Mr. Trevelyan agreed to join, in the entirely defensible hope that they “would knock the measure about in the cabinet, as cabinets do,” and mould it into accord with what had until now been the opinion of most of its members.[183] Mr. Chamberlain, who was destined to play so singular and versatile a part in the eventful years to come, entered the cabinet with reluctance and misgiving. The Admiralty was first proposed to him and was declined, partly on the ground that the chief of the fighting and spending departments was not the post for one who had just given to domestic reforms the paramount place in his stirring addresses to [pg 295]
Position Of Mr. Chamberlain
the country. Mr. Chamberlain, we may be sure, was not much concerned about the particular office. Whatever its place in the hierarchy, he knew that he could trust himself to make it as important as he pleased, and that his weight in the cabinet and the House would not depend upon the accident of a department. Nobody's position was so difficult. He was well aware how serious a thing it would be for his prospects, if he were to join a confederacy of his arch enemies, the whigs, against Mr. Gladstone, the commanding idol of his friends, the radicals. If, on the other hand, by refusing to enter the government he should either prevent its formation or should cause its speedy overthrow, he would be left planted with a comparatively ineffective group of his own, and he would incur the deep resentment of the bulk of those with whom he had hitherto been accustomed to act.
All these were legitimate considerations in the mind of a man with the instinct of party management. In the end he joined his former chief. He made no concealment of his position. He warned the prime minister that he did not believe it to be possible to reconcile conditions as to the security of the empire and the supremacy of parliament, with the establishment of a legislative body in Dublin. He declared his own preference for an attempt to come to terms with the Irish members on the basis of a more limited scheme of local government, coupled with proposals about land and about education. At the same time, as the minister had been good enough to leave him unlimited liberty of judgment and rejection, he was ready to give unprejudiced examination to more extensive proposals.[184] Such was Mr. Chamberlain's excuse for joining. It is hardly so intelligible as Lord Hartington's reasons for not joining. For the new government could only subsist by Irish support. That support notoriously depended on the concession of more than a limited scheme of local government. The administration would have been overthrown in a week, and to form a cabinet on such a basis as was here proposed would be the idlest experiment that ever was tried.
The appointment of the writer of these pages to be Irish [pg 296] secretary was at once generally regarded as decisive of Mr. Gladstone's ultimate intention, for during the election and afterwards I had spoken strongly in favour of a colonial type of government for Ireland. It was rightly pressed upon Mr. Gladstone by at least one of his most experienced advisers, that such an appointment to this particular office would be construed as a declaration in favour of an Irish parliament, without any further examination at all.[185] And so, in fact, it was generally construed.
Nobody was more active in aiding the formation of the new ministry than Sir William Harcourt, in whose powerful composition loyalty to party and conviction of the value of party have ever been indestructible instincts. “I must not let the week absolutely close,” Mr. Gladstone wrote to him from Mentmore (February 6), “without emphatically thanking you for the indefatigable and effective help which you have rendered to me during its course, in the difficult work now nearly accomplished.”
At the close of the operation, he writes from Downing Street to his son Henry, then in India:—
February 12, 1886. You see the old date has reappeared at the head of my letter. The work last week was extremely hard from the mixture of political discussions on the Irish question, by way of preliminary condition, with the ordinary distribution of offices, which while it lasts is of itself difficult enough.
Upon the whole I am well satisfied with its composition. It is [pg 297] not a bit more radical than the government of last year; perhaps a little less. And we have got some good young hands, which please me very much. Yet short as the Salisbury government has been, it would not at all surprise me if this were to be shorter still, such are the difficulties that bristle round the Irish question. But the great thing is to be right; and as far as matters have yet advanced, I see no reason to be apprehensive in this capital respect. I have framed a plan for the land and for the finance of what must be a very large transaction. It is necessary to see our way a little on these at the outset, for, unless these portions of anything we attempt are sound and well constructed, we cannot hope to succeed. On the other hand, if we fail, as I believe the late ministers would have failed even to pass their plan of repressive legislation, the consequences will be deplorable in every way. There seems to be no doubt that some, and notably Lord R. Churchill, fully reckoned on my failing to form a government.[186]