Yours truly,
H. Labouchere.
Lord Randolph Churchill’s resignation had been received with universal surprise; but astonishment was swiftly succeeded by anger. His enemies—and they multiplied rapidly—raised an exultant chorus of ‘I told you so!’ His friends everywhere found themselves without an answer. The Unionist Press was unanimous in its censures, and the London clubs were loud in their abuse. The cohorts of tale-bearers and gossips on the flanks of a Government were eager to impute the worst and meanest motives, and his action, already difficult to vindicate, was variously attributed to temper, to treachery, and to both. The whole strength of the party organisation was exerted against him. The public was informed through a thousand channels that he had aimed a deadly blow at the Union upon an impulse of personal ambition or of personal spite. His rupture with Lord Salisbury was utter and complete. The Queen was grievously offended by his premature disclosure to the Times; and in the mood that was abroad he found, like Macaulay before him, that to write on Windsor Castle paper may sometimes be accounted as a crime. Yet, although he was thus the object of so much reproach, he was of course unable to defend himself. He requested permission to publish his letters of resignation.
‘I cannot agree,’ replied Lord Salisbury by telegraph. ‘It would be entirely at variance with the accepted practice, according to which such explanations should be reserved for Parliament. You clearly cannot do it without the Queen’s leave.’
‘Obviously,’ rejoined Lord Randolph, ‘the letters have been shown to the Standard.’
‘No,’ was the answer. ‘Your supposition is incorrect; the letters referred to have not been seen by anyone.’
The Prime Minister was plainly within his rights in his refusal; yet while Lord Randolph Churchill was prevented by constitutional observance from publicly anticipating the explanation to be made in Parliament, and so from making any effective reply to his traducers, that explanation was being discounted in a dozen informal versions, disparaging sometimes by lavish falsehood, sometimes by ungenerous truth.
After accepting the resignation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Salisbury turned at once to Lord Hartington. He had hitherto, as we have seen, resisted the introduction of the Whigs into the Ministry; but the situation was now critical, if not indeed desperate, and he accepted the necessity. He therefore telegraphed to Lord Hartington, who was in Rome, and invited his co-operation, offering either to make such Cabinet arrangements as might suit him and his friends, or to serve under him if he would himself undertake to form a Government. Above all, he pressed for his immediate return to England. Lord Hartington responded to these appeals without alacrity. He tarried in Rome till the night of Sunday the 26th. Thence he proceeded to Monte Carlo ‘to pick up his letters.’ On the 28th he resumed his journey. It was not until the evening of the 29th that he arrived in London. His deliberation was justified by events.
The Prime Minister, having collected his Cabinet together from all parts of the country, met them on Tuesday, December 28, with a statement of his views upon the situation. ‘Master of tactics,’ as Lord Randolph called him, he rigidly confined the dispute to the single special question of the Estimates. The Ministers responsible for the defence of the Empire demanded a certain sum. The Minister responsible for the finances had refused that sum. The head of the Government, having to choose between them, was bound as a patriot to stand by the Empire. In the face of a vast Imperial issue and of the grave crisis in European affairs, the ordinary disputations of party politics—and, indeed, all personal predilections—must stand aside. The coaling stations, on which the British fleet depended for its world-wide mobility, were at stake. To defend them or not to defend them—that was the question: and who would hesitate in his answer, especially when the sum involved was remarkably small? Such, at least, was the version semi-officially communicated to the public and faithfully reproduced in every form of artistic variation by the party press, from the Times newspaper to the remotest ramifications of the provincial and local journals.
Lord Salisbury also informed his colleagues that he was in communication with Lord Hartington, and he laid before them the nature of the offers he had made. The proceedings of the Cabinet were reported to be so harmonious that the Times and many other Ministerial journals came to the conclusion that a Coalition with the Whigs was certain, and devoted many columns of print to preparing the minds of their readers for so excellent an arrangement. It was not until the next day that it dawned upon the journalistic world that numerous and influential members of the Government were very much averse on public grounds—the Empire, and, no doubt, the European crisis—from that ‘wide reconstruction’ which a Coalition or a Hartington Administration incidentally, but necessarily, involved. This reluctance was shared, not without reason, by the Conservative party generally, and voiced by the large number of members of Parliament whom the crisis had drawn to the Carlton Club. The Conservative party, although wanting thirty-five of an absolute majority in the House of Commons, were nevertheless by far the strongest and most compact party in the country; and they were by no means ready to acquiesce in their leader’s disinterested willingness to surrender the chief place in the Administration and to work on equal terms with a party which only numbered seventy. By the time that Lord Hartington’s train reached Charing Cross, on the night of the 29th, a Coalition Government had become excessively unpopular, and the Times was forced to admit, with a blush for the frailty of political mankind, ‘that Lord Salisbury’s foresight and patriotism were a good deal above the level of the rank and file.’ Lord Randolph Churchill had counted upon Tory Democracy. It was not Tory Democracy that stopped the Coalition; but Tadpole and Taper.