2. The division in the Opposition, so glaringly and so recently shown by Mr. Chamberlain’s speech at Leicester and Lord Hartington’s in Derbyshire.
I submit with great deference that, your task being to carry on the Queen’s Government, it is incumbent upon you to take advantage of every apparent circumstance which may be made to contribute to the efficiency and solidity of the Government; nor ought you, under such grave conditions as now exist, to shrink unduly from any reasonable sacrifice of friends or colleagues which might enable you honourably to attain the end in view. Having put your hand to the plough under the uninviting conditions of June last, it is hardly possible to look back, or to act as if the responsibility for Government was not upon you.
It is very pleasant to me to learn that my suggestions with regard to Parliamentary Procedure, R.C. University Ireland, Education, and criminal law reform and codification meet with your general concurrence; and that being so, I allow myself to risk a few arguments which seem to me to militate somewhat against the views expressed in your letter on the question of the programme generally, and in particular the questions of Local Government and Land Law reform.
If I apprehended your meaning rightly, you would make your programme rather rigidly orthodox Tory, with a view of expanding it into Whig heresy when the time for a fusion should seem to have arrived. Now I hold very strongly that in that case the moment for a fusion will never arrive. If the Newport programme is not at once presented to Parliament in a large and generous measure, the Whigs will be justified in their contention that it did not signify real progressive legislation—that they were right and discriminating when they mocked at it. That has been Lord Hartington’s cry all along, which he reiterated with emphasis last Saturday. The difference between the Newport programme and the concrete portions of the Midlothian address was not easy to be distinguished, and I doubt its existence. That being so, if you produce the former, without timidity, skimping, paring, or scraping, and if the Whigs turn you out, obviously their motive is office, and office only. The country will not be deceived or edified by such purely party manœuvres. And as by your administrative record, so with your legislative programme, you will have laid up for yourself treasure in the constituencies, you will have cast bread upon the waters which you will find after many days.
This is indubitably the lesson of 1835.
I do urge as strongly as I may that you should decide in your mind how far you can go in legislation—not under Whig pressure, not with a view solely of gaining Whigs, but solely with a view of what appears to be best for the country without infringement of any great Tory principle; and that, having so decided, you should offer the result to Parliament without delay, without stint, without qualification, and with all confidence. It is, I am convinced, by ‘showing your hand,’ by showing how many good trumps you have in it, that you will gain support—if not immediate, at any rate in the near future. It is by hiding your hand—by giving cause for the belief, or ground for the accusation, that it is a poor hand and that you have no trumps, that you will lose support now and make it most difficult to gain later. The boroughs have gone for you so strongly because they believe in the fulness and genuineness of the Newport programme. Our task should be to keep the boroughs, as well as to win the counties; this can only be done by an active progressive—I risk the word, a democratic—policy, a casting-off and a burning of those old, worn-out aristocratic and class garments from which the Derby-Dizzy lot, with their following of county families, could never, or never cared to, extricate themselves.
This being so, in my mind, I find the suggested postponement of rural Local Government a course open to the deepest suspicion; the preference given to London government an error in tactics of the largest kind. No one in the country, or in London either, cares a damn about a London municipality, nor would many municipalities attract them. But county government, involving as it does a redistribution and relief of burdens, to which every man of our party is deeply pledged, is without doubt anxiously expected by the constituencies, and will not brook delay. So I would say about land law reform. I am very sure that the feeling of the boroughs is in favour of extensive changes in our land system, on the ground that the labour in the towns is depreciated by agricultural migration, and that this latter is the effect of an antiquated land system. This, rightly or wrongly, is the notion in the manufacturing minds, and failure on our part to come up to their legitimate and reasonable expectations would produce incalculable disappointment and mortification.
If you decide that the large constructive measures which the times seem to demand are beyond the capacity of the Tory party, or the scope of their political principles, though I should regret the decision I would accept it without demur. But in that case I would press upon you the advisability of prompt resignation, on the ground that the country had for the time decided that the function of the Tory party would be more usefully displayed in Opposition, in efforts purely critical, in attempts to amend Liberal legislation and moderate Liberal zeal. If you show your hand at all, show it fully and show a good one; but if you have no hand good enough for the game or the stakes, place the cards face downwards on the table, decline to play, and leave the Downing Street table. I cannot think there is any safe via media between these two courses.
Lastly, I will not conceal my repugnance to dealing with Church reform. Surely the Russell-Gurney-Disraeli Church legislation is a warning. The time of Parliament will be wasted in furious ecclesiastical differences, and votes will be lost on every side by the party responsible for the effort. The Public Worship Regulation Act was one of my first House of Commons experiences, and I cannot forget it. The Nonconformists, so powerful, will offer every opposition; and nothing will be gained except loss of time, of temper, and of strength. If those ornamental but, on the whole, rather useless and expensive Lords Spiritual care to justify their privileges by attempts at legislation, smile on them, beam on them, give them every encouragement for bringing the Lords Temporal into a devout and heavenly frame of mind. Some good may possibly issue from such a source, if such should be the will of Providence. But Church reform which is the product of a Cabinet checked and controlled by party Whips and guided by House of Commons lobbies is surely in its nature a monstrosity, possibly a profanity, certainly a farce.
Please pardon me this long letter. I feel that my constant and lengthy epistolary communications to you may lead you to look forward to resignation of office as an immense relief, but I find my excuse in your kindness hitherto, and am