The great case in which the government were taken to have missed the import of the election was the failure to recall Sir Bartle Frere from South Africa. Of this I shall have enough to say by and by. Meanwhile it gave an undoubted shock to the confidence of the party, and their energetic remonstrance on this head strained Mr. Gladstone's authority to the uttermost. The Queen complained of the tendency of the House of Commons to trench upon the business of the executive. Mr. Gladstone said in reply generally, that no doubt within the half century “there had been considerable invasion by the House of Commons of the province assigned by the constitution to the executive,” but he perceived no increase in recent times or in the present House. Then he proceeded (June 8, 1880):—
... Your Majesty may possibly have in view the pressure which has been exercised on the present government in the case of Sir Bartle Frere. But apart from the fact that this pressure represents a feeling which extends far beyond the walls of parliament, your Majesty may probably remember that, in the early part of 1835, the House of Commons addressed the crown against the appointment of Lord Londonderry to be ambassador at St. Petersburg, on [pg 007]
An Independent House Of Commons
In the field where mastery had never failed him, Mr. Gladstone achieved an early success, and he lost no time in justifying his assumption of the exchequer. The budget (June 10) was marked by the boldness of former days, and was explained and defended in one of those statements of which he alone possessed the secret. Even unfriendly witnesses agreed that it was many years since the House of Commons had the opportunity of enjoying so extraordinary an intellectual treat, where “novelties assumed the air of indisputable truths, and complicated figures were woven into the thread of intelligible and animated narrative.” He converted the malt tax into a beer duty, reduced the duties on light foreign wines, added a penny to the income tax, and adjusted the licence duties for the sale of alcoholic liquors. Everybody said that “none but a cordon bleu could have made such a sauce with so few materials.” The dish was excellently received, and the ministerial party were in high spirits. The conservatives stood angry and amazed that their own leaders had found no device for the repeal of the malt duty. The farmer's friends, they cried, had been in office for six years and had done nothing; no sooner is Gladstone at the exchequer than with magic wand he effects a transformation, and the long-suffering agriculturist has justice and relief.
In the course of an effort that seemed to show full vigour of body and mind, Mr. Gladstone incidentally mentioned that when a new member he recollected hearing a speech upon the malt tax in the old House of Commons in the year 1833. Yet the lapse of nearly half a century of life in that great arena had not relaxed his stringent sense of parliamentary duty. During most of the course of this first session, he was always early in his place and always left late. In every discussion [pg 008] he came to the front, and though an under-secretary made the official reply, it was the prime minister who wound up. One night he made no fewer than six speeches, touching all the questions raised in a miscellaneous night's sitting.
In the middle of the summer Mr. Gladstone fell ill. Consternation reigned in London. It even exceeded the dismay caused by the defeat at Maiwand. A friend went to see him as he lay in bed. “He talked most of the time, not on politics, but on Shakespeare's Henry viii., and the decay of theological study at Oxford. He never intended his reform measure to produce this result.” After his recovery, he went for a cruise in the Grantully Castle, not returning to parliament until September 4, three days before the session ended, when he spoke with all his force on the eastern question.
III
In the electoral campaign Mr. Gladstone had used expressions about Austria that gave some offence at Vienna. On coming into power he volunteered an assurance to the Austrian ambassador that he would willingly withdraw his language if he understood that he had misapprehended the circumstances. The ambassador said that Austria meant strictly to observe the treaty of Berlin. Mr. Gladstone then expressed his regret for the words “of a painful and wounding character” that had fallen from him. At the time, he explained, he was “in a position of greater freedom and less responsibility.”
At the close of the session of 1880, ministers went to work upon the unfulfilled portions of the Berlin treaty relating to Greece and Montenegro. Those stipulations were positive in the case of Montenegro; as to Greece they were less definite, but they absolutely implied a cession of more or less territory by Turkey. They formed the basis of Lord Salisbury's correspondence, but his arguments and representations were without effect.
Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues went further. They proposed and obtained a demonstration off the Albanian coast on behalf of Montenegro. Each great Power sent a man-of-war, but the concert of Europe instantly became what [pg 009]