But the spirit of official Liberalism was constantly at war with Radical views.
'My diary continually expressed my regret at what I thought the timidity of Mr. Gladstone's Government.' Thus, when it was beaten by the abstention of Liberals on Fawcett's Election Expenses Bill, which proposed to throw the necessary expenses of returning officers on the local rates, Charles Dilke 'was angry with the Government for not having so much as named the Bill upon their Whip.' Again, when his group had proposed to penalize a corrupt borough, the member for which had been unseated on petition, the entry ran: 'We Radicals beaten by Government and Tories on the Bewdley writ,' the issue of which the Radicals had moved to postpone for twelve months.
In the case of Fawcett's motion to abolish University Tests, of whose injustice Dilke had personal experience: [Footnote: Having taken his Master's degree at Cambridge in this year, Dilke was 'immediately nominated to the Senate as an examiner for the Law Tripos by the Regius Professor of Laws.' But on further inquiry it appeared that an examiner for honours in Law must be a member of the Senate, and that a member of the Senate must declare himself a member of the Church of England. Dilke, strongly objecting to this exclusiveness, had refused to make the required profession. The 'grace,' therefore, was withdrawn, and he was not allowed to examine. Sir Roundell Palmer became Chancellor in 1872, on the retirement of Lord Hatherley. He was again Chancellor from 1880 to 1885.]
'My diary records a division in connection with which Sir Roundell Palmer did us some harm, the fact being that the great lawyer, who was afterwards Lord Selborne, was one of those gentlemen calling themselves Liberals in whom it was difficult to find any agreement with Liberal principles at any time or upon any subject. He was, in fact, a High Church Tory, as I found when I served with him in a Liberal Cabinet.'
On yet another motion of Fawcett's the Radicals found themselves in collision with the head of the Liberal Government. This advocated open competition for the Civil Service, and Dilke supported Fawcett by speech as well as vote. Mr. Gladstone, following Dilke in the debate, suggested that he had spoken without examining his facts, a charge specially calculated to excite this conscientious worker's resentment. 'I recorded a strong opinion as to the crushing of independent members by Mr. Gladstone.'
Charles Dilke was already displaying that blend of opinions which made him always a trial to the party Whips. He notes that, 'taking as I did an independent line, I supported on the Navy Estimates the Conservative ex- chief First Lord of the Admiralty' (Mr. Corry) 'on a motion which deprecated the building of further turret ships till those already built had been tested.'
[Illustration: SIR C. WENTWORTH DILKE, BART.
From the painting by Arthur Hughes.]
These outbreaks of independence led to remonstrance from his father, and remonstrance to this reply:
"I don't mean to let either you or Glyn" (the Chief Whip, afterwards Lord Wolverton) "frighten me into supporting the Government when I think they are wrong, but I vote for them when I am at all doubtful."
This letter was written to Sir Wentworth Dilke, then on a tour through the north of Europe with his son Ashton, by this time a Cambridge undergraduate, and inclined to regard his elder brother as a very timid politician. 'My father and my brother went to Berlin, and saw the Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick, and Prince Bismarck, who many years later described to me the impression which they—the Whig and the Republican—had made on him.' From Germany they passed into Russia, where Wentworth Dilke was commissioned to represent England at the Horticultural Congress. In May a sudden telegram called Charles Dilke to St. Petersburg. His father had been attacked with 'that deadly form of Russian influenza, a local degeneration of the tissues, which kills a man in three days, without his being able to tell you that he feels anything except weakness.' Before Charles Dilke could reach the Russian capital, his father had been already 'embalmed and temporarily buried,' with a view to interment in England.