Electoral Manifesto
The performance was styled by his rival “a prolix narrative,” but it is said that in spite of this Mr. Disraeli read it with much alarm. He thought its freshness and boldness would revive Mr. Gladstone's authority, and carry the elections. His own counter-manifesto was highly artificial. He launched sarcasms about the Greenwich seat, about too much energy in domestic legislation, and too little in foreign policy; about an act of folly or of ignorance rarely equalled in dealing with the straits of Malacca (though for that matter not one elector in a hundred thousand had ever heard of this nefarious act). While absolving the prime minister himself, “certainly at present,” from hostility to our national institutions and the integrity of the empire, he drew a picture of unfortunate adherents—some assailed the monarchy, others impugned the independence of the House of [pg 489] Lords, while others would relieve parliament altogether from any share in the government of one portion of the United Kingdom; others, again, urged Mr. Gladstone to pursue his peculiar policy by disestablishing the anglican as he has despoiled the Irish church; even trusted colleagues in his cabinet openly concurred with them in their desire altogether to thrust religion from the place which it ought to occupy in national education. What is remarkable in Disraeli's address is that to the central proposal of his adversary he offered no objection. As for remission of taxation, he said, that would be the course of any party or any ministry. As for the promise of reduced local burdens and the abolition of the income-tax, why, these “were measures which the conservative party have always favoured and which the prime minister and his friends have always opposed.”
By critics of the peevish school who cry for better bread than can be made of political wheat, Mr. Gladstone's proffer to do away with the income-tax has been contumeliously treated as dangling a shameful bait. Such talk is surely pharisaic stuff. As if in 1852 Disraeli in his own address had not declared that the government would have for its first object to relieve the agricultural interest from certain taxes. Was that a bribe? As if Peel in 1834-5 had not set forth in the utmost detail all the measures that he intended to submit to parliament if the constituencies would give him a majority. Was this to drive an unprincipled bargain? As if every minister does not always go to the country on promises, and as if the material of any promise could be more legitimate than a readjustment of taxation. The proceeding was styled a sordid huckstering of a financial secret for a majority. Why was it more sordid to seek a majority for abolition of the income-tax, than it was sordid in Peel in 1841 to seek a majority for corn laws, or in whigs and Manchester men to seek to win upon free trade? Why is it an ignoble bargain to promise to remove the tax from income, and pure statesmanship to remove the tax from bread? “Give us a majority,” said Mr. Gladstone, “and we will do away with income-tax, lighten local burdens, and help to free the breakfast table.” If people believed him, what better reason could they have [pg 490] than such a prospect as this for retaining him in the place of their chief ruler?
IV
Parliament was dissolved on January 26, and the contending forces instantly engaged. Mr. Gladstone did not spare himself:—
Jan. 26, '74.—8-3/4-5-3/4. To Osborne. Audience of H.M. who quite comprehends the provisional character of the position. ... Boundless newspaper reading. 28.—2-5. To Greenwich. Spoke an hour to 5000. An enthusiastic meeting, but the general prospects are far from clear.[305] 31.—-Woolwich meeting. The meeting disturbed by design was strangely brought round again. Feb. 2.—Third great meeting and speech of an hour at New Cross for Deptford. Much enthusiasm and fair order. 3.—Many telegrams and much conversation with Granville and Wolverton in the evening. The general purport was first indifferent, then bad. My own election for Greenwich after Boord the distiller, is more like a defeat than a victory, though it places me in parliament again. A wakeful night, but more I believe from a little strong coffee drunk incautiously, than from the polls, which I cannot help and have done all in my power to mend.
The Greenwich seat, the cause of such long perturbation, was saved after all, but as Mr. Gladstone wrote to a defeated colleague, “In some points of view it is better to be defeated outright, than to be pitched in like me at Greenwich.” The numbers were Boord (C.) 6193, Gladstone (L.) 5968, Liardet (C.) 5561, Langley (L.) 5255.
The General Election
The conservative reaction was general. Scotland and Wales still returned a liberal majority, but even in these strongholds a breach was made—a net loss of 3 in Wales, of 9 in Scotland. From the English counties 145 tories were returned, and no more than 27 liberals, a loss of 13. In the greater boroughs, hitherto regarded as staunchly [pg 491] ministerial, some of the most populous returned tories. The metropolitan elections went against the government, and 7 seats were lost—three in the city, one in Westminster, in both cases by immense majorities. The net liberal loss in the English boroughs was 32. In England and Wales the tory majority was 105; in Great Britain it stood at 83. When all was over, the new House contained a conservative majority of 48, or on another estimate, of 50, but really, in Mr. Gladstone's words, “of much greater strength.”
Numbers, as Mr. Gladstone said afterwards, did not exhibit the whole measure of the calamity. An extraordinary portent arose in that quarter from which so many portents spring. “The liberal majority reckoned to have been returned from Ireland was at once found to be illusory. Out of the 105 members the liberals were little more than a dozen. The period immediately following the Church Act and Land Act had been chosen as one appropriate for a formal severance of the Irish national party from the general body of British liberals. Their number was no less than fifty-eight, an actual majority of the Irish representation. They assumed the name of home rulers, and established a separate parliamentary organisation. On some questions of liberal opinion co-operation was still continued. But, as regards the party, the weight of the home rulers clearly told more in favour of the conservative ministry than of the opposition; and the liberal party would have been stronger not weaker had the entire body been systematically absent.”[306] Before the election was over, Mr. Chichester Fortescue had warned him that he expected defeat in the county of Louth, for which he had sat ever since 1847; the defeat came. Mr. Gladstone wrote to him (Feb. 11):—