Mr. Gladstone was always a difficult leader to follow, but when he was dealing with Irish affairs his movements resembled the lines created by a maze. With the best of motives he performed the worst and most foolish of actions, and Lord Spencer's task became more difficult every day. The Government was defeated on the Budget, and a prolonged crisis ensued. But before the resignation of the Cabinet Lord Spencer had to deal with the notorious Maamtrasna case. This was, in brief, the trial of some forty persons for the murder of an entire family. Twenty-one of the convicted prisoners were executed, and it was alleged that some of these were innocent. A fierce debate absorbed three days in the House of Commons, and later on, when Lord Salisbury was premier and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was leader of the Commons, a motion was brought forward censuring the administration of Earl Spencer. The only result was to draw public attention once more to the fearless manner in which the viceroy had carried out his duties, and even Tory members had to rise and protest in forcible language against the action of Tory leaders in condemning the man who risked his life to maintain law and order.
Lord Spencer's character
A month after his retirement from the viceroyalty 300 members of both houses of Parliament attended a banquet in his honour. It was noticed that Mr. Chamberlain was absent, but the presence of Lord Hartington in the chair and Mr. Bright among the company testified eloquently to the general opinion of Lord Spencer's conduct of Irish affairs.
The three years of office that remained to Lord Spencer subsequent to the Phoenix Park murders brought into prominence in Irish affairs Mr. G. O. Trevelyan and Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, successive Chief Secretaries. Neither was a pronounced success. The only person in the limelight was the viceroy. His personal bravery dismayed his cowardly foes, who, judging human nature by their own standard, could not but stand in awe of the man who could ride to hounds while the country round seethed with assassins. Trevelyan could earn the title of 'jelly-fish,' while Campbell-Bannerman utilized the position of Chief Secretary to try and convince his superiors that he could do something better if given greater opportunities. The viceroy was firm, just, knowing no fear and showing no favour. The fury of his opponents found expression in the attempt of an hysterical woman to horsewhip him, but she got no farther than stopping the horses and brandishing her whip. He was first called 'Rufus' because of his red beard, but this being deemed too genial, was changed to the 'Red Earl,' and accepted as an omen of his alleged 'red policy' of punishing murderers by hanging them. It was hinted that the Lord Chancellor, Sir Edward Sullivan, was the power behind the viceregal throne, and when the great lawyer died the first favourable opportunity that presented itself to taunt the Lord-Lieutenant with leniency towards the criminal political classes he was declared to have lost his backbone. On one occasion it was thought that he was suffering from lumbago because he was seen pressing his back with his hands; but a malicious wit declared that it was only 'His Excellency feeling for his backbone.' The joke would have been more effective if it contained just a grain of truth to flavour it, but if there was one charge that could not be levelled against Lord Spencer it was this taunt of lack of firmness. His only piece of good fortune was the submission of the Irish bishops to the Pope, who had censured them for disloyalty. This was a great help to the castle. A keen pleasure to the viceroy and a cause of anxiety to the police was a visit paid to Lord Spencer by the Prince of Wales on April 8, 1885.
In the summer of 1885 Lord Salisbury formed a Government, and appointed Lord Carnarvon Viceroy of Ireland. Within eight months a General Election placed Mr. Gladstone in power once more, and Lord Aberdeen spent the few but extremely critical months of life vouchsafed to the Liberal party until Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill split up his followers, and another General Election endorsed Lord Salisbury's claim that the Conservatives and Unionists represented the real opinion of the country on the question of Ireland and its government.
Defeat of the Home Rule Bill
Lord Spencer was President of the Council in 1885, and in 1892, when Mr. Gladstone became Prime Minister for the fourth and last time, he was given the post of First Lord of the Admiralty. That ministry brought in another Home Rule Bill, and passed it through the Commons; but the House of Lords rejected it by the overwhelming majority of 378, the actual figures being 419 for its rejection and 41 against. Mr. Gladstone did not appeal to the country, and thus Home Rule passed out of the Liberal repertoire for nineteen years.
If Queen Victoria had consulted Mr. Gladstone on the question of a successor, he would have advised Lord Spencer's selection. Her Majesty, however, sent for that brilliant dilettante, Lord Rosebery, and Lord Spencer remained on at the Admiralty. There was some talk of the premiership for him shortly before the resignation of Mr. Balfour's Ministry at the close of 1905, but by then he was a spent force, worn out and ill. He could not join Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Cabinet, but he lent it his moral support, and that was not the least important factor in bringing to reason the members of the egregious Liberal Imperialist League, who at first viewed with suspicion the new premier, and then rushed with one accord to be received into the strangest political fold ever presided over by a Liberal shepherd. Lord Spencer died in 1910 at the age of seventy-four, and it can be said of him, as of the late Duke of Devonshire, that he could have risen to greater heights had he not been born with a sense of modesty adorned by a good nature that permitted younger men to pass him, and left him without a trace of rancour or bitterness. He had the satisfaction of witnessing the amazing triumph of the Liberal party, and could die with the knowledge that it savoured of the Gladstonian Liberalism of the middle eighties and the early nineties—the Liberalism he fought for and in whose interest he had sacrificed his best years.