British Political Leaders Part 6

The Parnell divorce case came on, and led to a serious division in the ranks of the Irish National party and in Irish public opinion. The great majority of Parnell's followers refused to regard him as their leader any longer, and those who determined to support him and to follow him through thick and thin were but a very small minority. Gladstone was firmly convinced, as were the majority of the Irish Nationalist members, that Parnell ought to retire, for a time at least, from the leadership of his party, if not indeed from public life, and keep aloof from active politics until the scandal of the divorce court should have been atoned for by him and should have pa.s.sed to some extent from public memory.

Gladstone was convinced that if Parnell remained the leader of the Irish party it would be almost impossible to arouse in the British const.i.tuencies any enthusiasm in the cause of Home Rule strong enough to bring back the Liberals to power and to carry a Home Rule measure. This was a reasonable and practical view of the question, but Parnell and his followers resented it as a positive insult, and Parnell issued a manifesto denouncing Gladstone, the immediate result of which was that break-up of the Home Rule party I have already mentioned. Not very long after came Parnell's early death. It may well be supposed that such events as these must have made a deep and discouraging impression on Gladstone's hopes for the success of the second Home Rule measure. The Irish National party had been broken up for the time, and some even of Gladstone's colleagues in office had allowed themselves to be mastered by the old familiar idea that as Irishmen could not be brought to agree for long on any plan of action, it was futile for English Liberals to put themselves to any inconvenience for the sake of an Irish National cause. Such men might have found it difficult to point out any great measure of political reform in England concerning which the English people had always been in absolute agreement and about which there was no conflict of angry emotion in any section of English representatives.

But the fact remained all the same that the dispute in the Irish party had brought a chill to the zeal of many influential English Liberals for the Home Rule cause, and we have had in much more recent days abundant evidence that the chilling influence is with them still.

Among Gladstone's official colleagues there were some who held that the time had come when an appeal ought to be made to the country by means of a dissolution and a general election against the domination of the House of Lords. This appears to have been the opinion of Gladstone himself.

Others of his colleagues, however, held back from such an issue, and contended that the moment did not seem favorable for an appeal to the country on the distinct question of Irish Home Rule. The general impression on the public mind was that the decision of the Cabinet was certain to be in favor of an appeal to the country on the one issue or the other, and much surprise was felt when it began to be more and more evident that the Government intended to go on with the ordinary business of the State, as if nothing had happened. The outer world has as yet had no means of knowing what the reasons or the influences were which induced Gladstone and his colleagues to come to this determination. The whole truth will probably never be known until John Morley's "Life of Gladstone" shall make its appearance. We may safely a.s.sume in the meantime that Gladstone had the best of reasons for taking the course which he adopted, and that he would have made an appeal to the country against the decision of the House of Lords if he had believed the conditions were favorable for such a challenge just then.

Probably Gladstone knew only too well that even among his own colleagues there were some who were turning cold upon the question of Home Rule, who had never accepted his views on that subject with whole-hearted willingness, and could not have been relied upon as steadfast adherents in the struggle. I think I shall be fully justified by any revelations which history or biography has yet to make, when I say that Campbell-Bannerman was among those who would have faithfully followed the great leader to the very last in whatever struggle he had made up his mind to engage. There were, of course, many others of Gladstone's colleagues--men like Sir William Harcourt and John Morley and James Bryce--on whom their leader could have safely reckoned for the same unswerving fidelity and courage. But, whatever were the reasons, there was no appeal made to the country, and the administration went on with its ordinary work in a dull, mechanical fashion. The effect upon the Liberal party was most depressing. Men could not understand why nothing decisive had been done, and at the same time were haunted by a foreboding that some great change was impending over the Liberal party.

The foreboding soon came to be justified. On the 1st of March, 1894, Gladstone delivered his last speech in the House of Commons. The speech dealt with the action of the House of Lords on a subject of comparatively slight importance. The Lords had rejected a measure dealing with the const.i.tution of parish councils, which had been pa.s.sed by the House of Commons. Gladstone spoke with severity in condemnation of the course taken by the House of Lords. Towards the close of his speech he said: "My duty terminates with calling the attention of this House to a fact which it is really impossible to set aside, that we are considering a part--an essential and inseparable part--of a question enormously large, a question which has become profoundly a truth, a question that will demand a settlement, and must at an early date receive that settlement, from the highest authority." No one who was present in the House when this declaration was made is ever likely to lose the memory of the scene, although not all or even most of those then present quite realized the full significance of Gladstone's words.

There were many in the House who did not at once understand that in the words I have quoted the greatest Parliamentary leader of modern times was speaking his farewell to public life. I remember well that a few moments after Gladstone had finished his speech I met John Morley in one of the lobbies, and I asked him if this was really to be taken as the close of Gladstone's career, and he told me, with as much composure as he could command, that in that speech we had heard the last of Gladstone's Parliamentary utterances. That was indeed a memorable day in the history of England, and a day at least equally memorable in the history of Ireland.

I have had to dwell for a while on these historical facts, facts of course known already to all my readers, as a prelude to the most important pa.s.sages in the Parliamentary career of Campbell-Bannerman.

When Gladstone resigned office and withdrew from public life, the question of reconst.i.tuting the Liberal administration had to be taken into account. There could be no doubt whatever that the Liberal administration had been much weakened and even discredited by the manner in which it had put up with the domineering action of the House of Lords. The effect on public opinion was all the greater and the more disheartening because it was generally understood that the absence of any such action must have been due to the fact that some of Gladstone's leading colleagues were not prepared to sustain him in the policy he was anxious to carry out. There was therefore a state of something like apathy in the minds of advanced Radicals with regard to any arrangements which seemed likely to be made for the reconstruction of the Ministry.

The new administration was formed under the leadership of Lord Rosebery, as Prime Minister, in the House of Lords, and that of Sir William Harcourt, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the House of Commons. There can be little doubt that the composition of the new Ministry was regarded as unsatisfactory by the more advanced Liberals in and outside Parliament. The Liberal party is never of late years quite content with an administration which has its Prime Minister in the House of Lords.

The real work must always be done in the House of Commons, and it is obviously most inconvenient that the leader of the Government should be one whose position will not allow him to have a seat in the representative chamber. The condition of things is something like that of an army whose Commander-in-Chief can never make his appearance in the encampment or take part in any of the great battles. Even at that time Lord Rosebery, although a most brilliant debater and a capable administrator, was beginning to be regarded as one whose Liberalism was somewhat losing color and whose whole heart was by no means in the advanced policy of Gladstone. There was nothing better to be done, however, at the time than to make the most of the altered conditions, and the new Ministry went to work as well as it could.

Campbell-Bannerman, as Secretary for War, had an opportunity of proving his genuine capacity for the duties of his important office. He introduced a new and complete scheme of army reform, which, among other and even more important changes, proposed to bring about the retirement of the Duke of Cambridge from the post of Commander-in-Chief. The Duke of Cambridge was even then a man far advanced in years, who had never in his life shown any real capacity for the work of commanding an army, and whose chief recommendation for so great a position must have been found in the fact that he was a member of the royal family. The new measure was making its way steadily enough through the House of Commons, and every one was beginning to see that in Campbell-Bannerman the country had found an administrator of a very high order. Suddenly, however, the progress of the measure was interrupted by what seemed to be at first only a trivial accident, of which the public in general were inclined to take but little account. The army reform scheme had arrived at what is known as the committee stage of its progress.

I do not desire to occupy the attention of my readers more than is actually necessary with the mere technical details of Parliamentary procedure, and I shall only explain that when a Bill reaches the committee stage its general principle must have been already accepted by the majority in the House, and the House then forms itself into Committee for the purpose of discussing the mere details of the proposed arrangements. During one of the sittings a Conservative member proposed a motion declaring that the Government, or at least the War Office, had not made proper provision for the supply of the material of cordite to the army. This was so purely a technical question, concerning which only soldiers and scientific men could be supposed to have had any means of forming an opinion, that the House troubled itself very little about the whole discussion. But when the House came to take a division on the proposal, the Government was defeated by a majority of seven. This defeat produced at first only a very slight effect on the House in general. During the committee stage of a measure it is quite a matter of ordinary occurrence that a Ministry should be defeated on some question of mere arrangement and detail, and very few in the House of Commons suspected on that occasion that such a vote was likely to bring with it an important Parliamentary crisis. Campbell-Bannerman, however, took a very different view of the event. He appears to have made up his mind that the decision of the House was a distinct vote of censure on his administration, and that he could not continue to hold office after so marked a declaration of disapproval. Now, it may be taken for granted that Campbell-Bannerman was not merely actuated by any personal feeling, by any sense of mere grievance to himself, when he made up his mind to this resolve. He saw clearly that the Government had lost the confidence and the support of the country, and that the sooner the whole futile attempt at administration under such conditions came to an end the better it would be for the business of the State. He knew perfectly well that the Liberal administration was falling to pieces, that its leading members were no longer inspired alike by one great policy, that some of its leaders had ceased to be Liberals in the traditional meaning of the word, and that sooner or later the catastrophe must come. Those of Campbell-Bannerman's colleagues who were as genuine and stanch Liberals as he soon came into agreement with him as to the course that ought to be pursued, and it was known before long in the House of Commons that the Liberal Ministers had resigned their offices and that the long-postponed appeal to the country was to be made at last. Thus for the first time it became known to the public that Campbell-Bannerman was already a power in political life.

Parliament was dissolved and the appeal to the country was made at the general election which necessarily followed. Few Liberals had the slightest doubt as to the result of the appeal. Some of the very measures introduced by the fallen Government which had the strong approval of many advanced Liberals had put certain powerful interests and cla.s.ses against those who represented this policy. Sir William Harcourt's "death duties" had aroused the indignation of rich men here, there, and everywhere. The measures which the same statesman had endeavored to carry for putting the liquor trade under the control of "local option" had turned the publicans into an organized opposition against Liberal administrators. The result of the general election was the defeat of the Liberal party, and the formation of a Conservative Government with Lord Salisbury at its head holding office as Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary at once, and with Arthur Balfour as First Lord of the Treasury and leader of the House of Commons. The Liberals were weakened in every sense, not merely by the fact that they had come back to Parliament no longer as a Government but only as an Opposition.

They were rendered by their internal divisions too weak for effective work as an Opposition. Lord Rosebery continued for the time to act as leader of the Liberal party, while Sir William Harcourt of course became leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. It soon was quite clear that the Liberal party could not work together so far as its leaders were concerned. It was evident that men like Harcourt and John Morley and Campbell-Bannerman could not act in any cordial union with Lord Rosebery and those Liberals who accepted Lord Rosebery's policy.

The result of all this was that Lord Rosebery resigned the leadership of the party and has ever since seemed inclined to start a Liberal party of his own, and that Sir William Harcourt did not believe he was likely to receive such a united support in the House of Commons as would enable him to maintain the leadership of the party with any satisfaction to himself or the country. Harcourt therefore ceased to hold that position; and now came for the first time the opportunity for Campbell-Bannerman.

He was chosen leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons, and he had before him, under all the conditions, a task which might well have seemed hopeless. Lord Rosebery has, from that time to this, delivered speeches all over the country which could only be interpreted as the expression of his desire to call into being a new Liberal party professing a political creed differing in its main characteristics from that which had been proclaimed and carried on by Gladstone. Rosebery renounced Home Rule for Ireland, and refused to act on Gladstone's principles with regard to the protection of Christians in the East against the alternating tyranny and neglect of the Ottoman Government.

Never within my recollection had any leader of a Liberal party in the House of Commons come into a position of such difficulty and disheartenment as that which Campbell-Bannerman had now to maintain. It has often been the lot of the Liberal party to come into the House of Commons with diminished numbers, and have to carry on as best it could be done the battle against a Conservative Government of overwhelming numerical strength. But the peculiar trouble which beset Campbell-Bannerman was that he could not count upon the allegiance of all his nominal followers. He knew that so long as he showed himself determined to maintain the policy of Gladstone he could reckon without fear on the support of such men as Harcourt and John Morley and Bryce.

But there were able men among those who occupied the front bench of Opposition on whom he could not always count, men who were publicly displaying themselves as the political a.s.sociates or followers of Lord Rosebery. Campbell-Bannerman went boldly and steadfastly on, never faltering in the least. He upheld the time-honored creed of genuine Liberalism, "never doubted clouds would break," and by his words and his bearing inspired with fresh courage many a true Liberal whose faith was not faltering, but whose hopes were sinking low. He proved himself quite equal to the incessant work put upon him by his new position as leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons. He developed a capacity for debate which only those who knew him well had ever before believed him to possess. During all the wild excitement of Jingoism which followed the movements of the war against the two South African Republics, he never yielded to the temptation which overcame so many other Liberals, the temptation to evade a pa.s.sing unpopularity by suppressing for the time his opinions on the policy of the war. He must have been sorely tried again and again by the sayings and doings of some who still professed to be members of the Liberal party in Parliament. A new Liberal League was actually formed under the inspiration of Lord Rosebery, and its object apparently was to create a new school of Liberalism which should have nothing to do with the traditions of the party and with the doctrines of men like Gladstone.

Now, if all this had been done in open and avowed antagonism to the existing Liberal party, Campbell-Bannerman might have had a comparatively easy task to undertake. He could have braced himself to do st.u.r.dy battle against the promoters of internal disunion; could have set the whole question plainly and squarely before the Liberal public opinion of the country, and demanded a decisive judgment. But the promoters of the new Liberal League did nothing of the kind. They disclaimed any intention to create disunion in the party. They declared that they were the very best of Liberals, and that nothing could exceed their loyalty to the elected leaders of the Liberal party, and protested that in whatever they did they were only trying to help and not to hinder the work of these leaders. When one of the seceders, or supposed seceders, delivered a speech at some public meeting in which he appeared to repudiate the main principles of the Liberal creed, and an open split in the party seemed to be imminent, some other member of the Liberal League hastened to explain that the meaning of his n.o.ble friend or his right honorable colleague had been totally misunderstood. He insisted that the only motive of the previous orator was to promote the cordial union of the Liberal party, and, to paraphrase the words of the medical student in "Pickwick" after his quarrel with a fellow-student, that he rather preferred Campbell-Bannerman to his own brother.

Campbell-Bannerman took all these performances with serene good humor.

As I have already said, those who know him are well aware that he has a keen, quiet sense of humor, and I feel sure that he must often have been much amused by the odd vagaries of those who would neither fall into the ranks nor admit that they wanted to keep out of the ranks. He has gone steadily on as he began since it became his duty to lead the Liberal Opposition in the House of Commons. He has done the work of leader honorably, patiently, consistently, and fearlessly, and he is recognized as leader by all true Liberals, English, Scotch, and Welsh.

He has never fallen away in the slightest degree from the principles of Gladstone where Home Rule and the other just claims of the Irish people are concerned. He has kept the Liberal flag flying, and the whole Liberalism of the country is already beginning to rally round him and to recognize his leadership. Increasing responsibility has only developed in him new capacity to maintain the responsible place. We may well believe that he is destined to do great service yet to the Liberal cause, and to win an honorable place in British history. When he first became leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons, he might almost have seemed to be the leader of a lost cause, but he has fought the fight bravely and will see the victory before long.

The Gresham Press, UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, WOKING AND LONDON