To his Mother.
Ireland: April 15, 1879.
I write to wish you very many happy returns of your birthday to-morrow, which is also, as perhaps you may remember, our wedding-day; and having been married five years I begin to feel highly respectable.
This weather is certainly very wintry and does not seem to lend itself to anything congenial, while anything more odious or unfortunate for fishing cannot be well imagined. I fished for two days in the Suir and never moved a fish, nor did anyone else. However, I have added another Irish county (Tipperary) to my peregrinations in this island.
This is now the fifth birthday you have spent in Ireland and I am sure it must be satisfactory to you to look back on the years you have spent there. I do not think you can recollect a contretemps or a cross; and I am sure, if I may say so, no one deserves a pleasanter retrospect: and believe me, I sincerely hope next 15th of April will find you as happy and untroubled as I hope you will be to-morrow.
The wet summer of 1879 produced something like a ‘food and fuel famine’ in the South and West of Ireland. The potatoes failed, grain would not ripen, and the turf could not be dried. The Government met the danger by offering the landlords loans on easier terms than those recognised by law, and cautioned the Irish Poor Law authorities to be ready to administer additional relief. But official aid was wholly insufficient without private charity and in these straits, the Duchess of Marlborough came forward and appealed to the public. She was a woman of exceptional capacity, energy, and decision, and she laboured earnestly and ceaselessly to collect and administer a great fund. Its purposes were to supply food, fuel, and clothing, especially for the aged and weak; to provide small sums to keep the families of able-bodied men in temporary distress out of the workhouse; and thirdly, while carefully guarding against any kind of proselytism, to give grants to schools, so as to secure free meals of bread and potatoes and, if possible, a little clothing for the children attending them. The plan unfolded in her letters to the Times was welcomed not only by the Irish Conservative press, but by the Freeman’s Journal, which then supported Mr. Butt’s policy and which bore handsome testimony to the efforts made by the Viceregal family to become acquainted with the Irish people, and to their great popularity even in the disturbed district near Portarlington, which was their country seat. The ultra-Nationalist papers were less kindly, but the fund was warmly supported and grew apace. The Queen sent 500l. and the Prince of Wales 250l. By the end of the year 8,300l. had been subscribed; by March the receipts were 88,000l.; and, before the Viceroy left Ireland (April 21) on the change of Ministry, the fund was 117,000l. Although many subscriptions were diverted to a separate fund raised by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, the Duchess of Marlborough’s fund ultimately reached 135,000l. Its administration was entirely free from sectarian or party influence, Roman Catholics and Protestants being equally represented on the Committee. Upwards of 80,000l. was distributed in relief to the local committees, 37,000l. expended in seed, and 10,000l. upon clothing. The working expenses were under 1,700l. In all this Lord Randolph bore an active part. His whole time was given up to the work of organisation and distribution and before he left Ireland in the spring of 1880 he had visited nearly every Irish county and had come into intimate contact with every class in Irish life. His knowledge of Ireland was soon to be of service to him.
1880
Æt. 31
The Government of Lord Beaconsfield approached the election of 1880 with some inward misgivings. Their party was united and contented. The Times declared that Mr. Gladstone’s language was extravagant and out of proportion to any feeling that might exist in the country. The by-elections were not especially unfavourable to Ministers. But nevertheless there were causes for anxiety. The lustre had gradually faded from the ‘spirited foreign policy’ and from the Imperialism of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Lytton. Taxation had been increased; deficits had taken the place of surpluses; no legislative achievements could be discovered. In India and South Africa useless bloodshed, clotted by disaster, seemed to be the outcome of British activities. The policy of the Government in the Near East was stridently asserted by its opponents to be a failure, if not a fraud. Trade depression, as a reaction from the ‘boom’ after the Franco-German war, was continuous. Revival was delayed by the uncertainty of the European situation. Economic weakness followed diplomatic strength and military exertion. There had been serious strikes in 1878, and the winter of 1878-9 was marked by acute distress. The elements of Nature were adverse. Agriculture was vexed with wet summers and bad harvests and low prices. All Ireland was dark with gathering storm. There was, no doubt, sufficient reason for apprehension; but no one foresaw the extent of impending defeat.
‘Lord Beaconsfield,’ wrote Lord Randolph Churchill in 1883,[7] ‘was very old and very worn when he got to the top of the tree, and he was but indifferently served by some of his colleagues. Advancing years, an enfeebled constitution, a singularly exhausting and painful form of disease, had compelled him to give way to a disposition naturally indolent and unsuited to the constant mastery of dry administrative detail. He must often have thought that he had done nearly enough; that he might with justice allow himself to seek in the distractions of London society a pleasure and a repose to which, during most of his life, he had been a stranger. Only the most captious mind could blame him for this; but this it was, nevertheless, which greatly conduced to the downfall of his Government. What time he gave to public affairs was absorbed in studying, with the assistance of the Foreign Secretary, the various phases of the Eastern complication. All else was neglected. Finance was left entirely to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in whose unaided hands deficits and floating debts grew apace. The other heads of departments were all allowed to go their own way, doing what seemed good in their eyes. There was no master mind pervading and controlling every branch of the Administration. Election affairs and organisation went to the dogs. The care, the experience, the personal supervision which Mr. Disraeli, assisted by a few practised hands, had bestowed upon the preparations for the General Election of 1874 disappeared. A weak but wide-spreading centralisation enervated the vigour of the provincial organisation. A stupefying degree of over-confidence, a foolish contempt for the adversary, a fatally erroneous estimate of the revived influence of Mr. Gladstone—these causes, and these alone, all of them preventable, slowly but surely worked the ruin.
On March 8, 1880, Sir Stafford Northcote announced to the House of Commons its approaching dissolution. The next morning there appeared in the papers Lord Beaconsfield’s letter to the Duke of Marlborough, assigning to Ireland the foremost place among the perils and embarrassments of British dominion. The memorable and prophetic words of this celebrated document, familiar though they be, require to be recorded here:—