The Parliament of 1882 was opened on the 7th of February, and the Queen’s Speech announced the approaching marriage of the Duke of Albany. Foreign affairs were hopefully touched on. Local self-government, London municipal reform, bankruptcy reform, corrupt practices at elections, the conservancy of rivers, and the codification of the Criminal Law, were the subjects of promised legislation. Very early in the Session Mr. Bradlaugh renewed his attempt to take the Parliamentary Oath, but was again excluded from the precincts of the House by a resolution moved by Sir Stafford Northcote. On the 21st of February the House refused to issue a new writ for Northampton, and Mr. Bradlaugh, after the division, proceeded to swear himself in at the Clerk’s table. Sir Stafford Northcote accordingly moved and carried a resolution expelling him from the House. This caused a fresh election to be held at Northampton, the result of which was that Mr. Bradlaugh was again returned by a triumphant majority. On the 6th of March Sir Stafford Northcote proposed a resolution excluding Mr. Bradlaugh from the precincts of the House, and then, sated with its saturnalia of intolerance, the Opposition permitted Ministers to get on with the most pressing question of the hour—the reform of Procedure. The proposals of the Government were, in the main, identical with those which the Speaker had designed to defeat obstruction in the previous Session; but they were to be of permanent application, and not dependent on the carrying of a vote of urgency. It was provided that a debate might be closed, on the Speaker’s initiation, by a bare majority, only there must, in that case, be at least two hundred Members voting in favour of closure if as many as forty members opposed it; but if fewer than forty opposed, at least one hundred would be required to carry it. Non-contentious business relating to Law and Commerce might be delegated to two Grand Committees. The Tories objected to closure by a bare majority, and they fortunately found a Liberal—Mr. Marriott, Q.C.—to move an amendment to this part of Mr. Gladstone’s plan, and the debate began on the 20th of February. In the meantime the Irish Home Rulers, who had not scrupled to impede the working of the Land Act, found unexpected allies in the Conservative Peers. They attacked the Act as a failure, and carried a motion appointing a hostile Committee to inquire into its working. It has always been the practice of the Peers, when they dared not cut down the plant of Reform, to insist on pulling it up to see if its roots were growing, and in this case their strategy was ingeniously adapted to suit the policy of obstruction in the Commons. It was necessary to neutralise the hostile vote of the Peers by a Resolution in the Commons condemning the proposed inquiry as mischievous; and, though this was carried, it gave the Tory and Parnellite opponents of the Government an excellent chance of wasting time by re-opening and discussing the whole Irish Land Question. The Procedure debates were thus suspended for about a month, Mr. Marriott’s amendment being rejected on the 30th of March. Negotiations for a compromise between Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Gladstone were interrupted by a catastrophe which revolutionised the Irish policy of the Government, namely, the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Thomas Burke in the Phœnix Park, Dublin.
During the first two months of the Session the Irish Party vied with the Conservatives in assailing the Land Act. Radicals began to murmur against the development of Mr. Forster’s coercive policy, every incident and detail of which was subjected by the Irish Members to bitter criticism and violent denunciation. In the meantime, Mr. Forster’s scheme for pacifying Ireland was not prospering, and it was seen that he had made a fatal mistake when he pledged himself to suppress agitation, if he were only empowered to arrest the leading agitators. From the day they were imprisoned, Ireland drifted towards anarchy and terrorism. Then the experiment was tried of arresting, not only the leaders, but their lieutenants. Finally Mr. Forster crowded the prisons with the rank and file of the Home Rule host. Men began to wonder whether the gaol accommodation of Ireland was adequate for Mr. Forster’s policy. But the more people he put in prison the worse the country grew, the more did evictions increase, and the less rent was paid. A bid for the Irish vote was now made by the Tories. They put up Sir John Hay to move that the detention of the “suspects” was “repugnant to the spirit of the Constitution.” Through Mr. W. H. Smith, in one of the debates on the Land Act, they offered the Nationalists a scheme for buying out the landlords at the expense of the State, and establishing peasant proprietorship in Ireland, such as had been advocated by Mr. Davitt and Mr. Parnell. It was clear that the Tory-Parnellite alliance was becoming a formidable combination, and the Radicals urged the Government to make terms with the Nationalist Party whilst there was yet time. But Mr. Gladstone hesitated, and then the Radicals moved without him. An intrigue, instigated by Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, was set on foot to get Mr. Forster removed from his place as Irish Secretary. Through Captain O’Shea as an intermediary, Mr. Parnell was approached. He had certainly seen with alarm the increase in evictions, and knew that if the struggle were prolonged the financial resources of the Leaguers must fail them. He was, therefore, disposed to come to terms. Letters were exchanged, in one of which Mr. Parnell said that a promise to deal with the question of arrears would do much to bring peace to Ireland, for the Nationalists would then be able to exert themselves, with some hope of success, in stopping outrages. But the Land Act would have to be extended to leaseholders, and the Purchase Clauses enlarged. If this programme were carried out, wrote Mr. Parnell on the 28th of August to Captain O’Shea, it “would enable us to co-operate cordially for the future with the Liberal Party in forwarding Liberal principles; and I believe that the Government at the end of the Session would, from the state of the country, feel themselves thoroughly justified in dispensing with future coercive measures.” This letter was shown to Mr. Forster, and it seems that the Cabinet was also put in possession of Mr. Parnell’s views. Mr. Forster was not of opinion that they justified his release. Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke thought that they displayed a reasonable spirit which would justify a new departure of conciliation in Irish policy. Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, Mr. Davitt, and the other suspects were therefore released, and Lord Cowper, the Irish Viceroy, and Mr. Forster resigned office. Mr. Forster was of opinion that Mr. Parnell should have been compelled to promise publicly not to resist the law, or failing that, that a stronger Coercion Act should have been passed before he was set at liberty. Lord Spencer was appointed to succeed Lord Cowper, and Lord Frederick Cavendish succeeded Mr. Forster as Chief Secretary. On the 6th of May, within forty-eight hours of their appointment, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke, the Under-secretary for Ireland, were butchered by a band of assassins in broad daylight in the Phœnix Park, Dublin. Mr. Forster, in fact, had allowed a secret society of assassins, calling themselves “Invincibles,” to organise itself at his own doors, whilst he was scouring the country far and wide to arrest and imprison the patriotic but respectable bourgeoisie of Ireland as suspects. In his speech condemning the release of the suspects, whilst he maintained that Ireland was not yet quiet, he had declared that the country was quieter than it had been, that the Land League was crushed, and boycotting checked! He had never suspected that the place of the Land League had been taken by a secret society of desperadoes called the “Invincibles” and that assassination was to be substituted for boycotting. His administration had been indeed singularly ineffective. With power in his hands, as absolute as that of a Russian Minister of Police, he seems never to have suspected the existence of the band of murderers who had organised themselves in Dublin, and who had dogged his own steps in sight of the detectives who watched over him day after day seeking for a chance of slaying him. This tragic event upset the scheme for “a new departure,” which Mr. Chamberlain had induced the Government to essay. Though Englishmen behaved with great calmness and self-restraint after the first shock of horror which the Phœnix Park murders sent through the nation had passed away, they were resolved to offer no more concessions to Ireland till the Government took fresh powers for enforcing law and suppressing outrages. Mr. Gladstone interpreted the national will accurately when he determined not to withdraw the conciliatory portion of his Irish programme. But he recast his plans, and gave his coercive precedence over his remedial measures.
LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH.
(From a Photograph by the London Stereoscopic Company.)
The Irish Party were probably sincere in regretting and in condemning the murders. The prestige of their Parliamentary policy was sullied when it ended in a new Coercion Bill for Ireland, and in the demonstration of their impotence to control the forces which they pretended to have in hand. The Tories and Ministerialists were alike discredited by the untoward mishap. The alliance between the Tory Party and the Home Rulers had influenced every Parliamentary bye-election and every division in the House of Commons. The motion of Sir John Hay condemning the imprisonment of the “suspects” and the offer of Mr. W. H. Smith’s scheme for expropriating the landlords were palpable bids for the Parnellite vote. By releasing the “suspects,” promising to deal with the question of arrears, and to take the Land Purchase Question in hand, the Ministry outbade their rivals. But the Opposition and the Cabinet were alike guilty of intriguing and negotiating with men whom in people they pretended to denounce as irreconcilable enemies of the Empire; and the end of it all was the tragedy in the Phœnix Park! That affair had only a coincidental relation to the antecedent Party intrigues; but the people saw connection where there was only coincidence. Hence Englishmen for a time lost faith in their public men. They felt towards them as their forefathers did towards Charles I. when the Glamorgan Treaty was revealed, and towards Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell when the “Lichfield House” compact between O’Connell and the Whigs was unmasked. For a time this feeling cowed partisans below the gangway on both sides who had been mainly responsible for the negotiations and intrigues with the Home Rulers. The Government tried to atone for its misfortune by continuing Lord Spencer as Irish Viceroy and appointing Mr. George Otto Trevelyan as Irish Secretary, Lord Spencer to be entirely responsible for Irish policy in the Cabinet. This was the best possible selection that could be made. Lord Spencer represented the type of Englishman who, from his courage, common sense, love of justice, business-like habits, administrative skill, and disinterested patriotism, was most likely to establish an enduring and endurable system in Ireland, if that were to be done by firm and resolute government tempered by strong popular sympathies. Mr. Trevelyan was patient, industrious, and courteous as an administrator, and his success as a man of letters rendered him in some degree a persona grata to the Irish Party, most of whose leaders were writers for the Press. The new Coercion Bill was introduced on the 11th of May, and read a second time on the 19th. It suspended trial by jury in certain cases and in proclaimed districts; gave the police fresh powers of arrest and search, and revived the Alien Act; it defined as punishable offences intimidation, incitement to crime, and participation in secret conspiracies and illegal assemblies; it rendered newspapers liable to suppression for inciting to violence, widened the summary jurisdiction of stipendiary magistrates, and levied fines of compensation on districts stained with murderous outrages. It was at once seen that the chief merit of the Bill lay in the fact that it frankly attacked and punished criminals, thereby reversing, and by implication condemning, the feeble and futile policy of Mr. Forster, who attacked and imprisoned at will persons who were merely suspected of crime or of inciting to crime. Great doubts were expressed as to the utility of the Press clauses, Englishmen who are not political partisans being at all times sceptical as to the good that is done by suppressing newspapers and bottling up all their evil teaching in private manifestoes for secret circulation in disaffected districts. Some Radicals also thought the powers of arrest after nightfall given to the police were rather vague, and suggested too painfully a revival of Mr. Forster’s fatal principle of coercion on suspicion. But, on the whole, the Bill was well received by the best men of both parties, the responsible Tory leaders giving the Government much loyal support, though some of their followers carped at the measure.[177] The Bill was obstructed in the usual manner by the Irish Members, who had but few Radical allies. On the 16th of June only seven clauses out of thirty had gone through Committee. On the 29th it was clear a crisis had come, and on the 30th there was a disorderly all-night sitting, which ended in the suspension of sixteen Irish Members. Later in the day nine others were suspended, and, after sitting for twenty-eight hours, the Bill passed through Committee. Urgency was voted for its next stages, and the Bill read a third time on the 7th of July. The Lords passed it promptly, and it became law on the 12th of July.
Along with the Coercion Bill the promised Arrears Bill was introduced, and read a second time before Whitsuntide. It applied to holdings under £30 of rental, and empowered the Land Courts to pay half the arrears of poor tenants out of the Irish Church Surplus—but no payment was to exceed a year’s rent, and all past arrears were to be cancelled. After prolonged opposition from the Conservatives and from the House of Lords, the measure was passed on the 10th of August. These Bills exhausted the legislative energies of the Government; indeed, Mr. Fawcett’s Bill establishing a Parcel Post, and Mr. Chamberlain’s Bill enabling corporations to adopt Electric Lighting by obtaining provisional orders from the Board of Trade, were the only measures that had not to be abandoned. The Budget estimated expenditure at £84,630,000 and revenue at £84,935,000, a reduction of between £900,000 and £800,000 respectively on the preceding year’s disbursements and receipts. The surplus was small. The revenue was stagnant, and there was no scope for fiscal changes. A Vote of Credit for the Egyptian Expedition had to be provided, which caused Mr. Gladstone to raise the Income Tax to 6-3/4d. in the pound.
The Egyptian difficulty, in fact, during this Session, became acute. It was seized by the Fourth Party as a peg on which to hang an endless series of questions to the Government, of an embarrassing character. From questioning, Lord Randolph Churchill proceeded to wage an irregular guerilla warfare, most harassing to Ministers engaged in delicate diplomatic negotiations on which depended the issues of peace and war. In this unusual course he and his friends were supported by Mr. Chaplin and Lord Percy, and aided by many fiery assaults made by Lord Salisbury. Sir Stafford Northcote and the majority of the ex-Ministers in the House of Commons disapproved, at first, of tactics which seemed to them an unprecedented violation of the decencies of English party warfare. But Sir Stafford’s reserve and prudence, though appreciated by the country, were so distasteful to his followers that ere the Session ended he found he had to submit to be their instrument in using the foreign complications of the nation for the interests of faction. Had he refused, the combatant section of his followers would have rebelled against his authority. It was part of the irony of the situation that the Egyptian difficulty was one of the evil legacies which the Foreign Policy of the Tory Party in 1879-1880 left the country to deal with. In fact, the Egyptian crisis of 1882 was the logical consequence of the system of Dual Control with which Lord Salisbury had afflicted Egypt when he went into partnership with France in managing the finances of that country for the benefit of its usurious foreign creditors. It was in 1866 that Ismail Pasha took the first step that gradually led to his downfall. To use his own phrase, he “kissed the carpet” at Constantinople—in other words, bribed the Porte to grant him the title of Khedive and confirm the succession of the Pashalik in his family. Again and again did he “kiss the carpet,” till in 1872 he was practically an independent Sovereign wielding absolute personal power over Egypt—the suzerainty of Turkey being marked only by the annual tribute, the Imperial cypher on the coinage, the weekly prayer for the Sultan in the Mosque, and the preservation of the jus legationis. In 1875 he abolished the Consular Courts before which suits between Egyptians and foreigners were tried, substituting for them the Mixed Tribunals on which representative judges of the Great Powers sat. At this period the crop of financial wild oats which Ismail Pasha had sown had ripened. He had spent money lavishly not only on the Suez Canal, but on every conceivable scheme that wily European speculators could persuade him was an improvement. He had borrowed this money on the principles that regulate the financial transactions of a rich young spendthrift and a usurer of the lowest class. In 1864 he borrowed £5,700,000. In the succeeding years loans for £3,000,000, £1,200,000, and £2,000,000 were added. In 1873 there was another loan for £32,000,000—which, according to Mr. Cave, swallowed up every resource of Egypt.[178] The Khedive’s private loans came to £11,000,000, and the floating debt to £26,000,000 in 1876. How these last loans were to be met, seeing that the 1873 loan swallowed up all the resources of the country, was a perplexing point. The usurers would lend the Khedive no more money, and in 1875 England helped him to meet the interest on existing loans by giving him £4,000,000 for the Suez Canal Shares.