DODDl=^DSflflO m N^^- Q^ ,.;^^^' - co ' .-^^■^ •0' o 0' c5 -n.. V' p \ ^^^■ ^ .v ^^^ v^^' '^z^- -^^^ Vie, -/^ if' ,\V n c^ ^. 1. ^ ■^ .-^^ •>-. 4,N J vO ^ ^~""%:^^- ^^^ .0^ .0 ,^ .S- ;^^ '/^ <^- . fl '^ ' ^ -^ ^ ^^ * . O. • 0^ .',C ..-^^ c^- To^' ^' - -v o 0^ ^\^::;;.^:'^ "1/ .^ ^^■ .i" ^^c^. - %.^ > x^^'- ^ j?_ "^ S^ * ^ ' 8 A ». G85. DOIIIII.K ^illfilSi:!^. l*Jⅈi<: jso 4;i:i\'a' '1J TO 27 VANDEW/TEf^ 3T ^MnfMqn The Seaside Library, Pocket Edition, Issued Triweekly. By subscription $50 per annum. >ynghted ih85 by George Munro— Entered at the Post Office at New York a,t second class rates— Jan. 2^ The New York FasMon Bazar. THE BEST ALIEBICAN HOME MAaAZINE. Price ti5 Cents per Copy. A HANDSOME chromo will be given free to every yearly subscriber to the New York Monthly Fashion Bazar whose name wil* be on our books when the Christmas number is issued. Persons desirous of availing themselves of this elegant present will please forward their subscription c*s soon as possible. The New York Fashion Bazar is a magazine for ladies. It contains everything which a lady's magazine ought to contain. The fashions in dress which it publishes are new and reliable. Particular attention is devoted to fashions for children of all ages. Its plates and descriptions will assist every lady ill the preparatiou of her wardrobe, both in making new dresses and re- modeling old ones. The fashions are derived from the best houses and are always practical as well as new and tasteful. Every lady reader of The New York Fashion Bazar can make her own dresses with the aid of Muuro's Bazar Patterns. Thtse are carefully cut to measure and pinned into the perfect semblance of the garment. They are use- ful in altering old as well as in making new clothing. The Bazar Embroidery Supplements form an important part of the maga- zine. Fancy work is carefully described and illustrated, and new patterns given in every number. All household matters are fully and interestingly treated. Home informa- tion, decoration, personal gossip, correspondence, and recipes for cooking have each a department. Among its regular contributors are Mary Cecil Hay, " The DrcHESS," author of " Molly R>wn," Lucy Randall Comfort, Charlotte M. Braeme, author of '' Dora Thome," Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller, Mary E. Bryan, author of " Manch," and Florence A. Warden, author of " The House on the Marsh." The stories published in The New Y^ork Fashion Bazar are the best that can be had. We employ no canvassers to solicit subscriptions for The New York Fash- ion Bazar. All persons representing themselves as such are swindlers. The New York Fashion Bazar is for sale by all newsdealers, price 25 cents per copy. Address GEORGE MUNRO, Munro'-s Piiblishing HoiiNe, P. O. Box 3751. 17 to 27 Vandewater St., N. Y. Ii|lt Excellent Reasons wiy Every Lalj shflnlfl wear BALL H DBSET 1st. They need no hreakiii^ in. 2d. INVALIDS can wear them with Ease and Comfort, as they yield to every movement of the body. 3d. They do not compress the most vital parts of the wearer. 4th. They will fit a greater variety of forms than any other make. 5th. Owing to their peculiar construction they will LAST TWICE AS LONG as an ordinary Corset. 6th. They have had the unqualified endorsement of every physician who has examined them. 7th. They have given universal satisfaction to all ladies who have worn them, the common remark being, "We will never wear any other make." 8th. They are the only Corset that a manufacturer has ever dared to guarantee perfectly satisfactory in every respect to the wearer, or the money refunded, after three weeks'* wear, even if so soiled as to be unsaleable. The wonderful popularity of Ball's Corsets has induced rival manufacturers to imitate them. If you want a Corset that will give perfect satisfaction, insist on purchasing one marked. Patented Feb. 22, 1881. And see that the name BALL is on the box ; also guarantee of the Chicago Corset Co. AWARDED HIGHEST PRIZES WHEREVER EXHIBITED. For Sale l>y all IL.ea«liiig I>ry Ooods I>ealers in the United States, Canada and Kngland. ^^The Success of the Year/' NOW IIEA1)Y~A NEW BOOK B| Mari E. Brpi, aotliir of "MaEk": ^'THE BAYOU BRIDE." Handsomely Bound in Cloth. Price $1.00. This story was written by Mrs. Bryan for The New York Fashion Bazar, in which magazine it attracted the most compli mentary attention. It now appears FOE THE FIKST TIME IN BOOK FOKM, and will be warmly welcomed by the numerous admirers of the gifted author. The most fastidious critics have pronounced " The Bayou Bride " to be the purest and most remarkably interesting novel of the year. This elegant volume will be seat postpaid on receipt of price, $1.00 Address GEORGE MUNRO, Munro's Publishing House, p. O. Box 3751. 17 to 27 Vandewater Street, New York. ENGLAND DNDER GLADSTONE. 1880-1885. BY K JUSTIN HUNTLY McCAETHY, M.P SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. •♦♦♦- jAN 23 1886/ , NEW YORK: GEORGE MUNRO, PUBLISHER, J7 TO 37 Vandewateb Street, \ -. JUSTIN H. McCARTHY^S WORKS CONTAINED IN THE SEASIDE LIBRARY (POCKET EDITION): NO. PRICE. 131 Maid of Athens 20 603 Caraiola 20 685 England Under Gladstone 20 .\-v CONTENTS CHAPTEE, PAGE. I. The Fall op Lord Beaconsfikld ... 7 II. The Hew Men •■.....-. 20 III. Mr. Bradlaugh. — The Fourth Party . . 41 IV, Afghanistan 53 V. The Boer War 69 VI. The Irish Difficulty ..... 91 VII. Coercion . . . . . . . .113 VIII. Mr Disraeli — Lord Beaconseiel^ . . 132 IX. The Land Act . , . . . . 137 X, Parliamentary Reform . » , 1()5 XI Ireland IN 1882 =...,.. 177 XII. The Sixth of May . . . . " . , 192 XIII. Egypt 212 XIV. Trouble at Home and Abroad . , . 238 XV. The Soudan ........ 280 XVI. The Reform Bill ...... 307 XVII. The Fall of the Administration . . . 329 TO JSIR JOHN POPE HENNE88Y, KG.M.G., GOVERNOR OF MAURITIUS, I DEDICATE THIS RECORD OF EVENTS, OVER WHICH WE HAVE OFTEN TALKED, AS A TOKEN OF FRIENDSHIP AND REGARD. ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. CHAPTER I. THE FALL OF LOED BEACONSFIELD. Ok March 8, 1880, Lord Beaconsfield addressed a letter to the Duke of Marlborough, in which he announced liis intention to dissolve Parliament and " afford an opportu- nity to the nation to decide upon a course which will mate- rially influence its future fortunes and shape its destiny. " Rarely in the century, the letter went on to say, had there been an occasion more critical. The peace of Europe and the ascendency of England in the European councils de- pended upon the verdict she would now be called upon to give. But it was not upon any question of foreign policy that Lord Beaconsfield avowedly appealed to the country. It was the condition of Ireland which prompted him: the condition of Ireland was the first topic touched upon in the last letter of political importance he was ever destined to write. The Home Rule movement represented to Lord Beaconsfield a danger " scarcely less disastrous than pesti- lence and famine. '■' It had been insidiously supported by the Liberal party, who tried to destroy the '' imperial char- acter " of England by a " policy of decomposition,^^ which Lord Beaconsfield called upon all ^' men of light and leading '^ to struggle against. The letter professed to at- tack the opponents of the Government for their desire to disintegrate the empire: it really called upon the English people to set the seal of their approval on the whole course of that policy which Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury delighted to style " imperial.'^ That same Monday, before Lord Beaconsfield^ s letter had yet been published, Sir Stafford Northcote rose to make a ministerial statement in the House of Commons. He spoke of the grave inconvenience that would be experienced by the members of that House if they went into the coun- 8 ENGLAKD UNDER GLADSTON'E. try for Easter without knowing the intentions of the Gov- ernment with respect to the dissohition of Parliament. The moment that the leader of the House of Commons mentioned the word dissolution there was a literal flight of members from the chamber. Every man knew that the stroke had fallen, and every man was eager to send at once to his constituents tlie first ncAvs of the intended appeal to the country. In a few minutes the tidings were borne by a thousand wires to every electorate in the kingdom. It was computed, for the benefit of those who love the small statistics of great events, that some seven hundred and twenty telegrams were wired from the House of Commons on that night. The dissolution, though sudden, was scarcely unexpect- ed. The Government had lived an unusually long life; six years had gone by since it came mto power, and it could, at the utmost, only have endured for another twelvemonth. Since the beginning of the sixteenth century only eleven had lived so long, and only four had endured for a longer period. Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal party had been arguing vehemently for some time before the dissolution that no Government ^ ought to completely exhaust their mandate by holding office to the last syllable of their re- corded time. Whether they ought or ought not to do so, it was clear that they had a perfect right to remain in for the rest of their seventh session if so they j^leased ; but it was scarcely less clear that they would not act wisely in so doing. Ever since Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury came back from Berlin to delight shouting multitudes with their stately phrases about peace and honor, the poim- larity of the Conservative Ministry had been slowly, stea<:li- ly dwindling away. The Government could only live on success, or the show of success. The fatal brand Althaea burned did not bear closer proportion to '' the princess heart of Calydon " than did noisy triumph and gaudy surprise to the well-being and the popularity of the Government. If Lord Beaconsfield had appealed to the country immediately after the return from Berlin, the Conservative party might have come back to power with an undiminished majority, but in the year that lay between that more than Roman triumph and the opening of the session of 1880 many things happened, all of which told against the popularity of the Government. ENGLAi^TD UNDER GLADSTONE. 9' In Afghanistan the revival of the Afghan policy of 1840 brought with it a hideous repetition of the massacre of 1841. Sir Alexander Burnes had been killed in 1841 by an Afghan mob, indignant at England ^s efforts to force a British envoy upon them against their will. For the same cause Sir Louis Oavagnari was murdered in the same way in the autumn of 1879. Once more England had a mur- dered envoy to avenge^, once more Oabul had to be occupied by an English army. In South Africa there were even more serious troubles. We had got into a war with the Zulu king, Oetewayo, and we had sustained one terrible defeat at Isandlana, where an English force was surround- ed and literally cut to pieces by the Zulus. England was unaccustomed to such defeats, and the news of the disaster sent a profound shock of horror and dismay throughout the country. Of course victory could not be long doubtful or long delayed. Oetewayo was entirely defeated, his lands divided, and he himself captured and imprisoned. But the ministerial policy in Afghanistan and in South Africa did not increase the popularity of the Ministry. It was not, perhaps, so much the injustice of the policy itself that was condemned as its ill-success, and the bloodshed of English soldiers that accompanied it. There were other influences of a more domestic nature working against the Government as well. Sir Eichard Cross, the Home Secretary, had identified his name and the name of the Government with a Water Bill, in which an arrangement was made with the City companies which was by no means popular. Their Water Bill helped to drive them to the country. Not that a Water Bill of some kind or other was unneeded. The London water- supply is very bad and very dear; perhaps at once the dearest and the impurest water-supply in the country. Sir Richard Cross — he was then only Mr. Cross — proposed in the sum- mer of 1879 to bring in a Bill which should enable the Government to buy up the water companies and distribute pure water to the metropolis. In answer to Mr. Eawcett, he announced that the Government, in treating with the water companies, " would take the stocks as they found them on such a day — the last day of the half-year — and that no speculative' change in the value of stocks would have the smallest weight with the Government.^' Nothing could be more comforting than these assurances; nothing iO EKGLAKD UNDER GLADSTONE. more disappointiug than to find in the autumn that, as a matter of fact, the Government were prepared to pay the water companies a very much larger jjrice than the market vahie of the shares in August, from which they had very considerably risen in the ensuing months. A sum of nine millions was sufficient to cover the original cost of the water- woi'ks; their market value in the August of Mr. Crosses reassuring speech was under nineteen millions. Yet Mr. Cross, on the basis of extraordinary calculations which wholly failed to impress not merely the public mind but the mind of the majority of his own party, proposed to pay the water companies very nearly thirty millions. • Tlie country railed and laughed at the new measure. Conser- vative adherents warned their leaders that they would not vote for it. This was bad ; but it was not all. It was felt for some time that the Budget would be unsatisfactory, and unsatisfactory it proved to be. The preceding years had not been years of signal prosperity; the foreign policy of the Prime Minister had made manj'^ exceptional demands of the heaviest kind upon the resources of the country. Wars in all directions, and the ostentatious preparations for wars which neV3r took the field, had swelled the total of the de- ficit to an alarming degree, while the revenue had not risen in anything like a proportionate measure. The receipts were only some eighty millions odd; the expenditure ex- ceeded that sum by over three millions. An accumulated deficit ot some eight millions of outstanding bonds and bills Sir Stafford Northcote proposed to meet by renewing bills for two miUions, and creating terminable annuities to be paid olf at the end of 1885 to cover the remaining six mill- ions. In order to liquidate these six millions during the five years, Sir Stafford Northcote required an annual pay- ment of £1,400,000 to cover principal and interest. To meet this annual payment the Chancellor of the Exchequer added £800,000 to the National Debt, and seized upon the sinking fund which he had himself established for the pur- pose of slowly but surely reducing the National Debt. The Budget depressed the Conservatives and delighted the Liberals. It afforded Mr. Gladstone some of the best weapons with which to assail the Government. Sir Stafford Northcote^s proposal to increase the succession duties on joersonal property, and to leave the smaller duties on landed property untouched, was especially attacked by Mr. Glad- IKGLAKD UKDEB GLADSTONE. 11 stone. The exemption of land from succession duties had long been looked upon with fierce disfavor by the majority, who were not landholders. Mr. Gladstone point- ed out that while under the old arrangement the tradesman and the farmer paid three times as much succession duty as the landlord, by the new arrangement they would have to pay four times as much. Under such conditions, with shattered prestige and faded laurels, the Tory Government decided to make that ap- peal to the country which, one year earlier, might not have been made in vain. The more hopeful among the Liber- als rejoiced in the prospect of the struggle. Mr. Grissell, imprisoned in Newgate, for offense against the majesty of Parliament, rejoiced too, for the dissolution to him meant liberty. But it may be doubted whether there was much sense of rejoicing in many Tory bosoms. The more pru- dent among them must have regarded the election with doubt and dread. It is now certain that the Tory whips were much misled as to the prospects of the party, and that Lord Beaconsfield himself was unwittingly misled in con- sequence. However, the plunge was made. The Govern- ment hurriedly passed the Corrupt Practices at Elections Bill, which heightened the expense of elections by repealing the provision which made it illegal for candidates to pay the cost of carriages employed to bring voters to the poll. Then they went into the field and faced their enemies. The elections soon showed that the Conservative Minis- try had indeed outlived its popularity: election after elec- tion went in the Liberal interest, constituency after constit- uency declared in favor of a new Government and against the old, seat after seat changed from blue to buff. Never before in the history of the reign had a Ministry remained in power so long to fall from power so disastrously. When the elections were fairly over, the Liberals were found to have the largest majority on record in our time — a major- ity of one hundred and twenty. The reasons for this great victory were plain enough. There was the inevitable law of political reaction, which always makes a large number of persons vote on way because on the previous occasion they had voted another. There were the misfortunes of the Conservative Government: they had taxed the temper of the country very severely; their " imperial ^^ bubble, when swollen to its biggest, had been pricked and shattered 12 ENGLAI^D UNDER GLADSTONE. by some liumiliating blunders and some bloody defeats;: most of all, there was the eloquence of Mr. Gladstone. Months before the ai^peal to the country he had made his famous Midlothian campaign^ pouring out speech after speech of scorn and contemi)t and invective against the Ministry; and every word he uttered was caamp,^^ a journal occupying as curious and as interesting a place in periodical literature as The " Canda- har News," with which some of the companions of General Primrose amused their imi^risonment. The Potchefstrom garrison were less fortunate though no less heroic than the Pretorians. When the Boers came riding into the market square to get their proclamation printed. Major Clarke and a few men occupied the court-house; some others occupied the jail; the fort outside the town was held by Colonel Winslow. ^ The Boers occupied the building in the market square, and a running fire was maintained for three days between them and the holders of the jail and court-house. Then when the Boers were about to fire the court-house Major Clarke surrendered, and he and his men were made prisoners. The occupants of the jail managed, under cover of a wet night, to make their escape to the fort, inside which many of the towns-people had taken refuge. There were English women and children in the fort. A few of the women were at first allowed by the Boer commandant. EKGLAN^D Uli[DEIl GLADSTONE. 81 Oronje^ to return to the town; then in spite of the repeated requests of Colonel Winslow^ he refused to allow any more to come out. One of the Englishwomen died in the fort from the sufferings of the siege; one of the English girls was killed^ another wounded by the Boer fire. For three months the besieged held out under terrible privations from the want of water. Then they surrendered with all the honors of war. This surrender was afterward very properly reversed by the Boer Government^ as it had been made after the conclusion of the amnesty^ all knowl- edge of which had been carefully kept from Colonel Winslow by Cronje. Oronje alleged that the British destroyed their ammunition and spiked their cannon before surrendering^, contrary to the Geneva rules; and, on the other hand^ Winslow complained of the Dutch use of explosive bullets. Of the other forts, Standerton, on the north bank of the Vaal Eiver, held out till the armistice, under Major Mon- tague; so did Leydenberg, under Lieutenant Long; so did Marabastadt, under Captain Brooke; so did Eustenberg, under Captain Auchinleck and Lieutenant Despard; and Wakkerstrom, under Captain Saunders. Utrecht and Middleburgh had been seized by the Boers without resist- ance on the beginning of hostilities. It would have been quite impossible to defend them. After peace was made a convention was concluded at Pretoria, which was not con- sidered satisfactory by the people of either country. We may as well here somewhat forestall events^ in order to bring this portion of our story to a conclusion. For some years incessant negotiations were carried on between tha Home Government and the new rulers of the TransvaaL It was not until many ideas had been exchanged, and Boer delegates had crossed the seas to interview Lord Derby at the Colonial Office, that anything like a solution of the difficulty was arrived at. At last, on Ash-Wednesday, February 27, 1884, the anniversary of the battle of Majuba- Hill, a new Transvaal convention was signed at the Colo- nial Office by Sir Hercules Eobinson as representing the Queen, and by the delegates of what was henceforward to be called the South African Eepublic. By the convention the South African Eepublic obtained what was practically^ though not absolutely, complete independence. All the rights which the Boers exercised over the Transvaal pre- Tious to the visitation of Sir Theophilus Shepstone were 82 ElJl^GLAifD UNDER GLADSTONE. conceded, under certain conditions. These conditions pro- hibited the introduction of slavery into the country, pre- scribed complete religious liberty, and stipulated that the native races should be allowed the right to buy land and to have access to the courts. The Transvaal debt was re- duced from £385,000 to £250,000, and a sinking fund was established to provide for its extinction altogether in a quarter of a century. Furthermore, the British Govern- ment reserved to itself a right of veto over any treaties that the South African Republic might conclude with any foreign power. The Home ' Government was especially anxious to secure the rights and well-being of the border tribes of native race. The Eev. Mr. Mackenzie, a strong sympathizer with the native races, although not a very popular person vv^ith the ojDpressively anti-black African- ders, was appointed British Eesident in Bechuanaland. The resuscitated republic was further required to pledge itself not to make any treaties with native races to east or w-est of its territories without the sanction of the British Government. To these terms the Boers not unnaturally agreed. The inde^Dendence for which they had fought so well and so successfully w^as practically conceded to them, for the Orown^s nominal right to veto was but a slight check, pos- sibly never to be used against the now formally recognized '^ republic."^ On the other hand the restraint put upon their encroachments into the lands of the native .races was undoubtedly irksome to the Boers. But upon that point the Government was firm. It was willing to give up the suzerainty for which it had waged so unfortunate a war; it was willing to abandon its " British Resident " in the Transvaal; but it would not abandon the native tribes of Goshen and Stellaland, Zulu and Swaziland, to the mercy of the freebooters of the " Afrikaner Traditie. " On these terms, then, and for the time being at least, the Boers and the British were friends again. The new Ministry was not able to do very much in the way of domestic legislation. Other questions occupied the greater part of the broken session which the Liberals had left to them of the year. Still they accomplished nothing. The first business of importance was the Supplementary Budget, introduced by Mr. Gladstone on Thursday, June 10, 1880. The revenue had been fixed at. £82,260,000, ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. 8^ and the expenditure at £82^076,000^ leaving a surplus of £184,000, which had, however, been swallowed up by £200,000 of supplementary estimates. He was then un- able to make any definite proposal with regard to the claim in connection with the Indian deficiency. The Govern- ment 23roposals were to reduce the duties on light foreign wines; to exchange a beer tax for the existing malt tax; to meet any loss occasioned by these measures by an increase of one penny to the income tax; with a j^lan for increasing and adjusting the license duties for the sale of alcoholic liquors. The general result of the Budget was that £1,100,000 of revenue was sacrificed by the abolition of the malt tax, and £233,000 by the reduction of the wine duties,, which, with the £200,000 supplementary, made an expen- diture of £1,533,000. On the other side, the addition to the income tax was reckoned at £1,425,000, and the in- creased license duties at £305,000, which, with the surplus of £184,000 provided by Sir Stafford Northcote, made an addition to the revenue of £1,914,000, leaving a final surplus of £381,000. The Budget was, on the whole, satisfactory to the followers of the Government, and was acce23ted with but slight modification. Some of the Irish and Scotch members had objections to raise to the unequal taxation of alcohol in whisky. The wine duty clauses, being dejoend- ent upon the successful negotiation of a new commercial treaty with France, were withdrawn. Of course, the addi- tional penny on the income tax caused considerable grumbling. The absence of any statement with regard to the Indian deficiency was felt to be somewhat unsatisfactory by many wdio, like Sir George Campbell, were curious to know where the money was to come from. The Indian Budget was not formally inquired into until August 17, but it was known to Parliament long before that it was to prove alarmingly disappointing. The cost of the w^ar in Afghanistan down to the end of the financial year 1879-80 was shown to have been underestimated by the Government of India, and by its Finance Minister, Sir John vStrachey, by several millions sterling. The estimated six millions had now swelled into something like fifteen millions, which, if the frontier railway charge were to be included, would be still further swelled to some eighteen millions. Lord Hartington declined to make any definite statement as to how he proposed to meet this great defi.- 84 ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. ciency so long as the exact amount of deficit remained un- ascertained, but he pledged the Government to make some contribution toward meeting the war expenses from the Imperial Treasury, without, however, making any specific statement as to what form the contribution would take. Indian finances aj^art from the war charges were not un- l^leasing. In the three years from 1878 to 1880 there was an aggregate surplus of over eleven millions. This sur- plus, however, as well as a projected famine fund^ were, of course, devoured by the increased war estimates. A curi- ous example of the loose management of Indian finance was shown by the fact that some five millions and a half of the excess over the estimate had already been paid by the Indian Government before it was known that it was due. The deficit that remained was to be met, at least tempora- rily, by the means of loans. A Burial Bill was brought forward in the Upper House by the Lord Chancellor, to permit' the celebration of Non- conformist services in church-yards. This had long been a strong 23oint with Dissenters, and it had formed the basis of Mr. Osborne Morgan^s measure which had been rejected in the former Ministry. Some attempts were made in the Lords to narrow the scope of the Government measure by ingenious amendments limiting the working of the Bill to places where no separate provision was made for burying Dissenters; but these amendments were smoothed away when the Bill j^assed into the LoAver House, and the Lords made no attempts to put them back again. Mr. Dodson introduced a Vaccination Bill for the remis- sion of cumulative penalties; but it met with so much op- position, both inside the House and out of doors, that Lord Hartington had to announce, at the beginning of the second week of August, that the Government had made up their minds to abandon the measure. There still remained the Ground Game Bill, which was the chief piece of legislative work accomplished during the session. This was Sir William Harcourfs measure, and it was destined to cause a great many debates indeed before it finally became law. The Bill proposed to give farmers a right to kill ground game concurrent with that of the landlords, and inalienable by contract. The measure had the support of the farming classes generally, but the landlord party were, as a whole, opposed to it on the grounds of its interference with terri- EKGLAND UKDER GLADSTONE. 85 torial privilege, with rights of property, with freedom of contract, and the hke. The second reading was moved for on June 10, but it was not obtained for many weeks later; and when the Bill was finally carried to the Lords, it was not suffered to pass without remonstrance and ineffectual opposition. Two amendments were added — one limiting the rights of shooting to the tenant or to one other person to be named by him; and another amendment proposed to establish a close time from March to August, during which no shooting was to be allowed. When the Bill came back to the Commons this close time was rejected, and the right of shooting was extended to the tenant and one other per- son authorized by him. In these final changes the Lords quietly agreed. The Employers^ Liability Bill, introduced by Mr. Dodson, was more fortunate than his vaccination measure. It proposed to alter the legalized relations existing between master and workman, by which at that time an employer was practically free from all responsibility toward his work- people in case of accident, unless it was proved that his own personal negligence was the cause of the injury. The Bill proposed to amend the condition of the law by making the master responsible in cases where his immediate delegate, or any person implied to be such, was the cause of the ac- cident, though this did not go far enough to please the ad- Tocates of the working-men. When the Bill went to the Lords in August, Lord Beaconsfield mtroduced an amend- ment limiting its duration to two years, but this limitation was extended in the Commons again to seven years, and the extension was not opposed by the House of Lords. Other measures passed during the session were Mr. Faw- cett^s Bill for the extension of the Postal Savings Bank system, and the introduction of Postal Notes. Mr. Faw- cett, since his appointment to the Postmaster-Generalship, had been studying his new office very carefully, and dis- tinguished himself by the rapidity with which he was able to introduce two new and valuable measures of reform. The Bill for extending the system of Post-Office Savings Banks proposed to allow single depositors to deposit sums to the amount of £300 instead of the existing limitation of £200, and to increase the total sum that might be deposited by any one person in a single year from £30 to £100. The Bill further proposed to give depositors certain facilities 86 ENGLAND UlfDER GLADSTONE. for the conversion of a portion of their savings into Gov- ernment Stock inider certain limitations. It contained certain other changes as well. When the Post-Office Sav- ings Banks were established in 1861, the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt were bound to allow the trustees of the old previously established private savmgs banks interest to the amount of 3^ per cent on the money that they had transferred to the new banks. This was what might be called a fancy interest, much higher than the Government could properly afford to give; they only gave their own depositors 2^ per cent. , and there had been a financial deficiency slowly growing up in consequence. This it was now proposed to meet by reducing the interest of the trustees to 3 per cent. This slight reduction was regarded by the trustees and their supporters witli much disfavor, while, on the other hand, it was considered not nearly large enough by the advocates of the younger system of banking. The Post-Office Money Order Bill proposed to increase the facilities for the interchange of small sums which tlie Post-Office Order system had established, by issuing notes for the various small sums, ranging from one shilling to one pound, at jDrices ranging from a halfpenny to two-pence per note, and which were changeable at sight like an ordinary check. It really did in fact, in some measure, establish a j^aj^er currency of small denominations. Both these measures became law, and have since worked exceedingly satisfactorily. Census Bills for taking the census of the three kingdoms in 1881 were also carried. In the Irish measure the inquiry into religion was made optional, while in the English and Scotch Bills it was, as usual, excluded. A Grain Cargoes Bill was also passed, and the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, including the renewal of the Ballot Act. Two extraneous debates are worth noticing in this session. One was on a motion brought forward by Mr. Briggs, con- demning the erection of a tablet to the memory of the Prince Imperial in Westminster Abbey. Public opinion was much stirred by this question, and all the anti-Bona- parte feeling in the country was aroused. Mr. Swinburne wrote a brilliant and bitter sonnet in which he bade " scorn everlasting and eternal shame" to '^^eat out the rotting record " of Dean Stanley^s name for proposing to erect a a monument in England^s abbey to the heir of the Napo- ENGLAND TTXDEE GLADSTONE. 87 leons. Mr. Briggs carried liis motion, and the tablet was not erected. The other debate was raised by Mr. OTjon- nell;, on the nomination of M. Challemel Lacour as embas- sador of France to England. Mr. O^Donnell attacked M. Challemel Lacour for his acts during the Commune. Mr. Olad stone moved that Mr. CDonnell be no longer heard, and this revival of a custom that had fallen out of use for i5ome couple of centuries provoked a long and wrangling debate. In the end of July Mr. Gladstone was seized with a slight lever. For a few days there was great anxiety as to his health, and there were incessant inquiries at the house in Downing Street, Lord Beaconsfield^s name being conspicuous among the callers. Then it was announced that Mr. Gladstone had recovered, but his medical advisers would not allow him to return to political life for a time. Mr. Gladstone went for a cruise in the '' Grantully Castle/^ one of Sir Don- ald Curriers vessels, and did not return to Parliament until September 4, three days before the session ended. During his absence the position of leader of the House of Commons was naturally taken by Lord Hartington, who managed the duty as he had managed it before during Mr. Gladstone's polemical retirement, with the sturdy determination char- acteristic of him, and which, if not representative of the highest order of statesmanship, is certainly not undeserving in its way of admiration. Two days before the year came to an end, on Wednesday, December 29, 1880, one of the greatest novelists of the nineteenth century passed away. The impression that '' George Eliot " had made upon her age was profound and lasting; to a really large number of thoughtful people, men and women, her novels supplied not merely a philoso- phy, but a religion. The tendency of her admirers to re- gard George Eliot thus as a teacher and prophetess rather than as an artist and romancist is, perhaps, to be regretted because of the impression it produced upon her later work. The devotees of the George Eliot cult were inspired by an almost Bacchic frenzy of enthusiasm, ready at all times to turn and rend, as Agave and her companions rent Pentheus in the weird Cadmeian forest, any adventurer bold enough to find any fault with their idol. All this was bad for the idol, and its evil effects are painfully visible in her later works. George Eliot was a great novelist as Thackeray 88 EKGLAl^D UNDER GLADSTONE. and Dickens and Jane Austen were great novelists. Her Tullivers and Poysers and Bedes and Marners, even her fifteenth century Florentines, these are precious possessioAS in the illimitable world of fiction, rare and welcome pres- ences in the cloud country of romance. She was essentially a great novelist, a wonderful delineator of certain kinds of characters, an excellent teller of a certain kind of stoiy^ a deep thinker in certain veins of thought. The mistake of her admirers — of the admirers, that is, who did not know what to admire her for — was to attempt to make her a scientific Moses the lawgiver, a feminine London Socrates. As well attempt to reason out a system of domestic ethics from the early verses of Mr. Swinburne, or to discover the hidden princij)les of political government in the romances of Charlotte Bronte. To George Eliot the story-teller, the- inimitable painter of character, let us be grateful with all our hearts, as in the one case we are to the compilers of the ^' Thousand and One Nights,'" whose names have perished, or in the other to the author of the '^ Comedie Humaine. " But to George Eliot the Positivist, iliQ scientific thinker, the expounder of life-laws and life-theories, we might have been grateful had she written scientific treatises or volumes on ethics, instead of allowing these faculties ta spoil her later stories. Let us, indeed, be thankful that, in her list, there are not many novels like " Daniel Deronda,'* even while we regret that we have not more like ^' Silas Marner,"' ^^ Adam Bede," ''^ The Mill on the Floss," and ^^Romola." Many striking names, if no other very great name, dis- appear from the list of the living in 1880. Two belong to politicians of widely different types. Lord Stratford de Eedcliffe was a very old man, ninety-two, when he died. The school of dij^lomacy to which he belonged had j^ractically passed away long before him; at least, all the conditions of diplomacy in the fields Avhich were j^eculiarly his own had altered almost beyond recognition. Durmg his long career Lord Stratford de Eedclift'e was able to render many valu- able services to his country, and none more valuable than that which he gave when he saw through the Russian schemes ii; the Vienna note of 1853. Lord Stratford de Eedcliffe had the curious fortune to win the profound ad^ miration of one clever literary man, and the profound dis- like of another. To Mr. Kinglake Lord Stratford de Red- ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE, 89 €liffe was scarcely less than inspired^, and the historian of the Crimean war writes of the '' great Eltchi ^' as some en- thusiast might write of one of the Hebrew prophets. Mr. Grenville Murray ;, the once renowned '^'^Eoving English- man,^^ saw no such merits in the Constantinople embassa- dor; he presented portraits of him in his writings which resulted in something like a public scandal, and in the with- drawal of Mr. Grenyille Murray from the diplomatic post he held at that time. Lord Hampton was a statesman of a very different kind. He was known as Sir John Pakington during that part of his pohtical career which had any importance, though his importance was never very great, and was generally unfort- unate for his party. He was chiefly remarkable for a genial alacrity in accepting any office that might come in his way, without any self-searchings as to his own peculiar capacity or incapacity for the post. On only one occasion was he ever conspicuously brought before the eyes of his country- men, and that was in 1867, when his marvelous incapacity for keeping a secret told the story of the Ten Minutes^ Bill, and revealed the whole of the hidden history of the struggles of Mr. Disraeli and his colleagues with the Eef orm question. Among the other emiment men who died during the year perhaps Sir Alexander Oockburn was the most remark- able. From the day of the fierce debate over Don Pacifico and Lord Palmerston^s policy of Roman citizenship, in 1850, the career of Mr. Cockburn was a series of successes. The speech he delivered in that debate was the brilliant preface to a brilliant career. In a career that was hence- forward all of brightness, one or two episodes shine out with special distinctness. One was when he delivered his charge to the Grand Jury in the historic Jamaica trials. Carlyle, with his characteristic hatred of ''^niggers," might write from Chelsea to tell Alexander Cockburn that, far before and above the British law, there was a martial law which privileged the white man to flog the dark man and the dark woman, but the world will remember in Sir Alexander Cockburn^s charge one of the finest and most eloquent defenses of civil law against outrage and violence that was ever delivered from the judicial bench. By the death of Mr. Tom Taylor dramatic literature lost Si copious and creditable writer, and '' Punch " a conscien- 90 ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. tious editor. Literature of a certain kind lost J. K.. Planche^ Pierce Egan the younger, and W. H. G. Kings- ton, the boys^ novelists. Natural science suffered by the death of Mr. Frank Buckland, who had earned honorable distinction as a naturalist, and rendered good service to his country in his work as Commissioner of Fisheries. A- career which had at one time seemed j^romi sing came to a poor conclusion in this year. Dr. Kenealy, who had got into the old Parliament as an advocate of the case of the ^'Claimant/" and as the representative of the Magna^ Charta Association, had stood again for Stoke at the Gen- eral Election and been defeated. He did not long survive his defeat. He was a man of considerable natural abilities, who had at one j^eriod promised to do well and to go far. In his youth he had been an almost brilliant speaker; he had a fair acquaintance with a variety of language8> and could turn oft* clever translations and imitations that were not much inferior to these of his witty countryman. Father Prout. He had written verse which had nothing very re- markable in it, and had prefaced one of his efforts with a dedication to Mr. Disraeli, which might well have been called fulsome, and which was recalled to Dr. Kenealy's disadvantage in after-years, when he had made himself conspicuous by the oft^ensive virulence of his attacks upon his former hero. In the House of Commons he was a com- i^lete failure. The showy oratory of his youth had quite deserted him; he was heavy, dull, and uninteresting. He had entered the House of Commons with great announce- ments of what he was going to do, and he did nothing. He subsided, and was almost forgotten before the General Election brought about his defeat, and was followed by his death. His dis2:)Osition was an unhappy one, which had always led him into quarrels and dissensions, and had an- imated him, a2:>i3arently, only with an intense desire for notoriety of any kind, and at almost any price. In his private and 23ublic life he contrived for a time to make himself conspicuous. He may be regretted for his wasted life, and for the abilities Avhich, had they been better em- ployed, might have earned him honorable and deserved dis- tinction. ElfGLAHD UNDER GLADSTONE. 91 CHAPTER VI. THE. IKISH DIFFICULTY. Early in its career the Ministry had a more serious dif- ficulty to encounter than the question of a member^s right to affirm. The new Ministry might, without great exag- geration, be said to have scarcely been in office many hours before they were confronted by the Irish question, and under conditions which rendered it especially difficult to deal with. In oader to properly understand the exact condition of affairs in Ireland at the moment Mr. Gladstone took office, in 1880, it is necessary to consider some of the events that took place under the preceding Ministry, and even earlier. When Mr. Gladstone went out of office in 1874, he had pass- ed two great Irish measures, and had tripped himself and his administration up over a third. The measure which overthrew him was the Irish University Education Bill; the measures which he carried disestablished the Irish Church, and created the Land Act of 1870. With the land question before the passing of that Act we have here nothing to do. The Act had recognized that there was need of reform in the Irish land system, and it strove to effect that reform. The Land Act of 1870 endeavored, first, to give the tenant some security* of tenure; second, to encourage the making of improvements throughout the country; and, third, to promote the establishment of a. peasant proprietorship. It sought to further the first and second of these aims by le- galizing the Ulster tenant right on farms where it al- ready existed, and by allowing compensation for disturb- ance and for improvements to evicted tenants on farms where the Ulster tenant-right system did not prevail. Up to this time the Ulster tenant-right custom was not rec- ognized by law, and as it differed widely in different es- tates, it was not very easy to define strictly. Roughly speaking, however, it maintained, for those who were bound to it by time and tradition, first, that the tenant was not to be evicted so long as he paid his rent and acted proper- ly, his landlord having, indeed, the right of raising the rent from time to time, though not so high as to destroy 92 ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. the tenant^s interest; second, that the tenant who wished to leave his holding had a right to sell his interest in the farm, subject to the landlorcPs consent to receive the new purchaser as a tenant; third, that if the landlord wanted to take the land himself, he must pay a fair sum for the ten- ant right. It may be fairly said that, wherever the Ulster tenant-right custom existed, the relationship between landlord and tenant was reasonably good. On estates where the custom of any- thing like it did not prevail, the tenant had practically no rights as against the landlord. The majority of Irish ten- ancies were tenancies from year to year. These might at any time be ended by the landlord, after due notice. A comparatively small proportion of tenancies were let on leases which gave the tenant security of possession for a considerable period, so long as he could pay the yearly rent, or the landlord did not press too heavily for arrears. In neither case had the tenant any right to claim on eviction compensation for disturbance, or for any improve- ments he might have made in the land; and in Ireland, except on a few " English-managed'"' estates, the improve- ments are always made by the tenants. In the yearly ten- ancies, the landlord had always the powder of raising the rent when he j^leased; in estates held on lease, he could raise it at the expiration of the lease, and, as a rule, the landlord or his agent always did so raise the rent whenever the exertions of the tenant had made the land of more value than when he had entered it. Undoubtedly, one of the reasons for the wretched condition of so many Irish farms and cabins was that the tenant feared, and often justly feared, that the smallest sign of well-being, the least evidence of improvement of any kind, would be taken by the landlord or his agent as a sure sign that he might safely raise the rent. Raising the rent was the one great dread of the tenant. So great was the poverty of the average tenant that, in many cases, it was almost impossible to pay any rent at all, and the prospect of having the existing rent raised was terror. The Irish peasant is, as a rule,, profoundly unwilling to emigrate. He loves his land with a passion which defies starvation, and he will make any sacrifices and run any risks to remain at home. Of those who do emigrate, the majority always dream of returning, and many do return, to their native land. The land is the EKGLAN^D UNDER GLADSTONE. 9S love, but it is also the life, of the Irish peasant. If he re- mains in Ireland, he has nothing else to live upon, and he is ready to take the land on any terms the landlord chooses to make, trusting to Providence to see him safely through with his rent at the due time, or hoping that the landlord may be found easy-going and unexacting. Furthermore, the Irish peasant is in his heart convinced that the land is really his; that the landlord, to whom he pays his rent, and the agent, to whom he touches his hat, are alike, whatever their nationality, the representatives of an alien rule, of a coercion which is no conquest. Evictions were the great misery of the peasantry. Evic- tions were often for non-payment of rent, often because the landlord wished to clear the ground, and was anxious to get rid of his tenants whether they paid their rent or not» In the years from 1849 to 1882 inclusive, the evictions have been on an average of more than three thousand fami- lies a year. The highest rates of eviction were in 1849 and 1850, the two years immediately following the rising of 1848, when the rates were 16,686 and 19,949 families in each year. The rate was at its lowest in 1869, when the number of evicted families was only 374. From 1865 to 1878 inclusive the number of evictions never got into the thousands; in 1879 they were over 1000; in 1880, over 2000; in 1881 and 1882, over 3000. The Lan:d Act of 1870 did not lessen evictions, as great numbers of the ten- antry in all parts of the country were in heavy arrears of rent. In many estates it was practically compulsory -for the rent to be in arrears by a process known as the hang- ing gale, by which the tenant had always a yearns or half a year's rent due and hanging over him, thus giving him completely into the landlord's power as regarded evictions. One of the objects of the Land Act of 1870 was to create a peasant proprietary, through the clauses known by the name of Mr. Bright. Something of the kind had already existed on a very small scale. When the Irish Church was disestablished, the Church Temporalities Commissioners were given power to aid occupymg tenants of Church lands in purchasing their holdings when it was wished. These tenants were allowed, on payment of one fourth of the pur- chase-money, to leave three fourths of the purchase-money on mortgage at four per cent., the principal and the m- 94 EKGLAND UNDER GLADSTOXE. terest to be repaid in half-yearly payments, extending over a period of thirty-two years. Nearly three fourths of the tenants occupying Church lands did in fact thus 23urchase their holdings. It was with the intention of increasing such facilities for the purchase of holdings that the Bright clauses were introduced. A landlord and a tenant might come to an agreement under the Act by wdiich the tenant ; could purchase his holding, and receive a Landed Estate ! Court conveyance. The very fact, however, that a Landed ■ Estate Court conveyance is absolutely binding in its charac- ter, and gives its possessor an absolute title to the land acquired, to the disregard of any subsequent claims that might be made after the sale was effected, made the 23rocess a costly one. To prevent any mistake in the trans- fer of the land, or injury to any third, parties, careful in- vestigations had to be made, and elaborate requirements gone through, all of which made the process of transfer costly and troublesome. The expenses were often from ten to thirty per cent, of the price of the farm; in some extreme cases the cost of the transference was very con- siderably greater than the actual price of the purchased land. Moreover, the tithe-rent charges, quit-rents, and drainage charges, to which most Irish estates are subject, remained with the land instead of being transferred to the money in court, and were a fruitful source of trouble to the new purchasers. All these various conditions combined to make the work- ing of the Bright clauses far more limited and unsatisfac- tory than had l^een intended by their framers. Thus the Act failed to establish a system of peasant proprietorship on anything like an extended scale, or indeed on any scale large enough to judge of its working by. It did not give the ordinary tenant any great degree of security of tenure. It allowed him, indeed, the privilege of going to law with his landlord, but as in most cases the tenant had little or no money, while the landlord could fight out the case from court to court, appeal to the law was a privilege of no great value to the tenant. The chief thing actually ac- complished by the Act was the legalizing of the excellent Ulster custom. The passing of the Land Act, instead of settling the Land question in Ireland, was destined to give it a fresh impetus. The year that saw it passed saw also the forma- EKGLAKD UKDEK GLADSTONE. 95 tion of an Irish organization which was to be the cause of bringing every phase of the Irish question more prominent- ly before the notice of England than at any time since O^Oonnell;, if not, indeed, since the Union. On May 19th, 1870, two months and a few days before the Land Act be- came law, a meeting was held in Dublin of representative Irishmen of all opinions, and of all political and religious, creeds. The object of the meeting was to form an organ- ization to advocate the claims of Ireland io some form of Home Government. The words " Home Rule '' were lised by some one, and they became at once the shibboleth of the new party. At the General Election of 1874 some sixty Irish mem- bers were returned pledged to Home Eule principles, and to maintain a separate and distinct j)arty in the House of Commons, under the leadership of Mr. Isaac Butt, an eminent Protestant lawyer, who, in his youth, had been strongly opposed to the O^Oonnell movement. It is not necessary here to enter into any explanation of the Home Eule demand. It is enough to say that a Home Rule motion was annually brought forward by Mr. Butt in the House of Commons, and annually outvoted. The more active among the Home Rulers became dissatisfied with Mr. Butt^s leadership, and began to cast about for a new leader. They found him in a young man who had been an unnoticed member of the House for a year or two, Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell. Mr. Parnell was a Protestant, of English descent — he was of the family of the poet Parnell, and of Sir Henry Parnell, afterward Lord Congieton, the reform ally of Lord Gray and Lord Melbourne— a Cambridge man, of ap- parently Conservative tendencies. In 1871, after some years of travel, in America among other places, he settled down on his estate at Avondale in Wicklow, within whose boundaries is to be found Moore^s Yale of Avoca with its meeting waters. His first attempt to enter political life was doubly a failure. He failed to get elected for Dublin, and he broke down completely in his first attempt to make a public speech. In 1875 he was elected for Meath, but he attracted no notice in the House of Commons until 1877, when he became the head of a small party of advanced Home Rulers, who endeavored to prevent the introduction of Government measures at late hours at night by ingen- 96 ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. ions and systematic obstruction. The Irish members did not invent obstruction. It had been practiced often before, for special purposes, by Liberals and Tories alike. But they applied the method with considerable ingenuity and consistency. The obstructionists became popular in Ire- land in exact proportion to their unpopularity in the House of Commons. It was soon evident that the Butt Gironde was being greatly embarrassed by the Mountain party, which was forming under the headship of Mr. Parnell. The early obstruction was on English measures, and was carried on often with the active support and co-operation of the more advanced members of the Liberal opposition. One of the fiercest nights of obstruction was on the South Africa Bill, when the Irish party were ably and energetic- ally supported by the Eadicals; and not a few Englismen would now wish that the obstruction had then been suffi- cient to defeat that unlucky measure. Mr. Parnell, moreover, carried many useful amendments to the Fac- tories and Workshops Bill of 1878, the Prison Code, and the Army and Navy Mutmy Bills. It may be fairly said that his efforts contributed very appreciably to the aboli- tion of fioggmg in the army. Meanwhile all dispute or discussion with regard to the leadershi]^ of Mr. Butt was settled by the death of Mr. Butt himself in 1879, and Mr. Shaw was chosen leader in his stead. Mr. Shaw became leader in difficult times. The land question was coming up again. Mr. Butt, shortly before his death, had predicted its reappearance, and been laughed at for his prophecy, but he was soon proved to be right. The condition of the peasantry was still very bad, their tenure of land precarious. A new land agitation was inaugurated by a new man. Mr. Michael Davitt was the son of an evicted tenant. He had lost his arm while a boy in a machine accident in Lancashire. When a young man he joined the Fenian movement, was arrested, and sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude. Seven years later he was let out on ticket of leave. During his impris- onment he had thought much of the means of bettering the condition of Ireland, and had come to the conclusion that by constitutional agitation, not by force of arms, the improvement could be best accomplished. Mr. Davitt went to America, planned out there a scheme of land organi- zation, and returned to Ireland to put it into practice. He ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. 97 found the condition of the Irish peasant very wretched. For three years the harvest had been going from bad to worse, and there was danger of a serious famine. Mr. Davitt and his friends organized land meetings in various parts of Ireland; the new scheme was eagerly responded to hy the tenant farmers in all directions. In October, 1879, the Irish National Land League was formed. Mr. Davitt and some other Land Leaguers were prosecuted for speeches made at some of the land meetings, but the prosecutions were abandoned. Mr. Parnell went to America to raise funds to meet the distress; the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. E. D. Oray, M.P., raised a fund at home, so did the Duchess of Marlborough. The Government passed certain relief measures. The severity of the famine was stayed, but neither the Government nor the public and private re- lief was able to prevent a great amount of suffering. Such was the condition of affairs in Ireland when Lord Beacons- field wrote his letter to the Duke of Marlborough, in which he attacked the Liberal party for their compromises with Irish faction and disaffection. As we have seen, the Irish vote in England was in consequence given in almost every €ase to the Liberal candidates. In Ireland the Home Eule party were largely increased, and in the party itself the section that followed Mr. Parnell were soon found to be numerically the strongest. At a meeting in Dublin Mr. Parnell was formally chosen leader of the party in. the place of Mr. Shaw; and in the House of Commons the Pamellites, as the advanced party of Irish members were now called, took their seats on the OpjDosition side below the gangway, while the moderate Home Eulers, under the direction of Mr. Shaw, ranged themselves on the Liberal Ijenches. The new Irish party which followed the lead of Mr. Par- nell has been often represented by the humorist as a sort of Falstaffian ^^ ragged regiment,"^ and its members as rivals of Lazarus in the painted cloth, to whom the mere neces- sities of civilized life were luxuries, to obtain which they would follow any leader and advocate any cause. From dint of repetition this has come to be almost an article of faith in some quarters. Yet it is curiously without founda- tion. A large proportion of Mr. ParnelFs followers were journalists. Journalists unfortunately seldom amass large fortunes, but the occupation is not considered dishonorable. 98 EKGLAKD UNDER GLADSTONE. and the journalists who belonged to the Irish party were sufficiently intelligent to be able to obtain their livelihood by their pens. Mr. T. P. O'Connor, for example, was a young Irishman who had come to London, and was making his way in English journalism. He was a strong Radical, and had written an exceedingly able, if exceedingly one-sided. ''Life of Lord Beaconsfield. " Mr. Sexton, who was des- tined to prove himself one of the foremost debaters in the House of Commons, began life in the employment of the" Waterford and Limerick Railway Company. When he was some twenty years of age he became a writer for the '' Na- tion," a newspaper which had upheld through long years and under disheartening conditions the traditions of Nation- alism which had made it famous in 1848. He had been a writer for the/' Nation " for some years when the General Election came. Mr. Sexton, like most young Irish jour- nalists who ever wrote for the " Nation," had taken the keenest interest in Irish politics. He was sent to Sligo to oppose Colonel King Harman, an mfluential landlord and nominal Home Ruler. So great- was the popular feeling for the growing Nationalist party that the almost unknown young writer with the eloquent tongue was returned by a triumphant majority over the wealthy landlord, his oppo- nent, who had come to regard a seat for Sligo as an item of his personal property. Mr. T. D. Sullivan was another Irish journalist, the owner of the " Nation," eminent in Ireland, and not only in Ireland, as a true 23oet of the people. Mr. Healy was not returned to Parliament at . the General Election. He did not enter the House of Commons until November. 1880, but he may fairly be described with the jDarty which he was so soon to join, and of which he Avas already a valuable adherent. Mr. Healy came to England at sixteen years of age, a poor young man, with his way to make in the world. Almost self-educated, he had taught himself, besides French and -German, Pitman's short-hand, and through his knowledge of phonograj^hy he obtained a situa- tion as short-hand clerk in the office of the superintendent of the North-Eastern Railway at Newcastle. Later on he came to London as the confidential clerk of a floor-cloth manufactory, and as the weekly correspondent of the " Na- tion. " In this capacity he made the acquaintance of Mr. Parnell, whom he accompanied on his American tour in EN"GLA]SrD UKDEE GLADSTOKE. 99 1879. !Prom tliat time Mr. Healy became one of the most .prominent of tlie young men who were working for the Srationalist cause. He was soon to become one of the most prominent and the most important of the Irish Parliament- ary party. Mr. James "Kelly was a journalist who had been a soldier and a special correspondent in all parts of the world. He served in the Foreign Legion of the French army against the Arabs at Oran, under Maximilian in Mexico, -and had narrowly escaped being shot by the Span- iards in Cuba. After accompanying the Emperor of Brazil on his tour through America, and following the fortunes of the war with the Sioux chief, Sitting Bull, Mr.- O^Kelly came to England, and at once took an active part in the Home Rule movement then inaugurated by Mr. Butt. An- other journalist, one of the most able among the Irish members, was Mr. E. D. Gray, the proprietor of the '^ Freeman^s Journal/" probably the most valuable news- paper property in Ireland. Those who were not journalists in the Irish party were generally what is called well-to-do. Mr. Dillon had in- herited property from his father. Mr. Biggar had retired from a very successful connection with the North of Ire- land bacon trade. Mr. Richard Power was a country gentle- man of position; so was Mr. Mulhallen Marum; so was Mr. Redmond; so was Mr. Metge. Mr. Arthur O"0onnor had been in the War Office for many laborious years, and had retired upon a pension. Dr. Oommins was a successful Liverpool lawyer. Mr. John Barry was a prosperous busi- ness man; so was Mr. Dawson, Mr. Leamy was a solicitor of independent means. Colonel Nolan was an artillery officer of distinction. One of the most remarkable figures in the ranks of the Irish party was Colonel The 0"Gorman Mahon, whose hand- some white-haired head and tall form made him conspicu- ous in the House. The "Gorman Mahon had played a prominent part in Irish politics long before most of his present colleagues were born. He had brought 0"Connell forward at the time of the Clare election. He had been in Parliament some fifty years before his connection with Mr. ParnelFs party. The intervening half century he had spent in all parts of- the world, soldiering, sailoring, traveling, enjoying adventure for its own sake. He had taken a con- siderable share in making the history of one of the South 100 EKGLAKD UN'DER GLADSTONE. American republics. Eiimor said of him that at one time he was not merely Lord High Admiral of its fleet and Generalissimo of its army^ but actually Archbishop of its Church. This latter statement, however, must be regarded as the merest exaggeration. He was in Parliament again, from 1847 to 1852; he came in for the third time in 1879. His friends were fond of rallying him on his supposed an- tiquity, but there was no young man in the Irish jmrty, or indeed in the House of Commons, who carried his head more erect, walked with a firmer stej), or showed less evi- dence of the weight of years than The O^Gorman Mahon. At first there seemed no reason to expect any serious reason for disunion between the Irish members and the Liberal party. In the previous Parliament the Irish mem- bers and the Eadical members had been thrown into fre- quent alliance; during the General Election the bonds of sympathy between the English Eadicals and the Irish peo- ple seemed to have been strengthened. The Irish vote in England had been given to the Liberal cause. The Liber- al S23eakers and statesmen, without committing themselves to any definite line of policy, had manifested friendly sen- timents toward Ireland; and though indeed nothing was- said which could be construed into a recognition of the Home Rule claim, still the new Ministry was known ta contain men favorable to that claim. The Irish members hoped for much from the new Government; anel, on the- other hand, the new Government expected to find cordial allies in all sections of the Irish party. The api^ointment of Mr. Eorster to the Irish Secretaryshij) was regarded by many Irishmen, especially those allied to Mr. Shaw and his following, as a marked sign of the good intentions of the Government toward Ireland. From the earliest days of the session, however, it was obvious that there would be but little possibility of the Government and the Irish Mountain workmg together. The Queen^s Speech announced that the Peace Preservation Act would not be renewed. This was a very important announcement. Since the Union Ireland had hardly been governed by the ordinary law for a single year. Excep- tional coercive legislation of all kmds had succeeded,, accompanied, and overlapped each other with regular per- sistency since the beginning of the century. Now the G ov- ernment were going to make the bold experiment of trjing ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. 101 to rule Ireland without the assistance of coercive and ex- ceptional law. The Queen's Speech^ however, contained only one other reference to Ireland, in a promise that a. measure would be introduced for the extension of the Irish borough franchise. This was in itself an important promise. The Irish borough franchise was very much higher than in England; was based upon the old principle which still exists both in English and Irish counties. In England every householder in a borough has a right to vote, no matter what the value of the dwelling he oc- cupies. Any place in which he and his family live, anj lodging, any room separately held, gives him the right to record his vote. In Ireland, on the contrary, a house must, have a certain value, must have a certain rental, before its owner is allowed the privilege of voting. ,No house in an Irish borough under the rate of £4 a year rental carries with it a qualification to vote. In England and Ireland alike there is a standard of value which has to be reached before an occupier has the privilege of voting. This condi- tion of things the advocates of the new Eeform Bill pro- posed to change. But extension of the borough franchise did not seem to the Irish members in 1880 the most impor- tant form that legislation for Ireland could take just then. The country was greatly depressed by its recent suffering; the number of evictions was beginning to rise enormously.. The Irish members thought that the Government should have made some promise to consider the land question,, and above all should have done something to stay the alarming increase of evictions. Evictions had increased from 463 families in 1877 to 980 in 1878, to 1238 in 1879: and they were still on the increase, as was shown at the end of 1880, when it was found that 2110 famihes were evicted. An amendment to the Address was at once brought for- ward by the Irish party, and debated at some length. The Irish party called for some immediate legislation on behalf of the land question. Mr. Forster replied, admitting the necessity for some legislation, but declaring that there would not be time for the introduction of any such meas- ure that session. Then the Irish members asked for some- temporary measure to prevent the evictions which were undoubtedly rapidly on the increase, and appeals were made to the Government not to lend landlords military aid 102 ENGLAND UKDER GLADSTONE. in carrying out evictions; but the Chief Secretary answered that while the law existed it was necessary to carry it out, , and he could only appeal to both sides to be moderate. -Matters slowly drifted on in this way for a short time, the Secret Service vote and the Irish Relief Bill affording op- portunities of sharj:) debates, in the course of which Mr. Forster more than once expressed his belief that the im- proved condition of Ireland would obviate the necessity for many of the old-fashioned methods of managing the coun- try. Evictions steadily increased, and Mr. ^Connor Power iDrought in a bill for the purpose of staying evictions. Then the Government, while refusing to accept the Irish meas- ure, brought in a Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which adopted some of the Irish suggestions. This Bill author- ized county court judges in Ireland, till the end of 4881, to allow compensation to tenants evicted for non-2oa5'ment of rent in cases where failure of crops had caused insolvency. This was explained by Mr. Forster as a mere extension of the Act of 1870, by making the eviction for non-payment of rent in cases where tenants were really unable to pay a disturbance within the meaning of the Act. On Friday, June 25, the second reading of the Bill was moved by Mr. Forster, who denied that it was a concession to the anti- rent agitation, and strongly denounced the outrages which were taking place in Ireland. At the same time he admit- ted that the rate of evictions for the year had already more than doubled the annual average rate jDreviously to 1877. This was the point at which difference between the Irish party and the Government jBrst became marked. The in- crease of evictions in Ireland, following as it did upon the widespread misery caused by the failure of the harvests and the partial famine, had generated — as famine and hunger have always generated — a certain amount of lawlessness. Evictions were occasionally resisted with violence; here and there outrages were committed upon bailiffs, process-serv- ers, and agents. In different places, too, injuries had been inflicted upon the cattle and horses of land-owners and land-agents, cattle had been killed, horses houghed, and sheep mutilated. These offenses were always committed at night, and their jDcrpetrators were seldom discovered. There is no need, there should be no attemj^t, to justify ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. 103^^ these crimes. But while condemning all acts of violence, whether upon man or beast^ it must be remembered that these acts were committed by ignorant peasants of the low- est class, maddened by hunger, want, and eviction, driven to despair by the suiferings of their wives and children, convinced of the utter hopelessness of redress, and longing for revenge. It was difficult to get these poor peasants to believe in the good intentioiis of the Government at any time, and unfortunately just then the good intentions of the Govern- ment were not very actively displayed. The Compensation for Disturbance Bill was carried in the Commons after long- debates in which the Irish party strove to make its princi- ples stronger, while the Opposition denounced it as a fla- grant infringement of the rights of property. It was sent up to the Lords, where it was rejected on Tuesday, August 3, by a majority of 231. The Government . answered the appeals of Irish members by refusing to take any steps to make the Lords retract their decision, or to introduce any similar measure that session. From that point the agita- tion and struggles of the past four years may be said to date. It is impossible to estimate how much suffering might have been avoided if the Government had taken a firmer line with the House of Lords in August, 1380. The^ House of Lords is never a serious opponent to the will of a powerful and popular Ministry; and if it had once been shown that the Government were determined to carry some measure for the relief of evicted tenants, it would have soon ceased to make any stand against it. But though the Gov- ernment, through the mouth of Mr. Forster, had admitted the alarming increase of evictions and the agitated condi- tion of the country, they refused to take any further steps just then. They promised, indeed, to bring in some com- prehensive measure next session, and they appointed a committee to, inquire into the condition of the agricultural population of Ireland. On this commission they absolute- ly refused, in spite of the earnest entreaties of the Irish members, to give any place to any representative of the tenant-farmer^s cause. This was a curious illustration of the Irish policy of the Government during the early part, of its rule, Though the Irish members who followed Mr. Parnell might surely have been regarded as expressing at least the feelings of a very large section of the Irish people^, 104 EN"GLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. their wishes were as little regarded as if they had represented nothing. It seems difficult to believe that during the whole of Mr. Forster^s occupation of the Irish Secretaryshij) he never once consulted any member of the Parnellite party on any part of his Irish policy; never asked their advice, or even their opinion, on any Irish affairs whatever. It is still stranger that he pursued almost the same principle with regard to the Irish members who sat on his own side of the House — moderate men like Mr. Shaw and Major Nolan. The speeches of the Land League leaders became more and more hostile to the Government. At a meeting in Kildare, in August, Mr. John Dillon made a speech in which he advised Boycotting, called upon the young farm- ers of Ireland to defend evicted Leaguers threatened with eviction. He looked forward to the time when there would be 300,000 men enrolled in the ranks of the Land League; and when that time came, if the landlords still refused justice, the word would be given for a general strike all over the country against rent, and then '' all the armies in England would not levy rent in that country. " On Tues- day, August 17, Sir Walter Barttelot called the attention of the Chief Secretary to this speech. Mr. Forster de- scribed it as wicked and cowardly; but, while he declined to prosecute Mr. Dillon for it, he announced that the Gov- ernment were watching the Land League speeches vei-y carefully. Mr. Dillon immediately came across from Ire- land to reply to the Chief Secretary's attack. Mr. Dillon was one of the most remarkable men in the National movement. He was the son of John Dillon, the Young Irelander and rebel of 1848, whom Sir Charles Gavan Duffy describes as ^' tall and strikingly handsome, with eyes like a thoughtful woman's, and the clear olive complexion and stately bearing of a Spanish nobleman. " When the ^^ Young Ireland'' rising failed, John Dillon the elder escaped to France, and afterward to America, and in later years he came back to Ireland, and was elected to Parliament for the county of Tipperary. Ho earned an honorable dis- tinction in the House of Commons, where his great aim was to strengthen the alliance between the Irish members and the English Radicals, and he won the cordial admira- tion of Mr. John Bright. Mr. Bright has jDaid eloquent tribute to the memory of John Dillon in a speech which he El^GLAlSTD UKDER GLADSTON^E. 105 delivered in Dublin at a banquet wbicli Mr. Dillon had or- ganized to Mr. Bright. Mr. Dillon was to have presided at the banquet, but he died suddenly a few days before it took place. '^'^ I venture to say/^ said Mr. Bright, '^'^that his sad and sudden removal is a great loss to Ireland. I believe among all her worthy sons Ireland has had no worthier and no nobler son than John Blake Dillon. ^^ Mr. Dillon, the son, was a much more extreme man than his father. He did not display the sympathy with English Hadicalism which his father felt, and he appeared to have little or no belief in Parliamentary action. He was quite a young man, and had been elected for the county of Tip- perary at the General Election while absent himself in America. Mr. Dillon rose in the House of Commons on Monday,, August 23, and moved the adjournment of the House in order to reply to Mr. Eorster^s attack upon him. The manner of his speech was no less remarkable than its mat- ter — quiet, perfectly self-possessed. With a low, passion- less voice and unmoved face Mr. Dillon met the charges against him. He professed his absolute indifference as to what the Irish Secretary might choose to call him; but he. denied that his speech was wicked in advising- the farmers, of Ireland to resist an unjust law. He laid at Mr. Fors- ter's door the difficulties and the possible bloodshed that might be caused by the increasing evictions and the unjust course the Government was pursuing. Mr. Forster replied by analyzing the Kildare speech, and repeating his former charges. He accused Mr. Dillon of advising his hearers not to pay their rents, whether they could afford to or not; he charged him with something like sympathy with the muti- lation of animals, because, instead of denouncing the hough- ing of horses and cattle that had taken place, he had said that if Mayo landlords put cattle on the lands from which. they could get no rent, the cattle would not prosper very much. He quoted sentences from Mr. Dillon^s speech,, that ^^ those in Parliament faithful to the cause of the people could paralyze the hands of the Government, and prevent them from passing such laws as would throw men into prison for organizing themselves. In Parliament they could obstruct, and outside of it they could set the people free to drill and organize themselves;'^ and that *^^they "would show that every man in Ireland had a right to a rifle- 106 ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. if he liked to have a rifle." A long and bitter debate fol- lowed, in which Irish, Liberal, and Conservative members took part. The Irish members, in almost every case, ap- pealed to the Government even now to do something for the tenants; the Liberals replied, justifying the action of the Government. The next day, Tuesday, the 24th, another Irish debate arose on a motion of Mr. ParnelFs on the Parliamentary relations of England and Ireland. On the following Thursday, in Committee on Supj^ly, another Irish debate arose on the vote for the Irish constabulary estimates. This was, in many ways, a memorable debate. It 'was from the defense Mr. Forster made in this debate of the use of buckshot as ammunition for the Irish constabulary that the nickname of '^Buckshot" arose, which will, in all probability, be associated with his name as long as his name may be remembered. Furthermore, this debate was the first of several famous all-night sittings, w^hich mark at intervals the career of the administration. The debate had begun on Thursday afternoon; it was protracted all through Thursday night and over Friday morning, and only came to an end shortly before 1 P. m. on the Friday, when the Government consented to an adjournment of the debate until the following Monday. On the Monday, after further debate from the Irish members, the vote was finally carried. The Irish case against the constabulary was in some measure recognized by Mr. Forster, who stated that, although it was quite impossible then for the Executive to consent to the general disarmament of the constabulary force, yet her Majesty^s Government felt bound not to rest until they had placed Ireland in such a position as no longer to need the presence of this armed force. ' In some of Mr. Forster^s speeches there were menacing allusions to the possibility of the revival of the abandoned' coercive measures; but, on the other hand, Mr. Forster declined to promise to urge the calling of a winter session in case the evictions increased, in order to deal with the question. On September 7 the House was prorogued. The rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill and the inaction of the Government gave fresh impulse to the agitation in Ireland. Evicting landlords, encouraged by the failure of the Government measure, swelled the list of evictions; and, on the other hands, all landlords, good ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. lOT and bad alike, became the objects of popular antipathy. Tlie Land League leaders, members of Parliament and others, advised the tenants^ passive resistance of eviction and non-payment of rent, in the hope that, by a sort of general strike on the part of the tenantry, evictions might be delayed until the following session saw the introductiort of the promised Ministerial measure. In fact, the Land League advised the tenants to form a sort of tenant trades- union, for resisting not merely evictions, but the exactions of what they considered an unjust amount of rent above Griffith's valuation. Griffith's valuation played such an important part in th& politics of this time, and was so frequently alluded to, that it may be well to give some idea of what it was. The valuation of Ireland was undertaken in 1830 on- the recom^ mendation of a select committee of the House of Commons in 1824. To insure uniform valuation an Act was passed in. 1836, requiring all valuations of land to be based on a fixed scale of agricultural produce contained in the Act. The valuators were instructed to act in the same manner as' if employed by a principal landlord dealing with a solvent tenant. The average valuation proved to be about twenty- five per cent, under the gross rental of the country. In 1844 a select committee of the House of Commons was ap- pointed to reconsider the question, and an Act passed in 1846 changed the principle of valuation from a relative valuation of town lands based on a fixed scale of agricult- ural produce to a tenement valuation for poor-law rating ta be made '' upon an estimate of the net annual value .... of the rent, for which, one year with another, the same might in its actual state be reasonably expected to let from year to year. '' The two valuations gave substan- tially the same results. In 1852 another Valuation Act was passed returning to the former principle of valuation by a fixed scale of agricultural produce; but Sir Eichard Griffith's evidence in 1869 shows the valuation employed was a " live-and-let-live valuation, according to the state of prices, for five years previous to " the time of valuation. Grifiith's valuation was indeed but a rough-and-ready way of estimating the value of land. In many cases it was really above the worth of the land; in other cases it was below it. Still it was a reasonable basis enough, certainly far more reasonable than the rates of the rack-rents. The 108 ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. Land League speakers condemned all rents above GrilBBth's valuation — only, it must be remembered, in the period of probation while the Government was preparing its Land measure — and under their direction a practical strike was organized against the landlords extorting high rents. It ought to be borne in mind that the failure of the Govern- ment to pass its Compensation for Disturbance Bill, coupled with its announcement that it practically intended to re- open the land question and introduce a new Land Bill, had driven the bad landlords in Ireland to desperation. They thought that the interval between the measure that had iailed and the measure that was to come was the only time left to them, and they went to work vigorously to get all the money they could out of the land before the crash came, and the Government, in the formulas of the Opposi- tion, '' interfered with the rights of property. " It certainly did seem hard that the tenants should have been left by the Government at the mercy of landlords who were incited to make the most out of their tenancies before the new Land Act fell upon them. But as the Government had done nothing, the Land League advised the people to stand out for themselves; to pay no rent, and passively resist eviction. The supporters of the Land League had another enemy besides the landlord in the person of the land-grabber, the man who took a farm from which his neighbor had been dispossessed. The strike was suj)ported by a form of ac- tion, or rather inaction, which soon became historical. CajDtain Boycott was an Englishman, an agent of Lord Earne and a farmer at Lough Mask, in the wild and beau- tiful district of Connemara. In his capacity as agent he had served notices upon Lord Earners tenants, and the tenantry suddenly retaliated in a most unexpected way by, 1 in the language of schools and society, sending Captain : Boycott to Coventry in a very thorough manner. The population of the region for miles round resolved not to have anything to do with him, and, as far as they could prevent it, not to allow any one else to have anything to do with him. His life appeared to be in danger; he had to claim police protection. His servants fled from him as servants fled from their masters in some plague-stricken Italian city; the awful sentence of excommunication could hardly have rendered him more helplessly alone for a time. No one would work for him; no one would sujDply him with ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. 109 food. He and his wife had to work in their own fields them- selves in most unpleasant imitation of Theocritan shepherds and shepherdesses;, and play out their grim eclogue in their desertecl fields with the shadows of the armed constabulary ever at their heels. The Orangemen of the north heard of Captain Boycott and his sufierings, and the way in which he was holding his ground^ and they organized assistance and sent him down armed laborers from Ulster. To pre- vent civil war the authorities had to send a force of soldiers smd police to Lough Mask, and Captain Boycott^s harvests were brought in, and his potatoes dug by the armed Ulster laborers, guarded always by the little army. When the occupations of Ulstermen and army were over. Captain Boycott came to England for a time, but in the end he re- turned to Lough* Mask, where, curiously enough, he is once again at peace with his neighbors, and is even popular, perhaps because he showed that he was a brave man. The events at Lough Mask, however, gave rise to two things — to Boycotting on the part of the Land League, and to the formation of a body known as Emergency men, chiefly recruited from the Orange lodges. The business of the Emergency men was to counteract, wherever it was possible, the operations of the League, by helping Boy- cotted landlords and land-agents to gather in their harvests. Boycotting was freely employed by the League. It meant the practical excommunication of rack-renting landlords, evicting agents, and land-grabbers. No sympathizer with the League was supposed to have any dealings with the Boy- cotted individuals; they were not to be worked for, bought from, sold to. The principle of Boycotting was not ag- gressive; nothing was to be done to the obnoxious person, but, also, nothing was to be done for him. This was ^ti'ictly legal. The law can not compel a man to buy or sell with one of his fellows against his will. The respon- sible leaders of the Land League never countenanced other than legal agitation. Mr. Michael Davitt again and again put on record in public speeches his uncompromising oppo- sition to all intimidation. " Our League does not desire to intimidate any one who disagrees with us,^^ he said; ^^ while we abuse, coercion, we must not be guilty of coer- cion ;^^ and he made frequent appeals to his hearers in dif- ferent parts of Ireland to ^' abstain from all acts of vio«' lence, and to repel every incentive to outrage. " '^ Glorious, 110 EKGLAND UKDER GLADSTONE. indeed/^ he said^ '^ will be our victory, and high in the es- timation of mankind will our grand old fatherland stand, if we can so curb our passions and control our actions in this struggle for free land, as to march to success through privation and danger without resorting to the wild justice of revenge, or being guilty of anjrthing which could sully the cha^-acter of a brave and Christian people. " Unfortunately, these good counsels were not always obeyed. Famine and eviction had sowed evil seed; men who had been evicted, men who were starving, who had seen their families and friends evicted, to die often enough of starvation on the cold roadside — these men were not in the temper which takes kindly to wise counseL Outrages have invariably followed in the track of every Irish famine, and they followed now this latest famine. There w^ere murders in different parts of the country; there were mutilations of cattle. These outrages were made the very most of by the • enemies of the Land League. Scat- tered agrarian murders were spoken of as if each of them were a link in the chain of a widely planned organization of massacre. People found their deepest sympathies stirred by the sufferings of cattle and horses in Ireland, who never were known to feel one throb of compunction over the fashionable sin of torturing pigeons at Hurlingham. But while most of the persons who acted thus knew little and cared less for the real condition of Ireland, there was one man who was studying the country with all the sympathy of one of the noblest natures now living on the earth. General Gordon — then known best to the world as '^ Chi- nese " Gordon, destined now, perhaps, to be remembered chiefly as " Soudan " Gordon — was in Ireland examining the Irish question for himself with kind, experienced eyes. He wrote a letter to a friend, which was published in the '^ Times " on December 3, 1880. " I have been lately over the south-west of Ireland,'^ General Gordon wrote, '^ in the hope of discovering how some settlement could be made of the Irish question, which, like the fretting cancer, eats away our vitals as a nation. " After speaking of the " complete lack of sympathy " between the landlord and tenant class. General Gordon went on: "No half -meas- ured Acts which left the landlords with any say to the ten- antry of these portions of Ireland will be of any use. They would be rendered — -as past land Acts in Ireland have been EKGLAKD UI^DEE GLADSTONE. Ill —quite abortive, for the landlords will insert clauses to do away with, their force. Any half -measures will only place the Government face to face with the people of Ireland as the champions of the landloifd interest. " General Gordon then proposed that the Government should, at a cost of eighty millions, convert the greater part of the so*uth-west of Ireland into Crown lands, in which landlords should have no power of control: " For the rest of Ireland I would pass an Act allowing free sale of leases, iair rents, and a Government valuation. In conclusion, I must say from all accounts, and my own observations, that the "state of our fellow-countrymen in the parts I have named is worse than that of any people in the World, let alone Europe. I believe that these people are made as we are, that they are patient beyond belief, loyal, but at the same time broken-spirited and desperate, living on the verge of starvation in places where we would not keep our cattle. , , . Our. comic prints do an infinity of harm by their caricatures. Firstly, the caricatures are not true, for the crime in Ireland is not greater than that in England; and, secondly, they exasperate the people ' on both sides of the Channel, and they do no good. It is ill to laugh and >scoff at a question which affects our existence. " It is im- possible to avoid reflecting with melancholy bitterness on the different aspect that the Irish question would now wear if a man like Chinese Gordon could have been sent to ad- ministrate the country in the place of the egotistical and ill-conditioned politician who succeeded to, and was more noxious than, famine. , Still there w®re outrages, and Ireland was disturbed. The Land League claimed that it did much to prevent outrage; that the unavoidable violence consequent upon the famine and the evictions would have been far greater but for them; that secret conspiracy and midnight outrage were notably diminished by their open agitation. The Government, on the other hand, declared that the Land League was guilty of ■ inciting to outrage. A State prosecution was com- menced against the officials of the League — Mr. Parnell, M.P., Mr. Dillon, M.P., Mr. T. D. Sullivan, M.P., Mr. Sexton, M.P., Mr. Biggar, M.P., Mr. Patrick Egan, Treas- urer of the Land League, Mr. Thomas Brennan, Secretary of the Land League, and some eight others — on the charge of seditious conspiracy. The jury were unable to agree. 112 ENGLAl^D UI^DER GLADSTON^E. and the trial came to nothing. In the meantime the coun- try was becoming daily more agitated, and Mr. Forster daily more unj^opular. His ajDpointment had at first been hailed with satisfaction by many of what may be called the popular party, and with anger and alarm by the landlords, who regarded him as the herald of startling land changes. But Mr. Forster soon became as unpopular with the Na- tional party in Ireland as ever Castlereagh had been. They alleged that he was completely under Castle influence; that he only saw through the eyes and heard through the ears of Castle officials; that he came out j^rej^ared to be pojDular and settle everything at once, and that his vanity wa% keenly hurt by the disappointment; that, finding the forces he had to deal with were difficult and complex, he could only propose to deal with them by crushing them down. He was soon known to be in favor of a revival of the policy of coercion. Lord Cowper, the Lord Lieutenant, was an. amiable, but by no means a strong, man; in the Cabinet he feebly echoed Mr. For sterns opinions, and in the Cabinet Mr. Forster was able to carry the day on Irish matters when he proposed the revival of coercion. It w^as soon blown, abroad that the Government intended to bring in a Land Bill for Ireland, and to balance it with a Coercion Bill; furthermore, that they intended to bring in the Coercion Bill first and the Land Bill afterward. CHAPTER VIL COERCION. PARLiAMEifT met on Thursday, January 6, 1881. It found the Radicalism of the Ministry strengthened by the appointment of Mr. Leonard Courtney as Under-Secretary for the Home Department. The Queen's Speech was able to announce the conclusion of the Afghan war, and the in- tention not to occujoy Candahar, an intimation that sound- ed most unpleasantly in the ears of the Imperial party. The Boer war was spoken of; the Greek frontier was declared to be under the consideration of the great Powers; mention was made of certain measures of domestic interest, chief among them being the Bills for the abolition of flogging in ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTOKE. 115 the army and the navy. But undoubtedly the most im- portant part of the royal speech referred to Ireland. The multiplication of agrarian crimes^, and tlie insecurity of life and property^ demanded the introduction of coercive meas- ures; while, on the other hand, the speech admitted that the condition of Ireland called for an extension of the Land Act principles of 1870. A measure for the establishment of county government in Ireland was also mentioned. The debate on the address in the House of Lords was. chiefly remarkable for a brilliant and bitter speech from Lord Beaconsfield. In the eight months that had elapsed since the new Ministry had come into power, much had happened to embarrass them and dim their triumph. Tjord Beaconsfield was naturally not willing to spare his antagonists the recapitulation of their difficulties. In the life-long duel between Mr. Gladstone and Lord Beaconsfield there came in the end to be an amount of accusation and recrimination of so personal a nature as to recall the worst traditions of the days of Bolingbroke and Walpole. Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian speeches had struck hard at Lord Beaconsfield, and Lord Beaconsfield was not now likely to let slip the chance of retaliation upon his antagonist. He dwelt with scornful emphasis upon the complete repudia- tion of Tory policy which had been so loudly trumpeted when Mr. Gladstone came into office. What had their principles of repudiation brought the Government? he asked. Eetreat from Afghanistan, abandonment of Can- dahar, a Berlin conference which had reopened the closed Eastern question and nearl}^ plunged Europe into war. But Lord Beaconsfield was naturally most exulting whcR he came to the relations of t he Government with Ireland. He had been mocked at for his prognostication of danger; the new Ministry were satisfied with the condition of Ire- land, and were prepared to govern it without the worn-out Tory methods of Peace Preservation Acts; and now, after little more than half a year of trial, the Government were coming before the House, confessing their failure, and seek- ing to be strengthened once again by those coercive meas- ures which they had so lightly rejected with every other portion of the policy of their predecessors.- Lori Beacons- field had a clever case, and he made the most of it. With a brilliant maliciousness which recalled the days when Mr. Disraeli was still a young man with the world before him^ 114 ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. Lord Beaconsfield appealed to the Lords not to do anything in this juncture which might weaken the Administration in their late effort to deal with their Irish difficulty. Almost at the same time that Lord Beaconsfield was at- tacking the policy of the Government in the Lords, Mr. Gladstone was defending it in the Commons. He dwelt upon the happy conclusion of the Montenegrin difficulty; he was hopeful of a fortunate settlement of the Greek diffi- culty ; he passed lightly over the Afghan war, touched upon the Boer war, and justified the Government in not making the Basuto war — with which they had nothing to do, and for which they were in no measure responsible — their own. But the chief point of Mr. Gladstone's speech, as indeed of every speech delivered then and for a long time to come, was of course the Irish question. The Prime Minister de- nied that the Ministry had any reason to feel humiliation at what had taken place. He justified them in not calling Parliament together earlier, on the ground that they were determined to do their best with the existing law before ap- pealing for stronger measures. In a few remarkable sen- tences he censured the late Government for the manner in which they had chosen to act upon the existing law: they put the law into effect against four men, three of whom were utterly insignificant: '' One of them, indeed,' ' Mr. Gladstone added, thinking of Mr. Davitt, *' has since proved himself to be a man of great ability, but was not then of much note.'' " The late Government did not aim their weapons at the cliief offenders, but contented them- selves with charging comj^aratively insignificant men, and, having charged them, did not bring them to trial." " The method of threatening without striking is, in our opinion," said Mr. Gladstone, amid the loud cheers of his party, *' the worst course of action that could have been adopted;" and he pointed to the State trials then going on as a j^roof of the more decided action and stronger purposes of the new Ministry. He considered that they had done their duty in watching the country for a while under the opera- tion of the ordinary law. He thought they had now waited long enough, but could not admit that they had waited too long, though •he*declined to allow that the coercion which he thought necessary was any remedy for the grievances of Ireland. Hence the announcement with regard to the new Land Act. He claimed that the Land Act of 1870 had not EKGLAND UNDEE GLADSTONE. 115 been a failure; but lie confessed that the provisions of the Act '* have not prevented undue and frequent augmenta^ tions of rent which have not been justified by the real value of the holding, but have been brought in in consequence of the superior strength of the landlord/^ Mr. Forster had given notice^ before Mr. Gladstone spoke^ of the introduction of bills for the better protection of per- sons and property in Ireland, and to amend the law relat- ing to a carrying and possession of arms; and Mr. Glad- stone had announced his intention of moving that these bills should have priority over all other business. But tkese bills were not destined to be introduced for some days to come. The address was still to be disposed of, and there were many amendments to it to be considered and dis- cussed, several of these being moved by Irish members and relating to Irish affairs. But as, according to Thackeray, even the Eastern Counties^ trains come in at last_, so, too^, the debate on the address came to an end at last. On Thursday, January 20, after eleven days of debate, the re- port of the address was agreed to amid general cheering^ But already the Irish members had roused the anger of the Government. Most of the speeches on the address had been Irish speeches, the speeches of Irish members on the various Irish questions. Before the debate had concluded,^ Lord Hartington had attacked the obstructive policy of the Irish members, and warned them that their action might compel the House to come to some understanding by which the process of business should be facilitated. If every day added to the debate on the address staved off the introduc- tion of coercion, so too. Lord Hartington urged, it delayed the introduction of the promised Land Act. Lord Ed- mond Fitzmaurice and Mr. Thorold Rogers formed them- selves into a sort of amateur committee on obstruction. They plunged into records of old rulings, they became learned in antique principles of procedure and venerable points of order, and they addressed to the ^' Times, ^' three days before the debate on the address concluded, a long letter in which they pointed out the existence of certain seventeenth-century orders of the House. One of these ruled that '^ if any man speak impertinently, or beside the question in hand, it standeth with the order of the House for Mr. Speaker to interrupt him, and to know the pleasure of the House whether they will further hear him:^^ an 116 EliTGLAND UKDER GLADSTON^E. order which was sanctioned and strengthened by lat«r rul- ings. On Monday, January 24, 1881, Mr. Forster introduced his first coercion measure. Mr. Forster made out a long and elaborate case in justification of the measure. He pre- sented a return of outrages to the House of Commons which looked alarming at first, but which Mr. Labouchere showed to be somewhat curiously manufactured. In many cases outrages were of the simplest description; in many more the number was swelled by an mgenious process of subdivision, so that one outrage was made to stand for sev- eral, by the simj^le process of multiplying any given offense by the number of men committing it. The total number of agrarian outrages in Ireland in the year 1880 was 2590. I^eturns of agrarian crimes in Ireland had been made since 1844, but not before, and the highest return since that date was for the year 1845, the first year of the great famine, in which year the list of outrages numbered 1920, or thirty- five per cent, less than in 1880. Excluding threatening letters, the number of outrages in 1880 was 1253, as con- trasted with 950 in 1845, or thirty-two per cent, higher. Moreover, as the population of Ireland was only 5,000,000 in 1880, to 8,000,000 in 1845, the proportion of outrages in 1880 was really more than double the proportion of out- rages in 1845. There were, indeed, few cases of murder, or attempts at murder; the outrages were chiefly intimida- tion by personal violence, by injury to property and cattle, and by threatening letters. The number of outrages of this kind had greatly increased during the last three months of 1880, and the area of intimidation was extending. One hundred and fifty-three persons were under the personal protection of two policemen on the first day of the new year, and 1149 persons were watched over by the police. Mr. Forster urged that the existing law was not strong enough to grapple with this system of intimidation. The instruments of this intimidation were, however, well known to the police; they were generally old Fenians and Ribbon- men, the mauvais sujets of their neighborhood, dissolute ruffians, and village tyrants. The new Bill would give the Lord Lieutenant power by warrant to arrest any person reasonably suspected of treason, treasonable felony, or trea- sonable practices, and the commission, whether before or after the Act, of crimes of intimidation or incitement ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. 117 thereto. By this means the Government would be able to lay their hands upon the mauvais sujets, the village ty- rants, and, by depriving the Land League of its police, ren- der it powerless. Naturally an animated debate followed. The Irish Nationalists, of course, opposed the measure. Moderate Irishmen, like Dr. Lyons, Mr. Givan, Mr. Rich- ardson, and Mr. Litton, either opposed the precedence of coercion to remedial measures, or urged the introduction of a Bill to stay unfair eviction pending the introduction of the remedial legislation. Mr. Bradlaugh did not consider that a case had been made out for a Coercion Bill. The Conservative party, of course, supported the Government. The debate was adjourned on the Monday night, and its resumption was interrupted for a couple of days by the first all-night sitting of the year. On the day after Mr. Fors- ter^s introduction of the Coercion Bill, Mr. Gladstone moved to declare urgency for the Coercive Bills, and so give them precedence over all other public business. The Irish Nationalists at once set themselves to opposing this by every means in their power. The new standing order prevented the taking of many divisions, as it allowed indi- vidual members only two motions for adjournment; so the Irish members confined themselves to making speeches, which were incessantly interrupted by calls to order from the chair. Mr. Biggar, at a comparatively early period of the debate, got into a confiict with authority which led to his being suspended from the sitting; whereupon he imme- diately withdrew, and, ascending the heights of the strangers^ gallery, watched the confiict with unwearying interest from that elevation, as Ivanhoe followed from his turret the fortunes of the Black Knight and his fellows. The struggle, indeed, was sufficiently interesting to be worth sitting out. It was fought — this being but a first essay for the year — ^with sufficient good-humor on both sides. The hours waned; but there came no waning in the animation of the speakers on both sides. Members came and went; ingenious little plans of relays for relieving guard were arranged. Morning came, and brought with it a fog scarcely less obscure than night. It was not bright enough till eleven o'clock to extinguish the gas. Very dismal the chamber showed when daylight did come, as unwashed, unbrushed, with weary, sleepy faces and tumbled clothes, the members faced each other. For three 118 EKGLAlfD UNDER GLADSTONE. hours more the fight went on, and then, at two o^clock, Mr. Gladstone's motion was agreed to, and the House, not unnaturally, immediately adjourned to wash, eat, and sleep. y This was but the prelude to a series of stormy scenes in the House, each one surpassing its predecessors in bitterness and unpleasantness. The debate on the Coercion Bill was resumed on the Thursday, and was remarkable for a speech from Mr. Bright. Mr. Bright had kept silence — with the exception of a protest against obstruction — since the begin- ning of the session, and it had been whispered that he was so silent because he was .not in accord with his colleagues on the Irish question. He was roused from his silence by a speech of The CDonoghue's. The O'Donoghue was at this period of his varied political career an ardent sup- porter of Mr. Parnell. He sat in opposition to Govern^ ment, and made himself cons2Dicuous as an aggressive patriot and unfailing opjDonent of the Government. He declared that the Land League differed in no respect from the Anti- Corn Law League, and taunted Mr. Bright by asking what trials followed the agitation and the denunciations of land- lords which belonged to the movement of which Mr. bright and Mr. Cobden were the heads. A little later in the de- bate Mr. Bright rose and spoke. In a speech of great bit- terness Mr. Bright attacked the conduct of the Irish Parlia- mentar}^ party. He denied angrily that any parallel existed between the action of the Land League and the Anti-Corn Law League. With all the indignation of which Mr. Bright is a master, and with more than his usual vehe- mence, he flung himself in a very fury of passionate oratory "iipon the Irish opponents of the Government. It almost seemed as if Mr. Bright were determined to make it plain, by the very rage and whirlwind of his j)assion, how com- pletely unfounded were those rumors which hinted that he was at odds with his colleagues in the Cabinet on the Irish question. He assailed his opponents with all the eloquence at his command ; and though the speaker was now old, the strength and power of that eloquence were still sufficiently impressive, even to those at whom all its fierce invective was leveled. The severance of the extreme Irish 25arty and the Govern- ment was now complete. Mr. Bright, who had often sup- ported Ireland before, and was looked upon as a true friend ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. 119 by the Irish people^ was now one of the bitterest opponents of the whole national movement and of its Parliamentary leaders. The Irish national press was fiercely exasperated to find Mr. Bright supporting coercion for Ireland. He had indeed voted for coercion before in his younger days^ but he had always been eloquent against it, and his utter- ances were brought up against him by the Irish papers. They reminded him that in 1866 he had described coercion ior Ireland as an '' ever-failing and ever-poisonous remedy;^^ and they asked him why he recommended the imsuccessful and venomous legislation now. They pointed to his speech of 1849, in which he said,^' The treatment of this Irish malady remain^ ever the same. We have noth- ing for it still but force and alms.^"* They quoted from his speech of 1847: '' I am thoroughly convinced that every- thing the Government or Parliament can do for Ireland will be unavailing unless the foundation of the work be laid deep and well, by clearing away the fetters under which land is now held, so that it may become the possession of real owners, and be made instrumental to the employment and sustentation of the people. Honorable gentlemen op- posite may fancy themselves interested in maintaining the present system; but there is surely no interest they can have in it which will weigh against the safety and pros • perity of Ireland.^'' Such a passage as this might have served, it was urged, as a motto for the Land League itself. What other doctrine did the Land League uphold but that the land should become the possession of real owners, and be made instrumental to the employment and sustentation of the people? Might -not the Land League have fairly .asked the Government what interest it could have in the present system of land which would weigh against the safety and prosperity of Ireland? Had not Mr. Bright told them, too, in 1866, that '^ the great evil of Ireland is this: that the Irish people — the Irish nation— are dispossessed of the soil, and what we ought to do is to provide for and aid in their restoration to it by all measures of Justice''^? He disliked the action of the Irish members now because they were acting against the Liberal party; but had he not said, in 1866 also, *^ If Irishmen were united, if you hundred and five members were for the most part agreed, you might do almost anything that you liked ;^^ and further said, " If there were a hundred more members, the representatives 120 ENGLAND UNDEK GLADSTONE. of large and free constituencies, tlien your cry would be heard, and the people would give you that justice which a class has so long denied 3'ou ^^? '^ Exactly/' replied his- Trish critics. ** We have now a united body of Irishmen^ the largest and most united the House has ever seen, and you do not seem to look kindly upon it. You do not seem to be acting up to your promise made in Dublin in 1866.' '^ *' If I have in past times felt an unquenchable sympathy with the sufferings of your people, you may rely upon it that, if there be an Irish member to speak for Ireland, he will find me heartily by his side.'' At the same speech in Dublin, Mr. Bright said, '^ if I could be in all other things the same, but in birth an Irishman, there is not a town itl this island I would not visit for the purpose of discussing the great Irish question, and of rousing my countrymen to some great and united action." " This is exactly what we are doing," said his Land League critics; '' why do youL denounce us now? Why do you vote for Coercion Acts to prevent the discussion of the great Irish question?" The next day, Friday, January 28, while the impression, of Mr. Bright 's speech was still fresh in the minds of the House, Mr. Gladstone made a sj^eech which, viewed as a piece of Parliamentary attack, certainly far surpassed it. With all his eloquence Mr. Gladstone flung himself against, his enemies, justified the introduction of coercion in the disorganized condition of Ireland, and bitterly denounced many of the speeches of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar. From a dramatic point of view the scene in the chamber was singularly impressive. If the sheer force of eloquence and anger and the support of a powerful and enthusiastic majority could have done it, the opposition would have come to an end then and there, and the Coercion Bill been carried at once. Never since the night when Sir Charles Dilke made his famous speech, and Mr. Auberon Herbert announced himself too as a republican, had the House wit- nessed such a scene, though since then stormy scenes have been less infrequent. Mr. Gladstone was playing the part of Juj^iter suppressing the revolted gods. Wine, says Macaulay, was the spell which unlocked the fine intellect of Addison. Passion is the spell which most sureiy un- locks Mr. Gladstone's skill as an orator of attack. The fury of his indignation swept over the House and stirred it to its depths, arousing tumultuous enthusiasm in the ma- EKGLAN"D UNDEK GLADSTONE. 121 Jority of nis hearers, ajid angry protest from the minority lie was assailing. The pale, unmoved face of Mr. Parnell occasionally showed through the storm as he rose to correct the Prime Minister in his quotations from his speeches, and was howled and shouted, if not into silence, at least into being inaudible. Yague rumors floated about the House of Commons on the Monday evening that there would be troublesome work -ere night, but at first there seemed no promise of the ex- tsited and strenuous fighting which kept the weary Com- mons awake through successive days. The Irish members were determined to resist the Coercion Bill in every stage to the utmost. They challenged fate, in the shape of the Ministry, to come into the lists and fight it out, and the result was the longest sitting then on record. The hours €ame and went, the gray dawn stole on the heels of night, and ugly night again came breathing at the heels of day, and found the Commons still wrangling, still dividing, still calling to order, still stupidly sleeping or vainly trying to follow the arguments of the various speakers. The scene was full of interest to those — and there were some — who had the courage to see it out from the watch-towers of the Speaker^ s gallery. As the time went on, the appearance of the House was not without elements of humor. One member of the Third Party, as the Irish party were called, found the atmosphere cold, and insisted upon addressing the House -in a long ulster, resembling the gaberdine of USToah in the toy-shop arks. On the Treasury Bench Lord Hartington, grimly erect, doggedly surveyed the obstruc- tives. He was curiously in contrast with Mr. Forster, who sat doubled, or, rather, crumpled up, in an attitude of ex- treme depression. The occupants of the front Opposition bench wore an air of bland unconcern. " This is not our fault,^^ they seemed to say, ^' but it is not uninteresting, ;and we do not mind seeing you through with it. ' ' At ten minutes to five o'clock on the Tuesday morning the Speaker left the chair; the clerk at the table gravely in- formed the House of the unavoidable absence of Mr. Speaker, and his place was taken by Mr. Lyon Playfair, Still the debate went on. Irish member succeeded Irish member in lengthy speeches, interrupted by incessant calls to order from all parts of the House and from the chair. Somewhere about six o ''clock the motion for the adjourn- 122 E2TGLAKD UNDER GLADSTONE. ment of tlie debate was defeated by 141 to 211'. majority 114. The debate was then resumed on the origmal motion^ and Mr. Healy immediately moved the adjournment of the House. At twenty-five minutes past one on Tuesday afternoon the deputy-chairman left the chair, which was reoccupied by the Speaker. A small side discussion sprung up at this point, Mr. Parnell contending that, by the standing orders of the House, the Speaker had not the right to return to his place after that place had been taken by the deputy-chairman until the next sitting of the House, a point which the Speaker ruled was based on a misconception of the order. At ten minutes to three the motion for the adjournment of the House was divided upon, and was lost by a majority of 204; the numbers being, ayes 21, nays 225. Still the debate went on, with- out any sign of flagging determination on either side. The adjournment of the debate was then moved by Mr. Daly, and this question was fought out for some time and divided upon — 23 to 163; majority against, 140. The debate was then resumed on Dr. Lyon's amendment to the main ques- tion, and the adjournment of the House moved. At half- past eleven on the Tuesday night the Speaker again left the chair, and his 23lace was again taken by Mr. Lyon Pla}^air. At midnight Sir Stafford Korthcote apj^ealed alike to the chair and the Government to do something to jDut an end to the obstruction. A little later on the debate was enlivened by a wordy wrangle between Mr. (now Sir Frederick) Milbank and Mr. Biggar. Mr. Milbank com- plained that Mr. Biggar had used offensive language to him in the chamber, and, in consequence, Mr. Milbank,. later on, in the lobby, addressed opprobrious terms to Mr. Biggar. Mr. Biggar denied having used the words attrib- uted to him, whereupon Mr. Milbank apologized to the House. Bj this time a fresh division had been taken, and the motion for adjournment negatived by 22 to 197; majority, 175. At ten minutes to five on Wednesday morning the second unsuccessful attempt to count the House was made. At nine o'clock the Speaker resumed the chair, and, immediately rising, made perhaps one of the most remarkable speeches ever delivered from the chair. The SpeaKer observed that the motion to bring in the Bill had been under discussion for five days, and that during that time most of the opposition was purely ob~ EIT GLAND UKDEK GLADSTON'E. 123 structive. By the existing rule nothing could be done to stop this obstruction; but the Speaker was prepared to take upon himself the responsibility of ending it by declining to call upon any more members, and by putting the questions at once from the chair. This announcement was received with tumultuous cheering, and the Speaker then put the motion for Dr. Lyon^s amendment, which was defeated by a division by 164 to 19; majority, 145. The Speaker then proceeded to put the main question. An Irish member rose, but the Speaker refused to hear him. Then the whole Irish party stood up, shouted for some seconds the €ry of *' Privilege ^^ — which had. not been heard in the House since the day when Charles I. came looking for his five members — and, bowing to the chair, left the chamber in a body. The Bill was immediately brought in by Mr. Porster. Mr. Forster then explained to the House that on the previous Friday he had given into the hands of Mr. Gladstone a speech which he believed to be by Mr. Parnell, and which Mr. Gladstone quoted from as being by Mr. Parnell, but which was, as a matter of fact, delivered by another person. The House then adjourned until twelve o'clock of the same day, when it met again to discuss the second reading of the Coercion Bill. The Irish members "who had left the House in a body that morning did not, however, intend to follow the example set them by Pulteney and his followers, in the early part of the last century, and secede from the House for any length of time. When the House met again at midday, they returned to their places in order to criticise the action of the Speaker in bringing the debate to a close on his own motion. The Speaker, however,, ruled that the matter was not a question of privi- lege, and could not be discussed then, but must be brought forward on a specific motion. The adjournment of the House was then moved by Mr. A. M. Sullivan, and sup- ported by Mr. Joseph Cowen, Mr. Labouchere, Lord Ean- dolph Churchill, and Mr. Shaw, and argued upon until nearly six o'clock, when it was defeated on division by 278 to 44; majority, 234; after which, it being six o'clock, and the day being Wednesday, the House of necessity adjourned. The next day, however, witnessed a still more exciting scene, compared with which any mere prolongation of de- bate seemed tame and colorless. At question time Mr. Parnell suddenly rose and asked if it was true that Mr. 324 ENGLAITD UNDER GLADSTON'E. Michael Davitt had. been arrested that day at one o'clock. There was a murmur of surprise^ followed immediately by a deep silence as Sir William Harcourt rose to reply. ** Yes, sir/' was the answer of the Home Secretary, amid the wildest cheering from both sides of the House. Had some new conquest or some great victory been announced,, it could not have been greeted with greater rapture. Hu- man nature and human voices have their limits, and cer- tainly the limits of human voices were severely taxed that day when it was definitely announced that Michael Davitt was once again in i^rison. When the cheering abated, Sir- William Harcourt went on to state that the Irish secretary and he, after consultation with their colleagues and the law officers of the Crown, had come to the conclusion that Mr. Davitt' s conduct was incompatible with the conditions of his ticket of leave. Mr. Parnell tried to find out what condition of ticket of leave Mr. Davitt had broken, but th& Speaker called upon Mr. Gladstone, who was waiting ta submit to the House his Urgency motion. Mr. Gladstone had risen and begun to speak when Mr. Dillon rose also to a point of order. What the jDoint of order was the House was not fated to hear; for amid much noise and shouting from all parts of the House, the Speaker rose and declared Mr. Gladstone in possession of the House. Mr. Dillon instead of sitting down when the Speaker rose, and then rising again to make his point of order clear, remained standing with folded arms facing the speaking Speaker, and demanding his privilege of speech. A few seconds of excited confusion followed, few members of the House re- maining silent. The majority shouted against Mr, Dillon. The Irish minority shouted scarcely less loudly for him. " Name him," vociferated English members; to which the Irish members responded hj shouting, *"' Point of order. " Then the Speaker gravely named Mr. Dillon for disregarding the authority of the chair, not, as he after- ward explained, for rising to a point of order while Mr. Gla^lstone was speaking, but for remaining on his feet after the Speaker had risen. Mr. Dillon now sat down, and Mr. Gladstone, rising, immediately moved the usual formula, familiar enough even then, but destined within the next half hour to become much more familiar, that the offend- ing member should be suspended from the service of the House for the remainder of the sitting. A division was EN-GLAKD UNDER GLADSTONE. 125 taken^ and Mr. Gladstone's motion carried by 395 to 33; majority, 362. The Speaker then called upon Mr. Dillon to withdraw. Mr. Dillon rose again and strove to speak^ but the shouts with which he was greeted rendered him practically inaudible. He was understood to announce that he refused to withdraw. The Speaker immediately called upon the sergeant-at-arms to remove Mr. Dillon. At first Mr. Dillon refused to move, but at a signal from the sergeant several attendants advanced into the House, whereupon, as if accepting this as symbolic of sufficient force to remove him by physical strength, Mr. Dillon got up and left the House. All that happened immediately after was an incoherent medley. Mr. A. M. Sullivan spoke amid vehement clamor against the Speaker, who explained that he had named Mr. Dillon, not for interrupting Mr* Gladstone on a call to order, but for remaining on his feet when the Speaker rose. Mr. Gladstone now made a fur- ther effort to go on with his speech, and was at once inter- rupted by The O'Donoghue, who loudly moved the adjournment of the House. The Speaker taking no notice of this, Mr. Parnell jumped up and called out that he moved that Mr. Gladstone should be no longer heard. Amid stentorian cheers from his own party and indignant shouts from the rest of the House, Mr. Parnell reiterated his motion in defiance of the warning of the Si3eaker, and was immediately named. Mr. Gladstone again made the motion for expulsion, which was carried by a majority of 405 to 7, the Irish members refusing to leave their seat^ and vote. On the reassembling of the House, Mr. Parnell refused to withdraw until the sergeant-at-arms had gone through the same ceremony with him as with Mr. Dillon,, when he retired amid the plaudits of his party. It must here be remarked that, whatever may be the opinion as to the wisdom, policy, or propriety of Mr. Pamelas conduct on this occasion, there was absolutely nothing " disorderly '^ in the Parliamentary sense about it. But a little time be- fore,' Mr. Gladstone had moved, and moved successfully^ that a member should be no longer heard, and it had been urged in defense of that motion that it was perfectly per- missible, although it had not been made in Parliament for something like a couple of centuries. Now, if it was per- missible for Mr. Gladstone to put this venerable rule into action against an Irish member, it was equally permissible 126 EKGLAND UXDER GLADSTON"E. for an Irish member to put it into practice against Mr. Gladstone. We are not speaking now of the good or bad taste of such a line of action^, nor do we need to be remind- ed of the impossibility of carrying on the business of any legislative assembly if any member might interrupt it by motions that other members be not heard. But the Prime Minister had himself revived this antiquated form; he had drawn it out from the dust of centuries in order to silence an unwelcome speaker; it had received the full sanction of Parliament, and until Parliament repealed or altered it, it was in full force. As the rules binding the House of Com- mons affect all members equally — as no member, whether he be at the head of the Government or not, has any privi- lege whatever of making any motion which is denied to any other niember — it is clear that Mr. Parnell was as much in his Parliamentary right as Mr. Gladstone in moving that a - member should not be heard. So much for the mere question of the motion, the revival of which Mr. Gladstone was himself probably the first to regret. After the division had been taken, and the leader of the Irish - party removed. Lord Eichard Grosvenor, the Liberal Whi23, announced that the Irish members had refused to leave their seats and enter the division lobby, a line of action which Mr. Gladstone immediately exj^ressed a ho2je that _ the Speaker would find some means of dealing with. He was, however, once more iaterrupted, this time by Mr. Finigan, member for Ennis, who, following the example of Mr. Parnell, again proposed that Mr. Gladstone should be no longer heard. The Speaker named Mr. Finigan; Mr. Gladstone, for the third time, made the suspension motion, and a division was again taken, and the motion from the House, after the same fashion as Mr. Dillon and Mr. Parnell, the Speaker called the attention of the House to the conduct of the Irish members, and '' named " them at once. There were twenty-eight of them in all. Mr. Gladstone immediately rose and moved for their suspension in a body, and the motion was carried by 410 to 6, the ab- EKGLAKD UKDER GLADSTONE. 127 staining members, as before, refusing to vote. Then came a strange scene, such as had never been witnessed in the House of Commons before. The name of each mem.ber was read out in turn by the Speaker, as he called upon him to withdraw. Each member called upon answered to his name with a short speech condemning the action of the Government, and refusing to go unless removed by superior force. To each member making such announcement, the sergeant-at-arms advanced and touched him solemnly on the shoulder. In most cases the member so touched at once rose and walked out; one or two exceptionally stal- wart members, however, refused to go until the sergeant- at-arms approached them with such a muster of attendants as made it evident that he commanded sufficient force to compel withdrawal. For half an hour this process of nam- ing, speech-making, and removal went on. At length the bulk of the Irish members were expelled, and had rallied in the conference room, where they drew up an address to the people of Ireland, urging them to remain quiet in sj^ite of the indignity offered to their representatives. Then, for the fourth time, Mr. Gladstone rose and essayed to go on with his motion. But, in the meantime, some few Irish members who had not been present hitherto in the House had arrived^ and through their opposition shared their comrades^ fate. First Mr. 0' Kelly, and then Mr. O'Don- nell, moved that Mr. Gladstone be no longer heard, and were named, suspended, and removed, while three others — Mr. Molloy, Mr. Ei chard Power, and Mr. O'Shaughness^ — went through the same process for refusing to take part in the division, and remaining in their seats while the division went on. Then, none of the Irish members who followed the lead of Mr. Parnell being left in the House, Mr. Gladstone began his Urgency motion for the sixth, time, and proceeded with it without further interrruption. After the coup d'etat by which the Speaker brought the debate on the introduction of the Coercion Bill to an end^ the Government felt the necessity of altering the rules of the House so far as to meet with such emergencies in the future in a more legal manner. A set of rules was accord- ingly drawn up, nominally by the Speaker, for the regula- tion of the business of the House when the state of public business should be declared urgent. These rules limited the occasions and the scope of motions for adjournment of -7^ 128 EKGLAKD UNDEK GLADSTONE. either tlie House or the debate, gave the Speaker power of calhng tlie attention of the House to continued tediousness and irrelevancy^ on the part of a member, and of taking the general sense of the House on any debate, and, if sup- ported by a three fourths majority, of putting the question without furthar debate. The rules further prevented the possibility of debate on the motion for the House to go into committee on any matter declared urgent, and limited members to a single speech. These rules were laid on the table of the House by the Speaker on Wednesday, February S, 1881. The long-argued-about principle of cloture — or closure, to give what has become an English institution its English name — was of course conceded in the rule which allowed the Speaker, when presiding over a debate governed by the urgency rules, to appeal to the general sense of the House, and, if supported by a three fourths majority, to put the question at once from the chair without any fur- ther debate. The debate on the Coercion Bill was not concluded very rapidly. On Wednesday, February 23, 1881, the bill was still in committee, and Mr. Gladstone, in order to acceler- ate its progress, moved that on the next day at seven the debate should come to an end, and the third reading be moved without discussion on any amendments that might be left unconsidered at that time. There was no debate 2)ermissible upon this motion, which was moved by Lord Hartington in the absence of Mr. Gladstone, who was con- fined to his room for a few days by an accident — he had slipped on the ice near his house, and hurt his head — and was carried by 371 to 53; majority, 318. At seven o'clock, accordingly, the debate was cut short by the Speaker; the remaining amendments were divided upon without debate, and the third reading moved for by Mr. Forster. The third reading was carried in the Commons the next day, Friday, February 25, by 281 to 36; majority, 245. The bill was then sent up to the House of Lords, where it passed rapidly through all its stages; was read a third time on Wednesday, March 2, and received the royal assent by commission on the same day. The Arms Bill was introduced in the Commons on Tues- day, March 1, by Sir William- Harcourt, in the absence of Mr. Forster; and its third reading was carried on Friday, March 11, by 236 to 2Q — majority 210 — and was passed in EKGLAND UlTDER GLADSTON"^. 129 the Lords on the following Friday. During its passage through the Commons there were some heated debates on the relationship of the American Fenians with the Irish Land Leaguers, in one of which, on Thursday, March 3, Mr. Healy suiered suspension for charging the Home Secretary with breaches of truth and usual disiiigenuous- ness. Mr. O^Donnell was suspended on Tuesday, March 8, after a dispute with Mr. Playfair on a point of order. In the meantime the excitement in Ireland was increas- ing. While the coercion debates were going on, Mr. Par- nell had gone across to Paris, accompanied by Mr. 0' Kelly, and obtained an interview with M. Victor Hugo, who was expected to issue some manifesto in Ireland. M. Victor Hugo compared Ireland to Poland struggling against Eussia, but he wrote nothing on the subject, either in prose or verse. The interview, however, provoked a remon- strance from the great Catholic organ, the " Univers,^^ which warned Mr. Parnell that it was not well for the leaders of a Catholic cause and country to seek for the alliance of men like Victor Hugo and his friends. Mr. Parnell had an interview with M. Eochefort on the one hand, and with the Archbishop of Paris on the other. "Just at that moment, when people were saying that there would be a split between the Nationalists and the Catholic clergy on account of the friendship of M. Eochefort, an event occurred which served to show how much the Irish priests and tb^ Irish people were in agreeitient as to the Land League and the national cause generally. In Ireland a Ladies^ Land League had been formed, with Miss Anna Parnell — a sister of Mr. Parnell— for its president. Its object was to assist the existing Land League in every pos- sible way — by raising funds, by inquiring into the cases of eviction, arid by affording relief to evicted tenants. As soon as this new organization came into existence it was assailed by Archbishop M^Cabe of Dublin. In an angry pastoral he denounced the participation of women in the strife of politics as at once immodest and wicked. Mr. A. M. Sullivan, one of the most Catholic of Irish Catholic members of Parliament, immediately wrote a reply defend- ing the Ladies^ Land League, and justifying and approv- ing of the manner in which the women of Ireland proposed to come to the assistance of their husbands, fathers, and brothers. Mr. A. M. Sullivan's letter had not long been 5 130 ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. written when the Ladies' Land League found a still stronger ally, and Archbishop MTabe a still more formi- dable opponent, in Archbishop Croke, of Cashel. From the rock which has reminded so many travelers of the Athenian Acropolis, Archbishop Croke launched an epistle which Jerome might have envied for its vigorous direct- ness. The Archbishop of Cashel had nothing but praise for the Ladies' Land League, and for their eloquent cham- pion. In a moment ArchbishojJ Croke was the hero of the National party in Ireland. They greeted him with joy as a proof that the Church was on their side; and when he went, shortly after, on a sort of tour of inspection through a great part of Ireland, he was received everywhere with a display of the most enthusiastic homage and devotion. Long before Archbishop Croke had come so prominently to the front, many of the pi-iests had shown their sympathy with, and apjDroval of, the Land League doctrines; but after the action of the Archbishop of Cashel, their sym- pathy and approval became more openly and more marked- ly displayed. Day by day the ranks of the League were SAvelled by Irish ecclesiastics of all orders. It might be fairly said that, roughly speaking, all the younger priests throughout the country were in cordial sympathy with the Land League, and a very large number of the elder'priests as well. It was this sympathy between the priests and the peojDle which gave the Land League a great part of its strength; it t^s the eagerness of the people tp be in accord with their priests which made them receive Archbishop Croke's pronouncement with so much delight, and listen to his counsels with as much readiness as if they had come from the lips of ParneU or Davitt. When the Coercion Acts were carried, Mr. John Dillon went over to Ireland and began a series of speeches in different parts of the country, supporting the League and assailing the Government. On the one side, the League was being upheld from pulpit and platform; on the other, the executive was choking its prisons with its arrests of "suspected'' Land Leaguers. Evictions had not de- creased, and there were frequent collisions between the police and the people, and blood was spilled on both sides. At first the Government arrests were confined to members of the League, who, although prominent enough in their own localities, were little known outside of Ireland. But Mr. EKGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. 131 John Dillon^s action soon attracted the notice of the Govern- ment; and, after a speech which he dehvered at Grange- mailer, near Clonmel, in May, which counseled an extreme form of boycotting, he was arrested and put into prison. A short while before, the Government had roused great in- dignation among the Irish ecclesiastics by arresting and imprisoning Father Eugene Sheehy, of Kilmallock. These were the most important arrests made, at first, under the new Coercion Acts. The Land League was still flourish- ing. Mr. Sexton, M. P., hurried to Dublin from London to take Mr. Dillon^ s place at the head of the League in L'eland. When the Coercive Acts had passed into law, every one's thoughts turned at once to the promised Land Act. But there were some other matters to be disposed of before the new Land Bill could be introduced. There was a debate on Candahar. The Army Discipline Bill, definitely abol- ishing flogging for soldiers, had to pass through its various stages. Then there was the Budget. On Monday, April 4, Mr. Gladstone made his financial statement in a speech of over two hours. It was not a very startling or original Budget. The estimated expenditure for the ensuing year was figured at £84,705,000, and the revenue at £85,990, 000. This showed a surplus of £1,285,000, which was, however, reduced to £1,185,000 by a vote for the extin- guishment, of the loan for barracks. The Prime Minister proposed to reduce the income tax to fivepence. This re- ductioD created a deficiency, which he proposed to meet by an adjustment of the surtax on foreign spirits. The proc- ess of distillation, as practiced on wines, would be applied to them, and a uniform surtax of fourpence per gallon would be charged on the standard of strength. By this tax, and some changes in the probate, legacy, and adminis- tration duties, Mr. Gladstone hoped to have a total gain of £570,000, which would convert the deficit of £275,000 into a surplus of £295,000. The Budget being disposed of, the ground was now clear for the Land Bill, which was intro- duced, accordingly, by the Prime Minister on Thursday, April 7, 1881. 133 ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. /CHAPTER VIII. ME. DISRAELI — LORD BEACONSFIELD. it The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack/" says the triumphant Octavius, in magnani- mous tribute to his dead rival; *' the round world should have shook lions into civil streets, and citizens . to their dens."*" Some such thought must have come into the minds of many men when they heard, on that chill April morning of 1881, that Lord Beaconsfield was dead. ** The death of Anthony is not a single doom; in the name lay a moiety of the world."' The English world, the world of politics,- and the romantic world of fiction, had lost a moiety of itself by the death of Lord Beaconsfield. Seldom, in- deed, had a rarer spirit steered humanity; and as for the faults he had, even his enemies were not likely to think too deeply upon them just then. The gods will give us some faults to make us men; and whatever the errors of Lord Beaconsfield "s career, they had no need to be remembered in his epitaph. His had not been a long and protracted illness. Toward the end of March, 1881, it became known that Lord Bea- consfield was slightly ailing. Then it was announced that he was suffering from a severe attack of bronchial asthma, but was progressing favorably. As the days went by the reports announced no diminution of the illness, but the bulletins were still hopeful. Indeed, no alarm was felt generally until close to the end, though crowds of visitors of all kinds came every day to the house in Ourzon Street to read the bulletins and testify their sympathy. But the third week in April began with bitter winds — the fatal east winds that had killed Cobden, and that were now to kill Lord Beaconsfield. On the night of Monday, April 18, he sunk into a deep stupor, from which he never awoke. At half-past four on the morning of Tuesday, the 19th, he died, very quietly, without a sign of pain, Avithout a word. We have all heard and read much of the death-beds and death- words of great men; we like to think of Goethe's dying lips murmuring something about a beautiful woman's face {ind hair, of Napoleon thinking of the head of his EiN'GLAKD UlSTDEK GLADSTOJ^TE. 133 army. Lord Beaconsfield passed away in silence; but we learn from those who stood about him, that some quarter of an hour before his death he raised himself a little in his bed, stretched himself out in the old' familiar way that was his wont when rising to reply in debate, and that his lips moved in silence. Perhaps the dying statesman's brain was dimly conscious of his former struggles and triumphs; of those speeches which the House of Commons at first re- fused to hear, and which, afterward, the House of Com- mons was so often willing to hear, and to admire, and to obey. It was fitting that his last thoughts should have been given to the great arena in which he had fought so long and so well. How will it be with him when all is retrospect?' ' Cob- den had once asked a friend, speaking of Mr. Disraeli and his brilliant career. It is a grim question to ask about the life of any man, and very hard to answer. To the pure, simple soul of Cobden there was much in the career of Lord Beaconsfield, as there must have been much in the career of every great statesman the world has seen, that was repel- lent. Cobden may be said to have been almost devoid of personal ambition. His whole soul was absorbed in carry- ing out his task, in executing the mission for the good of his fellow-men which he believed himself called upon^ and, indeed, was called upon, to fulfill. But it would be, in- deed, unfair and unjust to test the characters and careers of great statesmen by the life of so exceptional a man as Cobden— unfair and unjust to assume that ambitious men had no sense of duty to the world and to humanity. Test- ed by the standard of the Sermon on the Mount, where is the statesman, where is the leader of men, that can be praised? ^Pericles is no purer than Bolingbroke, Washing- ton scarce nobler than Richelieu, when tried before that court. If we judge Lord Beaconsfield severely, we must judge others severely as well, and we shall find that he will not want companions in condemnation. If it is sinful to be ambitious, to make Avars, to extend empire, other states- men have been ambitious and warlike and aggressive. Let us believe, even those of us who are least in sympathy with the policy and the politics of Lord Beaconsfield, that he, no less than others, was animated by the consciousness of his own righteousness of purpose; that he sought the wel- fare of his coiintrymen and the honor of his country; and 134 EKGLAN-D UNDER GLADSTOITE. that if his way was not our way, we need not, in the seren- ity of our own infallibility, be too severe upon him. Lord Beaconsfield may fairly be called a great man, on his own definition of a great man, as '' one who affects the mind of his generation; whether he be a monk in his cloister agitating Christendom, or a monarch crossing the Granicus and giving a new character to the Pagan world. " Lord Beaconsfield certainly affected the mind of his gener- ation; and the part he chose to play, in doing so, was more akin to that of Alexander than that of a Jerome or a Mar- tin Luther. Indeed, the difficulties that the young Dis- raeli had to encounter in his career were scarcely less im- posing than those which ojjposed, but did not retard, the progress of the Macedonian king; nor were the victories of the one less splendid than the triumphs of the other. The young Disraeli began life as a Jew, when to be a Jew meant to be deprived of every social and civil advantage that makes a public career worth striving for. The posi- tion of a conquered Samnite in a world of Roman citizens was scarcely more galling than the position of a Jew in England in the early part of the present century. He was not, it is true, any longer tortured at the pleasure of prince or noble; he was no longer condemned to dwell in a ghetto, or wear garments of peculiar cut or color; but all, or almost all, chances of political promotion were closed against him in his adopted country. He might amass fortune, he might win distinction in letters and the arts; but he could not place his foot on the lowest round of the ladder that led to political distinction. These difficulties did not long restrain and impede the young Disraeli. He had been brought ujd a Christian. As a Christian he could enter the Pariiament which it was then impossible for a Jew to enter; and once in Parliament, he felt that his career was clear before him, and his success certain. But though he never professed the religion of his race, Disraeli never forgot his reverence for that race, nor his love for the people from whom he sprung. In his writings, in his speeches, in all the actions of his life, he was the cham- pion, and a most powerful and effective chamj^ion, of the Jewish people. Into the mouth of his favorite character, Sidonia, he puts an eloquent tribute to the genius and the glory of the Jewish race, which represents his own convic- tions, and the principles which governed him during the Ei^'GLAKD UKDER GLADSTOKE. 135 whole of a career that was in itself the most eloquent tribute to the genius of his people. Here and there throughout the history of the world a few poets, and politicians who might have been poets, have recognized with just pride their own genius and certain im- mortality. Horace, writing lyrics more enduring than brass; Shakespeare serenely confident that neither marble ' nor the gilded monuments of princes could outlast the powerful rhyme in which he praised his nameless hero — these are examples that leap to the lips at once. The young Disraeli, shouting to a mocking and hostile House that the time would come when they should hear him, is a no less remarkable example of justifiable self-glorification. He had entered the House in 1837, the year of the Queen ^s accession. He had already made a name, or, at least, a notoriety, for himself outside the House. He had made the grand tour; he had been in the East, at a time when Eastern travel was very much less common than it now is. He had written '' Vivian Grey,'^ one of the most brilliant novels of its time, and one of the most remarkable exam- ples of precocious genius on record. He had written " The Young Duke,^^ which, in spite of the scorn of Thackeray, may well be considered clever; and " Contarini Fleming,'^ which has at least in its earliest chapters some- thing of the romantic charm and adventurous attraction of ** Gil Blas.^' He had made use of his acquaintance with the East in the wondrous " Tale of Alroy.^"* His " Ixion in Heaven .'' was one of the most humorous bits of burlesque writing of the age. He had essayed to stand with Dante and with Milton in his " Revolutionary Epic,^^ and had certainly not succeeded. As a political pamphleteer he had vindicated the British Constitution, and penned the " Let- ters of Runnymede.''^ He was thus a sufficiently conspicu- ous character when in 1837, after three unsuccessful efforts, he found himself at last in the House of Commons. It is not quite easy to understand why that famous first speech was so hopeless a failure. The recorded costume of the orator was odd enough to us, but in 1837 a bottle-green frock coat, a white waistcoat laced with chains, and large fancy pantaloons would not of themselves have been enough to move the House of Commons to mirth. The speech itself, as we read it now after the lapse of nearly half a century, appears an exceedingly clever speech; and the 136 ENOLAKD UKDER GLADSTOKE. House of Commons is usually disposed to listen to clever speeches, whatever may be tlie view they express. His skill in political phrase-making was well foreshadowed in his description of the Irish Liberal Fund as a * * project of majestic mendicancy. '* We smile and feel that the speaker is making good strokes when he speaks of '' the new loves and the old loves, in which so much of passion and recrimi- nation was mixed . up between the noble Tityrus of the Treasury bench and tlie learned Daphne of Liskeard/^ and alludes to the " amantium. ires, which had resulted in the amorifi iniegratio, notwithstanding a political duel had been fought, in which more than one shot was exchanged, but in which recourse was had to the secure arbitrament of blank cartridges. ' ' All this is youthful, but it is bright enough; it certainly is not dull, and it does not seem ridiculous. But the House of Commons would have none of it, and laughed and jeered and hooted the speaker into a sudden blaze of anger. '' I have begun many things, and I have succeeded often at last; ay, sir, and though I sit down now, yet the time will come when you will hear me." It is not here necessary to 'tell again the story of Lord Beaconsfield^'s life. It has been told many times — on two occasions very bitterly and brilliantly by his enemies; and, unfortunately, generally very badly and drearily by his friends. Few books would be more welcome to the world than Lord Beaconsfield's autobiography. It would, no doubt, deserve a place on the shelf where stand '^ Dichtung und Wahrheit " and " Les Confessions." The life of Lord Beaconsfield has yet to be written. To be done fit- tingly, its writer should be, if possible, committed to neither of the great political parties; but if absolute impartiality were impossible, then the chronicler should have a bias of affection and of sympathy toward the subject of his record. Those biographies are cold reading which find their inspira- tion in hatred or contempt of the life they are recording. The biography of the admirer is like the votive wreath placed about the monumental pillar; the biography of the adversary reminds us only of the actions of those Egyptian kings who effaced the hieroglyphics of their rivals from shrine and temple, and hoped to attain immortality by sub- stituting their own. In the Upper House Lord Beaconsfield delivered some El^GLAND UKDEE GLADSTONE. 137 telling speeches, even after the fall of his Government and the triumph of his rival. The last speech he ever deliv- ered, that on the Central Asian question and the abandon- ment of Oandahar, had something in it of the youthful fire and the youthful audacity of Mr. Disraeli. He was speak- ing of tlie key of India. " The key of India/' hedeclai-ed, *' was not at Merv. It was not at Oandahar. It was not at — " here for a moment the speaker paused; he could not recollect the name of Herat Another man might have been discomposed, but Lord Beaconsfield coolly went on> *' the key of India is not the place of which I have forgot- ten the name; the key of India is in London. '^ It was characteristic of Lord Beaconsfield that his career should close with such a speech, remarkable alike for the cool in- difference with which he was always ready to treat the de- tails of the most important subjects, and for the brilliantly paradoxical saying which concealed a profound political truth. Not many weeks later Lord Beaconsfield was dead. The world had lost one of its most interesting figures, and England one of the most remarkable in the long roll of remarkable statesmen who have given their allegiance and their genius to the service of the House of Brunswick. CHAPTER IX. THELAKDAOT. The history of the new Land Bill was curious. The measure which Mr. Gladstone laid before the House on April 7 was not the measure which the Government had i originally intended to offer to Parliament. Another Bill had been prepared, of a less comprehensive nature. The draft had been submitted by a member of the Ministry to a Liberal member, who was very properly regarded as an authority on the land question in Ireland, with the request that he would make any suggestions he thought fit as to its possible improvement. The member consulted returned the draft Bill promptly, saying that the only improvement he could suggest would be to put the proposed measure be- hind the fire. The Government apparently acted upon this summary advice; at least, they speedily prepared a 138 ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. new and more advanced measure. Even the new Bill was mild enough, and bore very little resemblance to the form it came to assume later on. Mr. Gladstone introduced the Bill on April 7, 1881, in a long, elaborate, and exceedingly- eloquent speech, on what he not inappropriately called ** the most difficult and the most complex question '' which he ever had to deal with in the course of his public life. Roughly speaking, the Bill proposed to deal with the Irish land question on th6 basis of what was known as the three F's — ^fair rent, fixity of tenure, and free sale. Mr. Glad- stone denied that either the iniquity of the existing land laws, or any sympathy with the extreme views of some of the Irish land reformers, or the bad conduct of Irish land- lordism in general, called for the new attempt at legisla- tion. It was the " land hunger,^ ^ or rather the land scarcity; it was certain defects in the Land Act of 1870, and it was the rack-renting and evictions of a limited num- ber of landlords which had inspired the action of the Gov- ernment. The Government was not in want of guidance in the step it was taking. A commission — the Richmond Commission — ^had been appointed by the previous Government to in- quire into the land question. Another commission — the Bessborough Commission — had been appointed by the exist- ing Government for the same purpose. These two com- missions had begot, not two reports, but a perfect " litter " of reports. There was naturally an agreeable diversity of opinion among these various reports. One member of the Richmond Commission, Mr. Bonamy Price, was for aj)ply- ing, " in all their unmitigated authority,'^ the principles of abstract political economy to the very exceptional land question of Ireland, '' exactly as if he had been proposing to legislate for the inhabitants of Saturn or Jupiter.'"' Of the four commissioners who made up the Bessborough Com- mission, only two agreed to sign what may be called the main report: Mr. Shaw signed one collateral report. The 0' Conor Don signed another, and Mr. Kavanagh signed a third. Out of this multiplicity of counsel, however, Mr. Gladstone found that, with the exception of Mr. Bonamy Price, the whole body of both commissions were agreed in supporting the constitution of a court for the purpose of dealing with the differences between landlords and tenants in Ireland with regard to rent. ENOLAKD UKDEU GLaDSTOKE. 13& The establishment of such a court was to be then one of the principal features of the new measure. Appeal to this court was to be optional, and not compulsory. Every ten- ant from year to year coming under the description of "present tenant^' could go before the court and have a judicial rent fixed for his holding. This judicial rent was to last J in the first instance, for fifteen years, during which no eviction would be possible, except for non-payment of rent or distinct breach of specific covenants. When the fifteen years expired, landlord or tenant might apply to the court for a revision of the rent. If the tenancy were re- newed, the same conditions as to eviction were to hold good. In the case, however, of the tenant wishing to sell his tenant-right, the privilege of pre-emption, at the price fixed by the court as the value of the tenant-right, was reserved to the landlord. The Bill acted retrospectively with regard to. tenants against whom process of ejectment had been begun but not concluded. The Ulster tenant, while remaining under the privilege of his custom, was to be allowed the protection of the general provisions of the Bill for controlling augmentation of rents. The new court, which was also to perform the functions of a land commission, was to consist of three members, one of whom was always to be a judge or ex-judge of the supreme court. It was empowered to appoint sub-commissions as courts of first instance, to hear applications and fix fair rents. The second part of the Bill passed entirely from the re- gion of the three F^s into the diflicult question of peasant proprietary. The court, as a land commission, was em- powered to assist tenants to purchase their holdings, and furthermore to purchase itself estates from willing land- lords, for the purpose of reselling them when three fourths of the tenants were ready to buy. The court might ad- vance three fourths of the purchase-money to tenants, and was not to be prohibited from advancing the whole sum when it saw fit. Tenants availing themselves of these purchase clauses would obtain a guarantee title, and would only have to pay a very small sum for legal costs. Emigra- tion was to be included among the purposes for which ad- vances might be made. Such were the more striking feat- ures of the new measure. The Bill was read a first time without opposition, and immediately after, on the following day, the House ad- 140 -KKGLAND UKDER OLADSTOKE. jouriied for the Easter recess. When it reassembled oil April 25 the second reading of the Land Bill was moved at once- The debates were long and bitter. The Conserva- tive party as a body opposed the Bill with unwearying vigi- lance and vehemence. They characterized it again and again as a measure of communism, of socialism, of brig- andage ; and they exhausted their ingenuity in efforts, if not to defeat the Bill altogether, at least to delay it as long as possible, and to minimize as much as might be its ^* revolutionary "^ nurture. The Irish members, on the other hand, were no less energetic in their efforts to widen the scope oi the Bill, and make it of a character more markedly beneficial to the tenant class. Their efforts were more successful than those of the Conservative party. The general principles of the Bill remained the same, but its scope was widened, and its powers of apjjlication strength- ened to a surprising degree. The Bill in the final form in which it was jiresented to the House of Lords in the end of July, after months of protracted debate, might be not- un- fairly characterized as in large part the creation of Mr. Healy and the Irish party, of Mr. Charles Russell and cer- tain of the Ulster members. The sleeper in the Arabian story scarcely underwent a more remarkable metamorphosis when he assumed the care and dignity of the Kalif than was experienced by the iiew Bill in its passage from the Treasury bench to the Upper House. It is only necessary to compare the original draft of the Bill with its final form to see h^w important these alterations were. The famous Healy clause was constructed to exclude altogether the valuation of improvements made by the tenant in estimat- ing the amount to be fixed as a judicial rent. On the other hand, an amendment by Mr. Heneage was agreed to, ex- cluding what are called "^ English-managed " estates from the operation of the Healy clause. The court was em- powered by another provision to quash leases contracted since 1870 which might be shown on examination to have been drawn up with a view to dodging or defeating the ob- jects of that measure. The emigration proposals, which were extremely obnoxious to the Irish party, were very largelv modified. The total expenditure for this purpose was limited to £200,000, not more than a third of which was to be spent in any single year. A clause was intro- duced allowing the commissioners to make advances to BNGLAKD XTHDER GLADS'tOKE. 141 tenants for the purpose of clearing off arrears of rent which had accrued for three years. On July 29 the Bill was read a third time in the House of Commons, and was carried up to the House of Lords, where it was read a first time for formes sake, without op- position, the same evening. After two nights^ debate it was read a second time without division, in obedience to Lord Salisbury's counsels. In committee, however, the majority in the Lords fell upon the measure. They re- duced the Bill to a nullity by comprehensive interpolations and additions. They altered, they amended, ^they substi- tuted, till the Bill resembled Wallenstein's horse as shown by Brown, Jones, and Robinson. The head, legs, and part of the body are new, all the rest is the real horse. The Bill in this '^^ real -horse '^ condition was returned to the Commons. The Ministry accepted a few of the least important amendments, modified some others, and firmly rejected those which struck at the vitality of the measure. It was sent back to the Lords again, and once again the Lords, with that marvelous infatuation which is the pecul- iar privilege of the Upper House in its struggles with the Commons, proceeded to make the measure useless by rein- stating the objectionable amendments and interpolations. The Bill was then sent down to the Commons. The Min- istry made a further pretense of considering the question. The more dangerous amendments which the Lords had restored were struck out, but the Ministry made certain concessions. In the first form of the Healy claus^ for in- stance, the Government had insisted upon a proviso that the tenant should not be allowed the value of improvements for which he liad been paid by the landlord. The Govern- ment now conceded the addition *' or otherwise com- pensated." Under these words Irish courts can, as in the case of Adams and Dunseath, rule that length of enjoyment is to be taken into account as an element in considering the value of a tenant^ s improvement. The Bill was then handed back to the Lords. By this time public feeling was thoroughly aroused at the prospect of a serious consti- tutional struggle between the two Houses. Liberal meet- ings were held in all parts of the country, at which the Government were vigorously encouraged to make no con- cessions, to fight the fight out to the end. The Lords blustered, but their courage was shaken. Two of the most 142 EKGLAND UKDER GLADSTOKE. comprehensively destructive of the Lords' amendments had been moved by the Duke of Argjdl and Lord Lansdowne. On August 16, when the Bill came before the Lords for the third time, Lord Salisbury still assumed a semi-defiant at- titude. Perhaps on the whole, he said, their lordshiiDs had better accept the Bill, unless indeed the Duke of Argyll and Lord Lansdowne pressed their amendments. In that case Lord Salisbury would certainly vote for them, and for resistance to the imjDerious Commons. But the Duke of Argyll was conveniently absent. Lord Lansdowne sat in his seat and made no sign. Lord Salisbury had sounded his trumpet, and no knight challenger galloped into the arena. So, with something of an ill grace. Lord Salisbury bade those of his inclining hold their hands, and the Land Bill of 1881 became law. The House of Lords had gained nothing by their 0232:)Osition, but, for the moment at least, they were saved from the consequences of direct collision with the Commons. In the meantime the Bradlaugh case had come up again. Mr. Bradlaugh, as we have seen, had taken the affirmation and his seat under all the penalties that might come upon him if his so doing were decided to be illegal. He was at once sued for penalties by a man named Clarke, who, as was afterward shown, was a mere man of straw sustained by Mr. NewdegatCp The judge of the court of law in which Mr. Bradlaugh was sued decided that the statute allowing affirmation to be made in certain cases in lieu of taking the oath did not apply to Mr. Brad laugh's case, and did not, therefore, exempt him from the obligation of taking the usual oath, and from the penalties consequent upon his failure to do so. The case was brought before the Court of Appeal, where the judgment of the lower court was confirmed. Mr. Labouchere moved for a new writ. Mr. Bradlaugh stood again for Northampton, and was re-elected by a majority of 132 over his Conservative opponent, Mr. Corbett, on Saturday, A23ril 9, 1881. On Tuesday, April 26, Mr. Bradlaugh presented himself in the House of Commons, and offered to take the oath. He had been escorted to the table by Mr. Labouchere and Mr. Burt, and the clerk was proceeding to administer the oath, when Sir Stafford Northcote got up to interpose. The Speaker immediately rose, and announced that although under ordinary circumstances a member presenting himselt ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. 143 to comply with the legal formalities of the House was en- titled to do so without interruption, yet, having regard to the former resolution of the House, and the reports of the two select committees, he did not think it his duty to withhold from the House an opportunity of expressing its opinions on the new conditions. He accordingly desired Mr. Brad- laugh to retire while the question was being considered by the House, and Mr. Bradlaugh accordingly retired, after asking that the House would not decide upon his case be- fore it had heard him speak in his own defense. An active debate, led by Sir Stafford Northcote, immediately followed. The Opposition maintained that the House could not look on and allow any one to go through the solemn formality of taking the oath after having publicly proclaimed that the essential conditions which made such an oath binding were absent from his mind. The Ministerial speakers, on the other hand, argued that they had nothing whatever to do with Mr. Bradlaugh^ s belief or disbelief; and that if the newly elected member for Northam|)ton was ready to take the oath the House had no alternative but to allow him to do so, in spite of any declarations he might have made as to the binding nature of the obligation. Mr. Bradlaugh was heard at the Bar during the course of the debate, urg- ing his case with energy and with eloquence, and warning the House that to -deny him his legal right would throw him back on agitation. The Opposition, however, carried the day. Sir Stafford Northcote - had put his protest into the form of a motion that, having regard to the former resolutions and the reports of the- committees, Mr. Brad- laugh should not be permitted to go through the form of repeating the words of the oath prescribed by the statute. This motion was carried by a majority of 33 — 208 to 175. When the numbers were declared Mr. Bradlaugh again ad- vanced to the table. He was immediately called upon to withdraw by the Speaker, but he refused to obey, declaring that the order was illegal. There was great confusion in the House, members of all parties shouting out their opin- ions more or less inarticulately. The Speaker asked the noisy House for instructions as to how he should proceed. The Tories yelled for Mr. Gladstone to get up; the Liberals shrieked back indignant refusal. After an interval of con- fused clamor, during which Mr. Bradlaugh stood in the center of the House before the table, like the hero of ¥im- 144 ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. berths *' Salammbo '^ among his Oartliaginian enemies. Sir Stafford Northcote rose,, with bland curiosity, to inquire whether the Prime Minister intended to take any steps in regard to the resolution that the House had Just agreed to. The Prime Minister replied, in a studiously composed tone, that he had voted with the minority, and that it was the duty of the majority, and not of .the Ministry, to carry out the resolution. Sir Stafford Northcote accordingly, promptly assuming the leadership of the House, moved that Mr. Bradlaugh be ordered to withdraw. The motion was, of course, carried, and the Speaker ordered Mr. Brad- laugh to retire. Mr. Bradlaugh refusing, as before, the sergeant-at-arms was called in to enforce the order of the House. In company with Captain Gosset Mr. Bradlaugh retired to the Bar of the House, only to rush forward again to the table. The sergeant-at-arms then called to his aid a little army of messengers, who forced Mr. Bradlaugh — offering, however, no resistance, and j^rotesting against the use of physical force — back to the Bar. As he seemed de- termined to fight his way again to the table, the Speaker once more appealed to the House for guidance. A scene of sharp recrimination followed. Sir Stafford Northcote taunting the Government with abetting Mr. Bradlaugh in his action, and Mr. Gladstone warmly denying the accusa- tion. Mr. Cowen interrujDted the strife by a motion for adjournment of the House, wliich was j^i'omptly carried. The next day, Wednesday, April. 27, 1881, Mr. Brad- laugh again presented himself at the table, again demanded to be sworn; again was ordered by the Speaker to with- draw, and again refused to do so, until the sergeant-at- arms came to take him by the arm. A n^w debate sprung up, the Opposition and the Ministerialists repeating their old arguments, and the convictions of everybody remaining entirely unchanged. At length a sort of general under- standing seemed to be arrived at, according to which the Government would bring in, as soon as might be, some measure for remedying the law which regulated the for- malities of the Parliamentary oath; and on this understand- ing it was announced by Mr. Labouchere that Mr. Brad- laugh would refrain from presenting liimself at the table of the House for the present. As a consequence of this understanding the Attorney-General, on Monday, May 2, moved for leave to introduce the Parliamentary Oaths ENGLAND UKDEK GLADSTONE. 145 Bill, allowing members to make affirmation. But the bill was vigorously opposed, and several nights passed without any progress being made with the measure. Mr. Brad- laugh thereupon made his appearance in the House again on Tuesday, May 10, when the now familiar ceremony was gone through. Mr. Bradlaugh offered to take the oath, was ordered to withdraw by -the Speaker, and refused to do so until the sergeant-at-arms brought the semblance of physical force to bear upon him. Then Sir Stafford North- cote, once more assuming his function of leader of the House, moved that the sergeant-at-arms should exclude Mr. Bradlaugh from the House until he should engage not to disturb the proceedings of the House further — a motion which was carried without a division. For some weeks nothing further was heard of the Brad- laugh question in the House of Commons. On July 4, however, Mr. Gladstone announced that the Government did not intend to proceed with the Parliamentary Oaths Bill that session. Mr. Bradlaugh immediately wrote to the Speaker, announcing his intention of presenting him- self again and claiming his right to take the oath and his seat. The Speaker read the letter to the House, and in- formed the House that he had given special directions to the sergeant-at-arms to carry out the resolution of May 10. Mr. Bradlaugh did not, however, follow up his letter immediately. He attended meetings in various places, oc- cupied himself in obtaining a summons at Bow Street against Mr. ISTewdegate for ^* maintenance " in giving in- demnity for costs to the man who prosecuted him, and seemed in no hurry to claim his seat. On Wednesday, August 3, however, Mr. Bradlaugh made the attempt. He held a great meeting in Trafalgar Square on Tuesday, August 2, at which he announced his intention of proceed- ing to the House of Commons and taking his seat. Under the impression that he was about to do so then and there, a cheering, excitable crowd of some five thousand persons poured down Whitehall and through Parliament Street into Parliament Square, and tried to flood Palace Yard with noisy humanity. A strong body of police were, how- ever, in readiness; and though some score or so of people succeeded in getting in, the gates were speedily closed, and the shouting crowd effectually excluded. It soon became understood that the next day's demonstration was to be 146 ENGLAND UNDER GLADSTONE. more serious. Long before midday on Wednesday, August 3, a crowd, at least as large as that of the preceding day, had collected in Parliament Square, cheering for Mr. Brad- laugh, and greeting with loud acclaim the various deputa- tions that came up bearing petitions pra3ang that Mr. Brad- laugh be allowed to take his seat. Palace Yard was guard- ed carefully by a very large force of police, and the bulk of the crowd were kept outside the gates in perfect order. But the bearers of petitions were allowed to come inside the gates, and to range themselves in order in Westminster Hall. At about twenty minutes to twelve Mr. Bradlaugh, accompanied by his friend Dr. Aveling, arrived before the gates of Palace Yard, and was at once admitted, amidst the wildest enthusiasm on the part of the crowd. Once in- side Palace Yard, Mr. Bradlaugh was met by Inspector Denning, who quietly asked him what he proposed to do. Mr. Bradlaugh as quietly answered that he had come to ' take his seat; and entering Westminster Hall, where the ranged line of petitioners greeted him lustily, he passed in through the members' entrance, and so into the lobby, and to the very door of the Chamber. Here Mr. Bradlaugh stood and waited until the Speaker should take the chair, the central figure of a crowd of excited and wondering members. The scene was strange enough. Across the door the sergeant-at-arms and his assistants were ranged, and near them were several of the House messengers, and some dozen policemen. The lobby was crowded by curious members — and by members only, as the strictest orders had been given and obeyed that day to let none but mem- bers and officials of the House into the inner lobby. As soon as the Speaker had taken the chair, Mr. Bradlaugh} who had been standing perfectly self-possessed in the middle of the lobby, advanced to the door of the Chamber. His path was immediately barred by Mr. Erskine, who courteously inquired what he^ wanted. By those who crushed about and craned forward to hear the remarkable dialogue, Mr. Bradlaugh was heard to reply that, as the duly elected member for Northampton, he had come to take the oath and his seat. Mr. Erskine answered that he had received orders not to admit Mr. Bradlaugh, and Mr. Bradlaugh responded that such orders were illegal, and that he had a right to enter. Once again Mr. Bradlaugh urged his right of entry, and once again Mr. Erskine EKGLAKD UKDEE GLADSTOKi:. lit pleaded his orders, and refused him admission. The con- versation was carried on gravely and decorously on both sides, but the greatest excitement governed the crowd who surrounded the pair, and who listened to the dialogue while watching the well-guarded door. When Mr. Erskine made his final refusal to allow Mr. Bradlaugh passage, Mr. Bradlaugh immediately stepped forward as if to push his way into the Chamber. He was at once stopped by the officials; he offered resistance to their efforts, and in a mo- ment was engaged in a sort of scuffle with one of them. Then followed probably one of the most extraordinary and painful scenes that the House of Commons had ever wit- nessed since Cochrane, the gallant Dundonald, the last of the Sea Kings, was hauled from the House fighting with all the strength of his giant frame. The policemen who had been waiting in readiness seized Mr. Bradlaugh, and pro- ceeded to drag him away from the entrance to the Cham- ber. Mr. Bradlaugh is a man of great physical strength, and he exerted himself to the utmost to free himself from those who held him. The spectators in the lobby hurriedly made way, and in the midst of the policemen Mr. Brad- laugh, offering a vigorous resistance, was hurried through the door of the lobby and down the stairs leading to the members" entrance, and so out into Palace Yard, where he was released, hatless, breathless, with his coat torn from the violence of the struggle that had just ensued. The police, it must be stated, did all that was possible under the conditions of the struggle not to hurt Mr. Bradlaugh; but it was impossible that the strife could have been other than severe and exhausting, when a man of powerful build was being carried, struggling with all his might, down-stairs and through narrow passages. For a moment there was a danger, or at least the possibility, of a conflict between the police and the crowd, as Mr. Bradlaugh stood there dis- arrayed, exhausted, and excited, in the sight of his follow- ers. Men of all kinds were present in the crowd of Mr. Bradlaugh" s supporters that day, inside and outside the gates of Palace Yard, who would have been willing enough to use force to assist their leader. One man at least in that crowd deserves special consideration, James Thomson, true poet and brilliant writer, author of " The City of Dreadful Night,"" a poem whose profound pessimism is illumined by a melancholy beauty, and of some even more %4S ENGLAHD UNDER ULADbTUJ^E. valuable songs of the joys and pleasures of the poor. Thomson had been of old a friend and follower of Mr. Bradlaugh; their ways of thought had varied of late, and their paths had separated; but here, in the moment of difficulty, Thomson came to do all he could for the cause which he believed to be just, the cause of his old friend. Thomson^s wild genius and splendid gifts came to a sad end some eighteen months later, when he died suddenly in a hospital, still a young man, leaving behind him only a brilliant memory and some verses of great fulfillment and greater promise. His career was not unlike that of Henri Murger, or some of his clever, eccentric companions. Like Murger^s, it was erratic, fitful, full of gifts and promise; like Murger' s, it came to an end too soon, and very sadly; like Murger's, it was much regretted. Mr. Bradlaugh, however, made no appeal to his followers to come to his aid. Those who clustered about him were dispersed by the police. Mr. Bradlaugh drank some water and waited peaceably talking to Inspector Denning, until he received information that the House had, by its vote, approved of the action that had been taken. He then drove across to Westminster police court, to ask for a sum- mons for formal assault against Inspector Denning. The magistrate, Mr. Sheil, found the case invoh'ed too many technicalities and complications to admit of his granting the summons just then; and Mr. Bradlaugh withdrew by the magistrate's door leading into Vincent Square, at the request of the police authorities, in order to avoid a scene with the crowd outside. In the meantime much had been doing inside the House of Commons. As soon as Mr. Bradlaugh had been re- moved, Mr. Labouchere complained in the House of the treatment of his colleague, and made a motion censuring the sergeant-at-arms and the officials of the House for the manner in which they had interpreted and acted upon the resolution of May 10. The motion was seconded by Mr. Ashton Dilke, and an active debate immediately sprung up, which was chiefly remarkable for a speech made by Mr. Bright, in which he spoke feelingly of the way in which Mr. Bra