The fall of the Government was hastened by the Premier's anxiety to fulfil his pledge to pacify Ireland. The Church question was settled, the land problem on its way to solution, and now Gladstone turned his attention to the grievances of Roman Catholics on the question of a university. The Prime Minister's pose as the only man capable of settling Irish affairs had not been strengthened by the passing of a coercion act in the spring of 1870, but if he imprisoned Fenians, he generally followed it up by pressing for their release. And firmly believing that if he conciliated the Roman Catholics he would bring peace to the country, he introduced a measure into the House of Commons seeking powers to establish a university acceptable to all classes and creeds. It was defeated by three votes in one of the most memorable and significant divisions Parliament has known. Friends and foes abstained, and friends and foes voted with surprising inconsistency, but the net result was the discomfiture of the Gladstonians and the immediate resignation of the premier, the latter act prompted, no doubt, by the knowledge that there was no other possible leader of a Government in the country. Mr. Gladstone came back—as he knew he would—but the effects of the Irish University bill were felt right down to the day that the leader of the Liberal party heard the results of the General Election of 1874, and realized that his great rival, Benjamin Disraeli, was at last at the head of a working majority.
When writing of Gladstone's colleagues, it is difficult to resist the temptation to turn from them to speak of their chief. Lord Spencer, however, was something more than a mere official obeying the orders of his superior. His first term in Ireland laid the foundation of his public life, and exhibited those principles of devotion to duty, as he considered his duty to be, and a single-minded adherence to the political principles that distinguished him above his changing and vacillating colleagues. When Mr. Gladstone proposed his university reforms, the viceroy worked his hardest, and Dublin Castle witnessed numberless interviews between him and representatives of both Churches. He saw Cardinal Cullen and obtained his views. As usual, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, never doubtful as to its wants, asked too much, but Spencer listened politely, and in due course informed Gladstone. Doubtless, the English nobleman failed to understand the extraordinary mixture of politics and religion that is always part of Irish affairs, but he tried to understand and even to sympathize.
Gladstone's defeat in 1874 meant, of course, the viceroy's retirement from Dublin, and if the majority of the members of the Liberal administration regretted their defeat, Lord Spencer was not one of them. He merited the rest opposition gave him, and for six years Tory noblemen acted as viceroys of Ireland.
The Duke of Abercorn's second viceroyalty was quiet and threadbare. Disraeli was not the man to attempt heroic measures. Perhaps he laboured to avoid Irish affairs, which since the Union had threatened to monopolize the time of Parliament. He sent Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, afterwards Viscount St. Aldwyn, to the Irish office, and trusted to the viceroy and the Chief Secretary to shield him from the worries created by the awkward fact that a Prime Minister's duties were not confined to England. When the Duke of Abercorn sent in his resignation, in December, 1876, owing to the state of his wife's health, Disraeli prevailed upon another duke to take his place. This was the sixth Duke of Marlborough, who had declined the viceroyalty in the first days of the Government's existence. The Duke and Duchess of Abercorn retired into private life, popular and respected, the duke living until 1885.
The Duke of Marlborough
The incoming Lord-Lieutenant was in his fifty-fifth year when in the early days of 1877 he was sworn in as Viceroy of Ireland. One of Disraeli's personal friends, the influence of the duke had helped the Prime Minister from the outer ring of plebeian obscurity into the inner circle of Conservative exclusiveness. Disraeli had a passion for dukes, although that rank suggested dulness to his bizarre and Oriental imagination. Marlborough had been Lord President of the Council in 1868 during Disraeli's first administration, and he was induced to reconsider his decision not to join the ministry when the Duke of Abercorn retired.
The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough directed their attention to the amelioration of the lot of the poverty-stricken peasantry, and they endeavoured also to aid the trade of Ireland. When the failure of the crops brought a famine, the duchess inaugurated a relief fund, which, with the help of the Mansion House, London, brought over £170,000 to the rescue of the sufferers. Many other acts of kindness could be recorded of them, and although their reign necessarily concluded in May, 1880, on the destruction of the Tory Government, they accomplished much in a brief space of time, and, without being great reformers, achieved something in the way of reform. Her Excellency had been before her marriage Lady Frances Tempest, and was a daughter of the third Marquis of Londonderry. She was a dignified chatelaine of Dublin Castle, a fit partner for a great nobleman. The rumblings of the Home Rule agitation storm could be heard before they vacated the viceregal position, for by now Charles Stewart Parnell had arisen to sound a new battle-cry for Nationalist Ireland. The old methods of dead-and-gone agitators were to be improved upon, new ones invented and exploited, and a decisive battle fought for Irish independence.
Agitation and crime
The records of the day state that the Duke of Marlborough was 'popular' and 'successful,' but these are the records written by partisans. A popular viceroy generally means a Lord-Lieutenant who exhibits an amiable weakness to let things remain as they are, and as Marlborough did this, he was an especial favourite of the official party. He was, however, wise in his generation. Before his time history had taught the vital lesson that the viceroy who did his best to please all parties earned the hatred of all, and the men who ignored the pressing problems of the day, and turned his term of office into a social orgy, was acclaimed by the unthinking multitudes. Riots, and evictions, and murders, were common enough in the closing months of Marlborough's viceroyalty, but beyond giving his sanction to the various acts that dealt with agrarian crimes and the troublous land problem, the viceroy made no display of statesmanship or endangered his ducal equanimity. It was to the Duke of Marlborough that Disraeli addressed his letter asking the electors for a fresh mandate. He lived long enough to feel thankful that the English electors decided in 1880 to have nothing to do with Toryism, and so ordained that, instead of Beaconsfield nominating a viceroy, the task should be Gladstone's. During his stay in Dublin Marlborough had for private secretary Lord Randolph Churchill. In 1883 the duke died at the comparatively early age of sixty-one.
It was expected that Lord Spencer would return to Ireland, but he was selected to fill the decorative post of Lord President of the Council, and Earl Cowper was sent to cope with Parnell's followers. Cowper was forty-six years of age, and ten years previous to his appointment had married a daughter of the fourth Lord Northampton. He was a man of great strength of character, a charming host, and famous for a temperament that he never allowed to be ruffled. A perfect host, and a man of the world endowed with many talents, Earl Cowper might have succeeded at almost anything except the one particular task to which he was assigned. When he arrived in Dublin the country was in a state of rebellion, the remarkable success of Parnell in uniting all shades of Nationalists under his leadership having the result of presenting the most formidable opposition to the Government yet experienced in the history of both countries. Parnell had entered Parliament in 1875, and four years later was popularly acclaimed the new leader of the Irish people. His lightest words were sufficient to render null and void the most important Act of Parliament, his orders were reverenced and obeyed by a vast majority of his countrymen. When Lord Cowper took up his duties Parnell was the ruler of Ireland, and the efforts of the English Government to maintain a semblance of authority would have been ludicrous if the results had not been so tragic. Landlords, agents, and tenants were murdered in cold blood, peaceful citizens were dragged into foul conspiracy by their bullying neighbours, and Parnell went about in open defiance of the Government, preaching rebellion and its ghastly accompaniments wherever he came. Mr. W. E. Forster, the Chief Secretary, induced his official chief to advise the Cabinet to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and when Gladstone hesitated, a practical demonstration of its necessity was furnished by the arrest of Parnell charged with seditious conspiracy, his abortive trial owing to the disagreement of the Dublin jury, and the Irish leader's consequent triumph over his opponents. Then the power to imprison without trial was given to the Irish executive, and soon the gaols of the country were full to overflowing. With the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act the Land League was born, and a new terror to officialism created.