Private.
10 Queen Anne’s Gate: December 23.
Dear Churchill,—In your own interests think it over. This would have been all very well if you had not been Leader of the House, or if you had been Leader for some years. In the former case, you might have upset your friends and been Leader; in the latter case you would have become a fetish.
Parties just now do not hang together by principles. They are gangs greedy of office. You got your lot in—there is a wide difference between this and aiding in getting them out.
You and Chamberlain seem to me both to make the same mistake. You ignore the power of the ‘machine.’ It has crushed many an able man—Horsman, Lowe, Goschen, and Salisbury himself.
Whether Hartington joins or not, he will not be sorry that you have resigned, and he will be all the more inclined to help the Government. They only want thirty Unionists to have a good working majority. The tendency of the Government will be to yield a little more to him in order to revenge itself on you.
Joe is of no good to you. You have no idea of the feeling of the Radicals against him. There is a good deal of sentiment in these things; and just as Gladstone is their Christ, Joe is their Anti-Christ. They will laugh to scorn his ‘Grand Councils.’ They are, indeed, absurd. There are only two policies for Ireland—Coercion, or a domestic legislature, &c. All else is intrigue. You are not a Radical; on that line Joe will always cut you out.
I don’t think that the occasion you have selected is a good one. There is a strong public opinion, even amongst Liberals, for an expenditure on armaments. It is true that Salisbury may wish to obtain the money in order eventually to join in some absurd European war, but this cannot be proved, and the basis of politics is ‘hand to mouth.’
I should have thought that your game was rather a waiting one. Sacrifice everything to becoming a fetish; then and only then, you can do as you like. Hartington must go to the Lords. There is no such thing in politics as burning boats, until there have been explanations in the House of Commons. A Conservative Government must spend, and generally a Liberal Government suffers from not spending.
I write this—not, as you will perceive, in the interests of my party, but in your individual interests. Surely when it is a question of figures, and the figures are not known, there are the elements of an arrangement.