The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume I Part 48

The Memoir continues: 'On May 3rd Chamberlain, who had decided to take the Irish Secretaryship if offered to him, was astonished at having received no offer. At 11.30 p.m. on the same day, the 3rd, I found that the appointment had been offered to and declined by Hartington; but the offer to, and acceptance by, his brother, Lord Frederick Cavendish, came as a complete surprise both to me and to Chamberlain.

'In the night between May 4th and 5th the Queen telegraphed to Harcourt: "I can scarcely believe that Davitt, one of the most dangerous traitors, has been released without my having been consulted, as I was in the case of the three members." The fact was that Harcourt had so impressed upon the Queen the wickedness of Davitt, at the time when he withdrew Davitt's ticket-of-leave, that it was rather difficult for him to explain to the Queen his very sudden change of front.

'On the 5th I had an interview with Mr. Gladstone as to royal grants.

I carefully abstained from giving any pledge as to future action, and at the Cabinet of the 8th' (after Lord Frederick Cavendish's murder), 'when the question of my being offered the Chief Secretaryship with the Cabinet came up, Mr. Gladstone stated to the Cabinet that I remained unpledged.

'On May 6th I heard from Brett and from the d.u.c.h.ess of Manchester that Hartington had proposed me in the Cabinet for Chief Secretary, with a seat in the Cabinet, and that both Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville had said: "Dilke won't do." The d.u.c.h.ess asked me what this meant, and I said that it was the Queen's objection on account of the Leopold grant, which it was; but Mr. Gladstone was glad to give Spencer his own way without a Chief Secretary in the Cabinet.'

At half-past six that afternoon, May 6th, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr.

Burke, the permanent Under-Secretary, were murdered in the Phoenix Park, within sight of the Viceregal Lodge.

'On the night of May 6th the scene at the party at the Admiralty was most dramatic. Mrs. Gladstone had come there from a dinner party at the Austrian Emba.s.sy, not knowing of the murder, while everybody else in the room knew. At last she was sent for suddenly to Downing Street to be told, and went away under the impression that the Queen had been shot, for she was a.s.sured that it was very dreadful, but "nothing about Mr. Gladstone."

'Early on Sunday morning, the 7th, Parnell came to see me with Justin McCarthy. He was white and apparently terror-stricken. He thought the blow was aimed at him, and that if people kept their heads, and the new policy prevailed, he himself would be the next victim of the secret societies. [Footnote: In the letters of Justin McCarthy to Mrs.

Campbell Praed (_Our Book of Memoirs_, p. 97) there is an account of what happened in London on that Sunday. There was a gathering of Irish leaders at Parnell's rooms.

"Then Parnell and I talked together, and we thought the best thing for us--we two--was to go and consult some of our English friends. We started out, and went first to see Sir Charles Dilke. Our impression was that either Dilke or Chamberlain would be asked to take the post of Irish Secretary. Indeed, the general impression was that either one man or the other would have been asked at the time when Lord Frederick Cavendish was appointed.... We saw Dilke. He was perfectly composed and cool. He said that if Gladstone offered him the post of Irish Secretary, nothing that had happened lately would in the least deter him from accepting it....

"He went on to say that he was a Home Ruler _quand meme_; that he would be inclined to press Home Rule on the Irish people, even if they were not wholly inclined for it, because he so fully believed in the principle, whereas Chamberlain would only give Home Rule if the Irish people refused to accept anything less. But on the other hand, Chamberlain was an optimist in the matter, and thought he could do great good as Irish Secretary; and he (Dilke) was not so certain, seeing the difficulty of dealing with the Castle and the permanent officials, and therefore they agreed that as far as they were concerned it was better Chamberlain should go.

"He said, 'If Chamberlain goes, he'll go to smash things'--meaning the Dublin Castle system.

"Then we went to Chamberlain and had a long talk with him. We found him perfectly willing to go to Ireland, but he said he must have his own way there and he would either make or mar--by which we understood the Castle system...."]

'On this day, May 8th, I noted that I thought it most unlikely that Mr. Gladstone would send Chamberlain to Ireland, inasmuch as to do so would be to admit that he had been wrong in not sending him in the previous week. To Grant Duff I sent the reason for Mr. G.'s decision: "Spencer wishes the policy to be _his_ policy, and does not want his Chief Secretary in the Cabinet." At three o'clock Chamberlain sent a note across to me from the Cabinet: "Prepare for an offer." I was somewhat surprised at this, because Chamberlain knew that I would not take it without the Cabinet, and that I would take it with the Cabinet, whereas his note seemed to imply a doubt. At four he came across himself, and the first difference that had ever occurred between us took place, because although he knew that I would not accept, he urged acceptance of the post without the Cabinet. He argued that it carried with it the Privy Council, that it established great personal claims upon the party, and that it afforded a means of getting over the difficulty with the Queen. I declined, however, without hesitation and with some anger. It was obvious that I could not consent to be "a mere mouthpiece." Mr. Gladstone and Lord Carlingford then sent back to say, personally from each of them, that I was to be present at the Cabinet at every discussion of Irish affairs; and I then asked: "Why, then, should I not be in the Cabinet?" Carlingford came back to the Foreign Office again and again, and cried over it to me; and Lord Granville came in twice, and threatened me with loss of prestige by my refusal, by which I certainly felt that I had lost Mr. Gladstone's confidence. I was angry with Chamberlain at having placed me in this position.... Had he acted on this occasion with the steadiness with which he acted on every other, he would have told the Cabinet that the offer would be an insult, because he knew that this was my view. The ground on which the refusal of the Cabinet was put to me was the impossibility of having both myself and Spencer in the Cabinet. Lord Granville came in finally, and said in his sweetest manner (which is a very disagreeable one) that he had vast experience, and had "never known a man stand on his extreme rights and gain by it." This I felt to be a monstrous perversion of the case, and I was glad on the morning of the 9th to find that my reasons were very fairly stated in the _Standard_, the _Telegraph_, and the _Daily News_. Chamberlain had seen Escott of the _Standard_, and Lawson of the _Telegraph_, and I had seen Hill of the _Daily News_.

'That the Cabinet position towards me was dishonest is shown by the fact that they had given Lord Spencer Cowper's place when they had still reason to suppose that Forster was going to continue in the Irish Secretaryship and in the Cabinet, and had afterwards asked Hartington to take the Chief Secretaryship.

'An honourable (I trust) defence of myself is in a letter in the possession of Grant Duff under date "May 5th, closed on 11th."

The letter to Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, which has separate brief jottings on May 5th, 6th, and 7th, has so far been reproduced almost textually from Sir Charles's Memoir. The rest runs as follows:

"_8th_.--Mr. Gladstone is determined not to send Chamberlain to Ireland, and does not want a Chief Secretary in the Cabinet, and to send Chamberlain and so have a Chief Secretary in the Cabinet would be to admit that the decision of last week was wrong. I, of course, refused to go. I should have had to defend any policy that Spencer chose to adopt without having a voice in it. Acceptance would not have been only a personal mistake; it would have been a political blunder.

Outside the Cabinet I should not have had the public confidence, and rightly so, because I could not have had a strong hand. I should have inherited acc.u.mulated blunders, and I was under no kind of obligation to do so, for I have never touched the Irish Question. Never have I spoken of it from first to last. Many of the measures rendered necessary by the situation are condemned by my whole past att.i.tude; but they have really been made inevitable by blunders for which I had no responsibility and which I should not have been allowed to condemn.

"Yours ever,"

"CHS. W. D."

"Closed on 11th."

He wrote also this month in a letter to Mrs. Pattison:

"In a matter of this sort it is essential to have the look of the thing in view, when a question of personal courage is involved. Of course, I know that I have personal courage, but the public can only judge from the look of things. The reason why Chamberlain even doubted if I ought not after the murder to go--though I was not to have gone before it--lay in the doubt as to how the public would take the look of it. It has turned out right, but it might have turned out wrong. If the public had gone the other way, I should have said I ought to have taken it, and resigned."

But, as Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff pointed out when replying to the letter of May 11th, in the state of things then existing in Ireland a Minister could hardly have resigned without the gravest embarra.s.sment to the Government, and he cordially approved Sir Charles's refusal: "You could not have accepted the Secretaryship without a seat in the Cabinet." That refusal was also approved and understood by the heir to the Throne:

'On the 8th the Prince of Wales wrote to me through Knollys to ask me as to the Chief Secretaryship, and on my informing him how matters stood, replied: "If you had accepted the post without a seat in the Cabinet, your position, especially at the present moment, would be a very unsatisfactory one. If the policy, whatever it is, prove a success, I doubt whether _you_ would have obtained much credit for it; and if it turned out a failure, you may be quite sure that a great deal of the blame would fall upon you without your having been responsible for the initiation of the steps that were adopted."'

The Phoenix Park murders having immediately followed the appointment of Lord Frederick Cavendish, those who had always pressed for further powers of police now a.s.serted themselves with vehemence. Sir William Harcourt spoke strongly on Ireland and the necessity for coercion in the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone, in whom the Radicals had always found a mainstay against these tendencies, was broken in spirit and suddenly aged. All relations in the Cabinet were jarred and embittered, as the successive entries in this Memoir show:

'In the night between May 11th and 12th the Irish, although angry at Harcourt's coercion speech, sent O'Shea to Chamberlain at 3 a.m. with the olive-branch again.

'On May 13th Mr. Gladstone again stated privately that he intended to give up the Exchequer on account of his advancing years.

'On this day the Cabinet unanimously decided to give an extradition treaty to Russia--to my mind a most foolish proposal.

'On Monday, May 15th, Mr. Gladstone sent Chamberlain to O'Shea to see if Parnell could be got to support the new Coercion Bill with some changes. When Harcourt heard of this, which was done behind his back, he was furious, and went so far as to tell me: "When I resign I shall not become a discontented Right Honourable on a back bench, but shall go abroad for some months, and when I come back rat boldly to the other side." This reminds me of Randolph Churchill on Lord Derby, "A man may rat once, but not rat and re-rat."

'On Tuesday, May 16th, Mr. Gladstone wrote, on Chamberlain's suggestion, to Harcourt to try to smooth him over, and proposed a Cabinet on the matter for the next day, Wednesday, May 17th, at which Harcourt declared that if any change was made in the principle of his Coercion Bill he would resign; but then n.o.body knew what was the principle of the Bill. At this Cabinet Harcourt ... told the Cabinet that the Kilmainham Treaty would not be popular when the public discovered that it had been negotiated by Captain O'Shea, "the husband of Parnell's mistress." He informed the Cabinet that ... after this it would hardly "do for the public" "for us to use O'Shea as a negotiator." I wrote to Grant Duff on this day (closed 18th) as to Parnell's relations to Mrs. O'Shea as disclosed in Cabinet.

'On Friday, May 19th, Lord Derby said to me: "You were right to refuse the Chief Secretaryship; still Mr. Gladstone must say to himself: 'Surely I am about to die, for I am not obeyed.'" On Monday, the 22nd, Mr. Gladstone was very strongly in favour of accepting Parnell's privately suggested amendments to the new Coercion Bill, obtained through O'Shea, but Hartington going with Harcourt against touching the Bill, Mr. Gladstone got no support except from Chamberlain.

'On May 25th Chamberlain was anxious to resign on account of Harcourt's position as to coercion; but the fit pa.s.sed off again.

'On June 5th I noted in my diary that I heard that Goschen was soon to be asked to become Chancellor of the Exchequer.

'On the 9th Lord Granville told me that the hatred of Mr. Gladstone for Goschen was such that he had point blank refused to make him Chancellor of the Exchequer; but this proved to be untrue, for an offer was as a fact made to him, although perhaps very privately.

'At this time I received a letter from Lord Ripon in India as to the Kilmainham Treaty, in which he said that he was convinced that Forster's policy had completely broken down, and went on: "But between ourselves is not the Government still ... on a wrong track in its coercive measures? I do not like the suspension of trial by jury....

Again, if Reuter is right, it is proposed to take a power to expel dangerous foreigners. I am too much of a Foxite to like an Alien Bill, and, besides, if you are not very careful, the expulsion of foreigners will land you in a very disagreeable state of relations with the United States." These, I noted, were exactly the arguments which Chamberlain was using against Harcourt without avail.'

II.

On June 11th Mr. Chamberlain wrote that the Cabinet had decided on some important changes in the Prevention of Crimes Bill, and that things looked better.

But on that day the Alexandria riots took place, and opinion was sharply divided as to the measures which should be taken. Here Sir Charles Dilke, and with him Mr. Chamberlain, were strongly for forcible action, while Mr.

Bright, who in the matter of Ireland had come round towards the side of coercion, opposed the use of force in Egypt. On July 5th there was a stormy meeting of the Cabinet, which two days later had its echo in public.

'Mr. Gladstone, mixing Ireland and Egypt together, broke out in the House of Commons on July 7th, and afterwards privately told his colleagues that he intended to resign!'

The occasion of this outbreak was a debate on the Prevention of Crimes Bill, which the Tories were seeking to render more drastic. The Prime Minister declared with emphasis that if coercive powers which he did not seek were to be thrust upon him, he must "consider his personal position."

The words were at once in debate construed as a threat of retirement, and there was a critical position in the Cabinet.

'Bright would follow Mr. Gladstone; and Chamberlain and I decided that if this were so, although we were against him about Egypt, which would be one of the causes of his resignation, we must go with him all the same and refuse to join the new administration. Although I concurred in this view, after discussion, it was not mine. On this occasion I thought it was our duty to stay. But after discussion, as I have stated, I came round to Chamberlain's view so far as this--that we decided that we would not join the new Government if Mr. Gladstone were outside it in the House of Commons; although the case might be different if he quitted political life or went to the Lords, and if we were satisfied with the new bill of fare.

'At this moment Chamberlain and I were anxious to get Courtney into the Cabinet, and Mr. Gladstone having asked us, after Playfair's worst mess, if we thought Courtney would take the place of Chairman of Ways and Means, we told him that we thought he would only if it was understood that it was not to lessen his chances of obtaining Cabinet office. [Footnote: Sir Lyon Playfair, Chairman of Committees, had suspended eighteen Irish members on July 1st.]

'When the House met at nine o'clock [Footnote: This means after the dinner interval, for which at this time the House used to adjourn.] on Friday, July 7th, I sounded Trevelyan' (then Chief Secretary for Ireland) 'as to his course, and found him most anxious to stop in at all hazards. I then saw Childers, who had walked home with Hartington at seven. He said that he had urged Hartington not to form a weak Whig Administration, and had told him that if Chamberlain would stay he, Childers, would go on, but that he thought that to go on without Chamberlain would be fatal, and that it would be far better to let the Tories come in, and help them through with Egypt, and then make them go to their const.i.tuents. At ten o'clock Grosvenor came and told me that he thought that Mr. Gladstone would stay on. Chamberlain, who still thought that Mr. Gladstone would resign, told Hartington that in the event of the formation of a new Liberal Ministry he should insist that Goschen should not be put in, and that the vacancies should be filled up by myself, Courtney, and Trevelyan. At midnight the storm had blown over.'

A Bill to prevent eviction for arrears of excessive rents had been demanded by the Nationalist party as a necessary amendment to the Land Act of 1881, and it had been introduced by the Government, and was carried through _pari pa.s.su_ with the new measure of coercion. It was furiously opposed by the high Tories, and a new crisis seemed imminent.

'On Monday, July 10th, it again seemed probable that Mr. Gladstone would resign. The intention of the Lords to throw out the Arrears Bill, at Lord Salisbury's dictation, was loudly proclaimed, and it was said by Mr. Gladstone's friends that Mr. Gladstone would at once resign, and that if Lord Salisbury refused to form a Government, Mr.

Gladstone would retire from public life. Chamberlain was determined then to insist with either Lord Granville or Lord Hartington for myself, Courtney, and Trevelyan, on the ground that a Liberal Government with a Whig Prime Minister must be Radical.'

It was the apprehension of such an increase of power to the Radicals that made the threat of Mr. Gladstone's resignation formidable both to Whigs and Tories.

Mr. Gladstone, however, did not resign, though Mr. Bright did, after the bombardment of Alexandria had taken place. On the contrary, by July 12th,