The eventful day for the division of the spoil came on the 16th of
REVIEW IN WINDSOR GREAT PARK OF THE TROOPS FROM THE ASHANTI WAR: THE MARCH PAST BEFORE THE QUEEN.
April, when Sir Stafford Northcote made his statement. In spite of Mr. Lowe’s remission of taxes, his payment of the Alabama Claims, his disbursement of £800,000 on the Ashanti War, the year 1873-74 ended with a surplus in hand of £1,000,000. On the basis of existing taxation Sir Stafford Northcote for the coming year estimated his revenue at £77,995,000, to which he added £500,000 from interest on Government advances for agricultural improvements heretofore added to Exchequer balances and never reckoned in the revenue. His expenditure was taken at £72,503,000, so that he had the magnificent surplus of £6,000,000 to play with. Never did a Finance Minister use a great opportunity more tamely. With such a sum at his disposal he might have re-cast the fiscal system of England and won a reputation rivalling that of Peel. But Northcote had not the heart to climb ambition’s ladder. He pleaded lack of time as an excuse for attempting no great stroke of financial policy, and he frittered away his six millions as follows:—He gave £240,000 in aid of the support of pauper lunatics; £600,000 in aid of the Police rate; £170,000 in increased local rates on Government property, and this sum of £1,010,000 was to be raised in succeeding years by further payments for pauper lunatics to £1,250,000 as an Imperial subvention to local taxation.[71] He devoted £2,000,000 to the remission of the Sugar Duties; he took a penny off the Income Tax, which absorbed £1,540,000, and he remitted the House Duties, which cost him £480,000. The half-million of interest on loans which he had included in revenue Sir Stafford Northcote used to create terminable annuities, which would in eleven years extinguish £7,000,000 of National Debt. The fault of the Budget was that nothing historic was done with a surplus such as rarely occurs in the history of a nation. Even if Sir Stafford Northcote felt unequal to the task of re-casting the whole financial system, and giving relief to the poorer taxpayers, he could easily have earned for his Government the enduring gratitude of the nation. He might, for example, have created terminable annuities to pay off twenty or thirty millions of National Debt before 1890.
Mr. Cross’s Licensing Bill was introduced early in May, when the publicans, who had worked hard to put the Government in power, expected Mr. Austin Bruce’s restrictions on the hours of opening public-houses to be swept away. Mr. Cross, however, found that the magistrates and police, and more respectable inhabitants of every town and parish, were of opinion that these restrictions had done good. He was, therefore, forced to disappoint his clients. He left the Sunday hours untouched. On week-days he fixed the hours for closing at half-past twelve in London, half-past eleven in populous places, and eleven in rural districts.[72] He cancelled the permission given by Mr. Bruce to fifty-four houses to remain open till one in the morning, in order to provide refreshments for playgoers and theatrical people. Inasmuch as the Government were at the mercy of the publican vote in a great many constituencies, the Bill was most creditable to Mr. Cross. It was, in truth, a Bill not in extension but in further restriction of the hours of opening, and in passing it he risked giving offence to Ministerialists who had won their seats under a pledge that the existing restrictions would be relaxed.[73]
Quite unexpectedly the Ministry plunged into the stormy sea of ecclesiastical legislation, and as was hinted at broadly, not without encouragement from the Queen. This much might also have been inferred from two facts. The churchmen who had most strongly influenced the Court in matters of ecclesiastical government were Dr. Tait, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dr. Norman Macleod, Minister of the Barony Parish in Glasgow. The Bill dealing with the English Church represented the ideas of Tait. That dealing with the Kirk of Scotland embodied the policy of Macleod. Indeed, pressure of an unusual character must have been applied to the Prime Minister to support the former measure, which he knew only too well must provoke dissensions in his Cabinet. It was on the 20th of April that Dr. Tait introduced the Public Worship Regulation Bill in the House of Lords, and the best and briefest description of it was that which was subsequently given by Mr. Disraeli, who said, in one of the debates in the House of Commons, that it was a Bill “to put down Ritualism.” At first Ministers did not give it warm support, in fact, Lord Salisbury opposed it vigorously. After it had passed through the House of Lords the fiction that it was a private Member’s Bill was still kept up, the Second Reading being moved in the House of Commons by Mr. Russell Gurney. Mr. Hall, the new Tory member for Oxford, moved an amendment to Mr. Gurney’s motion, and Mr. Gladstone opposed the measure as an attack on congregational liberties, which had been consecrated by usage. The three great divisions of the Established Church, the Evangelical, Broad, and High Church Parties, had each been allowed a large scope of liberty. Why single out the last for an invidious assault? Mr. Gladstone, however, did not deny that some Ritualistic practices were offensive, and he moved six resolutions which would sufficiently protect congregations from priestly extravagances, and yet leave the clergy ample freedom in ordering their church service. These resolutions disintegrated both parties in the State. Sir William Harcourt led a Liberal revolt against Mr. Gladstone. The Secretary for War (Mr. Gathorne-Hardy) replied hotly to Sir William Harcourt’s ultra-Erastian harangue. Mr. Disraeli here cast in his lot with the supporters of the Bill; which, despite the opposition of Mr. Hardy, Sir Stafford Northcote, and Lord John Manners, accordingly became in a few days a Cabinet measure. In the House of Lords matters grew still more serious. When the House of Commons sent the Bill back to the Peers, one of Mr. Gladstone’s defeated amendments was speedily inserted in it, and Lord Salisbury “utterly repudiated the bugbear of a majority in the House of Commons.” A few days afterwards Mr. Disraeli replied with caustic humour to the taunts of Lord Salisbury, whom he ridiculed as “a great master,” so he called him, “of gibes, and flouts, and sneers.” Still, the Commons accepted the Lords’ Amendments, which were for the most part in favour of individual freedom, and so the Bill passed. But Mr. Disraeli paid a great price for his complaisance to the Court and its confidential ecclesiastical adviser. The High Church Party, who had ever marched in the van of his supporters, became disaffected, and in every future electoral contest those of them who did not fall sulking to the rear went over to the enemy. Mr. Disraeli’s tactical blunder in identifying his Cabinet with the Public Worship Regulation Bill of 1874 was notoriously one of the causes of the collapse of the Tory Party in the General Election of 1880. His other adventure into the perilous region of ecclesiastical legislation was not so disastrous to his Party as to the institution it was his desire to protect and strengthen. In 1869 Dr. Macleod had headed a deputation which waited on Mr. Gladstone, asking him to abolish lay Patronage in the Scottish State Church. Mr. Gladstone asked if Macleod and his colleagues had considered what view was likely to be taken of the proposal by the other Presbyterian churches of Scotland, “regard being had to their origin.” This phrase struck the deputation dumb. It was as if Mr. Gladstone had asked whether they thought it right that the clergy of the Free Church, who sacrificed their endowments in 1843 because the Party whom the deputation represented successfully prevented the abolition of lay Patronage, should be ignored now, when this very Party proposed that the price they agreed to pay for the enjoyment of their benefices should no longer be exacted. The project, according to Dr. Macleod, excited no great enthusiasm in Scotland,[74] but the Courts of the Scottish Established Church supported it strongly. In 1874 Mr. Disraeli, yielding to pressure, which it was admittedly difficult to resist, permitted Lord Advocate Gordon to introduce his Scottish Patronage Bill. It abolished the rights of lay patrons, and vested presentations to livings in the hands of the congregations of the Established Church of Scotland. When the patron was a private individual he was compensated, but when the patronage to a benefice was held by
