‘On this question of Local Government,’ Lord Randolph had stated in August 1886, speaking in the House of Commons in the name of the Conservative party, and with the full authority of the Cabinet as a whole, of the Prime Minister, of the Chief Secretary of the day, and of the leaders of the Liberal Unionists—‘the great sign-posts of our policy are equality, similarity and, if I may use such a word, simultaneity, as far as is practicable, in the development of a genuinely popular system of Local Government in the four countries which form the United Kingdom.’ The months had slipped away. A year and a half were gone. When Lord Randolph left the Government their good resolutions in respect of Ireland faded. Their pledges were long to remain unredeemed. The arguments appropriate to such occasions were employed: the circumstances had changed; the disaffection of the people was patent; the Irish were unfitted by character and history for popular institutions.
It was a Wednesday afternoon (April 25), and under the old rules of procedure the House rose at half-past five. A Nationalist member had moved the second reading of an Irish County Government Bill, roughly designed to merge boards of guardians, lunatic asylum boards and town commissioners in smaller towns into county councils. To this a reasoned amendment was moved, with the concurrence of the Government, by a private member from the Unionist benches, setting forth the inexpediency at that time of introducing any large constitutional change in Ireland. Mr. Gladstone spoke in support of the Bill, and Mr. Balfour made an airy reply, instancing the improper conduct of Irish local bodies and declaring that that country was not fit for any extension of Local Government. Something in his easy manner, thus dismissing unceremoniously—almost, as it seemed, unconsciously—solemn pledges elaborately given to the electorate at a time of choice, and renewed in Parliament after the decision, seems to have stirred Lord Randolph’s blood. He got up immediately the Chief Secretary finished. Speaking with much restraint, but with sufficient sharpness of manner to prevent him referring to his old comrade as a ‘right honourable friend,’ he reminded the Government and the swiftly-offended party of the declarations by which they were bound, and the authority upon which those declarations had been made.
‘All the circumstances,’ he said, ‘upon which the Chief Secretary has enlarged this afternoon, showing the defects which exist in the working of popular institutions in Ireland and the dangers that might be anticipated from their extension, were before the Government of Lord Salisbury at the time when they had to take a decision—a most momentous decision—upon this question.... The idea of the Government at that time was that a certain just extension, within reasonable limits, of Local Government in Ireland was to be looked upon as a remedy for the great evils which have been dwelt upon by the Chief Secretary.... I recollect that the pledges given by the Unionist party were large and liberal, were distinct and full, and that there was no reservation in those pledges with respect to all the defects pointed out this afternoon in the Irish character and in respect of Irish unfitness for Local Government—nothing of the kind. We pledged ourselves that we would at the very earliest opportunity extend to Ireland the same amount of Local Government which we might give to England and Scotland. I venture to say—and I do not care how much I am contradicted, or what the consequences may be—that that was the foundation of the Unionist party; and, more, that that is the only platform on which you can resist Repeal. If you are going to the English people, relying merely on the strength of your Executive power—if you are going to preach that the Irish must for an indefinite time be looked upon as an inferior community—unfit for the privileges which the English people enjoy—then I tell you that you may retain that position for a time, but only for a time, and that the time will probably be a short one.... The words I used in representing the Government at that table were that in approaching this momentous question of Local Government we should do so with similarity, equality and simultaneity. The time has gone by altogether for me to bear, and I will be content no longer to bear, solely the responsibility of those words; and I do not think that there would be a bonâ fide carrying-out of the policy I then announced if Ireland is not to have a measure of Local Government, until the state of order in that country is satisfactory to the Executive Government.’
Only a short time remained before the sitting must end. Chamberlain rose at once from the Front Opposition Bench and in a speech of four minutes said that he should vote with the Government on the understanding that measures of local reform for Ireland were simply delayed by pressure of business. Before the Leader of the House could add anything to the debate Mr. Parnell moved the Closure—the Irish desiring to obtain the division usual on such private members’ Bills—and the incident ended. But it left an estrangement behind.
The second quarrel did not arise till eight months later. In November 1888 the chronic skirmishing and raiding around Suakin developed into a regular blockade of that place, and the squalid, worthless, pestilential Red Sea port became again a bone of strife between brave men in the desert and wise men in the Senate. I do not need to remind the reader of the vehement attacks which Lord Randolph Churchill had made upon Mr. Gladstone’s Egyptian policy, or of the support and approval which those attacks had received from the Conservative party and the Conservative press. No part of those strictures had been more effective or more violent than that which referred to the operations around Suakin. They had not, as many people on both sides of politics had believed and freely stated, been impelled mainly by a factious desire to discredit and embarrass Mr. Gladstone’s Administration. That was, no doubt, an obvious contributory motive; but behind it lay a profound detestation of the purposeless bloodshed with which Soudan history, and especially Suakin history, had since 1883 been stained. ‘I do not hesitate to say,’ he declared in 1888, ‘that I hate the Soudan. The idea to me of risking the life of a single British soldier in that part of the world is inexpressibly repugnant.’ Whatever he might have thought at another time, when the finances of Egypt were restored and the Dervish fires had burnt low, of a methodical and scientific reconquest of the country, he was sincerely opposed in 1888, as in Mr. Gladstone’s day, to the policy known as ‘kill and retire.’ It seemed to him the highest unwisdom, whether from a political or military point of view, to despatch a single British battalion, swamped among four thousand Egyptian soldiers, with no other object, even if successful, than to fight a battle, decimate the hostile tribesmen and return. He recalled the small beginnings and the insufficient forces out of which great and far-reaching events in Zululand and in the Transvaal had sprung. And he did not lack, as was afterwards proved, the support of high authorities for his opinion. ‘I can assure you,’ telegraphed Lord Cromer (then Sir Evelyn Baring) to Lord Salisbury on December 6, ‘that, unless great care is taken, the Government may be dragged into another big Soudan business almost before they are aware of it’; and, again, ‘all sorts of arguments will probably be put forward about tranquillising the Soudan once and for all. I believe that these arguments are of very little value and that for the present the Soudan cannot be tranquillised without the re-occupation of Khartoum, which would require a large force.’[66]
On these subjects and in this tenor Lord Randolph delivered three speeches in the House of Commons, which were, as may be easily imagined, met with unstinted resentment by his party. He spoke first on December 1, a general debate on the vote for embassies and foreign missions having been raised by Mr. Morley; and three days later he moved the adjournment of the House. This step created extravagant surprise and anger. He rose, as the newspapers took care to point out, to make his motion absolutely alone on the Government side of the House. He was supported by the whole Opposition. He spoke—as, indeed, throughout the Parliament of 1886—with gravity and moderation, and made a quiet, earnest appeal to the House to prevent the renewal of the Soudan warfare. His motion for the adjournment was unexpected, and the Government were for some time, during the debate that followed, in a minority. At a quarter-past six, however, when the division was taken, they secured a majority of forty-two, although a half-dozen Conservatives—among whom Mr. Hanbury was probably the best-known—voted against them.
Loud and long was the expression of Ministerial wrath. ‘In order to discredit his views,’ wrote Jennings, in his preface to Lord Randolph Churchill’s speeches, ‘it was necessary to bring into play those formidable weapons of misrepresentation which can never be used with greater effect than when they are directed by persons who have the entire machinery of a great party at their command.’ He was accused forthwith of having laid a plot with the Opposition to destroy the Government on a snap division; and the ‘treachery’ and ‘ingratitude’ of such conduct were for some days a popular and fertile theme. He was even forced to defend himself in public from such imputations. His reply was explicit: ‘(1) If I had desired,’ he wrote to an inquiring person, ‘to snatch a surprise division on the motion for the adjournment of the House, which I made on Tuesday last with regard to Suakin, I should not have occupied fifty minutes of the time of the House with my own speech. (2) If I had desired by the aid of the Opposition to defeat the Government, I should not have selected an evening when the supporters of the Government, under the pressure of a five-line whip, were likely to be present in great numbers in order to take part in a division on an Irish vote which had been arranged to come off before the dinner-hour. (3) The fact of the matter is that the case against the Suakin expedition is so strong, and the line taken with respect to similar expeditions by the Tories when they were in Opposition was so marked, that I felt very confident of receiving appreciable support from the ranks of the Ministerialists. For that reason I welcomed every circumstance which was likely to bring together a full House.’
It is not suggested that Lord Randolph Churchill was unwilling to defeat the Government by his motion. Its object was to prevent the proposed action in the Soudan. That object could only have been attained by an adverse vote in the House of Commons. Whether such a vote would have involved the resignation of Ministers is uncertain. The pretence that a simple motion for adjournment, necessarily unaccompanied by any substantive censure of policy, should directly involve a change of Government is a modern abuse of Parliamentary practice. But even had the fate of the Government turned on the division—as, of course, they declared it would—conscientious conviction in an urgent matter of life and death would have fully justified Lord Randolph in the course he took. His action was reasonable, consistent and fair. Whether he was right on the merits of the question or as to its importance in relation to the general political situation, must be judged by others.
The Government profited both by the counsels which were offered them and by the result of their final decision. The British force despatched to Suakin was reinforced. The scope of the warfare was rigidly confined. Nothing that might prove extensive or entangling was permitted and, on the other hand, the limited operation was in itself completely successful. On December 21 an engagement was fought outside Suakin. The Dervishes were routed with heavy slaughter and driven away into the desert, whence—as it luckily happened—they did not subsequently choose to return in numbers sufficient to cause anxiety to the garrison or seriously disturb the peace of the Red Sea Littoral.
The speeches of Lord Randolph Churchill in Parliament during the years from 1887 to 1890 were the best in manner and command he ever made. He stood alone, surrounded by enemies who were once his supporters, and faced by opponents whose plaudits he did not desire; but if he had still been Leader of the House he could not have been more at his ease and more sure of himself. His style was serious enough to suit the dullest; and yet point after point was made with a clearness and rhetorical force to which the dullest could not be insensible. His voice penetrated everywhere without apparent effort. Every tone was full of meaning. He was sparing of gesture and cared little for oratorical ornament. He was always heard with profound attention by the House, with obvious anxiety by the Government, and usually in silence by the Conservative party.