Lord Randolph Churchill

by Winston Churchill

Ever yours very truly,
Salisbury.

Opinions vary on the merits of this dispute. Some of those who have held great office have informed me that the Secretary of State for India had no choice but to tender his resignation after such an incident: and it is certainly curious that so high an authority upon Ministerial propriety as Lord Salisbury should have allowed the difficulty to arise. On the other hand, it may be urged that personal slights, however provoking, ought never to be allowed to compromise a great political situation. Probably Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, in his dry way, summed the question up correctly:—

Sir Michael Hicks-Beach to Lord Randolph Churchill.

Many thanks for sending me the correspondence, which I return. I am the more glad of its conclusion, because I think there is reason on both sides. The Queen put Salisbury in an almost impossible position by asking him to forward the telegram. He could not tell you of it and it would have been very difficult, perhaps impossible, for him to interfere with her private correspondence by suggesting that she should reconsider it. But, on the other hand, I agree with you that the very fact of his forwarding it must have suggested to Dufferin that it was something more than the Queen’s private opinion.

Salisbury has written to tell me what has passed and I have therefore ventured to suggest to him that Ponsonby should have the cypher, so that what has occurred should not happen again. So far as I know, the Queen exercises her right of private correspondence with great care, to avoid anything that would affect the decisions of Ministers; and this exception to the rule was obviously due to the personal nature of the question, which Dufferin (had the telegram been sent by Ponsonby) would have quite appreciated.

But please forgive me for saying that I think you looked at this matter rather too seriously last Friday. I think I should have been more inclined to laugh at the story of the telegram than to treat it as a proof of want of confidence on the part of the Queen and Prime Minister. If you had not been ill you would never have said of yourself in your letter to me that ‘I have no longer any energy or ideas, and am no more good except to make disturbance.’ And I suspect the same reason has influenced your view of this telegram affair.

The sequel, so far as concerned the Bombay command, was simple. Lord Dufferin perceived from Lord Salisbury’s second telegram that grave differences had arisen in the Cabinet and that the matter would not be settled with easy and deferential good-humour. Upon receiving Lord Randolph’s despatch on the subject, the Viceroy, while seeming to re-iterate his opinion, ranged himself with the Secretary of State in the following dexterous sentence: ‘The fact of our having proposed the abolition of the Presidential Commanderships-in-Chief has got rid of what otherwise would have been an insuperable objection[42]: namely, the political responsibilities of the Bombay Commander-in-Chief as a member of Council’ (August 21). As this proposal involved the carrying of a Bill through the House of Commons, the ‘insuperable objection’ must have held good until the autumn of 1886—even had the Government survived. The Cabinet, to whom the matter was referred, unanimously decided (October 9) ‘that the political position of the Commander-in-Chief of a presidency army could not be filled by a son of the Queen’;[43] and the Bombay command remained vacant during the remaining tenure of the Government. It should, however, be added, lest anything in the foregoing correspondence should seem to reflect upon the Duke of Connaught, that under Lord Salisbury’s second Administration, the ‘insuperable objection’ being removed by the abolition of Presidential Commanders-in-Chief with their customary political functions, he was appointed to the Bombay command and discharged its military duties with conspicuous advantage to the public.

But the consequences were more lasting outside the actual subject of dispute. Although the correspondence between Lord Randolph and the Prime Minister ripples on as pleasantly as ever, although in the next few months their comradeship became increasingly cordial, it cannot be supposed that such a conflict could pass away without leaving scars. Lord Salisbury could not forget, Lord Randolph Churchill could not but remember, what the result of a resignation had been.

Last in chronology, first in importance, among Lord Randolph Churchill’s enterprises at the India Office came the conquest and annexation of Burma. When Lord Randolph Churchill had travelled in India in the winter of 1884, he had consulted a native fortune-teller and thought it worth while to keep a note of what he said. The astrologer, after saying, perhaps ambiguously, ‘that he had never seen so good a star since Lord Mayo’s (for during his Viceroyalty Lord Mayo was assassinated in the Andaman Islands), repeatedly asserted that his visitor would ‘return to India shortly in connection with a warlike expedition,’ and that he was ‘about to go on a warlike expedition.’ The prediction may perhaps in a sense have come more nearly true than many others of its class. When the Conservatives came into power, the British administration in Burma was confined to the maritime province at the mouth of the Irrawadi and the strip of sea-coast bordering on the Bay of Bengal. The inland country up to the confines of China still remained an independent State under its native ruler, the King of Ava. The relations of the British Government with that State had long been unsatisfactory. By the Treaty of Yandaboo, which terminated the first Burmese War in 1826, the right of a British representative to reside at Mandalay had been secured, and until 1876 this agent of the Imperial Government had from time to time—sitting on the ground and barefooted, according to the inflexible ceremonial of the Burmese Court—endeavoured, with small success, to safeguard the ever-growing commercial interests of British and British-Indian subjects.

In 1878 the old King of Burma died, leaving behind him thirty sons with families on the same generous scale. A palace intrigue secured the throne to Prince Theebaw and the new reign was inaugurated by an indiscriminate massacre of the late King’s other sons, with their mothers, wives and children. Eight cart-loads of butchered princes of the blood were cast, according to custom, into the river. The less honourable sepulchre of a capacious pit within the gaol was accorded to their dependents. Two of the thirty sons had had the prudence to take refuge with the British Resident, who not only stoutly refused to surrender them but addressed a strong remonstrance to the Burmese Government. The Burmese Minister for Foreign Affairs replied tartly that the procedure followed was in accordance with precedent and that under the existing treaties of ‘grand friendship’ the two great Powers were bound to respect each other’s customs. With this answer the Government of India were forced to be content, though Ministers at home seem to have had some difficulty in persuading Queen Victoria to sign the necessary message of cousinly congratulation to the new monarch.