The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume I Part 11

He was in agreement with John Stuart Mill in resisting a proposal which in his opinion did injustice to large cla.s.ses of the community for the sake of introducing what (in his own words) "could be only religion of the driest and baldest kind, and such as would be hardly worthy of the name."

At the beginning of 1870 Sir Charles was not openly in revolt, though after working for Odger against the Government candidate, he had gone on to condemn in a speech the Whig influences and fear of the House of Lords, which in his opinion were destroying Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Bill. Mr.

Gladstone showed a desire to conciliate this overactive critic by inviting him to second the Address to the Crown.

Accordingly at the opening of Parliament on February 8th, 1870, Sir Charles had his part to play in the modest ceremonial which still survives, rather shamefacedly, in the House of Commons, when a couple of commoners, uniformed or in Court dress, are put forward as the spokesmen of that sombre a.s.sembly.

His speech, advocating the European concert, dwelt on the cloudless calm which lay--in February, 1870--over the civilized world, and for another six months wrapped it in delusive peace.

For the moment domestic affairs held the field. In spite of Bright's observation about driving six omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar, Forster's Education Bill was pressed forward along with the Irish Land proposals, and the Government were at once in trouble with their advanced wing, in which Sir Charles Dilke was a leader of revolt. He acted as teller along with Henry Richard when Richard took sixty dissentient Liberals into the Lobby in support of a general motion demanding that school attendance should be compulsory, and that all religious teaching should be separately paid for out of voluntary funds. When compromise was accepted: [Footnote: The Cowper Temple clause practically left religious teaching to local option. Each school was to give or not give such religious teaching as it thought well, so long as no _Board_ School was used to attach a child to a particular denomination.]

'I was, I believe, the only Liberal member who resisted the Cowper Temple amendment as accepted by the Government, and I resigned my post as Chairman of the London Branch of the Education League. I published a letter explaining the reasons for my resignation; the Committee wrote in reply that they fully agreed with me in matters of principle, and asked me to reconsider my resignation.'

This, however, he refused to do, since the London Branch and the League generally were abandoning the principle in the support they gave to compromise.

Throughout the Committee stage his name appears in all the numerous division lists, voting against Government as often as with it. Thus it was from a position of complete independence that he carried two amendments of great importance.

'The Bill as brought in made the School Boards mere committees of Boards of Vestries, and the amendment that School Boards should be elected by the ratepayers, which was forced on and ultimately accepted by the Government, was mine. I also was the author of the proposal that the School Board elections should be by ballot, which was carried.' [Footnote: He always regretted the subst.i.tution later of the Educational Committees of County Councils for the School Boards.]

The ballot was then the question of the hour, and it was a matter upon which his study of foreign and Colonial inst.i.tutions had made him an authority. In 1869 he had given evidence before the Select Committee on Parliamentary and Munic.i.p.al Elections, 'explaining the working of the ballot in France, in the United States, and, above all, in Tasmania and Australia.' The evidence which he gave was of service in the preparation of the Ballot Bill of 1870, which closely followed the example set by Tasmania and South Australia.

Sir John Gorst, who was already a well-known figure in English politics, though not yet in Parliament, remembered attending a debate specially to hear what this newcomer had to say upon the question of the hour.

This first practical application of the ballot, 'forced on and ultimately accepted by the Government,' did not pa.s.s unchallenged. When Sir Charles's amendment was at last put to the vote, he was privileged to tell with George Glyn, the Chief Whip, in a division which took place 'after the fiercest conflict ever up to that known within the walls of Parliament, we having sat up all night.' There was a long series of dilatory motions, a fresh one being moved after a division had disposed of its predecessor 'This was the first birth of obstruction, and the lesson taught by Mr. G.

C. Bentinck on this occasion was afterwards applied by "the colonels" in the proceedings on the Army Purchase Scheme in 1871, and then by b.u.t.t's Irish after 1874.'

In all the discussions on the Ballot Bill for Parliamentary elections Sir Charles steadily opposed the introduction of a scrutiny which involved the numbering of the ballot papers. This appeared to him 'a pernicious interference with the principle of secrecy, chiefly important because it would be impossible to convince ignorant voters that their votes would not be traced.' His view 'prevailed,' he says, 'in the House of Commons, but the provisions of which we secured the omission from the second Ballot Bill were once more inserted by the House of Lords' at its pa.s.sage in 1871.

There was another matter connected with the franchise in which Sir Charles had effected by an amendment an even more remarkable change, and that in his first session. The proposal to give women ratepayers the franchise in munic.i.p.al elections, or rather 'to restore to them a right which was taken away by the Munic.i.p.al Reform Act of 1835,' was his. Two amendments were on the paper, and though by a chance Mr. Jacob Bright's was taken first, the suggestion, as Mr. Bright admitted, really came from Sir Charles, and it was carried in the session of 1869. This proposal, as he explained to a meeting of the London Society for Woman's Suffrage over which Mrs. Grote presided, was in his opinion 'merely experimental, and only a first step to adult suffrage.' In 1870 he seconded Jacob Bright's Woman's Suffrage Bill, which was carried through the second reading--'the only occasion when a majority of the House of Commons declared for the principle till 1897.' Divergencies of opinion had in the meantime arisen. The Bill of 1870 did not debar married women from obtaining the vote. When in later years a proviso excluding them was introduced, Dilke, with Jacob Bright, withdrew from the parent society. He held throughout his life that to attempt compromise on this matter was to court failure, and that women would never get the vote except as part of a scheme for universal suffrage. This was no mere academic opinion; and he gave later on proof of his earnestness for the principle involved in convincing fashion.

To the argument still urged against that principle--the argument that most women are against it--he gave his answer in 1870:

"You will always find that in the case of any cla.s.s which has been despotically governed--and though I do not wish to use strong language, it cannot be denied that women have been despotically governed in England, although the despotism has been of a benevolent character--the great majority of that cla.s.s are content with the system under which they live."

He pointed out that to admit women to the franchise did not compel those to vote who did not desire to do so.

In this matter Jacob Bright was his leading a.s.sociate in Parliament; but outside Parliament he was working with Mill.

To the two questions already dealt with--Education and Woman's Suffrage-- was now added a third, which Sir Charles describes as 'chief of all the questions I had to do with in 1870--the land question.' There is this endors.e.m.e.nt on one of Mill's letters written in 1870:

"I acted as his secretary for above a year on (_a_) his land movement = taxation of land values; (_b_) the women's suffrage proposal, which followed the carrying of his munic.i.p.al franchise for women by me in 1869 and the School Boards, 1870."

The Radical Club was founded, with Sir Charles as Secretary, in 1870, and Mill was among the original members of the Club. [Footnote: The others were Professor Cairnes, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Frank Hill (editor of the _Daily News_), Leslie Stephen, Mr. Leonard Courtney, Mr. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. W. C. Sidgwick, Mr. McCullagh Torrens, and Mr. Fawcett. Sir David Wedderburn, Mr. Peter Taylor, and Mr. Walter Morrison were added at the first meeting, as also was Mr. Hare. At the first meeting it was decided that women should be eligible. Half the Club was to consist of members of Parliament, half of non-members.] From this platform Mill propounded, in 1870, his views on land--views which forty years later became the adopted principles of the Liberal party; and at the inaugural public meeting of the Land Tenure a.s.sociation in 1870 Sir Charles for the first time promulgated the doctrine of taxing the "unearned increment." He insisted that England's system of land tenure was "unique in the world," and answerable for tragic consequences.

"One who has seen our race abroad under fair conditions knows how frank and handsome the Englishman is elsewhere, and might be here. But when he looks around him in Sheffield or in East London, he sees none but miserable and stunted forms. The life of the English labourer is a steady march down a hill with a poorhouse at the bottom. At the same time the observer finds, when he asks for the remedy, that in these matters there is not a pin to choose between the two parties in the State." [Footnote: A note sent to Lord Courtney in 1909 will show exactly what Sir Charles's position had been on this fundamental matter from the very outset of his political career:

"Mill's object was--

"To claim for the benefit of the State the interception by taxation of a great part of the unearned increase of the value of land which is continually accruing, without effort or outlay by the proprietors, through the growth of population and wealth.

"To purchase land for the State, and let for co-operative agriculture under conditions of efficiency and to smallholders on durable cultivating interests."

He adds a reference to his own Bill "for utilizing public and quasi- public lands under public management, with repeal of the Statute of Mortmain and forbidding of alienation."

This Bill was introduced by him in the early seventies, but obtained no support till 1875 (see Chapter XIII., p. 192).]

Within the previous twenty-five years over six hundred thousand acres of common land had been enclosed, under Orders sanctioned by Parliament. Of this vast amount only four thousand had been set apart for public purposes. In 1866 the commons near London were threatened, and a Society for their preservation was formed, in which Mr. Shaw Lefevre was the moving spirit. [Footnote: Now Lord Eversley.] Sir Charles became in 1870 Chairman of the Society. Among the latest of his papers is a note from Lord Eversley accompanying an early copy of the new edition of his _Commons and Forests_ "which I hope will remind you of old times and of your own great services to the cause." 'We saved Wisley Common and Epping Forest,' says the Memoir. It was more important that on April 9th, 1869, the annual Enclosure Bill was referred to a Select Committee, notwithstanding the determined opposition of the Government. The date is memorable in the history of the question, for the Committee recommended that all further enclosures should be suspended until the general Act had been amended, as it was in 1876.

About the same time Sir Charles became publicly committed to another cause, barren of political advantage, into which he put, first and last, as much labour as might have filled the whole of a creditable career. He began to take an active part in connection with the Aborigines Protection Society and presided at its Annual Meeting in 1870. This, says the Memoir laconically, 'threw on me lifelong duties.'

II.

The Franco-German War broke upon Europe in July, 1870. Later, it became one of the chief interests of Sir Charles's mind to track out the workings of those few men who prepared what seemed a sudden outburst; here it is important only to outline his att.i.tude towards the combatants. In that period of European history every politician was of necessity attracted or repelled by the personality of the Emperor of the French. In Sir Charles's case there was no wavering between like and dislike: he carried on his grandfather's detestation of the lesser Napoleon. The chapter in _Greater Britain_ which is devoted to Egypt shows this feeling; and when news of Sadowa reached him during his American journey in the autumn of 1866, he wrote home to say that he rejoiced in Prussia's triumph, and hoped "Louis Napoleon would quarrel with the Germans over it, and get well thrashed, with the result that German unity might be brought about."

'This' (he notes in the Memoir) 'is somewhat curious at a time when everybody believed (except myself and Moltke and Bismarck, not including, I think, the King of Prussia) that the French Army was superior to the armies of all Germany.'

In coming down the Mexican coast he touched at Acapulco, which was under Mexican fire, as the French still held the bay and city; and he had then, later in 1866, 'begun to hope for the fall of Louis Napoleon, who was piling up debt for France at the average rate of ten millions sterling every year, and whose prestige was vanishing fast in the glare of the publicity given to the actions of Bazaine.'

Before Sir Charles returned to Europe in 1867, Maximilian, the Austrian Archduke sent by Napoleon III to be 'Emperor of Mexico,' had fallen, an unlucky victim of French intrigue. But Paris was still the centre of Europe; and the traveller on his way home from Egypt--where he had seen French enterprise opening the Suez Ca.n.a.l, French language and influence dominant--saw Louis Napoleon preside at a pageant, already darkened by the rising storm-cloud:

'Reaching Paris' (in June, 1867), 'I attended the review held (during the Exhibition of 1867) by the Emperors of Russia and of the French, and the King of Prussia, at which I saw Gortschakof, Schouvalof, Bismarck, and Moltke, on the day on which the Pole Berezowski shot at Alexander II. Sixty thousand men marched past the three Sovereigns at the very spot at which, three years later, one of them was, to review a larger German force. The crash was near; Maximilian had been shot.

It is, however, not pleasant to contrast the horror with which the news of the execution of the puppet Emperor was received in Europe, with the indifference with which all but a handful of Radicals had regarded the Paris executions of December, 1851.'

'In October, 1867, three months later, I again visited Paris, with my father, and made the acquaintance of the Queen of Holland, the Queen of Sheba to Louis Napoleon's Solomon in his glory. The Emperor of Austria, the King of Bavaria, and Beust were also in Paris on business which boded no good to Bismarck, and the populace were amusing themselves in crying "Vive Garibaldi!" to the Austrian Emperor, as three or four months earlier they had cried "Vive la Pologne!" to the Tsar. At a banquet to the Foreign Commission to the Exhibition, at which I dined, I heard Rouher make his famous speech, "L'Italie n'aura jamais Rome," which he afterwards in December repeated in the Corps Legislatif--"L'Italie ne s'emparera pas de Rome--jamais" (shouts of "Jamais!" from the Right): "Jamais la France ne supportera cette violence faite a son honneur et a la catholicite." When I heard the word "jamais," I believed I should live to see Italy at Rome, but hardly so soon.'

His governing dislike of France's rulers had reflected itself in that part of his first address to the electors of Chelsea which laid down his views on foreign affairs. "Our true alliance," he had told them, "is not with the Latin peoples, but with men who speak our tongue, with our brothers in America, and with our kinsmen in Germany and Scandinavia." This prepossession, notable in one who came afterwards to be regarded as the closest friend of France among English politicians, shaped his action when the crash came. It tempted him to the German side, but contact with Prussian militarism showed where his real sympathies lay.

War was declared on Tuesday, July 19th. On the following Sat.u.r.day morning Sir Charles left London for Paris: left Paris for Strasbourg the same evening: visited Metz on the Monday, and saw the Imperial Guard at Nancy.

Within four days from the time of leaving he was back in London, and busy with preparations. He had decided to attach himself to the ambulances of the Crown Prince of Prussia's army, and in this expedition two other members of Parliament joined him:

'Auberon Herbert (physically brave, and politically the bravest, though not politically the strongest, man of our times) and Winterbotham, afterwards Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, and a man of eloquence, whose early death is still deplored by those who knew him. We took letters from Count von Bernstorff, the Prussian Amba.s.sador, and following up the German armies through the Bavarian Palatinate, a journey during which we were arrested and marched to Kaiserslautern to the King's headquarters by Bavarian gendarmes, as French spies, we were enrolled under the Prussian Knights of St. John at Sulz by Count Goertz, and received billets from that time, although we used to pay for all we had at every place. At Wissembourg and at Sulz we were sent to the inn, and at Luneville I was planted on an ironmonger, but we were divided. At Nancy only, being fixed on a legitimist Baron, I was not allowed to pay for what I had, but I was put with him by his wish, by his friend the Mayor, as he would not have real Prussians. He made things so unpleasant for my companion, Count Bothmer--though, unlike his brother, the Count was a non-combatant--that this Knight of St. John had to go elsewhere. Auberon and Winterbotham were also put elsewhere at Nancy. At Sarrebourg and Pont-a-Mousson I forget with whom we were, but we were together and were nearly starved.

'We marched with the Poseners, or Fifth Army Corps, through Froeschwilier and Reichshoffen; went off the road to Saverne to witness the bombardment of Phalsbourg; joined again at Sarrebourg; marched by Luneville, and from Nancy were sent to Pont-a-Mousson during the battles before Metz.

'The first thing that struck us much during this portion of the war was that the grandest of the early victories in this so-called war of races, the Battle of Worth, was won and lost in the centre of the position by pure Poles and native Algerians. Poseners were arrayed against Turcos, and both fought well, while hardly a German or a Frenchman was in sight. On the field of Worth I noted that the Poseners had all many cartridges as well as their Polish hymn-books with them, but the Turcos were as short of cartridges as of hymn- books. Wanting a French cartridge, I was unable to find one in the pouches of the dead, while of German cartridges I had at once as many dozens as I pleased. I fancy, however, that it would not be safe to conclude, from the fact that the French had fired away their ammunition, that they fired carelessly because too fast; for the Germans, vastly outnumbering the French (who ought not to have fought a battle, but rather should have fallen back), had probably opposed at different portions of the day different corps to the same French regiments, who had not been relieved. After this battle all was lost to the French cause. The scattered French spread terror where they went, and while the railway might have been wholly destroyed by the simple plan of blowing up some tunnels, only bridges were blown up, which in the course of a few days were, of course, replaced even where they were not in a few hours easily repaired....

'I was glad to have seen the beginning of the invasion. At no other time could I have gained a real knowledge of that which every politician ought to know--the working of the transport system of a modern army. We were the smaller of the two invading forces, yet we needed a stream of carts the whole way to Nancy from Bingen upon the Rhine, perpetually moving day and, night. The French compared the swarming in of Germany to the invasions of the Huns....

'My letters to my grandmother (by the military field post) were not numerous. My first (written from Wissembourg) states that we are much elated at the victory of Wissembourg; while the second is as follows:

'"I write on paper left by the French in the Palace of Justice. They seem to have fled in haste, for... the judges' pen-and-ink portraits of one another still adorn the blotting-paper. This place (Wissembourg) is in much confusion.... When, by straining, and a good deal of pressure upon the members of the old French munic.i.p.al council, a regiment is housed, in comes another with a demand for food and lodging for six hundred horses and four hundred men; then a Prussian infantry regiment two thousand strong, and so on all night.... We are leaving as members of the Prussian Order of St. John for the Bavarian camp. The whole series of French telegrams up to July 30th are still posted here on the Sous-Prefecture, inside which is confined Baron de Rosen, Colonel of the 2nd Cuira.s.siers of the French Guard." I go on to say that the "town commandant is an English volunteer and lives in London when at home.... He is a most accomplished man." He was accomplished enough, but he was a lunatic; and there is no more singular episode in the war than the fact that an unauthorized lunatic should have appointed himself to the command of an important depot, and been recognized for at least a week as commandant by all the authorities. The fact was that no regiment was stopping many hours in the town, and that each Colonel, finding a particular person established there, although he may have thought him a curious commandant, never thought of questioning his authority.

'One of my letters appeared in the _Daily News_. It was dated August 15th, and prophesied the complete destruction of the French armies, and it contained a somewhat amusing paragraph:

'"In our march last night we came into a part of the country unoccupied by either army. We were twice driven from villages by the Mayors, who seemed at their wits' end in the mazes of international law. One said to us: 'This town is not Prussian. It is French, and martial law is proclaimed in this part of France. Accordingly I must tell you that you need a French military safe-conduct. If you stop here without it I must arrest you, and send you'--he thought for a while--'to the Prussian Commandant at Sarrebourg.'" At Nancy I saw the Crown Prince, Dr. Russell of the _Times_, Mr. Hilary Skinner of the _Daily News_, and Mr. Landells of the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_, who afterwards died of rheumatism caused by exposure in the war. Lord Ronald Gower was there on the same day, but was sent away, as his presence with Dr. Russell as a guest was unauthorized.

'Among our adventures, in addition to our arrest near Kreuznach and to our obtaining pa.s.ses from the maniac commandant, was the adventure of our being lost in the Vosges, and nearly coming to be murdered by some French peasants, who in the night tried to force their way into the village school in which we had barricaded ourselves. Another adventure was our being nearly starved at Pont-a-Mousson, where at last we managed to buy a bit of the King of Prussia's lunch at the kitchen of the inn on the market-place at which it was being cooked in order to be placed in a four-in-hand break. While we were ravenously gorging ourselves upon it, a man burst into the room, and suddenly exclaimed: "Winterbotham!" It was Sir Henry Havelock, who was hiding in the place, being absent without leave from the Horse Guards, where he was, I think, an a.s.sistant Quartermaster-General. He had made friends with the Prussian Military Attache, to whom Bismarck had lent his maps, and we thus saw them and learnt much. It was on the same day that Bismarck himself was nearly starved. The first part of the story had appeared in print, and I asked him about it when I was staying with him in September, 1889. He told me that he had with him at his lodging the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg and General Sheridan, the American cavalry officer. Bismarck had gone out to forage, and had succeeded in finding five eggs, for which he had paid a dollar each. He then said to himself: "If I take home five, I must give two to the Grand Duke and two to Sheridan, and I shall have but one." "I ate," he said, "two upon the spot and took home three, so that the Grand Duke had one, and Sheridan had one, and there was one for me. Sheridan died: he never knew--but I told the Grand Duke, and he forgave me."'

No turn of fortune any longer seemed possible, and in Sir Charles's mind hatred of the Emperor began to be replaced by sympathy for France.