Of course if you had gone on alone, Lord Granville told him, you would only have had either more or less than half the liberal party. If Hartington had moved the first two resolutions, the government would certainly have had some 160 or 170 majority. All the malcontents behind the opposition front benches were obliged to vote on Monday, in consequence of having so vigorously preached allegiance during the previous ten days. As it is, the party voted pretty well.
Tacks In Public Opinion
“The assumed laughter of the conservatives,” he adds, “showed their vexation, and some of the radicals showed their cards—that it is not the eastern question, but the hopes of breaking up the party that really excites them.” The radicals on their part were extremely sore at the withdrawal of the resolutions. “Your goodness,” wrote their leading man to Mr. Gladstone the following day, “has been abused in the interests of a section of the party who deserve [pg 569] least at your hands. The current report in the lobbies last night, spread by these gentlemen, and easily believed by their friends, was that you had ‘caved in.’ ” Could he not take some further opportunity of showing that he had not abandoned the policy of joint intervention, and that the liberal party in the country had no reason to regret that they rose almost as one man to his call?
At first it was thought that the discussion had done good by impressing the government with the desire of the country, if not for coercion at least for real neutrality, and that Lord Beaconsfield had submitted to the better influences in the cabinet. It soon appeared that this had not happened. “The fidelity of the party,” said Lord Granville, “and the large majority have given Beaconsfield the lead, of which he has not been slow to avail himself. It is very serious.” The war in the Balkans went on; the Turks fought with valour and constancy: sufferings on both sides were frightful. In England the sympathy with the miserable victims of Turkish misrule became modified by the re-awakened jealousy of Russian power. Mr. Gladstone held his ground with invincible tenacity against all comers. He took his share in such parliamentary operations as were possible, but these operations were necessarily fruitless, and the platform now for the first time became the effective field for moving national opinion.
Great parties of tourists from the northern and midland towns began to make it a fashion to go on high pilgrimage to Hawarden, where besides a fine park they saw the most interesting man in the country, and had a good chance of hearing an eloquent speech, or watching a tree fall under the stroke of his vigorous arm. If they brought him the tribute of a casket or an axe or some cunning walking-stick, he was obliged to thank them, and if he opened his lips to thank them, the all-engrossing theme was sure to well up. Some of these earnest utterances jarred even on his admirers in the press and out of it. Just so would critics in colleges and cathedral closes have found Wesley and Whitefield in their evangelising mission north, south, east, and west, excessive, exaggerated, indiscreet, and deficient in good taste. They [pg 570] could not understand how one supposed to be so knowing in all the manœuvres of parliament and party, was at the same time so naïf. This curious simplicity in fact marked him in all the movements into which he put his heart. Like every other grand missionary—the abolitionist, the gospel missionary, the free trader, the peace man, the temperance man—he could not believe that the truths, arguments, and appeals, of which he was the bearer, could fail to strike in all who heard them the same fire that blazed in bosoms fervid as his own.
He went to Birmingham and was received with tumultuous acclamations by many tens of thousands:—
May 31.—[Hawarden.] Off before 11. Reached Birmingham at 3-1/4. A triumphal reception. Dinner at Mr. Chamberlain's. Meeting 7 to 9-½, half occupied by my speech. A most intelligent and duly appreciative audience—but they were 25,000 and the building I think of no acoustic merits, so that the strain was excessive. A supper followed. June 1.—Breakfast party 9.30. Much conversation on the Birmingham school board system. Off at 10.45 to Enfield factory, which consumed the forenoon in a most interesting survey with Colonel Dickson and his assistants. Then to the fine (qy. overfine?) board school, where addresses were presented and I spoke over half an hour on politics. After luncheon to the town hall; address from the corporation, made a municipal speech of say 20 minutes. A good deal of movement in the streets with us even to-day. Thence to the Oratory and sat with Dr. Newman.[347] Saw Mr. Chamberlain's very pleasing children. Then to the dinner, spoke again. To Hagley at 11.5.
Well was, it said of this visit by Dale, that strenuous whole-hearted man, “Forsaken or but feebly supported by many of those with whom he had shared many glorious conflicts, and who owed to him their place and fame, his courage remained undaunted, and his enthusiasm for righteousness and freedom unquenched.”
Mr. Gladstone described, the general situation in a letter to a correspondent out of England:—
I cannot say much for the conduct of the Powers. That of the pope and his court has been vile; Manning and most part of Ireland have followed suit; France and Germany are thinking of themselves and one another; and Italy, for fear of the pope, is obliged to look very much to Germany. Austria is to some extent in a false position. For us there is no excuse: there was no difficulty whatever in our doing our duty. I have said in parliament, and I deeply feel, it is the most deplorable chapter of our foreign policy since the peace of 1815. The good cause has been further weakened by the bad conduct, in varying degrees, of many races, Magyars and Jews above all. You see I cannot help filling up my paper with this subject.