COOMASSIE.
The Colonial war broke out on the West Coast of Africa. In consideration of being permitted to annex as much of Sumatra as they could subdue, the Dutch had handed over to England their possessions on the West Coast of
KING KOFFEE’S PALACE, COOMASSIE.
Africa. The English Government soon became involved in a dispute with the King of the Ashantis over a subvention which the Dutch had always paid him. The Ashantis attacked the English settlements near Elmina, but were beaten off by a small party of English troops. When the cool season came it was decided to send Sir Garnet Wolseley with an expedition strong enough to march to Coomassie, the Ashanti capital, and, if need be, lay the country waste. Sir Garnet arrived before his troops, and engaged with success in several unimportant skirmishes. The main army left England in December, and on the 5th of February, 1874, it entered Coomassie in triumph. The place was so unhealthy that it had to be evacuated almost immediately. But ere the troops left a Treaty was signed by which King Koffee renounced his claim to sovereignty over the tribes who had been transferred from the Dutch to the British Protectorate. The management of the expedition was not perfect. But it at all events showed that the administrative departments of the Army had improved somewhat since the Crimean War, and that whilst the English private soldier had lost none of his superb fighting qualities, he was now led by officers possessed of a considerable degree of professional skill. And yet the Ashanti War failed to arrest the decay of public confidence in the Government. With masterly tact the Tory leaders put forward Lord Derby to deprecate wasteful military enterprises and extensions of territory in pestilential climes, whilst Sir Stafford Northcote attacked the Ministry fiercely in September for engaging in such a war without consulting the House of Commons. The effect of this criticism was soon manifest. The sympathies of a large section of the Radicals and of the entire Peace Party were alienated from the Ministry, who now found the arguments they had used to embarrass Mr. Disraeli during the Abyssinian War, turned against themselves. Mr. Bright, in joining a Cabinet which waged a costly war on some wretched African savages without the consent of Parliament, sacrificed the last remnant of authority which his inconsistent attitude to the Education Act had left him. Nor did he regain this authority by writing a letter early in January, in which he expressed an opinion that all difficulties with Ashanti might be settled by arbitration. As the country was actually at war with King Koffee, Mr. Bright’s suggestion was taken to mean that England should, by an act of surrender, pave the way for arbitration between herself and the Ashantis. This could not possibly be the opinion of the Government which was vigorously prosecuting the war, and it was clear that on this subject, as on the Education question, there was chaos in the Cabinet. In these circumstances the question came to be would Ministers dissolve, or would they meet Parliament and attempt to regain popularity through the work of a reconstructed Cabinet, whose latest and most influential recruit never spoke in public without showing that, when he did not abandon his principles, he was at variance with his colleagues? Various rumours were current as to a conflict of opinion on the subject between Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues and the Queen. Ultimately it was decided that there should be no dissolution before spring.
Worn with anxiety, irritated by the failure of his plans for recovering popularity through a reconstruction of his Cabinet, sick in body and mind, the Prime Minister in January fell seriously ill. A fortnight before the opening of the Session he paralysed his Party with amazement by deciding to dissolve Parliament. Seldom has so momentous a decision been arrived at in circumstances so strange and so peculiar. Writing to Lord Salisbury on the 26th of January, 1874, Mr. Hayward says: “Alderson (whom I saw yesterday) thought it unlikely that you would be brought back earlier than you intended by the Dissolution, which has come on every one by surprise. The thought first struck Gladstone as he lay rolled up in blankets to perspire away his cold, was mentioned as a thought to daughter and private secretary, then rapidly ripened into a resolution and submitted to the Cabinet. The secret was wonderfully well kept by everybody. The Liberals are delighted, and the Disraelites puzzled and amazed.”[63]
Parliament was dissolved on the 20th of January, and it was reckoned that the new House of Commons would be elected by St. Valentine’s Day. Mr. Gladstone’s Address to the electors of Greenwich set forth at great length the reasons for his sudden appeal to the country. But Mr. Forster gave the best and briefest explanation, when he told his constituents at Bradford that the Dissolution was due to the petty defeats and humiliations which the Government had suffered since Mr. Disraeli’s refusal to relieve them of the cares of office, and to a desire that the electors should decide whether Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Gladstone should have the spending of the enormous surplus of £6,000,000 at the disposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Gladstone in his declarations of policy referred to the Ashanti War as a warning against “equivocal and entangling engagements.” He complained that the House of Commons was overburdened with work, and, with an eye to the Irish vote, he approved of delegating some of its business to “local and subordinate authorities” under the “unquestioned control” of Parliament. He held out no hopes of effecting any great changes in the Education Act, but he promised a measure of University Reform, supported the extension of Household Franchise to the Counties, and pledged himself to abolish the Income Tax. His meagre references to Foreign Affairs seemed to show that Mr. Bright had forced the Cabinet to accept the unpopular policy of selfish and self-contained isolation, which virtually ignored the higher international duties of England as one of the brotherhood of European nations.
Mr. Disraeli’s manifesto was not at first sight captivating. Instead of attacking Mr. Gladstone’s proposal to abolish the Income Tax as an attempt to secure a Party majority by taking a plébiscite on a Budget which had not yet come before Parliament, Mr. Disraeli fell in gladly with the idea. The abolition of the Income Tax was apparently to him what emigration was to Mr. Micawber when he had it suggested to him for the first time—the dream of his youth, the ambition of his manhood, and the solace of his declining years. The Tory chief also over-elaborated his complaints that Mr. Gladstone had imperilled freedom of navigation in the Straits of Malacca by recognising the right of the Dutch to conquer the Acheenese if they could. Nor was he apparently successful in attacking the Government for entering on the Ashanti War without waiting to ask Parliament for leave to repel Ashanti assaults on our forts. But when he demanded “more energy” in Foreign Affairs than Mr. Gladstone had exhibited, and when he said that measures could be devised to improve the condition of the people without incessant “harassing legislation,” he cut the Government to the quick.
The elections ended in a signal disaster to the Liberal Party. Nobody was ready for the fray. Everybody was irritated at being taken unawares. The influences and the “interests” that had caused the decay of Mr. Gladstone’s Administration have been already described. It will be enough to say here that they smote it with defeat at the polls. The attempt to neutralise these influences by promising to spend the surplus in abolishing the Income Tax and readjusting local taxation completely failed. The working classes were not eager to take off a tax which they did not pay. The majority of the Income Tax payers argued that Mr. Disraeli’s manifesto showed that he was prepared to give them whatever relief was possible. Independent electors felt that it was desirable to censure a project which might establish a precedent for including the Budget in an electoral manifesto,[64] and throwing the financial system of the country into the crucible of a General Election.[65] The City of London decisively abandoned Liberalism. The counties were swept by Tory candidates. The working classes refused to support candidates of their own order, save in Stafford and Morpeth, where the miners returned Mr. Macdonald and Mr. Burt to Parliament. Men of high capacity, unless their names were known to newspaper readers, were ruthlessly rejected. The electors preferred either candidates of loudly-advertised eminence, rich local magnates, or young men of family—especially if they had titles. Only two tenant-farmers were chosen—Mr. Clare Read, a moderate Conservative, and Mr. McCombie, a moderate Liberal. The “professors” and academic politicians went down helplessly in the mêlée—even Mr. Fawcett failing to hold his seat at Brighton, though shortly after Parliament met he was returned by Hackney, where a vacancy accidentally occurred. The Home counties, where “villadom”—to use Lord Rosebery’s term—reigns supreme, went over to Conservatism, and the success of the Tories in the largest cities was amazing. The middling-sized towns, and, generally speaking, the electors north of the Humber, were pretty faithful to Liberalism. But in Ireland the Liberal Party almost ceased to exist—the Irish electors preferring to return either Home Rulers or Tories. Roughly speaking, Mr. Disraeli could count on a steady working majority of fifty, even reckoning the Irish Home Rulers as Liberals.