Lord Randolph Churchill procured by his resignation almost every point of detail for which he had struggled in vain in the Cabinet. The reductions of 700,000l. in the Navy Estimates, which had been conceded to his insistence, were ratified and maintained by his successor. The Estimates for the Army, which had been declared utterly irreducible, were reduced by 170,000l. after his resignation. The Supplementary Estimate of 500,000l. for the defences of the Egyptian frontier, to which he had long demurred, was promptly rejected by Mr. Goschen as an unauthorised charge on British funds. He might therefore claim with perfect truth that he had saved the taxpayers 1,400,000l.; and although our sense of financial proportion has been largely modified by time, this was considered in those days a not insignificant sum. It is not necessary here to examine the policy of these economies. It is sufficient that they were strongly resisted, in spite of his advocacy, while he was a member of the Government, and admitted on their merits after he had resigned.
The coaling stations—of such vital urgency in December 1886—were left untouched by additional expenditure until 1888, and strengthened then only to an inconsiderable extent. Seven coaling stations which figured in the estimates presented to Lord Randolph Churchill—namely, Halifax, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Esquimault, Ascension, Trincomalee and Sierra Leone, have been in the light of modern experience reduced (1905) by Conservative Ministers, the heirs of the Government of 1886, to ‘skeletons,’ on which no money is to be spent in peace time.
The objections which Lord Randolph had entertained to the Eastern policy which Lord Iddesleigh seemed inclined to pursue, were justified by Lord Salisbury’s action at the Foreign Office. All idea of interference in the internal affairs of the Balkan States vanished so completely from the minds of Conservative statesmen that it was held libellous to assert that it had ever existed; and the instructions that were sent by the new Foreign Minister to Sir William White, were of such a nature that Lord Randolph could say of them, ‘the English people may now be certain that they are not likely to be involved in any European struggle arising out of Bulgarian complications.’ The new Procedure rules, which he had been accused of forcing upon unwilling colleagues, were presented to Parliament unaltered; the Local Government Bill took the extensive form he had desired; the introduction of a Whig element into the Cabinet was secured; and the Dartford programme, for which he had been condemned as a Radical in disguise, became the prosperous and successful policy of the Conservative party. The spirit of the Administration and the aims which it pursued—at home, in Ireland, and abroad—in policy and in administration, were indeed widely different from those of any Government he would have guided; but in so far as the special points in conflict were concerned, Lord Randolph Churchill’s resignation was vindicated in the most definite and tangible manner by the actions of those who had most strenuously opposed him.
All this availed him nothing. Ministers in plenty had quitted English Governments before without dissociating themselves from the party to which they belonged; but whether their course was inspired by honest principle or dictated by unworthy motives, whether it was marked by support of their successors or by intrigues and assaults to procure their overthrow, scarcely one was more relentlessly assailed than Lord Randolph Churchill. Even more pertinent and remarkable than the resignation of Lord Palmerston in 1853 is the case of Lord Salisbury himself. The Derby-Disraeli Ministry was in 1867 in a minority in the House of Commons and their position was highly insecure. The question of Reform pressed upon them, urgent and inevitable. A failure to deal with it effectively, still more an attempt to shirk it, might have inflicted enduring injury upon the Conservative party. Lord Salisbury met the Bill with uncompromising opposition. When Mr. Disraeli stood firm, he immediately resigned—and not alone; for by his personal influence he carried with him both Lord Carnarvon and General Peel. In this crisis nothing but the determination of Disraeli sustained the Government. Yet Lord Salisbury by writings, by vigorous and even violent attacks, by co-operation in Parliament with Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, did not hesitate to compass its defeat. And he was wrong! But how was he treated? His good faith was never challenged; his disinterested abandonment of great office was admired; his error was condoned. When Disraeli returned to power in 1874 he allowed no prejudice or consideration of former hostility to separate him from the man who had dubbed him a ‘political adventurer,’ and it was upon that association—stamped into the imagination of the people by the Congress of Berlin, that Lord Salisbury’s chief claim to leadership afterwards rested.
Why, then, was Lord Randolph Churchill so hardly used by the party which owed so much to his efforts up till the year 1887, and might have often been grateful for support, and more often still for silences, afterwards? Why was such unusual and uncompromising advantage taken of the false step he had made? No doubt much must be set down to the animosities he had excited; much to the alarm of a Cabinet at so impulsive and imperious a colleague; something to Lord Salisbury’s desire that the leadership of the House of Commons and all that might follow therefrom should be secured to Mr. Balfour. Perhaps, too, they felt less compunction in dealing with him than with an older man, and thought with Smith that all this was ‘only an incident in the life of a young politician’; that ten years later, or twenty years even, he might serve with his own contemporaries or lead a younger generation. Time would cool the blood of the Reformer, and the experience of adversity might temper an impatience born of extraordinary success. Little did they know how short was the span, or at what a cost in life and strength the immense exertions of the struggle had been made. That frail body, driven forward by its nervous energies, had all these last five years been at the utmost strain. Good fortune had sustained it; but disaster, obloquy and inaction now suddenly descended with crushing force, and the hurt was mortal.
CHAPTER XVIII
ECONOMY
When I consider life, ’tis all a cheat;
Yet, fool’d with hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust on and think to-morrow will repay.
To-morrow’s falser than the former day;
Lies worse; and while it says we shall be blessed
With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.
Strange cozenage! none would live past years again;
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;
And from the dregs of life think to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give.
Dryden, Aurung-Zebe.
THE position of a Minister who has withdrawn from a Cabinet is always difficult and peculiar. If for the sake of some principle which he considers vital he is prepared openly to attempt to wreck the Government and inflict upon the party a defeat at the polls, and if the issue is one which must soon be decided, the course, however painful, is plain. He has only to drive steadfastly on through the storm, like Lord Salisbury in 1867 or Lord Hartington in 1886, careless of consequences so long as he does his duty, disdainful of the anger of friends, if he holds them mistaken, and looking for vindication to the calm, just judgments of the after-time. But if the question on which he has separated from his colleagues is not paramount or urgent, and if, while differing strongly from the Government, he is yet determined not to injure the party from which that Government is drawn, his position becomes impossible. The more powerful he has been, the more powerless he becomes; the higher his office, the greater his fall.
From his place in Parliament he is bound, in common-sense and consistency, to uphold and justify his immediate contention. It may be economy; it may be Free Trade. Whenever that subject is raised he must be in his place, alike for his own defence and for the sake of his cause, to show that there was good reason for his action and that the public interest was at stake. If he feels strongly, he will speak strongly. Convictions harden and grow, and differences magnify and ossify as the controversy progresses. His party and his former colleagues are embarrassed by his proceedings, however legitimate or honest they may admit them to be. The more effective his advocacy, and weighty his charges, the more they are resented. The Opposition are naturally pleased. They take from the ex-Minister’s statements whatever they may consider useful to themselves and they employ his phrases and arguments to belabour in the House and in the country the party and the Government they are seeking to overthrow. Thus assailed, the Ministerial press and the party machine—with all its scribes, agents, orators and small fry—retaliate after their kind. In a hundred newspapers, from a hundred platforms, hitherto voluble in his praise, the ex-Minister becomes the object of depreciation and censure, expressed in varying degrees of vulgar and untruthful imputation. And all the while, since he will not declare general war upon his party, he is prevented from defeating calumny by vigorous action or answering malice by attack.
When Lord Randolph Churchill pressed his charges of extravagance and inefficiency against the public departments, the party which happened to be responsible at the time were themselves offended. When the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer urged the need of economy and spoke his mind, in all courteous moderation, upon the financial policy of his successor, the Government Whips whispered that it was only his jealousy and spite. If, on the other hand, he had remained silent, the judgment of the nation on the great question for which he had sacrificed so much would have gone by default. To do nothing was to abandon his cause; to move was to quarrel with his party.