These proceedings, which were reported very fully throughout the country, forced Lord Randolph Churchill to publish on April 23 a detailed statement in the form of a letter to Mr. Chamberlain. After dealing at length with the questions of the compact he continued:—
My going to Birmingham as candidate or not going always practically rested with you, as you perfectly well know, and you decided, no doubt on public grounds alone, that I was not to go. Now you have had your way, you have seated your nominee. I may claim to have assisted you materially, not only by yielding to your desire that I should refuse the request of the Birmingham Conservatives, but also by counsel, oral and written, as Mr. Rowlands and others can testify, to my friends in Birmingham to support Mr. John Albert Bright. If ever a man was compelled by duty to be magnanimous, or could afford to be magnanimous, it was yourself after such a conspicuous success. Your position demanded that you should neglect to notice any words which legitimate disappointment may have prompted, that you should do your best to soothe irritated but just susceptibilities, that you should suggest arrangements by which, in future electoral contests, the two sections of the Unionist party might work together cordially for their mutual advantage.
How widely different, however, has been your action! How curious the return you make to the Conservatives who voted in such large numbers for Mr. Bright, and to me, who thought I was your friend, and who certainly—to put the matter in the most negative and colourless manner—did nothing to interfere with Mr. Bright’s return.
As far as I am concerned, you endeavour to embroil me and my friends in Birmingham by representing, and by seeking to make it appear, that I have played fast and loose with them, although in dealing with the incident I have regarded your interests a great deal more than my own; and in respect of the Conservative party in Birmingham they are rewarded by an acrimonious attack from you and their leaders, by contumely and denunciation being poured upon men to whom they owe much and whose services they highly value; and, finally, in order that insult may be heaped upon injury, you allow the Liberal-Unionist Association, which is completely under your control, at a meeting over which you presided, to set forth in a formal and written resolution an assertion so questionable as to be almost ridiculous, to the effect that the recent election has shown ‘that the preponderance of political power in Central Birmingham is with the Liberal-Unionist party.’
I have entered into this controversy with you with much reluctance and have in no way sought it; but I owe too much to the Conservatives in Birmingham not to take up pen in their behalf when, as it appears to me, they are treated with unqualified injustice.
There the matter ends so far as this account is concerned; for it is not necessary to follow the long and vexatious discussions by which, after years had passed, the representation of the Edgbaston Division in lieu of the Central Division was ultimately conceded to the Conservative party. Lord Randolph’s decision has been exposed to various criticisms, but the explanation is not obscure. He looked back with pride to the great compact of 1886. He could not bear to take action which would be misrepresented as hostile to the fundamental basis of the Unionist alliance; and he knew well that the forces for influencing public opinion against him were strong enough, whatever the actual rights and wrongs of the Birmingham dispute, to create that impression. This reasoning may have been sufficient; but it does not cover the fact of his submitting his claims to the arbitrament of such a committee. Whatever the circumstances, he himself should have decided. The responsibility was his alone; and although it might be prudent to receive the counsels of Lord Hartington and of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and to hear Mr. Chamberlain’s opinion, he should have informed them, and not they him, of the decision that was finally taken.
It should be said that Lord Randolph Churchill never considered that Mr. Chamberlain had treated him with any want of candour in this affair. He did not think he had been generous in action or in victory. But he recognised that a natural divergence had opened between them and, this, although acute, was confined to political and public limits and did not extend to personal relations. To the end of his life he was accustomed to say that their only quarrel was over the Aston Riots; and they met, though less frequently, on courteous terms. The blow was a bitter one to Lord Randolph. His enforced desertion of his Birmingham friends cut him to the quick. As he came out of the Whips’ room, where he had given his answer to the deputation, a friend noticed upon his face the shadow of that drawn and ghastly look with which it was in a few years to be stamped.
So considerable an interval elapsed after the Suakin debates before Lord Randolph Churchill again addressed the House of Commons that he provoked a laugh by drolly asking ‘the indulgence usually accorded to a new member.’ The session of 1889 had almost reached its close without the question of making the necessary provision by Parliamentary grant for the children of the Prince of Wales having been debated. When he rose (July 26), in succession to Mr. Bradlaugh, from his accustomed seat immediately behind the Treasury Bench, the Conservative members seemed in some doubt as to his intention, and he was greeted by only a very faint cheer. But his first words made his position manifest: ‘I have always held an opinion, amounting to absolute conviction, as to the indisputable right of the Crown to apply to Parliament to make provision for the Royal Family and to rely upon the liberality of Parliament in respect of such applications.’ Then followed one of the most happy speeches he ever achieved. The argument, which was elaborate and precise, was concerned largely with figures and precedents showing the small cost of the British Monarchy compared with other forms of Government, and the conduct of the reigning Sovereign with respect to claims upon Parliament in comparison with some of her later predecessors. The constitutional doctrine involved and the mode of presenting such a case to a popular assembly are worthy of the attention of politicians; but the whole was enlivened and adorned by a sustained sparkle of what in those days had come to be called ‘Randolphian humour,’ which kept the rapidly assembled House in continued laughter and applause. When, for instance, he referred to Mr. Mundella as having ‘addressed his constituents in Paradise—Square,’ with just the slightest pause after ‘Paradise,’ the whole House collapsed; and Mr. Gladstone, whose sense of humour was somewhat uneven, is said to have laughed more than at any other jest he had ever heard in Parliament.
The effect of this speech, which occupied more than an hour, was to produce for the moment a complete reconciliation between Lord Randolph and his party. All about him as he sat down was a stir of enthusiasm. The Treasury Bench turned a row of delighted faces towards him. Among his papers I find a bundle of letters, full of gratitude and praise, written from the House by Conservative members while the impression was strong in their minds. But Lord Randolph Churchill knew he had that to say two days later in the Midlands which would speedily dissipate such transient and uncourted approbation.
On successive evenings at Walsall and Birmingham he outlined an extensive, yet not unpractical, programme of domestic legislation, dealing especially with land and housing, and with temperance. A single extract will show how far his mind had travelled from those serene pastures where the Government lambs were nourished:—