In 1882 the situation in Ireland became increasingly difficult and dangerous. As the time drew near for the meeting of Parliament, it was evident that the session would be a stormy one. In all quarters attacks upon the Chief Secretary seemed to be in course of preparation. The Protection Act had not put an end to the outrages, despite the fact that hundreds of prisoners, including Mr. Parnell and other members of Parliament, were under lock and key. Above all, the Protection Act would expire during the year, and consequently Ministers must allow it to expire, or must ask Parliament to spend weeks, or possibly months, in renewing it. Yet in the Queen’s Speech it was stated that the condition of Ireland showed signs of improvement, and encouraged the hope that perseverance in the course hitherto pursued would be rewarded with the happy results which were so much to be desired. The Lords resolved to find fault with the working of the Land Act. The challenge of the Lords was taken up by the Government in the House of Commons, and a resolution moved by Mr. Gladstone, that any inquiry at that time into the working of the Land Act would defeat its operation, and must be injurious to the interests of good government in Ireland, was carried by a majority of 303 to 235.
After the Easter recess the attacks on Forster were renewed. It was demanded that he should be removed from office, and that the suspects should be immediately released, on the plea that their imprisonment had not prevented the continuance of the outrages. To make matters worse, the American Government became urgent in their demands for the release of those prisoners who could prove that they were citizens of the United States, while, in addition to the political perplexities thus created, the atrocious murder of Mrs. H. J. Smythe, as she was driving home from church in West Meath, sent a thrill of horror through the country. At this time Forster, in a letter to Mr. Gladstone, writes: ‘That if now or at any future time’ (the Pall Mall had been suggesting his resignation) ‘you think that from any cause it would be to the advantage of the public service or for the good of Ireland that I should resign, I most unreservedly place my resignation in your hands.’
In reply, Mr. Gladstone wrote from Hawarden, April 5, 1882: ‘Yesterday morning I was unwell, and did not see the papers, so that I have only just become aware of the obliging suggestion that you should retire. I suspect it is partly due to a few (not many) Tory eulogies. There is one consideration which grievously tempts me towards the acceptance of the offer conveyed in your most handsome letter. It is that if you go, and go on Irish grounds, surely I must go too. . . . We must continue to face our difficulties with an unbroken front and with a stout heart. I do not admit your failure, and I think you have admitted it rather too much—at any rate, by omission—by not putting forward the main fact that in the deadly fight with the social revolution you have not failed, but are succeeding. Your failure, were it true, is our failure; and outrage, though a grave fact, is not the main one. Were there a change in the features of the case, I would not hesitate to recognise it, with whatever pain, as unreservedly as I now record their actual condition. I do not suppose we ought to think of legislating on the Irish case until after Whitsuntide.’
But, nevertheless, Mr. Forster did resign. In April Lord Spencer succeeded Earl Cowper as Irish Viceroy, and negotiations were carried on between Captain O’Shea and Mr. Parnell—known now as the Kilmainham Treaty—of which Mr. Forster strongly complained. Mr. Gladstone took a different view. Writing to Forster, he expressed the satisfaction with which he had read Mr. Parnell’s letter. With regard to the expression in the letter of the writer’s willingness to co-operate in future with the Liberal party, Mr. Gladstone wrote: ‘This is a hors d’œuvre which we had no right to expect. I may be far wide of the mark, but I can scarcely wonder at O’Shea saying, “The thing is done. . . .” On the whole, Parnell’s letter is the most extraordinary I ever read. I cannot help feeling indebted to O’Shea.’
In May Mr. Forster resigned. Writing on the 2nd of that month, Mr. Gladstone, in reply, says: ‘I have received your letter with much grief, but on this it would be selfish to expatiate. I have no choice—followed or not followed, I must go on. . . . One thing, however, I wish to say. You wish to minimize in any public statement the cause of your retreat. In my opinion, and I speak from experience, viewing the nature of the case, you will find this hardly possible. For a justification, I fear, you will have to found upon the doctrine of a new departure, or must protest against it and deny it with heart and soul.’
Speaking of the parting, Mr. Forster told his biographer that he had learned not merely to esteem, but to love Mr. Gladstone during their intercourse as colleagues, and he bore testimony to the fact that he had never ceased to be supported by him until the moment came when the Prime Minister found reason to change his policy. Then, however, the change of policy was swiftly followed by a change of attitude, so far as politics were concerned, deplored by both men, but, under the circumstances, inevitable.
Lord Frederick Cavendish was gazetted as Mr. Forster’s successor. He arrived in Dublin on May 6. On that day he and Mr. Burke, the Irish Under-Secretary, were foully murdered while crossing the Phœnix Park by a band of assassins, whose plans, it was evident, had been laid long beforehand with the utmost deliberation. Mr. Forster had escaped them on his departure from Dublin by what almost seemed a miracle. In a few days after, Sir William Harcourt introduced into the House of Commons a new Coercion Bill, which, although it was laid upon the lines introduced by Mr. Forster before he retired from office, was in many respects more severe and stringent in its character than anything which he had proposed.
Another difficulty which beset the Government was the occupation of Egypt in 1882. The bombardment of Alexandria led to the retirement of Mr. Bright from the Cabinet. Many Liberals were profoundly dissatisfied. In the early part of the session of 1883, the question of our obligations in South Africa, and our duties towards native chiefs who had trusted in our promises, arose in connection with Bechuanaland. In domestic politics the question was that of the Household Suffrage Bill, which, carried in the Commons, was thrown out in the House of Lords.
But a greater question was that of the abandonment of the Soudan and the failure to relieve Gordon at Khartoum. It was in the course of one of his most urgent appeals to Government not to delay the sending out of an expedition that Forster used words respecting Mr. Gladstone which were strangely misinterpreted at the time. Speaking of the dangers of Gordon’s position, he said: ‘I believe everyone but the Prime Minister is already convinced of that danger . . . and I attribute his not being convinced to his wonderful power of persuasion. He can persuade most people of most things, and above all, he can persuade himself of almost anything.’ It is difficult now to realize that these words were resented by Lord Hartington as ‘a bitter and personal, and evidently highly-prepared and long-reflected-over, attack upon the sincerity of Mr. Gladstone.’ It is to be remembered that at this time Mr. Bright had resigned office, and the Government was daily growing weaker. The attack of the Tories was incessant, and the supporters of the Government became daily more faint-hearted. It is said of one of our months that it comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. In the present instance this was specially true of the Gladstone Government. In June, 1883, the Government were beaten on the Budget. In reference to this event Lord Shaftesbury writes: ‘I have just seen the defeat of Government on the Budget by Conservatives and Parnellites combined; an act of folly amounting to wickedness. God is not in all their thoughts, nor their country either. All seek their own, and their own is party spirit, momentary triumph, political hatred, and the indulgence of low political and unpatriotic passions.’
A more accurate observer, ‘I rather fancy,’ wrote Mr. W. H. Smith, M.P., ‘the Government look for it as a relief from their troubles.’ The last, and perhaps the most serious of all, was the manner in which they had allowed themselves to be outwitted by Russia in Afghanistan. This belief was generally entertained all over the land. Mr. Gladstone was glad to put an end to his perplexities by resigning office. The Queen offered to make him an Earl, which he had too much sense to accept—though in office no one was more ready to make peers of his friends. In his later years his trump card was an attack on the House of Lords. Lord Salisbury became Premier, all necessary business was quickly disposed of, and in the autumn a General Election took place. In the boroughs the Liberal losses were heavy; in the counties they increased their strength. One of Mr. Gladstone’s appeals to the country was sounded in his speech at Edinburgh to the electors of Midlothian. He passionately implored his party to hold together, in order, above all things, that they should return a Liberal majority so considerable as to make it independent of the Irish party. He expressed the hope that from one end of the country to the other there would not be a single representative returned to Parliament who would listen to any proposition tending to impair the visible empire. Whatever demands might be made on the part of Ireland, if they were to be entertained they must be subject to the condition that the union of the empire should be preserved. Mr. Parnell’s answer was to return eighty-six Home-Rulers for Ireland; Lord Salisbury remained Premier. Lord Shaftesbury wrote: ‘In a year or so we shall have Home Rule disposed of at all hazards to save us from hourly and daily bores.’ In the meanwhile the Conservatives held feebly to office till 1886, when in January Mr. Gladstone resumed office as Premier.