The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume II Part 30

There were, however, friends who considered that the new inst.i.tutions established by Mr. Ritchie's Act opened a way back into public life for Sir Charles. Among these was Mr. Chamberlain. He was, as usual, corresponding with Sir Charles, during his absence abroad, on all matters, and an interesting letter is noted here.

'In, I think, May, 1888, while we were at Royal, I received a letter from Chamberlain in which he indicated a change in his views upon the South Africa question. Ultimately he completely turned round from his old position, which was violently anti-Dutch, and, like everyone else, fell into line upon the principle of the fusion of race interests in South Africa.'

'On our return Chamberlain came down to Dockett and spent the afternoon, bringing Austen with him, and very strongly urged that the time had now come when I should stand for Parliament. I said that I thought that the time would come, but that, after India, I had _Problems of Greater Britain_ to write before I thought about it. He then urged that I should stand for the County Council in my absence in India, and as to this point a great difference of opinion arose, I being inclined to accept his advice, which was also very strongly pressed upon me by my former colleague Firth; my wife and G. W. Osborn strongly took the opposite view, to which I yielded. I afterwards came to think it had been the right view. Chamberlain pressed his opinion very hotly to the last. I received a deputation from Fulham which represented the entire Liberal and a portion of the Conservative party, and the seat would certainly have been won; but I declined, and Chamberlain then wrote: "You must be the judge, and are probably the best one. But I yield reluctantly."'

This decision was made public in answer to the Fulham deputation just before Sir Charles started on a journey to India.

In February, 1889, after his return to England, he was confronted with a new proposal. The Progressive party now in power on the London County Council desired to put him forward as one of the first Aldermen. Sir Charles refused; but a preliminary circular in reference to his candidature had been issued, and a protest was immediately organized by the section which desired his permanent ostracism. This opposition was then formidable in its proportions, and it never wholly disappeared. It was, however, increasingly clear that a much stronger body of public opinion desired his return to public and Parliamentary life.

In March, 1889, he was elected Honorary President of the Liberal Four Hundred in the Forest of Dean. The election did not pa.s.s without challenge, and one of the objectors was the Rector of Newent (Canon Wood). Sir Charles sent this clergyman the papers in the divorce case, which had been collected by Mr. Chesson [Footnote: Mr. Chesson had died earlier in this year; and the token of Sir Charles Dilke's grat.i.tude to this defender of unpopular causes is commemorated in the High-Altar of Holy Trinity Church, Upper Chelsea, which he presented in memory of his friend. Sir Charles wrote: 'He had been for many years a useful man in politics, and he was to me at this period a very precious friend; one of the best and truest men I ever knew; he had been the most helpful man in England to the anti-slavery cause of the Northern Abolitionists, the working man of the Jamaica Committee, and, many years afterwards, of the Eastern Question a.s.sociation, and of the Greek Committee; and since his death no one has taken his place.'] and his a.s.sociates, and a study of them turned the Rector of Newent into a strong supporter of the man whom he had at first denounced.

Dilke's first visit to the Forest of Dean took place in May, 1889. By this time it was clear that his absence from Parliament could be terminated at his own pleasure. Mr. Gladstone had intervened almost officially in the matter. In June, 1889, he again sent for Sir Henry James, who transmitted the purport of his talk: which was that, while Mr. Gladstone was most anxious to see Sir Charles back, his opinion was that steps should not be too quickly taken. Sir Henry thought that Mr.

Gladstone would willingly give his opinion and advice if Sir Charles thought that would be of any value to him. A few weeks later Mr.

Gladstone called at 76, Sloane Street, but missed Sir Charles.

'In August he wrote to me in regard to his correspondence with James. The most important pa.s.sage in the letter was:

'"I deeply feel the loss we sustain in your absence from public life, after you had given such varied and conclusive proof of high capacity to serve your country; and I have almost taken it for granted that with the end of this Parliament, after anything approaching the usual full term, the ostracism could die a kind of natural death. And I heartily wish and hope that you may have lying before you a happy period of public usefulness."'

Sir Charles was in no hurry. Another invitation had reached him, from Dundee, and 'on November 4th a unanimous request to contest the borough of Fulham.'

But his determination was to let nothing interrupt the work on his book; after that, various promises both of writing and speaking had to be redeemed.

Meanwhile he remained in touch with the political world. 'I carried on a controversy with Labouchere about his views in favour of reforming the House of Lords, to which I was bitterly opposed, preferring, if we could not get rid of it, to go on as we are.' All Labouchere's letters were full of references to the position of Chamberlain, and Chamberlain himself came from time to time to discuss that point.

'On December 2nd, 1889, I saw Chamberlain. On October 10th he had told me that he was clear that ultimately he should join the Conservatives, unless Mr. Gladstone were soon to go and a Rosebery-Harcourt combination would come to terms with him about Ulster. On December 2nd I found a little change back from his general att.i.tude, and in face of the probable break-up of the Parnellite party over the O'Shea case, which was beginning to be talked of in detail, Chamberlain was undecided, he said, and no doubt thought, between the two parties. But I noted in my diary: "Labouchere sets him against the Liberals, and Balfour attracts him to the Tories." It was clear that I thought that the change was but a temporary one, and that he was certain to return to his att.i.tude of October, as in fact he did.'

_Problems of Greater Britain_ appeared at the end of January, 1890, and within a month the edition was exhausted. In America, Sir Charles, expecting censure, had arranged to reply in the _North American Review_ to his censors; but there was so little adverse comment that he chose another subject.

Discussion of military problems abounded in the book, but the 'Problems'

treated were by no means only those which concerned military experts.

Mr. Deakin wrote:

'It will not merely be the one book treating authoritatively of the Empire, and the one book making it known to Britons in Europe, but it will also be the first book enabling the various groups of colonies to understand each other, and their individual relation to the whole of which they form a part.... Knowing some of the difficulties you encountered ... I have been completely amazed at the skill or the intuition with which you have caught the right tone of local colours and the true tendency of our political and social life.'

'On July 23rd, 1890, I lunched with McArthur [Footnote: Mr. W. A.

McArthur, Liberal Whip and member of Parliament, who had made Sir Charles's acquaintance in 1886, and become a warm personal friend.]

to meet Schnadhorst, who had returned from South Africa, and who warmly pressed my standing at the General Election, and I allowed myself to be persuaded so far as to promise that I would consider the matter in connection with the offer of any first-rate seat.'

Different const.i.tuencies were mentioned; but in the following October, when it became known that the then member for the Forest of Dean would not stand again, Mr. Schnadhorst wrote at once to Sir Charles urging him to let his name be put forward. He added, as an indication of the general feeling, that the adjacent const.i.tuency of South Monmouthshire had also sent in a request for Sir Charles's services--'which should a.s.sure you that popular support will overwhelm any other influence.'

Accordingly, at the end of this year Sir Charles saw a deputation of leading men from the Forest, and fixed a date on which he would give a reply to a formal invitation. Having spent Christmas in his house at Toulon, he returned thence in February, 1891, met a further deputation, and agreed to give his public reply in the Forest in March.

In December, 1890, Chamberlain had concurred in the decision that, before Dilke accepted any candidature, there should be published a digest of the case with annotation and with the new evidence, 'which had grown up out of Chesson's notes, and which was largely the work of Howel Thomas, Clarence Smith, Steavenson, and McArthur. This was published in February, 1891, on my return.' [Footnote: In 1886 he had written: 'In the course of this winter a committee of friends of mine, got together by Chesson, and containing Steavenson (afterwards Judge Steavenson), and Howel Thomas of the Local Government Board, but also containing W. A.

McArthur, M.P., Clarence Smith, ex-Sheriff of London and Middles.e.x, afterwards M.P., and Canon MacColl, who were mere acquaintances, or less, had begun to investigate my case with a view of getting further evidence.']

'The Cinderford meeting (the central town of the Forest) on March 9th, 1891, was unanimous, and after it we remained chiefly in the Forest of Dean for a long time. I had promised to give my final reply in June. At the meeting of March I had only stated that if, after all the attacks which might be made upon me, they should remain in the same mind, I would accept.'

Sir Charles was fortunate in his new const.i.tuency. Throughout England there was no other so suited to him; he desired contact with large bodies of labouring men, and the Forest made him a representative of that great and typical British Labour group, the miners. He loved 'each simple joy the country yields,' and, whereas almost everywhere else a mining district is scarred, defaced, and blackened, here pit-shafts were sunk into glades as beautiful as any park could show, forest stretches of oak and beech enveloped that ugliness in green and gold, and from many a rising ground you might look over the broad vale where the wide Severn sweeps round a horseshoe curve and the little, unspoilt town of Newnham stands set in beauty, winter or summer.

Newnham was dear to Sir Charles, and there he stayed for visits in winter. But the place of his most frequent and prolonged abode in his const.i.tuency was the Speech House, built in the very heart of the woodland, remote from any town, yet at a centre of the communal life; for outside it, on a wide s.p.a.ce of sward, the Forest miners held their yearly meeting, their 'speech-day.' The miners' interest, which he represented, was not of recent growth, nor arising out of some great enterprise of capital; it linked itself with those rights of commonage of which he had always been a chief champion, and appealed not only to the radical but to the antiquarian in him. The 'free miners' privileges marked only one of many ancient customs in that Crown domain which he studied and guarded.

As in 1867 and 1868 he had made it his business to be sure that the electors whose votes he sought should know his opinions, so far as possible, not on one subject, but on all, so now in 1891, at his meetings throughout the const.i.tuency, he unfolded the whole of his political faith.

He developed in speech after speech the views which he had put forward in _A Radical Programme_, published in 1890, and in a great speech at Glasgow on March 11th of that year. His views on Housing, as given in his Glasgow speech and afterwards dealt with in his Forest campaign, show how far he was in advance of the recommendations made in the Report of the Royal Commission on Housing of the Poor.

'As chairman of that Commission, I had to instruct the secretary working with myself to draw such a report as would at least obtain a majority upon the Commission, and we succeeded in drawing a report that obtained a unanimity of votes; but, of course, to do so we had to put forward the points in which we felt that many would concur, and to keep out our most extreme suggestions. I personally would go much farther, and would allow towns to build or hire or buy, and would encourage them to solve the problem for themselves, and not ask the State to help them, except by setting free their hands and allowing them to obtain land cheaply and to tax themselves freely for the purpose.... Gladly would I see towns armed with the powers to destroy, without compensation, in extreme cases, filthy dwellings, where it is proved to the satisfaction of the magistrates that the owners are in fault, and the sites of such dwellings might be obtained by a cheap process. In all cases we ought to give powers to public bodies to take land for public purposes at a fair price ... and by the adoption of the principle of betterment ... owners would be called upon to make special contribution towards schemes which would improve their property at large.'

He dwelt on the sufferings of the working cla.s.ses owing to improvements which ejected them from their dwellings, and urged that the Local Authority should in all cases come to terms as to rehousing before granting any facilities for improvements.

For land he advocated taxation of unearned increment and fixity of tenure under fair rents fixed by judicial courts, with power to the community to buy up land at its real price.

He also advocated, not only the limitation of hours of work, a principle to which he had been converted by the Industrial Remuneration Conference of 1885, but that the workers should be qualified for the enjoyment of their leisure by educational opportunities. He urged the example of Switzerland in making education compulsory up to sixteen years of age, and that of Ontario in granting free education up to the age of twenty-one.

He advocated munic.i.p.al Socialism, by giving to munic.i.p.alities the widest possible power to deal with local needs, and, pa.s.sing from local expenditure to that of the State, he dealt with the need for graduation of Imperial taxation, and urged the equalization of the death duties (as between real and personal estate) and making these duties progressive.

He would raise them gradually to 25 per cent. By such means we should attain the double purpose of raising money and discouraging the possession of large estates, which are the cause of the existence of a too numerous idle cla.s.s.

Adult suffrage and one man or woman, one vote, was always a part of his programme.

In his utterances the change from individualism to collectivism is marked. 'We were all Tory anarchists once,' he used to say in reviewing economic theories of the sixties, and the change which had come over the att.i.tude of economists to social questions. His own conversion was so thorough that in industrial questions he acted often as a pioneer, and his const.i.tuency adopted his views on the limitation of hours by legislation as in the demand for a legal eight-hour day. [Footnote: Speeches in Forest of Dean and elsewhere (1890-1891). _Radical Programme_, 1890.]

He had laid it down as a condition of acceptance of the candidature for the Forest that there must be 'full and absolute belief' in him and in his word. Time was given for the personal attack to develop, and it was made by pamphlet propaganda with unsparing virulence, but entirely without result. Not a dozen Liberals in the division declared themselves affected by it; and 'on June 11th, 1891, I gave my consent to stand for Parliament at a meeting held at Lydney, which was extraordinarily successful and unanimous.'

The chair was taken by Mr. Thomas Blake, who had been member for the division, and who in the darkest hour of Sir Charles's political life had come forward with a proposal to resign and make way for him. He was there now to say that, if Sir Charles would stand, he himself would act as unpaid election agent. On the platform were all the leading Liberals of the Forest, among them Canon Wood of Newent, whose opposition had been turned into strenuous advocacy. There also was 'Mabon' to speak for himself and the Welsh miners, and from the outside world Mr. Reginald McKenna, an inseparable friend. Sir Charles's speech, which he counted to have been the best of his life, dealt briefly with the leading political topics of the day--Home Rule and the Radical programme--but soon pa.s.sed to the personal issue. He recalled the change from the murky dreariness of March to the height of summer loveliness which reigned about them, and the change no less great in the moral atmosphere. He reviewed the history of the attacks that had been made, the avowed determination to prevent his being their member; and at the close he declared himself satisfied that their trust was fully his. 'My conditions have been fulfilled. I accept the confidence you have reposed in me. I trust that strength may be given to me to justify that confidence, and I reply--not for a day, nor for a year, but from this day forward, for better for worse; and thereto I plight my troth.

To-morrow we go forth from among you and commit our honour to your charge.'

He was justified in the confidence which he reposed in them. One attempt was made to raise the personal issue against him; and its result showed that any man would be imprudent who sought to oppose Sir Charles Dilke in the Forest of Dean except on strictly political grounds. First and last no member of Parliament ever got more loyal support; but no man ever trusted less to personal popularity. He carefully developed the whole electoral machinery. The month which he spent every autumn in the Forest was very largely a month of work on the detail of registration, and the register as he caused it to be kept might be put forward as an example of perfection unapproached elsewhere in Great Britain.

'A day or two afterwards I received at a public meeting at Chelsea Town Hall an address signed by 11,000 inhabitants of Chelsea, congratulating me on my return to public life. It was signed by persons on both sides of politics. In reply, I made another good speech; but it was a great occasion.'

Among the letters which reached him from all quarters was one from Sir Henry Parkes, who wrote:

'Chief Secretary, New South Wales, 'Sydney, _March 9th_, 1891.

'I still hold the belief that few men have before them a broader path of honourable usefulness than you. May you succeed in n.o.bly serving the dear old country!'

He received now and henceforward many invitations to address labouring men, especially from the miners of Great Britain.

At Cannock Chase, in August, 1890, he attended his first miners'

meeting. How rapidly the list increased may be judged by the fact that, speaking in July, 1891, at Ilkeston, he alluded to his conferences with miners of Yorkshire, of Lancashire, of Cheshire, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Monmouthshire, Staffordshire, and the Swansea and Neath districts in England and Wales, and of Fife and Ayrshire in Scotland.

Attempts had not been wanting to stimulate against him the strong puritanism of these people, especially in South Wales; the answer had come from men like Tom Ellis, [Footnote: Mr. Thomas E. Ellis was a Liberal Whip at this time.] who brought him to address the quarrymen of Blaenau Festiniog, or like Mabon--William Abraham--miner, bard, and orator, who organized a gigantic torchlight procession of his own const.i.tuents in the Rhondda Valley to welcome Sir Charles and Lady Dilke, and who, at Lydney, when Sir Charles finally accepted their invitation, congratulated the Forest of Dean on having secured the services of 'one who was not only a political leader, but a real Labour leader.'

Parliamentary action in favour of an Eight Hours Bill formed the burden of Sir Charles's discourse at all these meetings. Accepting a special invitation to the annual conference of miners in the beginning of 1892, he dealt with the proposal, then strongly advocated, of a general international strike, pointing out that this measure 'should not be even talked about until they had seen the exhaustion of all other means of obtaining what they wanted.' It meant civil war; would 'disorganize the whole economic condition of the country and the trade of the Empire, and produce also a great feeling of exasperation between cla.s.ses.' He pressed them to consider whether, in the event of such an international conflict, the whole brunt would not fall on Great Britain. In Belgium and in France there was no such strength of organization as among them; and a general strike succeeding in Great Britain, but failing on the Continent, would be a national danger. He proposed, as an alternative, co-operation with the British representatives of other trades, for whom also Parliamentary interference was demanded. In the discussion which followed, the weight of his argument was fully recognized, and a resolution favouring the international strike was amended into one calling for Parliamentary action.

In the following June Sir Charles Dilke attended the Miners'

International Congress, and spoke at the banquet given to foreign delegates. A month later, when the General Election came on, 'thousands of handbills and posters,' says Mr. Thomas Ashton, 'were sent to the Forest of Dean by our federation recommending the workers to vote for the working man's candidate.'

Nor were his public utterances on Labour questions limited to Great Britain; request came from a society of the Belgian economists for a lecture on some subject connected with Greater Britain, and he chose the Australian strike and the position of Labour in the Colonies. This discourse was delivered by Sir Charles in Brussels on his way back from France at the beginning of 1891, and he then, he says, 'made the acquaintance of all the leading people on both sides in that city.'