6. To press upon the local Associations the paramount duty of a timely selection of candidates for the House of Commons.
Nothing could have been clearer, more definite or satisfactory than this scheme of labour; and accompanied as it was by observations of a flattering character concerning the constitution of the National Union, the Council was greatly gratified and encouraged by its reception.
The Council, however, committed the serious error of imagining that your Lordship and Sir Stafford Northcote were in earnest in wishing them to become a real source of usefulness to the party, and proceeded to adopt a report presented to them by us, in which practical effect was given to the advice with which the Council have been favoured, and they were under the impression that they would be placed in a position to carry out their labours successfully by being furnished with pecuniary resources from the considerable funds which your Lordship and Sir Stafford Northcote collect and administer to the general purposes of the party.
The Council have been rudely undeceived. The day after the adoption of the report, before even I had had time to communicate that report officially to your Lordship, I received a letter from Mr. Bartley, the paid Agent of the leaders, written under their direction, containing a formal notice to the National Union to quit the premises occupied by them in conjunction with the other organising officials, accompanied by a statement that the leaders declined for the future all and any responsibility for the proceedings of the National Union.
Further, in your letter of the 1st instant you express your disapproval of the action of the Council, and decline to consider the report, on the ground that the contemplated action of the Council will trench upon the functions of an amorphous and unknown body, styled the Central Committee, in whose hands all matters hitherto disposed of by the leaders and Whips of the party must remain, including the expenditure of the party funds.
In the same letter you state that you will indicate with more precision the objects at which the Council of the National Union should aim, the result being that the precise language of your former letter of February 29 is totally abandoned, and refuge taken in vague, foggy and utterly intangible suggestions.
Finally, in order that the Council of the National Union may be completely and for ever reduced to its ancient condition of dependence upon, and servility to, certain irresponsible persons who find favour in your eyes, you demand that the Whips of the party—meaning, we suppose, Lord Skelmersdale, Lord Hawarden and Lord Hopetoun in the Lords, Mr. Rowland Winn and Mr. Thornhill in the Commons—should sit ex officio on the Council, with a right of being present at the meetings of all Committees.
With respect to the last demand we think it right to state, for the information of your Lordship, that under the rules and constitution of the National Union the Council have no power whatever to comply with this injunction. The Council are elected at the Annual Conference and have no power to add to their number. All that they can do is that, in the event of a vacancy occurring among the members, they have power by co-optation to fill up the vacancy.
I will admit that in conversation with your Lordship and Sir Stafford Northcote, with a view to establishing a satisfactory connection between the Council and the leaders of the party without sacrificing the independence of the former, I unofficially suggested an arrangement—subsequently approved by this Committee—under which Mr. R. N. Fowler, one of the Treasurers of the National Union, might have been willing to resign that post, and Mr. Winn might have been elected by the Council to fill it—an arrangement widely different from the extravagant and despotic demand laid down in your letter of the 1st instant.
You further inform us that in the event of the Council—a body representing as it does upwards of 500 affiliated Conservative Associations, and composed of men eminent in position and political experience, enjoying the confidence of the party in populous localities, and sacrificing continually much time, convenience and money to the work of the National Union—acquiescing in the view of its functions laid down in your letter of April 1, it may be graciously permitted to remain the humble inmate of the premises which it at present occupies.