"In a matter of this sort it is essential to have the look of the thing in view, when a question of personal courage is involved. Of course, I know that I have personal courage, but the public can only judge from the look of things. The reason why Chamberlain even doubted if I ought not after the murder to go—though I was not to have gone before it—lay in the doubt as to how the public would take the look of it. It has turned out right, but it might have turned out wrong. If the public had gone the other way, I should have said I ought to have taken it, and resigned."
But, as Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff pointed out when replying to the letter of May 11th, in the state of things then existing in Ireland a Minister could hardly have resigned without the gravest embarrassment to the Government, and he cordially approved Sir Charles's refusal: "You could not have accepted the Secretaryship without a seat in the Cabinet." That refusal was also approved and understood by the heir to the Throne:
'On the 8th the Prince of Wales wrote to me through Knollys to ask me as to the Chief Secretaryship, and on my informing him how matters stood, replied: "If you had accepted the post without a seat in the Cabinet, your position, especially at the present moment, would be a very unsatisfactory one. If the policy, whatever it is, prove a success, I doubt whether you would have obtained much credit for it; and if it turned out a failure, you may be quite sure that a great deal of the blame would fall upon you without your having been responsible for the initiation of the steps that were adopted."'
The Phoenix Park murders having immediately followed the appointment of Lord Frederick Cavendish, those who had always pressed for further powers of police now asserted themselves with vehemence. Sir William Harcourt spoke strongly on Ireland and the necessity for coercion in the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone, in whom the Radicals had always found a mainstay against these tendencies, was broken in spirit and suddenly aged. All relations in the Cabinet were jarred and embittered, as the successive entries in this Memoir show:
'In the night between May 11th and 12th the Irish, although angry at Harcourt's coercion speech, sent O'Shea to Chamberlain at 3 a.m. with the olive-branch again.
'On May 13th Mr. Gladstone again stated privately that he intended to
give up the Exchequer on account of his advancing years.
'On this day the Cabinet unanimously decided to give an extradition
treaty to Russia—to my mind a most foolish proposal.
'On Monday, May 15th, Mr. Gladstone sent Chamberlain to O'Shea to see if Parnell could be got to support the new Coercion Bill with some changes. When Harcourt heard of this, which was done behind his back, he was furious, and went so far as to tell me: "When I resign I shall not become a discontented Right Honourable on a back bench, but shall go abroad for some months, and when I come back rat boldly to the other side." This reminds me of Randolph Churchill on Lord Derby, "A man may rat once, but not rat and re-rat."
'On Tuesday, May 16th, Mr. Gladstone wrote, on Chamberlain's suggestion, to Harcourt to try to smooth him over, and proposed a Cabinet on the matter for the next day, Wednesday, May 17th, at which Harcourt declared that if any change was made in the principle of his Coercion Bill he would resign; but then nobody knew what was the principle of the Bill. At this Cabinet Harcourt … told the Cabinet that the Kilmainham Treaty would not be popular when the public discovered that it had been negotiated by Captain O'Shea, "the husband of Parnell's mistress." He informed the Cabinet that … after this it would hardly "do for the public" "for us to use O'Shea as a negotiator." I wrote to Grant Duff on this day (closed 18th) as to Parnell's relations to Mrs. O'Shea as disclosed in Cabinet.
'On Friday, May 19th, Lord Derby said to me: "You were right to refuse the Chief Secretaryship; still Mr. Gladstone must say to himself: 'Surely I am about to die, for I am not obeyed.'" On Monday, the 22nd, Mr. Gladstone was very strongly in favour of accepting Parnell's privately suggested amendments to the new Coercion Bill, obtained through O'Shea, but Hartington going with Harcourt against touching the Bill, Mr. Gladstone got no support except from Chamberlain.