I quite agree with Chamberlain, that there is latent Socialism in the Gladstonian philosophy. What makes me uncomfortable is his inattention to the change which is going on in those things. I do not mean in European opinion, but in the strict domain of science. A certain conversation that you remember, when Stuart, fresh from the horny hands of Democracy,[[263]] produced his heresies, was very memorable to me. But it is not the popular movement, but the travelling of the minds of men who sit in the seat of Adam Smith that is really serious and worthy of all attention. Maine tells me that his book, a Manual of unacknowledged Conservatism, is selling well. It is no doubt meant to help the enemy's cause, and more hostile to us than the author cares to appear. For he requested me not to review it. You know that the new Hatzfeldt is the son of the lady who protected Lassalle, and that it is desirable to speak of his wife as little as of his mother. He is a Berlin bureaucrat, pur sang. I have something to write against time, which keeps me at work during the night until the end of November. Don't mind it, but please tell me what happens, and whether I may come and see you re-installed.
Fancy my disappointment: Paget[[264]] passed under our windows, and Liddon—as he told the World—was at Tegernsee, and I missed them both. The Pagets have set up a delightful daughter-in-law, and a near relation of hers, a Balliol man, son, I believe, of the chief Tory wire-puller in Shropshire, has just come out here....
*****
La Madeleine Nov. 28, 1885
It was a serious blow to find in your letter that you had no confidence in the election,[[265]] but I am glad now to think that you were so much better prepared to lose than I was, in spite of what I had also heard about Bright's despondency. I only hope that it has not been a bad time, otherwise, at Dalmeny, and that Mr. Gladstone has not suffered from so much effort.
At this moment I know only the result of the first three days, and have no Scottish news since Goschen got in. I conclude that we are beaten past recovery, and wonder whether the Dark Horse[[266]] will make the Government independent of their Irish supporters. If not, the rift in the lute will betray itself any time after the first Session.
As I am the only Englishman still so besotted as to feel Salisbury's presence in Downing Street exactly as I should feel Bradlaugh's at Lambeth, I will say nothing about my own sensations to a correspondent necessarily unsympathetic. What strikes me most strongly is the probability of Mr. Gladstone thinking that his release has come, and that he is not bound to embark on a voyage which is very unlikely to lead back to power until he is in his seventy-eighth year. For I suppose that the secret of the situation is that Chamberlain has so far played false, played, I mean, a private game, that he looked far ahead, and did not care to come back to office in the old combination, especially with the prospect of losing Dilke at first. So that, in fact, the Gladstonian influence, which would be unshaken in the country at large, was unable to control his own colleagues, and the old inferiority in the management of men, compared with the management of masses, which Goschen exemplified before, has appeared in the direction of the Radical wing.
As I know his characteristic of caring for measures much more than for the organisation which is to carry them, I conjecture he will say that he is not harnessed for ever to the coach, that he will be grievously tempted to give up leading an active opposition. Of course I should deeply deplore such a decision, but my old arguments, which circumstances did so much to impress, will be weaker now.
Three legitimate causes have told in favour of the Tories. They have not done much to make them odious, and the position abroad is easier, very decidedly, though not very considerably, easier. Then, the case against us in the Soudan is a very strong one. I may say so now that Mr. Gladstone does not really resist it; and you, at any rate, know how strongly I thought so before. That is not a positive recommendation of the Tories, but it does weaken us, and the reproach is not met, in the judgment of impartial men, by saying that the Tories did nothing to restrain or to correct us. Thirdly, the Church argument is logically against us. Mr. Gladstone's attitude gave no security that the Liberals, if they returned strengthened from the poll, would not eventually employ their increased strength to pave the way for disestablishment.
What you say of a flaw in his reckoning is very true indeed. In his literary occupations it appears still more strongly. The grasp is often more remarkable than the horizon. I do not think that it has been much of a drawback in politics, and the minds it would estrange are very few.