Gladstone: A Biography

by Roy Jenkins

  With the 1884 bill the second Gladstone administration gave itself some claim to look the government of 1830 in the face. Without a franchise bill it might have been remembered for little more than invading Egypt, sending Gordon to his death and being dominated by, but not resolving, the Irish problem.

  Gladstone’s strategy of holding back franchise reform until towards the end of the Parliament was rational. A substantial change in the size and nature of the electorate undermined the validity of the House of Commons which carried it through. Once there was a new basis for an election it was difficult for long to avoid having one. It would hardly have been acceptable to carry franchise reform in, say, 1881 and then to expect a House elected on a superseded basis to carry moral authority into 1884 and 1885. This would have been particularly so in relation to the representation of Ireland, to the shape of which reform was expected to, and did, make a seismic difference. To enact a Reform Bill early would have been to throw away, like a bee which only had one sting in it, the great Liberal majority of 1880.

  But if such a strategy was rational it was also risky. By the start of the 1884 session the government, although barely four years old, was beginning to look fragile. It could not afford calmly to sit out yet another of the periods of political foul weather which, partly because of sheer ill luck and partly because of its lack of inner coherence, had mostly been its lot. Dilke summed it up by writing that ‘The Tory game is to delay the franchise bill until they have upset us upon Egypt. . . .’2One thing which would have greatly increased the fragility would have been the defection of Hartington and of the faction in both Commons and Lords which looked to his lead. But Hartington had by this time lost all enthusiasm for extending the franchise or indeed for any significant measure of reform.

  He was not naturally illiberal. In his first twenty years in the House of Commons he had effectively propounded a number of advanced measures, and in the last phase of his political life as a member of the Salisbury and Balfour Cabinets he was a focus of liberally inclined moderation compared with the clanging imperialism and harsh partisanship which Joseph Chamberlain had by then adopted. But towards the mid-1880s he had come to feel unconfident, unhappy and bunkered in a Liberal Cabinet in which Chamberlain and Dilke made so much of the argumentative running. He was reluctant to hand over to them the post-Gladstone future of the Liberal party, but he did not enjoy serving with them and he no longer felt that he could lead a party which struck a keynote of ‘constructive’ Radicalism. Harcourt had informed Dilke in January 1884 that if Gladstone went and Hartington took over as Prime Minister he intended to compensate for his own Whiggery by putting Dilke in the Foreign Office and Chamberlain at the Exchequer. That is exactly the sort of flattering gossip with which politicians when they are in a good mood like to regale each other. Such principal lieutenants would however have been a nightmare for Hartington, and in fact by 1884 Harcourt himself had become at least as likely a successor to Gladstone as Hartington (which was perhaps the reason why his mood was so benign).

  This created an interesting new nexus between Gladstone and Hartington. The Prime Minister might upset Hartington with his intermittent adventurousness on Ireland and with his lack of dependable imperial feeling abroad. But he had the great advantage that he was no more of a ‘constructive’ Radical (defined as one desiring increasingly to use the apparatus of the state to redress social inequality) than was Hartington himself. When at the beginning of the following year (1885) Chamberlain launched the ‘unauthorized programme’ (his own Radical agenda without blessing from leader or whips) and gave it a fierce cutting edge with the use of the memorable and provocative phrase ‘and what ransom will property pay?’, he ruffled the feathers of Gladstone almost as much as he did those of Hartington. Furthermore, although Hartington was relatively undazzled by Gladstone, the GOM nonetheless had even for him the unique venerability of being the Prime Minister under whom he had served his whole ministerial career. He was used to him. If Hartington, increasingly sceptical about his own ability to lead the new Liberal party, was to continue in a Liberal government (which he half wanted to do), then he preferred that it should be under Gladstone rather than under anyone else. He did not want a franchise bill and in particular he did not want one without a redistribution of constituencies. This was mainly because he saw the enfranchisement of agricultural labourers unaccompanied by redistribution (to which the Tories were strongly attached) as leading straight to a disruptive conflict with the House of Lords. He was also dismayed by a scenario in which Gladstone got the franchise bill through, used the achievement as a suitable moment for retirement and left him (Hartington) to deal with redistribution and see the Whig interest trampled upon by Dilke and Chamberlain.

  Gladstone on the other hand wanted the franchise bill and judged that he could not get it through without Hartington. This was his view without foreseeing the Gordon débâcle. Hartington played an inglorious part in this, but his withdrawal from the government would nonetheless have made more dangerous Dilke’s perception of ‘the Tory plan to upset us upon Egypt’. Gladstone was willing to countenance redistribution (although he never felt much enthusiasm for destroying old constituency patterns), but he had far too much political sense to put it in the same bill with franchise enlargement. This would be to walk into a quagmire. He might as well try to cross the sands of Dee from Hawarden to the Wirral. The detail would be immense. If the opposition could block franchise extension as well as redistribution they would have no incentive to get on with the latter. And Gladstone had had more than enough experience of failed bills in the previous two sessions. There was no opportunity for compromise with Hartington here. The franchise measure had to be kept separate.

  Gladstone was indeed half looking for a favourable plateau upon which to retire, and seemed likely to regard the achievement of the third Reform Act of the century, without regard to whether it was accompanied by redistribution, as providing such a piece of level ground. Much of his own talk and apparent thoughts was directed to looking forward to the moment of release. And its early arrival was the assumption of those closest to him. On 9 November 1883, for example, Edward Hamilton wrote: ‘Went this evening to Lord Mayor’s dinner. One thought it was any odds that last year’s dinner would be Mr. G’s last; but here we are again. But this must be his final one.’3 So Hartington’s fears were not ill founded, and his reaction to them was sufficiently strong that in the first half of December the general ministerial assumption was that he would do a pre-emptive resignation before the Queen’s Speech in February, fatal although such a Hartington withdrawal might prove to the government.

  Fortunately, however, there was one possible avenue of compromise, and this was a postponement of the date of Gladstone’s retirement, an issue on which the GOM was always disposed to be flexible. And so, just after Christmas, the knot was untied. Gladstone went to London on New Year’s Eve and had a two-and-a-half-hour tête-à-tête with Hartington, a remarkably long-drawn-out occasion given Hartington’s taciturnity and Gladstone’s need to persuade and not just to harangue. However, it worked. Franchise reform would be the main measure for 1884, redistribution for 1885, and Gladstone would remain in the leadership to see through the latter as well as the former. On this basis Hartington would also stay for the time being, although by no means committing himself for the duration.

  The franchise bill had a relatively easy Commons passage. Gladstone moved its second reading on 28 February in a speech which the devoted but not always uncritical Hamilton described as being unsurpassed ‘for lucidity of exposition, for lightness in touch, for beauty of arrangement, for wealth of language, and for vigour and power’.4 What was of more interest, however, was Hamilton’s description of Gladstone’s 1880s approach – rather different from his earlier habits – to a major parliamentary speech:

  Mr G. saw the Attorney General early this morning and for about two hours devoted himself to arranging the materials for his Reform speech. His notes for an expounding speech of
this kind are quite a sight – so clear and tidy. It is remarkable that he can always tell how long a speech will be.111 I asked him this morning what the length would be, and he said an hour and 40 minutes; and it was within 5 minutes of that time. He went out for a little after luncheon. It is in walking that he thinks out his speeches, and I have no doubt that in taking his turn this afternoon, he rehearsed the plan of his speech and the words of his peroration. Half an hour before he went down to the House he was calmly reading a book (Mrs Roundell’s: Family of Cowdray, which is interesting him) – and sipping a cup of tea.5

  The result of the division which followed that debate was a solid majority of 340 to 210. There were then twelve committee nights, modest by some experiences of the time, with no serious upsets or narrow shaves. What for many, particularly Hartington, was the most controversial corner, the equal treatment of Ireland, was rounded by the even more massive majority of 332 to 137.

  On issues other than the Irish franchise Gladstone took a conservative, or it could be argued a non-diversionary, approach. He refused the enticements of proportional representation. And on women’s suffrage, which at one stage threatened to run strongly, he employed overkill. He authorized his Chief Whip to tell Liberal MPs that if the votes-for-women amendment were carried the bill would be dropped and the government would resign. Gladstone’s statement continued: ‘This does not imply any judgement on the merits of the proposal, but only on its introduction into the Bill. I am myself not strongly opposed to every form and degree of the proposal, but I think that if put into the Bill it would give the House of Lords a case for “postponing” it and I know not how to incur such a risk.’6 Eventually the dreaded amendment was defeated by a majority of over a hundred, although with three members of the government (including Dilke from within the Cabinet) abstaining. On third reading on 26 June the opposition did not divide the House: true to the tradition of 1867 the Conservatives were hesitant about recording themselves in direct hostility to franchise enlargement.

  Gladstone, who had already made a speech which even Hamilton described as ‘more rattling perhaps than judicious’,7 immediately insisted that the Journals of the House should most unusually note the nemine contradicente result. This quick-footedness was due as much to tactics as to triumphalism. The next move lay with the House of Lords, and Gladstone wished to subject them to as effective as possible a preliminary barrage. This was not because he wished to provoke a conflict between the two Houses. Others, most notably Chamberlain, welcomed such a prospect, but Gladstone both feared a dispute which could endanger the hereditary principle and wanted the bill on the statute book as soon as possible. He made the most strenuous efforts to maximize government support in the Lords. He even brought it home to Tennyson that there is no such thing as a free peerage. The Laureate, who eventually repaid him with a chiding poem (‘Steersman, be not precipitate in thine act’) was at first loath to pay his debts with the harder currency of a vote. Eventually, however, after two Gladstone letters to himself, as well as one to his son and another to his wife, he gave way ‘despite gout’.

  The bishops, on whom Gladstone was equally pressing, were less trouble. After consultation with Benson of Canterbury he wrote to twelve of them, mainly those who had been his own nominees to the bench, and was gratified that all but Stubbs of Chester (and of medieval charters) sent friendly replies within two days. In fact ten of the twelve, plus another two (Thomson of York and Temple of Exeter, later of Canterbury) whom Gladstone had not approached, voted for the bill. Only one bishop (Ellicott of the then united see of Gloucester and Bristol) voted against. Altogether it was much more favourable an episcopal performance than anything which Asquith was able to achieve in the disputes between the two Houses of a generation later. Gladstone, of course, did not attempt to crack a party whip over their mitres, but concentrated, with different letters tailor-made for each bishop, on the high constitutional issues and the dangers to the House of Lords which were involved.

  There was also a good turnout of Liberal peers, effectively for the last time. There was never subsequently any major party vote in the House of Lords before life peerages came in seventy-four years later in which the Conservative majority was not overwhelming. It was an end-of-term speech day for the old Liberal-Whig party in which those participating did not realize that it was not merely the term which was ending but the school which in its existing form was to be shut down. Nevertheless the Tories had a majority of 205 to 146 for Salisbury’s motion of outright rejection. However, quite a few of the 205 thought that Salisbury’s ‘leap in the dark’ had been rash and were muttering that they were not prepared to vote for a second rejection. This was moreover likely to be a matter of early practical import, for the government’s plan, announced by Gladstone two days after the Lords vote, was to bring Parliament back in late October, to re-present the franchise bill, and to follow it with a redistribution of seats bill provided there was a scheme sufficiently agreed between the two sides to offer the prospect of reasonable parliamentary progress.

  Compromise was therefore lurking in the background right from the moment of the Lords’ intransigence. But before this could come to the surface a noisy overture of denunciation and counter-denunciation between the politicians had to be played out. And while this was going on in public a still more intensive and at the beginning equally implacable exchange was taking place in private between the Queen and Gladstone. The doubts of some of the more moderate Tory peers about the wisdom of Salisbury’s lead were in no way shared by their Sovereign. The Queen thought that the Lords had every right to reject the bill, opined that they represented ‘the true feeling of the country’ better than did the Commons, and acceded only reluctantly to the proposal for an autumn session, saying that she thought ‘a more fair & judicious course’ would have been to seek the opinion of the country by dissolution, thereby provoking Gladstone to remark to Hamilton that the logic of her argument really led to the abolition of the House of Commons.

  Moreover the Queen settled down to a summer in which she appeared to read obsessively every speech made by a member of the government, senior or junior, and many by backbenchers as well, and write and complain to Gladstone about them. Between 10 July and the end of August he had to write to her no less than sixteen letters, amounting to a total of nearly 4000 words, wearily explaining, excusing, and occasionally half apologizing for what she regarded as the excesses of his colleagues.

  Mainly it was Chamberlain who was to blame, but Dilke and even Herbert Gladstone, the GOM’s thirty-year-old son, attracted a share of the opprobrium. The Prime Minister on the whole showed admirable restraint under this burden, but he did permit himself a late-July expostulation that: ‘Your Majesty will readily believe that he [Mr Gladstone] has neither the time nor the eyesight to make himself acquainted by careful perusal with all the speeches of his colleagues. . . .’8Nor was he himself spared her partisan criticism. When he made a few speeches in Scotland in mid-September, some of them admittedly a little close to Balmoral, she wrote to her private secretary, ‘. . . the Queen is utterly disgusted with his stump oratory so unworthy of his position – almost under her very nose’.9 Fortunately the emollient – and Liberal – Ponsonby, so far from passing this on, wrote to Gladstone wishing him rest ‘after your most successful visit to the North’.10

  Despite or perhaps half because of these trials and burdens Gladstone found time in mid-August to write a most formidable memorandum for the Queen. He heralded its importance by referring to it in a covering note as ‘a paper which goes beyond the ordinary limits of his official submissions’. The core was contained in the following paragraphs:

  21. The House of Lords has for a long period been the habitual and vigilant enemy of every Liberal Government. . . .

  22. It cannot be supposed that to any Liberal this is a satisfactory subject of contemplation.

  23. Nevertheless some Liberals, of whom I am one, would rather choose to bear all this for the future as it has been borne i
n the past, than raise the question of an organic reform of the House of Lords. The interest of the party seems to be in favour of such an alteration: but it should, in my judgement, give way to a higher interest, which is national and imperial: the interest of preserving the hereditary power as it is, if only it will be content to act in such a manner as will render the preservation endurable.

  24. I do not speak of this question as one in which I can have a personal interest or share. Age, and political aversion, alike forbid it. Nevertheless, if the Lords continue to reject the Franchise Bill, it will come. . . .

  26. I wish [an hereditary House of Lords] to continue, for the avoidance of greater evils. These evils are not only long and acrimonious controversy, difficulty in devising any satisfactory mode of reform, and delay in the general business of the country, but other and more permanent mischiefs. I desire the hereditary principle, notwithstanding its defects, to be maintained, for I think it in certain respects an element of good, a barrier against mischief. But it is not strong enough for direct conflict with the representative power, and will only come out of the conflict sorely bruised and maimed. Further; organic change of this kind in the House of Lords may strip and lay bare, and in laying bare may weaken, the foundations even of the Throne.11

  Sir Henry Ponsonby’s letter of acknowledgement indicated that this powerful document may have had some favourable effect upon the Queen. October produced a spate of oratory. Salisbury was uncompromising in Glasgow. The appearance of Randolph Churchill and Stafford Northcote in Birmingham provoked a riot (from the organization of which Chamberlain was not far distant). Hartington, Harcourt and Mundella addressed a reform demonstration ‘under the windows’ at Chatsworth (that was perhaps even more the finale of the Whig–Liberal party than the July vote in the House of Lords). Hartington’s speech there was robust, although it neither incurred the censure of the Queen nor rivalled Chamberlain’s provocations about ‘the insolent pretensions of an hereditary caste’. It was John Morley, however, not then a member of the government but a rising backbencher, who coined the neatest of the anti-peers slogans. ‘Mend them or end them,’ he said, must be the policy, thereby going far beyond Gladstone’s attempt to confine the controversy to the enormity of the Lords’ actions and to avoid raising issues of their composition or powers.