The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume I Part 37

Mr. Chamberlain replied from Birmingham on October 27th;

"I do not half like the Irish prosecutions, but I fear there is no alternative, except, indeed, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, which I should like still less. Parnell is doing his best to make Irish legislation unpopular with English Radicals. The workmen here do not like to see the law set at defiance, and a dissolution on the 'Justice for Ireland' cry would under present circ.u.mstances be a hazardous operation."

Mr. Forster was eager to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and wanted to have Parliament specially summoned in order to carry through repressive legislation.

'On Monday morning, November 15th, on my return to London, I saw Harcourt, and told him that I should follow Chamberlain in resigning if a special Irish Coercion Session without a Land Bill were to be called. I saw Chamberlain immediately after the Cabinet which was held this day. Bright and Chamberlain were as near splitting off at one end as Lord Selborne at the other. Mr. Gladstone proposed at the Cabinet the creation of English, Scotch, and Irish Grand Committees, but obtained very little support....

'It seemed probable that there would be a Coercion Bill and a Land Bill, and that the Land Bill (although the resignation of the Lord Chancellor was threatened) would give what was known as "the three F's," and that the Government would insist on both Bills. [Footnote: The "three F's" were "Fair Rent" (_i.e._, judicially fixed rent), "Free Sale" (of tenant right), and "Fixity of Tenure."] The Lords would probably throw out the Land Bill, and the Government would resign....

'Chamberlain had dined with me on November 17th, and had given me late news of the condition of the Cabinet, which had been adjourned until Friday, the 19th.

'The division was really a division between the Commons' members on the one side (except Forster and Hartington, but with the support of Lord Granville), and Forster and Hartington and the Peers upon the other side; Lord Cowper, the Viceroy of Ireland' (who, although not a member of the Cabinet, had been called in for the occasion), 'making common cause, of course, with Forster....

'On the 19th the adjourned Cabinet was held; Forster was isolated, and all became calm. The Queen had telegraphed on the previous evening to Lord Granville in a personal telegram, in which she said that Mr.

Gladstone had told her nothing about the dissensions in the Cabinet, and that she "must request Lord Granville either to tell her what truth there is in the statement as to dissensions or to induce Mr.

Gladstone to do so!" Mr. Gladstone always held that the Queen ought not to be told about dissensions in the Cabinet; that Cabinets existed for the purpose of differing--that is, for the purpose of enabling Ministers who differed to thrash out their differences--and that the Queen was only concerned with the results which were presented to her by, or in the name of, the Cabinet as a whole. This seems reasonable, and ought, I think, to be the const.i.tutional view; but the Queen naturally ... hates to have personal differences going on of which she is not informed....

'On November 23rd I noted in my diary that Hartington ... had grown restive, and wanted to resign and get Forster to go with him, and that Forster talked of it but did not mean it. Kimberley and Northbrook had come over to Mr. Gladstone's side, and the other view was chiefly represented by Lord Spencer and Lord Selborne; and I could not help feeling that if, as I expected, the split with Whiggery had to come, it had better be this split, so that we should have the great names of Gladstone and Bright upon our side. One could not help feeling that we had no men to officer our ranks, and that really, besides Mr.

Gladstone, who was an old man, there was only Chamberlain....

Hartington was a real man, but a man on the wrong side, and with little chance of his getting rid of his prejudices, which were those, not of stupidity, but of ignorance; with his stables and his wealth it was useless to expect him to do serious work. Bright was a great name, and had a power of stringing together a series of sound commonplaces, so put that they were as satisfactory to the ear as distinct statements of policy would be; and had a lovely voice, but it was rhetoric all the same--rhetoric very different from Disraeli's rhetoric, but equally rhetoric, and not business.'

By November 25th the severity of the crisis may be gathered from a letter of Sir Charles's to Mrs. Pattison, which describes the grouping of forces.

On the one side were "Gladstone, Bright, Chamberlain, Granville, Harcourt, Kimberley, Childers, Dodson, Northbrook; on the other Hartington, Forster, Spencer, Argyll, the Chancellor." "Forster," he wrote, "talks about resigning, but does not mean it. It is _meaning_ it which gives us so much power."

'"If Chamberlain and I should be driven to resign alone, we shall have a great deal of disagreeable unpopularity and still more disagreeable popularity to go through." His old kinsfolk who cared for him were "hard- bitten Tories": Mr. Dilke of Chichester; his cousin, John Snook, of Belmont Castle; and Mrs. Chatfield, if she were still able to follow political events, would "badger him horribly." Worse still, he would have to endure "patting on the back by Biggar," to which he would prefer stones from "a Tory mob."

The lull in Cabinet troubles was only momentary:

'On December 10th, Chamberlain, the stormy petrel, came to stay. When we were at dinner there suddenly arrived a summons for a Cabinet to be held on Monday, instead of Thursday for which it stood, and we went off to Harcourt's. We found that he was not in the secret, and therefore decided that the Cabinet must have been called at the demand of the Queen on the suggestion of Dizzy, who was staying with her at this moment; "but it may have been called on account of Forster's renewed demand for coercion," as I noted.

'The next morning, December 11th, Lulu Harcourt came, and brought a note: "Dear Dilke, L. will tell you what he heard from Brett. It is odd that the Sawbones should know what we are trying to find out."

Lulu reported that Dr. Andrew Clarke had told Reggie Brett, Hartington's secretary, that Parliament was, after all, to meet before Christmas. When Lulu was gone, Chamberlain and I decided that if there was only a pretended and not a real change we would resign, whatever our unpopularity. In the afternoon of the same day Harcourt wrote to Chamberlain that he had seen Hartington; that Forster had written to Gladstone that he could not wait till January 6th' (for extended powers of coercion). 'Harcourt said that the reports were not much worse, and only of a general kind; that Hartington thought Forster worried and ill. "In fact, I think he is like the Yankee General after Bull Run--not just afraid, but dreadful demoralized. I have only one counsel to give--let us all stick to the ship, keep her head to the wind, and cram her through it. Yours ever, W. V. H."

'_Monday, December 13th._--... called before the Cabinet to find out whether the offer of Chamberlain's place would now tempt me to sell him! We won, after all!'

Mr. Forster had accordingly to wait till the New Year for the introduction of his Coercion Bill.

II.

A departmental change in the Foreign Office at this time greatly increased the responsibilities of the Under-Secretary. Complaint had become frequent in the House of Commons of an apparently insufficient representation of the Government in regard to commercial questions, which belonged partly to the sphere of the Board of Trade and partly to that of the Foreign Office, with unsatisfactory results. Lord Granville determined, on returning to office, to make a new distribution of duties, and to take advantage of the Under-Secretaryship being occupied by a Member of Parliament whose competence on commercial questions was universally recognized to place the commercial business of the Office more completely under his control--as supervising Under-Secretary. [Footnote: This arrangement continued in the Under-Secretaryship of Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Mr. James Bryce, Mr.

Robert Bourke, and Sir James Fergusson, but was subsequently altered. See also above, p. 314.]

'On Sunday, May 2nd, Lord Granville asked me to take over general supervision of the commercial department of the Foreign Office, and, although I should have preferred to keep free of all departmental work in order to attend to larger affairs of policy, I admitted that there were strong reasons for my taking the Commercial Department, inasmuch as the commercial members of the House of Commons were dissatisfied with its management, and because also it was certain that I should have to defend in the House of Commons treaty negotiations with foreign Powers, which would in any case force me to give much time to the consideration of commercial questions. When I first agreed to take over the Commercial Department, it was only with the view of keeping it for a short time, but I was unable to rid myself of it during the whole time I was at the Foreign Office, and it gave me heavy work.'

The first and chief instalment of this burden consisted in the negotiations for a new commercial treaty with France.

In January Dilke had learnt from Gambetta that M. Leon Say, late President of the Finance Committee of the Senate, would come to London as Amba.s.sador 'when the trouble about "Article 7" was ended.' [Footnote: See Chapter XX., p. 300.] It was in the month of May (when the "trouble" about M.

Ferry's attack on the religious Orders was by no means ended) that M. Say arrived, charged with an important mission, specially suited to his qualifications as an ex-Minister of Finance. France was revising her commercial policy; several commercial treaties, including that with Great Britain, had been only provisionally prolonged up to June 30th; and M. Say was instructed to try to secure England's acceptance of the new general tariff, which had not yet pa.s.sed the Senate. Gambetta and his friends still held to the ideals of Free Trade. M. Tirard, the Minister of Commerce, supported the same view, but there was a strong Protectionist campaign on foot.

M. Say arrived on May 5th, and on the 6th had his first interview with Sir Charles:

'At this moment I was showing my disregard for the old Free-Trade notions in which I had been brought up by my grandfather, and my preference for reciprocitarian views, by carefully keeping back all grievances with the countries with which we were negotiating upon commercial matters, in order that they might be thrown in in the course of the negotiations. On this ground I managed to cause the Colonial Office to be directed to keep all Gibraltar grievances in hand.

'Immediately on taking charge of the Commercial Department, I had sent a memorandum on the wine duties to Mr. Gladstone, who replied, "I have never yet seen my way to reduction below a shilling or to a uniform rate. _At present, we have not a sixpence to give away._ I do not like bargaining away revenue for treaties, or buying over again from France what has been bought already.... In my view the treaty of 1860 was exceptional; it was to form an accommodation to the exigencies of the French Emperor's position. _We_ never professed to be exchanging concessions, but only allowed him to say _he_ had done it. I am, of course, open to argument, but must say, as at present advised, that I see but very little room for what is called negotiating a commercial treaty."'

This was discouraging, since it came from the author of the treaty of 1860, who by lowering the duties on light wines had brought into general popularity the "Gladstone clarets"; and Mr. Gladstone's expression of opinion, renewed in a second letter of May 11th, caused M. Say to 'let me clearly understand that as Mr. Gladstone was unwilling to lower the wine duties, he should resign his Emba.s.sy and try to become President of the Senate,' then vacant by the resignation of M. Martel. In this he succeeded, much to the regret of Gambetta, who afterwards said to Dilke:

'"People never know for what they are fit. There was Leon Say, the best possible Amba.s.sador at London, who insists on resigning the Emba.s.sy in order to become a bad President of the Senate."'

But M. Leon Say, even in the act of resigning, advanced the possibility of a treaty. While visiting Paris in May, to promote his candidature, he 'attacked Mr. Gladstone so fiercely through the French Press for not offering to lower our wine duties that the Prime Minister, afraid to face our merchants, gave way.' In the supplementary Budget, proposed on June 9th, provision was made for a reduction from one shilling to sixpence of the duty on some wines. This new scale, however, was not to take effect unless compensating advantages were obtained from other countries.

France, of course, was not the only country concerned; and the Portuguese Minister, M. Dantas, wrote to Sir Charles holding out great prospects of expansion for British trade if Portuguese wines were let into the English market at a cheaper rate.

The Prime Minister first demurred, but finally agreed that the Portuguese might be asked--

'"whether, supposing fiscal conditions allowed us to give a great advantage to their wines between 26 and 36 degrees of alcoholic strength, they could engage for some considerable improvements in their duties upon our manufactures, and what would be their general character and effect?

'"The Spaniards appear to have been much less unreasonable in their demands. Please to consider whether the same question should be put to them. Both probably should understand that _we have_ no money, and should have to make it, so that their replies respectively would form a serious factor in our deliberations."

'Here, at last, I had got all I wanted. I merely begged leave to put the same questions at Rome and Vienna, and, obtaining his consent ("Pray do as you think best about Rome and Vienna.--W. E. G."), I went on fast.'

Cipher telegrams were despatched on May 28th to Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Austria--countries which produce strong wines more abundantly than France--inquiring what corresponding advantages would be offered for a change in the wine duties; and Sir Charles resumed his discussions with M.

Say, who had returned to London.

For a time there seemed hope of a settlement, based on a new cla.s.sification of wines; but when the bases of agreement arrived at were seen in France, there was violent opposition to the proposed countervailing 'amelioration,' which was construed to mean 'a lowering of duties upon the princ.i.p.al products of British industry.' Protectionist feeling ran too high to accept this.

While Lord Granville left commercial matters entirely to his junior colleague, every detail of every proposal had to be thrashed out with the Prime Minister, who was his own Chancellor of the Exchequer. In such a correspondence there was much for a young Minister to learn; there was also an opportunity for Mr. Gladstone to take the measure of a man whose appet.i.te for detail was equal to his own.

One of the minor difficulties lay in the fact that the Portuguese and Spaniards wanted changes in the wine scale, but not the same as those which the French required. Owing to the acc.u.mulation of obstacles, Mr.

Gladstone, on going into Committee with his Budget, dropped the proposed alteration in the wine duties for that year. But in October Sir Charles was sent to Paris in order to open the matter afresh, and on November 11th Gambetta 'promised commercial negotiations in January in London, and an immediate declaration in the Senate.' Beyond this nothing could be done in 1880. The details of this first phase of these long-drawn-out transactions will be found in a very full despatch written by Sir Charles on August 6th, 1880 (and published subsequently in the Blue Book 'Commercial Relations with France, 1880-1882'), which placed on record the whole of the dealings between himself and the two successive French Amba.s.sadors.

'On Tuesday, June 1st, Leon Say called on me to settle the words which he should use before a Commission of the Senate in answer to a question as to the new treaty. What I think he had really come about was as to his successor. Challemel-Lacour, a friend of Gambetta, had forced himself upon his Government; ... and Say came to tell me that Gambetta did not really want Challemel to come, but wanted Noailles, if an antic.i.p.ated difficulty with the Queen could be got over.'

The difficulty was not got over, and so the appointment stood. The Memoir gives another version of the story, which Sir Charles heard in 1896, when he was staying with his friends the Franquevilles at Madame de Sevigne's chateau, Bourbilly.

'Franqueville said that Lord Granville had told him that when the Queen refused Noailles, the French Government had not meant to send him, but that he had been proposed only in order that Challemel- Lacour should be accepted. Lord G. had said: "The fact is that I told them the Queen would not have Challemel. They said they must send him or no one. Then said I, Propose Noailles.... She will refuse Noailles, and, having done that, she will take Challemel! So it happened."'

'Stories were at once set afloat that Challemel had shot a lot of monks, and various other inventions about him were started.' [Footnote: He had been in authority at Lyons during the war.] Matters went so far that the Prince of Wales wrote through his secretary suggesting that Sir Charles should use his personal influence with Gambetta to have the appointment cancelled. Trouble broke out in Parliament, where one Irish member put on the order paper a question specifying all the charges against the new Amba.s.sador. The question having been (not without hesitation) allowed by the Speaker, Sir Charles gave a full reply, completely exonerating the new Amba.s.sador from all these accusations. This, however, did not satisfy Mr.

O'Donnell, who proposed to discuss the matter on a motion for the adjournment of the House. The Speaker interposed, describing this as an abuse of privilege, and when Mr. O'Donnell proceeded, Mr. Gladstone took the extreme course of moving that he be not heard. So began a most disorderly discussion, which ended after several hours in Mr. O'Donnell's giving notice of the questions which at a future date he proposed to put on the matter, but which were never put.

Gambetta wrote to Dilke on June 18th:

"Let me thank you from the bottom of my heart for the lofty manner in which you picked up the glove thrown down by that mad Irish clerical.

In my double capacity of friend and Frenchman, I am happy to have seen you at this work."

A few days later the Prince of Wales's secretary wrote to say that the Prince had received M. Challemel-Lacour, and found him very agreeable. On this Dilke comments:

'Challemel was delightful when he pleased; but he did not always please, except very late at night.'