British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV / July and October, 1871

by Various

Either the amendment was insincere on the face of it, or it betrayed the most culpable ignorance. Lord Northbrook had, in fact, anticipated it in a speech of remarkable ability, in which he showed that the Duke of Richmond's amendment was simply inept. For the scheme of the Government fulfilled all the conditions required by the amendment, except in the matter of retirement; and that was one of those details which could not have been put into a bill beforehand, but must be dealt with in the light and under the guidance of experience. The bill was supposed to have been so mutilated in its passage through the House of Commons, that nothing remained of it except the naked proposal to abolish purchase. But the plain fact was, as Lord Northbrook pointed out, that the provisions which had been dropped did not affect the bill vitally, or even materially. One was an extension of the Enlistment Act—a matter of no importance; another related to the ballot for the militia—also of no immediate importance; and the third of the abandoned provisions was that which empowered counties to raise money for supplying militia barracks. In all other respects the bill reached the House of Lords in the shape in which it had been introduced in the House of Commons, and the proposal to postpone the consideration of it till more information was furnished was obviously nothing more than a device for saving the purchase system, with all its evil and all its scandal, for at least another year. The amendment was carried, however, by a majority of twenty-five.

The Government was thus placed in a most awkward dilemma. They had the choice, on the one hand, of accepting the practical rejection of the bill for a year; and the consequence of doing so would have been as follows:—The exhaustive discussion of the subject in the House of Commons would have been thrown away; all the plans of the Government for the reorganization of the army must have remained in abeyance for at least another year; and the interests of the officers would in the meantime have been needlessly sacrificed, for in such a state of uncertainty the value of over-regulation prices would probably have fallen to zero. Moreover, we should have had such an agitation throughout the country as would, almost to a certainty, have made it impossible for any Government to offer a second time the very liberal terms which officers are now enabled to secure. The Opposition denounced the compensation which the Government offered to the officers as wasteful expenditure, and if the short-sighted vote of the House of Lords had not been set aside, the country would have taken the Opposition at its word, and have refused to sanction so much of the increased expenditure as was caused by the payment of over-regulation prices. Purchase would have gone inevitably; but the officers would have lost more than half the compensation which is now secured to them. And for this they would have had to thank their injudicious champions in both Houses of Parliament. The Government has literally 'saved them from their friends.' Earl Russell and the Marquis of Salisbury fired up with indignation when this warning was whispered in their ears during the debate on the second reading of the Army Bill. 'It had been suggested,' said the former, 'that if the amendment were carried the proposal of the Government to compensate officers for what was called the over-regulation price would be withdrawn; but he must say that that seemed to him to be an incredible supposition.... If compensation for over-regulation prices was just in March, 1871, it could not be unjust twelve months later.' With all due deference to Lord Russell, we think that time is an element in the case, and that an offer which was just this year might be unjust next year. It would have been the duty of the Government to consider the will of the country as well as the interests of the officers, and to take care that the former did not suffer by any undue consideration for the latter. A man who refuses a more than equitable offer by way of compensation for a loss incurred in an illegal manner, has no right to complain if the offer is not repeated, more especially if he has received fair warning of what is likely to be the consequence of his refusal.

But, whether just or not, the plain truth is that the House of Commons would not have sanctioned a second time the payment of over-regulation prices. In the interest of the officers themselves, therefore, in the interest of the House of Lords also, but, most of all, in the interest of the army and of the nation, the Government was bound to avail itself of any legal means which might enable it to prevent the mischief that could not fail to follow from the rash vote of the House of Lords. Ministers accordingly advised the Queen to abolish purchase by royal warrant, which was at once done. This has been called a coup d'état, and a display of 'high-handed despotism.' But no one whose opinion is worth anything has ventured to question the legality of the act. Sir Roundell Palmer, whose absence from the House of Commons at the time was supposed to indicate his disapproval, has given the high sanction of his authority, not only to the legality, but to the advisability, under the circumstances, of what the Ministry had done. But though the legality of the act has not been disputed, a chorus of voices in and out of Parliament have pronounced it 'unconstitutional.' It is not easy to see the distinction. An unconstitutional act we take to mean an act perpetrated in violation of the constitution. But what part of the constitution has been infringed, either in letter or in spirit, by the exercise of the royal warrant in the abolition of purchase in the army? The purchase system was created by royal warrant, nor has it ever rested on any other sanction. Constitutionally and legally, therefore, all that was required for its abolition was merely the withdrawal of the warrant which gave it existence; and that is precisely what has been done. Constitutional or legal objection there is none that can bear a moment's examination, and the whole matter resolves itself into a question of expediency. Those who consider the purchase system the mainstay of the British army will, of course, be of opinion that it was highly inexpedient to abolish it. Others, however, who prefer to look at the question in the light of facts rather than of theory and sentiment, will say that it was expedient to abolish at the earliest moment in which it could legally be done, a system whose history is such as we have described, and the continuance of which for another year, after all that had taken place, would have been fraught with evil to public morality, and have effectually prevented in the interval all possibility of reorganizing the army.

But the sting of the royal warrant abolishing purchase in the army lay doubtless in the fact that it was only exercised after the consent of Parliament had been previously asked, and (by the Lords) refused. And if this humiliation had been put upon the House of Lords wantonly, and without sufficient cause, the Government would have merited very severe censure. But was there not a sufficient cause? In the first place, the abolition of purchase was part of a large scheme, which embraced, inter alia, a very liberal offer of compensation for the extinction of the vested interests which the officers of the army had illegally contracted. It seemed, therefore, more respectful to the House of Commons, which was asked to vote the money, that the scheme of the Government should be submitted to it in its integrity; and there is no doubt, we apprehend, that if the House of Commons had met the second reading of the bill by a vote similar to that which was carried in the House of Lords, the Government would have bowed to the decision. But the question assumed quite a different aspect after the bill had been affirmed, in all its essential features, by decisive majorities in the House of Commons. It was then in the power of the Government to abolish purchase by royal warrant, and to send the bill, thus disencumbered of its bone of contention, up to the House of Lords. But the Lords would certainly have resented such treatment even more indignantly than they did the subsequent rescinding of their vote. So the bill was presented to them as it left the lower House; and they met it, not by a direct negative, not even by an amendment affirming the expediency of retaining the purchase system, but by a motion for delay. The debate which followed, however, clearly showed that the majority in the upper House were in reality fighting, not for more information, but for the retention of the purchase system. The consequence of yielding to their injudicious vote would therefore have been simply the waste of a precious twelvemonth; for everybody admitted that the purchase system was doomed, and could not survive another year. But it would have been much more satisfactory if it could have been abolished by Act of Parliament, for its resurrection would have been a moral impossibility; whereas, as matters now stand, it may be revived any moment by the same process which has for the time destroyed it. This consideration alone seems to us to be a sufficient justification for the course which the Government took. The abolition of purchase by Act of Parliament was the more excellent way, and the Government was right in trying it before availing itself of its last resource in the royal warrant. And certainly the officers are the last persons who ought to complain of what has been done; for there can be little doubt that if the Government had begun by abolishing purchase it would have found it hard, in the absence of a quid pro quo, to persuade the House of Commons to sanction the swollen estimates which compensation for over-regulation prices necessitated. The Lords, too, if they would only consider the matter calmly, would see reason to be grateful to a Government which has rescued them from much obloquy and from a most dangerous agitation. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the rejection of the Ballot Bill and of the Army Bill in one session would have gravely imperilled the existence of the House of Lords, at least in its present form. But the unavoidable mortification which the Government was compelled to inflict upon it served to appease the public resentment, and even to create a certain degree of sympathy in favour of our hereditary legislators.

The limits of our space forbid us to do more than notice very cursorily the remaining Ministerial achievements of the session. We do not know what others may think, but our own opinion is that the University Tests Bill is at least as important a measure as the Divorce Bill, which was about the sole legislative triumph of the session of 1857. To the readers of the British Quarterly, at all events, that session will not appear a barren one which has thrown open to Nonconformists the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Nor will the working classes quarrel seriously with a session which has given them the Trades' Unions Bill. The repeal of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill may be considered a small matter. But the passage of it through Parliament consumed the best part of a session, and disturbed the peace of the three kingdoms. It was, moreover, a stride backward in civilization, for it was one of those attempts, against which Nonconformists have always protested, to defend the truth by the carnal weapons of penal legislation. It was also the commencement of a retrograde policy towards Ireland. When the Queen visited that country, and on several other occasions, the territorial titles of the Irish Roman Catholic bishops were freely recognised in official documents. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill made them penal, and the result was what men of sense predicted at the the time. The bill became a dead letter; for it was systematically violated, because it was too absurd and too antagonistic to the principles of religious liberty to be enforced. There was a moral fitness in its repeal, under the Premiership of Mr. Gladstone, for his was the great speech which exposed its mischief and its incongruities when it was passing through the House of Commons.

The Ballot Bill can hardly be reckoned among the achievements of the session, since it has failed to become law; but it is certainly one of the achievements of the Government. It was carried through the House of Commons by overwhelming majorities, and it is not the fault of the Government that it is not now on the statute book. The Ministry was blamed for pressing it on, knowing that the Lords would reject it; but the Ministry had no such knowledge. On the contrary, there was some reason to believe that the Peers would have been satisfied with thwarting one of the capital measures of the session. But even if the Government had felt morally certain that the Lords would reject the Ballot Bill, we still insist that they were bound to go on with it. Nothing did so much to damage the prestige of Parliamentary Government, and to exasperate the working classes against the old Parliament as the dolce far niente policy of the Palmerstonian régime. Lord Palmerston's adroitness consisted mainly in combining the maximum of liberal promises with the minimum of liberal fulfilment. He took up measures to conciliate the more Liberal of the electors, and dropped them to conciliate the majority of the House of Commons. More valuable, therefore, even than the passage of the Ballot Bill into law, is the assurance which the conduct of the Government has given that it was thoroughly in earnest. But it was contended in influential quarters that the sincerity of the Government was sufficiently evinced by the second reading of the bill, and ministers were accordingly advised to suspend all further progress of the bill, and resume it again at that stage next session. Besides other objections to that proposal, it is enough to say of it that it is founded on a misconception of the powers of the Government. It is the simple fact that the Government had no power to do what it was so persistently advised to do. A proposal was made in 1861 that some power of that kind should be given by statute to either House of Parliament. But the House of Commons rejected the proposal on account of 'the grave and numerous objections' to it, and particularly because 'this suspending power in either House of Parliament, if exercised at its own discretion, would be at variance with the prerogative of the Crown.'

Mr. Bruce's Licensing Bill has been considered one of the chief failures of the session; and we do not wish to conceal our opinion that there were some tactical blunders in the management of it; but they were blunders which are in a great degree excusable by the peculiar circumstances of the session. It was, in our humble judgment, a blunder to introduce such a bill without a determination to deliver a decisive battle upon it; for the introduction of the bill roused the opposition of a powerful and thoroughly organized class interest, while the withdrawal of it alienated those to whom the Government looked for support. Mr. Bruce's excuse, and it is so far valid, is that the unexpected tactics of the Opposition in respect to the Army Bill wasted so much of the session that there was no opportunity to fight the battle of the Licensing Bill as he had intended to have fought it. The bill itself appears to us to be a fair compromise, and we have no doubt that it was calculated to do much good. The brewers and publicans have gained a victory for the moment, and they have the satisfaction of having beaten the Government candidate in East Surrey; but their victory is likely to prove a Pyrrhic one. It has opened the eyes of the public to the ruin which the excessive indulgence in intoxicating drinks is causing, and the more the question is discussed, the less reason will the publicans have for rejoicing over the defeat of Mr. Bruce's bill. The yearly sum spent on intoxicating liquors in the United Kingdom has now reached the enormous and portentous figure of £110,000,000, and the annual committals for drunkenness amounted in the year 1869 to 122,310. These are frightful facts; and if the interests of the publicans stand in the way of a thorough remedy, so much the worse for the interests of the publicans. Let the Government take away the licensing power from the magistrates, and commit the question to the management of local boards elected by the ratepayers, and we will undertake to say that the publicans will be checkmated politically in the first place, and that we shall witness, in the second place, a rapid decrease in their unholy traffic. Before dismissing the subject, however, it is right to remind our readers that Mr. Bruce's bill did not perish utterly. A portion, and a very valuable portion, of it is now law, and will effectually check the increase of public houses, and at the same time help to diminish the number of those already existing.

We have now glanced through the principal measures of the session, and we confidently ask whether it is not true that both in respect to the quantity and the quality of the work done it will bear a favourable comparison with the large majority of Parliamentary sessions during the last forty years. And yet it cannot be denied that the Government has incurred a certain amount of unpopularity. How is this to be explained? A general answer may be given, to the effect that a Liberal Government which is in earnest is sure to incur some degree of unpopularity; for its raison d'être is to attack abuses wherever it may find them. Its business is to do what is best for the nation at large in the first place, and to consider the interests of particular sections of the nation in the second place. But the interests concerned, as was natural, view the matter in a different light. They object to be relegated to the second place, for they prefer their own welfare to that of the nation, and, like the brewers the other day, are ready, whenever their pockets are menaced, to subordinate the interest of their party to that of their trade. The Government, to use a common expression, has 'trodden on the corns' of several powerful interests, and has thereby incurred their resentment. But it must be owned that it was from Mr. Lowe's budget that the Government received its first serious blow. Our own opinion is that incompetent as it was the budget attracted to itself a good deal of unmerited obloquy. But we feel bound, at the same time, to express our conviction that if Mr. Lowe knew human nature better, or took less pains to exasperate it, he might have produced a budget which would have strengthened instead of weakened the Government. As it was, the Government never quite recovered the prestige which Mr. Lowe's financial blunders had lost them. Then came a series of naval disasters, for which the Government was somehow considered responsible, though it really had no more to do with them than it had with the eruption of Vesuvius.[68] Then the persistent cry of extravagant expenditure, raised by the Conservatives, and echoed by their small band of allies among the Radicals, had some effect. Yet there never was a more dishonest cry. Though the present Government came into office in the end of the year 1868, the naval and military estimates for the ensuing year were prepared by their predecessors, and they reached the respectable figure of twenty-six millions sterling. And this, be it remembered, was in a period of profound peace. Mr. Gladstone's Government had to prepare the estimates for 1870, and the result showed a reduction from £26,000,000 to £21,000,000, with a marked improvement, at the same time, in the efficiency both of the army and navy. It is true, that in consequence of the complications arising out of the Franco-German war, two millions more were added to the estimates in the course of the summer. But no Government can be held responsible for expenditure caused by unforeseen emergencies: and, moreover, the expenditure in question was demanded by the country generally, and cannot in fairness be laid at the door of the Government. The upshot of the whole matter, however, is that the Government now in office reduced, on the first opportunity, the estimates of their predecessors by upwards of £4,000,000, and that, in spite of the expenditure occasioned by a gigantic Continental war, and a thorough reorganization of the army, the estimates are still considerably below the figure which the Tory Government reached in the midst of an universal peace abroad, and in the absence of any extraordinary expenditure at home. And yet Tory politicians, in and out of Parliament, have rent the air with their cries against the 'wasteful and extravagant expenditure' of the Government. Were it not for the war on the Continent, and the cost of abolishing the purchase system, and putting the army on a new basis, it is not too much to say that the navy and army estimates of this year would have been £7,000,000 lower than those which the Conservative Government bequeathed to Mr. Gladstone. We believe, however, that the exceptional expenditure of this session is neither 'wasteful' nor 'extravagant.' It is like the wise outlay of a skilful husbandman who drains and manures his barren land, in the sure confidence that it will repay him tenfold. The new basis on which the Government is reorganizing the army will give us in a few years a force which will free us from the recurrence of those periodical panics which make us the laughing-stock of other nations, and which always involve for the time being a large, but perfectly useless, expenditure. Already our navy is admitted, even by the political opponents of the Government, to be more than a match for all the navies of the world put together; and, under the wise administration of our present rulers, the army also will soon be in a condition to maintain our just influence abroad, and make the invasion of these isles a practical impossibility.

On the whole, then, we believe that the unpopularity which has overtaken the Government this session, is for the most part, undeserved; and we believe in the next place that the unpopularity is mainly confined to certain political cliques and class interests, which the Government, in the prosecution of its plain duty, has unavoidably offended. Through a combination of these causes, a general election at this moment might lose the Government a score of seats all over the country; but it would not seriously shake its position. The nation has not lost its confidence in Mr. Gladstone, and it will think twice before it makes up its mind to exchange him for Mr. Disraeli. The journal 'written by gentlemen for gentlemen' has recently told us in one of its oracular manifestoes, that 'the whole London press has become thoroughly suspicious of Mr. Gladstone's strength and fitness for the place which, for the want of any tolerable competitor, he holds at his own discretion.' We have heard and read this sort of language before. 'The whole London press,' or rather that portion of it which is fortunate enough to receive the imprimatur of the Pall-Mall Gazette, pronounced the same verdict on Mr. Gladstone five years ago. And the result was, that those confiding politicians who trusted in the sagacity of 'the whole London press' either lost their seats in Parliament, or had to sit on the stool of repentance and vow eternal allegiance to Mr. Gladstone. Let those, therefore, who mayhap are contemplating a repetition of the same experiment meditate on the history of the Adullamites, and be wise in time. The country has its eye on that knot of atrabilious Liberals whose voice is that of Jacob, but whose hands are the hands of Esau. They may declare, ore rotundo, that they have no confidence in Mr. Gladstone. Let them have a care lest the next general election prove that the country has no confidence in them.

To sum up, then, the claims of the Government during the past year on the continued confidence of the nation. It succeeded in limiting the area of the war between France and Germany, and, while upholding the dignity of the country, preserved to us the blessings of peace. By the treaty of Washington it has laid the foundation of a cordial understanding and a lasting friendship with the great American Republic. It has passed several measures for the benefit of Ireland which will surely help, as they become thoroughly understood, to lay the demon of disaffection in that impulsive, but not ungenerous people. Then what shall we say of the Army Bill? Its importance is gauged by the unparalleled resistance which it encountered in Parliament, and in times less exacting than the present its success would have made the fortune of an ordinary administration. On the other hand, the Trades' Unions Bill, the University Tests Bill, the Repeal of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, and the Local Government Board Bill, (a most valuable piece of legislation) are the quality of bills which ordinarily constitute the work of a session. And, in addition to these outward and visible signs of ministerial toil, the separate departments of the Government have, each in its place, done an immense amount of that kind of work which makes no appeal to public notice, but which is none the less valuable because it works in silence. The Poor-law Board, the Admiralty, and Mr. Cardwell's department have all laboured incessantly, and the fruit of their labour is already becoming visible in the better management of our workhouses, and in the increased efficiency of our army and navy. Nor must we forget the excellent reforms which Mr. Monsell has already made in the Post Office, and which entitle him at no distant day to a seat in the Cabinet. We maintain, therefore, that the Government may, without any remorse, sit down with a good conscience to frame the programme of the coming session. The only serious danger which they have ahead of them is the question of Irish education; and that is a question which can well wait awhile. But if it must be tackled next session, we see no reason why the genius which solved the church and land questions should not be equal to solving that of education also. The danger of the Government lies in the inconsistent conduct of the Opposition, who advocate the application to Ireland of principles which are totally opposed to those for which they contend in the case of England. Still, it does not appear to us that the question of Irish education presents any insurmountable difficulty, provided the same statesmanlike principles are brought to bear upon it which have already solved the vexed problems of land tenure and religious equality. In short, a good budget and a moderate programme will enable the Government to make the next session—we will not say more fruitful, but—more popular than the last.