As with the Employers’ Liability Bill, so with Hares and Rabbits, and so with Burials, though the task of perfecting these two latter measures seems principally to have been discharged by Mr. Balfour and Sir Henry Wolff. At every point the Fourth Party were armed with facts and arguments; on every question they had a plan, in all difficulties they sustained each other. The Government were repeatedly exhorted to spare no labour for the public weal. Legislation of an important character, they were reminded, could not be passed in haste, or without proper intervals for reflection on the part of those who were responsible for it. Whenever the Government and their partisans showed signs of impatience—and, judging by the interruptions which are sprinkled in the columns of ‘Hansard,’ this was not infrequent—a motion, or the threat of a motion, to report progress or to adjourn was found an admirable weapon to employ; while all the time the House as a whole was kept in subjection and often in good-humour, by the excellent quality of the speeches, the wit by which they were adorned, the fertility of resource which distinguished them and the reality of the arguments advanced.
Not content with discharging—however conscientiously—the functions of criticism, the Fourth Party aspired to legislate constructively. With the object of encouraging private thrift and ready-money transactions, Lord Randolph introduced in 1881 a Small Debts Bill which sought to make debts of under one hundred pounds irrecoverable after one year from the date of their being contracted. Sir Henry Wolff carried a measure satirically described by Sir William Harcourt as the ‘Bournemouth Reform Bill,’ which enabled the inhabitants of seaside resorts to let their houses for short periods without impairing their voting qualification. In every Parliamentary incident, great or small, the four allies were prominent, if not supreme. The question of erecting a monument in Westminster Abbey to the Prince Imperial of France, killed in the Zulu War, produced differences in the Government, and from the division by which the proposal was rejected several Ministers abstained by withdrawing to the two small rooms behind the Chair which are used for the minor consultations of colleagues or opponents. Sir Henry Wolff at once raised a debate upon this alleged impropriety and, although Sir Stafford Northcote deprecated his action, a long wrangle followed, from which the Government emerged with ruffled plumes. When Mr. Dodson, the President of the Local Government Board, by an absurd mistake got himself elected for a second constituency without having previously applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, it was Lord Randolph Churchill who drew attention to the irregularity; and as the procedure of the House rendered it difficult to debate the matter without some artful device, he himself moved for a new writ for the borough of Chester, while Mr. Gorst—by collusion, as Mr. Gladstone unwarrantably asserted—gave notice of an amendment which would have brought the discussion within the bounds of order.
Nothing could excel the industry of the Fourth Party in Supply. They presented themselves nightly as the vigilant guardians of the public purse. No item of expenditure was too small to be criticised; no economy too petty to be cherished. ‘If,’ said Lord Randolph Churchill, with a paternal look at Sir Stafford Northcote and his colleagues, ‘the late Tory Government had been more attentive to the principles involved in paltry matters of expenditure, they might still be sitting on the Treasury Bench.’ On one warm evening when the bulk of the Conservative party was scattered on its holidays—in pursuit of grouse according to tradition, indulging their wives and families at the seaside according to fact—and when the weary Ministerialists gasped amid the parching streets of London, Lord Randolph Churchill subjected to the most minute examination the grants-in-aid accorded to various learned societies. He inquired about the Meteorological Office and canvassed the value of weather reports. He compared the weather forecasts of Greenwich with those of America. Satisfied upon this, he turned to the Academy of Music and raised further important points for the Minister, Lord Frederick Cavendish, to explain. When the diplomatic vote was taken, Mr. Balfour and Sir Henry Wolff were at hand with stores of knowledge and that keen thirst for information which is only to be gained by personal experience. With only seventeen men to go into the Lobby with them, the Fourth Party were formidable and feared. Nothing could provoke them to anger or to levity. Their dignity and politeness were undisturbed by charges of obstruction. They desired only to further public business and to aid the Government in their responsible duties; and they moved to report progress lest ill-temper should result from the natural impatience of weaker and less conscientious legislators. Under these inflictions the Liberal party groaned and its champions grunted.[8]
It was inevitable that disagreements should spring up between the official leaders on the Front Opposition Bench and the active group below the gangway. At first, to the amusement of the House and later somewhat to its irritation, the Fourth Party claimed to be totally distinct from and independent of all existing parties. ‘There are two great parties in the State,’ said a member one night. Mr. Parnell: ‘Three.’ Lord Randolph Churchill: ‘Four.’ (Laughter.) Fortified by this assumption, the Fourth Party moved whatever amendments and took whatever course seemed good to them, upon any and every question. As they did not consult their leaders, it often happened that differences arose about their tactics. And when, as we have seen, the influence of these free-lances was so often employed in making Liberal Bills more Radical, it was not surprising that the old Tories and ex-Ministers began to view their busy allies with apprehension.
The leader of the Conservative party in the House of Commons was an old and distinguished man. Sir Stafford Northcote had held high office, first as Secretary of State for India, afterwards as Chancellor of the Exchequer, under Disraeli in 1867 and in 1874. He had led the Commons upon Mr. Disraeli’s retirement to the House of Lords. Upon finance he enjoyed a reputation second only to that of Mr. Gladstone. He is said to have possessed the common virtues in special excellence. Although Mr. Gladstone, with that marvellous power great men acquire of looking at things only from their own point of view, described him as ‘not strong enough to convince his party that they were wrong,’ he also spoke of him as admirable in good-temper, self-sacrifice, quickness, sound knowledge, and general integrity. This eulogy was not undeserved at Mr. Gladstone’s hands. Sir Stafford Northcote had in ancient Corn Law days, when Peel was the honoured leader of the Conservative party, been private secretary to Mr. Gladstone at the Board of Trade. The reverence in which he held his former chief was undiminished by the passage of years, and his natural amiability of character led him to express it and display it on many suitable and unsuitable occasions. But the virtues of Sir Stafford Northcote were not those most needed in the stormy times amid which he closed his long career.
‘His gentle disposition and good intentions,’ said Lord Randolph long afterwards, ‘would have saved anyone from attack except a leader of Opposition.’ The very qualities which endeared him to his friends and family and won him the compliments of his opponents, disheartened, irritated, and paralysed his followers in the House of Commons. The deference which he delighted to show to the Prime Minister, offended a party which had just struggled back, smarting and reduced, from a crushing electoral disaster. His lack of enterprising vigour was from the first session of the new Parliament painfully apparent even to his most faithful friends—and all of those who sat below the gangway were not his friends. His speeches were tame and ineffective. When party rancour festered to hate, when crisis at home followed hot on crisis abroad, the mild expostulations with which Sir Stafford was accustomed to conclude the debates, disappointed his followers. The Opposition, always hopelessly outmatched in their official spokesman, were never more plainly at a disadvantage than when their leader undertook to encounter Mr. Gladstone. Sir Stafford Northcote’s character was estimable, his talents were distinguished, his experience had been long; but scarcely any Parliamentary chief has been more unequal to the particular work he had to do. And yet though his strength failed year by year and extraordinary physical disabilities oppressed him with increasing severity, his fingers, nerveless for aught else, closed tenaciously upon the reins of power. Unfit for any serious exertion or important business even in private life, he was willing—not, indeed, from any selfish or sordid motive, but from a high sense of public duty—to fill the most arduous offices of State. In a condition when, as a doctor, lawyer, or business man, he would have been unable properly to discharge his duties, he was prepared to form Governments, to grapple with Mr. Gladstone at the head of a great majority, and to guide the Conservative party through the fiercest political tumult of a hundred years. Heedless of the warnings of Nature and blind to the plainest teaching of fact, he struggled gallantly forward until he died in harness beneath burdens he was utterly unable either to relinquish or sustain.
The Fourth Party were soon openly antagonistic to Sir Stafford Northcote and took no especial pains to conceal their feeling. In private they invariably called him ‘the Goat.’ This was at first a personal allusion to his beard, but it was afterwards more generally applied to all Conservatives who were thought to be ‘weak-kneed.’ They found themselves hampered in their conflicts with Mr. Gladstone by those who should have led the onset. They viewed the line of ex-Ministers on the Front Bench with those feelings of impatience which are natural to able men who see, or think they see, great opportunities of warfare cast away by persons much less able. They suspected Sir Stafford himself of being anxious to form a coalition with the Whigs; and, although they carefully preserved in public an air of elaborate politeness towards their leader, their true disposition was not in doubt.
Their opinions were held by many others in the Conservative party before the session of 1880 was ended; and, as always happens under such circumstances, there grew up a counter-faction in Sir Stafford Northcote’s support. This was the beginning of strife. It would be profitless to attempt to trace the petty differences upon which mutual dislike was founded. But by the time the recess drew near disagreements were rife. The Fourth Party decided openly to condemn the want of energy and foresight which marked the leadership of the Opposition. The opportunity presented itself at a party meeting held in the Carlton Club on August 20. The plan was drawn up by the four colleagues in convivial conclave at the Garrick Club. It was arranged that Mr. Balfour should, in the name of his colleagues, indicate the failure of Sir Stafford Northcote to lead the party in the House of Commons to the satisfaction of its more active adherents. In pursuance of this Mr. Balfour made a very clever speech, in which he contrived to deliver a most damaging criticism of Sir Stafford Northcote’s methods without actually mentioning his name or using any discourteous phrase. He obtained a considerable measure of assent from the meeting.
On the same day Mr. Balfour, by arrangement with his three friends, attacked the Government for their conduct of public business. His indictment had been carefully drawn up by the four partners, and involved a comprehensive survey of the whole session. He complained that the attempt of Ministers to cram too much into a limited time had resulted in general confusion and in the most improper invasion of private members’ rights, and he moved that it was inexpedient that ‘important measures should be brought under the consideration of the House at a period of the session when it is impossible that they should receive adequate discussion.’ Mr. Gladstone was absent through illness and Lord Hartington undertook to reply to these reproaches. He read out to the House some figures, which had been prepared, of the activities of the Fourth Party during the four months since the dissolution. From this it appeared that Mr. Gorst had spoken one hundred and five times, and had asked eighteen questions; that Sir Henry Wolff had made sixty-eight speeches and had asked thirty-four questions; and that Lord Randolph Churchill had made seventy-four speeches and had asked twenty-one questions. This statement caused much amusement; and after Sir Stafford Northcote had defended the Conservatives at length from the general charge of obstruction which had been urged on behalf of the Government, Lord Randolph rose to vindicate the honour of the Fourth Party. He had prepared himself for this not unexpected duty by a careful study of an article written by Mr. Gladstone when in Opposition in 1879, justifying or at any rate excusing obstruction. Some of the quotations were very effective. ‘The public,’ wrote Mr. Gladstone, ‘has lately heard much on the subject of obstruction in the House of Commons.... But to prolong debate even by persistent iteration on legislative measures is not necessarily an outrage, an offence, or even an indiscretion. For in some cases it is only by the use of this instrument that a small minority with strong views can draw adequate attention to those views.... There are abundant instances in which obstruction of this kind has led to the removal of perilous or objectionable matter from legislative measures, and thus to the avoidance of great public evils.’ Lord Randolph proceeded to read a sentence which seemed to have been specially conceived in advance to protect the Fourth Party. ‘Now, if a great party may obstruct, it is hazardous to award narrower limits to the small one; for it is precisely in the class of cases where the party is small and the conviction strong that the best instances of warrantable obstruction may be found.’ Lord Randolph declared that these passages would be the charter of himself and ‘those who acted with him.’ He deplored the absence from the House of the Prime Minister and pleaded that, acting upon the sanction of his great Parliamentary experience, the Fourth Party ought to have escaped Lord Hartington’s rebuke. He ended by exhorting the Government to cultivate ‘the magic of patience.’
The last appearance of the Fourth Party in the session of 1880 was upon the third reading of the Appropriation Bill, which was not reached till September 4. Notwithstanding the heat of the season and the exhaustion of the House, the member for Woodstock and his friends preserved an air of unrelenting vigilance. Lord Randolph Churchill moved an amendment dwelling on the gravity of the defeat at Maiwand, which he sought to prove, by an elaborate argument based upon the Blue Books, to have been ‘mainly attributable to want of foresight, of military knowledge and of caution on the part of the Indian Executive.’ His criticisms drew from Lord Hartington a reasonable and weighty reply. Both Sir Henry Wolff and Mr. Balfour spoke at later stages in the debate, and thus the session reached its close. ‘The rise of a small body of Conservative free-lances below the gangway,’ said the Times (September 7), in its review of the session, ‘of whom Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr. Gorst are the chiefs, is a curious incident, and has originated the half-serious nickname of the "Fourth Party."’