KHARTOUM.
then confessed that for the coming year he could not expect a surplus of more than £260,000,[191] which admitted only of a small reduction in the Carriage Duties. The unexpected costliness of the Parcel Post caused Mr. Childers to abandon in the meantime the scheme for introducing sixpenny telegrams; but he made proposals for the reduction of the National Debt and the withdrawal of light gold coin from circulation, that led to some controversy. Mr. Childers’ method of dealing with the Debt was to give holders of Three per Cent. Stock the option of taking Two and Three-quarters per Cent. or Two and a Half per Cent. Stock at the rate of £102 and £108 respectively for every £100 of Stock so exchanged. Mr. Childers argued that he would thus reduce the annual burden of the charge for the Debt (after providing for a Sinking Fund to cover the nominal increase in the capital cf the converted Stock) by £1,310,000. His Coinage Bill was lost because the Tories roused popular prejudice against it. Mr. Childers proposed to demonetise the half-sovereign by putting in it a certain amount of alloy and giving it a mere token-value. The charge that he was “debasing the currency” wrecked his project. A Bill strengthening the hands of the Privy Council in excluding diseased cattle was passed. But the great measure of the Session was the Reform Bill, which was introduced on the 28th of February. By it Mr. Gladstone extended household franchise to the counties, and a vigorous effort was made to compel him to introduce along with the Franchise Bill, a Bill for the Redistribution of Seats. The Second Reading of the Reform Bill was carried on the 7th of April, a majority of 340 to 210 having rejected the hostile amendment of the Conservatives, which was moved by Lord John Manners. The Tories then made many futile efforts to coerce Mr. Gladstone into disclosing his Redistribution Scheme, which he had, however, sketched in outline in his speech introducing the Franchise Bill. Ultimately the Third Reading was carried on the 26th of June—nemine contradicente. The Bill was read a first time in the House of Lords on the 27th of June, where Lord Cairns and the Tory Peers opposed it by an amendment, in which they refused to assent to any extension of the Franchise, without any provision for a redistribution of seats. The country began to murmur against this attitude of the Tory Peers, many of whom even deprecated the policy of supporting Lord Cairns’s amendment. It was, however, carried by a majority of 205 against 146. After that the Peers, by way of conciliating public opinion, agreed, on the motion of Lord Dunraven, to assent “to the principles of representation in the Bill.” Ministers immediately announced that they would take steps to prorogue Parliament in order to hold an autumn Session for the reintroduction of the Measure. This involved the sacrifice of all their projects of legislation, including Sir William Harcourt’s Bill for reforming the Government of London, Mr. Chamberlain’s Merchant Shipping Bill (prohibiting shipowners from making a profit out of the wreck of over-insured ships), the Railway Regulation Bill (which prevented railway companies from burdening traders and farmers with extortionate transport rates), the Scottish Universities Bill, the Welsh Education Bill, the Police Superannuation Bill, the Medical Acts Amendment Bill, the Corrupt Practices at Municipal Elections Bill, the Law of Evidence Amendment Bill, the Irish Sunday Closing Bill, and the Irish Land Purchase Bill. These, as well as many useful measures, perished in the legislative holocaust of the 10th of July, which the opposition of the Peers had brought about.
The Recess was spent in violent agitation. Party leaders on both sides strove to rouse public opinion against or on behalf of the action of the House of Lords. The country, on the whole, seemed day by day to gravitate towards the Liberals, and the general opinion soon came to be that the time had come for settling the question of Parliamentary Reform, and that, the Peers having accepted the principle of Mr. Gladstone’s Bill, a compromise as to details ought to be effected. The monster procession which passed through London on the 21st of July, together with Mr. Gladstone’s political campaign in Midlothian, did much to strengthen the hands of the Reformers. As might be expected, the Radicals took advantage of the occasion to direct a fierce and violent attack against the House of Lords as an institution. When the Session opened on the 23rd of October party spirit ran high, and both sides took “No Surrender!” as their watchword. Lord Randolph Churchill attempted to fix on Mr. Chamberlain a charge of inciting a Radical mob to break up a great Conservative demonstration which had been held in Aston Park, Birmingham, on the 13th of October. Mr. Chamberlain proved his innocence by quoting affidavits made by certain men, who swore that “Tory roughs” had provoked the riot. The genuineness of those affidavits was questioned, but to no purpose. When, however, they were made the basis of legal proceedings, it was noted as a curious coincidence that, with one exception, all the witnesses who had supplied Mr. Chamberlain with his exculpating affidavits, somehow vanished from the scene. The Franchise Bill was rapidly passed through the House of Commons, and the enormous majority of 140 in favour of the Second Reading brought the Tory Peers to a more reasonable state of mind. Moderate Conservatives began to build a golden bridge of retreat for their lordships. Nor was the task hard. It was soon discovered, as the result of private communications, that there was now no substantial difference of opinion between Conservatives like Sir Richard Cross and Liberals like Mr. Gladstone on the general principles of Redistribution. Nobody, in fact, had the courage to defend the continued enfranchisement of petty boroughs while large towns were not represented in Parliament save by the county vote. It was finally arranged by plenipotentiaries representing both parties that Mr. Gladstone’s draft Redistribution Bill should be submitted confidentially to Sir Stafford Northcote and his friends—that they should suggest, and in turn submit to Mr. Gladstone their amendments to it—that when both Parties agreed, Mr. Gladstone should receive from the Tories “an adequate assurance” that they meant to carry the Franchise Bill through the House of Lords, that upon the strength of this assurance Mr. Gladstone should introduce the Redistribution Bill in the House of Commons, and carry it to a Second Reading while the Peers were passing the Third Reading of the Franchise Bill. The whole understanding rested simply on an exchange of “words of honour” between the leaders on both sides, and it was loyally adhered to. Lord Salisbury, Sir Stafford Northcote, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Hartington, and Sir Charles Dilke, met and settled all serious disputes over the question of redistribution, and the Bill was introduced on the 1st of December. On the 4th of the month the measure was read a second time, the House of Lords having passed the Franchise Bill. On the 6th of December Parliament adjourned till the 19th of February, 1885, when the Redistribution Bill was to be finally dealt with in Committee, de die in diem.
The autumn Session did not close till the Government obtained a vote of credit of £1,000,000 for military operations in Egypt. The decision to send an expedition to Khartoum by way of the Nile was arrived at with manifest reluctance by the Ministry, and of all the courses open to them, including those which had been suggested by Gordon and rejected by Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, it was the most objectionable and hazardous.[192] Lord
SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE (AFTERWARDS LORD IDDESLEIGH).
(From a Photograph by Barraud, Oxford Street.)
Wolseley arrived at Cairo early in September, and the Mudir of Dongola not only held back the Mahdi, but furnished a base of operations to the English force. Down to the end of 1884 Lord Wolseley contrived to shroud his proceedings in a veil of mystery. Beyond the facts that he had railway transport to Sarras, that after that point, the expedition and its transport were conveyed up the falling river in whaleboats guided by Canadian boatmen,[193] that Lord Wolseley’s sanguine anticipation of a rapid advance had been falsified, that dangers and difficulties, which he ought to have foreseen, had been encountered, that it had been necessary to stimulate the