Lord Randolph Churchill

by Winston Churchill

Such were the circumstances attending the rise of the Fourth Party in the beginning of the new Parliament. It must be admitted that Mr. Gladstone was at once their most powerful antagonist and their mainstay. His quick eye discerned very early in the session the menace that was growing below the gangway, and he hastened to respond to the challenge. Perhaps, if he had not been a great and famous Parliamentarian, he would have tried to treat with disdain the arguments of unproved or youthful opponents. He would have left the House during their speeches or, ignoring their criticisms altogether, have contented himself with replying only to the ex-officials on the Front Bench. But his nature prompted him to meet the strongest opposition from whatever quarter it might be offered. His generous care for the life and vigour of the House of Commons drew from him a frank recognition of talent wherever or however displayed. He had his favourites on both sides of the House, and he rallied with measureless good-temper and all his most formidable and glittering weapons of debate to the attacks of the Fourth Party and especially of their leader. Often and often he riddled them and crushed them and pulverised them or reasoned with them patiently or cast them aside with a stern rebuke; and as often they returned by other paths unwearied to the attack.

The Prime Minister was indeed on various occasions the innocent cause of delaying his own legislation. He was always delighted to expound obscure or difficult questions for the benefit of friends or opponents. Of this amiable weakness Lord Randolph and his friends took, we may be sure, the fullest advantage whenever the pace of Government business seemed to be undesirably rapid. In his most insinuating manner the member for Woodstock—‘Woodcock,’ it was irreverently called on one occasion—would rise in his place and request the Prime Minister to explain some clause or subsection of a Bill to the Committee. Mr. Gladstone would invariably respond to this invitation with evident alacrity and frequently at considerable length. The wealth of fact and argument with which in a single unpremeditated speech he often enriched the debate served lesser mortals with new ideas. When these were exhausted, Mr. Gorst would get up and thank the Prime Minister for his lucid exposition, which he would say had made everything perfectly intelligible to him, with the exception of one point, upon which he would be most grateful to receive further information. When Mr. Gladstone had made a second lengthy speech upon this, it was Sir Henry Wolff’s turn to state how clear all had been made to his comprehension also—with a single exception. ‘If you speak again,’ growled Sir William Harcourt, a sterner partisan, on one celebrated occasion to his chief, ‘we shall be here till morning.’ But it should not be supposed from this account that Mr. Gladstone lost by his invariable practice of giving his best to the House. Although now and then his opponents may have snatched some trifling advantage from the superabundance of his strength, no qualities but his own could have surmounted the amazing perplexities of the ‘80 Parliament or have guided the Liberal party through its perils. So long as his light lasted the House of Commons lived, and amid the fiercest passions and even scenes of violence preserved its hold upon the sympathies and the imagination of the whole world; and at his death it sank at once, perhaps for ever, in public esteem.

The proceedings and progress of the Fourth Party in the House of Commons did not escape the attention of Lord Beaconsfield and that great man regarded them from the first with high approval. Sir Henry Wolff had already consulted him upon the Bradlaugh controversy. He had known Lord Randolph since Oxford days. He was on friendly terms with all the four friends; but it was Mr. Gorst with whom his relations were most intimate. He took a keen interest in all their Parliamentary manœuvres. He liked to feel himself in touch with the new men and especially with the young men whom the Parliament was bringing into notice and, so far from frowning on their independence, he encouraged them with advice and approbation. He did not often revisit the House of Commons after his elevation to the peerage; but one of these rare excursions was for the purpose of watching the Fourth Party at work and to hear Lord Randolph speak. He made particular inquiries as to what was thought of the Fourth Party in Ministerial circles. In the early spring of 1881, immediately before the commencement of his last illness, he met Sir Henry James at a dinner given by Sir William Harcourt. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what do you think of Randolph?’ Sir Henry James praised his Parliamentary instincts and aptitude. ‘Ah, yes, you are quite right,’ rejoined Lord Beaconsfield, ‘when they come in they will have to give him anything he chooses to ask for and in a very short time they will have to take anything he chooses to give them.’ During the autumn Lord Beaconsfield invited Mr. Gorst to visit him at Hughenden, and talked to him with much freedom about the policy and influence of the Fourth Party, about Ireland and the general political situation.

‘Lord B.,’ wrote Gorst to Lord Randolph Churchill (November 9), ‘was in his talk anything but Goaty: he generally expressed great confidence in us, thought we had a brilliant future before us, and promised to help and advise us as much as he could. I can in a letter only state dogmatically what the oracle said, without giving all his arguments:—

‘1. We ought not to pledge ourselves to support the Government in any coercive measures for Ireland. They have encouraged agitation: they have adopted dilatory and inefficient proceedings: and they don’t deserve the confidence of Parliament. We should therefore hold ourselves free to take what course we think best when the Government lay their proposals before us. B. will prevent Northcote, if he can, from making any more pledges. Meanwhile our attitude may be ostentatiously one of reserve. There is a precedent for suspending the Habeas Corpus to suppress Ribbon outrages in the Westmeath Act of 1871. ‘2. B. himself broached the idea that Gladstone may buy off the Irish landlords. He thinks this would be to us a very dangerous move. But there is no use in talking about it either in public or private. Nor can we say how the matter should be dealt with till the move is made. B. has always been in favour of the purchase by the tenant under Bright’s clauses: Lord Salisbury has always supported an extension of this.

‘3. He scouted the idea of Northcote thinking of coalition or being inclined to Derby; and did not bear out what Wolff said about his supporting Derby in the late Cabinet. We need not consult Northcote when Parliament is not sitting. It would be good policy to abuse Government for not summoning Parliament to consider the state of Ireland, and to say that their object in not doing so was to conceal their Eastern policy. We should always courteously inform N., through the Whip, of any step we are about to take in the House of Commons, and listen with respect and attention to anything he may say about it; his remarks, even when we disagree with him, will be well worth attention. But just at present we need not be too scrupulous about obeying our leader. An open rupture between us would, however, be most disastrous; but Lord B. thinks if we are courteous and firm Northcote will make no open rupture, and will not throw us over....

‘4. Upon alteration of the rules of the House there is to be the most absolute and unyielding resistance. Cairns has agreed to this, and they will force N. to be firm. There was a committee on the subject twenty years ago, which took some very interesting evidence, including that of M. Guizot on the clôture, which we ought to look up.’

Mr. Gorst was not the only member of the Fourth Party who was encouraged by the Tory leader. ‘Lord Beaconsfield,’ writes Sir Henry Wolff, ‘whom I had known nearly from my childhood, having asked me to call, I went in the autumn of 1880 to the house in Curzon Street where he was then living and where the next year he died. We discussed the situation and I explained how the action of the Conservative party was crippled by the over-caution—not to say indecision—of Sir Stafford Northcote, which led him constantly to throw us over. He replied almost word for word as follows:—

‘When Mr. Gladstone announced his withdrawal from public life I fully believed his statement, which was confirmed to me from special sources in which I placed the most implicit reliance. I thought that when he was gone Northcote would be able to cope with anyone likely to assume the lead on the other side, and I wanted rest. I now much regret having retired from the House of Commons, as Mr. Gladstone, contrary to my firm persuasion, returned. I fully appreciate your feelings and those of your friends; but you must stick to Northcote. He represents the respectability of the party. I wholly sympathise with you all, because I never was respectable myself. In my time the respectability of the party was represented by * * * a horrid man; but I had to do as well as I could; you must do the same. Don’t on any account break with Northcote; but defer to him as often as you can. Whenever it becomes too difficult you can come to me and I will try to arrange matters. Meanwhile I will speak to him.’

The countenance and kindness thus shown to a rebellious group by so great a man as Lord Beaconsfield filled the hearts of the Fourth Party with a sense of elation. They reflected with satisfaction upon the events of the session. With astonishing rapidity they had risen to a position of influence in Parliament; their action attracted every day an increasing interest from the public. They commanded the serious attention of the Conservative party and enjoyed the favour of its famous leader. Ministers and ex-Ministers eyed them with equal apprehension. Older members were inquisitive about their plans. They looked forward to the brightest future. Yet there were already gathering clouds. Jealousies in a numerous troop had followed closely on success. Their own contemporaries in the party were quick to resent the formation of a clique and still more the prominence which was accorded to it. The great Tory newspapers laboured assiduously to ignore their existence and, when compelled, alluded to their proceedings only with a sneer. The life and soul of the Tory Opposition, they were freely represented as hostile to its interests. Sir Stafford Northcote seems from the beginning to have scented danger. ‘I am inclined to think,’ he wrote complacently to Gorst, as soon as Parliament had risen (September 15, 1880), ‘that the Fourth Party has done enough for its fame, and that it will be the wiser course for its members now quietly to take their places in the main body, where they will have work enough and to spare.’ Gorst, in reply, descanted on the advantages of combination. Each member of the Fourth Party felt stronger for the support and wiser for the counsel of his friends; and he assured Sir Stafford that together they would form a weapon of political warfare which could not fail to be formidable ‘in his hands.’