A member of this first cabinet wrote to Mr. Gladstone long after it had come to an end: “I suppose there was no one of your then colleagues less sympathetic with you, less in tune with your opinions and enthusiasms than Lowe. Nevertheless this happened to me with him—after you had resigned. Lowe opened to me one day, on the subject of your relations with your colleagues. He spoke in terms of warm admiration, and to my great surprise, ended by saying, ‘I have the same kind of feeling towards him that I can suppose must be the feeling of a dog for his master.’ Lowe is a perfectly sincere man. He would not have said this if he had not felt it.” “In everything personal,” Mr. Gladstone replied, “Lowe was an excellent colleague and member of cabinet. But I had never been in personal [pg 417] relations with him before, and at the outset of the ministry of 1868 I knew very little of him. Moreover, he was the occasion of much trouble to me by his incessant broils with ——, who was an awkward customer.” In sheer intellect Mr. Gladstone held that Lowe had not many equals, but in nobody else did he discover so many mixed and contradictory qualities—“splendid in attack, but most weak in defence, at times exhibiting pluck beyond measure, but at other times pusillanimity almost amounting to cowardice; one day headstrong and independent, and the next day helpless as a child to walk alone; capable of tearing anything to pieces, but of constructing nothing.”[272]
Lord Clarendon—Lowe—Bright
When Lord Clarendon died,—“An irreparable colleague,” Mr. Gladstone notes in his diary, “a statesman of many gifts, a most lovable and genial man.” Elsewhere he commemorates his “unswerving loyalty, his genial temper, his kindness ever overflowing in acts yet more than in words, his liberal and indulgent appreciation of others.” In the short government of 1865-6, Lord Granville had described Clarendon to Mr. Gladstone as “excellent, communicating more freely with the cabinet and carrying out their policy more faithfully, than any foreign secretary I have known.” Mr. Gladstone himself told me twenty years after, that of the sixty men or so who had been his colleagues in cabinet, Clarendon was the very easiest and most attractive. It is curious to observe that, with the exception of Mr. Bright, he found his most congenial adherents rather among the patrician whigs than among the men labelled as advanced.
Mr. Bright, as we have seen, was forced by ill-health to quit the government. Thirty years of unsparing toil, more than ten of them devoted especially to the exhausting, but in his case most fruitful, labours of the platform, had for the time worn down his stock of that energy of mind, which in the more sinewy frame of the prime minister seemed as boundless as some great natural element. To Mrs. Bright Mr. Gladstone wrote:—
It is not merely a selfish interest that all his colleagues feel in [pg 418] him on account of his great powers, just fame, and political importance; but it is one founded on the esteem and regard which, one and all, they entertain towards him. God grant that any anxieties you may entertain about him may soon be effectually relieved. I wish I felt quite certain that he is as good a patient as he is a colleague. But the chief object of my writing was to say that the Queen has signified both by letter and telegraph her lively interest in Mr. B.'s health; and she will not forgive me unless I am able to send her frequent reports.
He is quite capable of dealing faithfully with colleagues breaking rules. To a member of the cabinet who had transgressed by absence from a division of life and death:—
I should not act frankly by you if I did not state it, without hesitation as a general and prospective proposition, that, without reference to the likelihood or unlikelihood of defeat, upon motions which must from their nature be votes of confidence, [there can] be but one rule for the members of the government, and that is to give the votes themselves which at the same time the government with less strong title is asking from the members of their party.
He scolds a leading minister pretty directly for placing him in a disagreeable and rather ludicrous position, by failing to give the proper information about a government bill containing an important change, so that nobody could explain the reason for it to the House. His own personal example of absolutely unremitting attendance on the scene of action, entitled him to rebuke slackness. Nothing escaped him. Here is the way in which he called defaulters to their duty:—
April 8, 1873.—The chancellor of the exchequer thinks he has some reason to complain of your having quitted London on Thursday, without any prior communication with him or Glyn, four days before the budget. I have heard with regret that the state of your health has compelled you to spend your vacation abroad; but scarcely even a direct medical order, and certainly in my opinion nothing less, could render such an example innocent in its effects, as is set by a departure from London under such circumstances. Although it has been a great pleasure to me to admit and recognise your parliamentary services and distinctions, [pg 419] and though I have always thought your accession to the government an acquisition of great value, I must frankly avow my opinion that it is hardly possible for the chancellor of exchequer to discharge his duties without your constant and sedulous co-operation, or for the official corps in general to avoid suffering, if the members of it make themselves the judges of the question when and under what circumstances their absence may be permitted during the sittings of the House.
June 25, 1870.—I am led to suppose by your absence from the division yesterday, that there may not be a perfectly clear understanding between us as to the obligations of members of the government on these occasions. Yesterday gave occasion of much inconvenience on account of the entertainment at Windsor, but all the members of the government who could be expected to attend voted in the division, except yourself. I can say from my own recollection that as far as regards political officers, the sovereign always permits the claim of the House of Commons to prevail.