application of Liberal principle was the withdrawal from the Soudan. The death of General Gordon, who ought never to have been sent to Khartoum, has invested this operation with an unreal significance. To conquer and hold the southern provinces would have been as difficult and as costly as to conquer and hold Afghanistan. Being in Egypt, the Government wisely decided to restrict their responsibilities. The reorganization of finance was the first condition of the conquest of the Soudan, and a few years later the swift, successful, and cheap campaign of Lord Kitchener did what could at that time only have been done at the cost of enormous financial burdens. The wisdom of the policy of evacuation is not now questioned. But the loss of Gordon, due as much to his own disobedience to orders as to the tardiness of the Government, was very damaging to their reputation. They ought either to have kept out of Egypt altogether, or to have gone into it with a determination to do the work thoroughly. A vote of censure was averted in February, 1885, by only fourteen votes, and it was obvious that the days of the Government were numbered.
One flash of vigour illuminated their decline. The Ameer of Afghanistan, by the judicious treatment of Lord Ripon and Lord Dufferin, had been converted into a firm friend of Great Britain. An advance by Russia in Central Asia made some definition of boundaries necessary, and while negotiations between the two Powers were in progress some Russian troops made an attack upon Afghans in Penjdeh. The Government promptly obtained a vote of credit for six and a half millions, and showed Russia plainly that, however anxious they were to restrict the extent of the Empire, they were ready at all times to defend those peoples whom they had taken under their protection. The dispute was referred to the arbitration of the King of Denmark. The reference was denounced by the Tories as a cowardly surrender. The Liberals were content with the victory of morality over prestige. This affair took place in April. In the middle of June the Government, distracted by the prospect of more coercion in Ireland, resigned, and Lord Salisbury became Prime Minister.
In spite of their difficulties, this Liberal Ministry had contrived to do much for the cause of Liberalism. They had extended the control of the individual over his government to substantially all men. They had raised the value of women. They had removed one of the few remaining disabilities of the Dissenters. They had restored freedom to the Transvaal, and saved incalculable expense to both Great Britain and India by withdrawing from Afghanistan. They had blundered into Imperialism in Egypt, and though they had treated Ireland without egoism, like all their predecessors they had failed to pacify it. In the new spirit of collectivism they had stepped in between the economically weak and the economically strong. The Irish peasant had been further protected against the Irish landlord. The English farmers had got compensation for improvements and the right to protect their crops against game. Something had been done to get the poor into better houses. Workmen had got some protection against the negligence of their employers. The record of emancipation in the various fields of class, of sex, of race, and of wealth was respectable, if not glorious. Everything except the state of Ireland indicated the future course of Liberalism with clearness. Mr. Chamberlain expressed the opinions of the advance guard when he demanded the reform of the House of Lords, the compulsory purchase of land for agricultural holdings, free as well as compulsory education, the disestablishment of the Church, and a graduated income tax. This was the work to be done, to reduce the power of aristocracy in government, which had been displayed of late in more than one conflict between the two Houses, to perfect the equalization of sects in the State, to employ the superfluity of wealth in mitigating the conditions in which poverty lived. But the actual course of events was determined by the state of Ireland.
CHAPTER X
THE IMPERIALIST REACTION
The condition of Ireland was now forced upon the attention of both parties. The Irish Nationalist party had demanded Home Rule since Parnell assumed the leadership in 1879. The General Election of 1885 gave this demand a force which it had never possessed before. The extension of the franchise by the Act of 1884 gave a much larger representation to agricultural Ireland, and agricultural Ireland was wholly Nationalist. Out of eighty-nine contests Parnell's party won eighty-five. All the fourteen Liberal Irish members were thrown out. The Protestant half of Ulster remained Tory and returned seventeen members. But the general sense of the country was made clear. Parnell, so long denounced by both English parties as the head of a faction, was now manifestly what he had always claimed to be, the leader of a nation. Strong and resolute English government had hopelessly failed. Crime was suppressed. But no Nationalist had been converted by punishment into a good citizen. Egoistic government by England could not succeed. Altruistic government by England could not succeed. The only alternative was the government of Ireland by Ireland.
Both English parties showed signs of a change of temper. Gladstone had hinted in his first Midlothian Speeches at a general devolution of local control upon England, Scotland, and Ireland,[[332]] and in his election address in 1885 he declared that, subject to the unity of the Empire being preserved, grants of such control