This letter discloses with precision the critical state of facts on the eve of action being taken. Issue was not directly joined with ministers on home rule; no choice was found to exist as to taking the government; and this brought deep and long-standing diversities among the liberal leaders to the issue that Mr. Gladstone had strenuously laboured to avoid from the beginning of 1885 to the end.
IV
The Irish paragraphs in the speech from the throne (January 21, 1886) were abstract, hypothetical, and vague. The sovereign was made to say that during the past year there had been no marked increase of serious crime, but there was in many places a concerted resistance to the enforcement of legal obligations, and the practice of intimidation continued to exist. “If,” the speech went on, “as my information leads me to apprehend, the existing provisions of the law should prove to be inadequate to cope with these growing evils, I look with confidence to your willingness to invest my government with all necessary powers.” There was also an abstract paragraph about the legislative union between the two islands.
In a fragment composed in the autumn of 1897, Mr. Gladstone has described the anxiety with which he watched the course of proceedings on the Address:—
I had no means of forming an estimate how far the bulk of the liberal party could be relied on to support a measure of home rule, which should constitute an Irish parliament subject to the supremacy of the parliament at Westminster. I was not sanguine on this head. Even in the month of December, when rumours of my intentions were afloat, I found how little I could reckon on a [pg 284] general support. Under the circumstances I certainly took upon myself a grave responsibility. I attached value to the acts and language of Lord Carnarvon, and the other favourable manifestations. Subsequently we had but too much evidence of a deliberate intention to deceive the Irish, with a view to their support at the election. But in the actual circumstances I thought it my duty to encourage the government of Lord Salisbury to settle the Irish question, so far as I could do this by promises of my personal support. Hence my communication with Mr. Balfour, which has long been in the hands of the public.
It has been unreasonably imputed to me, that the proposal of home rule was a bid for the Irish vote. But my desire for the adjustment of the question by the tories is surely a conclusive answer. The fact is that I could not rely upon the collective support of the liberals; but I could and did rely upon the support of so many of them as would make the success of the measure certain, in the event of its being proposed by the tory administration. It would have resembled in substance the liberal support given to Roman catholic emancipation in 1829, and the repeal of the corn laws in 1846. Before the meeting of parliament, I had to encounter uncomfortable symptoms among my principal friends, of which I think —— was the organ.
I was, therefore, by no means eager for the dismissal of the tory government, though it counted but 250 supporters out of 670, as long as there were hopes of its taking up the question, or at all events doing nothing to aggravate the situation.
When we came to the debate on the Address I had to face a night of extreme anxiety. The speech from the throne referred in a menacing way to Irish disturbances, and contained a distinct declaration in support of the legislative union. On referring to the clerks at the table to learn in what terms the Address in reply to the speech was couched, I found it was a “thanking” address, which did not commit the House to an opinion. What I dreaded was lest some one should have gone back to the precedent of 1833, when the Address in reply to the speech was virtually made the vehicle of a solemn declaration in favour of the Act of Union.[175]
Home rule, rightly understood, altered indeed the terms of the Act of Union, but adhered to its principle, which was the supremacy of the imperial parliament. Still [it] was pretty certain that any declaration of a substantive character, at the epoch we had now reached, would in its moral effect shut the doors of the existing parliament against home rule.
In a speech of pronounced clearness, Mr. Arthur Elliot endeavoured to obtain a movement in this direction. I thought it would be morally fatal if this tone were extensively adopted on the liberal side; so I determined on an effort to secure reserve for the time, that our freedom might not be compromised. I, therefore, ventured upon describing myself as an “old parliamentary hand,” and in that capacity strongly advised the party to keep its own counsel, and await for a little the development of events. Happily this counsel was taken; had it been otherwise, the early formation of a government favourable to home rule would in all likelihood have become an impossibility. For although our Home Rule bill was eventually supported by more than 300 members, I doubt whether, if the question had been prematurely raised on the night of the Address, as many as 200 would have been disposed to act in that sense.