It is no doubt true that he rated his own power and consequent responsibility too high. Like many a successful man before him—and some since—he thought the forces he had directed in the past were resident in himself, whereas they were to some extent outside himself and independent. But this error was shared by his colleagues and by the Prime Minister. They had no idea what he could do, or how hard he could hit if he were assailed. They remembered his previous withdrawals and how he had always come back stronger than ever. They saw how often in the last few years his judgment had proved right and how he had always won in the end, no matter how slender were his own resources and how strong the confederacy by which he was opposed. They feared him greatly. But they were Tory Ministers; and they did not intend, whatever happened, to be dragged out of their own proper sphere and committed to large reforms and democratic Budgets. Better far Lord Hartington and the Whigs! Better even the Grand Old Man!
In all that concerned the management of individuals, Lord Salisbury excelled. No one was more ready to sacrifice his opinion to get his way. No one was more skilful in convincing others that they agreed with him, or more powerful to persuade them to actual agreement. His experience, his patience, his fame, his subtle and illuminating mind, secured for him an ascendency in his Cabinet apart altogether from the paramount authority of First Minister. The Leader of the House of Commons, triumphant in Parliament, almost supreme in the country, found himself often almost alone in the Cabinet. The disproportion perplexed and offended him. He believed that he had got the majority together. He wanted to see it used well and boldly in correcting abuses, in carrying great reforms, and moving always onwards. He believed that unless the Conservative party gave proof of their zeal for popular causes the constituencies, so painfully won over, would revert to Radicalism, that the Unionist alliance would collapse and that Mr. Gladstone would return to power. And he would be held responsible for the disaster!
From the very outset the new Administration was uneasy. Discord stirred restlessly behind the curtains of Cabinet secrecy. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach had his own views about Ireland and Irish landlords, and they differed from those of the Prime Minister. He was, so Lord Randolph described him to Lord Salisbury in a letter on August 22, ‘afraid of being forced to administer Ireland too much on a landlord’s rights basis.’ He had been upset by the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s statement that any revision of rents by State interposition was altogether excluded from Conservative policy. He would not agree to the principle that any permanent guarantee of the judicial rent was conveyed to the landlord in 1886. Lord Randolph, however, persuaded him that these questions did not arise seriously for immediate decision.
The autumn Councils were not harmonious, whether upon foreign or domestic affairs. The proposed changes in Parliamentary procedure, and especially the question of the Closure, provoked awkward differences, nearly every prominent member of the House of Commons holding strong personal opinions based on long personal experience. One Minister felt unable to be responsible for proposing Closure by a simple majority, and recommended that the Government should leave the matter as an open question to the House. Others disputed on the relative merits of a two-thirds or three-fifths majority. The tangled controversies connected with the details of English and Irish Local Government proved even more troublesome. To lighten the ship it was decided to confine the Bill to county government alone. For a long time it seemed impossible to reconcile the divergent views of the Prime Minister and the Irish Secretary, and, as it was intended that Sir Michael should himself take charge of the Bill, the difficulty was grave. ‘I wish there was no such thing as Local Government,’ wrote Lord Salisbury pathetically to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after an elaborate ‘eirenicon’ which he had proposed had been abruptly rejected by his colleagues.
Besides these internal differences, the alliance with the Liberal-Unionist leaders, upon whose goodwill the existence of the Government depended, required careful and unremitting attention. In November Lord Hartington, who felt the need of meeting Mr. Gladstone’s demand for a constructive Irish policy with positive proposals, if the Liberal and Radical Unionists were to be kept solid against the Home Rulers, pressed that a Local Government Bill for Ireland should be promised in the Queen’s Speech. He suggested that this should provide for the establishment of Irish County and District Councils, with liberty to two or more to act together for certain specified purposes affecting their several jurisdictions; but no further. He pointed out that, as Irish Local Government would necessarily proceed on more ‘Conservative’ lines than English Local Government, the Irish settlement, if first effected, would afford a safer model for the English measure. This argument much impressed the Prime Minister; but Lord Randolph Churchill, who also appreciated its force, objected for that very reason to giving Irish Local Government precedence over the English Bill, and he succeeded, by the influence of a friend, in persuading Lord Hartington to abate his Irish claims. Mr. Chamberlain also intimated, through Lord Randolph, that while prepared to give the Government policy a generous consideration, whether on foreign affairs or on the necessity for Coercion, he could not support anything that he considered reactionary in Local Government. The principal members of the Cabinet, including the Prime Minister, Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr. Smith, then agreed upon an extensive proposal for England, with the understanding that an Irish Local Government Bill should be promised in the Queen’s Speech, but introduced after England and Scotland had been dealt with.
One difficulty was thus removed; but, as the month drew on, continual divergences arose on questions of domestic policy. The Dartford programme was indeed, like the Budget—in principle, at least—accepted formally by Ministers. But their reluctance to embark on such policies betrayed itself in all sorts of small objections. The survivors of the ‘old gang’ were not inclined to forget the treatment they had received. The ‘Plan of Campaign’ against the payment of rent, which had been started in Ireland as the Nationalist reply to the refusal of Home Rule, was spreading; and the difficulties of the Irish Government, divested of the exceptional coercive powers of former years, were such that Beach, on whom Lord Randolph counted greatly, was often obliged by his Irish duties to be absent from meetings of the Cabinet. The Chancellor of the Exchequer felt sorely the want of a friend. His delight when, at his continued request, Lord Salisbury brought Mr. Balfour into the Cabinet led him (November 17) to send the news to the Times before the Queen’s consent had been obtained, and a breach of etiquette was narrowly averted.
Many of the lesser members of the Government were Tory Democrats; and much of the draft legislation that came before the Cabinet was Liberal in its character. Lord Randolph, however, had to fight single-handed for every point. A Minister who was called to one of the Cabinets on the Local Government Bill described to me the pleadings and arguments by which the Chancellor of the Exchequer strove tirelessly to extend its scope to the widest limits. ‘We must not overweight the Bill,’ said the Prime Minister at length. ‘It is a heavy Bill already.’ ‘A heavy Bill!’ repeated Lord Randolph, balancing the draft upon his fingers and letting it flutter to the ground, while everyone else sat silent. ‘A heavy Bill!’ He was, in fact, always the devil’s advocate. ‘I am appalled,’ he wrote to the Prime Minister (December 2), ‘at the strength of your disapproval of poor Long and Onslow’s Allotments Bill. We shall have to cut it down like anything.’ The concessions which were made to his insistence, disturbed his colleagues without satisfying him. The deference which he often showed to high Tory views, was forgotten amid disagreements so many and grave. When the last word had been said, no matter what compromise had been reached, this fundamental difference remained—that he regarded Liberal measures as things good and desirable in themselves; while many of his colleagues, and certainly his chief, looked upon them as so many unholy surrenders to the powers of evil.
‘Alas!’ wrote Lord Randolph sadly to the Prime Minister on November 6, ‘I see the Dartford programme crumbling into pieces every day. The Land Bill is rotten. I am afraid it is an idle schoolboy’s dream to suppose that Tories can legislate—as I did, stupidly. They can govern and make war and increase taxation and expenditure à merveille, but legislation is not their province in a democratic constitution.... I certainly have not the courage and energy to go on struggling against cliques, as poor Dizzy did all his life....’
Lord Salisbury replied with great care and kindness; but he had little consolation to afford, and this letter seems to have been his last attempt:—
November 7, 1886.