Cambridge send sympathetic messages to the seat of war. It was reinforcements that were needed, if the English in South-East Africa were not to be driven into the sea. Parliament, when it met on the 8th of February, was as wrathful as the country. The Government had let Sir Bartle Frere drag the country into a war, which in a few days the disaster of Isandhlwana showed they were incompetent to conduct with credit to the Empire. If Ministers were not able to emerge, without ignominy, from a conflict with the Zulu king, what must have happened had they been allowed to challenge the Czar of Muscovy to mortal combat? Criticism was felt to be futile, in view of the pressing need to retrieve the disgrace of a defeat, none the less ignominious that the Government and their agents had courted it. But a stern demand was heard on all sides for the recall of Frere and Chelmsford, a demand which, like a vote of censure that was proposed in the House of Lords by Lord Lansdowne on the 25th, and in the Commons by Sir Charles Dilke on the 11th of March, Ministers evaded by administering a strong rebuke to the High Commissioner. As a man of spirit, Frere would have naturally resigned after this rebuke. But he held on to his place, and this was so discreditable, that to account for his conduct a strange theory was mooted. It was said that private letters were sent to him by high personages, some of them connected with the Government, assuring him that the censure of the Secretary of State was not meant to be taken as real, but had been penned merely to save Ministers from a Parliamentary defeat.[143] Sir M. Hicks-Beach’s despatch with the censure ended with these words: “But I have no desire to withdraw the confidence hitherto reposed in you.” Such was the feeble manner in which the Government dealt with a satrap who had virtually usurped the prerogative of the Sovereign to declare war. Soon after the Ministry had warded off the vote of censure in Parliament, the country was again agitated by tidings of further reverses in Zululand, and it was not till the 21st of April that the Government could announce that Pearson’s column, which had been locked up at Ekowe since the outbreak of the war, had been able to save itself by retreat. The indignation of the country grew apace, and at last it was found necessary to allay it by superseding Sir Bartle Frere’s authority in Natal and the Transvaal. Sir Garnet Wolseley was accordingly sent to take supreme command at the scene of action. Ere he could arrive Chelmsford, stimulated into action by Colonel Evelyn Wood, had however taken a decisive step. He gave the Zulus battle at Ulundi on the 3rd of July, and won a victory which put an end to the war. Cetewayo was taken prisoner on the 28th of August, and, despite the efforts made by Sir Garnet Wolseley and others to set up another Government for the one which had been destroyed, Zululand lapsed into the confusion and anarchy in which it has since remained.
The Afghan War had been more skilfully managed. The British invaders overcame all resistance, and when Parliament assembled General Stewart was in possession of Candahar, and Shere Ali had fled from Cabul. Soon afterwards he died, and his heir, Yakoob, came with his submission to the British camp at Gundamuk. There, on the 25th of May, he signed a Treaty which bound the Indian Government to give him a subsidy of £60,000 a year and defend him against his enemies, in return for which he ceded the “scientific frontier,” and agreed to manage his foreign policy in accordance with the advice of a British Resident who was to be received in Cabul. This gleam of success neutralised the effect of the reverses in South Africa, and both Houses voted their thanks to the Indian Viceroy and to the Generals who had carried out the expedition. The Government had no difficulty in persuading Parliament to sanction a loan of £2,000,000 without interest to India, to enable her to pay the expenses of the campaign. In fact, when the Session closed Ministers were jubilant at having upset the predictions of the experienced Anglo-Indians, who had declared that it was impossible to keep a British Resident at Cabul. They assured the nation not only that the British Resident was there, but that the Cabulees were delighted to receive him.
The severe winter of 1879 aggravated the distress which had settled like a blight on the labouring and trading classes, and the existence of which Ministers attempted to ignore. They were, indeed, so ill-advised as to propose a grant of money for the relief of the Turks, who were enduring great sufferings in the Rhodope district. But some of the Tory borough Members threatened to rebel if this project were persisted in, and it was withdrawn. The programme of domestic legislation was long and ambitious, and Ministers very properly began the Session by an attempt to guard against obstruction. They carried a rule which prevented any amendment from being made to the motion that the Speaker of the House of Commons leave the Chair on going into Committee of Supply on Monday nights. This enabled a Minister who came to explain his Estimates to do so at once, because it prevented private Members from interposing, between him and the Committee, with long and irrelevant debates on real and imaginary grievances. The chief measure of the Session was a Bill to consolidate the Mutiny Act and the Articles of War—a measure which still further extended the Parliamentary control of the Army by incorporating these Articles into an Act of Parliament. It was read a second time on the 7th of April; but when it went into Committee it attracted the attention of Mr. Parnell and his followers.
Mr. Parnell now appeared in the character of a British patriot and philanthropist who took an absorbing interest in perfecting the discipline of the Army and in ameliorating the condition of the private soldier. As in
BAVENO, ON LAGO MAGGIORE.
the case of the Prisons Bill, he had mastered every detail of the subject, only he had become a much more formidable personage than he had been in 1877. He had deposed Mr. Butt from the leadership of the Irish party, and, for all practical purposes, he had taken his place.[144] He had shown Ireland that he had been able to procure for her, by one short year’s obstruction in 1877, not only the endowment of her secondary education, but even the release of several Fenian convicts in 1878—a year, said the Times, marked by the cessation of obstruction, and the good relations which obtained between the Government and the Home Rulers. In March he had discussed the Army Estimates with an ability and knowledge which even the Minister for War recognised; and when the Army Discipline Bill was sent before the House in Committee Mr. Parnell was conspicuous for his cleverness in exposing its anomalies, its obsolete applications of the principles of martial law, and its prevailing bias in favour of the officers and against the rank-and-file. When the 44th clause was reached, Mr. Parnell and his friends made a stand against the continuance of flogging in the Army, and at this stage Liberals vied with Ministerialists in denouncing their obstructive tactics. But Mr. Parnell persisted. He had foreseen that he was raising a popular cry. A General Election was at hand, and he knew that the moment it was discovered that he had touched the heart of the constituencies, it would be a question with the Liberals and Conservatives who were then storming at him as to who should be the first to fall into line with him. Mr. Parnell’s cynical prevision was justified by events.