Cabinet dissensions over Irish measures and general criticism of the foreign policy which had made a generous peace with the Boers of South Africa, and was accused of abandoning General Gordon to his fate at Khartoum, weakened its hold upon the people and their representatives. The Irish members held the balance of power in the Commons, and when, in the spring of 1885, they joined forces with the Conservatives, the Liberals were again unseated.
Lord Salisbury and Lord Randolph Churchill, the Conservative leaders who came into power in 1885, enjoyed a brief and troubled tenure of office. The general election of 1885 was the first to be held under the Reform Law of the previous year, which had given to Ireland the same freedom of electoral franchise which had existed in the English and Scottish boroughs since 1869. The result was a great increase in the number of Nationalist members in Parliament. Of the one hundred and three members for Ireland no less than eighty-four were returned as Home Rulers, a compact and formidable body acting as a unit under the leadership of Mr. Parnell.
The first leader of the little company of Irish Home Rulers that had appeared in Parliament in the early '70's was Isaac Butt. His repeated attempts to have the subject considered were as often rejected with derision. In his own party he was opposed by an element which desired to resort to aggressive measures to compel the English to heed Ireland's demand for local self-government. Prominent in this radical wing was a young Protestant, Charles Stewart Parnell, the grandson of Commodore Stewart of the United States Navy. In 1880 he was recognized as the chairman of the Irish Home Rulers in Parliament. For many years he continued to exercise a control over this party and over the Irish people such as no one, save perhaps O'Connell himself, had ever attained. He conceived and enforced the obstructive policy which so embarrassed the second Gladstone administration. By exasperating tactics, which we Americans call "filibustering," the obstructionists, unable to secure what they wanted for Ireland, succeeded in paralyzing the law-making branch of the British constitution. It was only by adopting new and arbitrary rules for choking off debate that any legislation could be passed in the stormy decade beginning with 1881. Arrests, suspensions, and expulsions of Irish members repeatedly disturbed the dignity of the House of Commons, and kept ever present before the English representatives the temper of the subject kingdom.
A statesman as earnest as Mr. Gladstone, as little bound by precedent, and as surely impelled in his later years by a purpose to enact into law the wishes of the people, could not but be profoundly impressed by the unanimity with which, in 1885, the Irish used their new gift of the ballot to send men to Parliament who were pledged to work for Home Rule. It was no sudden conversion but the result of a long consideration which led to his open profession, in 1885, of his determination to crown his efforts for the relief of the Irish nation by giving them the separate legislative body for which they had asked with such persistent clamor. It is possible, in reviewing his statements for a dozen years previous, in the light of the final declaration, that his mind had been dwelling on the subject as his old political mentor, Peel, dwelt upon the question of free trade in the years before he renounced protectionism utterly.
No sooner did Gladstone come into office, in 1886, than he concentrated his energies upon his Home Rule project. His chief lieutenant, John Morley, the English Radical, was sent to Ireland as chief secretary. In April, in one of the greatest speeches of a career remarkable for its eloquence, Mr. Gladstone introduced to the House of Commons his first Home Rule Bill, "An act to make better provision for the government of Ireland." It proposed to establish at Dublin a Parliament of Peers and Commons, under a lord-lieutenant appointed by the crown, and an independent privy council. The Irish Parliament was to have control of local finances except customs duties, and it was excluded from interference with army and navy, foreign or colonial affairs, or with religious endowments. An essential provision was that after the establishment of the Dublin Parliament Ireland should no longer be represented in the "imperial" Parliament at Westminster. A week later a "purchase of land" bill was introduced by the Prime Minister to provide funds for buying out the Irish landlords and distributing their holdings among the tenants. The Home Rule Bill split the Liberal party in twain. Lord Hartington, the Whig, Joseph Chamberlain, the Radical, and John Bright, the hero of the non-conformists, broke away from their old leader and helped to organize the "Liberal Unionist" party, rallying those Liberals who remained true to the Act of Legislative Union of the three kingdoms. Ninety-three rallied under this banner on April 14th, when the bill was killed on its second reading by a vote of 343 to 313. The nation was appealed to in vain. In July the Gladstonian government gave up the fight against the Conservative and Liberal-Unionist coalition and Lord Salisbury resumed the premiership.
For Ireland a new era began, characterized by agrarian crime, anti-rent agitation under the "Plan of Campaign," and Parnellite obstruction at Westminster.
In 1893 the "Grand Old Man," now Prime Minister for the fourth time, and in his eighty-fourth year, made a final endeavor to bring order into Ireland, by enabling her to regulate her own affairs. The Home Rule Bill of 1893 differed from the earlier measure chiefly in respect to the Irish representation at Westminster. Ireland, in addition to her local Parliament at Dublin, was granted eighty seats in the "imperial" House of Commons, though the Irish members might not vote on exclusively British measures. "This was to get over two objections: The first was the objection of those who complained of Ireland's being taxed by the imperial Parliament without representation. The second was the objection of those who complained that whereas English members could not interfere in the affairs of Ireland, Irish members might come over to the imperial Parliament and interfere in the affairs of England." The Old Man Eloquent, now backed by an overwhelming majority, carried the bill triumphantly through the Lower House only to meet defeat by a majority of ten to one in the Lords, the stronghold of Conservatism, where every progressive measure of reform has to encounter resistance at the outset. Though the Lords have learned to yield when the nation reiterates its determined demand for a law, they were spared on this occasion. Mr. Gladstone did not renew the bill. In March, 1894, he withdrew forever from public life, which he had adorned so long and so conspicuously, his last words in Parliament taking the form of an impressive warning against the assertion of authority by the Upper House. In his last interview with the leader of the Irish Home Rulers he assured them of his belief in the ultimate triumph of their cause—a cause whose success was mentioned in his prayers.
The Queen offered her aged public servant an earldom on his retirement, but his was not an ambition to be pleased with such empty rewards. In his beautiful castle of Hawarden, surrounded by his books and his family, he spent the years which remained to him in a graceful old age. To the last his mind remained alert and active. He busied himself with the classical and theological studies which had been the delight of his young manhood, and the relaxation of his active years. His translations, his controversial pamphlets, his letters on public questions, showed the refinement and vigor of his remarkable intellect. When he died the English-speaking world paid a universal tribute of respect to his memory.
In linking these biographies with certain public questions or events, the name of Gladstone has been connected with the cause of Ireland—a "lost cause," as some may say, because Home Rule, which was to have been the capstone of his edifice, was rejected by the builders. But it must not be forgotten that it was Gladstone who swept away the burdensome Irish Church and improved the land laws, the franchise, and the opportunities of education in Ireland, and made an English statesman's name beloved in the Emerald Isle for the first time since Charles James Fox. Nor should his great work for Ireland obscure the grand achievements of the earlier years when he led the Liberal party through its wonderful program of reform in England; nor should any prejudice against the friend of Ireland dull our perception to the clear voice which so often pleaded the cause of ignorance and oppression at home and abroad, and touched the best that was in the conscience of his countrymen. A good, great, learned, eloquent statesman, William Ewart Gladstone towers in moral grandeur above his fellows like a mountain peak above the foothills, and the far-surrounding plain.