The Queen therefore sent for Mr. Gladstone and bade him form a Liberal ministry. He had to face a difficult situation, for his majority was small, and composed entirely of the Irish, very exacting, untrustworthy, and reckless supporters. The new parliament showed 274 Gladstonians and 81 Irish Home Rulers, 269 Conservatives and 46 Liberal Unionists. Being compelled to rely on the Irish for his majority, Gladstone had to make Home Rule the main plank of his party platform. This was not at all to the taste of many of his British followers, who would have liked to give precedence to their own particular schemes—for the abolition of the House of Lords, the disestablishment of the Welsh and Scottish Churches, the introduction of Temperance Legislation, of Universal Suffrage, and of numberless other local and sectional projects.
The second Home Rule Bill.
In February, 1893, Mr. Gladstone produced his second Home Rule Bill, which differed from the first mainly in providing Ireland with two, instead of one, Houses of Parliament, and in leaving at Westminster eighty Irish members, who were to vote on imperial, but not on purely British, concerns. Essentially it was the same as its predecessor of 1885. The measure was debated with great fierceness, and at enormous length; it occupied the House of Commons from February to September, and was only carried finally when the discussion of many clauses had been stifled by the use of the "closure." The third reading passed on September 1 by a majority of 34—301 to 267 votes. The Bill then went up to the House of Lords, who made short work of it, casting it out on September 8 by a majority of ten to one (419 to 41).
The Conservative leaders had taken this bold step because they believed that the country at large was profoundly uninterested in the bill, and would view its rejection with equanimity. If it had been really a popular measure, the House of Lords would not have dared to deal with it in such a drastic fashion. By their abrupt action they challenged Mr. Gladstone to a second appeal to the nation; if he chose to dissolve parliament, held another general election, and was once more triumphant, the peers would have to bow to the general wish of the country. But Gladstone and his colleagues had no desire to try the experiment: while professing much righteous indignation, they proclaimed their determination to put Home Rule aside for the moment, and to proceed to the introduction of other measures of radical reform. This resolve incensed the Irish, on whom the Government's majority depended, while the English Radicals were so much split up into cliques with different ideals, that it was hard to keep them together. The Gladstone Government passed nothing but a "Parish Councils Bill," which extended to small communities that same power of governing themselves by elective boards which the late Conservative ministry had granted to the counties.
Lord Rosebery Premier.
In March, 1894, the premier announced that he was compelled to retire from office by his increasing physical infirmities. Even his splendid constitution was at last giving way, and with no immediate prospect of carrying out any great measure before him, he had resolved to retire from public life. He was succeeded by Lord Rosebery, his Foreign Secretary, who was rather a type of the Whig than of the Radical. He had ably managed the external relations of Great Britain, and had shown himself an exponent of colonial expansion rather than an "anti-imperialist." Like many a Whig statesman of the eighteenth century, he was a keen lover of sport, and alone among British premiers has run winners for the Derby. He had never professed any great belief in, or love for, Home Rule. His character and his views seemed little adapted to make him an appropriate leader for the Gladstonian party: but as its ablest man he was charged with the formation of the new ministry.
His tenure of power lasted for sixteen months (March, 1894-June, 1895). It was mainly filled by a record of Bills introduced, but never carried: a Welsh Disestablishment Act, an Irish Land Act, and a "Local Option" Act to please the Temperance party, were all brought forward, but none reached fruition. The votaries of each measure hindered the progress of the others, in disgust that their own was not given priority. The party was rent by feuds and intrigues, and in disgust at the situation Lord Rosebery took the opportunity of a casual vote on a small military matter, which had gone against the ministry, and dissolved parliament.
Lord Salisbury's Second Ministry.
The ensuing General Election resulted in the complete rout of the Liberal party; they had been in power for three years, but had accomplished nothing, owing to their internal divisions and the necessary dependence on the Irish vote, which hampered all their enterprises. Tired of their futile proceedings, the electors made a clean sweep of them, and gave Lord Salisbury a majority even larger than he had possessed in 1886. The new House of Commons of August, 1895, showed 340 Conservatives and 71 Liberal Unionists, but only 177 Liberals, with 70 Anti-Parnellite and 12 Parnellite Home Rulers. Lord Salisbury's second ministry was differentiated from his first by the fact that it opened its ranks to the Liberal Unionists. Mr. Chamberlain, representing the Radicals, and Lord Hartington, representing the Whig wings of that party, received cabinet office, and minor posts went to their followers.
This ministry was destined to see the century out, to survive the venerable Queen Victoria, and to face with success the ordeal of a general election, which no cabinet had done since Lord Palmerston's day. Its record has been a stormy one, mainly because it has carried out the mandate given to it in 1895, by taking in hand a strong imperial and colonial policy. In its first year it became involved in a noisy quarrel with the President of the United States, who had interfered with language of an unnecessarily brusque and provocative kind in a frontier dispute concerning boundaries in Guiana, which had been forced upon Britain by the republic of Venezuela. Fortunately the cabinet kept cool, American feeling calmed down, and the dispute ended in a satisfactory arbitration, which gave us practically all that we had ever claimed.