Changes among subordinate members of the government came early. Of one of these ministers Mr. Gladstone writes to Lord Granville (August 18, 1869): “He has great talent, and is a most pertinacious worker, with a good deal of experience and widely dispersed knowledge of public affairs. But he seems to be somewhat angular, and better adapted for doing business within a defined province of his own, than in common stock or partnership with others.” Unfortunately the somewhat angular man shared his work with a chief who had intellectual angularities of his own, not very smoothly concealed. As it happened, there was another minister of secondary rank who did not come up to the expected mark. “Though he has great talents, remarkable power of speech, and some special qualifications for his department, he has not succeeded in it with the House of Commons, and does not seem very thoroughly to understand pecuniary responsibility and the management of estimates, and there is no doubt whatever that in his department the present House of Commons will be vigilant and exacting, while the rapid growth of its expenditures certainly shows that it should be filled by some one capable [pg 420] of exercising control.” Not thoroughly “to understand pecuniary responsibility” was counted a deadly sin in those halcyon days. So the transgressor accepted a diplomatic mission, and this made room to plant his angular colleague in what seemed a “province of his own.” But few provinces are definite enough to be independent of the treasury, and the quarrels between this minister and the chancellor of the exchequer became something of a scandal and a weakness to the government. One of the fiercest battles of the time (1872) broke out in respect of Kew Gardens between the minister with a definite province of his own and a distinguished member of “a scientific fraternity, which, valuable as it is, has been unduly pampered of late from a variety of causes into a somewhat overweening idea of its own importance.” The premier's pacifying resources were taxed by this tremendous feud to the uttermost; he holds a stiffish tone to the minister, and tries balm for the savant by propitiatory reminder of “a most interesting fact made known to me when I had the pleasure and advantage of seeing you at Kew, namely the possibility of saving for purposes of food a portion of the substance of the diseased potato. The rescue of a sensible percentage of this valuable esculent will be a noble service rendered by scientific knowledge and skill to the general community.” But science is touchy, and wounds are sometimes too deep to be healed by words.
Ministerial Discipline
A point worth noting is his strict limitation of his own rights as head of a government. “Hope you will not think,” he wrote to a colleague, “I am evading my duties, but while it is my duty to deal with all difficulties arising between members of the government, it is wholly beyond my power, and in no way belongs to my province, to examine and settle the controversies which may arise between them and civil servants who are employed under them.” He is careful to distinguish his own words from the words of the cabinet; careful both to lean upon, and to defer to, the judgment of that body; and when the decision is taken, it is in their name that he writes to the vexatious colleague (July 24, 1872): “The cabinet have come to their conclusion, and directed me to make it known to you.... If you think proper to make [pg 421] the announcement of these intentions of the government, they are quite willing that you should do so. If otherwise, Mr. Bruce will do it as home minister. Thus far as to making known what will be done. As to the doing of it, the rules will have to be cancelled at once by you.”
The reader of an authoritarian or arbitrary cast of mind may ask why he did not throw a handful of dust upon the angry combatants. “It is easy,” he wrote to Cardwell (Nov. 20, 1871) “to talk of uprooting X., but even if it were just, it will, as Glyn [the party whip] would tell you, be very difficult. But Y. perhaps proceeds more like Moloch, and X. in the manner of Belial. Why cannot they follow the good example of those worthies, who co-operated in pandemonium? If you thought you could manage Y., I would try to tackle X. I commend this subject to your meditations.” Sulphureous whiffs from this pandemonium were pretty copiously scented both by parliament and the public, and did the ministry some harm.
Of a peer of much renown in points of procedure, private business, and the like, he says, “he looks at everything out of blinkers, and has no side lights.” Of one brilliant and able colleague in the first administration he writes, that “he has some blank in his mental constitution, owing to which he receives admonitions most kindly, and then straightway does the same thing over again.” Of another colleague, “though much nearer the rights of the case than many who were inclined to object, he is thin and poor in the cabinet.” Some one else is “a sensitive man, given beyond most men to speak out his innermost and perhaps unformed thoughts, and thereby to put himself at a disadvantage.” Another public servant is “not unmanageable, but he needs to be managed.” In the same letter he speaks of the Hibernian presbyterian as “that peculiar cross between a Scotchman and an Irishman.”
Of his incessant toil the reader has already a good idea. Here are a few items. To one correspondent (Jan. 21, 1869) he writes: “I hope you do not think my ‘holiday’ at Hawarden has proved my idleness, for I think ten hours a day has been a moderate estimate of my work there on [pg 422] public business, to which some other matters have had to be added.” To the attorney-general he says when he has had three years more of it (Sept. 18, 1872): “I cannot say with you that my office never gives me a day without business, for in the four ‘vacations’ so far as they have gone, I think I have had no less than five days. This vacation has thus far been the best; but heavy and critical work impends.” In October, 1871, he writes to Mrs. Gladstone from Edinburgh: “I have for the first time since the government was formed, had a holiday of two whole days.” To Lord Clarendon he writes from Lord Granville's at Walmer (Sept. 2, 1869): “At the end of a holiday morning of work, since I breakfasted at nine, which has lasted till near four, I have yet to say a few words about....” To Archdeacon Harrison, May 25, 1873: “As you may like to have the exact anatomy of my holiday on the Queen's birthday, I will give it you: 2-1/4 a.m., return home from the H. of C. 10 a.m., two hours' work in my room. 2-7, the cabinet. Three-quarters of an hour's walk. 8-12, thirty-two to dinner and an evening party. 12, bed!” To Sir R. Phillimore, July 23, 1873: “Not once this year (except a day in bed) have I been absent from the hours of government business in the House, and the rigour of attendance is far greater now than at earlier periods of the session.”
His colleagues grudged his absence for a day. On one occasion, in accordance with a lifelong passion and rooted habit, he desired to attend a funeral, this time in Scotland, and Lord Granville's letter of remonstrance to him is interesting in more points than one; it shows the exacting position in which the peculiarities of some colleagues and of a certain section of his supporters placed him:—
It is the unanimous desire of the cabinet that I should try to dissuade you.... It is a duty of a high order for you to do all you can for your health.... You hardly ever are absent from the House without some screw getting loose. I should write much more strongly if I did not feel I had a personal interest in the matter. In so strained a state as Europe is now in, the slightest thing may lead to great consequences, and it is possible [pg 423] that it may be a disadvantage to me and to the chose publique if anything occurs during the thirty-six hours you are absent.
This letter of Lord Granville's was written on July 10, 1870, just five days before war was declared between France and Prussia.
He wrote to the Spectator (May 1873) to correct a report “that every day must begin for me with my old friend Homer.” He says: “As to my beginning every day with Homer, as such a phrase conveys to the world a very untrue impression of the demands of my present office, I think it right to mention that, so far as my memory serves me, I have not read Homer for fifty lines now for a quarter of an hour consecutively for the last four years, and any dealings of mine with Homeric subjects have been confined to a number of days which could be readily counted on the fingers.” Yet at the end of 1869, he winds up a letter of business by saying, “I must close; I am going to have a discussion with Huxley on the immortality of the soul!”