[THE FINAL HOME RULE RUPTURE (1886).]
Source.—Morley's Life of Gladstone, vol. iii., pp. 364-368. (Macmillans.)
As it happened, all this [Randolph Churchill's resignation of the Exchequer, and Goschen's appointment] gave a shake to both of the Unionist wings. The ominous clouds of coercion were sailing slowly but discernibly along the horizon, and this made men in the Unionist camp still more restless and uneasy. Mr. Chamberlain, on the very day of the announcement of the Churchill resignation, had made a speech that was taken to hold out an olive-branch to his old friends. Sir William Harcourt ... thought the break-up of a great political combination to be so immense an evil as to call for almost any sacrifices to prevent it. He instantly wrote to Birmingham to express his desire to co-operate in reunion, and in the course of a few days five members of the original Liberal Cabinet of 1886 met at his house in what is known as the Round Table Conference (Sir W. Harcourt, Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Herschell, Sir George Trevelyan, and myself).... Mr. Gladstone gave the Round Table his blessing, his "general idea being that he had better meddle as little as possible with the Conference, and retain a free hand." Lord Hartington would neither join the Conference nor deny that he thought it premature.... On the other side, both English Liberals and Irish Nationalists were equally uneasy lest the unity of the party should be bought by the sacrifice of fundamentals.... Mr. Parnell, though alive to the truth that when people go into a conference it usually means that they are willing to give up something, was thoroughly awake to the satisfactory significance of the Birmingham overtures.
Things at the Round Table for some time went smoothly enough. Mr. Chamberlain gradually advanced the whole length. He publicly committed himself to the expediency of establishing some kind of legislative authority in Dublin in accordance with Mr. Gladstone's principle, with a preference, in his own mind, for a plan on the lines of Canada. This he followed up, also in public, by the admission that of course the Irish legislature must be allowed to organize their own form of executive government, either by an imitation on a small scale of all that goes on at Westminster and Whitehall, or in whatever other shape they might think proper.... Then the surface became mysteriously ruffled. Language was used by some of the plenipotentiaries in public, of which each side in turn complained as inconsistent with conciliatory negotiations in private. At last, on the very day on which the provisional result of the Conference was laid before Mr. Gladstone, there appeared in a print called The Baptist an article from Mr. Chamberlain containing an ardent plea for the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, but warning the Welshmen that they and the Scotch crofters, and the English labourers—thirty-two millions of people—must all go without much-needed legislation because three millions were disloyal, while nearly six hundred members of Parliament would be reduced to forced inactivity because some eighty delegates, representing the policy and receiving the pay of the Chicago Convention, were determined to obstruct all business until their demands were conceded. Men naturally asked what was the use of continuing a discussion when one party to it was attacking in this peremptory fashion the very persons and the policy that in private he was supposed to accept. Mr. Gladstone showed no implacability ... he said ... "I am inclined to think we can hardly do more now.... We are quite willing that the subject should stand over for resumption at a convenient season."
The resumption never happened. Two or three weeks later Mr. Chamberlain announced that he did not intend to return to the Round Table. No other serious and formal attempt was ever made on either side to prevent the Liberal Unionists from hardening into a separate species. When they became accomplices in coercion they cut off the chances of reunion.
[THE COMING OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION (1887).]
Source.—The Times, March 17.
Lord Hartington made a striking speech last night to the Polytechnic Young Men's Christian Institute. In the presence of such an audience a text was perhaps needed, and he took as his text some remarks made by Professor Huxley, who lately pointed out the instructive likeness between warfare and industry. If we are well advised—and Lord Hartington has no misgivings on the subject—in spending freely to protect ourselves against aggression, it is equally our duty to be not niggardly in providing industrial education, and diffusing scientific knowledge. It is the condition of industrial supremacy, and it is not an unattainable condition. A Watt or even an Edison is born, not made. But the knowledge of drawing, mechanics, mathematics, and chemistry, and other sciences or arts, which aid the artisan in his daily work, may be imparted, and on the spread of such knowledge may depend the continuance of industrial supremacy. Great commanders cannot be called into being; but in the main it depends on the rank and file of the army of industry whether its battles are lost or won. How is the work to be accomplished? In answer to this question Lord Hartington let fall one or two remarks which, though not offering a complete solution, are, if we mistake not, likely to be fruitful in consequences. The State, he is satisfied, cannot do all or much; and he is struck with the inability of purely voluntary efforts to meet the demand. He finds the necessary assistance, if anywhere, in our municipal institutions. "I hope the time is not far distant when our town councils or local governing bodies will establish in every considerable centre industrial and technical schools, suitable to the wants of the district, and supported out of local funds." The institutions which now imperfectly do the work of diffusing technical instruction "are playing the same part in relation to technical and industrial education that was played by the voluntary schools in relation to elementary education." This points to a national system of technical education; it is the largest and clearest conception of the subject which any public man of importance has put forth.