Asquith
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Asquith’s solution of this potentially tiresome problem was regarded as the first success of the Government and earned him a spate of congratulation. Rosebery, who was always rather a radical in London, was particularly forthcoming. “To have pleased The Times and the Star and indeed everybody,” he wrote, “ may rank with the achievements of Hannibal in crossing the Alps or of Orpheus charming his miscellaneous congregation.” The Queen, however, did not respond with the other members of this miscellaneous congregation, but informed the Home Secretary of her dislike and distrust of the new arrangement.
Asquith’s next major decision made him less popular with radical opinion, and so far from giving the Government another triumph, led to its first parliamentary storm. In January, 1893, the Parnellite rump, under the leadership of John Redmond, raised an agitation for the release of fourteen Irish “ dynamiters,” who had been imprisoned since the early ’eighties. The Government’s majority was such that pressure from any part of its normal support was a serious matter. Nevertheless, Asquith’s review of the sentences, conducted on the austere principle that no valid distinction could be drawn between crimes of violence committed for political motives and those committed for more personal reasons, decided that no remission was desirable. “ The result of my examination,” he wrote, “ was that I was left without a shadow of doubt as to the guilt, or as to the propriety of the conviction and sentence, of any one of the prisoners.”b
The Parnellites pressed the matter to the extent of putting down an amendment to the address at the opening of the Government’s first session of Parliament, and Asquith had to reply, on February 9th, in his maiden speech as a minister. This he did in an early example of what was later to be known as his “ sledge-hammer ” technique. In a long speech, he reviewed each of the cases with a devastating and unyielding logic. It was an impressive first appearance at the despatch box, but it was received with an equal if not greater enthusiasm on the other side of the House as on his own. “ Mr. Arthur (Balfour) rushed up to dinner immediately afterwards in one of his rare moods of ringing enthusiasm,” Mrs. Grenfell wrote to Asquith, “ and told us all about it, nearly word for word—and then I got this scribbled line from another of their side 41 know it will interest you to hear that Asquith stepped this evening into the ranks of the very few, the five or six men, one is proud to reckon as compatriots. His speech was magnificent, of the greatest ability and highest courage. . . . ’ I am so overjoyed and proud to hear them all overflowing with admiration, so proud of my little square-inch of your dear friendship,” she concluded.
The speech was also admired on the Government benches. Its arguments made it easier for some radicals to vote against the amendment. But Justin McCarthy, the leader of the anti-Parnellite Nationalists, who also had to vote for the Government if it was to survive and produce its Home Rule Bill, complained publicly that Asquith had “ shut the gates of mercy with a clang ”; and John Morley, without dissenting from the Home Secretary’s line, told him privatelyc that he might have been less “ cassant.”
Asquith’s next big speeches in the House (but he was not now so successful at avoiding minor ones as he had previously been: in the summer of 1893 he wrote complaining of “nearly 9 hours at the
H. of C. . . . (sitting) hour after hour through dreary discussions on Supply ”) were on February 23 rd when he introduced a Welsh Suspensory Bill, designed to pave the way for Welsh Church Disestablishment, and on April 14th when he intervened in the eight-day debate on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill. His speech on the first occasion was notable chiefly for the fact that he provoked the wrath of the Queen, who wrote to Gladstone complaining that Asquith had “ admitted ” that the Welsh bill was merely a first step to the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England.
Gladstone sent the letter on to Asquith with the characteristic comment: “ The enclosed is in no way formidable except that it will entail on me the necessity of writing rather a long letter.” He added: “ Her Majesty’s studies have not yet carried her out of the delusive belief that she is still by law the ‘ head ’ of the Church of England.”c The Welsh Bill was not proceeded with at this stage owing to the rapacious demands on time made by the Irish one.
Asquith’s connection with the Home Rule Bill was not an intimate one. He had not been a member of the Cabinet committee (Gladstone, Morley, Spencer, Herschell, Campbell-Bannerman and Bryce) which drafted it, but his name was printed on its back because of his departmental position. Partly for this reason and partly because of his debating strength he was asked to speak on second reading. But once he had done so, and delivered what The Times described as “ perhaps as good a case for his clients as anyone who had yet spoken on the same side,” his responsibilities were mostly at an end. Gladstone, indeed, was himself so indefatigable throughout the long committee stage that even Morley, let alone ministers less directly concerned, was largely overshadowed. Nevertheless Asquith had to be present throughout most of this parliamentary struggle, magnificent as a last display of Gladstone’s fighting powers but dismal because of the general conviction that ultimate failure was inevitable. His attendance was dictated not only by the narrowness of the Government’s majority but also by the practice of the time, which demanded from ministers a much more constant House of Commons attendance on subjects other than their own than is usual today.1
1 “ When I am ill,” said Harcourt, “ I am in bed. When I am not, I am in the House of Commons ”; but he was an even more assiduous parliamentarian than most of his contemporaries.
The bill completed its slow progress through the House of Commons early on the morning of September 2nd, when it received a third reading by a vote of 307 to 267. Six days later the peers refused it a second reading by 419 to 41, proportionately the worst showing, on a major question, which any Government has ever made in the House of Lords. Gladstone was for an immediate dissolution on the issue, but he could not carry his colleagues with him. They thought that, in the phrase of the time, “ the cup had to be filled up ” with English rather than Irish legislation before the electorate could be appealed to with any hope of success; and Asquith, despite the fact that an Employers’ Liability Bill,1 to which he had devoted great effort during the session, had been so mangled by the Lords that abandonment seemed the better course, fully agreed with the majority of the Cabinet. Gladstone was therefore forced to acquiesce, although the combined result of the Lords’ vote and his colleagues’ reaction to it was a fatal blow to his last political hopes. His premiership continued for another six months, but its purpose and authority came effectively to an end on September 8th, 1893.
1 It was designed to get rid of the last traces of the doctrine of common employment, by which a workman was inhibited from suing an employer for injury suffered as a result of the negligence of a fellow employee.
Asquith was occupied during part of that summer and autumn with a particularly nasty “ law and order ” incident. A protracted coal strike in the North of England led to sporadic rioting and some damage to property in parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire. The local magistrates asked for police reinforcements. Asquith transmitted their requests to other local police forces and also, in his capacity as head of the Metropolitan force, sent 400 London policemen to the area. This led to no improvement in the situation, and the magistrates began to send repeated requests to the Home Office for the use of troops. On September 3rd the Home Secretary sanctioned such an application, and a platoon of the Queen’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry was present at Featherstone colliery, near Wakefield, four days later. Asquith’s own account of what then occurred is as follows:
A magistrate was present with the troops; he made no fewer than seven appeals to the crowd, who were armed with sticks and bludgeons, to discontinue the work of destruction, much valuable property being already ablaze; the Riot Act was read; a bayonet charge was unavailingly made; and as the defensive position held by the small detachment of soldiers (fewer than thirty men) was becoming unt
enable, and the complete destruction of the colliery was imminent, the magistrate gave orders to the commander to fire. Two men on the fringe of the crowd were unfortunately killed.e
The two Coroner’s juries which held inquests on the dead men came to different conclusions. The one thought that there had been sufficient reason for the troops to open fire, the other not. The incident was first raised in the House of Commons on September 20th, the day before the adjournment after the continuous sittings of the summer.
Asquith gave a firm reply insisting that the responsibility for the preservation of order lay with the local authorities and that it would have been wrong, with the less adequate information at his disposal, to have refused their requests. He did not attempt to judge between the conflicting verdicts of the two juries. For this purpose, and to investigate the whole matter, he set up a Special Commission composed of Bowen, Haldane, and Sir Albert Rollit, a Tory M.P. and solicitor. This Commission heard evidence at Wakefield and produced a report which was notable to the public for completely exonerating the magistrates, officers and troops, and to lawyers for formulating with great precision the respective duties of the civil and military authorities at times of public disorder.
This was not the end of the matter. Had Asquith not been so “ cassant ” he might have chosen a less intellectually distinguished but more politically appeasing Commission. But that was not the way his mind worked. He saw no harm in appointing his closest friend as the one “ left-wing ” member, or his old master as the chairman, because it did not occur to him that they could be other than impartial, and he did not see why it should occur to others either. It was an example of his persistent tendency to be a little too concerned with what may be called “ Athenaeum opinion ” and not sufficiently concerned with a more general and less urbane public. In any event “ Featherstone ” pursued him throughout the middle years of his career and earned him a measure of working class unpopularity much as “ Tonypandy ” did with Winston Churchill nearly a generation later. “ Why did you murder the miners at Featherstone in ’92? ” someone shouted at him at a meeting many years afterwards. “ It was not ’92, it was ’93,” was his characteristic reply.
The cool determination with which he discharged most of his judicial duties at the Home Office did not extend to his decisions about the reprieve of murderers. To say that he was an “ abolitionist ” Home Secretary would be to misunderstand either the state of public opinion at the time or Asquith’s desire to run ahead of it. He was not a man for the pursuit of hopeless causes. But he disliked the death penalty, both because of its presumptuous finality and because of its ghoulish associations; and his responsibility for the exercise of the prerogative of mercy caused him great unease. One of the most difficult cases concerned a man who was hanged at Liverpool Jail on January 4th, 1893. The nature of the crime was not such as to raise the question of a reprieve, but there was persistent doubt as to identity. Was the man who was to be hanged the murderer? Asquith wrote Mrs. Horner an anguished letter on January 3rd, but he did not halt the processes of the law. Later, he told his daughter, he received a letter from the priest who had taken the condemned man’s last confession, telling him that he had nothing with which to reproach himself. When this story was published by Lady Violet Bonham Carterf some time after her father’s death, it aroused a storm of Roman Catholic protest. The letter was not left amongst Asquith’s papers.
Gladstone resigned as Prime Minister on March 3rd, 1894. He had been in dispute with his colleagues since January 9th, when in an argument with Lord Spencer about the size of the naval estimates he had been supported only by Shaw-Lefevre, the First Commissioner of Works. He had then retired to Biarritz for three weeks, but showed no desire to give way while there. Nor did the other ministers. Asquith recorded in his diary for January 13th: 44 Lunch with Harcourts. Talk with H. and Loulou.1 We agreed that we could make no proposals. Best chance to trust to time and Atlantic breezes.” But the main result of the Atlantic breezes, according to Sir Algernon West, was to produce in Gladstone a growing conviction that all his colleagues, except Shaw-Lefevre, were 44 mad and drunk.” The real cause of the dispute, of course, was something deeper than the question of economy in naval expenditure. Had this been the only point at issue Harcourt would hardly have found himself opposed to the Prime Minister. But on Gladstone’s side there was the constant desire to embroil the Government in a struggle to the death with the House of Lords over Ireland. 44 After breakfast to A. Morley’s,2 where was A. West just back from Biarritz with Mr. G’s latest,” Asquith wrote in his diary for February 7th. "He proposes an immediate dissolution—pretext being action of H. of Lords on our Bills; we all agreed that this is madness.”3 On the side of the other ministers there was the growing conviction that Gladstone was no longer either physically or mentally capable of presiding over the Government. The 44 gradual closing of the doors of the senses,” which he had first mentioned in 1892, was gathering momentum.
1 Lewis (later 1st Viscount) Harcourt, Sir William’s son by his first marriage.
2 Former Chief Whip and then Postmaster General.
3 Accusations of insanity were freely exchanged between the Prime Minister and his Cabinet at this stage.
Asquith wrote later that “ Mr. Gladstone’s resignation was entirely his own act” g and this was no doubt formally true. But Asquith himself, like most other ministers, had come to the conclusion by early January that it was time for the act to be committed. His admiration for Gladstone had been unconfmed. To the end of his life he thought him the greatest man with whom he had ever worked. But he knew how rapidly Gladstone’s judgment was failing. In consequence, he made no attempt to cling to the Grand Old Man during this Lear-like period. His relations with Gladstone had been based on high mutual respect, but hardly upon great personal intimacy. And this was a time when those who had been far closer, Morley particularly, and Rosebery too, were convinced that the moment for resignation had come.
Gladstone at last made his decision known to his colleagues on February 27th, and on March 1st he attended his final Cabinet and made his last speech in the House of Commons. What happened at this Cabinet—the “ blubbering Cabinet ” as Gladstone subsequently referred to it—was described by Asquith many years later: “ Before the Cabinet separated, Lord Kimberley (the senior member), who was genuinely moved, had uttered a few broken sentences of affection and reverence, when Harcourt produced from his box and proceeded to read a well-thumbed ms of highly elaborated eulogy. Of those who were present there are now few survivors; but which of them can forget the expression of Mr. Gladstone’s face, as he looked on with hooded eyes and tightened lips at this maladroit performance? h
Asquith wrote to Gladstone a day or two later, and was proud of the letter which he received in reply. “ The future is in my mind a clouded picture,” it ran: “ but I am glad that the prolongation of my political life has given me an opportunity of helping the arrangements under which you have taken your stand in political life. I well remember the impression made upon me by your speech at the Eighty Club, the first time I ever saw or heard you. It has since been, of course, deepened and confirmed. Great problems are before us: and I know no one more likely to face them, as I hope and believe, not only with a manly strength, but with a determined integrity of mind. I most earnestly hope that you may be enabled to fulfil your part, which will certainly be an arduous one.”i
The succession was not a certain one. In spite of the naval estimates,
Gladstone, had he been asked, would have recommended the Queen to send for Lord Spencer. But he was not asked. And, indeed, biased and bitter though the Queen had been in most of her later dealings with him, this omission was neither unconstitutional nor unreasonable. It was not desirable that a Prime Minister who was in effect being forced out by colleagues who venerated his past, but no longer trusted his judgment, should be allowed to choose his own successor. Spencer would have been a most inadequate choice. The “ red earl ” as he was known (owing t
o the colour of his beard rather than the nature of his political views) had no great powers either of intellect or leadership, and no following in the Liberal Party. Spencer commended himself to Gladstone because he was an old Whig aristocrat whom he had known for many years, and one of the very few in this category who had not deserted him over Home Rule.
The more serious claimants were Harcourt and Rosebery. The former—the Great Gladiator as he was sometimes called in those enthusiastic days—was nearly twenty-five years Rosebery’s senior and had a much wider experience of office. Furthermore, he had the advantage of being in the Commons. A peer Prime Minister, as Salisbury showed, was then by no means impossible, but it was faintly ludicrous for the head of the Government to sit in a House in which he could muster only 41 supporters. In addition, Harcourt’s “ Little England ” views were more popular in the Liberal Party than Rosebery’s imperialism. For all these reasons, Harcourt would almost certainly have been the choice of a majority both of Liberal members of Parliament and of the party’s active supporters in the country. Against this Rosebery had three sources of strength, two of them useful and the third decisive. The Queen wanted him; the Liberal press was on the whole on his side; and his Cabinet colleagues, while not perhaps burning with enthusiasm at the prospect of his leadership, were clear that, as the head of a tottering Government, he was much preferable to Harcourt.1