These embarrassments are only aggravated when the resigning Minister has been exercising in the Cabinet a general authority over the whole field of policy. As Leader of the House of Commons Lord Randolph had become acquainted with almost every question which was likely at that time to come before Parliament. On many of these he had formed strong views of his own. He knew exactly how he had intended to handle them when they became subjects of debate. When therefore he heard them mishandled, or a course adopted at variance with Cabinet decisions he had previously obtained, it was natural that he should wish to criticise or demur. Such conditions pointed inevitably, if the tension were prolonged, to a total rupture between the most patient ex-Minister and the most generous Government; and Lord Randolph was not the most patient of men, nor the Government the most generous of Governments.
Looking back on the circumstances and events of those years in the light of after-knowledge, there may be some who will find it easy to say what Lord Randolph should have done after his resignation. He should have stated the whole grounds of his difference with the Tory Cabinet, minimising nothing, keeping nothing back. In two or three speeches in Parliament and in the country he should broadly have outlined his general political conception of the course the Conservative party should follow, and then, unless he was prepared to wage relentless war upon the Government for the purpose of compelling them to adopt that course, he should forthwith have withdrawn himself entirely from public life. Leaving his party in the place of power to which he had raised them, with all the glamour of three years of cumulative and unexampled success still untarnished, he might well have been content to stand for a season apart from the floundering progress of the Administration, leaving to others to muddle away the majority he had made. And he could have counted, not without reason, upon the continued affection of the Conservative working classes. The party press would have been silent or even conciliatory. The relentless irritation of the machine would have been prevented. As the years passed by and the discredit of the Government increased, the Tory Democracy would have turned again to the lost leader by whom the victories of the past had been won.
Lord Randolph Churchill chose otherwise. He did not lay deep or long plans. His nature prompted him to speak as he felt, and to deal with the incident of the hour as it occurred. He was solemnly in earnest about economy and departmental mismanagement. He wanted to curb expenditure; and, while at that business, he was not at all concerned with his ‘prestige’ or his ‘career.’ Deeply injurious to himself and to his influence with the Conservative party as his course ultimately proved, it was at any rate perfectly simple and straightforward. He returned to England at the end of March, and plunged at once into the vortex of politics. In three speeches which he delivered during the month of April to public audiences at Paddington (where he defended particularly his resignation), at Birmingham, and at Nottingham, he made clear what his attitude towards Lord Salisbury’s Government would be. He was entirely independent of that Government. He had resigned from it on important grounds of difference. He desired a liberal and progressive policy in domestic affairs, and he was determined to wage war on extravagance and expenditure. But in the main lines of their policy he was a supporter of the Government; and to the cause of the Union, as to the large and permanent interests of the Conservative party, he remained perfectly loyal. From these intentions he never in any degree varied or departed in the years that followed. ‘You are quite right,’ he wrote to FitzGibbon (November 5, 1887), ‘in supposing that mere returning to office has never been in my mind. I fight for a policy and not for place; and when I go back to office (if ever) I shall have secured my policy.’ A Tory Democratic policy could only be furthered from within the Conservative party, and to that party he faithfully adhered. Besides Mr. Jennings, Lord Randolph had two good friends among the younger men in the House of Commons—his brother-in-law, Lord Curzon, and Mr. Ernest Beckett, the member for Whitby. These gentlemen stood by him, worked with him, and rendered him many political services in the years that followed his resignation, for which they were not extravagantly beloved in the high places of their party.
With these three exceptions the late Leader of the House of Commons was entirely alone. To do him justice he made no effort to increase his following and discouraged several who would have willingly worked with him. Profoundly as he disagreed with much that the Government did, and disliked the temper that inspired it, fiercely as he resented the Lobby slanders and the steady detraction of the party press, never in the five years that followed—the last five years, as they were fated to be, of his physical strength—did he contemplate alliance of any sort with the Liberal party or seek to cause cave, clique or faction in the Conservative ranks.
The introduction of the Budget on April 21 afforded Lord Randolph his first opportunity of opening his ‘economy’ campaign. Mr. Goschen’s ingenious Budget differed widely from the ambitious proposals of his predecessor. The reductions in the Estimates for which Lord Randolph had fought were, indeed, maintained—and even increased. The result was a surplus of 776,000l. This Mr. Goschen now increased by an addition to the stamp duties, yielding 100,000l., and by a reduction of the Sinking Fund and Debt Charge from 28 millions to 26 millions. The total sum, amounting in the balance to a surplus of 2,779,000l., was to be expended in taking a penny off the income-tax, at a cost of 1,560,000l.; in reducing the duties on tobacco by 600,000l.; and by granting 330,000l. in aid of the local rates, leaving a final estimated surplus of 289,000l.
The Budget was, on the whole, applauded. The Conservative party, whose consciences were a little uneasy on financial questions, were delighted. The very questionable resort to the Sinking Fund—not for any special emergency nor general scheme of fiscal revision, but simply for the purpose of courting popularity by inconsiderable reductions of taxation—was sustained by Mr. Goschen’s financial record. ‘Great,’ exclaimed Lord Randolph Churchill, ‘is the worldly worth of a reputation!’ In complete good-humour, albeit with a sharp edge, he rallied the Chancellor of the Exchequer—‘the canonised saint of the financial purists’—on his lapse from the austere principles he had formerly professed; and both on the night of the Budget’s introduction and four days later when he spoke next after Mr. Gladstone, he addressed to the Government and to the Conservative party earnest counsels of retrenchment and departmental reform. He added:—
It is not necessary to touch the Sinking Fund. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has ample resources at his disposal. If he leaves the Sinking Fund alone, and remits a penny of the income-tax, he will still have a balance of 400,000l. If he does not reduce the income-tax, and prefers to take off the tobacco duty, he will have a balance of 800,000l. If he touches neither of these, and relieves the rates, he will have a balance of 300,000l. He can do any of these things if he will only leave the Sinking Fund alone; and he is touching it for a purpose so paltry and frivolous that I fail to understand why it entered his mind. I pray the Chancellor of the Exchequer to believe that I only make these remarks because of my intense and earnest desire that the present Government—whose career, I hope, is going to be a long one—may enter upon the paths of financial stability.
On this Mr. Gladstone enters in his diary: ‘R. Churchill excellent.’
The Parliamentary Committee on Army and Navy Estimates, for which Lord Randolph had asked at the beginning of the year, had been promised by the Government in reply to a question, put during his absence, by Lord Curzon. But weeks and even months were allowed to slip by without the necessary motion being made. When at length it was put on the paper it was immediately blocked; and thus it would have probably remained. But one day, when the first business happened to be the vote for the decoration of Westminster Abbey, Lord Randolph asked abruptly if the Government really meant to say that they considered the decoration of Westminster Abbey more important than a Parliamentary inquiry into the naval and military expenditure. After this the motion was put down at a reasonable hour, and it passed by general consent. On May 14 Mr. Smith wrote:—
10 Downing Street, Whitehall: May 14, 1887.