A Short History of English Liberalism Part 10

On ancient subjects of party controversy temper again rose high. Church and Chapel fought the last of many battles over the Burials Bill. The point raised by this measure was very simple. In more than 10,000 parishes the only burial ground was the churchyard. In large towns, where there were public cemeteries, and in districts where Nonconformists were wealthy, and could purchase private ground, no difficulty arose. But in the other cases no Nonconformist could be buried except with the Burial Service of the Established Church. The service, however majestic in its language, expressed opinions which were obnoxious to many Nonconformists, and the Burials Bill provided that any person might be buried in the yard of the parish church with {283} such religious service as his relatives desired.

The Church party, while claiming that the Church was the Church of the nation and not of a sect, protested against being deprived of the absolute control of the public burial grounds. Any person might be buried there, but only on such terms as they chose to appoint. It was a plain case of a conflict between public right and private privilege. The Bill had been pa.s.sed four times by the last Liberal House of Commons. It was beaten in the following Tory House. In the Parliament of 1880 it was at last accepted by the Lords, and the Nonconformist grievance was removed.

A second religious controversy provided a useful ill.u.s.tration of the difference between Liberalism and the Liberal party. The Nonconformist members, in debating the Burials Bill, had expressed the pure Liberal doctrine that no man should be prevented from exercising a public right by his opinions on matters of conscience. When they came to deal with Charles Bradlaugh, many of them showed themselves to be as Tory in their essential habit of mind as the most bigoted vicar who ever shut out a Quaker funeral from his churchyard. Bradlaugh was a dogmatic atheist, and as honest a man as was ever elected to Parliament. He was chosen for Northampton with Henry Labouchere, who was a man of no more Christian opinions and of much less pure character than himself. Labouchere, like other easy-going men, had no scruples about taking the oath required from Members of Parliament; Bradlaugh refused to swear, and claimed to make affirmation in the form prescribed by Statute for witnesses in courts of law. A Committee of the House decided against him, and he then offered to take the oath in the ordinary way. There arose such a storm of bigotry and insolence as is generally to be found only in Orange Lodges. Gladstone and Bright, two men in whom Christianity was usually conspicuous, contended in vain, not only against Tories, but against those of their own party whose religious tolerance did not extend beyond the Jews. It was resolved that Bradlaugh could neither swear nor affirm, and when he refused to withdraw he was committed to the Clock Tower. Eventually, he made affirmation and took his seat, {284} speaking on several occasions with good sense. But the matter was not ended. An informer obtained a judgment against him in the King's Bench Division, and his seat was declared vacant. He was re-elected, and again attempted to enter the House. On this occasion he was thrown out by the police. A third election sent him back again, and he sat for some time below the bar of the House. In 1883 a special Bill was introduced which enabled any person, who thought fit, to make affirmation instead of taking an oath. It was thrown out. Bradlaugh resigned, and was elected for the fourth time in February, 1884. But it was not until the end of this Parliament, and after an enormous waste of time, energy, and money in agitation and litigation, that his struggle came to an end. He was elected to the new Parliament of 1885, and took the oath without serious opposition. In 1888 he himself introduced and carried through the enabling Bill. In 1891, when he died, all the hostile resolutions were expunged from the records of the House, and freedom of conscience received at last full recognition.

The whole proceeding did little credit to a Liberal House of Commons.

Parliament had been opened to Dissenters in 1828, to Catholics in 1829, and to Jews in 1858. If these reforms had any significance at all, they meant that for political posts only political tests were to be applied, and that a man's opinions upon subjects which were not political were not the concern of the State. Liberty of thinking is one and indivisible. As Gladstone, himself the most dogmatic of Churchmen, put it, "On every religious ground, as well as on every political ground, the true and the wise course is not to deal out religious liberty by halves, quarters, and fractions, but to deal it out entire, and make no distinctions between man and man on the ground of religious differences from one end of the land to the other."[328] Every argument which could shut out Bradlaugh could shut out a Quaker or a Wesleyan. The atheist was to the Nonconformist of the day, what the Nonconformist had been to the Churchman of 1800, a person who held opinions other than his own. {285} Experience of toleration should have satisfied those who could not see truth by their own light. The ablest men in the Cabinet were of the utmost possible diversity of religious belief. The Prime Minister was a High Churchman, Lord Hartington was a Low Churchman, Bright was a Quaker, Mr. Chamberlain was a Unitarian, Forster belonged to no Church and professed no creed. But there were members of the Liberal party who tolerated this lat.i.tude in their leaders, and yet could not bear the society of an avowed atheist. They drew the line at G.o.d. The case was made somewhat worse by Bradlaugh's opinions on the limitation of population. But the real weight of the charge against him was that he did not believe in the existence of a deity, and was sufficiently honest and sufficiently public-spirited to endeavour to preach his gospel. Some Liberals abstained from voting in these divisions. Others joined the most bigoted and reactionary of their usual opponents, and used arguments against Bradlaugh which, if logically applied, would have excluded from Parliament more than one of the best men in the Cabinet.

While old issues were thus fought out, the new economics made a further impression upon legislation. Fawcett again led the way by making the Post Office extend its activities farther into the field of private enterprise, and experiment as a Savings Bank, in the creation of annuities, and in the management of the telegraph. About this time also began the modern development of munic.i.p.al trading, which has converted the local authority from a mere regulating body to a body which supplies the means of light, heat, and locomotion to the inhabitants of its area. The debts of English munic.i.p.alities in 1875 amounted to about 93,000,000. In 1905 they were about 483,000,000, and the bulk of this increase is represented by the various gas, water, electricity, and tramway enterprises which are managed by the local bodies. All this large part of national industry is now monopolized by collective management, and it is not now denied that on the whole the public wants are better supplied by these munic.i.p.al monopolies than by the compet.i.tion of private traders.

An extension of national and munic.i.p.al enterprises was {286} accompanied by more direct legislative restrictions upon economic freedom. The Employers'

Liability Act of 1880 began the series of statutes which have compelled employers to insure their workmen against accident. The legal doctrine of "common employment" had produced a stupid state of affairs. A man who was injured through the negligence of another man's servant, acting in his employer's business, might recover damages from the employer. But if both men were the servants of the same employer, and if the transaction in which the injury was inflicted was part of their common business as servants of the same master, no claim for compensation was allowed. A master was liable for the negligence of his workmen to everybody but his other workmen. The Act of 1880, in the face of loud opposition from employers of all parties, to some extent abolished this absurd distinction, and made the master liable to his men for injuries sustained through the negligence of his superintendents or foremen. An Act giving the English tenant the right to kill game on his own land was followed by an Agricultural Holdings Act, which ent.i.tled him to compensation against his landlord for unexhausted improvements. In 1884, in response to an agitation which had nothing to do with party, the Government appointed a Royal Commission to inquire into the housing of the poor, and thus prepared for an extension of the system which had been begun by their predecessors.[329] But the most striking economic experiment made by this Liberal Government, as by the last, was made in Ireland. The condition of that country was now more dangerous than at any time since the Rebellion of 1798. The wholesale and systematic depopulation of the country by rack-renting and evictions had demoralized and degraded those whom it had not driven out of the country or starved to death, and throughout the most congested districts no spirit was to be found {287} but hatred of the landlords and the English connection. Boycotting had now been invented, and boycotting was accompanied by agrarian outrages of the most brutal description. The Land League was supreme. Rents could not be collected. No man would work for a tenant who paid his rent, or for a man who took a farm from which a former tenant had been evicted. The whole country seemed to be in sympathy with the Moonlighters and maimers of cattle, informers were murdered or intimidated, and the perpetrators of some of the most atrocious crimes were never discovered. The Government applied itself at once to the suppression of disorder and to the redress of grievances. Drastic Coercion Acts armed the executive with new powers, and in 1881 Gladstone introduced and carried, practically single-handed, a new Land Act.

This Act went farther than any previous Act of Parliament in interfering with freedom of contract. It strained the relations of the two sections of the Cabinet almost to breaking point, and the Duke of Argyll actually resigned. The Act of 1870 had provided that the tenant should be compensated for eviction except in case of non-payment of rent. The exception took nine-tenths of the virtue out of the Act. The country was crowded with poor people who wanted land and could not live without it. The tenant got no compensation so long as he kept his farm, and so long as he kept it he was rack-rented. If he was at last evicted, he was probably no better off for his compensation, because he had little chance of getting a second farm on any better conditions than the first. In these circ.u.mstances, bad landlords did very much as they pleased, and a Royal Commission reported that "Freedom of contract did not in fact exist."[330]

The tenant was at the mercy of the landlord in every case. The Government therefore stepped in to protect him, on the principle that interference is justified "where the necessities of one of the parties to a bargain deprive his seeming freedom of choice of all substance."[331] Their Bill accepted the recommendations of the {288} Royal Commission, and established what were known as "the three F's," fair rent, fixity of tenure, and freedom of sale. The amount of the rent was to be fixed by an impartial Land Court.

The tenant was to pay this rent for fifteen years, after which it might be revised. The right to remain in the holding at this rent was to be transferable to any purchaser. No tenant whose land was worth less than 200 a year could contract himself out of the benefits of the Act. This sweeping reform prevented the rack-renting of tenants. But the state of Ireland was now such as no remedies could affect. Parnell, the Irish Nationalist leader, was imprisoned in October, and all the extraordinary powers of the executive were employed. But in 1882 Lord Frederick Cavendish, the newly appointed Secretary for Ireland, was brutally murdered in Phoenix Park, and the release of Mr. Parnell, and an Act for extinguishing arrears of rent, were accompanied by new measures of coercion. Two years of hard administration of the law suppressed the disorder. But the national feeling was as ill as ever, and no Liberal Ministry could confound the maintenance of order with government. To produce moral corruption in his subjects is the worst wrong of which any governor can be capable, and coercion disgraces government more than it punishes crime. The disease of lawlessness was not to be cured by the mere suppression of its symptoms. So long as the temper of the people remains unchanged, obedience to the commands of authority is worth little or nothing. The attempt to find a new method of Irish government in 1885 settled the course of English politics for a whole generation.

Two disasters overtook the Government in foreign affairs. The first occurred in the Transvaal, and it was entirely their own fault. They had criticized the annexation when it took place: it had obviously been carried through in haste and contrary to the wishes of the inhabitants, and the right and wise course was to withdraw. Crown Colony Government, which meant government by Sir Owen Lanyon, an honest but unsympathetic official, had brought the Boers to the verge of revolt by the time that the {289} Liberals came into office. They were in fact restrained only by their confidence that a change of government would mean a change of policy. But this very absence of turbulence deceived the new Ministry. They were officially informed that the Boers were reconciled to British rule, and Gladstone, Bright, and Chamberlain were overruled by their less Liberal colleagues. Unofficial warnings went astray, arrived too late, or were disregarded. By January, 1881, the Boers were in arms, and had repulsed Sir George Colley at Laing's Nek. The Government, at last aware that the population of the Transvaal wanted independence, opened negotiations. A rash move by Colley produced the defeat at Majuba and his own death.

The situation was now such that the Government could gain little credit, even by doing what was right. They had the choice of three alternatives.

They could defeat the Boers and keep the Transvaal. They could defeat the Boers and give up the Transvaal. They could stop fighting and give up the Transvaal. The first meant that in order to avenge a defeat in a battle which ought never to have been fought they should do some more men to death, and then keep a country which they confessed they should never have taken. Having been guilty in the first place of robbery, they should endeavour to repair its consequences by murder, and having made it difficult to work with the Boers by apparent insincerity, they were to make it impossible by deliberate cruelty. The second course meant simply that they should do men to death to gratify their own wounded vanity. Either course was brutal, and the first was also stupid. No Liberal Government, with the case of Ireland before its eyes, could undertake the permanent domination of a free white people by force of arms. The Ministry, in the face of a loud outcry from those who believed that the strength of England consisted in her readiness to a.s.sert her own brute strength at the expense of others, chose the third way out of the difficulty. What was right before Majuba was not wrong after Majuba. The negotiations which had been begun were allowed to proceed. No more lives were destroyed, and the Transvaal regained its independence, subject {290} to some vague provisions for British suzerainty. In 1884 all references to this suzerainty were struck out of the Convention by the hand of the Colonial Secretary himself, and there is no question that it was then implied that England waived all right to interfere in the domestic concerns of the Dutch Republic. The Government acted as a Liberal Government was bound to act. It preferred to act according to moral rules, and to do what it thought right without regard to the protests of national egoism. This was the moral and the courageous course. But tardy moral courage is not an adequate political subst.i.tute for timely wisdom. For twenty years the two races cherished the memories of this miserable episode, and the recollections of wounded pride on the one hand and of hard-won triumph on the other were at last found to be excellent fuel for the flames of a second war.

The blunders of the Government in South Africa were balanced by other blunders in North Africa. Beaconsfield had declined to occupy Egypt openly and with the sanction of the Concert of Europe. Gladstone stumbled into it against his will, asking in vain for European sanction, and protesting his intention to withdraw at the earliest possible moment. Never was such a successful experiment in government begun in such an irresolute and unmethodical way. The details of the occupation of Egypt are not important for this book. The main outlines are clear enough. To increase the extent of the Empire by the appropriation of any country was a violation of the principles of the Midlothian speeches, and there is no question that the entry into Egypt was made with misgiving and reluctance. But circ.u.mstances were too strong, and for the first and last time in his life Gladstone masqueraded in the trappings of Imperialism.

Egypt, nominally subject to the Sultan of Egypt, had long enjoyed an insolvent independence under its Khedive. In 1879 its finances had been entrusted, in the interest of foreign bondholders, to the joint control of England and France, represented for the purpose by a large and costly army of officials. The entanglement of England in Egypt was thus the first example of what is now a common political case, the disposition of the {291} fortunes of a whole people by its investing cla.s.s. Plutocracy was beginning to usurp the temper, as well as the place, of aristocracy. In 1881 a revolt began, which was partly due to military discontent, and partly to a nationalist dislike of foreign domination. Had the British Government been free to act as they pleased, they would probably have abstained from interference, and would have recognized and supported the first Nationalist Government of Egypt, whatever its const.i.tution might have been. But their hands were tied by the financial arrangements of their predecessors. The Khedive was acting under the advice of England and France, and could not be deserted. When the revolt became fanatical, and Europeans were ma.s.sacred in the streets of Alexandria, there was no longer any room for choice. The other Powers declined to interfere, France withdrew when it came to the use of armed force, and the revolt was suppressed by English ships and English troops. One step after another led England deeper into occupation. In 1883 the Dual Control was abolished, and Sir Auckland Colvin became the sole Financial Adviser of the Khedive. By 1885 British financial control was established throughout Egypt, and evacuation, though the intention of it was not abandoned by either Liberals or Conservatives for some time afterwards, really became impossible. The total effect of this new acquisition can hardly yet be estimated. It was infinitely less equivocal in origin than our conquest of India, and the material benefits which it has conferred upon the native population are immense. The real test of its temper will arise when the Egyptians desire to take the control of their own affairs into their own hands. If the British bureaucracy can surrender its supremacy as generously as, on the whole, it has employed it, it will prove itself a miracle of magnanimity.

In the meantime, the events of this time are important as marking the intrusion of high finance into foreign politics, and the beginning of a series of huge extensions of territory, which have reacted very forcibly upon the fortunes of the British peoples.

The Gladstone Government, having been pushed and dragged into Egypt, was at least determined to go no farther. A wise {292} application of Liberal principle was the withdrawal from the Soudan. The death of General Gordon, who ought never to have been sent to Khartoum, has invested this operation with an unreal significance. To conquer and hold the southern provinces would have been as difficult and as costly as to conquer and hold Afghanistan. Being in Egypt, the Government wisely decided to restrict their responsibilities. The reorganization of finance was the first condition of the conquest of the Soudan, and a few years later the swift, successful, and cheap campaign of Lord Kitchener did what could at that time only have been done at the cost of enormous financial burdens. The wisdom of the policy of evacuation is not now questioned. But the loss of Gordon, due as much to his own disobedience to orders as to the tardiness of the Government, was very damaging to their reputation. They ought either to have kept out of Egypt altogether, or to have gone into it with a determination to do the work thoroughly. A vote of censure was averted in February, 1885, by only fourteen votes, and it was obvious that the days of the Government were numbered.

One flash of vigour illuminated their decline. The Ameer of Afghanistan, by the judicious treatment of Lord Ripon and Lord Dufferin, had been converted into a firm friend of Great Britain. An advance by Russia in Central Asia made some definition of boundaries necessary, and while negotiations between the two Powers were in progress some Russian troops made an attack upon Afghans in Penjdeh. The Government promptly obtained a vote of credit for six and a half millions, and showed Russia plainly that, however anxious they were to restrict the extent of the Empire, they were ready at all times to defend those peoples whom they had taken under their protection. The dispute was referred to the arbitration of the King of Denmark. The reference was denounced by the Tories as a cowardly surrender.

The Liberals were content with the victory of morality over prestige. This affair took place in April. In the middle of June the Government, distracted by the prospect of more coercion in Ireland, resigned, and Lord Salisbury became Prime Minister. {293}

In spite of their difficulties, this Liberal Ministry had contrived to do much for the cause of Liberalism. They had extended the control of the individual over his government to substantially all men. They had raised the value of women. They had removed one of the few remaining disabilities of the Dissenters. They had restored freedom to the Transvaal, and saved incalculable expense to both Great Britain and India by withdrawing from Afghanistan. They had blundered into Imperialism in Egypt, and though they had treated Ireland without egoism, like all their predecessors they had failed to pacify it. In the new spirit of collectivism they had stepped in between the economically weak and the economically strong. The Irish peasant had been further protected against the Irish landlord. The English farmers had got compensation for improvements and the right to protect their crops against game. Something had been done to get the poor into better houses. Workmen had got some protection against the negligence of their employers. The record of emanc.i.p.ation in the various fields of cla.s.s, of s.e.x, of race, and of wealth was respectable, if not glorious. Everything except the state of Ireland indicated the future course of Liberalism with clearness. Mr. Chamberlain expressed the opinions of the advance guard when he demanded the reform of the House of Lords, the compulsory purchase of land for agricultural holdings, free as well as compulsory education, the disestablishment of the Church, and a graduated income tax. This was the work to be done, to reduce the power of aristocracy in government, which had been displayed of late in more than one conflict between the two Houses, to perfect the equalization of sects in the State, to employ the superfluity of wealth in mitigating the conditions in which poverty lived.

But the actual course of events was determined by the state of Ireland.

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CHAPTER X

THE IMPERIALIST REACTION

The condition of Ireland was now forced upon the attention of both parties.

The Irish Nationalist party had demanded Home Rule since Parnell a.s.sumed the leadership in 1879. The General Election of 1885 gave this demand a force which it had never possessed before. The extension of the franchise by the Act of 1884 gave a much larger representation to agricultural Ireland, and agricultural Ireland was wholly Nationalist. Out of eighty-nine contests Parnell's party won eighty-five. All the fourteen Liberal Irish members were thrown out. The Protestant half of Ulster remained Tory and returned seventeen members. But the general sense of the country was made clear. Parnell, so long denounced by both English parties as the head of a faction, was now manifestly what he had always claimed to be, the leader of a nation. Strong and resolute English government had hopelessly failed. Crime was suppressed. But no Nationalist had been converted by punishment into a good citizen. Egoistic government by England could not succeed. Altruistic government by England could not succeed. The only alternative was the government of Ireland by Ireland.

Both English parties showed signs of a change of temper. Gladstone had hinted in his first Midlothian Speeches at a general devolution of local control upon England, Scotland, and Ireland,[332] and in his election address in 1885 he declared that, subject to the unity of the Empire being preserved, grants of such control {295} to portions of the country averted danger and increased strength. Mr. Chamberlain denounced government by officials at Dublin Castle as heartily as any Nationalist could have wished. Mr. Childers p.r.o.nounced definitely for Home Rule. The other side hinted at a complete change of policy. They appointed, in Lord Carnarvon, a Lord-Lieutenant who was known to be in sympathy with Home Rule, and he actually entered into informal negotiations with Parnell. They declined to renew the last Coercion Act, and Lord Salisbury at Newport, Lord Carnarvon in the Lords, and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and Lord Randolph Churchill in the Commons denounced coercion with different degrees of vigour.[333] So far as the political leaders were concerned, the most definite opposition to Home Rule came from the Liberal Lord Hartington. But everything pointed to the abandonment of government by force and the subst.i.tution for it of government by sympathy. Parnell actually instructed Irish Nationalists in all const.i.tuencies to vote against the Liberals.

The election gave the Parliament into the hands of the Nationalists. The Liberals had a majority of eighty-five over the Conservatives, and Parnell commanded exactly eighty-five votes. The Government were beaten on an amendment to the Address, and the Liberals came into office dependent on the Nationalist vote. If they had had any reluctance to introduce a Home Rule Bill, they must have been beaten in their turn. But Gladstone's line of action had been sketched with sufficient definition to make it clear that he would introduce some measure for the better government of Ireland, and Lord Hartington, Goschen, Bright, and Sir Henry James refused on that ground to join the Ministry. Before the Bill was introduced Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Trevelyan resigned, and the disruption of the Liberal party began.

The Bill was laid before the House on the 8th April, 1886. It proposed to establish an Irish {296} Parliament and an Irish Executive responsible to it. Law and police were included in their powers, but the establishment and endowment of religion were not, nor were the Customs. Ireland was to levy taxes and to pay one-twelfth of the British revenue to the Imperial Treasury. This Bill was accompanied by a Land Purchase Bill, under which the landlords might be bought out on the security of British credit.

The spirit of the Home Rule proposals was that of Liberal policy since 1868. The attempt to govern Ireland from England was to be given up, and the right of the Irish people to have an Irish Government was to be recognized, in the only possible way, by putting the government under the control of Irish representatives. "The fault of the administrative system of Ireland," said Gladstone, "is simply this--that its spring and source of action is English, and not Irish.... Without having an Irish Parliament, I want to know how you will bring about this result, that your administrative system shall be Irish and not English?"[334] Recognition of the principle of local independence would, it was hoped, be followed by a union between the two peoples stronger than the union of mere form. "British force," said Thomas Burt, one of the three working men in the Commons, "could do a great deal; but it could not make a real and genuine union between one people and another. That was only possible on a moral basis."[335] Home Rule, with all its possible risks, was the Liberal subst.i.tute for government which was alien, and consequently costly, obnoxious, and unsuccessful. It was not that Englishmen and Irishmen were by nature so discordant that they could not manage their joint affairs in harmony. As a problem of race differences the Irish problem need never have existed. But artificial means had been employed to produce a divergence of character almost as complete as the divergence of East and West, of Europe and Asia. Successive English Governments had first imagined and then in fact produced such an incompatibility of temper as generally arises between nationalities so distinct as Turk and Slav, or German {297} and Magyar, or Russian and Finn.

As Mr. Balfour has recently put it, "The difficulty is not that when England went to Ireland it had to face nationality. The difficulty is that the behaviour of England in Ireland has produced nationality."[336] With this creation of her own selfish folly England had now to deal. Gladstone proposed to fuse the ancestral antipathies in the common management of common affairs.

The Tories had several mighty weapons. They appealed to Conservatives to defend the Union. They appealed to Nonconformists against the threat of Catholic domination in Ireland. They appealed to law-abiding citizens against concession to violence, and against the gift of supremacy to a political party which had not condemned, if it had not encouraged, intimidation and murder. They appealed to the less worthy motives of Liberals against whom Parnell had thrown the weight of his authority at the election. They appealed to the timid persons who listened to the threats of Ulster rebellion. They hinted at the development of munic.i.p.al government.

But they did nothing to solve what Mr. John Morley told them was the immediate problem of the hour, "How are you to govern Ireland?"[337] They insisted, as usual, upon forms. They spoke of the greatness of the Empire and the wickedness of severance, of the cost to the taxpayer and of possible difficulties in case of foreign war. Much of the criticism of detail was just, and there was emphasis of mechanical difficulties which was sound enough. But nothing was expressed, in or out of Parliament, which showed that the Opposition could contrive any system which should satisfy the first condition of good government, that it should be acceptable to the governed. The most powerful Tory argument was the shocking history of agrarian crime. The sole argument which had moral force behind it was the argument that the Ulster Protestants would be persecuted by the Catholic Nationalists. Those who had used every engine of oppression to degrade and demoralize their religious enemies had a very {298} genuine fear that the hour of retaliation had arrived. If there had been any real chance for the Nationalists, at the very gates of England, to avenge all the wrongs that their race had suffered at the hands of Ulster, this risk would have been enough to deter even Gladstone from Home Rule.

The Tory alternative was announced by Lord Salisbury to the Union of Conservative a.s.sociations on the 15th May. In a pa.s.sage which contained a reference to Hottentots and Hindus, he declared that the Irish were incapable of self-government. His policy was "that Parliament should enable the Government of England to govern Ireland. Apply that recipe honestly and resolutely for twenty years, and at the end of that time you will find that Ireland will be fit to accept any gifts in the way of local government or repeal of coercion laws that you may wish to give her. What she wants is government--government that does not flinch, that does not vary." In plain English, government by consent was to come to an end. The Irish were not to control their own political affairs. They were to be kept in subjection to a people whom they had every reason to regard as alien, and such force was to be applied as should be necessary. The temper of Roman ascendancy, applied by Palmerston to weak States like Greece, and by Disraeli to uncivilized tribes like the Afghans, was thus to be exerted over a people who, in all parts of the Empire, had shown themselves as capable of managing political affairs as any nation in Europe. Disraeli had preached the gospel of "Empire and Liberty." His successor preached the gospel of "Empire before Liberty."

On the 8th June the Bill was defeated on the second reading. No less than ninety-three Liberals voted with the Opposition, and the party broke into pieces. The General Election completed its ruin. Before Parliament was dissolved, a violent outbreak of Protestant savagery in Belfast was suppressed by force of arms, and all the devils of racial and religious ascendancy were awake. Egoism was reinforced by the ordinary reluctance of Conservatism, by a very honest hatred of agrarian crime, and by an equally honest if less reasonable fear of religious persecution. The Liberals were {299} driven from the field in headlong rout, and the majority against Home Rule was more than 120. Gladstone came into office again in 1892. But he was without the essentials of power. The main current of political thought remained Tory for twenty years.

This general political temper was Tory and not Conservative. It was more positively reactionary than at any time since the Reform Act of 1832.

Peel's so-called Tory administration of 1841 contained many Liberal elements. The Tory Ministries, which filled in the gaps in the subsequent period of Whig ascendancy, were too short-lived to make any definite expression of principles of government. The Toryism of the Disraeli Cabinet was most marked in foreign policy, and at home made little display. But between 1885 and 1905 the temper of the dominant party was definitely and consistently Tory, and there was hardly any problem that it touched which it did not stamp with the brand of Toryism. The prime cause of this reaction was the dispute about Home Rule. The victory of Toryism in the controversy of 1886 had much the same effect upon general politics as a victory in the American War a hundred years earlier would have had. It could only be gained by arguments which applied universally, and not only in the particular case. The temper of the government of Ireland must be the temper of the government of Great Britain and the Empire.

Even among Conservatives this Irish policy was sometimes described in language which it deserved. No Liberal could put the case against Mr.

Balfour's system more concisely than Sir Michael Hicks-Beach when he warned his const.i.tuents against "our favourite English habit of measuring everything by the English rule, of bringing English prejudice to bear upon the settlement of Irish affairs, and of looking upon Irishmen as our inferiors rather than our equals."[338] This was the very temper of Mr.

Balfour, who believed that all the law and all the civilization in Ireland are the work of England.[339] No Liberal ever {300} suggested that the difficulties of Irish government had nothing to do with the character of the Irish people. But no Liberal ever had any doubt that the character of the Irish people, as it appeared in 1886, was very largely due to deliberately vicious and demoralizing abuse of them by their English conquerors. Mr. Balfour preferred to deal with them in the manner of a statesman who wished them well, but was convinced that they could do no good with themselves. Every manifestation of Irish discontent was thus attributed to a natural incapacity for good behaviour under government.

Outrage and violence never attained in this Tory period to the proportions with which the last Liberal Government had had to deal. But coercion was applied as unsparingly as ever, and almost with cheerfulness. A Crimes Act, a permanent Coercion Act, was pa.s.sed in 1887, and under its powers the Irish Executive might, by proclamation, apply it to any part of the country whenever it pleased. Under this Act not only were agrarian crimes punished and the armed forces of the Crown employed to collect rents and evict tenants, but Irish newspapers were suppressed, and Irish members who made speeches no more criminal than those of innumerable English, Scottish, and Welsh Liberals were imprisoned with all the degrading incidents of cells, clothing, and discipline which were forced upon common felons. Ireland was governed as Egypt and India were governed, and a race which had shown itself in other countries perfectly competent to sustain freedom of discussion and representative inst.i.tutions was treated in that despotic temper which was elsewhere reserved for people of colour. Two incidents displayed this Toryism at its very worst. The first was the affair of Mitchelstown. The second was the Parnell Commission.

But before either of these events ill.u.s.trated the mental habit of Toryism, another had displayed its complete futility. Under the land Act of 1881 rents all over Ireland had been fixed for fifteen years. Immediately afterwards the prices of agricultural produce began to fall, and the rents which had been thought fair became unfair. Good landlords reduced their demands of their own free {301} will. The type of landlord which was more common in Ireland than anywhere else in the world spoke of "the sacredness of judicial rents," and exacted the last penny of their dues. The usual process of eviction, starvation, and riot began. The Plan of Campaign was formed by the more determined Nationalists. Tenants who paid more than they thought fit were to meet and agree what rents they should offer to their landlord. If these were refused, the money was paid to a central fund, which was used to resist evictions. This was a criminal conspiracy. But criminal conspiracies are common in countries whose economic history resembles that of Ireland, and this had at least the merit of being free from violence and outrage. A Royal Commission inquired into the working of the Act of 1881, and reported in favour of a revision of judicial rents.

Lord Salisbury, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, and Mr. Balfour declared emphatically that they would never interfere with the rents.[340] They introduced a Land Bill in March, 1887. This Bill allowed leaseholders, who had been excluded from the Act of 1881, to obtain the benefits of its provisions. The Bill said nothing about revision. But Nature knew nothing of racial and religious distinctions. The fall in prices had been universal, and the tenants of Ulster complained as loudly as the tenants of Connaught. The Government gave way, and amended the Bill. Then the landlords set up an outcry, and the amendment was withdrawn. The tenants again raised their voices, and seeing that to hold out meant that Ulster and Nationalist Ireland might agree to subordinate their jealousies to their common grievance, the Government again surrendered. When pa.s.sed, the Act provided for the revision of judicial rents. The first of the twenty years of resolute government had ended in a fresh triumph for agrarian agitation.

Concession involved no change in temper. On the 9th September, 1887, a meeting was held at Mitchelstown, at which English Members of Parliament and English ladies were present. It was not illegal, and no attempt was made to suppress {302} it. But the police wished to have a shorthand note of the speeches, and with gross and unpardonable folly endeavoured to force a reporter through the crowd. A squabble began, the police were hustled and beaten with sticks, they retreated to their barracks and fired upon the people who followed them, and three men were killed. All the facts except one were obscure. There was no question that the police should have applied for accommodation on or near the platform, instead of using force to introduce their reporter. What happened afterwards required thorough investigation. A coroner's jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against six officers, but this was quashed on technical grounds by the High Court.

No other inquiry ever took place, though every means was used to put pressure on the Government. Their duty was plain. Even if no policeman had been technically guilty of crime, it was clear that there had been an atrocious blunder. The Government was bound to make a strict investigation, and to punish by censure, reduction of rank, or dismissal from the force the officers who were responsible. Mr. Balfour did nothing of the kind. He treated the affair of Mitchelstown as the Tories of 1819 had treated the affair of Peterloo. Before any thorough inquiry could have been made, he declared that the police were free from blame, and he never made any attempt to do justice between them and the public. Only one meaning was to be attached to his action. His policy was crudely egoistic. The English Government was to decide at its pleasure by what rules of conduct it was to be bound in its dealings with Ireland, and considerations of morality were to be subordinated to the convenience of the executive. Gladstone appealed to the British people to "remember Mitchelstown," and the affair became a potent weapon in the hands of the Liberals. To refuse inquiry where injury has been done to the person is the most unfortunate thing that an English statesman can do. Not even the memories of agrarian crime could prevent sober people from being alienated by this refusal of the opportunity of justice.

The Parnell Commission was equally ugly. During April, {303} 1887, the _Times_ newspaper published a series of articles which endeavoured to prove that the Nationalist party were responsible for agrarian outrages of the worst kind. On the 18th of the month it printed what professed to be a letter from Parnell. If genuine, the letter showed that Parnell, while publicly disapproving of the Phoenix Park murders, privately defended them.

As a matter of fact, it had been forged by a man named Pigott, and the proprietor of the _Times_ had bought it with such credulity as showed that he was completely reckless in his eagerness to injure Parnell. In November an action was brought against the _Times_ by another Nationalist, and the Attorney-General, who acted for the defendants, produced in court a number of other letters of the same kind. Parnell then took action. He had been advised by English Liberals that the verdict of a London jury would be cast, from political motives, against him. He had known that a verdict on the other side from a Dublin jury would get no credit out of Ireland. He had therefore declined to issue a writ for libel. He now demanded an inquiry by a Select Committee of the House of Commons. The Tories, who believed the letter to be genuine, refused the Committee, but promised to establish a Commission of three judges "to inquire into the allegations and charges made against Members of Parliament by the defendants in the recent action." This was accepted by Parnell instead of a Select Committee. But the Government, without his consent, inserted the words "and other persons"

after the word "Parliament," and thus turned a particular inquiry into the conduct of members into a roving investigation into Irish politics of the last ten years. Members of Parliament, boycotters, defaulting tenants, moonlighters, murderers, and maimers of cattle were all lumped together for examination by a body which was incapable by its nature of giving weight to the historical and economic condition of Ireland. Whether Parnell had expressed approval of murder or not was a question of fact which could be settled by a court of law better than by any one else. The rights and wrongs of England and Ireland could not be tried by {304} any tribunal upon earth, and Parnell's case was huddled up with the rest simply in the hope that general prejudice against proved outrage might outweigh the effect of an acquittal on the particular charge. Nothing would be settled by proving that the National League had promoted outrage. The case for the League was that it was the only means of obtaining justice for the Irish peasant. No judge, however impartial, could try such an issue. The Bill establishing the Commission was forced through the House, without the excuse of urgency, by the use of the closure. Parnell was thus compelled to accept a tribunal for which he had not asked, in order that the Tory party might find judicial support for their case against Ireland. The facts revealed by the inquiry were of no particular value. The forger shot himself, and the letters were declared to be fabrications. The Irish members were acquitted on the charge of encouraging crime, and condemned for not being more ready to disapprove it. This was nothing new. The demoralization of respectable Irishmen has been the worst result of English misgovernment of Ireland.

When worthy means of obtaining redress are exhausted it requires almost a supernatural virtue not to acquiesce in unworthy means. The moral and political defence of the Nationalists could not be heard by the Commission, and the judgment did not affect it. So far as the affair influenced independent opinion at all, it influenced it against the Government. The eagerness with which the Tories had a.s.sumed the truth of the Parnell letters, and the indecency with which they had confounded irrelevant issues in order to present an indictment against a whole people were as vivid ill.u.s.trations as the Mitchelstown incident of Tory disregard of equity and fair dealing. From this moment the Liberal party began to recover strength, and the union between English Liberalism and Irish Nationalism became indissoluble. But for the O'Shea divorce case, which discredited Parnell and distracted the Nationalist party, the strength of the united forces might have been sufficient to carry Home Rule in the next Parliament. In the actual event, the Liberal victory at the election of 1892 was {305} little more than nominal, and in 1895 Toryism a.s.serted itself more emphatically than before.

It was impossible for Toryism to govern Ireland in this spirit without the contagion spreading to other quarters. Those who refused liberty to others came near to losing their own, and those who claimed arbitrarily to dispose of the fortunes of the Irish people found it an easy task to a.s.sert their egoism elsewhere. During the twenty years which followed the rejection of the first Home Rule Bill, every principle which Liberalism had inherited from the Whigs, the Radicals, and the Manchester School was violated in turn. The powers of hereditary aristocracy were increased,[341] the status of woman was lowered, the Established Church was aggrandized, an attempt was made to revive Protection, a sinister trade monopoly was allowed to dictate the policy of the State in its own interest, a system of labour was established under the British flag which was not distinguishable from some ancient forms of slavery, the powers of Trade Unions were limited by judicial decisions, a foreign State was invaded because it mismanaged its internal affairs, large tracts, including the territories of two self-governing races of white men, were annexed to the Empire by force, morality was frankly struck out of the list of national virtues, and in its favourite cant word "efficiency" Imperialism coined an exact equivalent for the vertu of Macchiavelli. Even women suffered a loss of status. The agitation for Woman Suffrage dwindled away. By the Education Act of 1902, which abolished the old School Boards, they were deprived of one of their opportunities of being elected to a public body, and were given in exchange the inferior dignity of co-option to a committee of men. In 1897 they received a worse blow, when the regulation of vice was re-established, in a modified form, in India. These positive wrongs were accompanied by a serious neglect to improve the conditions of common life, and the consequences of neglect were made worse by the {306} burden of debt and the increased expenditure on armaments which the prevailing policy involved. At the end of the Tory period, when the excitement of the Boer War left the people once more free to contemplate their own condition, economic reforms were overdue, and attempts to grapple with the modern industrial problems jostled with attempts to undo the work of positive reaction, and to a.s.sert once more the Liberal principles of the previous generation.

It is of course not suggested that the Liberal Government of 1906 had to begin again from the beginning. The practical reaction was not, and could not have been, so complete as the moral. But the tide rose high and some landmarks were covered. The full term of reaction was not reached until the end of the century, and especially in the early years of Tory domination more than one useful and Liberal measure was pa.s.sed. Some of these were due to Liberal Unionist influence. Others were in the line of previous Tory action. Bradlaugh carried his Oaths Bill into law in 1888. In the same year the Local Government Act abolished the old system of county administration, and subst.i.tuted councils elected by the ratepayers for the justices of the peace who were appointed by the Lord Chancellor. In London a County Council took the place of a Metropolitan Board of Works. This Act gave to all the inhabitants of counties and of London that control of their own government which had been enjoyed by the inhabitants of all other large towns since the Whig Ministry of 1832. One blemish of importance was left in the Act, a curious proof that this, like other Tory reforms in political machinery, was due to a desire rather for efficient working than for the a.s.sertion of any principle of popular freedom. Two women were elected to the first London County Council, and a court of law decided that their election was void. No attempt was made to remove the disability, which remained until the revival of Liberalism in the twentieth century. Liberal Unionism remained male. In Ireland more than one useful change was made. A private Members' County Councils Bill was rejected in 1888. But in the same year a {307} Land Act advanced 5,000,000 to a.s.sist land purchase, and in 1891 a second Act provided for advances up to 30,000,000 for buying out the landlords. Grants to relieve the distress caused by failure of the potato crop were made in the usual spirit of Tory benevolence, and accompanied the most relentless application of coercion. They prevented starvation, and they did nothing to alter the popular enthusiasm for Home Rule. No amount of indulgence from an acknowledged superior will satisfy the man who wants only freedom to look after himself. Ireland took what she could get, and asked for more. A last domestic reform was made in 1891, when education was made free, as well as compulsory.

The Liberals came into office again in 1892. The most important result of their brief triumph was perhaps the ill.u.s.tration which it afforded of the power of the new party machinery in the country. The National Liberal Federation met at Newcastle, immediately before the election, and succeeded in imposing its will upon the Liberal party with questionable effect. It seemed to be animated by the logical temper of the early Radicals rather than by the practical, managing temper which is so essential to political action. It advocated, among more orthodox things, the Disestablishment of the Churches of Scotland and Wales, and a local veto on the sale of alcoholic liquors. Both these proposals carried Liberal principles to logical and unreasonable extremes. Disestablishment in Wales was a right application of the principle of religious equality. To invest with public privileges the members of a sect which contained a minority of the population, and had been for more than a century alien in spirit as well as in the nationality of its official heads, was one of those artificial appreciations which are abhorrent to all Liberals. The Scottish case was entirely different. The Established Church Of Scotland differed only in unimportant details of const.i.tution and government from the other Churches.

No social privileges were claimed or enjoyed by its members, and there was no national demand for the abolition of its formal privileges. An aristocratic Church with a form of service alien to the natural disposition of the people was {308} an inst.i.tution which the Welsh could reasonably denounce. A Church which was as plain and sober in its habit as the humblest chapel in the land was accepted by the Scotch because it never claimed to be more than it was worth.

Local veto was as dangerous an application of logic as the Disestablishment of the Church of Scotland. It meant that the majority of the inhabitants of a district could prevent any one of them from obtaining a particular form of refreshment. It was not a question of protecting weak men against temptation by reducing the number of public-houses. Nor was it a question of the inhabitants preventing a public-house being placed in a district where none had been before. Either of these applications of a popular vote would be legitimate. Every public-house above a certain number in proportion to the population is a public nuisance, and if a man has gone to reside in a neighbourhood where he cannot get a drink, it is quite reasonable to argue that he has no real need of the opportunity. But local veto means that the neighbours of an honest and sober citizen can impose on him against his will total abstinence, a form of life of which he does not approve. Modern forms of interference with economic freedom can generally be justified on the ground that while they diminish the apparent liberty of a few they increase the real liberty of many. Local veto is an attempt rather to diminish the liberty of many in order to increase that of a few.

If the extreme view of it is accepted, that total abstinence must be enforced because it is better than even moderate indulgence, it is not distinguishable from the crudest Toryism, which forces upon some individuals what others believe to be in their best interest. Hard lines can never be drawn in politics. But local veto appears to be one of those interferences with private conduct which are intolerable, even if they are applicable.

One or two Government measures were pa.s.sed into law. District and Parish Councils were established by an Act of 1893 to do the less important work of rural government under the County Councils, and this Act was more Liberal than that of 1888 in that it permitted the election of women. The Budget {309} of 1894 greatly increased the death duties on landed property and at last put an end to the advantages which it enjoyed in comparison with other forms of wealth. The same Budget emphasized and extended the principle of taxation according to ability to pay. Where money was required by the State for public purposes, it was reasonable that those who had large acc.u.mulations should pay at a higher rate than those who had small.

Equality of rate was not equality of taxation. The estates of deceased persons were thus directly taxed upon a graduated scale, and the first step was taken in the process of shifting fiscal burdens from the poorer to the richer cla.s.ses, which is so marked a feature of modern Liberal policy. This reform, the House of Lords not having yet the boldness to interfere with taxation, was carried without much difficulty. A more direct attempt to improve economic conditions failed. The Employers' Liability Bill, compensating workmen for injuries caused by the neglect of fellow-workmen under the rank of foreman, was so amended by the Lords that it had to be dropped. The second Home Rule Bill pa.s.sed the Commons, but was beaten in the Lords by ten to one. Gladstone resigned in March, 1894, and his place was taken by Lord Rosebery, a splendid orator, who could never lead the people because he could never understand them. Welsh Disestablishment and Local Veto Bills were introduced and dropped, because even the House of Commons would not pa.s.s them. The party collapsed in a few months, and the Tories came back to office and to power. The tide had been but little checked, and it now resumed its steady course away from Liberal ideals. The examination of the current of events requires some preliminary investigation of prevailing modes of thought.

It is impossible to understand the present methods of English political thinking without some consideration of the theory of evolution. Both habits of mind, the Liberal and the Tory, have been able to employ it for their own purposes, and its influence upon Socialism at one extreme and Imperialism at the other {310} has been equally marked. Darwin's book, _The Origin of Species_, was published in 1859, and produced instantly a turmoil in science and religion. Its bearing upon politics was less obvious, and there are no traces of it in the speculations of such a philosophical Liberal as Mill. The man who did most to bring the theory to bear upon things other than biology was Herbert Spencer, who was anything but a politician. But the channels by which its influence was poured into the general mind had become, by the end of the century, too numerous for discrimination, and the pulpit, the Press, the stage, the platform, and popular literature of every kind were full of references to the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. For good and evil the idea of evolution had become part of the national stock.