The Real Gladstone: An Anecdotal Biography

by J. Ewing Ritchie

When Mr. Gladstone returned to power, Mr. Forster was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, with Lord Cowper as Viceroy. There was great distress—as there generally is in Ireland—and exceptional efforts had been made, both by the Government and the people of this country, to meet it. A benevolent fund had been raised, chiefly through the influence of the Duchess of Marlborough, wife of the Lord-Lieutenant, and a Distress Relief Act had been carried by Parliament to empower the application of three-quarters of a million of the Irish Church Surplus Fund, and some good had unquestionably been done by the public and private effort thus made to relieve distress; but it was clear, from the results of the elections, and from the speeches of the popular Irish leaders, that it was not to measures of this kind that the people looked for permanent relief. The unusual distress of 1879 had intensified and aggravated the chronic disaffection, and sixty members had been returned to Parliament who were pledged to do their utmost to put an end to English rule in Ireland by securing Home Rule. Flushed with the brilliant success they had achieved, the Liberal party entered upon office confident that a career of prosperity lay before them. Lord Beaconsfield’s defeat had been brought about by the national repudiation of his foreign policy; and, in the first instance, it was of foreign, rather than domestic, affairs that the new House of Commons was thinking. But Ireland at once came to the front. The existing Coercion Act would expire in a few weeks, and it was necessary to secure its renewal before it lapsed; but the Cabinet resolved to try the experiment of governing by means of the ordinary law.

The Lords threw out Mr. Forster’s measures intended to relieve Ireland. He did not scruple to avow his vexation and resentment at their summary rejection, and the dangerous effect it would have in the disturbed districts during the coming winter, which might lead to the adoption of much stronger measures, both of concession and coercion, than the Government had hitherto attempted. In response, Mr. Parnell, in addressing a great audience at Ennis, enunciated the plan already known as boycotting, whereby every man who took an evicted farm, and everyone who aided or abetted eviction, should be shunned as a leper in the fair, refused custom in the market, and treated as an intruder at the altar. Before the year was out the courts established by the Land League publicly heard and determined the merits of each case as it arose. The signal for acts of summary violence was set by the fate of Lord Mountmorres, who had incurred popular dislike by his conduct as a rigorous magistrate, and was put to death on the highway near his own house in open daylight. Mr. Forster early proposed to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and to prosecute the prominent movers of the agitation. Mr. Gladstone clung to the hope that the friends of law and order would combine to suppress the tendencies to outrage, and wished to defer as long as possible the suspension of constitutional freedom; but ere Parliament had reassembled in 1881, the progress of disorder and outrage had increased, and the Cabinet reluctantly authorized the introduction of a measure for the protection of life and property. Twenty-two nights were spent in debating it; but it was passed by an overwhelming majority, comprising Ministerialists, Radicals, and Conservatives. But the obstruction systematically offered to repressive legislation at last provoked Speaker Brand to assert a discretionary power of terminating debate, which led to the introduction of a change of procedure, of which the most prominent measure was the Clôture.

The Irish Land Bill was the chief work of the session of 1881. Mr. Forster’s work at this time was arduous and untiring to keep the Cabinet up to duty. In October, 1881, Mr. Gladstone writes from Hawarden: ‘Your sad and saddening letter supplies much food for serious reflection; but I need not reply at great length, mainly because I practically agree with you. I almost take for granted, and I shall assume until you correct me, that your meaning about ruin to property is as follows: You do not mean the ruin to property which may directly result from exclusive dealing, but you mean ruin to property by violence—e.g., burning of a man’s haystack because he had let his cars on hire to the constabulary. On this assumption I feel politically quite prepared to concur with you in acting upon legal advice to this effect; nor do I dissent, under the circumstances, from the series of propositions by which you seek to connect Parnell and Co. with the prevalent intimidation. But I hardly think that so novel an application of the Protection Act should be undertaken without the Cabinet.’

In the same month Mr. Gladstone went to Leeds, where he had a reception which exceeded all expectations. In his speech he devoted himself to the Irish Question. Amidst enthusiastic cheers from the vast audience, he pointed to Mr. Forster’s name, and spoke in generous terms of the arduous and painful task in which he was then engaged; and then he went on in clear and forcible language to denounce the conduct of Mr. Parnell and of the other Land League leaders in striving to stand between the people of Ireland and the Land Act, in order that the beneficial effects of that measure might not be allowed to reach them. Such conduct, Mr. Gladstone declared, would not be tolerated. ‘The resources of civilization were,’ he observed, ‘not exhausted.’ Then followed the arrest of Mr. Parnell. Within twelve hours the news was spread over the civilized world, and everywhere it created a great sensation. Mr. Gladstone, speaking at a meeting at the Guildhall on the same day, first announced the fact of Mr. Parnell’s arrest to the people of England, and the statement was received with an enthusiastic outburst that startled even the speaker himself. It was hailed as if it were the news of a signal victory. Throughout England the belief—so soon to be dissipated—was held that the imprisonment of Mr. Parnell at Kilmainham must mean the downfall of his authority, and the extinction of the great organization of which he was the head; in reality, the outrages and assassinations became greater.

One result was a change in the policy of the Government. The English public was asked to believe that the Irish policy of the Government was not the policy of Mr. Gladstone, but of Mr. Forster alone. On March 24, 1882, Mr. Gladstone wrote to Mr. Forster, who was then in Dublin, pointing out to him the growing opposition to the Ministerial proposals for instituting the Closure, and the prevalent belief among the Irish members in the House that by stopping the Closure they might prevent the renewal of the Protection Act. The Prime Minister added ‘that, with the Land Act working briskly, resistance to process disappearing, and rents increasingly and even generally, though not uniformly, paid, a renewal of so odious a power as that we now hold is impossible, and that whatever may be needed by way of supplement to the ordinary law must be found in other forms.’

Mr. Parnell, speaking at Wexford on October 10, 1881, said: ‘He (Mr. Gladstone) would have you believe that he is not afraid of you, because he has disarmed you, because he has attempted to disorganize you, because he knows that the Irish nation is to-day disarmed as far as physical weapons go, but he does not hold this kind of language with the Boers (cheers for the Boers. A Voice: ‘We will be Boers too!’). What did he do at the commencement of the session? He said something of this kind with regard to the Boers. He said that he was going to put them down, and as soon as he discovered that they were able to shoot straighter than his own soldiers, he allowed those few men to put him and his Government down, and although he has attempted to regain some of his lost position in the Transvaal by subsequent chicanery and diplomatic negotiations, yet that sturdy and small people in the distant Transvaal have seen through William Ewart Gladstone; and they have told him again, for the second time, that they will not have their liberties filched from them; and I believe that, as a result, we shall see that William Ewart Gladstone will again yield to the people of the Transvaal (hear, hear). And I trust that, as the result of this great movement, we shall see that, just as Gladstone by the Act of 1881 has eaten all his old words, has departed from all his formerly declared principles, now we shall see that these brave words of this English Prime Minister will be scattered as chaff before the united and advancing determination of the Irish people to regain for themselves their lost land and their lost legislative independence (loud and continued cheering).’

Miss Parnell termed him a hoary-headed old miscreant; Miss Helen Taylor, of the London School Board, described him as a dastard and a recreant; Mr. O’Donnell, M.P., said Gladstone was a Judas, who had betrayed Ireland by the kiss of peace to the persecutor and tormentor. In Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, the effigy of Mr. Gladstone was burned by a crowd of fifteen hundred Irish under the direction of the League leaders. Even in Hawarden the magistrates had to place four additional constables to protect Mr. Gladstone from the effects of Irish revenge. Mr. Gladstone, said Mr. Parnell at Wexford just before he was arrested, was the greatest coercionist, the greatest and most unrivalled slanderer of the Irish nation, that ever lived.

The situation was gloomy. Naturally Mr. Gladstone made as light as possible of the situation in the speech he delivered at the Lord Mayor’s banquet. The speech for the moment silenced the murmurs of dissension inside the Cabinet. ‘You said,’ Mr. Gladstone wrote to Forster, ‘that if we are to ask for a suspension of Habeas Corpus, it must be on a case of great strength and clearness. But do these figures, after all the allowance to be made for protection, indicate such a case? As far as I can judge, there is a tendency in Ireland upon a series of years to a decline in the total number of homicides. The immense increase in property offences, agrarian, for 1880 seems to me to mark the true character of the crisis and the true source of the mischief of the Land League. But I incline to assume that any suspension of Habeas Corpus must be founded on danger to life.’

When Parliament met in 1881 began the long running fight between Mr. Forster and Mr. Parnell. As the chief representative of the Land League, Mr. Parnell had spoken defending the action of the League, and Mr. Forster retorted that the meetings of that body had constantly been followed by outrage, and that the object of the Land Leaguers was not to bring about an alteration in the law of the land by constitutional means, but to prevent any payment of rent save such as might be in accordance with the unwritten law of Mr. Parnell. In Parliament Government carried a Protection Act, an Arms Bill, and an Irish Land Bill. The Acts were of no avail. Outrages increased after the passing of the Protection Act. In May Mr. John Dillon was arrested and others of his party. In September it was resolved to arrest Mr. Parnell, ‘the uncrowned king,’ as his followers called him. Mr. Gladstone assented to the arrest if in the opinion of the law officers of the Crown he had by his speeches been guilty of treasonable practices.

On one occasion, when Mr. Forster had suggested that he had better retire, Mr. Gladstone wrote by return of post to acknowledge ‘the very grave letter,’ which he thought ought to be laid before the Cabinet. ‘With regard to your leaving Ireland,’ wrote the Prime Minister, ‘there is an analogy between your position and mine. Virtually abandoning the hope of vital change for the better, I come on my own behalf to an anticipation projected a little further into the future—that after the winter things may mend, and that my own retirement may give facilities for the fulfilment of your very natural desire.’ It was in a day or two after this Mr. Gladstone congratulated Forster upon the manner in which he had accomplished a difficult and delicate task in connection with the Irish Executive. ‘It is not every man,’ he writes, ‘who in difficult circumstances can keep a cool head with a warm heart—and that is what you are doing.’