Lord Randolph Churchill

by Winston Churchill

Many tales of Lord Randolph in these days have been preserved. We have a glimpse of his first meeting with a rather dismayed subordinate in the historical Board Room at the Treasury—the stiff and formal cut of his frock-coat, the long amber cigarette-holder, so soon produced, the eternal cigarette, and ‘an old-world courtesy of manner’ which surprised and disarmed a preconceived dislike. We see him going down to the City with Sir Edward Hamilton to lunch formally with the Governor and Directors of the Bank of England and hovering for half an hour outside in a panic of nervousness which robbed him for the time of his self-confidence. We see him once, and once only, when the Court of Exchequer, presided over by its Chancellor, settles the list from which Sheriffs are selected, in his robes of office—those imposing and expensive robes which seem to assert the opulence which should result from thrift, rather than thrift itself. His cynicism was disarming. We are told how, when the dreadful subject of bimetallism cropped up, he turned to Sir Arthur Godley and said: ‘I forget. Was I a bimetallist when I was at the India Office?’ When he received an influential deputation of sugar-refiners and sugar-planters in protest against the foreign Sugar Bounties, he created general consternation by inquiring, with immense gravity, ‘Are the consumers represented upon this deputation?’ We are even told how he complained to a clerk who put some figures before him that they were not clear and he could not understand them. The clerk said that he had done his best, and, pointing them out, explained that he had reduced them to decimals. ‘Oh,’ said Lord Randolph, ‘I never could make out what those damned dots meant.’ But this was surely only to tease.

‘The Chancellor of the Exchequer states to the Board that Her Majesty’s advisers desire to satisfy themselves that the clerical establishments of the Civil Service, of the Naval and Military Departments, and also of the Revenue Departments, are organised generally upon a principle which secures efficiency without undue cost to the public.’—Treasury Minute, Sept. 14.
Punch, September 25, 1886

From the very commencement of his career at the Treasury Lord Randolph began the exertions for economy to which he felt himself bound by his electoral pledges. In his private affairs he was usually extravagant and often unbusiness-like; but public money seemed to him a sacred trust. The character and extent of Treasury control over expenditure is very often misunderstood. It is represented sometimes almost as a statutory or constitutional power over the other departments. Such an idea is a complete delusion. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is able to exert his influence in two ways: first, over administration. In small matters not connected with policy, the Treasury acts upon a set of well-defined rules and principles, which the spending departments recognise and endeavour not to infringe and which are enforced more or less strictly, according to the relative authority of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the other Ministers concerned. Secondly, there is the wide domain of policy; and in all great matters the control of the Treasury is neither more nor less than the personal influence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer upon the Cabinet. Of Lord Randolph’s attempt to assert that influence the next chapter must give some account; but in the meanwhile he laboured with industrious severity to effect administrative economies. On September 14 a Treasury Minute announced the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the establishment and organisation of the great spending departments: ‘The Chancellor of the Exchequer states to the Board that Her Majesty’s advisers desire to satisfy themselves that the clerical establishments of the Civil Service, of the Naval and Military Departments and also of the Revenue Department, are organised generally upon a principle to secure efficiency without undue cost to the revenue.’ A variety of petty economies were effected by his personal authority. He discovered, among other things, that Government specie had to be conveyed in merchant ships, at much expense, because an old custom entitled naval officers to a high percentage. His indignation at hearing that Her Majesty’s gold could not be conveyed in Her Majesty’s ships because of claims by Her Majesty’s officers led to immediate action, and the practice was reformed forthwith.

A remark by the Comptroller and Auditor-General in one of his reports to Parliament drew his attention to another abuse. Of old times sums were issued out of the Civil List to the Secretary of the Treasury for secret service. No public account was rendered of the money thus expended. In 1783, many evils being alleged, Parliament, under the influence of Burke, was persuaded to limit this grant to 10,000l. a year; and that amount was yearly issued to the Secretary of the Treasury from 1783 to 1886. This branch of secret service was, of course, political and was quite distinct from that which is ordinarily known as foreign secret service. The money was used for the purposes of political organisation by the party which happened to be in power. Such a custom could not on any valid ground be defended. Yet for over a century the grant had never been seriously questioned. It might have been urged that the Liberals had always profited by this sum during their long period of power and that many famous men had assumed responsibility for it. Lord Randolph brushed such wire-puller’s arguments aside. Before he had been in office a month he introduced a Bill, which passed rapidly through Parliament, abolishing this payment altogether, and it has never since been renewed.

Until 1886 there had existed an octroi duty on coal coming into the Metropolis, the proceeds of which were divided between the City and the Metropolitan Board of Works. The principle of this duty was not unpleasing to the Conservative party. Its abolition was roundly denounced by the Standard and in high Tory circles. The Metropolitan authorities were glad to get money in an easy and painless manner. Powerful interests objected to a rise in the rates, while the abolition of a duty upon a necessary of life which affected the poor consumer, did not elicit much enthusiastic support. Lord Randolph took some time to make up his mind. He decided that an octroi duty was out of date, that it was a survival of a financial policy that had been emphatically condemned. He declined to countenance its renewal. His speech to the deputation may be read with profit by any who care to see the arguments against such an octroi put tersely, forcibly and without reserve. His impressions at the Treasury seem to have stimulated his mind to great activity and to have aroused in him a keen financial instinct. All sorts of plans were being moved forward by his agency towards and into the sphere of political action. He contemplated the purchase of Irish Railways by the State and their use as an instrument of economic development and of political and strategic control; and Lord Salisbury himself seems to have been persuaded by his arguments. He paid the closest attention to the coinage, and harboured a deadly design against the half-sovereign—‘that profligate little coin’—which he believed was an expensive and unnecessary feature of British currency. But there was one great scheme which overshadowed all the rest.

Parliament had no sooner risen than Lord Randolph turned to the preparation of his Budget. He knew that the duties of leadership in the next Session would demand his whole attention and physical strength; and, in spite of the labours of the memorable year, 1886, he succeeded, by what Sir Algernon West has described as ‘a performance never equalled,’ in getting ready and laying before the Cabinet his financial proposals for the year 1887-8. For nearly twenty years his projects have been veiled in mystery. The silence of the Treasury has remained unbroken. The few high officials who were admitted to his confidence and whose sympathy was enlisted in his plans, have kept their own counsel. Lord Randolph did not choose in any public speech to reveal what he had purposed. He is the only Chancellor of the Exchequer who never introduced a Budget; and in his lifetime rumour alone asserted that he had ever formed one. The time has now come when the abandoned Budget of 1887-8 may be fully unfolded in the form in which, during November, 1886, it received the provisional assent of Lord Salisbury’s Cabinet.

The reader who has accustomed himself to the giant Budgets of modern times must turn his mind and contract his fancy to the humbler figures of a vanished age. The cost of governing the United Kingdom and of providing for the defence of the Empire during the early ‘eighties fluctuated between eighty and ninety millions a year. This was in itself a distinct increase on the estimates of Lord Beaconsfield’s Administration; and Tory speakers were wont to dwell with genial malice upon the fact. The various wars which had disturbed Mr. Gladstone’s rule had left their marks upon the economy of the Army. The money raised by the Vote of Credit in 1885 had been scattered with a lavish hand, and prominent men in both parties were concerned to notice some apparent relaxation in the strictness of Treasury control. Few, indeed, thought so seriously of the future as Lord Randolph Churchill, and his prediction that a ‘Hundred-million Budget’ would be an event of the future was generally regarded as unduly pessimistic. But nevertheless the times were not unfavourable to retrenchment, and there was a healthy demand for departmental reform. With estimates standing at under ninety millions small economies were not disdained. The Ministers of those days had not learned to expand their view of the public resources. A saving of a hundred thousand pounds was regarded as a matter of legitimate congratulation. A reduction of a million was an achievement.