The work pressed, and time was terribly short. The new ministers had barely gone through their re-elections before the opposition began to harry them for their policy, and went so far, before the government was five weeks old, as to make the extreme motion for refusing supply. Even if the opposition had been in more modest humour, no considerable delay could be defended. Social order in Ireland was in a profoundly unsatisfactory phase. That [pg 298] fact was the starting-point of the reversal of policy which the government had come into existence to carry out. You cannot announce a grand revolution, and then beg the world to wait. The very reason that justified the policy commanded expedition. Anxiety and excitement were too intense out of doors for anything but a speedy date, and it was quite certain that if the new plan were not at once propounded, no other public business would have much chance.
The new administration did not meet parliament until after the middle of February, and the two Irish bills, in which their policy was contained, were ready by the end of the first week of April. Considering the enormous breadth and intricacy of the subjects, the pressure of parliamentary business all the time, the exigencies of administrative work in the case of at least one of the ministers principally concerned, and the distracting atmosphere of party perturbation and disquiet that daily and hourly harassed the work, the despatch of such a task within such limits of time was at least not discreditable to the industry and concentration of those who achieved it. I leave it still open to the hostile critic to say, as Molière's Alceste says of the sonnet composed in a quarter of an hour, that time has nothing to do with the business.
All through March Mr. Gladstone laboured in what he called “stiff conclaves” about finance and land, attended drawing rooms, and “observed the variations of H.M.'s accueils”; had an audience of the Queen, “very gracious, but avoided serious subjects”; was laid up with cold, and the weather made Sir Andrew Clark strict; then rose up to fresh grapples with finance and land and untoward colleagues, and all the “inexorable demands of my political vocation.” His patience and self-control were as marvellous as his tireless industry. Sorely tried by something or another at a cabinet, he enters,—“Angry with myself for not bearing it better. I ought to have been thankful for it all the time.” On a similar occasion, a junior colleague showed himself less thankful than he should have been for purposeless antagonism. “Think of it as discipline,” said Mr. [pg 299]
On Procedure By Resolution
Gladstone. “But why,” said the unregenerate junior, “should we grudge the blessings of discipline to some other people?”
Mr. Gladstone was often blamed even by Laodiceans among his supporters, not wise but foolish after the event, because he did not proceed by way of resolution, instead of by bill. Resolutions, it was argued, would have smoothed the way. General propositions would have found readier access to men's minds. Having accepted the general proposition, people would have found it harder to resist the particular application. Devices that startled in the precision of a clause, would in the vagueness of a broad and abstract principle have soothed and persuaded. Mr. Gladstone was perfectly alive to all this, but his answer to it was plain. Those who eventually threw out the bill would insist on unmasking the resolution. They would have exhausted all the stereotyped vituperation of abstract motions. They would have ridiculed any general proposition as mere platitude, and pertinaciously clamoured for working details. What would the resolution have affirmed? The expediency of setting up a legislative authority in Ireland to deal with exclusively Irish affairs. But such a resolution would be consistent equally with a narrow scheme on the one hand, such as a plan for national councils, and a broad scheme on the other, giving to Ireland a separate exchequer, separate control over customs and excise, and practically an independent and co-ordinate legislature.[187] How could the government meet the challenge to say outright whether they intended broad or narrow? Such a resolution could hardly have outlived an evening's debate, and would not have postponed the evil day of schism for a single week.
Precedents lent no support. It is true that the way was prepared for the Act of Union in the parliament of Great Britain, by the string of resolutions moved by Mr. Pitt in the beginning of 1799. But anybody who glances at them, will at once perceive that if resolutions on their model had been framed for the occasion of 1886, they would have covered the whole ground of the actual bill, and would instantly have [pg 300] raised all the formidable objections and difficulties exactly as the bill itself raised them. The Bank Charter Act of 1833 was founded on eight resolutions, and they also set forth in detail the points of the ministerial plan.[188] The renewal of the East India Company's charter in the same year went on by way of resolutions, less abundant in particulars than the Bank Act, but preceded by correspondence and papers which had been exhaustively canvassed and discussed.[189] The question of Irish autonomy was in no position of that sort.
The most apt precedent in some respects is to be found on a glorious occasion, also in the year 1833. Mr. Stanley introduced the proposals of his government for the emancipation of the West Indian slaves in five resolutions. They furnished a key not only to policy and general principles, but also to the plan by which these were to be carried out.[190] Lord Howick followed the minister at once, raising directly the whole question of the plan. Who could doubt that Lord Hartington would now take precisely the same course towards Irish resolutions of similar scope? The procedure on the India bill of 1858 was just as little to the point. The general disposition of the House was wholly friendly to a settlement of the question of Indian government by the existing ministry. No single section of the opposition wished to take it out of their hands, for neither Lord Russell nor the Peelites nor the Manchester men, and probably not even Lord Palmerston himself, were anxious for the immediate return of the last-named minister to power. Who will pretend that in the House, of Commons in February 1886, anything at all like the same state of facts prevailed? As for the resolutions in the case of the Irish church, they were moved by Mr. Gladstone in opposition, and he thought it obvious that a policy proposed in opposition stands on a totally different footing from a policy laid before parliament on the responsibility of a government, and a government bound by every necessity of the situation to prompt action.[191]
Two Branches Of The Policy
At a later stage, as we shall see, it was actually proposed that a vote for the second reading of the bill should be taken to mean no more than a vote for its principle. Every one of the objections that instantly sprang out of their ambush against this proposal would have worked just as much mischief against an initial resolution. In short, in opening a policy of this difficulty and extent, the cabinet was bound to produce to parliament not merely its policy but its plan for carrying the policy out. By that course only could parliament know what it was doing. Any other course must have ended in a mystifying, irritating, and barren confusion, alike in the House of Commons and in the country.[192]