Lord Randolph Churchill

by Winston Churchill

At Balmoral, however, the Queen persuaded him to make the attempt if Mr. Gladstone would not resume; and several attempts to induce Mr. Gladstone to resume having failed, Lord Salisbury accepted the duty and returned to London to discharge it. His first care was to seek from Mr. Gladstone an assurance of support in the measures absolutely necessary to bring the session to a close. The negotiations were protracted for many days; but eventually Mr. Gladstone agreed that facilities for expediting Supply might reasonably be provided, so long as the liberties of the House of Commons were not placed in abeyance; and he added the assurance that there was no idea on the part of the Opposition of withholding the Ways and Means required for the public service. During this discussion Lord Salisbury addressed himself to the formation of a Government. He forthwith invited Sir Stafford Northcote to become Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons; and Sir Stafford Northcote agreed. He asked Sir Michael Hicks-Beach to be Colonial Secretary; and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach agreed. Lord Salisbury then applied to Lord Randolph Churchill, whom he desired to take the India Office. But Lord Randolph refused to join the Government if Sir Stafford Northcote continued to lead in the House of Commons.

From this position nothing could move him. He remained silent and stubborn. While Lord Salisbury was still undecided whether to go on without him or not, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach intervened. He was, in his own words, ‘deeply impressed with the conviction that Lord Randolph Churchill’s active assistance as a member of the Government was vital to any hope of Conservative success at the General Election, for his popularity with the new electorate was greater than that of any other member of the party’;[29] and therefore, as soon as he learned that Lord Randolph had refused to join, he told Lord Salisbury—though without Lord Randolph’s knowledge, and entirely without pre-arrangement of any kind—that in the altered circumstances he could not join either. The dead-lock was again complete.

The narrative must here be somewhat interrupted, so far at least as chronology is concerned, to admit Lord Randolph Churchill’s own account of his action. He left behind him a considerable memorandum from which I quote all that is relevant to this situation.

‘In the events,’ he wrote (as I should judge, early in 1889, though the paper is undated), ‘which led to the formation of the Conservative Government in June 1885, I bore a part, and am induced to record my recollection of their nature; for one reason among others, that in my belief they were the main cause which led to the adoption by Mr. Gladstone of the policy of Repeal.

‘In the spring of 1885 it was a matter of notoriety among well-informed and studious politicians that the question as to the expediency of the renewal by the Government then in power of the Irish Crimes Act—which was to expire in September[30]—was one on which the Cabinet could come to no agreement. In the speeches which I made in the month of May at the St. Stephen’s Club and at Bow I endeavoured by diffuse examination of the question to do what I could to add to the difficulties which in connection with this subject embarrassed the Ministry.

‘My remarks at the former place were followed by a decisive intimation from Mr. J. Morley that he would oppose any measure for the renewal of any portion of the Crimes Act. This intimation practically terminated the duration of Mr. Gladstone’s Government. Agreement in the Cabinet on this question became impossible. The Ministers determined to court defeat in Parliament as a method of escape from the dilemma by resignation. A General Election was impending and the Opposition eagerly clutched at any opportunity of discrediting and defeating the Liberal party, and with this eagerness I was in thorough accord. Two attempts to place Ministers in a minority failed—one arising out of the events in the Soudan, the other out of a dispute concerning election expenses and local rates. A third attempt, against the Budget, met with unexpected success. The hostility of the licensed victuallers, who considered themselves aggrieved by Mr. Childers’s financial proposals, and the almost admitted connivance of Lord Richard Grosvenor, then the Head Whip of the Liberal party, secured the absence from the division of some sixty or more members of the Ministerial forces. The Government was placed in a minority and resigned.

‘The Opposition now found themselves in a position of immense difficulty, and though the difficulty had been foreseen by the leaders it was not on that account in any degree diminished.

‘The difficulty was twofold: personal and political.

‘1. For a long time there had been a division of opinion in the Conservative party on the question of the leadership—on the question as to whether Lord Salisbury or Sir Stafford Northcote ought to be the head of any Conservative Administration which events might bring into existence. While, on the one hand, there was a unanimous recognition by the party of the sterling worth and high character of the latter, there was, on the other, an equally unanimous but certainly not equally expressed opinion that he was indisposed by nature and training to place himself in entire harmony with the intense and acute party polemics of the moment; that he was, as he once admitted in a public speech, "deficient in go"; and that Lord Salisbury, though he was much less personally known to members of the House of Commons and much less popular than Sir Stafford, was more qualified for the conduct of a pitched battle such as we had to face.

‘I had identified myself with this latter opinion, and had expressed it publicly and privately in one way and another since the year 1883. In that year I had committed myself to such an extent that my action was much resented by the party in the House of Commons, who adopted and presented to Sir Stafford an address expressing their full confidence in and great admiration of him. My belief is that in this controversy, the existence of which was notorious, the principals had no share; that Sir Stafford and Lord Salisbury behaved with the utmost loyalty to each other, and remained throughout on the most intimate and friendly terms.