OPENING OF THE INDIAN AND COLONIAL EXHIBITION: THE QUEEN’S TOUR.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE JUBILEE.
The Fiftieth Year of the Queen’s Reign—Mr. W. H. Smith Leader of the Commons—Sudden Death of Lord Iddesleigh—Opening of Parliament—The Queen’s Speech—The Debate on the Address—New Rules for Procedure—Closure Proposed by the Tories—Irish Landlords and Evictions—“Pressure Within the Law”—Prosecution of Mr. Dillon—The Round Table Conference—“Parnellism and Crime”—Resignation of Sir M. Hicks-Beach—Appointment of Mr. Balfour—The Coercion Bill—Resolute Government for Twenty Years—Scenes in the House—Irish Land Bill—The Bankruptcy Clauses—The National League Proclaimed—The Allotments Act—The Margarine Act—Hamburg Spirit—Mr. Goschen’s Budget—The Jubilee in India—The Modes of Celebration in England—Congratulatory Addresses—The Queen’s Visit to Birmingham—The Laureate’s Jubilee Ode—The Queen at Cannes and Aix—Her Visit to the Grande Chartreuse—Colonial Addresses—Opening of the People’s Palace—Jubilee Day—The Scene in the Streets—Preceding Jubilees—The Royal Procession—The German Crown Prince—The Decorations and the Onlookers—The Spectacle in Westminster Abbey—The Procession—The Ceremony—The Illuminations—Royal Banquet in Buckingham Palace—The Shower of Honours—Jubilee Observances in the British Empire and the United States—The Children’s Celebration in Hyde Park—The Queen’s Garden Party—Her Majesty’s Letter to her People—The Imperial Institute—The Victorian Age.
It was on the 20th of June, 1886, that the Queen entered on the fiftieth year of her reign. But her Majesty naturally refused to assume that she would live to the end of it, and she accordingly determined that the actual celebration of her Jubilee should be put off till the 20th of June, 1887. Thus it came to pass that 1887 will be known as the Jubilee Year of the Victorian period. It was a year that opened badly for the Government. The sudden resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill at the close of 1886 rendered a reconstruction of the Cabinet necessary. Efforts were made in vain to induce some of the Whig Peers to join the Ministry, but, as we have seen, at last Mr. Goschen was persuaded to accept the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. The leadership of the Commons was given to Mr. W. H. Smith, who was made First Lord of the Treasury; whilst Lord Salisbury, who held that office, assumed the Secretaryship of State for Foreign Affairs. This involved the enforced retirement of Lord Iddesleigh in somewhat painful circumstances, which were further heightened by his sudden death from heart-disease on the 13th of January. The discreditable intrigue, which began by deposing him from the Leadership of the House of Commons, thus ended tragically. Some of the leaders of the Liberal and Liberal Unionist Parties were also endeavouring to discover some means of reconciling these now hostile factions. Parliament was opened on the 27th of January, and the Speech from the Throne plainly foreshadowed the introduction of a Coercion Bill for Ireland. It hinted at a Land Bill as a possible measure; indeed, had it not done so the alliance between the Government and the Liberal Unionists would have been weakened. Other measures promised were Bills for reforming local government in England, Scotland, and, “should circumstances render it possible,” in Ireland, for cheapening private Bill legislation, and land transfer. An Allotments Bill, a Tithe Bill, a Railway Rates and Merchandise Marks Bill, were also in the programme, which was large and varied. But the debate on the Address showed that no opposed Bills were likely to pass unless the House of Commons reformed its procedure, and to this task the Tory Party had most grudgingly to apply itself. Six sittings were spent on the Address as a general subject of discussion. After that amendments relating to the evacuation of Egypt and the Irish policy announced in the Queen’s Speech were debated. Three Scottish amendments were next brought forward, so that when, at the sixteenth sitting of the House, Mr. Dillon began to denounce jury-packing in Dublin, the Speaker ruled him out of order. A motion for an adjournment was defeated, and a motion to consider the condition of unemployed labourers in England was declared by the Speaker to have been sufficiently discussed after two speeches were delivered. The Closure, so dreaded by the Tories in former Parliaments, was then applied by Mr. Smith, a vote taken, and the Address disposed of on the 17th of February.
The Government lost no time in preparing to meet the obstruction with which their Coercion Bill was already threatened. They circulated their new rules for debates, and on the 21st of February Mr. W. H. Smith moved the adoption of the Closure, vesting the initiative in applying it not in the Speaker, which was the old rule, but in a bare majority of the House, provided always that at least 200 Members voted for it. The Liberal Leaders supported the proposal on principle, but complained that the new rule was still too weak, and that it ought to be applied unconditionally. Their view was confirmed in the following year, when Mr. W. H. Smith was forced to reduce the necessary quorum of 200 to 100. Meanwhile events had been moving apace in Ireland. The Chief Secretary, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, finding that the landlords were cruelly straining their rights against the poorer tenantry, urged them to be merciful for the sake of peace. He put upon them what he called “pressure within the law,” which practically meant that he hinted to them that he would refuse them the aid of the police in enforcing warrants of the Courts. In other words, he seemed to be exercising the “dispensing power” of the Executive, little more than a year after Mr. Morley had been forced to apologise for even suggesting its exercise. In Ireland evictions were resisted by force, and lurid pictures of the state of the country were drawn by the supporters of the Government. The prosecution of Mr. Dillon and other Irish leaders for a conspiracy to defeat the law, because they advocated the Plan of Campaign, broke down through the disagreement of a Dublin jury. The negotiations between the Liberal Unionists and Liberals at the “Round Table Conference” were said to be producing happy results, and it was soon noised abroad that the Government not only hesitated to demand a Coercion Bill, but that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was ruling the Irish with a hand so light that they were lapsing into lawlessness. The Times published a series of articles designed to prove that Mr. Parnell and the Irish Home Rule Members were secretly in league with the Party of Assassination. Mutterings of mutiny were heard from the Irish Tories, and at this crisis Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, against whom these complaints were directed, suddenly resigned. This step, however, had been rendered necessary in consequence of his failing eyesight rather than from considerations of a political character. To his post Lord Salisbury appointed his nephew, Mr. Arthur James Balfour, pledged to carry out an unflinching policy of Coercion. Sir George Trevelyan, one of the secessionists from the Liberal Party, about this time showed by his public utterances that he had now returned to Mr. Gladstone’s party.
On the 23rd of March Mr. Smith moved that the Crimes Bill have precedence over all other orders—and then the battle began. It was not till the 28th that Mr. Balfour was able to move for leave to introduce the measure, in a speech which seemed to show either that his case was exceptionally weak, or that he had not been able to master it.[236] The Bill gave magistrates power to inquire into crimes where no person was charged. It gave two resident magistrates summary jurisdiction and power to inflict imprisonment up to six months in cases of criminal conspiracy, boycotting, rioting, assaults on the police, and in cases of inciting to these offences. It gave the Lord-Lieutenant power to “proclaim” certain associations as dangerous, and to subject to the penal clauses of the Bill any one who after that took part in them. The Bill was to be a permanent measure, and not like former Coercion Bills, merely passed for a fixed period of time. Violent scenes occurred during the debates which led up to the Second Reading of the measure on the 28th of April, and the House was in an irritable mood because it had been forced to sacrifice most of its Easter holiday. In spite of the frequent use of the Closure, the first clause, which was scarcely a contentious one, was not carried in Committee till the 17th of May. When the fourth clause was reached, on the 10th of June, Mr. W. H. Smith moved a resolution that if the Bill were not reported at 10 p.m. on the 17th, the remaining clauses should be put to the vote without debate. When that hour struck Sir Charles Russell was speaking on the sixth clause. The Chairman stopped the debate, and put the question, the Irish Members leaving the House in a body. After the division the Liberal Members also left, and the rest of the Bill passed without any more opposition. It was read a third time on the 8th of July, and having been adopted by the Peers, it received the Queen’s assent on the 19th of July. The determination of the Government to carry the Coercion Bill was natural. It had been admitted by all clear thinkers that, unless Home Rule were granted to Ireland, she could only be governed under Coercion. Moreover, the introduction of the Bill before the Liberal Unionists and Liberals had been reconciled, forced the former to vote for Coercion, which rendered the gulf between them and the old Liberal Party practically impassable. But ere the Liberal Unionists thus burned their boats, they had induced the Ministry to bring in a conciliatory Irish Land Bill in the House of Lords. The Peers sent it down to the Commons on the 4th of July, when the Second Reading was moved on the 12th. The Bill adopted Mr. Parnell’s proposal of the previous year, to admit leaseholders to the benefit of the Land Act of 1881; it gave notice of eviction the same effect as the actual service of an ejectment writ, and gave the Courts power to stay execution, and arrange for payment of rent on easy terms when the tenants were in distress. But when insolvent, it provided for them relief from rent and all other debts by a process of bankruptcy, allowing them, however, to retain their farms. Mr. Campbell-Bannerman attacked the bankruptcy clauses, and demanded a revision of all Irish rents in terms of the fall in prices. To a general revision of rents the Government would on no account assent. But the revolt of one of the Liberal Unionists, Mr. T. W. Russell, compelled them to reconsider the bankruptcy clauses. The Tories argued that it was unjust to ask the landlord to accept a composition for rent from the farmer, when the tradesmen to whom he owed money were not expected to abate their claims. Mr. Parnell and Mr. T. W. Russell contended that no analogy could be drawn between rent and trade debts. The latter had never been disputed by the debtor. The former had been disputed. The tenant who owed money to his grocer or seed-merchant never denied that he had got value for it. But he did deny that he had got value for the money his landlord claimed as rent, and he was able to prove this in court when the rent was cut down. To insist, as did Mr. Chamberlain, on relief from just and unjust claims being given with equal ease under a process of gentle bankruptcy, at which the State was asked to connive, was to make an attack on property and on credit from which even the leaders of the Paris Commune might have shrunk. It was tantamount to asserting that whenever a man was able to show that one creditor had overcharged him 30 per cent. he was entitled to refuse payment of his just debts to all creditors who had not overcharged him, unless they too took 30 per cent. off their bills. When this was made clear not even Mr. Chamberlain’s advocacy sufficed to save the bankruptcy clauses, which were accordingly dropped. But by way of conciliating the landlords the Government insisted on applying the vicious principle to arrears of rent. No relief from unjust arrears was to be given unless they were to be dealt with in bankruptcy alongside just and undisputed trade debts. The result was that when the Bill passed it had a fatal defect in it. It prohibited landlords from evicting for unjust rents, but by this clause it left them free to evict for the arrears which had accumulated under rents which the Courts decided to be unjust. On the 19th of August the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland “proclaimed” the National League as a dangerous association, thereby enabling Mr. A. J. Balfour to suppress any branch of it he thought fit under the Crimes Act.
THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO EDINBURGH (1886): HER MAJESTY LEAVING HOLYROOD PALACE.
The Government were now compelled to abandon the bulk of their legislative programme. They, therefore, made no attempt to proceed with any measures unless they were so democratic that the Liberals could not with decency oppose them. Hence they passed a Coal Mines Regulation Bill, an Allotments Bill—disfigured, however, by the obstacles in procedure which it put in the way of labourers who applied for allotments—and a Bill to prevent substitutes for butter known as “Margarine,” from being sold as butter. The success of this measure led to a demand for a similar Bill to prevent publicans from selling poisonous Hamburg spirit as “Fine Old” Cognac, or Scotch or Irish whisky. Baron de Worms, as representative of the Board of Trade, however, though eager to prohibit shopkeepers from selling a wholesome animal fat as butter, was shy of prohibiting the publicans—whose votes were of some value to the Tory Party—from selling poisonous Hamburg alcohol as old brandy. Mr. Goschen’s Budget was introduced on the 21st of April. He described it himself as a “humdrum” Budget—though as a matter of fact, as Lord Randolph Churchill said, if he had proposed it the country would have denounced it as a scheme full of financial depravity. The Estimates had been taken to show a revenue of £89,689,000, and an expenditure of £89,610,000. The actual receipts, however, for the past year had been £90,772,000, and the actual expenditure £88,738,000. In spite of supplementary estimates, amounting to £1,129,000, there was a surplus on the year’s accounts of £776,000. Mr. Goschen’s general statement showed that not only were the taxes yielding less than they ever did, but that, though the rich and the poor had suffered much from commercial and agricultural depression, the profits of the middleman had not been reduced. For the coming year he took the revenue to amount, on the existing lines of taxation, to £91,155,000, and the expenditure he set down at £90,180,000, leaving a surplus of £975,000. To this he added £100,000 by increasing the duty on the transfer of Debenture Stocks, and by minor changes in the Stamp Duty. He then added to it a further sum of £1,704,000, by reducing the charges for the public debt. His surplus was thus inflated to £2,779,000, of which he spent £600,000 in reducing the Tobacco Duty, £1,560,000 in taking a penny off the Income Tax, £280,000 in relieving Local Taxation, £50,000 in aid of Arterial Drainage in Ireland, leaving him a probable surplus of £289,000. To manufacture a surplus by the simple process of ceasing to pay off debt, would certainly not have secured for any other Chancellor of the Exchequer, except Mr. Goschen, the reputation of a financial puritan. Mr. Gladstone and Lord Randolph Churchill demonstrated by unanswerable arguments the unwholesomeness of the financial policy which reduced the payments for the National Debt by cutting down the Income Tax instead of by cutting down departmental expenditure. But Mr. Goschen’s Budget gave everybody a little relief all round, and was accepted quite irrespective of the unsound principles on which it was based. It was, in fact, the first illustration afforded by a Household Suffrage Parliament of the deteriorating influence of democracy on the financial policy of the nation. Parliament was prorogued on the 16th of September.