as to the use and prohibition of books, that Government abruptly closed the correspondence. It afterwards appeared that the prelates had not put forward these demands as an ultimatum, and might have abated their terms upon good cause being shown. But it is probable that Mr. Disraeli, knowing how extremely averse was popular feeling from any concession to Romanism, felt little regret that the large demands of the prelates had furnished him with a decent excuse for abandoning the project.
Several measures introduced by Government in the course of the Session met with a similar fate to that which befell the Education Bill. One really useful Act was passed—that for enabling the State to treat with the various electric telegraph companies for the purchase of their lines, in order that the whole telegraphic communication of the country might be placed under the control of the Postmaster-General. The adjustment of the various interests involved was a work of great labour and patience; it was, however, accomplished, and the telegraph companies agreed to accept twenty years' purchase of the net profits of their undertakings. It was calculated that Government would require about £6,000,000 in order to carry the scheme into full effect, the greater part of which sum would be borrowed from the Savings Banks Fund; but the financial part of the arrangement was reserved for the next Parliament. Mr. Scudamore, the originator of the scheme, calculated that the Post Office would derive a net profit of £200,000 a year from taking the telegraph lines into its own hands; but the purchase gave rise, then and afterwards, to much hostile criticism.
The home policy of the Tory Government, checked and foiled as it was at every turn, by the fact of its supporters being a minority in the House of Commons, cannot be deemed, however brilliant it may have been in inception, to have been more than moderately successful in what it achieved. With foreign affairs it was otherwise. Lord Stanley presided over the Foreign Office, and controlled the relations of the country with Foreign Powers with a firmness and dignity that recalled English statesmen of the old school. Of his conduct in the Luxemburg business we have already spoken; of his management of the Alabama question we shall have to speak hereafter. Making a reasonable deduction for partisanship, we may admit that there was much truth in the lofty language used by the Prime Minister with regard to the foreign policy of his Government, in a speech delivered at a banquet in Merchant Taylors' Hall, on the 17th of June. "When we acceded to office," he said, "the name of England was a name of suspicion and distrust in every foreign Court and Cabinet. There was no possibility of that cordial action with any of the Great Powers which is the only security for peace; and, in consequence of that want of cordiality, wars were frequently occurring. But since we entered upon office, and public affairs were administered by my noble friend, who is deprived by a special diplomatic duty of the gratification of being here this evening, I say that all this has changed; that there never existed between England and Foreign Powers a feeling of greater cordiality and confidence than now prevails; that while we have shrunk from bustling and arrogant intermeddling, we have never taken refuge in selfish isolation; and the result has been that there never was a Government in the country which has been more frequently appealed to for its friendly offices than the one which now exists."
A short Act—the Registration of Voters Act—was passed before Parliament separated, in order to facilitate early elections under the Reform Bill of 1867; and the Session came to a close on the 31st of July. After the prorogation of Parliament the Ministry lost no time in making the necessary preparations for a dissolution and general election. The registers of the enlarged constituencies were actively proceeded with and so far completed that it was found possible to dissolve Parliament on the 11th of November, and to summon a new one, to be elected under the Reform Act of 1867, for the 10th of December. The great public question at issue was the existence of the Irish Establishment; and, on a general view, the verdict of the constituencies was given in favour of Mr. Gladstone's proposals, and disappointed the sanguine anticipations of Mr. Disraeli. There was a gain to the Liberal party, as the net result of the elections, of fifteen seats, equal to thirty votes on a division. But their triumph was chequered by several minor reverses, among which the rejection of Mr. Gladstone for South Lancashire was the most remarkable. Every resource that unflagging industry, careful organisation, and incessant oratory could put in requisition was resorted to in order to secure the return of the Liberal leader, but all efforts were in vain; the Conservative candidates—Messrs. Cross and Turner—were returned at the head of the poll, Mr. Gladstone having two hundred and sixty fewer votes than Mr. Turner, who was about fifty below Mr. Cross. There were two principal causes accounting for this result; one the extreme unpopularity of the Irish in South Lancashire, owing to the increased turbulence, drunkenness, and pauperism which their presence in large numbers occasioned, and also to the fact that their competition beat down wages; the other, the influence of the house of Stanley and other great Conservative families in that part of the country. Mr. Gladstone had to console himself with the suffrages of Greenwich, which had generously elected him while the issue in South Lancashire was still undecided. In other parts of Lancashire the same feeling of soreness against the proposal to disestablish the Irish Church, because it seemed to involve a triumph for the locally unpopular Irish Catholics, produced a similar result. This great and representative county, taking boroughs and shire-divisions together, returned twenty-one Conservatives against eleven Liberals. On the other hand, the Scottish electors accepted Mr. Gladstone's proposal with extraordinary favour. Not only did the Scottish boroughs return Liberals without exception, but many counties which had returned Conservative members for years were on this occasion carried for Liberals. Of the whole number of members who came up from Scotland, only seven were Conservatives. In Ireland also there was a Liberal gain, though one of less magnitude. At the election for Westminster—to the deep regret of all who could appreciate the profound political insight and philosophical treatment of great questions which were thus lost to the House of Commons—Mr. John Stuart Mill was defeated by the Conservative candidate, Mr. William Henry Smith.