VII. 1879. BOOK present position. I learnt that a private meeting had been held at Devonshire House in the morning. I believe Hartington, Granville, Cardwell, Adam, and Harcourt were present. My impression is that the advice Adam gave as to the elections, was that 'union in the party at this moment would not be promoted by a change of front.' I do not mean to say that the question of leadership was actually discussed, but I suspect the conversation turned somewhat upon the point which you place 'third' in your letter to Bright. To sum it all up, I do not think you will at present be troubled by any application to you from Granville and Hartington.1 The third point in the letter to Mr. Bright was the question whether a liberal government under Mr. Gladstone would not be exposed to a special degree of hostility, due to the peculiar antagonism that his personality excited. In a later letter (December 20), Wolverton tells Mr. Gladstone that in the conversation of the 16th, Lord Granville raised the point you made your third in your note to Bright, and that he did converse upon at some length, evidently having real fears that many of our weak-kneed ones would feel some alarm if Hartington went from the front now, and that the tories would intensify this to the uttermost. I think this was all.' Another sentence indicates Lord Wolverton's own view : Lord Granville is not sanguine as to the future. As you know, he is always inclined to 'temporise'; this is his line now, and he is perhaps right. You know my fear was that without your name in front, the battle at the election would be fought at a great disadvantage. But I see the immense difficulty of a change of front now, even if they desired it and you consented to it. This you also feel, I know. To all this Mr. Gladstone replied to Wolverton as follows: Hawarden, December 18, 1879. 1 Lord Selborne (Memorials, i. 471) says that Lord Granville reported to him (Dec. 21), that Lord Hartington at this meeting wished to insist upon Mr. Gladstone resuming the lead, but that the rest were, for the present I thank you much for your at all events, against any such step. Lord Granville's own view was that the question, like many other ques tions, would have to be solved ambulando. LORD WOLVERTON'S REPORT 603 VII. letter. What you report yourself to have said is quite satisfactory CHAP. to me. If Granville said more than you had mentioned, anything that fell from him would be acceptable to me. When I saw your ET. 70. envelope, I felt a dread lest the contents should be more substantive; a relief came on reading them. But these communications are useful, as they give distinctness to ideas, and through ideas to intentions. I may state mine as follows: 1. My ears are shut against all the world, except it were Granville and Hartington. 2. And even to them unless they spoke together, and in clear and decisive language. 3. They are the judges whether to speak, as well as when to speak. But as an individual, I am of opinion that there is not a case for their speaking now. 4. Were they to speak now, and as I have defined above, I should then say let us have nothing more than a formula, and let the substance of it be that by the nature of things no man in my position could make beforehand an absolute renunciation, and that the leadership in the next parliament must, like everything else, be considered in connection with what may appear at the dissolution to be the sense of the country, but that my action individually has been and will continue to be that of a follower of Lord Granville and Lord Hartington. One thing I would ask of you as a fast friend. If you think that in anything I fall short by omission or commission of perfect loyalty as a member of the party, I beg you to tell me. II As usual with him, these grave political preoccupations were not engrossing, but only a part of the day's task. He carried on a pretty profuse correspondence, he worked hard on his favourite diversion of arranging books and papers, he gave much thought and time to estate matters with his eldest son, with him too he felled now a chestnut, now a sycamore; he corrected the proofs of his speeches and wrote an article for Mr. Knowles; he read books and articles about Eleusis, and the Hebrew migration from Egypt, and the Olympian system, and Newman on the Eirenicon, and Westcott on St. John, and somebody else upon St. Thomas Aquinas. For two or three days he was partially disabled by a low faceache: the reaction after heavy pressure, under which VII. 1880. BOOK I received from the mercy of God such remarkable support." In the middle of January alarming accounts came from his sister Helen, who lay dying at Cologne. Thither he sped with his eldest brother and his sister-in-law. They found life fast ebbing, and four days after their arrival the end came, in the midst of pious exercises and affectionate care. They were satisfied that she had been 'freely restored to the unity of spirit and the bond of peace,' and had died not in the actual Roman communion. A few days after his return home he records: Wrote a long memorandum of the evidence in regard to dear Helen's religious profession.' The remains they bore to Fasque, and by the end of the month he was again at Hawarden, once more at work with his eldest son upon the accumulated disorder,' and the rest of the round of his familiar employments. Among other things he read Cowper's Task-the fifth book very noble in its moral strain; and another entry will interest many, — Feb. 15. Read the biography of noble Dora Pattison. How by reflex action it stings. . . . Butler), death was terrible.' He was haunted,' he writes, 'with recollections of Sister Dora.' Then after a Sunday passed in church exercises, and skimming many theological books,' on February 23 he left Hawarden with a heavy heart.' ... Yet even to her (like Bishop He quickly found himself in the London whirlpool, attending conclaves of his political friends, dining out, seeing Irving in the Merchant of Venice (his best, I think'), speaking once or twice in the House, and twice at London meetings in St. Pancras and Marylebone, where the popular enthusiasm made even his most hardened critics begin to suspect that the tide had really turned since the days when the Londoners mobbed him in the street and broke his windows. CHAPTER VIII THE FALL OF LORD BEACONSFIELD (1880) IN causa facili cuivis licet esse disertum, -Ov. Trist., iii. xI. 21. In an easy case any man can plead, and against shattered walls the puniest strength prevails; 'tis the overthrow of standing towers and frowning ramparts that tests manhood. Ær. 71. AT last one day (March 8) when Mr. Gladstone was 'writing CHAP. a little on Homer,' he heard the fated news that the VIII. dissolution was announced. Lord Beaconsfield published the famous letter to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, and in deep accents and sonorous sentences endeavoured to make home rule the issue of the election. Shrewd politicians, with time to reflect, found it not easy to divine why the government had chosen the particular moment. It might be, as some supposed, that they thought the opposition had lately got into bad odour with the country by coquetting with home rulers, as shown by the elections at Liverpool and Southwark. But, in fact, little importance was to be attached to these two defeats of the opposition, for Liverpool had always been conservative, and Southwark was thoroughly disorganised by liberal divisions. The general opinion seems to be,' says Speaker Brand (Mar. 15), 'that the opposition may gain slightly at the general election, but not to an extent to break down altogether the conservative majority.' 6 In what was in effect his election address, Lord Beaconsfield warned the country that a danger, in its ultimate VII. BOOK results scarcely less disastrous than pestilence and famine, distracted Ireland. A portion of its population was en1880. deavouring to sever the constitutional tie that united it to Great Britain in that bond which was favourable to the power and prosperity of both. It is to be hoped,' he went on, that all men of light and leading will resist this destructive doctrine. The strength of this action depends on the unity of feeling which should pervade the United Kingdom and its widespread dependencies. The first duty of an English minister should be to consolidate that cooperation which renders irresistible the community educated, as our own, in an equal love of liberty and law. And yet there are some who challenge the expediency of the imperial character of this realm. Having attempted and failed to enfeeble our colonies by their policy of decomposition, they may perhaps now recognise in the disintegration of the United Kingdom, a mode which will not only accomplish, but precipitate their purpose. . . . Rarely in this century has there been an occasion more critical. The power of England and the peace of Europe will largely depend upon the verdict of the country. . . . Peace rests on the presence, not to say the ascendency of England in the councils of Europe. Even at this moment the doubt supposed to be inseparable from popular elections, if it does not diminish, certainly arrests her influence, and is a main reason for not delaying an appeal to the national voice." To this manifesto Mr. Gladstone, with his usual long pains. in the drafting of such pieces, prepared his counterblast. He went with direct force to what Lord Beaconsfield had striven to make the centre of his appeal: In the electioneering address which the prime minister has issued, an attempt is made to work upon your fears by dark allusions to the repeal of the union and the abandonment of the colonies. Gentlemen, those who endangered the union with Ireland were the party that maintained there an alien church, an unjust land law, and franchises inferior to our own; and the true supporters of the union are those who firmly uphold the supreme authority of parliament, but exercise that authority to bind the |