The debate on the address had meanwhile been running its course. Mr. Gladstone had made his speech. One of the newspapers afterwards described the liberals as wearing pre-occupied countenances. “We were pre-occupied with a vengeance,” said Mr. Gladstone, “and even while I was speaking I could not help thinking to myself, Here am I talking about Portugal and about Armenia, while every single creature in the House is absorbed in one thing only, and that is an uncommonly long distance from either Armenia or Portugal.” News of the letter, which had been sent to the reporters about eight o'clock, swiftly spread. Members hurried to ex-ministers in the dining-room to ask if the story of the letter were true. The lobbies were seized by one of those strange and violent fevers to which on such occasions the House of Commons is liable. Unlike the clamour of the Stock Exchange or a continental Chamber, there is little noise, but the perturbation is profound. Men pace the corridors in couples and trios, or flit from one knot to another, listening to an oracle of the moment modestly retailing a rumour false on the face of it, or evolving monstrous hypotheses to explain incredible occurrences. This, however, was no common crisis of lobby or gallery.
One party quickly felt that, for them at least, it was an affair of life or death. It was no wonder that the Irish members were stirred to the very depths. For five years they had worked on English platforms, made active friendships with English and Scottish liberals in parliament and out of it, been taught to expect from their aid and alliance that deliverance which without allies must remain out of reach and out of sight; above all, for nearly five years they had been taught to count on the puissant voice and strong right arm of the leader of all the forces of British liberalism.
They suddenly learned that if they took a certain step in respect of the leadership of their own party, the alliance was broken off, the most powerful of Englishmen could help them no more, and that all the dreary and desperate marches since 1880 were to be faced once again in a blind and endless campaign, against the very party to whose friendship they had been taught to look for strength, encouragement, and victory. Well might they recoil. More astounded still, they learned at the same time that they had already taken the momentous step in the dark, and that the knowledge of what they were doing, the pregnant meanings and the tremendous consequences of it, had been carefully concealed from them. Never were consternation, panic, distraction, and resentment better justified.
The Irishmen were anxious to meet at once. Their leader sat moodily in the smoking-room downstairs. His faculty of concentrated vision had by this time revealed to him the certainty of a struggle, and its intensity. He knew in minute detail every element of peril both at Westminster and in Ireland. A few days before, he mentioned to the present writer his suspicion of designs on foot in ecclesiastical quarters, though he declared that he had no fear of them. He may have surmised that the demonstration at the Leinster Hall was superficial and impulsive. On the other hand, his confidence in the foundations of his dictatorship was unshaken. This being so, if deliberate calculation were the universal mainspring of every statesman's action—as it assuredly is not nor can ever be—he would have spontaneously withdrawn for a season, in the [pg 443]
Mr. Parnell's Decision
assurance that if signs of disorganisation were to appear among his followers, his prompt return from Elba would be instantly demanded in Ireland, whether or no it were acquiesced in by the leaders and main army of liberals in England. That would have been both politic and decent, even if we conceive his mind to have been working in another direction. He may, for instance, have believed that the scandal had destroyed the chances of a liberal victory at the election, whether he stayed or withdrew. Why should he surrender his position in Ireland and over contending factions in America, in reliance upon an English party to which, as he was well aware, he had just dealt a smashing blow? These speculations, however, upon the thoughts that may have been slowly moving through his mind, are hardly worth pursuing. Unluckily, the stubborn impulses of defiance that came naturally to his temperament were aroused to their most violent pitch and swept all calculations of policy aside. He now proceeded passionately to dash into the dust the whole fabric of policy which he had with such infinite sagacity, patience, skill, and energy devised and reared.
Two short private memoranda from his own hand on this transaction, I find among Mr. Gladstone's papers. He read them to me at the time, and they illustrate his habitual practice of shaping and clearing his thought and recollection by committal to black and white:—
Nov. 26, 1890.—Since the month of December 1885 my whole political life has been governed by a supreme regard to the Irish question. For every day, I may say, of these five, we have been engaged in laboriously rolling up hill the stone of Sisyphus. Mr. Parnell's decision of yesterday means that the stone is to break away from us and roll down again to the bottom of the hill. I cannot recall the years which have elapsed. It was daring, perhaps, to begin, at the age I had then attained, a process which it was obvious must be a prolonged one.
Simply to recommence it now, when I am within a very few weeks of the age at which Lord Palmerston, the marvel of parliamentary longevity, succumbed, and to contemplate my accompanying [pg 444] the cause of home rule to its probable triumph a rather long course of years hence, would be more than daring; it would be presumptuous. My views must be guided by rational probabilities, and they exclude any such anticipation. My statement, therefore, that my leadership would, under the contemplated decision of Mr. Parnell, be almost a nullity, is a moderate statement of the case. I have been endeavouring during all these years to reason with the voters of the kingdom, and when the voter now tells me that he cannot give a vote for making the Mr. Parnell of to-day the ruler of Irish affairs under British sanction, I do not know how to answer him, and I have yet to ask myself formally the question what under those circumstances is to be done. I must claim entire and absolute liberty to answer that question as I may think right.
Nov. 28, 1890.—The few following words afford a key to my proceedings in the painful business of the Irish leadership.