Windsor Castle, April 23, 1880.—At 6.50 I went to the Queen, who received me with perfect courtesy, from which she never deviates. Her Majesty presumed I was in possession of the purport of her communications with Lord Granville and with Lord Hartington, and wished to know, as the administration of Lord Beaconsfield had been “turned out,” whether I was prepared to form a government. She thought she had acted constitutionally in sending for the recognised leaders of the party, and referring the matter to them in the first instance. I said that if I might presume to speak, nothing could in my views be more correct than her Majesty's view that the application should be so made (I did not refer to the case as between Lord Granville and Lord Hartington), and that it would have been an error to pass them by and refer to me. They had stood, I said, between me and the position of a candidate for office, and it was only their advising her Majesty to lay her commands upon me, which could warrant my thinking of it after all that had occurred. But since they had given this advice, it was not consistent with my duty to shrink from any responsibility which I had incurred, and I was aware that I had incurred a very great responsibility. I therefore humbly accepted her Majesty's commission.

Her Majesty wished to know, in order that she might acquaint Lord Beaconsfield, whether I could undertake to form a government, or whether I only meant that I would make the attempt. I said I had obtained the co-operation of Lord Granville and Lord Hartington, and that my knowledge and belief as to prevailing dispositions would, I think, warrant me in undertaking to form a government, it being her Majesty's pleasure. I had ascertained that Lord Granville would be willing to accept the foreign office; and I had also to say that the same considerations which made it my duty to accept office, seemed also to make it my duty to submit myself to her Majesty's pleasure for the office of chancellor of the exchequer together with that of first lord of the treasury.

She asked if I had thought of any one for the war office, which was very important. The report of the Commission would show that Lord Cardwell's system of short service had entirely broken down, and that a change must be made at any rate as regarded the [pg 627] non-commissioned officers. Lord Hartington had assured her that no one was committed to the system except Lord Cardwell, and he was very unwell and hardly able to act. Lord Hartington knew the war office, and she thought would make a good war minister. I said that it seemed to me in the present state of the country the first object was to provide for the difficulties of statesmanship, and then to deal with those of administration. The greatest of all these difficulties, I thought, centred in the India office, and I was very much inclined to think Lord Hartington would be eminently qualified to deal with them, and would thereby take a place in the government suitable to his position and his probable future.

She asked, to whom, then, did I think of entrusting the war office? [Resumed this afternoon, April 24.][372] I said Mr. Childers occurred to me as an administrator of eminent capacity and conciliatory in his modes of action; his mind would be open on the grave subjects treated by the Commission, which did not appear to me to be even for Lord Cardwell matters of committal, but simply of public policy to be determined by public advantage. She thought that Mr. Childers had not been popular at the admiralty, and that it was desirable the secretary for war should be liked by the army. I said that there was an occurrence towards the close of his term which placed him in a difficult position, but relied on his care and discretion. (She did not press the point, but is evidently under strong professional bias.)

She spoke of the chancellorship, and I named Lord Selborne.

She referred to general action and hoped it would be conciliatory. I said that every one who had served the crown for even a much smaller term of years than I had the good or ill fortune to reckon, would know well that an incoming government must recognise existing engagements, and must take up, irrespective of its preferences, whatever was required by the character and honour of the country. I referred to the case of Scinde and Sir R. Peel's cabinet in 1843; which she recognised as if it had been recently before her.

She said, “I must be frank with you, Mr. Gladstone, and must [pg 628] fairly say that there have been some expressions”—I think she said some little things, which had caused her concern or pain. I said that her Majesty's frankness, so well known, was a main ground of the entire reliance of her ministers upon her. That I was conscious of having incurred a great responsibility, and felt the difficulty which arises when great issues are raised, and a man can only act and speak upon the best lights he possesses, aware all the time that he may be in error. That I had undoubtedly used a mode of speech and language different in some degree from what I should have employed, had I been the leader of a party or a candidate for office. Then as regarded conciliation, in my opinion the occasion for what I had described had wholly passed away, and that so far as I was concerned, it was my hope that her Majesty would not find anything to disapprove in my general tone; that my desire and effort would be to diminish, her cares, in any case not to aggravate them; that, however, considering my years, I could only look to a short term of active exertion and a personal retirement comparatively early. With regard to the freedom of language I had admitted, she said with some good-natured archness, “But you will have to bear the consequences,” to which I entirely assented. She seemed to me, if I may so say, “natural under effort.” All things considered, I was much pleased. I ended by kissing her Majesty's hand.

IV

Construction Of Cabinet

The usual embarrassments in building a government filled many days with unintermittent labour of a kind that, like Peel, Mr. Gladstone found intensely harassing, though interesting. The duty of leaving out old colleagues can hardly have been other than painful, but Mr. Gladstone was a man of business, and lie reckoned on a proper stoicism in the victims of public necessity. To one of them he wrote, “While I am the oldest man of my political generation, I have been brought by the seeming force of exceptional circumstances to undertake a task requiring less of years and more of vigour than my accumulating store of the one and waning residue of the other, and I shall be a solecism in the government which I have undertaken to form. I do not feel able to ask you to resume the toils of office,” etc., but [pg 629] would like to name him the recipient for a signal mark of honour. “I have not the least right to be disappointed when you select younger men for your colleagues,” the cheerful man replied. Not all were so easily satisfied. “It is cruel to make a disqualification for others out of an infirmity of my own,” Mr. Gladstone wrote to the oldest of his comrades in the Peelite days, but—et cetera, et cetera, and he would be glad to offer his old ally the red riband of the Bath when one should be vacant. The peer to whom this letter with its dubious solatium was addressed, showed his chagrin by a reply of a single sentence: that he did not wish to leave the letter unanswered, lest it should seem to admit that he was in a state of health which he did not feel to be the case; the red riband was not even declined. One admirable man with intrepid naïveté proposed himself for the cabinet, but was not admitted; another no less admirable was pressed to enter, but felt that he could be more useful as an independent member, and declined—an honourable transaction repeated by the same person on more than one occasion later. To one excellent member of his former cabinet, the prime minister proposed the chairmanship of committee, and it was with some tartness refused. Another equally excellent member of the old administration he endeavoured to plant out in the viceregal lodge at Dublin, without the cabinet, but in vain. To a third he proposed the Indian vice-royalty, and received an answer that left him “stunned and out of breath.” As the hours passed and office after office was filled up, curiosity grew vivacious as to the fate appointed for the younger generation of radicals. The great posts had gone to patrician whigs, just as if Mr. Gladstone had been a Grey or a Russell. As we have seen, he had secured Lord Granville and Lord Hartington before he went to Windsor, and on the evening of his return, the first person to whom he applied was Lord Derby, one of the most sagacious men of his day, but a great territorial noble and a very recent convert. He declined office on the ground that if a man changes his party connection, he is bound to give proof that he wishes the change from no merely personal motive, and that he is not a gainer by it.