'On January 12th I somewhat unwillingly made up my mind that I must remain in the Government, as Chamberlain insisted on remaining. I feared that if I came out by myself I should be represented as encouraging disorder, and to some extent should encourage it, and should be driven to act with mere fanatics. In coming out with Chamberlain I always felt safe that we could carry a large section of the party with us. Coming out by myself, I feared that that was not so. Chamberlain's position at this moment was that he personally did not believe in coercion, but that the feeling in the country was such that any Government would be forced to propose it, and he was not sufficiently clear that it was certain to fail to be bound as an honest man to necessarily oppose it. I received on this day a letter from a constituent upon the point, and answered that, agreeing generally as regarded pending Irish questions with Bright and Chamberlain, I should follow them if they remained united. [Footnote: The phrase 'pending Irish questions' is important. It excluded Home Rule.] Should they at any point differ from Mr. Gladstone, or the one with the other, as to the course to be adopted, I should have to reconsider my position.
'On January 14th I had a full talk with Bright, trying to get him to go with me. Bright told me that the outrages had got much worse in Ireland since the middle of December, as for example that of firing into houses. He had come round a great deal in the coercion direction. He now distinctly favoured suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act—that is to say, did not unwillingly yield to it, like Chamberlain, but supported it almost willingly, and he evidently had been converted by Forster to the view that things had grown to be very bad, and that by locking up a small number of the chiefs the rule of law might be restored. I did not agree, but his opinion showed me how completely I was isolated. I seemed trying to put people a point beyond themselves before they were naturally ready to go, and risked only being followed by those who are always ready to run on any fresh scent and whose support is but a hindrance. I felt myself face to face with the necessity for self-sacrifice of the hardest kind, the sacrifice of my own judgment as to the right course in the attempt to work with others. It was clear that few men thought at this time that coercion was so inexpedient that a single member of the Government would be justified in venturing on a course which would weaken the hands of Government itself, increase Mr. Gladstone's difficulties, and retard or hamper the remedial legislation which I myself thought most desirable. Moreover, we had weakened the Irish executive in past years by continually teaching them to rely on unconstitutional expedients, and it seemed very difficult to choose a moment of great outrage to refuse them the support which we had long accustomed them to look for in every similar stress of circumstances.
'The Cabinet of January 22nd dealt with the allied questions of closure, coercion, and remedial legislation for Ireland. It was decided to produce a scheme of closure as soon as it was certain that Northcote was in favour of the principle, and it was left to Mr. Gladstone to make sure of this, and I noted in my diary, "He had better make very sure." I was right in my doubt, and this question of Parliamentary procedure led to such a breach between Mr. Gladstone and his former private secretary that the Prime Minister told me he should never in future believe a word that Northcote might say. The apparent tortuousness of Northcote's conduct was caused by the weakness of his position as leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. He was in favour of moderate courses, and always began by agreeing with us in private, after which Randolph Churchill would send a man to him with the message: "Go and tell the old goat that I won't have it." And then the unfortunate Northcote, to avoid being denounced in public, had to turn round and say that he could not answer for his party.'
Chronicling another talk with Gladstone, in which the latter spoke of
Northcote's "shiftiness," Sir Charles says:
'I had a high opinion of Sir Stafford, but in face of Churchill he was
not a free agent….
'The Cabinet rejected Chamberlain's proposal to accompany coercion by a provision against ejectments in the sense of the Compensation Bill of 1880. In my diary I add: "By a majority they decided that there should be no declaration of the nature of the Land Bill as yet; but, as Gladstone was in the minority on this point, we shall probably not wait long for the declaration. The Land Bill was finally settled. It really gives the 'three F's,' applied by a Court, but so wrapped up that nobody will find them."'
Mr. Forster's Coercion Bill was introduced as the first business of the Session, and was met by obstruction which more than realized the forecast. From Monday, January 31st, through the whole of Tuesday, February 1st, the debate was prolonged in a House possessing no recognized authority to check it; and at nine on the Wednesday morning Speaker Brand adopted the course which had been advocated by Lord Hartington. Acting in the exercise of his own discretion, he ordered the question to be put. The Irish members, having refused to submit, were removed one by one, technically by force. In face of these circumstances the Cabinet met on the Wednesday afternoon.
'The Cabinet decided not to have general closure in the form in which Chamberlain had asked for it in my name as well as in his. Gladstone wanted to have a special closure for Irish coercion, but Chamberlain presented our ultimatum against that, and won. When Chamberlain and I talked over the whole situation, I told him that I thought we had been too popular up to now for it to last. We were now unpopular with our own people in the constituencies on account of coercion, but, holding their opinions, were not really trusted by the moderates. I thought this position inevitable. The holding of strongly patriotic and national opinions in foreign affairs combined with extreme Radical opinions upon internal matters made it difficult to act with anybody for long without being attacked by some section with which it was necessary to act at other times, and made it difficult to form a solid party.'
When Dilke and Chamberlain, neither of whom was averse from the idea of closure in itself, resisted a proposal which meant treating the Irish members in a category apart from the rest of the House of Commons, they took a course which now seems simple and inevitable. But there is some difficulty in realizing to-day how Irishmen, and more especially Irish members, were viewed in England through the early eighties. Something of the public feeling towards them may be gathered from a string of extracts dealing with another source of dissension in this Cabinet. Sir William Harcourt, as Home Secretary, had adopted determined views of what may be conceded to the exigencies or the demands of detectives. Sir Charles writes on February 5th:
'It was at this moment that I first had to do with dynamite. Lord Granville had instructed me to deal with such matters at once myself without their passing through the Office; and receiving despatches from Washington (containing despatches from our Consul at Philadelphia offering information as to plots), and having missed Harcourt, I took them to Mr. Gladstone. I said that I had no doubt a sharp Yankee was trying to get a couple of hundred pounds out of us.'