Mr. Forster had accordingly to wait till the New Year for the introduction of his Coercion Bill.
II.
A departmental change in the Foreign Office at this time greatly increased the responsibilities of the Under-Secretary. Complaint had become frequent in the House of Commons of an apparently insufficient representation of the Government in regard to commercial questions, which belonged partly to the sphere of the Board of Trade and partly to that of the Foreign Office, with unsatisfactory results. Lord Granville determined, on returning to office, to make a new distribution of duties, and to take advantage of the Under-Secretaryship being occupied by a Member of Parliament whose competence on commercial questions was universally recognized to place the commercial business of the Office more completely under his control—as supervising Under-Secretary. [Footnote: This arrangement continued in the Under-Secretaryship of Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Mr. James Bryce, Mr. Robert Bourke, and Sir James Fergusson, but was subsequently altered. See also above, p. 314.]
'On Sunday, May 2nd, Lord Granville asked me to take over general supervision of the commercial department of the Foreign Office, and, although I should have preferred to keep free of all departmental work in order to attend to larger affairs of policy, I admitted that there were strong reasons for my taking the Commercial Department, inasmuch as the commercial members of the House of Commons were dissatisfied with its management, and because also it was certain that I should have to defend in the House of Commons treaty negotiations with foreign Powers, which would in any case force me to give much time to the consideration of commercial questions. When I first agreed to take over the Commercial Department, it was only with the view of keeping it for a short time, but I was unable to rid myself of it during the whole time I was at the Foreign Office, and it gave me heavy work.'
The first and chief instalment of this burden consisted in the negotiations for a new commercial treaty with France.
In January Dilke had learnt from Gambetta that M. Léon Say, late President of the Finance Committee of the Senate, would come to London as Ambassador 'when the trouble about "Article 7" was ended.' [Footnote: See Chapter XX., p. 300.] It was in the month of May (when the "trouble" about M. Ferry's attack on the religious Orders was by no means ended) that M. Say arrived, charged with an important mission, specially suited to his qualifications as an ex-Minister of Finance. France was revising her commercial policy; several commercial treaties, including that with Great Britain, had been only provisionally prolonged up to June 30th; and M. Say was instructed to try to secure England's acceptance of the new general tariff, which had not yet passed the Senate. Gambetta and his friends still held to the ideals of Free Trade. M. Tirard, the Minister of Commerce, supported the same view, but there was a strong Protectionist campaign on foot.
M. Say arrived on May 5th, and on the 6th had his first interview with Sir
Charles:
'At this moment I was showing my disregard for the old Free-Trade notions in which I had been brought up by my grandfather, and my preference for reciprocitarian views, by carefully keeping back all grievances with the countries with which we were negotiating upon commercial matters, in order that they might be thrown in in the course of the negotiations. On this ground I managed to cause the Colonial Office to be directed to keep all Gibraltar grievances in hand.
'Immediately on taking charge of the Commercial Department, I had sent a memorandum on the wine duties to Mr. Gladstone, who replied, "I have never yet seen my way to reduction below a shilling or to a uniform rate. At present, we have not a sixpence to give away. I do not like bargaining away revenue for treaties, or buying over again from France what has been bought already…. In my view the treaty of 1860 was exceptional; it was to form an accommodation to the exigencies of the French Emperor's position. We never professed to be exchanging concessions, but only allowed him to say he had done it. I am, of course, open to argument, but must say, as at present advised, that I see but very little room for what is called negotiating a commercial treaty."'
This was discouraging, since it came from the author of the treaty of 1860, who by lowering the duties on light wines had brought into general popularity the "Gladstone clarets"; and Mr. Gladstone's expression of opinion, renewed in a second letter of May 11th, caused M. Say to 'let me clearly understand that as Mr. Gladstone was unwilling to lower the wine duties, he should resign his Embassy and try to become President of the Senate,' then vacant by the resignation of M. Martel. In this he succeeded, much to the regret of Gambetta, who afterwards said to Dilke: