Mr. Chamberlain followed up the rumour of a settled scheme by a prompt denial that he was a party to it, and added an emphatic statement of the way in which he and his friends read the Midlothian speeches—'all sections of the party were determined that the integrity of the Empire should be a reality, and not an empty phrase.' Mr. Chamberlain had listened to his great leader too long not to be aware of the importance of marking the distinction between a 'reality' and a 'phrase.' In a few days Lord Hartington too wrote to say, that he was no party to the suggested policy.
The ultimate result of the elections left the government at Christmas only 251 votes, and the Liberals 333. Had it been clear that the Liberal party were united in a scheme, which was consistent with the current of British opinion, the solution would have been simple enough. Had the appeals for straightforward dealing, made more than once during the election by Lord Salisbury and Lord Randolph Churchill, been responded to, the Government might have made way for a Liberal Ministry, the best men on both sides recognizing, what the soundest public opinion required, that the Irish vote of 86 should be disregarded on questions affecting the existence of a Cabinet; but before the elections were all over, the divisions in the Liberal party were obvious. Mr. Gladstone had returned with more eagerness than ever to the policy of Irish ideas, whilst experience had at length opened the eyes of his ablest lieutenants.
In such a condition of affairs, the only course for Lord Salisbury's Government was to await the onset of their opponents, meanwhile applying themselves to settle that scheme of Irish policy which they as a party were prepared to champion in office or out of office. They met Parliament with an emphatic declaration to maintain the Union, and a few days afterwards announced that further legislation in defence of public order was necessary. This announcement was made on the 26th of January, when several of the Amendments in the Address were still on the paper. Before the House rose, the Government had ceased to exist. By a majority of 79, in a House of 583; a Resolution in support of a policy advocated by the Radical section of the Liberal party was carried against the Government. The motion of Mr. Jesse Collings was, it must be remembered, not a necessary assertion of a particular principle. The importance of the questions of allotments was acknowledged by the Ministry collectively and individually. It was not supposed, even by Mr. Collings himself, that the carrying of this particular Motion on the Address would advance legislation on the subject by a single day. The motion was one of those demonstrations of opinions, ordinary enough in Parliament, and generally resulting in a debate without a division or if pushed to a division, in the withdrawal from the House of all but declared partizans. On this particular occasion the motion was taken up and pressed to a division, in order that the National League was to be put down, was followed in a few hours by a vote which, in the existing constitution of parties, necessarily involved the restoration of Mr. Gladstone to power. So transparent was the object of the division that 13 Liberals voted with the Ministers, among others such staunch adherents of Liberalism as Lord Hartington and Sir Henry James.
When the new Ministry was formed, two extraordinary circumstances came to light. Lord Hartington, the heir-apparent to the Liberal Leadership, Lord Derby, Mr. Gladstone's most distinguished proselyte, Lord Selborne, and other eminent colleagues in the conduct of the Liberal party, would have nothing to do with the new scheme for the final settlement of Ireland for the third time. Another still more singular fact was soon disclosed. All the members of the new Cabinet, who had any future before them, had come in with reservations of a right of further consideration, when the subject of Irish policy should be brought up for discussion.
One remarkable ally, however, Mr. Gladstone had found in his momentous enterprise. The appointment of Mr. John Morley to the principal post in the Government of the part of the kingdom, which had fallen under the sway of such an organization as the National League, was in itself a revolution. The new Chief Secretary had no official experience, and no parliamentary position. A favoured person, who had audience of great Trades' Union gatherings, he was observed with some interest by the late Parliament, busy with speculations on the character of the new Electorate. But, if his parliamentary work had been slight, he had considerable literary reputation, and had taken an active part, in the press, in discussions on the Irish question. The apologist of Danton, the champion of the Jacobin Club, he was the one English political writer who believed himself able to find in the throes of the French Revolution valuable examples of public policy. The figures of that terrible convulsion did not attract him so much by their range of human passion, by the largeness of the space they filled in a great drama of humanity. It was their fanaticism which inspired him. Their capacity to combine, with the perpetration of atrocious crimes, an ardent apostolate of abstract ideals, had for him a vivid fascination. A gentle critic of Robespierre, he could see in the execution of Marie Antoinette traces of discriminating statesmanship. Entering on political work with such dispositions, he was early attracted to the seething cauldron of Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy. Having satisfied himself that Ireland was in a state of revolution, he regarded murder and robbery as necessary incidents. When an unfortunate lady driving in the evening along a country road was shot dead beside her husband, whose only offence was that of being a landlord, the public were lectured for the inconsequence of their indignation. On the Dublin conspirators, who were watching to murder Mr. Forster, were not lost the lessons which Mr. Morley had been preaching on the vileness of the permanent officials at the Castle. They determined to murder Mr. Burke, and in killing him slew his companion also; and Mr. Morley deprecatingly reminded his readers, that the death of Lord Frederick Cavendish was 'almost an accident.' With these professed opinions, it was easy for him to acknowledge what Mr. Gladstone might have hesitated to confess, that Mr. Parnell and the National League were the true expression of 'the general sense of the Irish people.'
The Nationalist party had long recognised the value of his aid in Parliament. They felt the truth of the saying, that he was 'Mr. Parnell in an Englishman's skin,' and consequently enjoying more freedom of action, able, on occasion, to do more service for the National League in a Parnellite Cabinet than Mr. Parnell himself. Although the principles he had laid down, strictly applied, would oblige him to say, let Ireland take care of herself and work out her own destiny, he has qualified his faith—he has never very clearly explained why—by a declaration in favour of the integrity of the Kingdom. A believer in revolution, Mr. Morley is astute enough to be ready to take what he can get. 'We do wrong,' he said, writing after the breakdown of the Kilmainham Treaty, 'in being content with nothing short of perfection and finality. If we see our way to the next step, that is enough.' 'Perfection' in Irish affairs would perhaps be that Irish opinion should be organized in a convention at Dublin, and then, tempered by a full course of revolution, should come to the conclusion, that the Union after all was the best thing for both islands. As the public are not yet prepared for trying this experiment, we are to have a succession of 'next steps.'
As a set off to Mr. Morley's want of official experience and of weight in the House of Commons, Mr. Gladstone placed the consideration he enjoyed with the Parnellite party and a disposition, composed of fanaticism and adroitness, fitting him well to co-operate in the schemes which were to follow from the wild passion of the National League in combination with the skill of the 'old Parliamentary hand.'
No sooner was the new Ministry formed than the Nationalist party recognized the greatness of their opportunity. An attitude of reserve was taken up by the Nationalist members and their Press. The Ministry had not been a week in office, when the most advanced and outspoken of the Irish leaders, Mr. John Dillon, presiding at a meeting of the National League, frankly declared 'he never felt more inclined to say nothing than to-day, the present Ministry had been formed on one question and on one question alone, and that was the rights of the Irish nation.' With Mr. Gladstone in office, the policy of the League was to apply the policy of silence so often inculcated by Mr. Parnell. Speaking out might only embarrass their new allies.
The country, up to a week ago, knew nothing of the momentous scheme on which the Ministry were engaged. One Cabinet council considered it with the result, that the collective action of the Cabinet ceased for the next fortnight; and then the only two public men of weight, whom Mr. Gladstone had induced to give his scheme the compliment of a hearing, retired from the Ministry. Our readers are now in possession of so much of the new scheme as they may be able to discern through the glamour of Mr. Gladstone's rhetoric; but the condition of affairs during the last three months is a picture to remember for all time.
When the Hawarden scheme was disclosed before Christmas, Mr. Gladstone's principal organ in the London Press declared within a week that the game was up. The public would have none of it. The return of Mr. Gladstone to office, with Mr. John Morley as Irish Secretary, suddenly revived the hopes of the 'Pall Mall Gazette.' His new start in pursuit of the Irish ideal banished the despair which had settled upon even the most reckless of his adherents. The age, the physical power of the Premier, his long public career, called up reflections which could not be disposed of in a moment by foes, still less by former allies. He claimed time, and he has taken the most important part of the Session, to mature his plans, amidst the silence of the Opposition and of his Home Rule allies.