My dear Dunraven,—I consider honestly that you are quite as good a judge as to what the political position requires from moderate progressive politicians as I am. You have seen all the correspondence between me and Lord Salisbury, as well as my letter to Akers-Douglas, about which last Lord S. says it makes the breach unbridgeable. Therefore my explanation, when it comes, will add little or nothing to your knowledge.
With respect to persons like ——, ——, &c., whom I look upon as my friends, I have been most careful to check any tendency to follow my example, for resignation might be fatal to their political career, on which they depend almost for social existence, and I was most fearful of any responsibility attaching to me for having led them to extinction.
With you I feel in a different position. You have a social and political position of your own, which the holding of a minor office in the Government by no means enhances, and which the loss of such an office would by no means affect.
Tory Democracy may be a bad name, but it represents to you and me and many more certain distinct political principles which you and I hold very strongly. That those principles are in the utmost peril just now there can be no doubt. We know what Lord Salisbury is, and we know what Goschen is, and we know that our views are regarded by both with unrelenting distrust and aversion.
On the whole, I think you are in a position to try a bold course; and you must not undervalue your strength in the country, where you are well known, followed by many, and greatly regarded by all. However, let us talk it over this afternoon at the Carlton.
Yours ever,
Randolph S. C.
Eventually Lord Dunraven decided to resign the office which he held, of Under-Secretary for the Colonies; but his partnership with Lord Randolph Churchill proved in the end more noticeable at Newmarket than at Westminster.
Perhaps some day it may be possible to publish in a complete form the letters, some of which have been quoted in these pages, which passed between Lord Salisbury and Lord Randolph Churchill during their eventful association. Although the period scarcely extended above two years, the correspondence would attain considerable dimensions. Yet the reader would be wise to persevere: for when we consider the easy yet forceful pens employed; the profound and secret knowledge of political movements and forces at work which both possessed; the importance, range and fascinating variety of subjects; the changing relationships and antagonisms of the writers; above all, the free and candid style of their intercourse—whether in regard to men or things—one cannot imagine any compilation which would more truthfully illuminate the dark and stormy history of those times. All that, however, is a matter for the future. Such as it had been, the correspondence was now to close, for hardly any communication—and that only of a formal nature—was desired on either side in the years which followed. Nevertheless, its conclusion was not unworthy.
Lord Iddesleigh had been apparently forgotten in the reconstruction of the Cabinet. In the strife and excitement of these harsh days this unwarlike figure had dropped out of men’s minds. Lord Salisbury’s assumption of the Foreign Office necessarily displaced him; and he was, perhaps not unreasonably, offended to read the first news of it in the daily papers of January 12. It was said by the wags that ‘Randolph had driven him from the House of Commons in his rise, and from the Cabinet in his fall.’ Tragedy, never very far behind the curtain, came forward swiftly on the heels of this. That same afternoon Lord Iddesleigh called upon Lord Salisbury at Downing Street, and, being overtaken in the anteroom by the heart disease from which he had so long been afflicted, he expired in the presence of the Prime Minister.
The disputes between Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Stafford Northcote have been very fully recorded in this story; and I fear their harsh features cannot truthfully be softened or smoothed away. They must be judged as a whole and in relation to the circumstances of the time. Here is the last word upon them:—