Now as regards the immediate subject. What if Chamberlain and Dilke, as you seem to anticipate, raise the question of a prospective declaration about local government in Ireland as a condition of their remaining in the cabinet? I consider that question as disposed of for the present (much against my will), and I do not see that any of us, having accepted the decision, can attempt to disturb it. Moreover, their ground will be very weak and narrow; for their actual reason of going, if they go, will be the really small question arising upon the Land Purchase bill.
I think they will commit a great error if they take this course. It will be straining at the gnat. No doubt it will weaken the party at the election, but I entertain no fear of the immediate effect. Their error will, however, in my view go beyond this. Forgive me if I now speak with great frankness on a matter, one of few, in which I agree with them, and not with you. I am firmly convinced that on local government for Ireland they hold a winning position; which by resignation now they will greatly compromise. You will all, I am convinced, have to give what they recommend; at the least what they recommend.
There are two differences between them and me on this subject. First as to the matter; I go rather further than they do; for I would undoubtedly make a beginning with the Irish police. Secondly as to the ground; here I differ seriously. I do not reckon with any confidence upon Manning or Parnell; I have never looked much in Irish matters at negotiation or the conciliation of [pg 198] leaders. I look at the question in itself, and I am deeply convinced that the measure in itself will (especially if accompanied with similar measures elsewhere, e.g. in Scotland) be good for the country and the empire; I do not say unmixedly good, but with advantages enormously outweighing any drawbacks.
Apart from these differences, and taking their point of view, I think they ought to endeavour to fight the election with you; and in the new state of affairs which will be presented after the dissolution, try and see what effect may be produced upon your mind, and on other minds, when you have to look at the matter cominus and not eminus, as actual, and not as hypothetical. I gave Chamberlain a brief hint of these speculations when endeavouring to work upon him; otherwise I have not mentioned them to any one.
IV
On the day of his return to London from Hawarden Mr. Gladstone had an interview with the two ministers with whom on the merits he was most disposed to agree, though he differed strongly from them as to tactics. Resignations were still only suspended, yet the prospects of compromise were hopeful. At a cabinet held on the following day (June 5) it was agreed that he should in the course of a week give notice of a bill to take the place of the expiring Crimes Act. The point left open was whether the operative provisions of such an Act—agreed on some time before—should not be brought into operation without some special act of the executive government, by proclamation, order in council, or otherwise. Local government was still left open. Lord Spencer crossed over from Ireland on the night of June 7, and the cabinet met next day. All differences were narrowed down to the point whether the enactments against intimidation should be inoperative unless and until the lord lieutenant should waken them into life by proclamation. As it happened, intimidation had been for a considerable time upon the increase—from which it might be inferred either, on the one side, that coercion failed in its object, or, on the other, that more coercion was still indispensable. The precise state in which matters were left at the eleventh hour before the crisis, now swiftly advancing, [pg 199]
Final Deliberations
was set out by Mr. Gladstone in a letter written by him to the Queen in the autumn (October 5), when he was no longer her Majesty's minister:—
To the Queen.
... He has perceived that in various quarters misapprehension prevails as to the point at which the deliberations of the late cabinet on the question of any renewal of, or substitution for, the Crimes Act in Ireland had arrived when their financial defeat on the 8th of June caused the tender of their resignation.