The other startling advertisement I wish to allude to was as follows: ‘Hawarden Castle.—The Prime Minister attended divine service this morning. He was guarded as usual’ ‘Guarded as usual!’ ‘As usual!’ Gracious Heavens! what a commentary on Liberal government in those two words, ‘as usual’! Do you know that from the days when first what is called a Prime Minister was invented to the present, there has been no Prime Minister about whom such a statement could be made? Many Prime Ministers have come and gone, good, bad, and indifferent; but the best and the worst have never been guarded by aught else save the English people. And has it come to this? Are the times so terrible, are bad passions so rife and unrestrained, after four years of Liberal rule, that the apostle of freedom, the benefactor of his country, the man for whom no flattery is too fulsome, no homage too servile, cannot attend divine service in his parish church without being ‘guarded as usual’? Surely a world of serious reflection is opened up; surely the art of government must have sunk to a very low ebb when the first servant of the Crown has to be watched night and day by alguazils armed to the teeth. I hope and pray that they will guard him well, for it would be an indelible stain on our name and our fame if a man who has spent fifty years of his life in the service of the State, were to be the victim of an infamous assassin. But I ask myself, are we to blame humanity for this state of things? Is our civilisation all in vain? Is Christianity but a phantom and a fiction? Is human nature the awful and incurable cause? Surely not. It is more natural to blame the policy of the statesmen who, to possess themselves of power, to overthrow a hated rival, set class against class and race against race; who use their eloquence for no nobler purpose than to lash into frenzy the needy and the discontented; who for party purposes are ready to deride morality and paralyse law; who, to gain a few votes either in Parliament or in a borough, ally themselves equally with the atheist or with the rebel, and who lightly arouse and lightly spring from one delirium of the multitude to another in order to maintain themselves at a giddy and a perilous height. (Blackpool, January 24, 1884.)
1884 Æt. 35
A few days later it became known that Lord Randolph Churchill had accepted the invitation of the Birmingham Conservatives to contest that city with Colonel Burnaby at the General Election against Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain. This unfurling of the Tory flag in the very heart and centre of militant and organised Radicalism and against the most famous and the most active of Radical leaders aroused the keenest interest among Conservative working men all over the country. The Tories of Birmingham had long been powerless under the rule of their opponents. For years they had scarcely been allowed to hold a political meeting. Almost every avenue of civic life and even of municipal employment was closed against them. Now the fighting leader of Tory Democracy was coming to their deliverance. It is impossible to describe the enthusiasm which his bold challenge excited, or the encouragement which it spread through the mass of the Conservative party. The newspapers were filled with cartoons of ‘Jack the Giant-killer’ or of a diminutive David going forth to battle with a vast screw-bearing Goliath. The mention of his name, or any reference to the contest on which he had entered, drew forth the loudest cheers at every Tory meeting. Letters of gratitude, resolutions of confidence and support, poured in upon him from all parts of the country.
Before actually descending upon Birmingham he sounded a trumpet-call of defiance from Woodstock. He attacked Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain with an impartial and unmeasured ferocity:—
The battle which Mr. Bright has rashly challenged shall be fought sans trève ni merci. The savage animosity which Mr. Bright has breathed into his speeches, has raised a corresponding spirit among his opponents. The robe of righteousness with which he and his confederates have clothed their squalid and corrupted forms shall be torn asunder; naked and ashamed shall they be beheld by all the intelligent public, and all shall be disclosed which can be, whether it be the impostor, and the so-called ‘people’s tribune,’ or the grinding monopolies of Mr. Chamberlain, or the dark and evil deeds of Mr. Schnadhorst.
A positive fury was excited in Radical Birmingham by these and similar words. The political predominance of the Liberal party had been overwhelming and absolutely unbroken in the whole history of the city since the Reform Bill had enfranchised it. All kinds of criticism had been suppressed in all kinds of ways and those who had attempted to voice the opinion of the minority, had found it best to do so with a prudent politeness. Here was insult in profusion, gross, elaborate, and designed. ‘The mode of warfare,’ observed Lord Randolph, ‘of the Radical party resembles that adopted by savage tribes who endeavour to terrify their opponents by horrid yells and resounding exclamations. I observe that the reports of the speeches of Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain on Tuesday were interspersed with "loud and prolonged groans," "groans," "hisses," "renewed hisses," and "roars of laughter" and such like. These resources will no doubt frighten any person of weak nerves and are calculated to make old women and children run away. But the Tory party in Birmingham, many thousands strong, will preserve its composure and the candidate whom they have put forward, will not be intimidated one little bit.’
Upon April 15 Lord Randolph Churchill opened his campaign in Birmingham in two speeches delivered on successive nights. He was a man of many styles. The arguments which he submitted to the electors were the sincere expression of his deepest convictions; they were in perfect harmony with the whole of his political life and work, but they were strange arguments for a Tory to employ:—
I am not here to deny the services which the Radical party have rendered to English civilisation. I believe that the present generation is considerably indebted to the struggles which were carried on five-and-twenty and thirty years ago by those who were then designated the Philosophical Radicals. They enlarged the boundaries of freedom, they removed religious and civil disabilities, they brought the Constitution into the home and the cottage of the artisan, and they taught the people that there were in the political life of monarchies and nations higher and nobler aims than the perpetual waging of wars or constant striving after territorial aggrandisement. The student of English history, fairly recognising these lofty results, will not be concerned to discover or disclose the faults and the follies—and, indeed, I may say the absurdities—which the Philosophical Radicals mingled with their creed. Here in Birmingham, amongst your fathers and forefathers, those men found their home, their mainstay, and their trusting friends. But parties, like Empires and like all human combinations, wax and wane. The law of perpetual change, which is the motive principle of the Radical, exercises its fatal effect upon the Radical himself....
What was the great motto which expressed all their principles, which enabled the Radical party of old days to guide and control the course of events, to make and unmake Ministers and Governments, to win and retain the confidence of mighty cities such as yours? ‘Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform!’—in other words, Non-intervention, Rigid Economy, and genuine Progressive Legislation. And so long as they adhered to those great rocks with the tenacity of limpets, so long was their good name secure—so long was their wisdom undoubted; and year by year they could appear before you with clean hands and clear consciences to ask from you a renewal of your confidence. Chancellors of the Exchequer, Secretaries to the Treasury and of public departments, groaned under the tyrannical economy of Mr. Hume, but were uncommonly careful to give him as little handle as possible for what they arrogantly called his cheese-paring mania. The genius and influence of Mr. Cobden exercised a diminishing effect upon the estimates of the War and Navy Ministers; and Mr. Bright and Mr. Milner Gibson either averted or effectually censured unjust and unnecessary war.