‘There was a time last year when it happened to me to be engaged in something partaking of the nature of a struggle with men of great position, great responsibility, and great experience, as to the form which modern Conservative political organisation ought to take. That difference of opinion at one time became very sharp, and I did not know what the result of it might be; and I was getting extremely anxious, more for the sake of the Conservative party than for my own sake. One evening I came home from the House of Commons very anxious and rather discouraged, because at the House of Commons, among people whom I ought to look upon as my political friends, I had met nothing but gloomy looks; and I felt very much inclined to retire from the game, thinking I was doing more harm than good, and rather—to use a slang expression—disposed to cut the whole concern. However, when I arrived at my house I found there waiting for me a deputation from the University Carlton. Three gentlemen—three, I will venture to say, of the most accomplished and able envoys ever sent out on any mission—were waiting for me; and the only error which they committed was that, instead of going into my house and waiting for me there, with whatever accommodation that dwelling might afford, they waited for me in the street, and had been waiting for me some time. I do not think you can imagine the effect that expression of sympathy and that cordial invitation had upon me at the time. Before I received it I felt that I was very young, very inexperienced, and very much alone, and I did not know to what extent any portion or fraction of public opinion might be with me. But the expression of opinion from your club filled me with hopes that, after all, I was not going so very far wrong—that I might still persevere a little longer. I did persevere; everything came all right, everything settled down, both to the harmony and, I think, to the advantage of the Tory party. That was, to my mind, and must always be, as far as I am concerned, a most interesting and memorable incident. It was an encouragement from youth to youth.’
This temper among the rank and file was not lost upon the leaders of the party. The olive branch was held out publicly, though patronisingly, by Mr. Stanhope at a Finsbury meeting as early as May 7. Lord Salisbury replied with grave courtesy to the representations of the provincial Chairmen. All sorts of busybodies ran to and fro like shuttles weaving up a peace. On the 9th a party meeting was called at the Carlton Club to plan the contemplated second vote of censure on Egyptian policy. Upwards of 170 members of Parliament attended. To the astonishment of many, who thought he had been drummed out of the Conservative ranks, Lord Randolph strolled in unconcernedly, was warmly welcomed by the leaders, and, rising immediately after Sir Stafford Northcote, expressed his entire approval of the terms of the vote of censure and of the general arrangement of the debate. The meeting was loud in its satisfaction at these signs of concord. The negotiations with the Central Committee were resumed, almost at the point where they had been broken off. When the Council of the National Union met again on the 16th, it was evident that the tide of opinion flowed strongly in Lord Randolph’s favour. Upon the motion of Lord Holmesdale he was unanimously re-elected Chairman. He thus returned stronger than ever, neither disarmed nor placated, and the movement which he had launched was driven steadily and relentlessly forward.
CHAPTER VIII
THE REFORM BILL
Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri,
Quo me cunque rapit tempestas deferor hospes.
Horace.
Sworn to no master, of no sect am I,
As drives the storm, at any door I knock.
Pope’s Imitations.
THE Parliamentary session of 1884 began ill for Her Majesty’s Ministers and its first month was like enough to have been their last. While the mover and seconder of the Address to the Crown in either House were purring ceremonious optimism about the improvement of the Egyptian situation, the news arrived that General Valentine Baker’s wretched army had been utterly destroyed by Osman Digna in a vain attempt to relieve Tokar. So little disposed, indeed, were the Government to discuss Egyptian affairs that they allowed the debate in the Commons to collapse in a single night without any official reply to the serious attacks which had been made; and it was only revived next day through Lord Randolph’s moving the adjournment of the House, in somewhat unusual procedure, to protest against their silence.
Hard upon the heels of Soudan disaster, and equally unwelcome, came Mr. Bradlaugh. Judgment had been delivered in the Court of Queen’s Bench upon the suit Bradlaugh v. Gosset, brought by the member for Northampton against the Serjeant-at-Arms for excluding him from the precincts of the House. The Court, while admitting the absolute command of the Houses of Parliament over their own discipline, rules of procedure, and interpretation thereof, asserted that resolutions of either House could not affect Acts imposing fines and penalties. The opportunity was thus presented to Mr. Bradlaugh of testing in the Courts the value of a self-administered oath followed by a vote in Parliament. Once again, therefore (February 11), he presented himself at the table. Once again the members broke into a storm of shouting which drowned his voice. Once again the Leader of the House sat silent and powerless. But the battlefield had now become familiar to the Opposition. Sir Stafford Northcote moved that the member for Northampton be not permitted to go through the form of repeating the words of the oath. Mr. Labouchere provoked the House to a division, in which Mr. Bradlaugh voted. Motion was made forthwith to expunge his vote. Mr. Bradlaugh voted again upon this. When it was realised that his vote could always be recorded once oftener than it could be disallowed, the numbers of the first division were read out and Sir Stafford Northcote’s motion was carried by 280 to 187. A further motion to exclude Mr. Bradlaugh from the precincts of the House was agreed to without voting. Mr. Bradlaugh thereafter applied for the Chiltern Hundreds and, his seat being thus vacated, Mr. Labouchere moved for a new writ. This was granted by the House in spite of Lord Randolph’s opposition. The electors of Northampton returned Mr. Bradlaugh without delay by a largely increased majority. Sir Stafford Northcote again moved his old motion to exclude him from the House and, although the Prime Minister spoke impressively against it, the motion was carried (February 26) by 226 to 173.
The Government were scarcely free from the humiliations of this affair when fresh tidings of massacre and disaster arrived from the Soudan. Despairing of relief after the destruction of Baker’s army, the garrison of Tokar surrendered. The garrison of Sinkat perished in an attempt to cut their way to the coast. While the fate of these places was inevitably approaching, votes of censure were moved in both Houses of Parliament. In the Lords the motion of Lord Cairns and Lord Salisbury was affirmed by 181 to 81. In the Commons the debate followed what was becoming the usual course. Sir Stafford Northcote made a long, mild, and moderate speech, to which Mr. Gladstone replied vigorously. The moment he sat down Lord Randolph Churchill sprang up to attack him in rhetoric which can only be sustained by passion in few men and on rare occasions. ‘"Too late!"’ he cried. ‘"Too late!" is an awful cry. From time immemorial it has heralded and proclaimed the slaughter of routed armies, the flight of dethroned monarchs, the crash of falling Empires. Wherever human blood has been poured out in torrents, wherever human misery has been accumulated in mountains, wherever disasters have occurred which have shaken the world to its very centre, there straight and swift, up to heaven, or down to hell, has always gone the appalling cry, "Too late! Too late!" The Opposition cannot but move a vote of censure upon a Government whose motto is "Too late!" The Liberals should be chary of giving support to a Government whose motto is "Too late!"; and the people of this country will undoubtedly repudiate a Government whose motto is invariably "Too late!"’
The Conservative party, profoundly stirred by tales of blood and shame, continued shouting at this fierce conclusion long after the orator had ceased.
From these embarrassments and humiliations the Government found a happy escape which for a while entirely transformed the Parliamentary situation and placed them, in the fifth year of their troubled existence, once again in a position of great advantage. The story of the Reform Bill of 1884 may be briefly told. By enlargements of the household franchise and by assimilation of the county and borough franchise, two million new electors would be called into being and the total electorate raised from three to five millions. The momentum which this ponderous measure acquired was great enough to carry it forward through all sections of the Liberal party and over all opposition in the House of Commons, and to throw on one side or the other, as irrelevant or impracticable, principles as democratic as ‘one man one vote,’ causes as cherished as ‘Female Suffrage,’ devices as intricate and attractive as proportional representation. The Bill itself became an object of paramount desire. ‘It is,’ said Mr. Gladstone in introducing it, ‘a Bill worth having; again I say it is a Bill worth your not endangering. Let us enter into no by-way which would lead us off the path marked straight out before us. Let there be no wanderings on the hill-tops of speculation or into the morasses and fogs of doubt. What we want to carry this Bill is union, and union only. What will endanger it is disunion, and disunion only.’ And so it proved.