When I first entered the House of Commons, the Conservative party was in office. About a year after, the general election of 1880 came on, almost in the ordinary course of events, and the result of the appeal to the country was that the Liberals came back to power with a large majority. Mr. Gladstone was at the head of the Liberal party, and he became Prime Minister. Everybody assumed that two such prominent Radicals as Dilke and Chamberlain could not be overlooked by the new Prime Minister in his arrangements to form an administration. I think I am entitled to say, as a positive fact, that Dilke and Chamberlain entered into an understanding between themselves that unless one at least of them was offered a place in the Cabinet, neither would accept office of any kind. Of course when a new Government is in process of formation all these arrangements are matters of private discussion and negotiation with the men at the head of affairs; and the result of interchange of ideas in this instance was that Chamberlain became President of the Board of Trade, with a seat in the Cabinet, and Dilke accepted the office of Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, without a place in the inner Ministerial circle. This was done, not only with Dilke's cordial consent, but at his express wish, for it was his strong desire that the higher place in the administration should be given to his friend.
Now, at this time Mr. Gladstone was not a convinced Home Ruler. I know that the importance of the question was entering his mind and was absorbing much of his attention. I know that he was earnestly considering the subject, and that his mind was open to conviction; but I know also that he was not yet convinced. Chamberlain, therefore, would apparently have had nothing to gain if he merely desired to conciliate the favor of his leader by still putting himself forward as the friend and the ally of the Home Rule party. But he continued, when in office, to be just as openly our friend as he had been in the days when he was only an ordinary member of the House of Commons. There were times when, owing to the policy of coercion pursued in Ireland by the then Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, the relations between the Liberal Government and the Home Rule party were severely strained. We did battle many a time as fiercely against Mr. Gladstone's Government as ever we had done against the Government of his Tory predecessor. Yet Mr. Chamberlain always remained our friend and our adviser, always stood by us whenever he could fairly be expected to do so in public, and always received our confidences in private. When Mr. Parnell and other members of our party were thrown into Dublin prison, Mr. Chamberlain did his best to obtain justice and fair treatment for them and for the Home Rule cause and for the Irish people.
Many American readers will probably have a recollection of what was called the Kilmainham Treaty—the "Treaty" being an arrangement which it was thought might be honorably agreed upon between Mr. Gladstone and the leaders of the Irish party, and by virtue of which an improved system of land-tenure legislation was to be given to Ireland, on the one hand, and every effort was to be made to restore peace to Ireland on the other. I do not intend to go into this old story at any length, my only object being to record the fact that the whole arrangements were conducted between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Parnell, and that Chamberlain was still understood to be the friend of Ireland and of Home Rule. These negotiations led to the resignation of office by the late Mr. William Edward Forster, Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and then came the important question, Who was likely to be put in Mr. Forster's place? I believe that, as a matter of fact, the place was offered, in the first instance, to Sir Charles Dilke, but was declined by him on the ground that he was not also offered a seat in the Cabinet, and Dilke was convinced that unless he had a seat in the Cabinet he could have no chance of pressing successfully on the Government his policy of Home Rule for Ireland.
Mr. Chamberlain then had reason to believe that the office would be tendered to him, and he was willing to accept it and to do the best he could. I know that he believed that the place was likely to be offered to him and that he was ready to undertake its duties, for he took the very frank and straightforward course of holding a conference with certain Irish Nationalist members to whom he made known his views on the subject. The Irish members whom he consulted understood clearly from him that if he went to Ireland in the capacity of Chief Secretary he would go as a Home Ruler and would expect their co-operation and their assistance. There was no secret about this conference. It was held within the precincts of the House of Commons, and Mr. Chamberlain's action in suggesting and conducting it was entirely becoming and proper under the conditions. For some reason or other, which I at least have never heard satisfactorily explained, the office of Chief Secretary was given, after all, to the late Lord Frederick Cavendish. Then followed the terrible tragedy of the Phoenix Park, Dublin, when Lord Frederick and Mr. Thomas Burke, his official subordinate, were murdered in the open day by a gang of assassins. When the news of this appalling deed reached London, Mr. Parnell and I went at once, and as a matter of course, to consult with Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain as to the steps which ought to be taken in order to vindicate the Irish people from any charge of sympathy with so wanton and so atrocious a crime. We saw both Dilke and Chamberlain and consulted with them, and I can well remember being greatly impressed by the firmness with which Mr. Chamberlain declared that nothing which had happened would prevent him from accepting the office of Chief Secretary in Ireland if the opportunity were offered to him. I go into all this detail with the object of making it clear to the reader that, up to this time, Mr. Chamberlain had the full confidence of the Irish Nationalist party and was understood by them to be in thorough sympathy with them as to Ireland's demand for Home Rule.
Mr. Chamberlain did not, however, become Irish Secretary, but retained his position as President of the Board of Trade, and many foreign troubles began in Egypt and other parts of the world which diverted the attention of Parliament and the public for a while from questions of purely domestic policy. Mr. Gladstone, however, succeeded in carrying through Parliament a sort of new reform bill which reconstructed the constituencies, expanded the electorate, and, in fact, set up in the three countries something approaching nearly to the old Chartist idea of equal electoral division and universal suffrage. The foreign troubles, however, were very serious, the Government lost its popularity, and at last was defeated on one of its financial proposals and resigned office. The Tories came into power for a short time. Mr. Chamberlain stumped the country in his old familiar capacity as a Radical politician of the extreme school, and he started a scheme of policy which was commonly described afterwards as the unauthorized programme, in which he advocated, among other bold reforms, a peasant proprietary throughout the country by the compulsory purchase of land, the effect of which would be to endow every deserving peasant with at least three acres and a cow. The Tories were not able to do anything in office, owing to the combined attacks made upon them by the Radicals and the Irish Home Rulers, and in 1886 another dissolution of Parliament took place and a general election came on. The effect of the latest reform measure introduced by Mr. Gladstone now told irresistibly in Mr. Gladstone's favor, and the newly arranged constituencies sent him back into office and into power. Mr. Chamberlain once again joined Mr. Gladstone's Government, and became President of the Local Government Board.
Then comes a sudden change in the story. The extension of the suffrage gave, for the first time, a large voting power into the hands of the majority of the Irish people, for in Ireland up to that date the right to vote had been enjoyed only by the landlord class and the well-to-do middle class; and the result of the new franchise was that Ireland sent into Parliament an overwhelming number of Home Rule Representatives to follow the leadership of Parnell. Gladstone then became thoroughly satisfied that the vast majority of the Irish people were in favor of Home Rule, and he determined to introduce a measure which should give to Ireland a separate domestic Parliament. Thereupon Mr. Chamberlain suddenly announced that he could not support such a measure of Home Rule, and it presently came out that he could not support any measure of Home Rule. He resigned his place in Mr. Gladstone's Government, and he became from that time not only an opponent of Home Rule but a proclaimed Conservative and anti-Radical. When a Tory Government was formed, after the defeat of Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule measure, Mr. Chamberlain became a member of the Tory Government, and he is one of the leading members of a Tory Government at this day.
Now, it is for this reason, I suppose, that the unfriendly critic, of whom I have already spoken more than once, thought himself justified in describing Mr. Chamberlain as the Rabagas of English political life. It is, indeed, hard for any of us to understand the meaning of Mr. Chamberlain's sudden change. At the opening of 1886 he was, what he had been during all his previous political life, a flaming democrat and Radical. In the early months of 1886 he was a flaming Tory and anti-Radical. During several years of frequent association with him in the House of Commons I had always known him as an advocate of Home Rule for Ireland, and all of a sudden he exhibited himself as an uncompromising opponent of Home Rule. Many English Liberal members objected to some of the provisions of Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill, but when these objections were removed in Mr. Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill they returned at once to their places under his leadership. But Mr. Chamberlain would have nothing to do with any manner of Home Rule measure, and when he visited the province of Ulster in the north of Ireland he delighted all the Ulster Orangemen by the fervor of his speeches against Home Rule. Moreover, it may fairly be asked why an English Radical and democrat of extreme views must needs become an advocate of Toryism all along the line simply because he has ceased to be in favor of Home Rule for Ireland. These are questions which I, at least, cannot pretend to answer.
Of course we have in history many instances of conversions as sudden and as complete, about the absolute sincerity of which even the worldly and cynical critic has never ventured a doubt. There was the conversion of Constantine the Great, and there was the sudden change brought about in the feelings and the life of Ignatius of Loyola. But then somehow Mr. Chamberlain does not seem to have impressed on his contemporaries, either before or after his great change, the idea that he was a man cast exactly in the mold of a Constantine or an Ignatius. Only of late years has he been dubbed with the familiar nickname of "Pushful Joe," but he was always set down as a man of personal ambition, determined to make his way well on in the world. We had all made up our minds, somehow, that he would be content to push his fortunes on that side of the political field to which, up to that time, he had proclaimed himself to belong, and it never occurred to us to think of him as the associate of Tory dukes, as a leading member of a Tory Government, and as the champion of Tory principles. Men have in all ages changed their political faith without exciting the world's wonder. Mr. Gladstone began as a Tory, and grew by slow degrees into a Radical. Two or three public men in our own days who began as moderate Liberals have gradually turned into moderate Tories. But Mr. Chamberlain's conversion was not like any of these. It was accomplished with a suddenness that seemed to belong to the days when miracles were yet worked upon the earth. Mr. Chamberlain may well feel proud in the consciousness that the close attention of the political world will follow with eager curiosity his further career.
