April 7, later.
Dear Lord Salisbury,—I had a long and most satisfactory interview with Chamberlain this evening. In consequence he met Lord H. in a friendly manner, and arranged as follows: that he (Joe) will move the adjournment on Thursday evening, and that Lord H. is to speak Friday, either before or after dinner—for preference before. Trevelyan will speak to-morrow. Lubbock and Lymington will also represent Whig impartiality and patriotism if required.
Therefore we have to find dinner-hour speakers, and Plunket as a ten o’clock man. The debate is to be carried into next week. If G.O.M. insists upon Monday for his Budget, Tuesday will be taken for Home Rule.
I hope you may approve of all this.
Yours most sincerely,
Randolph S. C.
The famous ‘Bill for the better government of Ireland,’ after various delays, came before the House of Commons on April 8, and was expounded by the Prime Minister with his usual power and more than his usual restraint. The Chamber, crowded from floor to ceiling with persons of distinction and authority, the purlieus of Parliament invaded by an excited throng, reflected the anxiety of his opponents and enforced the memorable importance of the day. It was discovered that the Irish members had taken possession of many places on the Conservative benches above the gangway. The group of ex-Ministers, clustered together as if on an island, seemed surrounded on every side by the exultant cheers of their opponents. And as they listened to the oratory of their grand antagonist and to the loud applauses which were raised from all parts of the House, more than one heart sank at the onslaught which must now be met.
Mr. Chamberlain did not speak till the following afternoon. Lord Randolph’s anxiety about the exact terms of the Royal permission was justified by the event. So soon as Mr. Chamberlain, in the course of his explanation, found it necessary to refer to the Land Bill, ‘a very startling proposal, involving the issue of 120,000,000l. Consols,’ Mr. Gladstone rose at once to remind ‘his right honourable friend,’ as he was always careful to call him, that the permission obtained from the Queen on his behalf had no relation whatever to the Land Bill, but referred to the Government of Ireland Bill alone. Mr. Chamberlain at once asserted that he had resigned on the Irish policy as expressed in the two Bills, and his explanation could not be complete unless he was allowed to refer to both. He asserted that he had asked the Prime Minister to obtain for him permission to read his letter of March 15, which dealt exclusively with the Land scheme, and that Mr. Gladstone had consented to this. The Prime Minister suavely observed that he could not recollect what letter was written to him on March 15, and that he had no power to extend the Queen’s permission beyond the limits of the Government of Ireland Bill. The situation was painful and acute. Mr. Chamberlain found himself in a position of astonishing difficulty. Quite apart from the painful nature of a misunderstanding upon matters almost of personal honour between distinguished men who had hitherto belonged to the same party, his whole speech—the ‘speech for dear life,’ on which so much depended—must at every step in the argument be interrupted, restricted and recast. In the hush of a great assembly, stirred by passions the fiercer that they were restrained, surrounded by political opponents and personal enemies, menaced by the rancorous attitude of the Nationalist members, and confronted by the greatest Parliamentarian of the age, the resigning Minister had to make up his mind whether to go on and defy the Prime Minister, whether to sit down at once and refuse to attempt a mutilated explanation, or whether to submit and say what could be said as well as possible. He chose the last, and he succeeded in delivering a speech of nearly an hour which proceeded by steps of close and sustained argument to a triumphant conclusion. Lord Randolph Churchill’s admiration for this memorable personal and Parliamentary feat was boundless. ‘By a supreme and unequalled effort,’ he wrote at once, ‘you have reasserted your position as leader of the Radical party, and on questions of Imperial policy you have gained the confidence of the country. I never heard anything better.’
In spite of all its unexpected restriction the speech of the resigning Minister had proved damaging to Bill and policy. But a more formidable shock was to follow. Mr. Chamberlain has been censured for having joined the Government of 1886 at all; and at the time, while passion was hot, he was freely accused of having joined it in order to wreck it. The letter which he had written to the Prime Minister before accepting office on January 30, asserting his opinions in perfectly unmistakable terms upon the Irish Question, and the ‘unlimited liberty of judgment and rejection’ which Mr. Gladstone had formally accorded him, are in themselves a powerful defence of his action. But Lord Hartington, who had from the very first held aloof, occupied a far stronger position; and from that position, with the ‘hereditary virtue of the whole House of Cavendish,’ in his usual temper of sober integrity, and in that style of homely yet profound argument which has always influenced the English mind, he now delivered a tremendous blow. For a long Parliament he had led the Liberal Opposition; for almost a generation he had filled great office; on a hundred important occasions he had been the spokesman of a Government and a party, and yet until he sat down after his speech on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill, no one on either side of the House knew what he could do. Mr. Chamberlain could answer the Prime Minister, Lord Randolph could attack him and fight him, Mr. Goschen could rate him; but Lord Hartington on this occasion did that to Mr. Gladstone which no other living man could do, and which Disraeli himself had seldom done—he rebuked him.
Beside these speeches the rest of the debate, distinguished as it was by so much wit and vigour, lay somewhat in shadow. The Chief Secretary, as the living embodiment of the new Irish policy, was heard with the greatest attention when he closed the discussion for that evening. In arraigning the late Government for their bewildering changes of mood and action towards Ireland, he fastened upon Lord Randolph a sharp adaptation of a famous verse which was devoid neither of justice nor severity:—
Stiff in opinions, often in the wrong,
Was everything by turns, and nothing long,
And in the course of one revolving moon
Was green and orange, statesman and buffoon.
Lord Randolph, when he resumed the debate next day, chose, like a good general, other ground to fight upon than that selected by his adversary as suited to attack. He spoke with unusual moderation, paying many elaborate tributes to the Prime Minister’s eloquence and glory, and dealing mainly, in laborious detail, with the fiscal and financial proposals of the Bill. He contrived, without actually applying the quotation, to remind the Chief Secretary of Grattan’s description of a speech of Lord Clare. ‘Great generosity of assertion, great thrift of argument, a turn to be offensive without the power to be severe—fury in the temper and famine in the phrase.’ He kept his most effective retort till the end. Mr. Morley had suggested that the consequences of the rejection of the Bill might be an outbreak of crime and outrage in Ireland, and against those responsible for its defeat. Lord Randolph rejoined with force and dignity that such considerations ought not to influence the House. ‘Are these new dangers? Have we never known of a "No Rent" Manifesto? Have we had no experience of dynamite explosions? The right honourable member for Bury can tell the House how we were providentially, and almost miraculously, preserved from an awful disaster. But the dynamiters—the people who were inculpated in these atrocities—are now undergoing what has been called a living death.... Then, sir, as to assassination. Assassination is one of the rarest incidents in modern political life. It used to be a common method of political warfare; but the growth and progress of civilisation has demonstrated its utter folly and inutility. A man in public life ought not to be deterred by the knowledge that by some mischance some day or other he might be the mark of a lunatic or criminal, any more than anybody contemplating a railway journey would be deterred by the fear of an accident.’ All this was greatly approved. ‘I think you must be quite satisfied,’ wrote Lord Salisbury, ‘that your care over your speech was not thrown away. Everybody acknowledges it to have been admirably judicious.’ But Lord Randolph did not set much store by his effort. ‘It appears,’ he wrote to his wife, ‘to have been rather a succès d’estime than anything else; but the Whigs were very grateful to me for not being abusive of the G.O.M. or violent.’ And again to FitzGibbon: ‘I fear you must have thought my speech dull, but I was under an apprehension of saying anything to hurt the susceptibilities of timorous Whigs and Radicals, which made me very ineffective.’