Gladstone: A Biography

by Roy Jenkins

  The breakdown of the vote, as well as its overall shape, was at once remarkable and profoundly unsatisfactory to Gladstone. Not a single bishop voted for the Bill, whereas both archbishops, the senior trio of London, Durham and Winchester, together with no less than seventeen other diocesans, voted against it. Many of these, including both Canterbury (Benson) and York (Maclagan), had of course been appointed by him. Nor did any duke vote for the Bill, although twenty-two (an almost incredible turn-up) voted against it. So did Gladstone’s nephew Lyttelton, as well as, amongst those with whose persons or titles Gladstone had been closely associated, Ampthill, Rothschild and Wolverton (newly succeeded, not Gladstone’s old Whip). On the other hand the heirs to Granville, Russell and Northbourne (James) remained loyal. So did Acton.

  It was an enormity, but it was one which had become so widely discounted in advance, with the subject so exhausted by discussion, that the result was received with calm, almost with boredom. Magnus wrote that ‘not a dog barked from John O’Groat’s to Land’s End’. What was even more surprising was that Gladstone hardly growled. He did not mention the result in his diary, either for that day or for the next. He received a visit from Sir Henry Ponsonby, who came over from Balmoral. But Ponsonby was more concerned to discuss the burning question of whether the Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria’s second son who had succeeded as Duke (and princeling) of Coburg could continue to keep the whole or part of his British civil-list allowance, which subject did indeed occupy not only Gladstone but Harcourt and Rosebery as well for a considerable part of the autumn. Ponsonby also, Gladstone noted, ‘brought a message half inviting me to a limited visit [to Balmoral], which I think is well meant’15 – but was not taken up. Neither Prime Minister nor private secretary sought a constitutional discussion. Gladstone’s other occupation that day and the next was to read the official life of W. H. Smith, the stationer–politician, which should have been reasonably calming.

  It is sometimes alleged that Gladstone proposed an immediate dissolution but was frustrated by his colleagues. There is no evidence for this, although what is certainly the case is that had he proposed it he would have been so resisted. But he did not. And the facts that he neither went to London nor summoned a Cabinet until the first days of November are a firm indication to the contrary. His tactics were subtler and different from that. He knew that he could not mount a successful electoral indictment of the Lords on the Irish issue alone. During the general election of 1892 he had been seized with the obvious truth that English and Scottish votes could not be adequately sustained on a purely Irish diet. (It was an extraordinary Unionist conceit that Gladstone’s Irish policy was based on an opportunistic craving for votes, which was almost the reverse of the truth.) He now fully saw the need for ‘British’ measures, which had perhaps not been the case in 1886.

  This was the reason why he was determined to bring an exhausted Parliament back in early November and drive it up to Christmas and beyond with work on the Employers’ Liability and Local Government Bills. If the Lords again proved recalcitrant, which they did (they mutilated the Employers’ Liability Bill beyond repair and seriously weakened the Parish Councils measure), then an anti-Lords dissolution would attract him. This was a course which he urged from Biarritz, to which in 1894 he had once again made a January–February retreat, even though Parliament was still grinding on with what was still nominally the interminable 1893 session. But by then his final and essentially suicidal dispute with his colleagues over the naval estimates had assumed such proportions that his views on a dissolution had become a staking out of a personal position rather than a practical leadership of a Cabinet. Apart from anything else, it is difficult to believe that in the winter of his eighty-fifth year, he could have sustained the physical demands of a highly charged election campaign. He nevertheless remained convinced for his remaining four years, which is of course fully compatible with the ‘staking out’ theory, that a signal opportunity of regaining the Liberal initiative and beleaguering the Lords was then lost.

  The labours to which he subjected the House of Commons (including mostly himself) were indeed extraordinary. It sat until Friday, 22 December, and was brought back on Wednesday the 27th, in which interval he had snatched only five days at Brighton. The House was therefore sitting, which it had not done in any of the previous sixty-two years which his membership had spanned, on his 29 December birthday. Balfour and others were suitably gracious about the anniversary, although they cannot have been pleased at having their Christmases so truncated. On New Year’s Day the House ploughed on with its work on parish and district councils, as it did, tempered with other bits of business, for most of the winter. Gladstone’s escape to Biarritz lasted from 13 January to 10 February 1894, but the session was still going on his return, and indeed continued until 1 March, when his last words in the House were a reluctant acquiescence to the Lords’ amendments to the Local Government Bill. Then, after an interval of no more than a weekend, the 1894 session began, but without Gladstone.

  The issue of increased naval expenditure began to obtrude in the summer of 1893, although Gladstone did not much engage with it until December, being preoccupied with the Irish Bill until September and then away from London until November. In 1889 the Salisbury government had launched a sustained programme of increased warship-building. This had provoked a response by other European powers, particularly France and Russia, who were then moving into the alliance in support of which Britain was to fight the First World War, although this orientation was not obvious at the time. Then in June 1893 two British men-of-war, Camperdown and Victoria, collided with vast loss of life. The combination of circumstances produced a naval panic, which was carefully fanned by The Times and some other newspapers. It cannot be said that it was wholly logical. It was not obvious, for instance, that the answer to British ships running into each other was to have more of them. But the clamour was enthusiastically and not surprisingly taken up by the admirals. Given the persistent British affiliation to a ‘blue water’ theory of defence they swept along without too much difficulty the Queen, the Tories and the more imperially minded members of the Liberal Cabinet. And even such a Little Englander as Harcourt, although at first sceptical as a Chancellor of the Exchequer should have been, saw increased naval expenditure (the sum involved was £3 million plus) as preferable to the possible alternative of entangling alliances.

  Even more key than Harcourt was Spencer, the First Lord of the Admiralty. It is always tempting to think of Spencer, perhaps because of his venerable beard, as older than he was. He was in fact twenty-six years’ Gladstone’s junior, succeeded to his fine possessions at the age of twenty-two, was given the Garter by Palmerston when he was only twenty-nine, first became Viceroy of Ireland at thirty-three, and in 1893 was still well under sixty. He was in no way a jingo, as he was to show at the time of the South African War by inclining more to the Campbell-Bannerman pro-Boer than to the Rosebery Liberal Imperialist position. He was not a clever man, but he was a great gentleman, and he had the fortitude to stand almost alone of the high Whigs as a steady Home Rule ally of Gladstone’s. He also had a deep regard for and loyalty to the Grand Old Man. He was not exactly an intimate – no Latin tags were exchanged – but he was never reported as making a disparaging remark about Gladstone, at a time when there were only too many flying around behind the cupped hands of his colleagues.

  Spencer could probably take on only one unconventional policy at a time. At any rate he swallowed the demands of the admirals whole, and once he had done so he was a more formidable adversary for Gladstone than any other member of the Cabinet would have been. They never quarrelled, although Gladstone made some most violent remarks about Spencer’s policy, but never his person. Indeed, even after Gladstone had been overwhelmingly defeated in his own Cabinet by Spencer, the First Lord was still the man whom, if he had been asked by the Queen, which he was not, he would have named as his chosen successor. But Spencer, totally untinged by malice, unmovable once he was conv
inced where his duty lay, and impossible to defeat by dialectic because that was not the currency in which he dealt, was a fatal foe. Yet Spencer, by a supreme irony because of the quality of his central loyalty, was the spike on which Gladstone chose to immolate his final premiership.

  Nonetheless Gladstone won the first round. For 19 December Lord George Hamilton, who had been First Lord in the previous government, put down a ‘greater navy’ motion. The Cabinet was persuaded to treat it as one of no confidence and Gladstone refuted it in what turned out to be his last major (or, to be more accurate, semi-major) speech in the House of Commons. It gave him a ‘troubled night physically, in brain only’ (whatever that meant) beforehand. ‘This is certainly the weakness of old age unfitting me for Parliamentary effort,’16 he added. It also gave him a majority of thirty-six. But it was not a majority against a larger navy. It was a party majority against this being decided by Hamilton rather than by Spencer. This was recognized by Gladstone, who wrote pessimistically after the debate: ‘The situation almost hopeless when a large minority allows itself to panic and joining hands with the professional elements works on the susceptibilities of a portion of the people to alarm.’17

  Over his short Christmas holiday Gladstone’s opposition to the Admiralty proposals strengthened and deepened. He sometimes expressed it in extreme terms. When they were first expounded in Cabinet he asked in a resonant aside whether there were any plans for the enlargement of Bedlam. And in February, when he had had plenty of time to calm down, he informed Edward Hamilton that ‘I can only characterize those who put [these proposals] forward as mad or drunk.’18Yet he was far from being without a rational case, and it was probably best expressed again to Hamilton and also in mid-February:

  He again and again said it was not a question of amount: he would swallow any amount of expenditures, however reckless it might appear to be, for such purposes as converting all our ironclads into wooden ships on the assumption that naval policy has gone through a transformation, or (say) doubling the Education grant. No. It was a question of policy. Russia and France had gone ahead with their ship-building, solely owing to our Naval programme of 1889 for which we had to thank the late Government; and now we were to ‘go one better’, thus directly challenging Europe in the race of armaments. It was his conviction that this competitive action of ours would accelerate some great European catastrophe: these vast armaments must lead to some flare-up – probably the absorption of small states and the break-up of Italy. He could not be party to this.19

  And a few weeks later he added to Hamilton: ‘If I stood alone in the world on this question, I could not be moved: so strongly am I convinced that this large increase to the Navy will lead to disaster in Europe – Europe is my watchword.’20 It sounded a little hysterical, yet who is to say that his sombre view of the likely consequences of competitive armaments was not given strong reinforcement twenty years later?

  The first critical phase of the dispute was reached in early January 1894. Then Gladstone realized how isolated he was. Even Harcourt, who was against the increased naval expenditure on merits, nonetheless disagreed violently with Gladstone on tactics, believing that there was, regrettably, no sensible alternative to accepting Spencer’s demand: by thinking otherwise Gladstone was displaying irresponsibility. Harcourt gave vent to his spleen at a lunch with the ubiquitous Hamilton on 5 January.

  Mr. G. has already twice brought the Liberal party to grief – first in 1874 and afterwards in 1886; and now he proposes taking a step which would mean its complete smash up, after it has been partially set on its legs again with infinite trouble. He does not care a rush for the party. So long as the party suits his purpose, he uses it. The moment the question of his own personal convenience turns up, or he finds himself out of touch with the party, he is ready to discard it regardless of all consequences. I consider it mean and shabby of him.21

  Harcourt, beyond the habitual extremity of his language, was in a very jumpy state at this time because he had his own strong personal reasons for wanting Gladstone to survive in office and believed that the latter’s behaviour was making this impossible. Harcourt much wanted to be Prime Minister, and as the senior and dominant figure after Gladstone on the government front bench he obviously had a high claim. But it was becoming gradually borne in on him that, because of his overbearingness in Cabinet, none of his colleagues wanted to serve under him. Even John Morley preferred Rosebery. And a Rosebery premiership was anathema to Harcourt. At this stage he did not believe that he could serve under him (Rosebery, who knew he was on safe ground here, said that he could serve under Harcourt; what he could not bear was the thought of serving over such an intolerable colleague), and that his political career would be brought to an abrupt end. Harcourt was therefore in favour of the status quo but on grounds of convenience and not of respect for Gladstone’s current faculties and performance.

  Nor was even Morley, the other most committed Little Englander, and one on much closer personal terms with Gladstone than was Harcourt, a dependable ally. The best that Gladstone could record him as being was ‘sympathetic’. Gladstone needed more than sympathy. He needed fighting support, and that was not forthcoming. Wednesday, 3 January, was a terrible day:

  I have felt myself hard hit from a combination of circumstances: I seem to stand alone. . . . my sleep is a good deal disturbed. . . . The perpetual more or less dark fog odd to say contributes: I have always been open in a degree to this influence. Today I saw Spencer 1–2 and explained everything. In tone and temper, there was nothing to be desired. Of substantial progress hardly any. We agreed that in any case I ought to wind up the present Session [that is, continue well into February, as opposed to resigning immediately].22

  The fog, which that week shrouded London with the full intensity of a Sherlock Holmes-style pea-souper, became a recurrent theme of Gladstone’s. When on the following Monday he came back from a weekend in Brighton he told Morley that he was rapidly travelling along a ‘road that leads to total blindness’. ‘You are all complaining of fog,’ he added. ‘I live in fog that never lifts.’23 Morley found Gladstone on this (and some adjacent occasions) lacking in nobility, and he retaliated by himself writing about it in his diary with singular meanness, very different from the uplifting picture of Gladstone as a hero at bay that he gave in his great Gladstone biography, although he admittedly passed over the final period with considerable speed. Morley wrote:

  This was perhaps the most painful thing about it – no piety, no noble resignation, but the resistance of a child or an animal to an uncomprehensible & (incredible) torment. I never was more distressed. The scene was pure pain, neither redeemed nor elevated by any sense of majestic meekness before decrees that must be to him divine. Not the right end for a life of such power, & long and sweeping triumph.24

  On the following day Gladstone confronted the Cabinet. It was in one sense a true confrontation, for there was no one on his side, with the possible exception of Shaw-Lefevre, the First Commissioner of Works, who although an admirable man much concerned with the preservation of open spaces, was hardly a heavyweight minister. In another sense ‘confrontation’ was too gladiatorial a word, for Gladstone knew that he was beaten before he started. ‘On Tuesday I have to go to the stake (so to speak) and perhaps the sooner the better,’ he had written to Morley from Brighton on the Sunday, and had struck a note in that letter which was much more engaging than Morley’s diary entry. ‘I once made a speech of 3 hours in Cabinet,’138 he almost jauntily wrote. ‘This will not be so long.’25 However, he did speak for fifty minutes, and from one of the most elaborate and schematically prepared speaking notes (largely illegible to him) which he had ever used. Nonetheless he had occupied the Sunday at Brighton not only by working on this and writing to Morley and others but by producing a substantial monograph on the changes (and improvement) in church music during his lifetime. He was an amazing man. Almost anyone else would have been preoccupied with his Tuesday battle and an obsessive sense of grievance stemmi
ng from his knowledge that it was already lost. And so, most assuredly, it was. His fifty-minute oration did not shift the position of a single member of the Cabinet.

  Four days later he retreated to Biarritz accompanied by Armitstead, Mrs Gladstone, his daughter Mary with her child Dorothy Drew, and Lord Acton. He left everyone in considerable doubt about what he would do next. Was he going to return to resign, or, as many thought likely, to come back rejuvenated and announce that he was swallowing the naval estimates and staying on? And, if he resigned, was he to go quietly on grounds of increasing infirmity, or was he to make an issue of the naval quarrel, stay in Parliament and fulminate against his colleagues? It was a striking fact that the long-running Cabinet naval row never got into the newspapers. It justified Hamilton’s comment: ‘Mr G’s Cabinets have been able to keep their own counsel ever since Chamberlain and Dilke ceased to be colleagues.’26 It also set an example which modern Cabinets would find hard to follow.

  There was the additional lurking fear that Gladstone might indulge in one last exercise in the prerogatives of a Prime Minister and try to force a dissolution of Parliament. This would have been in the tradition (not a happy one) of 1874, when his dissolution was just as much against Cardwell’s army estimates as it was against the Tories. Fortunately, perhaps, that precedent was not much noticed, although one or two of his Cabinet colleagues – Harcourt in particular – had a naive faith that they were going to catch him out, and even force a change in his position, on the basis that in 1860 when Chancellor under Palmerston he had accepted, and even defended, a bigger increase in naval spending than anything which Spencer was currently putting forward.