An Annus Mirabilis—Breaking up of the Old Parties—The Tory-Parnellite Alliance—Mr. Chamberlain’s Socialism—The Doctrine of “Ransom”—Effect of the Reform Bill and Seats Bill—Enthroning the “Sovereign People”—Three Reform Struggles: 1832, 1867, 1885—“One Man One Vote”—Another Vote of Censure—A Barren Victory—Retreat from the Soudan—The Dispute with Russia—Komaroff at Penjdeh—The Vote of Credit—On the Verge of War—Mr. Gladstone’s Compromise with Russia—Threatened Renewal of the Crimes Act—The Tory Intrigue with the Parnellites—The Tory Chiefs Decide to Oppose Coercion—Wrangling in the Cabinet—Mr. Childers’ Budget—A Yawning Deficit—Increasing the Spirit Duties—Readjusting the Succession Duties—Combined Attack by Tories and Parnellites on the Budget—Defeat of the Government and Fall of Mr. Gladstone’s Ministry—The Scene in the Commons—The Tories in Power—Lord Salisbury’s Government—Places for the Fourth Party—Mr. Parnell Demands his Price—Abandoning Lord Spencer—Re-opening the Question of the Maamtrasna Murders—Concessions to the Parnellites—The New Budget—Sir H. D. Wolff sent to Cairo—The Criminal Law Amendment Act—Court Life in 1885—Affairs at Home and Abroad—The Fall of Khartoum—Death of General Gordon—Beginning of the Burmese Question—Rebellion in Canada—Marriage of the Princess Beatrice—The Battenbergs.
After the compromise had been arranged between the rival political leaders on the Franchise Bill and the Bill for the Redistribution of Seats, it has been said that Parliament adjourned to the 19th of February, 1885—an annus mirabilis in the Queen’s reign. It witnessed the final settlement of the Reform Question which the Whigs left unsettled in 1832. It witnessed the amazing development of the Home Rule movement in Ireland under two influences. The first was extended Franchise. The second was the alliance between the Parnellites and the Tory Party, which had grown out of the intrigues of Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir H. Drummond Wolff, and Mr. Rowland Winn, the Tory whip, with Mr. Justin McCarthy, and other Irish Nationalist leaders. Every day brought forth a new outward and visible sign of this alliance, and in Ireland, when it was bruited about that the Tories were ready not only to attack and overthrow Lord Spencer, who was still upholding English authority at Dublin Castle almost in the same sense that General Gordon was upholding it at Khartoum, the result was inevitable. The large class of Irishmen who from motives of self-interest, business connection, or personal feeling were willing to stand by the English Government in Dublin so long as they felt sure that England would stand by them, began to waver in their allegiance. Like the same sort of people in the Soudan, and even in Khartoum when they saw Gordon abandoned by those who were supposed to be truest to him, they began to make terms with their Mahdi. If the Tories were buying the Parnellite vote to-day, the Liberals would soon be found bidding higher for it to-morrow, and Irishmen, whose interests and timidity alone served to keep them loyal to Dublin Castle so long as they felt absolutely certain of the support of both political parties in England, began in 1885 to stream over to Mr. Parnell’s camp. The stream was obviously swollen when a coalition of the Parnellites and Tories expelled Mr. Gladstone’s Government from office, and when it was known that the Parnellite vote had been obtained on the faith of a promise from the Tory leaders that they would not only abandon the Crimes Act if they came into office, but join Mr. Parnell in opposing Mr. Gladstone’s Government if it sought to renew it. The year also witnessed the end of the Egyptian tragedy, the conquest of Burmah, the semi-Socialistic propaganda of Mr. Chamberlain, the General Election which made Mr. Parnell master of Ireland, and shattered the English Party system that had been built up after 1846, and the rumoured adoption of Home Rule as a part of Mr. Gladstone’s programme.
During the first weeks of 1885—the winter recess, as it might be called—Mr. Chamberlain spread terror through the land by making a strong Socialistic appeal to the new Electors. He was evidently bent on breaking up the old Liberal Party—perhaps he saw his way to the formation of a new democratic faction into which many of the “Tory democracy,” created by Lord Randolph Churchill, might drift. Signs were not wanting that a coalition between these successful politicians was in certain circumstances quite a possible contingency. In the meantime, Mr. Chamberlain and his followers preached what he called the “doctrine of ransom.” This meant that when a man became rich he was to purchase the privilege of keeping his wealth by paying taxes now borne by the poor, and if need be by providing new taxes in order to give the poor a larger share of the comforts and enjoyments of life than fell to their lot. Mr. Chamberlain in fact offered to “ransom” the thrifty classes from confiscation provided they taxed themselves to give the poor free libraries, pleasure-gardens, education, improved dwellings at “fair rents,” allotments of land, and work and employment in time of distress. It was part of his scheme to abolish indirect taxation. His lieutenant, Mr. Jesse Collings, formulated the portion of it which dealt with the land by popularising the idea that it was the duty of the ratepayers to set up agricultural labourers in the business of farming with “three acres and a cow” to start with. Government, in fact, was, according to Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Collings, to act as a kind of glorified Cooperative Store, or “Universal Provider” for the proletariat.
When the House of Commons met on the 19th of February there was a general desire to make rapid progress with the Reform Bills. Efforts to secure the representation of minorities, to oppose an increase in the members of the House, to cut down the representation of Ireland, to disfranchise the Universities, were resisted, and the alliance of the two Front Benches crushed all opposition. One member only was successful in carrying an amendment. This was Mr. Raikes, who had been Chairman of Committees in Lord Beaconsfield’s Government, and who now succeeded in reducing the perpetual penalties inflicted on voters in corrupt boroughs. On the 11th of May the Seats Bill was read a third time, and when it went to the House of Lords it was speedily passed. The Tories, who objected to the compromise, found spokesmen in Mr. James Lowther, Mr. Chaplin, and Mr. Raikes. The opposition of the last-named was the most active, but it merely resulted in effecting a few changes in the nomenclature of the Bill, and in what the Times termed “his more than paternal solicitude for the leisurely progress of the measure.”
No measure of reform proposed in the Queen’s reign by a responsible politician was ever designed to produce such a mighty change in the British Constitution as the Reform Bill of 1885. Lord Grey and Lord John Russell, by their Bill in 1832, added not quite half a million voters to the Electorate of the United Kingdom. The Reform Bill of 1867 increased the Electorate from 1,136,000 to 2,448,000. In 1885 it had grown to be 3,000,000, and to this number Mr. Gladstone’s Bill added 2,000,000 new voters.[204] The Seats Bill, which distributed the 5,000,000 electors into electoral groups, was a much more complex measure. The chief difficulties were two in number. First, there was that of determining the standard by which the claim of a borough to separate representation could be conceded; secondly, there was the difficulty of discovering how votes should be cast in towns possessing more than one member. Here curious contrasts can be drawn between the old order and the new.
PRINCE HENRY OF BATTENBERG.
(From a Photograph by Theodor Prümm, Berlin.)
Redistribution of seats in 1832 meant the transfer of a vast body of power from the aristocracy to the middle-class, and the liberation of the Commons from the despotism of the Peers, who ruled it through the nominees who represented their pocket boroughs. Little wonder that the sweeping disfranchisement of these constituencies brought the country to the verge of revolution. In 1867 it was not the aristocracy but the middle-class which dreaded the kind of disfranchisement that proceeds from destroying the separate representation or reducing the redundant representation of a constituency. Hence, though the contest in 1867 was warm, it was not fierce. But in 1885, on the other hand, no popular excitement could be raised over the question of Redistribution, and the nation grew sick of the controversy as to whether a Seats Bill should be taken before, with, or after a Franchise Bill. And yet the redistribution of power proposed