When the sea is smooth as glass, or the waves run mountains high,
In the brightest of summer skies, or the blackest of dirty weather,
Wherever the ship swims, there swim I."
The part of "the ship" to which I was now fastened was certainly not the most exalted or exciting of the public offices. The estimation in which it was held in official circles is aptly illustrated by a pleasantry of that eminent Civil Servant, Sir Algernon West. When the Revised Version of the New Testament appeared, Gladstone asked Sir Algernon (who had begun life in the Treasury), if he thought it as good as the Authorized Version. "Certainly not," was the reply. "It is so painfully lacking in dignity." Gladstone, always delighted to hear an innovation censured (unless he himself had made it), asked for an illustration. "Well," said West, "look at the Second Chapter of St. Luke. There went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. Now that always struck me as a sublime conception—a tax levied on the whole world by a stroke of the pen—an act worthy of an Imperial Treasury. But I turn to the Revised Version, and what do I read? That all the world should be enrolled—a census—the sort of thing the Local Government Board could do. That instance, to my mind, settles the question between Old and New."
But in the office thus contemned by the Paladins of the Treasury, there was plenty of interesting though little-observed work. In the autumn of 1883 I undertook, in conjunction with the President of the Board, a mission of enquiry into the worst slums in London. There is no need to recapitulate here all the horrors we encountered, for they can be read in the evidence given before the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Poor which was appointed in the following year; but one incident made a peculiar impression on my mind. The Sanitary Officer reported some underground dwellings in Spitalfields as being perhaps the worst specimens of human habitation which we should find, and he offered to be my guide. I entered a cellar-like room in a basement, which, till one's eyes got used to the dimness, seemed pitch-dark. I felt, rather than saw, the presence of a woman, and, when we began to talk, I discerned by her voice that she was not a Londoner. "No, sir," she replied, "I come from Wantage, in Berkshire." Having always heard of Wantage as a kind of Earthly Paradise, where the Church, the Sisterhood, and the "Great House" combined to produce the millennium, I said, involuntarily, "How you must wish to be back there!" "Back at Wantage!" exclaimed the Lady of the Cellar. "No, indeed, sir. This is a poor place, but it's better than Wantage." It was instructive to find this love of freedom, and resentment of interference, in the bowels of the earth of Spitalfields.
An incident which helps to illustrate Gladstone's personal ascendancy belongs to this period. Those were the days of agitation for and against a Channel Tunnel, eagerly promoted by speculative tunnel-makers, and resolutely opposed by Mr. Chamberlain, then President of the Board of Trade. Gladstone, when asked if he was for or against the Tunnel, said very characteristically, "I am not so much in favour of the Tunnel, as opposed to the opponents of it"; and this of course meant that he was really in favour of it. About this time I met him at dinner, and after the ladies had gone, I think we were eight men round the table. Gladstone began praising the Tunnel; one of the hearers echoed him, and the rest of us were silent. Looking round triumphantly, Gladstone said, "Ah, this is capital! Here we are—eight sensible men—and all in favour of the Tunnel." Knowing that several of us were against the Tunnel, I challenged a division and collected the votes. Excepting Gladstone and his echo, we all were anti-tunnelites, and yet none of us would have had the hardihood to say so.
In this year—1883—Gladstone's Government had regained some portion of the popularity and success which they had lost; but when the year ran out, their success was palpably on the wane, and their popularity of course waned with it. The endless contradictions and perplexities, crimes and follies, of our Egyptian policy became too obvious to be concealed or palliated, and at the beginning of 1884 the Government resolved on their crowning and fatal blunder. On the 18th of January, Lord Hartington (Secretary of State for War), Lord Granville, Lord Northbrook, and Sir Charles Dilke had an interview with General Gordon, and determined that he should be sent to evacuate the Soudan. Gladstone assented, and Gordon started that evening on his ill-starred errand. In view of subsequent events, it is worth recording that there were some Liberals who, from the moment they heard of it, condemned the undertaking. The dithyrambics of the Pall Mall Gazette drew from William Cory[38] the following protest:
"January 21, 1884.
"It's really ludicrous—the P. M. G. professing a clearly suprarational faith in an elderly Engineer, saying that he will cook the goose if no one interferes with him ... as if he could go to Suakim, 'summon' a barbarous potentate, make him supply his escort to Khartoum, and, when at Khartoum, issue edicts right and left; as if he could act without subaltern officers, money, stores, gold, etc.; as if he were an homme drapeau, and had an old army out there ready to troop round him, as the French veterans round Bonaparte at Fréjus."
In Parliament, the principal work of 1884 was to extend the Parliamentary Franchise to the Agricultural Labourer. A Tory Member said in debate that the labourers were no more fit to have the franchise than the beasts they tended; and Lord Goschen, who had remained outside the Cabinet of 1880 sooner than be party to giving them the vote, used to say to the end of his life that, if the Union were ever destroyed, it would be by the agricultural labourers. I, however, who had lived among them all my life and knew that they were at least as fit for political responsibility as the artisans, threw myself with ardour into the advocacy of their cause. (By the way, my speech of the Second Reading of the Franchise Bill was answered by the present Speaker[39] in his maiden speech.) All through the summer the battle raged. The Lords did not refuse to pass the Bill, but said that, before they passed it, they must see the accompanying scheme of Redistribution. It was not a very unreasonable demand, but Gladstone denounced it as an unheard-of usurpation. We all took our cue from him, and vowed that we would smash the House of Lords into atoms before we consented to this insolent claim. Throughout the Parliamentary recess, the voices of protest resounded from every Liberal platform, and even so lethargic a politician as Lord Hartington harangued a huge gathering in the Park at Chatsworth. Everything wore the appearance of a constitutional crisis. Queen Victoria, as we now know, was seriously perturbed, and did her utmost to avert a rupture between Lords and Commons. But still we persisted in our outcry. The Lords must pass the Franchise Bill without conditions, and when it was law, we would discuss Redistribution. A new Session began on 23rd of October. The Franchise Bill was brought in again, passed, and sent up to the Lords. At first the Lords seemed resolved to insist on their terms; then they wavered; and then again they hardened their hearts. Lord Salisbury reported that they would not let the Franchise Bill through till they got the Redistribution Bill from the Commons. Meanwhile, all sorts of mysterious negotiations were going on between the "moderate" men on both sides; and it was known that Gladstone dared not dissolve on the old franchise, as he was sure to be beaten in the Boroughs. His only hope was in the agricultural labourers. Then, acting under pressure which is not known but can be easily guessed, he suddenly announced, on the 17th of November, that he was prepared to introduce the Redistribution Bill before the Lords went into Committee on the Franchise Bill. It was the point for which the Tories had been contending all along, and by conceding it, Gladstone made an absolute surrender. All the sound and fury of the last six months had been expended in protesting that we could never do what now we meekly did. It was the beginning of troubles which have lasted to this day. The House of Lords learned the welcome lesson that, when the Liberal Party railed, they only had to sit still; and the lesson learnt in 1884 was applied in each succeeding crisis down to August 1911. It has always been to me an amazing instance of Gladstone's powers of self-deception that to the end of his life he spoke of this pernicious surrender as a signal victory.