III
The last meeting of the outgoing cabinet was held on April 21. What next took place has been described by Mr. Gladstone himself in memoranda written during the days on which the events occurred.
Interview with Lord Hartington.
April 22, 1880. At 7 p.m. Hartington came to see me at Wolverton's house and reported on his journey to Windsor.
The Queen stood with her back to the window—which used not to be her custom. On the whole I gathered that her manner was more or less embarrassed but towards him not otherwise than [pg 622] gracious and confiding. She told him that she desired him to form an administration, and pressed upon him strongly his duty to assist her as a responsible leader of the party now in a large majority. I could not find that she expressed clearly her reason for appealing to him as a responsible leader of the party, and yet going past the leader of the party, namely Granville, whom no one except himself has a title to displace. She however indicated to him her confidence in his moderation, the phrase under which he is daily commended in the Daily Telegraph, at this moment I think, Beaconsfield's personal organ and the recipient of his inspirations. By this moderation, the Queen intimated that Hartington was distinguished from Granville as well as from me.
Hartington, in reply to her Majesty, made becoming acknowledgments, and proceeded to say that he did not think a government could be satisfactorily formed without me; he had not had any direct communication with me; but he had reason to believe that I would not take any office or post in the government except that of first minister. Under those circumstances he advised her Majesty to place the matter in my hands. The Queen continued to urge upon him the obligations arising out of his position, and desired him to ascertain whether he was right in his belief that I would not act in a ministry unless as first minister. This, he said, is a question which I should not have put to you, except when desired by the Queen.
I said her Majesty was quite justified, I thought, in requiring positive information, and he, therefore, in putting the question to me. Of my action he was already in substantial possession, as it had been read to him (he had told me) by Wolverton. I am not asked, I said, for reasons, but only for Aye or No, and consequently I have only to say that I adhere to my reply as you have already conveyed it to the Queen.
In making such a reply, it was my duty to add that in case a government should be formed by him, or by Granville with him, whom the Queen seemed to me wrongly to have passed by—it was to Granville that I had resigned my trust, and he, Hartington, was subsequently elected by the party to the leadership in the House of Commons—my duty would be plain. It would be to give them all the support in my power, both negatively, as by absence or [pg 623] non-interference, and positively. Promises of this kind, I said, stood on slippery ground, and must always be understood with the limits which might be prescribed by conviction. I referred to the extreme caution, almost costiveness, of Peel's replies to Lord Russell, when he was endeavouring to form a government in December 1845 for the purpose of carrying the repeal of the Corn Law. In this case, however, I felt a tolerable degree of confidence, because I was not aware of any substantive divergence of ideas between us, and I had observed with great satisfaction, when his address to North-East Lancashire came into my hands, after the writing but before the publication of mine to Midlothian, that they were in marked accordance as to opinions, if not as to form and tone, and I did not alter a word. In the case of the first Palmerston government I had certainly been thrown into rather sharp opposition after I quitted it, but this was mainly due to finance. I had not approved of the finance of Sir George Lewis, highly as I estimated his judgment in general politics; and it was in some ways a relief to me, when we had become colleagues in the second Palmerston government, to find that he did not approve of mine. However, I could only make such a declaration as the nature of the case allowed.
He received all this without comment, and said his conversation with her Majesty had ended as it began, each party adhering to the ground originally taken up. He had not altered his advice, but had come under her Majesty's command to learn my intentions, which he was to make known to her Majesty returning to Windsor this day at one.
He asked me what I thought of the doctrine of obligation so much pressed upon him by the Queen. I said that in my opinion the case was clear enough. Her Majesty had not always acted on the rule of sending for the leader of the opposition. Palmerston was the known and recognised leader of the opposition in 1859, but the Queen sent for Granville. The leader, if sent for, was in my opinion bound either to serve himself, or to point out some other course to her Majesty which he might deem to be more for the public advantage. And if that course should fail in consequence of the refusal of the person pointed out, the leader of the party could not leave her Majesty unprovided [pg 624] with a government, but would be bound in loyalty to undertake the task.